1/24/08

the bedlam in goliath

pre-ordered the disc, so what the hell, i'll listen to the leak, cause i found one that seems good quality - so, a bowl, a shot of sauza, headphones, darkness:

superficially, it sounds like amputechture, but at a deep level it's most like deloused – omar flavour injected all the way, of course – most prog album yet, hooray! major time dilation happening, i'm halfway through the second song, and feel like i've listened to a whole album already, in a good way – audaciously dense in sounds and ideas – i played the album on some mediocre speakers and it was impenetrable, confusing, noisy and non-musical, but it’s actually extremely well produced, well thought out, musical and melodic – it just demands a good system and a proper listening experience, or it won’t betray its secrets – like i’m listening to metatron at 5:45 the second time through – first time was utterly confusing, now i see that there’s actually a key shift a whole tone up – knowing that, it sounds perfect, the bass really hammers it home, it’s articulated precisely, but there’s so much going on, it doesn’t come across right away, similar to amp in that sense – some might consider it a flaw, but being the rabid mars volta fan i am, i see it as a necessary evolution – it rocks too, holy fuck this album rocks – not that it’s trying to rock, like amputechture was trying a little too hard to rock, but this one just happens to rock out, as the song requires, which is often – love love love the production – gorgeous sound, cinematic sound, bright, synesthetic, visual – the concept sounded like stupid bullshit to me, but now i can actually hear it, feel it, verbal expression being inane and inadequate, but as an album! with omar’s artistry… now i can believe there might be something to the concept that wasn’t put across in that horribly written essay – if nothing else, i can certainly hear and feel it as an unwanted yet partially-perversely-desired invasion of ghostly and wounded consciousness creeping subtly into someone’s sanctuary from some other dimension

wax simulacra, the only song i heard before this listen now fits perfectly in context – i like amp, but i LOVE bedlam, bursting, rich, hallucinogenic, some parts merzbowian, great use of distortion – holy shit, it's rapid fire tollbooth transformed – ikey is awesome on this – goliath is orgasmic, a giant of a song – assimilating cedric's melodic bent, his blues scale in the gravity well of a rogue star, extra galactic gospel

tourniquet man is revelatory, they've never sounded quite like this before – brings to mind the mellow parts of a nevermore album – certainly also recalls the sublime slow songs from previous albums, asilos, miranda, etc. – mainly is a vehicle for fiendish vocal deformation – been so long since the last time they slayed me with new, polished material, i forgot how weird and inventive they are – so used to the old stuff

thomas pridgen is crushing it – drum sound isn't as devastating as it was on deloused, unfortunately, but is meatier than on amputechture – a testament to omar's confidence/ego to delegate a drummer of pridgen’s skill to a role that subservient – maybe why jon left, wasn’t content to be a slave – omar is pharaoh, though, you know? he builds large – has the gall to make foundations with guitars – long long album, like a tantric orgasm – ourobourus throws me for a loop, another sound i didn't know the band was capable of – speed metal? reminding me of megadeth – trouble processing, then it gets into another orgasmic chorus, yes! soulful sound parsed through technical devices, techniques, manipulation, like the twitch of a finger or the dissection of a waveform

i'm wondering if soothsayer is sampled from some portable recorder in omar's travels – seriously, this music makes me see crazy things, moreso than what i see without the mars volta, it's like they're tugging on archetypal strings that resonate inside me – not listening to the words, but it's so expressive on every level, every instrument, every sound, every tweak – continuing to make use of horns, mind-boggling flute interludes – juan with his slash and burn bass, a machete – totally omar guitars – i don't care what anyone says, i love his playing – i’ll take his inimitable style over a more polished technician any day – not that omar isn’t technical, but he’s about as far from textbook as you can get – the lead – cedric and omar as leads – strange combination, sometimes complimentary, sometimes perverse, always fascinating

goddayum, a new album from this band never fails to inspire – now i want to record great music again – fantastic stuff – i don't think any future album can affect me like frances and deloused, due to them being in that golden oldies age, when everything was perfect and innocent, but their latest record is probably as good as anything they've ever done, and that's saying something

casper the friendly ghost with rocket feet


bad associations
in everything
especially facebook
that sinking feeling upon opening
the cesspool, all these people
i sort of know, know too well
playing in their own filth
open sewers
disappointments arranged in pretty patterns
a vast swathe of write-off

my circumstances get better
and my head gets worse
coming home from work to my new house
with a whine to end the night
like every other night
what’s wrong?
how can i say it in a way that doesn’t betray
what an awful person i am?
let’s say poisoned, sick
can you believe a self-diagnosis?
strawberry river syndrome, the symptoms
of which include syringe-hugging self-portraits
where is my medicine?
i’ve self-medicated with opiates
sent love letters, lust letters
the righteous theme
playing in the relative major of D minor
woke up and worried
life confirmed the dread
said i’d be better off dead
cause my methods don’t work
and i have no function

every day several people at work ask me how's it going?
how’re you doing?
i say not bad
pretty good
doesn't feel right to actually answer the question
today i used less sugar
and said mediocre
and got a weird look, like
tmi or something
she wanted a definition
i said absence of greatness
and got a weirder look

nothing feels right
except feeling wrong
feeling wrong feels right
like it's the only way to feel

when i talk to people it stings
it’s so contrived
after it’s over i ache
it’s so empty
the things it could be, almost was
almost, always almost

i watched my friend descend
into a paranoid hell of his own making
now i watch myself do the same
entropy, health was anomaly
seeing the downward spiral
and spiraling down anyway
like emotions will always overpower intellect
that useless autistic weakling

neuroses grow like cancer
synthetic matter, synthetic thought
a cure for cancer? we are cancer
okay, i’m cancer, you’re fairy dust
i’ll grant you that, and you’ll grant me
as many wishes as i want
wishes in and of themselves
a resource that will last a lifetime
a resource i’ll burn through like
a pack of matinees, a wishpack a day
and when i’ve reached my last wish
when i don’t care enough to wish anymore
that will be my death
glorious apathy
the death gnosis
knowledge that there is nothing worth
wishing for anyway, when reality
has constricted to the narrow cataract perception
of this long-survived tumour
one for the almanac
rendered redundant in the next edition
just another double octogenarian
hushed senile struldbrug
someone’s gotta be cancer
otherwise how would you know that you’re fairy dust?

it's so horrible to think
anybody owes me anything
yeah, look at me
bringing so much sunshine into everyone's life
well i tried, i did try, oh i wanted to
but cancer has no function
and i'm an endorphin addict with no connection, okay?
that's why i'm so pathetic
because i can’t subsist on table scraps
still on the floor of the opium den
watching thin hallucinations
the ones i’ve seen before
running low on synonyms
recycling urine

apathy is malicious, to me
i require some sort of respect
as the magic of the past fades further into memory
like it was some lucky charm that wore off
microcosm of a petroleum-addicted society
divine death of a canary in a cage
sublime to save the miners
hacking coal cough, how noble
emperor norton incarnate
with my own currency, that no one will recognize
infuriating and depressing, what gives? what changed?
is it me or the world?
is it endorphins, is that what changed?
cause i know it would be so different
if i had those, the real ones, nature’s
prime mover
prime numbers make me sad
i’m divisible by thirteen

1/23/08

i won’t try to make sense of it anymore
i’ll channel frustration
intensify the end of an orgasm
then eat some processed food
and draw a syringe logo
for a hollow manifesto

delirium and delusion
in the absence of anything real
chronic sensory deprivation

1/21/08

in retrospect, i shouldn't have read that last one

It's meaningful because it's the title. Sentence case slipped. Will regain an arbitrary foothold. Contradictory binary code, it's one or nothing, attempts at both short circuit an already short circuit. Confusion isn’t confusing enough, means too much. Transcribing as poetry, like it's art or something. Any perception is, in the right context. Machine language. Plug into me. I tried to plug into you. What did I do? Didn't drink enough. Not the natural intoxicated attempt. What god intended. Proof he loves us and wants us to be happy.

Enjoy your politics. Incidentally. Yeah, I'm a political junkie too, like people are football fans. It's not like I'm involved. I will be involved when it gets down to it, more than I want to be. Involved, down to the tripwire, the necessary tripwire. That'll be my death, on my overcast afternoon walk in the remilitarized zone, one of those purposeless walks, into a purposeless death, the poor bumbler who hit the tripwire. When paths must be blocked with landmines, because not laying mines is a worse alternative, when the moral code is binary. It's not something I like to think about. I'd rather think of poppies. But enjoy propping up the mormon with the electric handshake. Good luck. He might have a prayer, maybe too many of them. Too many prayers and not enough celebrity. Cause star power is what wins elections, these days. It's a popularity contest. In a business context. That's how you become king - you don't kill people personally, you aren't expected to get your hands dirty. I had the decency not to spam forums with my odious political affiliation - yay me, not garish but dullened. Politics stinks, but so does everything else. Down with everything. Even the winner is a rat.

deleted a whole other post - it wasn't adorned enough - it was like a jandek rant - it embarrassed me - i should have done like the jandek and release it as an album - instead i will release an album, finally, with cover art and everything, in 2012, a sublimely worked out solo statement, focus grouped for the benefit of my demented demographic, the ones who like alliterations and dissonance - mellow with mike, i relate to those folks in middle age burnout, less and less apologetic about their concern with comfort

such a sad time... for me
and what does anyone owe me?
i don't know, but i'm so empty
but i don't extrapolate, cause my only sunshine
is an ex-patriot, gone from my country
gone for good, and happy
and it's not that everything's fake and hollow
no, it's worse than that
there are real things
that aren't for me
that torture me with their reality


yeah, that's more like a jandek rant, except slathered with the gravy
of my personal idiosyncratic idiocy
believe the hype
i will hypodermically love you
from the bottom of my plantation

hand in hand and we'll jump right into that pool

the astute of you, that is, blogger scholars
of the future, you precocious year 2012 time travelers
will notice that this is the season
for quoting random metal lyrics
the up-level irony being that people
those not-schooled in period metal
will take these out of context references
for profound statements

i did not mean to blow your mind
but that shit happens all the time

1/17/08

waking death

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X

1/13/08

~the strawberry river~

the strawberry river
~the strawberry river effect
~~the strawberry river syndrome
~~~how quickly it fades
to carbon monoxide clouds

joyce said he could explain every word - DID he explain ANY word, or did he leave that to others? as others so eagerly did, an exegesal free for all, a shared joycean hallucination, a ravgravy floatilla

DID the bitch write me ANY sonnet? i think not - and i don't think i was an equal partner in the great delusion of self - but i did reach out quickly and enthusiastically, given the erroneous hint of possibility, for the mirage, between drug deliriums, an endorphin rush, a cruelly deceptive hallucination, but there was facilitation on the other end of the socket, just enough for a spark, a shock, and a burn - no power - electric ignorance - mastering the magic of illusion - perhaps enough for another round, another stupid card trick that won't prove prophetic but will prove pathetic, to seven decimals, and i'll show my work

please, some charity for the moat people - the wretched wrecks on the moatbeach - can you spare another magic trick? see look - there's a guy with thick arms - it all makes sense now ~ so maybe i'll wait, till the music's over ~ persona non grata, sitting alone in the corner of the bar - ten dollars makes a difference - i'll buy happiness - embrace the garish path - hi, we're the pick of destiny - oh look, you found the charity case - congratulations - but our princess is in another castle

1/10/08

Muffin Mother

Oh, it's terrible - the king has been transformed! Please find the magic wand so we can change him back!

A new pen works nice - for modern redundancy. Which doesn't feel "modern" anymore. There is no feeling anymore. Just Rabbithole Malarkey. Bring back the Russian Melancholy. Leave the Rabbithole Malarkey. I want to hear the night wind again.

Oh people that populate this pathetic life, oh friends, TRAITORS, traders, dealers in junk bonds: not these tones. Let us raise our voices in more pleasing and joyful sounds! Tell me more of the Miraculous Mother Mary in a Muffin - your memory of the virgin's appearance in pastry, in the unholy sanctuary of a bakery, where workers cursed freely. Why common scoffers won't understand boddhisatva gawkers at divinity in chaos. How we're not the morons you think we are, because of our hyping of the Blessed Virgin in the Muffin. How a sign from God is personalizing the uncountable chainlinks of thermodynamic flux, to produce, TODAY of all DAYS, the miracle of Mary! Like shakespeare from a monkey. Why not worship that? Yes, too bad I can't explain it like I could in the old days, when I was sharper and remembered my rap. Quite a burden, being the elder statesmen, and senile spokesman, of religious reverie for its own sake.

Remember when it came out of the woodwork? Listening to a Haydn scale on vinyl, committed to the physical conveyance of a spinning record, a piano sonata on a wax cylinder, sitting next to the parents' stereo at night with headphones, paranoid, eyes darting around, making sure no one could see. When the run was magic. A scale! The artistry, running like a river, a fun-run.

Now the run is a done run, so sayeth the server. The run is just a run, and the feeling has run out of it. Ear tickled, tickled, tickled numb - run is just a run. Thanks for telling me. What do you suggest instead?

And there you have your answer - instantly. Get out of my head. Don't distract me from my speaking engagements with my appreciative minions. Flying monkeys.

1/08/08

Vacuous Scheme

Hey ho – starting off in a way that may facilitate future endorphinistic algorithms – is there an endorphistic future? I’d serve it if I can. New server girl’s got haesel hair, drives me wild. Would like to see her again, might have to wait a while. Forgot how the other resemblances manifested, exactly. More than just the hair though. It’s her first day. She’s a little nervy but a confident newbie. Hyper sociability, deep cool beneath, with that same girlywoman countenance as the other one I’m thinking of. If I’m arrogant enough to think I sense integrity – I do.

A.K.A.

The Girl with the Haesel Hair. No prelude here, haha. No prelude in the plaza.

I’m known as the guy who doesn’t talk. More than a kernel of truth in that. It’s insecurity. Don’t ever want to be on the unanswered side. I will only allow that with someone very special – who will then drive me to despair. I don’t let just anyone do that. Though maybe I should. Make everyone special, and therefore not special. Spend my entire social life on junk bonds. There’s a fucking idea.

Damnit, writing makes me tired. I could fall asleep right here, leaning over the counter, despite the morning’s caffeine megadose. I don’t want to write about it – but I need a nap. Oh yes I do. Droopy eyes. Leaning closer to my notebook in a soporific downward drift. Sleep would be so good. So so so good. Half lids.

I want to take a siesta. Like Vito Spatafore. Used to the mafia hardlife. Not used to the worker’s hardlife. Able to deal with violence and murder. But not tedium and tiredness, on a cold and endless winter morning, in rural New Hampshire. Commanding himself not to look at his watch – because he knows he’s desperately, hopefully overestimating how much time has passed – not time for lunch yet – but maybe… FUCK! Not even close.

Plates rattling, but I’m sitting on the lower counter like some postured dishgnome who has made his home in the pit, unkempt, uncaring, wet clothes. So I don’t see who’s there. Could be Haesel Hair, I don’t know. Wow, she offered to bring me something to drink. No one’s ever done that. I love newbies.

1/07/08

flat

distorted figures walk the streets
it’s 1999

the woman who hates everything i like
when i like anything
does she even like anything
except her own sense of superiority?
virtually every time she opens her mouth
some obnoxious, arrogant, condescending
pseudo-sophisticated bullshit spills out
but why should i care?

novelty waves make me sea-sick
seem merely dense folds of habit
and twitching externally, i accidentally
brush up against a body, a stranger's hand
or a strange friend's hand
or i don't know what

anyway, i don't feel like posting any music
it's either depression or mania
or labour, if i can work for something
when there's nothing to spend
maybe that's a third way

it's good to sink
in a reliable manner
the guilt fades, mostly
along with any possibility of respect
comfort in mediocrity
and lack of responsibility
beholden to nothing but gravity
why am i writing this? i don't know
because i want to bury the mania, i guess
back to the flat plane of no possibility

the drug obsession
is not in good taste, i will be the first to admit that
but life is an ugly thing that doesn’t
pay homage to human aesthetics when it sprouts
between sculpted stone cracks
and dogs eat their own shit
and then vomit, and as far as nature is concerned
everything’s working fine, the gag reflex
kicked in before toxification
and zooming in on a certain layer of life
that is as intricate, important and vital as any other
in its bio-chemical perturbations and machinations
is as valid
as a predilection toward ecological metaphors
or the writer’s feedback loop
or whatever

1/06/08

when it rains it pours

was just thinking, and really FEELING, that mckenna was so right about there being novelty waves - i dunno if it's a "timewave" exactly, his invisible landscape idea is a little far-fetched, albeit brilliant -- but he is right about that ebb and flow quality - some moments just seem to hold way more possibility, and new things build on each other - and other moments seem weighted down by the gravity of habit - i could even buy that this ebb and flow is encoded in the I Ching - i guess to my mind, it's not an invisible landscape, but more the "trendlessly fluctuating" process - an explanation he found laughable - reductio ad absurdum - not that i can't believe in telos, but i don't see any explanation beyond feedback loops from this vantage - i don't have the mind that he had - broad and deep - funny, i'm still a mckenna fanboy - but it took a novelty wave to remind me - a habit that hasn't died, heh

was also thinking the title of shpongle's last album "nothing lasts... but nothing is lost" is so perfectly in keeping with mckenna's synthesis of philosophy - he said the hardest lesson you learn is that everything changes - crumbles - the river - but there is the superstructure of information, machine elves beckoning beyond the blood brain barrier, if you can believe in that sort of thing – a tryptamine surplus helps - maybe we should ration intentional chocolate - that'll be my welfare cosmos, when i'm elected dictator for life, in the democratic republic of the universe

i still think the singularity of ultimate novelty is way behind schedule – i’m not looking to 2012 – i think when that year rolls around, i’ll be done with drugs and partying – i sure hope so – i’ll drink wine, only with meals, and i’ll know what goes with what, and i’ll read books again, and i’ll eat health food, and have a few fashionable boycotts, and i’ll have some job that’s beyond the service sector but not something i could call a career, but a niche in the local economy, that requires a small amount of skill, maybe organizational, and i’ll have a jaded but not too jaded fiancĂ© who’s pretty, but not hot, and almost but not quite as neurotic as me

1/01/08

grace did not shine on me

voidful
buried icaro

don't worry
i won't download any more

my instinct is to recoil at your voice
i'm sorry that's what i do
cause what's under the surface
is something i won't even attempt
to describe

but i'm glad it's there
almost always there

i'm glad i kept it to myself

but the icaro is buried
i still haven't learned to live
with that void
Well, now THAT was a psychedelic trip!!!

Much more than I bargained for.
Was just gonna lie down and hopefully see some cool shit
but holy living fuck was that intense
on a par with any shroom or acid trip I’ve ever had


total breakdown
full on hallucinations, seething currents of colour
contoured, creased, self-effacing folds of
blood-pooled personal aesthetic, THAT space…
except introduce, into the mix
my ex, calling out of the blue


wow
puked my guts out, synesthetic puked freakout

feared for my sanity
thought i’d lost it completely, out of time, out of ego, who am i, who am i supposed to be? imperative, vague sense i could get something out of this, but impossible, horrible tension, even after purging physically, life is an impossibly crazed dynamic, impossible to feel, grating dichotomy, “cool” lost its relevance, had nothing to hold together

so i reached out for whoever was there, she was there, on the phone
was actually good, novelty, and yet old timey
sick hallucinogenic intertwine
but amid the chaos, searching for something that was healthy, that still feels vital

something before and after the giggling fit of the absurd intermediary

always opportunities for self delusion, isn’t that all there is?
so much of the time wrapped up in platitudes, like even now
but turn your senses up to 1000%, and then… behold… too much
too damned much

kind of nice aftermath though, a tryptamine afterglow
like i’m refreshed, blank slate, can be a different person now
i did totally flip out, seemed inevitable, but she was there
so there was a certain style to it, when we did things together
when she took me places, and put clothes on me

and i took her places, in my head

well, now i can do something pedestrian
like drink beer, but i feel like i actually did something good for my head
taking that DPT, like it wasn’t a horrible mistake
even though it made me puke, and felt wrong
but it did remind me of how illusory everything is

with tryptamines, the sickness is the first thing you feel
and then the sublime radiates outward after that initial conflict
giving possibility to life, it’s a reverse hangover

whereas with most other drugs
the feeling of possibility is the first thing you feel
and then it fades, and turn artificial

tryptamines are good that way, they leave you with something

that was a nice goodbye to DPT, probably my last trip with that chemical
my first real psychedelic trip in years, nevermind that stuff with k
which is another thing in itself, but with less bearing on waking life
but getting back to the tryptamine for one last hurrah
was a fitting tribute, a grotesque and hallucinogenically riotous farewell
yeah, it was enlightening, no bullshit – and i must give my past trips their due as well – they were all serious high stakes territory – no fooling around, no happy go lucky kiddie trips – they all brought me to that place – of hyper context and sensory overload.

I’m actually enjoying the tryptamine post-trip glow - the body buzz – now that the horror is over – just happy to be alive. There was a lot of potential there. I’m accustomed to slaving for old patterns. I’m horrible that way – I’ve got a memory. I’ve got etchings. I cut deep. I go over the patterns, wear them into grooves.

Hey, I gave myself plenty of time to recover, at least. Yeah, I’m back to the old paradigm drugs, the booze – the ones that go with this paradigm. The dao isn’t as bright as it used to be. Those innocent times. I was ultimately innocent and ugly a couple of hours ago. I’m wired to respond in a finicky freakout way.

Back to black and white.
man, that dpt powder is some nasty shit
i’d forgotten how bad it is
dayum, ugh

if i can get through the next ten minutes
what ever happens after should be a cakewalk
ew, fucking eww
so gross, the taste, the feeling

The Twin Gears of Cringe and Cling

Donating. Actually doing something - an interaction - over the web - financial transaction, christmas shopping, or sort of gesturing to chri...