A Mellencamp Monday.

because
Oh yeeeeeah, life goes on
long after the thrill of livin' is gone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcJz-x6idd8
My goodness, that's some wicked nostalgia.



Thoughts today: Choice is tainted by our subjected surroundings. I find it peculiar in a beautiful way that some happenings by accident, or slight chance could've never been consciously thought through but could simply happen due to proximity causing the most fortuitous of pair ups with a stranger. Though sometimes in life serendipity seems dormant, so then what? Aren't we all entitled to some happenstance? I certainly believe this to be so. So then what would it mean to alter our contingencies, to take fate and contort it to our whim? With empathy and quick thinking it could easily be done, but should it be? We are forcibly born into a world, forcibly brought up in a house, in a town that we don't decide and that's ineluctable. But as we age, we are the ones who decide what is beautiful and admirable and what is not. We decide what we want and what we don't. But do we, do I, have the right to alter someone else's path to avail my own? Mind you, I do have good intentions.

Roger Ballen, I love you, I love you, I love you.

"The art of Roger Ballen is impossible to forget. It goes deep. Gets at places we didn’t know were there. Maybe hoped weren't there. It makes us wild. It opens us up to those uncertain, shocking and frighteningly banal aspects of the waking dream, twitching between animal and human, the clean and the unclean, the animate and the inanimate, the lived and the imagined, the natural and the performed. Arguably, the dynamic is this: Ballen’s complex artistic vision transforms particular historical and social issues into private, felt, internally experienced matters." (http://www.rogerballen.com/, Introduction)

I LOVE HIM.

And with an eye for twisted sorts of smirking surrealism like his, who wouldn't be enamored? There is a dark humor present in his images that evokes the most enigmatic of emotions (though my experiences consist solely of anomalous ones). Many many many can be felt, I assure you.

The rhapsodical effluence of Ballen's work lies in all the seemingly minute details of each singular shot. This is, in my opinion, where the substance of the concentrations are found. There's dirty people in bizarre places doing bizarre things and one might take a hasty look and think "what a kook!", but there is much more to his prints than eccentricity. His shots look spontaneous, an aspect I absolutely adore in artwork. The prints are not posed but the composition of the shots remain impeccable. The nucleus of Ballen's photos is a consistent calmness uniformly existent in a sangfroid cynicism. It leaves one uneasy and in a state of quandary, but more so than anything, in a state of awe. He really gets my aesthetic-craving blood a-pumpin'.

And oh my! He's presently working on a new project that I am exceedingly enthusiastic about.

Visit his site to check ot out:

http://www.rogerballen.com/

Eleanor Rigby

Like many of McCartney's songs, the melody and first line of the song came to him as he was playing around on his piano. The name that came to him, though, was not Eleanor Rigby but Miss Daisy Hawkins. In 1966, McCartney recalled how he got the idea for his song:

"I was sitting at the piano when I thought of it. The first few bars just came to me, and I got this name in my head... Daisy Hawkins picks up the rice in the church. I don't know why. I couldn't think of much more so I put it away for a day. Then the name Father McCartney came to me, and all the lonely people. But I thought that people would think it was supposed to be about my Dad sitting knitting his socks. Dad's a happy lad. So I went through the telephone book and I got the name McKenzie." He originally imagined Daisy as a young girl, but anyone who cleaned up in churches would probably be older. If she were older, she might have missed not only the wedding she cleans up after but also her own. Gradually, McCartney developed the theme of the loneliness of old age, morphing his song from the story of a young girl to a elderly woman whose loneliness is worsened by having to clean up after happy couples.

McCartney took a while to settle down on the name "Eleanor Rigby". His neighbor and fellow musician Donovan recalled that McCartney had played him a version of the song with the lyrics:

"Ola Na Tungee/ Blowing his mind in the dark/ With a pipe full of clay."

"The words hadn't yet come out right for him," Donovan said. McCartney said he came up with the name Eleanor from actress Eleanor Bron, with whom he had starred in the film Help!. Rigby came from the name of a store in Bristol, Rigby & Evens Ltd, Wine & Spirit Shippers at 22 King Street, while seeing his then-girlfriend Jane Asher act in The Happiest Days Of Your Life. He recalled in 1984, "I just liked the name. I was looking for a name that sounded natural. Eleanor Rigby sounded natural.

In the 1980s, a grave of an Eleanor Rigby was discovered in the graveyard of St. Peter's Parish Church in Woolton, Liverpool, a few feet from where McCartney and Lennon had met for the first time during a fete in 1957. Paul had frequently played there as a boy. The actual Eleanor was born in 1895 and lived in Liverpool, possibly in the suburb of Woolton, where she married a man named Thomas Woods. She died in her sleep of unknown reasons on October 10, 1939, at age 44, and was buried in St. Peter's churchyard in Woolton. (Coincidentally, she died 365 days before John Lennon was born; 1940, Lennon's birth year, was a leap year.) Whether this Eleanor was the inspiration for the song or not, her tombstone has become a landmark to Beatles fans visiting Liverpool. A digitized version of it was added to the 1995 music video for the Beatles' reunion song "Free As a Bird". The Rigby family, if any, has never come forward with any royalty demands.

Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and their friend Pete Shotton all listened to McCartney play his song through and contributed ideas. Someone suggested introducing a romance into the story, but this was rejected because it made the story too complicated. Starr contributed the line "writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear " and suggested making "Father McCartney" darn his socks, which McCartney liked, and Harrison came up with the line "Ah, look at all the lonely people". It was Shotton who suggested the change from Father McCartney. McCartney couldn't decide how to end the song, and Shotton finally suggested that the two lonely people come together as Father McKenzie conducts Eleanor Rigby's funeral. At the time, Lennon rejected the idea out of hand, but McCartney said nothing and used the idea to finish off the song, later acknowledging Shotton's help.

Moss Graffiti

I found this to be pretty interesting. Here's how to make moss graffiti!

This simple yet effective concoction is an old favourite of gardeners trying to encourage moss growth and provides an excellent alternative to spray paint.

1 can of beer, 1/2 teaspoon sugar, Several clumps garden moss.
You will also need a plastic container (with lid), a blender and a paintbrush.

To begin the recipe, first of all gather together several clumps of moss (moss can usually be found in moist, shady places) and crumble them into a blender. Then add the beer and sugar and blend just long enough to create a smooth, creamy consistency. Now pour the mixture into a plastic container.Find a suitable damp and shady wall on to which you can apply your moss milkshake. Paint your chosen design onto the wall (either free-hand or using a stencil). If possible try to return to the area over the following weeks to ensure that the mixture is kept moist. Soon the bits of blended moss should begin to re-couperate into a whole rooted plant – maintaining your chosen design before eventually colonising the whole area.

The 59th Street Bridge Song.

Simon and Garfunkel may have had their squabbles, but they sure can throw down some introspective beauty. This song's always been a favorite pick-me-up of mine and has never failed to lift my spirits and so I share it with you, my lovely readers. Use it when down or feeling overwhelmed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdRTI7FYqUc

Slow down, you move too fast.
You got to make the morning last.
Just kicking down the cobble stones.
Looking for fun and feelin' groovy.

Ba da, Ba da, Ba da, Ba da...
Feelin' Groovy.

Hello lamp-post,
What cha knowin'?
I've come to watch your flowers growin'.
Ain't cha got no rhymes for me?

Doot-in' doo-doo,
Feelin' groovy.
I've got no deeds to do,
No promises to keep.
I'm dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep.
Let the morning time drop all its petals on me.
Life, I love you,
All is groovy.

Affluence Amiss.

Forgive me once more for I've been nursing blues at my bosom.

WELL, NO MORE!
Hear me all you corners of the earth!

Oh, grim reminiscence of a dim luminescence!
NO MORE I SAID!-
of this grave incandescence inspiring a concrete essence.

You see, I was once a young and wiry lass and then lost it all in the stockmarket crash.
And though these muddy hands of life have taken hold of me by my collar, it's enough for me to be grateful that i can inhale, exhale, dance, and holler.

Grasshopper Nostalgia.

Re-living: It's one of those days I feel like dumping out a pickle jar and going to catch some grasshoppers. In my youth, I'd poke holes in the top and recreate their natural habitat by tossing in a few blades of grass to keep them from becoming home-sick. I liked catching grasshoppers because the other girl's wouldn't, they'd squeal and spazz. And as a self-proclaimed maverick of introspect, I really don't believe I've changed too much.

Remembering: I loved holding life, I felt like within that jar there was another world and I was a god to that little world. Can you imagine the absurd megalomaniacal apotheosis of a timid third grader? Agh, 'tis powerful, man, powerful.

Orthopteras are undebatably dope, but my favorites always wore top hats.

Shame's Pseudonym

I've clenched my teeth for so long,
I've carved lamentations into the enamel membranes.
I've been vacant, I've been patient.
Well, I've been buying without payment.
And I am impelled, no, rather IMPALED
by dreams of wires and glass, lurid and transparent
-Lucid but not apparent.
And I am so aware of your very scent,
and of how the clocks harmonize with fruit flies.
Now please, will you open up your eyes!
which are without necessity, always full of surprise.
I saw you pull the air from your wind instruments,
like some humorous and awkward vengeance.
and we danced with gracious spines that twirled and withered like vines-
on drive-way concrete, at night-
abashed and blushing,
when we were hardly touching.


You sure are something.

Street lamps don't wayfare.

Winds- be they gaunt nomads?!

Then surely, I'd pity with pennies the haggard vagrant!

Our words have become as wayward as urchins-

frenzies in metropoli so scantily urban!

But such orphaned propaganda will surely dissolve

for to sully the resistance gets nothing resolved

while the moon's chomping away on the building tops!

Poppies, like crazed fans, line the streets, unfettered-

falling in the cracks, it's all become litter!

From flasks, wine glasses, pints, and cups!

Drink the phosphorescence. Up, up, up!

Let it shine from your esophagus!

Let it radiate from your stomach-

Incorrigible and pregnant with intensity!

Street lamps don't wayfare.

2007.

I awoke in a comfy bed not my own startled by the springing room that pranced on it's vertices and hopped like an amputee on it's peg-like corners. I turned my neck to see a violent carnation in a befuddled vase pounding at the glassy edges, lunging while shooting fragments every which way. Beautiful as the fragments were, the way they harnessed such colorful beauty in their fragile inanimate genes, I found myself very afraid. I continued watching and then the flower appeared to give up it's escape. It kissed the mouth of the vase and dragged it's botanical body nearer to the glossy sides when all at once, they lustily embraced and became one, blushing with clamor.This disturbed me so I twirled my head in the opposite direction-I suppose to smother my jealousy and gain my bearings, for bearings are very important, I'd come to find in life.Well my eyes found and decided to rest upon a manwho was pounding his musical instrument as hard as it could stand.The strange thing here was the man was on mute. I could hear everything but his clamorous attempts-the whistling trees, the howling insects, everything but his trying knocks. The man seemed to know he was on mute for he looked at me with apologetic diligence and then shrugged off his trying. He plopped down next to me and spoke which also startled me because I thought the man could make no sound at all but he did speak to me and I took a liking to his humor. He made comfort easy. We traded stories, aphorisms, and philosophies. Then I convinced him we should trade eyeballs because I wanted to see the world as he saw it. So we did and empathy made us a work of art in which the bolds and pastels intertwined. We twitched with our new perspectives and decided to keep them in our pockets and call on them solely when we felt low. And just when I thought I might feel something for him sound broke in through the windows and then he was clapping and stomping before me. He fell in love with sound, it's unkempt resonance- the music and it's progression, structure, groove, and melody. He apologized and offered friendship as compensation, then we played leap-frog with optimism and pessimism for a while but grew very tired in comparison for those two can go on and on and on. And we decided we'd glide along upon the dragging veils of apathy. And we'd just glide on and on and on...because life goes on and on and on. And in sidewalk cracks we glimpse at the future and ego's got everything to do with it and nothing to do with love.

Twiddling vagabond, we are bags of bones!

Ha! Some escapade you paved!
Some serenade you gave!
Linchpins of some stationary accretion!
Feral seed, sedimentary and pursing.
Quit being so instant! Quit being so constant!
'Twas a feeling of elation, of optimism!
Without absinthe, 'tis a clenching root!
But an eddying breeze will turn it around,
and rip you straight from your chagrin ground.

And exhale fascinationand inhale perspiration,
Fluvial actions- mind your reactions.
Though what a pleasant redolence you were!
A bouquet on the tongue,
a vagrant fragrance of the young.


But please know that I am grateful for all that you've done.

Silverware.

Just bodies-we scratch, we sweat, we bleed.
I craved supple skin with which to share in my sin.
I yearned for sounds of desecration in a humble shanty
and now we epitomize a young couple's amorous squalor.

Our hands are empty but our hearts are brimful
and they proclaim that's not good enough! (what nerve!)
Just like the parts and their very counterparts.
Never mind their thoughts, never mind their pessimistic castigations!
And maybe sometimes we hunger beneath flickering fluorescents-
but at night, light is given a break.
Gleaming in prized moonlight we are silverware in darkness,
we are forks and spoons and knives!
Useful utensils, we are, we are!
And we live!

"Oh! Do tell of your frugal finds!"
This mildew-infested edifice conveys nothing of love.
But we do, it is in our beings.
We are thrifty and only need the stars.
We are poor and we only need the moon.

Summer on the Coast.

'Twas summer,

and soon I was but a flinching vessel, a circulating vas-
gazing at the ocean, the ebb, the infinite azure mass.
On the shore, the scenic coast-
I chased the tide, I made a toast.

Coteries, please raise your glasses now...
To years past,
To stained glass!
To the whirling globe,
To space probes!
To boiling noodles,
To ostentatious poodles!


And yes, I may have been enamored! I may have mewled and clamored!
And summer's blush did, indeed, stain my skin!
But now tell me, was I no better than a babbling fall? Than a crumbling city fulminated by sin in a lowly pity? I fear turning round and becoming nothing more than a salty pillar.

A Spinning Simile.

An omnipotent force holds the globe like a Rubik’s cube.
I saw this occur, one day on a train.
A friend and I watched with ecstacy coloring our vertabraes.
We painted our eyelids lysergic.
How I loved that day!
We blinked and smiled, we saw life as a child!
We toasted to youth and drank from flasks of holy water,
because only purity can be prepared for the slaughter.

And all we could say was,
"Doting youth, perhaps I’ve been cradled for too long."

Infatuation, Part Deux

Well, I'm just some limping sinner
and you're some lilting scrapper,
though in our dingy apparel we can still look quite dapper!
But something divine pulls me by my lax fabrics,
someone shouting, "You can't have it!"
Well well well, I wish I could pay this no heed,
but in the past I've never reaped what I've sewn from a single seed.

So forgive my hesitancy.

I'll plead. Please, please.