At the bad habit swap meet I traded a nine year killer for graffiti, which I am now totally serious about. Attention cops, look for my tags, appearing on buildings everywhere starting next week. My tags will be the following:

“Hilarious”
annnnd
“Noise Music”

Also I saw a little guy tagging from an electric tape shelf as ambulances rolled by in the night, you better catch him. And the cat that used to sit on my car was born in my hands.

Not cryptic: We played in Lancaster the other night, it was a blast.

Caution: Cryptic

\/\ \/ \/\ \//
L.I.F.E.
“Just trying to get through the day without any incidents, and hobbies are for passing the time.”

Tirath Singh Nirmala – Bluster Cragg and Awe – “Faleaflowstream.” Thanks bro I needed that.

Bom bom, Have a nice dream

Ex-Cocaine – Keep America Mellow: None of my friends like this record and they all make fun of it when I play it. Ben Caves in Lexington managed to bro down with these dudes in Missoula and was there in the basement when they did their thing, somewhere across the smoke, and wow, someone agrees with me that this is the best hippie band. Listened to this on repeat all summer while I knocked down trees with a sawzall, sweating into dissolving t-shirts, pants giving way until I cut them off, pockets all ripped out and full of holes, mosquitos in Mike’s house hovering on my legs, piling bricks into a perfect chimneys to aerate the ground, to release ancient underground fires. Brightest saddest summerfade on flat tire bikes and concussed brains on Chestnut Street bridge, dumb riffs and drug smoke and singing the July tunes drunk on August nights. Saddest brightest most straightforward and unexpected psych beast, just like verything in my everything.

The boys took me to Poughkeepsie on Saturday, rode with them in the back seat passenger side. Michael fell asleep to the Converge record. I am starting a Mindflayer-style band called Drugdealer with the next awesome drummer who doesn’t give a shit that approaches me about it with any level of seriousness, if Jake doesn’t get on it first. I knocked some people over on an ice sheet and everything happened and happened and happened again.

Wrapping up my computer job, feels good to be near completion. Doing another one and another one. Never been so busy, too busy to set up action and wildness.

And it’s already all such old old news. Might go on tour with them for a while in May, might sing in the woods with Pink Des dudes tomorrow, what else is new / what can ever be new.

Tatter Blurts:

Sleeps ferocious while hand caresses the satin time-slip. and cares for these times. and are the mess

American mouth wonders aloud, What next, where do we go next, what do we do now.

Listened to Loveless and went to sleep 10am, 1st floor horrible clarinet tones drowned out as I came in, soundstopper, Day 1, and Day 1 was like seven days,

, and listened to car hum and tried to sleep at 2am, West Philly sink-or-swim at my car door brandishing and spitting from nowhere and I drove away into the night on Day 783, and Day 783 was like seven days

“I and I”

Whatever, I’m posting this on my blog:

“Well is she in her garden,” he asked him, “Or is she in her hall? Or is she in the upper parlour, amongst those ladies all?”

Two other moments in the Boards of Canada catalogue that I’m still not sick of that I didn’t mention last time:
- “Alpha Rainbows”
- “Telephasic Workshop” first twenty seconds or so
- This band turned straight terrible after the second record.

Two things people have written to me this week:

Mos Def = mine, but that’s because I’m female. Or so I’m repeatedly told by disdainful men who are like no way man RAEKWON or something but I’m like, yeah but Raekwon isn’t hot.

and one one one one

I’m going up to bed, just watched the news, (that’s when I left you that phone message), and after the murders in PHila., then they announced the weather report. WE’re supposed to get 12 inches here. THere’s probably no milk and bread in the supermarkets already. IT’s so ridiculous how the people behave. I mean it’s not like we’ll starve in one day. Don’t people have anything in their freezers? Plus, there’s always peanut butter. THis storm will wreak havoc in cancelling office hours and then rescheduling everyone. IT’s a pain, but it will work out. The Police are back together and planning to tour. WOuld you ever want to see them? THey always remind me of the summer you were born. I must have listened to that album a million times. We used to have a stereo in our bedroom then and it was always playing. ANyway, I’m rambling. I’m really tired (we hired someone today to be my “assistant”. I hope she works out/she seems very competent and nice too!) Gramp has to get a new pacemaker generator put in on Friday morning at 6:30. I have to take him and gram to the hospital. Hopefully, it will be just a routine procedure and he won’t have to stay overnight. Otherwise, nothing new here. Talk to you soon. Stay safe and warm and enjoy the white stuff if you can!!

yeah, 1-2-3, 1-2-3:

Fights, crimes and terrible things I have seen in West Philly:

We went to the Blue Smaldone joint tonight. Fell asleep in my parka (they call them parkas in the South, not jackets) during the Fern Knight set, but never enough to stop thinking “This would have been my favorite band if I had heard it 10-15 years ago.” Life lesson and/or definitely a metaphor: Most dudes play too long. Smaldone’s set was darker and more whiskey soaker tongue loller than I expected. Jack joined for two songs and I watched him tap his fingers to the opener and smelled his drink as he walked past. Outside, Mike’s wheel was stolen, the chalk figure on my dashboard says “O no no no no no!” The city pushes back and roars low stereo roars.

It was only ten minutes after we were back from this recent tour that I saw a dude jacking a car on 42nd. … Clay asked, “So wait, why do any of us still live here?!?!”

TV tubes exploding at the oilcans again and again and again and again. Distant flames and black water under the bridge and we’re chewing veggie dogs and laughing about how hectic it gets. Cold wind and frozen ice toe in the stirrups, pedal it back home to doomed windowless South phil, pedal it back to Yucaton (Saturn Version) where they’re waiting for me to start my drum part, pedal it back into the tape-loops of yesteryear, pedal it back to my old chain that snapped on the back road summer 2004.

I get a new driver’s license photo this summer, right after I get back from camp.

Off tomorrow, band practice all day, pure ragers and boilers, “no jokes no drones.”

“Blah blah blog”

I watched TV for a few minutes and became tremendously negative and snippy. I had a great conversation with Brian just now and things are hopefully moving right along.

In other news, here is part one of my favorite moments in music. I feel like I haven’t blogged explicitly about music I like since 2002, so here we go. Do you need me to podcast this to you?

My favorite moments in music: Part 1The Beach Boys, Pet Sounds, “God Only Knows,” the snare (as in 2:09). Leeds nights on scrambled TV, dark chewed couches and Django singing outside of my gramma’s windows in dreams, Anna in my apartment after her shift at the ice cream shop, disappeared into the night with her one bag. Moon over the oilcans.

The Who, every radio station, “Baba O’Riley,” tape loop of the first few seconds on repeat for eternity

Mainliner, Mellow Out, “M,” 0:56-1:07. The riff that made me want to riff. I punched through a ten foot cement wall the first time I heard this. I threw my arms in the air and smashed holes in the sky and cut my hands on the shards. My dead grandfather’s grayblue face and hard eyes in paint on 2nd floor of 11 S 43rd.

The Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour, “Strawberry Fields Forever,” 0:10-0:15 – let me take you down cause I’m going to… (crash). Stevey in hippie gear rolling down York Ave, Kate and I walking on the beach in 2001, the wave that never breaks or advances, but continually rolls in onto itself just offshore.
The Beatles, The White Album, “Helter Skelter,” first seventeen seconds. Best Beatles song. The motivator from dusty floors.
The Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour, “I am the Walrus,” 2:00-2:18. Golf-claps from the memory balconies for this one. Navigator / Narrator / Nay-sayer. If you don’t know now ya know.

-1348-, Six Girls in Search of Heaven, track one through the Romeo and Juliet tape loop. Winter depression of ’04-’05 perfectly encapsulated and replayable for curious audiences. String people dancing the terror dance in tattered bedclothes, obsessive compulsive need to check the locks ten or twenty or fifty times, sleeping next to each other but finding the bed colder for the effort, riding the gary fischer home at 5:30AM to breaking dawn still awake and thinking how could it be this warm out in February.

Fennesz, Endless Summer, “Endless Summer,” especially warm sound from 6:25 that repeats at 6:42 – 6:54 and then on beat for the rest of the track.

Boards of Canada, Music Has the Right to Children, “Roygbiv.” Was “our song” once on canal paths. Moving aside in tunnels and riding a foot over the rail, just a pothole or a swerve or the least lapse in confidence from oily water and a ruined bike. Bums whistling on the bridge over the Pershore Road and it was all true summer in the summer of 2003. Seeped back mysteriously or never left and I’m pitched down on my back on PEEPS floors rolling through time, dancing with the permanent light dancer who has always and will always be with me, one way or another.

Sleep, Jerusalem, “Jerusalem.” Up on the aquaduct, burning my shoes in smoldering fire, Blaine and Mike swimming below in the dark. Golgotha

Swayzak, Dirty Dancing, “Buffalo Seven,” 0:43. The only person riding a bike in Birmingham drunk night. Straight story on the highway, marathon distance, out to nowhere and back to a cup of tea, cradling a dark nut that grew from my stomach into a kingdom of black trees.

Olivia Tremor Control, Music from…, “Define: A Transparent Dream” from 1:19-1:23. Age 19 on I-76 in the night.

Youngs / Kawabata, s/t, first thirty or so seconds before Youngs starts singing. Attic of my gramma’s house one time and look, my mom was young once too.

Velvet Underground, s/t, “Some kinda love.” Maybe this is just my favorite song in all.

Sun Ra, Atlantis, “Yucatan (Saturn Version),” 0:00-0:53. I am there —

Sunroof!, Bliss, “Columbine Kisses 1 + 2,” “Chirrups of Certain Being.” Prophecy

Muslimgauze, Sufiq, “The Girl Who Sleeps With Persian Tulips.” The good
Muslimgauze, Hummus, “Monsoon.” The bad

Tony Conrad, Four Violins. The ugly

Lost focus toward the end, this is supposed to be about parts, not about songs, maybe I will have to redo this list later when I reread it.

Most blogging I have ever done in a week since starting Dust?!!?!

Everything got totally weird in Charlottesville and we played two sets, first one was slow and creeping, second one was a total breaker. Light cracked and future tears streamed and it was all there under dirty feet and wet and live in my hands, all future standing and shuffling and leaning expectant and stoic as West Phillies for the trolley at 47th and Baltimore, all past roaring and rioting and tearing up the 1913 seats.

I am hopefully going to be a camp counselor at Beam Camp for a month this summer. I talked it over with Matt and am probably going to New York to talk it over more with Brian later this month. Camp starts on my 24th birthday. Missing city summer will be a great delight:
Last year, oilcans bonfire and burning bikes on up Chamounix Drive to perpetual trash and full-body full-brain arthritis in the 1917s. The sun just so on the river and the art museum, and the river at home whooshing low on drought rocks and river clams and washed up muddy pike, and the mold smelled good like crossing the metal bridge the first time to play Punch Out and drink club soda, day after Good Friday, 198X.

And 1969 on dirt floors and no electricity and no ceiling, pin light and moon stabbing too-thin eyelids and distant animal sound and night sound roaring away, scrabbling at the outside, just barely weak or unmotivated enough to make it over.

In dreams, whoa, in dreams… what hasn’t been happening? Deer attacking Maria’s car on the hill and then I go out to investigate and it’s actually a pack of twenty-seven dogs, one of them is a man in a dog suit, and I go back into the house. Four come up under the window and play wild music, two on drums that make xylophone sounds, two on the winding pipes, and I am almost convinced to let them come in. Meanwhile down the dirt road a car is dead in the ditch and the gray day fire is spreading slowly and without warmth through the prickly trees, a man is crying because his dilapidated house is about to be consumed, but I wonder what he’s worried about when it’s so obviously decayed and empty. I can feel the Reservoir just through the trees and I know everything is okay but I don’t go there, I just watch the fire slowly approach. In New York in my bathrobe in the Empty City I go to a Chinese supermarket at 6AM, trying to find juice to mix with my water. I look at the produce for a long time and walk back to the apartment empty-handed. I’m surprised that I have such good direction sense and that everything is where it should be and where I remember, because I think, how many times have I been here? Once or twice before? There is no one anywhere and no sound. Much earlier, I drove my car through snow and around spiraling hills up to a stone hut, and my friends were inside reading aloud by the fire. My car disappeared and my clothes fell away and I was there naked by the fire and their voices all chanted soft familiar dog songs to me and in dreams I slept and slept

…New year haze…

Year started with tinnitus and waves of Jersey sweat from shoving crushing shoulders and backs. The saddest $30 lesson: not 20 anymore. Couldn’t get drinks, couldn’t dance, they didn’t play Helter Skelter. There was a Nazareth video playing, which may have been a good sign.

Everything Is Always Getting Better Always. Where my year of the pig bros at?

Woke up from a dream with saliva running from my 3AM mouth. Earliest I’ve been to sleep in weeks and up from dreams before I’m usually done to begin with. I was in a bathroom of a giant hotel that was hosting Jesus Lizard and Butthole Surfers in the back by the pool. I took a break to get outside and had to wear a white sticker on my hand; I had lost the pink bracelet and my shirt. Walking out down the tiled mosaic floor behind an older man, totally drunk and wearing a ragged suit, walking very slowly. I went upstairs instead of outside. I thought the line upstairs would be shorter and it was empty. The doors were made of polished wood and the floors were clean, the toilets ivory and gold. I had diarrhea and a man looked over the top and I dove out on him, he said what’s wrong with checking to see if you needed extra toilet paper? I told him I had caught him checking to see if I had extra toilet paper earlier in a different bathroom too, and that he was following me. He said well what if I shoot you.

Earlier I had tried to throw tennis balls to my brother and my uncle waist deep in the river. I could only throw them a few feet and the tide kept carrying them back. Earlier I asked my brother if my grampa was in the mob and he said he couldn’t say I and cried. Earlier I walked on a wall past oldest trees at the furthest reaches and up through a cone mouth of wooden stakes that only opened one way, pulled myself up and was on the top of the hotel, out in the city night above everything, and a woman below said “This is all you get.”

OSPREYS tomorrow in Wilmington delaware at that jawn MOJO13. Playing with bad-weed and harshed mellows noise bro Wether, Pink Deserts doing that ugly swirl and Northern Valentine playing the “rock?” sounds.

Wilmington is only 10 minutes from south philly. You can stop to check out Jesus With the Eyes and still make it in 20. Show is at 9:30.

We jammed for an hour today – Bonsky told us to turn it down. New shit with the cello and new tricks is way nice. Incredibly psyched for tour, tell your far flung bros to check it out.

january 18 columbus cafe bourbon st
january 19-20 gambier oh kenyon college
january 21 ??? lexington area ??? anywhere between columbus and nashville – get in touch if you can help this happen
january 22 nashville chris cherry blossoms’ joint
january 23 ??? atl / athens region ??? same thing holler
january 24 columbia sc the whig with KGB graffiti bros + stoked to see k sheild after not returning his email
january 25 durham nc broad st cafe with temple of bon matin
january 26 charlottesville the tea bizarre with matthew playing drums, going to project shogun assassin and play three notes for the whole thing then fall on a sword.

All weirdness and heavy-headed… serious deja-vu in the club last night. We played a tough set, ragged by technical problems throughout, continuing curse of the p.a. = can’t get the right levels, can’t hear anything, bad feedback, emboldened by borrowed amps = falling on my face. Played an old-style guitar thing that didn’t work too well, couldn’t hear mike at all; second one was mic tricks, not bad, would’ve benefitted from the jug’s presence. Third one was key, cello on his side and I played the new march with crushed bass… in all it was nice to play and good to get difficulties sorted before heading out. Naturally we knew the dudes – recognized Wether from somewhere, knew Pink Deserts bros from the church. Jason and the Argonauts was playing on loop at the bar, saw the skeleton warriors rising up three times.

Couldn’t get out of bed this morning, woke up completely terror-domed. No food in the house but not too hungry… genghis dudes practicing new riffs downstairs all morning, probably laid in bed and listened for an hour before I finally got it together to climb down to the dirty floor. Toenails and paper room grit stuck to the bottoms of sweaty feet, a room feeding back. Dreamed I could just sleep through it all and not ever have to get out of bed, perfect stasis up there in the loft, nobody would come to check or bother, I’d never get hungry, just keep slipping in and out of sleep while the genghis dudes riff and the light comes and goes, distant smell of Clay breakfasts and drug cavern classic rock sound, carpet growing longer and thicker, buckling under my loft like a crushed caterpillar, a leech on an arm under squeezing fingers. Found Nutty Steph’s christmas pres while I was cleaning, was my late breakfast from far hills, and I was in that tower and the sun was setting again and again:

Spent the afternoon re-sorting it all, clean paper here, half-dones here, dones here. 2007 marches on and I am packing that ship. Tonight going to trade noise musics with Pink Ds, hopefully check out Jared’s band after missing it too many times. Recorded an hour yesterday, sent four emails, played and still went to bed thinking, What do I have to show for my day? Unbelievable.

Last day in the delph. Retiring to the moms where I will camp out for nine or ten days with what’s left of the beaujolais nouveau. Bringing loud action and intend to deliver bwoom phenomena in the basement and run out of ink in the attic. More ready than ever to go up there.

Me and Sus trimmed Kendra + Laris’s tree after we went to Zach’s joint – Kendra’s was likely the only Christmas thing I will do down here this year.

…There was a time when I drank bourbon by the pint glass and tried my best to walk through the cold streets, teary eyes bending twinkle lights, smiling teeth are the tree ornaments smiling from party to party, from bar to frozen bar, from icicle nights on roofs with comet tracer eyes down to slishing banks, secret and bundled, dragging what’s left of the beaujolais nouveau…

Browsed comic books for about two hours yesterday after a Jersey dude talked to us at great length about his sexual conquests and illegal endevors. Running mouths hit brick walls, brah.

Cut a snowflake for the tree at Kendra’s, first one in two years.

Sus and I also brainstormed ideas for our new TV show. We haven’t come up with a title for it yet but man, stay tuned. I want to call it Late Night With Conan O’Bryan but that probably won’t stick. This will be in the new year around the same time I start doing the Dopesmoker book/cartoon and the DVD will not have any extras, because Susy hates DVD extras.

I took the big thing I was working on in Christian St out of storage and got back to working on that yesterday. I’m doing another big OCD thing with small white lines too. Former done in a week or so if I bring it home, latter will take a month. Doing websites for Laris this week too, Dag Hammerskjold stuff, endless blog chasing.

Riding downtown today to get presents.

I finished my job yesterday. I am golden inside.

I couldn’t sleep for anticipation last night. I ended up getting out of bed and writing for a while, having a sandwich and watching TV in my robe. I’m looking forward to visiting my mom next week, to playing shows every day in 2007, to finishing every project I start, to beginning projects that will take me years to finish, to doing everything there is to do and right. I am gloriously unbound again and so thankful and so glad to be here in this most ridiculous of cities. Everything is perfect and right after so many false starts. Every year is so much better than the last.

I had lunch at the creperie I like this afternoon. I bought Susy that porcelain cat, so she will always remember this ridiculous week. (She has been incapacitated and we’ve been watching dumb movies together since last Thursday.) I’m tired and blown out by overwhelming blossom. Maybe I will write a funny or cryptic thing later this week. I have so much free time now, and I’ve sworn to use it.

This was the first week in five or six years I’ve spent so much time trying to learn how to do computers. My blog almost looks like a blog now, right?

Huge disturbances in the balance of power last night. Feeling of a large mass passing very near, an enormous black gravity sailing slowly, extending forever in either direction. This is not meant to be Cryptic Blog, but it is my blog afterall, and I reserve the right to go on like this from time to time. Anyway, the occasion has been duly marked. More details at a more appropriate time.

My high school is closing next year. The first thing I thought was, what will they do with the building? Will they let anyone use it as practice space?

Made pasta florentine again and cooked chicken in the leftover sauce and then ate the leftover chicken on sandwiches with hummus.

At work today that Modern Classics Clockwork Orange turned up again.

My advice to you is this: do not become a janitor, because there will be days when a person comes into the bathroom you are cleaning, has his way with a toilet, and then leaves without flushing. I remain sure that this job is purely karmic. Do I get paid? I don’t even know anymore. I walked across the lawn with a bale of dirty sheets and the sun was beginning to set and my stomach growled, yawning gray, distant marathon feet, cobwebs that grow back, ants on the trashcans, bucket full of rainwater and leaves. Susy had made chocolate chip cookies and I ate one in my car and had Nutty Steph’s.

Do you play drums? Do you want to play drums and guitar with me for four to six straight hours next week? Blaine went to Minnesota, we were going to, but I planned badly.