West Side Story Drama in my kitchen

Koko, yes the Rita Hayworth one, has just come into season this past couple of days. Just in time for Monty, the suddenly Aflame and Renewed springer spaniel, who normally spends his days asleep, but now who is frantically in love. We have to keep them apart, so that Koko does not return to her owner having lost her honour. We will NOT be putting purity rings on them or playing Jonas Brothers pukesounds in their ears, but Monty IS pissing all over everything to let Koko know he is coming for her, calling out to his beloved to keep her faith, that he is on his way. They are making their bark-aria as I type.

This is likely to continue for some days. This may be like this for a week. Hey! We need some patience over here. Can whoever gives out the patience bring a truckfull of the stuff over here? Just dump it in the yard, we'll make light work of it.

Thanks.

My Bloke

So. It has been a bit of a gap. My bloke was visiting me here in my exile, and making windows. We have been having a Really Great Time with just about everything. He has just about landed back in Brooklyn now, and things will probably get a little more regular around here again. Note: this does NOT mean that my bloke is bad for my blog. My bloke is bad for my internet habit, entire. And this is a Very Good Thing Indeed.

Sita sings the blues

I watched this a couple of days ago and it soothed my soul and the world caught fire. It's a full length animated film available in full, for free, here. It has been created from the mind and heart of Nina Paley, and she has woven some profound human archetypes, stories that resonate again and again in our lives, into this fabric of her own story, using the songs of Annette Hanshaw and the classic Hindu story of the Ramayana. It is wonderful, and profound and funny and gorgeous. It made me cry and it made me hot.

Nina moved from San Francisco to India to follow her husband, who had taken a job there. What she found when she went after him was coldness and withdrawal, leading to him dumping her by email while she was in New York for a meeting. Unable to move back to San Francisco, and with her marriage in tatters, she took a flat in Brooklyn and grieved. And five years later, she gave us this.

She has released it openly, on a creative commons license, available for anyone who wants to download it, and it is also streaming freely online. She has written about how important it is to her that stories and music that she found in the public domain be released back to that domain without restriction. And so she is now in a position of having to buy herself 'out of copyright prison', in other words pay the holders of the copyright to the songs used in the movie, $50,000 for their use, even though the songs were written over 80 years ago. If you are moved, this is how you can help her on her way.

This movie tells Sita's story so beautifully and elegantly and with such truth, accuracy and insight. What a gift.

It is Valentine's day

and I have been wombatted. Also, dogloved. Oh. ♥

Lucy and Tar: a selves-portrait

For Ross

Election night outside Freddy's

Hot damn

It was only about a half hour after Obama was elected that I noticed it. There was just sheer jubilant joy in Brooklyn last night. We just celebrated all night long. It was so beautiful. Every passing car, every passing person, cheered and beeped as we danced together. What a night to be in America.

We cheered the cabs, they cheered back. We cheered the people passing by the corner of Freddy's. They cheered back. They joined us. We danced. People swung from lampposts. We cheered the department of sanitation truck. They cheered back. We cheered the NYPD (well, I did). They ooh ooh ooh'd back. Every time anybody said yaaaaaaay, the room lit up, alive, yaaaaaaying back.

We sang, we danced, we played, we danced, it was a wreck of jubilation, I am covered in glitter dust today, we kissed and hugged strangers, no one was a stranger last night. Today I hear the same sounds of New York outside this corner house and they sound softer, chirpier. Of course, the jackhammers are back, across the street. This house is a confluence of streetcorners, one of them being one of the busiest thoroughfares in Brooklyn. There are always jackhammers around.

This was no mere Democrat victory, mark that. Last night, something reached deeply into people's hearts and set them free. Last night, the word OBAMA meant love. Something extraordinary happened in America's soul last night. This is how it was, here in Brooklyn, on Dean street.

Loving Tar

I am currently in a deep quiet slow love with an old alpha male black german shepherd, called Tar. I've had a tough history with Tar. He tried to eat me the last time I was charged with taking care of him alone. There was no aggression in him, just simple desire to satisfy his appetite. So I carried this huge black wolf dog by the scruff of the neck an acre down the field, my heart beating intense and wide, and threw him into a kennel, where I more or less kept him for the rest of the week. That was 2 years ago.

Lately we've been having gentler times, I've been helping him with his ears. He has a tough time with his ears. I squirt some squirty stuff in there and get massaging. He makes these sounds. They reach into me. I feel the soothing. I feel it.

And this week, starting slowly, I've been taking him for walks, and playing with him, rubbing his head, getting friendly with him. The way he looks at me when I bring him for walks. He doesn't usually get out for long walks like this, not since they retired him in the police service, which is how he got back here. I love this dog. I love him. I am thrilled when I see his eyes light up. I love him.

Beautiful scene on the Carrer de Verdi

The skinny swarthy dreadlocked man who works in my local supermarket, caressing his dog's head gently and reassuringly before leaving her attached to a lamp-post and going into his workplace. The look on her face as she accepted his love. The way she watched him go, her rump taking up half the footpath. How relaxed she was, with no anxious anticipation of anyone walking on her, as they crossed her path. But mostly her eyes, her face, as he cupped it in his hand, standing behind her, her sheer loving intelligence, and his, as they embraced before parting. Her eyes squeezed closed with delight, relaxed delight. He looked into my eyes as I approached them, protective of her.

It was the most beautiful thing I saw today, the most beautiful way I have seen two creatures being together, in some time. It is rare to see human lovers who love with such intimacy, such ease and casual joy in their loving.

The whole thing took about 3 seconds. I saw it happen. I only registered it mentally after I had seen it. I have been thinking about it ever since. A non- SLR/film camera will not capture this kind of moment.

Paean to these blogging tarts

Ok so there are fucking ten million places now on the internet where you can post your random passing thought of the moment, in pithy one liner fashion. I'm not starting this one pretty.

Facebook
One of the most beautiful things I have seen on the internet in quite some time
Twitter
Gmail Chat
All those postcard-your-feelings-into-our-website genre items
And while you're at it, have a look at Smithmag's six word memoirs

I've just discovered Spanish dippable digestive biscuits. They're extra hard so you can dunk them in your tea without disintegrating (and not as sweet as the exported version by mcvities) but not so hard that you can't nibble on them dry too.

And they make an excellent percussion instrument.

Green porn(o)

This is the kind of porno we like around here, though this is pretty softcore compared to the real thing (though the real thing is slower, and without the affecting narrative). The good news is that actual insects have no inhibitions about being watched up close. Find some dirt! (You could also begin here)

Insect love

These guys know how to rock.

A love song to the old year

Many men have loved the bells
you fastened to the rein
And everyone who wanted you
they found what they will always want again
your beauty lost to you yourself
just as it was lost to them
ah take this longing from my tongue
whatever useless things these hands have done
let me see your beauty broken down
like you would do for one you love

Your body like a searchlight
my poverty revealed
I would like to try your charity until you cry
now you must try my greed
and everything depends upon
how near you sleep to me
just take this longing from my tongue
all the lonely things my hands have done
let me see your beauty broken down
like you would do for one you love

Hungry as an archway through which the troops have passed
I stand in ruins behind you with your winter clothes
your broken sandal strap
I love to see you naked over there
especially from the back
ah take this longing from my tongue
all the useless things my hands have done
untie for me your hired blue gown
like you would do for one you love

You're faithful to the better man
I'm afraid that he left
so let me judge your love affair
in this very room where I have sentenced mine to death
I'll even wear these old laurel leaves that he has shaken from his head
just take this longing from my tongue
all these useless things my hands have done
let me see your beauty broken down
like you would do for one you love

like you would do for one you love

(take this longing, by leonard cohen)

The Seven Buck Butter Blues

The blank page. And not much to say.

Hm.

Continue like this and I'll soon have a masterpiece of the ilk that Jack Nicholson produced, in The Shining. All work
and no play
makes
Lucy a dull girl.

All play makes
Lucy's
work dull.

Apparently. What a pity. Though I could just hang on in here and see if something comes along sometime soon. You know, I've done that at plenty of buses that never came, so why not a blog post?

It's a rainy dark day in Brooklyn and new york. Blowing hot and cold. Wine is getting poured. Elvis and Nick Drake are getting listened to. Lips are getting kissed.

So I'm here on Dean street, listening to Nick Drake, sipping a glass of red wine on a sofa, next to this bloke I've sort of fallen in love with. And this is where I am. And this is how it is.

Yeah, of course there's more texture than that. Stevie Ray Vaughan is playing now, for instance. And I've just been out to the place on St. Mark's and 5th av for organic butter, and come home with none, because I didn't bring any money out with me. So he's gone, now. To get us seven buck butter. We're cooking dinner of chicken sausages, sweet potatoes and spinach yummy shit.

See ya.

Oh Dean street, I love the arse off of you

newyork newyork
brooklyn to me
newyork newyork
is brooklyn to me

and brooklyn to me
is a pair of small shacks
with a length of twine between them and a metal can either end.

Reaching right over Flatbush
sometimes the yellowcab drivers have to pass the intersection of Dean and F
with their hands raised aloft
out the window
so they don't drive right through
the delicate connection.

Such a flimsy piece of string
and so well taken care of.
he walks the line.

did something happen? fuck,
i think i fell into a pit of scorching hot love
this afternoon.
And I'm being eaten alive by these tongues of flame.

This thick pit
and nobody owns it.

Out of the dirt springs a miracle

I remember when I first lived in new york four years ago, I heard all these stories about where the new downtown was. In one version, the new downtown was some town out in the middle of Jersey, but I couldn't really fly with that. The point of it all was where the artist-scenes were happening, and how. I was looking for something, you know, something specific, and it was that kind of scene/community thing I blog and talk about sometimes, where something gorgeous rises up from the dirt and dances.

In this town you can take your pick of historical scenes that have fostered everything in the avant garde and popular culture of the past hundred years or more, ever since Walt Whitman sat on a stoop in Fulton street, jiving about leaves of grass and calling to human beings to get off their arses and FEEL.

But that's all just a bunch of stories, and you can so easily miss the incredible fucking beauty of the moment in the search for something else. The moment itself IS the edge. The moment is also all there is, and everything is jiving in it.

Way back in 2001, when I came to this city for the very first time, on a six day fly-through, I found myself sitting at a gig in the Zinc bar with about a dozen other people in the house including the band, and Alex Blake, the shamanic upright bass player, was getting down with piano, drums and a saxophone. It was a beautiful gig, a holy and dirty gig. I was sitting right in front, a bashful spit away from him.

And they came to the last song and he began to play an African circle song. It sounded like a sing-song to me, I grew up on sing-songs in Ireland, where everybody sang the songs they had in common, and then somebody got up, usually a man actually, and sang some ballad with a tender tenor voice and everyone went quiet and listened and then roared at the end and off we went again on another song.

Everybody knows a good chorus when they hear one. And Alex was encouraging people to sing, at least that's how I heard it, so I found a place and filled out a three part harmony with the bass and the saxophone. And we sang the chorus, over and over, until it was done. Until it was done.

My eyes were tight tight shut, but I remember his voice, hissing at me, "feel it! feel it!", making my heart soar for the next round. It felt so intimate in there, all I heard were the three voices and this flying free.

I was at another three part gig last night, in the Delacorte in Central Park, where I last went to see Shakespeare in the Park. Right in the middle of it was this shining vision of a woman singing her songs of beauty and hip, of sexy and sacred, speaking my tongue and the sound she made doing it felt like the most gorgeous vibration I have ever heard come out of a human being this side of Christy Moore. It's easy to get hyperbolic in new york city, but this gig felt like a homecoming. And there was singing-along, sugar. There was a sing-song in Central Park last night.

I love where I live. I have a strong desire to continue to live here and explore. I love the work I'm doing. I have a strong desire to keep exploring that, too. I am so utterly humbled by all this jivin' good stuff.

I'm feeling it, Alex. I'm feeling it, Walt. It's going on.

Open letter to a life in Denmark

I wrote a letter on pale blue post-its one evening a few weeks ago in a club on Avenue B. It's gotten moved around and the order messed up, and has been sitting on my desk ever since. Each little couplet is the contents of each post-it, and I typed it exactly as I found it on my desk.

It's addressed to a man who swings deep and breathes low, and often gets up late.

Hello ----
What's shakin', sugar?
God, I wish I could say that in Danish so it swung. I'd love

to be able to write love songs to you in Danish, but here I am, sitting in some supposedly hip east side bar writing to you on post-its that I may or

may not post.

I think of you so fondly, and I also get the blues when I think of you. I wonder what that's about? I wonder how you feel when

whom I feel a profound soulmate kind of vibe, and I felt that with you. If you don't feel the same way, I thank you for

the stub. I'm actually feeling really good, ----. Maybe I write to you because it is rare that I meet a man with

and sticking them one by one on the back of my notebook. It's so dark in here I can't see when my pencil's down to

though I sit here in this somewhat subterranean club in alphabet city, scrawling in the dark on some post its

happening inside me - some guessing game with a built in disappointment of the most crashing nature and

you know, it's a fucking load off to get out of that force field also. Because I feel like there was some game

to live there anymore. Not unless I was in love with someone who was also in love with me, and I suppose I felt that way about you, and

hard in the moment, especially when you really can't do anything about it. So I'm wary of Denmark now, because honestly I don't want

very valuable lesson to truly learn, I think. It's incredibly simple, of course, and obvious when you see it, but it can also be really

having some sort of purpose, and I can go with that. The point is that it happened. Not all of our lives are there to please us. That is a

long like that. No channels in the world much at all. Really difficult. But I remember something you said once about things

telling someone recently that I found it really hard to not have an anchor in life, in Denmark, and to be there for so

whip em from you in a flash, in a trumpet crash, in a heartbeat.

definitely a lot going on here.
It's an interesting place to be a human, alive. It pulls and pushes at you, dumps loads and

Americans are funny. They're interesting and the New York variety is incredibly diverse. There's a lot of money chasing here, but there's

the people who live in these places and pay that kind of rent aren't thinking like that at all. You know? It's a totally different thing going on there.

pay the rent alone, and it came to $70,000 a year. Just to pay the rent. And then of course there was food, etc. But

was advertising flats for $3900. So this chick had spent her time calculating how much money someone had to be earning just in order to

talking about how there was a new building over on St. Marks a block away from her place, between 1+2 ave. and it was called The Saint, and it

Francis, the bleeding Texan with chigger bites.
So he was out with some chick from 1st ave and she was

lived here, in 2003. He was the first person I've recognised on Avenue A since the old days, except for

some kind of invisible.
And tonight I met a photographer, longtime inhabitant of St. Marks, who I met the last time I

dropping coins into his cup. I mean, it wasn't subtle. You know? Wild-eyed, the whole bit. He's

But this man was psychotic of soul and body. And I don't think anyone sees him either, even when they've

on my street corner tonight. He was insane. You could say that many people here are insane, the way they live.

the poughkeepsie train. It must have taken 20 minutes for her to cross it. Nobody even saw her. I passed a boy-man

evening in the central concourse, and watched a hunched old woman make her way across this huge concourse on the way to

sorts of baby heart breaking kinds of ways. You know, stuff you see. I stood at Grand Central station one

Your graciousness in hearing me out. It feels good here, in New York. And it's also crazy. In all

I think that is about as far out as it gets.
I'm hungry, and waiting for this gig to kick off. When you're bored you're bored, whether you paid ten bucks

to get into a place, or not.

Sleep well, ----.

In Love

I feel so good today. I feel like I'm in love. I don't know who with, though. It's very exciting. All I know is that he's very sexy and his eyes are full of beauty. And he rocks.