Sylvia

I always think of
how she sealed the doors before
turning on the stove.

--------------------------------------------------

Alright. So to celebrate my triumphant return to Gchat after a dreary two week absence and as a way of introducing Andy to Grooveshark.com we engaged in our favorite roadtrip game via the interwebs. It's a fun little exercise that can be as easy or hard as you choose to make it. We tend to shoot for middle of the road.

Anyway, the basic idea is that you are given a song that you have to start from, for the sake of an example lets say... Beat It by Michael Jackson, then you are given a song that you have to finish on, let's say Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da by the Beatles and a set number of "moves" to get there. In this case, to keep it simple, we'll limit it to one.

So: Beat It ---> as yet undiscovered song ---> Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.

Now we just have to find a link. That link can range from something as simple as a similar guitar tone or tempo to a similarity or overlapping in album or song titles or lyrics, to shared personnel (people who worked or played with both people) or personal life (dated the same person, etc) and anything in between.

In the case of our example the obvious choice to me would be a Wings song like "Jet" with Paul McCartney as the link having recorded with both Jackson and The Beatles.

So:

1) Beat It - Michael Jackson who recorded The Girl is Mine with Paul McCartney which takes us to -
2) Jet - Wings - McCartney's post-Beatle's band, taking us to -
3) Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da - The Beatles.

See? That easy.

Here's the one Andy gave me yesterday:

- Get from Wicked Messenger by the Faces (covering Bob Dylan) to Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window by Bob Dylan in five moves with the middle one by a female artist over the age of 39 (apparently his reasoning for this was to disallow both Neko Case and Zooey Deschanel. The Jerk).

Immediately I considered using only artists that have covered Dylan. Which narrowed the field of artists to choose from by a whole... 2%. So then I had to go ahead and try and come up with some more concrete connections. Some of them (like the incestuous mess that is the first three songs) are very concrete. Others, like the last jump, feel a little less substantial. Anyway, here goes:

1) Wicked Messenger - Faces (covering Dylan) takes us to -

2) You Shook Me - Jeff Beck Group - As you know at one point or another both Rod Stewart (Best. Voice. In. Rock.) and Ron Wood played with Jeff Beck and were, of course, also the revitalizing force between the switch from The Small Faces to the Faces and Ron Wood carries us through to -

3) Shine a Light - The Rolling Stones. Despite his questionable personal life decisions Mr. Wood (though not on this track) is a fine guitarist but it's Mick Jagger that takes us to -

4) Because The Night - by Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen - John Agnello produced both Patti Smith (who was married to the lead guitarist from MC5(!)) and Mick Jagger at one point or another -

5) Hot Soft Light - The Hold Steady - As if the Springsteen to THS thing wasn't enough, this album is also produced by John Agnello (as was Patty Smythe (former lead for Scandal), who is often confused for Patti Smith and is featured in the lyrics of The Swish from THS' first album ("she looked shaky, but nice")) but it's The Hold Steady's second album (Separation Sunday) that takes us to-

6)The Chain - Fleetwood mac - This connection is fairly straight forward. The song Stevie Nix by THS off of Separation Sunday ("She got scared when it got druggy. The way the whispers bit like fangs in the last hour of the parties.") brought me to Stevie Nicks who has a writing credit on this riff-riding, totally driving-with-the windows-down-worthy song

7) Can You Please Crawl out your window - Bob Dylan - so, this one is a little bit more of a stretch... but she has toured with Dylan. *long, exhausted exhale*

And the one that I gave Andy to work on today is:

- Get from "Too Much Monkey Business" by Chuck Berry to "Thriller" by Michael Jackson in five (5) moves. With the Berry song coming out in 1956 and Thriller in 1982 I'm going to (approximately) split the difference and the middle song will have to be off of Motown Records (1965-1975). Of course the other four songs can be from anyone and any time. I wouldn't be surprised if your first pick after the Berry song was suggested by the opening guitar sound.

[more than] Enough.

Cartlidge & Brown

Two glasses stained Red;
Last night we listened slow
and sighed as dawn slipped.

-------------------------------------------------------

The View From Victoria Place

Toes touch down to tile,
steel tipped and rubber soled:
minuscule mop-topped creatures
crushed as commuters commingle. Group
patterns present themselves:
twos threes and fours
weaving around between and through
the confused, circling orbits of street map stares.

There is no balletic beauty here -
trips stumbles and footing blunders bound each grace,
hawkers hover wouldyouliketotry-ing their wares to every
fourth passerby. Emboldened by downcast eyes
they forge on hammering out cries
to heat the air.

Swatting through this sonic haze one sees, centrally,
a red-faced and bellowing man
large in his impatience: shifting his considerable weight
and shuffling his feet while waiting
for a young girl who, with lips pursed
in the very best mix of unpracticed concentration
and burgeoning frustration
knots the polka-dotted shoelaces on her nearly too small shoes.



Enough.

Not Those Kind of Needles

I rock stitches the
way that Diddy drops bitches
because real men knit.

------------------------------------------------------------------

A few of the haiku mentioned in the previous post, a number of them are still missing titles:

Porch Nights

She peeled her mango
without concern for the juice;
her hands stuck to mine.

-----

I saw a future
devoid of art and culture;
muzak filled the air.

-----

Championship Vinyl

She asked if we had
soul. I said, well that really
all depends, you know?

-----

Is the likelihood
of loss what makes new love so
intoxicating?

-----

I just spent an hour
trying to write haiku in
Spanish - Language Fail.

-----

Lately I'm concerned
that i think exclusively
in status updates.

-----

If Only to Cover the Silence

There are times when I
wish we had a sitcom. You,
me and a laugh track.

------

Chrissy Hynde has the
voice of a double-scotch soaked,
chain smoking angel.

-----

The capitol lights
outshone your eyes, but your breasts
bested the rotunda.

-----

Enough.

An Excuse of Sorts

I know you hate that
I'm always late - three words of
defense: the red line.

----------------------------------------------------

I was hit by a flurry of haiku last night, I'm hoping it serves as a happy portent. They'll be shared in due time.

If you're anywhere near DC tonight there are two poetry events that you should Definitely attend.

First is "the lowercase" put on by the Capitol Letters Writing Center featuring my dear friend and quality word-wrangler Julia S. At the Big Bear Cafe at 1st and R NW.

Second is Sparkle at Busboys and Poets on 5th and K where the talented Gowri K and Sarah L will be featured.

Both of these events are open mics, so feel free to bring something to share.

Enough.

Breathless

Arms and hearts and beats
and bars and cabs and tabs and -
everything just spins.

------------------------------------------------

So. I've been in a training course all week and with a little extra time on my hands I've been making some elision poems. They're the perfect way to not exactly look like you aren't working or paying attention. These poems are the literary equivalent of sewing earbuds into the lining of your hoodie. They'll never know you're multitasking. And, they're a lot of fun and look pretty awesome. Lacking a scanner I've had to pull the article I used from website of the Washington Post Magazine (I used their Summer Reading installment, which worked beautifully), paste the correct column into word and go through double strikethroughing and red-bolding. Over all these poems tend to look better when they're nothing but typeface and a sharpie, but you should get the idea at least. This is kind of like chipping away the excess marble to reveal the masterpeice underneath - elide, delete, cross out, blacken, etc any and all words that you don't want to have looking back at you, attempt to form a new, original and unrelated thought out of the raw material given and you have a poem that, Athena-like, springs fully formed from the mind of another. An author who is now entirely unaware that you've defiled her work. yikes. Any red punctuation has been added to try and guide the thoughts through the page.

friends since high school, and although I hadn't known her mother, and the majority of the time we'd spent together was in groups -- at theater events or diorama parties -- I felt the heaviness of the event like a stone in my stomach. When it was my turn in line, we hugged. I said the usual things, and the next person was ready to step in, but I held onto Lori's hands. for a second longer

"I'm available," I told her. I tried to weight my words "Call me if you want company. I'm just more available than usual, and I'm in an especially good place to sit. with pain."

She called the next day. In a wavery, post-funeral voice, she laughed a little and asked if I was okay. I asked her the same thing. We both said no. She knew the broad strokes about what had been going on with me, and later she said she'd been concerned when we talked at the funeral, and it had been a relief for a second to step out of her own life and think about someone else's. Likewise. We made a plan to meet at her apartment that Thursday, and for the next year and more, we met once. a week, every week, while she coped with that major grief and I dealt with a different kind.

Then, it was not symbolic. It was just two people who found they could be helpful to each other due to mutual care and unusual timing. There were no ritual involved. If anyone had offered to do some kind of quick healing "closure" ceremony with me, I would have thrown a fit. Because a symbol is supposed to be a shortcut, a way of valuing and noting in brief what is happening anyway, in depth. But with that marriage, it seemed that the symbols had taken the place of the depth. The kite, the drainpipe, the moths, the flies. Signs taking the place of living.

With Lori, we just sat together on the floor in her apartment in Silver Lake, eating take-out Indian food with glasses of wine, sitting with each other, talking or quiet, watching bad TV or not, with some crying, some laughing, some outrage, some shame, disbelief, pain, depression, realization, the forging of new closeness in the wake of two kinds of losses. The long route.

***

Aimee Bender is the author of "The Girl in the Flammable Skirt," "An Invisible Sign of My Own" and "Willful Creatures." She lives in Los Angeles. She can be reached at 20071@washpost.com.

^ just in case you want to read the original, which is quite good^

Enough.

Sunday Morning Everywhere

Silent, cheered, we walked
through traffics' heady mix of
sound of smell of life.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The unthinkable, friends, has occurred.

I woke up one morning early this month and realized that I was somewhat, slightly, just really only ever so much in love with DC.

It might just be the mild July that has breezed through but this place doesn't seem to grate me the way it once did. It doesn't set my teeth on edge each time I take to it's streets. I'm actually enjoying myself a great deal.

In other exciting news I am hopefully dining with a fine friend and fellow poet Sarah (you might care to check out her recent post, it has an Exquisite Corpse we went through together) this weekend at the Good Stuff Eatery on Capitol Hill - assuming we can get a table. This establishment is notable as it was set up by Spike from Top Chef Season 4. Check out their menu, then come down here and eat some food.

Enough.