Dairy of a Madman

I’ve spent the past two and a half hours writing a 750 piece on Steve Vai for Birmingham Weekly — the fifth rewrite I’ve done from scratch, and I’m still unsure of the end result. Doing the phone interview with him was an amazing experience — he’s incredibly laid back and easy to talk to (unlike some other ‘celebrities’ I’ve talked to), and amazingly humble, given his gifts and accomplishments. Writing the piece on him — and limiting it to 750 words — is akin to pulling teeth from an angry bull ape.

Vai has been — I’m not sure what the word is. Not my idol, really — I don’t really have too many of those, if any. Something to shoot for? The mastery the man has over the guitar, the vocabulary, the style, the unique creativity and vision — it’s humbling to witness, and inspiring at the same time. It’s hard for me to hear his music and not immediately want to pick up a guitar and simultaneously fear ever playing again.

Let’s compare it to reading the best of Mencken or Hunter Thompson, trying to imagine topping Warren Ellis’ or Grant Morrison’s situations, or making a movie that compares to ARMAGEDDON or PEARL HARBOR.

I’m joking about one of the above.

But….

Talking about love is like dancing about architecture. And writing about the one person who inspires you in your chosen field (even if your chosen fields are many, like mine) is the same.

I’m overwhelmed, and taking a break. Thank god for X-Box golf.

The sea air is crisp and cool against sunbaked skin, scented with salt and rum and coconut. It pulses against his skin with each gently breaking wave, sound and feel of water and wind in perfect harmonious tandem. He feels the white grain under his feet, brittle shoreline marked with her path into the water.

He scans to the horizon and back, brilliant moonlight reflected on a hundred rolling drifts of ocean, sparkle of stars and splash of sealife. There, near the water fifty yards away � she sits, watching the curved expanse of the water at the edge of their world. The tiny night gulls and chattering sand crabs scuttle about, ignoring her in their search for the dinner the salty waves bring in, she in turn ignoring them, lost in her dreams.

Her hair whips back and forth in the breeze, a perfect storm of golden silk. The ocean water beads and rolls down her back like tears of angels on a bronze plate, her shoulders square as she pulls her knees to her chest and begins to rock slowly in the early evening tide. The breeze carries her voice, quietly singing, and he can imagine a choir of dolphins and an aquatic symphony providing the foundation for her song:

�You�re my thrill
You do something to me
You send chills right through me
When I look at you
�cause you�re my thrill

You�re my thrill
How my pulse increases
I just go to pieces
Every time I look at you
I can�t keep still�

He wants to race across the stinging sands to her, to touch her cool satin skin, to run his hands through her hair and kiss her shoulders and hold her until the moon is eaten by the sun. He is frozen, though, transfixed by her song, unwillingly to move lest the picture in front of him shatter to be carried off into the tropical night. And so he stands, body to the ocean and eyes to the night, and watches as his heart is stolen by the angel on the shoreline, stars in her voice and not a cloud in the sky.

�Oh where�s my will
Why this strange desire
Flaming higher and higher
Every time I look at you
I can�t keep still
Oh you�re my thrill�

Dear asshat,

Thanks very much for stealing my bass amp out of my truck last night while I was loading up my gear. Your timing was perfect — who would ever think to steal an amp before the gig? Most people wait until after the show to steal equipment.

I hope you enjoy the rock that my amp will undoubtedly buy you. My best and brightest hope is that my $400 amp only gets you $10 at the local pawn shop.

Actually, my real hope is that you come into the pawn shop to hock the amp while I’m in there looking for you or the amp. That would make me happy.

Oh, and I hope you get hit by a large truck, and survive for many years afterward.

Love,
Kenn

“…That, and the fact that I told her, when he kisses her in the ceremony, to try not to think about the fact that he’s putting his lips where I used to put my penis.”

More reflections

There is nothing so wonderful as receiving timely payment for a huge invoice.

Today is good.

I have added eel to my (rather short) list of acceptable sushi.

I have a new — and smaller — bed coming within a month.

I’m going to win the annual Oscar pool, damn it.

Steve Vai is coming to town soon. Devin’s gonna be in Atlanta with Strapping in April.

Hell, even 50 Cent sounds good today.

Let’s see how long we can ride this feeling. I have hopes that it will be a good long while.

“Hey, Davan, whatever happened to that Cora girl?”

“The same thing that happens to most any girl who says she finds me attractive. She went crazy.”

Hey hey hey cool kids and everyone else…. My yet-to-see-print review of Strapping Young Lad’s ALIEN is popping up all over the net, most notably as the first and only review of the disc on the official Strapping website (www.strappingyounglad.com). For those who give a damn, here it is, a full month before you can read it in glorious monotone:

The scariest brutality is that filled with passion, with intensity, adrenaline released with a smile. The angry outlash is one thing, but in a world of car bombs and xenophobic foreign policies and Amber Alerts, anger is the new meme, a joke told so often that the laughter is nothing more than knee-jerk reaction. ALIEN is not the rebellious young man seeking attention or euphoric release, but the laughing man with the baseball bat singing songs that might well signal the end of the world.

In many ways, this is the Strapping Young Lad that fans have grown to love. Press releases trumpet the coming of �City�, part II, and there is comforting familiarity in the haunting harmonies, the cinematic structures, the towering layers of sonic assault. Certainly, frontman Devin Townsend is at his peak, blanketing pounding rhythms and crumbling walls of guitar rumble with a unique melodic sensibility and poetic lyrical approach.

Gone, though, is the adolescent undercurrent of anger and voracious hate; this is radio music filtered through fingers that know better and shaped by one of the founders of the new wave of metal. Townsend, as usual, defies categorization, across tracks and within, venturing from thrash to pop to acoustic ballad, never pausing, breathless walk across the mindset of Armageddon. ALIEN signals the beginning and the end of extreme music, challenging the listener to let go and feel the joy of unhindered release.

I’m particularly proud of this one — an inspired bit. If only more music came along that brought out this kind of writing from me.