Month: May 2005

download: a smattering of The Faint

My eyes aren’t working as well as they should. I open them and I still see a lovers sweep of dark hair or a hand bound with a silver ring. I looked up to the sky last night, remembering something Gavin told me. He knew a woman once who was a stripper and a whore who wanted to be an astronaut so she could be alone in orbit around the Earth and look down at everything. No one would ever touch her again until she wanted them to, until she came down in a screaming fire ball of atmosphere. She’s a scientist now, works at a particle accelerator up north some. Walking up a dark street in the middle of forest, I looked up at the sky last night and imagined myself there, as I do every time I think of her. I picture myself alone and glued to a port window, a cold hand pressed against the glass, my hair tied back and my body curled in on itself. I know I would be crying, that’s my only certainty. A fetal position stabbed through with something aching and nameless. To look down on the world, no horizon visible, only the blazing curve of globe, it would hurt me to be that alone.

Immoral, wanting to call you on the phone. You left me slick with children dead, with a cold bed in the middle of the winter, with half a dozen unpaid bills. How hard is it to maintain integrity when you’re a disgrace?

Today is hiking in Lynn Canyon, a deep cut of wilderness attached to the side of this little city. Half of humanity lives now in cities.

That, to me, is beautiful.

I woke up ill today. I woke up with nerves mis-firing. My teeth ached and my muscles felt as if they had been laced with broken glass. Words were gone, language deserting me for somewhere more hospitable. I tried to stand but fell. It took me too long to realize that I wasn’t in my own home. I tried to find something familiar. I found a mirror. Who is that? They’re also on the ground. Ah, right. That must be me. I woke again a few hours later, feeling far less deserted by my flesh though still aching. I’m not used to being sick. This starvation thing isn’t working out. I need to die in a far more interesting way. This shutting down of the resources one by one by one just isn’t me. Too trite, you know? I require some flaming inferno so you can see me again one last time on the WIERD NEWS collection in your local paper. Some personality accident where they thought I was trying to assasinate the Queen.

There’s a televert on-line for General Electric that I rather like. It reminds me of Banassi’s Satisfaction, (right click to download). The music is an especially amusing choice.

I feel like I might be part of some little war today. Ross Nukem arrived at my door for tea with an unexpected white plastic bag containing a packet of sausage, a carton of eggs, and a small bar of chocolate. Can’t have you living off bagels only, dear, you’ll die. Things are obviously getting out of hand. Next the resistance shall bring me dried coffee and a handgun. I can tell. My next task will be to seduce someone of importance and discover the whereabouts of the sekrit dokumentas.

It’s likely the chocolate that struck me with this thought. That, and Ross is a weapons dealer.

I think I like that a weapons dealer just dropped by with Rations. In fact, have some delicious music.

THE CIRQUE DE FLAMBE PRESENTS

In The Shadow of The Giant

Dates:
Sat., Sun., May 21, 22, 2005

Time:
All shows – 9:30 p.m.

Location:
1601 Ontario St. at 1st Ave., Vancouver, BC
Science Center Sky Train
100 meters to the south of the Science Center along False Creek

Cost:
$20.00 Adults
$10.00 Children under 15
Free to children under 5 (Parental guidance suggested, as performance includes unusual acts of fire and pyrotechnics)
Free parking on site

Tickets for Adults available on site or pre sale at the following stores :
Red Cat Records 4307 Main St 604-708-9422
Zulu Records 1972 W4th Ave 604-738-3232
Scratch Records 726 Richard’s St. 604-687-6355
Highlife Records 1317 Commercial Dr. 604-251-6964
Noize Records 540 Seymour St. 604-681-7007

Tickets for Children available on site only

Encouraged:
Bring lawn chairs and blankets

Vancouver, BC – Victoria weekend in May brings the world’s only flaming vaudeville circus, the Cirque de Flambe. The latest production of this local troupe, In the Shadow of the Giant, will set Vancouver into a fantastical burst of inflamed clowns, Robots and Jugglers.

In the Shadow of the Giant is the collaborative by-product of 33 artists’ imaginations, made uniquely evocative when combined with fire. “Cirque de Flambe prides itself on taking fire to new heights of beauty, comedy and awe,” said Maque DaVís, Artistic Director. “In true circus style, we use our hard-won skills in performances that play with on our audiences’ natural apprehension of fire, while stealthily employing safety precautions that assuage even the toughest Fire Captain.”

With vaudevillian flair, the Master Wizard ringmaster guides us through the Cirque de Flambe tall tales of laughable bravado and blunders. All ages will leave with fond childhood memories, except now those memories crescendo with more pyrotechnically-armed fire performers per square foot than any childhood could ever imagine.

In the Shadow of the Giant’s displays are brought to a resounding vibrancy by the Fremont Philharmonic. Orchestrations are 99.99% original music by Seattle composers Fred Hawkinson, Stuart Zobel and Jeremy Reinhold. “We are going to ridiculous lengths to please you,” assures band leader, Fred Hawkinson. “Calisthenics, diet regimes, fireproofing and something brand new.”

Cirque de Flambe has presented West Coast performances including Spokane First Night, Utah Arts Festival, the Bellevue Art Museum, Northwest Folklife Festival, Edmonton Fringe Festival, Seattle Fringe Festival, Tacoma First Night, Burning Man Arts Festival and numerous local appearances.

It was brought up repeatedly yesterday that my birthday is in a week. Folk have been asking what sort of wee gift I would like for my annual number switch and I’ve decided it’s time to proclaim it. I want every single last one of you who is available to dress in your most typical clothing and come with me in a large group to have our portraits taken somewhere like Sears. I think it would be fabulous. Everyone toss in five to ten dollars and I think we could cover it adequately. I’m thinking horrid blue sponge wash backgrounds and awful prom photos. I’m thinking those family portraits what happened when you were ten and thought that goofy headbands were cool. I don’t expect this to happen before my birthday, as apparently there’s only a week left, but in early June I want this organized. Spread the word, find out when people could come.

It hasn’t been very long. My dreams are out there, fluttering and pretending to fly, managing without me. The air smells like fire and rain, a strange combination maybe, anywhere but here. Instead, this is usual. This evening tableau, I saw it in the forest of my hair three weeks ago. I even knew he would bleed. I swabbed his cuts with alcohol on a damp cloth and lay him on his side. I see a child in his painfully hurt eyes, but not one of mine. This one loves me with the breath of gods again. My teeth are the stars and from my tongue hangs the moon.

Tonight is the Fire Circus. It was last night as well, but I haven’t been keeping track of days well enough to have set myself up to go. I saw posters up two weeks ago and avowed then to go. Tickets are 20 a head, which is rich, but I’m hoping someone will want to go with me. So far I think I’ve a chance of roping in Inevitable Bill. Which reminds me, Travis is back from Egypt and is going to be moving into Gamer Hall this upcoming month. This is a happy thought. I get too gloomy, I shall endeavor to remind myself of it. I’m not sure what sort of show there’s going to be tonight, but I don’t think it’s particularly going to matter. They can be bought at Noize, Scratch, Zulu, and likely one or two other alt record shops.

I found today in waking that I don’t need sleep as much as I need food. Part of me is dizzy while the other is railing at my attempt at excess. I was aware to see dawn today, I was aware when I left scarlet lines down his body in complaint. Before I leave the house I’m going to take a shower and brush my teeth and wonder about stem cell research as it occurs to me for the thousandth time that I should scrub the grout from between the tiles, every black speck a new colony of something alive. It’s what I do in the morning, in spite of the fact that it’s almost noon. I’m assuming that we’re sentimental enough to be forgiving. I’m assuming a lot of things, least of all that he’s alive still, that he hasn’t bled out. I think about the marks I left with a sad dose of heavenly pragmatacism. I could draw lines on this body without any effort. It would be too easy to create scarlet spires and cities on such pale skin. I never would have guessed that alone. Disappointment is harder to carry after surprise. Think on the words let down as if one had been carried before, buoyed up above the shoulders of something strong, and had then stepped to the ground. This was voluntary, of this I’m aware. I shook off the hands and fell to the floor, landing lightly out of habit. This is a familiar nation. They’re not a spy the way I am, they didn’t automatically have a passkey. Feet up on the windowsill, I look at trees and a sliver of sky and I think again about how the lines created at my fingertips. There’s a metaphor there somewhere.

My friends page flaunts its rockstar status today as coffeeshakes, theremina, kylecassidy, and evi_13thchild all spill about thier lovely time as photographers at the NIN/Dresden Dolls show last night.

In other news, the piano man may have been identified. I’ve been enthralled with the story, it’s given me a magic rush of wonder and joy. I want to hear him play, I want a recording of his fingers on the keys. There’s not a lot to make me genuinely happy lately but this? This has been a heartbeat to hold me still in one thundering clap.

(Then again, there’s the antitheses, the man in Holland who skinned his mother. He was seen directing traffic in her skin and dressed in one of her dresses as he recited texts from the Bible. That’s as wondrous, but the damned other direction.)

Last night was the first lightning storm of the year. The first I’ve seen since taking Gavin out of Calgary almost a year ago. I stood on the Burrard street bridge in soaking Italia rain and drank with my eyes. How time spreads it’s wings over me, it’s a little scary. How will I feel about this in a year? Last year this time it was like the stars were descending and bathing me in silver light and now I’m subtly changed again. This happens all the time, but how often do I notice? Going home was good for me. I found that I knew the streets better than my own life lines, that I was dancing without thinking about it when I stopped for a red light. People tried to give me change when I was waiting for the subway to lightly rumble into station. They gave me change. They gave me conversation and their smiles. The air is different there, like it’s different in L.A. It’s not the pollution count or the change in greenery, either. It’s something more to do with how I taste places, how Los Angeles carries an unidentifiable sheen of new product scent, like every bit of cloth you’ve ever bought from a store before washing has been atomized and sent into the sky, but Toronto has a satisfaction to it, like the buildings are self aware and content with the creatures that scurry around thier solid rectangle feet.

404 baby

404 blackhole

I wonder at myself, that I have been living half in memory this whole month.

Blog Monopoly Board

human sized Monopoly

Sometimes in the evening, I feel very young. The sky drops its light and I close my eyes against it. Then again, in conversation, I’ll speak a spectrum that encompasses more than it should by all rights allow. It’s as if the years in passing have grabbed my head in their hands and forced tongue upon me when kissing their daily blessing.

Melissa brought me out tonight, darling woman that she is. We compared histories, romance fallacy upon romance fallacy. I think we come out close to even, though I’ve yet to properly lose friends over any choices, only lovers that I might have discarded in the long run anyway. It was interesting, hemming the realization into everything that here is a new person I might talk with, hold hands and sit in sand with, our feet splashing in allegory and mythology and amateur music. The Fugitives were the night’s entertainment. CR and Barbara and Brandon and Mark Berube pounding words into us, throwing piano man rhymes at the audience like a net to catch our hearts with. Song and music, beat box and microphone yelling. It was good, they’re always good. There’s a glut of brilliance on that stage, I thought, and I can’t imagine how many people of this caliber talent must be playing little restaurants and tiny little coffee-shops all around the globe even just tonight. There must be thousands. It irritates me that these are never recorded, I said, and my nails scratched the tabletop before I looked up and started to sing along. I knew almost all the songs, all the skeins of poetry made available to us, the performer’s glory familiar and hard/easy to hold.

If you only watch two video this week, make it these:

McCouture for Women
McCouture for Men

The way that other cultures re-mix ours is simply delightful. Also, the brain, it balks.

50 nifty ipod tricks

50 x 2 years of vegas

50’s, on becoming a woman

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster and faster then the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

~~ W.S. Merwin

x-rays of piercings

x-rays, what kids eat

x-ray art photography