She was a princess
Queen of the highway
Sign on the road said
"Take us to Madre"
When Helen Frankenthaler was a young girl, she drew a chalk line on the pavement from the Metropolitan Museum all the way to her apartment where she lived blocks away on the Upper East Side—which is pretty remarkable and visionary. But the thing is: if I was lucky enough to live blocks from the MET growing up, instead of a chalk line, I would have drawn the line with lighter fluid, trailing it back to my apartment and then lighting a match from there, so—you lose Frankenthaler.
The contents of my old combination suitcase: assorted torque wrenches, Logitech handheld scanner, 10 X 25 Monocular scanner, electronic lock pick, shotgun mic, diamond dialer, micro camera for hard copy data (the more proof the better), a little under a thousand dollars cash, Sharper Image long lazer range pointer, Sony mini disk player, skypager (yeah, right), 4 oz. video camera, voice changer box, plug in phone scrambler that kind of looks like a guitar pedal, plastic anchors, Hilti anchors, long bolts, flat spacers and various screw nuts, invisible filament, an array of fire crackers and a bundle of black cat fire crackers (for emergency distraction), knife. I had a lot of reeky cool things, but honestly, a lot of them I rarely used—some things just collect, as they had only been needed once or only once, or just for one blow job. These tools add up though, and tend to weigh one down, quite. I do wish I had more of a need for the Logitech scanner or the super expensive diamond dialer I got from the spy store, which barely paid for itself.
And I also kept an old copy of Penthouse Letters in my gig bag—a remnant from my childhood, that I could ostensibly use to gin up notes or maybe lyrics.
Check the toilet tank in the private bathroom in the back at Cat & Fiddle,
The ceiling fan still on in the empty room is a clue,
Place a cheap wrist watch hidden where rubber tire meets the parking lot to clock when they second hand leave,
Everyone possesed a trigger,
Silent explosions caused most considerable damage,
And the world is too vast to ever dust for prints,
But there is one thing every detective needs—I can fast track you past accreditation hours of detective school instruction and just tell you the one one thing a detective needs, that every detective needs, the one thing absolutely essential, which cannot be overstated, and is, is, a detective needs to be, needs to have, what every detective needs to be in full striking possession of is: none, and I mean no sympathy whatsoever to the case as to what or what's ever at stake or as to whatever the final outcome of THE case ever shall be. And here is precisely where a detective's loneliness and estrangement from the world can be a sort of super power in cultivating some strong working impartial attitude. And this impartiality is and is everything. There must be impartiality applied to whatever clues evidenced may indicate, no stake in outcome—a cloud of clue could mean a whole lot of something or it could mean a whole lot of nothing or it could mean a little bit of both, meaning could shift over time—a clue, any clue must be taken with a grain of cocaine. Once the detective becomes personally invested in the case, everything becomes contaminated and then the detective ceases being the requisite uninfluence-able professional. And this is why a professional is needed—once that gets compromised, the case should be immediately turned over or abandoned.
But only for a tidy dim sum, did I Detective to so dreg myself. People act like or act like the best art is not a fiscal performance, anyways. Mostly it was just waiting or waiting around until I could find the available start gap where I found forbidden-to-look shot from the scenographic, so as able to sniper the infidel photo for my client. Strangely, the uncertainty with waiting for my client's significant other to get caught in the act of fresh evidence felt like, or sometimes actually felt similar to what it was like when I was younger and I had to go out in the world and obliquely somehow just try to find a low end job somewhere—leaving my place to detective just feels like going out to fill out job applications sometimes, but yet also, to be fair, not as hopeless. This job is usually there—the cheating was usually always going on. When someone gets to where they seek my services, it's well past point of denial, usually at some steam coming out of balloon crisis. I did sometimes have plenty dry runs though, where I found little nothing, unable to document anything suspect—that does happen or doesn't happen. But you would be surprised how cheaters double down on activity and cease to mellow out once they sense they been detected—and it's precisely because of that reactive impulse that keeps me a-floating, or did at least. And besides, it wasn't like I was just taking sex photos all the damn time—that's pretty much impossible, but I have taken some occasionally. Other than that, a lot of the times it was easy—parking lot meet ups mostly. It was surprising or not so surprising, how winsome cheaters are in the world right outside of partner's eye. I always think about that, just how entirely brazen women can be visually, it's as if their partner they are cheating on doesn't exist or never did—as if smudged from the wallet photo. Such, a sight that never gets old to see.
=
But I would do a retrospective of my deaccessioned archives, but even such fantasy is hard to indulge. For one, client confidentiality becomes breached, and it would be grossly unprofessional and gross to say the least, to just come out and contact my client years later and up and ask for permission. I mean, could you imagine, Hey, is it okay if I show that photo of your old dear Mabel meeting her coworker out on their shared day off that one time at Century Hotel Plaza—it's for an exhibition at the wax museum? And then try getting dear Mabel's permission also.
All I'm saying is I would love to see an exhibition of cheaters—the universal essence of bleached streets life distilled into punctum of moment. Such work would just be impossible for some graduate student to do—it really takes a professional—and the machinery of economics required to produce such phatic images. And besides, since the uncredentialed work happening outside of the academy is too much of an epistemological leap to make for most chilblained curators to even imagine or imagine or conceptualize, mark my words, you will never ever see something like this. New York vampire weekday curators just want to make their little smudge mark, anyways. Sure, some will take a morsel of risk probably, but not too much of a risk, and although outsider art is a viable category, still, even the outsiderness has to be vetted by historicity or the academy or be de rigueur somehow, whatever. And I don't think no museums nowheres ain't got no room anywhere for 'ol Jake Belane.
Hanna Barbera cartoon'd Charles Manson boogies down with kid friendly x on his forehead instead of a swastika, rides head lamp happy eye'd jazzy-lash dune buggy down to the Beach Party—Hanna Barbera Manson, an acoustic guitar jamming with monkey wrench Banana Splits beach band on the yellowed party sand, acoustic guitar in the floating note song cannot be heard. And all you needed was the courage to go up to the white haired beach bunny and ask her out—it doesn't matter how awkward or clumsy you ask, she will surely jinkies admire your effort in a benevolence that comes automatically attached to her beauty. And can you believe it, the California Josie and the Pussy Cat's beauty actually has zero dates because all the beach boys are just too afraid to ask her out, even though she is surprisingly approachable—as there was so much unclaimed prosperity in California yet to be taken.
I think about that one pregnant girl I saw out at the Sunland Commune. The post-disco communes was or was, all irresponsible old imperial teens, other people too, and post-disco churlish bauwdies in the aged milk of the Communes. Through the frequented halling of love-ins, the dissolute designation of 'lover'—calling someone a lover, always had such striking paucity. People consumed people like convenient dog food most of the time and designated them their lover, or actually, people never even actually used such term lover, it seemed to only exist in the staple-cheese of European novels. The story of California includes hitchhiking, running out of dough on the way out of state, ill-prepared with clothes during unexpected weather conditions, junk sick on the road and running into troublesome provincial cops—two traveling girls heading to the commune ran out of dough and the casual and seemingly unnecessary way prostitution announces itself, one of the girls takes off her shirt in the plain of day and talks about going into the small town to find a 'photography studio' to make some quik cash as if such expediency and economy of image exchange were ever so possible, but those who have been around know what photography studio means. Something terrible was going to happen. But in the post disco commune, two raver hippies are reckless or were reckless, and one of them got pregnant, and by then it was surprising it had only been those two so far. Denise Latchkey, the pregnant one I saw, bearing a baby changes what was otherwise the perpetually sunny anarchic nihilistic free for all fauvist swinging fun fun fun festival of the Wicked Lestering tribe in the chaparral of Salmon Creek in Sunland CA. Of course in the spirit of all the church annex of bad endings kidulthood commune, the pregnancy is initially accepted and even welcomed initially by woll hoarder prelate leader Lamar Gagne, and then all down, lock step automatically with the rest of the ganglia of gang. Lamar Gagne, over six feet tall, with glasses that looked too suspiciously like Jarvis Crocker, self satisfied half inch human praying mantis fingernails, also had viking moccasin tie crotch pants never discarded, and for what we know never once removed. And although Denise probably was treated on the surface the same, if not with even at first too speedily with outsized generosity and so un-original sanguine sentiment of general support, this of course fades pretty quickly once the buzz killing baby is born. And as the hypocrite hands of Mammas and Pappas sundial never ceases to advance, Denise becomes OTHER, and descends into sort of being scapegoated as all groups of people all too commonly need someone to communally rally against so they don't just hate each other all the time, even in a raver hippie commune, or no, especially in a raver hippy commune. Everything advances and advances. She very well would have been better off kicked out of the group, Denise becomes ostracized (in hindsight, it would have been better if she had somehow organized herself and just left), she found herself accepting and getting lobbed and lobbed with more little favors and more and more fence chores—washing clothes, working the stables, all the never ending mess hall kitchen work alone, sewing and mending, and so saddled down with just about anything the teens get too used to pawning off on her—someone should have told Denise to fix the ceiling mold in the shower bunkers as apparently it was something they could all live with. Denise feeling guilt by the imposition and also thinking about all the needs she burdened the group with especially during her pregnancy. Denise, also most aware of the dynamic that things get old real fast, but when such is confronted by such realization it's too late to reverse course and yesterday was only best excuse away. Make an exception, should she beg, in my case . . . and listen to me as an act of kindness, I simply beg of you. I offer you no harm and I am incapable of such. There is none to whom I can turn. I suffer alone in painful silence and I speak to you, now, with servitude, also pleading for your understanding. I feel alone and I agonize in this exasperated state. Is it within your heart to help me be at rest with the one and only thing I have ever loved? Denise was given more and more over to chores, which she cheerfully accepted maybe as a form of atonement, but also otherwise Denise actually liked to do chores, she liked folding her clothes doing laundry and she liked to vacuum the cabin, as in living in a commune, cultivating such appreciation for things helps one establish and maintain some sense of interior self among the Scooby slob gang. Though, Denise in some hard to describe miasma of admiration, automatic attraction to the leader dynamic, overstimulation, pecking order aspiration, natural lust, self awareness of pregnancy guilt brought to bare on the commune, she went with sludgeball Lamar Gagne once or maybe a couple of times and of course it gets around to her old man, the baby's father, who uses this as a perfectly good excuse to up and split the commune on his old lady and his baby, and hell, besides it probably wasn't his anyways he would conveniently rationalize. And the Nick Drake they listened to in the late afternoon seemed perennially hypocritic. In a commune there's really not much to do but just sit around the apocalypse of the thrift store marginalia in between screwing or trying to bag and smoking cigarettes. The downside to the commune is hitting on girls with less confidence of autonomy because everyone just shares everything, but the upside is that close proximity breeds breeding. Because the vicarage of forest meadow spring around the commune so sour'd, Denise now with a baby all on her own, in Margaret Kilgallen gypsy bandanna for communal chores, Denise couldn't even smoke tea and do dishes and like just zone out looking at the otherwise depressing white formica hardware store filler cabinetry in any modest enjoyment of her chores now because she was rightfully too paranoid.Timorous in the otherwise solitude of scramble house chores, unfairly harangued by Laura and Pippa for reusing bay leaves in the kitchen, Denise had to watch her back. But who knew so many day time hours in such splendid environs could ever be a cultivating for such capacity of boredom in daytime dim TV glow of the cabin of post disco commune, as if one small be-in was every perfectly purposeless of Golden Gate Polo Field be-in. With the two or three girls too many in the commune, there was plenty enough pettiness and woman-antagonistic hostility toking to go right along with it and around for not just towards Denise, but especially towards Denise, and they still bickered amongst themselves. Besides the baby, Denise with zero else and all alone except maybe for the lame duck couple asperger friends (none of them were associated with leadership), and now even without her less than useless old man, or maybe sludgeball men in pious overalls just engaging with her maybe only in some cynical dissolute opportunism that only ruins her reputation further, that since fully ostracized Denise feels compelled to rush to accommodate everything and being so desperate, practically desperate, and because of this, she is taken less and less seriously and further resented into an accelerating contempt, Denise unfairly disparaged when she was right out of lobe shot, and the fair weather girls grew to resent Denise even more and, Denise so alack and friendless, only with but the turbo tears mewling baby, both her and the baby seeming increasingly ever so less included, as the irresponsible commune months wove and tore themselves on, and the dear baby was just reminder it could have well been any body's, anybody's fuck up, while also giving the gang a sense of superiority—their brains printed on each other with what each had splutter'd underfoot about Denise, what's wrong with her, how could Denise be so stupid, you know Frank left her because she was balling Lamar did ya know that dig, she just has no self respect, just no self respect, how could she be so reckless, she's ruining it for the rest of us. And like the whole original thing, the original babyless vibe, but now it's kind of just a drag to see or be around when or whenever she's around, of what was otherwise originally pretty much false utopia anyways, and the raver hippies began to fall into decadence of Motorhead that an outsider brought into the commune, which became in fashion and not so surprisingly popular, all the chip teeth mashing, all the grotesque ancillaries that went with it all, everyone over-talking at each other, while Denise didn't have hardly an hour to herself because she had taken on so much unnecessary responsibility on top of caring for the baby. 'No one's, like learning anymore, or no one in a while, at least', Paige pinged out blanky, 'But besides, this isn't like some capitalist endeavor', 'You saw the house I was living in.' As sky so empty pack of motorcycle headlights unnecessarily on during the day and on too early before sunset, and out of the Motorhead so did most everyone have their most fizzing ugly pulled straight out of them as if with dented pliers, and all their meth mess in their putrid huts and tangle-wire dank cabins, and out into the sad strewn commons of the commune, all but self reinforced by the worst of the clique of the gang relations of shabbing bawdy buddyness, and now they were listening to Slayer and apocalyptic 36 rap all the time, and it all became korrupt, and the Motorhead energy needed somewhere to go, somewhere besides meth-craft tent tattooing, every tattoo was Frederic Jameson, and the riding insect shell motorcycles with torn seats exposing Auto Zone yellow food cake seat stuffing, shooting cheap nickel pansy pistols out at the fence and trees, ghost hustling to maintaining the new smuggler's bandit and massage parlour economy of the now etiolated junk sick commune, which now brought in outside crime along with cop's watchful dog eye, and that Denise girl was there among it all. Denise eventually succumbed and smoked zip, then becoming assimilated back into the group, one zip head is every zip head, as one drop of water is all water. She wore bovver boots to the rutland, He's just a despicable fink, No, I hate words. The baby's soon to be Brian Jonestown Normie subconscious was structured as language, and that language involved all around Denise like falling full into the collective calamity with which she is able to assimilate back with the black forest cake gang, the drought-gasm screwing hop headed so amped, and the situation is just so . . . loaded . . . by now—amplified church key stabbing and it did get worse and it didn't never end or probably didn't never end so pretty. Not my case, but Mulvaney's.
Roon didn't much have a 'passion' for music or for lyrics at all really, it was just something she just sort of had a little knack for, that's all. Joaquin always stated, a band was only as good as their song titles, really. He said something like, or to the effect of, looking out at the limitless bootless scrum of perma-placeholder song titles was actually seeing the usual ganglia nickel bag back of band so naked, so exposed.
I crossed the street and by the sidewalk ramp near the curb, a piece of ripped off spaghetti neon pink weed wacker wire was strewn on the ground looking like piece of contemporary art that had been broken off from some piece.
You just haven't earned it yet baby, Wade said out loud dimly, but I couldn't tell who he was saying this to when I walked in.
Wade was appraising who a certain solo artist had worked with—rating X working with such and such favorably, making comparisons to X's past decisions in a way that inserted Wade's own sense of being somehow on level with X, as if he was some peer, and now especially with some self regarded mastery of X, music people always did this anyways.
Anyways, they were working on the set up for I Won't Cheat, unaware of how Joaquin's song had actually a lot of personal meaning to me, and to them me, me, just the guy in the band but not in the band, and surely not within the all knowing ranks and camaraderie of the Jimmy Britches sound guys. They drew a line. One could sympathize with these guys, with their exposure to what one could only imagine so many cartoonishly self serious and inept musicians. But they wouldn't let you sympathize with them, as now keenly aware I was in the inherited path to atone for all inept musician's collective infractions, even though I was automatically respectful to them.
Since I was respectful, I was safe target so they could release and dump all the build up from the bad ones in the past, bad ones who were probably too much of a real problem and worth avoiding all together anyways. You always wanted to win over the techs, but being a musician, they looked at you with even more preloaded skepticism—they would even go out of their way, giving some random pedestrian right in front of you more thoughtfulness and attention, after you just tried to strike up casual conversation with one of the techs.
Uh-ok, midrange boost shifting, on what, two inch tape, one of the Johnny one-take techs went.
OK. Wade with standoffish laugh,
Sepulchral flanger, totalitarian hot, no reverb.
Um no, no, maybe, maybe.
Make it Untitled disappear, the other tech with over idiosyncratic precision. These kind of guys colonized music with their specialized comic book hoarder expertise, and that was something so LA about it, and although I was definately considered not on level to be included in their conversation, I silently still appreciated them from a distance.
But Roon's innovation on Dormers, was little tiny like devices in the song that were inconspicuous but repeated itself in another song on the album, devices working as signals, tiny trap doors that connected and led through invisible tubes in the air to other trap doors into the other songs on Dormers, like some kind of porthole bridge. This had no overall effect in the immediate reception of the songs, it was just something to do—like being bored and bouncing an angry rubber marking ball against grounded bedroom wall alone while your parents weren't home.
And what Dormers seemed to say, of all the world's unanswered prayers—and if every prayer was answered, they would cancel each other out, leaving only remainder, and then the odd remainder, the spare change left is what dictated the will of the world, as if answered prayers were only to know when and what to pray for.
I was saying something to one of the techs, or I don't remember what I was talking about, but I said I get up at eleven and Kate comes walking in hearing me right then when say I sleep in—Kate looking at me like a refurbished skeleton. Kate always accidently caught me saying the worse thing when she would come coasting in.
There was something about the homely idealism of Kate's short chewed about finger nails painted dark blue, pretty much black, as if it was just something she did from coming back from the drug store no big deal.
Kate was putting on mascara in the dressing room corner of the muska chalet room of the seconal studio, as if she being useful to herself before recording. The hardest part about singing is the interim before singing and it sure was. I usually dealt with it by drinking beer.
Suffice to say, Kate was never too terribly taken by me. Upon by my fatally suggesting she be in the band, I surely never should have made such assumptions behind my fevered insistence, and then it seemed Kate despised me in utmost silent extent. It was outrageous that she could be so cold and cruel—but alas, not until after did I realize realize, I did actually gate crash into the immediate family or atleast try to. And surely how curt and bloodless Kate was being, quite.
Roon talking to Kate, Kate's voice straining because she was flexing her eyes looking in the mirror, as if every mirror was the same mirror, but the others, just not with Kate in it.
And when I drink beer, I drink beer as if one drop of beer is a drop of every beer, And Deirdre of sorrows Kate then said something about Ostrich tuning, or not saying anything, just responding to something Rooney musta said.
I mean it's nice enough, I went.
We're not going to do that, Rooney interjected as if just for its own very sake.
Everything's a joke to you, isn't it Belane, Kate without hesitation, stomping on my face wearing a crampon.
Kate didn't exactly tolerate me—and the perceptual apparatus of all that was Kate, reserved or reserved at least around me, kinda quiet sometimes, stately, seemingly dignified beyond me for the most part. Kate was like a container of tin metal mints idly sitting on the shelf. Still there was something that was purille about her that although not for me, seemed like something that could be a really great thing for me if I was willing to grow and maybe change. Please pardon me for wanting something good for myself. Passed on by everyone I wanted, passed on by my entire generation, and even the generation after that too—Kate really didn't like me,
It’s not really supposed to be like a romantic, breakup thing, or actually maybe it is. But if there was any arc, or arc, you know it would like be, relationship, relationship ending, time gone by. Like, part 1, part 2, part 3—whatever. But, or but, I do not see this as necessarily romantic, like singing. It’s about other things, or mostly, but that’s what I want, or want to, if I could muster, like tonally, Roon saying to Kate.
Willem De Kooning is the Dinosaur Jr. of art—sure, undeniable and good, I mean they are though, or and but, but just not quite exactly my thing, I said trying to impress upon Kate, and Kate wasn't into art or music.
Ah, maybe I do like De Koons, over self consciously, I trail back, talking too much.
Kate looking at me like I peed on her Reeboks, Kate a pretty wait-machine, she wasn't exactly Rooney's more affable aw-shucks twin.
We had only one vision street wear march of life to live once, we had endless finite time, we were unsatisfied even when satisfied. Everything was an open field of playing out of will and will power, all against and against all—even just telemarketing a message on voicemail, to leave a most simple message-save you had to over-wait for your most simple likely delivery option of plain save as the very last option, but you had to hear all the less likely message delivery options so the telecommunications providers can siphon up as many collective unnecessary mule minutes as possible—this flashed in my head standing near Kate now. I had seen it all, but it was extraordinary how I, all the machinery of me, simply could not operate in front of Kate, she was the magnetic barrier repelling me from a richer reality, like a safety force field of creation. Kate from just existing brought up all issues to the fore, reminded me of every lame thing about me in her presence, I would heap, I would speck, and in her presence again I would remember myself embarrassed again. After listening to the lyric I keep my address to myself, when I finally figured out it just means a cool and funny and clever lyric pre-fame precaution of not sharing one's address to fans, when this whole entire time, I keep my address to myself was interpreted as some vague abstraction (which that's cool too, man), and I'm barely a detective. I'm sure Kate sensed that I didn't know the lyrics. There was nothing I could do but resign myself by now, but it was even too late for that now anyways, first hand embarrassed I thought again how I pushed for Kate into the fold—I did actually insist on her being here.
The bikini jerk clouds looked like wrinkle waves off Orlando jet city leather jacket, everything seemed to be held together by dental floss and tinsel strips. If existence is a one in infinity proposition, then for every infinity there is one existence, and there's infinity infinity so there's infinity existence, unless there's some contradictory rule somewhere behind the scenes, one that if we knew about, creation would self correct the paradox that makes this somehow all possible, and we would all total vanish. But the rest of them, they went on and got by, we were the ones who acted like we were born on a Thursday, we, all unreliable witnesses, we all read empirical observation incorrectly.
You rarely get what you want in this life. Yet, protect me from what I want is probably the most useful statement to ever come out of a museum. I was better suited being a knickerbocker sniffing gumshoe anyways, but even the clients were figuring out they could do it themselves and without me. But I was also a comforting occasion for the displacement they felt, and that was quite a useful service I provided. At the end of the day, if anyone was in midst of crisis, I was the type of guy who would come out and meet you out for a beer no worries. Otherwise, past clients would just rather prefer just not see me. I made quite a few friends though, but I could tell others weary when they ran into me, they associated me with that old problem they wanted to long forget. Kate was done applying mascara, and with the sound of the slight pull of leather and the purse efficient button snapped too economically against me, Kate putting the mascara back into her purse like ending a transaction.
I embarrassed and embarrassed myself for only trying to satiate a desire that I had otherwise no involvement in possessing, and not enough intelligence yet or ever to accrue. I am not beyond snatching defeat from the panic shack jaws of victory. I have had what I wanted come to me and gotten skittish and well harried it away. Don't think I don't live not living with this. I'm just trying to tell you how it was. The first time I admired a woman as a child, I distinctly felt an uneasiness even then, and it was strange, but now thinking about it as an adult, not so strange, and even when I was four or five I had a vague though mentally unarticulated sense that that uneasiness was from the traumatic impossibility of its possession, if not just getting to spend a significant amount of time in her presence. And when I was a teenager, I would imagine ideal circumstances—maybe it was being able to drive in a marijuana-ing Civic Del Sol with the girl, maybe it was going to a party with the object of desire and socializing with an open interesting group of contemporaries and peers sate in all the idealism in being seen. But really, whenever I bought a girl along, it ceaselessly just caused problems—I would have to button up and tolerate being cut up so casually, cut down in plain site in a casual circumstantial sociable ruthlessness by a girl I was with in front of friends, as if to say everything on her mind was all simply a playing out of power dynamics of forces of everyone's self will unceasingly carried out upon the world and it sure was—women would not give it away, and if they did, it was provisional until something else came along, or they would just give it away to make a cruel point against you, and it didn't even necessarily have to be something better, just someone, some times anyone else besides you, and sometimes someone easily worse. It seemed the ones, the men, who had not experienced the problems like this were an exception. And maybe my kind of dumb temperament didn't help me nuthin' neither ain't. I only ever dated gorgeous girls though, and they always always always flexed all inappropriate liberties and possibility—testing and test I wasn't aware was test, tests I wasn't ready for, tests saying something wild and gauging for my response to see if I had the strength to stand up for myself and even times when I did object it was not given credit as strenght of resolve, only mark against, like say, responding to my date breaking off with someone in my group and talking with them for a worrisome too long amount of time. Sometimes I would be out with a girl and they always mentioned who was hot and good looking right in front of me, which is rude, when I would never do this to them, not out of concealing, but out of a genuine sense of being a gentleman. But girls shurely never cared about this, if they even noticed. In every immediate social situation they always possessed full advantage—but since all the richest people in the world who owned businesses and ran the government were men, I was part of the problem. Oh, your boyfriend is picking me up at the airport, Oh, the crotch of your Levi's left in my room that had traces of Eden, Oh, you want my guy friend's phone number. Women can do everything a man can do, except build freeways. Women had available romantic options men didn't necessarily have, but their articulation of love sick is somehow supposed to be just as if not more salient? Give it to them, they can have it both ways then. I was actually on fire drunk driving you around the city, the city where I had all the connects. You got my best reserved material and I even surprised myself. What is exactly the problem? Then as a young adult going with you on vacation was only worse than any teenage despair, it was worse than I could have ever predicted—being ostracized from the group because now she's acting funny around the group, the soft single serve estrangement and my date not talking to me for no reason or even responding to what I directly say to her in a group social situation. If it's my friends she takes over my friends, if it's her friends I'm just along neutered to watch her say and do just about everything overstimulated of her in the driver's seat, that if I was to call her out only for her to say I'm insecure and I have the problem. Despite for weeks looking forward to the outing, and the disapointment now, just wanting to exit.
Yeah, well nevermind that—we just laid down our very own cover of Hank Williams Jr. Family Tradition—Kate and Roon both singing glorious chorus, re-realizing it like territorial peak jabs in the sky, and it was beyond better than it needed to be, Kate and Roon both singing together in unicen, Hank, why do ya drink . . . Hank, why do you blow smoke. . . Why must you live out the songs that you wrote. . . You should have been there, that very LA moment of Kate and Roon singing in the small booth room, precious and priceless.
I played the solo, Joaquin learned the slide guitar pretty quick, and they bought in a friend, Kandise to play some sort of violin, which I didn't initially realize, now so apparent for task at hand it be so mandatory.
You should have seen Kate and Roon, you really should have though. Their girl-like belting in the booth and it's almost uncontainable charisma—it was just too good. The Hank they were singing to was ostensibly Hank Williams Jr. in the song obviously, but I could not help but thinking of Hank Bukowski, and it was just so perfect—oh, what a moment, and oh, what a classic and eternal LA moment. We really quite had something on our hands—and so this is how it goes again.
Kate Mara glowed pale now staring at me silently for quarter second, but only by the happenstance of its incidence, Kate's perception brushing at me like intestinal acid bath. Life was just impossible, I thought again—Kate, an instant embodiment expression of all that eternal—even feeble grinds were not as easy as they should be, I thought. Once though she did brush up her arm against mine, and I felt self implicated for saying excuse me.
Just the way Roon walked over next to Kate, you could practically see the neutered invisible arrows stubbed into her own heart from the hurling boughs of all men's personal cupids from throughout the years and years and everyday.
I don't listen to any band that has a member with super curly hair, sorry, Rooney glicking.
Well, the problem with music is there were no new verbs, Kate plied, no one else but me paying attention.
Room shrugged and neither said a nuthin' not a thing.
The universe musta ran out of songs, Kate belatedly added, one of my lines that she recycled!
Joaquin restringing my guitar with hard strings was kind of listening from across the room, Joaquin gets up and kind of inserts himself still holding the kind of new hogg by its neck.
Y know, ya know Earth Wind, Earth Wind and Fire, the Fire had, actually had a touring budget of 1.5 million dollars allocated just for fabrics, it was so easy for Joaquin, Joaquin nodding at me optimistically, like this metric was such a great thing, even though maybe he really didn't even really care about it that much. Though Joaquin was not beyond relishing in the wrong idea sometimes, Joaquin with his consummate sense of propriety, but that was what was kind of interesting and funny about what he said sometimes. You could tell he was injecting himself to save me from the ice bath twins, but the problem is is they could probably also see this too.
Brace for zebra zooted, Roon with insolent smile, not missing an opportunity to even bring him down to earth, casting her own finality brand of clinical annoyance.
But when Kate would decide to be sort of cool to me she'd be something like, Thank You, Jake to me—which I hated. She came into rehearsals, and when I saw her I immediately felt kind of off.
And of whatever that of Baby Boomer narratives I was raised on once taught me, certainly had very little use for me here, I'm afraid.
Anyways, lot of sketches for the new album were done on a Cardiff Wollensack recorder, but I had been tabbing out guitar with a typewriter at home (since Ceasar's visit to my office, I avoided the otherwise cheerful quaintness of BDA, as it had been tainted by his visit, and also the lack of once bustling activity of business that my office had been occupied was also a bummer too, and Penny had all but disappeared also). I slugged my Remington portable down the penny-water smelling stairs of the office and up the stairs to my swinger's singles apartment, and worked or searched for numbers and x's like a detective detectives for clues. I really never had the knack for just crafting a long line solo on the spot, but I am getting better—I discovered a cheat code, tabbing out slowly in a false temporality, taping together a solo, the tab becomes prosthetic and then I drill it into the ground for seven hundred hours and I'm basically playing on level of Clapton. Of course I figure this out when Rock n' Roll is dead. Anyways, the metal key sticks of the typewriter were their own aggregator system—but it seemed a certain mechanical incidence of the type writer was also accidentally at work when influencing how the tabs came out. The guitar was also a machine after all, and my fingers were a machine, and sometimes the wrong notes mis-spelt spelt some lucky accidence of incidence occurring there a couple of times that played out on the track.
eb|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
bb|--0--------------------------x----------------------------------0-------------0------------------------------
gb|-----2-------------2----------------------------------------------x-------------2----------------------------
db|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2--------------
ab|--------2---3p2------2-------5----(7)-----5-----3-----5-------------2------------3------3-----------2---
eb|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Numbers are a human invention—the reason the words were given to the number is so each one lasted exactly one second, which is essential for voice measuring—that's why they taught in every grade in schools up to college was you have to say the longer nummer words exactly so quicker so they too last a second in the air—one thousand two hundred fifty six point zero five three = one second snug.
The studio now was a weedling garden of sound. Joaquin was though, practically at just about his very best building the cyclone fence of the follow up—the studio clearly spelt fun house for Joa, you could tell, Joaquin's ears now evermore more so sharpened since Dormers came out,
Turning towards the silver fabric pyramid shape sound insulation, where on the tip of each pyramid was a perfectly pointless red bead, I couldn't hear the melody leaking out the headphones, but the aural hallucination was assailed by Jane Beth talking too much to one of the techs.
The many hands make dark work of Roon and Kate, soon to release again upon unsuspecting world, both stood in fraught way that surely showed they weren't exactly singing in the shower now—I just didn't understand how people sang sober in the studio.
Ok, let's start back with baby's tears. Wade are we ready, we are ready, Joaquin reeling it in, clearly relishing in a religious-like fervor working in the studio.
A one, two, a one, two, three, four, Joaquin counting off, as if surgeon at woman having contractions.
The melody leaking out the headphone played dimly and the studio was quiet as a mute, A duh nuh nuh nu na nu na nu na,
The melody was recorded first, but we kind of couldn't hear it—it had an unbeat kinda jingle jangle, like line in coconut. After the singing was recorded, we might go back and add essential flourishes, like a little slide guitar. We would also use lush mellotron for flourishes too, but not on this song.
Kate-dawgg going first, the unmistakable look on her face now facing real live challenge, If they put baby's tears—, Kate sings.
Stop—sorry, my lovely, that's fault, my fault—again, baby's tears, Joaquin as is not minding the inconvenience, maybe even delighting in the jam up of its own complications.
No lying contained on Kate's face, she was serious now, the reel reround around and the song started it up back again into her headphones.
A one, two, a one, two, three, four, Joaquin at most serious.
A duh nuh nuh nu na nu na nu na,
And if they put baby's tears when they brewed the beer, Kate faithfully singing.
Cut. Stop. Kate—do it again.
The reel rewound backwards, then stopping on harsh register IBM click.
A one, two, a one, two, three, four,
The track starting back up again, A duh nuh nuh nu na nu na nu na,
Kate paying attention to make her hit mark, Kate waits, waits, waits goes now, And if they put baby's tears when they brewed the beeeer,
Joaquin punching a sobering full-stop again,
No, Kate—THEY, they . . .
Kate stood still draped in bleach, her hair pulled back aslant, only from Joaquin's order to corner the dottiness round.
That's what I sang, Kate stating plainly just like Roon.
Oh, you're, right, you're right—my fault, les do it again,
Joaquin hit the promo back button—a whirring sound came from inside the humming nuclear codes console of arcade and then abruptly Bally stopped.
With real rewound again, the track started up—A duh nuh nuh nu na nu na nu na,
Go! Joaquin pointing out, still looking down like NBC mission control.
Kate singing in the full summit of what she was capable of, And if THEY put baby's tears inside the beer,
Cut. Not inside, when, when they brewed the beer, Joaquin ever the task master, though the sweetest task master you could come across, practically.
The tape rewound around backwards, you could hear it on the rewind, but when it played forward, for some strange reason it still could only be heard in Kate's ear goggles, the ear goggles making Kate look like honorary air traffic controller.
Okay, a one, a two, a one, two, three four, Joaquin counting off again, the time it took to count was about twenty five hundred dollars in studio time.
A duh nuh nuh nu na nu na nu na,
And when THEY brewed baby's tears when they made the beer, needles bouncing sideways, Kate trying to pull something out of herself, Kate trying to pull something out the air—
Cut—not it's when they brewed, if they brewed. If they brewed baby's tears when they made the beer, kill buzz Joaquin halting the song up again.
Kate with her thumbnail between her focus group lip, with the consternation as if on quiz show, Oh, I'm sorry.
Baby you fine, let's do it again. If THEY brewed baby's tears, when they made the beer. Okay. One. Two. A One. Two. Three, Four, Joaquin the full in focus—you could just tell Joaquin was a great brother in law to have.
The honky tonk piano melody which had been resolved and tracked already to tape, still only heard by Kate and Roon—it was surprisingly a real good one too, it really came about all too quickly, and I really wanted to hear it now.
A space of silence passed as you could tell the song was playing before the spot for singing again came on, A duh nuh nuh nu na nu na nu na,
And if THEY brewed baby's tears, when they made the beer, Kate just as about as misty as ever.
Okay Roon!, Joa pointing to Roon, off Jane Beth's look in the adjacent separate booth, and off so she went.
Roon jumping in like catching baseball brat's ball, There would never be no more hangover.
Stop. Joaquin standing at the console in stunted contemplation.
The reel rewind wound until it clicked a bit and there was a worrisome harsh dragging sound, to only just then sitting patiently on call for playback.
Okay, that was good—one more time, Joaquin goes again.
The history of the world was an animal used a broken bone to stab another animal, and next was a telemarketing company beginning it's first day of business in a small office building that seemed impossible that it's collective tenants could ever cover rent enough to float the costs of the building and the building owners also turning a profit. I wake up to you tattooing my eyelids—that's enough, I pull away and you want to keep going. Another round of silence, Joaquin gave just enough extra widening interval before playback as to tarry quite just enough for singer to catch full measure.
Okay, a one, a two, a one, two, three four,
A duh nuh nuh nu na nu na nu na,
And if they put baby's tears when they made the beer—
Stop—
What, Kate holding her right ear goggle on her ear with her right hand, like she was engineering USA for Africa.
No, not made the beer, brewed—
Oh, right. Dammit. Kate, unnecessarily restive, this, in a way that was now stark contrast to the primal-scream therapy of Dormers.
It's fine—one last time, babe, Joaquin with zero razor rancor.
Okay, a one, a two and a one a two a two a three a four—
A duh nuh nuh nu na nu na nu na,
Kate back to work like faithful cobbler, And if THEY brewed baby's tears when they made the beer,
Roon! Go! Joaquin definitely not messin' around, Joaquin, as if now brutishly resolving by trancing distance for majoritarian global esperantos.
Roon punched in, no room to miss for spit second, There would never be no more hangovers.
The way Roon patched in prompted by Joaquin, you could see a flicker of the band take its very own shape,
And if you can make the giraffe spontaneously laugh, Roon sings back.
Kate!, Joaquin inexhaustible in the full of imperative, not wanting Kate to miss her hit mark.
It may give the city zoo extra paper work, and Kate sends herself as if grabbing fobbing brass ring.
Completely unprompted, the girls now go together, both caged green battleship lights in their booth signal on in the all of too quiet of the early evening studio, it was like the ambience from outside Pacific Palisades quaint street struck itself inside now. The outside actually transfers onto tape, and that's why you get an album like Disintegration—something so subtle yet so vital that it was missed entirely by pretty much all and every musician. Surfer Rosa had that too. Under Joaquin's aegis, he had this covered.
And it will make your shins itch, the girls together now, in a reflected spirit of union.
Like a hot thorny priest, the girl's go together again.
Bend X letter again,
If you can let ride another saddle on,
After hearing that I really needed a Cuba Libre, and both girls sewing it all up, no barrier,
La, la, la, la, la,
They water skied through the rest of the track—some end that seemed too abstract to actually be realizable had remarkably made its very own way here—though slightly unrecognizable when it finally reached, it was all still pretty satisfying.
Joaquin, exhibiting a not so original self stylized display of full mastery, he was ready to put it to bed now, Perfect. That, or that just, just might work . . .
We hung around and ordered some nice fresh pizza pies from Swabbs that was near that Benton's Sporting Goods store on Sunset and Crescent Heights, and they had Jane Beth pick it up in her old drafty guild van and bring the pies back to the studios.
On the way to pick up our order Jane must have passed past Ranch Market, where the sign of traced out words with red light letters, that had the CH letters expired, spelling Ran Market, as if the grocery store had plum worn itself out.
Chouinard Jane Beth mentioned that when she was picking up the zaz, seeing some hispanic guy in a cheaply decorated Suburban with an elaborate lighting system in the interior back seat back area that was customized in rowing of speakers, as he was playing braying anonymous wanna-be dance music through the carpet of parking lot. And the holy innocence of the Mexican children playing between the street, parking lot and sidewalk . I was listening silently wanting to jump into the conversation of Jane Beth's relaying this, but I knew better and just didn't.
It was just as well I didn't say nothing rushing in trying to be cool with Jane, because one day in the sessions smug Jane Beth had the audacity to pat me on the head—some superfluous, disrespectful, overactive response of her own strong personality getting ahead of herself reasoning that's logic made little sense at all to whatever she was superficially in the moment over-reacting at towards me. Jane Beth was the kind of person that likes the pumpkins that look like they had radical tumors dispersed in an all over of warts. I had to use all restraint in holding myself back that time, besides just giving her a sideways skeleton look. All of Jane Beth's otherwise calculated cheeriness, her offensive optimism, it was all so bad I almost mentioned it to Joaquin way later, but I eventually cooled off about it. Jane Beth was such a lake.
A serious surfer doesn't like plan on going surfing at three o' clock on a Wednesday. You go surfing when the conditions are right, the waves wind tide is good, congratulations Jane Beth, Jane Beth going on about, in some sense of girl-surfer eclecticism, another comment also resoundly having nothing to do with me. Though such altruism sounded good, all the surfers I actually knew never stopped surfing, and yes they went surfing also when the conditions were good. Jane Beth was the granddaughter of Al Ruppersberg or like Bob Irwin, I forget which. Jane Beth had this quality as being linked or a descendant or legatee of some kind of idea circulating sprawling horizon of embodied Californiacana flying eyeball Jimi Hendrix Fillmore graphic design West Coast heritage, as if articulated by herself just existing and everything she did and everything she was directly involved in, and that which I was not beyond silently still appreciating and still being particularly charmed by. I don't know how accurate that is about her, but such certainly did seem true.
Kate with teen's eye snatched a slice as if pre determinedly stealing food, like her parents never musta fed her. Roon came right up to her, they both the same short powerful height. Just the Salem gothic them next to each other doin' nuthin' looked, came off innocently conspiratorial.
Where's my skrillah, Rooney hectoring with casual worldliness to Jane Beth, playfully using ebonics, exuding in her white-girliness.
Jane Beth the smiler snatches, It's mine, bitch, as if mimming already planning to keep the blind change, knowing Roon wasn't being serious. Roon was pretty generally generous and cool for the most part—except that is, with her help Marta.
Everything in the cathedral of studio was mired in action marks, Roon turned back to Joaquin, resuming what they were talking about, It's pretty good,
I mean it's okay, Joaquin picking up the battered nylon string we kept for in house sketching—the wood on the edges of the body was fried and frayed and frizzled, and the side of the body had an accidental punch hole covered with some rambling sticker.
Yeah, pretty good, Roon real provisional.
Okay . . . , Joaquin went to Roon as if he was the most patient husband in LA County.
It's almost losing track of time, Roon chomping on the pizza while she's talking, giving off some ad hoc sense of leveling with Joa, Roon as if she had automatic right to all air of innocence she now so suspectly displayed.
Is it still live? Joaquin asking with taskmaster's pragmatic immediate concern.
No no, I don't want to read nuthin' Gabriella wrote—and besides, she probably doesn't even know the difference, the difference between Kris Markovich and John Malkovich, anyways—Roon going full into it, in a way that betrayed the innocence she so casually displayed milli seconds ago.
Rooney! Joaquin trying to reel Roon in,
Well, Roon innocently biting the triangle end of the pizza slice, as if out of selfless obligation.
Even I don't know Stan from Gordo, Joaquin snapping into the studied full of professionalization, like that of an attorney.
Yes you do, the horizontal blur of Roon, her voice muffled by the flat pasgetti dough of bread in her mouth, like her mouth's insides was avoiding the screaming heat, even though you could kind of tell the pizza slice wasn't necessarily that hot by now.
Actually, you're right, I do—but you know what I mean, Babe, Joaquin the lord, he put the guitar down purposefully after not holding it visibly not long enough, productively lights a cigarette, looking like an old mogul as if such for him was fated. His hand fisted with burning studio cig holding then firm against the smoked laminate off the studio break domino-ing table.
What's up big D? Joaquin, never one to not acknowledge anyone on the team in the room.
Well, look at these two fine lovely ladies, must be nice to be you, the tech said in a way that was not flirtatious at all towards the girls, but more out of general respect for Joa. In the optimism of his voice, I intuited that one of the such lovely ladies was inevitably going to be in my possession.
Indeed it is, indeed it is, these girls . . . , Joaquin in the full benevolence of a man blessed in the land of plenty, when you could see anyone else otherwise in his position could most likely be a total son of a bitch.
I always say people bitterly bewailed the benevolence of those who were of high standing, Well, if I was him, sure I'd be nice to people—pretty easy when things are always going all your way—that was so California—but the thing is is that people in power could easily sit in bug shell seat of self satisfaction like phoney crown on a rotter tooth of all their worst instincts while being just cynical and terrible and just terrible to everybody—ABUSE OF POWER IS NO SURPRISE. I can say pretty confidently Joaquin is one of the best people I know, I am proud to call him my friend.
Roon rudely speeded up the tech and the tech went back along into the other room doing whatever he was doing, and Roon then went something to Joa about Kennedy rhyming thesaurus,
Joaquin not letting the unforced gaiety working pleasantry interrupt what she was unnecessarily trying to get at, Graff is relational, sure, but it lacks any firm conceptual—basis, and, or anything, or resembling any sort of heft, I'm afraid—I mean imagine on insisting the voice of a generation is someone who's name was Barry,
Giraffey graffiti? Roon turning way too late to respond from barely paying attention, Roon Dawggg genuinely asking what Joaquin just went.
Unrelated later in the day, I fussied with tabs, moved an amp alone to the cornered tape marks we registered, I was going to screw my pick up tighter but it was not as easy as I thought it was going to be and I got scared I was irreparably messing it up and I gave up and left it a little worse off than how it originally was because I couldn't screw it back in as tight again. I was thinking about the problems built into narrative while I was moving the Mellotron over to the mic stand, I was thinking about the problems built into narrative—something that I would sometimes entertain silently, or think about when I was working out in the field on another cheater's case. Say you have a boy at home, the narrative begins with him as protagonist and our relationship as the audience begins there. The boy is told the pretty girl from around the block has been invited to his house, immediately spurring all his expectations that is now shared with audience. The heavy front door opens and luminescent girl arrives. Just as she walks in, a guy in a greaser leather jacket trails delayed behind her. From the view of the audience surely he must be a hoodlum hooligan, and since he's not invited he's a troublemaker—evidently, by the way he is so inimically inserting himself into the scene, thus activating the audiences' automatic sympathy with boy in house's immediate disappointment. Again, since the narrative began with boy at home, he is set protagonist, and the narrative convention leads us to automatically identify with boy at home as established protagonist. The boy in the leather jacket gate crashes into the house, but the girl reluctantly lets him tag along—and boy in the leather jacket is immediately set up as antagonist. They all somehow have lunch out on the patio, but the original boy in house (who's outfit could only scream fire hazard), tells his dumb waiter in persuader's smile to feign accident and spill pea soup over boy in the leather jacket's head, thus exacting some sense of expedient cruel practical joke. The wrenching waiter spills the pea soup onto boy's head, and the girl and protagonist boy in house have a good laugh at his very expense, as if such is fair, and in accordance to how the narrative sets up audience expectation of what constitutes some immediate poetic justice. But the thing is is is—the detective later finds out the boy in leather jacket is an old childhood friend of the girl, the boy in leather jacket from lower economic background, while she be from higher social register, but they had remained friends and besides, she had gone through a lot with her abusive father and woefully passive mother, and boy in leather was a support for her through a lot of the bad new days formative years, and then they eventually became each other's first like deep connection. I shall take your arm, and together we should always punch aside hastening death. There would always be time, and death has already taken so many others that it cannot possibly mean you. As weeks worsen weakly, school advances high towards end, external attitudes and pressures around the girl, not so originally beckon she expand her mantle and the girl's gripping parents arrange a date, even against her best guy friend's very interests, or especially against her guy best friend's interest, and all is unfair in love and war. Though the girl, otherwise perpetually vexed by her father emotionally, still even if she wasn't, she was also just anyways kind of unrelatedly perpetually dissatisfied like somebody always spit in her Sanka, and also besides, she can sort of be neurotic and unfair and sometimes she can go along well too easily with the crowd and crowd and people around her (she's an aquarius)—but also the girl is also occasionally funny, she has a firm sense of humor that is attached to the sharpness of observation of her perception—she is also very different with boy in leather jacket when they were alone in an easiness and intimacy of mutual self recognition of cultivated repeated references only known to them, terms and phrases they repeated in a two person code. His gaze alights beside her.They sitting on the thick carpet in her second story room, canister in the ceiling lights giving her bedroom an almost retail showroom like regency, and utopic piano loop of his Reflection Eternal instrumental 2000 Season CD playing on her Bose machine, the track sounding all in the contemporary jazz-calm evoking a glass marble doodling ink in water color dye golden age hip hop loop, and they were safe and isolated comfortably from the rest of the skimble skamble city, while outside in an ever widening chaos city with the stropping stop lights are in the weeds and cannot exhaust themselves ever enough to sort out the clogged streets, while girl and boy with leather jacket were supposedly doing homework, in a state of grace so comfortable in their shared recognition and familiarity, a haven in the un-straining of the girl's home setting of plenty, as if such activity with girl and boy in leather jacket was as good as all best of all design elements of her furniture and every high-end product around could ever aspire to frame and accommodate. Life has been disgusting, I'd endure any pain in order to spare you from it. Nothing else in life is enough. I'd give you no trouble, your emotional permanence is all that keeps me level. Their shared laughter, that they were so agreeably different is what made their shared company so savored—but to boy in leather jacket's peril, she needed some husky antagonistic bluto capable masculine rando to really keep her on edge of dysfunctional un-resolution that was in fact unwittingly so attractive to her. She tests decent, fetched good grades enough, and she will most likely get into a far away state school off somewhere. The environment around leather jacket boy is ever so fraught, and not only does his immediate fire sale home life not help set him up for success, it is quite the very opposite, with family members burdensome and ever so problematic, and it is actually through steely self resolve and of acting into auto-formed, self forced into emotional intelligence that boy in leather jacket is even able to very remarkably escape from being fully corrupted—still though, his grades are just lousy, he was not encouraged or fostered to develop any general intellectual curiosity much at all, and around his cousins he could occasionally flirt with bad and stupid behavior with underaged drinking and spending time at the scuzzed pool hall, which is most generally looked at as unfavorable. Still motivated by love, the leather jacket boy proves that he is still devoted to his family, even if they are dysfunctional and calamitous and most notably lower class stratum—but they still are his. Sure he's at the pool hall with his cousins, but his cousins are still his clan after all, but because they are problematic, any valor that the boy demonstrates on his own can only be diminished all but by the calamity of lower middle class third rate-ness associated with his family and also by some of his in plain view bad behaviour. Never mind that the girl's parents have not spent a Cincinnati minute ever really taking any such things into consideration, the girl's tottering parents have their own subjective view and attitudes, their very own plans after all, all of which involve their daughter taking up with those seizing deemed more respectable and socially landed. Never mind boy at the house, our frothy protagonist, which we too late discover to be total loathsome crow-flower, well too used to getting everything he wants, understanding himself superior automatic, an all too common trait hammer head to his privileged upbringing, and thus so goes his not so original looking down at those not as fortunate as he, being such his gift of the grab attitude. That he gets his butler, pressures the peasant handed butler to pour lime pea soup all over leather boy's head, ultimately illustrating boy in house's his lack of character, stealing the air and essentially pitting old friends against—which works because she, her name is Julia, now cruelly laughs with the boy. Julia doesn't necessarily go with boorish boy in house, but such activity to say the very least did little to advance her and boy in leather jacket's standing and such relations between the two left permanently fractured, as so later she goes off eventually to settle with someone else somewhere else as always does happen—girls rarely end up alone. If narrative convention sets boy with leather jacket off as antagonist, when he was in fact the opposite—it's only because what the audience sees when they arrive at the story or onto the scene of the crime, which is mostly quite always at precisely the wrong point. With what we see all the way up to boy with leather jacket drenched in pea soup—Julia and boy in house having shared laugh seems to the mookish just arrived onlooker like firm sense of justice. We now know the real score, or could even infer somewhat accurately to then further believe them laughing only anoints them as two miserable, cockered best suited in hell with each other probably, even though girl and boy in house are probably not that much a good match also anyways. But even if boy in leather jacket was say, set up as established protagonist, as if, we learn his background before all this happens—he loses the girl still, but now to which the expectations of proverbial conventional narrative tendencies would shift for him just destined to meeting someone beslubbering better, who by conventional expectations he would be ostensibly more deserving of and suited better match with someone else somewhere else. Though in real life this never happens and never happens at all, as narrative depiction to say the absolute least, is not at all how life ever or ever plays out. What United States of Generica narrative tendencies can never reconcile is that Julia was actually one in ten million—and some things lost are direly unrecoverable. And sure, that out of the other ten million to one girl like Julia to be in the set up circumstance to align with boy in leather jacket's path seems ponderously less than impossible. And it was the insufficient Boomer narratives that an entire generation was raised on, of what was some supposed universal karmic oven of justice a whole generation was so wanly set up to expect. Surely such unrealizable narratives are more satanic that some three minute Black Sabbath song ever could be. There was no way to gauge or track the oh so prevalent unfulfillment of such disappointments (despite evidence exasperatingly being well everywhere you look), as perhaps other not so exciting and mundane stories were less likely to be told or ever popularly illustrated, though sometimes this was depicted in the spare movie or even through historical accounts, or what twenty years from now would be something called autofiction (auto as in autobiography, not automatic). But an entire generation is still being brainwashed, and it wasn't a deliberate conspiratorial CIA brainwashing, it was more bourne out of inept, lazy Boomer writing that seeps through the gates mis programming all expectations that everyone's behavior is to be so bounded by. I am guilty of holding these naive expectations due to Scott Baio horn-teen narrative. The logical fallacy of credibility of established protagonist and again, the logical fallacy of credibility of established protagonist. Maybe I could see something similar in Kate's dagger pointed antagonistic indifference toward me now. They say don't take it personally, don't take it personally, you can't take it personally, no, just don't take it personally, but it seems silly not to take it quite personally when in fact you in their direct presence leads to a very certain refusal on their part and it just makes you feel permanent ill, and that's or that's why, that's why, or at least why I was at one point a detective in WeHo.
But now, I'm the tertiary supplemental Hanna Barbera cartoon character added to fluff up the last season of a formerly successful TV show—I'm the midget Scooby Do second cousin, I'm that white furry little space gremlin character in the final Jetsons that talks like Bjork and has suction cup feet attached to my cheap slinky legs. This is the last season, this is my last season. As tube river ride that is life—you could spend your life using the river responsibly, respectfully and with the very integrity it so deserves, for then so masses only to discover it, and not only does it become mired by everyone and their second and third and fourth and fifth cousin, the standards you so worked to maintain become obliterated, and then the irresponsible bad actors and all their erosion of standards instincts become so cemented, and then the blanched atmosphere elects them even into undeserved privileged positions that is catastrophic to the very delicate and fragile conditions that attracted them to the river in the first place. Just ask the river. Too add insult to injury, one finds himself easily outcasted by the Johnny Come Lately of the new populace and one can even find themselves unintentionally ostracized for doing nothing even by their old friends advancing misguided with the new zeitgeist, and the river is just never the same, all but completely debased, and one is forced to flee and retreat and give up the river. And I'm done being a detective, and of such estrangement that goes with the vocation, that too is vulcanized into a soft social stigma that only I seem to notice, and cannot quite explain to nobody—that is why I am here. While being a detective is slightly bourgeois, it's also not bourgeois—never in the same class will my clients ever allow for me to be. Here, in this settee set, power is not given, here power is taken, and that is how one gets herself into the country club. For a fee I give my clients proof that helps them settle or not settlement up their divorce. In a way, I am a glorified butler—but also, to be fair to myself, I am hardly a butler, and I have had to ceaselessly demonstrate inventiveness and take risks and do the leg work and keep constant tabs and worry and go well out in my preemptive way, but my perception by the broader general public is just that I am some new pornographer. All those who so unoriginally played by the rules, mookishly made good grades, and possesed zero imagination now control all culture. I was under the foolish impression that a rebellious visionary spirit was the price of admission, but obviously with this new generation, standards have changed.
Ya really got to really try to pry it loose—put some thumb grease into it, Joaquin helpfully instructed to one of the techs.
I had been edging around, wanting to catch Joaquin at a free moment—I aimed at most casual to try to get some in seemingly happenstance information or clues about Kate off him through casual conversation. Sometimes I swear Kate seemed like the type of person who liked movies where their title and what the movie story was about were the same thing.
Hey Joaquin, you notice, or have you noticed how some real good songs or how some good songs share the quality of the chorus words, the chorus words being confused with other words? There is one song that goes—'I won't let you', but how it is sung I always thought it was 'I want the truth'.
That is true, Brothaman—like, well, I can't think of any examples. But that is is true though—Joa occupied, talking like he's jogging.
I guess knowing that, you could reverse engineer a song to have that universal quality? Be hard though.
Joaquin didn't respond, as if preoccupied installing roll bars onto the album. When Dormers was about the cultural body existing upright yet collapsed, polite society rude, simultaneously as metroplex and ruin, coexisting in a schizophrenic split, ever without synthesis, becoming hand cuff metal fence bondage belt stockade holding pattern—and that was the blister-package of Dormers. This new country album was completely different as there was no room for blank spaces now—everything and everything had to be accounted for, so much now that Joaquin had to be electrician.
I drew glazed, Joa said something, finally Joaquin gave me a clue, a detail that I could now examine, and over-examine and reproduce in a Xerox to blow it up and I could to look at it closer.
Things that were uncomfortable, things that went unnoticed, were now becoming broadly deadly to me now and getting way too obvious. Some things I could avoid; some I could not; it could be impossible to anticipate and plan. I was trapped—remain in enjambment of such tiresome social texture with Kate and company and be neutered and all too self aware in front of everyone, or resign and retreat alone hiding away from the thing that gives my existence such explicit illumination, as such disappointment of promise entirely nulls everything I should retreat into, at least for a while. I don't know how else to explain this, as women are their own stars—I was turned into Lucifer because of desires I was never responsible for, and now I must cast myself out and away because of such refusal of being recieved. This most certainly must be why it is called falling. And I am Lucifer here now talking to you about it. When the moon shone brilliantly, it is hard to believe these sensations and emotions I am riven with are felt no where else. And I know many of you now too also must wander alone. When I got like this, at very worst I would want to go to sleep into oblivion, but would still always dream back into it, and then I would not want to wake up because I was inconsolable.
Kate's been through a lot or went through a lot back east—that's the thing you should know, or should know that much, Jake.
And oh, how those she makes fair, she scarce makes honest, and those that she makes honest, she makes very ill-favoredly, Joaquin said one of those times I was braying on about girls—and it was perfect in its therapeutic punch, seemingly not able to have been said so satisfying by anyone else. Joaquin is really one of the best people I know.
Ascendence, respect from strangers, the love of anonymous women in every major city. What men wanted to learn from music, was how to use music to master the complexity of music and to thus surpass other men, and thus in turn to capture a woman. I just needed somewhere for the exhaust of my life to go. A song is experienced in temporality as if generated on the spot, like a spoken sentence, but really it is a tapestry woven over and over and back again, written alone to someone who is never ever going to hear it. Salvation may lie in someone else in the future hearing such sentiment, then sending them into the arms of author and the song in a deferral that saved the author (or only make the successful artist become much worse).
I was just messing around on the battered nylon—I was fingering something just to practice. I try to play everything, or try to, or try to play everything for skill, even things I don't particularly like. I play so much, out of sheer boredom, I find myself just playing whatever, and because I always do that I never figure out my own good songs. I was even being cautious in the studio, but actually, I should have well known better that to do this now in front of Roon.
Wasss up Gypsy Kings, Roon gleeking past me in the hectoring of in house-mockery while I was warming up on some flamenco strumming, which I otherwise basically hate.
Roon! Joaquin intervenes, as paper jams will never be all remedied.
No—I, I'm just, I like—, faintly trying to explain myself, but there's no time in the moment for Roon's womanly getting too entirely ahead of herself in the moment to even listen to whatever blubbering logical short explanation of defending myself.
I like Gypsy Kings, Joaquin diplomatically, and probably actually meaning it.
Please, Gypsy Kings is for public school principals, Roon frothy in the dark ambience of the studio. Worrisome for recording traffic sounds from outside could be heard, and the paint on the outside of the building was peeling like bark strips on a horny tree.
Jane Beth, not knowing what to do with herself was wiping down the counter's surfaces now, as if casting a good luck spell on the sessions with seductive smelling chemicals—with detective's eye, I could tell she had been brainwashed from working some restaurant job, or probably. But whatever, she was making best of things in an open display of working optimism, and in such small act, it was good for our little soft parade morale, even though I pretty much could not stand fox stain Jane Beth, her fault not mine. It was also a bit dreadful when she over-productively took away too early the empty Swabbs pizza box, party's-over creasing it in half for the large industrial waste bucket next to the neatly folded stack of moving blankets.
Jane beth was seeing some guy who was a chief I think, big surprise. And anyways, just leave it to pedestrians to elevate kitchen cook to status of rock star. Loggerheaded lupen just needed something, anything to do with themselves—some kitchen cook designs some paper menu that's nearly impossible to realize for working commercial consumption, as if so much pink footed grown-man hours spent on prepping food should ever be so justified. Cruelty and barbarism of the kitchen is no workplace accident, but instead a result of its own extrinsic logic. Cooking dinner is not art work. The menu becomes some blueprint that organizes and encourages otherwise inexcusable bluto busting hierarchical pecking order behavior, and I've been drowning in the weeds before, and I've never once ever found it necessary to yell and bark at co-workers as if they were open air enemies. It's as if haute cuisine restaurant food is unconscious occasion just to legally permit so much out in open free range work-cruelty, not to mention the so many illegal ways workers exploited becomes standardized by all idiot managers, and all idiot restaurant owners. It was really not so surprising what ship of fools management raft of Medusa relayed and steered.
Just by the way people pathetically said sous-chef with automatic veneration, sous-chef, doing Satan's work of the chef, and the gigot brained chefs, and all the so paunchy, the chefs so pot bellied, all so gorbellied bloated bellied they be. But the way they say sous-chef you would have thought sous-chef had nothing to do with a job that was not otherwise required having to keep a wet rag in one's hand for eighty percent of the time. Yet when people spoke of a sous chef, saying that they were in charge of duties like scheduling, as if scheduling was not just some pecking order dog work duty not beyond otherwise dicking or dicking waiters on shifts and shifts and sections, unfairly pitting new hires against, sadistically giving preferential treatment to new hires all, in a too common, universally adopted position where owners and GMs fat headedly announce everyone is replaceable. You were sous chef at Per Se, oh, she was sous chef at Eleven Madison—why not give her a plaque key to the city why don't you. And pigs will pigswill.
As minute is to sea, Kate arrived with angry fruit nesting resting face, wearing a beige adirondack, like she was from some Rhode Island suburb. Kate instantly evoking a natural desperation in me, that until then, I momentarily forgot existed. Kate was not exactly tickling the air with her fingers saying hello when she came into the room, if she even ever said anything. Kate seemed like she was not shy, but she kind of actually was.
Kate's legs run around her like trickling river, and heavy be her words so lightly thrown. Kate was the kind of girl who never checks in her bag. And Kate could totally be like that, or she could just be a bit smug sometimes.
Because it gets no air play, Columbo, Kate reproachfully, now being total vipress, when I was just trying to level with her. And I've never felt more immediately insulted ever in my life.
Well it just depends, that's all, I urge weakly in conciliatory split the difference.
It doesn't, not carry, or carries the freight it once did, Belane, Kate as if giving an onion to a beggar.
Jake, call me Jake—you say, it's like bad, too bad,
No, but it is very uncomfortable, Kate now just about contradicting everything I was saying, I swear I could barely talk to her.
Less frenzied, I go meeting to level again with Kate.
No, not less frenzied,
Car stalls painted, I gibbered.
What. Kate calm, holding a glass of cold white wine, and at such second I bared not breathe.
Nevermind, Kate—fine, forget it.
There's nothing to forget.
Nothing to forget, I like that—I'll just have to remember that.
Go ahead and remember it, Jake. It's like no big deal.
What.
It's no big deal Jake. It's not a big deal. Kate as if gripping for last gun.
Kate halted back, looked at me sympathetically, like I was some unreliable witness who at best had naive good intentions, I was a Tony Magnusson detective, and a hobby detective now days is probably worse than getting with help.
=
While Roon during dormers came to the studio all Motley Crüe extra from the video Too Young To Fall In Love, Kate looked like or reminded me, but wasn't, a handsome East Coast funicular trollying up the capital hill of regency suite geo politic American, of car washed and perfectly detailed wet winter Chrysler town car diplomat masters of universe but who are still tethered to show required allegiance to the most current rust belt fallen behind chrome lined dashboard car door key code button lock design of contemporary stagecoach clydesdale silver grill Pennsylvania downtown lawyer Nokia kiosk business suit in the damp cruel winter gelled hair. I rush to the telemarketing stock photo narrative. I rush to the training video sentimental. One telemarketing stock office worker photo was everyone in every stock business photo, and I wanted there to be an entire movie done in this aesthetic and done not even in the least bit ironically. I want the plot and dialogue depicted in the same flat brochure spirit of the conversations that they were having in the telemarketing brochure stock photos, a new hire, a trainer and trainee digressed getting to know you casual conversation, a senior citizen health walk conversation, a friendly heeded doctor advice full scene, an entire telemarketing family vacation section in the movie that was the result of employee performance motivation contest. And when I looked at dear Kate, she looked like this, but to me she looked exactly like the Cremaster filtered version of House of Cards. I was civilian, never was, never will be a real media player,
=
That kind of thing, or if you like that kind of thing—if you can believe, Kate said to me, so cold in the moment, jicking like hot bullet lodged into casted spine, leaving me feeling like clip-on-bowtie.
=
I never see second story windows ever open, I have actually seen Kate's boyfriend, and just the fact that that guy has ever once had a woman lie down with him, not only speaks to a general failure that implicates all current living women, but also says something significant about the whole history of women in general, if you ask me.
=
Joaquin would always mention how Caroline Records little office on Melrose started off as a mop closet storage room trembling stacked with hand stuffed records from ceiling to wall tottering overhead, the secretary, a phone answering machine.
=
We were listening to a portable radio, which seemed like a strange thing to do in the studio right now. And this wasn't some generative vacuous John Cage exercise that every academic musician could not stop flaring their nostrils on about. I wanted to hear the Bobby Brown song from Ghostbusters II, and well I guess we're gonna have to take control—the perfect 6:45pm city song. But otherwise, we were just hangin' out in another post historical Los Angeles day.
=
Kate you could tell she shut people up, Kate was going out of her way not to look in my direction, or hear one comment I ever made to the group during practice—whatever Baby.
=
It was a pity, because I could just not get no tabs laid down now. Lowdown and peeved, because usually when I was around someone that stirred my interiority and I had to escape back to my lair, I would usually furl ribbons of broken chords heralding the after shock intensity (but unfortunately, never would write any of them down), but they came out good in the line of my alone yearning. I assumed sometime in the future it would automatically somehow be generative in some studios situation. Now in front of Kate was the best possible time—strumming like lackadaisical eternal minstrel on acoustic in vein of the Radiohead song You and Whose Army (like the Radiohead song, I'm not necessarily into Radiohead). Kate was the only reason we play guitar and now I was quailing and droning and dankish and loaming. She seemed to regard my playing with classical doubt—the burden of diminishment all guitar players face, surely. Instead, today I just drank a case of beer scaved and I was pretty much on the way to now defiantly do coke against Kate.
=
But then later on though, unexpectedly, me, Joaquin and Rooney and Kate ended up doing coke after the techs left and everything then seemed pretty okay, not so bad. Doing coke together was the most healthy thing for the facture of band right now. Kate then had to leave, and I was so wired I went with being fine with it—but I did embarrass myself interacting with Kate way too stoked—at least with her gone, I could relish distracted in now hanging with Joa and Roon.
=
There was a moribund payphone on the murmuring wall in the cheat trick studio that seemingly never got used now, quarters and dimes and nickels stuck inside its lock box because the telephone company aborted the weekly collection route. Joaquin took off his glasses and wiped them on his tucked-in black oxford button-down, Joaquin consciously or unconsciously looking like old Hollywood studio system score composer.
=
And on artists and stropping academics, you can flush them all down the toilet as far as I be concerned. And every artist, a one trick mule—the problem, no the problem, with the historical avant garde is assuming, actually assuming, modern geometric abstraction could ever really correct real life social problems—'The Swiss Constructivists', please—Joaquin going on, the quaalude quality of his demeanor made it seem like Joaquin's scrambling words had no purchase, as if what he said was written down verbatim it all would come out misspelled.
=
But maybe maybe, we actually could use a geometric abstraction to show and to explain to us the false signs and patterns we desperately want to see and cling to are not real, Joaquin, as if kinda coming around.
=
According to Joaquin, it's not if, but when something happens, when the next catastrophic thing happens, the city's collector class will too predictably buy less objects in the primary market, cascading into another form of recession all over again. But don't think this is because the wealthy will not have enough money—in fact, they do quite tend to profit from such conditions. And yet again, confusion thus hath made its masterpiece. During such cataclysmic events, they can and will come into controlling even more territorial gobbing general wealth, siphoning all emergency notes so hastily printed, and inept administrators were responsible for a wealth of our problems in all spheres. Even I have seen small business hold back such federally funded assistance funds that were supposed to be given right away in relief to their workers, and out of misguided administrational caution it was only illegally trickled and slow rolled out to workers and the business owners just conveniently kept the change, when it should have been generous immediate relief of infusement. If even slack witted small businesses act this way, who's to say the wealthy don't conduct themselves in ever the same such fashion, when indeed surely they view themselves at operating at such higher and dire stakes? Joaquin predicted an all too likely pullback among a not 'if' but 'when' of the ne plus ultra posers that are all art collectors—when the secondary market plummets into a mound of doubts because of dire broader economic conditions that they too were directly responsible for anyways. According to Joaquin, it was all too easy to predict such inevitability, despite no one else scarcely able to quite imagine it now—insult to injury, fluffhead collectors will bray and pain over the cost of art works being too high by the very conditions they so exacerbated. Collectors will complain about higher prices for works, not because they can no longer afford it, which on the contrary, they easily can and surely well can, but for them paying more represents some kind of conceptual defeat to their perennially weedy and feeble little man thinking—that contradicts whatever supposed thickwit valor they so ceaselessly advertise and self publicize they are upholding by collecting art in the first place. Collectors after all are a special fustilarian kook class of their own—since they little possess any mastery of manipulating materials other than human cattle, they can master artistic achievements into whatever idea of fang spangled subjecthood they concoct through their vastly limited shatter brained imagination of 'building a collection'. If one work is sold for 20k, after this is split in half between gallery and artist, and after all working expenses be recouped—the profit is only a mere pittance to actually live off of. Nevermind every man for himself and god against all collectors all be too thick to realize that precious unreplicable ascendant cultural phenomenon actually is valuable and precious and delicate and does need dire support, and actually does need to be expensive, or else you too are actually responsible for contributing to paying some supposed bellwether seven dollars an hour after taxes—so what be bragging rights honor in that? You would think honor would be found in paying too much in generously supporting such ostensibly significant voices, instead of haughtily mewling over some spiked leash designer discount. Instead, collectors obtain self perceived mastery over artist by haggling and nickel diming gallerist and artist for a quarter. There's a reason curator appointments have to be pathetically named after some such supposed generous elfish pick-me patron. There's a reason why dilettante collector's who thrive on human blood 911 call the museum front desk demanding to speak with conservators as soon as possible, seeking pro bono professional consultation about some who-cares-framing-issue about some who-cares work unrelated to the museum's collection, as if the museum is some sort of art advisory guild social charity public service—whilst desperately landing onto just about anyone to talk about their work. Sure high escalation prices are also due to the speculative wrong think bubble, but the vast majority of galleries will and will go out of business due to the vast expansion of rising working network costs in unaffordable social-capital cities. You see the Henrietta Milljanks and the securing of it's provenance, and thus it's legitimacy, and by originally hiring me as Detective was a very sensible precaution in establishing its objecthood as firm and legitimate basis for Joaquin's shadowy gallery, in order to in the future pick up all the remaining toe headed whimpering collectors left probably—also, by Joaquin's largess and generosity, least not his well informed thoughtfulness in supporting my very own creative venture of detective small business, and so much, that now I'm even working on his side side side project of the second country album. Joaquin has the foresight enough to predict the current cohort of small to mid sized galleries to predictably die a fast execution sometime in the future, only for space left in the long game to be open for a new and scrappy young gallery for something fish skeleton else to emerge. That something else to emerge is a mystery, but it might have to do with already established secondary and tertiary and quaternary figures tethered around the primary historically vetted ascendant, Paul Mogensen, Čestmir Kafka, Craig Kauffman. I don't think Jao was entirely too naive to think he could establish a venue just waiting for some bourgeoning scene or group to just sprig out from the vapour of LA. If he was lucky, he would be managing insurance on loan objects, and working in reproduction rights, and accommodating working scholars. Suffice to say, there was very little money in this, but if up and running it could secure enough funding to establish itself in some long term. That seems like a firm and realistic programmatic basis, and then with whatever time and space is left, newer voices that are a sop to these major formal discoveries and breakthroughs can somehow be shown. Like say an Ingólfur Arnarrson. At any rate, that's what Joa and Roon were pretty much doing with their house, anyways—and they had all the time in Los Angeles. The thing I did know was Roon did not want to do another Volkswagen picture.
=
Clouted means patched shoddily dressed, thirty years from now it will mean you are cockered, spoiled and weedy, and a popular little hot dog, Samantha Ai once said, and I still don't fully get it, and to that by which no underwear snapping scholium could ever quite explain.
It was almost once o' clock. They or someone was saying the studio was partly party-girl operation—the acquired EMI mixing boards, microphones and sinking microphone stands, the enjambment of Clock Work Orange blanket triangle cone sound insulation, the bleached coastal morning life size wall paper scene that occupied the live room—they were all so fine and splendid part-time working quasi vermissilitude—because once you found out about the party-girl operation component, it was now obvious why there were so many thoughtfully body disposal appointed lounge areas.
=
Belaine, this isn't a joke, Roon in a slightly irritated ashtray within.
=
An astonishing notion, surely, I loosened, then putting my nose near the line and inhaling the dust, raising my severed head up, and handing the powder coated LACMA gift shop design straw over off to Roon Dawggg.
=
Joaquin walked into the suite, just off a phone call.
=
What, Rooney noticing Joa's visible frustration obviously having nothing to do with the album.
=
Mixon was going on and on at me about some overseas distribution fee Warners charged him two years later, this two years later, this, like just today two years later.
=
Oh, Roon not having much to add,
=
Like it's somehow my fault—I got him the damn meeting, the things people forget when they get what they asked for,
=
Well babe, have some sacrament—body of Christ, Roon handed Joa the straw with codependent reassurance, and Joa took it automatically but you could still tell his head was in the call. King chooser how did you wind up with my number.
=
Roon said that AA was not literary enough to ever interest her, punctuated by putting her dada knife MoMA opium war priestess helmet head down and shredding her line off and then also conveniently the line I originally architected and built for Joa.
=
Roon brings her grave marker head up over dramatically, as if now liberated again into some natural vampire state, Lick me, lick me, that was yummy . . .
=
I won't go into reasons why, but, Joa to Roon very tenuously.
=
Theres IS no reason why, Roon sharply, pragmatically putting the straw back into Joa's hand and closing it.
=
Wait, no reason why, why what, Roon frugally dusting off her nose.
=
Look—Joaquin, as if he was the only sane one in the room, about to have to formally just break it down to Roon, as if she hasn't spent plenty enough time with him already, it probably impossible she could possibly hear anything new from him now.
=
Oh, detail detail detail, Roon shaking her hand in minimizing.
=
Well okay smarty pants, well who was, do you think was above the gun . . .
=
Grace Hardigan—no, just kidding, Roon slyly, referencing something unrelated now between them.
=
Grace Hardigan, she sure does get me hard-again, Joaquin as if wanting a quick divorce, certainly making very little effort to dispel such errancy while taking off his tinted spectacles, lowering his head down to the specks.
=
You pig. I don't know why I even know you, Roon characteristically plutonic marriage peeved.
=
Joaquin finished the line sprouting up, putting back on his glasses coming off looking respectful and responsible also with his outfit now, What did ya say, Babe,
They started talking about publishing breakdowns and then talk segued into the paraticism of franchises, and Rooney and Joa went around a while about sinister practices finances and the biz. When I hear the word franchise, I always just think french fries and the smell of them against cardboard sleeve. Recently Joaquin had been asked by an old friend who was a British producer to attend a screening of a film his friend had supervised. Luckily, Joaquin was camped out at the studio and attending the screener was out of the question.
So, the studio, or no, the studio always provides the money—they also distribute the film, movie, Joaquin in rare form, so sobering in his insistence.
Yeah, I vale in, terribly trying to feign some semblance of general interest—I've well heard these explanations before,
In return, the studio has a myriad ways that—gets paid, the otherwise whatever is vagrant of Roon jumping in at most bright now, seemingly like some Bonnie and Clyde co-conspirator to Joa, rather than the some agent of justice she's trying to come of as.
Right, okay, or okay, I do my best to follow along,
I looked out of the circle window on the drywall wall between the parking lot and street, a berm warrened accidental patched raised mound of concrete over some pothole so hastily filled, and I still barely even know what asphalt is—the clouds in the primordial sky above appear frozen over and sunlight lined around the big cloud like a boarder, there was another cloud behind that cloud, giving it the far away appearance of a black line around the big cloud with the escaping sunlight bordering between its edge and the other cloud behind it—it's the first time I've ever seen this, or maybe I have noticed this before.
I dissociated my direct perspective of Joaquin and Rooney talking in front of me. Now they were just a man and a woman in the room, this is a man talking to a woman in a room.
She took some egot tablets I think, or I thought, Joaquin stating in a frugal innocence, as if trying to somehow get the details accurate.
What do you mean, wandering parts Roon surprisingly catching it, paying attention.
Egot tablets? Joaquin questioning his own words.
Ergot?, Roon confused.
Ergot tablets, Joaquin making willfully incorrect clarification.
Emmy, and what Grammy, Grammy, Oscar, Oscar, Tony . . . , Roon being funny, coming off like jaded kid from the valley.
You forgot BET, Roon then added, willfully goofing.
Don't forget BET! Well, in any case she was pretty out or out of it, or at least, Joaquin with his finger tips pressed against his clavicle, looking so considered.
She's always sick, Roon stating plainly in such characteristic way that only underscores her frugality and sober thinking, even though right now she was not sober.
Well no, she always has emotional difficulties—that's, that's like the thing.
Joaquin resumes back to carefully explaining to me, and it's now kind of annoying, using both his index and adjacent finger pressed together pointing explicitly to air, So say, when a film is released Jake, when it is released—it charges overhead like immediately, total like,
First or like first the studio typically recoups ten, twenty five percent of the film's, the overhead charge, Roon goes looking at Joa all in the confirmation of what she's saying. Roon and Joa working together, like how pickpockets work together—it was sort of actually impressive now to see Roon so engaged now in giving me the rundown, but otherwise I knew how these things went.
Okay like—all I could say, as between these two I could get sorry little else in otherwise.
Joaquin steps in to skin graft explain patiently, Let's say the movie was like a million bucks to make—the studio immediately books one hundred, two fifty as income, like right at the beginning . . .
That sounds fairly reasonable—
Sure, sure—and also the studio charges for services, more so if it isn't Indy, Joaquin over explaining.
Right, Indy—I know Indy, I go annoyed, just trying to say something.
Sure, you do, Jake, Roon over-noticing me, clutching glass quipping in unnecessarily, Roon playfully messing with me and now I am almost vexxed.
Roon saucy, like it's so above my head, adding, A production that the studio was not a part of tha. . .
Yeah, I know what Indy is.
Right we know Belane, Roon in playful-now condescension, that I should find funny, but right now I don't.
Oh, 'Right we know Belane'—I'm Indier than the bicentennial—before you met me you didn't even know who—
Joaquin interrupts, So listen Jake, more money comes, more money comes back to the studio before the studio has broken even—
Then there's other things, things—distribution fee. The studio takes one third of the film's income from that alone, distributing it, Roon completes Joaquin's statement—oh, like well done, Roon.
So that's the thing, the studio is continuingly taking revenue along the way, like right all along the way anyways, Joaquin explains in sneaky manner that seems to unconsciously implicate himself in how he conducts his affairs the same.
The serum of Joaquin's great explanations, once he's even broke down what exactly fourth wave ska is (or isn't because—it, according to Joaquin, is yet to exist.) I had been spending a lot of time with them, and although the breakdown was actually prime fascinating, I felt like a subject, just all arriviste. Also, I can be unreasonably impatient when things are otherwise going on swimmingly and I have become too plain in comfortable, which I was now.
But here's the, the caveat—the studio like gets the first one hundred percent of the remaining monies until break even—and then it does not have to pay no nobody no points and no bonuses, Pabre, Joaquin helpfully continuing.
Oh, like, I unnecessarily beak back blankly,
So this is the thing—the studio calculates break even as something like twice or even triple the amount of the film's cost sometimes before it like pays anyone extra. If a film say, is a zillion bucks to produce, its break even can be two point eight zillion, Roon how she exacerbates decenterings, kinda reminding me of the rouguish computer not actually in the room couple in The Grifters, Roon all coming off like she's actually good with numbers and finances figures.
Joaquin with his tinted spectacles, as good cop, finishes Roon's statement, Think about it Jake, the studio has taken its overhead, all its service fees, distro, whatever, plus also recovered the film's income . . .
The thing is is is the studio would prefer a movie that was or is exactly one dollar less than break even, that way they can report no like profit even though it has made double its investment, Roon rooning in.
And abracadabra, they don't have to share like no profits, Joaquin excitedly arriving at his point as if what he's saying was even ever such a good thing.
The studio is making money while the film is officially supposedly loosing monies, Roon concluding, like I'm some yokel who got off the bus from Spencer Iowa.
Joaquin laughed deep and warm around the scrabble about of Sunset Sound. One of the techs let out a pronographic cloying laugh at something Joaquin said, and then Roon unoriginally said something about being a 'night owl'.
One of Joaquin's guys arrived at the studio around like two o' clock. Jao offered him a drink, but he politely didn't take him up on it. Joaquin in his tinted spectacles, gave him a casual tour of the rented studio and then they stopped and talked standing in the useless room with the exposed studs, down the hall past the pawn shop like entrance room.
Can Swenson do it, Joaquin's guy asked him like it was a trivia question, casually staring at a framed historic black and white photo reproduction of the Capital Records building.
I think so, Joaquin impassively.
Have you ever worked with?
No.
He's supposed to be alright right?
Well, he's already assuming responsibility for this one.
Their conversation trailed off. They stood in front of another historic black and white photo reproduction, casually examining it for a little while. There was a small gold plaque in the center of the bottom of the frame that read Hollywood Blvd 1899 - 1940.
Don't say nothin', bury the sarcasm—for now. Save the impulse for an opportune moment for display of cruelty. A moment in the meeting when there are witnesses. Some may take notice and heed caution, for some it will command respect. The others may not have a stomach for it, but it will indeed give them an idea of the exact limits of whatever ambition they still have left, Joaquin rumbling in reassurance while they were parting.
They both hugged and 'a simultaneously pounded their backs in a thubbing brotherly way. When his guy left, Joaquin lingered on and watched him get in his car, through the generic steel framed glass panel right beside the flimsy entrance door.
Joaquin stood for a quiet space in the day, that was the difference between Joaquin and everyone else I knew. You could tell when he would take minute to stay in moment and that was the rhythm of how he approached and lived his life. Joaquin still looked out—just like the lingering in the scene in It's A Wonderful Life, George Bailey and Donna Reed have just coronated a house for one of their savings and loan customers, they meet with Sam Wainwright and Sam and his wife pull away in their limo and Jimmy Stewart has his arm around Donna Reed looking from behind in the silent pastoral as the scene waits to cut for a couple of purposeful blank seconds extra.
You could tell Joaquin was a drifter, not drifter as in hobo, well Joaquin was a total hobo, but drifter in how his temperament was forged in adjusting to shifting concerns and turns of fortune. Joaquin had made it over and over pound to fist over again, living in pitch of prosperity, king of LA with Roon Dawggg by his side. How such contentment be maintained when one finds they can get no higher. Joaquin walked over, and back on towards the inner sanctum engine room of the mixing studio.
Well, got that one out of the way—now back to our own private little Rock n' Roll bauble, Joaquin wiping his nose with a paper towel.
We used Wade and the other guy to move the piano to the other side of the room so it could maybe sound recorded at distance—we had them move it back for the bridge, and then back another time. Anyone else would have just adjusted the levels manually on the sound board, but Joaquin's working approach, his methodology, was doing as much physical labor as possible, and as little technology in the booth or in post. If we were going to die by this, then just may as well die by committed proprietary approach he said, there was dignity in that.
Kate was surprisingly again real good at tambourine. The rule was cowbell, not if, but when, and today was when. Roon got the honor of cowbell and it was easily among one of the very best moments of recording the new album. The new album experienced in the birth, in the delivery room, and that first time the cowbell announced itself and embodied like the whole entire thing. It felt so good, it was like we were getting away with something.
We wound down at the end of the night, we should have been putting everything up, but then we ended up partying.
Joaquin rising to occasion, the response from which I did not see or catch—his eyes looking like they were soaked in fernet. Actually, Joaquin was kind of wasted now, but found a space in time of the room, when billions of people everyday never did or could ever do this.
Joaquin holding up his chalice, and not to say the cliché, but it was really like out of a movie.
The Beatles have the song Can't Buy Me Love, and though that for lovely some such would apply—otherwise how history has so woefully proven such very sentiment be patently un-true. Tomorrow never knows, they say—no, tomorrow does know better because events play themselves out in real time to where the effects of such actions then become noticeable by the next time the sun rises—so, tomorrow does know well. God, I hate the Beatles—but the scrum need something scrum to listen to now do they.
People who have eyes to hear and hear not,
As it's the death inside alcohol that lets us have life at drunk's joyous distance,
And of those on whom you think you can rely,
That just all go out and say,
The most important is to use the word in its very most current,
As all words purloined swallow the world,
As good music helps absolve from sin,
Like music absolves from sin, ya know,
And good music may very well beckon forgiveness, weather fully deserved or not,
For love, love, love cannot be earned nor made,
Joa and his cri de coeur to the crew comes to a close and he ends it in spirit of optimism, good faith and purposeful action, these were good times.
Let's finish this damn record, Joaquin still holding his green bloody Mary. It was certainly time to outflank the baby boomers again.
Los Angeles had just become an exhausted thing of beaten and battered things. People who didn't want to assimilate casted the worst of the baggage from where they were escaping from and planted it firmly into the fore in the Garden of Eden. The problem with democracy is anyone who had played the long game, paid their dues, waited, and in the meantime cultivated a thorough expertise and awareness that should distinguish themselves, were only circumstantially passed because there were too many bodies everywhere just ready to go. It was the same with meeting women. It was like waiting in line on a turning ramp onto another freeway—you patiently accepted and waited in the line leading to the turn off, but other new cars just come jumping along passing in the adjacent non turning lane and skip you and find a gap wheedling their way into a gap unfairly without waiting. Culture worked exactly the same way. The fairness of democracy allowing unfair and bad actors equal chance as those who were playing by the rules who were otherwise well suited with standards and integrity and advanced awareness. Simultaneously, while the art world was people who did play by the rules too much, filled out the forms correctly, and skipped over those without financial vacation resort of graduate school means over people who were actually wild and enigmatic (to be fair, wild artists were usually too stupid to be aware of the semiotic codes and art historical teleology to articulate and properly frame themselves—also, modernism was kind of exhausted by the end of the 60's in a way, and critical theory was actually the avante-guard now in the 70's, and only a handful of people carried this awareness). The freeways are nature to us. Women are wild nature, but they have become the city and embody all it's unfair operations. Dormers was a response to that—the closed freeways and the biblical exodus detours, the ugly people everywhere, dead bodies on the street, fragile families broken apart by opportunistic outsiders, the hip hop poisoned materialistic poor that was so prevalent that the once fashionable and exemplary rich aesthetic succumbs to such gaucheries and the poor the middle class and the wealthy all look the cheap same, an obesity epidemic of tattooed flesh covered in promiscuous images and images and images and information and little pictures just everywhere, too much information and everybody egregiously uninformed. Samantha Ai predicted that there will be a billion people making skate videos in the future and video will be simultaneously dead, just like how Jurgen Habermas diagnosed modernism was dominant but dead. Well, that was all Dormers. The new country album was the flip side of this—things weren't too entirely bad, as if to say country music could help us somehow see the light bright of life that was somehow still sometimes around. Sure not too entirely original, but it could still work.
Roon said something dot dot dot to Jane Beth, mentioning in passing someone getting their tubes tied. Jane Beth had just gotten back from three days in Palm Springs—which we were reminded of all damn week. Roon's eyes darted about the room in visible ease. The work for today was for the most part all shored up and the crew were taking one last break for the day—Roon reeled around room, satisfied like hostess now, and Roon in the scene with ease in knowingness that inside these living moments were just as if not more important than the actual work itself.
No, no sometimes if it wasn't too tiredly in the appellation of socially legible, she could just never quite or quite get it, Kate in neutral tone.
Traveling only to never leave the hotel room—but we had a better view of the desert from the sliding door. At night it got so dark, Jane Beth regaling on again about her Palm Springs trip.
There's something about watching TV in another city I actually like, Roon added helpfully. Noticing Roon make such a lovely point, beckoning me to silently agree.
No, I love just night air conditioning, it was so dark, off the mesa pesido just off there on the other side—I didn't know Jane Beth, but she was a part of Joaquin and Roon's immediate working crew. I could see the unreality of Jane Beth being involved in their gallery probably in the future. The breeze from the fan on the ground barely reached Jane Beth's ennobling light auburn hair and it moved from the oscillation in slight of the artificial wind, her strands of hair moving like a delicate Sara Sze fiber installation as if blown by delicate breath. She wore a sheared green sweater which according to her still smelt like campfire smoke, understated futuristic tenny shoes of which brand I could really not tell. I did want to out and open admire Jane Beth's shoes though, but such somehow would probably have proved self defeating. It probably be best I keep working layer of chainmail on around uncanny Jane Beth, anyways. As if the 1960's cartoon stark of her De Stijl wrist watch she wore flipped on inside of her wrist pointed to some quaintly impenetrable and interesting life—Jane Beth evidences the consummate advanced city dweller. I imagined some spongy long distance river raft boyfriend she would remain too dutifully and steadfastly faithful to, someone who looked like he could be her brother and who's family she would be of course annoyingly close with. I also knew Jane Beth had an old Land Cruiser with bike rack on the back even though she had been driving the van all week, some modest mouse cabin home out in Topanga Canyon, an outdoor bamboo shower, desperate for hobby bikes strapped to high beam living room ceiling by an elaborate invented winding pulley system—all accrued from doing design and industrial design work supposedly. Jane Beth was someone I would immediately want to know though, or at the least be on familiar friendly terms with—but I'm sure by her very glare she viewed the knocked down romanticism that of me probably being some perfectly despicable detective, which I well am.
And if Population Ex has people actually paying attention, of which to such inferred extent remains somewhat unknown, realistically I could see Jane Beth as the archetype of our audience type, and by which factor such did I feel an increasing suspicion of possible future estrangement by them. Each handy partridge porrige photo Jane Beth took of us, seemed deigned in a way to just be visually compromising and un-doing whatever aesthetic we established by now, and thus firming her bunny fangs more embedded into Pop Ex now.
I thought of band undermined by shadow of presence fan in extremis—I always thought of Linda Ramone, surely she must have started off as fan of the Ramones—she went with Joey originally, leaving Joey only to marry Johnny, thus creating irreparable gulf of fissure in the band and ending with Joey dying all alone on celibate cot—and then Linda Ramone highjacks the Ramones by starting a new band called the Johnny and Linda Ramone Foundation, which is based in Los Angeles.
There was an immediate block in interaction with Jane Beth towards me, she making eye contact without making eye contact. I had already actually worked on Dormers, though in her presence, pace Jane Beth, I would grow to feel more like session musician, which I kind of pretty much was.
I saw Jane Beth practically scuttle to be friendly with one of the new friendly unit shifter techs, who she obviously has previously worked with some other time or some other time on something else or something else, as if they were caterers—something telling about that, the way Jane Beth errantly rushed into over-friendly interaction, as if clinging to him in solidarity almost against me. He had been a roadie for Corrosion of Conformity, and I could hear him regaling to her how they were, 'totally good guys'.
Though through this ponderous illusion of solidity of second album, I didn't feel maybe as welcome with the new people brought in as I would have automatically just assumed, or actually, I didn't originally even really think about it, or ever factor it in, but this immediate historical amnesia in regards to me— I well should have seen it arriving on the horizon. Being sharp turns into sharpened down, and then goes to stub and then stubbed. I had long ago lost track of any promises I made. I had gotten names confused. I had not bothered to learn names when I had been working closely with people for days. Maybe sometimes, or no, all the time now, I felt probably like how Steven Adler must have felt before he got replaced by Matt Soren from The Cult. The way I was treated all by outsiders, newbies, gatecrashers, sycophants now, you would have thought I had no part in Dormers, practically.
And anyways it's not as if I was even trying to talk to or get with Jane Beth, though to be honest, otherwise, I probably well would have tried if there was no Kate existing. You know JB sensed this. It was probably known how I was about Katie, though anyways too. And so it goes as outlier in such sets—hated for loving, penalized, looked down upon for being refugee to such traumatizing passion, whatever. It's not so surprising how allowance for some would such be permitted, but for others like me, only casted and balked upon and not so included into casual studio conversation like some mottled ostrich. But to be fair, I'm sure, I bet having to visit Jane Beth's family, one would find them to be practically just as insufferable as well.
The other day I was playing guitar and the tech discovered the volume of my amp was turned down too low, and actually I really should have caught it,
Hey Belaine, your amp is too low—can't you hear that nothing is coming out, the tech not even attempting to mask his vitriol towards me.
What. Oh, yeah, no, no—then what should I—I respond back in late dumb sunnyness, that I could tell only confirmed to him exactly what he thought about me. As I had been high for a while, and did not have the snap to snap back at him, when I well should have put him in his place, when besides I was otherwise in a jolly mood.
The tech corrected my amp with a swift swiping violent efficacy, and I admit it sounded and felt much better then, but such active aggressive excoriating didn't at all help the playing.
Palm Springs has such a cute little, they've that Ralph's mini market, that we always usta like to go to, we always go straight there right after we check in, Roon deigning in appealing sense of OB anecdotal cosiness.
Me and Joaquin hadn't been there in a grip, Rooney adding, Roon using my phrase grip, I noticed.
And then I must have missed it, but I turned around and found Roon fitted in peak of flummoxed, arrested as if she found out her daddy got drunk and left her no will.
What are you—Joaquin showing some concern, maybe seeming a bit less so by how he was casually with tumbler in hand.
It's just—Roon blinkered about, as if expiring for air in the settler summer.
What—, Joaquin unhelpfully taking sip from his drink.
I—I, Roon as if about to give birth to a giant barking baby warf walrus.
What is it, Joaquin almost now annoyed.
Do not feed the oyster, Roon finally.
Yeah, yeah, what, Joaquin putting the tumbler down, now about to mean business.
Do not feed the oyster, Roon repeated like she was about to just start it all over.
Joaquin, hardly about to win a Golden Globe for his performance as husband not at all now least bit annoyed.
You know what I was thinking, Roon's brow incised with lines, in slightly preposterous presumption that anybody would be so expected to follow such wandered away train.
What.
Like thinking this time, or this whole entire time—Roon searching, halting herself dramatically as if in careening slow motion.
What. No.
I don't know, I imagined someone shoving food through the lips of a small oyster, that is if an oyster even had lips—no, I imagined an open oyster and someone sprinkling birdseed on the membrane inside the shell,
Yeah? Joaquin trying his dear best.
But I just realized, or you know what I just realized—do not feed the oyster. Do not feed the oyster, it means, it means, or you know what it means, Joaquin? Don't give someone an extra oyster to eat.
Oh, Joaquin for once at a loss.
So obvious I can't believe it, feed the oyster, the verb acting distransatively—it was there, it was there all the time and I didn't even . . . see it—hundreds of times, Roon with brute sincerity, like she had recovered something once thought lost—Roon real serious now, visibly misting up.
Close enough? Joaquin now in all the carefulness of consolation, trying to help her out.
In the moment no one said nothing, you could just tell Roon didn't want to be echo box in the center of attention now. It was so quiet you could hear a snail bleed.
No, it's okay, it's okay, no, I'm fine, fine, good heavens, it's just, Roon composing herself, raining it in, as if gone through some unintended threshold.
Joaquin judges back at Roon in some requisite measured on the spot contemplation as if this was something he always did with her, Joaquin contemplating her like she was a spilt cup of lima beans,
Joaquin in pause takes a lying swipe brushing his face with hand, paused, then rushes in sudden sense of immediacy, That's it, get in the booth, Wade fire the board up—Roon, we're re-recording your vocals to Hunters and Jumpers—right now.
He paw pawed her luscious breasts in the thicket of forecourt—each boobie was warm but soft, but heavy yet tender, each one like a little stillborn puppy nestled in his selfish seeking hands. Usually Lin could never bear to shut up, and now was of no exception. Sure, Lin was no stranger to coarse language, but the things that now came out of her miserable mouth in between the passionate mooing, was now enough to tarnish hard brass—
I should be oscillating ashamed, but I actually wasn't, Kate looked up from the smut, Really, Belane?
Jake, Jake—call me Jake. I don't like it when you call me Belane . . . it sounds, it sounds just so . . . , I take an un-quailing-able pull from a griesel bottle of German beer.
Why did you bring this here into the studio, the phenomenological effect of Kate coming off like some exasperated, but kind of cool LA wife.
To gin up lyrics, non sequitur, to beckon modulations, all sounding like tosh, but I was being frankly honest, and the way Kate was listening it seemed like she kind of reluctantly understood.
I just shrugged hushed, I had my process and it made sense to me at least—and I could hold firm and no one, least not Kate could take that away from me.
Kate uttered little nothing and just left out from the whelmed room.
One perfect late afternoon, it was one of those hallows afternoons where the weather was simply so cloudless it was the type that made one almost near narcoleptic. The weather could be so perfect causing one to fight to not doze off just about anywhere really, and I could not figure out what this meant. It was as if it was so ideal, the body shut itself down because it was never intended to live in such state of grace.
But I remember this about that day—I was at Roon and Joa's place, and their house was so nice, the windows would cast cinematic boxes of light above the door, and the limbs of the surrounding oaks would flutter causing twinkling shadows of the leaves, turning the indoor walls into screens, which complimented the dreaminess of the late afternoon. This was now a generally a fecund period.
Rooney nettled into the room, turned to me in a rare instance of deferring to me, Hey Belane, I may need your help with something,
From recording the follow up, and then being all too used to Roon, I had no desire to help Roon out with nothin', when in the past I would have rushed to somehow try to be of help to her. I concealed my annoyance, in a way that could have earned me a BAFTA practically.
Geez, contain your excitement Jake, Roon not letting it go, and now I was double annoyed.
You have experience with letters from your detective work, right? Or you have analyzed, work in archives?
I mean, not really, barely able to conceal my disinterest, and by this point I was just worn down from the recording and dealing with everybody. Usually, as was my vocation, I could project my agreeable self, but between the techs, Jane Beth, Katie . . .
Well, that's fine. I need your help. I been going through Captain Liddell's letters to my old aunt May. I want you to see some of them, or all of them if you like. Cassis brought all the letters up here, thinking I might have time to go through them and give them to Amy when she comes in. But so far, and this is really interesting, I haven't been able to put them in, or all the right order—but most, or most of them are dated. Some of them aren't letters, or really at all letters even, and are, or are just scraps and those need to be put into, or just made some sense of, if somehow or if that's at all possible.
It was too late to take a revivifying gulp of beer to gin up interest as I had been drinking beer all afternoon and I was near the state of having grisaille of headache, but I took the biggest gulp I could. Roon came back in the room with a metal ossuary and tumped the mail out onto the spilt table. As she was going through them, I stood right behind her, dallying my attention while uselessly holding my beer.
I must read them myself before giving them to Amy, as some might be indiscreet. Also, some are very intimate, but perhaps one oughtn't to regard that, Roon in a rare display, using at least for now some semblance of sensible discretion.
The more Rooney explained, the scope of the letter project just seemed to be getting wider and more vague, and may actually not have a concrete end or stopping point. I was not saying anything, and thinking of things to say to bail out of Rooney's letter project, it no doubt seemed like a total bore.
There was a small stack of rubber bindled banlded letters, I picked them up disinterestedly just to give some kind of impression that I was interacting with the project. The four or five letters were rubber banded together with a blue rubber band, a red rubber band, a green rubber band, a yellow one, and a generic beige band just for good measure.
I finished most of my beer, and was actually feeling better. Roon's eyes darted at the bottle on the table un-coastered. I thought she was going to say something, and before she could, I grabbed it off the surface.
Go get another beer, if you want, Roon thoughtfully. Even though Roon thought beer was déclassé and totally hoi polloi, she would sometimes do the thing where not only did she encourage you to drink more beer, but in the right mood, it kind of made her psyched. You could tell Rooney you drunk drove all around the city from Burbank to Santa Monica and she would seem impressed. And now Roon was being cool as shit, something I was by no means inoculated from. When Roon was like this you just wanted to make her happy.
I walked towards the hallway and remembered to ask her if she wanted a beer, hoping she would say yes. Roon said maybe later. I was now in the mood to listen to the Van Morrison record they had had—the other night the song from Penal Code came on to my surprise, and I now wanted to hear it again. I was too self conscious to put it on, but maybe if I helped Roon out, I could put it on the record player, since I was now helping her out.
Joaquin and Roon had a mini refrigerator that was just beer, on the floor in the junction of their pantry. Bottles of Pilsner Urquell in a productive row on the shelf ready to go. Brown Heineken bottles. Fog piss yellow bottles of Hefeweizen. Handy cans of Budweiser that seemed to have a practical use value economy—Roon could make even drinking Bud look glamorous, whilst beautifully conveying her amorphous adaptability, east coast football dynasty regular girl just drinking Bud in the game day stadium. Hand bombs of Red Stripe—Joaquin was a huge reggae enthusiast. A part of the shelf was devoted to bottles that they only had one bottle off—specialty beers mostly. One with a friar on the label, another beer looked vaguely like it should be drank in confessional booth in a gothic chapel in Europe, another label had a graphic of a big fat giant pickle, which must have been a sour—that might be my next one. There was one big bottle that looked like raspberry shampoo foil. Joaquin had a seperate beer cooler in the garage that was all cases of good cheap filler beer, but the pantry fridge itself justified its own consumption just by how well it was arranged and put together. This no doubt had nothing to do with their help, Marta—Marta was pretty useless and they really needed to let her go.
Once I was looking at the rows of hundreds of cd's that Roon and Joa had in their parlour room next to the living room now. They were organized intuitively, and then put into clusters according to the bands, a new project from the come down of recording Giraffey Graffiti—stop me if I have talked about this before. Roon and Joa had the album Drag City put out by Los Angeles based visual artist Stephen Prina, Push Comes To Love (that has Thank You's in the gatefold insert to Barbara Bloom, Dennis Cooper, Dan Koretzky, Sam Prekop, Lynne Tillman). Marcel Duchamp Errant Music. George Jones Super Hits. Granddaddy Sophtware Slump. They had every Brian Ferry cd, every Ramones album, every Velvets, five copies of VU and Nico and three of White Light/White Heat and them a bunch of compilations and imports. An entire Elvis Costello cluster. They had Grace Jones cd's, two Dee Lite cd's, everything by Fugazi including End Hits, they had Bratmobile (probably Rooney's), and they even had a lone but ominous Fifteen cd. There was an entire Beach Boys cluster, as if to say, if such was absent they would have surely received a letter from Laurel Canyon Home Owners Association. They had a bunch of Esquivel cds and then also Gypsy Kings—you see, I told you Roon was being completely unnecessary with me. Suffice to say, there were none Frank Zappa cd's in sight. They had Pearl Jam, Ten,Vitalogy, and then some other imports or singles. There was an entire Gang of Four cluster and you would be surprised how many albums Gang of Four actually have. They had the Thurston Moore Yvonne Rainer album that features Mark Ibold from Pavement. They had a copy of Glen Campbell's Galveston. They had like three Missy Elliot cd's. A stalk of copies of Cheap Trick, Heaven Tonight, Live from Budokan and all the other stuff. They had a Frank O' Hara cd, Allen Ginsberg spoken word with the epic poem Moloc. Frank O' Hara The Voice Of The Poet series that has To the Film Industry in Crisis poem. Marilyn Manson, that are probably Roon's, because she's too young to know any better and Joaquin will just go along with whatever she is into, and you certainly can't blame him. Minutemen Double Nickels on The Dime, which I have been lying about liking for most of my life—from the corny Santa Cruz video. All of Joa's Slayer albums, that guilt by association, seem like the very cd's the main character from Girl With A Dragon Tattoo listens to. Al Green I'm Still In Love With You. They had Pegboy Strong Reaction, that I know for sure is Joa's because of 411, and just this moment I realize Peg Boy is a gay sex reference, when I otherwise thought it was like some postmodern name like blockhead. Astrud Gilberto, the Astrud Gilberto Album, which I also know is Joa's because, Rooney hates female musicians and all female artists. They had the first Helmet album and they had Betty—those had to have been Joa's also. But that one day, a while back Roon called me out when I was looking at the rows of cd's—why else would they have them all out. She goes, and this is before I got to know her, if you can believe this, Roon all goes, 'what are you some kinda ethnographer?'—No Mam, just a Detective.
By the time I arrived back in the living room, Roon had on her reading spectacles. Looking through the letters is probably the most responsible Roon has been in a while. For Roon, this is the closest to what constitutes for her as the mundane utility room activity of hard reality everyday life, unless she's going to the dry cleaners or out to the green grocers or out to the Grove.
This here is Captain Liddell. Or Captain sent or he sent when Aunt May was in the hospital, it seemed like Rooney had been resuming the conversation as if I hadn't at all left the room.
This is from 1935. My darling Rémy, I was very glad of your nice long letter. You seem to be living a very mouvementé life with a good many agitations and ups and downs of all kinds. Never mind. Just as long as you are doing things you want to do, that interests you to do I feel is the main thing, and I'm sure all these curious editorial and other works will give you a lot of very useful experience and friends and reputation, which will eventually lead to you finding out just what you really do most want to do and doing it. You're an odd mixture you know my dear, like all my children, perhaps and like me and Julian—I mean we're an odd mixture, aren't we? I think you only got something in you that can only be expressed in poetry. But perhaps it's a curious half-submerged bit of you which can only come to the surface now and then. All the same it is indeed very important and really makes a great difference to everything else even when it is not apparent. But I suspect that your other writing must be used as a way of expressing ideas and theories and not as art for art's sake.
Roon looked up uncertainly, as if I could tell her something about this. Rooney's beautiful eyes looked back down at the letter and she bravely soldiered on—
Henry paid you compliments the other day àpropos of your review in the Leader. He's too interested at all in the art of war, but he has read it and thought it be well-written. He used to think, you know, that you could not express yourself too terribly clearly, but he says now that you have quite changed and have learnt how to do so, and that you are simply full of interesting ideas which you are able to, quite, put down. I should think the book by conchies would be rather fun to do and would bring you in touch with all sorts of interesting peoples. Why don't you get Hannah to write something? She's be perhaps the only sculptor and it may be quite fascinating. By the way, he's never said a word to me about the accident in the Baby, wretched creature. How did it happen? I've blown him up for not telling me, but I hope I shan't get you in trouble. I suppose he meant to keep it dark, but I'm sure one never aught to.
I had been sate next to Roon Dawg at the telephone table. After she read the passage I was hardly brimming to respond, but felt I should say something, got so far as mammering, You know—, and Roon simply continued reading the letter.
I have been reading Darby's letters and have said I'll hand over to Virginia all those I've read. So far there is very little she can't see. Those remarks later about—you know who, but only apropos of Micou, etc., so I don't think they matter one. I want you to see some of them (all if you like), but there are one or two which I think extraordinarily honest and disinterested attempts to analyse his own feelings about me which will throw a light on that particular quality of his mind and character, which I think you will want to write about. I suppose you will have to just wait until V is done with reading them. No, I think I shall send you the particular letter (it's not a letter really, I don't think he ever sent it to me, it was with the odd lot of letters and papers found at Bernard St.) as you might perhaps find it useful and V. can have it later just as well. I'll give it to her when you give it back to me. I hope it won't be conceited in me to show it! But its interest is not in the views of me but in the analysis of his own feelings.
Roon doya think that—
Roon responded little nothing and kept reading out loud the letter from Captain Liddell to aunt May.
Some of the early letters are rather painful to me to read. but everything gets so easy and happy later that one forgets the misery and sees that it is worthwhile. Perhaps some relationships become the best of all . . . Your loving Franklin—I love that. That's so cute, don't you think that's cute Jake?
The letter was actually pretty splendid, I was drunk enough now to agree, No, yeah, yes, that, that was is really cute—
You see from what I can cotton, we think Darby may have been opposed to Pamela's marriage to Micou . . .
Oh,
Pamela and Micou you know were cousins,
Cousins,
Oh, yes—I always relish in cousins being, getting—, conversations with Roon always swung around so elliptically, Roon now looking up from the parched parchment, her reading glasses still on.
. . . the engines of certain lilies, Roon digressed.
Roon was now so involved I could not get much in, she was so animated about the letter and it was actually great to get our mind off of the damn new record. I would go back into the pantry and fetch more beer, and then Roon was drinking beer with me. Since she just now started, I was envious of her for her fresh buzz. That was okay because I knew I had some white in my guitar bag.
Roon turned the page of her calendar notebook with innocent gesture as if searching for something, I thought to myself this is probably how she looked when doing her homework and studying at night when she was in secondary school.
If we can organise these debossed archives, could perhaps get sufficient federal funding to keep them in tack, we can get them into Getty or Ransom Center maybe, Roon in strained imperative, as if irreparable too late damage has already been done from all inaction.
Ranson . . .
Oh yes, the Harry Ransom Center on the Campus of the University of Texas campus in Austin—wouldn't or wouldn't that be nice? They have an entire archive and collections of rare objects and historical documents—
Well, Ransom is a real odd name for a place like that . . .
Rooney giggled, Oh, Jake—that is a terrible thing to imply. But yes, I guess so—yes it is true.
There was very little to say, but it was nice to see Roon occupied with work that she deemed of great importance.
Well at any rate, we do greatly need resources allocated so that the administration of these letters can be properly finally . . . attended to—that the letters can remain together and put, be, organized in proper order finally and that the materials, certification, documented, archive, maybe even written about. Locate and hire a scholar to advise their proper application, catalogue provenance, and whatever travel would most certainly be, or required to evaluate in comparison to perhaps other fine collections of letters and such treatment—I mean the work is just never ending, it's never done . . .
I suggested we order the letters that we know are already dated and put them in with the already rubber banded—the other rest can go in a stack, and then the fragments we can pin to a cork board. Roon thought such was a splendid idea, but she was so into the letters, that I could have practically said anything and such would have been met with equal enthusiasm.
Driving your girlfriend home Rooney. It was dark, but not late, and we were going to go to the Knoll store or the giftshop at LACMA to find a cork board for the fragments. Such was the perfect occasion to snort three lines and put some to-go powder in a spoon'd vile. It was probably too late to make it to either, but you could tell Roon wanted to go out and try anyways. Going out to get a cork board seemed terribly fun right now, actually.
By the time we got to the Knoll store it was close to close. We could have rushed in, but Roon was characteristically hesitant now.
Jerry and Helene are on Clinton, Roon carving a line on the dash just normal while we were idling in the part of the parking garage near the entrance of the store.
A security guard was near the car and Roon snorted the line fresh off the dash anyways, and it wasn't a big deal. I drove past the guard and waved to him and he was actually pretty cool.
I like nights like this. The streets were vacant, the strip shops closed, sidewalks left desolate. Everyone was put up like toys stored away—it was much better like this. There was nowhere to go and it was nice driving around in the dark jet city city woman Michelob light night, at least trying to be productive.
=
We just drove around talking the dust. Roon was saying something about Kate, or about her and Kate back east. I listened, though very intently, trying to avoid bumps in the road, giving me something to do, while Rooney was allowed, found free space to talk. Blanks, the space in between destinations, become mnemonic device—the roads were like blank spaces between the text in a book, or the incidental blank space in a book at the end of a chapter. I always read the blank spaces and try to figure out what might be said there from what the preceding text infers. Maybe that's where all Samantha Ai escaped to, maybe it wasn't self collapsing herself onto one ink letter on one unknown paper page somewhere. Driving with Rooney are some of the best moments—richer than destination conversation, sometimes. It was dark dark green behind her and dark dark blue behind her and dark faded in with night sky. Roon had been smoking and now her voice was like a coronet muffled in velvet. Roon stretched out.
Today the clouds in the sky looked like felled boulder hills coiled off in woven high planes driftin'. The clouds today weren't at all like the usual moody snotty wipe smudges that looked like squeegee'd against the flatground sky. Clouds were psychic, and they were clues about whatever the sky would say that day and today. To think, clouds were the largest advertisements for the future that have ever and will ever exist and people just never looked up enough or never payed no attention, everyone blind blindly walking towards their future wandering fate.
Roon and Katie were in the chalet occupied by just messing around and wasting time in the plain of day, totally getting in the way of my guitar practice time. There was still a lot to record and an endless array of base lines, solos, and chording that somehow needed to be figured out. I needed my time alone by myself to do this.
Roon flitting about,
Ya see, Kate—Kate you need, you need just a good, a nice gig bag. Something nice and sturdy and not too shabby, waterproof, no durable—like, rain proof ya know? You need a good pic box too—extra pics, you need extra pics, pics like always disappear like all the time, tape down your pics, you need finger picks here, incense, lighter, nail clipper.
Roon takes the nail clipper and just fooling around presses the lever back and forth like the tiny blades on the device are eyeless razor lip robot monster chomper mouth—Roon was being just about too willfully silly—I have honestly never seen anybody being so ridiculous ever in my life.
Kate continues along with Roon in the sealed attention of being consumed in the moment between the two sisters in cosey domestic like activity in the studio setting,
Roon just keeps going on and on,
In your gig bag there should be a pouch, a pouch for your ledger. Pencil in your gigs, and payment information, info, which comes in handy later for tax time—I usually make or make end notes also too about the night's gig after the giggin', you see here, 'January twelthteenth—good gig at the Troc, ten hundred dollars in payment...........plus free drinks' . . .
You have to report free drinks to the IRS? Kate looking down interestedly at the calendared blank ledger, genuinely asking.
Yes, Roon gravely, with utmost finality.
Roon, you don't play no gigs, I interrupt, totally calling Roon out, ruining play time between the two sisters.
I do too! I play gigs all the time, Jake. You just don't know, Roon with feigned antagonism, even though she's still being super duper jambling mode.
Whatever,
Kate don't listen to Jake, he's being a silly puss—
Jake is being a silly puss, Kate looking at me sternly in the scowl of agreement.
A big fat silly puss, Kate concludes in finality.
Because I couldn't practice by myself in peace, I just silently studied all the frets past twelfth instead—thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, seventeenth, twenty one'th—then I would see if I could match any one of those notes with the high e string or with the others strings up at the top by the head stock. Idiot avant gardes would play the strings above the nut over by the tuning knobs like they ever be the first to think of such stupid idea. The girls were getting louder and more obnoxious, I couldn't tell if they were doing it on purpose.
