Souvenier of Self Preservation

Know What You Look Like Drunk

Before another Friday night sipping on the alcoholic nectar of life, do yourself a favor and stay home, get drunk, and check yourself out in front of the mirror occasionally, that is unless you are going to see Machines are People Too at The Exit In, if that is the case, go get nasty with Brian and the boys.  Drinking alone is sort of depressing, but not this time.  This time it should be more like an experiment into your future.  Potential chances to correct something you may regret next time you are out.  It sounds weird right, but it will do you a world of good next time you go out and want to avoid that face you make in all those untagged pictures.  Some people don’t look good drunk and you need to know this because it could be you.

The Red Octupus

Rock-a-Ways Beach – The sun begins to set on the crusted rim of Brooklyn and the gutter boys and girls gather around a stage layered in domesticated tools of audio experimentation. Like an invasive scare about to open and leak southern melodies along the sun stained faded boardwalk, a crowd of young people dressed in truck driver swag meets Hawaii Five- Oh fashion have wondered from the nuclear blue ocean, and over the boardwalk, recognizing a stir that speaks to their mixture of savage and sexual nature. A tribe with no ranks but with free living idols has gathered in a nook of the boardwalk, not blocked off by ropes or chains but sequestered by the string of stairs of those who don't stop, to see and hear Nashville's JEFF the Brotherhood.  But this tribe does not share a common ideal or tattoo or habit for vice (most of us have a few of our own and we don't like to share), only a common lust for a sound to accompany their lives as individuals trying to make this industrial world a little more like the Tropics   As the lines for booze and food rap around the outer edges and the oval crowd and the salt and sun sticks red to the slurred movements, giving red necks to northern articulations, a hush falls off the ocean and unto the crowd. One man stands apart from the rest. From yards below he walks out of the ocean like a Red Octopus,  a guitar attached to his chest, and a look of blitzed concentration in his eyes, ready to further feed after the show on the carcass that stained his trunks.

The crowd parts as he climbs onto stage and leaves his eight legs behind . Besides for being the center of attention on stage, the brothers are easy to spot out among the crowd. They don't seem to know a thing about New York fashion but in swimsuits and no shirts they are the most fashionable of them all.   As the first song begins,  a fast paced fifties era grunge tune that Buddy Holiday would enjoy getting stoned to, the beer lines empty and all eyes are on the duo.

 "The next forty minutes were physical proof that southern music belongs everywhere under the sun." one stranger said into his suds.  As the light eventually retreated toward the horizon, the brothers finish up their set, and the crowd begins to clear, and as from the nowhere from that they came, they vanish into the night, toward Brooklyn hideouts to "rest" before making the trip back home toward the poetic hills of Tennessee.  

The boys will be playing at the Exit in in Nashville, TN, on August 17th before starting a tour of the East Coast.  If you are able to experience JEFF the Brotherhood, get your ass to a show and instead of pregaming it at home, stuff your back pockets with all the fixing, because from what i can tell they play when they want and that is at every chance they can get. 

A Southerners Guide to a Night in New York City

There are guidelines to follow for a southerner entering New York City for the first time. These guidelines, unlisted but tested, represent unspoken rules of self preservation that when broken, even if done casually and in good humor, lead to dire and often brutal consequences. In a place as heated and alive as New York City,  innocence is no excuse for ignorance.

Below are 5 rules to remember when traveling to New York City for the first time. The consequences of misidentifying  these unspoken rules of engagement are merciless, painful, and unrelenting, and even in a place as cool and as breath taking as New York City,  where even the most difficult task is done in style, punishments are as obstinate as the skyline itself and as varied as the people below it. These rules are also malleable and it is not where they land in your path but how hard you push when you meet the amalgamation of the whole.

Rule number 1

Don't Piss Off the Person That is Giving You a Place to Stay

This rule may seem easy to follow but booze and a new town can make even a self proclaimed southern gentlemen a difficulty to deal with. If your southern charm and Tennessee ways get you into trouble don't blame the drinks for being difficult. Blame the city, the lights, and the people. When there is a new galaxy to explore, manners can sometimes get lost in the deep end.

In an homage to prudence, if someone is letting you stay at their house free of charge, it is important to digest what that person considers politeness, especially for a house guest, and keep your verbal diet updated.  Use their version of polite and don't make up your own sequel especially if this directorial debut into a conversation with this person includes the emotional hair trigger topics of life or love.  Even though you think you are right, and you probably are, keep your mouth shut and have a smoke. If you feel like handing out drunken lessons from the bowels of love, relationships, and the imbecilic notion that a group of new graduates would want to go to a college bar on their first night in town ( It is fucking New York City), it may be best to wait till morning. All is well that ends, between drinking and walking away from fraternity toddlers and their withering sorority concubines, I pissed off the girl that was giving us a place to stay. This leads into rule number 2.

Rule Number 2

If you sleep in the park wait till daylight to lie down

This rule is potentially the most important because its disobedience includes rape, murder, and sexual acts to gruesome to be mentioned. But these outcomes can be unfortunate events true of disobedience to any of the rules above or below. It's really quite simple. If you find yourself at sunrise in New York City without a room to hide in and rest is all you have left, begin to look for a park; small, grassy, near a quiet cross street, and at best close to a business that sees vagrants that need a restroom and free ice water as potential customers. Starbucks is a good choice.

At about 8 o clock in the morning, when the sun arks over the highest concrete reaches and spills into the deepest ruts and wrinkles of the city, the park becomes an invisible shore where even the most tired ship wrecks can wash up upon, out of sight from the concrete sea around it. At this hour, I recommend lying on your back and pushing your body down into the grass under a shade tree, create an indentation in the Earth and feel the subway rumble underneath the ground and try to rest  When you wake up it is time to start moving. Get coffee and breakfast.

Rule number 3

Only Tourists Wait in Lines

New York is a fast paced town and only tourists have the time to wait in line. In my opinion even tourists should have some respect for an area as well as its economy and not act so touristy.  Put the camera down and make a move. It's time to say hello to natures most admirable achievement. Save the Utopian scrap heap of the park for another night and take yourself to any boro of your choosing. Look at the people before you begin to look up at the buildings. Once you raise your head and witness human's achievement of architectural mastery there is no going back. Just face it that people are pretty boring unless you stop to get to know them, but give strangers a chance and keep walking. (The relationship between New Yorkers and cloths could be studied for years) The best sites to see are those secret places lucky to not be noticed by the creators of guide books and tourist maps. Most sights that are listed for tourists to check out are historically  interesting with a unique New York energy and feel but through over crowding and lines this electrical buzz is disseminated much too thin to be felt.  

Exit the line now and for the rest of your life and pull out a GPS and get moving, there are a few things to see and lots to experience. Think of what you would like to see, type it in and get moving. Explore the depths of the park and bring a blanket. Take the subway across town and back again. Go to the top floor of a building where your restricted to be. And when night begins to show its self,  eat out in a small hamlet in any village of your choosing. Bring cigarettes, because they are expensive as heaven and always keep your mind on not wanting more while experiencing everything. Sometimes lines are going to be in your way and not everyone is going to have the name or money to go straight to the front. Find someone interesting near by and make a stranger a friend. And if the person is boring look to another. A line is only a line when it is related to time.  That's at least what my grandma always said.  I think it means forget time and enjoy the space time fills.  I'm not real sure though.

Rule Number 4

Being Passive Aggressive Does Not Fly

Asking for something means nothing unless you plan on getting it. In the South being subtle has its charm as well as a ring side seat always partly in play, coaching from off screen or whispering sweet nothings to the bikini glad women who announces the coming of a new round. But in New York City the proverbial gloves are off lying somewhere on the floor, speckled with staples, lingering paper, and chewed gum the color of vomit.  The most important part of this rule is if you have never been in a fight then get into one before going to New York. A city that size is not a training ground. It is an arena with blood stains ten floors deep and ninety stories high. If there is something you want in New York City go and get it, if not move to the Mid West.

If you are not a fighter, as I am not, focus on what you want and use your head to get it. Empathy is a great trend setter. I think the ration is 20:1.  One out of this crowd will know how to get what you want and it is alright to find that person. You can also be that person but that will come later.  To find a diamond in the rough draw some attention to yourself so that your intentions are clear..But unless your a magician, don't stand out to much,  you can't afford to get much done under that sort of surveillance. For us peace makers and reasonable individuals, which a suspect you are, the last and final step is a calculated leap of faith.

Rule Number 5:

Know which rules are OK to be broken

Lastly, make sure to use cross walks and crossing lights as suggestions instead of laws.  Most of us are not rats for Christ sake.  Your not going to make it anywhere if you rely on painted lines and blinking pictures of little men to tell you where and when to go.  (Are those signals sexist?). You have to use your instinct and take chances and hope the cab driver that is about to hit you ate his protein that morning and stops before shattering your knees. Be smart as you can be.  Make up your own rules and follow those that apply to you.  There are far to many opinions walking along the roads and living in buildings, and driving along to have to pick and choose which ones to use as your own. 

These are some rules to live by. I am interested in the rules you think I left out. Please share...

The Note

“Alfie, would you like to kiss after school today?” She leaned in not noticing her lower lip was quivering, brandishing her shy demeanor as innocent, casual and elegant, at the prospect of having her first kiss be with the only boy in the fifth grade who openly had emitted kissing a girl on the mouth during summer vacation.. He had never made the claim himself, at least not outside of his circle but boys would talk, portraying their curious understanding of the intimacies of adulthood through causal humor, unwittingly taking on the roles of vulgar caricatures of men, innocent and lonely. Yet even if the kiss was untrue, everyone assumed and desired a version of his sough after guilt.

“OK” , he said catching himself flustered between surprise and tension. Scarlett's appearance at her locker, the rusty square above his, had never conceived this prospect before, turning to meet her brown eyes “When.” He asked gaining his boyhood composure and wiping the sentiment of sensitivity back into the corner of his locker as the rusted bucket closed with a SNAP. He looked about the empty hall, the clock and the stained tile, watching as the dark shadows emptied into the lighted doorways and disappeared.

“Now! Meet me outside next to the bleachers,” Scarlette said with uncompromising matronly absoluteness.

“Ok! But,” pausing a moment to reach into the cognitive shallow waters of his memory. “I can't today, I have detention.”

“Alfie you are always getting yourself into trouble.”

“That is why you like me.”

“No it is not,”she said flirtatiously. She laughed with a charming greeting toward her corruption for further repertoire but Alfie's lack of certainty into the causal signals of the girls in his class kept him silent.

“What did you do this time?”

“I skipped Miss Eve's class yesterday.”

“I will bring you a note saying you were sick all day yesterday and left early so you could get back to your mama. Meet me outside on the steps."

Scarlet quickly unfolded her notebook and sifted out a clean sheet of lined paper. She balanced the end of the folder on the cap of her knee, propped horizontally against the lockers and wrote the forged note quickly and with artisan care.  It was not painful for Scarlet to lie forging the note, but instead she felt courageous as the means and end became subjectively intertwined, and her explorations of intimacy could begin.   As her hair fell off her shoulder and Alfie hurried to detention the rest of the hallway also cleared. Scarlet, determined to get her kiss and her boy, walked into Miss Eve's classroom. The door was propped open, lessening the commotion that would have transpired if she had had to enter the world inside the class room through an opening frame, turning the heads of the uniformed class as if there heads had all been connected to the corners of the door by strings, diverting that process and saving it for another girl at the end of another day.

“Can I help you Scarlet,” Miss Eve said smiling. “I know you are not on the list to stay after school today.”

“Not but Alfie's mother asked me to bring this note to you, she forgot to give it to Alfie this morning and when she stopped by the school no one was in the office, but she saw me at my locker and asked me to give it to you”

“Is that right?”

“Yes mam” Scarlet drew the note from her pocket

“Would you please unfold it?”

Scarlet unfolded the note gently as if a piece of art had been discovered in the earth and she had been the anthropologist to discover it. Once dissembled, each wrinkle folded over long then lines that fell off the page, Scarlet noticed the flaw of her plan and with stark unintelligible urgency retracted. She saw that instead of signing Alfie's mother's name at the bottom of the page she had written her own, Scarlet Walker written in her perfect and newly acquired anatomy of penmanship, cursive.

“Oh wait,” she said as she suddenly retracted the effort to hand out the leaf of paper, coiling back her hand like an electronic whip hung back on her black frame. The turned around quickly. “Alfie's Mom put the wrong date on here, I will fix it. Since, she sent me with the note, it would be my fault if I did not fix it for her.”

“May I begin Miss Scarlet,” said the smiling teacher.

“Yes mam, don't mind me.” Scarlet in one solid motion took out a clean sheet of paper, propped her leg against the invisible air and began writing the note over again, paying special attention so that more then just her cursive was perfect.

Miss Eve swayed her hinges, shifting the weight from one heal to the other, reaching her desk just as Scarlet was putting the final touches on the note. “You are not writing a novel now are you dear?” She said turning around, the couple students who sat in the classroom snickered at the much needed entertainment of watching something other then Miss Eve against the green and white chalk board.

“Here Miss Eve” Scarlet handed her the note and turned to meet the air out side the classroom door.

“Hold up girl” Miss Eve said just as freedom and the kiss, Alfie would be waiting outside, had become near as a casual glance and two more steps.

“Scarlet I was substituting in the gym yesterday at the end of the day and I know Alfie lifted one hundred pounds for the first time because I saw him do it, now please find Alfie and both of you join me for detention.”

“Yess” Scarlet breathed in deep and ran to meet Alfie beside the school doors.