Now.
Not now.
And now.
Now.
Exactly as as kings.
Feeling full for it.
Exactitude as kings.
So to beseech you as full as for it.
Exactly or as kings.
After I finished high school, I found my self in San Francisco. It was the fall of 1998 and I was looking to define myself, attempt to understand what it was that made me me and discover what I was capable of. Throughout the majority of my life to that point I had a firm belief in my potential power as a writer. I specify my potentiality here because one of my (possibly fatal) flaws is the projection of my self into the future— "some day I'll be a writer," "I could be a poet," and "I will write a novel." At this young point I had thought I'd "found my voice" and indeed, it was certain I had a particular way about how I approached the compositional act, fundamentally experimental rhyth-matic, repetitious pattern-based verbal constructions stumbling towards meaning on levels beyond hte printed page— in essence, still the same things I try to do— a conquest for the gestalt-cumulative effect, subtle intonations of obscured impressions. Like everything in my life, I arrived at htis voice by no percievable means; it was just there, like everything about me is just there, and I never seem to learn anything, just remember more clearly.
I'd raised my self on Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Tennessee Williams, Tom Robbins, Gary Snyder— the usual suspects. And I guess one could see these antecedants in my constructions. But then I was at a party sometime in my freshman year and a scrap of paper was on the ground that I picked up. I'd been developing an oral style that really communicated my thoughts, a style I thought was original. I cold-read it out loud and it went "Nearly all of it to be, as to be, as a wife, has a cow— a love story." It was Gertrude Stein, a sound-text artist from the 1920s who seemed to have fallen through the cracks over the years— but she suddenly put so much into perspective for me. It was as if I had finally found a direct connection to my own work, whose sensibility with meaning and repetition, oratory and text matched my own. I was enamored, in love, and in some ways devastated, as I always am when my mis-aligned ego control system is knocked around— it's been done before, and better than I could ever do, and she had passed into obscurity in the same manner I soon would.
Shutters shut and open so do queens. Shutters shut and shutters and so shutters shut and shutters and so and so shutters and so shutters shut
and so shutters shut and shutters and so. And so shutters shut and so and also. And also and so and so and also.
Exact resemblance to exact resemblance the exact resemblance as exact as a resemblance, exactly as resembling, exactly resembling, exactly
in resemblance exactly a resemblance, exactly and resemblance. For this is so. Because.
Now actively repeat at all, now actively repeat at all, now actively repeat at all.
Have hold and hear, actively repeat at all.
But I internalized her. This was about the same time I had met a group of other people at San Francisco State University, including some I went to high school with who'd moved up to the bay with me, and we kind of took over a poetry reading at a place called Notes from the Underground at Van Ness and Green— Russian Hill. It was there that I had met Q.R. Hand, Jr. a nearly seventy year old remnant of the post-Bop generation, Keith Savage, a huge homeless man with working-creased hands and a booming voice that told improvisatory tales of his experience as a self-contained laborer. Steve Arnston and his surreal poetry of magical gray-haired Richard Brautigan-esque musings, Craig Easley was a young loving (seeming to me on first impression Black Panther beret-wearing constructionist of confrontation, Steven Kopel, an effete conjurer of short rhyming ditties who supported himself on literary magazine sales, Tulsi Zimmerman, co-owner of the cafe and poet with complete knowledge of seven or more languages and a beautiful Turkish wife named Aysu. Phillip T. Nails, sexual poet, sensualist and generally one to get on my nevers, and a slew of mediocre hanger-oners of variable quality. Later I met Ramu Aki, aging poet who I once hooked up with very high quality LSD. Justin Desmangles— genius tempermental equal parts Gertrude Stein and John Coltrane who also was a DJ on California's first all-Black-owned radio station, KPOO; He alsogave me my first radio exposure; & countless others.
Q.R. was the most amazing to me. Bearded, tall, old and hyper-intelligent. I started working at the cafe eventually and was afforded the time to talk talk talk. He was so intelligent, read and wrote the most incredible poems. He made me feel special because he treated me as an equal, and considering his impressive, staggering talent I began feeling like a real writer. While I am now in the throes of doubt as to my efficacy as an author, at that time I felt so honored to be taken under his wing. One night he offered me some acid, basically offering to trip with me into the night and I now regret not taking him up on the offer. We all know that I'm an acid head, and at this time in my life I was reconfiguring my brain on a weekly to bi-weekly basis, and yet my tension stopped me from taking this step.
Which gets me to this point of wanting to talk about my outsider-ness. We're all outsiders around here, but I've never been able to fit in even with other outsiders. Something is wrong with my head, my perceptions, my communication abilities. I don't know if it's me always building these walls between my self and others, but they seem so high and so strong, and I can never pierce through them. I'm hyper-sensitive. Even people that I consider my friends I feel like have no idea about me, have no desire to spend time with me, are always judging me against templates and archetypes— is it because I'm doing the same thing? Am I doing the same thing? I don't even know.
I judge judge.
As a resemblance to him.
Who comes first. Napoleon the first.
Who comes too coming coming too, who goes there, as they go they share, who shares all, all is as all as as yet or as yet.
Now to date now to date. Now and now and date and the date.
Who came first Napoleon at first. Who came first Napoleon the first. Who came first, Napoleon first.
Presently.
Exactly as they do.
But San Francisco... I lived there from September 1998 to December 2001. And over that time I had developed these seemingly-complex relationships with the literary establishment. By the end of my tenure there I was regularly performing "featured readings" where I would combine my move towards short stories and experimental electronic music combinations, attempting to invent some kind of new oral tradition. And then the notion that it was time to leave San Francisco came to my mind and heart. I still don't entirely know why. After A Final Friday Night in San Francisco and some concluding performances, I left the tender network of interactions and artistic expression for Portland, OR. Now that I am here I haven't quite found a place within the city. I keep trying. I've ofund my self involved more with the local community of everythingians, and through that relationship recently scored the music for Do You Copy? but I've not yet entered the literary community here, which seems transparent, somehow less important than everything that happened to me in San Francisco. I left the Bay Area with my poetry on a few CD releases, the occaisonal literary magazine, and a debt the size of Texas...
I want to move forward. I need to. I graduate from college in two weeks, my aspirations now turn to film and installation art, a trajectory I forsaw in my self long ago. But this path way is wrought with more expenses, the large possibility of failure, and an ever-increasing chance of obscurity. Sometimes I feel that the only way to express that artistic forms I want to arise are to get into video game design, computer animation, or running some kind of public location, a trip zone so-constructed as an ideal place to chill out and just soak up the infinite variations on reality. I see a future where artistic possibilities will meet with technology, in ways we can not yet understand. I don't know what road leads there, and I don't want my next step to be a misstep. I want my choices to set the path stones towards evolving and revolutionizing, to rise above my petty body, my tricky ego, and the conventions of time and space. I need help, but no one seems to want to step in. I am often offered advice that has no place in the full schematic of my reality, only more clearly leading me to understand that something about the way I express my self, and the way I want to manipulate reality interferes with the actuality of what I desire.
At first exactly and first exactly and do they do.
The first exactly.
At first exactly.
First as exactly.
At first as exactly.
Presently.
As presently.
As as presently.
He he he he and he and he and and he and he and he and and as and as he and as he and he. He is and as he is, and as he is and he is, he is
and as he and he and as he is and he and he and and he and he.
Can curls rob can curls quote, quotable.
As presently.
As exactitude.
As trains.
Has trains.
Has trains.
As trains.
As trains.
Presently.
Proportions.
Presently.
As proportions as presently.
I still look to the past for cues, but the epoch-gone ways of then seems so inapplicable now. I feel that every day I am constantly risking obscurity, that my relevance to the time that I am living in is diminishing. That I am falling even more out of touch with the zeitgeist, that perhaps at one time and place I could have changed reality, that I could have made my mark and that has already passed. I felt this way at 18. I felt this way at 20. And now at 22, almost 23 I already feel like a product of some bygone era.
I don't know what's next. I survive on the innovations of music and society mutations; complexity. I need a doorway to open, and know that it is a doorway, a portal, and know that with each step closer to that entry I am taking the right steps. But there are no assurances. I am confused, tired, broke, skinny, and desparate.
The future is now. I cannot put it off any longer.
One.
I land.
Two.
I land.
Three.
The land.
Three.
The land.
Two.
I land.
Two.
I land.
One.
I land.
Two.
I land.
As a so.
They cannot.
A note.
They cannot.
A float.
They cannot.
They dote.
They cannot.
They as denote.
Miracles play.
Play fairly.
Play fairly well.
A well.
As well.
As or as presently.
Let me recite what history teaches. History teaches. Gertrude Stein, "IF I TOLD HIM: A Completed Portrait of Picasso"