INTERVIEW WITH A HOUSEFIRE

Update 7/2010:

I hate this bit,  but I love it too- mainly because it fights me
back.
I don’t think even my friends have ever read it, and I don’t
mind that at all.
This may be the 20th time it’s been edited and rearranged
to fit, somehow, and it may not be the last. But I hope it is.
e

____________________________

(This entry is in two parts because of it’s length. Write your congressman.)

Part One

This intro has been edited in the name of

diatribe and indifference. It was for me anyway,

and The Outer Boogie was, in theory, for you.

It served it’s purpose, and should not muddy

any waters- even without it, the piece is still

worthless.

I think it was Jesus who said “Quit while you’re ahead”.

In terms of Monday morning quarterbacking, I figure
He oughta know.

***********************

For Tom Robinson,

Quanah Laredo,

Michelle Petrey

and Donna Lawrence.

***********************

(Various hues and/or accelerant borrowed,

sparingly and with affection, from Burgess,

G.O. and the ever and always Sir Rastus

Bear.

I am, by a song, redeemed.)

************************

The voices sound deadly,

and sometimes I hear

echoes of empires

spread throughout the sky.

wings, wetted down.

************************

Bury me near the secret cove,

So they’ll not know the way.

Bury me there behind the rose,

So they’ll not rile my grave.

************************

PART ONE: THE RED

В то время (в настоящее время) За пределами  советского хочу ли я погрузиться спокойно пандемия гриппа,sans левитов будет(и периферийных устройств данные wih mer>iful краткость); заключительный cogof отдых и отдых.Для вас найти в этой таблице здесь и сейчас, с вашего разрешения не требует но с просьбой (от вашего имени,вы ouhta знать) некоторые Некоторое внимание, а затем,и сейчас.Без секретов, без сидений,без Ticketmaster.наколенники.Вы действительно считаете, что последние уже нет?Хотя большинство мертвые и/или посторонними,едва ли. При молитвенников, даже в тени с ассистентом вопросов плохих снов.Наведите курсор на Товарищ, и сказать Джеймс Patterson. I может быть только в качестве clearas потенциальных может простить.принять решение для принятия решения в интересах,но стороны рассчитывать в прошлом голосов.Халиль Джибран говорит, “как же вы, но я считаю убитых” .конечно, он был разговор с потенциальным meatloaf,но работает для сарказмом и snoot только А также.мне все равно сколько триггеры я уже вытянута, я в полном отчаянии’ttrying нанесет ущерб кому-либо; и если это не какие вам, может быть, мы можем лучше питаться в отдельных таблицах.Посмотрите, некоторые люди могут быть более равных tnr. Я просто сказал ые аниц.  здравствуйте.затем, интервью (не Поэтому) вопрос любого и каждого ответа (в Интерес ясности) о кровавых страниц,наружные | Гостевая книга.душа по усмотрению, зеленый бессмысленного e1eon планетарной космических наклона-o-думала,без ограничения высоты или прощения.Все они нужны “для затравки”являются общедоступными. Они ваши, ) Если вы решите играть.Но вам лучше одеваться самостоятельно; “Я могу услышать их на лестнице”.

This fire burns tonight.

This is not a bill.

Think of it as the music of war, or a counter-measure in

the event of real country dark.

Or if six turned out to be nine.

And don’t blame T.O.B. This is your account.
Make it pay, and pay it forward, with interest.
***************************

A harvest of life, a harvest of death

One body of life, one body of death.

And when you’ve gone and choked to death,

With laughter and a little step,

I’ll prepare the quicklime, friend ,

For your ripe and ready grave.

***************************

November 2006. At night. mostly.

Q:

TOB:

In spades. And stop calling me Shirley.

Easily, nothing is more or less humorous than asking

questions you don’t want the answer to.

In fact, countless millions of conversations have set in

cement the ceaseless wonder of Mortale Carnivale,

that people who ask for advice are usually asking you to

tell them something they can agree with, or something you

will justify. When advice hurts the most, it’s probably the

best thing you can hear.

That’s not my fault; write your cosmic Congressman.

TOB only states the obvious.

If what you see here is news to you, please observe the

check-out time and don’t forget to fill your Lily of the Valley

prescription. Don’t know much about book learnin’, but I can

tell you this:

your dreams will cease to be your friend.

Eventually, children, they will be the daily reminder of what

you’ve done, and what you didn’t do.

In terms of the chrome plated megaphone of destiny, if you

think your life is Bronte-esque (or wish it were),

it can never be.

And if you think your life is Everything’s Archie,

it’s way past your bedtime.

Q:

TOB:

Cars, birds, Christmas {Jesus}, food, people,

and time.

That is everything. There is nothing else.

Q:

TOB:

That’s right. Nothing.

Q:

TOB:

Cars, birds, Christmas…..

Q:

TOB:

Think of it as the Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

TOB is not a bird sanctuary- not even a fan.

Hard to argue with dimension; Cars are movement, place,

servitude, ambition, success, failure (seen the Ford Pinto?),

possession, freedom, captivation, symbol, time (seen the

Ford Pinto?), bond… the idea is degree and illustration:

fuck Kevin Bacon.

Everything that is anything, that is… everything, is there.

What cars are not, Christmas is.

What Christmas is not, birds are. Fast, faster, fastidious.

It’s a calling, but we are wide asleep.

Even easy isn’t simple, so don’t accuse The Outer Boogie of

mad-shadowing, it was just trying to help.

Think of it as a Groaner’s Manual.

Or think of it as…  the music of war.

Q:

TOB:

Every war, national or emotional, is about the presence

or absence of righteousness, be it real or imagined.

Not a silver word has been flaunted here that means anything

more; that’s all we need to remember.

Remember it well, for it is grave.

If we fly through that sentence unmoved, Orwell was right.

We are the dead. Told you that last time. Where were you?

War is religion and religion is war. If one gets in your pants,

the other follows.

And since the typical context of war is of nationality and of

God, then war is about peace.

And in the less popular notion of war, personal bonds like

marriage, home and community, strife is about calm.

Enemies of the “west” want you and your bird dead, because,

they seem to believe, people who like movies and girls are

the rain on Satan’s jalepeno garden.

That as long as the “west” thrives, there can be no peace.

You don’t have to read the whole Bible to know the devil,

not the butler, did it.

So if porn and hot dogs are the plant food of evil and must be

weed wacked right down to the root in the name of God, who is

generally perceived to be love defined (or at the very least a

pretty nice guy with a rent-and-hassle-free hundred zillion bed

room cosmic Neverland and a burden incinerator the size of the

Milky Way), then war, quite inarguably, is about peace.

Making sense yet? Of course not. The only thing worse than a

tangent that convoluted is the fact that it’s true.

In our living rooms, the stakes are higher, in that war to most

of us long suffering Americans is only thought of in the typical

context; which means, to us, it’s something really shitty that

happens on t.v. 7 minutes a day to a bunch of zealots and to

our soldiers. The neighbors kid.

We miss it, most every time.

The stakes are higher because it’s at our tables, in our bed

rooms, and in our dreaming.

If you’re depleting more personal energy than you can afford

wishing you’d done something different 20 years ago, you’re

not just invited to The Outer Boogie; you’re a Guest of Honor.

Beside righteousness is regret on the list of TOB particulars.

Regret is the shrapnel of personal war, of the battles fought

in thousands of homes, everyday.

Those battles are harsh realities for those caught up in them,

every bit as tragic and misguided as any war of Nation or God,

as brutal and immoral as the Path of Hat and Snake.

Pretty soon it becomes only about winning, and though winning

is celebrated by human kind on most every level, it is in fact the

fuel of our most Godless and selfish fires.

If there is something to be learned from TOB, I hope it’s the

gravity and necessity of at least trying to remember that

righteousness is the point of anything and everything.

It is our charge to try and help each other.

Even if the only result of that Holy endeavor is a brief and half-

hearted smile; it is not nearly as much about results as it is the

effort.

Wanting, really wanting to help, is enough.

And that doesn’t mean really wanting to be perceived as really

wanting to help.

There are no field goals in the Divine game of mercy.

TOB is a blood stained white flag. If you want the front seat, take

it.

I will no longer put aside my own confusion and fear and struggle

just to be chosen by the team with the muscle guy, but I will not try

to stop you from doing it.

I don’t know much, but I do know the music of war isn’t

“Ride of the Valkyries”.

The music of war is “Taps”.

Q:

TOB:

In the dark and creamery halls of TOB, our picture imperfect

and nonexistent Plaque of Purpose proudly doesn’t hang:

“Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.”

I said that, and will not fight for it.

Just understand you already know everything you can find here.

The cursed urge to write doesn’t make writers smarter than

gravediggers; quite the opposite.

I’ve always been drawn to the creative side of things, and if

there’s anything I actually do understand, it’s the creative

process.

Music, writing, acting- regardless of the vehicle the person with

a creative bent chooses to drive off the bridge, that person shares

something with every other bohemian troublemaker on the art rescue
raft. There’s something we really need to tell you, but we’re just not
sure what it is.
I may have more in common with John Lennon than Salvadore Dali,

but I’ll bet if you gave either one of them a call they would tell you

they couldn’t have said it better themselves.

It’s a lonely thing, often misconstrued as pretension or terminal

snootiness, and even though one is inescapably driven to try one

more time to make their point, it never seems clear enough, making

the whole thing oddly unsatisfying, most of the time.

It feels like important work as it’s being crafted, but three
days after it’s completed the only thing the artist can see is what’s

missing.

Somewhere in our well-fed but still starving skulls, that drive to be

clearly heard seems to never run out of gas.

Even when our soapbox of choice is unavailable, we snatch up

another mode of communication to beat senseless.

The guitarist will pick up a pen, or a paintbrush, for instance.

The architect heads to Ikea for an unassembled entertainment

center.

The writer…

well, the writer usually just gets drunk.

But the blessed gravedigger finds his peace in the simplicity of

honest and honorable toil. He knows better.

You will never need a tale or a tune as completely as you will a

sepulchre. What Jean Cocteau was really trying to say means

little in the face of the final answer.

Obviously everything pales when compared to a moonless

midnight, but  that’s too perfect and simple for someone like me.

Someone for whom “anything worth doing is worth overdoing” is

symptomatic of disease rather than playful syntax.

Call it Communicarcinoma.

Albert Einstein said “Everything should be made as simple as

possible, but not simpler”.

But who the hell reads Albert Einstein?

The artist matters, but no more than the dry cleaner.

Never imagine they get something you don’t.

In fact, I think most artists would prefer you think of them as

tortured.

Because they are.

But they are not victims of the invading bourgeois, even if they

want (or want you) to think they are.

They are victims of an obsession with being heard.

They are convinced they have something they really need to

tell you, as soon as possible, and it’s eating their lunch every

single day.

And they are not as afraid of you never hearing it as they are

of never being able to make it clear.

I should know. It’s my church.

If I am lucky (as opposed to successful), TOB will give you an

occasional smile. If I am really lucky, the odd sentence will feel

like, if not something  you hadn’t thought of, then a pretty good

way to say it.

I don’t think most people waste time questioning their every

motive or  wondering why no one ever asks the weird questions,

but for people like me, it is our very dead albatross.

At least a couple of people have told me it’s very funny, and that

feels pretty right. But part of me wants you to find it frightening;

not because I want you to be afraid, but because I am.

And also because of my bewilderment at the subject I so often

pound like a cheap steak in these pages: the inescapable lie

of our duality.

On another page of TOB you will find (as usual) the black leather

and blacker feathered notice of Sir Rastus Bear: “One door let to

take you in; the other one just mirror’s it.”

If the world in which we live is comfortable with the fact that

revolutionaries can own birdcages without losing an hour of

sleep, someone isn’t telling the truth.

You gotta forgive the artist.
Particularly the writer. It’s easy to mistake observation for
instruction, but I promise you TOB doesn’t want your brain,
or even your vote.
It doesn’t suggest you have missed the bus, and it certainly
doesn’t tell you when the next one leaves.

It’s not about what should’ve confounded you by now,

but what has confounded me.
And like most of the poor, tortured malcontents that think
you might dig a bit deeper as you dance to their song, laugh at
their sarcasm or cry over their Shakespeare, the bleeding
elder at TOB is only, simply, afraid of never being heard.
I’m quite aware that my puny societal tongue lashings do
not qualify as food for thought at the gravediggers dinner
table, and I do not think they should.
But I’ve learned the hard way the difference between clutter
and treasure is measured by the heart, not the common cause;
and as demonstrated by disapproving mothers-in-law, 50%+
divorce rates and a plethora of other communicative disasters,
matters of the heart are inexplicable from the word “go”.
Add this common nightmare to the fact that the artist,

through no choosing  of his own, is by nature ruled by

the heart, and the human need to be understood takes

on a dimension that defies common sense and nurtures

alienation with every wheezing breath they take.

If that sounds bloated to you, don’t worry about it.

It matters not.

Might wanna dig out that blessings list, though.

I would.

Next.

Q:

TOB:

In a world where both of our cars were totally

underwater…

No, how about this: One of the most..the sweetest,

perhaps.. feelings I’ve had, maybe ever, was seeing

a line, actually part of a quote used in a context by

itself (the way a good line oughta be referenced) from

one of my silly papers, on someone else’s “page”; a

quote intended by the pages’ owner to make a point

using my personal skew, because,

I can only assume, it made sense to her.

That anyone thinks I made sense isa favor from God,

and I’m grateful

to both of them.

I’ve been told many times over the years that I’m

“smart”, but it usually seems to be a misguided kudos;

just because none of your friends use  words like “shall”

and “perhaps” in a typical conversation doesn’t mean

people who do know what the hell their talking about.

It might be more accurate to say I “seem to be” smart,

which I have also been told by people that have known

me for two hours; but that’s surely

bullshit too.

I don’t think you’ll find my report card of personal

decisions posted under too many refrigerator magnets.

I’m a “quoter” too, but I’m as likely to quote Freewheelin’

Franklin (“dope will get you through times of no money

better than money will get you  through times of no dope”)

as I am Martin Luther King (“I had the weirdest  dream”).

Charles Winchester I ain’t.

But I think it’s common (and good) for me, because it

keeps me aware  of something I wrote in another TOB

entry: smart and smarter is a reality with a purpose.

You could throw a rock in a Kentucky meadow and

still have a pretty decent chance of hitting somebody

smarter than me. Smart is as smart does.

There’s a part in “Jesus Christ Superstar”, a plea to

JC to make a decision about His perilous immediate

future, where He’s told “they’ll hurt you if they think

you’ve lied”. I remember that line, and the tiny piano

bit following it, sounding pretty scary when I was young.

Desperate, in fact.

A few years later, and still, another line (oddly from

the same song, as I recall) replaced it on the gasp-o-

meter; a question I’d like to ask Him myself:

“Have you forgotten how put down we are?”

If the person who inspired Christmas and immeasurable

sacrifices (not to mention the Chia Pet) can potentially

drop the ball that hard, who the hell are you and me to

cry about blowing it?

It is beyond likely that it is possible to “ smart” yourself

right into the ground (you’ll recall the ill-fated Peter

Sellers in “Lolita”). When the right people know stuff,

the carousel keeps on a-wheeling.

In the wrong hands, it leads to passion poisoning:

Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix and Hunter Thompson

are are not dead because they were stupid. I think

they’re dead because they were scared.

And I think they had something they really needed

to tell us.

But they didn’t know exactly what it was.

And knowing- well that’s… everything.

Isn’t it?

Q:

TOB:

For most of us, quiet is not as much

about the presence of silence as it is the

absence of sound. No, really. That’s true.

Lester Bangs once said “There is some shit I

will not eat”. I may have more in common

with Alex Harvey than Stanley Kubrick, but

if you were to ask me, I couldn’t have said it

better myself.

Next.

*******************

A harvest of life, a harvest of death

Resumes its course each day

It comes as if by schedule

A harvester lifts his arms

to the rain

And toes that crawl

And knees that jerk

And necks like swans

that seem to turn

As if inclined to gasp,

or pray.

******************