The title is a cryptic EVEN via Cowachunga reference that will only become clear in retrospect. Just realized some people come here for the prose. This is liberating. I no longer need to think in terms of post or think about what has happened to people's attention spans (where is my mind) on  the Internet. Thank you Weebly.

Building suspense is a tricky thing, you want to reveal just enough, not everything. My real-life concept of fabric, which presumably teams in Athens, Baguio, Orca Island, and Fresno are now creating, is just kind of the short term process aspects covered in the EVEN narrative. Ambitious though creating a platform that reflects a truly sustainable social (and introspective) reality may be.

The suspense of the next Arisugawa Park section is killing me. No really. I have been learning a lot about what I feel I need to know to write this in a compressed space of time. Getting in touch with my inner Hernandez Bros., while understanding that that is just a pose.

Arranging  sections of Namida to collaborate with Maura Rosa on.

Oh infinite worlds we cross to reach the other side of the street.

​#endwriter #FabricDos

There was this phrase, "the prisons we make with our mind" that came back to me, again and again, as I was recording Fabric Chasing Sun over a five month period. Duterte had gone from a kind of hyped up joke, "Dirty Harry" (or as I put it around the poker table in Dumaguete "too dirty") to something ominous, a sudden appearance of cracks in the normalcy of everyday reality. Lost in device, while the world was turning opportunistic and into a dangerous place defined by imposition of oppressive force.

This concept song Namida (Borderlands) is pushing 13 minutes of quality sound that keeps me interested upon repeated listens. At first I thought it was a continuation of Horizon, which was actually my third attempt at a concept song.... (there was this one called Insane Shit Suite that was a combination of orchestral ideas suggested by Hendrix and myself. I did that as a little sound collage and practiced a few parts with Paolo Ramos, but it was too complicated to pull off in the studio in the limited time we had available... too many odd tunings and wildly divergent styles. It will be returned to later... with its refrain "so what do they want/ I don't know, you tell me/ what do they want/I don't know, I don't know" it is strangely prescient).

I'm not gonna get into dets on Namida at the moment, but I happened onto one of the best concerts I have seen since maybe Blonde Redhead in Las Vegas at the Bunkhouse in 2015. Actually I was invited by Maura at our recording session (and first meeting) to check out her show in the grrrrls Independent Ladies concert.

These were my texted words to Diego... as with John in Dumaguete it is hard to get him out of his workaholic schedule and give feedback, but the musical parts he contributed to Namida were amazing and his home studio by the sea has some of the best natural acoustics I've ever encountered.

I saw Maura and Le Ra perform yesterday
I was particularly impressed by the guitar work of Monica and her musical partners
really great band, Im not just saying that
I only wish it was longer

Longer?

the sets
they only lasted like 30 minutes or something
so right where I would have wanted to concert to extend it ended

Oh cool
I forgot about it, I wish I could go.

thats what frustrates me about old Hendrix concerts
they had him on a bill with Pink Floyd, the Animals, and a bunch of others and they only played 30 minutes each
so right where he would have taken off into the stratosphere it was time for a new band
It was cool though... Monica said if she knew I was in the audience she would have asked me onto the stage to jam

Just had an idea with Namida...
you know how I sang a little of Separate during my jam with Maura, kind of seeing if she had listened and knew it?
she didn't know it... but the jam was cool... that jam thing could be integrated into Namida
as well as an acappela version of Month of May, which I have not told Roy about
so its like how in Baden Powell's Afro Samba you get little previews of the album in the first song​

​
Okay, back to plotting out a little Arisugawa Park and Cowachunga, in between writing true #endwriter material for the algorithm content people.  Don't worry, that is long term research for EVEN. Beats writing an encyclopedia, eh Asimov?

The Fabric Dos project tools on it the TJ borderlands, yesterday I had a memorable sesh with Maura Rosa, a respected solo presence in the local scene. It was the sixth time in my life I have picked up an electric guitar, two of which were relatively recent sessions. Just like acoustic but wheeeee!

​For those interested enough to click a small hyperlink, the work in progress Namida (Borderlands) V9 is up on Soundcloud. This is what we worked off of, adding auditory colorations that will hopefully provide infill and expand the song to 13 minutes in length. Respectable Miles Davis territory.

​A little publicity, this is Maura's concert tonight:

As far as the next Arisugawa Park - Shudder installment? Give me a day or two. I think I left it on quite a cliffhanger, I am as excited to see what happens as you are.

Halfway through this Cloud Novel "rewrite a section of Arisugawa Park" endeavor, I feel a sense of accomplishment. Writers may understand that nagging discomfort that comes when you only half connect with a character. Eve was always like that for me... while I based Kaori more on people I knew, or situations I witnessed while living in Japan, Eve was a character I only glimpsed in fragments. I want to know more about her and why I admire her later survival-focused actions. And I want Lise also to become a more complex character. 

A misconception that many readers have about my book and purpose in writing involves genre. Attending a mystery writer's conference and wearing that hat was lame a ruse to get the attention of an agent and I came out of my shell just long enough to realize that outside of the academies no one really cared. Forget the fact that K–– was part of an agency that represented Faulkner and Huxley, it is apparent that in changing the agency name the target market also shifted. I do not have the energy to deal with taste-makers and who those who find hooks in art.

Any yet... and yet... if the writing market does not raise an eyebrow at hard-fought prose, individual readers care. The same way I do when I encounter a writer with whom I connect. In the past year I have connected with Joseph Conrad,  Erskine Childers, and Jonathan Franzen. (I tried to connect with Samuel Johnson and failed). I do not have the wherewithal to trawl the web in search of talent, but I am always hoping to come across that great unpublished talent. The cloud novelist, a conceit that (at least in this blog) is approaching reality.

The point of Arisugawa Park, with its indecipherable and yet distinctly Japanese title, is not an accurate portrayal of the country––the purported duty of writers who set their tales in foreign climes. ​We can read authors such as Alan Furst to gain details, if that is what we are after, of the trappings of the time––presented to expand technical knowledge and create a vision in the mind that hearkens back to classic representations. A realistic tableau that seems formulaic in its essence.

That is not what I am after. I want the reader of Arisugawa Park to feel a bit of discomfort in his or her life, an awakening, just as I did at the moment at which I set the story. Though inertia took me back to the States and a last concerted attempt at office-bound livelihood. 

The thing is, I have lived abroad, traveled for many years, interacted with people from many cultures, and observed. What I am really trying to tie together in AP is not a sense of Japan, but a sense of possibility within a world in which all seems to have been explored (is this is what the algorithms and bombardment of fake news have tricked us into thinking?) The dumbing down process is nearly complete, but for a few bastions––the sheer numbers of people with half the story (or less) and purporting to know all is astounding. The sheer number of clicks at bait and the diminishing recompense that follows. 

In a sense my signpost for Arisugawa Park is Kafka's Amerika, which I found to be not a great work per se but compelling in the freedom he allowed himself, long before magical realism was a thing, to create a serious novel that was purely his own imaging of a place. Oh, and to name the "hard k" title after that conceit, which seemed to detail individual reaction against the emergent bureaucratic underpinnings of fascism.

Arisugawa Park is about that moment when one loses tether to a specific country-defined moral code and starts thinking for oneself. Personal evolution, on either side of the wall. Trying to pretend the wall doesn't exist. Failing that, gaining inertia to take some kind of action.

Thanks for reading and continuing to read and may this ultimately earn me the wherewithal to turn my attention to Cowachunga, which I have been mulling, and lacking the time and space to put into action, for two years now.

Or let the Fabric Dos music project be the breakthrough and let the readers follow as they may. The few who find their way here and share with one or two friends is enough. 

#endwriter #ChasingSun

They said it could not be done, that literary art could not be created on one's own terms, outside the system. They said the Cloud Novel was dead. Those nefarious pranksters, those who convinced the gullible reading public that what they wanted was social interaction, not quality. The broadsheet purveyors of fake news, post-truth.

With your understanding that this is a work-in-progress, I present you Arisugawa Park 2.5 - Shudder, Part Four. 

Revisions since pub: Seven.* (Are you counting literary gods?  It's me, Damon).

​#AriPark ​

That night and its aftermath had taken Eve straight out of her teaching shell, given her wings to beat against the specific gravity of conformance that glued her colleagues to predictable paychecks, karaoke nights, and occasional trips to Tokyo. Their impulsive connection, which ended immersed in deepest pleasure, lost in a trail of firefly lights, also provided a means of navigating her way to a more interesting life. Had Lise used her or had she used Lise? It was a valid question.

Eve appreciated her role of observer and guest, in a country of surface homogeneity and internal contrarianism. It was not boredom  that impelled her to Tokyo, not only attraction to Lise––there was something about rural Japan she very much admired. Cycling all afternoon across patchwork family farms, up forested hills with shrines, taking in the sheer beauty traditional life here offered. It was longstanding joke among teachers who had completed a competitive application process that they got paid simply to be themselves. Her grandmother applauded the fact that she was following in her footsteps, teaching––albeit halfway around the globe.

Had Eve been settled in her life, Lise’s smile and expression––even their casual touch as they leaned against the tree, seeking cool breeze through shared flap of fan, would have passed in an instant. If she had been in Tokyo a week longer it would have simply been one of thousands of daily human interactions.

There was another  impetus––a small thing she could not quite shake. Her looks marked her as exotic in her small town, she felt unwanted attention on a daily basis. Something in men's smiles... but it was manageable, nothing overt. A month ago her underwear had disappeared from the well-secured balcony.... she thought at first it had fallen onto the balcony below, but the old woman smiled bemusedly and shook her head. Then a favorite lucky panda disappeared from her bicycle handlebar when she stopped at the picnic area next to the reservoir and lay back in the grass with a book for an hour, watching patterns in clouds. She thought at first it had fallen off but no, she remembered distinctly glancing at it as she set the kickstand firm in the dirt. There was no question in her mind she needed to leave town sooner than later.

Lise offered a firm, pre-built structure of support in the center of Tokyo, where debt pushed many hungry-for-experience women toward precarious lives, gradations of servitude. For the first few weeks after moving in she saw Lise as a radiant goddess who could do no wrong. And yet time had not stood still after that first night. Eve had quickly confronted the limitations of her new environs, the gilt Ebisu penthouse in which she was allowed to spread her wings. Lise went through girlfriends, she freely admitted, like clockwork. She had her collection of handbags and well... that came first.  This rampant materialism was the financial aspect of their relationship, which ultimately made everything come undone.

#endwriter

Something unprecedented here... I am putting the significantly revised Arisugawa Park section 2.5 - "Shudder" up daily. What is this all leading to? Possibly a convergence with me being in Japan and writing the climactic sections of the cloud novel. Enjoy fellow travelers. ​One revision so far

​#endwriter

Shinjuku 12:35 pm

Eve sat surrounded by strangers, her mind in the particular cast of deadness that came with all subterranean journeys. The paleness of the riders on the subway, the way they pointedly avoided acknowledging each other, made her long for a place where people were passionate, often confrontational, but warm, always warm. She wondered if she had grown up in Tokyo and known no other place––would she have come to accept this particular form of coldness? Would it have driven her slowly mad?

Here in Tokyo people got on and off of subway cars as if ghosts, blanketing all serviceable places with their quiet, determined presences. Not human, not flesh and blood. People coming and going from cracks in the earth, taking sustenance in the flicker of pale sunlight through tall buildings. Motivated by longings that left her cold and shut out. Wrapped in a communal desire for––what exactly––money? Not only that. Recognition. A recognition of the mass and of its irresolvable ambition. An ambition for Japan to be… what? More. More than Japan. She shut her eyes and still the subway rattled on. 

​Most of all what Tokyo made her feel was lack of human contact. Part of it was her newness here––she had given up on old habits and friends to stay in a place that had come to her through osmosis, anime. But the hikikomori phenomenon of shut-in otaku reflected a pervading sense of quietness, distance.

​And that could be deadly in a position where (doh!) human relations were not easily intimate. Money had a way of putting a damper on desire. Feelings were now to be measured by the minute, which made no sense on a physiological level. The only reason it was bearable––why she accepted it in the spirit of the experiences one had in one’s twenties––was Lise.

#AriPark #CloudNovel

Fabric Dos... how can I explain... it's a lil like this. 

The song has been evolving into something very cool. Namida (Borderlands) Version 2  is the foundational idea. Now prepped for a Version 4 session on Friday (Version 3 is nothing like this). The original Namida jam will be released as the album bookend  to the opening instrumental.  

​#Fabric #ChasingSun

The LA Times has a rousing story West Coast states form a wall against Trump’s reactionary agenda today. I had to add my two cents: "California people deal with earthquakes, fires, high rents, and drought on a daily basis. They may think we are a bunch of quiche-eating idiots, but we have just figured out what works from hard experience."

#endwriter 

Here is another clue for you all: Frederick Vulcan, CEO of Creostone, Inc. And here is a poem that has been composed in tandem with the collaborative cover art for Fabric - Chasing Sun.

Manifest Destiny or Mass Regret?


Shopping malls and grocery carts,
slate grey skies, 
prescriptions, prescriptions––

where did it all go wrong?
where did expansion end 
and leave the wooded path 

off in a parking lot 
and who was pulling strings 
at the casino, and where 

did the hard earned money, 
the Community Chest––

How did it get siphoned
into waves of 
avarice, regret?

Like Baltic Avenue traded up to prison
stacks and stacks,
the luxury of nature hidden,
the Boardwalk.

Bankruptcy never entering into the equation,
the weighted wheel, the loaded dice––
Work is for suckers, right?
Money––just a way of acquiring a war chest.

The cast out, who swooned under wooden boards 
on a Santa Cruz night 
at the slightest gesture,
making love in the moonlight 
as the ocean laughed 

and found themselves
at the end of a snub-nose dictator,
doling lies as he motioned toward the iron gate,
inducing mongrel reactions, 
humping the American public on his leg,
the country in heat for revenge 

against phantom enemies, a vision 
of humanity more Devo than talking head,
mucho headroom, less reality,
Viva device.

Aging, as others know it–––
a welling anger,
time, focus, gains, attrition
that ache the mere 
reality of sagging balls. 

The bell tolls, to whom does it speak––
manifest destiny or mass regret?

#endwriter

I just found a guy on the boardwalk in playas who sold me a desert fossil that has the face of an alien on the front and a fleet of early-Creostone Age spaceships on the back. Perfect Cowachunga material (photo evidence to be produced at at time and place of my choosing). 

UFOs and Labyrinths has been getting a few likes from people. Glad that the music flow has a place in some peep's rotation. Ive been told it helps fall asleep... which is a vital aspect of human existence. 

Fabric Dos, here we go! Borderland style.

Notes to Diego, the purveyor of playas studio, bass, and creative ideas:

SEPARATE MY SOUL - (Dos, Track 2)
Three basic sections 
1. Rain on me.. RHCP funk rock groove 
2) We build and build.. more steady chords with harmony vocals 3) We Cry, we are crying - acoustic fingerpicking ballad waltz-time

IT'S THE WEEKEND AND I'M GONE - RENO NOT AGAIN (Dos Tracks 3 and 4)
Two Songs 
ITWAIG - kind of grungy beginning 
Reno - more like a big Joe Jackson beat and makes tap feet

HERE'S ANOTHER ONE (Dos, Track 5) 
Kind of heavy chain gang sound 
then old 60s My Generation/Summertime Blues (in-your-face) chords), I'm not fazed

Then there are the notes for the original jam we did, which is the basis for the first (instrumental) song of the concept album. 

 NAMIDA (BORDERLANDS) Version 2 (Dos, Track 1) 

Currently 4:34 - 

0:00 to :10 Extend intro another measure - add some demon chaser before bass comes in

00:34 to :41  Add another shorter cascade of guitar before flute comes 20 to 28…. 

Flute over-layers around 00:40 to :50

1:00 Mountain bassline… extend that another full measure (to about 1:21) before going to minor thing add more desert reverb guitar.. can we detune one of your strings slightly to create a deeper sound or have you create a half note somewhere?

1:47 to 1:49 improve transition to Mountain

1:50 to 2:07 I like the Mountain bass-line length there, but then it should kind of transition to an organic drum-centered desert vision… like dancing, scatting, or chanting… 

2:07 ? to ? Create a new little intro to Summertime section about 20 seconds in length (using actual bass pattern from SR) and then go into section that is currently 2:28 using existing bass pattern… 

I think ending is around 3:22 … skip last Mountain… but… keep that reverb guitar somehow at around 3:45 maybe it comes back in another song? or earlier chorus…

#ChasingSun

QUIPS: 

• On Christo's wrapping the Reichstag: amazing... to negotiate with six administrations on something. And have it come to fruition. Reminds me that there is a campaign afloat to elect Lady Gaga prez. 

• Re: "The map of tyranny. We are HERE."
well no not exactly... there is a small window until a crisis is manufactured that galvanizes the crazies. THEN you are there.

• Regarding Abe's recent shift in perception as one of the less hardcore international leaders out there: the lessons of WWII mean that accepted populism is less in your face in Japan? As in Germany. The gravity of a fool at the helm of a major country is not lost on them.

• Ever asked yourself, how does a cockroach get into the skull?

New Year's Resolution (still time):I have stopped seeking out articles about Trump. He rubs me the wrong way. It is like when I watched a few episodes of the Apprentice a decade ago and decided I didn't like his executive style. It was on to Lost, which had its own problems eventually.

Apparently Betsy DeVos, ordered an immediate flattening of all classroom globes (just a rumor at this point)? Maybe that's because that's where you place the food offerings for our grizzly brothers and sisters... glad she has had a change of heart. I was thinking that grizzlies could somehow find their way to "sanctuary states" like Colorado, but apparently it won't be necessary.

Across the pond, Frankie Boyle nails it. Including an urgent rationale for Fabric Dos:

"Obviously, the most important issue here is why America hasn’t done as well as in the past at capitalising on these horrors to create good music about the political turmoil. I mean, where is their Bob Dylan? Where are their anthems about drone warfare killing innocent civilians? Instead we’ve got Drake begging women via song to text him back after a fight at the Cheesecake Factory."

#endwriter
​

Usual hangout in Playa.
Is very foggy rainy these days I love it
real coastline
big waves

• Sobering and highly informed words from Columbia's ex-leader to Duterte, as a NY Times op ed:

"What do we propose? Well, for one, we do not believe that military hardware, repressive policing and bigger prisons are the answer. Real reductions in drug supply and demand will come through improving public health and safety, strengthening anticorruption measures — especially those that combat money laundering — and investing in sustainable development. We also believe that the smartest pathway to tackling drugs is decriminalizing consumption and ensuring that governments regulate certain drugs, including for medical and recreational purposes."

No, lets waste money and actively work against scientific, social, and medical programs that have an impact.

Although, with KellyAnne urging everyone to go out and purchase Ivanka gear online, even the comatose will soon start to realize that life did not magically get better when their guy won. 

Here is a real eyeopening paragraph in a Guardian article by Jonathan Jones, How can Barack Obama smile at a time like this? I think he knows something

"In our horror, we are missing the point that perhaps Obama has grasped. The Trump “movement” – as Trump likes to call it – died on inauguration day. That row about the numbers of people in Washington’s National Mall? It mattered. For without a mass movement that makes itself physically – and dangerously – felt on the streets, there can be no future for Mussolini-style bluster.
Trump has a stay-at-home electorate of reality tv fans. It is the left who are on the streets. It is his enemies who have the youth, anger and numbers."

​#endwriter