darling of the dmv


Wondering, briefly, the shape of you. A capsule of sharks, cartilage bodies clattering and the soft punches of tail against teeth. I ordered a drink next to you once. Neon behind the bar bathing your cheek all blue, your grip of teeth rhythm-clenched.


I am stuck with the heart I broke. The sleeping bullet in my hip that we don’t want to wake up. Other mistake shrapnel for freckles. Littered this way. Road covered in a rainbow of glass, unwalkable but pretty.


This is not the cinema. It dawns on me now and then, when a part pans back and I catch myself, reel it back in.

a favorite

This is my favorite piece of music, ever.



I've posted about this piece a time or two on my site, but it never hurts to do it again. I am constantly rediscovering how important this work is to my life. I can't count the number of poems it has pulled outta me...

via Pitchfork(November 2012, box set is released):

The Disintegration Loops arrived with a story that was beautiful and heartbreaking in its own right. It's been repeated so many times that Basinski himself has grown weary of telling it: in the 1980s, he constructed a series of tape loops consisting of processed snatches of music captured from an easy listening station. When going through his archives in 2001, he decided to digitize the decades-old loops to preserve them. He started a loop on his digital recorder and left it running, and when he returned a short while later, he noticed that the tape was gradually crumbling as it played. The fine coating of magnetized metal was slivering off, and the music was decaying slightly with each pass through the spindle. Astonished, Basinski repeated the process with other loops and obtained similar results.

Shortly after Basinski digitized his loops came the September 11 attacks. From the roof of his space in Brooklyn, he put a video camera on a tripod and captured the final hour of daylight on that day, pointing the camera at a smoldering lower Manhattan. On September 12, he cued the first of his newly created sound pieces and listened to it while watching the footage. The impossibly melancholy music, the gradual fade, and the images of ruin: the project suddenly had a sense of purpose.

...

There's an irony to the four volumes of The Disintegration Loops appearing here on vinyl for the first time, since the defiantly analog origin of the music is central to its appeal. Even 10 years later, the internet is generally a poor space for contemplating the end; there are few digital metaphors for the process of dying. With Basinski's pieces, the metaphor couldn't be more simple. This music reminds us of how everything eventually falls apart and returns to dust. We're listening to music as it disappears in front of us. Hearing the music on vinyl, with its inherent imperfections, and imagining the records changing over time, lends another layer of poignancy.

Given the central idea behind the project, the length of the individual tracks is important. The first, "Dlp 1.1", is just over an hour long, and its source only lasts a few seconds. To listen to the entire piece is to hear that segment many hundreds of times, and the progression from "music" to silence happens incrementally with each play. But the loops don't fade linearly. It often takes a few minutes for the obvious cracks to appear, and then the tumble toward the void speeds up at the end, presumably because the cumulative runs against the tape head had loosened even the bits of tape that were still hanging on. The process is so gradual it focuses attention in unique way; I find myself examining each new cycle to discover what is left and what has vanished.

The rest of the article is (click)here

post-storm

Last night's/today's migraine brought on heavy sleep(thanks melatonin) and strange dreams(for the majority of one I was searching for Viagra). The past few hours have been the "fun part." The coming-back-to-life part. These things include: taking care of the trash can full of vomit, attempts to get food back in my stomach, and dealing with the strange twilight-bewilderment that is my head. The pain goes slow, inches its way out into the horizon. It has yet to disappear completely. I had to call off work and I can't afford to. The house will have to stay a mess for another day while I get my bearings and nudge my way back into reality. It's all quiet here, except for the box fan. The cold wash rag has yet to leave my forehead, and the cat has yet to leave my side.

It's been a day, that's for sure.

Coming back always hurts a bit but I'm thankful to return. Pain will steal your compass and run. It's nice to get it back, to find the right direction and get to walking again.

a slice of life

I was dating someone but that ended on Thursday evening. My response was to put on shoes and drive to Ava for the open mic, heart still stinging and radio off because an influence from music was the last thing I needed. Dumped, I told Pete. I went to the mic and hacked off another slice of heart, a marbled hunk that hit and bounced into the shadows. It helped a bit.

These things happen.

I went dancing last night and a woman dancing next to me started waving her shirt around her head. Unexpected boobs on a crowded dance floor.

This thing happens too.

The sky was getting lighter and the birds were singing their good mornings as I was going to bed.

And this.

Renee reached across the table and held my hand while I tried not to cry during dinner.

And that

I wait for my ride to the symphony while my neighbor's television sings. The earth slowly rotates.

“
Don’t ask us what it’s like
in that moment when the body
skitters away
from that stupid
sheepy shape of breath.

Down here, no one asks.

We all died

boot to throat.

We all went out
shrieking some bloody name.

Our tongues swelled,

you kissed
our numb fingers.

It was all
very touching.

The creak of your sob
in your stupid face,

your wooden gait
on the frosty hillside.

No one axe.
No one chitters
at all.
”


— The Dead Girls Speak in Unison, Danielle Pafunda

I'm sure I was shadow-stained from far away as I opened up my front door full of arrows. I hauled my bike up the stairs and the arrows kept flying. Fwunk, into banister, almost to bone. Another hits my messenger bag. One punctures my hamstring. By the time I get inside and see mirror I'm a porcupine. I drop the bag and helmet and get into bed. Abacus nudges my elbow--the sun shines and my head pounds in time to heartbeat. So I am one big drum. The urge to cry keeps washing over me and I fall asleep like that, diagonal on bed with my shoes still on.

I give myself close to forty minutes and then I get up and get on with it. Head still blaring. I make dinner, slowly, and it bleats on. I sauté garlic just to smell it.

This is what pain does. Puts a bounty on your head. Gives you space. Feeds you a rhythm. Denies gravity permission to hold you upright. It will also unlock certain things. A curiosity for resilience. Access to the white horrible heat that is excruciating pain. Is it a room, a planet? A sunken part of the floor? A place I can describe in writhing only.

draft

(a draft)

the fight

Blades punch material,
pinstripes
chewed apart.
Lanes on a highway.

She carves a blank moon
under each arm.
Flays their backs,
marks of shark.