By The Dream Power of The Truth Beast

he was always into music, y'know, always loved singing, dancing....

Tonight I came across a trailer for the new documentary film 'Alive Inside'. If you have a pulse, a love of music and a lust for life, you might find the subject matter meaningful. In a sense, it is a film about music. But it is much more than that. It is also a film studying the effects of music therapy on the elderly, particularly those living in nursing homes and suffering degenerative diseases.

If this sounds depressing and uncool to you, I suppose keep moving, for there probably isn't anything in today's post for you to know right now. Admittedly, Alzheimer's, dementia and in-patient care for the elderly are hard subjects to engage with. But if you have a genuine love of music and even the slightest interest in human neuroscience, then you might find the above video clip interesting. It is about as real and big and small and mighty and humbling and beautiful and sad and triumphant as life gets. It is also funny and sweet and profoundly weird.

When the elderly in-patient Henry is asked about the music he's been given, his eyeballs become very big and flash with such life and inner vision. Wigglin' around, movin' his arms, singin' tunes... The transformation is stunning. Corny as it might be to say this, it breaks my heart with such joy. Truly, it is just exciting to see the man get so excited.

The first time I watched his response, I cried like only a grown person can cry. I cried from deep down in my everything. I cried with the full weight of my years and all the history that comes with it. Due to a combination of time, circumstance and disposition I am a terribly hard person. This is a fact I'm not at all proud of. Which means I cry the way a hardened person cries— usually alone and for much longer than even I can believe. It takes an awful lot to get me there, but when it happens...it happens for a while. Why?

Probably because there are more than a few things I'll not ever fully reconcile. Despite my sense of optimism and wonder, my ghosts and regrets still live with, in and all around me. But that's life. After a while you learn to take the good with the bad and get on with the living as best you can...that is until something unexpected reminds you of how fragile, fleeting and strange it all is to be anything at all. Tonight, Henry's love of music sent me right over the edge.

When he says, "You've got beautiful music here," I felt like all of life's momentary triumphs and monumental absurdities came sharply into focus.

Despite the complexity of his circumstance, simply hearing his favorite tunes caused him to awaken from a decade-long fog and make profound statements on the nature of existence and importance of music's role within it. Maybe not to others, but to me this is amazing. His response is just such a wonderful, heartwarming, sad, happy, complicated, beautiful thing to behold. I love it. I really do.

He's right, we do have beautiful music here. No other place in the universe has given us Steven Reich's Drumming or Bo Diddley's Black Gladiator. Earth made those people, and those people's music helps me make it through a day, a year, a lifetime. Does that sound silly? Maybe it is. But I don't feel silly about it. Quite the contrary, I feel psyched.

Any time I hear the Bad Brains' "Rock For Light," Talk Talk's "New Grass," Prefab Sprout's "Lions In My Own Garden" and "Elegance," El Perro Del Mar's "Change of Heart," Aaron Copeland's "Clarinet Concerto," (or even Juno's "We Slept In Rented Rooms"), I suddenly find the entire arc of my life and personal history come into view. Why? I really don't know why, it just happens that way.

Without having any scientific explanation for it, I just feel like those songs (and thousands more) simply resonate with me on a biological level. The words and melodies somehow unlock a mental door to people, places, ideas, loves, deaths, tragedies, good times and regrets that I simply cannot contend with in any other day-to-day way. Listening to certain favorite songs and continuing to record new music helps me get on with the living. That neuroscience is now discovering there might be health and memory retention benefits to music that we had heretofore not considered is incredibly positive news and bodes well for the future.

Anyway, if you have friends or family suffering Alzheimer's or dementia, you might wanna whip up a playlist for that person ASAP. It could make a world of difference or at the very least brighten the corners of their minds.

To learn more about the 'Alive Inside' documentary and the neurological effects of music on in-patients living with Alzheimer's and dementia, here's a recent Washington Post article with links to more information.

Good night.

Strength & love,

A

Walking through doorways causes forgetting, new research shows // News // Notre Dame News // University of Notre Dame

Walking through doorways causes forgetting, new research shows // News // Notre Dame News // University of Notre Dame.

I just came across the above-short Notre Dame article. Kooky as it sounds upon first glance, it actually marks a fascinating discovery. Definitely well worth the three-minute read. That said, however, I really have no clear idea what it means, (which is exactly what's so exciting about it!).

If we can figure out how to harness the mental change of state/event horizon that occurs as we pass through doorways... we may eventually be able to collapse all space and time with our minds. Which is to say worms-holes and time-machines are perhaps not just the far-off pipe dreams of stoners and dystopian sci-fi writers.

The universe is made of atoms. We're made of atoms. From the biggest to the smallest things that ever were, are, or will ever be... we're all made of the same basic stuff. So I see no reason why we can't some day travel across all space and time as fast as any atom. It is less about figuring out how to get 'from here to there,' and more about being 'everywhere at once'.

Think about life. Not just for what it is, but for what it can be going forward. The practical application of string theory is potentially already within us.

without love where would you be now?

 

the bullshit piled up so fast... you needed wings to stay above it....

A few weeks ago NASA's JPL Laboratory had its annual open house.

A self-contained city of several thousand researchers and auxilary personnel, everyone working on weirdness far beyond my feeble powers of comprehension. While we're schlepping our asses back and forth to the corner store for packs of whatever, just 12-miles from Echo Park, those folks are building robots to crawl across the face of Mars. 

Robots, nantubes, satellites, rovers, spacecrafts, rockets, lasers...

...gamma rays, solar winds, meteoric dust, chemical gases, orbiters, telescopes, isotopes, etc...

I walked through the buildings and watched the films, smiling all the while. Truly, you've never seen such a clueless boob so utterly entranced. I stared blankly as robots meticulously moved across barren landscapes a billion miles away. I pondered ice crystals harvested from distant moons.

The day presented a whole other realm of possibilities, rewards and realities. Not merely in esoteric or conceptual ways, but in real and tangible ways. I came away feeling awed and refreshed. The notion that all those fabulous nerds spend their days on campus exploring the boundaries of places and things most of us can't even begin to understand, it just touched my heart in a really nice way. It gave me a newfound appreciation for their efforts and passions.

The facility moves to the pulse of its own mysterious mechanics, the thrum of its own internal concerns. Its own conundrums, its own failures. Its own solutions and jubilations. It is a place tasked with the job of forever looking outward, which is rather inspiring.

No tube amps. No dirty socks. No Echoplex. No Brite Spot brownies. No Arby's horsey sauce. No used car lots. No bungee jumping. No bad memories. false horizons. No sensitive gums or half-assed bridge work. No vegan cookies. No Apples-to-Apples. No neighborhood watch. No iPod nano. No Burberry. No bums. No bullshit DirecTV ads. No zines. No Medicare Debate. No Curves diet plans. No dance parties of the damned. No rye, no ham. No Coke in cans. None of that crap. Just stars and planets. Just darkness and light. Just solar flares and moons made of ice.

"Do you know why you can never step into the same river twice?" —Roxanne

"Yeah, 'cause it's always moving." —Willard 

"All that matters is that you are alive. You are alive, Captain. That's the truth." —Roxanne, ANR

 

Late on a Saturday night there's really nothing like the incomprehensible vastness of all space and time to put things in perspective. That, and Joseph Conrad by way of Francis Ford Coppolla. Halfway to enlightenment, halfway to the horror.

The next time you gaze up at the moon, maybe give it a good look. The arc of its existence is so long. Trace its edges, consider its craters.

This 'being alive' thing we do, really it makes so little sense. Your life is the life of the universe, if only for a little while.

Thanks JPL, Tammy, Luis, Karina, Kevin, and Phil.

Good night,

-A

 

a great place to live if you're an orange...

Divine math. The golden ratio. Inspired geometry.

Gnar-bros and bowl trolls schralped the Vans/Pro-Tec Pool Party in Orange, California this past Saturday. Sixteen-year old Pedro Barros won the Pro division with speed lines and huge airs on the hips and corner pockets. *[note the above frame]. The kid deserved it.

Per usual, Chris Miller destroyed everyone and took home his sixth Masters win. It is a joy to watch such a nice person blow so many minds year after year. Even in his mid-40s, Chris is still the perfect bowl skater. Unfortunately I didn't get any shots of him, I was too busy screaming and clapping like a child.

However, I did get a blurry shot of this huevos rancheros beauty pile at Anepalco's Mexican-Parisian Cafe:

I honestly believe it might be the best, most delicious plate of food in all of Orange County. Truly.

Hi Salman, good to see you. We pizza soon.

Rune Glifberg. So incredibly good.

Hi Phewwwwwl, congratulations on the office. Have fun in Spain.

 

 

 

thee victorian pizza parlour...

 

Very excited to finally blast about this on der trufths beasthsss brrrog!

A couple of months ago, with just $72 clams in her props budget and a bunch of crazy crap from the garage, Tammy transformed my tiny rehearsal space into a beautiful Ye Olde Victorian Parlour. We did it for a video project with our friends director Michael Reich, engineer Butchy Fuego and the electronic artist Alfred Darlington (a/k/a Daedelus).

Alfred's improvised tracks sound wonderful and the footage looks like something out of a Disney horror. Total spooksville macabre-vibes. It was tremendous fun and a helluva lot of work. 

Corny as this might sound, I'm genuinely thankful for having had the opportunity to do this. Everyone involved was really nice, talented and funny. We ate pizza while Daedelus changed in and out of marvelously tailored Victorian attire. Butchy wore a yellow plastic coat and a sideways hat emblazoned in a tropical motif. Michael Reich blasted the room with spectral projections and fake fog. DP Jeff Peters blew minds with his choice of lighting and filter techniques. Tammy stayed really, really calm... especially when lighting flowers and fluffing candles. I shot too many photos. We all sweated like barn hogs.

Basically, the work turned out great and we had a wonderful time making it. Which really is all one can ask of such an odd thing to do. Above is the first of three videos from the project. Numbers 2 and 3 to follow soon. To goggle your eyeballs at the Flickr photos, maybe go here. I sincerely hope you enjoy this weirdness. 

—Arlzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 

 

recent english...

Glanz & Gloria 2... sonic warfare, sweaty iPads, etc....

 

My Dutch friend Appel just blasted over this video of his friends in Germany.

Drummer slammin' out half-crazy disco beats + the energetic hands of a head bobbin' iPad toucher + warbly bloops n' bleeps + ear splitting volume = sketchy sonic shredding (a/k/a, The Future).

Dieses ist wunderbar.

Oh, the Internets, ssssssigh...so fun.

Thanks Appel.

unrelenting elation...

So it turns out Tam and I picked up a nasty case of poison oak while on that camping & hiking trip over the 4th of July weekend. Took ten days for the poison oak's oil to work its way through our immune systems. But boy, when it did—WOW! Just about an hour before boarding a flight to Chicago we both began experiencing painful pain beyond measure. Like, incomprehensible pain. And blisters. Enormous blisters.... that soon became open weeping sores.

 

Before boarding the flight we pounded a pile of benadryl in an entirely pointless effort to STOP THE ITCH. Didn't help. So we rubbed pink goo on our screaming limbs. Didn't help. Upon landing we rushed through our walk-thru of the events grounds and then hauled ass to an urgent care facility on Michigan Avenue. Five hours of paperwork, poking, prodding, speculating, and swabbing. This only sorta helped. The doctor determined us to be suffering a systemic reaction to poison oak. The oil is coursing through our blood, hair, teeth, skin, eyeballs, and central nervous systems. What to do? Well, he gave us a mountain of Prednisol steroids and antibiotics. Side effects? Sure. Several.

Heart palpitations, lethargy, blurred vision, nausea, cotton mouth, euphoria, excessive sweating, joint pain, drowsiness, insomnia, sensory hallucinations, chills, fever, hot flashes, swelling and... itching. Oh the itching.

But a kind of itching you cannot fathom until you've experienced it first hand. An itch so deep and so existential you begin to think the core of it can only be reached via the spirit world. A ghostly itch. A phantom itch, ever-present but always just out of reach. Fingers futilely clawing, clawing, clawing....

For the next five days we worked on an event production in the sweltering 90-degree Chicago heat. Fourteen-hour days. Pants saturated in sweat, blood, pus, and dirt. Scabs scabbing, pus running, legs bloating to the point of cankles. Talking like crazy people. Walking around like dazed crackheads. Telling anyone within ear shot to ignore everything we said and all of what we did. Guzzling gallon-jugs of water but somehow never pissing.

Exhausted, we returned home each night to cold baths of baking soda and white vinegar... chased by ample helpings of hydrogen peroxide, rubbing alcohol, ibuprofen and hydrocortizone cream. Such mess. Such itching. Such surprise! Such sadness and bewilderment.

 

Soon as we got back to Los Angeles we went to our doctor. Kolleen, unable to hide her shock at the expansiveness of our wounds, sternly pronounced, "If this doesn't at least get a bit better by next Monday, I may put the two of you in the hospital. You're at serious risk of contracting secondary bacterial infections. No smoking, no new vitamin supplements, no sugar, and no caffeine. If Strep takes hold in those wounds you're gonna be in for a much longer and much more painful recovery process."

Right. Flesh-eating Strep. Unfortunately, I had it years ago while living up at Whistler BC for a summer. Not fun. The only thing that got rid of it that time was a week in hospital.

I'd been wearing a Rector pad to "protect" an open wound on my left elbow. We were coaching shredders at a summer camp. Daily pummeling ourselves at the town's public skate park and in the icy salt-filled half-pipes up on the Horseman Glacier. Sun, sweat, bacteria and a dirty elbow pad created the optimal environment for the flesh eating Strep to overwhelm the arm and lugubriously slug its way to my heart. An unbroken red razor line running from wrist to left breast. Raised and hot to the touch. Neck flush with hives and fever. Lymph nodes hard as walnuts. The forearm reduced to a mass of white blisters and raw pink meat.

I was young and just about as dumb then as I am now. It was only when Danny Sullivan took a spiral fracture to his ankle and I drove him to the emergency room that I sort of nonchalantly asked the admitting doctor what he thought of the red streak running up my arm. He asked me to take off my shirt. After examining my everything, he said, "You're toast, and if you're not—you soon will be."

To which I said, "What does that mean, I'm toast?"

He replied, "You're going to die. See that red streak? If it hits your heart, your heart will be infected with bacteria and you will likely die. Die, got it? Toast. We need to admit you to ICU immediately. Kid, I'm not joking with you, so you can get that smirk off your face. We may already be too late."

Being on the young side and extremely Canadian, the doctor could hardly conceal his disgust and annoyance. Fair enough. While I took the doctor's words quite seriously, it wasn't the first time I'd nearly been killed by a situation so avoidable and so entirely my fault. It also wasn't the first time that some inconceivable twist of fate had intervened to keep me from death's door. For that is exactly where I was. The luck of it was not lost on me. Had Danny not broken that ankle and had I not immediately driven him to the hospital I'd in all likelihood not be typing these words now.

Sure enough. 

For seven days & nights the hospital pumped two IVs of antibiotics and one IV of saline solution into my body around the clock. Upon discharge, I had two months of oral antibiotics and made frequent visits to a monitoring physician. In every way it was pretty much a total drag. All these years later, if I look closely I can still see the discoloration and scaring along my left forearm and elbow. And in my mind's eye I can clearly recall the white blisters. 

So, basically, long story longer... I'll do whatever it takes to not go through that again.

Oddly enough, the poison oak found along California's central coast is somehow more burly than elsewhere. And by burly I mean toxic enough to occasionally kill people. Particularly if burned. The smoke blisters the lungs and can cause one to go into anaphylactic shock.

Perhaps not so oddly, the State Parks don't do much in the way of alerting folks to just how prevalent poison oak is in the region. Far fewer people would probably bring their families to camp and hike in these coastal areas if they knew killer poison oak was to be found along every trail and road side and in every field, stream and riverbed. IT IS ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE.

Scrub brush, brambles, vines, roots, trees, and even fibers daintily floating on the wind. If you like camping, just remember these words: "Leaves of Three, Let it Be." Corny, sure. But it just might save you the agony of the all-consuming itch. 

If the oil touches you, and if it works its way into your blood... it'll cause the rash to break out all over your body. The rash and blisters are your body's attempt to push the toxin to the surface and out of the body. If you get it on your clothes or your finger tips, everything you touch or rub up against will be left with a residue of poison oak oil. Essentially, this means you're just completely screwed for a good long while.

I knew we'd really descended into a situational hell hole at the moment I realized the rash was beginning to break out on my throat, cheek and eyelid. I awoke feeling the swelling sealing my left eye and burning a hole through my right cheek. It is one thing to have weeping sores on your legs, thighs, balls, wrists, arms and fingers. But it is entirely another to have a massive lesion sealing your eyelid shut. That's when the fear and misery really sets in and death starts to seem like a plausible option. No matter how badly you want to, you cannot itch that eyelid. You mustn't. Bad idea. The worst idea.

Until the day you've had a systemic reaction to poison oak, it is real funny to make fun of the poor bastards who get it. Once you've had it, however, you'll never laugh about it again. It is a truly monstrous plant.

Tammy and I have been at home trying to lay low, sleeping as much as possible, and generally only going out at night for errands and a bit of food. In addition to Prednisone we're now on sulfa drugs which cause a negative reaction with sunlight. Nausea and vomiting. So there's that. Neither of us is fairing too well as it is, so we've been pretty content to stay inside. She's been so sad and in such pain, it breaks my heart to see her this way.

My birthday was on Thursday, July 22nd. Memorable? Sure. I spent most of it on the couch in my underwear and a mangled v-neck t-shirt, scratching bleeding sores, bidding on an ebay guitar, and cracking endless jokes of exasperation with Tammy. That is, until we just couldn't take it any more.

So we gingerly put on some loose fitting clothes and drove over to Joe Donnelly's launch party for SLAKE at Track 16 in Santa Monica. It was nice to be there for a second, saying hi and lending support. Pretty soon though we had to get the fuck outta there. Nothing feels quite so lame as wearing excessive clothing to conceal your open sores, scratching like a maniac, and self consciously detailing your ongoing experience with poison oak to every angel and asshole you come across.

One week down, three more to go.

free refills...

So dumb/amazing/terrifying.