My Music

Hey!

It’s been a while since I’ve been here. I’m playing guitar and writing songs now and just made a SoundCloud page here: https://soundcloud.com/user-762931519-691171853.

Check it out if you’re into that kind of thing.

Cheers,

James

The Sea and Cake

They’re like a misty, partly sunny, sixty-seven-degree afternoon adorned with rainbows, cymbals, and a cloud-shrouded but beaming sun when you need it most.

I would say, if called upon to put my musical palate on a pedestal, that The Sea and Cake are artists’ artists, and they’ve made a career out of stacking albums with light, wistful, enlivening, complex, jazzy, and loungey tunes. Most of them fall into all those categories at once.

To get started, check out “The Colony Room,” “The Biz,” “Choice Blanket,” “Earth Star,” and “The Argument.”

The Cantina 2/22

After what seemed like no time I made it to the whistle-whetting spot, which can be conditionally modified that way depending on my intentions. My intention was to continue rhapsodizing upon the rhapsodies around and within me and there were likely to be some unmistakably living sources of music to reinforce the roll I was on at the Cantina, so I yessed while outside the door the notion that the Cantina was consistent with abstracting cadences and songs—which I was especially inclined to abstract now—and moving in space and moving above thought accordingly. I can think about it now because I really felt it and really drank it and really became it then—felt and drank and became the music abstracted, became the field capturing all the piping-hot, underappreciated delight around and within me.

Buttressed of course by my bright-green, orange-laced shoes I swagger-shuffled into the Cantina like FOOSH-FOOSH-SHICKA-NOW-HOOSH—THICKA-HOW and all eyes converged on me.

I was not that handsome, I was not that tall, I was not popping an obvious erection, I did not have a sweat-stain resembling a urine-stain on my pants; I was just the only one FOOSH-FOOSH-SHICKA-NOW-HOOSH—THICKA-HOWing and so the other patrons did not know how to respond—a single note of confusion was all I picked up for a moment. There was a band, and that propped up my momentum; their leader blasted his trumpet as if it was the world’s only recourse.

I stopped playing sounds mentally to allow for the trumpet solo, to be here, now, for the enlightened man’s contribution: he knew what he was doing, and my gratitude couldn’t wait. I danced all the time, though, “In the land of Mars…” I slithered up and down for the solo’s benefit and benefit it did because everyone started dancing along—electrified by my influence sure but ultimately by potential energy going active, kinetic, as it should when the context conduces; the context conduced so the moment arose and potential went actual and that’s how “should happen” became “did happen.”

I got a fez-tip from the enlightened hornist probably for catalyzing what he’d envisioned or at least progress toward what he envisioned when staring himself down in the green room, staring down those eyes, that face; the prayer “let me come to the fore tonight,” was answered with more than a little help from me. I’d helped him reach in and channel what was most deeply there—perhaps his make-up; perhaps his buried, primordial, metaphysical character; perhaps the pinnacle of his then-current self.

Part I (2/20)

Part II (2/21)

The Cantina 2/21

As I leisurely danced and jived my way to the bar, the other animates participating in this inner-jubilee went about their business rhythmically, like DOW-DOW-DINKA-DOW-DOW–DINKA-DOW, DOW-DOW-DINKA-DOW-DOW–DINKA-DOW…and whenever they failed to inspire me I could inspire myself and them with rotations of my bright-green, orange-laced sneakers on the hot, sandy, red bridge in the hot, starry night: my FOOSH-FOOSH-TICKA-NOW-DOW–TICKA-WOW harmonized beautifully with the organic percussion ensemble gifted to me by presence of mind, awareness of here and now. The beauty of here and now had never been clearer to me now that it was tied to this beautiful fucking music and beautiful fucking dancing and the beautiful fucking colors and the beautiful fucking heat and the beautiful dancing cosmoxen I’m so lucky to share a lifetime with—their dusty, starry-white, starry-orange coats will forever light up my brain, my life—and I didn’t need anything except to be free, by myself, and among the music of the world and the responses of my body and other bodies therein—more music and more harmonizing, rhythmic motion made for, by, and of the beauties of here and now. Even the voice that distinctly cried “nice shoes, FOCK-in’ idiot,” said it in a way I have to admit made a pleasing contribution to the symphony-choir-ensemble of the ecosystem.

I did not want to reach the Cantina by the time I got there; however I knew it could only build on the theme that was developing as long as I could keep some block-headed, rhythmically-inclined, starry-white, starry-orange, star-dusty, hot-glowing cosmoxen in my mind’s eye and the timpanis and the maracas and “nice shoes, FOCK-in’ idiot” in my mind’s ear. The road had been very kind to me; the road helped me start building a life that is now indelible, and it helped me realize that there’s nothing like the beauty of here-and-now sweetened by sensory candy like bright-green shoes with orange laces and rhythmically-inclined, starry-white, starry-orange, star-dusty, hot-glowing cosmoxen which I must say again I am so -ucking lucky to know!

Part I

Part III (next part)

The Cantina

Far as I knew she just stood, her wild eyes watching me shroud myself in dust and leave her purview.

I would head to the Cantina. I would have to walk a while, walk a distance, and that was all right by me. My satisfied, warmed “ahhs” would follow some welcome work.

It was hot and starry when I walked across the red rock bridge one quarter mile in. Played connect the stars much of the time I walked, but that was always. For now freedom was the same. There was just the fact of difference with no upshot I could feel.

On my way, there were many so many faces and murmurs that it felt familiar. There were many cosmoxen, which are oxen crossbred with stars, carrying burdens, swaying their blocky heads, dipping their chins, swooping up each side in time so that when I saw it I thought DOWDOWDINKA, DOWDOWDINKA, DOWDOWDINKA…

The timpani comes in and then the maracas, and I can’t stop making music out of all I see and hear. There’s a party, an organic dance party—street performers ; pedestrians; bystanders fall in line—happening and the stars are out and it’s hot and it’s 2256 and damn I’m lucky to be alive and damn I’m lucky to be free and damn I’m lucky to be treated to this lighted, musical delight of delights.

The cantina could wait, so the music did not have to.

Part II

Part III