Robert Fripp is sixty-five today. I liked early King Crimson enough to listen contently if you it put on, I loved King Crimson (Version Four) enough to buy and play vinyl, but I didn't follow Fripp after unless it was played for me, which I listen to contently (WFMU plays him often) - I'm told it's proof that I'm not a guitar player that I noticed Belew's gimmicks over Fripp's genius, and who am I to argue. For instance:
My Fripp story : Fripp had a touring workshop called Guitar Craft and a performing ensemble, The League of Crafty Guitarists. A bunch of us (Elric, you were there, yes?) got in Phavid Dillips lime-green VW van and drove to an old yellow mansion in West Virginia, not far, past Harpers Ferry, up near Shepardstown. Phavid, who we thought an excellent guitarist - or at least the best guitarist we smoked dope with regularly - had been invited to sit in a circle of other guitarists with Robert Fripp leading the workshop. Incredibly cool actually. Guests were invited to sit in the circle; guess who refused. Afterward, going out for a smoke, I ran into him on a porch and apologized. He asked me why I didn't sit in the circle. I said I didn't want to. He said, then you've nothing to apologize for, and shook my hand.
Requests solicited! (and sorry, I know the below cuts out early, but still.....)
- Zizek: Un-Shock Doctrine: The Left today faces the difficult task of emphasizing that we are dealing with political economy—that there is nothing “natural” in the present crisis, that the existing global economic system relies on a series of political decisions—while simultaneously acknowledging that, insofar as we remain within the capitalist system, violating its rules will indeed cause economic breakdown, since the system obeys a pseudo-natural logic of its own. So, although we are clearly entering a new phase of enhanced exploitation, facilitated by global market conditions (outsourcing, etc.), we should also bear in mind that this is not the result of an evil plot by capitalists, but an urgency imposed by the functioning of the system itself, always on the brink of financial collapse. For this reason, what is now required is not a moralizing critique of capitalism, but the full re-affirmation of the Idea of communism.
- How can the Left win?
- Once. Twice. Three times.
- The welfare state.
- Krugman's bankruptcy.
- Obama's Midas touch.
- Freedom's just another word for blowing shit up.
- Junk justice.
- Being poor is a crime.
- Offered for you to make your own comment.
- How Fox works.
- Internet Kill Switch and.....
- Huckabee sensibly chooses Fox's money.
- Your Fucking Washington Post.
That's Callie, beloved and missed by this guy, as is Little One below. Send me you cats, alive on earth or alive in mind.
- The indigenous American berserk.
- A rejection letter.
- Everything future.
- Poetry and the White House.
- Every ten years or there's another Henry Green revival. I went for the one twenty years ago, confess I don't get the fuss. Now, Murial Spark, yes.
- Adrienne Rich, who I admire but do not love, is 82 today.
- Canon yadda.
- A follow-up.
- Nothing stays put.
- Stream the new Kate Bush. I can't describe how depressed this makes me. No, literally, I can't. Believe me, I would if I could. More later. Or not.
- Paradise is not so bad. Holyfuck, I love Pollard.
- Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
- Here comes the flood.
- Evening star.
- Breathless.
THE WORLD AS SEEN THROUGH A GLASS OF ICE WATER
Dobby Gibson
There are a billion reasons to look down
into a casket, but just one way to lie in it dead,
which proves there isn't anything
you can think of that isn't here for the living,
who are each alive for a short time
in a very different way.
After she moves out, one tears up grass blades
to watch which way the wind blows.
Just over there, another buried his favorite dog
and now look at that tree!
Would you like to model for me?
says the lousy painter
to every woman who walks within earshot.
Feeling a little dead?
Maybe you spend a weekend
faking a French accent,
maybe you buy an even more expensive stereo
and build a separate and self-sufficient world
inside the garage.
Something happens something happens something happens.
Repetition repetition repetition.
The saddest painting I ever saw
was on the carpet in my friend's hallway
where he tripped one night
carrying a gallon of red.
This was just before the divorce.
Just after he told me he was trapped
inside some idea of himself,
one he swore bore no relation
to what the rest of us had been seeing.
"Nice shirt" has always meant too many things.