Crank the Tunes

So I went to a party this last weekend. It wasn't a huge congregation, just a medium-sized get together with about 30 people in a small-ish apartment, but overall well executed. Except for one thing: speakers.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you are going to have a party, make sure you have ridiculously large speakers, big enough to get even the most timid of wallflowers dancing or at least involuntarily shaking with the bass vibrations. In normal life, I'm the first person to get pissed off at people playing their music too loud. My evil eye is staring right at you, car audio aficionados. But under the circumstances of a party, you are given a mandate to rock, and you'd better fulfill the damn thing.

Which made me think: maybe that could be my job. I could bike around with a pair of speakers and receiver set, finding all the parties that needed a little volume boost. When the neighbors threaten to call the cops, my job would be done and I would go on my way to find other poor hosts in need. I think there's demand.

Yo La

Out of all the pretentious, semi-obscure indie-bands that are out there, probably one of my favorites (and, incidentally, least obscure) is Yo La Tengo. I can listen to their album "I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One" without wanting to skip a track, which is an accomplishment for the ADD channel-flipper in my soul. From the entrancing bass line of "Moby Octopad" to the shambling organ of "Autumn Sweater", this album is the kind of solid gold that you'd never build a toilet out of, even if you were a ridiculously rich rapper. Hell, even their cover of the Beach Boys' (or the Hondells', depending on how you look at it) hit "Little Honda" manages to be sort of a pastiche and still rock harder than, uh... a piece of granite (creativity waning).

But wait, there's more! For some reason, I believe this album has occult powers of association. Pretty much every song on this album evokes a particular memory for me, whether it be of seasons and loves past, family and friends, or just staring out the window on bus trips.

Ok, to be fair, I should counter the hype so any unfortunate soul that has not had the opportunity to listen to this gem gets a fair chance at enjoying it on its own merits. Some of the songs are certainly alienating to people who aren't into more droning, shoegazer-type electronic jams. Several of the songs are instrumental tracks, which might turnoff some listeners. Personally, I think they're well placed in the continuous whole of the album, something like the interludes on "Pet Sounds", but others are allowed to have differing opinions.

That said, give it a chance. Please. For the good of humanity.

A New Morning?

Ok, I've decided to attempt actually blogging. By blogging, I mean not putting up random jewels of shit that I wrote in a fleeting hour when I was drunk with inspiration, but occasional updates on my mundane life. We'll try to fend off the pretentious rambling this time, in favor of...I don't know, narcissistic insights on the world? Agreed hypothetical reader? Sounds good.

So yesterday I went and saw Into the Wild . It's a good little flick (ok, two and half hours is probably a bit more than "little") that manages to not completely screw the proverbial pooch by staying near to the spirit, if not the exact text, of the book. However, if you have even the slightest inkling of wanderlust in your soul, I recommend to steer clear. It made me want to go grab my backpack and hit the road so I could fight grizzly bear.

Garage Band

Having been granted a respite by the distance of time, I've been writting a bit of my recollections from my garage bands. While being primarily self glorifying, I think they give a nice glimpse on the larval stages of a band.

Let’s start with Pack. Patrick Foley. The rock star.

Of course, he was the guitar player. Guitar is the quintessential instrument of rock. It screams, it howls, it can sound like a machine, a mountain lion, but mostly it sounds like unadulterated rock and roll. From the pre-Hendrix Telecaster scratching over booming stand-up bass, to the plastic soprano of an over-produced Boston album, the guitar is the sword in the stone of the rock band, and whoever wields it is the king.

Pack may have read Nietzsche, I wouldn’t have doubted it. Occasionally he would ramble incoherently about relativity and string theory; apparently he was a big fan of the Nova specials physics teachers routinely recommend to cure insomniac students. In any case, he possessed a relaxed will to power that would have both baffled and pleased Nietzche’s syphilis perforated waffle brain.

His Fender DeVille was more effective than any venereal disease in making my brain look like Swiss cheese, its amplifying tubes red hot in the rear, spitting licks and riffs out the front that sounded like an airplane careening wildly out of control. His blues lines smelled like the proverbial crossroads bar; you could almost see the smoke wafting off of the musical lines in the air. Actually, you could see smoke. It was from the curtains the amp was burning in the back.

Stevie Ray Vaughn acted as the holy force sanctifying endless solos at chest-crunching volumes. “That’s how Stevie did it,” was a common response to complaints of guitar rifts treading over horns, vocals, and pretty much every sound source in a two mile radius. In many ways Pack was less a musician than a weapon of mass destruction, illustrating the power of man aided by his industrial creations.

Insanity and Poetics

Being a poet and being insane are not mutually exclusive. Plainly true, if you know any poets (hopefully you know a handful), the same could probably said for musicians, painters, and other artists.

My poet was placed in an indeterminate class distinction. He was reasonably well dressed, and the Goodwill he was toting around seemed to indicate an indistinct grey area between poverty and mediocrity. His words were not crafted in the ornate rhyming patterns of some 19th century well to do, or the pretentious discordance of a pretentious 20th century bourgeois bohemian. Instead, it fell into the yet-unrecognized (perhaps rightfully so) category of half-insane rambling.

Insanity seems a funny thing to put into gradients. It's a conundrum that was best addressed by the Princess Bride, the distinction between "dead" and "nearly dead". Anyone that talks on a bus is clearly running slightly off of the track, unless they're talking into a cell phone, in which case they're sane but hopefully (in my mind) heading for a beating. And anyone that talks solely to himself or herself for any length of time is quickly discarded into the looney bin by consensus of the majority. Despite the absolutism of this societal judgment, sometimes the subject matter covered by these urban orators is surprisingly relevant and even insightful, not simply insane. Of course, most of these brilliant speeches are dominated by incomprehensible mumblings originating from a drawl of the most creative origin, interspersed by such key subjects and figures as "Bush", "the War", "God", and the occasional plea "Spare change?" But the mere act of speaking in such an unconscious manner for a public audience is commentary itself. Public dialogue somehow became a sin for Americans, maybe it always has been. Strange, for a society of people who prides democracy so much it is perpetually trying to instill its fervor upon other nations with the zeal of an evangelical missionary.

I was waiting for the bus. Actually, I had just leaped on a bus, only to catapult myself out of it after the transit gods enlightened me with the revelation that it was heading in the opposite direction I needed to go. Feeling discouraged, my life firmly in the grasp of those deities that govern the bus system, I trudged back to the stop.

His beard was the startlingly white that never fails to inspire comparisons to Santa Claus, or perhaps Uncle Sam. Personally, I thought he might have been Jewish, but the opinion had little evidence to rely upon. First he accosted the Asian kid next to me, who seemed thoroughly engrossed in the process of integrating his cell phone into his hand by the sheer force of his fervently mashing thumbs. Mr. Maybe Jewish opened with a warning shot.

"Where is it?"

Mashing buttons slacken; Asian kid inclines his head to puzzled attention.

"Excuse me?"

"Where are we?"

"I'm sorry, I don't quite know."

"Well fuck."

I spend the duration of this conversation trying to integrate myself into the pole I am leaning against, avoiding eye contact. Be the pole. Be the pole. Fortunately, the transit gods have heard my prayers and taken mercy.

"The blue bus. The blue bus. The blue bus is coming to take us."

On the bus, the aspiring St. Nicholas picks a new recipient for his linguistic grace.

"Are you a college girl?"

Diligent staring out the window, melding into the seat. Be the seat. Be the seat.

"All you college students are alike *unintelligible mumbling..."Bush"..."Spare Change?"..."Society"...* don't you know that Jesus loves you more than a Mexican loves a burrito?"

"Spare change so I can buy a Rubik’s cube and LSD? Then I could take over the world!"

I never knew that I could focus so hard on the simple act of walking, or examine the concrete so carefully.

"These folks are so cold. Damn cold."

At least the weather isn't, buddy. Why are you bothering me?

"Spare change?"

Why don't you get a job? Why don't you take meal points? Couldn't you take debit, or maybe just a hamburger? Why are you there, and I'm here?

Maybe the homeless have it right. It's a job that pays nothing, is frequently disrespected by politicians and citizens alike, and its merits are ignored completely (a lot like teaching in all of these regards). Even though I'm always repeating my mantras, trying to cast homeless invisibility spells around myself, I can't help but think that an important role is being played. The line between an artist and a homeless person is a roof overhead, not a very fine distinction.

Public Restrooms and the Sacrosanct

The public bathroom is one of the most maligned institutions, and not without good reason. It gives a whole new meaning to avoiding something "like the plague", providing an atmosphere so degraded that it seems possible that one might contract such a disease, or worse. Perhaps this is why so many of those paper covers, "for your protection", can be found in bathrooms around the United States these days, keeping your asshole safe for democracy.

In fact, I find myself more and more covering the seat with those odd wax paper constructions, and in their absence, resorting to strange abstract configurations of toilet paper which would belong better to an early 20th century avant-garde movement than comforting for my posterior. The need to gentrify myself, to escape the muck and grim of everyday life extends beyond the bathroom. Whenever I'm forced to cross over the freeway when running I crank my iPod up a little louder. Those little white earbuds have become my personal walls, a development that Bradbury would probably acknowledge with a cool disapproval typically reserved for when you find a condom in your son's dresser. I want to believe in the morals of a vivacious experiential lifestyle, the good of living in synergy with my surroundings, but some of the realities are simply too real.

And so enters the role of the public bathroom. Possibly it is because I am a runner that I have gained reverence for this uncommon target of veneration. Certainly, the discovery of a bathroom on a long run for a soul in need rivals any conversion experience I've ever heard about. But the appeal extends beyond the physiological. An empty public restroom is a modern cathedral, a cloister for the soul. Typically dark, the exception to this rule is the light which slants down through the high, bunker slits that function as windows. This contrast plays well upon the tiles and other simple ceramics which adorn the floor, postmodern mosaics which fascinate through a logic thoroughly devoid of thought or intelligence.

I won't go as far to say that the shit on the wall enhances the religious aspect. Public restrooms deserve their reputation for a filth. However, it is a potent reminder of reality. Indeed, the powerful musk practically clubs the senses with into acknowledging reality (clubbing seals, however, does not). But it is this sense of earthly reality, combined with the simple aesthetic pleasures of the building itself, which lead to the religious appeal to the modern public restroom.