My Old Classmate

Nobody in the late evening art class we shared even knew who he was except me.

I thought that was funny.

Of course, when they found out all the girls wanted to fuck him (I think the instructor as well).

He was nice to talk with.

He stood in a freezing parking lot after class on more than one occasion to have deep conversations about I don't remember what.

He loved the Cocteau Twins.

He had met them, of course. He said they had "no idea how brilliant they are." Probably by now they do.

He loved Morrissey. I think they were like BFFS or something for a brief time.

I like his cover of "There is a Light that Never Goes Out."

The only disconcerting thing about him was that he admitted he collected Amy Lowell first editions.

You can tell this song is an attempt at a Smiths-like title.

I love all his music. Even my Mom thinks the band was wonderful. And she first heard them in her seventies.

I'm fairly certain John Porter (who produced the Smiths debut) produced their early album.

He's a C.D. East High School alum also. We were there at the same time but that coincided with one of my first serious breakdowns when they shipped me to a "special" school where I could read what I wanted.

That was nice.

I made my first Jesuit friend at that special school.

Jesuits are great conversationalists and readers.

They're more concerned about great literature than they are saving your soul.

Or my Jesuit was anyway.

Maybe he figured the soul was already forfeit.

So let's see what the kid reads.

I'm thinking this song might have been inspired by that over the top movie I saw on AMC last week or thereabouts. Just as Morrissey's songs were sometimes inspired by Brit cinema. Melodramas.

Melodrama is wonderful. Why I was raving about Vittorio's movie the other week.

Ballerina

And this video was filmed at the abandoned Rutherford train yards near my house, which were beautiful in their desuetude. I loved taking photographs there. Every artist was drawn to it sooner or later lol. The wild animals were something. It was like a wildflower catalogue book. And you find such great stuff dropped by trains and trainmen. But that one tall building was a deathtrap. There was an upper floor you could walk around inside that which was just a little concrete walkway around a forty foot drop. If you walked all the way around the sliver of floor you were brave.

Now it's as busy as a Chinese harbor. I do like watching those cranes which can pick up the raw tonnage of a loaded car and shift it from one set of tracks to another. I can't even begin to imagine the hydraulics involved in that. My brother worked for them for years.

Mercury, the coolest element.

I like this video and song a lot. They filmed this one in Iceland. I like how they weren't afraid to write ditties. I don't mean that as a slur. I happen to like ditties. Ditties are harder to write than pop songs. Really. They are. Roll your eyes.

Standing on a glacier feels good.