Archive for the ‘Suburbia’ Category

I sing in my robe sometimes. Today is the cubs opener, and it is freezing cold, and our heater has gone on the fritz and we are not fixing it.

Lately I have been playing my piano/ wedding ring again. Do you know this story? I am not a wearer of diamonds, and so, instead I have a piano. That’s not much of a story I know but its the best I can do right now. So I wrote this little waltz based upon our recent purchase of two rain barrels. We have some flooding here in the suburbs, and mainly because there shouldn’t be houses here, I think really the land’s original intent was to be a swampy water run off area. But here we are. We also have built, out of discarded lumber and chicken wire, a very rickety raised bed for vegetables. The reason for the chicken wire is to stop rabbits. Rabbits are out of control because the crows are all dead (adult crows are natural enemies of baby rabbits). The crows died because of complications related to West Nile virus. The moral of the story is: please avoid standing pools of water that attract mosquitos if you would like to avoid the ugliness of chicken wire in your garden. Which brings me back to the rain barrels. I now have more than 100 gallons of non potable water outside. If you would like some free water, please stop by with containers. This water is good for stuff, for instance, you can water plants with it, and also, instead of flushing the toilet, you can pour 3 gallons into the toilet and voila! bye bye unpleasant waste matter. Also you can rinse your hands off with it.

Back to the waltz. I posted this weird accapella, not expecting too many mixes and the spirit of light (aka Denis), a French musician, made this beautiful, jazzy piece with it.

download Denis’ mix of Reclamation here

I am disengaged
in the most delightful way
I hear music
I revel in its beauty as it seals off my mind
I’m disappearing from the lawn-scape one blade at a time
I’m collecting rain
drop by drop I will reclaim
the sky’s magic
I’ll weave a little chair out of the clouds
and float around your window without a sound
You expose my heart
you have it down to an art
I scream danger
Why am I always the one left inside the yard
Mr Young you were wrong
it’s really very hard

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… and my sister’s birthday. I blame the porn. Happy Birthday M., even though I know you don’t even read this!

So yes, September 4th was the one year anniversary of “Will Anyone Hear This?” I can safely answer the question now.

Yes.

People have heard.

So what’s the plan for this next year?

I will be released on a record in December probably ( vocals, a dance record, very talented producer/DJ, I will keep you abreast). I added two new links to my blogroll.

Ummm. That may be it. I may be up-grading some of my software. I am thinking about Logic. I will be making my own little studio, in the basement of our new suburban homestead. I may want a better microphone. Then of course, now we’re broke,  so I think votive candles and a rug is all I am going to get.

I need a new tag-line. “the sounds coming from apartment #3B” will no longer apply. I was thinking about “there’s a new sheriff in town and she doesn’t use chemlawn” but I am not really sure that conveys any musical inclinations.

My music has involved a lot of animals lately (geese, now foxes). I am fascinated by the nature that thrives in this dense dirty city. I am shocked they survive with the prevalence of chemlawn . I love watching the sneaky little paws in the night, or smelling the far away must of some terrible little skunk. Skokie, the place to which we are moving, was once a vast, rich, peaty marsh, dripping with life. What glowing, nocturnal eyes outside await us!

With that, here is my newest mix. Samples used were from Neurowaxx (yes, again), Father Scrouge, antonov & themfish. The inspiration for the mix was partially culled from a video I had seen many months ago, a family in Psadena, CA., that does sustenance farming on 1/5 of an acre. Here is a video of the Dervaes , and what they do.

Permaculture Disconnect (Babyland Mix)

The Sunset

Photo of Kaer Trouz by Ewan

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Penelope Spheeris (Wayne’s World etc.. see link) produced a little indie film starring Flea (red Hot Chili Peppers- you know him!!!) called Suburbia (1984).This movie was among my favorites, I felt at that tender age, I could really grasp the full tilt of nihilism, disenfranchisement, solipsism, anarchy, and anything else that felt slightly anti-establishment. My favorite song for that summer was Big Black’s Kerosene (1985).

There is an embarrassing story, from many summers ago, about this time, my family & I went up to the ‘burbs’ so far away from my little punk rock middle class life, I was wearing clothes put together with safety pins and dunked into the pool, by a bratty friend of my younger sister. There I was seething, half naked, my clothes sliding off of me, the men looked mortified, mostly my father…

I drove and drove around the endless cul-de-sacs, dead end roads, no people, no souls, the feint smell of charcoal briquettes being lit in the distance, and the damp pallor of those who had thrown in the towel, the ones who wanted out, content to just rot in their rows of houses, being consumed by the endless whir of cicadas, the mindless chirps of crickets, the excitement of one yellow butterfly wavering.

So now here we are, a diaspora of 3, making our way out to suburbia. Will you zoom your camera lens into my lawn, just to find a grisly ransom, a single, human ear covered with ants? (D. Lynch, Blue Velvet, 1986) Or will you find us embracing the soft caress of aging summer winds and well-tended lawns, because we are no longer young, and eventually we must release the most existential of angsts?

Who knows. I have a shit-load of wall paper to steam off.

Blowing The Roof Off (Kaer Trouz ft mr robot & stomacheache)

 

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