poems penny each

Is it not by his high superfluousness we know
Our God? For to be equal a need
Is natural, animal, mineral: but to fling
Rainbows over the rain
And beauty above the moon, and secret rainbows
On the domes of deep sea-shells,
And make the necessary embrace of breeding
Beautiful also as fire,
Not even the weeds to multiply without blossom
Nor the birds without music-
There is the great humaneness at the heart of things,
The extravagant kindness, the fountain
Humanity can understand, and would flow likewise
If power and desire...
-Robinson Jeffers

ship of fools (hunter/garcia) by me

industrial stuff in Portland

open mic

I'm playing at on open mic tonight at Fireworks in Corvallis.  Feel free to come down or tune into the webcast   starting at 9pm.  I won't be the only one playing, but I will probably be the only "Chris."  Maybe I can sell another cd.  I'm thinking of buying a whole bunch of equipment so that I can start playing cafes, because my voice definitely needs amplification.  My guitar is loud anyway, but my voice is kind of weak.  I think I would need a mixing board in addition to an  amplifier, because all I have right now is an acoustic with a pickup built in, and a microphone and stand for the microphone, and that is it.  I think I have the self-confidence to get up and sing and play for two hours, and I have enough songs, so I might as well get started.  However, there aren't a lot of venues in Corvallis, and I haven't got anything going as of yet.

I played the Interzone last year and it was a disaster.  I thought I had some good songs, but something about the atmosphere was just completely stultifying.  Plus there was like two people there.  At the most.

I used "I" about two zillion times in this post.  Does that mean I am self-centered?  Maybe.  But this is just about playing music.  It doesn't mean that I have zero concern for anybody else, which I undoubtedly do.  

It's art for art's sake, and I find that if I can concentrate on making the song sound the way I think it should sound then it works out, because I have a opinion that a song is good, and that if I play it right, it will sound good, which brings me to the fact that I'm playing exclusively songs that are written by somebody else, most likely Hunter/Garcia, Cat Stevens, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, or somebody similar.  Some of them are old folk songs that predate all these people.  Tonight I play on playing Bertha (Grateful Dead), Here Comes the Flood (Peter Gabriel), Rubin and Cherise (Hunter/Garcia), Dry Your Eyes (Neil Diamond), Stella Blue, and maybe some more.

negative comments

One thing that really gets to me is getting negative comments.  It's like "Thank you for the time you spent to analyze my video and decide it was worth one star.  I really appreciate it."  It's especially funny to get the dismissive comments on my karate videos.  I may not have done the forms perfectly, or even close to it, but there was a considerable amount of training and practice involved.  And the commenter probably has never even done any karate at all, and  is in no position to give any criticism anyway.  Then there are the people that say my music is terrible.  Thank you for taking the time to take me down a peg.  Give yourself a pat on the back.  Whatever.  The music is what it is.  In any case, it is sincere.  That is good enough.  If it is sincere, nothing else matters.

  I won't name any names, but there are some funny bloggers around Corvallis, people that can take the most run of the mill incidents and make them seem funny or at least interesting.  The vast majority of blogs are not too readable, or at least not too readable unless you are friends with the person, but many are not too bad at all.

there is a breath through the air

the resilience leaves

but there is always that voice again

out there somewhere

wondering and calling

going through the motions

mining the conclusions

and the restless mannerisms and details

....here and there

life being what it is

Some guy is in the beanery playing a kind of guitar with a sound that is too high on the treble. He just did a John Denver song, and John Denver always kind of weirds me out for some reason. Denver's songs were bizarre. He was super-popular (I guess) for like two years in the seventies and then after that he was virtually forgotten. Anyway the guy playing tonight is not too bad, but he would do better with less treble on the amp.

I decided I have to be less materialistic. Do I really need an espresso maker? In the long run, it will cost money. In the long run, I'd be better off sticking to the teapot and drip coffee method. That's good enough.

I'm practicing for an open mic on Monday at Fireworks. Why bother? Why not. Life is about, among other things, art and the singing of nice songs, and playing of nice chords. That's as far as I could explain it. Besides, it's not like I don't have the time to practice. I'm thinking of putting together a story from my extensive journal entries, but as far as real work, I don't have any. Machinists are not in high demand at this point. But I'm continuing with the classes....

sittin' around the beanery

It was darn cold driving down here, and rainy, and it occurs to me that the rain may freeze up at some unpredictable point, maybe before I drive home.  The Bean seems to be closing early, possibly because they are worrying about the very same thing.

Is the Beanery my favorite coffee shop?  Yes it is.  This place has had quality coffee and atmosphere ever since the early seventies, so basically that is ever since I can remember.  They also have free music, big windows, and they are located in kind of a nice area near the river.   The Interzone has great coffee, but it is a small place, and being near campus it is dominated by young students that never seem to read the Oregonian.  Maybe they read it online, but probably not.

Having recently gotten a laptop, I am attempting to figure it out, but I have always been a big internet surfer, ever since the days of lynx and yahoo being a big deal.  There are some amusing local blogs...

In fact, there is so much online that it is impossible to keep track.  When it comes to sitting down and reading a book, though, there's no experience like a physical book made out of paper.  Furthermore, the writing on the internet has a fairly homogeneous feel to it.  If you go into some dusty book shop and pick out something by, say, Sir Walter Scott, or Thomas Wolfe, you will get something quite different; a more beautiful form of writing that is has a quantum difference from the usual pabulum.

Music:

Valerie Lopez played here Saturday night, and it was a standing room only crowd.  I wasn't too impressed with her the first time I saw her, about two months ago.  She seemed like she was trying to sound like a pop star rather than doing something original.  This time she seemed more real and interesting, and her guitar and banjo playing were good.  Moreover, she had a good band backing her up, and they were all good, from the bass player, to the drummer, to the flautist.   The crowd was nearly in hysterics.  That was a bit much.  She's good, ....maybe she deserves all the cheering,...but anyway it was a large crowd, that is for sure.

That Friday night was a band consisting of four young guys with nice instruments.  To bad they couldn't play them.  I think that some of them actually are pretty good at some of them, but the drummer should have been playing the guitar.  They were trying to play Southern Man and just totally destroyed it.  What a waste of a good guitar.  You can buy an expensive instrument, but if you can't do a bar chord and have no technique and don't practice, it won't help.  Then again....why rain on their parade if they were having fun?  Why not?  I just can't stand a song that is supposed the be played in a screaming and powerful style played in a weak and barely-there style.

Latch-Hook Robots at Interzone: loud and powerful sound, screaming vocalist.  Kind of not too bad, really.  Four stars.

political blog

The car companies are going under. What a drag. They haven't made too many good cars for a while now. So what to do? Well, according to the Senate Republicans, it is time to try to demand that wages go down for all auto workers. They can't stand to see any middle-class workers earning decent wages, and they can't stand to see any functioning unions. If it was up to them, we would all be serfs earning a dollar a day, working for the rich Republican overlords.

Anyway, the government has to demand major changes from the car companies, including seeing all the current CEO's losing their jobs. Furthermore, it is time to move into innovative, fuel efficient car designs. But right now, until Obama gets into office and comes up with something comprehensive, the country can't afford to see all those good jobs just instantly go away. We would be looking at depression level conditions, and total devastation. Furthermore, with credit the way it is, bankruptcy wouldn't lead the reorganization. With finance the way it is now, credit is not available, and we would see everything liquidated, and the factories empty and slowly rotting all over the country. Perhaps down the line, with a national health care plan, the car companies could reorganize and lose all of the expensive health care benefits for retirees that is a large part of why they can't function competitively.

the lamest

rendition of "Southern Man" that I have ever heard, I heard this evening. Talk about a flaccid version with the riff cut down to nothing at all. It was excruciating.

Man Carrying Thing

The poem must resist the intelligence
Almost successfully. Illustration:

A brune figure in winter evening resists
Identity. The thing he carries resists

The most necessitous sense. Accept them, then,
As secondary (parts not quite perceived

Of the obvious whole, uncertain particles
Of the certain solid, the primary free from doubt,

Things floating like the first hundred flakes of snow
Out of a storm we must endure all night,

Out of a storm of secondary things),
A horror of thoughts that suddenly are real.

We must endure our thoughts all night, until
The bright obvious stands motionless in cold.
-wallace stevens

brune:

1.
	a dance that caucasin males do when highly intoxicated. often includes some sort of grinding motion and an uncontrollable loss of control of the upper limbs. usually results in dancing by one's self on top of a box/elevated dance floor. a great move for clubs that play 80s favorties like Bon Jovi, Foreigner, and REO Speedwagon. By pulling out "the brune" at a club, usually results in the sad, but common, night alone. -urbandictionary.com

wondering at the languages I don't know

I wish I could read German. I have read many translations of Rilke. Some sound better than others, but they have many differences, leading me to wonder what the original actually contains.

Hail to the spirit, with power that connects;

for we live in figures. And with tiny steps

the hours go by, keeping pace

alongside our actual days.

In the absence of knowing our true location,

we deal with interrelation

the antennae feel the space

and the empty distances carry...

Pure tension. Oh music of forces at play!

From you, is not, through casual commerce,

every disturbance deflected away?

Even the farmer who works and lives

where seeds transform themselves to summers

never does enough. The earth bestows. -Sonnets to Orpheus, Ranier Maria Rilke

coffee 'n' stuff

there was a coffee spoon
given to me
however
I drink my coffee black
newspapers around
here and there
perhaps even the metro section

Johannes Agricola in Meditation- by Robert Browning

There's heaven above, and night by night

I look right through its gorgeous roof:

No suns and moons though e'er so bright

Avail to stop me; splendor-proof

I keep the broods of stars aloof:

Fir I intend to get to God.

For 't is to God I speed so fast

For in God's breast, my own abode,

Those shoals of dazzling glory, passed,

I lay my spirit down at last.

I lie where I have always lain,

God smiles as he has always smiled:

Ere stars were thudergirt, or piled

The heavens, God thought on me his child

Ordained a life for me, arrayed

Its circumstances, every one

etc.

Blood River

The Congo is an amazing place, completely chaotic, completely removed from the modern world. Due to the constant fighting, no white man has gone through the Congo from Lake Tanganyika to the coast in decades. Stanley was the first to do it, in the nineteenth century. It is just too dangerous to go overland in large parts of the country. There is no law, and roving bands of soldiers or rebels or just criminals may kill you at any time. There is no law, no government, nothing at all. Numerous villages are so isolated that they have no clue of the outside world. It is pretty much the only country in the world that has gone steeply downhill since the 60's, to the point where they are surviving, if they are, using the same techniques they have always used. It is too chaotic for farming, so they live on a certain kind of root that provides some amount of inadequate nutrition.

The country has riches, in the form of mineral wealth, but the mines are controlled by small groups who enrich no one but themselves. The only role the government serves is to take bribes from the people that are making money. There is no kind of support for the people in the form of the rule of law, or any kind of medicine. It is kind of a hell, and the rain forest mostly remains as it always has been. Any organized economic activity, such as coffee farming or palm oil farming simply can't get done in the atmosphere of chaos and violence.

Mobutu had a lot to do with Congo's problems. He robbed the country blind for thirty years while the United States supported him. This country could have done something-but we didn't. Nobody has cared about the Congo in the least other than to get the mineral wealth in their hands. That's true of this country historically and true of China now.

There's lots of blame to go around. The Belgians should take a lot of it too. And the slave traders before them.

I'm reading a book about a brave guy who decided to go across the Congo on foot in 2004. It's quite interesting: Blood River.

Fwd: testing

brautigan imbroglio

in watermelon sugar the deeds were done
or in three piece suits
on the phone
making deals
crashing the economy
bailing out before hand
with big
going-away presents

the night they drove old dixie down

Written by the Band, done by Jerry Garcia...

new recording

beanery blog

Some guy, Michael Galinas, I believe, is playing some good songs tonight down here at second street, with a bit of a sparse crowd, which is kind of normal for Saturday nights. He's got kind of a nonremarkable voice, but plenty of guitar talent, and a nice loud sounding steel string guitar, but mainly some good and interesting songs in his repertoire.

g manley hopkins

But what more can be said?  Perhaps a poem from Gerard Manley Hopkins:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swing finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves-goes itself;myself it speaks and spells,

Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is-

Christ-for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

Spring and Fall:

Margaret, are you grieving

Over Goldengrove, unleaving?

Leaves like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! as the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you will weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sorrow's springs are the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost, guessed:

It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

writing and music

The dude in the bean plays on, sharing all of his most strange guitar chords and feelings with the audience, and the clouds spin on, and people sit and talk and think, and hardly speak in the least, but the world is what it is,...

The dudes go into a lenghy and spirited session of soloing, and I feel that the just tapping of the keys on the pad are enough to keep me rescucitated to some degree.  The fact that I don't understand everything can surely be resolved by the gradual application of the general principle that to do the right thing in every circumstance is the right thing to do. 

In the long and short of it.....what more is there left to say, but more of the writing and the thinking, inscribed and set down in some way....and hopefully negotiated to a better conclusion.

If I had a gun, for every ace I've drawn,

I could arm a town the size of Abilene

Don't you push me baby, because I'm holdin' low

And you know I'm only in it for the gold.

All that I am asking for is ten gold dollars

And I could pay you back with one good hand

You can look around about the wide world over

And you'll never find anoher honest man.

Last fair deal in the country, Sweet Suzie,

Last fair deal in the town

Put your gold money where your love is baby,

Before you let my deal go down.

----now they are playing "Cold Rain and Snow"----what a great song..."I married me a wife, she's been trouble all my life.  Pushed me....out in the cold rain and snow.".....

Don't you push me baby, cause I'm holdin' low

And I know a littel something you won't every know

Don't you touch hard liquor, just a cup of cold coffee

Gotta get up in the morning and go

Everybody's praying and drinking that wine

I can dell the Queen of Diamonds by the way she shines

Come to daddy on the inside straight,

.....

These guys are rocking out with the "Cold Wind and Snow"...going to be the next major jam band of the modern era.  

Another decent song ....

Hello cowgirl in the sand

Is this place at your command

Can I stay here for a while

Can I see your sweet sweet smile

Old enough now to change your name

When so many love you is it the same?

Its the woman in you that makes you want to play this game.

Hello Ruby in the dust

Has you band begun to rust

After all the sin we've had

I was hoping that we turn back

Old enough now to change your name

When so many love you is it the same....

Hello woman of my dreams...

I guess the good thing about that song is the lyrics...

Stuck in the Bauhaus again, in the middle of a sea of silent laptops, aside from the noise of the young people talking in the background.

Sep 10, 2008

In other news, apparently the beavs played today.  Some people are out partying somewhere, more or less partying depending on how the game went, but plenty in either case.

 Reading a great story by Geoge Eliot, a true genius of a writer, and it occurs to me that despite the disappearance of books, a writer of that calibre will aways be recognized as such.

The fact is that it is a Saturday night, with nothing to do, no money to impress much of anyone, but that don't appear to make much of a difference to anyone.  In the long run, there is a depth to life in the great writers, and a depth to the words of all people, and if one can look into that and see the true nature of life and things, then any sort of acceptance is workable, or any sort of existence is fine for things and ideas and the nature of words.  In the end, we need to have our lives measure up to the ideas of them, but then again, our ideas of necessary achievement may be quite different from day to day.

from song of the rolling earth

weapon shapely, naked, wan,

head from the mother's bowels drawn

wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only one,

gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown, helve produced from a little seed

sown,

resting the grass amid upon,

to be leaned and to lean on.

--actually, from Song of the Broad-Axe

open afresh your round of starry folds,
Ye ardent marigolds!
Dry up the moisture from your golden lids,
For great Apollo bids
That in these days your praises should be sung
On many harps, which he has lately strung;
And when again your dewiness he kisses,
Tell him, I have you in my world of blisses:
So haply when I rove in some far vale,
His mightly voice may come upon a gale.
-keats

starting from paumanok

Starting from fish-shape Paumanok, where I was born,
Well-begotten, and raised by a perfect mother;
After roaming many lands-love of populous pavements;
Dweller in Manhatta, my city-or on southern savannas;
Or a soldier camp'd, or carrying my knapsack and gun-or a miner in California;
Or rude in my home in Dakota's woods, my diet meat, my drink from the spring;
Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess,
Far from the clank of crows, .....


Shut not your doors....

Shut not your doors to me proud libraries,
For that which was lacking on all of your well filled shelves, yet
needed most, I bring,
Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,
The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing,
A book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect,
But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page.

--both of these are from Walt Whitman, of course. I would try to pretend like I wrote them myself. Somehow they seem full of life, and full of untold latencies, you might say.

weather report

the weather is kind of sunny, which is nice, and I am happy with my new beautiful laptop, featuring windows vista.  I don't know what the deal with this system is.  For all the bad I have heard about it, it seems to work just fine, easily understandable for a longtime xp user.  I'm no idiot with computers, but for all that I want to like Linux, when you sit down with it it is unbelievably frustrating.  It is not ready for us casual users, I would venture to say.

  The seem to be fairly quiet in this little cafe, as is usually the case on any afternoon, even during the school year.  

  As for me, I remain undirected, but is that so bad a thing?  I guess there could be worse.  Aside from karate, I have no real direction.

  Perhaps this Whitman poem partially applies to me:

Beginning my studies

Beginning my studies, the first step pleas'd me so much,

The mere fact, consciousness-these forms-the power of motion,

The least insect or animal-the senses-eyesight-love;

The first step, I say, awed me and pleased me so much,

I have hardly gone, and hardly wished to go, and farther,

But stop and loiter all the time, to sing it in ecstatic songs.

  

Praising, that's it! One ordained to praise,

he sprang like ore from the silence of stone.

His heart, oh, perishable winepress

of an infinite wine, for man alone.

His voice no dust can choke or dim

when divine instance seizes him.

All turns vineyard, clusters of grapes,

in his susceptible south grown ripe.

Nor mold in the kings' sepulchers

gives the lie to his laudings, nor

that from the gods a shadow falls.

Of the abiding messengers,

he reaches far into death's door

glorious fruit in golden bowls

-from Sonnets to Orpheus, Rilke