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Saturday, March first, 2014
posted morning of March first, 2014: Respond
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So there you are with about sixty other Fegmaniax sitting on
folding chairs in
Mark C.'s studio in Freehold (Central Jersey -- just around the corner
from where Springsteen went to high school), everybody's introducing
themselves and chatting and feeling psyched for the evening's show. And
Robyn Hitchcock comes in! He notes as he walks up to the stage how this
venue is a bit like an airplane cabin -- five seats on each side, please
keep the center aisle clear; take time to locate the exit nearest you, and
if you need to use the restroom, please use the appropriate one for your
class. If you think somebody else paid more for their ticket than you did
for yours, defer to them. "So everybody was here last time, right? ..." He takes off his coat and picks up his
guitar; wearing a hot pink shirt with embroidery and a green scarf that
gets tangled in the strap as he takes it off. "I don't wear glasses when
I'm performing, I just wanted to see you for a moment -- now I'll return to
my womblike state of myopia," and hangs his specs off the side of a lamp
next to the mic stand, and starts to play. "You'll never have the damned
thing out," he sings, and you sink into the beat of Surgery
(Gotta Let Ths Hen Out!, 1985†).
"This is a song about the emotional baggage you carry with you from
one relationship to another. I didn't figure that out for about 20 years
after I wrote it. Could you give me some delay on the vocals here, Mark,
this is sort of a rock & roll sea chanty." The Ghost
Ship (You & Oblivion, 1995). I wonder where my love has
been, tonight -- "Just imagine I'm Art Garfunkel:" Swirling
(Queen Elvis, 1989), which "I wrote when I was in the middle of
splitting up with someone, and also splitting up with with the second
person... it was a memorable experience." He explains how we
have to be angry, or we wouldn't be alive -- so "do you indulge
your quite justified rage at existence, or bite the bullet and inherit the
earth?"
From here he moves straight into The Devil's
Coachman (also from Queen Elvis). A bit of a digression
here about how his guitar strings are all worn out -- just yesterday they
were fresh and new, like tulips! "But thrash on tulips for a few hours,
they're not tulips anymore. You're just beatin' on that daffodil, baby! ...I
see we're just over Iceland now." Travel in the future, you learn, will be
much easier: just reduce yourself to a powder and FedEx yourself to your
destination to be rehydrated. "Wilbur! You're here! Welcome to Marin
County." All you've got to do is Ride... (Perspex Island, 1991) "Oxycontin
for mama, baby Jesus for the rest of us:" Madonna of the
Wasps (Queen Elvis again), going out to P. Buck.
"The practice known as vudu has been around for a long time. (Like
most things.) When you wish ill on somebody, a tiny grain inside you dies.
But you can't wish well on everybody -- can you? What do you think when
you look in the mirror? -- besides wishing for a face lift..." Wax Doll (yes,
Queen Elvis).
And now the harmonica is out! Drink a little coffee! ("We proudly brew
Starbucks™! ...How else can you brew Starbucks™?
shamefacedly?...") And a bit of tuning, tuning "as an agent provocateur,
pushing the string farther out of tune and then bringing it back so it
sounds better," leads into Queen Elvis (Eye, 1990) A bit of a digression
here asking whether the lamp by the mic stand (not the one he hung his
glasses on, a different one) is a Tiffany lamp... What distinguishes it
from a Tiffany lamp? Could it be made into a Tiffany lamp? Various
people from the audience are throwing in commentary, differing on a
variety of points, which is good -- "Consensus is very disturbing; if
everyone thinks along the same lines it usually means there's some kind
of fascism afoot." Maybe tonight you're dreaming... Arms of Love
(Respect, 1993). "If you're in Nashville, be sure to stop by the 5
Spot... especially if you like smoke and alcohol, like I do. (I'm from the
past, where it's not dangerous.)" More tuning -- "this guitar took a fall
today, coming into Amboy, South Amboy, it might be a problem..." -- and One Long Pair of
Eyes (Queen Elvis!) is the last of the back-catalogue tunes.
He closes out the set with two covers, Oh Yeah by
Roxy Music and She Belongs to Me by Tubby the Evangelist, and a
new song not yet released*, with the lyric "A window of bliss/ that
opened just once/ for the price of a kiss."
The encore happens in Mark's dining room next to the potluck supper,
and is 100% Basement Tapes tunes -- "Tiny Montgomery", "Lo and
Behold", "Quinn the Eskimo", and "Open the Door, Richard". You have some
baked beans and some pasta salad and a beer, and marvel at the glow of
happiness on everybody's faces.
 †(On the video tape of GLTHO -- It was not released on a record until You & Oblivion)
* (as far as I can tell -- not able to find anything about it on Google or in conversation with other fans.)
posted morning of March first, 2014: 6 responses
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Friday, February 28th, 2014
We're on our way south -- tonight in Freehold, tomorrow in Bordentown (and snow permitting, Monday in Sellersville). Excited! Will post gig notes.
posted afternoon of February 28th, 2014: Respond
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Thursday, February 27th, 2014
Here is a poem I have been working on this week. The genesis is as follows: I was thinking about my poem Analogies for Time, and also about the Persistence of Memory. I thought, well, the Persistence of Memory is a suspension of time, time does not progress in a painting, the time on the melting watch will always be 6:55 and the watch will never melt away -- from all this came the line "No hay rÃo para correr a través de este paisaje soñado" -- it's a landscape without a river. Well: a promising line. I spent a while tossing it around and it is seeming not to be so much a poem about that painting, but about a landscape that is outside of time. (Possibly this landscape could be the setting for the eternal city in "El inmortal".) Here is what I've got so far:
No river flows through this immortal landscape, dry and still.
No hunter seeks the spoor of his hallucinated prey.
The jagged cliffs look down on desert -- cliffs of granite, dreary desert --
static sands untouched by wind or moisture, waiting still
for time eternal, the imagined camera pans and zooms
but finds no hint of motion, no decay,
no sign of change for good or ill.
posted evening of February 27th, 2014: Respond
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Monday, February 24th, 2014
posted evening of February 24th, 2014: Respond
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Saturday, February 22nd, 2014
Two short, untitled poems I wrote this week open the same way:
So he tells you
how her ears perked up
and she strained at the leash
as they walked beneath
the rustling maples.
He wondered
what the dog was sensing,
what presence unfelt by her master
the animal knew.
She shook her head and her collar jingled,
and they quickened their pace.
So he tells you
how she looked at the ice
hanging from the eaves of his house
and said it looked like daggers.
("like daggers" is not exactly right, that ending still needs some work.)
I'm kind of enchanted with this form, which seems like it would work for fiction as well -- It brings you into the past tense very naturally and sets up a framework of person -- narrator, reader, characters. The narrator here is identified as "he" and the reader as "you", and implicitly "I" am the author, prior to the shift of frame of reference that occurs on the second line; and there does not really need to be any mention of "him" or of "you" after this first clause, depending -- he can refer to himself in the first person and tell his story as "I", or I the author can keep referring to him in the third person.(Note I don't think this form would work with an omniscient 3rd-person perspective, which is something I have never tried.)
posted morning of February 22nd, 2014: 2 responses
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Monday, February 17th, 2014
posted morning of February 17th, 2014: Respond
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Sunday, February 16th, 2014
Click "like" upon my statuses, ye Mighty, and despair...
posted morning of February 16th, 2014: Respond
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Saturday, February 15th, 2014
This time in my native tongue! Happy Valentine's Day, Ellen!
posted afternoon of February 15th, 2014: Respond
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¿Recuerdas bien cuando nos encontramos
en Gomorra? Cuando aún no tenÃas barba --
y yo engrasaba el pelo, iluminada por el farol antes de
verte; éramos jóvenes y con esa juventud nos sonrojábamos
como frutas magulladas. ¿Nos interesó entonces
lo que pasara entre los vecinos
en la oscuridad?
Mientras nos nacÃa la primera hija
al lado del rÃo Jordán, mientras
la rosada cabeza de la segunda
se esforzaba, saliendo de mi cuerpo
como promesa ¿nos preocupó
cómo usaran la lengua
los amigos?
O ¿cuáles grietas nuevas encontraran
para lamer el amor? o ¿cuál carne extraña
encontraran para empujar el placer? En llamarlo
entonces a uno sodomita,
sólo quisimos decir
vecino.
Cuando nos mandaron los ángeles correr
de la ciudad, te acompañé;
pero eses ángeles sabÃan también
que mira la mujer siempre atrás.
Déjame asà decirte, Lot,
cómo lucÃa tu ciudad en llamas
puesto que tú nunca te volviste para mirarla.
Los dedos pegajosos del azufre se arrastraban sobre la piel
de nuestros compatriotas. A pelo quemado apestaba
y a huevos rancios. Observé a los amigos sacando trozos
ardiendo de sus rostros. ¿Hay una forma
tan obscena de amar?
Cúbrete los ojos con fuerza,
hombre, hasta que veas las estrellas. Convéncete
de que miras el cielo.
Pues el hombre que es bastante débil para cerrar los ojos mientras
se castiga a los vecinos por la forma en que se aman merece a un dios
malévolo.
Todo esto te lo dirÃa, Lot,
si no se me hubiera secado océano en la lengua.
En lugar de eso me quedaré aquÃ; mi cuerpo soplará
grano a grano de regreso a la tierra de Canaán
Voy a quedarme aquÃ
y te veré
correr.
posted afternoon of February 15th, 2014: 2 responses
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