from: MY MUSICAL EDUCATION, 2

I was twenty-five, but still FSN (fairly snot nosed), living in a large bay-windowed room in a substantial house in Ashbury Heights, just below mount Olympus, with artsy-crazy housemates, and I was still playing the flute a little.

Through conductor Norman Masonson, a true light in my early life, I had met briefly another gay musician, Neal LoMonaco. Neal was an accomplished cellist who was building a career as a soloist, which is quite daring compared to taking a secure job in an orchestra, for which he was completely qualified.

We discovered that Neal lived just a block away from me in Ashbury Heights, and there were the usual let’s-get-togethers. There was no particular sexual chemistry or any other reason to see each other, but Neal was certainly nice enough.

One gentle autumn evening, after work, I smoked some exceptional marijuana before setting out for a walk down toward Haight Street. A few doors onto Masonic I heard a cello though the open windows at the front of a house.

I wonder if that’s Neal, I thought. At the top of the stairs one of the doorbells was labeled LoMonaco, so I pushed it.

I told Neal that I heard him playing and wondered if I could just sit and listen. I’d brought a joint of that great stuff and he got really stoned. Then he returned to his cello and I reclined in a comfy chair across the room.

Neal was about to play when he got an idea. He picked up his chair and his instrument and brought them and sat right in front of me so that my knees were maybe twelve inches from the strings. And for the next hour or so he played Bach, for me. To be closer I’d have had to climb into the soundbox. At that range the music was tactile.

I think that in the days of Bach, chamber music was so called because it was intended for performance in a room, chamber, of some noble person’s living quarters, not for an assembled audience, but for the inhabitants of the house.

Bach wrote the delightful “Goldberg Variations” for a court-harpsichordist friend of his named Goldberg, who had been tasked with helping his insomniac patron fall asleep. You can imagine the grumpy patron tossing and turning, maybe using the chamber pot, while poor Goldberg played in trepidation.

But regardless of rank or riches, no listener in the history of the world has ever been closer to a cello being played by a virtuoso than I was that Indian-summer evening in 1973, an exceptional and unexpected pleasure obtained because I was brave (or stoned) enough to ring a near-stranger’s doorbell.

I doubt if I ever saw Neal again. There was no reason to and soon I was out of that scene. He died at age 41 of AIDS in 1987.

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GRAVE PISSING

I thought Pud would be happy to hear that Alfredo Stroessner had died. The tin horn dictator of Paraguay, host to Nazi fugitives including Martin Bormann and Josep Mengele, oppressor of his people, crook, murderer, and, of course, ally of the United States, died last month. Pravda provides a nice little obit.

Instead of elating, the news annoyed my friend Pudinhand Wilson. “Another goddamn grave to piss on,” he said.

Turns out Pud has a list of graves that he feels obligated to desecrate. “There’s no way these fuckers deserve to rest in peace!”

Pud feels bad—because he’s so lazy, he hasn’t gotten around to pissing on any graves yet—time’s running out and the list of sites requiring Pud’s attention grows exponentially, like the world’s population.

“You know, Pud,” I said, “there must be plenty of people just like you, who, for one reason or another can’t make it to Paraguay to desecrate Stroessner’s grave. The next best thing would be to see video of someone else doing it. That way they could rest assured that his grave actually had been desecrated. Here’s the ideal business for you—travel, pee, travel, pee, etc. I don’t know how you’d market it… I’m thinking something like Girls Gone Wild.”

“You’re a genius!” Pud said as he jumped to his feet to do his “dance of cogitation.”

“This is sensational! My mission in life has been revealed. I gotta renew my passport, cash in some CD’s, get a video camera, and I’m off.”

“Pud,” I said, “it was a joke.”

“One man’s joke is another man’s toke,” Pud said dismissively.

“What about karma?”

“You mean that hippie chick in high school, Karma McIntyre? We’re the only two guys in our graduating class who never fucked her. Man, talk about free love!”

“No, asshole,” I said, “I mean the future of your soul.

“If you weren’t such a procrastinating piece of shit you already would have done it. You don’t have to go to Paraguay to find a grave worth pissing on. There’s probably a dozen fascists buried within an hour’s drive from here.”

“Yeah, fuck you.” Pud said, “I should have let you die.” When Pud says this, it means he wants to move on to some other line of thought, thank God.

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GARY SNYDER'S POEMS SUCK BIGTIME

In a recent post my blog-mentor sfmike covered an art opening that included a wall hanging (oversized beach towel) supposedly some famous mandala, which was contributed by “poet Gary Snyder, no less.”

I chided Michael for being impressed by mere fame, and challenged him to identify two “really good” poems by Gary Snyder.

Later I googled upon an essay about Gary Snyder, supposedly a glowing one, by Kenneth Rexroth (same challenge). Rexroth’s essay includes the following:

I once long ago said to Gary that Buddhism was the assumption of unlimited liability for the community of love, and Gary said, “The best way to put that is unlimited interiority in the community of love.” For the Buddhist vision is the empirical, prime reality. Nirvana is samsara. The world is the transcendent. Illusion is illumination. The disciple holds up a flower and Buddha laughs, and all the Buddhas of all the Buddha worlds of all the infinities of infinities light up and laugh. The point is flower. How right the interbellum culture was to make a saint of that sick man, Kierkegaard. There is no interiority there, only a horrified utter exteriority. “Who is Buddha?” “I think I’ll cook bean cake for supper.” In the necklace of Shiva every diamond reflects every other and is itself reflected.

If you think that maybe the above paragraph is anything but nonsense, then you might be able to form a similar opinion about Gary Snyder’s poetry. For me Buddha-bullshit is no more or less interesting than Jesus-bullshit or Mohammed-bullshit.

Here’s some basic stuff by Gary Snyder. This is the kind of crap that gives poetry a bad name.

So, rather than be completely negative I’ll mention a really good poet who shows up in some of the modern poetry anthologies along with Gary Snyder. His name is Jackson Mac Low. I haven’t actually read much of him, except for a few delightful anthology pieces, but for some reason his name came to mind when I asked myself, Who of that generation (besides the obvious Allen Ginsberg, Edward Field, Michael McClure) was a “real” poet.

The first thing I found on the net by Jackson Mac Low is exquisite, “9 Light Poems.” They have the same strong voice, the same command that I remember from reading him years ago, and the same wonderful shtick--exasperation rescued by playfulness.

You be the judge.

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P. Wilson: THE BOOK OF CHRISTIAN TORTURE

I can understand a docile press, I guess, but where’s the goddamn clergy?

There’s been a ton of discussion about US treatment of international detainees (not to mention domestic police practice) in the news lately. Much of the discussion centers on whether the US is bound by international laws and treaties. Another part of the discussion is whether specific techniques amount to “torture.” The third consideration is whether it is advisable in the long run for the US to employ torture. Bringing up the rear is any thought of whether or not torture is moral.

On this last issue we’ve heard barely a peep out of our Christian nation’s Christian clergy. I’m going to end that, by compiling definitive opinions from representatives of any and all Christian denominations currently operating in the United States.

It’ll be pretty simple. The table of contents will be a list of interrogation/torture techniques currently in use around the world.

For each technique, e.q., electrodes clipped to testicles for electric shocks, clergymen would answer just three questions: Would Jesus do it?, Is it ok for a Christian minister to participate? Is it ok for a regular Christian to do it?

We could rank the various torture techniques from mildest to most extreme. So we could see at what level each denomination drops their approval. Some sects might approve holding a gun to a prisoner’s head, but would disapprove actually killing him.

This would also pertain within a particular technique. Some sects might approve sleep deprivation by blasting loud music, as long as it’s Christian music. Other sects might say any music was ok. Or, when it comes to throwing uncooperative prisoners out of helicopters, most ministers would agree that the number tossed to their deaths should be limited to what’s necessary to extract cooperation from the remaining prisoners.

Of course there would be a really juicy appendix of torture techniques actually employed throughout history by Christian denominations. This will ensure perv-sales.

Interested agents, publishers, contributors, please reply by comment to this post.

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PUD'S IMPEACHMENT ADVICE

You dumbfuck democrats talking about impeaching Bush:

The impeachment of Clinton was a colossal parody of what impeachment should be. It wasted money and time and attention. I want my congresspeople to spend their time making life better for us, not fucking around with impeachment. Of course, there is sufficient cause to impeach Bush, but is there necessary cause? I think you have better things to do with your time. Please, give us bread, not circuses.

However, if you really must do some impeaching, impeach Cheney. Almost everybody hates that fucker, as opposed to Bush, whom some people seem to like personally, perhaps because he’s not threateningly cerebral.

So, the line is: Bush is a good guy who was betrayed by his vice-president. It was Cheney how got us into Iraq, Cheney who ordered Abu Graighb, Gitmo, and rendition for torture. Heck, it was Cheney who picked Rumsfeld and together they undermined that nice light-skinned Black man Colin Powell (we’ll forget that Powell told lies to the UN that got thousands of people killed, apparantely in exchange for x-billions of AIDS help for Africa, figuring, I suppose, that death is death).

Who the heck is going to step forward to defend Cheney? People voted for Bush, not necessarily for Cheney. Cheney’s going to die soon anyway, God willing. And Bush is just a beer stain on the pages of history, he isn’t even worth impeaching. Going after Bush is like impeaching Howdy Doody and letting Buffalo Bob go free.


Look it up, Congress can impeach any federal officeholder, not just the president.

There’s your marching papers, you puling excuses for leaders. Why does it take some dopey slacker with the name Pudinhand Wilson to think this shit up for you?

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ONE TWO PUNCH

"I'm getting tired of the blues."

Pudinhand Wilson

Pud wants me to the help Democrats by telling them a useful word to use in the upcoming campaign. He wants me to write it a hundred times.

Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less Warrant-less.


So I'm thinking: why don’t the Dems press the Repubs on this? It’s so obvious. Nobody on the face of the earth is opposed to wiretapping. Equally, none of us wants to give the cops blanket permission to enter our homes without a warrant, which is Bush’s program exactly. The administration has never explained why FISA warrants can’t be obtained.

So I'm thinking, What IS the relationship between the Democrats and the Republicans? Finally, after watching my five-millionth episode of Law and Order, it dawned on me—good cop/bad cop.

The Republicans are the bad cops, the Democrats the good cops. They work together to extract from the citizenry not a confession but their consent to be governed, and of course, taxed. That consent is expressed in the vote.

By this logic, those who don’t vote, at least here in America in 2006, are the one’s who have wised-up

Alexander Cockburn’s recent piece deals with the pathetic hope that electing democrats will somehow do some substantial good.

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