Torsdag

21.56 Aparallellitet: let’s go to india. fuck bukowski.

22.52 Aparallellitet: damn straight. continuity-sickness. yes definitely. my behavioral patterns are all old acquaintances. fear keeps me from cutting it out. i need to forcefeed myself change.

22.54 X: ”What will be need not suffer, while it waits.”

Söndag

Pappa behöver nya skor! Jag auktionerar ut en handfull udda trycksaker – Stora Saltet, Peter Sotos, The Fenris Wolf, Codex Seraphinianus. Kom och bjud över varandra här.

Fredag

Torsdag

Bonusmaterial från i lördags – den lättälskade Daniel Higgs -

Daniel Higgs at Debaser, STHLM, SWE 31 oct from Daniel Westerlund on Vimeo.

”Say God despite that which prevents one from saying God.”

—

Appendix. Funnet brev i bok på antikvariatet. Från Syster ”R***” till ”S***”

”Christ is Risen!”

May 4, 1999

My dear S***,

You have been on my mind & in my prayer so very much. Thank you for your last letter. I’m so relieved for you now that Walter as granted you a release & that you are now able to relate to him in a friendly way & that the boys can also have a positive relationship with their father. I could say more about this but want to spend more time talking about you.

We must realize that God is NOT absent: it’s simply our feelings that make him seem so far away. God is everywhere [& yet "no where" because God cannot be confined]. You are experiencing NEW LIFE (=resurrection) by the recent events… by your realizing some things about yourself that may have led you or rather attracted you to relationships that end up in sorrow… dead ends (in English = a ‘dead-end’ metaphor comes from a ‘dead end street’ – one that leads to nowhere = ends abruptbly). This insight is new life even if painful. And it is not surprising to me that you experience at the same time relief and also loneliness and a certain flatness in your feelings.

You say you feel a kind of loneliness you have not yet experienced… ”God is there but He doesn’t want me now.” Oh yes, S***, he does want you now (as always) – but it’s you that must relate now to him (& others) (AND to yourself) differently. How differently? First of all, trust all the while walking in the dark. Trust in what? Trust first that God is Love, that he wants the best for us all; that he has already given you all you need & that you have within yourself many untapped potentials. The Spirit of God is within us but it is we who must activate this spirit which is our spirit. It’s important to realize that feelings can get in the way. And so it’s a very good thing that you do not feel God present. Do not try to ”look for God, to see Him”. Don’t strain yourself. Simply pray as an act of your will to please him – prayer that expresses your intention to do his will – to become who you really are. But do not seek confirmation on any kind of security in prayer.

You say when you pray you get angry & sad. Now why is it? Because you seek God & he seems absent? If this is so, then what may be happening is: you are expecting something tangible in your prayer, some sort of answer…. & are you sad & angry because there is no ”answer”? So in point of a fact, indirectly God is answering you! By not answering. This is the way it should be. How can we take hold of our lives & live responsibly, go out into the dark in faith (this is God’s will!), if we think God is somehow ”out there”, ”near us”, leading us by the hand? No, S***, these feelings of a new kind of loneliness are good for you! It’s the consequence of no longer relying on your past patterns of finding too much support in outer things, people (particularly those unhealthy relationships with married men.) Will talk more about this at another time – that is, this sense of aloneness.

We could talk about theses things – I hope I’m not confusing you. Please ask me if some things I’ve said are hard to grasp.

Before closing: do you have a computer? Do you have access to internet or have e-mail? Have you heard of St. Nina’s Quarterly? A very good circular letter (4x a year) for women in the orthodox church for expressing their ideas; their problems in church life etc…

I think it would be very good for you ”meet” some of these women even if it’s through e-mail.

You have a tremendous amount of life within yourself, S***. You are already much alive & give life but there’s still so very much you have yet to tap into!

You sent me 40 dollars last year. I’m thinking of sending you some reading material. When you have understood more, how much more free you will be. ”The truth will make you free” – so Christ has said. And I know it to be so.

You are so frequently close in my thoughts!

Love & prayer -

Sister R***.

Ps. I think you are doing very well!

Onsdag

”You have successfully confirmed your subscription request for ‘aparallellitet’ to the jandek mailing list.”

Hur ska du högtidlighålla sjuårsjubileet av Jandek-dagen – den femte november 2002? Själv beställer jag Jackpot Records Six and six, den andra delen i vad som verkar arta sig till en komplett återutgivning  i kronologisk ordning av Jandek-katalogen (eller det är vad en hoppas på).

Vem eller vad är Jandek? Jandeks mysterioso-eremit-persona har sammanfattats bättre och fylligare än vad jag är kapabel till. Axplocken skulle kunna lyda:

1. ”Jandek, alone with a guitar and a microphone, sounds like a muttering sleepwalker aimlessly plucking amplified bicycle spokes. His music is dark and gloomy; but it won’t make you sad-it will make you tense and uncomfortable. Here is the Ultimate Disconnect.” (Irwin Chusid)

2. ”And what does his music sound like? Like pure desolation. Jandek is not just solo but profoundly alone on most of his recordings, picking distractedly at a guitar tuned to no particular notes, moaning in no particular key about thinking and love and wandering around and staying in the same place and God. Beyond that, there’s just emptiness — each off-key ping floats out separately into black space. Sometimes Jandek sounds as if he’d internalized the grimmest death-letter blues of the ’20s and is pulling them back out of himself, thoroughly dismembered, hair by hair. His songs have no choruses, no hooks, no melodies, no rhythms, no internal progression, nothing but the inexorable Chinese-water-torture plod of Samuel Beckett’s The Unnameable: ‘I can’t go on, I’ll go on.’” (Douglas Wolk)

3. ”Utilizing guitars (one at time, both acoustic or electric), voice and percussion, this is music from the ultimate void — vaguely related to genres like folk, blues and avant-garde but in the end it can only be the sound of Jandek. And there’s never been anything else quite like it.” (Forced Exposure)

Mötet med Jandek måste vara personligt. Trots alla spaltmetrar om honom finns det inte mycket som kan förbereda inför första lyssningen. De devota lyssnarna skriver sina rapporter som om de precis återvänt från en annan planet. Vilket på sätt och vis får sägas vara en giltig jämförelse. Yttre/inre rymd. Det gör detsamma. För att Jandeks musik ska få sin rättmätiga plats i ditt liv behöver du 1) ett mörkt rum och 2) hörlurar. Du är inte i Kansas längre, inte heller i Stockholm och så långt bort från Facebook-samtiden som är fysiskt möjligt.

Jandeks debutskiva har gått några varv och du märker att den ritat linjerna till något som bildar antitesen till allt försumbart.

I närmare trettio år bildade Jandeks hemlighetsmakeri projektionsduk för allehanda drömmar och begär. Det var som om han fick axla vår kollektiva längtan att vända kravmaskineriet ryggen. Välgörande isolering. En förortsmunk bakom fördragna gardiner. Den atypiska, atonala, amoderna, aparta, analoga. Som spelar på något som låter som ett ”ostämt tennisracket”. Sedan 2005 har han tagit allt fler steg in i rampljuset. Bakom namnet Jandek visade sig en anorektiskt smal white collar Houston-bo vid namn Sterling Smith. Youtub:ar du honom får du möta ett antal förvirrande liveklipp där han bland annat ses spela med en funkbassist och en driven trummis. Han har således intagit scenen på sitt sedvanliga kompromisslösa sätt: ingen spelning är den andra lik. Nya medmusiker varje gång och häromåret fick Helsingfors-borna möta en enda lång pianoimprovisation.

I vår lilla Jandek-festival nöjer vi oss med två klipp:

Spår från debutskivan. Rekommendationen är dock att införskaffa ett eget ex av vardera: Ready for the house-lp, hörlur, mörkt rum.

På ett spår från den fjärde lp:n Chair beside a window – efter tre lp-skivor av total loner-folk – dyker helt plötsligt en eteriskt vacker kvinnlig stämma upp, på den kongenialt döpa Nancy Sings.

Epilog:

Irwin Chusid igen: ”Jandek’s ultimate mission could be to test the mortal limits of patience, tolerance, and understanding. Perhaps he’s the Messiah, dispatched to Earth as an Outsider Musician, giving the human race one last chance to accept the unacceptable, to embrace that which is infinitely difficult to embrace.”

Tisdag

Måndag

Söndag

[Daniel Higgs på Debaser, Stockholm, igår]

Lördag

[Musik: replokalsgranne, okänt band]

Lördag: Fotnot

Det finns egentligen ingen anledning att fortsätta skriva musik efter Old time relijun. Deras musik är som manuset till Taxi driver – inte en enda onödig rad/gest/bild. Jag accepterar din förlovningsring om du övertygar mig om att du delar min kärlek.