Less Is More Or Less Less

.in viscera veritas.

[kaibraun]

https://soundcloud.com/curbfeeler/vorticister

[kaibraun]

.denying the enemy (or) let’s spit roast the marzipan pig.

Down at the water on the marina

Gauging the level of quiet at midnight

Salty dogs sway in their water beds

A few televisions flicker through the windows of the larger boats

Precious rats dance on the rocks

They mosh in the dumpsters

We have a competition to construct the most offensive joke we can muster

I lose

I never lose

Never really

The vessels get smaller as we walk the path back toward Berkeley

Standing on an outcropping near the Japanese restaurant

Watching the smallest boats look colder than the larger ones - their tiny shoulders closer together

Jubilation spills from the restaurant

The danger receptor that tingles when a man’s voice means to make itself big and betrays a thinness indicating adrenaline does its tingling thing

A dog appears

A dog

It’s running circles around a Chevrolet sat at all of the awkward angles relative to the restaurant

And every other object near it

The sound of women urging and warning in equal measure

The car seems to cower in anticipation

One man, after shoving two into the car, raises a trashcan and smashes all of the windows of the Chevrolet

He does this as the car runs anxious circles around him

All glass smashed - blind - it makes a larger circuit of the small parking lot

In fits and starts, it manages to miss the cars that remain in the parking lot

It sputters

It pauses

Hesitates

Then climbs, with much effort, a small hill in the middle of the lot

It lands

It snorts

It pauses

Hesitates

It seems to whimper

I swear I heard it

And it beats a squealing retreat in the direction of the freeway

All of its eyes are broken

And we watch it go

One of the men that remains stumbles after the Chevrolet and weakly tosses an object that lands on the pavement

It makes the sound of a Yahtzee cup clomping on your grandmother’s dining room table

...

We pause to consider the dog

Who has ceased its barking

[kaibraun]

(curbfeeler)

Name your most recent failure. I’ll go first: Overarching and ever-present failures notwithstanding, my most recent failure has been an inability to obtain gainful employment in a position I believe suits me wholly. The underlying reason for my failure is hesitation based on over-examination of my work history to delay response too long to correspond in a timely fashion. I’ve been thumbing an appropriated reward system into ill-fitting cubicles for most of my adult life. In my youth, I found myself in lots of strange places that I hadn’t naturally sought. Choir, piano lessons, the forest, floating in pools of motor oil, lots of sports. The results of my parents’ urging. I appreciate this now. But the quiet child I was then (and will always overcompensate for) was not easy in approaching these things. On reflection - in the years since I’ve moved away from the family home - I’ve slowly insulated myself from failure. I’ve struck out here and there and done handfuls of bold things, but I realize now that these were, in one way or another, partially underwritten by someone else. Or that the stakes were so low that I never allowed the edgy bits to get too close to the gooey membrane of my ego. That is not living. That is the healthy in hospice for the promise of a warm bed. That is confusion of the inevitable with the intentional. And, in the Dickinsonian sense, the futility and the ecstasy of remembering oneself in The Swirling Tumult is something I have (heavily and) unsuccessfully insulated myself against. Opportunities sometimes seem to present themselves in unison. This is likely fallacious. We place ourselves in holding patterns to which we acclimate. Death and taxes… Yeah. But life requires that we engage with it directly. We intermittently wake up. And multitudes of options, awaiting our attention, eagerly present themselves. Or. They don’t. Either way. (Unless you absolutely have to.)

Don’t sleep.

[kaibraun]

(curbfeeler)

(Elegy For Goldengray Ocean)

I’ve been trying to figure out a way to phrase my feelings regarding the tragedy that occurred in Oakland recently.

I will never forgive myself for failing to get more involved with a group of people that are SO clearly my tribe while I’ve lived in the Bay Area.

Some of which I met ONCE in person and knew immediately that they were my people.

This is not something I take lightly.

This doesn’t come easily.

The world is filled with people disengaged from one another.

People conducting conversations as place holders.

Risking nothing.

Gaining nothing.

Offering nothing of themselves for fear of being caught out.

Fear of being wrong.

Fear of being singled out as strange.

Fear of having to question their universal maxims.

Fear of being taught…

I can spot my people through fog.

I can feel their vitality sounding through walls failing to muffle their energy.

My people are unafraid.

My people have eyes that are always open to the world around them.

My people are present when you meet them.

My people remember each other after years and continents divide them…

It is VITAL to find these people.

To be able to speak freely about music, art, film, literature, humor without the need to contextualize everything.

To contextualize anything…

This is no small thing.

This is EVERYTHING.

Being drawn to the things that repel us.

Open love for the things that embarrass us.

What is a “guilty pleasure”?

Shame is a construct…

An appreciation for high and low culture alike.

Endless study and recommendation of material that goes beyond mere stimulus.

Things with the guts showing.

I am filled with regret reading reminiscences of all of the people we lost.

They were such good people.

It’s rare to be able to say that without embellishment, but they were.

The sense that I got in my infrequent excursions to the city or stops in to Life Changing Ministries or Micah’s Obscura Machina filled me with the same feeling that I got going to Infinite Complexity parties in Los Angeles in the early 2000s or teetering third floor squats in Berlin tenements with no walls saving you from falling to the ground or early raves in PHX before I could discern between jungle or drum & bass or noise shows in someone’s house in Tempe where strangers climbed on each others’ backs and bathed in strange sweat or jumping up and down on the couch listening to my dad’s Stevie Wonder records when I was 5 or feeling awkward practicing with my ska band in a metal band’s shed in Buckeye and randomly playing a Misfits riff to check my tuning and having the metal guys join in for an impromptu Misfits medley or basement shows in Flagstaff with one ladder in and out through a human-sized hole that vented our collective steam like a weirdo sauna…

To SEE people and have them SEE me.

To be present with people in inhospitable places.

To already know that this will be a good memory.

To find your people.

Seeing the outpouring from all corners of outsider culture.

Vital and active.

Makes me remember - viscerally understand - that this all MEANS something.

All of the time spent alone in one’s room with records, tapes, books, archives of all sorts…

Sitting in the library throughout primary school while all of the other kids are practicing tyranny for future use.

Knowing that wherever you are temporarily stranded there are others out there to gush with.

A place to lower your calloused guard.

People to be open with.

To be unashamed.

Dark ones.

Beautiful ones.

It’s possible that I’ve wept more this past week than I ever have.

I’ve been overcome by waves of emotion in the company of strangers.

Ultimately, words feel cheap.

My words feel thick and clunky.

From now on:

My aim is to make sounds of such volume and personal immediacy that it might reach the people who’ve given me an abiding energy in our shared time on this plain.

Wherever they are now.

Wherever they are going.

I hope the signal finds them.

[kaibraun]

(curbfeeler)

[kaibraun]

I've heard it said that to truly reject fascism one must have a healthy streak of it in them.

And decide to reject it completely.

I agree.

Because I feel that I do.

And have done.

I think that some people simply cannot SEE it. They can't FEEL it, so they can't believe that someone could exercise that level of control over another - especially someone whose saying what they want to hear.

To a certain degree this is innocence.

Mostly it is ignorance.

At worst, it is willful blindness.

I think that only servile toadies, at their core, can be led easily into fascistic rule. These people yearn to be told what to do. They will accept a certain amount of poison mixed into their pablum as long as the pablum reflects the truth they want to see. The poison, they will say, is an unavoidable concession. And eventually they will not taste the poison at all.

Should we have empathy for those that refuse to have any for those unlike them?

We should have a measure of empathy.

Should we see lifetimes disappear as these people struggle to accept that EVERYONE deserves to live as they please as long as their choices do not bring physical harm to others?

I say that we don’t.

Certainly, you could argue that this makes us no better than them, but one cannot be complicit in victimizing oneself in the name of peace.

That’s not peace.

One fights for peace.

If someone allies themselves with leaders who favor unnecessary friction as a means to rally voters, they’ve assumed a stance of oppositional offense.

And I will defend myself and those they deem worthy of attack.

I will push back.

[kaibraun]

True story.

I was at a thrift store in Glendale, CA back in '03.

I found a pair of Prada pants that were way too tight for me.

They were 3 bucks though.

So I’m buying these pants...

Guy walks in.

Lines up behind me.

He’s trying to donate a brown paper bag full of palm pilots.

They’re not entirely obsolete tech.

They’re in their waning years.

Lady won’t take them.

She’s doing that “No!” thing.

You have to take them to a donation center somewhere in Boyle Heights.

Apparently.

I stuff my new pants in my now pants pocket.

I look him straight in the eye.

I smack the register.

I say, “Red Tape!”

I shout it.

Actually.

Like Keith Morris.

Silence,

I smile.

It’s so silent that you can hear my smile.

I leave.

He follows me out.

He asks, “You want these?”

I say, “Yes (I will take your electronic waste).”

I saw a movie once where a guy was randomly given something by a stranger and, as a sign of some sort of cosmic something, he gives the guy giving something he has on him.

I think it was money.

Mighta been cocktail napkins thick with shambleton scramblings.

So I give him a wad of Hungarian money I’d been carrying since 2002.

He refuses.

Maybe because he was a nice guy, but probably because it was (and remains and ever will be) useless in any amount not gifted in tonnage.

I convince him to take the pointless paper.

I take the bagful of e-waste.

I sell it on Ebay.

I pay rent for a month.

Here’s the point.

(This isn’t a feel-good story.)

Ever since that guy gave me those palm pilots my life has been pretty mediocre.

I think those things were cursed.

[kaibraun]

True story.

Knew a guy once who knew a guy.

Partyer.

Goes out.

Blacks out.

Wakes up.

Has a drink from the sink.

Looks in the mirror.

In jelly donut:

“Welcome To The World Of Diabetes”

Oh and someone's glued a Wilford Brimley mask to his head.

[kaibraun]

Once you reach a certain age, being slowly expelled from one of the social circles you vaguely run in takes on a quaint atmosphere.

You feel nothing.

You can sit back and observe the expulsion at your leisure.

It’s nature to be observed at a measured remove.

It’s like dissecting an owl pellet.

Wait.

No.

It’s like sea monkeys.

Like being disappointed by sea monkeys.

What?

You’re out six bucks...

It’s fine...

[kaibraun]

I remember sitting for hours watching my Opa woodwork.

He would focus.

He would breathe through his nose.

A deliberate rhythm that indicated deep engagement.

This is something I’ve seen repeated in craftsmen in concentration.

In describing their work.

I remember, one evening, a thunderstorm.

He and I sat in the basement.

Basement door open - it led to the stairs that led to the backyard.

Rain on the accordioned tin that covered the stairs.

We sat on the stairs.

Eyes level with the grass.

Cresting the mossy brickwork of the stairs.

Complete countryside darkness.

The intermittent lightning would illuminate the entire world before us.

White light.

The air.

White.

New enough to me to appear unnatural.

He described a technique with which one could measure the distance of a lightning strike.

Counting the seconds from light to the thunder pealing.

In the seconds waiting for the report - the sound of silence held by his measured breathing…

These experiences make me savor silence.

Silence is dynamic.

In 2012 I saw Nils Frahm perform at Decibel Festival in Seattle.

I arrived after the show had started and was beset by the unique anxiety of entering a theater show late.

For ten minutes, maybe more, I stood on the second floor of the lobby looking out onto the downtown street.

It was dusk.

It was raining.

Street lights were beginning to catch in the static of the rain on the sidewalk.

I’d assumed that the music playing in the lobby was unrelated to the night’s performance.

I’m not sure why.

But then something happened.

I heard wood creak.

I heard a finger fall in a distinctly human way - on a piano key that’s shifted under hesitation.

I heard silence.

I heard amplified silence.

I opened the door to the theater.

The song continued - more immediate and clear, but somehow more silent.

The theater was well lit.

The house lights had not been dimmed.

Everyone was looking forward.

I could hear every detail of my stride described in the surrounding silence.

I halted.

I leapt at the first available aisle seat.

I sat.

My breathing slowed.

I could not hear my breath.

I felt as if I could not feel my breath.

Hundreds of people focused on one person sat at a piano.

Variably accented accentuations fading into cascading arpeggiations.

And then notes crashing into silence.

The collective focus of the audience painting the silence heavily.

I think there is a unique quality to shared silence.

A group focused on quiet.

It reflects on us in a primal way.

It is a break in battle.

It is the eye of a storm.

It is a moment shared in an impossible immediacy.

We listen to each other.

We listen for each other.

We hear each other listening.

[kaibraun]

Guys?

I just saved a spider from the sink.

I don’t kill spiders.

Guys.

This rescue op made me realize that my no-kill policy regarding spiders isn't strictly humanitarian.

Spiders kill things I don’t like.

The enemy of my enemy, right?

Guys?

It occurred to me that this is rather like America’s relationship with much of the rulers we prop up in third world banana republics.

Guys.

That *spider* is basically *Gaddafi*.

Guys???

And when the blurry cell phone footage surfaces of that spider being torn limb from limb by the proletariat—

GUYS!!!

WHO THE FRICK ATE THE LAST FIVE ZINGERS???!!!

I WAS SAVING THOSE FOR MY 24-HOUR COLUMBO BINGE.

Oh…

Shit…

I dropped the glass…

Where’d that spider go?

Ah.

There he is.

Yeah…

This glass isn’t gonna fit into that crevice he’s cowering in...

...

Got him.

#deepgluts

[kaibraun]

(curbfeeler) Live manipulation of Echoboy by Soundtoys over Novation Circuit drum track / Echoboy bounced multiple times. Recorded to metal on Tascam 414.

[kaibraun]

https://soundcloud.com/curbfeeler/september-swimmer-excerpt

[kaibraun]

KUKQ.

Phoenix.

AM station.

Open desert.

The signal would oscillate wildly in fidelity.

Like it was being cooked and warped by the sun in the distance it traveled to my radio.

Like, if you could envision a beach, laying your ear in the water that lapped at the shore.

Clear.

The water pulling away from land.

Then muffled as the water rushing the shore enveloped the signal.

Strange thing was…

Anytime this song came on…

The signal would clear right up.

No whooshing.

No static.

A clarion call.

Few things have proven themselves to me.

I believe in THOSE things.

In the absence (or in exaltation) of those things…

[kaibraun]

Protip: Playing music *strictly* to your musician friends will get you nowhere. They are your friends. (strike one) They are musicians. (two) They are (and you love them for this) fickle artist types largely focused on themselves and their precious expression. (three) Think about how tender *your* tastes are. You and your friends are one and the same. You fickle artist type(s)… Now. There are those who enjoy music... (You remember. The kids from high school. Who cared about music. And now they "listen" to "country". And it’s not even the good country. It seems like they mostly enjoy a passable steak. And the places where they serve these steaks at approachable prices play “country”. And welcome children so...) And there are those who are CONSUMED by music. So much so that they would never, for fear of sullying The Thing, dare to make it. These people are important. Give your music to these people.

[kaibraun]

Tulsa

My father is an imposing black man.

For those prone to weak assumptions, this is all that he is.

Every time an innocent black man is executed in proximity to utterances of “bad guy”, “trouble”, “thug”, “unpredictable”…I think of my father splayed in hemorrhagic confusion on callous pavement that will never know his name.

He was born in the 50s in a rural Ohio town filled with good old boys that, on the occasion of his exceedingly educated father’s return from distinguished service in the Korean war, refused to entertain the option of any form of employment. Most of the “opportunities” on offer hovered well below my grandfather's abilities...

For my father, growing up meant swimming bans, separate locker rooms, gaslit provocations, fist fights…

My father never openly spoke about these things when I was growing up. I had to ask after having been effectively radicalized by anti-authoritarian art and written works.

I would ask.

He would volunteer bits of information.

I felt guilty asking after a while.

These are stories that people don’t enjoy retelling.

There are situations that people would rather not relive.

My family made the trip from the southwest to Ohio on a number of occasions. The trip takes three days. It takes you through Oklahoma.

The summer of one of those trips coincided with reports of a spate of racist behavior by Denny’s establishments against people of color.

We weren’t frequent visitors to Denny’s but, when traveling through the flyovers, the choices were limited.

The only time I experienced the racism alleged against Denny’s was when we decided to stop outside of Tulsa to eat.

The person who sat us took one look at us, led us past the scattered, gawping locals swimming in ample seating, and showed us to a room that looked like a small dining area available for spillover on busy nights.

The space was lit with ambient mid-day light peaking through almost completely drawn sackcloth curtains.

Chairs were upturned on the tables.

We were seated in this room.

I’ve harbored suspicions of Oklahoma ever since.

There was a point at which, instead of my father, I started to see myself in the innocent man bleeding out on the pavement.

I have no idea what people see when they see me.

My father is a black American. My mother is a white German.

As a result I’ve been forced to prioritize clear, concise language with those whose behavior I find unpredictable.

These people are many.

And the very people who would levy my supposed unpredictability as reason enough to end me, or off-handedly inspire others we legally endow to do so, are the people who I must soothe and bring back to earth.

This is the burden of a person of color.

“Convince us we are wrong about your innate violence. However momentary.”

Which actually means…

“Give me a reason. Any reason."

I am surrounded by progressive people.

I live in the Bay Area.

That doesn’t mean I don’t feel every person of color who is ended for no reason.

For any reason.

[kaibraun]

https://soundcloud.com/curbfeeler/angel-island