GUEST POST: KP

1. Let me introduce myself; abruptly, the sky changes to the same hue of the sound, anyone can see it, anyone who is looking. It becomes time for other things, other ways of seeing, touching, even breathing.

2. This comes in waves. In each borrowed minute we must be mindful of the tendrils of energy the sun has left behind.

3. Realizing this, I enter the smoke-room, smokeshow, black everything except eyes green. We don’t do this anymore, but indulge me. Men crowd the bar. L and I order gins and sidle up against everyone who looks like they’re supposed to be here and for once I don’t want to discuss trees, or heaven, I want to move as one cohesive body on that dance floor. Not unlike magma, or saltwater.

4. A few moments pass and M texts me drunk from Virginia, she has a confession that she translated Derrida and Foucault and dovetailed a poem in a moments notice for a workshop on the definition of sex. I grow tired of talking at the bar and remember Barthes, how the proclamation of love is self-renewing like the Argo and its complicated affair with identity, capital-S Self. I wonder if Derrida––or Jackie as we called him lovingly on the porch, in wine, on a haze of a summer evening, almost touching––in his most intimate moments knelt on parched earth and prayed for these things.

5. He and I are stumbling along the wet streets at dawn, nibbling scones from the sunrise bakery before returning home.

The joy is in saying he and I, the joy is in the word home.

6. It is time to come back––there are peach blossoms tapping the window, and billows in the sheets. They always had billows and ruffles, and in the housekeeping there were ruffles and tangles, and work to be done, and linens to be smoothed and foreheads to be kissed.

7. J, if I could write music I would have written this one for you. I write poetry instead, by that I mean, they have figured out a way to weave sonic textures into simple, usually the simplest phrases, and those I give to you.

8. It is now well into the morning. The morning, please, remember, I exist, I exist.

Soul and Grit

“You afraid to touch it?” said a guy leaning up against a Ford Mustang.

I said yeah, and looked around my car for something to probe the mouse with. Something like a straw or pen, maybe even an old bank envelope. The poor thing was frozen solid on the windshield. Who knows how many blocks it had sustained that grip, withstanding the force of the air streaming across the windshield of my old Subaru.

The guy moved closer. He had a black sweatshirt that said “Redneck Army.” He was gap-toothed and lean.

“I work over at the Sewer District. I touch shit all day!”

The man clenched his index, thumb, and middle finger like a pair of chopsticks and pinched the soft underbelly of the mouse. It ran off towards the windshield wipers. The man laughed, saying something about the mouse living in the body of the engine.

After it was safely in the grass I thanked the guy, like he’d done some service, some dirty job for me, and then felt bad about it. Like I couldn’t have dealt with a fucking mouse? I thought about my increasing sensitivity as I sanitized my hands with a jelly-like paste.

I buzzed by his Ford Mustang, making sure to turn down the electro house beat I had pumping prior to the whole mouse thing – opting for something a bit more wholesome. Something with guitar. Something with a little soul and grit.

Chayed Out, Deep Cuts, elgringo, Music for Thought

Train Musings

I’ve had three recent encounters with trains.

The first was in the Mojave Desert. Blinding heat, socially very-distant. We spotted it from afar, way up ahead and miles away. In the expanse of the desert, we watched the train grow closer and larger as we, driving, continued along the open road. This went on for miles until unbelievably, our paths met at the same point. We rolled to a stop just as the rail crossings lowered. The train blasted in front of us.

Train two was south of Shasta, by the campground, next to the river. It appeared in the early evening, and with horns blaring it rolled to a stop. We stood at its side, hopped up on some rungs, and marveled at the feat of construction. We were drinking wine.

The third was near the Oregon–California border, along highway 97. Driving parallel alongside a moving train is trippy. I tried to keep my eyes on the road but the train demanded my attention. My perception of speed blurred.

Trains. Sheer masses of iron and steel. The freight containers green, orange, brown, all of them rusted. Each one the same, each one different. One after the next, seemingly endless. What was behind those doors? Where were they headed?

Under the strange cloud of quarantine, these days pass by like train cars – each one the same, each one different. Our only choice is to keep moving in the same direction.

The beautiful new album from Mtbrd plays like a train. Smooth beats move one after another, without any notice one track has passed to the next. Seamless. Start at the beginning and in the blink of an eye you’re on track 10. Each one the same, each one different.

↔

D-Man, Music for Thought

Seeing Far

The canyon didn’t look too far off so we thought why the hell not. As we hiked the landscape changed. Unsurprisingly the canyon turned out to be a lot further than it looked. We dipped lower and lower – like water running downhill – and suddenly found ourselves perched at the edge of a steep drop-off.

Staring at all of that sameness reminded me of a sensation I used to experience as a kid when I shut my eyes to go to sleep at night. I called it, “seeing far.”

I would stare at the back’s of my eyes – my mind cruising through the darkness like a spaceship. I expected to bump up against some barrier obstructing me from going further. But there was just space. Limitless, empty space.

When I realized there was no end, I’d pop my eyes open. And yet the expansiveness was everywhere in my room. The corner where two walls met. The hazy outline of my closet. All of it seemed to extend forever. I would start to feel panic-y at being untethered and would hustle downstairs to my parents.

Back above the canyon, I lay down on a rock, and let the sun warm the outside of my body. I shut my eyes and felt a wave of gratitude at being able to drift away from it all – just for a moment. And then my brain turned off – like a watchmen resting his head for a second.

∆

D-Man, Music for Thought

Marcus King at The Fillmore

Dana’s husband stood silently next to us. At least I assumed it was her husband. He had a large gut and kept eyeing me wearily. I was talking too much – making too many gestures, asking too many questions.

Dana grinned at me through yellow teeth. She’d seen Marcus King at Jazzfest years before he started to blow up. That’s where she’d purchased her first tee. She traced over the words in large bold font, ‘The Marcus King Band.’ I asked her if it had rained a lot that year and she started telling me about all the good food in New Orleans.

Marcus King strode on stage to massive applause. We danced. And danced. And danced! Other guys in the band jammed out – a drum solo – a bass solo – but really everyone was just waiting for the energy to swing back to Marcus. He stood – knees bent, nodding with a devilish smile spread across his cherubic face – and then leveled everyone with another guitar solo – so ballsy you’d think he was already a rock legend.

D-Man, Music for Thought

Texas Sun

“The best part of my day?”

My brother paused either for dramatic effect or for a moment of silent reflection.

“The two-hour drive in the Runner from Maine to New Hampshire, a fresh lip in…just cruising.”

I liked that. Amid holiday parties and nights out there could be a moment of total ease, with the wheels rolling and a tobacco buzz humming. The feeling that even though you’re on your way somewhere, you’re not really in any hurry. You’ll get there when you get there. Things will happen as they do.

Contentment implies a certain smugness. You’ve figured it out. No, it’s not that. It’s just that the Runner sounds good. The scenery is nice. It’s warm inside – cold outside.

If I had to guess – and certainly this is a guess, I imagine it felt something like Texas Sun.

D-Man, Music for Thought

Get Lost (feat. Ashe) [Ford. Remix]

Yes. Put on repeat. Do it. Trust me. Just do it.

“In order not to leave any traces, when you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely, a trace of yourself will be left in what you do. You will have something remaining which is not completely burned out. Zen activity is activity which is completely burned out, with nothing remaining but ashes. This is the goal of our practice.” – Shunryū Suzuki

elgringo

The season is near

This is one of the best times of the year.

No, not because of the holidays. Not because of reunions with friends and family. Not because everyone starts feelin’ that warm, holiday cheer. Those things are all fantastic, of course, but not what I’m talking about.

It’s ski hype season.

We start looking at snow reports – acting like we know anything about deciphering storm patterns. Who’s getting in those early turns? Who’s gonna score big this year?

The boys are talkin’ trips. Utah or Colorado – can we do both? Big Sky is a must. Anyone been to Revelstoke? Need to recruit more to Tahoe!

We start watching this year’s ski films and edits, drooling over Japow face shots we can only dream about.

The build up to ski season is fucking great. And with that, here’s the song of the winter.

D-Man, Music for Thought

Take it off

“Take it all off,” I said, making a lazy motion to the top of my head. This was my third time with Cait. We were starting to get to know each other. She knew what I liked, but this time I wanted something different.

“So, the clippers?” she asked, brandishing them like a samurai sword.

Cait has curly hair and considers herself to be an anarchist. She lives in the Tenderloin, the bleeding heart of San Francisco, and one day she wants to open her own therapy practice.

Cait started with the buzzer at four, just in case I changed my mind. We started chatting about her recent breakup – an engineer who made a lot of money and never talked about his feelings. They’d done couples therapy for a year and then one day he just proclaimed it was over. Shit is fucked, I said.

“Amy is going through the same thing,” she said, pointing the buzzer in the direction of a woman standing above the other chair. Amy is tatted and wears Red Wings. Her hair is long and braided, and hangs beneath a fisherman’s beanie perched on top of her head.

“She came in this morning and wanted to shave her head.” Amy nodded. I pictured two braids being swept off the floor.

Cait told me that hair had energy. She told me she was glad she got the apartment. She might have to find a roommate. Her mom was threatening to visit for Thanksgiving. And then she told me she was going to use scissors for the top, and if I woke up in the morning and really wanted it all gone, she’d do it for free.

elgringo, Music for Thought

open land // open mind

Something I love about music is the beautiful pairings that exist between landscape and music. Creedence matches with an open highway, Bon Iver is meant for a cozy cabin, Real Estate is best suited for a sunny, coastal cruise. These things just feel natural.

For some time now, I’ve found that the desert and electronic music are a natural fit, and as I was driving around New Mexico recently, I pondered why.

It could be that most highways in the desert have speed limits of 75 or more; electronic beats serve as a good backdrop to high speeds.

It could be that Joshua Tree trip last year, of which the unofficial sponsor was cigarettes and EDM. Petey with the sticks, it felt like the only option.

It could be the influence of Burning Man. Shit, whether you’ve been or not, perhaps the magnetic allure of the event has subconsciously instilled in us this alignment of electronic music and the desert.

But ultimately, I think this happy marriage is explained quite simply: the desert is a fucking weird place. When you move through strange, barren and endless landscapes, there’s something that naturally broadens your thoughts, opens up the mind. And while the vast desert stimulates your senses, electronic music just feels right.

Here are a few cruisers – some new, some old – that opened things up in New Mex.