such a simple thing.

the mess is a series of square tables, all diagonal to the walls, all coated in white linen with folded napkins and glass water goblets. usually when i go to the mess, the band is there too, so i have an automatic place to sit. it is expected that i will sit with them (except for the dangerously alcoholic trombone player), and they are welcoming, and there are odd bursts of converstaion that i am not compelled to either contribute to or resist.

but if the band is not there, i am faced with a weight and a weariness, for usually before me are two or three tables half full with acquantinces; mostly dazzlingly european women, members of the cast or youth staff. and too sad to face the silent sadness of halting conversation, i usually slink by and sit alone.

yesterday, though, the best dancer asked, in her melancholy english accent, "may i join you?". her dancing is amazing...while the others seem to be going through the motions in a plastic smile hangover thickness, she cuts through the air like fine russian scissors. her seven styles of red hair, her eyes done up for the show in a cats mask of silver and white. she sat next to me, not across, and ate her pineapple, melon and coffee, and we didnt say much, but just her nearness made me feel wonderfully present.

too often i find out that the people im most intimidated by are also intimidated by me. i must stop assuming that the rest of the world is stronger than me. i must remember that my ability to give love is miracle.

saw something that i have never ever seen before, never ever, ever ever, my entire vision filled, with this thing that i had never ever before seen ever. it was not a new seen thing framed by the typical background static of often seen things; this thing was my entire field of vision, that is, all i was seeing were these exactly two things, which thanks to a miraculous perfect synchornicity of color and shape had the appearance of being exactly one giant all thing, that i had never seen before, ever ever, and that i was immersed in.

this all happened on a perfect beach, secluded beach, half a mile long, with no one else on it, no one at all, a beach that i had to climb down treacheous rocks to get to, slowly, carefully, bravely, thinking to my foot, my white barefoot, all right, now, foot, im just going to have to trust you here, im about to put my whole weight on you and i am going to trust you that you wont slip and break me. all right foot all right foot are you ready foot. all right. here we go.

and then down and jump onto soft sad sand and theres the perfect beach with no one on it just white white sand, said soft sad sand and cliffs and caves and crannies rocks out my shoes and glasses and tshirt on a rock so i could go into>>>>> the water which was raging with the wind and giant perfect waves were smacking me just me
Iall aloneI

and then the suction>>>> into the sea knocked me down and before i even ever never seen knew it was way way way way out in the middle of the sea and the sun i looked up to or tried to but the water came laughing onto my head and salt was in mouth aw come on sand was in my thick rich hair really rocking me now you water you, growl and come on!! and when i looked up, over the water slaps looked up again to see , through my color senstive nearsighted human eyes when i looked up to the sky all i saw was the sea; and when i looked up to saw the sea all i saw was the sky. sea sky: see sky see sea, see sea see sky, because the water was so clear perfect and the sand so white perfect on this perfect secluded beach ever on this perfect day so clear and so white that together ever never `the light` and `the reflection` the water and the sky were, sigh, aw, come on, aw,

*the same color*

yup, yup, the same color, the exact same color, sigh again, *, foot cant believe it, with a wave over water underwater hardly breathe and salt taste tread to stay a float sigh my god perfect a ~baby~light~blue~ that rippled and heaved over me my blurry vision bluring the horizon line away and there the sea the sky both the same color the same color! the exact same color! never ever! so all i could see was rippling breathing ~baby~light~blue~, and i was /immersed/ in it and it was the only thing i could see, inhaling frantic salt water, up and down panic color never ever alive everything just this one color blue blue blue bluebluebluebluelueblueblueblueblueblue rrraaaaaaaaaaaahh on this perfectly cloudless day perfectly clearless water perfectly emptyless beachess.

later i lalala lay in the sad and alalalaughed uncontrollableable as the waves knocked me wash over and then swoosh slurped me back in ever ever ha ha ha!

i found some unexpected eggs today.

(its a classic paradox. a man presents you with 10 numbered boxes, and tells you that in one you will find an *unexpected* egg. you are to open them in order. the egg must be *unexpected*; thus, you reason, it cant be in the last box, for if you were to open the first nine and find no egg, you would know that it had to be in box 10 and it would thus be *expected*. so box 10 is out. by similar reasoning, box 9 is out too- since it cant be in box 10, when you get down to 9 and 10 it would have to be in 9- but that would then be *expected*. and it cant be in 8 if its not in 9 or 10, again, youd *expect* it. you can apply this to all the boxes, and safely say that it cant be in any of them. until you open box 5 and find a completely *unexpected* egg.)

friday nights the main crew deck, deck 3, becomes a maze of luggage, color tagged and carted into giant metal shark cages in preparation for tomorrows debarkation. everyone knows that luggage is the shittiest job. the housecleaners all wear back braces and sneak bites of cold pizza brought to them on white plates. old wooden ramps are placed over the stairs and the luggage slides down, helped along at each landing by one of these wearyeyeds, mostly philipinos. im pretty sure there should be a doubled letter in that word.

but there the occasional odd and lovely eastern european too...i was walking up the steps opposite a ramp tonight, and saw my beloved estonian, she of blond curls and small small voice and narcoleptic saunter. she gave me a pouty tired look and told me, in a >zabul dabo< voice like velvet taffy, "we push, we pull, mmmmmmm". i asked her if she ever slides down the slides herself. she said, yes, try it, and i did, but my shoes were too sticky and then an officer gave me a look. i had to leave, and wanted to leave with a graceful wit (this was only the second time ive talked to her), but could only manage: "you could sell tickets". which she responded with only a puzzled look. ugh.

i walked away feeling much like one of the rejected awkward teens wearing a signed white celebrity tshirt (signed by all his 'new teen friends') i had seen earlier that night up at the teen disco. (the cool teens were in the back hooking up). i feel the same about love as i always have- desperate, wildeyed, a fool. city streets in the rain, solo trumpet, hard eyes against the tears.

even earlier this night i had watched a bit of edward scissorhands. that is the kind of love i have always wanted, in a fairytale, a one who understands, an embrace of the pained abnormalities. at the end of the movie, winona is old and talking to her granddaugther...so she has clearly moved on. but she still loves him, she will always still love him.

and even earlier then that, lying in my bed thinking about an old old old love...an unrequited one that consumed me for years. one im at peace with; i love her friendship and have put all of my exaggerations about her and of all of the practical complications our history afforded us into their appropriately numbered boxes. we still see each other every rarely, and its wonderful and magic. but yet, but yet, today in my astral nap bunkbed world (specific song that did it was "wigwam", bob dylan, though i do not consciously associate that song with this woman at all), she stepped on my feet under a lowlit diner table again, and i was holding her hand and kissing her at last.

still earlier, at rehearsal, the husband and wife duo sing "to all the girls ive loved" (the willie nelson/julio iglesias(?) classic). just terrible, terrible fucking song. but still...

never fall out of love with someone. never not fall in love with someone else. that seems essential to me. i fall for the estonian as rapidly as i fall away from another on the ship (lazyeyed welder), but i still can taste her odd garlic (for health) kisses. then night i hear another song and remember someone else. theres such beautiful light in their eyes. everyone a different color, a delicate coral, an unsung evergreen.

now ive got my dreams of my one love that sings to me in a secret language and bites my finger and laughs me to the moon. i love her and want to take our grandchildren apple picking.

but still i love them all, all the rest too.
ive put them each in a soft box in my memory, with all of their letters and laughs and lipnesses, and ive closed the boxes, and i dont *expect* to feel that way again. oh but then, but then an oh.

i can reason through everything, i can control what i obsess over and what fills my head. i can let go.

but when i feel snow on my wrist, i shiver.

someones getting married tomorrow. and heres an unexpected egg--- i am so very happy for her. i love her and wish her the world, the stillness grandness of empty space, and all the blazing suns in between.

nothing really beautiful or amazing happened today. it was the first of our two formal nights. we do the captains toast (jazz standards) and the 60's show. we played stevie's "you are the sunshine of my life" first, and then i kind of went off on whole tone scales (the second chord of the intro is all whole tone). too symmetrical, i said, and wheres that halfstep edge, that sexy dissonant bite, that s-s-s-truggle, di-di-di-difficulty, zazazaconflict that makes life so -*yow*-. for the rest of the set the sax player and i played whole tone scales at every opportunity (ie every dominant seventh chord). skating up and down their space age slides!

we are up in a box stage left, looking down on the audience so we can see their gaping faces. they really love the shows, they get so happy. there were some nice moments out there tonight: a group of teenagers singing along to "help!", and a beautiful family in the front row, mother, young girl, father, the girl was maybe 8. she kept putting her hands up to her new hair berette (sp?) to make sure it was in place. formal nights are great for seeing young children in dressy clothes for the first time. so careful and gentle with their new precious things! she had really cute round glasses too, and she smiled and tucked her head into her fathers arm after the lead singer gave her a high five during "surfin usa".

but overall, nothing really, and i dont feel particularily happy or sad.

i had a child in a dream last night, the size of a pistachio. he was doing wild, digital fast breakdancing on the carpet. then another child, equally small, joined in, and they played pinballed across the carpet, bumper car twirling, and then swoosh! under the couch...we lifted the couch to find them, and they were not there. and then, there they are in the pocket of my cardigan sweater. we left to go enroll in college, enroll in geometry, and i took the long way down, a huge sandy path in the rain, the sand filling my sandals and the wind and lightning purple deep purple. later, my bicycle skidding on shiny asphalt.

i wonder how my child will be. will i indulge her in the materialist ecsatsy of fancy new things? let her grow out of it later? let her pretend to grow out of it...hm. i cant wait until i buy my new powerbook. though, i spent much of today making a gift, making, with pens and glue and the torn off covers of old hardcover books from the crew library. i noticed that i like using mistakes to my advantage-- this slip of the pen makes a really neat design, etc. it felt good. good for me. but will they like it? really? always selfish acts of love. sigh.

still, i guess that was beautiful, hanging out in the crew mess with a coffee and european cookies on a linen napkin, brushing glue on to avoid lumps, whistling "itsy witsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini" over and over again, fixing little mistakes by creating large abstarct blocks with black and silver permanent markers.

if you make a mistake in bingo, and call bingo, and then when the bingo commisioner comes over to check your card he finds that youve punched a number that wasnt called, you know what thats called? its called a bongo.

another thing my polish roomate does is comment on my comings and goings.
"you going?"
"aha! you come back!"
or, more perplexing: "aha! you come back?"

kenny, the conspiracy theorist trumpet player, asked me today if i beleived in reincarnation. i told him i didnt beleive in anything, but i thought there were prettier ideas than reincarnation out there. the book im reading now, "the third policeman" by some irish guy whose name...flann o'brien? i dont think so. one thing thats happens in this delightfully odd book is that in a bicycle obsessed town people become more and more bicycle like as their riding over the bumpy rocky roads causes their atoms and the bicycles atoms to mix. they dont actually turn into bicycles, they just can be seen leaning against walls and posts.

how many atoms would i have to lose before im not me anymore? ha.
is that my skindust behind the desk? ha.
when will i have a child? ha.

one of the crew channels plays a constant loop of csi, las vegas and miami. id never seen it before. i love the main guy in miami. he is so cool. he knows how to use language. "no. heres what youre going to do." i also saw the film "chicago" for the first time today, and i liked it too. really good braiding of the musical numbers with the real world. he had it coming! he had it coming! oh and that tap dancing lawyer at the end! man!

these are small pleasures that ease me and cool me and cease the pain of my useless and pointless knowledge.

the night before, after the drummer and i finished a really excitng, tight game of chess (the d column was a real traffic jam: black king d8, just a step shy of promotion white pawn d7, white rooks d 1 and 3. and a black rook stalking outside on f7, threatening [and eventually enacting] a dubious rook trade), we poured the pieces into the torn flat box and stared at each other for a moment.

earlier that night, we were watching pool in the crew bar, and this big guy from trinidad who can make the ball jump (and thus make me girlishly yelp) said "bloodclot!" as a curse upon missing a shot.

so now were staring at each other. and then i said, well good, im going to go to bed..and then tomorrow well just do this all again. and he said, yup, good luck with that.

then we ran up the steps, my sandalflops echoing all through the ship.

assignment 1.1
se/breakfast empathy

i sat outside her room at 5am and waited. the floor tiles were dirty- the corners were chipped and there was bus station era streaking. the corners of my eyes were thick with glass. i kept a wool blanket about my shoulders to protect me from the madness air conditioning and her eventual postdooropening survey. i had an itch all down my back, the side of my neck, the pillow.

there was a cardboard box at the end of the hall that contained christmas tree parts, garlands, the empty packaging of hoisery, a small piece of wire bent into a man with doubled arms but singled legs. the garland seemed to be breathing a little, but i kept still.

her door opened at 8:30am. she was dressed in gingham and she walked to the mess. i followed close behind. she left a tiny trail of small flying primary colors behind her. i could follow her movements exactly. as her left leg would raise, mine would then towards me and tandem her. i felt physically focused and mentally vacant.

she had not noticed me. she pushed the heavy metallic door open and i glided in behind her soft. there was a stack of individual milk cartons on the counter. the sugar in baskets. she chose a white round moonplate, and i did, and i traced her meal onto mine. three pieces of pineapple, one strawberry yogurt, one spoonful of scrambled egg, one thick half slice of french toast, two links of sausage. there were flowers on many of the tables, white linen on all. she held the yogurt in her hand, away from her chest, and the rest on her plate clockwise from the start.

we sat, i just a left behind her. my shoulders shy. i heard her shadow twitch to my presence, but still. the lighting gave our skin surprise gifts. she began eating. i followed her exactly. left fork, right knife, to the sausage, the cut, roughly one-fifth of the sausage, through the air, to the mouth, 5 major chews, 16 minor. a two second swallow. a three scene smile: a testraise, then back down, then full arise. arise then for the forgotten juice-- we get it together. the machine hums as we press our glass. she drinks the first sip while walking back, so beautiful is the orange; and she lets her juice enter her mouth just to the right, the right front incisor receiving the first splash. i do the same. i had never done it before. we peel our yogurt back together and pour our syrup from a height of seven inches and we eat our meals exactly the same. there are posters on the walls, but i cannot read them because she will not look at them.

after a while, i begin to notice that my eyes are watering. her eyes are watering also. there is a vague mint. she raises her hand to her face and touches it once, just under her eye, the sensitive upper cheek with bone just beneath, and i copy her and feel two hands upon this one spot on my face. our eyes close and we see the blackness. our sounds are the same, the ocean waves to the left and behind. there is mint.

inside this mint blackness we see an older woman sad, lying under a shawl, and a mahogany clock ringing a dullsonorous Db. we see the soft down of dirt under a lakeside tree, and there a wasp cradles our fingers and gives us her own smile. the mother is unrecognizable, but her face is like mine, and like the woman, and like the pieces of french toast...the the piece piece ofof frefrench ttoast...

that is finally finding its way onto our mutual tongue and the sweet sweet firework joy of that first swallow shimmers up both of our memories of swing metal cold and pleasently painful in our thin hands.

and i open my eyes and see that my skin is soft, my breasts full, my belly doubled with sustanence. a three, no six, second smile. two threes overlapping. the day can begin.

my roommate is polish, late fifties. every day he asks me my schedule.
"you have play?
what time?
six?

shit."


"training?
yes?
what time?
nine...nine thirty?

shit.

how long? one hour?
two?

shit."

he is obsessed with time, and the news, iraq, beheadings, etc.:

"the news, i see, if is good news. maybe. maybe. every day is bad. so maybe today good....ah.

shit."

the shit, is pronounced as if through a screen door.

i notice in my responses to him a desire to flaunt my lack of judgement on things. i want him to know that i do not find the schedule or the news bad, but just the world as it is. i want to show people that i do not complain, and that i do not beleive in good and bad, that i can see both sides of all things. and in this flaunting, this righteous posturing, i recognize pride and ego, and i am shamed, for i recognize these as, hm, bad.

my secret heart (this is a phrase i like now) is a mystery; i do not know what i think of good and bad. such a confusion: this bird sees the sun and knows it is the light and this bird sees the moon and knows it is the light too and in the eclipses of living i bird i find myself confused and trembling by the pale shallow pools of morality and quality.

what kind of asshole would write a sentence like that? a bad one? a good one?

i finished east of eden today. steinbeck seems pretty sure that good and evil exist. and we great creatures have them both within us, we are filled to the brim with them, and we may choose, thou mayest, we are lovely. i love his writing and his acceptance of the bad, his painful embrace of it. i love lee!! and cal and abra love each other in the end for their imperfections, their bad thoughts.

but its not so clear out here. tonight on deck 12 after working out, i let the cold wind freeze my sweat as i was listening to a hiphop mix se gave me (sle? sae?...i cannot remember, bad)...i think it may have been eminem singing, "you better lose youself in the music, this opportunity comes but once in a lifetime, grab it," etc, that optimistic hiphop about seizing life and tearing down the drapes and dancing through the street. you know. and i found myself imagining a room, a pre boxing room, concrete, bare bulb, tattered whitewash posters, and here i am receiving this encouragement, my woodstain trainer massaging my blazing shoulders with his anisette breath, and i am about to enter a ring, and he tells me, seize it, lose yourself to it, be it, and i am so scared because it is not boxing ring i am entering, and it is not my fists, nor is it my mind that will save me...rather this game is played with my elusive hidden soul.

the odd contest is in a circular, eggshell white room, high ceilings, perhaps two doors, lady, tiger...i will be thrown in and will have to play, but the rules do not exist. and i have played before, by leaping and shouting, by hurling myself at a door and banging it with my radiant song...or by walking slowly through and examining the woodwork for holes that may house hints. once i sniffed the air for an hour before the walls collapsed on me and i again wet my pillow with lost sobs. once i tried to hide in the corner but could not find it. once i danced calypso shadow puppets on the wall with a coquettish smile.

but i have always lost, in the end, lost, always. i must have, for this uncertainty inside of me persists.

i sometimes just dont know what is good or bad. i dont know how to act. i dont know what to say to this stranger to let her know that i am interested in loving her, without frightening her. i dont know how to tell this man that i love him in spite of what i have done to him, in spite of my lies and betrayl. and maybe there is no good or bad...but the agony is that sometimes i know its good, because the things i do and say make the whole world smile and magic. so there are right ways to do it...ive been there and felt it. but when i try to figure it out, oh, oh oh. my teachers (many of you!) tell me that this is the problem...the thinking, the thinking, the math problem approach. i should "be myself", do thy will, and the chorus will emerge from the circular lip of the ring and shower me with the rose petals of a well lived life.

and i think that in real time i can do this...i think that in the continuum flow of moment silk moment improvisation, in conversation, music or love (occasionally in cooking and video game playing too), i find this loss of self and judgement does not come into play and i am blessed with the overwhelming happiness, the greatest laughter, and the world becomes a garden of light, water and sound, with giant green leaves to blanket and bed me.

but then time sneaks in...and i find myself alone with this head in the moments in between and the analysis begins and all comes scrumbling (LIKE THAT WORD!) apart and i cannot begin again because i cant be myself because myself is thinking of too many different options and has no rules by which to judge them. ugh! but the thinking is me! still, still. and i think of this act, an action of pure being, so right and true, that has ended up hurting another. good and bad...and there is time to think about that, and i am lost in eclipse season again. this man traveling at the speed of light seems to be still and sickly to this man on the ground who loves as well. right?

it is true if someone thinks it...if an action is thought to be bad by one, then he is right, it is bad. truth is only subjective...and all subjective thought is thus true. theyre both right, always. its all true, i remember.

so how to proceed? i want to live, but my living is thinking. this writing soothes me, but it is a dangerous attempt to find a side. i know this hypocrisy as i write it. or does it just occupy me...am i still so afraid of being alone.

not ready, still, old song. i must be not ready to accept the vows and live in peaceful stillness. i still dont beleive that the singing will be as sweet on the other side of nirvana. i still dont beleive that through stillness i can enter the ring without thinking, with my true self who can dance every dance. that my being can flow so effortlessly from me and the world will be all right if i dont worry about it. do i not trust...do i still not beleive that the world is good? that evolution triumphes over entropy. at the core of my un-understanding of good and evil is a presuppositon that good is good, and my distrust that the world is good, that death will not hurt, that they are not laughing at me, leaves me vacant.

its so hard, and so lovely, this not knowing how to live.

but i must be learning...for my impulse now, sometimes, is to stop the mad runnings into the sun, to stop the wild serenades and outpourings of words (clearly! ha!) and just lie in the center of the room, on my back, with arms folded sweetly on my chest, and wait. stare at the ceiling and feel the eggshells bubble my back. wait until the moment arises again where i may be distracted by a creation, a simple turn of phrase or hip, into not thinking. a fierce love that hurls me into the moment and lets me do no wrong.

and only if the love is true, right, only if the love is true will this work. only if i truly love all the glowing angels that surround me. and if it is true, it will outlast time, and will remain.

i am sorry for all i say sometimes. i try so hard to stay in the present but i fail all the time. and when i fail, when i drift away, is when it becomes bad and sadness creeps in with her old cellophone refrain. sometimes i wish i could erase the boards and enter the ring with nothing but a blanket, a guitar, and a plate of warm peach turnovers.

so here i am, and there i am, in the pit, pounding through the zenith's first big production show, "that 60's show", beatles to motown to hair, enjoying the intellectual zing of sight reading music but still reeling emotionally from the wild shifts of the last few days, weeks, months. i have run away again, again, and hopefully for some good, some real financial problem solving this time, but i always manage to leave at a time of hallucinatory bliss...as if only the leaving, the sudden short time allowed, the instability, can produce those resonances in the world and those feelings in me. and so i am there with my fingers doing what they do best unknown to me as my mind is busy in the syrup of ago dreaming back and forth between the present and the longed for future, magnolia wind through my shivering skin, i am a drunken active coma of thought, and then the flower power sections begins-- and i am shocked into heart lump clutch because im suddenly not only listening to, hearing, but also helping create, with shining root position chords, a gel-lit morsel of the song "if you go to san francisco".
...youre gonna meet some gentle people there...
oh joy and sorrow! synchronicitous silken trickster universe conspires against my heart strings and rings them wet through her ivory hands. it medleys into california dreamin...

furthermore, im reading "east of eden" by steinbeck (thank you cgk!), and it is sooooooooo beautiful...the descriptions of california, the salinas valley, the rivers and winds and sagebrush. hes really brilliant. and more: joni mitchells blue, just really discovered on a drive up highway 1 after a magic magi weekend epitomizing the california vibe joni is talking about...yes the people i dig, and right, yes, sunset pig (which to me actually suggests that joni is a vegetarian but that the cookout on the beach will be so beautiful and so flowingly lovely that she will even kiss meat, perhaps have a taste, special occasion. hee!) and the next night, the guest performer (sax player from the benny hill show) does a really really fun to play version of "my life" (i pound the jangly high notes! du-du, dun, du-du, duh!)...and its lines about "...sold the house, bought a ticket to the west coast..." all of this leaving me pining for a place! my home!

when i first drove into san francisco, following dps's thorough email directions in a metal uhaul truck (i like that unnecessary adjective there), my fantasy was incense and wine, a porch by the beach with friendly faces who would call me up from the street, seeing my fresh wide eyes, and would welcome my fat belly and wild hair with their bottles and beads and bare open arms. the fantasy was only half ironic...it seemed possible to me. so ingrained in my midwestern consciousness was this image of california, from a hundred songs of the sixties and seventies sucked down thirstily in my adolesence. here was music originally for a generation that didnt fit, that was creating their own "new explanation"...and in my childhood, i found myself not fitting either, not only with the establishment but with anyone of my own generation, pounding their way through beer cans of guns n roses. lost, alone, fucked. so the sixties music became mine, and maybe my parents listend to it, but it was really mine. to escape into. and it all seemed to come from california; even the british stuff. sgt pepper was, in my secret heart, recorded in san francisco. whatever. thats not true. but janis and jimi! i knew that somthing magic and decidely unmidwestern was going on over there, something filled with altered reality and possibility.

oh cwg, mcw, nda, how is it to have grown up there? grown up and always had honey dripping from branches to suckle?

now every time i leave or return, brisk san francisco air, that old feeling hits me again, of this actually being that cliched place, where the people are kind and open, where the oranges spill over the sides. and now the music! there is music that does this for me now, my music that brings me home and makes me feel so sweet all over. mine! my music! my most precious belonging, an audible photo album that exists everywhere, anywhere i go the songs are in the air. and it fills me, chills me, thrills me.

how does that happen? listen to another one, even weirder: the other guest entertainer does "tiny dancer", a hot fast version. ive never heard this song...never, except for the scene in almost famous where they sing it on the bus, and that just once, barely remember. anyway, so we play this song, again, sightreading, and fuck! the first minute is really fast rock solo piano! fucking great! the piano is miked and loud and still jingle jangle, like theres a chain over the strings. and by the end of the song, oh magic love i own it! by the end of the song, it is a whole world of nostalgia for me, instantly created and completely nebulous in content. it doesnt remind me of a person, or a place, but theres a feeling, a fuzziness now, like drinking from my grandmothers juice glasses. i love the tiny dancer, i can see her dressed in yellow, and i want her to win!

other songs are more concrete. my first lsd experience was in san francisco, in a flat high above haight ashbury, and i put on jefferson airplanes surrealistic pillow at a pivotal moment (said pivot being that a house across the way had turned into a gigantic robot), and it was mine. strangely billie holiday singing "nice work if you can get it" also figured prominently into that experience- the adorable horn line intro seemed like the only beautiful thing in the world for a scary half hour or so.

so music is a healer, and an inflicter, salvation and sadness, a memory puller and sentiment moonshiner stronger then scent for me. if i want to smell jason rigby again, i put on coltranes ballads and his laugh is bear shaking me awake again from my intoxicated highschool couch slumber. my mothers irish records played at full volume, my fathers ry cooder tapes, my sister doing hand motions to "help!" on the living room coffee table, and my family is not so far away. every caress of an exlover remembered through the ink spots, solomon burke, elliott smith.

i know this is nothing new, but its fun to talk about.

but new for me: now its a place too! not just a person or a time, or a weird drippily shivery feeling, but a whole honest to god place, all of the vastness. all of the times, each moment of four five years, every exoticly fragrant richmond corner and market street bicycle death trap and night sky bundled into a three minute song. california. my home, my wet winded lilypad!

i revel in the sadness and longing this music gives me. the wind is in from africa, there are flowers in my hair, im all alone and so lonely and lost again and i love music, 'my prom date for life'. i can ring tears out of this sad old heart be they joy or moan, with a whole ringing singing silver gilded catalogue of san francisco song now.

and oh i like that, i really do.

we are docked in bermuda for four nights. so we can leave the boat at three in the morning if we want to...and so last night i did. walked and walked through the perfect air until the jewelery shops and expensive cafes were far behind me and i was on a winding dark road of millionaire homes and uncontrolled foilage. and the insects! a thousand electronic blips and bloops, every note of a minor sixth covered, spaced out in super thx stereo, this one close, this one a half step away and a half mile away reverbed out, a dangling forest of sound! this music is perfect in its naivete, its rhythmic coincidences...stars above and eerie streetlights cast upon the sides of a shattered mountain, a dynamited road with walls fifty tall, a tunnel, a cool night wind. deserted, this island is, i am a ghost at last, me alone, though still in the world, somewhere, somehow, may it do ya kind.

when i was sailing along the alaskan coast on a cruise ship for a few months, probably the most fun thing i got to do was play for the weekly talent show. these fuckers thatd come in, you have no idea. it would have been easy to just make fun of them all, but there was something so amazing about the confidence they all seemed to have in their work- were talking about people in their fifties to seventies singing mostly show tunes and sinatra, and just terribly- the tonal and rhythmic acrobatics i had to perform to accompany these guys were...that girl in the olympics who won the gold with a broken ankle or something? and that coach with the moustache? it was like that. anyway, musicality was truly secondary; their stage presence was awesome, this utter surety that they were offering something to the world that was singular and important and moving...and really it was, mostly just because of that attitude. i would leave these shows smiling, mystified by the social distortions that age seems to place on people, thrilled at the idea that soon (well, 30 or so years from now) i would understand that total disregard to social/aesthetic conventions that a life time of life would require of me.

anyway, so now, a harmonica story: there was this guy, and well, this was an ugly guy. midfifties, head coated with a thick mane of perspiration, gigantic gut, tightly sealed in a thin white shortsleeved shirt, shorts and high socks, glasses case nestled in pocket, you know. there at rehearsal with his wife.

so we say, what do you wanna do?
and hes all, do you know moon river?
and im all yeah, i know moon river,
and then hes all, well what key do you know it in,
and im all, well what key would you like?

and then, man, he smiles at me...and he pulls out this case, this beautiful, black leather miniature briefcase, and he opens it up, and there inside are twelve beautiful, shiny, fragrantly glowing harmonicas. each one held in a by a little leather clasp. one for each key, he says, one for each key.

and he pulls one out, and he starts playing, he starts playing moon river in this deserted cruise ship theater. the floor is rocking beneath our feet. and when the first high note, "...ri-ver" comes dancing out it is shiny and alive and oh! it is beautiful beautiful, somehow this man this most unlikely man is making each note of moon river connect into something inside of me, and i feel pain and sadness and joy and some primitive state of just feeling, all that stuff that music is supposed to do to you. but the killer, is, that then he stops, and he says, or what about this? and he pulls out a different harmonica and starts playing again, the same freaking mancini sugardrop that usually makes me numb out, and its even prettier, richer and lower now. and then he does it again. what about this key. oh, eflat, thats a nice one. again and again. he goes through maybe five different keys in all, and i look over at his wife, i look over at his wife, and her eyes are glistening.
glistening.

in the end we had him play a capella. the crowd was pretty unimpressed.
but for me and his wife, it was divine, seeing that holy music coming out of this poor guy.
this poor ugly guy.

its new years eve. i am enjoying a rare night off; the nye show is tommy tune, broadway song and dance man, and he brought his own piano player. im gonna go to the show at ten, then after that i have to play with the big band- some hot funk, watermelon man and shake everything youve got, at the hot deck 10 party, but til then i am sitting in my room drinking irish whiskey and scotch and watching the powerpuff girls. ive never seen this show before, but theres a marathon on and im fucking love it. (right now- the villains have formed a supergroup and they call themselves the "beat alls" and pretty much every single line of dialogue is a beatles lyric. fucking great!)

anyway, watching the wild cultural collisions in this show has confirmed a recent line of reasoning out here on the high seas- one of total integration. a lot of people i know just wont settle down- they dont pick any one thing, they fly from this to that and never settle and thus never excel in the usual sense of the word. i count myself as one of these people- never really committed to anything, thus my lack of real "success" in anything- music or career or spirituality or cooking or intellect, im just too all over the place, it seems, too excited by too many things to give any one thing a serious dedication of time.

theres so much! so much!

anyway, the other night i was really wanting to fall asleep, it wasnt working, and i was thinking of how much i wanted to sleep, so i could dream, because i love a dream, for the surrealness, the unexpected juxtapositions. so i decided to try and force it- i was tired enough and my mind was astral enough that rational thought was pretty much out the window, so i was in a real fluid and accepting state. i was listening to beethoven piano sonatas, the late ones (no. 31 in Ab, op. 110, i think, a grad student at college used to play this to me in her practice room while i lay under her grand piano. she died in a car accident a few years later. oh i miss you tara!); these are pieces that really transcend any labels; classical or romantic, they are just music, a seemingly seamless integration of all musical possibilities available to human consciousness at the time. so i thought to my self, well, all i need to do to create a dream is just take all of the imaginative possibilities available to me right now, here in 2003 america, and integrate some of them in new ways. so i tried it: the first two things i though of were an orange (i had eaten one at dinner) and boxer shorts (i was wearing a pair). and thus, the image of a orange unpeeled to reveal a balled up pair of boxer shorts arose brand new in my head. i created it. i had never thought it before. maybe no one had thought it before.

the idea of something youve never thought before, something thats never been thought before, thats the essence of creation. the surprise! whoop! man i love creation! and it seems that theres a pretty fun and easy course to divining creation- this random act of integration. simple ideas, surrounding us on the field of science, culture, history, spirituality, at, etc.- from the last piece of pizza to lois lane's earthquake grave to guilt to bee dances to cubism to the word order of languages to christs turn the other cheek- these can be fused together into new ways to create imagination. you can consciously do this! its a new route to lucid dreaming for me, and i have been doing this exercise for the last week or so now, and i feel like my imaginative life has taken a real good turn.

so, for example, take pizza christ and bee dances. what can this do? imagine christ and a hive, both hungry, a single piece between them, hawaiian style. what will happen? how will they communicate? what will they communicate? christ will surely allow the bees the pizza, and will gladly accept their stings, the one cheek swollen as the other cheek is revealed- yet he is a man, and he is hungry. and the bees, will they know christ> do they think? will they take the pizza to their queen? can christ dance as a bee does? how does this scenario alter your understanding of christianity and entomology?

and then: where is this scene taking place? for me, its in the garden of the godfather pt.II, where brando dies. how would christ interact with the hollywood mafia?

this can go on and on. it is a imagination machine! so simple! i am thinking of creating a beautiful leather bound book (the leather scented with coriander) of base ideas which can then be combined through dice rolling, hot nerdy d+d dice, that is. and a velvet ribbon bookmark.

anyway, happy 2004, i hope your new combinations are revelatory.