Category Archives: Thought

i want to smash everything…

my god, what a week it’s been. i finished writing my grant proposal for my massive secret art project friday. when i turned it in to the artists trust the very cool heather joy who runs the shop was there to greet me. unfortunately, i hadn’t eaten in a few days and hadn’t really slept in a week so i just smiled, said thank you, flashed ’em as winningly as possible and walked back out sans the application.

as i walked down the street i started crying. exhaustion. emotional and physical. i have never written a grant myself before. it’s sort of… stressful.
what i really wanted
was a drink.

so i called my friend angela who was kind enough to have kissed me thru last friday night’s depression. and we decided to meet at the six arms, home of the cutest bartender in the city. and the ruby ale that i love to drink whenever i go there.

on the way i saw a ‘buy obama!’ sign. wait. sorry. ‘VOTE obama!’ sign.
it was liberally flanked by a couple of ‘ron paul’s.’

i’m not sure why, but this just sort of disgusted me.
i hate the presidential campaigning/office in this country the way that some people deplore the commercialization of X-MAS or the psuedo-pathology that is valentine’s day.
hate it hate it hate it.
generally, i just spew in my head and pray that no one will ask me why i think it’s better to not vote. it can be so difficult to explain what a sham the whole thing is to people who honestly should know better.

one of the more common refrains i hear is, ‘but won’t it better if a democrat wins?’
like it was so cool the last time one of those guys was at the helm of our rudderless waterbucket.
remember how nicely the economy turned up? and people were happier? weren’t they?
unless they were poor and getting thrown off welfare or living in the balkans or wishing for some real sovereignty (nafta? the gatt?).
and i am refering to personal sovereignty, not nation status. come on, you have a philosophy degree; you can, therefore, follow what i am saying.

so i saw those 3 signs: Paul-Obama-Paul
and the first thing i wanted to do was to kick them out of the ground.
just stomp them into oblivion.
but the folks who had placed them were still there.
and they were looking at me funny because i probably looked so hostile.
and i had just stopped myself from attacking their less-than-handy-work.

oh, but i wanted to, though…

i got home the next day (don’t ask, but yes, mother i am still a virgin) and collapsed in front of my trusty laptop all thoughts of the presidency gone from me like monkey shit tossed between the protective bars of the cage of the supra-simian mind (uh. that’s us i’m referring to there). i collapsed i tell you, i co-lapsed. and stared into my laptop to check out digg and metafilter because i am stupid and they are my television.

and i found those wretched videos of hillary and obama.

what the hell was will.i.am on when he thought that his obama video would actually be anything other than pablum? i mean i know that his black eyed band of peas is sub-vile, but did he really have to try and go all wycleff-honest on us? you look stupid in the hat will; take it off. and that speech is not the next i have a dream, is it? shit. maybe it is. literacy levels have been dropping like infant mortality rates in the western hemisphere.

so i did something weird after i watched that obama video: i watched a hillary song and dance routine. i posted them both at the bottom of the whatever technical term applies to these entries. i can’t speak on the hillary piece. it is sublime in it’s ichor. i suppose that all of us who loathed ET for it’s stomach-turning depiction of a world that had only ever inspired feelings of rage and no impotence (practiced miscegenator, here) would notice that there was a form of subcutaneous information sharing happening here. no, no, i really, really can’t speak on that here. it’s just too stoopid, hillary.

on a lighter note i fell in love this past week…

obama will i am video


hillary i am not video

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Patterns In Recognition

incheon airport june 2007

picture, if you can, a large crowd.
all moving. all talking.
all commerce and combustion.

hands touch. mouths move.
colors everywhere all flying.

the policeman wears a gun. he has a purpose. you don’t know what it is in the moment, but you can feel it in its abstraction.

at night. outside the city.
when the lights are gone.
and we face the rim of the galaxy. or so it would seem.
in the sky. at night.
the great crack, the rift.
proof that we have a location, a place.

crowds speak. quietly sometimes.
but murmurs don’t last.
and if one voice rises, even a little bit, another will do the same.
eventually, the murmur will become a hubub and the hubub deafening.
then it will all fall away again.

tonight at the menares airport of marrakech i will be playing chess. american pop music will be playing over the loudspeakers. being american, every song will be known, every melody recognized. eventually a very strange song will emerge. it will be plaintive and also sad. its melody will be elusive. almost recognizable. tracing just out past me. its rhythms dare me to reveal them. it will be decided that this song, barely audible, is unknowable. its melody and rhythm unbreached. i will stop playing chess long enough to pay my respects to its signatures. in awe i will realize that i have been listening to a female newscaster speaking in arabic.

november 22, 2007 marrakech

now i know why i percuss…

on steve arntson.

my friend steve arntson has a new site up:
www.stevenarntson.info

he’s a musician and philosopher and perhaps something of an aetheticist living here in seattle. i rather enjoy his company and that of his wife, an equally talented and lovely lass who goes by the moniker of annemat.

steve has taken on the rather collossal task of defining what makes a proper instrument the proper instrument for you. he has constructed not just some simple compendium of forthright questions whose answering shews one the way towards the proper sonic appendage. he has constructed a system of enlightenment. and it is capable of not just pointing out the rigorous contemplation neccessary to choose the proper sound device, but it may actually be capable of helping a person to not choose an instrument at all.

if only such things were offered at an early age. or in an earlier age. perhaps we could have skipped a few of the world’s more noteworthy pop music failures. or ‘idols’ as the less droll among us would render them.

but enough about me… please go try steve’s system and see if it can make you reconsider that first guitar.

pol mulata

The Metaphorization of Writingprognosis

The End Of All You Know…

well, this is supposed to be my new space for discussing my work and art by others, but i just couldn’t get started in as timely a manner as i wanted. instead, i have been working on a lot of new projects and getting to the blog was just getting impossible.

then i stumbled across a video that i just had to share…

every cultural worker in these united states is aware that we have spanned the globe media-wise far more effectively than our deployments of our governmental concepts. hollywood is what everyone decries as america’s cultural span taints the world, but nobody lashes out at motown.

now i have traveled a lot in my adulthood (ahem) and what i am constantly coming across is the prevalence of kids from all over the world to engorge themselves on american RnB and hiphop. the fashion, the moves, the sound, the sound, the sound.

i used to work with all these cats from cameroon back when i was in school in oklahoma at a lebanese bakery. these guys would blast cameroonian pop all night/’til dawn, and it was cool. and it was the eighties. and it all sounded like afrikaa bambataa and newkleus.

and that shit hasn’t changed.

i was in japan and korea last year for an extended period (and i am ready to go back) and the kids there were all over black america. every store we passed was blasting rap and new millenial soul. all the kids love akon. they breakdance in the streets. and it’s as sexy there as it is here. or at least i want to touch it…

but here’s the video i want to share with you: ‘tell me’ by wonder girls from south korea. if you wanna know about them or their nkotb-style sevengali producer (overused, but apropos) look them up on wikipedia.org.

i find this to be about as deep as it gets. it moves straight to the heart of junk culture. i mean who really remembers the 70s this well? it’s not just the wonder woman show they got down it’s the whole feel of sid and marty kroft, too. just plain disturbing. but i love it. i honestly do.

i can’t tell you why. i don’t really feel it bears mentioning. it’s just aesthetic pleasure for me. i won’t tell you about my dreams, either. why bore anyone with that nonsense?

just enjoy.

hopefully, i’ll start writing about my nonsensical art life soon. i’ve got some pretty fun things planned for this year. i hope we all survive to see their fruition.

take care,
be good,
pol

UPDATE: so i was very mystified as to how well known wonderwoman, the tv show not the comic, was in korea. so i called my friends over there and was immeadiately told: “we love wonderwoman! everybody knows wonderwoman!” they in turn, having already seen my blog post were curious as to how i knew about wondergirls… they could hardly fathom that i would be aware of something so particular to the land of morning calm.

apparently, the wondergirls are about the biggest thing in the world over there. and they have a special dance, too. go on youtube.com and look for it. you’ll know you’ve found it when you start seeing all those videos of old ladies, cops, janiytors, tykes and school kids, rough tough thuggy school kids, with the title ‘woder girls’ on them. people love these ladies and they love their dance. kinda like how everybody had to learn the beat-it moves back when michael was still on top, but not yet the king of pop.

and even more xcitingly are the stories of lolita-branding. these girls really have it cut out for them. a number of different posts bring that American Prurience to the province’s predilection for young cute girl imagery. it’s strange, too. i always assume a degree of cultural relativity can stymie an analysis. as in, just because we lust after little girls in a particularly odious way does that mean that’s what’s going on over there?

i don’t know. i wouldn’t sleep with a 16 year old. but then where i live 16 year olds aren’t that cute. actually, in seattle, hardly anyone is that cute. just another reason to move, move, move. and maybe to korea. the pop music is just as bad, but the booze is cheaper, you can drink it where you want to, and the women are flash. links to some lolita agitation from the ex-patriot press over in old seoul:

http://www.dramabeans.com/2007/11/cultivating-the-lolita-complex/

http://metropolitician.blogs.com/scribblings_of_the_metrop/2007/11/the-wonder-girl.html

Chefchouen and Meknes…

Chouen and Meknes

hyeongssi and i are in a small and wretched affair of a town called chouen or chefchouen.

it’s a few hours from tangiers. feels like being trapped in the food
court of an american mall. all the joints are themed, but hyeong-chan
loves this place so we are here for another day at least…

we’ve got the whole ditch-the-street-hustler thing down, “my wife says no.”

they all seem to think she’s japanese or chinese so there’s a lot of
‘kinichi wa-ing’ and ‘nee hau mas’ following us like the cat calls all you
ladies hear downtown. me, well i am obviously ‘rasta!’ or ‘africaine…’
pretty funny; especially when they accuse me of being paranoid for not
scoring kif or hash or cannabis…

hopefully we’ll leave this wretched tourist trap for meknes tomorrow.
they have famous musical instrument shops there and i want some
specific stuff.

for those who are wondering or were unfortunate enough to see me
before i left and knew how terrified i was of this trip (does she
still like me? will we be able to stand this much time together?) the
answer to that is yes. we are blissing out. a little rough at first,
but now we are like twin pigeons feasting on old pizza on the
waterfront of anytown, usa; the feast never ends!!!

story two:

we are in the imperial and thoroughly chilled out city of Meknes.

this is the place kids.

giant walls of stone made over one thousand years ago by a murderous tyrant named Ismail. streets paved with two thousand year old marble plundered from an ancient roman conquest site. a massive walled courtyard where 15,000 negro slave guards paraded before their king when they weren’t busy slaughtering the unruly tribes of animists who lived in the surrounding mountains. and streets that only a little more than 100 years ago ran with the blood of thieves and political dissidents.

i am home!

yesterday, the erstwhile object of all my recent affections, hyeongssi, and i went wandering through the more impoverished shrines of what barely passes for living in this country. children playing soccer to the sound of wandering mules in streets that are still broken from an earthquake of over 90 years ago. the stench of piss and shit gags
me, but hyeong-chan seems unaffected. she tells me this reminds her of home before her parents got money and the municipality of seoul, korea began to consider the fortune of finding favor in the eyes of its poorer citizens.

people eye us strangely not just because we are obviously moneyed, in
a sense, but because they never see koreans and what the hell am i
with these dreadlocks and that strange woman on my arm?

as i begin to fear the vultures are circling a man runs up from a
broken and smoldering vehicle. he is smiling and covered in grease and
obviously a mechanic. ‘how can i help? where do you go? this is a bad
place for you.’

i explain that i am looking for the gate, bab jdir, and the souk of
the berber instrument makers. he sends us on a better path, out of the
old ghetto and down to a main street. the stench and the poverty make
me reflect on the worse parts of philadelphia and mississippi and
anyone who doesn’t agree should try exploring those cities more.

after more wandering through the dead tyrant’s ancient courts and
boulevards we found our destination: the bab jdir, north western gate
to the medina. and it is amazing. everywhere old men in traditional
attire or three piecers selling instruments, spitting on the ground at
hagglers, grabbing a young hustler by the scruffiest of collars and
hurling him around the corner (‘yalla!’); it is my place and i have
come a long way to get here.

an old guy in a big chunk of wool obviously high out of his mind and
barely able to whisper, but quite capable of growling, shuffling and
depositing desirable objects and i really get into it. for 150 i want
a horn, some extra mouthpieces AND some cymbals, dammit. no way, 200
you stinking tourist; here, smoke some of this and let’s argue some
more. forget it pops, if i were to smoke that crazy mountain shit it
wouldn’t be while i’m arguing about cash and prizes. fine, but still
200 you stupid interloper.

all this occurs in the most ridiculous pigeon stew of french, spanish,
english, arabic (‘bismillah!’) and berber. eventually things get loud
and someone old and grouchy is stuffing my new horn with extra
mouthpieces while a younger guy intervenes and argues with me in pure
french. after much more haggling, a small child getting slapped for reasons i was never able to pry from these grumpy old farts, hyeongssi telling me that i am ‘beautiful language’ every ten minutes or so and snapping candid shots while being asked not to and a lot of kif
smoke clogging my contacts, i have the horn. i have the mouthpieces. i have my amazing obsidian cymbals. all wrapped in newsprint like the fish i used to watch my dad buy from the door to door muslim fish mongers when we lived in akron. muslims, muslims, muslims. i love muslims.

did i ever tell you the one about the muslim, the christian and the
jew who were trying to get into heaven? another time. just stop me on
the street or buy me a cold one and i will happily give you an
american’s rendition of real moroccan storytelling.

i have been taking a lot of photos. i just can’t post from here. or
maybe i can. it’s just too much work to find out. whatever. i will be
seeding them to some online site when i get back or else illustrating
my dormant blog with these same tales that i have been sending you. i
promise that some of these shots will be worth the wait: i have so
many nudes of young dancing boys and voluptuously large old ladies
feeding me couscous by the pea in my ramshackle bed. hey. did anybody
out there know that they finally outlawed pedophilia in this country?
can you imagine how awful the state of american and european letters
(cough.cough.) would be today if they’d done that back in the 20s and
30s? no good burroughs, or bowles or any of the rest of those boy
lovers who made our literature possible.

god bless the King! Mohammed the 5th! A’Salaam!

from Meknes, Imperial City Extraordinaire,
pol rosenthal
‘a jew in the high country…’
p.s. i do not do drugs. really. ask around. i also have not had a
drink in days. i am going crazy without my rum.