#tape i

[littleplasticthings]

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Constant Cold War - Jagen

Post-punk / Berlin / 2019

[jincherie]

♢ The Tapes: Profiles ♢

Tempest

alias: Jay status: villain powers: levitation and telekinesis rating: 8

❝Tempest cocked his hip playfully to the side, your eyes following unwittingly before you caught yourself and returned your gaze to his face as he folded his arms. Various items floated contentedly in the air around him.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you weren’t happy to see me,” he grinned, turning to peer out the window for a moment before returning his gaze back to you, something new glinting in the depths of his dark eyes. “But that can’t be the case, you did come and seek me out all by yourself after all.” ❞

Tape I ➤ Tape II ➤ Tape III 1/2 • 2/2

[thankyoustu]

Gene Clark - "Some Misunderstanding"

Tape I of the Bourbon Tapes

A heart-wrenching jam from the first Bourbon Tape--Gene Clark’s “Some Misunderstanding”--reminds me of those early days of tears and whiskey, back when Stuart and I first met and he made the Bourbon Tapes.  These days, it’s just tears and more tears, some meditation, and no booze.   Most of my life I’ve felt plagued by being misunderstood.  The Buddhists tell me I should not concern myself with these fears because the self does not exist as something separate from everything else, but that’s not quite the way it works for me.  I’ve never felt anything but separate--against the wall at a crowded party, waiting in line at the convenient store, loitering at the mirror with all the other girls in the bathroom.  My people are scattered and gone.  No one recognizes my face...or he turns away from the raw nihilism found therein. The part of my identity that’s hidden and only tangible through blood memory confounds me, and I can’t wipe 34+ years of a Judaeo Christian complex away. I don’t want to either because each piece of me is important.  It’s made me who I am--but who I am is a construct, right? Have you ever loved someone who leaves you because of what’s out there beyond you?  Have you ever left someone you love because you have to see what’s out there?   We spend our formative years trying to figure out who we are--which is really just a construct that we are making up as we go along.  Or are we who we are from the start?  I feel like a hardened and “smarter” version of myself at five, but I hear so many people frantically say they have to “get their life started” or “find out who they are.”  You don’t know who you are?  It’s funny: it either takes time to believe who we are or none of us will ever really know.  To know who we are is to know what we want and where we want to be.  But dreams aren’t a birthright, and there is a price for searching out our dreams.  We make them happen, and we pay for them.  Gene Clark’s No Other really hits on this thought, and “Some Misunderstanding” has me soft and sorry for feeling selfish pain.  But damn, don’t we all use the beautiful rhetoric of fate to excuse ourselves from the table?    Once or twice or maybe many times, I had a young lover that left me to fly or be less attached or because I felt more for him than he felt for me.  On one of these occasions someone older said to me, “He’s too young to know the cost of things.”  Maybe this is what we mean by figuring out who we are.  Maybe we just figure out how much we are willing to pay for the precious gifts of the spirit, for the preciousness of life.  In our youth we overspend.  We are frivolous and loose with our time, our money, our emotions.  But when we reach that arbitrary sense of “completion,” the answer is nothing.  There is no price we can or would pay.  Instead, we desperately hold to anything precious that comes our way--at moments that grow more rare with the passing of each year.  We know quality when we see it because of all the times we have gambled and lost.  Maybe that is figuring out who we are--knowing what we’ve lost and what we won’t pay.    

[thankyoustu]

Kangaroo - "Daydream Stallion"

Tape I of the Bourbon Tapes

Featuring the lovely Barbara Keith on vocals, this is a hella heavy American psych folk jam.  What a great bass line in the forefront!  The twangy picking of psych guitar is just behind Barbara's amazing voice, the drums hold it all together, and the organ illuminates all the dark corners.  Keith's voice probably comes the closest to the sound of British psych folk's elegant and ethereal lady vocalists like Sandy Denny, Maddy Prior, and Jacqui McShee, but she also has the raw energy and power of Americans Grace Slick and Stevie Nicks.  When she sings, "Now I'll sell my stallion if you want me to," the guitar soars into such a badass riff--definitely a deep hippie hair shaker.  What an incredible song about freedom, status, and sacrifice!  "I'll sell my stallion if you want me to..."  Let's just take a moment to think about that line.  Damn.  The stallion isn't just a horse, it's a symbol of status and a source of freedom.  The stallion has value--it holds you high above the hoi polloi.  The stallion carries you wherever you want to go.  It makes you wealthy, cool, and untouchable.  The stallion protects you:  You can flee your enemies or trample them underfoot.  From the psychoanalytical vantage point, the stallion is your locus of control.  It's your principles and morals, your systems of belief--grand and yet specific to the rider--it's what drives you.  It's no small thing to offer to sell your stallion for someone or for some new idea or belief or cause.  (It doesn't necessarily have to be a romantic reason:  It could be spiritual or personal.)  It's the sacrifice of one's wealth, freedom, status, protection, and identity for something greater and more satisfying.   I am someone who can make myself invisible if I want to.  I can say, be seen and so I am seen, and I can say, be unseen:  "Fortune was a giggling girl who played with her sword like a wand.  I wanted her to see me and then leave me alone."   I often felt if I could control when I was seen, then I could control--to some extent--how people perceived me.  I've also been told that I give off an air of being untouchable.  This may be partially true though I do not intend it, and I do think I have learned ideas and met people who often have disarmed me.  I won't say I'm above using distance and reserve as a battle axe, but do you ever meet someone who isn't ever around very long, who doesn't ever completely unfurl or go below the surface with you?  Maybe he's too cool for school?  Maybe he's afraid of losing his freedom, but from another perspective, his freedom is the very thing in which he's enslaved himself.  Would he ever sell his stallion?  And at what cost and for what cause? It's too bad we can't ever just say lay it down, shed it, or climb down from there.  It is so difficult when we are all so worried about what the other person thinks of us.  Rejection sucks.  But what do we get in return for our sacrifice?  What do we get when we come down and sell our stallions?  Perhaps a connection to something more real, satisfying, and true.  Maybe it's something we allow ourselves to integrate and learn when we make these sorts of sacrifices.  Maybe it is the fruit of the spirit.  Maybe it is the drink of water from the well that will allow you to never thirst again.  (Or rather the drink that keeps you thirsting--for more knowledge and wisdom.) Freedom's a tricky thing.  Sometimes the seemingly freest of ideas are really just the walls of the box, the bars of the cage that are holding you in.  It's so easy to get caught up in this way of thinking.  Because we are creatures of habit and worn paths and schedules, we tend to stretch our serendipities across decades.  The real freedom though, is in keeping the mind always open, malleable and non-resistant to change.  Part with the old ways if they aren't working anymore.  Sell your stallion if you'd rather walk.        

[thankyoustu]

Jesse Colin Young - "4 in the Morning"

The very first track of Tape I from Stu's Bourbon Tapes.  Right around the time Stu made the tapes, I was moving out of my apartment with no real plans for the future.  I felt like leaving my life up to chance and living off the good will of the universe.  As I packed up and gave away so many of my things, the tapes became the soundtrack to my uncertainties and sorrows.

One night, my friend Krishna came by my place really late.  All of my stuff was mostly in boxes, and he, too, was moving out of his place that very night.  He'd dropped the last of his things at the Refuge House Thrift Store and was about to head out of town on his motorcycle.  As far as I remember (and he told me this), I was the last person he saw.  There was a stillness to our meeting.  For several moments, we sat quietly amidst the remnants of my life--Krishna's own belongings already disbursed--and I felt very close to him at this time.  When I remember that night, I hear this song.