An Experiment In Capitalism

Having let this blog sit idle for the better part of a year, I decided upon my return to try something Completely Different: I have signed up to do sponsored posts/reviews/poems/interpretive dance pieces for a little joint called PayPerPost.

As excited as I am to whore out my little corner of the blogosphere to the highest bidder, I do not have high hopes for turning any real profit.  Still, having a post or two potentially provide a little beer money is more potential beer money than any of my posts were generating otherwise.

Any sponsored posts will be noted in the post itself.  Don't expect to see such a note very often, I would say.  Then again, it will probably be more often than anyone's seen anything on this site in the past nine months or so.

So there's that.

The New U.S. Poet Laure-sorry, what?

Modern poetry is

a well-written paragraph chopped

up into random collections

of sentence fragments

that resist easy

reading.

Profundity.

Doric

New York State passed the gay marriage bill last night.

I feel the kind of embarrassment that any self-aware white person must have felt during the civil rights movement of the 60's: I'm so happy for my gay friends but I know, as a straight person, that I was never the one who was being oppressed. I hope my treasured gays forgive me the small entitlement of my satisfaction.

Still, it makes me miss Doric Wilson. Deeply. I was folded into his inner circle (as part of the ridiculously talented TOSOSII) for a very brief two years or so, until my own personal problems drove me away from many of my then-current social circles. He was one of the original gay rights activists--he never knew that speaking out for people of his sexual predilection was a "thing"--and ended up being part of the Stonewall riots that started this whole ball rolling forty years ago.

Doric died very recently. And I didn't say anything about it at the time because I felt that same entitlement-based embarrassment. But I desperately wish he had been around to see this, to see NYC actually legalize--i.e., normalize--the kind of society that he'd been fighting for since the 50's, before he knew he was fighting for anything other than people not harming other people.

I admit that others--Barry, Mark, Kathleen, Jamie--have way more claim on missing him than I do, but those brief moments of having the sunshine of his attention focused on me have really never faded.

He saw so much during his time on earth; I just wish he'd been around to see this.

Happy Birthday To Me

A list of my birthday presents, as given to me today and over this past year:

--I got to play Arlene's Grocery with The Conditionals last night. Arlene's has been on a par for me, as a measure of success, with venues like the Bitter End, ever since I saw a band there--Bailiff--whom I thought were terminally cool and desperately wanted to join. I was not cool at the time though, and things worked out the way they were meant to.

--I'm finally playing with an honest-to-god blues band, headed by a Mr. Nick E.T. (he'd hate me for saying he was the bandleader, which is delicious): the Brooklyn Blues Project. And we're good. Since I started at age 12, I never thought I'd be one of the "good" musicians playing in a "good" band.

--I got new headphones so I can finally use my ipod again.

--I got new underwear so I can finally use my pants again. Wait....

And, drumroll pleeze...

--My wife. That's all, just "my wife." Everything about her. From her head to her toes, to everything between her ears, to her lovely, lightly beating heart. The love of my life.

Now, spin me like an LP! Call me your pin-up Jesus! (Buh-dum!) I'm 33, y'all!

Hard Time Killing Floor Blues

I just spent the last day or two learning this song, originally by Skip James and given new, wonderful life by Chris Thomas King. I had to arrange it for myself using only the lower three strings--since the intended DADFAD tuning would play hell on a normal guitar set-up--but the final effect is undiminished.

I desperately want to perform this live, as a surprise mostly. I have no idea where it would fit in a proper set, but the simplicity of it reminds me of early Hebrew writing at its best, and I dare say Erich Auerbach would agree: it's elision at its most expressive, transmitting the profound despair of human existence more in its silence than in its sound.

One note at a time, simply played, just like life. Both disturbing and elating...

Mawage: Putting the "Itchin" In "Tradition"

Via Sullivan, we have an argument for more traditional marriages.

Ha! Okay, I guess that was a sorta kinda an in-joke for anyone who knows that Sully is a very outspoken proponent of what Republicans call "non-traditional" marriages. Like that? Eh? Anyone? Bueller?

Moving on....

I disagree entirely that marriages would benefit from being standardized and, frankly, I think the writer Sullivan quotes misses the point entirely. The trappings of a marriage ceremony don't much matter; the vows are what place the two individuals in the greater stream of human life on this Earth--the pledge to fidelity, to respect, to support.

In his own photo-negative, misanthropic way, David Mamet has a nice anecdote about this:

"I was once at a marriage ceremony where the parties swore to 'try to be faithful, to try to be considerate....' The marriage was, of course, doomed. Any worthwhile goal is difficult to accomplish. To say of it 'I'll try' is to excuse oneself in advance. Those who respond to our requests with 'I'll try' intend to deny us, and call on us to join in the hypocrisy--as if there were some merit in intending anything other than accomplishment."

This is the standard I held to when Erin and I wrote our vows: "I take you...," "I promise to...," etc. And I think as long as these fundamental words are spoken, as long as this contract between two people is simply and unequivocally stated, then it doesn't matter whether the surrounding shenanigans happen inside or outside, at an altar or on top of a Ferris wheel.

After all, each wedding is a celebration of a unique couple joining in a universal institution, a confluence of the singular and the eternal. It seems to me that a personalized ceremony (reflecting the uniqueness of the couple) using thorough, unambiguous vows (thereby acknowledging the eternal) is just the right way to recognize such monumental themes...

The Creaking Door Of A Closing Confessional

I have to admit something. This admission is not only eased by the fact that no one will read it, it's also spurred by that fact.

I used to think it something of a curse that I never built much of a readership for this blog. After taking an extended break it occurred to me that a possible reason for this is that I had let this blog resemble its title--always meant half-facetiously--much too much. I was saying nothing, and sometimes I wasn't even saying it well.

Self-censorship is not always a bad thing. I won't ever get into any negative aspects of my social and/or artistic life in this space--I will leave those classy souls airing their spats on Facebook to their rarefied perches. But, reviewing most of my more, ahem, recent posts (assuming they can still be called that), I see that I had begun to limit myself almost entirely to the safety of posts announcing upcoming events. Obviously an effective strategy considering my whopping ten page views per week.

What started as a forum established with the hope that I could practice my wordsmithing and share the random deep and (mostly) shallow thoughts of my day-to-day existence had quietly sunk into the sterile cowardice of words for words' sake. This blog had passed out of the realm of self-censorship into straight up P.R. Not quite my original intention...

I'm not really sure how to make my planned transition, but I very much aim to return to subjects about which I have an interest and an opinion--politics, art, religion, and other various bullshit (did I just repeat myself?), etc. Relaxing into this will be tricky; it's not easy to loosen a locked jaw. I learned that on 7th Ave. But I will do my best. I mean, hell, I live in New York City...who really would notice another poor schlub screaming random liberal, anti-religious, absurdist-leaning Jeremiads in this neck of the woods?

I mean, hopefully a few more than usual, if I let those screeds actually reflect real feelings....but, you know, other than that....

Two Bunnies, One God

Whenever I have a little downtime I get to thinking about the orifices of woodland animals and how those orifices fit into the grander scheme of the Universe.

I'd just like to share what I believe is a fundamental meditation on the subject.

From The Dept. Of Unconscious Prejudices

On a lovely walk with my lovely wife, I realized that I have a previously and completely unarticulated prejudice against the feet of tall people. I imagine their length, and how oversized each feature must be--from the toes to the patch of hair on the top of the arch, to, well, what must be the amplified aromas--and, I hate to admit this, but it strikes me as grotesque.

Sigh. It's not that I don't like feet. They can be very beautiful...in smaller doses.

Tall people: I sincerely apologize for this minor, hitherto undiagnosed bit of insanity.

Still though, don't take your shoes off, 'kay?

Checkity Check...

One, two--one, two...

Oh, this thing's still on?

I guess I should, um, say something.

(bored coughs/mic feedback...)

XXXI

One score and eleven.

If I were Jesus I'd be one year into my ministry. As my love and I concluded, though, I'm quite happy not to be Jesus, because I would only get to hang out with her for two more years.

And I'd have to put up with all those Mary's. Seriously, I much prefer Maureens.

All right now, go have a lovely day and I'll pretend it was in my honor.

Random Thought: On Art And Boredom

The one human state no art is able to capture is boredom.

Music can't do it. Notes have an intrinsic energy that's the opposite of listlessness, a kind of temporal tension: a tone has a beginning and, once begun, we wonder where it will go. Will it rise or fall, or will it simply fade back into silence?

Words, whether read or spoken, have this same energy. There's a tension between the meaning of the word and the way that meaning sits within the larger message of the thought being expressed. So writing--though capable of describing the feeling--can't actually convey it.

Similarly, color and line relate to each other through boundaries, all of which relate to the larger border of the frame (whether a rectangle of wood molding or, for a mural, say, the perimeter of a wall), which is to say nothing of the energy inherent to the pigments themselves, the gray scale included.

Boredom, as we all know, can be provoked (and here I must mention the art of theater, the ne plus ultra of such a provocateur), but it can never be artistically transmitted.

There's a saying that despair is the greatest sin against God (which we secularists do no injury by interpreting as "life"). Perhaps. But underlying such abject devastation is a longing for life as it used to be. Boredom, on the other hand, while certainly less overwhelming is actually more extreme. It is, at heart, a disinterest--a detachment--from the senses, from chronology, and so, really, a detachment from life (no matter how briefly).

Of all the social and emotional purposes the arts serve, perhaps rescuing us from boredom is the most basic.

The Merchant Of Menace

ANTONIO
In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:
It wearies me; you say it wearies you;
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born,
I am to learn;
And such a want-wit sadness makes of me,
That I have much ado to know myself.

Sigh...

It Begins...

So, as far as I can figure it, the whim under which I visited Blogspot yesterday and whipped this little thing up was born of a desire to undo what has felt like an epic, years-long case of creative block. An attempt to roll a boulder out of my path, in some way. But, instead of an empty cave where a few confused Hebrews were treated to the final sha-bang of a thirty-three-year magic act, I'm hoping to find something, er, substantive.

The pursuit should be interesting, considering that my most successful poetry (by which I mean those short, haphazard groupings of metaphors people I didn't know and therefore couldn't bribe actually saw fit to publish), and most of my better dramatic writings, are concerned almost solely (and ironically) with the feeling that I have nothing to say. Actually, nothing, said well, might best describe my MO.

Now, clearly, things occur to me over the course of the day. Ideas, observations, puns, riffs, meanderings. Often, they're silly. Sometimes, they're not. I guess I'm hoping that if I etch my ideas and experiences into a solid medium--to those who just cocked their head I note that the interwebs never forget--then I'll force myself to acknowledge that I actually have a considered take on my own life.

Here's hoping anyway. Let the games begin...