Rebel Rebel

Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today.
-- James Dean

James Dean has been dead 50 years now. He made three movies. I spent the morning at work listening to a BBC special narrated by Johnny Depp about how wonderful James Dean was. Such talent, such looks, raw energy and all that business. All the wonderfulness was giving me a splitting headache. There's something inherently depressing about reading, watching, or listening to biographies about famous people, because you can't help but compare their trajectory in life to your own . Notice how I didn't mention happiness? Who cares about happiness. I am talking about the lucky ones that figure out their purpose in life, go after it, and master it. When you are young, stories like James Dean's formative years are inspirational. When you are older, and you realize you are on a one way path to mediocrity, they are annoying.

It's Friday, and I am lying here in my bed without a sheet on it. I have no clothes on, and I have just gotten out of the bath. It seems that's all I have been doing this past week, reading in the bath. It took me most of the summer to get through the Beat Generation, but less than two weeks to get through the Lost Generation. Which is where I find myself this fall. Not in love like I had proclaimed so foolishly in the spring, but lost.

What is my purpose and what am I to do. I see opportunity all around me but cannot seem to muster the creative energy to do anything. I am frozen, solid. The seasons change and the years pass, and I live everyday like I will be here forever, still.

Vagabonds' Rest

2001: A Space Odyssey



Yesterday my senses opened,
At a rap-a-tap from Reason,
Inspiring in me an intention
Which I never had before,
Seeing that through all my days
My life has been just what it is.
Therefore when I rose I said,
To-day shall be as yesterday,
Since Reason tells me I have been
From day to day the self-same thing.
-- W. H. Hudson

Dearest, gentle reader, I haven't been around much because that last party I went to nearly killed me. As I lie here on my back, 6 days after said event, with my laptop propped up on my chest, the keyboard resting just beneath my chin bringing the screen close enough so that I can see what I am typing, I am finishing a colossal illness all brought on by passing out with my contact lenses in.

It all started last Tuesday, when I woke up with my contacts folded up in my eyes mixed up with all this white shit. I made it to work, felt quite lovely by 3pm and by 5 was on my way with Remington, by cycle, to the grocery store to pick up bread and vegetables for a pot luck dinner we were making at Gio's place with the rest of the band. For eight months, usually on the weekends, through all the seasons, from his garage, to our studio, or in his bedroom, Gio had been recording and producing our album, it was finished and now we were celebrating. We drank, ate good food, and listened to the fruits of our labor. A document to all the special times we had shared together over the past while. Leroy entertained us all with hilarious impersonations of Christopher Walkin, and I decided to kill my hangover from the night before with a beer and a double shot of Wild Turkey.

I got home around 11:30 and my left eye was stinging a bit, so I took my contact lens out and noticed my eye was a bit red, but figured it was just irritated from all the randy behavior over the past 24-hours, so I jumped into bed, cracked open the iBook and was slamming away at the keyboard at a dizzying pace, telling you all about my Monday night with Lucy and Frannie, when half way through my left eye started to twitch and water. I looked at my eye in the mirror and it had begun to swell. So I went back to the writing, hoping I could finish soon enough to get a decent nights rest. Well, as you can see below, I did finish, but by the time I had posted the entry, my eye was completely closed over and had swollen shut with white puss around the corners. Rather than panic, I just went to sleep, hoping it would be better by the time I woke up. No such luck, in fact, by the time I woke up, my eye was completely sealed shut, the stuff that leaked out of it acting as a glue once it had dried around my eye. I went to the doctor with my sunglasses on, navigating my way up the street with only my right eye working. The doctor looked shocked at the site of what she was confronted with. I was a mess, and she was lovely, young, educated, successful, humanitarian, kind, helps the helpless, and dressed impeccably. She got so close to me with her eye examining, light emitting thing, that I just wanted to wrap my arms around her and hold her tight, her skin was perfect. I must have repulsed her.

Well, I got my prescription, was sent on my way, started taking the eye drops and all that business, and my eye started to return to a normal state. But not without running my immune system down enough to allow a vicious cold to beat down my already beaten down body. For days I have been in and out of a feverish state, the apartment is destroyed. I missed dinners, meetings, a birthday party, and a date. I hallucinated my ex-wife unlocking the door and coming in to check on me, her hair with that slight smell of the outdoors, a hint of wood smoke and perfume. I could feel her hand on my forehead, cool and soft, pushing back my hair. Then I would realize where I was and get up to walk across the empty apartment for a glass of water, stopping to look out the huge windows and the buildings lit up on the skyline. I would open my eyes again, and see Ananta in the kitchen, preparing soup and washing dishes in her white undershirt. Then, almost instantly, it was daytime, and I could see my daughter standing at the end of my bed, with her backpack on, waiting for a ride out of this place. I haven't been able to put my contacts in for days, so I haven't seen anything in detail for almost a week now. I walked to the store on a Saturday evening to get some more medication, I felt like I was floating across the street, everything fuzzy and faces blurry till I could get close enough to see their expressions, but mostly I just had to walk the busy street oblivious to anything around me. The air felt lovely, but I didn't feel a part of that world at all. The night. Everything is all the time.

I sense some aspect of normalcy on the horizon, but I am not quite there yet. I look out from my bed and everything is still blurry, except for these black letters that my fingers are making with calculated movements in front of my eyes. And now you will read this, and maybe you will imagine my circumstance, my place in life, and wonder where we are all headed, because we are in this together, dear, gentle reader.

Monday...

Look, the bridge is lower now
Lower now, lower now
It's so low, you'll have to bow
My fair lady
-- London Bridge

I woke up this morning around 7am, fully clothed, and still, completely drunk. The amount of liquor I managed to consume was not outstanding, nor was it out of the ordinary, but I made a few key mistakes that turned a regular Monday night into a completely debaucherous affair.

It all started somewhere around 11am Monday morning, Ananta phoned me at work, and invited me for lunch. By 1pm, I was knocking on her door, and was told to come in. There was a sign that said "panty luncheon" with an arrow on it, directing me to the bedroom, where I found her in her panties, laying in bed with a spread of sushi. I took an extra long lunch. I came back to work, my hair slightly disheveled, and a grin on my face that Remington noticed right away from his desk across from mine.

5pm, and Frannie calls. She can't make up her mind what to wear to the wrap party, and wants me to come over to her place to help her decide. I rush home, put on a sweater, my gray slacks (I love the word slacks) that I had just gotten back from the cleaners, and my best shoes. Within minutes I am boarding the number 4 bus, outbound to the beaches, where Frannie lives with a view of the water. She pours me a glass of gewurtztraminer, my first drink in 8 days, and puts on my favorite xiu xiu album. Frannie proceeds to try on dress after dress, shoe after shoe. Her wardrobe is nothing short of amazing, and highly organized with all her shoes in boxes, and her dresses hung in bags. The wine goes straight to my head as I watch her walk across the floor, and I start to get excited, because for the first time in a long time, I actually can feel something. Lust feels so good, and lord I missed it. But as this is happening, I playback in my head a conversation I had with Leroy earlier in the month, that I am nothing but a pawn in a game, a game that I am playing just as much as Frannie is, but tonight I am losing. It gets worse.

We decide on a retro inspired paisley dress with knee high boots and call a cab to pick us up and take us to Tempest's hi-rise condo overlooking the core of the hometown. The view is amazing, and I am already light headed, not having had anything to eat since lunch. That was mistake number one, if you're gonna drink, you gotta eat something too, but I thought there would be dinner at the wrap party, so I could catch up then. After drinks at Tempest's place we piled into another cab and headed to the party. We arrived early, and it was pretty quiet, but the guest list was set to accommodate 175 people so things were set to pick up, and they did. Within an hour the place was packed, and although there was food being brought about I can't stand eating off a napkin so I declined every time, deciding to go to the bar instead to order double whiskies. Mistake two, and we all know this, don't mix your drinks. By nights end, I had wine, both red and white, whiskey, and gin. A recipe for disaster. Tempest brought Lucy Liu over to meet me and we chatted for awhile then hit the dance floor. I was wasted by this point and it didn't seem at all odd that I was dancing to Queen, Another One Bites the Dust, with one of Charlie's Angels on a Monday night.

Frannie seemed to be spending time with everyone in the place except me, the one who had chosen her outfit, I thought it should account for something. I suppose I had fantasized a romantic evening, she was leaving for Paris in the morning, and I dreamed of us connecting in some way. Months and months of pretending I didn't care was beginning to wear me down. I couldn't stop thinking about xiu xiu and dresses, and the way I had felt back at her apartment. But, those feelings were now mutated by whiskey and wine, turning them into sulkiness and frustration. I decided to pull my usual disappearing act, so I went to the coat check to get my jacket, but my coat check tag was not in my pocket. Not a problem! I announced to the attendant, it's a red leather jacket, oh, yes, there it is thank you very much. I put it on and told Frannie I was leaving, and when she asked me to stay I did. If you tell someone you're leaving, leave, otherwise you just look like a tantrum throwing idiot, just like I did. I stayed a little longer, and then finally left with little protest from Frannie, her indifference was driving me crazy. I got into a cab, and spent the whole time swearing to myself in the back seat. I arrived home, shortly after 1, with plenty of time to sleep things off. As I approached the front door I reached for my keys in the breast pocket of my jacket, but the pocket wasn't there. I looked down at the cuff of my jacket, and realized the buttons were different, my jacket also looked incredibly small, and feminine. I had taken the wrong coat from the coat check.

I ran back to the driver who was still sitting in his cab outside my place, and told him the situation, and that I had to get back to the club in a hurry. The whole way back I imagined walking into a scene of confusion and anger at the coat check. I didn't want to go back at all, but my keys and iPod were in my jacket so just hiding at home was not an option. Luckily the owner of the jacket I had taken hadn't left yet, so I rectified the situation quickly, and was finally free to leave. DId I leave? no. Should I have left? Oh yes. But, no, I decided to go back for a little more silliness. I went to Tempest and told her what happened, she found it highly amusing, and we had a bit of a laugh about it. I was so relieved that I managed to scrape through the incident with little consequence I decided that I might as well have another drink. I found Frannie and explained why I was back and brought her over to the bar where I bought us a round of drinks. We both sat at the bar but Frannie spent most of the time talking to a co-worker of hers, and seemed barely interested that I was giving her one more chance to kiss my pathetic drunken self. Really, how could she resist. As I sat there sipping my Gin in silence I thought of all the times that I had been in this situation with girls. Loaded, with emotions exposed, yet unable to stop the flood of want. I turned to Frannie and said, "ok, cya" and walked out. Making an even more ridiculous exit than the first time I had left wearing a woman's jacket. I am so glad I came back to do it right.

I woke up in the morning, walked to the mirror and was in shock at the sight of my left eye, I had left my contacts in, and somehow the left was folded in half, hanging off my eye, and full of white gunk. I took them out immediately and washed my eyes, but as I stood out in the middle of my apartment in my underwear, looking out the large warehouse windows, into the sunshine of Tuesday, everything was white. It was like I was looking through a piece of wax paper, but lighter. I was late for work, I didn't have time to think about it, I put sunglasses on and grabbed the bus to the office. I Walked into work, and one look at Remington gave him the whole story, and he responded with the same look that he gave me when I walked in from the Panty Luncheon with Ananta.

By late afternoon my eyes returned to normal, I called Frannie and apologized for my behavior, wished her well with London and Paris. Then I made a CD of french avant-garde music, and some london inspired songs, drew an eiffel tower on the disc and sent it by courier on a panic service to her front door with a note that said, "For My Fair Lady"

Will I ever learn?

Like Clark Gable

American Movie


The script it called for rain but it was clear that day so we faked it
The marker snapped and I yelled "quiet on the set"
And then called "action!"
And I kissed you in a style that clark gable would have admired
--The Postal Service

Sorry I left you all for so long. My iBook was in for repair, and spending time with you anywhere else but bed just wouldn't be the same, so now that we're all tip top, let's get on with it, shall we?

Frannie called me at work early last week, she had just gotten back from Vegas. She said it was like being stuck in a mall for three days straight. The news, although I had known this for some time, saddened me. Armed with Google, I have dedicated many an hour searching for some remnant of the myth that popular culture has spoon fed me ever since I formed an appreciation for such things. Black tuxes, white shirts, busty ladies, cigarettes, and amber drinks in hi-ball glasses. Where is it? Because if I ever get the chance to go, I want to find it. The only place that seemed to offer any glimmer of hope was the Flamingo Hotel. Which, of course has been built and rebuilt several times, but it still seems like Ideal architecture for dark sunglasses, an excellent hat, and a steady stream of elicit activities and substances. Frannie seemed relieved to have finally confirmed for herself that Vegas was dead. I still have hopes, and will never believe it until I am there for myself. My friend back in the old home town, Earl, went there for 9 days, longer than most people can tolerate, and was high on cocaine the entire time. Perhaps this is where the real experience lies, not in the architecture, but in its location. The desert; the middle of nowhere. Earl doesn't give a shit about the architecture, or the history of Vegas, he just wants to party. And I think this is the stuff that myth is made of. I bet the percentage of people that really get fucking nuts in vegas is low. This is a problem. Legends are not created by trying to repeat the past, or chasing dreams you see on TV and in the movies.

Which makes me wonder why I accepted an invitation to the wrap party for the production that Frannie had just finished working on, starring Lucy Liu. I have a tendency to shy away from spending time with stars in the real world ever since I saw Jason Biggs belch into the open mouth of his date and laugh outside another party I was at earlier in the year. And that's why I like old movies. The actors really don't exist. Only in legend. Only in the ethos of the cinema. You never have to worry about confronting their idiotic political and religious beliefs on the Oprah winfrey show, or accidently seeing them loaded at a party grabbing the ass of some woman, or opening the morning paper and seeing them in a police line up. Old movies are what they are, movies, which makes them frustratingly attractive, because they offer a world that doesn't exist. It's all fantasy. There is no real life/celebrity cross over with the giants of the silver screen. I am talking about Clark Gable, and Carey Grant, guys like that, their legacy is sealed, and can never be tarnished.

So I will go to the wrap party, with Frannie, and be tempted to kiss her, even though I woke up in Ananta's bed last week, after I saw her at the club our band played at, when we were horrendously drunk and sloppy on stage. We played our worst show ever, which oddly garnered us the most positive and numerous feedback yet. It's all a charade. Good, bad, real, fake. Experience is in the eye of its beholder. People will believe what they want to. I for one am susceptible to the achitecture of leisure and the flat inpentitrable plane of the matinee. Lucy Lui and Jason Biggs, I can do without, but Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn? This is my romance! And I'll cry if I want to, because reality pales in comparison to such great heights.

Hot 17

Sous le fardeau de ta paresse
Ta tete d'enfant
Se balance avec la mollesse
D'un jeune elephant

Overheated busses and rubber wrapped windows that seal me away from where I just was. Which was stumbling up Broadway after dancing to Michael Jackson. I found myself walking along the street staring into car windows full of presumably happy people zooming on the hard concrete with painted lines that will guide them to a place that I cannot follow. That was after hugging Nymphalidae goodbye, barely able to restrain myself from holding her longer than I ever should, and seeing a dark haired beauty fall out the back door of the club, and being tempted to ask her to hold my hand all the way home, and never leave my side. But, instead, I pick up my cigarette that had been leaning in the tree, and I put on my headphones and a Brian Wilson song kicks in for the crooked walk home. But I grew tired, and found myself on that hot bus for $2.25, waiting outside that fast food place with the massive illuminated redhead pigtailed girl staring me in the face as I waited for the driver to shut the door and take me home. Finally, as we crossed the bridge, that structure of concrete and metal lights lifted me over the dark water, carrying me back into my urban lair of littered streets and manufactured greenery, to the end of an evening I know all to well. This is it.

"In a Relationship"

Ron Terada

Thursday, the weeklies come out in the hometown, and more often than not I find myself franticly rustling through one of the bigger publications, bypassing the politics and pop culture features to get to the "I Saw You" section. It's absolutely tantalizing. You can peruse ads where, for a small fee, readers can describe someone they spotted earlier in the week, with the hope of contacting them. So they can meet. So they can fall in love.

Every Thursday the back pages teem with the possibility that maybe there is someone out there that saw you, and is so desperate to see you again, they went through all the trouble of placing an ad. Well, I am lost, and ultimately, need to be found. So Thursday is a day I often ritualize. Every Thursday, I wake up early, even dressing up for the occasion, just in case someone sees me reading the I saw you ads. I browse the headlines for events that I was at, for bus routes I ride on a regular basis, and the streets I frequent. I get excited when I see a reference I can identify with, only to be disappointed when the description of the guy is obviously not me, "skateboard, tall with long black hair, and the palest of blue eyes, you took my breath away." Although, even if one of my interactions with women were to show up in print, this is likely how it would transpire:

"I saw you maniacally traversing 6th Ave. In fact you almost ran right into me, idiot. You had freakish features that reminded me of a muppett! Just wanted to let you know that I don't give a shit about the architecture of leisure, and no, I don't smoke in bed. Please, stop following me."

With only a few ads each week, the chances of finding true love amongst the horoscopes, escort ads, civic announcements, and listings for carpet cleaning are minimal at best. So I'll keep reading and dreaming, people are falling in love all over this city, the ads are there to prove it. And, in the meantime, at least there's Friendster, until the next Thursday roles around.

Black and White

View this clip on Vimeo

I suppose it's often one of the big pursuits in life. To be remembered when you are gone. To permeate the fabric of culture at any given level. To create something that might be thought of from time to time whether someone is driving or dreaming; something that will outlast you.

Last night I sang a Roy Orbison song to a packed bar in the hometown. Imagine where that song was written. In a basement? On a cabana chair by a swimming pool under the blazing sun! Or maybe on a rainy morning, in a hotel room somewhere near Wink, Texas, after 15 cigarettes and three cups of black coffee. Whatever the case, that single moment was paid tribute to last night, and resurrected. I am sure it happens a thousand times a day, and will continue to do so for some time. Now that, is immortality.

After the show, I left the room with three girls, got into a cab and raced north to a restaurant which was closed, but was still hosting a private party for staff and their friends. Despite nearly getting into a car crash on the way there, the chance to sit in one of my favorite dining rooms drinking free beer was well worth the near death experience on the way there. Seeing all the tables empty made me think about the many times that I had been there in the past. I looked at every chair I ever sat in, and thought about each person I was with when I sat there, what I ate and drank, and what was said. I used to go there with Vernice mostly. Always hung over, we would drink strong coffee and while away the sunny spring sundays. But now, the place was empty, and the room quiet, except for the chatter of our small party. I felt like I was seeing ghosts of myself all around the restaurant, invisible, entirely cerebral, yet terrifying all the same. I guess I felt like I was dead, and the moments that I spent in those chairs were only moments, indistinguishable amongst the hundred or so other people that must sit there everyday, saying the same things, sharing essentially the same experience.

We turned out the lights, locked the door, and smoked a joint out front. I didn't want to go home and face the coming day alone, so I phoned Dragica who was with Remington and Leroy on their way back to her place, only a few blocks from where I was standing. Within a half hour we were all together again, at Dragica's. We frantically talked about how the night unfolded while Boogie Nights played on the TV in the background and drank tea. Eventually the sun started to come up, and we all went out for a huge Dim Sum breakfast. Most of the people that were with us the night before had joined us again. Eventually we wound up with a party of 12 sleep depraved friends, eating congee with hot and sour soup while spinning a tea pot to each other with a lazy suzan, so each of us could fill their cups, and eventually nurse themselves back to wellness. It was what I had been waiting for all night.

Exhausted I could put coming home off no longer, and while it was a wonderful night, it wasn't the stuff of legends, just a beautiful frame of time that will be remembered fondly by a few. And maybe that's better, more real, and more intimate than someone singing something you wrote into a straw. But wouldn't it be lovely to have both? To have private moments remembered forever? Recreated, emulated, thought of, talked about, even analysed, until they finally climb their way into the cannon of pop culture. Perhaps it would be horrific, but I still chase the dream despite its obvious evils. Which must have been why I picked up the guitar when I got home, and made another hopeless attempt to live forever.

Cut

Get Carter.



I'm lurking in the shadows
of my memory
we were going to have a circus in the bar.
-- Daniel Johnston

I was invited to dinner last week, a small party, thin room, tapas, wine, and a movie star. Like, a big one. I don't want any more google action than I am already getting, so I won't mention her name, but damn, if that just isn't the weirdest shit. (she was one of the leads in Charlie's Angels) I turned down the invitation though, deciding to meet instead with a small group of writers in an apartment off the main drag of the downtown boutique section in the hometown. You pick your veneer...

I like the movies. When a well dressed couple kiss on screen, with the music cued at just the right time, the lights focused in on the hot spot, and the screen floods with all the right colors, well, I feel love. Which is probably why I spend a lot of time in the theatre. But more often than not I will pass by film shoots as I walk home, and see my fantasy unroll in a ridiculous mess of catering trucks, portable dressing rooms, and solar fleeced production assistants with safety vests and walkie talkies. I hate it when make believe is exposed,

I was drunk with Vernice the other night. It was our last dinner. We decided that together, on MSN. To have one last dinner; no talking. A special dinner that we would remember forever, and then go our separate ways. We drank a bottle of our favorite Guwertztraminer, followed it with a half bottle of warmed Tawny, smoked weed, and took pictures of ourselves kissing in front of the freezer using the timer feature on our cameras. We would kiss, the cameras would flash, capture, then we'd press the buttons again, and resume kissing for the ten seconds that it took for the lens to grab us. Over and over, we must have kissed like that for a half hour. I left her the next morning, and walked 15 blocks to work in the dark dawn of the coming fall.

It is 11:35, and right now I am frying a half pound of bacon. I just want to fill my belly and go to sleep. I've been so hungry lately, but there is little food, only liquids. I have been out every night since last sunday, and I am starting to fall into a pattern of manic mingle chatter. I order my coffee in the morning with an expressive gusto that seams more suited to a cocktail party atmosphere rather than the office crowd going through their morning rituals. Night bleeds into morning, the day crawls towards the dinner hour, and now that I have my new iPod, I even have a soundtrack to this action drama, with suspense and horror, sure to bomb at the box office.