Category: la musica

Electric Strings

A balloon is mostly empty space
but then again so am I
gravitating toward the ground
yet she can float up to the sky.
I guess it’s her propensity,
and relative density
that leaves me here on terra firma.

But terra, too, is hardly firma.
The space between the particles
is vast as planets ’round the sun,
the distance of their orbitals;
and it’s not hard, it’s hardly there
just tiny specks, to say, is fair:
like grains of sand spread far apart
that hold up ox and man and cart.

Now let’s dig deeper, to the protons,
electrons, quarks and, now it’s, jeepers!
Electric strings that make us all,
harmonized, lest we fall
through the earth, like unballoons
thank God he plays the proper tunes.
Some dissonance, oh, lord, that harp!
We’re gonna die, He’s playing sharp!”

Imagine that. Imagine God.
We’re good at that. We wink and nod.
But others like to look much deeper
find their truths, each one a keeper.
String them together to fashion a rug
that holds us up so we can shrug,
ignore the beauty beneath our feet
and gasp at heaven’s phantasmal feat.

Rufus Cappadocia

Rufus Cappadocia beats the hello out of his cello
Wielding his bow whip – Whappity-Whap-Whap!
Scratching and clawing, pulling and mauling,
But lovingly like the guy in the O. Henry story.

I’ll bet that he’s sorry as soon as he’s done with
The smacking and whacking, backhanded slap hits,
He probably rubs her with oil so softly
And trembling hands and words that sound awfully
Like love songs.

A part of me wonders if she doesn’t like it
I’m judging by sounds that she makes when they’re fighting
Don’t judge me I’m not some sick sadist whose heartless
I’m quick to repel from violence that’s artless

But this guy can hit it, can hit it real good
Right in the sweet spot where pain meets the wood
And the vibrating strings where the pleasure reverbs
Through her beautiful body and elegant curves

And together they sing and both bodies ring
Flicking and clicking, plucking and

Boggling Minds

Think about your mind. Think about the fact that you can think. Think about the fact you can think about thinking. Meta that. Imagine a green airplane with wings with rainbow feathers and a nose the shape of soft serve ice cream cone – chocolate brown, with a purple octagon shimmering at the tip. Think about your imagination.

You can read tiny characters in sequences and glean complex ideas and images from those tiny characters. You can look at a page of notes and translate that through your fingers into beautiful music. You can invent stories. You can imagine the future and remember the past. You can come up with brilliant, dangerous and hare-brained ideas. You can paint pictures and make movies. You can multiply and divide; add and subtract and maybe even do calculations that to many others would be beyond abstract. You can see, hear, feel, taste, smell.

The scent of baking can reach deep into your mind and pull memories of your grandmother forth for your review. A movement of a symphony can move you to joyful tears. Too much heat and your brain will yank your hand away, long before you conscious mind knows to. You can taste the difference between Chablis and chardonnay.

You can love a person with all of your heart. You can feel another human’s suffering. You can stand up for what you believe in. You can sit down and watch the sun set.

Your brain is unbelievably, unequivocally, undeniably amazing. Think about just how spectacular your consciousness is – your awareness! The breadth and depth and sheer enormity of it!

Now think about the fact that there are 7,000,000,000 (seven billion!) other equally spectacular minds humming along right now on this tiny planet.

Think about the power of that.

what do you hear?

“The faculty of embarrassment was located in the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex by neurologists who made brain-damaged subjects sing along to “My Girl” and then listen to their own singing played back without musical accompaniment.”

From Harper’s Findings June 2011

Forget “brain-damaged”, most people are at first uncomfortable with their own voice when they hear it played back on another device – even embarrassed. Somehow the resonance of our voice in our heads often sounds quite different from how we sound to the rest of the world, and that sudden realization can be startling. Why is that? Is it just the surprise that we sound different? Personally, I was shocked at just how nasally I sounded playing back my voice on our little cassette recorder as a kid. I remember asking, “Is that how I sound?” And my sister giving me the bad news.

Makes me wonder, too, whether people hear other people’s voices differently from one another, possibly related to the size, shape and location of the ear and ear drum. Could it be that my daughter’s enjoyment of the singing of her pubescent Disney stars is related to just how differently her ear is to mine? Why is it that bagpipes make me want to tear my ears off while others find them beautiful?

I’ve often wondered if other people see colors differently as well. Is my blue your green? Why should they be the same exactly? To me it actually makes more sense that we all see them somewhat differently, if not completely. My brown is your gray. Without any prodding as far as I can tell, my daughter fell in love with pink as a color – as so many young girls do, but I’m certain (no, hopeful) that “my girl” will soon learn to love other colors as vividly. Something oddly creepy about an older woman purposely surrounding herself in too much pink.

To each his or her own, I suppose, and for good reason maybe.

Equalized to Insanity

My daughter is now six and so liking her music and the music she likes is what you hear on KDWB. I know this because she asked me to tune to KDWB in our van on the way home from the cabin, which I did.

Now if you were ever at the Saloon or Gay 90s in the 80s you would believe as I do that much of this KDWB music has got to have been produced by the same dudes who were making all that 180+ BPM super-charged gay disco back then. But they spike the treble weirdly now, apparently to accentuate the teeth-grating auto-tune. After a while I just kind of wanted to punch someone.

But my daughter thinks it’s all cool so I’m prepping myself for music negotiations that will undoubtedly take place in the years to come. How often will Led Zeppelin win out over Lady GaGa?

It is my van.

i guess i’m ready

shit, i’m 47. life comes slow and fast at the same time.

i would have floated many as … but i’m finally ready to say, as a music lover since day one… that what with beatles and stones and bowie and eno and japan and the vapors and flash and the pan and all their kin… the most important album what with its timing for me in high school when it really matters (your musical loves come from 16 to 26) and i can with a quick listen be transported to my bedroom at 3646 Zenith in mpls like full-on technicolor…

the clash: london calling.

i can’t believe i know this, but I do. meant more to me than any other. and deservedly so. in hindsight.  thank you. thank you. yours, jimmie jazz

the nits?

I find it beautiful that our world is as big as it is. We can go through life – me, born in 63, now 47, and hear a band begat in 74 that is as good as any band i’ve ever heard. The Nits. Really? Where on earth have they been? Where on earth have I been?

cloning carpenters

There’s a lot of talk about cloning and whether or not it should ever extend to humans, which we all know will eventually happen somewhere by someone and the seal will be broken. If those people lead good lives (clones, mind you), the practice will have to be accepted lest we discriminate against clones. They have as much right to live as you do, they have as much right to be brought in to this world as you do. So it’s a done deal and even if you have deep reservations about it, I’d ask you to think about one thing: What if instead of just cloning, we cloned Karen Carpenter? You can’t possibly disagree with that! Karen died way too young and how sweet would it be if you could go into any crappy little lounge with a singer and it was a Karen Carpenter? Clone Carpenter, of course. How sweet would that be?! I would argue that I get the original, the flagship clone, as it were, because it was my idea. I would enslave her like an ipod and she would hang out with me and sing upon request. Karen Carpenter. We all miss you, everyone.

I don’t believe in heaven, except for Karen Carpenter. It makes perfect sense that she would be there, live, in full angelic voice. The rest of you, no chance.

More Karen is better than one.