What are you doing right…now?!

How long is a moment?  One second is definitely a moment.  So is five seconds.  Ten seconds is kinda pushing it.  

Time is not real, though…I keep forgetting!

What we call “one year” is definitely a moment, then.  So is a hundred years.  And a million.  And an eternity.

If one second is a moment and a million years is a moment, is one second equal to a million years?

Can the word “now” apply to a billion years ago…and a billion years into the future?  

Are what we deem “the future” and “the past” really just “now”?

Does “now” have anything to do with our perception of time?  

Is “now” an expanding “moment” and not even an amount of “time”?  

Not even a nanosecond?  

Whoa man, “whoa”….

Kevin says: “fuck it!”

Kevin, Lauren, Ben Fox and I were on a post-dinner expedition to Cap Centre Market a few weeks ago, talking about that hip shit we talk about, when all of a sudden Kevin hopped on and off a parked car’s hood.  It all lasted just two seconds.  No one said anything, and we all kept laughing and talking.

But I can’t stop thinking about Kevin’s stunt.  I mean, Kevin’s no goody-two-shoes, but I just wasn’t expecting him to hop on that car!  Every other time we’d gone to the store, we’d made it there without one of us jumping on a car!  How refreshing that Kevin decided to jump on the car that one time!  

Kevin taught me to never walk to the grocery story the same way.

Haley House Thanksgiving ‘09

After a couple hours of opening cans of corn, beans, and cranberry sauce with a manly industrial can opener and stomping on them to decrease their volume (my mom kept telling people I was letting out my anger, which made me angrier), washing dishes, and wearing a hairnet, I sat down for Thanksgiving dinner.  It was 3 o’clock.

Everyone in my family sat at a different table, by accident.  I gravitated toward Ed, an old Cape Verdean guy from Dorchester (violent hood in Boston, aka “Deathchester”), because he was all alone in the corner; we chatted and laughed about Sarah Palin’s lack of brains and Tom Brady’s modeling career, and whenever there was a rest in the conversation, I started thinking.  Oftentimes when I’m in a pensive state, the climax of “Your Hand in Mine” by Explosions in the Sky plays in my head.  I looked around the room, searching for my family.  The tables were full of strangers–homeless, poor, lonely people.  My sister Anna sat a couple tables down from me with a bunch of old Puerto Rican guys, showing off her Spanish chops.  I looked over at my dad, who was rolling his eyes and cracking jokes with a fiery old woman in a pink jacket.  My mom was helping Linda in the kitchen.  Linda’s a fucking character, let me tell you (later).  My family wasn’t eating Thanksgiving at the same table, but we were connected by the people between us.  We were all just a massive family (corny, but really great).  My family’d eaten every other Thanksgiving together, and it was about time we shared our love with the people lacking it.  Ed interrupted my revelation, which was okay: “Ben, you are a fucking cool cat.”  I thanked him and stifled tears for the next ten minutes.  I hid my persisting waves of emotion by turning sharply to my right and checking the time on my watch for weird, unheard of amounts of time.  Ed had no family or friends to celebrate Thanksgiving with, and man, I’ll be honest–eating with him was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.  I ate my turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes at 3 o’clock instead of 6, within shouting distance of my family, in a soup kitchen instead of at home or at a relative’s place, my feet cramped and sore from crushing corn cans–and shit, I finally understood the holiday.  My Aunt Ruth, the hostess of many a Thanksgiving in the past, patronized the shit out of my dad when he told her we were going to cook Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless.  As if these people are less human or less deserving of love!  She is 70 years old and still doesn’t understand.  God Damn!  

Linda, a 59-year-old, short-haired, short-bodied woman with a Red Sox cap on (ehr we go sawks!), the one who gave me the job of opening and crushing cans, reminded me a little of Art Kimball.  She made me really happy.  She called me “handsome” in her cute (badass nonetheless) Boston accent and shouted things like “touchdown!” and “the cawds ah dealt!” whenever something significant happened in the kitchen.  When she was demonstrating how to use the industrial can opener, she told me she only picked me for the job because she had faith I could get it done.  Danny, her son, a small, sweet-looking guy in his late thirties (I’d say), killed some dude in a bar fight, got a life sentence in prison, but his mother got him a good lawyer and fished him out of there.  Danny mashed potatoes beside me in the kitchen.  He went outside every now and then to “poison” himself with a cigarette.  ”Hey Ben, I’m gonna go poison myself…can you throw these in the seive?”  I said ‘yes’ because I knew he killed a guy once.

But here’s a guy who works every goddamn day cooking food for the poor.  He understands.  

After everyone had left and everything was put away, mopped and clean, we gathered round Linda.  It just happened.  She opened up, explaining the difficulties of operating the soup kitchen (eaters getting rowdy, days with low attendance, etc.), and she admitted that sometimes she questions why she’s there (don’t we all?).

Linda suffers as a result of her willingness to give and be compassionate, and I admire that shit so much.  My kinda girl.

“Resolution” by John Coltrane

Thunder (bass) rumbles, waves (drums) duel–crash!–and rain falls hard (piano, piano, piano) on your boat’s deck.  The storm, the rhythm, the setting breathes.  In great abstract music, the setting (the steady pulse) interacts with the changing main melody, the main voice of expression.  Coltrane’s improvised melodies on “Resolution” explore and conquer the ongoing storm, and the different components of his band (members of the rhythm section) conflict in perfect harmony.  He screams, “I have to make it through this fucking storm!  I have to make it home to my lover!”  He couldn’t express his intense love for whatever woman without the storm as a trigger.  The storm is his means of expression.  Each time he hits a rogue wave, he screams, “Fuck you, storm!  I gotta get laid!”  Well, that’s just how I listen.  And I’m weird.

Same shit in Beethoven’s 5th: the “Da Da Da Daaaa” lasts as an undercurrent throughout the entire piece.  The melody embarks on a journey, always interacting with the underlying motif–Da Da Da Daaaa!  In the end, Beethoven is just fighting to get laid!

I love music without lyrics because it gives me the freedom to listen however I want to.  Coltrane expresses some intense emotions in his music, but yo, I couldn’t tell you what he was so passionate about when he was tootin’ his horn on “Resolution,” for example.  It’s not like Dylan, who tells stories in his music that evoke certain emotions for certain reasons.  ”The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” tells a story of a rich white man who gets away with just a little jail time for murdering an innocent black maid.  When I listen to this Dylan song, racism makes me sad.  The last lines of the tune go: “Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears/Bury the rag deep in your face/For now’s the time for your tears.”  <3 Bob Dylan.  But when I listen to Coltrane, I (or my subconscious) get to decide what’s evoking sadness or whatever emotion, depending on my mind’s activities at the time.  I can listen to “Resolution” differently a million times!  I become Coltrane–a Coltrane with a bunch of college kid problems–and I’m able to understand his expression through my own lens and my own temporary emotions.

I think people are scared away from listening to jazz (or jazz-related music) because it’s harder to conjure emotions through abstract art.  The most abstract visual art, though often confusing, has color and shape, things that we automatically associate with certain memories or emotions.  You see red, you think fire, warmth, or blood, which elicit feelings of pain, comfort, or whatever.  You hear a note from a saxophone and nothing tangible comes to mind right away.  Your brain won’t automatically connect a note to a memory, but it will with a fiery red painting.  Coltrane is harder to make sense of than Miley Cyrus, whose music makes people happy, and so more people are listening to her than to him.  You just gotta use your imagination, and let your own emotions take over.  Instead of trying to get something out of listening to Coltrane, become Coltrane.  Once you become his melody, you can battle the storm and scream at the top of your own lungs!  That’s the only way you’ll understand his shit!  

download A Love Supreme (Coltrane’s most sacred album), make sure to listen to “Resolution” with this shit in mind ^

http://www.sendspace.com/file/1xzmqu

<3

Ben

I don’t understand

The other day, I saw a little girl drop her ice cream on the sidewalk.  The cone’s pointed end stood erect in the air, and its strawberry ice cream drooled in all directions.  The girl knew her ice cream was gone forever, so she started crying.  ”Why mommy?” she asked.  ”I don’t undawstand!”  Though none of this actually happened, that little girl’s words struck me when I made them up in my head.  She doesn’t understand why her delicious ice cream is in the dirt, but she does understand what it feels like to drop her ice cream, damn it.  It sucks.  Her tears signify emotion, which means she understands something.

Until recently, I never understood that I didn’t understand that I didn’t understand.  It was just a misunderstanding between me and understanding.  I have soaked in so much verbal information over the past 20 years from friends, family, teachers, and media, though the amount of information I have gained through experience is smaller than an ant’s erection.  I, therefore, understand very little.  I mean–you can’t really understand anything unless you’ve experienced it.  

Let me explain myself.  In my mind, there are two levels of knowledge, the first being the superficial (for example, “I know that AIDs sucks”) and the second being the more profound (like–”My parents died from AIDs, and I am an AIDs orphan with AIDs”).  As a person with no personal connection to AIDs, I can’t possibly understand the infection or the horrors it entails.  The same goes for understanding music, art, politics, camp, the beach, racism, death, outer space, cancer–the list goes on…forever.

I now understand–on that second level–that I don’t understand, as a result of experiencing my good (weird motherfuckin’) friend Zach Ferraro, who, a few Wednesday night’s ago, paced across my living room, crying and telling me that he wants to understand everything, but can’t.  In elementary school, my teachers taught me not to judge someone until I walked a mile in that person’s moccasins.  I also learned that at camp.  I understood this very well–I had heard it everywhere–but it only had processed at a superficial level.  Now, I can appreciate it at a much more profound level, because I watched my friend suffer–he was crying because he couldn’t understand.  Never had one of my teachers ever cried to make a point to me.  At some moment that night, I realized and I experienced not understanding.  

Now, I must use my understanding of not understanding to admit that I don’t understand most things, perhaps leading me to actively attempting to understand, and shit.

I am a proud member of Street Pulse, Madison’s homeless cooperative newspaper.  When I first joined, I really didn’t understand homelessness.  But now that I’ve been a member for a year, I–I–well, I still don’t understand homelessness at all.  How could I possibly know that level of suffering without saying goodbye to my friends and family, leaving my home and living out on the streets for the rest of my life?  I can’t!  Just not something I’m willing to do.  I hope to sleep outside for a week this winter, so that I might gain a partial understanding of that level of suffering.  But never will I really know about homelessness. 

Never will I know what’s it’s like for somebody to judge me based on my skin color or gender.  I have black friends who say it really sucks, but I will never know how it feels.  

Is it sick to say that I want to experience poverty, homelessness, racism–just so I can understand?  Is it sick to say that I think I’m too happy, too content with my perfect PARTY of a fucking life?  Is it sick to wish for suffering when everything is going so fucking well?  Now that I understand that I don’t understand, I want to understand–so badly.

A few days ago, I flashed back to the morning of April 27, 2001, when my sister’s bus flipped on the way to a band concert in Nova Scotia and four kids were killed.  I’m ten, sitting cross-legged on my bed crying, listening to noises down the hall–”They’re dead!” my mom screamed.  ”I loved each and every one of the kids on that bus, and they’re dead!”  I had never seen my dad cry before then.  The other day, I tried to recall the emotions I experienced on my bed that morning, and I started shivering. On April 27, 2001, I understood death and pain like I never had before.  

I find comfort in the things that I understand.  Music, friendship, camp, family, death (to some extent), food.  All of these things have made me cry.  These days, when I’ve been crying about some shit (recent crying sessions have been as a result of slam poetry, Billie Holiday, and John Coltrane) I step away from my body.  I recognize my emotions and no matter what, deem them beautiful. Crying, for me, is part of the process of understanding.  When John Coltrane wails through his horn, I cry because I realize his pain–I understand it.  True understanding is the basis of compassion.

And compassion is what this fucked up world needs.

Phone-less in Madison….FREEDOM

This past Saturday morning, I dropped my cellphone and it broke. In an attempt to prove to my friends that I “really didn’t care,” I whipped the phone across the room and it ricocheted off my bedroom door, landing in a pile of dirty underwear.  Blank stares from my friends.
“Ben…”
“Why the fuck?”

A few minutes later I walked over to my room and discovered the phone in tact, but only half of it functioned–the keys lit up, but the screen stayed black.  I really don’t care, I told myself.  I stood there, regretful, squinting my eyes at the phone in my hand, probably with some kind of stupid look on my face, picturing my life without that fucking phone, a life uninterrupted by buzzes and jingles and “what r u doing tonite”’s, a life free of texting, planning and awkward conversations, a life free of–friends?

I returned from my room with my phone and asked somebody to call it to see if the black screen meant the end.  Turns out that when I answered a call, the caller could hear my voice, but I couldn’t hear shit!  Plus, I had no idea who the caller was!  So, every time I answered my phone on Saturday, I recited a short monologue about my situation and then hung up.  The person calling literally couldn’t get a word in.   I started off giggly and on a power trip, but my energy died as the day wore on.

“Hi, this is Ben.  I actually can’t hear you, because my phone is broken, so I’m going to tell you how my day has gone thus far and what my plans are for tonight.  Feel free to interrupt me…oh wait, you can’t!  Right now, I’m at the Marijuana Harvest Festival, just smoked a joint in public, man I hope this isn’t my mother…or my boss…or my grandmother!  Shit man!  Fuck! Hahahahaha….”

Later…

“Hi this is Ben, I can’t hear you.  My phone is broken.  Come to my house if you want.  That is where I am.  Peace!”

Much later…

“Hi, this is Ben, I can’t hear you, I don’t care, bye.”

Retrospectively, I wish I had been a bit more serious.  I mean–who was calling me?  Was it America’s Got Talent?  Did they finally receive my tape?  Were they calling to accept me for the next show?  Who the fuck was calling?  Was it Grammy calling just because she loves me?  Who the fuck?  Was it my boss calling to tell me I was promoted to floor manager?  Whoever it was, I most likely told them to meet me at the Marijuana Harvest Festival.  Fuck.

I wanted a phone that worked, so the next day, I decided to trek out to Wal-Mart for a cheaper option (motherfuckers at AT&T told me phones started at $160).  I mounted my bike with purpose–I would return home with a working phone, thus mending my social life’s bloody wounds (I had missed a dozen calls and a dozen texts–and remember, they could have been REALLY important).  As I rolled down Broom St. toward the lake, I realized that it was pretty nice out.  A gentle breeze caressed my face, and my hair danced with the wind (I have no hair to dance, but if I did–well shit–it would be grooving like TWO motherfuckers)(Richard Davis).  It was a warm, beautiful day in Madison, and I wasn’t ’bout to spend it at Wal-Mart.  Instead of continuing my track to the ‘Mart, I took the wrong left, and then I turned right, left, right, left–where am I?–straight for a while, left, right, left, straight for a few miles (I spaced out for a while), and there I was–my hair grooving, my face smiling, my nose sniffing in the scents of The University of Wisconsin Arboretum.  I biked through the Arboretum for a while, smiling and laughing the whole way (a bunch of high school cross country hot shits ran by me and taunted me: “What’s so funny, bro?”).  Ha!  Eventually, I dropped my bike and rested near a little pond, clear and full of lily pads and rocks, off the road of an unknown neighborhood.  I smiled, realizing I still didn’t have a phone.  No one could reach me; I could be alone forever, and no one could bother me.  I took off my watch, disabled it, put it in my pocket and sat.  Fuck time–I just wanted to exist!  A few birds chirped to each other in a tree across the pond; I wasn’t alone; a frog hopped from land to water–splash!; I wasn’t alone.  I did’nt need a phone to set up THIS play-date.

I gazed into the water, analyzing the tiny ripples, humming Liam’s lyrics: “I can’t wait to stop wishing/for something else.”  No compulsive texting, no compulsive watch-checking.  I was really happy.  I noticed a black mass floating in my sight, and behind it was a similar mass, only this one bigger and lumpier.  I panned out, and noticed these black masses floating all over the place.  It looked like….I bent over to investigate….sniff, sniff.  Shit.  Welcome to Wisconsin!

I went home and made soup.

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