the ol' ragtime pianner

He took piano lessons as a child. Through no virtue of his own, he kept them up through puberty. He could slog his way through Scott Joplin's The Chrysanthemum and most of The Entertainer. The Easy Winners was his favourite, but the second and third chunks were a bit difficult. He practiced on a very old piano, possibly a German-made Steinman upright. It was in bad shape. There was a massive fissure running up the wood of the bass harp. Any note below G in the bass clef caused a thundering rumble of distortion. A neat effect, but not one with which to teach a young ear music. That same G, the first one flat of middle C, was forever becoming stuck. The key itself was fine, but the mechanism that returned the hammer from the string after the key was played was broken. Imagine a hot-blooded teenaged male losing his proverbial shit trying to get that note to sound. He knew what the chord was supposed to sound like, at least, the untuned noise he was used to, but the blasted  G was missing!

This would have been an excellent time for some parental guidance: an excellent teaching opportunity. But no, his parents were too busy for music. As his frustration grew, if he was not able on that particular day to see beyond the great injustice of mere nuisance, grow too would the frustration of his father. Frustration causing frustration leading to frustration. Pa needed to come through with a better solution. But he never quite came round to seeing this. Tuning the old beast would have cost a small fortune by their standards. Maybe if father and son had taken it upon themselves to attempt a more cool-headed approach, actually diagnosing the problem and maybe even playing with the mechanics of the machine, there could have been more music and less anger.

smudged and blurred

There is dirt, earth, in my mouth. I have just taken a nasty fall. The texture of the grains of rock and soil, the taste of the particles of feces and rotting vegetable matter all impress themselves upon the mind as unpleasant at first. But this is surely because they are unfamiliar and appear now suddenly, unexpectedly. Olfactory sense is heightened uncannily, and the mind becomes aware of the thousands of scents that make up this particular spring day. It is all too much at once, so observation and meditation have become necessary. The sorting of information and self-diagnosis occur as the adrenal glands spread their super-juices throughout the body. Too soon all that registers though, are the colour orange and the smell of the inside of nostrils. The hot shock of electric pain passes up to my brain from my knees and the palms of my hands. If I look there will be blood. Then the texture of the grit between teeth finds accordance with the gravel sticking into flesh. I believe I can feel the bits of earth with the blood that is seeping around them and out of me even as the taste of the same elements is in my saliva, on my tongue. I am reunited with the world outside as the tenuous line between it and what is inside me is smudged and blurred.

an open letter to my editor

At the risk of using this log as a space to write whatever the whatever I want:

ZCHL GZTNZ, where are you and how do I contact you? I've tried Ouija, but zeds keep appearing, and it would be good to know I'm not talking to a ghost that isn't you.  Are you still in bonnie old England? When again is the bonnie Prince coming through? Oh, and thank you for the comments, I am now responding!

I recently considered converting to Judaism and thought I'd ask you if I could get in touch with your bro. for moral support. I lack contact info, you see? Since then I've returned to my belief that all organized human religions are bunk and've decided to remain profoundly profane. Still, foreskin art could be something worth exploring, so perhaps  an open mind to the old chestnuts of others is worth maintaining.

There is almost certainly another slightly less upsetting reason I'm trying to reach out to you, but it escapes my memory at the moment.
Gotta go! Wee ones and all! We'll try again later, maybe?
Zmz

post title

Quarter of an hour to twenty-two hundred hours Central North American time. Things seem to be happening later and later in the day. The studio is sort of off limits right now. It's a work night, a week night. There are so many drawings, scribblings and daubings to make, or even just consider making, that making the early rise of oh-five-hundred and thirty is likely to be difficult if even a toe is set across the threshold. A visit to the martian hop shall have to suffice.

Every joint of this corporeal shell is moaning with dull pain. I think it is bed-time. Thank you for visiting. Sweet dreams.
Z.

everybody hurts, and other gems to fuel the warped engines of the human psyche.

"When you feel like letting go, hold on."

"Everybody hurts, take comfort in your friends."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pudOFG5X6uA 

"They hung a sign up in our town/ If you live it up you won't live it down."

"But it's so hard to dance that way when it's cold and there's no music."

"Sometimes there's nothing left to do, but you got to hold on."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPnOEiehONQ

"I still don't belong to anyone/ I am mine."

"I am hated for loving/ I am haunted for wanting."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GTkyE6VyLs

"Nice day for a sulk." Why not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub2Gk0C6Vcw

"These days I seem to think a lot about the things that I forgot to do/ And all the times I had the chance to."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1N8GtDkYfQ

"I sit and watch as tears go by."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhPPJ5dolxU

freedom fighter series?

The time machine took us back to the month of February. Tuned to a different year, we could go back to visit one of the great jazz-people before he slipped out of this world. Not Sun-Ra this time, but, along with Art Tatum, one of the greatest pianists of the past century: Thelonious Monk. "Blue Sphere", give it a spin. If you're feeling slightly more off-kilter today, try "Nutty". Embrace the strangeness of being alive, being human and feeling alone. Put on a hat with an absurdly stingy brim, wacky sunglasses and stroll the avenue. When the martians do finally arrive, they'll know who to talk to.

Laura Peek: First show of 2012

Laura Peek: First show of 2012: Happy new year, everyone. I have a cold but hopefully that means I'm just getting all the illnesses of 2012 out of the way in one dose, righ...

Well planet hoppers, this is how information gets moved around in these times. In snippets, irrespective of the laws of language. The "google plus" experience didn't work out when I tried to recommend my ex-band mate's show belatedly. It's getting so hard to remember all my fake names. Really, I just want to subscribe to her blog, but it doesn't seem very easy to build webs in the internet. Maybe the virtual world is running out of space. Virtual space is reliant upon physical factors, after all. There have to be enough servers and enough surfers to create and cater to the surges and swells. Laura Peek turned me on to Space Age Pop, something for which I will be forever grateful. She made making music and performing in a band a probability, not just a possibility. She's the second red-head I had a thing for, though the thing had to be kept under wraps, and was. It's okay, everyone has a thing for her at some point. It's as inevitable as the past.
That's all I have time to jot right now. She sings like a simile set free.