Artist: Vernon Reid
Song: Uptown Drifter (5.02 MB)
Album: Mistaken Identity
Year: 1996

God hey, SOTW hasn't been updated in months. Ouch. I'm going to leave you with Vernon Reid's virtual bong hit as you head out to do weekend things. I can't believe how overlooked "Mistaken Identity" is. If I was Vernon, I'd just re-release in 10 years and make a billion dollars. By then, the rest of the world's aesthetic abilities will have caught up to Vernon's (circa '87)...

I'd be a bit remiss without mentioning Pat Tillman: a soldier's spot is a tough place to reside. There's so much honorable merit in how he lived his life -- completely steadfast in playing down special privilege. I wish we had more of that. I think America's neo-philosophical take on ownership is noxiously out-of-control. $ don't buy you love -- and $ don't buy you privilege either, asshole. What's more certain is that the people most deserving of privilege won't ask for it and will rarely take it. RIP PT.

This is probably the best musical performance of my life (download mp3 ~7 MB) and somebody caught the thing on tape. Howz that for Friday-the-13th payback? God, even if you don't believe in Numerology, it still bites you in the ass. Anyway, I'm playing my new v-bass on the recording (melody for the first 3/4ths of the piece and bass for the last 1/4th). Andrew is doing bass and then melody on his stick-thingy. Adrian is doing the drums, and Five is creating the most brilliant noise that I have heard in my life. Listen carefully for the point in time where Andrew and I switch on bass, 'cause it's subtle and cool. You can find more of Adrian and Andrew at neonbrown.com and more of Five at piratemusic.tv, brilliant minds, indeed. Also, more clips from the performance can be found on the Jam-Of-The-Week site.

Artist: Jonas Hellborg & Shawn Lane & Jeff Sipe
Song: Rice With The Angels
Album: Personae
Year: 2002

Another Metro find: September 20th, 2003, 4:46 AM.

Hellborg, Lane, Sipe: better than aspirin, or butt rock? Roll down your windows and take from your car stereo everything it has, and don't tell me you wouldn't be slightly embarrassed having "Rice With The Angels" blaring from your car (ahh, Lawyers, Guns, and Money? how about Camaros, mullets, and AC/DC?). "Hey man, is that soil your pants rock? Well, turn it up!" Oh, but I'm not mocking it, this stuff is legit. Plus, you have to feel a bit sorry for musicians who probably never get a single woman go to their shows. In the Sex, Drugs, and Rock-n-Roll equation, they are missing at least 1/3 of the variables, and that's such a tragedy for how good the melodies are. Lane's amphetamized jazz runs put Alvin and the Chipmunks to complete shame. Put the CD on repeat and bask in amazement as well as enjoy (oh my god oh my god oh my god).

[Update: I pulled this post down yesterday after I discovered that Lane had died only a few days after the first time I heard Personae... Yeah, I'm poking a bit of fun in the post, but there's a lot of respect there too.]

Artist: Jeff Buckley/The Fire Theft
Song: Mojo Pin/Backwards Blues
Album: Grace/The Fire Theft
Year: 1994/2003

One of the great things about living in Seattle is that you frequently get to drive around at night in the rain. There's really no better way to symbolically slash your wrists than to ride in a tin can on rubber in a deluge, especially at night. You can turn your radio to dark songs and dodge all those negligent drivers and have a private communion with pity (Really, what good is it to have anything but private pity? You wouldn't want to post it on a blog, that's for sure).

Shift to 2nd, but dodge the flooded storm sewer. A few years ago I was on a pity drive (in the rain at night) driving anywhere and hoping to randomly run into my yoga teacher. Stupid really. I had a serious crush on her -- or at least her class -- and her presence induced a lot of comfort in me. It sounds stalkerish, but just the thought of randomly finding my yoga teacher -- that was solace enough for an intensely spirit fracturing night. Is there a better definition for religion? A student seeking his teacher for knowledge, comfort, and grace, even if the search is in vain -- a rocketship to the stars?

A 2nd to 4th shift (we're going fast enough, but don't kill the pedestrian in the crosswalk). Another great thing about living in Seattle is the ability to listen to DJ Larry Metro on KEXP. You can get him on the internet, but it cheapens his show. Really, his show should be tried start to finish on a mono AM/FM clock radio: pain and imperfection matching pain and imperfection in their magnetized harmony. Not that Metro's show is imperfect, but you'll feel imperfect after your done with it. As it should be too. When a guy can take his pain and slap you around with it and you call it art and come back for more -- that's one of those pleasures you only do when the door is closed and the light is out. Proof? How about Friday, September 20, 2003 at 5:39 AM? Metro played Jeff Buckley's "Mojo Pin" followed by The Fire Theft's "Backward Blues." No great genius there -- until you hear the transition. And Metro does this shit day in and day out and nobody listens. How's that for pain and imperfection?

Let's be frat boy stupid and drive in 5th on a residential street (at night in the rain). So you fuckheads (much like me) who proclaim all this Jeff-Buckley-this and Jeff-Buckley-that, but never listened to him before he drowned, what good is it doing him now? You might as well take all those postmortem accolades and stuff them in a bottle without a cork and throw them in the Mississippi River. In the meantime listen to Larry Metro and clear your conscience a bit.

Slam on the brakes 'cause I'm going to post a picture of myself. My friend caught on film the very self-portrait that I would paint if forced to do so in some community college art class. For all the dark verbal shit I spit on paper and send to everybody around me -- the happiness in this pic -- this is the me I see, the me I feel every day. I'd show it more often, but I've got some weird channels in me and some of them run forever but don't cover much ground. And if I'm swimming in one of those channels, or if I'm driving at night and in the rain, just switch your radio to Larry Metro and you will see what I see.

I may be the last one to believe it but I'll always be the first one to say it, "who gives a fuck, anyway?"

Here's an mp3 clip from my last gig with Neon Brown (ballyhooing as Punkrock Pink) at Mr. Spot's Chai House in Seattle (I'm playing the distorted bass -- Andrew is on super real bass delivered via [essentially] Stick).

download mp3 clip (9.11 MB)

Additionally features Antoinette (violin) and Dave (weird wired things) from Revolving Jugglers.

Artist: Mitsou
Song: A Funny Place (The World Is)
Album: Mitsou
Year: 1992

Writing instead of zzzing -- so what, you know? Maybe I'll over-sleep and get fired? I do want fries with that. Why the fuck not? Fucknot. What a waste of a mind and I'm not even wasted. Waist of a mind -- I like that better. Hmmm, I'm writing ycabw Vic Ferrari but the plan was to write a new Song Of The Week. If you take a big enough bong hit you can stay stoned the remainder of your life. It's true.

Jen once asked me if I was ever happy (under the guise of asking me, "When is the last time that you felt alive. Really alive."). Alive, me? Yes. On travel-trips that spread me thin and push me to find perspective. That and listening to Ivan Doroschuk. Especially when he's telling me "the world is a funny place." Funny indeed -- corporate climbers take heed. Sharing a meal with a good friend is pretty stellar too. Writing without any form cracks me up and almost makes me feel alive. Although, I'll wake up and hate my writing in the morning and maybe I'll work at hating every moment in between. It's the sick mind, the idealist. But even in the martyred hell that I've ascribed to my brain, if you can't get up and dance to Mitsou's take on Ivan Doroschuk's A Funny Place (Song Of The Week Volume 13) -- well, think of it this way, "your friends (probably) don't dance, and if they don't dance, they're no friends of mine."

Grumpy forever, but alive all the time. Peace, TQ

Artist: Gram Parsons
Song: A Song For You
Album: GP
Year: 1972

One thing that arises out of unemployment is surplus time to ride, burn, and smoke the midnight oil to wherever it takes you. My surplus blessed me with spending many witching hours listening to barrier-bending DJ-Larry Metro on KEXP, Seattle. Another thing that arises from unemployment is the gift of a personal full-length Mirror. Between the two I hammered away at my egocentric, unilateral approach to music appreciation. When I was younger, I constantly touted the phrase "open minded" and then usually followed it with "I like everything except rap and country." Fortunately, Metro and the Mirror taught me to approach music with a find-a-value-in-it attitude. And like Frost at the fork in the road, this has made all the difference (although by now, ironically, both paths are probably very well traveled).

So, when the Gram Parsons revolution hit me two weeks ago (via my purchase of his fist two albums), my intellectual ears were attuned and ready for the Cosmic American Music sermon. I knew of Gram Parsons as a youth. I even knew of his mystique and legend. But when I heard his music as a youth, it scream-shattered the crystal imago I had built for him. Jesus, his stuff sucked. And so I believed, and so it went. On and on for nearly twenty years. But I've always felt some weird and perhaps delusional affinity and communion with Gram Parsons (obviously stupid because he's dead). I really like his name, so maybe it's all based on that. Regardless, I never let his mystique fly by, and it was a wise decision, because one play of his two-on-one packaged CD rearranged all of my semi-hardened music appreciation brain neurons (softened a bit by the aforementioned DJ Larry Metro and Mirror).

This Gram Parsons revolution is so strong I feel that applying words to it will only cheapen it and cause a great failure in the intention of my words and my execution of arranging them.

Gram Parsons died of a morphine and tequila overdose on September 19, 1973. Normally, this wouldn't spur any pronounced emotional reaction in me. In fact I prefer the Gene Simmons school of thought --that if you can't handle the fame and feel the need to suicide yourself (deliberately, accidentally, or otherwise) -- there are plenty of other suburban youth-rock-star-wannabes who'd be willing to swing that same fame bat for you.

Parsons's case is different because he didn't hit stratospheric fame and he wasn't playing rock-and-roll (and we all know about being country when country wasn't cool). There's something about his Harvard theology studies too. Searching. It recalls a Hesse quote that I recently posted. Was Parsons "a beast astray who finds neither home nor joy nor nourishment in a world that is strange and incomprehensible"?

On a bad night for me in high school, the evening ended with my friend writing the following letter:

I wonder if Parsons's last night was a "scary, depressing evening," or just another rock-and-roll party turned into a media goldmine? I hope for the former; I hope the last lyrics Parsons thought of were from his song "$1000 Wedding":

I say that not to be morbid. I just want his death to be as real as his life and his music. I mean, "country-rock" would have worked just fine, but Parsons wanted "Cosmic American Music." Laughable, lovable, geniusable. Four minutes and forty-three seconds into track 17 (a live track) on the GP/Grievous Angel CD, a woman screams something like "I don't like you -- you're ugly." If that's truly what is said -- and the engineers caught it and Gram left it in -- then that's keeping it real. That's the Gram Parsons revolution. [Oops-update: I just read the liner notes. The audience was canned on track 17. So much for keeping it real. Now I can go to bed crushed. At least it wasn't my Ph D thesis]

Aside: imago is one of those words with two pronunciations. Some say tomayto, some say tomahto, and some say imaygo, some say imahgo. Now that the Internet makes it possible, a site should exist that standardizes the way words roll off our tongues. Then we could get rid of crap like Warshington and alleviate silly arguments in the vein of whether it's JIF or GIF when pronouncing the acronym for Graphics Interchange Format... Oh wait. I forgot that the world perpetuates on silly arguments. We really shouldn't do anything that would get rid of those.

Artist: Rebekah Del Rio
Song: Llorando (Crying)
Album: Mulholland Drive Soundtrack
Year: 2001
Bonus Song: A Long Goodbye (756 KB)

And that's it. Mingling in the presence of legit art leaves you wholly naked -- a sudden, unapologetic, and irrevocable nakedness with no quarter. Conversely, pedestrian art revels in the one-burlesque-strap-at-a-time, pirouette around some once-shiny pillar of culture that pines for its audience to wholesale believe that effective imagination lies in what is not revealed. Legit art just takes your underwear and hangs it high in a tree.

I first experienced this phenomenon when my mom thought it was a good idea to take her 8-year-old son to see Raging Bull in 1980. Oh-fucking-ambush-shit-storm. Anything -- Debbie Does Dallas -- anything would have been a better choice. Forget the popcorn on this one for sure. At least with Debbie Does Dallas, the plot absurdity would have eventually quashed any uncomfortable feelings I had about watching gratuitous anatomy mingling while my mom was in the adjacent theater seat. Who knows, after a Debbie sub plot or two, maybe my mom and I could have made a run for Junior Mints and popcorn after all.

But Raging Bull. Turn the Aesthetic Page:

At age 8 I couldn't comprehend the art contained within the violence and language of the preceding script excerpt. I was reasonably street smart. I knew fuck and shit and cunt and all that stuff. But I knew them as imitation-swears and cool playground words (think imitation bacon bits for fledgling vegetarians).

Now, when Cathy Moriarty's Vickie says, "I sucked your brother's fuckin' cock!" That phrase gets packaged with all of its denotation and all of its connotation and gets wrapped into a potent singularity of legit art (especially with her lines being bounced off of Robert De Niro). It was a singularity so fierce that it stripped off all of the theatergoers' clothes who accompanied my mom and me. Of course my mom and I were naked too. So I couldn't jump into her lap for protection (extended innocence?) and my pride wouldn't let me cover my eyes or ears. I had to face Raging Bull straight up and naked -- to examine the saint -- to examine the sinner.

I was most recently naked at the movies while watching Mulholland Drive in October 2001. Being an awkwardly tall guy, I either sit in the very front row of a theater (legs can extend as much as desired), or the very back (nobody behind me to crack tall guy jokes -- being tall, conspicuous, and super self-conscious really sucks a thousand and two sucks). Anyway, for Mulholland Drive, I was alone (for a Lynch flick!), wearing my orange Chuck Taylor high tops, and I sat in the very first row: a self-conscious disaster invisibly effervescing. Then Jesus!

Rebekah Del Rio made her entrance giving a soliloquy of sadness by singing an a cappella lament. Her lament did not comfort. It demanded, it screamed, it suffered, it hated, it shuddered. Her sorrowful melody started deceptively sweetly, but after a few recursions of a crescendo-ing wail, the fury is released. She is God and her audience is left scrambling to hide their selves -- ashamed to show their banal nakedness in the presence of her sublime creation.

Certain artists make fortunes bearing lame crosses of suburban angst. In contrast Rebekah Del Rio bares the souls of her listeners to make fortunes in the exultations of art. When she sings (check out the bonus song, "A Long Goodbye") the embodiment of truth is entwined in her timbre, breath, and phrasing. She is a true artist, one that will make you naked without regard to your objections or resistance.

Addendum. It's a collective societal imperative to ensure that artists like Del Rio can live their lives without obstructions to their creative processes. Hmm, hear the naysayers? One way to support the aforementioned Utopian vision is by seeing live music. Fortunately, Rebekah Del Rio will be playing in the Seattle area at the Twin Peaks Festival August 15th - 17th 2003. If anyone wants to go to this, let me know.

Artist: Blondie
Song: Angels On The Balcony
Album: Autoamerican
Year: 1980

[ed note: I tiredfully wrote this without segues, but I'll post it just to post]

Just caught Blondie on a rerun of The Pink Lady and Jeff on Trio TV. I remember watching Deborah Harry on K-tel commercials when I was 9 or 10. I had some sort of autonomous reverence for her. The commercials would come on and I would change the channel in fear of my parents catching my automatic and uncontrollable worship of her. I felt like Ms. Harry's complete physical and spiritual sexuality that was personified as Blondie was heaped upon me -- marking me with some sort of Hester Prynne-ish sign.

To this day, I don't understand the fear I had of an adult catching me watching a 20 second clip of a good pop band with a pretty lead singer. If it was purely sexual embarrassment, I could attribute it to the same sort of feelings I got when my family members would tease me about some girlfriend that I never had. But the feelings I had were deeper.

I knew the word rapture. I knew that it had religious significance (as in the Rapture). I knew that what it represented didn't belong in the domain of children. But I didn't know the literal meaning of rapture. So, Blondie's "Rapture" was a point of confusion for me -- bewildering and enticing. Throughout my youth, I never separated the unknown meaning of rapture and the forbidden feelings that Blondie and Deborah Harry induced. It's probably the best contextual assimilation of a word that I have ever experienced.

And just like the Great Rock and Roll Ambiguity that is strewn throughout the lyrics of "Angels On The Balcony:"

I really came of age on the pop-fabulous of Blondie. NYC and Milwaukee are as diametric as they come, but it might as well have been me and my 3rd grade fantasies that were worshipping at CBGBs, that were hanging with dudes with blinking red LED sunglasses, that were simultaneously dyeing hair blonde and black. Blondie was wide-open mainstream by the time they hit me, but they pushed my boundaries, gave me roller skating highs, and forever stuck into this kid who came along.

Volume 10 aside: while watching The Pink Lady and Jeff I saw a Ginsu-like commercial for doughnuts "without all the fat." Now, your grandparents might tell you that there are no guarantees in life. Sure enough. However, in my life there are two guarantees: my beer will contain alcohol; my doughnuts will contain fat.

Artist: Coldplay
Song: Warning Sign
Album: A Rush of Blood to the Head
Year: 2002

While visiting San Francisco -- sure -- have a literati moment and visit City Lights Bookstore. But if you want yeoman enlightenment (it's better than you think), make a visit to City Limits Restaurant in Bremerton, Washington.

Bremerton is an economically and Prozacally depressed city. I get to go there frequently by virtue of my job. Today, I went to City Limits for lunch. The guy behind the counter took for-fucking ever to take my order. I was seething with all the nastiness that writers block and sleep deprivation produces -- and I was just about to give him a super urbanized "what the fuck is taking so long?" when a rare Seattle ray of sun beamed of wave of empathy into every part of my soul.

When you drink empathy tonic, the great Cosmic Hopper takes notice.

I gained awareness that the guy behind the counter put his heart and soul into the restaurant. And while I am off to New York City, frolicking in pinwheel fashion and pretending to be so cosmopolitan -- he's back in a nothing town taking care of his own. I hope to God his dream is bigger than my actualities. 'Cause, the thing is this guy waited on me hand and foot -- and he didn't call me a hippy-faggot for my purple sunglasses, and he didn't flinch from my initial dissatisfaction with him --regardless that he probably did feel my irritation and probably didn't understand my garb. He went through the trouble of custom-making my home-fries without green peppers (I abhor them) and just before I left, he gave me a free Dr Pepper to go. All of this and the place has live jazz and omelets all day long (the omelets not the jazz).

So Mr. Man behind the counter, SOTW Volume 7 is for you. I'll be off on my journeys everywhere, royally exercising all that is privileged; my neighbors will be right at home Mike-Tysoningly-slamming their doors for whatever reason, but at least the world will know; but you mister counter man, you will be at work, tending to your customers, soaking in the evening jazz, all the while enjoying the thrill of filling your humble space in the world.

We'll meet again kind fellow -- maybe play a game of Euchre or two. In the meantime enjoy this melancholy song -- it could have been so much better if it was written for you rather than (ostensibly) some anonymous chick.

Tonight, God bless the bus drivers.

Peace, TQ

Addendum, I found this looking for a City Limits webpage. They are probably commonplace, but the disco ball is such a great juxtaposition to the bleakness of Bremerton.

Song of the Week, Volume 6

Artist: The Kinks
Song: The Village Green Preservation Society
Album: The Village Green Preservation Society
Year: 1968

Six is going to be flawed. It's late so I'm already hosed on time. I'm frustrated because I have topics that I want to cover, but no song to accompany them; and, I have songs, but they would all be out of context in relation to my planned topics. Now I am doubly hosing myself since I'm writing about what I want to write about instead of just writing about it.

I'm also sidetracked since the past week immersed me into the blog underworld and I want to cover those emotions first since they are foremost in my mind. In time Song of the Week will settle back into its intent and I'll use the remaining six days to blog about blogging or any other topic the doesn't fit within the bounds of SOTW. So sublimation tomorrow, impulsiveness today.

Actually, I was kicking through the channels earlier and Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors" was on VH1 Classic. So much of that song is aligned with the framework of my emotions of the past week. I heard it and knew it was volume six. Unfortunately, I don't own the CD, plus none of you would download it since it's Cyndi Lauper for fucksake. Maybe I'll just throw a dart and see where it lands.

Blogs of notice (one is defunct): o2bee and waxy.org and indierocket. It's a mother, daughter, and son blog combination (independently maintained). Well, ostensibly it is -- though I highly doubt that it isn't. That would be a cool thing to pull off -- write three different blogs from the perspective of individual family members. The things life allows you to do.

o2bee is a chilly site -- at present she's covering her mother's severe sickness and imminent death. Y'all can check that part out if you want to. The site makes me groove 'cause her writing reminds me of someone scraping out her hardest-of-hardcore insides and then serving them up on one of those steely cold platters (the kind you might write about in a beginning poetry class). Or maybe it isn't serving-up, but more-exactly, force feeding and cramming down. I like either method. It makes me feel like someone stole my eighth grade journal and posted it on Google's front page.

Song of the Week, Volume 5

Artist: Mike Keneally & Beer for Dolphins
Song: Kedgeree
Album: Dancing
Year: 2000

One million-plus registered users on Blogger and I'm telling myself, blog-this or blog-off -- the world surely doesn't need one million and one blogs. Especially, especially in light of Cristina Nehring's very recent Harper's Magazine article, "Our Essays Ourselves" (Harper's, May 2003) which severely questions the autobiographical banality of the modern essay. Even more especially that a Google search on this essay yields results that only includes blogs. Further damning is that one of those blogs cites a line that I wanted to use for this essay:

So, for every blog that's out there, there are easily ten reasons it should desist. Combine that with Nehring's article and I had nearly enough reason for me to scrap the "y'all can't all be wrong" blog before I even made my first post. But, as I assembled my blog and pondered over such things as which shade of gray is the coolest or whether to use horizontal or vertical menus -- I happened upon a few sites that propelled me forward:

The being jennifer garrett blog provided instant comfort to my fears of bombarding the world with insipid details of my life (like those shades of gray I just mentioned). The "being jennifer garrett" description is "Everyday an adventure in mediocrity," and I'm thinking hey, there's at least one blogger out there who isn't trying to fool anybody. In fact I created a word for this: derationalized. So if "being jennifer garrett" is the first derationalized blog, perhaps "y'all can't all be wrong" will be the second?

Moreover, I didn't create my blog in a quest for greatness, nor did I create it to disseminate dull personal details. I did it because I felt I had no choice in the matter -- it was borne from the essence of incitement. There's a great Molière quote that is also found on the "being jennifer garrett" blog:

My journals and thousands of letters and emails prove my love for writing. "y'all can't be wrong"/Song of the Week is for my few close friends (except for the few who sent me hate mail for spamming them). If I never get to the prostitution stage -- I'm OK with that.

Song of the Week, Volume 4, 2003 June 08

Artist: Nåid
Song: And When I Heard Her, I Knew We Were Going The Right Way
Album: Nåid
Year: 1996

The following domains are registered:

123456789101112.com
johnjacobjingleheimerschmidt.com
slhacker.com
doubleu.com
orangeshoes.com
01235.com
8675309.com
sdrawkcab.com
eatpaste.com

eatpaste.com ??? C'mon, that's just not fair -- that should have been my site. Now, I am wondering if I have a cosmic double out there? Forget Internet dating, just find that random domain name that you really like and that somebody else has all ready scooped up. Bam -- you've found your (in?)significant other.

Nevertheless, to test the other side of the nothing-new-under-the-sun theory, here is a list of still available domain names (as of 2003-06-06):

012358.com
hisnameismynametoo.com
givemesomecandy.com
sitdownandshutup.com
theseampsgoto11.com
youwontforgetit.com
mymothersmaidenname.com
orangehightops.com

You would think that if you went through the trouble of registering johnjacobjingleheimerschmidt.com you would also fork over the cash for hisnameismynametoo.com Similarly, the first one on the list is the first six numbers of the Fibonacci sequence (the fist five are taken). A great, useless, expensive, and somewhat-performance-art piece would be to register every number in the sequence (up to the domain name length limit). Then have each domain contain a page with its given number and have that number be a hyperlink to the next number in the sequence (e.g. 8.com points to 13.com and 13.com points to 21.com and so forth). Is it anymore absurd than the John Cage piece that is currently being played -- the one that is going to take a couple of hundred years to finish? (639 years, click here)

Forgoing segues, SOTW Volume 4 is from a band from Sweden. I bought the CD on the recommendation of a friend of a friend (Matt then Mark) on the second to last day of my 2001 Stockholm trip. Less than a day after returning from Stockholm, two of my friends and I piled into a car and drove straight to San Diego. The Nåid (pronounced noid) CD was one of the few CDs we listened to en route. The trip was misery personified: three people, two weeks of camping gear, one Beetle, and no sleep. Plus, I had written incessantly in Stockholm. Most of it was for the betterment of humanity. However, one piece -- mailed in an unforgettable-headache-provoking-yellow envelope -- that one had other intentions (you know, words good and bad, they do what they're told without conscience). That one piece of (unfortunately) mailed cruel intentions -- it never left my mind the entire trip.

Song of the Week, Volume 3, 2003 June 03

Artist: Tina & the B-Side Movement
Song: Play That Fool
Album: Salvation
Year: 1996

I fell asleep with my head on my computer's keyboard last night. Technically, my head was resting on the wrist pad -- it's definitely more comfortable that way, but either way I haven't done that since my nearly role-playing-extremist software days at The Evergreen State College. It's a shame that it hasn't happened more.

In my family I'm the baby by a mile. Now that I have acquired some years, it's a bit freaky thinking about the age of my immediate family -- so much so that I've decided that I'm going to start living peoples' midlife crises for them. I'll surrogate their midlife crises now in exchange for not having mine later. Someone needs to worry for them -- we can't have too many people dancing around naively happy at age 45. I'm all for happiness, but I like freaking out too. So if I am allowed to freakout about 45 at 31, then I'll simultaneously keep my worry cup full and preserve the world's happiness balance.

Cognizance of destiny's squiggly line is bit tricky: there's definite admiration in a waylaid course towards personal definition. On the other hand denial of *wasted time* is manifest bullshit and extreme laziness. If I had to tag a personal definition on certainty -- it'd be found in the moments where I know I'm wasting my time. It's crazy scary too -- sloths can rationalize much better than they can hang from trees -- and if I had to define my hell it would be the moments I rationalize my indolence.

Song of the Week, Volume 2, 2003 May 27

Artist: Queen
Song: Love of My Life
Album: A Night At The Opera
Year: 1975

Last week's writing will probably act as a lifelong emetic for me, but time will tell. Yuck.

I'm reasonably tapped -- mostly caused by a week filled with cat-sitting and lots of mulling over what song I was going to pull for SOTW volume 2 (SOTW: the new big game inside my head). I finally found one, but it took a lot of self-convincing and it took a huge sidestep of an intellectual hurdle. (In oblique fashion) there are many reasons why this week's song should have failed at the cut, but out of the ashes of burnout, I cleared the hurdle -- but song explication soon, cat sitting ramblings now.

Last week I stumbled upon the metaphor of cat (or house, or dog, or plant, etc.) sitting. It's a lonely metaphor, a truly isolating experience. Normally, a home proffers warm and amiable feelings, but when it's not your home and when the home's owner is in Costa Rica drinking Cuba Libres (from a can!), then it's a different story. No one will ever call on you when you are cat sitting. The phone will never ring for you when you are cat sitting. Destiny stops and your life becomes masked by someone else's temporary absence. It gnawed on me so much; I had to call a friend to discuss. That discussion illuminated the positive sides to the isolation of cat sitting. And, although I am a champion of having that place you can go where nobody knows your name, when it's a friend's living room and a daily experience, that's a bit much.

So from volume 1 to volume 2, home surfaces again. Hmmm, maybe it'd be like returning from a holiday home, taking psychotropics, having your friend ask "how was home?" and then realizing five minutes into your (probably unwanted) reply/monologue that you've thoroughly switched home the concept and home the location. It's how holes get punched into things.

Song of the Week, Volume 1, 2003 May 18

Artist: BoDeans
Song: Far Far Away From My Heart
Album: Joe Dirt Car
Year: 1995
Lyrics: bodeans.net

It's funny how that works. We can build empires, but when it comes to doing something simple, the task always seems to contort into a larger, unbreakable monster. My simple task was to find a song for this Song of the Week idea and, immediately, the consciousness of simplicity starting eating away at me. (Agonistic) gods forbid I choose something too outlandish, too avant-garde or mother-of-all-gods forbid I choose something too kitschy. Right there I killed thoughts of the Cars, Rebekah Del Rio, and Russell Gunn for seminal SOTW ideas (y'all can figure out the associative order). So, to honor elusive simplicity, I chose a band from my hometown: Waukesha, WI, home of Les Paul, Tim Cahill, and the *BoDeans*. Waukesha is a dump place -- a typical western exurb of any insipid suburb, of any Midwestern urban center that has a big lake on its east side. But I'm a sucker for nostalgia and statriotism and like everyone else from Wisconsin knows, life really does revolve around cheese, bratwursts, and the Green Bay Packers ('cept I don't eat meat anymore, but this is just a digression of digression). Homeward yearning is pure simplicity. It's that unobtainable metaphorical mother with ever welcoming arms. So you can't get there, but simple songs will get you close... Truthfully, I never listened to the BoDeans when I lived in 53188. It's that disease where an outside opinion, regardless of its invalidity, is somehow taken above and beyond those in local scope. So, here, in Seattle, which has very little to do with Waukesha or the BoDeans -- this is where the BoDeans burned a (4-non-Blondie) rapture into my heart. For those that don't know, I bounced around for nearly two years without a job. Along the way I picked up some serious upper level psychology. Thank god I could rave to all of my friends about all the traveling I was doing, 'cause a lot of the days the mirror looked funky. Really, the only thing that kept the whole experience from morphing into some unwanted ascetical nightmare is that the un-employment checks (essentially) never ran out. That -- and the BoDeans. Joe Dirt Car, a 1995 double-live CD. There's a bunch of tunes I could have chosen. "Idaho", "Naked", and "Looking For Me Somewhere" all come to mind, but in the end, "Far Far Away From My Heart" won out. It's musing how the spirit takes comfort in the irony of a sad song providing cheer.

Yes, but I know everything will be all right... I planted a garden today -- what more do I need?

Shiot. Brevity! Peace.

/tq

While waiting for life that sucks to die, why not listen to my favorite unsigned bands: TQ's Garage Band Playlist.