Sammy

This little boy
points at my guitar case
on the frivolous preschool carpet
keen to be knighted
sir latcher of latches.

He kneels into the task
studious
remembering the groove of
slide
latch
click
each movement his personal best.

When the day comes
that he is master of projects
that change the way
we think and ask and thrive
it will have been music
that once answered prayer
of his fingering mind.

Verbiage

the Poets unbraid it
with punked up graffiti

the Pundits rebuke it
with bludgeons of grandeur
and voices of silt

the children reclaim it
their tongues on the throttle
their minds on the guttural
pulse of unknowing
in backward progression
from silence to sound

Artist re artist

You almost have to be full of yourself to be an artist, right? As in

I'm special.
I have something important to say.
The world needs my _____.
I owe it to the universe to live out my (stellar) trajectory.

Once you get enlightend about your status as just one of the gang, do you give up or hunker down? This is all pseudo art, after all. Real art is real life, however you live it. Charles Kuralt ambles by (he's dead of course -- artists are not immortal, dear) to ask about the scooner you're building in your parched yard or the bicycles you fix for neighbor kids who can't afford bikes, let alone repairs. You'll be humanly interesting for a minute, inspire somebody to get off the couch and weed the potatoes, but you won't see yourself Rolling-Stone blow-dry-air-brushed anytime soon.

Which leaves you with this. When the magnificent artist brain fits back inside the cranium, you start to see straight again. The bones that broke under your spectacular youness get strong and dear and appreciative of stuff like bird conjugations and orange rinds.

John McCain suggests his wife enter a topless beauty contest

This is how you get a rap for being a prude: rowdy guys leer at Cindy McCain and if you find her husband less than honorable for putting her in their sites, you (presumably) lack a sense of humor and adventure.

The same dynamic plays out in the litany of mega-artsy outside-the-boxers from New York to Hollywood who want you to 'lighten up! -- a little sex in the city never hurt anybody.'

A brave new citizenry will (soon, if it isn't here already) figure out how to make what is both creative and respectful of the human spirit trés cool.

Cindy McCain looks like she is smiling away in her roomy work shirt and crossed wrists on that biker rally stage, but like Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton and so many politico-wives through time, we'll never know what she's thinking or who's neck she's secretly wringing.

My visit with Sarah

Twenty four hours ago I might have been pleased with myself for groping my way to pen and pad through the work strewn room at 4 am.

But that was before Sarah.

It was a visit I dreaded and desired since hearing that my friend's granddaughter had lost both optic nerves by a gun badly handled. I'd last seen Sarah in passing, as she kissed her granny through the car window, her bleached bangs screaming wild. The way news of family filters through friends, I knew her as the wayward child. What would I, mother of sons, think to say, or do, in the presence of this newly blind young woman?

She was resting, down the hall, as we came and sat and wrapped our hands around wet glasses. Her mother's even keel belied her taut vigilance, bound to the sudden, changeable winds. What choice did she have in a home with a child who wasn't always keen on living?

Someplace within the lull of our murmurings, Sarah had joined us. She was curled in a bundle of gray hoodie, jeans, and black converse sneakers. We talked around and past her for awhile, swirling our best intentions her way like dervishes on tiptoe. When we lighted on braille and her new teacher, the tools came out and Sarah showed us the fingerwork she'd practiced.

It was really Sarah who broke the ice. "Show Susan the notebook, Mom -- maybe we can do the thing with random pages." I inched toward the lovely girl with auburn hair and dark glasses, starstruck by her grit and grace.

So we did the drill. She took each page I handed her and went to work, tenderly teasing the alphabet from tiny bumps, accepting me like the great aunt who passes through town on business. But this was not my business, it was hers, and she had her plans.

"After I learn the braille, I want to get good at cane walking and how to cook and do laundry so I can help my mom around here. I'll probably go to school in Pittsburgh -- I think it will be good to meet some other blind people. I don't know anyone who's blind."

And neither did I, but now, it seems, I do.

Something in Sarah reminds me of Dave, best friend of one of my boys. Dave ROTC'd his way through college, served and blogged his way through an Iraq tour and ended up, miraculously, alive. Both of them exude a sort of ironic alertness to the present, tense as it may feel from the fallout of choices they did and did not make. Their words carry the intelligent lilt of skepticism; their humor takes you in stride.

Her mom brought her a crisp new dollar, which Sarah began to fold and crease and fold again as talk turned to watches that speak and pills that dull the relentless pain of bullet wounds. Maisie, the golden mutt, bellied up for scratches on the braided rug. Voilà! Sarah's origami creature, a wee elephant that couldn't be spent in a million years, landed in my palm. "Every waiter says the same thing when I leave a row of these on the table," she says, pleased and weary. "I'll never be able to spend that tip."

It was time to go, my pachyderm a gift to cherish, a parting sack of chocolate eggs in shiny foil tucked in Sarah's pocket. We stood and hugged and said the normal things. "So good to see you, Sarah."

And Sarah said, "good to see you too, as the saying goes."

New Yorker 7.21.08

I reserve the right to be as offensive as I want in my cartoons, and to exaggerate however I please -- but I want my cartoons to work, to be good cartoons. A cartoon that fails to communicate its message in a way that readers understand is nothing more than a bad cartoon.
Daryl Cagle political cartoonist

If The New Yorker wants to get into the political cartoon business, it ought to hire some political cartoonists.
Ted Rall Association of American Editorial Cartoonists

If you're spending time on this, it must be summer!
Signe Wilkinson editorial cartoonist

Now that we've had our group fainting spell over the latest New Yorker cover, our bloggers exhausted, our pundits redundant, our analysts spent: this might be a time to wonder... what was that exactly?

Did all the huffiness and bilge amount to much besides the artist (what's his name?) getting a boot of notoriety and the rest of us (who are we again?) lavishly spinning our spokes?

Will a single voter change course because of this picture? Will the bungled satire cause two exhaustively scrutinized citizens to thicken up their skin against the muddy season? And if they do, so long as they keep their bright minds on the prize, this apparently being our collective inalienable freedoms to frazzle ourselves silly over words and pictures if we want to, what's the harm in that?

Sunseeds

I'm at a hospital or rehab center, visiting family. Simultaneously, I'm in Greece or Isreal with O & N, my niece and nephew. One wing of the building is noticeably run down; it's where the welfare patients live. I want to fix this, eying the foyer to the wards, wallpaper stained and peeling. I could pull down that paper, fix and paint the walls. I have skills in this work. Surly the authorities would approve. I consider getting permissions as I shrug off the fact that tackling this job will keep me inside for days.

O & N clamor for the great outdoors. I feel them pull my hands and laugh and clown around me. I reach like a woman obsessed for a peeling corner of pink flowered paper and rip away a good sized chunk, blinking with equal satisfaction and dread. As I wonder if the institution might finish the job, a couple of nun type characters show up, nod their approval, leave the completion to me.

The foyer has modest walls and painted ceiling. It opens into a giant hall with infinite ceilings that, lo and behold, are plastered with more flowered paper. Walls and ceiling have cracks and grooves begging a professional's hand. Away I peel into the vast hall, vaguely cognisant that papered walls need endless scrubbing before the paint goes on.

The place takes on a dingy feel, a musty smell, a hopeless sound of muffled laughter as two Israeli bikers rev up along the sparkly sea with its blinding sand reflections. I hope and hope, against all evidence, for rescue, working wildly, perplexed by my choices.

In the end, I wake up, panting, aware. My bondage to pink fading flowers never was nor evermore shall be.

Womb II

Once upon a cell, you did divide. You piled up cells unthinking, happy to comply with nature's plan. But even in her womb, your mama's booze, your dad's cigar, your older brother's angst took shots at you. Or maybe you were met by gentle souls who jellied up your appetite for calm.

Infinite possibility flooded by finite mitigations nobody planned so precisely as to ready you for this, life on the outside.

I call it second womb.

Once here, you would build your perfect womb -- your well stocked home, diversions and routine -- to serve more cell divides. But with second womb construction and maintenance, scant time leaks out to lube your passage into the wilderness you're bound for the minute ovum joins sperm.

We're conceived as cells. We grow more cells in utero, and once outside we pad our cells with matter no one asked for. We form thick walls around the impetus, the spark of life, the only part of us that's born to thrive.

Can't buy me love

"What consumer culture does is to privatize people. It makes them focus on their own personal well being. And not just material well-being. Why shouldn't people be concerned with their material well being? But they see in acquisition of material goods a kind of self liberation, a kind of upward rise socially, and a kind of freedom. And to the degree that consumer culture captures your imagination, you lose a social imagination. You no longer see yourself as part of some kind of collective."
Steve Fraser on Bill Moyers Journal 6-13-08

You get one chance to be proud. This can elude you, but don't be discouraged. One day, or sleepless night, it may come to you without the slightest provocation. A sense of pride in yourself, your place in society, that has nothing to do with status or consumption. A sense of human worthiness.

Still, trouble will come as messengers barrage you with one request: that you lift a wad of money out of your workshirt, stick it into the seller's fist. Marketeers lavish you with images of actors pretending to be incredibly satisfied with stuff.

Monks and shamans warn against selling your soul for the coinage of the realm. They sound so quaint and angry, quite the opposite of your suave superself out to buy the world and rest content in the lap of acquisition. Now you have your toys and baubles, your sleek car, your sleeker game console. You can live forever in the cosmos of your dreams. The hustlers cherish you you you my child: so important as statistic, insignificant as self.

But are you worthy, sister? Are you satisfied? Do you stealthily resist the huckster parade, blunderbussing you in its tractor beam?

Let the junk mail flutter down the ad soaked street. Let the superheroes flap their capes and flex their talons at your new found sight. Deny them any power to impress you. This is a great day where dead men walk and manic women lay aside their cloaks of unbelonging. Proper ladies take up megaphones to bleat their poetry at the lawless night. Image consultants weep themselves to sleep and the sweet elves of tomorrow tuck them in with fierce communal pride.

Everything youtube

So I was testing the capabilities of iMovie before plunging into more robust video editing software. Showed it to a few people I knew to get some feedback before posting it on YouTube, yesterday. Today, 1,690 views and counting, I'm surprised by something happening (as I cruise around YouTube gathering inspiration and toolkit ideas) beyond me. Makes me wonder what's going on in the lives of the people who take the time to look at it. Here's the flick... enjoy! (and leave a comment, so I'm not left completely clueless...)

Suckerpunch

It's one of those memories that only comes when a fresh wound conjures the ghosts. A bully on the school bus bound for Loveland Elementary pulled back a fist and belted me in the gut as he strode down the isle. I couldn't breathe at first; I sat in mute confusion, blinking. Who was this kid? Why did he attack me?

I recently learned that my friend once endured unthinkable brutality by a stranger. Her rage has festered, dank as its cave, poisoning the well. But now she stalks the demons, hunting down the details of her attacker's horrific childhood. She throws it all at the sun -- the rapist, her self-blame, systemic failures that breed violence, day in day out.

Her relentless pursuit invokes my courage. As a woman, as a citizen, as a mensch.

I have choices. If I want to, I can see the bombings of 9/11 as a cruel attack that had nothing to do with me or anyone I know. I can condemn Jeremiah Wright for saying our nation of imperialists provoked the bombings. I can ridicule others who denounce torture as a sanctioned government response to terror. I can define patriotism as unquestioned loyalty to a system that produces humanitarianism -- as well as bullying, rape and torture.

Or, I can dig. Not because it's a citizen's fault for being bombed any more than a woman deserves to be raped. I would dig to understand the broken system of have and have-not, victim and aggressor, remembered and forgotton. I would dig to unearth a lie that grows lethal in the dark -- the lie that blames the victims and ignores systemic origins of abuse.

In the end, no matter how distant the memory, it's up to the little girl to decide, with her lunchpail clutched to her sore belly, staring out the window at her new found knowledge of the world.

Buffalo

Diane: I listen to Buffalo every single day. It has shaped my character.

Susan: Can you elaborate?

Diane:

I can elaborate in that
I wake up each day
as a person
who feels like a mat
on which people walk
but the strong voice
in the song
and the strength of the beat
makes me feel my spinal cord
has much more give
and I want to go out and live.

Listen to the hoofbeats here.

j.o.y.

When did you last fall in love? Remember -- waking to desire that flowed into your daily ritual, no feeling too mundane to capture the light of this new love?

Love found. Love cherished. Love tamed and groomed in friendship, family, sacrifice and gratitude. The secret we don't always want to hear is that we are creatures of desire. If we tamp it down with civilized love, we are contented, perhaps, but our bellies growl for the deep wild pleasure known as joy.

I can't think of a form of entertainment that brings joy. But art, whether you pour it out or drink it in, is the elixir of your passionate self, multiplied by swirling image, potent metaphor. It's the dance of you in exceptional pivots and reels, breaking your trance into a million blinking stars.

Listen

The world is awash in sound, much of it humanoid.

No matter where you go on this planet, you will most likely be visited by the sound of civilization within the hour. If you live in a people zone, you can become a lazy listener, passively tuned in to human sounds (or anthrophony) -- talk honks cussing roaring gushing burps ringtones soundtracks laughtracks cheering bleeps booing sobbing and of course the ever present amplified placebo that is sold in the name of music.

Imitation music abounds. It is often called 'music' because of the look of the people who make it -- divas with microphones pressed to their lips, bands populated by suave hipsters. Musicians, right? Only if they teach you to listen.

Like anyone else with a humble guitar and a handful of lyrics I once fancied myself a troubadour bound for stage and glory. The friendly people who clapped at my act, I understand this: they reared me. I am forever in their debt. One day I left that stage to take guitar lessons from Michele Temple of the band Pere Ubu. This woman set me to the task of listening. In time, she sent me to the cable-snaking gear jungle of Adam Lake to relieve him of his starburst Fender Telecaster with a Zoom pedal and scribbled instructions on the care and feeding of my new exotic life form.

People tell me I "went to the crossroads" in 2003, from which I returned to voice my sonic rain of poetry and electrons. This sounds dubious to me, as though I sold my soul to the devil who taught me a trick or two about the arrangement of sound and cypher. I don't buy this since the devil cannot hear to save his life. Isn't he the incessant whisperer who saturates the atmosphere with blather?

The only roads I took to with my tele and my strat were crossings where a poet lets her conscious mind unravel, where passions of a lifetime filter through a new kind of song. If she is patient, and lucky, she may acquire the capacity to teach, lobe by lobe, the errant will to listen.



photo by Bruce Jennings

Dame Cognito

Why is my underslept gray matter punch drunk the morning after a concert?

Doubts ensconce themselves in the boudoir of Dame Cognito. In pink lamé, she drapes her curves across my spongy couch as one by one her suitors kneel and bow. These are pudgy little men who promise bells and baubles made of compliments and preen. Bored, my noble madam does her nails in deepest purple; she ignores the manikins and looks at me.

So, she asks again. I scrape the sludge out of my dredger.

You thought your show was over
when the stage went dark?

With this my handsome lady reels into a laugh that would uncouch her.

You are mad (she frankly whispers)
you are mad to be an artist
there is no reprieve
this mind of machination
is your gift and your despair

Wear it bravely, mavin,
wear it boldly and enchanted
and exotic in your hair.

There is movement like a cancer,
there is healing like a balm.
You are present you are absent
you are song.

With this I take my smudgy pencil out of my jeans pocket and a crinkled store coupon too shiny for words. I would lay them at her feet. Make me sane, I say. Make me normal like the women who are happy.

Dame Cognito's purple toenail flicks my pain aside.

You are as normal as they, she mutters.
they as mad as you.
Somewhat sleepier perhaps,
or better actors,
who can say?

They spend a lot of words on wallpaper and gardens, I suggest.

So do you --
refurbishing unconscious thought
for public consummation.
This is risky
and embarrassing
and strange.

I sit dazed, considering. Normalcy. Not in my timeline?

You are captivated
by the sounds that would be born.
Lilliput adores you.

Play the cords that bind and set you free.



photo Britters Szatala

Semi quaver

Music welcomes everyone.

You don't have to be gorgeous, hip or suave. Music asks you to be authentic and maybe a little bit crazy. It takes a kind of deranged love for your instrument to press on until anyone besides your loyal friends will listen.

People do listen to exceptional music in any genre. It reminds them of something. It remembers them to love. Strange love, desperately wanting to cohabit the molecular space of an other. Truthful, vulnerable trust of atoms smashing. Kids know this. Teenagers surely know it. Old people -- I think they do too. It's the vast middle earth of our lives that deflates love, dispenses it in cannisters.

Enter music. Throbbing sound waves crash against our ear drums into self. Legions of composers juxtapose intensity-duration-pitch -- endless variations of the vibratory muscles of our minds. This, when executed skillfully, unfetters our desire for the wordless union.

Some praise the lyricist for haunting images or exquisite rhyme. But words, in the signature of music, are also sounds that break the barrier of thought. Songs don't speak, they sing. They're less tasted by reason than swallowed whole by desire.

Certain music sweeps you off your feet in a ball room crammed with strangers you could love if you were younger or older or merely intrepid enough to feel. The tipping point between caution and candor is a billion angels dancing on a pin. And the pin -- you know it anciently -- is extraordinary music that will touch you like a hand along your spine. This is the pin pulled out of your elaborate headdress. The pulling lets the mind relax. Its raw heat tumbles down your shoulders into hurt and laughter as you slip into the world.

Leadership

I think we have to rethink the concept of "leader." 'Cause "leader" implies "follower." ...I think we need to appropriate, embrace the idea that we are the leaders we've been looking for.
-- Grace Lee Boggs, Bill Moyers Journal

This interview is worth watching -- I recommend it highly!

When I can devote myself to the pleasure, I'm going to dig into this as well.

There are cells in my brain, sleeper cells, awakening to this exceptional woman's clarion call.

Rock solitude

I’m a performing songwriter who craves solitude and adores the stage. Fronting my rock band feeds all that.

Monet’s Orbit is the name of my new CD. It’s a distinctive sound imbued in the songs we play. Monet’s Orbit is my bandmates, my audience, myself and all our respective muses.

Until recently, solitude was hard to come by. Making a CD -- my mind was a swamp of details. When it was done, acres of psychic real estate opened up. This is where the muse lives, where songs erupt and evolve.

Surprisingly, there can be a lot of solitude happening in performance. At our best, our shows create a transcendent space for musicians and listeners. Solitude is where you ask who you are, what you love, what you want and what you’re going to do about it.

In my case, rock music answers those questions well. I grew up playing classical piano, then took up the acoustic guitar, followed by electric guitar. Rock feels more native to me than classical or acoustic guitar based music. But my classical and solo acoustic roots inform the rock songs I’m writing now. Acoustic music honed my lyrical side, classical immersed me in sonic complexity. I give all that to the genre of Rock, this majestic ode to life. Passionate and humble, both.

Inspiration is humbling because the only part of it you can take credit for is being prepared to receive it, then keep running until you fly. Here I am with my Strat, writing a song that seems to have a pulse and purpose of its own. Here we are performing for an audience that amplifies the intensity of the show. Inspiration is humbling -- and electrifying.

If you ask me about the relationship between my experience and my imagination, I’ll say you’re talking to a person who sleeps in her tree house, swims in the rain and wonders out loud if literature’s best characters have souls. Imagination and experience are one. Don’t be afraid to befriend them relentlessly. Separate them at your creative peril.

I remember the first time I performed a song of mine in front of people. I was so nervous, I had no voice -- gasped out every note. That’s kind of a metaphor isn’t it, when you’re silenced by your own fear? I love the positive impudence of rock. It pushes fear aside, will not be silenced.

I swim almost as fervently as I create music, and there’s a synergy between them. Practically speaking, rock musicians schlepp a lot of gear. So fitness helps. It’s a physical job, before, during and after the show. Swimmers breathe deep, so do singers. Swimmers desire the water; musicians need to play. Both practice discipline, but the payoff is huge. There’s a community around a pool, a locker room, a clan of water rats not so different from musical kinship.

One thing that motivates me to expand the audience for this music is the response we have noticed so far. People use words like positivity and connection. Anything that strengthens our best impulses gives us more freedom, and a lot less fear.

Fighting absurdity

I don't spend any time thinking about what I am or what we do means. I spend my time doing it. I focus on the task and try to do it as best we can...

I think that, if we do anything in a positive sense for the world, is provide one little bit of context, that's very specifically focused, and hopefully people can add to their entire puzzle that gives them a larger picture of what it is that they see.

...this is how we fight back. I can only fight back in a way that I feel like I'm talented. And I feel like the only thing that I can do... even a little bit better than most people, is create that sort of that context with humor. And that's my way of not being helpless and not being hopeless.
-- The Daily Show's Jon Stewart, Bill Moyer's Journal 4-27-07

Mr Dime

You sometimes see your friend through new eyes when the shutter speed stretches out over time. Back in the Concord Coffee days, I was singing treble clef; you were up there with the bluegrassers, high and whiny like the wind. Gold pans in our patient hands, we sifted well through chicken scratches, flummoxed chords, believing there was treasure in the wild.

They say silver turns to fuzzy globules in the hold of a ship lost at sea while gold coinage gleams as the day it was forged. A rather risky method of detecting counterfeit but no far cry from the performer's gamble with time.

Listening to you last night, it was clear to me the years have brought a luster to your holdings. Your definitive essence speaks through your taut frame and intelligent glance out over the proceedings; your amber toned guitar fills in the crevices of your deepening voice; your listeners, we lucky ones, rise up to grasp your thoughts without a drop of vanity between us.

The best part about your show, for me, was the certainty that this man I know so well has found a way to voice his goodness to a world broken and afraid to be.

Hank, God rest his soul, is likely proud, with just a touch of envy on his wings.