our guests go south today to inner africa. they don’t yet know where they’ll visit, how long, or even when.
this is the second time overseas we’ve hosted friends i know but don’t know. last december in croatia we had 2 cleveland poets for a week. this time it was a rock&roll artist couple visit spread over 6 days. i’m not a natural host – i have to fake it. i lack people skills, social nimbleness, chit chatter – although i am getting much better at it all. keep practicing and i might get the hang of it. i’m more lone artistic collaborator than social commingler. i’ve become even rustier since i’ve had no one to talk to in english for most the past 8 months. lady says if we’re going to make it writing books, i have to become more sociable, less curmudgeony, that i’ve got to stop biting the hands reaching out to us. told her i’ll try, but they taste so good.
that said, it was a good visit. we learned, shared, got inspired, got to know two people better. blue gave us a copy of his up-coming not-yet-final-mix Urban-Jellen Test album – good stuff. last night he picked up a 3-stringed gourd guitar moroccan instrument that came with the apartment and sang “black cat” (my favorite song from the album). song has a bit of swamp rock to it. lady labeled their music “rockabilly noir.”
i read about a scientist who downloaded christmas carols into a computer, then taught it to write its own. trying to simulate the process of dying, he unplugged memory chip after memory chip until the machine lost its ability to think. its final utterance was pure poetry – “all men go to good earth in one eternal silent night.”
21st Century Schizoid Man
I’ve got certified rats in my rafters
Of legally voided mind waste
So excuse please these cancerous laughters
This spewing of petrified paste
Vague seeking through demented hereafters
I can’t find my mind’s been misplaced
Electron wails mournful my nay brain
Err trails its zinc aftertaste
This drivel due mad jolting sane pain
Embraces thy sameness posthaste
Dying I burp up my madness again
I can’t find my mind’s been misplaced
of when of where of what am i o god of whom of why
for seeketh then thou me thou see the be that thou belie
