Jason Burke & Eric Malone: For Immediate Release

 Darrin Daniel: Hollywood 10.31.01 (for Allen Ginsberg)

 Jack Foss: Two poems

 Andrew Hoffman & Randy Roark: Three Days Writing

 Jim Jack: Mr. President

Christopher Luna: from “it will be more than we can bear"

Sue Rhynhart: RSVP, 14 November 2001

Randy Roark: What I Wrote on the Night of the World Trade Center Bombing

Tamra Spivey & Randy Roark: In Conversation

Alison Carb Sussman: Warriors Among Us

Jason Burke & Eric Malone

For Immediate Release

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Bubbles
Along the surface of silence, that burst (in
This case they're not the details of J. Edgar Hoover's
Supposedly flamboyant sex life: politicians
Spooks & criminals, plutocracy, freelance celebrities
Unwittingly compose the poetry of impossible
Manoeuvres (in a series of thousands of amino acids
A single molecule out of place can be fatal: it's simple: you
Penetrate the living cell, & write yourself into its code: when
The cell reproduces, it passes you along
And this new message
May remain unread for some time

A tree
Dreamed up by botany, then
Improbably discovered in China
Was brought to Pasadena

(Pre-
Conifer. A
Design, pre-dating
Flowering plants.

How did rain
Infinitely various in rhythm
And in composition plain
Get the perfect name?

You only see as far
As the moon, sun, & other
Stars. You only see
Venus, or contours

The 2/4 equation
In Jazz, mastery
Inhabiting the space
Between breaths

But this is the opposite of math
A-blossom
Where thoughts rose
The seedling thrill

Sounds
In glints
From the skin of the lake, later
Stick.

hazy sun filled valley
in the mouth of the lion
hollywood hill curves
in damp evening halloween—
heard readings of Poe
at UCLA, and now
lost somewhere in a neighborhood of
american flags on limos and new model beasts—

"are things symbols of themselves" or not?
or instead symbols harkening
undone by concrete nouns—
each thing unto itself, all else
a translation burnt on from the idea/invention
such as these endless
and tempestuous cities
claiming the air‹choking it—
and themselves in turn.

our grandeur has met our ill-fated luck
as it flutters away with its hunger
of insatiable hungers.

goin where the sun dont shine
you goin too     everybody

goin where the sun go down
earth & heaven too     closin

down like night mus fall
where it gonna go

aint it fallin to somewhere
mus be fallin slow

will it ever rise again
after it be down

big red giant sun go down
be a little dwarf

goin where the sun go down
long long time

Man of Pleasure

In the old days Fillmore Street was the heart
of San Francisco's black ghetto, just as Hastings
Street was in Detroit, where I grew up.

The other night I had a dream, and in this dream
a guy—he must have been a pimp—gives me this
telephone number. Maybe it was a number
I'd actually seen somewhere scrawled on the wall
of a telephone booth: "for a good time call . . ."

Well, I knew this was a valuable number, probably
a whorehouse, and I remembered it when I woke up.
(Now that I am at an age where I wake up two or three
times a night to relieve myself, I often ponder
my dreams as I stand at the john.)

This night I remembered the telephone number
and repeated it to myself as I stood there—
and continued to mumble it when I went back
to bed. I was sure it was locked in memory.

But the next time I woke up it was gone. The number
that was so visible in my mind's eye had been erased.
I knew it would never come back.

But this dream had stirred another memory—of a time
in my life—after my divorce—when I was drinking
and drifting—falling—in no direction at all
and my drift had taken me to Fillmore Street
where I was looking to get laid. I had asked
a black cab driver where a guy could have a good
time and he had directed me to "a hotel in the next
block—the Man of Pleasure." Of course I couldn't find
the hotel, but I did find one named the Manor Plaza.

In a room of this establishment a black odalisque
welcomed me with open arms to her large warm
bosom. She was more like my mother than a whore,
but I didn't need to fight back incestuous guilt.
I guess I needed mothering at that time more than
anything else. Our encounter was brief but affectionate.

My memory of what followed is fuzzy—It seems
the hotel was raided by police, but the management
was prepared for such a contingency, and I found
myself being led by a young boy to another room
and then out a window to a fire escape, where I was
told someone would come to retrieve me when things
were safe. While I waited on the fire escape I felt
that the management of the house had—in a sense—
adopted me, and I was grateful for their protection
in this adventure into what seemed the periphery
of the underworld. And I felt almost blessed
in my perch on the backside of a hotel on Fillmore
Street—waiting for deliverance.

A Great Sadness Is Visited Upon Me

An hour of unnecessary pain
wanting to be here but unable
making & unmaking
winding & rewinding
looking back making a story
unmaking—taking a valium
& mysterious sounds from the stereo
old friends from far away
arrive with mid-summer snowstorm
stories—
—(this one I like: flying, learning to
fly. In my dreams I've been learning
to fly. And the other night I did, I
got it. My friend, who also flies, says,
watch out for the wires. It makes me
happy, flying, unmaking. And in class, when
she says thanks, I reach & touch her hand,
and a great sadness is visited upon me.

Too Young to Die

however many memories remember what I no longer remember
in some space where memories disappear and so much
no one remembers—not even forgotten but never was as well as
that time, that sequence, that desire for what remains
the same, desires lost in desire, a verb
             like wait
             like stay
             like surrender
how what remains does not remain but changes everything after and even what has gone before-until a moment you no longer believe in any-
thing for everything that is will be no more, and all that will be never be
has never been and never will be. A moment of severe weather,
a warning on the horizon, somehow warm, an
opening, the violence of silence that leaves no
trace but whispers through us as if yesterday
was a thing to be touched and held but
only then—and now another moment in this endless washing away
of what was with what is which becomes what was as if it
never was
             and never will be.

I've heard it said

            that gambling is akin to masturbation
& that loneliness abidest no separation
            & that sincerity is the key to revelation,
& that generally no one remembers their own gestation—
                                                    (church bells break the morning—)

            infestation or radiation
     maximizes & surprises

there were times when I trembled above her—
there were times when my tears glistened on her neck and shoulders—
there were times when all that I was hovered above her—
solid & ephemeral at once—

                                    sometimes no may be a sexier word than yes,
                                                and truer than any other lie.

Who Will You Be Kind To?

Over lazy summer sunlight shadows
chlorophyll green acetylene luminescence
like stunned clouds tossed by
May's listless mountain breezes

it's time to get personal
to speak of this night or that
on the roof in the sky by the stars
the demise of what we meant by all this behavior—
how sudden illumination negates a life of surmises
reversing everything we knew as true
only to find the night again.

Immune

The distance between us has expanded
or deepened—and the connections have
weakened, until the drift is enormous
and the colors return to their sources—
but Oh! how I wanted to be green!
How I always wanted
some part of my brain to stop
functioning—and how it never
really stops, even in sleep,
but only leads me into error,
into retrieve and longing,
into some imitation of life.

Sirius

It is better to be serious after,
but no one enjoys it when it is
hanging above our heads
matter bound through a star pattern
                                   dead.

I tipped her the regular
and she helped me on with my coat.
But I can't help thinking
Mr. President, as I work
to manage this part,
that you need to be more careful
with the words you use.
As we smoke the evil ones
out of their holes
and find them tied
in pools of blood,
as we locate
strange, new caves
in the back of their skulls
people are liable
to believe you
when you say
we're winning the war
on terrorism
and stand close to victory—
right beside those soldiers
picking dead pockets
after reloading their guns.

Christopher Luna

it will be more than we can bear, Parts VII-VIII

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VII.

Pre-war Koan:
"It's a hell of a lot easier to collect than to analyze: collection will always be a necessity."

bombs and bread
             this is our operation

"All these '-stans' out there,
          people have to understand them now."

at the laundromat
moments before we heard the news
liz sang along with the radio:

"war is not the answer
              for only love can
              conquer hate"

bombs and blankets
37,500 rations

"not a war against the Afghani people"

"When you're dealing with a backward country
            that has been at war for 20 years
            where everything that could be blown up
            has already been blown up several times,
            your vast firepower doesn't do much more
            than make the rubble bounce."

try to match targets and weapons
            with their effects
far too early to measure

"I gave them fair warning, and they chose not to hear it.
                                    Now the Taliban will pay a price."

Abdurrahman: "If the Taliban government falls, after I put aside my guns, I would like to become a store owner. Vegetables. I would like to sell vegetables. I'm never afraid of dying. I like to fight. I want to be a martyr."

We rule the skies

"It's a hard thing to order someone into combat. It's something that weighs very heavy into your heart. But you know that this is our course. This is our destiny. We do what the commander-in-chief tells us to do, and we do it willingly."

"The evil ones have sparked an interesting change in America."

We rule the skies - no terrorist is ruining our day

Ground Zero: "If you don't want to be here,
                                    you don't really want to be here."

1.2 million tons of debris
258, 710 tons removed to Staten Island
16, 000 truckloads

"This is going to sound really freaky, but
a few weeks before this happened
he told me that he had this feeling
a plane was going to hit the towers.
I didn't know until later but
he told his mother and a neighbor
the same thing."

                        freedom itself was
there can be no degeneration of discourse
            where there was no dialogue to begin with:

"Information that needs to be known will be known on a need-to-know basis, and if it's need to know, the people who need to know will know it. The Bill of Rights is for people who live here, not for terrorists who come here and fuck up! Put him in a cage and drag him around."

"Toward midnight the park empties of tourists and the locals stay behind, weirdly serene in their alternative city north of the wreckage, this dystopia at the edge of what a sweet twenty-two year old guy named Randol Aircrash tells me is the new world order."

VIII.
escape from chicken bone

the radical singularity
of an individual's perception
            of the Columbia River Gorge
            or the New York City subway
            or UFOs over Mount St. Adams
            "that patch of blue is very satisfying,"
                        she says

the trains and streets of New York City
            are littered with discarded, half-eaten chicken bones
            Dahnn and I notice them everywhere we go

the chauvinism of place
immediate surroundings as
central point in the universe
nowhere is this thinking as pervasive
as in New York City
            there is no other place like New York
            nor another spot quite like Boise, folks

our truck is delayed
by security checkpoints
on the Manhattan bridges
by the time we depart in a replacement truck
it is after eight o'clock
we do not have to pass through a security checkpoint
apparently you can transport what you please
so long as you drive it away from the city

animal and human carcasses
line the shoulders
of the highways of America
disturbing reminders
resembling discarded rugs
or terrorist carnage

someone has spray-painted:

TRUST
JESUS

on the concrete abutments beneath bridges
            throughout Ohio and Illinois
            on one of the pillars
JESUS has been crossed out and replaced:

   TRUST
YOURSELF

we are transporting our child and all of our earthly possessions
in a Budget rental truck without license plates
we are law-abiding citizens, of course
but the U.S. is on highest alert
the vehicle could be filled with uranium
            or small pox
everywhere we are followed by sheriffs
at a toll station we are stared at by at least eight officers of the law
and we are never pulled over
so much for homeland security

our journey is marked by a succession of ladybugs:
                        on the waterglass
                        in the boy's hair
            crawling along the outside of the truck window

At a rest area
            Angelo plays with a stick
            unaware of the ladybugs,
            butterflies, and grasshoppers
            all around him

Iowa City, Iowa

Enjoy a relaxing day out of the truck with Jeff and Carrie. Bring Angelo to the park, meet Jeff's parents for lunch at a vegetarian joint called the Red Avocado. The truck is parked in front of a sorority house, where last night it became a casualty of some retaliatory T.P.ing. Yesterday Carrie wondered why she was asked to lead the children in a drill that required them to enter a nearby parking garage and crouch behind cement walls. While we wait for the sushi, Jeff, Angelo and I hang out in the parking lot and watch the freight trains roll by on the hill above us. That night we watch "The Straight Story," which Jeff describes as "the ultimate Iowa movie."

Iowa City to Kansas City, Missouri

North and South Skunk River
What Cheer

    DO NOT
    PICK UP
HITCHIKERS

real live cows
don't interest Angelo at all

Gladstone, Missouri
The Show-Me State

arrive at the home of Patric Sargent
extended family visit
the children leap and shriek
and show us the pumpkins
watch them roll down the hill

rooting for Aerosmith
the Diamondbacks and the Dropkick Murphys
            ("Blink 182 with bagpipes," says Kevin)
there is much sympathy for our unique plight as New Yorkers:

"They should make Afghanistan into a giant lake. It'd make a great lake."

Meadowlark Lemon of the Harlem Globetrotters
preached and sang at their church today,
and asked
"300 billion and he lives in a cave?"
            Larry was very excited - big fan

the children have removed their shirts
Bayley needs a dummy
Tristan repeatedly bonks his head on the same table leg

the in-laws arrive from England
after a two-hour stopover in Newark
and a flight that was "bloody awful"
bearing gifts: a Cabbage Patch doll
            and a plastic snake
a new pair of shoes have left Lesh's feet swollen
so he dances around in his socks singing to the children
"I know it's only rock and roll but I like it I like it"

Kansas

Public Enemy with the public enema: perfect
Seventy on 70
            "I find those shapes to be quite satisfying."
Kansas sucks

  BEEF
It's what's
for dinner

The anti-abortion state

CHOOSE LIFE
your parents did

SEE THE LARGEST PRAIRIE DOG IN THE WORLD: 8,000 LBS.

home of America's first helicopter

and what's up with the
            KKK Kamping grounds
no Chinese food - must have run them out of town

Boulder, Colorado

Naropa, now a university
rather than an institute
feels the same
the students identical, only younger

a "monstrosity" has been added on to the Allen Ginsberg library
            a quaint administrative cottage
                        replaced by bricks and long windows
                        which are presently covered
                        with ugly white paper
                        to prevent glare

The Big Tent has been retired
and there is talk of lifting and moving the library
to the spot on the lawn
where it stood many a summer
filled with tired writers
transmitting and receiving

Naropa President John Whitehouse Cobb
            he of the pregnant Buddhist pause
who has taken it as his mandate
                        to expand and develop
is ailing - they're giving him leukemia
            to fight off cancer
            and his body is not responding well

Reed Bye greets us with big hugs and a happy beard
            the carefully trimmed beard
            of a man in love
            and recently engaged
I gently remind him that
            he has yet to give us a copy
            of the poem he wrote
            about my marriage proposal to Dahnn

we have some of that glorious chai
and buy a t-shirt as a benefit to save the archives
a project that should have begun twenty years ago

hours pass effortlessly
amazing how easy it is
            to get sucked back into Naropa time

Wyoming-Utah-Idaho

driving through the
            unending beauty of
                        the West
overwhelmed as in childhood
contemplating the vastness of space
puzzling over the impossibility
            of infinity

a beautiful country
rolls out before us
one that knows neither
bombs nor white supremacy
            the land transcends
            the evil that has been perpetrated
                        upon it
absorbs the blood that has been spilled
            from sea to shining sea

             BULLS FOR SALE
popular graffiti: "Dog sex is the best!"

the hills of Wyoming
rise like the backs of sea creatures
            as in the distance
            a cloud terrifying in its stillness
            marks the location of a power plant

Oregon-Washington

we pass a truck in flames
parked on the shoulder
and nearly slam into some asshole in a van
who slows down to look

Billboard:

      CHRIST DIED
FOR THE SINNERS

every auto mechanic
and real estate office
has put out a sign:

GOD BLESS AMERICA

       PRAY FOR BUSH

     LET'S SMOKE THEM
   OUT OF THEIR CAVES

the trip ends as it began
with Bono crooning
"You've got to get yourself together
            you're stuck in a moment
            and you can't get out of it"
as we make our way toward Dahnn's hometown
through the truck windshield
            an apparition makes itself visible
                        in the shadows cast on Rte 5
            what could this possibly mean?

When there is a gathering of such importance I serve blue chips made of corn always organic & sometimes the corn is red. Steve Katz told me a great story of when he studied with a certain tribe. It is the story of song. Of singing to your crop. I myself have heard the stretch when corn grows the actual sound of ache and yawn. I know that without water all plants will grow if you sing. My christmas cactus is outdoing herself at this very moment.

In Praise of a Contented Mind

My mind to me a kingdom is;
          Such perfect joy therein I find
That it excels all other bliss
          That world affords or grows by kind.
Though much I want which most men have,
Yet still my mind forbids to crave.

No princely pomp, no wealthy store,
          No force to win the victory,
No wily wit to salve a sore,
          No shape to feed each gazing eye;
To none of these I yield as thrall.
For why my mind doth serve for all.

I see how plenty suffers oft,
          How hasty climbers soon do fall;
I see that those that are aloft
          Mishap doth threaten most of all;
They get with toil, they keep with fear.
Such cares my mind could never bear.

Content I live, this is my stay;
          I seek no more than may suffice;
I press to bear no haughty sway;
          Look what I lack my mind supplies;
Lo, thus I triumph like a king,
Content with that my mind doth bring.

Some have too much, yet still do crave;
          I little have, and seek no more.
They are but poor, though much they have,
          And I am rich with little store.
They poor, I rich; they beg, I give;
They lack, I leave; they pine, I live.

I laugh not at another's loss;
          I grudge not at another's gain;
No worldly waves my mind can toss;
          My state at one doth still remain.
I fear no foe, nor fawning friend;
I loathe not life, nor dread my end.

Some weigh their pleasure by their lust,
          Their wisdom by their rage of will,
Their treasure is their only trust;
          And cloaked craft their store of skill.
But all the pleasure that I find
Is to maintain a quiet mind.

My wealth is health and perfect ease;
          My conscience clear my chief defense;
I neither seek by bribes to please,
          Nor by deceit to breed offense.
Thus do I live, thus will I die.
Would all did so as well as I!

          Several people set the ballad to music between 1581 and 1700, and it was popular enough to be published as a broadside as well. If my lack of knowledge of it is any indication, it is now almost completely forgotten. But for over 100 years, people sang this to each other and read its lyrics aloud and hung the lyrics on their walls.

          In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the concept of "the contented mind" (or otium) was something of a fad (if one can conceive of a fad that lasted a century and a half). It was related to idyllic simplicity and the noble savage and holy Mother Nature, etc.

          My intuition is that a lot of its popularity was related to the fact that many people at the time were obviously more noble than the Nobles, but they had nothing—and would always have nothing—and that several rather nasty people had most of everything. It's the kind of song a Dalai Lama might sing. The Norton refers you to other poems in this genre such as Surrey's "My Friend, the Things That Do Attain."

          The Greek philosopher Lucretius's writings were quite popular with Elizabethan playwrights and poets at the time. One of his most popular ideas concerned "mutability." From what I can understand, he believes that everything is in a constant state of change and that there is no central core to a thing or person that is always true and true in every part (and so exists nowhere). According to Lucretius, not understanding these basic facts is the cause of most of the pain and suffering we experience. For Lucretius, this meant that we should just appreciate being here and celebrate and be super-kind to our fellow humans, since we are all in the same situation. If you read Lucretius, you want to go into the streets and give everything away to people in need. You feel nauseous when you see people spending money on frivolous things knowing that they're frivolous things when both of you know that there are people, usually children, starving to death in many places on the globe. Or you want to go into nursing homes and get to know everyone personally before they disappear.

          What Lucretius said is obvious and unarguable, and this led to something of a crisis in the Church, since if people figured this out, it would be difficult explaining how the Church chose to spend "its" money.

          The Church had a different theory: they taught that there was something called our immortal soul and something that was immutable (God) and that our mutable state was part and parcel of a degraded world. In this life, they taught, suffering was good for your soul, so the more suffering you experienced in this life, the more points you could earn for your soul. And at the end of this very short life, there was going to be a judgment, and how well your unreal body did on this test determined where the eternal part of you would spend eternity.

          Edmund Spenser tried to integrate these two ideas—of mutability and an immutable and invisible and increasingly improbable God—into what's come to be known as the "Book VII: Two Cantos on Mutabilitie" of "The Fairie Queen" (a runaway bestseller in its day). What we have is essentially Cantos VII and VIII, or the central cantos of a twelve-canto sequence. Spenser abandoned this "book" and it was published incomplete in 1609, ten years after his death.

          The crucial distinction between Buddhist and Christian beliefs on the world's impermanence as a cause of suffering is that Buddhists believe mutability is the underlying nature of the material universe and that there is no reason for there to be a separate permanent world where things are realer than here, or to believe in a God that is somehow unchanging and separate from this changing world. Christians believe that the things of this world, by being impermanent, are to be rejected in favor of something that is immortal—your soul. But one thing the Christians had that other religions didn't have was that they had two Gods—Christ, who was mutable, and God, who was not.

          But the differences in practice were not so great: There were gods and devils in both, for instance, and the good guys were hard to tell from the bad guys, and the world was created in order to deceive us, and the body and pleasure were dangerous.

          In Spenser's "Mutabilitie Cantos" we hear a lot of talk about serious disappointments (115 nine-line stanzas of them) before Spenser pulls God out of his invisible hiding place and sort of waves him around. His argument goes something like this: God and our souls are outside of time but a part of us lives in mortal time, and our immortal soul is somehow attached to it. It has been put asleep (more or less) and attached to a body that exists in a dream world where good and evil are very difficult to understand—suffering, for example, is explained by the Church as a reward if undeserved, and punishment if deserved. The world is a sort of anthropomorphogized imaginary world whose sole purpose (and it was intentionally designed for this) is to trick us into believing in it. And then, when we do, it will sap our soul and will and the very life out of us while we're completely unconscious that this is what's happening. And if we don't see through the visible world's (changing) illusion and repent to an invisible God before we die, then we will spend the rest of eternity in torment.

          Further complicating things (to my mind) is the nature of "Grace"—which sounds very similar to the pagan idea of Fortuna. With Grace, God sometimes rescues people who have done nothing to redeem themselves on their own; and God can also (apparently) fail to bestow this gift on the majority of those suffering. This God apparently lacks the sense of pity that would motivate even the lowest and most degraded of humans into action.

          When Greek dramatists couldn't finish a play—most commonly Euripides, and most famously his "Medea"—a basket would descend at a crucial moment near the end of the play and a God or two inside the basket would resolve the play for the struggling playwright—almost always non-sensibly or at least illogically. It would be as if in a modern cliffhanger Jesus appears out of a cloud not to save the hero but one of the darker elements in the play. You'd feel cheated and your God degraded. The decadent madness of Euripides's late plays is the mark of the decline of nobility. Athens was falling apart.

          In literature, a metaphysical answer to a physical problem is called a "deus ex machina." But I'm not even sure where Spenser was headed in "The Mutabilite Cantos." Although it'd be too much "out-of-his-time" for anything other than God to triumph in the end (and the theology of "The Fairie Queene" is much stricter than the Bible's), Spenser seems particularly despondent about mutability. He never apparently began the final cantos of the sequence; the ones that would have explained God's part in all this.

          Thomas Gray, a poet popular during the time of '"In Praise of Contented Mind," was fond of quoting Pindar (in the original Greek, of course): "Comprehensible to the intelligent; for the world at large needing interpretation." Sometimes I get the feeling that Spenser is winking at his readers (as Virgil and Homer did before him). At other times I get the feeling that mutability has defeated him, and sometimes I get the feeling that he argues a bit too persuasively (as Milton did in "Paradise Lost") for the dark side.

          But how does this fit in with idyllic peasants and the nobility of simplicity, as we began. Ezra Pound was probably pretty close to the truth, as he almost always is in the cantos, when he says (I'm paraphasing): "How do we stand it? With a painted paradise at the end of it. Without a painted paradise at the end of it."

Randy Roark is the editor of this digest.

Tamra: I learned from your note about Kerouac and Ginsberg's "practiced" improvisation, and felt less guilty about recording extra vocal tracks for tracks I felt needed them.

Randy: This is what I think is the essence of improvisation: It's a form of practicing your instrument along with your mind/senses. Then later, even when you're "revising" your work, you can re-write it or re-play it with that same spontaneous mind. Or you can make room for improvisation within a structure—like Miles Davis. What you can never do is go back to the deadness and dullness of something over-produced, or produced poorly. It's like having a great cup of coffee and then trying to go back to instant. Yeats said it was "to make an hour's work seem a moment's thought." Or as I say, it ultimately doesn't matter whether it's improvised or not, but the closer to the truth something seems, the more powerful it is experienced by an audience. Or, as Gregory Corso told Kerouac, "I don't want to deny any part of mind, including the part that rereads a poem and knows why it sucks."

I'm with Corso, the rigidity of restricting improvisation to its "purest" definition usurps spontaneity.

It's also important to remember that Allen and Jack were talking of a highly specialized kind of improvisation, like great jazz (which is what they listened to). But Kerouac had already written a million words (by Burroughs' estimate) before he began writing The Town and the City. It's not just improvisation and spontaneity—it's skilled improvisation and spontaneity. Check out the new Dylan CD—reportedly (like with "Blonde on Blonde") he'd write a song, teach it to the band, they'd run through it once, then he'd go write another song and the band would go back to playing cards. That's what some people consider improvisation and spontaneity. When you've been successful working with spontaneity and improvisation a couple of times, you learn how to do it, and what works and what doesn't ... or you stop doing it. And if you like it, you get bored and embarrassed by anything else. It's not real somehow, and you're just repeating something—there's no edge or liveliness to it. It's dead and you're dead because you're the one who's wasting your time doing it.

I heard a funny story about Robert Fripp and one of his ProjKect bands (I forget which one) from their sound engineer when I was out in Seattle taping Jane Siberry. They were opening a tour a couple of years ago in Boulder and they'd booked two weeks of rehearsal. For the first time in 30 years of doing this, Fripp and the members of the band had absolutely nothing to show by the end of rehearsals. They had to open in front of an audience the next night and fourteen days of rehearsals had been a complete and total disaster. They didn't have a rhythm, a melody, or even a structure to use. So they walked out on stage without anything in mind and this guy said it was the best performance he'd ever seen one of Fripp's bands give—and he goes all the way back to the original King Crimson line-up.

Yes, the million words, but another factor is native intelligence and appreciation of some form of technique. For example, our keyboardist on the sessions, Diane, only had piano lessons ten years ago, had never played with a band, and had never played synthesizer, but she played beautifully. She was easily able to enter that space we old whore musicians went, crafting in the moment. Being a big music fan of course helped, but so did her skills as a designer and her love for art history. There's a certain proportion or blend of "weights/waits" or elements, did the Taoists call it li? I forget. Whatever, it's that common flow in all things: fire, fingerprint, agate. I think when you start to see/feel that, you can do remarkable things in arts you're not as familiar with. Like Woody Guthrie's paintings, that remind me of early Japanese Zen painting.

"Fire, fingerprint, agate." That's a cool line. Interesting flight of mind. I'll probably steal that one. Don't be surprised if it turns up in one of my poems. In fact, I'll make a note of it now. That'll be the title.

The dadaists actually insisted that no real artist could possibly restrict themselves to one means of expression. If you were a painter, well then who would compose more interesting music than a painter, and who could write a more interesting poem than a sculptor? It made for some really interesting art. But very few artists were good enough to be taken seriously in more than one medium. Ginsberg and photos. Cocteau's visual art and films (although his visual art's reputation has suffered somewhat lately, it was once considered on par with Picasso's), that Maine poet/painter who got famous for his paintings but is now known as much for his poetry, Michelangelo's paintings and sculptures. I'm sure there are more, but most are like Ferlinghetti and painting, or Ginsberg and music.

It's very odd how our celebrity cult culture wants people to be famous for just one thing. I never knew about the Guthrie paintings till I saw the exhibit the Smithsonian put on at the museum in Tacoma, Washington.

That's so cool about your keyboardist. When Bowie and Eno were recording what would become "Heroes," Bowie had an extraordinary recording budget and didn't want to work with very many musicians, so they spent all their money on studio time, and Eno would order all these new electronic instruments and throw the manuals away. Everything was new. The designers weren't musicians, they were engineers and so all they could imagine was to make fake violin sounds and stuff—or what they thought fake violins would sound like. Well, the last thing a musician's going to be interested in is something designed to sound like fake violins, so they'd fool around and find out what the instruments could sound like. Everything's an instrument, I think Bowie said, you just have to figure out how to make music with it. Do you realize that (I just realized) Brian Eno's name is an anagram of One Brain?

That is so weird you mentioned that about Bowie because Diane read that story in an issue of "Q" during our sessions and it encouraged her!

Those kind of coincidences happen all the time in my life. In fact, I began reading an article on Las Vegas in the current issue of "National Geographic Traveler" magazine the moment I first heard you sing the words "Let's go to Las Vegas."

I think of synchronicities as a sort of guidance system.

Yeah, but I can never figure out what they're telling me. Like the Las Vegas thing. What, I'm supposed to go to Las Vegas? Not likely. They happen so frequently to me that I call them my "coincidences of the day." I counted a string about two weeks ago in a series of e-mails to a friend and I ended up with about seven weird synchronicities in a five-hour period.

When I do zines it's amazing how often the right illustration or quote falls into my hands. There were times I felt I couldn't open my eyes or reach for something without it belonging in the zine I was working on.

Yeah, that always happens in art, I think. In fact, if that isn't happening, it usually isn't art it's advertising.

Recording and mixing at Uptone went well. Many eerie September 11 foreshadowings in the lyrics. We finished mixing September 10 and were supposed to fly home September 11. Wound up in Tacoma for an extra week. Thirty-five out of 48 tracks got mixed: some shining moments, but it was all somehow awkward and gravitized, if you know what I mean.

Not really, unless you mean that you ended up with less than you thought you would. I think that's always the case when you're working with art that's still being realized. You shoot for something and you end up somewhere else. But it's also interesting in an odd way you couldn't have planned. You're kind of the audience for it as well. As Pound put it, there are two kinds of geniuses in the world: There are the ones who are curious about everything and their legacy is a mess made up of 100 half-finished projects and beginning explorations in several directions. And then there are those who come along later and bring things to perfection. They scavenge around, can identify the cool bits and put them all together in their perfect form and basically kill that line of exploration by bringing it to its end (Joyce with Ulysses and Eliot with "The Wasteland"). I think it's important to know which kind you are and then live accordingly. And I've also learned to put something away until I've forgotten I've written it before I take it out and reread it. If you have that kind of room, that might be something to do. Or just put it out—I'm sure it's fine.

I'd like to be Pound's finishing genius, but I definitely fall in the explorer category. I feel very helpless to direct my inspiration. It's like a fever that comes over me. When it says paint, I can't write a song!

Yeah, I keep relearning this. Do whatever interests you at the moment and don't stop until it stops being interesting to you and then find out what interests you next. Believe me (being one) the explorer has much more fun, and less success, and less of the drag that follows success. We stay very fashionable and respected well past the point of the finishing geniuses because we keep moving and interesting ourselves, whereas the others end up chewing themselves up and being, on the whole, completely miserable (in my experience).

Yes, that makes sense. the explorer is dealing with the anxieties of beginnings and the finisher the doom of endings. I always wondered if it was both a melancholy and exhilarating feeling, completing a masterpiece. Anyway, we got enough that I feel it's my first truly great record.

I always feel that way too! Every time I finish a new book I think this is the best thing I've ever written! Every time I give a reading I always end up reading the last thing I've finished, sometimes on the way to the gig or even in the audience waiting my turn. That's why putting books out is such a drag, because that's what people think of you and you're somewhere else now. And being in a band you know what that's like more than I do.

I may go to New York City to start a new band.

Wow. Now that's courage. You're gutsy.

You think? I think the death-rebirth there, the historically unique (for the moment) penetration of American complacency … it seems to me the river of inspiration is going to flow fresh and fast there. I'd like to feel that, be a part of it. Plus stuff is cheap now!

Oh, yeah, I'm sure that's true. Or ... I wonder. I think the decades of New York City being a huge city are over. Like Beirut.

But of course Beirut was not the world center New York City is. And New York City's whole mythology is about having heart in the face of crisis. As an artist I just feel I need to see and smell and hear it for myself.

Well, I'm just glad we'll have a poet reporting from the trenches.

Also we have more fans and friends in New York City than L.A. L.A. has proven herself somewhat indifferent to experimental rock since the days the Velvet Underground ran aground here, leaving Jim Morrison's acid-addled Gerard Malanga impersonation in their wake.

You know Gerard? That's much more hip than either the VU or Morrison. I published some of Gerard's photos in "FRICTION" magazine—his photo of the manuscript of On the Road was on the cover of the Jack Kerouac issue (1983). It's the only issue that's sold out, but I'm putting up a website now and the cover will definitely be on it. And he introduced me to Ira Cohen, who took the photo on the cover of the "Doctor Sardonicus" LP for Spirit—a sixties Southern Californian psychedelic band. One of Ira's photos is going to be on the cover of my selected. Ira took some really cool photos of Hendrix shot onto Mylar in 1970 with that distorted effect.

The only Warhol graduate I've met is Holly Woodlawn. The earliest trio version of Lucid Nation backed her up live and recorded with her once. We would play ethnic instruments, flutes, thumb pianos, maybe an acoustic guitar, while she would stream of consciousness about those days. Some of it was amazing. She was raving about the goddess Ishtar and we were coming on like a Babylonian harem band. But after when we listened back we realized none of it was usable because she so expertly insults everyone she mentions!

Do you have any tapes?!

I have to dig up the masters.

I like Jim Morrison in moderation. He was definitely the start of something big—as big as Elvis. I just wish the songs (and LPs) were better. But I have dozens of live versions of "The End" and "When the Music's Over" and each and every one is terrific and interesting. What he had was real. And I get the feeling from watching videos of his live shows what it must have been like staring at him as he was standing at the mike staring into the audience, wondering who you were and what this was all about and what the fuck were you doing at a Doors concert in 1969 anyway? How sometimes it seems like he's just this transparent hologram on stage and he's actually being beamed down from some other world, just visiting. That'd change you.

He had a way with words, as Patricia Keneally Morrison told my guitarist Ronnie. Jim could pack a whole lot of meaning into very few words.

I've heard Lucid Nation's latest CD and it's fucking terrific. Let me know when it's about ready to come out for real and I'll write a rave review for the Patti Smith list and also if you offer it on Amazon it could go there as well. I find that reviews are best when the object is available—if not, people look around and then forget about it by the time it's finally out. If you want I'll send the review to you early ... it's pretty much ready. It'll take
me half an hour or so to write it up from my notes. But I'd like to hear the other two first before I write something, so I have a wider base of information, which'll probably take me two days or so.

By the way, I looked up your site today and I heard your bass player when she toured with Moby two summers ago I think—she looks familiar anyway. That black net outfit and the way she plays the bass off her hip. Oh, by the way, it was so good to suddenly realize I was listening to "Heart of Darkness" after so long. It's almost as if the Cleveland that David Thomas was singing about in 1977 is the world we're all living in now.

Yeah, that's Greta! I actually prefer David's original version with Peter Laughner's Rocket from the Tomb.

See, that's another one—I'm a huge Pere Ubu fan and yet I'd never heard of Rocket from the Tomb until last night when I was paging through a psych magazine I bought a couple of days ago because it had a CD with tracks by Bevis Frond on it and I'm a fan. And there was also a variety of psych artists from the sixties to the late nineties, including Japanese psych bands from the late sixties! I mean, who knew? I used to do a psychedelic radio show in the mid-eighties and I'm a real collector of that stuff and I had never heard of any of it. Anyhow, when I bought the magazine, the 18-year-old tattoed dyed-black-haired kid who called me "Sir" was caught off-guard when I asked if he had a vinyl copy of the Strokes LP and then handed him two White Stripes CDs and an Apples in Stereo CD. Anyway, he started and said, "Wow, we've had that magazine in the store for over two years now and it's never sold." So I was reading it last night and they had this really cool thing in the magazine—they had punch-out trading cards for "damaged guitar gods"—about fifty of them for people like Peter Green and Skip Spence. And I'm reading along and I come to the first guitarist for Pere Ubu (and Rocket from the Crypt). And what's playing on the stereo? "Heart of Darkness"! And, in addition, I only gradually came to realize that that's what you're singing, like a camera coming into focus ... like, "Wake up!" That's what I mostly use those moments for now, because I can't really figure them out. When I tell other people, they have all these explanations, but I still don't understand any of it. I never get any hard information.

I think of them as more a proof that your life is right where it should be. So you get magic sparkle synchronicities, cat treats.

By the way, you're not suggesting with this improvisation thing that you're improvising your lyrics, are you?

Let's see, "Suburban Legends" [the one with the shoes] is 100% improvised lyrics.

That's unfuckingbelievable. Why don't you advertise that somewhere on the CD? Why aren't you on the poetry circuit? Man, you need a manager!

We suck at self-promotion. Anyway, "Nonpoetic Rain," the live on KXLU CD is about 2/3 improv. And on the newest recordings we did in Tacoma, Washington, any song with backing vocals was sketched out, a couple lines, a chorus, but all the rest are total improv.

Wow. I am so impressed. I do improv speeches but that's a lot easier—you just get your thoughts together in public.

King Crimson during their 1973-1974 tour were the second rock band I know of to actually schedule improvisations in every show. Each night they'd trade off who'd begin and the others would fall in or not. And there's at least one performance called "Trio" that's absolutely amazing. The band had had a collective breakdown during a difficult tour and everyone thought that they were the only ones having problems. Drummer Bill Bruford was so depressed he sat out the whole song with his drumsticks crossed over his chest, and the band essentially became a chamber trio-violin, guitar, and bass. It's so sad and you can't figure out exactly why. Their recordings from this tour are very easily available, I think, if you like that sort of thing. "The Great Deceiver," a 4CD set from this tour, is the best. If you can't find them or want tapes let me know.

Your band is very, very good and the CDs are very well engineered (especially the last one). The one with the cool shoes is my favorite thus far but I have to go back to the latest one again now that I've heard everything else. The latest one is so uncompromising and unrelenting and the sneakers one had the mixture of softer tracks that I'm more accustomed to. But I know I'll prefer the new one in about two weeks. It's got that halo around it.

So what's the deal with "Heart of Darkness" and "Run through the Jungle"—they just popped into your head [during the recording of "Nonpoetic Rain"]? There's another cover I almost recognize … it's an AC/DC song or something? I could be wrong.

"Night Prowler" by AC/DC, the Richie Ramirez murder anthem. I'm always trying to redeem it. It started when I had a gig at PCH—Pacific Coast Highway Club in San Pedro, a tiny, scary all—ages space visible only by kids, in a bleak landscape of warehouses and train tracks. I went there to check it out a week before and freaked out in the car on the way home. I was just sure the car would stall, we would die, total anxiety. My guitarist Ronnie realized how closely this place resembled the place I was taken to and beaten after being abducted on my way to school in tenth grade. The resemblance triggered post-traumatic stress. He wanted to cancel but I wanted to face it, so for that gig we did a jam on "Night Prowler" and Sonic Youth's predator song "Pacific Coast Highway." I wore a black sweatshirt with hood up, on the back was written "terror worldwide" and when I sang "Night Prowler" I imagined it was me stalking the guy who abducted me. The catharsis was so intense people said I was glowing after. None of the scenester mod kids so proud of their indie credentials even knew Sonic Youth did a song called "Pacific Coast Highway," standing in PCH Club. The roadie for Red Monkey won the free CD. Since then I've been really partial to the song.

I'm a father with a 17-year-old daughter. Your story sets off all my panic alarms ... I started to cry. It's like I told a friend about the difficulties I have at being a pacifist: If you push me around, fine. If you touch my girlfriend or my daughter I'll fucking kill you. I heard a funny saying today: that being a pacifist except during wartime is like being a vegetarian between meals.

Rape is epidemic in this country. It's one of our biggest dirty secrets. And this country isn't as bad as other parts of the world. Still, when a woman gets paid 75% less when she works late, then has to face the empty parking garage, that is a kind of terrorism.

I've produced some tapesets with Peter Levine on PTSD. We have tapes and such where he tries to get you to release it. Are you interested? It can get pretty intense. He also has a book about it called Waking the Tiger. He lives up in Lyons, a few miles from Boulder, but he travels a lot and has a useful website, if you want to look him up—there's stuff on there for free. Peter believes that energy is stored in the body and you have to transform it via movement, not mental stuff. He talks about animals in the jungle, how they "shake off" fear—running in circles, jumping into the air—and how if you freeze it in the body it'll remain there until you release it physically—that therapy will never get to that part of it. That seems true to my experience. Sounds like you instinctively tapped into that with "Night Prowler."

That's why I've experienced so much transformation through yoga, then the martial arts.

About your lyrics: I especially liked the way the meaning of the words changed over time. It reminded me very much of Gertrude Stein from Lectures in America, the one about how there is no such thing as repetition—how if you say, jelly, jelly, jelly, jelly, jelly, jelly, jelly, jelly ... that the eighth "jelly" is not the same as the first one, and the difference is that the eighth one is preceded by the other seven. It's a form of insistence. It's like you're trying to get your dog to sit. Sit. Sit! SIT! SIT!!!! That last "sit" is not the same as the first one, so what's the difference? It seems like you've figured that out on your own terms. There's an element of incantation and shamanic magic in your form of repetition. You do that with "friends don't let friends drive drunk" and something else, I've forgotten now. The first time I realized you were singing "friends don't let friends drive drunk" was different from the next four times. It's like a mini-novel, really. And it's not in the words—you've stripped the words of meaning by repeating them and what people are listening to is you breathing through the words ... do you know what I mean?

Rimbaud's derangement of the senses happens when you repeat a word. It's the basis of all mantra.

I've had this weird experience where when I look at a word too long it looks weird too. Like "that."

First it shimmers with extra meanings, then it's just a sound. Then it can be made to convey an opposite meaning with a different intonation.

But the sound is being made by someone, so it's actually a different kind of language—not word language but human presence language. As if that's the epitome of language, and when you're trying to use language to get there you realize at a certain point that language itself is preventing you from reaching it. That's why the dadaists said that it'd be healthier if language didn't exist—or at least that life would be broader and more interesting without it. That's what you're doing with your band.

I learned something similar hanging around deaf people. I grew up near the Eugene O'Neill Theatre of the Deaf so it wasn't unusual to be at parties in conversation with a deaf person. They don't get fooled by what you're saying and you realize it's because they're actually reading your whole body, so it's like waking up from a language dream. Some people start crying the first time they communicate like that.

It's ironic to me now that I argued with Allen [Ginsberg] when he used to read from his notebooks or be in one of his improvisational phases. I told him he was being self-indulgent. That this might be the only time some teenage kid in Nebraska gets to hear him and he should deliver the real transmission. Certain of Allen's poems are undeniably liberating and have definite transmission power—thousands of people have testified to that—so Allen had a responsibility to change as many people as possible. Reading from his journals and his improvisations were fun in a classroom or perhaps in a small venue. But for a performance, people took the night off, they were excited. Maybe this was the only time they'd ever get to see Ginsberg—this would become their "Allen Ginsberg story." But Allen argued that he had to keep himself interested, that he read more than 50 times a year all over the world. He said "I don't want to think that the only poems I have worth reading were written thirty years ago. And if I'm not really there, if I'm only faking it, it'd be much worse. I'm keeping myself interested. The people who can appreciate what I'm doing are appreciating what I'm doing. I can't be responsible for everyone."

I have that discussion in a musical context. People say I need songs that crystalize my strong points and I need to play them over and over again for people because you can't just make stuff up. They don't get the whole Zen one stroke circle painting of it. We're not just stupidly jamming. We're experienced artists intently crafting in the moment a spiritual challenge. Yet I'm hearing more about the freestyle approach. I think it suits the internet.

Hmmm. But no matter, it's what you're interested in. You're stuck with it now. If you believe in it 100%, it's unarguable that it'll be the best work that you can possibly do in this lifetime. And, all things being equal, wouldn't that be great to look back on when you're old and grey? Wouldn't anything less be a loss? So we do it and who knows if it's important or if it'll last? But if you act like it is important and that it'll last, that's your best chance at getting there. Allen tape recorded himself every time he spoke in public for the last thirty years of his life. I saw how that made Allen choose his words very carefully, knowing that they'd probably last a long, long time.

Okay, here's your poem:

fire, fingerprint, agate (for T)

the best work comes out of a belief in goodness
or other people—what in three years will be fashionable
can leave you just like that and be replaced
by its opposite—to avoid a belief in stability,
or in people who appear to be stable, or the need to
appear to be so—how I began to see it as
a kind of misunderstanding, that it was
something you could look at only inwardly—
what poetry does, for instance—
to be to language as a kind of encouragement,
to develop something new, something
unstable, and make it real, if only for a moment—
and that I did this deliberately,
and that this is how I did it,
and that what I did is in these words.

* * *

Footnotes:
1. The poet/painter from Maine was, of course, Marsden Hartley.
2. I do, in fact, believe Lucid Nation's most recent work is their best. But the live radio program is a must-have as well for the full live experience.

The night was cold.
The air was crisp, dark,
No lights on the Lebanese border.
I was dressed in shorts and a tee shirt.
I came to the turret to be
alone.
It's not usual for Israelis
to be by themselves,
Israeli teenagers travel in packs.
I went up to the turret because it faced a quiet
border,
with no fighting,
just two kilometers from Lebanon.
Out there were gently whispering grasses, trees,
and a fence.
I leaned over the side of the turret,
felt the uneven
cement wall surface
under my hands.
I did not notice
there was anyone there. Then
lights went on, flooding the place,
and when I turned around
I made out a guard booth with someone in it.
He had a machine gun and it was pointed
at my heart.
He was shouting at me.
I did not speak Hebrew, so I couldn't explain
what I was doing there.
I was 17, and didn't understand war.
But a primitive cunning told me to stay very still,
to let him get it out of his system.
Another part of me pictured myself vaulting the fence and running
into the woods where I might be safer.
Then it ended, as suddenly
as it had begun.
The sentry lowered his gun when he saw that I was American
and obviously no threat.
The incident left me breathless and numb,
I never talked about it to anybody,
because I felt that I was stupid
to have been there.
But whenever I remembered it, years afterwards,
wherever I was, I would start to run,
and I wouldn't stop running
until the memory cleared my head.

II.

Not long ago,
on the streets of New York City.
I recognized this man.
He was tall, with a rock-hard body,
and had the wolflike eyes of a creature
used to hunting and being hunted.
I was sure he was an Israeli combatant.
I saw him near Israel's aircraft industries building.
It is rumored they have some combatants
here in New York,
pretending to work for the aircraft industries.
I looked at him and I knew he saw I recognized him
and I turned as he passed me.
Halfway down the block,
I saw him turn around to look back at me,
he let the flap of his jacket swing out
and I knew there was a gun in his pocket;
If I had done anything threatening
He would have protected himself.
But I turned away
so he wouldn't use his weapon on me.

III.

When I was ill I thought the Israeli Secret Service was using me
To penetrate a Hamas terrorist cell operating in the East Village
I thought they were positioning themselves around me,
to help me with my first mission, so I wouldn't
Make any mistakes-
Of course the Israelis who owned our local camera store were really Mossad agents,
The Beth Israel Hospital ambulance driver was one too-
After a few days I felt the Secret Service was growing displeased with me,
They began interrogating me late at night about plane hijackers,
I imagined them shining lights in my eyes
and kicking me in the stomach
Til I vomited.
I knew they were planning to shoot me,
They posted snipers in the windows of the buildings
Across from mine.
When I fled to my mother's apartment,
They stationed people with rifles outside the door,
And on the roof of the hotel across the way.
I stayed at my mother's for two weeks,
Hanging on to my last shred of sanity,
While they tried brainwashing me through the TV,
So I would lose it all and jump off the terrace.
I was sure it was a choice between killing myself, or
Having them break in with their guns and murder my mother, husband, and me.
I picked the terrace route to save my family. But before anything happened
A psychiatrist the family knew put me on Thorazine.
Eventually, the pain of the illness began to subside.
I learned I wasn't as indifferent to my mother as I thought.
I wouldn't sell her out. Even if she had handed me over
to eye doctors who experimented on me when I was a little girl and had no way of screaming
no.

© Alison Carb Sussman