Exene Cervenka is 56 today. No band has aged worse in my bread-box relative to where it once was in my mwah to where it is now in my meh than X. I affirm the possibility that I was a rube who bought the hype, but once upon a time, young people, X was advertised as, and celebrated as, groundbreaking. I'd guess This Is the New World is one of my 100 most listened to albums ever even if I haven't listened to it end-to-end in a decade. I know Elric doesn't read this shitty blog anymore (I made him mad two, three years ago when we were arguing about Bradley Manning), but when I'd say this before about X not aging well he'd say X always sucked, but they didn't, don't, even I feel like a grandpa when I hear X now and think holyfuck, what was once fresh is now seems was always stale.
Bless Billy Zoom! And actually, this has been, for this old man, refreshingly ungrandpa sounding. Statism and the illusion of choice. Was there ever democracy? History condemns us. The future of the internet becomes something that is done to us. The usefulness of uselessness. Fuck Whole Foods. Shop at MOMs. Saint Benny of Olsen. Dudar to Switzerland. Where is the 21st C Lit? Best European Fiction 2013: In a European short story, anything can happen, whereas in an American short story, it is almost guaranteed that nothing will. I have the 2011 and 2012 editions at my desk. Where is the American novel about the economic collapse?: Is the bourgeois ennui of Jonathan Franzen really the best we can hope for? Novels are dead to me again, I'm going to try short stories as kick-start. Globus Hystericus. Throw me to the coyotes. Visitors. RIP Anselm Hollo. RIP Anselm Hollo. Beckett, for those of you who do. Tugboat. Flashbacks? Who and Mac and B-52 tickets on sale today. My favorite three hours of the week.
NIGHT FEEDING
Muriel Rukeyser
Deeper than sleep but not so deep as death
I lay there dreaming and my magic head
remembered and forgot. On first cry I
remembered and forgot and did believe.
I knew love and I knew evil:
woke to the burning song and the tree burning blind,
despair of our days and the calm milk-giver who
knows sleep, knows growth, the sex of fire and grass,
renewal of all waters and the time of the stars
and the black snake with gold bones.
Black sleeps, gold burns; on second cry I woke
fully and gave to feed and fed on feeding.
Gold seed, green pain, my wizards in the earth
walked through the house, black in the morning dark.
Shadows grew in my veins, my bright belief,
my head of dreams deeper than night and sleep.
Voices of all black animals crying to drink,
cries of all birth arise, simple as we,
found in the leaves, in clouds and dark, in dream,
deep as this hour, ready again to sleep.
