Sunflower Sutra
Allen Ginsberg, 1955

I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and
sat down under the huge shade of a Southern
Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the
box house hills and cry.

Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron
pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts
of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed,
surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of
machinery.

The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun
sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that
stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves
rheumy-eyed and hungover like old bums
on the riverbank, tired and wily.

Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray
shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting
dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust--

--I rushed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower,
memories of Blake--my visions--Harlem

and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes
Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black
treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the
poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel
knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck
and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the
past--

and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset,
crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog
and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye--

corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like
a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face,
soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays
obliterated on its hairy head like a dried
wire spiderweb,

leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures
from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster
fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,
Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O
my soul, I loved you then!

The grime was no man's grime but death and human
locomotives,

all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad
skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black
mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance
of artificial worse-than-dirt--industrial--
modern--all that civilization spotting your
crazy golden crown--

and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless
eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the
home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar
bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards
of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely
tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what
more could I name, the smoked ashes of some
cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the
milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs
& sphincters of dynamos--all these
entangled in your mummied roots--and you there
standing before me in the sunset, all your glory
in your form!

A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent
lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye
to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited
grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden
monthly breeze!

How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your
grime, while you cursed the heavens of the
railroad and your flower soul?

Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a
flower? when did you look at your skin and
decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive?
the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and
shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?

You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a
sunflower!

And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me
not!

So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck
it at my side like a scepter,
and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack's soul
too, and anyone who'll listen,

--We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread
bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all
beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we're blessed
by our own seed & golden hairy naked
accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black
formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our
eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive
riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening
sitdown vision.

I am the biggest brat I know.

My dad had been looking around for a car for me to drive when I am home, and had found some very cute possibilities (cute convertible, sporty coupe, a beetle) and some safe reliable possibilities (a nice volvo, a few hondas, etc) and I had kind of been helping him out looking around for something.

Lo and behold- while I was in VA visiting Nathan my dad decides to purchase a car. Oh not just any car. The crappiest, ugliest Saturn station wagon on the face of the earth. I have never so loathed an inanimate object in my life. Have you ever laid eyes on a '99 Saturn station wagon? It is the ugliest, most boring car in existance. Quite possibly the LAST car I would EVER select for myself. Ever. I knew I hated it from the moment I laid eyes on it. Little did I know my hatred was only beginning. It is so. slow. (I used to drive an '82 Volvo- my standards for speed are accordingly low). The breaks suck ass. I almost hit the back of a car because they don't work at all unless you slam them to the floor. There's a crack in the windshield. The seat is too low for me to see over the wheel without assistance of a humiliating seat pillow. The heater takes about 15 minutes to reach an acceptable level of warmth on full blast. Oh and the little part of the steering wheel that connects the wheel to it's base is at the exact place where I like to drive, so that every last detail of this car makes me uncomfortably and unhappy.

I have never felt so much anger towards anything in my life. All I needed was a decent boring car that I could drive to work in the summer and then maybe buy cheap off my parents to keep for a couple years after I graduate. I would not take this car if they paid me. No joke. I would trade it in for my $200 broken down Volvo right now.

Who would be angry about a free car? I know I'm a brat but I HATE that car! I HATE HATE HATE it. I want to drive it into a lake. I want a tree to fall on it. I want someone to hit it in the night. I just want to scream. I would trade it for a skateboard. I am the one driving it for heaven's sake! Why did no one even just give me a call on the telephone to ask if I would find such a vehicle marginally drivable! Do I live in a house with people who have not even the slightest idea of my personal taste? The thought of driving this car is nearly conniption inducing it makes me so mad.

I feel so guilty. When my dad asked how it was after I drove to the grocery store I couldn't even lie to spare his feelings. My hatred for this car even outweighs my consideration for the feelings of my dad. Saying that makes me feel horrible, but it's true. I hate being a brat. I'm a good child. I just hate this car.

Methods of Art History: A
Christian, Medieval and Byzantine Art: A
Egyptian and Near Eastern Art: A
German Advanced Grammar and Composition: A
Chemistry and Society: A
Individual Exercise: pass

4.0

I could die happy at this moment.

this was a pretty cool quiz:






I leave tomorrow for Germany, so see you cats in July. I may have the opportunity to post with sporadic updates, which I will do if I have the chance. If I don't, have a good time this summer, kiddos!

Just some practice at writing a formal review of something I think is pretty great.



Ys
Joanna Newsom
Drag City
2006

Usually a review of a book, a CD, a gallery opening will begin with the obligatory introduction to the artist, comparing them someone more familiar to give the reader a place to neatly categorize this new artist, and assess if they might be to their liking. Joanna Newsom on her 2006 album Ys is an artist who truly defies any of these perfucnctory comparisons. Some compare her to Bjork, but this is just laziness, and doesn’t capture anything about the album. Others say Joni Mitchell, Fiona Apple, etc. This too is lazy. To compare the sound of Ys to anything is disingenuous, because it defies genre and legitimate comparison to any other artist.

Newsom synthesizes seemingly unreconcilable influences into something unique and new. Think John Donne meets a Renn Faire meets a bunch of hippies. Even this does not begin to describe it. The only way to describe it really is to try and describe the feel of it. The atmosphere resembles Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, or Neutral Milk Hotel’s Aeroplane Over the Sea. It is an epic trip into a magical secret world, a transcendent trip into Newsom’s own, highly idiosyncratic, world-view, an ambitious attempt to create something timeless.

Some may disagree, but Newsom does it. You won’t find traditional verse-chorus-verse song structures, you won’t find a danceable bass line, but you will find textured and literate lyrics, talented instrumentations, and complexly beautiful compositions. In a musical climate dominated by boring and idiotic songs like “My Humps,” Ys seems to have dropped straight from heaven, pure and perfect, devoid of insulting simplification and over-sexualization of radio music. Her music consists of her (unusual) voice, harp and orchestral accompaniment.

It opens with “Emily,” a quiet ballad with a note of melancholy combined with a childlike sense of wonder. How can you not be enchanted by lyrics like “And the meteorite's just what causes the light/ And the meteor's how it's perceived/
And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee,” when they are delivered with such honesty?

The next track is the allegorical minstrel-esque storysong “Monkey & Bear,” which is followed by “Sawdust and Diamonds,” a stripped down track which features only voice and harp. It may even take a couple listens to realize that there is no orchestral backing because the resulting sound is so full and rich, even without the violins.

The fourth track, “Only Skin,” is the longest, clocking in at nearly 17 minutes. This is the centerpiece of the album, which brings together all of her influences (folk, classical, Appalachian) and all of the album’s themes. She addresses such timeless issues as love, gender roles, and death, with the lyrics ranging from strange, “Scrape your knee/ it is only skin/ Makes the sound of violins” to the almost modern “stay with me for a while/ that’s an awfully real gun.” “Only Skin” is segmented in structure and could easily have been arranged into movements, but the tone and instrumentation keep the piece unified, and the final climax of the song around the 14:00 mark is possibly one of the most beautiful moments to ever be recorded.

The album closes with “Cosmia,” which is a warbling, dare I say cosmic, featuring Newsom’s voice at it’s sqeakiest, cyclic harp harmonies and nearly Surreal lyrics, “Dry rose petals, red round circles/ Frame your eyes and stain your knuckles.”

“But the voice! But the voice!” you cry. This is the devisive issue. Her voice can be described as a strange combination of a 5 year old with a 95 year old, or like Lisa Simpson singing. If you don’t like her voice, chances are you are only going to grow to hate it more and more. If you fall into this category, skip this CD and don’t look back, but boy oh boy are you missing out. In defense of the voice, it is clear that no other singer could ever sing Newsom’s songs due to their personal nature. It is her music and her lyrics. No other singer could deliver the songs as they were meant to be. Give yourself a test. Listen to the first minute of “Emily,” and you will probably find that your impression after that first minute will be intensified upon further listening. If you like it, or even just a bit curious you will probably grow to love it. If it is like unpleasant, further with further listening it may become like nails on a chalkboard.

Ys is an amibitious, magical, transcendent, otherworldly, epic album. Joanna Newsom’s voice is divisive, but for those who can become accustomed to it, or even (heaven forbid) enjoy it, the rewards are immense. Each listen reveals some new little musical interlude or sheds light on a lyric. Ys has the same magical, transcendent quality possessed by every truly great piece of music and I wait with bated breath for her next LP, and luckily in the mean time there is “Colleen” of the new EP titled Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band(clever title, no?) to tide me over.

Arts of Asia A
Post Impressionism-Abstract Expressionism A
Pop Art-Present A
Global Issues in Lit A
German 202 A-
Introductory Logic A

Semester GPA: 3.95


Since when am I the type of person to be upset and disappointed by an A-? I have changed a lot in some ways. I wanted it so bad(ly). Why did it have to be German? I thought I had an A in that one by a mile. I did email my professor in case it was an error, but maybe there was some homework assignment I forgot or maybe my final comp was terrible (I thought it was pretty good, but maybe not?). Why am I so worked up about this? A 3.95 is great! I keep telling myself that. But I wanted that 4.0 SO BAD(ly). I wanted to be perfect. I wanted it SO BAD(ly).

The only class I was worried about not getting an A in (Arts of Asia) I pulled through by I got a 100 on the final to just barely squeak in there with a 93.5. I thought I really thought I had achieved my goal. But no. And if only the school gave out A+'s! I would have over a 4.0! I could have handled the A-. ARGH. And now I am just sitting here worrying that I am not good enough, because for the first time in my entire life my grades actually represent some genuine effort on my part. Even if I get in, will I be good enough for law school? I mean, I can't even get an A in frikkin GERMAN. Not exactly organic chemistry! I have no excuse. I can only blame myself.

I'm not trying to gloat. No, seriously. I just need to vent. I worked my butt off for straight A's with a (challenging) 18 credit course load. I am just so frustrated/sad/disappointed. And I'm frustrated/sad/disappointed that I am so frustrated/sad/disappointed by this. How did I get this way!? I guess the type A personality lurking so long beneath the surface has finally emerged. In some ways good, but, really, I'd rather be lazy and content than be motivated and perpetually dissatisfied.

I think I need to find some balance in between, where I don't die if I get a 3.95 instead of a 4.0, but where I am not satisfied with a 3.5. Except I can't. If I want to get into a good law school, I need these grades to balance out that horrible first semester. I just do not have an option. I have at least 3 more semesters busting my butt. Kindness from an admissions committee is not something I feel like I should ever bank on, and my future bank account is banking on me getting in somewhere decent.

New resolution- next semester is my semester! A 3.95 means there is still room for improvement. That 4.0 will be mine yet! President's List, I will be on you yet (I was so close!).



(I hope- because now I am filled with crippling self doubt about whether I am actually capable of it. And the implications of my future academic career if I am not.)

I’m reopening the journal, so in celebration here is a really long post about everything going on in my life.


The manic energy once reserved for creation has been recently reborn as a deep passion for art and those who create it. Ironically, this obsession with the work of others has finally brought me a powerful sense of self for the first time. Finally I have found my own reservoir of motivation to achieve my potential. I am no longer scared, or shy, or hesitant to go to others with my passions. I've always been so preoccupied with being sure to not bother people or interfere that my professor's surprise and delight at my genuine interest in what I'm learning was shocking and unexpected. Where I expected to be shrugged off, or to be disposed of at the first possible moment, I found people who appreciated the interest and wanted to help me out. Consider my shyness conquered. Well, mostly.

My life has changed directions. I’ve realized that I am not the type of person to be locked into academia, teaching sleeping students in a darkened room. I hate writing research papers, let’s be honest. Why did I think I wanted to do this for a living? Especially when the employment prospects in the art history world are so grim. Even in the case I was able to avoid academia, I’d be rotting in some office, endlessly selecting good art from bad art as a curator, or I’d be writing about what was good art and what was bad art as a critic. In the end the result would be the same. I would become so numbed to the whole thing that I wouldn’t be able to tell the good from the bad anymore and I would have killed my one true love.

But I have a new direction, and no you’re not going to be able to talk me out of it. I’ve decided to go to law school. I know this is the direction for me. I just know. No apologies, no reservations, no hesitations. No talk of the future would be complete without mention of Nathan. If you are curious, yes we are together as in probably forever.

Since making this decision, everything has fallen into place. My grades have gone from a 2.28 1st semester freshman year (this is the first time I have ever publically admitted how bad my grades were) to somewhere in the range of 3.9-4.0 this semester (which would be a 4 or better if the school gave out A+s- I have some). The work ethic lurking beneath the self-imposed façade of laziness has finally wormed its way out; I’m organized, motivated, smart. I’ve finally proved to myself that the only thing ever holding me back from being “that smart kid” was me, and in a way I feared my own success. I was afraid of calling attention to myself by being exception and I was very afraid of failing in the face of trying hard. To work for something and not get it is one thing I cannot deal with, and until now I was never willing to take that risk. Those days are behind me.

In general life news, I have rearranged the room I share with Anna so that I have my own space again. It is possibly the coziest little corner of the house I have ever called my own. I’ll have to post pictures when I’m done; I still need to paint stuff. I can think of nothing more pleasurable than a corner of the world to call your very own, no matter how small it may be.



I’m into lots of things lately.

Music:
* Patti Smith – Horses – download “Gloria” to get a taste
Simply put, amazing. The most powerful assertion of self that I have ever heard. Not to mention Patti Smith is possibly the biggest badass to ever live. She’s old enough to be my grandma, but is still so cool it’s almost incomprehensible. Maybe though this CD is not for everyone. Anna has dubbed her spoken word bits “highly weird,” but I think Gloria at least anyone could recognize as a great song. And I love the entire album.
* Joanna Newsom – Ys – “Only Skin”
So beautiful it could actually make you cry. The people who don't like this (I never though I would say something this snotty sounding) really truly just don’t “get it.” This might be the most perfect album ever recorded. I can’t seem to go an hour without listening to it. It’s that good. I cannot recommend it enough. Really the only potential hang-up is that it can take a song or 2 to adjust to her Lisa Simpson voice (there is no other way to describe it) for some. Worth the effort, believe you me. Susannah, if you still read lj, I am thinking you would love this.

Artists of the moment:
* Marina Abramovic (performance)
* Kiki Smith (sculpture/printmaking)
* Matthew Barney (video)
* Matisse (duh?)
* Hanna Wilke (performance/sculpture)
* Pollock/Rothko/blah blah abstract expressionism in general
* Anne Hamilton (sculpture)

Currently reading:
*Long Walk to Freedom – Nelson Mandela
*Eats, Shoots and Leaves – Lynn Truss
*A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers

I will post if they were good when I’m done. Reading is my summer project. If you have any recommendations I am more than open.

Oh, and I've lost about 30 lbs from the beginning of last semester.

We are defined by our passions.



Or in other words,

"Do what you love. Fuck everything else."
Dwayne in Little Miss Sunshine</>

First day of classes, so far so good! Way rusty on the German though, definitely need to brush up on that vocab.

Weight Training:
8 am, but not as bad as I thought. And at least lifiting weights doesnt require any great powers of cognition.

General Psych:
Awesome prof. Looks like a crazy little gnome. Seriously. Weird beard, sticky out ears, and just general gnome-ness. Lectures should be entertaining.

German:
Cool prof. Very gay, very German, very fun. Need to brush up though. And lots of homework. Which I was completely unable even to decipher without the extensive aid of my handy German-English dictionary.

Modern Architecture:
I was originally kind of iffy about the class, but it's going to be AMAZING. The professor is electric. Just sitting in class listening to the introduction was awesome. Same feeling as doing art. 12 page term paper, but this class will definitely be more than worth it.