And you need some outlet, don’t you? Some place to put that rage and worry and anxiety and those shitty thoughts. Some other place to physically put them out of your mind, if you could. Physically take them from the mind and place them elsewhere. Because if not, they’ll be the ruin of you; they’ll eat you alive and they’ll kill you. I mean, they will actually kill the man that you thought you were, that you have been to this point, and that you anticipate becoming; and will make you somebody / something else. It’ll be a slow transition and one that, ironically, you will recognize and actually appreciate to some extent - like the mild joy and wry smile that comes with the absolute silence and peaceful heightening of senses that come just before a car accident. Because you at that point are not actually anticipating the accident just yet, but you are instead enjoying the earth slowing down for you to observe it...and you just observe...but then it’s over, the car suddenly hits the tree and the embankment and the explosive immediacy of the departure of your soul is just that, immediate. And then there’s no turning back. And you’re different. And things are weird and half dead and awkward, like conversation is just painful and meaningless. And nothing is quite right and getting a grip on things is impossible and you’re an outsider to everything, which Venn diagram-wise is a bit difficult to imagine. And your right eye is not just getting lazy and drooping a bit but it’s actually now producing a pus that you under no circumstances will touch with your fingers for fear of spreading it and so it just sort of drips down over the flap of your turtle eyelids and onto your face onto the top of your cheek and...
...take a deep breath...
...and stop clenching your fists and look at the horizon for a minute and unfocus your eyes and let the twitch in your eyelid pass and get a tissue to wipe up and look at yourself in the mirror and promise to get a haircut before you go into public again and know that nothing is actually as bad as it is inside your shitty head. And if you have all these dreams, just know that they are useless until you try them out and you might find out that it is actually funny to see some of those dreams as realities and, fuck, without them, without those crazy dreams, how are you ever going to sleep at night anyway?
09 March 2011
01 March 2011
Le Open Mic
Do not come in here with any of those soft, singer/songwriter, acoustic guitar, major/minor chord originals. No. If you even step foot in this door here, be a GD musician. Preferably one of the following types: 1. the guy that plays his acoustic with a slide in an open tuning and throats out the White Stripes’ “Death Letter” and then re-tunes to standard by ear; 2. the younger dreadlocked pot-smoker with rasp instead of voice that strums wildly through Bob Marley classics and/or the Sublime catalog week in and week out, 3.the guy that says he plays the “harp” and means harmonica and actually plays the shit out of it, especially when other artists are on stage and he is not but is instead sitting at the bar sucking and blowing away and generally playing along with everything regardless of what it is and says things like, “Oh, hope you don’t mind I play along. I noticed you were in A, so I was doodling in D” and actually helps himself to a spot on stage for the next song; or 4. the guy that whispers his way through Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” and basically astonishes everyone and drops jaws because, “wow, that felt like the first time I‘d ever heard that.”
The Thursday night Open Mic at the Tahitian Moon BBQ in southeastern Massachusetts is “sick.” Just ask Shirley, the hand-shaking, back-slapping den mother who runs the show every week. This Thursday she opens the night with introductions and a basically in-tune version of “Welcome to the Machine” by Pink Floyd during which the sound guy, her husband Ben, has to navigate his way between Shirley (singing and strumming), numerous mic stands, a speaker or two, and a warming beer on the <30 sq.ft. stage to get to the sound board and adjust some volume levels to even out her vocals and guitar. Shirley by the way is either perpetually stoned to the gills or ridden with clinical-level anxiety. The Moon, as the locals refer to it, is not a large room and has the acoustics of a Buick, such that the range of acceptable volume for any given instrument is extremely narrow, like within tenths of decibels, which necessitates Ben’s constant navigation of and excuse-me-just-a-second’s onto the Moon’s small stage for adjustment while the artists play and sing. Artists take turns playing 3 or 4 songs each throughout the night and very often will play together and/or have a second shot on stage. Shirley spends her time off stage clapping just before is generally considered acceptable at the end of every song and glad-handing the waiting artists on the list (a chalkboard at the entrance to the bar) that are anxious because either (i) it is their first time here and they are afraid of negative feedback from those watching, something that is actually unheard of in open mic land (the negative feedback) because it is basically understood as pretty horrendous etiquette to grant anything but effusive praise to every artist after every song (see Shirley’s pattern of timing her applause) or (ii) they came here to get their turn playing some music and they are sick of waiting.
Oh, and it’s open seating with just those long general seating cafeteria tables. So if this is your first time coming in be prepared to sit at the same table and likely right next to a family of BBQ piranha. The BBQ is a 5 out of 10 at best. But the wait staff is perfect. Our kind waiter David was the type of individual that absolutely needed to work at a place like this (much like Shirley when I think about it). David has enviable sideburns, salt and pepper hair that is almost comically thick and that hangs not so much down off the back of his head as out like a piece of awkwardly folded newspaper, and a generally weathered Grateful Dead fan look that makes you wonder how exactly he enjoyed the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. The way his hair and the flat (i.e., as in of the structural integrity of a puddle of water) ball cap that he is constantly pushing down onto his head look you would almost think it was part of a sort of Halloween costume (the hair and hat). But it somehow works perfectly on him and there is really no other way to picture someone with his personality and mannerisms than exactly like this.
Musicians like the ones here tonight show up for these open mics almost religiously on these weekday nights in the suburban parts of all states because, “there is just something about jamming with good people” or “mmm, I don’t know, just for the music and killer atmosphere, you know?” or “just want to try a few new songs out.” And the folks that come to play at the Moon on Thursdays? They are not here for the BBQ or to hear Shirley screech through Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright” in an octave until now unknown to man. They are here to play and to hear good music and to, if even for a brief moment once a week, massage those dreams that they have held onto from childhood.
“Play some of that 4 Non Blondes again, like last week, because that was sick,” says Shirley (whose sentences take 1.5 times the normal person’s to be spoken and appear to take maximum effort) to the next guy on the list, and I think she is actually at this point holding her cup at a 45 degree angle, spilling her beer all over herself but is either unaware or indifferent to the fact that she is dousing the crotch of her pants with stale Magic Hat. She then reaches out to touch my arm and I vomit wildly in a bucket of corn cobs.
The Thursday night Open Mic at the Tahitian Moon BBQ in southeastern Massachusetts is “sick.” Just ask Shirley, the hand-shaking, back-slapping den mother who runs the show every week. This Thursday she opens the night with introductions and a basically in-tune version of “Welcome to the Machine” by Pink Floyd during which the sound guy, her husband Ben, has to navigate his way between Shirley (singing and strumming), numerous mic stands, a speaker or two, and a warming beer on the <30 sq.ft. stage to get to the sound board and adjust some volume levels to even out her vocals and guitar. Shirley by the way is either perpetually stoned to the gills or ridden with clinical-level anxiety. The Moon, as the locals refer to it, is not a large room and has the acoustics of a Buick, such that the range of acceptable volume for any given instrument is extremely narrow, like within tenths of decibels, which necessitates Ben’s constant navigation of and excuse-me-just-a-second’s onto the Moon’s small stage for adjustment while the artists play and sing. Artists take turns playing 3 or 4 songs each throughout the night and very often will play together and/or have a second shot on stage. Shirley spends her time off stage clapping just before is generally considered acceptable at the end of every song and glad-handing the waiting artists on the list (a chalkboard at the entrance to the bar) that are anxious because either (i) it is their first time here and they are afraid of negative feedback from those watching, something that is actually unheard of in open mic land (the negative feedback) because it is basically understood as pretty horrendous etiquette to grant anything but effusive praise to every artist after every song (see Shirley’s pattern of timing her applause) or (ii) they came here to get their turn playing some music and they are sick of waiting.
Oh, and it’s open seating with just those long general seating cafeteria tables. So if this is your first time coming in be prepared to sit at the same table and likely right next to a family of BBQ piranha. The BBQ is a 5 out of 10 at best. But the wait staff is perfect. Our kind waiter David was the type of individual that absolutely needed to work at a place like this (much like Shirley when I think about it). David has enviable sideburns, salt and pepper hair that is almost comically thick and that hangs not so much down off the back of his head as out like a piece of awkwardly folded newspaper, and a generally weathered Grateful Dead fan look that makes you wonder how exactly he enjoyed the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. The way his hair and the flat (i.e., as in of the structural integrity of a puddle of water) ball cap that he is constantly pushing down onto his head look you would almost think it was part of a sort of Halloween costume (the hair and hat). But it somehow works perfectly on him and there is really no other way to picture someone with his personality and mannerisms than exactly like this.
Musicians like the ones here tonight show up for these open mics almost religiously on these weekday nights in the suburban parts of all states because, “there is just something about jamming with good people” or “mmm, I don’t know, just for the music and killer atmosphere, you know?” or “just want to try a few new songs out.” And the folks that come to play at the Moon on Thursdays? They are not here for the BBQ or to hear Shirley screech through Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright” in an octave until now unknown to man. They are here to play and to hear good music and to, if even for a brief moment once a week, massage those dreams that they have held onto from childhood.
“Play some of that 4 Non Blondes again, like last week, because that was sick,” says Shirley (whose sentences take 1.5 times the normal person’s to be spoken and appear to take maximum effort) to the next guy on the list, and I think she is actually at this point holding her cup at a 45 degree angle, spilling her beer all over herself but is either unaware or indifferent to the fact that she is dousing the crotch of her pants with stale Magic Hat. She then reaches out to touch my arm and I vomit wildly in a bucket of corn cobs.
dog whistle
there was that story of the man that had nothing on his mind. literally zero. his skull was a cavernous tunnel with but a tiny pea in it.
the pea only has a dozen or so neural connections. and so his CNS, having to choose early on which bodily and cranial functions to allow and which to let waste away, chose, among myriad other things, to let the recognition of nonphysical mental sensations fade. emotions per se. and so he needs a mirror up to his eyes to watch the pupils dilate to "feel" that he is in love and he knows that when his palms are moist it means that he is either nervous or that it's summer and if his mirror reveals a reddened face then he acts mad which also sometimes helps out in his embarrassing red-faced situations, the madness, but is also sometimes extremely awkward.
and he cannot make decisions for himself and so he awaits orders in all situations. and has developed, surprisingly, all these keen little ways to get others to give him orders in situations where no one has yet given a direct order. and basically everyone can see that he is doing it, the second degree order seeking, but his pea cannot recognize recognition.
so anyway if he stands in a strong wind that is running from the left side of his body to the right or right side to the left as opposed to in his face or at his back the neighborhood dogs will go totally bat shit, howling mad.
the pea only has a dozen or so neural connections. and so his CNS, having to choose early on which bodily and cranial functions to allow and which to let waste away, chose, among myriad other things, to let the recognition of nonphysical mental sensations fade. emotions per se. and so he needs a mirror up to his eyes to watch the pupils dilate to "feel" that he is in love and he knows that when his palms are moist it means that he is either nervous or that it's summer and if his mirror reveals a reddened face then he acts mad which also sometimes helps out in his embarrassing red-faced situations, the madness, but is also sometimes extremely awkward.
and he cannot make decisions for himself and so he awaits orders in all situations. and has developed, surprisingly, all these keen little ways to get others to give him orders in situations where no one has yet given a direct order. and basically everyone can see that he is doing it, the second degree order seeking, but his pea cannot recognize recognition.
so anyway if he stands in a strong wind that is running from the left side of his body to the right or right side to the left as opposed to in his face or at his back the neighborhood dogs will go totally bat shit, howling mad.
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