Miscellaneous.

I went out this evening with Ray and his generous ladyfriend, who bought me beers until I was reeling (it doesn't take long when you're 120lbs. and have almost no tolerance).

Finished Lady Chatterley's Lover. It was remarkable.

Finished Hell House, a haunted house story by Richard Matheson. It was so-so.

I'm going to sleep early in hopes of waking up early. Goodnight!

The Right Book, the Right Time.

At the Mad Dog on Valentine's Day. Picture by Auta.

Lady Chatterley's Lover is a beautiful read. I am eating out of the palm of its hand, absolutely powerless to stop mid-chapter. Yet at the end of a day's reading I feel momentarily full, satisfied, enriched. D.H. Lawrence seems to inhabit all his characters at once; we see each of them through the eyes of all the others one by one.

The protagonist Connie and the gamekeeper of the Chatterley grounds are particularly sympathetic characters. I feel nervous when they are tense, thrilled (mostly) when they make love, blithe when they enjoy one another's company simply. Oy, it's been too long since a book took me the way this one does. Some passages are so great that I make noises out loud that the neighbors probably smirk at. Still I can't stifle the sounds.

I hope you out there are well, too, Reader. Are you?

No Passengers.

My Famous Feet

This is my own snapshot, not Mary's. Hers are fantastic.

Photographs of my feet by Mary-Becker Weiss are available on greeting cards at Corniche in downtown Gardiner! When I went in it looked like my feet had momentarily sold out.

Also available at Corniche are some works by my good pal Robert Saunders, whose friendship, generosity, hospitality, art, and jazz collection have enriched my life over the past year. Robert will be a recurring character in blogs to come.

Swing into Corniche to see Robert and my feet!

How You Touch Her, Part II

Listening to a guitar is of course a purely auditory experience; watching a guitarist stimulates both your eyes and your ears. Playing the guitar adds pleasing tactile sensations, the satisfaction of musical progress, and the intrigue of communicating in a new tongue that is nonverbal like body language... and equally expressive.

Touch is a central pleasure of the guitar. Before you even pluck a string, you're taking something pretty onto your knee and putting your arms around her. That's a pretty good start, wouldn't you say?

The back of her neck is long, sleek, and smooth. If you run a hand up the fretboard lightly, you'll feel each of those metal inlays like rough bumps on a smooth road-like surface. Finally, as you begin to play, you're pinning taut wires to a hard surface with your fingers, vibrating them with the other hand until they ring pleasingly.

Even back when it used to hurt, back when I was a beginner, I loved how the wires resisted me, how they bit grooves into my skin. Slowly my fingertips hardened until I could play for hours without pain, and that was like losing some physical form of virginity. I had been initiated, I was entering another world!

Guitar continues to be a process of discovering limitations and working to push them farther out. Every time I sit down I confront myself, I struggle, and if I'm lucky that day, I overcome. Then I'm one tiny step closer to being able to express any musical idea that pops into my head; my hands are one notch closer to being "obedient."

It All Depends on How You Touch Her.

My amplifier now does nothing but hum when plugged in, and I can't afford to replace such an expensive piece of gear. So I'm an acoustic player by necessity for the time being: two hands and a heart and a pure love of sound! I've got everything I need.

The guitarists I look up to stand in agreement: the most important thing affecting the quality of sound from a guitarist is not his gear, but his touch. This is a comforting thought to those of us who can't afford professional-grade setups. Technique and artistic vision should form the core of any musician, and those two things can be exercised through any reliable instrument. I've got a certain degree of both qualities, or so I like to think, and they seem to feed one another. When I apply myself, I'm able to make one significant leap every day.


Tonight I sat and paid close attention to the fingertips of my left hand. I noticed that they were slightly out of sync with my right hand's plucking and strumming motions, which caused harshness of tone, and even some accidentally muted notes, during solos and melodic lines. I smoothed that out by painstakingly practicing a scale form until I had completely rebuilt my left hand's way of doing business. Then, as a new man, I used the scale to improvise. Breakthrough! I devised my first-ever melody that sounds upbeat and positive! It even sounds vaguely African in flavor ("African" is a major generalization; forgive me). Then, during a recorded improvisation, I developed more ideas based on those initial "hooks." I'm a happy fellow.

Do I still want good gear? You bet. Ideally, I'd acquire enough electronic devices to make listeners say "What is he doing, pleasuring a rhinoceros with a modified dentist's drill whilst turning cartwheels?!" I'd love to be creative that way. For now I can't afford to, but perhaps that's fortunate, maybe I'll grow as an artist first and then begin to incorporate my chosen noisemakers, fuzzblasters and crunchsplatters.

Again, though, the important question is how you choose to touch this lovely curvy thing that you wrap your arms around.

All else is secondary.

It all depends on how you touch her.

As I will consider publicly tomorrow, right here. Tune in by dialing http://tavernofsouls.blogspot.com

The Week in Review

My workplace has changed hands! The new owner's full of ideas and energy, so the place should grow.

This week I exchanged a few letters with penpals in Connecticut and Germany, learned five songs and sketched out the structure of a new song of my own. Its title is a phrase I've heard drivers scream repeatedly at the anonymous occupants of other cars. Surprisingly, the song is PG.

Finally, I started composing an ominous piece for bass clarinet, timpani, and bass voices. Closed out the week on Saturday night by playing for a crowd of friends and peers at the pub downtown. Dan stayed out both Friday and Saturday. Had a great time!

Tomorrow night I meet with a local guitarist, Tuesday with a banjo player. More writing and composing all week.

Today I began reading The Man Who Tasted Shapes by Richard E. Cytowic. It has wooed me, and a few fun little essays are forthcoming, so my next entry will be much less like buckshot. I promise.

Okay. Off to organize my next move; it's already past ten and there's much to do before bed!

Valentine's Day & Other Nightmares

I am not looking forward to a Valentine's day performance.

Two or three hours of love songs?! I'm unsure whether this is going to be fun or depressing.


Well, I finally started wearing headbands around the house. For practical reasons only! You will probably never see me wearing them, but Al, I finally took your advice. Thanks! I can at least work now without hair in my eyes.

Got some hard decisions ahead, some hard traveling. Life is a hard puzzle, a hard puzzle indeed. I think I'll go now and rehearse for tonight's gig. In fact, I'll put together a rough setlist while I'm here.

• "A Boy Named Sue" - J. Cash
• "Big Rock Candy Mountain" -American Hobo Song
• "Cape Cod Girls" -Sea Chantey
• "Come Away with Me" -Norah Jones 
• "First Song" -Poem by Galway Kinnel, set to music by Andrew Bird 
• "The Way" - Performed by Fastball, dunno who wrote it. 
• "Drunken Sailor" -Sea Chantey
• "Folsom Prison Blues" - J. Cash
• "Frog Went a-Courtin' " - American Folk
• "Gun Street Girl" - Tom Waits
• "Hallelujah" -Leonard Cohen
• "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum" - American Hobo Song
• "I've Been Everywhere" - Can't remember who wrote this 'un. Merle Haggard?
  
• "James Alley Blues" - Richard "Rabbit" Brown
• "Long Way Home" - Not sure whose this song is. Country standard, for sure
• :"Me Father's a Lawyer in England" - English drinking song that I rewrote for my own purposes.
• "The Times They are a-Changin' " - Bob Dylan
• "Cocaine Blues" - J. Cash
• "Oh, Darling" - The Beatles 
• "Nightingale" -Norah Jones 

Alright. Ridin' off into the sunset now. Got a mini-party happening tonight. Cheers!

An Arabian Storyteller Gives Me Blueballs

I've been flirting with Scheherazade's stories for a long while. Reading them seems a struggle, though a glad one.

My first contact with The Arabian Nights was an uncensored version of the story "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" when I was maybe fourteen years old. That's the famous tale from which the phrase "Open sesame!" originates. It contains a description of a man being carved into quarters and hung on a wall as a warning to that same man's brother. I loved it.

In 2007, back when I was a foolish young lad who didn't care to research different translations before embarking on one, I bought and read the Barnes & Noble bargain paperback edition. "Boy," I thought more than once, "I remember these stories being more gruesome." I kept reading. I had a great time... but it could've been much better; I learned after reading about a thousand pages that the version of the Nights I'd just finished was a neutered version of a declawed version of the original tales, and that many of the more explicit stories had just been omitted, censored entirely. Serious bummer; a thousand pages took a long time to read. I learned from the experience.

In 2008 I bought a CRW Publishing LTD incarnation of The Arabian Nights that uses a translation by Sir Richard Burton. It faithfully presents all the racism, violence, and eroticism for view. What I've read of it is already miles better than the B&N version that'd had its testicles removed. The problem is that this edition is enormous, not easily portable... and it still doesn't have all of the stories. Perhaps there are just too many to collect in one volume. Until I can afford a six-volume set, I guess I'm jolly well fucked.

Well, I'll leave you with a cute passage from a particular scene where a "lucky" porter has fallen in with some beautiful gals who're toying with him:

All this time the Porter was carrying on with them, kissing, toying, biting, handling, groping, fingering; whilst one thrust a dainty morsel in his mouth, and another slapped him; and this cuffed his cheeks and that threw sweet flowers at him; and he was in the very paradise of pleasure, as though he were sitting in the seventh sphere among the Houris of Heaven.

That's it for tonight. Goodnight!

Feels Good to be Understood.

A local photographer and acquaintance wrote today, responding to the comments I made on her college thesis:

"So, this is my e-mail thanking you for your inspired, insightful, devilish, indulgent, candid, smart-ass comments."

What a gal.

In exchange, she's taking my picture so I'll have visual material for music marketing & promotion.

It's supposed to be -10 degrees Fahrenheit tonight! Jesus.

Restless.

Literally and philosophically speaking. I'm restless.

Like grapes are hanging from the vine just above my best leaping grab. Like my fingertips just brush their skin. Like the grapes are swollen and sweet and just ripe enough.

And I can't for the life of me knock a cluster down.

Maybe a midnight walk will clear my head.

May I Groom You?

Jeff, a great conversationalist and entertainer that frequents the bar I played at tonight, said to the cook:

"Do you mind if I groom you while you eat?"

Snapped one of the gay men from down the bar:

"Do you mind if I eat you while you groom?"

Shot beer out my nose.

2008 Inventory

Every year I like to take stock of how I've grown, what I've accomplished, and where I'm going. What's my next move? It's inventory time.

2008, especially since late Summer, has been explosive.

Since October I've learned about fifty new songs, finished writing & composing five of my own, and expanded my repertoire by about three and a half continuous hours of guitar and voice. Learned Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, sea chanteys, American Hobo Songs like "The Big Rock Candy Mountain," blues tunes like "James Alley Blues," Johnny Cash covers, Tom Waits covers, and all kinds of other traditional music or new music in the old tradition. Reactions have been fantastic... I've got a regular weekly gig and I'm rapidly making contacts for more.

God, a few gigs were crazy. Frontal nudity, addresses scribbled on napkins and stuffed in the tip hat, hard-partying older ladies shouting along to "What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor?" What a great time.

Earlier in the year I wrote more fiction, but the past few months I've been steadily exploring what I want to do in music... by feeling my ideas out in essay form. I've been studying music theory, learning chord voicings, reading and writing sheet music more comfortably, even working on some musical scales from non-western cultures.

In October I wrote a twisted little book of Halloween limericks that'll soon be set to music.

Recorded about three hours of audio in 2008.

Read the massive first book of Don Quixote. I can't recommend that one enough. It's hilarious and profound.

Got three new students, aged 9, 11, and thirtysomething. They are simultaneous, a package deal: a mother and two daughters. It's been lovely.

Immediately on the horizon: a long-incubating short story, an album of improvised dronal music that blends traditional Indian and Jewish music with bass drones from my throat and from a heavily distorted (thus long-sustained) electric guitar. I'm also working on more conventional, lyrical songs. It's possible that I'll have two CDs out by Summertime, though I'll probably have to push them under different "band" names. One under my real name, probably, and the other under a pseudonym.

God, I love getting out of bed in the morning. Every morning.

Happy New Year!

The Garden of Love

Just yesterday I wrapped up a draft recording of a William Blake poem I've set to music, called "The Garden of Love."

Went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never have seen.
A chapel stood there in the midst
Where I used to play on the green...

The poem, dated 1794, is about the natural beauty of sex and love. Blake presents the church as a blight on these enjoyments, as noted in the last two lines:

...Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

Please note that the above lines and stanza may not be absolutely true to the original poem! I'm recording them from memory here.

Anyway, much work remains to be done. The effect of my derivative song isn't quite as chilling as I'd like it to be. Maybe if I transposed it down a few steps...? 

This Land is Your Land

At the local discount store I found a lovely little collection of Woody Guthrie songs for $2.99! I've already learned a few, with "This Land is Your Land" being one. I love the timbres of antiquated microphones and recorders and players; if I had the money and the time I'm sure I'd be busy collecting old 78rpm records.

While we're on the subject of music: I'm enthusiastically strumming a new copper-body resonator guitar. If you've never heard of such a thing, just try to envision something halfway between a guitar and a banjo: not too much twang, but more percussive than your standard acoustic guitar. I chose the copper body because it seems to contribute to a uniquely haunting sound.

I didn't earn the guitar; it was given to me by my wonderfully supportive parents. Thanks, mom and dad. I've been making great use of it already. Wrote a song on it, and it's not even a week old!

More soon. Goodnight.

Daylight Shavings

"Daylight Savings Time" confuses me. The following seems obvious, but let me remind myself and everybody else who's listening: shifting a man-made system of measurement does not actually produce any more sunlight in a day.

What it actually attempts to do is shift everybody's daily schedule backward by one hour. Here in Maine, this means that twilight descends somewhere around 3:30 in the afternoon, but the sunrise corresponds more closely to when most diurnal people are waking up.

Daylight savings time was first explained to me when I was a child; my mother said simply: "We get an extra hour of sleep." She meant that night we would get an extra hour of sleep, but I didn't know that. I thought that meant we got an extra hour of sleep every night from then on.

Daylight savings time actually shaves an hour of daylight out of my schedule. I can't sleep most nights, including this one, until very very late. By the time I wake up, sunrise is at least four hours in the rearview mirror already. So the hour that's tacked on to the beginning of the day? I never see it.

I hereby declare temporal war on the diurnal people of my time zone! Nocturnal people, unite to reclaim one of our few hours of sunlight!

Current Projects

Here's what I've been working on for the past week or so:

• The Halloween Parade, which is a small book of about two dozen or so limericks centering around fictional females dressed up in costumes performing acts that would make their fictional mothers blush.

• "A Man Does What he Can to Get On," a song about a musician busking during hard times. Nobody has any money for him... but characters keep giving him whatever they can, whatever's available. Comedy.
  
• "A Taste of Nature's Weapons," a song about the dangers of getting involved with a beautiful woman who doesn't think you're as great as you think she is.
• "There are Thieves About," a song about a moral-obsessed family locking their daughter away so that she can't be tempted into even the healthiest, safest sexual exploration.
• "Put Down Your Telescope," a song about a girl who loves only unattainable men... it's also about the very attainable man whom she ignores.
• "Homebody Alone," about the feeling of having stayed home all day by choice, then realized you feel left behind while everyone else is out having fun.
• "Redeye," a song about a beautiful insomniac.
• "Better-Rested, Healthier, Miserable," about a man who has the time now to start all kinds of good exercise and dietary habits as a result of losing his job.
• "Eddie Catch a Pretty Thing," a character sketch of a guitar player and raconteur.
• "Devil he Can't Shake," about nagging existential concerns.
• "My Little Blackbird," an attempt to express female sexuality by writing from the perspective of one during an amorous encounter.
• "Suspense," about sitting up awake late each night because the speaker lacks a sense of closure in his or her days.
• "Steady Time," about how there's a clock shop keeping time out there somewhere, even when things seem completely erratic and senseless... a clock is keeping neat, regular time.

So, that's thirteen or fourteen songs and a collection of limericks. I've listed only the projects with sufficient progress already made... many, many more are in the pipeline.

If one or more of the above ideas stand out and pique your interest, please let me know by commenting here!

Farewell for now.

Dirty Songs

Many traditional songs contain adult-themed subject matter. From "The Red Light Saloon" to "Roll Your Leg Over," bawdy songs kept folks entertained in the days before radio.

The most gruesome so far is a sea shantey built entirely of limericks, called "The Good Ship Venus." or "Frigging in the Rigging." It's ghastly. Parts of it of course are laugh-out-loud funny, but most of it is astonishing and terrifying. She's perfect.

By the way, I believe a recording of "The Good Ship Venus" is available on Rogue's Gallery, a double-disc set of sea shanteys that includes a singing performance by Johnny Depp under the assumed name of Jack Shit. There are also two performances by Baby Gramps. I wrote about him earlier this week.

Happy Belated Halloween! Mwa ha ha.

An Early Awakening & Farewell

As I finally packed myself into bed at 2:00am last night, I feared that I wouldn't be able to rise by 9:30am.

I woke up promptly at 7:30, though, thanks to a fortissimo performance of "Composition for Garbage Truck and Soprano Dog." Finally it's 9:00. The truck has roamed on. The dog is silent. And I'm grateful to be awake, because I've struggled vainly for months to sleep earlier at night and wake earlier in the morning. Despite all efforts, I don't often see daylight until ten or later.

As Winter approaches, some friends are taking off across-country; others will soon return home for the holidays. It has become an annual rhythm, like snowfall or turning leaves; some perch while others fly.

Some of you, like forces of nature, embody the summertime. That season is shrinking in the rearview mirror, but I can't wait to see you all again.

Safe journeys!
-Nicholas

P.S. For a lovely farewell song, sing yourself a rousing chorus of "Bound for South Australia."

I'll Give You Sugar for Sugar, Salt for Salt.

I've been digging through books, old records, and archives. The goal is to unearth roots music that I can learn, enjoy, expand upon, and perform. The search has been fruitful: I've found sea chanteys about falling in love with anonymous prostitutes, traditional blues songs about existential angst, broadside ballads full of the filthiest limericks I've ever set eyes upon, and British drinking songs about lecherous clergymen.

My favorite lyrics so far, though, may belong to "James Alley Blues," which was originally recorded in 1927 in New Orleans by the man who wrote it. His name was Richard "Rabbit" Brown. The second and third verses set the theme:

I've seen better days, but I'm puttin' up with these...
I'd have a much better time, but these girls are so hard to please.


'cause I was born in the country, she thinks I'm easy to rule...
She tryin' to hitch me to her wagon and drive me just like a mule.


Kinky. Now have a peek at the last three verses!

I'll give you sugar for sugar, let you get salt for salt...
And if you can't get along with me, it's your own fault.

You want me to love you, then you treat me mean...
You're my daily thought, you're my nightly dream.

Sometimes I think that you're too sweet to die... too sweet to die...
Another time, I think you oughta be buried alive.

Now those're some strong blues.

"Life is a Hard Puzzle, I Know..."

My good pal Dan saw an amazing performer named Baby Gramps on the David Letterman show performing a traditional sea shantey, "Cape Cod Girls." View it here:



The didgeridoo is an Australian Aborigine instrument, of course. There also happens to be one surgically implanted somewhere inside of Baby Gramps.

If you liked that one, have a gander at his rendition here of "Satisfied 'n Tickled Too."



"Life is a hard puzzle, I know. A hard puzzle..."

Certain art, certain acts, certain people help us forget about the world's teeth and claws for a while. Baby Gramps strikes me as an old-time bluesman or medicine show entertainer juxtaposed into the present day. I have never seen another human being entertain a crowd like he does.

There's literature in Gramps's repertoire; I've heard him quote Shakespeare and Friedrich Nietzsche during live performances.

Check him out by visiting his steam-powered website, www.babygramps.com!

To Whomever Left Ice Cream in my Freezer

I'll assume that it wasn't William Carlos Williams, and that I must now explain myself.

Your ice cream was lost to the French Renaissance writer Francois de Rabelais, who believed that it was best to please the physical appetites with whatever's at hand, and not feel guilty or hung up about it. The spirit of Rabelais possessed me from beyond the grave and, despite my valiant efforts to fend him off, he used my mouth to devour your frozen confection, which I will replace at first opportunity.

So sorry. I must now go back to licking the carton.

A Lost Art?

A great conversationalist can make anyone they talk to feel like the most important, interesting person in the world. But how many people can connect that profoundly while watching silly videos, listening to music, and carrying on two other discussions simultaneously?

“Instant” messaging is a prodigious time-sink, thanks in part to the distractions available on every Internet-connected computer. Who wants to be minimized? Who wants to wait seven minutes or more for a two-word reply? My friends are not just one "task" out of many, so I'm uneasy with the entire format.

Many people I love become barbarians online. Shouldn't instant messages observe basic social niceties such as saying "goodbye" instead of just vanishing? I've failed to observe etiquette a few times too, of course, but I've always apologized and tried to atone for the slip.

One-on-one online conversation seems so consistently rough around the edges that nobody is to blame for my exasperation. I am not pointing fingers at people, but at communication problems.

I just started reading The Letters of E.B. White, and I have an idea.

Do like your great-grandma did and write me a letter! You don't have to stamp an envelope or anything, just type it into an e-mail. I check my inbox daily.

If you don't like writing, come visit me instead. I'll feed you and sing you a song, maybe even for free. Overnights are alright, too, so bring your friends. My place sleeps up to a dozen. Comfortably.

And be sure I have your e-mail address. I sometimes handwrite letters, then scan them for e-mailing. There aren't many physical addresses in my, um, address book.

Check your mailbox! I'll see you soon.

Yours, as always,
Nicholas

Please Pass the Breasts

On the twenty-first I'll be attending a nude dinner for four (the nudity was my choice; more on that shortly). The hosting married couple have a long, bonded history with a mutual friend, and having heard a lot of stories involving me, they want to make acquaintance. I've agreed, in part because I've rarely cohabited with naked human beings outside of sexual contexts, and I'm interested.

A single skinny dipping excursion in the dark immediately before high school graduation was my only exposure. That night I connected as a friend to people I've rarely seen before or since, and I maintain a strong fond feeling when I remember their faces.

Our hosting couple laments that past dinners have ended awkwardly, with their guests revealing themselves to be not only nudists, but swingers. It's apparently rare to find naked, platonic companions. Let me repeat myself here: this is not about sex. I had heard through the grapevine that they're nudists, and I told our mutual friend to forward the message that if they prefer to be naked in their own home, I wasn't averse.

Platonic nudity, I have heard, improves the social climate. People are less guarded, more outgoing. It's hard to be pretentious in your birthday suit.

Wearing a costume does affect the way you perceive yourself. This black cotton t-shirt, these bracelets I'm wearing, and these broken-in jeans comprise tonight's disguise. When I stop to notice, I feel discomfort from all that cloth. I've never stopped to ask myself whether I actually enjoy wearing clothes. Yet to wear nothing is new to me, and my own bare body itself seems like a surreal costume, because I am so rarely unclad in front of others. This is neurotic territory at best, and that saddens me.

Only a handful of women have seen me naked as an adult. Some were so self-conscious that they demanded the lights should be out before they'd agree to strip too. I resisted this request every time, because I wanted to see the body, the nakedness, the humanness. It was always a thrill to make them feel beautiful, rather than merely sexy, because the nudity was not just about sex. It was about peeling off the mundane, stiff, professional daily world and leaving it on the floor layer by layer to create a safe empty space together, one all our own. It was about penetrating beyond the surface of this person's life, being trusted, helping that person feel good about herself, and then making her feel good physically. In the process, I'd like to think that common ground was formed, though at least once I was indeed used and cast aside.

Sex has always been associated with my experiences of mutual nudity, and I feel cheated. Why should I view my body as a strictly sexual object, uncovered only for bathing and gratification? Our bodies are miraculous in every activity. Why not appreciate that, in hopes of gaining a healthier appreciation for unguarded, exposed humanity? I can't empathize with a shirt. I can't empathize with denim. I can't empathize with a sundress. Body is the only thing I can really, humanly understand. Body, body, body.

I'll be there, friends. Eight o' clock. And I'll bring dessert. We'll all have a good laugh, because I'll have no idea which fork to use.

Pictures of Me Getting Licked

Above: Old Nick.

That's me, moments after yanking my head free of a giant nostril. Two Japanese tourists, apparently mother and daughter, stared on with blank expressions, talking quietly to one another. I don't know what they were saying, but I like to think they were impressed that I didn't get my head stuck this time.

Below: pedaling a giant heart. It lights up, alternating red for arteries and blue for veins, hot-cold hot-cold, but it doesn't go anywhere.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

"Fuck!"

Oh, that word! I love to say it, I love to sing it, I love to mouth it. "Fuck!" It can be sexual, violent, enthusiastic, awed. Its sound is hard, explosive, melodious. It is versatile. It fits. It feels good. It's easy.

And I'm trying, really trying, not to say it so much.

This is not because I've gone soft. Plenty of room remains in my heart for such sentences as "I'm going to knock your fucking teeth out if you shit in my house ever again, Larry." Phrases like that please even the Lord.

Here's my real problem: vague, ambiguous language promotes verbal and mental laziness when overused. "Fuck" and "suck" are frequent stand-in words. They emphasize opinion over observation.

"That new Tore-Up Anus CD really sucked!" You might say, just for example's sake.

You have used the word "suck" to express your position succinctly. But it's much more productive to say "The new Tore-Up Anus CD's sound quality was awful, the guitar was about five cents off key, and the melodies all sounded suspiciously similar to Black Sabbath hits." That's not so hard, and it's a little more sensitive to your Tore-Up Anus-loving friend because it says that you at least listened and took a moment to build an informed opinion.

I admit it's impractical to be that long-winded all the time. Nothing's wrong with saying "That sucked!" to save breath. I just aim to make sure that my opinions are well-built and substantive. Who wants to stumble their way through a judgmental, poorly thought-out, poorly expressed inner life? Human beings are partially defined by their opinions and ideas. I prefer to learn what I can even from art, music, and people I dislike.

You have limited time left in your life to taste as much of the world as you can. Why dismiss any experience as unworthy?

Autumn in Hell

Few people know this, but for years I've obsessed over the classic computer game "Doom."

In case you don't remember, "Doom" is a run-and-gun game in which the player must escape the denizens of Hell, battling to survive while exploring strange surroundings and looking for a way out of the nightmare.

Over the years I've learned how the game works from a designer's standpoint, and found excellent tools for creating new maps, monsters, and so on. The above screen capture is from a project I've been picking at this week, a map meant to look Halloweenish and evil, as though it were Autumn in hell. Trick or treat! Senseless carnage, reflexive hand-eye coordination. I love it.

* * *

Later that night...

* * *

It is fiendishly late and I still can't sleep. I miss my friends already, though they just left a few hours ago. I used to be such a hermit, bent over my desk night after night, no visitors.

What happened? I guess the right kind of company makes these things easy. For the first time in my life I'm feeling receptive, and I have an urge to tell my closest pals: "Hey, the door is open! Come stay for a few days, work on your art, your reading, whatever. Escape." Sometimes I feel it would be only natural to form a pack of sorts, sharing food and lodgings, sleeping in a massive pile like lazy lions. I am a better person in the company of my good friends. I like to have 'em around.

Like most people, though, to be truly happy I do need a room to myself and a door to shut behind me. Every day.

But even so, most of my conscious life's been cloistered: reading and writing and studying and learning the guitar and learning to sing and learning to compose. These things eat hours like candy. Finally I'm learning to balance it out, to mingle. It feels good. But I fear the Autumn, fear the words "Farewell Summer," because when the leaves are falling my mates may all be gone out-of-state where I cannot see them. But I'll write them letters, at the very least.

Letter writing is miserably underrated. It's much like keeping a journal, but more interpersonally productive, more communal.

Alright. I have a nine-hour shift ahead. It begins in four hours.

Goodnight.

Invisible Ink

Hanging on my wall is an unfinished piece of music that looks like a line graph.

It was intended to be a loose, freely-interpreted piece with a line and dots representing melody. Performers choose whatever pitches and rhythms they want, deciding what they think the line should represent. The lower the line dips, the lower the pitch. And so on, all along its squiggly shape. It's a vague guideline.

This process of "decoding" the line to create music is similar to reading a book: a set of agreed-upon symbols is interpreted to reveal an idea. This process is so commonplace that we rarely pause to think about how amazing it all is, these systems of sharing information.

Sometimes I look at languages I can't read. I admire beautiful symbols that I can't understand—it fills me with a sense of immense possibility. Sometimes blank books have this effect on me as well, that sense of "this could be anything."

It's also fun to sometimes look at things that were not intended as language, interpreting them as though they contained messages: if I chose, I could read the tackholes in my wall as musical notes and sing them. I could arbitrarily decide that the phases of the moon dictate my attire: no pants allowed on a full moon! Why not? Who's going to stop me? I've gone mad with freedom!

Ahem.

Occasionally a certain object or set of objects will speak to me almost as though they are language itself. A few weeks ago, it was a package of poker chips: I felt I needed to buy them. I don't play poker, but the little discs seemed importantly symbolic. So I'm sitting here, pushing the chips around, stacking and sorting them by color, laying them out to form color patterns, trying to get them to reveal their significance to me.

It's strange to look at an ordinary object and sense that your subconscious associates that object with...something you can't quite express. It's a little like knowing that something in your mind is reading over your shoulder, and that creature deeply appreciates the object as a symbol. And you feel it, you feel it, but you can't quite consciously know it.

The Pee Zone

My cousin Chris wore multicolored hair, checkered tennis shoes, pink wristbands. I had a black knit cap snugged down to my eyebrows, five days of stubble, a black pea coat. We wandered a cavernous department store to kill time and (maybe) buy something.

“Now why do I get the feeling that if one of my fellow associates came around, they'd tell me to watch you guys?”

My cousin Chris and I looked up from our movie browsing to see the Electronics Department manager standing over us.

“It's an appearance thing,” the manager went on, “people look a certain way, everybody assumes they're trouble. I don't agree with it.”

“I have to do the same thing at my work,” Chris said. “Don't worry about it.” We were left with the feeling that we'd been subtly warned despite the benevolent tone—fine with us; we can deal with being watched. We love attention.

I spent a great deal of time in the chair aisle, unfolding chairs and stools into the middle of the aisle one at a time, using exaggerated facial expressions to indicate approval or displeasure. If anyone was watching us via camera, they know my taste in foldable chairs.

Finally we decided to grab a late-night meal—but when Chris and I attempted to move on to the grocery area, we found yellow rope blocking the way. Store associates walked the perimeter, which must have encompassed at least a dozen aisles. What was going on?

We soon realized that we weren't roped out, but in.

Chris noticed it first: in a central corridor between rows of aisles, no more than six inches from my right boot, there stretched an unbroken twenty-foot line of yellowish-brown pee.

Great. We were the only remaining customers in the Pee Zone. I hope we were being watched while we browsed, because that's the only way our good names could be preserved beyond doubt.

I guess that's what I get for dressing like the kind of guy who'd pee in a department store.

Delicious Apart, Terrible Together

Come February I’ll be tasting wines with some regional distributors in order to learn more about the mysterious drink and its many varieties.

Since wine is mostly aftertaste, it can be paired very effectively with food. Dinnertime wine choice is a complicated art; there are no “rules” but most people generally find that certain combinations work better than others.

For example, a dry white wine is delicious with carrot dill soup; the sourness of the wine contrasts and complements the ginger in the soup beautifully.

The same wine with a barbecued burger, though, would taste like nasty hooker ass—even though the wine and the burger would each taste great if consumed separately.

I first realized this principle of “Delicious apart, terrible together” at the age of five when, after an early-morning episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy, I added orange juice to my leftover Coco Puff milk. I gulped it down and immediately felt as though I could puke hard enough that the other end of my digestive tract would exert terrible suction and lodge the kitchen chair halfway up my asshole.

The experience forever destroyed my desire to combine liquids of any kind, which is why I grew up to be a blogger and barista instead of a high-grossing chemist.

Change Looms

For years I insisted that underwear, for men, was unnecessary. No Boxer Short Baron would ever grow fat on my hard-earned dollars. No sir. I thought I'd never be tempted, not by any loom's hedonistic fruits. Not even if spokesman Michael Jordan sheared the sheep personally and then slam-dunked the ball of liberated wool directly into my pants.

Just before the New Year, a simple law of the universe manifested. The law takes the form of a not-so-secret ancient equation:

Christmas + Grandma = Underwear

It had been years since I had last stepped into boxers. What was I thinking all that time? How did I endure the tough texture of denim jeans? When did commando-style become a way of life?

Lesson learned: we sometimes identify too strongly with ways of thinking that we haven't properly... well... thought out. It's too easy to fall into a pattern of behavior without questioning whether the pattern makes any sense whatsoever.

I am humbled—all those uncomfortable years, all that denim, the chafing endured for pride's sake, the awkward two-turn losses at strip poker.

Well, I was wrong.

And besides, a hot girl recently told me she loved guys in boxers.

But, uh. I swear. That had nothing to do with it.

14 Inches Deep

Here in Central Maine, Frosty the Snowman loves to bend us over and give it to us, hard, pretty consistently through the Winter months.

Yesterday, he gave us a full glistening fourteen inches. Not bad for a white boy, eh?

A brief voyage outside during the storm revealed that the "snow" was neither fluffy nor soft, but steely and sharp. The wind shoved the jagged little dagger-flakes between the buttons of my jacket, down my shirt collar, up my nose.

The roads were empty but the neighborhood pizzeria remained heroically open; it looked like the last remaining beacon of civilization among the shuttered and dark storefronts. Light spilled from the pizza place's windows onto the blank white expanse where the sidewalk used to be—

—and thank fucking God for snow like this, I thought. On any other day off, I would have felt like a slacker for neglecting laundry, failing to shop for clothes, forgetting to buy groceries. Thanks to the storm, though, a forty foot walk for pizza became an epic Herculean feat.

Given a choice between taking all of Frosty's fourteen inches or facing up to my own workaholic conscience, I prefer bending over.

Welcome

According to 1500's Dutch Christian folklore, this tavern hosts sinners who are on their way to Hell. All of the newly-damned are permitted one final night of drinking, gambling, sex, or whatever other indulgences they enjoyed in life.

Ready for another beer or whiskey shot? Just ask one of the nuns in residence. Feeling more repentant than thirsty? They'll pray for you by request, but again: you are already damned. These kinds of executive decisions can't be overturned.

Like the fabled Tavern, this blog will be a space for reflection, reminiscence, and raucous abandon. I'm Old Nick; I'll gradually introduce myself in posts to come. There will be discussions on Consciousness studies, music composition, songwriting, performance, human behavior, literature, art, whiskey, beer, and much more.

If you've stumbled across this page somehow and share any of the above interests, say hello!