Asphalt Eden

datebook

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 01:03:21 GMT

Let it be remembered that, on June 28, 2008, after a good swim and making time with the missus, it just could not get better than grilled London broil, corn on the cob, seared pineapple, a cold Anchor Steam, and The Hired Hand. This world can feel very fair, if you let it.

more fun with new camera

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:20:42 GMT

ten great (obscure) ambient records

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:25:19 GMT

There were a few requests in my last post for a brief list of great obscure ambient records—stuff by artists even further afield than the "popular" ambient names, but no less worthy. It is the kind of list I could double or triple with almost no trouble at all. So I have compiled the following list of ten great ambient records that are obscure, forgotten, or worth noting, followed by a brief list of out-of-print gems that are worth hunting down on eBay or your favorite online den of MP3 piracy.

David Tollefson—Near and Far (Hypnos)
Fans of guitar-driven ambient like Stars of the Lid should note this unfairly obscure artist from the Portland, Oregon area. Only two solo albums to his credit (both done in the late nineties), but they both prefigure the current phase of gentle ambient drift done by Yellow 6, Eluvium, and the like, though this music has bite and isn't the least bit wussy. My pal, UK critic albient, thinks the albums are patchy, so your mileage may vary, but I think you might find Near and Far serene and ageless, despite being almost a decade old. Alan would likely recommend Paul Bradley instead, who works in the same vein and is also well worth exploring.

Aeolian String Ensemble—Eclipse (Robot Records)
Here's an obscurity from Robot Records, home of Organum, Andrew Chalk, Mirror, and the like. This was said to be a Nurse With Wound side-project for a while, but it is actually a solo work by some guy associated with Stapleton. Incredible, vast, dark soundscaping reminiscent of the aforementioned talents and something that will certainly appeal to those who enjoy oceanic spaces of ambient without the maudlin funhouse darkness sometimes associated with similar music.

Andrew Deutsch—The Sun (And/Oar)
I was always afraid of Deutsch's music, since it all seemed so terribly academic and unlistenable, like Tzadik-period Tetsu Inoue, for example. But this release, on And/Oar, is utterly majestic, waves of mind-mangling drones all culled from field recordings of the sea. This is one of those "where have you been all my life?" ambient releases—my highest recommendation.

Bill Nelson—Crimsworth (Flowers, Stones, Fountains and Flames)
Most know Bill Nelson as a solo artist and guitarist with Bebop Deluxe, but he is also a kind of ambient auteur, working with tape loops, magical (with a 'k') systems, and samples long before it became fashionable to do so. This work is oddly ignored, but is undoubtedly one of the most interesting and immersive ambient records around. Two long tracks of watery drift, similar to work by Brian Eno, and certainly superior to much of Eno's later period music of the same kind. I find this to be an utterly essential ambient release.

Ashera—We Gaia
Ashera is an Australian talent working very much in the Harold Budd style of self-consciously pretty music, all angelic choirs and tinkling bells. This is either your cup of tea or it isn't, but, if you can't get enough of the gentle dreaming ambience of things like the Budd/John Foxx collaboration, you can't find better music. I'd love to hear this music while scuba diving.

David Sylvian—Approaching Silence (Virgin)
Everybody knows David Sylvian's, ahem, ponderous voice from Japan and many solo recordings, but this one never seems to be mentioned much. Three incredible slabs of process music, the last of which, "Approaching Silence" is the best. If this final forty minutes don't hit you somewhere deep, you're just dead inside. His collaborations with Holger Czukay of Can are worth seeking as well.

Off the Sky—Gently Down the Stream (Databloem)
Jason Corder is of the laptop 'n' guitar ilk of performer, but with a playful sense of melody and a good ear for ambient textures. This is a solid album from start to finish that'll please fans of stuff like Loscil.

Oöphoi—The Spirals of Time (Amplexus/Faria)
Most folks who are addicted to ambient already know Oöphoi as one of the major ambient luminaries and this was the record that put him on the radar, so to speak. For a long time, it was out-of-print (one of the Amplexus art editions of 500), but it has since come back as a remastered and expanded reissue. This is Italian ritual ambient of the highest order, for fans of Alio Die, Vidna Obmana, Robert Rich, etc. Most likely one of the best ambient albums of all time, yes, that good.

Scott Solter—One River (Tell-All)
This one is relatively new (2006) and is one of the best slow burns I've heard. Definitely one for the fans of Stars of the Lid, this is essentially one epic track with subtleties that reveal themselves only via repeated listens on headphones. The first time I truly listened deeply to One River I was shocked by the tiny details hidden under a mix (a typewriter, distant caravan bells), all of which seem to tell a story of the utmost haunting nostalgia. Even the titles add to the effect—the whole thing is just masterful.

Milieu—Beyond the Sea Lies the Stars (Infraction)
Many already know Milieu as a purveyor of druggy BoC-inspired electronic ditties (think Casino vs. Japan), but he's also made quite a few ambient records over the years. I was never taken by any of those until this release on Infraction, equal parts William Basinski and Selected Ambient Works, Vol. II. Four loop-driven tracks steeped in longing and lost memory.

Out of Print and Notable
MLO—Io (Rising High)
Almost nobody remembers this early nineties gem on Rising High. Spacey ambient that will surely appeal to fans of the quieter moments of the Orb, Future Sound of London, and the Irresistible Force.

Roderick Julian Modell—The Autonomous Music Project (Amplexus/Lunar)
Another unjustly obscure release, by Rod Modell, who is now in more popular consciousness due to his fine dub-techno records as Deepchord and Echospace. Way back in '99, he recorded this excellent ambient work, a watery miasma culled from field recordings and bizarre stereo-panning. This is a real classic.

Jason Sloan—Still (Slo-Bor Media)
Jason Sloan operates in the largely synth-driven ambient territory, which is not so much my thing, but this record from 2003 is damned monumental. Vaporous atmospheres akin to Vidna Obmana's best, and with an added layer of melancholy that makes this a great accompaniment to a foggy autumn morning out in the forest.

Mathias Grassow—The Fragrance of Eternal Roses (Aqua)
Grassow has recorded about fifty thousand ambient records and this is one of the best. This one's got that warm, analog shimmer that I just can't get enough of, and the cover is good enough to eat.

Voice of Eye—Transmigration (Cyclotron Industries)
Voice of Eye were a ridiculously original husband-and-wife group making post-apocalyptic tribal music. They live in a bunker somewhere in the desert, probably naked and covered in paint and body scarification, playing music with hollow bones. They haven't released anything in years and are one of the best kept secrets in experimental music. All of their albums were hard to find, even when they were new. If you like O Yuki Conjugate, for example, and can handle utter weirdness, utter fright, and utter beauty all in the same track, you're probably ready to go to the next level: Transmigration. All of their stuff is worth seeking out.

100 favorite albums

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:58:07 GMT

Doing this list is a hell of a lot harder than it looks. The results are in no particular order and do not include things like soundtracks and EPs and stuff like that (making culling much easier). I also limited myself to only one album per artist so there'd be room for increased diversity. Still there's something unsatisfying about so many exclusions when having to choose ...

1. Pete Namlook & Tetsu Inoue—2350 Broadway 2
2. Adam Pacione—From Stills to Motion
3. Depeche Mode—Violator
4. Tom Waits—Rain Dogs
5. Alio Die—Password for Entheogenic Experience
6. This Mortal Coil—It'll End in Tears
7. Aloof Proof—Expo Two: Piano Text
8. Ananda Shankar—and His Music
9. Andrew Chalk—Vega
10. Aphex Twin—Selected Ambient Works, Vol. II

11. Steve Hillage—Rainbow Dome Musick
12. Ashera—We Gaia
13. Ashra—New Age of Earth
14. B12—Electro-Soma
15. Bark Psychosis—Hex
16. Voice of Eye—Vespers
17. Thomas Dolby—The Golden Age of Wireless
18. Bill Nelson—The Love That Whirls (Diary of a Thinking Heart)
19. Television—Marquee Moon
20. Biosphere—Substrata

21. Björn Olsson—Instrumental Music ... To Submerge In ... or Disappear Through
22. Black Dog [Productions]—Bytes
23. The Blue Nile—A Walk Across the Rooftops
24. Bo Hansson—Sagan Om Ringen
25. Boards of Canada—Music Has the Right to Children
26. Brian Eno—Another Green World
27. Talk Talk—Laughing Stock
28. Robert Forster—Danger in the Past
29. Can—Monster Movie

30. Charles Dodge—Earth's Magnetic Field
31. The Church—Starfish
32. Steve Kilbey—Unearthed
33. Zoviet France—Shouting at the Ground
34. Cluster & Eno—s/t
35. Cocteau Twins—Heaven or Las Vegas
36. Tangerine Dream—Rubycon
37. David Bowie—Low
38. Talking Heads—Remain in Light
39. The Dead Texan—s/t

40. Death in June—But, What Ends When the Symbols Shatter
41. The Durutti Column—The Return of the Durutti Column
42. Echo & the Bunnymen—Crocodiles
43. Edgar Froese—Epsilon in Malaysian Pale
44. Felt—The Strange Idols Pattern and other Short Stories
45. Fenton—Pup
46. Terry Riley—A Rainbow in Curved Air
47. Robert Fripp & Brian Eno—Evening Star
48. Gas (Wolfgang Voigt)—s/t
49. Ghost—s/t

50. Global Communication—76:14
51. The Go-Betweens—Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express
52. Hans-Joachim Roedelius—Wenn der Südwind Weht
53. Harmonia—Musik von Harmonia
54. Harold Budd & Brian Eno—The Pearl
55. Harold Budd— By the Dawn's Early Light
56. Heldon—Allez Teia
57. The House of Love—Babe Rainbow
58. Howard Hello—s/t
59. Steve Reich—Music for 18 Musicians
60. The Zodiac—Cosmic Sounds

61. Jim Cole—Godspace
62. John Fahey—America
63. Jon Hassell—Power Spot
64. Joy Division—Unknown Pleasures
65. Kenny Larkin—Azimuth
66. Kiln—Holo
67. Klaus Schulze—Moondawn
68. Kraftwerk—The Man Machine
69. Laraaji—Flow Goes the Universe

70. Lee Hazlewood—The Very Special World of ...
71. Lovesliescrushing—Xuvetyn
72. Magazine—Real Life
73. Manuel Göttsching—E2-E4
74. Michael Brook—Hybrid
75. Mirror—Places of Light
76. Windy & Carl—Drawing of Sound
77. My Bloody Valentine—Loveless
78. Neu!—Neu! '75
79. The Orb—Orbus Terrarum

80. Women & Children—s/t
81. Oval—Systemisch
82. Pale Saints—In Ribbons
83. Pink Floyd—The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
84. Popol Vuh—In the Gardens of Pharao
85. The Verve—A Storm in Heaven
86. Prefab Sprout—Steve McQueen
87. Pub—Do You Ever Regret Pantomime?
88. Tetsu Inoue—Ambiant Otaku
89. Robert Rich—Trances | Drones

90. Roxy Music—Avalon
91. Steve Roach—Dreamtime Return
92. Vidna Obmana—Refined on Gentle Clouds
93. Roy Montgomery—Temple IV
94. Scott Solter—One River
95. Scott Walker—Scott 3
96. The Sea and Cake—The Fawn
97. Seefeel—Quique
98. Slowdive—Souvlaki
99. Stars of the Lid—The Tired Sounds of ...
100. The Cure—Faith

the beginning of a beautiful friendship

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:10:43 GMT

Got our new Nikon D40 today. (woot) Click for a supersized image.

your topics: you've been gone longer than I knew you all

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:15:21 GMT

Chairman of the Board Mister MZA lostcosmonaut knows only I shall get in trouble when I recount both the agony and the ecstasy of all my old girlfriends. Oof.

Thankfully, little photographic evidence exists of my former girlfriends, a long string of the loveliest pearls scattered on the scuffed ballroom floor that is my life. I don't even know how to begin such a discussion. I think the only way to do it is to list each and every one I can remember, safe in the knowledge that none of them will come across this and correct me, or add themselves to the sordid listing in frustrated pique. I guess I can't really name names, if I don't want this to happen. Well, anyway. Let's start at the very beginning, shall we? I am prepared to lose all of your respect by writing this—these are the risks I am willing to undertake for LiveJournal.

1. The first was a gal in the seventh grade who her friends saw fit to set me up with at a dance at the local Presbyterian church dance (I am not a Presbyterian, for your information) because we were both the same height. I was shy and only danced a few times and, later that year, couldn't get close enough to her. Sadly enough, by the time my hormones awakened, she wasn't at all interested in me throughout eighth grade, had moved on to a handsome child actor in our grade who played a bit role in the film remake version of The Lord of the Flies and was in several commercials (including the one for the original Push-Pop, I believe), and then a private high school somewhere. Not a girlfriend, but there you have it.

2. After a few other unrequited romances that are de rigueur for a youthful voluptuary like myself, and also a few friendships with girls who may or may not have been interested in me, I met a troubled young lass, a comely blonde, who dated me and some guy from another school (a rough around the edges strapper of the hair-metal persuasion, I always imagined) simultaneously. In the days of call waiting, I would wait on the other line whilst she switched back and forth between us. Well, it didn't last.

3. A summer romance with a girl across town who had a pool where we spent most of our afternoons basking. I was too afraid to kiss her and it was over before the first bells of autumn had rung. My recollection of her is that she was sweet and had friendly parents.

4. was a cute brunette who loved poetry and I dutifully studied Alfred, Lord Tennyson to get in her good graces. She was of Lebanese descent (I am almost certainly remembering that wrong), wrote poetry furiously, and did some ice skating in her earlier youth. We used to make out on her sheepskin rug and had a very nice time together, until I started getting an inflated opinion of myself, rudely dropping her for the open arms of

5. the pert brunette, an aspiring actress (still, apparently) with ample chest for her small size, whom I met while working on the school play that year. Our romance, similar to that of Lupe Velez and Johnny Weissmuller (in my overinflated imagination) was stormy and fun, though ultimately doomed by my flighty and fickle appetites. I, a junior, had met a senior girl that year in my biology class, who asked me to the senior prom with her (pictured above)—while I was still dating the poor, soon-to-be-mistreated brunette, we got it together in the limousine and, shortly thereafter, she became

6. at the expense of her predecessor. Well, the jilted actress got karmic revenge, I suppose, for I saw a few photos of her online recently and she's even more appealing and beautiful than ever. No matter. After the senior prom, I began my romance with this delightful runner possessing a relaxed and comforting personality (her father was my former English teacher), and we had together what I still regard as one of the most pleasant and happy summers of my life. We went to beaches and parks, dined and vacationed with her generous and welcoming family, enjoyed each other's company. Sadly she had to leave for college. I would have stayed with her, but we both agreed it was best to part amicably. I met her years later and we had a nice little conversation. I hope she is well, wherever she may be.

7. My senior year was without real steady love, though I got back together with the pert brunette again briefly, and I dated a pretty Asian girl for a few weeks and took her to my own prom (where are these photos?). She'd only gone with me to get closer to a friend of mine, I learned many years later. Well, I was ignorant of that at the time, I reckon. Her parents did not appear to approve of me. "How could anyone disapprove of me?" I met another girl I had the hots for (she wrote all over my yearbook), but, even then, I knew she was just playing around, and nothing came of it.

8. I started college and messed around a bit, but nothing serious. I met two girls in adjoining dorms and had to choose one of them after I made an impassioned and dramatic open-mic reading of terrible gothic poetry I had written. I selected the wrong one, a saturnine redhead, which began a several month long nightmare of high school drama and bitter pettiness by all parties involved. We were both boobs, but I think she was a bigger boob than I was, so there. I wrote her a very nasty letter, which I later felt guilty about because it was so unconscionably mean. I met a lovely vegetarian that spring after it all ended, and I wished I had more time to get to know her, but I was kicked out of college and it was not to be.

8a. I dated an older girl (twenty-one to my seventeen) on the internet.

9. That summer I met a local lifeguard (name unremembered) while taking a summer class at the county college and we spent a bit of time together. This sounds awful, but I don't care: conversations with her inspired a deep sleepiness within me and I often fell deep asleep while talking on the phone or what have you. This soporific effect has not been noted with anyone since. At a party I had in my home, one of my close friends tried to convince her to go home with him. She did not, which I feel is worth noting about her character. She was too fast for me, it (I) didn't last, I stopped calling.

10. I met a girl in a video store who had a patch of the TARDIS on her backpack and asked her out. Since I was a stranger we went out with a few of her friends in tow the first time, I ended up getting involved with one of these friends a few weeks later. Video store girl's mother was a troubled case: I remember one night, this lady staggered out of her car in a haze of pot smoke, home from work late. It was the first time I'd met her.

11. Video store girl's friend was a gentle and sensitive redhead who juggled me at the same time as her boyfriend, also named Brian. This caused some degree of confusion. It was one of those static little romances people sometimes get involved in—though I liked her very much, she wasn't willing to ditch her boyfriend for me. We used to park in her driveway until very late at night and have long discussions that one might call deep if one were nineteen. This kind of tension could not last, of course, and, in retrospect, I probably wouldn't have been the best boyfriend either. Close enough. I always think of the other Brian; now that guy got a raw deal. Maybe they're married now.

12. I used one of my most embarrassing pick-up ideas to meet the next lass, a really cool girl into indie rock and comic books, sweet and kind, and without a nasty bone in her body. We were in a philosophy class together at the local community college and we dated a while. The picture at left shows 1. how much a guy can change in two or three years of bad living and 2. that we were going to break it off soon. Dear god, I was thin. My own roaming ways did get the best of me again and I'm afraid I did her quite wrong, insensitively dumping her by not phoning again and went off with

13. a generous brunette with absolutely terrifying appetites (and a secretive personal history to match). We worked at the bookstore together while I took part-time classes at college. This was quite a learning experience for me, and reminds me now that online dating isn't the original kind of dangerous dating you can do. It feels unkind and unnecessary to belabor it all by writing it down here, but it was good that it ended.

14. I got fired from the bookstore for shoplifting (never proven, thank you very much) and it wasn't long thereafter that I met Bianca at the new bookshop and she is worth a whole entry for herself (to come) and a hundred-thousand more besides. Thank you, kind fate, for putting me in the arms of this woman.

your topics: you seemed more real to me when you were home

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:20:33 GMT

Above you will find my latest ~~You Tube~~ Vimeo masterpiece. Three mini videos I edited together and added music to. The footage is awful. I attempted to descend on an anchor line while holding the camera as it recorded. The underwater sounds (unfortunately distorted by the compression) are great, even if you can't quite see much since it's so dark. I added a little Tylervision waltz, just for fun. I'm looking forward to playing with iMovie a little more.

Here's the post-dive sunburned afterglow. I bought a new hat to increase my scant arsenal, mostly because I'd been lusting after a straw Borsalino in the window of J.J. Hat Center near my office. I do not believe in the nerdly act of wearing fedoras and the like (in fact there's nothing worse than a fedora matched with a stringy ponytail, overcoat, and sneakers), but I do enjoy a hat for summer outings to the pool and beach, and around the property lawn-mowings. J.J. is New York City's oldest hat shop and worth a visit, but their hats are way too expensive for my uses. Anyway, barbecuing with the new topper at left just feels right.

Both Mistress of the Theremin sarabellum and Master Chief time3 want to read me write about music, and, since I haven't done it in a while, I'll be glad to oblige.

Truth be told, I haven't been buying much music lately. I try to keep up with the artists I like, but much of the newer stuff just isn't really doing much for me. The acoustic electronic music going around feels a little too emo and bland for my tastes, and I've been kind of bored with the little techno I've heard (the long-awaited new B12 album seemed so bland I didn't even bother to buy it—I can't even believe I'm typing this—so stick with the classics) here and there. There have been a few decent ambient works, but nothing ground shattering. I haven't had much drive lately to write about music, so I'm going to do this rather clinically. This ought to cover the last three months.

What I Have Been Playing—
~Gas—Nah und Fern
I've not picked this one up yet, but it's a reissue of the four phenomenal Gas albums from the nineties in a tidy package. These are going to be regarded in the same breath as Eno's ambient series one day, so, if you love ambient music, do not miss this. I'm told by sunhede that the double LP has a bonus unreleased track, if you, like me, have the original Mille Plateaux issues.

~Deaf Center—Vintage Well 7"
Type has a new Deaf Center out and it's very limited. I know a few of you are big fans, so act quick. There is also a new Grouper out. I haven't got either, yet, but I'm working on it. Also good to point out is the A Room Forever label, which releases boxed 12" LPs that look incredibly lush and dramatic; art objects of the highest order. I'm going to check these out, but they're rather pricey. One is by the acoustic doom artist Svarte Greiner, another by the guy from Mountains, and the third is by Machinefabriek. nomi and interimlover take note. Those of you unwilling to plunk down $90 for three 12"s, can check out the curator's Roadside Picnic podcast. If you're attracted to the thought of episodes titled "Foreboding/Drift" and "Solemn/Nostalgia" (I myself listened and felt that my disposition might well be too sunny and free for this kind of music right now), go for it.

~Ambient Not Not Ambient
This is an ambient compilation on Audio Dregs, available at a bargain price. Some nice tracks but a lot of forgettable filler, also. Chris Herbert, Grouper, White Rainbow, Valet, and Sawako contribute decent stuff, but the rest is often just a lot of unfocused sound collage. It's worth the price, but I can't honestly recommend it too highly.

~Christopher Bissonette—In Between Words
Bissonette's debut was a gem of sine-wave trance out. His latest is in the same vein, but darker and more claustrophobic. The first few listens didn't really stick with me, but some of the tracks are the best kind of slow build.

~Atlas Sound—Let the Blind Lead Those Who See But Cannot Feel
I'm totally crazy for this record. Bedroom ambient pop. I think some of the tracks are mildly derivative but the great tracks are GREAT.

~Robert Forster—The Evangelist
New solo LP by Robert, featuring some contributions from the late Grant McLennan. It's unclear if some of these songs would have ended up on the next Go-Betweens album, though I suspect so. I can't believe Forster's Warm Nights came out twelve years ago. This is stripped down Forster, so it lacks the grand arrangements of Oceans Apart, but it's a fine album. Sad as hell in places, though.

~Stars of the Lid—Carte-de-Visite
If you're a Stars of the Lid listener, you have to own it. This tour-only CD is currently available at Kranky's shop until the supply runs out.

your topics: escape velocity

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:54:42 GMT

Though I consider myself disinterested in most popular technology, I can't quite call myself a technophobe. I dislike clever gadgets on the whole, but I try to see their value. I think it must have stemmed from never really being able to afford expensive toys like that when I was working through high school and college. It is like attempting to convince yourself that the pretty girls have terrible character flaws to save yourself the time spent trying to look as though you've more sexual élan and athletic vigor than you truly have, I suppose.

One of the best toy-innovations I have enjoyed is the iPod, that magical gadget which allows me to currently tote around twenty-seven consecutive days of non-stop music, from Ash Ra Tempel to Claude Debussy to Yellow Magic Orchestra to Zoviet France. When I was a boy, I never felt secure without a book somewhere near. I have added my iPod to this brief list when I travel any long distance.

I am attempting to upgrade to a few new gadgets. Though I generally hate the pounds of dive gear the northeastern divers recommend I clip to myself, I am quite enjoying the added weight of my new underwater digital camera. I took some truly lousy movies seventy-five feet underwater with it this weekend, and even worse pictures. I'm working on editing the movies together with iMovie so I can add a little music to it and upload it onto You Tube. The undersea sounds are marvelous, I'll give them that. The Caribbean will be much warmer and brighter underwater, so I suspect my shots will improve there next month. We are also upgrading our digital camera to a shiny new Nikon D40 soon, and I look forward to more professionally taken shots here and there. It does pay to have better tools, sometimes. Though I will never give up my battery powered nose and ear hair trimmer, which many men I come across still appear to require, I will never be a gadget man, oh no.

Live Journal Grand Master eniastoa asks after the music of [my] youth [I] would still recommend today.

At thirty-one, I still consider myself a youth, but, for the purposes of the question, I will limit the time of youth to junior high and high school. Well, it is true that I listened to mostly classical music/movie soundtracks and a few of my mom's rock LPs in my boyhood until I heard Depeche Mode in junior high. Today's high school students are frighteningly well-informed because of the internet, but, in the days of walking to school through three feet of snow, fighting sasquatch uphill both ways, you had to dig through cases of shitty cassettes and hope that your purchases were worth the few dollars you could afford. I remember some of my friends had some terrible dog-shit music mistakes, like Transvision Vamp, (and I bought my share of terrible Belgian techno cassettes which I tried so hard to enjoy). You meet kids today and they're listening to all ends of obscure, you know, like twelve year olds playing Philip Jeck, when we were still enjoying America and Rush on a K-Tel cassette we bought via a dispenser at the Wawa. If I'd had the internet, I'd have discovered things like Talk Talk and Bill Nelson and Felt and ambient a lot sooner, I guess.

I believe the teen alt standards of my youth still hold up remarkably well. I listened to Joy Division and the Cure, the Church and Echo and the Bunnymen, the House of Love and New Order, Siouxsie, Bauhaus and Television, Depeche Mode and the Smiths, Talking Heads and Brian Eno, Cocteau Twins and Wire, The Clash and Roxy Music, and I think all of these bear up just fine. Some of the stuff sounds dated, like a lot of the "industrial" acts (i.e. Front 242, Nitzer Ebb), and the Madchester scene especially (I loved Inspiral Carpets and the Stone Roses) but it's all still great fun at worst. (Bianca had much better taste than I did in those days and her record collection is a fine cross-section of the best of college rock from the eighties and nineties.)

At some point much of this music shifted to a kind of lazer-light-show nostalgia for me, and I can't determine when. It was probably when we started being targeted by advertisers with the songs. Nevertheless, these groups are talked about by my peers in the same way our slight elders in That 70s Show regard Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd—a development I look upon with some degree of sadness, because the cycles remain essentially the same, no matter how different we thought we'd react to inevitable aging. The loss of those grand days of purchasing punk rock T-shirts through a hastily photocopied Burning Airlines catalog feels like the same void imagined by all our forebears with the pop culture artifacts they felt relevant in their youths. I guess I expected that I'd deal with it differently, but I do sigh now and again to remember running into the city to try to buy Doc Martens (which I could never afford anyway) and look for Echo and the Bunnymen posters, or browsing the racks at Alwilk Records in the Livingston Mall and being confused by the similar tracklists of Three Imaginary Boys and Boys Don't Cry (I bought the latter because it was cheaper—CDs were $11 or $12, imports $18). I loved the gatefold of the second Roxy Music LP, because I wanted to be an Intergalactic Sexual Space Vampire Overlord from Hottest Venus, and I also fancied dressing up like a girly Brian Eno (THE BEST outfit there), though it was more likely I imagined myself as Andy Mackay (second from right) because I never thought I'd lose my hair. (I sensed I was destined to be a supporting character in the Roxy Music epic, that I wasn't cool enough to be Manzanera or Bryan Ferry.) I pedaled my bike a few miles to pick up a cut-out copy of Depeche Mode's first CD for $8. I fantasized about dating a girl like Bianca with a better music and poster collection than mine, and I tried to convince my parents to let me see the Bunnymen (the faux line-up with Noel Burke) at Club Bené in Perth Amboy, NJ, a request they denied, as they did every time. (I didn't get to see the Cure until '96, Bunnymen in '01, Depeche Mode in '05.)

It's all over now. It's like I'm talking about the summer of love. I hate it in myself, but I can't stop it.

your topics: part company from them if you can

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:48:01 GMT

The totally dreamy Ms. disorganization asks after my feelings, and what a question or statement that is.

I tend to be of the holistic frame of mind, regarding feelings, and if my medical history is any reliable indicator, I lived an awfully long time trying to keep my feelings out of public and private view. Perhaps it was because I felt that most feelings, good or ill, were signs of weakness or vulnerability, or because I didn't really know how to express them, but it took crippling physical pain to bring them out. In the intervening three or four years, I've tried to learn how to allow them to happen, rather than repress them, pretend they don't exist, or try to change them with clever thinking and self-delusions.

When I think about feelings now, it is with a sense that they are really connections between us as individuals, and, from where I stand, it is the rare pairing that feels any sense of connection on a regular basis. To describe one of these connections, I am inevitably drawn to a final moment with my grandfather (from an old private entry):

So I'm staying at my grandfather's house in Florida and this is May before the December when he died. He died on the night before Bianca's thirtieth birthday. I had to leave on her birthday. My mother decided to keep it a secret so I would be able to throw her party without feeling awful that night. Somehow I think I knew, anyway. Life conspires to make you remember.

Now, it is my last day at his little house in May, it sat in a development next to a charming canal always bright with sunlight and populated by the ugliest waterfowl imaginable, they were adorably hideous and cruel beasts. So I made my bed in the guest room, where my grandmother's things had been taken down and replaced by my grandfather's girlfriend's stuff.

So, I was watching TV before everybody woke up. When I stay at another's place, I tend to be an early riser. It is an unusual thing if I can sleep late in a bed not my own. I was watching a Bogart movie with desert war and tanks in it, and it had just said "The End" on the screen, with the music swelling in crescendos in the way soundtracks did then and Grandpa walks in the room and I am sitting on the couch and smiling at him. And he gives me one of the saddest faces I swear I have ever seen and he says, "I am really glad you came." And I look at him and then look away and I feel the whole bottom drop out of me, but I push it further down inside of me, and I lock that feeling away. That face he had, well, it told me somehow that I was never going to see him in person again, and, wouldn't you know it, I never did after that day. Now that was a connection, and I was too dumb and cooped up inside to feel it then or respond to it.

Part of the problem is that sometimes words don't really do a feeling justice, or, by expressing them, take all the weightless beauty out of the feeling, and drop it like a stone. There's a zen anecdote that better expresses this, one I heard on an old Alan Watts lecture a few years ago, but I can't recall it well enough to repeat it accurately. In essence, it posited that the release of certain oceanic feelings of connectedness or extreme pain or extreme beauty reduces those feelings to cardboard mock-ups and fictional tragedies. Well, I've been feeling that way about these things all my life.

Sometimes a feeling is less like words and more like the tone of voice one uses. I find this happens to me when I listen to songs. When Robert Forster sings "Part Company," or Kilbey does those later parts of "Celebration of the Birthday of the Elephant God," it isn't just the words that make me feel, it's the tone and the inexplicable something that makes its way through the simple lyrics, something totally true and aglow, like too-bright light I have thus far seen only in dreams, it pierces its way directly through sleep.

I think real emotion and feeling pierces like that, and I feel as though I am somehow sensitive to the light, even if I can't allow it to shine unhindered out of myself. I feel I know when people try to fake it, and that's probably why I'm so intolerant of others on LJ from time to time—it seems so calculated and produced for others, when I feel it should be personal and its appeal to any other than its center wholly incidental. And I think I just talked myself out of this entry.

Hardboiled Mr. kohntarkosz wants to know all about Asphalt Eden.

I'm afraid it's so simple it's inane. It's not the greatest song, either. I believe I've claimed the phrase as my own by now, though.

chillax-solo

Sat, 31 May 2008 22:04:39 GMT

It's amazing how much I find I can cram into a day when I've got nervous energy from being alone.

Since today's dives got canceled due to rough seas, I had no reason to go to bed early or act responsibly last night. I went food shopping at the supermarket to pick up white clam sauce supplies for tonight, did my thirty-five minutes at the lap pool, then came home. I got loaded on an apple lambic I'd bought at the store, ordered in Chinese food, and watched At the Earth's Core, They Call Her One Eye, and Tarkovsky's The Mirror in succession, and I think I burned my brain doing it.

I enjoyed all three, but I have to say One Eye (or, Thriller—A Cruel Picture, as it is known in its native Sweden) probably took the cake for late-night psych self-damage. At the Earth's Core does have an incredible analog synth soundtrack, if you listen closely, and Doug McClure is just the most incredible mook ever captured on film, but One Eye is like Bo Hansson on quaaludes with slow motion action to match. I felt like I was dreaming parts of it. There are some entirely unnecessary hardcore porn scenes they tacked on to make it more shocking, (and a cadaver, sitting in for the lovely Christina Lindberg, gets a scalpel right in the eye), but it was actually quite a solid revenge exploitation flick. Here's the trailer:

After that I stayed up even later listening to The Ballasted Orchestra in the dark. Good times, but I miss my wife.

your topics: the bloody angle

Thu, 29 May 2008 14:44:34 GMT

Bianca's away on a business trip to Book Expo, so I'm all alone for the next few days, already lonely. I started sleeping poorly last night and dreamed a little. Two of you were in one dream, but I won't say who and what happened. Then I was back in retail, working at an antiques shop, navigating a complex cash register. It was the far future, for everything cost hundreds of dollars (a woman purchased a mechanical coin bank and paid with five hundred-dollar bills), and the bank notes were thin and dry, like browned leaves. I held one up to the sun to check for the watermark and felt guilty about it, since the money was useless anyway.

The lovely and talented Ms. wurlitzerprized inquires after the first book I remember reading and being excited about.

As I'm sure many of you expect, I read an awful lot as a child. I hate biographical notes that proudly proclaim, "the author was reading at age two," as though this be a pedigree of oncoming genius-hood. I read early, too, and by god I am no genius. Nevertheless, it was difficult to pick just one book, for I remember being excited by so many, Treasure Island and Kidnapped, Robinson Crusoe and those Forry Ackerman monster books bound in bright orange wraps, Ring Around the Sun and The Demolished Man, War of the Worlds and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Fire Dragon and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

I followed a link to an LJ belonging to an amateur writer yesterday at work, one who will be attending some writers workshop, and read the list of books he'd read in the last few years. When you filtered out all of the stuff like comic books, he'd read maybe ten in the last three years. I doubt this is a good way to become a writer, but I obviously don't know what I'm talking about. Hey, this is the kind of boob we're up against.

I have two favorite books that I want to mention specially. I was talking to my boss yesterday about Edgar Rice Burroughs (we're both big fans) and how memorable and colorful his novels were. Past H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, as a kid, I only knew Burroughs—there may as well have been no other science fiction writers, ever. My grandfather had the bargain volume, at left, which contained five Burroughs novels, all books in the middle of their respective series. I loved both Pellucidar and Tanar of Pellucidar (books two and three of the Pellucidar sequence, respectively) and it didn't seem to matter that I was unaware of the existence of the first volume, At the Earth's Core. In 1982, when this book came out, it never occurred to me that there might be more in the series, despite the cliffhanger at the end of Tanar which segued right into Tarzan at the Earth's Core (which I still have not read).

In Pellucidar, manly idiot David Innes drills down in an earth burrower invented by Christian kook Abner Perry (see the marvelous motion picture starring Doug McClure—this trailer is THE BEST) to the fabulous land inside the Earth's crust like an egg yolk of utmost adventure, a world of eternal noon-day light, where he must battle all manners of prehistoric beasties to win the love of a primitive maiden. There can be no greater entertainment for a seven year old (or a thirty-one year old—I'm rereading them now and enjoying them in much the same way). I also enjoyed the three Mars tales of Barsoom, The Chessmen of Mars, The Mastermind of Mars, and Thuvia—Maid of Mars (I have no recollection of the last), though I did not really start loving these until I located the first one, A Princess of Mars, several years later. Undoubtedly, this book helped start me on science fiction, for better or worse.

The second, clearly well-loved volume, contains an inscription on the front page:

MERRY CHRISTMAS BRIAN
FROM YOUR DAD WITH ALL
HIS LOVE.
DEC. 25, 1982

It is the fabulous American Heritage Picture History of The Civil War by Bruce Catton, perhaps the greatest Christmas gift I ever received, and a book that still inspires memories of delighted childhood afternoons when I see it on the shelf. I read this book until it was nearly destroyed, and it's a miracle the thing is still in one piece (more or less). My father and I used to play with toy soldiers on the weekends, creating vast dioramas of human suffering and destruction as only a boy and his father can. In an effort to get me into the history of all that slaughter, Joe B. bought this volume for me just after I turned six. I can still remember picking up the book, still wrapped under the Christmas tree, and wondering what it could be. It felt as though it weighed a hundred pounds. I'll never forget it. After that, the living room slaughter was more historically accurate. This book is loaded with amazing images, too, if you're a fan of old textbooks, ephemera, and the like, as I am.

The soldiers, which belonged to my father, are still here. They have the most expressive faces, though I regret "gore-ing" some of them up when I was a little older. I was a kid like anybody else, I guess.

subtitle your own bollywood movie

Tue, 27 May 2008 16:01:16 GMT

This just made my week.

your topics: back to the stone age

Tue, 27 May 2008 14:48:49 GMT

I think a Memorial Day weekend is best spent relaxing outside at home, which we did, for the most part. Bianca had a wedding shower and bachelorette party to attend, and I crawled along the bottom of the Delaware River for my class, but other than that it was lawn chairs and adventure novels. I repaired the weed wacker and trimmed some bushes (not secret code, but actual events). Friday we had spa appointments and then went to see a movie, which we both liked. All of that is out of order.

I looked at the conversation topics you all posted, and there are some good ones, and certainly enough to last all summer. There will be entries about girlfriends, and dancing (I hope to get video on this one), and feelings, and also Bianca, and many other topics besides.

Mr. chocolatebark of Upper Pellucidar, Canada asks, "Dear Brian, what are your opinions about the significance of Nazca art?"

My dear Mr. Bark, I have examined the Nazca art of which you write, for I must admit, though I am, essentially, an enthnologist and naturalist of the highest order (insofar as I am practically a nudist in the privacy of my own home), that I was at first unfamiliar with what it was you were inquiring about. However, now that I have examined both Wikipedia and the new Indiana Jones movie, and after exclaiming "Of course!" I can say that I am quite an expert on these geoglyphs that, as I recall, Erich Von Däniken felt were runways of the gods' aeroplane squadrons and zeppelin forces. As a great fan of In Search of ..., I find that my opinions about such things are generally that "they are good if they are beautiful and inexplicable" and their usefulness to malevolent aliens, 1970s stoner album artwork, and also pre-Hispanic godlings is an intriguing and positive side benefit. I have always loved things that people say "could never have been produced by primitive man" that are eventually proven to have been quite easily and ingeniously made by crude sunburned savages with their bare claws, perhaps with the help of dinosaur-leather hot air balloons, a theorem to which I say "congratulations, sub-literate apelike morons, for coming up with that one." My feeling is that, when battling ravenous pterodactyls, you want to engage them from the ground and also from the air, so as to provide enfilade fire from your bows and arrows, and to protect your luscious prehistoric women and their heaving breasts from grabbing pterodactyl talons, so that you may grab these women yourselves in the lofty environs of your tree fortress.

In similar notion, Madam apresminuit of Lower Caspak, Virginia, asks my feelings about sea monsters.

Well, I love them, of course, or I would not have spent in the vicinity of two to three thousand dollars on equipment and training to meet them all face to face, neck to tentacle. My favorite sea monster is, as expected, "The Kraken" which is pictured to your left. Once upon a time, in an alternate universe where I am not scared to death of needles, I fancied getting a tattoo of the monster at left on some fleshy portion of my body, but I am glad of my fear in this land, because that is an image I would surely have found regrettable as its tentacles reached lower and lower down along the Cimmerian depths of my body's personal meat-ocean with age.

Oddly enough, and probably at a sci-fi convention, I saw some portly knucklehead with the very same tattoo (a girl, I think), and it looked utterly ludicrous. At that moment, I breathed a sigh of relief, for I had avoided a singularly ugly tattoo, and also a tattoo that somebody else is fated to have for the rest of their sorry life. (Of course, if you have this tattoo, it looks just great on you, really.)

little stories

Thu, 22 May 2008 13:52:15 GMT

Last night, Bianca and I had the pleasure of a Thai meal with her father (in celebration of the upcoming Father's Day and his birthday), which was followed by a charming evening spent listening to Garrison Keillor at the Morristown Community Theater. Keillor is one of those almost extinct kind of Americans, and it will be a real tragedy when his kind is entirely gone. He has a mournful singing voice and recites poetry in a way that a confirmed poetry-disliker (myself) would enjoy in spite of his own prejudices.

I've been feeling a little dry here lately, as I consider quitting blogging, so I feel that the hair of the dog is the only medicine for me. Taking chocolatebark's fine idea, I have created a poll [below] where you can type in the box a topic for me to write about in my LJ. Anything you want, you can put it in there, and I will attempt my best effort to write about what you put there. You can ask me a question if you like, or just a single word you want me to expound upon in a tiresome and blustery fashion. I can do it. The worst that happens is that I will write a dumb paragraph about something dumb.

A few years ago, I attempted to write a little story about everybody who commented—it was a fun task, though I never finished because of the onset of my little pelvic issue that year. My apologies to those who were unavoidably skipped or disappointed. I'd write those little stories better these days anyhow, so consider yourselves lucky to have not been pinned down by a lesser talent back then. Herewith, Poll #1192139:

View Poll: Why it's: your chosen topics for future Asphalt Eden entries.

Currently watching: the seasons of Deadwood
Currently reading: Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck

aquanaut

Sun, 18 May 2008 14:53:44 GMT

I got sunburned again. Water temperature a balmy 57º.

incurably optimistic!

Wed, 14 May 2008 23:19:41 GMT

I've got dives scheduled every Saturday for the rest of the month and I'm pretty excited to give all my new skills and equipment a good kicking. I've got to remember to bring the camera to the quarry this weekend so I can get a photo of myself taken with the full wetsuit, loaded down with crap. It's a bunch of strangers I'm with this time, not the alumni of my class, but they all seem like relaxed and amiable guys. Me, I'm pretty calm and agreeable in these situations and it's nice to go into it knowing what to expect. The third dive of the day is at night, in completely dark water, so I'm a little uptight about that. I have a decent flashlight, so I guess I'll just choke the fear down and try to get into it.

I bought a couple of White Rainbow records, but I have to admit I can't quite get on this guy's trip. I love psychedelic music of all kinds, and I had these pegged as real winners, but it feels a little thin to me, like an ersatz Manny Göttsching with touches of Jon Hassell and Windy & Carl. The albums I got are okay, but I much prefer playing Ashra and Terry Riley and Heldon. The guy's got an MP3 blog with some friends (I cannot get behind MP3 pirate blogs where whole albums are shared, in case you were wondering—I think it's a harmful practice to artists everywhere) where they diss Steve Roach a little while pumping Steven Halpern. It takes all kinds, I guess. There's a kind of ironic vibe toward the original new age community of the seventies and eighties I detect on the blog—who the hell can tell what's sincere any more, because I sure can't. Everybody wears big, ugly glasses and ridiculous thrift clothes now.

Square and puffy, like an overweight brick, wearing his usual mohair poncho, apricot-colored felt hat, argyle ski socks and carpet slippers, he advanced toward Joe Chip, self-satisfaction smirking from every molecule in his body ...

I take back every bad thing I ever said about Philip K. Dick. I've read two of his books in the last week and I'm a believer now. I guess you can see the bricks and mortar of what keeps his books standing, but it doesn't make the edifices any less strong. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was a stunner and I'm quite enjoying Ubik as well. If only today's crop of practitioners could be half as inventive and audacious as Dick was. I've got the Library of America omnibus and I give it my highest recommendation.

In other news, I need a career reboot badly. Anybody have suggestions for possible asphalteden-style jobs that don't require additional schooling?

ya rly

Mon, 12 May 2008 13:43:59 GMT

Mom's got screech owls nesting in her backyard and they've a baby now.

livelid

Mon, 05 May 2008 15:57:16 GMT

It was a typical New York crowd for the Stars of the Lid show, with the usual mixture of self-conscious chunk-glasses guys and students; aging installation artists and angular Asian gals; Kant readers and men and women with one attractive facial flaw; sissyboys and their vivacious, baffled girlfriends; people interested in architecture and, well, six or seven guys who looked like me. And then there's that guy (he must be a record collector) with the polka dot shirt (pink dots on black or white dots on black). He's at every show, everywhere. Sometimes he has a goatee. He is always balding from the front to back.

It was a civilized concert, with comfortable seats, and I easily drifted to the merch table for a shirt and CD and got an aisle seat to grab some pictures. I'm getting old and two opening acts seemed like a lot, but they were worth sitting through. Itsnotyouitsme has a terrible name, but the music they did was good solid emo-bient. Simple collections of loops that rose and fell very prettily. The gent on the electric violin was animated enough that it made me feel self-conscious. Hewasfeelingthemusic. I guess. The music felt as though it lacked grit, but I enjoyed it.

Next was Face the Music, a group of freakishly talented 10-15 year old kids who played modern classical, including a difficult piece by John Adams for two pianos. I was both surprised and, I must admit it, horrified by the performance. Such abstruse music played by innocents! It was very weird to hear the sounds come out of their instruments, as though it were some elaborate trick—a canned recording of Gavin Bryars and a bunch of play-acting seventh graders. But the music was very pretty (especially the spiraling tunnels of "Hallelujah Junction" which I had not heard before) and the kids got well-deserved standing ovations. I found that our show was sold out because of all the parents attending. They cleared out when Face the Music was done and left a few empty seats.

Stars of the Lid came out next, at around 10:00, launched right into the sad stuff with "Requiem for Dying Mothers" and it didn't let up for the next hour and a half. The string trio provided nice depth and Christopher Willits even joined for their performance of "December Hunting for Vegetarian Fuckface," though it was difficult to discern just what he contributed to the wall of sound. On the whole, it was one of the more pleasurable ambient concerts I've been to, with cavernous sound and an intriguing projection on the wall of the church. I tried to get some photographs, but I totally botched the camera for no-flash pictures. The below shot was the best I got, sadly enough. There wasn't much to see anyway. I listened to The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid on the way home, just in time to share the PATH back to Hoboken with all of the people who saw Jay Z and Mary J. Blige at MSG that night. It was a Real Nice Night for everybody.

In other news, I pulled a muscle in my shoulder getting out of bed yesterday. I am old.

sail with pirates

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:46:09 GMT

Like many in my age-group, in the early eighties I was ga-ga over the Choose Your Own Adventure series. I still feel an unusual amount of nostalgia for their ilk, and when I think of them today, they contained every adventure trope a kid of my type in the eighties could want, with a level of adaptable interactivity that was wholly new at the time. My favorite volume in the original series (of which I had only a few) was, surprise, Treasure Diver. My father and I often read this one together (he always read to me when he got home from work, often quite late, and this was a big part of my boyhood), and I could tell he enjoyed its real-world setting more than he would, say, You Are a Shark(!), or Prisoner of the Ant People. According to Gamebooks.org (an amazing site listing and describing all details regarding the incredible array of all such books), Treasure Diver had nineteen discrete endings. To my recollection, twenty-one of these endings resulted in death. I drowned, I was eaten by sharks, I was killed by pirates, I was trapped in an underwater dome belonging to Dr. No, I was eaten by pirates, I suffered from gold doubloon poisoning, I got "the bends" and exploded, I fell in love with Mindy the One-Eyed Stripper and ended up in a South Carolina trailer park with rickets. It was a real horrorshow, and undoubtedly a crucial educational experience for a seven year old.

My favorite series, though, was the Time Machine sequence, where enterprising young boys and girls could experience the Holocaust or the Mexican Revolution, take a break and watch Diff'rent Strokes, and return to something else, perhaps the death of all dinosaurs. Great fun and interesting design. I had the complete series, which was published up until 1988 (I like to stick with things, even if I'm too old and they're out of fashion, duh), though I find I only have the first four of them in my possession today. I read Civil War Secret Agent (was there ever a more appealing confluence?) until the cover came off, and I can still remember phrases from it, and the scene where you meet Harriet Tubman. You couldn't die in the Time Machine books, either, which was of great appeal to me after the endless reincarnation cycle of Treasure Diver. The worst that could happen was getting trapped in time or failing your mission, which is pretty fair on the part of the authors, when you think about it.

I took a few of these books out last night, and tried to read one of the Endless Quest books (Dungeons & Dragons got in on the act), called Pillars of Pentegarn, knowing that my sensible adult intellect, and my knowledge of The Lord of the Rings films, would assist in a quick victory. I was killed three times. I tell you, in these books, as in the life of an editor of sci-fi, it is the arbitrary decisions that reward and the carefully considered ones that kill.

Personally, I must admit I am not much a fan of today's "interactive" things (though learning museums were always quite fun), and I generally tend to enjoy traditional, slow, go at your own pace activities. I like video games, but I refuse to play online games. I enjoy the internet, but I most prefer to read it and not participate (with a few exceptions, obviously) in its circus. I like having choices, but not too many choices—I might even add that the lack of choice, it seems to me, has an untapped capability to grow a person far more than unlimited choices can ever do. I believe in making peace with the decisions made, because you're never allowed to surreptitiously keep your finger on the previous page in case you die horribly when you turn to page 96 in real life (though there have been moments where I've felt I'd peeked). Often the interactive things seem like so much fad, like blogging or Choose Your Own Adventure paperbacks, just a thing of today to be replaced by something other in the endless parade of distractions, another entertaining blinder. I get tired with all the endless varieties which allow me to indulge small parts of myself (though if they go back to making one kind of jean again, I'll surely die) despite the overall withering of a unified self-image. When I browse the internet, I become tired and unsure, the boat come untethered from the dock, and it's sometimes hard to see the value in any of it, aside from making it easier to buy CDs and ... well, that's almost all I use it for. Buying CDs and reading LJ. That's the whole of the internet for me. Page 23 and page 106. I'll take the backyard, I think, page 574.

aquanaut

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:15:59 GMT

A cool, wet morning here and I don't plan to stray far from the bedroom or living room, close to warm liquids and Tylenol, until the evening, at least. My brain and body are working at 60 percent, my thoughts like wilting blooms, so this is an artless rundown for posterity.

I'm officially a certified scuba diver, but it wasn't easy. Two days of "environment experience," the first day of which I felt entirely unprepared for. By way of explanation: I wore unfamiliar equipment (new buoyancy compensator, computer, mask), eighteen pounds of weight, a thick farmer-john wetsuit with an equally thick jumpsuit on top, a hood and gloves, an eighty cubic-foot air tank (weighs about thirty-five pounds). In 48º Dutch Springs lake water (there's a thermocline about twenty feet down from the 51º surface water). The instructor said, "If you can dive under these conditions in a wetsuit and still properly do your skills, you're set to go anywhere." I've never been colder, not even during that rain-soaked trip up the mountain in Wyoming, 1993. I'm 5'8", 150 pounds, little body fat—in other words, Not Built For That Shit.

The first day felt like a high-anxiety disaster. I panicked on my first descent to twenty-five feet and had to get a grip at the training platform. My mask leaked, cold water flowed constantly into my suit (which is supposed to happen, of course), I swallowed air with hungry gasps, and I could only count down the minutes on my dive computer (you've got to clock twenty to count for certification, and the first five felt like thirty). Dive two was even worse, because I, noob that I am, neglected to zip the top of my suit up, meaning a constant, bracing rush of cold lake water (did I mention it was 48º?) onto my chest whenever I moved. Heart attack city. The most cold twenty-four minutes of my life; it's official. I got out of the water, shivering spasmodically, thinking I wasn't cut out for diving, and it was a depressing ride home from there.

I got a chill and was totally wasted for the rest of the day. I sat around and ate hot soup (Bianca took good care of me) and dealt with the lingering cold of the water and, oh yeah, the feverish feeling I had from the damned sunburn I got as a parting gift (it was overcast and I didn't even think to put any sunblock on). So: now lobster-face. I finished Rhialto the Marvelous (one of Vance's very best). I watched the last hour of Atonement (sad movie). I went to bed at 8:30 and had strange undersea dreams of dry-suits and carp, bodies distended with air, weightlessness. I felt as though there was a giant shiver inside of me, struggling to escape.

Day two I approached with something akin to dread, but I'd been convinced the day before by Bianca that I should tough it out and get it over with. I remembered that I'd forgotten to button up the suit, and I imagined zipping it properly would make it more bearable. I did so and did not panic on my first descent to twenty-five feet, where we did an air consumption drill and a compass run from the platform. I started getting a little cold after fifteen minutes, but was able to persevere without any mishap.

The second and final dive was a compass run to a submerged fire truck which lay at around thirty feet or so. My buddies and I got there easily and we then followed the instructor down to our target depth of sixty feet, the furthest I've ever been down under the blue. There were enormous carp and trout down there, beautiful and unaffected by 45º waters. Even scummy algae at the bottom of the lake had an ethereal beauty unseen on dry land. I look forward to the riot of life in the Caribbean this summer. From a technical standpoint, I had some difficulty clearing the air spaces in my ears, but, after a few tries, I managed to get them under control. My new BC, (a back-inflated model manufactured by Aqua Lung), made it easy to hover with reasonable stability without much practice or acclimation. We all left the water feeling happy and accomplished, though bone tired, to receive the signatures for our certifications. I've now logged just over ninety minutes under water.

In all, learning to dive was a happy, rewarding experience, save for a tough first day of open water dives. It isn't cheap, especially if you want to own your own set of gear (I went a frugal route and it still added up significantly at the end), but I can tell already it's a decision I'll feel great about years from now. Tonight, I begin the advanced course....

terrarium project 1

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:20:55 GMT

This spring denotes the 2008 terrarium project I will be undertaking. As you see, I have the vessel above, and will be starting this one in the month of May. I have not decided what the contents will look like quite yet, but I'll be using the Gardening with Terrariums and Sand Sculpture book by Rex Mabe gurdonark sent me a few years ago, vintage 1975, where imagination and container are the only limits. Scuba diving, terrarium construction—these are the kinds of hobbies I always imagined I would entertain myself with. It is only a matter of the doing.

jardin au fou

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:21:48 GMT

Incredible collection of Chute Libre's pop-art French SF paperback covers. I'd never seen all of these. I'd love to have this kind of design aesthetic on today's genre stuff—it still looks compelling and transgressive, while also appealing to the collector's instinct for uniform editions. It's an audacious use of stock art, since clearly none of the art was created for these editions (ie. the tentacle-prOn Moebius pic above). I like the visceral nastiness of it all, which was a great appeal of New Wave science fiction to me as a teenager, so much more style than substance.

From another perspective, it's a mere iteration of the same old paperback art tropes designed to lure you into buying the book on the quality of the cover. Here, rather than busty Frazetta babes or sensawonda spaceporn, you get a distinctly French perspective: shock the money out of the customer's pockets—doesn't matter what you put on the cover, just make it confrontational and vaguely modern-arty. The same old bullshit, targeted to a different consumer mindset, rather like a lot of the New Wave writers' work, now that I think on it.

Anyway, I find it all much more appealing than the computerized or self-consciously retro stock art that bedecks most tripe published today.

nostalgia digest

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:00:47 GMT

One technique I often use to lull myself to sleep [I have never had trouble sleeping, and I am often asleep four or five minutes after I close my eyes—I'm able to tell from the music playing when we sleep], is a mental tour of some past residence or place I have been. In the spring, the odors of exploding nature bring me back to trips to visit my grandfather in his Florida townhome, and so, this time of year, I tour his house in my mind and fall asleep by the time I make it to the guest bedroom within.

The year before he died, the guest room had changed considerably, his Vietnamese live-in girlfriend (my step-father, a vet, suspects she was a prostitute during the war, which is as salacious and intriguing an imagining as anything I could conjure) filling it with portraits of herself and of her family, and all of the familiar furniture had been removed. All semblance of what I had remembered (a settee overlooking the canal, a couch where I'd watch movies on the little television) was gone, save a fold-out bed for me to sleep on. His office had been moved to another room in the house, and everything once-known was impossible to parse in the original ways. The house in the moments before sleep is unchanged, though, and I can almost hear my grandmother's voice, and the little radio she used to play (this must be a compound memory of when they lived upstairs from us in my childhood home), and the sound of a Norelco electric razor.

The radio station she listened to is of the sort that no longer exists—the one-thousand strings of Mantovani shamelessly co-opting island themes and rhythms experienced by WWII servicemen in the forties have fallen silent. I recall we also used to listen to radio dramas on the same transistor set in the early 1980s, while playing pinochle, and though I know it is not an imagining, it still seems unbelievable.

I read the new Glenn Ganges comic book on the train yesterday. It seemed to me to be about our inherent social incapability to adequately communicate in person to others the complexity of our internal lives, but it may also just have been about experiences during the dot-com boom. A high-school friend of mine made a lot of money in those years, and she hadn't even finished college. She had expensive clothes and makeup. Sometimes I dream about her and she has a designer drug habit and a tasteless, glassy modern home on the cliffs of the Hudson.

When hearing of her success, I remember wondering why I'd decided to go down the road of a writing degree. At this time I cannot even remember my original reasoning, why I wanted to write in the first place. Well, perhaps it is not that. It is not about wanting to write—I simply write, and the act is done. But I can't remember why I felt it necessary to lock in writing as "what I do." I'm not sure where the thought came from, and possible origins recede further and further away with time. I think it is just the same as if I had majored in "undeclared." Being an editor is being the college professor of that graduate program, a Mastery in the Undeclared.

I feel terrible for children today who live their lives on the internet. I am shy enough that so much of my own development of the last few years has been written down for all to see, the warts and the lesions, and the thought of having my pre-teen and teen years on display, all of the drama and histrionics, would be too much for me to bear.

I'm doing my open water dives in Pennsylvania this weekend, so I'll be officially certified on Sunday. Next week we have tickets to go see Stars of the Lid. I'm reading Rhialto the Marvelous. I highly recommend the album Umber by Parks. I am expecting a restorative summer.

bad mood guy

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:56:23 GMT

hating yard work

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:14:44 GMT

Now is the time of year that you scoop the poisonous orange granules into the spreader, colored green to mark what good you are doing to that useless swath you offend the gods with by calling your lawn. Last year, you took the venomous little polyps out of the bag with your bare hands and it was like handling hot salt, so dry it burned after a while. Your spreader doesn't work very well, and the molecules of factory produced death come out in clumps, like little orange DMT balls, though instead of fabulous arcadian visions, you get both cancer and the promise of a lawn that will look exactly the same as it would have had you applied nothing at all, or had you sown safety-pins and vinegar on the ground.

Your lawn is a sign of your good Christian might, that you have conquered the soil surrounding your tiny parcel of land in Great Suburbia and reserve the right to spread volatiles, or, still more Divine, hire a man with a green thumb to come and do it for you. Though you shall walk through the valley of mint weed salvia, crackgrass, and nimblewill, you shalt not fear, for Scott's has formulated a white granule, to be used between the months of May and July [set your Speedygreen 1000 spreader to 3 1/2], which will alleviate these ills, and cause a little piece of heaven to grow, God willing, on your parcel, provided you water twice daily, wasting hundreds of valuable gallons that could be drunk by someone dying of thirst, somewhere, today. Wasting water is part of the Scott's twelve step system, which also requires the spreading of menstrual blood and seminal fluid on key chakra portions of the lawn's corpus (using Scott's patented RedSpread 5000®), in order to stimulate the proper growth of Kentucky Blue during a hot summer. That summer, you will set up your barbecue grill and a lawn chair, and inhale the residuals while you drink weak beer and read John Grisham novels and dream of playing a fabulous golf game with Arnold Palmer and Zeus and the CEO of Home Depot, where the stakes are no less than your immortal soul, and you score a birdie, or maybe an eagle, and Arnold Palmer throws down his visor like a divine lightning bolt, and Zeus rips off his golfing shirt to reveal his chest, a shimmering shower of gold, and the CEO of Home Depot regurgitates scores and scores of golden Sacajawea dollars in surprise, and you all retire for Pimm's Cups at the club, arm in arm in arm in arm.

It is more productive to impregnate a woman from five hundred yards, utilizing a water pistol filled with Frank's Red Hot and chicken yolks, than it is to fertilize a lawn, but Scott's is using the Power of Scientifiction™ to help grow your personal Elysian Fields.

Next you spread your granulated limestone, mighty mountains crushed to bring it to you, maybe even Matterhorn (which hasn't been much in the news lately, for this reason), to add their power to your lawn, and it spreads in a cloud like fallout over your property, over all body hairs, blowing your hair up into a homespun Einstein. Take care to inhale the mountain, hero, for it has crumbled for you, been broken down into almost nothing but dusty remnants, so that the Ph level of your lawn will change somehow and allow something else scientific and perhaps geological to occur, and the grass will grow. The lime settles in your system, aided by the cancer growing in your lymph nodes, courtesy of the Scott's corporation and also ChemLawn (whom the previous owners had hired), and you will eventually excrete chalky sulphur and cough out monochromatic fireworks. The grass must grow.