cold fusion
a stream of consciousness novela in prose/verse
notes:
themes:
movie quotes
conversations with henry miller
exposition/narrative
info on public relations and politics.
books on mojave desert, vrom the culture point of view. what was that book on desert communities?
i should probably tell you why i play the flute. first off, there is such a thing as the diminuitive arts; the hobbies and such; crafts etc. why play the flute when you could play, say, the piano or guitar even... or why not just compose, direct to the page. isn't that the ultimate? all that music soaring through your skull and not enough time to write it down? paul hindemith or dmitri shostakovich; rtftrrbkkhiitea for two on some phone app, killing time at some local coffee dive. or at least guitar! portable, contrapuntally enabled; all those styles and all those variables... processors, amps, samplers, with a gibson1964 acoustic12-string and the right settings you could sound like a fender strat through a showman amp; dick dale on an indian summer prime entertaining the vampires in some lean-to, bombay beach or some condemned industrial park on the outskirts of the empire city. why not..? or a sax, pushing the envelope, eric dolphy and mingus exploring the bridge at ten-shin, rashand roland kirk with a set of screaming eagles dangling out his ass... i mean, why not? why not go for the stuffed mastadon or the goldfish on steroids? well, i guess if i could answer that, i wouldn't have to write this story.
i can hear them downstairs, in the foyer or the vestibule, scurring about on the landing and balancing their quad vanilla lattes and 2.8 70-200mm lenses replete with wireless access and battery packs, 4k dslrs (they don't "take" pictures anymore, not in an conventional sense. it's all video now...just point your canon 1d in the vicinity of some enginue beating her preemie and you're in-like-flint!). i hear iphones are the bunk; they communicate now through flip-phones (yes, not unlike those infernally itenerate MCs, they have found the benefit of no-contract flip phones...and besides, let's face it, these guys are no william eggleston...no trust fund babies here; these are pure bred white-trash, or the equivalent, sag actors on methadone, out-of-work blockbuster clerks and 2nd generation asians on ZX10Rs and bmw R1150GS(s) and who has the moxie to compete with that?). i hear there is a paparazzi app! hilary swank at some dyke bar in the castro, gweneth paltrow and her lumbar dimples pushing yet another screaming brat into sur off melrose and santa monica... the mind reels...
i love georgetown. william peter blatty town. an odd mix of social malaise, kennedy's gibe about the charm of the north and the efficiency of the south; the women here are to die for; former darby winners and jaded miss havishems, gorgeous spinsters and librarians, and all of them hip to the cable food network. (fixit more about culture and socialisms). it's my kind of town, a way-station town, a passing through landscape with pretty pictures and clever dialogue, witty one-liners and petty cheek kisses. all this recyclable faux colonial revival; an historical culture that never was... if i had a wooden nickel for every mid-western johnny-come-lately that knows the history of this town..! this town is absolutely indesipherable and anyone who claims any different is either a liar or the editor of a famous etiquette book. it's all debbie reynolds does desdemona and othello groucho marx, and that's all i have to say about that!
i've been having a wee little bit of trouble getting out of bed in the morning lately. the limbs just don't operate the way they used to. i think i might be sleeping on them wrong, something like that. something about the blood not circulating, not quite reaching the extremities. perhaps i spend too much time in bed, reading and watching cable. my bed has become something out of who's afraid of virginia woolf, all new york times best sellers and the washington post, clippings of the arms services committee. i need to get out and rumble, knock a few heads around... maybe even a walk around the block. i have a pet theory about aging that i won't bother to bore you about; suffice to say that the body has a clock, a kind of internal time piece and as the body ages, the batteries need more frequent re-charging. it's really that simple. fail to recharge on a weekly, even daily basis and you can drop dead waiting in line at starbucks.
maybe it's just the routine; the shaving and the finding and organizing of socks; a (trivial pursuit) i have lost all patience for. or it's the big picture, a vision i have long since abandoned on my never ending whistle stop tour. who was it that said beware of google upgrades that require a new mac book pro??? i'm sorry... that was in poor taste. the quote i'm talking about is: "beware of all enterprises that require new clothes..." and the gentleman's name was henry david thoreau, one of my early (but since abandoned) influences. quotes are a minefield in this town. you can tell the noob by his penchant for mark twain; no subject that cannot be improved through the fine prism of mark twainism; jumping frog analogies and innocents abroad; the least favorite of mine being "wagner's music is better than it sounds..." it's not. take my word for it, or get off your hydrogenated soybean ass and listen to sixteen hours of the ring.
shaving for me is an exercise in existentialism. i no longer see the light at the end of the tunnel. god damn, confound, blast and fuck high-def video and cameras in congress. why do we feel the need to date our representatives. would we be listening to don giovanni today if we had youtube back in the eighteenth century? if you knew that schubert was a pockmarked leperous midget with tooth-rot would you be waking up in a cold sweat to death of a maiden?
(this bit belongs in the previous paragraph)
we pine for the monks in the field, clamor after bearded prophets and wandering sages, elevate the degenerate and unwashed poets of our ages yet when it comes to politics, it's all nazi chic; maximillian theo aldorfer and the severed head of john the baptist... "My grandparents went to Auschwitz and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!" "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore..then confine them in chains to hell's kitchen!" personally, i blame rasputin.
fit seth grundle quote here:
i am rotting in fits and starts, half-gestures and traded fours—i am the hoaried manifestation of father time, the reeking corpse of father zossima. i have the seth grundle disease sans brundlefly (?) and that doesn't exactly sell papers. somewhere along the line i got off the boat, traded in my principles for a saucer full of warm milk and a scratch behind the ear. somewhere, though in polite circles we never talk about this, are meth-heads and crack-whores dreaming about wasting away their lives in camarillo lean-tos (fixit
more like thihs)and i had to get all napoleonic on their asses. i have three kids in college, donna reed, a dog named cortez and a harley davidson road king classic and i traded it all in for a fixit , more like this (work in huey long), other politicians that got carried away, a face in the crowd) shot at the kingfish (
anyway, back to the flute; something there is about the economy of the flute, all of life can be defined by the simple reed like qualities the flute possess, the ability to make a joyful sound, a simple honest noise to add to the firmament, millers celestial spheres. and what of these grandiose principles anyway—the center cannot hold! mahler's ninth and mehta's 2 minute respite..! all dog and pony! see how they disentegrate and distill into simple flute like elements, flotsam and jetsam, the stuff of dime stores and vagabonds.
Whitman's barbaric yawp. i am the nazi eichman on the dais cutting the competition to their (respective corners). by the time marsalis leapt on the scene, miles had reverted into a kind of prehistoric tar pit, a mild cousin of the ancient Shepard lolling to sleep an itinerant flock of spoiled sheep, weened on chuck berry and pinning for the (something ninth chords) of jimmy hendrix.
(suspect) miles wasn't much for pagannini anyway, so marsalis reaped nothing but guffaws from both miles and the audiences. brothers didn't gong each other off the stage by mid 70s, that's all uncle tom.
i sleep with the flute up my ass if i want to (if i were so inclined). as it is, i keep it next to my pillow and no matter the time, i whip up melodies and scales to rival those of verdi in the midst of the triumphal march, wagner's prelude to act three (again, if i am so inclined). clickity-clak go the keys, their breathless echo calling harmonic ghosts—i disturb no one at three in the morning with my bach sorties. try that with a tenor sax, alto or soprano, a clarinet for that matter... all dead—all dead air... kerplunk!!! flutes, the score to gilgamesh, the most perfectly linear of all the wind instruments... no three steps forward, two steps back. a straight line as pure and evil as the driven snow, so hated am i with my purity, my high pitched sine waves that tourists quiver and scurry, whence and weave their ways to the exits, making their excuses, any, to extricate themselves from the diatribe, this nazi rhetoric. too much obtuse objective! not enough crosby, stills and nash.
the truth is; i step on no toes with my flute. i anger no would-be coltranes. i raise my hand in the back of the room and i am invited (forthwrite or twowhit) to the head of the class. i accent the tenor, play any kind of shit behind the singer and with the proper accouterments, i can muster enter sandman to the delight of the aging pamela des barres. of course the real treat is the abaondoend subawy terminal, 2 in the morning, me in my finest aqualung and just a few choice bums, the ones deafened by nugent and still reeling from the aftereffects of methadone (second methadone quote)
notes/mArgins
gas bottles for the 48. screw the 4 gallon tank. where the fuck am i going—riverrun..! hah! in a pigs eye... i have no business traveling 150 miles on a motorcycle i'm addicted to filtering anway. just one quarter gallon (what is that in liters?) for emergencies
bits about converting standard to metric. find interesting quote about metric system, a metaphore etcZ
something about walking down a street in georgetwon, ala chan parker nad 52 nd steet, going to the capitol, converging lines, washington architecute nad the homecourt advantage .
work in leno and his brough, all medium etc
pondering the great cinematic seven year itches
la notte
who's afraid
bill and june, french film with delerure and truffaut
etc
(before meeting publicity hounds)
upon entering my local starbucks; dissertations in the foyer, perturbations and all relevant coinages, the wry sardonic witticisms of recently outted children. on parade, fifth grade couture and housefrau logic somnambulists and armchair prophets, vagabond princess bag lady queens (or equivalent) the would-be lenny bruce and his bur-roughs cutouts. i can't get a word in edgewise to the arab condemning the french. but for sartre, he could do without the lot, clever sauces and all...
a once fearless leader, an ex-open mic mc, now takes his cues from the windows of forever 21 and his sporting checkerboard shoes and has of late adopted a decide marxist bent in his dealings with the gallery. i see failed heroin chic rockers, patti smiths on endless indian summer primes resigned to weekly romance endcaps and first monday book clubs.
farnsworth has favored us with an appearance. his mastery of photoshop channels, circa 1995, has garnered the aplomb of go-go-dancers and a two year stint teaching adult education. he sits alone now facing the wall fixated on a bearing shot coffee blender, he and his larry david converse and vintage members only jacket and like mingus, trolling central park with a nikon f strapped around his neck—awaits a fated call from george martin. he will speak soon, and we will listen and we will hear... with flying flem and decrepid sylvan tones, like some revenge character from slaughterhouse five he gives the faithful their long awaited comeuppance:
one for the gipper
two for the passing of an arizona gunner
three for baby ingenue aping veronica lake (in relevant type of sweater and relevant coffee drink)
i've got two bugs up my ass the size of nicholas tesla and harry partch and will without provocation debate and dissemenate the finer lessor points of these two charlatans—rather their lackey acolytes who champion their misgivings to the rafters and ascribe to them the heavens and all who inhabit, the perpetual motion machine and the vanilla latte. exalted to ever lofty heights by long dead beat poets whose stinking diatribes still echo in dilapidated castro lean-tos—they took the bus in from san bruno and all points san jose , border stock all, the stuff of fodder, ballast for dutchmen schooners. these starry eyed scots, pooling their collective (repetitive) third grade educations, forever extolling the greeks and the plights of oedipus, elektra, persephone for diana durbins, sisyphus for rexroths—these tar-bound macadem and future serial killers. i tell you—these are the sad palimpsests of the ages, trumpeting their tired credos and forever equivocating, ringing equally true or false so as not to offend the ears of the ladies of the georgetown social club, non-discriminating tintinnabulations affecting alike the resident merchant seamen and would-be professors. for them it shall be meat....
i make small work of the lackey yes men, the itinerant slant-maestros, the crisis handlers and spin doctors of the washington based public relation firm of leave the gun, take the canoli... these ex-lawyers, part-time stock brokers and wannabe concert promoters have propagated exponentially in this town, like pond scum and chinese mainlanders... they drip stalactite from the rooftops and the high ceilings of georgetown clambakes and infect the body politic with all thoughts jacksonian, the fine distilled principles of latter day marxists and hindu maître d's. any off comment beyond the activities of the Bilderberg group and skull and bones will leave them in a quandry, so too the exploits of the second viennese school of music–steer clear of the libestode and sentences that contain the words godel, esher, bach. a thorough working knowledge of the infrastructure of the death star does not a patrician make.
"huh... excuse me, sir? excuse me..?
"sir, are you with us..?"
forgive me. since the death of milton fixit i have resigned myself to movie quotes. how i do go on... now gentlemen, if i may direct your attention to the center of the stage...
"sir..."
not the gravedigger, you miscreant offspring! lawrence olivier..!!! what do ya take me for—william jennings bryan!
"sir, we really must get down to business..."
quite right. it's time to baptize our young counsel here...
starbucks serves a wet cappuccino by default; owing to the difficulties of steaming up pure foam for 500 jersy housefraus every hour, fresh off the path train. also, large espresso drinks do not have an extra shot. you're paying almost a dollar more for pure foam. it's little wonder why these future hedge fund manages are so good at upselling!
i'll have a tall peter brady! i then lapse into a kind of post-wategate, pre-reagan era coma, but it's all show, i assure you...
"excuse me..?"
you know, a tall peter brady... a small coffee with a little bit of room for cream...
"oh... okay. never heard that one before..."
it's occurred to me in the pre-dawn of late middle age that i'm not going to be known for (particle physics design, revolutionary silicon chip invention, a coating that allows for greater dispersal of transistors—something to that effect) so i've come up with a logical alternative. greg, peter and bobby if you're a guy and marcia, jan and cindy if you're a girl. marsha and greg are for black coffee, no room. the rest are for a moderate amount of room and lot's of room, respectively. this would save starbucks millions a year in un-dumped coffee.
i also have a joke: what did eliza doolittle say to professor higgins on their wedding night? "how kind of you to let me cum..!" i keep waiting for someone to tell it to me.
we have become a nation of flagpole sitters, black friday campers, coupon-clipping amoeba-like single celled lemmings sucking up the (jacksonian diatribe)
"did you know sir, that under the czarist regimes over 90 percent of the population was enslaved... did you know that sir?"
this from wikipedia: By the mid-19th century, the peasants composed a majority of the population, and according to the census of 1857 the number of private serfs was 23.1 million out of 62.5 million Russians, 37.7% of the population. The exact numbers, according to official data, were: entire population 60,909,309; peasantry of all classes 49,486,665; state peasants 23,138,191; peasants on the lands of proprietors 23,022,390; peasants of the appanages and other departments 3,326,084.[9] State peasants were considered personally free, but their freedom of movement was restricted.[10]
did you know that these two guys, these cobol programmers, these silk screeners are responsible for the kerry debacle—no, not getting him nominated—after he won the primary... it was tchaikovsky's 1812 overture conducted by john williams and the boston pops orchestra—probably the most recognizable piece of music ever written provided you're not the fourth or fifth generation of bostonian brahmins... nobody knew the tune... not one person! not one broadcaster or one producer, not one snot nosed wise-assed punk in the control room recognized this piece of music! well, this was before shazaam, back in the dark ages of 04. "well dave, this certainly is some energetic music mr williams is playing..." "yes, it is frank..., some very energetic music indeed. mr williams sure picked a winner!"
a conversation with henry miller:
they came by the house don'tcha know—a lot of people did. he was a quiet sort, kept his cards close—if you get my drift. she was a beautiful woman, i mean really beautiful! pure of heart, i have no doubt... like some some sort of abyssinian maid, long blonde locks and a kind of flowing figure—you know what i mean? she kind of floated about the room handing out garlands or laying alms at everyones feet. but it is true, she was no genius... rather, she did not have much of an education. but so what..! who cares. she was beautiful. but she had a minor flaw in her appearance, and i do mean minor. i think she had some sort of accident as a child, some sort of injury that did not heal properly. that was common enough in those days. she had a kind of funny jawline, her lower jaw. it did not line up straight and her teeth were not perfect. but you never noticed this, unless of course you were looking for it. but it kept her humble, it kept her grounded. most women want to be beautiful and she was convinced that she was not beautiful, though you would never know that by all the attention she got from men. nevertheless, i like to think of her as a kind of pure soul, uncorrupted by philosophical thoughts, which can ruin a persons character if they are not equipped to handle this kind of thinking. most people are not!
end conversation with henry miller
you mistrumpet gogol...
"excuse me sir? we really must get down to business. now, the way i see it..."
"the way we see it..."
"exactly, the way we see it, we play the roark card. the misunderstood genius, the penultimate man of action too preoccupied with saving the universe to be bothered with formalities... "
"or with manners or common decency..."
"yes... wait, no..! i can explain that too—we can. you're... you're aloof!
"aloof!"
"yes, aloof... but in a good way. a little preoccupied..."
"preoccupied! that's funny. he's freaking aspergers!"
"he's not aspergers..! you're not aspergers. we don't use that word. besides, according to the dsm-v, aspergers no longer exists. no, we're going with aloof. it's... it's real. it's accurate. it's unequivocal."
"let's face it, he's an asshole and he's unelectable..!"
"who's talking electable, i'm just trying to keep 'em out of jail!!!"
i'll get drunk too jedidiah, if it'll do any good...
"lets all get drunk."
chapter two
i haven't taken prisoners in years. i believe the correct expression today is i kicked ass and took names, but i hate that expression. let's just say i don't suffer fools. i just don't have the time. i came into my own in my late forties after a marathon bout of michelangelo antonioni, a director i had always been attracted to but could never explain why. the penitent afore vitti, her subsequent absolution, the melding of the philosophies, the absurdity of the universe filtered through the simple act of forgiveness, of understanding. it knocked me on my ass. but with nirvana comes a price... what now brown cow? the monk routine courts little favor with me, i'm just not that bashful. i want to spread the love, infect the laity and string up a few infidels. i've since held a little inquisition of my own; hence the world of politics. where else can you repress third world babies in a far away continent and look good doing it. not getting my hands dirty—that's been my motus operandi since they gonged off the stage at the reno club, that's the bridge i crossed, cherokee, two days before christmas, 1939!
another conversation with henry miller:
bathroom monologue etc
end with "i see dead people!"
they dont teach that at sunday school or the whittier comunnity playhouse
i belive governor brown has a heart, even though he believes i do not... i believe he is a good american, even if he belives i am not...
more nixon quotes
i would like to give me condolances, but nixon can't etc
(richard dawkins is no substitute for john the baptist)
streamlining for prayer, minimalism, monkish works nd self flagelation
camus fall, the guilt of existance, the burden of intellectual curiosity
oppenheimer, einstein (check leeter to roosevelt or truman about atomic bomb)
philip levine and the wagner quote
i hear thosse clipped notes (tones) and i want to...
all i really want to do is sleep and think about Shostakovich
with all these technological innovations, all i really want to do is sleep...
whichever (innovations) helps me to this aim/cause
something about the internet, social media that produces a kind of cultural myopia. we no linger pine for the Europeans, nor do the europeans. hence, the kids today know nothing of Shostakovich, have not the desire to learn nor the tonal and intellectual palate to discover...
but i can only think about him for so long n then i get tired and restless. that's why i don't need to carry with me every book ever written q out him.
composer of the first order, rank. theories, written music, not just writing from an instrument, like Stravinsky, who is more purely musical etc... n
our poetry is the recitation of poetry on pure celluloid; gielgud afore the bat of malmsey (more)
durrell and his obsession with justine, millers tryst with brenda venus and teinka thiebold sp the pursuit of pure beauty
imaginary conversations with henry miller on very intimate sexual topics
henry describes melissa, her innate beuty and truth
more conversations, still more... etc
at starbucks: my mind drifts upon fair maidens... i project upon then scenarios and personas
ode to an 80s porn queen (busty belle) her chance happening, the cornfred offspring of midwestern progeny... her going thour the motions
i see her now and agina non melrose blvd, in and out of shops (the way she is dressed)
nobody much talks abouy bernsteins soliloquy
we must make a point of destroying false prophets, false sentiment, the caretakers of mediocrity. read to them the texts of dead critics, deserta arabia,(fixit)the less than stellar passages of samuel pepys... did you know that ralph Waldo emerson kept a diary? reams and reams of equivocations, half-baked theories and speculation—you can't make an omelet unless you break a few eggs. i see the progenitors of a once landed gentry, turning on to benzedrine and mickey spillane, plying their trade on the playgrounds and in the nurseries, preaching to itinerant choirs, infecting the congregation... did you know that the true translation of camus' the stranger is the outsider? too vague, not enough punch, not enough bells and whistles to wet the kisser of little johnny.
(based upon my drawing that looks like tina, the way she states at me behind the counter—)
she has the sad tired eyes of boudica fending off the never ending sons of caesar , the marshall plan and the truman doctrine... or the looks in the eyes of transylvanian baronesses upon encountering the suffragettes—exasperated, tired and defeated by centuries of playing the doormat, the steppes to the west and the east. she stares through me, bores a hole through the back of my skull with doe-like eyes and an east european pallor, fearful of the summer sun and its stifling summer heat. i inform her that we live in a swamp and i can tell right away that she thinks i'm one of those creeps, the lingering upper gentry, retired civil servicemen and ex-congolese diplomats who make her world a living hell. i'm in love with her of course, but i think i've done a pretty good job of concealing it.
most of my paperbacks are vintage dell editions, mass market bricks of the western canon, doggeared, coffee stained, foxed and mildewed, the likes of which i have repurchased more times than i care to admit. do you know that the kids today won't read used books! GROSS!!! they say..! i know, i've tried. you can pick these up for free in the dust bins at local goodwills or for a penny online. better yet, befriend one of our many miss havishems, walk them round the wedding table and let them win at bridge and the lot is yours. yet don't look for signed editions of ulysses or travels in arabia deserta—sadly, nine times out of ten, it's all james michner and harold robbins with a little john updike thrown in to impress the bluehairs.
to my mother and her ilk, the abdication of edward the vii was a beaton spread in life magazine and (see rags for wallace simpson) who has time for (characterize edward vii period) something about simpson being a man etc.
for all my good intentions, i am grendel baying for my mother, my mute expression of agony, upward turned to a godless universe, a (des grendel, afro the dragon and after beowulf)
i revel in refernces to munches man on the bridge
birds, pawn broker, snad pebbles etc
to anyone that will liesten (there awre very w takers )
from tuchmans gusn of august "the egnlishmen think they can treat us like portugal" or something to that effect.
