The 505 Crossword Assignment

Had the first sesh (session for the uninitiated) of Stylistics.

Upon completing a crossword, the assignment was to take 25 across words and 25 down words and compose a story.

Here, is my story:

I’d sparred with that knuckle-walking ogre back at the old gym, despite our difference in weight class, age, and overall cred in the amateur boxing world of Akron, Ohio. How I got in, and out of, the ring with this skilled baboon, a k a “Old Scratch” Charlie, so named because everyone figured he would end up throwing a fight at some point in his career, and he was bound to go pro, was a result of vicarious pride, my own stupid pride, and of course, a girl. She wasn’t just some girl though, she was the most beautiful thing on two feet and everyone, including that demon donning boxing gloves, knew it. And she was mine. All mine.
Fump! to the head. Ooof! to the ribs. My face was getting cratered and my ribs were caving to ruins. I couldn’t get him off me. Fucking Tasmanian devil in gilt-covered Everlast trunks. And what were his hands taped with? Every blow felt like he was holding a row of quarters in his fists.  I heard his trainer yell “take it easy!” but the blows kept coming in like sideways rain. It hadn’t been two minutes and my vision was blurred, my legs wobbly, and my core akin to wet paper. I tried to get on my horse but I couldn’t tire that fuck and my nose was a magnet to his laden fists and nothing, nothing was going to sate him till he put me on the canvas. Then told her about it. Did I mention my stupid pride?

My stupid pride is one thing but you would think my trainer would have shown some sense. But no, he was dense with idiotic pride too. He’d had his own career stolen from him, serving as a nam vet. To make matters worse, the trainer of the boxing beelzebub pummeling me, got a draft deferment somehow and enjoyed a brief but successful pro career that parlayed into a lucrative gym ownership. And my trainer, Joe Pesci bless him, thought I was going to be his ticket. He should have thought more about where exactly the ticket would take him when he agreed to throw me to this haymaking motherfucker.
“Move, move, slip it slip it!,” my trainer was yelling from my corner but he came off one punch right into another. Fwap! from a hook, back in with the rangy jab, body blow body blow. Fuck this I thought and almost ran in the ring to get away but he was able to corner me and even after who knows how many consecutive blows, he didn’t tire - one punch after another after another. Holy christ the bell rang and I sat down in the corner while my trainer ran a damp rag over my face and said something about him being vulnerable to an uppercut but any advice other than survive against this guy was wasted quicker than a frat boy at a kegger. “Gimme some water,” I huffed between breaths. The bell rang again and when I stood like a drained noodle, my trainer again said “uppercut, uppercut.”
I wasn’t averse to throwing an uppercut, I wasn’t averse to throwing A punch, I wasn’t averse to throwing myself on the mat and feigning internal bleeding...but the stupid pride...and the girl. He was pummeling me in a corner when he mumbled through his mouthpiece between blows, “that girl of yours,” jab jab, “the one that acts,” jab, hook “like a virgin,” rib shot kidney shot “think I’ll,” jab, cross “make her,” hook, uppercut “mine.” The blow took me down to one knee and he took a spell when his trainer yelled at him “ain’t nobody winning any damn award; take it fucking easy Charlie!” I was surprised he stopped; I could see in his eyes that he wanted to go retro on my ass and finish me because I wasn’t unconscious. The bell to end round two was to no avail: there would be no end. I was getting gored and my boxing life was dripping blood and bile on the tip of a pike.
I could see him, ogling her, a smooth liar, hiding his intentions, waiting outside her math class, smiling, walking to the end of the pier with ice cream cones in hand after they’d dined at some place where they called him champ - “hey!,” my trainer yelled. “You straight?” I nodded but it hurt to nod. “Don’t acts like a hero! You straight?” Again I nodded and again it hurt. My trainer gave me two quick mists of something up my nose. To this day he won’t tell me what it was but I think it was coke or at least speed.
My ears felt like eaten cobs of corn when the bell rang for the last round. The coke or whatever it was put new life into my lungs and legs. Didn’t matter though; he sized me into a corner in seconds and began to toil on my ribs again but this time judo style, with some elbow on the follow through. My trainer was hoarse but kept yelling for me “stick and move, in and out, be a pest, be a pest!” How can I be a pest when I can’t move? He started talking about her again. “She’s,” body blow, “a dancer,” body blow, “right?” Jab, cross, “can’t wait,” jab, cross, “till she,” hook, body shot, “jetes,” uppercut, cross, “on my,” step back, “cock!” He unleashed a barrage of uppercuts and crosses low and high like a jackhammer crushing concrete: foomfoomfoomfoomfoomfoom. I crumbled again to one knee but this time he couldn’t stand himself and he reared back to let go a blow to my chin sure to separate my jaw when I uppercutted that fucker in his nutsack organ so goddamn hard he could have sung an aria above middle C. My arm held a perfect ell shape as I continued to try to push his nuts so far up into his intestines that they resembled cookie dough. He picked the wrong enemy to try and wargame with.

Even this many years later, after an ale or ten, I can tell my old trainer that story and that sum-bitch elates like a giant party balloon. I wasn’t his ticket out but when I remind him of that, he realizes for a minute or two that it ain’t so bad sometimes, being in.

Prompt:

Using your completed crossword puzzle from last week’s class, compose a story. You must use at least 25 of the across words and 25 of the down words, excluding proper nouns. Please bold all words you use, and list separately at the conclusion of the story. Optional challenge: Use all words in succession, across words first, down words second. 

The 505 1st

As of this writing, I am enrolled in a graduate stylistics course, hereafter, the 505.

Here is an assignment.


Write: Imagine you have been asked to write liner notes for a musical album (your fave).
Liner notes may give brief descriptions of songs, or may give some cultural/historical/biographical data. The genre is open. Your job: to compose those album liner notes, discussing whatever it is you want to discuss, but in a way that reflects the style of the music. So, for instance, if you choose a hip-hop album, the liner notes should read like the hip hop music they address. If you write about country, the liner notes should be in "countrese."

My fave you ask. Not the fave but a fave: August and Everything After from Counting Crows.

 Maria says she’s dying, through the door I hear her crying.

Why?

Hear me out. Hear it out. When you’ve got nothing but time this, thing between us, is worth the time.

Everything works. It all fits and it needs worn. Maybe I’m lying, maybe I’m wrong, and maybe I’ve done this sort of thing before. Maybe it’s a love/hate relationship with August. Maybe he’s not your type but I’m sure there’s something in a shade of grey.  You laugh with insecurity and tell me the words, so many words, don’t hit you in the gut and don’t make you feel wrenched or torn or wistful, and it just doesn’t do it for you. But maybe, man, I’m right. As right as the rain that falls in Baltimore, and maybe the words matter because words matter so damn much to you and me that’s why we can’t tear our ears away; not in 1993 and not and now in 2019.

Because: I walk along these hillsides in the summer 'neath the sunshine I am feathered by the moonlight falling down on me

Maybe you’re just afraid, afraid of knowing,  of giving in, of being changed by it. What would that do to you? Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe you won’t or can’t feel, in fear, the periphery from the core, the essential from the meaningless. Maybe some things are too bright. For you.

Because: Start threading a needle, brush past the shuttle that slides through the cold room. Start turning the wool across the wire, roll a new life over.

I want you to love August. I want you to feel the way I feel when the keyboard swells from nothingness and that guitar riff reverberates on the opening track like death fading to life. I want you to be transported the way I am; to know that you’ll feel something, about music, about words, about life...and how lyrics and music are important and why they express BOTH the terrestrial and the sublime of humanity. I want you to recognize. What’s wrong with you? if you don’t.

Because: Round here we talk just like lions but we sacrifice just like lambs. Round here she’s slipping through my hands.

You don’t believe me and I don’t blame you. I can’t blame you because I know what’s at stake. Judge lest ye be judged but as I write these words baby, thinking about it, I’m willing…to be judged. By you.

Because: When the kindness falls like rain, it washes her away and Anna begins to change my mind...

And your mind matters and your heart matters and you deserve this. We all deserve this; it’s why we’re here, you and me, us and them: to be moved. Like this. To know art and how it’s a door that needs opened so life -your life, my life, our lives- can be looked at, heard, felt. Lived. But you have to let it, convince it, shove it tabula rasa into your heart.

Because: Lay me down in a field of flame and heather, render up my body into the burning heart of god in the belly of a black-winged bird.

I hope you let it in.

Doubling

Write your life story in 6 words. Then, write your life story in 12 words. Then 24, 48, 96, 192. 

Caveat: once used, you cannot repeat any phrase. That is, you are not simply revising, adding, filling. Each piece should be unique. And try not to repeat your “style” or “voice” from one to the next. Mix them up. Take chances. But meet the word count. Focus on making each word a vibrant contributor.

I am grateful, not fully great.

Born Gordon Fritz Rohler: genxer, philosopher, beside HER, never sure, unsure.

Gordon? Rohler? How many words do I get again? No! He was sensitive to a fault but man, sometimes, he could make you laugh.

Mistakes were made.             Success is a subjective measure.
            Talent was unrealized.           Wherever you go, there you are.
            You can’t explain it away.       One can’t derive an ought/imperative from an is.
            Opportunities were wasted.    Walk a mile in my shoes.
            Nothing was ventured.            Judge, lest ye be judged.

What does a man have but time? Time is the constant in a universe of variables. In any biography, the usage of time is the essence -the matter at hand. How have I used my time? Asking why when how is what you want to know. How is where it’s at. How makes money and everybody needs it, money that is. Why doesn’t cut it, why doesn’t bake bread; no one cares about why anymore! So I’m persona non grata. Or at least ignored. Time will tell which is worse. How or why? But why...how?

Think of the way it feels when you hear your voice on a recording. Most of us bristle, even if a little. “Is that what I sound like?” Autobiography asks a similar question: Is that what I’ve lived like?” Autobiography tosses your lump of a life onto a steel-cold table in the gross lab, where with razor sharp scalpels and muscular forceps and probes, tears apart your judgement and character and personality with unceasing fire-breathing criticism of your horrible decisions and gnashes teeth at your incessant laziness and wrings hands raw due to your pathological sensitivity and erodes all possibility of contentedness or serenity or self-actualization at best and at worst births institutionalization, to produce the same face piercing cringe when you hear your voice through your ears and not through your head. Autobiography is not some mild self-sadism akin to a sauna what with its relaxed muscles finale. Nor is it torturous introspection to show the glass is half-full and “just look at all you’ve accomplished from such modest beginnings!” Honestly and authentically, factually, it exposes existential pain reaped from a life lived not through the ears, but through the head.

Dispatches

Dispatches finished with me last week; I can't say I'm finished with it.

Though it came out in 1977, it is simply alive; still breathing and kicking and still wrecking people to existential and artistic crisis. 

Case in point:

But then this tidbit from an old interview with Terry Gross:

GROSS: I think it took around 10 years for "Dispatches" to be published after you returned.HERR: Well, it took about nine years. That's because it took about eight years to write it.GROSS: How come it took so long?HERR: That's a long story, you know? It just took a long time. It took what it took, you know? I was afraid to finish the book.

Afraid. 

Books like Dispatches hold up a mirror to humanity.

And sometimes the abyss looks back.

The Death Problem

I read this

And, you know, it was fine.

Given that death is my favorite topic, I really latched onto:

Our modern world tries extremely hard to protect us from the sort of existential moments experienced by Mill and Russell. Netflix, air-conditioning, sex apps, Alexa, kale, Pilates, Spotify, Twitter … they’re all designed to create a world in which we rarely get a second to confront ultimate meaning — until a tragedy occurs, a death happens, or a diagnosis strikes. Unlike any humans before us, we take those who are much closer to death than we are and sequester them in nursing homes, where they cannot remind us of our own fate in our daily lives. 

But I ask you Mr. Sullivan, how exactly does christianity solve death? How does christianity protect us from THE existential moment?

By unrealizing it. You never die. You are eternal. He that believeth in me...

I like my solutions a little more solution-like.

You might say don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

But the bath water never cleaned the baby and christianity NEVER solved the death problem.

You die. we die, he dies, she dies, they die...all men are mortal, Socrates is mortal...

Death is your own-most possibility and it cannot be outstripped.

How are you going to LIVE with this possibility?

By unrealizing it? This has epistemic-health consequences.

What you believe matters.

What you think matters.

A lot.

Pinker's progressivism and all it entails doesn't deny death; it has that going for it. Which is more than I can say for christianity.

psst: http://www.pewforum.org/2018/11/20/where-americans-find-meaning-in-life/

The Uniformity of Nature

None of us expects two giant hands to press down through the blue sky as if ripping two pieces of sky-cotton apart while we watch from the ground, mouths agape. Neither do we expect then a fair skinned, incredible haired, white robed jesus to hold the sky-cotton open and tell us, in English of course, that “nature isn’t actually uniform,” and then let the sky-cotton pieces come back together but then just before the seam is about to merge, he breaks it apart again and says “oh, and stop misusing the word literally -it should only be used to contrast metaphor!” The sky seals back up and we go about our business and probably continue to misuse the word literally at every turn.
But the sky did open up one day and jesus did say those things and I know because I was there.

You of course have your doubts and I of course cannot blame you for having your doubts. But it happened all the same. Do you even remember what it was that jesus said? He said nature isn’t actually uniform. We, the royal we, like to think that nature is uniform and that, with perverse hubris, we know everything there is to know about nature. From the mouths of babes! Why on earth would we think that we know everything about nature when we are but a blip of geologic time in a nature so old we can’t get our mind around it? But you want to incredulously tell me that the sky can’t open up like a shirt being ripped apart – that’s not how the sky works. Sky schmy. We’re talking about one sky existing at this time but there have been a virtual infinity of skies over a virtual infinity of past and yet you want to tell me what can and cannot happen with a sky. And it isn’t just the sky; there are all kinds of things that can happen in nature that you didn’t think could because you operate under the guise of the uniformity of nature. But I just told you jesus told us it isn’t actually uniform. I mean how else do you even explain jesus himself if nature is uniform? See the corner you’ve painted yourself in?

Anywhoo, it was crazy that day. I was walking my dog, Sparky, at a shoreside park in Connecticut and just as we were coming to the sand, I heard this ferocious ripping sound from above like it was coming from rock concert speakers and I shielded my eyes to look up and I saw these hands, they must have been the size of battleships, bust through the sky like they were pressing through a balloon, only the balloon didn’t pop, it just kinda ripped apart like the cotton I mentioned. And then these huge hands held the seams apart when it seemed like they were pressing to be together, like magnets that are close. But then jesus appeared and he was just a sight behind the sky, I guess, curtains you could call them. He looked so handsome and young and clean shaven and you can imagine how big he was if his hands were the size of battleships. Behind him it was just like, you know, a halo of white. The sky curtains were held down to the horizon line and it must have spanned 40 miles. It was crazy. And then he said those words. And I believed him. I’ve thought about it a lot since then and it makes perfect sense to me. You may say it is an argument from ignorance, that just because we don’t know everything about nature, we can’t be sure how the sky works but I’d say that you are saying jesus is wrong. And I don’t know if you know anything about jesus but saying jesus is wrong ain’t exactly the right move.

So when I tell you that the sky was literally torn open by jesus you can rest assured that I am using the word literally to contrast with metaphor. Cause jesus told me to.

If You Gotta Ask..

Remember when I wrote about art here and asked what is the process that is necessary and sufficient for someone to be called an artist? 

Then I read this (and these lines... 

When you’re truly creating you don’t have time to think about what to call it.

Who thinks of what they’ll name the baby while they’re fucking?

&

Too many musicians and not enough artists.

&

You can’t practice art.

In order for it to be true, one must live it.)

On Why Jazz Isn’t Cool Anymore . . . .

Posted on November 27, 2011 

Jazz died in 1959.

There maybe cool individuals who say they play Jazz, but ain’t shit cool about Jazz as a whole.

Jazz died when cool stopped being hip.

Jazz was a limited idea to begin with.

Jazz is a label that was forced upon the musicians.

The musicians should’ve never accepted that idea.

Jazz ain’t shit.

Jazz is incestuous.

Jazz separated itself from American popular music.

Big mistake.

The music never recovered.

Ornette tried to save Jazz from itself by taking the music back to its New Orleanian roots, but his efforts were too esoteric.

Jazz died in 1959, that’s why Ornette tried to “Free Jazz” in 1960.

Jazz is only cool if you don’t actually play it for a living.

Jazz musicians have accepted the idea that it’s OK to be poor.

John Coltrane is a bad cat, but Jazz stopped being cool in 1959.

The very fact that so many people are holding on to this idea of what Jazz is supposed to be is exactly what makes it not cool.

People are holding on to an idea that died long ago.

Jazz, like the Buddha, is dead.

Let it go, people, let it go.

Paul Whiteman was the King of Jazz and someday all kings must fall.

Jazz ain’t cool, it’s cold, like necrophilia.

Stop fucking the dead and embrace the living.

Jazz worries way too much about itself for it to be cool.

Jazz died in 1959.

The number one Jazz record is Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue.

Dave Brubeck’s Time Out was released in 1959.

1959 was the coolest year in Jazz.

Jazz is haunted by its own hungry ghosts.

Let it die.

You can be martyrs for an idea that died over a half a century if y’all want.

Jazz has proven itself to be limited, and therefore, not cool.

Lot’s wife turned to a pillar of salt from looking back.

Jazz is dead.

Miles ahead.

Some may say that I’m no longer the same dude who recorded the album with Doc Cheatham.

Correct: I’m not the same dude I was 14 years ago.

Isn’t that the point?

Our whole purpose on this planet is to evolve.

The Golden Age of Jazz is gone.

Let it go.

Too many necrophiliacs in Jazz.

You’re making my case for me.

Some people may say we are defined by our limitations.

I don’t believe in limitations, but yes, if you believe you are limited that will define you.

Definitions are retrospective.

And if you find yourself getting mad, it’s probably because you know Jazz is dead.

Why get upset if what I’m saying doesn’t ring true?

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t play Jazz.

I play Postmodern New Orleans music.

Louis Armstrong and Danny Barker play Traditional New Orleans Music.

Ellis Marsalis and James Black play Modern New Orleans music.

Kidd Jordan and Clyde Kerr play Avant-garde New Orleans music.

Donald Harrison plays Neoclassical New Orleans music.

I play Postmodern New Orleans music.

I am a part of a lineage.

I am a part of a blood line.

My ancestors didn’t play Jazz, they played Traditional, Modern and Avant-garde New Orleans Music.

I don’t play Jazz.

I don’t let others define who I am.

I am a Postmodern New Orleans musician.

I create music for the heart and the head, for the beauty and the booty.

The man who lets others define him is a dead man.

With all due respect to the masters, they were victims of a colonialist mentality.

Blacks have been conditioned for centuries to be grateful for whatever crumbs thrown to them.

As a postmodern musician, it’s my duty to do better than my predecessors.

To question, reexamine and redefine what it is that we do.

They accepted it because they had to.

Because my ancestors opened the door for me, I don’t have to accept it.

Louis bowed and scraped so Miles could turn his back.

It’s called evolution.

It’s the colonialist mentality that glorifies being treated like a slave.

There is nothing romantic about poor, scuffling Jazz musicians.

Fuck that idea.

It’s not cool.

Jazz is a lie.

America is a lie.

Playing Jazz is like running on a treadmill: you may break a sweat, but ultimately you ain’t going nowhere.

Some people may say we are limited.

I say, we are as limited as we think.

I am not limited.

Jazz is a marketing ploy that serves an elite few.

The elite make all the money while they tell the true artists it’s cool to be broke.

Occupy Jazz!

I am not speaking of so-called Jazz’s improvisational aspects.

Improvisation by its very nature can never be passé, but mindsets are invariably deadly.

Not knowing is the most you can ever know.

It’s only when you don’t know that “everything” is possible.

Jazz has nothing to do with music or being cool.

It’s a marketing idea.

A glaring example of what’s wrong with Jazz is how people fight over it.

People are too afraid to let go of a name that is killing the spirit of the music.

Life is bigger than music, unless you love and/or play Jazz.

The art, or lack thereof, is just a reflection.

Miles Davis personified cool and he hated Jazz.

What is Jazz anyway?

Life isn’t linear, it’s concentric.

When you’re truly creating you don’t have time to think about what to call it.

Who thinks of what they’ll name the baby while they’re fucking?

Playing Jazz is like using the rear-view mirror to drive your car on the freeway.

If you think Jazz is a style of music, you’ll never begin to understand.

It’s ultimately on the musicians.

People are fickle and follow the pack.

Not enough artists willing to soldier for their shit.

People follow trends and brands.

So do musicians, sadly.

Jazz is a brand.

Jazz ain’t music, it’s marketing, and bad marketing at that.

It has never been, nor will it ever be, music.

Here lies Jazz (1916 – 1959).

Too many musicians and not enough artists.

I believe music to be more of a medium than a brand.

Silence is music, too.

You can’t practice art.

In order for it to be true, one must live it.

Existence is not contingent upon thought.

It’s where you choose to put silence that makes sound music.

Sound and silence equals music.

Sometimes when I’m soloing, I don’t play shit.

I just move blocks of silence around.

The notes are an afterthought.

Silence is what makes music sexy.

Silence is cool.

- Nicholas Payton