Automatic writing starts like this, possibly. Who knows? It might start with a kiss, or with the snapping of small-caliber gunfire. But we watch the men on stage and feel we know what they're talking about, even when we've never met. The rain stops, and mimicking birds fly overhead, looking for their nightly roosts. A single star cuts through the blue glow of twilight, dancing on currents of air like a small girl twirling to the accompaniment of hymn tunes on a summer Sunday morning. It's the dog star in springtime, soon to vanish into the heat of the sun, bouncing alongside the steady fall of the evening star. We see ourselves in the pair, each of us claiming the crazy scattering as our own, glad for the company of one more stable, declining even the tiniest bit more slowly. In truth we are both the mountain they crawl towards, descending not in a repeated series of moments but through the decay of centuries. When we are finally worn to nothing, though, the stars will still chase the planets in our wake, even if nothing with eyes remains to watch the hunt. As these two turn below the edge of earth, moths turn in alternating circles with no guide to draw them.

Automatic writing ends like this: The ringing guitar leans on the lonely amplifier, eddies of feedback spiraling ever louder as the room slowly empties. A deaf old cat leans into the body of the amp as though its rasping rumble were the purr of its mother. A cockroach scurries into the noise, sole survivor of the atomic blast in search of scraps of flesh, until the cat's eye leaps to track it. One pounce, and the insect might be in the buffetting of traffic instead of the twilight of civilization. Each stinging paw flips the carapace over and over until the lights of the midway flash and spin in the tiny brain. Carnival barkers cannot penetrate the din of the ringing guitar, and their arms and mouths flap soundlessly at the laughing passers-by. A child runs loose through the crowd, touching the rail of each booth and hurrying to the next. Cotton candy goes flying overhead and hands fly up to snatch bits of it right from the air. The strings of pink and blue stream across the sky, twirling into an indigo vortex that spins moths, birds, airplanes, and finally planets and stars into its eyeless orbit. It drips ever larger black tears that fall away into nonexistence. From every corner of the increasing void grow up trees of light, forking into infinite branches even as they meet at the center of everything and nothing. In that tangle of light we find ourselves created, shining out in divergence like that crazy canine star chasing worlds across the sky.

This is how automatic writing begins: You take my hand, and every light in the sky, every flower in the field, every bird and cat and dancing child automatically writes its trace across my memory in jumbles of strings of light and strings of sugar and strings of careening sound. I can never recall them without recalling your touch entwined in them.


2009-07-11 Cubbyhole Coffeehouse

My printer delivered a completely unsolicited page with a single tiny heart in the upper left corner.

A black heart.

♥

or, The Town of Gazoombapu?

I was trying to find when I'd last sung with someone and looked up the wrong show by mistake.  I stumbled on excerpts from a hellish Mikado that I did, squashed down to widescreen format to make me the fattest Nanki-Poo ever.  The director was a Tony winner and mind-bogglingly incompetent, to the point that his assistant and the choreographer had to direct the show for him behind his back and I wound up teaching the men's chorus parts during costuming breaks.  The Pooh-Bah in this production (the big yellow robe on the far right) was a tenor I'd sung with before, and that's what eventually gave me the notion to go out for Pooh-Bah myself the year before last.

So I mentioned Marching Plague to somebody this week, and I go look them up online and whaddayaknow they have a MySpace that even has all the songs from their EP I somehow never managed to buy.  So I send them a friend request and bang! I am deluged with friend requests from spam profiles advertising online surveys.  Not to accuse anybody of what's probably just stupid coincidence but HARDY HAR HAR Y'ALL.

SILENCE

I fell in love with D.C. band Bomis Prendin before I ever even heard them, as soon as I read the review and saw the picture from the cover of Phantom Limb in a local Dallas zine, and hunted down their two flexi-discs as fast as I could.  Eventually, they hunted ME down on teh UNSENET and sent me a copy of the NEW disc they had made, put me down and spin me around.

Now, thanks to the magic of the Twenty-First Century, you can be blasted straight back to 1980 with images of Candeee intoning "Silence"!

Chloe Aiyana is a baby girl weighing 7 pounds 5 ounces, 20 inches long. Her big sister Sophie was thoroughly unimpressed when her dad called us from the hospital.

Baby name books claim Aiyana means "eternal blossom" or "forever flowering" in Cherokee. This is false.

Wikipedia says:

Aiyana is a name coined by Prof. Bryan Sykes, author of The Seven Daughters of Eve, to refer to a particular genetic lineage from a hypothetical ancestor based on Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analyses.

The Kartuli Ensemble was contacted regarding use of a recording in a documentary a few years ago, but I've still never found out whether we wound up in the finished product--which turns out to be allegedly a cult propaganda piece.  Meanwhile, I may or may not be heard in this hopeful cult film, but I plan to go find out:

Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 07:54:51 -0800 (PST)
From: Donna Ansari
Subject: The Slack Shack Screening Information
Message-ID: <431863.66055.qm@web58003.mail.re3.yahoo.com>

Here is the promised information about "The Slack
Shack" screening on Monday, January 8th, at 7pm.

PIONEER THEATER
East 3rd Street between Avenues A & B (closer to A)
New York, NY 10009

Buy tix in advance at
http://www.twoboots.com/pioneer

This is the direct link to buy tickets:
http://pioneertheater.tix.com/Event.asp?Event=80197

Please consider buying tickets in advance. It really
helps us out.

Also, please spread the word as much as possible. I
hope to see many of you there!


Thank you,
Donna Ansari
Zenforfree, L.L.C.
www.zenforfree.net
917-670-0351

If you're in or around NYC, you should too.  It's super awesome!

One week till opening night!  Preview Sunday afternoon at 3:00 in Cold Spring at First Pres., then Friday night we go up at The Center in Rhinebeck:

The Mikado

featuring yours truly as Pooh-Bah, the Lord High Everything Else.  Directed by one of Sesame Street's long-time writers, this is sort of a Guys & Dolls meets Drop Dead Gorgeous on The Trip stylization.  We play two weekends in Rhinebeck, then Thanksgiving weekend at the Bardavon (who have remained too snooty to put us on their calendar).

Did I post something about ProgressQuest here on MySpace earlier?  If so, where?  If not, how did a talking pony wind up on a CD sleeve honoring me?

Of course, since "Sent mail is automatically deleted after it is 14 days old," I may well have mentioned it in a mail message and would never know.  In any case, I heartily recommend this product and/or service.

and winds up overwhelmingly voting to ban most of the Internet!

I'm relieved to see my Representative among the ONLY 15 who actually voted against this preposterous bill.  Here's hoping the Senate has a little more common sense about its ridiculously broad provisions.

Hey, wait, I know, let's ban public streets because pedophiles can use them to get to kids!