Monday, January 31, 2005

What Goes Around

Snow is waist high outside my door, but the sun is shining and for once the icicles seem to be dripping rather than just hanging there like the teeth of a winter that will never end...but not feeling all that grand today...at least I have a good saturday in my pocket. Weekday, corner pocket, watch it sppppppin.

So I had the weirdest day on saturday...I went out to work on a piece for the Visual Poetry Exhibition at Dudley House at the gallery where I rent and found a poetry workshop in my space. I happened to have all my poems with me for the purposes of the piece and so decided to join. And the guy who teaches the class is very cool and writes great poetry and has a blog and so I am putting a link to it, he did the same for me. So Instant Karma. What can I say. His name is Edward J. Carvalho, he is working on a masters in creative writing, I believe, and is generally talented and sound, writes stuff with great poise and just a wee bit of rock. His blog is The Outlaw Goatee, it has lots of truly beautiful poems and musings, and pictures of him with abundant facial hair.

After that I went and worked for a bit and jsut before I was to start hacking up my poems a reading begins to get under way upstairs so I ended up reading at that as well...odd happenstances galore on saturday eh?

Now contemplating what courses to try out...think it's going to be a lot of theatre this term...YangBanXi (Beijing Opera of the Cultural Revolution) and maybe a Japanese Traditional theatre course? Noh and Kabuki...zoweee.

any opinions?

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Arab Strap

This is Act of War. It is beautiful. Listen to it. Or else.

this is an audio post - click to play

Belated RIP

I know I live in something of a bubble at Harvard, but I just JUST found out the most awful news: John Peel is DEAD!!!

WHAT THE FUCK???? WHAT THE FUCK????? WHAT THE FUCK???????????

How can I NOT HAVE KNOWN THIS??????

I feel like nelson's column just fell over. The man was a GENIUS, and so fantastic. I remember when jane used to send faxes to him and he would talk about her zine on air. He was an institution, the most amazing institution: not only was he just cool all around, not only did he have this amazingly soothing voice and then would crank out amazing music, he promoted and did soo much for the careers of so many of my favourite bands: he helped THE FALL for fuck's sake. And the Wedding Present. Joy Division. and most of the bands I was friendly with. Good GOd .

RIP. I feel so stupid that I hadn;t heard. god.

PLEH
PLEH PLEH
PLEH PLEH PLEH

Sunday, January 23, 2005

Hopscotch

When I was a little boy I found a pearl,
Round, perfect, shining in a roll/shift/roll Shift along
the bottom drawer, making a rattling route:
A smooth world curved, turned inside out
In the no man’s land between socks and sweaters.
It lived like a moon in miniature.

Made its own adventures.

I licked it, put that small reflection right up
To my eye, squinted. It was the loose lost eyeball of some
Firebird, some fairytale fish, its odd soft hardness
It’s rough smoothness. It looked at me with no purpose,
I put it in my mouth. Tasted its taste of the sea.
Rolled it behind my teeth with my tongue.

Savored the clattering noise the clicking between those
Little curved ivories. Piano keys. Stepping stones.
Hopscotch. Don’t step on the CRACK or you’ll
breaK your mother’s…
…It glided down my throat, loose loose in the sinew.

Loose to think of the tooth I swallowed
In a spoon, white and flat, on my 6th
Birthday when I was a little girl. tooth
And pearl sat, whispered a shanty, sea of two together
One Beside the other in my belly,
One daring the other to be the first to grow.

Roots dug int’ me. Loose, Loose skip to my…
Made paths searching out sap and blood,
Inhabited a hot hole between my legs,
Pearl and tooth Skipped Upright in gum-skin.
The bone the flesh the tissue.
Buds of teeth in head, pearls in every vein.

Don’t STEP on the…

Loose, Loose: years were Scots in London:
Walking up Shoot-up-Hill and skipping down
Hillhead. All the catholics, bike chains, wind-chafers,
Cheap whisky, postage stamps. Friction against sheds on grey days.
Boys dressed by C&A with radar in their fingers.
Cum tastes like chicken soup, cock like communion wafers.

Pin point eyes, sweet sweat and smoke:
Fry-up, Gig pass, Mayfair, Cum stain, CharleyZebraX-ray, Don’t step.
White. White skin sweating before the mirror.
The guys at the bar saw the teeth in my eyes. Extra shot.
No Mixers. Subconsciouss swill. Aye and a bag of chips.
Going mad today. Going mad today. Going mad today, CharleyXray.

…Desire Desert…in the rift…rift/crack….

…CRACK or you’ll break….

I vomited pearls.

Phasing like the moon.

Greasy spoon, mate, (ash balancing), Kick hir out of bed.
(S)he’s the pearl girl I found drunk in the park.
(S)he’s the tooth boy put her fingers inside her.
(S)he had a fight with the lead singer.
(S)he bit his neck and it shot out pearls.
(S)he’s got a poem stuck in hir throat.

Melting drifts of sheet in the silver slick of morning,
Making dry islands in the sea of Saturday shops.
Crazy Paving. Praying to the angel of Turnpike lane
Pieced myself together. Strung myself about my neck:
CharleyFoxtrot. Extra shot. No Mixers.
Sister Ray. No Problem. No TV. No time. No time atall

Now mint tea and be
Mother to me.
Polish that tooth
Nurse that pearl knee.
Living on smooth roads.
Sinking no ships, fearing no fall.
This was Just a little...
Hopscotch
That’s all.

Monday, January 17, 2005

Happy MLK, Goodbye ZZY

So Happy Martin Luther King Day, everybody.

I think this is the first time I have celebrated, or observed MLK Day since I was 6. It's a good holiday. I am glad it exists. Martin Luther King had all kinds of faults but he was still an amazing amazing man and as an orator was in a class all his own...Don Q has an MP3 of MLK speaking about Vietnam at a meeting of church leaders to which I am giving the link here...


MLK Link


it is such an amazing speech, because it is so apt to the moment...he could just as well be talking about now.

truly sobering stuff.

I also wanted to take the opportunity to remember Zhao Ziyang, who died today in Beijing. Zhao Ziyang was Chairman of the Communist Party of CHina for a brief time after the death of Hu Yaobang. Hu's death was the catalyst for the 1989 protests, with tens of thousands of students, workers and ordinary beijingers takng part at various times in protest parades, democracy walls, public meetings, hunger strikes and of course, the occupation of Tiananmen Square, which lasted several weeks. Zhao Ziyang was indeed a member of the communist party and a believer in socialism and communism, but he was on the more liberal side of the split that divided the CCP at the time, and he by and large sided with the students, bravely standing up for them even though he was aware that storms were brewing. He famously addressed the students in the square before he was obliged to leave the country on a political engagement. In his absence the massacre occurred, and upon his return he was ousted from the party and placed under house arrest where he remained up until his death.

I wrote something on the BBC comment board on this subject, I am not sure it will get posted, but I just wanted to say that the thing that Zhao, and MLK for that matter, was not afraid to do was to criticise a country and political system that he ulimately had some faith in because he was afraid of seeming like a traitor. He believed that that examination and criticism of corruption and wrong practises "strictly according to the facts" (ru shi) would yield a better CCP and a better China for all. I beleve this is the great lesson to be gained from the more notable parts of his political life, especially here in the US, and for all of us, perhaps. Introspection, striving to do better, be kinder and fairer, avoiding the same mistakes, or trying to. THis is precisely what MLK talks about in his speech when he is speaking of the need to think about the position of those brothers we call our "enemy". It is something quite powerful, and somthing that though it exists as a strong theme in the christian world is not confined to it by any means.

SR65X

Saturday, January 15, 2005

Chavela Chavela Chavela again

So, here it is....click and fill your homes with Chavela Vargas singing "Macorina" as only she can...no-one can make "caliente" sound as "CALIENTE" as Chavela!!! how much better can it BE???? SR65X

this is an audio post - click to play

Thursday, January 13, 2005

chavela chavela chavela

chavela1
chavela1,
originally uploaded by SiRen65.
Finally got the Chavela Vargas stuff I ordered ages ago...having a fag working on stupid projects, but Chavela's voice is grinding deliciousssssly through the apartment...makes me think of my Great Aunt Margarita, missing her much (she was a passionate skinny frame, with a brilliant smile...a great letter writer), and all the others too, of course...so many to miss...and Chavela is nothing if not gut wrenching. Will put audio blog of her on tomorrow...now gotta go back to work, but just had to share the picture.

Hope you are all well. thanks for the round of emails...really cheered me up...exams and etc. not doing me a good turn at the mo'...

Keep on that train to victory,

SR65X

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

THERE"S TOO MUCH LOVE

Beautiful Belle and Sebastian thing from "Fold Your hands child you walk like a peasant"...Have listened to it several times today..:

"I could hang about and burn my fingers
I've been hanging out here waiting for something to
start
You think I'm faultless to a "t"
My manner set impeccably
But underneath I am the same as you

I could dance all night like I'm a soul boy
But I know I'd rather drag myself across the dance floor
I feel like dancing on my own
Where no one knows me, and where I
Can cause offense just by the way I look

And when it comes to blows
When I am numbering my foes
Just hope that you are on my side my dear

But it's best to finish as it started
With my face head down just staring at the brown
formica
It's safer not to look around
I can't hide my feelings from you now
There's too much love to go around these days.

You say I;ve got another face
That's not a fault of mine these days
I'm honest, brutal and afraid of you.


this is an audio post - click to play


Have a good dance about, everyone!!

SR65X

Chronotope Chronic: The Night Fell.

the night fell Green
again on manhattan.

again
In the shadows were seen
bare arms of black trees
opened silently to a sky
held aloft fragile high
by
columns
so much
Taller
so much
Bigger
than they.

again
the White arches:
lincoln centre a flash
of candles fading in the half
light…a festival of flickering
bones leaning like a rib cage
curving in to tuck a space in Red, a rage
of motion, a flight
of feet and
an ocean of light
to swim in, to
wish and swish in:

an arena for the twilight.

again
in a whisper it was said
that swallowing the seas
would do no harm, that lives
were not tandem but arrived
at like
knots on
string.
that there
was nothing
to be done at the
base of other White columns

but piss

again
on the pavement was heard
a hum of a thousand glories
glittering in the grout, like chips
of Gold, like sails of flying ships, but
there is
scraping by
the broken heel
some shit
scraping by
up with
scraping by
which i
scraping by
will
not
put.

limping politic clatters
through the night

a near burnt bulb in the heart,
a wave about to crash….

this was the dry land
that was the wet
this is the mainline coming.

this the place we
dance in dust
and do not see the warning.

the night fell Green
again on manhattan

once more you were miles
away stretching out your smiles
like towels. i was walking by
lincoln center in a measured aisle
of beauty
before
the end, my
friend, I
in the Green
light of a rich
night, that Green
of leaves,
of money
and of graves...


Sunday, January 02, 2005

"THERE ARE SOME BAD PEOPLE ON THE RISE"

saloinspection
saloinspection,
originally uploaded by SiRen65.
Morrissey had it right. Picture from Salo to illustrate...ever get the feeling you were being watched??

Haven't written...Opera was great. Tales of Hoffman, fun and beautiful. If it wasn't beautiful it would be Romantic piffle, but it is, so it's fun and luscious. But haven't been able to really say much about things that is too happy...the Tsunami has kind of been domnating my thinking, and the 30 million dollar initial "pledge"...now that waas a SCANDAL of Epic proportions. If I had been feeling less depressed it would have made a *fine* addition to DonQ's Scandal page. As it is, thankfully our resident "oval office ogre" (thanks for the phraseology goes to Rufus Wainwright) has upped the ante somewhat, but it's one of those hide under the bed moments, I think. I was watching CNN this morning and found out that Colin Powell is again being rolled off to the area of crisis. They ALWAYS send Colin Powell...he's the resident Brown Man, I think, getting all the messy sticky diplomacy stuff that I thought being president was supposed to be about. Not to say that there is anybody more qualified on the current staff. But of course Jeb's tagging along to represent White America in his fine figure of manhood, so all is not lost!AAAAgh. The whole thing is a farce. Harvard activism on this is happening, but everybody is still away on holiday, so...

Donations to Medicins sans Frontiers...what do you think? Most of you are more knowledgable about links ties and arrangements between charities and corporations/governments than I am, so. We sent some cash to the Red Cross, but I dunno...there's no way to fathom this.