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The Rants Return Letters & Gibberish from the frontline Greetings Faithful Jigglers and discerning
consumers of only the finest Rants! I
whole-heartedly agree with those of you who say it’s time to start ranting
again, and I apologize. My friend
Luciano’s death knocked the wind out of me, and when I again regained my breath
I ran immediately off to suck deep of the marrow, to live a little, to live a
lot, for Luci and for me. I hit the
road bound first for Philo’s Art Car Fest in the SF bay area. Beautiful!
Colorful! Wonderful as always! Then it was up into the woods along the
northern Cal coast to chop wood and carry water and speak in silly voices on
buddy CyberSam’s Saturday night radio show on Cybirk’s Point Area pirate radio
station. Then back down to Berkeley to
spiffy up friend Harrod’s art car for shipment to a swanky car show in
Germany. Spent another coupla weeks
back in Idyllweird, hanging with Luciano’s grieving yet still-vibrant, glowing,
amazing mother Mama Lia, who allowed me on my birthday to invite a few friends
over to dance and make music, to swing on the swing by the giant fire beneath
the vaulting castle ceilings of the Tyrol Mansion. Luciano was there in spirit.
His music played all night. Then
I disappeared again, this time to Bisbee, Arizona for Halloween, then Tucson
for the Day of the Dead parade there, then back south and into Mexico for the
second Day of the Dead to witness the graveyard gatherings of family members in
celebration of their loved ones. Now to
the rants again. For starters, I’ve compiled a handful of
rant-like letters sent to me by friends, letters I thought worthy of
sharing. I’ve removed the author’s
identities and personal details as I’m moving too fast this afternoon to gather
their permissions. I hope they are, if
anything, not mad if not flattered.
These I place in quotation marks and italics to distinguish them from a
handful of my own thoughts and gibberish.
Determined to get something posted today yet not so freshly inspired at
this precise moment, I thus give you a peak inside my tweaked mind over the
past two months. I will write and post
another segment of the heretofore-stalled Burning Man epic this Wednesday the
12th. Until then, enjoy this little
hodgepodge of writings. By the way,
don’t look for any connection between any of the separate chunks.. there ain’t
none. –RSM Please help keep me ranting. Most times, I subsist on less than $100/week. Think about that. “My Sweet Lord, I’m all about just having fun for the rest of
my life. The idea of utilizing the
remainder of my time on this planet, in this body, in some masochistic pursuit
of the grand Band-Aid on the sins of my fathers is sickening. I say, fuck redemption! To Hell with all the bad karma I may or may
not have inherited from lives past. I
don’t wanna fix me, I don’t wanna fix him, I don’t wanna fix you. I say LIVE and let live and let your ghosts
die effortlessly. The past cannot
concern me when my present, the NOW of now of my dwindling daily hours, is so
heavy on my heart. I live in a culture
and a country buckshot-riddled through with fear and I am wasted by it. I am the metaphorical emotional equivalent
of HIV positive, and it is killing me.
I got AIDS of the Brain! I am
not immune to the anxiety spat into me daily in this fear-sickened consumer
culture. I am, however, abhorred by
it. And I want out! I’m not stupid. I am educated and I have been a news-junky. I have been so-called “informed.” And now I am informed from an underground,
subcultural perspective. But the end result
is still the same: fear and loathing. I
know enough about history to know we are repeating and repeating ad infinitum
the mistakes of the past. But I lack
the strength anymore to fight the good fight for humankind, to burn, overturn,
revolt and renounce. I leave the fate
of humankind to the young. I have
turned a corner in my life, in part brought on by age no doubt, but also by
years of skull-crushing depression. I
have been on my knees, and now only ask that I be allowed to live, to enjoy
this big ball of joy and discovery for ME, and for those who might read me
beyond my living years. I want to live
a genuine experience, that “good life” of which Jim Morrison spoke, the one
rich enough in hue and contrast, enough “to base a movie on.” Let others “right” the perceived wrongs of
their past lives or the lives of their fathers or father’s fathers. But not me, and I hope not you. Let it go.
Let them go. Be here now. You are far too fucking talented to expend
any energy on developing anything other than your incredible expressions of
LoveArt. I love you. I LOVE YOU ALL!!! -RSM “..the
hat's off in the wind and so am I, prepared for the unknown, the stars and
beyond. I am leaving this world behind. Well almost. I have a
few things to do first. And I don't
mean my pending death. I mean allegorically
speaking, that
I will literally begin to drift and let the wind and water carry me. The
path of least resistance, the path most inviting and alluring I will follow. I
walked, as a lost cowboy, never a real cowboy in the first place, lost, like a
man fell to earth, walking for the first time down a suburban street, any old
street USA, backyard
of shopping mall, a street on which the houses are generic, the cars, the
lives, the whole fucking kit and kaboodle, predictable, boring, as if the
people are in a fishbowl decorating it with traditional aquarium grasses, and
cutesy fish homes BY CHOICE GODDAM IT. They could live otherwise, but
this is their choice. THIS IS THEIR DREAM. I DON'T FUCKING GET IT AND I DON'T WANT NO FUCKING PART OF
IT. NONE. I HATE THE DIRECTION AMERICAN GLOBAL WORLD CULTURE IS
GOING. FUCK THIS SHIT. Yes
indeed I am too far gone and so are you. We are doomed to live. -VW” Last night on the 80 southbound from Tucson, a
whole family of javelina appeared before my road-dazed eyes, six or eight gray
balloons bobbing by in front of me like yesterday’s party favors now
helium-starved and courting death. And
death it would have been for a few of them and maybe me if my navigational acuity,
dulled by 600 miles in a stretch, hadn’t snapped to just in time to swerve and
miss them. But even then there wasn’t
room, really. Somehow I made it
through, as though the little wild pigs really were just helium and gray
matter. A short distance later in
Tombstone at damn near two in the morning, a family of deer pranced across the
highway right where the road bends sharply around Boot Hill Cemetery. There’s an authentic old Mexican restaurant
right there where once my amigo Scott sat drinking and thinking, wondering
where I’d gone. “this living life that i lead, i work so hard
for so what? i'm in the middle of nowhere at the end of this
tour, dance and music and strife and dissent… now at the end, i am left empty
used up like just after sex, where everything pointed to it being really good,
but somehow it wasn't and you're left holding your own (insert whatever body
part seems appropriate) sort of back at square one, empty and puzzled and
roaming and not tied down. but maybe that's because i have a hard time
imagining living. –X” [Watched the film “8 Mile” the other day and
went from remorseful to pissed real quick, wrote a lengthy angry rap ala Eminem
of which this is a chunk..] So it’s been too long with me feeling all
remorseful When I shoulda been writing down every little
morsel So here to my homies Tom, Justin & Reb I will here forth be bustin Out with the rhymes and the rhythms and the
jizm Pullin no more punches in the name of no-no’s
and schisms. I’m sick of all the crap and the two cent
criticism Ain’t nobody buyin this shit so I’m gonna be
out with it, Out with the truth, the whole sleuth and
nothing but the John Wilkes Booth. If it’s true that depression is all suppressed
anger, Well I’m done eating your poison, get ready for
the dagger. Cuz if for none other my Luci who spoke soft and
never hurt a fly, I’m gonna bust some heads wide open, gonna
publicize your lies. Cuz I don’t lie. That’s right I said I don’t lie.
You may not like what I write about you But it’s true!
All true and if my just-is/ce you don’t see Just check out the shit I write about me! “Ever wonder how the mushroom supports itself,
how it looks so shiny, an architectural wonder, a stem holding up a large
mass. Well we're all like mushrooms really. And the ones who are on
the streets talking to themselves are really no different than you and I but
their support system collapsed. The sense of fight, or balance, that is
normally self supervised...is gone. It's like I feel right now
really. Only it's like I can choose to be supported or let it go. I
have the choice. I let it go and I drift, in space unconnected by anything, hardly an identity, rather an
unknown entity, fanning outward and further out, like the ripples in a lake,
like the reverberation in a canyon, like the meteorite that I am, in the darkness....
drifting...drifting...drifting. Reaching out occasionally to grab hold
the reins, vines on a cliff to keep from falling, and then sometimes flat out
letting go, rather not reaching...falling, or better drifting. It's a dangerous thing to play with, the tide
of one's mind. Sometimes it's beautiful to be the one and only and
sometimes it's flat out lonely. Loneliness can act as the fire to fuel
one's own loneliness – self perpetuating the fall. Voices can be heard,
but they are your own. It really gets weird when you think that the voice
you hear is not your own, but rather a ghost of yourself - and then you realize
it is yourself and you feel more comfortable. It's like being the
character in a movie -- but it never ends. The movie is you, and you are
the movie - just no one else is watching. No one esle sees it like you do. But
still you watch. However, no matter how far out you go, the base
of the mushroom holds you up. I guess
death is then the ultimate end. Perhaps death is the letting go of all, a
warp into just everything - the ultimate orgasm - energy that will go into the sperms and eggs of others to be
born. So here I am left to wonder, what it was I
smoked a couple hours earlier. I know it wasn't the beer. And it's
not that I am that far out, or further out than I normally am, but rather I am
closer to the essence, the water that makes up the river that I am.
It's the journey that matters – being lost is only frightening if you worry about what's not there, or what could be
there. The odds are, nothing bad will
be there. So on the bright side, look where you might end up. Drift
onward across the land and sea to a place just for..... –Y” I take you now. “Howdy from Reno, Herr Pirate, Black Jack
Kerouac, you Parade-Dwelling, Pheromone-Driven, Mad Hatter of a Jitterbugging
(or Tangoing) Poet, Lord Duke, and New Friend `Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a
blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.’ (quote by
Gene Fowler) -Z” I Was A Scab Hulk A new short film by me (based on a dream I had
whilst sleeping in Kathleen Pearson’s Postcard Room, Halloween ’03, Bisbee,
Arizona) Once upon a time on a 70’s television series
far, far ago, I dreamt that I had taken over Lou Ferrigno’s role as the
Incredible Hulk. Our film opens on a Hollywood film lot where an
episode of the Hulk is being shot. I
play the Hulk. We jump to bathroom
where Lou Ferrigno is cleaning the film lot toilets. Shot of me at urinal as Lou comes out of stall, also as the
Hulk. We two Hulks meet face to
face. He explains the loss of his job
and I apologize for scabbin’ in on his gig.
After some chitchat, we agree to work together to bring down the studio.
Cut to scenes of double-Hulk
destruction. Then, two Hulk girls
arrive on scene, stopping us in our tracks by their hot looks. Close face shots as we four Hulks exchange
sexy gazes. Scene ends with the two
Hulk couples walking off the destroyed set arm in arm. Cut to dumbfounded producers watching us go,
then back to the four Hulks seen from behind, now shrunken in their calmed
state, all holding up their too-big shorts (and in the girls’ cases, negligee). The End.
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