Sailor, call me

These three friends lived for one month together in Buenos Aires, in a beautiful, safe and friendly neighbourhood called Palermo SoHo. One day, it had to happen, they all bought leather jackets, and each night they went out, they wore them together, and they called this 'suiting up.' They looked damn good. It gave them a sense of rightness, which lead to confidence. One of them was me. I looked good. I had always wanted a jacket like this. It fit incredibly, perfect.

One night I had been drinking Fernet, an aperitif made of bitter herbs, and was getting especially excited to go out, when came a horrible tearing sound as I walked out my bedroom. I was scared to look, for I knew the sound. And I was right. A terrible gash had been laid, by the long, slender door handle; it rips in me to see it, in my soul. This perfect jacket, ruined.

Three nights of rain follow. This is imbalance, the three of us need all to be suited for such things, the ratios and gears of our confidence wobble inconsistently.

Bear with me, I'll get back to this.

***

I can't concentrate. I have told you all about Peter, my friend from Machu Pichu, the sailor, who is 70. I have received an invitation to sail with him the Baltic Sea, starting two weeks from now. I meet him near Helsinki.

I will see St. Petersburg, I will see Copenhagen, and I will live on the sea, and I shall see it all, the Baltic. There's Poland, Finland, Germany, Sweden, Russia .

I am unsure of what my decision is. I am edging on becoming a sailor writer (Melville, Thompson, Lowry, Hemingway, etc.)

Call me, sailor. What do I do?

***

I am looking for jobs and moneys. And there's been no calls. I will stay here and rot me for more months, beautifully, like crushed grapes, rotting and enchanting perhaps, but rotting still, and sedimenting, . . . if I stay and write or rather not write, but continue to speak of it, because after all what is there to write you about? This jacket story? How does it end, does it matter?

***

Earlier, the night before, I had been praying to one of the captivating, sad eyed Maries at the great Cathedral at the Plaza de Mayo. There are several tall smooth and imposingly powerful columns outside, the church is indistinguishable from a great stone bank perhaps, aside from it's sheerness. And there are homeless families sleeping on foam and newsprint.

I am inside praying, feeling sort of out of place, as I so usually do. But it is a habit I have picked up on this trip. I am not baptized, nor Catholic, or whichever, but this activity has so far been sincere. (I am not entirely sure if I 'do believe' nor if that matters.)

I walk along inside and marvel, somewhat, at the huge ceilings and arcs, and some of the icons. I pick a Mary, a beautiful, braze-eye, sad-eye, judging eyed, Mary. I believe our Lady of La Paz, although I must return to know for sure.

There's this horrible confession and this awful feeling of unjustly speaking to her. I dip fingers in the holy water as I leave, a curt bow to Jesus, and rub my fingers for sometime, a few seconds, over my heart. I leave and outside I consider giving one family, a man and his daughter sleeping on foam mattress amid ruin, a 5-peso note I had in my wallet. I realize, however, that I had left this note for the Mozzo at the cafe earlier, so I walk by averting my eyes, and hop down to the subway tunnel.

***

Oh the ruined heart. My poor jacket. It is so incredibly difficult to explain and to make you care. It would take a Dickensian yarn of poverty and pride to even approach the meaning of this jacket,

and as I've said before, this is just a blog - so please let us just accept for now the eminence of everything.

I come to the store, and the salesman and store owner who I was expecting to see, the man who sold me this great pride, was absent. However, the incredibly beautiful ( I mean this) and brilliantly happy Uruguayan, salesgirl, who I also met earlier, was there, alone.

"Hello. Do you remember me?" I ask, in Spanish, gravely.

"Yes," she pauses for some seconds, and her eyes awake as with great discovery. "Yes , of course! You are the architect!"

I smile, and half-nod. But I quickly switch to a graven face, great seriousness is brewing, and I explain that there's sad, sad news. I slowly remove the sorely torn leather garment from the carton shopping bag, and she gasps at the sight of the wound.

"Borracho!" she says. "You must have been drinking."

"Look, I was not, no way. Perhaps we had just one drink. But... listen, as we were preparing to leave I brush against the, umm" I gesture towards the door handle of the store, since I don't know how to say it. I explain what happened, and tell her how upset I am.

She is speaking quickly, with such enthusiasm that it is beautiful, the way her lips and eyes spark, but I cannot understand. She has so much energy, and breath, and joy it seems, as she rushes about, leaving me to go to the storage room. I am not sure yet, what is, but she is looking for another jacket. She comes back to the main boutique, bouncing, swinging her tall hips in jovial, rhythm to the loud electro music playing, and then, as if with a great joy of discovery - not as if, but with - she finds the same coat on the rack.

It is a size bigger, but I try it on, and it looks fine. It looks good. "Si me gusta," she says, and I agree, yes it is the same.

"You sure it looks fine?" And yes, it does. She brushes my back, removing some dust. She smiles greatly, but her look now switches from joy to graveness. A light but serious tone.

"Now, quick, put this away in the bag," her dark eyebrows strict, "and get out of here, my boss returns any second."

"Seguro - are you sure?" Yes yes yes, smiling, rushing. She takes the torn jacket, climbs the step ladder to the rack, and hangs it on the rack, replacing where the new coat had been -

"Nobody will ever know, never." She says. She is gorgeous.

I put the coat away into my shopping bag, and, quickly I grab her close, we kiss, I thank her, and I leave the store.

I walk nearly five blocks in the wrong direction, uncaring, unthinkig, unbelieving. I look up to the sky, and I explode into laughter, alone, as I have never once done in my life. Unbelievably happy to be alive, to have this life, this strangeness. This incredible doubt of chaos.

I buy a bottle of champagne and a jar of olives and me and my roommates, we celebrate. Tonight we suit up.

***

My oldest friends are all dead

My youngest friends are stupid.

***

I come from Penetanguishene, Ontario.

There is one big road and there is a dock where you can eat ice cream. There is a dock and there are houses, hundreds, where there are friends who smoke weed. Who smoke cigarettes, and weed, and their father's share patches of morphine with their wives, their 300-pound wives.

***

Today in Palermo, the rich nest of quiet streets of Buenos Aires, walking home mid-afternoon with three sweating 1-litre bottles of cold, argentine beer.

I had a spanish class in ten minutes with a 29-year-old woman in my apartment and I figure we might need beer. And cigarettes.

So I buy a .75 cent pack of Malboros from the kiosko down the street. I am walking down Charcas, whistling down Charcas, happily down the cobble stone. And a man he comes up.

A man he comes up from behind and he has got a knife. He's a boy with dirty clothes and indian skin and he wants my money. And so much rage, it flows through me. I knew this moment would happen, 'been expecting such. I knew, that when it happen, the rage, it come. It would come.

So I grab the grocery bag full of beer, twisting the white plastic 'round my fist, and swing, smash the two bottles on the indian's head. Green glass and blood explode in a disgusting slow motion cataract. His blood and beer tangles, trickle slowly, down the warm, autumn streets.

***

One week ago, just about, I met the New York Dolls. I was worried the whole time. I had spent days researching, this time, I was hoping to be prepared.

Things never really started feeling good until we (my crew and I) had made it to the venue, and Sylvain and a few of the sound check guys started playing "Here She Comes Again" or whatever it is called, by the Velevet Underground.

"This is a band, a historic band, this here," my sweltering insides they mumble me. "I am excited."

I chew on my pen and I scribble notes with that pen, as the 20 waitresses prepare the venue for the night's show.

Finally I meet the Dolls and it is half awful at first. David Johansen is acting like a straight up rock star with his visible and pronounced disinterest. I turn him around later on , somehow, maybe, with a question or two from the left side of field. He brings up cosmology, so I beg him to explain to me the universe.

We finish things and he shakes my hand, says: you are a clever young man.

Sylvain Sylvain is leaving, with a giant frosty glass of stella or something in hand, to get dinner with the rest of the boys. I am drinking from a bottle of Quilmes and smoking a Malboro, and I take a second to thank him. To give cheers: "cheers, thanks again"

and we cheers, I cheers too hard, and his glass shatters and beer, and beer it goes, the air.

"I didn't need more beer anyway," Syl, says, walking out. Smiling. "Thanks again, Tobin," he whistles on the way out.

***


These are damn good stories. They deserve to be written with more detail.

It is 1:06 am and dinner is over. Jeff and Peter leave Wednesday, and I am once again, solo.

Thinking much: do I stay or return? Law school or stay.

I have this new apartment with a 50 year old woman, Flor, who is amazing, beautiful and friendly, and I am excited for the new rhythm things are about to adopt. Things adopt.

"Things adopt."

I am drunk, it's no secret. We drank 2 bottles of wine at dinner. And we are about to go out.

I have a hundred better stories. A hundred of them.

***

I rode this subway car the other day. The A train is about 100 hundred years old, and made of wood, and the benches they all face each other like a train, and there are wooden, white painted rings that descend from the ceilings instead of steel bars, to hold to.

The windows are open and I meet C -

I invite her over.

***

I have at least 57 stories that I am saving. This is just a blog and it rushes me. It is 1:26 a.m. and I dedicate this last part to Suzanna C.

"life aint easy, life aint easy, life aint easy."

This is just a blog. I am tired and I miss you.

***

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f9NHLP7YWQ

exceptionally for Suzanna C

from the archives:



Dear S-

There's been about four long days here, in Buenos Aires, where I've had exceptional luck and love and down time. I mean "sad" by down time, but I mean it as an exception. Exceptionally, I am sad here.

Except:

On Sunday I learned how to use a camera. I learned by forcing my way backstage and borrowing a friend's camera. I found a professional newspaper photographer in the midsts, and asked him how to put the settings. The ISO was all wrong, the F-stops were poor, and so we vindicated things.

With about 200 shots, I gained maybe 10 fine ones, and 30 OK. I sat in the dressing room for a while just before the New York Dolls were going to play. I talked with Sylvain about his son who knows French, and about some bar where the Dolls opened for Rush in the 70s in Toronto: before Rush was big.

I also watched the meagre, skeleton, Jagger-of-a singer, David J, warm up his vocals with a large marijuana cigarette with the company of his beautiful, vampiric wife.

Auto check is telling me that vampiric is not a word. But it is, surely, a word.

"Oooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmphhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" David groans, sitting, smoking a tobacco cigarette now. Resting head on one fisted hand.

David Johansen looks like a man who is thinking, always. When we spoke, just alittle earlier. It was rough, my questions were poor, the settings were all wrong: light, camera, microphone.

There were many problems. I looked nervous (I have seen the footage).

Keep on riding

Listen, the big realization: I am happier today than I've been in 10 years, easy.

I've been writing a novel. I've been talking about it at least. The start is so clumsy and ugly, the hardest part: but it's important to begin. So I've begun.

I try a few words. I talk a bit about how it's winter here and the poetic fallacy of that - or do I have that wrong? Like when the bolt of lightning erupts, in the film, and the horrible monster emerges from behind the door. The kind of link to the weather that is life: but opposite, yeah.

"It is winter and I am alive."

I've been meaning to get around to giving you a book report on that Henry M. book, and I've been waiting for the right time to do it proper. But it doesn't look like that's happening, and seeing as I've moved on to Hemingway, I guess nows a good time to just get the drunken bastard out of my ears.

OK. Obviously I talk about him too much, and probably attempt to meet him too much in my writing. In my defense, I realize that it is just as naive to boldly search for a 'new' way of writing. This is not possible. Me admitting that I am hack is freedom. Artistically, I am free. (elbows. nudge. nerds)

Here's a very brief sketch of the important points, and why you should read Black Spring.

Henry Miller knows exactly how to write. But he is not a writer. Henry Miller is a drunk, a sad and lonely man, who is ecstatically happy at once. At once, toujours he is an artist, a seer a prophet and a blind man. He writes exactly what he sees. You cannot be an artist if you cannot describe what you see.

George Orwell liked Miller's writing, alot, but criticized it because it was irresponsible. And it did nothing to thwart the Nazis or stomp out the flames of the disaster approaching: World War Two. Miller's books are about Miller in Paris, either sleeping with prostitutes, drinking a little aperitif, writing, or simply remember his childhood in Brooklyn. Black Spring is a lot less sensual than his iconic Tropic of series. And a lot more about, hmmm, people. People that Miller knows. He really knows people.

(This circular writing is killing me. It is 5 am. I have spent the last 4 hours editing a video.)

This review isn't going so well.

There's this one really good part where he talks about painting a horse picture. He describes the entire thing so magically, so 'visually'. You see the lines hit the canvas, the water colours seep into the white, them blend, them erase, them. You feel it all. In the end he destroys the original plan and ends up with a piece of genius abstract. This is just like how he must write (that's the point.) Things don't go as planned.

Read this book if you want to be a writer.

Aside from this: moments of good old machismo keep the read entertaining, voyeuristic and vicariously pleasing.

Also, his Whitman mystic shit gets a little dry and you can skip these parts. They occupy the real-heavy first 30 pages. And is why people stop reading the book before it even really begins.

It really begins with his memory of his childhood working in the tailor shop with his poor father.

You see, he begun his book, probably just to begin it. There's no plan to it, and he just goes. Zip. That's it. He's very good at handling, managing, the chaos.

What else?

The end.

(fail - sorry)
***

Coming soon: my interview with the New York Dolls. A write up and a link to the Spinearth.tv video.

Never again: a book report feeling this tired. I just really missed writing. So here it is. I begun.

"It is winter and I'm wintry." Nah.

To begin, that's the thing!

MILLER'S VERSION:

Today my first day at work. A wide open, second-story office on Mendoza Av., in Belgrano, blocks away from el Barrio Chino. I knock on the big red door, am led to the place, and meet a few American writers, French design interns and other, random, shabbily dressed young, bearded men; all type on lap tops, drink espresso from stained cups, and need to wash.

I am forced to wait 15 minutes for the boss to show up; normal here, in fact, punctual. He comes, he's Kave, an engineer or young-business-man from Berkley, CA. He runs the show, outsourcing B.aires graphic designers to the U.S. - half the price of New York firms, and twice the quality of dirt-cheap India firms. Solid sell. Plus B.aires is a classy, sexy, design city. (Just look around at the angular, glass arc skyscrapers at the puerto; perhaps too the colourful, gay Flogger-hipsters; the several artsy universities. Every attractive girl I meet here is in communications, or graphic design. Zero exceptions.)

Anyway, we chat. He tells me what my job's going to be. To wit: re-arranging words from a pirated maths textbook to post online to avoid copyright infringement. Immediately I remember a scene from Henry M's Tropic of Cancer, his joy in editing the comma and vanguard semi-colons of news print: his absolute, wonderful joy of the simplicity, the order from it, the miraculous symphony, or something, of grammar. His love. I think, maybe I could handle a few weeks here, maybe this grows. Maybe I learn something, start my own competing firm later.

He tells me to watch over one guy, and see what the work looks like. I sit and I begin to wonder something. I ask the guy a few questions. My wonder expands. I am not at all interested in the job, but I am interested in how this guy does it. He is paid 5 dollars an hour, 40 hours a week to replace "Find the solution" with "Solve."

Kave goes to the office makes a few phone calls, chats on phone. He's waiting there, still, when I return 15 minutes later, he's typing away, emailing as we resume the first-day interview. He barely looks up at me the whole time, chatting, typing, I can hear the emails being sent away in these enormously loud "whooshes" that sound each time.

"Whoosh!"
"So that's that," I say, I sit down, he doesn't look up.

"Hmmm, yes. So, let's see here. You speak spanish?"
I try a few words or two. He tells me I shouldn't have put advanced spanish skills on my resume.

"Whoosh"
"Listen what was your GPA in college?"

I tell him, he looks up.
"Look man, you don't seem that interested in this gig."

"I'm not. This isn't exactly what I was looking for."

He looks back down at the keys, a bald white man, black round shades, walks in and we are introduced, they chat about some more super star Argentines coming in that day for designer gigs.

The man leaves. Kave says we should stay in touch.

I'm about to leave, but am struck with a sudden, genius urge.

"Listen, Kave. Here's what I'm going to suggest. I've been thinking the whole time I arrived here that you could be doing better. This thing your doing, with the textbooks - first of all it's illegal. Just switching around words doesn't free you from breaching copyright. However, that doesn't seem to matter much anyways, so let's talk about money instead."

He stops typing, looking up, looks interested.

"... What I wanted to say was, you can fire three of those guys out there, typing away like mad, and hire me at three-times the salary, and I will still get your shit done for you faster than if you had them working around the clock."

He smirks, he smirks because he doesn't understand.

"Let me ask you a question," I say. "How the hell don't you guys know how to use Word yet? There's codes you can do, this is monkey work."

"Listen, Tobin, pal. I'm not sure what's your deal. We tried Control-F, find and replace, that shit doesn't work. It takes too much ...

"I'm not talking about that. Trust me." I interupt.

"I make it so you hit one magic key, and the document get's completely switched, brand new. Your x's become y's, your a's b's, and so on. One button. Doesn't matter what doc you have open."

(Dear reader, please hang out a bit more. Computer talk done soon.)

"Whoosh" he says, "show me."

"I'll do it. But if it works, you pay me 500 pesos, today. I promise it will save you hours. You'll be able to fire three of these guys out there, at least."

He looks happy, pleased, maybe annoyed: intrigue, yeah.

"Agreed."

(So I show him what is called a Macro. It's a WORD trick I learned from some maniac teacher in 3rd year. I made it so when you type out dog, the magic key makes it cat, and when you type out tea, it becomes coffee. I figure keep it simple for him.)

I hit CTRl-ALT-M and ten doggies become kitties, and twenty teas turn to black, sober coffee.

He gives me the cash, and says something like I should stick around. I say, "yeah, maybe I'll give you a call."

Outside, I walk full-face in the sun, slowly and happily down Juranemento Av., looking for a good chinese restaurant, a place to sit, have a beer and read Hemingway. The day isn't even struck noon.

update: SPIN story

Here's the version of my adventures on Spin Magazine's internets, Spin Earth. spin

Write faster

"when you say X, in your most recent single, did you mean Y? because in 1992, on your debut EP, you said Z. and that's not cool."

One thing about music journalism:

it’s interesting and easy as long as you can have good conversation with your subject: be it Bono or Cher's boyfriend. (nobody)

I am here in Buenos Aires in an ostensible way. Ostensibly, that is to say, because I am supposta' be a writer for a magazine. Ultimately, I would hope, because I want to live in New York, and write pretty things.

Last Friday I started emailing the organizers of this big electro rave - a one day huzzah with artists who own names that are important. One of the bands sounded familiar, Fischerspooner, so I focussed my emailing efforts on them. I sent out about three messages, all pleading with whomever it was to help me get in the festival, for free, for an interview.

With only limited response - a few passive-aggressive reply-alls, that still left me wondering if I had made it to The List - the next day "I set out" with my two best pals, Jose and Pedro. We got to the big club, called Costa Salguero, on the waters of the rio plata. A huge complex, big enough to be a sports stadium it seemed, protected by about 54 armed guards wearing beige and neon vests. (‘beige and neon’ - see earlier motifs). Big guns, brown dudes, big smiles, smokes.

The night had started poorly: my camerawoman had to cancel last minute, so it would be impossible to shoot video of the event. Left a little dismayed I decide it’s better to go and just get some audio or words down than nothing at all. And things only got worse.

At the main entrance, they don't have my name on the list and say we should mosey to the backstage entrance and talk with the guards there. Here similar problems arise. They write my name down, and the name of my publication, and speak personally with the organizer - a Mr. Garrat - who was said to have talked with the band, and the band said that I didn't exist, or that they wouldn't talk to me, so essentially we were out of luck.

Anyway, I figure I am not giving up so easy. So I re-mosey back to the main entrance, and say to the two young door-women: "hey so I just spoke Garrat, and he said it's cool. Entiendes me?.. no? yo udon’t understand.. Todo esta bien. THIS IS MY JOB....I mean, estoy fucked if I don't get this entrevista , hoy noche! ENTIENDEME?"

This didn't work, not right away. They wanted my name again. At this point I start getting very worried. The security guards had all taken a big interest in me, with their shiny greasy guns secure in their belts: "You! Where you from. De donde sos? What's your name?" Everyone wanted to help, but I didn't want the help. No no no. (I'm going to get arrested). Deep breaths. Ask Jose for a smoke so I look music-journalistic, and proceed: "listen, let me talk to your manager" I say to the young woman behind the barred counter, exhaling in a music-journalist kind of way (I write for Rolling Stone, bichas, is my attitude). She writes my name down and sends out a text message.

"You wait here. The promoter is coming."

Jesus. This might be working. I barely know what the hell I am doing here. I don't even want this to ... scary because I should know more. I should know more about this band if they are gonna let me talk to them. I should know what their first and second albums are called. I should know their names! (I’m not even sure if I know their names and faces. Crissakes. Maybe I’ll be fine. )

A tall, dirty-blonde, blue-eyed Florencia, wearing a tight leather jacket and tight blue jeans approaches, smoking and talking on her cellphone. She is a promoter. "Hi. You are allowed in, but we have to wait till the band is done to see if they'll talk to you. How many tickets do you need?"

Jeezus, heart stiff, we’re going in. "Well just one for me and my camera man, but if you're nice, I need three." I point to Pedro, the third.

"I don't need to be nice," she says, putting away her phone. She pulls out a stack of tickets and rips out three.

Inside, Flor and I determine a place to meet after the band finishes their set. I give her my number to text me for a meet up. This place is huge, packed and busy.

This place huge, gigantic, electric, noisy, packed, and it's just 11 pm. Bam. Bam. Later thousands more will pack it more, more, thousands of hipster-sardines on ecstacy, cocaine and champagne, shades and Barbie legs. So much dancing, so much fun.

This place is electric and astounding. Huge and crazy. I have never seen anything like it. We have just been granted free access to what I’m sure is our first rave. Bump bump. We dance, it's amazing.

I'm in the washroom washing the sweat off my face when I get the call. It's Florencia. My heart, my slowing pulse, I’m nervous! I can't do this. I turn off the ringer, ignore the call, and plan on avoiding her the rest of the night: I can't do this! She calls back instantly, clik, once more. I look at myself in the mirror, this is one of those football movie moments, the pump up scene. "You can do this." (Can you really do this?) Ra, ra, ra, ra , ra. She texts me: "they will see you, come now to the stage!".. Something comes over me, almost like confidence. OK. Fuck it. “I'm doing this,” to myself. “I'm coming, see you at the stage," I text to Flor.

That's that. I pour water on my hands, and brush it through my hair, and slick it back. One final look at self, and out.

Plan! Plan, I need a plan. No idea, what the fuck I'm about to talk about. I have no camera man, and I have no microphone or tape recorder. I am the least prepared I have ever been in this situation. I decide to go with an idea that came to me a bit earlier: focus on one thing, a theme.

A theme! I pick "change". We will talk about change. Simple. (Change sounds so perfect when you think of it. So musical, so astoundingly simple and interesting. Like symphonies of chaos and logic, like giant trumpets and cymbals crashing, these are the bouncing feelings of enormous joy that shatter through me when I hear the words exceed my lips: Change change change change. The thought is an orgasm. Splash, listo.)

I'm let backstage and I come to a bright white room. Here a young woman whose name I should know offers me champagne, I refuse and ask for water. I light a cigarette: "Casey is coming soon." Good tip, I write CASEY in capital letters down on my notepad. "Good show tonight really great; you were up on stage weren't you?" She smirks, mutherfucker, "Yeah, I am THE Dj!." She's Lauren, I think, FLEX.

Anyway, it was rocky at first but we talked about Toronto a lot and she's gonna be there this week. She had nice tattoos, long curly brown hair, and was super nice. I'm conscious of self, of me, placing camera on table, smoking twice more, choosing words, writing down extra questions, all plans, my mind in two spots. Trying to be friendly, liked, but trying to be professional;


We wait for too long and eventually she figures we just go to the stage and get Casey. We go and I wait around with my arms crossed for a minute until he comes. We shake hands and I am so gracious for him to speak to me(I mean this), I smile, pat him on the back, and we go back to this square white dressing room behind the stage.

We sit we talk. That's how I get here, to this point, the interview. It went well.








Spin Earth Television: First of all, thank you very much for talking to me. Since Spin Earth is a more TV-based website, and I can’t have a camera, I’m going to make this short and sweet. I’m going to ask you all about one thing: Change.

C Spppppppp: Sounds great, let’s do it.

SETV: Alright. Here we go. At first I thought the new album’s name was Entertainment, and then, at least in the Internet world, people started saying it changed to Between Worlds. What’s the deal?

CS: Between Worlds! No! The album title didn’t change, somebody didn’t read the press release. The album title is Entertainment and then we named the performance (the tour), “Between Worlds”.

SETV: Oh, so it’s still Entertainment…

CS: Yeah yeah, yeah. Someone didn’t read the press release talking about the show, and the name of the tour is “Between Worlds.” So there was no change! But I don’t mind, it’s kinda nice, I like that there can be more than one title.

SETV: Ok, well let’s talk about the title you did pick, Entertainment. In a few words, your reasoning for the choice . . . because I could tell you what I think…

CS: Well you know I’m dying to know what you think!

SETV: You know, it doesn’t really matter though, everyone wants to know what you …

CS: I just like how simple it is.

SETV: Well… I guess I thought way too deeply into it then. I thought, you know, we were selling “entertainment,” putting a title on it, commodifying it.

CS: Well there is that, there’s that too. That’s what’s nice about it, is that it’s simple . . . there was a lot of deliberation because we were worried about the Gang of Four title, but there wasn’t an exclamation point, so it was OK.

SETV: And punctuation is so important nowadays, some bands are entirely punctuation…

CS: Exactly, punctuation is so important! It just seemed to be a nice sort of simple clear title and it feels like it’s in quotation marks. Which I think is what your getting at.

SETV: Yeah, exactly. It’s pointing at the fact that you are buying entertainment.

CS: Exactly. You know, like #1, the record, I can’t even remember if we had a name for it. It was kind of an accident. I mean we were calling it “number one,” we were gonna call our records, “number one, number two, number three.” There was no title. It was like a series. But then there was sort of a typo somewhere and someone made it look like, NUMBER ONE! [here he points his finger in the air and makes his voice real authoritative] and it was kind of funny, like “OK that’s a funny pun because we are making this record.” And then it would be funny because you’d go into the music store and it would be up on the board and they would have “#1” next to it. So it would be kind of confusing because we’d be like number 15 but it would say number one, so people were like “well which is it?”. And then [Dj] Hell put a sticker on it that said “Best Album Ever” which we never had anything to do with… I never saw it until it came out, and then everybody thought it was called Best Album Ever. Which was somewhat embarrassing…

SETV: So how do you feel about not having hardly any control, it seems, over what your albums end up being called?

CS: You don’t worry about it. You go with the flow.

SETV: But it’s your baby!

CS: Yeah, but. It’s kind of nice, you put something out there and it’s interesting to see what sticks. Different things … stick! And so it’s less about you and more about how the world responds.

SETV: Ok, there’s my segue to the number two question about change…

CS: Number two! Change!

SETV: Exactly. What has changed about how you’ve been received in the last ten years?

CS: Oh my God! I don’t know. I think we’ve been loved, and then hated, and now: we are loved and hated. So, I like that. I think if you are just loved it’s boring, and so I’d rather kinda be divisive.

SETV: Divisive…

CS: Yeah, no. You don’t want to be in the middle. It’s a little bit what #1 is about.

SETV: Music is divisive!

CS: Well I mean I think if something is interesting then it causes people to make a choice or have a reaction. So I’d much rather people have strong reaction one way or the other. So when someone really hates us, it doesn’t hurt my feelings.

SETV: Can I ask you a question about that?

CS: Yeah.

SETV: Because I hear that a lot. People say: “I’d rather my music be hated than forgotten.” People seem to think there’s some benefit to riling up people. But why should we care what kind of impact it has on someone’s emotions? Is there a stage after that emotion that will change the world? “Then what?” That’s my next question.

CS: Then what….?

SETV: So you rile them up, now why do you care?

CS: Yeah. . . why do I care? I don’t. I think in a way you can’t care. You just have to make what you make. And you have to be strong enough to accept however people react to it. I mean that’s kind of the challenge of being creative and being public is that you are and you are not defined by the way people perceive what you do. So I just have to be invested in the idea and believe in it and be excited about it to such a degree that I’m impenetrable. So in a way there is no “Now What?”

You know, unfortunately I have to make myself so strong that it cant matter to me. It’s tough though, because of course you fall for the adoration. That’s the difficulty. If you can’t be hurt by the hate, then you can’t really accept the adoration. Which is really tough, because everybody falls for it!

SETV: So, then, how have you changed in the last 10 years, because of the music?

CS: It feels like I got something out of my system. You know, I toiled away in the underground for a decade, and at a certain point I just didn’t feel like I was making an impact. At a certain point you can feel like you are almost too pure. You know, you are working away in obscurity, so what’s the point? If you are so erudite, if you are so … almost like aesthetically pure, then there’s no point in doing it because no one can attach any meaning to what you are doing.

So when we did our first show and it was in a Starbucks, that was revolutionary: these were people coming to a cup of fucking coffee, they didn’t even give a shit about performance art, then all of a sudden, if you put a beat to it, and then if you made it a song, all of a sudden they give a shit.

SETV: Ok, so last question, and sorry but it’s really cheesy: If you could change one thing, anything, in world (this interview, your hair, war, etc…), what do you change?

CS: … Well, I guess it’s simple… hunger, health care … genocide? The things that are important. Eating and living….eating and living! That’s about all, that’s what’s really important.

the hot water kids

These kids loved the camera. When I showed the little boy the video of him and his sister he lost it with joy. This is in Aguas Calientes, from early March, the day of completing the Machu Pichu trek. My old pal Pete and I bought them ice cream. It was real nice. (I've already told you about Pete, and these kids. Here is the story if you missed it.)

FROM THE ARCHIVES: CUZCO

* Much of the writing I have done so far on this trip has been by hand. I got to thinking that maybe some of it may be neat for you to read, so I am going to retype some of it and post it here as a "from the archives" thing.

This next post is a continuation (or more accurately, a prequel) to that rant I made about all the fear driving through me at the start of the trip. It shows the foundation of where these feelings erupted and the beginning of what would become a slight epiphany. It is a really long entry from a red spiral journal, written in very messy, sometimes impossible to read, thin black ink. I have tried to edit as little as possible of it.

One last thing: I don't want you to think I am so melodramatic as this next post would indicate. I was reading a lot of Malcom Lowry at the time, and I think this entry was kind of an exercise in detailing the psychotic, crazy little experiences perceived when traveling through mysterious, awful and beautiful worlds.


***



Sun/March 8/ 2009/ 10:15 p.m.

(Night bus to Puno and Copacabana)


"What am I looking for?" This is the question that bluntly kills me.

It looks like lightning is erupting, in soft tiny patches, above the Cuzco horizon of the dark Andes. Yes, it is lightning. It is getting larger now, and shooting out horizontally; looks as if light of a passing car momentarily strikes against a giant curtain, descending down toward old Inca valleys and lost empires.

How! Now each time I look up the light is becoming more fierce. But there is still no thunder. You can see the mountains only by their silhouettes against these eruptions in the sky. The forgotten mountains, or the invisible. Tonight there are no stars and only the street lights throughout the valleys and plateaux of Cuzco city make its land visible. Twinkling symbols of a desire to consume, either ourselves or this place.

Leaving town on this bus, now that we’re out of the city centre, the restaurants and hostels and tourists have disintegrated. Left behind are the insoluble inhabitants of this colonial scandal — pariah dogs, crying dirty children, women in bowler hats and rainbow ponchos — More lightning! No strikes, none audible, not yet. Two children hang like monkeys on the locked gate of a cement-block bodega, looking in. Driving past, we cross an outdoor party; it descends into an open field some distance away, where a band plays Quechan folk on a green wooden stage.

Near the road, just before the slight grassy slope approaching the stage, three young teen boys seem to be robbing — or molesting — a girl their own age. She screams and swings at them with a glass bottle, they laugh and tug at her clothes. Drivers sit in their taxis with bright lit signs, smoking or chewing coca leaf, and maybe forty other locals nearby, just watch. Or seem not to notice. A bottle smashes, a horn squeals in the distance, like a greasy finger rubbing against glass. Driving, still further, more vagrants have set up shop on the sidewalk: selling maiz, seeds, fruit, cigarettes. “Mate! Mate! Sandwich de pollo, Sandwich de pollo!” yells a woman, a dirty beige cylindrical bowler, with a wide ribbon the same colour. It has started to rain. The cement and mud brick houses don’t melt; a gas station is empty except for two attendants, one pissing into the road, facing our bus, the other tosses a cigarette. It’s raining, it’s pouring. The lightning, now flashes closer, brilliant neon purple. Still, no thunder… but maybe there is; it’s perhaps that distant roar. The sound of hundreds of revving engines, buried beneath the rock and mud of the great Andes. The mountains, in the mountains! And now, not even the Cusquenian sky or city or anything are visible. We have left the city.

Briefly, I pray to St. Christopher. The rain, the storm: As I’m leaving Peru! (I am always afraid of dramatic deaths, well timed, and symbolic.) The bus skids and drunkenly resumes it’s way. Ah, but here, more city, more buildings. Another empty gas station. And then another.

- No thunder, but the voices of the city haunt me, bother me.
- Mate! Mate! Sandwich de Pollo
- llamada, llamada
- massages! Massages!
- Puno Puno! Arequiiiiiipa, Arre aree are are-queeeeeeeepa. Ica ica, iiiica, La paz.

Earlier: The California girls trying to take pictures with the Peruvian woman on the street: ‘un foyo parami? Para mi para mi.. un foto…no? no!” The lady, shaking her head, her sad eyes, begging to understand; why a photo? Why me? A smarter tramp might have ask for a Sol or two. But maybe there’s dignity here. In it’s tiniest shred. The starving, the bitter, the inability to even want or know how to deal with the ignorance of a Catholic Supermodel Gringa. (Soon after this, I ate fries and pollo brasa with the girl and her friends. We said grace and prayed before eating.)

The bus slips, we are on a dirt path. Another gas station. We have stopped. Peddlers come on board the bus. A woman selling giant round rolls of flat bread – bigger than accordions. “pan solo un sol, pansolounsol.” The same whiney, nasal pitched scream as them all, as the bus station yodlers (Ica icaaaaa, arerrearrerarrequiiiiiiiiiiipa!) or the cellphone street vendors (yaaaamadas yaaamadas), these voices haunt me! Lightning and rain, pouring, filling up in rapid puddles on the blackened cement at the GRIFO gas station. Two men buy their tickets here, to Puno. They board soaked and sit far ahead. They own several plastic bags full of whatever, and stuff them in the rafters above and in the aisle before the stairway down to the first level of the bus. No one can manage to get by without tripping or barely tripping. Aha! More bread for sale. One of the passengers takes out a bag of flat loaves and makes his way to the back. “pan pan.” A man begins to snore. Two Scandinavian girls behind me laugh and talk. The snoring, the snoring. Driving through my thoughts. It seems to have stopped shooting lightning. The rain has slowed. A woman loads blankets and hats, and more bread, into the trunk of a hatchback taxi parked next to us. Still: no thunder, only from the phlegm filled snorer.

We have left the station, the snoring appears to have stopped for now, and I am the only one with a reading light on. Soon I shall turn it off and there will be no light, and no sound but of the road the splashing rain water. I will sit and wonder: “What is it I am looking for?” More truly, I am sure, since I know what it is, but “Why? Why am I here?” Why have I come to witness my own hell, human hells . . . Why alone? Dante takes with him Virgil, a ghost. Jacob is alone, without humanity, when he faces God, in his journey across the deserts of redemption. Where’s my angel, my anti-body, where’s the hell guide? It is here: the thunder. The bursts of fear and the longing — for love (indecipherable) happiness — the dreadful solitude and the blissful peace, alone. It is my words, my sickness, St. Christopher. Pachamama! It is fear that asks questions, which only get answered through gods or fate or whichever. Fear can be my only true conquest and amigo. It will be fear and mystery that keep me alive and kill me.

Your name is so regal

Buenos Aires is not an easy city. The name is confusing, false, a denial: "good air" supposes friendships and sweet rides, easy rides. As they say 'no hay aca': not here, there isn't.

But it is not a hard city either. Tonnes of drunks, transvestites, prostitutes, hostelers, backpackers, journalists, police, cabbies, art-deco mansions, clubs playing Oasis, nexus, plexus, rich ones, poor ones . . . spirals, stone, tall buildings, all of it. And so on. Is it really 7:48 a.m.? Is it really Thursday! Of course, of course it is. Two days ago I watched the sun come up, as I have several times this trip, with a few odd travelers, and I thought that this, this was something: "no one sees these things, no sees the city so naked, not like this..."

But today I saw the same sun come up - this time it looked more Tang and neon - today, and realized that maybe these nights aren't so special. Half the city sees this sun... but I can't decide if this is something to write home about or not. My roommates and I watched a man water the drive as the sun came up, through the rust and green paint terrace, we watched him three stories up, the sun reflecting off the puddles.

But who cares?

Anyway: no one sees the city so naked, not even us.

---

Spanish lessons and Tango. Living here in the Palermo Soho, Edificio de Burges y Armenia. A small maids room with a trundle bed and a private shower - where I sleep and make the bed each morning. So far the drill is wake up make coffee and read, then chess or read in the Parque Japonesa down the street. I am getting better at chess - play aggressive! like life! - and worse at reading: Miller is coming slowly, anxiously to an end.Let me just say, that if you pick up any of his books, you must give it time. . . the moments he paints are like amber trapped mosquitos: precious icons of time gone and beauty past, all of that.. etc etc... He makes art out of the pure human, (whats that word?) moment... What is that word....? The word starts with an "H". (Means takes joy from fruits and love, makes gods out of pleasure...what is that word???)

---

Sorry for all the stream of consciousness. I am tired and it is 7:57 a.m. I want to assure you that this is a perfectly respectable bed time for anyone here in the city of easy air, of beautiful air... and plus, there's a holiday tomorrow to commemorate the soldiers who died for the Falkland Isles. No one works tomorrow, except for: the taxi drivers, the waiter (mozos), the waitresses (mozas), the cell phone companies, the McDonalds, the lawyers, the tax men, the government, the police, the kiosko men, the carniceria men, the carniceria women (if there are any), the dude who makes emapanadas two blocks up Borges (God hope so), and finally, me. I work tomorrow. Must sleep.

Buenos.

Txo



ps: the word I couldn't remember was: HEDONISTIC.