Milestone

One-Year Anniversary.

I just realized that today is exactly one year since my first post on this blog. I thought about it a couple of months ago, and decided I wouldn't mark it with a nostalgic entry reminiscing about the things I've learned, the people I've met here and in real life, the blogs I read, the blogs that have come and gone and all the history that has taken place in the real world, blah, blah, blah. But then I forgot about it until just now.

Weirdly, it has been a rollercoaster ride for me. I wouldn't have expected it to be, but there you go.

As always, my heart longs to fly to you.

Front of the Bus

Rosa Parks

1913 - 2005
May we all be worthy
of your defiance and your bravery.

Kick Me Hard In The Ass If I...

• Rev my engine at stop lights.
• Wear leather pants.
• Talk down to a child.
• Let you sweat out your own computer problems when I know how to fix them easily.
• Don't listen.
• Use advertising slogans instead of real language.
• Won't admit when I'm wrong.
• Feel sorry for myself when others have it so much tougher.
• Attempt to comb over my bald spot.
• Receive your signals and still don't get the message.
• Try to play lead guitar on "Bhodisatva" while drunk.
• Ever again say anything to hurt you.
  

The Best I Ever Had

Hey everybody: Guess who has a blog!

Peter Townsend! That's right, Pete Townsend, a real rock star, the guy who wrote "My Generation," who created and performed Tommy, the only "rock opera" worth a shit, who led The Who through thirty-plus years of maximum rock'n'roll and who punched Abbie Hoffman off the stage at Woodstock in 1969.

I have played rock'n'roll for much of my adult life (some would say it has prevented the onset of my adult life), and I have performed with, recorded and talked with a few celebrity types, but the one guy I wish I could meet and get to know is this guy. He is one of the founders of what we now call Rock, and his music has influenced many of the artists whom I consider to be the best in the business. Plus, he's been an articulate spokesperson for his generation (also mine) for all these years.

What's more, he's never developed a hipper-than-thou attitude, even though he is arguably the hippest man in the galaxy, and has earned the right to do a little talking down if anyone has. He is generous and inclusive in his art and in his thinking, and now he is posting a new work of art on Blogger, and is making it freely available to anyone who finds it.

On Blogger! Of course, you're asking "Did he fill out his Blogger profile completely?" Yes, he did! Interests, favorite movies and books, his actual age (Yesss! He's older than me!). And there is even a blogroll of some favorite links.

It's called The Boy Who Heard Music, and it looks like it is going to be a novel. I have just started reading, so I can't really review it here, but so far it appears to have a few autobiographical elements in it. A young man from the countryside goes to the city and manages to become a rock star. Here is a taste of his ghastly look at the future of music, after it has been taken over by corporate interests:

A bizarre but critical aspect of the programming would pivot on the discovery that the one form of entertainment and art that penetrated in a direct way to the audience was music. It would cause unpredictable results. So the barons would slowly begin to exclude the most vigorous music from all their programmes. They would reduce the power and effect of music by making it generic, abstract, universal, insipid, meaningless – it would become like an aural colour wash. The same colours would be used again and again, and for all kinds of purposes. What would once have inspired suspense would inspire disinterest. What would once have induced calm and serenity would inspire apathy. Music would promise spiritual ecstasy at the same time as selling soap. Music that mattered to you would matter equally to someone else. Music that meant little to you would mean just as little to them. Music would be like rain and sunshine, benevolent to everyone. Nothing unique about us would be reflected in this music. Nothing spiritual would be tormented or excited by it.

Yikes! You can check out The Boy Who Heard Music by clicking on Pete's smiling face above. Warning: Somehow he has gotten the chapters out of order, but as of today there are five of them. Chapter Five is all the way at the bottom, preceded by Chapter One. The one at the top is Chapter Four. Just scroll around until you find whatever chapter you need next.

Solitaire

Every now and then, for no reason I can figure out, a chill floats down onto me.

Cold settles on my shoulders, and when I try to shrug it off, it only slides farther down my body, until I am shrouded to the ankles in chilly fog.

Through this fog it is difficult to see clearly the people I love. Their faces are blurry and vague. Are they smiling, or laughing? The music in me becomes distant and muffled, and I can't make sense of it. Like the sound of a band in the gym when you are smoking in the parking lot, it has no clarity, only a dull thumping, and I can't find the melody, can't catch up with the beat.

The things I do seem useless. All my projects - the protest song, the ongoing writing project that is this blog, the books I want to read, the music I am trying to record, the computer I plan to build, the places I want to go - who cares? Not me, not now. Would it make any difference if I did them or not?

Sometimes I go outside late at night and stand in the deserted street and look at the sky. Even through the haze and the lights of this big city and the fat October moon I can see a few stars, and I expand into the universe and I feel huge and empty and weightless with the the stars and after a while I can see the little guy down there on the street, so small, his arms waving toward heaven, and I think What do you want?

But I get no answer. From the street, from the stars, I get no answer.

Staff of Life

White bread. Bad for me. But my weakness.

Today I found a half-loaf of white bread in the lunchroom. I was walking past when I saw a brown paper bag on one of the tables. Curious as always, I went in and took a peek. In the bag was the half-loaf. A round, bakery-style loaf of heavily processed bleached white flour, gluten and yeast, the kind of bread that has no nutritional value and starts turning into paste as soon as you put it in your mouth, then goes in and sticks to various parts of your insides, possibly forever.

I turned and quickly headed for the door, but the bread started calling my name. One little taste won't be missed, I thought. So I went back and took a little bite.

My whole addictive system throbbed with pleasure. It was moist and soft, slightly chewy. Not a gourmet experience. More of a pig-in-mud experience. There was no butter, no cheese, no spread, and none was needed. There was also no bread knife.

I ripped off another piece of it with my bare hand, this one about the size of a small eggplant, and began stuffing it in my mouth. I held the remnants behind my back in shame and stuck my head out the door. No one was in the hall in either direction, so I hot-footed to my office, still pushing more of the glorious gluten into my face.

I got crumbs all over the floor in my office, but I didn't care. I haven't had bread like this in years. Get behind me, Worthless Loaf! Cease your siren song! Luckily I only had an hour of work to go before I could get the hell out of there, and back to my home, where I keep plenty of emergency celery.

Yum.

The Swiss Are No Longer Neutral

Are you the Mystery Cougher? Am I?

Today at 5:30 in the afternoon I heard the new Ricola commercial on the radio. I immediately pushed the button to switch to another station, and they were playing the same commercial. Weird, I thought, and hit the button again, and heard the same commercial again. Thinking I had somehow switched back to the original station, I hit the button again, and heard the commercial for the fourth consecutive time. These guys are really carpet-bombing us.

I was forced to figure out what it was about, and now I share with you:

Ricola makes cough drops, and they have always had strange advertising. I remember one on TV that involved some guy in quaint Swiss folk garb blowing on a 20-foot Swiss horn in a subway car, for example.

But the current campaign is truly bizarre. They have a Mystery Cougher, a man (or maybe a woman, they hint) who goes around coughing near people. If you hear him and offer him a Ricola cough drop, BINGO! You win money, up to a million bucks! If this works, we will all have to buy at least one package of Ricola cough drops, and start offering them to anyone who coughs around us, because who can take a chance on losing a million dollars? I'm assuming this is a nationwide campaign, so that's a lot of damn cough drops. But would you accept a cough drop from a stranger? Would you offer one? Would people call Homeland Security on you if you did?

Looks like we may find out.