Sparked

4-19

Things on my mind:

Wandering the streets without worry in a city that actually looks alive, standing behind artists whose work I’d love to touch and make my own, connecting with the people in this city that I feel I need to know. 

Riding the skyway across the river with a sun that dims in excitement for the night, a panda bear hat and a matching guitar. Words written in a guestbook - mi amor - on a second floor I’ve never visited in a building I’ve been in over and over. Rugs on the floor and on the wall, guitars in laps and smoke in the air. 

Fast new friends with flying fingers and dreamy atmospheres, our eyes are red but our noses clean. 

The humidity and hot collective sweat of bodies locked up tight in close quarters, the pull of breath. In. Out.

Rickety stairs and painted walls, chaos, music.

Feet meeting concrete with handfuls of golden beer in plastic cups, periodically filled up, and the swaying begins. Lured in by trombone blasting brazen and bold, dark faces hooking fingers through my soul.

Spirit animals. Connected and combined.

I swear the beer turned to wine when you lifted your fingers and swung your voice into mine.

::NOISE::

Last night I journeyed to what is arguably my new favorite space in Jacksonville, the CoRK Arts District,

and found myself in the middle of several different walls of noise.

Literally. Noise.

I had seen an event invite on Facebook and, recognizing none of the bands, decided I had to fill what was an already full weekend to the brim by heading down to Riverside on a Sunday night, bringing some friends along with me.

This would turn out to be an interesting idea. In the dark of the waiting studio there were bodies moving, wearing giant masks, focused on wheatpasting their art onto cardboard boxes, while a lone figure sat with them hunched over synthesizers and pedals flashing with light. A low reverbed hum throbbed around the room. 

Last night I had my brain shaken.

I was enthralled watching the artists work together, fluidly pasting the glue and paper prints in one seamless motion, and listening to what is called “noisebient” music. I absorbed the multicolored flashing lights into my bloodstream and felt my cells vibrate. Though I was admittedly skeptical of the “music” being played, this music with no immediately obvious rhyme or reason or melody, yet still handcrafted - I was also intrigued.

This feeling only magnified over the next two acts for which we stayed, the second immediately dividing our group’s sensibilities. While the aesthetic of the first noisebient offering was musically unintelligible, there had still been a somewhat pleasant atmosphere compared to this new act before us. There were no artists working, no lights, just two men inside of a wood frame structure, and a wall of sound. Sound like the distorted transmission of a message through the dark nethers of space.

Sound like what you might hear roaring the through the empty stretches of a silent tunnel at night.

I found myself lit up somehow by what I heard because it was a puzzle from every angle, something unique to be looked at and studied from all sides. It was not anything that would immediately be considered music to any outsider listening in, yet it was being presented as music. It was not anything that I could see myself listening to in any other scenario like at work or in the car, but it turned my brain inside out. I was simultaneously put off by the extended waves of discordance but also intrigued, and my thoughts raced to try to make sense of what I heard. I tried to make sense of the people around me and how they interpreted what we were hearing. The fact that we as a group were there together indulging the whims of these two musicians, the fact that these two people had come together and intentionally, deliberately, placed note upon note to form this soundscape.

I sat on the floor and closed my eyes, ignoring the text from my sister pleading, “can we go soon?”

No. I didn’t want to go yet. I wanted to wrap myself around this sound that was warping its way over me, making no sense. Trying to make sense. Objectively observing my visceral reactions to everything happening, thinking about the definition of music and if this could fit inside that definition, if music needs defining at all. If the questions “is this music” or “is this any good” were relevant at all.

We didn’t stay much longer as some in my group were growing restless, and on the way home it was clear that we, the six of us at the show together, were all over the place in regard to how we felt about what we had just seen. It was actually a pretty even split – two of us were really excited by what we had seen, perhaps irrationally so, two of us were on the fence or maybe didn’t even know what to think, and the remaining two were adamant about how terrible the “music” was and how absolutely unenthralled they had been… again, perhaps irrationally so.

And so we talked. I tried in vain to explain what excited me about what we had witnessed, about how I did in fact believe that it was irrelevant if the audience members thought it was music, or if anyone thought it was any good at all. The sole fact that we as an audience chose to stay and take part in something that made no inherent sense made this more of a psychological experiment than a concert. I’ll admit to being more open-minded when it comes to situations like this. Even if something is terribly unpleasant and discordant I am more than willing to give it a chance and try to derive some meaning, any meaning.

Out a lifetime spent surrounded by and studying all types of music, I’ve observed a large element of predictability in most musical types. A majority of songs will end one of a few ways, will have one of a few cadences, will have one of a few chord progressions. It’s why I find it easy to sing along to a song I’ve never heard before. But… there was nothing to be predicted about the music presented that night. There were none of the usual landmarks of a song, be it lyrics or a hook or a bass line dropping. None of it. It was a completely new listening experience for me, and it turned my brain on in a way I haven’t felt in a while. I felt buzzed, like I had closed my fingers around an electric fence, finding myself accidentally trapped. 

I felt, and I feel this now, the call of pure creation crying out for me. If two people my age can stand before a crowd and hurl dark frequencies around in the pitch black studio at a probably obscene decibel level…. then what in the hell is stopping me from pursuing any of my creative interests? If they can do it then I sure as hell can. Who cares if what I create is any good? Who cares if anything is ever any good?

Let me repeat that, for emphasis, for my own future reference: Who cares if what I create is any good?

It seems so simple in this moment of clarity. It is not the creation that matters so much as the act of creation. I know that I am not alone in my open desire to see what other people are creating in all of the wild and varied ways that thought manifests into tangible reality. I know it. I know that there are people who want to see what I am up to as much as I want to see what others are doing, and the only thing stopping me from reaching these people is a lily-livered lack of courage.

A waning lack of courage, might I add.

That is what touched me more than anything else that night sitting in the darkness with ambient static sound surrounding me – the implied courage it takes to stand before a crowd of people and play something completely unconventional. The balls to plug in your amps and guitars and say here goes nothing (everything). Here, this, is what I have been working on.

Christ, I’m so thankful for people with guts.

Verse Versus

 

Thank you, to whomever it is

that anonymous thanks belong,

for making the scratching of pen on paper

sound productive by default

so I can look like I am working when I am really

indulging last night’s thoughts and leftover bits of song;

of elbow patches on worn professor jackets

made of woolen tweed.

Lecherous, indeed.

Thanks to you for useless business meetings

that would be a waste of time except for

this sacred stolen opportunity

to withdraw, to leave my body here

and scratch my way back to lasers dancing

on layers of oak branches and their leaves.

Now back, I am relieved.

Thank you for the Mason-Dixon line that separates

the frosty numbness of my unprotected spine

from the golden-hazed warmth of the fire on my legs,

and thank you for the bodies sitting close

and leaning in,

for the words said under breath

to light my ears and incite sin.

Thanks for the ability to lay back

my head in solemn ecstasy,

my every breath a prayer wrapped in grins

and soaked in guitar necks next to me-

thanks for what this might begin.

I will not thank you, however,

for another entry into the annals of the bittersweet,

as if I needed more disdain for desks.

I already knew that elsewhere there are wooden decks

that lead to marshy water streets -

you didn’t need to rub it in.

You really didn’t need to remind me

of art farms and babies sleeping wrapped up in our poetry

with lumbering canines drinking sips of stolen wine

choosing my feet to slumber under – mine.

But thanks nonetheless for name-dropping peers

and multi-colored mason jars hued by Belgian beer.

Thank you for a row of twenty-somethings children

dangling drunken feet from docks

too skinny for things like mortality

or ticking hands on time bomb clocks.

Just like the water

I become something different in the water. 

My arms are stronger, capable of pulling the combined weight of me and my watercraft. 

My senses are sharper, tuned in to the sights and sounds around me.

My soul becomes visible again- if only slightly discernible through drops of water falling from my paddle.

And as the flask of whiskey is passed around, 

followed by the heady scent of earthy smoke,

my body warms and whirs to back life.

Valentine

Sometimes I think I purposely avoid writing about important things that occur, in all of their many-splendored levels of absurdities, because these moments don’t even feel like they belong to me. As if during these moments I am living someone else's life in some other era.


 

I guess that’s what happens when I encounter situations that half of me, greedy and instant, hungers to be a part of and signs on enthusiastically only for the other half to cower in fear at these brazen occurrences that rip me out of my comfort zone.

I am a toddler edging closer to the laughing edge of the water with only the dim recognition that at any point the waves might surge and, well, take me.

I am afraid of the water... but I am more afraid of missing the wholesome warmth of sun on skin, of smiling seagulls cawing after the crusts of sandwich lunches, the freest of feelings.

So as my car pulls up to driveways and my hand hesitates on the gearshaft with a clear and immediate “what the fuck are you doing right now,” I try my hardest to think of cool pink lemonade on salty lips. If I can just imagine the feel of sand between toes then I can gather myself up from the beat up Kia and go knock on a stranger’s door.
 

Spoken Word

1-24

The first wobbly step outside of my comfort zone has been taken - not just reading my words in front of a group of people that I know, but reading in front of one of my adopted mentors in writing...

It always takes me off guard when my physical reactions are completely out of sync with my emotional status - take, for instance, the heart of mine that began to pound against the walls of my chest in excitement and panic and no small element of “what the fuck are you doing on stage in a fur coat right now?!”

But, like I know would be,
I was proud as shit of myself, and inspired.

my one picture from that night

 

 

 

Me mid-sentence: taken by GM Palmer

my friend Alex: taken by GM Palmer

Mental Richochets

1-19

But where to start?
And how should I begin?

This has been a week of revelations, of spiritual visions and verbal revisions.
I’m not sure which I should address first.
The problem is that all of it seems so far away in comparison to this moment of morning-coffee peace.
The smell of toasting bread and sweet rolls tantalizes me but I will resist the temptation and choose instead to focus.

So basically I let my spirit fly the other night, through meditation.
I dug deep and was taken over by spirals of abstract thought,
letting vibrations of light and sound carry me as far as they could take me... and then some.

I keep continually coming back to this Saul Williams line:
“Through meditation I program my heart to beat breakbeats
and hum bass lines on exhalation...”

That line has resonated throughout the caverns within me from the first time I heard it and every time I have come back to it since, gaining new waves of meaning for my life with each visit and revisit.

In the darkness of the brilliantly patterned light, voices of mine sprung up from the deep.
I never knew I had such fear hidden away, such clear and perfect fear.

“I’m never going to be able to communicate all of this, to anyone.”

For a split second I was terrified that all of the beautiful thoughts and all of the mental ricochets therein would be trapped, forever. That I would never speak again, that I had gone too deep and lost my voice forever because in the time it takes for a second to split, to light sparks with flint, I had already bounded off into the ethereal..

I haven’t decided quite yet what to do with this revelation. Obviously my voice came back to me after I was done floating up amongst the constellations, after I remembered to breathe - after I remembered that breathing exists - and settled back down a smidge. I regained my voice and retained as clear a memory I could of what it felt like when I thought that no one would even know I used to speak.

Up until that moment, when my identity and honestly my existence was lifted off of my shoulders, when I came face to face with the pure and distilled essence of my personality and all of my hopes and feelings, I had no idea just how much it means to me to write.

Apparently it means a whole fuckton.

Shimmer and Drip

1-19

In that sacred space between it all - where everyday objects shimmer and drip like wax down the body of the candlestick - everyday thoughts dripped from my brain as if through a sieve so that all I can see is everything that actually means anything to me, and

and then, dripping over me this time, the music.
Vibrating me gently and taking force slowly until it is clear to me that I am a puppet hanging from steel strings, quivering at the most tender touch of fingers on frets. As voices begin to surround me, from the stereo and from the source unknown, I felt, overwhelmingly so, that it is a waste of time to do anything but devote my life to song - to open my lips and let sweetness flow forth; to stop suppressing my desire to sing.

I just have to be a part of it.
I have to.

It’s not just me, either.

I can see it now in Corey’s eyes, too.
An electricity is humming through us, changing the aqueous matter of which we are comprised and bringing us close together, easing our minds of stigma and worry, granting an ease and a confidence that brings us closer to getting our destiny.

We place more stock in our words and our harmonies, the ways our minds and bodies work and have worked together to create this mirror by which we see each other and ourselves.

“Feel yourself being quietly drawn
by the deeper pull of what you truly love.”

It feels good, like the moments we spend together are ramping up in terms of productivity, in terms of connectivity, in terms of feeling with certainty that we are back on the same page and back on track to keep exploring this world and this love together.

Sage Francis and B Dolan 12-21

12-28

The bass rattled my entire skeleton
and my heart began to beat
break beats and exclaim FUCK YES on exhalation
the exclamation met in turn by a hundred sweaty faces

and now the adrenaline’s combined with
my bathroom smoking sins

and I’m
spinning
and lifted

I stand palms down in Camazotz
imagining my blood pounds through me
like the speakers pound the walls

watching the end of the world
with eyelids closed in deep meditation

Banjo and Sharpies

Some nights are for coloring notebooks and shoes with sharpies in a tapas bar at the beach. 
For driving in the drizzly rain, looking at the hat (that I made!) warming my little sister's head, 
singing loudly to Frank Ocean.

Some nights are for fingers flashing wildly, on strings made of steel on stretched drum, on strings made of nature and knots. For music and the hum of vibrations, pleasant to my ear and my life.