Audible Sky

Effing the Ineffable

2011-12-13T18:39:00.000-08:00

Wend Elsen's spoken word piece, Effing the Ineffable, over guitar, loops, and bass by Laramie Crocker. Or, the Headphone mix
Title by Matt Dean.
Song version: 4, Date: 20111216

Bass Heavy

2011-12-04T00:32:00.001-08:00

http://laramiecrocker.com/mp3/BassHeavy.mp3

Home.mp3

2011-11-06T01:14:00.000-07:00

A new song for my lover.

[Listen]
Home

copyright 2011 Laramie Crocker
===================================
Comin' home to you
is like comin' home to me
comin' home to me
I look around
and its you
I see
comin' home to me

so I'm askin you
come home to me
comin' home to you
====================================

On Killy Yorn

2011-11-04T15:08:00.000-07:00

Here's a song I recorded today (after doing it last night in a nice set with Richard Berman and Wend Elsen, at the new open mic at Cafe Yesterday, hosted by Sam Weinstein). I wrote the song in 2000. We continue to sing it all the time, since people request it. So now it's going to open Redemption, the opera, even though it wasn't on Redemption, the studio album. In the opera, it is an excuse to have a Morris dance open the show! Give a listen:
http://laramiecrocker.com/mp3/OnKillyYorn.mp3

Small Truss Houses - Details

2011-08-20T09:02:00.000-07:00

Here are some details for the small truss house I'm building, showing how the lumber overlaps to form simple, strong joints without much cutting. Click on pictures to see them full-size.

I also mitered the corners of the overhanging lower truss chords, for a little decoration. You can make them even more decorative with carving, stencils, etc.

Small Truss Houses

2011-08-10T00:55:00.000-07:00

My new book (part Walden, part Sears-Robuck house catalog) is an open-source pile of drawings, plans, and models, for designing and building small houses using hand-built trusses from standard, dimensional lumber.

Here's the new cover design (click to see full image).

Please read more in the previous post, A Shack of One's Own.

Small Truss Houses are houses based on small trusses, or small versions of Truss-Houses. This book details five such house designs, with plans and drawings.

Modern, factory-built and site-built houses are typically "stick-built" (also called "stick-framed") and are often built as "California Construction" or "Platform Framed," so that each layer or storey goes on like layers of a wedding cake: a floor, a wall, a floor, a wall, ... a ceiling, a roof.

A Truss House, however, is built around a truss frame, so that traditional elements of stick framing are instead integral to the trusses themselves, and each storey is contained in a truss frame. "Balloon Framing" also ties the floor and ceiling into a kind of truss. In a Truss House, each truss contains boards that function as floor, wall, ceiling, and roof.

The designs in this volume are all variations on a particularly elegant and strong kind of truss known as a "scissor truss." Julia Morgan, Bernard Maybeck, and the brothers Greene and Greene all used scissor trusses at some point in their best-loved Craftsman designs.

The designs in this series all use dimensional lumber, which is wood that you can buy at any good lumber yard, and will be the most standard and cheaply available lumber.

In the book, I take you through the simple steps needed to buy standard lumber, assemble it yourself with simple tools, and build inexpensive, strong, lightweight structures for living. I present complete, original designs with simple, elegant line renderings. Along the way, I'll cover engineering, efficiency, and personal independence. Independence from bankers, independence from factory-built homes. The designs are all open-source--you can build one following a plan exactly, or read how to extend the designs in the book yourself, to create unique, personal buildings based on the same structural principles and construction methods.

The print version will include building plans, text, and photos of completed buildings. The open source online version will include the sketchup models.

A Shack of One's Own

2011-08-01T18:32:00.000-07:00

I'm building a shack in the woods in Vermont. I used Google Sketchup to mock up the frame and figure out the angles and dimensions. Plus hours and hours with the Orbit tool. I'm a carpenter, so I actually mitered the intersections, but I designed the whole thing to be built with uncut, dimensional lumber readily available in standard lengths with minimal waste, tall ceiling, good snow load capacity, and snow shedding dimensions.

Including buying a new nail gun, and a 500 foot spool of #8 wire to get power to the shack, and hiring a laborer for one day, the house has cost 1500 $US to date, including foundation, frame, floor ply, wall ply, and galvanized roofing, but nothing else. Labor up to the point in the photos has been 3 days of a journey level carpenter, plus 1 apprentice carpenter for 1 day, plus two apprentices for 3 days.

After the photos, add 4 hours of journeyman carpenter to install roof purlins, then 2 hours of journeyman and 2 hours with two apprentices to install 6 sheets of galvanized roofing panels, which are 16' long and 32" wide. The roofing panels went up easily, with the ladder going up inside the building, poking through the trusses, which was very stable and secure. The last roofing sheet had to be screwed on with the ladder outside the building, which is a bit sketchy as the peak of the roof is about 17' off the ground. If you aren't comfortable on ladders, you'd want to spend the extra time to set up some scaffolding.

I've included photos of the shack. The sketchup model is here: LaramieCrocker.com/download/truss+ply.skp

( You should be able to view it with the freely available google sketchup program: http://sketchup.google.com/ )

Here are some movies from my desktop showing the model from all sides.

Truss Shack (full-size)
Truss Shack (medium)
Truss Shack (small)

Here we are air-nailing the trusses on the platform, and standing them up, on-site.

Cast of characters: Laramie Crocker, Lukas Holst, Jordy Holst, Greg Goedewaagen.

9 Days Out (album: The Death of Finbar McGrath)

2011-07-10T19:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a demo recording of 9 Days Out, from the upcoming "The Death of Finbar McGrath". This version has me on piano and vocals, and the lovely Wend Elsen on vocals, and a very cute piano melody in the middle somewhere.

http://laramiecrocker.com/mp3/9DaysOut.mp3

Here in My Garden

2011-05-23T01:51:00.000-07:00

A demo mix of "Here in My Garden" from "The Death of Finbar McGrath".

Dream Heavy - practice mix

2011-04-02T05:00:00.000-07:00

Yo, here's a track of me playing Dream Heavy. This is a demo practice mix for those who want to come sing along at Cowboy Lounge. You can sing all night, but this track gives you a heads up on this piece, because it is simple yet twisted. This track has guitar+vocal, plus two additional vocal overdubs. It is really a bass-drum-guitar driven groove, but this demo just shows the vocal part, with the guitar. But there's huge sing-along fun, so there's something for everyone. Just give it a listen, and find a line that you like, and then join in. This is a short mix, but we often do it as an extended jam since it's an infectious beat, and it's such a fun looping structure.

http://laramiecrocker.com/mp3/DreamHeavy-07.mp3

And we'll want to do some songs you lead or bring.

So sing it, and bring it!

CowboyLounge.us

Sang-along with Family Crest at Fox Theater, Oakland

2011-04-02T03:16:00.000-07:00

Still kinda high from singing with the Family Crest, in a secret audience-side choir, packing the audience with sing-alongs who knew the parts. Absolutely Egytian, Arabian, Tibetan, and a little bit bhudda, the Fox Theater in Oakland is a pre-war extravaganza, you feel like you are flying, underground, in a cabriolet spaceship, in a beautiful subterranean garden. Big fun, big feel-good, big sound.

So excited that I'm now recording DreamHeavy on crappy GarageBand, but just testing out my new macbookpro. Anyway, reminds me that next week at Cowboy Lounge, I'm going to do Dream Heavy, and singers should listen for a part in the mp3:

DreamHeavy-07.mp3

Rainy Day Lover

2011-03-21T12:22:00.000-07:00

Here's a new song. I wrote it one rainy day this last Winter, and recorded it, and sent it to my lover to share the feeling of being away from her in the drip of Berkeley. Since then, I've worked on the verses and lyrics and turned it into a full song, but this first recording was done in a few hours just to capture that mood.

Rainy Day Lover (partial demo)

Here are the lyrics for the full song form:

And I hear
music
music for a rainy day
music for a rainy day
a rainy day love

and I hear music
in the street
in the tyres
in the rain
in the low flying airplanes
I hear

music for a rainy day
music for a rainy day

and I hear music
in the sky
in the trees
in the birds
in the leaves
on the ground
in the rain
in the arms of an oak tree
with you
my rainy day love

music for a rainy day
music for a rainy day

rainy day love
a rainy day lover

music for a rainy day
music for a rainy day

Naked: The Songwriting Process

2011-03-21T09:34:00.000-07:00

I thought it would be interesting to share the steps of creating a new song. I have many different ways I approach a new song. Described below is my process for a new song, "It's Time."

But first, a bit more about process. Some songs are lyric-driven; some are melody-driven; some by harmony. On another level, some come from a musical perspective (e.g. I'm interested in a groove, harmony, or melody working together), and some from an emotional place. Songwriting for me seems to be the most effective way to express emotions, both for getting them up and out of my body, and for sharing them with people. So even though I may be working with sounds, many times those sounds come from an emotion or feeling. I think this is what makes songwriting and singing so much more effective for me than cartooning, writing, or talking.

Melody-driven songs for me come from singing a line and playing with it. I like melodies that weave around and surprise, so I will modify my lines with intervalic jumps and mode changes until a nice melody emerges, usually while walking around.

Harmony-driven songs will come from two sources: 1) finding some nice changes on the guitar or piano, and then freestyle singing over the changes; 2) singing harmonies to melodies, before the changes are implied.

If the vocal has emerged as driving, the fun begins when I try to fit chords to the harmonies using Jazz harmony theory, and a bit of prankiness.

And, of course, the groove has to be there. For me, it comes while working the chords or bass lines, and is part and parcel of the noodling and playing. Workshopping the song with other players, or rolling out an unfinished song at a jam is my favorite process for refining the groove.

The lyric driven ones can come from an idea or emotional state, and I put myself into a trance and start pouring out lyrics either into a recorder, or pen-and-paper. O Youth [listen] was written with a broken hand while on Oxycodone--the whole lyric came out in one stream, in as fast as I could write it with my gimpy hand.

Mary [listen] was written from both directions. I was driving back and forth between Vermont and Brooklyn, and I kept tossing the lyrics around in my head. During the same time, I was working on two different guitar bits, in different keys. Guitar parts tend to sound right in only one spot on the neck, based on how the open strings sound for each chord voicing. So there was this spanish bit, with a gypsy change in open Em, Am, C, and B7, and then another bit, this pop song going between Gmaj7 and E. Normally, that is not a traditional change, because if you want to stay modal, Em is the relative minor to G, so to change you go to some other key. But E to Gmaj7 sounds great, and I didn't know what I'd do with it, but I'd sit there for half an hour just playing the changes and looking for more chords in the sequence. Then one day, fresh back in Vermont, fresh from bustle-y New York, alone with my guitar in the cavernous living room, coming up with fresh lyrics for the E/Gmaj7 part, I realized that the two musical sections matched the two word pieces--one angry, one hopeful--and I tried to glue the two sections together, even though the modes were weird together. Then I flushed out the lyrics by walking around the house and gardens, guitar strapped on, playing the song about fifty times, running back into the house to find the pencil and paper lying on the kitchen counter to scribble down the latest lyric. Somehow it worked.

Here, now, is an unpublished, unfinished song, in the very first stages. Song titles usually come last, but for now this one is named for its hook: "It's Time." I now have the luxury of an Android X, with the wonderful apps Rehearsal Assistant and FourTracks Lite, which let me record while walking down the street, siting in the kitchen, whatever. So I've uploaded the first takes of coming up with a new song.

These are in the order that I recorded them, all within about half an hour of each other, so you can hear, plainly, the raw process.

It's Time (worshiping)

It's Time (intro)

It's Time

It's Time (guitar section)

The next step I took with this song was to walk around and sing the hook over and over, looking for more lyrics to pop into my head. Then I fired up FourTracks Lite on the phone, and did a freestyle recording, trying some harmonies.

It's Time (harmony)

The next step will be to write more lyrics. This song is heavily based in an emotion, an idea, a hope of transitioning from a stuck place in life to another place, with a feeling of waking up from a dream, somehow hoping that the waking life will be as joyful as the dream life, without nightmares, and relying on something greater than myself for strength, through some kind of faith. Though ultimately, faith must be in ourselves.

This will involve, if past songs are any indication, sitting down in my yard or kitchen, and recording or writing freestyle until some tasty words come out, and riff on those. If I'm stuck or coming up with something trite, I use word association to break out and get into some kind of flow. Then I'll work those with the music some more, guitar in hand. Then, I'll fire up ProTools and start laying down tracks and harmonies and see what else happens.

Eventually, this song is going to need some kind of change, transition, or bridge. Hopefully that will come out of monkeying around. I tend not to use any kind of classical, Tin Pan Alley, Nashville, or any other process, because I don't like to write songs that sound like they followed a formula. My only real trick here is to play around with different keys on the guitar, or piano, or vocal freestyle until something fresh-sounding pops out. To help in this process, I try to transition to the most "out" mode I can go to from the current mode and see what works while being distinctive. On the guitar or piano, this can sometimes sound like random jumps, which is what they are, until I hear something fun.

Stay tuned for later posts on this song as it develops.

kronos quartet @ zellerbach 2010.9.26

2010-09-26T14:37:00.000-07:00

post-coital latte
sipping
tripping
zellerbach dipping
kronos
twitching
like a katydid

Facebooked

2010-05-15T16:32:00.000-07:00

billg
wants to be
the gatekeeper
grabbing his keep

Larry Elison
the robinhood
turned highwayman

There is no emperor
no king
but we all ho our digital lives
to the grand master pimp google

Selling ourselves
pimped
web 2.0
ad slaves
I am content
I am owned
I am a number
bought and sold
data-mined
face-booked

Hot Whole to Go

2010-05-15T16:29:00.000-07:00

I'm tryin to be a hippie
on my patch of ground in Berkeley
But the patch under my teepee
just went to 1.2
million dollars
1.2 million dollars

Now I'm sortin out my garbage
in little eco-baggies
recycling, strolling, drinkin coffee
eatin cheezeboard pizza too
million dollars
1.2 million dollars

I'm tryin to be a hippie
livin in North Berkeley
3 cheese kalamata basil
3 cheese kalamata basil
and a hot half to go
no
make mine
a hot whole to go

But I'm losin my redneck cred
(o he's losin his redneck cred)
yes I'm losin my redneck cred
livin here on brioche bread
havin cappuccino in bed
I'm going back to da land instead...

The Sun God

2010-05-15T16:24:00.000-07:00

Is it better to see the works
of the Creator
or the Creator itself?

Lift your eyes to the Sun
but look ye not into the Sun
you cannot but stare at the Creator
and not go blind

The silver white sun-god
in the billowing clouds
or the virgin white clematis
with dew-yellow lips
she glows in fog
but she kisses in sunshine

Inquisition

2010-04-21T16:28:00.001-07:00

Prompt: "Write about something from the past that continues to haunt, shame, or mortify."

I am standing at the top of the basement staircase.

I don't know how old I am, but there is a yellowed, plastic rotary phone hanging on our kitchen wall with a long spiral cord that is always twisted, and is fun to untwist, like Sisyphus, and there is real linoleum on the floor, not the crappy, shiny vinyl Armstrong tile that a future roomer will convince my mom to install after my dad moves out and my mom rents out every room but mine and sleeps in her red Volkswagen camper van in the carport. Which means I'm somewhere between 6 and 9 years old. Coming up the stairs are my older sister, Martha, and my mom. One holds incriminating evidence; both look concerned, with the same look that my dad and my step-mother will use on me years later when it is discovered that my sister has given me LSD twice. In the stairwell, my sister begins the interrogation. My sister, three years older than me, puts on her best adult voice.

"We found this paper, which is in your handwriting, wherein you describe this wonderful project and idea that you want to implement. But since this paper has come to our attention, we noticed that you have done nothing on this project, and, in fact, have hidden this paper, or worse, neglected it, in amongst mom's sheet music and used paper stacks."

My mother: "Yes..." followed by smarmy, overly concerned, falsely sympathetic grimacing.

My sister: "Ahem. Yes. And we are concerned that this pattern could negatively affect your future. This inability to complete projects after you've started them."

I have walked the streets of Calcutta, India, and seen poverty. I have peed in closets in seedy hotels in the Tenderloin in San Francisco. And here, in Berkeley, I have met crazy people, hippies, and dropouts. But this new information puts the fear of future failure in me where before I had only envisioned a life of singing, gardening, riding bicycles, building things, and possibly flying to the moon. My mother, always energetic, always laughing at the gods, and always dragging me with her into the AV room at the elementary school around the corner so that I could crank the handle on the mimeograph machine to spit out sweet, acrid, chemical smelly, blue printed pages of "handouts", programs, song sheets, flash cards and other devices of a music teacher, and always at the last minute, chimes in:

"We're concerned about your future. Why? Why did you write this? Don't you want to work on it any more?"

They read the paper to me. It is foggily familiar. I wrote it. Having dreamt up an idea, and written about it, I have lost interest in it. The paper still wags its incrimination at me from my sister's hand. I want to disappear down the stairs, the rough, furry timbered stairs, with painted treads, and a large, plank desk built in at the landing and knotty pine shelves that my dad built for my mother so she could have an "office" where she kept her extra sheet music (piles of Für Elise and Bach minuets for her piano students) mixed in with her "handouts," some active, and some relics from student sing-alongs and tie-dye parties. I love this stairwell. It is fun to climb, to lounge, to converse on. It is possibility. It is descent into the true heart of the house. Past my mom's music-and-activism mimeograph marketing collection, is the basement with exposed timbers, secret passages, a laundry chute, my brother's photography darkroom with its mysterious folded entrance that excludes all light even though there is no door to close, and my dad's woodshop where I make musical instruments of my own invention, and help build parts from exotic woods for my dad's boat. But I can't descend into the chthonic, safe, earthy, woody and warm world, because the Hydra, one claw on my paper dream, and one snakey eye on my dreamy, powerless mother, is blocking the path of Hephaestus.

To Web 2.0 or Not To

2010-04-08T14:53:00.000-07:00

Do you want to be connected to the super-connected-super-computer we are building?

YES!

Do you want to be connected to this asinine system we are building that will be louder, grimier, and stickier than the ugliest underground strip mall food court you have ever been to
all in pink neon green grow-lit
advertisers and barkers rampaging through the tables
whores and pickpockets pillaging in the aisles
and most people walk around with black cloaks over their heads and a brave many ask every passing soul to be their friends.

Um,... NO.

This is the question of the web phone.

We are all Dick Tracy now.

In the Golden Loop

2010-03-05T00:13:00.000-08:00

[audio with slide guitar: In the Golden Loop]

I am a visitor from another planet
That is why
all the obsession in Sci Fi
or why
at 5
I claimed to be from Venus
Implanted in my mother's womb
by superior alien technology

I am DNA, sentient, self-aware, mirror-gazing

I am millions of years old
I am information, stored in DNA, living, flowering
for the moment,
as the Buddha said
It is like a great, lone sea turtle
sticking his head through a single golden loop

But I am here, in the Golden Loop,
and it beats being dead,
and it is better than being non-sentient information
so
we get organized
build a body
get that body to reproduce
and live on in the information.

I look good -- it's good to see my body
My Self is a million years old
and I like these eyes.

Introducing the new Mac tablet: iDrop

2010-02-15T16:19:00.000-08:00

Cartoon forthcoming. For now, here's the screenplay:

Walking down the street we see a MAN carrying the iDrop.

MAN: Yes, Bob, you can see that I'm strolling the street with my new... OOOPS

MAN trips over own feet, and drops iDrop. CUT to footage of atom bomb.

Another man, TRENDOID, walks down the street and into a swanky street cafe. He is mobbed by ATTRACTIVE WOMEN.

TRENDOID: Hey, girls, easy there!

TRENDOID pulls out his iDrop and ATTRACTIVE WOMEN, and peering MEN, gawk. Before he can speak, a waiter bumps into TRENDOID and the iDrop falls. We do not see impact.

Silence into CUT to close-up of lone tear falling from sexy face.

CUT to BLACK. Sound of deep rumble, as a falling large object down a bottomless, bumpy pit.

CUT to very black and shiny scene in wet street. TRENDOID is alone, sitting on a stoop. Sound of bottomless pit continues.

Happier Days

2009-11-13T18:16:00.001-08:00

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

Leaf Season Sunset

2009-10-19T00:16:00.000-07:00

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

On Stairbuilding

2009-10-18T21:44:00.000-07:00

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

Infinity in the Vicinity

2009-06-26T08:08:00.000-07:00

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

Should Koan

2009-05-31T09:22:00.001-07:00

Should there by Shoulds?

4 Kinds Perfect

2009-05-28T18:53:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-28T18:51:00.000-07:00

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

In my garden (a redneck haiku)

2009-04-15T08:38:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-15T08:36:00.000-07:00

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

Thank You Howard

2009-02-09T09:49:00.000-08:00

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.

The New Model Politican: Obama2008

2009-01-22T11:53:00.000-08:00

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.

Pic: coming back from Pirate Cat radio

2009-01-21T15:03:00.000-08:00

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

A Good Day

2009-01-21T11:54:00.000-08:00

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