Six Feet Under

Everybody dies and everybody lives
With their struggles and their pleas
Our crystal sorrow summer afternoon
Teaches a child swim attune
The powerful calm of life sways
From in between
And not a rock and a hard place

Musical Life Cookery

When life did not feel right Martha started playing a game she called “musical life cookery”. It was an amazing, imaginative game where she could just about detach from her own life and let lyrics, sounds and all those fictional and non-fictional characters of popular music mingle and meet. That usually made her happy.
Martha liked weird, funny, poignant and occasionally touching connections switching and mixing issues, people, ideas and personalities between songs. Making up a musical movie in her mind allowed her to live other lives for a while until their experiences brought her back home.

One rainy Saturday night, Martha made Frank Zappa and Beth Gibbons accidentally bump into each other in an old funky jazz bar in Louisiana. Frank was just in the middle of a whacky Nixon impression, when Beth nearly ran him over.
"Blimey!", Beth said, not instantly noticing that very strange and weird change that happend as she spilled her drink amidst Frank's attentive audience - Frank and her had mixed personalities: Frank suddenly was Beth, or rather a Beth-like Frank, still retaining some aspects of his but with some of Beth’s personality traits - and vice versa. Frank felt curious. Not only had he never been to Portishead before, but he had also never felt that particular kind of serenity. Strangely inspired he grabbed a guitar and sang

“And the right and the wrong and insane
And the answers they cannot explain
Pulsate from my soul through my brain
in a spanish guitar“ (For a Spanish Guitar by the Byrds)

Beth, in the meantime, had gotten herself a glass of white port with lemon juice and was chatting up the band disrupted by Frank’s singing. When Frank had finished, Beth smiled and cracked a joke about the American guitar she had grabbed. Together with the band she played Egyptian Reggae by Jonathan Richman and even Frank joined in the dancing...

Martha was happy with the world where Frank Zappa and Beth Gibbons would become friends and people were happy with each other’s similarities and differences. Jacques Brel was sitting next to her on the sofa, gently stroking her hair and kissing her forehead. Martha took a sip of her tea. Outside, the rain was pouring down and her good friend Tanita Tikaram waived at her from under a large black umbrella. Distant music trickeled into her room -

“On a midnight voyage,
One that has no ending;
And it's sending me
The things that I need.
Far away from shore—
Further than I've been before;
But I feel the strength of the new sea.
(Of a midnight voyage for just what you need...)
Dreams come and go,
And I sift through them.
Love starts to grow
From the thoughts that I find within them.” (Midnight Voyage by the Mamas and Papas)

Crossroads

It’s not that love is not around
In her nightgown she stands as Jeanne of Arc
Over the rubble of the city she had build deep inside
Life had torn through metal, glass and wood
Tearing it up like an angry storm chasing lost hair
And at the end
I collect scattered hopes, wishes and dreams
In company of her and the wildlife

Love in the Days of the Blunt Pencil

Wilbur had just finished going through the weekly classified and since the kettle was boiling, he got up to make tea. There were still gaps in his tour for tomorrow and he was hoping to make amends by choosing a route through the middle class suburb of Rosemount to possibly pick up leftovers from the odd removal. He had rented the scrap metal truck about a year ago and although things could have been better he was his own boss and getting by modestly.
When he sat down at the kitchen table he noticed the slim figure quietly standing in the doorway. Wilbur was puzzled, for the person must have stood there for some time without him noticing. Looking at her he remembered seeing her passing by in the park a couple of days ago. Or could she possibly have stood next to him in the second hand bookstore downtown? Yes, he remembered briefly remembering her, like an echo of something significant that had happened long before. And then he had found this book that he might as well send his nice Emily for her birthday.
She smiled and as if she was walking right through him, a soft blanket or veil slowly flowed neck-down around his shoulders, just inside his skin.

~

The party had been going on for several hours and the speakers were spilling a mid-90s trip-hop classic over the midsummer night of North Donside Beach. Wilbur was comfortably tucked into his blanket, his face gleaming in the heat of the fire. The mood significantly lifted by various passing bottles of red wine, old friends and new acquaintances were chatting and laughing.
“What is this about mustard-vinegar dressing that makes me cringe?” Sitting next to him and pulling a face Beth Gibbons would have killed for, Alice was playfully tossing around her spinach salad in a plastic vessel. “It’s the vinegar – there’s just too much of it,” Wilbur answered, while Alice shrugged off sour times – “brrrrrh, you can feed that to the seagulls!” - “Crooooaak, croak, crrroooooak,” Wilbur replied flapping his arms up and down and prompting Alice to wittingly shove a spoonful of spinach right into his mouth – “yikes, very sweet of you, but too sour even for a gull on a beach party,” he laughed. “Just like real life,” said Alice and kissed him, “this food is something special.”

That had been the beginning of an extraordinary summer. With the last exam finished, they went on a long trip hitching and hiking across central Europe. In Switzerland, they had found shelter in a farmhouse after a long hike and torrential rains. The old lady of the house was a brilliant story teller and when the rain finally stopped early morning, they had gotten to know the full extend and drama of love, death and horror in the villages’ local history.
In Leipzig, they had made love on the rooftop of an old disused factory building – their ‘castle’, and they would look down on the tiny match-sized subjects below and invent royal decisions to be taken: “That’s Margaret. Her husband had been a former employee of the postal service, but after the reunification he had lost his job. Margaret is frustrated with him, because his mood is nauseating ever since he has been working with the employment agency – what should we do, my Queen?” “We chop his head off, my King.”
And they had found Alfred – a hungry little stray kitten crying for help in a public park in Amsterdam and after organising water, cat-food and a cardboard-box with breathing holes, they were now smuggling him back into Britain.
“I want a baby, Wilbur…” The National Express was hurrying across the pastoral scene of late summer rural England and inside sat Wilbur, painfully trying to imagine what his baby might actually look like and despite his luck at loss at the overall meaning of it all.

They had been madly in love in summer, but by winter their lives were moving at individual paces. What Alice could not stand was his stubborn self-deception. He was like this or like that, he would say, implying a hurtful “you still don’t know me, maybe I’m not good enough for you”. She knew that wasn’t true. She could see beyond individual character traits and had struggled through both the death of her baby brother Marco and her parents’ subsequent break-up: If there was one thing she knew for certain it was real love when she looked at it. It was not something she could ignore and with Wilbur it had been with her all the time – mustard-vinegar dressing and all.
“When freedom was practised in a closed circle, it faded into a dream,” Wilbur then wrote in fridge poetry. At first she took it as decorative whimsy, but the sentence had struck and stuck: Of course, he was the person he was and she loved him for it, but the hidden cruelty with which he would maim her efforts to devise a common future for the two of them hurt her. It was also rather childish, in her opinion.

Wilbur was at odds with himself. Not only was his job with a local accountancy firm meaningless and boring, but he was also struggling not to loose it. Yet, the more stress his boss would unload onto him, the less he would get done. With each apology the strings on the inside of his soul would tie into a tighter knot, impossible to untie. What was needed was a sword, to break the spell just like Alexander had done with the Gordian Knot. Wilbur wanted to quit and look for something else, but when he got home, his mind was oblivious. On top of it all, his father kept calling – “we’re going to Venice on invitation of your sister Francine and her husband Barry. You know he is a solicitor in Hampstead, don’t you? He is such a man of means and connections. Anyway, when will you get a proper job, Wilbur?” What a prison cell his life was! How could Alice honestly expect him to simply break out of this mess without any collateral damage?

One night he had a dream. Alice and he were walking up Gallowgate through stormy weather. Gusts of wind tore through their conversation, distorting phrases out of context and into absurdity. Both of them felt misunderstood and hurt by the other, yet they were trying to drive their respective point home: “You are ---- invincible ---- shit” – “When you --- falter --- each time your father calls.” They were bitterly angry with each other when Wilbur spotted what looked like a Rubik’s Cube just next to the sidewalk. It looked muddy and had obviously been thrown away by some bored kid. Yet, it looked precious, as if it could provide answers to all his questions. “Wait, I need to pick up that thing,” he shouted, but Alice startled at the monstrosity the wind had turned this phrase into and with tears in her eyes darted off into the wind. Wilbur picked up the Cube and tried to follow, but the wind got stronger and stronger, until he could hardly move forward. Having lost sight of Alice, his only hope was the cube: He instantly realised that each of its sides provided the answer to one of his personal struggles. “My life is such a mess,” he thought, “I won’t make sense of any of the other sides, but at least one of them is an image of Alice.” He knew that if he would solve at least that one side, she would come back and maybe they would be able to sort out the rest together. Frantically, he started to turn the bricks, but with each turn less and less bricks actually reminded him of Alice. Then he realised that he didn’t even know what she looked like – and woke up.

A month later, Alice moved down south. She called him from Westmoreland Service Station: “You know, Wilbur, I cannot forget you stopped loving me. Love is a precious living thing and a terrible thing to loose. It is like a plant that needs watering and sunlight, so it can grow. I have taken Alfred with me. Take care of yourself, please do. I really hope that you take care of yourself…” Soon after, Wilbur quit his job.

~

The figure was now sitting across from him. She looked neither young nor old. Her face had friendly and rather androgynous features. She wore a pastel-coloured dress gently flowing around her body and although she looked at him in a kind - yet nonchalant – way, her body generally seemed fragile enough to get bruised by everyday items such as wooden chairs, kitchen sinks or even a blunt pencil.
Wilbur searched around for dangerous objects. Indeed, this was not a place to receive a guest – he fetched a pillow and blanket and put out Turkish delight. His guest, in the meantime, smiled. Who was she? Just when he was about to ask, she spoke:
“I am Love and I’m moving in.”
Wilbur blushed. “There might not be enough room for you and I’m not sure if you can bear with me...”
“Don’t you worry about that – I’m here to stay. As long as you can remember…”
The veil gently settled over a vast expanse of land deep inside Wilbur - where he had expected crevasses and cliffs - and he smiled for the first time that day.

Treasure is everywhere

Record shops are full of treasure. Here is a great pasttime for a rainy afternoon: Find a friend with a sense of humor, go to a second hand record shop and spend ten minutes looking for the worst album cover you can find. You and your friend will most likely end up laughing your heads off. There was a time in the 60s, 70s and 80s when quirky layouters would come up with a vast range of breathtaking adsurdities...
Take a look at Slim Goodbody - can you imagine what his music may sound like? What may the "FREE full-color activity poster" look like and what on earth would it make you do? Discoveries like this can make your day, you can bottle them up for another rainy day, a shitty everyday moment of murkiness lightened up by their vivid memory.

The music video of "I Wanna Love You Tender" by Armi & Danny is another one of those peaches. Not only is the dancing choreography ridiculously awkward and the lyrics totally naft, but I think it is the grammar that adds a pinch of grandeur ("How can I be sure you're not pretender?") to a great artwork. I want Slim Goodbody and Armi & Danny to team up! I want a music industry that cherishes quirky detail and serendipidous crappiness! I want a museum for artists like Slim Goodbody and Armi & Danny!

Courtship Rituals

One of my current toilet readings is Henry Gleitman's introductory psychology reader. Admittedly, it is a steep challenge for a toilet reading, but it features various chapters with more and less interesting well-organised short sections and - there are various amusing and educational images and graphs on every page.
Today I read about peculiar courtship rituals in the animal kingdom and since it is spring I would like to share some of them with you. Maybe we can all learn something from it, refine our human interaction, arrange unions, liberate from hormonal controls and physiological cycles and enjoy the splendors of polygyny, polyandry and monogamy!

First of all, the bower bird, living in Australia and New Guinea. The male bower bird tries to entice the female into a straw hut decorated with all sorts of items, preferrably matching the blue of his feathering.
Appart from traditional decoratory items, such as shells or berries, the modern bower bird likes clothespins, plastic caps and all sorts of strips and shreds of consumer culture. If an object is moved while Mr Bird is out at a collector's fair, he puts it back in its place. Miss Bower walks around, carefully assessing each bower, considering everything from the color coordination to the rarity of the items, including the overall artistic significance and what that might say about Bob Bower. Finally, many females mate with the same male, leaving everybody else in artistic squalor and tornment.

Secondly, the grebe. The average grebe surely knows how to make the good times roll. These water animals engage in a complex water ballet during courtship, stylishly dancing with hydrofoil feet accross the water while exchanging gifts of seaweed. How utterly beautiful, nice and sexy! I think I wanna be a grebe for a sunny springtime afternoon!

Much unlike the dancing fly. During mating time, the male dancing fly secretes a little ball of silk which he gives to the female while he copulates ("Dear, I think the ceeling needs painting"). It may sound nice to bring a gift to a date, but why exactly does he do that? Apparently, in other related species occupied with less precopulatory fuss, the female may decide to eat the male, rather than making precious love. Some male flies have therefore cunningly taken up bringing a small prey animal to their date, to have something up their sleeve if Ms Fly is looking for a fry. She eats, he copulates, everybody wins.
Now that isn't the summit of fly cunning: Other guys decided to wrap the prey in a little bit of silk, in order to make sure Lady McFly is occupied with unwrapping and eating, while he's got a little more time to copulate.
The dancing fly, in turn, is the abomination of that idea - he simply sticks to the wrapping and when poor Florina Flyson is finished unwrapping the ever smaller present ("What could it be?! A grub? A fly? A small fly? A tiny fly? A very, very tiny diamond? Nothing?!!! What the ---") - he is already gone, bragging about his conquest with the other guys at the liquor store. I surely do not want to be a lady dancing fly, not even on a sunny springtime afternoon on Broadway.

Now, not all guys are like that. For that matter, let's turn to one of my favorite animals - the sea horse. When Seamour Stallion and Melanie Mare discover their mutual interest, they court for several days, disregarding any interference of others. They change color (do they blush?) and swim side by side, gently holding tails or gripping the same strand of sea grass. Before dawn they wheel around dancing. Their final courtship dance lasts about eight hours whereas Seamor pumps water through his egg pouch, which opens up to display its emptiness. Then both he and Melanie let go of any anchors and drift snout-to-snout in spirals upwards out of the seagras.
Melanie deposits her eggs in Seamour's pouch, together with a handmade wooly hat and other practical items one needs for a long journey. He then sighs, assures her that everything will be fine, fertilizes the eggs and carries them with him until birth - a pregnant father, as well as a beautiful and indubitably humorous animal: They can look with each eye at different locations at the same time. I wonder if they use that skill during courtship.

Climate Change "Expert" John Coleman

Have you heard of global warming? Are you concerned about it, maybe scared about what kind of world your children will be growing up in, the issues your grandchildren will have to lobby and campaign for?
As with every serious political problem, there are people who can just make it vanish. John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel and a former TV weather presenter is one of those, and apparently he finds an audience, happily listening to his talking magic. Click on the link above and you find an intriguing interview with him. Climate change is "a total myth" in his world and "20 years from now, I will be the one laughing," he says. That may well be an evil, sardonic laugh and I don't want to be anywhere close when he launches it. I wonder why people like him get any airtime at all - I might as well say the earth is revolving around planet Jupiter or Mel Gibson is an unperturbed person with great respect for religious differences...