In the fields accustomed, no camera,
the lack of wanting voyeuristic pats on the back, the space of the anti-Instagram,
phone-kisses, winked-nudges
Grayhawk and Houma Nation putting on a
show by the fry bread, I’m reading Andy’s Axeboy’s Blues in the grass
tree-shade with blue sky writing above Big Sam for his funky nation. Mobilian
tongue dancing feathered turning faster on the drum stops, The Fais Do Do stage
in the backdrop Gal Holiday Honky Tonk drowning the call
This place is about the drum beat,
indigenous with a European ocean paying seventy bucks a head to get sun burnt,
like me here I have these fried green tomatoes and a seven dollar strawberry
smoothie thinking of Jared Paul and the good attempts and the stale taste of my
placated ego infused with the rhythmporium’s offerings
The organ and gate of men six foot two
or taller escorting five foot girls in sunglasses, shorter shorts than what
makes laying in grass without a blanket palatable to fair skin, the call of a
woman in earshot who has given up on dating, spotting an African elephant
mosaic tank top pony tail with a shirtless visor Bro with his beer in hand
scanning side to side for where to look, what to do after the sex and this
half-shirtless in public nodding
The savannah gaze, the eyeing up targeting
system of who would allow a body, body to want in split second calculus of what
is water, what is the fishbowl and the lines of bodies ogling bodies, the
evolved corneas and retinas of under-surface to surface, of kelp, redwood, and
fern, of fish, cow, and whale
Big Sam hits the Gentilly stage
downbeat, white-hat, sunglasses, exposed chest hair, Japanese guitar player
filling in with a Saints Cap and a Who Dat, burst clap, there is the rise up,
the grand uptown funk, let’s go crazy, the purple one turned himself into a
symbol because Prince understood something most people do not
Therein the crowd is the I am not
here, the idea of reality concept of nothing but party skinned bones in the
pot, flesh gumbo; what color toenails? What jersey, call and response: is two
toned but one frequency depending on how one modulates listening, one idea of
obedience in staged people, the idea of I need to be here in the way an
extrovert ideal seeks to please external expectations to see as suitable,
pragmatic to keep the surface of the water unperturbed; two is a connection of
the all, participating in something greater entirely;
Beauty of a woman with flowers in her
hair, a halo of pollen and ovum, the mechanism of the pollinator will come to
the petal, tied and goading death for hopscotch genes immortality for the ego, extrapolation,
collateral Darwinism
Zombie apocalypse grocery store of it
all, windmill guitar seeing for aisles and aisles, the idea of the play-card,
the commandment of why all this surface speak garble without speaking, the
hyper complex human signal structures to avoid an intimate direct interaction,
the anarchy of being present and acknowledging the drum beat underneath in this
implausibility of wildebeests
The aviator sunglasses to make eyes
bigger, face symmetrical, the foot tattoo covered and not when desired to
expose the personal nature of ink on the page, the shrinking and taking of gray
painted toenails. Brain evolved to
associate contact with increased likelihood of genetic reproduction and
survival, the inescapable web of biting biological math
So it is to say, I am not here, not a
lot of the time, there are waves, scents detected on the breeze, but this
conversation, the one we are all having and occasionally listening, most
through fear of death stitched to the underbelly annihilation of the ego, the
path has taught me to let go as much as possible, to see color in the infinite
darkness in the space beyond the atomic acquaintance of greeting in a form
foreign to the surface conception of reality we inhabit in breath or the way
you probably would like to hear it; the message, the general discourse, the way
of what is up or going on; etc. but then there is this drumbeat
The tattooed foot-stomp anklet
movement of painted fungus toenails doing the math, working out when to press
and rise, release and press, to have a good time, to make some noise, the
exposed skin to blast pheromones in claps of muscle tone, sweat and why this
tattooed indigenous Mayan design white bicep exists walking past second lining
for pussy to be viewed by bodies
Gambit, shake of hands or smiles in
the strawberry lemonade vodka holders sweetness iced and coating the tongue,
the lure of Eden floral halos planted, We are gonna turn this mother out,
yellow can of who wants the funk to break it down jiggery mash
The un-seeing becomes as basic as
seeing at an impasse of un-learning the universe appears for what it always is,
the basics, the man with the microphone saying get down low on the floor and do
you and modulated to what frequency ? Do
you put your hands up and clap bent knee and what is one hearing? What is it to be in the moment and let go;
the sub-vision of severed volition and dilution of dual wielders choosing the
same act, taking the same action, but to do so for divergent understandings of
the reality in which they participate
Big Chief Keke and the Comanche
Hunters, Indians of the flame, got that water, the torrent of feather dress,
spy boy, old yeah you right Bamboula family and get the hell out da way, cut
short
The bladder call and Apu-Simpson’s
check-out port-o-let line math to pick the one with the most men, no chit chat,
stand-up speed rotation of the red to green turnstile in the stench of shit,
piss, testicles and cunt rollup to deposit circular alcohol excavation, everything
is easier for a penis
People chewing on each other
enumerated like crawfish shells in the dirt after the boil, tasty and rancid,
the exoskeleton exposed syphoned refuse, the black-lined tail veiny scar, not
waiting the twenty-four hour fresh water purge for sacred intestinal chewing;
the bodies chew in the mud, particles mashed swamp of moments indigestible
shells swallowed, pulled-out meat tossed aside to gulp the grime, the bodies of
claw, leg, and sucked head, peanuts and oysters mouthed, not for the nut or
soft jelly mollusk, but for the hardened eternity in a droplet of sun of a body
defending itself; we are salivating for outsides,
As we attempt to be in this melee
genetically engineered to persist; to attempt an advanced operative persistence,
this is to be a being, to take that soft essence and spit or hide it, to
disguise the squish-belly in an infinite jest of drapes, masks for camera
lenses boomed scanning crowds for broadcast and long division for a new reality
show pimping time’s laughter in cell phone snap-shots crackling nebula of
costumes avoiding prone abdomens, the videographers munching on labor scab
bones impaled marrow licked, more gray toenails and flip flops, well-trimmed
foot arches mimicking dance steps and spread legs asking angles to be measured,
the dilation of centimeters, the way god comes flirtatious with death, to make
parlay, to smash into time fear-ducts squirting and blood gushing apotheosis
Potential energy vomiting into kinetic
embodiment to become the appearance of a being, a vehicle humming breath and
blood starting a stamped number, unique identifier of self, idea of a person as
wholly sacred because of irreplaceable manifestation in an arrangement of
uniqueness, when rather is the opposite.
The truly glorious bombastic crunch of
the universe is the commonality. The call and response is the interconnection,
the linking of this tethered net of soul sinew. The
cockroach-star, crawfish-water, fern-bow, fish-whale-cow and me, the galactic
sparkle-fist, twittering fingers and laughing echo, the carried torch of the
octopus’ sexual tentacles slathering cupping surface distortion, innards mushy in
the awkward belly of everything, a blessing of infinity strumming starlight for
a chord, to hear patterns in the noise, to be rewarded for expecting the
pattern, the departure and the return
The so much and the spider web sticky
feet of thinking too much in the colors of bodies drinking and smoking and what
is this; the streak of galactic hearts of steel and like a rolling stone, do you
know how it feels to be on your own, and at the intermission I meet fifty-somethings
Mark and Scott from London Ontario, and tell them about my New Orleans brother
who lives in London Ontario in the snow who just spent seven weeks visiting here
in my home with his Canadian wife and two-year-old daughter and is now
tattooing in his new nation; Mark, Scott and me, we connect in true human
awareness:
A contingent circle of faces waiting
for Pearl Jam are privy to our small conversation about art, punk rock, citizenship,
daughters, and beyond plastic commercialized imprint of a band coming out
twenty-five years ago at the last time artists could sell records and make a
living, and I tell him how my younger brother made his own label Community
Records here in New Orleans and he gives the music away digitally and sells the
vinyl and what people are paying for is something unable to be copied not in
scientific technicality but art, and rhetorically expose what is art; what are
the film makers, musicians, poets, comedians, photographers, authors, painters,
dancers, sculptors, chefs, fashion designers, tattooers, architects, and
teachers making, what are we making if not economic compensation; we are art
and we are buying art paid for in a commerce of identification; we will pay to
have some fired of measure of atomic bond that our being is not alone.
This sea of thousands around us, are
we here for the same reason; because at some point, probably over and over
again we were touched personally by this art that is about to boom supersonic
and just as in that is the human contract; that is to not to forget that we are
connected; and with that a white woman with a literal interpretation of a third
eye painted in yellow on her forehead turns around and smiles at me for the
sounds coming over her ear.
The lights blur with the sun and Steve
Gleason announces Pearl Jam to the stage with an electric tongue of his adopted
home town and his original, the Defend, and Team and the black and white
distortion of the state of love and trust.
The inside job and the body that fights to be a body in a mind that sees
wife, son, hears the vibrations of kindness, inspiring and feeling unworthy of
being the better man
This behavior is not unique, minding
manners and the old punk speed, would you hit me? refreshing the sound of the
Ramones opening for the first time I heard Eddie Vedder and crew back in 1994
with Joey’s Blitzkrieg sounding off one, two, three, four….
The do the evolution of a sardonic red
Drumpf hat tossed to Eddie as he put the John Oliver joke cap on backwards or
correctly depending on how one sees the universe, the scroll of the rock
splintering in given to fly, Prince 1999 written in the sky, spreading arms in
yoga to the Earth beaming, raising limbs, leaping, arching, pounding fists
upward, unbridled, unfettered, unhitched to any human body even my own vehicle
jousting exuberant, letting go in the rip of skin off chest, thrust belly up,
back bent urdhva hasta to explode like a human sun in rock and shine and New Orleans,
glorious New Orleans beaming in a field of humans spirits like diamonds every
one of us, shining like wheat licking the sunlight within one another; wave
came crashing with a fist to the jaw, deliver him wings, oh look at him now, but
oh oh, high flying oh he’s flying…still gives his loves he just gives it away,
some days he sees a strange spot in sky, flying, fly, oh…..fly
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