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the poet who is not sensitive to the enormity and complexity of our historical and intellectual predicament is not worth reading.

--charles simic

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no man whose sex life was satisfactory ever became a moral censor.

--mina loy

dancing on valentine's day

not me.  i have no rhythm.  or groove.  at all.  but i love music, esp. live music.  & as a veteran concertgoer i am happiest when the music, musicians & audience become a sinuous fabric of pure unadulterated joy.  when your body becomes a fleshy river & the sounds from the stage are its banks.  transcendence in its most primal form.  it is a state i call ABSOLUTE MUSIC.  

which brings me to this evening's show.  i am at that stage of my music-loving life where, as a gent of a certain vintage, i love cover bands, tribute bands.    i seek them out on youtube.  & i have discovered that some of the most talented, passionate musicians are individuals who might not ever become superstars.  as a poet i can relate cuz a being famous poet is an oxymoron.  even the famous of the famous of poets like allen ginsberg of the last century could go to the corner bodega unmolested by fans.  not so if you are madonna or bad bunny.  

still, talent does not equal fame.  nor does passion for your art.  but so fucking what.  if you can make an audience groove, dance & sing along with you as you perform my fucking gawd that is a great gift.  so it was tonight.  anna purchased tickets to an ABBA cover band a couple nights ago.  ARRIVAL FROM SWEDEN, from sweden, natch, performed all the songs & the hits at the Hard Rock Casino Sacramento.  they were great.  they had the sound, the tone, the phrasing, the costumes & the charisma to honor the music they played.

when ARRIVAL FROM SWEDEN returned to the stage for their encore the song was, you know it, 'dancing queen'.  i fucking love that song.  wholeheartedly & without reservation.  ARRIVAL had the audience on their feet & everyone, even me a little bit, was dancing.  i sang along.  my two wooden left feet was doing their best to stomp in time with the beat.  while anna was beautiful & made it seemed like her dancing was like an angel.  call me biased for i am her hubby going on nearly 30 years of marriage, but i am trying to be objective.  when i glanced at her during the finale she was an angel.

after the final song the houselights turned on.  the 2000 people or so of the audience began to shuffle to the exits.  we made it to the parking lot & found our way home about 45 minutes later.  for the Hard Rock Casino Sacramento is actually in wheatland, a rural community that is famous for its pumpkin patch.  &, once again, i am reminded that life is beautiful.

absolute music

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there's no such a thing as good art.  there's only art & the other shit.

--billy al bengston 

[check out this rad short docu for more of the laid-back cool california vibes & art of billy al bengtson art & the zen of motorcycle racing]

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                                           --anselm hollo

a touch of spring

 

angels hard as they come [1971]

 

how hard?  haaaard!!! actually, watching this flick in full is the hardest part cuz tho this movie has all the requisite scuzzy biker dudes who are all in need of a lot of soap & water, with a base level of depravity & sadistic violence we come to expect from the biker genre, & even tho it was produced & co-penned by future oscar winner jonathan demme, this movie kinda lagged.  

demme's co-writer, joe viola, directed this entry in the knights errant of postwar dudes riding rough on their hogs thru highways & byways of mid-20th C america.  scott glenn is long john, the taciturn, but somewhat honorable leader of the Angels MC.  after a drug deal goes south long john & a few angels meet the Dragons MC, led by the histrionic psycho the general, played by charles dierkop.  come to the ghost town of Lost Cause, sayeth the Dragons, where the Angels & the Dragons can eat drink & be rowdy.

but lo!  Lost Cause is already a hippie commune led by peacenik henry, played by gary busey.  the hippies are trapped by the Dragons who confiscated their hippie van & are forced to feed & shelter this bad band of bikers.  enter a hippie goddess, astrid, played by gilda texter, who is a sensitive artist & watch long john fall in crazy in love.

does bad shit happen?  do bikers love their WD40?  soon the two MCs are at each other's throats with the hippies caught in the middle.  still, viola keeps the pace quick with bloody sadism.  apart from glenn who nearly whispers his half a dozen lines the dialogue is shouted rather than spoken.  the general is one crazy asshole but he's an imaginative one.  & when the two leaders go mano a mano it is a treat to see.  

i liked glenn's part.  his earthy good looks & his deep voice kept this movie from total boredom.  gilda was never given any depth of character but she was a lovely flowerchild & tho the chemistry between long john & gilda coulda used a catalyst of any kind i was invested in their budding romance.  call me a romantic!  for this biker flick is not the worst of the lot.  & the image of the outlaw biker does carry still a gravitas in our culture.  because, secretly, we are all rebels, right.  & when we are asked what we are rebelling against, remember johnny's answer to that question, played by marlon brando, in the wild one [1953], 'what you got?'

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--nicanor parra