Waldweben

What is going on here?
Not much really.

I'm just trying my hand at writing my own static site generator. I had been using Jekyll before and it was pretty annoying, so why not just write my own that's as 'lightweight' as I 'want'.

It has been a fun little Sunday-Monday half-insomniac project (if you're curious, check out the code); it's pretty sloppy, pretty hasty, and I have intentions to improve it sometime.
Time is ... though.

The point of this site was always just a place for me to dump thoughts. I don't ask that anyone read those thoughts.

Not particularly useful;
neither clever.

But I'm so disorganized that I should really staple my keychain to my belt..
-someone I remain rather fond of.

Anyway here's wonderwall

Street-lamps in Köln began to whisper—
 gloam,
each bulb a hooded monk.
I met that hair-thin seam and walked it,
one boot on cobble, one boot in ether,
static fizzing underfoot.

Even after Soho—
 after his hands struck midnight on my skin—
I kept the march:
hyper-sight, hyper-sound, hyper-everything,
eyes threading constellations through exhaust.
Even after Soho,
 after breath turned tin,
I told the moon hold, hold,
and the moon held nothing back.

Little meteors for breakfast,
little meteors at dusk—
focus in a pill, orbit in a vial.
Sleep peeled off like paint;
nights grew lacquer-thin, lacquer-loud.
I tagged every sedan, every silhouette,
filed them by omen, by octave of threat.
Don’t you see?
don’t you see?
They nudge the chair-leg two inches left,
watch me measure the void.

to mislead to mislead
 to lead you—where?

Even on a Cloudy Day—
I whispered fuck man, please
but meant stay sharp.
Safer, I swore, to simmer in sirens
than cool to silence.
Threat feeds vigilance; vigilance births threat—
wheel biting wheel, sparks eating sparks—
a perpetual engine of dread.
Better the knife-edge you know, I said,
and Even on a Cloudy Day.

Three-a.m. exodus: mountain hush.
Forest wore a thousand patient eyes;
I counter-paced with pole-staff baton,
conducting the breath between pines.
Still the routers hissed,
still the maps bred larvae of contingency—
north, north, north of all this light.

Back south the sky cracked louder—
license plates chanting in broken hex,
EMS shifting the key.
White-wall fugue:
 pope gregory is late
kill him, kill him—
chorus ringing in plaster & pulse-ox.
I walked out anyway,
still parsing bumpers for benedictions,
radio-snow in my veins.

What ends the gloam?
Not revelation—just.
the simple subtraction of amphetamine from blood.
Weeks, then months, street-lamps shed their second faces,
returning to plain fluorescence.
I dialed apology on a weather-worn payphone;
open valves answered.

Yet, Even on a Cloudy Day, the kernel clicks—
calcite, un-dissolved,
ready to hatch another rupture.
So I stamp it here,
ink it to paper,
hope the page keeps the circuit closed.

hold, hold,
  but never hush.
-mfw

Lexington hush—thick as tar.
Street-lamps bow their glassy necks and hiss gloam,
  gloam again,
each bulb a monk mispronouncing vespers.
I toe the seam—cobble / ether—
static-salt cracking under every step.

Even on a Cloudy Day,
night inhales, I exhale, repeat.

⸻

Three thirty-three: clock blinks a grin of knives.
Three crows on a wire.
Three breaths between buzz and shiver.
Fuck man, please.
The hour keeps happening.
Time refolds, loud with creases;
insomnia chews the minutes to pulp,
spits them back—identical, identical.
Don’t you see?
don’t you see?

Little meteors again—breakfast / dusk—
focus in a pill, orbit in a vial.
Wheel bites wheel, sparks kiss sparks,
threat feeds vigilance; vigilance births threat.
Better the knife-edge you know.
Even on a Cloudy Day.

Beccca laughs—echo stabs back later,
“She never said that,” she swears.
Strangers grunt my name, walk on.
To mislead  to mislead  to lead me—where?

Buzz behind both ears—twin tuning forks
struck by invisible fists.
Torso glitching under denim, under flannel—
but safe under viscoce.
seizure as semaphore.
MRI shows nothing. See?
I see more:
pulsers, implants, silver seedlings
burrowed in gray matter,
remote-trigger lightning to fold me in half.

Lexington syllables shrink to one long hum.
Isolation plows the snow of thought—
ridge upon ridge until the roof groans.
I crack, confess, collapse.
Gurney gleam, ward white—again.
This time delusion melts quick as frost;
poison idles in the drip tray.

What ends the gloam?
Not revelation—just.
the simple subtraction of amphetamine from blood.

Street-lamps shed their second faces,
return to plain fluorescence—mostly.
Yet 333 still skips across the dial,
buzz still circles like a moth.
Kernel clicks, calcite, un-dissolved:
  yeah, but what if—

Hold, hold,
  but never hush.

Even on a Cloudy Day
Even on a Cloudy Day
Even on a Cloudy Day

gloam breathes, I breathe back.
Static-salt underfoot remembers.
Wheel bites wheel. Sparks keep watch.

Fuck man, please.
Stay sharp.
Stay soft.
-mfw

Teeter me—
tip-toe the hair-thin seam
where daylight ends in dial-tone static.

I pace the filament, tight-strung & humming,
head full of floodlit riddles:
hyper-vigilant. hyper-focused. hyper-everything—
a beat that outruns sleep.

did you notice?
  each click in the hallway
  spells my name in Morse—
  --. .... --- ... -

someone once preached pattern-seeking is prayer,
so I knelt to the circuitry,
combing dust for glyphs,
  spooling every cough, every laugh, every sound
  into a grand design
  only I could stomach.

but the graph paper tore;
the planets mis-aligned;
& reality took a sick-day—
clocked out, left me supervising the void.

voices bristled in the drywall,
congregated round my pillow,
  chanting wake up, pope gregory,
    you’re late for your assassination.

so I out-watched the moon—
three, four nights straight—
till the fuse inside my skull blew,
sparks drizzling over every thought.

tell me, abuser-turned-bedfellow,
  how long can a man hold his breath
  beneath the quilt of your silence?

hatred fermented to vinegar,
doubt curdled to rust,
and the rust wrote sermons across my teeth:
  bite back. don’t blink. prove it.

I bled belief into spreadsheets of coincidence,
tasted copper on the tongue of each headline,
  insisted the ceiling fan
  was semaphore.

somewhere between thursday & the next thursday
I found the off-ramp—
crawled out of the radio-snow,
left the conspiracy half-painted on the floor.

now I’m relearning soft edges,
  whisper-walking the grocery aisles,
  letting fluorescent halos be nothing
  but light.

still, every dusk, the seam reappears—
silver zipper across the sky—
and I feel the tug:
one boot on gravel,
one boot in ether,
heart drumming its split-meter anthem:

hold, hold,
    but never hush.
-mfw

Morning is ordinary, mostly.
But I still check the fixtures for breath.
Street-lamps asleep, I test their throats for gloam,
 gloam again,
as if light could wake wrong.

Even on a Cloudy Day—Even on a Cloudy Day—
I walk soft.
Hold, hold, I say,
and the day holds—for now.

The hair-thin seam keeps its address:
there, between curb & ether,
between checkout beep & radio-snow.
I toe around it like wet paint.
Static-salt remembers my name.

No pill in the blood today—
just the ghost of a white-coat benediction,
a script in my name that promised focus, fix, forward.

Still, the rooms where I learned to flinch
 echo from the drywall.
Still, the old hush I used to hide inside
 stands open like a trapdoor.
to mislead to mislead to lead you—where?

Three thirty-three on the stove, on the dash, in the receipt—
333 like a grin of knives.
Sometimes a voice from a far stairwell,
sometimes only the air practicing vowels.
Fuck man, please, I whisper into my sleeve,
and inventory the aisle lights till they are
only aisle lights.
Only aisle lights.

Gloam has its habits.
Dusk puts on a second face,
then a third.
Lamps bend like glass reeds,
detach from their posts,
float a half inch forward,
remember they are metal,
    bolt back.
I keep watch anyway.
Even on a Cloudy Day.

Threat feeds vigilance; vigilance births threat—
I know the engine’s taste.
Wheel bites wheel but idles now,
a low grind under the daylight hum.
I keep the keys out of the ignition.
I count to four.
I start again at one.

Nights are longer than they measure.
Insomnia folds the hour to match itself,
lays it down beside itself,
 identical, identical—
the clock blinks obedient lies.
I pace the kitchen tile,
one boot on linoleum, one in ether,
checking the silver zipper of the sky
for the first tug of opening.

The kernel still clicks—calcite—under the tongue.
yeah, but what if,
it says, polite as a clerk.
I sign nothing.
I breathe.
I sort the mail.
The light becomes light again.

Hold, hold,
 but never hush.

If the seam returns, I will name it seam,
not prophecy.
If the lamps whisper gloam, I will answer lamp.
If 333 grins, I will let it grin alone.

Even on a Cloudy Day I practice the ordinary until it holds.
Gloam breathes; I breathe back.
Static-salt underfoot;
radio-snow at the edge of hearing;
and me, keeping the line,
keeping the line,
 keeping the line.
-mfw

Evening checks its pulse on the curb.
Street-lamps whisper gloam, gloam again—
each bulb a monk with a second face.
Hair-thin seam at my feet, wet-paint bright.
I count the cracks, the breaths, the exits.
hold, hold, I say to the ordinary.
Fuck man, please, I say to the air.
got no self control, look, I’m back here in line.

Three thirty-three—333—winks from the stove,
winks from the dash, from the phone’s black glass.
Time folds itself, lays itself beside itself—
identical, identical.
Insomnia chews through the hour’s rind,
spits out the rind.
Even on a Cloudy Day—
got no self control, now I’m back here in line.

Inside: a weather I borrow to round corners—
a hush that warms, that says shh,
that says wait, that says later.
I catalog exits, count to four,
start again at one,
practice the ordinary until it holds.
The old hush opens like a trapdoor;
I step around its mouth.
to mislead  to mislead  to lead you—where?

The night tilts closer, a little eclipse.
Lamps bend like glass reeds, detach, hover, bolt back.
Static-salt underfoot remembers my name.
I name it lamp, I name it lamp again—
it keeps insisting gloam.
Even on a Cloudy Day—
got no self control, want to be back in line.

Receipt-tape thoughts unspool—white spirals,
barcode choir, small red eye that blinks accept.
Jaw a vise, ribs a ledger.
I itemize the ache, subtotal the noise,
apply a discount for shame, add tax for rumor.
Fuck man, please, I whisper to the hum.
Only aisle-lights, I tell them.
Only aisle-lights, I tell myself.

Strangers don’t look. The mirror doesn’t speak.
Silence grows teeth and taps the glass.
I pace the seam, wet-paint bright;
the curb keeps breathing, I breathe back—
wheel bites wheel somewhere I can’t point to.
Threat feeds vigilance; vigilance feeds threat;
the meter runs, the weather returns.
Even on a Cloudy Day—
got no self control, now I’m back here in line.

If 333 grins, I let it grin alone.
If the lamps whisper gloam, I answer lamp.
I keep the keys out of the ignition.
I keep the hush at arm’s length.
I keep the line, keep the line—
hold, hold, I say to the ordinary.
The ordinary wavers, then holds.

Static-salt remembers. Radio-snow edges the hearing.
I practice the ordinary until it holds.
Even on a Cloudy Day—Even on a Cloudy Day—
I stand with the carts and the hum and the seam.
Keeping the line, keeping the line, keeping the line—
got no self control, look, I’m back here in line.
-mfw

Take me out to those woods
And tell it like it's Lenny

pull a trigger
you should

And then,
, you catch that drift

That silly sound wave
Read into a watch
Read into depraved

Hung around "much" longer
Built up some trust?*
Asked for a passcode
Realized they're fucked.

Stupid motherfucker thought you had a leg up?
Peppered pickled parrot there
And shut the fuck up.

Memorize my social?
And not my insta-gram

My fucking SSN?
fuck is wrong with you
who here's "unhinged"?

See there's in-
direction.
See it's everywhere.

See you can't make sense of

Anything.
when it's all there

to mislead
to mislead
to lead you astray
Because listen here
since you wouldn't that day
What did he say?
What.
did.
he.
say?

"""
Please leave me alone.
"""
"Please I want to go home."

Detainment?
No I could have left when I wanted.
Or could I.

Ready when you are, George.
Ready when fucking you are.
"""

*Lol you think I'd ever trust a gippi-teat-er?

Here's the thing

Man he fell for it

He deleted it
Man

Even on a Cloudy Day
I'll find the time
To walk away
from you again

And,

Even on a Cloudy Day
I still won't find a way
To tell you what you said
was wrong.
wasn't okay.

And,

Even on a Cloudy Day
I'll find my way back
to you, Carmen
somewhere on the shores of Cuba.
clad in grainy linen.

Walk around the corner
Always saw it coming, still
I tried to make a move
Almost snapped me from belief
I just want to know the future
But I'm like rolling thunder Listen.

Even on a Cloudy Day
Even on a Cloudy Day
Even on a Cloudy Day
Even on a Cloudy Day

I keep my eyes fixed on the sun
-mfw, Matt Shultz

When shadows drape the weary heart, and whispers haunt the night,
the weight of worries never parts, and fear obscures the light.
Yet in the dark, a hope remains,
a memory so fine,
that we might find our peace again,
in days of auld lang syne.

Of all the friends who slipped away,
lost to the endless night,
we linger in the shadows’ sway,
and fade beyond the light.

The weight of silence fills the air, a chill we cannot quell,
yet in the dark, a whispered prayer,
that someday we’ll be well.

Should olden days of peace return, and calmness grace our mind,
We’ll raise a glass to times of old, in gentle moonlight’s bind.
No shadows creeping in the dark, just stars that softly shine,
We’ll sing a song of yesteryear, for days of auld lang syne.

SHUT UP, you said,
again and again

MOVE, you shout.
Again, you're red.

If you give me some time,
I’ll get out of your way.
But you don’t give me time
So what do you say?

MOVE.
NOW.
OUT OF MY WAY.

again and again.
Day after day.

When will you learn
The right way to say.

Please, could you move,
you're just in my way.

Walking down the corridor,
On my way to see,
A reservation made
With a bottle my friends and me

We won't stay very long,
The night it isn't young.
Three bottles naught but left
A drop or two were brung

Slowing ever softer,
slowing ever more.
footstops growing softer
stopping at the door

Walking in to rapture.
Walking in to see,
A table sitting softly
with a bottle my friends and me

The shadows they grow longer.
The silence has more weight.
nostalgia wrapped in teardrops,
Fades without a trace.

Commiserate with silence
Commiserate you see
Commiserate the violence
Of a bottle my friends and me

Lilting towards tower
Lilting towards sea
Lilting somewhere quiet
Fuck man don't you see

Teasing with power
Teasing with dread
Teasing with silence
Teasing the dead

The arm lifted quickly
The mass through the air
Struck on the elbow
That feeling, despair

Yearned for some quiet
Yearned something dead
Yearned for some silence
Yearned something said

Cache me if you can
Christ in a crockpot
Gardening in gravel
Biting the bubble
Baking the blues
Stitching time
fishing in fables
Weaving whispers
Treading tar
Paddling puddles
Dancing with debris
Plucking a paradox
Drinking the dew
Juggling the jigsaw
Chasing the chasm
Hunting for hiccups
Polishing the paradox
Singing in the static
Sketching a schism
Murmuring a mirage
Whistling the whirlwind
Rustling the riddle
Riding the reverie
Brewing the breeze
Knitting the night
Lingering in the labyrinth
Tugging at twilight
Painting the paradox
Chasing the chasm
Weaving the wonder

There once was a coder so spry, Whose projects kept them up all night. With humor so wry, And ambitions sky-high, They cut red squiggles from sight

In Millburn and Short Hills, you’ll see, A contrast as stark as can be. With mansions so grand, But small shops close at hand, Tell a tale of both plenty and need.

In Millburn and Short Hills, you’ll find, A gap that’s both striking and blind. With mansions so grand, And small shops close at hand, It’s a story of wealth intertwined.

In London Town's heart, I did roam, Through Soho’s bright lights and soft gloam. Though shadows may linger, It calls like a singer, And always, what's left of my home.

A lad with a heart full of song, Found solace in melodies strong. Each note was a friend, A means to transcend, In music, he felt he belonged.

He rose with a talent quite rare, Yet found himself trapped in a snare. In boxes and roles, They measured his goals, And freedom seemed distant and rare.

In London, the streets called his name But shadows soon followed his flame. Though magic was there It came with despair And nothing could quite stay the same

He returned with a heart bruised and worn, To a place that felt empty and torn. With nowhere to rest, He searched for what’s best, In the echoes of dreams that were shorn.

Yet morning brought light to his eyes, A promise of new, clearer skies. With courage anew, He bid past adieu, And set forth on crimson sunrise.

Jules, he was a writer
A teller,
, by heart.
And if you'd only let them,
She'd tear your heart apart.

But Listen to me softly.
And Listen to me well.
Jules was something special.
Jules was something,
Well,

Look at this absence mind you,
Stare in its fucking wake
Because jules will come to haunt you
They-
Jules, please, just wake

N'importe qui et ce fut toi.
Je t'ai dit n'importe quoi

i’ll admit this is a bit different, least what you’ve come to expect from me. But as the text suggests, I'm running out of steam. I think the last theatric I have left in me is this little sword of Damocles above my head. I've been waiting for the lighting to be right in this room, and Ive given up that endeavor aside from chasing sunrise.

someone implored me recently, to stop dancing around what I'm getting at here and just talk about it. and so I think I’m gonna do that - briefly. Talk to you about this ...document?

first and foremost it’s ruminations on loss of agency and second and foremost an exploration of medium. I really like thinking about these things called phonograph effects. That’s a term coined by this musicologist, Dr. Mark Katz and essentially describes the complex interplay of technology, music, and sound. Specifically how technology changes the ways we produce and consume music. And I think, with the breadth of assets available ---these stories, these reels, these shorts, these tiktoks, these whatever the fucks. They have the ability to produce phonograph effects if people were to explore them in the same way they explore oil on canvas.

But for fear of sounding overly pedantic or impressing undue profundity on my work, I'll get on like monty and get git onit onwithit. There’s several things that I am getting at and/or retelling during this sequence. And like I said. they each deal with loss of agency.

I had a broader, more academic plan for this in mind dealing with hyphenated musicians and formal language, and barriers, but it got derailed by whim, as you could probably tell. If you got added to a close friends list and are offended by that I really don't give a shit. Right now my close friends list is the same set as my followers, aside from a few people I periodically remove, and that's intentional, because I'm worried that they might be worried about me pressing charges if I talk about it, even though I forgive them.

' I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like more than half of you twice as much as you deserve. '

Some percussionist told you that there were three important themes, but I lied. There's more. Ill enumerate three important ones for you though. Let's begin.

The first is that little thing called an EMR. Electronic Medical Record. Have you ever been sat down, brain on fire, in front of a doctor that made better eye contact with the computer than you? And then you did it 9 more times with 9 more new doctors for 6 more empty years?

what I will say about this is that in any healthcare system you can find that loss of agency happens in subtle but pernicious ways and that there’s a lot of, just, unsavoriness that goes on behind closed doors in medical settings that gets hushed to silence.

I was assaulted in a hospital in Raleigh, north Carolina. The staff did little to nothing to protect me until my outside doctor started threatening lawsuits. Are you listening? I was trapped. In a crisis unit. With a person in the throes of religious delusions who decided I was the reincarnation of pope Gregory and that it was her mission to kill me. And the staff couldn't be bothered. They could not be bothered. That's just one story.

Then there's Soho. around 2017, 2018 I don’t care to know. Precisely; but something happened to me in London that involves some degree of violence. And it has fundamentally altered how I interact with and view the world. And I’m not gonna get into it. Because it would make you uncomfortable. It would make YOU uncomfortable. Just know, setting comfort aside, I felt more shame being spotted by pedestrians whilst checking for blood during my back to the hostel, than anything else.

And then there’s something odd. I intended to recount this in a bit of detail but you know what? I am exhausted. Exhausted. I don't think you understand really, but I can't be bothered. About a year ago and some Change. some people, precisely 3, did some unsavory things to me under the guise of "just kidding around".

I don't know what made you think what you were doing was okay. I really do not. I really, really. Do not. You were sick. You. were. Sick. I'm gonna stop myself there. All I know is that somebody took a trimmer to my left eyebrow and it wasn't me. Look at it. Look at it. It's been shaved off. The lighting may make it difficult. Given the circumstances, I don't think it's coincidental.

Now to make matters worse, in my quotidian --- my daily that is --- it seemed that unkindness, misrepresentation of work, disdain for the differently abled, ignorance, and reckless, irresponsible gossip had became the norm.

So I decided to remove myself. I had a sick grandmother and uncle and the world falling apart at home anyway.

I'm still a student there, and I intend to finish my degree of course, but man some of you need to learn how to act like fucking adults because to me it seems like you careen through this life, smoking your friends down to the filter; left dumbfounded like a prick when they disappear or disown you.

Obviously, there's more. To quote a ren, Anticapitalist, irrationalist, something something else

After jules, I'm weak most of the time. My physical health has continued to falter. I've lost a disturbing amount of weight, and, don't get me wrong I needed to trim considerably, but not at that pace.

I don't know what it is. I just keep getting stuck.

The hard part is sitting down for me. Most days I just pace. Seriously. I pace. And think. And Sometimes that thought overflows. But when I do sit down I think i accomplish a decent amount.

What happens next is I start removing people from that close friends list for good. Transience interests me.

I don’t want your pity, but I do want you to to treat people better. And, most importantly, on this ride, we keep our hands, and feet! In the vehicle at all times.

Keep your fucking hands to yourself. And off ourselves, too. Are you fuckin kidding me with that shit man? Get a fucjing room for yourself.

I've been trying to learn to be gentler. I've come to understand that I operate with an intensity that catches people off guard. And I've been trying to soften. Clearly it hasn't been getting me very far. But some of you have been testing me. Again. I forgive.

I'm sad that this field is now a mound of dirt
And the field adjacent is a mound of worse

Reel me in now could I be more terse?

Waxing on a whimper
plop him in your hearse.

lmabent on my lips it lies
waiting elsewhere for respite
done listening for your lies
listening for your shit

shake me down
couldn't take me further
but didn't want to turn around

That voice her reedy timbre

Echoed through the gaps

And when she spoke It stitched my silence
And whisked off all my hats

I heard they called her Carmen
But I couldn't be too sure

The sound always disarming
You know that soft allure

The sight somehow alarming
You know I couldn't be too sure.

And every timestamp with her.
Every lambent pause.

Hard to just hold on to
Hard to see a cause

left me in the afterglow
A fool without its clause

You know they call her Carmen,
Go be tangled in her paws.

See
A fugue state finite
A fugue state machine
Overlapping undercurrent
Fuck man don't you see?

a fugue state finite?
a fugue state machine
A fugue state fuck you
to think,
, you know,
, another's means.

Prostration.
On matt's knees.
take him out to Blah BlahBlah
what is it that he means?

a fugue state finite
a fugue state machine
A fugue state fuck you
Fugue Man? what you mean?
I said a fugue state finite
I said a fugue state machine
You are in a fugue state.

Just like me.
Hegelian dialectics?
Fuck man don't vou see?

fuck the world a fugue state
Fuck this damn machine
Satisfaction of a cadence?
Fuck don't look at me

A fugue state?
what's he mean?

A fugue state finite?
A fugue state machine?

A fugue state fuck you
fuck you?
who's he mean?

Once upon a francophile

Stressed and alone
Taken out to blah blah blah
Wanted to go home.

What was it
What was it
What did he said.

The arrogance to
Think
You know another's means
You could say it's tragedy.

Prostration.
On your knees.

Take him out to the woods
Said shot in the head
Think the ones who are nervous
Now know

Heh,
where this story ends.

waxing on a whimper
What was it he said
Waxing on a whim
May as well be dead
Waxing on a whimper

Take him out to blah blah blah
Shoot him in the head.

Otherwise anxious
Otherwise we

otherwise otherwise

we're all left hanging

What was said it was spoken
What was it was it meant?
What was it Whither Music
What was his to present?
<<<<<<< HEAD

=======

6a6b53e103c4502e8aa3a15cee44abf728e5bd80 A Thaw Here,
, Said Again, and Again
A Purge There,
, said again Don't You Fret.
Matt never deigns destruction
Unless it's for him.
<<<<<<< HEAD

=======

6a6b53e103c4502e8aa3a15cee44abf728e5bd80 Who not you this time the scheme,
A shift iambic Or A-double-B-C?
changes slightly, Changes, see?
maybe, maybe not UDP

And now let's restate my silly idea but doitasmoreofa thespian with the sartorial proclivities of a clown.
Maybe a bit of sass:

But pay the fuck attention
And listen to this:
Bernstein spoke in a tongue
you may expect from a tryst
some bohemian country
some elaborate twist,
No it was:
Yiddish
But Deutsch and English too
And if you pay some fucking attention
You'll feel eye-talian to boot
But also maybe romance
And also maybe wind
Don't you fucking get it?
The name still screams in
Nanjing.

Jack of no trade Wish I was all.

you see I’m just a bit behind

But Been some places seen some things. Met some people. Gotten to sing.

Both with voice and with brass
Venues never thought real
Touching grass?

Crossing oceans
Crossing seas
Won't you spare me
Jesus please

This time,
It was her name,
That I didn't know.
But I'm somewhat confident, she had no idea of mine either

Right because Language
language got in the way
Language always gets in the way

Until you two gave it all up,
and you two spoke silence in fury?

Was it fury?
Who's to say.
Don't you get it?

Carmen a la Cubana
And I didn't even know her name
And she knew mine neither.

Cuba has always called too
Somewhat of a leftie
Who are we kidding

I stuck around in köln
Against some better judgement

If I'm a slave,
it's a slave I'll be free

-mfw

Straight from the brain's attic:

y'all

It's funny:
A certain person who told me they'd staple my keys and wallet to my belt[^1] also told me this:

If you cannot sing it.
You cannot play it.

And that was, well, said probably a few hundred and fifty times over the course of a few hundred and fifty years.
Time dilation is a bitch.
Jk I'm not into anything that heavy, at least recreationally ;).

Although, de temps en temps; it did feel that way a bit.

Neither here
Neither there.
And n'importe qui, n'importe quoi.

Anyway I was listening to Ralph Sauer talk about the Mozart Tuba Mirum.
What?
Have you not come to expect this from me?

Moving on,
Yeah so Mike used to say 'if you can't sing it, you can't play it.'
And that's unequivocally true if you ask me.
There's not a lot of things I believe are black and white, but this is one of them.

not a vox.
rather
a box

and you can ssh into it ;)
-mfw

[^1]: Frankly, it was necessary at the time ;) thanks for everything mike

There's a documentary, Twenty Feet From Stardom, I saw some years ago.
Mind you, only after many more years of listening to a certain brontesaurus's father wax quixotically about how great the film is.

But here's the thing:

It's always stuck with me;
I know I can't be the only one
Who wishes Mick Jagger

could have just stood out the way of Merry Fucking Clayton on Shelter.

That song - It is War

It is chaos.
It is sirens.

You hear them but you almost don't -
As on the nose as Hendrix wasn't?

It tells something rotten to the core.

It tells something that happened rotten on the streets of Saigon
and the streets of Boston.
something on the streets of Warsaw
and of Algiers.

Belfast and Selma and Havana.

I know the ones, the ones who still howl,

Rape. Murder. It's just a shot away.
You know them too:

It's Hanoi.
It's My Lai.
It's Fallujah and It is Port-au-Prince.
It's Babi Yar. And it's Rwanda.
It's Darfur.
And I won't give you the satisfaction of a cadence.
Did we to them?

It is Aleppo.
And It is Mariupol.

It is Leningrad.
It is Manila It is Santiago It is Hiroshima.

It is Guernica: Where Picasso Screamed in Paint.
It is Tenochtitlán and Wounded Knee.
It is Beirut

It comes from Ports of Empire.
It comes from Ports of Kings.
Must you insist I remind you:
The Name Still Howls in Nanjing.

It is an apocolypse.
Still no valkyries; not those of Wagner, nor Francis.

No Need
No Need.
The horror, the horror
It's Happening Now.

It is interesting; on a recent listen of Shelter I finally noticed something. Maybe I'd never noticed it due to equalizer[^1] or I don't know what. But then again I heard her isolated howls in the documentary...

In that studio; and on every street.
When her voice finally shatters.
finally ruptures.
some man finally cheers.

It's a shame that the name Clayton doesn't echo like Jagger.
It's a shame when we hear those fractured howls we think The Stones.
It's a shame that her body was broken for that song.
It is a damn shame.

That it was not only her body broken
A body politick?
No,
A body not yours.
Not mine.
Not even hers, one might claim:
That night, called to the studio,
Four months pregnant.

The voice she carries is seismic.

If you ask me, She was supposed to be Aretha.
No, no.. how wrong. Look at me:

She's suppossed to be Merry Fucking Clayton.
(In my very humble opinion; I'm open to asking her though.)

Now, do the right thing and Look at Her:
She still is.

You know, I originally planned for this little spot of writing to veer off towards a discussion of what I call Languages of Viscerality in my 'head-canon' or whatever. Pretty pedantic, right? Guess one needs to be that way if one has hope of using it in academic writing if one is ever 'credentialed' to do so. I was going to draw on Sennet who draws on Dudamel's idiosyncratic yet highly effective means of communicating musical idea without formal language. More, that prolific musical/artistic/literary/Anyary output is only made possible once we 'just...give it all up'[^1]. Trying to communicate so formally that is. I was going to make my own mention of Shelter, make a ludicrous assertion about some of the sounds that the brass are called to produce in Shostakovich's Leningrad, some more. But I sat down to write about Shelter and all I could care to write about was Merry Clayton and what she howled and is still howling for us.

Then-Studio-Gospel-Singer Merry Clayton said, four months pregnant, curlers in her hair a few strokes past midnight: That she would blow everyone out of this room. She did. And we cheered on pain.

Let's change that: https://open.spotify.com/artist/71cyZ6pH0KrM2MdtO8RGmy

-mfw

[^1]: Sapienti sat.

and joe made the hysterical observation,
that the aliens looked Italian to him, inside of the craft.

sometimes I wonder
While on 81

If anyone
At any point

Notices any of all of the crosses on the side
And no, I don’t mean the big ones in threes

The small crooked ones that echo silent screams

For me, it's London;

Truthfully,

It's Soho.

... It's Sam.
... who didn't know
even my name ...

But later Maria.
Later, Maria, whose name I never could
quite pronounce the way she really liked
Aside from lambent moments,
Cast by city lights.

and eight years later, and I realize she was teasing.

and on the noordsee I whistled Bernstein;
and I whistled her name along,

And what lingers,
well a lot lingers,

but what lingers most is the understanding: that I came closest
to the correct pronunciation of that woman's name
when I was whistling,
whistling along mindlessly.

I miss her somewhat

-mfw

you

looked for meaning in silence

but the fact of the matter
was there weren't

-mfw

Up in his flat
Up on his horse

Not gonna wake up
here any more.

Listen one time
It's all the truth.
Not just a story
I made for you.

Easy to say,
Easy to do.
But it's not easy,
Well maybe for you.

Hope that he found it,
Hope it was good.

Hope that she reads it,
Think that you should.

Cuts you his slack.
As he sits back.
Sizes you up.
Plans an attack.

Ah-da-da,
Brass, please,
matt---
I've got it all.
I've had it all.

Waiting for me,
down on her street,
now she's gonna do
somethin' special
for me :)

I'm gonna say

What's on my mind.

Then I'll walk out;
then I'll be fine.

Guess I'm under his thumb
now I'm on my back.
I don't think it's safe to show
my teeth so quick.

I needed her there. I needed you there.
But I didn't know.

how could i know

Go alone
I'll go alone.
We'll go alone.
I'll go alone.

... Back from his trip
He's at the door
Becca gets back-

And he hits the floor.

Innocent eye.
Innocent heart.
You know it's not wrong,
but it's not right.

Innocent time,
mid-night in Soho.
Can't let him do that
Fuck,
it's out of control.

I was just bored
Playin' guitar.

Learned all your tricks.
Wasn't too hard

It's the last one now.

I will promise you that.

I won't find out the truth.
I just won't come back.

...

I will leave the rest to Julian;
These are his words I've stolen anyway; I'm not sure why they've always spoken to me; his father was a mess,
wasn't he?

-words of Julian Casablancas, modified for the retelling- -of one night up in Soho

-mfw