”The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction.” -Allen Ginsberg
In Unconscious TapeLoop Blues #1 I told you the story about how I wrote this poem in my 20s, trying to make sense of Life, Reality, and Myself. And also how it lead to this endless process of using the cut-up methods to express the felt experience of myself.
After I created the first Unconscious TapeLoop Blues, I thought about using this process again to create another track from this poem. I learned a little bit from creating the first one. This time I knew I wanted to lean on the blues again. So I sampled Galt MacDermot - Coffee Cold which had a great blues riff in which I can really get into the words of my poem.
I start off the track reciting this old poem, which actually has nothing to do with my Unconscious Tapeloop Poem:
Old man down the street
just waiting around to die
lungs have gotten so bad
that he has to walks
up and down the block
up and down the block
he sits on his front step
hung over, beaten by life
This poem is about my neighbor down the street from me. He was an old foe of mines. When I was a kid he would get mad at me when I would run up and down the block. But when I wrote this I was older and he was on his last couple of breaths of life. And there was something about this picture of him walking up and down the block trying to get more air in his lungs, that made me want to capture this moment, to hold on to those last breaths of life, forever and ever.
When it came time to open up Unconscious TapeLoop Blues #2, this poem was probably the most blues like lines I have written at that time. I think it worked out pretty good. But from there I got sampled from Unconscious TapeLoop Poem:
Been working hard in the factory
The factory that I call my mind
Because I spent 6 days locked up
Had visions of nim and the devil
This moment of being locked up for 6 days and having 'strange' dreams of 'nim' and 'the devil,' it was that moment when I realized that I had to look under the hood of my mind.
My consciousness has been lodge loose
And now it needs to be fixed, time to reboot
Hacking into my consciousness
reengineering my neural-nets
so that I am in control
and not some unconscious tape-loops
because
I burn deeply for those connections
I work hard for those connections
breaking open my mind
trying to find the source code
mental programs running out of control
because when it's my time to die
it's gonna be in a dream inside a dream
stuck inside a dream, trying to wake up
only to find out life is but a dream
I've been there to many time before
when it's my time
I'm just not gonna wake up
ready set, its time to let go
let go of everything
all of it, reset all of it
remaking everything
let go, let go
I think this next part about life being just a dream, and being stuck in a loop, like the old man down the street, of just walking up and down the block, but the cosmic games of life after life, death after death. This is the thread or connection to the first poem.
I don't know what it is
but what it is, is something
that doesn't go away
no matter how much
I run, fight, or try
no matter how much
I drink or smoke
no matter how much
I care or don't care
its always there
I always try to put down the pen
and pick up the sword,
but the pen haunts me in my dreams
I think this struggle with the pen and word, of trying to put it down, or thinking that all of this writing, creating, art is meaningless or useless, is something that still loops in the back of my mind.
I made a deal with the devil and the logos
years ago in a jail cell
from now until forever I am cursed
by the word, verb, the subject
by sound and vibration
by the beat
I think by this time in the process I moved beyond the Unconscious Tapeloop Blues, into the present moment. Of now being cursed by sound and vibration, by the beat
sometimes I feel I will never be free
the word imprisons me
my consciousness will be forever tied down
by words, ideas and my mind
I don't know if I will ever be able
to put my mind to rest
doom to run life after life
death after death
on this plane and the next
on reality, on perception,
the universe and everything else
But I know what,
when the music hits my ears
and the drink hits my lips
and the smoke hits my lungs
and the words hit my eyes
and the images hit my mind
everything, everything, everything
is alright, forever, and ever and ever...
What I think I find interesting with the second part, I didn't really cut-up other poets, but I began to cut up and remix my own poems. But here is the video, I hope this helps to understand and enjoy it more:
A visual sampling of Pinkshinyultrablast - The Cherry Pit
