Tuesday, November 30, 2004
, break
fight! fight! fight!
Smallpox first crossed the seams of Pangaea-specifically to the island of Española- at the end of 1518 or the beginning of 1519, and for the next four centuries it played an essential role in the advance of white imperialism overseas as gunpowder- perhaps a more important role, because the indigenes did turn the musket and then rifle against the intruders, but smallpox very rarely fought on the side of the indigenes.
-Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism
like, let's go shopping.
Monday, November 29, 2004
it's behind you.
hour drives at midnight and cold beaches are like endless plates of strawberries. they make you feel all waked up. stars as large as Eminem's ego and ones diminutive and ittie bittie like my nephew's soccer victories this year make it even more worthwhile.
my pops likes to say in another language--"you have to learn how to wait"
we thinks deep.
then, you have to go home. tofurkey is all cold and rubbery, rain is two-stepping all over your car. but Langston had it right, though he bottled it in simplicity: life is for the living and death is for the dead/let life be like music and death a note unsaid
these people kept me from sticking a pencil in my ear and hooking a left into the convoluted Confederate-flagged towns that line the Texas highways. i just want to thank them.
sorta-ineffable and Glossy:
autechre
tom ze
dizzee rascal
Bob Dylan
thats it.
now, go get educated.
Saturday, November 27, 2004
[microdream]
(to live and die in an old italian art museum. walk in circles.
throw smiles at dusty windows.)
in Houston, folks don't think like you do. chemical plants are small disneylands.
fading Kerry/Edwards stickers on cars give you puppy-dog eyes.
satori is on the screen. in the tongues of football announcers.
its where record stores are only found in history books.
and they hang up on you.
but, the barbecue sauce should be a Shakespearean character.
and winters are warmer than sweatered love poems.
im going to go build a library in the middle of the street now.
see if i get arrested.
(i think getting caught reading material that isnt for school as a minority is a misdemeanor.)
black leaves are talking all the jazz.
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
roboticize.
ghetto modernity.
lumpy gravy and Ras Kass lecturing me on the history of race: what else are thanksgivings for?
i dont want to be found--like people from London and books in rappers' houses.
and Biggie Smalls really is world music. this is what i have realized.
its like Walt said:
to the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist
much, obey little,
once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city, of this earth, ever after-
ward resumes its liberty.
i mean, talk about wordy.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
fzzzzzzzzzzt!
Ron Artest's lecture notes.
it all happened so fast: blurred blackness, Paul McCartney crooning about christmas over slinky synths, the moon shuffling its feet, lusting for booklights in small towns, One Hundred Years of Solitude single-handedly raising the literacy rate in my car and trying to convert the harmonic murmurs of three students into transmolecularization--or so Sun Ra said. in any case, the road was cut by silence, loud intents and timelessness.
then, there it was: a city sewn to gray skies and wide-eyed memories.
in Austin, people walk their dogs not out of security or status but out of love. there are bass recitals for youngfolk where 2.5 of the people are studying how Rachmaninoff coulda bent a note or two this way. another order of beings and fish tacos that should be nominated for Cabinet positions. rainy mornings come with Hollywood sets. pull your shoes up, Black. where dudes wear their jeans like Bun B raps (tight, dude, tight ) and ladies wear their Kafka shirts like the 80's were an academic department (without umph, folks).
mtvdos:
I caught 0.3 seconds of a sloppy-haired indyrock
ramshackle event thrown together by Vice. the unorthodox people should have stood on stage and watched the band walk around the venue--it was that gully.
I saw 2.1111 hours of TV on the Radio and The Yawn. like a third-string Franz Ferdinand they flung both hips and hair in hopes to get the masses moving--and they did (my two feet included). but what got me was why would you confuse the already confused-looking crowd with abstract films when you are playing dance music with an ittie bittie IQ? sociology students are writing dissertations on this as we speak.
I caught .0000000 seconds of Ellen Allien at Plush. there should be a school holiday for German DJ's.
to the Pistons/Pacers: War is Over if you Want It.
to TV on the Radio: buy plastic watches and play longer, bitches.
to girls who lose their asses on the dance floor: side glances are not in the dictionary.
if you can, catch Ta-Nehisi Coates' excellent piece on Jin in The New York Times. it's hot like Fat Albert surfing on a duck lip in a bathtub.
on a somber note, Rebecca Westcott, RIP. far from knowing her personally, I did enjoy her paintings. I first saw this girl's work in Anthem long time ago. she was future.
and remember, bagpipe solos are holy.
Thursday, November 18, 2004
(closed eyes)
, Ms. Jackson(s).
a friend from Philly who recently saw the squiggly signs and rough streets of Moscow:
"it's an odd place, far from the U.S., but the human spirit still can be understood and seen in the eyes of its inhabitants."
i don't think he really went there.
but, alas.
i always felt that apologizing for being content was as irrational as a Coltrane solo, quantum physics on a Tuesday or Marxist theory thrown at five-year olds. and yeah, things all over aren't bubbling with bliss, but true contentment is rarely found hiding beneath easy answers.
unless those easy answers are in portable turntables.
and call your mothers, people. talk to them about pasts in small Mexican towns and forgetting.
don't wait until they get sick to find a phone.
a thought im sure someone in Moscow has had before in their lives:
beards will do that to you--make you think.
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
, and she never woke up.
never a dull moment.
in Holland, things have gotten all weird and violent again. and it doesnt even have to do with cheese. the Muslim/Dutch divide is growing ever larger after Vincent Van Gogh's chubby grand-grand son made this film and got plenty of religious folk in a tiff. in fact, it ended in Theo Van Gogh being brutally murdered by a Morrocan extremist as a reaction for his criticisms of Islamic religion. identity--whether something constructed by religion or baseball--is something that necessitates discourse. (scratches chin...)it boils down to the idea that the transcendental abilities of art, especially when dealing with the urgent problem of the treatment of women in Middle Eastern countries, involve recontextualizing imagery, ideas and history into new ways of seeing ourselves. image is the reality by which we live. and, it is in my humble and latin-american opinion that "the joy of questioning", as Nietzsche once mumbled beneath his forest-like moustache, be welcomed in religious discourse. indeed, that it be required. not trying to step on any toes or ruffle anyone's ideology, but if something is to endure it must be willing to change. i was talking about cheese.
its sticky, i know. but, let's take critical theory out of its posh living room in English and Philosophy departments in the academy for once and thrust it into the streets and see if we can change some things. at least rustle a tree or something.
look up sometimes.
Sunday, November 14, 2004
ausencia
we all need hugs.
back in the days when i was a teenager--stop me if you've heard this one--ODB was the wildest thing hip-hop had outside of Kool Keith, Fat Lip or that white dude with the flat-top who sang about ice. i mean, like nutty. an E-40 spelling test with mescaline blowing bubbles in your brain, nutty. he exemplified that element of rap that made me want to shake two shell-toes to begin with: its eccentricity. welfare checks and all. plus, i loved how he made Wu-Tang glossy, yet not take itself too seriously. for that, he'll ride around the hip-hop canon in a limousine with some 40oz's and a notebook: stenciling small eternities with his raps about booty and Brooklyn. god bless the dead.
oh, and women are weird.
Saturday, November 13, 2004
mexican no wave
what you mean you're outta pad thai?
brown people with cameras: it just isn't supposed to be, they say. like two snowflakes with the last name Smith. or the Astros in the World Series. see, with a friend fumbling through film school I get a behind-the-scenes ocular google at the production of cinema (i get to use his shit, yo). and on the urging of no one, I decided that we should buckle up, throw some Pixies on the tape deck and ramble on the Dallas way. why, you might mumble? because there are films to make. small moments of magic that need to be encapsulated and digitized. plus, its fun.
hours later we stitched up some images and I scratched the cinematic itch I've had since I was going to skidaddle to film school years ago.
its a short sneeze, you see--non sequitir in scope--rooted in the bulbous poetry of Pablo Neruda. no turntables, Brazilian folk music or philosophy of science was used neither.
trust me.
in any case, god bless the dead.
somewhere in Dallas last night:
"that's what we need to do, man...you know what i mean?? (I continue to film while he's still driving).....d'you know where we're going??"
somewhere in Amsterdam in 1996:
"I guess a good image for this that the United States is far from being a free enterprise economy, it is an economy run by multiplicities of little Soviet Unions."
- Manuel De Landa on the hierarchical command aesthetic of corporations.
Thursday, November 11, 2004
don't remember me.
don't act like you can't hear me.
people, let's hug. let's set down our warm glasses of milk and differences. cuddle around cold histories and watch the sunset.
and then read small articles on one of the greatest American authors still alive--and with a Wizard's white beard, no less. seriously, this cat is one of my few heroes that still eats cereal and reads Sir Thomas Browne (17th century British writers, stand up). and i don't have many left that are living, you see. thats why i watch the other side of the country from my window to see who's next to go.
i'm looking at you, Lou Reed. no, no. just kidding. no, really.
speaking of Lou Reed, whats the tiff between old retired Republicans from Wyoming and smart-alicky political--with a capital "P"-- tv hosts? makes me want to stick some sadness and a bag of ugly in my Transformers lunchbox and watch it wither. weather. what?
teddy bears are chewing the leaves from trees of pixels.
breathing brains.
smiling with butterfly teeth.
yes huh.
to all the old people in Ohio who voted with the terrorists and kids waiting for new Star Wars films (it actually looks good): let's protest the Advertisting Agencies by zipping up our streets. i dont know what that means.
(they just opened up a Citgo in my bathroom)
Monday, November 08, 2004
throwdown.
you are invited to a Republican fundraiser.
dopey and cross-eyed: that is our new democracy. but far prettier and sex-smelling is the abstract space our country has become.
not so similar, and on the cusp of actually being news (only when that elusive vote is needed), those brown people cluttering borders and sweeping kitchens are a bit more complicated than you think. who knew the subaltern wore boots?
its like being in Spain, cigarette dangling from my 55-year old mouth, watching the tiny dreams of leaves drizzle onto the eyelashes of concrete coating the ground.
it's like being places and not even knowing it.
(if you don't measure yrself, time will--as my grandfather used to say.)
non-bespectacled and embittered by the frail cold weather doing the Hammer outside my apartment doors, i realize that the quiet protest against gas stations and dead love notes thrust out of windows is, well, an essay. more on this later.
but the truf is always wearing a lab coat, son.
and art galleries in small texas towns deserve bulbous amounts of federal funding for their audacity, joy and cold ability to exhibit cartoons in macabre sexual positions. Kerry, what happened? cartoons, man. cartoons.
Sunday, November 07, 2004
let it fall.
watch--she's about to lean back.
music has always helped me forget women. both the beautiful ones that i shared chocolate milk with in third grade, the ones i shared notes with in Chemistry and the ones i went to art museums with, um, after third grade. and it hasn't failed me now.
the light licking blackness, a portable turntable on my bed walking in circles and some ramen on the stove: what else were Sundays, invented by the British, made for?
so, just kick back, drink some Japanese apple juice and open up the New York Times webpage (hey, it doesnt hurt to act like your zipcode is in Brooklyn) and scour David Foster Wallace's erudite and menacing critique of some Oxford academic's dry ass take on Jorge Luis Borges. it makes the day seem more real.
and couple that with this match made in a Hollywood afterparty. Sundays couldnt get any better. who knew Quest, with all those stripper poles in the studio, had an affinity for the prettiest chain-smoker off Rodeo Drive? i'm jealous.
in any case, look to the Red Sox people. and pepper passion only when necessary.
go, get strong.
there is an apartment in Mexico City with your name on it....
Friday, November 05, 2004
italy is the place to be
future Gap Ad.
things are getting better.
no, really.
there is nothing to fear.
and words of wisdom from the Talking Heads:
Don't Worry About the Government
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Gray Wednesday
Republican Party Headquarters.
NO SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL.
reflections on Black Tuesday brought to you by the indelible Sasha Frere-Jones:
How did the country not change after four years of acid test politricks? Where is my mind? How quickly can I GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS COUNTRY?
(Long wheeze.)
...
This is the time on Sprockets when we buy airline tickets.
and a few more of 'em by the dude with the Ph.D in the microhistory of minimal techno (and a guy who spins a mad set), Philip Sherburne:
To our friends around the world: we're sorry. And let us know if you have a couch we can crash on for a while.
To the 43% of the 18-29 year old demographic that chose not to vote (at least according to exit polls I saw last night -- the same percentage that chose not to vote in the 2000 election), please go take a job at Wal-Mart, catch some disease that your nonexistent health insurance does not cover, and die.
no heart.
and it's his fault, too.
i mean, it's like my man Benjamin Franklin once said, "dem n**gas that can give up essential liberty to get a lil' temporuurry safety don't deserve neither of dem shits" **
so, go hug a turntable and listen to the Dead Kennedys for hours.
and remember: Howard Dean and Barack Obama are drawing graphs on Denny's napkins for 2008. trust me.
they're-a-cookin' up something...
**may or may not have been his actual words
but, seriously. would it be wrong to still think of Kerry as my President? i mean, come on. people still believe in Jesus. and that dude is like, you-know-what. i mean, can't i believe in the idea of Kerry-as-President?
sigh.
come have a glass of wine with me...
