04.25.07

Lifes Rich Pageant (sic)

Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 2:15 am by Gregory

Lovely day and night,

Much to recount, but not now;

First to Dream, ah Yes.

 

Addendum: Hello.  My tapping has been required elsewhere, and updates so swiftly turn to downdates.  But we’ll wrangle this into a new post soon enough.  Meanwhile, why not toss your Personal Electronic Device into the nearest birdbath, and go for broke on the smooching?

 

Oh, thank you, Hugh (I needed that).

 

Busy week!  More soon.

 

 

Permalink Comments

04.23.07

Fables of the Reconstruction (of the Fables…)

Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 11:57 am by Gregory

Since life continues to be unrelentingly stupid, I suppose I shall burn off the remainder of this green-tea rush by recounting another dream.

I had been discussing Marc Bolan (ne Feld) with someone in real life. It always amazes me that so few people (in America) know who Bolan is/was, since his influence on popular music rivalled that of Liverpool’s finest sons. I became interested in Bolan whilst working in a big, crazy record shop in Washington, owned by total yuppie-Boomer scum (the owner, Jim, once actually told a female hourly employee that he “owned” her). But while I was there, I did my research. This included many areas of popular music, including T-Rex.

That Bolan was so incredibly prolific in such a short span continues to amaze me. He certainly had his limitations, but from his Tolkien-inspired “fantasy-folk” sound to his overblown near-Metal persona, the guy took on the pop idiom in a manner that makes pretty much all of today’s “stars” seem boring and inflexible by comparison.

Perhaps it was the era.

Bolan died in a car wreck at the age of almost-thirty. His girlfriend was driving.

The funny thing was, although he never learnt to drive, he was fascinated by cars, and they figured prominently in many of his songs.

 

That’s the jump-off point for the recent weird dream, because, unlike Bolan, I don’t particularly like cars, and wouldn’t even mind a world without them. It may be obvious, but I’ll say it anyway: Cars essentially never appear in my dreams.

Last night, though, one did.

I was employed by some strange consulting company housed in what appeared to be a large, airy, low-ceilinged warehouse converted into office spaces. The walls and cubicles were painted a cheery yellow. I had my own cube, but was rarely there, as it was my job to go around, consulting people. (The exact purpose of these consultations was never made clear.) The Woman I Love was in the dream, and although the office was entirely empty to the point of being eerie, suddenly She appeared in it, and suggested that I take The Car out for a ride. Huh? What car? Then: That one. Oh. I hadn’t noticed it. Sitting among the filing cabinets and half-covered by some sort of worn canvas tarpaulin was one of the craziest cars I had ever seen. Bright red it was, and a 1950s (”Mid-Century”) convertible it was, and bigly finned it was, and extremely ostentatious it was. I kinda liked it. I liked that it was not boring. That was why I liked it. That it was a car was almost irrelevant. But why did The Woman I Love want for me to take it out? I asked. She gave me a Mysterious Look and said no more. And then she gave me more Mysterious Looks. Hm. Thanks. Okay. Did She want to ride with me? She said yes, and then did not approach the car. And then She did. And then She didn’t again. I looked around. Was this some sort of set-up? Was it April first? She remained mute. She grinned, but there was no indication of meaning in the grin. I pulled the tarp from the car, let it fall in a heap among office papers. What was my job, anyway? I decided not to worry about it. I “consulted.” Whatever. Somewhere along the line, I must have filled out an application form as a Consultatitian. I must have been a pretty good one, too, because I had my own cubicle. How the hell did this Car get in here? The Woman I Love suddenly vanished. No — wait — She was sitting in the Car. No — now She wasn’t again. What just happened? Noise. One of the side offices appeared to have vomited forth its entire contents, including typewriters, coat-racks, a microwave oven, Jenga, desk things, desk, generic inoffensive art, mugs, loads and loads of paper. The pile of crap was blocking what suddenly became known to me as the only way out of the building (for the Car, anyway; bipeds had easy access to many smaller windows and doors). I started the Car, and then She was sitting in it beside me; and then She wasn’t; and then She was (etc.). I noticed that the Car was sort of useful, but also sort of theatrical; it wasn’t a convertible in the strictest sense, but rather in that it had a sort of fibreglass-papier-mache bonnet over our (my?) (our?) (my?) (our?) (etc.) head(s), which was easily detached, so I detached it. It was quite light, and I let it fall to the side of the Car. The engine seemed reasonably powerful (especially since this was an actual vintage automobile, weird or otherwise). Then, suddenly, She wasn’t there anymore (again), but my niece and some of her friends arrived — as planned, but I had forgotten. Hi. Hi. The pressure of entertaining them suddenly made itself known. Hey…make yourselves at home…want a stale candy bar? Some bad coffee? (I never actually work here; honest.) I briefly considered regaling the youths with tales of my Consulting — except I still did not know about what, exactly, I Consulted. Hm. Hey, kids, could you step aside a little? Yeah, don’t mind that exploded office — that’s somebody else’s. Yes, you may play with the typewriter. Suddenly She was back in the car with me, and we plowed through the debris, giving a wide berth to my visitors, who gazed on from a safe distance with the awe and tedium of youth. See you in a bit? Okay. And we hit the road. The road itself was quite nice. Not the sort of ghastly road one usually finds in America — clogged with rude people cutting off one another as if they went to school for eight years to learn how to do it most masterfully. Actually, there was hardly anybody out there. An occasional other car would pass us from the opposite direction, or else a goat would wander through, and I think we also passed some religious people on their way to something important to them — but basically the road was open and pretty. It looked like a Northern region in Summertime: Verdant and bursting with beautiful views. We drove. At this point, She stopped appearing and disappearing, but rather behaved like a Person, rather than an optical illusion. I’d like to conclude this reflection by saying that we drove off into the sunset — except that we didn’t: It wasn’t yet noon, and so we were simply contemplating lunch.

 

What does this particular dream mean? Well, some of it is obvious to me, but mainly this dream means itself. Doesn’t take a Jungian. I present it here more in appreciation of the title line, as I don’t actually know what R.E.M. had in mind (exactly) with their album of the same name (which was rife with Southern American themes but recorded during a gloomy winter in England — kind of an interesting combination), but, to me, the words “Fable” and “Reconstruction” are highly suggestive, and they are both suggestions I happen to like.

Cars I really don’t like. I see cars as the cancer of the Earth. Some sci-fi nuts posit that humans are the cancer. Naw. Humans wouldn’t be causing all that much trouble without cars. Suck-suck-suck; spew-spew-spew: That’s what cars do, and what cars make us do.

I don’t like that at all, so in the dream, I suppose, I was taking the nebulous aspects of my current existence (the weird office), finding a focus within it (The Car — not as mere Polluter, but as Symbol), and then striving to focus that focus so that The Woman would actually take the ride.

Reconstruction as Fable.

The niecey showed up, I believe, because the niecey is a good person, and perchance the most globally astute person in our family. She and her friends represent a great big Everything’s Gonna Be Alright (sic).

(I prefer “All Right.”)

 

And what does any of this have to do with the shooter kid from last week? Very little. Although that story proved shocking for this particular country and the world in general, upon further contemplation, I don’t really feel that I have much more to add to the already oversaturated media-storm. Kid needed support, didn’t get it, derived his “inspiration” from very bad pop philosophies. I can only re-state that some writing teacher should have taken him to task on his ideas and asked him What and How and especially Why.

 

I really can’t stand people being rude to me, but I also constantly expect it and it no longer surprises me in the slightest. I sang Talkng Heads’ “Psycho Killer” (”I hate people when they’re not polite!”) with our local band as a teen, but it was satirical then just as it is satirical now. Art.

That’s noted because my creative impulses don’t seem to spring from the same well as those of many other males. Case-in-point, yesterday’s reflections. And with the introduction of today’s album title, I would like — much more briefly — to reflect upon another project which totally overlapped the previously mentioned one.

It ended up with the title Happy Phantom Haunting, kind of melding the Tori Amos song with the Robert Wise movie. I shot it in and around a manor house in England in 1989, and finally edited and “released” it in 1999 — a full ten Earth-years later.

For a little while thereafter, during my “popular” years, I had a “friend” who eventually became a known screenwriter — and during his then-starving years he frequently turned to me for free screenings. He’s easily one of the most obnoxious (and bullying) people ever to stalk the planet, but he was nice enough to me (while I remained in print), and so at some point we traded videos. His was a short piece of crap featuring two scuzzy-looking guys discussing forcing a dog to have oral sex with them. He declared it brilliant, and no argument was welcome.

My project was my overly-ambitious English ghost story — which was really a drama — which was really a romance.

The guy claimed that he couldn’t understand the dialogue in the first couple of minutes, and gave up on it.

Mind, the thing was shot by a total amateur, prior to any real production training — but comprehensible it is, and really rather pretty.

I still cringe that the guy — who has been known to call himself “Mr. Hollywood” even as his friends drop like flies — sincerely believed that his canine blowjob movie merited more praise or even just plain appraisal than my awkward but oddly involving half-hour ghost story.

Guys.

Hollywood.

Forget it.

Anyway, I mention it here not so much to blow my own horn (these are more my personal reminders of various achievements), but specifically because the eerie mystique of the R.E.M. album above fueled both the writing and shooting of the project (Fables on my $400 -!- Technics portable CD-player was the current fave.) Peter Buck has a very peculiar and even haunting little guitar line right at the beginning, on “Feeling Gravitys Pull” (sic), and that was my entryway into the movie that eventually became Happy Phantom Haunting.

(Weird how things connect: Yesterday I was standing outside a small theatre, waiting to go in, and the woman in charge of allowing this to happen suddenly exclaimed that she had been talking with a friend recently, and the friend had to go have dinner with Peter Buck: “You know, the guitarist for R.E.M. — they are one of my very favorite bands!” How do you like that? What are the odds? Synchronicity. She could have been a Limahl nut.)

I loved shooting what became Happy Phantom Haunting. There were lots of challenges, but everybody was kind-hearted and even with our incredibly primitive gear we actually got everything we set out to get. The whole thing could use full looping and colour-correction (and probably an overhaul-edit), but it exists! Compared to the slick stuff you watch, it probably wouldn’t hold a candle, but…it exists! I had a wonderful time working with the cast: Melanie, Mindy, Steve and Bernard. A very happy experience indeed.

Sometime I’ll see if I can get these projects compressed and get them onto the site.

Meanwhile, I’m going to give up on this ridiculous evening and return to dreams (in which no car, symbolically or otherwise, is requested).

 

(Time and distance are out of place here)

Permalink Comments

04.22.07

Reckoning (Earth Day)

Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 8:13 pm by Gregory

Hi.

Happy Earth Day.

When I was a Junior at USC, I made a movie called Can. It is still one of my faves, and probably the one from cinema school for which I am best remembered among my peers.

Certainly, of that time period, it was the most ambitious.

There had been some meditation. Although there was landlocked bewilderment Freshman year, and I was quite away for Sophomore, by the middle of Junior year I had some grip regarding how to get around Stupidland — er…Los Angeles.

I also had a car.

A shiny silver Ford Escort wagon.

I later had cooler cars, and more expensive cars, and even a couple of the same car, but that Escort was the most pleasant and useful overall. It sounded nice, smelled nice, looked nice and carried things nicely.

I was extremely poignantly alive that year, and wished very much to Say Something with My Movie.

At that quite tender age, all of the Conflicting Energies of the Universe were making themselves known to me.

Meanwhile, my friends were pretty much all making movies about Lovers Who Murder Each Other.

I never understood that.

Weird.

Anyway, first I went to The Beach.

I lay upon The Beach several times — usually up around Malibu or Point Dume, or maybe it was Will Rogers — and I Thought and Thought and Thought (and Scrawled and Scrawled and Scrawled).

Gotta make My Movie good!

I decided upon themes of Conflicting (or, at least, Opposing) Energies: Feminine & Masculine; Black & White, Dirty & Clean; Caring and Rude; those sorts of things. (Curiously — and perhaps in line with the briefly running R.E.M. theme of these current posts — Love & Hate never really entered into it. Oh, I believed in Love — did I ever! — but somehow this particular Movie wasn’t about strong emotions, but rather about being Useful.)

For some reason, I decided to call the thing Can-Can.

The dance amused me — even though my concept of it at that time was, at best, vague.

Somehow my meditations had landed upon an antihero who was the embodiment of everything I did not (and do not) like about Dumb-Ass (American) Guys. Surrounded by quite a few of them at the time (frats, military types, etc.), I felt very ill-at-ease: These were not Men the way I had hoped Men would be. Something was wrong. So I satirised the sitch.

The movie’s butt-head (prior to Butt-Head) became “Doug” — “Doug” always seeming to be a good butt-head name, in my estimation. He’s never really named in the project until the end credits, but I found a very funny actor named Dan who also happened to be a waiter at the now-defunct Ed DeBevics “diner” on La Cienega, to play him — which he achieved with supreme Dougness. I simply asked the guy if he’d do the role while a small gaggle of us were there being waited-on by him (and having something kind of like dinner). Not only did the fellow take the part, he literally wallowed in it. To call his performance cathartic would be an understatement.

It required mopping.

Next, although at the time the concept of “Goddess Spirituality” was as limited in my conscious mind as “Artemis is kind of cool…which one was She again?…,” I knew that I wanted Elemental Energies to oppose Doug — or, rather, for Doug to oppose the Elemental Energies. Mind, this process was largely unconsious, and required a lot of weeding: My fine professor Clinton Solomon (who now sells real estate with his wife) proved wiser than many of my classmates would admit. He took a breeze through my first draft and simply told me that it was too complicated, to get to the heart of the matter, to remove Black Man & White Man and Left Man & Right Man and all that polarised busy-ness, and to focus on what the story was really about.

In retrospect, all of this may seem easy and clear-cut, but, mind: At the time most of us were taking a full load of classes, many of which were not really complementary (and certainly not complimentary!), plus Emotions were running high. It was a tense and difficult time. Concurrent with telling good stories visually, we were supposed to be learning Sound and Lighting from extremely demanding professors who wanted us to use the proper mics and to figure luminence with old-fashioned, analogue light-meters and all that.

Tough stuff!

Once I had wiggled through some of the process, however (this while lensing and editing my fun partner P,’s own Lovers Who Murder Each Other movie, egad), My Movie began to take shape:

Can (I dropped the dance reference entirely, although it was the point of entry) would be an amusing allegory about a man who lives in a big rubbish bin on top of a mountain, who runs out of Coca-Cola and thus goes out and destroys Nature.

For Nature, I knew only that I needed Women.

Elements.

Again, this was a purely instinctive, unconscious process. To me, then, some unspoken Feminine was closely related to Nature — but this was USC, of course (not Bryn Mawr, not Sarah Lawrence), and the gentler (if equally strong) aspects of Femininity were not daily entering my periphery nor my direct field of vision.

I was seeing someone back then, and kind of meant it (I now know very well how “kind of” it actually was; I didn’t then), and it took a huge amount of work, and in the end she was actually rather clueless about femininity herself. It was exhausting. Could have done without the sneering comments, too. She became a lawyer.

Q: What do lawyers use for birth-control?

 

 

 

A. Their personalities.

 

 

I wish her well. I definitely do not wish her.

 

That was the pressure-cooker of the time, though. That was how it felt.

And within this pressure-cooker I needed to find three actresses, who could, respectively, capably depict the elements of Earth and Sea and Air.

Although I had shot all of my Super-8 movies with casts of my friends, for this colour video project (alas; looks good, though) I knew I’d need — as with Dan — to search beyond my immediate circle.

I placed an ad and received headshots and resumes. Loads of them. Boom boom boom boom boom. Every day, for weeks.

At first, I would open the things, examine the photos (men also applied, for the part Dan had already inadvertantly landed), read the resumes, and try to make sense of focusing a rather generic blanket-process into something more specific.

(For a while, in appreciation, I wrote personal thank-you notes to all who submitted headshots; after a couple dozen, that practice had to fold.)

I narrowed down the submissions to a scant few, and, with P., conducted on-camera interviews and auditions.

This was strange for me, frankly (there was a collective embarrassment factor), but it seemed to be the only way to do it.

Eventually a young woman named Heidi came in, and she was ideal and clearly not insane. I had decided to give all three roles to one actress, so she got all three roles.

As this was a non-verbal production, this meant emoting in a couple of wigs and three different outfits.

Thus my wig-shopping of the time.

The exteriors were extensive and took place mostly throughout the rougher reaches of Malibu. Heidi was involved in all of that. Dan, meanwhile, enthusiastically made a huge mess out of his “abode” set I had built in one of our classrooms, and later joined us for the exteriors — which were fun, from the misty shore to the sun-blasted mountains.

I wasn’t thinking about Star Trek or M*A*S*H at the time, but I was basically recycling their locations.

It was an enjoyable shoot, as I believed in the work, the actors were terrific, and P. was as dependable and good-natured a production partner as anyone could want.

Script and rewrites and location-scouting and casting and rehearsals and fittings and prop-houses and “catering” (we did our best) and shooting and then — although I lensed most of the thing, I have to give P. his due — the edit, which I supervised but he conducted, and which was really rather fly.

A synth score, zany sound effects, a commercial jingle, a sound mix…

We screened with our classmates at the Norris Theatre at USC — which was very enjoyable, considering the luminaries who have visited that space — and the project earned me an ‘A.’

Something slipped, though.

DVDs didn’t exist yet, so I just got some okay VHS copies to the actors.

We remained friendly, but I don’t know where they are anymore. (A quick check reveals that Heidi still works; no sign of Dan.)

Believing Life to be Grand, I concluded the semester and hastily flew off across the ocean to see if Life in all its Grandness awaited me There.

It Did Not.

I had A Bad Time, and Jim Henson and Sammy Davis, Jr. even died while I was There.

Jim Henson dying?

For My Generation, that is huge.

Although much sporadic fun was had after that year — including in the realm of Moviemaking — I note that a darkness had crept into my work thereafter. Nothing nearly so dark as the efforts of the Goths with the Precision Haircuts, but something involving despair.

Basically, the previous concerns (way before Al Gore made it post-70s trendy again, I noticed that we were literally killing our only planet; plus: Hey, Wherzuh Feminine?) returned, but with much less hope. Sarcasm and bad dreams made it into my work much more than before.

I felt like we were all losing.

(Not surprisingly, that feeling saturated the 90s.)

Caught between Hardcore Tree-Huggers and People Who Really Do Not Give A Crap, I felt that I had lost my voice. The wit and sincerity of Can did not readily return — not both at once, anyway.

Although I have enjoyed and celebrated Earth Day (Every Day should be Earth Day, non? — like when the environmental solicitors outside Expensive & Trendy Natural Foods Market ask if we have a minute for the environment: “Every minute,” I always say, and not unkindly), on this particular Earth Day I revive the spirit of Can. It was adventurous and weird and full of heart. It wanted to keep Bad Things from happening to a Good Planet. It took Feelings and made them Form — which is a crackerjack thing to do when you can manage it.

I don’t want that time or its trappings back, but on a personal note I feel that I was particularly adept at that sort of storytelling, and that I choose to reclaim.

On the evening of the screening, we directors had to go up in front of the crowd and say a little sumpin’ about our cast, crew, experiences, whatever.

I thanked everybody, and then – silently noting the enormous wastefulness of the entertainment industry — gently said:

“Recycle.” 

 

(There’s a splinter in your eye and it reads “react”)

Permalink Comments

04.20.07

Murmur

Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 6:04 pm by Gregory

Oops.  Skipped a day.  Gloriously.  No oops.

Today I feel like opening with a useful quote:

“Life is so pitifully short, the years with parents especially short, that not one second should be misused.”

-Pearl Sydenstricker Buck

Of course, that dedication goes out to Alec Baldwin, who is the toast of the Media today for yelling at his daughter’s voice-mail.

(Why does a child have voice-mail? Why does a child need voice-mail?)

In 1991, I got to experience Alec Baldwin yelling through a telephone into my ear. I was an assistant to a honcho at Paramount, and honcho’s secretary had fled for the restroom or junk food or something, and, sans instruction, had left me in charge of her telephone — which was a brand new system awash with brand new numeric codes necessary to connect one screaming imbecile with the next screaming imbecile. My first call of the day? Alec Baldwin. Calling the wrong office. I tried, in the milliseconds he afforded me, to explain that I didn’t actually know how to connect him with the other honcho, but would try. After a few seconds of fumbling, he exploded:

“IT’S ALEC BALDWIN, GET ME [honcho]!!!!!!!!!!”

That was an extremely unpleasant experience, brevity notwithstanding, and I haven’t liked anything about Alec Baldwin ever since. Well, maybe The Cat in the Hat (nice choice!) A few years ago I saw him at a film festival party and realised that not only did I not care, but that I was actively choosing to move to the other side of the room.

The point, however, is parenting. Could somebody please explain to me why most fathers sincerely believe that the primary definition of their job is: “To Torture My Own Children”?

The mother seems nuts, too. Good luck to that kid.

 

It rained today, in the morning. Rain tends to make me happy, but this rain, while nice and a lovely complement, was already out of its league in that capacity.

 

Then there was guacamole.

The only two current Hollywood films I have seen are Perfect Stranger and Fracture (amusingly — or, rather, not — the first missing honcho above worked on the latter; small world; too small). Both are about how human beings are sickening and dangerous — but worse, both are unintentionally laughably absurd. No — let’s go with “stupid.” Just had a fun time with Double Indemnity on the big screen, and this new stuff looks such crap by comparison. These days I prioritise my time and energy by desire, and focusing any more attention on these movies — while arguably part of my arguable occupation (of sorts) — just doesn’t sit high on the desire meter. Maybe later.

Hot Fuzz is quite funny in the creative moments, and tedious in the overblown fan-boy-esque shoot-outs. (At least it’s not even close to witless!)

The Black Book is pretty good if you didn’t already know that sex is sexy and fascism is bad. (Considering that Elvis Costello’s “Two Little Hitlers” came out almost three decades ago, the movie did not stun me with thematic novelty. It’s still light years better than The Good German, though.)

I glanced through the trades for the first time in a couple of years, and was as pleased to see Sarah Polley on the board at Cannes as I was displeased to see “Bono” and “The Edge” doing the music for a Spider-Man musical for Broadway. Of course I can see the rea$on behind such a development deal (and Julie Taymor likes money too), but…really?

I note that Shia LaBeouf is going to be in the way-too-long-for-its-own-good-awaited Indy 4. Does anyone else think that “Shia LaBeouf” sounds like a personal practice forbidden in the Middle East under penalty of decapitation?

And how come SoCal, doggie-lovin’, Idol-losin’ Katharine McPhee’s debut album cover seems to be unsubtly subtitled: “Hey! Guess What’s Between My Legs!”?

Mainly I enjoyed noticing the name of a friend of mine, who just signed a good new deal (and, coincidentally, made it a point at his last party shush everyone and show us the Across the Universe trailer in — ooh — HD). How random! I haven’t flipped those pages in a long time, and suddenly there’s a pal.

I’ll tell ya, although Money is the root of all Entertainment around here, it just never occurs to me to think of creative storytelling as a business — not for my own purposes, anyway. These words may one day come back to bite me, but when I see “U2 Spider-Man Musical” it actually makes me feel ill and I don’t want to play by any Show Biz rules, at all, ever, Amen.

Speaking of religion, I note that the Substitute Pope has declared an end to Limbo — which he calls, “only a theological hypothesis.”

Like…Hell?

Pardon me for mentioning this, but everything theological is a hypothesis!

 

(Beside defying media too fast.)

 

Permalink Comments

04.18.07

Chronic Town

Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 1:12 pm by Gregory

Hiya. Taking a moment to think about the recent slaughter within American halls of learning. I was going to call this particular post “Reckoning” — owing to the concept that, really, everybody is tested by their demons at one point or another (I once read a quote from Mother Teresa, explaining that she looked inside her heart and saw that she had the capacity to become like Hitler — and thus consciously chose otherwise; Brava). In other words, all must reckon. With something. With many things.

I still have to go back and recollect the past few years, which certainly do not connect in any causal way to the current tragedy — however they were indeed often dark and lonely and horrible (Drained ‘n’ Sacrificed was my general perspective; it certainly wasn’t my intention). I mention this because America, compared to most civilised (not currently literally ripped apart by war) countries, tends to be a very dangerous and lonely place. Some Norman Rockwell illustration it is not. Nor is it Cosby. Nor an Amy Tan novel. Presently, it is a place in which people actually do shoot first and ask questions later (if they ask them at all), and the philosophy of Us Vs. Them still usually holds sway. We got our privacy, but with it came paranoia. Who Are You? Most do not know. Within a small circle of relative comfort, maybe — but beyond that, most people’s psyches are at the mercy of the Media, and the Media tend to gravitate toward sensationalism — most of which is often negative.

All of that may be obvious, but I employ it as a foreword to the concept that America often blocks creativity and creative thought. Like most heavily industrialised nations, there is only so much room for free-forming, and most of the rest is crushed between the gears like Charlie Chaplin accidentally not being funny anymore (Whoops! Cut!). It sucks. Making matters worse, it appears now that psychological profiling on the recent shooter is suggesting that negative thoughts are somehow linked to hideous crimes. Nay-nay. Negative thoughts are healthy – within a full spectrum of human contemplation. Blocking and/or ignoring the negative thoughts — that’s the problem: which in the current case obviously reached a terrible extreme.

What of Stephen King? Should he have been thrown in prison or some “Pre-Crime” detention tank for writing the novel Rage? It’s about classroom killings and it’s very unpleasant. He originally published it under his “Richard Bachman” pseudonym. It’s definitely not nice, and obviously the mind behind it wasn’t feeling very nice, either. But as far as I know (apart from the driver of the van that hit him dying rather suddenly thereafter), there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot wrong with Stephen King. A dork who uses bazillions of words to scare people and make many millions — almost entirely within familiar modern American milieux. Not a criminal, just a guy expressing himself.

Of course, behaviour may say a lot more than mere writing. The shooter kid was a writer but obviously not a happy camper.

What this post concerns, however (and I’ll probably get to the shooter kid once a couple of days of reflection have passed), is the very American tendency to bury the negative while artificially enhancing the positive. Have A Nice Day! Bah. Lonely people, say you’re lonely! Angry people, say you’re angry! Disenfranchised people, say you’re feeling cocked-up! Say it in Words, or say it in Art, or say it in Any Way You Want — but Say It; Don’t Spray It.

Perhaps it all boils down to Trust.

Not much of that in America.

Land-Grab, Genocide, Slavery, Malls: Boom, here we are.

But have you noticed how nobody talks about it very much?

Odd!

Maybe it’s because fast’n'funny keeps ‘em tuned in, but Real Considerations are bad for Business.

That’s probably it.

That kid who went bugfuck, clearly a damaged case: But a little love, a little support, a little useful criticism — he could have been nominated for screenwriting awards.

Paul Schrader was.

(Although I don’t actually like that movie.)

Again, this is less a reflection on the recent tragedy — which, in other countries around the world, happens more frequently without making American headlines — than it is a paean for Trust. Robert Louis Stevenson allegedly burned his original manuscript of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde due to his wife’s complaints that he was not distinguishing the tale (scary) from allegory (potentially scarier). Therein lies the concern here: If we attempt to shut off the Shadow (an action which is an extremely stubborn aspect of American psychology), then ol’ Mr Hyde finds another way to break through. If there’s Trust, he’s present but harmless.

Hyde’s unfortunate effects, incidentally, are not at all gender-specific.

That’s what I think, anyway, concerning this matter.

Let’s not have witch-hunts just because the kids down the block are watching horror movies or reading comic books.

Let us instead encourage creativity — and adult-supervised interaction in questionable cases — within those contexts, as part of a larger spectrum of creativity. Make it useful, instead of shameful.

Somewhere I once read about a Japanese village which boasted its own folktale about a vicious, repulsive monster which dwelt in or near the local bog. Children were routinely told this tale. As a result, none of them drowned. They were scared to go near the bog – until they grew up, at which point they discovered that the bog monster was only a creation put into service for their safety. Then, in turn, they probably kept the bog monster “alive” by retelling the tale to their own kids.

Whether that is useful or merely dishonest is open to consideration, but on the whole I’d lean toward useful.

My primary point in mentioning it is that it is a healthier society that acknowledges and appreciates its monsters and their purposes, rather than puritanically trying to eradicate them all (which never works).

Somebody should have read that kid’s screenplays and openly discussed them with him.

 

With enormous condolences to those who suffered and are those who are left suffering.

 

As for the title of this entry, it’s a bit askew, but once I considered “Reckoning,” it reminded me of R.E.M., and thus it seems reasonable enough to go with a string of titles of R.E.M. albums (or, in this case, their debut E.P.)

Having seen Peter Buck again just a few days ago, I am reminded that I used to like R.E.M. quite a lot. Most white American guys did. It was like some secret handshake (without actually being secret). I recently passed a garage sale, and some white American guy had recently gotten married and so he was selling off his CD collection (I wouldn’t, but he was). Right there: Automatic for the People and (ironically enough) Monster.

Hm.

When I was a teenager, R.E.M. got passed around, mostly on IRS cassettes, and they became a part of our Experience just as Nat King Cole or Buddy Holly or The Beatles or Joan Baez had been for our parents.

I wrote and shot a movie in England entirely around the opening riff of “Feeling Gravitys Pull” (sic).

(Thanks, Peter.)

I was in Stockholm when Green was released. I was staying with a pretty and bizarre foreign-exchange-student friend named C. Of course, C. was into Melissa Etheridge. That album where she looks like she’s having a tizzy on the cover. I didn’t get it. I was utterly enthralled by Green, though. It was one of my very faves of the time. C. asked me why I liked R.E.M. so much. I fell into an unusually inarticulate state, and “murmurred” something about them being “our” band, and something “real” coming out of “America.” It was difficult to put into words, but the gist was that R.E.M. were about something — without ever actually stating what that “something” was. You didn’t get that with The Beach Boys or Lou Reed or Gloria Estefan. Although I’d have to hand it to Camper Van Beethoven for being “America’s Best Alternative Band” (back when such labels meant anything), R.E.M. were definitely Up To Something — and that, for a young man, was very intriguing. By being outrageously suggestive without ever fully making themselves clear, they were fashioning themselves as an antidote to the America that was swiftly being swallowed up by Target and (far worse) Wal-Mart. They were from the same boring milieu as the rest of us — but they were being willfully abstract!

Of course there are associated memories.

I learned a lot of their songs on guitar and vocal (like a lot of other people did; except I sang them more vulnerably than most).

At an Elvis Costello concert at the London Palladium (part of the Spike tour: A Month of Sundays), M. and L. and I noticed Billy Bragg standing with Wiggy (!!) near the back, and I approached him excitedly without actually having anything significant to say. Astoundingly, I asked him if he knew who R.E.M. were. Mind, at that time in Britain, you couldn’t go a solid hour without hearing “Stand” (sometimes twice). The band had just become British demigods. I must say, Mr. Bragg was incredibly polite, pondering: “Hey, we had one of their tapes on the bus, din’t we?”

They’re playing in the sun

And having Fun, Fun, Fun

’til Daddy takes the gun away!

-Billy Bragg

“Help Save the Youth of America”

Bringing these apparently random notions into some harmony: In America, a lot of askew thoughts or confusing scenarios or “monster” feelings lead people to Los Angeles. This isn’t exactly news, either, but there are two Americas: California and The Rest; and there are two Californias: Pretty and Los Angeles. After two decades of observation, I can say with confidence that Los Angeles attracts “monsters.” They may not all be wicked or evil or dangerous — but largely they are here because they do not fit anywhere else: When it starts to hurt them elsewhere enough that they can’t stand it anymore, they seem to migrate to Los Angeles.

That shooter kid, he was prone to writing screenplays.

That’s worthy of consideration.

When I worked in the USC Cinema Stockroom — under the management of hyperactive dingbat-turned-murderer Aziz (not a story the current administration is likely to enjoy remembering; and why would they) — one of the other employees was named J. This J. had an uncomfortably pugnacious personality. Whatever you said to him, he’d get either a smug or angry expression on his face, and he’d contradict you. (He was otherwise no sociopath, as far as I knew.) J. had achieved his undergrad somewhere in Georgia. One day, I mentioned to him that I liked R.E.M. Exclaimed J., “I know a guy who fucked Michael Stipes!” (sic)

“Monsters.”

See?

There’s always something.

And most of it seems to end up here — here in this place with very little sense of history or love for itself (although I tip my hat to the schools and universities and museums).

I don’t mean to suggest that everyone here is here because they went apeshit somewhere else and had to flee to this insane and largely comfortless megalopolis. Some people are here, probably, because the complacency elsewhere was stifling them, or because they feel a need to prove themselves against what they’re seeing on the big and small screens, or they (like me) simply don’t belong anywhere else (for now).

That shooter kid, though — it seems that he was trying desperately to connect in a world that would not have him.

He probably should have come to Chronic Town.

 

(Here’s a house to put wolves out the door)

 

Permalink Comments

04.17.07

from me to you

Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 6:42 pm by Gregory

Hello, Dear Reader.

How are you?

I do not mind telling you that the past few days and nights were the most acutely painful I have ever experienced.

To anyone I encountered over that span, the encounter was good — I was just forced by circumstances into being an automaton with the default switch set to “Reasonably Friendly.”

The actual experience behind the façade was heart-exploding agony.

I was contemplating searching for Atlantis the hard way (in the wrong ocean, no less; yeah, I know; we’ll get to that).

Contemplating.

Thanks for hangin’ out (as They say).

Not that these years have been any treat (it’s still Hell-A.; it’s still American’t; it’s still a swirling igneous Bundt cake with organic icing dangling perilously in Infinite Nothingness)…

…however…

…as a Human Being…

…on Planet Earth…

…I feel that an unspeakable obstacle course has just been bested.

There will be others.

But none like this.

Ordeal!

Whew.

I’m not even feeling that it’s necessary to use this peculiar tool to mark the occasion.

Rather, I am typing this to say hello to you, and to offer my thanks for the connections that make it worthwhile.

I do feel quietly exultant, though.

Whew Again.

Movies are neato.

Have fun.

Kindly,

Gregory

 

Permalink Comments

04.15.07

Worst. Sunday. Ever.

Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 3:56 pm by Gregory

 

Whee.

 

Permalink Comments

Dreams (and not)

Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 11:42 am by Gregory

Kind of funny, a night (morn) of full-on narrative dreams (In Colour!), composed of episodes such as these:

Construction site, fun during the day, lots of kids are playing upon it and I am their guardian. Apparently these are the children of my friends. The construction site used to be their playground, and as it is an official day off to celebrate some or other dead philanthropist, the entire community has decided that it is appropriate to reclaim the site for play, starting today but for the foreseeable future. I have some fun, too. It is fun to climb around on things. When night comes, though, and after dinner (everybody still seems to be eating meat, but I find some roasted vegetables and hearty bread), one of the boys admits that he left some toy back at the site. I agree to accompany him, but when we reach the place it has been raining, and the happy playground has been reduced to a very muddy bog. Worse, suddenly it is wartime, and evidence of the construction being blown to smithereens abounds. Whoah. Hey…kid…I don’t think we’re safe in here anymore. The mud is very thick, and we lament our shoes and trousers up to the knee. It is dark. Oops. We’re not alone. Figures of silhouetted soldiers circle the bog. Are they here for us, or are they simply here by coincidence? Interaction seems ill-advised, and so we “go tactical” through the remaining underbrush. The boy does not recover his toy. The boy, incidentally — apart from being a guest star in my dream — is not me. I am an adult in this dream. He is my charge. We evade the soldiers and flee stealthily and quietly into the night, where the light rain washes off the mud, and we return to the lights of our village on the horizon.

Inside some sort of architectural model shop, I find myself suddenly confronting a somewhat famous New Age putz who pretends to be a spirit from another world in order to fleece wealthy lost people (Barry Manilow, in the real world, is among his faithful). This guy is fat and old and totally defensive: How can you not believe my words of Salvation?! Of Love?! Of Universal Harmony?! Frankly, I am much more interested in the models — all buttresses and cantilevers and unlikely jutting-out bits — than I am in this guy. Not because I’m inherently fascinated by architecture all the time (although it’s nice; and this display reflects many aspects of an exhibit I attended a couple of years ago at LACMA) — but, rather, because this guy with his $piritual claptrap spews ten times the unctuosity of Elmer Gantry. He is being a terrible bore, and I’m wishing that his followers could see him now. Hey, dude, fine, whatever, you’re rich already, leave me alone. I can go to The Bodhi Tree and soak up a bunch of Wi$dom just like you, and go round up a bunch of vulnerable people in airport hotel convention halls and take them on “Guided Meditations” — except that I would prefer not to. This stuns him. Why do you hate me? I explain that I don’t hate him. I tell him that, socially, he’s probably a nice person who deserves happiness and good company. It’s simply the professional presentation: I find it totally nauseating. He asks me if I’m sure I don’t want to join, and I don’t even recall bothering to answer him as I study the scientific little models, and realise that “healing” for one person is not necessarily (nor should it be) “healing” for Everybody.

Foil paper. A lot of foil paper. Aluminium. This much sillier dream also stems from real life. A while back, I agreed to appear in a film-school friend’s strange movie, wherein we finally agreed that I would play a character (shamelessly based, at first, on Ted Raimi in Lunatics: A Love Story — the director’s and producer’s idea) who believes that “forces” from “outside” are trying to “get” him. Hm. Actually, I go out a lot, a whole lot, and when I do I talk with people for hours, so this was an actual role. The thing was, there was no actual script — at all — so it took take after take after pretty-amusing-actually take to figure out what this character was about, and how he was expected to behave. Eventually, he sort of transformed into a foil-obsessed “Doc” from Back to the Future, with a heaping side-dish of paranoia. That was fun. Then, the kicker was that crazy swinger Ted Raimi actually was out to get me: Ha-ha, The End (Or Is It?) Guys with loads of funny money notwithstanding (I’m sure this reference will enhance interest), I was left with the foil, which inhabited a storage nook until recently, For Sentimetal Reasons (sic). In the dream, this foil took on new life. It did not actually become animated, but suddenly Producer P. and his Girlfriend (who does not technically exist) were romping in a Happy Forest, and I happened to have both this huge bale of rolled-up foil plus my camera with me, and The Moment Seemed Right: Hey, Young Lovers, How’s About You Pose for Me With This Huge Bale of Foil — Say, Perhaps, Between Those Trees Over There! This bit is harder to put into words, but ensued a comedy of errors, wherein every time I had the shot lined up and Man, Woman and Foil were arranged most prettily, something would happen to spoil the portraiture. All of the pine cones would suddenly cascade down around them, scaring them into fumbling the foil. Small Woodland Mammals would dash past them in height-challenged, thundering herds (herds of Small Woodland Mammals — can you imagine? they hooted!) The Lady would slip on the carpet of pine needles and roll down a huge hill. The Gent would begin sneezing uncontrollably for several (time-lapsed) minutes. I did eventually get some shots, and we were all happy about it, but the photos weren’t actually very good — in focus but poorly composed, extremely fun but also could have used a bit less spontaneity and a bit more planning. Again, this dream isn’t specifically about me, because P. is a real person I have known for a long time. Given the presence of his (technically nonexistant) Girlfriend, however, the dream may have hinted at how as soon as people appear to be happily coupled, suddenly everyone becomes a shark, and it becomes a contest to see what it would take to split up that union. “Hey, I want some of that,” and so on. In the dream, I was wholeheartedly honouring the union, but there was an undercurrent of melancholy in whether or not, in this day and age, we should even bother taking photos anymore. Do the Two Young Lovers possess the wherewithal to resist the lashings to their vulnerable Egos, to stay the course, to live together beyond the mere pretty picture?

Next came a Ferris Wheel. It was running but unattended, within a pleasingly spooky version of a county fair. The fair alternated geographically between the American Midwest and Scotland. The dialects of the shadowy passers-by alternated in kind. I was there with The Woman I Love. We only regarded one another peripherally. I have often wondered if one could leap from the Ferris Wheel on the Santa Monica Pier and actually make it into the ocean. In this dream, I actively dismissed that consideration. We, however, were nonetheless in the mood for danger (lite). We leapt onto the moving Ferris Wheel and landed in the prettiest of the gondolas: gorgeous mother-of-pearl in shades of green and blue. The Wheel spun both pleasingly and thrillingly, as it did not seem to be stuck on a predictable trajectory or velocity. There were monsters down below amongst the people — not terrible, over-the-top monsters but more children’s fairy tale monsters, scary but not infinitely threatening. We were above them. Some unidentifiable things flew by, too, but they didn’t bother us, nor we them. It was misty. The Wheel gently disengaged from its moorings and began to roll across the countryside. Due to its unique structure, this posed no threat to the gondolas whenever they happened to be at the bottom. Likewise, the Wheel didn’t seem hell-bent on crushing anybody (including the monsters). It just rolled. It rolled justly. We talked a lot, but didn’t use words. The evening was luminous. At some point, the Wheel pulled up next to a country inn, and a fine late night repast and warm room were waiting for us.

There were also many “segue” Dream-ettes, but come on.

There were no sex dreams. Not a one. Unless you’re really deep and want to contemplate the buttresses and cantilevers and jutting-out bits. 

Permalink Comments

04.14.07

“Television, Say You Love Me…”

Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 11:34 pm by Gregory

In only the past couple of days, I have borne witness to:

California Champagne

A Brief Brawl

A Very Long Pointless Busride

A Long Not-Pointless Telephone Conversation in a Place I Didn’t Actually Wish to Be

Sleepless Delirium

Chow Mein

Chocolate

Chocolate

Chocolate

An Overdue Notice

Several Expensive New Jaguars

Hundreds of Hopeful Movie People

Hundreds of Push-Up Bras

Hundreds of “Guy” Haircuts

Loads of “PR” Talk

Unexpected Telephone Calls at Strange Moments

Vitamin Water

Lindsey Buckingham’s Haunting Cover of “I Am Waiting”

Five Rubber Chickens Just Looking to Belong

A Wildly Rotating Sofa

An Unexpectedly Pleasing “Mash-Up” of “Walk on the Wild Side” and “Fame” (Until Some Asshole Starts Rapping Over It And Ruins It)

Nice Women Who Do Not Sound Like Crows

Not Very Nice-Seeming Women Who Do Sound Like Crows

Amusing Men Saying and Doing Amusing Things

Amusing Men Battling the Same Sadness but Probably in a Different Form

People Leaving

People Seeming Almost Like Community

Too Much Sun

A Late Nite Call from Two Friends in a Bar Owned by an Uncle of One of the Friends

Sushi

Buses That Hit Bumps So Hard It Feels Like One’s Spine Is Going to Shoot Out the Top of One’s Head

Naps Lasting Four Minutes (a.k.a. “Night”)

Mom

Somebody Who Knows Who Jung Is

Not Enough Stars

Moon Waned Out, And With It The Happiest I Have Ever Been (Really)

Discovery that Classic Book Which Friend and I Have Been Toiling for Years to Adapt Already in Development with Damned Bigwig, Ug

Friend of Twenty Years Still Friend

Both Previous Two Entries Featuring Same Male Human Name

Christina Ricci as “Trixie” (Egad)

(I Would Have Cast Tautou)

Chocolate Soy Protein Drinks After Accidental Long Respite Without

Python Talk

Yam Fries

Most Worrisome Nights in Memory

Chocolate

Bewilderment

Chocolate

Misery

Chocolate

Contemplation of Whether or Not Sheer Willpower Could Lead to a Fully Aquatic Life or If One Would Just Simply Die and Would Never Notice the Difference

Wondering If Anybody Else Would Notice the Difference

Full Realisation that “Pretty” Is Meaningless

Extreme Wariness About Extreme “Compliments”

Wore Tie for First Time in Seven Years

Carried Apples; Didn’t Eat Them

Bought Banana for Eighty-One Cents; Ate It

Stared at by Hundreds of Latinos

Felt Like Saying to Them, “I’m Not Actually Jesus”

Didn’t

Crucifixion Seeming Easy by Comparison, Though

And, with that…

 

Although emotionally I was nailed to a stick Thursday night (THANKS, MEN OF THE WORLD!!!!), I did somehow manage to go back to visit my funky-junky old neighbourhood of Silver Lake, where I got to enjoy the company of my freshman roommate (whose wit always surprises me, and whose compassion reached touching heights this time) within the context of familiar-yet-distant-and-dreamlike Thai food and then — oh, it was great — Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 at Spaceland.

The wind howled, the homeless huddled in the dark on filthy mattresses under the freeway and Sunset overpasses, the power was out for a quarter-mile at a time, and the old ‘hood felt eerie, frankly — a very strong feeling of “this was, and isn’t anymore.”

Ditto Spaceland.

I used to go there all the freaking time.

(Literally.)

But…

Now?…

Peter Buck stood right beside me for several minutes, pre-show, and we both seemed on the verge of “Don’t I know you?…” But he’s a big rock star and I’m…something else…and although the urge to say, “Hey, we met in Brighton in 1989!” was present, I actually enjoyed the wordless moments of Alternative Greatness. (Buck was the first rock musician I ever heard declare himself “a citizen of the world.”)

When Robyn took the stage, he delivered the best set I’ve ever seen and heard him perform.

It would be fun for me to write about it for hours and hours — that one show — just because of the myriad facets of memory and imagination covered by his loads of amazing songs. (I love indulging over details.)

I’ve seen Robyn Hitchcock perform — solo, with bandmates, with The Soft Boys even! (twice!) — about a dozen times in a dozen years. Robyn Hitchcock is The World’s Greatest Pop Musician. Each performance has brilliant moments of absolutely breathtaking pop (and absurdist wit) laced through it. Maybe he plays “Trilobite” solo; maybe he covers “Kung Fu Fighting” with Jon Brion and Grant Lee Philips (both of whom attended; Grant played; Jon hovered with girlfriend and scary-thick beard; on him, silly); maybe he goes on a long, strange ramble about a Minotaur.

He always seems to dedicate “I Feel Beautiful” to his wife-woman, Michèle. (The line about fireflies sucker-punched me this time. O: Time and How to Waste It.)

He has also learned to take his “Queen Elvis” lyric: “Gettin’ blowjobs from the press; Oh, I’m jealous, can’t you guess” to great heights of amusement with the “fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-las” in between.

In a nutshell, though, even though every show is special, this one was fashioned into a very-near perfect set, from “Ghost Ship” acoustic to open, through “Balloon Man” and “Chinese Bones” and “Queen Elvis” and “Brenda’s Iron Sledge,” to “See Emily Play” (rather loudly) in the encore.

Of course, I was in the restroom (they got rid of the trough; about time) when I heard Robyn say:

“Yesterday was a very sad day, for one of the Greatest Living Americans stopped living.”

He then dedicated his lilting, deceptively simple “Television” to Kilgore Trout.

At that point, I had emerged from the restroom. Like lightning emerges from a cloud.

The crowd was diverse, and had nice hair.

I felt so fucking miserable inside that I could barely stand up.

Gutted!

But among those groovers, I felt comfort.

It was not my preferred comfort, but rather the very best band-aid fifteen bucks could ever hope to buy.

Seriously, I wish I could sit and type for ten hours about everything that I felt within the context of that ostensibly “fun” little rock concert — because Robyn and his mates were creating scintillations on the outside to counterbalance the overwhelming revolution short-circuiting every synapse on my inside.

Anyway, since people seem to dig imagery more than thought, here’s a wiggly image suggesting the way it felt:

 

 

Permalink Comments

04.13.07

gigs

Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 9:42 am by Gregory

Okay, although a lot of people probably use their “blogs” as place-holders or blow-by-blow public confessionals or even just to post up something they got from somebody else, it just so happens that I literally and truly do not believe in nor endorse “time,” which was a very stupid idea from the get-go, and thus this entry is being modified from midnight-ish ”Monday morning” rather than actually appearing fresh on the previous Friday. As a symbol of respect, Kurt Vonnegut’s illustration of the asshole (which happens, conveniently, to be a key on the English-American keyboard) will separate this new (and actually title-and-rhyme-theme-appropriate) material from the petty slug material.

I just figured out the definition of what kind of music I intend to make. You know that horrible question: “What kind of music do you like/make?” Horrible! Because then, everybody on this iPod-insane planet is forced to say, “I’m, like, eclectic.” (Translation: KCRW controls my brain.)

BRIAN

You’re all different! 

CROWD

Yes, we are all different!

DENNIS

I’m not.

CROWD

Sssshhh!

(Heh. Earbud lemmings.) 

But yeah, I finally found a term for what I like to play.

(Of course, I’m never going to tell it to anybody.)

One of the very first times I played an open mic night solo, I performed an original song called “It’s Only Monday” – which concerns subterranean man-beasts and their groovy underground ways. This took place in the cafe called Highland Grounds, on Highland just north of Melrose, in the stinky black aorta of Hollywood. It’s a shitty, uninspiring place, really, without any organic life to it. Paramount Studios is just to the east, and headache-inducing shoe-shops run by scowling Persian women lie just to the west. To the north, trannies on Santa Monica Blvd., and to the south, the Highland Park neighborhood, where some of the city’s wealthy hide. Highland itself is an ugly fucking street. There are some smaller studios there, covered in toxic soot, lots of outrageously crappy apartment buildings, cockroaches skittering from donut shop to donut shop amidst the endless SUVs and trucks and cars. The region is the antithesis of Romance.

(Which is, puzzlingly, why all these allegedly ”Romantic” young and not-so-young people are drawn there, I suppose.)

Anyway, I wanted to find or synthesise some Soul at Highland Grounds, so I gave that a shot for a while. Some woman named Karen ran the show back then. Every time she’d go for the pun of “Open Mind Nite” my memory would backtrack to my Virginian-transplant friend O. up in Washington, who was such an amazing solo musician that he’d rock me with song after song right in my little kitchen as if he were playing to a sold-out theatre. O. liked to play such events (and shone the brightest), but nonetheless — often aptly — called them “Open Sore Nite.”

Yeah, there’s a whole lotta, “I suffered for my art; Now it’s your turn” at such things.

I did my best, though, and for some reason Karen chose me to go first.

I did.

The crowd was still sparse (often one finds oneself playing exclusively to other wannabe musicians who are merely waiting for their turn to play to you), but there was one black girl (this was before “African American Woman” would have taken the lead in common parlance; no insult intended nor implied) sitting about five feet in front of me, eyeing me with intense scrutiny. She was smiling. She seemed very happy to see me.

Then I launched into my song about subterranean man-beasts.

Now, please: I love the songs of Marvin Gaye, Bob Marley, Tracy Chapman, Prince, Stevie Wonder, etc.

But unlike many, I make no pretense about not being black.

What I was singing was my version of Soul.

(I sincerely believe that the world would be a much better place if more people latched onto that concept.)

It wasn’t amazing. It wasn’t super-polished. I had just gotten extremely nervous only moments before (I don’t get stage-fright unless doing something new, which this was, particularly to start off the evening), and had tensed up every muscle in my body, in an attempt to alleviate the pressure; what this had achieved in reality was a head-to-toe charley horse. Painful! Thus I’m sure there was some quavering inherent in the delivery.

But it was mine, and I was delivering it in accordance with the unspoken agreement of an entertainer.

The black girl’s face curled up like she was going to puke. She was glaring at me with actual malice by the time I finished.

(No, there was nothing in there for her to find personally offensive. Not without getting ridiculously creative about it.)

I think about eight people applauded.

And five of those worked there.

That was weird, but as any self-obsessed boob will tell you, you gotta walk through that fire (or whatever cliched expression is being sold in overpriced performance classes this week).

I returned to Highland Grounds a few times. One time I simply played bodhran to an otherwise a capella cover of The Pogues’ “Sally MacLennane.” A since-estranged friend of mine stood beside me, to the befuddlement of the “crowd” — until he suddenly shouted the “FAR AWAY!” parts so loudly that he probably made a few onlisteners wet themselves a little.

Yeah, something about that place and I never quite clicked. Real Musicians would play there sometimes, and they knew their scales and their Elton John or Tom Petty covers, and the performances would prove as clean and innocuous as cruise-ship entertainment. Other times, really offensively bad “comedians” would seize the mic. Much of the time — although I have never attended any (because I don’t have to) — the evenings would feel like AA meetings.

I tried a few more times, though.

For a while, I worked as a paralegal, and there was a big young guy in the office who wanted to go do something weird to let off steam. He had just acquired a creepy latex alien mask as a “tip” for dropping off some paperwork at the effects house for Babylon 5. Somehow we arrived at “Bad Moon Rising.” I learnt the chords that afternoon, then I seem to recall my guitar causing too much feedback for their equalisation, so some regular lent me his Fender, and I went to work on that — whatever, “Creedence classic” or whatever — while the huge kid, meanwhile, with his peripheral vision severely limited by the alien mask and his entire body covered in a large white coverall suit, loudly recited the words. It was Art, and I sorely wish I had a video of it.

If perhaps you’re the sensitive type who wants to read into that that we were somehow attempting to insult the audience and the venue, read on. Around the same time, a crazy Silver Lake accordionist chain-smoker chick discovered that I also had an accordion, and enlisted me to join her “band” (really sort of a collection of her friends assembled to combat the band she had formed with her also-insane musician soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend). Once a month at Highland Grounds was held Club Peoria — wherein “butt-rock” classics would be performed live with alternating karaoke-like vocalists. (I once noticed that “Desperado” was bearing a close resemblance to my own existence — or whatever, like it matters — and thus performed it with the house band, with the bass-player taking the scrotally-challenging high parts — Don’tcho feet git col’ inda wintati-i-ime — only years of coke-abuse could render possible.) When the house band took a break, smoker-chick and her band, and I, went on. Somewhere there’s probably half-inch video of this. We performed kitschy crap. Rod Stewart’s ”Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.” Um… “Iron Man.” Did we do an ABBA tune? I think we did. Oh, something from Blondie. “The Tide Is High,” I think. (Oh Debbie, you Rastafarian.)

It was a mess, frankly.

Pretty embarrassing, overall.

They served pickled eggs and Schlitz.

Horrors.

But there were other venues…

Eventually I discovered The Un-Urban Cafe on Pico in Santa Monica. This being just down the street from clubs (and, yep, even KCRW, that “college” station itself) where some of my fave artists played, I felt a vague closeness to familiar and appreciated energies. I trotted out some covers at the Un-Urban (which — ironically? — is urban), like Robyn Hitchcock’s “Queen Elvis” (there’s a tape of that). I did a couple of duets (mostly bad). And played a few originals. My “dark” original didn’t go over too well, as some girl in the audience immediately began playing back at me the lesson-book classical exercise I had appropriated as a bridge. Oh well.

It was around that time that I began to wonder why anyone would want to be a live performer.

One of the very best ones ever — ever! — “Freddie Mercury” eventually denounced himself as “a rock’n'roll prostitute.”

Women, I notice, use male singer-songwriters as a drug — an intimacy drug — rather than having actual male intimacy around.

Me, I employed Kate Bush and Jane Siberry to fill in the considerable gaps when all that the females around me seemed to want to do was defecate into my face.

We do what we can with what we got.

Back to the “gigs” topic, though — I make no claims to being a professional musician. I have studied for about a year each on various instruments (including my larynx). Most of the time, for instance, I cannot fathom how Prince Nelson, in his late forties, can go out in front of a billion viewers and act as though shaking his keister is deeply meaningful.

Weirds me out.

He’s good at it.

But it weirds me out.

I used to sing into the tape recorder when I was a little kid, and eventually began multitracking, leading first to slavish but affectionate covers of things like Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” and The Cure’s “Close to Me” (sans brass). I didn’t even have a proper guitar yet, but I had a nice Yamaha synthesizer. In retrospect, I suppose I liked songs with “Me” in them.

None of my friends at the time ever got serious about forming a band together — I believe because they were all Americans, and thus more inclined to watch television and eat bad food — so my dreams in that department were stymied (and still are).

Now, since most singer-songwriter material in the pop world is based on very adolescent feelings and perceptions, it’s starting to seem very silly to have a go at that.

Long before I was an adolescent, one of my very first “gigs” was as the White Rabbit, in the Disney-approved primary-school stage production of Alice in Wonderland. My heart was in my throat as I attempted to audition, cold, in front of my entire music class. This may be hard for people from other parts of the world to understand, but at that time and in that place, singing with anything resembling a melody — as a boy — felt tantamount to pulling down your pants and smacking yourself in the face. It was horrifying, mortifying. Being a jerk, or a jock, that was fine. But being a singer? Unknown territory! Potential shame! So I stood there and basically spoke the words to “I’m Late,” in a dismal monotone.

And I got the part.

Egad.

Gymnasium filled with enthusiastic parents and younger and older siblings, and suddenly I’m wearing bunny-ears and ”singing” to them. Since nobody ever sang to me, this felt astoundingly unnatural — like being forced to fly without ever having seen a bird. I’m not being cruel to my diminutive former self when I say now that I’m sure it was terrible. Fortunately, most of the rest of the cast was composed of girls, and all they wanted to do was shake their groove-thangs and show off, as is often the wont of young girls (and people who believe that they are young girls). They carried the show.

Me, I was The Original Rapper.

(Come to think of it, although I cannot compete with Basso Profundo and Tone-Deaf-Except-For-”Perfect Day”-Strangely-Enough Lou Reed, my tuneless talk-through of “I’m Late” did actually precede the appearance of Rap — which didn’t actually totally suck back then if you can believe that — by about a year. I should have patented it.)

I sang in a couple of motherfucking terrible plays in high school as well, but those were so bad — regardless of my performances — that they do not even merit mention.

In case you’ve never performed in front of people — particularly musically — you may not realise that it is nothing whatsoever like passively experiencing a performer from the relative safety of the audience. For some people, I am certain, the rush of all that attention engorges their genitals with blood. For me, though, there’s a very strong feeling of, “What, exactly, is the point of this? No, really: What is the point of this?”

I have learned enough to know that simply shrugging lazily and saying, “The mysteries of the Universe are not ours to know; Just Do It!” is a complete crock of shit.

Why do it?

For if we discover Why — then the Cosmos open up to us in ways our Unconscious Selves may never know.

I like that.

That’s worth discovering.

Veering away from that topic 100%: When I lived Up North, I carried the lead in a nearly unspeakable vampire-”comedy”-musical. This entailed singing two songs solo. I performed under a pseudonym. They weren’t very good songs. A redhead I knew at the time was impressed — but she was love-starved. The production was ridiculously unprofessional — and everyone in charge of it viciously chain-smoked — but I enjoyed the cast. Working with them was pretty fun. I sang those mediocre songs with undeserved gusto, thus I suppose that could sort of count as a gig.

All of my best singing is done in the shower, though.

Although…there have been a few experiences with friends in domestic settings, wherein we briefly cut loose and played and sang like we meant it. That was something I always wanted, so even in meagre rations it was satisfying.

I sang with a local band a few times whilst in high school, doing Talking Heads and Thompson Twins at parties. Their saxophonist was jealous and wanted me gone, but the other guys were cool. I sang with them at the International Special Olympics one year. Really. That — oh, that would probably be the best video of them all (if it actually existed, alas). Me doing “I Melt With You” to hundreds and hundreds of mentally-challenged children and their bewildered-but-beaming parents. One retarded kid (I’m sorry; he was a retarded kid; retarded is a word that essentially means “slow,” and he was a kid, which means “young person”) actually dashed up and wanted to sing with me. I think he may have had leg-braces. I threw an arm over his shoulder and let him make up some words into the mic. It was a ridiculously sunny day, and a ridiculously jolly performance. (Modern English would have been horrified.)

And sometime in (I think) 2002, I went to the beach, and it was incredibly windy, and I whipped out my acoustic and performed “Your Mother Should Know” and “Science Fiction Double Feature” while a friend videoed it. I wonder where those sunglasses went. Those were good sunglasses. 

The last time I played out — hm, I’m trying to recall — oh yeah, that’s right: I was in a pub on Long Island, and it was karaoke night, and my niece wanted to go up and show off her ”Grrrl Power” with her take on “That Don’t Impress Me Much” (or whatever; I do not like that song nor the ‘tude behind it) and part of the deal was that her uncle had to perform something too. Ever the scoundrel, I chose “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)” — for which I, for some reason (freshman nights not spent gang-raping new pledges, mainly), happened to know all of the words in the right order. The patrons of the pub by that point were all youngish, and I felt at ease about presenting them with such bombast — but then, to my (actual; not just overusing the word as many do) chagrin, an old white couple wandered in and sat directly in front of me, just as the quickly-sickened black girl did at Highland Grounds years before. (I would like to take this moment to apologise to all of the Septuagenarian European-American Domestic Partners reading this.) Oh well. Too late to change course on that. I launched into the raucous R.E.M. thing full-throttle. Somewhere, thanks to my brother-in-law, there is digitial video. I haven’t seen it or even thought about it since. It was late 2004. Billy Joel lives nearby. I was about to be fired by rotten shits. It was around Thanksgiving. I hadn’t yet learned not to feel thankful anymore.

Regular gigging, though? Alas, I was not born into social circles which enjoy forming bands. And the notion that anybody would want to hear my voice instilled in me never was.

Oh: Wait a moment.

Although only bugs and woodland creatures and the odd farmer who have probably all since passed on could bear witness to this, when I lived in England I bought a guitar, and I would wander out into a woodsy glade across a field and practice, often sitting on a stump or log — come to think of it, there weren’t any stumps, as nobody had attacked those particular trees, so it must have been logs. There was Soul there. I was missing my friends but feeling alive. Those were probably the best gigs I’ve ever played.

So there’s that.

 

 

*

This is turning out to be a rather wretched week, wherein I am being punished for somebody else’s screwup.

L.A.

Does it to everybody.

(Otherwise, this “superstitious” day and date feel acceptable to me.)

Whee.

Anyway, at the moment fingerpainting seems unduly intellectually challenging, so this is but a filler message until such a time as this week’s brilliant pentalogy may be completed.

In the interim, why not treat yourself to a nice green tea?

Permalink Comments