Dru Blood - I believe in the inherent goodness of all beings: May 2007 Archives

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Sir Richard Bishop/Animal Collective

May 28, 2007

I have decided that Animal Collective, almost as much as Neutral Milk Hotel, sounds like falling in love. But I am getting ahead of myself...

The angels of parking were with us as I somehow managed to get myself and my companion to the show in time in spite of having lost all track of it & getting a late start. Thanks to a harrowing U-turn and, if I may say so myself, flawless parallel park, we managed to get a space within blocks of the club and arrived in time to stand around ordering drinks before Sir Richard Bishop made his appearance. We even managed to stand semi-sort of close. Close enough to see, if I hadn't been compelled to close my eyes through most of his set and just feel the presence of the music and the nearness of my companion. There were moments when I felt like we were maybe the only people in the room. It was magical. The playing was amazing, and Mr. Bishop had a delightful sense of humor, which he surely needed, as the crowd was way less appreciative than they should have been...

What is WITH the kids these days? As the oldest person in the room by far, I wanted to live up to my self-imposed stigma and just SHOOSH everyone. I mean, really...? There is an artist at work on the stage in this medium sized hall, and it is seriously more fun to talk on your phone or loudly to the people around you? Really?

*sigh*

And, while I can't comment on the performance with any amount of technical knowledge, I was delighted by the man. In spite of the background hum, it was such a treat, and I was happy when he cranked it up electric-style and drowned the fucking children out in the end. Score one for the old fart on stage, and the biddy in the audience.

We were busy buying merchandise when Animal Collective took the stage, but we managed to find a spot not too close to a speaker and not too far from the performers. I wish I was taller, but I'm tall enough, I guess. I don't even know how many people were on stage, but I did catch glimpses of the singer dude doing his cute little dance and shrieking, gasping, yelping into the microphone while the computers fucked and moaned samples and beats for our amusement. I saw stars and, yeah, like I said, realized for the first time how much Animal Collective sounds like falling in love. Dunno if my companion would agree, but he smiled a lot and his company was a flawless and necessary component of the evening.

It was really one of those sets that seemed to never end. One song ran into the next and I believe I caught myself dancing at least part of the time, which is rare for me, but ok. Lovely. Also, I caught myself grinning a lot, into the air. Surrounded by all of these sounds and lost, but solidly anchored. I actually didn't recognize a single song until nearly the end when other singer dude said something like "Now we're going to play some old songs" and busted out "Loch Raven" and then, what was it? "Leaf House?" and "We Tigers" and maybe one more that I totally recognized and didn't know the name of. Swoon.

And then it was back to the car in the perfect weather, not a drop of sweat shed all evening in spite of the excitement and thronging crowd and gentle motion. And on home to the best performance of them all as I was serenaded by my favorite musician on my son's cheap and brokeny guitar, much to my (silently) adoring delight...the perfect encore to an understatedly wonderful night.

Posted at 4:57 AM • Comments (2) • TrackBack

The Department of "Who Do We Think We Are Fooling?"

May 24, 2007

A couple of news items have really struck me in the past few days. Last night, I was driving around listening to an NPR (or maybe it was The World...yeah, it was The World) report about the U.S. Embassy in Iraq...the only rebuilding project that is being completed on time and within budget (must have been a HUGE budget) on some of the best land in Baghdad. When the reporter was asked how the U.S. acquired the land, she gave some vague reply about how, in these kinds of deals, the land is usually bought by the other nation or given as a gift. She never really said if either of those was the method by which the U.S. acquired the land...she just said something about how there are hopes that this will be land that is used for diplomatic purposes:

he complex is to be 104 acres, six times the size of the United Nations' property in New York and approximately the same size as the Vatican. It has fortified walls and apartments inside for 615 staffers, to spare them the risk of having to go out on the actual streets of, you know, Iraq. Despite American vows to return normalcy, the new long-term home seems to bet on decades of chaos: Behind the walls, it has water-treatment facilities to cope with the Iraqi capital's lack of potable water, power generation to compensate for Baghdad's erratic electricity, as well as a food court, beauty parlor, pool, gym, and club. All surely necessary to keep staffers safe and sane in unimaginably difficult working conditions. But not quite the kind of facility you build for the long run in one of those normal, friendly countries that Iraq was supposed to become.

And now this...to which I can only say...WHAT THE FUCK?

Posted at 10:31 AM • Comments (0) • TrackBack

Griffith Park Fires

May 22, 2007

Twitter is an amazing thing. Through it, I have been able to keep up with the happenings and goings on in far-friends' lives to an extent that I never could with blogs. I think it's that Twitter posts are quick and dirty and convey only the headlines of the lives I am interested in following. And I have some interesting Twits to follow!

A goodly contingent of my twits reside in southern CA, and have kept me informed about the fires that burn frighteningly close to their residences. Yesterday, Miss Martini posted a link to this flickr photoset that documents the aftermath of the Griffith Park fire. Some of the photos are disturbing, sad, and graphic...but there is also a beauty to them that is difficult to define. A horrific beauty.

I favorited this photo...and I keep going back to look at it. To remind myself. Yesterday, I really felt like that fire extinguisher. Today...not so much. Still, sometimes it's good to keep things in perspective. I am, afer all, only a tiny device in a vast, burning forest. It is true that I will never be enough...but I am something.

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My Boys, The Twits, and Me.

May 21, 2007

It's funny. I will have weeks and weeks with my boys, feeling like I have done everything wrong as a parent and I can't possibly keep doing this...and then there is a day like today, when I realize that I have actually somehow managed to give two boys a good start towards leading fully compassionate, empathic lives.

I have had a rough day...a rough weekend, kind of, in ways that are difficult to explain. Just a lot of unpleasant, unwelcome, and unproductive self-examination. The boys were at their dad's all weekend, and when they came home this morning, I just thought "Oh, fuck. I am just not cut out for this job today."

But I did what I know best to do...distract them. Hahaha. I took all of our various portable media devices out with us for an early morning exploration walk, and then we stopped at the park and I tried not to cry my eyes out from exhausted sadness while the neighbor lady played hide and seek with Monk and her kids, and Coley made me various "poisonous" concoctions from sand in the sandbox.

In spite of my gratitude for both of these things, I was still feeling like crap. And, of course, when I feel like crap and I am trying to parent...I feel like double, triple, exponentially compounding crap because, on top of all of the other shit I feel like I am doing a crappy job of, parenting goes to the top of the list because, damn, I just can't get it together to have fun and enjoy my babies for a bit.

Well, I muddled through, trying to be honest with them about how I'm feeling, without putting too much responsibility on them for causing and/or relieving my upset.

There are little snippets throughout the day, though...I know they know when I am down. Coley thrusts plucked wildflowers at me...Monk gives me a rare hug. They argue less...not out of fear, but out of empathy. It's nice. It's really nice.

By story time tonight, I was feeling much better, thanks to a couple of good friends and some time spent at an event that moved me out of my selfish self-pity, as well as viewing an exhibit that inspired me artistically and politically.

We are reading the twits...and we were at the chapter where they Dahl describes Mrs. Twit, thusly:

If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it.

Coley interrupts me here...he says "Mom, do you ever have ugly thoughts?"

I'm thinking "Good fucking lord, kid...ALL FREAKING DAY! And then some." Because damnit if I'm not worried that if Mr. Dahl is correct, I am about to sprout a couple of disgusting boils on my face. But I respond "Well, honey...I think everyone has bad thoughts sometimes."

Coley examines my face for a minute, and we both turn back to the book. I continue reading:

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

Cole looks at me again. "Mom," he says. "You must think good thoughts all of the time, because I think you are beautiful."

And this makes me so happy that I forget to point out that this is a rather simplistic way to introduce the complexities of emotional make-up to small children. In fact, I don't point out anything at all. I just smile, hug both of them closer, and continue reading.

Thank fucking maude for my boys, is all I have to say. Thank fucking maude. I am so not worthy of them.

Posted at 10:47 PM • Comments (0) • TrackBack

Grateful Five

May 21, 2007

Trying to bring myself up this morning via some conscious gratitude:

Five things that made me smile big this weekend:

All of the sights, sounds, and smells on my leisurely daytime walks through my neighborhood. The weather was perfect. And getting to share a walk with Sam, too...it's always nice when I can drag someone else into my little private world for a tiny while.
Headless banjo players.
Futurama, season 4, disk 1.
Finding a babysitter for the Animal Collective show this Sunday.
Trout Fishing In America...particularly this passage: "A little ways up from the shack was an outhouse with its door flung violently open. The inside of the outhouse was exposed like a human face and the outhouse seemed to say, 'The old guy who built me crapped in here 9,475 times and he's dead now and I don't want anyone else to touch me. He was a good guy. He built me with loving care. Leave me alone. I'm a monument now to a good ass gone under. There's no mystery here. That's why the door's open. If you have to crap, go in the bushes like the deer.'
'Fuck you,' I said to the outhouse. "All I want is a ride down the river.'"

*sigh*

Posted at 8:36 AM • Comments (0) • TrackBack

My Brain

May 20, 2007

I have started to appreciate the spirit of gardening. It's such a creative and also time-consuming and labor-intensive practice. It seems to involve a great deal of forethought and artistry, but also there is this element of chance. It's one of those things that I find myself thinking "I wish I had time for that." And then considering that if I really wanted to make time for it, I probably really could. And then I start to think that I would rather appreciate the artistry of my neighbors than take it on for myself at this point in my life.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about my brain. I can't tell if my thoughts about my thought-processes were what inspired a number of discussions on that topic this week, of if my week-long discussion of my thought processes has inspired me to think about it further. Either way, I am questioning a very basic way of viewing and processing the world that I have used for quite some time now, pretty much unconsciously. That is...I tend to narrate my way through life.

At the risk of sounding like a total nut, I am going to describe my history of this. hahaha.

When I was little, I did it with dolls and stuffed animals, and the disconnected imagining of what I called "scenarios." I remember when I was in high school, I managed to confess this constructed world of mine to a friend, and she agreed that she did the same thing. So I know I am not completely alone in this.

Later, this constructed world seemed to be replaced by a need to reinterpret my real world. Almost constantly. In my writing, I was always recording my emotional response to what I was experiencing around me. My journals from this time in my life are all weird disjointed sentence structures with words that sounded vaguely pretty together. It was very much a poetic picture of my emotional landscape. Meanwhile, the narrative began in zines and other forms of communication. Letter-writing. It seemed as if everyone I knew, myself included, had to spend a lot of time narrating and explaining their surroundings because we were all so geographically isolated.

And I kept communicating this way for years. Mentally writing notes about how I was going to describe my experiences in words once the experience was over. Because I am generally a fairly solitary person, but also because those who I was closest to emotionally were generally far away in proximity and could not share the actual experience with me. The retelling of the experience became part of the experience itself.

And I guess that is what I do today. I find myself searching for words to describe all of my senses in any given situation. It's not always something I am conscious of, but I am sure to an outside observer, it seems to be indicative of a disconnection from the experience when, in fact, it is my way of connecting TO the experience...and connecting others to the experience, as well.

I am not sure if any of this is making sense to anyone. I guess what jarred me about the week-long conversation I had on this topic is I was accused of being somehow phony because I find it necessary to expound on things that make me happy, and the feeling of happiness and gratitude that regularly comes rushing up through me even at the most depressing moments in my life. I think for this person, it is such an alien concept to find joy in sorrow that it seems to him that I am denying sorrow and manufacturing joy. I really don't think that is so. Just as I don't think it's ingenuine to feel nothing but sadness, I just don't feel that it's fake or shallow to seek contentment - even in the smallest doses - and focus on it until it expands exponentially.

I have more to say about this, but I think I will save it for later.

Posted at 6:24 PM • Comments (0) • TrackBack

Three Parts Giving up, One Part Hope...

May 8, 2007

Part One
On my walk, I was thinking about how funny it is that I can so quickly lose interest in something. There are things that I have thought of as ultimate goals or desires, and really all it takes is one incident...one word, or a lack of words. Some small catalyst can quickly kill my drive or desire, no matter how strong the drive seemed to be just moments before.

I can't say the exact moment I lost interest, but I do know it happened quickly. One moment, anything seemed possible...and the next, nothing was desirable. It's not an incredibly happy thought, but for some reason it made me laugh. Perhaps it was nervous laughter. Who knows.

Part Two

I just realized why I laughed...and here is why: it is NOT at all easy for me to give up. I am ridiculously persistent to the point of obsessive. I will take a situation and examine it from every angle. I will see how certain people, projects, or situations might be able to fit into my life. I will exhaust EVERY effort to hold on to something that I deem worthy of holding on to...YET, when I finally reach the point where nothing works...*poof* it's over. No fanfare. No tears. No regrets. Just over.

I am tempted to say I have wasted years in trying to wrap my life around this situation...but I don't believe in wastes of time. I am just not quite sure what I was supposed to learn from it, and that kind of bothers me. I guess one thing I have learned is that sometimes things DON'T happen for a reason...but is that lesson worthy of the energy invested?

Part Three

Somehow, this song seems fitting...

Funny As In Funny Haha by Smart Went Crazy
A prizefight between your entropy and cowardice
The sweet science of being in love
The sweet science of giving up
Did she keep a file of all your lame excuses and vulgar transgressions?
Like the time that you said that you were afraid to confront your fear of confrontation?
A raw deal for your sweet complicit paramour
Someday she'll thank you, of course
That is what deathbeds are for
Now you'll have to dine alone

Part Four
(the hope is silent)

Posted at 10:12 AM • Comments (1) • TrackBack

Journey to Emoville

May 7, 2007

Rites of Spring was the original emo band. I believe I am 100% correct here. That is my story and I am sticking to it. They were probably the best, too, but that is an opinion and if you disagree...you have inferior taste.

At any rate, I think it was M.K. who told me I needed to listen to Rites of Spring. Back in the winter of 1986? maybe? or 1987? I can't remember exactly when, but I do know that I asked my mom to write a check so I could order the album from Dischord. hahaha.

And when the package arrived, the needle on my record player was broken, and I couldn't listen to it for at least a week. I spent that time memorizing all of the lyrics, which to my 16 year old brain were fucking brilliant works of sheer genius. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that now, but really only a little. They are unabashedly EMO is what they are. Unpretentious, though...not like the crap the kids spew out these days...but maybe that is just me being a crotchedy old lady.

So I was expecting, judging from the lyrics, something that sounded quite a bit like, oh...THE SMITHS. And what I got when I finally was able to replace the needle was a wall of guitar feedback and a vocalist who managed to be both gutteral and screeching in his vocal assaults.

There is a reason why emo is a word that describes (or at least did describe, back in my day) music that is primarily written/sung by men. In fact, I can't think of a single emo band fronted by a woman. If I were to ask my friend Chris the reason, I am certain what he would say is "That's because you bitches are emoing all the damn time." hahahaha. But I don't even have to ask him because A) I know this is what he would say and B) He hates Emo and therefore will never read this and therefore will never know that I put an alleged quote from him in a conversation that never happened in this essay.

At any rate, yeah...there is a reason for emo (or having been) the domain of men, and it's only partially because of what Chris would have maybe allegedly said. It's more because it's the perception of society that emotions are the domain of women, and a man emoting is something that needs to be labeled as such to reinforce it's mythical oddity.

I know I just totally stated the obvious there, but I feel like it must be said, anyway.

But back to Rites of Spring and the caterwauling of the lead singer dude (I just hate it when people put the names of the band members in essays like this...as if anyone really cares what their names are...) My response to the initial listen was much like my response the first time I heard The Jesus and Mary Chain. I had to check and make sure the needle was actually fixed and that I wasn't listening to the sound of my new vinyl being ripped to shreds by a bare tone-arm (that's, you know, a PHONOGRAPH technical term meaning "that little arm-ey thing that the needle rests in") And, in fact, after I realized that what I was hearing was what I was intended to hear...it took me some time to adjust my prediction of what the music would sound like (based on the lyrics.)

That's because it was something totally new. I mean, Saccharine Trust had the same caterwauling lyrics, but they wrote mostly about drugs and, if about love, then in a more obscure sort of way (with, maybe, the exception of "A Human Certainty"...but even that is more of a story than an epic emotional outpouring. Nice fucking crying at the end though! I keep thinking I need to make a mix of music that has good painful crying or shouting or whatnot. "Human Certainty" is on that list, and so is "Drink Deep by Rites of spring...which, oh yeah, is who I am supposed to be writing about right now.) So that is how I KNOW Rites of Spring were the first emo band.

And, like all emo bands worth their salt, they were not long-lived. One album and one 7" and a handful of shows that were, as the story goes, plagued with strange and mysterious disasters...Rites of Spring had a short season. The 7" was a very stripped down affair with none of the assaultive guitar feedback, but I guess a bit of caterwauling. After that, there were a few Emo bands I liked...Moss Icon was good, Jawbreaker. I liked Jawbreaker a lot, but it was more straight-up punk with emo lyrics...already losing that edge of noise. And really I only started to like Jets to Brazil much later and that's just because I have a big crush on Mr. What-see-giggy lead singer and I want him to write love poems about me for the rest of my life. hahaha. Otherwise they would never have interested me.

But, yeah...Rites of Spring were the first. And they are the perfect thing to listen to at the end of a very long, emotionally-charged and riddle week. There is nothing better to keep me from yelping out cries of frustration than listening to that scratchy, pained voice and remembering...fucking a! At least I am not a teenager anymore!

Posted at 1:35 AM • Comments (3) • TrackBack

Two media posts...

May 4, 2007

Seems to be media day here. No Media Kings is (are?) soon to release a serial low-fi sci-fi movie called Infest Wisely... Mr. Munroe is always scheming fun ways to use media, and is the author of several innovative novels, films, and let's not forget punk points!!! I am just so impressed with all that he does. I'm looking forward to the release of the first 7 episodes!! Yay, Jim!!! (and everyone else who is involved.)

****

I would like to take this moment to personally thank Mr. Harmon Leon for cracking me the fuck up when I accidentally stumbled upon the Lederhosen episode of Blind Date last night.

"Don't worry, this is all a part of a TV show," I say, realizing the two of us (man in cowboy hat, guy in lederhosen, standing by urinal) looks like a Village People video from another dimension. The producer comes back. Lederhosen-APPROVED!
With cameras in place, I jump the gate in front of the restaurant, spring in front of my date like Peter Pan, making my big lederhosen entrance.
"Mien Frau! Ich bin hungry. Let us go dine!"

I was telling my friend Chris that, sadly, what with all of those fucking bizarre Hollywood Insider shows and the freaking weird-ass nightly nose (nose? I mean NEWS. GOD, what is it with me and the bizarre typos?!)...the lederhosen dude was probably the LEAST surreal thing on television last night. Which is probably why I avoid television.

I told J about it...and he had all sorts of information for me...evidently this dude does this a lot. I am going to have to watch the Press yr Luck one. Oh, and here's a video of the blind date:

I will have to watch his entire body of work...

Posted at 10:00 AM • Comments (1) • TrackBack