Thursday, July 28, 2011

we only said goodbye with words

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--

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

now i feel so small discovering you knew

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.

Monday, July 11, 2011

where the sailors are all in

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.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

the last time i saw richard

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.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

happiness is a warm gun

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.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

"will you find your lost dead among them?"

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.

cheers.

i'll be back

sorry sorry sorry it's taking me forever to get back on track. will try to post tonight. loads to tell.