3 posts tagged “2008”

TUCSON.  MAY.  1994.
Somehow between the festivities of the actual graduation ceremonies in the morning, after the pitchers and the families mingling and congratulating at Dirtbags late into the afternoon, between that and the Goldwater-Alexander extended-family dinner that night, i found myself floating face-up in the University Heights pool listening to this CD in its entirety. 

The big floor speakers from my poolside apartment were fed through the windows out onto the courtyard blasting sofa king loud i could hear it underwater.  I could easily justify the volume because literally everyone in the complex was out attending some form of graduation something or other.  And insofar as my dinner plans almost certainly pushing late for, i could justify this excessive luxury-time to myself because i was screwed quite high on all the ### i had taken that morning.
 

I believe my plan was to intentionally scar this day into my memory in the loftiest way i knew how.  The LP had only just come out that week, and i had been singing various chorus' from LIGHTNING CRASHES all during the ceremony as a talisman to keep me grounded.  I was singing them just lound enough for me to realize myself as a real presence on earth, but clearly loud enough for Anna to ask, then be deluged with whatever passed for verbal explanations of how fucking great i felt at the time.
 
This was one of the first times in our relationship when i recall feeling complete & total peace with the Truth to her.  About the #### mostly.  For i couldnt possibly have known myself enough then to show her the love & open doors i took a full year later to realize.
 
Funny how things unfold across the boardgame of life.  For the woman i was sitting next to in both that graduation ceremony, as well as the dinner that evening, would be the woman who would shape me as a man today.
   

THE ANGEL CLOSES HER EYES

THE CONFUSION SETS IN (my words, fuck you)

THE ANGEL OPENS HER EYES

PAAAAALE BLUE COLOURED YES

Some time after 10pm.

Jude is asleep, fast in the cocoon of mommy’s north face mummy. It's well into the 30s tonight. And I'm wondering how to spin to the world how wonderful a cold jack & ice is whilst huddled around a fire your son legitimately helped build.

He's done exceptionally. So much so that in the quiet of night, I overflow with fatherly pride. Absolutely none of the mischievous button-pushing I’ve come to accept back in town.  He's taken everything in stride and at face value. Bravery in the company of trust.  But really, never let me get more then 30ft from him from the moment we staked our claim.

It was only after the sun long gone down & the novelty of a carte blanche bag of marshmallows had worn off that it began to set in for him.

Starting with specific queries into what mommy & Charlie were doing right then. The prescient segue onto the heavy notion that THIS was not home. And home was where he'd rather be. The notion of have no fear: daddy is here was somehow not so slam dunk. It was only mommy’s bag, our tent, and the want & promise of 4 books of Dr Seuss by flashlight that allowed him to accept a day of camping’s beautiful end game.

So here I am: a full 3 score of miles away from a single bar of signal, listening to the sounds of Lost Coast surf, and the ebbing cracks and stickles of that very same campfire.

I am so full of the life right now. A feeling of release, having fulfilled a dream I've had as long as I've felt a man. A cacophony of favoirites.

9/30/2008

You' re hereby strongly encouraged to get one ping down & pull up LOVELESS on Rhapsody. Listen to it only once.

Note the polyaural textures of fuzzy tremolo and crisp chord progressions.

Pay attention to the meandering on SOMETIMES.

And the reverse low altitude fly-bys on TO HERE KNOWS WHERE.

The mock intro to which is really the outro to TOUCHED, and how the mock intro to LOOMER which is really the outro to ONLY SHALLOW, thus tying their strong structure (for me anyway) to The Beatles' song-strings on ABBEY ROAD. Fuck you ALL they CANT be played out of sequence.

And keep in mind the bridge on SOON is what dragged me into the old ROUGH TRADE on Haight that stony summers day in 1992 whereupon, it could be said, my mind was blown and nothing was ever to be the same.

For soon thereafter, it was the MBV sound that introduced me to the EXCURSIONS IN AMBIENCE series, which in effect was an acid-fueled mental mosh-shove into THE ORB, which coincided with my move to Venice & subsequent envelopment into PORK.

It all started with LOVELESS.

Nothing short of a SMITHS reunion could loft this anticipation higher.