Thoughts on the Sunn O))) show at the Brooklyn Masonic Hall on Sep 22nd.

--

I thought I had a grip on what Black Metal and Drone was capable of, and what it meant and all that jazz. After a life time of introverted depression, hate, fear, paranoia, suspicion and self-loathing, I discovered a new depth of darkness in music. And it was incredibly satisfying.

There was the obligatory twenty minute long wait for the Masonic hall full of a thousand people to be shrouded in smoke so thick the sole light became a blood-red star while a recording of chanting monks filled the space with an ominous dread. The stage was invisible behind the billowing smoke so when the band came on at half-past midnight, it was barely visible behind the clouds of vapor.

The music was as punishingly loud as I remembered, maybe more so, since the venue (allegedly) had no sound-restrictions so the band could feel free to play past the 130 decibel limit for live-venues in New York City. Chords resonated and then reverberated in the magnetic cabinets, and then the distortion took over, layering volumes of echo and reverb until the floors were vibrating under my feet, the vibrations ran up my bones until I could feel ever hair on my arm. My ears were plugged with soft rubber and still I felt a shiver of pain crawling down the back of my ear canal.

Maybe I should have stepped back, rather than being within ten, twelve feet of the stage. The New York Times reviewer said he went outside the venue and heard the band as it sounded after passing through the walls, and claimed the music needed open air to breathe, and I can see the point. The last time I saw the band, I said it was terrestrial music, planetary music, but I was wrong, or maybe the band has just expanded in scope and scale since then. It was now galactic music. The music was not just the sound of continents moving, but rather the nuclear chaos of a supernova or the ultimate radioactive madness of a black hole.

The medieval trappings of black robes only made the extraterrestrial nature of the music more vivid, as if we were witness to an extraordinary ritual of stargazing in which the participants were trying to manifest the ultimate darkness of the most brutal natural phenomenon and find in it, some impossible meaning. I would love to hear this music under the open sky in a grassy field. I would love to feel the vibrations as they traveled, not through concrete and wood floor, but through the bedrock of the planet, infused with terrestrial mystery.

Then Atila came out, dressed in a similar robe and intoned with his gravel-voice, a long stream-of-consciousness in English that was incomprehensible due to his accent and delivery, while the hushed, whispered Hungarian and Polish he added in as footnotes only made the performance all the more alien and terrifying.

The whole thing went on for a half hour, maybe more, and then Atila left, replaced by long, solemn, grieving notes from the horn of a trombone that appeared like a moon through the clouds, sonorously wailing as if mourning for a death. The guitars slowed down even more, leaving silence, gaps in the sonic assault. There was a hushed anticipation and then, I realized, the horn was not a farewell, but a herald.

As it vanished back into the smoke, Atila appeared wreathed in glass shards. If the music and texture wasn't enough of a hint of the galactic scale of the music, Atila in his star-man outfit would drive the point home. His hands erupted with red lasers that bounced off of his glass-covered body and head while the intensity of the music grew and his vocal performance become even more tortured and brutal and I couldn't tell if he was self-modulating his voice or if someone was putting his vocal signal through a distortion box.

The performance began to take shape, this wasn't just a concert with mood and texture but rather, an extended storytelling sequence, that needed no words to get the point across. All of Atila's black-metal experience came into sharp focus - his ability to make the ridiculously over-the-top costumes seem authentic and real, his ability to manifest a truly unnerving presence that transcended the music and costumes. This was real. This was terrifying. He wasn't trying to scare me. He was scaring himself. And that feeling was infectious.

It is impossible to see something of this caliber, of this scale, something that works so hard to immerse you into a world of its making and not be moved. Not be inspired. Not be carried away somewhere dark and dangerous and bring back a feeling of that underworld place. I lingered in the deadlands, illuminated by a red star, wreathed in smoke, ruled by hellish drones, and felt a cloak of some rich, black, velvet emotion wrap itself around me and its touch was not comforting, it sent a shiver through my bones but I tugged it tight around myself and was wrapped in a new skin.

By the time the show ended, it was two in the morning. As we left, as I plucked the ear-plugs from my head, the hall was still vibrating with the sound of the performance. Nick looked at me and shook his head. "I can't wait to sit in my car and hear nothing but silence," he said. Exhausted, my head and ears vibrating and ringing painfully, I could only nod in agreement.

Sometimes I catch myself in the act of getting into my car and realize what an act of audacity it is that I can manage to keep climbing back into that metal box that will soon be hurtling at 70 miles an hour down an asphalt road alongside other such metal boxes, all under the control of humans with other things on their mind than keeping safe.

I've had several really bad accidents. Once I slid sideways into a guardrail off of ice with enough force to buckle the rail and leave the car hanging off the edge while shattering the glass. Then there was the time I pulled into traffic without looking left and a huge truck slammed on its air-brakes with enough force to melt its tires to keep from vaporizing me. The worst was the time, I spun out during a snow storm sideways and the car ran up a hillside and slammed into a tree with enough force for the tree to rip open the metal body of the car and embed inside the car about six inches behind my head. I don't know what miracles of physics and math kept me from dying in any of those situations. I still have mild shudders and shocks when I think back to those moments and wonder how I didn't die then.

Today wasn't that bad, by far, but it still made me chuckle. A car was in front and to the left of me on the Grand Central by Laguardia. His tail-pipe was rattling pretty bad and then it just came off. It fell off his car and since traffic on the GCP is ridiculously tight and fast in the mornings, and so there was a car right behind him. I watched with a helpless certainty hoping nothing would happen to me - how could it? I was a lane over and two cars back - but I had nowhere to go, all I could do is slow down a bit to get away from the impending accident, so I did.

The car behind the junker tried to go over the metal but no luck, the metal slid under the tire and there was the sick crunching sound of metal on metal, metal on tire, metal on asphalt and then came went flying out from underneath the car, as if flung with even greater force and speed straight towards me.

Primal instinct made me put up my arm and I tried not to swerve - I'd crash into a car on either side, so I stayed straight and my eyes squeezed shut to the sound of the loud, metal, crunch of the pipe on the window and the door inches from me. And then it was over. Everyone kept driving. The window didn't shatter.

I passed the junker as he pulled over but I was running late so I didn't want to stop. It was some kid, late teens, he looked really scared. At the office, I parked, and looked at the car. Poor thing had a long smear of a bone-white scar just below the window. A foot up, a foot in, and who knows, maybe it would've gone through the window and struck me in the face.

But it didn't. So I worked all day, and shortly, I'll go back downstairs, climb back into the metal box, and drive home.

A few shows I'll be at in the coming weeks that I'd love to see some of you at as well:


- Tuesday, September 22nd: Sunn O))), Earth, Pelican, Eagle Twin @ Brooklyn Masonic Hall
- Thursday, October 29th: Mastodon / Deathlok @ Hammerstein Ballroom
- Tuesday, November 17th: Skinny Puppy @ Nokia

I haven't listened to this album in so long that every song is like a trip back in time, late nights in diners, driving alone through Poughkeepsie in that black, haunted car with the moon-roof open and the songs blaring, the Catskills burning under a twilight sky and the spires of that ever-watchful bridge casting long shadows over Route 9. The familiar streets of Westchester, the only one awake in the car while everyone else slept and I drove home at three, four, five in the morning.

These songs take me back to that time without a pause and I'm twenty, twenty one, twenty two years old, from a life I can barely recall, a time I can barely comprehend. Back then, I thought, life would be magical if only I... something. Something like what I have now. Today, I look back and think, I caught a glimpse of some dark and moving piece of magic in all those adventures.

And maybe the fact is that there is no such thing. Subjectively Times seem more or less than they were and never the here, never the now, never the this. We've been over this, I've said as much, more eloquently before, I think, but then, the last time was different. I didn't have a slim sliver of a shade of mortality staring me in the face. Even now, it isn't anything real, nothing dangerous, just a reminder of appraoching middle-age that brings with it words like "Biopsy" and instructions like "Take this pill every morning before breakfast and this drink before bed every night."

--

In the woods on Sunday, I leaped from rock to tree, jumped over branches and scrambled up rocks, some primal instinct in me kept me going even when my lungs were burning. I stopped, when I could go no further and leaned over panting, sweat dripped off my nose and made a Rorschach pattern on the dead leaves, pitter-patter, salt rain. When Eric and Donna caught up to me, I ran again. I jumped and I ran, and I picked up sticks, dead sticks, broken sticks and I threw them as hard and as far as I could, some went into the twilight sky and I heard them crash into the leaves somewhere far away. Others ran into branches and fell in my sight, their flight aborted. I picked up other sticks, longer and thicker sticks and I broke them on trees, the impact sent a shiver up my arm to my elbow and my hands were numb from the impact. Wood splintered and disintegrated, flew in a hundred directions. Three hours and then I was ready for more, wanted more, wanted to reach the point when the third, fourth, fifth wind would keep me going until I collapsed, depleted of life.

Two days later, my body ached, but it was a good ache, the kind of thing that makes you aware of things done, dirt under your nails, sweat stains on your clothes. Dream of green places full of silence. Full of nothingness. Full of emptiness. Full of a vibrant green absence of light where the trees are so thick, even the grass doesn't grow.

I didn't think I'd make it this far, I didn't want to make it this far, but now that I'm here, I don't want to be anywhere else.

Always thought I'd be done by now. Lights out, chairs turned over table, last one out lock up the place, a fond look back and then that would be it. Instead, thirty has become a look into the future. Doctor's visits don't end with, "I'll see you next year," they end with references and appointments for more test and invasive procedures that you have to go tell your boss about so that you might take a day off, and you apologize, "I didn't know or I wouldn't have taken all my vacation time."

Now the dusty, routine of days rolls by and every attempt to do something more than just sit and relax feels like a chore, and another done instead feels like a wasted hour, a wasted night. I stare at half-written stories and the weekends fall away and the weekend come so soon, and the months vanish in a blur of cool, warm, hot, cool sensations that pass for seasons and the sunlight glares through windows until I cannot bear its darkness, its lightness so I turn on the electric lights, to pollute the sun, make the light all even, so that someone comes home and says, "Where are the lights on?" And I have no answer. Sometimes, rarely now, late at night, I sit trapped in a cocoon, the night is my cloak, I wrap it around me close, the music fills my ears enclosed by headphones, and it is my cloak, I press myself into its folds, cursors blink at me while letters appear, and in that moment, I can pretend there is meaning after all, meaning of my making and it doesn't matter how many ghosts stand looking over my shoulder.

Loneliness creeps in even when I'm surrounded by company and community. An angst that I cannot shake leaves me ever feeling as if I have my face pressed to a frosty glass, forever and ever. Depression comes, depression goes, the number of the psychiatrist sits on my phone, and I stare at it, trying to gather up the guts and just dial the fucking thing and become another statistical element of modern life, a person incapable of dealing with this artificial cage of reality, these jobs, these numbers, these banal routines, these empty rituals, until any meaning is leached and existence becomes so hard to quantify, to dignify, to reason away...

...and another weekend looms. Dates to keep. Smiles to plaster on. Doctors appointments to make. And suffocate the anxiety of the coming procedures, physical, mental and otherwise.

Since so many people commented on my status when I said I was excited about running a Vampire: The Dark Ages game (based on the OWoD) I thought you might enjoy following the short campaign as it goes along.The following is a primer for the game that I wrote up.

( Read more... )

One of the reasons I wrote up all that stuff in the last update was to sort of out myself, and the amount of time I've spent on this game in the last few months. I've been hungry for something more, something substantial, I miss doing projects and completing them, and seeing the end result of work that took me hours, days, weeks to finish.

I really miss making really short, animated films. They were ugly and weird and bad, and I never showed them to anyone, but I enjoyed making them. I also miss writing. And drawing. And music... I force myself to make time for it, but in all my pursuits, this is where I am the weakest and this is what calls to me the most.

But. Anyway.

As you might have noticed (all 3 of you who read this still) I've begun writing again, but I'm on vacation for a few days starting Sunday, so I'll see about updates from the road. Maybe so, maybe no. But the trip is through New England, and every time I go through there, I wind up returning with some idea for a really long, complicated project.

My first trip yielded my first book, for example. I'm hoping to be similarly moved. But I'd also love to return with a small, rough, finished project. I'd love any suggestions you might have - let me know and if I get one I like, and manage to execute it, I'll put it up for everyone to gawk at.

(Also: I've been listening to Black Tape For A Blue Girl all the time lately. Seriously, like... All. The. Time. It's kind of awesome.)

So, here it is. My sordid World of Warcraft history. Skip it if you're not interested. :-)

( Read more... )

I'm tired of this heat, I'm tired of this green, this vibrant blue outside my window. Inside the box of my office, everything is an ugly yellow and I want to hide from it all in a cold, cold place.

Snow falls inside my head, small, tiny flakes, filing up the sky, falling down in spiraling patterns carried by cutting drifts of winds that make any pattern impossible to map. And I imagine, the city, the town, the village, crawling with traffic, busy, hurried people run to shop, filling their carts with food and wine to keep warm by, and I imagine driving home, sitting by the window, in a house full of warmth, full of company, outside it's so gray, even in the late morning, early afternoon, the clouds make it seem like dusk, and we huddle around a table, warm and full, and the candlelight is enough to make it all magical.

One of my favorite memories of my brief time living in the dorms in college was the miserable, heavy, endless snowfall in Rochester. The whole place was coated in snow all the time and I secretly loved walking that half-mile back late at night from the labs, alone, with the wind cutting my ears and the frost collecting on my face. There was a lonely, chilling beauty to that and I can't explain it.

Later, when I lived in my first apartment and drove all over the place along the Hudson Valley, the snow was another companion, a snarling Wendigo beast that threatened to eat me up. Twice, I stumbled into terrible, terrible accidents and survived by some dumb luck. Lonely and alone, I remember the cold, chilling gray of those days and sometimes, I remember little else but the gray.

But now that I have a lovely warmth to embrace me when I get home, I crave to be cold and frozen, coming home, hungry for a human contact that I know will fill me with life.

I feel a deep restlessness, a hungry yearning, a yawning chasm down in my stomach that will not be filled up and images haunt me. Images of apocalypses, chase after me.

Dreams of pale wintry skies where the thinness of the atmosphere is made clear and you can see past the clouds to the cold darkness, as if through the skin of an old and dying man and see the blue veins, the muscles and bone underneath. Visions of broken castles on water's edge, full of broken men and women, black silhouettes under the yellow sky. Nightmares full of this yellow light, this ugly yellow dust that rises from the desert and cloaks everything, there is something insidious, something insect-like in this hideous crawling tension across my skin. The grains of sand flood into my mouth until I choke.

And awake in the apocalypse. There is no fear of nuclear winter in me any longer, nor does the idea of global warming make me quiver. The personal apocalypse is far more terrible. Everything begins and ends with my perceptions and when I feel selfish like I am today, when I feel utterly disconnected, the apocalypse is mine, and mine alone, wrapped up in these nightmares, these recurring images, these chilly winter skies, these lifeless oceanic waters, these broken towers casting long shadow fingers to pull me in, these silhouettes swallowed into their black halos, these caves yawning up into the stars as if to swallow them, these hungry dust storms eroding everything they touch until all features are smoothed away to leave a blank face. Empty city, haunted city, hungry city, compress me within your wet, brick walls, your cobblestone streets, your rainsoaked skies, your cemetery face with a thousand gravestone teeth, grinding me into wet paste so I might stretch over you like skin.

These dreams, these nightmares, these places in my astral-space, these horror-sanctums, these fantasy-endings, they will never leave me, and I will be incomplete without them, but to take a day, an hour, a minute when I do not feel their eyes all on me, beckoning me, cloyingly tugging with their bony fingers, their face disguised by a hood, and I fall back in love with the decay, the gloom, the pain of a bleeding cut that I pick and pick and pick watching the red rise to the surface and somehow, keep the blade from making more cuts, draw new lines in fresh human parchment.

Meet with a colleague at work, and describe the work I am doing now, explain my process, and her eyes light up, she's excited, or maybe she's putting on a show, because all work's a stage, anyway, but who cares, as long as the reaction is a good one. Keep in mind, this is just me talking, no tech-demo, no live data on-hand. Still, it's enough to get this sort of reaction. I walk back to my desk, and there's a thrum of life in me, the spark of some sort of creativity, some work work to do, a few more structure to build into the app but the base classes are all there, the experiment is breathing on the table, it just needs legs to walk around but everyone is impressed already.

Take some joy, some pleasure, some satisfaction in that.

Back home, I lie on the couch, exhausted from the eliptical, the cool air from the window is nice after all the sweat and the shower, eyes closed, the song plays in my head, my song, about a red sky, and the words are too many, I need to trim some away, leave some room for the music, in a waltz-time, dum-dum-dum, the droning chords sound in my head, my fingers fretting the air. Yes. It sounds so good in my head, if only I could reproduce that voice.

Behind me the piano sits, with her ivory keys hiding behind the lid, the book of music open, notes on black lines, Italian words to tell me to play, now Allegro, now Ritard, but my fingers are clumsy and the time signiture might as well be absent.

A month ago, I am sitting by the piano while the woman tunes it, one hand ringing the keys while the other turns the bolt with a wrench, tuning the string, slowly, slowly, bringing it up to pitch, key by key. "You can't sell this anymore, you know, not legally," she says. "This thing was made before the ivory ban."

"What do you mean? The keys?"

"Yes," she tucks her hair behind her ear. "These are real ivory. If you took this out of the country, you'd have to remove the keys. They're illegal, now."

Back here, back now, I get up off the couch, put away the comic I am reading and sit at the bench, comics are all I read anymore, and I lift the cover from the elephant teeth and run my fingers up and down their pale surface. When you press a key on a real piano, you feel the weight of the hammer behind them. What a beautiful instrument, cage for an animal soul, trapped with only me to try to play, climsily, awkwardly. I look at the music, and then, intimidated, I close the book and lower the lid.

Someone taps me on the shoulder and I turn around. I didn't know I was having a party. Anne is standing there, and behind her is the little princess with her redcap guardian, the photographer from the docks, the couple lost in other worlds, the psychic investigator gone undercover, the woman with her tree, all of them stare at me, waiting for me to get back to them, the sacrificial lamb in the pod, the little boy on his way to the necromancer, all of them staring at me wordlessly and only Anne is rude enough to scowl and say something. "Get the fuck back to it," she says, "I don't have all the time in the world to wait for you."

And she's right, of course.

I fret and tweak, a month now, I've been playing this song, these chords, but listening to them today at work, I hate it. Something sounds terrible, something sounds just wrong. Maybe I should play a G there instead. Keep up that bottom-string drone. Yes, that, or something else like it because this sounds like shit.

And I look at that book, that poor book, that I wrote so long ago, I read the first chapter and I cringe, I close the file, I back away, rather than print it, and send it to those who wanted to read it becaue, my god, my god, this is bad. This needs work. It would be embaressing for anyone to see it like this.

And this application? I can't let it out like this, I need to make sure it all compiles in the 3.5  framework and move the databases to the new server. You know. Just in case.

I would like to write more frequently but LJ has been so dead lately and few people, if any, comment or write here anymore. I don't know what other option to use, I've got FB picking up my LJ posts as notes, which I suppose, is handy, but FB doesn't exactly seem to support blogging as a native function, I feel like I'm hacking the social networking thing to do some writing, which wasn't the point.

This makes me feel old, as I sit here wishing to go back to the days when I could blog, instead of trying to compress myself into witty soundbites for status updates and Twitter. (Please note, I suck at witty and soundbites so I fail at Twiter and status updates as a means of communication.)

Maybe this is a general sign to return to actual writing, you know, stories, and shit. I've got the strings of a novel tugging at my head but maybe I should actually get my short fiction in order and begin sending stuff out. I mean really. It's a joke at this point to even talk about it, but I'm not going to write another book over a year just to throw it into a drawer because, fuck, I don't know what to do once I write a book. I already wrote the fucking thing, didn't I? So, yeah, writing a second book for myself doesn't sound like fun.

Anyway. Suggestion would be appreciated! I miss writing.

Such an effort to restart, from the beginning, take up the quill, the lead, the ink, the parchment, the paper, the keystroke, the blank screen and the blinking cursor, all the same, a blank space to fill with words, that pour with less and less urgency so they seem, all the less potent, all the less capable of making an impact, yet we make the effort all the same.

A year's worth of efforts slip away into blank waters, leaving the barest of ripples to show for their existence and the waters are deep and swallow up everything so if you could, you just move forward, you tell yourself, it was a good time while it lasted, and then you move on. So we try, turn the page, blank sheet, start anew.

So we start anew here, with this medium that is dying, and so it becomes even more attractive, a warmth radiates from it, the broken smile of the doomed and the despairing. Perhaps we can keep each other company, him and me, we can sit next to each other and talk in long strings of words each listening to the other, what few friends remain in such circles as these, any more.

Last night, I dreamed of a blue and yellow and red mushroom, though it did not look like a mushroom, it looked like a flower, but I knew it was a mushroom, and it grew, on the back of my right hand, like a tumor, a growth that was lovely if, perhaps poisonous, maybe dangerous, but mine all the same. I walked about with it, nauseated, afraid that someone might see it and be nauseated in turn, I was a party, you see, a grand ball of some sort and dressed finely. The grand surroundings made the fungus on my wrist all the more obvious. Marble columns and crystal chandeliers.

I slipped into a bathroom where a woman was washing her feet, she did not look at me so I rolled up my sleeve and I began to twist the mushroom, to get rid of it before I was discarded from the hall. It was attached to my flesh by means of a single stem, like a flower, and I kept turning it, and turning it, it felt so solid in my hand, exactly like a fungus even if it bloomed into petals, there was nothing delicate about it. My skin spiraled around the stem and I felt a tightness, a sharp pinch, a pain, and then - snap - it came off in my hand, the stem with just a drop of blood to show for the vulgar surgery, and there, on the back of my hand, my skin peeled into a Y-shape, like an autopsy scar in miniature, across the back of my wrist, my hand, it peeled open and blood welled up and twined around my wrist, dripping from the bottom in a steady stream.

If it had grown on the other side of my wrist, I thought, my wound would have opened my wrists. The thought left me cold, and I looked up to see the woman who had been washing her feet was staring at me, her eyes were cold, and I saw for the first time, she wore a red dress and her face was familiar to me.

In my dream, I said her name and she nodded, while I took the peeling skin and tried to close it over my open wound. The blood was too much, there was a cushion of it that kept the skin from clinging to the flesh, I looked up at her helplessly, apologetically.

Above New York, thunder barked and lightning crashed so loud and so close, I awoke, my left hand reached out to cover my wrist as if it were still bleeding, I could feel the pain, the burning of naked flesh with no skin to cover it. Outside my window, lightning painted everything in stark white colors and I sat there, staring at the storm, and at whipping tree branches, waiting for the pain in my wrist to subside from a ghostly wound that left no mark.

We arrived in Edinburgh on Sunday afternoon after taking the subway back to Heathrow for a short flight to Scotland. Our friends met us at the airport (we'd met before back in September/October when they came to NY) and we had fun catching up as Fiona and Heath drove us to their flat.

Along the ride, we learned a few things, like how the Kingdom of Fife across the water from Edinburgh was composed of baby-eaters, and how Irn-Bru (pronounced "Iron Brew") tastes really weird for a soft drink, and how we should expect wet, miserable weather because we were using up our one good, springy, sunshiney day on our first day in Scotland.

We drove around Edinburgh and it is the strangest city I've ever seen. The medieval city layout is completely weird, narrow streets, cobblestones everywhere, original buildings that are hundreds of years old still put to the same use they were built for... it was a very strange experience to drive around a city and save the vehicles and brands on the shops, nothing had changed in centuries.

The night was spent in Fiona's lovely third floor flat, eating some awesome home-made pasta and we chatted away the night before heading to bed. It was good to catch up on rest and sleep after the two days we had just had in London.

Early the next morning, I awoke to Claire knocking on the door. She is another friend, one I hadn't met in person yet, but have known for several months. I don't suppose I made a brilliant first impression as I struggled into pajamas and a sweater and waved hello with a bird's nest of a hairdo but she didn't seem to mind. We sat around, drinking tea and chatting some more before taking turns in the bathroom and getting ready to explore the town.

The day was overcast, but it left the day pleasantly warm and there was no rain. The weather held up for a second day in a row! Heath, Fiona, Claire, Donna and I walked up to what seemed like the middle of town and hopped a bus, circling around the city until we became hungry and went to have some dim-sum for lunch. It was a great meal, Fiona is a regular customer and we were ushered into the basement for a "natives eat here" style meal. Stout dumplings, yummy strips of meat, sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves and sweet and hot sauces - it was a great meal and we all gouged ourselves silly before hopping the bus back up to the castle on top of the city.

The fortress was wonderful, with a commanding view of the countryside and we goofed around up there, taking silly pictures, posing with statues and spending too much time in the weapon's display talking about the most efficient weapon for infantry to use against cavalry amongst the selection at hand. Donna and Fiona backed away from Heath, Claire and I while we pondered the halberds, maces, spears and swords with perhaps a bit too much zeal.

As evening arrived, we left from the castle as it was closing, and returning to the flat, we all crammed into the Fiona Mobile to head to a pub for dinner. Heath introduced me to a wonderful ale (whose name I forgot!) which I enjoyed two pints of before the meal arrived. The pub had once served as a plague hospital and was the epitome of a medieval tavern. Images of D&D campaigns resonated in my head and we had a wonderful meal, with wonderful company in the dim lights. I only wished the fire in the small, ancient metal fireplace had been lit to set the scene.

After many, many shared stories and laughing too hard (which even provoked our neighboring table to lean over and inquire about the snatches of conversation that drifted over to them), it was time to drop Claire off at her home and then we returned to the flat, where Fiona and I stayed up a while sharing ghost stories a bit too late in the night. In a city so old, so haunted, so gray, it seemed appropriate talk.

The next morning was overcast and even a bit rainy. At last - true Scottish weather. We packed lightly for two days and loaded up the Fiona Mobile and then head out into the country. We drove west, through Glasgow heading for the Pagan standing stones on the west coast. As we left Glasgow behind, the weather turned and suddenly, the countryside was sundrenched. Three good days in Scotland = Summer apparently. After passing through lovely countryside, we stopped to see the ancient rocks where we took a few silly pictures and pat their pockmarked faces before returning to the car. Next, we passed through one of the most shocking and beautiful areas I have ever been through.

The Highlands are an amazing place, and Glen Coe is the crown jewel. Mountains and hills rise majestically into crystal blue skies that are streaked with racing clouds. The land makes majestic sweeps towards the slopes and cliffs, deprived of any vegetation, cultivation or architecture, the waves of rock are exposed dramatically. The barrens are broken up only by the occasional tree, clutching at the sky with empty branches, or scattered herds of sheep, miles from the lonely farms that squat among the mountains. The peaks are shrouded in snow, patches of white, and sometimes, when the wind hits them, you can see the snow drifting in an ethereal spray.

All the romance, mystery and drama of Scotland is buried in this place. I was content to simply watch, soaking in the atmosphere. This is where stories are born.

We checked into a small hotel here, the Clachaig Inn, and it was a charming place, mostly used by climbers who are on the many trails around the glen. We spent the night in the pub here, I had my first encounter with Cask Strength Scotch here and my god, it put some hair on my chest. Some more hair, I mean. This was also the night that Heath and I began to bond over Roger and Beavis. Don't ask. It's best not to repeat the things that happened in that pub. I blame whisky and ale.

The next morning, I awoke to an empty bed - Donna had sneaked out in the early dawn light to take in a hike - I was jealous, but after breakfast (during which Donna grew fond of Haggis and I thought it was merely okay) we moved on, driving north and west, further into the highlands, until we left the Glen behind. Nearing the coast itself, we came across Eilean Donan.

This is a small castle on a tiny island offset from the shore and reached by a thin bridge. The whole place is open to a tour and we walked around it, taking it in. This was the first time I got an idea of what living in a medieval castle would be like, as much of it was still furnished. It is a lovely place, faithfully reconstructed from the ruins a hundred years ago and is absolutely picturesque. We spent a long time wandering about the castle before reluctantly returning to the car to drive further north, and west onto the Isle of Skye.

We stayed in the town of Portree - a town you can walk through in ten minutes, which is the largest settlement on the island. Fiona and Heath took a nap in the afternoon (deservedly so after all the driving they had done) and left to our own devices, Donna and I wandered to a local park overlooking the harbor. It was filled with rabbits, teenagers making out in a medieval watchtower and bare, skeletal trees full of huge black crows crowing at the intruders. The sky was a cauldron of dramatic black clouds and the wind was a gale. We stood on the top of the cliff and looked about us at the many small islands rising in tall cliffs with green tops in the harbor that separated us from the mainland while the wind raced across the water and up the cliff, spraying us with salt and brine. To say it was dramatic and ethereal is not enough. Later, we wandered through one of the most gothic graveyard I have seen before returning to the inn - we had dinner plans further north on the island.

If Glen Coe and southern Skye are dramatic, gloomy majesty then the north of Skye is as gloomy and dramatic, but the majesty is replaced by a relentless bleakness. The hills are shorter, squatter, the country flatter, the roads thin and winding only wide enough for one car at a time and the weather is eternally overcast and drizzly. In the distance, one can make out the ocean rolling and crashing across this land that seems like a spit of rock left over after the creation of the world. Scotland truly becomes one of the alpha or omega points here, the beginning or the end of the world where the elements are pure. Very occasionally, we passed ancient buildings, cottages with thatched roof, the only sign other than the roads of human civilization.

Eventually, with an hour or so of light left to us, we came to the Three Chimneys - a very high-profile restaurant and a hotel in the middle of this hopeless, bleak despair. There is literally nothing for miles around, just jagged, broken country and then this, in two converted farm houses. We arrived early and getting out of the car, we experienced another peculiarity of Skye - the wind. With no hills to break it up, the wind rushes at you, coming over the distant ocean and the moors and the wet country with relentless speed. We struggled with it and were seated in the lobby, whose big picture windows looked west over the gray desolation. I could have sat there for days, sipping something to warm my insides and write.

"I'd love to come here again," I said, "And sit in a window like this, and write, and write, and write."

I think, having said that out loud, Fiona might try to arrange exactly that for me. That woman is a menace. When our table was called, I was almost upset. The view was too much. The four of us were seated, and we had a fine meal. I had grown used to European portions of food which are much more reasonable than American, but here the three-course meal had so much food that I almost couldn't finish everything. The ride back across that treacherous winding road in the dark, in whipping rain and winds was a bit nightmarish and I commend madam Fiona on her driving skills and for getting us back to Portree safe and sound.

The next morning - sun again. We were to head back to Edinburgh on this day, Thursday, but first we stopped in at Tallisker. The whisky distillery didn't do much for Donna who almost offended the tour by holding her nose until she puked from the smell, but Heath and I had a fine time, sticking our noses into stills full of fermenting grain. Delicious. I picked up a special reserve and then we began the drive back through even more lovely country, until near the end of the day, we gave Sterling a drive-by before returning to the flat in Edinburgh.
Heath came down with a cold on Friday so Fiona, Donna and I spent the morning in, and then we went out to Roslin Chapel which, while sadly overrun by Dan Brown fans, is also a lovely, beautiful building, with high-gothic architecture and lovely carvings. I spent a few hours in the chapel soaking in the dramatic architecture before we returned to the Old City, where Heath, Claire (who joined us after work), Donna and I went down into the city's catacombs on a haunted tour. It was just the four of us and the guide, so it was a fun little spooky tour, and the guide was good at setting the appropriate mood.

Afterward, we hit up the pub, where I demonstrated my drinking prowess (and Claire demonstrated her lack thereof) before heading for some decent Curry and then back to the flat for continued shots and drinks. Sadly, Claire had to leave at some point and we hugged her good night, not good bye, and Fiona drove her home while Heath, Donna and I talked late into the night about various spooky things.

When Saturday morning came, I found myself dragging my feet; there was an unspoken resentment about the time that had passed so quickly. When Fiona drove us to the airport, I kept hoping for traffic, for rain, for something to slow down our departure. It was too soon. The week had vanished like a puff of smoke. Fiona stayed with us until we got to security when we hugged our adieus with promises to make more plans.

My time in Edinburgh and the Highlands is one of the finest memories I have and I can't thank Heath and Fiona for all their kindness and generosity in arranging for it. The driving, the reservations, the planning - it was all absolutely perfect. I owe them more thanks than I can say. I only hope I can repay with something similar when they come visit the US. Seeing Claire was also wonderful, and I'm happy to know that the people I've been talking to for months are exactly as cool, as friendly, as warm and as charming as they seem over voice and text.

We all took a risk in trusting the other person to be what we thought they were and were rewarded, I hope, with one of the best times of my life. Going on vacation is one thing, cementing friendships like this another thing entirely.

When I close my eyes, I can see Glen Coe, I can see Skye, I can see the mountains and streams and lochs and the standing stones and distant castles. The scent of the Highlands is a ghost that follows me around. I look around expecting a door to take me into Fiona's lovely apartment any minute. When I wake, I want to have tea in the mornings instead of coffee.

I can't wait to go back.

It was bright and sunny today, warmer than yesterday, and we woke up a bit later than we had hoped. After a brisk walk and a couple of subway stops later, we emerged in Whitechapel, hoping to rediscover the haunted footsteps of Jack the Ripper only to discover the neighborhood transformed into a Little India. Well, taking it at face value, we decided to have a curry and then hopped back to Tower Hill and spent much of the day mucking about in the Tower of London.

I'd say it was fun but for the tourists but being one myself, I suppose I can't say that. Still, it was a good amount of history and walking between thick stone walls and walking in rooms a thousand years old was wonderful. The place is remarkably preserved and the Ravens are huge and the Chapel is wonderful and the White Tower is utterly medieval if transformed into a banal museum.

Afterward, we headed to the National Portrait Gallery to take in an exhibition of Gerhard Richter - one of my favorite painters - and then it was the early evening and we stood in like at the TKTS and bought tickets, on a whim, for a gothic-sounding play called "The Woman In Black." Whilst waiting, we took in dinner at a pub and the the play.

It was a fun, little spooky play with two actors (mostly) and very effective at being creepy, atmospheric and fun. I'd never heard of it, but it was like a little visit to October Country and provided a few excellent, Gothic shivers that I enjoyed. It was an unexpected pleasure to see a ghost-story-play when I was merely expecting a diversion for a few hours. What fun!

On our way back, we realized we'd missed a notice about one of the subways being on repair and so we decided to walk to Victoria from  Green Park. It was a long walk, along the gardens of Buckingham Palace and around Victoria Memorial - and despite the chilly night, it turned out to be fun, walking the empty, but beautiful area around the palace late at night.

My impression remains much the same as yesterday, though with the addition that I'm finding myself engaging in much the same behavior as I used to engage in NY when I first moved there, running about with frantic energy to do and see everything and then slowly, it died down. It made me realize that I could enjoy much the same things as I'm doing here in London back in NY if I'd put in a bit of effort.

Still, I do like it here. It's urban, rich with culture, ridiculously expensive, and full of history, mad with manic energy and completely seductive. I'll be back, I'm sure, though tomorrow, we're off to Scotland.

I'll miss it - but I'm excited to see Edinburgh and then, the moors and crags of Scotland. More from the UK next time!

After the last couple of vacations - a lackluster San Francisco, a placid resort - London is fucking awesome.

We arrived last night and immediately plunged into it by taking the subway into the city with our luggage from the airport, rather than taking a taxi. The amount of mobility the city lets you get away with it pretty awesome. It reminds me a lot of NY in that sense - you can get just about anywhere without needing a car. However, the streets are incredibly gnarled, the numbers run up and down with no heed or warning and so when we got to Buckingham after a couple of very easy train swaps, it took us about an hour to find the hotel. That part wasn't fun, but it did prep me for the kind of street-architecture to be found in London.

Streets were deserted as it was after eleven, and most pubs and bars were already shutting down. Weird. So we checked in, got room service and conked out.

Woke up later than we wanted this morning, realized we'd forgotten to pack hair gel and my hair's a complete mess. Blargh. It rained all day, on and off, with no hint of sun at all. But that was cool in a way - it's London, it had better fucking rain.

We walked around Buckingham, Palace Westminster Abbey, House of Parliament/Big Ben, and along the Thames for a while. It was crazy-crowded but Westminster in particular was awesome. My first visit to an *actual* Gothic building with flying buttresses and gargoyles and everything. The gates of the House of Parliament are gorgeous as well. So awesome.

Getting hungry, we hopped the subway towards British Museum. After a pub lunch, we wandered in the museum for a while, gawking at the huge Egyptian collection which took about two hours before deciding we didn't want to spend the entire day in the museum. Too bad - it's huge, it's free, and it's amazing.

So we skipped subways again, and wound up in the West End, where we decided to go see a play and snagged tickets for a well-reviewed production of "A Little Night Music." Waiting for the play, we window-shopped around and found the most amazing little alley way - it was crowded with book shops and print shops and we could've spent days in there, browsing and spending oodles of money but we compromised by buying a single print about 200 years old to add to our collection and then went to dinner at a Lebanese restaurant before going to see the play. It was great fun, even if the play itself wasn't that great. The music was awesome and I really enjoyed myself.

First impressions: I absolutely love and adore London. It has a frantic energy and pace that reminds me of New York, everyone's always moving, and street-walking is very similar to Manhattan in terms of keeping up your pace around people, especially on crowded sidewalks. People are generally a bit more polite, and it's incredibly international, again, like New York. The Subways are clean, quick, efficient and frequent. I didn't wait more than a couple of minutes at any point for transfers. It is a bit complex, but thankfully, we're used to staring at subway maps in NY and figured it out fairly quickly. The streets are generally clean and I felt safe walking around even late at night on empty blocks. The history all around you is incredible, frequently running into walls, houses, businesses and statues hundreds and hundreds of years old is pretty cool for a nerd like me.

However, there are a good number of creepy issues, like the constant security. Everywhere you go, and I mean, everywhere, there are signs indicating security cameras in use. I've heard London called the most paranoid and photographed city and it's true. I've pretty much been on camera ever since I left my hotel. It's kind of creepy and not in a good way at all.

There are also a good number of homeless about, especially in SoHo and West End. The area around Buckingham is kept neat and clean but there are homeless sleeping in doorways even here. The streets are incredibly confusing and I'd hate to drive in this town, the thousand-year old architecture shows its huge weakness in absolutely chaotic street maps. There is a sense of classism and elitism - I don't know, it feels like there are segregated pockets of people who don't mingle as much as they do in NY. Again, just an observation, I could be completely off. Also, this feels a lot like Manhattan - most people don't live in the city itself, as I imagine it'd be incredibly expensive, so they're just working here and then going home, so I'm sure the suburbs around London are nowhere near as exciting, interesting or cool. Speaking of expensive - holy shit am I crying over the exchange rate. Stuff costs about as much as it does in NY, but in pounds, so I'm paying that plus the exchange rate. Ugh.

Phew! I'm exhausted and more than ready for bed. But that's how I know I'm on vacation - when I'm more tired than I am at home on a normal day. :-) No more resort vacations for me!!

We're here for one more day and then we're off to Edinburgh for a couple of days, and then a road-trip to the Isle of Skye. Whee. I'll write more as I get the chance!

Tomorrow: Tower of London, National Gallery (Gerhard Richter exhibit!), and maybe another play - possibly at the reconstructed Globe?

I used to have so much to say, words would just flow out of me, but now, I struggle to find anything worth saying, at least here. In other places, other times, the words come, but privacy compels me to silence, when once, I aired every embarrassing detail of my life, and laid it bare, for all to see. Perhaps it's for the best, to retreat behind walls, early middle-age beckons with a practical hand, never know who might read this, after all, no reason to say things you might regret.

So, the words slow behind the veil of censorship, ethereal voices dim, celestial light fades, all the exotic mystery leaches out into cold vacuum and we're left on practical, solid ground full of dull facts lacking all poetry. And here, what can I tell you? What do I have to say? Nothing so pressing that it would change things, but something so beautiful that it's bursting out of me.

Last night, this morning, I listened to old music, old music that immediately makes it seem like a rainy day, a drizzly day, a day in the bleak rain under a sky of clouds.

It doesn't thunder here like it used to, when I was little, watching the Monsoon skies, lightning doesn't fill up the heavens in jagged lines anymore, and you can no longer sit on the veranda and watch it rain and rain and rain all day long, a warm rain, a rain you can walk in, even if it pounds your skin, but you're too little to go out into it yet, that would come later, years later, for now, you were caged in the veranda and watched the rain out there, apart from you, watched it fall and soak into the dirt until the dirt turned to red mud and ran down the hill, in the gutter along the road, while the purple and blue flowers sagged under the wet assault.

It rained like that in New Orleans, gutters overflowing, cities drowning. There was piano in the empty restaurant, there was my new wife across the table from me, there was the cook serving us after the restaurant had closed, there was the lazy afternoon, and we ate alone, all alone in the restaurant. The rain was like those monsoons behind the plateglass window, and no-one was in the streets. Old buildings stared from behind shuttered portals, and I looked at the city, a city I loved, a woman I loved, and said, "One day, you will drown."

And then, she did. I remember that day too, though it didn't rain in Cape Cod, we walked along New England beaches and I thought about her, drowning in the rain, her face pressed into deep waters, still waters.

It all came back to the rain for me, a cycle of water, it must have rained when I was born, it rained while I sat in that veranda, clutching the lattice, under black skies, under lightning skies, it rained when I walked under the Banyan trees, soaked to the skin in warm waters, terrified of the stories that lightning loved the eldest sons, every time, I looked up and let the gray light pour into my eyes. Red mud ran down the street, pooled around my feet and the dim light filled me up.

Later, years later, I used to dream of being just another raindrop falling from a great height, falling faster than the other drops, falling among cliffs, falling in the mist, falling into a deep, dark green valley, falling with my arms spread apart, I was no longer a raindrop, I was me, and I was falling, but I felt no fear, I was a part of the rain, even if unlike the water, when I reached the ground, I would splash red, the idea didn't repel me.

This will happen one day, I said, and closed my eyes, and listened to the rush of wind as I fell and fell and fell.

So. Last night, this morning. It was raining in my head. Pianos played, roughly recorded, drums echoes off of stifling walls, strings were plucked and the sound dragged me back to my black car, my car that gave its life to save mine, up into the Valley full of ghosts, ghosts that I can't bear to look at any more, and outside the window, it started to rain, and I went to sleep.

This morning, I woke up in bed and to the hiss of rain, and I reached out for a hand and found only the cold. I had overslept. Donna was gone. I opened my eyes and the music was still in my head, and I wondered if it had reached out to the clouds, called them over this city, another place, another dream, another thing, another person, another place that I love, to drown, to press more beautiful faces into the water.

One day, it will have me, too. The thought brings me comfort, but I think, not today. Not yet.

A man once said, "You're not your fucking job." I tried very hard to believe him, I wanted to, very badly, but I never quite found the thread he was weaving and I wound up simply appreciating the sentiment from a distance rather than really living it.

Where do you go from there, when you give up on your job as means to an economic end? Where do you find meaning, where do you find yourself? In the woods, on misty mountain tops, in words, or in music, in family or in friends, in faith or in community... or something else entirely.

There is a music permeating all of my life, and I hope yours as well, it's the sound of some resonance, dim and distant, some alchemical catalyst gestated from my DNA, your DNA, at the moment of conception, at the moment of the most miraculous conjunction of biology and mathematics that makes up who we are, in that random, meaningless miracle, in that quintessence of an instant, within that molecule, that cell, that atom of creation, the music forms.

A function whose resolution is our life, enough variables to keep things interesting, chasing that music, but do we hear it? Do I hear it, chase it, or is it a dream, a fantasy sound made up in my head, chasing sun spots across the grassy while the day slips by behind the tree tops and I never get to see the sun itself, it was here all along while I was trying to scoop up the intangible, the smokey unreal phantasms.

At night, I can almost hear the music, from the next room, or the room past that, and I creep towards it, terrified of the shapeless lumps in the dark, furniture turned into monsters, nightlights glowing like secret hellfire, I step slowly, arousing no attention from the threats crouching in the unlit corners, I peek around the doors, I slide into the shadows, and eventually, I wind up where I started and the music seems to have just passed in front of me, into the next room, the room I started looking in, and I will give up, give in, turn on the lights, flare the room with bright incandescence and ... there is nothing there at all. All of the mystery has burned out in the light, all of the subtle shadowy sublime secrectiveness is gone and there is only dull, concrete reality left behind.

Leave the lights out.

Revel in the velvet shadows, sit in the glow of the hellfire, a glass of red wine to dull the senses and then, and then the music begins to swell, give up looking for it and find something else, find other music, find other words than in the song and then it'll come, desperate for attention, and then, in that moment of distraction for both you and that primal sound, you might surprise each other, come face to face for a moment.

And maybe, just maybe, you'll scoop up that mote of sunlight and feel its warmth glowing in the palm of your hand, if only for a moment, and feel as alive as the sun once made you feel before it grew dull and familiar, the disc in the sky.

Of course, the moment won't last, and the sound will dissolve, dissipate into the luscious darkness, shocked into dust, blowing away before you can reach out to touch it, so the seduction begins again, all over again.

No, you're not your fucking job. But you are alive. And the world is alive, with mystery, with shadow, with an ancient, immortal, and ultimately hollow, but sublime darkness that is just waiting to be the cloak that shelters you through the cold, brutal days of winter that descent over the years as time wears on, and you can no longer remember what year something happened.

My days are lost in dreams.

Days float by the window in a gray mist and I barely notice. Things come out of shadows, pluck my sleeve and whisper in a dusty voice and I kick them away, scatter them back to their catacombs on misshapen limbs and deformed bodies. I argue with myself, scold and cajole, but then the days are already done and I've nothing to show for them.

But then, I wonder, how many of us do? My guitar looks back at me, mute, one eye, one hole in the middle of a black body, a shadowspot of an iris, tracking me through the day as the sun moves. Words come out, inadequate words, meaningless words, enough words to drown in if they had any potency, instead they're a misting rain that falls forever making no impact at all, it will all be gone by sunrise, burned away from the grass in the first dawning light so no one will even know that it rained.

Music fills my ears, from someone else, from somewhere else, and I listen, and I listen, and I listen but I have nothing to reply with, and the conversation is so one sided that I know this relationship won't last unless I find something to say back. But will these notes be like my words, inept, thin, and translucent?  Vacant and void, the days stumble over each other. January snow turns to February rain. Soon, March winds will rip the last of Winter from the sky, soon, April sun will warm into Spring. All of it outside of my window.

I have yearned for so long, the hunger has become a dull, familiar ache in my stomach, a void that has never filled, so now it has given up any expectation of fulfillment and the dull ache is just another familiar body event. The trick is, I don't even know how to fulfill this yearning. What could fill it? What might take away this desperate groping for something substantial enough to sustain this insatiable hunger?

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

Whilst on leave from mundane reality, I lost myself in a difficult book I'd tried to read before but never managed to get past the first hundred pages. It's called The Name of the Rose by the Italian Umberto Eco. The book is somewhat famous in certain circles and its resistance to my scrutiny made me determined this time, to conquer it at last. So I came to it with girded patience and dove into the thick material.

A monk, William, famous for his reason and his young apprentice arrive at a remote but famous monastary famous for its collection of books - a beacon of light in a dark age - where death lingers, waiting for Willing to dispel the gloom and point out the sinner. But as the book continues, the body count accelerates and no killer arrives on scene...

The book brims with debates, on the nature of Christian behavior, on worldliness (or materialism, to simplify things), on order or lack thereof, on the divinity (or not) of poverty, and many other things, among which most prominently featured, is a debate on the worth of humor. The book punctuates this in places with pointed and sarcastic humor that illuminates the dark and academic passages with levity.

Academic, because the book is the work of an academic - Eco is a renowned member of the Ivory Tower and his vast breath of knowledge is evident in the text. He easily talks about complicated philosophical, theological, historical and political concepts in ways that expose them to a reader across a gap of seven hundred years. Indeed even mathematical reasoning makes its way into the mystery, as the book exposes ancient means of the cipher and geometric reasoning.

Eco provides a veritable treasury within the book, casting out names of books and authors of the medieval age off hand as references in number great enough to provide reading for a lifetime.

Soon, the dense history and confusing swirl of Latin, old Italian Catholic orders (Heretic or not) and political discourses, the confounding and unanswered questions of Philosophy parted. At last, I caught a glimpse of the story, and indeed, the mystery. And there is where the book succeeds. While it talks about all the other matters (mentioned above in brief) it also deals with the conspiracy in an active manner, inviting the reader to reason along with William.

Along with these technical issues, the book brims with shadows. The murders begin to glow with hellfire as hints of the Anti-Christ are claimed by the monks and the Inquisition hunts just beyond the abbey walls. Atmospheric and ethereal in places, it manages to be all things and none of them, rising above the various genres it apes.

This is a dark, rich book. It is a wine too soon taken from the bottle - tart, complex, and unpleasant at first but rewarding when allowed to sit and breathe in the open air of one's imagination.

It will live with me for a long, long time.

By comparison, the film adaptation - which I saw many years ago - is a blurry shadow of the experience.