REASONS FOR LIVING: The Best Shit I Read, Watched or Heard in 2012

Typically people do this in December, so people can read it during their downtime for the holidays, so they know what new shit to buy for X-mas, but I'm only getting around to it now. This is the best media I experienced during the year of our lord, 2012. The year the world didn't end.

Nebraska - Bruce Springsteen
The Branch Will Not Break, Shall We Gather at the River - James Wright

Travellers on the lost highway. Makes me think Springsteen should've never had a band. He should've made weird little tapes like this. The songs move slower, so they have more impact. They're not overwhelmed by the bravado of the band. The characters are alone, so the sound should be sparse. It reminded me of James Wright's poems. Poems of an abandoned landscape, an abandoned people, aimless, lost in a cold wind and a grey sky. Springsteen is an actor in every song. He's a serial killer, a highway patrolman, everybody's on the run. They don't know where they're headed. Probably nowhere. The glockenspiel makes it cosmic. It brings the stars, so high over our dirty, hard earth, and the delirious stupor of a living death. These characters have been pushed beyond hope, into the grace of helplessness, the same grace that one might experience as they fall after they've jumped from the ledge. They're almost like kids again in that they're not in control of their lives, at the mercy of some massive, unknown authority. They are beginning to enter the abyss. They've reverted to the cocoon of hypnotism. They've gone into a void, not heaven, but a few different kinds of hells. They will soon find out some answers to the mysteries. They are living in the night, the dark sky closing in, the same kind of dreaminess that one feels in the jaws of a leopard. The brain is releasing the dreamy narcotics to soften the bite of death.


Run With the Hunted - A Charles Bukowski Reader
This is an excellent retrospective of the man's work, culled from the span of his career and assembled into something of an autobiography. I'm not wild about the guy's poetry, but his prose is brave, and he's able to write about the darker impulses of man and granting us an understanding of them, rather than villifying or alienating us from them.

Adbusters - Issues 2009-Present
http://mentholmountains.blogspot.com/ - David Berman
I've always been a little bit reluctant/cheap to give an ear to anyone close to my age because of what I saw as a lack of sincerity or perhaps politcal conscience, but David Berman kind of eased me liking something resembling a more contemporary, "hipster" artist. He's something of an anomaly, an accessible and popular modern poet, and his music is clever and funny, although sonically it leaves a little bit to be desired. Now he's chosen blogging as a platform, collecting poems, articles, videos, songs all charged at renovating our modern mass consumer society and the cultural imperialism it wages on our consciousness, perhaps the rectify the sins of his father, who is a successful lobbyist in Washington for seemingly all of our worst habits and industries.

As for Adbusters, I was visiting my cousin a few weeks ago in Evergreen Park, Illinois, a suburb on the South Side of Chicago where the Unibomber's from, and noticed a copy of Adbusters in his bathroom. I'd never read it before, but heard a little about it at OWS. He saw me looking through it and came in with a whole stack of them, every issue from the last three years. It being Chicago in January, we had a lot of time downtime indoors, which I spent reading every issue he had, cover to cover. He came in a few days later and said, "You doing okay in here, Kazcinski?"

Birthday Letters - Ted Hughes
I was sitting
Youth away in an office near Slough,
Morning and evening between Slough and Holborn,
Hoarding wage to fund a leap to freedom
And the other side of the earth -- a free-fall
To strip my chrysalis off me in the slipstream.

The Cruise - Bennett Miller, starring Timothy "Speed" Levitch



David Attenborough Documentaries -
These should be our biology classes in high school. I don't know how this guy gets his footage, but he's one of the greatest filmmakers in the world. Netflix has helped me discover a new love for documentaries. These movies show that the world outside of man, the world of nature, is beautiful and imaginative far behind any artistic capability we have. Watching these movies is a good way to gain a new consideration for the natural world, which is now being fatally overlooked, occupying little space in anyone's consciousness.



Shakespeare Behind Bars -
The greatest film adaptation of Shakespeare. Watch it on Netflix. An Othello monologue performed by a man doing life for killing his wife is as authentic emotionally as it gets. It's hard to picture, but Shakespeare writes about real people. These murders, rapes, betrayals, maneuvers, amputations, androgenies, these are real events, not fictions.

"Walking" - Henry David Thoreau
The Songlines, In Patagonia, On the Black Hill - Bruce Chatwin


"I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of walking". These guys are one or two. Werner Herzog is another.

Diaries of Anais Nin, Vol. 3 1939-1944

Wandering - Herman Hesse

"By Blue Ontario's Shores", "When Lilac's Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" - Walt Whitman
The Civil War - Ken Burns
I was taken by the eloquence and strength of even the young soldiers during this war. In this movie, we see the beginnings of modern warfare, and the horror evoked by it in those who were the first to witness what was being unleashed. You can feel the dignity of the whole world unraveling, and death taking over.


Black Coffee Blues - Henry Rollins
The funniest shit I've read in a long time. Rollins is the greatest. Here's an interesting website that argues that Bob Dylan's more recent albums have borrowed heavily from Rollins' books.

Residencia a la Tierra - Pablo Neruda

The Stepfathers set at the Del Close Marathon at the UCB Theatre, NYC.
Hello Lazer at the Magnet Theatre, NYC.
One of the advantages and beauties of improv is that it's theatre stripped to its most essential, and Hello Lazer performs with the logic of the dream. Probably my favorite improv group. The Stepfathers one word suggestion was "Rewind", and about 2/3s of the way through a funny set about a gang of saxophone players, Bailiff school, Chris Gethard steps out and says "and now we're going to rewind to the beginning of our set" and they proceed to perform the whole thing exactly as it happened IN REVERSE. We were all lucky to be there that night.

Truth in Comedy, Art by Committee - Del Close, Charna Halpern, Kim "Howard Johnson
Impro - Keith Johnstone
Mastery - George Burr Leonard
The War of Art - Steven Pressfield
Buck - Cindy Meehl
These books helped me a lot this year. The principles of Improv aren't just helpful to would-be improvisers, they're a pretty solid foundation for living well. Steven Pressfield's audio books are pretty hilarious, as he sounds like a grizzled survivor of "The War of Art". Impro by Keith Johnstone is a spooky, magic assessment of modern society and how to re-animate our spontanaiety and humanity.

The Random House Book of Twentieth Century French Poetry - Edited by Paul Auster
It's all there. Auster's introduction is stellar. I discovered Apollinaire, Artaud, Francis Ponge through this book.


"What People Say About Paris" - Kenneth Koch
People also say these things about NYC.

"The Exstacie" - John Donne

Duino Elegies - Rilke
Maybe my favorite poems.

They Live - John Carpenter starring "Rowdy" Roddy Piper
The prophets Carpenter and Piper. The scene where they bulldoze the encampment is exactly what happened in Zuccotti Park.



Encounters at the End of the World - Werner Herzog

Cricket

I was meditating, grateful to the miserable weather
for condoning my isolation, when I heard
a lone cricket throbbing through the cold, wet leaves.
What was he chanting? I wondered. Must he sing to live?
“help, help, help,” he ached, or maybe “please, please, please.”
I went out to find him but when I approached he
vanished into silence. I stood in the rain, listening,
wanting him to teach me how to endure, to thrive
in an inhospitable world, but he would not give himself up.
Back inside I found the silence I’d requested.
Today summer has been granted a reprieve.
Again, the crickets try to chirp
their way through the walls.

These Songs

These songs have potholes
in their cheeks. These songs do not
wear capri pants. These songs
say what they can in
Japanese. These songs do not
bend like the horizon. These songs
are half-starved and delirious,
imagining cake, stomachs
bloating like the universe.
These songs are the amalgamated
pieces of every invisible
sound you’ve ever caught
with your ears, butterflies
in a net, legions fluttering
in formation.
They are not even songs.
They are the combination
to a safe holding
your own heart.

Shorts

There are ladders growing
from the ground
like telephone poles.
Climb to the sun
Climb to a cloud
Climb to the smog
Climb to nowhere.

*

Music is no longer
a fist
It is an open palm
petting your hair.

*

There are no grails here
Only red plastic cups

Airy Nothings

I have been recording some music in the attic over the past few weeks. My goal is to have an album featuring between ten and fifteen original songs recorded by the time I graduate (August 24).

I've written the songs over the course of the past few years. Most of them are basically just fragments. I usually get bored with a song and leave it wounded rather than kill it off completely.

I find it really hard to write lyrics. Music is such an ethereal thing, writing lyrics for a melody is like trying to pin a butterfly to the wall while it's alive and fluttering around. Most of the songs are fairly typical love songs, but I think my style is becoming a little more sophisticated. I feel like a lot of music serves to keep us in a kind of permenent adolescence. There's a lot more to write about than holding hands and heartbreak. I guess pop music is particularly effective when dealing with these subjects, but I'm trying to write about something else, not politics, but just anything interesting.

I am using Apple's Garageband and a Blue Snowball microphone for drums, organ, percussion and vocals, as well as an iMic USB input to record the guitars. I think the guitar amplifiers on garageband are basically shit, but I can't seem to get a good sound any other way.



If somehow you manage to find yourself all the way out here on this little internet outpost would you please be so kind as to visit this link to here some of the music.

Here's a tentative track listing:

1. Mushroom Cloud
2. I Like the Way Your Pants Fit
3. Static Electricity
4. Let's Stay Up All Night
5. I Want to Wake Up Next To You
6. Hall of Mirrors
7. Marilu
8. Black Rainbows
9. Tattered, Shattered, Broken and Beat
10.Girl With Her Feet on My Dashboard
11.Supersonic Narcissist

Up to My Ass in Daisies

I first saw Rita at a bohemian coffee shop where a mutual friend was performing a magic show. She had a blond, beehive hairdo, eyes that could read every thought you were trying to hide and lips soft and plump as strawberry taffy. I drunkenly searched the Facebook guest list for her later that night and recognized her by the honeycomb on top of her head. I sent her a message and, to my surprise, she gave me her phone number. I called many times, but never got past the voicemail. "Hi, this is Rita, leave a message." I memorized the timber of her voice, the little girl panicking over whether she should get the raspberry sorbet or the peanut butter brickle. I was in love with her for a few weeks but gradually gave up on the idea that she was going to save my life.

Six months later I was in an arty dive bar (the kind where you can't tell the difference between the scruffy hipsters wearing the carefully frayed 200 dollar jeans and ironic trucker hats and the scruffy people who are actually poor wearing frayed jeans and trucker hats) when I saw her for the second time.

"Oh shit," I said to my friend Oscar, "I think I know that girl."

"Which?" he stood on his toes and craned his neck.

Oscar is, as he is proud to admit, a huge smartass. He goes by the creed "It's better to be a smartass than a dumbass," although I would argue that this isn't always true, that sometimes your mouth can get you into situations that your body can't get you safely out of.

"With the hair," I indicated.

"Go talk to her."

He pushed me out onto the dance floor and I dawdled over to her, half nodding my head to the music, which was nearly unlistenable. There was a band onstage playing noise rock with a golf club, a filing cabinet and an electronic sample of frogs croaking.

She was swirling her drink around with a blue straw. I tapped her on the shoulder and when she turned around I was taken aback to see how much more beautiful she was in person.

"Hey!" She said and gave me a hug as if we were old friends.

"You have more freckles than I imagined," I said.

"Thanks," She said, smiling.

Our conversation was going well and she traveled with me to a booth by the pool table where Oscar and I were playing against two lesbians. We were down five balls and I got up to hit a difficult bank shot. I am a fair pool player at best, but I sunk it right in the pocket. Rita held up her drink and raised her eyebrow at me. I sunk another one across the table into the corner pocket, cutting it gingerly and putting the english on it necessary to keep the cue from going into the opposite pocket. I didn't look at Rita, as I was "in the zone" and I knew how cool I looked and I wanted to show her how casual I was about the whole thing. I sank another one in the side pocket and slicked my hair back like Tom Cruise in "The Color of Money." I could see out of the corner of my eye that Oscar had sat next to Rita, and I figured that they were probably talking about what a great guy I was.

After hitting it in the side pocket I left the cue in a bad position and my only shot was an attempt at the corner which I had to jump over a stripe to make. I slid the cue smoothly between my fingers and chipped briskly at the point where the ball met the felt. It jumped, arched over the edge of the table and clacked against the concrete floor. One of the lesbians caught it and her friend handed her a cue. I shrugged my shoulders as she set the ball back down on the table. I sat next to Oscar and tapped him on the shoulder but he didn't turn around. He was gesturing aggressively at Rita.

"That's bullshit," he said belligerently, "You're full of shit."

Alarmed, I butted my way between them.

"What's bullshit?" I said. "What're you talking about?"

"You know this girl?" he said, pointing at her with his beer.

"Yeah. Sort of." I smiled at her. She was searching the room for her friends.

"She doesn't believe in relationships."

"What do you mean?"

"She doesn't believe that a man and a woman, or two woman, or two men should be in a monogamous or open relationship. Ever."

"Why's that?" I said. Oscar started to answer. I cut him off. "I'm asking her. It's your shot." I handed him the cue. He pounded the rubber end softly on the floor. I tried to catch her attention. "I think that's really interesting. Why do you believe that?"

She espoused a lazy explanation of her philosophy. "I just think that you should experience everything and committing to another person like that really limits what you can experience. It's like you're betrothed to that one person."

Betrothed. I remembered how, when I used to correspond with her on Facebook, her messages were grammatically fairly incoherent, but she would throw in a five dollar word every once in a while, one she had clearly learned from a "Word-A-Day" calendar or the like.

"Mutual romantic love is the ultimate thing you can experience in this universe," Oscar yelled, cutting her short. She smiled curtly.

"It's your turn, Oscar." I tried to push him off the seat.

"You can be in love," she said. "I didn't say you couldn't fall in love."

"How're you going to fall in love with someone if you're not in a relationship with them?" Oscar said. I leaned so far off the seat trying to see around him that I almost fell off. I was in disbelief. He was murdering my chances with this girl. He knew how lonely and pathetic I was and he was killing me.

"I fall in love all the time," she said. "Love is transitory. It's not something you're meant to hold onto. It flows."

He mimed jerking off, "Give me a fuckin' break."

She stood up. "I'm gonna go find my friends. 'Bye Pete." She waved a small wave to me while looking around the room and walked away.

I took Oscar by the shoulder. "What the fuck are you doing?"

He went to hit a shot. "That chick was fucking crazy."

"So what? She's gorgeous. You just killed my chances with her."

Oscar rammed a ball off the rail and missed the side pocket. "You never had a chance. You heard her. She doesn't believe in relationships."

I could see her across the room standing in a loose circle with her friends. They were all wearing colorful summer dresses and when they went out the front door I felt like beating Oscar to death with the thick end of the pool cue. Why would he torpedo me like that? He had a girlfriend. He wasn't trying to meet girls, but he was the only friend I had who liked to go out. I went out with him three nights a week, salivating at every attractive girl in every bar we went to, too timid to approach them. We usually ended each night drunkenly barking into the speaker at McDonald's and pathetically nibbling at McChicken sandwiches. I didn't want to end up at the drive-thru that night.

I walked over to the door. I pushed it open, surprised by how cool the air was for June. Rita and her friends were trying to hail a cab. I ran to her and grabbed her by the elbow.

"Hey, Rita," I said, "I just wanted to apologize for my friend. He's kind of an asshole when he's drunk."

"It's fine, don't worry about it," She looked completely unconcerned about Oscar's opinions on anything. She got into the cab and it pulled away.

"You ready to fucking go, man?" Oscar appeared behind me, lighting a cigarette.

"Let's go get a fucking McChicken sandwich," I said, and we went home in Oscar's parent's mini-van.