kronos quartet @ zellerbach 2010.9.26

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

Facebooked

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

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

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

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

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

[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

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.