I was out when the water went up.



















Saw our street and it was a frothing river with whitewater rapids with waves up to my chest. The double-parked cars lining the sidewalks only churned the waters more violently, making waves that met in the middle of the street that then made even higher waves. I was in a neighbour's elevated driveway with the water up to my calves.






Stood there for a few hours waiting for the rain to stop, or the flood to settle a bit. I went to a neighbour and stayed there for the night.

Funny as I can't seem to find the Berrigan original on the internetz.
I suppose this version is more apt for the news as one more of my idols dies,
almost exactly a year to the day of the death of yet another idol.


Rest in peace, Catholic Boy.




Teddy sniffing glue he was 12 years old
Fell from the roof on East Two-nine
Cathy was 11 when she pulled the plug
On 26 reds and a bottle of wine
Bobby got leukemia, 14 years old
He looked like 65 when he died
He was a friend of mine

Refrain
Those are people who died, died
Those are people who died, died
Those are people who died, died
Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died

G-berg and Georgie let their gimmicks go rotten
So they died of hepatitis in upper Manhattan
Sly in Vietnam took a bullet in the head
Bobby OD'd on Drano on the night that he was wed
They were two more friends of mine
Two more friends that died / I miss 'em--they died

Repeat Refrain

Mary took a dry dive from a hotel room
Bobby hung himself from a cell in the tombs
Judy jumped in front of a subway train
Eddie got slit in the jugular vein
And Eddie, I miss you more than all the others,
And I salute you brother/ This song is for you my brother

Repeat Refrain

Herbie pushed Tony from the Boys' Club roof
Tony thought that his rage was just some goof
But Herbie sure gave Tony some bitchen proof
Hey, Herbie said, Tony, can you fly?
But Tony couldn't fly . . . Tony died

Repeat Refrain

Brian got busted on a narco rap
He beat the rap by rattin' on some bikers
He said, hey, I know it's dangerous,
but it sure beats Riker's
But the next day he got offed
by the very same bikers

Repeat Refrain; repeat song to Eddie




1980,
Jim Carroll

It's been a monster couple of weeks. Yesterday was DFW's first death anniv. "Mercury Retrograde" seems to have escaped Mom's kitchen and invaded the Memeplex. BT launches first local scifi/fantasy/generic/specfic hub Rocket Kapre, for which I answered a brief questionnaire. Enjoying some new books that came out recently. Sent some to Longdong via Vincenzo. Bought a Tomine poster. Work is sort of wearing me down as work does, so I'm trying to spin it. Had plans to write about the tyranny of the written language and the potential of the essay to liberate thought and restore the status of the writer as intellectual and poetry as one of the last frontiers of anticapitalist art efforts and the purpose of poetry in a popomo context, but it's been a fucked-up stretch of afternoon so I just can't be fucking bothered right now. But I have plans for it. Maybe next Sunday'll be better.

Oi, Alexis!


Thanks for the eMail. It's really funny how much reaction the essays are still generating even a few months after the fact, and it's funnier how the reactions are widely more aggressively supportive now than when the shittitz hit the fannitz, so to speak, as if they were these stink bombs of insight that only opened just now, apparently in a time delay fuse.

And it's actually even funnier how I actually miss sharing critical space with you in the Free Press - yes, even after everything that went on (maybe one of these days I could work on mending the few bridges that need mending, ano?) - as however which way you cut it, this lack of critical assessment - however bland, however ranty - continues to be a missed opportunity in such venues of public writing, and only really contributes to the wholesale snowballing Degeneration of the Arts. It's true that we could do lots more with whatever Interweb forum our hands are actively idly fiddling, but something has to be said about having words printed on paper for all to read and dis/agree with, even if in the final analysis, all of these things just stack up as heaps of fish-wrapping paper (if we're lucky) and really just killing more trees for our mere entertainment.

Yeah, we haven't met, yet, even after us sharing Free Press space and minor editorial work for Gaba's Space Philippines, but I can honestly say I've read your essays on Pinoy Cinema, or at least some of them that were available to me through the FPs, and I really found myself always agreeing with your assessments, based off of my semi-regular film viewings from a while back, back when Pinoy Cinema seemed to have an urgency for/in me, but I mainly know you and admire you from that letter piece you wrote for Rogue, and especially because of the anaphoric addendum. I love this bit: "The first impulse of any good film critic, and to this I think you would agree, must be of love." And really, how could it be not? Criticism always starts with Love (or in your case, Lav [haha]). How can it not be driven by Love?

And it's this really very creepy kind of Possessive Love, the this-is-mine-how-dare-you-sully-it sort of Love, the sort of Love that'll get you beat up by the baranggay tanod if its focus was a cutie in your neighbourhood. Maybe from the initial Love you get to Hate, or Even More Love, or oftenly in my case, to Immensely Heart-Shattering Balls-To-The-Floor Debilitating Disappointment, but it's still all primarily driven by Love. How can it not be Love? You take this lummox that really can go on about its business without you and you selfishly/selflessly decide to make yourself relevant to it by sincerely just merely talking about/to it in a way not much people do (ie, smartly) keeping an eye in making this lummox be more relevant to other people, make this lummox as relevant to others - as loved by others - as how it's relevant to - and loved by - you.

And Film Criticism Jesus Fucken Christ is the biggest lummox of them all, bigger than LitCrit as it's dictated by stronger forces than mere ego, ie money, thus more resistant to reform or revolution (unless it's shown to them first by Hollywood or Eiga Sai or Cinemalaya or somesuch institution, and even then ... and of course, you know this more than I do), and Pinoy Cinema as focus Jesus Fucken Christ! But again, how could it be not Pinoy Cinema? It's where we eat and shit and loiter and sleep. What else should it be about? It's quite the brave thing to choose to write about that and expecting something to happen. Or maybe it should be "deluded?" We're only a year apart, still under thirty, with girls smarter than us by thousands of leagues. We have tons of delusions. They love our delusions. Our delusions do us good.

It often feels like Sisyphus up and down his mountain or at worst Prometheus in the Caucasus and I'm half-tempted to say that it's really its own reward but as you well know it's not, it's a thankless rewardless creditless job this Criticism Business of the Arts, as well it should be, as well it ought to be, as some things - and there ought to be more of these things - should be dictated by stuff other than gratitude or money or fame, if only just so our entry point of discussion is and always will be nothing short of Love.

And yeah, we could go on and on and on about it, and hopefully, we will. Dude. I look forward to reading more of your work.


Yours in solidarity Jesus Fucken Christ
(wormfood and rumour all these two thousand years),
Adam!