Spider sense tingling!

There are plenty of times when you find out in your life that things are not what they seem. Many times one could plainly be sitting in his most comfortable armchair, sipping on some Cognac, while puffing away on the huge acorn pipe unknowingly aware as your read your paper that the wife whore you've been married too so long is actually in the back room with five of new yorks blackest, roughest natives.

Unfortunately for many, it's never that entertaining, or hilariously dramatic. For many it is actually a quick slap to the face. A snap of the fingers, a blink of the eye. Maybe even just a realization. I am telling you, although more subliminally, that my life has gone through such a great change.

Too many times have I sat upon my porcelain throne reading for hours sometimes about a little funny chemical reaction that we all know and LOVE to call it by its fabled name - Love. Simply put, that amazing feeling you get when you pee, smoke some weed, or see a sibling. Love is simply that, a chemical reaction that is impossible to gravitate from. It is human, and being human is allowing the flow of these chemicals. Whether it be sadness, happiness, or in our case love, you must feel it. You must kneel and feel stunned when you get hit by it.

That's my realization.

There are somethings that are human, and there are somethings that are imposed, whether it be by society or media(which I guess is sort of the same thing but not really). Being able to tell the difference and understand the fullness of the emotion is not giving in or anything of that sort it is simply just being.

Being, being, being.

That's all we are, beings. I think people forget that though.

-rod

Praise and Shame

I see trees of green........ red roses too
I see em bloom..... for me and for you
And I think to myself.... what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue..... clouds of white
Bright blessed days....dark sacred nights
And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world.

The colors of a rainbow.....so pretty ..in the sky
Are also on the faces.....of people ..going by
I see friends shaking hands.....sayin.. how do you do
Theyre really sayin......i love you.

I hear babies cry...... I watch them grow
Theyll learn much more.....than Ill never know
And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world

(instrumental break)

The colors of a rainbow.....so pretty ..in the sky
Are there on the faces.....of people ..going by
I see friends shaking hands.....sayin.. how do you do
Theyre really sayin...(I ....love....you).

I hear babies cry...... I watch them grow
*spoken*(you know their gonna learn
A whole lot more than Ill never know)
And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself .......what a wonderful world.

Freedom

There are bars and prisons everywhere.

In my wallet, in my phone conversations, in the people I deal with daily.

My family, my hobbies, my genes and my love.

I am almost ready to take whatever is necessary to free myself. I understand that freedom is a subjective view, that freedom can only exist in ones mind and never be fully exerted.

A free man is a man that does not live.

A man is born free, but there are chains everywhere.

-rod

Tune in, Drop out...

Has been repeated over and over by the great Timothy Leary...

Tune in, Drop out

Tune in, Drop out

Tune in, Drop out

Tune into your senses, tune into your being, tune into your essence, your life; tune into this world and understand the gift that is life! Drop out of the mainstream, drop out and under the radar and live this life as free as you can.

Tune into yourself, drop out of yourself.

Tomorrow I will tune into myself.

The sun will rise around 5:40 and life will begin again. At eight thirty I will rise out of bed unlike any other day. I will continue to excercise my body and leave my conciousness contempt after studying and reciting my work materials. At which point I will fall into comfort and relax myself whilst I await to go to work..

Dropping out of my existence as I see it and encompassing a whole new way of life. A whole new vision.

I guarantee and promise this to nobody but myself and I believe that effect starts today.

-rod

The calm before the storm...

I know sometimes I can be drastic.

There's always a reason behind it and honstesly I always find my reasons to be justified. Even today and with all the impromptu decisions I have made I can still take comfort in the thought that I am always in the right.

Last night I had an argument, or discussion, about how my arrogance secretes out of my body and filters into my words, unconciouslly. This causes me to think twice about wanting to express my opinion as much as I do. It seems everyone is too retentive on the comments others have to say, sometimes they even take things literal, even when the comment was totally not intended to be taken to the degree it was.

Thoughts or something like that

Today is tuesday, I said to myself at first light. I'm usually never up this early, but today was a different day. Today the light would shine so bright into my room I would wake up to find myself more aware. Aware of all my surroundings and all the thoughtless things I've done. All the people that have endured my actions.

I just need some more time.

I just need a little more time to figure out who I am. I have found why I am the way I am, I have found out why I believe what I do but I am still not sure who I am.

I am.....

The most important idea in human history. The most astonishing little sentnce and the words that speak louder than life and all its motions. Here I am, Rod sitting on the corner of Fair and Harbor attempting to find the ultimate answer of who am I? I still wonder what divine purpose I might serve, or what belittled existence I might lead. Unfortunately that is the least of my worries, whether I am leading a virtuso life ttat is undoubtly being measured by such low standards, how much money I make and what kind of car I drive. But I ask you this, is it not worth more today anymore to know about who you are?

I think in an effort to find out who I am, and what purpose I shoud lead I keep finding myself mor and more spiritual. Not in the sense that there is a spirit essence in all of us, because that of course is not true, but that we are here for an entirely different reason than the one we are being told. I can't help justify the work week alone. I can't bring myself to understand and believe in this system of giving up my precious limited time on this grand earth to work in some shitty retail store or in some company to help it make profit I will never see. It seems almost outlandish that this system has withstood the test of time.

blah blah blah

-rod

Everything sprouted and intertwined

A little like a redwood's branches and roots, but more like the cell structure of a plant. If you can understand what I mean, and I know it's abstract, you have felt this very same feeling of comfort in knowing that everything you see is real, but only because it can only co-exist with you.

It was then that I could feel the songs bass reverberate through my body, it was then that I could feel every little piece of grain that helped create the fiber that created the wooden floorboards that my drunken face lay on. It was then and only then that I could feel comfortable in my existence, and in my purpose. It seemed very simple at the moment I thought to myself as I stared down the floor over to where the busy feet scurried and stumbled towards the alcohol and back to the dance floor. The floor bent and spinned and my eyes tried and tried to keep focus but everything was lost, yet everything was in place in this skewed view.

Nevertheless the purpose was simple, to enjoy myself. To live and not bother with the specifics, the calculations of it all, because at the end of the complex logarithm needed to express a humans place in the vast universe would only be a man explaining to you that sometimes you don't need the grand finale of a billion year old epic. Life, he would say, only exists for you.

Enjoy. That would be his final word and with that the logarithm would compute that there is insufficient data.

I took a breath at this moment, I remember, because it was curiously 'filling'. It was as if I had reached the top of a mountain and breathed in the world all at once. I was empty and full all at once. Exhaling everything and nothing, then all was black.

I'm stumbling towards the couch...

And i'm trying not to gag at my own stench. It fills my nostrils and i feel it drift slowly into my lungs. it was about this time that I remember the floor growing rapidly in my eyesight, and suddenly feeling really heavy.

It was a couple minutes till I regained conciousness; as I lay there wallowing in my drunken stench I realized something about myself. There was nothing in my head at the moment, and I remember vividly looking up from the cold wood trim flooring and into the billions of dazzling lights and flashing strobes that everything was tied together as one.

Homosapiens are

something else. I'd like to say

The fire is dying as it burns away at an old bike rim, the wood too wet to ignite properly sits around the burning plastic and metal. The light dances in the middle of a circle of chairs, and I am positioned in the middle accompanied by two other gents. We quarrel about who's turn it is to ignite the pile, or try at least, and we toss responsibility back and fourth till I am too tired to even be bothered by it.

I take out my little smoke stacks and place one between my lips, reach my hand for a flame of my own; flick and inhale.

It streamed out of my mouth and danced away up towards the sky. I take a drag and puff. Drag and puff. Watching the smoke play and twirl, twist into itself to create a more tangible form as if its existence came about to entertain my eyes. Fluidity and motion, paired together they prove nature is beauty.

I watch it go up and up and up until something more catches my eye.

It sat in the ocean of the dark blue sky, brighter than the points that of light that lay scattered all around it. "I might never wake up to see it again," I mused to myself "but the Moon would still rise tomorrow night..." I stared in awe as I realized how infinite and vast the sky is. How puzzling and perplexing yet wholly centered and unified. like a complex watch with all its gears and springs.

Then you called me, and I heard the distinct song my phone played when such a glorious event happened. I stared at your name and smiled thinking about us, and how simply complex we are. How our relationship works so well and what little work and fine tuning it takes to make something extraordinary happen when two people who are right for each other meet. How your hands perfectly weave into mine making such simple actions like hand holding a complex skill that we've evolved in an effort to become closer to each other.

I flip the phone open, prop it against my ear, and open my mouth.
My lips start to feel numb, and my skin feels warm.
If I only knew how to tell you all of this. The vast complexities of the world so vividly brought to life by my mind, but the semantics to tell you about it are buried deeper in it.

"Hey." is how I can best sum everything up.

Monologues

I don't have to tell you things are bad.

Everybody knows things are bad.

It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.

We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is,
'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'
Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad!

I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.
You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!'

I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!

According to my brain...

In the solar system the distances between planets is so ginarmous(?) that if you wished to write down the exact approximation of the distance in order to grasp the idea of DISTANCE (that distance being 57 million miles) it would like 91,732,608 kiliometers. That's a great distance, and would indeed require many moons to travel, but I wonder to myself if the universe is built with distance

I just realized, it's so lonely being free.

I think sometimes for someone so inconsistent like myself I can consistently mess up the good things in my life. It's a terrible thought but I can't help realizing how bad I make myself feel. Reading through some books I came across about how to approach "malicious" ideas that might flood your thoughts. One of the the ideas I had was "Does she still love me like I love her?" and I can't tell you how much it plagued my mind; thought after thought about whether I would ever get over it, whether I would ever be okay again, I convinced myself that I had given away my heart one too many times already.
Really though, that was all fluff, until I went down my list did I really understand what that question meant to me. Part 4 in the list of questions to determine your true feelings reads: "and if you didn't have this thought how would you feel?"
Content, I thought.
Then I realized that I can't resent a broken heart because if anything I was privilaged to have gone through that agony.

I just realized, it's so lonely being free.

At the party, the crowds energy brimming; I'm two shots past drunk and blurry is my description of my thoughts. The whole time I'm with my friends all I can think about is how unfulfilling any of it is. It's not that I'm not having fun, it's not that I can't stop thinking about you, it's just that I can but I

So I'm just curious....

What are you waiting for Rod?

A specific invitiation? I'm turning grey waiting for you.

Are you waiting for 2012? A certain shade of green?

Paths split at every corner and at every hour. It's what you choose that matters at the end of the day. So my question to you is what? and more importantly when? When do you think Rod, that you'll pick the right path?

-rod

"It doesn't rain everyday does it Eric?"

I focused El Pollo Loco through the viewfinder, made sure everything I wanted was in frame and fired away. One exposure, two exposures, three exposures, and fin. I was done but I figured I'd walk around the front just to make sure, you know in case I forgot an angle or something.

This is where I met Tommy Eric Logan.

Tommy Eric Logan, or Logan as he first introduced himself as. Logan was a homeless person, a drunk, and possibly a schizophrenic. He asked me basic questions, how long had I been doing photography(which I said jokingly "This thing? I just point and shoot man."), if I had seen The Crow, and if I wanted to grab a beer with him. Sure I said. I wasn't sure if I was going to get shanked and robbed or some miraculous event was going to occur, I wanted to stick around anyway.

So we walked towards 7-11 which was a couple yards away, it was nicely snugged into the corner of Harbor and McFadden. I walked in not really knowing what the hell to expect but he did just as he said, walked in and grabbed himself a tallboy of Steel Reserve. We walked around the corner and he began telling me about The Crow, Brandon Lee, and how he was going to kill himself within the next 24 hours.

I sat idly by listening mostly and trying not to piss off the drunk bum with my questions. Eventually after sitting next to him for awhile I asked him if I could take some shots of him while we talked, he agreed and kindly asked me - and this is verbatim - "Would you please get some pictures of me suffering, I want you to capture my raw spirit before I leave this earth.".

I was a little hesitant, mostly because I was supposed to be working but I agreed. I figured if I was a bum and had not one thing to myself all I would want is someone to listen to me before I hung myself or whatever bum thing you do to kill yourself. So we talked for awhile and he told me about music, movies, and life.

He was completely in love with music though. He knew facts, histories, and collaborations of all the artists he listened too...which was all good classic rock stuff. It blew my mind. It was sad though because you could tell when a song changed because his expression would get really stoic, his eyes would focus on one point, and you could tell that gears were moving in his head. Eventually a sniffle would sneak out, and then his eyes would glass over...
---
I always found it interesting to talk to people that have gone through a lot because they usually have a lot of words of wisdom to share and at the least they put your life in perspective. While he talked I noticed that he would hold back his tears constantly, even while he listened to his little old mp3 player he would hold back his tears when a song he liked would play. It was almost a constant struggle for the poor man to even formulate a paragraph without him having to sniffle or tear up. It was horrible.

The experiences and stories he shared blew my mind, but most importantly his broken spirit and his skewed view on life and religion left me overwhelmed. I think the religion part left me amazed. That this "man of god" had fallen so far from the tree, but he wouldn't curse the religion he would instead curse god for putting him on Earth. Constantly he would stare up at the sky and constantly he clench his fists, bite his lip and through the spit and clenched jaw would slither "I hate you for giving me this consciousness."

I took the shots, bought him some double A batteries and left him 4 bucks and told him "peace." because honestly I couldn't handle this guys depression any longer. Call me self absorbed or whatever you want but I work hard every day to be what I want to be, and this guy was just another example of how fragile and precious life is. It could be one thing one minute...and the next it could be hell on earth.

I think some of the shots speak for themselves.

R.I.P. Tommy Eric Logan, or whatever your real name was.

-Rod

So yesterday the subject of top ten favorite cd's came about.

I tried to remember my last list...but...let me just fish one out of xanga hold on a minute.

Okay so that was really weird. That was a trip down memory fucking lane...but worse 'cause I was 16 and strange. I'll be the first to admit I was a little awkward in high school. At times I used to be really charismatic and funny. Other times I would be really quiet and wouldn't say a thing to anyone. I think the worst part about high school was how pathetic and lonely I felt all the time. As if I was singled out and everyone knew it.

I remember there being times in class where I wanted to disappear forever. I wanted to run away from my home and hope that wherever I ended up nobody knew who I was. i't s a depressing feeling to have honestly, and it's an even worse way to think for a solid 2 years. Those were the good days though eh rod! Counter-Strike, Battlefield 1942, Half-Life Deathmatch, Doom 3 online! woooo! Getting super stoned and browsing www.offtopic.com while eating a fatty burger.

I don't know what gave me that mentality, and I surely don't remember breaking that way of thinking. I guess just at some point I realized I was worth more than anyone took for granted. I know at some point in college I realized that the way I was and the way I saw myself wasn't the way I wanted to be...and that had to be the first big change going from being what I happened versus being what I wanted. I always think about the big crush I used to have on jules and how I used to not really think I was capable of going into "her league". She's cute, smart, athletic and I was none of the above. Shit changes though when you find you're capable of so much more as long as you put your mind to it. I remember the first thing I wanted was to change the way my body looked, I wanted to blow minds...and not be a weird old person

As long as you put your mind to it.

Anyway...that was a lot different than I expected this post to be. Let me wander back to the topic.

This is what I fished out of my xanga:

My top ten(listen/play-not restricted by genre or bands.)
1. Clap Your Hands And Say Yeah!
2. The Unicorns
3. The Books
4. Minus Story
5. Built To Spill
6. Del The Funkee Homosapien
7. Kid Koala
8. Sonic Youth
9. Pavement
10. Cornelius

That's the most pathetic thing I have ever seen. I hope I die for ever posting that list. Seriously. Clap your hands? fuuuuuuck....the unicorns at 2? wtf? good god.

alright nevermind...I don't know what that shit was here's what I found from like a little over 2 years ago haha.

Top 5 Of All Time.

1. Modest Mouse
Favorite Album: :Lonesome Crowded West

2. The Doors
Favorite Album: L.A. Women

3. Radiohead
Favorite Album: O.K. Computer

4. Rage Against The Machine
Favorite Album: Evil Empire

5. Interpol
Favorite Album: Turn On The Bright Lights

5. Pavement
Favorite Album: Slanted And Enchanted

Not bad I guess...Kind of all over the place I think, interpol seems really out of place though. So here's a nice little updated list I am going to think really hard on:

July 2007

1. Modest Mouse

Album: Lonesome Crowded West

2. Radiohead

Album: Amnesiac/Ok Computer (tough call)

3. Pavement

Album: Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (luxe and redux)

4. The Doors

Album: The Doors

5. Built To Spill

Album: There's Nothing Wrong With Love

6. MF Doom

Album: Doomilation/Mad Villainy

7. Mad Lib

Album: Quasimoto/Yesterday's New Quintet

8. Miles Davis

Album: Get Up With It

9. The Velvet Underground

Album: Self Titled

10. Broken Social Scene

Album: We forgot It In People

Woo! That does it for my top 10 list. I'm pretty proud of it it's a good list with some really talented stuff, some hip hop...some classic rock...it works!

-rod

Poet

See the storm is broken,
in the middle of the night
Nothing left here for me,
it's washed away.
The rain pushes
the buildings away
The sky turns black.
The sky.
Washed so far
Push it out to sea
There's nothing left here for me

I watch it lift up to the sky
I watch it crush me
And then I die.

Speak to me baby.
Put your lips close to mine.
I can see the wind coming down
Like black night.

So speak to me
like the wind outside.
It's broken up, pushing us...
Hear the rain fall
See the wind outside
and feel the storm being broken outside.
then nothing.

Speak to me baby in the middle of the night,
Speak to me.
Hold your mouth to mine
cause the sky is breaking
it's deeper than love.
I know the way you feel
like the rains outside.
Speak to me.

-Rod

I can teach you what's new
private lessons that'll show you how I knew
a blessin, this life you view
"Why was I Blu?" A big Q
I can be part of you, fight the fears
give it a couple years, a couple more tears
I can judge time by the simplicity of the universe
I can make you feel affinity through a song or discourse
I can make this infinite, just never stop this verse
Yup. Never stop this verse.

Of course
Saw a gleam of light, so bright
she came down from the sky, and not that I lie
So let me just mention
In this other dimension
The mystery shot up with strong words
She was an intelligent wisdom and a song bird
Unlike anything you could have ever heard
I was so mesmerized it was absurd
All I can say to this girl is the good word
"Yo, if you're not busy maybe we can get some lunch?"
"I'd love too." Was the knockout punch
And since then I've had this hunch
You and me, tied by love
everyone else is just in awe,
cause i had never dreamed of
a love,
a love, a love like this.



I can feel the burn, all the hurt
Nothing short of this emotional burst
I can rap and rhyme, a couple of nasty lines
about sippin' nattis and society declines.
I can tell you what goes on in my mind
scare you stupid like that kid with the shine
But time
Well it goes
naturally it'll flow
I can and will always forever
make it my endeavor
to make sure our ties never sever
Yup never sever like this verse.
Like this.

Worker Bee

It's summer, i'm supposed to be relaxing.

I feel so fucking stressed though it bugs me. A little. It's just kind of slowly putting things into perspective about what I should be doing and what I am doing. I think that this summer is going to be my last summer as a free student. I mean free from any real responsibilities, because this time next year I should be on my own and secure...I'm doing more than wishful thinking here.

The unfortunate thing about all of this is that i'm never sure of where I will be.

Most of the time I can't tell you where I'll be in a week.

-rod

Space and Time

Like the infinite questions that our own time and space in the universe bring up I ponder what to do for my space, and my time.

I've been out of the house a little under a month now, and I can say that I am going insane. I don't mean to make it sound like this house is full of law pushing parentals or anything. It's just so insane here all at once. I love my mom, my sister, and her son, but I can't stand to be around them for more than a little at a time. I have good times when they're all in a good mood and we're, say, eating breakfast on Sunday. No problems there.

It seems my mom walks around half the time giving me dirty looks. I'm not sure why or if maybe this is just the way she was I just forgot, but it's annoying as hell. Half the time she gives me looks like I shouldn't be doing what I am planning on doing. I don't ask for much, and I don't take what is not mine, so it's not like I'm a big hassle.

My sister on the other hand seems to be okay with everything. She seems to be 'okay' with her lack of free time, her lack of money, her sons lack of a mother. I know she is not really feeling that way, but she likes to make it seems every things okay. And if it is not okay, she'd rather not tell anyone about it.

As for me, I'm losing my fucking head. In between the periods of me driving back down to costa mesa and the time I spend here I'm at work, exercising, or just sitting in my car avoiding this place. I feel like I'm invading their space, and it feels like I have no space to call my own. It's sort of depressing me, and I can see why I used to be depressed with no real outlet for emotions. I'm trying to better manage my time to not have to run around for work, because I figure the whole point of getting one of these 9-5ers is to get into that daily grind of making it a process. I failed this morning to wake up at 8:30, my alarm didn't go off or something. Who knows really, I have to get back to work, but I really need to figure out my space and time.

-rod

The Hard Sell

Yesterday turned out to be more of an event then I had previously thought.

I had nothing to do yesterday, but I ended up going to a concert with jules:

DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist: The Hard Sell - 7 inches of funk

It was an introduction to turntablism and the creation of modern DJing. That's the best I could describe it, amidst all their chaotic cutting and scratching, they would play samples and demonstrate different techniques and styles. It was pretty impressive to say the least, DJ shadow and Cut Chemist both had 4 tables running at once and the only other equipment besides the sound stuff that they had was a guitar pedal to loop sounds and a soundbox to add effects like Echo. They played tons of great stuff - Digable Planets, The Doors, Miles Davis, Outkast, DooWop groups from the 50's, and many more.

They had some really cool things going on while the concert went on. The lighting was way cool, they had these little boxes that held parts of images, and there was 3-4 on each side stacked randomly each providing a little bit of the image but still not the whole picture. Also they had the roof of the Hollywood bowl sparkling bright white lights, giving off a star like sky. They had a cool little camera attached to the wrist of Shadow, it gave a really neat view of his hands and how fast they move to catch the records, scratch them, and cut them. The only disappointing part was that they didn't really show the crossfader much. And as anybody who knows about DJing can tell you the crossfader takes tons of dexterity and precision and is almost just as impressive to watch as the records themselves.

The hall was mostly filled with "subscription" owners. People who buy season passes to all the concerts. It was pretty cool because you could bring in a meal in a basket and alcohol and just eat and drink away. Unfortunately I wasn't aware of that otherwise I would have planned something a little more special, but we where already late to the concert and such.

Once the lights went off though, it smelled like weed. haha.

The most impressive part of the night wasn't the concert to me. I got a strange feeling while sitting in section J1, Row 6, seat 18. While I sat stoned watching the lights flash and the dj cut my arm hung around my girl I felt good and wanted that moment to go on forever. Yeah, it was that good.

I haven't had a good day in a long time. Something always fucks it up, but if I had not gotten us lost(or the navigator depends who you ask) it would have been pretty damn close to a good day. It was surprising to feel so comfortable in that moment but it was indescribable - the music was loud making my ears feel "full" of sound, the warmth of her body crawled onto mine, the air cool but electrified by the crowd in the hollywood bowl - hey I can try though...

Thank you.

-rod

"The clever nerd / the best m.c. with no chain ya ever heard."

I like to think that I am creative and that I have a good taste in music. Everyone seemed to agree until I turned my ears to Independent Hip Hop. Most people seriously though I went crazy, I wasn't surprised after years of tearing up hip-hop for it's untalentless synthesizer keyboard sounds that barely pass for music. M.C.'s too busy with themselves to really break the mold, M.C.'s too busy enjoying their wealth they forget what go them their. Mainstream sucks.

It's true.

Most hip-hop artists are talentless ass clowns. Busy rapping about champagne, mercedes, and fat asses. Oh wait sorry, phat.

The first time I heard the creative rhymes of Del The Funky Homosapien on the debut Gorillaz - Rock The House I knew there had to be some kind of hip hop with that structure. Samples, clever rhymes, and up-beat creative melodies. I had always liked Hip Hop ever since I can remember, my brother grew up listening to Snoop Dogg, Warren G, and Dr. Dre. I can't help it, sometimes it's just catchy. But when I immersed myself in Del's first album "Future Development" I was hooked, forever and ever I would be a fan of Hip Hop, or at least Del I though. The deeper I went though, the more surprised I was at the level of creativity these guys went.

Thing is, there's something brewing in the underground. The one thing that I find most intriguing is the philisophy taken to create these tracks, as the article below says, everything should be made with 2 turntables and a microphone. Samples and beats should be what you rap over, not homemade synthesized beats. Because of this it seems that there is more creativity going into the music, the way you have to cleaverly sync yourself to abstract beats and tempos. I love it. I find a lot of these artists just as creative as other musicians. So without further ado I present an article with more detail and truth than I can present.

-rod

First appearing in The New Yorker in the month of April on the 22nd of 2004.

DOOM’S DAY
by SASHA FRERE-JONES
Madvillain redeems the pretensions of independent hip-hop.

In the early nineties, thanks to performers like Dr. Dre and his muse Snoop Doggy Dog, hip-hop became geometrically more popular than it had ever been. In the mid-nineties, multitasking figures like Puff Daddy helped make it a brand. As this happened, hip-hop gained a self-consciousness, as all successful art forms do, and a set of beliefs: hip-hop, sayeth the faithful, is made with two turntables and a microphone; graffiti and break dancing are the appropriate activities if you aren’t rapping or d.j.ing. And with Scripture comes orthodoxy: parvenu superstars rapping about guns and women and sampling popular songs are somehow betraying the original ideals; these new popular artists are “rap,” not hip-hop; hip-hop isn’t about sampling well-known songs like Rick James’s “Super Freak” and talking about champagne—it involves “skills” and an affinity for the “truth.” It sounds, in short, like Sunday school.

Hip-hop, of course, did start with people rhyming over well-known songs, and very few hip-hop records have actually been produced with only two turntables and a microphone. This fact hasn’t stopped the revisionists. As hip-hop became the lingua franca of youth all over the world and artists like Jay-Z and Eminem made remarkable and remarkably popular records, a parallel subculture of independent labels and artists grew up around a doctrine that was almost puritan. These independent artists rue the perfidy of apostate millionaires, and moan about pop stars who abandoned the true faith. Wanna-be prophets dream of chasing the moneylenders out of the temple, even though the moneylenders built the place.

Some independent acts prove their devotion by exulting in musical and linguistic obscurity, like slightly hipper stamp collectors. Some m.c.s spend so much time scolding the popular m.c.s that they come across as schoolmarms, switches in hand. Others are so committed to resurrecting various “golden ages” of hip-hop—1979, 1988, 1993—that their work is not much different from that of Renaissance-fair revivalists dancing around the maypole. Independent pop—not just hip-hop—has in many ways become a version of graduate school, a safe zone where artists can eke out a living, take their time doing specialized work. In most cases, this is the last thing a popular musician should be doing. But on “Madvillainy” (Stones Throw) the duo Madvillain—the m.c. MF Doom and the producer Madlib—demonstrate that hiding out can be the right move. Madvillain’s music is accessible but idiosyncratic, catchy but soaked in noise, lighthearted but full of abstractions. Madvillain is why independent hip-hop isn’t such a bad idea; this group needed breathing space.

Some fourteen years ago, MF Doom (Daniel Dumile) signed with a major label, Elektra, as part of the group KMD, which included his brother Subroc. In 1991, KMD put out “Mr. Hood,” a delightful, unusual record that was often lumped with De La Soul’s 1989 album “3 Feet High and Rising.” De La Soul combined playful samples of well-known funk songs and a friendly, Day-Glo graphic sense. KMD was a darker, stranger group, and never quite fit that template. Doom, then known as Zev Love X, has a slightly obstructed voice, as if his tongue were too big for his mouth. KMD’s samples made reference to racial unease. In 1993, Elektra dropped KMD, and refused to release its second album, “Black Bastards,” reportedly because of controversial artwork (a drawing of a Sambo figure hanged on a gallows). Later that year, Subroc was hit and killed by a car.

Doom resurfaced with his new name—from Marvel Comics’ Dr. Doom—in the late nineteen-nineties, releasing a few independent twelve-inch singles and then, in 1999, the full-length album “Operation: Doomsday.” It was a furiously odd thing, assembled from sweet nineteen-eighties R. & B. and nailed shut by Doom’s glottal, pained rhymes. (Doom has since released records under the names Viktor Vaughn and King Geedorah.)

Doom’s partner in Madvillain, the West Coast producer Madlib, was born Otis Jackson, Jr., and emerged in the mid-nineties with the group Lootpack. He established himself in 2000 with “The Unseen,” an album by his alter ego Quasimoto. (He created the character by speeding up his voice slightly.) As hip-hop producers were moving toward keyboards and drum machines and away from samples of records, which are expensive to license, Madlib stuck stubbornly to samples of jazz and rock records—especially jazz records. His sound was distinct enough to avoid anachronism: of a tradition but unique. In 2003, Madlib was given access to the vaults of Blue Note records, and he created a long, effective montage of sixties and seventies jazz called “Shades of Blue.”

Madlib and MF Doom are both comfortable with what might be called the “casual noise” of hip-hop, the sonic by-products of the act: spit hitting a microphone, the crackle of an old record, the sibilant hum of a low-resolution digital sample. The voices and samples on “Madvillainy” sound as if they’d been coated with dust, fried, dropped, rolled around, and then fried again.

But “Madvillainy” is hardly a difficult record. MF (which stands for Metal Face, among other things) Doom, who appears on the cover masked, looking like an extra from “Alexander Nevsky,” takes a deep pleasure in words: alliteration, internal rhymes, and pure sound. The point of “Madvillainy” is largely poetic—celebrating the language of music and the music of language. It’s not hard to quote Doom. From “Money Folder”: “Egads, she got enough style to start three fads.” From “Raid”: “The metal fellow been rippin’ flows / since New York plates were ghetto yellow with broke blue writing.” (Who wouldn’t like to hear more rhymes about license plates?) There are many references to science fiction and TV. Doom can turn a corner with a quote reminiscent of “Star Trek” or “The West Wing” (“Sir, request permission to be candid.” “Granted”), touch on commercials (“Better get Maaco”), and end with an enticing metaphor all his own (“more soul than a sock with a hole”). Thankfully, Madvillain doesn’t define itself against the mainstream. The only reference to popular m.c.s comes in a song called “Figaro”—Mozart’s guy—and it’s deliciously subtle: “The clever nerd / the best m.c. with no chain ya ever heard.”

Most of Madlib’s beats are made from samples of records, though it is hard to say which ones, even in a general way. Is the lovely, decaying piano figure in “All Caps” from a jazz record? An English skiffle record? A documentary about whales? “America’s Most Blunted” begins with a sample of Steve Reich’s “Come Out,” and then stumbles into a swaggering funk pattern. The three instrumental tracks are some of the album’s best moments, brief as they are: “Do Not Fire!” could be the theme of a Cuban kung-fu movie, and “Supervillain Theme” sounds like the work of an accomplished rock band from a country that the United States does not maintain diplomatic relations with.

After a few repetitions, a sample becomes known but doesn’t necessarily stop being strange. The imperfections in whatever is being sampled are retained, the stresses and flaws and cracks. There is a tactile quality to “Madvillainy,” which leads us to the smoking gun of the record, if there is one: marijuana. There are repeated allusions to weed and several samples of a 1971 record called “A Child’s Garden of Grass: A Pre-Legalization Comedy.” The key sample: “In fact, everyone finds that they’re more creative stoned than straight.”

For most of us, this is poppycock, but Doom and Madlib succeed in translating the heightened physical sensitivity and associative facility of the stoned mind into concrete sound. Madlib, especially, seems able to hide music inside other music. His samples lie on each other like double exposures, or like a cassette tape that allows the previous recording to bleed through the new one. “Strange Ways” sounds like several songs constantly competing to achieve dominance. Doom, happily, is undisturbed. The narcissism of the stoned can be a gift.

But not always. Quasimoto appears as Lord Quas on the mildly philosophical “Shadows of Tomorrow”: “Today is the shadow of tomorrow, today is the present future of yesterday, yesterday is the shadow of today, the darkness of the past is yesterday.” Somewhere, a dorm room is missing its poster.

Madvillain was thinking more clearly when this album was assembled from scenes into narrative. The twenty-two songs on “Madvillainy” cohere and zip by. (Once or twice, Doom drifts over the beat without engaging it.) “Madvillainy” makes a convincing case that, however you choose to pray, two of hip-hop’s many dogmas still obtain: Every sound can make a song. All words make sense.

If I Only...

This next one is just a couple descriptions I tossed together and stringed them sort of nicely. It's an alright piece of practice.



If I Only...

The fire is small as it burns away at an old bike rim, the wood too wet to ignite properly sits around the burning plastic and metal. The light dances in the middle of a circle of chairs, i positioned in the middle accompanied by two other men.
I take out my little smoke stacks and place one between my lips, reach my hand for the a flame of my own, flick and inhale.
It streamed out of my mouth and danced away up towards the sky. I drag and puff. Drag and puff. Watching the smoke play and twirl, twist upon itself to create a more tangible form so that it could exist to entertain my eyes. So that I can view its beautiful entrancing motions that speak to me about the importance of fluidity and motions in beauty.
I watch it go up and up and up until something more catches my eye.
It sat in the ocean of the sky brighter than the light the scattered across the sky in points. "This," I said, "is the moon!" and stared in awe as I realized how infinite and vast the sky is. How puzzling and perplexing yet wholly centered and unified. Like a complex watch with all its gears and springs.
Then you called me, and I heard the distinct song my phone played when such a glorious event happnened. I stared at your name and smiled thinking about us, and how simply complex we are. How our relationship works so well and what little work and fine tuning it takes to make something extraordinary happen when two people who right for each other meet. How your hands perfectly weave in with mine making such simple actions like hand holding a complex skill that we've evolved in an effort to become even more closer.
I flip the phone open, prop it against my ear, and open my mouth.
My lips start to feel numb, and my skin feels warm.
If I only knew how to tell you all of this. The vast complexities of the world so vividly brought to life by my mind, but the semantics to tell you about it are buried deeper in it.
"Hey love." is how I can best sum everything up.

-rod

All Of This Is True

Welcome back.

Thanks, blog.

I've missed you, and your ability to allow me to express myself a little. I love writing as you might or might not have known, so whatever little ideas I get to write down in my 'mooseskin' pocket book I keep with me sometimes stick with me for days. I write little pieces of the story down, sometimes even descriptions I think in my head, but I never get to immerse myself into it fully because I never develop the idea. With a little discipline I think I can do that and you can help.

It's nice to be back.

-Rod