Week 174: Clean Up

I think only one person reads this. My apologies to you. I’m gonna unload posts that I meant to write, but never did and probably won’t. It will be unreadable. Apologies again. But it will clean up the queue.

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Try to get the words, to do something more, more than signify, more than emote, more than be a Dadaist experiment. Try different combinations, but understanding is important to make the words not be just a deserted forest. See, that was a terrible sentence, because meaning ruins it, but not meaning in and of itself, just that meaning.

There’s so much music these days. Most of it is noise. How do we fit into the noise? What part do we play in the noise as a whole? Turn off the stereos and TVs, throw away the CDs and LPs and MP3s. Go back to the family piano and only hear music played for our family. But family now spreads over more miles that the sound of a piano can reach. Virtual families gather ’round a virtual piano.

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She calls every day. Five minutes. Only five minutes. Just a little longer than most 45s. She calls when no one is here. Leaves messages. Talks to the answering machine. Sometimes it’s just one call. Sometimes it’s 20 calls. Sometimes she’s calm. Sometimes she screams bloody murder and worse profanities at the people who put her in the situation she’s in. It’s crazy. I’ve learned her story over time, listening to these short messages, one after the other, day after day. Our voice mail system doesn’t allow us to erase the message in the middle, you have to listen to the end, though one can speed it up to a chipmunk style speed, which makes her words run into each other like desperation. One day she’s going to get tired of calling.

***

When he walked by me as I stood waiting for the bus, and I reached out to him and shook his hand enthusiastically saying, hey man, how are you? sincerely. Well, I thought he was someone else. I thought he was the guy who a few nights before had vomited all over the booth at the bar. He was sitting borrachisimo but quietly, alone at a booth. So I left him alone, he wasn’t sleeping or passed out, but I wouldn’t serve him anymore, and no need to send him out into the night like that. By the time I closed up, he was gone and imagine my surprise when I went by the booth and noticed that he had puked all over it. Imagine my double surprise when I realize he had left a fifty carefully sitting under an empty bottle like a tip. That’s what you call a yuk & yay.

So when I saw him walking down the street, I wanted to say gracias. But it was someone else, who looked like that guy. Someone else who works in the same building as my other job. Someone else who I had now enthusiastically greeted like he was a good friend. And now, every time we see each other in the building, I say hi in the normal way that strangers say hi to each other. And he looks at me with wonder and maybe a little disappointment or relief that the warmth of friendship that I showed that day has disappeared.

***

My friend’s dad hates music. He does not allow it being played at his house unless it is the background and incidental music of television shows. Mostly the news. My friend’s dad thinks music softens the spirit. Makes you lazy, weak, susceptible. He thinks those are bad things. He is old and his way has earned him several houses in various locations around the world. So there is no arguing the point with him. He’s been this way for a long time. Probably since rock and roll started freeing minds and cranking out hippies. My friend of course turned out 100% hippie. But now, in these days of complete music over-saturation, his home is an oasis of silence. Not just because you won’t hear any music while you’re there, but because you won’t see a single recording of music, not a CD, not an LP, not a stray cassette. You won’t see a stereo either, not even a small radio. Have you ever noticed that stereos and radios play music even when they are turned off? I think his house is the only place you would notice that. Cause bringing in a contraband ipod in your pocket, you’ll be able to hear music without turning it on. It’s an aural hallucination of the potentiality of music. He can hear it too. And he told me to please leave the ipod in the car. My bad. Disrupting the beautiful silence with music equipment. What about the voice? I ask jokingly. Should I leave that outside too? Do I need to make sure what I’m saying does not modulate, what if i suddenly started talking in a sing-songy way… he cut me off with a hand gesture. Don’t be silly. And please don’t talk in a sing-songy way. Of course the minute someone says that, all I want to do is say shedoobie, shattered, shattered.

***

Sometime around the time I was in high school (1980-1984), my mom told me that Marvin Gaye had been killed by his dad. I remember, because Sexual Healing had just come out and he was riding the billboard charts and we both thought it was so sad that he had been killed, by his dad nonetheless, right as his career was taking off again. So sad. John Lennon had been killed just a few years before and we both felt something must be wrong that people are killing these great musicians.

This was a very confusing event in my life because years later, sometime in the late 90s, someone told me Marvin Gaye had been killed by his dad. I told them, of course, years ago. And they said, no, just yesterday. And sure enough, there it was on the paper. So for years I’ve thought that I had imagined the conversation me and my mom had in the mid 80s. But it turns out that he had died in 1984 and that what I must have imagined was the later conversation and having seen it on the paper. What’s Going On is right. Time is a motherfucker. Wait, that line isn’t on the song?

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La Maza
por Silvio Rodriguez

Si no creyera en la locura de la garganta del sinsonte
si no creyera que en el monte se esconde el trino y la pavura
si no creyera en la balanza en la razón del equilibrio
si no creyera en el delirio si no creyera en la esperanza
si no creyera en lo que agencio si no creyera en el camino
si no creyera en el sonido si no creyera en mi silencio

qué cosa fuera, que cosa fuera la maza sin cantera
un amasijo hecho de cuerdas y tendones
un revoltijo de carne con madera
un instrumento sin mejores resplandores
qué lucecitas montadas para escena
qué cosa fuera, corazón, qué cosa fuera
qué cosa fuera la maza sin cantera

un testaferro del traidor de los aplausos
un servidor de pasado en copa nueva
un eternizador de dioses del ocaso
júbilo hervido con trapo y lentejuela

qué cosa fuera, corazón, qué cosa fuera
qué cosa fuera la maza sin cantera

si no creyera en lo más duro si no creyera en el deseo
si no creyera en lo que creo si no creyera en algo puro
si no creyera en cada herida si no creyera en la que ronde
si no creyera en lo que esconde hacerse hermano de la vida
si no creyera en quien me escucha si no creyera en lo que duele
si no creyera en lo que quede si no creyera en lo que lucha

qué cosa fuera, que cosa fuera la maza sin cantera
un amasijo hecho de cuerdas y tendones
un revoltijo de carne con madera
un instrumento sin mejores resplandores
qué lucecitas montadas para escena

qué cosa fuera, corazón, qué cosa fuera
qué cosa fuera la maza sin cantera

un testaferro del traidor de los aplausos
un servidor de pasado en copa nueva
un eternizador de dioses del ocaso
júbilo hervido con trapo y lentejuela

qué cosa fuera, corazón, qué cosa fuera
qué cosa fuera la maza sin cantera.

***

This post was written last Thursday, but it’s being posted this Thursday which is no longer Thursday, along with this Thursday’s post. Last Thursday’s post went near some black holes and lost a week as a result ended up running into this Thursday’s post as if it was last Thursday. Last Thursday not noticing the lost week, mistook this Thursday’s post as an invader on last Thursday’s position and therefore would not listen to this Thursday’s post request that last Thursday’s post retire having missed it’s day. They spent so much time arguing that another Thursday post came by and told them to cut it off that it was now next Thursday and they both had missed their days, and needed to get off his Thursday. The others looked at next Thursday and said, no, no way, you ain’t even come around yet. Wait your turn. The argument escalated and before long, there was a multitude of Thursdays all claiming this was their Thursday. At which point someone threw a punch, bottles and chairs followed, and soon there was a full on bar brawl between a bunch of Thursdays, and this is the result.

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What’s that you say? You’re gonna pop a cap in Sancho and slap that heina down? Just like Bob would’ve done, right? Sneaky. Violence and death to a happy reggae beat. Sneaky pop music.