Henry Miller always brings me back to my senses. Dead for twenty-five years now, his words much older than that, yet somehow by merely letting my eyes scan over some black zigs and zags, I am resuscitated, ushered into a realm of greater clarity and sanity. In contrast, Wilber’s words often pull me away, drag me into a maze wherein I find myself lost and confused; disconnected in some way. After reading Wilber’s latest diatribe this morning, I found myself in the bathroom staring down at a big, steaming turd that I had no recollection of parting with. I could only assume that the reason I was standing there with my pants around my ankles was, in fact, that I had just taken a dump. After reading Miller, taking a shit can be a religious experience.
Archive for May, 2004
Sipping coffee on a rainy Saturday morning.
I’m heading out to the music store this afternoon to price some equipment. My main objectives at this point are to somehow acquire the following: 1) a low-end digital recording system; 2) a drum machine; 3) a semi-decent guitar amp; and 4) the skills/know-how to set up a website (headthegong.com).
Something like this probably already exists, but I’m envisioning an entirely new kind of “music scene” emerging in the coming years, one where a group of like-minded musicians can link up, pool their limited resources, and create opportunities as a collective that wouldn’t happen otherwise under the old “my band against the world” way of doing things. Imagine Brian Hall in Gladys, my dear ella and whomever else in Chapel Hill, the inimitable Happiness Thief of Lexington, KY, all linking up under a common website. A virtual music scene is created wherein a person can buy a my dear ella cd, see live footage of Brian Hall singing It Must Be Cold Outside, hear the new experimental Jeff Dewitte solo material (Slough from my Chafed Rod), and get tour info (and read reviews of records, news about local music scenes, etc.). Each band could help promote the others, set up gigs in their respective towns, etc. A music scene that is not limited to one geographical area, and one that is not dependent on record company slime (how many great “unsigned,” truly “independent” rockers must there be out there?). Man that coffee was strong! This idea just occurred to me as I started typing this paragraph, and as long as there’s bean flowing through my veins, I’m sure I’ll have the whole thing up and running by the end of the summer. Is all this any different from what independent record labels already do? I don’t know, but I gotta take a shit.
Had a long phone conversation with Mom an hour or so ago. She was feeling under the weather, which is not so unusual, but we had a nice chat anyway. My mom is always in the process of doing laundry, and she probably keeps time by the washing machine cycle as much as by the clock on the wall. Jimmy’s got the runs, so he crapped his sheets real bad. That means a hot water, heavy load cycle with lots of bleach–to make sure all the germs are good and dead. I can’t remember the last time I talked to my Mom without her lamenting about growing old. Miss Martha said earlier this week, “Getting old is the pits!” and I think my Mom would agree. But like I said, it was a pleasant conversation nonetheless, a simple chat between mother and son. She mentioned something that I had never known before: that she once aspired to be a journalist, when she was ten or twelve. She remembered watching some planes flying close together in the sky, and her father explaining that they were military planes refueling in midair. To their astonishment, one of the planes suddenly burst into flames, scattering debris in a field nearby and claiming the lives of the half dozen or so people aboard. This was a big deal to happen in a little country town like Springville, NY, and my mother dreamed that she was a top news reporter assigned to cover this big story. I expressed some excitement about learning this new piece of family history, but my Mom was quick to brush it off as one in a long line of silly dreams that were never meant to come true.
She also mentioned that she’s been keeping a journal of childhood memories for the sake of posterity, which I think is a cool idea, although I feel sad that my Mom seems to view her life facing the past like this, as if she takes for granted that her best years are well behind her.
It’s Saturday and Mary Alice and I have been lounging around the apartment working on our little projects. She has two more papers to write to finish up the semester, and I’ve been farting around with the guitar and scanning through the old journal entries. It’s been a long time since I’ve done any sustained writing, and I’m making a concerted effort to get back on the horse before I started facing backward myself. I find Mary Alice to be quite adorable all curled up on the couch swimming in a sea of books and ideas. She’s my girl and that’s all there is to it. She has very fragile hands, like a little old lady’s, but without the spots and wrinkles. She’s so gentle and innocent, so transparent when it comes to her feelings about me. I like that a lot. No matter how wrapped up in her school work she gets, she almost always softens up just as soon as I climb in bed next to her. When she says “I love you,” which she does quite often, there’s not a trace of pretense, not a hint of going through the motions. She just comes back down out of her head, feels me there with her, and the love just pours out her. It’s really quite wonderful.
I’m still not sure what it is I aim to do with this Radical I Experiment thing. Maybe nothing. I’m just realizing that my deepest intention back when I started all this, beyond the desire for attention and the need to see myself as an artist, was the hope that somehow I would create my own world, my own reality, that my life would really become more and more interesting and that I would indeed make significant spiritual progress along the way. Imagination creating reality. To some extent that did happen–the band experience, falling in love–but all in all I never really took off, never truly headed that gong. So here I am in Kentucky, working a nine-to-fiver (until the summer at least) and, on the surface, not doing jack shit that’s cool or inspiring. And yet, some thing has changed, this I know. That quiet revolution I mentioned earlier, a new understanding of what it might take to live in the “fair realm.” This summer could prove to be very interesting, especially if I keep up with the discipline and also keep reminding myself to be on the lookout for gongs at all times and in all place. I am readying myself for something.