Sunday, March 30, 2008

Sunday Morning--Let it be Known

Milk doesn't go with herbal tea.
Also...
Robin is telling me all about her anatomy class and everything that goes into human physiology. She said we have heart strings and that they operate much the same way the spokes on an umbrella work--they open and close a valve. I said, "The more you tell me, the more the body sounds like a machine."
"Oh man, just think about all it takes to get out of bed in the morning!"
She's right. We're way overdoing it.

Friday, March 21, 2008

Open Letter to Frank Black #3

Frank!

How are you? Where are you? I don't even know where you live. This is maybe a metaphor for something I guess--writing a letter and not knowing where to send it.

I'm in North Carolina now working on the new record. The time I spent in NYC was, well, really strange. I had alternating bouts of big-time creative productivity and then days of strange and terrible ailments. One week I was out all the time meeting stimulating and interesting people, working on so many new projects, and the next week I would have a fever and a pain in my side which I assumed was my kidney though who knows! Like the underground man: "Then again, I don't know a thing about my illness; I'm not even sure what hurts."
I hope you aren't too impressed--I don't usually compare myself to literary characters and I wish there was a way to erase saying it here but my delete button is broken. Can you believe that!?

Everybody around here has gone basketball crazy and it's giving me a good reason to try different kinds of beer.
I've been trying all the fancy imported and local beers that people are raving about and they're okay but I had a Natural Light in the can the other day and it was delicious. My friend Sarah reminded me that it is the beer with the taste for food.
I hope it likes Raleigh Times burgers because that's what it's getting.

I'm considering joining the YMCA. Do you exercise? I like the idea of it but haven't been able to commit to a gym because I generally despise the people who work at and go to the big, fancy gyms. I tried to join Peak Fitness once but instead, I narrowly escaped that awful place with my dignity. It was all I could do to not scream at the poor, orange creatures, "Fuck your techno!"
So the YMCA is starting to look more attractive.

You have any big Easter plans?
Kelly

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Lady Chatterley's Lover--Reading Update

Lady Chatterley's Lover
by D.H. Lawrence

In our hotel in Spain there was pornography on the television. For free!
Not Cinemax style, this was, in fact, the real deal y'all. And not even ugly actors. Pretty people.
If you had told me there was porn before I got there, I would have probably switched on the TV right away for proof... instead of finding it accidentally. And wouldn't you? For the novelty at least!

I was not surprised to learn that Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned in America when it was published in Europe in 1928. I was surprised, however, to learn that lots of people bought different pirated versions of the novel and at really high prices.
It was banned because of the treatment of sex. Lawrence treats it as if it is in the room and anyone can talk about it and, well, how's that supposed to work?


To get people interested in reading a book, you can do no better than to say, "Whatever you do, NEVER READ THAT FILTHY BOOK!!!"



But this book isn't pornographic it turns out. It's sexual content is sometimes beautiful in it's directness. Upon reading the first real sex scene I thought, "Oh, that's how people do it. They just walk into a room and start!" Without any embarrassing all-night-talking before they finally drunkenly kiss. In Lawrence, the man walks over to the woman and tells her to lay down on the floor and both of them know what is happening and neither of them snickers or makes a joke. I hadn't thought of that.

But the best part isn't learning how to be human, it's the heavy poetry. Listen to this... This is the first paragraph of the novel:

"Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen."

I bet Lawrence really started living when the controversy of this book caught fire. I bet he just LOVED it. What self-respecting author wouldn't just delight in normal people being forced to take a side about an issue they're too embarrassed to name out loud? Normal people just behaving insanely over your novel. Hell yeah.

Because of the pirating, he decided to publish a cheap version on his own, to which he added an essay entitled "A Propos of "Lady Chatterley's Lover." In the essay he says:
"So, between the sick and the old puritan who is likely to fall into sexual indecency in advanced age, and the smart jazzy person of the young world, who says: 'We can do anything. If we can think a thing we can do it' --and then the low uncultured person with a dirty mind, who looks for dirt--this book has hardly a space to turn in. But to them all I say the same: Keep your perversions if you like them--your perversion of puritanism, your perversion of smart licentiousness, your perversion of a dirty mind. But I stick to my book and my position: Life is only bearable when the mind and the body are in harmony, and there is a natural balance between the two, and each has a natural respect for the other."

So it was curiosity that brought me to this novel but... Now I'm embarrassed that sexuality is still curious to anyone. Me.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Clairvoyance

It was when I predicted Steve Erwin's death that I decided that I'm clairvoyant. So I went to the bookstore to try to find information on how to harnass my abilities so I can figure out who's going to die or what I should do with my life, or, basically, just any ideas for ways to exploit my gift.
Sylvia Browne is the best they can do at Borders.

I think she started a religion called Novus Spiritus where there are tenets that have the word "thou" in a lot of them. She channels a voice called "Francine" whom she's been listening to since she was 7. She hears Francine's voice in only one ear, making her "clairaudient" or possibly psychotic, according to Sigorney Weaver--psychiatrist and top serial killer expert in the movie Copycat.
In one book I picked up, Sylvia says that the visions sometimes come to the clairvoyant in colors and that you CAN learn to channel and control them.

I don't have "visions" or "colors" or "voices" but, rather, just information that already exists. It's a part of my knowledge--just in general. I was visiting my grandma and saw Steve Erwin on TV and thought, "He will die." I said it out loud actually. My grandma said, "What?" I said, "He's going to die," and by Monday he was dead. It wasn't a vision, it was just information I sort of already knew.
My friend said sarcastically: "Wait! You predicted the Crocodile Hunter's death!? A guy who constantly fucks with crocodiles!?"
Yes, that is silly. And also there's a small chance your girlfriend is pregnant. But I didn't say that out loud.

What I know is random and the information is sometimes not really important so I forget that it might be true and I don't usually tell anybody about it so I occasionally catch myself saying, "Yeah, I already knew that was going to happen." Like an asshole.
And they say, "How did you know?" and I say, "I'm clairvoyant. I also predicted Steve Erwin's death."
Like an asshole.