Boiling Point

Literature boils with the madcap careers of writers brought to the edge by the demands of living on their nerves, wringing out their memories and their nightmares to extract meaning, truth, beauty.
--Herbert Gold

I see you

thanks to http://kthread.tumblr.com

don't miss a thang, y'all!

Miles Davis and Finding the Right Jazz + Sonic Youth

After days of turmoil caring for our 5-yr-old by myself, I found I was hungering for a certain musical sound. In my head, it was like Sonic Youth, but not. It was random; was it jazz? If it was jazz, what jazz? In my head the sound was chaotic, syncopated and weird. I asked a jazz friend, a bass player, “Who should I be listening to for this sound I feel?”

And while he gave me a number of suggestions, none was quite right. That made it easier to narrow down. Who was missing here?

Miles.

Of course. Miles Davis, what the fuck is wrong with me? I immediately searched in Spotify and clicked.

Ah, the relief, OH, the relief when I turned Miles on.

What is this need? And what’s the connection between Miles and Sonic Youth?

Sonic Youth is chaotic and overbearing, and completely rob the soul of all sense of self with discordant sound arrangements that travel through dimensions, and build rooms, and become enveloping, all-encompassing...disappearing.

I thought of Jean-Michel Basquiat talking about jazz in the beautiful doc, Radiant Child. I thought of his favorite type of jazz, Bebop. I went through the players...shit!

still not one that fit the bill...who hadn’t I tried?

Miles.

Chaotic, loud, absolutely sure of its place in space and time, his sound is fucking free flying sound, with the volume, and the travel in and out. It’s random, beautiful chaos. There’s so much freedom in that. It’s a language spoken so clearly, as if to say, “I am reality. I am all.”

To which I say, “I submit. I give it up. I’ll become nothing for sound.”


UPDATE: it was the grateful dead i was hearing. not miles. not sonic youth. the grateful dead were brilliant at playing noise too. known as "drums/space",  they used it as an intermission at shows because they played for three hours. played. instruments. three hours. sometimes four. the drummers would take over and the guitarists, keyboardist and bassist would take a break; then they switched.

sonic youth. miles. the grateful dead. the most beautiful noise three-way you can get. time to put on headphones, listen to this trio, and become nothing. phew.

Nothing is worse than losing your mind...

...but if you survive it, you gain a skill that will make the rest of your life easier than it would have been without.

(Thanks, Jenny Holzer!)

100 Galloping Monsters

This girl I know, she gave up too quickly. She was a kid living in a depressed area, she had few skills and was looking at low pay. She said, "I'll never be able to afford it here."

Her mom moved to Oklahoma, that dustbowl of dead opportunity. So she moved to the same tiny town not close to anything. Or anyone. Or any future bigger than the reality right in front of her.

No 21-year-old who lives here ever has enough money, and always gets low pay. I wish I had told her that. You stay and work it, because this is where opportunity lives and without opportunity, life will always be the same. No movement. No growth. No risks. No learning.

To live here at 21, you have to adjust to not eating much. You find a home that will let you split the rent into two payments a month, a place with included electricity. You move into a closet, one big enough just for a futon on the floor and a place for the door to open.

She didn't have a dream, she didn't think she could do it. But what about me? I had no confidence either, but I was filled with the juiced-up anger of 100 galloping monsters. That anger burned like a fever, forever moving me forward. Bad decisions led to mistakes which led to learning, far reaching discoveries, and devastating humiliations.

Just the right amount of insanity is a very good thing. I'm so grateful for the fire inside. I worked San Francisco and I won. 16 years of struggle. Nonstop struggle, with no net, no backup, no parents with a handy check to send. I worked my way up in a creative industry that paid a lot, because of the raging fever. Because I held tightly to the conviction that mediocrity must be avoided at all costs. I could stop eating and I could live in the ghetto and I could survive a nervous breakdown all by myself. And get back up and work more and be abused more, just to make it past the next rung. 

And then, 16 years later, I left the boiling cauldron of City culture. I had won.

And when I won and I was done, I said goodbye and good riddance and went on to have a peaceful life in a quiet town on the other side of the bridge. 

When I was done I put that City in a headlock and threw it down on the ground and stepped on it. "Thank you, tar pit trap, for making me a person I can respect."