13 November 2009

Happier Days

Working on a new album already, before Crazy is even printed. I've got a songlist, and the songs, and about half are recorded and in some phase of editing. So here's what I've got now:

Artist: Laramie Crocker
Website: LaramieCrocker.com
Album: Happier Days

1. Leaving the Green Mountains
2. Goodbye Days
3. Friends & Old Lovers
4. Candy (also, Candy - live)
5. The La-La Song
6. On Killy Yorn
8. Pure Imagination

Each of my albums is a concept album, although sometimes I don't know the concept fully until I am done. The songs are stories, all. Here are the lyrics, which are best read while listening to the songs:

Leaving the Green Mountains (words from Robert Louis Stevenson's Farewell to the Farm)

 
The coach is at the door at last
The eager children, mounting fast
And kissing hands, in chorus sing:
Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!

To house and garden, field and lawn
The meadow-gates we swang upon
To pump and stable, tree and swing
Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!

And fare you well for evermore
O ladder at the hayloft door
O hayloft where the cobwebs cling
Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!

Crack goes the whip, and off we go
The trees and houses smaller grow
Last, round the woody turn we swing
Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!

Candy

   She was just a bored old whore named Candy
She was just a bored old whore named Candy
She was just a bored old whore from a border town
down in disorder
south of the border
south of Toledo
Ohio
Texaco
Mexico
I don't know
she's just a ho
named Candy
She's just a whore named Candy
She was just a bored old whore named Candy

Friends & Old Lovers

   Why can't we be
friends and old lovers
coffee and tea
with friends and old lovers
like tee shirts and sneakers
like coffee and bananas for breakfast
like bars and subways
like cars and radios
and dirt roads
like doorframes and pictures
and letters
as time goes by
why can't we be
friends and old lovers
my old friend

On Killy Yorn

Lyrics are here.

The La-La Song

   I Dont want to see you again
It's been a long time and I'm almost healthy
my therapist says I should see you and breakthrough
she says it's an important life lesson
but I know its because
all the pain it'll cause
will cost me ten more sessions

La la la la la

10 million people and you and me
this town isn't big enough for the both of us
so I propose a healthy suggestion
to avoid chance meetings in subway congestion
you take the green line I'll take the 2-3
I'll let you have the A, C and E
and the N-R and even F
and when in doubt
I'll take the local
so you can take
the express

La la la la la

so please don't call
please don't drop by
well maybe an email
just to say "hi"
and let me know when's
the best time
that I
that I
can see you again

La la la la la

19 October 2009

Leaf Season Sunset



Candy colored sunset
over the ever green spruce
and in the distance
a fading grove of maples
dances in the peach light
remembering its glory days

18 October 2009

On Stairbuilding





Three staircases to the top


My dad put in a spiral staircase
in this house
on the first floor
I built one upstairs and through the roof and up to the cupola
which I built atop his house


My Spiral Staircase


My staircase is like the bones inside a ship
the mast exposed
holding up the deck

My staircase involves higher math

My staircase is special.
It is like no other.
It is a symbol or extension of my self.
It is expression, space, beauty, engineering, folly, life

My staircase phones Michelangelo
and worries for my father's approval

My staircase is the bones of a ship
Hang on to the mast
and climb up to the crow's nest


On Building Spiral Staircases

Every carpenter
at least just once
in his life
should oughta build himself a spiral staircase

I hope Jesus got to build one
(a spiral staircase)
at least once in his life
before they strung him up

Is that the lesson of Jesus?
You do what you want
but when you get too uppity
they string you up?
So have fun
but watch out
don't be gettin too crazy now

Or, is it that on your way to save the world,
you should take some time
to build yourself a spiral staircase
at least once in your life

26 June 2009

Infinity in the Vicinity

My Laptop
has been safely put to sleep
having faithfully sent its ether-packets
into the ethernet
through the ether
20,000 miles up to the satellite
and 20,000 miles back to Earth
and 3.000 to Menlo Park
and back again at the speed of light.

The response tells me what I know
"Thunderstorms in the Vicinity"

Outside my window
fireflies fly and glow
lightning strikes
lighting the darkened house

Inside my window
I sit, watching
and a lone lightning bug
woos the L.E.D. of my sleeping Lappy

31 May 2009

Should Koan

Should there by Shoulds?

28 May 2009

4 Kinds Perfect

1. The perfection that comes
from meticulous attention

2. The perfection that is an ideal

3. The perfection that arises
from natural spontaneity

4. The perfection of mere existence

The Infinite

Western Man
sees the Void
the Infinite
feels anxiety, angst
invents God
like a pillow, a pall

Zen Man
sees the Void
the Infinite
feels joy
exclaims enlightenment

15 April 2009

In my garden (a redneck haiku)

While I sat here
a flower bloomed
open
but new for me
still closed for her
speeding off with a harness
driving
driven
run

growing older

The longer you know me
the more obsequious I'll be
the longer you know me
the more obsolete you'll seem
(the more obviated)
And as we age into oblivion
I will obtain obstreperousness

09 February 2009

Thank You Howard

Governor Howard Dean, M.D., is a great American Hero.

By being a Vermonter -- outspoken, but not overspoken; sensible, thoughtful, but passionate -- by taking an anti-war stance early on, became the focus of a deep strain of peaceful, compassionate Americans who strategically needed to get the idea of peace past the corpo-media by injecting it, at last, into the national horse-race.

But we needed more than just an anti-war president. Hell, Nixon was anti-war. (OK, not really.) We needed a focus for a grander strategy. And here is where you really shone, Howard. (Forgive the informalism, I'm feeling like thinking of you as a man in this moment, and not as your titles, which you certainly deserve respect for.) You told us to retake the school boards, and the local offices, yes, as a stairway to the presidency and peace, but you also told us to take back the Democratic Party. Yeah, yeah, maybe you read Lakoff, and maybe you heard Wellstone, but you brought it all together -- Framing, grassroots control of the party -- addressing, finally, Corporatism. (I think it was the direct attack on corporatism, when you leveled it at the media giants, correctly, but not with the best timing, which brought you down from the national horse-race, but not from your vision, which you continued to fight for, brilliantly.)

I asked Denis Kucinich, when he was here in Oakland, what we could do to stop the PATRIOT ACT, and he simply replied, with, what was certainly not meant as one, but what seemed to be transmitted as a shrug, "organize." I asked him more questions, and hung out while he tried to answer a small circle of us, all asking "yes, but what do we DO?" Nothing got answered. His politics are all in the right place, but he couldn't answer the fundamental questions that many of us had. It seemed no one could.

When I went to see Governor Dean speak, it was in a small office in the Upper Valley in New Hampshire, where I was helping out, and he came through to rally the troops. I gave him my CD with my song "I Want My Country Back" inspired by his speeches. I stood and chatted a moment with him -- he also plays guitar -- I found that I didn't have ANY questions for him. His speech that day had, again, answered all my questions -- Organize, yes, but here's how, and here's why. He said we might not win this year, but maybe in 10 years, we'd own the party again, and that we, and independents, and sensible republicans would own our country again.

He lost the 2004 election. I went to see him a fourth time, and play onstage for him my song, at a DFA party/conference (after the primary) called DeanFest. DFA is Democracy for America, which Dean renamed from Dean for America, after his presidential campaign closed. Democracy for America was a grassroots/netroots campaign run by a tiny staff and lots of online and in-the-streets activists. These same people overwhelmed the local Democratic Party chapters and pushed to have Dean installed as Democratic Party Chairman.

Dean focused his tenure on the so-called 50 State Strategy, which was a means of funding and supporting party offices in all 50 states, not as the previous party leadership had ignored many rural states, leading to the Republicans' and conservative christians' grassroots efforts to gain a hold in the so-called Red States. Dean's brilliance was to tackle this head on. We were there, working in Nevada, for John Kerry the war-waffler, ferchristsake. I went to Reno to walk the hot streets in Summer, and then the cool, dessicated dusty backstreets on election day in November, to get out the vote. Reno. Armpit of the West. Red State. We almost won. That was huge. But I saw dozens of people I knew from the Bay Area. I saw my NEIGHBORS from Berkeley -- in Reno getting out the vote, monitoring the polls.

DFA produced a short-list, of sorts, called Dean's Dozen. These were true grassroots politicians, coming fast up the political bean stalk. DFA added it's support to these energetic souls seeking higher offices. (DFA also held and still holds training sessions for those getting into politics and organizing.) Someone saw Barack Obama, and headed him to the Dean's Dozen. Maybe our valiant new President is so brilliant that he didn't need Howard's push. From where I sit now, and what I saw back in the 2004 campaign, it was George Lakoff who documented how the Republican thinktanks worked people's emotional judgment, and who pushed the research to give us all a clear concept of what Framing is about in a political world. Then Paul Wellstone said "I'm here from the democratic wing of the Democratic Party." Then it was Howard Dean who took a big, sometimes stumbly, grab at reframing the debates in this country. He was wildly successful. Barack Obama probably understood Framing innately, but it sure seems like he read Lakoff, and listened to Wellstone and Dean. And the grassroots/netroots that Dean helped build DID take over the party, and did reach so many people, now with an understanding of how we get power over greed and money. (Hey, there's a LOT more of us numerically than corporations -- I guess that means we have money.) And that grassroots effort helped put Obama over the top. Not the pro-war Hillary.

I'm not a Christian, but from a literary perspective, if President Obama is viewed as Jesus of Nazareth, maybe a messiah, maybe just a man, then Governor Dean would be John the Baptist.

Prepare ye the way.

22 January 2009

The New Model Politican: Obama2008

Current events make sense to me,
with the Roberts-bot
programmed to derail Obama2008
at the critical moment,
the moment having been decided by thinktankers
watching endless loops of Barack-O-Vision,
recorded debates and interviews of the new model of politician.

"Must figure out his weak spot!" they cry
as they ply their digital emo-decoder
and out it spits the moment:

================================
DEPLOY ROBERTS-BOT @ 0900 HOURS
TO READ RE-ORDERED OATH (SEE ATTACHED)
================================

Washington is a place like no other.
the best politicians in the country come to ply their art
the best paid and best paying lobbyists,
thinktankers, and other salesmen
come to sup with the politicians
and the great masses of beaur-o-crats
(beaureaux-crats?)
type and shred
type and shred
at their whimsies.

To survive in that town,
you must be bloodsucker or blood
The new politician, sucked soon,
soonly becomes a preternatural ancient.

I understand current events
I was in D.C. in 2003
with guitar on back
ReDefeat Bush shirt on chest
and asked two nice looking guys at Dupont Circle,
how to get to the whitehouse.
They earnestly
smilingly
happily
sent me on my way
in the opposite direction.

Later, another soul pointed me right.
Me with no map or metro map, even,
having popped up from the metro,
and now stuck off in Georgetown
where the nice gents sent me.

That is how Washingtonians think, I think.
I was visiting in Virginia, at the time.
People in Charlottesville, good Southern liars, true,
would not concoct such a lie.
Residents of my beloved Brooklyn,
and playful Manhattan,
would not lie, they'd just tell you where to stick it.
Unless you asked for subway directions,
then they are honor-bound,
as New Yorkers,
to give you
the complete,
the whole,
and the detailed truth,
including where to transfer to avoid exiting.

When Obama hit D.C.
Americans cheered
and Washington-BOTs quaked.
The Roberts-BOT was unsuccessful:
Obama reframed
with grace
and strength.
Some may have deployed the Biden-BOT
But Obama2008 reined him in.
Or was that part of the Obama2008's strategy
For me, I watch as the new model of politician
brilliant
graceful
eloquent
but also compasionate, empathetic
runs his routines
Maybe in the future, when Obama2008
has defeated
the blatant backstabbers
All new political models
from all manufacturers
will have empathy and compassion circuits come standard.
Brilliance, eloquence, and grace extra.

21 January 2009

Pic: coming back from Pirate Cat radio


Riding back from our friend Matt Holdaway's show on Pirate Cat Radio, my gal Wendi took this photo.

A Good Day

Yesterday, I was working with my friend Bond on my song "Good Days Coming", and I wrote this:

We mixed on Inauguration Day
I wept.
A new mix.
A new President.
A new day.


A day after Inauguration. I'm wondering now if there is an Obama Shopping Channel.
Items for sale to-day:

Cut Glass Bowl on Quartz Base, just like the Obamas' welcoming gift to the White House.

Leather-bound journal and fountain pen, for writing one's memoir. The perfect kiss-off gift.

For him:
Cashmere Overcoat and matching Obama-maroon Cashmere Scarf.

For her:
Cold-weather Chic
Gala Gowns

For the whole family:
Framed picture montage of Cheney being wheeled out of the White House and Bush's walk of shame to the airplane.

Later, Wendi reads to me that jCrew has claimed that their website crashed due to people looking for Obama items. Man, what a free plant. Someone obviously thought of it soon enough to pull the plug on the server while the art department quickly fakes up the images of the products they are, at this very moment, selecting and stocking based on the innagural ceremony and ball photos.

I'm alive with ideas, cartoons, songs, poems. And for once in my life, I actually have a President, and I'm actually proud to be an American.

In short, a Good Day has arrived!

Laramie