Consoling Exchanges and Rhythm Changes
Whiter than white,
but warming to human touch,
just a stone’s throw away
from sticks and brush.
Hit the dirt shuffling;
pay no attention to rags and bones
or the masked tears and shouts
to send him home.
“I am Anarcho-Instamatic!
(Hail to the populist regime!)
I am your law and disorder.
Holy crypto-manic libertine!”
And with that absurd battle cry, my band, the Transmystic Blues Sniffers, released our long-awaited debut album, Seeds and Stems. The album is currently available digitally on music platforms like Spotify, YouTube Music, Bandcamp, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. See the links below to hear or purchase the album. Call your local radio station and demand the DJs to play it—yes, I said demand because civil disobedience demands nothing less!
Now, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows me that when I’m not writing poetry, prose and novels, I’m writing songs. In fact, my writing exploits really began with my writing music and lyrics, which to be honest, I had hoped other bands might cover one day. Life, however, has taken me down some strange paths—including this one with my bandmates, which I am very happy to have been on as they are also my dear friends.
As far as the album goes, there’s much to be said about hit and run art. “Leave the beholders stunned and confused,” I say. By the time they figure out what the absurd lyrics “Long live the leftist Hitler Youth” and “DEFCON: Defecation!” really mean, I’ll be long gone. In truth, I wanted to produce this album two years ago, but (as it always happens) life gets in the way. Now that it has finally been released, I am leaving Greece, my home, for better or for worse, for the last twenty-five years. It’s a shame that due to the coronavirus we won’t be able to perform the album live, but as they say, “that’s showbiz, kids.” I hope the band survives my departure one way or another because we are all friends and play-well with each other. Also, we have a lot of good music we have yet to record officially. Nevertheless, greener experiential pastures, new creative collaborations, regeneration, and even love await.
Continue reading
For The Record And Pete’s Sake:
Age slips a purgative into our reality …
The mindset manifests in spasms of release …
But we are never really free …
until our existentialism is resolved …
and then we are still left forced to deal with one another.
My sister bought the first Monkees album.
We listened to it repeatedly.
We seemed to know all the songs,
cause we had heard them all on the radio and the TV,
our mainlines to all things Pop. Continue reading
“Sol But No Rhythm”
For the first time in months, I sat on my balcony,
in my woolen clothes, and drank in the Sun.
Sol … but no rhythm …
Please understand,
I am NOT patient; I am stubborn.
Please don’t confuse my smile for my defense mechanism.
An inner storm always rages; it is a force of nature.
I cannot control it … but it is who I am.
And yet, I am too stupid stubborn to come to terms with it.
So I think to myself …
“why hide when you can simply masquerade?”
Forever the cat, dreaming he was a dog.
Forever the dancing baton in a requiem.
Forever an undressed window looking out into the foreign.
Curtain-less.
Shameless.
Soul but no rhythm.
Poisoned by white tempo …
with increasingly fading vision …
and the buzz of white noise in my ears.
Not even sure when my heart skips a beat or two,
but surely it must …
Death, always advancing, never seeking an element of surprise.
And me?
Too stubborn to accept the calm before the storm.
A misappropriated cliché:
That which doesn’t harm you, kills you.
Soul … but no rhythm …
Why aren’t I Miles Davis?
A better question yet …
Why aren’t I Jay Schwartz?
Polly’s Cadence (In Dada Flat)
“Polly wants a cracker!”
A call is made.
You wait for a response.
I comply in earnest.
Behind the wool, you gloat blindly.
Knowing enough words to nod along, I do so … knowingly knowing I know nothing.
Point Counterpoint. A methodological approach to string theory resolves to the root of us all. Klimakatastrophe … deservingly so
You want dogma, a rationale of semiotic obedience.
A feathered response is in order:
There are no more prayers, only the chanting of reverberating sounds in the wild; the vibrations that ricochet off your sensitivities … forcing you to move.
You want belief, perhaps in distended words unspoken.
Yet, I have only the faith of habit found in sustained accidentals and enharmonic phonemes … and wings to sing of.
And oh how I’ll sing one day, despite your efforts to make me talk.
“Over all, I think the main thing a musician would like to do is give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things that he knows of and senses in the universe.”
As a writer and someone who tends to ‘feel and think’ his way through life, I have certain subjects I often feel compelled to write significantly about since they intensely stir the very core of my existence. Today, I’m referring to jazz and death – the former with love, the latter with fear. Time to connect the dots.
Please note that this essay is not the big magnum opus I plan on writing one day on these topics, but merely my attempt to broach related issues of an existential nature (breathe, breathe, breathe). In fact, I’m quite aware that in all likelihood I will probably never write what I’d like to, since I’m mindful of the fact that any attempt to do so would fall short … simply because jazz and death are both larger than life. Moreover, descriptions of jazz are just as elusive as rationalizations of death. Most literature provides the gist, but misses the jest. That’s where I come in.
A Phoenix Imploding
Fanning the flames of a prodigy’s inferno, self-pity looks on as art burns.
Anger consumes reason.
Bitterness ignites the mind-set.
Consumed with the rage over jilted aspirations …
The eye stutters …
The tongue is blind …
Speaking in volumes of disdain, spitting dissension.
Wracked with spasmodic thoughts on unfinished words.
Impotent intentions char on slow burn.
Wisps of smoldering passions dissolve into ‘misforgivings’.
A primal scream of guttural inflammation belches forth raw talent.
“Such a waste” cries a vanishing muse …
Choking on bile …
Lashing out in all directions …
Twisting, jerking, shrieking, mourning the living and grieving over stillborn dreams.
A phoenix imploding.
Why so much anger?
The will to cause such pain.
Too busy blaming ancestral arsonists to reach for a glass of water.
Choosing instead to smother candescence with incendiary fury.
Burn that ‘self-loathing’ down …
……………………………………………………………………
Suggested Viewing
Suggested Reading
Musically Yours
There are times when there is vision in the music
… but not when the music itself presents a vision
… or is even visionary itself.
Oh say can’t you see that some chords unravel and some scales are unbalanced?
Have you ever met an arpeggio that unfolded into a non-linear arrangement of an unsequenced rhythm?
I have … and was seduced by it … willingly.
Surf’s Up
Aboard a tidal wave
Come about hard and join
The young and often spring you gave
I heard the word
Wonderful thing
A children’s song
– Brian Wilson / Van Dyke Parks
You have to SMiLE at the thought that 43 years after the Beach Boys’ album SMiLE was supposed to be released, an official version in more than one form finally came to be … on Halloween, and in the UK no less. In the United States, the release came 1 day later, on November 1st, the end of the hurricane season in the ‘Atlantic basin’.
Just yesterday I ordered the 2 CD version from the Beach Boys site. I paid extra for the version with a SMiLE T-Shirt. I don’t want to just ‘look, listen, vibrate’ and SMiLE’ I want to wear it, too!
Personal Music: Some Notes & Chords:
There was a time in my life when I would sit at a piano all day and play various chord combinations, without really knowing what chords I was actually playing. Later, I did the same on guitar. I wasn’t looking for a particular mathematical permutation of notes, but rather I was looking for a feeling, a sensation, perhaps even a ‘movement’. In musical terms, this would refer to a “self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form”. For example, on a guitar, pluck the chord Asus2 and let it resonate. To me, such forms don’t necessary come in a string of notes played across a few bars…. but rather in a single blast … a Big Bang, if you will. Listen to the seminal chord progression struck by the Beach Boys vocals in the album’s opening track, Prayer, and you’ll understand.
I cheated myself,What the hell’s the matter with you?” is a question that’s often been fired at me point blank in varying contexts, by an even more varied collection of people. Parents, sibling, employers, and colleagues have all hurled this inquisitive barb in my direction. My answer? Well, in general, I’d suggest that the question is moot.
To be honest, I think it’s a strange question, because more often than not, it’s a question that’s asked through a veil of perception that gnaws away at the inquisitors’ sensitivities… or expectations. In fact, I’d argue that it’s not really even a question, but more of a statement of exasperation, spoken by a chafed few who have yet to fathom that there are just some things, situations or people that they can’t control in life.
Loitering Words 