Many years ago, at the dawn of my cafe-artist life, where I ceased actually making music and began talking about it and art while exploring new dimensions of inebriation, my art-fag crew and I were sitting around a going through pitcher after pitcher of beer (we had yet to discover the efficiency of brandy, gin, and whiskey) and there was a table full of art-school-fruityloops at the next table, discussing something about ... i'm not sure, but I would surmise modern dance ...

"The toe is trivial!" blurted out a another certified art-fag in a shrill, nasally whine that cut through the din ...

I ridiculed then the remark, the sentiment, and even the anonymous ass-clown who said it, and I do so again as I type these words almost 35 years later.

Berkeley is possibly the Cafe-Artist capital of the world. I say possibly only because I've not spent any time in New York, London, Paris, or any other boho-certified metropolis long enough to determine. San Francisco has a new breed of art-fag: the Burners (a derivation of Burning Man), but that is an essay for another day.

As a result of my experiences in the cafe-artist world and as a bonafied art-fag for many years, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie Art School Confidential.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

O my brothers: we, all of us in the realms of light and mercy, have watched movies for nearly a century where the bad guy threatens the good guy or the town or the lake and all the good guy has to do is kill the bad guy or chase him and his gang away and life goes back to normal and he gets the beautiful girl.

Were it only so.

Flashback: a Tuesday morning, March 2003.

I had worked until three a.m on the HoneyBun website. Launch approached. Money dwindling. Pay-off on investment coming minutes or days after I get site up: this is the mantra which kept me humming tunefully along as the newly formatted year gained traction in my brain.

My doorbell rang at about 9:00 a.m.

I ignored it: it could only be one of my local guardian angels who would need three or five or ten dollars for booze with which to ease her way off an all-night crack binge or for more drugs to keep it going. They knew better than to ring the bell so early. However, in a true emergency, which it often was — you know how it is when the booze runs out or all the drugs are gone and you simply are not done yet— the doorbell would keep ringing loudly until I wandered to the front windows to see who it was. If I did that, they pretty much knew they had me. So the task was to lie still, to passively resist, to wait them out: an gargantuan battle of wills, which in truth I lost more often than not over the years.

(continued on the flip-flop) 

A few years back, when I was hiding out in Hollywood, I got to a point where it seemed as if the jig was up. I was staying in a friend's place.

I was in a near-suicidal state of depression. Nothing was going according to plan. All the Hollywood bullshit (promised investors, etc.) had become painfully apparent. I was broke, living off a few sales of HoneyBun kits to distributors, and borrowed money.

I had convinced the company that made HoneyBun Spanking Kits to put out a massage kit, with the idea of breaking out of the adult novelty industry and onto the shelf next to Dirty Girl Soap, where the money was.

They wanted to make a soft-core massage video to go with the oil. I said that was too tacky for HoneyBun. I proposed a relaxation cd. They agreed.

So I did what I have done so many times: I went down below to where the music is. Whatever storms rage above the surface cannot touch me down there.

I can only assume other artists know of which I speak, or anyone who has perhaps submerged him/herself in meditation, or prayer, or focused labor, which, now that I think about it, seem to be the main components of my creative process.

In the time that followed, about three weeks, I composed four songs. When I came out, these are the songs that had flowed through, each about fifteen minutes long:

1. Summer of '68
2. Autumnal Sun
3. Winter Blue
4. Isle of Islay Revisited

Isle of Islay Revisited is the only song I have ever done composed entirely from samples: gongs, chimes, birds, water, guitar, and so on. The title refers to an incredibly sweet and sad ballad by Donovan, on his album Gift From a Flower To A Garden, released in 1968.

I have since reworked the first three songs, taking them from the pastels of the original versions into more technicolor realms. The label I am discussing releasing the cd with insists I redo Isle of Islay Revisited as well. I am in the process of composing a very different piece, although I hope it will have the same placid flow as the original. The label insisted I not have any of the original pieces available on the web (you can hear an excerpt of Winter Blue at my myspace page, however), but since there are issues with samples,etc., on this piece, I think it safe to offer to you for download.

Download Isle of Islay Revisited

You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh.
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by.

And when two lovers woo
They still say, "I love you."
On that you can rely
No matter what the future brings
As time goes by.

Moonlight and love songs
Never out of date.
Hearts full of passion
Jealousy and hate.
Woman needs man
And man must have his mate
That no one can deny.

It's still the same old story
A fight for love and glory
A case of do or die.
The world will always welcome lovers