Uh, look...

I don't know if you all got that last one. It's a joke only for people with senses of humour that enjoy dressing like pirates. (no, not for finely humour-tuned people who like to dress up as pirates. Yes, for people whose senses of humour like to dress like pirates. I knew you'd get it, Charlie.)

Hey, it's my last day in Madison for a while and my last day with my beloved computar, Complexoid B. I do love this machine, because - let's face it - I'm a little bit of a computer addict. But, all justified, my computer DOES give my my daily dose of music day in and day out, PLUS a way to talk to all my dudes and dudettes. Even more than that, it lets me draw some pretty wackin' weird drawings for my good friends, The Side Order.

Actually, I could probably ramble off like that for a LONG time. Complexoid B is what I've done all this blogging on for cryin' out loud! (and I do know how much every bat and bicycle loves this blog even though nobody really ever comments except Tim because he's nice.)

So, case-in-point, I'll probably miss Madison, but I think that reasonably speaking The BIG EC will have it's benefits. Really the trade-off is about the same. I wanna get the hell out of this damn dorm and eat real food.
Seriously.
There is almost nobody on my wing and I've been taking finals for nearly a WEEK. Do you know how long that is? It's about long enough to build a small Aztec-style pyramid, sacrifice several people, memorize the english dictionary, eat a half-barrell of rice-o-roni (although realistically you could do the two previous ones simultaneously), run halfway around the equator of the earth, dissmiss the digested rice-o-roni from your body, and blow your nose.

THAT's A LONG TIME.

Okay, I think we're done with that line of thought, then. I was going to delight Ammar and Atun with a fresh pot of coffee on the day or our daughters wed... uh, the day of our last final, so I better get on that. Captain, you take over for a while.

CAPTAIN: "Captain's log: stardate 12/23/04: I sit at Davyd's computer, aimlessly filling blank space. The ship is travelling through gamma quadrant... yeah, bleep, bloop... who wants to talk about that boring shit anyway? Guess what is REALLY on the captain's mind. Yup you got it. PICKLED FOOD. Seriously. I love it. The CAPTAIN LOVES HIS PICKLED FOOD. Herrings, Eggs, Pigs Feet... pretty much anything that is as succulent as that when pickled, I'll eat. The only pickled thing I have distain for? Well, little junior space-cadets, it's pickles. They soil the name pickle. I mean couldn't they thought of something better to soak in brine? Like MAYONAISE, guys? I always wanted pickled MAYONAISE, but NOOOOOOOO... they had to make the damn pickle...."

Davyd: Okay, captain, that's quite enough.

Captain: You haven't even begun to hear me ramble on about what I was rambling about!!!!!

Davyd: Go back to your little box-like house, please.

Captain: Oh, okay, Mr. Grand High Commander, sir... what EVER you SAY. Bllllllllll......... (in case you were wondering, that was him sticking his tounge out at me... I just can't think of a better way to notate that noise than all consonants.)

Westward won and back we run.

Welstred, the commoner - Lord Sigmus of Realms Berated

We'd like to start off by listing a NEW LIST OF THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY™.

• Being a fan (of Phish, StoneFloat and The Big Wu in particular, but pretty much of any band...)

• Seeing the complexities and beauties around me (see the post on The Sharpened Eye below)

• Really, really cold weather that bites your face... (the extreme notion being the frosty-beard effect)

• Plants. Yeah, pretty much. I love them and taking care of them.

• EXERTING CREATIVE ENERGIES! (This blog being one of them, my ongoing musical notions one of the multiple others...)

• Wacky conversations. (These can be witty or just plain bizarre... time travel and waffles)

• Seeing family and friends that I haven't seen for a long time. (I'm looking forward to break, folks, let's be frank.)

There are a lot more, maybe I'll share later. Maybe not.


Phish is a group of people I ultimately admire. They're a group of people that have really given me a formation for much of my creativities... they've not only helped to sculpt my inclinations towards good music, but have taken humour towards life and creativity and given it a viable excuse in music. It's delightful, happy stuff with an unquenchable sort of nature to it. There is no real way to put it out. The music really just goes on and on and I'm pretty sure that if the band wanted to they could resume the music at any time they pleased. Bottom line - they make me feel awesome.

It is no wonder, then, that I have researched the history of the band in depth. I know the ins and outs... but most of all, I appreciate the early days of the band when it was mostly just a spinnning shape of notes and rhythms. But today, I got a show that means more to me than any show I got in the past.


The place... the grassy space inbetween Wilkes, Davis, and Wing dormitories at the University of Vermont. The date - May 3rd, 1985... one exactly year before I was born. (My pre-birthday you could say.... I was exactly -1 years old) It's suprising that the date didn't catch my eye at first.... it was the year that stood out, in fact. It stood out as the earliest recorded show in circulation that I have ever seen. (I had always thought that an '87 show at Nectar's in Burlington had been the earliest in common circulation and in MP3 format) The actual show was on an "end-of-the-year BBQ" for the three dorms... almost comical stature for a band that just this year played a festival for over 50,000 people.

As if that wasn't enough, this is also a moment of "Genesis" (with a capital G) for the band and it's sound. Before this point, the band had played with Jeff Holdsworth the rhythm guitarist for early Phish, but hadn't discovered Page McConnell, the mighty keyboardist who would become such an integral part of the band's sound. It is in fact THIS show that Page first plays with the band, sitting in for the latter half of the set. I was struck because I couldn't hear the keys on the beginning of the show and when Trey introduces Page as a suprise I nearly fell off my chair. What could be better for me, the early days buff, than to have in my posession the inagural moments of our beloved Leo?

Yeah. (*insert laughter of ten thousand people here*)

• Pancakes with apples in them?

Write me a scram-jet program please. Send it to my e-mail or send it to my little room suspended in the Madison air or send it to the house that I only live in when I'm not at school but like quite a lot. That would be cool because scram-jets are pretty cool and I have several uses for that sort of program.

I tried to play my acoustic guitar on top of Bascom hill all bundled up in the 0º weather tonight at 11:45ish, but I realized that to grasp the pick and strum without muting the strings was pretty hard, even with my bum gloves on. Soon after that I got frostbite on both of my legs and they snapped off and so I sold them to a butcher who made sausage out of them. I used the money to buy myself the vintage amplifier I've always wanted and paid off the rest of my college. (Hey, legs are a rare commodity, okay?!?)

(*insert monkey and steamship noises here*)

Whistle a little for me. I'll hear you wherever you are. Do it and I'll say, "Wow, now if that isn't some fine whistling. Thank you for doing that." If you can't whistle, don't worry, you can always snap your fingers or something. Humming is good, too. Pretty much anything that you do that makes just a little pleasant noise, I'll absorb it into me and when I've collected enough, I'll secrete it out and collect it in a small flask. I'm pretty sure that the secreted whistlings of friends are some sort of magical species or something.... good for healing things. That would be pretty cool.

Not really related to that topic is my favorite lovely idea for people in a mostly surrealistic sense. I believe that I will begin to simple store objects inside my body and grow them out of my torso whenever I need them. When I want to put them away I simply touch it back to my body and it absorbs back inside of my body. This is convenient because if I need a cup for drinking out of I can simply grow it out of my body and don't have to worry about cleaning it because it is clean when I absorb it back in anyway. Pencil dull? No problem... reconstitute it and then grow it out again... fresh as ever and never a nicer eraser (let me tell you)!

(*black and white lines that stretch off into both the positive x and negative y directions*)

Trey is peeking over my computer. Goodnight Trey.

There will be pie at midnight.... no, seriously, that can't be right, Bruce.

First off, there is nobody I REALLY know named Bruce. However, whenever I hear the name Bruce I can only think of a guy my Dad used to work with. It's strange that of all the people named Bruce in the world (and let me assure you, there are multitudes of Bruces out there...) that this guy would be the one that I associate the combination of five letters with.

Okay. But, seriously, that wasn't my point.

The real idea was to articulate on several of my good plans. (look sort of impish when you read this, and get your pointy teeth out and rub your hands together a lot.)

1.) I have always had a fancy for the paradox of communication. We humans have such a love for speaking, yet we are always stepping on the toes of communication like awkward dancers. Sometimes, though, we're purposely malicious. Cutting toes off with crusty butter knife malicious.

Take for instance our practices of advertising. Commercials are noise and random lights flashing. They convey information that has no use to the viewer realistically, yet are still figured as "communication" in a sort of twisted sense.

So, in fairness, I've started to do the same. It is my new passion to take part in "communication" with fellow humans with only a few hitches. We say as much as possible and try to convey next to nothing. If nothing more than a method to crack smiles, this is a pretty darn good way to hit idiots in marketing with the blunt end of the language stick when they aren't looking.

I suggest you try it. It's reasonably entertaining, and who can resist a conversation about navels and washers. I can't.
(I also know that using a quote from AIM really isn't cool, but this is my best example....)

11:47:53 simonpiler: Let's transfer information through communication, okay??
11:48:04 bjhboarder: okay
11:48:30 bjhboarder: go
11:48:41 bjhboarder: heh
11:49:29 simonpiler: I have a navel that is not olive green and I live in a building that is approximately on the order of 1x10^2 feet tall.
11:50:44 bjhboarder: My fridge has approximately one half of one half of a gallon of apple cider in it. I also currently have Four washers and a bolt sitting on my desk.
11:52:29 simonpiler: I create a gas that weighs more than vaporous water when I breathe and when the sun shines really brightly I sneeze, expelling small particulate masses of saliva into the general atmosphere.
11:52:41 simonpiler: Seriously.
11:55:16 bjhboarder: Harvest grain Sunchips® are good, Textbook returns are bad. Don't mess with Ray Allen. He is playing the best basketball of his life this season.
11:55:55 simonpiler: I won't. I eat the matured flowers of trees and sometimes the condensed sap of trees, but I am generally regarded as strange when I take the ground, bleached, and re-pressed structural cells of these organisms and attempt to consume them.
11:57:17 bjhboarder: You can purchase your own gold edition, autographed Bernie Worrell Bobblehead from www.Bernieworrell.com, but you can't make me eat it.
11:58:01 simonpiler: I once was walking in the wintertime and the overall temperature of my general location indicated that there was not much kinetic energy in the air and when I breathed my little grotesque facial appendage/beard was coated in a layer of frost.


As you can see, Bundy and I are both actually saying things that make sense. It's not nonsensical.... more of just logistically inaccurate. There are other good ones, too. I won't go on, though, you get the picture.

2.) Sure... the next project is one that doesn't involve endives or pencil-erasers or anything with sec(x) in it. (Even though in my opinon sec x is just some mathematician's cruel subliminal messaging trick... you try writing it 50 times as an exponent without writing sex once. Seriously, you can't do it and do math at the same time.)

I've always liked the feeling of extracting something useful from more complicated and rough components. I've dug clay... ...yeah... and stuff like that. But I'd like to get some more organic syththesis going on by using steam distillation to produce and separate out the oil of juniper berries.

Why, you ask? The aroma is immesurably calming and very fragrant. It's unlike any other conifer I've ever wafted... fruity and "piney" at the same time. So, yup... that's project #2.

3.) MUSIC.
I've been crackin' at my solo guitar stuff for a while now and I'm beginning to really like what I'm getting... however, I would like to move into a larger competency with lead work and delay looping. I've done some exciting electronic magic with an effect called "automatic filter" - it works out very well, but there are still some tweaks to figure.

Okay, punch line: #3 was basically to let "the crowd" know about my demo CD that I'm putting out, "Twenty-one Musician". It's under my pseudo-pen-name, "Simon Piler" and is pretty damn good listening for $1. Realistically, I'll give it to you for free, but I'd like to at least be able to partially pay for the CD's I use to burn with. Just e-mail me or talk to me when I'm home or send me a letter, and I WILL get you the CD... I have the means, worry not.

That's all.


1, 2, 3....

99 songs that don't start with the letter ∂ and one that does...

flowpoetrythegoldenclawsbynightyouenjoymyslefgrindambie
nceofdormroomlettertojimmypage∂wah∂uyarfluffstravelsthe
horseihavenoideaseventimetwosilverstringstrumthehorsesat
iationstationscentsandsubtlesoundsintroihavenoideaacoustic
thetonaldisagreementtomorrowssongrooftopiamtheseadogf
acedboytuliptimereprisetreeplantingpeglegfikusintothewildca
rstrucksbusesidahooutofgastrainsongcalculatorsongtweezer
elijahcomebygoodtimesbadtimesbustedbicyclepoorhearttheb
oltonstretchquinntheeskimoiftheresstillramblinintherambler9
0milesmossycowsnowonthepinesorionsbeltherecomethebast
ardsaftermaththelandladymentalbreakdownminkintheclassica
lthememyrubberbandlongitudetakebacktalkatthegazebobitter
bluefriendofthedevilclinchmountainbackstepfluffheadrosesth
esweetsunnysouthfluffheadonthephoneiwannarideyouraydaw
nballoonwillowtreelimbbylimbroughneckbluesllamaeasyaspie
ethersundaydinnerandamoviehampshumpblackeyespeasilcant
urnitovahouseofwurestlesswind40milesfromdenverfreeoneang
rydwarfand200solidfacesofyoughostheenttothebogtuliptimepi
ratesongjackaroocharacterzerothegroomsstillwaitingatthealtar
scentofamuleheartcooksbrainpamelabrownwonderboycaseyjon
essomuchtosaybluegrassbreakdowntastewedgedownwithdisea
seconvenientparkingacdcbageverythinginitsrightpl ace.

WOW. I am explicitly and implicitly excited about this.

Poemtrees

Wave break.
Break on the sand right there where I point my finger.

Longer than a peice of string that Archimedes used to measure the earth.
Longer than the nose that causes laughter in the movies.

Cloud crack.
Crack.
Mirror ripples in the distance.
I know only three things. I break even on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

Mildly confused.
Fractured, melted, recollected.

~

Drink.
Lift that cup to lip,
Drinking from tipped, sipped.

Ride far in arc of sun,
untie the soul and let it run.

Mirror. Sharpened Eye.
Take aim and loose arrow through the sway of his path.
To dusk
and twilight.

River flowing, syrup and haze is cast
on drenching dew.

Pull draught to parched tongue.
Cupped hands in mountain stream.
Emerald jade and crisp,
so delightful to cleanse the soul again.

Stand up and creaking boughs
bones to arc in familiar shapes
so rough against the stars.
Muffled blue,
cricket hopping, chirping, stopping.
Silence and liquid frost creaping.

~

Here's one I'm particularly jazzed about!

~

I make people from air.
I make people from water.
I make water from parts of bugs and holes that have collected ovet the years in my closets.

I make avenues with rain.
Bend hammers, liquid such that into each other completing circles with rivulets of vapour and steam.
I make magic and people gaze into it.

Look at plate glass.
Look at liars.
Look at policemen.
Look at dreams.

Draw together lives and music of flutes.
Draw together mothers and children and people who are walking but have no place to sleep.

Draw together moonlight and faint odours of home caught on foreign breezes.

Cry on the sidewalk.
Make little rivers.

I make seismic revolutions - waves breaking on distant shores.
I make candy for children with hair on only one half of their body.
I make light, the atmosphere, droplets suspended until you wake up damp and cold in your old plastic pup tent on the corner of 5th and main on the Saturday after next.

I make a person out of words,
A dream out of rivers,
tick tock sunrise out of meat and ravioli.

I can count to numbers higher than you could imagine.

~

Make me.
Take THAT brick,
dense crimson clay.

Take THAT rock,
granite pumice basalt.
wise-ass.

Bring to skin.
Break, bite, bend.

Don't hold back.
If you think I'll soothe you anymore, you've been fooled.

There is so salve for a wound of this nature.
Let's chew on each other's faces.
Noses.

Grow long claws and eyes for poking.
Then I will finally sleep well at night.

~

HEY HEY! (Russian Dance)

~

We are the mirage people.
Propelled in wafting states of mind

The sands that stretch to distant azimuth.
The blare-white sun.
A breath on tent flap.
A rattle, shake and stirring wake of dune.
A sky so lost... depth is no factor here.

Walk onwards,
one after other,
walk onwards,
timing seconds, but never knowing which could be the last.

Crumple.
Broken people are this earth.
Recycled, recomposed, and relieved.
Alight to the sands, sons!
Arise and rejoice, daughters!
We are the wind's people,
the borrowers of light!
The mind is no toy of our hands,
we live for every drop from the water skin,
every dew-fire gem of the morning.

~

YUP. that about says it.

Okay... that was sorta cool, eh, Jim?

Mark this spot right now.









I want more than anything to mark the earth with my triangles from Sharpened Eye. The Sharpened Eye can see all of the mirrors and complexes of the triumphant earth and with it we call up vertexes to form a greater understanding of the world we live in.

The Sharpened Eye is a state of pure feeling... not a state of mind or a way of looking at the world. Health teachers and councilors and all the people who deem it upon themselves to take the depressed and the crumpled and realign them to create a better society dreamed up perspective. If you look long enough the arcs and the beauties of what is called the "mundane" begin to show themselves. Inside of the body there grows a newer feeling of life and of living and of breathing air and of seeing pattern and shape in the world around the body and in the smooth, flowing shape of the body.

Look out your window right now.



Did you see color? Did you see shape and line? These are the fundamentals of The Sharpened Eye. With vison comes a source of uttmost bliss and freedom. Let your mind clear, and drain like tank water full to the brim and empty out. Then, look out the window again.

This time, REALIZE. Every person has The Sharpened Eye inside, just some bury it away and don't practice it and it is weak and wobbles unstable and blurry when they try to use it. REALIZE everything you see. Continue EVERY line into the infinite distances it proposes, meld colors and shapes together, break them apart. Let your eye fall on the brightest and then stop and blink it away. Focus on one thing, then feel how the entire world bends and bows around that one thing and be delighted.

I do not mean to sound like some instructor or drill master or specialty source of things. I would rather like that my friends and the ones that I feel close to could feel the way that I have been so lucky to uncover in my time here in this whorling cloud of shapes and color and emotion. I want every person to gain the way to beauty and discovery. Most of all I want to explain.

And as of right now, no explainations for the heat of passion that this world embraces have been discovered. The binding spiraling trusses of the innermost energies of this planet and this universe that go off and dance in some distant place far from where my eye lands have meaning and order and a trigger of light and sound that march off my ears and eyes as I compose these words.

To feel truly amazing, I would like to involve the transformations of objects and colours over time into my daily life with more effect and reason. Humans treasure powerful sunsets and watching fires.... this is the beginning of what I wish, but to realize these things from hour to hour with a clarity that is reserved for sunset watchings is something that few have been able to maintain.

In the light of observation, I must also mention the absolute beauty of sound and of how it marks my life as much as the passions bound in vison. Ambiences grace our lives, but we do not care to capture and savour them. I ask you next time you go to a crowded place to close the eyes for a moment and drink in the sea of sound that glows around you. In this sense, vision is almost as powerful, the lack of color and shape... yet still graced with the visionary inflections of shape and colour your eyes produce against closed lid are amazing.

I must also profess my love for music. In it's loom I find such peace... from it's cloth myself and others are healed and supported, and most of all... we are subjected to the imagination and power associated emotion that is tied to the notes of music. This is incredibly relieving to me, personally, that humans can touch their fellow humans so deeply... even though it may be only a few individuals who accomplish this with the grace and bliss of The Sharpened Eye.

Milestone. Warp and weft, milestone. Makeshift. Marker and plotted neatly. 10 inches long, but no longer dreaming.

Synax Snakcs

Whenever. This while machine. This while machine.

Yes, yes, of course, they say. They say of course and blink their eyes, flaps of skin melting, melding. They blink, bat, and whites to bend and bow, break and send waves out over the desert.

We respond, utilize. We respond and in the mist that slowly leaks from lips new lives are formed and new lives are slowly created in the abcess of mist and light that is inbetween all of the particles that make up the mist.

Milestone, marker.

Welders and of that sort, we write. OF THAT SOUR SORT WE SORELY SAY: make machines make machines make machines make machines, repeat. Make machines and make clouds where humans make more humans to make machines and clouds to make more humans and machines and clouds and the hammer flies off into outer space.

It spins. Don't question that. Don't shed any tears, don't mildly, meakly write to them, don't imagine christmas lights or weak juniper smells. Don't live that way, don't live.