on joyce and novels over your head

…hiding from a novel here. I’ve got this big novel over my head. It’s not a lot of pages, just one big page that hovers over me like an about to strike extra giant pteredactyl with it’s pointy spine fingers hovering over you. It’s a horrible feeling. Having this large book over your head like this. I guess this is why you cannot be sane to choose to become a writer. After awhile you must either drown your sorrows in either alcohol or drugs or some other vice, I guess.

So. So much for that novel. It really does try to stop over me and pick me up into it’s maws or jaws or leaflets or logic or whatever. I can do very little to stop my fear of it as it is over me. It happens all of the time. Every time, when writing, that I don’t want to use the voice that I feel most comfortable with. I don’t think I have one writers voice per se. I have a lot of voices. As many voices as to aspects of my personality. What is personality anyway but the amalgamation of a thousand voices, aspects of ourselves. We are either going forward or we are floating. If we are floating that is okay. Some of the greatest artists and creatives floated through this world pretty good. Learn to deal with it. It is not as easy as the other thing, the running through things. That’s harder to do than floating. Both are difficult and both deserve equal respect, I guess. Life kind of sucks in the end because of death anyway that we can’t complain too much about it. It’s just another bad idea. A worried thought. Meaningless words, the giant novel, joycean in scope, perhaps as an art form he would have said, polishing his big, fat glasses through which he saw logic and logic and logic and then no more, the logic having gone to his head, he’d understood everything and praise Jesus! Trademark. And he said to his sister, Emily, Lord, the fun involved in learning the amalgamations of personality having to do with aspects and business deals with fat elephants walking to moons yet unexplored, but seen and sometimes eaten as if in blue cheese the elephant world would contain themselves, wondering. Wanderingly, again, joyce, the novel outside of the novel, big fish little fish, ronald laing, whom I do not clearly understand and the hope that someday this exercises will have at least consumed my fingers for a few moments. The exercise of the mind is the precursor to the exercise will power button belonging with the body.
Then the world came back and your fingers, though tiring, continue. Past loves can’t remember why they loved you anymore. You seem so tawdry. So cheap. Parameceum. Love.

Published in: on November 13, 2012 at 11:16 pm  Leave a Comment  
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A Story too ___ to ___.

The two children played on the sidewalk in front of Mr. William’s two story brownstone, but they didn’t know that. They had never had trouble before. Mr. Williams was home watching t.v. at the time when he looked outside and saw one of the boys, Tyler was his name, but he didn’t know, draping superheroes one by one on to the spikes of his black wrought iron fence. He watched when suddenly the other one, Mickey, jumped up and began the process of hitting each one of the superheroes off of the fence one by one: Captain America, gone, into Mr. Williams’s ten square foot front yard. The Incredible Hulk, bam, right behind Mr. Willliams’s two feet in circumference planter which held exactly one dead cactus. A scream of protest went up by the younger child, but Mickey didn’t care. Whack. Mr. T flew as far as the second step of Mr. Williams’s staircase. Tyler started to cry.
Jesus Christ! growled Mr. Williams and he got up and slammed open the front door. Both children looked up at him in abject fear, but did not run away.
C’mon, you guys, you’re too close to my house. The last thing I need right now is some crying brat screaming outside my window. I’m trying to sleep!
He hadn’t been trying to sleep, but was actually pouring over the Wall Street Journal to find out how a few of his companies were doing. Things were looking pretty bad and now this.
He did it, cried out Tyler, the tears streaming down his face.
I did not!
Yes, you did! And he turned and hit Mickey. Mickey took the punch because he was more concerned with Mr. Williams. He was the older and he was the one who would be getting in trouble, not Tyler.
Just go, said Mr. Williams, just get out of here and don’t play around here. Where do you live?
Mickey turned and pointed.
Up on Wallerby.
Well, then go play on Wallerby. What are you doing playing around here anyway. Who cares. Just get.
But I need my toys! Pleaded Tyler before breaking into a full out cry.
Oh, Christ, where are they. What toys?
Over there. The Incre-di-ble Hulk is behind that thing. Captain America is right there, he said, pointing. Mr. Williams looked down and saw Mr. T on his step.
Christ! he yelled and the kids almost ran, but didn’t. Mr. Williams moved forward fast and bent down quickly and in anger to pick up Mr. T so he could throw it back over the fence when he felt a sharp pain shoot from the small of his lower back and then sort of zigzag around the rest of his back before the momentum made him fall forward and he fell headlong down the staircase of exactly eight steps.
The boys just stared at Mr. Williams lying there at the bottom of the stairway. He did not move and they both briefly thought that he was dead until they heard him groan, a long, sad moan that proved he was only hurt. Suddenly Mickey darted. Tyler forgot about his toys and sprinted after him. After a moment they were around the corner of Wallerby. Mr. Williams would never see them again.

Williams? What is Williams anyway? British.
Of course.
So you’re probably not catholic unless you’re Irish/British, right?
No, I’m catholic and British/British, British-American.
Like me.
Like you, Calvin Williams smiled. He liked the feeling of this girl.
A lot of people asked about Catholicism at Notre Dame, especially at the beginning after first arriving as freshmen. Both Calvin and Sarah were new, both standing in line together. Neither knew another living soul at this, their first meal at the dining commons just outside of the dormitory that they soon discovered that they shared. Sarah led them to a table without turning to look to see if Calvin had followed. Calvin followed knowing somehow that it would be alright.

This girl seemed to play her silences in a way that he had never really known before. The girls in high school had been a lot of fast lip jabbing together and eyelash flashing at strategic moments. This one seemed to float on a cloud. Her silence did not lend itself to interpretation and because of this Calvin knew he could follow and sit with her. As she sat down she checked only once out of the corner of her eye whether he was behind her. She smiled and acknowledged him. Perhaps he was being too brazen, but she didn’t give that signal. They were, from the first, just right.
What’s your major, she asked.
Pre-med.
Her eyes fluttered up then back down as she sipped through her straw.
A doctor.
That’s what my parents think anyway. That’s what I’ve told them. And here I am.
She took a little time before she spoke again. It was odd for Calvin. Time passed and they simply just ate. It was suddenly as though she had forgotten that he was going to be a doctor, something he had hoped would service him well in his pursuit of girls ala the standard dream of the young college man. It wasn’t until she was finished with her salad that she spoke again.

After they accepted one another’s companionship at that first meeting a little void inside each of them was partially filled, the lonely part of the overall void of coming to a new place, the scared part of themselves they tried to cover in their new clothes and sure knowledge of what they thought they wanted to do in the future.

Published in: on November 1, 2012 at 5:29 am  Leave a Comment  

The Barky Concept – a short,short story – Albert Jones

This is the story about my dog, Barky, Felix, Barky, Barky never shutups. Barky barks 24 hours a day and we, get this, we Keep him! Keep Him! My mom loves Barky. So this is the story. This is the way that it’s gotta go. Barky’s got to get famous. This is the only way. Barky must be famous so that my mom can be rich and I can get my own room on the other side of the mansion that Barky is going to buy us. Because, trust me on this, Barky can never be quiet. Barky can never Shut up.

This was the plan. Make sure that my mom didn’t find out, but sneak barky out of the house between two and 6 oclock when she got home everyday. I would have to buy my own carrying case. I’ll take Barky to all of the agencies. Everything. He’s real tame. He’ll let me hold him, which is a plus. A plus so far. So Here we go. Get that perpetual barking on command harnessed into a few dog food commercials and we’ll be set. I’ll keep the money quiet until Barky’s really famous and we can get that house and then I won’t have to listen anymore to that dog!

2.

this is the plan. 3:30 got an appointment with Alpo. I know, I know, Alpo. What’s the odds of Alpo wanting Barky, but they need Barkies and I got one. Put out a few fliers and some other things and got a nibble from Alpo. So I take Barky in and they put him on the floor and first look to see how he is around people and he’s good on a leash too. My mom trained him, she wouldn’t take no shit. And here was my mom on the end of the leash right now, going through all the best motions to impress these people and wouldn’t you know it, through her dog of all things, all of my mom’s stuff, right here.

Anyway, we got through that one. That tall guy was the one in charge, I know it. You can never be sure though. Barky did alright. He barked of course, little son of a bitch, on cue, but that’s what he was supposed to do and it didn’t sound so bad once it was put on full form for the cameras. It’s like putting nickels in a slot machine, each bark a nickel, a chance at the big jackpot on a national Alpo commercial. Christ, they need new dogs all the time!

3
get in get out. That’s it. You make sure that you get in fast get the sound guy and the camera going. In the mood, barky! Rawf! Trademark! Another 2 grand in my pocket. Fifteen thousand short of getting the house and this dog out of my life forever!

4.

Barky did it. A Lil’ Nibbler’s Chunky Treat gig with two other dogs, not the best scenario, the one of the lap and the smile, but I’ll take it, $1,800 to the broker tomorrow and we’re in and that dog can go to hell.

5.
Been in the house five months. Can’t hear Barky anymore. Thanks God. People tell me to use Barky as my money making scheme in life instead of doing what I do. I tell them look, I could be living the high life with that dog there. We could easily pull down another five or six hundred thou together, but you know what? Fuck that dog.

Published in: on October 30, 2012 at 10:23 pm  Leave a Comment  
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A short story too sad to finish – Albert

There were a lot of moments, moments that meant nothing to anybody but Sam, the dope eyed loner with nothing to do at any odd moment, seemingly, ever. A 40 year old now, he walked down streets alone, noticing nothing, apparently seeing nothing. There was a time when he was married that things mattered to him, but now it seemed all of the doors had closed. What seemed possible then was impossible now. The world was a self running machine whose fuel was merely money. What good to talk to others now that he knew this? So he didn’t. He walked.

Down Piedmont Street and up Dunbar, round Wayne Avenue then back down Stream to his apartment on Maple, just off the main street within a stones throw of a Baker’s Pharmacy and Subway sandwich shop. There in the yellow light of his room, a simple bulb made yellow through his own painting of it with spray paint, he sat and stared at his ceiling or read a book that he would usually put down after a few pages. Many days he would simply sleep waiting for his disability check to come in. Life floated over his head. Action was for others. There was music, but it only filled space, splayed time momentarily until he would shut it off through boredom and continue only to listen to the drones of empty space in an unwanted corner of the universe. God? A non-issue anymore. Such romantic fantasies lived in the minds of the young and those who had somehow made money off of such spirituality. Even the dreams had stopped. Was it possible to become a stone?
But even though his soul was tired Sam continued to milk himself for promise. He would look at things and relish things such as being cool when it was hot outside or being able to sleep when tired.

Published in: on September 30, 2012 at 1:23 am  Leave a Comment  

The Poet

So true. If at all something can be true. (the curve, always the curve, coming up ahead, a down slot fast slot down spot…stop, then go) the curve, outside, inside. All I can record is movement. Actuality is of no moment. Fickle. Downplay the wired. Upplay the actual. Inside the moment. Outside the real. Next…
Its been claimed that the world is a wiggly one. The fact fades and dives and ducks away from the beam and all that is collected is the wind of the movement once again. Not even a New York skyline much less a storyline. Judgments crush down asking for some solidity, but it does not come. Once again it is the history of the invisible.
And style. Style again. Just what does that mean? A curve a jab a wisp a…never is it good enough for style is that which is left after the attempt has been made at stabbing the truth. Stabbing to hold, not to kill. If ships sailed before my eyes then its seas would be calm. This is all you can hope for when it comes to knowing. Calm seas under which the swirls and the whirls hide and propel the universe. But only if everything is symbolic, which it, of course, is. Magic? I guess so. There is no there there. Only a here hidden and fulsome, blowing, growing, in ecstasy. A carving of reality one breath at a time.
And judgments again, the stopping power of the good judgment, yet such things kill everything. This is an intereting plot, the killing of everything. Only this will make everybody stand up and prick their ears. Pour money into the killer’s cup. But such a sight is a fantasy. There will be no killing nor should there ever be. An ending, perhaps, or a beginning after an ending, but a killing. Is something born for the movies where excitement is guaranteed. For life only for the deceased. Thursday’s obituary.
So then you have color because of your particular curve. Black. Oh pound, so much like judgment this thing, this turn toward the ferocity in the emotion of the color black because of a curve that you took and did not take. That took you. Where are you? Here. In dread of the fact that you end because your sight is not great enough to see the beginning after. It is the same for all of us.
Under there are porpoises too. Worlds and grasses drifting in tides, suns high above, minnowed rays blocked in and all pointing upward. We’re fish. How can one so silent as you deny this? Our eyes look in one way and see in another. We are you and you are we. Yet we continue on. We never even meet and this is just as well for how could we hold all of us in our minds forever since forever is the only way that really ever counts. So we see and pass on, our gills sucking in oxygen just like all the rest. We’re fish.
Perhaps our minds really do need the truths of the ayurveda, your air, my earth, our water, the fire of us all. Perhaps in only this way can we know what we are and where our thoughts come from. Otherwise we are drifters like logs in oceans soundlessly going away for years and years and years. We grab hold of our elements to use them, to speak through them, to ground ourselves in something other than the ether of thought. But our lips want to kiss such truths and in our love we smother them and go back to ourselves, children without balloons walking walls alone.
The sleepy eye coming in from the jowls and hardening our eyeballs as though eyeballs could be plucked out for seeing things which lead to thought. Thought is a pillow upon a bed which isn’t there. Bang, bang, that is our head seeking stoppage of thought when thought drips into puddles stagnant. Shoot her up, smoke her out, water her down. Works for me.
What would blank do? That mirror’s image is you. There’s got to be more. It’s only that it’s all so static, so staid, so just there. Where there when no whispers to move your head or raise a smiled lip? Just you and always you there in the silver glass waiting for something to move you beyond. But the steps are limited. There is no one thing that you can do. There is only you and you are what is to do. But the staidness, the bland…
Kick invisible toads upon grasses that taste green. What for? For the heck of it. You’ll never find those toads so what’s the worry? Swim in oceans blue that take you cold downward only a little bit before you buoy back up and see the sun, feel the sun. are those chocolate covered clouds that you see? Breathe the air that trees have made and sing with lungs still good. Enough of you will do this and it will be called life even though you do not know that you are living it. There are plenty who aren’t.
I see now why storylines recede from steps of breath and air. Everything would be too fantastic. Heaven would be painted green and believed in and such things would warrant smiles and you don’t much feel like smiling because of the smokestacks and all. But a world destroyed is lightless without the flicker in the innocents eye despite it all. And the guilt you feel is useless without the flicker, the very same flicker. Crawling must lead to standing and that’s simply the truth. Of course, the callouses on your hands will go away, but you are not a dog, nor am I.
When will the ship come in? this is a very real question, one that keeps me from thinking for long periods of time. It is really just a desire for peace. But people don’t like peace, they do, but they don’t. This is a sad fact. The human being becomes bored and action stirs emotion and because there is judgment, that thing which makes everything so real, peace goes away and we wish for it again until we are bored again and action comes upon us again.
The poets roam, their souls bared like the page under a magnifying glass. Because it seems so huge they expect huge things, huge ships perhaps, but they are not holding the magnifying glass and they are really just very small creatures, just like everybody else. Some push away the magnifying glass. Put away the poetic pen and wish to be the size that they are when they poeticize when they sit and drink a cup of coffee or speak to a friend. This is their lives becoming art and it is a real aspiration even though they cease to be noted and their lights are lost among the stars. If they have an inner strength though their secrets are carried with them and act as fuel so that when they do poeticize again they are purer, their lights are shinier. They are honed. But the getting lost can be painful.
So we end here because our bodies want us to. We will not live forever in this form and the breath out is true, the eyes close and we sleep. A million pictures later we arise and we still walk silently, balloonless, upon the walls of our neighbors.

Published in: on August 9, 2012 at 3:33 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Babel

Babel.
It’s all babble.
I mean Babel. As in Tower of Babel.
We’ve built our tower and the higher up we get, the less we understand one another.
The thieves have taken up roosts in the new nesting places.
Come on in. They look just like the honest ones before them.
That new website and service. Oh, that’s Johnny’s new thing,
something he does when he gets home from elementary school.
He’s made ten bucks this month faking his way through the adult world.
Good for you, Johnny, keep up the good work.
Babel. It’s not what you say, but how you say it.
Babel. It’s hardly worth talking about because any talk at all just adds to the confusion. I’ll be the one who explains it, each writer writes.
Add the solution to the billion other solutions and we’ll see if he or she is right.
Or simply lost.
Babel

Published in: on August 2, 2012 at 1:02 am  Leave a Comment  
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Is it Halftime yet? – Albert

It is very important to know whether or not it is half-time yet. Is it half-time yet? Is it? Is it half-time yet?

Given over then, livened over then, this other thing, crabdaplinar in scope, noodles and whey, won over then, thos slope, this gibletted…
nownownow…no need to get crandiplaplicler now is’it? Now now now.

– from the poetry of nobody no longer doodling series by Albert Jones (never printed).

Published in: on July 27, 2012 at 9:45 pm  Leave a Comment  

Henry Mills Diary

We laid down Anna Belle today for good. Mary cried, but she didn’t do all the things I thought she might. Then we carted her little casket over to the cemetery and placed in a hole. Mary cried a little bit there too, but still she didn’t do nothing drastic. Like I wrote before, Mary had taken immediately to talking strangely about the event, of how Anna Belle walked outside and why. She blamed the Densmore sisters down the hill for causing Mary to leave the house at night since one day Anna Belle walked down the road and ended up in their kitchen. She was only four. That was last year. The sisters brought her right back, but first they cleaned her up a little and put something on a little rash she’d developed from poison oak along the way.

The night before last Mary walked down to the Densmore house and took all her clothes off and started screaming “Witches! Witches! Witches!” The ladies didn’t come out. I heard her when she changed her chant to high pitched screams. I ran as fast as I could to the Densmore place and I tackled my wife and put a gag around her mouth, but she bit it off and started screaming “Witches!” again. I had no choice but to strike my own wife. She went soft like a rag and I carried her home. One of the Densmore sisters came out and asked if there was anything she could do and I said no. The other one was afraid beyond all explanation of fear is what that one sister told me, because she’d dabbled before in the mysteries, that had been the story anyway, and wondered if perhaps she had lain a spell upon our daughter without knowing it. I told her I didn’t think any kind of hocus pocus was strong enough to cause a girl to lose her life like my Anna Belle did, but nobody will ever know if Anna Belle was walking to the sisters house.

It doesn’t matter much anymore. The doctor gave Mary something and she’s sleeping peacefully now, but I’m not sure what it is that’s going to take place in her head in the next few months. I’m overwhelmed right now and searching for answers from God. Mary told me yesterday that she doesn’t believe in God anymore and I told her she was foolish for thinking that, but deep down I wondered myself and I got me out a bottle of whiskey and sat there by myself and wondered and wondered and wondered. I’m still wondering tonight. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get an answer. I don’t know.
I gotta quit. I hear Mary stirring.

It wasn’t nothing. Mary’s sleeping sound, but I don’t remember where I was going. I know it had to do with Anna Belle and Mary. We might have to quit this mountain. Since the war everything has gone to hell. I still got a little bit of money, but I told the doctor about Mary and what she did and he said it don’t sound good. He said I should keep an eye on her and if it looks like she’s addled that I should call him. Mary’s addled for sure. I know that. You just don’t know what’s going on inside her head anymore. I guess she loved Anna Belle more than even I knew, but love don’t explain why someone would want to go and give up their own life when one life’s been lost already. I guess she depended on Anna Belle. Hell, I did too, but I don’t want to go taking off my clothes and running naked down the road to the Densmore sisters house. That’s not right. If anything at all the only thing that’s changed with me since Anna Belle died was that I drink a little bit more than I used to. It helps take the pain away. I’ve had too much pain. I don’t want any more pain. Pain hurts.
That’s five drinks so far. Gotta a good number more left in this bottle. It’s kind of better to be lost like this than to have to think about my life. I’m sleepy though. Goodnight for now, journal.

Published in: on July 21, 2012 at 7:47 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Joey Kantor Query (letters never sent)- Albert

Dear Editor,

Is Christ dead in America? I don’t mean the regular practice of the Christian religion, but the teachings of Jesus, that of love, giving away all that you own to follow Him, loving your neighbor as yourself, loving your enemy? Ask a Christian this question and you will most likely be set straight real quick that, no, Christ is by no means dead, that He is alive and well. But is He?

If this hypothetical Christian is telling the truth then why is there a large mass of Christians in America adamant about following the Republican Party’s teachings that people should have to take care of themselves without government aid, that handouts are a path to a great evil called Socialism which insists on citizens helping citizens, that health care, the keeper of life itself, should only be given to those who are worthy of it, that is, can afford to pay for it. Also, if the Republican Party is supposedly the moral leader in the country, far ahead of the Democratic Party, then why are the Democrats much more in line with the teachings of the Republican Party’s defacto leader Jesus Christ who never once counted self-preservation over community well-being as an ideal?

I’m interested in all of the contradictions concerning Christianity in today’s Republican party. I would like to write an article and explore this subject. It intrigues me that Americans today who claim to be Republicans and therefore the standard bearers of morality represent some of the most un-Christian notions going around today. You would be hard pressed to find a Republican who would suggest giving everything away and following Him. Yet, at the same time, they will swear that they follow Jesus’ teachings literally. Warren Buffett has suggested to them that it is time to practice this sort of Christianity and was rebuffed by every Republican within hearing distance. It doesn’t add up.

I am a former staff writer for the Paradise Post Newspaper in California. Although unpublished as a novelist, I have written three of them. I am also an award-winning short story writer. My stories have appeared in The Dudley Review, Alchemy on Sunday and 971menu. I also have a blog at fargokantrowitz.com.

On the academic front, I have a Masters in mythological studies with emphasis in depth psychology. I studied spirituality, art and religion from around the world.

Sincerely,

Joeykantor@decrepit.co.uk
The Fargo Kantrowitz’z Literary Campsite

Published in: on July 10, 2012 at 1:30 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Session (fin)

Session 5

Welcome back.

Glad to be back.

So?
So.

Did you ever figure out what you’re going to do?

Not really. Things are getting fuzzier. It’s like I’m traveling down this road and letting shit go. I want to let everything go. I don’t want to die, but I want to let everything in my life go. I want to believe that there are other things that I should be thinking about and dealing with and doing those things. I want to lose interest in everything from before. I want a newer and better life and just chuck the old one. It’s too full of shit.

How so?

It just is. All my dreams that I went for were all vanity. Solomon was right. Even if you do succeed the heartbreak that you get in knowing that everybody then wants to see you fail brings you down. You wish that you could see according to the old way that you saw the world, but the old way is gone. People are animals and there’s nothing to allow you to overcome this fact. A smiler will kill you the next second. Some people perfect the process. Smile their way into your life and continually play the game so that one day they succeed and you lose. You can never go forward with people expecting there to be an even transaction. Everybody seeks superiority. It’s as simple as that. There is no other game in town. We all seek status and if we don’t get it then we can’t rest. We must win. There is nothing to strive for anymore so I would rather lose all signs of the game and, I don’t know, walk the earth.

Walk the earth?

You know, look at the world in a new way. Find something else to do. Maybe make glass and forget about being a battling ant for a crumb that is huge only to us ants. Sick of it. Tired of it. Done with it.

Well, you can’t just disappear.

No. I can’t. I will always be here, but how will I be here? This is the question.

You can get a new job.

Maybe.

You can get published and have success as a writer.

More judgment. The issue is lost. The salvation from the writing is hidden. I’m sick of dedicating my life to one or two readers who may or may not understand what I was trying to say. I thought I wanted to be heard and then found that I couldn’t be heard because everybody else is trying to be heard. We are throwing our best, truest stuff out there and it is being lost in everybody else’s best and truest stuff and in the end we don’t know who to believe, what to believe, or even what the issue is anymore. It’s just a bunch of us struggling to be most authentic so that we can be heard and eventually make money from being heard. We know this is the solution to our particular careerist illusions.

Wow. You are really hard core.

I’m not hard core. I’m not beginning to be hard core. I am mild and meek and have a lot to say, but I don’t know how important it is anymore now that I know that most of it has an undercurrent involved that is desperate, that the words have been shared under less than auspicious reasonings. We all want success. This corrupts us all. It means that there was a possibility that our truths did not contain real care. If you are selfish you cannot care. My whole life has been this balancing act, trying to be selfless and then to be selfish (since I matter too). The selfish part always seems to make me ineligible for the selfless role, like I am a phony and a fake and I’m starting to believe that I am. A true person doesn’t chase after success, but the one who doesn’t get it regrets it later. We are animals and it is better to be honest about this, make our nest egg while we are young, and live as long as we can because here comes death…

So, death is involved in this thing.

Yeah, death is there. Most people hear me talk and can’t stand it, think that I’m a major complainer, that I should just forget the bullshit and get on with my life. Well, that’s what I’m trying to do. Get rid of the bullshit and get on with my life. Get mine and disconnect the getting from “true” things that could be searched for and given to the masses to heal them. Altruism is purposeless anymore. Google for help and you will get many more better put together and researched answers than I could give. I would probably go off on the color blue or yellow or purple or something. Poetry. Nobody told me that us poets would be dealing with economics on the level of pennies. But that’s what it is. Pennies.

So, you feel as though you donated your life to the arts and life never gave you anything back?

Sort of. It gave me pleasure in a job well done. It gave me a sense of meaning and purpose, but when it is all said and done, the philosophical road that it places you on makes you lose everybody in the world that matters to you. You cannot have money, basically, so you cannot have a wife and children, hardly even friends. If you try and replace your moneyless world with friends then you are with other moneyless people and you begin to eat each other up with your moneyless problems, the havoc that moneylessness reaps on human beings in general. A soap opera. A big soap opera.

Like everyone else, I am silent and perplexed somewhat. I don’t know how to answer you, but I am sure that you get this response from just about everybody. You get it as complaining or thought processes gone too deep for your own good. The only advice you probably ever get is to go outside and enjoy nature.

True. Nobody knows how to talk to me. We immediately go to too deep modes of thought and the next thing you know. Poof. It’s done. Intellectual people can’t talk to me either. They can fake it pretty well, but only age can take you to a certain depth and all the reading in the world isn’t going to get you to the place where you can understand another man’s travails who feels them deeply and is perhaps older than you. We are all on a trek to death.

There it is again.

I guess so. But I’m not hooked on death. I’m hooked on the fact that life isn’t so great until death and I can’t ever figure out how to fix that. I know there are a lot of things that I should do, though. I’m not stupid. I didn’t just fall off the chicken truck. And that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to clear the slate.

Maybe we should end it here.

End what here? Do you see? There is no there there. There is nothing to wrap up. I don’t know the metaphysics, but I’m pretty sure that we are not talking about anything of substance. Thoughts? Phtth. Call all talk complaint and excuses. What else is there any reason to communicate for? I’m not on to your pop rock trip and you don’t want to splice hairs about morality and the nature of mankind. Ehh. So let time roll. It’s going to roll anyway. Nothing is going to change. After 2000 years after Jesus we just had our bloodiest century ever. Man learns, but man forgets just as quickly. You can’t take the animal out of the man.

So how do you get through the day, not believing in thoughts.

I believe in thoughts, but the transfer of them I don’t see as having any value. I can change you a little bit by changing your thoughts maybe, but so what? Who cares? Do you really need to be changed? It seems to me those who keep change away are the happiest. They get everything they want. They can kill for what they want. It’s easy. It’s easy to be a non-thinker in this society. It is geared for them. Lucky bastards who never believed in morality or the humanities, writing, art, music. Lucky bastards who can just see what is acceptable in their head and say no to everything else. If only I could be like this, then I could get in the game. Be loved. Be respected as strong and forthright, as being a person who knows what he wants and goes out and gets it. A success!

But only if they have money, right?

Yeah, I guess so. If they’re broke they’re just considered assholes. But when you have this type of attitude you’re going to find a way to get money.

Prison, maybe.

True. Maybe. Not everybody is smart enough to parlay their meanness into cold hard cash, but it certainly helps if you are ruthless and can lie in the name of apple pie, the American way and Jesus Christ Himself.

Your trajectory is set and you can just go…

Yes, something like that. You don’t have to mill around sticky moralistic questions and ugly reactions from ugly facts about mankind and whether or not you want to participate. You will want to participate in anything that will get you closer to your goals. You can fake all the other shit, all the moral shit, all that shit is easy to fake. You did it every day growing up going to school. You play that shit. Just play it. It’s easy to make it big if you don’t have a conscience. I wish I didn’t have a conscience basically, but I do, so I can’t get into this competition bullshit that they keep telling me that I need to embrace after filling my head for eighteen years with the notion that it’s about helping and sharing instead. Get out of school and you will see that the Pollyanna eyed doe-boys like me are the first to be placed on the platter to be picked clean. The luckiest people are the ones who drop out of school at thirteen with a strong work ethic. They beat the rest of them by 10 years. By the time the others have graduated college they are skilled in the game. They are the masters of the universe. Bow down to them. If you drop out at thirteen and are not work oriented you can kiss the baby just like the others who don’t care about things, but if you have a work ethic…

Scammers. Get connected in scams young?

Pretty much. Figure out how everything works, parlay your youthful charms into better pay and more connections. Play the adults for everything they’ve got. Youth rules. It’s just that youth doesn’t know this.

You sound exasperated.

It’s played out. I’m grasping at straws now. I don’t want any of this thought.

You think of what you say as mere thought. You don’t really think much of a real world do you? Everything seems to be philosophy with you.

True. Maybe that’s because I don’t have something better to do. Maybe I am complaining, but this is pretty much the way that I was taught to live. Think all the fucking time. Be a thinker. Be a critical thinker. Think about this that and the other thing and when you have thought a whole lot then put it on paper and let other people read what you thought and wait for the applause, smile, and continue on thinking and thinking until you write something else down, put it on paper, wait for the applause, accept it, and then go forward. All the while money is coming into your coffers because of the thoughts on paper and you are slowly rising in self-esteem, and your eyes clear up and you walk a little taller and you get a mate and have children.

Nice dream, huh?

Yeah, it is.

Tell me about your childhood.

Good.

What else?

Bad, good. Whatever. Pretty good. Imaginative kid. That’s why I’m a writer. In the sixth grade I got a lot of applause for some stupid stories I wrote. I included my friends in them. Second grade, I won best haiku poem by a Japanese judge, the uncle of a student. So I carried that forward as excuse enough to say that I want to be a writer. Good luck. Anyway, that was then. This is now. You don’t see yourself and all that and blah blah blah.

Blah what? What was that last blah.

Blah.

That’s what I thought. Depressed, huh?

I guess.

That final blah always tells it.

What about your adulthood?

Pretty good. Not too bad.

What was good?

Peace. Young peace. I mean real young peace. When I was very young and the world was a magical place although I could feel the pain. I could also feel the beauty in the quiet stillness. Peace. Gray walls watching the shadows of the trees blow on my wall. Day slowly turning into night. Peace. Sometimes you are too frustrated to write. Too bottled up. Anything that you say would be too much about a subject that you feel more than truly understand. You try to understand but you don’t and you won’t ever. You’ll never see it in the scope which some say that you will and can see in, their scope, no, not even really that, a more positive scope, sure, hopeful, yes, always looking for the right proper true answer? Yeah. Peace. Gray wall peace. Sleep and dream peace to wake up to a raucous world slowly, the smell of the food cooking in the kitchen, look down the hall at the old clock. My brother’s up. Action. Talk. Life. Slowly come to life.

coffee

Yeah. Slowly come to life.

How old were you.

Eight. Nine. Ten. Life. Grew up, was going to say “though.” Like life is the hard lessons of older age and not the innocent dream of youngness was a part of you as well. We are all on the continuum it seems perhaps some of us may match along the way and we may have families. The world needs to cater to these growing families by providing them with decent places to assemble and be themselves. Let’s take the scene back away from the drug dealers and into the hands of our kids where it belongs. Hamlet, orchestra, rock, punk, whatever, circus! They’ll do it all these days and I think it’s high time we listened.

***********************

Jed Jones

2001

Jed Jones was the lead guitarist for the grammy nominated band Moxy Priestess. In 2011 he put on Petals: A Rock Scenario. The American Tribute to Princess Diana at the Riverpark in his hometown of Millsville, Tennessee.

*****************above:

Stade Deakins

Interviews jed jones

s. Jed or is it Jedediah?
j. Jedediah, but you can call me Jed.
s. alright, Jed.
j. Stade?
s. Yes.
j. You don’t seem staid to me.
s. Thank you. Short for something.
j. Cool. Thankyou.
s. No, thank you for the interview.
j. Alright
s. Alright, let’s go. Moxy Priestess.
j. the love of my life.
s. Helen Capowitz
j. the mother of my child and the love of my life.
s. Moxy Priestess reunion?
j. I’ll talk now. Thanks, Stade, for having me. I got me right now a rock scenario on my hands written by my brother, Albert Jones, who I hadn’t even seen in over ten years.
S. Petals
J. Yes, that’s right, Petals.
s. is it sad? And about Princess Diana?
j. yes and no. it’s funny sad, but happy hopeful and musically astute…but anyway…
s. No, yes, I’m sure. And the music was written by yourself with your brother, Albert?
j. this is also correct.
s. I see. Well, tell me about this thing, this Scenario you call Petals?
j. Well, it’s like this, it’s one of those things. You ever pick up a rock on a beach or somewhere and looked at it and then kept it for a long time like it meant something to you until one day you look down and you see what it is? Well, Petals was like that. It was sort of an ode to my lostness in my daze of heroin addiction and running, petals, I remember ‘em in the fall in Pennsylvania. Petals. Petals. Petals. Falling Down. On the Ground. Petals. Knee deep.
Petals.
s. I see. Let me ask you, is the risk on the road rousing you, I know Rose had a problem earlier in her career…
j. No, not at all. No. I’m free. I’m free. There’s a real story I could tell you and it would have to do with this play and it is actually in the play because I told Albert to put it in the play and he did. It’s what Steve Merrick told me at Riverbend Penitentiary in Nashville, Tennessee. He told me to “love.”

Love. That was it. No room for hate. Just love. And Albert put it in the play and then we took this hike on the mountain, a sort of climb, tried to get to the top through the back way of Anna Belle Mountain, the same way that my mule Teardrop went up. We made it, but along the way there was a little accident. We fell off of a cliff, first me, then Dink, this is Steve Merrick’s son, I still hated Steve Merrick at this time, still had the hatred clenched around my heart, and there was his son and he followed me over and finally we all just stopped.

Blahmph. I stood there swinging from a rope by my neck, Dink spread eagle above me as if about to take flight and from out of his shoulder the steel tip of a blade and rising above his shoulder, like smoke, the clenching face of Albert reeling both of us in.

s. how did you manage to fall like that?
j. fate.

Published in: on June 15, 2012 at 7:41 pm  Leave a Comment  
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