12,946. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,105

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,105

(a few things : 'if stones were soft pillows')

I've always disliked people

who sang other people's songs

and gave them the over-the-top

performances, with emotion

and grimace and all, as if they

themselves had written it. It

all made me want to say, 'Stop.

This is not your song, and these

are not your words, nor are they

that particularly universal.' But

it continually goes on. The world

of entertainment, thereby, gets

filled with a greasy falsity. Maybe

if I gave out whiskey to everyone

no one would NOT notice the

things that bother me. As in a

chorus into which a few falsetto

voices are implanted, the ears

will hear the strange differences

but not be quite able to pick out

from where. My trouble is in my

voice, being loud and low, giving

itself out so egregiously. Like the

bowl, I then get the punch.

-

I was reading today an long essay

that said 'Cities are not permanent.'

For once I agreed with something!

Look at Detroit, if you can find it;

or watch NYC and Philadelphia

fading away. Back in the 1980's,

Detroit was losing 30,000 people

a year, and that went on for a ten

year count. 300,000 people, upped

and gone. Texas newspapers were

being sold on the street, hawked,

for their availability of jobs, in

Texas. The two largest beneficiaries

of the transplants? San Antonio,

and San Diego (CA); all the while,

 in the same period of 10 years, NYC

lost some 825,000 people. Yes, cities

are not permanent. But neither are they

evanescent. It's called flux. Ebb and

flow. But it's always amazing anyway.

Entire ways of life and manufacturing

bases have removed themselves, been

removed, or become simply obsolete.

Corporations followed their own dollars,

and people were relegated to their

own nothingnesses, Dead cities, small

and pathetic old mill towns, all the

Rahways and Plainfields of the

raggedy old mind.

-

You have to wonder about things. 

Like, 'Who makes irons anymore?'

Just as a for instance. Back in the 1950's

a person could buy a good iron, for

clothing, with a steam-spray and the

whole bit, for $12.95, maybe right up

to $17.00. I can't recall what companies

made them, but I recall them well  -

that cool electric cord they had, with

the fiber covering and some odd

pattern of black and white or

whatever. No one makes irons any

longer  -  not that there are still even

clothes to iron with. If they are made

anywhere, they're Asian cheapos,

serving the same purpose and probably

made for 3 dollars. Corporations just

somewhere along the way decided

they'd be better off walking; taking 

their manufactures and going east, 

way east, for 10 cents on a dollar 

what it cost here. Thus did cities

flounder, people losing jobs, all those

small shops and lofts and clothing 

places just dribbling away. It's

too hard to balance all those old

figures and say you come up with

a count or a solution or a rationale.

Behind everything is a lie.

-

I get pretty tired of people claiming

they are hurting and all the while

misrepresenting all the crap they

think they see. Lots of people are

hurting, sure, and there's sadness and

sorrow of some new kind ever 15 

minutes if you look for it. This

country has been turned ass-inside-

out and if you so much as dare to

bring it up, you're cooked. Municipal

bullshit, state bullshit, mandates, Bucky

Beaver governors prattling on, drunk-

fuck mayors pretending to be safe

behind their walls of illogic. And all

in a row everyone buys it, bites it,

gets in line with it, and just marches

along. That's where those numbers

come from, and that's where and how

cities wither. A million small deaths.

Fat-laced marauders ignoring rules

and process and instead getting their

knifepoint, asinine. demands granted 

and no regard to the consequences.

NO lives matter, when you come 

right down to it. Except the ones who

ruin cities. We're all stinking graffiti 

now on some floating raft of debris.
The only things that matter are the
whims of Governance, and how YOU
and I can be used and exploited and,
in so many of today's pathetic
examples, not even realize it.

-

If stones were soft pillows, no one

would get hurt. They're not, and as

it now stands I hope, from top to 

bottom they all get their heads 

cracked. A long time ago there

was a 1978 rock song by some

friend of mine's friend, out in 

California. It was a pun, sort of, 

a double play on words, about the

supposed-then wonders of how 

grand the wonderful Chinese

Communist system took care 

of everyone  -  in the benevolent

sense, not the way of death sense.

It went 'Everybody works in

China; from the old man down to

the miner.' [Or 'minor,' depending

on how you wished to hear it, age

or occupation. Child exploitation 
anyone?]. The song was bullshit

then, and is worse bullshit now, 

but I won't speak ill of the dead.

Mao is dead, and so is my friend.