Before I was born my grandparents, who were young then (younger than me now) were called names like “Jew” and “Communist”. It was true. They were, but what people meant when they spat these monikers in my youthful elders’ direction, was not accurate. My grandparents were “Jews”, in that they were Jewish, but they didn’t control Hollywood or the banking business or kill babies or Jesus, or even keep kosher, which is what the people who railed against them railed against. As “Communists” they were basically good American liberals. They believed that everyone should have health care and a minimum wage and access to education and legal representation. They had no interest in enslaving humanity or incinerating American families in nuclear clouds, as their McCarthy-ite accusers imagined. They were, as far as I was concerned, grandparents. Grandpa rode his bicycle and worked with lasers and computers at MIT. Grandma tended her garden and kept an endless stream of food on the table. They shared a fondness for nerds from India, who were always hanging around talking physics and politics, but mostly food. Pretty sweet, right? But by some people’s standards; the people who painted a swastika on their door in the 80’s, for example, my grands were some brand of devils.
I guess I’m a devil too. Nobody that I know calls me a “Jew” or “Communist”. They call me “a sexist”, “a misogynist”, “a domestic abuser”. My beloved Mirah once compared my version of Liz Phair’s “HWC” to “rape” onstage during a Radio8Ball show. Even my best friend, Shmushkin, has been labeled a “pedophile” by my accusers. Some of this is “true”. I am a sexist, born and raised in a sexist society, by and around women who had no patience for it. I’m trying to make the most of this poison in me to dismantle sexism in my world and in my time; not for women, or even for my fellow men, just for myself, and for future generations who I deign to think will be more like me than those who today accuse me of sexism.
The boring haters who are currently accusing me of “domestic abuse” have never been in a domestic situation with me so they are basically full of shit, but they are synchronistically onto something. My experience with domestic violence is that the women in my life wish I was more “abusive”, in bed, and less abusive in my being. My own abuse of self sometimes spills over to my lovers and leads to something that looks a lot like domestic abuse; intense lovers’ quarrels where the energy borders on, and sometimes spills over to, physicality from both parties. When this happens only one party is always wrong; the man. I agree with this. Karma’s a bitch. We may not deserve it but sensitive men of this time must accept that there are certain lines we will never be able to cross, which is what the “Cunt Punch” chapter in my book is about. If there is one reason I choose to live alone and uninvolved with a physical sexual partner at this time, it’s that I have yet to find a passionate loving relationship that doesn’t bring with it a dangerous and potentially violent shadow side. And anything without that hungry tug isn’t really worth engaging, is it? Whether it’s me bringing this darkness into my bedroom, or the hyper-literate sexual revolutionaries I am attracted to; I feel it’s my responsibility to unravel it for myself before engaging another human women; for her sake, for my own, and for my neighbors. So, my accusers are correct, but they have it all wrong.
This is the psychic brew I was steeping in when I found myself embroiled in yet another controversy or, as I am calling them “accidental initiations” connected with my book. A selection from Accidental Initiations: In The Kabbalistic Tree Of Olympia was going to run in Reality Sandwich; an online magazine overseen by Daniel Pinchbeck, and devoted to the transformation of consciousness “bite by bite”. I’ve written for them before and given them lots of free advertising on Radio8Ball. Daniel is one of the many guru lovers of the sacred whore from my book. According to my philosophy of Honor Among Men this makes us tribe. Sadly, instead of engaging this bond we’ve been acting like the worst kind of masculine cunts. Having shared the same snatch for a spell, we clearly have each other’s stink in our snouts, and we are bound to fight or fuck or flee or…be friends?
Jen Palmer, my fellow Sync Book author, recently found herself at the center of this archetypal conundrum which, I am almost sure, is someplace she has no desire to be. And yet, here she is; another woman suffering the egos of two limp gorillas. Not that she isn’t an active participant in the drama. During the Sync in The City event in NYC in February Jen delivered a long talk on the syncs she was experiencing around The Rolling Stones “lips logo” and images of Kali; the Hindu goddess of birth and destruction. A video of this talk exists somewhere on the east coast of the U.S. and will eventually find its way to the internet. My memory of the presentation is vague and potent. I’m looking forward to re-watching it on video now that so many syncs around it have been revealed. (Hey Alan Green & Kevin Halcott! Get on that shit will ya?)
When I returned home from the NYC event I found myself increasingly obsessed with The Stones music. In general I’m more or a Who, Beatles guy, but the last few months it’s been all Stones. I listened to the book on tape of Keith Richards’ autobiography. (I didn’t know he dated Ronnie Spector.) I watched all the film footage of The Stones I could get my hands on. Mostly I danced and sang in front of my altar to songs like “Bitch”, “Street Fighting Man”, “Gimme Shelter”, “Happy” and that most “evil” of all songs “Brown Sugar”. Kali-esque! I unleashed my inner cunt in this music the way girls have for decades. I didn’t connect the resurgence of my interest in The Stones with Jen Palmer’s talk until the events of the past week. Now, as with all after-the-fact syncs, the connection seems so obvious and I seem stoopidly slow in recognizing it, even though I also appear to be the first to point it out (much to the chagrin of those who would prefer I didn’t.)
RS= Rolling Stone; beginning with the Muddy Waters song from the 50’s,
then the band that Brian Jones founded in England in the early 60’s,
then the Bob Zimmerman song from ’66,
then Jan Wenner’s magazine featuring Hunter S. Thompson ,
and then Reality Sandwich founded by Daniel Pinchbeck.
Although my work has appeared in Reality Sandwich before, and Daniel had already gracefully acquiesced to running an excerpt from Accidental Initiations in RS, I was letting Jen shepherd my piece through the editorial process. I liked the idea of supporting the connection between Sync Book Press and Reality Sandwich, and I saw Jen’s relationship to both as being perfect for everyone. Also, I am cagey about dealing too much with Daniel. Other than a couple of conversations we had when he was courting my sacred whore girlfriend, he has a way of being that makes everything he says seem like a putdown. At least that’s the way I experience it. I think this actually works for him as a writer and invests his voice with an audacity and impatience I appreciate, but with our history, sometimes it seems easier not to engage him directly. Now I wish I had.
Sadly, Jen wasn’t really on her game as an editor that week and she waited to read the excerpt they were going to run until the night before it was due to hit the site. This, despite giving me her personal assurances that there would be no problem running it. When she finally read it she had problems with the excerpt from the “Cunt Punch” chapter, in which I get hit in the face by a woman who I made the blessed mistake of calling a “cunt”. Despite my frustration with her lack of professionalism and the way it messed with our promotional schedule, I was immediately intrigued with the sync between Jen’s reaction to my book and her talk at the Sync In The City event. So I wrote her an e-mail, one sync-head to another, pointing out the humor and, perhaps, the hypocrisy of invoking the cuntiest goddess of all time (Kali) and the biggest musical misogynists of their era (The Stones), and then clamping her mind like a chastity belt around the language in my book. In this late night e-mail (which probably should never have been sent) I urged her to “Own your lips girl!”
The next morning she wrote back; accusing that phrase of constituting “harassment”. Within a couple of hours my e-mail made the rounds at Reality Sandwich, with Jen repeating her “harassment” accusation against me. By 10am, a tersely worded e-mail from Daniel Pinchbeck himself informed us that Reality Sandwich would have nothing further to do with someone as “aggressive” and “insulting” as me.
Of all the things I’ve been called of late, these two are the most accurate. I am aggressive. These are desperate times, if not for the world; then for me personally. I’m at that age where you’ve got to wonder how much more juice you’ve got in you artistically, especially when you’re someone who works mostly in obscurity, on the far periphery of pop culture where poverty is a way of life. I’ve unleashed an aggressive part of myself with Accidental Initiations, and she is on a creative roll. Insulting? Toward a synchromystic poseur like Jen Palmer? Absolutely! A big sisterly, “own your lips girl” to her and anyone else who insults those who have genuinely been harassed; invoking that word just to get the upper hand on a colleague. My inner cunt loves to insult censorious prudes like Pinchbeck and his worshipful counter-culture cronies, always wondering why they won’t simply dance with us.
I have to work very hard to mitigate this bitch inside of me. Dancing to the Stones seems to help. Got to remember I have a man’s face and a man’s desires, and these are even scarier to my sisters than they are to me. I’m still a monkey man who, on some level, desires nothing more than power. I could have it if I let my inner She run the show, but at what cost? Kali knows. I’m not sure I want to. Now I guess I have to.
So, here I am again, accused of being some kind of dangerous man, specifically to women, when no women have been hurt by my actions. There is simply an editor in NYC who made a professional mistake, and got a sync-y late night e-mail with some intense Stonesian language in it. Rather than cop to her mistake like a professional and move on, she decided to get right by making me wrong, and bad. A bad, bad man. In the mean time, her boss; a man who enjoyed the affections of my sacred whore girlfriend, and has himself been erroneously accused of sexism in the past, is sending me pissy e-mails from the Global Love School in the hinterlands of Portugal as if I actually am the villain Jen claims. If I weren’t used to this kind of thing, it could really freak me out. How’d you like to be called a “harasser” and blacklisted by a well-known writer who fucked your girlfriend, while your first book is fending for its life in the counter-cultural marketplace? Luckily, I’ve been through this kind of thing before. Olympia has trained me well.
It is tempting to see these two manifestations of my shadow (Jen & Daniel) as villains. They are definitely being dickish or cuntish, depending on what second chakra word you choose to use to demean people who lack integrity and blame others for their inadequacies. You know? What I’m doing here (until I figure out how to do something else).
When people who I respect and feel connected to get this kind of weird with me, it has a strange effect. I get inspired, and the flip side of inspiration is obsession. So, here I find myself obsessed and inspired by this interaction. I may not be a harasser but I am definitely stalking the sync beyond what is generally considered polite. I am determined to unlock the energy in it.
Byte by byte?
At first, I was thinking Sync Book Press should organize some kind of debate. It would be hilarious! If Daniel or Jen debated me on the use of the word “cunt” in Accidental Initiations? Two men debating the word “cunt”?!? Or even worse/better, me debating a woman on the use of the word? It’s Andy Kauffman-esque. From his wrestling women days.
I think my mind went in that direction because I desired some kind of human interaction with my accusers. Everything that has gone down between me and my old allies at Reality Sandwich happened by e-mail. It’s easy to write someone off this way, like dropping a bomb from above the clouds. Not so easy, for either of us, when we have to look at our target and feel their humanity in the same room with us.
At the urging of my friend and editor, Alan Green (in the form of an anecdote about The Who at The Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus in ’68 – you know the one?) I turned my inspiration away from direct engagement with the fragile folks at RS and toward my art. Within a day, I had a new song. It’s a Stonesian droning blues, with a snakey riff I’ve been noodling with for months. Once I knew what it was about, the lyrics came fast and deep. Jagger-style falsetto oo’s and big-mouth’d English twang make it a blast to sing, and the title is something I think Keith Richards, maybe even Brian Jones, would be proud of; “Reality Muffin (Own Your Lips Girl)”.
For the first time in years I wish I had a band.
The song is already embedded in Will Morgan’s first synchromystic exploration of my acting oeuvre.
I sent a copy of the acoustic demo to Daniel and Jen in an effort to raise our quarrel to a more creative level. Daniel called it more “harassment”. Jen didn’t respond. I’m not giving up on these folks, but I am also a little less obsessed with them and this issue, and more intrigued with the syncs, and the resulting art and alchemy they generated. I love playing this fresh new song, its arrival coinciding with my inclusion as a musician AND as the host of Radio8Ball in the upcoming Oly Music Awards at The Capitol Theater in Olympia, Washington on May 5th, 2012.
This is going to be a weekend of firsts and returns.
Friday, May 4th at 7pm I’ll be at Kitzel’s Crazy Delicious Delicatessen to discuss Accidental Initiations: In The Kabbalistic Tree of Olympia and take questions from my supporters and detractors. This will be the first opportunity for an in-person discussion of my book, and even the boring haters are invited.
Friday, May 4th at midnight I’ll be appearing at The Northern in Olympia as part of the Oly Music Awards. This will be my first live appearance performing my own music in Olympia since my divorce in 2003.
Saturday, May 5th at Noon I will lead the first group walk of The Kabbalistic Tree of Olympia. Anyone who has a copy of my book is welcome to join me. (Please get in touch at the e-mail at the bottom of this post to confirm your participation.)
Saturday, May 5th at The Oly Music Awards at the Capitol Theater at 9pm Radio8Ball returns to Olympia for the first time since my troubles at KAOS where I was actually harassed. This will be only my second appearance on the hallowed boards of The Capitol Theater since my rude dismissal from OFS back in ’04. (The first, being; accompanying Sandman: The Rappin’ Cowboy, when he performed at the Obama inaugural event in 2008.) I’m talking with some super cool guests for this show and am determined to make it as positive and transformational as the situation allows. Check back next week for more details on this event.
Things are shifting and I know it’s making some people, including myself, a little uncomfortable, but mostly I like it. Yeah, it’s only rock and roll but I like it. Yes I do.
Reality Muffin (Own Your Lips Girl)
You called on Kali and Kali called you back
but you wouldn’t pick up the phone
You called on Kali and Kali called you back
but you pretended that you weren’t home
Ooooo – You got to own your lips girl
Ooooo – What you say
Now you’re the victim and I’m the bad man
and you got control
but I ain’t no victim and you’re no bad man
Just fillin’ yo hole
Ooooo – You got town your lips girl
Ooooo – What you say (Reality)
Ooooo – You got town your lips girl
Ooooo – What you say (Reality)
You called on Kali and Kali called you back
but you pretended that you weren’t home
Reality
You called on Kali and Kali called you back
but you wouldn’t pick up the phone
Ooooo – You got town your lips girl
Ooooo – What you say (Reality)
Ooooo – You got town your lips girl
Ooooo – What you say (Reality)
Try some reality.
That’s my reality…muffin.
Like every song I’ve ever written, it’s going to end up being all about me. It’s the devil’s bargain of rock and roll. Whatever insult Pinchbeck and Palmer suffer at the hand of my muse will be nothing compared to what it costs me. Even as I write this, my phone is ringing, The Stones are doing “Fingerprint File” from 1974’s “It’s Only Rock and Roll” album, and my heart is filled with fear, as I just let it ring.
If you desire an mp3 demo of “Reality Muffin (Own Your Lips Girl) just send me an e-mail to a-n-d-r-a-s-j-o-n-e-s-@-r-a-d-i-o-8-b-a-l-l-.-c-o-m (minus the dashes) with the song title in the subject and I’ll send you the latest version for free.
