“Man himself is divine in that he feels. He is the very feeling of God. God created him in order to feel through him.”
When one starts a business, one must finish it with honor.
I have written my life on these cyber pages. Nowadays it takes a while before you hold in your hands the physical outcome of your work—often we deal with blank screens and flashing lines. Perhaps in thinking we can now store pages and pages of ramblings never running out of space we reduced any chances at an earned immortality.
Nevertheless, that is a discussion for another day.
I am writing this with other goals at hand. First and foremost, to thank. To thank those who have been here with me all along. 666 times I chose to inflict my conclusions, you chose to listen. And that is a lot to say in a world like ours: where the time of the day runs out of hand fast, and we are all scheduled to work in limited attention spans. I thank to all those who told me of their familiarity with these pages on nights where conversations flowed brighter than blood, where wine wetted the compliments that their words forged, when they quoted unexpectedly a piece of my mind, making me blush in confused gladness.
Even those who silently remained aloof, I knew deep down that they knew everything I meant to say. Sometimes I was bound by that fear of recognition, and I kept things to myself. Other occasions I spilled out the anger and the frustration to those I couldn’t do so face to face. But either way, I knew someone was always listening, and that urged me to tell the story which was hardest to tell: my own.
I despise goodbyes. I often skip ceremonies and pretend to be indifferent to not let it show that I remain with a broken heart at departure. This, I can only hope, is not a goodbye: therefore I do not despise or fear it.
I loved being here. And I was here only when you were. Only when I knew there was for certain an ear open to my voice I chose to speak.
Yet we all have to change faces and move on. I will not quit doing what I do the best—that is to tell stories. I just will not do it here anymore.
Perhaps a different page I will turn, perhaps you’ll hear of me tomorrow, perhaps never again. But whatever comes out of life, comes out of me, you'll know. One way or the other.
Right now this blog—this aimless yet excessively vital place of heart—leaves behind the phase of existence it enjoyed for so long.
I am aware of the awkward silence but give me two days in a row and i tell you all about the craziness. i thought i'd cancel this place/ delete it/ forget all about it and start anew but i think i won't do so. we practically grew up together now, didn'T we?
sadly i find myself often wrapped in very basil like moods--i don't know why i haven't been writing, or if i ever will on here. goodbye for now. if i do decide to fully terminate this page i shall do so with a proper farewell.
the most fun you could ever have is when you're getting to know a band.
bands are always an explosion of several chemistries. they're always more dynamic but easier to grasp than a single musician.
i always start off by listening to the debut album. the band may have 50 albums by the time i discover them but no worries: always start with the debut album. it's always a tasty combination of awkwardness and selling out. there's a desperation to put out a style so mostly songs are similar to one another--especially if you're rolling for a rock band. cause then they have to be upbeat and heated and have to show off their tough skin. clothes are mostly picked out by the band members early on, styles aren't perfected yet, there's always a youtful look and a freshness to everything the band does while they try make themselves look cool--desperately or subtle.
they always claim that they picked the label that allowed them most creative freedom which is as true as it gets in a debut album, not that it gets that true, ever, but debut album is when it's mostly at the top of its factuality--because they are already desperate for fame and glory anyways and able to make the wrong choices by themselves without the need of a hot shot executive hovering over them.
so debut albums have a danger of having 12 of the same song with usually one, at most two that breaks the lining. if a band is good, then mostly they're all good. if a band is all right, they're mostly good. if a band's weak, it's just a stepping stone, unworthy of a second play.
for the good bands that have either the talent or the balls to break out the pattern of the album, there are always precious gems that later--if you get hooked on--turn to have cult worthiness for the fan. trani for example. one of the best songs that evert surfaces a debut album.
i have that freshly spring jitters that you get when you start discovering a new band. there's always new stuff to catch up on--live performances, videos, interviews. you slowly notice speaking voices, most used words, hand moves, customs, laughing styles, repeated pieces of clothing. it's not that different than getting to know a lover. same process, different results--or maybe even same process, same results.
more on cage the elephant soon. now that you know my process, you will better understand my conclusions.
unconsciously wore this evening one of big brother's shirts that i had taken from him long long time ago. do not get bored of my constant complaining: i am wired to show how i feel and i miss my brother already.
big brother took off at 4 am-- my sleepiness softened the blow but still not entirely at peace with the idea. had huge plans for the day: that is i was supposed to read the wondeful amazing living in the end of times by the nuclearly incredible slavoj zizek, enjoy lots of coffee and silence around the house, listen to lotsa music, then a movie at night with chips and coke. instead i woke up way too late, skipped breakfast, had a way too late lunch, did dumb stuff on the internet--only good thing i managed to take out was to listen to the debut album of the band cage the elephant--listening to a debut album is always the best of rides.
i tumbled on a few dylans that kept my mind at ease and all that but managed to put together no reading. the sun came up, not happy about that either. around 3 pm i did a minor supply run (to buy chocolate chips for pancakes+chips+coke) when the weather was still darker and windy--oh the beauty in that--but the lousy sunshine came back up and washed all the autumn loveliness. the end of summer is nigh though and that makes me joyful.
tomorrow plans with the bestie to see a movie and chat a little. but now get dressed up and off the go have dinner over at auntie's.
turns out it rained while i was sleeping. the after-rain coolness still lingers on though, and the lovely gray clouds that stuck around a bit longer so i could see them.
big brother's taking off to a warmer climate early tomorrow morning. i hate goodbyes. needless to say. to take leave turns out to be always much much easier than to stay. and i turn out to be much much more emotional than expected. been walking around with a tear hidden in the corner of my eye for some time now, unwilling to grow up and face the fact that it is just 6 months, and big brother's gonna be back before i know it. yet lonesomeness already settles--not because we part--because we parted before even for a whole year when i left for my crusade in the far away land--but because he parts and i will be still in the same disfunctional whirlwind--of which we both share the same mark of damage.
that being said you can only hope things to turn out all right, and i'm sure they will.
the weather is prefect though. last night as i shut my door and went to bed i could hear the wind howl and shake the doors: it is the most peaceful sound anyone can fall asleep to. you feel like you're in the middle of dark deep forest and almost smell the green leaves being hurled around by the storm's will. the wind must have slowed down by the time i wake up (long after noon) and the ground had dried out but the grayness and cloudiness still stays. i had had enough of summer as it is, so i won't mind if we stay on like this from now on.
also wonderful about the weather: as i have mentioned a friend of mine had suggested an album to me by danger mouse and daniele luppi called rome. it is a beautiful album, but i had been thinking how fitting it would be to autumn weather, and even thought i wasn't enjoying it to its full capacity because the weather was so burningly hot and the sun was so direct and merciless-- so when i woke up to this wonderful weather i immediately brewed my coffee and plugged in that lovely piece of work.
strange desire: i woke up this morning wanting to be walking down an also cloudy brooklyn street with a plastic coffee cup in my hand my fave beatles bag hanging over my shoulder on my way to some open market sight seeing and then to ravage through a bookstore or two. strange things we want for no appearant reason. but then again the apple had been a soft spot for me since i was one of those unbalanced teenagers (that i perhaps still emotionally am) and by the corner of my eye i look up to the large photographs that i had torn out of the calender my host family had given me and put up on my wall--with the colorful joyful majestic christmas tree by the rockefeller center--by which i had stood and posed for a photo--i am a strange person i guess-waking up to miss jim to miss bob to miss exra to miss my fave zeppelin song and even to miss new york of all places--
and if you still can't feel the steam of coffee and the sole of my shoes treading a new york path this may give you a hand to do so:
a good friend suggests an album she likes--with the most delicious most wonderful jack white--and it is but a wonderful distraction to clear this million dollar head of mine. been trying to tie up a story that i have left unmended months ago but jack white is stealing my thoughts.
years upon years are put--we don't have real life virgils painting us the way in bright red colors of hell. we don't get to stop midway and point towards a fiery pit and ask what it is or who burns there? but then again we did exchange typewriter pops for keyboard hits.
i don't have a purpose in saying that (or the other) just wrapped up at home today trying to remember how i used to love reading holding my dante that i had started off months ago but got distracted. second chances do sometimes work. put away my ulysses again the other day dissapointed and unworthy. it's either me or--me.
tea and dusting of my kings of leon songs (the ones in which caleb sounds the saddest) and hoping to get some reading done in the night. tomorrow-perhaps a movie or some shopping, lonesome and quiet by choice; maybe a dinner with the fam restless and worried--
i don't know how your heart works but i love my bands for better for worse--they tend to put up with me through relentless hours of self evaluation and unexplained misery. so i suggest the world to cool it. for when things do tumble down it is always useful to go back to gems like these to remember the good times:
and many more. that followill with his wicked voice.
there was a beatiful girl who i was lucky to meet when i was away from home and while we were taking a morning walk she had asked me where my home was and i had responded 'far far away'. that little girl went through a hell of a lot--lot more than a so called adult could have handled--in that tiny body of hers--and now i hear she's much better.
there is no other news on the world that can ever beat that.
i saw Amy Winehouse's death on the news and I knew it was too late. instantly the feeling of a ship that sailed creeped in. except for a passing whim a few weeks back for you know i'm no good i hadn't paid any attention to her recently. i hadn't even listened to back to black from frist track to the last--ever. always in half, always a few. because there were always tons of other things to catch up on--amy was here and today and i had a whole past to devour--i had to learn and love and know so much--amy winehouse was here anyways. friends of distance we remained--i admiring that voice of hers everytime it came up-- singing low to her songs whenever they crossed my path.
but that was it. no need to lie now.
amy winehouse belonged to my time.
i knew when she came out, when she exploded. i remember watching stronger than me thinking 'well she isn't that pretty' and yet fighting myself to death to look away from the tv. i remember that quirky video with the dog and everything. i remember how strange she had seemed then. i remember when she went big seeing her on a tv screen -- in a far far away land at the age of 17- lying on the kitchen floor where she had cried. again not being able to take my eyes from her i had then discovered what had been coming to my ear all along--that growling roaring larger than life voice she had at her feet. that power that comes out when she opens her mouth. that was where the beauty lied-- where the magnet-like pull that kept me chained to the tv trying to figure it out.
what does it matter now? nothing, obviously. all those personal stories of the first times you listened to her or that time you cried to her or that very second which she had turned your moods around mean very little. all those add up to one huge impersonal story.
i did listen to the whole of back to black , after all. too little, too late, i listened to it with chill running down my spine, shievering at the midnight hour, scared of disturbing the ghosts of whom i had no acquaintance with. she roars even now in my ears--a woman, perhaps the only woman besides joni, that shows me that it is ok to love as a woman-- defining love through a woman's eye-- a woman so strong that even in her weakest minute you see that once she had that man--i don't mean that in a feminist way i mean that as a soldier wounded often and in a haze of misery often feel incompetent secretly because no matter how good those men that i am in love with, that i adore, get they don't ever mean exactly what i really mean to mean after all--
this isn't coming out great--i know--i can't seem to work out the details--i've been meaning to write this for a few days now and never really quite getting it out properly as i wish--what does that mean, again, nothing, nothing to the naked eye.
i had once written here that voices are like naked people--stripped of all the shenanigans---and i had written that they are like poets themselves--separate of the persons whom they are given to. and if there ever needs to be a proof to that i believe winehouse would be a good one.
unwilling i am to use her name--as if i am crossing some shameless boundary--but the last few dry days i only had her--listening to her voice--to her words --apoligizing silently for never having truly listened to her--because she would have warned me for many things that was bound to happen--but sadly i missed out--i missed out having a friend to talk to in the darkness of the night--a girl of power and misery and lonesomeness and spontaneity-- a woman to curve next to and listen to a heart broken love story--to listen to my own heart broken love story--
i have never been a toruble maker--never been eccentric or extraordinary. but now amy winehouse and i--we stand in some gray funeral scene where i seem to see her most clearly, staring at each other in the eye, i wipe a tear at the middle of the night-- we look at each other-- two woman of completely different storylines and i suddenly hear in these songs that she was just as broken and battered with one dissapointment or the other--like me-- but i--
i even more so-- because she was my time and i missed her.
so now i'm left with a handful of songs that make me wanna crawl next to a faceless woman on the floor and vomit all my broken tales-- hoping for if nothing else a black hole where you can put down your arms and surrender--
you know how it comes to the tip of your tongue but you chose not to roll it? closin down a hundred alternative universes with a single word skipped. i always have something to say these days, just not the will to say them.
the comfort of the familiar home for a day before i leave again tomorrow. my left ear's busted--i am not aiming at some comedic response or anything--seriously, i got water in it splashing all around and it screwed up something in there so i'm half deaf now (which if you ask me is not that bad, very few people say things that are worth two functional ear drums) anywho been wondering whether i have anything to say at all, or why i was never one of those common people who make friends, hang out with friends, find people who understand them and who they understand, fall in love, get married etc and all that. needless to say that perhaps a new start is really just an overdue finish--feeling mostly solo and skywalker like these day (except perhaps an evil pops and the responsibility of saving the regime) but more like in a way that i can't seem to stop discovering life but now that i've done plenty (except perhaps one thing in mind) i kinda feel tired and the least troubled by taking a few weeks off to rest. but when rest comes comes lonesme acceptance of personality and a slight sleezy joy of having not to deal with the same people in the same rooms again.
patience was never one of my strong suits and be it known that i don't do fear. what i do though is a lot of talking inside in there in my head and come to no conclusions whatsoever. yes i shall die a hopeless farmer inside.
funny thought--i feel like i fulfilled the shell that i was given and now i should move on to something else. yet as often rooms full of strangers awaits. i always liked strangers. long as they smile though. nothing more dreary than a hung up stranger. perhaps a hung up friend, yes yes, a hung up friends is much worse than a hung up stranger.
as you may have noticed half way down i really have nothing to say of importance, just a desire to say things aimlessly as i always encourage people to do but they never do so so i have to fill up the void by rambling double the amount.
as joni sings innocently about the fate all romantics are bound to meet eventually i shed a tear or two on my way back home from a trip to my dear campus reading lines those others have written in my name on the pages of what they now call the yearbook. the frustration settled in that i know only how to love and now with getting booted off from that lovely place that has been taken from me--i no longer will in life come near anywhere where loving was endless and free--offices are dreary and people get uglier as they make more and more money and departures and lonesomness resides at the end of the path of growing up. but i think things in life are like dylan bootlegs-- you shouldn't be afraid to try them in brand new places in completely unfamiliar ways--love for instance have been dealt with perhaps in a mistaken haze--or to some extent fruitless--but in some other rythym one can perhaps do better. self confidence may be left within the stone walls but responsibility (the most tasteless of all) i'm sure will come up here and there.
first morning since rome burnt down that i had the chance to have a super prolonged breakfast with brother (both of us as newly grads) and later on enjoyed the cookies he bought for me from the bakery. read the newspaper and then spontaneously hopped between a few lines of ezra (how tasteful it is to be able to read as one wills, without having to work it into schedules and such)then decided to kill some more time with some online entertainment. overall in an endless aimless state, not that worried except for certain little moments. who knows.
the weary traveller just needs a few days at the sea shore--and perhaps some secret revelation that shall shed light to show the way.
my golden coffee warms my recently bought beatles mug (w/ the cover of let it be and the faces of the fab four in all their lovely strangeness)and here i sit finally after what seemed like years (fit into about three weeks) to put down some of the stuff that i've been meaning to let you guys know--and more to come possibly in my remaining life here and there and never really quite leave me (for they are matters of endings and beginnings and conversations led by ezra on the grass fields of the beautiful gardens of kensington).
before i fall in the depths of my own journeys i would think it'd be proper to speak of my dear angel whose death marks a tasteless day in july 40 years or so ago today. this blog have been missing a whole lot due to my endless tasks and non remaining energy but what it was missing the most was the annual remembrance of my dear jim--and his angel words and his crazy swift sadness. so let it be known, and let it be remembered and let him be loved--though he lies somewhere in a grey and mistaken paris morning.
coming back to myself. london came and went, swept my feet in a haze of poetry and songs. it is a beautiful place: not for its shops, or pretty stores, or large streets and pretty old buildings--but for the way it oozes words and poems from every stone you step on- even if you're doing the act of buying a simple bottle of water you walk by the museum where once ezra would sit and read for hours. you come across in the midst of your walks the house that dickens lived in, or where stones had sang, or where john lennon had once existed. there is art in the air you breathe--the music never leaves your ears, the lines of every play of every hundred year old theater rings deep in the night shaking the early ending nightlife to its proper place. you walk by the book stores on the streets with their notorious bargain baskets and couple-of-pounds copies of the taming of the shrew.
but besides its daily beauty london offered me some of the best times of my life.
the kings of leon show at the hyde park was poetic and grand and wonderful. to hear followill's wicked voice fill up the sky just warming up after 3 hours of endless showers of rain. the boys were up to expectations and the songs were as beautiful as ever. yet even more inspirational was the crowds of strangers you meet and greet amid the wave of human flesh and the strange events that occur within the duration of a rock show. plus hyde park is a beauty (as is any other london park for that matter) and to attend a show there is priceless to a music fan like me. had seen countless of videos from countless different performances but to actually stand there in the venue to dig your heels into the mud and to walk back with the slightly drunken and high crowd back to the street then hopping on the midnight 'tube' with the rowdy english boys yelling and screaming and then getting lost after midnight trying to find the way back to my hostel--all pieces of the story line that left the most beautiful taste in my mouth.
another high point was the shakespearean play i got to witness at the hundred year old wyndham's theater--beautiful place, wonderful performances and the whole thing was just so beautiful that i didn't want it to end--ever. the rain tapping outside the cement streets by the leicester square and the people flowing in to get the final standing tickets--and the way the wonderful david tennant waltzes in there and steals the show--his amazing changes of mood and incomparable talent to mix humour with a sudden strange sadness--and his sincere smile that lights up a room--and the whole of britain who so deeply loves him--the girl in my room in the hostel claimed he was a 'british god!' with the most envious emotions of my soon to come adventure. if i didn't had to run to the tube to get to the airport on time i would have definitely stuck around to catch him by the stage door to get an autograph--or to simply soak in the london midnight air of the 'theatreland'. and the joy of giving a great actor a standing ovation in a london theatre for a shakespeare play--do i even need to explain--for me of all, buying hamlet in a bargain basket at the age of 12 making my dad smile when i came back home proud and filled with ecstacy.
and plenty other wonderful things that go bump in the night in london or appear at broad daylight in the streetways--but none can even come near to tracing by foot step by step ezra's whereabouts in the streets and parks and houses and alleys and even coming across to a vorticism exhibit in the glorious tate britain (to which i had went to in search of the wonderful paintings of william blake--found and enjoyed them dearly) where 'mr. pound' winks at you through vortographs and sad in memoriams of friends dead in the battles of the war. and his wife also appears shortly through a few paintings she herself had done--but mostly you get to feel and see ezra in his poems and his words in his contributions and his wonderful ability to name movements and create them even--and even more importantly all the others arond him and how he affected them and how they affected him--how i stared broken hearted inside the national portrait museum at the portraits of james joyce and t s eliot ('voted nations most favorite poet') and ezra was nowhere to be found. or to look down upon where t.s. eliot lies beneath the stone carvings of the westminster alley telling him to tell ezra that i at least love him, despite his mistakes and screw ups. and to give him a triumphant smile when reluctantly he was included and a arrogant 'gotcha' smirk to the rest of the world.
just as i was so lighthearted of finding where james joyce had lived--walking down the church street chatting and taking photos i discovered a little pathway and before i saw anything else i saw the st mary's abbot sign up above--and the church bells ringing that used to bug ezra to death--and discovered following the pathway his famous church walk--a walk of peace and grand beauty with the modern day londoners spending their lunch breaks over the benches with their newspapers open ahead of them and i hopped in between looking up and down and left and right. then we followed the trail all the way to the kensington gardens and the beautiful round pond which makes you understand why people turn poets in that town after all--where ezra, too, had done so.
these are the first bits and pieces that i can get out without getting drained to my bones. but i will talk about poems for much longer, and about poets, and i am sure now as i will be sure then that i will eventually, one way or the other, keep talking about london in the midst of it all.
back to deadlines and dumb questions. will get back to you to tell you all about the amazingly wonderful superb london days--but guess what? i have to do shit load of crap first. plus coughing my lungs out so cheers.
sorry i couldn't do this last night but i was dead by the night. mama also got a little health problem so i spent most of the night taking care of her.
without further introduction lemme get to the point straight. a few of my good friends yesterday accompanied me (with my endless hours of persuasion--uhm--coercion, even) to the new warhol in motion exhibit downtown. it's a three piece event: you have movies shown in taksim in two separate buildings and one in besiktas that is all about the polaroids. we went ahead and saw one of the ones of the movies and here's what i thought of it...
for starters, no need to sugar coat it, lame arrangements. lousy sound system. you basically get only the movies projected to a white wall and you can not hear a word they say (or any of the music which is vital like the one of the velvet underground movie. anywho so it's basicly a series of images which mean very little to random passengers--and means slightly more to those like me who know a thing or two about warhol (or a person or two may be a better way to put it). you miss all the conversations and stuff that would have probably revealed wonderful things about the images.
then again one could say that warhol never really aimed for any higher message or anything but words don't always deliver higher messages--they sometimes describe the time and the mood better than any image can. a simple giggle or a sigh too can deliver a lot. so it could have been handled better, but hey. better than nothing, right?
it was a real trip for me though. everything is 60s and everything is non-conformity everything is sex appeal and everything is visual. it's the other side of the coin of dylan's nonchalance--everything is very pretty and very shallow(!) and very artsy and very overtly sexual--especially one of the reels was skipping i guess, tech problems, and we were stuck watching a scene of the chelsea girls almost image by image some freezing momentarily--there was this young boy in the middle on a bed filled with people and it looked like he was struggling to get up while someone was trying to take of his underwear. that may not even be the scene i have no idea we didn't stick around for long but i kinda felt it in the air that none of us were fully sixties yet.
we got to see about 6 of warhol's movies. i liked them all for different reason obviously, but my favorite was the one called my hustler which told the story of a gay man hiring a male hooker and taking him onto some vacation site in new york and then realizing that since the hooker is really hot everyone's out to get a piece of him. we got to watch the clip where two men and a women were hanging out at the balcony over looking this young man lying at the beach. one thing about warhol's movies is that nothing rushes, nothing chases nothing. everything is shown slowly and everything takes its time. we got to watch this extremely handsome full blooded coke and tv style the american man--who's real name was paul america by the way which i thought was brilliant-- and i'll be very honest he was the most amazing part of the whole exhibit for me: not for the cheaper reasons, but he was such the american image this tall overly proper physique, the bleach blonde hair, the look on his face, he was the ultimate 50s american fella. a bit of neal cassidy you know.
needless to say everyone was really beautiful--or after a while you feel like everyone was very beautiful. second high point for me was the velvet underground and nico piece--i tried vainly to pick lou reed of the lot and there was nico's son running around. it's always weird to see stuff like that--i know nico of her la dolce vita deal, and i know she's been connected both to jim and to bob on different days.
but the best of the best for me was the screen tests of warhol that they projected on to the white wall. i personally think they are the best piece of art warhol left behind. there is something extremely honest and expressionist in their nature that his hyped up movies can not really match. i watched this woman--turns out to be a lady named ann buchanan for about 3 minutes--most beautiful thing ever. she cries on her screen test--i dont know whether it was planned or spontaneous but it was incredible. the way they slow down the visuals made it seem even deeper. i had already watched several of those screen tests--namely bob's nico's and edie's i think--but it was wonderful to watch some people whose names i didn't know. brings a different dimension to the whole thing.
last piece of footage was of the inner and outer space of edie's monologues. my friends were absolutely mesmerized with her beauty. now i'm of the dylan school of thought (he just turned in his bed) and to me edie's always the shallow socialite who gets dragged away by all the shimmering lights. she has a good heart but not the matching personality, she's overly obsessed with her 'ribbons and bows' and is brainwashed. so to me she's always just pretty--hence had everything in her life because she was pretty--she was rich and careless and well, darn me for saying it, but some sort of paris hilton of the 60s in a more art-induced manner. but when you see her face enlarged on the screen you do get a little shaken--she has this beautiful little mouth and large eyes that stare right into the void--you kinda get a feeling of the whole little girl inside image making it girl outside deal. she is pretty, you know, nothing to exceptional as far as i'm concerned because she reeks of image and i feel like she had an idea of what she wanted to look like every step of the way which puts me off of her legendary icon status. i tend to see icons as spontaneous bursts of humanity that can not exist in any other way (which is mostly wrong, i would think, we are all image anyhow) but edie seems too--you know--calculated for precise beauty. but as i said when she stares into your face in black and white you get sad for no reason. you don't get sad when you look at the other superstars but you get sad when you look at edie. perhaps she to me is a broken-hearted woman after all who got treated terribly by the man she liked--and she failed to receive the attention that she tried all her life to recieve because one man was to stubborn to give in.
anywho--whoa this is getting long.
anywho to sum everything up: i always liked warhol but not really admired him a whole lot--i think warhol is a period in time and a mood of existence rather than one incredible amazing artist or whatnot. i think the whole of factory was what should be taken in and felt rather than warhol on his own. the in and out spinning of hundreds of really beautiful people chasing fame and visual attraction. i say attraction for i really don't think they chased beauty in a broader sense but only the visual rules of their day. all the girls are perfect and them men--boy the men are even more perfect--they follow that kerouac way of drifter look with dark hair and flat stomachs and shapely arms--and they are all really good looking. i think the men even more than the women.
one great thing though is not everything feels like you cracked upon a box with all the sex and sexuality involved--you feel like you're enjoying something that bended a few rules of its time (bending a few rules of our times, more likely).
anyways so afterwards we headed out to see the polaroids in besiktas but couldn't do so because they were closed. instead we got to drink tea and stuff and chat a little. a day spent well is a day spent well anyhow, right?
will tell you all about the partial andy warhol exhibit that i saw today but i am so extremelu tired that i should probably just call it a night and go to sleep.
sorry it took me a while lovers, it's been a day or two of coolin' down, that's all.
coolin down from what? well, everything. including fireflies and wayward hedgehogs but more so from the last remaining bits of the wasteland that allowed me to grow into a much saddened yet wiser butterfly (or perhaps something else, butterflies are not very metaphoric after all. yes i put the period after a long sentence (but you know me and my sentences they always continue--even when they end).
it was a wonderful night when we all laughed out loud with silent recognition of the coming danger of growing up (you'd think by time of college you'd already have done so but me? no. never). i drank lotsa wine cracked up jokes and tagged along to made up last minute speeches. popped up champagne twice- firstly with those who i've set out to walk this path with and than with those that i learnt to walk this path with--both of which mean the world to me-- and noticed that one thing a man can't do with grace is pop the champagne (no joking i mean it). they all cramp and try and sweetly laugh but boy it takes time.
seen fireflies for the first time in my life. they look like these long lost pieces of silver spirits flashing up as shooting stars in the darkness and even more sweetly they follow a path (well they are bugs after all and have to fly from one spot to the other) so you watch them spark (but in a silvery sharp way) all the way down slowly but constantly. and boy they are beautiful. i could have perhaps trailed them all night if i was left to do so but i had other stuff to chase: goodbyes, mostly.
i ended up (as always) not where i thought i'd end up. my dear friend who always helps me to not feel dangerously homeless opened his home to me and even prepared a wonderful breakfast the next morning. made me realize two things: firstly i am an incompetent child in the kitchen. i think it's because my mom always made everything so amazingly tasty and quick that i grew to learn my place. second i think my favorite meal of the day (not very poetically or very much in a rock'n roll manner) is breakfast--if you have a smiling face or two by your side. i think i love it so much because it means you're starting your day together-- which has a very sincere beauty involved in it. it's not meeting up or running into one another--it's this human emotion of sharing the start of a day which resounds of will and warmth. so yes at the age 21 i notice i like the morning hours and breakfast chats. especially to clean up the table and move on to drinking your coffee or tea or whatever it is.
what am i feeling? who knows. been drinking coffee and reading books all morning outside at the balcony with the fresh vase full of flowers i bought the other day for mama and the tea she made and the crow babies running around shrieking all the way till you see the redness of the insides of their beaks. and as if it could have been any better it's been raining all day and mama and i just sat there on the balcony with the roof protecting us from the wetness but not from the lovely dripping sound. she was doing her crosswords puzzle. i was sketching out my pound route for london next week. and the rain oh the rain.
how come i get to feel this safe now when everyone's crumbling down is beyond me but i think knowing ultimately what you have to do to survive helps. you just have to find a way to make that fit into the real world. so i guess i look out for a tool, not a purpose: hence my ultimately peaceful ways.
it's gonna be a crazy week from now on lotsa arrangements have to be made and shopping and figuring stuff out with my lovely london companions. app. i'll be staying somewhere within a stretch of a walking distance from ezra's whereabouts. so we may run into each other after all in a dreamland where i can then perhaps shape by where he's been and where i'll be.
i should make an ending now. and not just to this post, i take it. don't let it be known but i am sad. i have the blues in the root of my heart. if it was up to me i would have stayed. yes not in a way that i'm afraid of life and all but life was in there for me: always there within those high stone robert frost walls within the shades of the trees and the heart shaped leaves beneath which i let out my morning sigh within the shelves and shelves of books where i ran to to feel safe and to fall in love with poets proud and praised and within hallways and high ceilings and pathways that made me feel always in charge always in control and always in life. there in that patch of ground i never buried anything but i busted them out--every bit of feeling of love and lonesomeness and joy i hashed up and jumped around and beat the crap out of to have'm all stand high above the ground--i knew where i was and it was mine--and the green and the blue and the dustworn sunrises and the blinking stars of the pitch black--and all the colors of the time of my life when i knew who i was and who i was to be--and hanging up the lock now i know i am never to feel that safe again or that in possession--but i also know that if i ever get to tell my story to a handful of drifting souls in some pastel colored cafe over bitter and black coffee while the sun goes up beneath some hills there is where i will say it all started. and i being me will laugh a loud laugh and wave a hand aimlessly knowing that in a world where rootlessness always make the best poems i am cursed with knowing where i began.
in about i'll say 24 hours or so i'll be a free gal with no worry over time anymore: i will also be a child who just got kicked out of the house yet still can barely stand on her two feet.
considering that my sincerity has been doubted through the same attitude i guess trying to ease people's tensions result in an unintentionally-condescending-tone-of-suggestion. school's over and all, but i guess when people are freaking out they want someone to freak them out further--rather than to calm them down.
coffee is slightly surpassed by some wonderful ice cream but the weather is lovely and i still have shitload of stuff to do BUT had a fun couple of days, so i thought i'd put the stuff down here before it slips away from the grip of my mind (which, those of you who know me know, is really not that tight). anywho last night was loads of fun with several different highs --- for starters my incapability of keeping myself proper and clean--i have the manners of a 5 year old when i'm all excited and talkative. not to mention you can trail me down from 4 street afar if only you follow the cigarette buds with bright red dark pink and sometimes even purpleish lipstick circles around the buds (and accordingly, as i noticed last night, at the tip of my two fingers that hold the bud).
and guess what happened? i ran into the everything is illuminated kid last night. circles and circles and circles of friends added up and was taken out and i remembered (though about 10 15 minutes in). strange happenings, i would say. nice ones, though. makes you feel like you really are coming around full circle.
and several other things that go bump in the night--the curfew gull for example! yes i know what it means now. i mean no i still have no clue what it really means but here's what happened: we were all dancing at this rooftop place with the most beautiful view surrounding everything and i look up for a split second and notice something paler shoots through the sky-- it's a seagull. i'm not joking. it just flew right over us up up up in the sky in the blueness of the midnight and i thought to myself "there, that's what it must mean, that's what curfew gull must be".
last but not least--we had a lovely cabride back home. after the city was shut down and even the coffee places were locked and all that and we had a slightly strange driver but hey we made it home in one piece after all. which is all that matters. and though i was dead beat in my feet and resting on about 4 hours of sleep of the previous night i pulled an almost 24 hour day straight having fun to the bone.
but if you still ask me the nomad who stays where she may find a couch and a smiling face the best of all the most beautiful the most wonderful was coming home to find dear old dad waiting at the bus stop because he arranged his buying-sunday-paper-warm-bread-fresh-egss etc. with my coming home.
my favorite kind--the midnight rambling. with all the tom lyrics i've been paying attention to lately makes me feel like writing something with smoke and dirt and lust and sundown. but i have a full belly and a stable life: hence the death of the poet.
we parted ways with ezra on a sunny morning by a deserted old building.
for those who have less wild imaginations: that means that i'm done with my thesis. 4 days of non-stop writing (a little over 30 pages) is finally done. i am a bit sad, i'll be hoest with you, the moment i wrote it i wanted to rip it to shreads and rewrite it. not that it's bad--it's just everytime you sit down to put something on you come up with 12 more things to say and then you're left with all these wonderful questions for which you knew you would have come up with if only you had the time for it! and you come up with a million more ideas and you want to read a million other things (like i am so turned on now to perhaps one day do a portrayal of ezra through the autobiographical works of those around him and such other crazy dreams and visions that pop up while you look dry eyed at the now bleak computer screen). as for what i've wrote: ezra would have probably at best given it an eh but i'm 85% satisfied wit it. and trust me, 85% is all you can really achieve in 4 days.
ah look at me: all academically emotional because i had to leave behind my subject.
thanks to a buddy of mine who brought to my attention that i've been too bob-dependent over the last few days (or in general, i guess) i did a little resetting on my playlist yesterday and thus rediscovered my tom waits collection--well rediscovered my few songs of tommy, and then downloaded quite a few of his albums and now i have them on--very soothing, suprisingly, that growly voice mellows out in these wicked romantic lyrics and smoky back room visions. even of an emotionally dead encounter with a hooker tom manages to tell the story broken hearted but understandingly--i don't know what it is but depsite having shitload of stuff to do (a whole 6 pages take home final for friday morning) i chose to do nothing tonight and listen to tom's stories instead.
my brain's fried nonetheless, so sorry for the lack of innovative wonders here in this post. but here's something that i came up with a coupla of days ago, about ezra, written by william carlos williams (the famous plum poet of mine) :
"He is the essense of optimism and has a cast iron faith, that is something to admire. If he ever does get blue nobody knows it, so he is just the man for me. But not one person in a thousand likes him, and a great many people detest him and why? Because he is so darned full of conceits and affectations. He is really a brilliant talker and thinker but delights in making himself just exactly what he is not: a laughing boor. His friends must be all patience in order to find him out and even then you must not let him know it, for he will immediately put on some artificial mood and be really unbelievable. It is too bad, for he loves to be liked, yet there is some quality in him which makes him too proud to try to please people."
thank god that bob dylan made 40 some albums including the bootlegs. and have been very generous in number of tracks per each album. let's face it: without a decent playlist that can move on on its own a thesis can not be written.
the unhuman amount of coffee, dylan's philharmonic hall 'halloween' concert (where he is unusually chatty if you must know) and a pile of old dusty yellowy books that constantly make my fingers itchy. thesis, thesis and thesis...
turns out what matters is not those you've set on the road with, but those you stand by at the end. had a sweet day today, a little dramatic with a lotta "final"s thrown around--but it was good--a final second esp. standing at the rooftop thinking "man this is the end"
thought i'd drop that down before moving on the some unpleasant studying.
The first time I met Dylan was when a friend of mine liked a boy she thought similar to dylan.
the second time I met dylan was when I watched a movie about him in which a woman was giving out an amazing performance. I was far left behind what intellectually the movie went for. but I look back now to think it was rather ironic that I met dylan the second time in a woman’s portrayal. that’s what I’ve done all my life (if you count me a woman and what I do a portrayal). I heard I want you and liked it immensely. I went ahead and bought several records.
yet when I truly met dylan for the very first time that is the dylan of mine was on a warm afternoon in a crowded bus waking up from a daze to find out that my! those lyrics to just like a woman could redefine life. as it is. as it was. we met each other there. the bridge laid forth the city underneath. and I met dylan on water where one walks leaving no footprints behind also ironic (if you call dylan one and what he does footprints).
then began a ambitious archiving project and long hours of contemplation on his words. Have I tried to understand? you bet. Who hasn’t? so our relationship grew. mostly on highways for I spend a lot of hours on highways. then i fell in love a bunch of times and out of it and found dylan to be comforting. I made several mistakes broke up with many friends and witnessed multiple family catastrophes. so dylan I went to to take a piece of mind but he never gives you that, but we managed to come to such terms: either I was to screw up, cry or intentionally plan to screw up, then cry and he was to take me to somewhere where people looked small. and ideas mattered little. we smoke quietly on riverbeds me and him in his young days and the old him was hiding out in cool shades looking at me like sayin’ “kid” nothing else though. just kid. the immense comfort of having a man to be a kid by. I would say “life means little don’t it bobby? I know I feel I see? don’t I know?”
he never answered. he always frowned. the young him especially. never smiled.
the closest he got to revealing me what life meant and all was on a dolmus ride back home past midnight. drunk I was and battered (I am mostly drunk, and even more often battered anyhow) over that water where we first met in the truest terms he then threw aimlessly a handful of gold coins over my head. and had a habit of doing so afterwards everytime. because I had learnt the gateway opens for drunks and I began taking it.
then there was a night warm and summer-like we came across each other for the first time in person flesh and bone, I mean.
I walked around at 8 the next morning and in my long dress and overnight weariness and stench of tobacco I walked down the streets smiling perhaps bright as the morning star saying to every lost soul I came across “look look I meant to be what I meant to be” walking down the hillside with lousy Istanbul on my right “look look city of mine I will be who I will be for people fall through only the cracks they fit to fall through.” Istanbul said “you’re still a bit high, but enthusiastic, I’ll give you that, if nothing else.”
oh and I had once a dream about him where he stood mid stage as me and my friend discussed whether it was him. he looked different. an old man of any kind. but he looked up with his piercing (I happen to think that specific adjective works for only bobby’s eyes) eyes and I knew it was him. but he was angry with me. still don’t know why. I should have asked, perhaps but he scares me a little.
I made memories for each of his worlds. and discovered songs. even the ones I discovered I went back and discovered again. simple twist of fate for example, refelt that on my way home one spring afternoon. just when the weather got warm.
we sat knees up to our chests i wanted to be a kid
“kid”
I sparked
I was the kid who never quite broke through but hung midair dangling acknowledging things will not change but depending on them to do so.
at the age of 21 (which resounds of resentment, if you must know)
cursed with knowing just where everyone ached. constantly.
dylan was vast. at best endless. had enough juice to handle enough tragedy and shelter one from the worst by not caring. small matters. who cares. I would drain my awareness into his harmonica and would feel refreshed.
I knew he wouldn’t hurt anyhow
often I would dig my hands in my pockets and look up into the foggy clouds and smile no reason. just smile. at my own doorstep thinking I looked very artsy. and poetic. with books pressed against my chest. and that dylan in my ear.
first storyline I managed to hold on for long enough to really put down had a boy in it who began as a bystander to the story then became the lead. a boy who played the guitar and had curly hair and when I realized there really was no boy but a vague imitation of dylan I made him break up all relations and marry a girl named Sara. and he moved away. haven’t seen him since, though I hear sometimes, at night he made it big time. like real big.
I also wanted to play the guitar. dying to be a part of the process
needless to say, that didn’t happen.
but turns out no guitar does not necessarily mean no bob. instead it only means more of kid just kid though nuthin else.
we’re separate processes it turns out and don’t know what you would say but I think bob is ok with mine. he kids me from time to time but that’s all. he’s surprisingly tender. never growls. never raises his voice.
they say now that you’re 70. going fast down the lane, you know.
but I will chase you life after life a tree a snail a banker perhaps finally a king you’ll become and I shall shift faces too
and then one day after endless endings we will sit by one another and I shall stretch forth a hand to say
“dear soul this part within that once was a part of a child whose soul too once a part of a whore whose soul once a part of a cypress tree whose soul once a part of an angel whose soul once a part of a robin whose soul eventually a part of the souls of a million other things
whose souls also parts of even more
and now multiplied a thousand times and a thousand times more I have come and found you. but I always remembered and always knew”
entire joni discography, 10 page paper on democratic peace theory and a couple of inbetweeners later it dawned on me: i need to get high. no kiddin' really need to wind down a bit with all these academic crap pilin' at my doorstep.
tore out about 20 pages of old writings of mine--tore them, folded in two and pushed them down the bin. i need a voice. i need a voice. then spray painted guidelines in my head and pretended i fully knew who ezra was.
i am at peace quite strangely due to a few conditins i would say:
for starters i have a bunch of new albums coming my way--the whole of joni's studio miracles-- and a bunch of news ones that i've already listened to that i've been dying to hear-- bookends for example and pet sounds
also i have noticed that whatever attachment i had to the last remaining crowd of my soical life i had severed it. i'm missing a huge get together and truly i feel no remorse. not in a bad way, no, not in a suck-it way. i love a few individuals in there (and a few i loved back in the day) but the long tables and wine-driven conversation no longer bring us together but perhaps take us further apar--or take me, take me further apart. it is now beyond shifting dynamics, i would say. what we have felt for one another has been dealt with, and concluded. i wish there was a way of portraying how calmly i have noticed such, how at peace, but i guess 'sincerity' has been lost and never found, and there's nothing more normal than people questioning what i say just like i question theirs. it's just-- we share nothing anymore.
i am not built for friendships though. i really am not. can't fit them in. i think i may even further say that friendships and friends don't exist. there are lovers and then people you like seeing, you grow accustomed to, and people you would prefer not get hurt. i was on the bus yesterday overhearing this young woman fighting the hell out of her friend over the phone--who was right who was wrong who had been a bitch and so on--again who was sincere and who wasn't--and i wanted to tap on her shoulder and say, 'sugar, nobody cares anyhow but you, you yourself, you care the less" i didn't though. she seemed upset enough.
i have a ten page paper to get on with (not to mention my thesis) but i like the subject on that one so that's not too bad.
i just had an ice cream cake which i also again like dearly.
so i think at this point i'm ok. then again you may question why i tell you any of this but i tell you everything anyhow. i do really like to hear myself talk.
there was a great dylan song about all this. there is always a great dylan song about everything.
"He would cajole, and almost coerce other men into writing well: so that often he presents the appearance of a man trying to convey to a very deaf person that the house is on fire." T.S.E
the most wonderful thing about going through all this hastily is that i come across things that make me go nuts with pleasure--though mostly they are completely unrelated to what i should be looking for--but they complete the picture one way or the other. like that bit above. if you're read any pound you know exactly what eliot means. i mean you really really do.
but there are all sorts of gems--i saw one photo of ezra in a costume for a play or whatever, his bit of the annuals of his school, a photo full of kids and in the middle sits a blonde little boy with glasses--i don't know, all kinda strange things that you wouldn't think pound in his defiance and "literary frightfullness" would ever reveal.
i have a pile of books on my desk--on my right--the bright reds and blues--no letters or anything on covers just plain colors on hardcover. i love their look unorganized and untamed. and the thick sticky dusty feel at my fingertips.
let's see how all this comes down for i lack any entuhiasm to write these days. but i really don't wanna miss some of the stuff i saw/heard/tasted over the last few days and jack white thinks sometimes all you gotta do is to down to the studio to get a move on with your creativity. and who am i to challenge jack white?
a quick recap. my shakespeare ticket is paid for and done so 24th of june someone will be very happy in london. plus it's going to be my last night so i think it's a wonderful way to end the london week. been up to my neck in visa application--all very unpleasant, but helps you to see everything a bit more realistically (though i'm not sure if that ever helps anyone to accomplish anything). school's been--well, school-like. i have way too much more to do than i can ever put down in words but i don't see how complaining helps. i'm gonna lock myself down though, in the house, for the next 15 days or so, and won't be doing anything but getting my act together for ezra. still am waiting on the blakean vision though. would really appreciate it.
oh the big event of the past week: went to see the band that i was completely in love with back in my high school year. i still do love them and trace back whatever musical taste i have to their tunes. if one was to ask me when i first followed an artist--completely--you know, albums, shows, live tracks etc--it was them. my zeppelin and my doors and even my dylan have their roots in their poetic approach and true rock-n roll lives. plus i put a lotta gloomy teenage love into their words. when i was away they were the only music i took with me to the far away lands that reminded me of roots i once and always had and yet never fully came to terms with. so they meant a lot to me then and i do have to say on different levels they still mean a lot. it was wonderful to go back and revisit some of that, to see some hasn't changed a bit and some had evolved enormously. plus i went there with my high school buddy and ran into yet another high school friend of mine.
then we swung there left and right to some tunes we hadn't heard of before and some we had built memories around. then we moved on to the wonderful view and had a few drinks and all. then went home with a good friend who had generously offered me her couch for the night. some places are just different you know--i think subconsciously i thought that house reminded me of some other house i had been in for i felt not at all foreign but on the contrary almost perfectly at home. she made me a wondeful breakfast in the morning in a way that only people who are further away from the tastes of their childhood days can.
had a run the visa application center today. i walked for so long and got lost several time (still incredibly grateful to that man who knew where my street was and most wonderfully described it to me). i realized today again that time and I--we keep racing each other and trying to conquer one another and my whole life is a battle against time
then went back to school quick to load up my ezra's. running on less than 2 weeks now and i'm still completely blank as far as writing my thesis goes. got myself two more albums of joni, mama just made tea, and we'll see how this all goes..
don't think there's a specific reason why i'm keeping my quiet these days: none but constant haze, shitload of stuff to do and the frustrated unspringlike weather. i am drained even now but have a paper i have to get out of the way. if may don't kill me then i don't know what may (haha)
think i just saw a mindless cat nibbling at the grass. or perhaps a revolutionary in its own world.
been hiding out in the library with my tunes on and trying get my union whatever videos in order for a presentation that i at least to a certain extend enjoy--i will refer to the lovely van ronk and seeger and others, as well. and bobby, obviously.
i wish i could blame the weather but you know how the song goes have faith in all kinds of weather and i do, at times. today is a bit weary but most certainly better than yesterday. now that i am staring down the faceless crowd of supposed intellectuals i feel like i should be putting down gigantic stuff--stories and poems that would knock people off. but truth be told i've been thinking a lot over the last few weeks of the extend of my talent. was talking to a friend today about how he was done with everything and the month of may was absolutely free for him, and I stared quite bitterly, since a death month starts for me from now on. but you know all that, it passes.
anyways, as you see, wanting the write is not necessarily a upbringer of lovely works. may as well cut this one here and know and leave of you of with this little baby song, which if you ask me is good enough reason to like the chimney ash grey sky.
like a bridge over troubled water i will lay me down
the earth shatters and the child looks absent mindedly at the ground caving in under her feet. we all face challenges stubbornly at times yielding at others. i have fought on several fronts. some i have lost bleeding, some i won. i picked my pieces up afterwards, occasionally. more than not i stumbled, but kept walking.
yet the child must grow.
as a single tear drop finds its way down your cheek lying forsaken thinking of an old song sighing your last breath
2 blocks tumbling down in a day. i tend to see myself justified in these things, but so does everyone else. it's just that all of it is so unnecessary.
"They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn But without our brain and muscle, not a single wheel can turn We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn That the union* makes us strong"
Ralph Chaplin
here's a few tunes you may like to listen today of all days:
the wonderful guthrie:
just as wonderful dylan:
on a different note:
happy may 1st, everyone.
*i choose to take 'union' there on a greater notion--a union of human love and compassion--as well as the union on a standard basis. though the lenin way of seeing this whole union thing is quite logical to me, that has nothing to do with the issue of the workingman, with the unity of humanity.
ps: most certainly this post itself does very little, but people my age are quite reluctant to get out on the street on this very day. that is clearly no excuse. but next year--i'm really hoping i can turn around a few heads by then.
nothing of royal nature or fascination through fancy hats and overy done manners can really match to the nervous yet excited and mischievous tingling of two youthful boys trying to conceal grins bored and entertained at the same time.
true poems reveal themselves at 2.10 am -- an album pierces through one's soul like no other for it is a long story line, composing of smaller ones that remain as valid and strong as any on their own but come back to stand as pieces of a beautiful train of thought that you can follow. the boy that fell in love and the boy that died in vain.
"They got a metabolic connection, a Man Within you might say."
W.S.B
so prepare suckers for this one's gonna be tiny bit long.
my timeline's a bit shady but i'll try to pull everything together for your amusement. i had one of those endless days yesterday and it was one of the most wonderful days i had over the last few months, perhaps. so let's roll this thing, shall we?
let me try to be organized and talk about things one at a time but you know me, i am spiritually very disarranged. anywho though to start off, we hit this photo exhibit inside the armenian church on istiklal which is kinda weird cause 1)it's kinda holy ground for some 2)it's kinda a strange ground for others. not to be overcome to these national discourses but over the years you kinda pick up words here and there and usually the less pleasant stick with you. so when you walk down the stone yard some unwise part of you thinks someone will leap forth and pick up a heated hate debate. needless to say that obviously didn't happen. though one wonderful thing did: i was staring at this black and white photo when a kid pulled her mother's sleeves and pointing to a photo of an old ragged uncle (we call all strange yet affectionate looking men uncle in this lovely culture of mine) and stated bluntly as does a child often: "he scares me".
now we couldn't figure out why with my dear good hearted friend, but that girl cared very little for poetry and art and all that other socially constructed idols and looked at what seemed to her frightening. there was something quite sincere and defying in her attitude.
moving on from there we checked out this other art exhibit on istiklal--one that is named the tactics of invisibility--this group of artists focusing mostly around the issues of identity, conformity, ignorance and such that renders an individual or a crowd invisible. there were quite a few things that were mindfully challenging--my favorite was this artist's project on reincarnation and second lives where he interviewed a bunch of people who believe they died and were reborn as someone else. they had two wives two families some had more children some i think at some point had his mother in a bull. now i know that sounds stupid but trust me, it wasn't. you don't even have to believe it. you just sit there and listen to these crazy stories of people buying things for whom they believe carries the spirit of their lost loved ones--people recognizing their brothers from different lives--and even more people accepting these newcomers as a part of their life. you know it kinds creeps you out and those brain curves start to tingle. in a way you wish to believe for it carries endless possibilities of story lines--mystic and inspirational and unreal and beautiful.
another cool thing from the exhibit was this woman who brought to life this old orientalist painting of the harem. it looks kida dumb at first but there is a split second where you see the painting as it is this unliving worn out greyer shade of life and then you see these freaks all around moving. i thought it was a strange perspective, and a good one. slightly creepy, i repeat. but strangely attractive. i'll post the original painting just so you can enjoy it, i think it's kinda superb. orientalist, but superb.
once we were filled with arts and thoughts we had a bite and then moved on to this small kinda shabby coffee shop. we drank our strong bitter turkish coffees and romaticized blobs and stains on the cup--finding out hearts and snakes and roads and good things and bad ones and lotsa jokes. it's always wonderful to be sitting around a tiny wooden desk finding common ground and laughing along. very human and very precious. so precious that it does not happen often.
then we moved on to yet another shabby looking little place. but that was wonderful as well. we laughed and talked and joked and all that.
most wonderful though as we walked up to the lightful square sharing what seemed to be the last laughters--my dearest friend and i realized that we spent about 8 hours on the same street and did not get bored once--didn't even sigh. it was such a good mix of everything--of art of joy of warmth--that we did not once check the time to see whether or not the day had gone by.
before i wrap this up several last minute remarks: on a less poetic note, guess what, some genius filed a suit against william burroughs for corrupting the youth. oh i can just see the skiny old man up sitting at a heaven-hell with ginsberg by his side having a mirthless laugh (burroughs has the 'mirthless' i doubt ginsberg ever can). i sure as hell did.
and i honestly don't think i need any introduction on this one: this song boiled up within me a universe and i'm addicted to it for the last few days. so enjoy:
made my coffee, put my slightly calmer tunes on. had a long day that started around 7am which really wasn't that pleasant, to be honest. but there were upsides to it--like visiting a different campus of a different university and walking down a path between two worn out old buildings thinking someone might have walked these roads just as i do walk mine--thinking and pretending to understand life and coming up with ideas that don't fit in their chests. i sat in seats that were some other child's imagined palace.
have been dragging my feet all day. have a few days of for spring break but looks like i should be spending it buried up in my thesis stuff. i feel like i'm doing great readings but everything is floating so high above that i can't grab a hold of it and arrange it properly. it feels like a wasted afternoon where you sit in a library pulling up books as you wish and then dropping them off after a few pages. so you end up reading lots but learning very little.
anyways less whining should be more suitable. i'll take my leave now:
And the old voice lifts itself weaving an endless sentence.
remembered this song tonight through a friend. remembered how great it was. read somewhere i think it was harrison that said this one of his faves--because a warm gun meant that someone had just taken a shot. or something like that. wonderful lyrics too, if i ever need to say. here, enjoy, make this friday night slightly warmer:
i've been cramping to write stuff for days now and i tell you it's not working. some times you feel that emotion comes strong and then you look back and realize it really wasn't that big of a deal.
i haven't been going to school much lately, last week i almost didn't go at all, and this week already ditched half the week. it helps you to take a step back though and look at the people you spend your everyday life with. they fade away and instead you're left with vague associations. some you see more clearly the rigid, stiff, angry bits of them which you had ignored, or in your head justified, but some people lack love in a deadly manner. i think it stems from longs years of self defense and self preservation. but it is problematic. it is unpleasant.
others you see not as evil as before, you cross out excuses, you make amends, you come up with ways to work them into your lives. you let the anger pass slowly the less you see people the less vital they become so you begin assesing them more as a stranger than a true part of who you are.
and you are always more forgiving with strangers. so sometimes it helps.
it's just that things have been spinning around aimlessly. time feels like it does not pass when you stare outside your room away from the dangerous entanglements of the modern world. but then at certain moments when things pile up and get handled and pile up again you realize time is a tricky beast that only slowly releases its grip so you won't die at his hands. i sometimes at night close my eyes and try to dream of what to be and there is really nothing there. i think i stopped believing that time flows. i feel as entrapped as one can feel in an endless eternity.
i am eternal in my head. i feel like days won't pass i will never grow old and the time to decide (what is to decide anyways?) will never come. i do know what i want, that's the tragic part, but i can not fit it to the daily system. and then i step back, smile and realize that's the best thing that could happen to me. to dream such that is not convenient.
"as in our letters" says the comrade and brings herself back to these lines again. my notion of greatness in life of love and hate and friendship and all, i do wish at times i wasn't who i am, that i was different, perhaps easier, less self-indulgent, less needy, and less child like. then i remember i am all those things, and i can not change them now. so i drop a vain tear at the prospect of a roaring friendship had I been a different person.
a couple of things that tonight revealed: 1)you know how you make fun of the american chick flicks where the boy wait for the girl under pouring rain and bam like half an hour later he's totally sick. well. turns out that wasn't entirely a myth. i have a weary headache and was soaking wet to my bones today that later on resulted in a terrible cold. 2)i hate nothing more than someone who repeat somebody else's words to me. especially in criticism. i want originality. i have absolute respect to anything you say--as long as you say it yourself from yourself within yourself. 3)caremel icecream is kinda worth dying for.
the bands you fall for are like the boys you fall for.
it's a different kind of bonding, i mean, one that pays very little attention to their qualities, to yours, to common history or shared values.
came across by coincidence to the live streaming of a keane show in china (internet is one funny leviathan--there was especially one moment really creepy--they did this beautiful wonderful close up to chaplin's cherub face--it was so strange--because you knew it happened right then and there--more likely right then and there of your time--and of their time--it's actually all happening at the same minute--but you are somewhere else and you watch it through a screen which kills any lively feel to it but it still is alive--anyways, as i said, strange). then i heard of a rumour this afternoon that maybe keane was to come over here to perform some time around june. and if i get to hear those lovely songs live this summer, i think i'll be a much happier person.
i'm all hyper now. add that to bon jovi, and the kings, and looks like i'll be having a wonderful summer. this summer will be the end of things, it will be determining how the rest of my life will be, it will be filled with all these decisions etc etc--what do i care? especially if keane arrives and with their beautiful tunes--ah why would i--for what reason would i--really give a damn?
i found out today that i crave songs. i mean it--i crave them--biologically, spiritually--this need arises that you usually get towards things that you feel you have to have that very moment--that's how i feel--i face a system shut down if i don't get it in time. my whole world spins around that very song. it doesn't have to be a song or an artist that i would die for or anything--like today i woke up craving six different days. i do like the cure but you know, i don't walk around preaching my love for them. but i literally got out of my bed--interrupting a quite strange dream--and craved for that song.
anwyho i wanted to study today but looks like that'll be a bust--there is a keane show live streaming from beijing that i'm planning to enjoy if everything goes all right. so you know, who cares about all the rest when there's good music to hear, right?
yes i did spent my day doing nothing--first one in ages--skipped school to ensure such. tomorrow also will not include school, but thursday i'm planning to get back on track. truth is i have a vague notion of time and how time passes--therefore i just walk around spilling it here and there, treating days as if they lead to nowhere. i am personally very pleased with such a way of looking at things, but i try my best to survive within the given structure of time.
been reading marx over the last few days (nothing too heroic, i had a midterm in which he took a great part) and i think beyond all the great ideas the man had the best one was his opinions on 'revolution' and how to 'revolutionize' one's ways. i think he is dead on right: the more you try to fight the system through the structure of it the more you fail to do so. by using what they give you you end up becoming a part of that. to revolutionize anything should mean an absolute breaking with its past--with its cancerous conservatism--and to really shake it to its bone. that's why a middle class thinking she/he can advocate change while admitting step by step the necessities of the given day--a good education, a good job, perhaps first an internship, good grades etc--no revolution there. just maintenance.
anywho don't think i have anything else elaborate to share. i've been still struggling with my thesis as before, i think i'm a little over my head on this one. i'm almost wishing that ezra would appear to me in some ginsberg-blakean vision and tell me something incredible that solves everything. but i've been taking him apart--ezra that is--trailing down strange steps like his contributions to newspapers or magazines of his times--this way of placing pieces of the puzzle slowly. been reading him and him only, since i have very little time to do any reading at all. even though i bitched a lot about the whole primary text deal at first, i do kinda like it now. straight down to the belly of the beast. it's tough though, simply because ezra is tough, but i think i secretly enjoy not getting it, and trying to get it, and then trying a little bit more.
and then there's this song. i remember putting a jack white-rolling stones version of it on here but let's face it: the glorified men in their youth were pretty amazing. i thought it would color up somebody's night after all. it has a base, beautiful, naked in the woods type of understanding of love--the man in the mountains, the humbleness, the rawness of mick's lovely voice. a simpleness that i love is in it.
i think there's something slightly mellow tonight. i have these fluctuations of heart i can not fully understand but i'd like to think they are a result of having too much spirit, or too much heart, or something that is too much that won't be pushed down but chooses to ooze of the cracks. now, for example, i am completely at ease and even slightly happy. but half a minute may pass and i can lose sight with anger. makes me wonder if perhaps everyone is, after all, the same?
i really wanted to write a story tonight but that also comes and goes lately, stones in themselves have more of a do than write act to them, but i do have all these feelings that i wish i could put on somebody else's shoulder.
i came home slightly weary but dinner and a moment to think pulled me back together. then i had this wonderful urge to listen to the lovely tom chaplin's voice. not even the songs themselves (which are no less lovely)but simply his voice. he has this peaceful way of singing that allows you to relax and feel at ease-- this home-like feel to it. besides his incredible technical whatever (i know very little terminology when it comes to these thinks) but you know, he has--a friendly voice. one that you choose to come back to not simply to burden yourself with thoughts but to lighten your load as well.
i really don't have much to say but i like saying things on here anyhow so i'll just randomly ramble. oh first--i don't think i have to tell you how wonderful stones in exile was. it made me think once more of the fact that there are two things that constantly get in the way of one doing what one desire: money and time. have them endlessly or destroy them in their entirety and the whole world will change, i'm telling ya. i think that's what i love the whole rockin and rollin kinda leaving--those two things lose their importance--and you get to do all these other things instead that are not bound by rigidness
besides that the thing i like the least as i figured out today is two people whispering at the end of the table while a whole group of people are right by their side--especially if its about someone who's there. i don't mean to say it as a bad thing--it just winds the crap out of me. i don't like it. i get tense and nervous.
you know what, none of this sounds good. i really shouldn't be writing tonight. goodnight.
i think about a few disappointments and some more revelations after i just realized what's wrong with me: once someone says i'm special for them, esp. in friendship, i just take that to be perpetual. i can not integrate that into life, and i can not handle its alterations. for to me you have mostly one or two that are special to you, and once they're special they don't go back to being ordinary--and that's why i pick my words carefully, only when i think i have someone as close as they have me i tend to see them vital, and true--but life evolves, and it is all about what we share at the end of the day--and the things we share run out, or dry out, and then i can't seem to understand that. i'm stubborn that way.
i think after some years in this business i found out that i truly have one 'best' friend. now i have to learn to live with that--not in a way of 'accepting it' but more 'working it into life' kinda learning. but you know you can't be special for everyone--still i wish people were careful--you know--when saying they care.
i really don't mean to sound bitter--perhaps only wise.
back to being my old self for the day--the usual chilled out laid back version whom i missed dearly. been indulging myself in both jack the wonderful white and the stones-- i will tell you all about all that as soon as i have a minute.
and then someone tells you that writing is a "know-how" situation. how easily we assume we know everything. how easily do we assume that we can read things through layers and layers of successful analysis, how easily we assume we have the right to tell someone what or how they feel, how easily we avoid direct confrontation--those who says they are filled with knowledge and courage--i laugh. i laugh heartily. and then we say ezra pound was proud.
on a slightly warmer satrday afternoon--i have to get some work done so i can enjoy stones in exile slightly more in peace tomorrow. until i enjoy that, you enjoy this:
i don't know whether the songs become an absolute nothing or whether they become sacred--when all comes face to face with what a father is willing to do for his daughter.
by chance i found out something i should have known, but these things flee one's mind. matters very little how much love or affection you truly put into their subjects--dates of birth and death and such memorable seconds of life, which to some are blank pages on a calender--and to some, as myself, mystic imaginings of supposed events.
i learnt a few seconds ago that allen died 14 years ago this very day. it is quite depressing here today, to be honest, rainy and all, not at all like april should be. careful though i am not appointing meanings beyond my power to strange happenings, rain can fall regardless of allen's death, or perhaps in a universe more just and poetic than this one, it can rain to commemorate him.
poets come bearing several marks. some do, at least. some you make up marks for. now allen is none of the above, but he in his writing and in any second of footage i've ever seen him (this is what we have today once the thunder is gone: still moments of perfect clear footage that fools one into thinking you now know someone) has been so gentle yet bursting with such-ness that he is often scary. of all those poets who pretend to put distance between themlseves and the world those who stand back a bit--none achieve such frightfullness. it is not a bad thing, don't take me the wrong way. it is in allen's openness that you see something contradicting life--something untamed and excessive and something fearfully courageous--i've seen even in my limited years of age so many who was brave at the moment to sit still or to throw a punch or to mock another but i've seen none brave in telling of love and of emotions.
and for that he scares me. to this day. i have this notion that if i had ever met allen, i would have been terrified to talk to him. but thankfully little consideration is wasted upon matters of such in one's internal existence, and there i've been just as courageous and fearless as allen and have directed so many words and questions to him that we had very little choice but to bond--and i have bonded with him.
and now once such affections are placed, one feels a sudden void in one's stomach on days such as this one.
we are all in one kind of rockland or the other, after all.
