You had an accident. Do you remember what happened?

Portrait of the clone as a soulless, convention-attending lego-being.


Savannah in the rain:


The fair citizens of the village of Savannah have seen fit to cast into stone the image of the benevolent King Friday, ruler of the righteous, bailiff to the downtrodden, administrator of the good times:

~~~~~~~

The cafe where I prepare each morning to have my brains siphoned:

~~~~~~~

Three views of the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge in rain:

GERTY, am I a clone?

Portrait of the artist as a man who spends all day in a life-sucking convention center and is subsequently transformed into legos:

We're not programs, GERTY, we're people.

My morning commute across the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge...


... and my evening commute back again:


The in-between was filled with soul-wincingly mindless grind.

The best part about being here is seeing people I haven't seen in a long time, sometimes years. The highlight in this department has been Jillian and Whitney, both of whom were regulars in my office back in the day. Two genuine, lovely people. A real pleasure to talk to.

~~~~~~~

The hotel Hilton's hallway carpet, because I know you care:


The view from my window:


Savannah trees, no. 1 - the larch:

~~~~~~~

I recently remembered how much I used to like listening to SomaFM back in the early 00's. They've got more stations now (18) than they did then (4).

I'm back in the hotel, writing to you and listening to the "Mission Control" station, described as "live NASA shuttle and historic mission broadcasts mixed with electronic ambient." Good times.

Nobody kept answering.

A portrait of the artist as a man who has just learned that J.D. Salinger is dead:

~~~~~~~

I knew that Jerry would probably die during my lifetime. I remember last year I even had a feeling that he would die soon. But he was pretty directly responsible for me surviving nineteen, and I never thought he'd die while I was at a ridiculous music education convention.

Memento mori.

Life in Hell

My commute to the life-sucking convention center involves crossing the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge.


Twice.


The bridge spans the Savannah River. The life-sucking convention center is on the north side of the river. Here's two pictures taken from the life-sucking convention center.

~~~~~~~

But let me tell you about this conference.

Although it ostensibly exists to support music, it actually exists to support an industry that has grown up around music. Although the people in attendance claim to be music-lovers, they are actually lovers of an industry that has grown up around music. And no one seems to know the difference.

Very strange.

Also, everyone is acting like a salesman. And they're all excited about it. As though they've been waiting impatiently all year long for their chance (finally!) to get to act like door-to-door used car salesmen.

I find it all unsavory. It's sucking the life from my brains. It's trying to turn me into a zombie.

~~~~~~~

By contrast, my room at the Hilton feels like home. The corridor of the Hilton:


The keycard that opens my room keeps not working. It's mysterious. I'm on my third one. I've only been here 24 hours and the hotel manager already knows me by name.

Intermission

Tonight I'm in Savannah - a four-hour drive from Bedlam - for a three-day music education conference which begins tomorrow. I arrived an hour ago, unpacked, moved some things around, adjusted the lighting, sent a few messages, and took a photo of the room.


Any questions?

I'll do my best not to belabor this subject, but if you know anything at all about Sabitathica, then you surely know that conferences, music educational or otherwise, are not his natural environment. Conferences, music educational or otherwise, cause Sabitathica's ardor to wither and wane.

~~~~~~~

My Great Aunt Rose (my maternal grandmother's brother's wife) died Friday. She was good-humored and gracious. I never saw her in a sour mood, never heard her say an unkind word. She was ninety-seven. Memento mori.

The Wall, part two: don't leave me now

One side down, The Wall sounds like a record conceived and recorded in isolation. Pink Floyd's earlier material benefited from being test-driven in front of many an audience before ever being committed to record. There are some areas where The Wall might have been given richer treatment if it'd been honed based on audience response.

But it's a testament to the power and reach of this band that they were able to create an album - a double album - varied and convincing enough to hold our attention based on instinct alone, like the Beatles, post-1966.

So let's flip the record over and listen to Side Two:

Enter the limpwristed fingerpicking songs. Hooray! Goodbye blue sky is beautiful Dave, playing in a fully-developed style we didn't hear on side one.

Q: how many different ways can this man persuasively play his instrument?
A: unknown.

Dave oohs out harmonies like some world-weary Californian dream. A field of pastoral guitar lowers our guard until we hit a chord so minor it'll crawl up inside your head and convince you to put your finger on the trigger. Twice.

~~~

As usual, Roger doesn't let the beauty stand overlong. He fucks everything up with Empty spaces, one of the record's stranger moments.

Roger's vocal strategy seems to be: despair first, melody second. Concentrate on the pain and the notes will somehow take care of themselves.

The lyrics drip with acid; a silly backwards "puzzle" adds to the utterly bizarre atmosphere.

Pink's regret at the end of side one about the wall being too high? Not so much anymore. He's now desperate to get back to building. He's still concerned about the wall's size, but now only because he's running out of building materials.

It's hard to know which sounds are made by Rick Wright and which by other synthesizer/organ players, but without them the record would sound more skeletal and threadbare.

~~~

Young lust has a frivolous chorus, and it rox. Who can't relate to Pink/Dave's libidinal plight?

As on the Final Cut, Dave ends up looking like The Shallow One, but he's so good who really cares? O the guitars!

Dave asks "Where are all the Good Times?" In a characteristically twisted response, Roger (because it must have been Roger, right?) gives us the nosy operator narrating the infidelitous phonecall. Nothing ends well.

Dave sings to us of pleasure; Roger makes of us witnesses to pain.

Bastard.

~~~

We are informed that our hero is the sort of man who has a favorite axe. Which he keeps in the bedroom. In a suitcase. What? Holy hell, get me the fuck out of here!

Some of Roger's bleakest lyrics: love turns grey. People become cold, grow bored of one another and lie about it. And this, we are told, leads to rage.

Several songs on The Wall are broken into two distantly-related halves and One of my turns is a good example.

~~~

It's the synthesizers, stupid.

Don't leave me now is another song with the dichotomous form AB, the first of which is psychotic, the second hypnotic. Guess who sings which.

Roger and Dave sing of running, which is a minor theme of the record, receiving it's fullest treatment on side four. There was running on Dark side of the moon also, in Breathe, Time, and the travel sequence.

Don't leave me now is long -- only Mother from side one has been longer. They take their time and it pays off. Pink Floyd are many bands in one, and most of them make bizarre musical/psychological landscapes sound natural.

More oohs. More TVs. More violence. More isolation.

~~~

Pink un-asks his earlier question ("Why are you running away?") by informing us that he no longer needs anybody.

He also claims he doesn't need drugs, which given later plot developments makes it hard to take him seriously. Who knows what to believe? I hope he's not lying to us, because I've had it just about up to here -- and I mean it! -- with his nonsense.

What we really learn from Another brick, part the third -- the most muscular entry in the Brick trilogy -- has less to do with Pink's developmental arc than with how Pink Floyd give each version of this song its own architectural variation.

~~~

If there were any justice in Roger's universe, Goodbye cruel world, a no frills suicide note, would end the album. The less sadistic among us will not play the second record. Poor Pink has suffered enough.

The rest of us will soldier on...

The Wall, part one: that space cadet glow

I either bought or pilched The Wall by Pink Floyd on vinyl back in 1985, I can no longer remember which. I loved it at the time. It had an effect on me - more than most records - but I haven't listened to it in many years. New years day I bought it through the iTunes store and am reacquainting myself with it.

Some observations:

Side one begins, after the half-spoken phrase, after the woodwind/accordion theme, with a crunch. The minor theme is 120% rock and roll. Orff turns in our direction. Wagner stirs. There will be no limpwristed fingerpicking on this record. At least not until side two...

At the end of In the flesh? Roger promises theatrics, calling for lights and sound effects. Is this music? theater? no sensible person likes the term rock-opera.

~~~

The thin ice continues the theme of heavy with another rocker to let the rockers in the audience know this is gonna rock. But first we catch our breath.

We are introduced to Dave's voice, having only heard Roger so far. Dave's voice is used here the way it will be for the rest of the record: expressing less emotion than beauty.

Roger and Dave's voices conveyed different qualities on previous records, but with roles less well defined.

Dave sings the character of the Mother. He's also Pink at times, but not during the fucked-up scenes we most associate with Pink's dark and confused psychology.

Roger sings the second half of The thin ice, with its bleak summary of the album's distrustful worldview: things suck, and then they get worse.

But redemption is possible.

~~~

Another brick, part the first is our initial exposure to what will be a major musical theme for the record: Dave and delay. So beautiful. So beautiful.

The three versions of this song help the record cohere (as do the two In The Flesh's and the recapitulation of Is there anybody out there?). This is my favorite of the three.

The coda is the first time the band do what they always do so well: vamp a strange space.

This strange space is invaded by children (screaming? playing? i don't know, but violence is in the air) before Roger begins ordering my inner schoolboy about.

Bastard.

~~~

But it's all in the nature of the Great Reciprocal. Bullies are themselves victims of bullying, merely acting out, puppet-like, a cycle of violence which has its roots deep in the past and, according to Roger, mostly in the hearts of women.

Q: Is Roger a bleeding heart or an asshole?
A: If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding.

The music behind The happiest days of our lives is territory covered by the three Bricks.

~~~

Another brick, part the second, though it may have been stingy to the poor unpaid choir brats, is generous with Dave's guitar.

His rhythm playing is unlikely. The solo is one of his best, don't you think?

More kids playing/screaming at the end. And looped abuse from Roger. I think of Nicky as the band's tape-experimenter, and it's weird to imagine him arranging choice bits of Roger's dementia.

~~~

Mother is the early emotional peak of the album. The naked strum lexicates emotional transparency.

The fall into the guitar solo is satisfying. The solo itself drips with colors from the same emotional palette as the rest of the song.

The change of singers (and changes in time-signature and key) is... I don't even know. I can't explain it. Their creativity is so effortless. It's a very strange thing they do here and yet somehow they make it seem so natural.

Lyrically, we learn that the construction of the Wall, mentioned almost in passing several times thus far, is now complete, or nearly so, and Pink is beginning to regret having built it so well...

There's more beauty to come.

remember

January 13, a traditionally significant day.

This is the first week of music-prison. Work is busy. Home after for Armagnac, a second sitting, more Armagnac, a reading, and my new favorite meal: a curried chicken prepared by L according to one of Luba's bistro recipes.

Avatar

Today we went from brunch at the Carroll Street Cafe to Borders, and then to see Avatar at the Midtown cinema.

A short play:

Everyone: Avatar is amazing! You have to see it!
Sabitathica: Yeah, maybe. But James Cameron directed it.
Everyone: Who's that?
Sabitathica: The guy who directed Titanic.
Everyone: Oh, right. I hated that movie. But this one's amazing. You have to see it!
Sabitathica: Maybe. I don't know. It sounds like "Titanic in Space" to me.
Everyone: That's not fair. It's a good movie. You should really see it.
Sabitathica: "I want you to paint me like one of your Zorg girls..."
Everyone: You're such an asshole.

But Cameron was also involved in Solaris (as producer), and he didn't fuck that up, so I decided to give it a whirl. And it wasn't as horrible as I was expecting. It looked terrific, but the story was only eh. All in all I thought it was a little overdressed for the occasion. Plus our theater (theater four, for future biographers) had no heat, which affected my experience.

After Avatar, we snuck in to see Sherlock Holmes, something I haven't done in probably fifteen years. I liked S.H. just as much, if not better than Avatar. It was more clever, less emotionally in my business, and the camera loves Robert Downey Jr.

Then to a nearby Thai restaurant for plum wine, ginger tea, and chicken massaman. Home again at last to warm up. Good times.

The Nunnery in snow...

It snowed here last night, and a photograph of the cowpath outside the Nunnery is submitted as documentary proof:


It may not look like much, but this light glaze constitutes something of a crisis for the good citizens of Bedlam.

It's been cold here since I got back from the North and my car window has been frozen shut since Sunday.

The Nunnery in snow:


Every school, college, university, daycare, dogpark, assisted-living facility, shopping center, hotel, highway, and government building was closed today because of the, um, blizzard. But not Bedlam State University.

Bedlam's Central Authority Administration does not know about sanding or salting roads, and so my commute to music-prison consisted of driving (sliding, really) across long sheets of virgin ice, sometimes hundreds of feet end to end. Cars were turned around facing backways, abandoned in the middle of the glistening road.

~~~~~~~

For some reason Miranda at Slice comped my lunch today. She also gave me a complimentary red-headed slut, which is some sort of silly-person's drink I'm unfamiliar with.

Mark came over for a dinnerparty, which was good times. He gave me a copy of his latest project, instructing me to "have at it". It sounds very good to my ears already, so rather than remix, my plan is to recontextualize. Very exciting.

We also listened to two new things I'm working on:

1. an old song concerning both Jules, whom you know from earlier, and JuJu, the girl who lived across the street from where I grew up, recently re-recorded; and
2. a song that began taking form at Vlindinhauer's on new year's eve.

Photographic evidence of the good times...

The view along the seawall outside of Vlindinhauer's before the first dawn of the new year:


My parent's neighborhood:





The Logan Hilton, aka the Overlook:


The carpet at the Overlook:


The only existing photograph of Vlindinhauer Haverhast - still not beheaded, despite my most earnest entreaties:

Traveling day

A very nice dinner with family yesterday. Stayed up too late at the Logan Hilton last night.

Awake at 03:30 to inspect the airport's newly upgraded security.

Our plane took off in snowy, blustery air. Less terrifying than I was anticipating which isn't really saying much.

After landing we had just enough time to drop off our bags and say hello to the Nunnery before meeting Mark for brunch at the famous Carroll St. Cafe.

Back here to decompress and leave the unpacking for tomorrow...

The things they will do and the things they will say when they don't really understand.

The idea is that every individual occupies a place on the continuum between introversion and extroversion.

But what doesn't get said, yet is nevertheless true in my experience, is that most extroversion is disease: thick layers of uninterrogated psychological shit barely masking insecurities and a general inability to socialize with other humans. Only fellow extroverts are fooled.

I have met genuine, healthy extroverts, but not often. The last time I saw one was in the crowd at Fenway last summer. Naturally likable because he wasn't trying, moment-to-moment, to prove something to everyone within eye and earshot.

It's probably true that introverts are as fucked up as extroverts, but at least they're not as obnoxious.

New year's day

Feet on the floor at 09:15, greeting the day, year, decade.

We accomplished some serious lounging before checking out of the hotel Suburban and returning to Vlindinhauer's for brunch and film. We were last to arrive: Number Six, Tamara and Janice were already there. The group watched Persephone's lovely film of their trip to Iceland. Good times.

Drove south from Vlindinhauer's, stopping for more caffeine at the Dunkin' Donuts.

Home again...

New year's eve

Once again we escorted in a new year at the Haverhast's, one of the centerpieces of the holiday cycle.

The team:
Vlindinhauer
Persephone
Number Six
Tamara
Johanna
Oleg
Julia
L
Sabitathica

Lots of good times with friends - some old, some new. Peals of laughter, moments of joy, one or two accidental deaths.

As in all of life, some members of the party were not, in their marrow, thoroughbred team-players. As in most of life, things were kept afloat thanks to the goodwill of the rest of us.

Peace be unto them.

~~~~~~~

the food:
O that every night could be new year's eve! I'll say it: guests at the Haverhast's are spoiled.

Bacon-wrapped dates and homemade bread for fingerfood. Also, wine. The main course was (the tenderest) boeuf bourguignon complemented by carrots and mushrooms. There was also some wine. Dessert was what is becoming one of my favorites: Persephone's chocolate mousse and short bread dipped in white chocolate with pistachio cookie served with armagnac and turkish coffee. omg.

the music:
This year's song, in case you've been living in a cave, is You can't kill rock & roll.


the players:
Number Six ~ lead voice and the occasional autoharp solo
Vlindinhauer ~ bass and voice
Persephone ~ percussives
Sabitathica ~ guitar
L ~ thereminator
Julia ~ large keyboard


the setlist:
You can't kill rock & roll
You can't kill rock & roll
You can't kill rock & roll
You can't kill rock & roll
You can't kill rock & roll
You can't kill rock & roll
You can't kill rock & roll
Auld lang syne
You can't kill rock & roll
You can't kill rock & roll
You can't kill rock & roll

~~~~~~~

Somewhere around 01:30 we retired to the hotel Suburban where we hung out and talked until 06:00.