So, with fingers crossed and curved every which-a-way, there should be the following prepared by september:
-website
-album
-music video
speaking of the latter--are you a cute guy in los angeles available aug. 10th-15th? i need a cute guy to be in the music video. you may be objectified for your cuteness. email me if interested.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Up!
David Bowie died in my dream, in passing, in the newspaper. I immediately checked when I woke up, and luckily the thin white duke breathes on. The rest of my dream included having to chase my brother through a snow storm over the Alps, and hanging out in a classroom with my ex-boyfriend, which I'm sure was an internal plot to sabotage my upcoming date with a tree surgeon. For real!
Gifts
Here are some tricks.
The 9 Felonies in Common Law:
MR. & MRS. LAMB
Murder
Rape
Manslaughter
Robbery
Sodomy
Larceny
Arson
Mayhem
Burglary
P.S.
Robbery is the taking or attempting to take something of value from another person by use of force, threats or intimidation [a stick up.]
Burglary is the unlawful entry of a ‘structure’ to commit a felony or a theft [a break-in].
Larceny is similar to burglary. The major difference between the two is that the perpetrator did not illegally enter a structure by using forcible, non- forcible or attempted forcible entry (with the exception of a motor vehicle.) Along with motor vehicle theft, larcenies can include purse snatching, shoplifting, theft of any bicycle, fraud, embezzlement, identity theft, forgery, con games, etc.
Members of OPEC: (Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries)
LIV A QUIK SIN
Libya
Iran
Venezuela
Algeria
Qatar
United Arab Emirates
Indonesia
Kuwait
Saudi Arabia
Iraq
Nigeria
The Four Largest Human Bones:
FEMA Told Fibs Humorously.
Femur
Tibia
Fibula
Humerus
and finally:
What year did the Wright Brothers fly?
The Brothers had glee in 1903.
You can all thank Rod L. Evans, Ph.D for this sesame streetlike interlude.
The 9 Felonies in Common Law:
MR. & MRS. LAMB
Murder
Rape
Manslaughter
Robbery
Sodomy
Larceny
Arson
Mayhem
Burglary
P.S.
Robbery is the taking or attempting to take something of value from another person by use of force, threats or intimidation [a stick up.]
Burglary is the unlawful entry of a ‘structure’ to commit a felony or a theft [a break-in].
Larceny is similar to burglary. The major difference between the two is that the perpetrator did not illegally enter a structure by using forcible, non- forcible or attempted forcible entry (with the exception of a motor vehicle.) Along with motor vehicle theft, larcenies can include purse snatching, shoplifting, theft of any bicycle, fraud, embezzlement, identity theft, forgery, con games, etc.
Members of OPEC: (Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries)
LIV A QUIK SIN
Libya
Iran
Venezuela
Algeria
Qatar
United Arab Emirates
Indonesia
Kuwait
Saudi Arabia
Iraq
Nigeria
The Four Largest Human Bones:
FEMA Told Fibs Humorously.
Femur
Tibia
Fibula
Humerus
and finally:
What year did the Wright Brothers fly?
The Brothers had glee in 1903.
You can all thank Rod L. Evans, Ph.D for this sesame streetlike interlude.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
the littles
Top moments today, teaching a choir of 6-8 year olds:
-A tiny paper airplane shooting out from the back row, landing at my feet.
-One of the kids going to the bathroom, and then, when the choir paused, her little voice singing plaintively from behind the door, making everyone giggle.
-one of the boys, anxious during the solo announcements, holding his hands in his lap with every single finger crossed over one another. I forgot about hoping that hard.
-A tiny paper airplane shooting out from the back row, landing at my feet.
-One of the kids going to the bathroom, and then, when the choir paused, her little voice singing plaintively from behind the door, making everyone giggle.
-one of the boys, anxious during the solo announcements, holding his hands in his lap with every single finger crossed over one another. I forgot about hoping that hard.
Monday, July 21, 2008
chugga chugga chugga
I feel a little over-run by my own brain, which is almost chattering melodies rather than churning them out. i dutifully draw ledger lines in the back of The Orchid Thief and conduct in the air for a moment before drawing tiny little tadpole heads. and all the while this feeling that lands me facedown yelling in a pillow, everyone's transient everyone is transient nobody here 100 years All New People. I crouch into music, cello shield, despair swoops hawk-like. people don't stick! I cry into my brain, and my brain reprocesses frantically and delivers red-faced arpeggios. Kneeling before my keyboard, I try mixing midi flute with midi marimba to see if it sounds nice. it does. A sparse midi tango beat gently marries the two. the john updike collection near my bed is crawling with rabbits. Zelda and I made a book today called the Almost Everything book, which she spelled Olmost Evreething. She came over to me in a nightgown with two silk ruffly shoulder pads, also with a weighty and drooping milk moustache and a powdered sugar beard. She had clearly just licked her plate after eating all the pancakes on it, then, with all the powdered sugar taste still starchy, drank the milk. As I sat in the armchair, surrounded by moving boxes, she stood before me and declared "I don't like being alone!" A part of me swiftly reawakened, as if in response to an accusation of absence.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Knock knock
Here are some rules and hints for teachers and students. I found these in The Wind's closet, and they've been providing some rhythm within lately. There's some internet controversy over whether Sister Corita or John Cage wrote these rules, but maybe they're just the same person actually would be a better controversy?
RULE 1: Find a place you trust and then, try trusting it for a while.
RULE 1: Find a place you trust and then, try trusting it for a while.
RULE 2: GENERAL DUTIES AS A STUDENT
Pull everything out of your teacher.
Pull everything out of your fellow students.
RULE 3: GENERAL DUTY AS A TEACHER
Pull everything out of your students.
RULE 4: Consider everything an experiment.
RULE 5: Be self disciplined.
This means finding someone smart or wise and choosing to follow them.
To be disciplined is to follow in a good way.
To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.
RULE 6: Follow the leader
Nothing is a mistake.
There is no win and no fail.
There is only make.
RULE 7: The only rule is work
If you work it will lead to something.
It is the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch onto things.
You can fool the fans - but not the players.
RULE 8: Do not try to create and analyze at the same time. They are different processes.
RULE 9: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It is lighter than you think.
RULE 10: We are breaking all the rules, even our own rules and how do we do that?
By leaving plenty of room for 'x' qualities.
HELPFUL HINTS:
Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes.
Read everything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully and often.
Save everything. It may come in handy later.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
but he's a robot!
The last time I was in los angeles, I fell for a robot. He approached me after a show and complimented my performance, in his deliriously objective monotone. The robot wore a bowtie and was significantly taller than me, and I gazed into his streamlined face and thanked him.
A few of my friends know that I now like to think about the Robot and write to him and, when I have downtime in the afternoon, have gentle daydreams about us doing things like going and buying fruit in a nice supermarket, as opposed to an outdoor market because I hate how warm fruit gets at outdoor markets. When I read his letters, my brain quietly undulates in ways it hasn't for months, if not years. It's an unassuming sort of rippling, like placid noiseless finger-length wave rolls on a pond, maybe from a bug jumping in the water. I maintain my identity and do not jump on planes and meet the Robot in the airport where he could pick me up in his extension of his body that would fold out for me like a motorcycle sidekick sidecar deal. I just write back.
Beyond all this, I'm writing. Every day. I am getting to know stories intimately, seeing them as possible from all angles, being an architect and a massage therapist and a best friend and an intellectual stimulant with stories, breaking a story's heart, learning what the Robot mentioned when he said in what I picture a very solemn voice:
"Every culture in the history of man has thought it important to tell stories, and ours has effectively rebuilt cities to this end [i.e. universal films backlot]...there is an inherent, evolutionarily important need to document and satirize life...there are guidelines to story telling, and that by looking at life with those in mind, everything is easier to cope with."
The point of this story that I tell you, and say to terrify you and tell me to turn back and the killer is right behind that door, is to break it down and look at you so truthfully when I say it: I am very slightly emotionally invested, about the same rate of emotional investment as I might have to a really good apple that I know is in the refrigerator and I'm driving home and can't wait for it to split open in my mouth. Can't quite say it. Yes I can. I'm excited for that robot apple. and aspire to perhaps hold up residency in kind, be my own apple in the center of his robotic eye.
A few of my friends know that I now like to think about the Robot and write to him and, when I have downtime in the afternoon, have gentle daydreams about us doing things like going and buying fruit in a nice supermarket, as opposed to an outdoor market because I hate how warm fruit gets at outdoor markets. When I read his letters, my brain quietly undulates in ways it hasn't for months, if not years. It's an unassuming sort of rippling, like placid noiseless finger-length wave rolls on a pond, maybe from a bug jumping in the water. I maintain my identity and do not jump on planes and meet the Robot in the airport where he could pick me up in his extension of his body that would fold out for me like a motorcycle sidekick sidecar deal. I just write back.
Beyond all this, I'm writing. Every day. I am getting to know stories intimately, seeing them as possible from all angles, being an architect and a massage therapist and a best friend and an intellectual stimulant with stories, breaking a story's heart, learning what the Robot mentioned when he said in what I picture a very solemn voice:
"Every culture in the history of man has thought it important to tell stories, and ours has effectively rebuilt cities to this end [i.e. universal films backlot]...there is an inherent, evolutionarily important need to document and satirize life...there are guidelines to story telling, and that by looking at life with those in mind, everything is easier to cope with."
The point of this story that I tell you, and say to terrify you and tell me to turn back and the killer is right behind that door, is to break it down and look at you so truthfully when I say it: I am very slightly emotionally invested, about the same rate of emotional investment as I might have to a really good apple that I know is in the refrigerator and I'm driving home and can't wait for it to split open in my mouth. Can't quite say it. Yes I can. I'm excited for that robot apple. and aspire to perhaps hold up residency in kind, be my own apple in the center of his robotic eye.
Zelda
The definition of a little girl is standing in the doorway, asking me in a half-whine to please try to catch that butterfly in the backyard. Looking out the door, I see a wavering ocean of overgrown plants. Poking out of the grass are two playsets, but the determined backyard has reclaimed them both in the name of nature--anyone sliding down the slide would get a mouthful of spiderweb. I squint. The butterfly is actually a papery moth, and would require extensive navigational tactics. I say I don't think I can get to it in time, but maybe today's goal should be to catch a butterfly. Zelda gives me a Lucille Ball-like grimace, her eyes inflating and the corners of her mouth dipping down comically. This is my favorite face.
We're standing barefoot in the kitchen, on a floor covered in glazed pieces of brightly colored pots and crockery, cool under our feet, as we're essentially walking on dishes. Her mother designed it. A small cd player is in the middle of the kitchen floor, and my voice is drifting out of the speakers. Zelda seems to feel my songs; she starts to sing a little while moving in a distracted half-dance, smiling at me almost encouragingly, like i should dance to my own voice with her. I'm very anxious for her opinion. I find children to be the most honest critics, if not the most important. At six, Zelda is at a ripe age for honesty.
"So do you like it?" I venture, squatting beside her.
Her face gets serious. She says plainly, "Why don't you make more of these CD's and sell them?" which wraps me up warmly inside the center of a star.
As we sit on the porch, eating strawberry jam directly out of the jar, I contemplate my love for Zelda. She's named after Zelda Fitzgerald, and that's all she really knows about that. She has aspirations of being a paleontologist, surrounding herself with as much literature about dinosaurs as she can check out from the juvenile section of the local library. A plastic bin crammed with dinosaurs and one stray My Little Pony waits in the bathtub.
I don't know why, but I correlate the fact that she doesn't go to school with the fact that she's consistently pleasantly unkempt. If I might adopt the six-year-old criteria for friendship, where ties form very quickly with a lack of forethought on either side, then Zelda and I are best friends. We've eaten popsicles together in the crawlspace of my attic, where we took turns peering out of the beautiful window that opens out rather than up, like a drawbridge. We've played cards together (war and crazy eights) using her special dinosaur-themed cards. We've covered my driveway in chalk. She left her favorite stuffed animal, a bunny with no face named Patricia, in the back of my car, and, after a flurry of questions about why i wanted to know and making me swear I wouldn't tell anyone, especially not her sister, she showed me the best hiding place in her house. She makes a lot of faces at me throughout the 3 hours I babysit her, all under a tangle of blonde hair, and usually baring her teeth slightly. The front teeth must have come in early, and they're oddly chipped; they look like two tiny square paws.
We're allowed to sit on her roof, and we did yesterday, with her older sister (11, harder to read). The roof and our presence felt nearly holy, or at least oddly nostalgic, like someone was using a gold filter over the moment.
Zelda's mother was on the porch below, nursing a cigarette. I'd just spoken to her downstairs, or rather she spoke to me, warbling through her southern drawl "Ah get a little jealous sometimes, Ah get short with Zelda sometimes. Cos I never got to be six." blows out smoke and laughs. "And then she says 'mama whaddya mean you never got to be six?'"She's a doughy woman, wears dresses that look a lot like Zelda's in terms of how much they cover up. She's occasionally bra-less and her legs are always bare, and flecked with brightly colored paint, the same colors I often find all over her children. I imagine her hips as having indentations where her fists fit. Sometimes her face has a flash of Zelda in it. It's not quite a physical likeness of her, but more like the expression Zelda has when I pose her a question like 3+1+1. "But, if you've got one foot in the past and one in the present, then you're just pissin' on today, you know?" she follows this with a volume of laughter that I really wish I could match, because then I would feel more like a woman.
On the roof, Zelda leans next to me and I ask her, on a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you?
She looks at me and says whaddya mean?
Well, if one is low and ten is as happy as possible.
She still looks confused.
Out of 1 to 10, how happy are you?
"A hundred!" she yells, incredulous that I could limit the possibilities like that.
Ten minutes later, as I'm leaving, I can't find her. Her mom points me into the bathroom, where she is standing in the corner by the sink, her face buried in a towel.
"Bye Zelda," I say nicely.
"Bye," comes muffled through the towel.
"Can I see your pretty face before I go?" I touch her shoulder lightly.
No.
here she is in a video her sister shot on her phone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJPplWaExxU
sometimes i feel like if i don't write i will explode, and i guess that is a good thing.
We're standing barefoot in the kitchen, on a floor covered in glazed pieces of brightly colored pots and crockery, cool under our feet, as we're essentially walking on dishes. Her mother designed it. A small cd player is in the middle of the kitchen floor, and my voice is drifting out of the speakers. Zelda seems to feel my songs; she starts to sing a little while moving in a distracted half-dance, smiling at me almost encouragingly, like i should dance to my own voice with her. I'm very anxious for her opinion. I find children to be the most honest critics, if not the most important. At six, Zelda is at a ripe age for honesty.
"So do you like it?" I venture, squatting beside her.
Her face gets serious. She says plainly, "Why don't you make more of these CD's and sell them?" which wraps me up warmly inside the center of a star.
As we sit on the porch, eating strawberry jam directly out of the jar, I contemplate my love for Zelda. She's named after Zelda Fitzgerald, and that's all she really knows about that. She has aspirations of being a paleontologist, surrounding herself with as much literature about dinosaurs as she can check out from the juvenile section of the local library. A plastic bin crammed with dinosaurs and one stray My Little Pony waits in the bathtub.
I don't know why, but I correlate the fact that she doesn't go to school with the fact that she's consistently pleasantly unkempt. If I might adopt the six-year-old criteria for friendship, where ties form very quickly with a lack of forethought on either side, then Zelda and I are best friends. We've eaten popsicles together in the crawlspace of my attic, where we took turns peering out of the beautiful window that opens out rather than up, like a drawbridge. We've played cards together (war and crazy eights) using her special dinosaur-themed cards. We've covered my driveway in chalk. She left her favorite stuffed animal, a bunny with no face named Patricia, in the back of my car, and, after a flurry of questions about why i wanted to know and making me swear I wouldn't tell anyone, especially not her sister, she showed me the best hiding place in her house. She makes a lot of faces at me throughout the 3 hours I babysit her, all under a tangle of blonde hair, and usually baring her teeth slightly. The front teeth must have come in early, and they're oddly chipped; they look like two tiny square paws.
We're allowed to sit on her roof, and we did yesterday, with her older sister (11, harder to read). The roof and our presence felt nearly holy, or at least oddly nostalgic, like someone was using a gold filter over the moment.
Zelda's mother was on the porch below, nursing a cigarette. I'd just spoken to her downstairs, or rather she spoke to me, warbling through her southern drawl "Ah get a little jealous sometimes, Ah get short with Zelda sometimes. Cos I never got to be six." blows out smoke and laughs. "And then she says 'mama whaddya mean you never got to be six?'"She's a doughy woman, wears dresses that look a lot like Zelda's in terms of how much they cover up. She's occasionally bra-less and her legs are always bare, and flecked with brightly colored paint, the same colors I often find all over her children. I imagine her hips as having indentations where her fists fit. Sometimes her face has a flash of Zelda in it. It's not quite a physical likeness of her, but more like the expression Zelda has when I pose her a question like 3+1+1. "But, if you've got one foot in the past and one in the present, then you're just pissin' on today, you know?" she follows this with a volume of laughter that I really wish I could match, because then I would feel more like a woman.
On the roof, Zelda leans next to me and I ask her, on a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you?
She looks at me and says whaddya mean?
Well, if one is low and ten is as happy as possible.
She still looks confused.
Out of 1 to 10, how happy are you?
"A hundred!" she yells, incredulous that I could limit the possibilities like that.
Ten minutes later, as I'm leaving, I can't find her. Her mom points me into the bathroom, where she is standing in the corner by the sink, her face buried in a towel.
"Bye Zelda," I say nicely.
"Bye," comes muffled through the towel.
"Can I see your pretty face before I go?" I touch her shoulder lightly.
No.
here she is in a video her sister shot on her phone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJPplWaExxU
sometimes i feel like if i don't write i will explode, and i guess that is a good thing.
Friday, July 11, 2008
steering whales, radiant brains, and resuming contact
Three days a week I drive a great white whale of a van, and on those days the whale slowly empties and refills itself with old people. Elderly people are teaching me about patience. On average, it takes an old person two and a half minutes to get into my van, which means I can mentally drag my hand over my face about seventeen times. I'm genial with them, I comment earnestly on the weather, but I try to pose meatier questions--how long have you lived here? What did you do? Can they cram 70+ years of their lives into a 6 minute shuttle ride? They love settling into the past tense.
"I was in a mortar attack in Korea that killed everyone in my regiment but me," one man says grimly, after I ask him how he enjoyed the 4th of July. "Fireworks aren't really my thing anymore. When they start going off, I want to wave a white flag out the window or something." It hadn't always been that way. In the mid 1930's, his family used to drive from Berkeley to Oakland on independence day, and they'd lay out a picnic and watch the fireworks along the river. "But now," he says wryly, "I just don't want anybody popping off any balloons behind me or anything."
"I attended school here from '49-'53," muses another. "Not many people'd remember this, but I remember when the Fremont bridge was being built on the barges and then was floated to where it is today, lifted with screws and all that--I guess Archimedes did his job," he chuckles. "I had my two kids and was going through a divorce at the time, so that bridge was good cheap entertainment."
"You should really get a stool for us old folks," one withered woman interrupts. She has thick white hair and ironic super-hero-like sunglasses. Captain Snippy.
I wrote a mini-song about one of my favorite passengers, an older giggly woman with a horrible crop of moles all over her neck and cheek.
"Joan
Joan
You're so cute
Your socks always match
Your sweatpants suit"
In more melodramatic news, where are the bright batches of people? The papers try to convince me I don't live in a town this quiet. No matter; I have a code, one that dials into everyone. It buzzes nutso when it's time to clink ideas together.
But as of late, I'm running low on the brains that whirr and glow. I'll keep flipping for a match. One day I'll strike, and the match will catch.
oh my god, my phone just turned back on.
--ariana
"I was in a mortar attack in Korea that killed everyone in my regiment but me," one man says grimly, after I ask him how he enjoyed the 4th of July. "Fireworks aren't really my thing anymore. When they start going off, I want to wave a white flag out the window or something." It hadn't always been that way. In the mid 1930's, his family used to drive from Berkeley to Oakland on independence day, and they'd lay out a picnic and watch the fireworks along the river. "But now," he says wryly, "I just don't want anybody popping off any balloons behind me or anything."
"I attended school here from '49-'53," muses another. "Not many people'd remember this, but I remember when the Fremont bridge was being built on the barges and then was floated to where it is today, lifted with screws and all that--I guess Archimedes did his job," he chuckles. "I had my two kids and was going through a divorce at the time, so that bridge was good cheap entertainment."
"You should really get a stool for us old folks," one withered woman interrupts. She has thick white hair and ironic super-hero-like sunglasses. Captain Snippy.
I wrote a mini-song about one of my favorite passengers, an older giggly woman with a horrible crop of moles all over her neck and cheek.
"Joan
Joan
You're so cute
Your socks always match
Your sweatpants suit"
In more melodramatic news, where are the bright batches of people? The papers try to convince me I don't live in a town this quiet. No matter; I have a code, one that dials into everyone. It buzzes nutso when it's time to clink ideas together.
But as of late, I'm running low on the brains that whirr and glow. I'll keep flipping for a match. One day I'll strike, and the match will catch.
oh my god, my phone just turned back on.
--ariana
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