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THE RIGHT STUFF (7)
now then, here's a thing - if i'm pretty awful with a guitar and, kinda, appalling with a saxophone, you should hear me with this beauty!
caterwauling ain't in it. i mean, y'know, a banjo takes some playing, specially if the action is as high as on this "classic" (that means antiquated and really meant to hang on the wall, i expect)
anyhow, i forgive him everything, my banjo is definitely amongst the right stuff.
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CARL ROGERS
"Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person's ideas, and none of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience.
It is to experience that I must return again and again, to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming in me.
Neither the Bible nor the prophets ~ neither Freud nor research ~ neither the revelations of God nor man ~ can take precedence over my own direct experience.
[....] My experience is not authoritative because it is infallible. It is the basis of authority because it can always be checked in new primary ways. In this way its frequent error or fallibility is always open to correction."
rogers
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THE RIGHT STUFF (6)
this is not something i can love but he's like an old mate, y'know?
you gotta respect something that has all them strings.
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THE RIGHT STUFF (5)
so i guess this is where it all began. this martin alto saxophone has been in my right stuff for almost 21 years. how's that for endurance?
i mean, like, i'm probably one of the worst sax players in the world but i can sure make it toot.
me and martin have done a lot of stuff together, i reckon on around 20 or so gigs.
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TALK BACK
and so, at long last, i found a replacement for the comment system i was using that went belly up.
so here, now, you can comment again on all those irritating thoughts i have been streaming out over the past few months.
you can tell me, and the world of readers at god's own country, just what a small-minded, cantankerous old bastard i have become. you wankers.
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WHAT'S THIS ABOUT?
i know this is true because i read it on rogi.
do you know what these colours mean? because you'd better find out. like quick.
rogi
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COLOUR OF WORDS
i think we're living in a world where the only two words we have for colour are red and blue.
does that mean that collectively we don't even recognise yellow as a colour?
of course, all this kind of introspection won't butter the parsnips but what colour is the butter and how do the parsnips smell?
imagine all those scientists and philosophers and writers and poets and playwrights and godologists digging away in such earnest truth-mining and all they have to do is look up and think "yellow".
it sounds so simple yet it's so evasive.
and so, perhaps, it comes around to this: how guilty is it to have things in your head when the ability and opportunities to express them are so limited?
perhaps, sometimes, etherea can be more meaningful than kitchen sink drama.
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THE RIGHT STUFF (4)
this is like number four of the things around that i kinda like, y'know?
this clock oughta go tinkle tinkle every 15 minutes but it got banned.
so now it sits and tells this time, five minutes to four o'clock.
it's getting pretty good at it.
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THE RIGHT STUFF (3)
this is like number three in pictures of stuff around me that's kinda cute.
now this little man has got to be top notch stuff in anyone's book.
it's a long story but i've had two of him. i lost the custody hearing for the first incarnation, so i had to go back to mevagissey to get another.
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THE RIGHT STUFF (2)
this is like number two in the series about stuff around me that i like.
i really like this little teaset. it's supposed to be for kids to, y'know, play with i guess.
but i like to use it to with little cups of coffee and a little jug of milk. i spose it's like playing tea parties when you're a kid.
so what? i like it.
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THE RIGHT STUFF (1)
i've decided to start a new series called "the right stuff" which is all about, y'know, them little things in your life that you like.
i don't mean like your car or your wife or stuff, i mean like the little things, yes?
well i'm not sure whether this will be an occasional series or a series occasionally.
anyhow, to kick it off, here's this label on this wine bottle. now, i assure you i ain't ever gonna drink this shit. but i sure as hell like this fishy label.
kinda cute somehow, y'know?
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TRUTH XII
this is not really the truth, oh well yes it is, but more it's, well kinda, a apology. there i said it.
i mean, it's like i gotta say sorry, y'know. all that time in nyc and i never done lou and joey proud. sorry.
so i gets to zap up out of jfk and looking down i suddenly think, god, i never done went to 53rd and 3rd or up to Lexington, 125, and just how will joey and lou live with that. I mean, they gotta be pissed, right?
so anyway, next time i'm back there, i just know i gotta get my ass over to them places before i see the guys, y'know?
waiting for my man
ramones lyrics
new york city map
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TRUTH XI
the truth is often
not what we wish
nor where we wish
to find it
hard as childbirth
precious as a baby
it screams
demanding
time and patience
we would not give
i see you in your field,
your factory, your home
hoping for a new truth
handcuffed
to how things are
a prisoner’s dream
of how it could be
i am in the field,
the factory, the home
the slapstick truth
is a custard pie
this is batman
not macbeth
listen listen listen:
truth ridicules
bear the burden
like a fool
and be proud
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TRUTH X
marlene dumas paints what she sees. and what she sees is how funny and awkward and, y'know, gangling human beings are.
and it's ok because big cocks and asses and vaginas are, pretty well, humourous. specially if you're looking at someone's painting of one with a lot of other people and you all have your clothes on.
it kinda reminds us that pretend as much as we like, cocks and assholes and vaginas are pretty much important to most of us.
so there in the new museum of contemporary art on broadway, you have to kinda smile when you turn the corner and there's a big asshole grinning at you.
thank you marlene. i liked it because it made me smile. (and i know it's dead serious really)
this is my rough sketch of your painting called "introduction" -
new museum
marlene dumas
stolen pinups
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TRUTH IX
let me just say this - broadway and 94th don't look a bit like this. there's a lot more, like, scaffolding, y'know?
like most of nyc, there's scaffolding everywhere. and this "quality hotel on broadway" isn't so much quality as cheap.
i mean, like, it's ok (and where else you gonna get $70 a night?). but the truth is that it's a goddam death trap if you're on the 14th.
oh and the little corner shop with the brown awning sells shit baskets of fruit.
quality hotel on broadway
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TRUTH VIII
what i want to tell you about is bill viola.
amidst all the usual, expensive shit full of oohs and aahs from the crowds at the metropolitan museum of art is a video similar to the still picture above by bill viola.
it's, like, y'know, wow.
so much truth, so much beauty, so much about people and not about things.
bill viola
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TRUTH VII
listen: you kinda walk down murder mile where all them people were planed to death and you know it was a mausoleum even before the day the world changed.
big slabs of buildings suck sun from the sidewalks and cast tombstone shadows over ant-people scurriting to turn the wheel.
this heart of mammon does not beat, listen carefully on wall street: it whirrs. almost silently, almost beyond the range of hearing.
and there in the cold of the sun-sucked street you can still smell the change in the air. thick dust (they tell you from roadworks) grits your eyes and makes everyone cough. there's a skyscraper cough on the streets.
and you look people in the eye, in their sharp suits and round-face new yorker stares and you get to think this: these people, even these people who turn the wheel, are innocent.
there is not a person on the planet who is, how you say, evil. you know what i'm saying?
how come, when we are each angels, we are so good at coming together to make machines that do us harm? how come? how come we have this individual conscience but collective irresponsibility?
here's some things that don't exist: the corporation, the company, the economy, the market. you geddit yet?
here's some things that do: grandchildren on our knee, vera, chuck and dave.
so, in the end, it kinda comes to this - the hindenburg and the twin towers: oh the humanity.
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TRUTH VI
always listen carefully to others.
when you have something new to say, expect to be heard.
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TRUTH V
how strange to be seeking truth in new york and to be reminded of it on broadway by an australian i last saw in brixton:
"and the mercy seat is waiting
and i think my head is burning
and in a way i'm yearning
to be done with all this
measuring of truth
an eye for an eye
and a tooth for a tooth
and anyway i told the truth
and i'm not afraid to die"
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TRUTH IV
inside the largest gothic cathedral in the world is a little space set aside for people's poems to be put on the wall.
because why?
because muriel rukeyser, who started it all, said this: "i care about a world in which there is not a sense of acceptance or rejection."
st. john the divine - nyc
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TRUTH III
i found this at 32,000 feet:
1. "lies can run the world before the truth has got its boots on."
2. "the truth has got its boots on and its about to start kicking."
3. "nothing has to be true forever, just for long enough."
the truth
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TRUTH II
sorry pablo, i sketched your picture.
the proper one is by:
pablo picasso (1881-1973) dying bull, 1934, oil on canvas.
so is this it? is the truth about creating the death of something else? the death of something fearful but majestic? grandeur and tyranny.
if truth is the death of bull - what new life derives from it? is the monster more eloquent than its replacement?
beauty v science?
beauty v truth?
metropolitan museum of art
dying bull
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TRUTH I
here's a truth i found in new york: the solomon r. guggenheim museum on fifth avenue is closed on thursdays. mostly.
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today's handkerchief is:
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TRIANGULAR SQUARE
guess what? new york rain is probably the wettest in the world. you get soaked right through in seconds.
i mean it doesn't even go through a damp stage, it's, like, dry and then wet. like you were in a bath or something.
so i thought about this: it may be the beating heart of mammon here, but, like, even they can't stop the rain from falling.
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