Content
Random thoughts, settings, characters, situations, perhaps leading somewhere
Thursday 28 March 2013
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Filed under
Snapsongs
It’s a pretty singular image in my mind: I am hurtling through the High Plains dark on Route 2, the scenic route across Nebraska that evidently includes the pathway of Col. Wm Custer on his rendezvous with destiny. I am driving an elderly black BMW 528e and there’s not much rain hitting the windshield because I have a 30-mile-an-hour tailwind. (Later, when I stop for the night, I will discover that this resulted in close to the theoretical limit for this car’s efficiency: 37 miles per gallon.) It’s a bit wild outside. Why was I pushing fate at 80 mph in a gusty crosswind? Equal parts deathwish and youthful testosterone, to be sure… but I was also anxious for a possible future and in a hurry to have it begin.
It is May of 1995. I have set out across the American heartland on a solo road trip, ostensibly to exercise my photographic practice, but actually to bury ghosts and to offer my heart. That will come later. The photography will come first. That is why I am heading to Mt. Rushmore and to Crazy Horse right now, to see a chunk of America and to attempt a record of my travels. I had already chanced upon Carhenge earlier in the day, a replica of the trilithons and bluestones on the Salisbury Plain done with obsolete cars painted primer gray. I’d spent a happy half-hour shooting Plus-X and Tri-X in the rain with plastic bags over my two cameras. The omens were definitely trending upward, if only the weather would cooperate. I’d been keeping abreast of a huge system of violent storms ever since I’d set out two days ago. This windy downpour was merely the leading edge.
Morphine’s third studio album “yes” had come out that March. It was already a staple in my car’s Blaupunkt tape deck and was ready-made for road tripping. I knew just about all the songs, and any one might have done the trick. But “Super Sex” summed everything up in one nice neat package that night. And not even in just the obvious way. It’s a relatively simple song, relentless 4/4 beat on the hi-hat, octave runs burbling on the fretless bass, and a drive-through vocal that was half spoken and half sung. Honking sheets of baritone sax push blaring overdubbed powerchords above and below the main rhythmic lines. It’s a song for passing things at speed, over and over again in geographic rhythm — empty gas stations, slick shiny cross-streets, swinging traffic lights blinking red one direction and yellow in another. The chorus lifts up those sonic pieces and drops them down, over and over again, drawing parts out into a whine or a moan. It ‘s about sex, isn’t it? Well, kinda. It was about a guy in an unfamiliar city calling for transport, lodging and satisfaction, and his tone indicates he’s half expecting he’s not going to get any of them. She said she’d come if he came, and here he was, so where was she? He’s got all the pieces, all the parts, whiskey, smokes and chocolate — surely that’s the recipe? Surely there’ll be nothing but super sex? Even the goddamned president of the United States gets super sex.
I wasn’t driving for super sex, but I would take it if I could get it. I was driving for a woman, one with whom I’d had history, history which I did not think had been laid to rest one way or another. Sure I wanted sex. But I also wanted peace, love and understanding. I wanted dogs, canaries, kids playing in the sprinkler. I wanted to finally make a decision, take a stand, say, “This is what I want.” I wasn’t expecting to get it. I was expecting to drink the flask, smoke the pack and eat the bar all by myself. But I wanted to make the effort. I wanted to bring myself to an alien place, at the verge of an uncertain future, and say, “Take me, if you will.” Super sex was only a portion of that drive.
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2013-03-28 ::
Edward Semblance
Sunday 24 March 2013
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Filed under
Squibs
Bright sunlight woke me. I blearily raised my head from my tucked arm, and tensed. I was in the beginning of a bad novel. I was sprawled facedown on sacks of garbage, their dark green plastic warming in the spotty sunlight and emitting their customary fragrance. Concrete gritted under the tips of my shoes. Steel gray bricks formed a wall to my right. I was down and out in a back alley, twisted sunglasses pinned to one ear, a pain in the crook of my neck. The bags squeaked and clanked as I scrambled to the vertical, or as near as I could manage. The bag under my foot shifted, and I went over backwards. Fortunately from this position I could see the head of the alley.
I could see tops of roofs, water behind them. This alley was evidently on a hill of some kind. I stood, retrieved my sunglasses, and shuffled through the trash to the opening. Before me was a narrow street, terraced in loops across a steep slope, paved in blue-gray brick. It didn’t look familiar. The house that I leaned against looked more unfamiliar. It was checkerboarded in alternating runs of steel blue and pale white brick, with neutral gray stones used for the window mullions and the archways above them and the doorways. Across the road, the red roofs of similar buildings occupied the next terrace down. The edge of the road was bordered by a low white wall, with intermittent rectangular spaces jutting out over the terrace that served as parking spaces. At least some were occupied by a species of motorscooter I didn’t recognize. Odd. Somewhere in Europe? Why would I be in Europe? But, then again, why would I be laid out in an alley anywhere? I didn’t normally occupy myself in ways that would lead me to that situation. The subliminal sense of unease in my chest spread in an odd prickling coldness down my arms.
Belatedly, I checked my pockets, but my phone and wallet were still intact. The phone told me it was 7:42 am, but it was obviously wrong. The light said ten-thirty, maybe eleven. The phone also told me it couldn’t find any signal. Not even roaming. The wallet still had cash and cards and drivers license. Whatever had happened, I hadn’t been rolled for my stash. The USB stick was still in my change pocket.
I shook the last bag off my foot and stumbled out into the full sun.The sunglasses helped with that and my headache at the same time. It was a little chilly, but not too bad. There was a faint breeze, and a scent of salt. On a whim, I pulled out my useless phone and snapped some pictures: of my alley, the scooter across the street, the house. I went left, because it was as good a direction as any.
The street wound back and forth for a quarter mile or so until I found a staircase leading down the side of the terrace. There had been no traffic in the residential terrace, but that changed as I reached the next level. I came between buildings from the landing and emerged on a street moderately busy, foot traffic and motorscooters weaving between each other, taller buildings around me and taller still jutting up from the terrace still lower.
Again, the scene was unfamiliar. Not wildly unfamiliar, but subtly so. The scooters whined in an odd key. Men paired oddly Arabic tunics of white coarse cloth with simple shirts of brown or tan and loose chinos. Women favored flowing robes over pleated slacks and brilliantly-colored, highly-complicated blouse constructions. All wore patterned headbands with a single complementary strip going over the head from ear to ear. My button-down over t-shirt plus jeans and loafers looked like nothing at all. Adding to the shiver of unease was the faint stirrings of culture shock at the base of my brain. I checked my phone again, nervously. It was still refusing to find a cell. I unlocked it and swiped my way to the map settings, activating the GPS. It would take a few minutes to get an ephemeris, so I stuck it back in my pocket.
The shopfronts all had large black slabs of glass in front of them that flickered oddly as I shifted my head. Polarized flatscreens, evidently. Lifting my sunglasses I could see writing, shapes, layouts, but nothing familiar. And that also jarred.
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2013-03-24 ::
Edward Semblance
Friday 22 March 2013
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Filed under
Squibs
It was long sunset, and the wind was high. The sound from the drezo grove was a vast, encompassing sussuration, at once loud and subtle, and gently modulating in a slow oscillation. Sprinkled in the sound was the pealing of childish laughter. Simone pulled herself from her bitshifting and went to the side window.
Although the monsoon cowling blocked her left-hand view, the rest was enough to tell the tale. The large windlimbs of the nearest drezo were lined with children, the larger close to the trunk, the smaller clinging to the outer segments. As the windlimb slowly oared in the sunset monsoon, the children swayed and whooped with each ponderous dip and backsnap. Some of the more daring attempted to ride the limb without handholds, surfing against both the windstream and the shifting of the drezo. Some of the less fortunate were picking themselves up from the thick sentinel ivy beneath the windlimb, scrambling for the trunk and shaking leaves out of their hair.
Simone had to shout to be heard over the wind, but her tone was not angry. “Don’t ride too long, dzichi,” she called, and several heads snapped in surprise toward the house, some guilty, others defiant. She smiled and continued, “They can take it for a while, but I won’t have you disrupting the harvest. If not you’ll all have to bring six liters from the store to replace my lost oils.” Some laughed, others just smiled. Several waved, and continued their surfing. One young boy cupped his hands to his lips and shouted, “I’ll be here to help you with the jugs, Babsa!”
Simone nodded and laughed herself. She went back to her bitshifting, remembering the times she herself had ridden the drezo in the sunset monsoon, and her uncles chasing her from these very same groves.
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2013-03-22 ::
Edward Semblance
Thursday 21 March 2013
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Filed under
Squibs
Rough days, what’s the economy? Scraping energy to survive. Barely any sun, but plenty of space to collect it. Huge sheets of ice flash-frozen into solar bowls that concentrate dim Jovian sun down to Earthly brightness. Some is reflected through thick fibers to illuminate caves of field greens; oxygen and sustenance in one simple package. Some is allowed to heat ice to melting, to be pumped through conduits for drinking, washing, cleaning, processing, heating. Final sun is converted to electricity to power the simple pleasures we might share: musicbox, gameboard, internet, video streams. And then there’s the alternative pastimes. Would you believe we sew for amusement? Someone brought linseed with her from Earth, grew it in her own quarters, and made a measured quantity of linen thread. Her grandchildren have a small plot in the fieldcaves for their crops. We supplement it with wire and finespun insulation.
But that’s when we’re home. Mostly, we’re on the out.
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2013-03-21 ::
Edward Semblance
Monday 18 March 2013
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Filed under
Squibs
Imagine an evening, freshening breeze and deepening shades. Out in the neighborhood, watching the stars flicker between the early-budded twigs. Nearing the horizon, a growing crescent of Moon swings midway two bracketing stars, the crook just a little lower than the intervening line, as if the weight of the satellite was straining a net between. It’s closer to one star (perhaps Regulus? Aldebaran? No — it’s Jupiter in fact), and the eye, running from lunar surface to planetary dot, finds it can repeat three more crescents in that dark space. Four moons? One moon = one half degree, thus there are two degrees of separation there.
And this is interesting, because that’s the size of the Earth seen from the Moon, a blue-white-and-tan gibbous Earth extending fatly between that same distance, an instant comparison easy for the imagination to make, inflating the Moon four times its size and about that much brighter. The Moon is in actuality a dull, grey lump–it’s hard to tell when it’s the only thing glowing in the sky, but it’s the color of asphalt and the Earth is many times more brilliant.
And what more interesting step to take in the imagination that to see that Earthshine extending to the horizon, a serrated horizon of faint uncompromising jags against the stars, far too close for comfort, and the cold bites harder but it’s not the wind. There is no wind here. What wind one has rushes from one’s lungs and immediately doubles the atmosphere present, and as it dissipates in a flurry of fog one get the unmistakable scent of gunpowder and dust. Hanging desperately in one’s vision, faintly through distance and atmosphere the glittery, city-speckled edge of North America slips behind the planet. As the ground too slowly encroaches the last thought might be, as the realization makes its way in time to dissipate into entropy, that someone will be hard-pressed to explain these bones on this plain, on this cold hardened lava sea, and that thought might be enough to bring serenity, before the absurdity elicits a laugh.
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2013-03-18 ::
Edward Semblance
Monday 18 March 2013
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Filed under
Lyrics
©1998 Mindhue Studio
She saw him on the road shouting at the stars
Caught in the headlights of the passing cars
He uses her as a shield against the rain
She unfolds herself and covers up his pain
She was buttoned up so tight she couldn’t see the sky
But she stopped to let him in when her mirror caught his eye
Chorus
The wind cuts her with its howling chill
He stands against it and makes her world go still
Work it out, work it out, work it out…
“I must be an agent of Someone Else’s hands,”
She told him with a look, making some more plans
“Angels don’t claim their divine game,”
He answered with a smirk; she turned and did the same
“But I’ll scream it to the Heavens if you’ll notify the Man.”
“Good enough for the gov’ment,” she said and took his hand
The sacred and the secular never join as one
Unless the two can work it out, lovers out of none
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2013-03-18 ::
Edward Semblance
Monday 18 March 2013
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Filed under
Lyrics
©1995 Mindhue Studio
Impress black dress
And its static caress
Around you as you talk
Phrases as you talk
Confess, or repress
The impulse to posess
Feel the crackle of the shock
Resolution is not rock
first chorus
One lives a life inside onself
Confusion is a simple thing
Sometimes I demand too much
For the guidance that desire brings
Discern concern
In your careful turn
Phrases as you talk
Around you as you walk
Disarm alarm
Intensity is not harm
Resolution not rock
Feel the crackle of the shock
second chorus
My disappointment turning black
Everything in a fading light
Hesitations are mine to mend
Bide my time to make them sin
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2013-03-18 ::
Edward Semblance
Monday 18 March 2013
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Filed under
Lyrics
© 1998 Mindhue Studio
Pause a moment and watch the side
Bits of glass in the weeds and gravel
Glint against the setting sun
Cutting along the path I travel
I knew a man who took a ride
On a molecule he couldn’t spell
He told me it was more than fun
To count the lights as he fell
Sparks in a line
At night I look far ahead
Glow of brakes in the growing dusk
A chain of embers from a cigarette
Strewn to ashes and cooled to dust
As red as Mars along the Milky Way
Or bright as Canopus in the southern sky
The dust of stars curls like a veil of smoke
And overwhelms the stinging eye
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2013-03-18 ::
Edward Semblance
Monday 18 March 2013
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Filed under
Lyrics
©1998 Mindhue Studio
I can lie to myself, I can lie to everyone else
But if I lie to you, I’ve got no one left
I bought a liter with a thirty-dollar bill
I drank it down and felt a little ill
I told myself that the pain would go away
But it was waiting the very next day
I can trick myself, I can trick everybody else
I’d trick you too but you’ve already left
I took a quarter and scratched it on the street
I wrote your name for everyone to see
Someone bought it with a thousand-dollar check
Four thousand quarters, and me a nervous wreck
I can ask myself, I can ask someone else
But I can’t ask you since you’ve already left
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2013-03-18 ::
Edward Semblance
Monday 18 March 2013
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Filed under
Lyrics
©1998 Mindhue Studio
Take it down
Kiss the ground
Never stare
At the air
The sun will burn
As you yearn
For the breath
Of Ozona
Tangy spark
In the dark
Smell the storm
You alone
Let the rain
Cool the pain
And the kiss
Of Ozona
She was there
Unaware
Transparently
Took her leave
Search the breeze
Find the tease
And the sting
Of Ozona
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2013-03-18 ::
Edward Semblance