What must it be like to slick the green hairs of algae across my kneecaps? to breathe in the muddy water? to look into the button-eyes of a massive gar, and to say my goodbye in bubbles? Say, Goodbye, world. Goodbye, gar. In pictures they are needle-nosed and have many teeth, but I do not think they are aggressive. They look impassive. I do not think they would eat me. The carp is king.
Evan Bryson, “Bottom Feeder”
There are fifteen Texas Is The Reason songs in total. A few of the song titles (and the band’s name) refer to conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination. Though tied to a slew of simultaneous musical evolutions in hardcore and emo, their sound is very singular, easy to live in. The songs groove and twist intermittently, like a moving dark.
My piece about Texas is the Reason can now be read in a free issue of Maura Magazine. The free issue also serves as an introduction to the new magazines Exact Change, run by Damon and Naomi (formerly of Galaxie 500), and Tits And Sass, which is by and about sex workers.
(Source: dubin)
I pulled my bike up onto the curb by the yoga studio and leaned it against the trashcan. I watched the yoga class through the glass. The lights dimmed and everyone moved in amber. They flickered like votives when the teacher crossed back and forth in front of the window and I thought, that’s what we will all be one day, insects in sap, strange jewels.
Vanessa Veselka, Zazen
His own performance with jazz drummer Milford Graves was set meaningfully among the abstract expressionists, particularly Jackson Pollock. Their expansive splatters matched; structure revealed itself along the way. Graves hunched with extreme focus over his drum set, seeming multi-limbed, becoming spidery. His drums were rainbowed with color, and every time he used his kick drum it would jump forward an inch.
John Zorn staged five performances in the Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday. I wrote about them for Maura.
Revelations inside: How museums make me feel like a cool and fluttery ghost; my savage hostility toward German expressionism.
Lapham’s Quarterly: Pet Cemetery by Miles Klee
It is hard to look a dog in the eye and see anything but an ignorance that amounts to fiercely protected wisdom. Every pet owner knows the feeling: somehow, this creature has domesticated me.
Ignoring the animal hair packed into the detail of my couch, this is my dog, a chihuahua/papillon mix named Cash. My roommate, his primary owner, named him after Johnny Cash. There is little resemblance except in their black and white plumage—he is a tiny, fearful guy who walks daintily across surfaces, at a near glide. At times he is excited into jumping by the merest implication of food or a walk; other times he is extremely reserved, only leaving his bed gingerly for a treat. He will walk on his hind legs if he feels he must impress you. I have no idea what he ever wants, and this makes me despair. But when he seems happy, when his eyes—extreme black marbles that sensitively quiver—express what I have with effort interpreted as happiness, I find myself smiling, as if I am a member of a pattern he initiated.
Miles wrote a great piece on the role of animals in human life and afterlife; it’s more of a direct continuum than we usually imagine.
