song: Judith
artist: A Perfect Circle
album: Mer de Noms
year: 2000
NIGHT
“My biggest mistake so far has been running around spreading fear like a disease. Spending it like a currency,” Johnny tells me while we sit next to each other at Goldline in Highland Park.
“Like a false prophet who comes down from the mountain not to create and cultivate, but to destroy and shame,” he continues.
“And you want to know why?” I ask him.
“Exactly,” he says.
“You have to go to the root and uproot it and replant it somewhere else and observe it scientifically, objectively, coldly,” I tell him. “There is no other way.”
“I wonder if you’re wrong,” he tells me, he dreams, and on a steel bench somewhere in the triage room of my emotional void, a cool wind slides over the sanitary white tiles and there is a drip drop drip of a leaky faucet somewhere in a damp corner and an underground feeling of pipes and earth and a strange view of the truth of it all – the flimsy scaffolding upon which our lives are built.
I wonder.
DAY
I think through many styles of nonsense as I drive down Broadway this afternoon and it seems very clear to me that the world has changed rapidly since COVID hit the planet.
Something is going on. I want to get to the bottom of it. What does that take? Am I up for the challenge? There are many things happening at once: War, the rise of Fascism, a restructuring of international alliances, spy equipment being shot down over the Midwest, the post 9/11 youth with desire and tools to change the world, the effects of Climate change hitting the coast, the beginning of the return of American manufacturing,…
It will take a lot of work to separate the parts and define them and by the time that happens a revolution will have occurred. These are dangerous and fruitful times and I feel the groove and try and catch it and hope I don’t miss and hiss and skip and pop.
It’s not hard to ask dumb questions in order to open lanes for responses. Playing stupid is easier than you think. especially as an outsider, and all it takes is an appetite for risk. Like a naive drive up PCH through Malibu and over the County line.
A getaway from a life built on getting away.
But where are we really in the arc of the plot? Is this the regular movement of things or is this something uncommon? Something different?
I’m not sure and I don’t know, but do you? Do you know someone who does?
Surely AI will have something to tell me but I’m almost certain that it won’t be close to the truth because AI doesn’t have eyes. At least not yet.
As I watch the world unfold in pale green hues outside the confines of my car, I remember that my ex used to call me the master of the universe, and not as a compliment.
She should have just called me a blowhard, because that’s what she really meant, but politeness is a strange kind of drug.
“A slice of time that I’m grateful to have moved through”, I wonder in the endless stream of nonsense. Good riddance.
Color, sound, and a song that I first heard at the Hustler in Vegas plays and that was the first strip club I ever went to and the last one was Sams down the road.
The Western light cascades in high contrast fragments between the buildings above and birds move between them and the white gold pillars of gauze shatter the transparent charcoal silhouettes of people moving on either side of the street.
I observe a group of kids that are probably in their early twenties posing for a film camera in the hands of one of the girls.
I saw Keifer at the Grand Star in Chinatown last Friday night and as we were listening to one of the opening acts, my friend turned to me and told me to check out the girl with the VHS camera and I did.
I saw her behind a speaker, a cereal box sized camera pressed against her face, and as she looked through the eyepiece and recorded the moment I couldn’t help but wonder what she saw. Did she care that she looked silly?
I guess you can play God and still not be able to neutralize judgement, which is weird, but maybe that’s what keeps us human.
The light turns green on Broadway and 7th and the song changes and I think of tone.
kosmik city 