Been working, off and on, with
several novels-or-novellas-in-progress...the one that seems to be
picking up steam is INDIGO. These passages concern the character of
Bodie Lewis----think of him as the Robert Cohn character-----not to
compare INDIGO to THE SUN ALSO RISES, but just looking for a
butt-of-all-life's-bad-jokes thumbnail to roll with. Enjoy or
whatever.
I'm not sure I like Bodie. I like him
but I don't.
As the get-together (I'm
loathe to call it a “party”) wears on I hear him in the other
room and he's in a heated discussion with this girl---I don't know
who she is. She'd been having a loud conversation earlier about
pheromones---how you give off a pheromone when you're involved with
someone and people are attracted to you---you can't beat suitors away
with a stick. When you're single, however----and apparently this
relates to the fact that she'd broken up with her boyfriend---you
can't give it away-----nobody's interested. Again, the mystery of
pheromones.
Maybe there's something to all
this jargon, I dunno. It imposes too many tacit rules and
suppositions for my blood. You just need to be careful what you lay
out there in front of Bodie, though, because now he's trying to get
his foot in the door and it's not a pretty tableau.
“You said you can't give
it away, right? I look at you, I look at me, I see two nice people
who should just cut the shit and try being happy, you know? What's
wrong with being happy?”
“I know, but,
y'know.....no.”
“Come on!”
“You're just not my
type, dude, no offense, just, y'know.....that's life! Oh well.”
“ 'Oh well', what
the fuck's that supposed to mean?!”
“That's life, man, you just
move on. S'not a big deal.”
“It's not a big deal for
you, you can just shrug your shoulders and forget about it! I'm stuck
here with this shit forever!”
“Yeah....maybe you are. I
gotta go, dude.....”
Yeah, Bodie, maybe you are.
Eventually we all head down to
the University Computer Lab, shanghai some terminals and fart around
on the net. So we're all sitting at various points in the lab
separate and yet gloriously together. Crazy Ed is in Goth Chat under
a female persona then he cybers with some guy who thinks he's a
16-year-old hottie. He busts the third wall and scares the hell out
of the guy. No one ever hears from him again.
Some guy from a Christian Chat
site comes in and starts preaching at us, haraguing us, telling us we're all evil and going to hell. Why? I don't know-----because we like The Cure or some other nebulous reason. This prompts a mass exodus
to the Christian Chat site where we heckle everybody there. Some cat
calling himself Count Othmar starts calling himself “The Lion of
the Tribe of Shecky”, which is a hoot and a half.
Bodie tries cybering with a
whole slew of girls and they all laugh him off the net. He slams the
table and leaves the lab in disgust, probably to the joy of several
kids who are around waiting to work on their papers or do research.
Life is tough.
The rest of us are there
entirely too long. When we leave the lab it's early morning. The
sun's not up, yet, but the night birds are scaring up one helluva
racket. I'm almost sober again, and that just will not do.
***
Bodie gets up and delivers some
long, pompous, anal-retentive preamble about “intellectual
property”, and how, if you relate something he said it's very
important to tell people, even if all he said was a comment about the
weather, that “Bodie Lewis said that,” that this is just as
important as telling people “Bram Stoker said X” or that “ee
cummings said x”. And by the point where folks are catcalling Bodie
to get on with it we've all been appraised of how important all of
this is to Bodie.
When the poem comes around
it's a lot of rhymey doggerel about feeling one particular woman's
“hot breath” on his neck (which he has never felt, obviously) and
describing the look and feel of her legs (which he has also obviously
never felt or seen)----the mystery woman is never mentioned by name,
but I imagine it's Bessie.
***
“You really like
that one girl, huh?” Says Bodie, and I'm getting a distinctly
creepy, polluted vibe off him.
“Do what, now?” I don't
look up at him, which is a more and more frequent occurrence in my
interactions with Bodie. I can smell him, though, from the doorway.
He smells like jerky, hotdogs, Budweiser, stale BO and stale,
jizzed-in, unwashed underwear.
“That one girl,” he
says. “I don't know her name.”
I choose not to fill in the
blank for him.
“You're a cuck,” he
tells me, a hint of practiced contempt in his voice.
“Do what, now?”
“I'm a MGTOW,” he says,
with what I imagine to be a kind of subdued pride.....I misunderstand
him at first and think he says, “I'm Big Now.”
“Proud of ya,” I offer.
“It means I'm a Man Going
My Own Way,” he elaborates, correcting what I'd initially
inferred. “I don't need women to make me happy. My eyes are open.
I've taken the Red Pill.”
My first comeback to “I
don't need women to make me happy” might be to respond, “Bodie,
how do you know?” But I guess that would be mean.
“You know, that girl you
like, she'll dump you. You know, that's what they do.” He repeats
it, as if he's trying to implore me to listen. “That's what they
do.”
“Nice to see you've got that
figured out,” I shoot back.
“I do,” he says. “I see
it all the time. It's my world. It always will be.”
“I don't doubt you're
right.”
“Yeah,” he says, in a
quieter voice. Whatever's going on in the next room draws him away,
where I imagine he'll tell everyone out there he's big, now, and that
he's taking red pills. He's no longer trying to pry Gayla's name from
me, so....the desired effect.
*********************************************************************************
As of this writing I've got my irons in
a few fires.....first and foremost “The Abbey of the Lemur” is
BACK!!!! This is our first show since 2014 and we're hitting a string
of milestones....
This is the first-ever episode
of the show where we embrace cellphone technology. The centerpiece
for “Lemurs at Monte Ne” (the 15 minute video of our trip to the
ruins at Monte Ne) was all shot on my phone. It's not great video,
by any stretch, but it's one more stab at putting the production and
dissemination of art and culture in the hands of whoever wants to do
it.
It also marks the first
appearance with written sketches of our little friends, the Devil
Goats, since their brief origin in 2014's “The Megalithic
Bamboozler” Beyond that we just padded it about with old stuff.
Have fun.
Past that, expect two more
episodes in 2017....one will be a tribute to late TAOTL cast member
Adam “Dead Guy” Jardine----the other will be related to our 20th
anniversary on the airwaves in Fayetteville. Past that I couldn't
tell ya, but like Joe Strummer said, “the future is unwritten”.
This also marks the very first
episode of “The Abbey of the Lemur” to be uploaded on to YouTube
in its entirety....all thanks to our wonderful providers at FPTV.
You'll need to sign in to YouTube as an adult to watch it, and that's
just what we gotta do. Prior administrations in the city (perhaps
illegally) didn't offer the privilege of being shared online to VDA
shows, so we're happy to let FPTV set up that precaution.
ENJOY!
*********************************************************************************
The SE Apocalypse Krew's
album----tentatively titled “RISE”----is officially in the can!
Yeah----it only took us 30someodd years!
You're gonna have to wait a
little longer for the official release....right now I'm wrangling
with the visual art aspects and then there are other
logistics....but HEY! Lemme know if you're interested in covering
this thing/reviewing or helping to promote it. Who knows? We could
hook you up.
I'll personally tell you Mike
and I are happy as hell with this beast----and it is a beast. 17
songs in 58 minutes and the thing just BLASTS. Mike had been floating
me dailies on the production and even I wasn't ready for the face
removal that is the final product, mixed and everything else. I spent
over a week with it in the car, blasting it up and down the streets
of Fayettenam. At long last, we're the monster I'd always hoped we'd
be.
Heavy metal sprouted from
the blues, originally, and in some respects, even as it's evolved
into sort of a post-rock'n'roll genre, it is, in a lot of ways,
similar to blues. Metal has its indelible conventions and tropes,
just like blues does---its musicians and fans love these tropes and
conventions and are dedicated to their perpetuation and preservation.
Mike and I, in that respect, are
more jazz guys. Push to shove we'd rather hear someone break from the
old tropes and take things in a direction we don't expect, and we
like to do that ourselves. Not that you can't hear our
influences----you'll hear a little Black Sabbath here, a little Black
Flag there----a little Dead Boys here, a little Jimi Hendrix,
there----a little Wes Montgomery here, etc., etc., etc. And yet at
the same time we're our own animal.
Stay tuned.
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