City of Legends

If you think I am going to turn in before midnight, PST, or feeling as funky as I was a few hours ago, you’re mui loco. (Did I get that right?)

One of the talents I have is the ability to manipulate my own emotional state. Sometimes it is easy, like running downhill, all you need to do is start moving. Sometimes it’s a lot tougher, like running uphill, requiring more will, but possible.

So I am right now fighting my way out of a funk a dunk to end all funk a dunks. I call those my suicide spirals. I ride them out for a few, then seize the first opportunity to pull up…I do this by any of several methods, not the least of which is list making. Tonight’s list is the ten best tracks on my CDs this past year.

Hmmm…I really can’t use THE NAKED READS as more than one track, as that’s really all it is, despite the multiple works on it, one very long track. But the contents of THE LAST ROMANTIC VERB and NEMICORN are valid, so here goes.

1. DARFUR (Jesus Wept): Have to give this track its due. It has received radio airplay overseas and recognition from several sites. It is nice to take the focus off my heart or genitals once in a while.

2. RIGHT SET OF LIPS: But not for too long…this romantic but sweetly intense work could be used as backdrop to most relationships I’ve screwed up over the years.

3. THE NAKED READS: Let get this long-ass piece out of the way. Dozens of poems, from softly romantic to gently erotic. Ear candy with a pillow-talk sensibility.

4. STRANGE, BUT BEAUTIFUL: Wow. That piece gets me every time I listen to it. I don’t know where I pulled it from, but I am glad to be able to claim it as my own.

5. TEXTURE OF YOUR TONGUE: I was on the fence about this piece, then the other night this beautiful young woman, giggling, kept asking me to read it to her, then chickening out. I must have done something right, eh, Jaz?

6. KISSES FOR KARMA: In the atom bomb that was NEMICORN, many have forgotten this piece from THE LAST ROMANTIC VERB…upbeat but unremittingly romantic. Yes, the horns are a bit much, but…

7. A PASSION, UNRELENTING: Like nothing else I’ve ever done, this piece just come from a space I cannot define. The music and the words just fell into place.

8. THE NOSFERATU’S QUANDARY: Who says this guy can’t funk it up in a good way? All we missed was Prince, shrieking in the background.

9. BEASTS OF LEGEND: The second longest arc-work from VERB, the bridge before RADIANT TIGERS alone is worth the price of admissions.

10. WORDSLINGER: At just over 18 minutes, an hellaciously long poetry arc, but when keystone phrase of IN THE MEMORY OF LOVERS, "I will take no pretender, again, to my bed", kicks in, you know who is shaping this universe.

There you have it…about ninety minutes of experimental madness. And there’s a whole new year out there, waiting.

And I feel better.