Brown Paper Dog

It's so nice to be able to open the window. It's been another long winter. Etc. Etc.

Big City Lights I

When I went to Brooklyn, I stayed with my glorious fag of an actor friend. He shared an elevator sized 2 bedroom apartment with a guy he had nothing in common with and barely knew. He said I couldn't be in the place alone because of house rules. I would have to leave when he left for work. I could ride the subway into Manhattan and walk around. So I did.

I walked around for twenty-four hours.

Alot can happen in 24 hours.

Just five minutes please!

My daughter is driving me crazy.

There's 24 people on the island right now. Several boats have been going through to pick up pot gear for fishing. Boats are heading North of the Pass into the Bering Sea for a brief Herring season. I used to work on a boat during herring. I had to pull out 20 or so random fish from a haul and snap their backs in half, record whether they were male or female and how much they weighed. Nasty. Float planes flew overhead radioing coordinates for fish schools to boats below.

A boat at the city dock made an announcement on the VHF radio. We all communicate here by radio as much as phone. They said, "This is the fishing vessel______. We have a bonfire going on the beach north of the city dock. We have refreshments (likely beer unless they also have chick tracts and koolaid). We have good music. Hospitality is a wonderful thing. Come and join us. Share your stories with us."

That kind of invitation is pretty rare. A few years ago, this fisherman named Snakey Pete (Snakey as in Delerium Tremons from acute alcohol poisoning) called me on the radio to tell me he loved me or something like that. I told him to have another drink.

I made the guys on the boat an mp3 mixed cd and sent it down with my husband.

I took the next two weeks off of work. I'm lucky I have so much paid leave accrued. I can take long breaks every couple of months. How do people do it everywhere else? Not too much drama workwise this month. Just burned out on caring.

I sent my little brother a loaded ipod. He was really happy about it. He also said the similarities to what songs were about and his own mind freaked him out. That sucked. Hopefully I didn't send him down the rabbit hole. What else am I supposed to do? Mash peas for him and talk about clouds?

I haven't been able to paint in forever. No painting with a toddler. No sense even trying.

The sun is up until midnight and she thinks it's much earlier. She rebels when I try to get her to sleep. She's full of sentences this week though.

I've been working at the library here as the sole librarian. The library hasn't been open since I opened it a year ago. I had to take a hiatus because my kid would have been destroying all the books and smearing feces about. It's good to be back in there. It's good to have actually digested a book after going so long without reading. Baby steps.

I'm glad summer is here. I like the change in scenery. I am not crazy about the rush of traffic and all of the generic questions people passing through ask. I just avoid them. I must seem like a neurotic housewife.

Bring me the Head of That Fog Wall.

In general I don't "write" when the events in my life are moving along with no suspense. I "write" when I have a choking ball of venom threatening to treat my spinal fluid to a black flood of retarded heartbeats, wasting everyone I care about with a juvenile preoccupation of death camp impressions.

There is no remedy to these attacks. No plausible sentencing of my criminal thoughts will alleviate the psychic stench of my over-bearing paddle toward solitude. There is only knowing that sane revelations truly do come from fantasy-driven orderlies....

Poetic justice floats like oily residue on thick swamp water beneath me. My rick-shaw boat, stops in, gets analyzed by the local witch and Moves on to the next weigh station... undetected but feared just the same.

I am a dog. I am a dog. I am a dog... with no hunger driving me.

Our each and every cell is a battle scar.

I never want to write about my teenage years. There's so much I can't recall.

Everyone grows up hearing "When I was your age" or "When I was young..." followed by some pathetic tale of how technology and information has somehow devastated the emotional integrity of that person. You listen. You get it. What can you say? Getting over it
- is easier said than done. Our each and every cell is a battle scar. Hellraisers, each and every one of us, choking down fistfulls of human on every block like zombies stuck in a compost.

My equivalent to missing soda jerks and farming the land for a steady income- is a matter of the American shifting cultural energies haunting me as a child and stuffing me into a pre-paid coffin as an adult. A coffin of my choosing. I want the velvet lining. I want the pearlescent knob. I want the patch under the oak tree. I want the headstone to be edible. Whatever. I want my bones to be burned. I want King Kong to jerk off on my ashes and force you to sign for them.

I suppose I am lonely here. No more than anyone else probably. My relationship to everyone on this island is different than the relationships of other residents here. I get introduced as "The Doctor." I'm no doctor. I detest the mechanics of IT ALLtoo much to be a doctor. I screen my phone calls because 9 out of 10 calls has something to ask of me rather than offer me.. (not that answering the phone is about the eternal reception). I do get into the science behind medicine. Callouses make diabetic ulcers calling for amputation. Salt kills bacteria. Don't give Nitroglycerine to someone taking Viagra. Emergency Medicine is depressingly thrilling, but not here. No thrill here. Not under these circumstances. Not when I have to be the medic for an extended family of people who will always be predjudiced against me and use me when it suits their convenient disposable jock. It's not like I get out of the ambulance or punch out at work and I never see my patients again. They visit when they are drunk and tell me tragic stories all the while never mentioning how I couldn't revive their 65 year old brother..... And that's not the only barrier to us ever loving each other. Fuck it all. Boo Hoo. Maybe I have it wrong. Maybe you demonstrate love, by tormenting the creatures around you who share enough history with you to tolerate your unrelenting hate and fluctuating forgiveness... and maybe I show mine by giving you the room to do it... Yeah. Truthfully, that's likely for reasons I don't care to share with you... in this perpetual state of bombed out playing fields.

My favorite part of the male anatomy is the "snuff box". Always has been, mostly when I am watching the muscles grip the stick shift of a car I am riding passenger in- going somewhere I have never been-listening to something I have never heard feeling ..... bristly and deeply motivated even on dark and unknown roads I am confident being lost on and want to have at you on.... Capturing time can't be done, but I am willing to over-compensate often by leaving a trail of fermented crumbs. Typically, they are scavenged and kicked aside. Personally, that kind of battle turns me on, and with you on board, Where couldn't we "overcome"?

Last night I had a dream involving murderers, hotel security, elevators, towers, and my child hiding safely with my mother behind the door of a room only I knew the number to. When is it okay to enter a room knowing you may be leading an enemy into the fold but you are too tired to fight without reinforcements? Too exhausted to hold off the fight any longer?

Cleared the forest of the trees-have you?

If I had to jump in a time capsule, you wouldn't have the latch locked down long before I was carving out Anti-You messages into my flesh for Alien eyes. I can almost guarantee, "they" would still take your side. It's just how it goes. No hard feelings. One day I'll shoot some hard feelings your way though. so you have a way to measure my impact on you if you needed some help in the me-you-math department.

"The sides of my Uterus itch... I'm Afraid My Fractured Back Will Make Me a Vegetarian..."

Ahhh. My job. People. History. Life. Move On.

The Tiny Tower in the Corner

Maybe I only visit you when I'm failing everything. You aren't god. I never go to god. The Creator can go to the Hell he created. Everytime I see you in my dreams, I am climbing a corner fire pole to reach you, and then I wake up. There's always some soul you spared- gumming up my exit with a soup of out of touch questions about you. There's never enough time to answer your fool or leave you a note. I wake up and move to the couch every single time. You always seem to have weak fans. I joke constantly that I am where true failure begins.

Burnt Fuse Drop-Off Here.

If I said the World was tragic, you'd shove my face into your love.
And if I said the World was magic, you'd parade me through the streets by my cunt.

"I want a war" Vox/chorus A.D. Take 1

I'm here to make war.
I made peace with myself, and I want some more.
I'm here to kill the wolf that killed my dog.

I'm here to wage a war.
Let me tell you what you're fighting for.
The means to an end... and how exciting...
The meaning of it all.

Don't worry if you beat your fists down.
There's a million walls.
Don't worry if you have to re-group
There's a million souls.

I'm here to wage war.
I'm here to kill the wolf that killed my dog.
I'm loading the arsenal
into the vehicle.

I want war.
You're gonna hear shit from me you never heard before.
I want control in a small way.
I swallowed the Earth and everybody praying.

I made peace with myself and I want some more.

I'm here to kill the wolf that killed my dog.

wolves

This Village is in a wild state of disrepair. We've got a liquor store and no church. We received month-old produce yesterday after going 2 months with nothing. Our water is constantly freezing. Wolves are eating our dogs. (4 dogs this week,out of 12 including my 6 year old husky Joan Jett). New town hires look like embalmed drag queens and are barely functioning on their steady diet of vodka. We have ZERO law enforcement. The School is probably going to close next year because we have 5 of the ten kids needed to get government funding. It's all or nothing. The tenth kid equals $450,000 to run for the year and the other nine students might as well be invisible chopped liver. I think it's totally unconstitutional. If the School closes, we get sent leaflets from private agencies wanting to help us home school. If the School closes, families will never move here with children. The jobs we need filled in our village are of major importance and if we don't have a school, the already dusty job postings will never be filled. Our mayor is a commercial fisherman who is is never here. My husband is the acting Vice Mayor, and the stress level is through the roof here. There's maybe 15 able bodied adults on the island (2 of whom are registered pedophiles). We're constantly getting freaked out by Earthquakes and Tsunami warnings. Mail planes and contact with the "outside world" are making it in once a week if we are lucky. My two year old refuses to shit on the toilet. I have family fighting in Iraq. The tribe I work for went under major Reconstruction and I keep getting in trouble at every teleconference for antagonizing them. I probably shouldn't go this far, but one of my grandmothers is on an Oxygen Concentrator and the other is suicidal. My little brother took a knife to his throat and was found wandering the streets of Australia. My kid brother... a newly diagnosed Paranoid Delusional Schizophrenic Fugitive (who's being visited by my mother's identical twin sister tomorrow.) So also, the Grizzly bears are starting to wake up from their long sleep on this Refuge. Refuge meaning we aren't supposed to kill them even though they break into my house in the middle of the night. When we do have to kill them, we have to decapitate and skin them, then send the skins out to Fish and Game. My grizzly dreams started last night. Our new post master hasn't hung the flag in months because she's got an 8 month old at work with her. Not sure why this bothers me. Something about it seems wrong. Not to mention it's fucking Easter time. I'm almost convinced that a Flu Pandemic is inevitable and the fashionable "red" campaign ain't seen nothing yet...But on top of all of this, my job is to take care of people. I am fucking spent. So... I'm not tagging my inner walls with smiley faces right now.... I do have a pretty cool hydroponic herb garden though.

"I do not need to be rescued. I am the rescuer. "~Grover

"The Bugle Sounds, The Charge Begins..."

In William Golding's, The Lord Of The Flies, a handful of boys make their first move toward self governance. They blow a conch shell on the beach to gather the other survivors of the WWII evacuee's plane crash. Surely as this first note is blown with proper intention, the lives of William's boys are rocketed straight to Hell. There is a golden haze encompassing this group of pig-killing choir boys. Man vs. Man. Boy vs. Boy... vs Nature etc., etc. It totally fascinates me.

The bugle and trumpet have often been used interchangeably and each of their histories is long and varied. Most horn players could tell you some really interesting shit about history. Something like this... maybe:

"Ancient trumpets were used at religious ceremonies and associated with magical rites. Burials, circumcisions, and sunset rites (to ensure the sun would return) were a few of the early ceremonies in which the trumpet was used. It was a male-dominated practice and among certain tribes of the Amazon any woman who looked at a trumpet was killed. The tradition of playing at sunrise (Reveille), sunset (Retreat), and at burials (Taps) may have evolved from these ancient rituals." Read more here. The trumpet has been around longer, but the Bugle rose to prominence quickly for use in military campaigns. It originated from German hunting horns.

During the American Civil War, the Bugle could be heard from a distance of three miles over the sounds of artillery. Responsibility for sounding out commands and movement, interpreting the music of the Enemy bugle, playing at funerals and "lifting spirits" all fell under the Bugler's job description. How do you get that job? Volunteer? Were any of these Buglers (or drummers for that matter) musicians before the war? Do you think they were ever targeted because of their important role - like medics in wars of the past?


There is a story that the Union army officer, Colonel James H. Wilson, employed 250 buglers during the battle of Front Royal, in Virginia on September 21st., 1864. The Union buglers charged the Confederate lines with each of them screaming through their instruments at the same time. The Confederates broke and ran in full flight.
This story is not confirmed, but it wouldn't be the first time such a tactic was used. Roman Legion... Zulu Nation.... I always imagined that buglers were solitary individuals and that's probably from product advertising and not from being a genius, but I'm pretty sure (without really investigating) there were many buglers in every conflict. The utilization of horn players in battle goes back for centuries. As long as you could hear your Trumpeter or Bugle Boy or bagpipe player, you knew you were still okay in some way. How do military units fair when communication is lost? Take out the Bugler. No more direction. No more wake up call. Lose the Last Rites... It wouldn't take long after that for things to fall apart without exceptional leadership. Seems like a smart enemy would train their sights on the horns before anything else!

Though there is this:

是故）百戰百勝，非善之善者也；不戰而屈人之兵，善之善者也
One hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the most skillful. Seizing the enemy without fighting is the most skillful.~ The Art of War


My propensity for lateral thinking takes me away from the Bugler for a second, so that we can talk about television actors who play the criminals in re-enactments on shows like America's Most Wanted. I can't help but think that there are scads of people who believe they are watching the actual crime itself unfold before them. Years ago, a slew of mid-westerners wouldn't eat chicken because of an X-Files episode they saw. KFC, Lazy Boys, fruited plains, John Walsh. I wager that acting in a Cold Case Files type of show, would have you soon after suffering the scrutiny of security at grocery stores and airports. I think these actors aren't safe from having their identity mistaken, unless all crime show actors live in Los Angeles. Because If you live there long enough, you just accept look-a-likes and criminals because everyone is a bastard. I once told a Houston traffic cop, that I had just seen a guy who was on the FBI's most wanted list 2 blocks away. He didn't take me seriously. It was probably my delivery. I'm not saying that crime scene re-enactors are stupid for having their trade and trying to make rent. I'm not saying anything. This is an aside. This whole thing is an aside.


The most famous Bugle music I know is TAPS. Taps replaced a song called "Lights Out" which was a military tattoo. The tattoo was predominantly used to tell Bartenders to "Turn off their taps" at 9:30pm sharp as soldiers were meant to return to their barracks. So, when you hear Taps playing at the next military funeral look at it like a last call for alcohol. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Bugles were eventually outmoded with the invention of radio, but up until the Vietnam War soldiers were trained in bugle calls, although today they are mostly used in ceremonies. Popular modern tunes include: "Come to Breakfast", "Haven't You Had Enough Alcohol" and "You're Dead".

One story about how Taps came to be, talks about a Union soldier who happens upon a dying Confederate soldier in a thicket. Though he risked punishment, the Union soldier brought the dying man to his camp and asked that he be spared. The guy died, but in his pocket was a piece of music. It was discovered that the young man was actually the runaway son of the Union soldier who found him, and the piece of music in his pocket was Taps... Sounds like a tidy and romantic little moral lesson doesn't it? That's why it's not true. Most scholars agree that Union Brigadier General Daniel Butterfield wrote TAPS, and handed it to his Bugler, Oliver Norton, in 1862. It was played softly because the usual 3 volley tribute played for the dead would give away their location and get them killed. Ever see footage of soldiers smoking Opium and blasting "Purple Haze" and then they've been blown to Hell in the next frame? Back to the music. Sort of.

I'm sure that I am not the only one who considers battle cries musical. Along with wolves howling, pencils sharpening, elevator shafts dropping, glass breaking, fan lights clinking, radio static hissing and sea lions fucking on icebergs... all music to me. A single word can be poetry. A spark can be fire. A drop of water can be a tidal wave. Canyons don't jut out of deserts because of mystical reasoning or solely because of scientific arguments. The big picture has nothing to do with our logic or our desire. All music to me! Which brings me to the Rebel Yell!

“Then arose that do-or-die expression, that maniacal maelstrom of sound; that penetrating, rasping, shrieking, blood-curdling noise that could be heard for miles and whose volume reached the heavens--such an expression as never yet came from the throats of sane men, but from men whom the seething blast of an imaginary hell would not check while the sound lasted.” -Colonel Keller Anderson of Kentucky's Orphan Brigade.

"At last it grew too dark to fight. Then away to our left and rear some of Bragg's people set up 'the rebel yell'. It was taken up successively and passed around to our front, along our right and in behind us again, until it seemed almost to have got to the point whence it started. It was the ugliest sound that any mortal ever heard -- even a mortal exhausted and unnerved by two days of hard fighting, without sleep, without rest, without food and without hope..." - Narrative of then-Lieutenant Ambrose Bierce, 2nd Brigade, 2nd Division, XXI Corps, Army of the Cumberland, at the Battle of Chickamauga (Last Union defenses on Horseshoe Ridge, September 20, 1863)


So, what did we learn? The Rebel Yell wasn't just a song by Billy-Leather-Dick-Idol, kids. It was the battle cry of Confederate soldiers used during the American Civil War. It was said to sound like a rabbit screaming, or an "Indian" whoop, or a wolf howl. There is a million stunning sounds out there in the Universe trying to vie for being on our individual life's soundtrack. I can't think of any sound more terrifying than being surrounded by thousands of armed men screaming and closing in to kill me. Actually, I can think of a more chilling sound. Hunters surrounding a dead stag and trumpeting a celebratory kill! Who would deny that this is also music?

My ancestors painted their faces blue and ran naked into skirmishes screaming their battle cry. It's a little different now. Armies are pounding Celine Dion and Muslim chants across militarized zones to drive their enemy's nuts and their morale down. Seems like it would just make the listener more determined and more hateful! Make them want to do anything to shut off the devil sound. Maybe the point is to drive men away from their Zen, and force them to act prematurely so they bungle their strategies. What other point is there to using music on front lines now-a-days? The Occasional artist travels overseas for publicity and the boosting of record sales - playing to rapidly aging boys and girls we kissed with death and big promises about "freedom". Does standing in the middle of a battlefield require meditation? How does all of this shit work? Why are we so vile? Maybe some soldiers would say they couldn't have made it through war without music. I'm sure that's true. Now let's see how they react in a department store or convenience store when confronted with their songs of war, 2 years later. If they had a particularly rough go at war, they would likely stop everything and leave the premises. And it wouldn't be with a smile on their face. Music itself could be the trigger to a bullet that you can never dodge. But you can clickhere, to see what kind of music this group is sending the soldiers in the Middle East to listen to.

One participant of a modern survival education camp a couple of years ago was mortified by the idea of shitting in the wilderness. She just couldn't do it. She had a real fear of crapping in public like an animal. She preferred instead to hold her bowels and be flown out by helicopter on the verge of death. I know that strange psychological things can overcome people at times, but what kind of music does a person like her need to get through the day? What songs does she need to make it on her battlefield of life? Dave Matthews? Cold Play? It's probably not Wagner. It's probably not anything I listen to, right? What kind of music would I take to War with me? In our own way, we are all on the front lines of our own bodies and souls, fighting the whole Universe to maintain our defensive lines. But who cares about what music people like when we all swell with group gluttony on a Death Star blowing conches and forming alliances with the same results? Music isn't going to save mankind. It's like graffiti in stereo. It is beautiful, but that doesn't really help us on a global front does it? Don't get me wrong, I like listening to, talking about, making and reading about music, but it's not much of an escape or a consolation - given how fucked up life is. While watching a documentary about Mahler, there was a quote about how Music is so important because it is about the here and now, and the here and now is all we really have. To be honest, I don't know what that means, because tell me if I'm wrong... Wasn't there a yesterday?



My favorite listing is "A"


Son of Ravyn, and myself have both been participating in The International Mixtape Project for some time. If you're into exchanging mix cd's, it's pretty cool. Yesterday I recieved a "Lips and Assholes" mix featuring music from artists with inflated egos. Plus they're cool, because Ryan Mixtape links to the NAP from their site.

Congratulations to the Cramer family. Here's to wishing you all the best . And finally, I hope your art show goes well Kilian.



Most of the NAP's readers have presumably seen this U.N.K.L.E./Radiohead/DJ Shadow "Rabbit in Your Headlights" video directed by Jonathan Glazer, but if you haven't ... it's worth seeing.

Kid Gloves, The HI-Jacking Failed.

I had another WWIII dream.

I was flying a helicopter around a crowded war zone
Dodging artillery and answering remedial math questions
all posed visually with no true answer

I had to abandon the helicopter I stole because I ran out of gas...
due to fucking around learning how to fly ..

Scrambling along charred remains, driven into corner after corner
and hysterical strangers
I am pressed against them
pressed against you and hiding

Delirious with Adrenaline

Sadly, armed with things that seem reasonable and sane.

I wake up Punching my throat
then take a deep breath and remember who I am
and it doesn't take long for me to feel the rage again.

Hello. I am calling from the United States.

My little brother took a knife to his throat and was found wandering the streets in Australia. He's in a Psychiatric Treatment Center. He told my mother she could tell me, because he figured he needed the Tough Love.

Paranoid Delusional Schizophrenia.

How proud am I that I called it months ago, but didn't know what to do about it because of a bunch of fucked up Logistics.


Not proud at all.
Never proud again.

Mexico invades Oz.

Last night, I had a fucked up dream.

I went to sleep early. I was stressed out.

I suffer from Sleep Paralysis. Look it up.


I live in the building that was the first school and hospital of this village. People always enter my house. Look at the ceiling, and talk about their depressing memories. All I see is repression.

The dream involved one hundred people moving through every room, who had ever lived or been here. I was like, Why the fuck are you in my house? They all had super cryptic answers. I was looking for someone to blame for dosing me with acid or to explain why I felt so out of control.

The phone rings in this chaos. My mother says, "I have been trying to reach you. Mexico is invading Australia, and a fleet of aircraft carriers are on their way to Alaska." The phone goes dead. Something about how my mother spoke to me, instantly damaged me forever (even in a dream). I know I will never speak to my mother again, and as I am thinking this, I am also making fun of my fatalistic interpretation of it all. Making fun in the way that line cooks fuck with waiters. Heavily laced.

I start throwing diapers and bottled water and salt and oregano and panties and medication and alcohol based hand sanitizers into a laundry bag. I hand Electra off (with a pain I have only known in horrifying dreams) to my dazed husband. I prepare for the destiny we all have been kicking across the fence. If you knew just a little bit about the relationships of man, you would know that leading is not a truly gratutitous affair. Leadership is something that only the truly lost endure.

Leading is all pain.

I step out onto the dark and wind ripped terrace, clutching my laundry bag of items that surely won't last more than a week... I remember my friend Fergie who was the child actor who rode a bicycle onto the set of "Red Dawn" and was catapulted into a life of conspiracy theory.... And then I look to the Southside. The normally black night is set on fire by the endless lights of approaching aircraft carriers.

They believe in themselves. They've got tools and a convoluted sense of self.

Heroes pull out.

I let them fuck their life away and I let them beat their fists on my chest so they can pretend to work out their hazy conflicts. And they don't hear me when I tell them how to get back in the saddle. They know I'll still help even if they never heard me. Plus, there's no horse.

Good for them. Here's to John Wayne.

The Internal Time Zone

I don't know why I am the way I am. I spend practically 50% of my day remembering shit from the first decade of my life. Maybe because I can only remember like 10 things for every 2 years of living. The things I choose to remember are horrible. It's like I'm fucking jewish or something.

I've been kind of struggling lately. Well for the past two years I guess. I used to be able to walk around spitting fire. I could assimilate my emotions into the events of my daily life. It was acceptable. It made sense. It came from my heart and it felt normal to be myself. Now it feels criminal to be myself.

When you take someone who is used to using expression to thrive, and you put them in a position where they could go to jail if they aren't literally being vague about everything that makes them feel anything.... You're going to see destruction. You're going to get what is happening to me.

I wonder why I don't have many friends. I mean, I feel like I am a friend to alot of people. I like seeing people. The few friends I do have are really good friends, but I still can't tell them my true feelings about things without practically horrifying them. OK. That's an exaggeration. I only horrify once a month. My point about friends comes down to me having to type my brain out to Space Ghost instead of sharing cookie recipes, erecting monoliths and exchanging fresh food from our gardens.

My frustration with life at this point, is probably due to the situation of my total isolation. But, I'm not stupid enough to think that if I put myself anywhere else on the planet, that my attitude would improve. In a couple of days, I will look at this entry and say, "What a fucking load of shit." What are you doing to beautify the god damned planet anyway? Nothing. Even the threads of life I weave through this computer are like wispy cotton candy strands that were too weak to make the pile. Too fragile to last near the humidity of a mouth, let alone make it inside to melt under pressure.

Sure, I'm not a total asshole, but Totality isn't known for being... total. It's pretty sick, how much hate I have inside me right now. Not this second, just this phase. People always say that you hate what you are. You eat what you are. You buy gifts for people that you want. You always want what you haven't got. You can't win for losing. How come if I don't like something thats fucked up and terrible, then I'm fucked up and terrible? That doesn't make sense. So, the whole argument about hate being bad... is based on the selectively discharged bullets of intimidation by intimation.

I have a huge heart. I want people to be content and healthy. I want my kid to take whatever the fuck she will ever need to take from me. I want my husband to be his own boss. I want my little brother to not be a fugitive. I want my mother to live forever and I want my father to stand trial. I want all of these things more than I want to take care of myself. I know this makes me damaged. I know I should strive to eat my Soilent Green, but holy hell I'm tired of not being fucking satisfied with ANYTHING. I think its because I'm not really contributing to anyone's life in a way that gives me harmony in exchange for the sacrifice... Could that be true?

Listening to music makes me right. Makes everything that I can't share literally, have meaning, and it dissolves my rigor.

Nurturing Phrenology or Poor Charlie Manson

"A consistent number of members from professions amongst the creative arts as a whole, suffer from more types of mental difficulties for longer periods than members of other professions."




I read that sentiment in a medical journal. It referenced the mental health of selected jazz musicians (who were meant to represent all musicians for the sake of the article). The power punch of the thesis involved (and was in my opinion, limited by) the listing of social disorders belonging to a handful of famed artists. The point the author made seemed founded in environmental elements for me, so I had a hard time not having violent thoughts as I found myself angered- but still falling under the audacious spell of their proposition. The fact that my ire was raised probably means that I, myself, am an unstable creative type, but I can think of several worse personalities to have. So.. what of it? The holes in the argument are huge, and I'm sick of presuming I'm crazy, because the beast of opposition prevails. And if you must know I privately maintain that the constructs of Society, in general, are totally fucked up.

So, I started to wonder, "Is any aspect of the musician vs. mental health issue genetic or the product of a learned response?" (nature vs. nurture).I understand the difference between the opposing scientific beliefs, but I was unable to glean a comprehensive conclusion from the article. The author only spoke about one tiny piece of art history – Jazz is, after all, a speck in time. An incredibly important one, no doubt, but what of the rest? What kind of people were the musicians in the dark ages? Was it only the rich cavemen who had spare skins to beat on and were capable of feeding their families and still got the kinky girls? Or were they all burnouts?


There are a countless number of artists who fell into depressing environments. Miles Davis, James Brown, Tina Turner, Charles Mingus, Jelly Roll Morton, Robert Johnson- just to name a few. And I didn't even have to leave the continent for that list, because I'd never make it back to my point before I found a new injustice. It would appear though, that regardless of whatever "mental problems" or social disorders that musicians have suffered, they aren't the members of society running around murdering people. That's what armies do. And, for the most part, mortality by occupation sees most musicians dying from heart failure like everyone else, with maybe an extra helping of drug overdoses, vehicular accidents, suicides and other causes. I jump to cause of death, because it's a natural stepping stone in the pursuit of defining the roots of casualty within the framework of musician vs. the world. And I don't think I am being dramatic.



What I started to unravel, as I looked further into the suggestion that musicians and artists were luckless, sensation seeking nihilists (who were deviant sufferers by extension of their craft alone) and were therefore prone to the "seedy" life, didn't really surprise me. As I departed the present day and started tripping over the carcasses of Harpsichords, I found myself weeding through tangled fields of music record, naming the typical Room 101 Masters as stable examples of how a musician should behave. Try as I might, I could find hardly anything on criminal activity or victimization of our classically-composing Forebearers. I was hoping for some Syphilitic duels or an execution by the King. Nothing! This doesn't mean that crime wasn't rampant among these guys. It just means that I didn't find it or History hasn't documented or preserved it for some reason.


Paganini, Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Mahler, Brahm, Wagner, Strauss, Chaikovsky, Bellini, Rossini, Monteverdi, Schubert, Rachmaninoff, Paganini, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Shostakovich, Philip Glass, Ravi Shankar, Irving Berlin, Ernest Hogan, Fats Waller ... all had parents who were either musical instructors or had their child studying as early as 2. They were either well off or dropped off at some private orphanage that created prodigies. Our "Masters" were bred in golden cages, and these dynamic show dogs became the base of our musical cheer ladder. They probably didn't even want the job, except that their 20 brothers and sisters needed to eat. My partner in music crime, Jonathan, says that Gesualdo wrote weird far-out stuff for his time and was also independently wealthy. To which I say, was he the exception to the rule then? The tradition of selectively cultivating artists continues today, but because Art isn't taken as seriously in our modern world culture (i.e.:no strong presence in curriculums), our "show dogs" are treated as the sickly shadow of their original progenitors. This obviously isn't fair, but until we replace the elitist literary idiots at Macmillan Industries and other Text Book publishing houses, children are always going to think that they have to write overtures from an incubator to be taken seriously. And while I'm rearranging the face of our history books, little girls need to start seeing pictures of women in those books too... The good and the bad of it.


I'm not saying that all musicians who were bred to play, don't deserve credit for their art. I do suggest however, that they were forced into roles by the powers that be, devastating powers that insulated them from the pain and beauty of life, and shut everyone else's pain and beauty out. I'm also not saying that we have no control over our own destinies. I am asserting the idea that we should always consider the complex environments that give us music before judging the music itself, and the bounty hunters of prodigious sound ought to spread the net some. I mean... MORE! Being incapable of separating the anthropology from the archaeology is what draws me to artists who have suffered through the production of their creations, while under more duress than others. It's too bad that billions of men and women have been not only denied access to music, but have also been robbed by all of our ancestors. Of everything they could have left, they left us with a legacy of forced agonies that we could never hope to top. But the true facts of life are bleeding all over us. I mean, shouldn't Little Johnny Leper get to be discovered as the prodigy he is before his fingers fall off? Sure that's philanthropic... but, it's mostly SMART. It's about getting more for all of us.


Since, I don't have the resources to travel the annals of all time looking for a complete and fair history covering every artist's work and their life-story, I can't make a justified conclusion about this theory that musicians are more prone to anything over another. Even though mysterious outsider artists have been flinging their blood Pollock style on cave walls forever, a large amount of historical record is based on assumptions and discriminations. Legend is highly speculative by nature, and I totally believe that the majority of our history IS legend. That was more of a sweeping emotional statement, than something I came up with using beakers and calculus, but I still believe it.


I don't have a conclusion here. Except that maybe, Class War has always been ON. You can't deny it. Stories always start out the same. Born Rich or Born Poor. So how does that figure into the general mental health of musicianship? It isn't a tidy package. Maybe when I have some time, I'll venture back to the places in history, where the crimes against the arts were even weirder. We'll ride our time machine back and spy on the punishments of creative types. We'll watch them having their skin scraped off with oyster shells and then the burning of the leftovers. Or maybe we could even sit in on one of those Gut-a-cow-and-sew-up-a-criminal-inside-to-die-in-the-rotting-carcass-at-high-noon parties, and wonder what their song meant.

I see the World as being full of scores of dead musical ghosts who never had the chance to play music. Maybe, every breath we take is the ether of a musical soul who was hung by the throat for his politics 3 thousand years ago. Maybe, every breath we let escape, is the floundering essence of cheated apparitions. I think it's easier to manage your vision today, but ghettos still remain filled with desperate children, who if given the chance could be that prodigy of this century. I am glad to be a part of this time period, where I have the opportunities I make for myself, but we have to help make BETTER opportunities for kids around us, because History is not that encouraging. And mental health is fucking relative during War time.

Nonetheless, I wondered how all of this related to, or directly affected our numbers amidst the "Mortality by Profession" charts. Because apparently, carelessly-driven, hyper-sensitive creative types can't avoid a party or a pill or any other gateway libation, that eventually sees them face down in a gutter of human disregard, slowly drained of opportunity. A mess of scribbled on napkins in their soiled pockets listing innumerable romantically charged failures.... Or so I figured. I made these two lists as I hunted for Sensationalist stories.

The first list is of some musical victims of homicide. I didn't include any Neanderthals, Highlanders, Friends to Vishnu or listings from the Ming Dynasty... (A couple of these guys weren't confirmed murders, but highly suspicious)

Murdered:

Darryl Abbot
Marc Blitzstein
Carlton Barret
King Curtis
Rhett Forrester
Marvin Gaye
Timur Kacharava
Al Jackson
John Lennon
Don Myrick
Blind Lemon Jefferson
Felix Pappalardi
John 'Jaco' Pastorius
Mia Zapata
Bobby Ramirez
Selena
James Sheppard
Peter Tosh
Rick Garberson
Johnny Ace
Sam Cooke
Samuel George Jr.
Cornelius Gunter
Lee Morgan
Terry Knight
Eddie Jefferson
Rudy Lewis
Øystein Aarseth
Jannie Pought
Stringbean
Stacy Sutherland
Tupac Shakur
Notorious B.I.G.
Walter Scott
Larry Williams
Countless rappers
Albert Ayler
Wardell Gray
Don Drummond
Brian Jones
Harry Choates
Lord Buckley
Bobby Fuller

Musicians Who Committed Crimes:

Vince Neil..
Steve Jones
Manson..
Jazzist Rosolino
Phil Spectre
Rick James
James Brown
Lead Belly
Varg Vikernes


Unsafe Sax

In closing, I just want to say that I learned something very significant once that changed the way I look at the world of the arts forever. Still-life paintings weren't always about the skill of the artist's depiction. They were about capturing the exotic fruits that wealth could afford. When fancy pants or "dandies" would come calling, they would marvel at the fruits in the paintings that were imported from far away places and had cost a fortune. So, the art was about it's social value, and the value was in the owner's ability to afford the fruit (and so also control) the artist making the painting. You think those poor artists wanted to waste their short lives painting fruit baskets? I'm not saying every artist lived by a for-hire credo, but Money sure as fuck changes things now doesn't it? So the next time you look at a still-life, don't assume it was painted for practice. How this relates to the mental health and wellness of musicians and artists through history, is obvious I think, but needs so much more attention to respectfully work out the implications. So, I apologize if I have dragged you into my quagmire of criticism only to be unsatisfied with my conclusions.

And, I'm not saying Charles Manson was a good musician by the way, but his mother DID sell him for a pitcher of beer when he was a boy.

Please enjoy this video of Jeff Beck and Seal covering Hendrix's Manic Depression to film footage of Taxi Driver.



This "Article" was posted on Nonalignment Pact February 28th 2007.

Black Dog

I've told this story over and over again in my head countless times. I am going to eliminate the emotion and just state the event.

A 13 year old girl waited at her bus stop one misty morning in Magnolia Texas, at the usual pre-dawn hour like any other day. She had hopes that she would do well in a spelling bee.

As the school bus took it's usual route after picking her up, on the dark trek through the tall forested back roads, the young girl caught an image that would never be erased from her mind.

Hanging from the rusted white ornate gateway of a private cemetery, down the street from a tenament of beautiful peacocks, hung a large black dog, by a noose and it's tongue seemed the starkest piece of horror in it's death. It fell toneless, past the broken neck.

The dog had not only been lynched, but also through its chest, protruded a pitchfork.

No one else in the neighborhood had any comment.

You got a license for that?

When I was in Anchorage for some medical training recently, I was trailing a Diabetic doctor as she saw patients. She looked kind of like Annie Lennox if Annie Lennox maybe had a hard life instead of the assumed easy one I think she must lead.

One of the patients had Down Syndrome. We went through all the initial questions. What has your blood sugar averaged this month? What are you eating? (Her husband had been forcing her to eat ice cream, literally.) Are you physically active? Do you still have a membership to the Y? Are you competing in the Special Olympics again? No? Why not? (Not enough money to pay the $10 fee at the Y) Are you taking your medication?

The woman was managing her diabetes well. She had a really sweet demeanor. She was thoughtful before she spoke.

At the end of the visit, she told the doctor that she had brought something for her. She pulled out a plastic bag and from it, she presented an orange hooded sweatshirt. It was a plain sweater. There wasn't a logo or some obnoxious advertisement on it.

" Do you remember when I was here last, how you said you liked my sweater that I was wearing? Well, I brought it for you to have," she said.

The doctor struggled. She looked at me, and in her eyes was a warning and a fear.

The doctor said, " Oh . No sweet heart, I liked it on you. You shouldn't give it to me. Thats very sweet though."

You know what I thought? Inside my head were legions of cells I thought were long-dead, screaming for the doctor to take the sweater. Take it and try it on. Model it in the hallway for colleagues, and gush over it... and maybe THEN decline for some lame ass reason. The pauses between them were too great, and the moment.. the opportunity to make this huge leap of trust and acceptance had passed, and now we were all treading water in a place that no one with any kind of compassion or position of judgment wants to be in.

So, in the awkward silence I told the patient, "It's an awesome sweater, but if the doctor wears it, she's gonna look way too orange."

The clinical visit is over, only I hear sobbing coming from the room as the young woman waits for the pharmacist to come and straighten out her meds. (Alaskan pharmacy students have to wear United States Naval Uniforms now, and probably 2/3 of their clients are intimidated by it.) That fact has nothing to do really with this scenario.

I call the doctor over and motion into the room.

The door shuts and traffic backs up. Patients waiting to get their consultations over with.

I wish I could tell you the specifics of the reason why the young woman was upset. Suffice it to say, that she was a victim of abuse, and she didn't have the tools to deal with it like others do.

The doctor made some calls to social workers and a ball got rolling, and there's no telling where that ball is now.

I don't think this occupation is my calling, but I do know one thing.

If the doctor had tried on that fucking sweater and acted pleased for like 2 seconds, that young woman would have gained some strength and a sense of importance that she was obviously accustomed to being denied. I think , she needed the hospital AT LEAST to show some interest in her grace. Some might argue, that acknowledging personal needs like this can really trouble the integrity of a physician/patient relationship. And to that I say, Suck a Billy Jack. Use your goddamned head. People need to be treated like people.

I used to be a hater of Van Gogh.

Some time ago I went to the Art Institute of Chicago. I had been pegged as an “outsider artist” at that time, and kind of embraced it because I didn’t have a choice, and didn’t want to be associated with the “insider artists.” My impressions or feelings on Art at that time in my life, were not special emotions based on any kind of educated theory really. They were the identical impressions or feelings I spread thinly across the board for any given topic or scenario. Its fair to say I was super sardonic, and not a thing or a creature was safe from me.

So on this one particular day, I went to the museum. I don’t even remember if I went alone or not. I can tell you that I was scared. I was embarrassed. And I was secretly elated to the point of distraction. But over these dumb histrionics, was a more discriminating force within me, Anger. And Anger, was definitely along for the ride that day. Anger, was just radiating from me and I may as well have been a red light. I am going to attempt to explain what it is about me, that made me feel that way on that day. I don’t think it was a sunny day, but I don’t remember rain.

I wanted to be invisible so that I could walk through all the rooms without eyes on me, while I had this experience. I could hang my nose within an inch of the exhibits and no one would arrest me. I could lay down and just stare at paintings. Its almost as if I was suddenly a barbarian, for the amount of one dimensional energy I poured into just desiring these basic actions. The problem was that I had so much to learn, and so many limitations. Me Vs Me. One on one. Anger.

So you see, I wasn’t angry because I hated the modern institutionalization of the arts, from some kind of twisted outsider perspective, like you might assume. I was angry because I knew this was going to be a deeply personal experience and I had two hours or some shit to have it in. I would have to be institutionalized if that was even possible. The task before me, was to experience miles and miles of these exhibited objects. Objects made with unknown meanings, by men and women long ago dead and buried. Men and women who were legends and lived during very different times. Men and women who had to create things to the extent that they would rather die than live without that right. How can you be critical of Art? And, what’s your point?
Don’t cheat yourself.

During this phase of my life, I seemed to have chosen the sad ability to remember approximately one memory for every few months of my life, and I was a sober individual as I made my way through the years. The reason for this horrible lack of memories can be blamed squarely on the fact that my emotions and my heart were running the show like a fucking death squad, spraying every experience with blinding sentiment. Which is why, I can only tell you about one piece of art that I saw on that day. The one piece of art that made me want to cry.

I never understood why Vincent Van Gogh was famous. I don’t suggest that I understand now, in any total way why he was famous. I thought his paintings were ugly. The content didn’t even excite me after learning about his life. He was an artist who was part of the Art 101 Outline, and I preferred the works of other artists. I didn’t think that I would leave the Art Institute of Chicago with a broken heart because I saw one of his paintings. But I did.

I saw his Self-Portrait. The paint was literally swimming like pixels. Every inch of the canvas was alive with his ageless spirit, and thats not something I have ever said, or ever hoped to say honestly.. but... It crushed me. I could feel my anger being zapped by compassion. I have nothing but compassion for Van Gogh now because I truly experienced his artwork up close, and it marked me. I had been deceived by the whole world for so long. I had deceived myself as well. Van Gogh was amazing and how could I have missed that? One on one. Experience.

Even though I know there was serious art all through the museum for me to get with, I am satisfied with my experience there. I’d love to go back for a second chance, and it would be great to hit The Mutter Museum in Philadelphia again while I’m at it. These places play a crucial role in our society, which in greener days, I would have shot the bird at. I learned something very important when I visited these Museums. I can’t tell you what that is exactly, because I am still cultivating it, and its final yield escapes me still. I do know, that I am no one to be judging, and maybe, you aren’t either.

Bounty of Contexts

"Deconstruction came along and said, basically, you're all wrong. (It's very hard to trump that.) Deconstruction maintained that all meaning is context-dependent, and the contexts are boundless. There is thus no way to control, or even finally to determine, meaning-and thus both art and criticism spin endlessly out of control and into the space of unrelenting ambiguity, never to be seen from or heard from again."

"Postmodern deconstruction, it has finally been realized, leads precisely and inevitability to nihilism: there is no genuine meaning anywhere, only nested deceptions." -Ken Wilbur-The Eye of The Spirit

Yeah. Ok. So.

Who I am, is totally the creation of my destruction, by way of X .


I like to call the brief swatting at their heads, comraderie.



My heavy noise and my heavy heart beat.