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.

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.

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.

Yet it wasn’t completely laid to rest, and my writing has been mostly on life-support for the past couple years, long silences interrupted by occasional blips on the screen, spikes in otherwise untrafficked zones. But I feel the words once more bubbling up from that netherworld of all insight and inspiration. And it makes me feel something again; perhaps I could go so far as it brings back a sense of self-worth that was lost along the way. With ego-death also came posthumous self-doubt, as that self became slowly redefined and refined and yearned to be trusted with a voice and appropriate energy, yet shivered with the memory of mistaken notions and arrogant delusions.

If ever there was a time the world needed more voices speaking truth to power, it is now, as the landscape of global power begins shifting under the weight of society’s demands. I have begun to see and feel how relevant — not arrogant — a mouthpiece for the individual is to the process of engaging that power structure and systematically whiting-out and rewriting the collective narrative. The individual is the base unit of our whole society. The logic follows that if individuals educate and empower one another with truth, society will invariably, inevitably, and irrevocably adjust to accommodate that truth. The alternative, at least as things currently stand, is a desolation of lies; because the truth is, we don’t need to be told that we have self-worth. We already feel that; it is what leads us to stand up for ourselves, even if not all the time, and what makes us sensitive to disparaging words and insults to our character. If we had no sense of value whatsoever we would not feel compelled to object when others do wrong by us. We would not be compelled to confront wrongs nor seek recompense. Some of us do not, but only when we have been impelled to swallow the lies others tell us about ourselves.

The truth is, you are unique. We know this empirically but more importantly we respond to this innately. I do not need to be told that I am different from everyone else, nor do I need to study the sciences to understand that my genetic makeup is, even when alarmingly similar to that of others’, individuated. The human being is not a replica of every other; it is a sentient, reasoning, passionate reflection of what I can only call god. I can think of no other way to put this, and would not try to. We are a piece with the universe, composed of particles and energies beyond comprehension that have been and will continue to be existing for the remainder of, and perhaps past, this universe’s lifetime. We are nothing short of miraculous, each one of us…

I must admit I am drawing much inspiration from a recent viewing of Zack Snyder’s rendition of Watchmen, which was originally a graphic novel. At one point in the film, the major character named Dr. Manhattan — a godlike being of pure energy — suddenly realizes the mistake in his view of humanity. He has completely removed himself from Earth with exhaustion for humanity’s petty differences and conflicts, and built himself a kind of clockwork mechanism out of glass, a symbol of perfection, balance, and austerity (in the graphic novel, the image of this machinery is accompanied with the words “The Blind Watchmaker”). As Earth’s future dangles precariously on the verge of nuclear annihilation, Dr. Manhattan summons Laurie, a fellow superhero and his former “lover,” to Mars — using his handy teleportation abilities — so that she may present a case for the saving of Earth (something Dr. Manhattan may actually be capable of). He patiently explains his ambivalence to Laurie, from the perspective of a near all-powerful being whose conception of time is non-linear, that the universe does not blink if a species like “Homo sapiens” or even a planet like “Earth” is simply snuffed out in the vastness of its expanses. “A live human body and a deceased human body have the same number of particles,” he says. “Structurally there’s no difference.” He even offers to enter Laurie’s own memories to show her how much pain humanity is capable of inflicting. After showing her an unsettling portrait of her own life, Dr. Manhattan watches as Laurie shatters the intricate glass machinery into fragments, perhaps symbolizing her shattered identity. But in the next moment Dr. Manhattan has felt something, becomes somehow inspired by this woman’s outburst.

The monologue that follows is beautiful. It has brought tears to my eyes on several occasions:

Dr. Manhattan: Will you smile? If I admit I was wrong?
Laurie: About what?
Dr. Manhattan: Miracles. Events with astronomical odds of occurring, like oxygen turning into gold.

I’ve longed to witness such an event, and yet I neglect that in human coupling, millions upon millions of cells compete to create life, for generation after generation until, finally, your mother loves a man, Edward Blake, the Comedian, a man she has every reason to hate, and out of that contradiction, against unfathomable odds, it’s you – only you – that emerged.

To distill so specific a form, from all that chaos. It’s like turning air into gold. A miracle.

And so… I was wrong. Now dry your eyes, and let’s go home.

Perhaps you will have to see the film — or preferably read the graphic novel — to agree to the poetic genius behind the whole character of Dr. Manhattan, but the sentiment of something like humility is what stands out to me; conceptualizing a being not wholly human but neither infinite that would recognize the wondrous nature of the individual human being — complete with all the facets of what we might call consciousness and wrought from any and all flaws one might try to pinpoint in the making of that self-awareness. It really is nothing short of miraculous.

And this is something that, to me, seems worthy of tears. I shed tears of joy at the affirmation and recognition of this uniqueness, in direct contrast with a world that sees the unmatched patterning of the person I see in the mirror and would seek to replace that diverse palette with a bland monotone. The one-size-fits-all humanity hawked by salesmen short on imagination has sought to bring the whole down to the lowest-common-denominator of our desires. And one of the dangers implicit to desire is its malleability, its receptivity to suggestion. Thus we find ourselves inundated with commodities that actually commodify their users, and advertising that may be better seen as self-fulfilling prophecy. And the same is true in the inverse: we see ourselves as identical, and in turn respond identically to singular experiences. The product of this self-image is damning; it is at the heart of our collective crisis of post-modernity and it is seeking resolution as we move into the post-Capitalist civilization we will present to our future generations. What will we teach our children? That the good is simply the expedient? That might is right? Or will we instill ancient virtues of integrity and respect, justice and humility? Should we not become a generation seeking excellence rather than decadence, empathy instead of amorality? Can we not resist willful ignorance to the lessons of our history, hoping instead that we might have any kind of higher-evolved future?

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 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.