The Politics of an Underwritten Sense of Identity; Three Digits, Four Digits, Four... Dotted Line.

I’m not usually much for
Outwardly “political” poetry,
But…
Some things have been…
Festering… lately that I’ve
Been having an increasingly
Harder time trying to
Ignore.

My attention is short for
Chosen ideologies based on
Personally biased concerns,
Personally motivated, pay-check,
“Real world” based
Partisan decision-making…
Cries and whines of “isms” based
On “because of the ‘system’
My ends won’t meet so it’s
Obviously the ‘system’s’ responsibility
To make them, to even playing-
Fields, tear down the
Institutions that tear us
Down,” or, just as bad, the
“My vote will ensure that
My dollar’s not going to
That,” with no concern for
Broader philosophy or any
Larger concerns than your
Personal take-home pay.

To quote a wise anachronism whose
Name on principle I
Refuse to capitalize,
“Render to Caesar
That which is Caesar’s”
“In {something vague and
Elusive} we trust” printed
In so many different
Words and symbols
On the fronts and backs of
Bills, and “trust” is
Something that you know I’m
Not one terribly quick to do.
These bills belong to a
System that we’ve
Chosen to participate in…
In theory.

Cue the back-beat backing-track
Break-down as I spin you a
Slide-show.
(Mock me in your mind as a
“Wonder Years” monotone for a
Lecture-like moment) Spin of
Reel-to-reel, “START.”

In order for a “Democracy” to
Function as such, based on the
“Will” of the “people” to
“Choose” their own “freedoms,”
The “people” must have the
“Freedom” to “choose” to
Opt out of said otherwise-
Sham of a “democracy.”

But most of us were
Born into this system,
Tagged with codes of
Threes and fours and
Fours to mark our
Places within, our debts to
Jurisdictions inside
Ever closing in, continually
Smaller sets of borders,
To contain us within the
Laws of our “personal” fiscal
Identity.

I must stress here, you
Don’t need to desire to
Exist outside of the system
For that freedom to be
Active and pertinent.
That “freedom,” however, must
Be constantly conscious
In the way that our
“Chosen” institutions “choose”
To conduct themselves,
And the way that we relate
Ourselves {as now in
Shackles} to them.

This is why I refuse
To wave flags intended
To represent false “freedoms.”

This option has failed,
As we find ourselves
Forced, within our sets of
“Obligations” as “responsible
Adults,” to sign our
Names on lines, scribble
Last four digits in boxes to
Underwrite every aspect of our
“Personal” conduct with the
“Insuring” capital of
Corporate conglomerates,
In case something were to
“Happen” to force you to
“Require” services within the
System built up as
Confining walls of bullion
Blocks around us that few
Humans alive could comfortably
Procure without the
Fiscal net you’ve bought and
Signed for, to reaffirm your
“Choice” to operate within
This “optional” system.

In twenty-six years “my”
“Name” has become
Attached to so many
Various forms of
Account numbers that
The fees would rise
Higher than the national
Deficit were I to
“Choose” to try to close them all.

And you wonder why I’ve used
So many alternate names for how I
“Choose” to represent "myself".

I’m not sure if I would
Personally exercise the option to
Opt-out if I had it,
But it’s integrally important to me
That we regain that
Most essential freedom
To actively choose not to sign
Our names and identities as numbers
On another dotted line.

"Unexpected Situations on a Crowded Street," a preface in poetic explanative expiriments.

"Beyond superstition, I was aware, in a manner more forceful than anything my academic research had brought home to me, of the extent to which my identity and the words I utter coincide, the extent to which I want to form my own sentences or to choose for myself those moments in which I will recite someone else's. To be asked, even by an isolated, needy individual to perform lines that were not my own, that violated my sense of my own desires, was intolerable." -Stephen Greenblatt, "The Improvisation of Power (Epilogue)"

Unexpected Situations on a Crowded Street, Revisited.

“Cars overturned,
Fists are flyin’,
Houses bein’ burned,
Children are dyin’.”

Full circle…
Riot.
Unexpected situations on a crowded…
Street.
What street?
This street,
That street,
The same

As the space in which we
Make these noises now
Sits a mere block-and-a-half from
That pad we inhabited
When I was a child…
In fact, I can almost see it from our
Grime-encrusted back-window as
I stand now sporting
Straight edge tattoo-work
Chain smoking Specials, sipping
Cloudy Green Fairy and red wine…
Life…
Blood.

To those who think they’ve
Kept tabs on my back-catalogue
So much of this must
Seem a bit strange
So bear with me a bit as I lay myself bare,
I tend to think in some sort of semi-logical trajectory
This makes some semblance of sense,
I swear.

I’ll slit my
{Insert something
Censored here}
For you,
I really will…

This game of performance is a Riot

Leaving faceless idols of divinity hanging
Upside-down from trees,
With banners of perversity
For its own sake,
And so many dead
People from a country that
We all doubted that the song ever
Really had anything to do with…

As the circular nature of this
Riot
Leaves me battling
Myself now,
Pitting what I
Should do against
What I seem to have to…

As after trying to quit
Cold-turkey so many
Times, I pull the
Tourniquet so
Tight again to
Inject “Music”
And “Performance,”
The stuff that seems to
Kill, into my veins with
Rhythmic pulsing pump and
Flow again, banging out
Noise with these people who
Shared the same first ironic
Moronic cult of a “band,”
Performance-art shams,
Devoid of Concept besides
In anachronistic retrospect,
A willing pint we call and
Raise.

As I battle the
Balance of
Sounds I can’t
Seem to cease making
With the words that
Prove my passion,
Squeezing my own
Voice within perversely
Problematic rehashes and
Re-fires of words from the
Past that I put in my
Mouth that weren’t really my
Own,
And try to make them fit
With what I really
Can’t stop needing
To say,
In speech and sounds,
In synthesis.

With this fire,
Raging blue with
Volatile and toxic
Plastic, we
Burn symbolic streets.

“Cars overturned,
Fists are flyin’,
Houses bein’ burned,
Children are dyin’.”

“Cops can’t do nothing’, even though they have those guns,
Youngsters on the sidewalk, glassy eyes turned to the sun.
You stand in amongst the throngs, try to stay alive,
Chantin’ pro-rebellion songs, smothered by the hive.
Ground comes up to meet your head, scattered mates call your name.
You’re gonna be left for dead, playin’ your private/public riot game.”

“Cars overturned,
Fists are flyin’,
Houses bein’ burned,
Children are dyin’.”

{The preceding is a piece of word-collage poetry that I posted on the Myspace blog for my electro-rock outfit Tipsy Cougar, who recently finally started posting some actual "music" to our site. It's intended to serve as a strange sort of preface to the next piece of noise that we intend to post, a drastically divergent reworking of the long-forgotten Moron Cult/ Pseudophonics song "USOCS". This seemed to be an ironically fitting choice for the outfit, as all three active members of the band were at one point or another at least tenuously part of the older act (in fact, depending on definitional technicalities, and at different junctures, Moron Cult was all three of our "first" band.) Thus, I must give credit where it's due and point out that some segments of the above that appear in quotations were originally written by C. Charles ("xian") Dyer of that outfit (while sitting next to me in driver's ed. class, in fact). Also, references and lyrical fragments are borrowed liberally throughout from many bands that I've contributed to in the past (we could make a game of it, if you like... cookies of some sort should go to those among you that can pick out and identify the most...)... This would probably be as good of a time as any to point out that if you haven't taken a listen to what I'm doing with Tipsy Cougar yet, you should. Conceptually, what I'm attempting there in auditory form is very similar to some terrain tread often within the pages of this blog.}

Critical Snippets, Music, Movements... Goulash.

Movements" and "stances" are themselves fabricated constructions, tools within larger identity-construction mechanisms.

This isn't a new idea, but it's usually used to discredit the validity or power of a movement or critical stance. It seems to me, however, that this awareness can function as the SOURCE from where the movement or stance can derive it's power. It validates its own existence AS a mere fabrication by the very act of elevating itself as such.

Contributers are any artists and critic willing to participate conceptually in the act of such an elevation and reconstructive effort.

(This was my reply to someone who inspires me, when asked to expound on a partially toungue-in-cheek and cockily-provocative statement about arming potential contributors with stances for the next major critical movement. Reading it today, I figured it might be worth taking out of context a bit and passing on. Chew on it a bit, spit it back to me.)

In other news, I've been completely addicted to Playlist.com lately. This service is nothing terribly new, I know, but I figured I'd share some of the spoils of my recent musical meanderings. As I'm sure you've gathered by now, my mind tends to wander a bit, so very little on this playlist has anything in common with the rest besides that I enjoy it all. There are new songs, old songs, forgotten songs, obscure songs, favorite songs, songs I'm still not sure about and only kind of like, you name it. Enjoy.

My top "wtf"/"guilty-pleasure" picks on the playlist would presently be Hot Hot Heat covering Amy Winehouse (yes, you read that right) and "Parentheses" by The Blow.

To continue with the scatter-brained goulash of today's post, I like to occasionally send a shout out for cool things going on around town that deserve attention. Last week I headed down to the Underground M.A.P. Project, a gallery space on Lowell Street in Manchester, for the first time to check out an open-mic that they were hosting. The vibe of the event proved to be refreshingly more similar to a round-table workshopping session than a performance-setting. The gallery has a comfortable and creative set-up in a brick basement across the street from the Red Arrow, and the visual work on display included some peices that I was impressed by. The group gathered was talented and supportive. They seem to have a good thing going on down there, to the extent that I plan to head down again this evening.

This is Boston, Not L.A...Still.

As green versus yellow fire spit across the nation this month, renewing long-forgotten divergent styles of shit-talk, the pertinent dialogue for a moment turned to “cultural rivalries.”

Glancing through an assortment of articles and snippets on the subject in the Boston Globe one slow morning at work, I was reminded of how strange of a chasm still sometimes sits between pop-culture and the counter- or sub-, the mainstream media and the underground-/ arts-media… and how well the idea of this sort of “cultural rivalry” can sometimes demonstrate this. What seems pertinent and obvious within one lifeblood can often fall irrelevant on deaf and confused ears within the context of another.

The articles in the Globe (and, as I’ve noticed since, most other mainstream sources that covered the “broader” implications of the basketball playoffs) seemed to want to insist (with a suggestion that, to the readership, it would be a given, an obvious assumption, something only briefly worth mentioning as an afterthought for those of us living most extremely under a cultural rock) that the rivalry between Boston and Los Angeles, culturally, as cities, was forgotten since the days of Bird and Magic, and completely dominated by sports over all other elements, paling in comparison to the Boston versus New York rivalry, which is driven (obviously) by the same sort of sports-first cultural tunnel-vision. Duh.

There are those of us, however, within the varied readership of these mainstream publications who most definitely do not live under cultural rocks, yet were still a bit surprised by these supposedly “obvious” assumptions.

For those of us who grew up and live daily within various facets of an art-driven “counter-culture” ( I use that term hesitantly, but am unable to come up with a succinct replacement that better conveys the idea), the pertinent rivalry has always been Boston vs. L.A.

The “forgotten rivalry,” huh? I assure the staffers at the Globe, to musicians and artists in the Boston area, the bad blood with the city of angels has never completely left our minds, while the feud with New York has always seemed more like a fairly good-natured (albeit violent) sparring about sports among “friends.” Hell, with the distance separation being as small as it is, holding legitimate grudges between Boston and New York would be incredibly creatively and culturally limiting for artists and musicians. We trade shows and gallery-appearances on a weekly basis; our cultures and tastes are similar enough any sort of “real” rivalry would be self-defeating. Whether the team-flag-waving fanatic is willing to understand or not, for the sub-culture there is a daily, pragmatic need for us to leave the Red Sox vs. Yankees grudges in the pubs and on the fields.

If the mentions of rivalry in the media-coverage was limited to sports-fanaticisms, I would concede the cultural over-looks as aspects of a suburban-mainstream American culture outside of my realm of most-adequate experience. Unfortunately, license has been taken to translate “sports” and “culture” into interchangeable terms, and translate the entirety of one into the limited scope of the other. “Cultures” were contrasted, in ways that had nothing besides context to do with sports.

The arts scenes in both New England and Southern California have been acutely aware of a “cultural” chasm separating them for quite a long time. Having worked as a musician extensively in both parts of the country, I can assure you that this separation is far more fundamentally life-style-based than any assumptions that a mere sports rivalry can caricature during a play-off period pitting one commentator’s accent against the next, or compiled lists of celebrities residing in one locale over another (which reminds me that I should point out for those in my readership that are bound to quip that I’m not even “from” Boston [the city proper] or a citizen of the commonwealth of Massachusetts that EVERY of the articles to which I’m referring that boasts of Beantown’s celebrity roster lists Adam Sandler, who has largely touted his allegiance to the neighborhood that he’s from mere blocks away from where I grew up and currently reside [once again] in the Queen City of the Granite State… not to mention Aerosmith, who’s members hail from a rather rural area even further north in New Hampshire [and I would prefer not to even mention the rednecks from Godsmack, as I consider them a bit of a disgrace to the state]…)

Flipping stations on a car-ride during the playoffs, I caught an afternoon DJ on WBCN spinning The Freeze’s “This is Boston, Not LA” as a rallying-cry for Celtics fans prior to the evening’s game. Great song, great compilation… and I promise, it spoke to so much more than basketball, and still does, to New England punk fans. When I got home, I cued up The Showcase Showdown’s classic Boston anti-Cali-anthem “213.”

I promise, for artists and musicians, this rivalry has nothing to do with basketball. I am disappointed that “credible” and well-staffed publications such as the Boston Globe and the LA Times, who operate in cities whose “dominant” cultures are more dominated (possibly ironically) by the “sub”-cultures than most others in America, seem to be completely and naively oblivious to this.

Dirty, Shiny Shellac; Metro-Grime in Fragmented Pastiche.

I'm working on collecting my thoughts.

The image in my mind is a splattering of acrylic paint, a combination of of drab, dirty colors and the bright, slick, and jarring, across a tattered piece of newsprint, torn and scattered on the shiny floor of a creatively-lit club. I'm scooping up the pieces, spreading some shellac on the wall, and reassembling the fragments into something completely different.

I have so much that I want to say in giant brush-strokes of sticky, shiny goop. This entry will be a bit messy. I know that you like it that way.


The term Metro-Grime has become the new catch-all. It began as a tongue-in-cheek mock-gimmick label for a music-genre. Then we realized that it could be applied to so much more. It's a way of seeing things. Something slightly less than a "lifestyle," but pretty close. It has to do with the combination of the dirty and the fashionable, where the juxtaposition itself is essential to any conception of either. The beauty itself is derived from the decay and disorder, and the individuals who embody the movement are acutely aware of this and thrive off of it. This is how many of us have lived for years. Metro-Grime embodies an unabashed love and embrace of the pretty dirty things. Manchester, New Hampshire, for instance, IS a Metro-Grime city, and serves as home to healthy numbers of such individuals... but is merely a single example, the most pertinent to my present analysis, of a nearly endless list of just those grimy/ gorgeous neighborhoods, cities, and districts that I know well enough to pull merely off the top of my head.

Manchester is my city, and always will be, no matter how much I may enjoy a span of time elsewhere. I love the city, its quirks, its dirt, its problem... and these things are among what makes it a beautiful and creatively pertinent place. Thus, as a cultural critic-at-large based in this dirty/ pretty city whose life-blood could use to be documented, I'm prepared to call the flaws as I see them, as part of the creation of an ongoing aesthetically important documentation of a place that deserves one.

So bear with me as I drag you through the dirt and glitter. I'll start in with some specifics tomorrow.

Asbjorn Updates... Ongoing and Evolving Projects..

Since my last post (part 1 of 2 in the "reluctant beat-freak" series) has yet to incite the sort of argument or "lively debate" that I was hoping and assuming that it would, I think I'm going to put off the second installment a bit further, hoping that some of you speak up in the meantime. For now, I'll give you guitar-music/ rock'n'roll aficionados all the benefit of the doubt that you're waiting to see how I defend my stance before throttling me for it.

Plus, I'm a bit overdue for posting my quasi-monthly updates about what's new from the various and scattered members of the Asbjorn Arts Collective. So this would probably be as good of a time to do that as any.

I wish that I have more to report this time around... but as I don't, this will be a relatively short entry. If you're an artist even loosely associated with Asbjorn (if you don't know what that means, email me and I'll let you know whether you are or not, and what it would entail) with new work that I left out of this update, or if you want to be sure that your project gets included the next time around, by all means, let me know.

Dandy Apparel is releasing a limited-edition first run of its 2008 t-shirt line this week, and they've already begun to take orders for the eight initial designs in the catalog (follow the link above).



I recently added a new track to my acoustic profile on myspace. It's called "Strange Sutures," and the recording that's up right now is a REALLY rough demo that I recorded the night (or morning, more literally) that I wrote it. I hope to have a better recording of the more refined version of the song that it's now evolved into up soon.



In other Asbjorn music... I've been working with a couple other Asbjorn wackos/ conceptualists on a new indie-dance-rock project called "The Immaculate Conceptions." We're in the song-writing stages as of now, getting a solid set together and preparing a demo EP called "Tipsy Cougar." Keep your eyes and ears open; I PROMISE that we'll be in-your-face about it, forcing you to notice, soon enough.

On that note... I was prompted recently to contemplate the perpetually problematic "separation" and subsequent confusion of "artist" and "character" from whose perspective he speaks when someone brought it to my attention that, if casually reading the lyrics to the new project, without the context of the music and the show, scribbled and tacked to the walls in the room where we write our songs, I sound like an arrogant creep. Really, I swear, songs like "The Thrill of the Chase" make sense within the context of the project. But with the written words alone, understanding the nature of the character that I'm presenting in the overall art-statement of The Immaculate Conceptions is impossible. So, if you happen to stop by the downtown pad where guitarist Mac Ming and I live and make our art, take the scribbles around the room with a grain of salt. You'll eventually understand why the cockiness of the words is relevant.



As for the progress of on-going projects, Miss Chloe Claustrophobia (the ever-evolving concept-art project referred to and explained in quite a few past entries, most recently here) has taken another unexpected turn, which is once again perversely appropriate to the concept that she is intended to address. The mannequin, in its physical form, is now across the country from me, may very well never be modified in the ways that I had intended, has no new image-renderings available to me, and is apparently (to my great aesthetic displeasure) dressed as a belly-dancer. This is all so very far from the future that I had envisioned for her (that's always the way, isn't it?), but that fact in itself is almost sickeningly and ironically appropriate to her intended concept. Expect to find "her" popping up as the female subject of several songs by The Immaculate Conceptions in the very near future. See the reference already? "The Thrill of the Chase"? Eh?

In a past entry, I mused about my inability to finish a certain painting after putting it down to work on another that was very different in style, mood, and inspiration. I recently realized that, although I finished the work a couple of months ago (and presented it to my mother for Christmas, at least a year after I had intended to do so initially) I had never posted an update on what became of that work. Basically, I ended up having to reinvent it, and the meaning and purpose of the painting became very different than I had initially set out to create with it.

This..


...became this.

"Ill Seen Ill Said In Time, Words, and Decay."

If you can tell me what the new title of the work is a reference to, I'll give you a cookie. If you can venture any sort of theories about the relevance of the reference, I'll give you a whole lot of cookies, or something far better.

In another prior entry, I had mentioned my search for a certain set of books. Thanks to Jenn, who read my post and tracked a first-edition set down to a book-dealer in Texas via the internet (which she is apparently far more savvy with than I am), I was finally able to procure copies of the out-of-print texts. Come to find out, however, the preface of the work, which is the element that my use of the text most directly pivots around, wasn't added until the second(?) edition of the work's publication. So, now I have a couple beautiful copies of limited first edition books, but I'm still searching for what I needed from the perspective of scholarship.





I think that's all for now...So much for this entry being short.

Confessions of a formerly reluctant, overly critical beat-freak, part 1.

I have to admit, what is now my rather long-term love-affair with electronic music has been heretofore rather tepid and reluctant. Up until recently, there was part of me that was still trying to resist admitting to it.

I assume that this was the part of me that started playing guitar at age eleven. The part of me that was foaming at the mouth with a childhood fervor to throw myself headlong into a life where chord-charts and equipment and pentatonics and techniques and woodshedding were important things for reasons that didn’t need to be explained, merely because their importance was just part of “who I was.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely not claiming that these formative tools and obsessions haven’t served me well. Being “a musician” is still an integral facet of my identity, as anyone who knows me, however casually, or regularly reads this blog, can attest. Without the musical hang-ups of my youth, my current way of identifying myself would not have been able to evolve as it was. However, I’m well aware that, to people who think “as musicians” in the sense that I did when I was younger, some passing mentions of my current musical preferences and critical opinions can verge on downright sacrilege. It might, therefore, be time to venture an explanation, with a mind to a broader sense of “cultural criticism” to tie it all together.

I have to admit it now. Even though I am primarily (loosely) “a guitarist,” the music that, to my critic’s ear, gets me the most excited for future artistic/ cultural progress with music as the medium rarely (if ever) features a guitar as the dominant instrument. Hell, I’ll go even further than that. Even from a non-critical, more personal and taste-based perspective, the music that tends to get me excited, the music that I enjoy that makes me feel comfortable, is nearly always, at this point, driven primarily by well-programmed, atmospheric/ textural electronic beats. I’m well aware that, to most of my brethren of the fret-board, this is something that no self-respecting guitar-player should ever say.

To be continued…

…but in the meantime, I’ll end this installment by continuing my series of “marginalia as visual art, art as criticism, marginalia as criticism, criticism as art itself…” I forgot to bring a notebook with me to work the other day, yet started brainstorming the ideas for this entry while on break… leaving me no place to write down my ideas besides on full-page advertisements in the current issue of “Poets & Writers” magazine that I happened to be reading… producing this mess.