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The Best CDs From 2000 to 2007


So here's a list of CDs to come out in the last eight years that I think deserve praise and acknowledgement. And who better than me to give it, because I've been a closet critic for most of my life (in all truth it seems we're all critics on matters that are dear) and I'm a musician that loves music and the arts; and I tend to be pretty outspoken and opinionated on stuff I care about (who isn't? [and what better way than a list to externalize it]) which tips the balance significantly in my world toward these things and less to things like; money (much to my dismay), lawn care (much to my neighbor's dismay), or just plainly, stuff I couldn't give two shits about. Anyway, I decided to make it since 2000 for no real reason, except that it seems like a cutoff point in most people's minds; but if I were to make the list an even ten I would pick Willie Nelson's Teatro for '98 and Tom Waits' Mule Variations for '99. So the list is sure to disappoint many but; hell it's my list right? So read 'em and weep or enjoy; or let me know what an idiot I am or just nod and agree. Okay, enough fluff and on to the meat...



• 2000
PJ Harvey – Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea

Listeners will not need their skip button when listening to this CD, as there's not a bad cut to be found here. On her 6th release, PJ Harvey demonstrates her diversity with a lighter and more atmospheric approach that recalls Patti Smith in ways but is still a unique document of Harvey's voice and music. Her trademark rawness and lo-fi production are still present; but a sense of longing, exploration, loss, escape, and observations of nighttime cityscapes and dreams round out the theme of this CD. The picturesque scenes of "Big Exit", "The Whores Hustle And The Hustlers Whore", "Beautiful Feeling", and "This Mess We're In" just about jump out and bite the listener. Harvey has said that her songs are not necessarily personal, but just stories or tales – if this is true about this set, I think she needs an Oscar quick, because these songs radiate genuine honesty.

• 2001
Bjork – Vespertine

Like astronomers and physicists researching the unknowns of the quantum world, Bjork's Vespertine is the musical equivalent of an exploration into the very small. Quiet, ambient beats support whispered instrumentation and melodic choirs as Bjork sings in her completely original voice about the inner life. This music is like a warm blanket in a small country cottage during the wee hours of a snowy night. The introversion of songs like; "Cocoon", "Hidden Place", and "Unison" are perfectly matched with other songs of winter like; "Pagan Poetry", "Aurora", "Frosti", and "An Echo, A Stain". And yes, it really does sound like winter. Using samples of boots walking through snow, glittery harps, and majestic sounding choirs, she pulls it off in a way that only Bjork can.

• 2002
Peter Gabriel – Up

This is Peter Gabriel's best album of his entire career. It's also his most polarizing and misunderstood. It sounds nothing like its predecessor Us from '92 or the mid-eighties popular peak of So. In 2002 Gabriel returns to his early solo years with a more experimental sound, think; Games Without Frontiers, Intruder, and San Jacinto. But Up is also something different because it was produced by a 52 year-old Gabriel writing on subjects like aging, death, birth; about growing up continually throughout life. Musically the album navigates light and shade as the opener "Darkness" blasts noisy rhythms intersected by soft piano, "Sky Blue" features an outro of gospel singing and minimalist guitar, and "Signal To Noise" has screaming, orchestral strings, and tribal drums interlaced. Yet with all its diversity, it is a very simple, direct album as Up is a masterpiece of understatement from a man that can do great things with subtlety.

• 2003
King Crimson – The Power To Believe

For a band that started making music in 1969 to have a worthy album of material 34 years later is astonishing. This is in part due to guitarist and all around head-honcho, Robert Fripp guiding his band through the years with an artistic mind that has seen him play with 18 other members of Crimson in various versions and incarnations, changing stylistic directions like a switchback mountain road. In his own words, Fripp has said that King Crimson is not so much a band as it is a way of thinking about things. In 2003, Fripp is joined by; co-guitarist and vocalist, Adrian Belew, drummer Pat Mastelotto, and Trey Gunn on something called a Touch Warr Guitar, which seems to me a kind of hybrid between a bass, Chapman Stick, and a guitar. On the title track and it's 3 other parts, Belew sings through a vocoder giving a ghostly feel to the music, while on songs like; "Level 5", "Dangerous Curves", and "Elektrik" Mastelotto merges acoustic and synthetic percussion to produce intriguing rhythms and sounds. This "way of thinking" has put together an album of material that fuses the dark machine-like heaviness of all eras of Crimson, with eclectic electronics that validate them as true genre benders.

• 2004
Squarepusher – Ultravisitor

This guy eats, shits, breathes, and dreams music in such a savant-ish way that it's hard to imagine him doing anything else. And for his 10th album, Squarepusher (Tom Jenkinson) delivers a long set that proves this point, I think, better than any of his other releases before or since. Ultravistior functions as a "Best Of" album except that it's not re-released material, but instead is the best off his musical traits displayed on one CD. From his drill n' bass and IDM sonic explorations, to his jazz drumming and bass playing, to classical pieces like, "Andrei" and "Everyday I Love", he covers more ground than he has ever done before. His creative and technical virtuosity are on full display here – Tom is, no kidding, one of the best bass players I've ever heard – but what really affects me is the scope and boundaries that are punched out by the music which gives it a distinct genre of its own.

• 2005
Dave Douglas – Keystone

Ass-kick'in Jazz is what I would call this. The very prolific trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas shows off a new band and approach ..stone. These songs were written by Douglas as a tribute and a kind of soundtrack to the early 20th century comedian Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle and his silent films. I know nothing of silent cinema, but I do know that these tunes are not a throwback to the subject matter's era but a much needed leap forward in thinking to modern jazz. Psychedelic keyboards, turntables, and funky to heavy hitting groovy drums are the addition to a saxophonist and Douglas' trumpet. "Just Another Murder", "Fatty's Day Off", "Famous Players", and "Barnyard Flirtations" brilliantly show the adventurous spirit of the music and performers. I just wish contemporary jazz would wake up and do stuff like this that is truly in the spirit of jazz instead off turning jazz into a classicist genre by recycling the past – Wynton Marsalis; I'm talk'in to you buddy. Luckily, we have Dave Douglas and a handful of others that are crossing over and breaking down walls.

• 2006
Tomasz Stańko Quartet – Lontano

I heard this CD when it came out not knowing much about Tomasz Stańko or his band except that they're all from Poland and play jazz. After I fell in love with Lontano, I went out and bought a handful of his other releases, but this one's still my favorite. One of the amazing things about this recording is its textural sounds and microscopic attention to detail. I'm guessing that they recorded it live in an empty theater hall, because one can hear the room, the communication between the players, and the full range of improvisations from being hesitant to confident – warts and beauty marks. And this is the love; because mistakes and eloquent lyricism make it perfectly human, and what better way to be evocative than to elicit this unique animalistic quality in a way that only humans can. Restraint, weakness, patience; all are so elusive in the arts, but with respect for the past and an ear in the future, these guys understand the importance of space; in the room, between the notes. They play space and silence just as well as they play their instruments and this is the hallmark of mature, accomplished musicians. This album is a testament to what humans can do.


• 2007
Skinny Puppy – Mythmaker

Thank god or the devil, or Canada depending on your orientation that Skinny Puppy decided to reunite in '03. Because without these influential pioneers, Industrial music is about as close as it can get to shit without them theses days. Why? Because Skinny Puppy paved the way for a new kind of extreme in musical experimentation and thinking that caught on in the '80s, but quickly devolved into watered down simulacra of the original intent. Heavy borrowing and filtering by Nine Inch Nails (Bubblegum Industrial), Marilyn Manson (shockingly laughable), and sadly, the once mighty Ministry (I love 'em but they've been playing the same song since '92) have just about bankrupted the genre. On Mythmaker, the Puppies come to the rescue with an album that hits you in the face and then nurses your senses back to life like a summer day. Particularly on the songs; "Dal", "Haze", "Jaher", and "Pasturn" they show that in order to achieve real artistic darkness, a band needs to paint with plenty of light colors to emphasize the darks (evil metal bands, please take note). Dynamical in sound, performance, production, and composition is what Mythmaker is, as Skinny Puppy have once again annihilated their competition.

Shaping Point




Singing solitary
Nowhere
As another

Moving through twilight, the guiding conduits of freeway bulge with resistance. Presence. And the late summer sky, big and open; he breathed it with a naivety that evoked primal impressions of conflict in the detached self. In skies vast, but immediate. In roads ahead, strewn about into miles of asphalt that penetrate tender lands running into the coming dark; that move and sway like the ancient winds in far away grassy hills and plains. Every man and machine moving in circles and cadence to this night of day. The tired journey around. Seen everywhere and all over the faces in side mirrors; singing invisible songs, talking to phones; looking at him. Driving home on this Friday evening. Withdrawal. Feeling that the day and week are done; they had navigated another monotonous trial of will. Of false pride, strife, value. Keen and distant, and the clash of senses; thoughts scattered, bodies beaten. Together in One.
His shape was rough and torn, hands cracked, muscles constricted, the proof under fingernails. It had been a hard day and he was looking forward to being fucked up. Losing himself in drink just as work had lost him in the day. Further, into. Thoughts rambling in echoes of happenstance that blur his mind's eye to traces and crumbs of experience. Music, cigarettes, bumper stickers, women through tinted windows. Encroaching light poles and the impending darkness turning on, and on.

Held in the middle
A protection like warm skin

He woke and saw the spider. Still and absolute. In the faint red glow of the alarm clock display, 3:42 AM. Only his eyes moved. He wanted to get up; to get up and crush it in his hand. He wanted to feel the body popping in a tissue, smashing its insides and smearing the rest on the blank wall by his bed. He was afraid and unmoving. Wondering where the spider had been. In the bed? On his bare skin, intruding on peace as a ripple in water? The moment of fear was paralyzing, exhilarating; his intuition spoke in stiff jabs that left breathless difference.

Rhythms maintaining order
Awake in dreams
Everywhere and within

Sweeping. Nails, bits of wire, cardboard, plastic wrappers from half devoured vending machine items, dirt, pieces of wood, tobacco spit, metal shavings, mostly it was drywall plaster - the white mud that gets everywhere in the last stages of construction. Intoxicating; the little cloud of dust and dirt that consumed him while he swept. The smells of everything kicked up in the air, breathing their way into him. He felt overtaken by it; the dirty air, the garbage, penetrating him and his dust mask, his clothes and skin. It was in him and he'd cough it up later that night, he'd see it in mucus on tissues.
It was the labor of the individual. The young man. Falling into place from high nowhere, from ambition and meaning, to sweeping and wanting to go home. So pure and undiluted the feeling. To be away. To hate this place. Belonging to someone else, it was part of their institution and he knew he was a part of it. The integration. But, he was apart from it as well, everything he thought and said seemed to go against his being in places like this. The counterproductive friction that he produced for himself and others, like an unruly squall in the open ocean, disruptive but expected of the expanse. Yet a bludgeon hung over him that kept him in check. It was the money, like a whore, that controlled him and every decision he made. It was him and all of these guys that moved and swayed through work and weekend. Ennui in gentle waters. The balancing act of the American dream. This bludgeon; a reflection of all the weekends and needs standing on shoulders over his head, arms cocked and ready to swing. Pressure. Swollen and infected, his spirit was being laughed at. By someone, sometimes him, but definitely by those that he felt were above him in so many ways. The overachievers, prodigies, young artists, the talented. He would languish in the cool dim of so many others throughout his day. From bitter ambivalence that pecked and tugged, to violent anger that stormed through, destroying things and feelings. Mostly it was the Sadness; the ever present numb that filtered all experience, that blockaded his sensory vision like a dark blind spot to the extent that only the outer edges of the periphery were visible. Exhausted, weary, like walking in clothes soaked in heavy oil, it was the weight of tiredness that held down every motivation, dulling his fight. He sought sleep all the time. The comfort of unconsciousness.

After light and the room that holds

The spider was gone. 4:57 AM. He reached over the alarm clock, pulled it away from the wall, the lamp, the same; nothing. He stood up in the dark, in his small square room and waited for the vertigo to wear away. Standing, looking around, dizzy with sleep, his vision was hazed in gray static. Like the momentary after burn of a television that's just been turned off, it was a demarcation point with end and beginning on either side. He starred into the dark of the room not looking at anything, but making out the emptiness of shapes, things around him, with him. In this half-wake delirium he was so happy, so at ease knowing that it would be over any second. He knew about life. He knew it was the spaces like this, where nothing is anything and nowhere is here. These miniscule chokes in existence that blurred all the other. His ears rang and his eyes blinked, he outstretched his arms to feel in the dark, to think of a first step, to think of the light.
And the end.
It was over because he realized it was over. The 3 steps to the light switch. The carpet and stuffy bedroom air. He felt the wall, his hands moved up and down, in circles, he looked into the blindness feeling for the switch. Finding it, he paused and saw a fresh snow covered prairie on a cloudless day, he squinted at oncoming traffic. The light was on. Everything harsh and whitewashed. Blinking, looking around the quiet, he found an empty room that he already knew. On the window pane, his partial reflection looking back against the bare wall and opaque night.
He looked under the sheets. Thinking about the bite; if it was venomous. He looked on the floor amiss the array of books, soiled laundry, work boots. The window sill, the drapes. Nothing. He thought of the poison and its effects, he thought of pain. The closet; could the spider be in his clothes? Under the bed? He crawled around the room relentlessly searching for any sign. A web, dead flies. Nothing. Scared and anxious; the reflection fading with the coming morning. He wondered if the spider could be far from home, the nocturnal searching of prey could have drawn it far from its web. The fear spread to purpose; to the pursuit of an end point. Through the window the eastern horizon started to glow.

Something in a distance
Suspended in duality
A different kind of beauty

Orange, pink, blue. The deep light and long shadows. A portrait that hangs behind buildings, mountains; juxtaposed against. It is. Dynamic and teeming with allure, the sky as the mind of an artist or a child that forms the ever-present background of everyone. And him in his car. In the solitude of a small space. Isolation in the evening traffic with everyone but without anyone. He felt better now, alone in the river of cars swimming against the current, it was laughable. A buoyancy. Looking in the rearview, the slow moving light behind the mountains to the west brought him a solace that was normally faint to his eyes. Today was different. Today was distraction. Today was different.
To be away. He thought. In the traffic, in his dazed state of automatic functions, he thought of being away, of being fucked up, of sleeping in daylight hours; he thought of the difference. Saturday and what it held. The smell of people. Barbeques, children, barking dogs, booming cars. The flatlands of his neighborhood; the browned greenery that is either dead or dusted with dirt, dilapidated houses that used to be, the trash and dirt blowing in wind, scavenging rodents and birds, the tribal-like graffiti on fences and concrete, flowers of all color in plastic pots, American flags, little satellite dishes facing east. He rolled his window down and felt the summer. The cooled evening of the freeway. It was the exhaust and breeze that appealed to this romantic self. This is the way of stories with no endings that perpetuate for generations. This is the music of culture; of entertainment and pleasure. It seeks the weekend through routine discipline, starry nights and worn out steel-toed boots. It's what is. With heaven smiling down. Everything is so easy and beautiful.

Like waking
Something different from the view inside

In the large open of the future building, other workers would walk by and say things that he couldn't understand. If he happened to make eye contact with one, he would nod or say, "yeah" or "uh-huh," not caring about the returned looks of puzzlement. Through the contractor provided earplugs, human speech was made into grunts and mutterings. And he liked this. With earplugs, he heard his every breath, swallow, cough with utter clarity while the rest of his surroundings became a solid humming drone. It was as if he was inside himself, in his own body, like a solitary piloted vessel in vast or confined territory. The simple foam filters gave him his own room in which to exist; to think of the future and what it held for him. His dreams and ambitions, so close to his real place and purpose. He thought of his glories, the triumph over his surroundings, he thought of the recognition. The relentless hard work. A long life of success with admirers giving their praise to his achievements. He would command respect in all of his endeavors, he would give to charities, crowds would follow, he would be acclaimed with awards and honors. And the end, like deafness, like solitude, westerly in slow dissension. He would laugh and enjoy life, enthusiasm would flow with unwavering vigor, he would produce radical change, his vision would be talked about as, "laser-like precision." And all the time he would cry like a king. Alone in this room, he would be far away from this and now. Earplugs wouldn't be needed, the future would be different, the reciprocal of now. And death suddenly. At the top. A beating, an assassination, a violent murder. He imagined his blood in the media, all over the web, the front pages, TV. His transcendence. The story exported to the world, to history – a legacy. The innocence of his torn body. The looks of bad smells and shock. Sacrificial. The rhythms of rain showers and slow motion. The sorrow, the remembrance. Glacial anger channeled into movies, books, tribute events. Hearing the eulogy at the funeral praising him with goodness and reverence that induced mass mourning and sadness at the event of his passing. There would be suicides and copycat murders. Posthumous offerings. Pageantry. He would become eternal. Hero, artist, champion. Things. "Uh-huh." So far away. Far away from here and anywhere he's ever been. Delusional and so close to him that it is him. The illusion so actual and true that it exceeded the prophetical and arrived at the real. The faith he had in himself was so pure that not even reality could find its way back into his sentience. He was of difference. This man standing in here, this large open room, this man sweeping. This man smiling on images, this immense place in front of everyone's thoughts, this man of adoration. This product of power, seeking out the more and the against, in the hard landscapes of diversion inside everyone. An undercurrent. Like a wind that blows over the prairie, constant and broad in tidal motions that will become formal; relaxed to sensation. That dryness whistling though, carrying echoes of sound – reverberations of the original everywhere reaching places known, ordinary, accepted. So commonplace that the sounds carried are distant and altered, bearing a likeness to themselves, but not of birth, not of origination. Nor of himself. He is the image that blows in the dry winds of his own dull places. He moves to his self of prestige and eidolon-like status, experiencing all through the dream and enduring all through nocturnal dreams of what is normally called, the real.

End and beginning on either side

He watched the play of colors on the window. For a good few minutes he saw purples and pinks turn to oranges and yellows. Birds and quiet. The spider was nowhere, he wanted sleep. It was the day, and other than this beginning, he had no interest in it. Realizing the cold on his skin, he walked over to the curtains, pulled them shut and climbed into the bed. He thought of the dark and how he wanted to be free of fear and anxiety, he wanted to be the room that held him, and wanted to be nothing. Inanimate shapes around him, light after burnings imprinted into the eyes when he closed them shut, still glowing long after in luminescent trails that burned hotter and more poignant than the initial carefree glance. He loved these vivid reproductions of light – they were real, as real as the objects they personified, only enhanced. This is what he wanted. This, and then sleep unnoticeably creeping, taking him over. No dreaming, only a calm sleep. Over and over.

Today was distraction
Everything so easy and beautiful

Closer to home and the coming night, the first stars were appearing near the zenith. Stark, portentous; the bellies of clouds reflecting the glow of city, in pink, hazed fortunes, toil and pace. A different kind of beauty. But he knew all this. In his elevated mood he hadn't noticed it was taking longer than usual to get home until he saw, in the oncoming lanes, that there was an accident ahead. The characteristic twinkling blue and red light and diverted, distracted traffic. Coming upon the scene, he saw a car completely smashed in on the driver's side. From what he could tell there seemed to be no other vehicles involved, hence the question as to how this happened; he saw no answer. He looked away giving his attention back to the road, but the flow of cars was at a near stand-still while police converged 4 lanes into 2, and drivers captivated, turning heads, rotating gazes between disturbance and road. Just as the rest do, he watched in alternating single second frames of information and curiosity. Moving up closer he watched a boy cry into the shirt of a man that looked to be his father. Resemblance was obvious. Solid and stoic, the man was looking at nothing; a tight grip, a stare that had no focal point, as if the moment was attacking all senses, diffusing emotion into detachment. A television news crew was hurriedly setting their equipment up as a paramedic crew tended to a body inside an ambulance that was about to speed away. Thinking this body was a brother and a son, he looked again at the man and boy sitting on the concrete barrier that divided the east and westerly lanes of highway. He felt a fleeting sympathy for them, in the center of a spectacle of light and onlookers. It was an episode that had already happened. Witnessed everyday in front of billions of eyes, and tiredly played out without limit. The shock; only to those involved. For most of the onlookers the scene would be replaced or forgotten in a few days. He drove on.
Gaining speed, he fell into a kind of solemn cool. Staring through the windshield, a dream of light washed into streams of frozen motion. Oncoming headlights and the street light above as blurred into solitary streaks against the late evening commotion. Bemused symmetry. The confluence dissolving into a calm center. Moving in the direction of a place. Past the disturbance he continued eastward into skies and territory darker in scope and view. The night black, the landscape fading of iridescence into scant points of light. His exit in the seeable distance ahead, he thought of the body. The mangled car that once carried him, the paramedics closing the doors of the ambulance as others watched in finality. Who was this man and where had he been going? Dead and finished; to everyone that knew of him, to his father and brother, even to the one who barely understood.
Mind drifted into vignettes of the past, of childhood and place. He saw himself as a boy, not far from this site, in blown winter snow, wandering hills and fields. Running, playing, enduring cold and mind. He was away from the house and the endless patterns of boredom. Straying in arbitrary directions for hours, an obscure purpose, an absence to be. Solitary. Nature and an imagination giving him companionship in compromising ways that people can do. The personalities of compassion, elusiveness, a purpose of something other decentralized. Asleep in his thoughts; sown in dramatic plays of coherence. Of something in a distance; moving, fighting. In blasts of wind and snow, the view of white in all directions penetrating everything absolutely. It was alive and suspended in the monotone of the storm, floating in centers of sound and scene. Struggling against the blizzard, collapsing and rising with gusts. Like a star flickering in tides of atmosphere, irregular in site, it fought with and against. Hard to breathe. He thought it was going to die out here. It moved farther from him and he thought to run after, but he couldn't. His struggle was exactly the same, he was enduring everything that this figure ahead in his direct view was going through. His fear was the storm around him, it was in him fighting. Remembering the cold shivering, sweating; he looked back to see his footprints, but there was no trace. He saw no trees, hills or sky; the whiteout wrapped him up as if under murky water. The landscape was turning to gray as it got darker out. It was gone; in the distance. At a loss, he failed to not wonder about it, then and now.
And then the spring and summer too. The same steps but in wind streaked meadows and sunshine that would burn his skin red. He remembered packing food and water, and then supplies like a blanket, flashlight, extra socks; each journey gaining knowledge for the next. Farther ahead, always pushing. He would sleep with the chill of the late summer night under an old bridge, braving the poisonous things he knew were there but couldn't see, the fear and his wild thoughts compounding everything. Preparing himself, he thought, for adulthood and independence, for the unmapped terrain of future experience. The freedom of being alone. And later from his distance, the city would turn on at the close of days; he remembered the night sky would look otherworldly in its variance from where he was. Continuous wandering for long stretches of time and place out of an innate desire that constantly propelled him through childhood and adolescence. The sinuous maps of thought, the forced endurance, winning an awareness of means and reason for being where he was for the small cost of physical exhaustion and alienation. And now through the telescopic vantage point of age, the wanderings defined himself early as different in the capacity to accept his immediate reality as it was, opposed to how everything should be. Despite awareness, that dusty memories crack and break down over time becoming dreams, fiction; endlessly recycled back into questions of trust. The wistful reminiscence; the authentic. The dualities in everything.

Refracting that wasn't there

He sat by himself on an empty five-gallon bucket next to a future bay door. Friday's lunch time and he had nothing to eat. It was more of a reprieve from the monotony of sweeping and hauling trash to the dumpster all morning, but not from the place or people within it. He smiled to himself as he watched a group of guys across the way sitting on their buckets, talking their slang, eating, and making gestures – the not-so-mysterious dialog of modern social grooming. He wondered of these traditions, of the culture that made these men. The forces that sculpt the ethos in groups of people. Outside the day was already hot. He saw the city through a heat mirage refracting and blurring the skyline into water that wasn't there. It was sensational. The view of these modern castles built by the men in his company; and by him. Monuments to power, and the systems that mobilize massive teamwork, cooperation of all; the coercion and pride that is equal in magnificence. He was thinking of the significance when he sneezed into the lap of where lunch would normally be. He spat a few times on the concrete and smeared it with the bottom of his boot. A mix of recycled dirt and slime on a darkened floor, it was ugly to him.

Still and absolute
Only eyes moved

Walking into the building, he passed through the revolving doors, through the lobby and up to the entrance of the restaurant. Red velvet and brown satin interweaved into braids forming a tunneling archway that he thought was laughable in its pretentious kitsch. He smiled at the hostess; she did not look or greet him as he walked past. Braids turned looser to woven sheets and the tunnel grew dim and small as he walked its length. Claustrophobic and almost colorless now, he walked forward hunching over, feeling the fleshy fabric touch him like a breeze; like warm skin. Spreading through the off-centered curtains, he thought that he must've walked through 50 or so, until he unknowingly came to the last one, hurriedly peeling them back. Then, standing in an immense expanse of open space, he should've been out of breath, but he was calm. He stood, awed by the vast area that was this single room. Across from him, about 100 yards, a circular bar with numerous patrons and bartenders. The light was dim, yet hard. It was a room of distinct shadows cutting through the air; no gray. Looking up, his eyes followed the blank, windowless walls of this hollowed out high-rise to a brilliant point of light, akin to looking at the sun trapped in a box with all 4 corners disappearing into its light. This powerful energy source shining down hundreds of feet onto him and the floor. Remembering his hunger and why he came here, he moved toward a booth that had a tall cylindrical wall enclosing it and a single opening barely enough for a grown man to get through – like individual pods randomly dispersed on the pale restaurant floor. The place was full of all kinds; a dull, blending chatter pervaded and echoed throughout, reminding him of an orchestra tuning before a concert. Dissonance. He slid his body into an empty table and waited for service.
Thirst and hunger were consuming him. The empty feeling in his stomach held his body suspended just as the clean, acidic smell of ammonia clung to the air of the room. Frustrated, he stood up, scanned the room and waved at the closest waiter. Nothing. He stepped out and walked to the bar. When asking for help, people looked at him, but did nothing – as if they heard him but had no reaction. Blank stares in the hollow building; he resolved to leave. Looking for a fire exit but, not surprisingly found nothing. He looked back and saw his father. A flash of confusion, relief, excitement, recognition. Alone at the bar watching television, he called out, "dad!" Pushing through the sudden mass of people, "dad!" Louder, smaller, crowded. Everywhere people talked, smiled, laughed. Shouting into ears; wry expressions hanging on words. "Dad!" Faces and noise. Skin and scent rubbed through, all over, plowing deeper into the chaos. Nowhere. His father couldn't hear him; he stared further into. And he stopped. An aged statue, or a lost child in the hapless currents of this expanse. He saw nothing. Waited. Nothing saw him. The walls, the blinding light above, the decision. Turning, he ran toward the entrance, the curtains of sheets and braids, boring through people like they were nothing. Angry; no one noticed.
Violently, he pulled back and apart. The sheets had become sticky, weightless, and he tore through easily. Closer into; a growing apprehensiveness came. Like swimming underwater, he couldn't see or feel; save for waves of anxiety rippling through nerves as he ran slower. He was tired and wary, feeling the stringed tension pulling, holding him in an almost polite way. Vibrating with the dissonance, the complete disharmony of everything now. In the undercurrent of helplessness, he stepped back but pulled everything in the dark place with. The sheets of strings were all over him, invisible now, and a seemingly greater hold; pulling him back, moving him forward, exaggerating his movements but not letting him go. A hostage in an invisible place. He released his grip.
Closing his eyes, he desperately wanted to see those after burns of light from a few hours ago. A protection. Like the art that compelled him, these impressions were a manifestation of substance outside itself that functioned as time stamps, moments frozen in existence like architecture in light. The evocative excitement and comfort, yet the dark of the room existed in him. With his eyes shut he saw nothing of any thing or object, and now he was genuinely frightened. Now he felt a crippling fear that would not let go. He thought that he could die in this place, never seeing outside this again. And then he realized his being, his substance of thought – his tormentor. This empty room that held him in the middle of dreams.
And he saw the white of daytime underneath his eyelids and knew it was over. An intense headache and a warmth on his skin from the sun, he opened his eyes and knew that he was late for work. Flung the sheets and jumped out of bed, ran to the bathroom and stuck his head in the shower. The cold water shocking him in a kind of self inflicted punishment for oversleeping. He was fatigued and hungry, and there wasn't enough time to pack his lunch. "Just have to suffer through it today." The worst kind of work on the site would go to him in exchange for being late and he knew this. Concrete pour, trash detail. In the car racing down the freeway; loud echoes of the dream and more than the recommended dose of painkillers. "At least it's Friday."

A solitary piloted vessel
Far away from here and anywhere

"Looks like we got a company man here," some asshole said as he tapped his wrist and kept walking. No one around – it was just past the end of the overtime shift. Like waking, he took out the earplugs, slid his dust mask off and threw them in the trash heap he'd been building all day. Leaned the broom on the wall and headed for the time clock.
He found the door of the contractor's trailer locked. Inside was the time clock he needed to punch out with. He looked around for anyone that might have a key but found the site barren – as would be expected on a Friday evening. Walking toward his car, the intensity of the sun, the heat; he took the hardhat off and ran his fingers through sweaty hair, glanced back at the site a last time and saw the skeleton of the building he had spent his day in. It was starting to look like something. Something very different than what he had thought; distinctly different from the view inside. The same inside that had no record of him being there. Since he couldn't punch out, it was as if he was still in there; or punched in and left, never coming back. Totally ridiculous; it would be hard to explain. Remembering the morning stupor, he almost wondered if he was in the wrong place. "The days are getting longer." A sigh and a grin. Walking to the car, going home.

Presence
Everywhere and all over
Together in one

He pulled off the freeway at a rural county road exit. Day dreams consumed him to the point of hallucination delivering him miles past his exit, to be here in a mirage of naivety and repose; night and the shapes of emptiness. He drove farther into the country, parking at a dirt intersection; no reasons. Out of place. He waited for the dust to settle, then stepped away from the confines of the car and felt the same unsteadiness as he had in the bedroom during the day's dark morning hours. Looking skyward, stretching from the cramped quarters, he felt something more than lightheadedness – an instinct intuitively broadcasting, pushing. An impression that he had been orbiting about himself. Locked in a revolving continuum all this time, many times over, to arrive at this place. He breathed hard, shallow, and reached for the vehicle, for anything to hold. Shoes slipping in the dirt, he gripped the open side door swinging with it, his equilibrium giving away, gravity pulling down. Wondering, then knowing what had happened. The undertow of reminiscence, of fantasy, washing clean the present until a self imitation left him abandoned here. Beyond forgotten territory with no direction to the natural; the original. Here as another. One that did not inhabit the dreams of his future, that did not inhabit anything he saw.
He already knew this. Without any struggle, sitting in the dirt, leaning against the car as someone else. In sight, in body; everywhere in an enormous purgatory of years encircling him, waiting for everything to begin. Priming and adapting all along without the acceptance of suffering; the endless pursuit that had made him tragic. In the shell of comfort around, he saw earnestness fail to infiltrate existence, leaving him unscathed in fictions that had become a projection of an unknowable place. He knew all of this. Yet he still watched from behind a periphery of mirrors that judged every action and inaction, every choice he made. And it had become exhausting, to the extent that this brief impacting knowledge would erode like an ancient crater weathered over in stasis. The fainting of a stranger into unconsciousness.
And there he sat. Weary, tired. He coughed and then spat onto the dirt next to his boot, seeing the dust of the day in spit, lit by the interior door light. Smothered it out of habit, embarrassment. He pulled himself up, took the key from the ignition and closed the door. Feeling the barren effects of his spell, he started down the road. If for nothing else, it was nice to hear the dirt underneath his boots, walking in the absolute dark of the late summer night. A rural sky immense in grandeur, an infinite view from his eyes. Constant yet dynamic. His head arched back to see as he walked down the unknown road. Outside of things.
Ahead, a grouping of trees on each side of the road, probably surrounding a small creek and culvert. Completely still, no wind. No time. The extreme silence disturbed him, frightened his view. He stopped, looked up at the stars again; like home. And then something in the trees. No breath. Like crying – a young person. He couldn't tell what side of the road the sound was coming from, just that it was in the trees. Emanating, suspended in nowhere. He was petrified but willed himself over to one side. Listening. And then it stopped like quiet and nothing. He looked back toward the car, for comfort, confirming it was there in the distance. He waited, completely still, calm. It slowly faded back, crying and moaning, but farther away, softer. He felt his skin radiate. The sound was moving within the trees, circular, slow, with no other noise to offset, like leaves under shoes, like flying. Weeping. He had to help, needed to see. Stepping toward and walking into the brush, the trees were tall and thick with dark against sky. He reached out to feel for branches, to see with his hands. Tripping over and into exposed roots, moist sand, probing farther, his heart knocking hard inside. It was still faint, well into and under the canopy of woods. The wail, pursuing him to the dried creek bed as he chased it. He stopped and stood looking around. In the quick of the moment, he thought someone might be playing, tormenting him. Laughing somewhere, watching and waiting for his next act. "I'm not falling for this shit!" Trying to believe that he wasn't afraid. The imaginary audience made him to be a clown and he had to retaliate. "Why don't you come out and show your chicken-shit, redneck faces?" Panicked yelling in full armor. "C'mon!" Nothing; words in the air. "C'mon!!" He waited; hardly moving, breathing. "Go back to the barn and fuck yourself some more!" And mumbled, "I'm leaving." His display just disappeared into the night. The sound hadn't stopped and he imagined a few sons of farmers laughing next to a kind of portable audio device. He found a baseball sized rock and threw it. And another. None of anything made sense to him. The crying was still moving in circles and waves. Whirling around him, ephemeral. Another rock and his frustrated growl turned to a loud yell. There was no one here but him – he knew this now. And the fading lone weeping. He knew a fool by himself, his breathing shallow and defeated, seeing through broken sense. He sat in the soft sand and cupped his face with dry, cracked hands then moving them up, pushing back hair, seeing arms scratched and bloodied from thicket. The trees around him rustled with a fresh breeze; sounds of ocean tides in the leaves. Cool, moist air entered him, touching the inside of a home in disrepair. The visiting end fragmented, singing solitary; from nowhere to here. He was crying.
There was something. Behind the mass of trees, a light, gentle but austere. Immediately he stood up, wiped his face and squinted to see through the opaque flutter of leaves. It shone elongated like the space underneath a closed door. Something hidden, vague. He was curious but not afraid of this presence sharing a place with him, and he marveled at this. Like the light in the room of his dream, echoing back, it was an instantaneous empathy with something, anything, that he had not met in years. It was a visceral feeling that he felt but could not understand. It was the threat of fostering a relationship, a beginning at the expense of failure looming in the dark. And so a new calm permeated everything and the light grew with all of this. Soft winds moving through wood and brush, through his damp clothes, smelling of night and sweat. He began making his way out of the wooded area, pushing past limbs and branches, hearing twigs and dried leaves break underneath his weight.
From the lower grade, he pushed himself up to the plateau of the dirt road. Brushed himself off and looked back at the moon rising in the east. It was almost full, and beautifully darkened by dense layers of atmosphere near the horizon. He turned and walked toward the car. The dirt and gravel road, pale like the desert world behind him. Reflecting, diffusing the light he had known before.

In gentle waters
A dark blind spot

His car was the only one in the parking lot. The day was still hot and the sun had started to touch the mountains, changing everything in colors. He poked a key into the lock, opened the door and eased himself down. Simultaneously savoring the feeling of the seat and being annoyed by the heat of the car. He started it and felt the blast of air vents and loud music, taking him back to the morning rush to work. Switching off the radio and rolling the windows down, he put it in gear and pushed the accelerator out of the building site and onto the road.
Driving the roads of city, the systems of rhythm maintaining a pulse and order. Alive in everyone. Symmetrical circuits through bodies of community that stretch and overlap one another, blending divergent currents into a contentious confluence. And he, everywhere and within. The aloof witness, the busy talker, the absorbed listener. Going home under the wake of a setting sun. In patterns beginning and ending. In simple progressions of time. Awake in dreams, existing all around and inside their sights. Reflecting back, reciprocating experience as memory, as real. Worn out and disconnected, he slowly drove with the line of cars that were entering the freeway. Moving slow like colors bleeding together in the sky, his car diffused into streams of traffic. The shapes of one; cast out, spread into the coming night.

Quiet house in the afternoon. Again. Curtains distill shadows of sunlight, dulling edges. The warm, the claustrophobic; the air finds its way to the center of them. Awake in a time of slowness, breathing lazy. In traces of boredom. Again. Every scrutinized thought magnified under their eyes. The unconsciousness in the day, it would be so good. The quiet smell of skin on sheets and unnoticed dust flying in shafts of light. Distraction that wouldn't be thought of. The sleep taking them somewhere. Around again.

I pulled out of the drive-through and made a hard right without stopping onto the street leading up to the hi-way. At the red light, I got the straw, poked it into my soda and fished the paper bag for my sandwich. "Dammit! Why can’t people just do shit right?" Taking a drink I realized they got that wrong too. The light went green. Frustrated, I floored it onto the hi-way and jumped into the fast lane. Pulled my hair back; reached for my purse; found a cigarette. Lit up and rolled down the window. Knowing I needed to relax, I tried to feel the day; the sun, the blue sky, but it was hard. I was going to be late for a meeting and I hadn’t eaten since last night. I turned on some music and maneuvered the car at autobahn speeds. A last long puff and I flicked it out the window.
He was resting under a freeway overpass after a long traverse across half the city. A lit cigarette rolled down to him next to his weathered boots. Lipstick imprints on the filter, he wondered of the beautiful creature whose lips it was just attached to. This burning thing reminded him of his wife and all of her habits. He tried to think of the good as well, but it just wasn’t working for him today. The cigarette was slowly losing its life as it burned closer to the end. Blue sky came upon his eyes and broke his thoughts. He picked up his pack and started up the hill when one last memory entered him. Turning around, he crushed it underneath his weight.

Penetrating uncertainty bores into, deeper and softer.
Elusive will con its way through.
Over and every time until You belong to someone else.

From night are stars shining through. Ancient light in a wash of unknowing black. The AM that is young, naïve; follows no heart. Unshaped, beautiful; the born mind knows no imbalance, distraction. From time and place, the beginning of one Being each other. The same. Self. Under the lens of big, open skies that cradle the infant new. It is faint, weak, barely there, at once powerful in it’s distant burning. Signs; waves of color that touch the soft calm. Vast, twilight scattered, cool. And shadows begin; symmetry, form, the coming of day; the path has been crossed. The black will fade to Sun, the faithful stars will go in hiding veils.

Breathing sky. I and the flamed horizon. Places. Light, set in vision. Upward to stars and planets framed in books. Upward to pilots navigating balloons in morning brisk. Solid determined, young flights. Places found in the room of me. In a time. A recollection of past. Soaring hot air balloons that are breathed into, upward in colors, in slow steps above fields and hills. They move graceful, placid. They are morning dreams of I, against big music that propels the windless navigation. Moving everywhere at once, the scene explodes in every direction, every path, every possibility. The music is slow, quiet, at times it is silence.

I will be.


Or else this room. This being and place of rest; sweating reprieve from toil and pursuit. This middle. Factory break room of all. And me, inside them. The common river in the nightshift of desert plains. Coming to mid-point idle, dinners and lunches. In trance and slow passage to bitter aging meanness, we sit and eat, and stare. Out windows into street light and dark. Windows that sieve light, that reflect half in mirror, looking inside this room - fluorescent haze and night. Breathing inside this work of power and content; the calm anxiety. Breathing in the medium room of adulthood, sailing away in vessels on oceans never to return – to die in the waters, murdered by dreams, against purgatory rooms. I, and my opaque reflection in glass. To disappear in things, into a dark star. Invisible, restless.

It is completely ageless, but old dead – anything but young. No washing over, no singing, no emersion; just there. As there as the universe is here and there at once. Stale indoor air that is the universe of me in the afternoon time; that is its own self, breathing with me and the walls that don't have eyes or talk, but wish they did – sometimes. Moisture: from the swamper, my skin. Soft rubber! Just the way it goes, many say; but there is no rebuttal, because this and that are the way; …only it seems like it goes absolutely nowhere. Just like it is in here. Here? There? Nowhere? Yes!
Yes, that is the feeling of heat that doesn't need to hit ya, because it slipped in under the door when you and I weren't looking. It's always been (you know where….[EVERYTHERE]…..of course), and will be, at least since I noticed. Sly and stealth-like, appearing to the mind's eye at a moment that announces itself as a feeling similar to 30 minutes after a quart of vodka has been consumed. No direct blow to the head from the sledge hammer, but all the aftertaste of it.
Here in the heat. And, here in the heat I often wonder what would happen here and now if a major blizzard snowed its chaos upon all the mirror-like mirages on the horizon, and the dry dead grass, the smells of lower income housing, the 5 cent lemonade stands, the malleable asphalt, my upturned mouth? Snowflakes! What would it take? An asteroid? Comet, maybe? Jarring the earth so hard it would move a few degrees north – about 20 I'm thinking. So hard that the whole immensity of terrestrial land and ocean would move, BUT , but the atmosphere would not. Imagine how it would feel to feel like the vodka thing above and then suddenly, but a whole lot faster than sudden, like immediately, feel the weather of the Northwest Territories? I say ahh! But what of the global consequences? Global cooling on a massive scale – and warming for the southerly reaches of the Southern hemisphere. Snowflakes! On the tongue, just like youth times – an unwriteable feeling. Let's try math instead: 6 year-old tongue x snowflakes ÷ paint peeling, vodka drinking, fowl garbage disposal heat. The answer; just like I said. The answer; only in summer waves of heat induced dreaming or euphoria the answer lies. Lies and lies. Outside my 816 square foot domain the air will not lie like dreams in bed. It won't do a lot of things. Just is. And was. The outside truthful weather slowing. Universal gears and belts red shifting and receding along the mirages, moving away farther to the west end of my street, over here; and you and I.

Early 1990's: Grunge replaces Hair-Pop-Rock-Metal, as the epitome of teenager coolness. Ha! HA! HAA!! Same shit, different day. Gone was the spandex and hair gel, and in came the flannel and over grown bowl cuts. While the hair farmers rubbed in the product, the dirt bombs rubbed in a tad of cooking oil or Vaseline to add to their, "primitive is more pure" guise. The poodles died of saturation and inundation of their own kind with ample help from the Hallmark Card poetic intellectuals of the Pacific Northwest. Sex, drugs, and rock n' roll, was replaced with; abuse, addictions, and rock n' roll. Before '91 it was vogue to sing about tits and ass, but that was augmented to 26 year-olds bitching about their fucked up childhoods and subsequent lives. While Pop Metal was a natural extension of Metal and Hard Rock, Grunge was a retrograded repackaging of Classic Rock with a few late '80s alternative influences thrown in. After the rise of bands like; Nirvana and Pearl Jam, bands like; Dig and Sponge showed up to demonstrate that Grunge too will die of saturation, imitation, and inundation. One of the many things Hair and Grunge had in common was their stupidity in taking themselves so seriously. It's the same banal game with player rotation, and the same spectators mopping up.