Little Georgie's Blog-a-Thon

DAILY DOSE #67: "When We Were Young And Dreaming"

2011-12-13T12:50:00.014-05:00

Dreaming and then making those dreams real are sometimes the exclusive province of the young.

Its not like I haven't stopped trying in my middle age, but I do tend to pick my spots more carefully these days. I can still throw a well aimed pebble in the pond, but I try and weigh carefully outcomes, probabilities, and the potential for possible collateral damage before cocking back my arm and chucking one. Truly believing in living by the Hippocratic Oath ("First Do No Harm")took me awhile to take to heart.

When I was young, I didn't give a tumbling fuck about any of that. With naivete comes a certain form a bravery that I just can't recreate in the here and now. I'm just not as blindly stupid as I once was. Admittedly, I miss that bubble of clueless stupidity at times, because when fully enveloped within that bubble, I did have a lot more fun than I do now.

So here's a little story of the bubble, and the feeling of security it gave me. It, like all things in life ended up being temporary. At the time it was authentically real. This story comes with a little attached piece of evidence that for me proves that distant dreams and friendships were in fact true, and motivated by love.

I have a tendency to forget that, mostly for justifiable reasons, but sometimes not.

Sometimes stupidity is not limited to the young.

GETTING FOUND AT THE LOST HORIZON

I had cut my performance teeth on the corner of Thompson Road and Erie Boulevard throughout my third decade on the planet, courtesy of my tenure in Ed Hamell's band "The Works", and the good graces of the owners and operators of the club; The family Italiano, particularly Greg and his father Tony.

In addition to those performance opportunities, whenever I found myself with nothing to do, a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out of (of which was a state of constancy throughout that decade), my then roomate Scott Sterling filled the breach whenever he could.

The Lost Horizon was not only a popular rock venue for local bands that could draw a respectable number of fans to fill it. It was also a favorite stop of "Nationals", bands that may have had their first hit on MTV per example; basically a gas gig on a first tour; an off-night club stop on the way to a larger market.

Scott adminstrated and operated the house PA in the club, so if the opportunity arose, he always offered me a gear humping "load in/ load out" gig whenever one of those national acts on a club tour played the Lost. The gig didn't pay all that much, but the experience was incalcuable. Working those shows gave you access, the most treasured commodity in any business, and certainly the business of Rock and Roll.

You got to see how the big boys operated on their way up the ladder, basically. As time progressed I learned many useful skills along the way; how to wire a PA, how to focus a light show, how to operate a monitor desk; because I lived with Scott, I saw and learned how all those gigs were advanced. Scott enabled me to acquire real world knowledge of the business of Rock and Roll from the trenches.

Sometimes those National shows absolutely tanked, and sometimes the were like the battle of the bulge. It was a crapshoot depending on airplay and word of mouth. Watching Chuckie the promoter repetitively bashing his head against the bar in frustration was a common occurence at the end of particularly ill attended shows.

Whether those shows were a financial success or failure, observing the musicians close up and being able to have conversations with them through soundchecks and on their respective tour buses was the real "college of musical knowledge". They were life lessons on how to conduct yourself in the world you wanted to be part of.

Per example, Richard Marx was a complete flaming pissant, hissy-fit throwing asshole when forced to play in the provinces in front of a paltry 28 paying customers. Jon Bon Jovi, touring in support of his first hit "Runaway", may have looked like a rockstar when he walked off that bus, through the side-load in door only to get assaulted by the patented Lost Horizon stale beer and smoke stench, but he was anything but a rockstar in his actions and reactions. A true sweetheart and gentleman, grateful to have the opportunity to play in front of approximately the same paltry number of Syracuse fans and win their hearts, minds and loyalty... one fan at a time.

One of those guys went on to and can still fill arenas, if you get my drift.

Without my friendship with Scott, and his support, I would have never received those practical life lessons. They still serve me well to this day.

I THOUGHT I'D NEVER SEE AN ELEPHANT FLY....

Towards the back end of the 1980's I was trying to find new things to do. After seven years of faithful service in "The Works" I had a tiny radar blip of a brief tenure in "The Masters Of Reality"; signing on to briefly replace Mr. Owl to perform a string NYC showcases that led to their first record deal with Rick Rubin on Def American, only to then getting promptly shit-canned before a note was recorded in reward for the effort.

Rock and Roll can break your heart and your will at times. Lets just say my dream, and self-esteem, were both simultaneously approaching a swirling downward status.

In all honesty, the next part of this tale gets real sketchy for me.

The Black Crowes were flapping their baby wings through Syracuse, landing at the Lost Horizon on their first tour in support of their debut recording "Shake Your Money Maker". I'm a little foggy on the date: 1990 perhaps? '91?

Scott got an advance copy of the record. Local radio hadn't caught on yet, although MTV had.

Perhaps the point of inspired illumination and motivation for Scott was the combination of George Drakoulias (engineer of "The Blue Garden" recording for The Masters Of Reality) producing The Crowes debut and the fact that my childhood piano hero Chuck Leavell (then Allman Brothers, Sea Level, and soon to be Rolling Stones Musical Director.) was all over the record in a very integral way.

By the time Scott was advancing the Crowes gig at the Lost and realized they weren't touring with a piannaplunker he clearly and creatively connected some theoretical and conceptual dots and saw an opening; even if it might have been a figment of his own fertile imagination.

I don't know how he did it, really. But somehow, he bum-rushed management, he bum- rushed the band, and he bum-rushed me all at the same time and convinced everybody that The Black Crowes should give me an audition and a trial by fire in front of an audience of the Syracuse faithful.

He made it happen, and wouldn't take "no" for an answer from anybody. A prime example of youthful enthusiasm, pure balls, and a testament to our friendship all in one shot.

I don't really remember it actually happening... not in detail anyway. He just stuck me in a room and made me learn that record to the best of my ability, and he took care of the rest.

I do remember feeling like I was inappropriately invading someone else's space. The guy that just humped their gear was now going to play with them, and it felt like I was getting shoved down their throats to some degree.

Scott didn't care. He was going to make something happen, and not be deterred.

FAST FORWARD

In twenty one years after the fact, a lot of water rushes under the proverbial bridge.

I had forgotten all about this little episode until I started posting dog beauty contests, anti-hydrofracking initiatives, cooking videos, and blogs on various social networking sites.

A new facebook friend had recently reminded me that I had played with the Black Crowes at the Lost Horizon. I had totally repressed the memory. Just another epic failure, and a reminder of days that I didn't want to re-live.

Not only did he remind me of the lost memory that occurred behind the omni-present pole at the Lost Horizon, he offered proof: A bootleg recording, and hard evidence that this wasn't a distant dream or memory. It actually happened.

So with all due respect to the Robinson Brothers, their publishing company and their record label, I offer that proof now: Here's The Black Crowes at The Lost Horizon in all their crunchy glory, taking their first steps of their touring career, playing their first hits "Hard To Handle" and "Jealous Again" with yours truly plunkin' away in support. I'll let you all decide whether I held my own or not.

Hard To Handle by The Black Crowes

Jealous Again by The Black Crowes

Whether I did, or whether I didn't doesn't matter in the here and now. What does matter is that I was reminded of a time when friends were friends, and a sweet innocence long gone sour got tasted once again, if only for a moment. It serves as a gentle reminder:

Look for, and lead with gratitude, always.

Thank You, Scott, for your blind faith and belief in me when I needed it most, and for a still fond and newly found memory that was once lost in the distant horizon.

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!

COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"

Daily Dose #66 (08/09/11)

2011-08-09T08:22:00.009-04:00

I AM THE HUMAN MEAT

(A Lake Boy Tale)

HALLOWEEN 1975

My adolescent rebellion was in full flower by the age of fifteen. I had become the antithesis of all that surrounded me:Re-invented as an anarchist and junior Anti-Christ in training.

Who knows how one gets to this point? Nature? Nurture? Raging Hormones? All I know is that "not giving a tumbling fuck" about ANYTHING was always me first move in any situation, and had to be immediately clarified, right up front.

Danger, was indeed my business. And complete anti-social behavior was the conduit and delivery system.

Inspired by Dadaist Happenings, my little circle of ne'er do wells (and ne'er do well experimentalist wannabees) devised a little recurrent happening of our own.

Dubbing ourselves "The Tiger Sextette", we would crash a classroom, gym class, grocery store or any other locale that would have an incredulous surprised audience.

We would then proceed to dance lasciviously, thrusting our collective pelvii, and look absolutely ridiculous as we bumped and grinded for about 30 seconds, and then run out of the joint laughing like six insane screaming hyenas. A total exercise in Surrealism.

It being the mid nineteen seventies, being properly stoned was ritual preparation for these little theatrical commando raids. I suppose it was the "flash mob" happening of its day. We were just having fun.

On this Halloween, it was decided by The Sextette that we would crash Under The Stone, our own little rock club ratheskellar in our sleepy little town of Skaneateles NY. C.R.A.C., a kickin funk band was playing that night, so an appropriate soundtrack to the shenanigans wasn't going to be a problem.

The plan?

1. Get as high and or as drunk as possible
2. Crash the club and the dance floor
3. Run out, or get thrown out. Either outcome was acceptable.

We were all fifteen years old, after all. Well below the legal limit to be in a drinking emporium.

Since this nefarious plan of mischief was devised after school on Halloween Day, a costume had to be improvised, and my inspiration was a 5,000 foot roll of industrial grade shrink wrap in my basement at 12 Gayle Road.

I would transform myself into the human meat! Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius.

I pedalled my bicycle down to the P & C, and bought the most exotic and disgusting cuts of meat I could find: Tongue, Tripe, and Pigs Feet, with a healthy supply of more traditional cuts of beef.

I then enlisted the help of the girl next door for the next phase of my creative Halloween costumed expression. With an indelible purple marker, I had her section off every part of my naked body with dotted lines, and then label the "cuts": Rump Roast, Flank Steak, Top Round, Etc, my body functioning as a butchering diagram for cannibals.

She then took the the industrial grade roll of shrink wrap and wrapped my from neck to toe, in a single unbroken wrap job.

In the middle of this operation, still half naked, my Mother came home from school. She was working on completing her four year RN degree that marriage and kids had interrupted nineteen years previously.

She begged me to reconsider my costume, and even offered a complete nursing uniform to go to the party in full nursing drag. But I could not be swayed. That meat cost a lot of money.

I attached all the bloody meat to a pristine lab coat of my Mother's with safety pins, and completed this horrific ensemble by topping it off with a white hard hat.

As the rest of the fellows collected in the back woods behind Walser's house on Lakeview Circle, we knew it was going to be a night to remember.

The first step was to get properly primed, and we did so with gusto with about an ounce of weed and a bottle of Jack Daniel's that we drained in about a half hour, as we huffed and puffed away.

Careening around Pluto without brakes, we made our covert trek into town, showed up at the door, and weren't even carded. The ridiculous nature of my meat suit gave us automatic entry. "It's Showtime, Ladies and Gentleman"

We immediately crashed the dance floor, to what we were anticipating was going to be the collective shock and horrified awe of a packed club of adults, and be immediately tossed out on our collective keysters.

But Lo, this did not happen. We were applauded, and lauded with free drinks all night. We were teenaged rock stars dancing the night away with real live older women dressed in their once a year, costumed expression of their inner slut.

It was a throwdown to end all previous throwdowns. A real live Bacchanal, and a teenaged dream come true.

Unfortunately there was a critical flaw in the conception of my costume. The industrial grade Saran Wrap sealed my entire body. As the temperature rose, and the alcohol factor increased, I reached the peak of heat prostration and hypothermia.

I had built up quite a tolerance of binge substance abuse by the tender age of fifteen, but this was even beyond my Herculean abilities to handle.

The meat coat was jettisoned sometime in the proceedings, and the sweat slick building up inside the wrapping started to cause it to lose its grip on my skin.

That's the last true cognitive memory I have of the evening. The rest is anecdotal.

Somehow, at around 4am and way past curfew, I found myself at the front door of 12 Gayle Road. Was I driven and delivered? Did I walk up from town? Who knew, because I was in no shape to know.

Coatless, and more importantly without house keys, there was no alternative but to ring the door bell, wake up Mom, and face the music. I was completely butt naked.

I leaned on the door bell and then promptly passed out against the front door.

As my Mother tells the tale, when she opened the door I fell into the house face first, breaking my nose. As she gazed incredulously at my naked ass and the faded purple cuts of meat decorations that had been applied to it only just hours before, a single twisted rope of Saran Wrap was attached to my left ankle. It ran down our walkway, down the entire length of Gayle Road, down the access road to the lake, and finally ended disappearing down the shore line headed in the direction of downtown.

Id like to say that passing out in front of my Mother was a singular occurrence in those days, but it wasn't. There were a few times when she would awake to the sounds of me aspirating my own vomit.

I was on a mission to join the 27 club, and I was ahead of schedule, being the motivated little whippersnapper I was. I was always a "Go Big, or Go Home" personality type, even at fifteen.

2008

I relocated to the town of my birth in the summer, emigrating for good from New Orleans.

It was nice to be home. I needed to get reset, and you can only do that at home. It was the first time that I spent any length of time in Skaneateles since 1978, a repatriated exile, and returned prodigal son.

But a funny thing started to happen. As I was introduced to total strangers, invariably the same question would arise:

"George Rossi....Oh Yeah, You're The Human Meat Guy, aren't you?"

I would like to be remembered and recalled for some of my successes, triumphs, and good deeds done over the past 35 years, but in my hometown? I'm still "The Human Meat" guy.

I've come to accept this gracefully. We are the sum total of the choices we make, and unfortunately, the salacious bad ones have much more sticking power in a tiny town.

We write our own narratives to some degree, and sometimes we inspire the motivated to write it for us, whether its actually based in any type of reality based truth or not. In the end, you have to own what you have done, good, bad, or indifferent.

So when asked if indeed I am "The Human Meat Guy", I smile, extend my hand and say, "Yes I am. Its a pleasure to meet you"

AUTHOR'S NOTE

As of this writing, The Dose has received over 20,400 legitimate page views in 65 daily injections. All I have asked of the general readership is that if you enjoyed what you just read, hit that little share button on the top right column of this site, or copy the blog address down, paste it in an email, and give a friend a taste.

The Dose's original intent and design was for it to be passed along and shared; sort of hoping that we could form a bond and a shared sense of responsibility between the content creation and its users active participation.

Unfortunately, my personal assessment is that its starting to look like a failed experiment.

It isn't without its harvestable aspects in the face of failure, and I don't regret the amount of time I spent writing 66 posts at all. I have learned so much by disciplining myself to produce quality writing to the best of my ability for 65 conescutive days. I can look myself in the mirror and honestly say that I gave my all, every little last particle of me. I did not phone it in, or take whoever might be reading The Dose for granted in anyway. I stayed true to principle.

I'm truly grateful to those of you that have read, and perhaps even been inspired by the Blog-O-Thon's content and message. I'm also especially grateful to the folks that took it upon themselves to realize their implied responsibility by enjoying the content, and then taking the time to hip their friends and family to the Blog-O-Thon.

Circumstances beyond my control have led me to a place where I can no longer devote the time to producing a quality reading experience for you daily.

Those circumstances were the result of broken promises made to me, and the collateral damge is that I no longer can keep my promise to you... everything, IS connected.

That isn't an excuse though. We are what we eat, and we are the choices we make. I sincerely apologize for breaking my promise, and seeming unaccountable.

Those circumstances coupled, with a rather tepid response of reader participation have led to this unfortunate resolution.

That's cool. I'm a big boy, and I can handle it. "I judge my forward progress and successes by the crushingly epic nature of my failures..."

If you are on facebook, I also started a page called "Little Georgie's Blog-O-Thon". Just search it, it will pop up. That will be the final publicly published Master Index for all of the past Dose Output, and any that might happen in the future.

The "Last Dispensary" as it were.

I love you all.

Easy,

Geo

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

DAILY DOSE #65 (08/03/11)

2011-08-03T14:23:00.012-04:00

EXPLORING CREATIVE PROCESSES PART 10:

(Adding The Stock)

I know I'm beating this "Gumbo Metaphor" to death, but this particular dish signifies clearly the process. Food preparation, assembly, and the techniques involved truly mirror how "Little Georgie And The Shuffling Hungarians" was pulled from theory into a tangible reality.

To recap:

At this point in time, all of the foundational concepts that I could complete by myself were identified and clearly defined. The Roux had been rendered, and "The Holy Trinity" had been identified, chosen, chopped in the right amounts; blended into the roux. The basic armature had been pulled from theory to a loose manifestation of reality.

But ultimately, live performances and possible future recordings, like films, are collaborative vehicles. I could be the engine, but I still needed a car to get to the final destination point.

Second only to a perfectly rendered roux, a perfect Gumbo hinges upon the stock used to prepare it for its final finishing stages: the spices and additional ingredients, the timing of their entrance into the gumbo pot, and its cooking down process to blend the flavors of all of the pot's eventual contents.

You can use water, and you can used pre-packaged stock as well, but your Gumbo will suffer accordingly if you do.

Only homemade stock will do.

As mentioned previously, at the time of ultimate creation I had very few resources available to me at the time. I was unknowingly bi-polar crazy, suicidal, and dead broke. All I had was my brain and a modicum of musical talent.

That said, I did have access to a stock; beautifully made and created outside of all of this.

If that stock and the access to it did not exist, then all of this creative armature building would have been a totally pointless exercise. The existence of the stock was the insurance policy needed to commence the mental work necessary to finding the roux and the "Holy Trinity" in the first place.

I knew that if I could get the Gumbo to the point of having the stock added and heat applied, the rest of the process would just fall into place. It was going to start to look and smell like a mighty good gumbo, one that would generate a magnetic force of gravity that would pull all the other future crucial and ultimately very special and unique ingredients into its orbit; eventually convincing those ingredients to dive into the "Hungarian Gumbo Pot" of their own volition.

THE STOCK; MARK TIFFAULT AND PAUL LaRONDE A.K.A. THE RHYTHM DICKS

My association with The Rhythm Dicks started benignly enough. A local comedian by the name of Tom Kenney (Later to go on to fame and fortune as the voice talent behind "Sponge Bob Squarepants")wanted to reprise a one off gig in his old hometown of Syracuse, New York.

I had worked with Tom before. Gary Frenay had organized the original first one off gig of what was to be called "Tom Kenny and The Fabulous Pushballs" (For those unaware of The Upstate New York Volunteer Firemen Arena, Pushball is a form of tug of war played between departments using high pressure hoses and a large canvass ball attached to an elevated rope, utilizing public embarrassment and humiliation for fundraising purposes).

A couple of years later, Tom called me and asked if we could do it again, but this time, he put the responsibility of putting the band together squarely on my own shoulders, and gave me full autonomy over personnel decisions.

I had always been a sideman, parasitically joining bands that were well into their development phases. A gun for hire. Oddly, this would be the first time I had that responsibility and autonomy.

It would be the perfect time to be handed that type of autonomy. I found myself between “causes”: The Bogeymen’s record deal had just imploded, or was about to anyway simultaneously with my personal life. I needed to get my mind of off the shit side of my life and do something productive. It was a unique opportunity to build a “Dream Team”, even if it was to service the needs of a crack comedian to ultimately showcase his abilities. That level of creative and administrative control had never been felt by my hands. It was time to seize control, because all elements of my life as I knew it were wildly spinning out of control.

So if given the responsibility of constructing some thing of value, you start at the foundation. Mark and Paul got the first call, and they signed on for this singular gig.

When Tom sent me the source material of the show, it was way more on the Jump Blues side of things. They were still obscure novelty numbers from an era long gone, and Tom was (still is) an absolute scholarly musical archaeologist and archivist when it comes to these matters.

My concept of novelty blues began and ended with Bull Moose Jackson (“Big Ten Inch”), Roy Brown (“Keep On Churnin”), or a huge chunk of the Louis Jordan and his Tympani Five catalog. Tom dug up things that I had NEVER heard, and for me, that was a tough feat to accomplish. “Uh-Oh, Get Out of the Car?” “Cut It Out?” “Mickey Mouse Boarding House?”. “Drunk, by Joe “The Honeydripper’” Liggin’s little brother Jimmy , who used to be his bus driver?” This was a subterranean strata of the blues and rock and roll history that even I had never been exposed to, and I thought I was pretty well schooled at the time.

I still have those tapes. They are an absolute historical primer on how humor and the blues are related. If you were ever curious as to how intrinsically verbal and poetic humor is woven into the blues, rock and roll, and popular music in general, I suggest you talk to Spongebob Squarepants.

So now, at age 31, I was finally being handed the reigns, and how successful a race run was going to fall upon my jockeying abilities; and they at that point were untested.

The “New” Pushballs were formed around the rhythm section of Mark Tiffault, Paul “Big Daddy” LaRonde, and me. We busted our collective asses to be totally prepared for the future voice of Spongebob’s show. With the addition of Tim Harrington on guitar, and a killer sax section of Frank Grosso and Paulie Cerra, I again might have found myself once again the low man on the musical end of the totem pole, but I will take the credit for putting together and administrating a killer band of the very best that Syracuse had to offer.

Tom blew into town, and we played the show at the Zodiac Club. He was on fire, as per usual, and the band killed completely, adopting Tom’s “take no prisoners” mind set when it comes to performance.

Playing a Pushballs show is like being in the middle of a hurricane, and time compresses. It just blows by. At the end of them you always ask yourself these questions; “What in Hell’s name just happened? Was I even here for this? ”

Playing a show with Tom Kenney is an out of body experience.

Transition

In the aftermath of that show, Paul, Mark and I had a pow wow. We had worked so hard to build that set of material, it would be a shame to just let that workload go to waste. I floated the idea of just going out and playing as The Pushballs. I was the rehearsal vocalist anyway. I knew the tunes.

But I was totally untested as a vocalist and frontman. It was a huge risk for Mark and Paul to take professionally. They were on the forefront of the roots and blues scene, I was an interloper from the Rock and Roll world and a green horn as well.

But they took that leap of faith with me. I rounded up the rest of the Pushballs, and booked a series of 4 consecutive Wednesday shows at Club Zodiac, to try and snare some of the revellers heading to Armory Square after Party In The Plaza.

I’d like to say we were a smashing success, but we weren’t. Specifically, I wasn’t. No let me rephrase: I sucked. I couldn’t sing and play at the same time. I couldn’t sing. I was, (and still am to some degree)totally charismatically challenged. I didn’t even know how to count in a song half the time. It was a humbling experience.

After the four shows, it was “back to the woodshed”. Time to figure out the "Gumbo".

FROM THEORY TO REALITY (Taking Stock)

Let's skip back in time a bit.

When Mark and Paul started humping their gear up the stairs to my newly acquired second floor bachelor flat on Winton Street for the first time, I was as low as a human could possibly go. Completely bottomed out.

The Pushballs project fell into my lap, and truly, it was all I had to look forward to. Everything else in life was burned to the ground, and I knew it.

These two musicians were the absolute cream of the crop. The "A" list rhythm section, both with extensive professional resumes. In the midst of abject personal catastrophe, the Universe had decided to cut me a break, and delivered a huge gift, although at that moment wasn't recognized.

They set up in my front room. We really didn't know each other personally from Adam.

My piano faced the bay window overlooking Winton street. I asked if they just wanted to jam on something to warm up, because the source material tapes hadn't been distributed yet. I suggested Professor Longhair's classic "Tipitina" in F, started playing the rubato intro, and they just fell right in.

There was no eye contact between me and the amazingly sympathetic rhythm section playing behind me. They were a Godsend. They knew the tune, they knew the vagaries of style; They put their own unique spin on it, a spin developed over thousands of road miles and countless gigs in their former band The Kingsnakes, and their present project Built For Comfort. They were John Lee Hooker's back up band for chrissakes.

So in the midst of a complete meltdown, this is what was bestowed upon me. Absolute musical perfection. I dont know how long we jammed on "Tipitina" but by the end of it, I was convinced that somebody up there, did in fact like me. It was a sign.

I was going to have the opportunity to play with the best rhythm section I would ever get a chance to play with, even if it was just for one gig with the future Spongebob Squarepants.

I can't really get into their heads as to how they felt about making noise with me, but it went well enough for them to commit to doing the one-off Pushballs gig. The rehearsal source tapes were distributed, the first ten songs on the tape to be learned, and the second rehearsal scheduled.

The Pushballs project was all I had, and I threw myself into it. I trancribed all the lyrics to about forty tunes, charted them out, worked with the horn players to create charts. The "assembly line" system that I would employ in the future was developed right then. I could not waste Mark and Paul's time. Half-assing, phoning it in, and ultimately if that happened, failing, was not an option.

Rehearsals were focused, directed, and run with military precision. They came in totally prepared with a combined surgical eye aimed at the innards of all the material, and I was ready for them. I honestly didn't have anything else to do other than to dedicate myself to pulling it off on a 24/7 basis. My life, literally revolved around the once a week arrival of Mark and Paul to my Winton Street digs.

It was the only bright spot in my rather bleak existence.

By the time we assembled the whole band together for complete rehearsals, the three of us knew that we may be on to something, but that something hadn't really been defined at that point. We did know that the show with Tom Kenney would be pretty epic, but that was about it.

Maybe they recognized my dogged work ethic. Maybe they saw that I could be the potential complimentary engine to their already completely stylized car. I can't tell you what made them decide to sign on to the subsequent four shows at The Zodiac with a totally untested, destined to suck front person. Maybe it was just the extra dough to be made on an off night while they pursued their main project, Built For Comfort.

Whatever the reason, they were there. And after bombing mightily, they were still there, ready to make a transition into something else, and they left me to my own devices to create and define what that something else was going to be.

Mark and Paul were "The Stock". Perfectly cooked down and rendered, and lustily flavorful. Had they not given me access to their superlative talents, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to go into the tunnel of memory and find the critical components of the Gumbo. I wouldn't have had the opportunity to build that conceptual armature.

To say that there wouldn't be a band without them would truly be an understatement.

Those rehearsals were my life line. They extended it to me, and I grabbed it with all my might.

They saved my life. Period. I wouldn't be writing this blog today without them. I would have been long gone from this earthly existence.

The tenure of the Hungarians through their history was not without its bumps in the road. Some of those bumps could have been avoided, and some of them couldn't.

But when put in terms of giving thanks and finding true gratitude, I look back at that spring and summer, and I realize what really is important in this world.

I was close to dead, and they gave me the means and support over time to ressurect and re-invent myself, and they knew exactly what they were doing.

Its a debt, that can never be repaid. Ever.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

As of this writing, The Dose has received over 19,500 legitimate page views in 63 daily injections. All I have asked of the general readership is that if you enjoyed what you just read, hit that little share button on the top right column of this site, or copy the blog address down, paste it in an email, and give a friend a taste.

The Dose's original intent and design was for it to be passed along and shared; sort of hoping that we could form a bond and a shared sense of responsibility between the content creation and its users active participation.

Unfortunately, my personal assessment is that its starting to look like a failed experiment.

It isn't without its harvestable aspects in the face of failure, and I don't regret the amount of time I spent writing 63 consecutive posts at all. I have learned so much by disciplining myself to produce quality writing to the best of my ability for 63 conescutive days. I can look myself in the mirror and honestly say that I gave my all, every little last particle of me. I did not phone it in, or take whoever might be reading The Dose for granted in anyway. I stayed true to principle.

I'm truly grateful to those of you that have read, and perhaps even been inspired by the Blog-O-Thon's content and message. I'm also especially grateful to the folks that took it upon themselves to realize their implied responsibility by enjoying the content, and then taking the time to hip their friends and family to the Blog-O-Thon.

Circumstances beyond my control have led me to a place where I can no longer devote the time to producing a quality reading experience for you daily.

Those circumstances were the result of broken promises made to me, and the collateral damge is that I no longer can keep my promise to you... everything, IS connected.

That isn't an excuse though. We are what we eat, and we are the choices we make. I sincerely apologize for breaking my promise, and seeming unaccountable.

Those circumstances coupled, with a rather tepid response of reader participation have led to this unfortunate resolution.

That's cool. I'm a big boy, and I can handle it. "I judge my forward progress and successes by the crushingly epic nature of my failures..."

If you are on facebook, I also started a page called "Little Georgie's Blog-O-Thon". Just search it, it will pop up. That will be the final publicly published Master Index for all of the past Dose Output, and any that might happen in the future.

The "Last Dispensary" as it were.

I love you all.

Easy,

Geo

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

Suggested Reading:

Gary Frenay: A Testimony:

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/05/gary-frenay-testimony.html

033.) "On Rhetorical Devices, Influences, and Making Art "Popular": The use of rhetoric as a velvet rope and associative strategy 1981-2011

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/06/daily-dose-33-062911.html

055.) "Exploring Creative Processes: Part 1": An Introduction

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-55-072211.html

056.) "Exploring Creative Processes: Part 2": What's In Your Gumbo?

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-56-072311.html

057.) "Exploring Creative Processes Part 3": The Hard Wiring Of The Really Little Georgie 1960-1964

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-57-072411.html

058.) "Party Time": A "Lake Boy" Tale

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-58-072511.html

059.) "Exploring Creative Processes Part 4": The Test Of Time

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-59-072611.html

060.) "Exploring Creative Processes Part 5": The Test Of Time

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-60-072711.html

061.) "Exploring Creative Processes Part 6": Finding the Second of Three "Trinity" Components: The Green Pepper

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-61-072811.html

062.) Exploring Creative Concepts Part 7: They Eat Green Bell Peppers in the Emerald City

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-61-072811.html

063.) Exploring Creative Concepts Part 8: Finding The Celery: The final and third component of "The Holy Trinity"

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/08/daily-dose-63-080111.html

064.)Exploring Creative Processes Part 9: The Celery Was As Green As An Invader From Mars (Integrating Core Marketing Concepts To Fuel Creative Content)

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/08/daily-dose-64-080211.html

DAILY DOSE #64 (08/02/11)

2011-08-01T11:14:00.029-04:00

EXPLORING CREATIVE PROCESSES Part 9: The Celery Was As Green As An Invader From Mars

(Integrating Core Marketing Concepts To Fuel Creative Content)

Citizen Kane is considered by many to be "The Greatest Film Ever Made".

The Hollywood film community and Studio System effectively killed it immediately after its release in 1941. It was too good and Welles made too much trouble for all of them. But once it got resuscitated in the mid 1950's by first French New Wave film makers and critics, and then its television rights got sold and Americans could finally see it, in a relative short time it was topping every critic's "best of" list and still does to this day.

Historical Context is pretty important when looking at "Kane". In 1941, it was just clearly ahead of its time on so many different platforms it still boggles the mind. So much so that Welles never got a chance to make a film with total creative control again in his lifetime.

Much like an early episode of "Survivor" , Orson Welles' sheer genius and the value of his work framed himself as either an impudent child ass or a very real threat to the 1941 film making community. He had to be voted off the island a soon as possible, and was.

I'm not going to go into a lengthy diatribe concerning the artistic value of "Citizen Kane". Much has been written about it, and has been written much better than I ever could.

But in my quest to find a solid armature to build my own work upon, the study of "Kane" and its creators was a forgone conclusion.

With VCR remote in hand, for hours, days, and weeks I deconstructed the film, scene by scene and frame by frame. I bought a copy of the shooting script and took scrupulous notes. Every camera angle, special effect, unorthodox lighting trick, and scene transition was notated. I broke down Bernard Herrman's score bar by bar. I poured over Pauline Kael's and Peter Bogdonovich's critical essays, and fact-checked every anecdote contained within. I logged alot of public library time and still have multiple stacks of composition books written in 1991 filled with "Kane" arcana.

I was in search of a story, but I was also in search of story telling techniques, both in a literary and visual sense.

I learned much and can definitely say that "Kane" as a film was a major influence on me and on the final blueprint that I was trying to create before actually initiating the actual construction of the musical project before me.

But much more influence on me than the film was Welles the man himself.

Welles was given a "Carte Blanche" at RKO, a feat unheard of at the time. Although known as a child wunderkind dramatist and radio star, really he scored that contract on the back of the "War Of The Worlds" broadcast. They were basically expecting him to come to Hollywood and make a B grade amateur film version of it.

Welles was all about controversy and shaking up the status quo. He produced and directed Shakespeare's Macbeth with an all African American cast in a Haitian "Voodoo" context. He mounted a production of "Julius Caesar" with everyone dressed as modern day Italian Fascists in ultra modernist staging and lighting techniques.

And of course, he did a radio broadcast about a Martian Invasion, and set it in the context of an emergency bulletin, igniting a widespread national panic. Don't think he didn't know what he was doing, because even though he had issued a mea culpa apology after the fact, they were well aware of what was happening during the broadcast and Welles refused to pull the plug.

The controversy was a preconceived element and major component, woven directly into the radio play as performed and presented by The Mercury Theater. It was Orson's ticket to Hollywood, and he knew it.

This veritable child arrived in Hollywood with an unheard of two picture deal, total control over all aspects including casting and final cut, having never directed a film before in his life. A kid in a veritable candy store.

Welles basically was lost in the weeds of the Hollywood Hills when he got there. He originally came up with a treatment for Joseph Conrad's "Heart Of Darkness",which RKO refused to greenlight. Then came "Smiler With A Knife", again unable to sell George Schaeffer, the head honcho at RKO on his choice of Lucille Ball for the lead role.

The entire Mercury Theater troupe was out in La-La Land with nothing to do except play tennis all day and get drunk all night on RKO's payroll. Welles was banging starlets like Delores Del Rio and cocktail waitresses two at a time. Things were getting dicey for Orson, and the public relations pressure was mounting; much of it at the poisoned journalistic pen and sword tips of Louella Parsons, the "Perez Hilton" Hollywood gossip monger of her day.

Parsons was the handmaiden and Satanic minion of William Randolph Hearst, one of the most powerful men in America, controlling a newspaper and broadcast empire of epic proportions. She, along with Hedda Hopper (her competition) were key players in the eventual fate of "Kane" and its creator.

With the walls closing in on him, Welles started collaborating with Herman Mankiewicz, and that's when the worm finally turned.

Mankiewicz was part of the New York journalist and writers migration to the west coast when the embryonic film industry started to develop. In his day he was very successful and is credited for creating the snappy dialog patter style in comedies of the 1930's and the subsequent humor employed.

Nunnally Johnson, no slouch to screenwriting and directing himself, once said that the "two most brilliant men he has ever known were George S. Kaufman and Herman Mankiewicz, and that Mankiewicz was the more brilliant of the two. ... he spearheaded the movement of that whole Broadway style of wisecracking, fast-talking, cynical-sentimental entertainment onto the national scene."

But by this time he had de-evolved into a notorious drunk and professional liability. Just another extremely talented, lovable Hollywood loser.

They had a basic working dramatic construct of an idea: Develop a story about a famous American, told from several intersecting point of views in flashback. Aimee Semple McPherson and John Dillinger as potential central characters were kicked around as possibilities, among others.

Only when Mankiewicz handed him an old manuscript and notes of a sprawling novel based on the life of William Randolph Hearst did Welles finally approach the position of getting back on his creative rails. But even then, he wasn't quite there yet.

"Mank" purposefully had shelved the Hearst project out of fear of reprisal from the publishing magnate. Hearst could have people killed in the literal sense, and get away with it. Killing careers to Hearst was the equivalent of shooing away flies.

Mankiewicz was part of the crew that Hearst would ship up to San Simeon, and was a close friend of Marion Davies, Hearst's longtime mistress and Hearst's personal "pet project". Davies' film career was bankrolled by Hearst, and a bit of a Hollywood joke. Mank knew many intimate details of Hearst's life, due to his association with Davies.

You don't become a "Giant of American Publishing" without having a massive ego. Hearst was a Narcissist beyond compare. Welles, knowing a thing or two about over inflated egos and narcissism himself, recognized enough bitchy details in Mank's notes to assume that there just might be enough slings and arrows available to take a shot at enraging that ego as an attempt was made to deflate it.

Welles was compelled by the thought of throwing a well aimed punch at the face of real power and in so doing lighting a fire under the ass of most powerful man in American Media. He was a man that wielded a considerable amount of power over The American Film Industry and Hollywood as well.

Within this context, the controversy would be delivered woven into the actual vehicle of the art.

It was "The Sell" that sold Orson, primed his creative pump, got those juices flowing, directed and focused. Making great art to Welles was a forgone conclusion. He had done it his whole young life.

But making a huge stink and having the art the vehicle to achieve that? Not so easily done. Welles knew that "marketing" was just as important as "making" and he had discovered at a very early age that the secret always was in the alchemy of combining the two in the creative process, instead of the linear process of "making" and then trying to figure out how to sell it.

One of the dirty little factoids in Mankiewicz's notes was the euphemistic pet name that Hearst had lovingly bestowed upon a certain organ in his misstress Marion Davies' vaginal nether world. The pet name?

Rosebud. Rosebud was a code word for "The Courtesan's Clitoris"

This school boy joke became the unifying thread in the narrative of "Kane". As the word was gaspingly uttered in a death rattle, and the first line of dialog spoken, the movie became a "who dunnit" mystery aimed at answering a singular question "What exactly was "Rosebud'?"

The shadowed and almost faceless "News On The March" journalist Jerry Thompson attempts to track down the hidden "clitoral question" through the interviews and subsequent memories of characters Susan Alexander, Jed Leland. Mr. Bernstein, and through Walter Thatcher's memoirs: As Kane's life story was unfolds in flashback from these sources, "Rosebud" was the topic, the conversation starter, and the mystery of the picture.

"Rosebud" drove the action. And although in the end Rosebud signifies the last time this tragically flawed man was authentically happy, the picture ends with "Rosebud" being discarded and going up in flames.

The whole narrative story was based on a prank. One designed to function as a red hot poker, continuously rammed into the eye of one of the most powerful men in America and thus the entire power structure of the film industry, for the entire running time of "Citizen Kane".

That, my friends, is an integrated core marketing concept that informs and shapes the final product.

It is aimed at a single bullseye to achieve the desired result: a firestorm for a work of art yet to be even created, and really a large part of the formula for the fuel to ignite Orson's creative rocket ship launch.

The rest of the incendiary devices in "Kane" were aimed directly at the Marion Davies character. The "Opera" career. The puzzles on the floor. The dim bulb, knuckle-headed, low brow portrayal. The isolation in Xanadu. The alcoholism. That was just cruel variation on a theme.

The "Greatest Movie Of All Time" was going to be about a clitoris. A very specific one. That was the foundational ground work before a a script was developed or a single frame was conceptualized or shot.

Not alot of people were in on the joke, except a few Hollywood insiders. The movie certainly works for people who don't know the joke.

But for those few who did? Kane became an exercise in absolute brutality, and its agenda was very clear. The few that did know ran the show. The heat that was going to come down on all their heads would be beyond compare.

Then the little pissant upstart interloper NY intellectual had the audacity to make the best film ever seen to add insult to injury, having never made a film before in his life, exposing the mediocrity of Hollywood product of the day.

Under pressure from Hearst, the studio heads made a collective offer to RKO to buy all prints and negatives of Citizen Kane for $800,000... to burn it. The greatest movie of all time came very close to being destroyed before ever getting a chance to be seen by a general viewing public.

THAT'S how good it really was then, and that is why it's still great now.

Welles' own narcissism sealed his own doom; with the marketing device, and ultimately with his own genius.

He became one of the great tragedies of the latter half of the 20th century.

Art can imitate life. In this case, Art imitated life and life imitated art in an infinity loop of unforseen, but ultimate self-destruction.

THE CELERY

The purpose of this series was to expose and explore "process". From a single point of view, show how I came up with what I did and why.

But before work really initiated, the core concepts had to be in place, and a rough blueprint had to be developed.

"The Celery" was where art and commerce met. The Wellesian device, the red hot poker and the secret punch in the face, integrated into the art.

There are other ways to create controversy. You can dress up outrageously. You can bite the heads of of bats, or wear meat dresses at awards shows, or have fake lesbian spit swaps with Madonna.

Welles's device was a little different, and much more integrated. It really was designed at a single target, and the very few insiders that knew the joke. His main target was still mass appeal and a mass audience. He knew he was making popular art.

He just knew how to get eyeballs on it, and he knew how to direct focus and expectations before the eyeballs actually saw it.

So in the end, this device worked for me. I would function as "Kane" as well as "The Bunny" and ultimatley the character of "Little Georgie".

It would be the fictionalized version of real life events. The tragic hero would be undone by his fatal flaw. And although there were many protaganists in the tale I was about to write, the singular one was the ultimate betrayer. The vessel of disengenuous love.

This narrative going to be my version of a classic Greek tragedy of loss, dressed and presented as a comedy. The tragic elements were only going to be revealed to those that had the ability to notice. The surface presentation and eventual narrative was just sugar coating and chocolate dip on a rotten peanut of a story of abandonment,mysticism and the dark arts, lust, sex, betrayal, lies, substance abuse, a public beheading and then delivering a head on a plate, with a surprise twist at the end with a cautionary warning to the members of the collective cosciousness that trucked in the utter banality of evil as they mundanely scorched the earth.

That coating would be able to stand alone and function quite effectively as an entertainment in and of itself, and as a shield.

In the end, a casual observer wouldn't know anything about this, and certainly wouldn't recognize anything resembling a "Rosebud". But for those few in the music community that knew the real story, or were at least privvy to all the gossip surrounding the ugly details of the last year of my marriage and the excruciating year between separation and ultimately divorce played out very publicly by my future ex-wife, it was going to be pretty obvious that "Little Georgie's Narrative" was going to follow real life very closely.

Art would imitate life.

I wasn't very good at hiding my "Rosebud" at first. A Gumbo has to cook down and the flavors have to blend. At the point of creation, ideas and concepts, and the feelings that inspire them are very raw indeed.

But in the end, as a concept, the final hidden output was going to be a twisted love letter to my ex-wife, delivered with hidden a red hot poker directly to her metaphoric eye.

Enough people knew the tale to get tongues wagging.

If I could sustain that local innuendo trading, narrative spinning and tongue wagging for three years, that would buy me enough time to slow cook the Gumbo, and get it into a finished state.

There would be an eventual business plan crafted for long term goals, but this was the point where the creative armature and the future business plan truly intersected.

Next Step For The Creative Gumbo Assembly

At this point in time, all of the foundational concepts that I could complete by myself were indentified and clearly defined. The Roux had been rendered, and "The Holy Trinity" had been identified,chosen, chopped in the right amounts, and blended into the roux. The basic armature had been pulled from theory to a loose manifestation of reality.

But ultimately, recordings, like films, are collaborative vehicles. I could be the engine, but I still needed a car to get to the final destination point.

Second only to a perfectly rendered roux, a perfect Gumbo hinges upon the stock used to prepare it for its final finishing stages: the spices and additional ingredients, the timing of their entrance into the gumbo pot, and its cooking down process to blend the flavors of all of the pot's eventual contents.

You can use water, and you can used pre-packaged stock as well, but your Gumbo will suffer accordingly if you do.

Only homemade stock will do.

As mentioned previously, at the time of ultimate creation I had very few resources available to me at the time. I was unknowingly bi-polar crazy, suicidal, and dead broke. All I had was my brain and a modicum of musical talent.

That said, I did have access to a stock; beautifully made and created outside of all of this.

If that stock and the access to it did not exist, then all of this creative armature building would have been a totally pointless exercise. The existence of the stock was the insurance policy needed to commence the mental work necessary to finding the roux and the "Holy Trinity" in the first place.

I knew that if I could get the Gumbo to the point of having the stock added and heat applied, the rest of the process would just fall into place. It was going to start to look and smell like a mighty good gumbo, one that would generate a magnetic force of gravity that would pull all the other future crucial and ultimately very special and unique ingredients into its orbit; eventually convincing those ingredients to dive into the "Hungarian Gumbo Pot" of their own volition.

That stock manifested itself in the form of three very specific people.

The next intallment of this series will take a look at those three people, for without them, "Little Georgie" or "The Shuffling Hungarians" would have been just another good idea left on the drawing board. The only reason it became realized was because of their specific contributions, ones that I will be forever grateful for.

(Stay Tuned For Installment 10)

AUTHOR'S NOTE

As always, if you are following The Dose regularly, its going to be increasingly more helpful if you have a roadmap and scorecard. An updated master index is sent out weekly that includes descriptions and direct hyperlinks to each archived blog: Its a lot easier than searching for archived material for cross referencing purposes than the blogger platform. Just shoot me your email address at:

piannaplunker88@gmail.com

You can opt out at anytime.

As of this writing, The Dose has received over 19,500 legitimate page views in 63 daily injections. All I have asked of the general readership is that if you enjoyed what you just read, hit that little share button on the top right column of this site, or copy the blog address down, paste it in an email, and give a friend a taste.

The Dose's original intent and design was for it to be passed along and shared; sort of hoping that we could form a bond and a shared sense of responsibility between the content creation and its users active participation.

Unfortunately, my personal assessment is that its starting to look like a failed experiment.

It isn't without its harvestable aspects in the face of failure, and I don't regret the amount of time I spent writing 63 consecutive posts at all. I have learned so much by disciplining myself to produce quality writing to the best of my ability for 63 conescutive days. I can look myself in the mirror and honestly say that I gave my all, every little last particle of me. I did not phone it in, or take whoever might be reading The Dose for granted in anyway. I stayed true to principle.

I'm truly grateful to those of you that have read, and perhaps even been inspired by the Blog-O-Thon's content and message. I'm also especially grateful to the folks that took it upon themselves to realize their implied responsibility by enjoying the content, and then taking the time to hip their friends and family to the Blog-O-Thon.

Circumstances beyond my control have led me to a place where I can no longer devote the time to producing a quality experience for you daily.

Those circumstances were the result of broken promises made to me, and the collateral damge is that I no longer can keep my promise to you... everything, IS connected.

That isn't an excuse though. We are what we eat, and we are the choices we make. I sincerely apologize for breaking my promise, and seeming unaccountable. In the end, all you are left with is your Integrity, and mine got compromised by not recognizing the lack of it in others that I openly trusted.

Those circumstances coupled, with a rather tepid response of reader participation have led to this unfortunate resolution.

That's cool. I'm a big boy, and I can handle it. "I judge my forward progress and successes by the crushingly epic nature of my failures..."

If you are on facebook, I also started a page called "Little Georgie's Blog-O-Thon". Just search it, it will pop up. That will be the final publicly published Master Index for all of the past Dose Output, and any that might happen in the future.

The "Last Dispensary" as it were.

I love you all.

Easy,

Geo

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

DAILY DOSE #63 (08/01/11)

2011-08-01T04:44:00.010-04:00

EXPLORING CREATIVE PROCESSES: PART 8

(Finding the Celery: The Final Component Of "THE HOLY TRINITY")

Going back in time to find the purity of concept was initially like trying to find buried treasure without a map.

But through repeated dives, by this point a methodology started to emerge, that at least at the surface, was paying pretty large dividends. The more I dedicated myself to the goal of building a solid armature of conceptual elements, the better I got at knowing where to look to find them.

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. As I circled around the central point of building that armature, the harvested concepts and ideas kept tightening the circle. At the onset, getting to the true heart of the point of discovery required a time machine worthy of H.G. Wells, but by this point, quantum traveling from any point of the circumference to the center was like walking to the corner store.

Patterns in this chaotic process started to emerge. Subconscious drivers and actual methods materialized.

The Shuffling Hungarians were to be, in the end, a band. A presentation of music, to state the obvious. But by opening myself up to the absolute randomness of the process and to find the real and true answers to the questions I posed to myself, one of those patterns was that I was finding those answers in very unorthodox mediums, that had very little to do with the process of making music.

Maybe I instinctively knew that in trying to create an entity that was unique to its arena, that I needed to pull ideas and be influenced by works of art that had nothing to do with music.

Perhaps that had something to do with how I learned about rock and roll. If you dig The Stones, that sets you on a path of discovery of who they were listening to to arrive at the end product. The same with the Beatles. In fact both groups early recordings were peppered liberally with material to point the way. They were exposing their own journeys of discovery.

To get inside the minds of Lennon and McCartney, you had to absorb the complete ouvres of Motown, Brill Building Pop, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers, Little Richard, Elvis, The Isley Brothers, Fats Domino, British Dancehall Music and Broadway Show Tunes. The covers gave you a map to understand the artists. If in fact you are what you eat, its a good idea to study the diet of others.

Being very familiar with that process, in very gut-brained fashion I went in the opposite direction. By searching for that one pure moment of discovery, and casting the net wider without any preconceived controls, I started creating a list of "future influence" that wasn't actually operating in the realm of music, or music making. I aimed for the first and last time that I ever felt safe and truly loved.

Then I found the influence and sources of inspiration.

One of my main objectives was again "The Test Of Time". What stood the test of time? What works elevated themselves through time to iconic status?

Beethoven wrote thousands of pieces of music to arrive at the opening four notes of his Fifth Symphony. Out of the whole cannon of Piano Sonatas, why are "The Pathetique" or "The Moonlight" the ones that automatically trigger the collective consciousness?

Van Gough's out put was pretty prodigious, and yet when you think of his work, why do "Sunflowers" or "Starry Night" pop up first? Why does "The David" define the sculptural output of Michelangelo first?

The Sistine Chapel's Ceiling has many images, but God touching his finger tip to Adam's is the first one that pops up.

I was in search of the "Iconic", and I didn't realize it in real time in the multiple journeys of trying to make those discoveries. Really the goal was pretty purely motivated. I just wanted to make the best work that I could with the resources available to me at the time.

I was alone, isolated, bi-polar crazy, clinically depressed and dead broke. The only resource available for conceptual purposes was my own very broken brain, heart, will and spirit. If I could pull off a personal ressurection, than the ressurection would be "televised". My life's story and very public humiliation had been writ large on bathroom walls and shit house stalls, and if I made a public statement, I expected no different of an outcome.

I knew that if I "aimed big", that failure was pretty much a foregone conclusion. But I also knew that in aiming big, I was going to end up with something of much more lasting import than if I stood two feet away from the target and aimed for the middle.

Professional and personal failure was all around me. This did not discourage me, in fact it fueled me. If failure was a foregone conclusion, than I was going to fail in epic proportions. It was the "Daffy Duck" finale. You can only do it once. Accepting that responsibility was a key factor in dedicating myself to the process.

I posted this clip in Dose #60. Watch again, because this was me. I was in search of the creative equivalent of a ".. generous portion of gasoline and nitro-glycereeeen....".

While sewing a Devil's Suit to wear in perpetuity, all I needed was the proverbial "Lit Match" to set it all off. That, dear readers and world wide peep-a-roos, was the "Celery", and I already knew where to find it.

(Stay Tuned For Part 9)

Suggested Reading:

Gary Frenay: A Testimony:

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/05/gary-frenay-testimony.html

033.) "On Rhetorical Devices, Influences, and Making Art "Popular": The use of rhetoric as a velvet rope and associative strategy 1981-2011

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/06/daily-dose-33-062911.html

055.) "Exploring Creative Processes: Part 1": An Introduction

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-55-072211.html

056.) "Exploring Creative Processes: Part 2": What's In Your Gumbo?

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-56-072311.html

057.) "Exploring Creative Processes Part 3": The Hard Wiring Of The Really Little Georgie 1960-1964

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-57-072411.html

058.) "Party Time": A "Lake Boy" Tale

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-58-072511.html

059.) "Exploring Creative Processes Part 4": The Test Of Time

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-59-072611.html

060.) "Exploring Creative Processes Part 5": The Test Of Time

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-60-072711.html

061.) "Exploring Creative Processes Part 6": Finding the Second of Three "Trinity" Components: The Green Pepper

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-61-072811.html

062.) Exploring Creative Concepts Part 7: They Eat Green Bell Peppers in the Emerald City

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-61-072811.html

As always, if you are following The Dose regularly, its going to be increasingly more helpful if you have a roadmap and scorecard. An updated master index is sent out weekly that includes descriptions and direct hyperlinks to each archived blog: Its a lot easier than searching for archived material for cross referencing purposes than the blogger platform. Just shoot me your email address at:

piannaplunker88@gmail.com

You can opt out at anytime.

As of this writing, The Dose has received over 19,250 page views in 61 daily injections. All I have asked of the general readership is that if you enjoyed what you just read, hit that little share button on the top right column of this site, or copy the blog address down, paste it in an email, and give a friend a taste.

The Dose's original intent and design was for it to be passed along and shared; sort of hoping that we could form a bond and a shared sense of responsibility between the content and its users.

I'd like to continue to keep delivering this stuff, but we're rapidly reaching the point of diminishing returns.

Unfortunately, my personal assessment is that its starting to look like a failed experiment.

It isn't without its harvestable aspects in the face of failure, and I don't regret the amount of time I spent writing 62 consecutive posts at all. I have learned so much by disciplining myself to produce quality writing to the best of my ability for 62 conescutive days. I can look myself in the mirror and honestly say that I gave my all, every little last particle of me. I did not phone it in, or take whoever might be reading The Dose for granted in anyway. I stayed true to principle.

I'm truly grateful to those of you that have read, and perhaps even been inspired by the Blog-O-Thon's content and message. I'm also especially grateful to the folks that took it upon themselves to realize their implied responsibility by enjoying the content, and then taking the time to hip their friends and family to the Blog-O-Thon.

Circumstances beyond my control have led me to a place where I can no longer devote the time to producing a quality experience for you daily.

Those circumstances were the result of broken promises made to me, and the collateral damge is that I no longer can keep my promise to you... everything, IS connected.

That isn't an excuse though. We are what we eat, and we are the choices we make. I sincerely apologize for breaking my promise, and seeming unaccountable. In the end, all you are left with is your Integrity, and mine got compromised by not recognizing the lack of it in others that I openly trusted.

Those circumstances coupled with a rather tepid response of reader participation have led to this unfortunate resolution.

That's cool. I'm a big boy, and I can handle it. "I judge my forward progress and successes by the crushingly epic nature of my failures..."

If you are on facebook, I also started a page called "Little Georgie's Blog-O-Thon". Just search it, it will pop up. That will be the final publicly published Master Index for all of the past Dose Output, and any that might happen in the future.

The "Last Dispensary" as it were.

I love you all.

Easy,

Geo

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

Daily Dose #62 (07/ 29-31/11)

2011-07-30T14:38:00.031-04:00

Exploring Creative Concepts Part 7

(They Eat Green Bell Peppers in the Emerald City)

1964 / 6:45 am

I remember waking up early on cold winter mornings in the dark, lured into an emerging state of semi-consciousness by the aroma of Cream Of Wheat wafting from the kitchen.

I would stumble out of bed and into the kitchen, beclothed in my baby blue "onsie" with the pink bunnies scattered about the flannel material and the white nubby plastic soles glued upon its feet.

As we three Rossi sprouts took our places around the small square wooden table in the kitchen, Moms would serve up the steaming glop whilst singing "The Cream Of Wheat" radio jingle of her youth, grab the glass bottle and pour milk in three bowls, and let me handle the sugar ratio with a four year old's heavy spoon-wielding hand.

The TV was tuned to The Today Show. Moms said it was for "Current Events", but I think she secretly had a crush on Hugh Downs. Eating for those first ten minutes of the lead-off news segment was a solemn affair. All of us were required to shut up and give Hugh our undivided attention while we blew on spoonfuls of breakfast goo to cool it off some.

At 7:10, Mom would assume her position at the fourth side of the square, and as if by magic, produce "the book". The TV was turned off, its black and white picture closing in on itself, reducing to a lingering white dot in the center of the screen.

Our first hour of an awake state was mapped out with military precision. Reality first, and then fantasy second, accompanied by her rendition of The Cream Of Wheat Song.

It didn't matter what the book was, but in retrospect, it was always of high quality. Charlotte's Web, Winnie The Pooh, Stuart Little, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, The Wind and The Willows, and The Cricket In Times Square; Every morning a chapter would be read aloud; The dialog acted out in character by my beautiful Moms, and when an illustration would appear in the text, the book was passed around the table.

Day by day, the stories would unfold serially as we ate our cereal. You never wanted the chapter to end. That meant that Alfie and Becky would have their teeth washed and their faces brushed and hustled off to school; and I would be the only kid in the house until they came back.

But I couldn't wait for the next part of the story. I figured the quicker I learned to read, I wouldn't have to depend on Mom to read them to us. Eventually all those books and more were devoured and memorized chapter and verse, read repetitively with my nose buried constantly within them.

But long after I was able to digest novels myself, still; Those breakfast table readings and performances were enthralling ritual.

Moms never read to us to put us to sleep at bedtime. She read to us to fire our imaginations and wake us up.

DANNY KAYE SITTING ON A TOADSTOOL 01/64

Having had to replace our TV set due to my block throwing incident during the news coverage of JFK's assassination and State funeral, the first color TV on Gayle Road made its appearance in the Rossi living room.

We gathered around the set on a cold Sunday's winter night earlier than usually, to watch the televised special broadcast of "The Wizard Of Oz". I'm sure that the yearly broadcast had been established as a yearly event before then. But this is the first of my memory.

It was in color, and it was a revelatory experience.

The family brood, and like every other American Atomic Age, Cold War Era family, tuned in every year as "The Wizard Of Oz" cemented its place in the American cultural consciousness.

No one can deny the overall greatness of this film, or the L.Frank Baum books that had been entertaining about four decades of American children before the theatrical release of the film in 1939.

But the confluence of the film with the medium of broadcast television in the era bears special notice.: With only three major networks and no ability of home video recording or playback technologies in the day burnished the importance of the film and its yearly special broadcasts. You could only see it once a year, and it was a truly special family event, shared by America.

It unified all of us. Just like the airing of Warner Brothers Cartoons did to every kid with access to a TV, every Saturday morning.

So when searching for examples of "Pop Culture" creative output, its impact on our culture, and running it through the criteria of "The Test Of Time", there is no larger or more impactful example than this film.

I knew if I was going to find "The Pepper" of my holy trinity, I would have to deconstruct this film on all platforms, but my first focus was the original progenitor of the film: The actual story, written by L.Frank Baum, and how it was re-interpreted by the multitude of writers that crafted the screenplay and musical numbers for the film.

Allegorical stories seem to have more staying, and thus more sticking power in human experience and consciousness, from Homer's "Odyssey", to The Bible, all the way to "The Wizard Of Oz". In search of a narrative for a central character, I knew that just like everything else about to be cooked up, those narrative elements had to function on many different levels to bear repeat exposure, and have the same type of impact.

The narrative had to be a gift that kept on giving, no matter how many times it was visited by an audience.

Allegory, and its use, was a key component in crafting a future narrative for "The Bunny".

As I deconstructed every element of "The Wizard of Oz", and went on a vision quest to learn each and every little fact and detail I could about the construction and creation of the books and the film, many other new skills and concepts were revealed; and many other pre-existing skills and theoretical concepts that already were within me were validated.

Unknown to me, I was actually co-opting as I was crafting the architecture of this classic American musical film. In search of an actual story, the ideas started to gel as a strong allegorical narrative rooted in fantasy, with its action driven forward by songs.

This was "The Pepper", in it's embryonic state: and it was as green as anything else found in The Emerald City. But I had the foundation dug, and laid, even if the rough architectural blueprint wasn't exactly manifested in a hard reality yet. All I needed now was the building material to draw those blueprints and build my own creative version of an "Oz" upon it.

WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW"... Mark Twain, American author and humorist"

1991

I was at the creative "Waterloo". I had my foundational parameters clearly defined, but now I was at the point where you really do have to create something out of nothing.

I used Twain's quote to guide the process and lead the way. If I was going to assume the character of "The Bunny", then The Bunny in the context of an allegorical, picaresque adventure story, was me.

My story was the one story that I knew most intimately.

So roughly, I just decided to take that story, mythologize it and amplify the life themes of existence that were running through my head at the time. As I sat down with a pencil and a yellow legal pad, I jotted down a short list of potential dark adult themes that I wanted to weave into the future "Allegory". I was in a very psychologically dark place at the time, and by writing about what I knew, these themes would reflect me current state of mind:

1. Abandonment
2. Loss
3. Personal Betrayal
4. Lust and Sex as Leverage and Other Substance Abuses: Addiction
5. Heart Break: Love and Love Lost
6. Madness
7. The Nature of Failure
8. Mob Rule.
9. Maintenance of Integrity
10. Death/Murder of the bunny at all platforms
11. Mysticism
12. The Quest for Meaning/Spirituality
13. The Flaws of Humanity, both innwardly and outwardly
14. Resurrection

This was my life in 1991. The commitment to a creative endeavor was tied to the need to get out of the psychic hole that I was in. These were the stages and changes I was experiencing as I continued to absorb cataclysmic professional and personal failures, the personal ones tied to the events of the disintegration and very public implosion of my marriage, specifically tied to the behavior and autonomous life style choices of my soon to be future ex-wife.

I hadn't really figured out how to turn this into an allegorical tale yet, but this was a process of circling around certain conundrums, and slowly tightening the noose around its neck, as mentioned previously.

The challenge was to write a narrative that somehow would be entertaining, and appear to be not only light hearted, but in fact at times extremely comedic as well. Alot of that element would center on the actual character development of "The Bunny" himself.

But at the onset, there had to be a transition of material from the comic R 'N B book of obscure covers that had been hand picked by the future voice of Spongebob Square Pants, fellow Syracusan Tom Kenny. So any future material chosen to cover had to meet two basic criteria:

1. It had to be New Orleans based as a rule. The band had to go through the process of learning how to be a New Orleans style band first before one note of original music could be written. I had to go through this learning curve as well both musically and in the context of being the "Ringleader/Front Person". We had to immerse ourselves in the New Orleans "book" and explore the styles and arrangement techniques and then re-interpret them with an East Coast, New York sensibility. It had to evoke, but uniquely personalized as a representation of who we actually were. New Orleans would function as "OZ".

2. The lyric content had to match these thematic threads. Some of The Fabulous Pushballs material already met that bench mark ("Drunk", "Down Home Girl")... so much so that those two tunes were covers that were included in the final manifestation of all of this, The Shuffling Hungarians eponymously named first recording, released in the fall of 1994.

As a side note, an actual timeline started to emerge of just how long it was going to take to get there. Before we debuted at the Dinosaur, I started to get a feeling for the projections, time wise, and it did look to me like it was going to take about three years from conception of the original ideas to finished product of both band and recording.

BUILDING LITTLE GEORGIE ("You got to do "Good" in the world...")

As I was in the development phase of indentifying basic narrative themes and that the narrative would take on the fictionalized and mythologized version of autobiographical events, I still didn't have the actual "story". That would come in time, but now I needed to actually develop the central character, and had enough structural elements in place to take that challenge on.

By doing this, I knew that the character traits of the character would start to actually redefine and clarify narrative points.

At the time, I was very much intrigued by the inner conflict of popular artists that had fought the battle of becoming secular Pop Stars by using sacred forms, and coming from a personal place of deep spirituality.

There's a recording of an argument between Sam Phillips and Jerry Lee Lewis prior to cutting "Great Balls Of Fire". At the time, I had only read a transcript of it, but thanks to the intrawebs, here's the actual recording as Sam tries to twist Jerry Lee's arm into to recording "Great Balls Of Fire", as both of them cite scripture chapter and verse; Jerry Lee desperately trying to not record "Great Balls Of Fire" and Phillips intent on selling the true power of Rock and Roll.

http://www.myspace.com/sunyears/music/songs/jerry-lee-lewis-sam-phillips-argue-53422860

Listen to the pain and incredulity in Jerry Lee's voice as he asks the question "Nooooo, Nooooo!-How can The Devil save souls? What are ya talkin about? Man...I got the Devil in me! If I didn't I'd be a Christian!"

I especially love one of the sidemen on the session who can be heard in the background saying "Awww, lets cut it man...."

Well as history proves, Phillips prevailed. Rock and Roll history was made.

But Jerry Lee's state of mind before he cut the song? A lost soul, in complete and utter turmoil.

Just like mine at the time I was trying to come up with the "Bunny".

There are other examples of this inner turmoil, when the sacred and the profane collided in rock and roll history and genious was born of that inner clash and turmoil. Elvis. Sam Cooke. Ray Charles. Al Green. Aretha Franklin. Really anybody that came up through the church with a holy roller Pentecostal sensibility. All of them had to eventually accept the very real thought in their minds that they were actually going to burn in hell predicated on a career and artisitic choice.

The art got made in the context of real conflict. The epic and eternal battle between good and evil.

This aspect would define the new character, but also define the as yet written narrative, In any good allegorical story, this is the critical element, be it God vs. The Devil, The Good Witch of the North vs, The Wicked Witch of The West, or The Dark Side vs. The Force or Yin vs Yang.

Magnetic, chemical and electrical force at the atomic level, be they positive or negative, is how energy is transferred through the universe, and it effects us all right here on our lowly little Earth bound existence.

The action of the narrative would ultimately driven by this time honored tradition in story telling and life: What happens when the sacred and the profane collide, and what is the outcome?

OTHER ELEMENTS

In all honesty, much of my direction of character development was directly inspired by Greil Marcus' classic tome of Rock and Roll essays, MYSTERY TRAIN. My paperback copy by 1991 was a much dog eared, coffee stained, yellowed by drool, constant resource and repetitive reference book.

The prologue of MYSTERY TRAIN recounts an episode on THE DICK CAVETT SHOW, the guests present at this taping being Little Richard, Erich Segal (who wrote "Love Story" a very popular book at the time), theater critic John Simon, and Rita Moreno.

Basically, Marcus details an argument between Simon and Segal, with Little Richard quietly watching as the two intellectuals crash their broadswoeds over the cultural significance of Segal's enormously popular but ultimatley crappy book, "Love Story".

Until Richard Penniman sees his opening. This from the prologue of MYSTERY TRAIN:

"The battle resumes. Segal has now slumped even lower in his chair, if that is possible, and seems to be arguing with the ceiling. “You’re only a crutuc,” he says as if to Simon. “What have you ever written? What do you know about art? Never in the history of art…”

“WHY, NEVER IN THE HISTORY!”

The time has come. Little Richard makes his move. Leaping from his seat, he takes the floor, arms waving, hair coming undone, eyes wild, mouth working. He advances on Segal, Cavett and Simon, who cringe as one man. The camera cuts to a close-up of Segal, who looks miserable, then to Simon, who is attempting to compose the sort of bemused expression he would have if, say, someone were to defecate on the floor. Little Richard is audible off-camera, and then his face quickly fills the screen.

“WHY, YES, IN THE WHOLE HISTORY OFAAAART! THAT’S RIGHT! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! WHAT DO YOU KNOW, MR. CRITIC? WHY, WHEN THE CREEDENCE CLEARWATER PUT OUT WITH THEIR ‘TRAVELIN’ BAND’ EVERYBODY SAY WHEEE-OOO BUT I KNOW IT ONLY CAUSE THEY DOING ‘LONG TALL SALLY’ JUST LIKE THE BEATLES ANDTHESTONESANDTOMJONESANDELVIS – I AM ALL OF IT, LITTLE RICHARD HIMSELF, VERY TRULY THE GREATEST, THE HANDSOMEST, AND NOW TO YOU (to Segal, who now appears to be on the floor) AND TO YOU (to Simon, who looks to Cavett as if to say, really old man, this has been fun, but this, ah, fellow is becoming a bit much, perhaps a commercial is in order). I HAVE WRITTEN A BOOK, MYSELF, I AM A WRITER, I HAVE WRITTEN A BOOK AND IT’S CALLED –

“‘HE GOT WHAT HE WANTED BUT HE LOST WHAT HE HAD’! THAT’S IT! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! HE GOT WHAT HE WANTED BUT HE LOST WHAT HE HAD! THE STORY OF MY LIFE. CAN YOU DIG IT? THAT’S MY BOY LITTLE RICHARD, SURE IS. OO MAH SOUL!”

Little Richard flies back to his chair and slams down into it. “WHEEEEE-OO! OOO MAH SOUL! OO mah soul…”

Little Richard sits with the arbiters of taste, oblivious to their bitter stares, savoring his moment. He is Little Richard. Who are they? Who will remember Erich Segal, John Simon, Dick Cavett? Who will care? Ah, but Little Richard, Little Richard himself! There is a man who matters. He knows how to rock.

A phrase that Little Richard snatched off Erich Segal stays in my mind: “Never in the history – in the whole history of art…” And that was it. Little Richard was the only artist on the set that night, the only one who disrupted an era, the only one with a claim to immortality. The one who broke rules, created a form; the one who gave shape to a vitality that wailed silently in each of us until he found a voice for it."

The "Bunny" became "Little Georgie" officially. An homage and a blueprint.

His future story? "HE GOT WHAT HE WANTED BUT HE LOST WHAT HE HAD"

Ultimately, "Little Georgie" was going to fill all the deficiencies that I felt that I represented at a time when my self-esteem was at an all time low. He would be the "Anti-George Rossi".

"Little Georgie" would be everything I was not.

He would be a cross between Jerry Lee, Little Richard, Stack-O-Lee, and John Henry The Steel Drivin' Man.

He would be larger than life, and a complete amplified cartoon: bragadocious beyond belief, physically beautiful, charismatic, talented, and adored. He would be able to out-play, out-fuck, out-drink, out-drug, out-pimp, and out-fight any mere mortal alive.

In my personal isolation and very real abject misery, I would define him as a version of Bacchus, The Devil, and God incarnate. The Alpha and Omega, as defined by Foghorn Leghorn, Wile E. Coyote, Pepe Le Pew and Bugs Bunny via Chuck Jones and Mike Maltese.

At the intersection of Highways 61 and 49, he could close a deal like Ron Popeil on the Atlantic City Boardwalk.

But like every epic hero, he would be imbued with a tragic flaw, and an Achilles Heel. For this one flaw, I looked toward myself, and installed the singular point of actual reality firmly and deeply into a utter fantasy of character invention.

He would want to be loved truly and authentically; He would risk all to seek it and that would be his undoing.

The narrative would be a variation on the concept of "Love Conquers All", sideways and backwards.

(Stay Tuned For Part 8: The Third Element Of The Holy Trinity)

Suggested Reading:

Gary Frenay: A Testimony:

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/05/gary-frenay-testimony.html

033.) "On Rhetorical Devices, Influences, and Making Art "Popular": The use of rhetoric as a velvet rope and associative strategy 1981-2011

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/06/daily-dose-33-062911.html

055.) "Exploring Creative Processes: Part 1": An Introduction

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-55-072211.html

056.) "Exploring Creative Processes: Part 2": What's In Your Gumbo?

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-56-072311.html

057.) "Exploring Creative Processes Part 3": The Hard Wiring Of The Really Little Georgie 1960-1964

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-57-072411.html

058.) "Party Time": A "Lake Boy" Tale

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-58-072511.html

059.) "Exploring Creative Processes Part 4": The Test Of Time

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-59-072611.html

060.) "Exploring Creative Processes Part 5": The Test Of Time

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-60-072711.html

061.) "Exploring Creative Processes Part 6": Finding the Second of Three "Trinity" Components: The Green Pepper

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-61-072811.html

As always, if you are following The Dose regularly, its going to be increasingly more helpful if you have a roadmap and scorecard. An updated master index is sent out weekly that includes descriptions and direct hyperlinks to each archived blog: Its a lot easier than searching for archived material for cross referencing purposes than the blogger platform. Just shoot me your email address at:

piannaplunker88@gmail.com

You can opt out at anytime.

As of this writing, The Dose has received over 19,250 page views in 61 daily injections. All I have asked of the general readership is that if you enjoyed what you just read, hit that little share button on the top right column of this site, or copy the blog address down, paste it in an email, and give a friend a taste.

The Dose's original intent and design was for it to be passed along and shared; sort of hoping that we could form a bond and a shared sense of responsibility between the content and its users.

I'd like to continue to keep delivering this stuff, but we're rapidly reaching the point of diminishing returns.

Unfortunately, my personal assessment is that its starting to look like a failed experiment.

It isn't without its harvestable aspects in the face of failure, and I don't regret the amount of time I spent writing 62 consecutive posts at all. I have learned so much by disciplining myself to produce quality writing to the best of my ability for 62 conescutive days. I can look myself in the mirror and honestly say that I gave my all, every little last particle of me. I did not phone it in, or take whoever might be reading The Dose for granted in anyway. I stayed true to principle.

I'm truly grateful to those of you that have read, and perhaps even been inspired by the Blog-O-Thon's content and message. I'm also especially grateful to the folks that took it upon themselves to realize their implied responsibility by enjoying the content, and then taking the time to hip their friends and family to the Blog-O-Thon.

Circumstances beyond my control have led me to a place where I can no longer devote the time to producing a quality experience for you daily.

Those circumstances were the result of broken promises made to me, and the collateral damge is that I no longer can keep my promise to you... everything, IS connected.

That isn't an excuse though. We are what we eat, and we are the choices we make. I sincerely apologize for breaking my promise, and seeming unaccountable. In the end, all you are left with is your Integrity, and mine got compromised by not recognizing the lack of it in others that I openly trusted.

Those circumstances coupled with a rather tepid response of reader participation have led to this unfortunate resolution.

That's cool. I'm a big boy, and I can handle it. "I judge my forward progress and successes by the crushingly epic nature of my failures..."

If you are on facebook, I started a page called "Little Georgie's Blog-O-Thon". Just search it, it will pop up. That will be the final publicly published Master Index for all of the past Dose Output, and any that might happen in the future.

The "Last Dispensary" as it were.

I love you all.

Easy,

Geo

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

Daily Dose #61 (07/28/11)

2011-07-28T12:15:00.010-04:00

Exploring Creative Processes: Part 6

(Finding the Second of Three "Trinity" Components: The Green Pepper)

Deep sea diving through my past, I found certain "Pearls" that matched my objectives of finding a state of conceptual purity. On my first two excursions, I found a few core concepts that would comprise the roux of my projected, but still yet unknown and undefined creative "Gumbo Project".

Just as a refresher, here's a snippet that outlines rough parameters for "The Roux"; The true base of "The Gumbo", defined in a previous blog (The Hard Wiring Of The Really Little Georgie, Daily Dose #57: http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-57-072411.html)

"Those identifiable core elements took this form, when finally digging inside myself to find them.

1. There had to be a "narrative" element. All material, covered or eventually written, had to follow that narrative.

2. Although undefined at that point, the narrative would explore the darker side of the human experience. A creator creates of what he knows.

3. The narrative would be allegorical in nature. And in the end, uplift.

4. The project had to be just as powerfully presented graphically. Everything piece of material that came out of the camp had to deliver the right visual content to be just as evocative as the music, the presentation, the performances, and the narrative.

5. As mis-direction, the narrative had to be hidden, through the use of unabashed humor. It couldn't look like any of us were taking ourselves too seriously.

Entertainment values were what we were going to show first.

6. The band was going to showcase a decided New Orleans Piano flavor; (Insert "Caribbean Calypso" in here: a strong component of Mardi Gras Indian chants and music, and the music of Professor Longhair, blues with a decided Afro Caribbean slant, and the artist that I stole the name of the band from, as an homage, of course!)

7. It had to rock, but more importantly, it had to roll. There were going to be moments of collective and communal orgasmic release, just like that scream in "I Saw Her Standing There"; a pure exhibition of the power and resultant joy of Rock And Roll as I knew it."

After another dive in the darkened depths of early memory, I found my "onion", the first of a projected three additional core components, revolving around the filter of "The Test Of Time". What that was, and could again I find the purity in that concept; and then reinterpret that concept as a core design component.

From Daily Dose #60 ("Finding The Onion": http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-60-072711.html)

"The first awareness of "The Test Of Time" was drilled into me from 1963-1970 on all platforms, but the source of the springwater? The love and care of my brother through the conduit of the entire Warner Brothers Cartoon Cannon.

I had the onion now, and like an onion, this first component of my "Holy Trinity" was a multi-layered thing......

The onion, and thus the Gumbo, would explore the darkness of the human condition, yet appear to be "light", functioning on many conscious and subconscious levels simultaneously. The Onion would not condescend or cheapen its intended audience in anyway. The onion would be stand repetitive viewings and listenings through multi- layered complexities. The onion at first glance would be funny. The onion was going to have a cast of characters that would be absolutely personality driven.

Everything I knew about the Warner Cartoon Output would be re-interpreted, twisted and personalized, but I knew that those core concepts would be recognized and followed.

And at the heart of it all, and the soul of it all, would stand "The Bunny", as I remembered him from 1962 with my six year old brother sitting next to me with a sketch pad, teaching a two year old how to draw a perfect Bugs with nothing but love and a totally open heart.

I was going to be "The Bunny". As I rushed to to escape the past to gasp the air of the here and now, and broke that water line, the concept of "Little Georgie" was born unto this world."

I was circling around a conundrum, tightening the noose around its proverbial neck.

The last two components of "The Holy Trinity" ("The Green Pepper and The Celery") were now going to be actual creative work that were going to by guided by the parameters outlined, and always run through a set of filters, at this point "The Test Of Time".

These next components were going to be narrative based. I now had the function of a central character in that future narrative, but now I had to actually develop it in form.

Do do that, I had to take one more dive, this time to find that narrative. Find it, and the character of "The Bunny" would flesh itself out, as would the problem of character development in general.

I was very close to breaking through at this point, and probably would have gotten there without this third trip in the Time Tunnel, but since it had born the core design elements, and found them in a state of child-like purity and awareness, I had to make sure I had the narrative's priorities screwed on straight.

DAILY DOSE #62 will be about storytelling, and what types of stories I was attracted to, and what types of stories conformed to these newly defined parameters. Ultimately leading me to answer a critical question: Could I write one of my own?

Could I write one that could run cleanly through the now established filter of "The Test Of Time?"

(STAY TUNED FOR PART 7)

As always, if you are following The Dose regularly, its going to be increasingly more helpful if you have a roadmap and scorecard. An updated master index is sent out weekly that includes descriptions and direct hyperlinks to each archived blog: Its a lot easier than searching for archived material for cross referencing purposes than the blogger platform. Just shoot me your email address at:

piannaplunker88@gmail.com

You can opt out at anytime.

Remember Peep-A-Roos, your feedback and the active sharing of The Dose is what keeps it alive and viable, and is just as important if not more than the actual generation of the content.

As of this writing, The Dose has received over 18,950 page views in 60 daily injections. All I ask is that if you enjoyed what you just read, hit that little share button on the top right column of this site, or copy the blog address down, paste it in an email, and give a friend a taste.

It's designed to be passed along and shared. Otherwise, it just dies on the vine.

Love,

Geo

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

Daily Dose #60 (07/27/11)

2011-07-26T19:41:00.032-04:00

EXPLORING CREATIVE PROCESSES: PART 5

Finding The Onion

In the same mental quantum leap taken to find the authentic elements my "Roux", I used the same techniques to find the first of three elements of my "Holy Trinity", my metaphoric "Onion".

Just like an onion, I stripped away memory layer by layer, falling backward in time to get to some kind of purity, that I knew resided at the core, but was lost to me.

I really did stare into the mirror while I did this. I had to look myself directly in the eye, with no more self-generated bullshit attached to the process. My life depended on it.

I was isolated and alone, and felt abandoned and betrayed by anyone outside of my family who I had ever dared to love. I wasn't at the point where I could accept my own personal responsibility for my current lot. Those were the final questions that needed to be acknowledged and answered obviously; that's where any harvestable wisdom and lessons for the future resided and this was only the start of THAT journey. I wasn't ready for that yet. This was only the second of many attempts at "Soul Scraping".

Framed in the context of finding the root elements of a future creative endeavor, that gave me cover to some degree; yet still, the only council I could keep or trust was my own.

As the imaginary digit counter of the years rolled backward, I left a trail of breadcrumbs by the milestone markers to get back to the present.

Every failure, every betrayal, every fucked up thing done, either to me or what I had done to others, got cataloged and then peeled away. Every mask, every facade, every rationalization that led to false justifications got stripped and tossed aside.

This time though, I was on a specific mission. I was in search of "The Test Of Time", but not the versions that were learned in 7 years of car rides with debating the concept with Eddie Hamell.

I was in search of the first awareness of the concept; it's initial discovery. When was that light bulb lit? Where was that one true and pure moment in life that "The Test of Time" not only existed, but that somehow I had simultaneously placed a value on it without attaching an agenda to it? When was the time, and where was that place of security and innocence?

Where's my real "Onion"?

November 22, 1963

Although I have very definitive memories of my first three years on the planet, its difficult to attach specific times and dates. That's why November 22nd, 1963, and its media aftermath is useful as a memory docking station, and point of real verifiable time reference. The rest of early childhood is based alot in part on ritual. Feeding times, bed times, and repetitive, consistent events.

I remember the pain and anguish of all the adults around me, and being aware of the fact that something was terribly wrong. I had never seen real grief before that day. It was scary.

But there was also a frustration attached to those days as well. All regularly sceduled television programming got pre-empted, and more specifically aimed at the rote rituals of a three year old child, all children's programming on the only available three broadcast networks dematerialized mysteriously.

The disappearance of "The Bugs Bunny Show" the following Saturday morning was a crisis of epic proportions, much more so in my life at the time than a Presidential assassination. I became unglued. I remember this morning well, because all hell broke loose at the realization that my ritual was being denied.

I threw a block at the TV in an uncharacteristic three year old blind rage, and got thoroughly thrashed for the outburst. These were the days when it was OK to spank your kids, and although I received MANY of them through my early years by being what in my mind was being benignly mischievous, this one was my first, and my three year old ass was a deserving recipient.

You never forget your first time.

For over a year of hard-wiring cognitive development, my Saturday morning ritual was based around "The Bunny". That was the highlight of the week, and the whole of my toddler existence was scheduled around that singular weekly event, with Sunday's airing of "Walt Disney's Wonderful World Of Color" (of which we watched on a black and white set) coming in a distant second. Cartoons were always kind of a crapshoot on that show, and not always guaranteed.

But most importantly, "The Bunny" always was experienced at the side of my older brother Alfie.

My brother was four years my elder, the first born to our little mid-century nuclear family that was housed and based at 12 Gayle Road, Skaneateles, NY.

Alfie was (and still is) a genius. There's no delicate way of saying that. His I.Q. tested off the charts, and he was a child prodigy in many areas. It was normal to me, but in retrospect he must have been pretty scary to some, especially kids his own age. He was that smart, but more so he was freakishly talented in his chosen field of interest by age seven: The graphic arts of all genres, and by relation, the study of Animation.

From the day I spurted out of my mother's birth canal, I became Alfie's charge and he became my protector; He was "Primo" and I, "Secondo". Frick and Frack. Mutt and Jeff. Abbot and Costello. There wasn't a time I can remember where we were separated for very long until he started to go to Kindergarten. Every available moment we had, it seemed like we spent them together.

Alfie knew that if we were going to hang, that he had to get me up to speed and make up that four year gap as quickly as possible. He taught me to read, and he taught me to draw. He sat me down in front of every cartoon available on TV, and deconstructed comic books, from my day one until he finally hit puberty and realized that hanging out with his kid brother as best friend might result in a form of social suicide.

I took that intellectual and skill challenge on. There was no safer, and no more fun place to be for me, than to be pasted at his side.

"The Bunny" was the centerpiece of all knowledge and filial love in 1963, and it grew from there.

As we watched every Saturday, Alf would explain the gags that were dependent on reading, or humor aimed at adults. I knew what cirrhosis of the liver was at the age of three, because of the references to "Sir Osis of Liver and Sir Loin of Pork" from a roundtable scene from "Knighty Knight Bugs"

He taught me what suicide was in 1964. Bugs, Pepe LePew, and Daffy always seemed to commit it, or try to. I wanted to know, and Alfie had the answers.

The punch line of "Good thing I missed!" was much funnier if you comprehended the darkness of the set-up.

He taught me about surrealism through "Duck Amok". Right after viewing it, we'd hit the art books that had paintings of Magritte and Dali. Opera? Right after "The Rabbit of Seville", "What's Opera Doc?" we'd hit the family record collection and listen to Rossini's classic while devouring the liner notes and reading the libretto in Italian, or attempt to plow through Wagner's "Ring" cycle to sing "Kill The Wabbit" along with "The Ride Of The Valkyries"

Why was Bugs commonly dressed as a girl all the time? Here comes the lesson on cross-dressing and Transvestism. Nothing was held back as being "age-inappropriate."

He defined the use of irony in "One Froggy Evening" and "Show Biz Bugs". If you didn't get the reason why the space aged construction guy re-discovers Michigan J Frog in the year 2056 A.D. in a cornerstone placed in 1955 and has the the same delusions of grandeur and moral flaws concerning the frog that the last guy did, you didn't know that he was about to be driven to insanity. You didn't get the joke, the irony, or the absolute existential darkness of the humor being explored and then deployed.

I'd run around the house on Saturday afternoon's singing, "Oh, We are The Boy's Of The Chorus- We Hope You Like Our Show- We Know You're Rooting For Us- But Now It's Time To Gooooo".

It wasn't just a catchy tune. Alfie knew what it really meant, and he made sure that I knew about the concepts of vanity and futility attached to it.

In other words, Alfie had a true understanding of all these things, and made sure he drilled them into me from the jump.

Through the years, Saturday mornings were spent recording The Bugs Bunny Show and its various incarnations and it's network jumps, first with a tape recorder and then with one of the first home VTR's received by both of us as a collective Christmas gift, a fifty pound beast that used 7 inch reel to reel Black and white magnetic tape.

We'd deconstruct the plots, recreate the story boards, type out the scripts and the dialogue and practice imitating Mel Blanc's voice characterizations.

By the time I was seven we were breaking them down frame by frame and tracing each drawing off the television tube.

We'd do it with the rest of the Saturday morning fare.

The Hanna-Barberra stuff, Rocky and Bullwinkle, and any new half hour Saturday animated Kiddie show.

But the animation was crap, even if the writing and voice characterizations were worth careful study study.

By the time I was reading at the age of four, I knew by scanning the title cards and scored the "four horsemen of the apocalypse"; Mike Maltese, Mel Blanc, Carl Stalling and "Directed by Chuck Jones" a winner was about to appear. Alfie made sure my tastes were that refined as far as the output of Termite Terrace was concerned.

Milt Franklyn was an acceptable substitute, but only for special ones like "What's Opera, Doc?"

There was a qualitative difference between McKimson, Freeling and Jones. I was a Chuck acolyte. His stuff just looked better, the animation was more radical while also using incredible subtley at the same time, and the character development was a lot darker. Above is an illustration of the greatest smirk of evil intent ever animated.

By the time I was eight, we were using a Bell and Howell 8mm Film Camera with a momentary control on the shutter, enabling us to shoot frame by frame. Alfie built a light table, peg board and Rube Goldberg vertical camera stand and crane.

We started making our own cartoons.

My mother was always very supportive of all of this. She didn't want Alfie and me to grow up mired in the muck of mediocrity either. She wanted little versions of Leonardo and Michelangelo, and I guess in some form, she ended up with them.

My Mother made sure that every available resource was right at our fingertips at all times; from the complete Encyclopedia Britannica, to Art Books, to college level Animation Text books, to Art Supplies, to the actual advanced technical gear to advance to the point of producing real two-dimensional Animation on film.

All those years, in the act of acquiring all that knowledge, really boiled down to the core in two objectives: I loved my brother and mother with all my soul, and all I ever wanted to do was to please them. Life, from zero to the age of ten, was about seeking that closeness and safety through their collected validation of effort, work, ethic, development of talent, mental and intellectual acuity, and most importantly, creative output.

I can't exactly pinpoint the moment that I realized that The Warner Cartoon Output represented "The Test of Time" to me for the first time. Somewhere between 1965-1968, as I was learning the craft, I put it together. When I started to learn the production dates and did the math certainly helped. Some of these classics were produced as far back as 1948, and to an eight year old, a 20 year gap might as well have been an eon.

But it was more than that. It was their absolute density. How they functioned as not only kiddie entertainment, but functioned on many other levels as well, all at once. Their sheer artistry. That just like a Van Gough painting, you could watch them over and over again, and always be spiritually rewarded on some level in a new and different way. With every single repeat viewing, these seven minute shorts continued to deliver over the span of decades.

They never dumbed it down, or condescended to their intended audience, ever. They weren't worried about some kind of Freudian or Jungian developmental concern for impressionable young minds. They were smart, and the more you dug into them, the smarter you became.

So like Glinda the Good Witch explaining to Dorothy that she always had the power to go back to Kansas, telling her; "Now those magic slippers will take you home in two seconds. ...close your eyes. Tap your heels together three times...and think to yourself...there's no place like home" as a took my freefall back in time to find my "Onion", I realized that I had had it all along, but it was such a fundemental part of me that I couldn't recognize it until I had a soul scrape through my own version of a past "Oz".

My yellow brick road traced a twisting, spiraling path through the folds in my brain, always.

The first awareness of "The Test Of Time" was drilled into me from 1963-1970 on all platforms, but the source of the springwater? The love and care of my brother through the conduit of the entire Warner Brothers Cartoon Cannon.

I had the onion now, and like an onion, this first component of my "Holy Trinity" was a multi-layered thing.

As I re-emerged through the waters of the past to breath the oxygen of my present, my psychological lungs almost burst before I broke the water line. Like swimming out of the amniotic fluid and spurting out the birth canal, I had harvested some pretty major components and was about to have a creative birth of my own.

The onion, and thus the Gumbo, would explore the darkness of the human condition, yet appear to be "light", functioning on many conscious and subconcious levels simultaneously. The Onion would not condescend or cheapen its intended audience in anyway. The onion would be stand repetitive viewings and listenings through multi- layered complexities. The onion at first glance would be funny. The onion was going to have a cast of characters that would be absolutely personality driven.

Everything I knew about the Warner Cartoon Output would be re-interpreted, twisted and personalized, but I knew that those core concepts would be recognized and followed.

And at the heart of it all, and the soul of it all, would stand "The Bunny", as I remembered him from 1962 with my six year old brother sitting next to me with a sketch pad, teaching a two year old how to draw a perfect Bugs with nothing but love and a totally open heart.

I was going to be "The Bunny". As I rushed to to escape the past to gasp the air of the here and now, and broke that water line, the concept of "Little Georgie" was born unto this world.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

(Stay Tuned For Part #6: Finding Another Trinity Component)

As always, if you are following The Dose regularly, its going to be increasingly more helpful if you have a roadmap and scorecard. An updated master index is sent out weekly that includes descriptions and direct hyperlinks to each archived blog: Its a lot easier than searching for archived material for cross referencing purposes than the blogger platform. Just shoot me your email address at:

piannaplunker88@gmail.com

You can opt out at anytime.

Remember Peep-A-Roos, your feedback and the active sharing of The Dose is what keeps it alive and viable, and is just as important if not more than the actual generation of the content.

As of this writing, The Dose has received over 18,500 page views in 58 daily injections. All I ask is that if you enjoyed what you just read, hit that little share button on the top right column of this site, or copy the blog address down, paste it in an email, and give a friend a taste.

It's designed to be passed along and shared. Otherwise, it just dies on the vine.

Love,

Geo
"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

Daily Dose #59 (07/26/11)

2011-07-26T06:47:00.024-04:00

EXPLORING CREATIVE PROCESSES: PART 4

(THE TEST OF TIME: Section A)

Part Three of this series left off with getting to the root of all knowledge, and the act of personal discovery to find core elements of pure authenticity as I made the commitment to "make a gumbo".

Gumbo starts with the "roux", for all of you non-culinary types out there. A base of white flour, slowly and carefully browned and thickened in animal fat or vegetable oil; Making a proper roux, in the proper amount, is tricky business.

You've got to get it almost to the edge of utter destruction without actually destroying it. It has to be constantly stirred and watched for up to an hour to get it to that perfect dark reddish-brown, melted chocolate color and the right consistency of thickness, right before it burns. The darker the roux, the richer and more complex flavors can be achieved. It's a gastronomic high wire act.

Burn the roux, and you have to toss not only it out, but more than the
hour of life you spent trying to render it.

The next steps needed to be taken in making my creative metaphoric "Gumbo" was to conceptually identify what is called in Creole Cuisine "The Holy Trinity": Chopped Celery, Chopped Green Bell Peppers, and Chopped Onions.

There's no variation here. These three vegetables go into a Gumbo. They don't call it the "Holy Trinity" for nothing.

But each ingredient must be carefully chosen. They have to be fresh, and chopped to the desired consistency and in the right amounts; at the ready as soon as the roux is ready to go.

They represent "core" or "ground zero" structural concepts.

As I faced the possibility of transitioning from an instrumentalist to having the opportunity to take the full responsibility of embarking on creative and business initiative that would result in tangible output, you know that output will be judged to some degree.

"Throwing it out there into the Universe" has many emotional and character components attached to the act. One of them is courage.

You can not give a tumbling fuck about what people think about your "output", but if you are working in the arena of "Popular Art", its probably a good idea not to ignore the word "popular" either, especially where the "business" side is concerned.

That isn't to say that you have to be guided by popular trends as you make your own "Gumbo". If you get caught in that trap, you're already behind the eightball.

You just burned your roux if you position yourself as a dedicated follower of fashion.

You can shoot for "Elvis" or aim for "Fabian". There is a quantifiable and qualitative difference, and that choice is not without consequence. The measuring stick is just how much bravery you bring to the table as much as how much creative juice you may think you have to offer.

The goal is to stay true to core elemental concepts, and hopefully go way beyond the trend and set it. Raise the bar and obliterate the bell curve as you find the right escape velocity to create a large distance between what you produce from constraints of "the muck of mediocrity".

As I sat in my apartment on Winton Street in 1991 with my entire existence crashing and burning down around my ears, I knew one thing. If I was really serious about taking this on, and all it represented: Creating a "Gumbo" and assuming the full responsibility of making it, I knew in my gut brain that it was "go big or go home" time.

What ever I was going to end up with, it was going to have to stand up against "The Test Of Time".

It was my first and very possibly, my last shot at it; my feeling at the time was that I had better make it count.

You got nuthin' to lose if you got nuthin' left to lose.

This core concept, was going to be part of my "Holy Trinity". It was the first one recognized, and directly relates to the training I received in my tenure in a band called The Works, from the mind of my tutor and mentor of seven years, Ed Hamell.

THE 7 YEAR CAR RIDE: 1981-1988

When I first joined forces with Ed, his first move was to throw a pile of LP's at me to digest immediately. I had already digested most of them. I wouldn't have been in position to be asked to join the band if I hadn't to some degree, but certainly there were mutually recognized holes in my game and knowledge base.

All of those recordings were not only cherry picked by Ed because of what they represented stylistically. These records weren't based on obtuse esoterica to hide a sphere of influence, but on popularity and their place in the world wide musical, and primarily (but not exclusively), rock and roll zeitgeist.

There was only one true benchmark. All of them would stand the test of time, or had already done so. Either that, or would eventually prove to be of timely cultural significance.

I'm not going to go into a long list here. That's up for you to compile and find for yourself if you want to explore that concept. You are in fact, what you eat.

This I can say though: through thousands of hours of car rides, and thousands of hours spent listening, excavating information, reading books, and rooting out anecdotal stories, hundreds of records were deconstructed down to core elements.

The were dissected not only by their overall structure; Art work and graphic design, genre, concept (if any) or conceptual narrative elements, pacing, song structure and structural elements, hooks, instrumentation, arrangements, spheres of influence, production techniques and lyrics syllable by syllable.

Entire careers got disassembled and reassembled to figure out how the watches actually ticked. Who was the producer? Who was the engineer? Where was it recorded? What was the technology available at the time of recording? Who was the manager, and how was that career stewarded? Who signed them? What Label? Who broke them on the radio, and how? How was the team assembled, and how could we find out the backstory on every last one of them?

What was the cultural climate at the time of impact? What was sheer dumb luck, and what was brilliant design?

This was pre-internet days, peep-a-roos. There were no "Search Engines". There was no Wikipedia, and no YouTube to go to. If you really wanted to know this stuff, you had to really commit to finding it out, by any means at your disposal.

These were also the days when Rock and Roll journalism actually meant something. Ed required that you know just as much about Lester Bangs as you did about The Beatles.

Everybody from Al Jolson to N.W.A. got put under that microscope. Top 100 "All Time" lists were debated vociferously. One of my favorite exercises was the "Career and Output" face off. Madonna or Bowie? Go! Little Richard or Chuck Berry? Go! Springsteen or Dylan? Go! Andrew Loog Oldham or Brian Epstein? Go! The Clash or The Pistols...and Where Do The Replacements fit in? Go! Brian Wilson or George Martin? Go! Roy Thomas Baker or Mutt Lange? Go! Prince or Michael Jackson? Go! "Exile on Main Street" or "Sticky Fingers"? Go! Sam Phillips or Leonard Chess? Go! Lou Reed or Iggy Pop? Go! Dick Clark or Don Kirschner? Go! Berry Gordy or Thom Bell? Go! Lenny Bruce or Richard Pryor? Go! Robert Johnson or Muddy Waters? Go! Johnny Cash or Hank Williams? Go! Jerry Lee or Elvis? Go!

This went on for seven years, and it was like going to a Master's Program of Rock and Roll, Songwriting, Career Management, Street Fighting, The American History of Humor, Criminology, Sociology, World History, Industrial and Technological History, Military Planning and Theory, Advanced Poetry and Literature, Media History, Advanced Marketing and Economics all rolled into one, every time that extensively touring car door opened and I set my foot in it.

Crossing intellectual swords with Ed was like stepping willingly into a running Waring Blender set permanently on "Puree".

These debates could get very heated, but in the end, it hardened and cured your knowledge base like carbonized steel.

We were unified as one, however. Brothers in arms, shoulder to shoulder in the same foxhole, discovering the conceptual strategies in all areas, deployed in the past and present. Hopefully in that process, we would find a unique mixture; one of our own for a common purpose aimed at a collective future.

We wanted to make history.

Or rather he did, and I willingly enlisted myself under his leadership and guidance.

No matter how arcane a factoid was or how it came to light, all of that knowledge had to answer to that one parameter and be housed under a singular umbrella of a concept.

The Test of Time.

In the end, as I look at The Works retrospectively, the band basically went through four phases in the time I was a member; A Springsteenian start, a Clash like turn to the left, a more current for the times 80's English Glam sensibility due to personnel changes and the influence of MTV and emphasis on visual information, and sort of petering out with a more punkish direction and ultimate vision of Ed's that the band, at that time, had difficulty in tacking to and following.

That last turn, due to the economic and sheer physical grind that The Works represented and the fact that we all were growing up and developing diverging strategies on how to acheive the common end goals, was probably one of the main factors for Ed to decide to close the final curtain down on that particular project.

We thought we were pretty slick, but all of those transitions seem a bit sophomoric and forced today. We were young, and we were learning the trade, trying to run through identifiable shapes, "periods" and image changes, and keeping the music and presentation fresh over a grueling seven year period; following the chameleon template defined by Picasso and The Beatles, refined by David Bowie and Neil Young, and copied rather ham-fistedly but quite successfully by Madonna.

That's an over-simplification, but you get the general idea. Cut us some slack. We were kids. We may have been miles ahead of the curve for the provinces, but for the world stage, we were a little behind that eightball.

We built a loyal and supportive tribe. We made some great music. We had a blast has we lived a very low rent bohemian, yet truly Bacchanalian lifestyle, and made great friends. We were downright inspiring to many folks. We walked the walk as we talked the talk, and paid the price dearly for doing so.

And personally, I walked out with the education of a lifetime. I'm proud of every note I ever played in that band and what those notes represented, under the guidance and tutelage of Ed.

Ed was on the right track, however, and has spent the years since refining that original knowledge base and the implementation of it for his following and very successful solo project, "Hamell on Trial". Unencumbered by the constraints of having to deal with other humans in a band and everything else that goes with that, he was able to make calibrations and changes much more nimbly, as he continued to hone and pressurize his coal into his own personal vision of what a diamond should be.

Just as my treasured friend and teacher had done, when my turn at bat came up, all that I had learned was going to be deployed somehow.

In search of my own personal statement and spin on the "Holy Trinity" of a future creative "Gumbo", one thing was certain.

"The Test Of Time" was going to be my onion. I didn't know exactly how that would exactly manifest itself, but it was going to be there. All I had to do was discover it.

(Stay Tuned For Part 5: Finding The Authentic Onion)

Author's Note:

All Dosages will eventually connect, for those that are following the entire cycle.

For those that aren't, here's one quick recommended read concerning Ed Hamell and just one of many of the lessons I learned from him:

033.) "On Rhetorical Devices, Influences, and Making Art "Popular": The use of rhetoric as a velvet rope and associative strategy 1981-2011

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/06/daily-dose-33-062911.html

Also if you'd like to learn more about "Hamell On Trial", here's his web address:

http://www.hamelltv.com/

I also highly recommend his interesting take on his "Works" days, which can be found here:

http://www.hamelltv.com/category/the-works/

As always, if you are following The Dose regularly, its going to be increasingly more helpful if you have a roadmap and scorecard. An updated master index is sent out weekly that includes descriptions and direct hyperlinks to each archived blog: Its a lot easier than searching for archived material for cross referencing purposes than the blogger platform. Just shoot me your email address at:

piannaplunker88@gmail.com

You can opt out at anytime.

Remember Peep-A-Roos, your feedback and the active sharing of The Dose is what keeps it alive and viable, and is just as important if not more than the actual generation of the content.

As of this writing, The Dose has received over 18,500 page views in 58 daily injections. All I ask is that if you enjoyed what you just read, hit that little share button on the top right column of this site, or copy the blog address down, paste it in an email, and give a friend a taste.

It's designed to be passed along and shared. Otherwise, it just dies on the vine.

Love,

G

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

Daily Dose #58 (07/25/11)

2011-07-25T09:18:00.013-04:00

PARTY TIME

(A Lake Boy Tale)

Gayle Road is a steeply graded street located on the east side of Skaneateles Lake; on the outer Eastern border but still within the village limits.

Lined on either side with relatively modest ranch style homes, the street descends sharply in altitude, curves suddenly to the south at a ninety degree angle, turns into a dirt trail, and winds up basically at the shore; a small sixty foot slice of beach side real estate that is shared by all of Gayle Road’s residents.

In the days of my youth, most of the homeowners were of the same age, with children that were all mostly the same age too. It was a little tract of about fifteen homes and fifteen nuclear families; our own little private Utopia within the utopian confines of the village of Skaneateles.

There were cocktail parties hosted in a different home every weekend. It was always an exciting event when it was my mother’s turn to throw a party. The house bustled with major activity during the day; a blur of super-charged anal-retentive cleaning, errand running, hair dresser appointments, liquor deliveries and strange ritualistic preparations of tiny bite sized food.

Around five pm, my brother Alfie, my sister Becky, and myself were scrupulously scrubbed, dressed for bed, and then fed some gawd-awful “quick” repast, usually Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks and tater tots accompanied by the pre-requisite glop of ketchup on the side (parties were usually thrown on Fridays, hence “Catholic food” that passed for fish).
Then that wonderful hour before guests were scheduled to arrive, where Pops did the final tweaking chores of preparing the bar (A six foot sheet metal folding table with kidney-shaped "parameciums" printed on it; covered in an exquisite table cloth.)Dansk ice bucket filled: Check. Exotic fruits cut, lemons peeled: Check. Maraschino cherries and green olives with pimentos jammed inside: Check. Cocktail napkins: Check. Tooth Picks: Check.

It was very quiet, but the anticipatory tension in the house was palpably increasing by the minute, the smell of warming cocktail weenies wrapped in pastry permeating our family quarters. Then my mother’s magic metamorphosis would unfold.

I used to marvel at my mother’s ability to transform herself from a drill sergeant barking out marching orders with militaristic precision in preparation for the upcoming Bacchanalian onslaught to an absolute knockout “Betty”.

I would lay on the linoleum floor of our garishly pink tiled bathroom, watching her carefully in a state of awe: wrapped in a towel, freshly bathed, her coiffed hair wrapped in a protective plastic mushroom cloud of a shower cap, sitting on her green upholstered vanity pouf, applying her war paint with a vast array of strange tools (The curved eyelash curler was always an implement that I found particularly compelling); the application ritual of the smearing of frosted pink lipstick (which seemed to me to resemble a disembodied, rotating doggie penis within a large caliber bullet casing) and then the “kissing” of a Kleenex tissue to set it, smacking her lips; and finally dousing herself in a copious amount of Estee Lauder’s “Youth Dew”, a perfume that was so overwhelmingly noxious that I would almost pass out from the intoxicating fumes. My first foray into the world of “huffing”, I suppose.

In the enchanted pre-party “calm before the storm”, as my Pops would zip up her up in some latest designer cocktail dress and they’d give each other the once over to make sure they were sharp, straight and good to go. They would fixedly look each other in the eye in silent pause, and a deep breath of relaxation would be collectively shared.

And then they would tenderly kiss as the first of a stack of L.P.'s would mysteriously slide down the spindle and plop down on the turntable, my mother's right knee bending, her high heel ascending heavenward in the embrace; the music would start and the doorbell would automatically ring as if on cue.

Here we go.

This was the age where the men wore tailored suits and the women dressed to the nines with teased-to-the-stratosphere beehive hair helmets and rhinestone studded cat’s eye goggles. Martinis, Scotch and Sodas, Manhattans, and Whiskey Sours for the ladies were the libations of choice coupled with the sounds of Frank Sinatra, “Kind Of Blue”, Show Tunes, and calypso music functioning as the soundtrack as it burbled through “hi-fi” stereo speakers.

I didn’t know what was going on, but I did know that I wanted to be in the middle of those wing dings, not on the periphery. I especially hated the collective sibling “trot out” right before bedtime, where all the Gayle Road women cooed collective “oohhhs” and “ahhhs” and then we would be hustled off to bed. I would try to fall asleep to the muffled sounds of Harry Belafonte singing the Banana Boat Song coupled with the amazing booze fueled detonations of cackling laughter that would periodically explode out of the living room.

I remember sneaking around and hiding under the table cloth that draped the bar in my footie pajamas trying to discern just what was going on in that blue haze. Instinctively at age three I knew that staying up late smoking cigarettes, listening to weird music, and drunkenly trying to play grab ass with your neighbor’s wife whilst doing the rhumba to the sounds of Acker Bilk was way more fun then the existence I was currently living, which mainly consisted of a steady diet of toys, “Romper Room”, “Captain Kangaroo”, and “The Silly Book”; my musical fare consisting of songs like “Itsy Bitsy Spider” or worse, and not being old enough to play with most of the other kids on the street.

It was like watching Martians. All I wanted to do was go to Mars in a suit, hair helmet, and a pair of cats-eyed rhinestone studded goggles of my own.

But there I was, up way past my bed-time; crew-cutted and goggle-less, in a set of blue “one-sie” pajamas with pink bunnies printed on them feeling like the plastic treaded soles of my jammies were permanently glued to the slate stone floor of our dining room. Hopelessly Earth-bound.

Not for long.

THE END

Author's Note:

This is a revised and edited version of an older posting. My apologies for having to resort to such chicanery!

Life intrudes sometimes. This was the best I could do in the time alotted... plus #57 was a work out of epic proportions, so in reality, I'm not feeling too guilty. This is a companion piece to #57.

For those that want to follow the story cycle, I again urge you to consider signing up for the Master Index List, updated and sent weekly. Its easier to negotiate than the archived material on the Blogger platform, and to really experience the Dose as its designed, this is a very useful tool.

Just send me your email address: piannaplunker88@gmail.com

You can opt out at anytime.

Love,

Geo

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!

THANK YOU KINDLY,

COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"

Daily Dose #57 (07/24/11)

2011-07-24T07:41:00.030-04:00

EXPLORING CREATIVE PROCESSES: PART 3

THE HARD-WIRING OF THE REALLY LITTLE GEORGIE

I happen to be blessed (or cursed) with a memory bank that reaches far back into my early development phase. I have very specific memories that were burned into my naked gray matter via my tiny little virginal synapses at a very early age.

I remember when JFK got assassinated, per example. I was utterly frustrated after three days of having my afternoon cartoons pre-empted by a nation in mourning. I was three at the time. I had never seen my parents cry until that fateful day. It was scary to witness your Mom openly weeping for days. That's my touchstone to unearth things further back.

Those earlier memories are usually associated with records, and the effect they had on the adults around me.

Anybody remember this one?

This, released in the fall 1962, got a lot of spins in the Rossi household. That would put a very firm and specific memory in place at the age of 2.

I didn't have a clue as to what was actually contained within it's grooves, other than it made everybody sit in the living room with rapt attention, and resulted in everybody booming out loud in laughter. It was always a beautiful thing to hear that joyous sound pealing out of the living room "with great vigah" during my parent's patented weekend, Gayle Road cocktail parties, when I was supposed to be in bed; in actuality I was hiding under the draping table cloth that was set up on a card table, that functioned as the party's bar in my little footed onesie pajamas.

How about this one?

Released in 1960, the year of my birth, and the "soundtrack" of The Kennedy Presidency.

I remember my mother holding me in her arms as a toddler, and having her spin and dance across the living room as "Camelot" played out of the hi-fi set, or gently sway me to the dulcet tones of Robert Goulet singing "If Ever I would Leave You". Probably one of the earliest memories I'm capable at age fifty one to still capture with any type of verifiable clarity. I still wonder what the King is doing tonight.

As soon as I became ambulatory, my mom taught me how to work the record player on my own. The 1961 equivalent version of sticking your kid in front of the TV to watch The Disney Channel. Listening to the music, and singing along while holding the jacket in my hands, staring at it, soaking up the graphics and trying to decipher the words was a daily session in my pre-toddler years.

The first words I learned to read were "Lerner and Lowe".

I could quietly entertain myself for hours, and Mom took full advantage. She had a house to run, and two other trouble makers to keep her eye on.

And then, there's this amazing recording:

Released in 1956, this was my defacto "In-Utero" soundtrack.

My mother tells a story that when she first held me in the hospital on the day I was born, she sang these songs to me, and I sang the melodies right back at her. I can't remember this, but she swears it's a true story.

I can tell you this: I sat staring at this Al Hirschfeld illustration, listening to this record for hundreds of hours up until "Meet The Beatles" invaded the Rossi living room on 12 Gayle Road in 1964.

It just wasn't the music. This graphic was equally as compelling, and the ironic idea that people thought they could be puppet masters when really God was pulling the strings.

The concepts of God and flawed human manipulative behavior, clearly understood at the age of two.

Hirschfeld's illustrations held a remarkable sway over me. On Sunday mornings, instead of making a mad grab for the funny papers, I instead made a mad grab for The New York Times Arts and Entertainment Section, to unearth the "Nina's" embedded in every one of his cover illustrations.

Powerful graphic stuff. It was back then, and for me, still is.

Now check this one out:

Again, released in 1962, this one was a major contributor to my own hard-wiring process.

At age three, I not only was compelled by the music, but by the narrative that was driven and moved along by those tunes.

This is a strong allegorical story of a clown who marries into the family circus business to improve his life, gets disillusioned, goes on a pussy parade only to find that the one true thing of value in his life, the love of his wife, was the thing he valued the least.

I totally "got it" at the age of three, and even though I haven't heard this recording in almost 45 years, I can still sing "Meilinki, Meilchick", "Mumbo Jumbo", and of course the bittersweet "What Kind Of Fool Am I?" today, by heart, and with a bad cockney accent to boot.

And now, this:

The music of the Caribbean. "Day-O!". I wore several copies of this one into vinyl shavings right up to the day that Mom and I went to Nicholl's record department in Auburn, NY to pick up a copy of "Meet The Beatles", probably about a month before my fourth birthday.

I used to drop the needle on Side 1, Track 2: as the killer straight up bass and drums rock and roll of "I Saw Her Standing There" would blast out of the wall mounted hi-fi speakers, I'd climb up the book case right up to the ceiling; to the topper most of the popper most top shelf, and when that blood curdling scream erupted out before the solo, I'd let go and free fall backwards onto the couch; about a ten foot drop.

Once mom got hip to that, that kind of killed my unchaperoned use of the family hi-fi for awhile.

These records, and the critical thinking skills attached to them through repetitive listening, emotional experiences and experiential visual imprinting became ground zero, and the absolute core of my creative sun when I finally found myself in position to craft a statement of my own.

These are the base elements that I drew upon when I got to be the chef, making that personal creative gumbo.

BACK TO THE GUMBO

The Fabulous Pushballs (the original incarnation of The Shuffling Hungarians) started as a backing band for a comedian, and after a failed attempt at playing that material with a charismatically challenged front person (that would be me), the whole thing had to be re-tooled and conceptualized.

Before the band ever played a note as "Little Georgie and the Shuffling Hungarians" at their unveiling at the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que that fall, all those major conceptual components had to be identified and then solidly installed.

This wasn't exactly cognitive at the time. I wasn't going "A pinch of Vaughn Meader, and a dash of Anthony Newley, a dollop of "Get Me To The Church On Time", two cups of Harry Belefonte, mix thoroughly, fold into a meatloaf pan and bake at 325 degrees, let cool, and slather it with "I Saw Her Standing There" sauce before serving.

Those identifiable core elements took this form, when finally digging inside myself to find them.

1. There had to be a "narrative" element. All material, covered or eventually written, had to follow that narrative.

2. Although undefined at that point, the narrative would explore the darker side of the human experience. A creator creates of what he knows.

3. The narrative would be allegorical in nature. And in the end, uplift.

4. The project had to be just as powerfully presented graphically. Everything piece of material that came out of the camp had to deliver the right visual content to be just as evocative as the music, the presentation, the performances, and the narrative.

5. As mis-direction, the narrative had to be hidden, through the use of unabashed humor. It couldn't look like any of us were taking ourselves too seriously.

Entertainment values were what we were going to show first.

6. The band was going to showcase a decided New Orleans Piano flavor; (Insert "Caribbean Calypso" in here: a strong component of Mardi Gras Indian chants and music, and the music of Professor Longhair, blues with a decided Afro Caribbean slant, and the artist that I stole the name of the band from, as an homage, of course!)

7. It had to rock, but more importantly, it had to roll. There were going to be moments of collective and communal orgasmic release, just like that scream in "I Saw Her Standing There"; a pure exhibition of the power and resultant joy of Rock And Roll as I knew it.

It had to free asses so minds and spirits could collectively as one, follow and fly.

LIFE CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING

At the point of the realization that Tom Kenney-less "Fabulous Pushballs" was on its way to being a failed endeavor, it was just one of a consecutive string of many critical personal and professional failures that seemed to be falling on my head like a thick sheet of New Orleans tropical rain.

My shot at the brass ring with "The Bogeymen" had unceremoniously, and still to this day mysteriously, crashed and burned.

My future ex-wife had just been outed as a long term philanderer. That's as delicately as I can put it. The multiple bi-sexual affairs had be going on for over a year, known to our collective network of friends, but unknown (or denied in delusion) by me. She was my wife. I had to trust her by default, even though I knew that I shouldn't have.

It was a long, grinding year.

I was betrayed by all of whom I loved and trusted. I had been sold down the river by my closest friends, including my future ex-wife. I felt totally abandoned, and my innocence and joi de vivre forcibly robbed against my will. I felt like Dustin Hoffman strapped in the Dental Chair in "Marathon Man", with the world as Laurence Olivier asking me "Is It Safe?", a running dental drill in its hands.

The answer was always "No...it most definitely is NOT SAFE"

I had moved out of my formally happy little soul-sucking marital house and into a dingy apartment on Winton Street. A piano, a couch, and a set of bookshelves were all I took with me.

She could have the rest. I had no interest in staking claim to the 30 pieces of silver. Even if I was the only one who knew, I knew I was worth more than that.

My best friend in the world couldn't hang with that type of misery and pain. He usually stayed with me when he had a gig in town. I called him out on some of his patented bullshit and took a well-aimed verbal swipe at him, heavily medicated on Vicodin after a botched oral surgery in which all four of my wisdom teeth had been shattered, rather than extracted.

He walked out the door the next morning and I haven't spoken to him in the 20 or so years that have elapsed since. More abandonment.

In all of that undiagnosed, crazy-as-a-shit-house-rat, bi-polar free falling, I had to process all of this, all at once, to the best of my ability, by myself.

Either that, or check out and meet my maker. It was a close call.

I stripped all my personal history away, layer by layer, to expose my core, and get back to a time and place where I felt authentically and in it's purest state a sense of safety, as I was feeling quite the opposite at the time.

It took me all the way back to swirling across the living room floor in 1962, gathered up in my mother's arms, as we danced to the tune of "On The Street Where You Lived" as she whispered the lyrics in my ear.

It took me all the way back to sitting with my big brother Alfie as he patiently taught me how to read, using the liner notes of "Stop The World, I Want To Get Off", listening to Anthony Newley poignantly warble "What Kind Of Fool Am I?" and knowing exactly what he was saying.

It took me all the way back to the joy of free falling backwards off from ceiling height to the awaiting nubby fabric cushions of the brown Paul McCobb couch looming below as Paul McCartney screamed, punctuating and providing the requisite soundtrack.

It took me all the way back to hiding under the card table, loving the sound of adult laughter, even if I didn't understand the jokes.

It took me all the way back to pondering the existence of God at the age of two while I memorized the lyrics of "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face", mesmerizing myself with an Al Hirschfeld illustration.

It took me all back all the way to dancing without fear of judgement to the sacred call and response groove of the "Banana Boat Song" on top of the coffee table, wearing a straw floppy hat.

It took me all the way back to pointing at words on record jackets, reading them aloud, and having my mother radiantly beaming at me with pride.

This was the last time I ever felt "Safe" and in that safety, pure unadulterated joy and love without fear of reprisal or betrayal. I needed to feel it again, and when I discovered where and when it was, THAT was going to be the core structural building blocks of any upcoming "Gumbo".

I had to start with the uncut, pure essence of all of everything, and the jump point of all acquired knowledge collected after the fact.

That was the stuff that was going to get thrown in the pot first. That was the roux.

WHAT'S IN YOUR GUMBO?

When I ask it this of you, I don't ask it glibly. On the surface, it may seem like an easily answered question, but I assure you from at least my own personal experience, it is not.

Stand in front of the mirror, and ask yourself that question. Then peel away all that you think you are, all the facades, all the illusions, all the damage wrought and the damage incurred, all your defense mechanisms, all of your bullshit and lies, and all the misdirected blame you've deployed to keep yourself from looking in the mirror, and doing the real work that God and the laws of Karma put you on Earth to do. Soul growth doesn't happen on auto-pilot.

Get it down to your very soul, and then scrape that fucker clean. Tear it ALL down.

Are you ready for that kind of work, and that kind of investment? Are you ready for the high probability of a fall, when you aim big and get on the highwire without a net?

If you are, you'll know what needs to go in the Gumbo when you commit to playing catch with The Universe and all of the energy flow that IS creation.

Whatever creatively flows from you and through you, it will flow on the bedrock of your authentic heart and soul, instead of quicksand.

And it may just stand the ultimate test. The Test Of Time.

(Stay Tuned For Part 4)

Author's Note:

I've been trying to subtley intimate that all projected 365 Daily Doses are going to function as a cycle, and every singular Dose will function as a "connective point" that will illustrate unseen, connective tissue: Hopefully illustrating a larger story than the sum of its parts.

This is why I've been urging you Peep-A-Roos to get yourselves on The Master Index mailing list. You'll be able to read the Dose descriptions, and discover the related archived material on your own, if you were so inclined.

So "Once More, With Feeling": Write me at piannaplunker88@gmail.com and join the inner sanctum for real by receiving The Weekly Updated Master Index.

The Dose series is kind of like a mixed up jigsaw puzzle that you can put together anyway you want to.

That said, I'll give you a little nudge: Here's a suggested reading list of archived material that I consider potential "related points":

001.) "Gary Frenay: A Testimony": How brief contact can radically change your personal trajectory, and how you can radically effect others 1987

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/05/gary-frenay-testimony.html

003.) "Pondering Upon A T-Shirt": Why Art Created With Commitment Will Stand The Test Of Time 1993-2011

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/04/pondering-upon-t-shirt.html

005.) "Party Time": A "Lake Boy" Tale of the recognition of Love, and a longing for a future of adventure 1964

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2008/09/lake-boy-1-party-time.html

043.) "Creativity, Validation and Inspiration Part 5": A seven part series on creativity issues, and self rationalizing mind games

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-dose-43-071011.html

033.) "On Rhetrorical Devices, Influences, and Making Art "Popular": The use of rhetoric as a velvet rope and associative strategy 1981-2011

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/06/daily-dose-33-062911.html

029.) "The Best Gift I Can Give": Make Sauce, not War, and the consequences of choice. 2010-2011

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/06/daily-dose-29-062511.html

025.) "A Song Is Born": Gutbucket Blues, Rare Video, UK interpretation, and The History of the Bloody Mary Cocktail, 1993-1994-2011

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/06/bizzarro-dose.html

003.) "Influences": Early Musical Influences/ Dylan Video. 1962-2011

http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2011/05/influences.html

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!

THANK YOU KINDLY,

COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"

Daily Dose #56 (07/23/11)

2011-07-23T08:03:00.021-04:00

EXPLORING CREATIVE PROCESSES: PART 2

WHAT'S IN YOUR GUMBO?

(You are what you cook and you are what you eat)

Preparing a real gumbo (or Italian Sunday Gravy for that matter. See Blog #29, "The Best Gift I Can Give") serves as a great metaphor.

If you've ever tasted a real gumbo made by a real native New Orleanian there isn't anything quite like that experience.

You can recognize what it looks like. What it smells like. How it feels in your mouth, and what it tastes like. It is a very rich and complex combination of blended flavors,textures, techniques and components.

You can also recognize that no two gumbos are alike. The dish can go through endless variations, depending on the actual tools and techniques employed, the ingredients used, how the roux is prepared and the family history of the person who cooks it. That narrative is in the pot just as much as any physical component.

But the most important things to notice are what the gumbo does to people as it is served and consumed: To the chef and the guests alike.

The chef provides a mind and body experience while providing sustenance. The guests not only experience the dish as a full body experience that stimulates all senses, but has also stimulated agroup of people simultaneously at their gut brain AND cognitive level.

It's food, made from the heart, and given freely. Food for the senses, food for the stomach, but also food for the heart and soul, A collective orgasmic yummy noise emotes communally as the experience is savored from the dining table.

The Gumbo elicits intellectual, emotional, and a full body response when prepared with authenticity of the history, the heart, and the true soul of the chef.

A non-verbal reciprocal feedback loop of elevation to a different place for all the participants is achievable. I've seen this happen time and time again at my father's table; He can make a linguine and white clam sauce that has reduced grown men to tears.

If you are wondering why I have included video family cooking tutorials to the Blog-O-Thon, wonder no more. Everything over the next three hundred and ten days is going to all connect at some point, if everybody focuses and pays close attention.

Creative arts and efforts should elicit similar response, no matter what the delivery system. Some conduits are skewed more toward the head than the heart. A painting can't make you dance, normally. Let me rephrase: A painting can make you dance if you are open enough to let it that have that type of effect on you, but music is a more direct delivery system, per example.

When trying to visualize the "end product", you have to visualize what that end product is going to actually do when humans interact with it. Those are the elements of design as much as how it sounds or what it looks like, and they can be very broad and far reaching, and they can be both cliche and totally obscure as well. They can be inclusive, or repugnently repulsive. Are there narrative elements? What's the ride going to feel like? Are you even providing a ride to take? Do you have a full pallette of techniques to build that ride?

What will be the emotional response? The physical one? The spiritual ones?

Are you even thinking along the lines?

What is in your gumbo? Find those answers first, and then pathways will illuminate themselves. The recipe and the techniques used reveal themselves if you can answer those questions.

When I got bitten by the bug of music, the first step was to absorb as much piano related material as possible, specifically anything that the piano had to do with twentieth century popular music; from ragtime, to trad jazz, the history of jazz piano and its primary exponents, raw blues, boogie woogie, r & b jump blues, the history of African American Pop forms, and modern rock and roll and its lineage.

An inordinate amount of time got spent on "the fundementals". Not only the mechanical ones like scales, theory, harmony, time, groove and the like, but the whole history of what transpired before you. Solid ground on which to build a house of your own design and architectural plans.

You spent every dime you had on records, and every availble minute listening, and then trying to decipher and deconstruct. I read every rock and roll book or magazine, every musician's memoir, and every liner note I could get my hands on.

Early on you realize that you are the sum total of the amount of input flowing into you.

At some point though, you realize that the choices you make as far as input was concerned, were going to start to define how you would be perceived. I went with what felt natural, and gravitated toward the rock and roll side of things. I started to narrow my listening diet, and narrow beam my focus. when I truly started digging deeply into the music of New Orleans, I became organically enflamed. Strange for a skinny assed white boy from Skaneateles NY, but that true authentic love put me in charge of a studio recording for a seminal Mardi Gras Indian Tribe Funk Band, The Wild Magnolias, on a major label (Code Blue/Blue Note Records). I was just as Joe Campbell would say, following my bliss.

Making those types of esoteric choices was really the first time that I was aware of trying to find a unique voice on the instrument.

All instrumentalists go through that process. Slowly over time, we try to sharpen definition. This just doesn't apply to instrumentalists. Singers, Songwriters, Artists, Poets, Painters, Novelists, Filmmakers, Business Folks, Academics and Professionals alike all realize that they intrinsiclly have to find a niche.

Any thing you do that requires skill and acumen, once we acquire a bit we realize that we have to specialize to some degree.

I only mention this process because that process is just but one facet of the microcosm.

When you finally get to a point of having the reigns in your own hands, and are solely responsible for a final "end product", hopefully you take those skills and expand, search for creative and unorthodox usage, and extrapolate them as you apply them to your ultimate gumbo.

What goes in, manifests itself in the end result. You are what you eat, and you own the choices that you make.

(Next Up, Part 3: "THE HARD-WIRING OF THE REALLY LITTLE GEORGIE")

Author's Note:

If you would like a master index list of all The Daily Doses sent directly to you every Saturday morning, shoot me an email at:

piannaplunker88@gmail.com

The index is a lot easier to navigate; has brief descriptions of the content of each dose, and hyper-text links, possibly opens up a direct line of communication with me (which is cool for me), and its easy to forward via email if you want to get them addicted.

As always, you can opt out at anytime.

Also, see that friggin' share button in the upper right of The Blog-O-Thon? Press it, and be an active participant, rather than a passive energy black hole of a Suck -O-Vac.

Love,

Geo

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!

THANK YOU KINDLY,

COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"

Daily Dose #55 (07/22/11)

2011-07-22T06:29:00.015-04:00

Exploring Creative Processes: Part 1

(An introduction)

As we begin a creative journey on our way to some kind of tangible output, part of that process is educating ourselves on what has transpired before, no matter what particular form or genre you may be working with. We use them as references and jumping off points for creative variations on our way to putting personal stamps on them. Come up with enough, from a wide panoply of avenues and choices, and in the right combination, we might luck out and find not only a voice of individuality, but the spiritual components that not only will move people, but may even stand the test of time.

By knowing what has transpired before you to the best of your ability, you may even develop the skill of foresight: The ability to see clearly what hasn't transpired, and clarity enough to identify the pathways of how to get there.

I am known as a musician, and musical projects were the conduit to identify those pathways for myself personally, and yet the processes that I have learned can be applied to pretty much anything you set your mind to do.

Everyday I present myself with a blank blogging form, and every day I ask myself the same question: "What do you have for the Peep-A-Roos today, George?".

My mind starts as blank as the form, but usually by 8pm I've ended up with something that meets my standards enough to publish.

That's output, and no amount of knowledge, theory, conceptualization, and systems analysis can replace tangible output.

That is always the goal for me. All roads lead to that central point: The output, but more importantly, the function of the output. Is the output doing what it was designed to do?

I like to problem solve, backwards. Identify the goal, and then identify the paths that lead to it. That will eventually lead to a first step and leave you with a rough action plan to get you over, and to the end of the proverbial rainbow.

There are exceptions to every road map, however; "The Best laid plans of Mice and Men" and all that jive. Be prepared to improvise, and stay as fluid as possible.

Part of any good plan is enough of a contingency cushion to let inspiration guide you, instead of trying to force the issue. As you travel, a balance must be achieved between disciplined work ethic, and letting yourself float in the power grid; and allowing the power grid to flow through you, untethered.

It really doesn't matter if you are creating a painting, a new CD, conceptualizing a new business and writing a business plan, or writing a fresh story per day. The processes are remarkably similar.

So please bear in mind as I dive in to a forensic analysis of processes, tricks, and techniques that relate to my own personal experience and personal output, I'm only putting that up for detailed examination to serve as a larger metaphoric device for anyone that may be reading this stuff.

This next series of projected blogs isn't designed to function as a "set in stone" rule book. Just an example of one person's creative process that might reveal some usable concepts as you embark on your own personal creative journey as you decide to commit to playing your own game of catch with the Universe.

It's time to share some of the trade secrets. I'm not "competing" anymore, so being proprietary about what I know is kind of silly at this point.

Maybe some of this will be useful to you, maybe not. I'm just setting it all free.

I referred to my own creative education taking place in a car commuting up and down the "Thruway Circuit" with Ed Hamell in a past Daily Dose (#33,"On Rhetorical Devices, Influences, and Making Art "Popular") for thousands of nighttime hours over seven years. He was the Sensei and I the grasshopper.

You don't have to be a grasshopper for this next series of blogs that will come down The Dose Pipeline.

Let's just call it an extended car ride.

(Stay tuned for part 2)

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!

THANK YOU KINDLY,

COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"

Daily Dose #54 (07/21/11)

2011-07-21T09:11:00.018-04:00

LAKE BOY TALES

(Home as a "Reset" Button)

I had lunch with a very old friend of mine at the Cedar House Lanes in Skaneateles yesterday. I really love the Cedar House. It’s one of the last bastions of the town I remember growing up in. The rest of it, with the exception of the lake, has changed and mutated much over the past 50 years.

You can still go to a place called Riddler’s. but there’s no Ed Riddler to inject a personality to the experience. You can go to the Skaneateles Bakery, but you can't saddle up to the lunch counter to get a cup of cop coffee and chain smoke cigarettes, pretending to be a Bohemian in Paris as you ditched school for the day.

You can get a glazed donut, but it won’t even come close to the glazed donuts that used to be produced there. When it changed ownership, they got rid of the ancient machinery and secret alchemy that produced the best glazed donut in the entire free world. Those donuts (and the half moon cookies) were art, not just food. Every time I would land home after an extended ramble around the world, I could always count on the Bakery to snap my brain to grid with sensory memory back to Square One, Ground Zero.

Those donuts were like a giant reset button, re-booting me to my original "settings". It’s just evolution, and that reminds me of my own mortality I guess. I’ve certainly sailed into middle age collecting curmudgeonly barnacles along with my ever graying hair.

Originally, My friend Holly and I were headed to Cam’s (now The Willow Glen) up on the tangled intersectioning corners of Jordan St., Seneca Turnpike and Jewett Road, but we were greeted with a hand lettered sign written on a paper placemat that said, ‘Closed Tuesday in March.’ I don’t know if it was every Tuesday, but according to the sign this particular Tuesday we were to be denied.

So off to the Cedar House and The Hilltop diner.

I don’t have any axe to grind against all the other potential lunch spots in town; they all serve their purposes, and they put out fine food, in a great atmosphere. I sometimes pop into the Sherwood for a drink, but frankly I’ve been defaulting to the Cedar House for all my night time libations in public lately. There’s a little too much jockeying for position in the Sherwood for my tastes, and Dusty’s mother-in-law always makes me feel like a long lost son as she tends to her duties behind the bowling alley bar. I used to wash dishes in the Sherwood as a kid, so I do have a deep rooted connection to the place. The Blue Water’s been around for awhile (Their Portabello Mushroom Sammich is particularly yummy), but again, it still has new car smell to me, and I feel like an alien when I walk in there sometimes.

Morris’s Grill is now gone, to be replaced at some un-determined time with a ‘Bistro’ when the foreclosure on the Seitz Building finally gets untangled. And when I visit Skaneateles, I crave that "reset". As I age, the options for experiencing that are becoming limited.

To walk into the Cedar House, and to be enveloped in its yellow orange shellacked walls with an old and trusted friend, is like crawling back into the womb. After getting your ass kicked by life, sometimes you need that. Instinctually, when I do, I gravitate towards that reset experience.

Tear it down and build it up again.

Here’s how I start the process: a hamburger at the Cedar House, shooting the breeze with my buddy, Holly.

It’s not just the place, but the people in it. Here are all the ex-pats of the old town, that somehow survived the gentrification process that started in full force around 1980 or so. They tore down the trailer park and put up a spa. Some of us moved, some of us dug in our heels, and some of us just got plain left behind.

But those people, the descendants of Yankee pioneers with ancient bloodlines, as I remember them, are all here; like members of an exclusive club of wizened war veterans.

It’s just progress.

The "Old Skaneateles" of my memory wasn’t all that great. I mean we did have confirmed pedophiles running around at St. Mary’s Church and at the local movie house. It was down right creepy at times.

Sometimes, change is good.

I’m just grateful that the Cedar House is still there for me when I need it, even if a gas station now sits where Fabin’s used to be. I don’t know about the rest of you, but right now I feel like doing some keggling, and I thank God that I still can in a memory that I call "Home."

Sometimes, I need a little help in reminding myself who I am, and where I came from.

Fabin's demolition photo by Jorge Battle

"a parking lot in paradise"

FINIS

Author's Note:

Just a few little updates for the regular peep-a-roos that get their Dose, daily.

1. Page Views: "The Dose" just eclipsed the 17,000 page view benchmark in 53 consecutive days of publication (17,071 as of 5:30pm, EST 07/20/11).

2. Feedback and Metrics Count: The confirmed Peep-a-roo network has 40 feedburner subscribers, 14 google followers, and 10 networkedblogs subscribers. That means 64 peeps are actively sharing The Blog-O-Thon, and generating page views at a ratio of almost 4-5/1 per "share", to achieve an average viewership of around 250-300 page views per day.

Peeps... THANK YOU! This is how its supposed to work, and you have made yourself an integral part of this publication.

I know there may be more regular readers out there that are firing into the blog through facebook newsfeed posts. I'm very grateful for the time you spend reading them, but if you would please consider using the sign up options in the left collumn, I could get a much more accurate read on just how united The Peep-a-Roo front really is.

3.Comment Protocols: Commenting directly on the Blog-O-Thon site is supposed to help promote it, but for the life of me I don't know how... that said, I moderate all comments before they show up, in case you were wondering. If people want to say negative shit, I generally post it anyway.

But I'm instituting a new rule. No more "Anonymous" comments will be posted. If you have an opinion, attach your name to it. Other wise, your opinion really has no value. This blog is about standing up and being counted, not sniveling behind a cloak of anonymity.

4. The Master Index:A Peep-A-Roo (Denise, you know who you are) pointed out to me recently that the Blogger Platform makes it difficult to access archived blogs, along with the fact that its hard to find a previously published piece if all you have to go on is a consecutive string of numbered blogs.

I created a Master Index of all The Daily Dose injections, with a brief description of each one to make them a little easier to locate. This index will be updated weekly, and sent out every Saturday morning.

If you would like to receive The Master Index, please send me a traditional email address to: piannaplunker88@gmail.com You can always opt out at anytime.

Aside from receiving the index, this also gives us a chance to correspond one on one, probably the most rewarding part of the Dose experiment for me. Don't be shy!

Don't forget: "The Dose Is In The Discipline" and "Sharing" really does translate to a state of "Caring", no matter what you do, what you make, or who you are. If you participate in the Universal Recycling system while playing a game of catch with creation, great things will happen. They always do.

Love,

Geo

Daily Dose #53 (07/20/11)

2011-07-20T06:34:00.031-04:00

THE LAKE BOY

(An Introduction)

A few million years ago, mighty glaciers migrated due south, gouging deep lake basins and creating what now look to be topographic claw marks on the face of Central New York. Or maybe it's backside, depending on your point of view.

The Iroquois also named them "The Finger Lakes". The original Native inhabitants envisioned this collection of gouges as the hand print of the Great Spirit on creation.

Whether interpreted as loving hand print or angry claw marks also depends on your point of view and disposition. There are thin lines between love, hate, and the viloent throes of passion. The Great Spirit probably was capable of a whole range of emotions.

One of those water filled geological scars is called "Skaneateles"; A slight Anglicized bastardization of the original Native American Iroquois word "Skeh-ne-a-iles" meaning "Long Lake".

The locals pronounce it "Skanny-AT-less". You can still suss out an interloper if they pronounced it "Skan-needles", or any other variation. They weren't true "lake people". If someone took the trouble to pronounce the extra syllable but got the rest of it right, they might be worthy of a little local slack being cut.

As spoils for soldiers participating in the Revolutionary War, nearly two million acres of land in Central New York were set aside as compensation. A clerk that worked in the Surveyor General's Office drew up the apportionment map; He had a predilection toward Roman history, Greek classical literature, and philosopher authors of the Enlightenment which is why to this day towns bear names like Marcellus, Pompey, Camillus, Ulysses, Syracuse, Cinncinataus, Milton and Locke.

Skaneateles (as a section of the town of Marcellus) was intitially settled by a hardy pioneer family around 1794; historically by Abraham Cuddeback with his wife and eight children in tow after a 43 day journey, depending on which historian you're talking to. It was rough terrain to clear for farming but the soil was rich, and because of the swift flowing outlet and its position on the Old Seneca Turnpike Road, it was perfectly suited for hydro powered industries such as saw and gristmills, and light industry.

The sons of the Revolution (or the folks that they sold their granted land to for a pittance) carved out a little Yankee town, and eventually a self contained economy and culture in one of the prettiest spots on God's Green Earth.

Many of the family names of those early settlers were still the surnames of kids I went to school with, proving that once you became a lake person, you stayed a lake person for life, and for generations.

There was one aberrant blip on the radar screen of the town's history that bears a little notice. J.A. Collins, a travelling speaker selling the concept of the Abolition of Slavery, became so enamoured of my little town that he was inspired to buy 300 acres just north of the village and start a Utopian commune that espoused the abolition of Religion, Civil Government, and the institution of marriage.

Collins formed his Utopian commune in a town called "Sodom", later to be renamed "Mottville". I kid you not.

Collins only lasted three years in the land of Puritan fundamentalism, but I mention the "Community" because a strand in the DNA of the collective gene pool of that social experiment is still in evidence today.

Just walk into The Sherwwod Inn on any given Saturday night, currently. You'll see what I'm referring to. The old guard conservative denizens of Skaneateles may be the descendants of Calvinists and Puritans, but they still know how to get their commie pinko free love freak on.

I was born in 1960, and by that time Skaneateles was a typical small Yankee town. You never had to leave, because everything you needed was there.

We had a movie theater, a bakery, a hardware store, a five and dime, lunch counters, pharmacies, toy stores, retail clothiers in which you could procure work and summer wear, and grocery stores; they were all locally owned and operated. We had doctor's that made house calls.

We had all kinds of houses of worship, except mosques and synagogues.

According to the US census, 99.16% of the total village population is white.

I guess that other .84% signifies some kind of progress. When I was growing up, being from one of the two EYE-Talian families in town tagged me as an exotic.

There was always old money in Skaneateles, but most of it was consigned to a rich persons ghetto, on West Lake Road from the village to the Country Club. The rest of Skaneateles had every layer of the socio-economic strata well represented, from the dirt poor to the upper middle class tax bracket.

We still had a trailer park in Skaneateles when I was growing up. After I left for good in 1978, at some point they tore it down and built a spa.

Skaneateles is a lot tonier now. Those balanced economic layers started to get pushed out during the boom-boom eighties. Now its basically a tourist economy and commuter community.

It has solidified its reputation for being the playground of the wealthy. There are alot more rich folk (Some of them EYE-talians!) and folks that are carrying three mortgages and are leveraged to the teeth to pretend that they are to take advantage of the excellent public school system.

Something got lost along the way though. There's no more movie theater. There still are two pharmacies, but they aren't on the main drag and are national chain stores.

There's no more Western Auto, or Talbot's Five and Dime. The retail shops service the hoi-polloi and tourist trade. The last vestige and holdout is Roland's clothing store and The Cedar House bowling lanes. Even Morris' Grill is gone, the victim of a botched condominium development project.

The impetus and inspiration of "The Lake Boy" daily dosages was to somehow record the era from 1960-1978, when a small Yankee town was still a small Yankee town, and trace my life's personal narrative arc within it, before it disappears from my memory.

The ingredients for the narrative gumbo in mind? Part Norman Rockwell, part Jean Sheppard, part Mark Twain, part Garrison Keillor, part Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery", part "Peyton Place", part John Irving, with liberal spices from Steven King's catalog of twisted horror.

The "Lake Boy" stories don't appear in chronological order, as this is how my brain actually works these days. The memories are randomly chaotic, like puzzle pieces that magically appear in the space between my ears.

The tales are but faintly flickering stars that I am pinning to a fantasized celestial sphere that surrounds me; I imagine that I am standing in the center of that sphere, estimating the proper location and distance of each memory as I attach it to the firmament.

Eventually, the picture that will materialize out of that chaos will take shape and form. One would hope that anyway, but you never know. As a regular reader of the Dose, you're taking that journey right along with me.

I will leave you with this memory:

I was a pretty angry young man by the time I hit sixteen, and left Skaneateles for awhile. I didn't leave with much of an appreciation for it, because I was a typical confused adolescent with his head firmly self-inserted in his own ass.

When I was about 18, I momentarily returned in the summer of '78. I hitched hiked from Bucks County, PA and got stranded on a country road in the bowels of Pennsylvania overnight. What was usually a 24 hour hitch turned into three miserable days.

When I got closer, getting dropped off in Auburn NY in the late afternoon of a glorious early summer day, I walked the seven miles due East to the place of my childhood; the staging area and backdrop of teen-aged, over-the-top angst.

But as I approached Clift park, I saw it, and felt it.

The sun was setting, the lake clear, clean and smooth as glass. It was ablaze with the reflection of the orange, pink and purple solar fireworks display.

I stood in that park with a duffel bag slung over my shoulder in an unexpected awe. What I had always taken for granted, became quite clear.

I was standing in a place where what the Iroqois called "The Great Spirit" had put its fingerprint on the whole of creation, and for one brief shining moment, that spirit completely filled me. I was home, in one of the most beautiful places on earth. A place of great spiritual power, energy and significance.

I let that energy flow freely through me, and reached a clarity, a state of peace and grace, and an understanding that I had never known. I was one, and connected with that place.

I turned toward home to walk along it's shores around its curve to the south on Route 41. Back down the steep downward incline, cut by a glacier, to 12 Gayle Road; to the lake and the little tribe that had been a constant in my life carrying this little thought:

No matter how hard I tried to fight it, ignore it, or deny its existence in my soul, I am, and always will be, a "Lake Boy".

FINIS

Kihm Winship's blog, "Skaneateles: The Character and Characters of a Lakeside Village", is a precious resource and inspiration; Kihm has been a great source of first encouragement for me to keep on grinding out The Daily Dose.

Check his blog out. It's really well researched and well written:

http://kihm6.wordpress.com/

Author's Note:

Just a few little updates for the regular peep-a-roos that get their Dose, daily.

1. Page Views: "The Dose" just eclipsed the 17,000 page view benchmark in 52 consecutive days of publication (17,071 as of 5:30pm, EST 07/20/11).

2. Feedback and Metrics Count: The confirmed Peep-a-roo network has 40 feedburner subscribers, 12 google followers, and 10 networkedblogs subscribers. That means 62 peeps are actively sharing The Blog-O-Thon, and generating page views at a ratio of almost 5/1 per "share", to achieve an average viewership of around 300 page views per day.

Peeps... THANK YOU! This is how its supposed to work, and you have made yourself an integral part of this publication.

I know there may be more regular readers out there that are firing into the blog through facebook newsfeed posts. I'm very grateful for the time you spend reading them, but if you would please consider using the sign up options in the left collumn, I could get a much more accurate read on just how united The Peep-a-Roo front really is.

After casually insulting the casually passive, non-sharing readers last week by basically calling them out for being lousy in bed, this would be very helpful data if you could sign on to the email or network options.

3.Comment Protocols: Commenting directly on the Blog-O-Thon site is supposed to help promote it, but for the life of me I don't know how... that said, I moderate all comments before they show up, in case you were wondering. If people want to say negative shit, I generally post it anyway.

But I'm instituting a new rule. No more "Anonymous" comments will be posted. If you have an opinion, attach your name to it. Other wise, your opinion really has no value. This blog is about standing up and being counted, not sniveling behind a cloak of anonymity.

4. The Master Index:A Peep-A-Roo (Denise, you know who you are) pointed out to me recently that the Blogger Platform makes it difficult to access archived blogs, along with the fact that its hard to find a previously published piece if all you have to go on is a consecutive string of numbered blogs.

I created a Master Index of all The Daily Dose injections, with a brief description of each one to make them a little easier to locate. This index will be updated weekly, and sent out every Saturday morning.

If you would like to receive The Master Index, please send me a traditional email address to: piannaplunker88@gmail.com You can always opt out at anytime.

Aside from receiving the index, this also gives us a chance to correspond one on one, probably the most rewarding part of the Dose experiment for me. Don't be shy!

I bite, but only when asked politely in the privacy of my own home.

I guess that's it for today. Don't forget: "The Dose Is In The Discipline" and "Sharing" really does translate to a state of "Caring", no matter what you do, what you make, or who you are. If you participate in the Universal Recycling system while playing a game of catch with creation, great things will happen. They always do.

Love,

Geo

Daily Dose #52 (07/19/11)

2011-07-19T06:34:00.007-04:00

JUST STOP

Today has been a day of miscommunication. I try to achieve clarity, but sometimes it feels like I'm speaking English and it's getting interpreted as Chinese.

Is that my personal "crazy"? Or is everybody else crazier than I am, and because I'm more honestly transparent about my personal crazy, it gets used against me?

Who knows? Sometimes, you just have to stop.

I actually have to work today, and be productive in other ways. My best friend is in trouble, and friends come before blogs. So I will leave you with this:

Read the red flags, and when you recognize them, don't try to fix the situation.

Response time is critical.

Just stop as quickly as you can. You don't have to come up with a reciprocal action all the time.

Life is long. You may think that there are only two moves on the chessboard, but don't forget the unseen third option.

You can chose not to play. You can take a breath and recalibrate.

Everything we do effects everything else.

Sponteneity has its place in life, but so does being mindfully aware.

Daily Dose #51 (07/18/11)

2011-07-18T07:11:00.016-04:00

A Katrina Story: Part 6

The Monkey Boy Atomizes

Before Katrina slammed into the gulf coast, I was a spider on the rim of a toilet bowl. After a long life of struggle, it seemed as if I had finally crawled my way to a safe place.

That was not to be. The Universal Toilet got flushed. I got pushed down the concave side of the bowl and thrown in it's swirling waters. No matter how furiously hard I swam against that current, the drain pipe incrementally inched it's way closer.

I had been there before. Whether by providence or choice, re-invention and resurrections have always been a part of my life, and I had pulled that trick off multiple times in the past forty five years.

Christ only had to do it once, and his daddy had a bit of Universal pull. How many times would life's random chaotic events require me to have to pull a rabbit out of my ass? What exactly was in my sphere of control here, and what was not?

What exactly was The Universe trying to tell me? Those were the questions to be answered, and starting the third and final act of my physical life, I wanted to make sure I answered that question very carefully. I knew I wouldn't have many more chances to make those types critical of choices.

My life had been erased. I had my family. I had the love of a good woman. I had my dogs. But I didn't have me. That was on it's way to a lost status way before the storm blew through town. There were too many hits to the bow, and too much irreparable damage.

Katrina literally blew the residents of New Orleans all over the map like milkweed seeds. But in every one of the souls that were pushed and bullied by her, she also planted a seed in every single soul and survivor effected.

How that seed germinated and gestated, took root, and it's rate of growth was dependent on the condition of the "soul soil" in which it was planted.

Amy was 25. She had her whole life ahead of her, and her soul soil was fertile.

I was twenty years older, and the essential nutrients of my soil had been leeched out through multiple resurrections long ago. A large strategic assessment of my personal capacity of resiliency was based on past successes.

It was an ill-founded assessment. I had none, and in painful slow motion, internally crumbled into dust. The outward shell, may have been fastidiously maintained, but ultimately it was a ruse.

That seed was like a microscopic implosion device. I didn't even know it was there, but like an undetected cancer, I started to disintegrate and atomize into the ether, but it took a while time for for it sporadically leak to the surface on its way to become for the dust to become outwardly apparent.

When it did become apparent, I was really the last to realize it. I always was.

I was the Monkey Boy, and I knew how to appear to be smiling.

NOVEMBER 2005 / DIVERGENCE

We had to relocate to a place with heat, and again the Allyn family came up with a solution. Elsa Solderburgh offered to rent us a family lakeside camp in down by 10 mile point, in Spafford.

In winter, these camps are pretty isolated. Isolation was the catalyst that started to feed that toxic seed, like water. I surrounded myself with water in fact, and at the edge of the bleak winter lakeshore, that seed took root within me.

I thought I was healing in that isolation, but the isolation was feeding the cancer instead.

By New Year's Eve, Amy saw it, but she didn't know what to actually do in the face of it. She loved me, and I was starting to give away the ghost I was transforming into. She put on a brave face, but she knew she had to go, and to start her life. Her survival instinct kicked in. She left for New Orleans in February, and I followed in May.

I didn't want to go, but I didn't want to lose her. I knew what awaited me in New Orleans, and I wanted to avoid it at all costs.

She took a job teaching piano at a music school in Mandeville, and supplemented her income as an assistant to a professional organizer. I took whatever shit job I could find, subconsciously putting myself under the metaphoric macaroni dryer.

I gutted rotted sheet rock in rotted houses. I sanded the dried sewage pasted on the exteriors and painted them in the brutal New Orleans summer heat and humidity. I hired myself out as a domestic. I got a job cleaning toilets in a Guest House on Bourbon Street. Nobody could clean a toilet as well. I tried to find dignity and pride where there was little to be found.

As Amy ascended, I descended. By August we were clearly going in opposite directions.

She held out and hoped against hope as I slowly disappeared into an apparition. She waited it out for about seven more months to for me to only hover a couple of inches above rock bottom before she finally left me, as to minimize my impact as my spirit finally fell to earth. It wasn't a shove off a cliff: just a nudge off the curb.

At twenty five, she was ready for her first resurrection act. She chose to live.

At forty five, I was working very hard to disprove the theory that I had another one in me. Known to everyone but me, I chose death instead.

When finally free of personal responsibility of another human, I embraced Katrina's now blooming poisonous vegetation, in full flower.

I know what it's like to watch someone you love disintegrate from the inside out, seemingly by choice. I was much more emotionally mature to handle it when I was bearing witness. I had much more life experience as well.

I am sorry that I subjected somebody I loved, and more importantly someone who loved me, to that experience.

Being sick in the head really isn't an excuse. There are no Mea Culpa's attached to the apology.

The shit house rat owns it all.

EPILOGUE 2011:

Mr. Eddie didn't keep his promise to me, and was probably just placating me anyway.

His remains were identified by DNA evidence in December of 2005. He became another number on the statistical death rolls of Katrina, one of over 1,836 New Orleans souls.

They built a commemorative bronze of his visage, and installed it in the piano lounge of Pat O'Brien's.

On any given Saturday night, you can go see Amy and Alvin do their thing.

That glimpse of the future and the clutch at the rope of hope has been realized.

Have Fun.

THE END

If you got this far, please share it.

Love,

Geo

Daily Dose #50 (07/17/11)

2011-07-17T07:12:00.026-04:00

A Katrina Story: Part 5

TUESDAY, AUGUST 30th, 2005

As we sat glued to the tube on Tuesday to witness the drowning of New Orleans, it was pretty apparent that we weren't going to be able to go home in the near future, and we weren't in a position to stay in hotel indefinitely either.

Katrina had automatically applied a massive pressure on Amy and myself; escalating and elevating our relationship status. We were no longer slowly and organically finding our way to a blended future. We immediately became "georgeandamy" out of necessity.

We had to hit the road, Jack. Either to Jerome Idaho, or Skaneateles New York, our respective birth homes. Ultimately, introducing a lover and now freshly minted partner of permanence twenty years her senior to the Idaho contingent wasn't really the most pragmatic of moves. Kind of a hard sell. It was time to solidify an action plan with Moms and Pops Rossi.

I placed a call to Nick and Linda that morning. They were having lunch at Cam's Diner on Jordan Road.

We all knew that housing Amy, myself, and two little doggies in their Legg Hall condo was an immediate impossibility. The building did not allow pets, and we would have been at each other's throats is about two days in such close quarters even if Legg Hall did relax their pet policy.

We needed a private landing strip to lick our wounds, for how long no one knew. They promised to start hunting.

It's funny how in the face of utter catastrophe, that destiny, serendipity, charity and grace can present itself.

Lew and Dawn Allyn were sitting in the booth at Cam's next to my parents, overhearing the phone conversation. Within five minutes of hanging up, the graciously offered their camp for the next month, free of charge, so Amy and I would have the opportunity of getting our bearings.

Had I made that phone call one half hour earlier or later, that might have never happened. Everything is connected to everything else, and every event is connected to the next in the time continuum; life's real narrative. Every choice we make, even one's as insignificant as randomly deciding when to make a phone call, effects future outcomes.

The script gets written simultaneously as the movie of life unspools, it's flickering images projected before our very eyes.

Within five minutes, Lew and Dawn offered Amy and I sanctuary and a stab at some kind of temporary peace of mind as we commenced travelling into the the frightening unknown. If that isn't one for "The Gratitude Files", I don't know what "one" is.

We stayed a few more days in Birmingham, and then travelled North an a meandering pace. Poor Amy was about to be abruptly thrown in to the psychological Waring Blender known as "Skanny-Atlas livin' with the Family Rossi"; she was about to be a stranger in a very strange land.

At twenty five, how graceful Amy was. She negotiated anything that got thrown at her, and under these circumstances, much was about to be thrown over the next 18 months.

Nick and Linda took good care of us that September. They made sure that we were well fed, and as little agitated as possible. They were as tender as they could be, and accepted Amy as their own, right from the jump.

We tried to get our shit straight that month, but it was tough. In retrospect, I think we both had started to develop post traumatic stress syndrome. We got some clothes, filled out FEMA paper work, and enjoyed countless hours of humiliation as we registered and entered the Governmental Social Safety Net system. We tried to make plans for a projected future, but it was difficult due to the uncertain nature of the recovery of New Orleans.

We played a fundraiser for the Red Cross at the Red House where some of our displaced NOLA friends flew up to join us, but basically we treaded metaphoric water as New Orleans was pumped and drained of its actual flood waters, hurrying up and waiting for the all clear to return to The Crescent City.

OCTOBER, 2005

After the false start of re-opening the city gates and then immediately closing them again to its residents due to Hurricane Rita, Mayor C. Ray Nagin finally gave the green light to go home.

There wasn't much of a home to go back to, but we decided to fly back down to make a temporary first hand damage assessment; on the city and our personal, former lives.

It wasn't pretty.

As we drove in the rental car from the Airport in Kenner, you could track the mark of the water line as you passed every building. Everything looked like it was bathed in a sepia and gray tint. Dead boarded-up buildings, dead trees, dead grass, and destruction everywhere you looked. It was a ghost town punctuated by the absence of life.

Mid City looked like a neutron bomb went off. Folks had started to gut their homes, so the sides of the streets were piled high with rotted sheet rock, construction detritus, and abandoned appliances. There were dead cars everywhere covered in dust and dried sewage, indicating that many folks had a way to escape, and chose not to. The city hadn't had the means to hide that evidence yet.

Entering Amy's house was like entering a tomb. The only thing worth salvaging of her belongings was her family's antique bed frame. The mold had taken hold of everything by that point, and the first floor was destroyed.

My Bourbon Street shotgun apartment hadn't suffered any flood damage. Although it had some wind damage, it was pretty much intact. I tapped out a large chunk of my newly acquired life savings and paid my landlord a year's worth of rent to reserve a future place, and to lock the rental rate in before greed and the law of supply and housing demand shot rents through the roof.

We then sublet the apartment to Amy's good friends Waylon and Bryant at the same Pre-Katrina rate. That reserved a future home in New Orleans for the both of us, and the boys had a home. A "win-win" in a climate of loss.

We were hoping that the tourist economy would bounce back first, and that our pianna plunkin jobs would re-materialize at some point. That was the plan "A", anyway.

The Quarter was lined with "Katrina Coffins": Upright refrigerators with their doors duct taped shut to prevent being exposed to the vile rot encased within. At night, the commercial ends of the streets were manned with National Guard transport vehicles and Guardsmen armed with AK-47's.

Under the thinnest veneer of trying to get back to some kind of normal, the natives were just walking around exhibiting a combined state of nervous cheerleader delusion and zombie-like shock.

The rest of the stay was spent with reconnecting with friends, buddies from work and my Bourbon Street neighbors, getting drunk as they updated us with the recovery effort as they regaled us with the thousands of urban legends that sprung forth from Katrina's wake. Murder, mayhem, incompetence, and local governmental malfeasance.

That's typical New Orleans cocktail party repartee, but at this stage in the game, it was amplified mightily. Watching the surveillance tapes of the NOPD busting into the local next-door hardware store and trying to break into the safe was particularly edifying for me. It wasn't all "legend".

On our last evening before flying back to Syracuse, we went down to the old duelling pianna plantation to retrieve our music libraries. My old pal Alvin met us at the front door and let us in. He was always there for me in the past when I was hitting low ebb... tonight would be no different.

Alvin was a Pat O'Brien's lifer, in fact, he was born into the Pat O's family. His Mama Miss Micki was a piano entertainer there for many decades. Alvin played the tray on any shift that Mr. Eddie didn't, including matinees and off nights for about over thirty years.

His house was destroyed and he was living in a little one room apartment a half a block away on St. Peter's with his wife Dainnie.

Pat O's wasn't open to the public yet. There was no public to open to anyway. They were still cleaning up from the storm. Alvin was helping to re-organize but basically he was working as a nightwatchman to make sure the place didn't get looted.

When Amy and I arrived, unexpectedly Uncle Charlie and Heather Varish, who worked in the Pat O's operations and administration office, were there. Both of them I'm sure were being sorely battled tested to try to get the business up and running again.

So we took the tour of damage, and ended up in the piano lounge, the six of us recent victims of Katrina's ass kicking that all had a shared interest in seeing the old girl of a business resurrect.

We got liquored up, and Alvin scooted home to grab his thimbles and tray. When he got back, We fired up the P.A., Amy and I manned the pianos, Alvin hopped on stage, and we put on a little show for Charlie, Heather, and Dainnie.

Just the six of us, trying to catch a glimpse of what we had and clutch a rope of hope for the future. We hugged, shook hands, said our goodbyes, and made promises to stay in constant contact.

Amy and I grabbed our music bags and walked out.

That was the last time my finger tips touched the keys of one of those pianos. It would be a long time for Amy, but she finally got to touch them again.

We migrated due north in an aluminum bird the next day, back to the land of the lake. It was going to be a long, hard winter.

(Stay Tuned For Part 6)

Sharing is Caring... if you got this far, pass this along.

Love,

Geo

Daily Dose #49 (07/16/11)

2011-07-16T05:56:00.023-04:00

First, A Note From Our Sponsor:

I'd like to thank everybody who is actively reading and participating in THE DAILY DOSE project.

I really do need your help, though. Writing these things was harder work than I anticipated. Shilling for them makes it even harder.

If you're depending on facebook feed posts to access the blog-o-thon, please think about using some of the tools that are provided in the column to the right, especially the NetworkedBlogs and Google follow options, or the direct email delivery service, and of course the facebook and twitter "share" options. Slow growth and exposure helps to keep The Daily Dose and The Blog-o-thon alive and viable.

The content is free and the blog will always remain non-monetized. Those are two important points to remember when deciding whether to throw "The Dose" into your personal facebook feeds.

Direct delivery, and a little sharing among the many would really lighten the load for me.

As I announced yesterday, I have also prepared a Master Index of all the blogs with hypertext links and brief descriptions of each Dose's subject matter that will be updated and sent on a weekly basis. It's a lot easier to find what you may be looking for than clicking on a random archived number.

Not only does that simplfy things for me, but it gives us all an opportunity to correspond within The Peep-A-Roo network personally and directly, if you should desire to do so. That's really the fun and most rewarding part of the process, for me anyway.

Just send a request to piannaplunker88@gmail.com. You can opt out at anytime.

Sincerely,

The Exile On Helen Street

(And now, back to our regular scheduled program)

A Katrina Story: Part 4

MONDAY MORNING AUGUST 29, 2005

Even though utterly exhausted, my inner insomniac really didn't care about that particular state of personal affairs.

I woke up at 5:00am initially disoriented in a strange environment, but a familiar one to a travelling musician: surrounded the cookie cutter, absolutely devoid of any type of design aesthetics American mid-priced corporate hotel decor.

I stared at the ceiling for a while to get my bearings, Amy's soft and steady sonambulent breath on my neck. We weren't in "Kansas" anymore, kid.

Huck and Doo seem to miraculously sense when some type of consciousness overtakes me, no matter how subtle that process might be. Woof! As a groan of annoyance rumbled out of Amy, I oozed out of bed slowly and threw on a pair of jeans. Time to walk the doggies.

The Hampton Inn lobby, empty a scant four hours previously, had transformed into a refugee encampment. All were either clustered, or craning their necks around the singular community computer area, the television in the common area, or the front desk desperately trying to find an alternate place to lay their heads. Katrina was about to open her curtain and start the show.

After the ritual of the morning canine constitutional, I grabbed a couple of bagels from the complimentary continental breakfast set-up, and headed back to the room to watch the oncoming horror show in private.

The initial reports that were on the wire that morning were highly inaccurate. Perception is a funny thing. Just like people thinking that NYC is the only thing in New York State, The French Quarter and Downtown New Orleans do not a city make. This point seemed to go unrealized by major cable news outlets and their various rain slickered talking heads in the field.

As the eye of the storm passed over New Orleans, and the first damage assessments were broadcast, it didn't look too bad. Some wind damage related stuff, but it looked as if The Crescent City may have dodged a major bullet.

It was a false sense of hope obviously as history now proves. The aerial video of the levee and canal breaches weren't on the media's radar at that point. When I walked through the lobby for the noon dog walk, the general mood in the refugee camp was one of relief.

By late afternoon, the upcoming ugly realities started to slowly filter through the pink fluffy clouds of that false sense of security, like the constant and steady deluge over the breached 17th Street canal.

It was just a slow leak of ultimate shock and awe, persistently filling you up as the flood waters filled New Orleans.

You didn't know where anybody was. Everyone was scattered, and communications were knocked out.

For someone who called New Orleans home, that slow leak of information over the next few days got more and more surreal. You sat glued to the TV while simultaneously burning up the phone trying to make sure that your friends, family and loved ones were safe. Had they escaped? Were they alive?

Parts of Mississippi Gulf Shores looked like it had been carpet bombed by the Enola Gay. The Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish, slowly drowning. As the flood waters rose, you knew the body count was rising reciprocally, and it didn't seem like anybody was really addressing that equation, except for footage of both first responders and citizen volunteers on daring aquatic search and rescue operations in private or comandeered boats.

There were as many tales of heroism as there were tales of heinous human behavior.

The idiot comedy of jurisdictional pissing matches between State and Federal governments and agencies continued and reached full dramatic flower, causing a state of paralysis and ultimately magnifying Katrina's ultimate product of her wrath. Death and destruction.

Pictures of large scale abject human suffering; corpses floating in water or left abandoned in front of the Convention Center juxtaposed with President Bush declaring in "Frat Boy" speak in a news conference that FEMA director Michael "Brownie" Brown was "... doing a heck of a job.".

Senator David Vitter maintaining in a news conference that "...I don't want to alarm everybody that, you know, New Orleans is filling up like a bowl. That's just not happening", while you're looking at a live broadcast of aerial rooftop rescues shot with the backdrop of the panorama of 80% of the land mass of the city filled to the roof eaves with flood waters, raw sewage, and God knows what else.

It was real life drama, a combination of Dante's "Divine Comedy" and John Kennedy O'Tooles "A Confederacy of Dunces", truly realized as if scripted by Harold Pinter with a heavy editorial and directorial hand from Salvador Dali; and all the while in your own brain it was starting to smell like opportunistic economic and social engineering through a Federally sanctioned genocide of a segment of a race based on economic standing.

You could hear the salacious licking of real estate developer's and high ground landlord's chops in the far off distance.

My beloved C. Ray Nagin finally cracked in a radio interview on WWL-AM stating at the end of a scathing and emotionally raw interview: "Now get off your asses and do something, and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country"; Virtually assuring his eventual public and political crucifixion by throwing a last ditch, hail mary pass and wake up call of actual truth telling for some kind of tangible help.

The horror just slowly ratcheted up with each passing moment. When reports came in of search and rescue efforts being halted because of widespread burning and looting, and with all semblance of societal control, empathy, ethics or morality being willingly cast asunder, it was official.

The point had been finally driven in your head and heart like a railway spike: All forms of Hell and Anarchy broke loose and Evil Incarnate had seized control.

New Orleans transformed into the Seventh Circle before your very eyes.

My little family had lost its home. We had lost everything that we had defined ourselves with, and I mean everything. That realization achieved clarity, piece by piece, in a slow, grindingly tortuous, televised fandango.

There was no home to go to. The borders shut, the city, and its soul, forsaken.

We were safe, and we were alive. But I was in too much shock to realize the gratitude in that thought.

Within the matter of a few days, I was torn completely down with no idea of how to build it up again. It wasn't the first time, and ultimately it wouldn't be the last, but at that moment it sure felt like it was.

(STAY TUNED FOR PART 5)

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!

THANK YOU KINDLY,

COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"

Daily Dose #48 (07/15/11)

2011-07-15T05:24:00.033-04:00

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Just a quick note for all of you faithful peep-a-roos. As the blogs start to collect, it's become increasingly apparent that negotiating and accessing archived, blandly numerically sequenced material in the Blogger platform is kind of a pain in the ass.

This was an unforeseen problem, so here's my quick fix.

I created a master index, with direct hyper-text links and brief descriptions of the contents of each and every "Dose". This will allow you to pick and chose, or re-access a former Dose a whole lot easier.

If you would like to receive a weekly, updated master index of your very own via email, please write me at piannaplunker88@gmail.com.

Best,

"The Exile on Helen Street padding around in Pink Bunny Slippers"

A Katrina Story: Part 3

Amy and I both thought that we might pull a fast one if we hit the road as quickly as we could the minute we got home from work. Traffic might be light that early in the morning. She had been home an hour earlier. All I had to do was peel off my stage monkey suit, and pack the car. She had piled everything in the my front living room for a quick load up.

We stuffed it all into her little green Ford Focus wagon, stored a few more items up in the loft, walked the dogs, and dug out a nesting area in the back seat for Huckleberry and Doodle.

By 5:15 am Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop was in the rear view mirror, bathed in the dawn's early light; Outta "Da Quatahs", the 900 block corner of Bourbon and St. Phillip behind us and an unknown adventure ahead as we made our way toward the I-10 on-ramp.

Although by mandate of our illustrious Mayor C. Ray still a "voluntary evacuation", by the time we got on the I-10, it was a parking lot. It took us about 7 hours to travel 2 miles west of The Superdome. All we could do was sit and listen to the radio, and everything coming out of the speakers indicated that we were inching closer to a doomed state of affairs.

Both of us hadn't really had any sleep since Thursday morning, so maybe we were just sleep deprived and paranoia had taken hold. We sat still for hours in traffic and watched families having wienie roasts in the middle of the highway while eye-balling the fuel indicator slowly descend as the disembodied voices of the radio announced that Katrina just upgraded herself to a Category 5 hurricane. When C. Ray Nagin finally announced a Mandatory Evacuation by 10 am, we were barely past the Fountain Bleu Hotel, The Rock and Bowl, and the Carollton / Tulane Avenue off ramp.

The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. We thought we had a shot at hitting the contraflow lanes at a reasonable hour, but it was time to improvise. There wasn't any traffic in the Eastbound lanes, so we finally got off the 10 a little after noon and headed East, the new plan being to get across the causeway that spanned Lake Pontchartrain, hit Route 12 on the North Shore and pick up I-10 a little further west of Baton Rouge. We figured we'd just might get to Lafayette at around nightfall.

By the time we hit the Causeway, we were at a dead standstill again.

When you're bumper to bumper and side to side surrounded by the waters of Lake Pontchartrain, every layer of the whole economic strata of Metro New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Shore was on parade; from trashed cars held together with spit and duct tape rolling on two donut wheels packed with enough people to qualify as a clown car to big assed luxury vehicles with only one or two folks riding high in air conditioned comfort.

We were all in the same boat. That boat was about to sink, and no matter who or what you were, it didn't matter. We were all full of anxiety. We were all scared. We had to move forward, and none of us were.

And yet under the most trying of mental circumstances, we were all on our best behavior. Usually situations like this would invoke a bit of road rage, but there was none. We were all in this cluster fuck together.

In the midst of a climate of impending catastrophe, the Universal unseen connective tissue between seemingly unrelated points was clearly on display. As you looked out your car window, all you felt was a collective human unity as you looked at others suffering the same thoughts that were running through your head. What you drove didn't matter. Status didn't matter. Money didn't matter. Education didn't matter. Gender didn't matter. Race didn't matter. We all were Universal matter, thrown together by a single circumstance; compacted for maximum density.

As Katrina made its way to landfall, the longer we sat still, the more fucked we were. It was a mass Exodus in suspended animation, and Moses was no where to be found.

We all had to get out, and get out as peacefully as we could.

At about 5pm, after being stuck in a car for about 12 hours, we finally got across the lake. Route 12 was closed to westbound traffic and was being diverted into contraflow lanes headed North through Mississippi on Route 59. We weren't going to our designated landing strip in Lafayette, by mandate of the State Police.

We had only one option; Head north through Mississippi, and try to stay ahead of the projected path of the storm.

We had had no real sleep since Thursday, trapped in a claustrophobia car for over 12 hours with two little doggies, and still we had no destination known like a couple of barely crawling stones. We had to pull one more improvised rabbit out of our hat.

Amy quickly got on the phone with her friend Stacy, who was riding it out and still had internet access. The closest dog friendly hotel that had a vacancy was a Hampton Inn about 350 miles to the North East in Birmingham, Alabama.

When we hit the contraflow lanes on Route 59, traffic finally started to move, albeit at a slow 30 mph pace. But it was perceptible movement, and we could finally take a collective exhaled breath. We were going to escape.

There was about 80 miles of contraflow lanes set up, so when we got North of Picyune, we stopped at a little country filling station and fried chicken emporium to re-fuel the little green wagon. It looked like a refugee camp, with hordes of humanity and chicken bones strewn across the gas station's parking lot and lawn.

Although Katrina was still about 10 hours away from her official land fall, her ire could be witnessed first hand as we cruised towards Alabama. She was at full Category 5 strength in the early evening Sunday hours before the sun set; a pissed off whirling dervish of 175mph winds gusting up to 215 mph.

The north eastern view out of the windshield was nothing but clear blue sky, but in the rear view mirror? Anything but.

The sky was the color of a deep black-purple bruise. You could see flecks of debris in it, and the clouds looked like they were rendered by a cubist Picasso. They were angular. All the soft edges were squared as lightning flashed through the deep purple-gray soup of a sky.

The car became increasingly more difficult to keep on the road, as the first tendrils of Katrina's winds intermittently pushed us off axis from the passenger side. We started to get pelted by pine cone projectiles as the southwestern swirl slammed into the trees that lined Highway 59, and the pine needles on the road were so voluminous that they started to drift like snow.

We were in no way out of the woods, out of the dark, and no where near the "light". At any minute I expected to see Elmira Gultch fly by on her bicycle.

The dogs started to freak. Every time the rifle shot sound of a pine cone whipping into the car, Amy started to freak. Here, my dears, was real adrenaline pumping fear.

The only option was to go all Dale Earnhardt on Katrina's ass, and out-run her. Traffic had opened up considerably enough to peg that little Ford. I slammed my foot on the gas and held the speedometer between 85- 90mph. In my hallucinatory state, that shot of adrenaline was a welcome injection.

For about 20 miles, we weaved in and out of those headwinds, from feeling safe to feeling totally in a state of compromised fear.

I knew if I drove like a white-knuckled maniac, we'd get some distance between us. Katrina might have been cyclically moving fast, but her northern encroachment toward land and rate of speed was still pretty slow.

By the time we got to Tuscaloosa, night had fallen. We gassed up the car one more time at a flying bug infested filling station, and Amy took the wheel. I passed out from exhaustion, and woke up in the roundabout of the driveway of a Birmingham Hampton Inn at around 1:00 am Monday morning in the middle of an industrial park.

Our new home.

We checked in, and oddly, when we told the girl at the service desk that we were evacuating New Orleans, she wasn't really aware the storm and its potential consequences to her upcoming rate of available hotel vacancies. She would become well aware, because by morning the hotel lobby was jammed with displaced refugees from the City That Care Forgot.

My little family, as embryonic as it may have been at the time, was safe. Maybe by the skin of our collective teeth, but we had a roof, a bed, and we were far enough out of harms way no matter what Katrina was going to deal out over the next couple of days.

All Amy and I could do now was try and get some sleep, track the actual body slam of storm to land on television, and pray that we would end up with a home to return to.

Did we remember to pack the Ruby Slippers? I was too fried to care as my head hit the pillow.

(Stay tuned for part 4)

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!

THANK YOU KINDLY,

COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"

Daily Dose #47 (07/14/11)

2011-07-14T06:06:00.036-04:00

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog cast for a message from the emergency blog-o-thon system, and your personal "Daily Dose" administrator, Crazy-as-a-shithouse rat Little Georgie, the pink bunny slipper wearing, rust coated Shaman in exile on Helen Street:

"Hey you! See that "share" button? The sign up for direct email delivery? The Google and Networked Blogs "Follow" option?

If you've been reading this blog regularly and haven't availed yourself to these tools, then you are a parasitic lamprey eel, and you should stop reading now. We don't want usurpers here in Peep-A-Roo land, only givers and receivers that understand the concept of that type of momentum, and the value in sustaining it.

Have I alienated 95% of the folks that read this? Probably. I don't give a tumbling fuck, frankly.

There's an implied trade off and pact between sharing the contents of "The Daily Dose" by not selling advertising, or monetizing the blog-o-thon in anyway....the content is free, and all I ask is that you help spread it around some to be able to receive it without the fear of being taken advantage of by me and Google Adsense.

I respect that implied pact, and backed it up with the only thing I have left of any true value to prove it: My Integrity. I made a public promise, and I keep my promises.

I'm looking for active participants in the Universal recycling system, not boat anchors. If you haven't grasped the concept of "tearing off a piece for yourself, and then passing it along" by now, you probably never will.

You're a hole that can't be filled. This blog ain't for you.

I'm seeking quality, not quantity. People are always impressed by a big number, but the numbers don't mean a thing to me. The "Dose" is an experiment, and experiments aren't shaded for a desired outcome. They are conceptualized, guided by an hypothesis, designed, and then executed.

I'm writing these blogs specifically for the people that are sharing them and realize the value of that kind of participation. The experiment was designed to specifically identify and then unify these types of people and personalities. Everybody does a little of the heavy lifting, making it light work.

At the end, the result will be a world wide closed circuit of group communication, and that will be extremely valuable to all who have participated in the process in the future.

So if you are reading these installments passively without any reciprocated effort? At least you now know who and what you are. Maybe you should recalibrate, or maybe you should just stop reading "The Dose" altogether. Your personal decision on this particular issue is beyond my control.

In actuality, I'm hoping that the initial metric reaction to this statement is that the number of page views goes radically down. Then at least I'll know that people are actually reading the thing and are paying attention.

If you read it, then you should re-post it, share it and give feedback like you're on auto-pilot. That's the ritual and the price of entry.

That's the deal. Anything less than that frames you as a thief and an energy usurper. Even though I look a bit like a young long haired, jowly Don Corleone in the above portrait (taken by my dear friend Laura Brazak, BTW), If you can't be bothered, it is a deal you absolutely must refuse.

God Bless You, and God Bless America".

And now, we return our regularly scheduled blog-o-thon broadcast already in progress:

A Katrina Story: Part 2

Even though Amy and I had both played at Pat O'Brien's duelling pianna and booze-o-rama emporium on Friday night and didn't get home until 4am, the television stayed on to track the storm. There would be no sleep.

Television meteorology in New Orleans had reached a high dramatic art during hurricane season. I had been bemusedly watching Bob Breck's wide eyed, gap toothed, adorned with a combination Beatle meets Roman Gladiator hair-doo Fred Sanfordesque "This-is-the-big-one-'Lisbeth" shtick since Hurricane Georges trained his ugly little disrupted eye towards the Crescent City back in 1998.

Evacuating the city was a pain in the ass, but ultimately it was sort of like an unpaid forced vacation. You drilled the plywood panels over the windows, gassed up the car, and took off for a three day holiday, usually at a point west of the city. Hurricanes, when the made landfall, usually took a northeast doglegged trajectory.

If you don't have the financial where with all to do that, you just got some batteries, water, filled your ice chests, and rode it out.

There hadn't really been a Hurricane of massive destructive consequence since "Billion Dollar Betsy" back in 1965. Camille was a bitch as well, I had been told. The populace, a culture already fiercely proud of their collective "Laissez Faire" attitude, approached an oncoming hurricane with a large amount of collective ennui. In the aftermath of any Hurricane, it always seemed like ultimately it was a decision to take a forced vacation to Texas, or stay put, protect your stuff from possible looters, and have a little home camping experience.

But on that Saturday morning, everything had changed. Satellite pictures don't lie. The sheer category 5 force and scale of Katrina at that point indicated that no matter where she hit land fall, it was going to be a storm of Betsy-like proportions regardless of what the talking heads on the local news were saying. If you didn't get out there was a high likelihood and probability that you may actually die.

At around 1pm, Mayor Ray Nagin was on the tube with Governor Blanco basically telling folks to start getting the fuck out of dodge, especially if you lived in Algiers or The Lower Nine; and if you didn't, make sure you had a hatchet to chop yourself a hole in your roof to prevent getting trapped like a rat and drowning in your own attic.

Although curiously not yet called a "Mandatory Evacuation", as far as I was concerned, this was the Big One, 'Lisbeth. I called Uncle Charlie, the piano lounge and entertainer plantation overseer at Pat O's, to see what the official corporate position was.

"Charlie, you're not seriously thinking of opening tonight, are you?"

"If you want a job on Sunday, your ass better be down here tonight"

Now in his defense, Pat O's doesn't close for nothing. That place is cranking out fruit juicy rum laden Hawaiian punch in Hurricane glasses for 364 day a year, and only shuts down for Christmas night. Again, there really hadn't been a big one since 1965, and everybody's job, including his own, was predicated on those cash registers ringing as much as possible; especially in the sleepy "no tourists and no college kids" end of summer days. Big weekend nights were crucial to operations.

But this stance felt a bit irresponsible towards human life. I wanted to preserve my job, and yet a painful seed of conflict got planted in my head. The I-10 westbound lanes were already reaching parking lot status by early Saturday afternoon, and me and my little family (Amy, and my two furry children Huckleberry and Doodle) weren't going to be allowed to evacuate until 5am on Sunday at the earliest.

Ultimately, there really wasn't an alternate decision to be made. We needed our jobs, so we rolled with it.

The French Quarter is high ground in New Orleans. If any area was going to survive a weather related catastrophe, the Quarters had the highest odds of doing so. Getting gas for the car was already problematic for folks in the 'burbs of Metairie, but not in the Quarters. That afternoon we headed to the gas station on Rampart Street and gassed up Amy's forest green Ford Focus Wagon, checked the oil, necessary fluids and tire pressure and headed to her Mid-City apartment. We grabbed her "hurricane preparation box": A purple plastic file box with important pictures and documents that looked like a little cosmetics suitcase.

The rest of the afternoon was spent getting essential items like musical instruments and computer gear stuffed into a little loft space that I had built in the spare bedroom of my Bourbon Street shotgun flat, and crammed all our clothes into an attic crawlspace that I also had built in advance preparation for such an occasion (and the future occasion of Amy eventually moving in permanently, frankly). Anything of any import had to be above any possible impending water line.

Amy made the four block walk to St. Peter's Street to work at 8pm, and I trudged down there at 9pm. We were working alternating one hour sets with separate partners, so our breaks during our respective seven hour shifts were spent alternately alone back at what we thought was going to be our future short term home on 922 Bourbon Street, finalizing the packing plan.

We were both in delusion hoping for that typical three day forced vacation scenario, and packed accordingly. Just enough essentials: important paperwork, clothes, food, water and doggie supplies to survive for three or four days and then return to our lives as we knew it.

Although there were a few customers to be serviced in the early sets of the evening, by midnight, Bourbon Street had transformed into a tumble weeded ghost town thoroughfare, and so had the duelling piano lounge at Pat O's. There was nobody but staff, and the sound of crickets chirping after every song played.

The gossip scuttlebutt around the wait staff and entertainers revolved around whether we were going to catch a break, have the plug pulled early, and gain a few extra hours to leave town. There were no customers, and there was no sense in staying open. We were all following the news on our breaks. We all knew that we were working under the umbrella of empending doom by that point.

No such break would materialize that night.

Damn the torpedoes, the joint's house lights weren't going to be turned on until 4am, on the dot. All us agitated chillun, from the green jacketed wait staff, the maroon jacketed floor managers, the velveteened bow tied bar tenders, to the entertainers were going to be taught a lesson on how things actually operate, and just what value the collective paranoia and unspoken opinion really was worth.

I walked in through the breezeway entrance on St. Peter's at 2:45am on Sunday morning, took the right hand turn into the lounge, and sat down next to Mr. Eddie Gabriel to watch Amy and her partner finish up for the night. I had one more show to go with my partner for the evening, the lovely and talented Mizz Vicki Amato. She was the lead pianist of all of the entertainers; A Pat O'Brien's Lifer that had been grinding out the hits of the day for over twenty five years, and whenever you worked with her, she never let you forget the fact that she had been grinding it for twenty five years.

She had earned her right to do that. She had the chops and the voluminous repertoire and was better at the gig than the rest of us newbies, but sometimes you ended up the night wishing she didn't exercise that right quite so liberally.

Some nights were musically brilliant, and some nights I felt like I had just spent the evening bouncing around in a clothes dryer. You never knew which way it was going to go when you pulled Mizz Vicki as a partner for the night.

Eddie wasn't going to bother getting up on stage, because there was no one in the house to throw any money on his tray. He was waiting for his wife to pick him up

Eddie was a lifer too, and his on-the-job experience had everybody beat. For 67 years he had been hopping up on stage between the the two copper sheathed pianos with a metal tray and thimbles on his fingers, banging out rhythm on the underside of the tray and catching tip money. Back in the day, they threw coins, which is probably why the pianos were coated in sheet metal.

Mr. Eddie wore wrap around dark shades,sported a dapper pencil thin mustache, and had a rug sitting atop his head that had seen too much Brylcreem and much better days, but on a good night he still knew how to make the cabbage flow directly into his tray for his eight little 15 minute sets, performed 5 nights a week for sixty seven straight years. He never missed a day of work, ever, in all that time. At the age of 95, he was still going strong, and was truly a New Orleans and French Quarter institution.

Whenever I would help him up onstage to negotiate the floor monitor and drink laden obstacle course of a stage, he'd permanently paste on his omnipresent fifteen minute shit eating grin and whisper in my ear "Muthafuckas gonna throw that money ta-night!" or "Muthafuckas ain't tippin worth shit!" depending on how the night was going. He was a true and authentic old school New Orleans character.

He was crusty and he was salty, but he was truly a beautiful ninth wonder of the world who lived in the lower ninth ward.

From our seats in the rear of the lounge I turned to Mr. Eddie.

"You gettin' outta Dodge tonight Mr. Eddie?"

"Hell yeah, I'm gettin' the fuck outta here. I done seen 'em all. Betsy, Camille. I ain't stickin' around for this one. Gettin' too old fer this shit, Boy."

This was serious. I put my hand on his thigh.

"Eddie, travelling is gonna be rough tomorrow. You promise me you're getting out, right?"

"Boy... doanchew worry 'bout me. You jes' take care of yer own ass"

"Good enough, Mr. Eddie. Just makin' sure"

"Screw you, Boy!" He laughed and slapped my leg, and I made my way to the stage for the final set to be played for no one but green jacketed employees.

On slow nights, sometimes management would be merciful and turn the house lights on somewhere between 3:30 am and 3:45 am, but not on that night. The point had to be made, and made it was.

Mizz Vicki and myself were the last pianna plunkers playing on the strip on the last night of a the pre-Katrina Bourbon Street world. I ended the set with Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927", to make a musical point of my own to the management and staff alike.

That was a trick I had learned from my ex, Kim, also former long time pianna plunkin' veteran of Pat O'Brien's. One night David Duke was in the audience and threw a fairly sizeable tip with a request for "Dixie" scribbled on a bar napkin.

She played John Lennon's "Imagine" while staring at Duke and his party of goons straight in the eye instead, God bless her.

I said my goodbyes to Joe, another Pat O's lifer and my favorite waiter, grabbed a bag of music, and headed out the door.

Uncle Charlie was standing by his big black SUV, parked out front, talking on his cell phone.

"You set?" he asked.

"Yeah... Amy and I will call you when we land."

"Where are you headed?"

"We're aiming to stay with Amy's friend Anne Marie's family in LaFayette, but I don't know if travelling west is even an option anymore. That's the plan anyway"

"Allright. Just make sure to call and let me know where y'at."

Charlie was a big man. He stood about six foot four, and he was imposing when he wanted to be. We shared an intense history that went way beyond my working tenure at Pat O'Brien's.

I looked him right in the eye.

Not a word about how we were really feeling was spoken in that moment, but there was a clarity of message delivered, and the lines in the sand were drawn right then.

We both knew what the outcome of our personal relationship would be if the shit truly hit the New Orleans metaphoric fan.

But in true New Orleans fashion, none of it would be verbalized, it would just be rolled out passive aggressively over the next few months.

I turned around and walked toward home, not knowing if it was going to be the last time I would do so, but feeling in my soul that the odds were in favor of the fact that it might be.

Sorry, Charlie. I know that life is cheap in New Orleans, but my life was worth more than putting it at risk all in the name of squeezing the last nickel out of the Quarter with fruity drinks in large glass containers embossed with the clever catch phrase of "Have Fun!", before it went possibly asunder.

And so was everybody else's.

I didn't know it yet, but my days of musical whoredom were officially at an end as I listened to the Palmetto bugs skittering across the side walk, breathing in the scents of the night: The perfume of night blooming jasmine laced with effluvium of stale beer, piss, vomit, and the lingering greasy stench of hamburgers coooked under hubcaps that flowed out of The Clover Grill, long since boarded up and braced at the ready for God's upcoming muscle flex.

It was going to be a long day.

(STAY TUNED FOR PART 3)

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!

THANK YOU KINDLY,

COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"

Daily Dose # 46 (07/13/11)

2011-07-11T09:45:00.021-04:00

A KATRINA STORY: PART 1

Watching the televised weather reports in New Orleans in the last week of August, 2005 was an exercise in fear management.

By Friday, that big swirl of clouds called Katrina filled the entire Gulf of Mexico and looked as if it was headed straight at the "City that Care Forgot."

My life had finally settled down some by that point. I was playing at a duelling piano bar called Pat O' Brien's. If not very artistically rewarding, it was the best money I ever saw as a professional musician, certainly enough to live on, get health insurance, and build a retirement fund; Maybe even buy a house.

Playing piano bar "hits" for five nights a week with Mondays and Tuesdays off ("Piano Man,"Tiny Dancer" "Brown Eyed Girl", "Sweet Caroline","Lucille", "Margaritaville", etc...) wasn't exactly how I thought I'd end up, but that cash money can make you swallow a whole lot of shit sandwich, especially when you've lived your entire life on the edge of total economic doom.

I wasn't getting any younger. At 45, you start to think about real life issues like being able to go to a doctor. I know that may seem inconsequential to some, but I had lived my whole life not having access to medical care. Having the stress an economic sword of Damocles constantly over my head (How am I gonna eat? How am I gonna pay the rent?), was a lifetime of daily stress, and I was tired of dealing with it.

Especially for a concept of "Artistic Integrity" that at 45, was looking increasingly like a bad investment as far as a life strategy was concerned.

So you start to sell that integrity off. I knew what I was doing the minute I took that gig. Instead of selling it off piece by piece, I had a fire sale and sold it all at once.

There were plenty of artistic and professional rationalizations that I had for doing so besides economic ones. I didn't have to hustle gigs. I didn't have to hump gear; just show up and sit behind a piano and play with a random partner. It was going to afford me the opportunity to intimately acquaint myself with the "Great American Songbook". I was going to learn a new skill as I had never played "solo piano" before.

Ultimately making a comfortable living playing the piano and singing was what turned me out.

If I was going to be a whore, I was going to be a well paid one. After two years, walking the four blocks from my 900 block Bourbon Street apartment to Pat O's on St. Peter's for a shift felt like walking to Uncle Charlie's world famous plantation-vibe house of ill repute. Just slam a shot of liquid courage before your shift started and smoke the occasional cheeba on your breaks for head maintenance issues: All I had to do was close my eyes, never "kiss", and give the drunken "johns" the songs they wanted with absolutely no personal emotional investment attached but yet appear to be totally invested. I got real good at faking orgasms from behind a copper coated piano.

Keep smiling, Monkey Boy... You got through the night and stuffed your pockets with mondo tip money. It'll be allright by 4am. It was routine, and it was ritual.

It was just like work at a factory assembly line, only you got to play music instead of assembling widgets. I had worked at an actual assembly line, so I had the ability to compare the experiences.

As long as the cash registers rang and you didn't fall off the pianna stool, you still had a job the next day. Uncle Charlie wasn't one for validation, feedback, or constructive criticism. He just left you alone.

I was cool with the Devil's Deal. Nothing in life is for free, and through a lifetime of experience, Satan knew I could drive just as hard bargain as he could. He may have gotten my soul, but I didn't walk out of those negotiations empty handed.

Far from it. In fact at the time, my trump card was that I knew that Satan had over-valued what he was after. My soul was damaged goods, but I hid that fact pretty well. That was his massive strategic mistake, and it resulted with me ending up with a pretty great package of perks.

There were other advantages to a somewhat normal life, with a regular schedule and finally an economic safety net below me. My aging parents could finally relax and let go of the regretfully aching "What are we going to do about George?" conundrum that had been a constant irritant in their adult lives.

I finally knew where my next meal was coming from. I could go to the dentist, and pay the bills. I could buy the dogs their own food instead of considering having to share it with them. I could start to let go of some artistic and emotional demons that had me rotating over a spit for the past eight years. But the biggest prize that I beat out of the Devil?

Amy.

Amy worked as a piano entertainer at Pat O's as well. I guess through work schedules and proximity factors, we became friends first, and then discovered a little later on that we had a mutual attraction.

I had never experienced a "May-December" romance before. The age divide between us didn't come without a set of cultural and emotional maturity disconnect problems all its own, but we were negotiating them gracefully. At the onset, a 20 year age difference indicated to me that the relationship had a pre-programmed short shelf life, but she was such fantastic soul I didn't care, although in retrospect I should have.

I was just grateful for each day she chose to spend with me.

At the time we became lovers, I truly felt that my capability of feeling love and being able to reciprocate it was no longer in my future, in perpetuity. She proved me very wrong.

In that last week of August in 2005, Amy and I were just starting to organically take those small steps to a long term commitment. Although she still maintained her Mid-City apartment, she spent most of her time with me in the Quarter. I finally had put half my clothes in storage, and made room in the actual and metaphoric closet for her to move in permanently. We were having discussions about the future, and maybe starting a family. We had even started to shop for a condo to share together in the Quarter. I never thought I'd ever have the chance to start a family of my own, and now I found myself in a position to consider it with a truly loving partner.

Things, if not perfect, were as perfect as I could have crafted them. I had a future finally, and one that was clearly mapped out and visualized.

But as that week in August ticked down toward the weekend, and as you watched that behemoth of a category five hurricane aiming dead nuts on New Orleans, no matter how hard you tried to rationalize or go into an outright state of denial, you could feel the impending doom in your bones.

Your perfect life was going to take a roundhouse punch. All you could hope for was minimal damage after the fact, and the ability to raise yourself off the canvass before God counted to ten.

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!

THANK YOU KINDLY,

COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"

Daily Dose #45 (07/12/11)

2011-07-05T20:54:00.025-04:00

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog cast for a message from the emergency blog-o-thon network, and your personal "Daily Dose" administrator, Crazy-as-a-shithouse rat Little Georgie, the pink bunny slipper wearing, rust coated Shaman in exile on Helen Street:

"Hey you! See that "share" button? The sign up for direct email delivery? The Google and Networked Blogs "Follow" option?

If you've been reading this blog regularly and haven't availed yourself to these tools, then you are a parasitic lamprey eel, and you should stop reading now. We don't want usurpers here in Peep-A-Roo land, only givers and receivers that understand the concept of that type of momentum, and the value in sustaining it.

Have I alienated 95% of the folks that read this? Probably. I don't give a tumbling fuck, frankly.

There's an implied trade off and pact between sharing the contents of "The Daily Dose" by not selling advertising, or monetizing the blog-o-thon in anyway....the content is free, and all I ask is that you help spread it around some to be able to receive it without the fear of being taken advantage of by me and Google Adsense.

I respect that implied pact, and backed it up with the only thing I have left of any true value to prove it: My Integrity. I made a public promise, and I keep my promises.

I'm looking for active participants in the Universal recycling system, not boat anchors. If you haven't grasped the concept of "tearing off a piece for yourself, and then passing it along" by now, you probably never will.

You're a hole that can't be filled. This blog ain't for you.

I'm seeking quality, not quantity. People are always impressed by a big number, but the numbers don't mean a thing to me. The "Dose" is an experiment, and experiments aren't shaded for a desired outcome. They are conceptualized, guided by an hypothesis, designed, and then executed.

I'm writing these blogs specifically for the people that are sharing them and realize the value of that kind of participation. The experiment was designed to specifically identify and then unify these types of people and personalities. Everybody does a little of the heavy lifting, making it light work.

At the end, the result will be a world wide closed circuit of group communication, and that will be extremely valuable to all who have participated in the process in the future.

So if you are reading these installments passively without any reciprocated effort? At least you now know who and what you are. Maybe you should recalibrate, or maybe you should just stop reading "The Dose" altogether. Your personal decision on this particular issue is beyond my control.

In actuality, I'm hoping that the initial metric reaction to this statement is that the number of page views goes radically down. Then at least I'll know that people are actually reading the thing and are paying attention.

If you read it, then you should re-post it, share it and give feedback like you're on auto-pilot. That's the ritual and the price of entry.

That's the deal. Anything less than that frames you as a thief and an energy usurper. Even though I look a bit like a young long haired, jowly Don Corleone in the above portrait (taken by my dear friend Laura Brazak, BTW), If you can't be bothered, it is a deal you absolutely must refuse.

God Bless You, and God Bless America".

And now, we return our regularly scheduled blog-o-thon broadcast already in progress:

Creation, Validation and Inspiration: Part 7

“A FOOL THINKS HIMSELF TO BE WISE, BUT A WISE MAN KNOWS HIMSELF TO BE A FOOL”

So you may be asking the question, “Why is he writing this, and why is he posting these as Daily Doses on the Blog-O-Thon?”

As I read my contributions to the blog, two things pop out at me.

The first is that if you trace the chronology of the contributions I made to the thread, they serve as the crumbs on the trail to finding something that I had lost, something so dear to me that it’s loss was literally killing me.

The evidence of a creative re-birth. Remember, I had stopped playing, had no plans to play in the future, and cleaned toilets to pay the rent, drug addled and very much confused about whether I even wanted to continue to breath or not.

So I just started to tell a few tales and write a few stories. There was no agenda, no expected pay-off, just…. throwing it out into the Universe via cyberspace. You can see the first tentative tendril shoots of exploration, and then “Booker on the Edge” came pouring out of me.

Then stopping because of the rate in which that story did pour out of me. I was trying to down play it as a happy accident, and not something that could be sustained.

Then getting back on the horse, recanting Booker stories, K-Doe stories, stories of my adopted home town to an audience.

Now, admittedly, a very small audience. Not many people bother to actually read these days, and most of my friends on Myspace at the time were cartoon characters and inanimate objects: My numbers on the blog-o-thon were intially very low (I haven’t been one for very much active “promotion” these days) But there were a select few who took the time to read them, and leave encouraging comments.

Unbeknownst to me, I was again assembling a tribe. A tiny tribe, which leads to this second observation, and the true point of this long-winded tale.

You folks (and you know who you are) validated these tentative efforts.

I re-read all the reactions over the past year. Every one, urging me to keep going, keep writing and most importantly. keep throwing it out there.

Again, when in the throes of Bi-Polar craziness, I could not recognize what was happening at the time, but your comments were the only thing that was keeping me alive at that point.

So here’s the skinny: I now know that waiting fifteen years to express true understanding, and true gratitude, for heartfelt validation is lunacy.

I will not wait fifteen years, and I will not wait until you die and it’s too late to make an attempt to at least try to tell you, and anybody else who may read this, just how important you are to me, and just how grateful I am to The Universe that I accidentally found a way out of the forest.

And of course, how grateful I am to all of you; The Pineapple Peep-A-Roos, veterans of Cute Dog Contests, anti hydro-fracking initiatives, political tom foolery and other internet shananigans that have sprung forth from my crazy cranium the past few years.

I threw a little virtual party to save my own life, and you folks not only showed up. Many of you brought extra booze and metaphoric munchies.

I have that life back now, and I couldn’t have done it without your encouragement.

I promise all of you that I am now paying very close attention.

The DAILY DOSE is the culmanation of five years of tentative toe dipping into the creative writing pool, and realizing that if I couldn't kill the zombie boy, at least I could keep him under lock and key.

Those restraining devices manifested themselves as the discipline of creation. As long as I kept participating in the Universal recycling system, he would stay imprisoned and at bay.

My mantra? Keep making stuff, Keep doing stuff and make sure you share it openly and freely, with a true and authentic heart.

I don't need the "character" to make a contribution, and that consigns "Little Georgie" to a form of ultimate irrelevancy.

I'm now firing on all cylinders at full throttle.

I'd like to say I'm back in the saddle, but that remains to be seen. Let's see how fast, far and how long I can drive this Daily Dose truck. Lets see if I can keep it between the guardrails and prevent myself from crashing it into a tree.

So far its been a helluva ride, for me anyway.

I hope it has been as equally Hellacious for you, and I mean that with all due respect and gratitude.

DAMN THE TORPEDOS, FULL BLOG AHEAD!

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!

THANK YOU KINDLY,

COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"

Daily Dose #44 (07/11/11)

2011-07-05T19:56:00.020-04:00

Creation, Validation and Inspiration: Part 6

VALIDATION... OR:
“WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS MAN!”

Ahh, validation. The fuel that keeps us “outer-directive’s” fires stoked. Is it necessary to have validation to continue to be creative, to continue to do the work against the crushing forces of pragmatism?

I wish I could answer that for you. I can only recount my own feelings about validation.

When I wrote about Jerry Wexler (you can review that installment by clicking on this link: http://littlegeorgiesblog-a-thon.blogspot.com/2008/08/jerry-wexler-story.html) calling basically with the intent of acknowledging my efforts.

He wanted to give his personal stamp of approval and to urge me to keep creating; to use his cache to tell me "Be the core and fuck being the envelope, Sonny".

I wrote my tribute to Jerry from the vantage point of having about twelve years of distance and perspective.

I know what that kind validation means now. But I was too guarded and too concerned with maintaining a protectionist stance to realize what was happening at the time of that first phone call. I failed to recognize just exactly what Wex was trying to do for me, and what the Universe was trying to tell me. It was one of those points of validation that kept me pushing, but I failed to understand just what direction the finger of fate was pointing to. Basically, because my blinders were pretty highly developed at that point, and my head was firmly inserted up my own ass. He couldn’t actually do anything career wise for me, so what was his true function?

Well like I said: Now I know, but unfortunately, I will never have the opportunity to truly thank him in gratitude for the gift he gave me, the one I finally opened up twelve years after the fact.

So here’s another little validation story, and hopefully it will show you what I’ve learned since that phone call.

In the period of my 18-month malaise, and being a full-blown agoraphobic, one of the only options for human contact left for me was the Internet. I collected a very small posse of Bi-Polars such as myself, worldwide, to discuss medication issues, recovery issues, dealing with this fucking disease issues and the like. An informal AA electronic meeting for the “Crazier Than A Shithouse Rat” club, if you will.

One of the club members is a friend who lives in Birmingham, UK. She found me via my Myspace “Little Georgie” site, but once it was established that “Little Georgie” was dead and a verboten topic of discussion, and that we were both Bi-Polar, the former career “suit” was never mentioned again, and we just kept discourse on the Bi-Polar rails.

Until recently. She wrote me in the summer of 2008 with this statement:

“I know that you’re uncomfortable about your past life and accomplishments. You have the same 4 songs on your myspace player that you had when I first met you. I’ve tried to buy your recordings through all the standard outlets, and they can’t be found and you are very good at what you do. Could you guide me in the right direction?”

Now drugged out of my mind, just at the point of entertaining the notion of re-visiting my former creative self at the point of finally releasing any ties that I had to that former creative self and burying it for good, could I recognize this as any form of validation?

Absolutely no way! If anything, I’m consistent.

But at this point, I was getting philosophical about it all. I responded that yes, this is a part of my past that I’d just as soon put behind me, and no, you can’t buy the discs because I don’t play at that particular playground anymore. But if you want to hear transmissions from my ancient past, you have been a good friend. I’ll just email you every MP3 I can dig up. And I did.

This, her response after digesting several hours of finished recordings and demos of me drunkenly caterwauling into a Norelco condenser mic whilst bashing about on an out of tune piano:

“ George, all of this is... amazingly flabbergasting. And the fact that Bob Dylan speaks so highly of you is truly impressive”

This statement, so matter-of-factly delivered, as if someone who had spent the last ten years hiding under the proverbial bed would or should know such a thing.

We have now entered the Wexler Zone of validation friends. I asked for an explanation.

She wrote back stating that she listens to Dylan’s satellite radio re-broadcasts on the BBC religiously, and that she was compelled to go to myspace to find me because Dylan plays The Hungarians repeatedly, and purportedly said: “Best American band of the past twenty years... and amazingly enough, no one knows who he is or how to find him…. he’s more enigmatic than me!” and she “compassionately” didn’t tell me this, because I cut her off at the pass on any conversation remotely resembling, music, art, or “Little Georgie”.

This is a prime example of cutting yourself off at the knees to prevent hurt, and then wondering why the fuck it’s so hard to walk forward. Or having inserted your head up your own ass and wondering, “Why is it so dark in here... and why does it smell like ass?”

And so, the thing I tried so hard to insulate myself from hit me like a freight train. I counted my chicken before it was hatched. I allowed myself to think: “What If?”. I expanded right into the Universe of infinite possibility…pragmatism be damned, or at least just enough for that to happen.

There is a line of plausibility in all this. When I first moved to New Orleans, I was being courted as a possible production project by George Ricelli of whom I met through a mutual acquaintance.

At the time George was playing drums with Keith Richards in the X-pensive Winos, and ended up playing with Dylan and still does to this day. He ended up with all my output, all recordings, rehearsals demos, scribbled poetry: everything.

Once he figured out I didn’t have any money, he dropped me like a hot potato, but that being said:“What if” he just happened to be playing my shit on the tour bus and just as Uncle Bobby walked on it. “What If” Uncle Bobby said, “What’s that?”

But pragmatism has a mighty strong pull. This had to be verified. Calls were made. Show logs were scoured, by many drunken Internet monkeys, worldwide.

It never happened.

There was a record of him playing “Professor Longhair and the Shuffling Hungarians” repetitively during “theme” segments (I stole the name as an homage to one of my musical heroes), but no “Little Georgie”

So I wrote my friend back with my research findings and asked, “ Which did you Google? Little Georgie and the Shuffling Hungarians, or just The Shuffling Hungarians when attempting to find me?” (The Shuffling Hungarians is such a little known factoid that I would come up in any search engine before the good professor would).

She was adamant at first that she was telling the truth, but I had planted the seed of doubt.

You could literally see her confidence wane halfway through her letter (perhaps she elaborated and embellished the information she was feeding me), and then the “AH-HA” moment where she makes the realization that she took a borderline stage 2 Bi-Polar friend that has been on the brink of suicide for the past year, erroneously lifted his spirits, and carelessly dashed him upon the rocks…and apologized profusely.

And this, my reaction:

“Dear Debbie:

Please don’t feel bad about this…when faced with the realization that this might be true, I expanded into the Universe and saw infinite possibility for myself, for the first time since I was a little kid jamming to Meters records and thinking “Someday…I’m going to play with those guys”. You know what? That day happened, I did play with those guys: a lot. And it wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t allow myself to dream big, and to open my heart up enough to expand into the realm of possibility with no fear…and so after being so lost for so many years, you allowed me to feel that way again. It doesn’t matter if it happened or not. I got to shoot up into the Universe, just for a moment and it felt good.”

And this is what I have learned.

It doesn’t matter if validation is real, or imagined, or if you use it for motivational fuel or not.

Just don’t forget about what’s being made available to you. Don’t forget about the realm of possibility, the realm of dreams. Don’t forget to PAY ATTENTION to the abundance that is all around you, but so hard to see.

Don’t forget that you are part of that abundance. Its all made of the same stuff!

And don’t forget to be grateful, and give thanks.

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!

THANK YOU KINDLY,

COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"

Daily Dose #43 (07/10/11)

2011-07-05T19:51:00.014-04:00

Creation, Validation and Inspiration: Part 5

ENERGY PRODUCTION IN THE SUN OR:

“MY WORDS FLY UP, MY THOUGHTS REMAIN BELOW... WORDS WITHOUT THOUGHTS NEVER TO HEAVEN GO.”

We’re all familiar with Einstein’s famous equation, E=Mc2 (Energy equals Mass multiplied by the speed of light, squared). What does that really mean to a creative?

Over simplified, energy production in the Sun can be viewed in two functional segments:

1. The Core

Within the Sun’s core, hydrogen fusion is taking place at the rate of about 3 trillion hydrogen bombs exploding per second. That’s a lot of energy folks; or metaphorically, a lot of creative output.

2. The Envelope

The envelope of the sun comprises most of its mass. So massive that the force of pressure bearing down on the core contains the force of hydrogen fusion (remember: 3 TRILLION hydrogen bombs per second!) and keeps the core operating as a functional unit. Or metaphorically, I like to call the envelope, “pragmatism.”

For heat and light to reach us here on Earth, to warm us and grow food, to make possible the creation of life itself, as we know it, both the core and the envelope of the Sun need to work in harmony to make this possible.

But in the end, in the act of creation, the core doesn’t give a flying rat’s ass about the envelope. The core just explodes exponentially and creates an unfathomable amount of energy and output. What the envelope does with that is the envelope’s business. The core does not concern itself with pragmatism or small-minded protectionist philosophies as it furiously fuses hydrogen atoms.

The core doesn’t give a fuck about not being hurt or disappointed, or what is possible and what isn’t, or what it thinks it can do or can’t, or whether it’s worthy enough to do the job in the first place. It does not “aim for the middle”. It just does the job.

It just creates. It projects it’s output into the Universe.

Like grinding out a blog a day for 365 straight days.

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!

THANK YOU KINDLY,

COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"

Daily Dose #42 (07/09/11)

2011-07-05T19:30:00.016-04:00

Creation, Validation and Inspiration: Part 4

“THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND ON EARTH…
THAN ARE DREAMT OF IN YOUR PHILOSOPHY”

It takes light 1/10th of a second to circumnavigate Earth 7 times. It takes light 20 minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth. It takes light 120,000 years to travel from one end of The Milky Way galaxy to the other. It takes light 4 million years to travel from The Milky Way to the next nearest galaxy, Andromeda. Are we getting an idea of the sheer physical scale of the infinite Universe yet?

Physically, it’s impossible to “expand” into the Universe. My epiphany was that it’s possible to travel faster than the speed of light to get to the outer reaches of all creation and to become part of all that carbon, hydrogen and oxygen (Some most abundant material out there, and the same stuff we all are made of)

That happens by opening your heart, and making that journey within the infinite space between your own ears. This is something I knew all along, but refused to acknowledge.

Carl Sagan once said, “We are all Star Stuff”. Wanna go say hello to your distance cousin, your distance nascent beginnings of your own DNA, which happens to live in a neighborhood about billions of years away from where you stand? Do you want to participate in all of the abundant gifts that the Universe wants to share with you?

Just close your eyes, and ask with humility to go there.

Like Dorothy in the “Wizard of Oz”, to travel from a figment of your imagination to home, from one reality to another, all you need to do is click the heels of your ruby slippers together three times, close your eyes, meditatively chant the mantra “There’s no place like home” repetitively... and you are there.

In other words, you’re already there, because you never left in the first place. The Universe IS home, because you are a part of it, and it a part of you.

“BE NOT AFRAID OF GREATNESS: SOME ARE BORN GREAT, SOME ACHIEVE GREATNESS, AND SOME HAVE GREATNESS THRUST UPON ’EM”

By it’s very name, popular art, or the truncated term “Pop Art” is oxymoronic at best. What is popular may not be art (Insert the concept of a Paris Hilton, here) and what is art my not necessarily be popular in the time of it’s creation (Insert the cliché of the unappreciated starving artist flailing away in a garret, halfway on the way to total madness, I.E. Vincent Van Gogh, etc., here).

As those that are involved in the arena of popular art know, the journey is rife with rejection, harsh criticism, dashed hopes, crashed dreams, brushes with goals that are just beyond the reach of our outstretched fingertips, and of course, the ensuing crushing disappointment that follows.

Through our journey, we develop defense and coping mechanisms to deal with that crushing disappointment. We come to expect that crushing disappointment is always lurking around the corner, and we have to be prepared for it, for it will never hesitate to rear it’s ugly little head; especially when things are going well.

So we harden our hearts. We most definitely do not count our proverbial chickens before they’re hatched. We expect nothing good to happen, and when it does, we can be non-chalant about it’s appearance, in true “who gives a fuck?” rock and roll fashion.

Cool heads prevail, right?

Wrong. At least in part.

Hardening your heart is an effective short term strategy to shield you from the hurt of crushing defeat, but it also cuts you off from projecting into the creative Universe. It’s a self defeating pragmatic approach. Good things happen so far and in between because hardening your heart, although a protective act, puts up massive barriers between you and the force of creation. You can’t dream big, if you are always dreaming small. You can’t expand and project your energy if all that you do is expend inordinate amounts of negative energy to further a self-protective agenda.

A shield works both ways. It keeps things from getting in, but it also keeps things from going out. You might be protected from hurt. but you also shield yourself from anything good that might be trying to come in as well.

Eventually, employing this as a long-term strategy is like cutting yourself off at your own knees to prevent yourself from kicking yourself in your own crotch and then wondering why you can’t walk forward.

Doesn’t make much sense in the long term, does it?

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!

THANK YOU KINDLY,

COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"

Daily Dose # 41 (07/08/11)

2011-07-05T19:14:00.015-04:00

Creation, Validation and Inspiration: Part 3

“IT IS THE STARS, THE STARS ABOVE US, GOVERN OUR CONDITIONS”

And so this brings my tale to the recent past. On June 1st, 2008, I wrote my Bourbon Street landlady my rent check and I had a $200 balance left in the account: not even enough to cover food or utilities.

I had spent the last year re-wiring, pro-actively burying my dreams, and finally placing a headstone on it’s metaphoric grave, but at that moment I was right back at the same crossroads I was 18 months ago.

After all that work, all that drug induced catatonia, and all that soul searching, the only viable option was to pull the .45 out of the drawer and stop all this shit once and for all.

So I looked up at the sky (in reality, the ceiling: I’m a full blown agoraphobic by this time) and I said:

“Look…I know I don’t talk to you too much, and I’ve never asked you for a damn thing. But I have made thousands of people happy at the expense of my own happiness; I have made considerable deposits in the Karma bank, and quite frankly, if you’d like your presence known, I want to make a sizable withdrawal from my Karmic Bank account right now.”

Five minutes later, a promoter from Syracuse (of whom I hadn’t spoken to in years) called and offered me $ XX,000 to re-create “Little Georgie”, for one night only.

Was this the handiwork of God or Satan? I didn't know but in either case, both of them have a wickedly cruel sense of ironic humor. Brothers. Who can figure?

Now you can interpret this anyway you want to, depending on your belief system, or what particular dogma you ascribe to. But here’s mine:

The Universe and all the creative power contained within in its infinite expanse had finally had enough of my self-absorbed shit and hit me over the head with a sledgehammer of synchronicity. But it wasn’t going to deliver the blow until I asked for it.

I HAD made a lot of people happy over the years. I had rocked bodies, rocked souls, and rocked minds. I used to be a Shaman, and I gathered a tribe of thousands around me who had valued these gifts It was time to stop running away from the thing you do best, Jack. You will not receive any gifts of abundance until you start to be abundant yourself and throw it back, into the Universe.

“Ask and it will be given, Seek and you shall find, Knock and the door will be opened to you” Matthew, 7.7

OK, here it is. It’s real. But old Matthew left out a crucial part of the equation:

Once the door is opened, you have to be aware enough to step over the threshold into the great unknown and out into the Universe: The “Leap of Faith”, as it were.

I’m not the best piano player, or singer, or songwriter in the world, but music was the chosen delivery system, and for whatever reason, of everything I created, those creations were born with the utmost of sincerity and truly an open heart.

This translates into the ability to communicate ideas and philosophical concepts to large gatherings of humanity.

This where my true creative powers are at their most concentrated form. That is my gift.

I am a storyteller. The Universe told me to re-visit my creation, the source of all pain, to understand the value of creation itself.

No matter how hard I tried, the little zombie boy would not die quietly.

"Don't you know you can't kill something that's already been dead?"

I wrote that line, and yet foolishly, thought that I could get away with ignoring it.

My own personal Frankensteinian monster wasn't quite through with me yet.

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!

THANK YOU KINDLY,

COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"

Daily Dose #40 (07/07/11)

2011-07-05T18:47:00.015-04:00

Creativity, Validation, and Inspiration: Part 2

“GOOD-NIGHT, SWEET PRINCE…”

On a daily basis, 1,200 mgs. of Lithium and 1,200 mgs. of Lexapro were pumped into my little cracked egg of a head; an extremely potent combination of salt and serotonin re-uptake inhibitors so massive that I literally couldn’t see straight for about a year. It took every ounce of energy to go to my therapy sessions and walk my dogs.

Work, let alone create? Not even a possibility. I couldn’t think. Characterizing this as momentary “lapses in the synapses” would be a gross understatement. Every bit of wiring was ripped out, chemically and cognitively. Waking up and being ambulatory was a rare major success. Most days I didn’t even bother with that. Not that I didn’t want to: I just was incapable.

One of the lovely side effects of that chemical cocktail was uncontrolled muscular tremors. I found myself self-administering a form of drug induced Parkinson's disease. Touching a lit match to the tip of a cigarette was difficult work. Playing the piano was out of the question. I had to give up in total the one thing that defined me for most of my adult life.

A corpulent Elvis waving a gun at a television set would be a shining example of mental health compared to me.

This went on for about a year. I’d like to tell you that my spelunking expedition stomping around in my own gray matter like a skill-challenged electrician with the grace of Godzilla at a disco was an enlightening experience.

It was to a certain extent, but at the time, enlightenment was far off my radar screen. I was hanging on to life by my fingernails.

Which leads me to the point of this little confessional epistle.

The major thing that kept me away from getting help sooner was my fear of losing my mania, because any thing I ever created of any value was birthed in the context of a high manic phase. In other words, if I lost the mania I would lose everything that defined me as a high “creative” in the process. I would lose the me I knew. The chronic depression is the price I had to pay in order to reap the creative benefit of what was left in the wake of a high manic “episode”.

That’s a scary concept, but in retrospect, if I look at the past thirteen years of my life, the trail of evidence leads to the fact that I was really sub-consciously and systematically destroying everything that defined me as a creative to get to the point that re-wiring was not only possible, but only one of two options left on the proverbial table (The other being sucking on the barrel of a .45)

With every choice I made, day by day and year by year, I was distancing myself from my creative past, pro-actively murdering any dream I ever had.

“BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS,
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES”…. OR:
“THOUGH THIS BE MADNESS, YET THERE BE METHOD IN IT”

Here’s a good example:

I willingly put myself in a relationship with a chronic alcoholic that lasted over a seven year period. At the height of her abuse cycle, she would be ingesting almost three litres of vodka per day. Its quite easy to put creative endeavors on hold while you are running the love of your life in and out of hospitals, detox and rehab centers trying to keep someone alive on a constant basis.

Ride that roller coaster, creative endeavors and personal recalibration are the furthest thing from your mind.

I don’t blame her for anything. Alcoholism is a disease. It would be like blaming someone for your personal pain because they contracted cancer.

But I had a hidden agenda (hidden even from myself) and that disease suited my sub-conscious purposes to a “T’.

I prevented myself from doing the important work I needed to do. I dodged the concepts that intimidated me and scared me the most. I let myself get ruled by fear.

By willingly putting myself in this situation, I totally diverted my attention to her instead of me, and got to play “The Martyr” at the same time. Pretty slick, that sub-conscious.

We are the sum total of the choices we make. The shithouse rat owns it all.

Re-locating to New Orleans was less about career advancement then it was about achieving total anonymity so I could leisurely kill the character of “Little Georgie”, (my most public and personal crowning creative achievement at home) at a pace that would inflict as much cruelty and torture on him and myself as possible.

Kill the dream. Kill it good and dead, and the dream no longer becomes a factor. Then you can do the re-wiring job.

Presently, in the few instances that I venture out in public on the streets of CNY, people often ask me "Why aren't you playing? When's the next Shuffling Hungarians gig?"

There are myriad different answers to that question, and explanations as to why a show won't be happening anytime soon.

I usually answer "I'm retired" with a wink and a nod, and try to deflect as much as possible.

But in my interior monologue, the answer I want to give is "Because I took my alter-ego Little Georgie down to New Orleans to murder him in cold blood with my bare hands on the streets of the French Quarter... I had to. It was either him or me."

That thought isn't exactly a good conversation starter in a social situation. I just keep smiling as I keep it to myself.

“Tear it Down and Build it Up Again”. Art Imitates Life Imitating Art Imitating Life.

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!

THANK YOU KINDLY,

COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"

Daily Dose #38 07/05/11

2011-07-05T18:18:00.024-04:00

IN PRAISE OF MANUAL LABOR: PART 2

On Saturday Night during the Fourth of July holiday weekend, I got to play in my hometown with my childhood musical heroes, The Dean Brothers.

The crowd was overwhelming. The Skaneateles Village Po-Po estimated the throng to be around 2,000 strong, an all time attendance record for a concert in Clift Park.

I'd like to say I was hitting musical homeruns all night, but that wasn't really the case. I'm rusty. I was just hoping to contribute and be in support of these guys. They have given me so much over the years, and I'm extremely grateful to have a shot at giving back to them.

Still, after all these years, the one impression that I always leave with after seeing or playing with The Deans Brothers is this: These guys just aren't nostalgia. They have a lot of creative gas left in their collective tank just waiting to get ignited. That's pretty inspiring to me.

There were little moments in the show where there was a slight indication that maybe I could help to function as a spark.

Perhaps when I signed on to play with them on this night, I was seeking the answer to that. "Can you still be a spark, Little Georgie?".

Because if I still can, there would be nothing better in life than to provide it to friends who I truly love. I have stood on their shoulders my entire life. I'm not related, but they are a huge sequence in my musical DNA.

How gratifying it would be to have them stand on mine a little. Maybe just enough to fire up that unused go-go juice in their tank.

If that creative tank does ignite, I want a ringside seat. If any of you trust even a little of my musical judgement, I gaurantee that you will want one too.

But I am pretty hyper critical of my own performance as a rule. I could have done much better. I forgot just how much preparation and discipline it takes to get over the standard bar that I have always set for myself. I shook the rust off eventually, but I should have never showed up with rust at all.

As mentioned in Part One of this little manual labor musing, making that realization isn't a bad thing. You always can be better. All you have to do is analyze the system, make an accurate assesment of past performance, de-construct it, re-calibrate to make improvements and adjustments, and always seek the flow in any future situation.

Don't think I'm beating on myself. I'm not. I left that show fired up and inspired to play again, and play at the level I know I'm capable of.

After packing up my gear, I headed to the Sherwood Inn to have a celebratory night cap with Holly and the whole crew.

Long story short? A lot of nightcaps appeared in front of me like magic, in the form of Absolute vodka and club sodas with a wedge of lime. So many caps that I could of opened a hat store, and having scarcity issues, I made sure that not a one went to waste.

Holly and I stayed up until 4:30 in the morning in his kitchen.

His lovely wife Patience would come and go as we yakked into the morning speaking of Michelangelo, and the conflict between creation, art and commerce. I finally swooned and crashed in their guest bedroom.

I awoke feeling like a pair of ragged claws were scuttling across the floors of silent seas that were sloshing in my skull, having achieved a state of abject brain cell genocide the night before.

We hung for awhile, and then I limped back home to Syracuse, and back to a reality to be experienced in hung over pain.

All hail the idiot conquering prodigal son and hero. What a dumb ass I is.

The apartment was an unholy wreck. Crap and clutter everywhere. Mail in the form of unpaid bills spilling from vertical surfaces. My gear was all torn down and in the car, so there was cabling and the residual gear from my practice rig strewn all about the music room. I had to bring everything up two flights of stairs and then re-wire the whole rig.

Maybe its my Catholic upbringing, but when I'm hungover I feel I must do pennance. I also was still excited about re-dedicating myself to hunker down and do some real wood shedding. The decision for what to do with myself, was obvious.

I channeled my inner Carlo.

I left the gear in the car for the day, and I cleaned. I sweated out the toxins in an un-airconditioned apartment until 10:00pm. I vacuumed and scrubbed and got all obsessive compulsive. I got on my hands and knees and stuck my head in the toilet until it was clean enough to serve fruit punch out of. I detailed the baseboards with a tooth brush. I moved all of the major appliances in the kitchen, cleaned under them, and then moved them back into position, the results of that work undetectable to no one but me.

I analyzed every organizational system in the house and then re-organized it. No cupboard or drawer was untouched, or unchanged. I got to projects around the apartment that I had been ignoring for over two years.

I drenched myself in the juice of meditative hard labor. Sweated it out.

Jumping into manual labor serves as metaphor. If I can physically clear out the obstructions in my living space to achieving flow, I can then see how to go through the same process in the space between my ears.

That's a harder task to execute, but the manual labor leads you to the real important work. The path gets cleared.

I cleaned house, let go of any unnecessary attachments, and threw them out.

A ton of crap and clutter hit the curb on Sunday, both physically and metaphysically.

Finally, I pulled all the keyboards and attendent gear out of the car and lugged all of it up the stairs.

I made an assesment of my practice set-up and made the call I had been making all day. I can design this better, for maximum flow. I dismantled what was left mantled, wrapped every cord and cable, unplugged everything, and started from scratch.

I tore it down, and then I built it up again. That's the process, no matter what you decide to tackle.

I finally got it up and all wired by midnight.

The slate is clean, and the system is improved. I'm ready to get to work, and to be that spark, for myself, for my friends, and for the people I love.

The stage is set, the pathways opened. The dust has cleared and it's time to dance.

Let's Roll Up The Rugs And Crank It.

(Live performance photos by Jack O. Bocchino)

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!

THANK YOU KINDLY,

COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"

Daily Dose #37 (07/04/11)

2011-07-05T04:35:00.021-04:00

IN PRAISE OF MANUAL LABOR: Part 1

Although exploring the creative process may be one of the driving conceptual forces of The Daily Dose, manual labor can play a huge role in opening up pathways and clearing obstacles that may be obstructing a clear view to achieving a state of creative flow.

SWEEPING LESSONS

Carlo was a little old elf of a man. He stood barely at five feet and had an incredibly thick shock of curly black Roman hair streaked with gray. He would wink at me with twinkling blue eyes that would put Paul Newman's to shame.

His total mangling of the English language went way beyond the definition of "broken".

Carlo was one of the many Italian immigrant workers that my Grandfather had recruited to make the trip across the Atlantic to work in our family's pasta factory, and pursue the American Dream.

He brought his son Caesare over with him, and both he and his son worked side by side in the factory to make a better life for their family, in Auburn, NY USA, and for the family they left behind in Italy as well.

When I became of age at fourteen to work summers full time in the factory, being the "Scion" of the whole shooting match meant that I had to be made an example of: Nobody was above anybody else, so I started with the crappiest jobs that could be found in the factory.

Workers in the factory like Carlo had to experience the Rossi generations beating down on the future generations first hand. That was the family and thus corporate philosophy as laid out by my grandfather to my father, and my father to me.

Pasta Princes start at the bottom, cleaning the factory communal toilets.

Your value to the organization was based on what you could do, not who you were.

Dad always stayed late after every day shift, and since he was my ride, I always pulled overtime until he could finally close up shop and go home for the night.

In those quiet hours, after a long day of toilet cleaning and linoleum scrubbing, I still had to be productive. I graduated to dust wrestling with the skeleton night crew as they started the second shift. The hours between 4:00pm and 7:00pm were spent with Carlo, the Leonardo DaVinci of sweeping floors.

Making pasta on an industrial scale is dusty, dirty work. Flour has a tendency to get all over everything. Particulate matter control was a bottomless pit of a task.

The pasta was manufactured on the second floor of the factory, and packaged on the first. Carlo and I swept that second floor at the close of everyday as the sun started to droop for the night, blasting its last shot of radiant light upon the panes of the factory's Washington Street western windows.

Being a fourteen year old knuckle head and relieved to have a task that didn't require me to breathe in the day's collective piss and shit smell of an army of workers, sweeping was a big promotion.

Armed with a push broom, I attacked those floors with gusto, working out my teen-aged rage banging bristles on the floor. I could have been swimming in the lake, water skiing with my friends, having a normal kid summer, instead of what I was currently doing. I was making money, but at the sacrifice of a summer vacation.

Black foreboding mushroom clouds of dust erupted to the ceiling, silhouetted against the western window wall; My violent re-creation of Nagasaki in miniature and outward expression of frustration, and I was Godzilla with a broom.

You couldn't breathe, but anything was better than what you had to breathe in those bathrooms.

Carlo snuck up behind me and gently put his hand on my shoulder. I turned to his crooked little smile.

"No, no, no Meeestah Roasz... a like-a dis"

The thought of a grown man calling me "Mr. Rossi" was initially disconcerting.

"Call me George, Carlo, not Mr. Rossi."

Again that funny smile. He didn't understand. With his hands now trying to translate his inner thoughts, he again said, "No, no, no Meeestah, Roasz... Lemmee show"

My inner smart ass now piqued, I thought: Show? Show what? Its fucking sweeping, fer Chrissakes.

And as the dust bowl cloud I created started to settle, I saw the light.

Here was a man that had swept that floor everyday for thirty years. He proceeded to show me how he had elevated the most mundane of chores, sweeping, into high art.

All of his critical thinking, all of his creativity, all of his muscular control, and all his focus was directed and narrow beamed. It was like watching a combination of an Italian Elf and the Nureyev of sweeping. He epitomized flow, calm, and ultimate efficiency. His rhythm and balance, the length of his stroke, the conservation of energy and his state of grace were all clearly on display. Sweeping was a prayer, a meditation, a science and a choreographed ballet all rolled up into one.

Not one speck of dust flew up from the floor. Every single particle ended up in the pan instead of the air. When he was done, that floor was really clean.

As he taught, I learned Zen and the Art of Pasta Factory Floor Maintenance.

I started to go home every night in a state of peace. My mind was now freed to think of other things, because the stones of frustration had been removed from the pathways. Instead of being exhausted, I was energized.

Carlo and I swept that second floor every night that summer, and yes, by summer's end I learned how to elevate the utterly mundane into the absolute sublime.

But he taught me so much more than that.

Everything you do, every muscle you move, every breathe you take and every task you undertake can be broken down into a system, analyzed, and done better.

From brushing your teeth to tying your shoe. The simpler the task, the easier it is to reach a sense clarity of mind. Have you ever really given any concentrated thought about how you walk through a room? Could it be done better? Can you streamline your actions and can you improve efficiency? Can you manage effort by finding ways of conserving it and minimizing it? Can you reach a higher state of consciousness in the mundane, by constantly seeking flow, and thus a state of calm?

Carlo had spent thirty years seeking the Zen core of sweeping, and he found it.

And then he shared it lovingly, with an open heart, to me.

Carlo knew that by perfecting the art of sweeping that factory floor, that he was part of a larger system. He was just as important as the foremen, the plant manager, the warehouseman, the ladies in accounting, the truck drivers, the salesmen and even my Dad.

If he reached a state of ultimate flow, he would contribute flow to the system as a whole. That system made stuff, and the stuff that system produced fed people.

This is where he recognized his value. This is where he found his sense of self-esteem in the art of sweeping floors. This is how he connected with the Universe.

He was the microcosm of the macrocosm incarnate. As he contributed and participated in the art of the flow, the flow came back and ran right through him. He was a circuit on the board, and one that wouldn't function as well without his contribution.

Nobody is above anybody else.

And no task, no matter how mundane it may be, is either. Screwing up on the simple stuff is going to block your access to a higher state of consciousness, and a higher state of creative flow.

Getting on the grid and participating in focus allows the grid to feedback into you.

The key to the door of your place on that grid might be something as simple as folding your underwear differently, or finally getting around to organizing that bottomless pit of a catch-all drawer in the kitchen. Engage your brain fully to analyze, re-calibrate, and improve.

Everything you do, seek the higher elevation level everytime you do it. Make the most ridiculously insignificant thing an art. That type of focused discipline will reveal the path to secure your future place of efficiency on the grid of creation and reciprocal energy flow.

Some may call that being "In The Moment" or "In The Zone". The trick is in getting there, getting there quickly, and being able to get there consistently.

You don't have to fight it, or seek it in desperation. The Daily Dose is in the discipline. It will come to you if you can truly sweep your floor like Carlo.

Clear the dust, and then you can dance.

"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound, mired in the muck of mediocrity.

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"

AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!

THANK YOU KINDLY,

COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"