ROW 80 DAY 42 – WEDNESDAY AUGUST 22, 2012 CHECK IN THE GODMOTHER

“Get out!” This was me. Hollering in my sleep. Again. JC told me I yelled this shortly before waking, this morning. The fact that I didn’t wake up with a gun, or a blue moon in my eyes (Sopranos/Alabama3 reference for those playing along at home) made not one whit of difference. I regularly wake up shouting at whoever to get the hell out. This morning, I was some kind of godmother to a drug kingpin, at least that was my general feeling of “it-ness,” or “being-ness.” You know how it is in dreams. You just understand the zeitgeist immediately. So, this kid or little person is sitting on my Victorian couch and proceeds to light up a huge stogie.

I tell him in no uncertain terms that if he’s going to smoke he needs to “Get out!” He snarls back. “If that is so, how come you live across the street from the Bank of England, hmm?” Unimpressed, and clearly on my own turf and backed up by shadowy underworld-type beings of indeterminate strength and parentage, I purr back, “Be that as it may, however,” my voice rises, “you are in MY house, and I SAY, no smoking! Now, GET THE HELL OUT!” and I wake up. Shit.

I have dreams like this about every night. The fact that we do live in a world that is cheek by jowl with so much casual violence and we are rather immersed in it does desensitize us to it. I have written about this before. By the very fact that we are all here now I think also speaks to our own willingness to commit whatever random acts of violence or non-violence it takes to survive. Baldly stated, Survival of the fittest. We mitigate that savagery by the grace we show one another and I truly believe that is also inherent in us as a species, but make no mistake. That grace has to be revered, nurtured, celebrated and exercised constantly. It is easy to kill.

The fact that I underscore this so vehemently is that I have a very vital fear. It is my worst nightmare and probably the only fear that I possess. I suspect I am not the only one that has this dread. We immerse ourselves as a culture in trades of casual atrocities as if we were at a swap meet. How can we have such an outpouring of sympathy and outrage over the slaughter in Aurora, Colorado when this is now being so casually observed daily in Syria? Is state-sanctioned slaughter not just as horrifying, as the DIY kind? Maybe I observe this with a particularly jaundiced eye because I am a true aficionado of this “Batman” franchise by Christopher Nolan. Beautifully rendered, Nolan spot-on captures the ultimate darkness of the Dystopian Gotham. Unfortunately, art clashed violently with the real-world; this is horror writ large. Make no mistake. Nightmares beyond eldritch beget the Old Ones. I Have No Mouth & I MustScream*. We've gone way beyond Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," in my estimation.

Maybe that is my fear. We walk with this every day. The fact that we dabble in this artistically is good. It is healthy. The fact that we feel these impulses, is also good. The instincts are what have propelled us into this age. They continue to propel us to Mars and beyond. The fact that they are also ruinous are something we struggle with and will continue to; it’s a duality. I myself am Catholic. I really am at a loss to explain what I think happens once our corporeal selves die, but I lean towards the astronomical, sub-atomic plane theory; we don’t go away. We transmogrify.

I digress; wildly. I was talking about our violent ways and how comfortable we are as supposedly civilized beings. We may have civilized veneers. We might be soccer dads and moms, paint pictures, cook for a living or program. But underneath us, I think there lurk the hearts of, in some cases, lions or lionesses; in others, demons or imps. Some of us are pure, but ferocious, others of us are black in our intent. In most cases, we know what we intend. Witness the man in Aurora, Colorado and more recently, the white supremacist in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. They knew what they were intending. I will not use their names. By expunging their names, I expunge them from any memory. I erase them. They deserve no less. They are anathema. They are cast out and excommunicate. Let them be damned to eternal darkness.

In so doing, I hope to try and preserve the purity, the spirit of us. The humanity. It’s okay to be lions and lionesses. The lions and lionesses usually act to save the weak, the cubs. That’s what it means to have “the heart of a lion.” I’ve always loved them. Now I know why.

*Harlan Ellison, March 1967

ROW 80 DAY 41 – NORTH OF THE CROSSROADS

Now that we’ve made the deal at the Crossroads with ol’ Scratch himself, I guess it’s never too soon to admit that here is about where we’re most comfortable. By “where” I mean the “the not day side.” By “we’re” I mean, “I.” I’m fully aware that most folks are not all cozy over at “the not day side.” I am. I have never been easy in a world of sunny optimism. Cheery ambience does not soothe me. Sunny choirs of angels singing softly in A or D Major even do not lull me. They pretty much irritate me. At the very least they bore me. Bring on the chaos, or at least a little confusion and some missed connections. Hilarity at the very least should ensue.

“Some people are more comfortable in Hell.” – Tony Almeida to Audrey Heller, about Jack Bauer, Episode 13 of Season 4 of “24.” With those bad ass words ringing in my head last night, I decided to play my favorite game of death and destruction, Runescape. Usually, I’m on the giving end. Tonight, something a little different happened and I can honestly say I should have kept my big trap shut. One of my dimmer friends actually went along with my suggestion of our killing dragons. The problem with our killing dragons, is that this has to be done in the Wilderness, north of the “Wilderness Ditch,” or “Ditch of Stupidity,“ it’s more proper name to be sure. Once you’re north of the DoS, you’re fair game for any other Player to kill. There are Players who do nothing, but KILL other players. WE are not those players. We just wanted to kill dragons.

Right off the bat, we’re in trouble. Why? Because ViolaFury forgot! Forgot! Mind you, her Dragon shield! She is a Dragon Slayer! But! She forgot her Dragon Shield. We should have taken that as an omen and gone home right then. The fact that I did not realize I had forgotten my shield and my anti-fire potions until I was being crisped by this stupid dragon after walking north for ½ an hour did not bode well for either of us Einsteins.

So, being the hero that I am, I turn around and walk south. For ½ an hour… and bam! Get maged by some 11-year old and die. And lose my stuff, Except for my whip and dragon boots and my dragon skirt. Big deal. Hell on a Harley. Derrick gets killed by some doof and loses EVERYTHING. All his dragon skins, which we had gone to kill the beasts for. So much for being comfortable in Hell.

Along the way, we’re jabbering about this idiot game. Derrick lives in Surprise, Arizona, which I’ve actually driven through. It’s like, “Surprise!” Arizona. I still laugh, every time I think about it. Derrick says, “what are you doing, oh yeah, what are you killing?” I say, “lava guys on wheels.”

He says, “Watch out, they scream and they get the big ones to help.” “I know,” I say. I sometimes can’t believe this shit. I try to imagine my folks doing this crap at my age. They might have.

I remember back, when Zezima played. He was fletching an arrow or something in a bank. There were like 157 people bunched around watching him, including me. Unreal. A bunch of 45-year old strangers, pixels, no less, watching the most famous Runescape guy, who’s pixels, make pixels in a make-believe pixel world. Yeah, my folks would totally get behind that. And then probably have a debate over who was the better god, Sara or Zammy, or should Guthix rule? Would you like toasted batwings with your yummy delicious elven ale?

The fact that we, as a civilization have different ways of passing the time, different hobbies, arts, modes of expression now, in no way negates the forms or the instruments we use to express ourselves. For years, I had to listen to the arguments about electronic music being worse than acoustical instruments. At the risk of sounding heretical, I dispute that completely. They are both valid. Without being obvious or patronizing the sounds from a stringed instrument are unique to it. I’ve worked with electronic keyboardists and other synthesizers to know that they have validity and sounds that cannot be reproduced by other instruments.

How we choose to amuse ourselves and expand our horizons has changed as well. Instead of Etch-a-Sketch and cut out dolls, we have the electronic equivalent now. The fact that my father used to build and hang his beloved model airplanes for hours and hours as a grown man tells me he’d probably be in one of those furball flying games now on the PC. He did do rudimentary BETA computer games before he died. He was funnier than the games, believe me. I really went far afield today. You must forgive me. I had a massive PD attack in the midst of this. Boo Hiss. Give me an Etch-a-Sketch; this could be epic!

ROW 80 DAY 40 – MARY AT THE CROSSROADS

I find myself at a juncture artistically, but not ethically, (I hope) as it were. I hesitate to even include mention “artistic” and “myself” in the same sentence. I don’t feel that what I do is artistic in any sense of the word. Not in the sense as I applied it to viola playing. That was true artistry for me. A combination of skill and black arts at times. One never truly masters a non-fretted instrument and I daresay that artists of Clapton’s and Buddy Guy’s stature would argue the same. What we do is exploit our virtues and learn to mask, or better yet, exploit our flaws.

The fact that I can play disgustingly long phrases brings raptures to folks who love Rachmaninoff and Barber. The Katchaturian amphetamine crowd thinks that shit in 1 could be a bit brisker; I’ve learned to think ahead of the beat, at great cost to my sanity. I revel in the robustness of Richard Strauss, and could really do without the anemia of Wolfgang Amadeus, thank you very much. I am a rock and roll, electric  and blues violist. For years, I yearned to be Robert Johnson at the crossroads, then realized I didn’t need to; I had already given my soul to my art.

For anyone who doesn’t know the story, Robert Johnson was a 27 year-old man in 1930’s Louisiana. He played guitar with Son House and some others in these old Juke Joints. He played pretty badly. The story goes that he went off for 6 months and came back and played very well. Supposedly, he made a deal with the Devil at the Crossroads; he sold his soul. He also got poisoned for messing around with some Juke Joint owner’s woman, and died about 2 days later; badly, it’s assumed. I don’t think one dies goodly from poison.

Anyway, I think he just went off and practiced guitar like mad for 6 months and Clarence “Gatemouth”Brown thought so, too. I loved ol’ “Gatemouth.” For those who haven’t heard this gem, he was a Blues guitarist, violinist, and violist from Louisiana. He was also generous with his time, and kind to me. One night, he was playing at Skipper’s Smokehouse out here on Skipper Road in Tampa. I was drunk and got very enthusiastic when he picked up his viola; he got ready to rip into a blues tune. I jumped up on a table and yelled “VIOLAS RULE!” He yelled back, “DON’T HURT YOURSELF!”

I am a middling writer. I yearn to be more. To write as I read. I read Seanan McGuire’s short story, “Sparrow Hill Road” over the weekend and came away slack-jawed. The wedding of her ideas with her prose is nothing less than artful to the point of pain. Her idea of the “daylight” America and the “midnight” Americas that “outnumber them a thousand-fold” is so compelling and simple. It turns back on itself in such an elegant way towards the end of the story. I give nothing away by saying that what starts as a horror story, ends as a profoundly moving and loving tribute to time and the journey itself. Beautiful stuff.

Where I’m going with all of this is I am going to have to do the gut-work. All the shit I did when I first learned to play the viola and when I got my Computer Science degree. Work and write and write and write and sometimes I wonder if I have the patience and fortitude for that. I don’t even know what direction I want to take or what I want to write about half the time. I need to go back and do all the scut work and go to writing classes and network with writers and I have to figure out how to do that. I know I can; am I willing. I think it’s worth it. I just don’t know if I have a worthy voice or something to say.

All I really have is clarity and honesty, and on that note, I have to make an amend. When I wrote

“REQUIESCATIN PACE, WADE” I mentioned that Wade and Ray were alone, and that it was possible that Ray left Wade unattended, when Wade fell. Ray came to our house which was odd by itself, to ask us to a wake for Wade. He mentioned at the time that his (Ray’s) girlfriend Jackie had administered CPR to Wade when he fell. So, I accept this. As I have said before and let me be clear, my mother raised me, and it took me many years to learn to be, as scrupulously honest as I can. I have to be as clear and fair as I wish everyone around me to be. If we all tried, it might be a happier world.