"Robots I believe will collect my work. But you don't need to be a robot to enjoy it." ~ George Widener

George Widener, Sunday's Crash, 2005

Igor Stravinsky as drawn by Pablo Picasso, 1920

Monday | 17 June 2013 | 10:35 AM

Born this day.

One of my favourite pieces of classical music, and not just because it caused a riot when played for the first time.

Homage to the master

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." ~ William Gibson, opening sentence of Neuromancer, published in 1984

"The sky was the colour of a dead laptop display, silver-gray and full of rain." ~ Charles Stross, opening sentence of The Bloodline Feud, originally published in 2004

Dangerous Visions

Written for Johnny by Glenn Danzig

Bad luck wind been blowin' at my back
I was born to bring trouble to wherever I'm at
Got the number 13 tattooed on my neck
When the ink starts to itch
Then the black will turn to red

I was born in the soul of misery
Never had me a name
They just gave me the number when I was young

Gonna find me a preacherman confessin' all I've done
Or you can catch me with the devil playing 21
Bad luck wind been blowin' at my back
I pray you don't look at me
I pray I don't look back

I was born in the soul of misery
Never had me a name
They just gave me the number when I was young

Got a long line of hearthache
I carry it well
The list of lives I've broken
Reach from here to hell
Bad luck wind been blowin' at my back
I was born to bring trouble to wherever I'm at

I was born in the soul of misery
Never had me a name
They just gave me the number when I was young

I was born in the soul of misery
Never had me a name
They just gave me the number when I was young
They just gave me the number when I was young

Ivory Carving from ~1640

"Roussimoff has been unofficially crowned "The Greatest Drunk on Earth" for once consuming 119 12-US-fluid-ounce (350 ml) beers (over 41 litres) in 6 hours. On an episode of WWE's Legends of Wrestling, Mike Graham said André once drank 156, 16-US-fluid-ounce (470 ml) beers in one sitting, which was confirmed by Dusty Rhodes. Such feats can be attributed to his large size, which meant it took higher amounts of alcohol to inebriate him. In her autobiography, The Fabulous Moolah writes that André drank 127 beers in a Reading, Pennsylvania hotel bar and later passed out in the lobby. The staff could not move him and had to leave him there until he awakened."

André the Giant holding a 12-US-fluid-ounce can.

Torii Kiyohiro, The Harmonic Couple, 1756

Tuesday | 11 June 2013 | 10:26 AM

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Takiyasha the Witch and the Skeleton Spectre, 1844

At The Quinte Hotel by Al Purdy

I am drinking
I am drinking yellow flowers
in underground sunlight
and you can see that I am a sensitive man
and I notice that the bartender is a sensitive man
so I tell him the beer he draws
is half fart and half horse piss
and all wonderful yellow flowers
But the bartender is not quite
so sensitive as I supposed he was
the way he looks at me now
and does not appreciate my exquisite analogy
Over in one corner two guys
are quietly making love
in the brief prelude to infinity
Opposite them a peculiar fight
enables the drinkers to lay aside
their comic books and watch with interest
while I watch with interest
a wiry little man slugs another guy
then tracks him bleeding into the toliet
and slugs him to the floor again
with ugly red flowers on the tile
three minutes later he roosters over
to the table where his drunk friend sits
with another friend and slugs both
of em ass-over-electric-kettle
so I have to walk around
on my way for a piss
Now I am a sensitive man
so I say to him mildly as hell
“You shouldn’ta knocked over that good beer
with them beautiful flowers in it”
So he says “Come on”
So I Come On
like a rabbit with weak kidneys I guess
like a yellow streak charging
on flower power I suppose
& knock the shit outa him & sit on him
(he is just a little guy)
and say reprovingly
“Violence will get you nowhere this time chum
Now you take me
I am a sensitive man
and would you believe I write poems?”
But I could see the doubt in his upside down face
in fact in all the faces
“What kind of poems?”
“Flower poems”
“So tell us a poem”
I got off the little guy but reluctantly
for he was comfortable
and told them this poem
They crowded around me with tears
in their eyes and wrung my hands feelingly
for my pockets for
it was a heart-warming moment for literature
and moved by the demonstrable effect
of great Art and the brotherhood of people I remarked
“-the poem oughta be worth some beer”
It was a mistake in terminology
for silence came
and it was brought home to me in the tavern
that poems will not really buy beer or flowers
or a goddam thing
and I was sad
for I am a sensitive man

The Dead Poet by Al Purdy

I was altered in the placenta
by the dead brother before me
who built a place in the womb
knowing I was coming: 
he wrote words on the walls of flesh
painting a woman inside a woman
whispering a faint lullaby
that sings in my blind heart still

The others were lumberjacks
backwoods wrestlers and farmers
their women were meek and mild
nothing of them survives 
but an image inside an image
of a cookstove and the kettle boiling
— how else explain myself to myself
where does the song come from? 

Now on my wanderings: 
at the Alhambra's lyric dazzle
where the Moors built stone poems
a wan white face peering out
— and the shadow in Plato's cave
remembers the small dead one
— at Samarkand in pale blue light 
the words came slowly from him
— I recall the music of blood
on the Street of the Silversmiths

Sleep softly spirit of earth
as the days and nights join hands
when everything becomes one thing
wait softly brother
but do not expect it to happen 
that great whoop announcing resurrection 
expect only a small whisper
of birds nesting and green things growing
and a brief saying of them
and know where the words came from