Blind Art Collector

I’m pretty excited. Everything that has happened since returning home has been dense; I’ve explored many limits, met people, shared my mind, established preliminary roots, and Reed Lakes is preparing to release a studio E.P. I suppose I can say this isn’t our first release, but in a way it represents the band as something evolved from our home-recorded six-month reflective. We studied up and built upon our strengths; we addressed our weaknesses and, in the midst of weekend touring, approached a kind of fluency with each other in musical language.

It was harmonious, making this record, and an achievement in many ways, for each of us in unique ways. I didn’t join the band until we moved to Alaska, but the other Reed Lakes have been playing together for years — as perad and Gayda and as nameless noise before that. And from all that came this: Blind Art Collector. We had six weeks, and conjured up five songs. A couple had been jangling around in our heads for months before being finished in Heather’s Garage or, in some cases, at Twisted Penguin. Out of necessity more than artistic intention we entered the studio with the album not-quite-realized and this left each song accessible for spontaneous inspiration and important input from Evan and James.

With some subtle, essential, suggestions to each track and experienced mixing, we eventually wove together some harmonious, sweet tones to interesting beats and out popped our long-gestating E.P.

I’m excited. This album was, and is, a goal of mine since the Yurt, since back when we played Maxine’s Open Mic, since A Three Way E.P. Can’t wait to share it. Stay tuned.

Dissonance

It’s all been corrupted again; perhaps it always was

an orchestral piece of broken instruments,

brass in half, rusty slides on wooden floors,

snapped strings and shredded bows hung as laurels

earnest proclaiming relevant competencies;

cracked and corroded the timpanis,

someone removed all the glockenspiel keys,

laid out and stomped the cymbals,

stripped the snare, punctured the tense heads,

beaten bare and lonely;

dented the mellow sousaphone, chucked at the walls

bleating wet smacking barbaric throat noises,

harmonic bassoons with splintered reeds

dissonant and dying their somber buzz.

Crescendoes at fortissimo tax the wary band;

they wonder when the song will end.

Air Into Gold

I wonder sometimes where I lost my nerve. I’ve had this blog since the end of my freshman year of college, and for over a year after its founding I managed to be relatively prolific, opining on this or that current event or pet interest, and churning out words if not perspective. In those days, it wasn’t about figuring everything out, or even convincing anyone of anything; it was simply about figuring. It was a venue for dialogue. And I was challenging my surroundings, seeking a higher ideal, pushing the boundaries of my sphere of influence.

Maybe I just decided at some point that nobody would benefit greatly from having another voice added to the fray of online bickering, and bickering is absolutely an appropriate word to describe the general level of discourse one finds in most online outlets. If you search hard enough, the voices become less strident and more interpretive, but it isn’t common. And I suppose I look into many of my past opinions and tirades and feel them to be juvenile, or overconfident, and can’t help but grimace. Another nail in the coffin of what I thought to be my budding writing career.

Self-Portrait

Self-Portrait — 6/7/11

 

The slight flab:

a gray paunch, finally

to call his own

sitting launch-pad.

 

Holding back, restive,

ever more reservedly;

a death, of sorts

the red kind he couldn’t read about —

it hadn’t happened yet.

 

Beginning again,

again, and then again,

unruly, surly,

tumbling rapidly into the ever

lightning next…

One might call this a self-portrait.

The Earth Is Round

The Earth Is Round — 11/13/11

 

The Earth is round.

The sky,

matte black and endless,

interrupted by chaotic masses

of gravity and gas

permanence; eruptions

and emergence in the cosmos.

 

The Earth is round.

The scale,

its orbit a flywheel invisible,

emanating an everglow;

auburn sunbeams engulfing

moon’s pale eyeline

apropos the dance of satellites.

 

The Earth is round.

The sight,

a bloody revolution

vouchsafed in souls; the

mossy center of the universe

belongs to the ant,

his heart a mold.

 

The Earth is ground.

The sand,

founder of things,

a shifting sea;

mind, its own –

a looking-glass

into vast spaces.