i think of the hearts swaying thisday in '83.
kids getting closer to sun/swimming summer
kids getting out from the clothes that they're under.

dim-distant houses in woods
calling-lights you'd never reach if you could
and know that you're not too far in.
but far 'nough to see some trees turning foreign.

counting the days till they'd see solo's fate.
and luke's life saved by the hand they had thought they should hate.

by dusk / dawn dreams
in youth / loves seam

rare dreams

how in earth does beauty flow / fore and back / to and fro
and is our vision held to the span
'tween the here-now and those first memories of a man
or does everyold scene slingshot our sight backways through time //

1500 YEARS OF OUR LORD

WE KNOW NOTHING OF THIS WORLD

so young minds look to an experiencer - we are illiterate - yes see
like words of wisdom from older brothers, acuity falls underfoot.
we are born under jade jambs ||| to stretch beyond the skin of this sweet fruit.

and did a salted path course its way through time

and all wild things falling along it become preserved

have you heard

he's always been mine

amass

stems/cells
annuallis - annuaals
turnerims
on palace walls

turn this earth
grow this world
begin all time
again, for her

scrap/asthetic

smithereens
b-actress dreams

co-factor heritage
often psalmic sincerity





how very small these shells

how do we still float //

while we leap from the arms
of those who carried us

is there another way to swim //

:A NEW WAY:

if i can't show them
can i carry them //

courtess

wellspring (1)

popularity blindly leads us through strange tunnels.
as a spectre, moves on ahead, the wake tills illuminated history.
lights well up through those places we crowd around.
prejudice and prediction fail in this furrow.
it grows no segregate.

and in the shimmering present, many stay, waylaid.
some bury themselves away
enamored in the finding of a cozy passage.

but in staying the path, some find real glory.
newer and newer, cooler and cooler.
a stream leads deeper.

we have but one world.
we love to say whats best.
we cannot say why.
we only know we must.

nothing comes from nowhere
but some come so cool.

so cool that we pile on
strangle them like a child would a favorite frog.
"we love you so much."

monument

garnished remnants of eras
what help time tell how.
purposed or happenchance
history now.

masquerade

elan, that voice from the future

1983
1972
1978





















how is it to see someone sing
cannot their music show you who they are



feel so blessed when dark shadows of figures appear through glistening melodies.
who belongs to this voice? how does this man move when he sings? .wait years.
how treasurable a face may become to you in seeing them strain there on stage. for beauty, harmony, dance, and song.
then sew ornate melodies into the curtains of our minds. feel the seams become loved, worn, tattered, and resown. as a bulb through a shade, all beautiful patterns are shown, and likewise show the light . .how to sing out. .

early light was landed here first. broadcast ov'r the entire isle.
anxious dancing, well practiced in bedrooms and small halls, thrust on to a television screen while half-hearted attendees onlook.
no matter, when movement and music carry far more confidence than appearance ever can.

europa

heavens above

an ice world

a small servant satellite
an old moon

oceans below

century

call out colours a child would see
shiver, hold the broach of your mothers mother.
stare into the life of an earthbound man
see how their worlds know eachother.

similar to nowhere you've come ashore.
alike all that has come before.

spill strange scenes oversea.
brought down dreams in these places
well-traveled roads
in spell gathered spaces.

space is the place.
sleeping beauty is 75 magical minutes.
haircut 100 is dance neverending.

sometimes, something happens when you hear a song 100 times.
it can be very damaging to your view of the song, and can even change the way you are able to hear the song, musically, emotionally, or otherwise. a song you have heard many times as a young person in passing on the radio, may simply wash over you as another tiny gem in a pool of a hundred others. we become saturated with melodies that slowly carve canyons into our mind, growing old and traveled.

salvation from this path often comes through a motion picture soundtrack.
here, the song is pulled from the sleepy pool of radiobound songs and placed in a wonderful new world of movement and purpose which may even serve to layer the emotion found in the song with new meaning afforded by its position in a film.

as a side note, i believe this is the reason soundtracks and music videos are so popular, especially with women, as they are much more emotionally conscious by nature.

but how can we account for a single song which has tunneled through years of airplay, surfacing in every successive decade, and understand it it's origins: the husband and wife who birthed it, the stunning women who performed it, the evil genius who brought them all together, and see them as one collective who somehow pushed this record towards the light of everlasting popularity.

the dozens of girls screaming in an audience may not have understood they were witnessing history, but their unending cries reflect the joy, excitement, and freedom, that a pivotal moment like this could elicit.
brian wilson called it the greatest pop song ever recorded.


how wonderful this preservation of a performance. a gift given to music.
a glimmer of beauty which seeped from the year 1963.
left to us for all time.
the vocals are live, the band roars over the crowd, and veronica bennett moves like she's the queen of the nile.


i believe this song may be a miracle.

mister lonely. nov. 18. 2008.

THE STUFF (1990)

rob lowe just took all of james spader's stuff.
and he's NOT giving it back.






now, he's gonna mess his whole life up...








just to show him what living is.

ballet / film ~ 1948

i cannot say i understand ballet, or film, and especially not, 1948 England.
i can say though, that i have seen something beautiful and inspiring.

The Red Shoes

when have dance and moving pictures met so famously or gracefully?
a fairytale wrapped up as an ornamented gift, hidden deep in a drama.
opened for a few fleeting minutes at the back of a dark closet.
closed before the spectral light gives it's finder away.




we find here, a movie which has drenched viewers in inspiration for years.
the runoff into rivulets too difficult to even place.
do we see it in the cool blue screen behind robert deniro's cab as he cruises through latenight new york? the whirling embrace and ocean cliffs in depalma's body double? do we see it in the firey tap dancing, theatrical movements, and sweet swooning of gene kelly? how early on had it seeped into the gracefulness kate bush exudes in her adolescent songwriting?
this movie seems to have meant a lot to a great many people


below is the entire red shoes performance.

part 1
part 2

comedy / england

i was standing in line somewhere recently, talking with a mainman, when i made an awesomely generalized, untrue, offhand, remark.
somehow i said, with confidence, "Monty Python invented comedy."
the comment was borne from fervor, and i expected to be ignored or then scoffed at when i realized there were a few people closer than i thought.
i was quickly surprised when a girl next to me said, "that's right." we smiled and nodded to each other, i muttered a few things to dampen my overarching statement, something like, "yeah, British people are so funny," and we went our separate ways.

there was no contest to my statement. this girl and i bathed with our 20th century brand of comedy knowing that it was not the first soap ever made, but feeling that, before it, there had been no better soap, and since it's coming, most soaps had been derivative of our little Monty Python. we saw it when we were young, maybe our dad's showed us. we were wonover by it's sillyness, and, as we grew older, it's cleverness. and at that moment, we were both ready to say, "yes, monty python INVENTED comedy."

as far as i can tell, comedy must be one of the oldest and most universal things in this world. if invented at all, it was by God himself.
laughing, at it's most basic, can be an involuntary reaction to being tickled / and at it's most complex, can be caused by an occurrence (whether staged or real), and last for minutes, hours, days, or years with no physical prodding necessary.

so while comedy did not begin in October of 1969, one could argue that a very new era of comedy did begin. these actors had all been in comedy productions before working together as a the collective Monty Python, but as a unit, they became the most outrageous, audacious, groundbreaking, comedic group of men available in their time. a time which, i believe, was extended by Terry Gilliam's work, until the late 80's.

but here is the idea.
Monty Python were able to reach such a large audience by tapping into a flowing current of excellent comedy that seems to lie in the very soil of England. whether knowingly or unknowingly, the group exists as an extension of what men like Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Hogarth had begun in the centuries before them.

i do not state this lightly.
and i will not become bogged down in the authorship debates surrounding Shakespeare, the misascription of works to Chaucer, or even, the obvious parodying of Old Masters by Hogarth.
The produce of these men remains piled all over the world, and certainly all over England. Even if the poet's work was whittled down to a few honest pages, the body of material we would then call "the work formerly assigned to Shakespeare" would not lose any of the influence it had enacted on minds over those many years. and the material could still be studied, recited, and acted out for it's unshakable merit. If Hogarth's work was somehow suddenly cut out of academic curriculum for his blatant gibes at Religion and also Old Master's like Da Vinci, and Durer, his artistic lineage that fathered the comic strip would not simply dissapear.
The common thread for all these figures, and their work, is Popularity
they may have not even been the most talented or original men in their time. they, most likely, were not. yet they became very, very popular. and this is where we must meet them, as icons.
not to worship, but to study.



The Python men were exceedingly original; merely skimming over the surface of past work as they barreled down a massive wave of hilarity, abstraction, and poignancy.