Evaporation

In limited experience with poets and songwriters, I have discovered how difficult it can be to draw out the artist's interpretation of their work. Most usually, they prefer you work with your own interpretation and make the experience your own unique one. I admire and support such an attitude, and strive to do just that with songs and poems that strike me on a particular level. There was one occasion, though, where I successfully got the artist's interpretation of his song simply by publishing my own thoughts.

Of course, I'm speaking of Barry Andrews. I'm proud to say I've never asked him what a song means, not because I haven't wanted to; rather, I was just too cowardly. When I was still maintaining the Shriekback Digital Conspiracy mailing list, I would host a "song of the week" each Friday. It's an idea I borrowed from the ELO mailing list with that list's owner's blessing. At the time, Barry was lurking on the Shriek mailing list and received all our communications. So, when the song "Evaporation" was featured as the Song of the Week, I decided to offer up my ideas of what the song said to me.

( Evaporation lyrics )

I hear this song and am now reading the words for the first time…..and am stricken with a feeling that can’t properly be verbalised ~ but I’ll try……
For me, ‘Evaporation’ is a tapestry of the bittersweetness of the undeniability of Love and how it so often comingles with Death or the idea of Death.
It’s the drawing into something else as the origination dissipates…becoming and unbecoming simultaneously. A love that kills the self by letting the adored one inside the essence of you, making you more whole than ever imagined, but releasing all that you are into everything. Light within the deepest Dark, a blinding shelter ~ content with silence since touch is the most intimate and honest tongue, and one needs no other sense in the arms of desire. The spark of Life in the stillness. Something so extreme that it transforms into its own opposite and, in so doing, neither polarity exists but in the other.
The ascent of joy into the realm of death as defined by passion (la petite mort ~ the infamous ‘little death’) ~ a succumbing to the natural proclivity for union and the immersion of self in another ~ there’s no choice but for us to love and release and die in order to love again. It’s as certain as a bird will take flight.

Favourite line from the song: Those dark eyes conceal their light within them, Buried secrets the flesh won’t keep.

---

The next day I had a letter from Barry telling me that it was really nice that someone 'gets it' sometimes. He then proceeded to tell me the story of "Evaporation," which I later put up on Shriekback.com.

It was 82 and Viv and I were living at Burghley Rd (Carl and Jo upstairs).

The basement was inhabited by Mr. Paul Scrivens (a very old man indeed - with an old man's name - a watchmaker and heavy smoker). Mr. Scrivens had been finally moved out to some place where they could keep an eye on the poor old sod. He'd started pissing on the bedroom floor because his legs were too dicky to make it to the toilet down the corridor. Viv - a keen collector-of-things - wanted to get down there upon his leaving and I was curious about his set-up down there. Neither of us was disappointed: there were many objects recalling Paul's non Old-Bloke past - long locks of his ex-wife's hair laid on the mantelpiece - a book of Shelley with a sexy (for 1940) dedication..all his watchmaking gear - he was a skilled geezer - oh loads of stuff. The local squatters kept up a steady ant-like procession through the back windows for a week or so after. We got some nice little crystal bottles; a few books. And there he was gone. He was precarious at the time - there's no way he's still alive. It was a moment of Looking at It: Death. Love. Loss. All that. I had a night job dismantling shelves up in Hendon and while Viv slept and I organised myself to go to work at midnight I stooped over the cassette machine playing the groove from the studio (working title: 'quizzical little bastards' because we thought the toms sounded like curious prairie dogs in a wildlife doco) and I wrote 'Evaporation' full of Mr. Scrivens' life and death and lost lovers - the huge vacuum beneath us in his vacated flat, which you couldn't help but picture yourself in at some much later date. The night, the empty rooms - only dust and rubbish left, really now. It doesn't take long to disappear. That was it.

I'm still really pleased with that tune ~

Lee Perry was the presiding spirit, of course (Dub that you can't dance to - you can only lie down to) and the tune could be Ecclesiastical or Celtic - killer combination. And the smouldering vocoder which flickers around the voice and allows me to sing a melody I'd otherwise be embarrassed to sing. We played it to Groucho Smykle, the Reggae producer who did Jam Science and he turned it up on the big speakers at Island so you could really feel Dave's huge bass-line (all the huger for being so gentle) and he said approvingly 'dis ya Bad Music'. Bad and Sad, I thought. That's the human condition for you..

So yeah. This is where my mind is today.

Collage

Many years ago I made a collage of pictures of family and friends. In order to see the actual pictures, I took photos of the collage piecemeal. The collage itself is tacked up on the wall in our dining room/office/sitting room. It's tacky, but full of memories. That's what matters anyway.

( Collage )

Shedding the unwanted and un-needed

Breszny strikes again with this insightful horrible-scope for Virgo.

The average person throws out 19 pounds of garbage per week. Between now and August 24, however, you have license to exceed that figure by a large margin. In fact, Virgo, the cosmos would love you to carry out a Great Purge. So take full advantage of this opportunity to lighten your load. Get rid of every last scrap of dross and clutter, give away anything that has outlived its usefulness, and unburden yourself of outmoded necessities that have been sitting untouched in a closet or storage unit for more than a year. As much as you possibly can, free yourself of the unnecessary residues of your past.

I really don't think this applies to just this week, though. This is going to be my life for the next month or so, I'd wager. There's a great deal of material, physical, emotional, and mental, I need to make go away. I want 2005 to be remembered as the Year of Redefinition.

As Jean Luc Picard would say: "Make it so!"

Three 311 mailings and not one of them complete.

I have an order for one 311 mailing, but I don't have the flyer that goes with it.

I have the bios and quote sheets for another 311 mailing, but I don't have the photos or order that go with them.

I have the flyers and stickers for yet another 311 mailing, but I don't have the order to initiate it, and they want it to ship on Friday.

Why can't they just send me everything I need in one box instead of drawing out the misery? Why can't they be fucking organised and be at least marginally capable of discerning their arses from holes in the ground? And...and why do they have to send me all this crap when we're winding down this operation for a long overdue death on the 15th? What I'd like to do is write everyone involved in these mailings and tell them to take a flying leap.

But I will continue to do my job until freedom rings on 26 August.

Agro

This cat (I think she is Shmoop's mum) has been extremely pregnant for a very long time. I mean agriculturally pregnant. So I named her Agro. Aunt Tudi and I were really starting to worry that she was unable to give birth because she was so increadibly large. No more worries. When I went to the out building to get the riding mower for my weekly regimen, I saw her at the back of the enclosure, in labour and nursing a wee ginger kitten. Finally! What a relief!

But...I couldn't start the riding mower because the building is once again a maternity ward.

I used the push mower to mow all the grass and sprained my ankle for my troubles. Blaaaaagh!!! But the grass is all mown, I've had my shower, and I'm looking forward to seeing the new babies in the next few weeks. I'd give my right breasticle if I could capture Agro and have her spayed.

The dogs are scheduled to be boarded on Friday so Aunt Tudi and I can head for Moncks Corner. Smidgen and Shmoop will be staying home with an abundant basin of food and the communal water cooler. They'll be happier at home instead cooped up at the vet's office.