I’ve spent the last week in California, both halves. I lived here when I was a kid so writing about it doesn’t come easily. Everything is too eerily familiar, especially in the south- the Levittown architecture (now supersized), the size and break of the ocean’s waves, the grain of the sand, the heat mirage that rises from the asphalt as viewed from your unique position in the traffic jam. It puts me nostalgic.
one frivolous observation:
For subculture types in North America the fedora hat is all the rage. But peeps from the two coasts deploy it differently. In the east the brim is curled up all the way around, with early 20th century grifter/hobo flair, and often paired with Woody Allen glasses.
In the west you see more modern replicas, their narrower brims dominated by a slightly off-center dip of the front, at best looking like early 50′s casino gangster, and at worst like Michael Jackson.
Some acquaintance was trying to map the point where the (allegedly eco) paper coffee cups of the northern united states give way to styrofoam’s stronghold in the south, the subtle mason-dixon line of polystyrene. It’d also be worthwhile to map where the front of the fedora brim aims up or down. Do hipsters in chicago or denver dip the front or subscribe to the even curl? And where does left coast pimp feather first start appearing?
Greetings from the K-Shack, named after Ted “unabomber” Kaczynski’s home of similar size and simplicity. It’s located in a wide open desert mesa with a deep crack down the middle formed by the Rio Grande, and ringed by mountains. At this time of year the mesa is alternately buffeted blizzards and baked by sunshine. You can see the weather an hour before it arrives. During the night you can also see this thing called the sky, not just a bunch of refracted light pollution. I wake up every day at 5am with the first rays of sun, and look out the window to see a few rabbits nibbling on some frosted vegetation.
The few other humans living out here are all interesting in one way or another. Mostly dropouts, be they hippy, anarchist, or right-leaning patriots. Some burned out vets living out of trucks, as see in the documentary Off the Grid (dubious film but a nice trailer). The best communities on the mesa are eco-quixotes as seen in the phenomenal documentary Garbage Warrior.
Whenever I feel sick of europe, which is often, I dream of this place. So I make it one of the longest stops on any tour of North America. It’s also where I make repairs. Here is a video that takes you through the house, the K-Shack, and the shop where we were modifying my performance kit.
Today is friday, and I play in San Francisco (at 103 Harriet) tonight, so no more time to write… long drive and flight ahead.
Last night I enjoyed a night picnic with my hosts. We crossed a tangle of railroad tracks and the remains of a chainlink fence to dine at the point where the mississippi meets the canal, not far from where this very same canal burst open and thrashed this city. Passing ships the height of skyscrapers motored past. There was distant lightning in the sky and a constant humid wind that stank of the river. A good earthy smell, with just a whif of petroleum on top.
Here on the banks of the mississippi Gillian finally told me her story of being kidnapped in Palestine. She tells it like a sarcastic comedy. Although it’s impossible that she had time to develop Stockholm Syndrome, she sympathized with her kidnappers anyway, a down-on-his-luck man in need of a job and medical attention, and his accomplices, a family who plied her with tea. After being “rescued” by the Palestinian Authority they kept the whole thing quiet, resulting in newspaper non-stories like this.
There is no doubt that powerful forces are capitalizing on the disaster to remake the city to their imagination. Much of the public infrastructure, from hospitals to housing projects, which wasn’t actually damaged during Katrina, remains closed as a return disincentive to those who might rely on these services. I’m mostly informed by my host Djen, an old friend, lifelong activist, and Louisiana native. Our talk revolves around hydrology and health care (or lack).
Many buildings are tagged up with a half dozen colors of government graffiti. The house next door to Djen’s (which is occupied) screams “TRAPPED DOG” and a bunch of other less legible emergency hieroglyphs.
There is way too much to talk about this city, and I feel unqualified anyway. Here is a video of something you can stumble across any tuesday night.
Another tangent, in case you aren’t already familiar with Sissy Bounce, the tranny thug booty rap genre, you should be. Begin your education with Katey Red.
A week ago I had a night off. I spent it bowling with Jeff Stark in rural upstate New York. Not enough people know who Jeff Stark is, because he’s a humble type that maneuvers behind the scenes of projects such as Nonsense NYC, junk raft adventures, some iterations of the Idiotarod, various actions of the Madagascar Insititute, and some more thoughtful things involving intervention and public space.
Since then I’ve been near Boston, trapped in a beige tower next to a freeway, it’s called “Hilton Garden Inn”. This Hilton is surrounded not by a garden, only empty windswept parking lots. At night the lightpoles waste electricity illuminating the piles of leftover snow, stained brown by pollution dust that settles from the nearby highway. Every room, including the lobby and the Fitness room, have tv sets angled down at the habitants like all-seeing eyes. It’s either sports or babble about the dire economy.
But this is just a place for rest. The work days are spent with Nettle, a live band/electronic project that fuses maghrebi music to ruined beatscapes. This week I’m their percussionist, joining them (us) in a residency at the nearby Brandeis University, and it seems to be going well. The very smart Wayne Marshall deserves credit for this, and you should have a peek at his great bLog.
A notice for anyone near boston- I’ll revert to being Filastine and play monday march 23rd @ The Enormous Room.
Washington DC felt like being in Bucarest after the fall of Ceausescu. Even a hater like myself can feel the Hope™, although it quickly disintegrated when, on the way to the airport, we passed the headquarters of the FBI and later the Pentagon building. It was the first time i’ve seen either in real life. The last time I saw images of the Pentagon it had a airplane sticking out at a jaunty angle. Queda mejor asi.
Lot’s of corn-syrup-fed lumpy bodies here in ‘merica. Lot’s of adults speak that with the vocabularies of ten-year-olds. Why do they continue to eat food that turns them into landwhales? Why do they say “like” between every other word? But I’m sure Obama will fix all these things.
At very least activists can now work on making progress, rather than constantly playing defense to Bush’s neanderthal policies. For eight long years our discourse was reduced to dumbness like “war is bad.” Never argue with a fool… but what choice did we have.
Lately I’ve suffered a crisis of confidence with this here log. I’m not sure what is worth writing about. I fear that what’s remarkable to me may not be so for any reader. For instances ice: chunks of ice in the rivers of Strasbourg, Berlin, Koln, and Montreal. And the train journey yesterday across upstate New York followed a frozen river with it’s first gaps of spring thaw, dozens of bald eagles on the edge of the ice holes looking for fish. This is thrilling! But maybe not second hand?
Montreal’s fine underground scene continues apace. It was impossible not to fall in love with Apocalyptica, the promoters of the gig there last night, with their feral style and diy-punk approach to throwing a dubstep/bass party. Big up to women promoters in general, even more so when they’re decidedly downscale.
Does anyone else find this dubious? MLK repurposed as Walmart marketing on Myspace? It’s not culture-jamming piece, this is a real screenshot.
On the subject of advertising here are some recent pics from Berlin. In my opinion “discount” doesn’t pair well with the sex and death industries. At least it’s harmless.
The dopest minimalist self-destructed grammar always comes to me in emails from japan. Their casual ease at english butchery makes William Burroughs look like a poser.
I still have my tattered Prague city map from the blockade of the World Bank / IMF meetings here eight years ago, all marked-up with highlighter according to the plan titled “peel-offska” as the march of 20k people approached the soviet-era compound where the meetings were held. The blue, pink, and yellow coded sections of the march peeled-off to approach from different routes, using differing levels of engagement or “spice”.
This is was in the early part of my time with the Infernal Noise Brigade. We put ourselves with blue faction, a united-colors-of-benetton of international anarchism, although heaviest on the greeks, czechs, and spanish.
Our day with the blue block began like this, an hour off marching with the main demo, until splintering off towards a narrow pass that led to the meeting center. Hundreds of riot police and armored vehicles blocked our approach in this little uphill street.
A giant “earth ball’ which had looked pacific up until this point suddenly showed it’s true use as it was rolled into the police lines. Teams of german punks with giant crowbars ripped up the cobblestone street 50 meters behind our us, the cobbles were relayed to the front by runners, and then hurled into the police. Every few minutes a molotov cocktail would sail over our heads. Sometimes the police would throw the rocks back at us. That’s rather unprofessional! But mostly they blasted away with water cannon and concussion grenades and a bit of gas. After half an hour of this we moved to another zone of action, and continued like this for about 12 hours.
To be clear, my job was (and is) motivational music. Just like there is background music in a grocery store to encourage you to buy more Corn Flakes, or music in the elevator to ease the social awkwardness of being in any tiny box with strangers, the Infernal Noise Brigade had a specific function, a live soundtrack for insurrection. Here is a video of us there.
Nearby thousands of bankers and officials were trying to go about the business of business. The usual stuff, expand market fundamentalism, new ecologically and socially destructive mega-projects. Resource extraction disguised as development. I’m content that their day was interrupted by the sound of pounding drums and explosions. Later I saw them in the television news, nervously staring out of the windows and making defensive remarks.
The following day the police were making vengeance arrests of nearly any foreigner on the street, and later torturing them in jail. We left our safe-houses in pairs in order to buy disguises in second-hand stores. Later, done up as tourists, and pretending not to know each other, all 20 of us tried to take the same metro. This particular station, like many built in the former east bloc, was built to double a shelter in case of nuclear warfare, which is to say extremely deep & accessed by one long escalator.
Some secret police must have spotted us entering the station. As we waited on platform, we could see a the top of the tube dozens of riot police beggining to descend the escalator. Of course we jumped on the escalator going up, passing the police separated only by that narrow stainless steel slide that divides the two directions. The police stared at us, we stared at them, nobody said a word. When the cops reached the bottom and started running up the upbound we were already sprinting out of the station and scattering into the nearest trams and buses.
A hairs breadth away from beating and deportation, which is lucky because I wouldn’t be able to be here in Prague today, walking around in the beautiful snow and playing tonight at my favorite club in the whole world.
The Cross Club is living sculpture, in constant redesign, and run by stellar people. Here is a little tour.
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