John Martyn, whose music I loved for the long slow wonderful crash of trips and still love for reminding me of the long slow wonderful crash of trips I don't take anymore, was born 65 years ago yesterday, I looked him up on Wikipedia. Not only did I miss Richard Younges Tuesday night to see Pere Ubu I would have missed a USMNT-Mexico WCQ to see Richard Younges if Pere Ubu had been another night. I mention this not to bemoan a soccer tribalism I say I want to shake but can't/won't/don't but to acknowledge that nowhere am I more tribally loyal than music and musicians, a point driven home to me in David Thomas' monologue where he said (paraphrasing as I best remember) Here's when I'm supposed to thank you, say how glad I am to be in Washington, tell you that you're my friend. Well you're not before launching into Musicians Are Scum. This is true too: I love hating my musical hates - The Fucking Doors, for instance, people can vouch this has been a lifetime of hating The Fucking Doors - almost as much as I love loving my musical loves, because there is no tribalism without hate.
Link-farming has resumed - I should have no trouble talking Earthgirl into a weekend trip to New York to see this and other stuff, for instance, and Silliman's generous litlinks for another - but I've no more interest, at this moment, in bookkeeping motherfucking Obama's daily motherfuckery on whichever dance floor he's motherfuckering, employing motherfucking Obama, in this instance, as a metonym for general Empire clusterfuckerery. I'm aware an (almost certainly short) implementation of this program will severely curtail the use of motherfucker and clusterfuck and their derivative verbs, adjectives. and adverbs, which will please more than not but will infuriate a few. So: Faulkner and Beckett, for those of you who do; Hurt Hawks; on bad arguments and bad manners; on not reading Bleeding Edge (which I'll start after finishing the two novels I'm in); a sense of homecoming; visiting Rhinog and Snowdonia; does anyone know how I can transfer this domain name to here, because I really like the way it looks and I'm really tired now of the claustrophobic dark green here but I can't change it. I wrote yesterday the Pere Ubu show was exactly what I needed and then descended into a bad mood (work-sparked plus next-day-aches for an old man who doesn't stand for two hours straight whether at a soccer stadium or in a mosh-pit of other old men too). So don't worry, I need love Pere Ubu more than ever, and The Fucking Doors will always be the clustermotherfuckfuckingestly shitty band ever because if I'm not motherfucking the clusterfuck that is the metonym Obama I need hate The Fucking Doors more than ever.
MILTON'S GOD
Nate Klug
Where i-95 meets the Pike,
a ponderous thunderhead flowered;
stewed a minute, then flipped
like a flash card, tattered
edges crinkling in, linings so dark
with excessive bright
that, standing, waiting, at the overpass edge,
the onlooker couldn’t decide
until the end, or even then,
what was revealed and what had been hidden.
