First show is done. It happened at a place called BEAT Factory in a nondescript shopping spot and loft laden portion of Chicago. A burb-burrough? (I know nothing of the terminology which describes big city levels and tones.) It makes me feel very small potatoes, you know?
Not a big turnout. They fed us dinner though (I had "beat salad" which included pears and pine nuts and bacon (asked for no bacon) and some kind of cheese (asked for no cheese). We played with a band J+J+J. I wonder what is going on with the "rave" thing right now? I can't tell if its coming in or going out, but it is totally unstable. The stage was big and the room was big and the merch sold slightly and the carpet was dirty so my feet were covered with what appeared to be black tar of some sort. I washed them in the sink in the bathroom basement which I definitely could not have done if the fans from the early show had still been there because they were terrifying and used way too many paper towels.
THE MUSIC IN THIS FUCKING PLACE IS INVASIVE TO SUCH AN EXTENT THAT MY HAIR FEELS THE TWISTED HIGH-VIBE OF THE TUNES AND REACTS TO IT IN A LATE NINETIES STONER FASHION- "ROCKIN OUT DUDE" WITH THE LEVELS PEAKING AT "WHAT THE FUCK EVER, SMILES FOR MILES" HANGING OUT OF MY HEMP ROWBOAT "WITH WOODEN BEADS ON THE ENDS." OR MAYBE THIS IS THE LONGEST BUS RIDE HOME FROM FIFTH GRADE EVER.
Ok, more "the show." It was a hot and sweltering night, made more sweaty and insipid by the 800 or so fans of "Kill the Lights" and some other rock outfit created by the devil and sent to play in Chicago right before us. The crowd stunk of bilateral hair arrangement devices, These I Saw in the Rest Room where I was "over and over again" wrapped with paper towels and sprayed from behind with aerosol cans. I tagged stall #2 up good for that unwonted debauched shit. Cris Stoll came and we flicked words at each other for a while. He still calls himself a writer when people ask, which was exciting and hilarious, especially when it came to me explaining my "identity crutches".
Nate also showed up, we stayed with him. What a total asshole.
City level note "Wicker Park" was visited today, and with relief I realized that I am for sure NOT a hipster.
Now I am going to drink hard liquors with Darren across from the venue. Maybe more later? DOUBT IT.Love, Teal
5 comments:
ma'am, i think i'm going to have to examine those crutches.
captcha=swebmyvj
champ champ strawberry slinky tank tank tank.
my identity crisis is "typing without looking at the thing" ok ok bye "I BET I LOVE YOU"
Typing this on the way to Chicago in the way that a band on its day off might with no real plans for the coming hours. Will find something interesting to look at such as dark areas on tree branches from rain, street signs, large puddles and the people apprehending such puddles by leaping over or plodding through them. To come into Chicago without plans is dangerous. It can mean walking aimlessly through shop after shop, looking and looking at sewn items and baked items and items wrought with a laser or bound with string. It can mean impulse purchases of winter socks manufactured in main China, it can mean the vicious dog type of rubbing limbs against public banisters on the way to subway stairwells where Russian, German, Polish, Spanish, Ebonics and English are all spoken. In a din, in a barrel that moves under the streets.
I still haven't figured out exactly how I feel about skyscrapers. The tallest structure I've ever clambered up to the top of was the Eiffel Tower, not the Sears Tower or the Tower "People Forgot To Name It But Its Diabolically Huge And No-One Knows What Goes On In There". Such large things never seem to apply beyond their visible dimensions and the way that their stance obscures sky or other buildings or the flight patterns of migratory waterfowl.
I like microphones and microscopes.
My dad sent me e-mail from Mongolia detailing their findings so far. The last time the research team went there (1999) they were amazed by the lush flower-covered meadows and fish filled rivers. A totally pristine, beautiful ecosystem. The photos they've taken on this trip are the opposite of that due to a severe drought and an increase of human population from 250,000 to over one million.
I am going to try and include a few clips of the Karate class that I saw while observing in a Dojo on Belmont Street. They let me walk in and watch the class practicing various deflections and attacks. They revolved as two slick weasels with designs on sticking throats; prowlingly evasive but always connected at the hand, leg, hip. Circling and twisting until one would be beat, and fall rollingly forward or behind, somersaulting like water. The arm of the man thrown would slap hard SWAK! on the padded vinyl floor. Then roll back to face the other and go again.
Good ideas happen when you step back to pull the gum off of your shoe. No one should help with that procedure, its your stickiness, your stick used to pry, your left foot .06 seconds delayed in moving forward. Your .06 seconds later than you would have been to the show. Or to the show-up. Don't think about the person who let the gum slide from their oral cavity or two fingers, it will only create the sensation of a mouth that you won't sip filtered water from.
You will need toothpicks.
You will discover that the wind is coming from the North and that it is chilling the area.
You will rotate your hand, with the stick firmly gripped, and you will placate the need to clean the shoe. You will fantasize and dream of the perfect step, maybe one with a slight gum-deposit drag, just enough to induce a laid-back gait, causing you to look unhurried yet resolute against the directly approaching future.
Today I walked right through a white plastic shopping bag and it attached itself to my ankle, by way of its handles. I continued without removing the bag, thinking of the toilet paper-heel thing (which makes me laugh hysterically when unstaged). Gathering trash onto one's body by walking feels incredible when done in busy urban shopping districts and seen great numbers of pedestrians and drivers. One gradually acclimatizes to the quality and texture of most garbages available, layers of paper and softer plastic materials form a blanketing layer which can work to protect skin from epidermal aggravation caused by any shards present in the walked over landscape. I reccomend walking through all sorts of urban areas, calling the legs to move the body over highly ornamented gutters or receipt-laden sidewalks near the ATM.
Once fully encased with the preliminary layers, move quickly. Standing still or laying down could cause money to be placed near or on you, especially if your face is visible at all. Someone might ask your name or try and give you some water.
Accelerating forward dressed in trash becomes easier the more volume collected, which logically shouldn't work, but in this instance does because humans pedestrians and drivers will scatter in terror when approached by this independently progressing object comprised (seemingly) entirely of garbage. *Anal distention makes way for a bumpy ride.
p.s. I wanted to do some editing of this, but can't now because I had to leave it as a comment, and apparently thats not possible.
The editing I would have done definitely would have included adding an asterisk at the bottom of the page and following that with the words "Darren wrote this while I was away. What an interesting thing to add to this part of the paragraph!"
Wow.
I liked the part where you were working at a swanky business with many windows and elevators. When the business was bought out by another, you hid in the bathroom in fear.
Outside, an alien (with an exposed brain) manned a registration table. Another alien (also brain exposed) walked up to it. "Hey, don't mind me. I'm just here for the party." He(?) signed in and walked away, dragging another alien like a fetus behind him.
You slinked(sp?) out of the bathroom slowly and headed to one of the many elevators, taking it to the fourth floor. You noticed that the local press were all there, drunk on alcohol and realized the aliens had thrown a party to eat human brains.
That part was my favorite.
"Science rules everything around me." - Tom Cruise
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