Obsidian Noise

I watched a friend perform some jazz standards last night. For the first 5 minutes it was just me in there, sitting alone at a side table in the near dark. I had a book with me, but it was too dark to really look at it.

“Drink sir?”

No thanks, I’m here to see my friend sing.

Besides, I need to be searingly, brutally clean in the blood for the weekend’s merriment.

“OK but would you mind having something, there’s a drink-per-set expectation.”

That was probably the friendliest plea I’d heard in a performance bar. I’ll take a lime club soda, thanks.

My friend and her band emerged after quite some time and soon the place had 10-12 patrons, mostly dressed for the occasion, which was different than me, sitting in ripped jeans and flip flops. At least I had a collar shirt on.

The set was killer. Both of those guys I’ve known for many years, since about 2002. They’re both German, both products of the Berklee jazz program in Boston. She’s the ex girlfriend of a good friend from high school who’s now a hard rocker on tour on the west coast. When I used to hang out with them all, and particularly over one summer, we’d consume dangerous levels of hard alcohol and hit the streets, bars and music venues of Boston. We’d be out until sunrise and cure ourselves with bloody mary’s the next day. I’d crash at their place on those days, and I quickly started a relationship with their third roommate, a jazz pianist who’s father was a professor of jazz piano at Berklee. It was great while it lasted, but hard to explain my work at the time. I was frequently not there, for months at a time. I think we were pretty much together for that one summer, and after that I feel like I was everywhere but there. I saw her one other time on a visit home about two years later.

Every time I see my friend sing, I get flooded with memories of that time. A perfect time– and the perfect duration. A single summer of sunrise bliss, and then on to real life for me, and I enjoy that choice, still.

Uh Oh.

Very bad timing for a cold.

The problem with any illness leading up to a sporting event is that the athlete is essentially prohibited from medicating. Advil, Uprin and Motrin will give you a false positive. Ibuprofin can get you a false positive for marijuana. Any of the nasal sprays– Dristan, Vicks, Sudafed. Nyquil will get you a positive for Methodrone for 2-3 days afterwards.

Anyway. I’m not bad, just coughing and congested, maybe from running in the rain  a few days ago. NYC street filth makes it tough. Running in the rain in the woods is one of the purest, healthiest things a person can do. But here, you end up breathing the vapor of whatever’s been tossed, hocked, shat, smeared, dropped, flung or leaked.

I’ll sleep for 12 hours tonight and hope for the best.

Right now I’m coughing about every 10 minutes.

West by Friday for a thing. They had better be ready because I’m riled and ripped. I’m so eager to get in there that you’d think there was a huge purse or something. But there isn’t. There’s never been. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be: for the interest and the love. The aftermath is in the memory, and despite the other face, it’s always you against you.

Yesterday I learned something that was immediately life-changing. Not  in a health or spiritual sense, but something much subtler, having to do with merely knowing the truth about this thing, and how much I’ll be thinking about it now that I know what I know. What I’m about to tell you is one of those things that I will never forget and will probably tell everyone I know, and possibly even people I don’t know.

Ready?

Space…

…like outer space, the void between all planets and stars…

Yeah, go on…

HAS A SCENT.

But what kind of scent?

THE FUCKING SCENT OF SPACE.

A. Burnt steak

B. Gunpowder

It clings to everything that is exposed to open space. Astronaut suits acquire the odor after the first space walk and it never goes away. The bays on the space station and shuttles all have it, as does every tool and piece of equipment brought inside after being in open space. Astronauts say you smell it after the first hatch opening, and you’ll never forget it. Some say it’s sweet, some say acrid. All agree it’s a combination of burnt steak and gunpowder, some have added that it hints of “arc welding fumes” and ozone.

It never goes away.

The fucking scent of space.

The reason this is more interesting than you might immediately realize is that soon, in the next couple of generations, this scent will be familiar to everyone. As we start to terraform and colonize our solar system and beyond, and as our human lives shift from terrestrial to space travel, the smell of space will be with us, on us, in us. What we are just now smelling for the first time will be the dominant scent of our future human lives.

The fucking scent of space.

It’s the smell of dying stars and it’s everywhere in the universe. The only reason we don’t smell it is because of our atmosphere. But anything that spends any time between planets or in orbit around them will acquire this smell, the smell of the universe, the smell of stars.

Your life will never be the same now. You’re welcome.

I was on guide duty over the weekend. A friend called and asked if I had any recommendations for places to stay in NYC because her middle school classmate from their hometown in China was in the US for the first time. He had come for a dance program in Arkansas, and he wanted to quickly see DC and NYC before returning home. He had a friend who was in DC so he was able to stay there with her, and I was happy to have the two of them come up and stay at my place while exploring my city.

The dancer’s name was Louis and he spoke with a familiar Chinglish lisp that all gay Chinese men seem to have. I wonder how much of that sound is learned and how much is just the tone of gayness.

I wonder how offensive what I just said might be.

They wanted to get Lion King tickets for that night and, at $240 each, I was definitely not interested. But after walking around the entire city with them for virtually the entire day, I took them to the venue in time for the show and gave them directions for how to get back to my place afterwards. No prob.

Sunday was a repeat minus the show. It was great to walk and explore this city again. I hadn’t really gone out on foot through all the neighborhoods in a while. Having visitors can be a great motivator for that. There are many beautiful women here, and in the summer time they seem to compete with each other for the ideal balance of taste and hotness. Don’t want to look whorish by letting it all get out there into the eyes and dick-brains of men, but do want people to know when you’ve got a 10 body. There were lots of midriffs, and short shorts and bouncing boobs around.  Disappointingly, I found myself in simple, shallow pain throughout the day. Sometimes you just want to have every hot chick you see. But then you convince yourself of how lame that would be.

It’s wiser, safer, better to let it build up for the right one. You know, the path of the non-douchebag.

By the time I got home on Sunday night, my legs were a little tired, my back a little stiff, my face a little pink from the sun, my feet a little dirty from the flip flopping, and my mood very good. I like hosting people here. I like seeing a nervous traveler in NYC for the first time begin to relax enough to really take it all in.

I guess I do what I hope people would do for me when i’m traveling far away from home.

I’ve never not been a little freaked out by them. Please don’t do that. Normal eyebrows will always look better than eyebrows drawn on with a pen.

Also, choosing to draw lines on your head to represent a naturally occurring physical feature that you’ve decided to do away with makes you a total weirdo.

What an utterly bizarre place we live in.

How do you melt a high-powered tube amp? Feed it high voltage drone metal from a detuned baritone Les Paul at high volume for two hours in a closed-door room. Make it 90 degrees out, possibly 92 in, one fan only. Create a puddle under yourself as you transfer what you have to the amp, the Blackheart, that’s how you know you’re getting somewhere good, by the millimeters of sweat gathering around your territory. Use a towel for your hands and Gibson’s neck and get the distortion gritty enough to shake a lamp. Find a tone that makes your chest pulsate, find a tightness that you can see in the air. Then let it go slow.

B, B#, B, F#, B. Keep it down there, somewhere.

Eventually the Blackheart will give its last crunch and crackle to you. Its last fuzz and pop will go to your axe, and its little red light will let you know when it’s over, when the tube slowly cools off for the last time.

Killed by high voltage guitar tone. The way it’s supposed to be.

I wrote for four hours last night and accidentally drank 5 blueberry-infused beers (lovely) and was suddenly too loaded to continue. Getting 5 beers deep led to way-past-my-bedtime Netflix hopping and this morning I’m uncomfortably one step behind everything. This rarely happens–getting wasted– especially in the middle of an intense training cycle. But nevertheless, here I am, dehydrated and slow, getting prepared for what will probably be shitty training over my lunch break.

To help myself out I grabbed a coffee from a local place. As I walked back onto campus I started chatting with the chief of security who was posted at the front gate. Our conversation was interrupted in an unusual way: a big line of black SUVs began to enter through the gate and the guard said something I’ve definitely never heard before: “Say Hi to the King of Jordan. Don’t move until they pass.”

I was able to peer into the cabins of every car as they slowly drove in, and in just about every seat I saw pretty serious looking protection, mostly suited up and sunglassed. I kept looking.

My eyes were met by shining rims and cleanly shaven faces looking back out, hands on laps, relaxed but ready. Every occupant turned to look at me as they went past. In an unplanned way, I began nodding at them–perhaps for lack of anything better to do and not wanting to merely stare– and I watched as they nodded back, one by one. Yes and now I will nod at you, and you will nod back. And now we’re nodding together, and I will nod some more, and so will you, and we are now friendly nodders, whereas before we were nothing to each other, and now there is an obvious agreement, for we are nodding, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes to you to, and yes to me and yes to you.

And suddenly the king appeared.

Abdullah II, sitting on the side of the vehicle closest to me. He wasn’t wearing sunglasses. He looked at me and smiled as he rolled by, and I nodded some more and he nodded back.

He has a controversially hot wife, Queen Rania, who I certainly didn’t see in any of the cars. Aside from that, I don’t know much about him.

But yeah, me and the king, we had a moment.

Relax. I’m hungover. And now the King of Jordan is part of it.

————————————————————-

The heat wave continues and high temperature warnings for tomorrow are already being broadcast. This has already been the hottest 12 month period in recorded human history and most people in this douchy city will ignore it, like good little workers, going about their business, wearing the blinders that enable them to carry on the routine without needing to think much, lest they kill their buzz.

Enjoy Monday more than me, please.

Has it been smeared all over the materials you had available?

Pigment and sweat drops, an aching back and deeply stained nail beds are all that’s left. Cathartic flow under control. Look at the messages to myself in their miserable, disastrous glory, and I know already that tomorrow I will revisit in anguish and embarrassment what I’ve been “able” to produce. Creating is one of the most deeply vulnerable acts of which we are capable. Confront your ineptitude well and it’s water down a Harlem gutter. Confront it poorly and it’s a large bovine rectum stretching around your head; a new mask and hat to be worn conspicuously as you pretend to just be on your way around town.

The coffee pot is full and the aroma is gritty, flavoring the entire living room and leaving it clear and creative. I can feel my brain reaching out and it’s time to give it space. Phone off. Music on. Brushes out. Paints out. Knives out. Papers out. Drop-cloths out. Direction  in.

OK then, you dandy punk, have a good time.