A Fine Music...

Just a minor tidbit, but a tasty one, and a big thank you to Trev for providing it.  Turns out the  symphonic form of music is actually alive and doing very well in a place I would have never guessed: as the soundtracks provided with some of the advanced video games, the warrior games.  Trev kicked me some selections from that source, said he thought I’d like them and just winked.  Well, he was right, I do.  Itunes rambled into those tracks tonight and guess what?  Great music.  Tchaikovsky would smile, and say the only thing wrong was it didn’t have his name on the cover.  You can hear all the modern elements evolved out of the artRock-> techno line, but they’re beautifully integrated and appropriate, drawing from and complementing the full power of the symphony orchestra.  Good stuff!  A well done and an attaboy to the composer(s).  Now, if such powerful music can just find a home not tied to the violence of infantry combat... but, one dream at a time, one dream at a time...

I miss my muse...

Yea, I do.  I don’t miss her because she’s as sweet hot a work of womanhood as ever graced Planet Earth, thaw a frozen heart with no more than a glance and a smile, no, that’s not really it.  I loved that, of course I did, but that’s not what I’m missing about her.  I have those memories safe stored, the enchantment of her company every warmth of the erotic distilled to such a purity as to deny the casual or the crass access even to imagination.  Those memories are treasures, but I’m not a greedy man, I’ve plenty of those to last a lifetime.  That’s not what I’m missing, not the thing I’m hungry for. 

The gift of the muse draws from the erotic, but in all truth it transcends the erotic.  Or perhaps it is the erotic enlarged into dimensions as yet undefined.  I am a self aware man, at this point in my life I’ll say that without reservation.  And yet try as I might I can’t quite bring it into clear focus, the thing I’m missing.  All I really know is that I didn’t know such places existed in my soul until her, and now that she’s gone?  It is such an emptiness to try and fill with nothing more than art, the echo of what that place was when she’d fill it to such overflow as to suspend thought for the sheer wonder of the visions. 

That place remains open, it is mine to wander at will, but it is not the same without her.  Poetry remains, to set a thought soft or scintillating into words but a matter of relinquishing the focus of reality for a time.  I can close my eyes and speak into that place, hear the poem return in the echoes.  But they are just echoes without her.

Perhaps, perhaps those echoes are part of what it is to be a man in full, to know that without woman no act of creativity can ever really ascend into that place where the awe and the wonder set mortality transparent.  Perhaps it is that transparency I’m missing, those sense visions not set in sight or sound, not cast into the mold of words, but rather the sense and sensation of transparency opening away in all directions, the poignancy of seeing all of life and light blended into… into what?  What might compare to what that felt like?  To be a man, and know in full her cry of ecstasy as orgasm grants her freedom from the desire?  Her cry of pain during the test of her labor?  That cry of separation the birthright of every new born infant?  All of everything carried on those sounds brought to a visceral harmony coursing every nerve far beyond sound?  Perhaps that might get close to what I’m missing.  Perhaps.

Or perhaps I should simply admit the gift of the muse is a mystery not mine to solve, resolve myself to endure the echoes and go toss back a shot of whiskey to toast the beautiful woman who hosted the muse for me, and hope she is spared feeling what I feel.  If fate will allow I’ll endure those echoes that she not need to, somehow I think that endurance is where a man matches to balance the things she’ll endure as a woman that no man can ever know.  There is balance in all things even when the scales are hidden from common sight, perhaps this is just one of nature’s balances.  Perhaps.

Playing the Moments for Once...

A most sincere thank-you

     to a fully sweet lass

For a laugh and a smile

     and a roll in the grass

Lit sparkling blue eyes

     weigh'd tassel and dance

O’er mirth plotted mischief

     Old memories trapped

In lost innuendoes

     scant subtle first draft.

           ***   ***   ***

Dog Washing and the Grandpa bug...

I’ve let this post age in a couple of days, some things really need a bit of time to settle before you speak of them.  That’s the dog washing thing, dog washing being both literal (the poor mutts both needed a bath, and both were very well behaved) and symbolic: I copped an attitude and did a Tim Taylor style afternoon of cleaning.  Tim Taylor, you know, Tim Allen’s character on the comedy show.  More power!  Phooeey on the Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner, fire up the shop vac, and the air compressor, spool out the hose, set the BIG fans to blow out the front door, we’re fixing to put the dirt right back where it came from.  Yea, spring cleaning man fashion.  A successful afternoon of kick ass, the dust bunnies never had a chance.  And the little farts had been getting so bold as to be setting up toll booths and trying to charge me admittance to places in my own house.  They won’t be back for a good long while, I kicked their round little rumps right up between their swastika shaped ears.  Victory is sweet.

I just wish I could have a victory over the grandpa bug to match.  But it isn’t looking promising.  I got my feelings hurt, deeply hurt on that subject, and there wasn’t a fucking thing I could do about it but lock on a stoic face, laugh on cue and endure.  She was trying to be funny, had no clue what she was doing to me, and I forgive her.  I do love the lass, she’s been nothing but good to my daughter, and for her, she is a true daughter in love.  But even the folks we love can hurt us, and she did. 

No one who is actually gay can possibly understand what a case of that bug feels like.  The same things that make them gay put it beyond their reach.  I ‘m sure there are things of comparable impact going the other way, but being straight and a parent those things are no doubt beyond my reach.  Just an unhappy fact of life.  So, I suppose since I can’t cure the disease I’ll keep treating the symptoms, adopting this kid or the other to mentor, doing the best I can for them just like I did for my own and hoping to God whatever turned mine lesbian isn’t something I did, might do again.  The grandpa bug is a real bitch and bummer, and yea, I’ve got a case of it, a bad case.  Oh, well.  If it gets to bad I can always go trucking, and take myself out of reach.  Westbound and down (way, way down), loaded up and truckin…

I've Slept Since Then...

Yea, a full nights sleep, at night.  Racked out at 8:30pm and awoke at 5:30 the following morning.  A full nights sleep, and I needed it.

For give or take the last week I’ve been immersed in the world of the youth, living their schedules, playing in their games, listening to their music.  Nuts and bolts bottom line is I’ve been trading beer and pizza (and a safe place to enjoy all of the above) in exchange for them conducting a class on the culture they live.  My buddies are proving out to be a fine tutors on the subject, Trev in particular knowledgeable enough in the culture as it was to draw the lines of progression into the culture as it is, Keating and Rob providing additional material particularly in the realms of Anime.  It’s not a particularly easy class to sit in, but cheap at the price.  The university couldn’t provide such education, and it would cost me a whole lot more for them to even make an attempt.

A few posts back I spoke of the Anime genre as a propaganda medium dispersing a subtle despair.  Realizing I’d made a pretty broad generalization I asked after the subject, framed the question within the context for the guys.  My question was met (and my assumption validated to a degree) by a long silence as they searched their memories.  In the end they produced a couple of possible examples not conforming to the assumption.  Based on what I saw I’ll set a confidence level of 90(+/- 5)% on that assumption.  They could find exceptions, but not many, and they had to think about it.  But the most interesting thing to come out of the last week was evidence validating another assumption. 

Beginning in the late eighties, early nineties I began to sense a deliberate and coordinated effort by the “establishment” to program weakness and compliance into the emotional structures of the youth as they came up the years into their adulthood.  I could sense it, but not really prove it.  It cost me, my ears had to suffer a bit to acquire the evidence first hand, but I can now demonstrate that such an effort has to be an ongoing campaign of the enemy.  While the enemies effort is widespread and dilute, impinging on the youth from essentially every angle, every facet of their lives, their defense against that effort is by the rule of inverses concentrated and discrete.  The music they’ve evolved to call their own is in fact an antidotal agent to the propaganda efforts of the enemy, the structures of their music a perfect negative space image of the emotional weapons being wielded against their humanity by the enemy.

My stereo got a workout for several hours each night (the Kappa’s earning their keep in spades!) playing music structured to negate the propaganda being inflicted by the establishment.  In common between the works was a transition from melancholy soft tones (that instantly reminded me of King Crimson or Pink Floyd at their best) each displayed a shock stop transition into tones so harsh and hostile to assault and repel adult ears (think Jemi Hendrix bred to say Deep Purple, and then overdriven from anger into berserk insanity).  That might be expected, looking at the normal maturation process passing through teen angst and rebellion. 

But what does NOT fit that profile of maturation is this fact: the lyrics were in fact continuous, a thought continuing unbroken across the transition from melancholy to rage, the lyrics in essence buried to become a subliminal influence beneath the raw volume of the shock transition!  I was listening closely, and when each work broke into rage the volume of the instrumental elements totally obscured the lyrics, they were not within the range of conscious perception.  And yet as I watched the boys each was chanting the lyrics in perfect time to the beat!  

Yes. That is exactly what I said.  The musicianship was crafted to set the most defiant of the lyrics, the thoughts most condemning of the establishment’s efforts to rob them of their individuality as a subliminal influence, an influence impacting their psyches at the same level as the propaganda it counter attacked.  The proof of the absolutely unethical presence of subliminal propaganda in the culture is the evolution of an equally subliminal counter agent!   That the counter agent is subliminal by reason of raw volume does not change the fact that it impacts the same regions of the mind, the subconscious perceiving what the conscious is unable to!  They are in fact fighting fire with fire, and theirs is loud enough to be clearly seen by those with enough understanding to perceive the nature of the defense of self they are mounting against the efforts of the enemy. 

All I can say is fight on kids, it is your right to a free life you’re defending.  I’ll lay covering fire for you where can as can, you have just as much right to a free mind as any other human ever born of woman to the love of her man.