Burning Hands 2

Potty’s skin is grey. Chrissy doesn’t know why. She’s known Potty since 1987. They met at the mall downtown in the Terminal Tower. Chrissy was working at the pretzel stand---she was just a young teenager. Potty asked what they did with the pretzels at the end of the night---did they throw them out, or donate them or what. Potty was ageless. She seemed 40 then and she seemed 50 now, though more than 25 years had passed. Chrissy told her the truth: all pretzels are soaked in a saline solution overnight. No waste. Potty had said that was disgusting and walked off. She wore a grey raincoat and heels. 

She came back the next day. She said her name was Patsy, but people call her Potty. Chrissy asked why and Potty said that was a rude thing to ask: could she not smell the faint incontinence? Chrissy felt so shitty about it. But Potty said there were no hard feelings and would she like to go with her to a special place on her break?

Yes!

Potty took Chrissy to the photo machine and pulled her inside. She took out a small metal cylinder she called a cracker, and another metal thing, and a groovy balloon. They did whip-its in the photo booth. 

Chrissy's lips went numb. Before her eyes was an endless escalator, and the steps buzzed electric words that went by too quickly for her to understand. But she felt sweet and knew she'd been there before, that this was the space from which we all spring. 

She hugged Potty, whose smell was dried urine, but also clean hands and gummy hairspray. With her ears ringing, Chrissy said to Potty, "I hope you don't mind I don't get many pop culture references."

And Potty held her close, saying, "Darling, I could not care less about that Popeye shit."

And they've been friends since.

Now, just as Chrissy is getting worried, she sees Potty a tiny ways off, cruising by the river's edge, lips painted good mood red, her coat weighted on one side. Hopefully with a bottle and not hammers like last time.

To be continued...

Burning Hands 1

Chrissy waits for Potty down by the bank of the Cuyahoga, but it's cold. Potty's bringing the bottle. So, it's a rotten way to be. Out in the cold---the grass is frozen and Chrissy's hands are getting hard and her fading magenta ponytail is frozen like the grass. But there is no where else to go today.

Chrissy's just come from her boyfriend's place---he lives in a condo just up the way. She showered. He only lets her stay the night---come day, she's out. Chrissy stands just past a concrete wall, where the trees are coming back through cracked concrete things, the roads, and all these other things down in the flats overgrown with moss and tough winter weeds. Potty lives down here somewhere in a tent. She won't take Chrissy there---it' in a secret place, veiled from the roads. Potty says they're going to get some money today. That would be ok---Chrissy doesn't like her boyfriend. She'd like to get a room somewhere instead. Somewhere she can sit in the daytime and not have to touch old vinegar-reeking skin.

The river isn't frozen now. As it moves, Chrissy feels a cold wind coming out of it. If Potty doesn't get here soon to warm her up with vodka, Chrissy will spin spit and scream just to get some heat.

(To be continued...)

WOOD GRAIN

moths winged in gold

in the room facing east

with the curtains in gold

and the ceiling was closer

crabapple tree cut down  now

and the floor was wood moving

half the tree is underground

spreading like your veins

your eyes spread the water – tree veined fire

hands aging and reaching and working and holding

my eyes pressed from the world very world

jasmine on my palms sticking on the atm

power-lines powerless and other nameless flowers

growing feather leaves

on the bird dead in the driveway insides open bare

nickel wires

blue hair feathers our teeth grow like hair but slower

skin soft scales for touching

another gift from reptiles – the inner ear bones from their jaw bones

touching and listening

my lover's hair is from the moon his skin is from the sun (his eyes are from inside me)

the sun is in Corona, lemon pulp and dead gold, and we want it clear

not diffused into white, the sun's awful white

we crave it when it's too everywhere

wood grain in the island bar full of white people

the ceiling low

the mushrooms inside us wanted the wood grain

black winter tree just to bud the next day reached slow for the moon

the moon looked down at the water

and all us things made from the water

back when the moon was closer and we were all water

lifting the moon was closer and spinning faster

we crave the moon the water the woodgrain

we tore the brown paper bag

rough and rubbed it into leather

we craved the strange in weather

in the straight sky blind back

strange cancer strikes up mold

even molds can't contain bulbs and breaks and pink livers

and even mold can't breath under bleach rain

all the flecks one duty moan dirty flecks

the city and the cuntree tree

bladder bleeds electronics hard drone stagger

bleating like a ghost

bleeding like a goat

hold the cup liver bang houses

band houses to the Erie

the sun was awful

the sun was diffused and made our arms cold

(we shut it out we craved it)

on a white planet wet and awful

legs like trees like legs like wings (moths golden moths in gold)

the world is alive

for who knows what

magic is real

running around like beetles like ants come in

gra saoirse gra

like windows like nettles like pods come in

we shut our eyes as we craved it

we crave it waves in the wood

Cara Benda Bertumbuh

Cara Bertumbuh

Bertumbuh

waves – green wood – straight sky (we wanted it) 

HELP A GOOD FRIEND

My dear friend Stephen Petrus, whose interview appeared on this blog a couple months back, lost his home early this morning in a fire. He's in good spirits and glad to be alive, but he lost everything: 20 years worth of recordings, films, all his gear, his clothes, every material possession. He said he wants to encourage everyone to make sure they have working smoke detectors. Stephen, aka Murderous Vision, is one of the warmest, kindest, funniest people I've known, and he's always ready to give and help anyone.

There is a Facebook group dedicated to gathering donations and sharing updates on his situation. The site includes information about several benefit shows, and how people can donate to his Paypal, or use a fundraising site a friend created. Another option would be to go directly to his Bandcamp page and buy downloads of his great music: http://murderousvision1.bandcamp.com.

Check out this link for more information:

Stephen Petrus Benefit

NEW TANTRAMOON RELEASE HAS ARRIVED!

Well, not brand new.

My new solo release CUYAH LIVER (Tantramoon 03) came out on August 6, 2013, the day before my child was born. The first tiny batch of 13 are gone, but a new batch of 20 has arrived - hit me up if you want one: amandarosehowland3@gmail.com or message me on Facebook.

Here are links to two sample tracks from CUYAH LIVER:

"The Stone Giver" https://soundcloud.com/arhowland
"Woodgroan" http://amandarhowland.bandcamp.com

CUYAH LIVER BY AMANDA R HOWLAND

I also have some copies left of Dead Peasant Insurance RITUALS OF THE IRON AGE (Tantramoon 01).

The Howland/Lombardo EXALTATION HEAT (Tantramoon 02, tape) is very nearly out of print - but I may be able to scrounge one up if you'd like.

2013: Some of the Best of the Best of The Year of the Snake (an inherently subjective and incomplete list of public and personal artifacts of experience)

Joyous Happening Number One: The Birth of our Daughter, Abigail Rose!

Three releases that I've listened to over and over, despite the world being so full of great releases that we can often only take the time to listen to each once or twice:

Enemy by Skin Graft
We Know Your Body Better than You Do by Nine Volt Haunted House and 
Relentless Corpse is an Urban Myth by Relentless Corpse (which has been the only album I can write to these days).

Four splits/comps in which I was honored to be included:

Songs for Spooky, released by Live Bait Recording Foundation, Dead Peasant Insurance(DPI)-Griefhound-Fascist Insect-Extreme Noise Terrier four-way split, Exaltation Heat with Pauline Lombardo and A Christmas Gift for You Gotta Groove compilation (my band Stark Holy MAA with Mitch Ribis and Wyatt Howland contributed a short track that marks the first time Wyatt and I have been on vinyl together after almost nineteen years of collaboration!).

More releases that sounded new to my ears:

The Stop Circle of Singing by Dog Lady Island, Conrail by Conrail, The Neverending Story by Dr. Quin Medicine Woman, Counted Clock by Skin Graft and Battery Cage III  by Being.

That's surely not all - I'm lucky to hear great stuff all the time - those are just a few releases that stayed with me over these last twelve months.

My three favorite books I've read this year:  

Veronica by Mary Gaitskill, Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions by John (Fire) Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes and Look at Me by Jennifer Egan.

But wait, I read Look at Me every year! What else? Tampa and Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls by Alissa Nutting, The Ask by Sam Lipsyte, Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill, We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates,  Already Dead by Dennis Johnson, Shelter by Jayne Anne Philips, and, more great books, oh yes, this was a great year for novels, I was fortunate to read a bunch.

I'm so grateful to everyone who participated in this blog's interview series. What wonderful stories and insights!

This year I received my MFA, and the best thing about that is it means four people have actually read my novel! My thesis committee of three wonderful writers: Imad Rahman, David Giffels and Christopher Barak, and also my brilliant mother.

Others experiences and things I'm grateful for this year:

The Tantra yoga class I took with Corissa Bragg when we were both very pregnant, the moonlight shining on my four week old daughter's face and her smile in return, the manic warmth of friends, lucid dreams, The Mysterious Black Box, The Brewing Luminous, What You Need and other great shows on WCSB and WRUW, The Rubber City Noise Cave, my great students and teachers in and out of Cleveland State University, more time with my family, the growth of  the Lean House and all things diy, local health activists, Mahall's and Now That's Class hosting regular noise events such  as Class's First Sunday Noise Series, and the monthly events at Mahalls' curated by Lisa Miralia (Lecture in a Bar, second Tuesday of each month) and Tom Orange and Dan Wenninger (Outlab: Experiments in Improvised Music, on the third Tuesday of each month), regular writing and science events at The Happy Dog (also the fact that they pay musicians, although the crowd there can be antagonistic), The growth of Black Sun Oasis, the Cleveland Print Room, the return of the label Mistake by the Lake, collaborating with Pauline Lombardo, Rob Resch, Mitch and Wyatt, and the new free-standing Hanson Record store! I took my two month old baby to a lecture at CSU by Junot Diaz, and it was wonderful. Continuing the Voice of the Valley Noise Rally and the Diamond Shiners Wassail party; although I wasn't able to go to either event, it made me happy that they rage on!

Bad Shit:

Death, sadism and suffering in Syria, the Congo, South Sudan, Afghanistan and many many more regions.  The government shut-down and all the propaganda surrounding it. Meanwhile, the ice caps are still melting, forests are still being mowed down and the massive extermination of life and diversity continues: lost languages, plants, animals, cultures. Air. Chances. We lost Lou Reed and two wonderful dog friends, Spooky and Basho. The Black Cat Factory disappeared, and I read too many half-baked reactionary trollish responses to intelligent feminist articles. I missed tons of good shows that were not well attended, although it was worth it to bring Abigail into this world. Also, I wasn't able to watch the demolition of Peabody's.

I went to few shows but a few of the performances I did catch stayed with me:

Bbob and J Guy at some sort-of Embassy show, Faangface at Now That's Class, and Iron Oxide and The Utter Darkness after a Dying Flame at The Holy Mountain. I've also enjoyed the shift in Murderous Vision's style, and the continuing refinement and control of Baat's performances. The Dreamtones's show at Akron's Porch Rocker was very pleasurable. I've enjoyed watching my husband Mitch Ribis play solid and exciting shows with Fascist Insect and Gomorrahizer, and now I'm enjoying him develop his solo project (Fascist Insect).

I am so grateful for my husband, who has been by my side for almost three years, through exhaustion and bliss and all the rest, cooking beautiful meals and making me laugh every day since the birth of our daughter.

Hopes for 2014:

Psalm Isadora coming to Ohio in September, more Tantramoon releases and recording with friends and a new solo full length, more interviews, the return of DPI for our tenth anniversary show and the return of XTerminal and of Survival of the Loudest, and our daughter learning how to walk and talk. I hope to finish drafting my second novel, Don't Fear the Night Duende.  I dream of the relocalization of economy, culture and power, a renewed intimacy between humans, animals and plants, and the healing of the earth.

Thanks for indulging me in this grandiose review of 2013. Each Monday I'll be posting material relating to text, sound and ecstatic consciousness, the magic and ritual of performance. I'll also be posting monthly interviews.

Addendum:

A few more cool things from 2013 are Murderous Vision and Polar Envy downloads on Bandcamp  and the Four on the Noise Floor compilation by Sam Harmon - what treats!

JOSHUA NOVAK FAANGFACE CAVE MAN

I first met Josh a few years back when my band played shows with his and Brian Harvey's incredibly, blindingly loud and heavy band Griefhound. Since then, he and his small and enthusiastic gang have built up Akron's Rubber City Noise Cave (rubbercitynoise.com), maybe the best venue I've been to in twenty-one years of going to shows (although Now That's Class, the now closed Embassy and Detroit's M.U.G. are up there, too). The RCN Cave is also a label (rubbercitynoise.bandcamp.com), and sometimes even becomes The Wandering Cave, showing up at events such as the Cleveland Ingenuity Festival (the Cave was the best thing about the fest in 2012). Josh has many projects, including Mousecop with Curt Brown and Josh's solo project Faangface. I love Faangface because Josh uses the vehicle to emotionally and visually push himself through the audience in visceral, sometimes bloody ways. He sent me the latest Faangface release, Oboe, and I loved it. It's all over the place, using whatever sounds, undulating in volume and intensity.

ARH: What are you working on now?   

JN: Just finished a solo album, and wrapping up another solo album. I have a tendency to do a lot at once then nothing solo for a while.  Mousecop has been recording like we do, we've been getting together with others for sessions, which brings out a lot of interesting sides to us. David Russell and I just did some recording, which was fantastic, but for the most part, Mousecop'n.

I mean, Faangface will ALWAYS be there. I have been fairly excited about these newsiest of recordings, but mousecop is forcing me to try new approaches. But at the same time allowing me to be pretty free to do whatever.

ARH: Faangface is one of my favorite projects right now – what’s going on with that? 

JN: That's sweet of you to say! haven't played out in a while, really. for a minute it there it was all focus on live sets, theatrics, and performance in general. As of now I'm just focusing on the music end of it, so no plastic bags or razors for a minute, *giggles**squirts milk out nose**wasn't drinking milk*. I'm shifting direction right now, total 180 from last album in a way. But I'm always indecisive, and will probably switch gears again.

ARH: When and how did you get into performing?   

JN: Faangface started out as a kinda spoken-word-acoustic-avant-performance thing to begin with. HOW I did that exactly is what has changed. I think some of my most awkward shows have been where i didn't do something performance-focused. As for performing music in general, I played punk shows in high school and so on, then meet up with Brian Harvey and played in Snuff Film for a while, which later became Griefhound. 

ARH: Since you’ve started performing, have you noticed repeating cycles in terms of style and energy of experimental music? How would you describe the current zeitgeist?  

JN: Hmmmmm. Hard to say? I'm still a young blood. 26 as of rights nows. Plus "experimental" is wide term, different groups use. HNW and power electronics, performance art and avant-garde circles, free form rock to skronk jazz, to any dude who bought a flanger pedal to use in his/her bands one 7-minute song with some "crazy huge psychedelic breakdown like whoah dude jupiter is in the song lyrics like woah".  I'm seeing more bands from all necks of the woods playing shows together, which is wonderful. I'd like to see things become at least a little less exclusive. But what do I know? I AM excited to see what I haven't seen yet, that's for certain! 

ARH: What qualities excite you in performances of others? What takes you by surprise and keeps your interest in experimental music? 

  

JN: When someone is genuine. Doing their art for art's sake. Because they feel that's what they have to do. Anyone who isn't afraid to try something new, there's a lot of copycats out there, not just in this scene, but art in general. In any type of music. But even if I've seen something on that line, or pretty much the same thing as someone else before, if they are genuine about it and it comes from them from within, then you can tell. It's expressive at that point, powerful, emotional. I also like to see little inventions. Home-made instruments and the like. I'd also like to see someone dress up like a tiger and shoot fire from their butt. 

ARH: How does language factor in your creative process? Does your inspiration often begin with words or sounds – how do these interact? 

JN: Yes, to all of the above!!!! Spoken word was a primary factor in me beginning. Even if there isn't a word in a piece, sometimes, or a lot of the times, a phrase or line will inspire it. A lot of the times I'll think of a sound or movement and start there, words and sounds have really become one in the same in the process.

ARH: Do your senses cross – is music visual for you at all? 

JN: Yes and yes. Live settings I'd like to think the sounds I'm creating and I are one. Like I said earlier, some of my most awkward shows (not awkward in the way I'd like) were the ones that I wasn't really performing. Just playing. All my senses cross for sure, i tend to be physical with everything around me and feed off of everyone. i've also licked lots of stuff and sniffed some people live.

ARH: Do you feel performing is a mystical act and/or ritual? If so, how does that work – how do you use ritual awareness in your work? If not, how would you describe the performing process in terms of mental, physical and emotional transformation? 

JN: Wow, that's a loaded question! I think anything that pulls you out of yourself in such a way is. It's emotional on a different level. I cried live once, wasn't sad, just cried. I have always used the sense of ritual in my music and have written entire sets around it, but i think as a ritualistic happening, the mental and physical and emotional transformation are one in the same. That's what a mystical happening is. A transformation. I'm just sure I see the terms the same as everyone else. I'm evoking something, whether it's a presence of unknown, or some anxiety in an uncomfortable person who wants to immediately leave with the people who dragged him/her there as soon as I start.

ARH: I like your description of ritual experience: 'anything that pulls you out of yourself.' What do you think the future holds for you as an individual artist and experimental music generally? What is the relationship between local and global experimental music now? 

JN: I hope to get myself out there more. Which is all on me. I hope people just keep on experimenting, as simple as that. Not just see something and do the same. There needs to be experimenting in experimental music!!! not the idea of, "this is how you make/or not make experimental music". As for locally/globally, I hope it starts leaking into each other. I can see it happening already, and it's nice. Quite. It's becoming more 'accessible' if i dare say? (look at the festivals Wolf Eyes and Merzbow have played in the past few years). The radio and Mtv are pretty much obsolete because of the interwebs, so people are wanting something new. Which is the greatest thing ever……to an extent. It means a lot of artists will finally get the recognition they deserve, and be able to do more with more people and get there stuff out there to a lot of appreciative people. But, there will be a flood of it, more and more of "experimental musicians". Prepare your anuses for Garage band presets. All in all, it's a good thing. Plus since the term 'experimental' is such a broad one, who knows? How WILL people look at the term in the future? Clark and The New Blockaders collab? Sir Richard Bishop/Venetian Snares split? Who knows? 

ARH: What’s going on with the Cave in 2014? 

JN: Only the CAVE, the building itself, knows. It governs all that we do day to day. it is in fact, it's own living entity. And it's hungry….for blood. some new releases and awesome shows more than likely! XXX Super Arcade album in works? Finally after two+ years. word up. More Mousecop'n to boot.