Friday, August 28, 2009

The Silence

Sorry for the silence, but I've been off the web and into the real world too much. Awful last week, with my brother Paul's legs almost being amputated between a train and a platform on New Jersey Transit. He is still in the hospital where they did a great job on him. But it will be a long, residential recovery just as he was getting his life together after some tough times.
Otherwise my sometime-girlfriend and always soul-mate Rachel had her mother die so quickly it was unreal. Her mother was diagnosed with a fatal disease, on top of the one she had before, on a Saturday. By Friday she was gone, at age 63.
When my own mother died back in 1990 I remember thinking that there was going to be some kind of climactic scene where I would say goodbye to her just before she died. It happened too fast for that for me, and unfortunately for Rachel as well, nothing like it happened. It's what Hollywood has conditioned us to expect, but it rarely happens that way.
So I've been playing games with Fugazi videos instead. By the way, if you are feeling melancholy about fate, try to rent Ingmar Bergman's The Silence . Literally, there are about five lines of dialogue in it, but the title is in reference to the silence of God in the world and its affairs and random cruelty. There is a constant wind-in-the-plains whishing-whistling sound, but no words from above to comfort the characters. A real laff-fest, but more on the mark about the human (and divine) condition than 10 Hollywood feel-gooders.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

The Flying None

There is nothing more foreign and antithetical to Hollywood than Nuns. That's why they dress the women up in totally dated penguin suits that no one has worn for forty years. It highlights the supposed absurdity of the whole idea of, uh, Nunnery, Nunhood? Whatever.

What is truly bizarre to Hollywood is that a young woman would want to cover her physical self in obeisance to the life of the spirit. You're throwing it all away! They say, in ways that are painfully obvious. The only life a young woman should have should revolve around her physical attractiveness. To do otherwise is truly weird, almost like joining Jim Jones in Guyana.

So Southern California is open and receptive. To all who obey the law of the land, which is Hedonism. Kicks, baby, get them while you can. It's only later that faded starlets realize that the code is a trap. After they get beyond a certain age, it's out with the old, in with the new. As some rock band said, "They will never forget you 'til somebody new comes along." (I think the name of the song was "Shooting Star.")

Al-Queda criticized the US for spreading this kind of amoral philosophy around the world through movies, TV, and radio. This may be the one thing they had right: there is something deeply sickening about American culture.

Superficiality is a moral good, stupidity about the public interest is the wisdom of the masses, and being an uncomplaining smiling birdbrain is valued above all (especially if you do it in front of cameras: look, I'm famous!)

This is why Hollywood still makes movies about nuns in penguin suits. Can't you see the absurdity of it all? Mellow out, put on a bikini, and soak up the rays. Life is good, and when it's not, get plastic surgery.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

You've Heard it Before

Can't let you behind the curtain
Can't let you see the mundane
Tricks behind the golden door
Trajectory of my life a long stain

What a freak!
Already feeling like a geek
Don't need more to pour
Into the crushed and innocent soul

Very oblique, very untold
No one to purchase if and when it's sold
Like a spaceman, an alien amongst you.
Thought I was through, thought I didn't have to be told.

Stay away. I am not like you.
Stay and pray. I do not like the things you do.
In a body like a torture chamber, like a dungeon.
Too many thoughts to fill without a blugeon

I can only feel the hate
I can only feel the hate
Coursing, burning through me
Just the way it's been
Since 1993

Reach out and receive, the unarmed arm
God's finger, a wishing singer
Don't let me infect you
I am a disease thorough and through
And I don't want to talk about it with you

Wish

I wish she could see
How deep it all cuts to me
I wish I was a real boy
Then I wouldn't have to treat you like a toy

It's not so easy
Finding someone who understands
And the many times
That you for me took a stand

I just need some connection
So cut off and cast off
A long time since my inauguration
Into the world of pain and isolation.

I wish I could tell you
All the things you did for me
But all I really want
Is for someone else to be he

Who will heal your wounds
Who would dry your eyes
I can't stand thinking about what you're thinking about
And the tears to hold back you would try

Sir Galahad, rescue you from the world
Shelter you, protect you from what's real
And what it is with which we make a deal
Into my body I make a curl.

Sent as though from above
You gave me tears you gave me love
But I could not feel
With my compromised life, I could only make a deal

In panic, I cannot let you drift away
You're the only thing that makes it worth my day
Would that I could be what you want
And you to be what shall not haunt

Who else to understand?
Who else to make a man?
Who else to make me feel?
Who else is so surreal?

Take your body
Take your head
I want to lay you on a bed
Of roses and everything that's bled

Friday, August 7, 2009

The Rape Room

Apparently Saddam Hussein had "Rape Rooms" included in every palace he had constructed, which were legion.

What I want to know is, who were his architects?

Imagine walking one of his palaces with Hussein. He would rub his beard in deep thought, and then say "where should I put the Rape Room?" Being that the palaces had dozens of rooms, this was not an inconsequential decision. One mistake and off with your head.

Or did he simply decree "bring me the finest Rape Room architects in the land!"
This may well have been a course of study at Iraqi university, being that there was a constant demand for them.

The position of the Rape Room was a serious matter. Right off your regular bedroom, or in a dank cellar where no one could hear the, er, guests?

I tried this with some local architects ("and this would be the Rape Room"), and they recoiled. You can't get good sexual assault help these days, I swear.

In a massive palace, it must have been confusing. Was the door unmarked, or, to avoid a mix-up, was there a simple placard outside reading "Rape Room." Much easier.

Before someone accuses me of misogyny, I will have to note that Rape Room architecture has come a long way. There is usually a full DVD-HDTV set-up in there, as well as the usual pillow-strewn genie-bottle room. Slaves from Kurdistan would be at their beck and call. Not a bad gig, if you can get it.

My place went south as soon as I hit the bars. I'd get into a conversation with a woman, then say "My Rape Room or your place, baby?" This somehow seemed to turn them off. Guess what I need are armed security ready to break some bones when the negotiations get to that point.

Sincerely,
Tourguide

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Radio Free Europe

It sounded unlike anything I had heard before. From the echoing buried chorus to the bell-tone hi-hat cymbals at the end, it was way cooler than what I had heard before.

The Boog had it going on. Besides "college music" (REM in this case), there was a wall-lining shelf full of beer cans, many of which were defunct, surrounding his room at just above eye-level.

If coolness could radiate, it would have done so towards me. The album (REMs' "Murmur") was so far beyond what my friends knew that I started worshiping College Rock. I felt like I was in some kind of secret society just knowing about it.

When I got to actual college (Tulane) I was shocked to find most of my classmates still listed to high-school oriented Top-40. I can remember talking about some crap Duran Duran song, trashing it, then having the other people in the room ask me what was wrong with it? I was so flustered that anyone at that level could enjoy that pap all I could offer was "it would take too log to explain."

The college had a perfectly good radio station, one that suffered from the hipper-than-thou syndrome. The challenge among the DJs was to find a song that was so obscure than no one had ever heard it. Usually for good reason. As a friend said, they were so avant-garde that they sucked.

At Madison, my second (and better) university, some in-state schmuck wrote an us-vs.-them article in the Badger-Herald, the competition for our left-wing rag The Daily Cardinal.

First, you have to understand that the out-of-state people ran everything. The student government, the student union programming, the film society, the two (!) student newspapers; and practically everything worthwhile, though we constituted about one-third of all undergrads.

Anyhow, this columnist talked about how "they" listed to Natalie Merchant and REM, while "we" listed to various god-awful bands like Styx and Journey. This was doubly amusing since those two bands (REM and Merchant) had long ago been picked up by major labels.

There was a certain Deer-in-the-Lights quality to rural or even suburban Wisconsinites. They couldn't believe what you did, whether it was putting together a piece like this or a Fellini movie in an unused classroom.

I can vividly remember going to a free preview of a terrible Kevin Costner movie at Social Sciences hall. I fully expected that maybe 20-30 people would show up, like in the film society flicks. Instead, the place was packed.

Who were these people? The answer was that they were the two-thirds of the campus population that never appeared in the papers, and didn't hang out at the student union at all hours like everyone else we knew.

My belief in my cultural superiority was reinforced by a scene where Costner jumps off the Whitehurst Freeway in DC and into the Georgetown metro subway station. Besides the logistics involved, there was one great problem in the scene: Georgetown does not have a metro subway stop.

Back to the Boog. I can live without him, but I cannot forget the good times we had: going to the Adirondacks, the Catskills, and Montreal. Searching NYC for the last German neighborhood (somewhere in Queens), traveling by ferry and Staten Island Transit to Killmayers, a beerhall on the southern end of that benighted borough.

We conquered the North Bronx, Woodlawn and the rest, and partied with the immigrants when Ireland won a certain round in the world cup. One to nothing, and the crowd took over the streets in pint-smashing celebration.

You don't need to know that I miss those times, only I don't resent anything. I have frustrated multiple mental health professionals: I don't expect you to be any different (just don't charge me as much).

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Almost

I almost had you
I almost achieved transcendence
I almost loved
I almost satisfied my lust
For living

I really let you get away
I really am gone today
I could smell you
I could feel only a part of you
The rest still out of bounds

Heaven and Earth
Linked together in your flesh
If only I had acted earlier
Then I wouldn't wish I had
One chance and it never comes back

The top of Reno hill
You said I was different
Hoping it was a compliment
Jack and Jill
But only I fell down the hill
Oblique and Cryptic in a life Dyspeptic

Too many lines for beauty
Too many years to recover
Once over it's over
Never could find a four-leaf clover
One shot and the rifle kicked back at me

But now it's way past 1993, or 1985
Far more than five times five.
I've lost a life, more than twice.
Don't want to think about my body and the lice.
Never having felt anyone, only everyone's pain

I apologize, to all of you
So ready to give yourselves
Away, away to a black hole
I've got nothing but sorrow and pain in my soul
Keep Away, the sign reads in front, seconds from a subway train.