Rattlesnake Free Jazz Mobile

I sleep in a room with no windows. Wine. Video chat blooming in the heart. Later, on the deck we talk about money while it snows. He smokes a cigarette and for me the wine starts pouring into the landscape. The lights are softer and the mist is red like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer; Christmas Eve-esque ambiance. Except that's the feeling of the mist, the actual color is infinitely dark yellow. Halloween as a deity. 

Tomorrow morning we go on a hike at Eldorado Canyon State Park near Boulder. It's $8 bucks to walk the Rattlesnake Gulch Trail. Is it dripping from the pine trees or is it snowing? Sun on the snow on the trees. Oh crystals of tiny-wide majesty teach me how to breath again! A train needles through trees near the summit like in a children's book. The Continental Divide is a panorama of unfathomable real estate. How can one own mountains? Who made that tunnel through the mountain? Who lives in that cabin? How am I now eating Spicy Chicken Ramen, sub Pork Belly, with spicy edamame and soft shell crab buns, with a "modern whiskey" that has lemon foam and sprig of mint that looks like the dove branch from Noah's Ark landing, crepuscular rays forking into the new world like a celestial carnivore?

The Bernese Mountain Dog in the 1.5 million dollar Denver apartment barks at the human shadow in the street. The Denver Nuggets are in the 4^th Quarter against the Bulls. It's officially Halloween and the adults dress up to forget themselves while the kids find themselves in the streets. Satan orders wings. The wall is on fire to keep us warm. Bird scooters await their orders, dormant, like Black Mirror-Robo Dogs.

Tomorrow taking him to the airport he asks if I want to go to space? I say yeah I want to start "The Free Jazz Zero Gravity Big Band." No gravity and no sound. The furthest edge of music where everyone can go ape shit bananas in space suits and no one will hear anything. The ecstatic boredom of total freedom. The complete elimination of dynamics from music. I imagine not being able to use the rebound of the sticks and the drums themselves now floating away and essentially deconstructing into a wild piece of visual art, a feral mobile, cut loose from the ceiling, headed for the absolute-zero wilderness of empty space.

Lion Rules Thor's Lair (Neon Snow Tropics Denverween)

We don't go the art museum. Swing Thai is getting new cement in the alley facing the direction I sit to eat medium spicy Pad Thai. I want to fill the cement truck full of bells or Craigslist drum sets (plural) and bring it on stage tonight. Lion's Lair painted the floor red before we get there. The bartender had the air conditioner on to help dry out the paint. But at some point it's Denver and it's snowing. On the stage the dry heat is blowing with polyester leopard print curtains veiling the droning neon signs, so it feels subtropical up there. Neon snow-tropics.

There is a painting on the wall of a lion and other lion collectibles that I can only assume point to the name of the place. Laura says that Harpoontang plays here the most out of all the places they play. The floor is still sticky. If you don't dance you might not get out of here (alive). We decide that to be a member of your own tribute band would be sick. I have to use a drink ticket for ginger ale. Steve came down from Longmont and tomorrow he sends me a track of shamanic drumming to be used with noise canceling headphones and a hammock between two trees of your childhood.

Stealth is loud. I would follow him. The woman with the iridescent white coat just had a baby. Her heart is true. The man with the pigtails is not a costume, he looks like a black crow, and he's just as beautiful. We are mice and she is holy cheese. We decided against being the royal family at the Spirit of Halloween. Google Maps doesn't know that Spirit of Halloween has moved to 10^th Street so we get to the old address and there is no store. Our false destination looks like a strip mall with no doors or windows. We wander around the parking lot like deer trying to cross a highway.

The highway leads to Rattlesnake Gulch tomorrow even though when we were getting gasoline-snacks-coffee this morning we couldn't make up our minds and Thor's rules didn't say anything about that.

Longmont, Boston, & the Dark Side

Longmont Colorado in the xerox light of the suburbs. Bandmates are in Denver, the urbs. I'm here for sleep, baseball, and laundry with old family friends. The mountains are in the field. Boston wins World Series in game 5. Home runs. Are sunflower seeds just a chewing tobacco substitute or is there some bird-nutrition-electrolyte-quotient they are trying to fulfill in the dugout.

Phil tells me about going to school with the cousin of Boston mobster Raymond Patriarca. Junkies in the 70's needed $400 per day to sustain the habit equals a life of crime. Today that would be around $2600 per day. Whitey Bulger dies tomorrow. Tony was incarcerated at Walpole during the riots when the inmates took over the prison. He said that out of all the guards there was only five out of the whole staff who treated the inmates like people rather than tortured animals. Two of those guards were on duty during the riots. Those same two guards were found locked in closets after all the dead bodies were cleared out by the army the next day. 

Prison code. 

Tony actually saw one of the honorable guards being dragged and locked into the closet by a rampaging inmate, right after stabbing one of the despicable guards in the neck. 

Prison code.

Eating Pizza Hut and gelato, Phil reminded me of the saying by Ramana Maharishi. The saint, when asked how should we treat others replied, “there are no others.” Yesterday we had coffee in Boulder and talked about our fathers and being fathers. I had a bagel with only enough cream cheese for ¾ of a bagel. Two cups of coffee. Second cup from Ethiopia.

Went to eat Mexican on the roof but the roof was closed for the season. I was excited about combining danger and leisure. Niche market. Stopped by the Boulder Drum Shop while Gail meditated in the parking lot. Fell in the love with the AA Meinl Sand Sizzle Cymbal. Put in my future harvest heart locket. 

Back "home." Phil's nephew Joey is also living there. For two days and nights, I did not see him once. We joked about him being imaginary. Today Gail was Darth Vader. Happy All Hallows' Eve Eve. Lion's Lair tonight. 

Omaha is Dead

Omaha is dead. There is a zombie walk for charity. The wall of Halloween Christmas lights and green plastic flowers at the back of the stage share a wall with the cocaine-dusted bathroom. Later on tonight we stay in an AirBNB with a lonely host who forces us to partake in the breakfast part of BNB. She is desperately making cookies tomorrow with the same urgency as putting flowers on her husband's grave. 

Not many people are here for the show and it's Friday night. The sound feels like it's happening in a different room. We have our ears up against the wall trying to separate the language and the noise. Spies of our own music. At what point does reverb become eternity? The monitors are constantly on the verge of feeding back creating a baseline of rage and hopelessness to funnel into the ballads. At least in Columbia there was a full drunk on the verge of heckling, waltzing with himself in a recurring naked-in-public dream.

World Series game 4 is happening in LA and I am watching from the bar in Nebraska. Dodgers are up 4-0 and then lose while I am playing. I can see the crowd assembled on the field from behind the drums so I know the game is over. The night before was the longest World Series game in all of history. Almost a complete workday of 8 hours.

I watched baseball when I was doing insurance work in Florida. It's the perfect mixture of adrenaline and boredom to get through the unyielding tedium of labeling thousands of pictures “damaged by wind” Now the windshield is taking care of the wind. As we zoom over and/or the highway zooms under us on our way to Denver so much faster than the pioneers it hurts.