FundamentallySound Blog

I.

The cyclocomputer ramped up to optimal traveling velocity with startling speed. Michiko's muscles were indeed flexible power generators. A flash of worry sparked through her brain about the tightness of the front wheel's positive retention device but quickly disbursed when she remembered that she had adjusted it properly.

This bicycle tour through quadrant 78-C was a requirement of Hiro to garner human visual data on the reactions of its inhabitants to the recent slight color/flavor readjustment of Sweet Soda XL783.

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The last couple of days have been lovely. Last night I got to see David and Adrienne after their big Italy (and beyond) trip. Dinner with them was super fun. Then I went to a warehouse party down in the outer Mission with punk synth bands playing, made me feel 17 again, and I got to meet R's new beau. Then a quick stop by the Phonebooth before a lovely late night bike ride home. Today has been all about biking around the city, eating up the brilliant sun, and finally ducking into the Roxie Theater for Zizek's Pervert's Guide To Cinema. More on that later.

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H.

Hiro came home and drew a hot bath. After picking up his Climactis in Shibuya, he couldn't be bothered to think about much other than the feeling of the hot water slowly untangling every last fiber of his tired and tight muscles. At 35, he wasn't old. But he sure wasn't young anymore either.

The cumulative effect of the drug, the steam, and the hazy incense burning in the other room was taking Hiro to a place he hadn't been in a long time. Unable to restrain himself, he began smiling. Suddenly everything that had seemed so important, his job, his recent frustrations with the Thompson Web interface, the emotionally unsatisfying trysts with Michiko, all those things began to seem like some cosmic joke and he finally got the punchline. He started laughing so hard he couldn't stop. After a full five minutes of this, he pulled himself together, got out of the bathtub, pulled on the same underwear he had been wearing all day, put on a UniQlo t-shirt, and collapsed into bed immediately falling into strange dreams involving Zen priests wearing Catholic frocks and meditation sessions which were ended by painful swats on the back by vindictive altar boys.

(Previous episodes of Michiko's Life can be found here).

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This morning, I'm hanging out on the gorgeous small old California College of Arts campus in Oakland. I had a job interview for teaching in their Young Artist Studio Program this summer. I got the job, and now am just sitting between the Contemporary Gallery and the Printmaking Studio, freezing my as* off but enjoying the view of the mountains across the way. I feel like I've gone back in time, to a faux folk historical period when women wore long dresses and knitting was a way to ensure cold-weather survival, not just a trendy means to inner peace.

While thinking about these things, two men are wheeling out a giant machine, it's taller than they are and wrapped in clear plastic. Finally I figure out what it is, an old reel-to-reel magnetic tape recording machine, must have been built in like 1965. It's taken them this long to get rid of it, and of course it should go, who needs it? But at the same time, it's a little sad to see it in that state, probably never to be used again.

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After visiting our brothers and sisters down in LA for a few days, I'm now back in San Francisco. And it's good/bad to be back.

Good in the sense that I was so happy to meet with Rebecca and Deric the other night about our new performance group Kunsole. It's completely exciting, stay tuned here for news.

Bad because, well, it's San Francisco, so there is an energy vacuum and everyone is way more relaxed than they have any right to be, and it is f*cking cold here too. But if you are in town, the Lab is having a good music series this week, a performance tonight by Blevin Blectum. Friday, at the Lab, a very interesting group of LA'ers will be performing there as well, including CalArts alums Adam Overton and Andre Vida. Check the schedule for lots of other fun too.

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Every time I come to LA I have a good time. It's so refreshing to be in a real city. Granted, it's a city with a somewhat crippled subway system, strange night-time helicopters, an oppressive police force, and surreal paparazzi/celebrity choreographies playing out in real-time on the streets. Thursday, we were going to meet Sean at Samy's Camera, and when we got there, the paparazzi were swarming the door. Out came Paris Hilton right after we arrived, with me on the sidelines in the video on this page. Isn't she in jail yet?

But this trip has really been a work trip, I'm working with Sara on a new project she has created. And we performed Saturday at the 24th Street theater. Today I'm off to Machine Project.

And I've been recording sounds from the street downtown:

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I've been going through the archive of photos they have online for the DNK Amsterdam music series. I used to know it as Kraakgeluiden, but since they were able to get funding, they've spruced up the space quite a bit and gave it a new name.

The photos are just excellent. I'm assuming they're mostly taken by Seamus Cater. Either way, they capture the sense of play and solidarity that the Dutch do so well. Makes me miss that city. And that music series.

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On a night out with R recently, we started quizzing people on the streets, as we often do. This is up and down Polk street, in front of the Cinch (a favorite of mine) and the Buccaneer (a favorite of R's). Fed up with the cocoons that most people who go out in San Francisco seem to be in, and bored with the relentless lack of stimulation, we start playing. Stepping outside, we strike up conversations with strangers and pick their brains about what they do and why, why they live here and that sort of thing, with a little bit of a silly good-cop bad-cop attitude to our presentation. I think of us as absurd amateur sociologists, collecting man-on-the-street data about this city. Sometimes we get amazing answers, from people who live fascinating lives and have strange deep musical passions. Most of the the time though we receive confirmation that much of the population in this town are self-satisfied bores more interested in their sycophantic squeaky-voiced cell phone conversations about retirement funds than anything else remotely interesting.

The overwhelming impression we come away with is that most everyone seems lacking in confidence. Even in Tokyo, where the social surface is extraordinarily polite, after a few drinks Japanese become gregarious and fun, letting their guard down and engaging with others. But not here, according to recent findings from R&R Social Surveys.

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G.

After meeting Hiro for a late night rendezvous at the Venice Star Love Hotel outside of Shibuya, Michiko walked down Dogenzaka Street as the sun came up. This was her favorite time of day in Tokyo, a tiny temporal window in which the city felt slightly at rest, when you might look down a street and see no one; a shocking visual impact as Tokyo is nothing if not a tightly intertwined morass, locked up in a rubber band ball of constant physical and mental negotiation. To see the city this empty hinted at apocalypse, disaster, and the extraordinary. Within the hour this would change and it would resume its usual manic pace.

Hiro, on the other hand, could not be more uninterested in these urban sociological inspections. He was single-mindedly on his way to meet his supplier, and was running late for the appointment. His supplier was a young guy, almost a kid, who had so far found nothing in life to interest him, other than money. And he made a lot of it. Practically the whole city of Tokyo was drugged up on the latest pharmaceutical strain of Climactis, and Hiro's supplier worked it in the most fashionable districts, fetching incredible sums for textiles coated with time-release Climactis. This kept Hiro's supplier in the latest microcircuit fashion.

(Previous episodes of Michiko's Life can be found here).

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Last night I did something totally indulgent. It's something I would have not thought to do otherwise, but my friends Nora and Juan invited me, and then I realized, I have to do this, I have to reconcile this part of my life once and for all.

I went to a Morrissey concert. For two hours I watched as the old man taunted, teased, and strutted back and forth, crooning the lyrics that we all know and love, about boys with thorns in their sides shouting the same old SOS with the luck they've had they could only turn bad needing love just like everybody else does, and so on ad infinitum. The whole experience rocketed me back to my floppy-haired Doc-Marten-wearing teenage life in the early 90's. And I knew that I have been here before. These people around me, we all know why we are here. We're here to worship and reaffirm our faith.

And the concert was absolutely fascinating, Morrissey never actually giving us what we want, save once when he finally ripped his shirt off threw it to the crowd then quickly (and cutely) scampered offstage. The whole time the security men were crouched at the edge, always ready to tackle the boys who would rush that sacred space, the boys (and it's always boys) who fall prey to Morrissey's weird form of cocktease. But no, of course they'll never get it, they'll get yanked away and pulled backstage, their just punishment if they should try to get too close. In Morrissey's bizarre mythology, homosexuality is something always to be hidden, just around the corner, but never acknowledged much less embraced, making it safe for alienated and confused post-pubescents.

And when I left the concert I felt connected to the religion of my youth, the one I've since abandoned but still obviously can't quite totally shake, a secular form of Catholicism called Morrissey.

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Immigration into this country is completely messed up. I've seen firsthand on several occassions how difficult and ridiculous it is to get papers here. And not only that, there's always the risk that you might just get whisked away from your family in the meantime. This New York Times story is just depressing.

I normally don't get behind public rallies, but this is one issue where a show of public solidarity could make a difference. Demonstrations are happening in lots of cities.

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