Excerpts from ROCKPILE On The Road

(David Meltzer, Michael Rothenberg, and Terri Carrion)

August 25, 2009

IMPOSSIBLE MUSIC (David Meltzer)

Brilliant ideas arrive like celestial comets as Mercury conjuncts
Uranus. Think of your mind as a radio transmitter and receiver.
The Aquarius has one of the sharpest intellects of the zodiac. Paint
the town red tonight.

The old tale teller’s ploy: Where to begin? How to start? In the
middle of the night and day of you are the one, it’s always been
music and never words enough to say it, within it or beyond it.
Profound dyslexia. Metaphor abounds. But no way into what the music
is, was, does, reveals, conceals. Ammiel and yrs vaguely spend a late
afternoon in The Musical Offering cafe in Berkeley. “Ami” “El” =
“friend/beloved of God” (?) and “David”, singer/psalmist, the Temple
music director, in a delere. The music jones; Ammiel back from a
blitzgrieg at Amoeba in San Francisco and David fresh from a quick
taste at Berkeley’s mothership Amoeba, backpacks stuffed with CDs
zagging and zigging across crashed empires of diaspora and meltdown.
If you’re in the predatory imperial mode, one can buy and therefore
own any CD art wafer from too many disasters of class warfare,
racism, pimping between the two lines of defeat, exploiting the
exploiters. Hip-hop gangstas are square because they align with
market capitalism venality — hey, we’re fucking entrepeneurs; we
drive Mercedes and don’t pay taxes. We’re just like you, why do you
hate us?

When we talk of music it is about love impossible to speak of.

Jazz Kabbalah, the black & white of it, the page, the letters, ink,
its black absence its white presence

describe the revolutionary harmonic shift wrought by Debussy, Ravel,
Satie, a jazz pianist said, ‘Yeah, they’re playing the black keys’

the sounds made are colorless until pulled out of the air &
transcribed, not even trance- scribed, but blacked onto white onto
black lines of the page

don’t belive it: Scriabin & Huysmans — one shapes sound, the other
pages, but others see chromaticism as color-coded & kabbalistically
each letter has a musical equivalent or each word in Hebrew
explaining or deliniating a musical term is mutable & permutable –

thieves invent moral order;
crooks create classic art;
salesmen are at a loss even though they win when poets don’t

we riff our ruin into say-no amulets & say-yes run-the-lotto-down
dream-book number code
moving the move to alert
Publishers Clearing House to reroute its TV crew in the new SUV to my
front door

numbers & letters
notes & tones

immense hope of overcome & underpay plus underplay oy vey to
reach-out & pull into ongoing networks connected at the core of more

October 07

Warming up for rehearsal

Sleep is fairly hard to come by. (Ask David, I hear his groggy voice on the phone, offer to bring him a cup of black coffee. Don’t worry everyone, he’s still alive!) Today is rehearsal for Hammer Show (Oct. 8 at 7pm) at Johnny Lee Schell’s studio. We’re all ecstatic. Looking forward to seeing Johnny, He’s an old friend/co-writer on a bunch of songs and a few movie soundtracks, one of the few people who welcomed me as a collaborator when I hit the LA streets as a “songwriter” years back. Awesome guitar legend, what a treat to move this over to the poetry side of song.  And Joe Sublett, saxophonist extraordinaire, I met through Johnny back in those LA initiation days, another generous soul who befriended me when I came sneaking around. I met Theo Saunders in a Mexican restaurant in Venice, CA when David and I came to Beyond Baroque a year back to do a celebration reading for Philip Whalen Collected. I have seen videos of David M. and Theo, they have played together before many times, and I like it.  Looking forward to mix it up with him myself.   Debra Dobkin is a new friend. I hear she can play a full set of suitcases, drummer/percussionist (did you see the video of her and Richard Thompson in the back seat of a black taxi cab? wow!). John B. Williams is a legend too. What Jazz great hasn’t he played with. He’s coming all the way into town from Lancaster to bass it up with us for this grand ROCKPILE experiment.  Hat’s off to John B.  So I plan to read “I Murdered Elvis: The Nashville Journals” at the Hammer tomorrow. Mystified by the possibilities of collaboration with these magic minstrels.    Blues and Jazz and Rock. How will it come together? I know it will. Great musicians always find the language.– MR

October 09

FUZZY BRAINED IN PRESCOTT, AZ

Prescott, AZ exhausted. Jumped in the van the morning after the Hammer show and we

were still too slow getting started so ended up in the mountains in the dark at 10pm talking about ‘in time” and “out of time” and shifting chords and what are we going to do in Albuquerque and New Orleans and about sitar in New York, the humble origins of the hubcappaphone…

My head is killing me. It’s 10 am… Oh yeah, the Hammer show was beyond belief, I can’t say enough how inspiring it was to work with these musicians. Bliss, total bliss!! And the audience dug it big time. A standing ovation!!! Yay, ROCKPILE!! And what a treat to see so many good friends in the audience. Surprise visit from Randy Cauthen, a facebook friend, showed up and introduced himself, a real good guy teaches at CSU-Dominguez. Karen Ivanis, Patricia Donnelly and Joe DaRocha came down from Bay Area, for moral support and to join the festivities. And lots of local buddies made us feel at home.  A good turn out indeed. But god am I exhausted, can’t unplug my brain. One night I sleep like death and the next night it’s buzzes and jolts and mind movies out of control. Breathe, breathe.  “Stop telling me what to do!!” Touchy, touchy. I pity David and Terri for having to be within a mile of my insanity. But the show was great.  We’re looking for a video clip from Troy Christian, who filmed the whole deal, and a sound tape from the Hammer for posting on the blog. Hope to have it posted in the next couple of days. Hey, You ought to have seen David swing (I was going to say “rock” but I am trying to be musically accurate).  And Terri don’t forget I love you. Oh my head is killing me. Help, help. I can’t stop going and I don’t want to stop–MR

October 13

IF YOU’RE NOT HERE YOU’RE NOWHERE

We’re in ABQ Quality Inn now and tired beyond belief. So much catching up and almost no sleep, the sheer energy of trying to hit a pace, drag of the learning curve, altitude change, diet change, and making sure not to let the  computer cord hang out the van door.

I caught the Thule roof rack on the ventilation ducts in the parking garage at the Hammer and punched a hole in it. We’re 6 foot 10 inches and the clearance 6 foot 9 inches, that’s what I learned. Then one of the hangers in the van broke when the bellman tried to hang a 40 pound jacket bag from a hook that has a 10 lb capacity. The reason I know it had a 10lb capacity is because that is what it says when you lay down on the back seat and look up at the amputated hook. Then I drove up a hill with the emergency brake on, you could smell rubber wafting in over the chef salad I was eating at a Prescott, AZ Pie and Coffee Shop. No problem I can get this repaired. New pads, no problem. I’ll duct tape the roof rack. While I am at it I’ll repair the side door of the van which I gashed and dented on a fence backing out of a friend’s yard in Placitas, NM. I blame it on the altitude. I see us now driving back into California with the van duct taped together, bumper dragging on the asphalt, smoking tailpipe, and David and Terri in me, crowded in skeleton of a van (kindly loaned to us by Nancy Davis) muscular from our adventure, but with our clothes in shreds.

Okay, enough complaining. We’re fine. Working with the musicians in LA was transformative. Truly transformative. And it took an enormous amount of energy to flex and learn to improvise and collaborate at this level, and I was totally star struck. I mean these musicians are the real deal. And what am I? A poet. . . We only had a day to get the performance together and it all seemed so possible from my desk in Guerneville. But I was terrified halfway through the rehearsal ‘cause nothing seemed to be working out. Lots of talk and I grew dark and brooding. Nothing worked. We couldn’t find a groove. I couldn’t articulate what I wanted clearly and didn’t know what anyone was talking about.

Then David took over and the musicians were working with him okay, of course he is the pro, years of experience and all, and he had already done several gigs with Theo. Theo was able to give the musicians direction as how to approach David. Though I know David was still challenged by the possibilities of a complex collaboration of musical voices, blues and jazz. So it wasn’t until the last ten minutes of the rehearsal I finally saw daylight. Terri encouraged me to go back for another shot. Miracle of miracles we found our way. John B. Williams was able to suggest an approach of essential improvisation. Johnny Lee Schell understood it was tempo that I was looking for first and not so much a particular tune or style of music. Everyone got the groove, the swing, and was there with me, incredibly supportive. I was in heaven. Debra Dobkin throwing bells and shakers at her drums for percussion. Joe was laughing through his saxophone. Theo had it all grounded with beautiful chords. Johnny Lee saw the smile on my face and said, “Have we restored your faith?” “I’m happy,” I said. Totally. I had imagined the worst, a nightmare, standing on the stage of the Hammer, all those people in the audience I bothered about showing up, yelling ROCKPILE every day for 10 months, and me standing there with nothing to show for it, reading rubbish over a garbled noise, inaudible…

Beat, beat, beat, I am beat. Terri is working on the documentation and she hasn’t had a time to breathe either so we have dragged behind on that. Today is the first free day since we hit the road. She is getting her photos, video and audio organized for uploading today and tomorrow. Grateful to catch-up, David too, wholly consumed by it all, his stamina incredible but no time to stop and write. I’ll let him tell his own story. He is one remarkable dude.

Now, Terri is pasting pictures on the motel room wall. An advertisement from the official Visitor’s Guide and Vacation Planner for Albuquerque. She especially likes one advertisement for a golf and spa resort within the ancient lands of a native American pueblo, that says “Centuries of History Brilliantly Disguised as Fun.” — MR

October 14

David Meltzer “Blahgs” from New Mexico

3rd day in the Quality Inn in Bernalillo, NM. Today we lunched at Flying Star, a cafeteria style eatery serving thoughtful, healthy food — when possible, locally grown produce, meat & poultry — had a glass of organic Chardonnay, felt instantly immortal. Sooner or later in my blabbing blahg, I’ll tirade off into a critique of “green” vocabulary, but now want to try to figure out where we are, i.e., what the text of highway, strip malls, meta malls, uniformity & deformity reads like. Like all of us, alert to subtext. F’rinstance: a billboard looms above the Inn: “Dos Lunas Tequilla” on the top in white florid script on a black page. In more sedate type: “New Mexico . .” More signage along the way that puzzles me endlessly as to how to “read” it. Does Dos Lunas make you see double? As a geezer, I have dim kid memories of driving Route 66 to Los Angeles. I don’t recall the roadside plaques, stacked w/ corporate symbols, before any turn-off in any remote isolate spot along the highway. Everything the same which I suppose brings comfort. But to whom? Yeah, I know the story of the incorporation of USA & then the Globe starting in the 19th century. Yeah, I know about the constant standardization & rationalizing of so-called reality; its reconstruction into the familiar neutral spectacle. Yeah, I’ve read & re-read Debord’s dense masterpiece, “The Society of the Spectacle,” a trash-compacted encyclical in maybe 100 pages of numbered units of critique. Yet the impact of its totality on the American roadscape & TV & cyber inscape has, thanks to the Rockpile tour, become inescapable to me. Old news, yes. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less easy to succumb to, to surrender to. & I don’t & won’t. But I can read it resistantly, as a poet, digging deep into each word, icon, image, as well as trying to understand how folks read & internalize all of it in everyday life. I can also appreciate the remnants of poetry in ad copy & imagery.

Am listening to the local “classical music” radio station like its brother & sister stations throughout the States, it plays “lite”, a movement from a symphony or string quartet prefaced w/ peppy thumbnail sketches on, let’s say, Beethoven’s deafness or Mozart’s precociousness a la People. At the local Walgreen’s bought a copy People’s 35th birthday issue. Need to read it now to discover where US is & who its heroes, heroines are at this moment. More later,  –DM

October 14

Sushi and Saki at last!

After too much oversalted and overprocessed food in the suburbs we make it out to downtown for some sushi and much needed saki. The music was horrible, but the food was great! -Terri

October 16

The Day After The Outpost

Amplified accordion, long black hair, orange, red, yellow streaked chiffon skirt, black tights  with zippers, polka dot socks and red Doc Martens, Terri Carrion joined the Thunderbird Poetry Orkestra last night, her debut in the ROCKPILE performance tour and fun was had by all. And lots of curious sounds from saxophone, glockenspiel, coronet and koto (see the performance  schedule for instruments and musicians), and more, the array of percussion exhilarating. I  performed “Still Life of The Imagination”, a challenge to deliver a journal piece as song, varying  line lengths, improvising line breaks based on music rather than “projective” notation already  established on the page, and drive the dynamics in such a way as to keep the audience moving  with me through time and the rain of percussion and brass. After “Still Life” I followed up and  concluded with “Elephant in The Room for David” (for our very own David M), a melodic, lyric, more narrative poem, which opened with the blowing elephant didgeridoo and distant reply of coronet, a considerable change of pace and from “Still Life” and direct transition to David.

David began with introduction to and songs from No Eyes, with cello blues and followed up with the majestic, hard core and sorrowful “Brother”, a minimal accompaniment from the Orkestra was poignant. As usual, David had the audience under his spell. He concluded with an exuberant and upbeat rendition of “Red Shoes”. I was dancing in my seat on the stage. The Orkestra was right on top of the shifting tones and modes and moods of David’s entire reading. What a pleasure and honor to work with them!

At the end of David’s reading applause broke out and then audience sat still. They didn’t want to leave. (Or maybe they were still waiting for the show to start!!! It’s hard for me to tell sometimes, what people are thinking or mean by what they say or do cause most of the time I’m freaking out about every minor detail as if it were the end of the world). No they didn’t want to leave, and so mingled long after Terri had unplugged her shiny electric accordion and the lights went down on the Outpost Performance Space stage. Gratitude to Jeff Bryan for organizing and Tom Guralnik for his generosity and for hosting this event! –MR

October 18

Tired in Texas

Long drive through golden fields of dead sunflowers

Oil pumpjacks stranded in cotton fields

Plains of barley, dead Main street sunset, and then dinner at Outback

The only choice on the 289 loop around Lubbock

Loud white uniformed world of waiters and blonde teenage girl soccer players

Won’t be uploading anything tonight

Tired in Lubbock

The hot bath water at the hotel burned my ankles

I guess I’m just too sensitive.

–Terri

October 19

2 DAYS IN BETWEEN

In Lubbock, TX at the Marriott Courtyard — ate in some Aussie chain steakhouse whose steaks were rated #1 by Zagat — Michael dug in — I had a salmon fillet — over 6 hours driving out of NM — weary but the flat screen HD TV keeps me in touch w/ the unreal world & eases me into fitful sleep — love to the crew & to you!

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Bleary butt-tired blues — in the Holiday Inn Express in Shreveport, LA — dined on catfish & red beans & rice at Brothers — off tomorrow for almost a week in New Orleans — watch out! –DM

October 21

Always happy to be in New Orleans…

Rehearsal with Blodie and members of Dirty Dozen Brass Band went great yesterday so we “had” to celebrate. First Stop Fahy’s Pub on corner of Burgundy and Toulouse. David and Terri broke out a couple of Nola Brown Ales.

Then we headed over to visit Jerry and Marion, old friends who live in a beautiful Victorian Style house on Barracks St. As we enter the house David was taken by a large painting of a black angel baby in the foyer. In honor of that painting, he had his first Mojito, and second Mojito, Roy Orbison serenading in the background. So David didn’t have to drink alone, Terri had a couple of Abita Ambers. I nursed my customary club soda and cranberry, with a twist of lime. Ah, refreshing!

Then we headed down to Frenchman’s Street for tasty Japanese meal, gypsy jazz sitar, guitar and standup bass accompanied the seared sashimi and skewered eel. David tried out a couple of bottles of saki, maybe three, but they were small, though pricey. Terri again was accommodating, chasing her saki with Orion beer. My water and lemon was divine accompaniment to sun dried fish and horseradish.

Then we ambled down Frenchmen’s Street where Terri and David tried and some more local beers at the Spotted Cat. (Quite a few more beers but whose counting? Not me.) The music was awesome, powerful conga, sassy saxophone, drums all over the place, gorgeous guitar, tasteful bass…we met a couple of New Zealander’s in the crowd who became instant friends. Amy, is a hippy girl who was raised in a bus and whose grandfather has a Marxist radio program back home, and her husband, Sean, is a very sweet guy, a psychologist who I found it easy to confess to. They were on tour of the US, on their way to Nashville today, they promised to join up with us at the New York ROCKPILE gig at the Gershwin Hotel. Terri danced and David tapped his metal sticks on the dance floor mesmerized by Terri’s free form marimba. I thought of my promise to Patricia to bring David back in one piece. So I gave him the once over, he was doing fine, full of high test but straight as an arrow. Lord knows what was going on in his sprightly mind. Another Club soda and tons of second hand smoke, I couldn’t have been happier.

We sat through the second and final performance of this festive and brilliant jazz band, and ambled out onto the street of music, blues across the street, jug band next door, this is Music City, not Nashville (an industry town) and drove over to a smoky local bar on Esplanade, Buffa’s, and began a gestalt session over rare mahi sandwiches, a few more beers, but not me I was drinking coca cola. Alice Cooper on the jukebox, and Alice Cooper kids crowded around the bar. David sang happy blues at the urinal. “I woke up this morning/with a sty in my eye”. This may have not been one of David’s most eloquent compositions. But he made his point.

I was checking my watch now. None of us young but all of us crazy. It’s hard to know when to stop. But it was time… So we headed home. Of course, I drove. Sober as the day I was born, and still got lost in the drunken Quarter streets, crossed Bourbon St. three times, then finally got pulled over by a New Orleans cop for making a U-Turn in the wrong place. He was incredibly sweet. I simply told him I was lost and let him peer into my clear eyes and see that I was simply disoriented not intoxicated. He pointed us in the right direction. Maison Dupuy, it was absolutely time to sleep. It. Off…. –MR

October 21

David makes it to Bourbon Street and beyond!

Overnight in Shreveport, then next day to New Orleans. To the Maison Dupuy in The French Quarter. Hit the streets — Bourbon Street — cacophony — live & canned music blasting out of saloons & eateries — Larry Flynt’s Barely Legal Club — tourists in all shapes & sizes partying in the neon din — almost everyone holding containers of one kind of booze or another — street hustlers scamming — one lone black hooker in ubiquitous hot pants appears in a doorway & we make eye contact — but the Rockpilers are hungry & in quest of raw oysters on the half-shell which we find at Desire. Terri & I start off w/ a shot of tequila w/ a beer back. She shows me how salt my thumb a forefinger loop, knock a taste back, then suck a splash of lemon. The first dozen oysters are almost inhaled. We vacuumed up 2 more. Then ordered dinner. I had wine w/ a salmon fillet on top of Caesar salad. We wound up weaving through an even louder blast of music on Bourbon St — reminds me of Charles Ives on top of a hill hearing 4 marching bands below playing 4 different marches — then to Fhay’s, an Irish pub catercorner to our hotel — naturally, pints of Guiness & a person at the bar shared a couple of American Spirit cigarettes w/ Terri & I — everyone’s allowed to smoke in saloons & pubs — my clothing smells like a filter tip –DM

October 22

On the Road…again?

“Old weird America,” Greil Marcus wrote describing Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, groundbreaking anthology of regional musics from the ’20s & ’30s. Now entering the New Weird America driving down California into Arizona & New Mexico; skeleton houses, rusty RVs, & remote outposts on highways surrounded by red rock, mountains, immense sky.

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My late wife Tina loved to travel; I was a stay home sort. In the late ’60s we took a road trip across the US en route to NYC en route to UK where we were going to live the life of exiles. I’d set up readings along the way to finance occasional overnighters in Ramada Inns. By the time we got to the East Coast, I was totally antagonistic to the sound of my voice & to the poems I read along the way. We lasted less than 2 months in UK (another story) & ended our exile where it started in Bolinas.

+++++

Hours driving through Arizona to Lubbock, TX — the flat vast — new ghost towns boarded up & abandoned — fields & fields of cotton, corn, sunflowers — the usual usual of malls, familiar logo icons everywhere — oil pumps — ranches — cows, horses, sometimes burros in pastures — then small villages almost there surrounded by out-of-business shops — gas station mini-stores where locals hang out & tourists use toilets & maybe buy souvenirs — the unending isolation punctured by new off-freeway clusters of MacDonald’s, Arby’s, Denny’s, Red Lobster, Taco Bell, &tc.

+++++

I keep recalling Michel Butor’s book “Mobile,” a road trip across the States told by all the signs along the road & through the towns & cities. Also Kerouac’s “Lonesome Traveller”, impeccable title describing the bottom of the US landscapes, the ruined objects, homeless wanderers, railroad yards, broken-in ghost warehouses, dead smokestacks housing mice, &tc. — Kerouac gets it down better — it’s worth checking out.–David

October 24

BE NICE OR LEAVE (Dr. Bob’s Studio)

It could not have been better! Lewis Schmidt stepped out of Facebook and set up a great open mic/workshop/party/ROCKPILE celebration at Dr. Bob’s Studio.

We were greeted by a bottle cap alligator, stenciled Americana, and a keg of Miller Lite generously donated by Dave Brinks/Goldmine Saloon. Bill Lavender and Guild guitar led a workshop in the blues. David M held forth on the virtues of firewater, “When I was a poet!”, and Terri turned the podium into a drum kit, setting the record straight with “The Day I Stopped Being Adorable”…did you know that dimples are really cellulite of the face? Family from Alabama, Pacifica and Guerneville, CA showed up.

Laura Mattingly sang about race and becoming. Gregory Corso joined us from the dead and spoke in Italian but nobody understood what he was saying. I heard my father talk about his best friend Chris Dundee, and heard Muhammad Ali say, “It’s okay momma”. A shortwave radio, a 78 rpm record player, 35 mm projector, a tiny ukulele, egg shaker, cabaret and circus music, gave credence to the idea that “all is fair in love and war” whether you be a man or a woman or both at the same time, and other pearls of wisdom.

Oh, Katrina still dumping her cyclonic tears on the gathering, but in that inimitable New Orleans resolve it was just water off the alligator’s back. The Mighty Mississippi keeps rolling and the levees still threaten to break. I hear a party gathering, around a hot jazz band in the Quarter. A Kahlua cake is cooling, gumbo bubbling…sometime soon we will feast on cajun plenty and be reborn in the name of the host.–MR

October 30

KNOXVILLE, TN 8:23 AM

Precision is not poetry

Fall gold explodes between evergreens on Highway 24
On my way to DC to speak with the President about America
5 minutes of hope, a campaign, then all is lost in the “process”

A Sousaphone at the back of my head humps and pumps
Music is in the wind. It’s always time to go!
Terri at the gym here in the Comfort Inn
David engineers a slow train across the morning sky

Quails, snails, martinis, and baklava, crutches across the asphalt
We have finally broken away from the mother ship
The gravitational pull of New Orleans remains a tragic, soulful empathy
Mythology more than any estimation of truth -MR

Oct 30

Thanks to Bill Lavender in New Orleans!

Thank you Bill for all your help and support!
I totally enjoyed our afternoon at Napoleon’s…

Lunch again at Napoleon w/ Joe & Nancy in from Pacifica & Guerneville for the festivities. Muggy breezy day. The blues began this morning w/ a communique from Neeli Cherkovski: Lenore Kandel is dead. I first knew her when she & Lew Welch were living together at the East/West House collective in San Francisco. She came from L.A. – & performed in Sunset Blvd. coffee houses in beat attire & published a couple of chapbooks to sell in the clubs. She was a striking looking woman who wrote the “controversial” sequence of erotic poems, “The Love Book.” Her book coming out during the season of the Lady Chatterley trial, the Tropic of Cancer trial, the persecution of Lenny Bruce. Lenore’s book was the sexual experience expressed from a female vision of empowerment, not submission. Her next book, “Word Alchemy” expressed a new level of her lyric gift.

Earlier today Katherine Hastings sent me this quote of Lenore’s: “There are no ways of love but beautiful.”

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The last time I saw Lenore was when we & other poets were gathered together for some Beat redux event at SF’s Jewish Community Center auditorium. I’d forgotten my pain meds. We talked about our various crippling ailments in the “green room” & I told her I forgot my Vicodin. She immediately reached into a beaded bag & pulled out a container & laid one on me. “Do you want two?,” she asked. We talked about our losses & looked to the ongoing we would never abandon. Lenore read from a chair on stage. She read w/ great power & deep wisdom of an even deeper knowing. David

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and your blues at Bob’s Compound.

We will be back to New Orleans soon… so see you around. –Terri

October 31

10/29- Alabama to Virginia

Beautiful death on the Alabama roadway
of tree leaves
deep yellow
red
magenta
pathways
taking up by the wind
blowing over the highway

Guitarist Steve Mann died a few days ago
we were part of the ’60s folk scene in the Bay Area

Steve was a brilliant finger style blues guitarist
he & I were some of the guitarists who backed up
20 year old Janis Joplin at the Coffee Gallery
in North Beach at the Monday night hootenanny

Newly arrived from Port Arthur, TX
Janis was scared to perform in bars
because she was underage
& when she did get on stage
she stood as if in rigor mortis
w/ her balled fists held tight to her side
& opened her mouth to release
a voice that could shatter beer steins

Steve was a sweet soul
& hopefully some of his records
will be reissued

–David

November 03

HARRISONBURG HALLOWEEN

Black clouds over Walmart
Rats gnaw on scarlet Appalachian Mountain heart
Greasy white political mask jerks
in gold autumn death,

Halloween

Eve shivers, slivers, brittle hands,
faces leap impromptu, balloon
A cartoon commentary

Trucks of stuff, plastic hotel rooms “R Us”
rumble by, thunder

Check out at noon. To DC today
Next week New York City

“Wars R US”,
Walls R US,
Spoils RUS

It’s raining in Rochester. Going there too
Is it cold? Will it snow? Everyone warns me
“You gotta get chains!”

One thing at a time…

Drag, and clang haunted manacles
To Bristol, TN Birthplace of Country Music

Terri sports Satan’s horns
Blood runs down the Quick Mart
cashier’s face

DC!

Hookers gather in the lobby of the Days Inn
Screams from the Sudan embassy
Immunity of Genocide!
Obamaphiles raise the dead

November 1, 2009

–MR

NOTE: Harrisonburg is in the only county in Virginia that went RED in the election.

November 11

Greased Pole

I know we promised blog entries on a daily basis but this ROCKPILE trip is outrageous. I don’t know how people do it. I don’t know how they make a life of this kind of gigging (see Tales of a Sunburnt Country by Bob Malone) and I don’t know how they can keep up with daily blogs (see Tales of a Sunburnt Country by Bob Malone)…

I had something started for posting about our first DC gig at Writer’s Center but before I could polish it up we were done with our second DC event at Institute for Policy Studies. So I figured I would do one entry to cover those two DC events but couldn’t find the time or put my ideas together. Before I knew it we were at Busboys and Poets with Burnett Thompson and company and wow!! So, I decided I would write one blog entry about all three events in DC. But it never happened.

Packing and unpacking, traveling, eating, uploading, downloading, drinking…

How could we begin to absorb half the experience, half the lesson of these majestic DC events and then regurgitate them in some quick artistic bloggy thing?????

So we ended up in NYC, and BAM! a symposium at St. Mark’s, then another symposium at CUNY. (Terri and David really don’t like that word “symposium”.) Here we go again. It’s showtime at the Gershwin.

Listen. It has all been great. DC was gorgeous. The people were kind and brilliant. I felt like I found a new home. Sarah Browning at Split This Rock, Sunil Freeman at Writer’s Center, Burnett Thompson and The New Columbia Orchestra Quartet, Carlo Parcelli, Buck Downs, Brian Gilmore, Jack Foley, all new friends now.

Burnett Thompson put together a brilliant program for Busboys, awesome musicians, Joe Cunliffe (multi-reed player a new cool friend), all of those players, and that great vocalist, Nicki Gonzalez, who sang in Portuguese. Bassist Don West, Guitarist Richard Miller. An enormous honor to perform with all these DC folks. Check out the videos!

And the ideas behind all this ROCKPILE stuff, just listen to the tapes from IPS program sponsored by Split This Rock. (And watch the footage from St. Mark’s and CUNY for more thoughts. Chicago will have a “symposium” too. All four of these discussions will be a starting point for more talks, jams, whatevers…everywhere!!)

There is a revolution taking place. We just need to start getting together and talking, jamming, dancing and all will be manifest…

And Monday night at the Gershwin. Sure, the band was awesome Marty Ehrlich, Michael Stephans, Bill Zavatsky, Lindsey Horner took the ROCKPILE experience to new realms. David was adorable and beautiful, so what’s new. Terri was beautiful, that platinum blonde wig strangely entrancing.

And Ira Cohen was there. Sooo sweet to see him. And Isabel, Manuel, Suzi and Allan, Elisabeth Hayes, Allan Graubard, Bonnie Finberg, Allan Graubard, Will Swofford, Tom Savage, Joel Lewis, Margo and Adam Kornfeld, Bill Kane, David Henderson, Vincent Katz, Ellen Geist and friend Page, friends from Australia we met in Spotted Cat in New Orleans who dropped by to catch the show while on the tour of this weird country, Martha and Baz, Jake Marmer, Jim Feast, and more, and loved.. How could it not have been a wonderful night?

And well…

I am okay. A little fatter everyday. My nerves are completely shot. I live for the ecstasy of the collaboration and the communion of ideas flowing all around us everywhere we go.

Hey, we’re in upstate NY now.

Yes, the NYC footage will go up soon. We are having some technical difficulties. Got in to Rochester and going to sleep. Tomorrow we’ll take another shot at flushing out the gremlins of documentary technology.

Did I tell you the people in DC were charming and real? Sure, Imperial Kingdom of America but…

November 14

ROCHESTER, BUFFALO, TORONTO: A marathon of events and encounters with beautiful people in multiple blog entries… Part 1

Hungover from the big NYC Gershwin ROCKPILE show and into the morning revelations with Australian friends we met in New Orleans who finally caught up with us and Arielle Guy. After long drive out of the city, lost in New Jersey, lunch in off road diner, finally arrive in Rochester, checked into the Holiday Inn Express and headed across the street to Bugaboo Grill, a Disney style chain restaurant with talking moose and a fish that flaps on the wall every 15 minutes. Three martinis and a couple of Tequilla shots later the moose started to make sense and the monster trout on the walk had an inimitable flow. We left a fifteen dollar tip and made it back to the room. Road buzz kept me tossing and turning but finally fell asleep. Holiday Inn Express was a noisy drag. Our room, 262 for numerologists, was next to the laundry room. When morning came at 7am the housekeepers had a little party going on. Laughing and talking loud against the rock & roll of washers and dryers. I thought of Garcia Lorca but not sure why. “Yerma!” I quietly asked one of the housekeepers too keep it down. Her laughter was killing the sandman. She took offense and slammed the laundry room door in my face and the laundry room party continued on. Was this a class war? The Union of Housekeepers was setting down some rules. I called the front desk. I figured I had the bosses on my side. Terri crashed the party in her red and black Che Guevara pajamas and made her request bilingually but to no avail. So morning arrived in a sludge. Over tired and aggravated and there is no rest for the wicked. . We ran to meet our Rochester host John Roche and meet new friends at the Lovin Cup…–MR

November 15

ROCHESTER, BUFFALO, TORONTO part 2

November 11th, We meet. The great Sam Abrams, Linda Reinfeld, Vincent’s F.A. Golphin, Gerald Schwartz and the John Roche join us for convivial testimonials and introductory statements, while we gulp down salads at the Lovin’ Cup, stoking the engine for an RIT poetry and music “rave”.

It didn’t take long to figure out who the enemy was, and it certainly wasn’t us. I met John Roche by e-mail years ago, published his poetry and reviews of his work in Jack Magazine and Big Bridge years ago. He set this Rochester ROCKPILE visit up. It was great to make first contact. I always feel a little startled when an e-mail or facebook name manifests as flesh and blood. There must be a catch, I think. But John’s kindness was overwhelming and he set the record straight.

Gerald and Linda and I thrashed around topics of performance, collaboration, aesthetics, poetics. The salad was a little weak and overpriced but the conversation was lush and substantial. Tired of being bored to death by uninspired poetry and poetic renderings, all of us, someone’s ears must be burning! But we have learned to not name names. You never know when you will need a grant, or a publication credit, or some other nonsense, like a blurb. And they had tons of resource recommendations. Books to read, links online to check out to see performance of poetry and music… The transmission is what it is all about. I gladly took note and invited them to blog.

Someone said, “You guys must get pretty testy being in the car together for so long.” Seems the “reality” part of this trip has recurrent appeal. But reality doesn’t figure. I am mostly hallucinating these days from sleep deprivation and sensory overload. Reality doesn’t figure at all, but heart figures, and I am all heart for David and Terri. So what ever weird manifestations possess me/us, hysteria, glossalalia, paranoid schizophrenia, delusions of grandeur, it passes, dissolves in a Pennsylvania sunset, or in the rocky crags of an upstate mountain gorge, then moves on.

David got into locked reminiscences with Sam Abrams, a meeting of the memories. The wine was poured and secret transmission of wily weed became the sacrament of lunch. Creeley and Duncan were mentioned. John Roche, Vincent Golphin and Terri dove into the conversation. Someone mentioned “race” and the “academy” and books I never read.

The table was working enthusiastically in three directions.

Obama took the floor to speak to us. It seems we all supported him but find him bitterly disappointing, no different than any other politician. (I hear “Brazil” playing through this conversation and many other similar conversations these days on the road). Obama. Grossly disappointing, grossly part of the system that is killing us all…Obama, he reminds us, we can’t blame him for our disappointment. Just because he gave us hope, doesn’t mean he owes us anything…

David has trouble talking and eating at the same time. His glass of red wine half full. He goes back to Jazz. He killed an introductory martini in a single bound. He is an athletic drinker with refined tastes. Oh, Dad, my dad, You would love this man. Plate overflowing with Caesar Salad and chicken. Cheeks rosy and ready for love. I rose from the table first. Did I have my cell phone, my wallet, David’s poems, my poems….I stood clutching my briefcase and David’s walking sticks. Staring down David’s neck, “Take your time but it’s time to go”, I said. The point was made.

Good times have to roll and baby it’s time. Showtime at RIT! No question about it. Rochester was going to be a sweet, sweet visit.–MR

November 22

Rochester Rochester Rochester part 3

Part 3

“Translation with Terri Carrion” with cookies and fruit juice!

The first event in Rochester was a Translation Seminar 2pm-3pm, sponsored by the Foreign Language dept. of RIT. Hosts were Professors Sara Armengot and Diane Forbes. Terri discussed the Tri-Lingual Anthology of Galician writers she is working on for Big Bridge., translated from Galician to Spanish by F.R. Lavandeira, and translated from Spanish to English by Terri. It was a lively discussion of the complexities of translation, the different ideas about literal vs interpretative.

Then 4pm-5:15pm, off to the RIT’s Center for Innovation on campus where we joined up with Carl Atkins (saxophone) and Jay Alan Jackson (drums) for an afternoon performance of ROCKPILE with a light show. The visuals were implemented by: Hung Hsin Wu, Brandon May, Jarrod Parker, Professor Al Biles and Professor Mitchell Rosen. Also creditworthy Dean Ian Gatley, Director of the Innovation Center, and Professor Jon Schull for helping make the event possible, and Tim Stephany for filming it.

Terri took the stage. A blaze of rave lights danced on a semi-circular screen behind her. This was her first reading of poetry with music. And her first reading since we began the ROCKPILE tour. It wasn’t like she had never been asked. David and I did our best to inspire her to join us in the performances but it had to be the right moment and this was it. She was in her glory. A natural. Her jazz-backed renditions of “When I was In Love” came off great. “This is hard”, she commented to the audience. Then turned her back to face the display of voice and motion triggered lights, and waved her arms in playful delight. She continued her reading with “First Times”. I would say it “rocked”. David would say it “swang” or “swung”, something from the root of “swing”. Beyond the half-way mark of the ROCKPILE tour, we were finally a full formed Trio. Terri concluded her set with “Lazy Tongue” from her chapbook of the same name. This is a great poem, a crowd-pleaser too. Bravo to Terri she was swiftly on to a new addiction.

I followed Terri with “Mink Household”, which has its own story on this trip. Subject of much discussion by David, Terri and me on class, wealth and lack thereof in America. (Today’s news reports: “The number of Americans who lack dependable access to adequate food shot up last year to 49 million, the largest number since the government has been keeping track, according to a new report released Monday.”

I continued with “It Has Nothing To Do With Us” amidst a electronic light show and then read “Angels Sleep In Peace” which seems to be a performance favorite. Fun to read and the musicians like the way the lines move. Lots of room for improvisation. It is interesting to note here that part of the ROCKPILE plan/proposal was to perform works composed on the road. As I write this blog entry we are down to the last two weeks of the tour and it hasn’t happened. We have been working with far more variables than we had imagined. The big improvisation has been working with the musicians and learning what each musician required to get things going. Learning to listen. (And learning to flex for each other as the road gets wearier.) There hadn’t hardly been time to write on the trip, between packing, driving, checking into motels, unpacking, organizing, symposiums, uploading and downloading, sending out performance notices, visiting new friends, accommodating physical tweaks and twitches as we made our way through the obstacles of being everywhere and “here now”! By the time we get some private time we are exhausted. E-mails to family and friends and sleep more interesting than writing… So we work with previously composed pieces and the work we are reading seems new with each performance. Musicians have their own temperaments, colors and tempos, what could happen to a familiar work once spun in a new musical storm is a mystery to be revealed in the moment. And who knows, we may yet perform works composed on the road before the tour is over!

I concluded with “Phantom, Come Hither”. I didn’t need to read “Phantom”. The vibe in the room really didn’t call for it but I had planned to read it and so followed with my plan. Not the best idea. Another lesson. I need to allow for variability in my choice of work for a reading. This is improvisation too. Though making choices at the last minute is impossible sometimes because the musician collaborators tend to prefer to get some idea of what we are going to do before the show commences. We have mostly been asked to give our musical collaborators, at the very least, a list of poems with first and last lines and some suggestions on tempos and tones. But what it was is what it was and that is what it is. Though tired from being early assault by a revolution of housekeepers and a rushed lunch, rushed conversation, did I bring my cell phone, have my credit card, will I remember your name, have your e-mail, which parking lot? I did okay…

Then David took the stage in his usually shiny way. Apologizing for his body and crutches he made his way to the stage, nodding and smiling to the audience, he was softening them up from the moment he rose from his chair. He had them in the palm of his hand before he even opened a book. Settled in with mic in hand he flashed the audience one of his cherubic smiles and threatened to read his novel. Laughter.

David set out his first piece, “No Eyes, Lester Young” , with a little bit of jazz history then struck up an improvisation with the reed player, Carl Atkins, who turned his sax sideways in tribute to Lester Young. Jay Jackson, drummer/percussionist was right in there with them. I thought I saw Lester Young at the back of the room but it was a ghost. Charlie Parker sat down to watch the show. I was glad he showed up. David moved on to the blues, a performance of one of his now trademark performances paging through manuscripts, verses, lines, in time, singing verses that seem right at the moment, rendering them as the blues. Yes, David was singing, as he seems to do more and more in each performance and the audience loved it. I saw him do this singing and improvisational versification for the first time at the Shelldance pre-ramble and it took my breath away. It seems this was something he started doing 50 years ago but hadn’t begun doing again until ROCKPILE started stacking up at the door. A long stream of lights unfolded on the screen behind David as he concluded his set. Dots of colors popped on to the screen as Carl Atkins replied to each movement and breath that David gave up. Another beautiful performance.

And so the afternoon at RIT concluded. A good audience. Good collaborators. And the ROCKPILE Trio was on its way to Japanese food and Writer’s and Books for a no music, poetry reading.

Charlie Parker and Lester Young head out into the afternoon light content to know the story continues.

The engine was running backward and took us to the next place later and later. And it was cold to the bone. Winter finally caught up with us. Layers and layers of sweaters, t-shirts, hoodies, overcoats, hat, gloves, scarves hardly cut the chill. We caught a quick Japanese dinner, chaos of sushi, edamame, fresh rolls with shrimp, multiple bottles of hot and cold sake, Thai soup, hot and sour soup, dragon rolls…. I met Paulette Swartzfager, a brilliant anarchist from New Orleans recently arrived in Rochester . Gerald Schwartz and John Roche continued to guide us through another Rochester moment… I don’t know what we talked about but we talked fast, ate fast, paid the check and David, Terri and I headed off in Paulette’s car to Writer’s and Books for our first reading of the ROCKPILE tour (without music).

The room was small but comfy. Someone told me it used to be a police station, maybe the reading space was the interrogation room. John Roche gave a thoughtful introduction to the three of us. It was remarkably intimate space and very quiet. Ah, no musicians. The space belonged entirely to the voice as instrument. Enormous possibilities for improvisation. All attention to listening to ourselves. It was easier to focus. And the room was small enough to read without a microphone so no electronic interface. Terri took the stage first. Perfect reading of poems. My favorite was a poem she introduced as a “punk rock” poem. Then I read, no complaints. The flow was easy and satisfying, no pressure to get things done. Then David took over. He read poems I had never heard him read and all was good. Maybe this was the best reading of all? “With or without music?” Is the perennial question. The way I see it is that reading without music is a pleasure, lots of room to move and improvise. A relaxing change from a marathon of performances with musicians, like I say, you got to listen and listening is very hard. It is easier to read without music but not necessarily better. I would never pass up the opportunity of reading with great musicians. Mainly, I think that performing with musicians makes me a better reader.

After the Writer’s and Books reading people stuck around to talk. I got to meet a lot of people I had only met online. There was Stephen Lewandowski whose review of John Roche’s Topicalities I published in Big Bridge, Steve Tills, a close friend of David Bromige, I met on Facebook, and Steven Potter who published some of my poems in Wandering Hermit Magazine. Great to meet these e-mail/Facebook bio photo/poem people human to human. And we even sold some books!!

Then we were back in the cold, frost over everything, in my beard, on my ears, and we headed over to the Lovin Cup for a hot, raucous Karaoke night, dancing and talking about poetry and any other thing that could squeeze through the noise. Gerald Schwartz, Paulette Swartzfager, John Roche and the ROCKPILE trio were buzzed. The waitress was adorable and Terri kept on running her finger through her hula-hoop sized earrings as she took our orders for more food, more drink, more good times to roll! John Roche grabbed the manager and brought her to the table. She was all over the idea of “beat” poetry and how much she loved it. David signed a copy of Beat Thing. As we headed out of the Lovin’ Cup David and Terri paused on the dance floor for some boogie-woogie but were soon joined by a drunk college boy who decided he wanted to do the lambada with Terri. I headed over to intercede. “Uh, oh,” said Gerald. I stepped in front of the college boy and pointed him back to his table and he went without fuss. It was way late and we had a 10:30 symposium. I pointed David and Terri to the door. Greeted by the manager who hugged everyone, they lingered in the freeze. “Walk and talk, walk and talk,” had become my mantra on this trip. New conversations at every step. We would never get home to sleep!!! “Walk and talk, walk and talk.” And so we did finally get in the van and shivered home to the Holiday Inn Express.

November 12. “Editing The Literary Magazine” at RIT:

We should have gotten more sleep. But we were burning the candle at both ends and any efforts I made to get Terri and David to cut the party short were met with scowls. But we did get sleep and the motel room had been moved to the furthest end of the building where housekeeping was Indian and contemplative far from the brash sambas of the 2nd floor Puerto Rican Anarchist Convention.

Terri got up early and went to the gym and did the laundry. I tried to locate an electric keyboard for St. Louis . Scored a cup of coffee from the buffet in the lobby. Then we packed our bags and loaded up the van for the next stop, Buffalo- an hour and a half from Rochester . But before we headed for Buffalo we had one more gig at RIT on ‘Editing The Literary Magazine” at 10:30 am.

The panel at RIT on Editing was moderated by John Roche. Participants included me and Terri representing Big Bridge , David representing Tree, and Steven Huff and Thom Ward from BOA. -MR

November 23

Niagara Falls and beyond

Push David in wheelchair
down to Horseshoe Falls
vista point

Broken rainbow!
Fatal rapids!

Blue skies

Stroll through gold light
Capillary shade of naked trees

Black squirrels

The river
Mutes impossible engine
of the mind

We disapprove
We approve

Cross Canadian Border headed for Toronto
“Do you realize that everybody
on this highway has health insurance?”

-MR November 13, 2009

+++++

David – Blagh 10

Terri says “Let the signage begin!”
it’s night
she’s driving along the motorway
out of Toronto heading towards Flint.

•
Copetown
Monk playing “Just a Gigolo”
Marantha Church:
“Contentment:
Knowing God Will Provide”

a ribbon of birds in flight
floating in the sky

•

The toilet at the Toronto petrol station
neatly writ on the wall:
“Graffiti Vandalism”

•

travel into & out of
the virtual liminal

Bubba Army
& Heil
truck tire flaps

•

“I’m sorry
you’re timed out”

shop sign:
“We Have Your Diamond”

Billboard:
“Uncork Paw Paw
A Village to Discover”

Climax,
Michigan

November 27

Toronto!

NIAGARA FALLS TO TORONTO

Look, we were running late
because we lingered too long at the Falls.
Traffic backed up for 40 miles outside of Toronto
Road work and rush hour
We had a reading at This Ain’t Rosedale Library,
guests of Charlie Huisken,
with poet friends, Jim Christy and Robert Priest
who we met in Victoria last year
at the Pacific Festival of Books,

After hours of sniffing tailpipes
we found Spadina Ave but couldn’t find the Super 8
The little Super 8 sign was tucked
inside a mall and lost in so many neon signs in Chinatown
Then we couldn’t find the garage
So we drove around the block
to the back of the mall hoping to find the garage
There it was. But the electronic garage door was locked
and there was no call button to get someone to open it

When a car came out of the garage
we shot through the open door but the roof rack
full of books was too high and couldn’t make clearance
so we had to back out of the garage,
empty the roof rack, take the roof rack off the roof
and put it in the back of the van
and wait for the garage door to open again.

It was one of these 5 story underground garages
with weird cobwebs of black asbestos type insulation
on the walls and ceiling
We entered the garage and followed a sign with an arrow:
“Super 8 Motel/P3”

We followed the arrows down and down and down
through the circles of a spidery apocalyptic hell
Down and Down
P1. Down
P2. Down
P3!
We found a parking space

We were going to be late for the reading
So we grabbed essentials from the van
And took the glass elevator up
P2
You could see the insides of the mall closed for the night
Everyone was gone or dead
P1
Empty offices where nothing was ever accomplished
Hit with the plague or some other disease, skeletons of cubicles
Lobby
We walked out into a hallway but no sign of a lobby.
David, Terri and I pushed on down the silent hallway

We finally found the lobby
Three stories above the main street.
I had no idea where I was or how this all worked.
What floor were we really on?
Where is the earth?

We checked in
There was a separate elevator from the lobby to the room to the street
This was not the same elevator that went to P3
We took the lobby elevator up to our room on the 85th floor
Which was weird because there were only 5 floors in the building.
There was the ground floor which was street level.
The Lobby which was on the second floor
And then 84th floor
85th floor
86th floor.

The elevator won’t take you anywhere
unless you swipe it with your plastic magnetized room key.
Before we ever got to the 85th floor we rode up and down
in the elevator wondering why we couldn’t get to our room
Eventually we figured it out
Swipe, swipe, swipe (it should have worked the first time but
I had the card in backward and upside down)

We got David set up in his room with wireless
Then we ran down the hall to our room and put away our bags.
But Terri had to go back down to the van in the P3 level
to get her poems for the reading
She said she would meet us in the lobby
Which I thought was on the street level but it wasn’t, it was on the 3rd floor
If you take the street entrance elevator

I washed my face and got David, got in the elevator, swiped the card,
We landed in the lobby
Terri wasn’t there so we went down the elevator
and waited on the street in case I misunderstood her
but she wasn’t there and it was cold so we got back in the elevator
and went back up to the lobby and sat down and waited.
Sometimes it is best to sit in one place and let the other person find you

Terri took a while to find us in the lobby
She got lost on level P3 or something like that.
She had to take the elevator from the 85 floor to the lobby
and then go through the lobby to the back of the building
and take the garage elevator back down
through skeletons and cubicles, abandoned offices and mall
to the cancerous and furry P3
to get her poems out of the van
This took a while

We all got in the elevator, swiped the room key card,
ended up on the street amidst crazy blinking neon signs in Chinese
We found a taxi that took us around in circles because
every street was one way going the wrong way.
The taxi finally dropped us on a corner
a half block from the book store going the other way.

We trudged down the street to This Ain’t Rosedale Library
where we were greeted by Charlie Huisken
Introductions were made and then we headed across the street for a bite to eat.
Jim Christy and Virginia joined us, Michael Boughn, Victor Coleman,
Robert Priest and his wife and it was great to seem them all …

I love Toronto.

After a beautiful reading we took lots of pictures of each other
Then walked down to Spadina Ave and had a grand banquet of Chinese food.
David had clay pot chicken, Terri had egg drop soup and shrimp fried rice
and some sake. I had cod in black bean sauce

I want to go back to Toronto soon.

December 11

Welcome to Chicago

I didn’t get a lot of video or pictures of Chicago. It was rainy for a few days and then I was stuck working on the computer the rest of the time. Here is a little short made with what I did get… Terri

CHICAGO CLIMAX

Chicago was a big breakdown of things, sort of deconstruction (if you must).

Poooo et treeeee…

Pooooo… ems

Slam!

Spoken Word.

Hip Hop.

What’s the difference?

Performance.

Cultural Identity.

Cultural Differences.

Different cultures singing the same exact tune with the same tone and inflection. What is that about?

Politically Correct poetry. Too political. Too obvious. Too sentimental.
Too, Too anything.

When all that spoken word and slam talk came around I was out in the cuts growing bromeliads and none of it made a difference to me.

There was the “language” and experimental stuff and that didn’t mean anything to me.

There was a lot of talk about Beat Poetry.

Meat Poetry.

Street poetry.

What about get up and dance poetry?

Poetry of the outriders, inroaders, dieharders, decoders…

What about multi-media poetry and art?

Thank God or Mammon for the internet.

Anybody could put up stuff and all the stuff they wanted on the internet. The game changed. Everyone was a publisher.

But the whiners at the gate, gatekeepers, critics, whined “there’s too much poetry, too much art on the internet” and “nobody can control it” or “tell us what is good and what is bad.”

And man, those critics sure could publish a whole lot of “sanctioned” crap. Everything published had to be “affiliated”, so they could fund it with grants, advocate it in university classrooms, study it at backslapping literary conventions.

Cocktail parties with wine and hummus.

“Sour grapes” is what they say, if you complain about it.

None of that added up to anything for me. I had my own way of figuring things out.

But, nobody gets anything done without a little kindness from strangers (see Philip Whalen).

Still, I created my own doors, all ego, and walked right the fuck in.

ROCKPILE IS AN OPEN DOOR!

Whitmanic, Democratic, a Big Tent Party! Come on in!

Welcome to the inside of The Hideout.

We finally had a sound person we could count on to run the sound board and do the mixing. The Hideout is a performance venue with a long history of great performers. So we were in good hands.

Bob Malone Band and Spider Trio showed up early to do sound check. We waited the customary 45 minutes after the announced show time before we began the show.

*

As far as I’m concerned we owe the success of our Chicago visit to Larry Sawyer and Karen Ivanis.

First, Karen, Angel of the Pineapple, hooked us up with hospitality at the Hotel Allegro, so we had a place to camp out in total comfort for the week. It was Kimpton room service that inspired us to have a ROCKPILE party in David’s room, I think we had two. Terri filmed it. We tried to do some shop talk, but the party slowly broke down in blabber and blather as was our custom and so it was perfect. Maybe Terri will post some of that footage. Terri and I had a view from our 15th floor room of the city, and the train station below. And an enormous plasma screen TV. Again, the bed was a little too soft, slightly crooked, but it was plush and encouraging. We got an “amenity” the moment we arrived, a bottle of red wine, which we passed on to David. That was also encouraging.

The bellman, from India, who took our bags up to the room was very curious about what we were doing there and when he found out about ROCKPILE he was all gushing about Walt Whitman. He said there wasn’t enough poetry in modern life, and wondered about all the other great American poets. I tipped him large. He explained that he had had a very bad day and that we had turned the whole thing around for him. People had been mean to him, detached and cold. “See, that is what I am saying, we need more poetry.” Ironically, Karen thought the Kimpton would be interested in ROCKPILE because it was artsy, but she didn’t realize fully that poetry is the poor person’s art and the art/fashion that inspired the Kimpton is a rich (or wanna be rich) people’s art. Is that possible?

And then there is our true friend Larry Sawyer who set up the venue at the Hideout and moderated the symposium at Columbia College. Larry is an old friend. His work with milk magazine has been an inspiration, his poetry series at Myopic Books is landmark, and of incredible personal importance to me. Larry introduced me to Ira Cohen. So on some cosmic level Ira Cohen is the mad guiding spirit that drives this gathering in Chicago. Larry got the venue, Larry got the readers, Larry moderated the symposium, Larry set up Facebook pages and sent out announcements.

And there were other very important contributors who made the Chicago leg of ROCKPILE great, who should be acknowledged, like Dan Godston, who helped gather some musical forces and spread the word of ROCKPILE, and Francesco Levato who gave us voice and notice through the Poetry Center, and Art Lange and Tony Triglio who set up the Columbia College venue for the Symposium. And then the musicians who worked with us at the Hideout included the awesome Spider Trio with Dan McNaughton on bass, Bryan Pardo (saxophone) and Tim Keenan(drums). Also on the ticket was the perennial Bob Malone (piano) and Bob Malone Band with Marc Singer (drums), Christa Hillhouse (bass). We were honored to be joined by surprise guest Ellen Miller (harmonica).

Guest readers at the Hideout and panel members at Columbia College included, Larry Sawyer, Art Lange, Dan Godston, Dan McNaughton, Francesco Levato, and Tony Triglio. Joe Wetteroth and Tom Hibbard were our “surprise” guests at the symposium.

More about the symposium later…

*

Back to Larry Sawyer

Though there was a ton of people in Chicago who helped put the show together, it was Larry who put Chicago together. Larry is a revolutionary force and viva la revolucion!
Check out milk magazine and Myopic series

*

We checked into the Hotel Allegro, agreeing to pay 45 dollars a night for parking, and stopped in the lobby for a couple of complimentary glasses of red wine. Then we started looking for dinner. Problem with dinner around the Allegro, in the Loop (theater district) is that many of the less expensive restaurants are closed after 10:00pm, so we ended up in the Kinzie Chophouse, a fancy steak joint, , and blew a couple days food budget. My steak was great, huge, tender, and actually tasted like steak. Terri was not happy with her seafood and pasta. The mussels were huge and bulbous and looked like they had been grown hydroponically on the bottom of the Bay of Fundy by some mad scientist and this grossed her out. She was also expecting a fresh, chunky red, tomato sauce and got a creamier pink sauce. She doesn’t care much for creamy or pink. David had all of the fancy wines and liquors he could desire on his menu so he was not worried, nor feeling any pain, so ventured beyond the chicken or salmon Caesar and took a shot at the waiter’s “highly recommended” (first sign of a problem) mahi tuna. He should have stayed with the Caesar. The mahi was skimpy, tough, and overcooked. (Most likely old, which is why the waiter was pushing it)

Did you ever imagine this blog would turn into a Food Channel moment?

As David remarked several times, he was always hungry, even after meals. He was eating more food on the road than he ever ate at home. Collectively we gained 20 pounds on the trip.

Talking about food, we had a great visit to The Portillo with The Bob Malone Band. Chicken parmagiana for me, another disappointing mahi sandwich for David, and Terri ate a huge slab of lasagna smothered in a bright red sauce. I am still thinking I should have ordered the Italian sausage sandwich but tried to protect my road weary stomach from a miscalculation of spices. The Malone Band ate Chicago hot dogs in unison. I was jealous.

We also ate at the Greek Islands Restaurant with Larry Sawyer and Dan Godston after the Symposium at Columbia College. That was a treat. Though I got so excited by the bread that by the time my lamb came I was already for desert. But the lamb was good. David had sea bass and Terri had red snapper. I don’t know what anyone else had. I was too busy eating. This dinner was a blur. There is a great picture of all of us full and bundled up for the cold outside of the restaurant waiting for a cab.

Again, no pictures of Terri.

Why do women always carry the cameras on these trips? I think of Joanne Kyger’s poem about her trip to India with the big shot Beats.

Poison Oak for Allen

Here I am reading about your trip to India again,
With Gary Snyder and Peter Orlovsky. Period.
Who took cover picture of you three

With smart Himalayan mountain backdrop
The bear?

–Joanne Kyger

(I think we need to do a Terri Carrion photo portfolio to set the record straight.)

We ate in the restaurant downstairs and it was mostly bad but not too expensive. One night we did get to watch some Church raffle for an electric car, a Tesla, from our seat at the booth window. The server comped the margaritas because they lost our dinner order. I ordered a pizza with extra cheese and it injured me for most of the next day.

Another time, at lunch, I sent back my salad because it was all spinach and tasted too green and I asked them for something with crunch and not all those nouvelle lettuces but they brought me soggy spinach. I sent it back for salmon Caesar but by the time I got it I wasn’t hungry.

Food, food, food, forget about it.

*

We were in Chicago for The Hideout ROCKPILE performance and symposium at Chicago College. That’s what I should be talking about. Right?

Okay, The Symposium, nobody came to it except Tom Hibbard and Joe Wetteroth. A great audience but spare. The panel was deftly moderated by Larry Sawyer and included David Meltzer, Terri Carrion, Art Lange, Dan McNaughton, Tony Triglio, Dan Godston and me. So we talked among ourselves and invited Tom and Joe to join the panel from the audience.

This was the fourth symposium of the tour. The first was at Institute for Policy Study in DC, hosted by Sarah Browning and Split This Rock, the second was at CUNY, hosted by David Henderson and Ammiel Alcalay, then one big gathering at  St. Mark’s Poetry Project in NYC hosted by The Poetry Project.

I can see why I have taken so long to write about Chicago. We had a lot going on in Chicago.

Okay, so here we were with nobody in the audience but Tom and Joe and a highly qualified panel of speakers. Why didn’t anybody come? Does it matter that nobody came? Maybe nobody was interested in the subject. Here is Larry Sawyers blurb on the subject:

“About: Since Kenneth Rexroth and Langston Hughes first collaborated with jazz musicians (but then Jelly Roll Morton claimed to have collaborated with authors, as well) poetry and music have enjoyed a special relationship. The subject ranges far and wide: Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, Allen Ginsberg’s manic rock combos, modern hip-hop, the singer-songwriter tradition of troubadours such as Bob Dylan and Lou Reed–the relationship between music, specifically jazz, and poetry has been percolating for generations. Sit in with these artists as they discuss this tempestuous relati . Panelists include: David Meltzer, Michael Rothenberg, Art Lange, Dan McNaughton, Tony Trigillio, Ed Roberson, Dan Godston, Larry Sawyer, Francesco Levato, Terri Carrion, Bob Malone, and others.”

Ed Roberson and Bob Malone had to cancel.

Or maybe it was booked for the wrong day, or wrong time.

Maybe the professors didn’t blackmail their students. Or maybe, as is often said, “You can never tell with these things”. A vague but adequate enough answer to the question: “Why didn’t anybody show up?”

I been in the right place
But it must have been the wrong time
I’d of said the right thing
But I must have used the wrong line
I been in the right trip
But I must have used the wrong car
My head was in a bad place
And I’m wondering what it’s good for

– Dr. John

Does it matter that nobody, but Tom and Joe, showed up? Isn’t it good enough that we got together and had an interesting discussion about a subject WE cared about?

My opinion is this. If you are going to put out the effort to get people to come then you ought to want people to come and if they don’t come you feel like you put out your hand and nobody took it. That feels weird.

Okay, so nobody came and it felt weird. But we had a good talk amongst ourselves. Most interesting part was when Larry Sawyer asked each of us to recall our earliest and most profound moment when music figured in our lives. I recalled my mother and father singing “Sonny Boy” to one another. That was memorable. And I remember dancing around the house to Harry Belafonte singing Banana Boat Song over a recently installed house-wide Hi Fidelity system. I could have danced for ever but eventually my mother discouraged that as being a little too “gay”.

“Day-O!”

And then we went to the Greek Island Restaurant where I immersed myself in pita.

*

Terri took off one afternoon to photograph the Chicago skyline. Some very cool architecture in that city. Some very cool pictures.

After the Rochester, Buffalo, Toronto hiatus, Terri spent one “free” afternoon in Chicago trying to resume uploading footage from the videocam to her computer, so she could convert it and upload it to Youtube or Vimeo, her imovie function gone awry somewhere between pastrami and edamame in NYC.

*

I am learning how to create run on sentences and unravel my dyslexic syntax. Terri still goes over my blog entries to make sure they are not all screwed up.

*

Does Terri ever get credit? Does she ever ask for it?

Sometimes…

*

The cab ride to The Hideout was interesting. The cab driver got lost. Terri and I agreed to go by taxi separately to buy her and David a little extra time in personal repair. So we paid twice for taxi drivers who insisted that the shack nestled in the cold shadows of industrial blight could not be The Hideout. But then what better place to hideout than in a shack in the shadows of industrial blight? The Hideout had no “Hideout” sign, just a beer sign?

When I stepped out of the taxi a stranger walked up to me and said, “Are you Michael?” “This must be the right place”, the cab driver said. “Yes,” and “???” I never saw this guy in my life. It turned out to be Patricia Donnelly’s brother and his wife.

Patricia is friend of David’s and ROCKPILE who lives back in Berkeley. She won David in a raffle. I will let David explain that if he wants.

Inside The Hideout.

A funky place. Warm and friendly home to some of the best music in Chicago. I feel like I’m writing copy for the entertainment section of the Chicago Tribune.

First big personal news at The Hideout was that I got to see Joan DeLott, an old friend of mine from Miami Beach whom I haven’t seen in 40 years.She brought Ellen Miller, an awesome harmonica player, to join in on show. More news. I met a cousin I never met in my life. It turns out we have the same great-grandfather. I am not sure what kind of cousin that makes him but he was a really nice guy and thoughtful to come out to the show and say howdy. (Weirdly, he came with a friend who heard about the show from Danny Kerwick in New Orleans.)

*

ROCKPILE AT THE HIDEOUT (we started an hour late so everyone had a chance to arrive and get settled.)

Art Lange began the show with w/ Calligraphy, Dan Godston’s band with Dan Godston (trumpet, percussion), Renee Baker (violins), Satya Gummuluri (voice), and Jimmy Bennington (drums)

Calligraphy is a band brought together for the first time by Dan Godston. A great group of musicians and a vocalist. They tore things up and so redefined space and time.

Then the great Bob Malone and Band took the show to another place. His performance was dedicated to the singer/songwriter, another way of looking at poetry and music. Bob sang “Chicks” by Dave Cantor from Dave’s True Story, and the title track from his new CD, “Ain’t What You Know” (you can buy it from Bob at www.bobmalone.com/store.html). He also sang three songs we wrote together, “Caught Up In Christmas”, “Morning Desires” and “Raydaddy’s Blues”. Francesco Levato, accompanied by Bob Malone, read from “INT. LIVING ROOM – NIGHT”. Joe Wetteroth took us back to earth with “Soul Eyes”, “Two Drunks and Me Waiting For the Bus”, “On Grand Lounge”, “Save Me Somebody Save Me”, and “Gita Revisited”. Larry Sawyer, with Bob Malone, read “Bohemian” and “Moon Act”, Terri Carrion, accompanied by The Bob Malone Band read “When I Was In Love” and “What’s Happening Now”. Then Bob Malone, The Spider Trio and Ellen Miller, joined me. I read a few poems including “The Jet” and “Angels Sleep in Peace”.

“ The Breaks” (Variations inadvertently on a theme by the Ohio Players with a nod to the Brothers Johnson).” by DAN MCNAUGHTON and The Spider Trio. Dan McNaughton had a composition idea which he tried out for the show. He describes as follows:

“The piece we did with you and David was originally to be called “The Breaks”–a break is when everyone in the band stops (this could be a blues or jazz tune) except for the soloist (which could be a singer), who continues on unaccompanied for a short time. The alternate title I came up with is “Variations inadvertently on a theme by the Ohio Players with a nod to the Brothers Johnson.” So the full title would be: “The Breaks (Variations inadvertently on a theme by the Ohio Players with a nod to the Brothers Johnson).”

This is how it goes:

“Spider Trio plays—poet reads—poet reads/Spider Trio plays—poet reads—poet reads/etc. My sense is that the basic unit (ST–poet–poet) could be repeated 4-8 times. Within the unit, each segment would last 15-30 seconds. Trading fours is meant to be a back-and-forth with each participant making a relatively brief statement. It’s up to you guys if you want to read previously written poems or improvise. We will be doing a theme and variations kind of thing. My sense is that this would not run too long, 7 to 15 minutes.”

We did like Dan suggested until it kind of broke down and spread out and then Dan gave us the go to continue improvising. David and I went back and forth with the Spider Trio in the mix, exchanging random lines, kisses, grunts, sighs, songs, stardust, weather reports, blues, jingles, jangles, shoe sizes, orchids, a dance in the street, a generic merlot, sometimes just one word at the right time, whatever seemed to belong in the moment, and the audience had a good time which only encouraged us to indulge ourselves further.

Thanks to Dan McNaughton for creating an environment that enabled David and me to do what we had all along promised to do, according to our grant, perform work composed on the road. This was it, kinda.

Terri said, “The David and Michael show, great!”

David took over to read with The Spider Trio, Bob Malone and Ellen Miller. He read/sang some blues, “Brother”, “When I Was A Poet”, and read excerpts from “No Eyes, Lester Young”, Dan McNaughton says, “I think we did play rhythm changes behind David’s poem about Lester Young. “Rhythm changes” means playing the chord changes and form of “I Got Rhythm” (by the Gershwins).”

David read from NO EYES, a sequence on Lester Young and then “When I Was A Poet”, a solo piece to conclude the evening.

After The Hideout show, after settling high finances with the Hideout management, after many sweet goodbyes to old and new friends, after squeezing into Dan Godston’s very compact car, Terri, David, crutches (he likes to call sticks), violinist and violin, trumpet, books for sale, camera equipment including tripods, briefcases, back packs, winter coats and wool caps and slightly claustrophobic me, THE ROCKPILE TRIO was birthed outside of an all night greasy spoon diner, soaked in the afterbirth of poetry and music. I don’t remember the name of the place, and after too much bad wine, soggy French toast, biscuits and gravy, fried eggs, French fries, “remember American fries?” with Joe Wetteroth and Sarah Hogan, we said some more goodbyes, climbed into a taxi to the Allegro Hotel, with books, bags, and camera equipment, grateful to know the next day was a rest day, a sleep late day, another day in Chicago to sort things out before we headed south to St. Louis.-MR

December 26

St. Louis begins…and continues!

ST. LOUIS BLOW OUT!

I dedicate this blog entry to Zimbabwe Nkenya, a good friend and wonderful musician, who was scheduled to join us for the show but could not make it. He had a stroke a month before the scheduled St. Louis performance. Our Love to Zimbabwe and his family.

POET’S RAP

Gather up & gather round
a poet’s rap
is going down
ain’t nothing new
the evening news
colorfully true
st. louis blues
aching thru
myth/history
& snaking round
the mystery
& shaking apples
from your tree
to lift you from
your gravity

Poet’s Rap
It’s a killer
Poet’s Rap
It’s a killer

The Moonrise Hotel is a trip.

I am not sure what it is about that place. Maybe it’s the stairs flashing and flickering colors wired to tone and tempo of funky music piped into the lobby. Or red, white, and green plastic cubes and bulbous white plastic chairs and sofa set up in the driveway for a Fellini fashion shoot.

Or the busboys and girls with Madonna-style headsets roaming the halls and grounds, all cute and smart and glad to be of assistance. There’s the multi-mirrored convex mirror collage installation in front of the lobby elevator, perfect for a re-enactment of The Beatles’ Help!, and the huge framed Dali-esque mirrors outside of the elevator on each floor, bending as you approach them. Or the 20 dollar hamburger and excellent Margaritas at the European modern Eclipse restaurant and bar attached to the lobby. (I passed on the 20 dollar burger.) Spacious and newly decorated rooms were totally up to speed. You could plug your computer into the huge flat screen and get wireless surround sound (maybe). But the beds were just way too soft. It was like lying in a grave, I swore I was being swallowed up for good. It gave me the mini-terrors.
Brazil!!!!

Now
times are hard
careening fast
& each new day
could be our last
more reason to
use heads & hearts
& not abuse
our natural smarts
cause any answer
we can find
delving deep
in heart of mind
down in its depths
& still as stone
we understand
we’re not alone

Poet’s Rap
It’s a thriller
Poet’s Rap
It’s a thriller

Here’s the list of poets & musicians who joined us for the ROCKPILE performance at the “weirdly amusing” Regional Arts Center across the street from The Moonrise: Jason & the Beast (Jason Braun accompanied by Jerry Hill and Mic Boshans on drums) were high all the way, hip-hop poetry and beat par excellence; Alex Balogh, our friend from Untamed Ink read a perfect tribute poem to Papa Meltzer; the awesome anarchist Sean Arnold drove a steady rhythm, intense and sublime.

Many thanks to Paul Nevenkirk, of St. Louis, MO, for letting us use his great photos of the poets and musicians to accompany the performance videos.

Phil Gounis showed us The Way (has a great cd collaboration with Rich Kruse–who graciously lent us his PA system, said, “I never thought I would be a roadie for poets”– reviewed on Big Bridge. Maria Guadalupe Massey gave us her bluesy all. Harry Sky Campbell was sweet and beautiful. Howard Schwartz taught us about lineage and justice.

Shirley LeFlore possessed the mighty elegant soul and flow.K. Curtis Lyle roared like a lion, his verbal claw on the heart of America. Michael Castro knew “The Poet’s Rap” (he was the ONE in St. Louis who got this whole show together, thanks for everything Michael, wow!) He wrote after the event: “Our audiences were inter-generational and diverse, as were the participating poets & musicians. It demonstrated the vitality of the arts community here, an impression that will be spread by all those involved.”

yet in our time
we separate
& seeds get sown
of fear & hate
this rap reminds us
real-ize
life’s unity
that underlies
our lonely separate
transient me’s–
our individualities–
& know
compassion’s
what we need
to full-fill life
not self-ish greed

Poet’s Rap
it’s a yearning
Poet’s Rap
It’s life-affirming

Head’s up, America!!! St. Louis knows how to celebrate poetry and music!!!!

And Dave Black was great on the guitar.David A.N. Jackson was always on the money with percussion, his curtain of bells. And the Bob Malone Band was at it again, with us in Chicago the week before, sang the songs Bob and I wrote together. To end his solo set Bob played some major Jerry Lee Lewis rock and roll while Adelia and I danced at the back of the room. Then The Malone Band, David A.N. Jackson and Dave Black took the show home with The ROCKPILE Trio.

(More video coming soon!)

Who says poetry readings are boring????!!!!

We had the largest audience on the ROCKPILE tour in St. Louis. The night before the RAC ROCKPILE event, at the celebration for Untamed Ink reading at Lindenwood, we matched the RAC Crowd, 140 bodies (TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW!!!!)

Beau Jesus says so
Buddha too
& Martin, Malcolm
& Lao Tzu
& every animal
through whose eyes
a soul cries out
we recognize
each still small voice
says, to be free
we must express
our unity
& bathe each self
in selfless bliss
as lovers do
inside a kiss

Poet’s Rap
Thou art That
Poet’s Rap
Thou art That

Did I mention that pizza joint after the Lindenwood gig? You could get New York Style, Chicago Style or St. Louis Style pizza. The eggplant parmagiana was awesome. We went for the New York style, the large was more than enough for 4 people. Homemade sauce, gooey cheese, crispy crust, maybe not New York but yummy.

We ate a few times at Blueberry Hill Café. Cheap and reasonable portions. The cheeseburger was my favorite meal there. The late night breakfast was very average. I couldn’t get fried eggs because they only had those pre-scrambled pourable eggs. Ugh. David seemed to agree with their Caeser and chicken, but one day we went over to The Blueberry alone (Terri stayed at the Moonrise to download a backlog of footage) and we had a heart to heart about sobriety, morality, propriety and ultimately too much cheese! We both ordered a salad. There was so much grated cheese in the bowl you couldn’t find the lettuce. It’s just wasn’t right. Thick and sticky and flavorless.

One midnight I took a look around the Pin Up Bowl, a bar/bowling alley, it was a great idea , but the music was so loud and everyone was drunk so I dashed out and sat at the bus stop to collect myself. Floating above me…The Moonrise has its own moon.

We went to Duff’s for lunch and Karen Duffy, who has hosted literary readings at her Central West End restaurant since 1974, joined us for a mellow afternoon.

Thanks Karen for your camaraderie and generosity and the best Cobb Salad and awesome chocolate ganache desert I had on the whole ROCKPILE tour…

so expand that
I-dentity
& understand
“I’m” not just “me”
& that the inside
& the out
is what we’re finally
all
about
The universe is
where we are
eternity’s
more near than far
the final Word is
All is One
So now you know
The rap’s undone

Poet’s Rap
It’ll haunt ya
Poet’s Rap
It’s a mantra

it’s a mantra

it’s a mantra

-michael castro-

* * *

So this was the last stop of the ROCKPILE on the Road tour. But be forewarned, David, Terri and I are not calling it quits. Yes, it was a long, exhausting trip but the high of collaboration and making new friends is all endorphins. Sure, we had our squabbles and I wrecked the car a few times but the ROCKPILE TRIO has achieved a perfect dysfunction. ROCKPILE, is an addiction that’s impossible to cure. It can only get better. We can only get higher. We hear rumblings in Dublin, Berlin, Great Britain, Amsterdam and Victoria, BC. Calls to return to Rochester, Buffalo, and Toronto. Joe Cunliffe  is poking around DC for another gig. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band wants to hook up in the Bay Area in the Spring. What about Hawaii? Alaska? Don’t forget The Rabbles! We’re supposed to do a Grand Finale in the Bay Area in 2010. Yes, we’ll do a big show but Grand Finale? I don’t think so…ever….-MR

+++++

(from DM)

24:xii:09

Rummaging thru four-fold papers of road scrawls. Out-of-sequence like this Rockpiler in the aftermath of our odyssey.

Signage like splattered shattered colored glass chips:

“Embryos Are Babies”
Fill Up With Freedom Gas
in Normal

Shut up
& write a fucking haiku

Bubba truck tire flaps

*

Most of all, the musicians were the adventure. Sound was ambix. How to listen to each other in the moment. How to hear & respond. When to be silent. When to weave w/in the fields of sound. How to transform, merge, create a momentum of sounds into the air. Moons ago, the composer Peter Garland edited a magazine called, appropriately, Soundings, where contemporary composers wrote about their work, the process of composing, also providing the music on the page in its own language. We were creating within the sounded-out mystery of improvisation. Composer R. Murray Schafer (in his essential text, The Tuning of the World), coined the keyword “soundscape” for the acoustic realms we inhabit.

Now I will do nothing but listen . . .
I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following,
Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night . . .

–        Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

We worked w/ wonderful players & their mantra of “it’s a gig” said it all about the life of poetry. Feel a great kinship to musicians & to their art & economy.

-David Meltzer

January 11

one more time/blahg/part 1

Yesterday I was trying to celebrate our gig & homecoming in St Louis on my computer — BUT my iMac chewed it up & shat it out into some kind of cyber limbo — how can a machine be such a cruel editor? — I sang & soared 2 hours of praise songs erased by a what? a glitch? an omen? juju? —
yeah yeah, I got the St Louis Blues –

have been going & performing in St Louis for over 40 years — why? because it’s the realized integrated arts core community that many other urban palookavilles can’t fathom or realize — you can kill each other or embrace & learn to work together — that’s what was so rewarding about our last gig –

OK — back-story:

1969: Tina & me & our 3 daughters (Amanda, Maggie, Jennie) in a funky white second-hand Plymouth station wagon are driving across the US of A towards permanent exile abroad, we’re headed to the Old Country & we want to show the kids some of the landscape they’re leaving. I’d set up readings along the way by contacting poet friends & academics who arranged readings & sometimes their apartments or houses for the Meltzer brood. When we arrived in St Louis — on one of those numbingly hot moist times of the year — our host was Howard Schwartz, a recent friend & contributor to Tree, an irregular journal I edited focusing on kabbalistic themes like Shekinah, Yetzirah, Evil, putting ancient texts in dialogue w/ modernist writings. Howard was devoted to dreams, parables, Kafka, jewish folklore, & ECM Records. He was a professor of Literature & Writing at UMSL & belonged to a vibrant cultural nexus of poets, musicians, Donald Finkel, artists, congenial eccentrics. Buddhist artist & poet, Michael Corr, gave up his apartment to the Meltzers in one of those 3 story brick cubes lining the streets. It seemed every night there was a gathering at someone’s place, but the one I remember best was at poet Michael Castro’s digs. In the basement people were playing kora, mbiri, xylophone, all kinds of drums, guitars. Poets reading, chanting, burbling & babbling. Our daughters loved it. A good sign. Then Howard, maybe Michael, & I read at marvelous Duff’s, a bar & restaurant that to this day flourishes thanks to Karen Duff, indefatigable, & generous to creative types like us. I met not only teenage prodigy Marty Ehrlich, but the wonderful jazz guitarist Lyle Harris, who we’d work w/ over the decades. I remember one night we stealthed into East St Louis to read poetry at a local “underground” radio stations. Remember, this was the ’60s & “revolution” & “free” was in the air. St Louis was the apogee of our road trip & we’ve staid in touch over decades!

–DM

St. Louis Part 2 from David

tour across the States staying at a recently opened hotel — it had a full moon globe atop its roof. I think it was called the Moonrise Hotel on the same street leading to the legendary Blueberry Hill bar & eatery where Chuck Berry makes an appearance on a regular basis. Also one of St Louis’ great record/CD stores, Vintage Vinyl, where I picked up Zimbabwe Nkenya & ZIYA’s CD “In Concert.” Zimbabwe was going to play with us but suffered a stroke & was in the hospital. On the road, days before we arrived, we heard that Howard Schwartz had also suffered a stroke, but was on the mend. Yet I worried.

==

One of the great joys to me was hanging out w/ Michael & Adelia Castro. Being a passenger & listening to Michael & Adelia negotiate directions was by now a familiar pingpong. The deep coded bond of coupledom is its own poetry, performance art.

Doing late lunch at Duff’s brought all the years back. The place hadn’t changed, glorious Karen Duff was even more radiant. Our waitress (whose email address I lost) was a daughter of one of Karen’s staff & she was the future w/ both guarded & open questions.

==

—DM

January 14

St. Louis “Next Installment-DM”

Little Walter in my earphones: But someday, baby, you’re not going to worry my life anymore

First of all, Howard Schwartz is there, post-stroke, the only noticeable clue is the cane. Am so delighted & elated to see him; was so worried. He’s done so much remarkable work as scholar of the Jewish folklore traditions — his penultimate work, Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism, is essential. What’s often forgotten, is that Howard is a poet & parable & dream maestro, all of those deep skills employed in this grand work. May have embarrassed him by touching him to be sure he was still alive. At the same time, Zimbawi, great improvising musician on the m’biri, who signed up for Rockpile 2 years ago at a loose sweet meeting at the Castro’s, also suffered a stroke which was more serious & was still in hospital. Howard takes the stage & tells us a great teaching tale from the Jewish bag of shticks.

From then on, it’s a procession of impassioned performances. Old friend from old days, K. Curtis Lyle, in full regalia, white griot robes, cornrows, intones a magnificent tribute to Michael Jackson, back up by stalwarts: Dave Black, guitar, & David A. N. Jackson, on a myriad of percussion possibilities. Phil Gounis proclaimed Buddhism. Shirley LeFlore kicked it. Anarcho-punk-hip hop poet — Jason & The Beast — kicked it out of the park. Michael Castro (backed by Black & Jackson) was consummately in the groove, The glory of it wouldn’t stop. Maria Guadalupe Massey . Sean Arnold. Alex Balogh. Whew. The energy in the room was palpable. Then Bob Malone’s trio amped it up beyond. Singing some of Michael Rothenberg’s deep songs (cante hondo), with his out-there brio. The most satisfying compliment I got that night was from Bob’s bass player Christa’s son; he was maybe seven or so & she brought him up to me because he really dug my performance. St Louis was all acme; it was a signal & sign of what’s possible in arts communities in touch w/ the necessity of shared & embraced realities & alert & constantly awake to the imaginative possibilities.

Long as I have you, baby
Nothing I won’t do
Little Walter in my earphones

–DM

January 21

11.25.09—SIGNS, SIGNS, EVERYWHERE SIGNS

(St. Louis to Kansas City to Grand Island and beyond)

“Commute with god”

Huntpheasants.com

Nostalgiaville, USA—37mi

“Got A Bra Problem?”

In my afterlife there are no gates
Not even pearly ones

Poetry Without Borders

Historic Village for Sale!

“Control your child not our guns”

Ten miles to Nostalgiaville

Who is Bob Evans?

Blue Springs, MO
Home of David Cook
American Idol 2008

ER:
From broken back to heart attack

Bob Evans had the best sausages
around Ohio

Grand Island Thanksgiving porkchops
Peanut butter & chocolate pie

“There’s no such thing as a free lunch”—
says puffed up man enjoying complimentary
after dinner cordials and sweets
at Kansas City Hotel Intercontinental
Executive Club Lounge

“And the ones that want it are the ones who
aren’t making the grade”

Man at Western Nebraska rest stop toilet
wears duck call t-shirt that reads:
“When Nature calls, call back”

Mama Sage!

—M.R. and T.C.

January 27

ugh the blahg onward/ DM

Thursday, January 21, 2010, 3:18 AM

Now in post dramatic trip syndrome, trying to get some clarity on what happened, what I learned. Learned that there’s much more to learn performing w/ improvising musicians. Have always been unclear about how that works & if it does, what’s going on? I started reading poetry w/ jazz musicians in The Jazz Cellar in SF 1958. Did a weekly gig there for a year or more. Worked w/ some terrific musicians like Leo Wright, Frank Phipps, Max Hartstein, Bill Weisjahn, Sonny Wright, Pony Poindexter. Learned how write poetry head arrangements, i.e., brought in the skeleton of a poem & then improvised it , fleshed it out, as a soloist, making room for the other players to take their solos, & then often figuring out ways of trading fours. It still makes sense to me. But that didn’t happen on our tour. Instead we relied on set pieces — our “standards” — telling the musicians what the work intended & rehearsing w/ them usually the day before a gig. There’s an intrinsic kinship between poets & musicians; we share the margins together in terms of gigs & immense public support. But always it’s about how one hears & how that either becomes dialogic or disconnected. Working together or apart. I’ve done both & am still unsure about which form works best for me.

Other lessons learned or unlearned have to do w/ an increasing sense (or weight) of lived history, realizing the context I remember out of & speak to is alien to someone a decade younger. “Displacement” is often an accurate word to describe the dissonance of histories unmeshed. The same not the same, but still the same? Learned that Allen Ginsberg’s mantra “First Thought, Best Thought” is often wrong.

Learned how beautiful & sad & ruined USA is from the road. Have kvetched about that earlier.

Learned how remarkable & resilient & fierce couples are. Puts me into grief mode, missing Tina.

Learned how many remarkable people are involved w/ the arts in towns & cities across the country & how generous they are & compatible & irreplaceable.

==

Love

DM

January 27

blahg in the fog

Date: Friday, January 22, 2010, 1:58 AM

Learned kinship w/ improvising musicians, which I never lost; how they, like poets, emerge from & continue a tradition.

Learned page poets write silence.

Learned again & again that the voice is an instrument.

Learned the ache of transit from page to air; how my voice either weaves w/in the tones of other musicians or retains its separateness.

Learned how all of us, poets & musicians, are ongoing; there’s no ending final enough to empty the world of light.

••••••

Learned how to listen but in the moment not to hear. But we’re talking about moment to moment, quick as a tick.

Learned love & family w/ Michael & Terri, again.

Learned that learning teaches that there’s so much more to learn.

– dm

January 27

Thanksgiving on the way home from ROCKPILE 2009

Dear David (Madgalene),

“Grand Island is the fourth largest city in Nebraska, with an estimated population of 44,000.”

Thanksgiving in Grand Island, Nebraska was unfortunate. We were already thinking it would be weird to be “unaffiliated” hunting down turkey in the boonies at 8pm on Thanksgiving Day when everyone with a life would be home with their families eating string beans and sliced almonds and watching THE GAME.

We found a diner that had a T-day special but when we sat down to order we found out they were out of turkey so they were substituting ham, out of mashed potatoes substituting fries, out of cranberry sauce with no substitution, though there was still some dressing. Uninspired, I ordered fried porkchops, mushy dressing and some seriously warmed over sweet potatoes. The biscuits were chewy but the honey helped. I ate about half of everything and called it quits. Terri had a combination fried cheese stick and fried mushroom appetizer. A mistake. She fished the mushrooms out of the inch thick batter and gave up. “I don’t know why I ordered this,” she said. We split a piece of “homemade” chocolate peanut butter pie which wasn’t bad then went back to our Holiday Inn fortress and caught up on blog work, downloading and uploading files from Toronto and Buffalo.

New York City blog entries and video got lost in the “shuffle off to Buffalo”, Rochester and Toronto , so we are way behind on videos from that performance, and same with notes from Chicago and St. Louis. So our routine now is to drive 6 hours, book a hotels.com room by cell phone, check in, then find food that won’t hurt us, After dinner we work on the back log. Try not to watch bad TV.

We’re in Laramie, WY now, it’s morning, Terri is down at the exercise room, and I am lying in bed with laptop dreaming of a solid cup of Cuban coffee, and looking forward to seeing you and Jim and Ziggy and Chiqui and Mi Casita for a burrito fix. Snow all around the motel. We have been incredibly lucky with the weather on this trip. Winter just behind us all the way here. Laramie, kind of desolate and pretty. Hope to be home the day after tomorrow.

Love, Michael

ps. An estimated 500,000 Sandhill Cranes pass thru the Nebraska Platte River valley heading northward every year during the Annual Spring and Fall Sandhill Crane Migrations. They migrate through an 80 mile wide “Flyway” stretch along the Platt River from near Grand Island to west of Kearney, NE. It is estimated that about 80% of the world’s population of Sandhill Cranes do an annual migration layover in this area of the Platte River. The Platte Valley area has great habitat for many types of birds – even bald eagles.

pss. Happy Thanksgiving to you and Judy!