moonlight mile

I've been catsitting Heather's cats during the holidays, a chance to get out of the city slush and dirt and spend some quiet time with a couple of cool cats and watch cable television and work on writing some songs in a different atmosphere. Sometimes when I'm really out of it and laying in bed staring at the ceiling I don't know if I'm really 10 centimeters or 10 feet from the ceiling. And sometimes I see things moving. Today is the last day I am at Heather's place, it's driving me bonkers not having a nice stereo system. A person needs a good sound system. A real sound system with a turntable and lots of power and bigass speakers to move some real air.



Bailey the Bugcatcher has decided that a guitar case is a nice place to set up residency in. I don't blame him. It's the perfect size for him and it's soft and fluffy inside so I'm sure it's very comfortable for him. I love Bailey the Bugcatcher because he doesn't take any shit and he's not scared to stand up to humans. The little fucker will bite you if you fuck with him too, it's great that he has that wild ornery streak inside of him. Sometimes he'll walk up to a person and bite them! He's bit me on the nose when I was sleeping a few times, and if your toes are sticking out from under the sheets and are moving he will get them. And for whatever reason, if you are walking around talking on a telephone he attacks your feet! I think it's important, in a cat, to keep and encourage that wild fighting attack streak if they have it in them. Just like a kid, they should have a little bit of fight inside of them. The other cat I'm catsitting is cool, but is more aloof and remote and pretty much does his own thing. This cat, Bailey, is moody and aggressive and hissy and I love him for it. I've sat there and stared at him, right in the eyes, stared and stared and stared, until he got up and walked over and clawed the hell out of my foot. That's the way a cat should be.



Working on writing songs. Making something out of nothing. The whole process involves sinking oneself into the subconscious, like scuba diving into the depths of the psyche. I've always found the Jean Luc Godard film One Plus One fascinating because it documents the Rolling Stones hammering one of their best songs into shape, you get to watch it go from an idea to a vague skeleton of a song to the finished product. If you've never seen the film, or if you're loooking for a way into the world of torrent files, I'll make it really easy. 1) You need a good free torrent file client, you can download Bit Tornado from
here. You need a good torrent viewer, you can download a good free torrent viewer here. Then you just have to find the file, and I'll help you out by pointing the way to one I know works here. It's a fascinating film, it shows how out of it Brian Jones really was at the end of his life and how a band hammers a song together together.

This building I'm catsitting in is quiet and civilized and adult, quite unlike my own apartment downtown where you can let the jams run free. I recorded this video, a Stones song, in the bathroom because of the acoustics and the darkness.

And here, just for Winkie, is the other other cat I'm catsitting.

all you need is love!

that demon alcohol

Last night I had a very bad scene with a friend who was drunk and not seeing the forest for the trees. I can't understand drunks and have never been able, at least since my drinking days, to get on that extremely fragile and sensitive emotional wavelength that most drunks have. Not all are bad, and I've been friends with the best of drunks. My dead friend Rob comes to mind. He comes to mind because he and I had this talk a long time ago. He came from the drug world and moved more into the drinking world but still retained his drug rules about coping with life. When I say "drug rules" I'm not talking about that stupid stoned-out deadhead making a fool of himself or the junkie passed out on a stoop, I'm talking about the drug rules a succesful druggie has imprinted in his brain, the kind of rules that allows a person to go through life flying under the radar. The kind that lets a druggie cope in a hostile world without attracting heat.

I know many drunks who are trustworthy and totally dependable. A high percentage, though, are inevitable liabilities when they are drunk. Druggies, on the other hand, if they've made it this far in life (my friends are mostly late 30s to early 40s) they have cultivated a good coolness and style to their intoxication. That's because drugs are considered bad whereas booze is considered acceptable, and a lifetime of flying under the radar in enemy territory has taught some hard lessons. People that can't handle drugs either make the sensible decision to stop doing them or they get busted/rehabbed, by the time the mid-30s roll around most people stop using drugs. The ones that keep it flying have internalized the basic rules. It's sink or swim.


Drunks are all about being in public and making a spectacle of themselves. This is such a juvenile mode of behavior that I don't feel sorry at all to see a drunk led off in handcuffs. They wear their emotions on top of their skin and have lost the common sense to know they are operating in enemy territory, and are the equal of the stupid stupid deadhead walking around stoned in a tiedye shirt and wearing potleaf buttons. They seem like they are trying to draw attention to themselves, and they stick out in crowds like neon signs. Do they think the police don't see that shit?

A succesful lifelong druggie knows that they should be doing their drugs in the safety of their home away from the general public, and if they go out in public they should dress as conservatively and act as low-key as possible. William S. Burroughs made this impression on me long ago, to be invisible. Even when I was smacked out of my mind or tripping my brains out in public I always dressed nearly business casual in public or in non-flashy clothes and made sure I was presentable and didn't do stupid shit to draw attention to myself. When you are on drugs and holding drugs you should always be invisible.


Drunks talk different and get a different personality when they are drunk. This usually happens to repressed people who have a lot of hang-ups. It's like their filter is turned off and they can let their anxieties and sensitivities all come out. People with psychological problems shouldn't do chemicals, they should get their psychological problems and inadequacies solved, or at least come to terms with their mental baggage, instead of letting others see the full extent of their fucked-upedness. They lose their cool. And when they lose their cool they won't admit it or suck it up and eat whatever shit they have to eat to get out of the jam, they just keep compounding the situation into a worse one.

Succesful druggies have learned under fire to NOT LET IT ALL HANG OUT. The big rule in the heavy-duty druggies I used to hang out with was to ALWAYS KEEP YOUR COOL. No matter what, you never ever ever lose your cool or you risk being avoided. Druggies are constantly getting in situations where anxiety attacks or insecurities can mean trouble. Even as a 15 year-old pot smoker hanging out with the older kids I saw that you needed to act beyond your years to be accepted and trusted. When I was a teenager I did get busted holding pot and I took the charges and paid my fine and basically told the authorities to fuck off, that I wasn't going to roll over on anybody. This paid off greatly with the older kids who sold it to me, and my ability to be trusted was never questioned again. That sticks with you and can be applied to life situations on a day to day basis. Honor among thieves.


I'm not saying I'm super badass or anything remotely like that. I'm just venting because of a very shitty incident that just happened, and how drunks rub me the wrong way. I'm not a 24-7 druggie, nowadays my weekdays are straight days but from Friday afternoon at 4:30 until I pass out Sunday night it is on. I spent a long time, many many years during the 90s in the 24/7 hard drug zone. Aside from the above-mentioned teenage pot possession charge (which wasn't even my fault, I was a passenger in a car stop and couldn't ditch it so I sucked it up and took the charge like a man), I have never been busted. I've been pulled over while high on unrelated circumstances, questioned by cops when I was high about unrelated circumstances, bought cars and expensive guitars and made business decisions and gone about everyday life when high, and have always gotten away with everything and done well and pulled my shit off with class and style by not acting like an intoxicated shithead. The chances of me getting into a stupid situation because of drugs is very low.

I have friends, business owners, that know that I've done business with them when I was in the next dimension and they know when I'm that way because when I'm straight I'm belligerant and talk all sorts of shit and am outgoing but when I'm fucked up I'm almost invisible. When I'm fucked up in public I don't talk much, I don't draw attention to myself, my friends are chosen with high standards so I know they can read the situation well enough when I come into their store/shop and am not acting like my usual self to know that I am flying under radar. The transaction gets done, shit gets handled, everybody gets what they want. Yes I take drugs recreationally. No I will not involve anybody else in them by my actions or behavior. That's personal responsibility.

It hurts me to be thinking about walking away from a drunk friend, but when every other meeting seems to fly out of control or off-schedule or get fucked-up by miscommunications, I just don't know what to do anymore. It's gone beyond amusing. It's now like a gangrenous limb that should maybe get amputated. Being intoxicated in real life is maintaining constant damage control. Drunks just don't seem too good at damage control. I trust my druggie friends more than drunks because they are more predictable and air less of their dirty laundry in public.

today I will slaughter a song from Led Zeppelin III

I threatened to start posting my horrible renditions of songs nobody digs anymore, and dammit that's what I intend to do. I had to sit down and watched the video on Youtube and played along twice, figured out I couldn't sing it in Robert Plant's range and tuned the guitar down about a mile, and then sat down and gave it a couple tries before I somehow staggered through it. I forgot the bridge chords in this and somehow winged it to end up at the right spot and lucky for me (and you) it made the song shorter. This resonator guitar records really nice, it's louder than a normal acoustic, but it's harder than hell to play because the action is high for playing slide. I need practice. You all are lucky, sooner or later I'm going to get really baked and start playing Ween songs.


I don't know how people like my friend Liz the Who Cares Girl come up with stuff to post every single day. I don't trust her anyways. Who would trust a hippy that doesn't smoke pot? That's some fuuuucked up shit. I can't come up with a single thing to post anymore and am so sick of sitting in front of a computer all day and then coming home and sitting in front of a computer. When I can't think of anything to write about then you have to sit through me murdering some song you hate. Like Ween.

time waits for no one

In Joshua Tree California every single view looks like an album cover and every song you play as the car whizzes over the endless blacktop becomes an epic. The words become existential mantras and the guitar solos float up and spiral off into the vast clear skies like smoke rising off a burning pile of dessicated mesquite. You walk out into it all and suddenly you become lost in a crepuscular lunar landscape of giant boulders and gnarled trees and lizards staring with dead beady eyes at your unwelcome intrusion into the next dimension.


At night I walked out into the void and laid down on the sand and listened to the silence knowing the coyotes were right there, maybe within 20 feet, just outside my periphery of vision. The crack as I uncapped a bottle of dark beer and the snap of the lighter as I lit up a joint was the loudest noise. I hooked the little speaker up to my Ipod and played some songs to help me connect, songs from the time Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg* (the uncredited 6th Rolling Stone) and Gram Parsons roamed the druidic-looking rock formations while flying high on cocaine and acid. It's an archetypal and life changing experience to experience time out of mind in the desert, the minimalist graceful beauty of the rugged rock structures and twisted-stunted trees fitting perfectly into the jagged and chemically-altered nooks and crannies of the tripping synapses and neurons.


I'm flat on my back on the sand watching the stars slowly slide across the sky. In perfect equilibrium with my surroundings, gravity plasters me to this mortal coil as my thoughts and dreams are flung by centrifugal force out into the cosmos. Old country and blues songs resonate clearly out here where there's no buildings or forests to deflect the signal. Loud and clear, a transmission from deep in the satellite heart of nowhere, sounds of clanging cans and rusty abandoned radiators and tin roof shacks and dreams slowly collapsing and rotting away into infinity.



Captain Beefheart came from the desert. The desert ejected Don Van Vliet like a whale ejecting Jonah, and the beautiful enigma we got was the Trout Mask Replica. Hallucinate sunset like a liquid vision of flowing orange tranquility while the planes fly over like primordial birds floating through the heavens transcending space and time.



*Anita Pallenberg was the dark center the Stones rolled around during their wonderous Beggars Banquet/Let It Bleed/Sticky Fingers/Exile on Main Street era, the beautiful druggie whipsmart satanic negative-energy female who managed to fuck half of them and mindfuck all of them and in general was a major influence behind the scenes in every way possible.