2nd epiphany of the day

Poetry is about taking you to the place of rapture. It is not about uncovering trauma, unless it is to transform that trauma into beauty.

Catching up on East Bound & Down and it has me thinking. It is the childish behavior of Kenny Powers that makes the show fun to watch. Yet the behavior leads to hard learned lessons, to redemption. Is every narrative arc about becoming humbled? A story allows us to live the crime, vicariously, but also doles out the punishment. It is cathartic, a way to have your cake and eat it too. In order to pull you into the story, the story has to sin, and to get you out of the story the story has to deliver you from your sins. In this way the story is a hypocrite, knowing before the fun begins where it will end. You are hooked anyway. We will go back to the story over and over. On the flip side the story allows you a glimpse into the heart of hypocrisy in all of us, leads to sympathy for the devil, and in doing so leads toward compassion. Stories are strange machines.

day book-ended by Jack White and Mozart

Woke up at 7pm and went to the gym. I fueled up and got mean on the elliptical machine. Jack White's Blunderbuss kept me cranked up. And I sweated as I ascended into a morning bliss. Then a day with the daughters and trying to hold onto their ages, Sofia 2 yrs, Lucia 5 months, and almost too much goodness to bear. Then off to teach class and saw an advertisement for a book talk happening at the same time as the class on "Zombies On Kilamanjaro". Since we read "Snows of Kilamanjaro" in class this seemed like a nice serendipity and so I took the class to the talk, which turned out to be fantastic. The author took us on a slide show, book reading, up the Mountain and the writing was so good, especially with the visuals, that the whole class took the journey with him. It is amazing how often these portals will suddenly open. Another on the way home listening to Mozart. I'm so grateful for all of them.

3 Moon morning

Triple synchronicity this morning centered around The Who, who was, in its way, centered around Keith Moon. First watching a Who documentary on Netflix, then reading Barry Fey's book (which he gave me last week when he spoke at D Note) and coming across his account of time spent with The Who and, third, a text from my brother Matthew, an article by Penn Jillette, about, in part, The Who. Read article below...

"I first saw The Who on TV. I was watching with my parents, and when Pete, Roger, and Keith started smashing their instruments, my family was appalled. We were just barely middle class. My dad was a jail guard and we lived in a nice neat little house that my parents had built with their own hands. I loved music and I had a newspaper route, and I mowed lawns. I was taking drum lessons using a practice pad, and all my money was being saved to buy a used drum set so I could join a rock and roll band. At my rate of earning, it would take me decades to afford Keith Moon's drum set and I didn't understand its destruction on TV. How could Keith do that? How could he have such little respect for music, for the TV show he was fortunate enough to be on, and for me and my family?

My parents didn't like the music or the act, but they still tried to console me. These rich rock stars just didn't understand what money meant to us common folk. Then in a flash everything changed. I started to cry. Right then something happened and I understood The Who. I understood that passion and art could be more important than money. I went from sad and disgusted to exuberant. It was the first time I had ever understood real beauty. I loved The Who. I loved rock and roll. I loved life. It was at that moment I became an artist.

I use Teller's broad definition of art -- "Whatever we do after the chores are done." There's one show business and Bach, Dylan, Ron Jeremy, and the guy at the mall in the Santa suit are all in it. By that definition The Celebrity Apprentice is art, and, for my sins, I am on it.

I've done a lot of TV, but one of my proudest moments in my career was shown this week on The Celebrity Apprentice. I didn't watch it, but I was in it. I don't know how it was edited, but I was there and it was beautiful. The Celebrity Apprentice is all about watching people argue and lie while they covet money and success. Those are the artistic ideas. Donald Trump scowls and passes judgment and we all suck up and rat out to win more time on TV and get money for our charities. The theme song is the O'Jay's "For the Love of Money," used as awkwardly as "Born in the USA" at a political rally. It's not the most likely show to have something beautiful happen, but the Blue Man Group can make beautiful anywhere.

Some of the "tasks" on the show are measured by money, so if you bring in a rich famous person to buy a sandwich for 10 grand, you have a better chance of winning. I've have been a fan and friends with Blue Man Group, since we were all working in NYC. They make my heart soar. They make me proud to work in the arts. They are the best of us. They've also got some money, so I called them, told them I was doing this TV show and did they want to donate some money to charity? They said yes before finding out what charity or how much I wanted because Blue Man Group is like that. They do charity all the time. They really deeply care about people and they do a lot for many charities. They are the best of us.

BMG asked if I wanted them to show up and do something. Oh yes, please. After weeks of sitting on "boardroom" sets pretending to do business, I really wanted something beautiful.

"Can you deliver the money in a fun way?" I asked them.

That was the problem. In the Blue Man world, money doesn't exist. For then Blue Man money means nothing. The values that they've established in their art don't include avarice. The Blue Men donate tons of money out of the blue make-up, but in it, well, they're not above money, but they're beside it. It doesn't exist. They asked me to give them some time to think of something beautiful. A couple days later they sent me a video of them filling a balloon with tens of thousands of dollars in tens and blowing it up with a leaf blower. It was beautiful and it delivered money, without the Blue Men having to respect it. It was so beautiful.

I really wanted to save their appearance and money for "my task" and my charity (Opportunity Village for people with intellectual disabilities, a charity that BMG helps a lot), but I was on Dee Snyder's team and he asked me to help with more money on his watch. I ran the idea by all our team members, the production company, and NBC. Everyone signed off. Blue Man Group would march up, with a loud parade and giant puppets and they would blow up a balloon full of money with leaf blowers and fill the air with 10-dollar bills that the Blue Man wouldn't care about. Whatever our team could gather out of the wind, we would have to score for out team. Teller would join BMG and add 30 grand of his own money, not blown around, but handed politely to our cashier, American Idol, Clay Aiken. Clay takes The Celebrity Apprentice very seriously and plays the game for all it's worth.

We were outside selling our bullshit little jive guide books (the sandwich of this week). I gave the signal, and from blocks away, we could hear the parade. BMG with their giant drums, and confetti canons were changing traffic patterns in NYC. They arrived at the park where we were set up to sell our guidebooks. My business partner for my entire adult life, Teller, was in the parade, firing streamers into the air and dancing. Teller had the eyes of Keith Moon in the Who. I had been sequestered on The Celebrity Apprentice with all the complaining, backstabbing, and phony heart to heart talks, and down the street came joy. Pure joy. Honest human joy personified by Teller and Blue Man Group. I started to cry.

They got to our stand, they exploded the balloon full of money, and suddenly the air over the park in NYC was filled with money. Blue Man Group stayed in character and just enjoyed blowing the money around. Their joy was more important than the money or us winning our game. They were there for art and to help the cause, in that order. We all scrambled to pick up as much money as we could. Paul Sr., and Lou Ferrigno held people back, while Dee, Arsenio, Clay, and I tried to grab all we could. Everyone was ready for the money to explode, but, somehow Clay was surprised and disgusted by the chaos. I was still crying with joy and Clay was crying with pure hate and anger towards me and my blue buddies.

Some of the camera people, the producers, the sound people, and crew ran up after the Blue Men had gone and said they had never been prouder of anything they worked on. Some of them were crying with me with joy. They had remembered why they had gotten into the arts. We had been just a few feet from The Who, while they smashed their instruments for America. They proved that art meant more than money. I'm pretty proud of "Penn & Teller," we've done some pretty groovy stuff, but I was exploding with pride at the beauty of my friends, Blue Man Group.

When we had the first break from the cameras, Clay was gathering evidence to take me down for this in the boardroom. He was angry and detailing the humiliation and the injuries he endured in all the beautiful chaos. When I asked him if he needed medical attention, making sure the cameras weren't on, he screamed, "I need you to shut the fuck up!" It was so easy to shut the fuck up right then. Teller and Blue Man Group work without words and they had said more than I could ever say in defense of art. I drifted away in the NBC van, to my childhood and the moment with The Who when I understood that I needed my life to mean more than "Money, Money, Money, Money."

The "boardroom" didn't matter. Clay low-balled how much money we were able to gather, but I didn't argue. Clay said that the Blue Man Group's money that Clay wanted to go to our TV charity had ended up going to some homeless people. Trump joined him, disgusted by the idea that some of the Blue Man Group's money might have gone to people who needed it instead of the people Donald Trump would get credit for giving it to who needed it. Trying to explain to Donald Trump that beauty and art can be more important than money is like trying to explain to Donald Trump that beauty and art can be more important than money. The "contest" was revealed to be very close (in terms of money, beauty wasn't discussed) and Donald Trump tried to make me say that I regretted what the Blue Man Group had done. Clay tried to get me to say that I should have gotten the Blue Man Group to be more responsible, and by that he meant, give us more money so he could win his game.

It was this episode where Donald Trump understood that he didn't understand me, and feeling misunderstood by Donald Trump and Clay Aiken is its own kind of joy.

I thought about some family at home in a small town watching the Blue Man Group on The Celebrity Apprentice like I watched The Who. I thought about many children being disgusted by all that money being "wasted" on the homeless. And I thought about maybe one child, all of a sudden understanding what art can mean and crying with joy.

As The Who sang, "why don't you all just f-f-f-fade away. Don't try to d-d-d-dig what we all say."

Vissa d'arte."

Very nicely put Mr. Jillette.

Goodnight Keith Moon!

this date

A kid hit a drum solo so hard tonight that I cried.
The kid couldn't have been older than 17, the perfect age
for rock and roll. They are still rocking out as I write this.
I love them. The day started with the dimple below the right
shoulder blade on the Venus in Toilet De Venus by Valezquez,
while I listened to "Dusk at Cubist Castle". This lead to work
which lead to here listening to Voltage at the D Note shine.

Root Canal On The Moon

Strange morning.

First root canal. Since I had my wisdom teeth pulled last week I decided to take a percoset before I went in. I also asked for Nitrous Oxide. The combination made me sick and I had to ask for them to stop it half way through the root canal. It was a hellish feeling. The Christmas music sounded terrible to my ears, nauseating. I also had flashbacks of the horrifying movie I saw last night, Wit, about a woman dying painfully of cancer. Fears were unlocked and drowning me. I needed oxygen.

Then when I got home I crawled in bed and for comfort turned on a movie. The movie I found on Netflix was Castaway On The Moon, a highly rated Korean movie. I watched the movie with Sofia on my lap. The movie was so beautiful, enchanting, one of the best movies I've ever seen.

So I went from a deep low to a beautiful ecstasy in the space of an hour.

Time Suck

Alright, so I'm writing a book, right?
And this book is pure joy, fun, first and foremost,
for myself, which is, by my logic, yourself.
I would ask you what your logic is, but

this is a poem, of a sort, and what
would be the point of asking you anything
unless I wanted to answer it for myself?
and so that's what I'll do, illogically, sing

a question, instead of answering
a question yet unsung, which is a question
of mechanics. You want to know about this
no? Like for instance, see that "sing"

at the end of stanza two? It is there
to rhyme with "thing", as another word
might do if the rhythm had not lead
to a better verb, to sing.

That's what I'm doing
and see how the "sing" at the end of stanza two
leaps out into the blank space between
stanzas? That space is called the caesura

because that is what it is, the pregnant
seizure in which the song can breathe
in silence before she is sung again, the bated pause
just before the full throttle song in which the lark

will leave her "forever" mark upon Keats,
the master in all things counter. Opposites
attract, silence and song, which is why
Shakespeare will say "Truth and beauty buried be."

That is why, though I am dead, seriously,
the joke is on me, and I laugh at me,
a jester hung out to dry, a foolish son
who will try in vain to defeat the ruinous fall.

That's a sly reference to Dante in hell,
where all is judged and recorded and fair-
thee-well. I'm more li'ble to inhale the draw
and take it for a long preamble.

I mean near forever, drawing the pleasle
out until it is a sinuous release of worklessness
and disuse, the disease of the most horrible drivel
to ever reprimand itself for early predisposal.

I'm getting ahead of myself, and therefore maybe
you too? Or maybe you are light years ahead of I,
comprehension-wise. I hope not though, because
then why read another line? Why not pause

at that last caesura and pop yourself, Pip?
We've got Mrs. Haversham for debacle and we
have miles to slow before we wake. Oh yeah,
the work. I have so much work to do. I keep

forgetting, and postponing the difficult yet
very real work! So I will do that now, having to beg
your indulgence, sir madam. It has been a pleasure
to know you, if only in the biblical sense.

On a lark's wing, that "sing" way back there flung off into
that pause and then landed in the third stanza as "a question".
That is part of the answer to your riddle, Sun,
the answer to the question of what is being sung.

So why ruin it with any dark? Because ruin is our redemption,
said the great critic, the booming Herold of the Bloom.
And so what if that critic hates it! Bring on the truth
soon, because soon, in truth, I lose my youth.

Oh my bod, in that last pauwth I got wet.
I'm such a queen bee in the buzz of my own mind,
and therefore have fallen way behind on the thing
of it, the weight of it, the thing that weighs the most.

There goes the ghost. After a long break to refresh
my brink of dismissal, my dismal failure will be made dead,
brought to you by the letter D, which we shall see
has purpose in repose heretofore unleashed.

Donne be damned for his wit,
we sing for the hell of it.