SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

BLACK DOG SLEEPING IN

Yesterday I woke up early and Ramona was still asleep. I thought she looked funny so I took her picture. I always have the Star Wars pillow and she gets the pillow I got from that hippy company where the sheets always look dirty. I’m serious.

While I was procrastinating a bit I had a phone call with my friend Erica who is also my producer because I was threatening her with a black mail operation if she did not watch the motion picture “Peanut Butter Falcon” by July 15. She asked me what I was going to do today and I told her. She was annoyed when I said I was going to make all the electric cords in my studio be perfectly zip tied and orderly. I could tell she was annoyed because when that came up in the list I was reciting to her she said “That’s a big day” in that voice women of a certain generation use to put certain information into a jar set aside for that which they find to be mildly disapprovable. I find this funny and curious, and it did not bother me because she told me she was going to take her child to look at a frog pond, which, admittedly, is better than making a work of art out of electricity cables due to whatever spectrum I am on.

I did have a big day. I took a little bit of Acid my friend Jaime mailed me from France a long time ago. I did a little bit of Morning Yoga and writing. I took Ramona for a long run eastward up Balboa street, and then North over to Lands End. Then we ran the trail high above the bay toward the ocean and cut across the golf course to head over the hill and back home. Ramona picked the route, including the short cut through the golf course, which she likes doing for some reason.

When we got home I made her breakfast and then I talked to Sleepy Todd on the phone for a little over an hour. First we talked about a music project he’s working on. Then I gave him some lectures about computer archiving skills. Then I asked him how to sing properly and he said to imitate the singers you like and what sounds come out when you sing is none of your business. I said when I try to sing the high notes that Paul McCartney does it ruins the whole song and would be anti-social to do in public but he said he doubted that. I also told him a good story about my friend Dan Bray because of a joke Todd made when I told him I was good at composing rag time piano music.

After talking to Todd I retrieved a box of CDs people have given me over the years that is stored in the garage. I decided to listen to one that was given to me by someone named Corrina Jones. This would have been a long time ago, so I’m not sure if this is correct but I think she was a really pretty young lady from England who had a zine. She dressed in old rock and roll clothes you buy in one of those stores that sells lamps that don’t work and ugly dishes. She was really good at picking out the clothes and taking pictures of herself in them. Again, I can’t remember how I “know” this because I’ve never met her. Did people have internet profiles that long ago? Somehow my friend Chris Arnold knew who she was and suggested I mail her a DVD of a movie project we did together which I apparently did do because she wrote me back and sent this CD.

The letter she wrote back said this:

Dear Michael,

Thank you so, so much for sending the story DVD. I haven’t been near a DVD player get with it, but I will find one soon, and delight in it. If it’s suitable, could I maybe do - little special on it in may fanzine. ‘You deserve A Real Relationship’? I hope you like the music and the book.

Best,
Corrina
xx

Now that I have transcribed this letter I wonder what that book was! I’m overly good at holding on to books but I’m not sure which one it was. There is another reason to stop watching McNulty over and over again and to read the books I have. I imagine it is a book about music but I don’t know. I listened to the CD she sent while perfectly zip tying all the electric cords underneath my recording station, and screwing down the power strips in a perfect line, so that what was once an eye sore became a work of art.

The music was what I suppose is called “Indie Rock?” Or it was called that. I think one of the songs was by a band that was a side project of someone that was in a band called Galaxy 500 or 5000, one of those bands my friend Ben Sherwyn somehow automatically knew about because it occupied the niche distanced far enough away from too many people knowing about it. There were guitars that were slightly out of tune and the singing was off hand and influenced by people who listened to old country music and also knew how to buy clothes properly from the broken lamps store. The guys were sad and talking about the false promise of love in the knowing, non sanctimonious way that is attractive to artistic young women. There was a song sung by a woman near the end that was a gothic electronica song that was good. The whole CD was good.

I hope I wrote you back Corrina and thanked you. I hope I find your book. If not, somebody send her my regards and ask her if she remembers. After I finished all the work for the day, took Ramona for a run, swam in the ocean, cleaned up, and made dinner, I did not read books. Ramona and I ate strawberries and watched McNulty again.

I did, once in bed, read a couple pages of the Hagukare. It was a good part that maybe is famous where the guy says if you are good at your job you can keep doing it after they cut off your head. After that I watched a bit more of McNulty where the annoying dock worker kid with a good hairstyle goes to jail for shooting the Greek organized crime appliance store owner who was mean to him. McNulty was trying to solve the source of a Greek text message by using GPS coordinates on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay when I turned off the program and fell soundly asleep.

FILE BOX OF CDS GIFTED BY FRIENDS AND ASSOCIATES

MIX CD SENT BY CORRINA JONES, FRONT COVER

MIX CD BY CORINNA JONES, INSIDE COVER

MIX CD BY CORINNA JONES, TAPED IN LETTER OPENED AND UNFOLDED FOR PURPOSES OF DOCUMENTATION

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

BLACK DOG RESTING ON A FOGGY, SUMMER AFTERNOON

The impediment to progress is not knowing where to start. I am good at resourcing ideas that would change the world for the better in theory. I am also good at writing these ideas down and organizing them for later use. Unfortunately, thus far, the greatest portion of my time has been spent in maintaining an archive of ideas, as opposed to executing them, and publishing the results.

So I had on my list today to write (in this digital publication platform where you are currently reading) having entered blindly, in order to cultivate the habit of producing instead of just theorizing. There is a thick layer of fog above the roof tops. I can see it out of the corner window that affords southern and western views. Below the windows on a black vinyl couch Ramona is sleeping. I have just concluded reading two music criticism articles I cut out of a New York Times Magazine with scissors four years ago. Yesterday I successfully replaced the European Hinges on a client’s cabinet and got paid. I also practiced learning the KO II again, and went swimming in the ocean, and watched McNulty before bed.

Right now, I have two hours or so until Ramona will require her afternoon exercise. It is my intention to spend this time on activities that will calm my nerves. This intention was set, and will be converted into action, under the theory that doing so is the best path to the remuneration, freedom and companionship that seems missing. This is because a long period of seeking to do what I “should” or what I “deserve” was based upon the appearance of struggle and suffering observable elsewhere in the world, and seemed to dictate that I either perform a miracle or else spiral into hell trying. (By a long period of time I mean, probably around thirteen years or so.). It was thirteen years of functionally drinking beers, ripping cigarettes, and workaholism.

I did it in beautiful places and also in tortuous, banal ruins. Sometimes I achieved half finished, promising results, or little broken pieces of romantic relationships. The surroundings changed. There are pictures of snowy forests, and the long drives and dystopian airports between, modern cities with colorful shining windows, and bright tropical sunshine on primitive beaches in the winter, and coastal mountain ranges north of the arctic circle, shivering in a rubber suit and drinking aquavit with locals in lawn chairs under the midnight sun. There is an impulse to bring this paragraph down to earth with a true story violent enough to make the uncomfortable feeling that precedes sincere expression go away. I have chosen to abstain.

Hell, like salvation, is a manifestation of a subconsciously applied sequence of assumptions. Neither are unspeakable realms. Neither are forever. Neither are personal. Love, if uncorrupted, is a garden where one continually and freely cuts ties based on intuition, which is being in dialogue with something outside of the self. You must move here light on your feet, with a loose grip, ready to spring into forceful action. Forceful action, if it is to be powerful, operates from a place that is deeply relaxed and unattached.

This is what came to me to write down. There is a lot of talk about how artificial intelligence will destroy the human race in the popular discourse I’ve heard lately. Isn’t that predicated upon the idea that there is some evil, hidden others doing the programming? What if we all are doing the programming? I say we are. And likely, no one is reading this but the robots or aliens, or whatever you call them, because I’m not good enough at writing, nor relevant enough of a cultural figure to warrant the attention of any given human in an attention starved society. Adieu. Farewell.

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

THE ARTIFACTS OF LAST NIGHT’S EFFORT TO LEARN TO SAMPLE A RECORD ONTO THE EP-133, KO II PHOTOGRAPHED.

Lately I’ve been making music for about two hours every night after dinner. I recently got that sampler from Teenage Engineering which is called a KO II. The record I was sampling is of a nun who plays organs and pianos in Africa really nicely. We made some progress last night, and just struggling to learn the machine felt peaceful and focused. Ramona would prefer to have company immediately after dinner so I make it up to her after the music is over and share a bowl of strawberries or raspberries with her on the couch while we watch a program. Right now we are rewatching McNulty’s antics in the Wire, Season One. The villain on the Wire is the attorney whose name I think is Maurice Levy. Some of the good characters are Weebay and Avon Barksdale.

McNulty is neither good, nor bad. He is who you hang out with to tour through the Baltimore streets and get to know the corrupt police department and local politicians. I went through a period in life where watching self destructive behavior and a chaotic lifestyle was a familiar experience. I’m grateful that currently it feels like I can use it to contextualize the past.

Last night I had terrible nightmares. Today was nice though. I swam in the ocean for the third day in a row. After our afternoon run Ramona always runs to the truck and asks to jump in because, I presume she wants me to go swimming in the ocean.

I’m just trying to make a habit of doing this writing and documentation. My neck hurts now though. The baseball game is playing on the radio. Robby Ray is pitching and the Giants are winning. Soon I will make music and tomorrow I will fix my client’s cabinet door and do some work on her garden. I need to make four times as much money as I do now but I finally feel like I’m living with integrity and balance. The world is engineered on accident by society against balance but that doesn’t mean it’s sensible to cooperate with that. I don’t work as hard as Avon Barksdale but maybe one day I will. Or maybe I will go where there is less concrete and people, and the outside will be wind, birds, flowers, and the sea.

I tend to think people are mad at me for wanting nice things like that. But that’s probably because I’m so mean and judgmental toward people who buy cakes and bring them to the beach or go to furniture stores. You know…if you can learn to emanate love, and focus on it, as opposed to Fauci or Maurice Levy, then you will go to a better reality. You won’t have to worry about people wanting to destroy you.

God helps those who learn how to create material or immaterial works. One who is focused on these pursuits and learning them, is in the image of the creator, and a better member of society. Ok. Ok. I will work on it. I will!