The Residents Are Deadheads!

No. No, they aren't. But there are rumors to that effect... Back in the day, I did in fact have a Deadhead friend try to get me into the band by claiming that the Residents sometimes attended Grateful Dead shows in costume. Imagine my shock when I learned the truth behind the story -- a shadowy truth linking the Residents, the Dead and my very own guitarist, the hon. Richard Talleywhacker!

I have a vague feeling I may have told this story on the blog before, but I can't figure out where and when. It's good enough to be worth re-telling, though. For those unfamiliar with certain types of popular music, let me introduce our cast of characters.

First off, the Grateful Dead. They were a hippy-era band from San Francisco. They're one of those bands that's actually a lifestyle in disguise, kinda like (and predating) Jimmy Buffett. Their followers were a gentle drug-addled cultish group referred to as Deadheads.

Musically? They combined roots music with psychedelia, and were well-known for their live improvisation. I do enjoy some of their stuff, but the majority of their their oeuvre makes me feel as if I have the flu. They were skilled and gifted musicians -- it takes remarkable ability to do music as bad as the Dead at their worst.

(I am awfully fond of Jerry Garcia's solo work and especially his collaborations with Dave Grisman.)

The Residents, on the other hand, are exactly my dish of tea when I'm in the mood. Right now I've got a copy of their faux-Innuit folk music album Eskimo sitting next to the bed for listening-in-the-dark purposes.

I first heard the Residents back in the early eighties, on the Dr. Demento show. Even in that venue, their music came off as aggressively weird and willfully intelligent, so of course I fell for it. The Resident's are actually nearly as old as the Dead -- I think their first release came out in '69. And they have always been way, way avant guarde. They did some of the first videos, early use of synthesizers and sequencers, etc, etc. They have an admirably unified aesthetic, incorporating multimedia and design into their work. I fucking love them.

They are totally anonymous. No one knows who they are; I've heard that one of their core members is a really famous musician who you'd never imagine would be a Resident. I'm hoping it's Bob Seger, just for the shock value.

They perform wearing masks. Initially, the masks were all eyeballs wearing top hats. (see above) But when an eyeball was stolen at a live show, they replaced it with a giant skull, thus enhancing their mythology.

I've recently heard a theory put forth that at least one of them is a woman. It was an interesting theory, backed by intriguing rumors of circumstantial evidence. So I'm changing my mind. I now hope that Dolly Parton is a Resident.

So when Brian --

("Brian, you can play your fucking Dead until the cows come home, but you have played Sugar Magnolia six times today and if I hear it a seventh time I promise my behavior will be both shocking and spectacular." "But dude! Those were all from different shows! They're totally different songs!")

-- when Brian told me the Residents attended Dead shows in their stage costumes, I was troubled.

Years later, after the hon. Richard Talleywhacker and I decided to play music, we set up a studio at his house. (The special quality of our early recordings is due to the fact that the space we occupied could be described accurately as being both a garage and a basement, thus squaring our credibility.) And what did I find decorating the studio?

See the image at top.

It turns out that it was a costume that Mr. Talleywhacker created and wore in high school.

And Mr. Talleywhacker, may the lord pity him, is a Deadhead.

(When Jerry Garcia died, out of respect for my dear friend's grief, I waited more than a year to tell Mr. Talleywhacker what my initial response to the news has been. "Dude, I knew it was just a matter of time before you dragged my ass to a Dead show. So when I heard Jerry died, my first thought was that the band was finally living up to its name -- he was dead, and I was grateful."

He looked at me with great sorrow in his face, flooding me with guilt. "Dude, I knew I'd hear something like that from someone, but I didn't think it would be you."

Of course, our at-the-time asshole lead guitarist suggested that the Dead's best hope for continued success would be to put Garcia's corpse on stage and say it was the Touch of Grave tour...)

Anyway, it seems that for a number of years, Mr. Talleywhacker was in the habit of attending Dead shows while wearing the eyeball. We were discussing this last night and Mr. Talleywhacker expressed some disgust for the gullible Deadheads.

"Just look at it. The real eyeballs don't have that heavy stoner red-eye on them. And when did the Residents ever wear fucking tie-died shorts?"

I'd just like to remind Mr. Talleywhacker that all of the witnesses to his awesome presence were high.

Very, very high indeed.

In Which, With The Assistance Of Good Luck, The Oaf Gives Himself A Present

Behold -- the hollow-body tenor basselele!

So over the last couple of weeks I got into Viable Paradise, finished the current batch of Swillistrations, and sold my soul. It seemed to me that somebody around here deserved a treat.

This is my treat.

As a broke-ass compulsive reader with a strong taste for the obscure and eclectic, I've long been a devotee of the yard sale. The missus is constantly on the hunt for planters and pots. As a result, one of our shared hobbies is looking up yard sales on Craigslist and driving around the Bay Area.

Weekend before last we wound up at a warehouse sale in Oakland. At first I thought this was a typical antiques warehouse; then I noticed the display case full of pop-culture images of the devil.

And then I stepped into the central hallway and saw the huge warehouse wall covered in guitars. These weren't ordinary guitars; the owner had given them to artists who had modified them. Most were obviously unplayable; a few were so tempting they brought a sweat of cupidity to my brow even though I'm terrified of six-stringed instruments.

But down in one corner, hidden behind a cabinet, I spotted what looked like a baritone ukulele. A very nice baritone ukulele. It was naked; no strings or tuning machines. Still, it called to me.

Now I've got a baritone ukulele. It's pretty sweet; it was made in the forties. I can play a few chords; my version of Let's Talk Dirty In Hawaiian is coming along quite nicely. But for years I've been longing for an instrument that would be tuned in the same pattern as a bass only an octave up. I've talked about doing that with a banjo or a tenor guitar.

Or a baritone ukulele...

So I get ahold of the owner and mention that I'm interested in cheap but playable ukuleles. He takes me to his office and shows me a couple of beat-up old specimens. One of 'em looks kind of cute. He asks me how much I'd pay for it...

My brow furrows as I consider my (truly pathetic) economic state. And I say, "Well, if you could let it go for five bucks I'll take it."

He looks at me very seriously and considers. "Yeah, sure," he says, and hands it to me. "So where's this instrument you wanted to look at?"

I show him and he just grins. "No one's spotted that one before," he says. The thing's been there for years. He fetches it down, points at the detailing -- the pearl inlays on the rosewood fretboard, the black and white stripes on the inside lip of the sound hole. I tap the mahogany body; the sound is sweet.

"How much do you want for it?" I ask.

He looks at me seriously again. "Fifty bucks."

"That sounds --"

At this point the missus grabs me and hisses me into silence. She takes the instrument out of my hands and points it at the guy who's selling it. "How about twenty?"

"Listen, lady," he says with a fair bit of volume in his voice. "I'm giving your husband a bargain because I can tell he has money issues and I know he's going to fix this and play it. Anyone else who came in here? I'd say three hundred and they'd pay it and they'd know they got a bargain!"

"I'll take it," I said, and the missus and I drift off to look around some more.

Then the guy comes back. "Listen, I'm sorry, I'm a little manic today with the sale and all. I'll tell you, though, later on you're going to hear him playing that and you'll say, 'well, that guy was an asshole but he sold my husband a good instrument for a good price.' Tell you what, I'll throw in the other uke for free."

When we're in the car, just as I'm about to roast her for the way she thrust herself into the situation and pissing off someone who was really nice to me, she cut me off at the pass. "See? I got you a free ukulele!"

(Tragic note; in transit the ukulele's top separated from the rest of the body. It's unplayable.)

So yesterday I took it in to the Fifth String and bought some tuning machines and was reassured that I had a nice little instrument at a bargain price. Took it home and started to string it. Since I wanted it to be strung E-A-D-G, like a bass, I used acoustic guitar strings.

Alas, the E string and the nylon G string were too thick to fit in the slots in the nut. I needed a file. Something narrow, preferably with the file only on one side and not on the bottom so I could widen the slots without deepening them. I asked the missus if she had any files left over from her jewelry-making days. No such luck. I'd have to make a trip to the hardware store...

... waitaminnit. Let's try the file on the toenail clippers I keep in the studio!

Bingo!

So I start to play, cursing the way new strings refuse to keep in tune. And I quickly noticed something unfortunate.

This type of tuning is a real pain in the ass so far as making chords is concerned. I knew that going in; I wanted the instrument for picking more than for strumming. But the nylon G string sounded dull and muddy next to the three wire-wound strings.

Damnit.

Hold on. My baritone uke has nylon strings for the B and E, but the D and G strings are wound. And I have a set of baritone ukulele strings...

And sure enough, the baritone uke G string does the job just fine.

It is a wonderful little instrument, at least by my plebian standards. A bit of a twist to the neck but that don't bother me none. And my, it sounds nice, loud and sweet and clear. Good wood, my friends, good wood. Even the missus noticed the quality of the tone.

It'll take me a while to get my fingers used to the spacing. I'm still a bit clumsy. But this will, hopefully, enable me to start playing some lead in addition to the bass and drum programming. I want to be able to use all those cool effects that guitarists get.

And so I am now the proud owner of what I believe to be the world's only hollow-body tenor basselele. And I am having fun with it.

Mektoub.

Because I Am An (expletive delayed) Artist, (expletive delayed) It.

This is a little busy, but it's going to be printed as a diptych, so the composition will look a lot more reasonable on the page. Now I'm down to three illustrations (and two revisions of illustrations I thought I'd finished) before I'm done with Swill.

I've got a confession, though. I am officially at the, "Just scan a bunch of crap and make a nice composition out of it," stage. The, "Oh, they'll be able to read something into it," stage. The fraud stage.

Last night, Rob said, "Someone was asking me why Swill was taking so long to produce, and I told them it was because Sean had to do twice as many illustrations this time. They asked me why you had to do all the illustrations and I told them it was because Swill was an entity."

Yes. That would be the case.

(Posted later, after I placed the above in the magazine -- it looks swell as a diptych. While I was working on it, I had two layers that had gray rectangles that blocked off either the left or the right side so I could see how each half would look on its own. The resulting centerfold is a lot more pleasing than the whole thing in one slab.)

So this morning, the missus played one of her tapes for me. It was the, "You should stop wasting your time on art and focus on your writing," one. This is something that I have to address every once in a while -- I explain things to her and sometimes she gets it and sometimes she doesn't. She's a brilliant woman but she has a knack for forgetting things that don't fit her needs...

(And oh! my best beloved, to whom this post is directed, you didn't pull that crap on me when this was happening.)

Anyway, I came up with a good one this time. "That's like telling a boxer that they should give up track work and spend all their time working on punching."

I've talked about this a bit here and there but this seems like a good excuse to explain why I'm not just a writer or visual artist or musician. Why I have to do all that stuff -- and why I'm thinking about the day when I can try my hand at sculpture and film making and...

Well, it pisses me off when she starts talking like that. So I've got to make an overly-elaborate reply, even though I shut her down in a somewhat high-handed fashion. (L'amour est guerre, baby, and in this case I'm the occupied nation...) So get ready for a boring diatribe that will probably sound like bragging a lot of the time.

Now I could defend myself from a practical standpoint. I could say that my art is an important element of Swill and that Swill has given me some very valuable contacts in the writing community. Or I could point out that this site, which has been of great value to me, owes most of its tiny-but-treasured fistful of readers to my visual art.

But the real issue is that creativity is the set, and writing is just a subset. Art is the experience of the world filtered through an individual. Even the most trivial art is the result of a lifetime's living as interpreted by its creator. Art is a fractal -- if you look at it from the proper distance, everything has the same shape.

As the Bellman said, "What I tell you three times is true." I wrote about this in one of my posts about plotting. To paraphrase, many of the crucial elements in the arts are used across the board. Rhythm and timing exist in both music and prose -- and in art, the same element translates to composition. Repetition and variation occur in all arts. A sense of where to let things open up and where to include lots of detail -- again, that concept can be beneficially applied to any creative field.

Working in different arts gives you a variety of perspectives on these principles that you can't get in any other way -- and once you start feeling them in one arena, you can use them in others. That's one of the keys to art -- learning those principles so well that you don't have to think about them. If you don't do that you can't riff, you can't freestyle, you can't jam. You're static. You're fucked.

And one of the crucial elements in my writing is that I don't limit myself to verbal thinking when I work. When I write I perceive/hallucinate my subject matter with as many of my senses as possible -- and then I describe what I've 'experienced.'

If I just wrote, I would imagine in words -- and I think that would weaken my work. Yeah, I'd be more technically skilled, my prose would be more polished, but I think that one of my gifts as a writer is my ability to immerse the reader in a scene. I would not be able to do this if I were limited to verbal thinking. And I think this ability is more important to most readers than an elegant prose style or a graceful plot.

(Not to denigrate two skills with which I am fucking obsessed.)

And to be a little bit more specific... Writing is my primary concern. Visual art was my primary concern for years. And music is something I do purely for fun. But the novel? It's about a musician, and music is central to the plot. And I wouldn't be able to write about it if I didn't play a little myself. Many of the fantastic elements in the book originated as artworks, and my art continues to be a primary source of inspiration for the writing. I believe these influences are crucial to the quality of the work I'm doing, such as it is. The novel wasn't written by writing. I drew the novel, composited the novel, composed the novel, played the novel. If I just wrote I would have nothing but words on the page. Fuck that.

And anyway, sweetie (this is for the missus, you're reading over her shoulder) I tried to give up art, remember? Got rid of my art supplies, joined a writer's group? It didn't fucking work, did it?

I know you're gonna give me a hard time over this again. But be warned. My reaction will be even more ridiculous than writing a fucking essay justifying myself. I'll go further. I have no idea what my response will be, but I can tell you this much.

It will probably involve illustrations.

On Music, Friendship, And Therapy

A bit of juvenalia from my early twenties, since none of my current art projects are ready to show. I did mention that I first studied art and writing because I wanted to do comic books, right?

Hypermasculinity always seems to have a homoerotic component to it. And while I think of myself as completely heterosexual, it's hard to look at much of adventure fiction and the imagery associated with it and not see that it's got a queer component to it that's only invisible to most of the creators and most of the audience.

In other words, when they make a big deal in the media out of gay superheroes in mainstream comics, who are they fooling? All superheroes are gay. For pete's sake, they are defined by the fact that they wear fetish gear straight out of Tom of Finland. Of course if you told me that when I drew this I would have freaked out.

I've tried not to make a big deal out of it here on the blog but I've been going through a rough patch lately. My back has been killing me and I've been subject to a bad case of floating anxiety, the kind where you always feel as if the world is about to be pulled out from under you, where you wake up in the middle of the night and immediately start thinking about your problems and shortcomings.

February is the hardest month for me. My crazy always bites a little harder this time of year. As I've matured I've gotten better and better at handling this -- but this year things have been worse than they have for a long, long time.

As a result I've been getting about two hours of sleep a night -- which doesn't help the anxiety -- which doesn't help the the crazy or the pain. A big part of dealing with chronic pain comes down to will, which I have been sorely lacking.

But I'm not pleading victim here. The above paragraphs are a jumping-off point. See, last night I slept for eight hours. My back is in bad shape and I'm still going to need to restrict my activities in the near future -- but I have to look for the pain to notice it. The pain itself is not a concern. I have a calm, sunny disposition at the moment -- quite content with life and my place in it. Why?

Last night I got to hang out with my best friend, have a few drinks and some cigarettes, play music and talk.

This seems like such a small thing. And the term 'best friend' seems like something more fit for the playground than for use between a couple of guys in their forties. But it's the right term. Since this post is going to discuss a nefarious activity or two, we'll call my best friend Buck, at his suggestion.

We've known each other for about thirty years and for a long, long time now -- Jesus, somewhere around nineteen years -- we've been getting together to hang out on a regular basis. For the past while the routine has been fixed at twice a week, Thursday and Saturday nights.

We play the same handful of songs, me on bass and Buck on guitar, do some musical noodling and improvisation, share a few beers, maybe a shot or two, and every so often we go out on the deck to smoke cigarettes -- he's a habitual smoker, I'm opportunistic (if I'm around smokers I'll bum a smoke, otherwise I'm a non-smoker) -- and listen to music, trading back and forth between his and my collections.

We talk about how the women in our lives are trying to assassinate us through sexual denial and willfully crazy behavior, affirm that we love them enough to let them do this to us, confess our own odious behavior and figure out how to minimize it, discuss political news in increasingly loud and angry voices, cast our thoughts back to the joys and miseries of our rather unpleasant childhoods, I talk about my creative work and school, he talks about his job and how much he loves his son -- now sons. The arts, literature, nature, world culture, science, mythology, history, language, and a bizarre gallimaufry of other subjects are discussed, dissected, and delighted in. It's good to have a smart friend.

No matter what mood we're in when we start, by the end of the evening we've entered into what we call 'band space.' Low key but energetic, calm but confident. The music and the drink and the company and the ritual of it all work together to evoke a very specific mental space.

Do I dare to risk the wrath of the gods by using the word 'happy?' Yes. I do. We wind up happy. It's very, very rare for one of us to leave band practice in a bad frame of mind -- and even then, it's a better state of mind than we had going in.

It's our therapy.

There was a TV show that went off the air recently that I was very fond of. It was called Boston Legal. It's appeal was very straightforward -- one part freak show, one part 'I am right, you are wrong' porn, and one part friend porn.

(Then there was the Shatner factor -- William Shatner played a character named Denny Crane who was clearly Captain Kirk in his filthy degenerate dotage. This is an example of what I think of as the principle of actor continuity -- all the characters played by a certain type of actor are the same individual at different times in their lives. For instance, the Jeff Bridges character in The Big Lebowski wound up in that state because of what happened to him in Tron. But I digress.)

Buck never watched the show and one night I was explaining to him that the emotional core was the relationship between the characters Alan Shore and Denny Crane, how at the ending of each and every episode they were sitting out on a balcony overlooking Boston, discussing the events of the day, sipping whisky and smoking cigars, and basically affirming that as long as they had their friendship, as long as they had that time together, all was right with the world.

And as I explained that, I looked at the cigarette in one hand, the glass of Anderson Valley IPA close to the other, looked over the railing at my wife's garden in the moonlight below us, and looked at my best friend.

I realized that we'd been doing this long before that show aired and would be doing it long after -- that when I watched those balcony scenes, what I felt wasn't envy. It was an affirmation of an important part of my life.

Last night we got together for the first time in a long time -- and as I said, last night I slept for eight hours, my back is tolerable, and I'm in a good mood. I love my friend; I missed my friend; I saw my friend and now I feel better. And I know that it went both ways.

He's being a good husband and father these days, attending to his family now that his second child has been born. He's doing the right thing and more power to him. We're going to have to change the pattern of our time together -- we'll be over at his house and his kids and wife will be part of the mix.

But seeing him last night made me realize that it's all gonna work out fine.

I was going to tell you about how we found out that we were friends but this post is already too long. I'll save that story for tomorrow. It involves, as I mentioned above, nefarious activities, Jack London, my sorely-missed brother Duncan and a coming-of-age passage, The Ramones and Screaming Jay Hawkins, a trailer park, class warfare, and just a wee little tiny bit of amnesia.

It's a pretty good story. I think you'll like it.

Thoughts On Plot 3: Backbeat, Verses, And Instrumentals-- Why Stories Are Songs

A tragically prophetic title, given what's happened to the band over the years. My favorite description of our music came from a drummer from whom I took a few lessons. "You sound like a cross between the Beat Farmers and Brian Eno."

Okay, here's the deal. All arts are the same. Once you get into more than one you start noticing that musical structure works in writing, that color use has a lot in common with chord structure, and that what it all comes down to is pattern. And the three basic principles of pattern construction are very simple -- repetition, variation, and placement.

Rhythm is the most elemental pattern of all. We live every moment of every day to the sound of two backbeats -- the inhale/exhale of breathing and the lub-dup of our heartbeats. One-two one-two one-two. We're born rocking.

And exactly this kind of backbeat informs fiction.

The standard terminology for what I'm about to discuss is a little awkward -- there are two types of scenes in fiction and they're referred to as scene and sequel. Really, they're more like action and reaction.

In a scene, a character enters into a situation and acts -- in good fiction the character acts to the best of their ability and whether they succeed or fail the scene usually ends with the character worse off than they were at the start of the scene.

In a sequel, the character in question takes in the result of what happened in the previous scene, re-establishes a position of emotional equilibrium (again, usually worse than it was before), and decides on a course of action.

Lub-dup lub-dup lub-dup. There it is, the heartbeat of conventional fiction. The essential backbeat. But like all fundamental truths in the arts it seems so freaking obvious it's impossible to imagine that it's useful.

At first.

But once you start examining stories from this perspective a number of things start becoming clear. First off is that while it's impossible to avoid the rhythm of scene and sequel you can choose how much weight to give one or the other.

You can have a scene take place off-camara. You can have a sequel take place during the time it takes the hero to pop a new clip into his automatic. You can consciously balance the two.

What's interesting about this is what happens at the endpoints of the spectrum. When scenes are consistantly minimized you get the moment-of-revelation form of literary fiction. When sequel is minimized you get pulp fiction.

Very interesting, no? If you're conscious of the interplay between scene and sequel in your fiction you can deliberately control the pace of your story. Want to speed things up? Focus on scenes. Are things seeming a little busy or shallow? Beef up the sequels.

And when you're conscious of whether you're writing a scene or a sequel you have a better understanding of the purpose of the passage you're writing. One of the writers I work with had a habit of interrupting scenes with bits of rumination from his lead character. After learning about scene and sequel it struck me that his stuff would flow more smoothly if he thought in those terms and kept the scene and the sequel seperated.

It worked. Scene and sequel alternate -- they don't mix well. Each has its own flow, its own tempo. Let 'em run smooth til they're over.

I mentioned earlier the importance of making things get worse for the character. This is another reflection of the principle of repetition with variation. Any given book is going to have certain elements repeated in it. If there are relationships between characters they'll have a number of shared conversations. In adventure fiction, the characters will have to face a variety of physical dangers.

These elements are like the verse and chorus in a pop song -- and like the chorus and verse in a pop song it's the differences between the iterations that makes them interesting.

The main thing to remember about differentiating these scenes from one another is that you have to keep raising the stakes. Think of it this way -- if you heard a song that started off with full instrumentation and then one instrument at a time was gradually eliminated from the mix (all of a sudden I want to try actually doing this) you have a song that will tend to get less and less interesting. It's possible to imagine that it could be made to work -- but the songwriter would have to know exactly what he was doing and why ahead of time.

You tend to get good results from continually jacking the tension, though. This is what they call rising conflict. Let's say your lead character is at odds with his boss and you have three seperated scenes where they interact one on one. Here are the outcomes of the three scenes arranged in different orders. Which sequence seems more like a story to you?

1. The lead character grows so upset with his boss he screams into her face and storms off the job.
2. The boss hints that she suspects the lead character of theft.
3. The boss criticizes the lead character for coming in to work late.

1. The boss criticizes the lead character for coming in to work late.
2. The boss hints that she suspects the lead character of theft.
3. The lead character grows so upset with his boss he screams into her face and storms off the job.

It ain't subtle. Learn to recognize scenes that are of a similar nature -- the verses, the choruses -- and make sure that each sequence of scenes builds on what went before, with the stakes and tension increasing from one to the next.

Because all of this is going to end when you get to the final instrumental, the climax. The point when the story is resolved, when the emotions built by the song reach their highest pitch. The more tension you have when you reach this point the better the payoff is. Remember this when you're building your scenes -- every inch of the way you're getting the reader ready for the payoff.

And yeah, I can think of a few other areas of life where this pattern works pretty well. Tomorrow I'll go into the role of character in creating plot.