monkeyplus1

I’m stoked, I’ve got a great new set of tracks for playing live. I was a bit stressed about it at first. while I’ve played around 50 live shows in my life, it’s been about 4 years since my last one. I had a bit of cold-feet at first, but after re-listening to some of the stuff I’ve lined up for the show, I’m not at all worried about being nervous, or of the quality of the material.

there’ll be a few things off the recent album, but while in the groove, I’ve made roughly another dozen tracks. Here is a good one from earlier tonight.

I’ve stripped some of them down so I can play live with them.

The show is in no way getting any kind of promotion. Zero. The “promoter” for the show is just like, “whatever”. If nobody shows up, it’s just fine with him, there’s no money in it for anyone, just good times.

There will be two people there, aside from the one or two people working there. On the other hand, it’s zero-pressure, so I’ll be able to play a live, hands-on set with no worry about how good or bad my keyboarding skills are. They’re not too bad, considering it’s mostly simply stuff, and 99% improvised.

Wednesday 9/27 at the Fez, 10pm, no cover, 21+
318 SW 11th Ave, Portland, OR

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I started working on my next MP3 mix this weekend, having decided that I would pillage my oldest CDs for material. I have a vast collection of cassettes, but recording them as audio files, and then scrubbing them to remove tape-hiss, is discouragingly time-consuming.

Some of the old CDs have been lost, taken by former lovers and former roommates, or misplaced in the process of moving. Some are so worn and scratched, it is a miracle I was able to rip tracks from them. A couple of them even have started to rot, something which seems impossible for a CD, but it’s true.

As I’ve been listening to these, I feel like I’ve lived dozens of different lives, that I’ve been many different people. Some of the memories seem  foreign, as if they belong to someone else. It’s difficult, and sometimes overwhelming, to be flooded with the memories the tracks bring back.

The real weight in these memories, what I’ve been thinking about since I ripped the first dusty CD for my mix this weekend is memory of the people I met, and shared a bit of lifetime with, who I’ve long since lost any contact with.

Some of these people have completely disappeared from me, floated downstream in time, obscured from me. In some cases, I can’t even remember names, but even when I do, some people have eluded even the eyes of the Internet.

To be fair, I only want to find a few of these people, and even then, as a ghost. Just a curious peek to see how they’ve turned out so far, or if they’re even alive or sane.

My, what a sordid past I have. And yet, here I am, with my shit relatively together. Scars inside and out, but mostly in one piece. Unbelievable.

I will let tracks play longer in this mix, so the end product isn’t just another 15-minute mash-up quickie.

Stay tuned and see what hatches.

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One can only have so much sham philosophy rammed down ones throat before one needs to see pictures. It breaks things up! Lightens the mood!

(mp1, you’re a nutjob. “pix or stfu”. pictures, or shut the fuck up).

The semi-erect Northwest Portland rubs itself obscenely against the moist mound of Northwest Portland, cockblocked by a sprawling industrial complex to one side, and a protected urban forest on the other.

The red buildings on the right side are where my son and daughter were born. I can smell the birthing now. If you’ve ever participated in hunting animals or childbirth, there is a particular smell common to them both. Hmm. I think “guts” would be a good description. It’s not the smell of death, which is what carnivores whiff on the potty, or someone who comes across a dead animal, it’s the smell of LIFE.

Seriously though. Life is beautiful, life is WONDERFUL. But it smells funny.

I didn’t really sacrifice the Easter Bunny, just so you know. It would be a bit hypocritical of a so-called vegetarian to gut a poor bunny for stupid, ugly humans. Just like the Catholic Mass, it was empty charade, pomp and circumstance.

The Easter Bunny is a quite alive and well, wriggling his little nose at me, chewing on some celery.

In the picture below, I am taking a real exit off the freeway, not one of those fake pretend ones. I am traveling at approximately 50 miles per hour, and if possible, I will make it all the way down off this bridge and almost to work without touching the gas or brake pedals.

This is called Control. I see too many drivers who know only the accelerator and the brake pedal. They are uncomfortable with inertia, cruising at a constant speed without cruise-control. They are always either speed up, burning gas and tiring their engine, or slowing down, wearing out the brakes and dusting the roads with metallic residue that those downstream creatures just LOVE us fucking humans for.

These are my sister’s feet. No boys allowed on those feet.

She is volcanic. Don’t fuck with Aline.

but we’re cool. Two people too similar are what a match is to a dry room full of old explosives. But I love her, because it’s not smart to hate other people for sharing your qualities.

The picture below is taken from the outdoor balcony at Rotture, deep in the industrial district in close-in Southeast Portland.

Billboard lights highlight… emptiness. Letting it all go. Why put an ad there? Embrace the void.

The tall buildings you see are on the other side of the Willamette River, which separates East and West Portland. To the far right you see the halo of the tall pink Bank Building. The Middle Finger. I don’t know what it’s officially called now, since a different bank puts its name on it every few years. A fog at 11pm has settled over downtown.

The picture below was taken inside Rotture. They have a “Tales from the Crypt” pinball machine. I’m positive I meant to take a good picture here, but this one didn’t quite turn out, but it turned out to be my favorite.

The Tales From the Crypt pinball machine at Rotture.

Let me say, the band EARTH from Seattle rocked the fuck out the place, slow-motion style.

This is the outside of the Gershwin Hotel, in NYC, where we stayed last summer. Dope place, though a huge, brightly-colored painting of Picasso glared at us from over the bed.

Beware. Touristy-picture below. Top of the Empire State Building. I looked into helicopter tours of Manhattan. Last summer, for two people, on a 10 minute circuit around Manhattan would have run around $600. Someday it would be worth it, but I’d want to know the geography better, to KNOW what I was looking at. For now, a 2 hour wait to get to the observation deck was ALMOST worth it, but not quite.

The picture below is taken from the window-seat of an MD-80 landing at Portland International about 11pm.

We’re probably doing less than 200 knots here, as I didn’t see excessive speedbrake usage on the wing, and you can see the Columbia river (which separates Oregon, to the South, from Washington to the North). The city of Vancouver, Washington is on the other side of the river. The approach into Portland international onto runway 26L (seen here), goes over Troutdale, Oregon.

The pilot passed the threshold of the runway with the engines at idle, and only very lightly flared (bringing the nose up, so the plane “stalls” out of the air onto the landing gear), but the ground-effect -an invisible cushion of air under an aircraft right above the ground - kept us floating past half the runway before the pilot forced us down, the stood on the brakes to bring us to a stop, exiting off the last possible taxiway.

Smooth touchdown, but he used us a frightening amount of runway to do it.

Anyway. Yah. There’s some random pictures. Hmm. I guess before there is too much awkward silence, uncommented posts or unreplied emails, I’m signing off.

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so, there are words.
there are words and words.

in the beginning there was the word
as some say
and the word is shit
as other say

a human excretion.

people watch people
with pursed lips and eyes
darting back and forth.

a twist of the mouth.

a sudden blurt, OMGTHATWASFAWKIN
HILAARIOUS.

uncomfortable silence, a lack of eye contact.
a shudder of stupidity and self-consciousness.

HAAAHAHAHaahaaha.ah…. ahh…
mm.

crickets rubbing their legs in the distance.

there is that reaching out.
that has to count for something.

I saw a woman standing in a used-car lot
on Burnside and MLK. Skin stretched across
the bonemass of her face, thin lips
no teeth visible in the smile.

It seemed she was smiling into thin air.
when she started to wave, I thought she’d really lost it and turned to see who she was looking at.

There was a face in a window, a few stories up. Curtains parted, and a hand
waving discreetly.

She was reaching out
to another person.

and that person was waving back.

CONTACT

An old man is turning the corner in his late 80s buick, yelling PRICK WHY DONTCHA LOOK BEHIND YOU at the truck in front of him.

the anger of others is often quite funny.

my ex-roommate Sanchez would say, with a deadpan scowl of disgust on his face
(when someone was laughing at his expense)

HAW, HAW. FUNNY, FUNNY.
(DIE ASSHOLE DIE)

But, that’s still human contact.

Let me tell you THIS.
I know the difference between my asshole and my elbows, and not a whole lot more. but I know human contact counts for a lot.

yes, I, monkeyplus1 of such hermit-like repute, who has no more true friends on this earth than he can count on his digits, believe that human interaction is meaningful.

I know, I know. I’ve said many negative things about the human race, and society.

ignore that for just a second.

in all the intermediate levels of awareness, from fat dumb and happy
to unburdened and enlightened,
there are vast seas of isolation
seems you make up for this with incessant, pointless conversation with anyone that will listen.

other times, in a sea of people, you find youself completely silent.

the inert observer of ones surroundings.

now take grits. he has the compulsion to express himself, profusely. but he pays little attention to his audience, a one way contact, but it’s effort.
Effort.
elementary school teachers give credit for Effort. Thank You For Trying Mr/Mrs/Ms stuff.N.stuff.

I want to give you points for effort.

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