IF YOU ARE GOING TO GET DRUNK AND RAISE HELL GET OUT NOW
I wish I’d taken a picture. This was before the days of ubiquitous cameras in cell phones and artificial limbs. Later that day I did see great swine of men stand in the river and pee openly, after having consumed, no doubt, many cans of beer. In fact I saw coolers afloat near them holding beer. I don’t mean swine pejoratively — that’s what the guys looked like. I’m OK with swine.
I’m now in the land of North Carolina, where I saw this, but far from that locale. I’m at Wrightsville Beach in the southeasternmost corner of the state, and I am tired. This afternoon I walked from a bookstore in downtown Wilmington to a record store nearby, a walk of several blocks, and I passed a man who asked me for money, which I gave him. He said, “You must be a hippie.” I agreed, and privately, I was amused, because I feel that I’m increasingly called this in recent months. My friend Shane often calls me a hippie. A month or so ago my friend Chris also called me a hippie — not just that, a “true hippie.” And then this guy. Well, I figure I must be doing something right, because I am proud to be called one — though I’d never call myself one. (It doesn’t hurt that I have a bumper sticker on my car that says, “I Would Fight For Hippie Chicks” — a line from a Camper Van Beethoven song, and a Camper Van Beethoven-made bumper sticker.)
The man I gave money to started telling me about how he and his girlfriend were train hoppers and had gotten stranded in Wilmington, and he couldn’t find work, and his backpack was stolen at a shelter, and at least one of his children had died under circumstances I didn’t quite understand, and his former wife was no longer his wife for reasons I also didn’t quite follow, but he would never get married again (for which I don’t blame him, I’m not sure I ever want to be married again, either). It was one of those one-sided conversations that seemed to have the potential to go on for a very long time, and I felt bad for not having it in me to be more empathetic at the time, but I wasn’t sure how long I wanted to stand there and listen.
Eventually I broke off and went to the record store, where I noticed that Yo La Tengo has a new album out under the name of Condo Fucks, which I’m curious to hear. And I bought a few albums: Junior Murvin’s Police and Thieves; a Roland Kirk two-fer featuring Elvin Jones and Jaki Byard on one of the two-fers, so I figured it was probably a pretty safe bet although I don’t know any Roland Kirk; and the African Scream Contest compilation, about which I’ve heard enough good things that I figured it would be worth it although it was an import and a bit pricy. Nicely packaged. Oh, buying music, in concrete tangible form no less — seems so outmoded, maybe even unnecessary. But I really do have issues with downloading music and not paying for it. It seems like stealing, and I try not to steal because I try to follow the Buddhist precepts — at least the ones that are easier to follow. (That one about intoxicants I find a bit more challenging.) And really it is easy for me not to acquire music, because I already have so damn much I’m hardly acquainted with. Let us just start with the vast output of John Coltrane, or Miles Davis, which I already have, and how woefully underacquainted I am with it. Add to that Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations, Yo-Yo Ma’s Bach cello suites, the hundreds of tracks iTunes tells me I have yet to listen to, and so on and so forth — do I really need more music? And I already feel obligated to listen to so much of it just to put together a radio show of any kind of coherence and quality every week. So yes, I don’t need to download music gratis to have a good time.
After the record store I went to the Cape Fear Beer and Wine store and discovered some wonderful things, such as the Lagunitas Undercover beer on cask, and the Centennial Double Trouble on tap, and a jukebox devoted entirely to punk rock, and a girl behind the bar who was wearing a roller derby shirt and knew her beer backwards and forwards. And a foosball table that kept Louisa entertained, although I mostly beat her. (She got better when we determined that she was spinning the dudes the wrong way half the time.)
Those are my adventures in consumption, and being called a hippie, and I should go to sleep now. But I am feeling good. At peace in the world, and with my general lack of sense of what exactly it is I’m doing with my life. Is knowing what one is doing with one’s life an essential part of feeling with it? Because I totally don’t have that, and I’m not sure whether I ought to be trying harder to grope my way towards it, or if I should just let go and not care. These days I’m not real big on trying too hard for anything that doesn’t come naturally.
]]>which tonight I was thinking would be stuff like Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk. I should be clear that I was not suggesting
that I would be writing the music myself because I haven’t done that before but maybe I could.
Whatever the case then I could play it on my radio show enjoyed by all of 5 insomniacs and one guy who sounds really out there.
(though if you wanted to hear it you could get the podcast at www.mikejanssen.net/podcasts/wpfwshow.xml)
and maybe we’d distribute it more widely somehow.
I LOVED THE CRUISE and also speed levitch’s part in Waking Life. “On really romantic nights of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMsk-lzppNg&feature=related
watching that made me feel so good just now.
]]>Brandon Wu took some pictures and wrote about his impressions here. My old Sony boombox that I used to play my tape is in the last picture on that blog post. He also caught a pic of Louisa on top of a bunch of slabs.
Layne e-mailed the participants and asked them to share their methods and impressions. Here’s what I said in response.
]]>Hi Layne — thanks for organizing the event yesterday. I really enjoyed taking it all in, and my daughter liked climbing around the rocks.
I made my recording using a handheld cassette recorder and an omnidirectional mic. I considered using my laptop for sound editing but decided in favor of going analog. The prompt made me think about the W&OD bike path, which I happen to live next to and which combines both natural and manmade elements in various states of construction or decay. I often walk along the path and appreciate the sights and sounds. So I walked along it one day paying special attention to what I heard along the way. Then I went out another time with the recorder, recording pretty much at random sounds such as birds chirping, water running and people talking as they passed by me. It was difficult to do this seamlessly, and my sounds ended up being rather quiet due to my haphazard approach.
I liked wandering through the ruin, dazed by the cacophony that expanded and evolved with time as more people arrived, watching everyone and wondering who made what sounds, and why and how… at one point I crawled down into a well to rescue a tape player that had fallen, the batteries had popped out and the tape fallen out. I fixed it and put it on a nearby rock. My good deed for the day, I guess. It was funny how every tape was personal yet when they were all put together and separated from their creators, it became more impersonal, our sounds spooling independently of us, and were they ever “our” sounds in the first place? Mine weren’t because they were recorded at random, made by birds and water and other people. What about everyone else’s?
And I thought about how we all came together to make this and thought about what else we could or should do together, in DC, to make it a more imaginatively stimulating and enriching place to live and love. Or maybe I’m thinking more about that now than I was yesterday.
What do you think about how it went?