Promenade

I want to be an old man
with nothing to do
but buckle my shoe,
looking out at the people
walking on the promenade,
happy to be rid of wanting.

A Gathering

We are gathered here today to Witness. Witness the joining of you, (name), and you, (name), and everyone else here on this Friday evening in New York City, city alive and thumping, ten o’clock and all of us together, one time only, it shall never be exactly the same as this again, forever and ever, Amen.

We are gathered here today in judgment, even if we believe otherwise, in a room that’s hot and cooked up on mismanagement and devastation, trumped up on smiles and congratulations and thank yous, and we are each and every one of us prepared to go the extra mile to think we’re not let down.

We are gathered here today, mini-Tom Waits and mini- Bill Gates alike, with things on our minds, things on our minds, gas in the car, money in the meter, how the children are doing, Derek Jeter. We’re listening to sounds of our scheming, dancing to the beat of a diluted dreaming.

We are gathered here today, an anguished pack of ephemera, refusing to acknowledge what looms, a half-night away from the best night of our lives but never bothering to board the train.

We are gathered here today in the presence of the no-God, desperate to un-know, handsome in our feel-good clothes, the drinks sliding like cancerous slugs down our checked-up throats, the burden of midnight’s perpetual return burrowed beneath our skin like invisible lice.

We are gathered here today with overcoats and umbrellas, you never know when it’s going to rain, and the galloping ghost of a former lover occasionally pin-pricks our skulls, usually in bed at night beside she who sleeps, he who wants things, she who won’t let you out until it’s certain we’ve memorized the bullet points.

We are gathered here today in misery, but there’s hope at last! A-ha! Champagne! A two o’clock sneezing fit! The psychic whisper of Dan Nani! Puddles and steam! Seasickness! Central Park! J. Seger! Duck Duck Goose! Casinos of the snow! NyQuil! Jumping up and down! Plastic castles! Morning! Soggy nights! Champions of the World! We are free.

We are gathered here today to stop taking care of ourselves, stop trying to mean what we said, stop being reverential, stop tethering ourselves and making amends, stop smothering the loneliness and circumcising our decisions.

We are gathered here today to start looking around, start chasing chills, start blending our voices, start writing an altogether different tale of howling and woe, to stare down the  chimera, to blame happiness for the garbage revolution, to attend a standing-room-only event in honor of the new expectation, one that doesn’t shirk or smirk or shrink, but gambles and weaves and denounces nothing until it’s been properly vetted.

We are gathered here today, friends, to smell our stink, to consecrate this holy ground and joust with our dragons. We must find out what makes them tick and where they reside, instead of sequestering them like some straining jury of our peers, trying to connect the dots. Adjust! Repent! Relent! screams the chorus of the adaptive heart, the one that’s been whittled down and made to fit. Fit no more, friends, let it fill and bust through our throttled chests, and let us continue to gather in the great and everlasting chase for thoroughness, forever and ever.

Amen.

Lyrics to Declaration of Us

The EP we will release on December 10th at The Living Room is complete. There are approximately 2178 words spoken and/or sung on the album (give or take a "Yeah" or a "Uh-huh" here or there). For those of you who are interested, here are those words in the order they appear on the record. We don't have the funding for fancy inserts.

As you're reading along, feel free to make up your own tunes. Also, sometimes I can't always make out what Chris saying, even if I wrote it. So not everything will match up will what you hear live. Just like real rock and roll.

William Faulkner


Pressed into service by an unrepentant television, he arrives at the pen. He brandishes it clumsily, makes some marks on a page, turns up the volume on the knob inside his head.


“Fuck aesthetic! Aesthetic is accidental!” He screams this out the window into the night. He is a beast, scanning for chaos. Down below, he knows the men and women are silently shrieking.


Chorus 1

Ugliness and language is the beauty of the dead.
Looks like what we’re looking for has already been read.


Feverish! Feverish! Like Faulkner’s dogs, always in pursuit of feelings with flesh! Life’s on the line here, gotta get it right. Rip it out! Every revelation is vicious.


Chorus 2

Stampede of belief and a quiet little bed.
Looks like what we’re looking for has already been read.

Managing his shoe salesman job has become a daily interference. After all, America is hard to conquer on a slope. He crushes his feet into size 8s as a matter of principle. He needs the pain. He goes to work every day and walks home. It does not matter if he goes home. By then, a portion of him has traveled on. Most remains. It’s not until much later, in the deepest part of the secret night, after he has had a glass several more, that his teeth come out. And the excavation begins. Blessed are the wounded. Blessed are the stubborn. Blessed are the wealthy. Blessed are the underwhelmed. Blessed are the damages inflicted under the night sky by every drop of anguish of the brothers and sisters of the brothers and sister. We are all bottomless.


Books are not riddles. Don’t fancy them. Press them against your skin. Smell the meat on those pages. Concentrate on the blemishes. Unless you’re only looking to run away.





You and Me

1.

Madness and ignominy are the best things that could happen to you.

As long as we’re built this way, I want you to sweat out your own sins and breathe new life into mine.


2.

My work is a sieve. It is burdened and fancies wanderlust.

That means it collapses very easily.

That means a lot of things get into it.

That means we all fall down.



Chorus (2x)

Whatever I conceal

Whatever I hold dear

Will always be estranged

From the way I appear.



3.

You can be logical.

You can mix in theology.

You can be trusted.

You won’t fall all the way down.

You can be kindness.

You can be struggle.

You can make decisions.

You can be told.

I am kneejerk solipsism waiting to be broken down.

My situation is more urgent.


4.

In the very last moment of night

I come back to you.

I come back because it is convenient

And because it is safe

And because it is my heart.





Declaration of Us

I’m so fucking angry, but I’m old enough to prove it.

I can be all the emotions simultaneously, especially on the morning commute if I’m listening to Steve Earle and the derelicts are particularly pushy.

We got a problem here today and it’s called US. We don’t believe enough anymore and when we do, it’s about wall fixtures. Forget all that. Let’s fucking run away and hide – you and me. Let’s even hide from each other while we jump our batteries. Not really hide so much as float around like itinerant, whimsical philosophers, and only meet up for daily dinners and occasional sex. As for this place? Don’t worry. Those no-good, lowdown police officer pricks and shitty high school principals will still be here when we get back. If we get back.

See, a great and true red-headed innocent once said, “Neil Young knows what I’m talking about,” and I think that’s right on. Helpless, helpless, hellllpless. If we’re lucky. Might as well get whipped into a different frenzy. This one is all chaosed-out. Look at me, I’m off my medication on purpose ‘cause it makes me give a shit. Everybody screams. As they should.

I’m going to take a break right here to read you a list of people I secretly admire. Sorry I never told you. I’m telling you now:

Charles Dickens.
Tom Hayes.
Grandma Sadie.
Natalie Maines.
Michael Rupert.
Tupac Shakur.

What can I say? I like people who look like their feelings.

OK. Back to the story.

Today I did an experiment. I imagined leaving my life. It wasn’t so terrible. Sure, I cried a lot. But what’s that got to do with anything? I envisioned hightailing it to the Pennsylvania mountains to teach college-level English and falling in love once a week with one of the darlings, collecting beautiful, fresh young writer-goddess lovers for my vault, growing old with all of ‘em and none of ‘em at the same time.

I got ideas (ideas, I say!). I got big, beefy, thunderclap, shucksy, masculine, heartfelt, scurrilous, sludgy, howling-at-the-moon ideas! And if I can’t lasso at least one of them soon, I’ll have to start giving them away. C’mon. Whaddya say? Can we lash out together? Can we bring back that Keroauckian, talkin’-smackian vernacular? Saddle up on this roof and ride out into destinations unknown? Maybe we’ll get famous for all this horsing around. End up like one of those TMZ cheese doodles, noodling in the park with our tits flopping out of Sunday dresses. Jesus, what the hell did I just say? LOL.

Oh God, I just wanna watch it rain from a stranger’s living room, only to find out that the furniture is mine. Or see a disaster up close and personal so I can fix it with a box of tools. Or tell my girlfriend I’ve loved her as much as I could possibly ever love a woman and leave her anyway. Or have a chance to explain myself to Eddie Vedder. Or walk around at night in a town I haven’t heard of yet. Or be the only old guy in a happy house of boom-boom bass lines and scandalous creativity. Or just to know what it’s like to be alone, disgraced and suffer the consequences.

I want to write.

Here it is, today (insert date), and I know the streets are teeming. There’s enough suffering in one subway car to blind you if you look directly into it. Today I saw this guy rubbing a lottery ticket at an outdoor café in New York City. He was wearing a suit and tie, scratching feverishly. Nobody should need that kind of dream.

The streets are teeming, yes they are, with the busted-up ruins of everybody’s goddamn loneliness, James Baldwin said it a long time ago and he knew (he knew!), and all that decay now gets overlooked because we all have blood and most of us have seen at least one episode of American Idol. That’s the problem, these days. Too much common ground. Isn’t anybody unpublished anymore?

Health is hogwash.
Smart is good.
Murder is a deep feeling.
Damage is irreparable.
Good.
Stay damaged.
Yes, goddamnit, I love the way the liquor feels. Consider me lucky. Some people don’t even have that much.

And when the demands of modern life – Facebook and organic peanut butter and bridal registries and mindless savings accounts and the economy (Jesus Christ! Fuck the goddamn fucking economy already!) – when all that gets to be too much, and some jackoff with a dubious agenda and a concerned face asks you how you feel, make sure you say something with conviction:

“I feel OK.
Thank you kindly.
I appreciate your concern.
But don’t worry about me very much.
‘Cause I’m not really here.”

He’ll never know what hit him.




Zornoza

That is the young writer's dilemma as I see it. Not just his, but all our problems is to save mankind from being de-souled as the stallion or boar or bull is gelded, to save the individual from anonymity before it is too late, and humanity has vanished from the animal called man. And who better to save man's humanity than the writer, the poet, the artist, since who should fear the loss of it more, since the humanity of man is the artist's life's blood? -William Faulkner 

1.

Get ‘em out.


2.

Blended sounds

Blended sounds

Walk outside

And blended sounds.


3.

You don’t empathize.

You rationalize.

You don’t feel it.

You only steal it.


4.

Suffer . . .


5.

Fix things and hustle.

Fix things and breathe.

Factor in the unfactorable.

Maybe then I’ll believe.


6.

I’m not like you!


7.

Buck up and tell me who is used to it!

Buck up and tell me who is used to this!

Handsome men, handsome men.


8.

I can’t get turned on.

I can’t get turned on.

Maybe it’s because I’m bland.

I can’t get turned on.


9.

Everybody has a leader.

Everybody has a plan.

No one who connects the dots

Can fathom man,

Can fathom man,

Can fathom man,

Can fathom man,

Can fathom man,

Can fathom man.

Etcetera.





Dangerwalk


1.

Dragons.

It is not necessary to invent dragons.

They’re already on their way.

I am my most vicious at work.

Making rules.

Believing in ordinary angles.

I won’t think twice about cutting off your money

or your scholarship

or your air supply.

Viciousness is a decision.

It’s in my blood as we speak.



Lay down your fire. Lay down your showmanship.


2.

This verse is an old, broke-down shoe.

One with the leather tongue deflated, the sole worn through.

One that looks like you.

You don’t have to be defended.

Your leg up is an illusion that colleges reproduce.

You see without magic.

You are a deduction.

You dance to the music of calendars.

You old, little man.

You meaningless prick.

I will not let you into me.

Go find another legacy to shake down.


Lay down you’re tired. Lay down your selfishness/selflessness. This indiscretion has left you vacant.


3.

I am weaker than my muscular moments.

Those things flee at a bribing kiss

and the fallacy of relief.

My kingdom is in the wash

Being sanitized for reproduction.

It seems I will join your logic after all.


Lay down you’re free now. Go on discover. Please let me be now. I am not dead.





Ten years


The first time I fell in love it was Los Angeles and it was in a room with a lot of other people, a Tuesday I think, and I was an actor and a teenager, and she had the reddest hair and was taller than me, and everyone ate lunch and read their lines and laughed, and I never shook her hand, and then it went around in circles, and I stayed up in bed at night asking God for help, and I gave her mix tapes and wore clothes I thought would impress her, and the weather was always fine, and she thought I was fine, just not kissing material, and the way it was was something that will never happen again, and she grew up into something else, a rock star, I still see her from time to time in magazines, she’s a superstar, and all I do is read books so I can see why she decided to pass.

The second time I fell in love it wasn’t winter but it should’ve been and I wasn’t an actor anymore, she was, maybe, and it was a Tuesday night, I think, and I spent two weeks leading up to her, two weeks of strategy in New York City diners, she said no anyway, and it was cold on weekends in Hopewell Junction, Halloween cold (remember Matt?) and the Knicks were always on the radio, and the way it was was something that will never happen again, and after I realized I was ashamed of it I started to make sentences out of love, the long and short of it, got happy with the gloom, showed off my wounds, and I liked the crying but it wasn’t just that, her sister got killed but it wasn’t just that, I would’ve helped her anyway, I was good, I was pure, I wanted to relieve her, she decided to pass.

The third time I fell in love with a real live believer and she scooped me up on the early side of a fade, first I decided on her, hid behind trees to watch her making out with accountants (future accountants actually, even worse), and we bounced around, we were hooting and hollering and when we made love it was actually worth it, she was worth more than a decent poem, finally she strangled me with her hands, four months and then the murder, my fault really but not much left of me, I was constantly crawling, I wrote her letters from Cheyenne and Provo and Los Angeles too, and I argued for what she left behind and she didn’t so much decide to pass but pretend it was never there, and the way it was was something that I will never feel again.

Then ten years went by . . .

The fourth time I fell in love is the love I’m in right now, and it won’t be the last time, that much I know, but I like it because I can’t watch her start to cry, I always have to make it stop, I’ll even go so far as to put a tissue underneath her eyes to see if I can stop the flow, and that makes her laugh, so this time I think I’ve almost got it right . . .

How Strange It Is to Be Anything at All

Part 1: Us

1.

Humbled and mumbling and running out of steam,

Whispers of scandals and someone else’s dreams,

Damages, damages and all the words unread,

Figure you’ll get used to it or burn the thoughts unsaid.

2.

See the way the ugly heads get sucked in by the sound,

Push away the morning stink and try to walk around,

Let me go to other places and learn about the scene,

You won’t let me get there til it fits with our routine.

3.

Take me out or shut me out or tell me what I’m worth,

The things I think are all the same and have been since my birth.

Mixed up in the elements and trying to be true,

Slave to conversation and stranded like you.

4.

Try to forget this place, unknow the things you own,

Dispose of all your lovers and resist the weight of home,

Make up stories, set aside the tangents of TV,

Not much there but sing-a-longs and shit you can’t redeem.

5.

Stand beside your brother, he’s not the one to blame,

Misspent dedication and addicted to shame,

Lovers who mean well and hold out through the night,

Coronate their children with the gift of narrow sight.

Part 2: Them

6.

Conquer all the grownups and aspire to be worse,

Find a better trauma and demand to haunt the earth,

Tell me not to suffer and I’ll tell you not to smile,

Gladness is vindictive and it’s going out of style.

7.

Line ‘em up for summer and they’ll all jump in the pool,

I’d like to see them shake their heads, I wish that they’d refuse,

Schedule the righteous man a time to settle down,

He’s just another rumor, another broken noun.

8.

The holy war among us is a sight for God to see,

He’s just around the corner and he likes to brush his teeth,

Worship him in daylight and unwrap him from the shroud,

Bury him in trying and ignore his thorny crown.

9.

Shoelaces in the window of the Yellowbird motel,

Have got me feelin’ pretty bad or maybe pretty well,

There are stories of the devil in an angel’s Tuesday dance,

And a million kinds of subplots that deserve a dying chance.

10.

Campaigns and canopies and a smattering of details,

Cowering to the managers who practice what they fail,

Anthems and morality are washed up in the flood,

Nothing more than posturing for uninspired blood.

Part 3: Coexistence

11.

A certain kind of stop-and-go is typical for me.

A certain kind of answer is what we’re going to need.

Thorough minds and thorough lives are worth the crying for.

All we are has bound us to our love forevermore.

The Release of Danny Lanzetta's Gadfly and Declaration of Us on December 10th at The Living Room

Allo ladies and gents!

Well, the date has been set and we’re raring to go. On Friday, December 10^th, I will release both my novel Gadfly and the EP Declaration of Us at The Living Room at 10 PM. We’ll be rockin’ and rollin’ all night long, I can promise you that. My good friends Emily Easterly and J. Seger will also be releasing their new EP, VA/MD, that evening at 9 pm. Chris Cubeta and The Liars Club will play at 11.

Please allow me this opportunity to share a little about how we finally got to this night. I started Gadfly more than four years ago as an MFA student at the New School and am indebted to so many people for their help, support and critiques, both solicited and unsolicited.  I don’t know if Gadfly will end up resonating with a lot of people (I think my dad liked it, but he might be biased), but I do know that the process has been worth it no matter what happens next. I believe in it and am grateful to all the people who have helped get me through this thing. Even Dale Peck.

For those of you who don’t know, Gadfly is a self-published novel. But that decision was far from a last resort. In fact, self-publishing this book became a choice I felt I had to make, not only for my own satisfaction, but as an acknowledgement to the numerous writers, far better and more worthy than me, forced to toil in obscurity because of the whims of the marketplace and the lack of vision of some folks in the literary game. But this is not meant to be a screed against publishing houses. We all know the problem of trying to mix art and commerce, and I’m not going to waste space with that old debate. But I do want to make it known that even writers who have book deals spend years waiting to see their words in print, to say nothing of those who can’t get an agent, can’t find a publisher, etc. etc. It can be pretty demoralizing. And I simply didn’t want to wait around for the approval of someone who probably wasn’t that interested in my artistic goals in the first place. That’s not a knock on those folks, just a fact.

So, in addition to my own aspirations, I am willing to throw down the gauntlet to show there are possibilities available to us. That doesn’t mean I’m the only one who can do it; it just means I like gauntlet-throwing.  I know other people have self-published before me. Independent musicians have been doing this kind of thing for years, after all. But we are on the cusp of an era where artists will have more control over the ability to cultivate an audience. And that is truly something to celebrate. I am also extremely lucky to have a rock and roll band to help bring my words off the page in an exciting way. I take very little credit for that, by the way. Most of that belongs to Chris Cubeta, my co-writer, and the band.

Over the next few weeks leading up to the release, I’ll be sending out email reminders about the show, my blog updates and anything else I might want to share. (The Knicks might not be terrible!) You can now access my blog, as well as some music and videos through my new website dannylanzetta.com. I’d appreciate all of you spreading the word about December 10^th and hope many of you can make it out to share the evening with us. The book and EP will be available together for 15 dollars that night, which is cheaper than they will be separately or online. So you’re getting a deal too! (Because you know what America’s real pastime is? It’s not baseball. It’s saving money. So says the weird looking State Farm pitchman in this strangely disturbing commercial. But I digress.)

Thanks again to everyone who has been a part of this . . . well, I want to say “journey,” but I’m tired of that metaphor. Let’s call it an extended trance that has included, but wasn’t limited-to, ecstasy, suffering and boredom. That probably doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well, does it? Oh well.

Pertinent details below. See ya soon.

Danny

Danny Lanzetta – The Release of Gadfly and Declaration of Us

With Chris Cubeta and The Liars Club and VA/MD featuring Emily Easterly and J. Seger

Friday, December 10th

9 PM

The Living Room

154 Ludlow Street

NYC

Free

William Faulkner

Pressed into service by an unrepentant television, he arrives at the pen. He brandishes it clumsily, makes some marks on a page, turns up the volume on the knob inside his head.

“Fuck aesthetic! Aesthetic is accidental!” He screams this out the window into the night. He is a beast, scanning for chaos. Down below, he knows the men and women are silently shrieking.

Ugliness and language is the beauty of the dead.

Feverish! Feverish! Like Faulkner’s dogs, always in pursuit of feelings with flesh! Life’s on the line here, gotta get it right. Rip it out! Every revelation is vicious.

Stampede of belief and a quiet little bed.

Looks like what we’re looking for has already been read.

Managing his shoe salesman job has become a daily interference. After all, America is hard to conquer on a slope. He crushes his feet into size 8s as a matter of principle. He needs the pain. He goes to work every day and walks home. It does not matter if he goes home. By then, a portion of him has traveled on. Most remains. It’s not until much later, in the deepest part of the secret night, after he has had a glass several more, that his teeth come out. And the excavation begins. Blessed are the wounded. Blessed are the stubborn. Blessed are the wealthy. Blessed are the underwhelmed. Blessed are the damages inflicted under the night sky by every drop of anguish of the brothers and sisters of the brothers and sisters. 

We are all bottomless.


Books are not riddles. Don't fancy them. Press them against your skin. Smell the meat on those pages. Concentrate on the blemishes. Unless you're only looking to run away.

Stories and Songs Residency Update

Just want to send a quick thank you to everyone who has been involved and attended the Stories and Songs residency all month at Googies. We've had some terrific readings and performances and I'm grateful to everyone who has come out to support this little endeavor. This week, we're going out with a bang. New York Times book reviewer Joseph Salvatore, whose new collection of short stories, To Assume a Pleasing Shape, will be published by BOA Editions in 2011, will be reading. Word is he's bringing a pretty good crowd. In addition, Emily Easterly, J. Seger and Chris Cubeta, three of the best songwriters I've had the pleasure to know, have a few tricks up their sleeves to put an exclamation point on our month-long jamboree. I don't know what those "tricks" are, but I'm sure none involve a lady being sawed in half. Pretty sure, anyway. Just come out and take a chance.

Thanks again to everyone who has been involved. I'll be posting regularly in October and November as we get ready for the release of Gadfly and the as-of-now untitled EP (any suggestions?). As soon as we know that date, we'll get you all the pertinent info.

That's all for now. Oh, check out this blog entry from my friend Matt Singer who performed at the Stories and Songs residency. He's an amazing writer and I am humbled by his far too effusive praise.

See ya' reeeeeeaaaaal soon!

http://www.mattsingermusic.com/blog 

Stories and Songs: A Residency of Writers

Here is the schedule for the Stories and Songs residency at Googies Lounge - 154 Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side - I will be hosting every Sunday in September. Hope to see you there.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

8 – 8:15: Minju Pak

8:30 – 9:10: Danny Lanzetta

9:20 – 10:00: Paul Basile


Sunday, September 12, 2010

8 – 8:15: Andrew Cotto

8:30 – 9:10: Danny Lanzetta

9:20 – 10:00: Clyde featuring Misty Boyce and Nick Africano


Sunday, September 19, 2010

8 – 8:15: Andrew Zornoza

8:30 – 9:10: Danny Lanzetta

9:20 – 10:00 Matt Singer and Bryan Dunn


Sunday, September 26, 21010

8 – 8:15: Joseph Salvatore

8:30 – 9:10: Danny Lanzetta

9:20 – 10:00: Chris Cubeta, Emily Easterly and J. Seger

Catch Me if They Can

1.

Night always dies.

Me and a cigarette.

Lonely morning.

2.

Blended sounds,

blended sounds,

walk outside and blended sounds.

3.

Mary in a tight dress

doesn’t hold a candle

to Mary in a winter coat.

4.

Buck up and tell me who is used to it!

Buck up and tell me who is used to this!

Your rise goes blank at sundown.

5.

In between the papers is the note about the scandal.

It isn’t long.

It’s everyone’s song.

6.

If I told you where I live the mystery would sour.

I better tell you for the sake of us.

If I didn’t, it doesn’t mean destiny but something else.

7.

Short things are long things in disguise.

Everyone looks at the wrong thing.

That’s how we fill up our bellies.

8.

Games are on –

night trap.

Games are on –

night trap.

Good to see all that ends well.

9.

I’m gonna go into the building.

I’m gonna look a little woozy, bleary-eyed.

Catch me if they can.

The Declaration of Us

I’m so fucking angry, but I’m old enough to prove it.

I can be all the emotions simultaneously, especially on the morning commute if I’m listening to Steve Earle and the derelicts are particularly pushy.

We got a problem here today and it’s called US. We don’t believe enough anymore and when we do, it’s about wall fixtures. Forget all that. Let’s fucking run away and hide – you and me. Let’s even hide from each other while we jump our batteries. Not really hide so much as float around like itinerant, whimsical philosophers, and only meet up for daily dinners and occasional sex. As for this place? Don’t worry. Those no-good, lowdown police officer pricks and shitty high school principals will still be here when we get back. If we get back.

See, a great and true red-headed innocent once said, “Neil Young knows what I’m talking about,” and I think that’s right on. Helpless, helpless, hellllpless. If we’re lucky. Might as well get whipped into a different frenzy. This one is all chaosed-out. Look at me, I’m off my medication on purpose ‘cause it makes me give a shit. Everybody screams. As they should.

I’m going to take a break right here to read you a list of people I secretly admire. Sorry I never told you. I’m telling you now:

Charles Dickens.

Tom Hayes.

Grandma Sadie.

Natalie Maines.

Michael Rupert.

Tupac Shakur.

What can I say? I like people who look like their feelings.

OK. Back to the story.

Today I did an experiment. I imagined leaving my life. It wasn’t so terrible. Sure, I cried a lot. But what’s that got to do with anything? I envisioned hightailing it to the Pennsylvania mountains to teach college-level English and falling in love once a week with one of the darlings, collecting beautiful, fresh young writer-goddess lovers for my vault, growing old with all of ‘em and none of ‘em at the same time.

I got ideas (ideas, I say!). I got big, beefy, thunderclap, shucksy, masculine, heartfelt, scurrilous, sludgy, howling-at-the-moon ideas! And if I can’t lasso at least one of them soon, I’ll have to start giving them away. C’mon. Whaddya say? Can we lash out together? Can we bring back that Keroauckian, talkin’-smackian vernacular? Saddle up on this roof and ride out into destinations unknown? Maybe we’ll get famous for all this horsing around. End up like one of those TMZ cheese doodles, noodling in the park with our tits flopping out of Sunday dresses. Jesus, what the hell did I just say? LOL.

Oh God, I just wanna watch it rain from a stranger’s living room, only to find out that the furniture is mine. Or see a disaster up close and personal so I can fix it with a box of tools. Or tell my girlfriend I’ve loved her as much as I could possibly ever love a woman and leave her anyway. Or have a chance to explain myself to Eddie Vedder. Or walk around at night in a town I haven’t heard of yet. Or be the only old guy in a happy house of boom-boom bass lines and scandalous creativity. Or just to know what it’s like to be alone, disgraced and suffer the consequences.

I want to write.

Here it is, today (insert date), and I know the streets are teeming. There’s enough suffering in one subway car to blind you if you look directly into it. Today I saw this guy rubbing a lottery ticket at an outdoor café in New York City. He was wearing a suit and tie, scratching feverishly. Nobody should need that kind of dream.

The streets are teeming, yes they are, with the busted-up ruins of everybody’s goddamn loneliness, James Baldwin said it a long time ago and he knew (he knew!), and all that decay now gets overlooked because we all have blood and most of us have seen at least one episode of American Idol. That’s the problem, these days. Too much common ground. Isn’t anybody unpublished anymore?

Health is hogwash.

Smart is good.

Murder is a deep feeling.

Damage is irreparable.

Good.

Stay damaged.

Yes, goddamnit, I love the way the liquor feels. Consider me lucky. Some people don’t even have that much.

And when the demands of modern life – Facebook and organic peanut butter and bridal registries and mindless savings accounts and the economy (Jesus Christ! Fuck the goddamn fucking economy already!) – when all that gets to be too much, and some jackoff with a dubious agenda and a concerned face asks you how you feel, make sure you say something with conviction:

“I feel OK.

Thank you kindly.

I appreciate your concern.

But don’t worry about me very much.

‘Cause I’m not really here.”

He’ll never know what hit him.

MP3's

Click here to download a link to the song "Just Asking" from my last album.

Pearl Jam

They are all so hopeful, so mindful, these city kids, city girls, these young, Masters-style city profs, waiting days, months, years practically, to hear back from editors of prestige, to learn if their feelings have been approved. Do writers actually give a shit about literary magazines anymore? Book deals? The New Yorker? Guess so. Love and opportunities abound and yet we’re all too busy using ‘em to update time, to inform anonymous hacks what song just came on the radio. Unless it’s Pearl Jam and it reminded you of how it feels to tingle in your throat and how music and words can get inside your muscles and make you grind your teeth, I’m not interested.

Pearl Jam, Pearl Jam, Pearl Jam, Pearl Jam, Pearl Jam. That’s right, I said it. Pearl Fucking Jam. You got the chutzpah to put that name in your mouth? Here’s the thing, folks. Christian Lander’s got this blog you’ve probably heard of. It’s called Stuff White People Like, see? It’s funny and all, well-written and can be an amusing distraction at the office, I guess. Can even make you feel a little better if you think you deserve to be castigated for your privileges. But I think it’s a shitload more than that. I think it’s an indictment. I think it’s a portion of the panacea. I think it’s an instantaneous treatise calling out the modern-day Anglophile liberal and his postures, his fear of a belly, his bloodless, under-the-radar sins that are costumed as good taste. Fuck coffee, fuck hummus, fuck Vespa scooters, fuck not having a TV. Fuck yoga and film festivals and Netflix and the Sunday Times and grammar and Barack Obama (in the abstract of course). The humble Mr. Lander will surely disagree, but to me, he’s nothing less than a hero.

And you know what’s got me all riled up and delighted at the same time? Pearl Jam will never end up on that list. Matt Cameron ain't much of a jazzman. Jeff Ament likes basketball. Stone Gossard wears khaki shorts to gigs. Eddie Vedder is always naked. Good for them. But we need more Pearl Jam. More Neil Young and Stephen Wright (the author, not the comedian). Less lethargy and Jack White. More feeling, less stealing. More hungry, more dingy. Less lecherous and stingy. More vodka and abundance, fewer gadgets and redundance. More Eminem and abandon. Less Radiohead and handsome. More Carlin. Less bargainin’. Fewer stoics. More hocus-pocus. More love, more hate. Less sit and wait. More Pearl Jam.

I still operate almost exclusively on inspiration. I think you should too. I am not a tireless worker. I am tirelessly ready to get back at it. I feel remorse because I didn’t start watching the Knicks until they won three in a row. I think that’s good guilt. And you know what folks? I may be a fat fool. And I might try to drag you down, just when you think you’re over the top. And I might wish I were dead from time to time. But I still got all night for you. And I almost always got enough left in the tank to shake you loose, you pretty, sexy, sophisticated city girl. I wish I could publish your story. I wish I could tell you how much you deserve. I wish you didn’t love your coffee and your Sunday Times and your comfortable goddamn inhibitions so goddamn much.

Fight to get it back again.