THE MUSIC OF THE

i was working with Joey Casio the other day, and i was playing him this "string" part i had layed down that day, and tried to explain how it was that i had heard it... when i was listening to the track over and over, i thought i had heard it in the upper registers, but wasn't sure if it was there or not really.

He said something like "yeah you listen to something long enough, over and over, and you start to hear the angels singing" with a laugh, and i said YES!!!

its like you start to hear the music of the music...the music the music is listening to while it makes itself ....the backing tracks or the inspiration or ...... in my imagination its music is infinite (like reality, ha) there's many layers in many different directions. sometimes its hard to choose, you could keep going forever ....
god, i am glad someone understands. glad we are making some music together!


i am working on a mixtape, songs i am listening to right now and being really inspired by, until then, you should enjoy DIAMOND BLACK HEARTED BOY 's SPACE SLAVE TRADE mix
i don't think its on his myspace page anymore but i have the zip here ...

really loving this mix, and feeling inspired!

O frischer Duft, o neuer Klang

its spring where i am, things are stirring, in big and small ways. i have been trying to go to bed early these days, but something keeps waking me up. a few days ago, i am not sure but i think it was a song. or the start of a song, and visuals, and ordering, structure.

i sort of hate and also love that i am a slave to inspiration. i am glad it wakes me up. i am glad i don't sleep through its call or try to ignore it, whenever i don't, which i am sure sometimes i do. i guess this is why a lot of people don't choose to be artists, why have your life as you want it to be disturbed , be held hostage by this immaterial ....feeling, thing, being? whim? parents live this way, with their babies, but a baby you can hold, babies are very material.... but to me, this thing can be really real, realer that real life sometimes, so i guess thats why i keep going. i sometimes feel like real life is too much getting in the way of this other, bigger life, that sometimes wakes me up when i feel like i should sleep.

i have been meeting with joey casio a little bit, and its been great! i love the way he thinks, the breadth of his interests, and i think some good things will come from it, already humbling toiling on a few things. already i am excited and inspired, so that right there seems like a great gift...

we have been talking about kwaito a bit, i've been loving it for the last couple years, turned on by my friend Spoek the house scene in south afrika is amazing, and has been for years and years, can't wait to go there for real and check it out....

also been into:

• MNDR
• ACTUALLY
• The Voices of East Harlem (esp their version of Run Shaker Life, and their slogan "WE KNOW WHO WE ARE AND WE ARE FREE"),
  
• REAL shaker hymns and songs (run shaker life is based on a shaker tune called Come Shaker life...many of the shaker songs rose spontaneously from followers, living their simple lives, and, shaking ...they thought god had both masculine and feminine aspects in it, and that the founder of their church, Sister Ann, was the second coming of god/christ, as the feminine aspect ...),
  
• ancient greek and roman music,
  
• this great CD from rome where this guy is playing stalactites in an ancient cave .... SONOROUS CAVERNS

the earthquake off chile, all the earthquakes and tsunamis, its hard to make sense of it. the earth is moving, the earth is trying to throw something off. i don't want to intellectualize and spiritualize people's real sufferings, i don't want to ignore it because i have things to do... how to keep your heart open (if you can let yourself feel pain, thats the good side of it, at least, is that its a sign that your heart is open) .... but keep going too...

MUST

i was awoken this morning by some clear edicts, i don't know where from, or from whom (although i have my suspicions) and i knew i had to write them down (these days my journal open with a pen sleeps beside me instead of a human) .... first came:

YR MANE
YR STEP (...or GALLOP??)
YR EXCELLENT

which seems nice. and YES, it came in ALL CAPS.

then came, it seemed more like someone talking to me:

"Let's mix together and must the poison."

and i'm like, well, obviously.

so maybe thats all that's coming this morning. its something like 7 am. liminal times. its maybe over but i lie around with pen in hand. because, you never know. and this stuff is energizing
then, this comes in:

"there's no room for you on the elephant."

i lie around some more.

when i get up a little later, i look up must: its from the latin mustum meaning young wine. Must is the first step in wine making, the un-filtered grape mash/ first pressing of grapes. its often cooked down for making sweeteners and such. the romans used it a lot, middle easterners still use it. It is speculated that in roman times it was often poisonous: having being cooked in bronze or lead pots. its speculated (but highly debated) that lead poisoning contributed to the decline of the roman empire... the roman church declared that must could be used in very special cases as a substitute for sacramental wine (such as for alcoholics), but it does not have the clarity and lightness truly needed to represent christ's blood.


there is a persian word "mast" which means intoxicated. That is the source of the word "must" or "musth" as used to describe a periodic conditon of male elephants, where they exhibit extremely violent, aggressive and/ or aggressive/sexual activity, accompanied by a large rise in reproductive hormones. it mostly visits them in the winter. the secrete a tar-like substance from their temporal glands by their ears, rich in testosterone and ketones. they are known to gore other elephants, male and female alike, and also humans. domestic elephants are often chained to trees during this time and put on a starvation diet for a month to help curb the most violent of activites...

Elephant in Must

no room on the elephant....

"THAT'S GOOD BINGO"

OK so i've done a pretty horrible job of documenting my time in Europe. Now I'm back in America, trying to make sense of it (well not really i have a pretty good handle on what happened, but isn't that what yr supposed to say?) and also kinda, integrate myself back into the fabric of American culture. I guess one way i've found , is....through BINGO.

YES. BINGO. an unlikely candidate for bridging my experiences abroad with those in a small rural Iowan downtown. But apparently this game that seems very stodgily American is also a very European pastime as well. Especially Norway and Italy, for some reason...its seemed like i saw signs for bingo almost everywhere i went, but somehow this doesn't seem possible. The picture above is from Norway. I don't have any pictures from Italy because i forgot my camera in Berlin, but in Rome I passed several times places that looked like fancy casinos but they said
"B I N G O P A L A C E"
in huge letters above the lit up Corinthian columns and between the palm trees.
Tonight i played bingo, in public, for COLD HARD CASH, with OTHER PEOPLE, for the very first time, here in Burlington, IA. While the Steamboat Senior Center is no ornate Italian bingo palace, it is not without its own charms:




We came in an hour later than the starting time, the room was oddly quiet but filled with a palpable nervous energy. We were scared, we had no idea what was going on and how we could be a part. we were told they were playing "hard cards" and then there would be a "full sheet" round then a break at 8 pm. we decided to wait and join in after the break.



the terms being tossed around casually by the cashiers and bingo checkers (the guy who surveys the room for potential bingo-possessors...?) ... doo dads in the corners, no frees, hard cards, full sheets... around made everything seem daunting, like stepping into an SAT test half way through as a 14 year old fresh from the amazon. This was not your 1st grade level bingo, and it was very clear that we were the only ones in the room who had never stepped foot into a bingo hall before. The incomprehension was only made worse by the caller, in his late teens, who, when calling out what type of game it was, held the microphone on his teeth (which were also not exactly in the right places in his jaw or mouth).

We got through until the break, bravely marched forth and got
some cards, 2 full sheets...the ladies were kind enough to lend us daubers, chips and magnet wands to clear the hard cards. with a fist full of plain m&ms from the 25 cent candy machine, we were ready to enter into what was clearly a strange and wonderous new world.



it becomes pretty clear pretty fast that your chances of winning are slim. we start to debate about whether or not your chances of winning are increased if you buy more cards. with the hard cards, after one or two rounds, the flaws in your method of choosing cards from the chest become quite apparent (those methods being "aesthetical intution" and "whatever") as your cards in fact don't even have quite a few of the numbers called. you start to strategize about next time, and how you'll choose some cards with a good number spread amongst them (or is it better to have cards with the same numbers??), and also you should buy two more cards at least next time... well its obvious how this can become a dangerous spiral into addiction for many.



Looking around, noting the metallic daubers collections, the mini-fans, the little homemade chip holders, the glitter trolls, you can see each person brings their own collection of fetishes and accoutrements to attract luck but also make a space THEIRS. i start to arrange my cards in different patterns and use different chips to stir up the energy a little and perhaps make a new pathway for luck to breeze through my table.
its very very quiet the whole time we play, but everyone is very very focused on finding numbers. towards the end the checker guy starts to make jokes a little. he comes up and explains each game to us, which is very nice because we are clearly perplexed and add to this the stress level of the game ... everyone is quiet and its clear we are total outsiders but they are quite nice to us, the lady selling us cards tells us she hopes we will have fun and come back. quiet is the mid-western way.
the games are many: regular bingo, doo-dads in each corner, 3 on top, 3 on the bottom, heart shape, bell, etc...we blast through the hard cards and go to the final full sheet round. X's first, then the + game, then the final is a frame around the outside. By this point my brain is fried and i start to scramble numbers, making it quite challenging to find them on the sheet. Tim gets close on the last one, needing only B 10 to complete a frame. It was fun to have a real thing to root for.... the whole game i had to manufacture some joy or disappointment for each number, hoping for a fake it till you make it sort-of emotional experience.
Most games its not mentioned how much yr playing for, but probably no more than $10 (the biggest money games are getting every single square on a game filled; one was $100, another was $70). But somehow there is so much adrenalin going through my body for each game, my heart is still palpitating. The Frame round is called (no B 10), and its all done. Ladies put on their head scarves, men fold up the tables, and i look for a place to put my chair. An announcement is made that next week is a potluck and i am trying to figure out if i will be here or not. its after 10, which means some people were here for almost 4 hours, but not a lot of fuss or chit chat is made after the show. We leave exhausted and wanting to drink. but we don't, its too windy outside and we have things yet to do tonight...

www.welovefreebingo.com/Bingo-Slang.php
www.bingo-lingo.net
www.ildado.com/bingo_patterns.html
www.bingohall.com/patterns-1.asp

EUROPE BACKWARDS< STEP BY STEP

(norway)

its been a really long time since i've written here on my blog. a LOT has happened since, what? 2007? i dunno but i won't bore you with the details. mostly i am here to write about europe because i've already been here for 6 weeks and haven't really posted anything. I have a thing where i really need to be sitting in a proper chair at a desk or else my brain doesn't work quite properly, maybe its a blood circulation thing. so thats my weird excuse.

First of all, a funny thing happens on the internet when you travel to different countries.....yr internet actually goes to those different countries too. its hard to tell, and you wouldn't suspect it, but then all your banner adds are in a different lanuage, and google is all in italian or norwegian or german,and maybe a few at once: like, right now my google is in Norwegian, but my myspace banner ads are still in Italian, and my gmail banner ads are in German. and they even have different aesthetics....different targets. its like, the internet is VIRTUAL, and yet, LOCALIZED. kind of like the human soul.
OK. i have to start backwards i think? does that seem like the most (il)logical way? not even from today, because i started writing this last week but didn't post it. so, HERE:

BERGEN. FEB 1st SUNDAY.
today we went for hot chocolate (sjokolade) at cafe oper(a)? Ingeborg and her friend Annika (i think this is how one would spell it?) She is studying architecture. she is proposing a project for a town center to engage and build community...through building a library and an area to fish? once i start thinking about architecture i think its quite fascinating. how design truly does shape all of our experiences, and can shape our feelings and behaviors. she is taking it more easy this semester, and only working for 8-4 and really WORKING, has an office. then at home she listening to podcasts and watching dvds. this is because she got sick last...year...? it seems like norwegians are really into perfecting leisure and the balance of that with work. well, all europeans i guess are a little more in touch with this, i think. i've met a few students and really surprised they aren't forever working on homework. it seems like i always was, but maybe i wasn't after all.

coming down the stairs in the cafe there was an old man hunched over , sitting on the stairs putting sugar into his coffee, which was on the floor. we said, why won't he sit at a table? Annika said his name was Otto. everyone knew who he was, he chose to be homless. he went out every morning to pick up old bread and such to feed the birds of the town with. there was an interview with him on the local radio station. he said he liked that he was huntched over because that means he could always be looking at the sidewalk to pick up things. here is his bike:



then Ole and I made curry and hung out. His dad was in the norwegian army and he stayed in los vegas during the summer when he was ten, his dad was doing a sort of NATO training.
then i mostly stayed in. thought about my performance and what i am not really happy with, kinda getting bummed out but telling myself well then i at least will keep pushing myself forward.
SATURDAY January the 31st.
Ingeborg pointed out that this day is the last day of january 2009 that will EVER happen. its already been 10 days since my birthday. the party this nigth was nice. FIncken is a great space, up stairs...there was great art up. mounted heads of imaginary colorful beasts. a manequin with human hair on her legs and abdomen like a pan creature. raindrops tear drops dripping off the walls. (a too dark picture, but you can get the idea)
i got to project my video on white mini-blinds....perfection!

people were so nice....DJ Ingebling played telepathe's Michael as the first song and also the last song of the night. dj cyper puppy 007 , sad boy/sad girl, siri all played some great jamms. really scandinavian dance music pumpers. i feel like my beats sort of wilt in comparison, but maybe there's no camparing. people either like things that are familiar, or that are different, or both??? oh, can't think that way for too long. had a hot dog wrapped in bacon with dried onions and potatoe salad on it. pretty amazing until the very very last bite, when i sort of figured out what it was i was eating.

we walked around in the day. i love bergen. we tried to find a photocopier. i am noticing everyone says "hi!" as a greeting....which i haven't heard in europe yet really. i love norwegian candy, and also soda pop. the real norwegian kind.

FRIDAY Jan 30th.
didn't miss my flight! the instant i got into the Bergen airport, i was reminded on minnesota...there were like 100 old people hanging out in the airport, and they all dressed liek old people in minnesota. all sitting around kind of bored, kind of just enjoying their coffee, kind of bad ass. reminded me of people from my church growing up. The bus into Bergen was a beautiful ride, perfectly late afternoon sunny. beautifl ponds and cliffs, and moss, and trees, and volvos, and houses with roof tiles like fish scales or like japanese houses. The Bus driver had a funny curled moustache, perfect for him. i like the quiet intense intelligence beaming from a lot of the people here. i feel like when you live in a land so seemingly perfect, of course you are going to have some sort of quietly confident sense of superiority. i feel happy and also sort of dirty for how happy i am to be in scandinavia and thinking its so perfect. Ingeborg was there waiting for me at the bus station...nice! so happy to be here. like ...i FINALLY made it to fairytale motherland! so funny.

we walked to Ole's house where we were staying. and met him on the street (its like olympia, you just run into everyone everywhere.) we went to a cozy birthday party. met a couple form canada whose going to art school in Bergen. made me excited to maybe go to school here too? listening to Norwegian. reading it and figuring out the vowels. wanting to learn norwegian, or swedish maybe...so add it to the list along with german, italian, and dutch maybe. i think this is my preferred way of learning lanuages...maybe 5 all at once, and just little bits, so it would take me forever to be fluent, but then once i am, BAMM! i got 7 languages at my disposal!

Ingeborg led me down these tiny streets with tiny wooden houses, right in the middle of the city. so cute! so charming. this is how it use to be, all over norway. sorry that i don't have pictures of that , but try googling "charming little wooden houses of Bergen and see what comes up??. Then, we went to see the set of Kenneth's play...its amazing! i have pictures....





the chairs are where the audience sits. the action happens all around, the white backdrop is a projection screen where surveillance like video of the two main characters was shown. then the scaffolding, and etc, became the house where the characters lived (a jail, detention center? it was a russian play about two russian boys.) This is from Ingeborg's description. i really wished i could have seen it, but i didn't have enough money. things be EXPENSIVE here in norway, what with their socialist leaning taxes and all.

theater in general is exciting to me here in europe. for some, maybe its a little too multi-media and un-fourth wall, my friend Kyoko who is an actor in Antwerpen, says that its almost more radical in europe (or at least Antwerpen) to stage a piece in a traditional manner. but to a shelted american, its all very amazing...its like i made it to the fiary tale lande where everything i think is possible with performance is happening, and maybe more normative...like i am coming to the planet i am really from, and always dreamt exsisted but never knew for sure if it did, heard rumors...

WELL i have to go get ready for a show. more pictures and stories soon. if yr into that sort of thing.

SOFT BUT NOT WEAK: the downloads