Sunday, April 24, 2011

Let's Go, Let's Go…

Dear Friends,
About thirty-five years ago a couple of egg-heads with time on their hands, Carl Sagan and Edwin Salpeter were sitting around the Planetary Sciences department at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. They got to musing on what life might be like, if such existed, floating in the cold soup of Jupiter’s oceanic atmosphere. A little paper came out of their chats and subsequent calculations and speculations.
Might it be, despite the deep freeze upon the Jovian orb, the supersonic winds gyring storms larger than most of the planets in our system, cloud tops that rain down hydrogen to condense into shards of metal through electrical storms powerful enough to shatter entire worlds… might it be that some sort of life could evolve there?
Well, the two men thought so. All the ingredients for biology, all of the gunk of organic chemistry, was known to be blowing on those titanic winds. It was a very cold place to live, but there certainly was enough energy flowing into and from the planet to power biology.  There was all that lightning, auroras fluttering about Jove’s poles, a rain of exploding comets, the tidal tug and compression of a host of moons, Jupiter’s own fierce gravity, and the distant Sun. Perhaps, this Universe might kick start Life from such a mix. It did it on our own world. Why not on Jupiter?
What would such life be like? They might float like terrestrial jellyfish, but be larger than any city of our Earth. They might enjoy eating each other as much as procreating, or those two activities might be one and the same. This is not, after all, unknown among some terrestrial life forms.
Might these giant beings also have sight, optics adapted to peer through a swirl of clouds made of ice and ammonia? Would they perhaps see the dim reflectance of those moons above, the catastrophic and life engendering flash of a failed world, a comet, vaporizing in the whirring clouds? With no hands nor ears, would they develop technology to detect the drizzle of microwave radiation raining in from the television transmissions on our pale blue dot?
In 1990, Voyager One flew by Jupiter. That little robot bore a camera that could have resolved those sentient gas bags, if they exist. In those days, half a billion miles away, scientists were more interested in seeing other things there might be to see. Lots of good information, data, came from hurling that piece of tin foil, baling wire, bubble-wrap, and pre-PC computing past the largest orb circling our Mother Star. Perhaps buried in those pixels captured more than two decades ago is a the mother of all jelly fish winking some sort of eye in our direction.
We’ll likely have to go back to find out if this might be so. Sign me up.
Hic Finis Est,
S

Friday, April 22, 2011

On My Way Back to the Future…

Dear Friends,


I've lately been idling my time between current screenplay and book projects by surfing thru old songs, stories, essays and similar nonsense. I will be getting back to meditating on such things as sentient gas bags flowing in the hypersonic streams of a Jovian atmosphere. First, however, is an old lyric. Reading it again is humbling. I once knew not a whit about how to make a verse scan nor how to keep care of the singer's voice. I did not know much of anything, for that matter.


The following comes from the voice of a young man so jealous that he might've killed another fellah. He did not act on his instinct, but worked what'all out in rhythm and meter. Thank goodness for good friend Johnny, of the Notorious Hooligan Band. Johnny somehow laid this mean spirited junk down as a fine song. Maybe a recording still survives on one of these aging hard drives or some cassette falling to pieces in the basement. I'll look into it.


Res Ipsa Lquitur,


S



Mad Rolling Crazy ©Solomon 1982

Yeah-
You saw me burning
I was without a shred
of peace nor insight in my mind


Yeah-
I went inside out
without a trace
of Love or Compassion
in my mind


Yeah-
I was mad rollin' crazy
in the eye o' the wind
not anyhow reconciled
all alone, not content


Yeah-
That's the the way it was
Leaving gems and secrets 
on the road to dawn
I was wrong to be so careless


I was mad rollin' crazy, electrified
The change had to come
could not be undone
all the pieces should be one
We are gonna come home


Yeah-
I'm in love
I'm in Love
Mad rollin' crazy
and forever in love





Thursday, April 21, 2011

Seein' Backwards…

Dear Friends,

I was lookin' in the rear view mirror earlier today. Not the best way to drive, but sometimes informative.


He is Dead ©Solomon 2011
I felt dreadful as I smiled when I heard the news. It was a nervous smile, but there it was on my blushing face. Craig had killed himself. He was dead and gone. My best friend had killed himself, and taken his broken heart to the grave. It was 1975. I was twenty years old. He had been twenty-one.
He loved me. I was too young, naive and self-absorbed to realize that truth. We’d been hanging out for four years, all through my high school days and that first year of college. I knew he was gay. I enjoyed hanging out with him and his several boyfriends. I liked the clubs, and the attention that I got from the handsome guys and the exotic trannies and transvestites. I used to join him on these jaunts to that weirdly happy world, sometimes with my girlfriend in tow. She was a big hit with those boys. Apparently she was as much a novelty to them, as they were to me.
I was so stupid. I was the one taking him into a dangerous space. I was safe and loved in his world. Yeah, he loved me, but I never picked up on that reality. I invited him and his then current boyfriend to join me for a New Year’s celebration at my college. There were just half a dozen of us in an otherwise empty fraternity house. We had plenty of pot, several hits of strong, speedy LSD, and buckets of whiskey and beer.
I didn’t know about his previous suicide attempts. I didn’t put the pieces together about his history of what I now know must have been abuse by his “uncle” abetted by his own mother. I handed him a tab of acid, and he accepted it with no apparent trepidation. In truth, he was scared but game to prove something to me. He wanted to be included in my new world. He was willing to dare his fragile ego to not be left behind. I was unaware until years of reflection made it clear to me how brave he was that night. We drank with my friends, shared our dope, and had a fine old time for hours, and I had not a clue as to what was roiling in his heart and mind.
Somewhere around dawn, a mighty blizzard was raging. It was a beautiful, crystalline sunrise above the sheet metal clouds. I was staring out the window, saucer-eyed. My ears were full of the quicksilver notes of a certain cowboy song, then playing on the stereo. “Jack Straw from Wichita cut his buddy down, he dug for him a shallow grave, and laid his body down…” A very apt line, as what was about to happen would demonstrate. Suddenly, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I had goose bumps on my arms. I detected the odor of rotting meat.
Craig’s hand gripped my own as he approached me from behind. I sensed that things were going to take a turn toward the deeply weird. We were all so psychedelically gacked that telepathy was business as usual at this point. I knew he knew that a bridge had been crossed and broken and there was no way back. He said, “I need to make love to you. Let’s go upstairs.”
Somehow, I pulled my jellified wits together to answer. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, right now. We’re very high. How about going for a walk. It’s beautiful outside. We can talk.”
“I’ll kill myself if you don’t come with me.” He was utterly unglued. His boyfriend was overhearing this from across the room, and he fled back into the maelstrom of the party. We both could tell that Craig was serious, and seriously broken. “Come upstairs with me, or I’ll hang myself.”
“Um, no. I’m not going to do that, and you’re not going to kill yourself. When we’re not all twisted, we can talk about this, but you are not going to threaten me into having sex with you. Please, let’s take a walk and talk a bit.”
At that, he let go of my hand and marched up the stairs in silence. I was tempted to follow him, but didn’t think I should be alone in that endeavor. The boyfriend clearly wanted no part of this mess, and my other buddies were just as smashed as I was. I stared out the window and prayed that he really wouldn’t hurt himself. I was frozen with fear even as I understood that indulging him might make things worse.
He did not kill himself that morning. We rode back home in uncomfortable silence. He dropped me off at my folks’ house and drove away with his friend. I didn’t hear from him again for several months. Attempts to call him went unreturned. He just fell away from my new world as I, too, drifted off.
It was the following autumn when I got the news from our common friend, Mark. It appeared that Craig’s suicide was a sort of “accident”. I’d learned that he’d previously tried stunts like woofing down a fistful of downers and calling friends from the phone booth on the corner of State and Main until he passed out and got rescued. He’d once gotten real drunk and drugged, laid down in the middle of Rt 20, waiting to get run over or taken to the hospital. Of course, the latter reliably happened. This time, however, his plea for help was left unanswered. At  6AM he pulled into the garage where he worked, closed the door while the motor was still running, and just died. Apparently, in his confusion and stupor, he had forgotten that it was Columbus Day, a state holiday, and nobody would be coming to work that morning. His cold corpse was found the next morning.
I’ve spent the last few decades morning my friend. I’ve gone through all the phases of guilt, anger at both he and I, sadness, regret, and just plain missing that sweet man. His heart was good even burdened with the damage it incurred. I have wondered if I just should have walked up those stairs with him and made love. Was there really any harm to be found in that? I’ll never know.
Hic Finis Est
S

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Word Reunited with Tunes!

Folks,

Found the work around for blogger's dim-wit upload tools. See this page to hear The Altered Statesmen render The Suite for Kathy Anderson.

S

Lyrical Doodling…

Dear Friends,

There are few things more lamentable than a lyric shorn of its melody and rhythm. Nonetheless, as I have not found the time to figure out how to upload MP4a files to this freekin' blog. So, here is a bit of somewhat musical nonsense in words. I wrote them lo some years ago for the redoubtable Altered Statesmen, a band of no-goods that shall always be my friends.

The Kathy Anderson who is the subject of this song popsicycle of five songs is the most troublesome, beautiful, bedeviling, perfect, ragged, happy, unhappy, joyous, hard to please source of any pleasure that I have yet to imagine… I do, of course, a good deal of imagining. K.A. is, was, always shall be my Starry Queen, and I continue to surf the Astral Waters in pursuit of her aetheral embrace.

Oh, if you want the inside scoop, see this and follow your bliss.

Yours, in the Bonds of Love and the Tragedy of Romance,

S


A Suite for Kathy Anderson  Solomon © 2003 

The Starry Queen 


You are to trouble 
as dawn is to dew 
cutting slack in the gallows' rope 
so my feet of clay 
can find my old shoes 

Dawn, Dew and the 
Starry Queen 

The gift of Perfection 
to wizened fools 
nothing to reflect on 
but the shine of Stolen Jewels 

Dawn, Dew and the 
Starry Queen 

Flat on my back 
sails to the wind 
cutting the chord in poor harmony 
ragged mates in fine sensibility. 

Dawn, Dew and the 
Starry Queen 
Amen to Dawn, Dew and the 
Starry Queen 
Sing it again, Dawn, Dew and the 
Starry Queen 
Here is a cheer to the 
Starry Queen 
Amen, bless us all, 
under the gaze of the 
Starry Queen


The Mystic Line 


The shore, it is receding 
can’t tell if it’s dawn’in 
or the evening 
the compass points skyward 
as sailors ride the Mystic Line 
...sail on the Mystic Line. 
...come along the Mystic Line. 

The moment’s disappearin’ 
as fleet as embers flashin’ 
upon intuition 
no secrets can be told 
as sailors ride the Mystic Line 
...sail out on the Mystic Line. 
...come along the Mystic Line. 

Count your limbs 
count your toes 
count your blessings 
get up n’ go, get up n’ go 
dance along the Mystic Line. 

Selling fortunes by the seashore 
a dollar on the dime 
nice work if you can get it 
if you give it all your time 

The moment’s disappearin’ 
as fleet as embers flashin’ 
upon intuition 
no secrets can be told 
as sailors ride the Mystic Line 
...sail out on the Mystic Line. 
...come along the Mystic Line. 


Sunshine Blues 


Pennies raining from the sky 
whether to catch 'em 
or let ‘em fly by 
do’ya stay pat and let it ride 
Just send down some pennies from the Sunshine Blues 

Maybe hard to understand 
whether to see ‘em 
or to close your eyes 
or best stay open n’ let ‘em fly 
Just send down some pennies from the Sunshine Blues 

Give me a hand 
Let me lend you a clue 
Here’s an umbrella 
for the Sunshine Blues 
It's raining pennies in the Sunshine Blues 

Pennies raining from the sky 
whether to catch 'em 
or to let ‘em fly by 
when you bet or just let it ride 
Just send down some pennies from the Sunshine Blues 

Give me a hand 
Let me lend you a clue 
Here’s an umbrella 
for the Sunshine Blues 
It's raining pennies in the Sunshine Blues 

Take it! 
Here’s an umbrella 
for the Sunshine Blues 
Just send down some pennies from the Sunshine Blues 
Take this umbrella for the Sunshine Blues 


Unhesitating Beauty 


Unhesitating Beauty 
Fetching Lady in waiting 
swinging on the Bough of Heaven 
whilst I stumble ‘cross the world of clay 

I do believe I have been down 
laid flat as a dollar whose eagle’s flown 
but I’ve never seen such strange terrain 
never sipped from this star-filled cup 
never known which way was up 

Unhesitating Beauty 
You’ve seen me when I’m sleeping 
and you know when I am awake 
and we amble ‘cross this waking dream 

Cartwheelin’ Goddess 
seducing no deception 
give'n what I’m asking for 
before I know that it can be real 

I do believe I have been down 
laid flat as a dollar whose eagle’s flown 
but I’ve never seen such strange terrain 
never sipped from this star-filled cup 
never known which way was up 

No never mind all that now 
no never mind confusion 
give me what I’m asking for 
yes, tell my heart that it can be real... 


Golden Laurels 


Shake the pennies from my eyes 
shower me with laurels 
shake me to my feet of clay 
and wake me from my slumber 
kiss me like there’s no time to lose 
kiss me hard, shake it loose 

You bet, and I do too 
here’s where we should meet 
one step across the rainbow 
one foot striding Heaven 
nothin’ between left forsaken 

Golden Laurels in my eyes 
shower me with blessings 
wake me from my walking dreams 
and shake me from my slumber 
kiss me, there aint nothing to lose 
kick it hard, shake it loose 

You bet, and I do too 
here’s where we should meet 
one step across the rainbow 
one foot striding Heaven 
nothin’ between left forsaken 

Here I’ll meet you on the shore 
the tide’s direction undecided 
I will love you more 
more than all the others 
more than all the others every way 
I will love you more and always

Hic Fins Est…

S



Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Reckoning with Remembrance…

Dear Friends,

Following is a bit of weirdness that will maybe make some sense to the chosen kin that I was among back in the '70s and thereon. Yeah, it might make a bit of sense to whack-jobs like those that thought Ginsberg and Burroughs could write (I am happy to be among such). Whatever. A guy with a goatee plucking a standup bass and some girl in a fuzzy black sweater on bongos would not hurt the presentation, but the setting and theme are timeless. I trust that the men pictured below would have known just what to do with me if I had long ago wandered into their establishment.

S


Now, some of you all might remember spending a good while long ago in the little city of Northampton, Massachusetts. You might recall a joint up the street and down on the corner from the funky tomb the original incarnation of the notorious Hooligan Band called office and studio space. That palace of regret, grandiose thinking, and forgetting would be the Del Ray Tavern.
Look up “dive” in a big old dictionary; dive as in a saloon. Next to a serviceable definition you will find the accompanying illustration; an interior picture of the Del Ray at any time ‘tween 10AM and 1AM. Not much to see; so dark, cruddy, smoky and dank that the you might as well be looking up the nostrils of a vampire bat snortin’ dry snot and shruggin’ off last winter’s hibernation in the shattered rafters of an old tobacco barn burned up and pretty well fallen down fifty years before your ass arrived into this strange world.
The photo is, however, apt; dark, cruddy, smoky and dank also well describes the interior state of the patrons of this gloom benighted habitude.
Take a gander and have a seat at the right end of our happy vomitorium. Two seats to your left is old Dick Noble, last of the first American fly-boys of World War One. In June-something of 1981, he celebrated his 81st birthday.
The celebration began with a good old fashioned Bloody Mary. Anybody remember those gut-searing concoctions first blended in Saratoga, New York?
Hmmmmyou start with a beer mug, soapy and warm, fresh from the crusty old sink, nicely sanitized with a stinky bar rag.
Fill half full with lousy, watery beer of the finest American vintage.
Add one uncooked egg and much salt, a good tumble of pepper, Tabasco if handy but not required. More black pepper works fine.
Fill the mug further, two-thirds full, with condensed tomato soup (then thirty-three cents a can).
Top off with as much cheap, bad vodka as the mug will hold.
This last step is crucial. Without the alimentary analgesic resting buoyantly on the top of this delightful beverage, the patron will throw up before gulping the entire mess down his ulcerous gullet.
Well, Noble did reliably regurgitate his little eye-opener, careful to do so upon his own lap, but not on the bar where the tear-bender, Eddy, had already provided him with a complimentary double shot of grain alcohol distilled from the finest weedy grass or decaying leaves or dead crow feathers or road kill, all skillfully blended with muddy water from down at the creek, purified in straining the gunk out through somebody’s underpants by trained booze artisans of the Alabama persuasion.
No offense to my friends from Muscle Shoals. You all make fine music.
Anyhow, old Airman Nobel throws up again, this time scoring a memorable hit on the old lady three stools to my left. She doesn’t make much notice, except to turn her fogged gaze upon mine own. She starts babbling about her kid or her long ago boyfriend or something.
Noble lurches out of the bar. Brunch awaits him. Maybe, just maybe, like on any other day, some chump will toss some change in his cup. Maybe ol’ Andy will make a run to the liquor store for him. Nobel ain’t allowed around there anymore. Andy is a saint of the streets.
Whatever. I reckon that the future will be what it will be. But, I was impressed by Nobel’s demonstration of breakfast as performance art. I was thus so moved to compose a little ditty. Here is a poem.

Down at the Del Ray © Solomon 1981?

Down the Del Ray
where most folks like me is ugly n’ crazy
got rips ‘tween our ribs
what’s aircraft linen wore out where the wind blows through
Crazy men scratchin’ on bar rags
quotin’ expressions from a cracked old bag seein’ in me her youngest son
now dead to the last best war
and three empty bottles since noon
In the imagined dawn of such precious moments as these
that dead person n’ me often meet at the bar
and we play crazy eights for each other
we toast to our shared apparition!


Hic Finis Est

S


Monday, April 18, 2011

Another Odd Little Place…

Dear Friends,

Well, about five months into the mysteries, miseries, discoveries, and magic of newly found sobriety, if not sanity, there was in my temporary place of safe passage a little seance held. It was good old Beatnik nonsense smashed smack forward into the jazzy rock of early 21st Century Portland Maine (the locale pretty well like any civilized similar spot of some forty years prior, but with an ocean and actual history).
The Free Radicals, abetted by my pianer-playin’ buddy Mike Be, led by John Sinclair, crazy ass poet/philosopher and once erstwhile manager of the mighty and proudly doomed MC5 of Detroit, long happily embraced by certain sectors of my United States, as well as regions of the present Czech Republic, France, and places now no longer fashionable to the hip in England… well, they held up their end of the bargain with fine whacky dissonance and whining, searching, preening chords and awful thumps as the old man held forth with shards of old words for The Future.
Of course, I was too broke to gain a ticket. I sat outside and smoked cigarettes with a lost girl who looked kindly on my well intentioned sentiments and historical lessons. She shared the dregs of a cup of decaf tea. That was horrible. She was so pretty. The music was just fine. Old Sinclair was still nuts all night long and through the decades. He was giving no sign of giving it up, even as the bongos rattled the club’s windows and no doubt tickled down to the roots of his wizened white hair. 
I went home to my happy hovel and wrote… and, I must remark that my craziest writing in years was plumbed out of the depths of some kind of clarity.

S
I’m Gone © Solomon, 5/7/2010

Things are awful. I'm reborn. Truly fucked. What am I to do? My old lady, that bald pated bat has gone mad, gibbering. She don’t know where I live or where she is. I'm alone. It's way too crowded 'round here. This place stinks. It's filthy. It's immaculate and unborn.
I'm surrounded by morons, geniuses, laughing ghouls, gurus… five-sided hallelujah hum-bugs, four-sided crystalline spheres, three-legged coyotes perched on two legged wigglin’ stools’ rodeo ridin’ on a one-eyed pyramid. It’s no miracle that I am perfectly presently pleasantly surprised.
I've got a pillow case stuffed in my mouth. I'm not eating properly. I'm scaring people. I'm quite proud of myself. Life is too good for words. The sky opens and gushes blood. It drinks up the light radiating from my eyes. I'm blind. I can see. What's that I hear? It's a birth-cry heralded upon an empty wind rushing in every dimension from a faceless womb that smiles that smile you see just before you get et. I'm content. I'm gone… truly fucked… pleased… really gone.
Hic Finis Est

S