Win On Diagonals

I don’t watch many movies. I haven’t noticed a pattern of me doing this. In fact, I only had a vague idea of what this film was about. There were a few scenes that really smashed me up…where the man Jean Dominique is already paralyzed and mute and all that…. He rediscovers the love of his children, his daughter preying for him every night in a quiet pious way, his son wiping saliva from his inert but warm cheek. I do love to immerse myself in a  feeling that predominates or subsumes all else; but try not to let this happen without being fully aware of the possibility of just immiserating myself with a temporary glib satisfaction. There is a beauty of course in things heavy winged, crippled flight,  brocaded sighs that fasten you to a temporally richly emotional place, crestfallen, doves in the dry well, an overbeat chest leaning on a motionless loving shadow, pumping dark light. 

We will have to return to traditional modes of inhabiting the landscape — villages, towns, and cities, composed of walkable neighborhoods and business districts — and the successful ones will have to exist in relation to a productive agricultural hinterland, because petro-agriculture (as represented by the infamous 3000-mile Caesar salad) is also now coming to an end. Fortunately, we have many under-activated small towns and small cities in favorable locations near waterways. This will be increasingly important as transport of goods by water regains importance.We face an epochal demographic shift, but not the one that is commonly expected: from suburbs to big cities. Rather, we are in for a reversal of the 200-year-long trend of people moving from the farms and small towns to the big cities. People will be moving to the smaller towns and smaller cities because they are more appropriately scaled to the limited energy diet of the future. I believe our big cities will contract substantially — even if they densify back around their old cores and waterfronts. They are products, largely, of the 20th-century cheap energy fiesta and they will be starved in the decades ahead.

An early August night of pleasurable conditions at the Stain bar in East Williamsburg last night. I hosted an event entitled ‘Old Fiasco Dry,’ which will serve as title of an upcoming collection of short fiction and poetry I have written. Friends Craig T and Caroline (co-owners) of this performing arts bar-lounge on Grand Ave are excellent hosts. I read from some of my work to a slim but receptive audience, and then Quoma and I played a track put together by us (El Alto) fairly recently to be played concurrently with Jacky Doll’s fun and perfectly unusual video presentation for this event. I have not read my work in a very long time, and enjoyed and learned from experience.

El Alto played a quiet set of mainly new songs that we hope to record in full for an upcoming fall album that should spin some heads and whet some appetites. The set went well, and we hope to get out there soon with another gig.

The topic of Screwpools came up in conversation last night. While talking about what state sponsored vacation promoting bureau TV commercial or radio spot we enjoyed best as far as the music jingle portion, the topic turned to those hotels or lodges, or general places that market themselves as love or passion rekindling havens for couples in need of such a getaway. Such places are always replete with tacky champagne shaped Jacuzzis, or heart shaped bath tubs, and very often pools far too small to swim or even to just chill in, but primarily designed for screwing. The thought of visiting one of these places and touching foot onto the ominous flooring of such a screwpool rippling a laughing white foamed wave of giddy disgust from all of us hanging out in the garden behind the good old Stain Bar. We hope to put together an Old Fiasco Dry (2) or some such other event there in near future.

Dom