Cetaceus

It’s been cold out, and bitterly so. Work has taken me to many far flung, remote and teeming-with-life places in the city this week. I have my own private eternal return going on, as these trips for their purpose, the places themselves, and the stretches and swaths I’ve crossed to reach them, highlighted liberally with the ruins of a one-great, proud and perhaps even mighty civilization, have been bordering on the religious. Walking up Baltimore from 40th Wednesday with hands so cold I could feel the moisture departing my skin, I felt as though I was coming home from a long pilgrimage, sojourn or something in a long lost but not lost wilderness. The cold and gray have only highlighted this sense. I don’t mean this to sound like Columbus, but rather more like the comings and goings of Jesus. The difference being all the people, of course.

I’m not much for corporate evening news, but tonight on ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson, they’ll be airing the first of a two-part series about the literacy crisis in the US called Living in the Shadows: Illiteracy in America  that seems like it will be an excellent and sympathetic look at the issues around the literacy crisis. I think it will be webcast, and I intend to watch it online.

This is what I devote 40 hours out of my week to, so I am hoping it will be an objective look at the issue. What I can’t stand about mass media and mass culture in general is that I am already cringing at the thought of people jumping all over the comment pages to spout uninformed, unsympathetic partisan political what-have-you over the issue. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, more tedious than “It’s the parents!” vs “It’s the teachers!” and so on. When it comes to education, everybody’s an expert, and there is nothing worse for actually solving a problem than bringing in an entire population whose cups are already full of true belief.

Noon on Saturday and as yet coffeeless, I am compelled to write now about a musical experience I shared with many good people last night that bordered on the religious.

To set the stage however, there are a handful of things in this world I consider sacred, and the transgression of which I take personally in the gut. Anything relating to Italian-American culture falls neatly into this category, so you can imagine my chagrin when I discovered that alongside the first invading, pretentious hipster “art gallery” that’s lamely popped up along 9th street south of Washington in south Philly’s Italian Market, there is now another such gallery. The first I was uneasy about, lamely called “BoBo’s on 9th,” more so after first visiting it and bearing witness to some god awful junk last summer. Much, much more so when I heard about a performance of Riley’s “In C” being given there by some friends of mine, preceded by a performance of some other friends of mine. The proprietors, in all their hipster wisdom, at some point decided that they didn’t like the opening act (said friends) that they themselves had booked, and tried in the most obnoxious and hipsterish (read: passive aggressively annoying, these people have no backbone, not even aesthetically) of ways to cut their set short of the previously agreed upon time. In a fit of great justice, one of the guys in the band, after going back stage and reportedly having shit talked to him after his set by one of these proprietors, punched the guy in the fucking face and left. I had to take my hat off to this, as there is no better way of dealing with bullshit than transcending the tacitly understood rules of engagement, defined by the context, and taking it to a level the assholes wouldn’t dare go in order to put the whole thing to rest.

So after all this, you can imagine I was hesitant last night to attend a show at yet another small gallery on 9th, a place where I really have doubts about galleries belonging. I was expecting that I was in for the same kind of scene and atmosphere, but was extremely pleasantly surprised to find that this other place, The Purl, was presided over by some extremely good people, with great taste in music, a friendly relationship with their south Philly neighbors and were able to, with very little effort, create a positive and welcoming space through a combination of all kinds of factors. Most of all, I was impressed when they let an older man that I would wager was homeless, come in an stand for a while to listen. I don’t think he really was into the music, but I toasted him with my beer when I turned around to see who was coming in. The place is tiny, and I was standing by the door.

In any event, there were two acts of the night, along with much banter and good people I haven’t seen in a while for various reasons. The first, who’s name escapes me now because I think it’s just something these two guys do now and then, was pretty good. Although I am staunch in my insistence that it was not by any stretch as great as a lot of other people think it is. Not to be ridiculous, but it really does take a lot to win me over to music these days, and I tend to not at all give anyone the benefit of the doubt. The setup was like this: an amazing, and I mean amazing drummer and a guy (friend of Ben’s) playing a saxophone with effects and pedals to give it some really interesting sounds.

While I do salute anyone who can use electronic effects well, actually integrating them into making music, at the end of it I felt a little let down despite the enthusiasm with the rest of the crowd. Really, in the end this was just mathrock. Now, it was mathrock with a saxophone, and while that’s interesting for about 5 minutes, I’ve heard plenty of people in either straight math or mathy-hardcore bands make pretty much the same sounds along with the same level of drumming excellence. Coupled with the fact that despite some people’s technical musical prowess, they really don’t know how to effectively limit their set such that the audience actually wants more, rather than wants it to end. This was the case with these guys, they just played way too fucking long, and I think the sax guy was just overly smug and proud of himself for his gimmick, which is always a turnoff for me. It reminded me why I turned from being interested in virtuoso playing to punk at a young age, because I just can’t stand the self-satisfaction of musicians who like to show off that much.

The long and the short of it was that in the end this just sounded like a lot of things I’ve heard before. Having been, arguably, the only person in the room that was old enough and in a position to see this sort of thing before because of my own past musical endeavors, it may explain why I ultimately found this boring after about the second song. Whereas it was a new experience for some others. Who knows, it was cool but it didn’t do it for me, and it still came off as gimmicky. One last thing about this band though, in a major nod to the drummer, sitting on the floor in front of his set, I was periodically overwhelmed by a whoosh of air that would emanate from the set like some kind of cascading barrage of whatever energy is left over when the pedals, sticks cymbals and heads meet with such force.

The next band however, was easily one of the most amazing, difficult, strenuous, joyous and beautiful musical performances I have ever had the privilege of witnessing. This is an experimental jazz group called Mostly Other People Do the Killing. And my god, these guys are indescribable. As the byline on their myspace page says, “100 Years of Jazz History in Every Byte!!!” With a mouthful of all kinds of other stuff. The most striking thing about the group is that they truly integrate jazz sounds and styles (not to mention a lot of other non-jazz desiderata) into what they do, integrating all these things together in a way that’s usually not heard, at least not to younger people. They do everything from New Orleans and Louis Armstrong to Coltrane in a way that’s so playful, intense and ultimately fun that I kept saying to myself as I looked around the room last night that these guys really make people happy.

This kind of joyous reverie is deftly combined with an amazing use of extended technique, particularly in each of the four members solos, in a way that to me brings their live performances up to the level of some kind of out-of-time liturgical revelation. I had the unique phenomenological experience of feeling both that I was having a great time and going through an intense ongoing religious ritual. This show made me feel the way I did the time I meditated for 5 days straight in a monastery in Taiwan, it was that complicated, difficult, beautiful and ultimately satisfying. Riding our bikes home through the long dark cold back to West Philly, Kobza and I felt like a great weight had been lifted off our shoulders, and me like my insides had been unloosened, put back in place, made right.

As a quick vocabulary note, “extended technique,” put loosely is when you do stuff with instruments that they weren’t really made to do. The great thing about these guys is that, as Ben put it in an email, they use their powers of extended technique for the forces of good and actually make music with it, rather than just some stupid annoying sounds.

Time to eat. If this band is coming to your city, take my word for it and go see them because the live show will be somewhere on the spectrum of completely fun to transcendental.

Yes, yes it’s Valentine’s Day, but I am not catatonic. Unsure and with no plans, I think Alissa and I will scour the city, ranging widely here and abouts in search of the sort of Valentine’s activity that is compelling enough for us to partake in itself. That’s the plan, there is no plan.

On the day after a long, good Sunday of making pancakes and celebrating my birthday with many fine individuals, it is cold out, bitterly so, and I am working from home. My ongoing drive for tutor recruitment continues apace, with a few small steps for man taken today. Yesterday was perfect: friends, food, sun in the windows, boisterous conversation around the table, and a heated debate about labor (the movement, not the bodily function). People I was glad to see came by, everybody talked. I met Dave’s new lady, my sister was here, we concocted makeshift mimosas and filter coffee and sambuca came together in a nod toward that old Italian favorite, known around my family simply as “medicine.”

The week promises to be grueling. I have my first solo tutor training Wednesday, and tomorrow I’m accompanying my most volatile of colleagues to an orientation at a program we have worked hard to put in place. I will spend three hours on tense high alert to insure that said colleagues short-sightedness and even shorter temper doesn’t unravel all that effort. I shall assume the role of imminent damage-control-bot for the evening, and I am already exhausted just thinking about it.

There are way, way to many people in this town without degrees. What the fuck are they thinking down there in that tower?

Today is my birthday, I’m 28. I’m sitting here at work with a pile of new student intake forms getting bigger and bigger before my eyes and a serious lack of volunteer tutors to accommodate them all. I suppose there’s some solace in being overwhelmed with the ills of the world rather than being overwhelmed by my own life.

Actually, as it stands, I don’t have much to complain about on this birthday. I have a job that I like, although it doesn’t pay much, and that I feel proud to do everyday. I just got my first graduate school acceptance letter, to the Religion program (MA and PhD) at UC Santa Barbara, and I am extremely excited, relieved and satisfied about that. I don’t have any tangible imminent travel plans (for lack of funds to execute such plans), but I imagine I will soon enough. I got a giant stuffed-animal bear head. Yeah, there really isn’t anything bad going on now, nothing anxiety causing, nothing overly stressful. It is a very strange thing indeed that one can, on a birthday with 30 only 2 years away, feel as calm and simply good as I do now. I am truly a lucky fellow.

So in honor of all of this here, I will cite a poem that my dear Croatian friend Petra sent me, written by none other than David Berman (of Silver Jews fame):

Self-Portrait At 28

I know it’s a bad title
but I’m giving it to myself as a gift
on a day nearly canceled by sunlight
when the entire hill is approaching
the ideal of Virginia
brochured with goldenrod and loblolly
and I think “at least I have not woken up
with a bloody knife in my hand”
by then having absently wandered
one hundred yards from the house
while still seated in this chair
with my eyes closed.

It is a certain hill
the one I imagine when I hear the word “hill”
and if the apocalypse turns out
to be a world-wide nervous breakdown
if our five billion minds collapse at once
well I’d call that a surprise ending
and this hill would still be beautiful
a place I wouldn’t mind dying
alone or with you.

I am trying to get at something
and I want to talk very plainly to you
so that we are both comforted by the honesty.
You see there is a window by my desk
I stare out when I am stuck
though the outdoors has rarely inspired me to write
and I don’t know why I keep staring at it.

My childhood hasn’t made good material either
mostly being a mulch of white minutes
with a few stand out moments,
popping tar bubbles on the driveway in the summer
a certain amount of pride at school
everytime they called it “our sun”
and playing football when the only play
was “go out long” are what stand out now.

If squeezed for more information
I can remember old clock radios
with flipping metal numbers
and an entree called Surf and Turf.

As a way of getting in touch with my origins
every night I set the alarm clock
for the time I was born so that waking up
becomes a historical reenactment and the first thing I do
is take a reading of the day and try to flow with it like
when you’re riding a mechanical bull and you strain to learn
the pattern quickly so you don’t inadverantly resist it.

II two

I can’t remember being born
and no one else can remember it either
even the doctor who I met years later
at a cocktail party.
It’s one of the little disappointments
that makes you think about getting away
going to Holly Springs or Coral Gables
and taking a room on the square
with a landlady whose hands are scored
by disinfectant, telling the people you meet
that you are from Alaska, and listen
to what they have to say about Alaska
until you have learned much more about Alaska
than you ever will about Holly Springs or Coral Gables.

Sometimes I am buying a newspaper
in a strange city and think
“I am about to learn what it’s like to live here.”
Oftentimes there is a news item
about the complaints of homeowners
who live beside the airport
and I realize that I read an article
on this subject nearly once a year
and always receive the same image.

I am in bed late at night
in my house near the airport
listening to the jets fly overhead
a strange wife sleeping beside me.
In my mind, the bedroom is an amalgamation
of various cold medicine commercial sets
(there is always a box of tissue on the nightstand).

I know these recurring news articles are clues,
flaws in the design though I haven’t figured out
how to string them together yet,
but I’ve begun to notice that the same people
are dying over and over again,
for instance Minnie Pearl
who died this year
for the fourth time in four years.

III three

Today is the first day of Lent
and once again I’m not really sure what it is.
How many more years will I let pass
before I take the trouble to ask someone?

It reminds of this morning
when you were getting ready for work.
I was sitting by the space heater
numbly watching you dress
and when you asked why I never wear a robe
I had so many good reasons
I didn’t know where to begin.

If you were cool in high school
you didn’t ask too many questions.
You could tell who’d been to last night’s
big metal concert by the new t-shirts in the hallway.
You didn’t have to ask
and that’s what cool was:
the ability to deduct
to know without asking.
And the pressure to simulate coolness
means not asking when you don’t know,
which is why kids grow ever more stupid.

A yearbook’s endpages, filled with promises
to stay in touch, stand as proof of the uselessness
of a teenager’s promise. Not like I’m dying
for a letter from the class stoner
ten years on but…

Do you remember the way the girls
would call out “love you!”
conveniently leaving out the “I”
as if they didn’t want to commit
to their own declarations.

I agree that the “I” is a pretty heavy concept
and hope you won’t get uncomfortable
if I should go into some deeper stuff here.

IV four

There are things I’ve given up on
like recording funny answering machine messages.
It’s part of growing older
and the human race as a group
has matured along the same lines.
It seems our comedy dates the quickest.
If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare’s jokes
I hope you won’t be insulted
if I say you’re trying too hard.
Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live
seem slow-witted and obvious now.

It’s just that our advances are irrepressible.
Nowadays little kids can’t even set up lemonade stands.
It makes people too self-conscious about the past,
though try explaining that to a kid.

I’m not saying it should be this way.

All this new technology
will eventually give us new feelings
that will never completely displace the old ones
leaving everyone feeling quite nervous
and split in two.

We will travel to Mars
even as folks on Earth
are still ripping open potato chip
bags with their teeth.

Why? I don’t have the time or intelligence
to make all the connections
like my friend Gordon
(this is a true story)
who grew up in Braintree Massachusetts
and had never pictured a brain snagged in a tree
until I brought it up.
He’d never broken the name down to its parts.
By then it was too late.
He had moved to Coral Gables.

V five

The hill out my window is still looking beautiful
suffused in a kind of gold national park light
and it seems to say,
I’m sorry the world could not possibly
use another poem about Orpheus
but I’m available if you’re not working
on a self-portrait or anything.

I’m watching my dog have nightmares,
twitching and whining on the office floor
and I try to imagine what beast
has cornered him in the meadow
where his dreams are set.

I’m just letting the day be what it is:
a place for a large number of things
to gather and interact –
not even a place but an occasion
a reality for real things.

Friends warned me not to get too psychedelic
or religious with this piece:
“They won’t accept it if it’s too psychedelic
or religious,” but these are valid topics
and I’m the one with the dog twitching on the floor
possibly dreaming of me
that part of me that would beat a dog
for no good reason
no reason that a dog could see.

I am trying to get at something so simple
that I have to talk plainly
so the words don’t disfigure it
and if it turns out that what I say is untrue
then at least let it be harmless
like a leaky boat in the reeds
that is bothering no one.

VI six

I can’t trust the accuracy of my own memories,
many of them having blended with sentimental
telephone and margarine commercials
plainly ruined by Madison Avenue
though no one seems to call the advertising world
“Madison Avenue” anymore. Have they moved?
Let’s get an update on this.

But first I have some business to take care of.

I walked out to the hill behind our house
which looks positively Alaskan today
and it would be easier to explain this
if I had a picture to show you
but I was with our young dog
and he was running through the tall grass
like running through the tall grass
is all of life together
until a bird calls or he finds a beer can
and that thing fills all the space in his head.

You see,
his mind can only hold one thought at a time
and when he finally hears me call his name
he looks up and cocks his head
and for a single moment
my voice is everything:

Self-portrait at 28.

“Super Tuesday” is over and while it looks like McCain will be beating out dashing Mitt Romney and everyone’s favorite kinder, gentler religious fanatic Mike Huckabee, Obama and Clinton remain locked in for the long haul.

I’ve repeatedly said that I’ll vote for either Democrat in the actually election, but despite all the newfound hype over Obama, taking a long steady look at both of them I really still have no preference in terms of policy. Obama wins for me majorly on foreign relations, which I care probably the most about (though again, he certainly isn’t perfect here), whereas Clinton really does have a better sense of what’s really needed regarding healthcare. We’ll see, hopefully since I live in the craptastic state of Pennsylvania now, with its primary weeks after all else is said and done, I’ll get off the hook by having the rest of the country decide for me.

I actually think that at the end of the day Obama stands to pull in more swing voters and disgruntled Republicans than Hillary, for a few reasons that my imminent departure for work will require I leave there for today. Suffice it to say, I think he’s more of a genuine uniter, whereas the stigma–rightly or wrongly–around Clinton might push people in the other direction.

It looks like the Serbian people have at least initiated the process of navigating the rocky straights of their own recent history toward some kind of positive future. Having a keen interest in the former Yugoslavia–and a general belief that anyone who wants to rule themselves should–this is also great news for the Albanians in Kosovo. The two best possible outcomes, namely Serbia’s expedited entry into the EU and an independent Kosovo (because after all, however you slice it, the Albanians have paid for that right in blood, mass graves and the 1990’s favorite political euphemism “ethnic cleansing”) have actually appeared on the horizon.

I know I personally still have a lot of mixed feelings and anxieties about the situation there. While anyone who’s done even light reading on the Yugoslav wars of succession knows that in the 1990s, there certainly were no “good guys,” Serbia is still seen (rightly or wrongly) as key to stability in the area and I think this is true. There is frankly nothing more dangerous in a country than rampant nationalism–aside from a deep sense of wounded nationalism (read: Russia, China, Serbia, etc.). This positive move away from that, and the Serbian left-of-center’s statement (can’t find it now) that it will not oppose Kosovar independence violently is a very positive sign for the Balkans.

But the issue of whether or not it is either right or good for Kosovo to declare independence warrants investigation. My own short answer is yes on both counts, with the proviso that Serbia should be both politically and economically rewarded for not opposing this. Most importantly, the message must be sent that the Serbs have done the right thing in the profound sense, and should be congratulated. Further, as the EU spreads down into the Balkans, the point must be made that none of these national boundaries are going to matter much anyway in the long run, and the Serbs will still have free access to their “spiritual homeland.”

It should also be pointed out that, and I believe this unabashedly, the movement of any group or country away from Moscow (at least Putin’s Moscow) is certainly a far-sighted good thing. It’s pretty clear that Russia is just trying to grab at anything for influence in Europe, and this happened to be some cause they could take up. It amazes me how the largest country in the world is so obsessively outward-looking, rather than worrying about it’s own territory. Of course, the same goes for the US, but as my mama always said, two wrongs don’t make a right.

Anyway, I would like to take this small corner of the internet to congratulate Serbia on moving away from right wing nationalism and the legacy of the 1990s and toward a future where Serbs will finally be, as they deserve, genuinely respected. Doing the right thing really goes a long way–again, another lesson we could learn here in the States.

Not sure what others think about this. Maybe too rosy a picture is being painted. To be sure, there are dire consequences (including loss of life) teetering on the brink here, and if Tadic can make it through this whole thing without any bloodshed, then it’ll be a miracle.

Tonight at work, at a church somewhere in the north of the city a man came in to take a test. It took me too long to figure out that he was drunk. The pastor descended the stairs, took him aside, spoke with him, and showed him out. He may be back Saturday, he may not; the pastor said:

“He has to find his own way.”