Holy Day, mk. 1

I'm leading us on a legend-trip to that Spring-Picked bedroom we found in the wood two years ago. You're restless and spooked, riding in the passenger seat; knowing it's quicker if we use this transport but silently criticizing me for driving. When I drive, I assume this unnatural intensity and focus that makes it very difficult to be a passenger. It doesn't help that, for hours now, we've been seeing the same indicators along the road informing us that, while we're almost there, we're also (strangely) traveling on a circuit.

Once the hour passes midnight, the frustration becomes apparent and you ask me to stop. I do and just as you're about to take the reins and leave me in the wood, I remember that the only way to get to our bedroom is to walk. So we do, roughly at the same pace. Sometimes you lead, sometimes I do, and sometimes we hold hands and the landscape becomes more familiar. This is how we discover.

Little Miss 1565

We assemble on the golf course after-hours, preparing the field with Christmas lights, bike reflectors, and loud kerchiefs. Dauud and Andreas become interchangeable silhouettes in the cold, unlit field. Forgive the poetry; it's just that, after a few games of Capture the Flag, your body has atoned for all the wrong you've done to it and you want to go tell it from the mountain. That paradoxical cleanliness you feel after driving yourself to exhaustion in the dirt with a good, close circle. In fact, this was how I came to know Jason. We'd met in Knoxville, TN (and again in Baltimore ... and every time his band, Cue, played with the Octopus Project after that) but it was only after Toto began organizing these weekly games that the extent of his good character made itself known to me.

When he initially began providing percussion for Mothfight shows, I was astounded by how he could fill frequencies as well as holes in the music. Percussion has always been a struggle for me to orchestrate, so to meet someone who will sit and talk things out with you...

That said, the logistics of performing these compositions in a live setting has grown increasingly knotty. I've enjoyed a burst of focus and inspiration over these past 6 months; the fruits of which, though not ready to take out of the oven, I'm still cautiously proud of. However, because I want every individual part to serve an integral function, it's become increasingly difficult to practice for a performance without the full 9 piece band present (and even then...) And once everybody's together in a room, trying to coordinate an experiment, something that always has the potential to fail, might be interpreted as a waste of time if it doesn't yield immediate results. Then there's the challenge of notating samples, circuit bent toys, and the like. The prospect of going into the studio and realizing this music excites me; to have it finally jump forth from the staffs and staffs and pages and pages of sheet music that litter our practice space floor and line its walls.

This was the impetus behind the group. I'd no means to demo these tunes and, even if I did, I'm not proficient enough to record worthy takes of many of the instruments needed to make the songs materialize. Not without an inexhaustible amount of time at my disposal anyways. The only opportunity I really had to hear my own songs would be to schedule a show (because that would be the only night that every player was certain to show up). The more shows that are scheduled, however, the more you rely on the same people to play these parts, which gives them more license to annotate the work.

That's why I've held onto the new material until it's ready to go. Musically, I'd hope to capture some of the immensity and joy of standing in the middle of a Sacred Harp group. Though, I'm not certain, it feels as if there is a certain cohesiveness to all the pieces. It'd be nice if the lyrics reflected that, though verse is a whole different struggle.

George - Slow Wave Sleep.mp3
BUY George - The Magic Lantern

The Green Pajamas - Deadly Nightshade
BUY The Green Pajamas - Narcotic Kisses

"Slow Wave Sleep" by George is such an intimate song that it's almost counter-intuitive to share it. It is one of my favorite songs, though, and I often find myself obsessed with The Magic Lantern. Ryan Schreiber turned me onto "Deadly Nightshade" a few years ago. I haven't actually listened to the rest of Narcotic Kisses but, whilst in Marfa, this song floored me, leading to a few months of repeated listening.

As always, if anyone wants me to take these MP3s down for any reason, please contact me.

Patior

Stumbling upon an archive of my middle school poetry, I was fascinated by how much better I understood the writing now. At the time, every line was born of anxiety and countless revision. So much so that I often lost track of the work as a whole, a fact which I covered up with grandiosity and a thick synonym-acon. Now that the situations addressed in the poems are farther behind me, I'm quite astonished that the words make any sense whatsoever. Keep in mind, the writing is ingenuously angsty and bloated with puerility, reading like Billy Corgan's kitchen magnet prose. But these confessionals were all that I had and, at the time, I was nervous that such literary attempts to create order out of my life actually indicated some sort of schizophrenia. "Acid literation" as Mike Love would've (somewhat inappropriately) called it.

Finished reading The Worst Hard Time which read like a passion play for the Dust Bowl and it's inhabitants (minus the passion).

Rhonda and I (mostly Rhonda) just finished the Spirit Photos from our Victorian Pageant. I'm absolutely astounded at how well they turned out!

Oh, I was asked by Asthmatic Kitty to contribute an article celebrating Houston, TX (to coincide with our October 20th performance at their Unusual Animals party) and came up with a little writ of absurdity entitled "The Houston Parachronist: Top Stories of the Year 1905". It felt good to write for an audience again as I haven't for some time now.

Gwar Gum Wrappers Delight Fully

Well, I was in a low mood last time I wrote here. I think that bloomed from having just returned from tour and my body's decision to take a temporary vacation from composing music. Things are beginning to stabilize and the spring is returning to my stride just in time for an autumnal bloom.

I became acquainted with Baby Bash's "Cyclone" last night while combing the dials for Chamillionaire's awful(ly curious) new single, "Hip Hop Police". Unseen and unknowable circumstances transfigured the song, dispelling the production's garnish, permitting a glimpse of some truly exciting explorations of the human voice. These moments are the affirming ones. I listened to the track again today on Baby Bash's myspace and it didn't overwhelm like it did last night but I'm sure I can crack it's code again.

In preparation for Moth!Fight!'s October 6th Victorian Pageant in Austin, I've been researching turn-of-the-century Forteana with surprising ardor. So, when Michael Kaufmann from Asthmatic Kitty/Unusual Animals asked me to contribute an essay for the label's sidebar, I relished the opportunity to affect the sensational language of Victorian-era news papers. I don't know when the piece will run but Michael, whose unique recording project, Future Rapper, deserves adjectives like "cerebral" but dismantles the trappings of "backpacker hip hop", will be playing with us in Houston on October 20th!

I know I need to upload some mp3s soon. Soon.

Thomas Chatterton / Guts

Confidence arrives in many forms. I'm seeking an earned confidence that'll balm my soul, reintroducing me to moral obligation and the personal church. I want this to be found in Harry Houdini, the Voynich Manuscripts, Korperwelten, Laurie Anderson, Hope, and the mythology of noise.

The best songs come from early morning melodies and, if those are inaccessible, then you need to exercise the patience she requires.

I missed a tornado in Brooklyn by nearly a week. I need to read the People of Paper. Thanks to Todd, Angel (Dirty Projectors), John (Prince and Pearl), and Lucas (Nonhorse) for being so kind in Brooklyn. Good on us all.

Selig Mary; Slept Under Our Sheets

Upon driving back from Marfa with Jess, we saw the formation of an unwonted dust devil against the backdrop of mountains and desert. For me, what makes phenomena like this so wonderful are their rarity. In the economy of experience, seeing a tower of wind and sand struggling to maintain its form in the nation's mountainous purlieu (especially from the vantage point we had that day) is worth so much.

Today is the eve of our first real tour. Tomorrow, Moth!Fight! will leave port; the jaunt christening us as a "real band". As we make our final preparations, I'm consumed by a spirit of wonder remarkably similar to that which I felt driving home from Marfa. The band (and everyone in it), the tour, the reality that we're beginning to release music and that people seem interested in all of it... it just appeared.

I've to admonish myself not to expect it but I can't shake the hope that, as we drive through the plains on our way to Chicago, I hope to see a real tornado (my first!)
The way things have been developing, it seems like it just may happen.

This Summer Mechanism

My muscles are wracked. Working inside for 12 hours a day stiffens the body, makes the eyes adjust poorly to natural light, and feeds neuroses that make it difficult to keep up a normal conversation. That isn't to say that I haven't enjoyed working from home o'er these past few months; there are simply some negative physical symptoms of a hard work ethic. As a result, I've considered resuming my work as a full-time preschool teacher. Having sporadically submitted to substitute teaching at this wonderfully progressive daycare near my house, I've noticed that I always seem to walk away from a day at the school feeling better-adjusted.

My last teaching post was hardly as therapeutic. The children, many of whom had physical and emotional disabilities, suffered at the hands of teachers whose rigid authortarianism (with 3 year olds for God's sake!), cluelessness, and professional bitterness permeated most of their actions. Many kids were written off as having ADD, autism, or anger proneness before they could even speak. This took the pressure off of the teachers to appropriately guide the child's social development. I still don't understand why people who don't enjoy this line of work continue to do it; it poisons everyone involved.

Working in that environment was a daily trial. I awoke each morning feeling dreadful and, upon returning home in the evening, was haunted by all the poor situations I'd dealt with that day. Luckily, about six months into my tenure, a new batch of fresh-minded teachers was hired, resolving a lot of the issues and allowing me to quit with peace-of-mind.

Now, Mothfight is in the process of saving up money to go on tour and I'd jump at the chance to spend a few months out in the sun with the kids before leaving for the road. The cost of our South Austin practice space has been steadily rising as well and, though we're probably going to move our rehearsals to a theatre down the street from my house(!), it'd be nice to live more comfortably in the meantime. That'd make me less available for work at Gallery Lombardi but it'd be steady and secure.

Right now we're tracking for a demo CD-R with Michael Landon and Seth from Super Pop Records. Finding a way to best capture our orchestration has always proved to be a bit difficult and I think this has definitely been an opportunity to learn about ourselves and how these songs should sound. This'll be our millionth attempt at Murphysboro 1925, a song composed of three "vignettes" (Crickets/Schools/Tornado) that I've had kicking around since high school. I never knew exactly what it was supposed to sound like until playing it with Mothfight. It's a very difficult piece to record/perform because it ends with these jabs of arrhythmia (the "tornado segment" as we refer to it) punctuated by this huge refrain.

Musically, it's supposed to be a sound poem telling the story of the Tri-State Tornado of 1925.

Tellingly, I only finished the lyrics up last week:

Murphysboro 1925
Go home to Murphysboro
Inkwells and useless kids line the roads

Comb the farms for bits of hair
(Tomorrow I brew, Today I bake
And then the child, away I'll take)

This is not night
Girls who leave their music boxes on from daybreak 'till night
Would mind to keep their windows locked tight

We've a rough mix of it up on our Myspace and Virb pages. It's not quite there yet but you can see what I'm talking about.

Virgin Verse

Paul Giovanni and Magnet - The Maypole Song.mp3
BUY The Wicker Man (Original Soundtrack)

If anyone wants this mp3 removed for any reason, please contact me and I'll take it down.

My parents just moved from my childhood home in the rural outskirts of Austin to one of the city's new gated communities. It's the type of home that they've always wanted (and deserved) so I'm happy for them but sad to lose the countless forts, secret paths, and buried treasures kept hidden by the seemingly endless acres of unclaimed copse that bordered our backyard.

From their move, this week's Springtime poetry special on A Prairie Home Companion, and my first viewing of the excellent 1973 film, The Wicker Man, I've been onset with a strange tenderness for youthful pagan revelry. Chris (of Car Stereo Wars), Christie, and I have a weekly writing club wherein each of us reads aloud different essays, short stories, scripts, et al. that we've been working on. This week I chose to read a poem:

What the skull-boys discovered, in summery lastingness
Agape boulevards locked in directionless tidewater,
Came about in May
In the pregnancy of the camps, wooden swords, and abashed breasts
Where they couldn't speak
until appeared clover begging their cloven hooves to stumble deeper into theater
Was a path unobstructed by prose
that could never be bankrupted