Hollywood Life

"Sire, now I have told you about all the cities I know"
"There is still one of which you do not speak."
Marco Polo bowed his head.
"Venice," the Khan said.
Marco smailed. "What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?"
The emperor did not turn a hair. "And yet I have never heard you mention that name."
And Polo said: "Every time I am describing a city I am saying something about Venice."
"When I ask you about other cities, I want to hear about other cities. And when I ask you about Venice, I want to hear about Venice."
"To distinguish the other cities' qualities, I must speak of a first city that remains implicit. For me it is Venice."
(Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities)

Tonight, mandyman came over and we walked over to the Catalina to check out The Bad Plus, an awesome piano trio. We passed Hollywood High School and the Scientology anti-psychiatry museum, saw the CNN building down past Vine, and were trying to figure out where the Capitol Records building was relative to us when I realized how surreal my life is now.

I grew up in Los Angeles, as do most people. Not literally, of course, but in the sense that a vision of the city was imported into our living rooms each day via television and film while we were growing up. The media has ensured that the landscape of LA has largely become our own, regardless of where we have lived. Los Angeles and New York have become what novelist Italo Calvino might call "first cities" or "implicit cities" that color our perception of what a "city" is.

And now, I live in one of these cities. I get to experience Los Angeles not as a voyeur, but as a resident. I walk around Beverly Hills every day at lunch. I curse the freeways with a vehemence previously reserved for Republican politicians. I go for long, meandering walks late at night in the neighborhoods around my Hollywood apartment and stare at the city from the ground up, and wonder why it took me so long to finally come here. The idealized Los Angeles shimmers, superimposed over a grittier reality.

There is much to dislike about LA. The traffic is horrible. One earthquake in the right (or wrong, to be more precise) place and I'm screwed. I can count the number of friends I have on one hand.

Even so, I love it here. I can't imagine living anywhere else.

Sunday Random Ten, The "I Suck Because I'm A Day Late" Edition

1. The Magnetic Fields, "Come Back From San Francisco"
This is a really interesting tune. Stephin Merritt is gay, and there's a lot of gender-bending going on in the lyrics on 69 Love Songs. This song is a perfect case in point. A girl sings it, and one wonders as she sings the line "Should pretty boys in discos/distract you from your novel," is she singing about a bisexual female lover? A bisexual male lover? And ultimately, is this a commentary on postmodern sexual fluidity, or just a really good song?

2. They Might Be Giants, "Mink Car"
I love this piece. It's all major-seventhy and breezy, very Bacharach.

3. Scott Walker, "Next"
According to my friend Amanda, this is an English version of a Jacques Brel song. The music is kind of a demented tango, and the lyrics, about a young soldier standing in line to lose his virginity to a prostitute, are actually brilliant.

4. Enigma, "Callas Went Away"
MCMXC A.D. is seriously the sexiest album ever. This isn't my favorite track, though.

5. The Ramones, "Beat On The Brat"
I love how fun the Ramones are. Regardless, Johnny Ramone is a dumbass.

6. Beat Farmers, "Big Rock Candy Mountain"
My online friend waraw made me an incredible mix CD of cover tunes, and this was on it. The Beat Farmers were a legendary San Diego bar band fronted by Country Dick Montana (who, sadly, died in 1995). He had a beautiful bass voice that works very well on this song.

7. Ben Folds, "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head"
Another piece that was on the mix from waraw. It totally makes me weepy, in the best possible way.

8. The Album Leaf, "Another Day"
So pretty. My friend Chris turned me on to them.

9. Queen, "Don't Stop Me Now"
Nice tune with a really interesting chord progression.

10. Tom Waits, "Earth Died Screaming"
On this recording, Tom Waits sounds as though he's having his heart pulled out through his urethra. That's a compliment, believe it or not.

It was wonderful to wake up this morning to the news that the remaining CPT hostages in Iraq were rescued. More details at the NYT.

My joy is bittersweet given the fate of Tom Fox. But I'm still thrilled at this turn of events all the same.

More news from South Dakota... this time, it's good.

Cecilia Fire Thunder, the President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe (located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation), is a former nurse. Two days ago she made an amazing statement:

I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.

The above was from an article apparently copy-and-pasted from the subscription-only Native American Times, and is just now starting to seep out onto the internet. It'll be interesting to see what the national news media does with the story.

QUICK UPDATE: It's on Bitch Ph.D. as well.

In today's Boston Globe: The Politics of Pacifism

Over the last four years, the FBI has repeatedly spied on the Thomas Merton Center, a Catholic peace organization in Pittsburgh... It is as if, in carrying out fresh surveillance of the antiwar organization Kessler started more than 30 years ago, the FBI is paying tribute to the staying power of this compassionate prophet of justice and peace. That's one part of the story. Another part is implied in the FBI memo, which breathlessly singles out pacifism as a ''political cause" of concern. What drew the bureau's attention to the Merton Center in 2002 was its members' handing out leaflets that opposed the impending war in Iraq.

Well, I guess I'm screwed.

I have two questions here:

1. Why is the most powerful nation in the world concerned about people who are completely nonviolent? (Never mind, I can think of some answers to that one)

2. How would DHS justify a "no fly" ban on someone because of their pacifist beliefs? They can't exactly say, "I'm sorry sir, but we can't let you fly because we're worried about the fact that you are no threat whatsoever."

Are You There God? It's Me, The Sunday Random Ten

1. The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, "California Uber Alles"
This amazing cover of the classic Dead Kennedys song/rant (updated so that the subject is Pete Wilson rather than Jerry Brown) was done by Michael Franti's first group, with Jello Biafra singing the chorus. It works really well as a hip-hop type of thing.

2. The Clash, "London Calling"
When I see angry kids coming out of Hot Topic with their Korn tshirts, I just want to play them some of this stuff. I love how punchy the guitar and bass are on this track.

3. Grand Buffet, "Candy Bars"
I've seen this hip-hop duo from Pittsburgh three times... on the first occasion, they opened for the legendary Wesley Willis. If you want to hear this song, go to their site, scroll down to the bottom and download this shit.

4. The Beatles, "We Can Work It Out"
This song is so pretty. Once again, more evidence that there are hidden treasures in recordings by Mssrs. Lennon and McCartney when you listen to them with open ears. I love the accordion... it's so understated, and yet so perfect.

5. Some DJ whose name I don't know, "The Ghost That Feeds: Ray Parker Jr. vs Nine Inch Nails"
A mashup of "The Hand That Feeds" by NIN and the Ghostbusters theme. It is exactly as awesome as you think.

6. Stina Nordenstam, "Stations"
Chris Moll gave me some recordings by this Swedish singer. I enjoy her music- it's very spare and enigmatic.

7. Chet Baker, "I Get Along Without You Very Well"
In my opinion, the first verse of this song- particulary the part where Chet's voice ascends on "The thrill of being sheltered in your arms"- is one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking moments in all of recorded music. Another similar moment happens when he sings this same song on the album The Last Great Concert... it was made a couple of weeks before his death at age 58, and his voice sounds so wistful and broken on that track that I can't listen to it without tears in my eyes.

8. Ben Folds, "Jane"
I was listening to the album The Unauthorized Autobiography of Reinhold Messner a lot around the time that my wife and I split up. I have a difficult time with it even now, and can only attribute the fact that I dumped the whole album onto my iPod to some sort of musical masochism. Despite my emotional issues with it, Messner is damned close to being a perfect album. I'm a sucker for the chunky sound of a Wurlitzer, and that instrument is all over this song.

9. Queen, "We Are The Champions"
I will never be able to listen to this song without thinking of the choral version at the end of Revenge of the Nerds.

10. The Magnetic Fields, "My Sentimental Melody"
It's beautiful, but the singer gets so out of tune on the last note of each chorus that it makes my teeth actually grow hair. I adore the triplet-y accordion part; it reminds me of "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" by Bach.

One for the nerds

This page was taken down a while ago, but through the power of the wayback machine I bring you Timecube, The RPG!

I'm pretty torn right now about the direction in which I want this blog to go.

I'm feeling moved to make this more of a journal... to be more personal, to let go of my inhibitions about sharing myself with the Internet, and to make it more than a linkblog with the occasional political rant or humor post.

However, I'm very hesitant to do so. Part of the reason is because Google searches for my real name still turn up this site in short order, and as a teacher there are certain things I don't want random students/co-workers/employers to know about me if they stumble across the bone (as they occasionally do). But that's not the only rationale for playing things close to the vest.

I came to an interesting observation about my songwriting the other day. There are maybe two or three people who read this blog that have actually heard things I've written; think clever and self-consciously learned lyrics a la They Might Be Giants, and Ben Folds-ish piano playing (but not as good). My conclusion was that most of my songs have a common style- very pretty melodies and chord progressions that can practically cause full-blown diabetes wrapped around offbeat images and quirky rhymes, and these things are what people notice first about my music. However, when I sat down and analyzed the lyrics I realized that subject matter tends to be pretty dour. I present as evidence the following synopses:

1. A man shakes a magic eight-ball to determine if his lover will leave him (an alternate version details Erwin Schroedinger shaking a magic eight-ball to see if the cat he locked in a box is still alive. The word "icosahedron" is used);
2. A song about Sisyphus told in the first-person which references Camus and Sartre;
3. A man gets sloshed on Pabst Blue Ribbon and wonders what's happening with a former lover (possibly; I left it deliberately ambiguous) who is drinking "a thousand bars away;"
4. A song about inauthentic language and shitty communication based on this poem;
5. A song about driving cross-country on Interstate 10 (although I think it's really about death), largely written while I made that drive last summer, with a chorus section lifted verbatim from a poem my mom wrote ages ago;
6. and a song titled "The Happiest Song Ever Written About Agoraphobia." 'Nuff said.

I like to pretend that the reason for this is because I'm interested in the dialectic of "beautiful melodies telling me terrible things," as Tom Waits would say. I tell myself that, because composing is largely my therapy, that its perfectly normal for my work to exhibit the anxieties that I'm trying to write out of my system. I also try to convince myself that I'm getting better about this- for instance, I finished an earnest love song the other day that turned out surprisingly well.

But I suspect that the real reason is because I don't know how to be honest in my creative work. I wear my fears and concerns and unexpressed hopes secretly, like a Mormon temple garment. I dress up my art's exterior with humor and syncopated Bacharach-like tunes, but it occurs to me now that these techniques conceal more than they reveal.

And that's the way I am in other aspects of my life as well.

I'm working on getting over that tendency for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is because I want to make this blog something worth reading again.

Fits and starts

A note for newer readers: I am not a prolific blogger even under the best of circumstances.

Right now, there's a lot going on. My teaching gig became part-time in February, so I've been trying to find some way to supplement my income that doesn't involve selling blood plasma. I'm half-assedly recording a demo. Space Kitty's daughter is still recovering from recent surgery (by the way, go over there and say hi!). And to top it all off I had some significant health issues over the past few days, and even though I'm feeling considerably better now I'm still a little stressed about it.

In other words, posting will probably be kind of light for a spell.

On a different note, I'd like to thank everyone for their kind and gracious words concerning my post from March 6th. I really appreciated the comments (and now I have a whole slew of new blogs to read! Oh, happy day!).

Sunday Random Ten

It's occurred to me on several occasions that, for someone who is a professional musician, I do precious little writing about music here. I recently purchased an inexpensive used iPod, so I'll use the "random ten" conceit to write a little bit about some of the songs I'm listening to on any given Sunday. This trend will continue until I forget or get bored.

1. The Rasmus, "Guilty"
This song sounds as though it could have been recorded in 1986 at a studio off the Sunset Strip, in the heyday of the glam metal years. However, this album (Dead Letters) was released in 2004. Go figure. The Rasmus (no, I don't know what a "rasmus" is either) is from Finland, but the singer's English is perfect.

2. Timewellspent, "Interlude 1"
This track is only thirty seconds long. I've played the piano that Casey and Chris used on the recording... it's a piece-of-shit upright piano that is dreadfully out-of-tune, creaks and groans as though it were haunted, but has a type of barroom charm regardless. The knocks and squeaks coming from the instrument are, to me, just as much a part of the music as the notes.

3. Sense Field, "Part of the Deal"
Sense Field were a well-known Southern California rock band that dissolved in 2004 after personal tragedies and an unsuccessful major-label release. Jonathan Bunch has a great set of pipes, and their drummer was a bad ass.

4. Queen, "Under Pressure (Live)"
This is seriously one of he most beautiful songs ever written... the second guitar chord that Brian May plays in the intro (an A over the D ostinato in the bass) kills me every time, and Freddie Mercury is in my opinion the best rock singer ever. I've had a story percolating in me for a while about this song (specifically, about a choral arrangement of the song I had written for the gay men's chorus I used to direct, and our first post-9/11 rehearsal), but it'll have to wait until I have time to give the tale justice.

5. Prince, "When Doves Cry"
Random childhood memory: When I was in junior high, I had a poster of Apollonia Kotero (Prince's co-star in Purple Rain) on my bedroom wall.

6. Chet Baker, "Time After Time"
Several years ago, I played this for one of my high school chorus students (an amazing tenor who is currently trying to break into the RnB scene in Miami). He sat silent while the track played, with a really intense look on his face, and when it finished he said, "It just sounds so... so true." It was probably the most brilliant observation I've ever heard one of my students make.

7. Magnetic Fields, "A Chicken With Its Head Cut Off"
Stephin Merrit is really clever... a modern-day Cole Porter.

8. Weezer, "Undone (The Sweater Song)"
Everyone went crazy over this song when it came out, but I think it's one of the weakest tracks on that album.

9. The Beatles, "Ticket to Ride"
I love the chord progression in the chorus... songs by the Beatles are such a feature of our musical landscape that it's hard to listen to them with fresh ears, but when I pay attention I still find interesting things in their best tracks.

10. Sondre Lerche, "Dead End Mystery"
My friend Amanda sent this to me last night. I love his sound... he's got an innocent tone that sounds like a fusion of Ben Folds and Chet Baker, and he sings these understated, jazz-influenced pop songs that are buoyant and beautiful. Additionally, he's a babe and his band is great. According to Amanda he'll be playing somplace on the Strip in April, so I think I'll go.

Most people who read this blog would be familiar with the case of Tom Fox, the Quaker and humanitarian worker who was abducted by insurgents in Iraq last November.

Tom's body was discovered in Baghdad on Thursday.

As one could expect, Tom's friends, fellow Society of Friends members and CPT colleagues haven't issued a single call for vengence... they've focused instead on recalling Tom's legacy and continuing to do what they can to help that battered region heal.

Everytime I'd hear Tom's name, the name of another man with the same surname would come to mind: George Fox, founder of the Quaker sect. The wiki article I linked led me to this essay by Walt Whitman (who was raised a Quaker). From the essay:

Yet George Fox stands for something too—a thought—the thought that wakes in silent hours—perhaps the deepest, most eternal thought latent in the human soul. This is the thought of God, merged in the thoughts of moral right and the immortality of identity. Great, great is this thought—aye, greater than all else.

The same could be said for George Fox's spiritual heir Tom, and for his service and sacrifice.

Godspeed, friend.

A quick "hello" to the folks coming over from Feministe and Creek Running North (and other places). I was filled with a lot of trepidation when I hit the "post" button last Monday after writing that little essay, and have thought about taking it down a dozen times since then (I took out a couple of details that were too uncomfortably personal even for that post and subject). My thanks to everyone for their kind words.

[edited for spelling 3/7, one detail removed 3/8]

Gov. Mike Rounds signed legislation Monday that would ban most abortions in South Dakota, a law he acknowledged would be tied up in court for years while the state challenges the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

I kind of take this personally.

Let me say this upfront: I'm not a big fan of abortion. I have absolutely no patience for people who deign to tell women what they can and can't do with their bodies, and even less for so-called "culture of life" conservatives who condemn abortion through the mouth on one face, and enthusiastically support war and capital punishment with the other. That being said, I have no way of knowing when life begins, and at what point a fetus should be considered a human being. Because I can't make that distinction, I get inherently squicked out by the idea of abortion. I can't help it, it's just a visceral response.

I do think that abortion should be fully legal though, for any reason, at least through the second trimester. And to outright ban abortion even in cases of rape and incest, as the governor of South Dakota has now done, is nothing short of completely fucking insane.

A tale follows. It's super-personal, so if you don't want to experience an overshare you may want to skip it.

I once knew a woman who was brutally gang-raped many years ago.

Those words are horrifying, but appallingly banal in a way. Inexcusable violence against women is a sad and terrible fact in virtually every human society, and yet rape stories are so omnipresent that it's easy to get desensitized to them. I think that it's this lack of empathy that not only makes rape possible, but also is the force behind legislation such as that signed into law today in Pierre, South Dakota.

I'm sure that the good Christian men and women who drafted and voted for that law, as well as the constituents that elected them and prodded them into action, would no doubt have said that this lady "had it coming." She wasn't on her way to church or work when the attack happened; she was a college-aged girl drinking in Tijuana.

This would have been sometime in the mid-sixties; I'm not certain of the year, but she would have been nineteen or so. Having gone to TJ in order to party with some friends and drink alcohol legally, a male acquaintance of hers slipped drugs into her drink. She ended up being raped by several men while unconscious in the back of someone's van.

And as if the attack weren't vile enough (not to mention the unsympathetic treatment she received from the US border patrol when she finally came to, realized what happened, and tried to get back home to California), she ended up getting pregnant. She was late with her period, a couple of days turned into a couple of weeks, and it quickly became obvious that her nightmare was far from over. A devout Catholic, she couldn't imagine getting an abortion from a doctor (at any rate, this was before CA liberalized their abortion laws, I think), so she decided to induce one herself.

After taking a handful of birth control pills she was wracked with severe cramps, and after a day or so of being seriously ill- I should note here that she was still living at home, and as far as I know hadn't told any family members about this- her menstrual cycle began. When the first wave had passed, she noticed one large clot in the toilet bowl amidst her blood... whether or not this is true, she was convinced that that clot was the baby she had been carrying.

I heard this story in 2000, while the woman was in the hospital. She ended up dying a month or so later, and the telling of this story was part of the last long conversation I ever had with her. Even after thirty-plus years she was still consumed with guilt and grief over her decision to end the pregnancy.

A postscript: The woman was married in 1970. She and her husband tried to conceive a child, and were unsuccessful for a couple of years. She never said as much but I wouldn't be surprised to hear that she believed the abortion to be the reason for her inability to become pregnant, either due to physical injury from the pills or divine retribution. Fortunately, neither was the case. She and my father managed to conceive in the spring of '72, and I was born on January 22, 1973; the same day that the Roe v. Wade decision made abortion legal on a federal level in the United States.

Had she lived, she would have been 58 today.

I love you Mom, and I'm so sorry.