edwards drive-in

I've posed the question to people I know, even lately, about the difference between the life you live amongst those around you and the one you live if you try and create something. does it matter how they interact? how much does one comment on the other? or cost the other? I usually get derision back after posing this question, probably deserved.

my architect: a son's journey at first seems a strange little movie about a strange little man. the movie then proceeds to sneak up on you, especially if you're not familiar with the work of louis kahn before you see the movie. documentarian nathaniel kahn sets out to examine the life and work of his father. there are times when the movie shouldn't work and yet it does. perhaps this is because of the contrasting stories here, one of a personal family history and the other of buildings that louis kahn left behind. in the end louis kahn left a ridiculous amount of beauty behind in the world, it's worth seeing this film just for that.

during the movie you hear kahn speaking one time and he says that art is proof that you've created something that nature couldn't create on it's own. probably because I'm not well read enough, but I've never heard that put quite that way. anyway, see this film.

edwards drive-in

"brothers" is a dannish dogme style movie about that, two brothers. it's not just that though, it's a little bit about war and jealousy and the things that keep creeping up on people afterwards. and also the cost of change on those around us. more than anything it's just a really well made movie that seemed perfectly acted. put it on the netflix list, forget about it and then be pleasantly surprised when it finally moves up the list and arrives at your house.

notes from a waking

immortality is two kids smoking cigarettes by the side of the highway in a small roadside town. this is nowhere. this is where you come to leave your bones.

you never open all the way up. you explain yourself using the voice you were given.

you turn irish when you talk about your parents. you decorate curiosities to avoid the truth. you vanish into mobile homes, old trucks for sale, daytime headlights, miller’s point, something she said to you at a back gate. three birds glide along the hubcaps as you pass cemetery road. you promise yourself that you’re going to kill something in yourself as you slip over the lane lines. you’re a weary whistle-stop. gray’s river. hull creek. corrugated roof. a bench no one has sat on for years. you wait on yourself and then you go away.

river

wisconsin comes apart
a shaky slump of surfacing years

hello dead people of highway 31, then 35 along with mennonites and speed limits that seem like a prelude, music getting you ready for words.
turn that inside out, turn north into south, a story of sweaty skin sheen, a mess of starting over and words that you’ve said on the way out of doors behind which you have not been at your best.

golf courses with train tracks through them
the tracks with such a longing not to hurt anyone
suburban urban muses gone absent
there is more of this than that
miles and miles without any motives
dairylands
dells
boat landings
your senior year in high school
cemetery ready every fifty miles or so
marked by hard looking locals without their shirts on
historical markers
are you being dragged along this time or can you move this fast

if I’m here then my home must be empty

on straight-aways eyes close experimentally for a hundred yards at a time
then longer

the water has what you don’t own. something you weren’t born with. you steal some of it and hang it like an old tire from a tree, see how everything swings.

sometimes the only interest people hold is figuring out what they’re going to do different that you’re not going to like them for.

the road for stretches, for being head on jack, for okay hypnotisms, the pleasure of a singular company, mine.

at maiden rock an indian girl threw herself off a cliff. I see her walking along the highway with another woman, thumbs out. after passing them a shudder gust against the car, a wasted visit of wind.

a buzz of voices between here and san francisco, first separate, steps that I walk on. then they gather to impose themselves in the way there is always an hour becoming something next, or the way you suddenly turn down a highway to feel it swing out behind you as if connected by a giant rubber band stretched and blown, one long ride as an apology.

conscious then that there is a skeleton inside of me.

they let me out at five in the morning, not sure if they should. the magistrate smiled, so I let her. some things are plans, others are decisions.
don’t come back here, ever. it was said for him as well as me I think.
I was never here. and you’re never leaving.

soon after is a day or two, another motel room just getting light, then another storm striking out over another mountain in the distance. there are some moments worth having I thought and I wanted to go home.

water, in different places, in flow or still, has a distinctive sound. this one was stronger in the morning just as the heat came around.

as the sun was going in nevada, a black figure, a desert sun, what was it moving slower and faster, out there in front of me. and then bodies, how does everyone eventually become just another body.

i-pod wars

if you took the arcade fire and moved them to australia, gave them a bit of happy juice like you get in some dentist chairs, throw in some identity confusion you might have "in case we die", the second cd from architecture in helsinki.