1. To be so bad that you've objectively been judged so by peers. Cred. Didja hear? Jasper put two in Kerry after he mucked on the docks. That's some seriously guilty shit.
2. Doing time to earn one's due. Respect. Seattle, WA--The newly resolute John "Jasper" Phillips pled 'Guilty', officially ending the State's chances of implicating alleged crime boss Alex Boskevitch in the recent wave of break-ins at popular chain electronic stores. Trevor Abilglass, lead counsel for the State, has implied, but been unable to prove, that Phillips is taking the fall for Boskevitch.
3. Hip. Look at this ink I got to commemorate my brother Jas! It's guilty.
8.03.2008
Definitions: Guilty
Guilty (gill tea) adj.
7.08.2008
I was shaving the other day around the latest outcropping of acne on my chin, cursing my life's good luck to get my mom's bad skin, when a phrase popped in my head like an aggrieved blood vessel. This is not unusual. Things bubble up all the time. My brain will cobble together some words into a phrase fraught with emotional resonance and, often, an abundance of assonance before lobbing it at the world like a spaghetti plate at a wall. This is what teachers call brainstorming.
From there, I try to concoct a vignette that might properly frame those words, imbuing them with the feelings and tensions I had in saying them. Some angst, some pain, and a month later, it's a first draft so ugly you consider keeping it in a burlap sack until you can find a bat or a stick or something with which to beat it to death. On the plus side, if you're lucky, it's an honest little thing, with no refinement or pretension to trip up its blaring declaration of THE TRUTH.
And then you must revise THE TRUTH, pushing it forever up until you abandon it or it crushes you, hopefully somewhere near where you started. This is where I often get stuck, sitting at mountain bottom on top of my boulder thinking how godawfully hard it'll be to begin. To get rid of all the parts that don't work and replace them with other things that are marginally better, intelligent design in metered lines, evolution in essay form.
For me, the problem is affect, that need to be bigger than the moment and say a little something to everyone; my symptom: sarcasm, a knowing eye roll of the tongue. The funny thing is observing how that same wrench gets in everywhere. The man who dances around his stiff spine like a church-approved maypole, biting at his lip as hardens his elbows into crooks? Afraid to simply shake his shit. The woman who tries to sing Houston when she should just loosen up and belt out some Jett? Scared of her own inherent power. You gotta let the audience find you, not the reverse, and I've a glut of projects that I need to clear out of my barn.
From there, I try to concoct a vignette that might properly frame those words, imbuing them with the feelings and tensions I had in saying them. Some angst, some pain, and a month later, it's a first draft so ugly you consider keeping it in a burlap sack until you can find a bat or a stick or something with which to beat it to death. On the plus side, if you're lucky, it's an honest little thing, with no refinement or pretension to trip up its blaring declaration of THE TRUTH.
And then you must revise THE TRUTH, pushing it forever up until you abandon it or it crushes you, hopefully somewhere near where you started. This is where I often get stuck, sitting at mountain bottom on top of my boulder thinking how godawfully hard it'll be to begin. To get rid of all the parts that don't work and replace them with other things that are marginally better, intelligent design in metered lines, evolution in essay form.
For me, the problem is affect, that need to be bigger than the moment and say a little something to everyone; my symptom: sarcasm, a knowing eye roll of the tongue. The funny thing is observing how that same wrench gets in everywhere. The man who dances around his stiff spine like a church-approved maypole, biting at his lip as hardens his elbows into crooks? Afraid to simply shake his shit. The woman who tries to sing Houston when she should just loosen up and belt out some Jett? Scared of her own inherent power. You gotta let the audience find you, not the reverse, and I've a glut of projects that I need to clear out of my barn.
5.19.2008
With your fingers curled in the beach
Tomorrow--improbably--The End Times has a show. We'll be gracing the stage of our favorite little house/bar Cafe Racer right around nine and will play for as long as the gin and whisky fuels us. This is perfect preparation for our upcoming recording session, sure to be available on our MySpace sponsored shop within a fortnight.
Speaking of recording, The Irrelevant Prophets recently visited the Fairhaven recording studio and put four future singles to DAT tape. The results are fiery, focused affairs, except for the one about the solar system, because there is no fire in space. You can hear (and download) them here.
As for me, I've traveled out of open-ended days (oftentimes known as the "musician lazies") into highly-structured weeks. I'm maintaining three jobs in as many disciplines: one catering to my years of tutoring the hard scrawls in writing centers, another that pays me to listen to fresh world-heavy mixes, and the last, the newest, which is full-on office work, surrounding my clerical obsessions with a positive, supportive environment.
An environment you can experience the essence of, even if the methods are much much different, tomorrow at Cafe Racer. We'll be in the rumpus room, but we'll meet you in the bar.
Speaking of recording, The Irrelevant Prophets recently visited the Fairhaven recording studio and put four future singles to DAT tape. The results are fiery, focused affairs, except for the one about the solar system, because there is no fire in space. You can hear (and download) them here.
As for me, I've traveled out of open-ended days (oftentimes known as the "musician lazies") into highly-structured weeks. I'm maintaining three jobs in as many disciplines: one catering to my years of tutoring the hard scrawls in writing centers, another that pays me to listen to fresh world-heavy mixes, and the last, the newest, which is full-on office work, surrounding my clerical obsessions with a positive, supportive environment.
An environment you can experience the essence of, even if the methods are much much different, tomorrow at Cafe Racer. We'll be in the rumpus room, but we'll meet you in the bar.
4.17.2008
4.14.2008
Definitions: Speaker Crackle
Speaker Crackle: (noun) Hiccups.
"I can't understand a thing Sarah's saying on this message. Her speaker crackle is fierce."
"I can't understand a thing Sarah's saying on this message. Her speaker crackle is fierce."
4.11.2008
Something about this
The two following poems appeared in Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac and stuck with me for a couple of months; something in the way the form intersects with the thought, the thrust. Instead of having these kick around my inbox forever, I'm placing them here.
Aftermath
by George Held, from Grounded
Finishing Line Press, 2007
It's not the storm itself—wind and rain lashing shore,
uprooting trees, toppling poles and dousing lights,
flooding cellars and roads, capsizing boats—
but the aftermath—the bright calm, the pair
of drowned cats crumpled against the picket fence,
the parlor of Izzy's shack open for inspection,
the walls fallen flat on all sides, your own
roof filling the front yard, covering your car,
and your own twin daughters dazed by Nature's
petulance—that makes you reconsider
your life and weigh your possessions and the cost
of putting down stakes too near the coast
as the globe warms, and storms grow worse
~
Montana
by Gary Johnson
A great many small failures have brought me to this
Dark room where, against the teachings of the church,
I lie in the forgiving dark with you and we kiss
And loosen our clothing and feel the hot urge
Toward nakedness, man's natural destination,
The slow unbuttoning, unclasping, until at last
We lie revealed. The fine sensation
Of you on my skin. A slender woman as vast
As Montana and I am now heading west
On a winding road through the dark contours
Of mountains and into a valley, coming to rest
In a meadow that I recognize as yours.
This is what I drove across North Dakota to find:
This sweet nest. And put all my failed life behind.
Aftermath
by George Held, from Grounded
Finishing Line Press, 2007
It's not the storm itself—wind and rain lashing shore,
uprooting trees, toppling poles and dousing lights,
flooding cellars and roads, capsizing boats—
but the aftermath—the bright calm, the pair
of drowned cats crumpled against the picket fence,
the parlor of Izzy's shack open for inspection,
the walls fallen flat on all sides, your own
roof filling the front yard, covering your car,
and your own twin daughters dazed by Nature's
petulance—that makes you reconsider
your life and weigh your possessions and the cost
of putting down stakes too near the coast
as the globe warms, and storms grow worse
~
Montana
by Gary Johnson
A great many small failures have brought me to this
Dark room where, against the teachings of the church,
I lie in the forgiving dark with you and we kiss
And loosen our clothing and feel the hot urge
Toward nakedness, man's natural destination,
The slow unbuttoning, unclasping, until at last
We lie revealed. The fine sensation
Of you on my skin. A slender woman as vast
As Montana and I am now heading west
On a winding road through the dark contours
Of mountains and into a valley, coming to rest
In a meadow that I recognize as yours.
This is what I drove across North Dakota to find:
This sweet nest. And put all my failed life behind.
4.10.2008
The End Times Jive
When we arrived, it was closed.
The giant plaster tea pot--made of the same material those roadside dinosaurs were poured, general American hope and plaster, probably able to withstand a nuclear blast--was shut. It and roaches will be all that remain when we're dust. Teapots and dinosaurs and roaches.
We saw old friends (Hi Pat!) and made new, saw great bands and also rans, and generally had a time.
If you joined us then, or at Cafe Racer, thank you. Your support is everything.
This coming Wednesday, we play a show at the one venue in this city perfectly suited to our stylistic and acoustic desires: The Jewelbox Theater. We will assist Pillow Army and Hardison. The latter of which opened the Jive for us, like thus:
Hardison
The End Times
Paul and Deborah Paige
Aurora Roarers
The giant plaster tea pot--made of the same material those roadside dinosaurs were poured, general American hope and plaster, probably able to withstand a nuclear blast--was shut. It and roaches will be all that remain when we're dust. Teapots and dinosaurs and roaches.
We saw old friends (Hi Pat!) and made new, saw great bands and also rans, and generally had a time.
If you joined us then, or at Cafe Racer, thank you. Your support is everything.
This coming Wednesday, we play a show at the one venue in this city perfectly suited to our stylistic and acoustic desires: The Jewelbox Theater. We will assist Pillow Army and Hardison. The latter of which opened the Jive for us, like thus:
Hardison
The End Times
Paul and Deborah Paige
Aurora Roarers
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