Saturday, August 7th – Curated by PAS
6:00 PM Start time
Backroom:
Silent Theater by The Tableaux Vivants
Inside:
Prehistoric Horse
Damien Olsen
The JazzFakers
Cloud Cloud
Zilmrah
Vampire Squid
Shield Your Eyes, Pray For Death
Boy With the Ice Cream Face
Clutter
Strangewalls
Sunday, August 8th – BBQ going all day !
Curated by Apparition Sounds
3:00 PM Start time
Aron Blue
Grab Ass
Cowboys
Isa Christ
Full Speed A Ed
Catacombz
PAS (Post Abortion Stress)
Grasshopper Abstract
Artimus Farms
Manburger Surgical
Speak Onion
Joy Through Noise
Big Brother On Acid
So who is Big Brother On Acid? Big Brother On Acid came out of a musical project named “Room 429″ (After the Cop Shoot Cop song).
Room 429 was disbanded after producing about 10 songs.
After Room 429, Big Brother started to perform visuals at various experimental shows in NYC.
MAKE MUSIC NEW YORK 2010 – thought and memory on our sidewalk
this past monday afternoon had a three-hour open window in my day and if you know me, you know exactly what i did with that time.
hint-hint.
i’ve been engulfed in the gulf. i can’t stop watching ongoing developments just as i couldn’t stop watching those jets fly into those buildings back then.
i call it “trainwreck mystification.”
the week it happened, sixty-five-plus days ago, i told a friend that this was going to be bigger than the twin towers because it will play out to be mass murder on a decades-long scale by white guys with a smart logo and thousand-dollar suits who speak our language – sorry scared white guys, it’s a bunch of your own this time and i’m wondering how you’ll justify this horror, but i know you’ll have no problem – and if anyone thinks human loss is more precious than the things around us, think again.
murder (or manslaughter) is a crime, whether driven by political ideology, greed or contempt.
humanity’s sense of entitlement knows no bounds.
that’s at the core of religion, but that’s just an opinion.
i have plenty.
three thousand people died on september 11th and thousands more will have gotten their lives shortened by their selflessness for pitching in and caring about what happened.
there’s a lot of wheezing going on around NYC as a result of that day.
in the gulf, miraculously, only eleven people died on the Deepwater Horizon on april 20th, which was horrible because of the arrogance of that corporation – but the overwhelming promise of long-term tragedy will, over time, eclipse the trade center numbers.
if i owned a farm, i’d bet it.
which brings to mind…. april 20th….isn’t that hitler’s birthday? you mean there’s no white-trash supremacists out there toasting or trying to secure a link between the black president’s agenda, the fuhrer’s dreams for the schwarzcommanders as spoken of in pynchon’s “gravity’s rainbow“…..(or was that “V”)?
if you let them sit side by side on a shelf in your own mind for thirty-odd years, it becomes one big book.
everything becomes one-big-book.
maybe it’s time to revisit those titles again so i could drop pynchon’s name with focused certainty.
….or would hitler’s birthday cause tea party conservative confusion – whether to bury the president or praise him……
but i digress.
i was somewhere about crime and punishment (or the lack thereof).
i was somewhere, skirting the oily shores of corporate crime, moral hazard and the first meeting i had with that grifting lizard who looks like omar sharif and sounds like eduardo ciannelli, in months and months, who, this day, had in tow the suit of ayn rand, the author of the biggest, longest-running comedy on mars, “atlas shrugged,” the book written by the lizard who made a meal and suit out of ayn rand when she signed the hollywood deal for “the fountainhead,” got a big check and was gobbled up -literally – in 1955.
the lizard who wore ayn rand wrote “atlas shrugged,” in addition to being hilarious on their planet, was taken as gospel by many faithful on earth, spurring a movement that would be co-opted, corrupted, conned, fattened and devoured by the lizards who live life no differently from ginger rogers, who once told me this;
“a girl’s gotta eat.”
that lizard guy (the one who sounds like eduardo ciannelli and looks like omar sharif) told me last year that they’re still getting tremendous mileage (or tonnage….i think it was tonnage) out of “atlas shrugged” and the humans who buy into it.
he then made a point of telling me, “wait till that angelina jolie plays dagny taggart – it’s gonna be a feeding-frenzy in lizard-land, you betcha,”
…..but i’ve drifted way off base.
the point being, humanity means as much to that lizard guy (you know the one i’m talking about) as a can of starkist tuna means to you. speaking of tuna, you might notice a spike in tuna futures soon, what with the big oops down there.
i wonder if there are tuna futures. i wonder if tuna HAS a future.
probably as much of a future as we have.
p.s. – i don’t think we have a future, or at least, i don’t think we humanity deserves one.
if this is your first visit here, it’s all about the food chain.
if you still don’t know what i’m talking about, google “the grifting lizards from mars,” or hit these two links; hi-dee hi-dee ho addresses more of what i’m talking about, but ken lay; martian lizard is the the genesis of this balderdash.
there are mountains of hubbub between then and now.
i’m writing this to be offered in a friend’s blog about “the underground” (whatever that means these days) and by virtue of the fact that goodbye blue monday is remote enough to maintain such underground-ness for five-plus years (more or less).
for us, mainstream could signal failure.
why travel way out here for the same shit you can get at your local pub?
i’d prefer to fail doing something….”other than.”
goodbye blue monday is “other than.”
i won’t write much about this place because i am genetically disposed to automatically having it become a pitch for money, performance gear, kitchen equipment and just as recent as today, a free or really cheap car.
there, i did it.
i also can’t help grinning at the term, “underground” because as i write this i am preparing to post it onto an open source information clusterfuck of word and imagery, not that “underground” isn’t valid.
i just tend to think that the whereabouts of osama bin-laden is “underground.”
and subway systems are “underground.”
besides, how “underground” are you once you’ve made it into Vogue Italia? (we made it last october)
i was interviewed by an documentarian a couple of weeks back.
at one point she asked me if i was an original-equipment new yorker;
if i was born and raised here – and when i replied “yes,” my plumage sprouted wondrous colors and rays of light sparkled and glimmered on and around me in the afternoon sun.
“there’s plenty of us,” i said.
i explained that i didn’t ride up the empire state building’s elevator until 1984 when i was thirty (laughing uproariously with a headful of acid) – but i DID have lunch on the 82nd floor of the unfinished, un-windowed twin towers when i worked at 90 west street in 1974 when i was twenty.
do you know what i’m saying?
that was being a new yorker, i guess, back then.
….and as our interview went on, she asked me about my experience with the music and art scene in NYC.
so as not to offer spoiler alerts, i’ll say that i’ve been part of the bar and club scene that stretches from the late 60’s, through disco, punk and whatever else that is or was up to now and because i believed i had/have an artistic bent, i did “art” and continue to do so, though i have no documentation other than the things i’ve done and continue to do.
i never read “on the road”, but i imagine it had to do with being young, indestructible (seemingly, until otherwise proven), eternal (ditto), rebellious (double-ditto), passionate (ditto squared) and maybe self-centered (“pi” times ditto to the third power).
my “road” book was “fear and loathing in las vegas” and more accurately for me, “screaming bloodily down the highway of oblivion,” the title (that i just made up) of my own book that no one wants but is available in fits and starts on my blog and at myspace.com/scrapbar.
……so the conversation with the documentarians went on, centering on why i did what i did in bushwick and my answer was “i just did,” and quickly added that there’s no place where anyone can “begin,” anymore.
i took them to the backyard and showed them “the other stage” where we do acoustic, electronic and experimental music and films.
i told them that here at goodbye blue monday, there is no 22-year-old numbnut passing judgement on anyone’s musical statement or artistic direction when they ask to perform here.
that we simply say “yes.”
….that my only hope is performers show they care by inviting a few friends to support the house.
i understand the limitations of nyc venues. i’m not knocking them.
they can’t do what we do anymore and haven’t been able to in decades. that they have to shuffle bands in and out, get door-counts and charges, and even steal a percentage of people’s merch and more.
new york city can’t afford to be creative unless you’re connected with a group of swells or have dad’s black american express card tattooed to your bank account and even then, the deck is generally stacked by PR and shmoozers professionale’.
this isn’t an indictment, it’s just the way it is.
the village voice voted us the best place for new music and performance in 2007. six months later i was in their offices, arguing.
i asked them why they didn’t ever list the shows we did here on their calendar – ever – and was told that “editorial” didn’t believe anyone who played here, “mattered.”
i explained that i even ADVERTISED with them.
it didn’t matter.
there was a new issue of the voice laying open on a table in front of us and my eyes were drawn to an ad for a show sponsored by “the fillmore at irving plaza (whatever the fuck THAT means) and the village voice.”
there was a list of six musical acts slated for this show. i pointed at the ad and said, “what? i have to have names like these to get a rise out of those douchebags in editorial?”
and the person i was arguing with looked down and said, “well,…yes.”
and i pointed at three of these names and stated with strong certainty that these bands all played on my stage over a year ago.
“so what we’re saying here is once it matters to you, it matters. it doesn’t matter that they may have cut their teeth in my stage, you shit!”
i stopped advertising with them.
and that’s what the music scene is in new york city.
last week, three years later, i was informed that village voice editorial has decided to list us in their calendar.
this was followed by a pitch to start advertising with them.
whatever…..
don’t eat the brown acid – it’s really little pebbles of ka-ka.
in 1985, allen ginsberg walked down into a bar i was building at 116 macdougal street and asked me “do you know where you are?” and before i could offer my wiseass reply, he excitedly told me the history of the place, it being the original “village gaslight.”
he told me about dave van ronk and careers started from bob dylan to bill cosby and loads of other stuff.
it excited him to pour his past out and lay it on the same floor i was currently using to spray six-foot flourescent light tubes with day-glo blue krylon paint.
i would later learn that “cafe wha,” – across the street – ran an open stage every day with booked acts at night and everyone worked “the hat.”
was this in my mind when i began out here in bushwick?
i don’t think so.
i’m not very good on “plans,” and maybe that’s not a good thing, but no one i knew was running their businesses with sliderules and graph paper when i was a kid, though i admit i wasn’t looking.
me and math never got along, anyway.
i told the documentarians that now is more punk than ever, that the gradual dissolution of the recording industry as i knew it was a good thing and that i never lived in a time of such startling creativity.
i also qualified this by saying that it’s just an opinion by “a musically-challenged writer with a short attention-span who did way too much of whatever he could get his hands on for far too long a time.”
that would be me.
i prefer to talk about near and dead-death experiences, my extraordinary friend’s rendezvous with my late, sainted-irish mother whom she never knew till they chatted briefly on the corner of Eternity boulevard and Hallelujah avenue;
….the “gulf-coast oil window” and when it will despoil the beach where me, maxx (my dog), the giant tire i befriended some years ago and those lizard people i keep mentioning meet on an almost weekly basis and where i can get a clean shot at “the eighth-electro-plasma-ocean of the ninth dimension” where i mingle with the comings and goings of everyone who ever came or went, who matter and anti-matter and who i hold, will hold or ever held in my electronic sputterings near, dear and otherwise to me.
instead of this, i can tell you about our booking policies, backline list and cheese you with goodbye blue monday’s history, but if that’s what you’re looking for, it’s on the website/blog.
see this thing just below here?
nuclear missiles used to be mounted on these things as they waiting and waited for something to happen.
i live my life waiting for something to happen.
it always does.
i started this by double-clicking the icon of a song entitled “dream a little dream” that sits on my desktop.
it’s a song that i remember the mamas and the papas singing, back when mama cass was the “vocal-ist” vocalist of the band and everyone in america wanted michelle phillips; well, at least this twelve year-old american.
of course, i was still unclear as what to do with her if i ever got her, but such is the way of desire…
and now, years later, the song has become another beckoning that i hear – my eyes closed – as a long-gowned dream stands beside the piano on my stage, a hip curved out seductively, a hand to her ear, the other caressing the microphone stand – oh you kid – mixed bills of various denominations, a lot of tens and twenties, laying and leaning in the big snifter sitting beside her on the piano top….
with my eyes closed, smoke from cigarettes twirl and cloud into the lounge-lamps where i never hear a cough or throat clearing, back where the suits never carry the foul aroma of last night’s marlboros and society was a state of mind let on in black and white and record grooves and big cars.
the recording ends.
while i’m wandering around, maybe it’s time to get back to the glossary of mind and memory…what the heck.
30 – Retrieval cue. A hint about where to “look” for a piece of information in long-term memory.
I haven’t got a clue where to find a retrieval cue, probably because at the moment, i’m not shopping for anything specific at the memory department store, but then again it might have something to do with the icon double-clicked earlier.
there, i used it in a sentence.
a fairly long-winded one.
….but the point of this note has more to do with “do” than all of my rememberatory recallaree, two words that aren’t words that should be words.
it has to do with the wide gulf i find myself treading at times here.
i wonder why i used the word gulf.
i suppose we’re all using that word a bit more often these days.
gulf is the new black or oil is the new black or the ocean is the new black or the the black-gulf-ocean is the new black.
i don’t shoot my mouth off very often on social networks, but i did a few days ago. this is what it said; a BP ad says they’ve got three million feet of boom to combat the spill.
i used my calculator for the first time in forever and found that it translates into 568 miles of boom. then i learned the length of the gulf coast shoreline is -17,141 miles.
i repeat; 568 miles of boom.
goodbye blue monday! KV is howling like a banshee out there on the eighth-electro-plasma-ocean of the ninth dimension.
it was because i was eating lunch a couple of days ago and reading that heartfelt ad from british petroleum that mentioned “three million feet of boom” that set off the bullshit detector.
i love to use the word “that” relentlessly.
(ellipse – i love those too)….and yes, i’ve once again evaded my getting to the point. the one from a week ago. make that two weeks ago….
there was a drunk hippie-looking kid with a bad attitude doing an imitation of sean penn doing an imitation of a hippie with a hippie attitude in that film “fast time at ridgemont high” but it was now and not a movie and he started some shit with some kids who were performing in the backyard stage at goodbye blue monday which isn’t a movie either and i walked into this rukus.
i listened to verbal thumbnails from both sides of the issue and asked the bad-attitude hippie to please head out this way, my left hand gesturing the direction i was requesting which was out of the backyard stage area.
he stared at me and didn’t say anything.
“let’s go guy. please. this way,” my hand continuing to gesture.
he continued to stare, now half smiling, still not answering or moving.
there was a crush of other kids around and behind him, also sitting.
to my right were the other kids who was the other part of the original argument. they were at the base of the stage. there was a small aisle caused by me and the sound guy who was behind me.
i knew where this was going.
i could feel the moments of how many nights in how many bars and this same shit about to be coming down.
i paused, then said this.
“i want you to get the fuck out of here, now.”
and he paused and said this.
“and what if i don’t?”
all in one motion, i grabbed whatever material was covering his frame at the shoulders and dragged his ass out of the place.
i think he was unprepared for it.
i think his friends were unprepared for it and frankly, as i did it, i was unprepared for it.
we were all surprised.
i hated myself for having gotten physical with another human being for the first time since 1994 when a drunk irishman was accosting women at scrap bar at 4:15 in the morning.
i asked myself if there was another answer to “…and what if i don’t…?,” that i didn’t think of other than swift and blinding aggression.
my answer was, “no, not from where i come from.”
i came from a time when you were punched the fuck out or got your fingers bit off or something equally unappealing in answer to such high-spirited, youthful ignorance.
been there…..and learned that’s a perilous question.
what if i don’t write about this subject?
i can always just delete this and you’d never know this happened, so at its simplest form – thought – it’s nothing but a choice, but later up the road i’m traveling, i assure you, it’s going to get “complicated”….sort of.
before this, i want to post some video, sampling why i love where i am and what i do.
first is genghis barbie –
they were followed by “watcher” who was then followed by guns guns guns. the following video is them.
there’s five minutes of music here – pay attention to the last three minutes of it – it’s quite good.
but that’s just me.
please note, these acts followed one another and was followed by something completely different – “real rock n roll,” when a DIY venue in the neighborhood was raided and a band showed up looking to finish their set here. we let them.
sorry – i was out of recording time.
but, i started out this note with “what if i don’t” and i’ll end it with this;
i’ll “do” in my next note.
returning with bundles of ice, i walked into the store today surprised with a bustling little room.
there were – of course – our regular innernet folks and the now familiar census workers who meet with their superiors (they’ve been meeting here since they were sent out into the field), but there was another crowd here, all sort-of biker-looking guys wearing the same black tee with white lettering, the information i wasn’t yet able to decipher between my bad eyesight and the extreme adjustment from light to dark those familiar with this place would know about.
it ends up it’s these guys (a lot of them, not all of them) from Rescue Ink, a show that screens on NatGeoTV.
they’re on the hunt to rescue dogs from a house a few doors behind us on dodworth street. when i met them, they told me what was up and who they were after.
i informed them that Animal Precinct (a show on animal planet) paid a visit to this same house over four years ago.
when you can make a cottage industry out of man’s inhumanity to animals, it’s a gentle reminder (to me) why that lizard guy who sounds like eduardo ciannelli (and looks like omar sharif) delights in farming on such a planet so delightfully diverse in rubes and cretins.
i continually marvel at how certain members of this family of man feed so well on cruelty.
i wonder if they find it simply “satisfying” or something more along the lines of “scrumptious.”
let me get away from such thoughts.
my friend hans (hgullickson@gmail.com) found a basket of kittens on the street today. there were four. he found homes for two.
we have two kittens who need a home.
care to help?
contact hans at the above e-mail address.
it looks like this;
hgullickson@gmail.com
i take out my phone and flip it open absently-mindedly to make believe i’m checking the time though i’m most probably checking for text messages or voicemails i know that i haven’t gotten.
i do this way too often in any fifteen-minute timeframe.
when i am anywhere near a computer, i check all of my “social-networks” (am i using this in the proper context?), looking for the the information i hadn’t gotten on my phone, though you wouldn’t know it because, as i stated, i “seem” to be checking the time and i have that “casual glance” down to a science. i peer out to the street and check the traffic coming and going with “deliberateness.”
so deliberate am i that i google the word to make sure i meant what i meant in saying what i said.
i’ve been with the same low-level headache for two weeks now, half the time wondering if it’s stress, the other half pondering the notion if it’s the aneurysm i’ve been expecting since 1962.
this feeling comes and goes, like the headache.
feelings and headaches come and go like the tides that i observe from the dunes until september 15th when maxx and i regain the beach…
a few days back, on a whim, i jumped in the car with maxx and headed out to the land of the big tire and the grifting lizards. i looked up the meaning of the word “whim” and remembered i’ve done this before, so i let it go.
it’s bad enough that i continually go to and write about the same place, …. i don’t need to go to the dictionary again for the same word.
i do this weekly three-hour deep-breath making five years without a vacation feel….well, tolerable.
i drove past floyd bennett field, considering to go in, then gunned ahead to the bridge that leads across the water to the peninsula that is fort tilden and breezy point.
maxx began howling and barking as we crossed, telling me how pleased he was with my decision.
maxx never learned how to applaud.
i tend to believe it’s an opposable thumb issue.
when i parked the car, i decided to follow the dog.
instead of heading to the water or the small road that runs parallel to the dune and beach – where i met “maybe willie nelson” and where, a year earlier, one of bernie madoff’s sons passed me on his way to becoming “lunch and a suit” for one of those grifting lizard from mars’ (you know – the one who looks like omar sharif but sounds like eduardo ciannelli) underlings.
no, maxx took me other way, toward where i had discovered those new trails and paths last time here. as we walked, i could hear birds singing in the brush chirping, singing, conversing, but there was another sound drifting in the wind, catching my ears for moments or parts of moments, that i dismissed as the far-off drone of ATVs or trail bikes or even a piper-cub passing in the area.
after hearing it again, this time louder and steadier, it caused me to stop because i wasn’t satisfied with the conclusions my hard-drive was giving me.
i stood motionless and thought i was hearing what i heard in movies, back and white ones, “million-dollar-movie,” movies from when me and my brother chris parked ourselves in front of the television after turning the wheel of the channel tuner to the number “9″ in the afternoon of 1964 and hear the theme from “gone with the wind” play, heralding the start of some movie or other from the 30’s, 40’s or 50’s.
this stuff processed through my mind as i heard the sound become more distinct, causing me to clumsily (as if reliving moments of the great blue heron debacle) fumble for my camera, eyes, ears and camera-lens skyward, the sound becoming unmistakable, the sound of “the good war,” the drone of warplanes on the way to somewhere in the past…..
…and this sound, more connected to john wayne movies and scenes from the original king kong ran through my memories as i clicked and clicked and came up with this “in formation” shot.
i wanted to follow their path like a fire-truck chaser “needs” to.
thank goodness the car was half-mile away.
thank double-goodness i’m not a pilot with a plane.
i might do something impulsive-like.
the planes’ sound disappeared but would resurface time and again though i wouldn’t see them.
i would seek the great blue heron, walk paths and trails new to me and listen to the rush of aviary communication that would end with my approach and resume with my passing, wonder about my friend who i hear less and less from, seek a garbage can for the plastic bag of maxx’s business i’ve been carrying with me for quite some time and wonder about the nature of miracles and luck and fortune and tragedy.
i confess to doing that more than occasionally.
if you live life a bit…..recklessly, you tend to look to these matters as part of the math.
without trying to, you factor in this stuff somehow.
that’s how i opened this place here. i “figured” that with a little bit of time and people moving in and this and that, and more venues opening around this strip of broadway, and with everything building and growing and “isn’t life grand,” happening all around me, everything’s gonna be perfect.
i’m sure those BP, Halliburton and Transocean Ltd guys looked at life much the same way as i do, except my wishful thinking doesn’t impact humanity the same way theirs does.
i acknowledge this in my behavior, whether for good or ill.
i heard somewhere say last week that there were something like 260 possible chances of “failure” to occur with one or many of the “whoozitz” connected to the “whatzitz” with that big old drilling platform and that the more they investigate, the more they aren’t surprised.
well, isn’t that just like the folly of anything like, let’s say, what banks and investment houses did? i mean, isn’t it the same thing when you spin scenarios and make plans that profess “intended probable outcomes?”
this is what something like that might look like;
except, instead of coin tosses, we have variables like, “if we can make believe that we’ve done the job, we can call the job done,” and proceed from there.
same thing as bundling up someone else’s unpaid debt, insuring it and selling it as a promise and then betting on the high or low like it’s a football game.
but i’m getting away from the point i haven’t even begun to form.
all of these geniuses – i believe they’re as smart as they think they are. they’re surely smarter than i am, but that’s not saying much – they look at a “catastrophic event” and have the brilliance of their geniusness to be able to disengage from the reality they caused and become a member of the peanut gallery, the mass of the “shocked and amazed,” long enough to forget they had anything to do with it or until they’re able to stooge it out to an available william calley, thus wiping the blood from their hands.
regarding these people; it’s a good thing having a conscience is only a temporary condition. they will regain their brilliant posture in no time.
that might be what separates some republicans from some democrats.
…..and that’s about as political as i’m going to get tonight……
maxx led me east and then south, through the paths that would bring us to where the great blue heron was (that i never photographed).
i decided to document the sounds of what was there, with us as we walked. what follows below is a “nature video” and is tolerable for 25 seconds. the two minutes after that are horrible with the wind making noises like a really bad sound-effects comedian.
this video ends at the marsh where i missed the great blue heron and caught the duck out of water. i took out the bowl and maxx took a break.
a while later, i got this idea that those old airplanes might land where they belonged – floyd bennett field.
me and maxx headed west, where the parking lot and maybe that lizard guy who sounds like eduardo ciannelli and looks like omar sharif might be. on the path back, i saw what i remember as honeysuckles. these were in their springtime infancy with barely the scent that will, in time, fill the air with sweetness that makes you know for sure that in the end, humanity might make a toilet of this planet, but when we’re but a distant fart in the windstorm of time, things like these will abide.
or not.
the genius of it all is this;
“mother earth” doesn’t care.
it doesn’t even know it’s a mother.
it doesn’t have to, it’s the universe.
it’s been a year. maybe it’s time for my disclaimer.
“all opinions here are subject to change at nary a moment’s notice.”
i may have phrased it differently a year ago though the message was the same, more or less.
….i’ve been digressing….possibly for days.
me and maxx got in the car and left the fort, looking for the airfield where i might see planes that look like this;
i drove onto runway 33 of floyd bennett field and hung a right onto runway 6…….
…..and rolled to the end of the runway where this hanger is located. i’ve been here before (many times) and tried to gain entrance into this hangar but no dice…until today….
i parked at the water’s edge and we walked to this big room.
the door was open enough for me to decide it was time to walk in with authority.
if you’re lost or headed into somewhere you might not belong, proceed like you own the fucking place.
this was the lesson learned years ago walking in the bowels of the Palladium on 14th street back in a different millenium.
that’s a scrap bar story, so go…(myspace.com/scrapbar).
this is what i saw when i entered the hangar;
i was impressed. i walked around shooting and reading. i didn’t see anyone to stop me but had a feeling that time was at a premium….
….if i could find those planes that sang above me earlier, i know i’d find decals that look just like this one;
but they were not to be found here, only their technological child, swifter and more deadly –
after clicking a few more times, i heard the voice of a man who was definitely disturbed at my presence. he was in uniform, though i’m unsure if it was a military or government uniform.
“what are you doing here?” he said
“i’m walking around with my dog taking pictures.”
“you don’t belong here” he countered.
“sorry. the door was opened. it says on that table that it’s a museum. i even put money in that donations box. this place is wonderful.”
all of this was true.
i could tell he was softening. “well, it’s opening thursday and will be open thursday and sundays through the summer.”
“ok. thanks. we’re gone. have a great day.”
“you too,” and that was that.
there’s more pics in the “earth reclamation project” on our photobucket account here.
and now you know – the museum’s open.
how unfamiliar this place is if you’re not here on a regular basis.
i feel off-balance. i can’t explain why i stopped doing what has become as natural as breathing these past couple of years.
it’s like a hand quietly pushed my fingers from the keyboard while a voice deep inside whispered, “no…no…not now.”
yeah, right.
next thing i know, i have a head full of…..i don’t know what i have a head full of, or at least i don’t want to know what i have a head full of at the moment.
i know the last time i entered text here i was “chronologically” a year younger than i am, not that i’m measuring time.
who measures time?
oh, right. i do, or at least i started to when i was living under the notion that my time was becoming finite, not that my time ISN’T finite.
finite-er.
since then, my opinion of time was adjusted to more like maxx (my dog) or his big brother and my buddy, (my cat) buddy’s sense of the moment.
they seem to live one loooooooooong day with a series of naps, meals and bowel movements, but this is another invention i’m foisting on them in my name. my animal friends are so forgiving.
oops. there i go again.
this past week, they were immortalized and set to miraculous candle- heights along with notions of, “if i were really crazy, this is a full-back panel tattoo,” by hannah, a member of the GBM’s staff….
yeah. i need to breathe…..slowly….and get back to basics with the glossary of mind and memory.
29. – Retrieval. The process of “finding” information previously stored in memory.
the act of “retrieval” my mind employed in getting back to basics regarding the glossary of mind and memory is a perfect example of “finding” information previously stored in memory.
there, i used it in a sentence.
it all seems rather circuituous…..
i find myself in a terry gilliam film…..
in all of this…notelessness, – if that’s not a word, it is now – i’ve been caught up in a number of personal fronts.
on this day – this eternally long day filled with darkness and brightness – i’ve been to the land of the grifting lizards for the first time since that shitkicker rainstorm, but later for my extraordinary meeting with who i believe was willie nelson and our three minutes of unassuming, government-regulation small-talk followed by the conversation i had with that lizard guy who sounds like eduardo ciannelli but looks like omar sharif about my meeting with this “willie nelson” (where i inquire if it was another one of those lizard guys “wearing” willie nelson), but that was today and i have five weeks past to touch on before i dwell on these currently extraordinary moments.
borrowing from the lessons learned from maxx and buddy, i will consider loads of things with glowing adjectives and adverbs as so much means so much to me these days…uh, these moments.
have i stated this with enough conviction?
much of my time has been diverted to posting notes to my dearest friend on the planet and when not doing that, thinking of what to say to her when not writing them.
this might be another way of saying, “my mind goes blank.”
no…no…it’s writer’s block, i say;
or is it fancy talk for stylized procrastination?
i fear, with me, it might be the case.
in the dark of spirit located in the dark of night i recall a mantra i heard a year ago…,”a writer writes.”
at the end of last month, that being march, i went to that place called “dead horse bay“, otherwise known as the beach of old bottles, but then again, that’s my name for it today, but you know how long today could run, especially going by maxx and buddy’s rules…..
this item below has since become buddy’s dry food bowl…..
but this is more about the bottles, and there are plenty……
in my previous venture out here during the winter, i hid a brown-glass, one-gallon clorox bottle in the high reeds that frames this “beach”
i hid it so well i couldn’t find it, but not to worry…..
there’s plenty more where that came from.
the tide was low, revealing a mucky bed of glass and history.
there were little things that jabbed the memory, making me unsure of where i was, leading me to stop and close my eyes.
when i did this, i drifted or so it seemed, to that part of the universe where i was able to walk – just-like-that – and approach my friend, my very dear friend and attempt small talk as if meeting in a park on a warm spring day, with casual repartee’…..
“nice weather we’re having,” kind of talk.
“tonight’s a big full moon,” kind of talk.
“funny running into you here, on the “the eighth-electro-plasma-ocean of the ninth dimension” kind of talk.
and it’s here i would dwell for moments that seemed hours - that being in a good way – as she and i chatted about all the things we word-processed and phone-discussed in the near-year we’ve come to know each other.
as we strolled beyond galaxy Tirius-B-109467-Hydrox-401, i reached out to touch her and she was gone.
i opened my eyes and looked to the shore and there was this tree….
i approached it, noticing in its not-just-yet-lifelessness that it was born of a land of glass. i reached in, under the tree where the roots were supposed to be, in that space between the shore and the tree and this is what i found -
dazzle was a liquid laundry detergent popular about sixty years ago. as i looked into the landfill that supported and nurtured this tree, i wondered how many low-level gangsters were packaged and processed here. having come from this low-level gangster neighborhood area, this made perfect sense.
with this in mind, i chose not to shop for another bottle.
i moved on to the ecosystem that lives in the 1920’s safe that lay on the shore.
while out here, my dearest friend and i chatted on the phone.
it was a wonderful day.
——————-
right this minute, right at this newer part of this long, extraordinary day, maxx and i went for a late-night walk.
because of this impending anniversary, i decided to take a stroll to evergreen and willoughby streets. it was where i was walking when i had my first telephonic communication with my dearest friend.
this conversation wasn’t a year ago.
i don’t remember exactly when that was but i do remember where it was exactly and that was here.
here i am, late this evening, looking at a street sign recalling a phone conversation, the bulk of which i recall me saying, “huh? hold on – a train is passing.”
this is where i found poignancy.
this is where i had walked in clouds of glorious air and angelic streetlight.
we take it where we can get it……
the anniversary i seem to be harping on has no “occurence,” to connect it to. there was no chance meeting, no poignant moment.
it was an online comment to something i wrote that she read and one day months ago, i seeked out the date of that comment and it was may first, hence this “anniversary.”
it was regarding scrap bar chronicle #28 and the dream i had while living(?) at the st. mark’s hotel around the new year, 1995.
“…..the beauty of dream states are they make every other temporary episode in one’s life more pronounced…or less depending upon the urgencies to make them so…..”
….that’s what she said.
and i said, “scrap bar…ever been?”
and it went on and on from there.
—————————————
parsing this extraordinarily long and amazing day (as i continue to put words, thoughts and motives onto maxx and buddy’s behavior), i move onto to “sooner,” when i traded photos with my dear friend from when we were 18-year-olds. this is what i sent her – it’s a picture of me immediately after returning to brooklyn after a weekend at bridgehampton racetrack, something i refer to as the time of “the trusty pliers.” i was all about this stuff when i was a kid;
the picture she sent me made my breath stop.
i’m not gonna show it.
bear in mind, the “part-of-car” you see is a triumph TR3.
you’ll notice that the car door sits about as high as my kneecap.
if you’re wondering if this car had windows, the answer is yes – they were stored in the trunk and clipped onto the car with allen keys.
also, around this time, we had the bushwick book club where songs were written with dolly parton’s autobiography in mind.
there was even a skype performance by franz and maria held aloft by susan.
this is what that looked like;
and then lillie got dressed up and yodeled……
there’s a bunch more pictures put in the facebook and myspace universe from this show. there are pics here in our photobucket link, too.
————
a few days later, confirming to me that the fabric of the universe is chock full of unplanned and poetic coincidences, i found this on a bookshelf as i sat in my store….
that was my triumph TR3 owner’s manual from when i was that skinny hippy kid in the above photo.
my affair with british automotive engineering went on for some years. i ended up using that green car for parts as i patched together another one, this time red, and bought another TR3, one that a classmate in high school had gotten involved in a wreck with….
the photos above is that time in my life “as told by cars in a backyard.”
the wrecked one with the blue tarp is the subject here.
what is more than “cool as all that” and the absolute point of this “backstory” is what happened next.
last week (or “a pile of naps past”), i was writing a note to my dearest friend when the phone rang. carly, working downstairs, called to tell me, “some guy who says he went to high-school with you is in the store.”
it was that guy.
so, to sum up.
after arbitrarily scanning that teen-pic of me and my TR3, within three weeks i found my owner’s manual and reunited with a high-school classmate who i haven’t seen in almost 40 years and to boot, he’s the only other person i ever knew to own one of those cars.
oh, and one other thing.
he may have been my dearest friend’s english professor in college.
…..but life is…random.
good thing.
the notion of an extraordinary galactic fabric is better kept at bed, bath and beyond.
this was offered up as evidence of miraculousness for no reason at all with my friend in our next conversation.
it probably had to do with the improbability of our paths without all this becoming problematic.
—————
next, for a moment and maybe more, the sign above our store was re-illuminated again for the first time in four years……
it promptly de-illuminated after an hour or two.
which of course, had nothing to do with my decision to go to floyd bennett field some hours later with maxx and see springtime develop in and around the old hangars as well as find more airstrip numbers…..
i posted pics of bright airiness and sent some to my friend around the time i took them, which is still sooner than earlier, but not quite approaching “almost now,” but i’m getting there, i just know it.
i portraited maxx.
“portraited” should be a word, and should join “notelessness” in this new slang.
i find them both highly descriptive and if they were combined, as in “portraited notelessness” it would be a big, blank sheet of something, but you have already figured that out because those words work, right?
this was a sexy love letter i sent to my friend some hours ago, but not as “ago” as my time on the glass and bottle beach. out here at floyd bennett airfield were vaginas and penises every where you looked. this was becuase i had a sex-strewn conversation of casual innuendo and blatant expletives.
there was even penises and vaginas whoopin’ it up…
this may have had something to do with conversations we had, but then again, so many of my memories come and go like errant breezes. was it this current conversation or memories percolating behind what i’m thinking. like laughter escaping without thought.
my trips to gateway national park are good for me and especially maxx, but these trips were not to the beach, that place where maxx can no longer tread for the next four and one-half months. i would reason, as i do each year, that i should still go out there and at least try to check on the big tire (and i do, especially on rainy, inclement days), and to steal fifty yards from the dunes to the shore and make my call out over the ocean to my friends and the croupiers and pit bosses in the big casino.
this is the place where hope lolls in the missing sun and breezes pass notes to the likes of armand hammer, louise brooks, johnny thunders and sandy becker as they might trade industry stories on chaise lounges overlooking the silvery portal to the pi-squared demi-universe, southwest of the eighth-electro-plasma-ocean of the ninth dimension.
i would celebrate that birthday mentioned at the dawn of this.
drawing ever-closer to now, i traveled to fort tilden.
this is the trip where i walked on the path that runs parallel to the dunes and the shore beyond them. this is the same road/path that i was walking on last year when bernie madoff’s son whizzed by and i later witnessed the gruesome handiwork of the “meal and a suit-taking” lizard-guy who was waiting in the parking lot along with that eduardo ciannelli-sounding lizard- guy who looks like omar sharif who no doubt set up this rendezvous. yummy.
today i heard both madoff’s sons were getting indicted or something equally delicious. the one now being worn by that lizard guy no doubt is formulating a scrumptious-greedhound-criminal-farming plan.
if you don’t know what i’m talking about, you might want to start reading this blog from about two years ago and work your way here.
there’s loads of totally useless information you might need to know.
but i digress…..
i’m approaching “now,” inexorably.
i parked the car a shorter time ago than anything i may have mentioned earlier, except for those “now, this moment,” pronouncements which are fading into earlier moments all the time, just like me and everything and everyone around me.
meeeeeeeeee.
obnoxious.
this day that i drove to fort tilden had both me and maxx barking up a storm. it was sunny and breezy, though before heading out there was a greyness and threat of rain. i had planned on the rain to give me the anonymous sense of cover to get me onto the beach without federal interference.
with the sun, i decided that the path, dunes and the trails would be fine.
as i walked east from the parking lot where i first met those lizards (two years ago now) and headed toward jacob riis park beach, a white pick-up truck approached headed in the opposite direction.
as we neared each other, the truck slowed.
i thought to myself, “this is going to be some lizard guy reminding me that i’m not permitted to run my dog on the beach and to keep is leash on at all times. maybe it’ll be that woman trader-wearing lizard from last summer…” i was confident this would be a national park dress-down.
the vehicle stopped with the driver giving me a bright “hello”
“how ya doin’ today?” i asked. my eyes fixed on the face beneath the park-employee hat.
“holy moses,” i said to myself (and yes, i really use that expletive), “that sure looks like willie nelson.”
his head came out of the window and he said in a country-drawl, “sir, i just want to thank you for walking your dog on his leash and keeping that leash in your hands. we really appreciate when people respect what we’re trying to do here during the season.”
“well, that’s very kind of you to say that, sir,” i answered, “and, you’ll notice, i’m not on the beach.”
“well, if you were on the beach, i wouldn’t know that yet, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation, but just the same, have yourself a great, glorious day..”
“you too, sir,” i said, as i found myself grappling with the urge to blurt out something like “you look just like willie nelson,” or “hey, are you that guy?” or something like that. i bit my tongue and walked further along until i saw the truck disappear, making the right hand turn at the end of the path. i looked at where i was and tugged maxx along toward the dunes leading to the beach. reaching the top, i looked at the rocks that formed the jetty on my left and saw the bunch of yellowish boulders that told me i was right where i belonged if i was going to locate the big tire. it was under a couple of feet of sand, not more than forty feet from where i stood.
i was sure of it.
i thought about running to the water’s edge and calling out my dear friend’s name, but decided to do it from where i stood.
i had an oceanwide-shot that gave me a touch of the earth’s curvature.
this would be fine. why rile-up old willie?
he was so kind and friendly.
he didn’t-once let on that he knew what was on my mind. does that mean he’s really willie and not a lizard-guy wearing willie. besides, he ’s never been a greedy man. he’s not part of their diet, i don’t think. on the contrary, he got in all sorts of trouble for NOT being a greedy bastard.
he was as bad with his millions as i was with my thousands. for a moment i felt like we were sympatico. i wondered if willie nelson ever wrote a song by that name or if he used that word in a song.
i thought about how he should or did or would one day.
sympatico – it would have that bit of an Elfego Baca beat.
i thought about my friend on the other side of america and how much i wished i could talk to her right now about this willie nelson experience. i thought about this as loud as i could, then walked down from the dune and back onto the path. i walked on a short while longer until i saw the trail that would lead to where i saw that great blue heron that i was totally unprepared to photograph some months ago. i hoped it would be there. i was camera ready…
this path would turn left sharply and end at a small marsh, so i took maxx’s leash and we walked quietly. i felt like elmer fudd.
i made the turn and saw a lone duck. i startled it. i snapped a picture.
i got it, dead center. i would’ve gotten the great blue heron if it was there, sure. i followed the path away and up an incline where there’s a bench. i sat and decided to wait. maxx joined me and after a few minutes, he rested his head in my lap and we sat……
…and waited.
maxx slept. i wished things. in a conversation with my friend some time earlier, i expressed the wish to get a conversion van with enough amenities to be comfortable and travel cross-country. not “living-in-a-van” sort of traveling, but “ok to nap laying down and there’s soda in the fridge” sort of traveling. “motel stop option” sort of traveling.
maybe we will.
who knows?
maxx roused himself up. i followed and we headed to “battery harris east,” that place which offers the panorama of the surrounding area so well. i’ve posted many pics from this place over time, the last one being during our last snowstorm – you can find it here and compare the changes. pretty amazing, you bet.
i decided to send my friend a picture, so i set the camera to stun and ran across the platform -
i went down and found a trail i don’t recall having traveled. there were other paths branching from where we walked that were also new to me and i was excited about this. i never thought i knew it all out here, but i’m pretty familiar with a lot of the terrain. the dawning of a new season and new things i might capture with my camera was a nice thought. i found more sex-related imagery and posited that whoever blazed this trail may have the same thing on his/her mind as i did right when i clicked this…
or have i been looking for the womb again, that safe place where i can cease thinking and worrying and have my needs met automatically, something i’m not sure means life or death and if they are one and the same, the thought of which switched on a movie/play i recall seeing when i was what…? – twenty? entitled “steambath” that whirred and clicked inside my head for a few moments.
i’ll have to settle in a watch it again. it’s been half a lifetime.
and i clicked and walked some more, taking in the light and dark aspects of whatever is going on in my head. i sent some of this to my friend to give her a visual escape from the four walls she’s been confined to lately.
she’s got a bit more than a cold.
i do this to make us both feel a bit better.
it’s heart medicine.
drawing closer to now, some more meals, naps and and bodily functions later, we had a show with M.Lamarr, otherwise known as reginald when he’s behind the counter here.
i hadn’t been too good at documenting lately. shame on me.
i made it a point to charge the battery and slipped it in my pocket for that night. it was really great and my friend brendan from gigmaven even immortalized it with some video. me? i clicked away…..
which bring me to my last picture postings and closes out this game of catch-up i’ve been playing for the past hours interspersed with naps, meals, etc…
the stepkids played here the night before last and brought with them big white sheets and a projector along with pop melodies and harmonies that harken me back….never mind….geezertime will take over and i’ll never get this done…..
…..along with this visual goodness, it’s also wise to mention that one of the band members, dan along with clara who produce the empenadas we serve here. they’re quite extraordinary. the link tells you all about them and how they’re not what you find “just anywhere.”
they’re old-style, hand crafted, delicious, edible pieces of art.
we’re all about that stuff around these parts.
whew.
oh, and to my dearest friend, out there in the interwebness.
thanks. quite a year.
now.
we are now, by the way, but that’s only gonna last a second, you know.
i do my restaurant depot shopping for the store on sundays in the early afternoon. i bring maxx with me because i know i won’t be more than fifteen minutes or so and then we can walk along the railroad tracks that run along the waterway where the warehouse is.
i do this so maxx can have his woody guthrie experience.
i wish to be part of the illusion myself, so we walk on train-ties, in between the tracks that run east to west, heading to the eastern most point of long island. these train lines mattered greatly between the two great wars of the last century.
i could romance the notion of jumping a freight train heading west.
after shopping and walking the tracks for a bit, i came back to the store, unloaded the carload of shopping and allatonce decided that the beach just might be incredible today because of the storm.
i jumped into the car after feeding buddy and off we went.
when i got to the beach, i could hear the ferocity of the water without even seeing it and when i got to the shore, i saw a green-brown roaring, foaming, churning clusterfuck reminding me and a few other onlookers how insignificant humanity is on this sphere.
i headed east, away from the small group at the first bay.
i was so overwhelmed by the visual that, as i walked, i forgot where i was and suddenly, in sort-of slow-motion, found myself falling down into a gaggle of rocks, sand and wood.
i not only felt out of control, i felt feeble and helpless and spindly and old.
i cried out what may have been a part of a word that started with the letter “a” – i don’t really remember.
i lay in a heap and momentarily collected myself.
for a second, the commercial flashed, “i’ve fallen and i can’t get up…”
my hands bled from negotiating the elements they fell in contact with. i succeeded in not smashing my head on anything…”ok, that’s a plus..,” i thought.
my thumb bled at the nail, but i wiggled it and it seemed ok.
maxx stood over me and immediately began to lick my hands.
i scrambled up inventorying my joints and limbs as i rose.
“i think i’m ok,” i muttered, half to myself, the balance to maxx.
i looked behind me.
the other ocean watchers continued to look seaward.
seeing how the last high tide had gobbled up the shoreline and part of the dunes in front of me, i felt a sense of anticipation that the big tire would reappear on the beach for the first time in months.
as i walked on the shore with maxx, i’ve drawn some conclusions about a storm;
1 – the shells on the shore – there are no small, fine bits of shells. they are whole or nearly whole.
2 – the seaglass – like the seashells, pieces of glass on the beach are large and new. there are no pieces that are ocean or sand-worn.
there’s probably some equation for this.
there might be someone who can explain this.
there are experts about everything, everywhere.
humanity needs statistics and equations to couch a sense of knowledge or familiarity about this and every other sort of thing.
i would love to know why, too.
then i might remark about how hungry i am or say something unrelated to this like, “hey – there’s that big tire!” because it was – there, i mean.
the ocean was so fierce it dug up the beach and carried it about fifty yards east from the last place i saw it.
maxx was immediately back at home with it.
there’s a whole bunch of new pics in the album named “earth reclamation project” on the photobucket account here (if you look left).
it’s a good name for this post even if she isn’t already a crazy cat lady, but i told her that she has an excellent chance to be one.
she rescued a little ferile kitten (i saw pictures this morning) and has two other cats elsewhere, so she qualifies.
as the world’s biggest buddy to my buddy…..note – this is buddy, as if you didn’t know or don’t remember -
- i applaud cat ladies. she is a self-proclaimed crazy person, by the way…..
i am a crazy geezer.
i will become a crazy “old” geezer…..soon.
someday soon.
i too, am self-professed crazy and have a slew of witnesses,
but i digress.
i was talking about a cat lady.
my crazy cat lady friend wanted to get out to see some gateway national park-kind-of-nature. when i went to pick her up, i found out that she lives in my old neighborhood.
she used to perform at “paperback burlesque” shows put together by my dear friend, jo. that was back when i made tee-shirts and not coffee, right here at GBM. jo has since become a published author and her book is coming out (soon).
i’m proud and happy for her.
jo weldon is the epitome of the phrase, “all this and brains too.”
the link at her name is to her blog. she’s a “good read.”
she’s smart as a whip and knows how to use one.
a while ago, she tended bar at scrap bar, atlanta.
a few years later, we shared an eighteen-foot truck from georgia to new york.
that was almost fourteen years ago.
imagine that.
she introduced me to the cat lady who shared gateway national park with me and maxx this day, but i may have already said that.
this day was maxx approved….
……and this is the cat lady on the beach;
i think the last time i saw her, she was on our stage at goodbye blue monday in a vaudeville/C.I. burlesque review about three years back, but this day, it was a relaxing stroll on the beach while we shared small talk and she collected shells.
i was inexorably drawn to the almost-still ocean waters. it was low-tide.
thoughts of my dear little friend on the other side of the north-american landmass drifted in. “gee whiz,” i would think….
i want to call her, out there over the ocean.
i thought about my quiet chat here a week or two ago….
even now, she’s all i can think of and how that eduardo ciannelli-sounding lizard guy – who looks like omar sharif – hasn’t even bothered to show up here yet again and how i know it could be more about kindness than anything else. i want believe that the grifting lizards from mars understand.
then again, it just might go to show how well the beings above us on the food chain know their diet staples.
i write to her online and drop texts into the televoid.
…..a call to her from way inside, in there, the heart of the universe, smack-dab in “the eighth-electro-plasma-ocean of the ninth dimension”.
this will humm through me like a silent song as the cat lady and i walk across the dunes and into the brush while we speak of herons, woodpeckers egrets, freakshows, showbiz, exploitation and youth – though we’re a generation apart, i marvel at life’s innate sameness….. and i’ll wonder about radiation sickness as we go to the car and i suggest a tour of floyd bennett airfield on the way back, “sure…,” says the cat lady…….and we drive on runways 33 and 24, to places where photo-ops would present themselves in empty buildings….
i title the above “fashionable cat lady with large dog in abandoned building”
i looked out the window and i went click….
and i looked out there and began to talk about how this area is the “go to” place for astronomers without a budget and how it’s the darkest place in the entire metropolitan area and where i will go when told about any and all meteor showers, celestial disco parties or any end of the solar system scenarios.
when i landed in new york in december, i remember peering out the plane window and looking down at blackness that was not the ocean.
i had read about the old airport’s pitchness and there it was (or wasn’t) before my eyes.
i have no photos….you’ll have to trust me.
if the galaxy is ever scheduled to explode and you don’t want to drive to jersey to see the big bang, get on your bike and get to gateway.
last stop before leaving was the old hangar.
the cat lady was enchanted.
it gave me the opportunity to put into perspective “a little humanity in a space,” like this;
the cat lady was “fearlessness in sneakers.”
she tromped through snow and muck and puddles.
she was returned to her kitten a short time later with tales of dogs and beach adventures.
me and maxx went home.
i got a text message a short while later from my dear friend.
“hey murdock” it said.
that’s me. sometimes.
