BLESSINGS THESE DAYS

donkey jen's blessing miss ed

Day after day I see on facebook people posting an announcement of being blessed by having some feel-good experience. Most of the time I feel like barfing because it drips with oozing sentiment like fart putty. Sometimes I agree, it was indeed a blessing. Then I question what the word blessing means and why I never say it. It's like the word luck. We make our own luck. In like manner, we make our own blessings. I think about times I've called something a blessing, I find that I feel more blessed having whatever it is that makes it possible to notice a given experience as a blessing. It's there whether or not I receive it a blessing. My friends Crystal and Justin had their baby girl, who I consider a major blessing in my life. I've slowed way down and lost interest in an awful lot, become so disappointed by civilization, I've indrawn to the world of my home, my mountain glen in the beautiful Blue Ridge among my four-legged friends. I only see people I care about who care about me. I've let go of associations with toxic people. It really makes a difference when they're gone. And it makes a difference when a vibrant baby enters.

 

miss ed's fifth day in a donkey body

 

Over the last few years I've alienated three people I thought of as friends, because they wore me out. Constantly telling me what to do, what to read, what to, what to, sentences all starting with you needta, you gotta, you oughta, you should. Can't we just sit still and talk about something, like have a conversation about something having to do with something besides measuring how deficient I am as a model of you. They got on my last nerve to the point I had to shake them off, never felt a pixel of guilt. I hear Patti Smith in my head in her Babelogue intro to Rock n Roll Nigger, "I'm an aMERican artist, I feel NO guilt." So Patti Smith. The times I see tv, this is what I see, continuous you-oughta. I amuse my friends talking back to commercials, saying things like, "No, I don't think I will." Nationwide is on your side. "Not." It's a blessing not to have so-called friends in my face missionarizing empiricism to me, what's right.

 

miss ed one ear up

 

I used to think it cynical of men my age laughing at me thinking principles important in my youth. It wasn't many years ago I came to I don't give a shit about what's right, it's so subjective. Because it works for me is no reason it would work for somebody else. Our karmic make-up must be at least as complex and specific as our DNA. I'm of a mind that it's ok guys have long hair, girls have blue hair, both have tattoos and dress imaginatively. Somebody says to me, "the kids these days," in a disgusted tone of voice, I make a case for the kids these days by telling a little bit of what I've seen getting in among the kids these days and finding they are incredible people. I like all the kids-these-days I know, like them a lot. I don't bore them too badly because I'd rather listen to them tell me what they have to say than be the one talking. I'm a good listener because I really do want to hear what they have to say. They're good people. They have beautiful things to say. Going by the kids these days I've known, I feel like their generation is closer to the heart than my generation

 

jenny and her five day old baby

 

The day after going to a show of Daniel Biggins' band, The Seduction, waking up next morning, taking carrots to donkeys, I feel blessed. The experience of a small place playing rock n roll the way I want to hear it feels to me like a blessing. The blessing part in it, in my subjective case, is that I am able to receive an experience as a blessing. It is, indeed, a blessing that I have three babies in my life that I love with all my heart, and one long-distance. A kitten, a donkey, Vada and Teddy. I feel buoyed up by the new energy right here, one inside the house, the other just out the door. Kids these days. I pay attention to all the kids I know, from babies on up, find them, every one, interesting people. I value their humanity, their lives. It's been known about me for years in a big group of people they can find me among the kids, listening to them and watching them play. I just sit in a chair or on a step and watch. I've watched Weird Al videos with a roomful of kids laughing, all of them kids I'd known since they were born. I feel the same among the animals I've learned to know. Sometimes I stand at the fence and watch the donkeys in their lives together, sometimes go out and sit in the meadow among them, listen to them graze, tell them I'm happy they're in my life.  

 

miss ed watches mama eat her grain

 

 

 

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SHOULDA BUT DIDN

the seduction the band

Fiddler's convention weekend is here and gone. I kinda wanted to go, but couldn't open the door to leave home. The thought of carrying a portable chair, finding a place to put it, sitting for hours in place is boring already. Somebody appears onstage, plays a traditional tune on an instrument and leaves. Sit and wait. Sit and wait. Somebody else goes onstage and does the same thing. Sit and wait. Sit and wait. Somebody else does the same thing. Sit and wait. It looks bad to take a book, looks intellectual in an anti-intellectual context, thus pretentious, but if I'd chosen to go, a book would have gone with me. The alternative to sitting and waiting for hours is to walk around in the parking lot among campers and visit different jams going on. This is always emphasized as the best part of the fiddlers conventions. But I don't enjoy this either. I prefer my live music in a program with a band playing several tunes, or a jam at somebody's house, getting into their musical groove and playing the tunes from the groove. I know it is fiddler's convention tradition and I'm supposed to like it, but I've tried it several times and never liked it. Supposed-to means as much to me as should, nothing. 

daniel biggins, guitar, vocals

Have felt minor guilt Friday and Saturday nights over expectation, expectation in self, not coming in from outside. Every year I have to analyze why I don't want to go when I feel like I should. There's the word. Every time should pops up anymore, I delete it. A meaningless word like needta and oughta. I make the decision not to go to the fiddler's convention and hear an imagined voice in my head, a voice presumed from outside self, "Well, you should." Next thing, I'm thinking, "Should? Not necessarily. By what authority?" Next time I talk with somebody in town, I may be asked if I went. I'll say no. Then, You should have. I'll say, Not necessarily. And that sets us off to a bad start. Should have gone, a meaningless word. To say I should have done something in the past other than what I did cannot be correct, because I did something else. What I did is what I should-have done. 

brandon hamby, guitar

My focus on the present, on living the life, has relaxed considerably since realizing the meaningless nature of the word should and it's siblings, needta, oughta, haveta, gotta. There is nothing I needta do that I don't choose for myself. Like somebody says the Stones are gonna be in Atlanta, you needta go. Uh, really? Spend a hundred dollars on gas round trip, at least a hundred on a place to stay overnight and food, and however many hundreds it costs to get in. Uh, I don't think so. I'd rather go to Charlotte to a small club and hear local punk bands for five dollars. Much rather. Big auditoriums and mega-parking lots don't do it for me anymore. It was cool seeing Jane's Addiction  and Siouxsie & the Banshees with 50,000. I could not get to London in 1978 to see Siouxsie, like I couldn't get to LA in 88 to see Jane's Addiction at a small venue. It was a matter of take what I can get. Though a huge mega-concert has its own thrill. I like a small place for the immediacy of sound. Last time I saw Daniel Biggins' band, The Seduction, when they'd finished their set, people around me talking sounded like they'd inhaled helium. The sign of perfect volume. 

jacob shelton, bass

All my life I've heard and read that rock n roll is ruining the hearing of the young, you shouldn't be listening to it. It's just three chords. Yeah, tell that to Jimmy Page. I've committed the sin of listening to rock n roll since age 12 when Bill Haley's Shake Rattle & Roll was first played on the radio. I remember at age 16 sitting on the floor in my room, holding the speakers of the tin-can stereo to my ears listening to Chuck Berry and Little Richard as loud as it would go. Home alone. Not knowing right from wrong. In late twenties, I sat about ten feet from a wall of speakers at a Grand Funk Railroad show, County Hall in Charleston. My ears rang for three days and nights. I loved it. Bands like Van Halen, The Cars and Kiss, I've heard so loud no ears were needed. The sound waves I felt in my skin. That's a good concert. I let myself be a guinea pig to see if there's anything to losing hearing. Haven't lost it yet. It may not be perfect, according to this study and that, and I know it's not, but I don't care. Hearing Johnny Winter in my head, "I was raised on rock," one of my rock n roll anthems of the mind. Shoulda? I shoulda done exactly what I did, listened  to all the rock n roll I wanted to. After college, I saw people I knew put their rock albums in boxes in the attic or basement and call it a youthful thing---like good grown-ups they're supposeta listen to something less committed, American Idol. Not me.    

the seduction the band

photos by tj worthington

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THREE NEW TSHIRTS

jean arp

Reminded again of the imperfection of perceptions, it has happened that the missing geode, Quan Yin's head, became a symbol of my talent for not seeing what I'm looking at. Psychological tests tend to be about interpretation. I don't read facebook article comments. They just make a jumble of chaos. One makes a convincing case that the one writing the article doesn't know what he means, the next one says it's the best ever, the next a string of insults, and sometimes one whose point of view matches mine, so what. I like about facebook that I see what is important to my friends in the posts friends put up. A few I think about blocking for putting up so much fascist propaganda, but don't do it, can't turn my back to somebody I like over his/her political opinion different from mine. Their opinions are equally inert and ill-informed as mine. I'm recalling a moment in the coffee shop a few years ago. I was at the bar talking with a woman I found extraordinary, enjoyed talking with her wit and intelligence. She was passing through and I was wishing she lived here. A time came I began to get a drift she was from the far right and adamant. I realized a time will come, before very long, she'll deduce I'm an anti-fascist. The moment I realized she would reject me for having different thoughts and experience from hers, I lost interest in her. I said, "It's time I tell you I'm a liberal." She swiveled around on her stool, put her back to me and didn't say a word. I had to control the compulsion to laugh out loud.

jean arp

Had summer tshirts custom printed today. Bought three black tshirts from Gil Thadani at Gil's Jeans n Things. Gil is one of my favorite people in Sparta. He's from Poona, India, the same city Meher Baba was born and grew up in. Gil came here from San Francisco, Hong Kong before SF, and India before Hong Kong. He married a Sparta girl who was in San Francisco when he was and came back to Sparta with her, raised a family of several kids, put them all through college selling clothes in Sparta. I buy all my clothes from him. One, I like to do all my business in Sparta, except for books and cds. And I like to support my friends. I feel like when I buy something, I am offering support to whoever I'm buying from. I'd rather give my money, energy, to individuals I appreciate than to corporate box stores with employees so poorly paid and richly disrespected they act like they're dead, corporations that rape every town they move into. I bought the tshirts from Gil and today took them to Crystal to print them. In white letters, one says, dissident, another says, insurgent, and the third says, the Seduction, my favorie punk band. She printed them and we had a good time visiting. This is my summer wardrobe. The fun in it is nobody but a very few will know what they mean. Though Daniel is from here, whose band is the Seduction, no more than a dozen people in the county ever heard of it, and them family. 

jean arp

I had not realized it before, but it is habit to look when I get home from town and park to see if Quan Yin's head is in place. Birds knock it off the rock it stands on fairly often. I'm experienced looking for it. Home from town, see her head is missing, I'll search for it before going to the house. I feel like it belongs in place. I understand a geode is a powerful energy, the reason I've not had this one sawed in two. I feel like that does harm to the energy. Like a nautilus shell. I have two, one that is striped and one a pearl shell. They look like shells. In a Myrtle Beach souvenir shop I found among the shells some sliced nautilus shells. They were pretty, but had lost their energy and color. They'd turned a dead gray. I wanted one, but realized in the moment shells must have some energy in them. Cut one into slices and it dies. Quan Yin's head is safe. When I leave the body, next time the geode falls to the ground no one will pick it up. It will roll under a fern or daffodil leaves, or it could be anywhere on the ground and no one will see it. It will seep into the ground, covered year after year by autumn leaves and may never be seen again, went home to the earth, just another rock in the ground. I feel a connection with the geode in that way, that we will both go home at about the same time. 

jean arp

Another art project is in motion. This one, like the one before, is made of scraps from Chris Durgin's woodworking shop where he's now making guitars. He was cleaning up the shop and put some sticks of wood by the woodstove to burn them. He let me look through the pile. I took at least half of it. Today he had a bigger pile for me. I loaded it all into the backseat of the car and there it stays. A great collection pieces of exotic woods, small chunks, slices, square dowels three and four feet long. Pieces of walnut, and some I cannot name. And there was a slab of a certain kind of pine with a beautiful grain that swirls. It is coffee table size. Thought I'd let Justin and Crystal have it, if they want it, to make a coffee table for the mancave or to sell. It is old and dry. Brought home some nice wood to add to my parts inventory. A mess of treasures. These two most recent projects feature beautiful wood. One is about two and a half feet by two feet, a big circle cut in three quarters inch plywood, the circle a foot and a half diameter. It so happens I have a sheet of thinly sliced wood found in an old picture frame with a print of Thomas Carlyle painted by Whistler. I took it apart to give the frame to Crystal to fix up and use as she will. This thin slice of wood not quite an eighth of an inch has beautiful grain in this old, dry wood. Some tung oil brought it to life. Glued onto the back, it fits the circle like it belongs there. Looks like the planet Jupiter with the grain horizontal. A ways yet to go. I can play with wood colors and grain now, make fun things never known before on earth.      

jean arp himsel

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UNCUT ROCK N ROLL: THE SEDUCTION

the seduction @ the garage

Nothing is more punk than being self-determined

and respecting the self-determination of others.

                                                   --graffiti

I got my rock n roll fix at the Garage in Winston-Salem Sunday night. The place was a powerhouse of energy from 9 til 2. My friend Daniel Biggins' band, The Seduction, played in a show with three other bands, The Swamp, Bask and Viajando. All played hardcore punk in their own particular take on it. All the bands were good and all the musicians stellar. They were unafraid to make some noise. The band, Viajando, turned their guitars up to screaming, then started. A three-piece band, the guitar was all over the place. The bass gave the guitar a surface to dance on that, itself, was a dance. The bass player's fingers hopped all over the strings and I could hear what he was doing. The sound system was just right. The lead guitar, Nick, played kind-of melodic, abstracted sounds beyond description. Viajando had an almighty drummer, too. He was the vocalist. Talking with him after the show, while the bands were packing instruments and electronic equipment into their vans, I asked him the source of their name, Viajando. He said it's Spanish for a journey, they felt like they were on a journey as a band, and they liked the word. I made it a point to express my appreciation to one person in each band, and everybody in the Seduction, through the course of the night between bands. On the road to the show in the van, Daniel played a cd with some music by Bask and Viajando. Taking I-40 into the city, I told Daniel, if this is what we'll be hearing, I am ready. I was anyway. He said they are bands difficult to follow onstage, and he loves it. They make him play all the harder. 

viajando

bask

The van parked in front of the band entrance door, everybody in the band did their part unloading a major sound system in several parts from the trailer and transporting them to the stage area, placing them out of the way, allowing the first band to put their equipment on the stage. Between bands, the band just finished removes their sound equipment, the next band sets up theirs and wires it all together. The beginnings of each of the band's sets, they played sounds they use to check out the system of wires and tunings. I loved it. It brought to mind an orchestra checking out their tunings before a concert, conditioned intro to some good music. The sounds are quite different, the only likeness being they're the same thing. Each band had their own such intro. By chance, I made video of the Seduction checking out their connections. I thought they were starting the first song and pushed the record button. Catching on that they were checking the sound, I thought, what a waste, then thought, it's digital, no waste, no problem, and thought, wow, this is cool, glad I got this. I stayed near the "merch" table throughout the show, allowing Nolan, who was taking care of the table, a chance to go outside for a smoke from time to time. There was no way I could leave one of the bands once they got going. For my own personal taste in rock, I'm awfully particular about what I listen to, these four bands delivered full satisfaction. I wanted cds by all of them, but only two had cds for sale. Before the show, I spoke with the guy setting up Bask's merch table, who turned out to play guitar and do vocals, and bought their cd. He didn't have many and I didn't want to chance waiting til after the show. Haven't played it yet, but am itching to. To play it now, I would not be able to carry on here until it finished. While they were playing, I felt like a treasure was in my pocket.    

bask

the swamp

The merch table between Bask and the Seduction was the Swamp's section. The guy setting it up and working it turned out to be the vocalist with the Swamp. Like everybody in all the bands, he looked like just another guy who might be in there. His tshirt said, channel your inner catfish. I told him my car's name is Catfish. He told me how he found the shirt. Adam, if I remember correctly. It's his story for him to tell, not me. It's personal, neither vulgar nor intimate. It's his own story, a good one. I enjoyed our brief conversation. As with the guy from Bask, Zeb, it felt like conversation with artists. I already know why, because they are artists. It's the artist in them I appreciate. It's why I was there. They are songwriters. They are musicians, who really are musicians. They compose and arrange songs. It is the art in punk that has drawn me to punk since it's beginnings in the New York Dolls, Patti Smith Group, Nina Hagen Band, the Clash, Richard Hell, a short list. Like punk in London in the Seventies, every band had its own expression. The musicians, the bands make music the way they want to hear music made. Punk is not so much a sound as an attitude. The attitude creates the sound. The attitude is raw American individualism. The code in punk circles, I just want to be myself. The bands playing at the Garage Sunday night were what we call hardcore punk, what I think of as post-Black Flag punk. Punk has evolved infinitely since its beginnings forty years ago. American punk came out of the New York Sixties bands, Velvet Underground, Mothers of Invention and the Fugs. Before them was Bo Diddley and Buddy Holly in the Fifties. Punk has been a line running through rock n roll since the beginning. By now, every city in the country has multiple punk clubs and bands to keep them going every night of the week.   

the seduction

brandon hamby

the seduction

Talking with someone before the show started, I was asked what band I was here for. It came to me from out of the blue. I said, All of them. I want to hear them all. I'm here with the Seduction, to hear them is the reason I'm here, I want to hear all the bands. The Garage is a comfortable place with great sound. I'd seen the Seduction back in September in awe of what I heard then, a giant step beyond their previous cd. What I heard Sunday night was a giant step beyond last September. I don't know where I could put my finger on what has improved about them. Their delivery, their approach to the songs, their extensive stage experience since then. I can't say more or better of anything than before. It felt like it was a fuller sound, a flow from familiarity with what they're doing, their flow with each other evident in their music making. It's what they do on weekends while they work full-time all week. Jacob's bass I did not hear in September like I heard this time. He was cranked up loud, his noting fingers jumping all over the strings. I felt like the playing of all four of them has freed-up somewhat. Not that it didn't have freedom before, they flowed together. The sound was so good I could hear each of them, individually, and the whole band at the same time. It was loud, too. Just right. The drums, I felt were stronger than before. Everybody in the band has more power than before, they're stronger, like Jonathan Owens, the drummer. Perhaps this is what I hear that makes me feel they've taken a step I can't put my finger on. It takes time to build up the physical strength, the stamina, for what they do. The drummer is an athlete. He is stronger and more practiced than he was eight months ago, like everybody else in the band. I like this band, like what they're doing, like the band members, four very different individuals together making a dynamic entity called rock n roll. I like their hope.  

jacob shelton and daniel biggins

the seduction

the garage

drummer with the swamp

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BILLY IDOL DANCING WITH MYSELF

Closing in on the final pages of Billy Idol's autobiography, Dancing With Myself, and don't want to finish it. A dozen pages to go and I couldn't read on, save it for another time, make it stay just a little bit longer. He's quite a good writer and he tells a good story. He's even a rock star who reads books that are not easy to read. You'd never know it by his behavior. Pedal to the metal, full on, everything goes. His first song with his punk band in London, Generation X, was, Ready Steady Go. I remember when the London punk scene withered and Billy Idol came to USA. Of all the punk albums I have in the house, when I want to hear punk, I most often put on Generation X. I started reading his story from my interest in the years 75-77 in London punk. He gave a you-are-there account of his experience with rock n roll since his early childhood listening to the Beatles and the Who. The punk moment was just right for his age and generation. He embodied the punk spirit, just about as much as Johnny Rotten did. After some time of creating a stage persona with a certain attitude, the stage persona bleeds over into one's personality. Billy Idol took punk persona all the way for about twenty years. He managed to function with a heroin habit, cocaine addiction, both at once, and everything else that came along. It's a life full of consequences of stupid actions. He had a knack, like me, for making a fool of himself at a moment that turned out to be crucial. When he had his Rolling Stone interview, he was apprehensive they'd twist him around like they were known to do and trick him into saying things he didn't want to say. 

He was so anxious before the interview, he put himself into a stupor, then exploded in the interview yelling about how he hates Rolling Stone magazine, hated the interview, told them not to put it in the magazine, regretting he'd consented to the interview, put on a shameless rant that embarrassed him terribly when it was reproduced in the magazine, word for word. He said it was good for the short term record sales, punk attitude, but it turned all the rock critics against him. He had many such incidents in states of advanced inebriation, mixed with punk attitude and rock star arrogance. I like about his telling of his story that he owns up to his arrogance and his inner stupid, his addictions, his love for the never-ending party that is a rock band on tour. In his most self-indulgent time he threw away the love of his life and their child, the other love of his life. It got his attention. For awhile. He said when the most gorgeous, hottest babes he'd ever seen were all over him, what does a man do? Making music on stage meant more to him than his addictions. His addictions kept him going, even assisted him doing the one thing he loved most unto his guiding light. His dad told him when he told mum and dad he wanted to be with a rock band, he'd never make a living a rock musician. Not many years later, Billy went home to London to see family and carried with him his first framed gold record, gave it to his dad. In a time he'd made a major mess of things from too much of everything, debilitated by it, his dad and mum flew to LA to stay with him and nurse him back to health, his mother a nurse and Irish. In the course of his life, his dad was the friend who stuck with him all the way along. 

I never bought any Billy Idol albums after Generation X. I liked what I heard that he was doing, White Wedding, Eyes Without a Face, Dancing With Myself, and the great song, Rebel Yell. He told of a time in a NY recording studio complex, the Stones were in there recording at the same time he was. He and Ron Wood were friends. He and his band went and hung with the Stones awhile during time out for refreshments. He said Keith and Mick were drinking Rebel Yell. He started thinking about it as a song and asked them if they had any plans to name a song Rebel Yell. They said no. It was his to do. He wanted to make it sexy and did. He brought punk rhythms into American metal and made a difference. He tells his own story by album recordings, the tours that follow, and the time in between of resuming the other life of wife and kid he loved like crazy, but found it ultimately impossible to fuse the two lives. He didn't say it directly, or I forgot, but his story tells that his time writing songs, putting them together with the band, recording them, the album release and five months on the road doing what he loved more than anything in life, on stage charging up an audience with some killer rock n roll, was his life, all else peripheral. I like his spirit, his attitude toward life. He tells his story with an enthusiasm the equal of how he lived it. He gave himself to his life wide open, committed. He wrote his story in the same spirit. He had two motorcycle wrecks. The second one almost ended his career. Came close to having his lower right leg amputated, the bone crushed, broadsided by a car bumper. He's a high-energy dude with a lot of it to burn off. He willed himself healed in time for the next tour and did it. 

Not many people confuse rock musicians with artists. I'm one who does. Reading Billy Idol's life is the story of an artist the same as reading a life of Vincent Van Gogh. A good piece of music of any variety is art. I would call the Kronos Quartet playing Terry Riley compositions art the same as I would call Billy Idol's albums and performances art. He's a musician, songwriter, composer, vocalist and a performer. I'm one who sees theater alive and thriving in rock concerts. This coming Friday night I'm going to Charlotte to hear/see four hard-core punk bands, Daniel Biggins' band, The Seduction, one of them. I thought about Daniel quite a lot reading Billy Idol's story. Daniel is doing the only thing he ever wanted to do in his life with his band. He is one happy dude when he's on stage giving it all he's got as loud as he can make it. I think it's through Daniel I had some insight into Billy Idol, the kid who wanted to be in a rock band and nothing else all the time growing up, learning an instrument, looking for others with the same dream, put a band together and do whatever a kid can do, a step at a time. I've come to believe knowing Daniel helped Billy Idol come to life for me in the telling of his story. I was stuck in the middle of a thousand page biography of Van Gogh, needed a break. Read three Chris Hedges books, writing you'd read in The Nation magazine, documentary looks at contemporary history. Then I wanted a page turner. Went to amazon, Billy Idol's Dancing With Myself popped up as a suggestion going by purchases past. I knew on sight this was the book I was looking for. It fulfilled its promise. I don't believe I'll buy any of his music, unless it would be a Generation X album from 1976. I never took to his American metal period. I appreciated that he injected punk rhythms into metal, but I wasn't a fan of 80s metal and still am not. I liked his hits, but have become wary from experience of buying an album because I like one song. I can find Billy Idol on YouTube any time I want. 

billy idol 

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WALKING THE DONKEYS HOME

the road

Woke up in the morning, looked out the window and saw white spots on the ground. Went to the door, opened it and saw sleet all over the ground, rocks wet, rhododendron leaves hanging down covered with ice. The Cosmos was telling me the trip is off to Charlotte to see Daniel Biggins' band, The Seduction, play at the Milestone with three other bands, a CD release party. I knew the ice would not be a factor from the place I was scheduled to meet Daniel in Cherry Lane, though between here and the meeting point would be more ice than I care to address. Driving home at 4am in unknown conditions, more than likely worse, convinced me this is not a good time to go. The Cosmos knows. Much as I'd love to be there at this moment, a few hours into the show, it's not a problem. The future is open. I'll hear the band again. This coming week I'll find Daniel to buy some copies of the band's new self-produced CD from him. I already know it will be a good one. I wanted to hear the other bands too, Viajando, in particular. The two bands play together fairly often. Maybe I'll get to see them with DSR (Dirty South Revolutionaries), who, by the way, are playing in Atlanta this weekend, a Charlotte band. My feeling about the Cosmos shutting me out of this event tells me another show is coming up soon even more to my liking. Since my first show at the Milestone, I've been wanting to go back. I like the vibe there. I like the people there. My mother saw a video of Daniel's band last week I put up on facebook. She wrote in comments: "Did you get out of there alive?" I wrote her back, "They are wonderful, friendly people, nobody gets hurt" The people I'm among in there give me a good feeling about the future. I see the people in the bands artists. They explore new compositions of their own. Talented songwriters among them as well as guitar players and drummers. I see talent galore. And I hear talent. They rock the way I like it.   

dsr

Looking out the window at the weather, I saw the donkeys in their new meadow, heads hanging down, the precipitation sticking to their backs, walking to a sheltered place. They looked so forlorn I decided carrot time would be the best time to put my new hypothesis to the test, walk them from one fence to the other, leading them. I went to the gate with carrots. They were visibly glad to see me. I stepped inside and gave them each a carrot, relaxed, tuning in to them. Jenny stepped through the opening. Jack stood beside the gate and wouldn't move. OK. I followed Jenny and Jack stepped around to the opening and joined us where Jenny was making the decision not to step onto the road looking like ice with a small stream of water was running down the road. I walked by Jenny and around the car, Jack following me and Jenny following Jack. I walked them by the house and to the gate into the meadow. Jack walked in behind me. Jenny found some fresh hay on the ground beside the fence where I roll hay bales down the hill. She followed the trail of hay up to the side of the road, found nothing there of interest. I picked up some hay to carry into the meadow and she followed me through the gate. Nothing big deal about it. We went for a walk. I wanted to keep this sojourn as volunteer on their parts as possible. I never directed either one. I walked from gate to gate and they followed entirely of their own volition. I feel like they will learn the walk from gate to gate better by walking it out of curiosity than being directed. To them, this side of the fence is my world. They see me in it every day. I'm glad they found a chance to check it out relaxed, following their curiosity, Walking them to the other gate in summer would be another matter. We would need to make the walk before the jewelweed gets past seedlings. The donkeys love jewelweed. I give them each a jewelweed plant in summer for dessert when carrots are gone. They would not pass the jewelweed patch until it was all eaten.  

jack and jenny wait for me to help them find their way home

Another bridge for another time. I don't believe we'd get very far in summer volunteer walking. It could happen, but Jenny has a curious eye and a will of her own. They don't eat only grass. I see what they eat from what grows up where I spread their biscuits for fertilizer. They appear to like daisies. Jenny's name before she became Donkey Jen was Daisy. I was inclined to go on calling her Daisy. I don't like to change a pet's name. Talking with Justin about it, he said, "I'm gonna call her Jenny. You can call her anything you like. She'll always be Jenny to me." I was good with calling them by what they are. Male donkeys are Jacks and female donkeys are Jennys. They're probably the most common donkey names. Good. I didn't want to call them cool made up names like Jellyroll and Tulip. Jack and Jenny are good names. Little Richard sang her song. Jack is a name I associate with a friend of my parents when I was a kid. Jack and DeLouris. I loved Jack and DeLouris. I wanted to know them grown up, but Jack died of cancer before I could know him as an adult. DeLouris is gone too. DeLouris was Billy Graham's first cousin and would not allow it to be mentioned. My mother thought it was the coolest thing there ever was, but DeLouris did not. I mentioned it to her once and she said we're not going to talk about that. Jack and DeLouris took me to see Elvis Presley's first movie, Love Me Tender, 1956, seventh grade. It was billed, "Mr Rock n roll in the story he was born to play!" To a teenage kid getting caught up in the new stars of pop culture, it was gloriously sentimental. Elvis died at the end, sob, sob. And then he came back in Hollywood swimming pool movies surrounded by babes in bathing suits and high heels. He died and came back in a martyr's heaven. The name Jack has its own happy association. I don't think about the other Jack when I'm with Donkey Jack, same as I don't think about Little Richard with Jenny. They're just name associations. 

elvis the pelvis

It felt good this morning to walk the donkeys back to their home meadow after a night out. The precipitation set me in motion, wanting them in their home meadow before much more of the ice was on the ground. I wanted to get them to their shelter, knowing they were uneasy, especially after sleeping outside their den all night. Gone camping. They were safe and Jack knew where they were. I imagine they slept wherever he slept. It turned out to be a good experience for all concerned. I felt like the whole experience was for the three of us to share. I didn't go nuts and scare them out of their wits. They walked to the other gate, I thought it would be a good time to introduce them to the meadow the other side of the creek, and a whole lot easier than trying to get them back to the gate they came out of while they were in full exploration mode. Gave them an acre to run in and memories for Jack. This morning they were ready to go home. I took it for a success in how my philosophy plays out in the world. I felt a twinge of alarm when I saw Jenny walk by and Jack close behind her. There would be no turning them around. I put the hay down and entered their flow. It's the three of us out for a walk, not me in charge. I know better than to think I can take charge of a donkey. I relaxed into their flow. They went to the other gate out of curiosity. I've a confidence now that were they to get out and wander someplace before I know they're gone, I'll be able to walk them home simply by joining them on their walkabout. No need to round them up with a switch and holler and cuss, get in there you jackass bitch. About the time somebody talks to Jenny in such manner, she will be alienated from that moment on. Jenny is a proud woman. I'm happy with my relationship with the donkeys. Jenny has a brilliant mind and her own will. I like both characteristics in her. I want to allow her her own mind. The journey worked out successfully both ways allowing Jenny her curiosity, joining her in it, flowing with donkey mind instead of against it.  

donkeys at home

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GRUMPY OLD BASTARD PUNK ROCKER

dirty south revolutionaries

My head is so full of fresh memories they've faded like in a fog. Details fade first, and I'm left with the feeling in memory, which was so big and complex that it, too, fades to the core of all the feelings together: joy. Six hours from 8 til 2 in a small rock club, the Milestone, Charlotte, NC. Five bands played, all of them regional hard-core punk bands. It was a ten year anniversary party by the band DSR, Dirty South Revolutionaries, with four other bands playing, Turd/Cutter, The Seduction, Cop Graves and Dollar Signs. Free admission. I found Johnny Moss, who does vocals with two bands, Turd/Cutter and DSR. We've been facebook friends for some time, met on facebook through our mutual friend, Daniel Biggins, vocals and guitar for the band, The Seduction. I wanted to shake Johnny's hand and talk with him briefly. His appearance is scruffy punk rocker, and when I met Johnny, I found he, himself, lives his heart. I noticed everyone he spoke with, that I saw, he told them he loved them in a way you know he means it; he's not playing peace-love-wow-groovy or blowing smoke. It's who he is. It's how he feels. It's what he means. I spoke with his wife at the tshirt bar when I bought Turd/Cutter's five dollar cd with eight songs, their song list for the show. She had the same vibe, wide open, who she is, awake with a loving heart. I heard the word love go around so frequently during my time in the crowd, it made me pay close attention to where I was. The vibration in the crowd and in the bands I felt was love and joy. Joy not separate from love, but an aspect of love. I consciously went into the event open to whatever, territory I had never been in before. A whole new world to me. We all loved punk rock. Johnny told me the people here were a community of friends. Saying, in effect, the world as he wants it to be. He put out loving vibes all night that flowed back to him.  

johnny moss and turd/cutter

I never saw anybody even show a trace of being mad at somebody else for whatever reason. In other places when I only know maybe half a dozen people there, of at least a hundred, I find it hard to talk with anyone I don't know. At the Milestone, I felt free to speak with anybody at any time. It was like everyone was open to everyone else. Their lights literally did shine. In their community I was so welcome I was thanked several times for coming to be with them. I don't know that I've ever been in the company of this many people who were so wide-open receiving one another. I noticed in the mosh pit area, guys running around in a circle, kinda, slamming into each other (slam-dancing), pushing, shoving, running in a tight circle. When somebody fell down, everyone nearby, four and five, would pick him up and set him on his feet. It was spontaneous. I thought: in my generation, you fall down, you're on your own. Everybody was dressed in their punk clothes. For me, it was beautiful. Every person was individuated in what they were wearing and at the same time moved freely among each other like bees in a hive. Bump into somebody, nobody gets mad. Turd/Cutter opened the show. I was standing somewhere around the middle of the crowd, looking for a good place to get pictures from, when everybody around me erupted into a slam dance. Suddenly, I'm knocked this way, then that way, shoulders and arms in motion all around. I stumbled a path outside that circle in a hurry. It was a wild surprise to be standing still, grooving to the sound of raw punk, and quick as a snap of the finger, everyone is slamming into each other, and me, pushing, running, shoving. Unaware of the mosh pit phenomenon, I don't know what I'd have thought. Everybody went spastic except me. If I'd been a cat, I'd have jumped straight up.  

daniel biggins and the seduction

At one point in the night I was in what amounted to the second circle around the mosh pit. The people in the front circle would push moshers back into the pit when shoved out of the circle. The guy in front of me was hit so hard by surprise he fell back into me. In my hyper-vigilant way, I saw it coming before it happened, just enough to ready myself to stop the momentum rather than get knocked on my ass. I was able to put hands up and catch his back as he started over backwards. You start reeling in one direction from a shove and get a shove from a surprise other direction every time. It amounts to floating around staying upright. Until. This was not a mean mosh pit of football players, but a fun one of friends, community. From my brief experience of the shoves from different directions by surprise, I saw that one could let go and let the motion, determined by bumps and shoves, keep one upright and float like a raft on the ocean. Hypothetically. But I wasn't willing to try it. My right knee became sensitive after standing for so long. Toward the end of the night I had to be careful on steps. It reminded me I could be the grandpa of nearly everyone there, and the pa of everyone else. Crystal printed a black tshirt for me to wear, grumpy old bastard, in white letters on the front. I felt like it freed the people around me from seeing an outsider with white hair. The humor was evident, the only thing it was about. Nobody who takes False News Network seriously is going to wear a tshirt calling himself a grumpy old bastard. I can wear it in fun, because I am not grumpy, anyway not all the time. I didn't look grumpy; my face was lit up in a smile of joy the whole time. I was in mild ecstasy from the sound of punk guitars and drums real loud. Words cannot reproduce the experience of the sound. 

door at the milestone

Several times through the night I caught myself thinking I feel at home here. I felt like the others around me felt their own versions of that feeling. It was a new experience to be a stranger in a community where I am embraced as one of them on sight without question. The whole trip from leaving the house to returning to the house felt like a Divine set-up, saying: Here, you need this. I drove the Parkway to Daniel's house, where he, Jess, his wife, and I, took the van with trailer trailing behind down the mountain to pick up the rest of the band and girlfriends at Elkin. Then the long drive to Charlotte on 77, getting acquainted with the band largely through listening. Brandon, rhythm guitar, is an x-ray technician at the hospital; Jacob, bass, a recent graduate at ASU in Boone; Jonathan, 19, could beat the fire out of the drums; Daniel, vocals and lead guitar, I've known since he was a little child. I said when we left the house and passed the swing set for the kids, "This is the age you were when we first met." He said, "Yeah, I remember." I've known Daniel to only want to play rock music since a kid. I've supported him with encouragement all the way along wanting him to experience what he wants with all his might. It's like he's soul driven to be playing and singing in a rock band, particularly a hard core punk band. Initially, my only interest in going to Charlotte with the band was to hear them live and see them in motion. Daniel has given me copies of the self-produced cds they've recorded, so I knew their sound. I wanted to hear and see what Daniel is doing now that he has what he's always wanted and is making it work. In my heart the whole time I was feeling joy for Daniel. I loved the band's music. Like Johnny Moss and the bass player from DSR, Jesse, said to me of Daniel's band, The Seduction: They rule.   

rocknroll van ready to go

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