lush/dreamy dream within a dream

Today was the release date of the long awaited (by me) Audio recording effort by young femme fatale Scarlett Johansson,which is even more fetching as she is trying stuff by brilliant wiseguy Tom Waits. Like when her fellow too-compelling actress/enchantress/chanteuse Charlotte Gainsbourg tried "Five fifty five".. For me..I ache for it's blandness/
I so expected it's grandness.
Maybe it's because I've been listening to a lotta edgy Polly Jean Harvey &
Dresden Dolls lately but the lush & dreamy sound that Scarlett's producer was going for(Mr. Waits is truly a wistful romantic and lush is appropriate,but) was way short of what studio lush-legends Mr. Brian Wilson or Jon Brion might have succeeded at.
Maybe if producer/hero Todd Rundgren had been saddled w/the studio chores, and Scarlett chose from Mr. Rundgren's vast cache of gems to interpret, all mighta been AOK. Imagine her lushing w/ "It Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference","Wailing Wall","Torch Song", or "The Night
The Carousel Burned Down" complete with all those gorgeously hishy glockenspiels & tubular bells & shit.
God, Todd could even keep Bowie for the cameo backups again,if he likes.

& mix it with a kiss & a part clenched fist
can you picture this?

mixed media memorium .Bob Rauschenberg May 12,2008

From Cunningham and Cage
to the last, less dramatic stage
You found
& let broken art be broken art.
You sequestered, sequenced, &
segued.
You corralled,
Caught,
& catalogued
odd blends.

yr. now taskless assistants
yr. staff of stuff scavengers
must now scatter
like bears from the dump at dawn
& drop their own one-patch versions
of yr piecemeal visions

yr. material jazz
silenter

odd job

Somewhere,in character,Humphrey Bogart said something like "You're not one of those characters are you?" & smiled such a disagreeable smile

We've probably all known some 'characters' off the silver screen. Not just
the truly individualistic,unique ones that do sparkle up the heap of our own friends and our own families,But there are those who climb higher on the "watch me,Now" soapbox for a shout in the park. Society's characters,acting out their parts.
There was this old guy, back 35 yrs. when I was in school,this old guy always in the keystone cop outfit, who was glaringly obvious in the mix of very young college students. The badbearded glassyeyed guy never said much,
likely because he was higher & drunker than the rest of us at any given time. Some of us used to imagine him persistant & lucky enough to bed some of the sillier,high & drunker girls, the last standing at the latest of nights. He went by "Buster" I think.
he seemed like an ancient unsympathetic drunken fuck to me.
I'm probably older..than he was,
tonight.
From Mt. Pleasant I went on to live in Ann Arbor. Most any alumni of U of M. from the 70's knew who the character Shakey Jake was; an indiscriminately aged black man..on any corner,armed w/his stringed instrument,working it some & trying to accompany it some.He was early chuck berryish;zoot suited pinks,whites,& Blacks. Wore baggy checks,jacket, & two-toned shoes. and a bad lid.
He was usually with a nod,toothy smile , and a hey.
probably Also got invites to party..and maybe more from the ladies.
funny how being odd can help getting creature comforts met.
for me, subtlety always trumps blatancy
like rod stewart mostly metaphored almost forty years before
"I combed my hair a thousand ways,but it came out lookin just the same"

wordmath4/29/8 (Refusing Dawn & Guts for Love)

I can Recognize, but hell,
I can't Realize so well.

I'd drink more coffee but my cardiologist insists I don't
I'd drink more coffee but my heart man
prescribes "not so smart, man".
I'd think more whiskey would push me
to bask at last in a primal light,
but my general practitioner generally frowns
about practicing until I get it right.
I'd read more
but eyes see less.. I digress,
I'd come 2/pray more/give in/give more/dream-sleep in/weep for once/
walk the lit dark like I used to/
take the darklight I've refused to.
I can Recognize, but hell,
I don't Realize so well.

2nd Guess

I would welcome suggestions for the last word on this wordmath that spilled last night at work. I was shooting for the word that most suggested that Truth was in the room, & something divine.

the night fills book shelves
of newselves
and ghosts ancient that go silent
after you dare to glare it down
the night fills full boxes
of hoaxes
All honest,bold-faced hazy fascades,
and full frontal revelations.


or

the night fills bookshelves
of newselves
and ghosts ancient that go silent
after you dare to glare it down
the night fills full boxes
of hoaxes
all honest, bold-faced hazy fascades,
and full frontal epiphanies

I'm not sure of the precise differentiation, I was mostly going for the sound. someone told me that when they thought of 'revelation' they thought of something that stayed & changed. and that 'epiphany' was more temporal. I kinda think of revelation as being the more visual of the two (and this might fall in line w/the 'newselves' & 'ghosts' imagery.) what do you think? which?

pushy pee see

With prejudicial judgement, I theorize that political correctness is eschewed,ignored, and mocked even by some who might be nervous & shy about their accidental bigotry,the more unsightly blemishes of their prejudices, and bad manners showing.
Wise guys like Bill Maher,dennis miller,carlos mencia, and stern might still bask in the sexy afterglow of outrageousness, and pass wordy wind
freely because George Carlin fought every utterance for "freely".But Carlin & his spiritual mentor Mr. Lenny Bruce were ultimately NOT up against political correctness, it was all up against the would be & very real
priggish silencers or Free Speech ("priggish"? I'm gonna have to run a spell check on that)
Todd Rundgren has an appropriate song mention right about here
check out "Jesse"

I am sometimes in the minority I bet when i sometimes support and sometimes encourage PC, just as I stand by civility & fairness.

So I'm at lunch with family yesterday and I decide to offer up an observation to liven up the conversation.
Cable news had an extended piece on the recent earthquake in the Midwest. I quickly revealed my astonishment that arose while watching,
as one after another of the interviews by the surprised victims and citizens of Mt.Carmel, Illinois. The people were wild.
Let's just say that if a drive-in movie production were looking extras for their "nutty locals" scenes...let's just say, maybe there was a devastating industrial accident (from the the factory or nuclear plant that had laid off all it's town years before) maybe a spill or explosion maybe (this along with the unlikely Midwest earthquake thing). Or maybe the circus was in town.

I watched and forgot all about the unlikely Midwest earthquake and keened in on the (and here's where my prejudices come in,I'm from the Midwest) unlikely freakish Midwesterners.

Family at the table,especially my mate(into her 2nd white wine) imaginably glared in imaginably disapproving silence. Until she got to the heart of the matter right away when she brought up the Midwest thing. I admitted that I might have been less stunned by the shocking display on CNN, if the people lived much farther South.
She stepped things up by unnecessarily reminding us "In Cold Blood was where?"
I was about to counter to unnecessarily remind her in my rejoinder that her New Jersey housed the 21th century's "All In The Family", the too popular Sopranos when the food came.
Our quieter graceprayer might have been "judge not, not really budge not"

a pathetic apathetic politic poll

passionate political concerns and my serious attention towards them even have deteriorated to a pale,anemic sickness since the 60's for me, my citizenry is a shambles.
But I wonder what my dear fellow progressives in Pennsylvania have on the signs in their yards, or does that happen once they stand up and wield their fateful vote and take part in crucial steering of this country's fate?after that only one sign goes up?
I am starting to cringe when I hear concerned democrats worry about and bad mouth the political sparring between the democratic candidates. Isn't it politics?Ain't it one big high school debate competition where points are made swinging the judges when gaffes are pointed out and capitalized on and hammered home? Ain't it what lawyers do in courtrooms the world over? pokin holes in how the other guy looks and discrediting one's way to the victory?
Here in my state, florida, where my fateful vote will likely not take part in crucial steering, but did encourage Clinton (though she's tenaciously willing to belittle herself some by going "old school" politics, I have faith that her longtime idealism might be powered into very real progressive change by her understanding how it can happen)
Obama is bullied by winning lawyer rhetoric about his "clinging to guns and religion" as if he weren't fucking right. it's embarrassing seeing clinton open her legs some for those NRA beasts. This business and a couple of my old heroes letting their Obama support show has shaken my support some, makes it easier to support either candidate on the ticket, as the good lawyer usually charges the most but wins, and Law ain't bad..
I can take some comfort in the ludicrousness that there is a latin term for neither guilty nor innocent.