A Lantern is Never Wasted

"There's something here that doesn't last too long. Maybe I shouldn't think of you as mine."

Hello It's Me, Todd Rungren

So my birthday came at Midnight as the 8th became the 9th. About a mile or so away, across the cold and turgid East River, a couple hundred people huddled around the mosaic tribute to John Lennon which rests in the dirt at the edge of Central Park. They sung his songs, each one a small version of him, with their hair down to their collars, or round glasses, or I Love NY t-shirt, or army surplus jacket. They sung his songs in the shadow of the Dakota Building where he lived, and infront of which he died. The Dakota is like one giant gargoyle. How many candles would it take to illuminate it?

I wondered if anyone ever sat on the sidewalk and read Catcher in Rye instead, as Lennon's killer did, with the shot residue grey on his pale fingers that turned the pages, the gun still warm in his coat. Did anyone ever memorialize that? Ever Unimagine.

I wondered why thoughts so dark came a flickerin' through my mind? Why in the dimmest hours of night, do I sometimes feel that resemble Mark more than John. And on my birthday of all days.

The year is over, at least the sort of the year we mark this way. I've now seen more days than Jesus of Nazareth did when the sand still scalded the soles of his feet, but a couple thousand less then John Lennon did when lead made a mess of his heart. I prophesized that things would change for me in this year that just passed, that some would things would fall away, and others rise. There would be transformation. I'm not a prophet though, so I was just being superstitious, or blasphemous...hopeful, or scared.

I always loved the title of that book, which I never read...

"Midnight in The Garden Of Good and Evil"

Is that where those people are, sitting around holding hands and playing 'Across The Universe' on badly tuned acoustic guitars? Midnight in Central Park.

I am always hypnotized by these moments. Whether for Princess Diana, or John Paul, or the Kid Who Drowned Swimming After His Diary. It made me quite ashamed of coloring Easter Eggs.

Andrea and I once discussed doing a photo-book of Roadside Memorials made for people killed in or by cars. She would take photos (which she was very good at), and I would write moody prose that attempted to mean something. My vocation in a nutshell. She isn't around for this birthday, and probably won't ever be again. I am hoping that someone gets me a camera of my own this birthday. Or Christmas.

Later in the day I will be meeting a few friends at Donovan's in Woodside for a meal and a pint. Then we will go to see the Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe. It's opening night co-inciding with my birthday is another 'sign' I suppose...or hope...or imagine.

I have a nasty cold. That's why I am awake at 12:30 with the lights off, thinking delirious thoughts about going down to The Dakota with a copy of Catcher. Does the devil wait for the flesh to go weak? Come in alongside the virus I probably got from playing Kurt Brondo's piano? Or is the devil... just...me being bored with a runny nose, and playing in the dark.

I finally fell asleep to the sound of the sports talk radio I use to drown out the ever present jangle in my ears.

When I awoke, daylight was breaking and I looked out the window. Snow was falling in riots all around. The superstitious smile returned to my lips. I would open my front door, slightly mad with fever, just like Lucy did the wardrobe door to Narnia in Winter. I was too enchanted to even decide if this was a good sign or a bad sign. Or just a wink. I'm aware most of you just consider it meteorology. Which is fine.

I walked out of my apartment in an interesting outfit consisting of jogging pants, a moth chewed Cure T-shirt from 1989 (aka my pajamas), snow boots and a big parka. I stomped through the snow with no particular destination in mind. Children looked happy.

I went to the bodega and got a copy of the Daily News. There was a picture of the people at the Lennon Memorial on the front. They looked sad. I went next door to the French bakery, and bought a warm fresh loaf of whole wheat bread which they put in the slicer for me. It smelled grand. I then went across the street to the Food Dynasty and purchased a can of Cambell's reduced salt Tomato Soup and a quarter pound of American Cheese.

I returned home lightly dusted with snow, like one of those pre-fab Christmas trees from the 70s. I made myself a small pot of coffee in my little Bialetti coffee maker, and put two slices of wheat bread in the toaster. I had it with butter and blackberry jam. I read the newspaper with particular attention to what's referred to as 'hot stove baseball' news.

Then I went back to sleep....the hours passed a little like a dream. I got back up and read the Songs of Solomon a little. I felt like a lily in the bramble.

I then made myself a grilled cheese with the fresh wheat bread, and a bowl of tomato soup. I watched Starting Over on Channel 4.

I played my recently rescued guitar for a while, working on a song that sounded a bit like something a sober Johnny Thunders might have written.

I chatted on the phone and waited for a present that never arrived. I checked the mailbox three times.

Will argued with Grace.

At 8pm I traveled to the pub with my brother, and sat in a back room of this labyrinth like restaurant surrounded by bookcases and some odd Dali prints. Soon my friends arrived and we chowed on some 'pub grub' of varying quality while trying to decide whether or not the waitress hated us. We laughed. The cold medicine and beer in tandem was getting me a bit high. People got me awesome presents though I expressly requested none. My brother got me an old PBS video of The Bloodhound Gang which started my still ongoing 'detective phase' at the age of 8. My friend Jake got me a big colorful anthology of Bob Dylan articles.

After dinner, we carpooled one Queens neighborhood over, to the multiplex to see The Chronicles of Narnia. There seemed to be forty minutes worth of commercials and previews, and it was now about 11:30 and the snow and beer and bread and songs had put me in a lovely, peaceful mood as I joked with my chums and awaited my beloved Penesvie Children and Aslan the Lion.

Back across the East River, a lovely girl left the opera house on someone's arm. I thought of her as the lights went down.

The movie was a dreadful bore. The children were cute, but save for Lucy, acted only with an annoyingly repetitive series of facial expressions. The filmmakers followed the book, event by event & image by image (minus an effective London bombing prelude) but missed everything else. Or perhaps there was nothing there that could be captured. The film was like watching a deck of tarot cards being shuffled. An image, and icon, an sword, but nothing really magical. I thought of the old counter culture catchphrase 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised'...and altered it slightly in my mind 'The Lord Will Not Be Computer Animated.' Sigh. A goofy digital Lion with Liam Neeson's voice brought none of the joy & terror that the presence of the Lion brought to the children (and the reader) in the book. In those pages, our imaginations allowed us to create our own Narnia, our own Paradise in our minds eye, and run through it with Peters sword, or cry in it's valleys with Edmunds Turkish delight on our fingers. In the theater we were spectators of a spectacle, but there was no specter.

My Brother called it Snornia

My Narnia, on my birthday was a sweet and slow, and slightly feverish day in a garden of steel and concrete called Queens, where snow and bread and music and friends and poetry and beer brought me a kind of calmness. Took thoughts of Chapman from my mind. Whispered to me of a thaw that was to come.

On the way out of the theatre my brother told me of his favorite C.S Lewis quote. It was something like
"We are not bodies that have souls, but rather souls that have bodies"

And I thought "Perhaps films don't have souls, but souls have films"

I would remember today, and all the signs, and all the ordinary things. I would put them in my film.

Tidings,
Michael

Blog is a four letter word

With a past where to be 'touched' meant to be 'mental'- Morrissey

Okay all...

I am overwhelmed with the grading of Art History reports this week, and failing to keep up my weekly blog writing pace. All this strain, and sweat and red sharpie on my hands...and I'm only an Adjunct!

I am sad about the anniversary of John Lennon's death, and have written a strange song from the perspective of Mark David Chapman, which sounds a little like The Jesus & Mary Chain. Actually considering sitting around crying with a bunch of hippies infront of The Dakota on Thursday evening....what's becoming of me?

I am excited about the Chronicles Of Narnia opening Friday on my birthday! Although my accordianist is making snide remarks about my childish C.S. Lewis fascination. Some of you know there is nothing childish about it! Ok maybe a little...

I am slightly concerned that The Bronx Bombers do not have a dependable centerfielder yet for next season. Only a man of certain grace can stride in the space once occupied by Joltin' Joe Dimaggio (and I do not mean Marylin Monroe)

Oh Michael...so crude.

Forgive me dear detectives, If you can. I'll write more soon....

The Third and a Haircut

Just because you're nobody, it doesn't mean that you're no good.
Just because there's a reason, it doesn't mean it's understood.
It doesn't make it alright. It doesn't make it alright.
It's the worst excuse in the world, and it doesn't make it alright.

-The Specials

So when one of my students found out about my grandmother passing, she said

"Professor Michael! First the car crash, and now your grandma...you know bad things happen in threes...watch out!"

And I put my hand over my head like something was going to drop on me. Got a chuckle from the kiddos. But secretly I'm thinking, gosh...doesn't she know that a superstitous Sicilian catholic ...IS GOING TO GET FREAKED OUT.

Something did fall on my head. The third bad thing was just an acceptance of a kind of distance between two people who have been quite close, on various important levels, at various junctures...for a nice bit of time. It wasn't the deafening roar of steel bending, or the deafening silence of a six year old contemplating death for the first time whilst holding your hand. It wasn't like the first two. It was simply the ending of a musical refrain whose resolution pales in comparison to the beauty of its finest flourishes. Friendship though, is resilient, and resurrection, a divine aspect of Love. So I go into winter with my chin up...but with the top button of my coat fastened.

My hair is long. I like it when it gets a little Bringing It All Back Home...But I need to buzz it. Buzzing it always helps me simplify, re-focus. Like a monk.

Actually its ironic, because when I first went 'suede', I was at a really low point, the first of two valleys I crawled into in my twenties, a little kid flirting with violence and fascism...playing with its aesthetic power, the discipline and wholeness it can seem to enforce on a weak soul. It was brief, but I look back upon it with bewildering shame. I don't mean to overstate it, I was merely playing on the sidelines of a few troubled skinhead souls in a shit-hole of a Long Island town for half a year. But I do remember in my neutral way, having a kind of asinine admiration for there ignorance and brutality. '17 Berlin' was sort of me accepting my complicity...by just throwing in with them at all...but also recognizing that 'desire' it's various forms was as dangerous as it was compelling. It's a song without a real thesis. Me just struggling to reconcile 'love' with 'violence'....something I would do in a much wiser way years later with 'burning hearts'.

So now when I shave my head a bit, its with a humbleness, a nod towards a discipline of the spirit. I do try to retain a kind of working-class pride and courage from the earnest, leftist skins, suedes and punks I met later on, when I would wander around NYC, going from record shop to reggae show in my parka that smelt like the fisherman who owned it before me. A part of me will always be with them, in a perpetual meloncholia of the 1970s, where nothing seems possible. We haven't come that far...but if I'm going to fight now, it will be only for love & justice.

Putting my boots on,
Michael Peter

Living Ends

No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low. That is you can't you know tune in but it's all right, that is I think it's not too bad.
-Strawberry Fields Forever

Some years are just harder than others. The transformative effect of said challenges upon one's spirit is rarely understood until a small ocean of time has passed. I have always had a typically catholic superstition about this year, as I would be age that Christ was when he died. My superstition was not that I too would die (though I gave it a shot with the accident last month), but rather that it would be a time of change, of endings and beginnings and renewal. I think in the end it will have been. But at this moment I am just a bit weary and sad.

My grandmother passed away last week (please don't feel the need to comment your condolencesces, its understood) and I trekked back across that grey highway to Long Island for the wake and service. Without writing too much about a situation which is obviously quite private, I do want to say that she was a special woman. At times, the one person in the family who didn't seem see my wandering troubled sojourn to adulthood as a mystifying disappointment. When Andrea and I split after a decade of being together, she was a real calming, wise influence. So if I may be a bit 'grown up' and boring, may I respectfully suggest that you dear reader...take a moment or two soon to connect and share something with the elders in your life who care for you. The importance of said connection has a difficult time penetrating our adolescences (or our artificially prolonged adolescences), but it is profoundly important. The fact that I could write and read a eulogy for her, made me prouder of my gifts than the writing of any song has.

So restarting one's bohemian life back in New York after and emotional week back in the homeland is difficult, and I would have no adjustment time since I had a birthday party to attend Saturday night for my dear friend Jennifer (seen in a cameo carrying a dog and giving me a smooch in the 'happiest days' video) which centered around a bit of risque burlesque at a show called 'Le Scandall'. So whether or not I was ready for barely concealed nipples, barely concealed nipples was what I got.

The show was actually quite entertaining, with old fashion burlesque girls and contortionists and magicians Here's a photo of the lovely Jennifer sitting in my lap in an innocent fashion.

The other interesting thing I saw was one of those mainstreamTV news magazine shows about Mark David Chapman, the man (boy) who killed John Lennon. Returning to superstition, I've also always had a weird connection to this story. First because like Chapman, Lennon was an important figure in the young Michael's artistic development; from sniffing glue while listening to Black Sabbath as 13 year old...to using glue to make collages of pictures of The Beatles as a 14 year old (the fact that one of the commentors to this diary is a deeply intelligent 14 year old girl really makes me smile, since at fourteen I was barely able to tie my shoes). Lennon was a really important transitional artist for me, and I still enjoy many of his songs. The superstition is also because he was killed on December 8, and I was born on December 9...though not of the same year. Anyway I am rambling a bit. Chapman is a really interesting and deeply pathetic figure, who I have trouble condemning as deeply as I'd like to because much of his adolescent narcissism...I can sadly relate to having suffered. It was likely the influence of a kind of mild schitzophrenia which allowed him to complete his 'masterpiece'...as opposed to I...who thank the Lord....left it unfinished.

Chapman was obsessed with Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye just as I was for a period, carrying it around like a crimson bible. He saw in the newly 'metropolitan' Lennon of 1980 a phony figure who had sold out the ideals of his youth. When in the grips of this sort of 'young idea', all growing up is a sell out.

A kid who tells on another kid, is a dead kid -Huggy bear

On the night table of the hotel room he left behind to murder John Lennon, he set up an altar of images and then opened up a bible to the Gospel of John, and wrote "Lennon" by hand after the word John. That sent a chill down my spine, as that was the same sort of dark, jarring, creative gesture I marked my universe up with as a teenager. Each action was a kind of insecure act of pollution. Sending a kind of black smoke of 'self' into the space that surrounds you, so you can stare at your own darkness, and not see the beauty of the universe. Narcissus at least had a clear blue pool, but we, in the grips of modernity have only this smoke.

Chapman wanted to become art, and for us all to choke and tremble in that smoke. I don't think he has ever come to understand that creativity in its divine nature Illuminates. It took me sooo long to understand that. And I almost murdered all that was good in me, before I did. But I am here, and alive, and consoled. Lennon is dead, and Chapman was never really alive. But we're alive.

That's why I don't fear this year, despite all it has taken from me. That absence will be filled with something like light.

Shine on,
Michael

Darkness at noon

In my head you are suffering...

-"A miracle" The Hidden Cameras

I am feeling better incrementally, day by day, and am more or less ready to resume leaving the house twice a week in the evenings and drinking two Newcastles with various drifters, low-lifes, and editorial assistants.

It was scary having these dizzy spells every evening. It makes you realize just how much of our lives depend on a certain amount of health and vitality. You feel all the more grateful for having it. When I think about just how hard it was to regain my equilibrium after my accident, my thoughts turn the 19 year olds returning from Iraq. If they are lucky enough to return at all, or return with all their limbs, what shape are their nerves in after watching and hearing and feeling bombs go off all around them for two years? It's a brutal world, and has been...I suppose since the beginning.

So I watched the following films in convalescence:

I Heart Huckabees: Enjoyed it a decent amount, but really enjoyed the directors commentary! Kind of like taking a refresher philosophy course. The two pretty people were better actors than I expected. Painted in slightly bold strokes, but I mean how can one not appreciate a rare Hollywood movie concerning with the meaning of things, and our connections to each other.

The Brown Bunny: Each individual who admits to watching this film must deal with the paranoia that the person he tells will immediately visualize him leering and foaming at Chloe Sevigny's famous bj scene. Yet I soldier on. I thought Vincent Gallo's Buffalo 66 was a special little movie, and kept an open mind about this one, despite Gallo's strange smug championing of right-wing politicians. The movie does have about 14 beautiful minutes of 'on the road' footage with Gordon Lightfoot playing. The rest is kind of The Sixth Senseless. But having said that, he has made a really really depressing movie, and the 17 year old nihilistic goth in me almost admires him for it. Either the best student film ever made, or the worst piece of cinema.

Batman Begins: Ok, after the, ahem, Brown Bunny I was ready for a popcorn flick. This was a fair choice. Nothing amazing, or truly dark about it...but for this old comic book fan, it managed to be remotely satisfying in parts. Mainly though I always feel ripped off after one of these blockbusters which just aren't very good. I'll exclude (for the most part) The Lord of The Rings from that...

Last Days: The Van Zant pic about the last days of Kurt Cobain. I had a friend tell me she needed all her will not to fall asleep when she saw it the darkness of the Sunshine Theatre in NYC. But at home while eating some pasta carbonara alla Grazia...I found it really beautiful and opiate-like...which was obviously appropriate considering the subject. Barely any dialogue, a lot of blue early morning wandering. Not a classic, but well worth watching. Bressonian in it's sparse shots and quietness.

Au Hasard Balthazar: after Van Zant's mildly Bressonian pleasure....I finally got around to buying the much discussed but seldom screened Bresson masterpiece Au Hasard Balthazar which has just been released on DVD. After finally seeing it myself...I can honestly say...it may be the most affecting, efficient, and transcendent work of cinema ever made. I can't even describe it, but to say its a movie starring a donkey. It functions both as a deeply affecting work of Christian allegory, and a probing existential analysis of man's distance from love. It is a reservoir of meaning and feeling, and it gives to you based on what of your soul you bring to it.

After all this I made the mistake of finally watching the criterion dvd for Hiroshima Mon Amour which a friend had gotten me last year. I haven't watched the movie since I rented it on Long Island 5 years ago while living with Andrea, and wrote Burning Hearts shortly after. Sigh. Tears. Sigh. Toblerone.

But it gave me an idea for an art/memory project called 'The Confrontations' which I will talk more about soon. I promise.

What does it say about me that these are the images a friend sends to cheer me up while I'm recovering?

Of course this is the friend...so what else should I expect?

Thank you Per! Thanks everyone for wishing me well after my accident. More from me soon.

xo

Mick Grace

Jayne Mansfield's third cousin twice removed

Shadow that stood by the side of the road, always reminds me of you
- "Komakino" Joy Division

So I am afraid to report that I've been suffering a bit over the last week with some of the delayed effects of my car crash. A bit of dizziness, and weakness and overall malaise. And while the dizziness may explain my treatise on Prussian Blue...i've produced little else, and feel quite down...which is a predictable result when one feels as though his flesh is not currently suitable for his spirit. I have rented a bunch of movies in my state of convelescence...and I'll give you some recommendations when I'm feeling a bit better.

-Michael

Golem's gold

One minute she says, she's gone to get the cat in. The next thing I know, she's mumbling in Latin. She cut the stars out of the sky and baked them in a pie. That's how I know...she's got a new spell. She stole the scene and scenery, the script and the machinery.
That's how I know she's got a new spell.

-Billy Bragg


So thanks for indulging my 'woe is me moment'...as the days pass I feel better and better about what we accomplished with My Favorite, and how we accomplished it. And even more importantly I am feeling inspired and passionate about making more music for the right reasons...and things are progressing well with our new incarnation...but I don't want to tease until there is more to report.

Now I certainly did not intent for this journal to become a weekly survey of sensationalist Daily News articles...but this following bit on the pop stylings of Prussian Blue requires a bit of contemplation, especially with the Anti-Bush protest that happened yesterday. (www.worldcantwait.com)


Pop twerps from heil can't carry tune

By TRACY CONNORDAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Are these the new faces of Hitler youth?
Thirteen-year-old twins with braces and blond hair who call themselves Prussian Blue are making a name for themselves with white-power anthems about Nazis.
Lynx and Lamb Gaede's songs are painful to listen to - and not just because the girls are off-key.
They praise Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy; William Pierce, who wrote the book that inspired the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and Robert Matthews, a white supremacist who was killed in a shootout with cops in 1984. They make snide comments about blacks.
They count former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke among their fans, perform at white supremacy rallies and sport T-shirts with a smiley face tweaked to look like Hitler's.
And it's not just an act.
The girls are the daughters of notorious white separatist April Gaede. At home, they play a video game titled "Ethnic Cleansing" and refer to minorities as "muds."
Neither flinched when asked about Hitler in a recent interview on ABC's "Primetime Live."
"I think he wanted to preserve his race," Lamb said admiringly.
Quizzed about Hitler's henchmen killing 6 million Jews, Lynx called the number "an exaggeration."
"I hardly believe there were even that many Jews alive back then," she said.
With their innocent-looking freckled faces and matching tartan miniskirts, the Gaede girls have become the poster children for hatemongers.
But groups that monitor white nationalist groups aren't concerned.
"If they weren't so terrible musically, they would probably be more dangerous," said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center. "Not to dis the poor little girls, but they can't play their instruments and they can't carry a tune."
The real villain, Potok said, is stage-mom-from-hell April Gaede, an activist in the National Vanguard, who acknowledges she's taught the twins everything they preach.
"If we were Christians, they would be maybe singing Christian rock songs," she said. "But we're not. We're white nationalists ... and I share that part of my life with my children."
Edgar Steele, a spokesman for the twins, said, "They don't sing about hatred. What they sing about is white racial pride. After this blows over, they aim to pick up right where they left off. These are 13-year-old girls who are twins and cute as buttons," Steele said. "They've got a career ahead of them."
The twins were surprised but undeterred by the furor, he added.
Yet they've stopped giving interviews because they didn't like how they were portrayed on ABC. And they are keeping a low profile in their hometown of Bakersfield, Calif., Steele said, because of threats. Originally published on October 30, 2005

So the appearance of Prussian Blue seems somehow inevitable, yet it still shocked me. But I suppose it won't next time. The right-wing fundamentalist preacher whose cable access program I watch from time to time (with a mixture of disgust and fascination) says Satan works through 'gradualism.' That is to say that he looks to slowly erode our sense of right and wrong through seemingly innocuous or even ridiculous gestures which prime the pump for real evil. Now this cable access preacher (whose attire could best be described as a futuristic Klansmen's boxing robe) uses this concept as justification for boycotting Will & Grace, (which would ruin my early evening suppers infront of the TV) but I can't help but at least be reminded of it when I see something like PB.

I spent a good portion of my 20s studying semiotic theory for beginners, as part of my graduate degree in art. You trace the way various forms of communication signify meaning, from language to advertising to painting, and the interplay between them. It's the study of signs. Its dense, but interesting stuff. Plus it's written by a lot of French guys, which only makes it cooler.

For last few years I've been more involved with seeking meaning in an understanding of faith, and metaphysics. From people as "McSpiritual" as Wayne Dyer, to the work of Joseph Cambell, there is a lot explore in spiritual semiotics and myth.

The real strength came however for me, in recognizing a kind of sacred "significance" and it's immutable covenant with the seekers. To have it go from concept, to something that moves the whole of your being, brings the universe into focus in a new, beautiful and indeed terrifying way. And with that you begin to understand that although meaning in art and media and in fact all human discourse is an unstable construct of contextual relativity, Goodness is a stable intuition of an individuals spirit. And so I go a' slogging through the wilderness of signs towards my Signifier.

So what does this have to do with Prussian Blue?

Well there was just something in this article & pictures which seemed to unify both my pursuits of the last ten years. And if one is inclined to consider 'satanic' thinking...well there is a lot there to mess around with. Thus if you will indulge this adjunct professor, clumsy theorist, and super clumsy theologist a quasi-provocative reading of Prussian Blue, here it goes:

*satanic logic as the re-arranging, the misdirecting of sacred impulses towards their opposites through the use of partially analogous coding.

1. The impulse towards the adoration of the innocent, the gentle the wholesome...is, I believe, a product of our good spiritual intuition. The two blonde sisters of Prussian Blue probably tap into that impulse on some level whether or not we want them to. And that is certainly the impulse they hope to engage with images like these; The girls frolicking in the meadows of Narnia. One twin reading to an even purer more innocent incarnation of herself (that is until you find out that the baby is named Dresden after the German City 'martyred' by the brits in WWII). The girls playing in the playground as though the apple had never been eaten. Now aside from this impulse being corrupted by association (the despicable and evil practice of racism & neo-fascism), I believe it is corrupted even more so by being paired with it's inverted intuition, that of a sexual desire for closeness with children. If one is willing to take some giant leaps with me, all three of these 'innocent' images could also have a less innocent reading, particularly in context alongside the more 'adult' images which I will revisit in a moment. The 'meadow' image, if one reads in the 'garden of Eden' sense proposes the twins as archetypical original lovers. Which is ironic because I am certain this group demonizes homosexuals, but will in its most subconscious approaches, perhaps play with this kind of titillation. The bed image, as disgusting as it is to conceive of, propose a kind of 'pillow talk' scenario...which again places children incongruously in a situation where we most often see lovers depicted...under the covers in bed reading side by side. The final photo on the slide requires a kind of sequential extrapolation, that is to say, that we see the two girls a moment before presumably they would tumble on top of each other in the dirt. The potential for binarily opposed readings is reinforced by the noise created by a purposeful fluidity of signs. That is to say that the innocent pictures can be unstable because the overall approach to showing the girls is unstable. Like little Bowies. We see them in the garden but we also see them in the first two pictures in the article, dressed closer to little Lindsey Lohan's with cute "delia's" style 'Hitler' tees, and once again touching or embracing with a kind of naturalness and melancholy usually associated with lovers. We also see them here in the more contemporary context of pop 'bad girls', in 'come hither' Avril Levine style;

2. The impulse towards the adoration of the outsider. Again I think this impulse is a product of a deep spiritual intuition. From the New Testament to Shakespeare, to all sorts of texts from other traditions (and philosophies...Camus' The Stranger to pick an obvious one) show this empathy clearly. Christ embraces (and indeed insures his initial demise by doing so) the humanity, the poetry of suffering, of exile. In the context of the temple priests, Christ himself is profoundly an outsider. And I think 'the outsider' has a spiritual resonance with us because the outsider exists in a kind of spiritual reality. That is to say a state which is apart from the artificial salvation of 'culture', or 'economics', or even sadly 'community', but yet is still apart from God...which during our time in a land called Wandering, is the frequent, and real State That We are In . James Dean (explicitly in East of Eden) represents this to us, but so does the profoundly troubled Joe Hawkins character in the dubious Skinhead/Suedehead novels of the 1970s. The Anti-Hero is not the Anti-Christ, but there is static and camoflage in these spaces, room to move in all directions. We connect to a spiritual or philosophical truth in being apart. It moves us. Prussian Blue inverts that sacred impulse by directing it towards an inverted impulse to be part of a 'mob' or 'legion' of outsiders, which in turn makes a true individual experience with the divine nearly impossible. For true 'outside-ness' is does not occur in a socio-political, eugenic context...or any group context. It is a true state of individual discourse with the universe. PB's confluence of signs; be a guitar playing rebel/put on your red armband... is hard to swallow. Stand infront of a graffiti covered wall/ promote a cleansing of the very inner-city realities which created that sign. It is madness, but a seductive one. I am actually in awe of the brilliantly multilayered image of the 'two white pieces' which won't fit into the sea of darkness in the puzzle image below. It's heady stuff for people whom we would prefer to imagine being morons. In a political sense, this reinvention of the white Euro-American as threatened underclass is also, obviously a perversion of this impulse that we see frequently in this country

The impulse towards one-ness. This is the most difficult to wrap one's mind around, and it is the one most profoundly dangerous and sacred. The sad fact is that fascism can tap into, in a most insidious and tangential way, a good spiritual impulse to return to a kind of cosmic one-ness or sameness. Whether you see that in a Buddhist sense, or a Judeo-Christian sense of 'being with god' or even in an existential sense of 'shared human condition' I think a part of of us is always yearning for a kind of simplicity and connection to the source. Fascism plays with that, with a serpentine promise of a kind of power which nullifies the presence and possibility of the true one. One-ness here on earth, based on skin and hair, and national medieval legends is a deeply corrupted and tortured inversion of this impulse. It's a kind of tribalism. The inversion's power is again amplified by it's association with fluidly incongruous opposites. In many cases with Christianity itself., and also in the early days of Nazism, with socialism.

Consider if you will the girl's album cover for the outrageously post-structurally named Fragments Of The Future. The sacred impulse towards one-ness is mixed into a tainted combination of signs which lead you towards the corrupt impulse. Here the girls are shown younger, in a state of greater innocence, back in the garden, dressed in the medieval clothes of 'tribal' pre-Nazi Germany. And included in the image is the ultimate 'satanic' inversion; the Iron Cross. A symbol for a man of infinite love, who was broken naked on a piece of wood, turned into a sign of military strength... first for Crusaders and then famously for the Nazis. It is the ultimate corrupt recontextualization, for it retains power and seductiveness, but is emptied of true meaning. And from there its easy to see that the girl's naturalness, innocence, nostalgia is all emptied of the implied meaning. It's a milk carton filled with white latex paint. A poisonous delusion.

Ok, so why take this apart? Do these readings of mine reveal a talent for 'reading' or understanding evil in me? Probably yes, but it is not unique in me. The 'knowledge' of evil, the binary impulse towards it, is our living human history from Cain fowards. Being susceptible to evil, is our sad situation, but one which promises purpose in our struggle against it. It is powerful, it is seductive. It is even at times necessary to understand ourselves. But it is not what we are in the end. And we need to be vigilant as artists, as audience...in that wilderness...to be that eagle in the rye.

In a final image, a rare transparent and useful bit of poetry, Prussian Blue declares themselves to be 'shadows of the night'...which both semiotically and spiritually, more or less tells the whole story.

Most of what Prussian Blue is doing is stealing from Tatu, whom I actually liked from a conceptual point of view, because they revealed more than they concealed, and themselves were like a living sign (oh i am a living sign...I'm a living sign...) for the Frankenstien monster of pop, capitalism, desire and melancholy...more so because, than despite being prefabricated and manipulated. PB is in the process of concealing, and what they conceal is way darker than what Tatu might have been. Frankenstien is honest, a zombied schoolgirl is evil.

Obviously we don't blame the girls of Prussian Blue. They're just as saint Zimmy said 'pawns in the game.' I'm currently having Holden-like fantasies of rescuing them and giving them tambourines in The Secret History. Sadly this impulse, as was Holden's, is complex. Thus is our situation forever. I'm betting on our better nature.

In a final redemptive gesture. Here are images of the two true kid stars of pop; Michael Grace jr. and My Favorite guitarist Darren Amadio aged around seven, at Darren's birthday party where the Secret History began...

With love,

waiting for a sign

Michael.

Combat Angels...

"And I'm at the stage, where I want my words said and no one wants to listen though. No one wants to listen 'cause everybody's yelling, about you and yours and how I'd have the answer if only I'd open up up up and let you in. They must be out of their brilliant minds"

-Furniture "Brilliant Mind"

Penningtron said...
You know, you can tear yourself up about obscurity, but the truth is that people like us love the Go-Betweens or Felt as much as the Smiths, or the Comsat Angels as much as Joy Division. Is that fervent love any less spectacular just because only a few feel it? Actually, I think it's moreso.

This deserved a response.

I think this "immaculate obscurity", is the very issue that I was struggling with after Andrea left, struggling with when I wrote that first diary entry. It's hard to keep one's perspective on the work, to remember that the quality of the work in is the specialness of the experience of its audience (how ever small) and not in the width of its audience (however small the experience.) I completely agree with this above comment, and hope the fans of My Favorite know that. I can't say its not hard when Interpol opens for you at CMJ 2001, and you open up for Haunted Pussy (www.hauntedpussy.com) in 2005. But for every surreal humilation, there was a triumph, and its bad manners to overlook them. The rough bits are part of being an artist, and many before have had it worse, and had a better stomach for the hardships. We never had the courage to quit going to University, to tour the nation sleeping on people's floors, the way our friends in The Bouncing Souls did in the early days. We also never had the trust funds to be full-time micro celebrities, with a staff of publicists and ad exects the way a few of our peers have. We had a choice of forks in the road and chose the chopsticks...and however few the blessed grains we managed to grasp, I assure you we savored them all. I am getting the feeling I may be letting my need for supper influence the quality of my metaphors.

On a only slightly related note...this news story from the New York Daily News has been on my mind a lot lately...

DIES FOR HIS ART: Man drowns in bid to save his poetry. TRAGIC LAST WORDS: 'I CAN'T LET THAT STUFF GO';

KERRY BURKE, AUSTIN FENNER and TONY SCLAFANI DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS. New York Daily News. New York, N.Y.: Oct 7, 2005. pg. 30

Copyright Daily News, L.P. Oct 7, 2005
AN ASPIRING Brooklyn poet apparently drowned after jumping into the Hudson River to retrieve a book bag packed with his writings, cops and friends said yesterday. "I can't let that stuff go," Dennis Kim, 22, told a friend before leaping from the railing of the Christopher St. pier in the West Village Wednesday night.Kim, of Brooklyn, lost the green-and-black bag - with his spiral notebook and Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" inside - when he leaned against the rail, and the bag fell into the drink, his friend told the Daily News.
So he emptied his pockets, ripped off his shoes and shirt, and dived into the 75-foot-deep water.
He swam out 30 feet and hooked the bag over his shoulder in minutes. But on his return, the current overpowered him, leaving him gasping."Help!" he shouted once before going under, said his pal Jennifer Hare, 17, who witnessed the tragic drowning.
"He let it [the bag] go and tried to swim back," Hare, a Queens student, said hours later. "He floated on his back, but the current was just too strong."
Hare called 911 at 9:50 p.m. and pleaded with others to help, but no one did.
A team of NYPD divers searched until midnight, then resumed hours later, but there was no sign of Kim.
"It wasn't just some dumb kid pulling a stunt. His work was important to him," Hare said.
His mother, Olivia Choi, and sister, Stella, fought back tears as they watched cops scour the river for Kim yesterday.
"Nobody was working over here. There was no life tube. This is a public area. If it were safe, my son wouldn't have died," said Choi, 51.
Kim, of Bay Ridge, waited tables at the Murray Hill restaurant LaCarne and planned on returning to Loudonville College in Vermont after dropping out in his sophomore year.
"He's very intelligent," said his sister, Stella Kim, 19, a fashion student from Forest Hills, Queens. "He's a great role model . . . He wanted to write poetry."
tsclafani@nydailynews.com
[Illustration]
Caption: Dennis Kim LINDA ROSIER DAILY NEWS Stella Kim mourns at Christopher St. pier where her brother Dennis Kim jumped into the Hudson River Wednesday night in an effort to retrieve his book bag.

Sigh...I'm always bumming people out. It's not my finest trait. But this kid is kind of my hero, my inspiration these days. God keep him.

I bid you all adieu for the weekend. Those in NYC come have a drink and dance at the halloween Mondo party....check the link section for details.

Floating,

Michael

Dean's 7th Dream

'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood. When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud. I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form. 'Come in,' she said, 'I'll give you shelter from the storm.'

-Bob Dylan

You should not drive in the rain.
You should not drive in the rain in New York City.
You should not drive in the rain in New York City listening to Bob Dylan.
You should not drive in the rain in New York City listening to Bob Dylan, watching a decades worth of storms play out inside your memory.

I had a fraction of a second before I hit the cab. I skidded through the intersection. If it hadn't been rainy, I probably could have stopped. If I was listening to The Arcade Fire I probably could have stopped. You might think that the lyrics to my song "le monster" might have went flashing through my mind, as they sort of deal with exactly what was about to happen, but they didn't.

Instead I thought about the last car accident I had, in maybe 1994. I crashed the car Andrea's parents had just bought her as some kind of graduation gift. She was in the passenger seat. We were in New Jersey driving to old skinhead/ska record shop in Passaic Park, called I think, Two-Tone. The roads in New Jersey twist and turn in all sorts of directions. Sometimes you have to go right to make a left. I haven't driven in New Jersey since. The impact sounded like a bomb going off, but it wasn't quite head on and we survived...the whole thing was a blur. Spanish speaking children were crying. The car was totaled. My leg was bleeding and Andrea was dazed. We had a show that night in Hoboken at Maxwell's. So we had the wreckage towed to the street outside the club, because we didn't know what else to do. We weren't really thinking straight.

The show was pretty bad. It was one of the first where I played rhythm guitar, which was hard enough for me without a concussion. I was dressed in a white tennis sweater and white trousers a with a little blood on them. I remember someone from the Rough Trade record shop was in town and at the show, and they posted some snarky comment on the indie pop list. Something to the effect of "They sucked, and mods don't wear tennis clothes!" I slept for three days after the show, and did not bother responding with a partial treatise on the post-Gatsbian Long Island modernist straightedge skinhead--- not because it was ridiculous (which it was)--- but because I did not feel well.

We never got Andrea's car back from New Jersey. Every week for about a month we had to go to various courts or impound lots in some of the saddest, sketchiest hoods in Jersey City. We got out of a prison sentence, and eventually we got the car out of the impound lot. But no one could fix it, and we didn't have any money. One of those days in exile we were leaning against a razor wire fence in the middle of South Jersey City, in dirt and dust and 100 degree heat, waiting for someone to give us the corpse of our car back when our lives were saved by the angelic jingle of a Mr. Softee ice cream truck that came a ramblin' down the road to nowhere.

And this was what I thought about on Saturday Night in that instant before I crashed into the cab... not the lyrics to Le Monster or James Dean Awaiting Ambulance. I thought about the coldness and softness and sweetness of a chocolate Mr. Softee ice cream cone eaten in Purgatory with someone you loved.

The impact was not as bad as the last time. I braced myself, and did not so much as utter a whimper. It only went black for a second or two.

My car was ugly, but drivable. The cab was only slightly dented. An off duty police-officer and his attractive girlfriend helped us exchange insurance information. I called my brother and told him I wouldn't be making it to the vegan restaurant where I was to meet him and my old friend Matt "Spike" Kelly, who's departure from My Favorite, was the reason I was playing rhythm guitar in Hoboken that night in the first place.

I managed to get the car back to Queens. I ordered some takeaway pad-thai, and brought it back to my cold apartment. I watched the film version of Chicago on NBC. I couldn't believe how much I enjoyed it. I must have been mildly concussed. I couldn't make it past the second SNL sketch before I fell into uneasy sleep without any dessert.

One pumpkin away from
destruction. By His grace.

.

.

.

.

Sincerely,

Micky

.

photo by J. Hensberry

Concerning Stars and Comets

"Bill, I still hum all their songs. But I'm miles from their smiles and I've nowhere to sleep. If I don't grow old I can't become an antique. So I just stay a freak, for someone to keep."

-Comet Gain, second song on the cassette.

It was the morning of the first day after we sent out notice that our pop group, My Favorite, had dissolved. I brushed my teeth while staring in the mirror, the fine lines under my tired eyes reminding me of the fine lines in vinyl that my world once revolved around. They both revolved I suppose. I think it's entirely possible that I'm not a kid anymore.

I buy my toothpaste at a Korean 99 cent store on Roosevelt Avenue for two reasons. The first one is that it costs 99 cents. The second is that the tube of Crest is embellished with colorful Korean writing, making it look somewhat like an interior design choice.

I brushed while I traveled through time. My bathroom is like something out of Picasso's blue period as seen through they eyes of a 1970s Greek manicurist. But the blue tiles and tub and toilet sort of enveloped me and comforted me. I wore a wrinkled Harris Tweed blazer and striped tie to the college to teach my courses. I rarely ever did. I usually wore a battered polo shirt of some sort and three days of stubble. I only wore a tie when I felt in particular need of a bit of strength, and a bit of dignity.

I came down the stairs of my apartment building to find a package crammed into my mailbox. It was from a friend from the Pacific Northwest who did a fanzine back in the day. Inside was a taped cassette copy of the as yet to be released new Comet Gain record called, I think, City Fallen Leaves. I believe it will come out on Kill Rock Stars records.

Comet Gain, for those who don't know, are a real good British indie band who evolved out of the same post-riot grrl indie scene that the earliest incarnation of My Favorite had, at roughly the same time. They are one of only a handful of bands from that time/ideology who still make music under the same name. I had kept up with their releases for the most part, watching them take a shot at soulful chart pop (albeit Marxist chart pop), only to return to their original shambling folk/punk sound. This returned them to the quasi-ghetto of obscurity reserved for unfashionably earnest (or good) music.

I popped the cassette into my car stereo and got onto the Long Island Expressway. The early daylight was eerie and I felt slightly like driving off a cliff. But there were no cliffs. Perhaps that is why the expressway runs through the flat center of this tremulous isle.

The first song was a decent noisepop number, but the second song was staggering. An acoustic guitar strumming along with a single warbling synth. A voice which seemed in the space beside you, as opposed to in the speakers, like the closet mix of VU 'pale blue eyes', or The Smiths 'Please, Please, Please.' Its repeated refrain of "these are the days I forgot to write down" covered my mind like ivy as I rewinded the tape and listened to the tune at least twelve times. It seemed to be asking the same question which I had faced while facing my face in the mirror.

Why play music when not enough people listen to you? Why play music when not enough people listen to anything? Why play music when the bombs will always be louder? Why play music when you actually have to hope one of your song is used to sell m&ms....so that you yourself will be able to afford m&ms? Where are your friends? Why isn't anybody happy? Why I do think that nobody's happy?

David from Comet Gain seemed to want the answers--- and not want them at the same time.

It all struck a nerve, broke a rib.

In The Last Days Of My Favorite this July, we toured the west coast, hoping to grab the attention of labels like Capitol Records and Subpop, who we were told were coming to see our young, up & co tourmates. A decade separated us from them. There were similarities, we were both configurations of contradictions. But they were different contradictions. They had a studied carelessness, a kind of knowing naivete, which could only be grasped when seeing them play five shows in a row as we just had. We, on the other hand (despite a dozen years of doing this,) had just the opposite, a kind of careless, shambling, short-hand grandeur. They also had a bit of rock star swagger, but it was camouflaged behind Beat Happening t-shirts and American beer in a can. I dressed like The Thin White Duke's shabby cousin, clutching a sparkling inch of scotch with my metaphorically golden nailpolished fingers, but took the stage with the same awkwardness, and tentativeness that I did when giving my tenth grade oral report on The Cuban missile Crisis. All my bandmates did. Our tourmates were 10 years younger than us, but understood the music industry and how to work it 10 times better. And they were also quite good to boot. They were however, also a definite evolution of the indiepop idea which I had taken so seriously at their age, and I recognized that mutation as having something vaguely to do with The OC .

We had struggled in the last years of the band with reconciling our past with our present and future. We started out as a teenage art-pop band of fanzines, and boxing gloves and crackling 7-inches. Then we became an actually quite good rock n' roll band by accident. Through it all, I tried to write about life in a way that made sense to me, to take chances with words and artifice, to promote a kind of uncool caring. When a big management/production company flirted with trying to turn us into the next Interpol, we blew it badly, maybe half on purpose. Because in the back of one's mind, one is always doing algebra.

If X=being better & different than Interpol now, and Y=becoming similar to Interpol, doesn't Z=became similar and worse than Interpol?

I barely passed College Math. We failed Becoming a Successful NYC Hipster Band. We registered for it, but barely showed up. I kept sitting behind the Sculpure Building with the same ten freaks I already knew, smoking Gaulloises. Was it because I was scared of failing or passing...I honestly don't know.

So that final tour, save for the amazing San Francisco Pop Fest, did more to end My Favorite than anything before it ever had. Faced with the industry's ambivalence towards us, and the increasing difficulty of surviving in one of the most expensive cities on earth, people within the group had to re-examine the music in the context of their lives. And I had to examine why it wasn't making me as happy anymore either.

But one level, it wouldn't matter. It was over. And Comet Gain's song, sung with such pure intention, made me feel ashamed of our last summer as a gang. Made me feel ashamed of everything we did and everything we had failed to do, and all the things which we let hurt us which should never have been able to.

Fame, fame, fickle fame...it can play hideous tricks on the brain. But still I'd rather be famous than righteous or holy any day, any day any day.

And thus St. Stephen damned indie-dom to the hell where it now resides, where its brightest star, St. Sebastian, is famous for being righteous and holy. I wanted to make records, and for people to care. I wanted health insurance.

I've got some thinking to do. All I know is that this song, which arrived at just the right exit upon desolation road, also made me want to keep playing music. To take all those impulses--- to be famous, to be righteous, to be holy---and suss them out. Because of all the plastic gestures I have littered my life with, this one felt the most like being alive. This one was bringing me closer to a living end. I just had to make sure that I kept making soul music, for the Templars, not the Camp Followers.
Going for dollar Budweisers at The Phoenix, with jukebox money.

Love,
MGjr

"Brent, you don't surf anymore, but you drown so slow with nowhere to go. If you're fucked it's alright its Saturday Night, and you are alive, and you are alright. These are the days I forgot to write down..."

-Comet Gain