Did You See Jupiter?

You feel so much more alive reading Walt Whitman, don’t you?

Tonight outside Moe’s bar in Brooklyn this toothless guy wandered up murmuring crack talk about did we see his magic paper, where was his magic paper, there was a magic paper somewhere here or there. He picked up a piece of NY Press discarded in the street, ripped it to shreds, then methodically folded it back together into a tear-free piece of pristine newsprint. Then he pulled out a deck of cards and did a seriously freaky trick that involved my friends standing on any two of three cards he threw down, leaving my covertly chosen 7 of spades there to be flipped up untouched.

His name was Magic.

Hatebeak — a death metal band fronted by a parrot. Single, "Beak Of Putrefaction," hearable here in this archived WFMU radio show. It's a death metal band fronted by a parrot.

Went to a benefit for Downtown For Democracy tonight and saw a James Chance set most notable for the extent to which he sweated through his suit-jacket and the clarity with which his band’s lachrymose (not disco? not disco) lounge jazz evoked images of “Bobby” vamping in Twin Peaks. Gang Gang Dance sounded like what would happen if you left your cat home with a Kate Bush record and a copy of the Broklyn Beats Sic comp. Excepter weren’t as good as they were a couple weeks ago, but I really like what they’re onto (if what they’re onto is in fact what I think it might be).

Crypticness is unbecoming, I know, but the humidity in Brooklyn right now won’t allow much else.

Here's an interview I did with the extremely great Nellie McKay. Some of the more colorful stuff I liked was cut from the top: she had this great story about her mom picking her up from school in a blue VW Bug with an orange hood and a camouflage bumper—a "very charismatic car" in her words.

Got in a rich little tangle re the gesture-derived value of rock vs. non-rock tonight and had any ideological points I’d scored on a guy firmly in favor of the former pretty much wiped away by Keith Moon coming on whatever mix CD my roommate was playing. Battle conceded for the ease of conversation, war very far from over.

Here’s a mix I made to send to Brian Greene, the author of The Fabric Of The Cosmos: Space, Time, And The Texture Of Reality, a book about quantum mechanics that I very much liked.

THE VARIABLE SUM OF QUANTUM HUM

1. ALL – Logopedie 99 (Kompakt)
2. FREILAND – Rot (Kompakt)
3. BOXTYPE – Spin (Shitkatapult)
4. THEOREM VS. STEWART WALKER – Minor Explosions (M-nus)
5. I.A. BERICOCHEA – R3 (M-nus)
6. FALSE – Flack (Plus 8)
7. PANTYTEC – Micromission (Perlon)
8. PHONIQUE – Trip To Texas (Poker Flat)
9. JEREMY P. CAUFIELD – Ripped Backsides (Trapez)
10. FARBEN – Raute (Klang Elektronik)
11. SND – Circa 1509 (Mille Plateaux)
12. THOMAS BRINKMANN – 0101 (Max Ernst)
13. GRAMM – Siemens.Bioport (Source)

Tried to keep the banging stuff to a physicist-friendly minimum, though I’d like to think that workers down at your nearest neighborhood particle accelerator could stand to benefit from a little head-nodding here and there. Minimal techno made a terrific soundtrack to reading about particle waves and Higgs fields and the like…descriptions and images serving as a sort of ambient background to music that clearly understood that which can’t be clearly understood.

I wish I understood the sound barrier better. I wish my plants were more full of verve. I wish TV would be more experimental. I wish Deleuze was readable. I wish keyboards didn’t seem so set in their ways. I wish my friend’s Ducati had ample room for another. I wish water didn’t taste so plastic. I wish my fireplace wasn’t seasonal. I wish fish exhibited more personality. I wish time held out an out-clause. I wish appreciating repetition didn’t take so much explaining. I wish words could wiggle, empirically. I wish all umbrellas were red. I wish M. Mayer would finish his album. I wish . I wish Aerobies were taught in school. I wish magic didn’t seem so Olde World. I wish I’d find an Eames chair on the street. I wish I could hear my blood, for a bit. I wish my creaky apartment would come out with it already. I wish ice cream didn’t make me sick. I wish that bird today had relieved itself elsewhere. I wish Chaplin had a suitable heir. I wish ashes struck me as more ethereal. I wish the many and the few would gather for a root beer. I wish the worms in apples had a name I knew.