A History in Rust

I am sick.

I coughed so hard yesterday afternoon that my lumbar muscles have been spasming. Seriously. I'm so sick it's making my butt sore. Kathleen has been taking great care of me, bringing me soup and tea and putting her hand on my forehead.

Mostly I have been laying in bed, thinking about things. I have come to the following conclusions.

1. Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan is a phenomenal graphic novel.
2. I am overwhelmingly satisfied with where I live.
3. I need a new job. Soon.
4. There is nothing wrong with listening to an audiobook and saying you "read" it.

not exactly Voltaire, but it'll do.

It is frustrating to be on this side of California's teaching jobs (i.e. wanting one and not having one). The state has taken the metaphorical axe to the education budget again. It's shocking how few jobs are open.

I'm going nuts at my job, but only because of the paycheck. I can't live on $13.50 an hour, and the poetry slam business prevents me from (for the time being) taking a second job. I said awhile ago that if I was not in a classroom for the 09-10 school year, that I would go on a huge tour again, possibly even going overseas. Faced with the possibility of having to follow through on that is not a comforting thought; especially considering that my motivation for doing so is to make money. That will require a monumental amount of dedication and planning.

I'm trying to stay positive--to remember that the world doesn't owe me a teaching job and a decent paycheck and that things could certainly be much worse. For example, I could have wasted eight dollars and two hours of my life to see the Transformers movie, but I didn't.

Send money so I can buy Beyonce tickets for Thursday night.

Love and Rockets,
JM

Listened to a whole bunch of Unwed Sailor, watched an old movie, wrote and recorded a song, worked on memorizing poems, read some Moby Dick and Berlin: City of Stones. It was a perfect night.

I don't know a good file hosting site, but you can download the song for the next 7 days from yousendit:
JM Huscher - Its Apogee; Its Triumphant Decline

Let me know if you are looking for full or part time work in Pittsburg, Concord, Moraga, and/or Davis, CA. The non-profit I work for has a few openings that have not been posted yet, and I could help you get an early foot in the door. Fair warning: the pay is not great and working with adults with developmental and physical disabilities requires an absurd amount of patience.

Find me backchannel for more details.

In other news:
My summer is going by too quickly!

Jason posted a favorite poem of his, "Mistaking the Sea For Green Fields" by Ashley Capps. Here's one I saw awhile ago that stuck with me. It was in last month's Believer. Hope you like it, J.

Getting in Line
Bob Hicok

A man crosses a field. He’d like something
to set down so he picks up a rock
about the size of a baby. Rock-baby
is heavier than a baby-baby would be,
the man has walked but a few steps
when he abandons the child. Years later,
there’s a knock on his door in the field:
rock-baby has grown up and wants
to get even. The man
doesn’t remember rock-baby,
so when rock-baby says, you never loved me,
the man says, sure, I can buy that,
and offers grown-up rock-baby a beer.
When they’re a little drunk, the man says,
your quarrel isn’t with me, your quarrel’s
with the poet who put us in the field,
and the poet’s quarrel
is with the God who makes poets
send people walking across fields,
and God’s quarrel is with the nothing
that came before God
that God is always trying to fill, even after God
has filled it. Grown-up rock-baby
thinks the man is telling him
he doesn’t really exist, he stones the man
to death to prove that his nonexistence
is not the case. Alone
with the bloody certainty
of his tangibility, he writes out,
again and again, my thoughts
have a city in them. And in that city,
at night, a little girl
wants a goldfish for the goldfish
she already has, and the goldfish
wants a little girl for the little girl
he already has, and the bowl
wants a bowl beside it
to share the orange and rippling feeling
it would call soul if the word
wasn’t already taken.

Awesome scooter ride today. The clutch was being a bit shady, but I tightened it up in the coffee shop parking lot and we were good to go. The delta is just beautiful country--vineyards and wandering rivers. We took the river roads down to Rio Vista, to a crazy bar with all manner of dead things on the walls. I should have been grossed out, but I was mostly impressed.

We had lunch in a Taqueria that served burritos as big as my head. The waitress brought us more beers than we ordered, which was fine, but the highlight of the whole trip was a painting on a wall in the back hallway, which you could only see if you were headed to the restroom. I came back to the table having laughed myself to tears. This is the picture, taken by my camera. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it myself.
What the?!

On the ride back we hit some one-lane winders--it pays to go on a ride with locals who know the area. After about five hours of riding, I noticed a noise coming from my rear tire. We were back in West Sacramento at this point.

When we pulled over, we noticed that my rear tire rim was loose, and wobbling around. When we took off the rear tire, it looked like the bolts on the tire hub were just about to be sheared off. If I had ridden it the rest of the way home, my Vespa would have, at some point, turned into a unicycle.

Dave got his truck, loaded my Vespa, and drove me home. I parked and cleared out the glovebox. She's not going to be going anywhere for awhile. Ugh. I'm looking at $150 in parts easy. Hopefully somebody has something sitting in a garage somewhere.

At least I didn't die, I guess. More photos on facebook (JM Huscher)

Another instrumental, this one written and recorded last night. I was too tired to think of anything outside of 4/4 or even moving too far from major chords, but it's not the worst thing I've ever done. The whole thing is sort of orchestral, I think, and at just over 4 minutes, it's pretty perfect background music for a slam poem. When my brain power returns (when the coffee has been consumed), I will be able to do something with augmented chords. Ha!

Music is always the best part of any day, but the priority this weekend is with writing and memorizing poems. Hot new group pieces are slowly coming together, and by the end of the week I should have solid (finished?) drafts for duets with every one of my teammates (personal goal). I also have a Berkeley feature in a little less than a month, and I want to do as many other poets' work as possible. Ashley Cropp, Bob Hicok, and Kim Addonizio poems need to be memorized by then. I need to make goulash again soon. Is Food Inc. showing anywhere near where I am? I need to adjust the clutch cable on the Vespa again. Wait. What was I talking about, again?

Oh yeah:
JM Huscher - The Architecture of Trees (DL up for 1 week)

The latest in an unfortunately long-lived series of posts about indie rock bands....

I'm watching videos of bands online to pass the time while I... well... do nothing, and sometimes I need more than youtube's endless music videos and cell-phone concert footage. I thought I'd pass these along:

Take Away Shows
This site is RIDICULOUS, and has been a favorite of mine for years. These filmmakers drag musicians out into the streets of Paris (sometimes Seattle or SF) and have them play their songs, sometimes on improvised instruments. Always with a wandering single camera and surprisingly good sound. Vincent Moon shoots (in my opinion) the best ones. For highlights check out Arcade Fire singing "Neon Bible" in a freight elevator, toddler's dancing to Menomena's "Wet and Dusting" and Pigeon John doing "Freaks Freaks" for an unsuspecting audience in a bus stop. I mean, come on, where else are you going to see REM playing "Living Well is the Best Revenge" smashed into the back of a van driving through Paris. This web site is nuts.

These two are also nice.
Interface
Might not always get the name of the song right (It's "Við Spilum Endalaust" not "Fljotavik"), but it's studio quality sound and a really nice picture. If you wanted the DVD, but couldn't afford it, this'll do.

Lake Fever Sessions
I think this one's pretty new, but it shows a lot of promise. It's musicians in a studio, so the sound quality is there, but it lacks the excitement of a Take Away Show. Good stuff, regardless.

Look, it's not much, but if you can, wear something green today to stand in solidarity with Iranian students putting their lives on the line for women's rights, free speech, and democracy in their home country.

It also would not hurt to pray.

If you're living in a cave, Al Jazeera's reporting has been the most complete of what I've read so far.

7 1/2 hours of testing later...

I had three interactions with people on my way to or at the testing site. They are as follows:

Walking out of the parking lot, an older woman asks me where we're supposed to go. I show her where I'm walking and she tells me she's failed the test 5 times in a row now. I ask her two simple questions about the test content. It's clear she hasn't studied anything.

After the first three hours and forty-five minutes of testing (and our first mandatory break), the guy next to me tells me that he only made it half way into his first of two essays. He probably failed, he tells me. I neglect to tell him that I wrote a two page essay on deconstructing morphemic structures, erased it, wrote a completely different essay, wrote the other essay and still had time to go check all of my work.

At the end of the second test, some lady overhears someone say "Affective Filter." "What's Affective Filter?" she asks me. I told her it was developed by Stephen Krashen at USC (she was wearing a USC shirt), it had explicit implications for children experiencing culture shock, and was the answer to the second essay on the test we had just handed in. The dude behind her confirmed this, and I watched her eyes get huge.

Hands down the hardest test I've ever taken, and I'm glad it's over. Fingers crossed until my scores come in.

When I came home from work, Kathleen was watching an episode of Heroes on Netflix. I sat down with her a second, mostly because my legs were tired, and there's this jumpy japanese guy named Hiro who is trying to steal a sword.

Hiro tricks the guard to go in the back room and look for something, and then quickly runs around the desk to jump on the computer. He types in the name of the sword to find out where it is. A location comes up: "CRM-114."

Those words are on the screen for about as long as it takes to read them, but I freaked out. I let out a weird series of syllables and reached for the keyboard of Kath's computer. "Greaaahhhh... Pause pause pause.... It's a nerd thing... It's a... reference..." I sort of sprawled out into her face to get to the laptop.

By the time I have paused the show, Hiro is running over to locate the drawer. I opened a tab in firefox, typing CRM-114 into the search box.

Turns out the CRM-114 Discriminator is the name of the communication device on the planes in Dr. Strangelove, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. This is the radio-looking device that they use to send/receive the recall message.



Kathleen laughed hysterically. I don't know if I am impressed with myself or saddened by the fact that this particular synapse fired inside my head. I could have been retaining knowledge about Metalinguistic abilities. Instead, I can remember the name of a fictional device from a movie made in the 60s.

If nothing else, I guess it's a good indication that things are still working well up there.

Thoughts I had over the course of the evening:

1. Edamame is outrageously delicious. Why am I not eating it every day?

2. Mark Kozelik's "Rock 'n' Roll Singer" is the only ironic song I like. Except for maybe Carly Simon's "You're so Vain."

3. I look really good in these jeans. Like whoah.

4. [While changing albums on iTunes] I would listen to more Wilco, Velvet Underground, and White Stripes if I didn't see so many other great bands on my way to the end of the alphabet.

5. I have no idea how I will entertain my parents for five days when they come to visit, but I sort of just want to hang out in my living room, listen to great music, drink wine, and do crossword puzzles.


Knocked out two chapters tonight... which was better than I hoped I would do. This test (Saturday) is going to kill me.

Kath bought a vegan cookbook, and I'm excited to be moving my diet in that direction. I think about 1/3 of my meals now are vegan, including these amazing roasted bell pepper, ginger, and chickpea flatbread pizzas that she made tonight. I don't know if going completely vegan is a goal that we share, but we're slowly moving in that direction. Not a difficult thing to do this time of year--so many amazing fruits are coming into season.

Telling someone you are vegetarian will only generates a few specific different responses. They are as follows:

1. Do you eat chicken/fish?
I guess there are a lot of "vegetarians" who do this? I will say this once and simply. Those people are not vegetarians. They wanted to be, but then they slacked off and couldn't follow through. That means you, Tim. Quit eating fish.

2. I used to be a vegetarian.
I get the exact same feeling from this as when people see my tattoos and say "I'm going to get a tattoo..." There is always a sense of longing in the voice.

3. I could never give up ____.
Yes. You. Could.

4. Ohmahgawd! What do you eat?!
Everything. And it's delicious.

This post was brought to you by my dog-tired brain, who has spent too much time studying and driving and ripping poems in Chico and working working working and waiting for a DHP rejection letter and too many other things and it couldn't say anything interesting or to even say it well and for that we (my brain and I) are very sorry.

It was inevitable, I suppose.

damnit.

Mostly posting this for myself, so I don't forget:

Reading/Competing at:

Chico Invitational: June 4
SF Battle Of The Bay: June 14
Berkeley Battle Of The Bay: June 17
Oakland Battle Of The Bay: June 18
Southwest Shootout (in ABQ): June 18-21
Tourettes without Regrets: July 2
Marin County Fair Slam: July 3
Berkeley Slam (Featuring): July 15
West Coast Regional Slam (in SF): July 24 & 25
Multi-voice Slam (Oakland): July 30
National Poetry Slam (in FL): Aug 4-8
Individual World Poetry Slam (in Berkeley): Oct 8-1

Also considering a quick tour up north in the fall... I'd better book it now before these shows burn me out.

For future reference:
You can get a lot of reading done when your computer is dead in the water.

Send money.

I am reachable only by phone for the next several days.

Rereading Whitman's Civil War era poetry is good for me right now. The Berkeley Team was weirded out when I said I wanted to write a group piece about Whitman, but they are letting me run with it. A few stanzas in, and I already feel like I've been handed the keys to a very expensive car.

I had an all staff meeting about how to use the toilet which included phrases like "When you go in, you need to close the door." I spend all day reducing things to the simplest terms. I talk to 60 year old men like they are in the third grade, because that is how their brains function. I hug people when they cry, but mostly I tell them to stop crying. When guys get angry, I make them go outside and rip up cardboard boxes. My job is totally insane, but it is also very very simple. Reading Ken Wilber when I got home today just about made my ears bleed.

Time for Zelda and Ice Cream.

Because we needed some solidarity...

Click here to see the awesome logo I designed for the Bay Area Poetry Slam Teams.

If you are on a Bay Area poetry slam team, let me know if you think this is not the awesomestestest thing you've ever seen in your life. If you don't get it, post that in the comments too. I tend to think the more subtle a joke is the better, though.

Efrim Menuck is a hero of mine for many reasons, not the least of which was his involvement with several Constellation Records projects, including Godspeed You! Black Emperor. He did an interveiw with a quality online music mag called Drowned in Sound that I read this afternoon, stating some really interesting things about the responsibility of art and artists in times where reform is urgent.

Regarding the end of GY!BE, he said:
“The last American tour that Godspeed did was in the run up to the current war in Iraq. For what Godspeed did, it was very difficult for us to work out a way to communicate directly with the audience about what was going on.
“We could talk to people after the shows, or we could make announcements from the stage, but so much what Godspeed was, was one-way communication, and I had an existential freakout about that, that those tactics aren’t valid anymore.
“People didn’t need a rock band pointing in the direction of [how the world was at that point]. Maybe what they needed is some clumsy words, a presentation that was a little more human.”
full article here

As one who has always held onto hope that maybe GY!BE was just in a long, long, long hiatus, this makes me pretty sad. Seems like they are done for good. As an artist of "clumsy words" and what I consider to be a presentation that is "a little more human", this fills me with some hope. My compulsion to write has taken a new complexion this spring--I feel more motivated than ever to write about things like vegetarianism and riding bikes and buying/wanting less (the small very human ways in which I revolt). I had considered this desire to write as a byproduct of what I was interested in doing, and never a means of accomplishing those things or increasing the impact of my personal revolt.

Interesting.

I was supposed to be at the Berkeley Slam tonight. I'm at home writing and listening to 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons instead.