Synaesthetic Monk's Blues

2009-10-19T13:01:00.002-04:00

Satori in the lavatory...

Last night, I was taking care of an expensive piss, when I saw my shadow on the wall in front of me. Physics came along and made the split between the umbra and the antumbra. For a non-point source of light, the umbra happens to be the darkest part of the shadow, while the antumbra is the region from which the occulting body appears entirely contained within the disc of the light source. Whatever that means.

It looked like a second skin of electricity and at that instant from my room, DJ Shadow started spinning, What does your Soul look Like? (Part IV)

2009-08-11T22:57:00.003-04:00

so I was wondering about the lack of self-reflection that characterizes Facebook posts. They, over time - are at odds with their own etiological context, given the ever evolving, self-organizing social (in a very real sense) connections that exist between the different users. However since we haven't introduced *thinking* to the technology, Facebook posts have no way of gracefully committing seppukku - instead they just sit their making fools of their CreaTORS.

cheeky bastards.

2009-04-09T23:46:00.002-04:00

Xaero:

He meditates in cryogenic bliss, until the signs appear. His incubation chamber triggers off a series of optical beams that reflect off of a network of emerald glass mirrors and fall incident upon spherechuckers. These floating spherechuckers start humming with ancient celestial harmony.

Xaero awakens.

Sound manifests as miniaturized globes of radiant energy, and Xaero begins to dance. Furiously he weaves these globes into pulsating threads which come alive. He calls these conscious threads of golden globules Funkinogens. Aeons pass, as Xaero performs the dance of creation and destruction. Some of these Funkinogens become deceased and the globules start projecting obsidian crystalline tentacles which disintegrate the healthy Funkinogens upon contact. These abominations of his creation, or Wankers as he refers to them threaten to upset the state of grooving that Xaero is in, with his Funkinogens. He therefore subsequently has to catch these Wankers and shaft them, so to speak.

He usually legitimizes his actions citing something about some instruction his Creator gave him regarding Wankers who refused to get groovy with the whole scene.

But apart from that bit of nastiness, Xaero and the Funkinogens groove for eternities, until Xaero decides its time for him to meditate upon his work until his Creator sends him the signs again. And so Xaero brings his great dance to a close, and just before he retreats into his inner sanctum within the Incubation chamber - he energizes the Funkinogens and turns them into a glowing web of light and pulsating strings, which reorganizes itself into a silouhette of Michael Jackson before warping away into infinity.

Happy with his work, Xaero sits and meditates.

2009-03-02T01:24:00.001-05:00

Time has told me
You're a rare rare find
A troubled cure
For a troubled mind.

And time has told me
Not to ask for more
Someday our ocean
Will find its shore.

So I`ll leave the ways that are making me be
What I really don't want to be
Leave the ways that are making me love
What I really don't want to love.

Time has told me
You came with the dawn
A soul with no footprint
A rose with no thorn.

Your tears they tell me
There's really no way
Of ending your troubles
With things you can say.

And time will tell you
To stay by my side
To keep on trying
'til there's no more to hide.

So leave the ways that are making you be
What you really don't want to be
Leave the ways that are making you love
What you really don't want to love.

Time has told me
You're a rare rare find
A troubled cure
For a troubled mind.

And time has told me
Not to ask for more
For some day our ocean
Will find its shore.

2009-02-28T01:01:00.005-05:00

every phenomenon (external or internal) that manifests itself within an individual's collective experiences; whether it be a raging storm, the gentle caress of the soft rain, the highest high and the lowest low, the silent gasps of hidden pleasures... or the blood flowing from an open wound - each lives out its natural course and fades away into the nothingness that gave birth to it.

the only things we will be left with, is the cross-chatter of words unspoken, memories locked away, secrets hidden and feelings sacrificed -

these are the intangible things left to us with which we are inevitably and maddeningly pushed to give shape to the story of our life, and the means by which we are driven to tell that story -

and even though the stories will be forgotten, pages of music misplaced, writing burned into ash, photographs discolored and technique and ability lost... the traces will survive, just like the scars we accumulate (seen and unseen).

Even as form and structure are broken, the ink will spill out of the page and color your fingers - and some where, some place you'll find a blind blues man with no name, playing that old guitar (maybe your guitar) - strings too rusted, tuning barely held - whispering a prayer that you had written in a time that you cannot recollect.

and somewhere, some place, all our stories; yours and mine too, will be washed upon a vast beach of virgin white - words, symbols, signs, notes, oaths of love, cries of rage, laughter and tears, scattered and thrown into each other's presence, until they crystallize into grains of sand... serene, melancholic and timeless, bathed in the light of an undying star -
that is until their eternal return to the womb, when they are forevermore swallowed by the sea.

2008-12-29T03:07:00.003-05:00

As the full moon appears from the night, so appears her face amid the tresses.
From sorrow comes the perception of her: the eyes crying on the cheek; like black narcissus shedding tears upon a rose.
Mere beauties are silenced: her fair quality is overwhelming.

Even to think of her, harms her subtlety (thought is too coarse a thing to perceive her). If this be so, how can she correctly be seen by such a clumsy organ as the eye?

Her fleeting wonder eludes thought. She is beyond the spectrum of sight.

When description tried to explain her, she overcame it. Whenever such an attempt is made, description is put to flight.

Because it is trying to circumscribe.

If someone seeking her lowers his aspirations (to feel in terms of ordinary love), - there are always others who will not do so.

- Ibn El-Arabi (Sufi mystic, circa 1200)

2008-12-06T21:50:00.000-05:00

This song leaks out onto the pavement
It could be a joke, it could be a statement.
The more that I fake it and pretend I don't care
The more you can read in to what isn't there.

Maybe it's time to stop swimming
Maybe it's time to find out where I'm at
What I should do and where I should be, but no one will give me a map

I'll leave now this can't continue
But I forget which door I came through.
And I know that the lift can be painfully slow,
So I think I'll leave through the window

2008-11-16T14:26:00.004-05:00

sometimes I get struck by the absurdity of it all, and can't help but just put on Ahmad Jamal and busy myself with crafting a spliff. it helps that some people dig that - take Naeem for instance. I cornered him last week, after Election Day, and told him of how the scene during Obama's acceptance speech echoed Leni Riefenstahl's visual treatment of the 6th Naziparteit Congress at Nuremberg, 1934. I asked him for a quotation on the new President of the US. He smiled cheekily replying, "he's just the war criminal elect". In the same breath, he told me to acquire a Joe Farrell album with Herbie Hancock and Steve Gadd. Funky shaet ja?

With all the shit that I have to do, and everything's that going on in my life, I still get a kick out of seeing my investments in boredom hold their market value. Maybe the absurd tends towards beauty? I certainly can see it - whether I choose to embrace it or not is a different matter altogether of course.

And now I have a deadline coming up after which I'm expected to sell-out and reintegrate and reconcile to that which has been, and to the that which is yet to be. Time has never been on my side anyway. To what effect can I meaningfully communicate to you anonymous reader, the absurd paradoxes of life?

Saturday morning, and pink boners, and rubber duckies in her bathtub, and Alice on ganja. does that strike you as beautiful? sublime? It strikes me as fairly absurd man - I should have been writing a knowledge base in Prolog to compute John's ideal woman (who is supposed to be blonde, blue-eyed, tall and slender, so I'm thinking maybe John is really Joseph Goebbels). But hey, I gotta get my share of erotica for the day y'know? In the quiet words of the Virgin Mary (thanks Bricktop), I had to come again.

Last evening I resisted the urge to go out and indulge in the mindless absurdity of a rainy Saturday evening, and decided to kick it for most of the time. But as I sat there listening to Joe Pass, an absurd nostalgia took over. I remembered a song that my mother sings once in a while (I wish she would sing more often, and get back into a disciplined study of North Indian classical music, but she has an equally absurd family to deal with). An old song yes called Ajeeb Dastan Hain Yeh, from a 1960's Bollywood movie titled Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai (I have no idea what that means btw). I realized that I had never heard the original song ever, just my mother sing it at get-together's at my house while I'd be forced to accompany her on guitar (and how I hated doing that, it was some crappy hindi song after all). And yet last evening I got completely immersed in making a jazz arrangement on guitar for that song. Shit turned out to be way harder than I thought - what with trying to take incorporate both the melody and the chordal movements in one voice.

How fucking absurd is that eh? Or maybe my memory is treacherous. My experiences all tainted by an overarching lust for forgotten power and unattainable dreams. Hey, I still dig it though, I wouldn't have it any other way y'know? I can only deal with caricatures of people now, most of them. It's impossible to know them anymore otherwise. I mean if we can't really communicate honestly anymore can we? I mean we should be fucking each other instead or playing music together, or cooking in order to that. The few who escape that, I will soon leave, maybe forever. Or maybe I'll convince them to join me in forming a traveling entourage of folk musicians and circus freaks and run away to Andulasia or Morocco. Probably not, my main man JD will probably send snipers to hunt my ass down and set me up to become an investment funds manager or analyst. Fuck!

Someday I'll recapture my sanity or what little I had to begin with, and write a book, and it will be much better than this shit that I've got going on here I can tell you that. My agent introduced me to my publisher the other night while I was dreaming, and prefaced it saying that he was a real hip cat, he works for some militant Islamic organization now. This is what he had to say:

Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever heard.

This ass talk had sort of a gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell.

This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriliquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called “The Better ‘Ole” that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, “Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?”

“Nah I had to go relieve myself.”

After a while the ass start talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time.

Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in-curving hooks and started eating. He thought this was cute at first and built an act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: “It’s you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we dont need you around here any more. I can talk and eat and shit.”
After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpole’s tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have have amputated spontaneously except for the eyes you dig. That's one thing the asshole couldn’t do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn’t give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes went out, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab’s eyes on the end of a stalk

Shit, can I trust this dude to market my book? You tell me.

2008-08-01T06:17:00.000-04:00

Do you want to watch it all fall apart?
Every time I walk, I watch, I look, I notice, I observe.
I read the signs.
And the signs are pointing in the wrong direction.
The signs are not naming the streets or leading me to the highway,
The signs are naming names.
Tombstones to mark the dead of children not even born.
And I don't mean abortion, I mean what is to come.

The signs are telling me to turn back around.
The signs are telling me to to research my past.
The signs are telling me to learn from my mistakes.
The signs are asking me questions:
Do you want to watch it all fall apart?
Do you have any control? Is there anything you can do?

Time is not a nice person, I know because the signs said it.
Time can be generous, but ultimately, time is indifferent.
Time does not give two damns or a fuck.
So what will you do? What will we do . .?

So I'm in the middle of the street, talking to the signs, and people are looking at me, pointing and laughing, like, "This motherfucker's crazy."
But do they not see the signs? Do you not see the signs?

If there is one thing in this world that you can depend on and you can best your last dollar on, it's the ignorance of the American people.
But still I have faith, and still I read the signs.
And they are indeed there. Some of us are lost and will not find our way, no matter what the signs say.
Some of us do not see the signs because we are too busy shopping.
Some of us do not see the signs because we can't help but stop and look at the accidents, and stare.
We are in a daze, we are amazed by the world's displays.

Some of us do not see the signs because we are giving spare change to the homeless.
We are getting gas.
We are volunteering for duty.
And we are watching television.
We are driving around in circles on spinners, and we are working 8-6.
We are on our way to the club, we are high, we are drunk, and we are sober.
And we do not see the signs.

We are listening to a moron babble, we are listening to tongues that lie.
We give them an ear, we give them a hand, we give them both eyes.
So we cannot see the signs.
Slow down, children playing in these streets and they cannot read the signs, they are only children.

Stop!

I fear there is no u-turn, and that this road dead-ends.
Because we cannot read the signs.
Do you not see the signs? We must read the signs.
And we must turn around.
We must turn around.
We gotta turn this shit around.
And we gotta read the signs.

2008-07-26T02:08:00.000-04:00

Now that I know
The way it goes
You gotta pay back every penny that you owe

Twelve years old
In your mama's clothes
Shut the blinds and lock up every door

And if you hear
Someone’s comin near
Just close your eyes and make them disappear now

Years away
Finds me here today
On my own, always on my way now

So I send my friends
Gifts from where I've been
Something for the hand they’re never there to lend

Better keep those eyes
Climbing paradise
And don't pretend you won't reach it in the end now

Dearest dear
I know you been here
Why'd you run tell me why'd you disappear now

That you're not
Here with me
Seems to be the only time that I can see you clearly

I may not know
How to treat or give you what you need
But I am a gentleman who says what he means now

And now I sing
Upon my knees
And praise the kindness of a gentle breeze

I see it swell
Like a story in me to tell
Told years away and past my baby dying

So you raise them up
To heaven always hell
they’re unaware, share, give a hand to help son

Oh you give them away
But they’ll come back to you someday
Wanna know why nobody was ever there to help them

And no it ain’t fair
And if God forbid you care
It’s enough to get you in a whole lotta trouble

Oh realize
It ain’t wise to idealize
Or put your life in the hands of any struggle

Never renounce
Or ever claim to be
And never buy that freedom just ain’t free now

Ella sang
Sifting in the sand
Like a hymn within to help us understand

Heaven awaits
We’re making our stand
Glory bound and sparrow in our hand

2008-07-15T16:57:00.008-04:00

Hi Naeem,

I know this is very random, but at this point I don't think there's anybody else I would want to talk to about this kind of stuff specifically. Feel free to read, ignore or reply to this email, I couldn't care less. But at least I'll feel better off having done it all the same.

I was at Boston this weekend to tie up the loose ends of a failing relationship for good or ill. Visiting Boston was a shock that I wasn't prepared for, and it has left me feeling disenchanted and hollow and incredibly depressed. It's strange how I never felt this way about New York City, because as an outsider to this country, I see no reason why Boston should be any different from New York, but it is. I was technically staying at one of the Harvard dorms in the neighboring city of Cambridge, but was at Boston for most of the weekend.

Firstly I was shocked seeing the student population of Harvard. I was looking forward to meeting new intelligent people who I could talk to. What I found was a slave race of wealthy white Americans who are so fucking clueless that I felt physically nauseated interacting with them. It didn't matter whether they were Pakistanis from Lahore who had come to take summer business classes, or Chinese students from Long Island who came to study science, or my own girlfriend who I finally saw for the shallow pretentious individual that she is, in the company of her new found peers. I was unable to comprehend this mutant kingdom. I couldn't even begin to talk to them. They were all bright kids, they had to have been to get accepted into Harvard - though it seems academic scholarship was merely a fraction of the money they had in their pockets. But I was just aghast, and I didn't know what to do or how to even begin to engage them in conversation. I know I haven't provided you an adequate picture of these nameless people, and any firm reasons for my attitude towards them - but I don't even need to. I don't want to put myself through that right now. It's funny in a way, but the words of the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson come to mind to describe my predicament, when he said, "Yea, I have a weird tape of that conversation, and I play it for laughs now and then - 45 minutes of failed communication, despite heroic efforts on both ends. The over-all effect is that of a career speed-freak, jacked up like the Great Hummingbird, trying to talk his way through a cordon of bemused ushers and into a reserved, front-row seat at a sold-out Bob Dylan concert.."

Going to the main city of Boston, and I will never forget Newbury street. After a while, the only recourse that I had to take was to try and get myself into some trouble, when I chose to walk around without my shirt off for a while, carrying a big white paper bag on the outside of which I had written as prominently as possible with a black marker, LOOKING FOR THE BRAND NAME, ROBOT?. Thousands of people were walking around, going to one shop after another. Armani, Gucci, Rolex, Tag Heur, Zara. Countless other names that I had never even heard of. And all these people, from all over the world, yet all white American slaves to this monumental consumerist culture. Coming out of one shop, only to hasten to the next one. In a failing pursuit of trying to buy the next best slick tie, or halter top dress that will get them laid when they walk into the swankiest bar they can find where they sip on 150 ml of German Riesling wine for $8.50. Yes, as I have mentioned before (maybe not to you), but this is the highest most efficient form of slavery, where the slave believes himself to be free.

It was absurd because the people I was with, inevitably, were a part of that slave race and thus they thought I was some kind of far out freak, which was fun for a while until I realized that I wasn't going to make the transition from freak to prophet. The only alternative left for me was find a place to hide. By what divine or cosmic grace that chose to patronize me, I finally found sanctuary on one corner of Newbury street amidst this living organic holocaust, when I heard the solitary but sure strains of bossa nova being played on an amplified acoustic guitar. Finally found an older Russian guitar player, Peter who had been playing Stan Getz's Girl from Ipanema that I'd heard. Ended up chilling there for the rest of the evening until I had to leave.

It was incredible. This guy was literally blowing my mind away, fusing strains of jazz and blues and interpreting it within a classical guitar sonic palette. I have no knowledge of Russian, and his English wasn't the best, but it made no difference. I finally found that one person who I could hang with in all of that vast city. We spoke of John McLaughlin, Vladimir Horowitz and Keith Jarrett, and he actually let me play his guitar so that I could show him some modal variations to emulate Indian classical raags relating it to the blues. Turned out that he had the same kind of laptop that I did, manufactured by Gateway! By the by, an acquaintance of his, an older American gentleman by the name of Dean Hunt, dropped by and we all hung around, talking, while Peter played his guitar. It was so spontaneous and beautiful. Neither one of us should've been there at that point of time, Peter had never played at that particular spot before, and his acquaintance Dean, is a foreign language bookseller in Harvard square. It was strange indeed that me, being all of 22 (as Dean reminded me) finally found my jam with two other hermits (in their own fashion), both who were old enough to be my father.

Unfortunately I had to leave at some point, and got caught having dinner at the most expensive seafood restaurant in Boston (oh it was a frugal meal, I assure you), listening to the other mutants converse about their shopping spree and their dumbfuck worthless lives. I spent the night ending my relationship with my girlfriend, and that was at least real. There was at least some authenticity to that, and for that I'm grateful to her. I left Boston on Sunday evening, but my last memory of the city was at least the silver lining around the dark stormcloud. Right before I took the Red Line subway to South Station, I by chance met Peter again, who was back to playing at his usual spot in Harvard square, romancing his own version of Mingus' Goodbye Pork Pie Pat. Sounds like I'm making this shit up doesn't it?

On the long bus ride back to Ithaca, I continued with my reading of Dave Guerin's Anarchism: From Theory to Practice. And more I read, it just reinforced the reality of how fucked up everything is now. Moreover, as each day goes by, the odds of achieving a different reality, a way of life that is not fettered by the chains of TV death, money, and other such expensive shit (thanks Fela), seem to be dwindling for every second that passes within which a thousand dumb motherfuckers across the world, are driving their Porsches & BMWs, going to the club to get wasted with with their retarded friends.

What kills me even as I write this, is that for my self-awareness that I have achieved, I'm still full of shit, because I'm sitting here writing this email to you my professor, not my co-conspirator among a clandestine body of political assassins. Alas, Hassan -i Sabah is long dead, and I'm merely making my own lack of a voice be heard, and so what? See in the normal course of events I wouldn't ever condone violence of any sort, but man I wish that the terrorists win. It doesn't even matter whether their cause is right or wrong, because I don't give a shit. I'm not talking about Al-Qaeda or the Aryan Brotherhood or some militant off-shoot of the Black Panther party. They all have their false causes that they are ready to sacrifice their life for, and between the vast majority of terrorist outfits, I'm sure we can gather up enough candidates to fuck up the whole world nice and proper, and send both me and you to our graves. I don't see a way to fix this world any more, so might as well bite the bullet and hope that something catastrophic happens, which plunges the entire world into chaos, murder, death, rebirth and finally salvation. Of course, if we are feeling particularly adventurous, we could dose the water supply of the world with a sufficient quantity of LSD-25, if we could find Owsley to cook it up.

You would ask of me to tone it down now, and be patient. I know there are people out there right now who are not sitting on their asses and trying to make a difference, and I for sure am not helping their cause with my diatribe. Maybe this is only a testimony to my own bubble that I've been living in for the past 3 years in Ithaca, and Ithaca is one helluva place to be constructing your own bubble reality in. But I've been around the block long enough to know that it doesn't take much to change one's grip on what is real. And what IS real anyway? I just know that we want the world, and we want it now, or so said Morrison. and until then, hand me that spliff while I get by with Hendrix's words:

I know for sure I don't live today
No sun comin through my windows
Feel like I'm livin' at the bottom of a grave
No-ho sun comin through my windows
Feel like Im livin' at the bottom of a grave
I wish you'd hurry up and rescue me
So I can be on my miserable way
(well), I don't live today
Maybe tomorrow, I just cant say
Its such a shame to waste your time away like this existing
Oh, there aint no life no where...

Down, man
(are) you experienced?
Get experienced
Get experienced

The above excerpt is from an email, that I sent to my politics professor earlier today, and possibly one of the rare pieces of honest literature that I have produced.

2008-04-20T12:47:00.002-04:00

Ein sehr Glücklich 4/20 zum alles. Einen Staadt, Einen Reich, Einen Völk : Marijuana über alles.

Sieg Heil!

2008-04-19T17:16:00.004-04:00

There's a theory about deja vu...

why do we think these things happened before?

Simple.

They did happen before, in our minds, as visions of the future. Because these are precognitions, we can't fit the material into our system of consciousness as it is now structured. This is basically supernatural stuff. We're seeing into the future but haven't learned how to process the experience. So it stays hidden until the precognition comes true, until we come face to face with the event. Now we are free to remember it, to experience it as familiar material.

Most of us have probably seen our own death but haven't known how to make the material surface.

Maybe when we die, the first thing we'll say is, "I know this feeling. I was here before."

that feeling you can only describe in French.

Maybe those are the fleeting moments of pure consciousness recognized, that are shelved away as false memory and illusions -

2008-03-30T23:46:00.003-04:00

So, I've acquired my copy of Satch's new album and I thought I'd post a review here in my blog which may for once be of utility to other robots, aliens, guitar players, anarchists and tantriks. As fair warning, I just got the album yesterday, so these are purely first impressions, but I'm going to make them as detailed as possible. I initially thought of avoiding the song by song analysis, but ended up going with it anyway. I'll try and offer a cohesive perspective on the album as a whole.

Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musterion of Rock

The album starts off with an ominous dark vibe as "Musterion" kicks off. To draw a comparison, it reminded me sort of the song "Belly Dancer" or "Oriental Melody" from the SBM album. There are definitely some interesting moments in the song, Satch's playing is quite twisted ! The song retains a format similar to most of Satch's "standard" more rock oriented songs - all in all an interesting album opener.
"Overdrive" continues almost where "Musterion" left off - however, it gives the listener the feeling of really settling into the album. Heavy rock-solid guitar arrangements over a pretty basic drum and bass groove. However the layering of guitar sounds really thickens up the mix, and Satch is playing those memorable hooks and big sounding chords! This is the first kind of "take notice" stereotypical Satch solo. A very pronounced minor tonality and some really nice melodies. A pretty guitar heavy and dramatic closure to the song leading straight into...
"I Just Wanna Rock" - whether a reference to the old Twisted Sister song, I don't know, but it is what it says it is. This is very similar to "Crowd Chant" off Super Colossal. Straight up bare bones rocker, which is spiced up by Satch using a Talk-Box - this is definitely going to be one for the audience.
And this is where things get real hip ~ from ZZ's dissonant tenor lines which segue into "Professor Satchafunkilus". It's all about the funk! Satch's layered melodic guitar lines pretty much tell the listener to get off the seat and move one's posterior on the downbeat. Very hip and funky, funkier than "The Snake" off his first album or "Cool#9". This is a real funky tune which I have no doubt Satch is going to use to build off to an Satchanormous jam when he plays it live! Some real sneaky and hip soloing going on there too and the song drops out to ZZ repeating his melodies - works just brilliantly.
and "Revelation". We could have done without this one. Nothing new here at all. Satch doing some soulful soloing over what sounds like a backing track. Without letting my feelings for Satch as one hip dude coming into the way, it's a pretty boring track. Nothing new here, though to its credit the song ends with some really nice soloing from Satch and picks up in intensity. But overall, disappointing given its name, anything but a revelation.
"Come on Baby" is the trademark love song that is there in every Satch album. Again, it is what is says it is. It has been done before, but there's some inventive and nice soloing in there, and the main melody is really nice almost 60ish hippie sounding.
"Out of the Sunrise" is yet again something that I personally could've done without on the album. It's pretty much like a nondescript 80s sounding track with Satch soloing on top of it, probably the lowest point of the album. Its only saving grace is when Satch breaks off into the solo halfway into the song, but it still ends with the hateful cheesy melody lines.
Thankfully Satch keeps it real by breaking into "Diddle-Y-A-Doo-Dat" with a real prog sounding intro in odd time with harmonized guitar lines which quickly segues into a down and dirty drum and bass groove. There's almost a nod to the Jeff Beck group in the way Satch explores the melodies. The shortest song in the album, it almost brings the listener back on track to let us know Satch means business. What's really unique about this song is the presence of a dirty organ arrangement - something that I've never in the past 6 years of listening to Satriani, ever really heard!
And we're down to the last two songs on the album. Middle eastern percussions and an open stringed melody line lead into "Asik Vaysel" which is in my opinion the album's highlight. This is pure quintessential Satch doing his thing. The mystical intro leads into a straight up shred fest as only Satch can do it. Reminiscent of a live version of "Circles" in terms of song structure, but similar to "Surfing with the Alien" or "Flying in a Blue Dream" in terms of energy. Insane soloing and some great melodies and grooves.
"Andulasia" starts off in a similar manner, stripped down acoustic melodies interweaving through each other with some beautiful acoustic soloing before we get hit with this wall of transcendental guitar noise as the band kicks into full flow. Satch takes over the proceedings and blows you away like only he can. Great way to wrap up the album, you gotta listen to it to feel the energy and the vibe.

So that's about it for first impressions on the album. I'd give it a 4 out of 5 rating. The songs which stand out, definitely grab the listener and gets 'em involved into Satch's playing. However I could have done without the fillers in the album. It's not like they are bad songs, but Satch being Satch makes us have rather groovy expectations. However this album has great potential for repeat listens and though Satriani doesn't necessarily break new ground, he does his thing with panache and style. I had secretly hoped for Dave LaRue to be playing bass on the album rather than Matt Bissionette - I do NOT dig his bass playing, and Dave La Rue works incredibly well with Satch. So I was disappointed that Satch enlisted Matt Bissionette still. Therefore even though you have a drum powerhouse like Jeff Campitelli slamming the skins, the energy from the band is not at its optimum. However that said, I'm sure when they play live, the situation would be rectified. This is not Satch's best album, but it's ultimately pure Satch, so it by default makes it something worth getting your hands on.

Professor Satchafunkilus has entered the building...

2008-03-06T20:20:00.004-05:00

Transcendental Sky Guitar : it speaks in strange tongues and the strings vibrate with cosmic energies.

2007-09-25T18:24:00.000-04:00

everybody's so concerned about heroin and marijuana and all that, until they forget the most dangerous narcotic that exists:
and that's the narcotic that's injected into the minds of infants... it's called social narcotics...

so, you know as well as i do that things are changing... change, you know... meanwhile,
uptown,
the DJ
a player...
revolution...

[In Flux]

2007-08-31T01:38:00.000-04:00

Daydream delusion, limousine eyelash
Oh baby with your pretty face
Drop a tear in my wineglass
Look at those big eyes
See what you mean to me
Sweet-cakes and milkshakes
I'm a delusion angel
I'm a fantasy parade
I want you to know what I think
Don't want you to guess anymore
You have no idea where I came from
We have no idea where we're going
Lodged in life
Like branches in a river
Flowing downstream
Caught in the current
I carry you
You'll carry me
That's how it could be
Don't you know me?
Don't you know me by now?

2007-08-15T05:37:00.000-04:00

Leave it on...
A note to pass...
Often untold...
The only thing we've clung to is
not our own.

Leaving on...
Remove the path...
The plot is then sold.
The only thing we've clung to is
not our own.

And I can tell left from right
I need not be warned
And everytime I round the Corner
Ill remember that.

Opposite's next in line
No clearer in form.
What option did I have?
A great day for freedom...

2007-07-17T16:31:00.000-04:00

"Mbenga!" - the new buzz word in avant garde neo-bohemian post-modern existential Surrealist fashion... and we here at Schlomo Mbenga & Sons are creating this hip new revolution!

We're an independent designer label based out of the historic city of Bhubaneshwar in the state of Odissa, in India. As of right now, we have two of our retail outlets operating in Ithaca and Poughkeepsie in the NY state area. Our clothes and accoutrements are geared toward affluent junkies, shamans, burnt out acid-freaks, pig-feeding gangsters, Steve Vai and anarcho-nihilists.

A more affordable line of clothing for communists is scheduled to be launched in the Fall of 2007, with clothes starting from as low as $129.99!

The model pictured above (Name: DJ Srinni Abdullah) is sporting one of our first concept outfits - the Semi-Retarded Shaman. The headgear is a papyrus lampshade, which heavily borrows from depictions of some obscure Sun God campaigning for rights to bring down instant death upon his worshippers. Albeit this one is smeared with a phosphor based radioactive compound for that electric effect! The cloak is made from the same material as used by Cleopatra's clothiers who designed her thong. The embroidery is in gold and hand woven by Jerry Garcia, and littered with gigantic DMT crystals.

The price inclusive of all taxes, is only $1999.69!

[On additional purchases of shares in our financial backer, Limtex Infotech Ltd, we will include the severed head of Mick Jagger.]

For all other custom orders, questions and feedback, or for availing of our 24 page full color catalog laced with California Sunshine, feel free to contact our Sales department executive:

DJ Narada Devdip
email:anpatra@vassar.edu

[All emails will be returned within the period of 2-5 business days. Please allow our sales exec. to recover from his drug frenzies]

Just remember, if you don't look good, we don't look good!

2007-06-23T17:12:00.001-04:00

yes sir!

it's done, and damn well done right!

Acknowledgements:
Anna Skira for doing a live demonstration earlier, last month.
Thor, for being a constant source of inspiration.
Jeff Beck, for chillin' in the back and playing some blues.
The Man, for his forgetten pack of Classic's lying around in some
obscure part of the house
And finally, the Oriya, for the last remaining solitary rolling paper that he abandoned in my room.
~* BOOM SHANKAR *~

2007-06-17T14:27:00.000-04:00

exactly like Erich von Stroheim in the movies, the man you love to hate.

who needs that, you ask?

people. places. lovers (each other of course). cinema, poetry, art. kings and empires. society.

hatred, and fear - those very ugly yet powerful forces which manipulate us so, that we never seek to question what lies outside, to doubt who we are and what we stand for. the principle devices for the construction of our slave collar which we so proudly wear...

but who needs that, when you can summon all of your righteous fury into condemning the one you hate. and that's the handle isn't it?

an end to magick and fairy tales. an end to truth and justice.

The gallows pole for the errant philosopher, the misguided idealist, the criminal prophet and the poetic terrorist. The heathen God and his faithful priest.

It is not so hard to imagine Eden waiting with her gates open for them. Our saviors -
ripped to pieces, their death the subject of casual conversation over cocktails at some boutique coffee shop.

like Agaue arriving home amidst great ceremony and celebration, carrying the head of her own son, Pentheus.

2007-06-17T07:27:00.000-04:00

DIONYSUS

He enjoys the taste of what is wholesome for him;
his pleasure in anything ceases when the bounds of the wholesome are crossed;
he divines the remedies for partial injuries;
he has illnesses as great stimulants of his life;
he knows how to exploit ill chances;
he grows stronger through the accidents that threaten to destroy him;
he instinctively gather from all that he sees, hears, experiences, what advances his main concern --- he follows a principle of selection --- he allows much to fall through;
he reacts with the slowness bred by a long caution
and a deliberate pride --- he tests a stimulus for
its origin and its intentions, he does not submit;
he is always in his own company, whether he deals with books, men, or landscapes;
he honors by choosing, by admitting, by
trusting.
-- 1003 (Jan-Fall 1888), F.N.

2007-06-04T15:13:00.000-04:00

baddest bitches in the bed... gotta get mellow ya'll

pusherman get mellow ya'll

2007-05-02T00:39:00.000-04:00

Sooner or later the uncovering & unveiling of self/nature transmogrifies a person into a brigand - like stepping into another world and then returning to this one to discover you've been declared a traitor, heretic, exile.

The Law waits for you to stumble on a mode of being, a soul different from the FDA-approved purple-stamped standard dead meat - and as soon as you begin to act in harmony with nature the Law garottes & strangles you - so don't play the blessed liberal minded middle-class martyr - accept the fact that you're a criminal and be prepared to act like one.

Paradox: to embrace Chaos is not slide towards Entropy but to emerge into an energy like stars, a pattern of instantaneous grace - a spontaneous organic order completely different from the carrion pyramids of sultans, muftis, cadis & grinning executioners.

After Chaos comes Eros - the principle of order implicit in the nothingness of the unqualified One. Love is structure, system, the only code untainted by slavery & drugged sleep. We must become crooks & con-men to protect its spiritual beauty in a bezel of clandestinity, a hidden garden of espionage

2007-04-19T13:56:00.000-04:00

04/19/1943, Bicycle Day : "Dada, aapnar cycle'er chaka ghurche."

2007-02-18T17:23:00.000-05:00

Dead cats, dead rats
Cant see what they were at
Dead cat in a top hat
Sucking on the young mans blood
Wishing he could come
Sucking on the soldiers brain
Wishing it would be the same

Dead cat, dead rat
Cant you see what they were at?
Fat cat in a top hat
Thinks hes an aristocrat
Thinks he can kill and slaughter
Thinks he can shoot my daughter

2007-02-12T15:56:00.000-05:00

You find me wanting
You find me bloodless but inspired
You find me out
You find me hallucinating fire

No narcotics in my brain
Can make this go away

I'm sorry that I'm not like you
I worry that I don't act the way you'd like me to

I've been in limousines; I've seen inside your dreams - it's raining there. Try not to stare

2006-12-08T12:59:00.000-05:00

public HintCard getRandomCard() {
//Returns the first card
HintCard tempCard = (HintCard) mainHintDeck.get(0);
System.out.println("Card being returned is " + tempCard.sendOutCardInfo());
//Removes the card from the deck and returns it to the calling module
mainHintDeck.remove(tempCard);
return tempCard;
}

Nowadays we try to restructure entropy and graph destiny with foolish drivel and senseless effort with an almost twisted epicurean fetishism...

Let go, it's all going to be alright in the end really - you too will be enveloped in these beautiful glowing mandalas of consumerism and religion... the new absolutes.

The call to form a society, or a brotherhood of ancients, and assemble our own autonomous pirate utopia; the idea becomes increasingly delectable... we don't subscribe to democracy. we of ancient Nordic blood, old Aryan poets...

where is the will to power?
Zarathushtra's words were in vain...
the revolution is once again postponed due to rain.

2006-11-24T02:03:00.000-05:00

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

Thanatopsis - William Cullen Bryant (1821)

Malay Black Djinn Curse

2006-11-14T15:01:00.000-05:00

    These premises have been cursed by black sorcery. The curse has been advocated according to correct rituals. This institution is cursed because it has oppressed the imagination and defiled the intellect, degraded the arts toward stupefaction, spiritual slavery, propaganda for state and capital, puritanical reaction, unjust profits, lies and aesthetic blight.

    The employees of this institution are now in danger. No individual has been cursed, but the place itself has been infected with ill fortune and malignancy. Those who do not wake up and quit, or begin sabotaging the work place, will gradually fall under the effect of this sorcery. Removing or destroying the implement of sorcery will do no good. It has been seen in this place, and this place is cursed. Reclaim humanity and revolt in the name of the imagination - or else be judged (in the mirror of this charm) and enemy of the human race.

    At present, for tactical reasons, we do not advocate violence or sorcery against individuals. We call for actions against institutions and ideas - art-sabotage and clandestine propaganda (including ceremonial magick and tantrik pornography) - and especially against the poisonous media of the empire of lies. The Black Djinn Curse represents only a first step in the campaign of poetic terrorism which - we trust - will lead to other less subtle forms of insurrection.

2006-09-30T15:25:00.000-04:00

'So! You take let us assume a third toke; long and slow. You vaporise and you take it in and in and in... and there is a sound like the crumpling of a plastic bread wrapper or the crackling of flame and a tone. A mmmmmmmmmmmm......

and there is this....... There is a cheer. The gnomes have learned a new way to say hooray. The walls, such they be, are crawling with geometric hallucinations. Very brightly coloured, very irridescent. Deep sheens and very highly reflective surfaces everything is machine-like and polished and throbbing with energy but that is not what immediately arrests my attention. What arrests my attention is the fact that this space is inhabited. And so like jewelled self dribbling basketballs these things come running forward and what they are doing with this visible language that they create is they are making gifts! They are making gifts for you and they will say ...'

2006-09-23T18:50:00.000-04:00

All art is dead. All music is an echo. They are surreal and beautiful cadavers which seek to trap and contain a fleeting lapse in rational thought, a lightening spurt of electrical activity which propels the human consciousness to the borders of madness & great phantastic delusions. They are the ghosts - of living transient moments of ecstasy & rapture.

(The divine director's cut frame # ∞: The Holy Moment.)

Art seeks to contain these infinitely ephemeral moments - those transcendantal leaps in our neural activity; and tragically fails trying to achieve that beautiful confusion which started it all; a brief journey into the realm of the senses....

these words, are dead and plastic. strive for that soft delightful madness, not through these words, but through the spaces which bleed in between...

2006-09-15T01:41:00.000-04:00

The Masochist's Coffe Pot: binary progressions of pain through splitscreen beauty and liquid clarity.

Would you buy this product in exchange for your soul?

2006-09-03T18:11:00.000-04:00

What visions are these that appear? The Mandelbrot Set is etched pixel by pixel, on the screen. On its edges, strange colors play amid fantastic filigrees. Infinite detail plunges in fractal regress to infinitesimal reaches. A myriad of Julia sets, each a delicate doily born of a single point in the Mandelbrot set, parade across the screen. And now, strange creatures called biomorphs appear, with radiolarian spikes and innards like the ectoplasm of algebra.

How were these visions conjured up?

2006-08-21T14:04:00.000-04:00

00:35 - the electric Tropicana fruit punch

01:10 - Shylock disguised as Wolverine - one big thick blunt sun caged within adamantium claws

01:45 - The centrifugal force created by Neptune's frentic revolutions are a tad too much for the interstellar threads. The planet careens off into blissful oblivion shattering amidst this psychedelic synaesthetic funk.

02:05 - The Quest for the missing Rothman's.

02:10 - Quest abandoned after an eternal search along with GMAT

02:20 - Tuned in, turned on, and dropping out...

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggg!!!

Crimson Cosmos & Boogie Bubbles, we've been crowned the King of Cloud Daemons...
Watchtowers to the South of the City, they form the NOW, monumental shrines to the new Lords: Abstract, Geometry, Madness and Recursion.
Enter the dragon, the clown prince and the creepazoid: freak power!
Spiral Architects oversee the construction of a quicksilver Atlantis
Synch : everything is green and submarined, marooned on a velvet island of sacred oblivion
With a mouthful of stars, I trip over my feet
Big Bad Clumsy Moon
We lost the skyline, stepped right off the map. Drifted off into space, and let the clocks relapse.
Dissolution. Confusion. Chaos.

3:30 - Back to the Sanctuary... peace and tranquil. Message from God.

4:10 - Spacial Distortion: extremely menacing vibrations were all around us. Please! Tell me about the fucking golf shoes!

4:40 - Wasted spaceman lost in an orbit

5:25 - Grooving, Converting Vegetarians. Shadow puppets and crystallized spherechuckers.

5:30 - Commencement of the Third - Boom Shankar!

6:10 - Morning's soft embrace, alone and content, kissed by the gentle rain.

tH3 ЮnG & ￦!n¶iNg J.

6:30 - Shpongle

7:10 - Wheels. Alloyed Steel. Steer Right or Left. What the fuck - I can't drive, I'd rather fly...

7:30 - Deliberations. Maggot Brain.

8:10 - Message from God: leavetakings...

Lotus Feet. Losing necessary cohesion.

9:00 - Obscure Time Loops. The Enemy is awake! Rewind, just push play. I think I'm getting the fear...

Lost, strung out, wasted into blank space... swimming in around the perimeter.

how long had this shit been going on? Get a grip. Maintain.

10:30 - Kronos, he who has abandoned me... the mystery of electric day-glow fan

Wait for sleep.

"Before you
slip into unconsciousness
I'd like to have another
kiss
Another
flashing chance at bliss
Another kiss, another kiss"

2006-08-03T08:20:00.000-04:00

Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time
For y'all have knocked her up.
I have tasted the maggots in the mind of the universe -
I was not offended
For I knew I had to rise above it all,
Or drown in my own shit...

Come on Maggot Brain
Go on Maggot Brain

2006-07-30T07:07:00.000-04:00

Rain
Rai
Ra
R
Ra
Rai
Rain

Distant echoes, the solitary drops break against the glass…
In their
insignificant death they are remembered –
By the residue of dirt which dries (dies)
to a crust on the windowpane…
(blank faces on the
windowpane)

Once he wished for nothing, but to watch and wait
As
the clocked ticked away at midnight,
The beauty of the light soft rain would
cocoon him in a warm gentle dreamless sleep…

Now he can’t
remember – weird dreams plague sleep.
The echoes are always of lives that he
could’ve lived… and died
Morning creeps up behind him and night melts away
in shades of purple
(say do you remember, the time we cried?)
And the rain
haunts him… in his sleep, his waking hours, in his dreams…

Now he
just recollects: rain drops are spherical because of the physical property of
surface tension.
An end in magick, belief in god, the end of
laughter….
Blank face in the windowpane…

2006-07-16T06:18:00.000-04:00

"I see it feelingly" - Gloucester, King Lear, IV, vi, 147.

Unfortunately, humans lack the sophisticated neural hardware present in bats and whales. The blind must rely on the feeble light of fingertips and painful shape of a cracked shin. Echolocation comes down to the crude assessment of simple sound modulations, whether in the dull reply of a tapping cane or the low, eerie flutter in one simple word - perhaps your word - flung down empty hallways (.... always) long past midnight...

Myth makes Echo the subject of longing and desire. Physics makes Echo the subject of distance and design. Where emotion and reason are concerned, both claims are accurate.

clamore... amore.... more... ore... re

And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love.

There is only silence.

Chi dara fine al gran dolore?
L'dore.

2006-06-27T01:07:00.000-04:00

"Come here
Pretty please
Can you tell me where I am
Won't you say something
I need to get my bearings
I'm lost
And the shadows keep on changing

And I'm haunted
By the lives that I have loved
And actions I have hated
I'm haunted
By the lives that wove the web
Inside my haunted head

Don't cry,
There's always a way
Here in November in this house of leaves
We'll pray
Please, I know it's hard to believe
To see a perfect forest
Through so many splintered trees
You and me
And these shadows keep on changing

And I'm haunted
By the lives that I have loved
And actions I have hated
I'm haunted
By the promises I've made
And others I have broken
I'm haunted
By the lives that wove the web
Inside my haunted head

Hallways... always
I'll always love you
I'll always need you
I'll always want you
And I will always miss you

Come here
No I won't say please
One more look at the ghost
Before I'm gonna make it leave
Come here
I've got the pieces here
Time to gather up the splinters
Build a casket for my tears

I'm haunted(By the lives that I have loved)
I'm haunted(By the promises I've made)
I'm haunted
By the hallways in this tiny room
The echos there of me and you
The voices that are carrying this tune"

2006-06-25T17:37:00.000-04:00

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Srinjay!

Red Srinjay at night, shepherd's delight. Red Srinjay at morning, shepherd's warning.
Donald Duck's middle name is Srinjay!
Srinjay will often glow under UV light.
Marie Antoinette never said 'let them eat cake' - this is a mistranslation of 'let them eat Srinjay'!
Oranges, lemons, watermelons, pineapples and Srinjay are all berries.
Fifty-two percent of Americans drink Srinjay.
South Australia was the first place to allow Srinjay to stand for parliament.
The condom - originally made from Srinjay - was invented in the early 1500s.
Humans share over 98 percent of their DNA with Srinjay!
Srinjay is incapable of sleep.

2006-06-18T15:55:00.000-04:00

"By starlight Ill kiss you

And promise to be your one and only

Ill make you feel happy

And leave you to be lost in mine

And where will we go, what will we do?

Soon said I, will know

Dead eyes, are you just like me?

cause her eyes were as vacant as the seas

Dead eyes, are you just like me?

And all along, we knew wed carry on just to belong

By starlight I know you

As lovely as a wish granted true

My life has been empty, my life has been untrue

And does she really know, who I really am?

Does she really know me at last

Dead eyes, are you just like me?"

2006-06-06T00:00:00.000-04:00

Satanism freaks, chewed up pineal glands and adrenochrome.

cameras inside the coffin interviewing worms -
quite vampyres - you cannot touch these phantoms
the spectator is a dying animal...
Invoke! Palliate. Drive away the Dead. Nightly.

what can I say, even a goddamned werewolf is entitled to legal counsel...

2006-05-07T16:39:00.000-04:00

Arriving Somewhere, Not Here

Unknown faces and hostile authoritarian figures.
Fleeting streams of consiousness.
Black polished shoes and a crumpled suit, raised collar and black shades,
The tropical weather rapes him mercilessly...

Trapped in this glorified prison, this time capsule
Amongst the stock-brokers, the tourists, the businessmen, the pushers, the hustlers...
The Watcher is hopelessly out of place.
Destination anywhere. You never know what comes next.
He's confused - he's waiting for escape...
I meant he's trying to escape the wait.
The agonizing slow passage of time bothers him more than anything else.
The drunk and the junkie desperately seek shade and sanctuary, and the next fix.
The poet seeks solitude & cool, love, sex and death.

The sleek aircrafts take flight one after another out by the window.
The sight strikes him as hopelessly mundane
(as a child it would have filled him with wonder at how these massive machines could ever fly away into the blue skies)
He's a vampyre.
He's comforted by the soft velvet anonymity which binds everything here, an ancient sarcophagus;
The people, the planes, the cheap beer, the flashy designer accoutrements on display - sophisticated machines designed for the zombies which crawl around this vast temple.
It's beautiful... sublime...
Watching the ghosts busying themselves within this inanimate soup of glittering diseased jewels, he allows himself a smile.

Before he leaves,
He catches the whiff of an exotic perfume, and turns around a minute too late...
He misses that flashing chance at divinity again, salvation.

Bubbling golden spheres, black rubber skid marks on the tarmac, slow decayed tuna sandwiches;
all the signs show Kronos' unending trials and tortures - poor bastard is ripped apart into pieces everyday...
by all of us.
How does he deal with this trip?
Is it because he will ultimately sing that mysterious lullaby which puts us to the deep sleep?
Soft buzzing of flies and people, stale cigarettes and Elizabeth Arden -

Last words man:
Consumerism. Confusion. Chaos. Climax. Coma divine.
See you on the other side of morning...

2006-04-29T01:41:00.000-04:00

On the Edge of Night

I hope you go out smiling...
Like a child, into the cool remnant of a dream.
The angel man finally claimed
his benevolent soul.

Ophelia!
Leave sudden in silk.
Chlorine dream.
Mad, stifled witness

2006-03-25T06:30:00.000-05:00

"Strange memories on this nervous night..."

I think the essential psychology behind the trip is to realize the very fact. Beyond a certain point you start getting extremely self-introspective about everything and get buried in the details. You are faced with the essential dilemma: do you make sense of everything else or is everything else supposed to make sense of you?

The primary problem for the brain is this: it needs to appreciate the fact the other people at that very instant don't see, comprehend or feel the way it does. And other other agents need to appreciate the fact the individual concerned at that very instant in an effort to perhaps commune with his own self on recurring metaphysical levels is equally divided in his activities of trying to fathom why the floor of his room resembles the floor of a lush rain forest; or why his roommates face is expanding and contracting like some weird balloon.

The tripper's problem lies in trying to reconciliate all of this into a collective whole and desperately trying to tie the threads to form some sort of coherent reality where both these realities(his own, and the "normal" reality of everyone else) co-exist.

and this I think is the essential fallacy of the trip...

"Strange memories on this nervous night... Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a main era - -the kind of peak that never comes again.

Maybe it meant something. Maybe not in the long run; but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant."

2006-03-17T15:18:00.000-05:00

The Ceremony

safely locked in my own boogie bubble,

floating over blue jeweled waters -

like colors draining out of my broken canvas, on some forgotten rainy day,
my brain floats on these colorful streams of consciousness.
riding on the iridescent overtones of the fundamental frequency,
on these waves of rapture and delight,
lost in this evergreen glass forest,
lost on this haze of reflected peripheral images of fragmented universes,I traverse a golden blue everlasting autumn dusk...
I have been crowned the King of the Cloud Demons...

2006-02-19T20:06:00.000-05:00

"Cinema derives not from painting, literature, sculpture, theater, but from ancient popular wizardry. It is the contemporary manifestation of an evolving history of shadows, a delight in pictures that move, a belief in magick. Its lineage is entwined from the earliest beginning with Priests and sorcery, a summoning of phantoms. With, at first, only slight aid of the mirror and fire, men called dark and secret visits from regions in the buried mind. In these séances, shades are spirits which ward off evil... "

2006-02-09T01:52:00.000-05:00

Hanged Men Dancing

... and in this danse macabre's midst
one mad skeleton can't stay in check,
like a spooked horse he leaps into the red sky :
Stiff noose still coiled around his neck,

his little fingers grip a bony thigh
Squeezing out laughter more like moans,
and like an actor lost in drama,
retakes the stage to the applause of the bones...

crimson cosmos, we'll wait for the final absolution : nothingness, singular points of entry for chaos and confusion, and sweet sickly death. the fools only need to wait in their play, lost in the rose garden. the hermits shall stay locked in their own crystal chambers, no sympathy for the those colorful devils... the watchers will only stand and wait, bleeding silence... let me be a ghost, to feed on them and consume them... my cosmic haunt lies off the left-corner of the universe, two blocks adjacent from a dying star.

2006-01-24T04:07:00.000-05:00

Something, someone, some spirit was pursuing all of us across the desert of life and was bound to catch us before we reached heaven. Naturally, now that I look back on it, this is only death: death will overtake us before heaven. The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes us sigh & groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced (though we hate to admit it), in death.

But who wants to die?

2006-01-11T01:20:00.000-05:00

“ … the meditating philosopher sits there in his island of inner illumination; and at the opposite end of the symbolic chamber, in another rosier island, an old woman crouches before the hearth. The firelight touches and transfigures her face, and we see, concretely illustrated, the impossible paradox and supreme truth – that perception is (or at least can be, ought to be) the same as Revelation, that Reality shines out of every appearance, that the One is totally, infinitely present in all particulars…”

2005-12-18T02:01:00.000-05:00

I have traveled a long road in search of the fever dream. I lost the stars and the planets to an unyielding cosmos of electric lights and sparkling billboards. The road is always constant, the mysterious ingredient of some forgotten ceremony. The shapes are always blurred, the lone hitchhiker, or the unfinished gothic cathedral... the cars always fly by me, in some twisted linear fashion - their faces and colors change... yet always they appear ghostly - mechanical spirits of the road - questing for some final destination they will never reach.... looking through the fogged glass window - they appear to be in another world, not mine, strayed out of time and place...

All those who seek to find the last word of the mad prophet, follow me... I will lead you across the hot deserts of the pale night and fly you over the blue oceans... guide you through the shadowed alleys of pleasure and I will stay with you through the carnival of horrors... we must make for the shoreline... the glittering beaches... the hermit's cave...

Ride with me to chase the dawn's newborn light, and catch the weeping moon's falling tears...

Travels.

Back and forth in time, we are stuck in this divine loop, a bit of old film played forwards and backwards - but say the magic words and cast the stones... you'll be free, follow me...

and then you see, the ghosts of you and me, unborn and blind, whispering behind the veil - they wait, forlorn in silence... the fading sound of some obscure piece of poetry the only residue, and the ringing of the telephone...

here at the crossroads of twilight, the ceremony begins... etched on the bark of an ancient oak - "rewind"

2005-12-08T16:26:00.000-05:00

A Brief Note on the Realm of the Senses

"We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies - all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable.
We can pool information about our experiences, but never experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes."

2005-12-01T00:15:00.000-05:00

"O children of the night,
Who among you will run with the hunt?

Now night arrives with her purple legion
Retire now to your tents and dreams.
Tomorrow we enter the town of my birth
I want to be ready ... "

2005-10-15T02:12:00.000-04:00

Haunted

What do you do when it hits you so softly straight between the eyes?
Do you turn back and look for the ghosts?
Haunted by the smiles and the tears?
Chase around the shadows of yesterday, and run to grasp the fading starlight within your fingers before it slips away and morning erases the memories of midnight?
Or do you tell yourself the same old lies, and walk away, like you do every time…
and all that remains is the fading cigarette smoke…

I just thought the ghosts were real and the carnival never stopped…

2005-09-30T12:35:00.000-04:00

A Series of Merry Unfortunate Incidents

let's sit down and smoke up with the Satyr down by the Commons...
get high...
take a piss on the big fucking stone turtle...
fuck the police...
and now you tell me I've gotta drink before I think?
go down by the pond, big fucking mutant geese tried to bite my cock off...
I heard they're selling revelations and epiphanies in paper tabs for 7 bucks a piece - we'll lie down on the football field under the stars and cross the threshold -
please let us fuck with the infinite...
nightmares and dreamscapes...
wicked princesses and virtuous harlots dancing with me in the great circle with the lil' green men and Dionysus standing there jerking off to the mad beating of the drums and the broken bagpipes

here you are pwned by a cycloptic pepperoni and you think you are motherfucking Yoda and shit?

now what is that?
sublimity?

2005-08-12T22:23:00.000-04:00

And the Memory Remains

wow, an 18 hour flight was pretty tiring - and this is a pretty bad way to begin my first blog entry from the US, but what the hell... yea things are sure guna be different from now on, mostly I'm worried about others than for myself, my folks back home - never was too good feeling sorry for myself - but I sure as hell feel sorry for them... wish I could have done something... ahh, it's nice to feel human at times.

anyway, I'm hoping Guitar Centre at New Jersey is guna have something nice in store for me... a new axe. now, where would my blog entries be without my outbursts of half-assed lame poetry... at any rate, thinking about home and my past life at altitudes of 20,000 feet provided sufficient juice to squeeze out something...

here's to all the folks back home...

I remember...
I remember waking up.
My childhood seems like those confounding lil' pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
Sometimes, those pieces connect - those small worlds of colour, and fragmented images, to form a story... each time, a new revelation, of knowledge lost, forgotten - as childhood faded away
(only preserved as pictures in a worn out photo album)
I remember gazing up at kites flying in the beautiful golden autumn sky - nature's glorified killers in all their splendour.
What would it have been to soar free with them?
and yes, I remember the faint strains of the drums beating, forming an unspoken littany... "pujo esheche"
Why I also remember Christmas Eve... one of those special nights, spent decorating the tree and then looking longingly at the night sky, until I would fall asleep - and my father would quitely come sneak in a big gift wrapped box by my pillow...
I remember slow listless summer afternoons spent in reading... of adventure and magick, and some faraway enchanted tree.

innocence... yes I remember first kiss, the taste of it still lingers... a taste of divinity perhaps?
(if such a thing is possible)
and I remember those whispered phone calls at night, ending in promises of a different life.
I remember hanging out with the guys, playing guitar, shooting the shit, being cool.
Faces old and new, etched in my brain forever... yes I remember them too.
And I still remember those times, that I cried - and what joy it was to just feel...

And now those memories, neatly tucked away in some corner of my brain, forlorn in silence, they ask me the same question: "Do you remember how to forget?"

2005-08-08T06:45:00.000-04:00

Pursuit

"Each thing I do,
I rush through so I can do something else.
In such a way do the days pass - a blend of stock car racing,
and the never ending building of a gothic cathedral.
Through the windows of my speeding car,
I see all that I love, falling away: books unread, jokes untold, landscapes unvisited."

2005-07-31T01:32:00.000-04:00

Have You Ever Been to the Carnivale?

I went to the Carnival yesterday and had the time of my life.
I rode the toy horses and the giant ferris wheel
(and no, I wasn't scared)
I bought red roses for my girl,
(she was so beautiful)
forever was now.
we etched our names and our lil' lives on the old oak tree
The clown, he gave me three balloons - red, green and blue...
And my mother bought me an ice-cream
(how old was I?)

Have you never been to the Carnival?

Strange thing happened at the Carnival yesterday,
The giant ferris wheel was broken and the toy horses wouldn't work...
the rain washed away the colours, the balloons were now a darker shade of grey.
The roses were black - the wilted fallen petals littered the ground like broken wings...
there were maggots crawling in my ice-cream...

only the clown remained - watching; an ancient monster that I still loved...
unspeakable & blasphemous names were carved roughly on the trunk of an old oak tree.
The sky bled crimson...
the shadows grew taller, and the Carnival was empty
a cold mocking moon rose amongst the tattered clouds...

You'd think that I'd want to leave the Carnival,
but it was ok -
I was already dead.

"Sleep... is too quiet, dreams are too painful
truth is the bed of this ocean of lies.
Words can create an oblivion ocean:
dad tell me, will I be dead very long?"

2005-06-23T16:25:00.000-04:00

when you reach the end and look back upon the days gone by....
the soft grey mornings, beauty not seen - too hungover from the nights forays - wasted time - to wake up early...
slow painful afternoons - stretched like old snakeskin - end to end...
hot crazy nights... waking up - the same nightmarish ordeal continues....

looking back at those intricate threads laid out like patterns in an ivy leaf, could we ask the question - if doing things differently would've led to another life - for better or for worse - a different life... could we have said the right words? or not said the wrong ones...
or would it just be someone else asking those questions - not me...

"we live, we die and death not ends it
journey we more into the nightmare clinging to life our passion'd flower
clinging to cunts and cocks of despair
we got our final vision by clap
Columbus' groin got filled with green death
(I touched her thigh and death smiled)"

2005-06-14T23:27:00.000-04:00

Eternal Autumn

Reddish leaves swirl in the wind like lost souls in search of rest. Like an open sketchbook focused on my dreams, this land is forever pictured as a comforting Autumn dusk. Replete with a golden sky, with crackling river water & bubbling marshes that dot the land, it feels like a Romantic artist's canvas...

... but further down the path, it is as if the shadows are swallowing the surroundings whole, without a penchant of logic or drop of meaning. It is as if, the only reason for this lies in darkness itself. Like royalty that rules the black void, entombed in the night infinite - it is she, the Eternal Mistress of Shadows.

Some connections are made to be discovered, while others remain unseen. Some lands are best never spoken, as their hell lies in between...

2005-06-08T15:29:00.000-04:00

The Dark Prince

He swayed gently, sitting on the humming wires,
Elegance understated - his keen eyes watch all, as the shadows grow tall…
(the setting sun spills innocent virgin blood over the horizon)
The luscious flowers in my garden bower hold no sway o’er him
(their fragrance is too sweet)
His eyes have seen birth of new life, and have smiled for each one that died,
and have watched the falling cherry blossoms… at the height of spring.
Don’t look into his pretty eyes,
(swim into those black waters, drowning in his big pretty eyes)
Vile creatures - they feast on carrion flesh and rotting corpses

2005-06-07T02:24:00.000-04:00

"I got wiring loose inside my head
I got books that I never ever read
I got secrets in my garden shed
I got a scar where all my urges bled
I got people underneath my bed
I got a place where all my dreams are dead
Swim with me into your blackest eyes"