July 2009 Archives

In the midst of the first quarter of the waning moon this month, just a few days ago, I walked along the herbal ways of the wilderness in Oregon and celebrated my second wedding anniversary. The piney clime was bluish and there were baby deer springing in the grasses, their butts painted with white dots. I saw butterflies that were black and orange, and yellow, conducting their experience with a bobbing humor, until they went to a bed of minerals to taste and meditate. I was at the hot springs. At midday I sat in the hottest tub and panted and reddened, sweating and wilting, until I couldn't take it anymore. Then I tried to run but my bare feet would barely tolerate the pebbles and rocks sharpness, so I walked quickly, through the grasses and then next to the labrinthe of stones and then over a small ridge and through prickly green plants until finally I was at the shore of the river, rushing with snowmelt over a rusted mosaic of rocks. I ran into the current and plunged in.

The cold plunge---the shock is the substance of a most treasured feeling. Hot tub enthusiasts and sauna devotees know what I'm talking about, it's the million-word wordless therapy, an instantaneous reckoning and forgiveness, a visitation into forgotten memories and identities, a surfacing of dreams, a lucid illumination into the opaque paths we see ourselves on when we peer back into the past.

The path----it's the way I try to blunt the impact of the future onto my present, or to make sense of the meanderings of the past----I explain that it's my path. The path, it's the mellow word I use to explain the mysterious combination of decisions, coincidences, syncronicities, hot tar months of depression or brilliant sudden breaks. At the hot springs the other day, I felt a gratitude for my path, its meadows and potholes both, and I revisited those little pebbles of moments that pave where I walk now.

The best thing about a path metaphor is the movement implied. I love to run lately because it so quickly metabolizes what's going on with me, and sometimes I have to stop and kneel and cry a tear or three, and just get out all the depression in a quick liquid, or I have to really laugh loud on the trail or put my chest into a tree trunk and get emotional about the gift of a green minute on EARTH.

My love of nature is exploding today, in proportion to summer's blossom. My garden vegetables are festooned with fruit or little baby buds, the herbal leaves are multiplying. We are growing basils both Thai and Italian, thyme, parsley, lavender, lemon balm, lemon verbena, epazote, valerian, yarrow, tomatoes that are cherry small and or fist sized and bulb-like, green and purple tomatillos, green beans, cucumber, squash, cantaloupe, lettuces producing so much they are funking on each other and most specially, a Peruvian tree tomato. That plant was a special score from a local plant sale, and an exciting adventure into my newest dimension of plant love.

It's such a blessing to be back here again, back in Planet Summer, with its pleasures unimaginable in the dark of winter. Watching a strawberry redden, feeling the sun's searing promise, the relief of wind, the achievement of jumping in freezing cold rivers, the sublime sensations of bare skin and the luxuriously long days. I want to commit every calorie of myself to physically efforting to experience the most enjoyment of the summer. It's exhausting to love Earth so much in the deep of summer, but it's the kind of productivity that I can finally overachieve.

I just got a watermelon infinity tattoo on my right wrist. For a half hour today I slowly ate a watermelon slice and that was my JOB. Last summer a melon brought tears to my eyes, so exquisite. I just spent a few weeks in Portland and went to Sauvie Island on two different occasions, just to gorge on strawberries too delicate to experience but a few miles from their origin, and once I went to try to gain a pound of perfect blueberry flesh. Portland was the summer ultimate as usual, and the city continues to be the North American capital of feminine pacific beauty conquering all consciousness, upending rottenness and fertilizing the new fruits of the mother millenium. OMG, the women of Portland, they fed me their fruits from the trees and vines and I swallowed the seeds and rushed to the Bay Area and sent the seeds into the earth here, trying to keep with me what that group of women is doing so lovingly.

I have new fruits.
Records. Recordings.
My pomegranate fruit is HEAVY WINGED/INCA ORE "Ring Mining" on Not Not Fun. One side of the record is a collab between me, and Heavy Winged and Nick Bindeman too. This track was recorded live in Brooklyn, and it is embedded with a crazier vocal energy than I usually exhibit as Inca Ore. I love this track! The other side is a collab we did through the mail. At that time, I was living in a house upstairs from my landlord, who was slowly perishing from cancer. One day she knocked on my door and said breathlessly, "I just have to tell you, I love your music. You should join the Cirque du Soleil, you would fit right in. I can find out about auditions for you. Please keep playing, I love it." Theresa died a few months later on July 4th, but the Heavy Winged/IO collab was recorded during her listens, and though I wouldn't reference the Cirque, I can see where she's coming from. I did the art for this release, a potpourri of images of the Himalayas at sunset.

MALIBU FALCON "How is hell fact met? All of them witches" is another release, maybe a cherimoya fruit, on cassette by Not Not Fun. Malibu Falcon was me, Nick Bindeman and Stef in the year 2003-2004, making music in a moldy basement and stretching our food stamps while listening to Les Rallizes Denudes and DJ Screw. Lowering property values, imitating Mason Family antics, hanging with a brindle pit----Malibu Falcon has some crazy lyrics that maybe I wouldn't include here in case my dad googles me. I don't have this cassette quite yet but it should be here pretty soon.

I also have copies of the Grouper/Inca Ore split on CD and vinyl (pluot embodiment) and the retrospective of my old band Alarmist (it's like a persimmon). Each member of the band made some solo music for this four-way split----Argumentix, Tunnels, Ghost to Falco and Inca Ore. I also have a few copies of the Inca Ore/Secret Abuse split on Not Not Fun, which I think is like a mangosteen. You can email me at incaore@gmail.com if you're interested in any of these.

Also, I have just finally finished my new Inca Ore album SILVER SEA SURFER SCHOOL, which is super up-front and emotional and maybe exactly what you wouldn't expect---that's also my JOB. It will be released by Not Not Fun and Acuarela in the fall. I have to let this fruit ripen before I tell you its flavor.

Marriage Records is a new home for me too, so happily, as Adam from White Rainbow and Honey from Valet and I have made a dub album and they will release it hopefully really soon! I need to call in some overdubs tonight. Our group is called We Like Cats and the album is titled PROPER EATS!!!! Head out to some Portland party times for a sonic sneak peek. This album has a fruit embodiment but I think it's like a whole papaya tree that a tiger sharpened its claws on and all the fruits fell down. I feel HIGH.

Below is me and my idol Saul Bindeman. I miss him.

Please come over to 3960 NE 6th tomorrow July 5th.
Potluck at 3 pm
Show at 5 pm
featuring
Inca Ore
Pete Swanson
Wraith (Ashby and Nick)
Foque Mopus

So much news to offer, but it's party time!
Talk to ya later.