Busenitz

Ken Norton

 

“Ali defeated everyone mentally first. With Frazier, Ali had him so mad Joe was trying to kill him with every shot. With Foreman, he tried to kill him with every shot. Mentally, Ali could not defeat me and physically I felt I was as much a physical power as Ali was. He couldn't upset me in any way.” RIP

Sirens

Hesitation (high) Marks

 

After a few days of solid listening, I can’t think why many people are calling this Nine Inch Nails album underwhelming or in some cases, boring. If you’ve pretty much created – and then reigned over – a music genre for 10 years, you have the ‘right to do what you want’ card. Maybe some people wanted a Downward Spiral follow-up? That would be equivalent to late-career hip hop albums made my millionaires, still rhyming about shooting people in drug deals… fuck those records. 

Among other achievements, Trent Reznor is sober, older and a parent and goddamn if the latter two alone aren’t enough to change your outlook and output. There is still an underlying bleakness to the record, partly due to the production being a tad sparse, closer to Pretty Hate Machine than say With Teeth, though obviously much more refined than the former. 

Which leads back to the point of Hesitation Marks being an evolution… if this was a How to Destroy Angels release, everyone would love it I’m sure. But putting that NIN logo on the cover creates a huge expectation from most ‘fans’ and less importantly, music critics. The album as a whole is admittedly pretty ‘mid-tempo’ and also more electronic/less organic than others, but so what? It’s not a Downward Spiral or a Fragile because those records regardless of how ‘timeless’ they were, are, like all art in one respect, a snapshot of their time and of the mind of their creator. Also from a personal point of view - you buy the vinyl and get a free CD version with it. #winning.

It’s about everything, as usual.

The radiators click and whine

As the air bubbles slip around inside the pipes
And I bury my head under a mound of feminine pillows
Rub my feet together a few times
To warm my cold bones

The outside world has begun its annual attack
The front door creaks while the glass in the windows
Quietly vibrates from the coming storm
I force myself up to find clothing, armour

Then I can see for miles - across the city one way
And over houses and hills to the back
There are great cracks and holes in the darkness
Blue light shining through here and
There

The real turns to abstract
Turns it back on you
Like walking through a mirror
From the other side

Any sense of control is lost
You are caught in a silent maelstrom 
Carried on the wing of all your anxieties
And so you swim with it
It is instinct to not fight

Then a moment
Grey and formless
You see a razor slip of white light
Passing and then gone
And that moment of clarity keeps you in check
Sane and grounded
Charged and ready and waiting for the next go round

And the sky begins its descent as you look up, face it and
Breathe and breathe and
Breathe
It
In.

Dr Hfuhruhurr..?

 

Once you know what it is, this apparently innocuous picture of a blob assumes a terrible gravity. It is an adult human brain that is entirely smooth – free of the ridges and folds so characteristic of our species' most complex organ. We can only imagine what life was like for this person. He or she was a resident of what is now North Texas State Hospital, a mental health facility, and died there in 1970, but that's all we know. While the jar containing the brain is labelled with a reference number, the microfilm containing the patient's medical records has been lost. From NS.

The flux of white butterflies

He said the world was full of white butterflies

And footsteps of blood

He said

Bigger did not mean better and that

White walls and obvious juxtaposition

Though useful to the artist,

Should never be considered art

He said we were never meant to live beneath the sun

But rather, burrow deep within ourselves

Consume and ultimately become eternal fire

He said the world was full of words

Masquerading as images and vice versa

That

Some of those words were made up of colours

Only ever seen at the

Heart of an exploding star

And some images, seemingly deep

Were in reality wading pools of bleach

On white canvas

Of all these things, all I could find to

Convince myself anything was true -

Were the butterflies in the sky and

Blood red tracks

On the staggered concrete behind me.

countdown (again)

 

Off to Brixton next week to see these lads. At least this time we'll be indoors out of the rain... 

'I feel big...'

Trenta-palooza

Heroin footy

Cassini

 

the Pixar theory

 

Like Pixar? Like Conspiracy theory? Read this.

MJ Interview

some real talk from Marc Johnson

Two hundred dustbins

It is the hottest day of the year

There are 200 dustbins to walk past

Every morning

On the way to sit down and work so I can get paid

And one day live somewhere there is less garbage

Crushed mint

Vaseline

Music of the gods

And a 14^th moon is found

Out there where the lack of air is a gift

Where the closer to the sun you get

The further away from breathing you are

And you need one more line for balance

Space

Time

Absolute quiet

But that line never comes

So you grind teeth and swallow bourbon

And sit in the sun and bake

Trying to see past the burning light

Without actually

Ascending

I turn up the volume

Push up my sunglasses

Look up to try and find moon 14.

Bye bye CBI

A quick post to mourn the passing of a great blog - the Chrome Ball Incident has been logging a serious amount of real skateboard history for a long time now. It was bound to end, as all good thinigs do, but the site - not to mention the integrity with which the posts were written and handled overall - remains truly indispensable.Good work.

Lost cat

A sign on the tree outside the house

 - Lost cat -

Cute photo

Etc

I think we saw it yesterday

I think, maybe

So I call to say ‘don’t get your hopes up – but I think…’

Etc

Been there, done that

So I call, let her know what I saw and hang up

When I look at the photo a second time

I see the picture is of my face

I little greyer

A little fluffier

But it's me no doubt about it

I check my pockets

Count ten fingers and ten toes

And am pretty certain that I am not lost

So I walk down the path and in the front door

A moment later there’s a knock

I turn and open it and am greeted by a large woman

Holding a small porcelain horse

you called she says

In a vague eastern European accent

            can you give me more info she says

I couldn’t but tried anyway

Been there

Done that

She thanked me and left

I closed the door and went to the bathroom

Washed my face and checked the mirror for signs of cat

Nothing

And nothing much else

Really

I look down

Ten toes

I’m not lost

I’m right here

Right?

BOB

Jim Kelly RIP

Wanted to put up a non-Enter the Dragon picture. So you know... Tennis.

Came back haunted

we are all made of...

what the whatwhat

 

sometimes things have nothing to do with anything. 

I mean honestly what the hell is going on here...

Conflicting advice

Gentle voices have of late

Been telling me to kill

Or perhaps that’s too distinct

They have whispered the blues to me

Warm breath on my neck

Reassuring me that there would be no consequences

Fire in my throat

A clear mind

There is little more terrifying than a clear mind

Not much left to fear after pure love and security

The true sign of life for some

Is the true sign of the end for others

When joy is weighed down by the shadow

When you only ever laugh while in company

But then

The screams

Bourbon soaked and

Arms scarred

Shouting for you to rise

To fight for everything

For everyone

Ice down your back

The biggest joke of all

Looking to the end of the world and seeing the edge

That really does exist

And you are surrounded

Hands taking and souls giving

Souls or something

But you are far from alone

And whom do you reach out to

When all these words all make so much sense

Though the voices are all at once black and white

They’re the first truth and the last lie you’ll ever hear

This is the reason you sing songs

The reason you drink and write and

Bang the drum.

Reverse creep while the goddamn television keeps me down again

Genius idea 1;

I figure

If I log three things at a time

Maybe one of those will save time

Grab someone

You

Them

Condense correlate

Aggregate

Life is like this

A rambling haiku of misspelling

Non-linear

Constant asides

Accidents forgiven

Mistakes forgotten

Love remembered

Someone else’s guitar

While your voice sings along

Albeit silently

A secret well known to all

This late in the game

Nothing linear

If anything

Experience and actions become reversed

Perfect and symmetrically opposite

A crippled symmetry

Here I am alone

Red all around

Flowers and

Wine and heavy curtains that she bought and got made and

Hung

Here I am alone

Pretending I am young though not wanting to

Be

And any focus or point or anything of something that once there was

Long since left me - for sunnier climbs no doubt

Genius idea 2;

Sit and force it to come

Back

The words are here

there somewhere

Light up

Pour

Swallow

Close my eyes and lie about the page having an end

About there being rules and facts and a real world

Just outside somewhere

Even with this sky as light as it is now at nearly 9pm

I see the reality through the gap in those dark heavy curtains

How long before we all end up just coasting along a path

Because that was the easiest thing to do

The safest thing

No one to follow anymore

No one left to lead now

What a predicament

How are the others dealing with this I wonder…

Do they still have each other

These thoughts are laid down in too abstract a fashion

Too camouflaged to be considered (I am aware - I am not stupid)

An intentional wasting of my – and your – time

So why bother

Because ‘one day’

One day they’ll all wake up

And who knows

Maybe I will too

But until then I now have this responsibility

Then and now

My opposing forces

Mirrored and so unaware of each other

Countdown is beginning

- has begun

My mistake

The morning birds now sing outside

Into the nighttime clouds

So at least I am not the only one in the wrong

Here

And I remember that I used to do that

And far from lamenting that time

I am glad to miss it

I shed not a tear for the naivety of our youngest nights

Full

Stop.

1939 - 2013

The only thing that ultimately matters is to eat an ice-cream cone, play a slide trombone, plant a small tree, good God, now you're free.

WWIII

'World War 3' is a working title. This is the start of the start of the beginning of a short story I'll probably never finish... peace.

Ours is a small story, told from inside a far bigger one. The biggest story we’d ever been part of – and the biggest there would ever be.

The house was merely shell. Orange brick turned to white chalk. Fragmented and abstract. Blackened, charred. The bright smouldering long since cooled. Luckily for us the layout of the small 5 room building was such, that when the last of the big blasts came, the shockwave passed the south east corner of the house in a kind of slipstream. This left the large rear bedroom more or less intact – structurally at least.

We had the 3 beds for the 4 of us to share, a luxury that we’d told the children not to let on to anyone outside the family. The small stove worked fine and what was left of the bathroom was still attached to the inside wall of the bedroom so the toilet was workable most of the time.

Running water hadn’t been anyone’s reality for I think about 3 months by that time. It was hard to know for sure. We knew the date from the radio broadcasts, but the events of the period overall, were all just blurred into one another. The important thing was that the 3 remaining exterior walls were mostly intact also, forming something that still resembled a home. Or at least what strangers and scavengers could recognise as having been a home, once upon a time…

We had managed quite well for the year since last winter – the one they named ‘the dead winter’. We had seen neighbours leave in the hope of settling somewhere more populated, seen others perish. We had watched as those who had retreated to the countryside and outer suburbs - returned only to fade away weeks later. Meanwhile the decision was made that we’d stay put – wait it out. What we expected to happen wasn’t entirely clear, but we felt staying in one place would be safer for the kids.

We were wrong.

Quote of the day

"Skateboarding is not a hobby. And it is not a sport. Skateboarding is a way of learning how to redefine the world around you. For most people, when they saw a swimming pool, they thought, ‘Let's take a swim.' But I thought, ‘Let's ride it.' When they saw the curb or a street, they would think about driving on it. I would think about the texture. I slowly developed the ability to look at the world through totally different means."
Ian Mackaye 

Quote of the day

I constantly try to reinvent my sensibilities and my ideas. I enjoy some of the satisfaction that I get when I feel good about what I've done. But the process is quite lonely and quite painful. Vincent Gallo

Ray Harryhausen 1920 - 2013

I won't even bother to explain the obvious... article from AintItCool here.