Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson

I saw Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson lst night and it was AMAZING. Favorite moments included, "i'm going to tell you how I feel now" followed by moody folksong, followed soon by chorus who rocked, "Michel Foucault would have an explanation for that but he's not born yet" followed by me booming with laughter thanking grad school for understanding that.


Also a highlight, was a song poking fun at art/songwriting, where Andrew Jackson and his girlfriend cut themselves while obnoxiously smearing the red all over each other in a hilarious spoof of emotionally intense metaphor:

"It's a metaphor for love

These aren't veins

Just the beating of my heart

This fever isn't real

It represents how I feel

My pain transformed into art"

Snowy Fireflies

if only we could live in slow motion
to watch molecules stitch and bind
To see a snowy wave progress from flake
to sculpture as it surfs and winds.

Yet somehow even amidst our HD
Our long exposure, our technology,
I prefer the pleasant surprise
on my garage, an unexpected storm trophy.


Poke tangle extend and reach
Little homes stare at another kind of nest
of grapevines and snow vines extended to space
Role reversal of solid liquid gas enmeshed.

Hush of man, machine, and mind
the swerving, slipping stops
White velvet drapes over street
To sound proof all and leave us locked.
or unlocked.

***
Call me an anti-artist or untrue hippie, but marijuana makes me so intensely and emotionally aware of of the intricate detail in every day objects that it makes me simultaneously blissful and miserable. For example, I would look up at a tree and think it is so beautifully framed in perfectly shaped clouds that it will make me want to cry. That "double rainbow" [yes, the viral video] type cry that is almost masochistic where every molecule of my brain becomes cynical in the real world after soaking in such unassuming beauty. Don't get me wrong, to appreciate beauty and to be cynical are quite the oximoronic combination that I know quite well, but I don't always need an extra kick to make it happen. Why am i talking about this?

Sometimes our own natural combination of circumstances produces similar types of confusion highs, where peak sensory awareness merge--fusing pure horror and anxiety with exhilaration, bliss, and hunger.

Driving. From Virginia to New Jersey. Packed with a dysfunctional family eager to rip one another apart. Add the biggest blizzard the northeast has seen in 2010. Then add a few slippery bridges and 9 additional hours of drive-time from an otherwise 6 hour trip, and some serious self-analysis will occur.

There comes a point along the drive, after one another critiques what others should say, or how we should react to the slipping, after braving the passing, after fearing for the lives of your closest family, when you just have to step back. and at that precise moment, when all emotions are heightened to a point where one cannot distinguish between the anger, the fear, the disconnect, and the love for one another, that one really starts to see things. All of the cars swerving out into the snowbanks suddenly appeared beautiful as they glided into the poof of new soft snow, alighting with the rhythm of yellow warning lights. As the light darkened, all of these warning lights blinked silently with syncopated rhythm, appearing like fireflies on a hot summer night; you know that the fireflies are there, but you cannot completely predict where they will appear. And when they do, you are slightly surprised but somehow calmed by them. Suddenly braving the storm was just like this: silent, invigorating, and frightfully beautiful.

Embrace the fearsome, the ugly, the discomfort, and the cold, and maybe you'll see something frightfully beautiful. Here's to seeing things differently in 2011. now who's up for skydiving?

On Tour

The sun seems brighter on the road
The fences on the other side of the
greener pastures
seem closer
on the road.

But sometimes, they just are.

Night Sky

When i was little I wanted to live in a tree, or adapt my room so that it appeared as if i were in some kind of jungle. Later on, I saw a spread in Seventeen magazine on "top coolest rooms" and this one girl had a beautiful bed frame that looked like branches and she had painted trees and jungle on her walls. I felt jealous as i turned the pages, thinking that some of these teens had stolen my idea. Years later, I sit in my room, which has now become partly a greenhouse for my mother's various plants. The dark purple walls seem to drift upwards into what sometimes (without my contact lenses) appears to be night sky; little glints of light through the old window pain reflect onto the walls and ceiling like the specs of light that you can only see when you are in a thick forest.Finally, my room is a jungle, where the lines between imagination, inside, outside, here, there, past and present are comfortingly blurred. Sometimes your childhood wishes do come true, and all it takes is a little patience, a little less jealousy, and the right set of grown-up eyes to see it.