Boredom 2

Kids that don't have the initiative to learn, those are the scariest ones. For them, culture only exists in that small realm that has been drilled into them by the inane media. Adults too.
I work in a haven for the bored where, for no cost beyond city taxes, you can check out up to 8 movies at a time to take back to your television.
Typing a blog looks like work, reading a novel looks like I'm not working.
The middle class in this country, even the "broke" lower-middle "working" class, which a bunch of white people who read blogs probably belong to, is fairly wealthy compared to the rest of the world. This ain't no picnic but it's not a gypsy camp in Belarus either. There are places like the Ogaden where no food will grow and the rest of the desert that has no water or a hint of the infrastructure necessary for it. But still somehow we dare to claim we are in a period of economic crisis. I'm thankful for my job. Just thankful.

Anyway, the computers at the library weren't working properly this morning. People complained. They made life hell for my co-workers. What could be so important on those computers to come in every day AND be such a jerk. People sat staring at blank screens until 45 minutes later when they miraculously came back on.
I laughed at the scene, taking solace in having recently heard an indigenous resident of Alaska talking about our unsustainable culture. His consolation is that this shit can't last forever.

Happy New Year.

Boredom 1

Joe Strummer was once quoted as saying that many of the songs he wrote for The Clash came from boredom. If only everyone were Joe Strummer in that way. I've found quite the opposite in people and what boredom does to their creative urges.
So I started to write songs about boredom itself. The first of these came during Labor day weekend, 2007. I saw a barn in rural northern Missouri where someone had spray-painted "life without escape" in large letters across one side of the facade. That was art as far as I'm concerned, it got me to write a song.

It's a swampland, nothing to do
but watch the river and the trains
just the sorghum and the soy
Boredom - first comes boredom
Boredom - next comes anger
It's the pilot's call whether it's safe water
or whether you should get out
Boredom - then comes stupid
Mr. Clemmon's swearing in his grave

The second piece about boredom dwells in a more urban setting. Also last summer, right after Labor day, the police found a kid's body in a dumpster. He'd been shot and some other kids got arrested on suspicion. I didn't follow up[ on the rseults of the case. One has to figure these kids could not afford the video games that might satisfy these sort of urges in more privileged children.

Necklace Of Shoes

for Muntadhar al-Zaidi (and the widows and orphans)



Roll out all the red carpets
Put up a castle out in the sand
Put up a throne out in the desert
go to hell where you'll bother no one

This is a farewell kiss, you dog
Now you’ll wear a necklace of shoes
A ridiculous disgrace
Ridiculous and ready to kill us

Keep moving to stay alive
Oh, the people…
Keep moving while asleep
The people are sharks

Corrupt but loyal, it’s the customer’s money
It’s about money it's a rich land
It was a rich land and now it’s a poor one
by the sleight of a government magic hand

Wars and walls all around yourself
Roll out the carpet so full of sand
Put up a throne out in the desert
now you're king of a forsaken land

A ridiculous disgrace
Ridiculous and ready to kill us
This is a farewell kiss, you dog
Now you’ll wear a necklace of shoes

Part Of The Problem 10

The famous massacre at Wounded Knee happened in the 19th century. This same place is an Indian reservation where, less than a hundred years later, the FBI caused a shoot-out with Leonard Peltier and others. Peltier was charged with the death of one of the government agents and taken from Canada to which he had escaped. He has been in prison for over 30 years, like many others, for political reasons. This is a part of the problem.
This turned out to be the longest song I've ever recorded. There aren't that many words, but I tried to encompass a whole era of history into a couple short verses. Maybe this was my idea to re-do Neil Young's "Cortez the killer" for North America. A story that needed attention.
During that same era of history wherein the first Wounded Knee massacre took place, there was a great labor struggle in the cities as well. Chicago's anarchists and socialists were organizing to strike for the 8-hour work day. Some contented themselves with this and hopes of higher wages and safer working conditions. Others advocated taking over factories, throwing out their employers by force and taking the means of production for the working class. Businessmen that owned the factories also had interests in the railroads to ship their raw materials and products. This connecting line, a train of thought so to speak, made me realize that the Indians were being pushed off their land by the same forces who were keeping the immigrants and the poor enslaved in the factories. This is another part of the problem. Marshall Fields was a motherfucker and I've never said that and meant it as a compliment. Evil white men who worship money like JP Morgan. We've heard their names, we should know what they did to the country.
Albert Parsons gets a name-check in this song. He and other anarchists were framed for the bombing in Chicago's Haymarket in 1886. He escaped to Wisconsin to avoid arrest but later turned himself in to die at the gallows with three others in 1887.
This, one of the last songs written for Bad Folk and recorded, leads to the next project I've recorded more recently. A folk-opera of sorts about Lucy Parsons, wife to Albert Parsons and leader in the struggle for worker's movements throughout her life.


WOUNDED KNEES (lyrics by Tim Rakel)

out on the plains, the ghosts of buffalo
echo like thunderstorms, storms that no one hears
Black Hills cleared to make way
for the thunder of the white man's train
and out on the plains
the ghosts of buffalo echo like thunderstorms
a nation and all it's people are left with bloody hands
a nation of people are left with two wounded knees

out on the plains, the storms still echo
from cold Chicago and through the Dakota fields
when they lose control, all they see is red
the immigrants every time
and the ones who were always here
and out on the haunted plains
and through the martial fields
the innocent flee north
stumbling with two wounded knees
a nation and all it's people are left with Parson's blood
the nation of Peltier are left with two wounded knees

Part Of The Problem 9

Sometime around 2002 I saw this in neon. LAUGHTER (buzz buzz) SLAUGHTER (buzz buzz) LAUGHTER. Big red neon letters on a building in Grand Center, with the "S" flashing on and off like when you see a WAFFLE HO SE from the highway. I don't know who put it up, it was seemingly part of a gallery event in the neighborhood. That is art though, that which inspires thought and consequent art from others, so thank you unknown neon-light installation artist.
What an insight into the strangely-related and hard-to-pronounce words of the English language.
The line asking "will it take the bombs to wake us" was stolen from George Orwell's "Homage To Catalonia", I proudly admit it. His use of it was in reference to England's ambivalence to the civil war in Spain in the 1930s. The rest I would hope is self-explanatory, kind of a little anthem.


SILVER SPOONS AND PAPER PLATES (lyrics by Tim Rakel)

what gives you the right to laughter and slaughter
drank up the well, poisoned the water
and it seems like it will be a thousand years
for some people to be free
as apathy settles back in with the debris
will it take the bombs to wake us and open up our eyes
or will we finally see the truth of how the other half dies
the rest of the world doesn't eat
from silver spoons or paper plates
and death is not some side effect
in the search for the cheapest rates

what gives you the right to laughter and slaughter
drank up the well and poisoned the water
and it seems like it will be a thousand years
for some people to be free
as apathy settles back in, with the debris
cut off the heads of state, use their corpses to fill the hole
in this lousy culture that they traded for your soul
if they don't own you, you get called the enemy
you get called the enemy of ignorance and apathy
and the rest of the world
doesn't eat from silver spoons or paper plates
and death is not some side effect
in the search for the cheapest rates

Part Of The Problem 8

This song came to me as a small piece of a larger world I'd created in my head while reading too many books at the same time. It's a terrible habit of mine. The title "Mechanical Lions" came from a story of the same name by Danilo Kis, who lived and died in what was then Yugoslavia.
I was reading his collection of stories, "A Tomb For Boris Davidovic", in a park on the Vltava River in Prague. Really, it was a great vacation, drinking beer in three foreign countries with my brother and reading books while riding in trains and living in hostels.
"Crime and Punishment" was also in the trip's backpack until I left it behind in Ireland somewhere. But the biographical details of Fyodor Dosteovesky are there in the first part of the song. His father was choked to death by mutinous soldiers and he was himself in prison awaiting death by a firing squad. The second verse was filled in by scenes I saw in Krakow. A statue of a dragon outside a castle was rigged to breath flame for tourists but what I noticed most was the homeless people in Poland. Everywhere I went, people looked Czech or looked Irish, but here on the streets, these people could have been Indians or from India, I didn't know. Dirt makes people the same color and hides their former identities.
The old men only appeared to me after I had crossed an ocean to get back home. In a color photograph I had taken looking one direction, there were two men walking towards me. In a black and white photograph, apparently taken a moment later with my other camera and facing the opposite direction, the men were now walking away from me. They had come towards me and passed while I fumbled with film advance levers and light meters. Anne Tkach, with whom I first shared the prints, identified the men in the pictures. I was taken aback. It made me think of all the other old ones that have passed while I fucked around not paying proper attention to their presence. So, this song has always been related to "Dead Trees" (see Part Of The Problem 7) in an indirect way. Perhaps the next thing is to figure out more pieces of the story from that alternate European world that existed in my head in those days.



MECHANICAL LIONS (lyrics by Tim Rakel)

father was murdered, they poured vodka down his throat
poured it down his throat until he gagged and choked
you get into this frenzy with that stern look on your face
line up the firing squad, send me to a better place
two old men were walking across the ancient bridge
two old men were walking along the river's edge
they said go on shout your non-sense, that's fine with us
keep on shouting non-sense but make sure it's your own

there are dragons breathing fire outside the castle walls
there are dogs wearing muzzles in the park below
the gargoyles they look down from the holy church
and if that carpenter came back he'd get murdered again
and the homeless look like they're not from around here
like angels, one moment they just appear
and the prophets get met with mechanical lions
and old men are left wandering the streets
they'll tell you everything you wish to know
you just have to notice them there

it's a damn shame hearts are hidden never to be found
while material goods continue to abound
they say thugs do the bidding, commit murder and do time
the state says that thinking is the most dangerous crime
so go on shout your non-sense, that's fine with us
keep on shouting non-sense but make sure it's your own
two old men were walking across the ancient bridge
two old men were walking along the river's edge

Part Of The Problem 7

Long memory is not quite the opposite of short-term memory. Most people lack both these days. You stare at computers all day and allegedly have access to every piece of information, then you become reliant and who cares what you can or can't remember without prompting.
What if the power goes out? Then you head to the dimly lit bookstores. But those are mostly gone too. I've worked in those bookstores and libraries and seen the computers move in.
A few years ago I worked with R. P. Dunaway, a man who had started a bookshop on Delmar when you could still travel by train and visit stores in other cities. That was the way you found things that didn't knock at your door and weren't generally available in your particular city. Pat, as his friends called him, knew books and loved them. Books should be more precious but they have become commodity like all art and knowledge in a capitalist society. The more obscure, the more valuable to the seller, despite the usefulness on the contents. Pat also knew history, partly because he had lived through so much of it, but also because he thought it important to learn and remember. He liked baseball and boxing too, pasttimes that have also endured. He cursed the computers and painted a funny picture of the future devolved man, with short arms only to reach the keyboard and big buggy eyes to see the bright screens.
I showed up at work awaiting new stories or bits of history from him each day. When he died in September 2004, work became just another job. My disinterested ass got fired. There was a flashlight in his desk drawer which he used to see the titles on the bottom row of shelves. I took it, and on my next trip to Chicago, I brought it along. I left it on the still visibly upset spot in the ground where he'd been buried in Findlay, Illinois.


DEAD TREES

sit there keeping score, keeping track of everything
remember it all, always learning
watch the changes from behind the door
walk content in the way you weathered it
block the punches, dodge the blows
and counter with your stance alone
spend my days in a room, in a room full of dead trees
left a flashlight on your grave
because it's dark and you'll need it to read

hundreds of people moving in front of me
this progress it takes no care
hundreds of people
and all i can see is you who are no longer there
spend my days in a room, in a room full of dead trees
left a flashlight on your grave
because it's dark and you'll need it to read

Part Of The Problem 6

Stack shot Billy. I read the book about Stagolee by Cecil Brown, a great sliver of Saint Louis history. Before that I read "A Blues Life", an oral autobiography of Henry Townsend. He passed away two years ago at age 96. I saw him play a couple times, the only man known to record songs in every decade from the 1920s to the 2000s. Back in 2001, I started writing a song about the life of Henry Townsend. It was boring. Then I listened to Nick Cave's Murder Ballads record and it all came together when I recalled an incident from the autobiographical narrative. Henry Townsend was confronted in a bar a stabbed by another blues guitarist by the name of JD Short. Townsend recovered and borrowed a gun from a friend.
Bucket Of Blood was the name of a bar in some versions of the Stagolee story so I threw that in the mix. Townsend took the weapon and went hunting through the house parties and bars to find Short. When he did, Short tried to flee but then stopped and pulled a knife. Townsend fired the gun and ended up shooting Short in the testicles. That's what happened. Sometimes revenge that does not kill might hurt even worse than death.

BUCKET OF BLOOD
Henry he hopped that north-bound train
jumped off in the yard in east st louis
henry was a shoeshine boy
fronting for that bootlegging man downtown
henry learned to play that mean guitar
henry learned to play that sweet guitar
had some folks jealous with the way that he played

JD Short got him in the back
that coward with a knife got him in the back
Henry was a bleeding he nearly died
when that coward snake got him in the back
henry wanted to take his revenge
went hunting JD Short through all the joints
cornered him at the bucket of blood
Henry stepped up and short pulled his knife
Henry drew his gun and he took a shot
Short jumped up yelled and fell down
Henry left the yard same way he'd come in
Short lay bleeding hurting on the ground

henry he's an old man now
stack-a-lee's been long dead now
with many a song to sing and many a tale to tell
the city henry knew it ain't there no more
the booker washington theatre been torn down
the city henry knew it ain't here no more

Part Of The Problem 5

The Bonnot Gang invented the getaway car. That's what I tell people to hook them because it hooked me. Richard Parry wrote a book about them in the 1980s that is hard to find but well worth reading. The gang of French anarchists, named for the oldest member of the group Julius Bonnot, was active around France before the first World War, roughly 1909-1913 until they all were arrested or killed. Victor Serge was there and went to prison with members of the gang for various crimes against the state. Serge, or Victor Kibalchich by birth, is a fascinating historical figure, novelist and poet. Look him up, you'll learn something.
Anyway, the workers and criminals of France started stealing cars from wealthy estates at night so as to flee more quickly when they robbed banks the next morning. Twentieth century innovation not too long after the development of the assembly line mode of production.
Bad Folk's drummer, Anne Tkach, once remarked that I tended to write songs about cars like they were a disease. I sure ain't Bruce Springsteen.

DEBT
you've been hurrying, don't you see that light ahead
you've been hurrying, don't you see that light is red
you've been hurrying, don't you see you'll drop down dead
slaves to that gold chain, wrapped around your neck
dragged down in debt
crime doesn't pay but neither does your job
crime doesn't pay but neither did your job

you get carried away, now you'll never repay this debt
this debt that you owe
you settle down, you settle for this devil
this devil you know
fallen behind, barely started, fallen behind, barely started
fallen behind, dragged down in debt
crime doesn't pay but neither does your job
crime doesn't pay but neither did your job

it's what keeps you down, it's what keeps you up
this struggle is a very old war
Bonnot is outside waiting with the getaway car
maybe we'll make it out alive, maybe life will just pass you by
slaves to that gold chain, wrapped around your neck
dragged down in debt

Part Of The Problem 4

Mark Stephens first told me the bug story. My various bands have been fortunate to share the stage with his various bands over the years and one night at Lemmon's, we stood there unwrapping microphone cables. He stood, wearing a blue jump suit with a Monsanto patch on one breast and the name "Russ" embroidered over the other. Our mutual friend, Ross Lessor, gave Mark the outfit and kept one for himself. They were heirlooms from Ross' uncle who had worked with pesticides all his life and died alone out in the country in a house infested with bugs. Mark told me the story and I said it sounded like he should write a song about it. He told me it was more a song I would write. So I did. Then Ross gave me the primary account. Turns out I had filled in details close enough to the truth. Fiction is less strange than fact in this case and that's probably why this was easy.
The images stuck in my head for weeks. Uncle Russ in his house with a septic tank out back. Then the carpentry scenes to get away from the old place which was infested with bugs. A new house also infested. Then the horror movie end with neighbors and flashlights discovering the body. Afterwards, Ross went there too and couldn't stay the night for all the bugs, which he described as looking like aliens from outer space.
Bad Folk recorded the song. Jason Rook took his tape recorder and got some scab frogs to sing the part. We rejected it. He went back and got union crickets. Turns out Belgrade, Missouri has a fine cricket choir scene. More recently, a benign cricket infestation appeared in my basement where Bad Folk had rehearsed.


Bugs

old man worked for the chemical company
when he retired moved out to the country
that old house on the river was infested
called on the phone and siad he had to move
all those years in a blue jump suit, working for the chemical company
mixing, fixing to kill, mixing pheromones with the poison
that's how you kill them, attract them to the posion
one last phone call from that old man
the bugs are killing me

old man worked for the chemical company
mixing, fixing to kill
all those years making DDT until he himself radiates it
built a new house every step by hand
new wood, new ground, up on a hill
but these things are futile if you've been mixing to kill
that's how you kill them, attract them to the posion
one last phone call from that new house
the bugs are killing me, he said

and the heart attack was from the shock of how well it worked
and how they'd come for him in the end
at the end of that dirt road
the bugs are killing me he said
and the neighbors found him dead
shine a light on this infestation
exterminator down

Part Of The Problem 3

When I first met Hunter Brumfield, Chris King was there. He has recounted some stories about Hunter in his blog Confluence City. He encouraged me to write about Hunter so I will from time to time among many others who must have their turn too. Chris was there and so were a number of Ogoni people, refugees from the oil-related destructuion in Nigeria. Hunter was the white dude dancing in the black church (quite literally, one of the first times I met him). He told me about spray paint and train hopping before Upski published his book. When all my college friends were reading "Bomb The Suburbs", I pointed out that William Wimsatt's friend "Hunter" was that guy that waited on us at Mangia. They blinked. Hunter told me a lot of stories when we talked. It wasn't that I didn't believe all of them, I was just continually amazed when they were supported later with evidence from an unexpected direction.

Cut to nearly ten years later, my bandmate Joey Gavin did some basement recording with Hunter. He called the space Cricket Studios. Bugs will always be around, even in a place as irrelevant as a studio name. Hunter and Lindy Woracheck (another bandmate at the time and friend of Hunter) documented some great musical moments that day. Hunter killed himself a couple weeks later. Joey and I made copies of the poor quality CD and passed them out.
The last thing I did was take one of those songs for myself and started playing it with the band Bad Folk. For me, it was a song he wrote about himself and I could sing it about him. People that don't know him sometimes think it's mine. Small compensation.


The Laughing Song (lyrics by Hunter Brumfield III)

He's sorry that things turned out as they did, it's a god-forsaken shame
small was the box in which that he hid to temper his poisonous brain
he reached for the stars, came back with stumps (maybe stubs?)
in a downpour, yearning for rain (though i was told "urine" was the lyric, i thought "yearning" more poetic and gave Hunter credit for the ambiguity)
happiness got him once he hit bottom
gonna laugh his way through all the pain

Believe him it's easy to drink and be sleazy
as your conscience just limps along
mistaking freedom for license, he screamed in the silence
and his echo said boy you're all wrong
well, life is absurd, haven't you heard?
keep laughing boy, that's your best bet

Part Of The Problem 2

"War Is The Health Of The State" said Randolph Silliman Bourne, a man of crippled physical stature but immense awareness of history and society. It was the first World War and here was a man, like those damned anarchists, who claimed that no good would come to the common person in any country involved in conflict. Whether it was outright imperialist plunder or something disguised as a more benign mission to save someone or some imagined value or way of life, the common soldier would die and the common worker would work (or become a solider and then die). Profits from war industry would be pocketed by those already wearing fat, greedy pants. Whatever small victory that could be claimed would not fix the psychological damage of the victor. Fuck the losers, we won't even speak of their fate. In the end, the original goals of the conflict would probably be forgotten as lies, as more heaps of lies obscured whatever people once thought their country was fighting for.

The poor confused soldier, perhaps a young man scorned, who enjoys firing his gun at the midnight hour of new year's eve and is prone to a revenge killing if given the chance.

I didn't know the name Osama Bin Laden in the year 2000 and I'd nearly foregotten Saddam Hussein. I imagined the Frankenstein monster as an Italian gentlemen with the given name of Luigi.

I wanted that man to die for what he did to me
I had my heart set on killing Luigi
my country started a war, they told me to take a stand
I said what did you go and do that for, I only want to kill one man
But I up and joined their ranks to see if I could see
from the planes and from the tanks that bastard Luigi
I killed ten men and maybe more and that was just the first day
more batallions topped the hill and I blew them all away

I walked amongst the corpses wandering how it could be
that I'd killed so many men and not shot Luigi
yes, I killed so many men that honors they bestowed
then they said we won the war and to me that they owed
I said wait a minute, what about Luigi
I have not won a war if still that man goes free
something still wasn't right a voice spoke in my head
so I hunted Luigi down and shot the bastard dead

they people they were outraged, they cursed my bloody name
they said that I had broken the rules of their game
I showed them my medals but they just shook their heads
they dragged me to the guillotine, they say they want me dead

Part Of The Problem 1

Dual (lyrics by Tim Rakel)

Call the doctor or the wrecking ball man
go to hell or the thorn crown man
torn and tattered taped together
this hell, this hell of mirrors
challenged myself to a duel
shot out my own heart

send up the red flags and then the white
now it's just a maze, a maze of states and tribes
see the roadside signs, souvenirs of this life
translation's lost and everything is fine
and as long as they preserve that state of fear
they'll tell you these things at the same time

i came from the old world, that twisted old world
the ship sank behind me, that war rose behind me
come across the ocean to get away
but this, this new world
nothing, nothing could prepare me for this
hold my heart in your hands
it'll keep them warm for a little while

the crowds have gone got what they wanted
someone's watching me now followed and haunted
see the roadside signs and try to deny
there's nothing at the end of this road
just motels and loneliness
across a whole continent
this hell, this hell of mirrors
challenged myself to a duel
and shot out my own heart




Dual (lyrics by Tim Rakel)
(with a Nabokovian self-analysis by T. S. Rakehell)
If you think the title is spelled incorrectly, please read further for the mundane pun herein

Call the doctor or the wrecking ball man
go to hell or the thorn crown man
Catholic guilt, morbidity
torn and tattered taped together
this hell, this hell of mirrors
thinks he's funny
challenged myself to a duel
shot out my own heart
the pathetic author's first attempt at getting attention with threats of killing himself

send up the red flags and then the white
some vague reference to Russian history to mark the setting, poorly researched
now it's just a maze, a maze of states and tribes
more place marking, little development
see the roadside signs, souvenirs of this life
translation's lost and everything is fine
the author claims he woke from a dream about a gun fight to find his cat striding away from
an open volume of Nabokov's translation of Eugene Onegin on the bedroom floor
and as long as they preserve that state of fear
they'll tell you these things at the same time
the same time being another reference to duality, the "state of fear" is just more slander of
the American dream and the country in general

i came from the old world, that twisted old world
the ship sank behind me, that war rose behind me
come across the ocean to get away
this is another poorly researched and vague reference to Nabokov's personal history,
wherein his family sailed from Europe during the great war. Their former apartment building
was bombed in their absence and the ship was sunk by hostile fire in its return journey
but this, this new world
nothing, nothing could prepare me for this
just more slander of the United States. The author should move to Switzerland as did his
beloved Nabokov.
hold my heart in your hands
it'll keep them warm for a little while
morbid, just morbid, another desperate cry for attention on the part of hack of a writer

the crowds have gone got what they wanted
someone's watching me now followed and haunted
an all too obvious reference to the plot of Lolita and more of the same follows
see the roadside signs and try to deny
there's nothing at the end of this road
just motels and loneliness
across a whole continent
this hell, this hell of mirrors
challenged myself to a duel
and shot out my own heart
just couldn't bear to end it without more drama and suicidal references

--- the author bears no responsibility for his critics or any harm done to them







Appendix:

Russian translation, back to English:

Double
(lyric poetry Tim Rakel)
summon doctor or destroying man of ball
go to hell or man of the crown of thorns
stripped and tattered connected by braid together
this hell, this hell of mirrors call to the duel taken to outside my own heart desertedly send upward by the emblems of revolution
and after this to the whiteness
now of it' s exactly labyrinth,
labyrinth of positions and gears
sees the signs of curb, the souvenirs of this life
of translation' lost s and everything is excellent
and as far as they preserve the position of the fear of
they' ll tells you these things in also the time
I it arrived from the old peace, that interlaced old peace
the ship sank after me, which war raised after me
it comes through the ocean to obtain away but this,
this new peace nothing, nothing could prepare me for this
you hold my heart in your hands
of it' ll hold by their warm for few
thus far crowd dispatch what they they obtained wanted
someone' by s observing me now it followed after it
pursued it sees the signs of curb it tries to refuse
there' s nothing at the end from this road
exactly of [moteli] and solitude
through entire continent this hell,
this hell of mirrors is been cast
call to the duel and is taken at outside my own heart

French translation, back to English

Combine
(texts by Tim Rakel)
Appelez the doctor or l' man of destruction of ball
go to l' hell or with l' man of crown d' spine
torn and torn in scraps attached of the adhesive tape
together this hell, this hell of the mirrors
disputed to a duel
drawn outside my own heart
send to the top of the red flags and then white
now it's right a labyrinth, a labyrinth of the states and tribes
see the signs of roadside, memories of this life
translation lost and all is very well
and as long as it preserves this state of fear
they indicate these things at the same time
I came from the Old World, this Old World twisted that
the boat is descended behind me, that the war raised behind me
find l'ocean to leave but this, this new world nothing,
nothing could prepare me for this
hold my heart in your hands
it maintains hot
them for a little while obtained crowd went this qu'
they wanted someone
observing followed now and haunted
see the signs of roadside and try to deny there
nothing with l'end of this road
right motels and loneliness through a whole continent
this hell, this hell of the mirrors
disputed to a duel and drawn outside my own heart

Addictive Behavior

I have added the blogs of some people i actually know in real life to the side of the page. see what they say too. I can see how this can occupy one's time. Also, i'm doing this at work. Does that make it more subversive or more predictable?

Renowned Luddite Tim Rakehell Enters Blogosphere

With some regret, I step off the cliff of willful technological ignorance. It has sustained me so many years but now all my friends have robots.

My various musical endeavors will now have an explanatory outlet here. As physical media dies its slow death and my pockets fill up with more discarded books and records, i'll try to share what i find interesting.

- Rakehell
11/30/08