Upon the keys of the piano again tonight...yearning for a time which is not now....rallying against the thought of myself, of my place in a world gone utterly mad...a song to smash highways by...to obbliterate the working wage, the fourty hour work weak...a deconstructionist sonnata invented for the purpose of pulverizing concrete and melting down steel....for *returning the ores to the earth*....

And Is this all just useless ennui, or is there really some internal emotional magic waiting there to be unleashed? I ask myself, why is my music always so stormy and full of passion?

Where are these ten finger chords all chock full of flats and minor sevenths leading me?

What am I trying to say?

In one way I feel like I am pleading for the destruction of all pianos. It is as if I cannot really say what I want to say with this musical contraption. If I had more fingers and if there were more keys it might be possible, but as it is, something is incomplete....

These are songs which decry the uselessness of everything and which affirm nothing. These are songs for the end of times....these are songs for calling forth volcanos and comets and earth changing catastrophes...these are the songs of a farmer who has had the earth taken out from under him and who has now alligned himself with the end...with armeggedon....with doom....

And wouldn't you think that after years and years of pouring forth thunder and lighting and crescendo upon crescendo of mighty sonic violence, that it would, at some time or another *abate*?

But no, it doesn't.

It doesn't because this is my new rain dance and it doesn't happen on the guitar and it doesn't happen on the flute....it happens on the piano because the piano is an elegiac instrument, perfectly suited for exorcism, channelling, and the excision of internal war....

And ah, yes! There at the end....there in the pauses there is still a light....a light which no matter how much thunder pours forth is still bright and wholesome and welcoming....the light of the new planet, the light of the farmer and his warm hands with the earth restored to him....the music of the zen mind....the music of wholeness...the music of one emotion, the music of being, the music of appreciation....

And i wonder, why does this music only arrive after the whole of the universe has been rent assunder?

Is this the allegory for the All inside of my music?

Is this the microcosmic proof in me that before we can grow again we must first be destroyed?

It's true....I believe it....until we let it all down....until it is all tilled under...until it is all shot through with the ionizing force of destruction, nothing of much value can grow in the dead space of the modern mind, so full of nothing, overripe with naught.

the cyber hippies have left the building:

so, after a big build up, the hippies have come and gone. anti-climax figures into the equation here.

after not seeing my friend "x" for awhile, i was really looking forward to her visit: three days with her alone and then her new guy was to join the party.

good to touch base, to renew, to review, to speak about things such as her ex husband and the idiocy he brought *openly*, to lay things to rest, to forgive, to draw near.

but she was cold....chilled, even down here in south florida....

funny, because all her talk was about *balance*....about *harmony*....about *the path*. it was that whole bag of quasi new age rhetoric come to roost *again* on my doorstep...."i want to thank you douglas, for all that you've given me....you have helped me so much on my *path*...."

so i decide to take her to the mall, you know, the last place on earth for a hippie like her. could she walk evenly through it, not judging it down? could she keep warm, could she be stable in herself?

poor "x", she was everywhere derailed, insecure, and confused- talking about being able to *release her blockages toward material opulence* out of one side of her mouth while bitching about the Dead Air and the Overblown Materialism of it All from the other.

would she like a chocolate chip cookie?

her eyes saying "yes, oh yes pleeeaaase, that would be so gooood!" she instead says....."uuuuuhhhh"

i said, "they look really good, don't they?!"

and she mumbles, "....uuuuhhhhh" her mind crumbling as the inner debate over the Evils of Sugar rages. a blast of cool air hits her from he air conditioning vent and she actually shivers.

"well?"

".....uhhhh i'd really like one....but i *shouldn't*....i.....i...uuuuhhh..."

it's so simple, yes or no, but she can find her way to neither.

she asks me, "are you going to have one?"

"hell yeah i am."

this seems to bouy her up: now her decision isn't on her, she can reference me for her own decision. if she has the cookie she's austere and that's good. if she joins me then she is being a buddy, a co-enjoyer. still, she can't decide, tells me to go on, and dawdles around behind me while i get in line for a cookie and a large cup of chai tea. the conflict is palpable, but from her body language it seems she's decided to pass, albeit reluctantly. she eases away from the cookie joint and towards a fountain doing reiki-ish energy clearing symbols in the air to firm her resolve.

as i walk towards her with my cookie i notice that it's a hell of a cookie, moist and gooey. the runny chocolate actually spooges out of the cookie and onto my lower lip as i take my first bite.

she can't watch. she doesn't want a bite. she desperately wants it. she looks away from me as we stroll through the mall. then, almost atremble with tension, she starts in, "are there eggs in those cookies?"

"i dunno"

she starts to say something, but stops. then, "are they sweetened with sugar?"

"tastes like it"

i can practically hear the bolts and nuts falling out of her brain: two discordant melodies playing at once- one saying, "how can you EAT THAT SHIT!?" the other saying, "oh gooood i want a fucking bite! it looks sooo gooood!!!"

just then, we're square to the window of a custom upscale jewelry shop- dig it, palm beach bling. there's a watch on display, toot sweet, front and center. it looks like it's all of a piece, poured out of a single puddle of gold, with faces on both the front and back, richly detailed, loaded with movements- but yet elegantly simple- a work of art no doubt. with absolutely no prejudice in my voice i ask her, "what do you think of that?"

and again, she just doesn't know how to respond. is it beautiful? obscene? both?

"....uhhhh...."

and so it went, on and on. and the more time i spent with "x" the worse it got: vaccilation, vitiation, uncertainty, and an emerging impression that the *thought* of the chocolate chip cookie was actually far more dangerous than eating a whole pile of them.

so many facts regarding "health" had been memorized, so many coffee enemas and gall bladder cleanses had been embarked upon....but yet, the *thought* of a single cookie....of the beauty of a simple instrument with a big price tag was enough to throw the works into chaos.

so for the remainder of her stay i cooked her oatmeal, curried tofu, lentils and rice and heated her up organic, non GMO, soy milk for bedtime.....i wonder though....i wonder if she noticed that i kept playing two songs over and over, both by The Who, both singing in concert with my feelings.....

"whooooo are you? who? who? who? who?.....
i reeeeaaallyyy want to know......tell me
who the fuck are YOU!"

and the other:

"meet the new boss....same as the old boss....."

tonight: playing the upright grand. there's candlelight in my mind so there's no need for a match....except for....well, yes, for *that*. not much of *that* anymore- but sometimes it's right.

tonight it's right.

so there's that, and now there's smoke too.

and now the piano, well, it moves.

it moves somehow and i'm moving with it and here come the songs and the feeling of the whole house throbbing with the something that's coming out...

...and it's coming out....

and, like usual, the hard disk recorder and the laptop and the cassette recorder and the digital voice recorder and all that other shit are a million miles away because chords like these don't really mix with that crowd and that's quite alright....quite alright...

it's quite alright because soon nothing will matter- nothing at all. soon i will be utterly and completely lost, erased, washed downstream in waves of sound....polished on rocks, whispered at by trees, and pounded in the rapids of this music that comes into and through and out and which is the glowing border on my life, the hallowed ground, the mystery of sounds....

....and still pouring forth, pouring forth- staccato and trill, tidal and deep, deadpan and idiotic....a child on a tilt-a-whirl, agape....lost in a memory....lost in a song....

flooded...overfull and brimming...shooting for something....

but will i make it?

....yes, i will- but only if i don't try......