If it has a frame, it's a work of art

 

Tracy & Frida, October 10, 2023

RIP Kenneth Anger

 https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/may/25/kenneth-anger-obituary

Dennis goes solo

 http://dennisfinnegan.com/new-recordings-2

Latest from Laco

Roman Harvan, Laco Teren - Dreaming Away - YouTubeYouTubehttps://www.youtube.com › watch

Dreaming Away - Roman Harvan, Laco TerenApplehttps://music.apple.com › album › dreaming-away

Hear No Evil

The sounds at night. The sounds I hear at night.
I hear—I do not hear—I hear a tune
The silence and the song is what I hear.
What I don’t hear is you. I don’t hear you.

I hear no—
I fear no—
I hear no evil

I dream of how we’d walk out through the hours
I’d hear: click clack. The ticking. Then it stops .
When I look you’re not beside me. You’re gone.
Still I catch your footprints on the sidewalk

I hear no—
I fear no—
I hear no evil

You’re gone. The song goes on. The song is gone.
No chords. Not even notes. Perhaps just urges.
The silence and the song. But what I want
I want right now. The darkness. Silence. Perfect.

I hear no—
I fear no—
I hear no evil

Steal softly through sunshine...

 Saw Eugene Chadbourne the other evening at the Museum of Art Brut in Lausanne.  Small but very appreciative full house, mostly "young people", i.e., younger than me.  He sang and played a lot of nice songs. His Beefheart cover filled me with joy. I saw him once in Boston about twenty years ago, double bill with Jimmy Carl Black. I think this was better. He's the only musician besides myself I've seen play the Marauder.  Alas, he's sold the parts.

 We were at some sort of county fair/battle of the bands event. Tracy hadn't shown up yet, she was stuck in traffic or something, but we managed to tear up "Spheres" with just the three of us.

#9 Bream Song

The lake in the song is Lac Leman, and the bridge the good old Pont de Mont Blanc, which had a way of shaking as you walked across that now would make me think an earthquake was on the way.  I forget if I actually dreamed this, or imagined it as I was walking across the bridge stoned or just made up at some point.

I dreamed as I was walking across the lake

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream

The bridge beneath my feet began to shake

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream

A school of flying fish rose up in synch

Like dead poets, bless the poets

Electric yellow, neon green and pink

Like dead poets, bless the poets

I recognized those fish flying overhead

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream

Were the poets I read in my youth, now dead

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream

The shining spirits of poets who had died

Like dead poets, bless the poets 

Through neglect, disease or suicide

Like dead poets, bless the poets

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream 

Like dead poets, bless the poets

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream 

Like dead poets, bless the poets

The only beauty it seems that we revere

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream

Will flash and shine, explode, then disappear

Like dead poets, bless the poets

Like Berryman and Dylan, if you please

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream

Anne Sexton, Sylvia and Weldon Kees

Like dead poets, bless the poets

We all so love to dream of a special heaven

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream

For rock stars who have died at 27

Like dead poets, bless the poets

And what’s illuminated in their wake?

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream

Is it the blue of sky or blue of lake?

Like dead poets, bless the poets

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream 

Like dead poets, bless the poets

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream 

Like dead poets, bless the poets, &c.

 Pelé may be gone, but Baby Pelé will live on forever.

 Jimmy, I'm sorry I forgot your birthday.  I hope it was filled with cheer.

Forgotten, but not gone

 Missing my birthday greeting!

Been there, done that

 

Happy birthday Johny

 And how you are celebrating today?

Dum Dum Boys

https://youtu.be/jRivyhE3JvU

Nice interview. Nice hearing them sing together, too.

Do The Murmuration, Baby

When 10,000 starlings fly

They mur-mur-ate

Make a kaleidoscope in the sky

They mur-mur-ate

Dancing without holding hands

More precise than marching bands

Just doing what the dance demands

They murmurate! They murmurate!

Humans on earth, let’s do it too

Let's mur-mur-ate

Let’s join together like starlings do

Let's mur-mur-ate

Can’t we learn to take a page

From those starlings who engage

To make the whole sky their own stage

Let’s murmurate! Let’s murmurate!

We too can move in a big formation

Let's mur-mur-ate

Rising and falling in a great gyration

Let's mur-mur-ate

We don’t need leaders, we don’t need rules

There’s dances you can’t learn in schools

Come on all you dancing fools

Let’s murmurate! Let’s murmurate!

Let's mur-mur-ate!

This is a 60s dance craze-type song for my dear friend Larry Starling.  Because he's dark-colored and lives in a birdcage he's hard to photograph.  This is the best I could do:

Epithalamion

I also wrote this one for him.  (Ned Stone = Philip van Ouse.)

Yesterday we wept

Tomorrow we will fight

But let there be no tears,

No anger on this night

And even if tomorrow is

The day the world ends

Tonight there is still time enough

To celebrate our friends

Though I am not a believer

And barely an agnostic

I do believe in this union

Of Van Ouse & Tomasic

Tonight there is no room
For the fear we all have carried

Tonight there’s only room for joy

For our friends who’re getting married

Don’t rise up from the table

Don’t turn away the cup

Tonight all sorrow’s chased with joy

Tonight we’ll drink it up

Though I am not a believer

And barely an agnostic

I do believe in this union

Of Van Ouse & Tomasic

Sonnet 43 or so

 My friend Ned Stone's getting married next month. I wrote this song for him (by way of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and John Cage)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the droop and breach and heft
My soap can reach, when feeling out of samples
For the ends of buttons and ideal grandmother.
I love thee to the liver of every day’s
Most quaggy niche, by soup and canine light.
I love thee frizzily, as men strip for Richard.
I love thee purple, as they turn from prairie dogs.
I love thee with the passport put to use
In my old gravy, and with my chicken’s fade-in.
I love thee with a love I seemed to loop
With my locked saints. I love thee with the bakery,
Smock, teapot, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after Delaware.

RIP Mary

 My mother died at home in bed on 11 May.

RIP Steven

I Am Waiting

I was thinking of like a Bowie song from "Lodger."

I am waiting for instructions
I am waiting to be given
The most recent set of orders
I am waiting for directions
I am waiting for a stockpile
Of gasoline and toilet paper
I am waiting for the drugstore
To renew my last prescription

I am waiting
I am waiting

I am waiting for the sirens
To stop their ringing for a moment
I am waiting for the militia
Getting closer to our borders
I am waiting to hear the anthem
Cheering on our local Farm Team
I am waiting for the ice cream truck
I haven’t heard those chimes in days now

I am waiting
I am waiting

We need the Good Guys, at least allies
The hotsie-totsies who punch Nazis
The dads and mommies, anti-Commies
Mounties on horses with their forces
I am waiting for the code
To this episode
The book, the guide
All the answers found inside

I am waiting for the moral
To this fable I keep hearing
I am waiting for the secret
Explanation to this story
I am waiting for the punchline
Of this endless shaggy dog joke
I am waiting. Can you hear me?
I am waiting. I am waiting