I can write exactly this. And you can read it or not. And you can write what you write. And no one gets paid.

Those who are actively working to destroy the Earth gain capital, and those who could exert changes look the other way. Fabric. 

Dumaguete is a pretty cool and welcoming place. It is also crazy. I am lost in spirals, which take form as music and disjointed longing for something other than this pleasantly fractured seaside routine. 

There was a time when the port of Berkeley bustled and there were warehouses, businesses. (Full disclosure, my mom later had a studio in this area). Dumaguete is that and more. Wood houses and storefronts unimproved by time. Unimprovable. Historic.

Not-just-remnant green throughout the city. There is actual tree filled solitude, if not bliss. Fabric. 

The "Chasing the Sun" song cycle that I suggested has been cleverly amended by guitar player Paolo to "Chasing Habagat." 

H–– (Weebly spellcheck won't let me write anything but “Habitat”) is a season between seasons in tropical latitudes, typified by rainy weather and imminent typhoon winds. Grey and dreary, comfortingly close to Northern California on certain mornings. 

The fog horn, the ship horn. I hear it every morn. 

Chasing the Sun is now turning into a cornucopia of songs and jams, and different versions of songs in song and jam form. Does that make any sense? 

The basic point is that I had Aletheia Elwood Cediño as well as Ramke's Siquijor band in the studio with Paolo and John, creating music last night, and what a sound was created. I almost forgot I was a musician and the mastermind of what was unfolding. Losing control I realized music is a multiway street––beautiful chaos. 

We made a couple new songs, including an Alethia compositional riff off my "UFOs and Labyrinths," "Fragilidad." It hits my Billie Holiday mood hard. 

There are now about 5-6 Chasing worthy songs and jams. Very cool feeling to get a concept album in place. The kind of underpinning structure, the recurring Zuma Time, the bookending Fly Away Home are coalescing. The middle miasma of ever folding un-oneness. The ultimate structure is dually based on an unnamed jam from 1968 and Bartok’s Concerto For Orchestra.

Behold the last unrepentant writer. 

#endwriter

I am slowly training myself to get back into pen and ink, unconnected writing. After years of being a slave to computer-tied prose (by necessity––it was for SEO-driven online dissemination) I am slowly finding confidence to break free.

​The Hemingwriter* (or whatever less offensive thing they call it these days) is a concept to which I wholly subscribe.  I want to be able to write without device,  to play bamboo flute with kubi or djimbe, write masterworks of prevarication.

To inhabit whichever sunset or star-filled sky I choose.

 What is the Hemingwrite?* A Kickstarter-funded web enabled remote prose capturer.  A take on the classic typewriter that can be used to create a cloud novel, blog. Inspired by news of Cuba while camping in Tulum and hosteling in Playa over a couple months, I emailed the entrepreneur behind it:

"If you have a prototype developed soon, why not yours truly as a beta tester (traditional writer)? My idea is simple. I will travel to Cuba and use the Hemingwrite over a 3-6 week period to send dispatches from a country that has little to nil Internet connectivity outside of Havana. In other words, Cuba still exists as an Internet-free society. Perfect for SMS text-level transmission."

They didn't have a prototype and long story short, family obligations trumped Cuba and I headed back to California to find that my agent had not found a publisher and I had run out of money.

Fast forward a year: what has been released is revealed as the Tron-looking Freewrite, which Mashable describes as "pretentious hipster nonsense." Hmm... At first glance, they turned what could have been a vintage typewriter into an early 1990s word processor.

Wait... maybe I'll create my own, ask a machine shop and an electronics shop in Dumaguete to coordinate. It is amazing what you can salvage from yesteryear technologies in these latitudes.

#endwriter 

* Hemingway famously carried a Underwood Noiseless Portable throughout Europe, haunting cafes, learning from Gertrude Stein, and experiencing The Sun Also Rises. Controversial because much of what he did reflected the inhumane nature of what he (and many in his generation) went through.

​All Rights Reserved Damon Shulenberger

I have been busy with creative projects over the past few days. Primarily getting Arisugawa Park 1.25 - Orchids right. David, fresh from a hairbreadth balcony experience at Eve's behest is on another mission––this time to Peach, on the 19th floor of Roppongi Hills. Here is a sample: 

"David took a deep breath and walked into an interior of round glass tables and metallic lamps emitting a subdued blue light, framed by a nighttime panorama of Tokyo. As he settled back in his seat, David admired the city lights amid a buzz of skyscrapers and traffic. At the center Tokyo Tower, lit-up and serene. With effort he pulled his eyes from the view and looked around the room. Scattered dissipation in the form of expensive dresses, hands draped casually over shirts with loosened ties––lighting cigarettes, pouring whiskey, picking out ice cubes with slender tongs from silver buckets and clinking them into glasses.

The woman who floated toward him had a blend of Japanese and Latin features, her face tan and slender, eyes and hips wider than the Tokyo norm. “Good evening,” she said in a voice with depth, a little the worse for wear. “My name is Lise––you requested me?” 

“Yes,” he said, his throat suddenly very dry. As Lise draped herself on the seat beside him, he struggled to avoid and yet was drawn to thighs framed by painfully short skirt. This felt strangely intimate, and not in a false way. Whoever had designed this experience was working on a higher level––sex had gone from the last thing on his mind to the only thing that really mattered."
​
What is most interesting to me at this point is creating a tone poem with each section posted. The thriller narrative structure has been around for considerable time (Shakespeare?). If you are reading to find out what happens next, that is valid. But I also encourage readers to look within.

The real challenge involves using the cloud novel format as a way of elevating my art. I am not posting this work simply because I have been spurned by editors at literary imprints. If I was after trad publication and other yesteryear signifiers, I would have made the agent-recommended changes years ago (significant line-by-line cutting). I am as stubborn as a Number 2 pencil in an era of algorithm-affixed marketing missives.

If you read my prose, it could only be by me––that is what I am claiming. Thanks loyal readers, I should have the next section up within a day.

​#AriPark

In Chasing the Sun news: I was back in Alchemy recording a studio version of UFOs & Labyrinths with John and M—.

Snapshot of a five-hour session:

We listen to the spontaneous version of UFOs* I recorded in March, pierside at Make Waves in Puerto Gallera with Ralph, a student of Master Jing. After we listen a few times to this field recording, I ask if John and M–– if we can create a high-fidelity version. 

M–– "sure, but I will need to set it into standard tuning." He plays something bright and not at all what I heard.

"I prefer the chord as it was played at the time."

Shrug and look of dismissal. “The guitar is way out of tune on the recording.” Translation, this cat can’t even tune a guitar. 

"What I like is the out of tune-ness. I like the off minor sound that is somehow blues rooted. It matches the tribal flute, which is also not in a Western scale."

"Even if I could tune the guitar down, John could not make it work on the bass. Too difficult."

"Do you have an unfretted bass, an acoustic?" At that point they get wind of the stubborn will behind what I am saying and get to work detuning by ear. Within five minutes we have a very close simulacrum to the sound on the tape.** 

We then go into a jam created out of the chords, a free interpretation with new words on my part. The result is fresh to the point that M––– thought I was singing a different song. Which it might just be. 

We then run through three straight unedited flute, bass, and acoustic renditions of "UFOs and Labyrinths," with me giving simple directives… sustain that note.. no that one… build up the tension, leave out the rythmic sway, make it edge and choppy… follow that with a little minor jazz embellish, ala Pork Pie Hat.

Well, M–– and John get it down quick once our communicative lines are established––musicians really can speak a universal language––and the third take is  close to perfect. I have M––capture a little guitar tapping percussion thing he was doing during the playback, on tape, and we are done. 

I think the song is original and it works. Future guitar players are going to have a lot of fun detuning their strings to figure it out.***

​#endwriter

* Music nerdists, check out the original UFOs & Labyrinths on Lambanog - Jam At Make Waves. Track four after "When is the Malasimbo Festival?" 

**What John came up with is similar to the bass line to Walk On the Wild Side, though he does not know the song. It is sampled in a lot of hip hop, maybe it has percolated down.

***I am not sure if I will put up the current versions of UFO, before official release of the album. I would like the songs to be presented as a unified "song cycle." (With 12 Soundcloud listens a day, one may argue, what's the diff?)

The thing that gets me about Dumaguete in Negros, Philippines, is that it is a college town on the coast. In one of the most beautiful, geothermally active natural coastal locales the Visayas offers.

Most students live not far from campus, yet instead of bicycles and walking paths in this perfect cycling-sized burg, you see motorcycles. Everywhere. A lot of pollution and smells––an equal number of calm, tree-rich areas that seem to be disappearing without much planning. Waste water flows untreated into the harbor.

Santa Cruz, CA, what did you do right? Is there a way to create urban paradise/sustainability in Dumaguete* without making it expensive, closed to outsiders? Is there a way to access renewable energy from an existing local geothermal plant (Pulambato), rather than importing low-grade (dirty) Cebu coal?

Leapfrogging levels of awareness, Can Gross National Happiness be prioritised first and foremost in the developing world, where it must occur for sustainability to happen?

For starters, I would pose these GNH questions to the incoming Philippine President Duterte and to our (as yet undecided) US leader.

Cloud novel update: Arisugawa Park 1.25 - Peach coming soon. ​