Monday, August 30, 2010

thegrowlingwolf As a Neologist

Foto by tgw, New York City, 2010
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Neologism
Neologism. Sounds dirty, doesn't it? Maybe because the word "gism" is in it. Call it what you want, but it means "inventing new words." At least that's my definition. And one of my word inventions, "eburline," was brought to my attention by a woman friend of mine who I had said had eburline skin. She said she Googled the word and got The Daily Growler past posts that used the word, again mainly to describe a woman's skin.

The word, of course, I stole. Surely I did. From a past reading. Otherwise there's no way I could have ever realized the true source of the word. Yes, I invented it, but it comes from the word "eburnean."

E`bur´ne`an
a.1.Made of or relating to ivory.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by C. & G. Merriam Co.

But I swear I'm not a true neologist. I know I saw the word eburline used somewhere in my past reading. It sounds like a word a writer like Larry Durrell would use. I am a great admirer of Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, a quartet of books that are a magnificent look at colonized Egypt and characters surviving in the vicinity of Alexandria--a place I've always wanted to visit and had a chance to back in the early 2000s when my favorite men's clothing purveyor it turned out was from Alexandria and owned an apartment building on the main thoroughfare that runs between the city and the Mediterranean--just down from where the great lighthouse used to stand. When I told him I'd always wanted to experience Alexandria, he said I could use his apartment any time. Of course, unless you strike while the iron is hot, you lose. He who hesitates is lost. And that's what happened to my chance opportunity to live in style for a couple of months in Alexandria, it poofed away into a could-have-been tale. My friend closed his New York store and disappeared. I figured he probably moved back to Alexandria...or maybe Milan. All of his clothes came from Milan. And what nice duds they were, too. Even his shoes were cool. I bought my one and only suit from this guy.

My mother's invented word was "shipittle." My mother left the world of sin--that including jitterbug and Charleston dancing; playing a hell of a stride piano; or singing in a little Betty Boop voice--for the world of Jesus. In the world of Jesus, saying anything profane was a big sin--like saying the word SHIT in anger. Now shit's a common everyday word. I may say it a hundred or so times a day--especially if I'm pissed--or even in everyday conversation, "What the shit's goin' on?" It slips off my tongue with almost the same ease as fuck does among my closest friends. I do curb my tongue with fuck in polite company, though I am prone to continue to let SHIT slip no matter the occasion. "That's a crock of shit" is one of my favorite rebuffs. Or as George Carlin and Socrates would have put it, "What the shit does that mean?" Though in that case, Carlin and I and probably Socrates, too, would have substituted fuck for shit for more gleeful rebuke. Socrates maybe: "Why the fuck do thou want me to rebuke thee?"

And, yes, my mother's invented word was a substitute for SHIT. SHIPITTLE. Not pronounced like "spital"; nope, "ittle" as in little. Shee-pit-tle. The S.H.I.T. is in there but I suppose mom figured God or Jesus didn't know English that well to figure out she was really simply saying SHIT the righteous way.

The first time I heard mother use her word...I was 16. I was a smartass. I usually stayed in my room and listened to my records and read and wrote my stupid little juvenile tales in my schoolboy notebook that I kept hidden in my closet in a chest where I kept my taboos--my pipe tobacco and my Custombilt pipe I'd "borrowed" from my brother's tobacco shop pipe display--my girly magazines--my playing cards and my dice. But then I met this girl. I called her Wanderer...her name was Wanda. At first it was phone acquaintance...talking long hours about teenage nonsense, whatever, "Well, what do you like to do? I mean, like, you know, do you like movies?" And one day after school I got Wanda to ride the city bus home with me and I talked her in to riding it all the way out to the end of the line in the north part of town--and then we'd ride it back home. Full circle on that bus took about an hour and that gave me plenty of time to start moving on the Wanderer, you know taking her hand, maybe telling her she's pretty, then maybe a quick kiss, collected fast while the rest of the riders weren't paying attention to us. And then near the end of the line we had the bus all to ourselves and finally I got serious and tongue kissed her and she responded with her tongue and next thing you know I'm inviting her out on a date and she's saying she'd love to go on a date with me. I'm excited. One time kissing her I pulled her to me and her dress slid up and exposed one very well-sculpted young leg, up to the thigh, enough to drive me batty as hell. And I got batty as hell when I asked mother if I could borrow her Nash for the date and she turned me down. She was washing dishes. She was feeling her oats. She'd just come back that afternoon from her first trip ever to a professional beauty salon where she'd had her hair coiffed. That's why she needed her car, she said, she was going to a big food-tasting affair--my mother was a nutritionist and supervisor of the school lunchrooms of a large air force base just outside my hometown. This food-fair-tasting thing was a big occasion where her types got together and sampled new types of foods presented to them by various food suppliers and then they chose the nutritionist of the year and my mother was the master of ceremonies so that's why I couldn't use her car. "But, mother, this is big for me...this chick...I mean I've wanted to date her for so long now...come on, mother, get one of your nutritionist sisters to pick you up." "No and that's final," she suddenly blurted, tired of my pestering her. She stomped her foot when she said that NO. I don't know what it was. Something inside me. The devil maybe making me do evil against my mother. Breaking one of the Ten Commandments God gave Charlton Heston on that papier-mache Mount Sinai--"Honor thy father and thy mother..." and your days shall be long or something like that. I didn't really think about what I did. It wasn't premeditated. Oh, no, I was an improviser even way back then, so, yes, it was spontaneous. I grabbed the dishpan full of soapy dishwater out of the sink and before either of us knew what was happening, I dumped that dishpan of soapy dishwater straight up, over, and down over my mother's pro-done hairdo-ified head. The first word out of her mouth was SHIPITTLE. Then she stomped off to the bathroom, locked herself in, and started bawling like a maddened baby.

My dad's invented word was "hooded." "That son of a bitch tried to hood me this morning." What he meant was a combination of "hoodwink" and "pulled the wool over my eyes." I once joked with him when he drove up with a big dent in his Cadillac's hood. I said, "Hey, dad, did somebody hood you there?" "Please, son, don't be a smartass like your brother and Uncle Grady."

Other words I've invented. Let's see. I had a friend who used the word "finoogle" all the time though I don't remember how he used it. Duffy was his name. Taught himself to dance by dancing with a broom to Arthur Murray tapes.

I remember reading a mystery novel by the Swiss writer Friedrich Durrenmatt. I don't remember the story but I remember this one line..."It was a dundrearied morning...." That word dundrearied has fascinated me ever since. Looking it up I found the word "dundrearies" means "side whiskers."

Of course thousands of new words are invented every day. Bowl yourself into a gaggle of modern teenagers--you'll hear words you have no idea what the hell they mean.

Speaking of babies reading books...I love that commercial on teevee where the straight dude is selling his babies-can-read DVDs and software. He shows a bunch of 2-year-olds who can't remember their full names yet reading books. "What's that word, sugar?" "Shit." "No, no, no, Ship not Shit, you little creep." I'd love to have a bunch of 2-year-olds read my poems on stage. You know, while I sipped some Fundador off in a corner directing them by using a special spoiled-child control rod..., "Little Billy, read or I'll whack your behind to the tune of twenty licks...." And in that quaint little bubble-mumbly two-year-old voice, Little Billy reads--with a slurp and a spital-drooling gurgle:

"Ugly tombs bleed
paper-doll spirits
in tombstone tumblers.
Hiccough.
The smell of dead breath."

"Very good, Little Billy, for that you get to go on an all-day retreat into the woods with Father Flotsky and the Saint Suspicious Novitiates Choir."

I don't know...I rather liked my Uncle Herman tale of true events that ran over the past weak end...anyway, now that I've put my word-inventing machine away, I'm gonna listen to some Wardell Gray (Who?).
http://www.jazzwax.com/images/2008/12/15/wardell_2.jpg
Wardell Gray. One of Prez's bop-childs. Listen to "Blue Lou" from 1947 with Errol Garner on the piano. Died in a car crash near Vegas way back in the fifties--he and Dexter Gordon were a team--just gettin' famous when Wardell left us.

Plus, an old ML ballplayer from my baseball days, Cal McLish, has been given a free pass on into baseball heaven. Check out Cal's real name from his Wikipedia entry:

Calvin Coolidge Julius Caesar Tuskahoma McLish (December 1, 1925, Anadarko, Oklahoma – August 26, 2010) was a starting pitcher in Major League Baseball who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers (1944, 1946), Pittsburgh Pirates (1947–1948), Chicago Cubs (1949, 1951), Cleveland Indians (1956–1959), Cincinnati Reds (1960), Chicago White Sox (1961) and Philadelphia Phillies (1962–1964).[1] He was a switch-hitter and threw right-handed.

In a 15-season career, McLish posted a 92–92 record with 713 strikeouts and a 4.00 ERA in 1,609.0 innings pitched.

Cal's father was 3/4 Choctaw. My second wife was 1/4 Choctaw and she, too, had a long-flowing name like Cal's.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Friday, August 27, 2010

thegrowlingwolf Facing Another Full-Moon Phase

Foto by tgw, "Moon Over Manhattan," New York City, Aug. 24th, 2010
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Moonlight and Ewe Deer
Back when I was a kid the folklore my family's legends were built on said that if you slept in the direct moonlight by morning you'd be nuttier than any of grandma's rummy fruit cakes. Some of the really dumb and dumber in my family, the White Trash end, also believed that if you put a piece of string in a fruit jar full of water and sat it in the moonlight the string would turn into a snake. On the other hand, the other end of the balancing see-saw, the moonlight also stood for love and romance and getting laid. Albert Collins the great blues man said the moonlight made his love come on down. And Jimmy Reed sang about walkin' by the river "on a pale moonlighty night"--the time of decisive or indecisive love. I never heard whether or not fucking in the moonlight had any essential jujube effect connected with it since fucking as such was never discussed in my family. Oh, there were plenty of insinuating sex-teaching jokes gadded about during family reunions and within the cousin click. Imagine learning sex through jokes and juvenile curiosity and juvenile answers. The first time I tried it.... Can you imagine how unfucking real you looked the first time you tried to have sex? Men like puppies humping legs not knowing whether it was right or wrong--just lovin' the feel of urge to hump somethin'--humping naturally as nature intended us males to hump. Women like puppies squatting and peeing in excitement every five feet, warm in their vaginas instinctually knowing what that heat was and what one day it would be for. That "furnace-like heat" the old blues men sang about. Women of fire; men of wind? And Freud was put down for dwelling so long and over and over and repeatedly on one's sexual directions.

I remember clearly my first erections. They amused me more than they frightened me. Right then and there they became times of horribly tempting pleasure. An urge from within my solar plexus area to when it was hard and burning, its head so sensitive that to just glance-touch it was to send fiery signals up your spine to your brain hollering "what the hell am I for?; why am I so hard?; now what?" And my brain tried to answer: "Well, er-ah, I don't know what to tell you. Hell, I'm only 5-years-old. I mean, damn right you're hard and are tingling and making me tell this dumbass whose body we're a part of to at least grab you with one of his hands and give you a good shaking down...."

Oh I'd been taught about sex. When my mother bathed me and I got little nail-like hards on, she would tell me, sweetly, as only a mother knows how, that that little act was wrong. I thought it cute and poked it up out of the bath water at her face. "Look, mommy dearest, you've given birth to a real man...look at that thing, ma." Her advice. "Every time that thing gets like that put it between your legs and squeeze it until it turtle-like backs back into the way God intended it, in a perpetual shriveled state." "Like daddy's?" I curtly asked. (I probably didn't ask that. I don't think I was that witty yet). According to Christian Holy Book laws I never saw my father's penis nor would I have been given permission to look at it had I asked. I did, however, see my Uncle Herman's BIG penis. He was my dad's sister's husband. So, you see, one time out by my hometown's biggest lake during a summer family reunion, my Uncle Herman called me over to the side of the lake, whipped his long dong out, and taught me how to piss in the lake like a real man. We walked right up to the lapping little tongue waves of that gypsum-water lake and whizzed away. "Throw the stream out into the lake away from you. There's nothing worse than showing back up among the ladies with a big wet spot on the front of your pants." My wonder-of-the-world Uncle Herman. Six foot five. A Goliath. But as gentle as he was wise. A dairy farmer who due to his having allergies so bad--hay fever, hives, shingles, nervous shit-- sold his dairy and moved to Portland, Oregon, where he became a shipbuilder.

His home in Portland was up on a bluff over the Willamette River on Harvard Street, in a neighborhood where all the streets were named for Ivy League colleges. From that bluff you could look down on the shipyard where my uncle worked. The first morning after we had arrived in Portland from Texas the day before, at that little house on Harvard Street, my Uncle Herman and I had a pancake-eating contest.

The night before under a full moon, I remember it so clearly, it was maybe 4 in the morning, the room I was sleeping in started madly shaking. The bed hip-hopping. The walls rattling. The windows clattering. The floor waving. I'd never felt anything like it. I jumped out of bed and ran out in the hall. My cousin Anna Moines (that was her name; I never asked but assumed she was named after Des Moines, Iowa) was awake and headed for the kitchen. I was shaking and probably on the verge of tears. Anna Moines was in high school, many years older than I was. She wasn't pretty but she was cute. I remember the minute I saw she was wearing what we called baby-doll pajamas--a little thin top over a panties-like bottom--my thoughts turned from the fears of whatever the heck-fire was shaking the house into a full-fledged horniness for my cousin. "It was just a tremor, baby," she said, calming my fears and anxieties, "Wanna make a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich?"

I sat there eating a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich with a hard on unable to really take advantage of checking out my near-naked cousin due to my tremendous timidity. I did catch a glimpse of her breast one brief time when she got up and went to the fridge for some milk. But just as I was daring to take a long look at her as she was bending over looking in the fridge, the grown ups were up and rambling into the kitchen. "What the hell was that, I thought the Good Lord was coming back," my dad was excitedly jabbering when he came into the kitchen. "Just a tremor," my aunt said, "you'll see, we have several a day." "Go put your clothes on," my mother ordered me. I supposed we were up for good. Soon there were smells of coffee being brewed and breakfast cooking being prepped.

My aunt suggested she make pancakes. Oh boy. My attention then left the tremor, my half-naked cousin, and excitedly centered on pancakes. I loved pancakes. Even though I'd just finished a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich, the thought of getting to eat pancakes made me desirously hungry again. Even when my aunt told my cousin to put a robe on and I got a good look at her legs and some jiggling in her top, my little pecker wasn't hard; my thoughts were welded on the idea of eating pancakes.

Fear, sex, and hunger...all in one fastly unreeling tremoring morning under the long-lasting remains of a full moon.

It ended with me committing one of the 7 deadly sins, gluttony. My aunt just stayed at the stove flipping pancakes while my Uncle Herman and I contested to see who could down the most without upchucking so severely we'd end in a coma. My aunt was stacking 'em eight to the stack and I cleared that first hurdle fast and in good shape. The syrup was pure cane syrup from back home--there was even a side bucket of sorghum molasses from back home, too. The second eight went OK because I was still madly hungry for pancakes. Each stack had a pad of real cow butter between each layer and that buttery flavor combined with the thick wild sweet taste of that rich syrup all soaking into those buttermilk pancakes made my hunger crazy and with a gulping nature. My aunt served us our third stack of eight. My Uncle Herman was jawing away with my dad while he was nonchalantly tossing down another forkful of pancake dripping in syrup and oozing buttery juice out from around each cake's side. The third stack began to tell on me. About halfway through it I began to realize there was a possibility unless my Uncle caved in and coma-ed first, I would have to surrender. I could feel a hint of queasiness coming on in the pit of my stomach. My Uncle Herman finished his third stack of eight while I was still trying to get the first half of my third stack down. He got up and excused himself. He had to take a pee. All that coffee he was drinking, he thought.

I took advantage of his being off taking a piss by regaining some confidence and killing my third stack and telling my aunt I'd take my fourth stack now, please. "Wolfie, be careful, you know how sick at your stomach you get from all that syrup," my mother warned. "Old Herman's ten sizes bigger than you, son," my dad chirped. "I mean, he can out eat everybody in this room." "Oh, shut up, Larry, let the kid have some fun. Besides, I got enough pancake mix here to feed the U.S. Navy anchored out there in the Willamette." By then she'd filled my plate with my fourth stack o'eight just as my Uncle Herman came back from the bathroom. "Watcha' doin', kid, tryin' to get a jump on your poor old hungry uncle?" "I'm gonna beat you, Uncle Herman."

I tackled that fourth stack of eight. My aunt placed the fourth stack in front of her husband but he just sat there sipping on a fresh cup of coffee and telling my dad about the weather around Portland. Halfway through my fourth stack I knew I was beaten. But I couldn't stop. Yep, I was fiercely competitive as a budding teenager, especially in contests, whether of body or mind. So, sickness, death, misery, or what, I decided to whip Uncle Herman's ass good. I dove into my fourth stack with a mad passion. I finished it while Uncle Herman was still only about half finished with his stack. He was leisurely enjoying the contest. Four stacks of eight. Thirty-two pancakes. Before I could catch my breath, my aunt plated another eight and placed them in front of me. Surprisingly, Uncle Herman said he was ready for his fifth stack, too. I looked and his plate was wiped clean as a whistle.

I poured some syrup over my stack and with bewilderment I started in on it. Thirty-two pancakes inside me. Yes, I felt bloated. Damn right I did. Plus, dammit, I was taking long swigs of buttermilk to wash down my mouthfuls of pancakes and that thick milk only bloated me more. My stomach was pooching out solid round and tight. I took a big bite. It hung in my mouth. I tried to swallow it down but my swallower didn't seem to be working. I took a big swig of buttermilk and washed that bite down and it went down reluctantly slow. But when I put my fork into that stack for another huge bite, something failed me. Something inside me shut down, though it wasn't my stomach. My stomach was beginning to tease me with spurts of quease. My Uncle Herman was talking about how would we all like to go to Canon Beach later in the morning. My cousin Anna Moines got all excited. "Yeah, let's go. Can I take Beth? Please?" I tried again at that second bite. It, too, stuck in the back of my mouth. Again I washed it down with a slug of buttermilk. Suddenly, unbelievably, as if with the voice of an imp, my Uncle Herman said, "Honey, you got anymore of those delicious pancakes ready, I'm so hungry...." Holy Moley, Uncle Herman had suddenly just out of nowhere finished his fifth stack--40 pancakes--and I was still not even a third of the way finished with my fifth. "You better give up, son. I've seen Herman eat half a cow one time back when I thought I could eat more steak than the average Joe." "Or, remember that time out at the diary, Larry, when he ate a gallon of ice cream by himself and was askin' for more." They were all laughin' and jokin' while I was determined but struggling to finish my fifth stack.

The next thing I know, I was upchucking like a maniac, huge chunks of undigested pancake soggy with pure cane syrup and oozing with creamery creamy sizzling still butter in the downstairs bathroom. Back in bed, my aunt brought an ice pack and put it on my forehead and a hot water bottle, which she put on my pooching stomach.

My cousin Anna Moines stuck her head in the room. "Hey, my Texas cousin, you gonna chicken out going to Canon Beach with us? Chicken. Don't you wanna see me and my friend Beth in our bathing suits?" Oh God. As sick as the dog I was after eating 35 pancakes, that mention of getting to see her and her friend Beth in their bathing suits had a powerful healing effect on me.

And, by God, yes, I made it out to Canon Beach with the whole two-car load of us. And am I glad I did. What a revealing day it was. Canon Beach and the haystack rocks was full of little coves and inlets off the main beach, coves and inlets filled with driftwood and places to be safely hidden from the grown ups who were back out on the wide-open beach. And what a day. What a beautiful beach. The Pacific Ocean was booming in, breaking far out, and then gently rolling into the white sandy beach as pathetic as a almost-slaughtered lamb. And, yes, I not only got to see my cousin and her friend Beth, who I fell madly in love with, by the way, in their bathing suits, but I got to follow them off into one of those cosy inlets among some driftwood where we began playing a game of "Show Me Yours and I'll Show You Mine."

"Herr Doktor Freud, I experienced all the Pleasure Principles there were that day long ago on Canon Beach--my stomach was full of pancakes; my eyes were filled with for the first time sights they'd only guessed at before; my penis filling thick and long with the steady rushing of blood to its helmeted head--culminating in Beth breaking one of my cherries. Praise ye, Herr Doktor Freud."

All because of this damn full moon that greets me every morning this week when I wake up at 5 and look out my window. This big beauty of a moon that is carrying a star along with it--the morning star. And Venus was born naked in an oyster shell--and then sailed off to join the moon in an expected marriage. I'm moonstruck.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Another Visit From the The Daily Growler Jots & Tittles Man

http://www.blog.thesietch.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/pollutedyangtze.jpg
Let's Give a Hearty Hail Mary for YES, Barabbas Munn-Dayne, the The Daily Growler Jots & Tittles Man, From the Fecal-lined Shores of Lake Flaccid, NY
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I'm in "the city," as we upstate New York transplanted New York Citians say when we're "down in the city." We still think of ourselves as city folk even though some of us haven't lived in the City for many decades now. Myself, the last time I lived in the City was, wow, almost 25 years ago.

The City is overcast today. It's sprinkling rain. Sprinkling. What a water-spritish sort of word (you dew drop the "e" and add "ish" don't you?--any editrix's read my posts?). And I'm in the city to visit my friend Cherokee Chinch and help him work on what he calls his "dying" effort at a book, tentatively titled, I'm No Fucking Indian.

I met Cherokee when I got a happenstance job as a proofreader at the law firm of Birnbaum, Baum, Baumbirn, and Rosenthal (I know, typical making fun of Jewish law firm names--but in truth, the law firm I worked at did have a name very similar to the one I used). This firm had hired me as a proofreader, which to them meant I was going to start out as a reader reading to another proofreader who had been there working already who was the marker. You worked on "appellate appendices." You worked in a far-afield back-room dungeon of their offices on Park Avenue in the Seagram's Building. I was assigned to be Cherokee's reader, meaning I read the appendix to him while he redlined or bluelined it--checking for typos and to see if the changes made by the lawyers were made correctly.

I saw right off the bat Cherokee Chinch was a Native American, though he was dressed very Western, nice shirt, slacks, and his hair was cut Beatles-style--with bangs--and no pony tail, though his facial features and his coal black straight hair gave indications that he was either a Native American or a transplanted Mongolian.

He was polite enough when we were introduced by the chief mistress in charge of the goofball proofreaders at this firm, of which I was the latest addition. "Cherokee Chinch, this is Mr. Munn-Dayne, Barabbas, isn't it?" "Yes, m'am." Here Cherokee spoke up, "Jesus Christ, man, your parents named you after the dude the Jews wanted released so they could nail up old Jesus Christ?" "Yes, my parents were Christian-opposites...that's what they called themselves. I have a brother named Baal, for instance." "Damn, man, you may be my type, have a seat and let's get started with this shit, and that's what this crap is, too, man, pure shit, the legalese ramblings of these shyster lawyers as they try and reword things in so confusing a way only their asses can interpret them and only the opposition to their asses can cut to pieces with legalese ramblings of their own making up."

To lower oneself to doing proofreading in a law office was next to admitting you were one step out of the gutter in terms of life style. It was a painful experience. For instance, there was a telephone on the desk but when I went to pick it up, Cherokee stopped me. "We're not allowed to use the telephone here." "Then why is there a telephone here?" "It goes with the cubicle design--the designer put it there for show." "Great, but it works." "Oh yeah, it's a workable phone but if you use it, you'll get fired immediately." "OK. I was just gonna call my wife and let her know I got a job and maybe I could help her with the rent this month." "Women are for losers," he shot back. "Men are for winners?" I shot back. "No, no, damn, White man, you sure dumb. Of course I meant women are for loser men. Strong men don't need a woman except for cooking, cleaning, and conceiving." "My wife would scalp you over that statement." "Funny White man make a joke." "My wife's a full-blooded Mohawk, brother, so stick your wry conclusion up where that Father Sun don't shine." "Woooooo. Great White Father, I've been cornered like the rat I am. You married a Mohawk squaw. Shit, you gonna be rich one day, Whitey, the Mohawks are getting a billion-dollar settlement out of Good Ole Uncle Sam White." "Yep, and she's a member of the tribal council, too."

This was all bullshit, of course. I didn't have a Mohawk wife. My wife was a Jersey girl, from Rutherford, her parents both professors at Rutgers, the Jersey State University. The closest she ever got to a Mohawk was when I came home with a Mohawk haircut one day in the late night after I'd been out drinking with a barber friend of mine, Sal Barbaria ( "bar-bah-reee-ah," as he used to emphasize his name's correct pronunciation). But, hey, when in the trenches with an angry Native American, why not trump his warrior-attitude ass with a lie? Come on, it's been natural for the White man to lie to Native Americans ever since we stole their lands from them and forced them on reservations (concentration camps).

After we finished the gig, Cherokee Chinch invited me to join him for a drink. And where did he take me for a drink, up the street to the Waldorf-Astoria bar. "I like going into this stiff-ass bar and ordering firewater. It entertains these swellheaded creeps who stay in this overpriced hotel that is built over sacred Manhatto soil."

Turns out Cherokee Chinch wasn't a Cherokee. Nor was he a Chinch. "My Lakotah name is Racing Deer That Eats Smoke. Chinch came from my mother once saying while drinking an RC Cola that it tasted like chinch bugs. So when I started writing, I chose that as my White name, Cherokee because the White man used the Cherokee as his enemy and reason to march my people from the East Coast out to that stinkin' fucked-up Oklahoma Territory, where when oil was discovered the White man once again trick-bagged my people not only out of their oil but out of their land and today Oklahoma is a White hick state that votes against anything that is tinged with any kind of color or progress. White to Whites is purity. Red to Whites is blood and blood scares a White man. He sees blood he cringes. I see blood I recognize life. Black is sin. So Blacks are truly on the bottom of the White man's list of impure races, though my people are lower than Blacks today--we are still relegated to reservations and a bureaucratic White aristocracy is still telling us what we can and cannot do, what Jesus Christ-thing we're supposed to believe in, what limits we have off the reservation...." After that evening, Cherokee Chinch and I became friends. Later he met my wife and knew right off the bat she wasn't one of his people. "God-damn, you White motherfuckers are the best damn liars ever brought down upon the true civilized of this world, the people White people refer to as savages. The savage is simply closer to reality than the civilized White man." And that's how I got to helping him with his book. He called it I'm No Fucking Indian meaning he wasn't born in India and he didn't recognize Christopher Colombo--"he was an Italian Jew, man, that bastard"--as the discoverer of America. The very title is a total lie. "Colombo the Italian Jew never discovered America. He was sniffing through his heavy nose for gold--where he found no gold he infected the indigenous population with small pox and syphilis, all those fine clean European diseases, and wiped them out--like the my Carib brothers and sisters. The bastard. Fuck him and the ships he rode into town on."

But Cherokee Chinch is now dying. That's why he called me down to the Isle of the Manhattoes. He's dying and he wants to finish his book before he dies. "Not that many more moons to live, my White friend." "What's wrong with you, Cherokee?" "Nothing. My doctor says I'm healthy as a horse, but the spirits tell me I'm soon to be dying. I want to finish my book, put it out for publication, and then go back to my people's nation and die in style."

The first paragraph of Cherokee Chinch's book is "When my father rose on his hind haunches and mounted my seduced mother and I became their first born, at first they wanted to name me Jesus Christ, but the BOIA didn't allow Native Americans to use that name, so my father, who never converted to Christianity, by the way, said to name me Shit, but my mother insisted and she named me for her father's people. My dad was real Lakotah. He still went out alone into the wilds and shot a grizzly and held long prayers over its dead body whose life was infiltrating him while he was letting the grizzly's spirit free to go on high and from those heights watch over him and his people. My mother converted to Christianity though she still respected the old ways and still did little things like leaving food out for the spirits at certain times of year--like ears of corn--but at the same time, she wore her crucifix religiously and she read her Lakotah-language bible devotedly, though I know deep down in my Lakotah soul that she was using Christianity as a mask, a mask to hide her still-devotion to the Lakotah spirits so that she could at least carry on with her interest in teaching old customs of weaving and telling tales and such to Lakotah children at the reservation social center."

www.republicoflakotah.com/

Today, by the way, yes, it's Sunday in my world, down two blocks away from Ground Zero, that White sacred ground, a group of ignorant totally foolish White people are gathering, most of them not residents of New York City and certainly not Manhattan,--the teabaggers are thick down there already--to protest the building of an Islamic Center up on Church two full blocks away east from the still-being-built Freedom Tower. It started in 2002--what's that, 8 years in the building and still there is no building there. And still Whites are saying that earth is not contaminated, but it is, and should be condemned as such. It's a burial ground, a burial ground of human flesh, blood, teeth, skulls, melted steel, melted asbestos, melted fire-retardant materials, melted carpets, melted ceiling tiles (made out of asbestos), melted rats and mice--all melded into that ground they're calling Ground Zero. To build a high-rise building on that earth is an abomination to the spirits of those lives lost on that former Manhatto Native American ground, a ground filled with stories of hate, hate against the freed Blacks that once were trying to start a Black neighborhood down there--the first Black church was on Williams Street--in fact, one could say, Blacks built New Amsterdam and later New York--they tilled the land, built the buildings, dug the canals, built the walls, built the streets, formed the chain gangs. That land has been abominated since it was stolen from the Manhattoes back in the 16th Century. Manhattan Island when the Native Americans ran it was a paradise. Now I look at Manhattan and I see change. Change in the skyline. A whole raft of new buildings on the East River side of Lower Manhattan. Looking over from Brooklyn, for instance, the Woolworth Building is no longer distinct. It is coffined in by a wall of new buildings, one which has its outer covering to look like a building within a building--monotonous architecture--architecture coming out of Europe--the Europeanization of Manhattan--one of the ideals Mayor Mike "I Stole a Third Term" Bloomberg put into motion with his desire to turn Manhattan into a European-style city of bike lanes and outdoor comfort zones with tables and chairs sitting under umbrellas--one comfort zone's tables and chairs and umbrellas in the dead middle of the huge traffic coming together at Broadway and Fifth where Broadway X's across Fifth--Broadway, ironically, the original Native American trail that traversed from lower Manhattan all the way up into the high hills of the lower Catskills--that's the reason Broadway has never conformed to the grid layout the rest of Manhattan streets are laid out on. Bloomberg and his woman city planner are catering to tourists. Bloomberg, like all the world's wealthiest men, hate poor people. He can only really communicate with his own kind. The tourist industry is taking over Manhattan--not entirely, because the real estate industry still owns Manhattan, but the tourist rippers-offers are flocking to Manhattan by the droves. Times Square once the center of New York City's true cultural nightlife is now a Disney World, a Warner-Brothers World--office buildings housing communications companies and now network television studios and tacky hotels like the overpriced Marriott (I just read where there's a bedbug epidemic in NYC now). And now Times Square looks like a development project, with these intruding buildings replacing where used to be the entertainment crossroads of the world, Broadway, the Great White Way, cutting through the heart of the theater and music and cultural district that used to hug Times Square.... As the Wolf Man has been writing of late about obsolescence, that's suddenly what I'm writing about, which was not my intention today but I got sidetracked by the visit to New York City and my dying friend, who is healthy as a horse, Cherokee Chinch.

So the Bozos are gathering en masse, Christian Bozos and Jewish Bozos, gathering to protest the Constitution's guaranteeing freedom of religion in this country. These Bozos say that putting an Islamic Center this close to Ground Zero (it's two blocks away from that sacred (in the Christian sense) site) is an abomination, an insult to the many Christians and Jews who died in the crazed-Islamic-terrorist, yet amazing, military feat, one as great as the Trojan Horse incident in ancient Greece. These night-before-drunk attackers who blew down 5 buildings in the World Trade Center complex using two airliners hitting precisely the two main towers. The World Trade Center, which to Muslims represented the Capitalist pigs wanting to secularize the World--a move that should upset Christians, too--turning the world into a Global Marketplace with the down-and-out reduced to slavery--turning the world into a New World Order of Capitalists from all over the world--check out the world's richest men: White men--Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Senor Slim. Cell phones and mobile networks made Senor Slim the richest man in the world, more money than the constantly upgrading Windows software nerd and his pal the junk-bond-trading-financial pirate, Warren Buffett, both now worth several billion dollars less than Senor Slim. Boo-hoo-hoo.

But these Bozos believe that those people who died in the 9/11 tragedy were all Christian Whites--disregarding the fact that a load of Muslims were killed in that mess, too. A mess that could have been prevented had our military been serving us by performing its proper Constitutional role, that of defending our borders from enemy surprise attacks. That's why we have a supposedly early warning alert system where jet pilots are on 24/7 readiness at specified air bases to take off at any moment to track down an illegal blip on the radar or a call from the airlines saying that terrorists had boarded 4 or 5 American airlines planes and were intending.... But, no, our defense system let us down big time. But, hey, Muslims are the same as dogs to Christians--like Palestinians are dogs to Israelis. But anyway, Whites vs. the Rest of the World goes on--and our wonderful White people are down there now babbling out their misguided hatreds against these anti-Christian-Jew terrorists. In the meantime, our US forces are killing Muslims by the 100s every day--and Muslims are still killing Muslims every day in the streets of Baghdad and in the whole country of Afghanistan and now over into Pakistan where those wonderful good ole USA-invented drones just killed a father and his 3 sons, as suspected Terrorist Dogs, yesterday. Ah, the lust in killing. We the People of the USA love killing. We allow the most despicable ways of killing people to be broadcast as "OK for Kids" over our television and in our movies. You notice love on teevee and the movies is always lust--the love affair leading to some kind of brutality--even that stupider than stupid show "The Bachelor"--I mean...OK, I give up. It's time for some Jots & Tittles.
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Jots & Tittles

--the amazing African woman, Abbey Lincoln
just left the mortal coil earlier this week. Abbey was an amazing woman. A strong woman. "Men," as she would say were the reason she sang, wrote poetry, and acted. Her concepts were geared toward what she called her African self. She even said very beautifully in an interview with NYC teevee interviewer, Gil Noble, and she was an extremely beautiful woman, that she was getting into polygamy, sort of coyly hinting that it took more than one woman to satisfy all the love needs a real man has--and she would be cool with that since men cheat like crazy now--why not just be a man's lover among many of his lovers, each woman giving one man the certain kind of love he needs--it's a reactional idea--she said it was a very African idea. I'm not a fan of NPR, but here's a damn good page on Abbey (she preferred her African name, Aminata Moseka), if it's still working, on the NPR Website:

www.npr.org/programs/jazzprofiles/archive/lincoln.html

---also, same week, we lost Herman Leonard--here's a copy of the official The Daily Growler Herman Leonard photo--what a photo it is--if you understand the subject matter, this pretty much captures Prez's existence without Prez's actual being being in the photo--but Prez is there--the magic of a good photographer:
http://www.polkmuseumofart.com/content/images/interior/exhibitions/FY%2006-07/leonard_big.jpg
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---Souvenirs of the Wedding of the Century: I was piloting through Rhinebeck yesterday morning and I noticed quiet a few Wedding of the Century souvenirs being offered--one guy had some flowers he swore were from the wedding floral leftovers--he had a basket of wilted daffodils he wanted a buck a piece for. "Did Chelsea sign any of these?" I snidely asked, to which this guy replied, "You're too late. I already sold those."

---And Out-of-Nowhere Jack Horkheimer the Star Gazer has left the mortal coil. You gotta remember "The Star Gazer" shows on PBS. Where Jack sat at his desk in the stars and told you all the heavenly events happening in a certain period. He was head of the Miami Planetarium. Oops, there goes Jack Horkheimer off into space.

---And YET Another Death, that of Rodolfo Enrique Fogwill, the Argentine businessman turned writer and poet. Here's a long poem--side-by-side Spanish to English--by Brother Fogwill--forgive me; it's Google translated; it's gotta be screwed up, but if you read Spanish, it's a damn feisty mad-Latino poem:

BAD CALL BY THE POETS


Se necesitan malos poetas. Bad poets are needed.
Buenas personas, pero poetas Good people, but poets
malos. ill. Dos, cien, mil malos poetas Two hundred, a thousand bad poets
se necesitan más para que estallen more are needed to explode
las diez mil flores del poema. ten thousand flowers of the poem.

Que en ellos viva la poesía, Let them live poetry
la innecesaria, la fútil, la sutil unnecessary, the useless, the subtle
poesía imprescindible. essential poetry. O la in- Or the in-
versa: la poesía necesaria, versa: poetry necessary
la prescindible para vivir. dispensable for the living.

Que florezcan diez maos en el pantano Maos flourish ten o'clock in the swamp
y en la barranca un Ele, un Juan, Canyon and a Ele, a John
un Gelman como elefante entero de cristal roto, Gelman as a whole elephant, broken glass,
o un Rojas roto, mendigando Red or broken, begging
a la Reina de España. the Queen of Spain.

(Ahora España (Now Spain
ha vuelto a ser un reino y tiene Reina, has come to be a kingdom and has Queen
y Rey del reino. and King of the kingdom. España es un tablero Spain is a board
de alfiles politizados y peones of bishops and pawns politicized
recién comidos: a la derecha, negros, paralizados, fuera del juego). just eaten: on the right, black, paralyzed, out of play).

Y aquí hay torres de goma, alfiles And here is rubber towers, bishops
politizados y damas policiales politicized and police ladies
vigilando la casa. watching the house.

A la caza del hombre, A man hunting,
por hambre, corren todos, saltan by hunger, they all run, jump
de la cuadrícula y son comidos. grid and are eaten.

Todo eso abunda: faltan los poetas, All of this abounds: Missing poets
los mil, los diez mil malos, cada uno the thousand, ten thousand bad, each
armado con su libro de mierda. armed with his book of shit. Faltan, Missing
sus ensayitos y sus novela en preparación. his little essay and novel in preparation.
Ah.. Ah .. y los curricola, and curricola,
y sus diez mil applys nos faltan. and his ten thousand applys we lack.

No es la muerte del hombre, es una gran ausencia It is not man's death is a great absence
humana de malos poetas. bad poets human. Que florezcan Flourish
cien millones de tentativas abortadas, hundred million aborted attempts,
relecturas, incordios, rereading, nuisances,
folios de cartulina, ilustraciones cardboard pages, illustrations
de gente amiga, cenas friendly people, dinner
con gente amiga, exégesis, escolios, with friendly people, exegesis, scholia,
tiempo perdido como todo. time lost as a whole.

Se necesitan poetas gay, poetas It takes gay poets, poets
lesbianas, poetas lesbian poets
consagrados a la cuestión del género, devoted to gender,
poetas que canten al hambre, al hombre, poets who sing to the hungry man,
al nombre de su barrio, al arte ya la industria, the name of your neighborhood, art and industry,
a la estabilidad de las instituciones, the stability of institutions,
a la mancha de ozono, al agujero the stain of ozone, the hole
de la revolución, al tajo agrio of the revolution, the bitter pit
de las mujeres, al latido women, to the beat
inaudible del pentium ya la guerra Pentium inaudible and war
entendida como continuidad de la política, understood as a continuation of politics
del comercio, trade
del ocio de escribir. leisure to write.

Se necesitan Betos, Titos, Carlos Betos are needed, Titos, Carlos
que escriban poemas. to write poems. Alejandras y Marthas Alejandra and Marthas
que escriban. they write. Nombres para poetas, Names for poets,
anagramas, seudónimos y contraseñas logos, nicknames and passwords
para el chat room del verso se necesitan. chat room for verse needed.

Una poesía aquí del cirujeo en la veredas. A poetry here from cirujeo on sidewalks.
Una poesía aquí de la mendicidad en las instituciones. A poetry here begging on the institutions.
Una poesía de los salones de lectura de versos. A poetry reading rooms of verse.

Una poesía por las calles (venid a ver A poetry in the streets (come see
los versos por las calles...) the verses on the streets ...)

Una poesía cosmopolita (subid a ver A cosmopolitan poetry (go up to see
los versos por la web...). verses the web ...).

Una poesía del amor aggiornado (bajad a ver A poem of love aggiornamiento (go down to see
poesía en el pesebre del amor...) poetry in the crib of love ...)

Una poesía explosiva: etarra, ética, An explosive poetry: ETA, ethics,
poéticamente equivocada. poetically incorrect.

En los papeles, en los canales On paper, in channels
culturales de cable, en las pantallas cultural cable, on screens
y en los monitores, en las antologías y en revistas and monitors, in anthologies and magazines
y en libros y en emisiones clandestinas and books and emissions underground
de frecuencia modulada se buscan FM is looking for
poetas y más malos poetas: more bad poets and poets:
grandes poetas celebrados pequeños, great poets held small
poetas notorios, plumas iluminadas, well-known poets, feather lit
hombres nimios, miméticos, petty men, mimetics,
deteriorados por el alcohol, impaired by alcohol,
descerebrados por la droga, brainless by the drug,
hipnotizados por el sexo hypnotized for sex
idiotizados por el rock, stupefied by the rock,
odiados, amados por la gente aquí. hated, loved by the people here.

En las habitaciones se buscan. The rooms are searched.
En un bar, en los flippers, In a bar in the flippers,
en los minutos de descanso de la oficina, minute break in the office,
entre dos clases de gramática, between two kinds of grammar,
en clase media, en barrios in middle class neighborhoods
vigilados se buscan. monitored sought.

¿Habrá en la tropa? Will the troops?
¿En los balnearios, en los baños What spas in the bathrooms
públicos que han comenzado a construir? public have begun to build?
¿En los certámenes de versos? What poetry contests?
¿En los torneos de minifútbol? What mini-football tournaments?
¿Bajo el sol quieto? "Under the sun still?
¿A solas con su lengua? "Alone with his tongue?
¿A solas con una idea repetitiva? "Alone with a repetitive idea?
¿Con gente? How people?
¿Sin amor? "Without love?

No es el fin de la historia, es Not the end of history is
el comienzo de la histeria lingual. the beginning of hysteria lingual.

Todo comienza y nace de una necesidad fraguada en la lengua. It all starts and comes from a need in the language forged.
Falsifiquemos el deseo: Fake desire:
Te necesito nene. I need you baby.
Para empezar te necesito. To start you need.
Para necesitar, te pido To need, I ask
ese minuto de poesía que necesito, necio: minutes of poetry that I need, fool:
quisiera ver si me devuelves el ritmo de un mal poema, I would like to see if me back the pace of a bad poem
que me acarices con sus ripios, I acaricides with rubble,
que me turbes la mente con otra idea banal, disturb me with another idea mind banal,
y que me bañes todo con la trivialidad del medio. and I bathe all the triviality of the media.

Y en medio del camino, en el comienzo And in the middle of the road, at the beginning
de la comedia terrenal, quiero vivir earth's comedy, I want to live
la necedad y la necesidad stupidity and the need
de un sentimiento falso. a false feeling.

Se necesitan nuevos sentimientos, It takes new feelings,
nuevos pensamientos imbéciles, nuevas imbeciles new thoughts, new
propuestas para el cambio, causas proposals for change, causes
para temer, para tener, to fear, to hold
aquí en el sur. here in the south.

Y arriba España es un panal And Spain is a hive top
de hormigas orientales: Eastern ant:
rumanas, tunecinos, Romanian, Tunisian,
suecas a la sombra de un Rey. Swedish in the shadow of a king.

Riámonos del Rey. Let us laugh del Rey.
De su fealdad. In its ugliness.
De su fatalidad. From his fate.
De Su Graciosa Realidad. Graciosa Your Reality.
La realidad es un ensueño compartido. Reality is a shared dream.
La realidad de España The reality of Spain
es su filosa lengua pronunciando la eñe uttering his sharp tongue is the eñe
y su mojada espada pronunciando el orden wet bar and saying the order
del capital y la sintaxis. capital and syntax.

¡Ay, lengua: Oh, language;
aparta de mí este cuerno de la prosperidad clavado en tu ingle, away from me this horn of prosperity stuck in your groin
suturada de chips, y cubre chip sutured, covering
nuestras heridas con el bálsamo de los malos poemas..! our wounds with the balm of bad poems ..!
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You mixed-language freaks ought to enjoy figuring that poem out--bad poets--exploding--into flowers. Muchas gracias to the following blog:
solitarioyfinal.blogspot.com/2007/06/rodolfo-enrique-fogwill-un-poema.html

---"They'll Build That Mosque Over My Dead Body"--so said a guy wearing a construction worker helmet with an American flag design. I can remember when the rightwingers condemned the hippies for wearing American flag shirts. They said it desecrated the flag. But, boy howdy, the do-gooders were desecrating the flag like mad today down around Ground Zero. There were two groups, those for the mosque and those against it. New York City is such a racist city. It has been since it was founded by the slavetrading Dutch and the wealth-stealing British. There were firefighters there waving their bloody shirts and there were a couple of guys who claimed they were almost killed in both of the WTC buildings that those amazing Muslim-terrorists, drunk out of their minds the night before, so accurately hit at so exactly the right spots that those two main towers fell straight-as-arrows down to fall flushed straight down past street level, as if they were imploded...oh but we patriotic Americans can't ask questions about that. One of the more patriot of the idiots against the mosque down there said it wasn't about Muslims in general, it was that these Muslims were practitioners of Sharia in terms of morals and law, and as this GI-looking character got more patriotic he fervently cried, "Everything in Sharia law is against every freedom we have in our Constitution." Well, then damn right we don't want a bunch of towelheads whose mission it is to spread Sharia law...how the hell are they gonna do this? Looks like we truly believe in this country that all Muslims are terrorists. Too bad. Hell, 1/5 of us believe Obama's a Muslim. Fools rush in....

Just thought I'd say hi while I was in town.

barabbasmunn-daynethedailygrowlerjots&tittlesman
for The Sunday Daily Growler
"Serving the Lords With Factual Fiction"

Thursday, August 19, 2010

thegrowlingwolf Again With This Obsolescence--Take 3

Foto by tgw, New York City, August 2010
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[A The Daily Growler Warning: President Obama, after two taxing "Missions Accomplished" in less than 48 hours is a physical wreck--definitely deserving of some MORE R&R. His first "Mission Accomplished" happened on his quickie visit to Panama City, Florida, where he declared with a deceiving smile on his handsome mug that the Saint BP miracle of the disappearing oil in the Evil BP Gulf Coast oil spill disaster to be, yes, true, yes, an actual miracle. The Gulf Coast beaches in Florida at least are lushly bright seagreen blue--why, he said, why wouldn't any American want to come to Florida now?--take advantage of the low hotel rates--they're desperate for business. (Out of curiosity: if 1/5th of the American Idiot Class believes that President Obama is a Muslim (also he's not an American)--therefore, as a Muslim, is he able to declare Christian miracles?--BP certainly being a Christian (Anglican) Saint, even though ironically they got their free pass into the oil business by stealing Muslim oil--which triggers this thought: has anyone suggested that maybe this oil spill was Allah's revenge?). President Obama vouched for this miracle while he and Michelle were taking big-toe dips in the Good Gulf Oil Coast waters at Panama City. One might ask, why did he choose to go to Florida for his testing of the waters? Why not Mississippi? The President's 2nd Mission Accomplished party was his, while he was on a quick stop back in Washington, District of Corruption, declaring an end to the Iraq War.... Whoaaaaa...let me backtrack...he said the end of "combat" in Iraq...is "Combat" another word for War? Anyway, hey, Yahooooo, 50,000 dumbass now matured-in-killing combat forces are exiting Iraq via Kuwait and heading back over here--oops, up goes the jobless market--unless Obama immediately ships these poor stupid American "heroes" on another long-term tour-of-duty in President Obama's sacred G.W. Bush Memorial War in Afghanistan. By the way, do We the People of the USA own Kuwait? I know G.W.H. "Pappy" Bush when he was Commander in Chief bravely led our forces against that evil Saddam Hussein when he was throwing Kuwaiti babies out of their incubators--remember that reason for going to WAR given us by Pappy Bush and his crusading New World Order visionaries--a looking back (which Obama won't do) shows the direction these Republican FOOLS want us going--and that's into a deep dive across the board--DRIVING US DOWN--achieving their original goal of CHEAP LABOR. Capitalism can't keep rewarding the Power Elite with profits if they have to pay their workers more than barely-livable wages--with hopes of one day slavery returning to this country--and in some cases, like picking tomatoes in Florida, it already has. Remember, the original NEO-CON Spoiled Brats saying we needed another Pearl Harbor to tear us loose from the Socialist high-tax policies of that evil Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Jewsevelt as they knew him then) those Socialist/Humanitarian policies (strikes of Communism to these American Neanderthals--OK in China but not the rest of the Global economy): like insuring our bank accounts against bank collapses due to banks using their customers's monies for their own private investment speculations; like giving us a Social Security for when we are old and worn out and can't work anymore (the majority of our senior class--and it is a class)--when most old folks are burnt out--and maybe busted; or like bringing electricity to Rural America, where today the remaining oddballs and idiots under the power of their up-to-date lighting will vote for a Repugnican whose policies would take away all public utilities and put them in the hands of God knows what Power Elitist private investment firms--or take their Social Security money (it's our money) and put it all lock, stock, and barrel into the hands of the Wall Street pirates who are stealing our wealth to the tune right now of 1.9 trillion dollars. While on the subject of our new Saint, British Petroleum, ask yourself how this foreign oil company got so many unregulated drilling privileges on We the People-owned lands and offshore waters? Like BP drill, drill, drilling away up in our unique Alaskan Wilderness area? Who parcelled out all of these rich natural resources to a British corporation? Or how did this foreign oil company (from the only country that has declared war on us twice) get so many well permits in our Gulf of Mexico offshore fields? So President Obama--let's see he vacationed in Maine just a month or so ago--right? Then poor vexed and haggard Michelle and the girls got a little deserved relaxation on a trip to Spain--God bless them. Then the exciting little whirlwind visit to the Good Gulf (Oil) Coast--whewww, even I'm exhausted going over this itinerary. Then back to the District of Political Sludge and declaring "Combat" ended in Iraq...whewwwww. So why not a little vacation on Martha's Vineyard? A little golf maybe with the new BP CEO, the American dude? Sounds like a deserved series of vacations to me. Besides, it is summer and the two-faced Congress is off counting up the money left in its political campaign coffers back home--some of these fairly rich dumbclucks facing challenges from some Ayn Rand-freak women ex-executives--some facing challenges from the Rand Paul and Ron Paul-type Libertarian goofballs--old Harry Reid having to back peddle on his old phony-Liberal one-wheeler into a more aligned agreement with the teabagger babe giving his casino-supported ass a run for the billions of Federal and Mafia dollars that are poured into Nevada every year since We the People of the USA own most of Nevada--and the Mafia owns the rest. Las Vegas by the way has the highest unemployment in the US right now; it has the highest number of foreclosed-on homes of a major US city--including DETROIT! Our US superstructure is falling into shambles--could this be the beginning of the ruins that will be left behind of our civilized time of being in the catbird seat? "It's over, Johnny!" may be the clarion call these two-faced politicians, including our President, are trying to warn us about--a downhill situation they no longer have any control over--we are now a Corporate State--Nazi Germany was a Corporate State, in case you're interested.]

And now back to our story....


But I Like My Toshiba 4.0
What are timepieces but collections of pieces of time organized into a chronological reading. "The time is exactly...." Whoaaaa. That's the beginning of a misstatement. It's time to eliminate the misstatement from the observational reasoning. Obsolescence is where those pieces of time no longer add up contemporarily. I am facing four timepieces. All four show four different "exact" times. Then I look up on the toolbar of my Mac and the time there is different from the other four times. All in all, going from one timepiece to the other either keeps your life time steady or pushes you further ahead into yet unexplored life time, or drags you so far behind your obsoletely too late in your catching up.

How does one measure the NOW? Obsolescence is merely a process in the NOW. It is happening at the particular time in the NOW that is the time of obsolescence--like when you have a great idea and then it disappears from your thoughts the very next second--you met an idea in time but obsolescence crashed into it at a crossroads in your life time...God-damn life is confusing. Good thing, right? If you are told, "You are going to die in 6 months," what does that mean to you? In the NOW it means nothing. In the long-run it poses mental and physical problems. Can the NOW be held in a continual present? A time that is always the same time? Would a perpetual NOW be the key to eternal life? Immortality?

The mind is controllable like time is controllable and time is controllable by the mind that invented it. When I look at these five timepieces whose faces are facing me, I see on what a delicate and mostly incorrect time line we walk. Yes, the old teevee show was right, "You must Beat the Clock to win the prize." If the clock beats you? You're dead. Do you get it?

thedailygrowlerhousepianist has immersed his intellectual self into a thorough study of Plato. It has turned him contentious with regards to my SET ways of logically thinking. When I say I'm an Atheist but not in the sense of the way the word is constructed--like "I'm an A without the theist," he then begins to Socratically attack me by referring me to Plato's The One, the source, the this, the that. I rebel. But my rebellion draws more criticism from this new Plato amongst us--"Your arguments are lousily foundated, Wolfie," he jabs at me. I throw Freud and sublimation at him and he counters by asking me what the hell I mean by sublimation; he knows nothing about it. As a result, I've started seriously reading The Republic for a second time--the first time was in college--a time way in the past that was not a pastime but a time of release for me, a release from the binding hands of that era's clock, especially the big clock on the administration building's tower. All my learning timed. Like Pavlov's dogs, I was conditioned to respond to the loud bonging chimes of that tower clock whose face was as gruesome as the faces of most of my professors. All my time then was divided into multitask-type categories. I'm reading The Republic then at the same time I am reading Jacques Maritain, the Catholic existentialist. And I am reading paragraphs of both over and over and interlacing them, arguing with Socrates on justice using Catholic-existentialist reasoning--justice is in the eye of the beholder--justice doesn't exist--show me where justice exists? Where's justice in childhood? Where's justice in religion? Then I began to realize, and time it was I did, that I was wasting time causing duels within my head with two different concepts of time and life. Wasting my time, not their time. I was getting points from reading several different disciplines at the same time, but they in time became sketchy in my timed mind--like confusing my Max Weber with something I knew damn well was Georg Simmel's idea--or from questioning the reason for squared cities--why not round cities? when I knew I had learned that from reading about Burgess's Concentric Circle theory of urban planning at some time in the time I sat aside to my Urban Sociology reading and study requirements, and from Burgess I found time to read Frank Lloyd Wright's book on his Utopian city he called Broadacre City--I'll take time out here to tell you that over time, I've found Frank Lloyd Wright one of the most fascinating thinkers of his time and even into my time and your time today--and, yes, I know, he was an egomaniacal asshole, but, hey, you've got to be such an asshole when you make your fortune off the Power Elite--the only way really any serious artist can really get ahead--with a whole bunch of patrons, don't you see.

And here I go...it's cynical time in my constant growling imaging that's going on in my head all of the time--and that would pose a good question for Socrates to question--"Tell me, Socrates, what is 'all of the time'?" "Hand me that cup of hemlock,
Thrasymachus, these fools are driving me nuts."

TIME OUT: I've found a truly interesting site--I think Columbia U architectural students came up with this--on Frank Lloyd (his real middle name was Lincoln) Wright's Broadacre City. What a visionary. He was thinking in a time that will never be--what kind of time is that? And Frank Lloyd Wright did design timepieces--more for the design than the time they told. I wear my gold 1953 Hamilton wristwatch for show and not for the time it tells. I seldom look at it though I do like flashing it on people. I have the time of my life sometimes showing off that wristwatch. "Hey, Socrates, why's it called a watch?"

www.mediaarchitecture.at/architekturtheorie/broadacre_city/2009_broadacre_city_en.shtml
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It's time I shook the timeless cobwebs out of my head and wrote something that easily made sense. In time all sense becomes nonsense, doesn't it? Like in the past people used to believe as sensible the nonsense of a Jewish guy who was miraculously born of a virgin (yeah, sure) 2000 years ago and who billions now see sense in this 2000-year-old illegitimate Jewish reformer actually being the only son of what they referred to as "the living God." Yahweh--the living Jewish God? Jehovah--the living Christian God? Allah--the living Muslim God? Mazda--the living Zoroastrian God? The Sun--the ONLY LIVING GOD there is--but don't worship the sun, my children, or you'll go blind--Jesus, what a time I have staying on my subjects--but that's exactly what I was meaning earlier in describing my time in college and the time I had for learning and the time I had for becoming socially acceptable and the time I had for studying and the time I had to quickly learn self-control--times times times divided into one time that cannot be. And in time, too, nonsense can become sense. All things are related, aren't they?

Flip a coin. And in an Experimental Psychology class during my time in college we once tested our moment-to-moment existing using the flipping of a coin to decide what we did. Do I study or go get drunk? You assign heads or tails--"Heads, I study; Tails, I go get drunk," flip the coin, and then determine your next move on the results. "Yahoo, let's go get drunk, boys." "But my coin says I gotta study, man, bummers." Can you imagine spending your time flipping coins all the time?

Have a good time. Time has it things will certainly run out of time at sometime or another. What is another time? Hand old Socrates another cup of hemlock.

And by now all I've written is obsolete. Ah shit! That's the god-damn cross-eyed bear I bear as a writer, writing on time, timely writing, on my writing time--whoops, TIME! Put down your pencils and turn in your tests. "Ah, come on, I need more time, teach."

Time waits for no man. It should be the opposite: man waits for no time. Time spelled backwards is emit and that's what time does, it emits death. E.E. Cummings wrote that "Time is an eater of all things lovely." [Editor, please don't fact check that quote--E.E. Cummings doesn't give a shit if I get it a little the way it wasn't in Puella Mea. [Mr. Ed: To be editorially correct, that quote should be stated: "Eater of all things lovely--Time."] Is it time for big fat crazy Kate Smith to belt out "God Bless Our Editors"?]

http://www.europastar.com/europastar/photos/05_2005/magazine405/letterengland405_1.jpg
An ancient timepiece.

And I spent all that valuable life time trying to write a puzzling post about time, the phony time, the real time, the poco tiempo, the tempus fugit, or "Till the End of Time" "As Time Goes By."

"Play it again, Sam."

thegrowlingwolfrunningoutoftime
for The Daily Growler

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

thegrowlingwolf Still Contemplating His Obsolescence Take 2

Foto by tgw, "Bad Day for a Drive," New York City, 2010
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We Lost:
Bobby Thomson
--Bobby was born in Scotland. His greatest moment came in the Polo Grounds against the Brooklyn Dodgers for the 1951 National League Championship after being down to Brooklyn by 13 games. And Bobby came to the plate and hit "The shot heard 'round the world" against Ralph Branca to win the pennant for the Giants. Bobby hit 31 home runs in 1951 and drove in 109 runs. "The Staten Island Scot" is dead at 87.
Thomson hits the 'Shot Heard 'Round the World'


And we lost James J(ackass). Kilpatrick, Praise the Lawdy Lawd--anybody remember this old Conservative asshole? He wrote "From the Conservative Point of View" a nationwide column that ran in all the nation's rightwing-leaning newspapers back in the late '40s and all during the 50s and 60s. He was an Oklahoman originally. He became a died-in-the-wool Conservative racist first-class--the kind of White man you don't wanna be seen with if you have half-a-brain. He wrote that he thought Knee-grows weren't equal with Whites and that Segregation was good and the States had the right to overturn Federal mandates against Segregation--in fact, according to this true-blue Conservative asshole, if a State wanted to vote slavery back into existence it had a right to. James J. Kilpatrick types are still thick in our media, in our Congress, and in our lives. Asshole. We're glad your old shriveled ass is finally on its way to Hell in a hand basket. Still this old prick got to live 89 years.
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Still Using a Toshiba 4.0
The idea in jazz--the blues idiom, as Albert Murray puts it--was "laying back"--think about it. You lay back to rest. You lay back to avoid being hit by a passing cab. You lay back for sex--and I'm talking either sex here--I love my women on top and they seem to too...

Ah, what a lovely phrase whether I used it right or not...seem to too...come on, Lil Wayne, wouldn't that make a heavy rap thang?...

I was lookin' for your moola, moola, baby,
little shaved down everywhere,baby, baby,
and because of that, of that, of that, oooh, oooh, baby,
My stiff direction, yeah, direction, is pointed straight like an erection
'Tween those archangel-winged shaved-down legs you got in open arms...and, I said,
I found you moola, moola, yah-yah-yass-yass, moola, baby,
and by now I know...I know, I know...I want it all,
and you seem to too...oooh, ooooh, ooooh....

c2010 Crossed X Over Wolf's Head

Sorry, Lil Wayne, I know I'm not coming from any street but used-to-be street...I live eleven floors up in a fading-from-memory building on a corner of fast-changing Broadway, once the Great White(Man's) Way, now just a cosy little pissant walkway with big gouged-out max-tacky green-painted areas with chairs and tables for tourists and winos and scavengers to take a break on or scan the crowds for a make...so I live in a building full of memories nobody cares to remember anymore.

My building still has mailbox slots like hotels have. The postman delivers our mail in big mailsacks and we have a dude who sorts that mail and puts it into the proper mailboxes. Since this guy knows I've lived in the building forever, he's always stopping me and asking me about names of tenants he can't find on this computer list of who is in what apartments and what names they get mail under. This time he stopped me and asked me if I knew a Billy H. Waters. He handed me a business-type envelope addressed to this name. "Sure, I knew this guy. Billy Waters...'Flood Waters' we called him 'cause he whined like a baby so much." "I don't want his history, is he still around 'fore I send this back to the post office?" Billy Waters had been a doorman in the building 30 years ago. I had just moved in the place when Billy had a massive brain hemorrhage--down in the lobby one hot afternoon. They hauled him off in an ambulance and he was never heard from again, everyone in the building coming to the agreement old Billy Waters was a goner. So 30 years after Billy disappeared from here, someone is still looking for him. A collection agency probably. Yeah, one of those 2nd-story Mafia-like operations who buy old supposedly noncollectable debts for pennies on the dollar from maybe old Billy's health insurance company or his credit card company--who knows. The only people still interested in this obscure doorman from the past were the people he owed money.

That American truism is never obsolete. And that was the most bothersome thing that hassled me all of my life, dodging those to whom I owed a debt. One reason my parents and I had rifts. The main reason I had problems with my rich brother. Absolutely the reason my second marriage failed--my wife felt I owed her a debt. She felt since she had a good job and was having to support me, I owed her big time in terms of getting myself a good job that paid at least as much as her job paid (I was trying to be a writer doing freelance editing on the side for around $7,000-a-year; she was a high-class executive recruitment agency executive nailing down $42,000-a-year). This was a debt I could not repay, so she divorced my worthless ass and went on her solo way to a local fame (in New Mexico) and a worldly fortune (in the millions when she died). My way of earning a living was becoming obsolete the minute I went out looking for my first job--I applied for a job interning in a big city city manager's office--I was highly steeped in Urban Planning, but, nope, most of his staff had gone to an Ivy League school but I had gone to...ugh, UNT--"put a C in front of it and you have what it stands for."

I was bent from birth to dabble somehow, someway in the arts. I fortunately grew up in a family of artists--some worthy of the title and some not, but all signifying themselves as artists. For instance, I loved to sit quietly watching my grandmother painting at her easel. I loved the smell of her oil paints and loved watching her use her brushes so delicately and strangely able to bring a living scene out of what started off as smears and gobs of paints. And I loved going through the many art books she had in her library. One big one had all the old masters in full-page lengths and full color--my mother had a framed print of Gainesborough's "Blue Boy," which she treasured and commented upon a lot, hanging in her bedroom and that same "Blue Boy" along with across-the-page "Blue Girl" were the first paintings I flipped this art book open to, a coincidence I thought of as a calling--you see, I was scientifically mystical as a 12-year-old, a significant age of change in my life--instinctual, right, Socrates? I believed that art called you forth same as my peers who became preachers claimed they were called forth by God through his only son Jesus H. Christ to "go forth and preach the Gospel." My Gospel was Art--and then I heard the acoustic piano calling me--then the typewriter. I remember the first electric typewriter I ever saw. Lawsy mercy! I remember the first color teevee I ever saw (in 1948...top that). I remember that as an amazement. Now how silly do electric typewriters look. How silly do touch-tone phones look? How silly does an old analog teevee look? How silly do cassette tapes look?

Cassette tapes? Because I'm listening to a cassette tape of the Charlie Parker All-Stars playing somewhere back 60 years ago in some club with Max Roach kicking the hell out of the drive, "cookin'" as we once said. There are no musicians listed on the cassette jacket...yeah, that's right, the cassette jacket--it lists the tunes, but that's it. There's a photo of Bird & Diz on the cover but this ain't Dizzy on this trumpet--it's probably Kenny Dorham maybe--I like "probably" "maybe" thinking.

I was looking at a Village Voice t'other day and there was a whole-page record store ad offering the latest VINYL and at the bottom of the page the latest turntables. You see the thing is vinyl's my generation's gift to newcomers and youth...a petroleum product...so OIL makes our recordings possible and vinyl it turns out is the best way to store sounds--PRAISE OIL, which though it's becoming obsolete, we continue to worship it as if it were divine in a salvation sense. As it becomes rarer, it seems to be becoming the Christian God's newest-born only son...God sperming into the womb of the deepest pool of holy oil whose legs are open to his mighty thrust. Whooops, God's penis just hit a gusher--HOLY JESUS's brother, God's cum is OIL.

I'm drifting off my rail...jazz taught me to GROW OLD GRACEFULLY. Jazzmen blew their blues away, though many of them no matter how innovative and virtuosic they played couldn't shake the grip of that which causes the blues: oppression and depression. Jazzmen were laid back when they played. Some jazzmen laid back by stooping forward--coolin' out forward. The pianist slouch. While Dizzy after playing with a snake charmer had his trumpet redesigned so the bell pointed toward the sky. "Groovin' High," Dizzy called his method of "blowin' the blues away." ("Somewhere there's music/How high the moon.") Trumpet players like Miles Davis, however, turned their bells at an angle toward the stage floor...or Sonny Rollins turning the bell of his horn against back walls of stages or toward the civilization-escaping (as in a toilet flushing) East River from off the Williamsburg Bridge.

And you laid back fingerpopping when you were digging jazz...West Coast Jazz or East Coast Jazz...free-form jazz...modern jazz...progressive jazz...cool or funk...you laid back to play it and dig it. And laid back meant "being cool," though all jazz people weren't necessarily into Cool Jazz--like Miles caught onto when he experienced the West Coast with Max Roach and met Gerry Mulligan and those cats--Shorty Rogers, Bud Cooper, Bud Shank--White boys who had learned their jazz off 78 rpm records in the L.A. area and then in U.S. Army bands during WWII--Be-bop was too HOT for these guys--the spinning out of clusters of smokin' notes toward the stratosphere in a kind of perpetual manner was too breathless for them--so they backed Miles into the cool zone with "Birth of the Cool"--and I'll be honest with you, I think Bird was too hot for Miles, too--and I've heard Miles sounding like Dizzy so I know at first he tried to follow--but Miles was, remember, a sloucher, and he had a different approach to being laid back. He was a boxer, remember, and boxers lean forward to fight with their intentions aimed toward the canvas floor of the ring watching the legs, the hips, the waist movements, so Miles blew cool as though undressing Madame Zzaj as she lay back naked under her skin-tight drum head on his leopard-skin carpeted living-room floor.

"Lay back and blow the blues away." And that's all jazz was, a sophisticated funky way to mind-boggle and blow the blues away--as long as a jazz musician was on stage or in a jam playing his horn or ax or box or kit he was safe from the reality of the blues. And because it was Black thought-up music, of course, it was always like a hopeless race horse running to win, certainly strong enough to win, though frustratingly never able to cross a finish line because of the rigged blue nature of the track and track officials. They blew the blues away on stage, in the clubs, on the tours--and when that way became gulped up by history and time and became obsolete, the blues took over the USA. Oppression became reality. Depression became reality.

The great jazz groups had one thing in common: unity; cooperation; a brother-sisterhood beneath the skin color--a relationship that came together over an art--art unifying--division the method the blues and the boogiemen and -women use to keep dissonance, disharmony, decadence, and disillusionment, the official musical art of the upper-underworld, which to my way of eccentric thinking stands for all the arts in the U.S.A. today.

Being laid back means you never want to come out of that style. Like good clothes. Jazz people used to wear the coolest clothes. Where do you think the Beatles got the idea for their cute little suits they wore? Jazz guys called those continental-style suits--super slick styled like a super slick car--like the Cadillac Eldorado. Everything was in the cut. But the clothes had to be laid back cool, too. I once saw a Bobby Hutcherson, the vibraphonist, gig and Bobby was wearing a pair of slacks that were so god-damn cool--I mean I sat there thinking, "Man, those slacks sure do match Bobby's cool playing to perfection. You gotta have the right slacks when you've reached Bobby's level of jazz perfection." The fineness of those threads. Threads. Vines. Obsolete terms now. Squares. Obsolete. Cats. Cookin'. Ridin' on a riff. Obsolete.

You see, growing old gracefully, the laid-back jazz way, means you are cool with change because the music that has called you to it is so ever-changing, so ever-evolving. Though jazz is probably obsolete in the sense young people never listen to it. Still I hear it in today's music, believe it or not. You're saying, "Now where's this weird obsolete-sounding wolfman going? How confusing this man is--though how much sense he makes when he dons his wolf clothing." In the 90s there was a rap group from NYC who used jazz vinyl as their DJ's source of riffs and rhythms...Run DMC paid tribute to Chuck Berry in one of their raps. Respect for the music that got all y'all here. That's what I'm looking for in the music of the NOW.

I see rappers like I once saw young jazz people. Rappers came from jazz. Listen to King Pleasure, Babs Gonzales, Eddie Jefferson, Jon Hendricks, the great versemen, guys who used their voice as instruments whose note sounds were words, putting words in the mouth of improvised jazz--these guys were rapping--but doing it on top of a recognizable melodic line--a classic line--a classic riff--a classic tune--words fitting the message of the tune. Like Eddie Jefferson singing "Billie's Bounce" to Bird's solo on the tune, his tune, or King Pleasure doing his famous "Moody's Mood for Love" to James Moody's solo on his recording of "I'm in the Mood for Love." And those guys old boppers could sing FAST, too--and they could rhyme on a dime.

Down in Port of Spain, Trinidad, once, I attended a calypso contest, a Panorama it was called. All the great Caribbean calypso artists were there--along with a broad span of newcomers, too. The Mighty Sparrow, Lord Kitchener, and the Roaring Lion were there. These great calypso performers were at their peaks--we're talking the 70s--Lord Kitchener at the time the most respected--but one of those guys that day blew me away--at the time the only calypso I knew was "Drinking Rum and Coca-Cola," a hit song put out by the comedian Morey Amsterdam (of the Dick Van Dyke teevee show) in the 1940s, though later he was sued by a Trinidadian calypso artist who said Morey had ripped the tune off him during one the comedian's vacations in Trinidad.

That day in Port of Spain, this one guy came out on stage and he asked the people to shout back at him what they wanted him to sing about. "Take your meat out of the rice, like Dr. Kitch!" "Peace on earth and crooked politicians, man." "What kind'a women do you like, man?" Stuff like that. And then this dude started riffing away on whatever subject he'd taken from the audience--and he sang verse after verse and the rhyming and wit and humor was so catching soon the crowd was wild and waving and swaying as this dude upspun line after line after line of carnivalish rhyme and mind--AND THEN, he suddenly said, "And now for you Spanish-speaking people," and he started singing in Spanish--wildfire Spanish calypso. I was drinking the rum enough to be elevated out of my ignorance of this music and sent way up into the ganga-skies the Mighty Sparrow was soon forcing his storm cloud into, suddenly interrupting this dude--just like the rappers break in on each other's rhyme time, and the Sparrow suddenly blew this guy off the stage and took it over--but this guy, it might have been the Lion--there was a Roaring Tiger, too, was on stage at least 30 minutes doing his thing in English and Spanish before the Sparrow hit the stage with his Big Bamboo show. I returned to my hotel room that night with my head rhyming my feelings. Quick wit. Blacks had to develop this quick wit to survive slavery in both Jamaica and the US. And Blacks are great rhymers. They are great improvisers, which is what all their music is--even the African musics that came with the African Blacks who were "imported" into the Caribbean and the States--the music of the Congo coming into US music in New Orleans on Congo Square, but also in South Carolina--and it was all improvisational music. Music of the moment. In Africa the Master Drummer sets the pace and the drummer proteges start mixing their beats onto the mainline of the Master Drummer and soon the women start chanting and dancing and the dancing arises out of the movement--and that's the key to growing old gracefully--the laid-back way--to keep moving. Never let a movement stop. Never change horses in midstream. The stream. The flow. The rivers all roll toward the mother ocean--the mother ocean who rolls her way around the world according to the whims of her husband the lowly lightless Moon--as the African legend continues to reverberate around the world now. Like I said, I recently heard a group of Russian rappers rapping in Moscow.

So how does an obsolete man keep on keepin' on as time is fastly erasing all remains of what he once thought was infinite in its endurance and evolution. Even my writing style is obsolete, I'm pretty sure. I hate realistic stories. I like rambles through the jungle of so many tales, so many through-the-looking-glass reflections of what I have experienced or what the subliminal man-wolf in me has imagined. Yes, I may be an obsolete artist, but I am a called artist facile enough to bend, to realign my parallel lines to a future way of getting elevated so the view above it all becomes clear and understandable.

Laid back and looking at it through the glass darkly, I know, I'm having trouble writing these days, not a writer's bloc, I don't believe a real writer has any blocs while he's hot. When he's burnt out maybe. I learned from William Saroyan (Who?) how to beat a writer's bloc. You just get up every morning and write even if it's drivel, babble--that way you keep writing--just like a jazzman or -woman keeps blowing their horn or chopping up the opponents in cutting contests with their axes or keepin' the heartbeat rhythm going on their boxes or their kits--you can't stop. You keep moving and going in the direction you were CALLED to go in. I know it's time for me to elevate myself out of the obsolete and get back onto the track with a new way of stating the same ole same ole--the fighting off of oppression and depression. Expression is the answer. It always is. Free expression never gets obsolete, though the Powers that rule us want it to be. Free expression means free verse, free thinking, freedom to move and keep moving. "Keep on truckin'" was the motto in the 70s--now it's "Keep on electrifying." Fuck, Plato, I don't believe in repression.

On my apartment floor today are the remnants of my past. Over one hundred cassette tapes of all the original songs and tunes I wrote from 1983 to 1996. Stacks of professionally produced cassette tapes. Forty-five hours of cassette tapes featuring theryefarmerfromqueens (Bob Guida) and another 45 hours of myself performing with the Rye Farmer and our favorite drummer who was named by his jazz bass-playing father after Tadd Dameron. And there is a huge trunk under a Rhodes electric piano I use as a desk that is filled with cassette tapes of me doing me and me working with a big band and me working with a Long Island blues band and me working with a group called Eric & the Boyz and me working with the Big Rigg Band--and dammit there's another box on which are stacked about 50 books behind this Rhodes piano full of commercially produced cassette tapes. Piled next to these cassette tapes are stacks of CDs. CDs again of me performing me or me performing my own music from 1996 up until today. And aren't CDs becoming things of the past? Who buys CDs anymore except the far-behind, those who live on the fringes of tomorrow still in yesterday? Young people download their fav flavs into their iPods--thousands of tunes for pennies--oh what a racket!

And unfortunately, the unification my jazz-blues-r&b generation sought--a unification away from commericalism, away from the Top 40, out of the bars and nightclubs and into the concert venues--and teaching it in our colleges--and we almost got there, and then guess what? The Beatles came along and now the Fab Four are becoming obsolete. Like how pathetic does Paul McCartney now look and sound?--and he gets all this major laud from our college of musical knowledge--I tried to watch a recent White House tribute to Sir Paul--how disgusting to watch this little amateur-musician fop posing as a serious composer of serious music when this little prick wouldn't have a pot to piss in if it hadn't a been for US Black music and Black musical innovators. Jazz added cellos to its instrumentation back in the 40s--Oscar Pettiford played a jazz cello. Electric guitars were invented by Count Basie's trombonist, Eddie Durham--he put a pick-up on his acoustic guitar and made it sing electric riffs and lines--and then Charlie Christian picked one up and made it sing--and then Oscar Moore--and then Tiny Grimes--and Barney Kessel--and Herbie Ellis--and the electric guitar came on line in all music. And then there was Roland Kirk, a blind jazzman--totally free of mind, and he brought into jazz the stritch and the manzello--two instruments he could play at once--adding a tenor into that mix--three instruments at once, and then add in his invented nose flute--and oh what a wonderful time it was at a Roland Kirk gig--I saw him at the Village Vanguard back in the early 70s. And I could bring in here the wonderful creative one-man-band music of Jerome Cooper, who used to hang down in my old BLOHO neighborhood and show up at loft parties and bars down there all the live-long time.

And in one corner of my apartment is a collection of 80 78 rpm recordings--mostly those of one of my most beloved of jazz characters, the Pres, Lester Young--his Philos, his Aladdins, his Savoys, his Commadores, his Norgrans, his Mercurys, even some Blue Aces. How obsolete are 78s? Back in the 60s and 70s my Lester Young collection would have been worth thousands of dollars. Not today. The market for Lester Young 78s is almost dormant. You can buy a very rare Lester Young Philo today all over for less than 20 bucks.

And, yes, I do have a vinyl collection--45 rpms and LPs--especially my proud collection of 40 (and growing) Charles Ives LPs from the first ones of 1948-50 until the 100-year-anniversary box set came out in the mid-70s. The market for Charles Ives material is up and down these days. Ives is still highly respected on the Internet--a lot of oldtimers still trumpeting Charlie's unique gifts (Ives was polyphonic before Henry Cowell and he was atonal before Arnold Schoenberg and he used doctored pianos before Cowell and Cage) to American music--though I know this young violist who just blew me off when I asked her if she knew Ives's work. "Oh, him...yeah, I've heard of him." What a put down.

So where is classical music today? Obsolete? Yes. It's trying through younger conductors and players to crisp up--to become trendy again--yet, they don't seem to be visionary enough to start promoting contemporary works--like who are the current leading American classical composers? Are there any?

I'm going to put on a Burton Greene CD and disappear until next time.

thebecomingobsoletegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler