Saturday, February 19, 2005

back home i'm lagged and lazy

Denied Areas

Some zones you have to walk around.
We have no idea what goes on inside them,
we just give them a wide berth and look
around for the friendlier zones.Sometimes
you have to take running leaps to get to
them. We keep moving, not always in straight
lines but we keep moving. And we can chat
"How's the weather?" "I don't have a
mother." It can be stressful, though
sometimes we break into song without
warning, and then someome always starts
to remember another life, and then one by
one we all begin to weep and anything
seems possible like a glistening rainy
pavement, or a lodging house, or a toothpick.

--James Tate

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

apples crackers and roast beef

Comfort food given to Townes Van Zandt by his 3rd wife after she busted him out of the hospital because because his DT's were putting him in a shitty way. He was in the hospital for surgery on the hip he broke and ignored for 8 days. EIGHT DAYS! And to top it off, he had traveled to Memphis to record with Steve Shelley and Tim Foljhan at Easley. The recordings, apparently, went awful.

Anyway, the documentary on Townes, 'Be Here To Love Me', played at a country music festival I caught at the Paradiso. It's a damn good film. There is some great footage of Van Zandt singing 'Waiting Around To Die' that sets some old-timer to crying and some funny stuff shot in the backyard with a fifth, a pellet gun and some cans of Coke. Oh and Guy Clark is a fucking bust.

The Meat Purveyors were to play the festival but cancelled. Kind of a drag, their show in Fairbanks was a blast. I stuck around for a bit drinking 'small beers'--little 8 oz. fuckers that were a pain in the ass because to make things worth while, you really had to buy two at a time and then you were stuck with your hands full. Really, what's the point of a drink that small? (I also hate the juice glasses at hotel continental breakfasts--I usually stand in front of the pitcher and down a few before sitting). Plus, it's difficult to watch a film about Van Zandt when drinking from glasses that make you feel as though you should be sticking out your pinky.

Then came the Dutch-Canadian all the middle agers (you know the joos song i was living, dontcha?) were there to see: Fred Eaglesmith. I tried to give the guy a chance, even after opening with a song that's chorus went: 'I ain't never givin' in, I ain't never givin' in', (dramatic pause, then kicks in with a mighty down-strum) 'anytime soon!' That doesn't even make any sense!!! He then went on to spend more time playing out a half-assed 'i just a plain ole simple country boy' comedy routine than playing any songs and his schtick was more than I could handle. Closest I've ever come to heckling. Instead, I just headed out to the cobbles and found myself at the Rokery with it's killer White Widow.

Elsewhere, Barry Hannah is interviewed in The Paris Review # 172. Here's a poem from the same issue:

Out of the Way Bungalow-Style Areas
Charlie Smith

Sometimes love's vagrancy (whatever you call it)
overwhelms all but the most robust subscriber's,
and, dishonest as it may sound, the whole cramped enterprise
is given only a few minutes to clear out of town.

We were touchy that year, all year,
at least until the old lady died. Perhaps a singularity
enraptured you, caused the sell-off
and the false positive. Compare your notes

with the sample addresses, the ones
the boss started to give, but then just couldn't.
Outside the metropolis
you hardly find any restaurants worth eating in. Yet

the places are always full. Little families, conversation groups,
a sense of the fell and distracted nature of humankind,
the displaced circular reasoning one gets into after a gambling loss,
these show up, disperse among the tables

and fade into the background.
It appears we'll be here just long enough. For whatever
the thing is that knows no human reason to have its say. Or something
other, she explained, and passed the biscuits around.

Saturday, February 12, 2005

rain wash the dust from the aesculus

a windy, rainy a.m. inspired another lift from dutch flowers (so far, the coolest coffeeshop i've found), a trip past the flower markets as they set out their goods, and a short respite in this internet cafe. visited the Anne Frank House yesterday and decided that i will listen to Neutral Milk Hotel's 'In the Aeroplane Over the Sea' as soon as i return home. something in that girl's smile is far more mesmerizing than the bloated Mona Lisa. weather pending, this could be another day of aimless wandering (following random alleyways in unpointed directions--by far the best way to be in this city) or a day of strategically mapped out museum stops so as to stay on the dry side (the museum stops interspirsed with even more strategically mapped out coffeeshop stops, of course).

Silkworm's version of Shellac's 'Prayer to God' on this just fucking kills me.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

if it ain't dutch, it ain't much

or so my dutch buddy steve used to proclaim. i'm begining to understand. last night found me lost on the cobbles of Jordaan and Medieval Centre in the blue haze of Dutch Bizarre, the dark, hairy pride of Dutch Flowers coffeeshop. found a cool record shop and picked up Fahey (Yellow Princess), Sun Ra (It's After the End of the World), Sticks and Stones (Shed Grace), and a Silkworm ep (You Are Dignified) on which they perform acoustic (guitar, mandolin) covers of: Shellac, Pavemant, Bedhead or The New Year (cant remember which at the moment), Robbie Fulks, and Nina Nastasia. at the counter i found fliers for this and a four fucking day Harry Smith festival (24 Feb-27 Feb) which also happens to be the weekend of my birthday. i was digging this city with it's bakeries, canals, coffeeshops, buildings leaning to and fro,and cyclists (there is nothing more sexy to me right now than a girl on a european-style cruiser) and now i see they have a goddam Harry Smith festival going on! have i found my Eden? tell me, what better gift could i give myself than an extended stay in Amsteradam that culminates in a tribute to this guy?

expatriotism never smelt so good . . . .

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

hazy days where lenin lays

there'll be infrequent posting here for a bit as i am on a tour of russia and eastern europe for the next few weeks.

highlight so far:

clients taking me out for dinner in red square with many beers and 3 bottles of vodka followed by the cute office assistants taking us out for russian karoake with many more beers and 2 bottles of vodka. blacking out the rest of the evening, though i was apparently quite the charming conversationalist. waking up the next morning fully clothed with no recollection of how i got home. passing out on the flight to chelyabinsk. being held by a giant polish man as i violently threw up out of the sliding door of a passenger van downtown (lots of pedestrian traffic) and literally minutes later speaking to an assembly of 100 or so russian college students followed by a series of personal interviews and a short stint in front of the camera of a local news station. then being treated to dinner at a joint that had belly dancing and a strange and very bacchanalian show put on by young aspiring russian models in skimpy underwear, somehow mustering the strength/courage/stupidity(?) to suck down the hair of the dog and sharing numerous "big beers" and 4 more bottles of vodka.

ahhh, russia . . .

much love,
squirrelski