tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38824978423127754122024-02-20T05:30:11.776-08:0099 Words99 Hookerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15996079358743804893noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3882497842312775412.post-6203025425337861772017-09-28T21:57:00.001-07:002017-10-02T05:07:01.161-07:00Wilder Shores -Belinda Carlisle<div class="MsoNormal">
God
bless Belinda Carlisle! AKA Dotty Danger, first Germs drummer (lasted one day) –
a punk priestess within the delightfully apocalyptic LA scene (1977, The
Canterbury Hotel, <i>Decline of Western Civ</i>
101). Carlisle, co-founded the delightful post-apocalyptic all-girl-band The
Go-Gos whose sugar-encrusted songs and videos affirmed a cheery hollowness Andy
Warhol could have loved : “deeply superficial.”
Belinda then morphed into a “adult oriented” chanteuse who swapped out
campy fun for designer lifestyles. It girl. Cosmo girl. VIP girl. Girl next
door. French Girl. Even Artist girl. And of course Party girl. She awoke from one
cocaine binge back in bed with a Dodgers bad boy as the new owner of a thoroughbred
horse. Like all great Americans her arc from absurd success back down into
wanton excess became fodder for a sobering tell-all comeback (<i>Lips Unsealed</i>, 2011). Chock full of too much “common sense” and not
enough depravity<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> or
even simple life passages such as heartache, the reader can blame the book’s
tactful remove not on some quaint idea of censorship but rather her spiritual
awakening in India. And thus we come full circle (in the sand) to her latest
release – <i>Wilder Shores</i> (due out on
Friday, September 29<sup>th</sup>, 2017). Once again like a real Forrest Gump,
Ms. Carlisle is at one with the Zeitgeist.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Having
already worked with Kundalini mantra-singing superstar Simrit - including a
shared billed at Sat Nam Fest - <i>Wilder Shores</i>
offers a full album of pop songs built from Kundalini yoga chants. Carlisle was
introduced to Kundalini yoga 25 years ago and has had a “serious practice” for
10. She credits the discipline with allowing
her to control her wildly addictive behaviors around substances including cocaine
and food. Nothing to sneeze at! <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Like punk rock, AOR and “tell-all” autobiographies,
Kundalini yoga has become a pop phenomenon. Various programs have branded
Kundalini yoga with a welter of encouraging success stories, merchandise,
online chatter, changed lives, unmentionable ironies, curious indulgences: an
outbreak of peaceful easy feelings.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
A yoga practice with a focus on
chanting, Kundalini first came to attention in “the West” at the end of the 19<sup>th</sup>
century. Flourishing first as a bio-psychological philosophy it is now a daily
practice for an ever-increasing large number of citizens around the world.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a
bio-psychological philosophy (all the rage in the 19<sup>th</sup> century
“West”, as found for instance in the radical connection of body & mind in Fredrich
Nietzsche – “Has anyone yet written the philosophy of the stomach?”<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>),
the Kundalini tradition has given “Western” post-Apocalyptic (WWII) thinkers a
way of talking about the fine line, perhaps the imaginary line, between madness
and spiritual awakening, or as one often reads – “bliss or nightmare?” Abyss or
freedom?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Intellectually Kundalini yoga can
be a bit of a New Age bad boy – the energies released can be overwhelming (a
snake uncoiling from the base of one’s spine, memorably described in Gopi
Krishna’s (1903-84) famed autobiography (<i>Kundalini</i>,
Shambala, 1967). People’s heads have
been known to explode with lightening.
Seizures can occur. Heat or
pressure can overtake body & mind. Resembling
a psychotic break, this phenomenon can be called a “spiritual emergency.” I am not aware that Belinda has experienced
any of this; her madness was what Kundalini practice relieved. Her <i>Wilder Shores</i> are behind her rather than
<i>straight up ahead</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
In the early part of the 20<sup>th</sup>
century Carl Jung, had an “intuitive” patient with a “snake in her stomach.”<span class="MsoFootnoteReference"> <a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></a></span>
At first Jung wondered if she was schizophrenic. She was experiencing psychotic
breaks with reality – not hearing her footsteps because she was walking on air,
mistaking a brothel for a salon. The snake -- whose golden head would
eventually come out his patient’s mouth – led Jung deeper into consideration of
Kundalini and the snake as an example of “collective fantasy” – a theme Joseph
Campbell picks up in his examination of Kundalini yoga as a “path to
illumination.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of
course none of this is casually connected to Belinda’s newest product. Indulging my
own equally entitled sense of willful disconnect, I have not listened to <i>Wilder Shores</i> for this review. Arguably
reviewing the idea of her content without being prejudiced by the facts might
allow me as a critic to share the proper space wherein <i>Wilder Shores</i> arises from.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If 19<sup>th</sup>
and 20<sup>th</sup> century thinkers’ “search for secret India” abstracted a
varied, rich, ridiculous and remote tradition -- “The Orient in The West” -- Kundalini
yoga is now a very present global phenomenon. Within popular culture it has
regained its origins as an embodied practice. Chanting, striking poses and
breathing all center upon activating the body instead of providing mere intellectual
concepts As Carlisle states about the singing of mantras, "of which there are
thousands" - “It’s not just singing, it’s a science” – meaning real causes activate
real effects. Composed in the relatively
new written language of Gurmukhī (1500 AD), this former oral “language of the
gurus” uses different sounds to hit “84 meridian points in the mouth.” “[The
stimulated meridian points] in turn stimulate the hypothalamus which makes the
pineal gland radiate.<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
When the pineal gland radiates, it creates an impulse in the pituitary gland.
When the pituitary gland gives impulses, the entire glandular system secretes
and a human being obtains bliss. This is the science.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As with
all things popular the recursive feedback loop of phrases like “this is the science”
can feel mindless or even creepy to the non-initiate. Somewhere along the way
the song becomes karaoke. For example, the popular Kundalini school founded by Sihk
Yogi Bhajan generates a surprising uniformity of information across numerous media
channels despite being called a “sacrilegious hodgepodge.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Teachers and students alike seem to cleave to the melody and harmonies with an
unsettling uniformity. The instructions and goals are quite specific and
programmatic. For an outsider the singing along appears to supersede finding
one’s inner voice. As T.S. Eliot would say “One man’s hodge-podge is another’s
tradition.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
What might be cynically be called
the marketing of belief and its mechanics, has greatly assisted the popularity
of Kundalini yoga. The message, practice and goals are clear. If New Age
spirituality has traditionally been a hodge-podge of traditions, Kundalini yoga
evidences the re-emergence and interest in what used to be anathema: organized
religion. Just as The Go-Go’s signaled a return from punk noise to identifiable
structure, a kind of elevated Oprah verbiage (refined from various traditions
into something like a pop song) demarcates Kundalini communities through homogenous
theory <i>and</i> practice. So Dr. Jung, why
is your pseudo-science any better than this?<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Why not listen to New Age music as if it were
an intuitive gateway to God, or the Collective Unconscious? If it creates belief and experience is it not
real enough? If it allows someone to overcome addiction is it not good? Is not my love of a field recoding of Taos
Pueblo round dance singing merely equal to another’s predilection for Kenny G?
Is one less authentic? Belinda? Is not the inauthentic the real experience by
now? Like a store bought strawberry from Chile? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
This album and the Kundalini
movement can confront the listener with an old yet still fundamental question
about culture in general – what is authentic? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Even discounting the claims to objective
science, clearly a real need is being engaged by the Kundalini yoga phenomenon.
Large gatherings in the US, Mexico and Europe alongside thousands of
individuals in their homes on sheepskins evidence a remarkable sense of shared
purpose and practice. Conscious or not
this is a collective. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Spiritual work in the age of
mechanical (digital) reproduction is necessarily absurd. The aura of uniqueness
(what Belinda finds in “punk” Simrit<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>)
hasn’t been seen since the 1930s, that is, since it began to visibly disappear.
The question thus becomes whether Belinda’s newest effort is an alternative or
a reiteration of the problem of inauthenticity it seeks to soothe. Both. And
this is a most modern phenomenon: that something is both what it is and is what
it is not.<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
There is something about the way of our world which validates and invalidates
anything that appears. Hallowed hollowness. The lack of peace, clarity and
higher purpose – modernity – is reopened and healed by the realistically
inauthentic. Truly disembodied and displaced pop song mantras which do not even
have a <i>peasant tradition</i> <i>to give them character </i>are our folk
music. No wonder <i>the pure products of
America go crazy.</i> (<i>To Elsie</i>, William
Carlos Williams, 1938)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
And like an all-you-can-buffet, or
a weekend in Las Vegas the hodge-podge feels real because it is. If Belinda’s
album is inauthentic it is nevertheless all-too real. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i>Wilder
Shores</i> is a full length album of pop mantras plus an acoustic remake of
“Heaven is a Place on Earth.” Before considering the music, note that these are
not chants a la Simrit. Like Jung or Campbell, Carlisle has abstracted content
from Kundalini practice for her own use.
The songs on <i>Wilder Shore </i>are
not for practicing Kundalini yoga. As
Belinda tellingly posits, “If you were to put it on in the next room or in the
background you would think they are pop songs,”<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> She has broken up the repetitive (scientific)
nature of chanting with a more verse /chorus structure. “I need to be me.” The
mantra has been transformed into a pop song, just as punk or the Playboy
centerfold (2001) was transformed into a statement about Belinda. Despite the ever-present demonization of the
ego, Belinda is in fact making the world of Kundalini her own. She is still
punk whether she knows it or not.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Media agrees. With no trace of
irony (awareness) the website
Joy-Yoga.com states that Belinda’s recording are“ elevating Kundalini
mantras” which is like thinking King James improved God’s word. Suffice to say,
this album is not for attaining enlightenment nor chanting “Sa-ta-na-ma” for the
proscribed 12, 18, 31 or 61 minutes. Instead, Belinda is offering company while
one drives to the yoga studio or blends up a green smoothie.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
The music itself is much as one
might imagine. (I am writing this review
without having heard more than 60 seconds of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2EwGgdsLYA">YouTube snippets</a> which
should be sufficient.) It is neither here nor there. Thus listening or not
listening to it doesn’t make much difference. What is the sound of one hand
clapping?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
For all the materiality that
Kundalini yoga practice emphasizes, even a snippet of Belinda’s latest music reveals
a sound as disembodied and displaced as any other contemporary recording. As has been the case for many decades, pop
music no longer seems to come from any actual place on earth. Once there was a
Stax sound, or Chess, or Motown, or Megaphone which reflected both the technology
in the studio (RCA’s room size plate reverb in Memphis) and the engineers. The digital
revolution and “flat economies” of recording have erased all spatial
reference. While some projects do
reflect a technical signature (Dr. Dre’s “sound”), in general the conventions
of recording (even field recording!) have produced a generic room tone and
gated community of pure digital silence between perfectly tapered sound waves.
Listeners are at once displaced and reassured by the sterile warmth of contemporary
recordings. The familiar contours of the sound production are everywhere and
nowhere at the same time (especially with ear buds, optimized car stereos or
“we got you surrounded” sound.) Listeners can feel at “home” with the music in
any number of settings be it the grocery store or a transatlantic red third
eye. Presumably the standard digital
displacement beautifully serves <i>Wilder
Shores</i> which like many New Age iterations of “Eastern” religious impulses (including
the perfectly smooth and pure tones of Simrit) seeks to transport listeners
from the attachments of earthly concern to an amorphous space where the self,
the ego, is dutifully lost.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
The ego. The “Western” version of “Eastern” bio-psychological
philosophy and Kundalini yoga specifically, conceives the ego as the cover-all
term for all earthly, “toxic” concern. The ego - logical, fear-based, harsh, burdened
with baggage and inconsistent - is opposed to egoless creative, loving, neutral,
intuitive and consistent consciousness.<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Here is the rub, to what end? What is being
escaped and where are we finding ourselves?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Mark Epstein, MD, a long time
practioneer and writer on psychotherapy with a Buddhist perspective argues(!)
in his latest book (<i>Not Giving Advice</i>,
2017) that ego as identified with emotion has been stigmatized unfortunately. A
misinterpretation of Buddha’s “mindfulness” has led to a demonization of all
emotion. Even the kind of love that arises between two people can be felt as
triggering, an unwanted “obscenity” because it simply is a strong emotion: one which
pulls the individual from the heavens back down to earth. Here is one of Epstein’s case studies:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
As I got to know
Claire, I found that she often seemed more comfortable with her meditative
attainments than she did with her own history. She tended to use meditation as
a doorway to an empty and infinite expanse into which she could dissolve. She liked
to go to this place in her imagination and hang out there. It gave her a sense
of peace but also a feeling of sadness. There was a desolate quality to it that
I could feel whenever she spoke of it. For Claire, meditation was an
alternative to everyday reality; it was a place she could go to get away from
things that bothered her.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
The richness of
the interpersonal world remained something Claire felt unworthy of despite the
best efforts of her mother and her meditation teacher. Her basic premise,
disguised in her veneration of meditation, was that she was not real. She felt
it in her relationship with me, and it is fair to say it had become an
unconscious pillar of her identity.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
This unreality is at the center of
Belinda’s autobiography where she talks at length about feeling a fraud all her
life from being “Blimp-inda” (chubby kid) to being a pop star who didn’t know
how to sing. Not only did she feel like a fraud. She was one. As anyone is whose social functioning defines their self - not only because the public subsumes the private self, but because the public self, unlike in earlier times, cannot be authentic, subsumed as it is unto what the French call <i>Le Machine</i>. That Belinda "feels" or intuits that she has now had her fraudulent self transformed by the science of Kundalini complicates an already confused sense of higher & lower, inner & outer selves. For if a new age pop collection of "elevated" mantras is just another groundless machination of Belinda Inc, the only change is that the very idea of an inner life has been finally vanquished by its valorization. Ironic. Obeying the practice of Kundalini yoga thus both confirms her egolessness and provides a consistent way to identify herself as someone who truly has lost any sense of authentic self. Full of emptiness. Empty of interpersonal
richness. At one with the world. [Perhaps the lack of drama in her marriage (and autobiography) is not some quaint idea of discretion, but perhaps evidence of two people whose lives are more akin to two travelers on a cruise ship than two soulmates hashing through life's ups and downs.]<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Like many an American Belinda finds
enlightenment on a junket to India. The former Dotty Danger who branded her
punk self with a garbage bag dress comes full circle (in the sand) years later
at the Ganges where she “realizes” we are all just trash, our inner selves
(egos) are “garbage” to be thrown out. Heartbreakingly, the nullification of
the subject as evidenced in the concentration camps (Adorno) and the star making
machine (and every day exploitation) becomes a dissolution to identify with. What
is truly needed is to recycle and repurpose our bodies our selves.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
In a deep irony Carlisle misses as
she affirms her self as truly trash, is that the problem is not with the self
but with a culture that no longer celebrates or provides the satisfactions of its
citzens’ desires and will. America has not been of the people or for the people
for a long time, certainly not since the advent of the military industrial complex.
Our society uses and discards its people, as Belinda rightly felt in her pop
days. “America eats its young” (George Clinton). But daily struggle is not to dismiss the
self, but to reassert it. To whatever degree Carlisle attempts to make Kundalini
mantras her own, we might applaud her intuitive desire to “live your life” as a
weak, unconscious attempt to affirm her individuality. The irony at play in an earlier footnote can
be seen in the pull quote by Belinda on Simit’s home page.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
“The first time I saw her live I
thought – wow she’s kind of punk rock. I
don’t know why I thought that, but that’s the element that drew me to exploring
her music. Her sense of melody, her
energy, and her musicality set her apart from the rest.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
The individuality of Simit, what “sets
her apart”, is "punk." But Belinda does
not make the effort to understand this. This lack of critical retrospection
might explain why there is not more contradiction and conscious irony in the
Kundalini movement in general. While the ability to hold opposing ideas together at the same time is indeed a laudable capacity, the traditional thought was that this was done through understanding dialectics not turning a blind eye as to "why I thought that."<br />
Homogeneity, programmatic inherently practice has its price. While much can be said about the loss of discipline (see the letters between John Coltrane and Ravi Shankar), the modern world ultimately finds whatever authenticity it can not by following rules, marketplaces or intuitions. The true Modern makes their own rules.<br />
Insofar
as Belinda never felt special or unique or worthy, seeing herself as garbage to
be discarded (as she was and she allowed/encouraged her self to be treated within the industry), she finds a perverse sense of
oneness with her fate by subsuming her creativity within a nascent tradition apotheosizing
the eradication of the ego. On this
recording Belinda undoubtedly finally comes home – nowhere. The hodge-podge (pastiche) of “world music”
is inherently a loss of specificity and history. And rather than struggling
like Benjamin or Williams against the dissolution of self within modern culture,
Belinda and others have sought to make peace with their predatory environs by
detaching from anger, frustration and outrage over say the burning of wheat. Such emotions (along with potentially inspirational
emotions rallied by the music of George Clinton or “To Pimp a Butterfly”) only
bring you back into a post-Apocalyptic world which punk had already realized
was unredeemable.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
[The 1960s were] the
last burst of the human being before he (sic)was extinguished.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
Andre
Gregory, <i>My Dinner with Andre </i>(1981)<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Such “Eastern” (now “Western”)
detachment is seen again in Epstein’s case of Claire:<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
Emotions still
have a bad name in many Buddhist circles. When I was learning meditation, the
emotions I was taught about most often were the obstacles, or hindrances, to
meditative stability that are known to all those who try to quiet their minds.
These hindrances are usually listed as anger, lust, worry, doubt, and fatigue,
although “fatigue” is given the more arcane name of “sloth and torpor.” Who is
it that is angry? Who is it that lusts? the Buddhist teacher wants to know.
Behind each of these feelings is a sense of an all-important “me”—a person,
striving to exert control, at the center of a mostly uncooperative universe.
This way of working with the emotions, while incredibly useful at certain points,
tends to leapfrog over the important and meaningful personal content bound up
with such discomfort. Claire’s therapy is a good example of this. She wanted to
avoid her uncomfortable feelings by whatever means possible, but this left her
feeling unreal.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
Emotional content
needs a welcoming attitude; otherwise it will remain undigested, waiting to
jump out at inopportune times. There is a tendency among Buddhist
practitioners, and even among many Buddhist teachers, to lump all feelings
together and to see the spiritual path as one in which “toxic” aspects of the
self, like the emotions, are “cleansed” through practice. Through the eradication
of such “defilements,” it is assumed, a state of quiescence can be reached, a
state of calm defined by the absence of emotional disturbances. Claire’s view
was very close to this one. It is reminiscent, in the language used to describe
it, of the dynamics of toilet training associated with the Freudian anal stage,
where the cleansing of one’s waste in the service of order and control is also
emphasized. This way of practicing leads to a kind of paralysis, however.
Rather than opening up the underlying flow of feelings that marks our
connection to this world and makes us human, there is only retreat and routine.
In the guise of openness, emotions are shut down. Feelings are pushed away. A
kind of joylessness masquerades as equanimity.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
My guess is that <i>Wilder Shores</i> will be a rather joyless
(but evocative) affair. (One of the great pioneering East/West bands was John McLaughlin’s
Shakti. The opening piece on <i>Live at Montreux</i> (1976) is called “Joy.” Recorded live with all the artifacts and
specificity that a live recording offers, this piece is flat out mind-blowing. Much could be said here about internalizing a
different culture at an extremely high level – suffice to say it is on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGW4nrsZJ3o">YouTube.</a>)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
True otherness has disappeared with
Belinda because such depends upon a strong sense of self or ego. If the “East”
has a tradition of selfless oneness, the “West” has been dialectical. Carlsile’s
synthetic homogeneity prevails because actual mixing of historical reality creates
disharmony, uncertainness, doubt and anxiety … psychological states which used
to be lauded as “spurs” (as in punk for instance). At the very least alienation from God, Nature
or Society was considered part and parcel of the all-too-human “Western” struggle
to hold Gods and people in conscious dialectical dichotomy.<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Like other albums such as <i>Live Your Life Be Free </i>and<i> Real, Wilder Shores</i> is so insanely
mistitled as to approach unconscious profundity. The shores of Kundalini as advertised are not
wild at all. Yet for the right listener,
its saccharine waves of undulating electronics can with mindfulness present something
wild … and perhaps by deeply mediating on the superficiality of this product initiates
can begin to answer a question once poised as “is it schizophrenia or
kundalini?” A question perhaps better
generalized as “what is the difference between insanity and sanity?” The sane
still ask this question; they don’t package answers.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
So put down that Beethoven
bagatelle because Belinda’s album at this point in history has more for the
listener to mediate upon than any product from “high culture.” This is not some snarky inversion of values,
but a fact: the trauma (whatever it might be – cannibalism, nihilism, factory
food, incest, meaningless sacrifice) is of such unapproachable consequence that
for thousands of people, they need to believe in a practice promising a final
solution to distance them from their all-too-real pain. Belinda! Belinda! Please
get up!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I remember when people used to
stand up for what they believed in, rather than sitting down for nothingness. I
remember when people used to sit down for integration not dissolution. <i>Wilder Shores</i> evidences the loss of our
culture’s foundation built upon Greek tragedy (Simrit’s real life ironically recalls
Greek tragedy). <i>Wilder Shores</i> is not
even the wages of sin. The practice and
recordings advertise a way to dissipate, detach from emotion, and see if Heaven
can’t be a place on earth. By
considering such “reaction formulations” as evidence of traumas clearly beyond
articulation (within the subjective interiority of intuition) the attentive
listener might be able to hear underneath all the polish and predictability
(remember I am reviewing an “album” I have not heard) a profound unutterable suffering,
the greatest suffering in fact: the suffering that is unable to feel that it is
suffering. As Paul writes in Corinthians, it is only through suffering one
knows God’s mercy. To not connect to and affirm one’s suffering, to “overcome
it” (Buddha’s great mistaken goal) is to alienate one’s all-too-human self from
God, from the truly Other. Carlisle’s “religious” album is in fact deeply
profane, just as her earlier recordings profoundly denied her punk roots. For a
heretic, she goes down all too easily.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
As Nietzsche wrote in his lifelong resistance
to the dangers of nihilism “Examine the lives of the best and most fruitful
people and peoples and ask yourselves whether a tree that is supposed to grow
to a proud height can dispense with bad weather and storms.” (Gay Science,
1882) One wishes Belinda had suffered
more. Nietzsche (who wrote surprisingly much about Buddhism, perhaps because of
his mentor Schopenhauer) offered a
different kind of tension than the one offered by the Kundalini yoga movement: a
tension which can be heard in early LA punk, Greek tragedies and certain
esoteric religions wherein suffering is embraced not to be overcome, not to be let
go of, nor to detach from, but to be amplified like some of the best tracks on
“Return to the Valley of the Go-Gos” (the “valley” being a specific set of bio-psychological
and philosophic concerns for those who know LA) . The alternative to the “alternative” is to
argue that “Earth is a place on Earth.” <i>Do you know what that’s like?</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
And insofar as listening to Belinda
can bring forth such questions and thoughts, God Bless her. Like all great
works of art (aren’t they all great), the opportunity to hear our own denial of
our great suffering is perhaps of far greater use than any advertisements for
its relief. Not only is there no poetry after Auschwitz (Adorno) or the Native
American genocides, there is no pop music. True poems of the earth offer no
relief only brief respites, the kind one might find with a lover perhaps, bittersweet
glimpses of eternity embodied in the flesh which must pass into dust, which
Belinda has never confessed to experiencing in her music or her book. When I
listen to this CD which I pre-ordered on Amazon, I hope I will be inspired to
go out into the world and have my heart broken once again.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
99 Hooker, Ancram, NY, September 27<sup>th</sup>,2017
on the eve of Wilder Shores release. 99
has been practicing Kundalini yoga for 9 months at this point.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div>
<!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="ftn1">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <i>We Got the Neutron Bomb, The Untold Story of
LA Punk </i>gives a better sense of things as does Jane Weidlin in general, see
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jun/01/jane-wiedlin-go-gos-la-punk-scene-los-angeles.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Paraphrase.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMr3X_60h_Q<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn4">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Descartes, the great dualist philosopher who broke apart the body and mind
wrote that the pineal gland was the seat of the soul.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn5">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Dr.
Trilochan Singh, “a prominent Sikh scholar and historian.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3HO<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn6">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
What Eliot actually said upon being asked why he chose Christianity instead of Buddhism,
“Christianity was more culturally consistent” which is not unlike the Dali
Llama’s admonition to Westerners about being wary of adopting foreign
practices.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn7">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
The debate over whether psychology is more science or art is long standing.
Here is a good article about this debate: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evil-deeds/201001/redefining-reality-psychology-science-and-solipsism<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn8">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> ““First
of all, I’m such a fan of Simrit. The
first time I saw her live I thought – wow she’s kind of punk rock. I don’t know why I thought that, but that’s
the element that drew me to exploring her music. Her sense of melody, her energy, and her
musicality set her apart from the rest.”
http://simritkaurmusic.com/about-simrit-kaur/<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn9">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> “At
the same time all individual reality has become social reality directly dependent
on social power and shaped by it. It is allowed to appear only to the extent
that it is not.” Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle,#17 (1967)<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn10">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> https://www.banquetrecords.com/belinda-carlisle/wilder-shores/EDSL0004<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn11">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> https://www.3ho.org/kundalini-yoga/meditation/featured-meditations/voice-ego-vs-your-intuition-meditation-build<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn12">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/johnc/Documents/Belinda%20Kundalini.docx#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> “In
form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in
apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals.
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me.” Shakespeare,
<i>Hamlet</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
</div>
99 Hookerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15996079358743804893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3882497842312775412.post-35325375183030869482015-09-16T08:28:00.000-07:002015-09-16T08:33:38.764-07:00Harmony (476 words)<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">From
her parents, or her mother, perhaps the commune - she got the name Harmony.
Like my unhappy friend Joy, Harmony’s name was a curse or at least an enduring
rebuttal.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Harmony
had hitch-hiked in from the dessert. She’d been mourning at the spot where the
year before her friend had been dumped after being picked up by a trucker,
raped, and killed. “She wasn't just killed. She’d been cut into pieces.” She’d
been dropped in the dessert by friends who were irritated that Harmony hadn’t
spoken during their three day trip to the spot. She would hitch-hike out.
Strangely, the suspect in the case had recently driven his 18 wheeler into an
Amtrak train, killing himself and “injuring dozens”. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">“The
police were closing in,” said Harmony.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">I
offered her bus money for her next trip. I had extra at the time. She didn't accept it.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Harmony
was telling everyone at the table to “Fuck off.” Six of us were sitting under
the pines, under the stars around my neighbor’s big homemade picnic table.
People were creating weird cocktails with gin, Aperol, moonshine, wine and tea.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Harmony
told her story of being in a disco in China. A man had appeared and gave her a
drink as she danced. She knew better. She drank it. Luckily her friends saw it
and put her in a cab. “Good thing. No one gives a shit about you in China.”
Harmony woke up the next day in the hostel with no memory. I said “You know
David Tudor says everything eventually resolves into Harmony, just the way
anything that repeats once has rhythm.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She reached across the table, held and squeezed my hand. She rolled
under the table. I was scared she was going to try and blow me. She touched my
thigh. She came up next to me. Amid the chaos of the night, everyone drinking,
we kept talking. “In the deprivation tank there was no silence only the whine
of nerves, the murmur of the cardio-vascular.” “You’re the only one who fucking
understands. Fuck these cunts.” Harmony swung her arm in the dark. I’d had
enough. I stumbled into the woods, tripped over a log splitter in the dark, cut
myself good and limped home alone to bed.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The next morning I went over to the
neighbors.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Where’s Cacophony?</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>N and J laughed. N said “She walked
off the mountain in the middle of the night after making a big scene.”</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Fuck. This is probably the best
place for her right now.”</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Not with us.”</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Not with me,” I said.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>N smiled. “You two were talking up a
storm.”</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">I
was so glad we hadn’t fucked. “I don’t think she heard me.”</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“She can’t hear much.” N was making
breakfast. “I know that commune scene where she grew up. Too much free love, too
many old men.”</span></span></div>
99 Hookerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15996079358743804893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3882497842312775412.post-23255948447878910152015-07-04T10:49:00.000-07:002015-07-04T16:17:15.058-07:00I dreampt a perfect story in a 17 hour stretch. The only words I'll ever have are the ones I've known before.<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Three
times I woke and worked to remember it. Slept in the bath until the water got
cold; my son's bed where she'd left a canopy of printed fabric & Christmas
lights; and the firmer, nicer half of our bed untouched for five months. Less a
story, rather perfect proportions moving. A lava lamp! For real :) All the shapes
morphing, each intense color and shape shifting accompanied by the human
virtues: death, joy, boredom, love ... flowing instead of blurring. Now I've
forgotten. A Christian cartoon: three kids (white, yellow, brown) squeaking
through the Stations of the Cross. "How does He do it???" <i>He is Jesus.</i> Terrific headache. "Emergency
contact?" Now? <i>My brother</i>. Tears
explode. Staff concerned. Cool it. Remember Mingus self-imprisoned in Bellevue
- "Just needed rest." You pissed on that place. Fetal position (of
course), she wheels me to the CAT scanner. Soft sobs. Finally laugh out a workable
cliché "Nice driving." Her kind eyes. A projected loop of heaven blows
across 16 panels. I loved the end, the separation. The sky went up or my bed
went down. My problem with words: I often believe they mean something before living
them as in "letting go."</span>99 Hookerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15996079358743804893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3882497842312775412.post-85196048696282198252015-04-24T18:54:00.002-07:002015-04-24T18:54:51.869-07:00I always loved Stephanie, the idea of Stephanie<div class="MsoNormal">
Wrote "W"s on each ass cheek. Bent over &
spelt "WOW" with her asshole. Nights with my sister full of smoke,
drink, dance, laughing. And crazy stories: Dad baby-sitting Stephanie in Cleveland
porno houses. The tattered Mission "tranny" karaoke where we used to
dance, kissed. In NY, Stephanie called. "Sunday's a date!" Then I
canceled - a friend said Sunday was his only free night. "Stephanie can we
reschedule?" "Sure." They
knew without knowing they wouldn't. Sunday had been their night. Months later, returning
from rehab she overdosed. His sister called. Penn Station. Bought ice cream,
cried, ate slowly.</div>
99 Hookerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15996079358743804893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3882497842312775412.post-4925441276531765252015-03-19T16:44:00.000-07:002015-03-19T16:44:13.192-07:00Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood<div class="MsoNormal">
We finally had the right Swiss Army blade and gob of Vaseline
to split open the atom Jimmy had plucked outta dem dare frog eggs. <i>Power-up dat fucking piece o' shit solar</i>
<i>TV,</i> Dad bought from that Vietnam Vet
at the Woodbury Flea Market. Finally some awful, hilarious K-Pop where the
albino cock-less wonders with mad eyebrows dally-dance with well-tapered tit-forward
steaming piles of vanilla shit representing duh female form. So gloriously
false and mesmerizingly horrible in our plucky tree house. The reality would
pass the rest of my life as nostalgia forever at odds with its ever-arriving presence. </div>
99 Hookerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15996079358743804893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3882497842312775412.post-69068281807286239912015-03-15T18:29:00.002-07:002015-03-15T18:29:50.744-07:00Extrapolating<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Radio
Shack™ "pillow speaker" from earphone port - white plastic idli of
sound. 14. First time - <i>Knocking on
Heaven's Door™. </i>Mysterious. Magical. Kids asleep. Parents downstairs.
Dishes done. Distant Dave Brubeck. Then LA. Can't think of a tattoo. Stained
glass? Guns & Roses? <i>Stylized</i> stylized.
<i>Ohhhh yeah baayyybeee</i>. Life in the Everywhere
Studio. LA Guns in the ground. <i>Cold black
cloud coming down</i> ... yet ... <i>what
thou lovest well remains</i>. Dylan, 32. Me, 25. <i>Don't cry tonight, there's a heaven above you.</i> What's bad is good; what's
good is bad. Anything without victory has a chance ...</span>99 Hookerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15996079358743804893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3882497842312775412.post-18002369941710620732015-03-04T06:56:00.002-08:002015-03-04T06:56:34.904-08:00I was walking with a friend and<div class="MsoNormal">
his floppy Springer Spaniel. John was a second father to me
in high school, a preacher, a vet who would die too early - Agent Orange. John
might talk about jogging into a tree because he'd been mesmerized by the clouds.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"I've
always liked cloudy days myself," said I.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"Why
is that?"</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"Too
much light gives me nothing. I like the unfair shafts bringing my attention to
some sapling or that corner of the basketball court where trash and leaves have
accumulated."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"I
still think you might become a preacher."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"Like
you?" I said.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
"Ha
ha, no, like you."</div>
99 Hookerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15996079358743804893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3882497842312775412.post-31287887461198800582015-02-16T20:35:00.001-08:002015-02-16T20:35:58.433-08:00Subscription Offer<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;">So
much bad art; I make much myself. A numbers game; it can't snow every day. Then
there's the scope of flow; one's landscape is another's ski resort. And don't
discount the need to stumble, fart stupidly, be more than obvious. An awful
poem -<i>The NY Review of Books</i>. I've
always hated this publication - a good read. Another poem regarding the white
page: full of muted agony and tempered ecstasy. I'm happy for it; I realize
what's missing, what terrifies: if the writer's skill at projecting life upon
the emptiness, then imagine what they must do to people.</span></div>
99 Hookerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15996079358743804893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3882497842312775412.post-5586596480971827982015-02-07T06:30:00.002-08:002015-02-07T06:30:53.381-08:00The transaction - (commas as brush strokes)<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
He paid for every orgasm, every touch of her breast, her
matted fur, with every shaft of forgetting recalled in obsessive strokes of
his brush, layers of wet ocher, taupe, and true black. No sense thinking in dollars.
He paid in the old-fashioned exchange of experience, never equivalent, concerned,
crazed by the i'mbalance, the unaccountable space as framed by two truly
appearing, one fleshed in, the canvass a bill to be paid, never enough, such is
their beauty, the musk one imagines within the remains, the truth that, at best,
the image, she, must be, become something more, less.</div>
99 Hookerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15996079358743804893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3882497842312775412.post-11213218324542936722015-01-28T07:16:00.000-08:002015-01-28T07:19:06.782-08:00You don't need a Shaman to tell which way the Winds blow<div class="MsoNormal">
Accurate facts on the ground merely multiply the hype within
the labeled clouds. The curse reversed. Originally, weather was interpreted
like chicken innards. Predictably, awe, mystery, panic accumulates. It lies in
the loss of the curvaceous. The sexless Dad, out of retirement, points up the cold
air font. The grid of flights, color-coded everything, scrolling banners below:
watches, advisories, finally emergencies. Capital's regions buried momentarily. Miss
work. Miss Universe. Yellow trucks, salt's lot. We miss a history to deny,
shovel. Profane storms pale before miracles & plagues. </div>
99 Hookerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15996079358743804893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3882497842312775412.post-89176248772371528622015-01-02T05:32:00.000-08:002015-01-02T05:32:02.345-08:00Like this morning<div class="MsoNormal">
She was one of those cousins I'd never known about. Darker
skin gloved in a white turtleneck. Texas, December. Soft nest of black hair -
part tumbleweed, lint and 100% Annette Funicello. Their truck descended the
horse field, dropped us at the filing station. "We'll walk back," I
said. The party was in back. A rattlesnake stuck out of a manhole, terrestrial
eel, a solitary stamen waving about the throat of a cement underground flower
disappearing into the earth. Fifty of her closest friends were situated around big
bowls of chips. I was happy. Everything new makes me happy.</div>
99 Hookerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15996079358743804893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3882497842312775412.post-56498256006944823862014-12-14T06:43:00.000-08:002014-12-14T12:42:32.581-08:00Cuz<span style="font-family: Calibri;">After Catholic schools, eight years off helicopter zip lines,
fast, "cuz next guy’s on your ass." Tore up his knees like he
"lit up" Afghanistan. Starts with shots, wants to get me;
"Thanks, but I'm working." SoCo. Jameson. Jack. Everyone’s empties
thud down. Second mistake: wants the world to feel like him. Told the
judge “Pure anger, sir.” 18 months was as good as it gets. “Bitch” has his
money; his adult kids been five years silent. Laughs, says he’s glad Dad beat him
cuz he "gotta good work ethic." Two hours later, his boss arrives, takes him home.</span>99 Hookerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15996079358743804893noreply@blogger.com0