139. David Lynch’s } The Darkened Room.

My friend sits in the dark in the room.

“Do you see her? I cannot see my friend.”

An object that’s not ordinary to me because I have no use for it is ordinary to you because you use it all the time.

“Don’t look at her.”

A slip, for instance,

“You haven’t been listening.”

or Tokyo.

138. To get weird in Daniel Mills’ } Lord.

Mills’ collection begins with a tree, spoiled by M. Wayne Miller’s illustration (it gives away the turn in the tale), and Mills’ collection ends with a tree, the Saint Martin’s Oak, “burned to a standing cinder.”

Tree destroyed, Muelenberg loses faith and turns to debasement; out of the bacchanal, a theater is built, where sins are performed as mystery plays (the history of theater, at least from Roman times to the early Renaissance, is here). For a time, a halt is put on the performances in preparation for a great performance, scheduled for Midsummer. Who will be the mason and who the ass?

Friedrich, a monk in the monastery where the narrator lives, understands the tree to be “the embodiment of all that we could never know.” While the story “The Lord Comes at Twilight” is “after Thomas Ligotti,” it’s informed by Catholicism, not atheism, and maybe a little evangelical Christianity—the Lord was in Muelenberg, but corruption, embodied by the leprous, masked Count, holds Muelenberg’s people in its thrall. They are, so-to-speak, “left behind.”

A little ahead of the collection’s midpoint, Mills experiments; “Whistler’s Gore” is told via grave markers and a sermon. That formal break marks a point in the collection where the stories become more complex—when they get weird. All the stories in The Lord Came at Twilight are, in terms of genre, weird—by weird, I mean, unpredictable. When Mills gets weird his stories become interesting, buttressed by his solid prose. When Mills gets weird his stories are very good.

Perhaps the best way to get weird is to break from the communities from which you seek admiration.

[Daniel Mills’ collection, The Lord Came at Twilight, is available from Dark Renaissance Books.]

137. Thirtieth anniversary } Blue Velvet.

8:17pm

cable car

           

            May 4, 2016

Wed.

…audience member explains (to his son?) what D. Lynch does (in Blue Velvet or in general?): “what’s underneath. It’s like everyplace.” Patently untrue. Conventional read of Blue Velvet / Twin Peaks. Repeated by the un-thoughtful. Awful-ness reveals itself, be it the awfulness of a downtown with nothing but chain jewelers and chain coffee shops and a furrier or a rt. X strip of lighting and appliance stores and car dealerships and donut shops or the floor of a valley fitted with box stores. The phrase “Blue Velvet is about.” …audience member sets up Blue Velvet (to his friend? “I’m just glad you were able to come out. I thought I was going to go alone” ) “…on VHS. A long time ago. My brother… an actor… the theater… I was 16, you can imagine, completely mind-blowing… it really started me being interested in film… a big ginger ale... to have that experience… I’ve seen it a few times since… it’s just, like, crazy. No, I’m psyched.”

A frosty-blond woman with a leopard-print coat will pass in front of me four times.

A crush of beetles crackles.

Bored rock toss.

Father weeps in his hospital bed.

Jeffrey Beaumont “When he discovers a severed ear in an abandoned field” and ants instead the world abruptly revealed the torso of Karina Holmer in a dumpster. Jeffrey Beaumont wears an earring. Jeffrey: I found an ear. Detective Williams: Yes, that’s a human ear alright.

Sandy Williams emerges from shadow pink and blond. “I just know that’s all” and “It sounds like a good daydream but actually doing it is dangerous.” The wind and the trees, the long sidewalk. An environment meant for daytime at night.

The sounds stairs make when left all alone.

How the hall must smell; “it’s this new stuff, there’s no smell”; like ash cans and industrial carpet.

Television set in Dorothy Vallens’ apartment is “encased in wood” (29,  Nieland).

Horror of, “Do you like me?” I thought I was involved, that something important was happening to me; instead, the situation revealed: I am  stupid, ignorant, and weak.

The light is Sandy’s dream. Theater’s speakers buzz fire.

Red roses, red shirts and suspenders, red drapes, pink and purple neon Slow Club, pink neon This Is It, red carpet, red walls, Jeffrey’s red car, hot pursuit, prostitute’s pink mini skirt, Dorothy’s red lips, ruby slippers, Isabella Rossellini and David Lynch at Cannes on the red carpet and David Lynch’s red box, red-brown robins.

I know what it's like to unlock doors that lead someplace forbidden.

136. DIAGRAM 16.2 } “Notes on” fig wood, etc.

Read from—

even the details have details = "a thing so small / the shapeliest mind / can't fix its density" Katherine Williams

(Elisa Gabbert and I once performed together in her apt. She read from a sequence of poems she posted to the blog Even the Details Have Details; I read the poems I wrote in the comments field of said blog…

—so, Elisa read,

“There’s an injured marsupial in front of my tire.  / Would you be interested in a happy ending? // Technically, it’s still spring. / Would you be interested in a happy ending? // Stop honking. I’m trying to think. …”

and I read,

“Koala never caused no ruckus / not no how not at all + / Koala say yes t'bookish, so / step th'back up fish fragile. // This is SERIOUS. Koala courts /honk-trouble + girls aplenty. / Koala say "brings on brunettes /they red-headed brainy."

…and now we perform in public together once more in DIAGRAM 16.2).

Read from—

"...only the boss, who / disappears into / the carbon field and rises / into the knots of language" Matt Sadler

"fig wood, little sun" Geoffrey Detrani

My contribution is more from “Notes on”; to see more visit Word for/Word 27.

[ image: "Notes on 12," a variant of "Notes on 12b" ]

135. “The man in the mack” } a ferryman.

Ringo boards the Magic Christian; George “on holiday.” John returns to London with “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” calls on Paul at Paul’s and the two work it out: “John was in an impatient mood,” said Paul, “I was happy to help.” At Abbey Road (studio three, 2pm – 11, April 14, 1969), John sings lead, Paul sings harmony; John’s guitars (lead and acoustic), Paul’s rhythm and piano; eleven takes—“Take ten was the ‘best’ basic track."

“John recorded these sorts of songs with his new group, the Plastic Ono Band,” wrote Mark Lewisohn in The Beatles Recording Sessions, “and had the band existed at this time “The Ballad of John and Yoko” would probably have been theirs.” Paul’s presence brightens John’s song, brings to it a depth that, musically, it lacked. John’s solo record, “New York City”—another account of John and Yoko’s doings—gives a sense of what “The Ballad of John and Yoko” might’ve sounded like if John hadn’t made it Beatles. John’s guitar and Stan Bronstein’s sax on “New York City” attempt to fill it up—it’s manic; “New York City” is aggressive, “The Ballad of John and Yoko” is sly. Paul’s bass, maracas, hand claps, fun! but, “Christ, you know it ain’t easy… the way things are going, they’re gonna crucify me”—isn’t it that sneaky desperation that so startles on Smiths records? “New York City’s” jabs—policemen who shove, “God’s a red herring in a drag”—are hidden in the mix.

Prince died yesterday. Yesterday, coincidentally, I stopped at Rhode Island Historical Cemetery no. 41—a plot surrounded by industrial debris—where’s buried Edwin L. Green, died April 21, 1946, alongside his wife, Marion, who died in 1911, and their unnamed, infant daughter (“our only child”). I like to think about John and Paul in the studio together, in the midst of no little legal acrimony, in the midst of John’s heroin use, days after John’s marriage to Yoko, a month after Paul’s to Linda, at work. At work and able to enjoy the pleasure they found in work and in working together.

Two days later George, Ringo, Paul, and John recorded Harrison’s “Old Brown Shoe.” Philip Norman wrote (John Lennon: The Life), “…an indifferent George Harrison song ‘Old Brown Shoe’.” Indifferent? Christ! What about that song is indifferent? Listen to the way George pronounces his lyric—the blunt “shoe,” the way his delivery pushes and pulls.

“The Ballad of John and Yoko” single, b-side “Old Brown Shoe,” a neat pivot into the Abbey Road sessions, begun that day with “Something.”

134. word for/word 27 } “Notes on” foliage, etc.

Read from—

“Soon the foliage around our house is made of mirrors.”

—John Gallaher and Kristina Marie Darling

“Close your eyes. Watch out. Invader. / Invader. That year was a long time ago. It’s happened. Air.”

—Elizabeth Witte

“Can you describe this valley of ash?”

—Anne Gorrick

Look at—

Scott Howard’s “Mere Bog” morse code.

Scott Helmes’ “Sonnet 26-II-14.”

All parts of Word for/Word 27, published late February, and including a selection from my poem “Notes on,” an erasure/collage piece. Another selection from “Notes on” will appear in an upcoming issue of DIAGRAM.

(“Soon the foliage around our house is made of mirrors.” ——that image, what pleasure I get thinking about it. Verdant mirror—they reflect the house, sky, sunlight, the viewer herself, in moving fragments.)

[ Image: "Notes on 11" (rescan) with new smudging. ]

133. Works in Progress } Mon Mothma's Brood.

Description of a 2:11-min. video parody of the 1982 trailer for Return of the Jedi called “David Cronenberg’s Return of the Jedi”:

TITLE CARD: 20^th Century Fox presents a Cinepix tax-shelter incentive CUT TO: Stars. Voiceover: “A shocking new vision from David Cronenberg, and the final chapter of the Star Wars saga. Play it. Live it. Exterminate all rational thought: Return of the Jedi.” CUE MUSIC by Howard Shore (strings processed through a black panel Synclavier II). CUT TO: A pair of ROYAL GUARDS, clad in the red robes and surgical masks worn by the doctors in Dead Ringers (’88), exit as DARTH VADER and LUKE SKYWALKER arrive for their audience with the EMPEROR. Voiceover: “Return for the climactic clash between the forces of good and evil.” CUT TO: JABBA THE HUTT. Ensconced on his throne, he inserts a video cassette directly into his stomach and his massive eyes light up blue and static. Voiceover: “The battle for freedom rages on.” PRINCESS LEIA struggles against her chains while NICKI BRAND extinguishes a cigarette on her left breast. CUT TO: The SARLACC PIT; it groans with lascivious pleasure as various HENCHMEN are drawn toward its moist innards. CUT TO: Rebel headquarters frigate. MON MOTHMA, after briefing the Rebel forces before the Battle of Endor, opens her white gown to reveal an external womb that is also the head of ADMIRAL ACKBAR. A deformed baby drops from his mouth. CUT TO: Endor. Close up of LUKE’s speeder bike entangled with a BIKER SCOUT’s speeder. Voiceover: “The heart of a hero, the strength of a leader, beyond pleasure, beyond pain.” CUT TO: LEIA as her speeder bike crashes. The Ewok WICKET finds the princess amid the wreckage. They tumble together in uncontrollable, accident-inspired lust. CUT TO: outside the shield generator bunker, HAN SOLO reaches into LEIA’s laser-inflicted wound and removes an organic pistol. HAN SOLO: “I’ve got a serious urge to kill someone here.” LEIA: “Do it. It’s just a game.” CUT TO: the DEATH STAR, main docking bay. Voiceover: “A destiny revealed, the circle closes.” LUKE watches as VADER’s head explodes. Voiceover: “To becomes the new flesh, you have to kill the old flesh.” CUT TO: Stars and, superimposed: Return of the Jedi. CUE MUSIC by John Williams (triumphant Star Wars “End Titles” theme). END.

[Excerpt from the essay “Of David Lynch’s Revenge of the Jedi”—from which I’ll read at the Works in Progress reading, hosted by the Nonfiction Writing Program at Brown University, Wednesday, March 2, at 6:30pm, Wilson Hall, room 206. More information here.]