TRAVEL, the band

Check out my band TRAVEL's new myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/traveltheband .

Of course, all of our tunes can still be ordered (on CD for a small fee and/or downloaded for free) at: www.myfriendnoise.com .

Finally, you can also check out tech notes, reviews, and photos from all five of our records at TRAVEL bandmember Darren Callahan's website (just click on any of the TRAVEL titles in the list on the left hand side of the page): http://www.darrencallahan.com/music.html -- and while you're at it, check out some of Darren's other projects -- including numerous recordings, several novels and radio plays, and even a new film project -- by going to: www.darrencallahan.com and clicking on MENU.

Speaking of (Ziggy) Stardust

"I think I saw you in an ice cream parlour, drinking milkshakes cold and long,
smiling and waving and looking so fine;
don't think you knew you were in this song."

--David Bowie

I love these lines from verse two of "Five Years" (side 1, song 1 of David Bowie's 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, a brilliant, much lauded rock-n-roll record of apocalypse, redemption, and great sparkling beauty). The direct address in the lines above are, for me, the song's high point where the speaker/singer reaches out to you, me, and everybody (after prophesying in verse 1 that the world is doomed to destruction in five years), implicating us in the song's explicit mayhem and tremendous gorgeousness -- even if we don't know it -- it's/we're all so close.

But it's the "cold and long" in this lyric that always kills me -- such a wonderful syntactic afterthought, surprising in the line for its placement (in the end)(after all), but weirdly, tonally necessary to put "you" (me, etc.) in y/our place -- that is, to cement us in the marvel of the moment with just this one tiny descriptive phrase, which refers ambiguously not only to the milkshakes, but to drinking them and to the state of the state of the lyric in general. Delight sometimes comes in the smallest odd doses, so too hope.

These are perhaps my favorite lines in all of rock-n-roll.

4 Quotations in Rotation, my Brookdale CC and Ear Inn readings, and Pilot/Pilot Books


1) "O take off your solemn/head and bang/a little music for longing" -- Matthew Zapruder

2) "We breathe in, we do not think/of it. We walk and we speak//beneath the blue-flowering trees/and do not think. We breathe." -- Michael Palmer

and two from Guillaume Apollinaire:

3) "I love men, not for what unites them, but for what divides them, and I want to know most of all what gnaws at their hearts."

4) "...I disdain what has come to be called style in all arts and limit it to the expression of what is necessary and personal. Discipline and personality -- those are the limits of style as I understand it; beyond that there is only imitation not of nature, but of an earlier work of art."

*****

Thanks to everybody who came out to my readings this past week/end , and especially to the organizers/hosts/and fellow readers: Timothy Liu, Laura McCullough, rachel m. simon, Ken Hart, Jason Schneiderman, Michael Broder, Jill Reinhardt, Merrill Feitell, and John Hoyt. I never cease to be amazed when I travel at the kindness of both strangers (who really have no reason to be kind) and friends (who have lots of reasons not to be).

Also, thanks to my pals who made the long drive with me out East: Brett Price, Evan Commander, and Jane Ortrun Carver.


*****


Finally, this just in from Betsy Wheeler:

Hello Friends,We are proud to announce the official launch of Pilot Magazine and Pilot Books!! http://www.pilotpoetry.com/ Pilot is an online magazine of poetry and poetics, with an affinity for collaboration. Issue #1 features poems by Cynthia Arrieu-King; Heather Christle; Adam Clay; Paula Cisewski; Kathy Fagan; Sean Flanigan; Ron Klassnik; Alex Phillips; David Rivard; Andrew Michael Roberts; Anthony Robinson; Jeremy Schmall; Zachary Schomburg; Lori Shine; collaborations by Karla Kelsey & Peter Yumi; Friedrich Kerksieck & Aaron James McNally; as well as an interview on collaboration with Joshua Beckman & Matthew Rohrer.

Pilot Books publishes affordable, handmade chapbooks and broadsides in small editions. For season #1 we are proud to present three titles: Cruel, Yes, but Company, a collection of postcards by Friedrich Kerksieck and Aaron James McNally; Brief Weather & I Guess a Sort of Vision, a chapbook by Anthony Robinson; and "Coming Down in White," a broadside by Lori Shine. A $30 subscription gets you copies of every chap and side for a year!

Check out the books site for more info on these, as well as to see what books we have lined up for season #2:www.pilotpoetry.com/books.html

*note: the sites tend to work best with Firefox, so if you have that browser, you should use it.

Friends in the NYC area,

I'll be giving two readings this week in your neck of the woods:

1) w/ Timothy Liu -- Thurs. 11/9, 7PM at Brookdale Community College (Lincroft, NJ) --details here: http://www.ahherald.com/news/2006/0727/bcc_writers.htm

2) w/rachel m. simon and Ken Hart -- Sat. 11/11, 3PM in The Ear Inn Readings (326 Spring Street) -- details here: http://www.mbroder.com/ear_inn/nov06.html .

If you live in the area, I hope you'll be able to make it out...