Salem Collo-Julin

“gary indiana give me a haircut or let me borrow some shirts i am feeling neglected & you are directed to touch me where it hurts” (“Gary IN”, song, by Mondo, JR’s old band)

I’m feeling like the guy at 1:12 right now:

but it’s going to be okay.

We closed down the old livejournal for Temporary Services and are now blogging about TS, Half Letter Press, and friends over by here.

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not-so-surprising keywords for August:

continually re-writing grocery lists

plastic black drugstore Filipino Grandpa sandals

Willie Nelson

big salads with almonds

victory laps

ten minutes of neatenin’ up every day

the Staple Singers

writing more than discussing

hugs not drugs (or smug lugs – pref. hugs from friends over 80 & under 2 y/o)

Cat Fancy

Tuvan singers

Edna St Vincent Millay

get on up and do it again, you can do it one more time:

Larry Levan:

Today, I will Stream of Consciousness post all day for my fiend Russell’s benefit & thought that others may like to see one side of our conversation in progress …

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JR, I can’t believe they allowed you to bring your computron with you. Is this some sort of spa experience that you were ashamed to be honest about? & what does it say about our friendship that you feel you would make more cool points with me by being at the Unlearning A Lifetime of Fun Program rather than by being at Canyon Hills Resting Spa Quarry for Lovely Ladies & Gentlemen? I mean, you are correct, but that is beside the point. Let’s make the most of it…S

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“This brief introductory letter may come to you as a big surprise, but I believe it is only a day that people meet and become great friends and business partners.” – spam

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I mean really explicit. (you should also check out Beer Can Hill’s interview series to give you insight on your new tattoo community!)

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“She also mentions a British Vogue feature on ‘new ways’ to carry your handbag (in your mouth? Up your butt?).“

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Cherry [my pet tortoise] is very much like my daughter; I’m very close with her. I’ve had her eight years. She’s not the brightest, but she knows me and we cuddle.  – Ron Jeremy

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Don’t even tell me we’re not going to rock! just help me build a playlist for a SLUDGE NIGHT. (ps we get to see these lovely ladies next week here in chgo, you should be jealous, mmhmm):

THE PACK A.D. (chgo readers contact me directly if you would like to go with, show is next monday night july 27 at that weird place across from tuman’s)

xox!

mm-hmm

sorry about the advertisement in the video, but –

– aw, shut up Al Green

Summer, age 14. F & JR, who I called R, were my secret music camp friends. Music camp because I needed “culture”, JR needed to play drums somewhere other than his dad’s barn, and F couldn’t live anywhere else. the three of us all read Brave New World way too early for our own sakes and thought of our instruments as weapons. I remember that F and I met first in an advanced snob recital class that we were both too nervous to take and quickly formed The Duo That Would Transfer To The Experimental Forms Class Toot Sweet. It’s amazing that the Schoenberg was the thing that made us understand, but we told everybody that the Cage challenge in class was really the moment we turned.

F insisted that “this guy” who was staying in his dorm who kept following him around and calling him “Hendrinks” should join us. We practiced at night, outside, by the science library, in the bushes. JR claimed later that he’s the one who introduced us all to evil doings, mushrooms, and vodka shooters, but we all had families, that place where everyone learns how to screw up.

We learned new techniques from filmstrips & stole instruments from our music departments. we stayed at JR’s dad’s barn the next summer and listened to a history of rock ‘n roll backwards on 78s. F was the only one among us who could actually tell his family what we were doing. His parents brought us sandwiches and carried their own lawn chairs at our first show, a kids stage carnival block party in F’s neighborhood. JR had to drop out for weeks at harvest time to run the hay rides for his family’s pumpkin tourist spot. October was for composing and November for spitting it all out onto the street. It stayed that way, secret summer style, well into our adult years.

Well into our adult year. 18 begat more fucking up and F screwing around with scarier and scarier monsters, JR leading the way, both of them pleading or yelling at me for retreating. Me spending more nights inside my head, going to the party to play the first 3 notes and then scurrying out unable to process why people like each other so much. Me trying to fit in anywhere, sideways, at least nearby.

For a bit of time, it still worked, booking shows for ourselves by showing up, communicating psychically, feeling bits of skin peel off F’s finger and rest on my own, drinking JR’s sweat, losing them both in countless crowds only to find each other at the same time at that tree that I noticed coming in, the tree that seemed to be bending into the street as if to say, “This way, my friends,” with a swoop of leaves. That tree that must have said the same thing to F & JR in their own hazy language.

One of these guys can only send us psychic messages now and the last one I got really helped. He’s been quiet for a while. At least to me. I think he’s in a deep composition mode and maybe the other guy forced some previews out of him before he was ready. Maybe the other guy needs a break from the solid and pushy life he has built since the first guy went into his haze. Maybe music’s not the only thing that gets into your blood.

The other guy, the one who I could still call on the phone if I wanted to, the one that still sends me screeches now and again, that guy is trying to throw himself in these days. Or tried to throw himself in. All I know is that I got a terse email from his partner (his long-suffering partner who graciously sat through our silent three hour reunion a few years ago), an email that said “Step 1, again, so don’t expect to see him this summer.”

Because this summer, the other guy will be hopefully healing up and pounding on something other than his arm or leg or ankle or hand. & I’ll be going back to the bush by the science library, alone for the first time, playing along to some scratchy recordings and pretending that the trees are people. & ghosts will rise and recommend transitions.

At least that’s the way I’ll remember it when I’m older.

Like the time JR grabbed a big piece of sod and threw it at the guitars, screaming “You want to smoke this?” in his incredulous, never-to-be-satisfied screech, while F nodded off on top of the pitcher of water on the transistor and shorted out the radio. A small “fizit” of smoke and wire in the air and then the sound of static chopping. We all woke up and sawed away, wishing that we hit the red button on the 4 track two minutes earlier.

dear russkie — we always fought & we always won. love always, salem

Let’s Re-Make’s new book is available for free as a PDF. As always, if you have the dough, you should spread it around to your friends, but if you need some coaxing, check out the entry from the group Section 8. Yet of course another thing I’ll have to ask B&B about next time we’re all chatting — is there a group in the outer norrebro that is actively reading my mind and took the Cats & Ghosts project into a better direction? Well, good. Translation – I’m not the only one influenced by Louis Wain. Awesome.

Some optional events:

Monday 6/8, evening, enter the forest of blistering light and love with bands, performers, and excess hugs at No Coast. Here’s the fantasm of PR from the inbox –

FINGERS
Monday, June 8th 2009
7:30pm
at No Coast – 1500 W 17th St.

always limp-wristed, never backhanded

ANXIOUS TO TAKE YOU TO THE BACK ROOM GAY VAUDEVILLE OF YESTERYEAR, A VISION OF CAVES AND PARADISES WE HAVE IMAGINED INTO REALITY. WE BRING YOU A NIGHT OF PERFORMANCES IN THE STRUGGLE AND THE SPLENDOR OF QUEERTRANSFEMINIST BODIES, A RAINBOW OF HALLUCINATED AHISTORICAL REENACTMENT. OUR FINGERS ACT DEFTLY, SLIGHT OF HAND AND SLIGHT OF WEIGHT, SHADOW GAMES, PALMISTRY AND CARPAL FEELINGS. WE PRESENT A WHOLE SORDID SMORGASBORD OF INTUITIVE MAGICAL PRACTICE:

Dewayne Slightweight’s The Kinship Structure of Ferns, a 30-minute psychedelic solo opera with projected drawings, is a hermit’s inquiry into the nature of kinship and it’s collective hope and despair.

Edie Fake rises up for The Count, vampiric gay tales from the crypt. A recounting of what his unearthly life has been below. An account of the ghost rivers that run beneath us. A 20-minute countdown of our times together until all the night candlelight is burnt. Tabulation. Reiteration. Reincarnation.

Silky Shoemaker’s Arranging the Object is a gladhanded play (with video) about the terrible weight of loving, knowing, and holding it in your arms,with inspiration drawn from late night radio, ecstatic camp, and Lily Tomlin(!)

Owen Brightman does double duty, traveling lightly with two short pieces. Sado-Magical stages bondage escapism and rope tricks the finesse into knotty suspense. If your right leg should cause you to stumble is an harlequinade of stilted vignettes and gentle balance.

Scott Tankersley delves deep in Hark the Haunted Hallways!, a 20-minute sonic excursion into the glorious, hungry catacombs of the (butt)hole.

Joined at the wrist to the musical accompaniment of Jail, Vanessa and Megan, together as Learned Helplessness, a band, twangy and morose, out of tune. Pancake makeup.

TO YOU, FROM THESE FINGERS, A GIFT:
DIVINE EXTRAVAGANCE, SCENIC OVERLOOKING, FARCE, FANTASY, FANCY FACADE, CABARETS OF DECADENCE, CABINETS OF CURIOSITY, PASTICHE, REVELRY, OASIS, MIRAGE.
METOPIA, YOUTOPIA, WETOPIA.
YOU ARE IN GOOD HANDS!

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then later Monday night go to Danny’s for Peace Party night to benefit the Unlympics!

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& Tuesday — if you are free in the afternoon, you must come to the south side and see the fabulous ART LAND! 3–5 pm, Tues 6/9/09. in Sherman Park, most likely by 52nd & Loomis. Look for the cardboard cannons shooting out free t-shirts for kids, the R/Z=made tower of power, Miss Adams’ 4-foot all-seeing eyes, and M’s magic crazy clown boat that will scare the bejeezus out of all of the Sherman Park geese (voted #2 on last year’s Libby Art Club Bully Map of the neighborhood)

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& as always if you’re on my side of town, you’re welcome to stop by and check out the extreme home makeover in progress! R/Z/M/L & J (but a ton of work from M, yay) all toiled and troubled, boiled & bubbled on my apt while I was away. Still a couple of things to organize, but boy, did they work wonders. Bawling ensued, of course, no potato chip casserole necessary.

KH has advice that we should all follow, but from my outpost here in the outback I feel it’s better to wait and still be shy. To my 12-year-old self, I tousle the hair and mutter, “sorry, man, it never gets easier.” To my 80-year-old self, I stretch a little and say, “don’t worry, I’ll still make room for making memories and falling on my ass. just not this week.”

to the earth full of lovelies (including you)

from the salem who loves you back

(with guide-dance from 100 days of disco)

i say this with help from Julee

go here

& this (heard first in a tough but good movie I saw the other night, Samson & Delilah) with help from Charley Pride: