City of Legends

Got word yesterday that Dave James, my older brother’s best friend in high school and my first real boss, passed away of a massive heart attack last week.  He was only two years older than me.  Maybe it’s time to say screw the gout and ankles and get the running shoes on.  My condolences to his family and friends.

Olga Zavershinskaya and I have reached an agreement in principle that will make her the first featured photographer for my new magazine.  Those of you who know her by this name or "Armene" at Deviant Art know her as a skilled and instinctive photographer of immense talent and a great sense of humour.  Also, a beautiful, expressive face and killer body.  But that’s just icing.

Applied to take my PMP (Project Management Professional) exam on Friday.  One in eight gets randomly selected for credential auditing.  Guess who made that elite 12.5 percent?  Yep.  This will slow a few things down, but I had a plan in place and reacted quickly and should only be delayed by about two weeks.  Inconvenient but not killer.

Right now I am listening to an edgy playlist that includes massive amounts of Warren Zevon and Wang Chung.  The cats have applied for passports under assumed names and are planning to join insurgents in the jungles of Central America, battling for the right to have MySpace accounts.  Good luck.  "Dance Hall Days" is right now playing at about 12.5.  To Hell with 11.  I like knowing my brain cells are liquifying.

Went out and got new workout clothes.  Yeah, feeling the mortality and the solitude.  In the sliver between dreams where love seems alien and my mind does its twelve-dimension self-intersectional dance of madness.  There are times I envy people with less complicated thought processes.

Missing certain key people, immensely.  This is a mad, mad world.  That reminds me to add key Tom Cochrane pieces to the playlist.

Byron.  I wonder what Shelley would have evolved into, in time, had he lived.  Had to blow off the reading in Louisville.  Not happy about it.  Feel like I imploding.  Know what that means.  In time I pass crush depth and oscillate back out.  I am writing, but mostly sub rosa, not sharing or caring to show the works, not until I understand them, not until I have a focus, be it a window or a point of illumination.  Have I had a worthy muse in the last decade or is it all, as some insist, illusions, delusions and tricks of the light?  Damn good trick.

Too much Zevon on this playlist.  Affecting my mood.  Blerg.

I don’t know why I "get" Warren Zevon, but I do and always have.  The late, twisted composer of some of the most truly bizarre rock songs in history always speaks to me.  From Werewolves of London to Lawyers, Guns and Money, the Z has a special place in my heart and consciousness.

And one of his best songs, in terms of stirring me, is Mohammed’s Radio…a song that has passed into the distance in no small part because of Western paranoia over Moslem extremism.  Well, Jihad them if they can’t take a joke.

I downloaded both Linda Ronstadt’s brilliant cover of it this evening from iTunes, as well as the Z’s live rendition.  And they strangely calmed me.  I think Warren Zevon’s self-destructive cycle speaks to me like Bob Fosse’s Joe Gideon avatar, played by Roy Scheider in All That Jazz.  I think people expect creative artists to be a bit unbalanced.  Sorry, folks, move along…nothing to see here except when the peacock is in bloom.  Aside from a tendency to blunder into really, really drama-laden relationships, I’m as boring as life gets.

I’m lucky.  I am in good health.  I still command a decent price in the marketplace.   I have three beautiful, healthy children and friends who would have my back if Hell came for me.  I tend to lone wolf it a bit too much, am somewhat gullible and take horrific risks when someone calls for Superman, but that’s not as bad as some traits I could have, I guess. 

I have decided that when I do my interview with Barbara Holmes later this month to give her a listen to the full package of the CD Evangelist, so she can write her impressions.  After her and the gentleman who has already asked to interview me for his online zine, I’m packing it in for interviews.  Everything I have worth saying I’ll say in my poetry and songs. 

Jan Innes once said I don’t write poetry, I live it.  Might as well take it all the way, you know?  This world of mumbling mediocrity needs a little more elegance and eloquence, and maybe I can’t save the world, but I can inspire one or two more voices downrange…you never know.  Too many people wrapped up in their self deceit and self-defeat.  The violence and venom of this world are not the disease, they are the symptoms. 

We are the disease. 

We need to learn to laugh at the absurdity of it all (as Warren Zevon did, when the pain of life wasn’t killing him by driving him to excess).   Judge me for who and what I am and have done, but my poetry has never lied to me, ripped me off or tried to do anything other than make life a little lighter, brighter, clearer and dearer for me and for others.

That’s the message, coming into focus, I plan to take on the road.

Guess what just came on my iTunes?  Requiem For Soprano, Mezzo Soprano, Two Mixed Choirs & Orchestra.  From 2001:  A Space Odyssey.  The sound of the monolith.

Spooky.