Why would you leave New York?

06.27.04 (7:42 am)   [edit]



When I left New York, I think that few of my friends understood my reasons.
To tell the truth... I am only beginning to understand myself.
My last 10 years there were so filled with activity, that I have to cut hunks of it up in my memory and slow it down to really see what happened. Don't get me wrong I loved the pace, the urgency of it all! Even if it was just an illusion... a figment of a collective imagining.
I do love that city! Sometimes I'd go out late at night and just walk.
Uptown, downtown, cross-town it didn't matter, I just wanted to be on the streets.
They were my streets.
Just before I left in the early 90's, I lived in a rather large apartment on 40th & 6th with my brother and his husband.
The three of us did not have a bad life, enough room to be out of each other’s hair & Bryant Park and the city at our doorstep.
If I could have only frozen that time, no... not out of a sense of nostalgia, or even because it was my "Golden time". No...simply cause we were all alive then.
Because it was before that Plague touched us.
Before the color started to drain out of our daily existence.
Now my brother and I live on opposite sides of the globe neither in NYC.
We don’t speak about our 'other' or the city, but sometime we speak of love...and then we know...we can only be visitors there now.
Why would you leave New York?
Well... Why wouldn't we?
-Monk-

Open letter to the world at large!

06.20.04 (5:54 pm)   [edit]
This is NOT a complicated world!
Do you find that hard to believe?
Do you believe that anything ever progresses past the point of human need and the more sticky issue of human desire?
Passion is useless without compassion to temper it!
I know that many groups want you to believe that modern life is too complicated for an average person to sort through, but my friends there are only average people on this planet!
Do you believe that these complicated issues are best left to the professionals to solve?
Professional what? Professional politicians?
Politician with big ideas? hmmm?
Now I may be wrong... but the way i heard it politcians are not supposed to have big ideas. They should spend all of their time in office administering to the needs of the people.
They are all, up to and including the president only middle management. Put in place for only one purpose... to administrate our will.
maybe we should elect professional humans then we'd all be eligible again!
After we all, we all turn Pro on the day we are born. Why do we then spend the rest of our lives trying to become amateurs?
Trying to foget how to love.
Trying to forget how to hate.
Trying to forget that we are ONE people, all locked on this spinning ball, ONE race that can trace it's origins back to a common root.

:idea:
Here it is in a nutshell brothers and sisters!
We have been spun!
Suckered!
Hood-winked!
We have actually begun to exclude [u]ourselves[/u] from the democratic rights that we had been given!
We have allowed the smallest and most petty of us to make desicions in our names, in the belief that they have our best interest at heart?
Really... don't we know by now by now that they don't?

Where it all began/ part 1/ summer of OZ

06.19.04 (5:32 pm)   [edit]
It's been a long summer vacation in Australia, 12 years by my count. And I'll tell you it's been a wild ride.
Come on in, and I'll tell you a story!
A story with more stupidity than a day in congres.
more banal than a Hollywood blockbuster
and more regret than a Greek tragedy!

It all started in New York, as most good stories do.
Just after the first gulf war, that the first Bush started. I was working triple duty.
By day i was a jeweler, by night working on a recording project for H.S. with M.B. and on-call for M.B. as guitar tech/audio engineer/go-fer/guitar student/conscience... the list goes on and on!
Lots goin' on... and i was LOVIN' it!
I was working in my creative zone, stimulated and open. I was tired, but happy.

Backstory:
Just two or so years before I was involved in a car wreck that landed me flat on my back, in a full body cast for over a year. And when I got out... I wanted Sex, positive stimulus and SEX!
I know i said sex twice!
A whole year!!!

And then...
In steps the woman! Well, there's always a woman isn't there? For me she was no ordinary woman, so different!
She: White-Australian.
Me: Black- American
She: Just under 6 feet tall
Me: 5'6" or so if i don't slouch
She: love the Bush
Me: Love the city
Well... you get the idea.
I met her at a party my brother was giving at our apartment. I wasn't even going to stay at the party, I would have been the only straight person there and as i said earlier... and SEX! Anyway... I was getting ready to make my exit when...
There she stood, shocking red hair, green halter-neck flower patterned ball gown and green doc martin boots.
I had to have her!

TBC

Looking back and running forward

06.19.04 (10:59 am)   [edit]
Sometimes I look back to the time in my life when I was played high school football (gridiron).
In my freshman year I was developing such a bad habit of looking behind while carring the ball upfield that coach Scarpino had to take me aside.
He told me how counter productive it was to look behind when everything I wanted was ahead of me! Now everyone in town knew that coach had taken one too many hits to the head when he played, but I had to admit he was right.
When you look back you lose time, concentration, advantage!
It's true in football and true in life.
With the help of the coaching staff I broke myself of that habit, and I took the coach's advice to heart. In my life I have not spent much time looking back. I've tried to anticipate what lay ahead. But now, so far from home, I do find myself looking back, wondering what became of the people that I knew In my early days, what would have become of me if I had stayed stateside? Would things be better or worse if I had never come to Australia? And then ... coach's voice popes into my head and tells me to turn around ...turn around and haul ass!
I've still got a few plays left, but no time outs, so i'm gonna keep heading for the goal line while there's still time left.
Thanks coach!

What ever happened to the guitar solo?

06.19.04 (12:27 am)   [edit]


I am not sure if it is an result of getting older but when i listen to music these days i feel something is missing.
There's no doubt that music sounds better, the technology has come a long way! I am not looking for a return to the past that way. I ain't givin' up my MP3 player. It's too neat! You'll have to pry it from my cold dead hand! To paraphrase some cold dead guy.

Yes, the music sounds better but where are the Guitar solos? I miss them so much! Ok, today's music has "PHAT BEATS" aplenty...but Where is the improv factor?
That 8 or 16 or 32 bars of pure self expression?
Where is Ernie Isley taking flight and trading endless ideas on "Who's that lady"?
Where's the emotional solo's of say stevie ray?
Where is the part of the song that says "We've said plenty... But here's how I feel about it!"

Some believe the guitar solo to be self-indulgent wankery.
I see it as a metaphor for personal freedom, that chance for the guitarist to soar over the changes free to improvise, play with the time & be in the moment.
The moment when the 'Head' comes around and says "Do ya feel lucky?...Well do ya ...PUNK? And you gotta step up and fill that space with the only thing you got...your SOUL!

I was lucky enough to grow up in a home filled with Jazz & jazz players that knew the importance of the solo. For all instruments.
To all of them and all the others that made or didn't make the changes... I thank you!
I'm sure guitar solos will make a comeback, and when they do I'll be there to take the trip and take my chances!
I'll see you at the "A" section!

New kid on the tblog

06.17.04 (9:22 pm)   [edit]
Well who knew there were so many ways to blogger! I became aware of this world just a while back when I bought a new camera. I've looked around and this seems like a good place to hang my hat.

A little about me:
Ex-Pat New Yorker
Guitarist
Writer
Go Board maker http://www.geocities.com/monk...
Living in Australia (and lovin it! ...finally)