fflo | Hello. And I mean that sincerely.

Hello. And I mean that sincerely.

It's Sunday night.

I should comb out my hair so it'll be more or less dry when I'm ready to lay my head on the ol' pillow (which is about now, to tell you the truth). Thought I'd post something first, though. So hi.

I found out that my silver pattern is called Stradivari. I also found a small card/tag attached to the flyer describing the storage file thingie it's in--- a drawing of a woman with an actual piece of pink feather for a feather in the cap (or is it a boa?), and my mother's name, written by her mother, thereon. Then I found a small card of Xmas bells addressed to my mother and father from "Mother." Pretty sure that's also Bertha, v. Merl. Fountain pen. Used "Nick" for my dad.

All this to say it may not be such an easy thing to do after all.

Started out in the shower singing the spy-and-me lyrics to John Denver's "Annie's Song":

You fill up my senses
Like a mouthful of horseshit
Like the smell of some horseshit
Like the feel of horseshit
Like the sound of some horseshit
As it's hitting the pavement...

Etc. But then next thing I know I'm singing the real words, such as I can remember them. And then, t'boot, as if to say "if I can be THAT sincere, ... ," I find myself conditioning to a straight-faced rendition of "The Rose."

Jonathan Richman likes "The Rose." Once when I saw him he started to sing it and, when the (inevitable) groans started up, he stopped, said something like "Then you don't deserve to hear it," and moved on. Not laughing a bit, or even twinkley-eyeing us. I hadn't been a groaner on that particular occasion, but I could easily have been. There have been times in my life at which it'd have been compulsive.

So I'm all dead-panning, in the shower, and thinking on sincerity, and how it's a reward of age. The ability to let go of multiple levels of ironic awareness and critical thought of critical thought. At least for a few minutes, now and then. And for longer if the circumstances are right.

Then I was thinking about some people I know in their 20s, and one in particular, who is not stupid, and how you can't say "When you act that way, you advertise the very internal agony you're terrified to let out." At least it's advertised it to us old farts.

If any of you have thoughts on sincerity, on taking things seriously, that you'd like to type back at me, that'd be cool.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

My favorite John Denver parody was in some Dr. Dimento...

To the tune of "you fill up my senses"..

You came on my pillow...*sound of singer being strangling*

hehe...thanks for the memory :-)

i do like how the raw (and sometimes sticky) reality of sex is right up front in that parody, vs. in the song, in which "to love" is a direct substitute for "to fuck" (i'm thinking in the "come let me love you; come love me again" bit)

I couldn't make music publicly until I was over 40. Because I had to be that old to stop worrying about being cool, so that I could be sincere. Only now, having been hammered by two deaths in quick succession have I reached a point where I can, in conversation, without the structure of a song circle, stop and sing a straight song.

Midnight last night, almost 24 hours to the minute before I write this, I found it simple and easy to give a sincere tribute to my brother Dave in front of 20 people with no hint of Irony.

Maybe it *is* age. Maybe it's that kids are cruel to their peers, and hou needed the shield of irony to hide behind, and it takes years to figure out that high school is over, and to the extent that it's not over, it's not your problem if someone else hasn't left it behind.

these gut-wrenching losses notwithstanding, i was thinking the other day how, using your own accounts as my only input, i perceive so many ways your life, and the quality of your experience of life, seems to have improved dramatically since your marriage ended. harder to see those sometimes, i'm sure, but i wonder whether you can even imagine music taking off in your life anything like the way it has had she not left.

good for you, the other night---no pointless anxiety interfering with your making that tribute.

Actually, music was taking off in my life before she left. I sometimes wonder if it contributed to her leaving. She didn't see making music as fun thing to share, but instead as just another "thing that Pete does" that cluttered up the house. The most enthusiastic thing she ever said about it was that "It sounds like actual music," as opposed to just screwing around with instruments or software.

it takes years to figure out that high school is over.
--probably the quote of the day. I've been going through a similar realization myself, and you (or you all, or you alls) are helping me articulate it. Thanks.

i had meant to go to bed early too, but i am yet to learn how not to renege on my promises to myself in that department. it may be that some people who think they know the land of my people and its people exhausted me inordinately. they always do.

high point tonight (me vs. a faculty member in hist of architecture; he wants me to teach him the language of my people so he can go to their ghettos in the almost seceded province and ask them "deeper questions"):
he: "is your project on the balkans?"
me: "no."
he: "it pays to play the yugo-card these days." (he does)
me: "i don't play the yugo-card."
he: "but you want a job, don't you?"
me: "i do, but i don't play the yugo-card."
he: "well, we'll see when you need that job."
me: "i'd rather not have a job."

[version 239873245 of the "i-know-you-want-to-be-a-diversity-american" conversation; i need to develop a good "no-i-want-you-to-shut-up-and-die" conversation re-router]

i am finishing up my speech of employment. it is all out and i have nothing to lose anyway, being that i don't play the yugo-card.

i must have left my yugo-card in my other pants.

:]

so bbc last night was talking of the almost-seceded province and its now-thought-lesser chances of independence, with putin in opposition (among other things). but my question for you is this: is there really such vitriol between kostunica and tadic that k would form a govt with the ultra-nationalists? bear in mind i'm just an idiot american with the most-votes-take-all election style, and how things really work with these "triumphs" of a third of the vote is pretty mysterious to me.

oh, and the history of architecture privileged one can sit and spin.

e would be a much better source of information and interpretation on this because he is following names and things more closely. but here's what i know.

tadic's party has long been compromised and has no actual political vigor to it. people voted for it because it is the least fascist of the most familiar (theirs is the party of the assassinated djindjic; they have noone else to offer and no reasonable platform). people who didn't know who to vote for, voted for the democratic party (ie for noone, hoping at least their vote won't go to the radicals).

the radicals won at least one third of the vote, but they can't form a government. my father claims it's because they have noone competent; my mother claims it's because they are interested in disruption (meanwhile they "do business," ie steal); e claims the latter as well, plus that they are waiting for the province to secede and then they'll have another election and get 70% of the vote, when they get their share from all the currently covert fascists.

i don't see a way it won't secede. the will be war if it doesn't and there is no way more disruption will be encouraged, even if it's lesser than a war, over this. everybody's ready for it to secede, the eu is treating as a country, but it can't be said in serbia right before the election. we'll see it unfold in the next six months.

lunch with the woman human rights lawyer from the fatherandmotherland today. she "clouds and clears" over there (as they say) and finds secretly videoed executions from bosnia and gives them to tv stations; here she thinks people shouldn't want to stay; when asked what one should do in serbia, she doesn't know.

bbc said china objects, too (to UN-pressured independence), and then went on about concerns within other EU countries about precedent of not properly respecting borders of nations if kosovo becomes independent. and then they played a clip from a guy in the current serbian govt saying what version near-independence is okay w/them.

will be interested to hear more of the visiting lawyer after your lunch.

the un protested when ex-yu was disintegrating and it went to pot over night and noone could stop it. they also had the un 'peacekeepers' oversee several massacres, just to go by the book. i do think it's a done deal. noone gives a shit about a tiny country somewhere to put it in the way of more important business? not to mention that if serbia has this support, kosovo has ten times that, and in more relevant places.

Interesting. The Yugo card v. the Serbian, I presume? I have a h.s. friend whose father is of Serbian descent. A few years ago she was registering dismay at some portrayals of the whole situation, but I never spoke with her about it in-depth. (I'm in a slow process of getting in touch with her again after a long time, so it wouldn't be the first thing I'd bring up. Oddly enough, or not so, the main reason I lost touch with her is because she has always been so 1000 % heterosexual that I was "sure" she's reject me and we'd have nothing to talk about, but now I think I was wrong.) Anyway, interesting to hear that you can / could play the Yugo card in academia, whereas elsewhere people probably wouldn't even know what it was.

it's one of those 'crises' that americans like to think various foreigners can handle because they are mysterious and mystifying heirs to eons of 'senseless violence' and 'inscrutable identity politics' and such. all shit, of course, but i guess it makes money these days if you claim to undestand what's otherwise incomprehensible.

so far, it's been productive of a pile of shit that wants to call itself intellectual work. various idiots with 'personal experience' from the region go about telling people 'stories' they've heard and how it's all 'strange.' usually they have no undestanding of the difference between 'this' war and 'that' war and what happened in between, usually because they have no interest in divulging their own implicated position in one of the criminal parties. the 'outsiders' want to show how they've mastered a foreign 'culture' and gathered tons of information on it, most of which helped noone yet.

being less particular about how one makes money, carves a niche, etc., must surely be tempting sometimes. it's tempting to me, and i have a sense of personal security in some major areas of my near future that feels pretty strong compared to what i imagine yours feels like.

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Hello. And I mean that sincerely.

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