DANCING WITH MYSELF

the black box

by tj worthington

One of the better aspects of living alone is having no one to react to my peculiarities. I like the freedom to be peculiar when I feel like it. Like I just now smoked a cigarette/cigar and followed it with a Hershey's Kiss. It's a good combination. Peeling the foil off the chocolate, I thought, this is peculiar. And simultaneously forgave myself. It works for me, why concern myself if it's peculiar? It is what it is, whatever it is. Last night about this time I had a drink of some Wild Turkey and it put my lights out. It's never done that before. And this was only 80 proof. I was on facebook looking at what my DCP friends were doing, gearing self toward writing, poured a drink, sipped on it like usual. I never feel anything. It's why I sip. I don't want to feel it. I want to taste it. I love the taste of Wild Turkey Rye. I never drink to the point I feel woozy standing up and trying to walk. I don't like that. By the time what I'd poured into the glass was gone, my head was spinning. I had to get up from the computer. Went to the reading chair and picked up the book I'm enjoying at the moment, Dancing With Myself, by Billy Idol, an autobio. I'd been through three Chris Hedges books about an absurd society, felt I needed a break, a page-turner, something to hold me in place when I pick it up. Went to amazon looking for some white paint and a birthday present dvd. Something popped up out of the blue, no recollection of how I found it, an ad set specifically to my buying record as I sometimes buy books or dvds having to do with punk. Billy Idol's bleached hair sticking straight up and title, Dancing With Myself. I said, That's it. This is what I came to amazon for and didn't know it. Found a new copy at a good price and ordered it immediately. It was impulse and it wasn't. It was not an impulse in that I knew on sight this is what I wanted to read next. 

richard tuttle

It arrived a few days later, making my day. Carried it from the mailbox to the house like a kid Christmas morning about to open the present he wants to open most. It wasn't a good time to start it, so I flipped through the pictures with family in childhood and rock stars in adult life. I've liked Billy Idol since his punk band Generation X in the late 70s. He had a teenage suburban brat persona. Punk degenerated in London, his band faded out as a result of some success that set the guys in the band at odds with each other. Heroin had a little bit to do with it. His label had been talking to him about going solo, which tempted him, but he didn't want to leave the band mates while they had a good thing going. The band fell apart and he flew to New York with a suitcase and his guitar. Got checked in and second night stepped into a dance club to feel the energy, see what they're doing in the States. He said the people were not dancing, just standing around. The dj put on Generation X's, Dancing With Myself, Billy's attempt to make a punk song with dance rhythms. Everybody ran to the dance floor, the whole place was in motion. He said he knew in that moment he was going to make it. He had apprehension of New York, having heard it can chew you up and spit you out. The Sex Pistols did not survive their American tour. After four gigs they fell apart as a band and went home. The States spitting out the Pistols gave Billy a degree of pause. This is the book I was looking for. I have to make myself stop reading. In the chair under the light of the floor lamp I tried to read after leaving the computer light-headed last night. Couldn't read. The words were not working for me. Had to get up and go to bed. Couldn't get to sleep. Lay there wondering what happened. It was obvious. Had not eaten all day. Fell asleep thinking if I never wake up, heaven here I come.   

richard tuttle

Woke about five hours later, got up around one, went to the desk, started writing yesterday's entry. My head was nodding throughout the last paragraph. Head would fall over to the left, then to the right, or straight down, looking for the tabletop to rest forehead on, but none was there, only the keyboard. I struggled to stay awake throughout the paragraph. By the time I made it to bed around 6, I'd forgotten what I wrote. I felt like I was writing on automatic pilot. Forgot each sentence as I put it down. Which is cool. I stayed with it after telling myself I do have permission to stop for now and finish it later after some rest. No, I wanted to stay with it. This is the place I like best for writing. I feel like it is all coming from the subconscious when I'm so drowsy the mind is not working. I like writing best when I'm so weary I barely know consciously what I'm saying. In the writing, I'm thinking this is the worst shit I've ever put down, just delete it, don't embarrass yourself by letting anybody see it. Decided to go ahead and embarrass myself, let my inner stupid have its moment, and clicked on Publish. Done. Put it on the DCP facebook page and to the bed I go. Woke up a couple hours later, carrot time, weary as a fox dog after running all night, ground-cover snow out the windows. I threw on a sweater and the heavy shirt that is also a warm jacket, and a hat, to take carrots to donkeys and seeds to the birds. Jack brayed and Jenny squealed. I remembered again how deeply in my heart I love Jenny and Jack. My heart glows when I see them. I've learned how to bray with them. I do a deep, extended Oh, bray harmony with Jack. He loves it. So do I. It is a form of communication between us, play, singing together. Jack's ears lay straight back, his nostrils flare and his eyes bug out, staring without seeing. Braying seems to give him a momentary ecstasy. 

richard tuttle

Gave the donkeys some hay, came back and returned to the bed. Slept until up in the day, getting up to take grain to the donkeys before dark. I love feeding them. I feel like an old country grandma piling food on the table, telling everybody to eat, eat all you can. Two movies from netflix today, The Squid and the Whale, and Siouxsie & the Banshees at the Albert Hall in 2002, the same visual of the live cd I listened to recently. I was ready for Siouxsie. Caterpillar ran and hid in the bathroom. Sioxsie gave me a good concert, good band. They get the energy generated into a cyclone of sound around Siouxsie, Take a walk with me-e, Down by the sea-ea. She seems to me an inward woman who has taught herself to take to the stage. She retains her privacy in her eyes. She freely gives herself in her flowing motions, swirling arms, turns and half-turns, contained movement, free and restrained. It gives her motion a stylized dance that works just right with the flowing quality of her vocals, the verbal aspect of her physical motion. This concert was the band grown up, thirty-six years into their career. They'd not played in something like nine years, this concert a re-union tour. It was in 91 I saw them. A dvd I'd ordered arrived a few days ago in the mail, a Siouxsie & the Banshees concert, 1983. This is when I want to see them most. I'm holding off, waiting til the time is right. They'd been a band seven years by then, closer to the time they were playing small clubs in London. The punk scene in London in 75-77 was much like the punk scene in Charlotte now, small clubs around town different punk bands play. It seems a healthy sign to me from what I saw in Charlotte that the bands are leaving the drugs alone largely. Heroin took down the first round of punk in London and New York in a short time. The Charlotte band DSR, Dirty South Revolutionaries, have been together ten years, and played Atlanta recently. I'm glad to see they're not taking the down bound train. 

richard tuttle himself

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A RAINBOW OF DUALITY

I've recently discovered a new name for myself. It is ODD, Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Get pushed into a corner and come out fighting: Disorder. It's about people who don't take well to authoritarian behavior. That it is called a disorder does not allow for the fact that many authoritarian figures don't know what they're about, don't make rational decisions, and look down on the people they have authority over. Authoritarian is a disorder, too, if oppositional defiance is a disorder. I can't help but think that the science of psychology has so far worked against us humans. After a century and a half of psychology as a science, psychoanalysis is prohibitively expensive but for the upper middle class. The part that applies to the rest of us is manipulation by marketing and political manipulation. Collectively, we are manipulated by a field of study sought initially to be to our benefit that has turned against us. Given that these sorts of manipulation amount to authority, my own ODD comes  into play and I oppose  the manipulation. I can't fight it. It would be like fighting the wind. I can't control it, can't even manipulate it in turn, can't even talk about it without somebody calling me a cynic, which I have no problem with. Online dictionary gives it two meanings. One is Greek philosophy that virtue is the only good and its essence lies in self-control and independence. I have no argument with that, looking at virtue as spontaneous instead of structured. Two is believing human conduct is motivated by self-interest. I have no argument with that either. Our popular use of the word, cynic, tends to mean somebody not optimistic. Remember Dr Bernie Siegel, pediatric surgeon who wrote feel-good self-help books ten to twenty years ago? In an interview, I heard him say, "Pessimists are right, but optimists live longer."

 

 

 

 

 

I've questioned it ever since I heard him say it. It's one of those generalizations that begs exception. In a plane crash, optimists go down with pessimists. When an American bomb blows up an Iraqi or Afghani neighborhood, optimists die with pessimists, at the same time. Is he talking about laboratory conditions? Out here in the world, not all circumstances are self made. Earthquakes, for example. In an apartment building that collapses from a quake, pessimists die with optimists. It's obviously not a statement meant to be analyzed. Hear it, agree, be impressed by its cleverness, take it as a saying from on high, an authority, one who knows more than you do. I remember hearing it, thinking it insightful, like men are from Mars and women are from Venus, then questioning it immediately, impatient with myself for questioning the obvious. But it's not obvious. Maybe by empirical study it would bear out. But I don't know how such a study could be controlled, considering the unforeseen is around every corner. People who don't smoke get lung cancer. Some people who are crazy drivers have wreck after wreck and survive, while some have one wreck and die. I know a guy who went through the windshield of his car and woke up on the hood unhurt. Another I know drove into a tree dead center front bumper 70 mph without seatbelt and survived. The air bag knocked him out. He woke up lying down in the seat, otherwise unhurt, holding the gear shift in his hand, it separated from the transmission. I don't think they survived because they were optimists. The first one was so drunk he probably couldn't see. He flowed like a fish through seaweed. The second one was racing. I wouldn't say either one was optimist or pessimist, just working class guys bored with labor jobs that have no fun in them and home life that has no fun. It's called: I'm the only hell my mother ever raised.

 

 

 

 

 

My other question is how somebody of Siegel's extensive knowledge would see it so either/or. People who would be categorized optimist have some pessimist in them. Pessimists have some optimist in them. All in varying degrees according to DNA, sun, moon and planets, experience. The more I think about it, the more they bleed together such that it is not one or the other, but interwoven degrees of both. Either/or makes it easier for our minds to grasp thin air. It acknowledges duality to see opposite poles. Yet, there is darkness in the light and light in the darkness. In this world, there is no absolute good and no absolute bad. Get down to defining these opposites and it starts getting fuzzy. The woman who loves her abusive man because she understands why he's bad. He aint all bad and she aint all good. Getting down to what we mean by good and bad gets subjective in a hurry. When our karmic return on a given action is to our liking, we call the action good. When the return is not to our liking, we call it bad. An individual's liking varies from person to person. People who like arguing take arguing for the good. People who don't like it take it for the bad. People who like heroin take it for the good and the people who don't like it take it for the bad. Objectively, we may say heroin is bad because it is self-destructive. So is everything else we do, though heroin self-destructs in the fast lane. From what I understand, "when I'm rushin and on my run, you know I feel just like I'm Jesus' son." That's from Lou Reed's song, Heroin. The people who use heroin evidently think it's to the good. They'll debase themselves to the gutter for it. That's unconditional love, giving it all you've got, giving it your life. However, we can make the objective call fairly convincingly after the good in a heroin rush wears off and what you're left with is infinite craving, wanting to crawl out of your skin. That's what we call the bad. Then go back for more of the good, which leaves you again with the bad, round and round, duality, the nature of this world.  

 

 

 

 

 

I've made a turn in my life away from the political because I see it's all about the poles of good or bad, rich or poor, black or white, reduced to extremes of duality, which makes a very unreal world. It is said that it is shades of gray between black and white, but I say all the colors are between black and white. In paint, white is absence of colors, black is all the colors. Everything in between is the rainbow of colors. In light it's just the reverse, black is the absence of light and white is all the colors, illuminated by way of prism. I've realized recently I'm giving an awful lot of attention to ignorant professional politicians, the lowest grade of human being. I see their faces over and over every day, feeling revulsion. Finally, I asked myself why I want to focus so much attention on these people who don't think about me, don't give a shit about me, not even the remotest shit. The only thing they want to do with me is get my money. Why do I pay attention to them? Why am I not paying attention to artists, poets, writers I love reading, more than I have time to read in a lifetime. Good movies, art projects, good reading. I have a good life. I don't need to have my head full of ignoramuses whose only purpose is money. These people are not even authorities in my world. They exist when I turn on NPR and BBC radio news or look at online news. They exist when I flip the On switch. It is totally by my own volition I am exposed to these people I personally have no respect for, people I would cross the street to avoid shaking hands with. It is time to relax further into my home on Waterfall Road, leave the vision of the poles of duality for the vision of my everyday life, the rainbow of duality. Along the way, I've seen the good in bad people and the bad in good people. The badest man and the badest woman I know, I see in both of them good people. I tend toward "bad" people, because they don't advertise the good in themselves. When it comes to good, the bad people have it all over the good people. And when it comes to bad, the good people can make the bad people look like beginners.    

 

 

 

 

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VELVET UNDERGROUND AND HEROIN

Earlier, I put on a Velvet Underground album. Their tune Heroin continues in my head, Lou Reed's and John Cale's guitars pumping a rhythm with Sterling Morrioson's bass and Moe Tucker's drums keeping the rhythm going. The shriek of guitar strings like subway wheels screeching on the tracks in curves through the tunnels under Manhattan streets. Heroin was their obligatory anthemic drug song required of every band in the Sixties. The drug anthems tended to be around lsd trips, floating over strawberry fields forever. Not the Velvets. Hard core spike in the vein, makes me feel just like Jesus' son. Hippies didn't take to the Velvets' New York scene where everybody hip wore black. California was the flowers in your hair hip style. The Velvet Underground only played outside New York a few times. They made a bus trip to Texas and then to San Francisco in hippie times playing New York sounds and lyrics. Audiences didn't take to them at all. They hated the song Heroin. Too hard core. The Velvet Underground also cranked up the metronome a bit making their rhythms a little closer to original Fifties rhythms of Buddy Holly and Bo Diddley.


Reed's and Cale's guitar solos were never Stairway To Heaven psychedelia. They wrenched the strings making unmelodic squawling sounds that turned up later in new ways by Rage Against The Machine, Papa Roach, The Clash, Garbage, Patti Smith Group. To make it brief, punk. Punk followed Velvet Underground's influence as Velvet Underground had followed Bo Diddley's and Buddy Holly's musical influence. In New York, punk pretty much came out of CBGB's where a new sound was emerging, like all at once after the New York Dolls when Patti Smith recorded Horses. Simultaneously in London punk was an art student trend. Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie and the Banshees was one of the first run of London punk bands in the time of the Damned, the Sex Pistols, Generation X, naming just a few, and Nina Hagen Band in Berlin. Siouxsie said punk is not a particular style of music. Punk is the freedom to do what you want to do, make the music you want to hear. In London, the press made punk into an anger expression, when it was an art student trend. There, kids wanting to get with a band went to art school. That was where you met other's looking to get a band going. Every one of the Clash met in art school. Paul Simenon, the bass player, didn't even know how to play bass. When Jones and Strummer started talking about it, Simenon was there and a friend, so come on, you can learn it, let's party. Punk was not an anger expression in New York either.


Herion ran through the New York punk scene like a plague and crossed the Atlantic to the London punk scene where junk critically wounded the punk spirit in just a few months. Richard Hell, interesting New York guitar player in the band Television with Tom Verlaine for awhile, then his own band, Richard Hell and the Voidoids. He didn't last long. The black dragon got him. The one song he might be remembered for is Love Comes In Spurts. He was a guitar player and singer with promise at his very beginning, but he took a liking to the extended orgasmic feeling that's better than sex and goes on for quite awhile. Then it goes away and everything is boring, gotta get some more right away. Breaking and entering, becoming habitual at stealing cars, computers, anything, and it becomes a career. Steve Tyler of Aerosmith kissed the lips of death and wound up in the literal gutter before he could turn around. Lost his band, home, jewelry, self-esteem, the works, down the drain to the sewer. He survived and came back, as did Bob Dylan, Steve Earle and several I don't know about and never heard of.


The obvious finally popped me with a knuckle on the forehead that heroin addiction is the beginning of the spiritual path for the ones able to get with some kind of help to get over the addiction. It looks like the only path out of any kind of addiction is the spiritual path. And when one comes back on the spiritual path, they have experience of both the dark side and the light side, the whole. I think of them as brave people. They may not think they're brave when they start shooting up, but it's not long before breaking into somebody's apartment in an apartment building and carrying out the loot is what you do. That's brave. I do not have the bravery to break into anybody's apartment or house, even if the house is remote and the owners in Europe on vacation. My heart would beat so fast, my knees would be so weak a cat could scare me out of my wits. It wouldn't do for me to put myself in a situation where I have to be brave enough to face somebody being home when I wasn't expecting them. I don't have what it takes to be a junkie. I'm not brave enough to do something to get myself handcuffed behind my back and stuffed into the back seat of a police car. I have a problem being handcuffed by an authority I have no recourse against. I don't want to go there. So I obey the laws, at least within reason.


I've read different writings by junkies, known friends who have friends who are junkies. We have our share here in Alleghany on every kind of thing from crystal meth to opium, cocaine, heroin, anything of prescription drugs. I've seen it take young'uns just out of high school, set free from the leash the first time in their lives, dive head first into everything they can find. Then you need the money. A labor job just out of high school doesn't pay enough. Besides, that's work. Breaking and entering is easy and fun and you find all kindsa shit. Crossing the line into needing to steal a woman's precious jewelry, some of it her mother's, tainting her private space with the presence of a thief without compassion is something I cannot do to both myself and the person I'm stealing from. It's a feeling of having been raped when you discover somebody has been in your house and you start seeing what's missing. I don't like that feeling and I can't give the experience to somebody else. It's just not in me. It doesn't leave the world a better place. Sometimes we hurt other people without intending to and without knowing it, like when I have kicked Caterpillar walking through the house in the dark. I would never kick Caterpillar with intent to hurt her.


The people brave enough to stick a needle between their toes have something I aint got. But then it's not long before standing in the street in downtown New York traffic, holding up a lane of traffic, standing in the street talking to somebody who isn't there. That's not how I want to live my life. Whatever a heroin rush feels like I'll never know and don't want to know. It's the nature trail to hell. For the last half century the American people have made the drug trade the most lucrative in the world. It's got millions of people in prison over the last half century. The drug war is just another war used by our government to keep war going. After the 2nd WW, the Cold War. After the Cold War, the War on Drugs. Or, as Gore Vidal calls it, the War on the American People. I wouldn't think of hoping our government might do something sensible, but it seems to me free treatment programs in every city and rural county would keep prison populations down, clean up the drug problem in a short number of years. I'd be for taking somebody in no matter how many times they lapse and return. Not one minute in the labor of helping junkies is wasted, no matter what the results. Compassion the guiding light instead of punishment makes living easier all the way around. Junkies want help, need help, can't afford help in a society indifferent to them. Not indifferent. Hostile. It is a hostile attitude Americans have for junkies. Making it harder for them just makes it harder for the rest of us. Compassion costs nothing, is easy, and every expression of compassion makes the world a better place.

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