http://www.mindflowmusic.com/index.htmlHot News!entmindflow@aol.comCopyright 2010 Tony Roberts2010-11-22T07:45:38-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 Fri, 01 Jan 2010 18:08:13 -0500tmindflow@aol.comNone2010-11-22T07:45:38-05:00http://www.mindflowmusic.com/page7/files/6f5852d2d425e22e78b39d0c78bc1212-10.html#unique-entry-id-10http://www.mindflowmusic.com/page7/files/6f5852d2d425e22e78b39d0c78bc1212-10.html#unique-entry-id-10Hey all,
the website was hacked... don’t know why... but will try and fix it.
thanks,
tony]]>tmindflow@aol.comNone2010-05-17T03:07:00-04:00http://www.mindflowmusic.com/page7/files/0e7ce24b114fef52e889f675b327d4da-9.html#unique-entry-id-9http://www.mindflowmusic.com/page7/files/0e7ce24b114fef52e889f675b327d4da-9.html#unique-entry-id-9Monday, May 17, 2010 

"You are ready to take on the world" I’m leaving tomorrow for the outter banks of North Carolina... Cape Hatteras exactly... I’ve been out there twice before... once with Delphine... where I was litterally in Nags Head for less than an hour and I couldn’t get out of there fast enough... some ex-boyfriend named Chirs... stinkin up the place... we had to pick up her stuff... boxes of who knows what... that she had moved there with... cuz she couldn’t stand to be with me anymore... and then one day decided that she could no longer stay... and left everything behind to come back to me...  we left Key West on that trip to leave it behind and begin our new life in British Columbia... but I had to go to London for some reason first... ... then life got in the way... ... years later I had made the choice that I wanted to be a surfer... I left Key West on my own... drifting and dreaming... playing in random towns up the coast... but had to go to the outter banks... to surf... to buy my first surfboad... Rhyan had planned her trip to Hawaii... and the deal was we... we would both meet back in Key West in a couple months and then figure out where we go from there... ... then life got in the way... ... I was just thinking how foolish it would be to go into details about both situations... sad love stories... tortured artist... beautiful inspiring woman... long road... different paths... never enough time... too many choices... some sort of strange misunderstanding... loss of faith... etc etc... ... but I think it’s strange to be here again... ... about to find my way back there... ....perhaps I am a glutton for punishment... ... I planned this trip when Steph and I were still together... ... I rented a house for a week... for my family... to be able to hang out and spend time together where I wasn’t rushing off to a gig or to a recording studio... for a chance for all of us to spend time and maybe just enjoy the moment and stop planning the future... ... then life got in the way... ... so it’s strange... to be hopping on a flight solo... and heading out there... .... it’s the first trip in a series of trips to begin my metamorphosis... ... tomorrow OBX ... next month Barbados... ... July... Boston and Cape Cod... and where ever else they’lll have me... ... after that whatever happens happens... ... all I want is everything.................. ... I opened up a fortune cookie today that has been sitting on my counter for weeks... ... I hate fortune cookies... they used to hold fortunes... ... now mostly it’s just bizarro sayings and random facts... ... but this cookie has been in the wrapper for weeks... ... I remember the night of ordering from China Garden with Sunny... ... we both got very lame fortunes that night but they had put in like 4 cookies... ... cuz we had ordered enough food that they just assumed more people were involved;) ... but so this cookie has been sittin there with my vitamins... ... and I’m always thinking that it’s just a symbol of how out of shape I am... ... but today I made coffee and I took my vitamins and I saw it sittin there and I knew I was getting ready for this trip... so I just said... “ Hey, whatever this thing says is how things are gonna go... so just do whatever it says (thinkin it would be something mundane or something so obtuse that I could manipulate it’s meaning to see it through no matter what)... ... and it said “ You are ready to take on the world”... ... and I sat there for a minute... thinking about how useless fortune cookies are... ... but there was a part of me that couldn’t help but remember that Paul Coelho quote: “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” ... and I have to admit that in some stupid way I am inspired by this fortune cookie... ... I take the signs when I can get them;) ... so I leave tomorrow to begin the process... ... I have a million big ideas at the moment... ... my heart is aching... ... my soul is searching... ... and I am as hopeful as I can remember being since the last time I believed... ... in love... ... in life... ... in the fact that this is just the beginning... ... but maybe I am ready...

]]>tmindflow@aol.comNone2010-05-05T03:51:31-04:00http://www.mindflowmusic.com/page7/files/df300f1a6d5cab80e705e7795232d903-8.html#unique-entry-id-8http://www.mindflowmusic.com/page7/files/df300f1a6d5cab80e705e7795232d903-8.html#unique-entry-id-8
... I've realized that I've gotten away from writing blogs and journals and all that because I feel like that I have to post it up on the internet when I finish... and then I have to deal with the fallout of whatever I write...

... I wonder if I would have blown apart my relationship even if I had just kept journals the way I did for all those years before the internet was the internet... when the world wide web made you think of spiders and not every fucking bit of digital information on earth...

... so much of what goes wrong in my world has to do with my neurotic belief that people (friends, fans, strangers... etc) actually care what the fuck I'm writing about... or need to know... and I think I have to live up to some impossible higher standard so I can have some insight into the human condition that no one else has... so I can somehow prove my points to the world... prove I'm right... prove I'm worthy of accolades and forgiveness... even if I'm full of shit... words would somehow save me and I would be venerated by just speaking my mind and unburdening my heart...

... I realize now, more than ever, that to be a writer you have to be somewhat delusional...

... it's strange to sit here and think about how many of my relationships have come to an end or to some chaotic culmination because of something I wrote... diaries, songs, journals, letters, screenplays, novellas, novels, emails... I wonder how many words I have typed or handwritten in this lifetime???... I wonder how different my life would be if I had chosen not to... I wonder if I'd be happier?... or if I'd have children?... or if I'd be famous?... or dead?...

... I wonder what my life would be like if numbers did the things that words do to me...
... I wonder what my life would be like if I didn't feel the need to vent at 3 o'clock in the morning...
... I wonder what my life would be like if I was able to censor myself to myself...

... that's why it's hard now... because back in the day I would write all these journals and stories  and poems and unless I trusted someone enough or someone decided to do some snooping... all the words would just end up hidden away... in notebooks and then when I felt like it was time I could go through and rewrite... and edit... or leave something out... or remember to put something in later... and then I'd self-publish them as little books of poetry or novels... it would take months or years... but I was able to make sure that names were changed to protect the innocent... and salvage relationships... and basically give or sell them to only close friends and family... or hardcore fans...

... somewhere along the way though... the game changed... it became possible to litterally write whatever the fuck you wanted and instantaneously post it up for the world to see... instant gratification... instant humiliation... instant participation with anyone and everyone...

... suddenly everything I wrote was for an audience... and slowly I started forgetting to write for myself... to write anything and everything... truth without consequence...

... everything I wrote had a consequence...

... and I'm not gonna lie... I have written things and posted them up... and then gotten the call or the email from someone I care about... telling me how much my words had hurt them or offended them or was just too much information... so I immediately deleted it...

...  I always thought that was kinda cowardly of me... but I also know that I don't want to hurt the people I care about with my words... or my songs...

... and that has always made me wonder if I was a true artist...
.
.. but lately I'm realizing that it's okay if I don't won't to hurt someone I care about... and hurting someone for art's sake is bullshit...

... and I started writing again... here and there... but the hope is that I will be writing every night... and most likely will not put it up on the internet... 

... cuz as my old buddy Jon Tomilson, so aptly put... my problems are really just bullshit compared to what most of the world is dealing with... I have "1st" world problems... and I cause most of them myself...  everyone falls in and out of love... everyone questions whether their doing the best they are capable of in their life... everyone worries about dying and what happens next...  everyone has some sort of health issue... relationship issue... job issue... everyone questions the powers that be at some point... everyone feels alone at some point...

... human nature is natural...

... so I'm gonna do my best to keep my drama to a minimum and try like hell not to hurt the people I care about...

... and let you know when things are good...
... and when the problems I think need to addressed need to be addressed...

... but I want to be happy... and I want you to be happy...
... and I don't want to instigate... unless it's instigating change for the better...

... and I don't want to talk about love....

... but I'm gonna... when it's time to...

... in the meantime I'll try and let the music do the the talkin...

... and let my actions speak louder than words...

... and forgive and forget...

... so that I can remember all the little things that I stopped paying attention to...

... and maybe I can get it right this time:)



]]>tmindflow@aol.comNone2010-03-29T02:37:18-04:00http://www.mindflowmusic.com/page7/files/b9042f3a67f94438ed1d8a395b188266-7.html#unique-entry-id-7http://www.mindflowmusic.com/page7/files/b9042f3a67f94438ed1d8a395b188266-7.html#unique-entry-id-7

... it’s strange for me to think how little I care for this island at the moment... ... it’s strange to feel so disconnected from a place that I love with all my heart... ... but it makes sense I suppose... ... for two years this island has equalled Stephanie Vincins... ...which meant... there was always a bright clear light in the dark sea of chaos Key West has to offer... it meant... that no matter what I was loved... and I had friends... it meant that there was always someone who would fight for me... and stand up for me... and be my social surrogate when I went all recluse... and inspire me to get up and stand up and seek out the sun and the waves even when I wanted to crawl in a hole... ... but there is something in me that is broken... at the most basic level... something I’ve spent my whole life trying to fix... and have yet to find a way... ... I was thinking today, of a letter Dan Millen (Mindflow guitarist) wrote to me after he was asked to leave the band... because I just didn’t see Mindflow becoming the band he wanted it to be... but, of course, we were young and bands are families and he was properly pissed...  and so wrote me this letter... and it was angry and hurtful... but I honestly don’t remember anything specific..... EXCEPT... that I clearly remember his writing that I would “never be happy”... because there was something in me that just would never let me be... ... and I wasn’t really sure what made me think of the letter until I started kinda backtracking in my mind... and thinking that was always kinda Steph’s stance... whether she ever said it that bluntly or not... in the past few months it was definetly what she was thinking... in the end the ennui took over and would not let go... and I lost something beautiful... but... so it got me thinking more... ... cuz I talked to Delphine for the first time in a VERY LONG TIME last week...(Delphine who I loved madly 10 years ago... and lost to distance... and cowardice... and lostness... and all that damn worry and sorrow about life and carreer and making it...)... and at the end of our conversation... she asked me “Ton... are you happy?”... and my mind raced... cuz I don’t know when or if I will ever talk to her again... (because she’s happy with man and child (phoebe)... and has a life that has turned out well... and I don’t want to interfere)... and my slowing synapses kept popping backward and backwarder... trying to remember the last time I could truly say I was happy... cuz I wanted to tell her I was happy... cuz I honestly want to be happy... and I wanted her, more than anything, to be able to hang up and smile and think of me happy... and all I could give her was silence... and I felt myself tearing up on the phone... trying to explain that I am fine and I am strong... and the songs and the music that I write will somehow save me from the sorrow... ...I honestly believe that... ... (but for what it’s worth... I sat down and thought about it after I hung up and realized just how many happy moments I have had in the past few years... (sit down sometime... on your porch... or anywhere safe and in the sun... and think about it... it’s amazing how many you come up with;)) and how many of those included Steph... it’s funny cuz in the early days of a break up... you always seem to remember all the bullshit of what went wrong and terrible moments and anger and the AAARRRGGGGHHHH!... which sadly keeps piling up between she and I in our day to day lives... stupid texts, emails and the fucking horror of facebook... but I know...  and she knows... that there was a time when we were beautiful... and we were happy... I distinctly remember us happy... in Key West... in Barbados... in Love...) ... so tonight I am writing... for the sake of writing... for the sake of happiness... the joy I’ve had and the joy I lost... and the joy that’s on the horizon and is mine for the taking... ... Key West equals nothing to me at the moment... (I have said this numerous times before though...)... so there is a part of me that gets that this is part of the process... ... of moving on... ... not gonna lie... I can’t say I won’t be leaving soon... because I feel like I need to... ... and I can’t say that I am not dissapointed, dissillusioned, disconnected and genuinely done with Key West... ... but again... part of the process... ... whether I leave Key West or not... ... I already know that I’ll be back sooner than later... ... cuz I may not be happy... but I am a survivor and I am a forgiver.. ... and Key West belongs to me as much as I belong to it... Dear Del,     Just so we’re clear... I am not happy... but I’m happy for you... cuz I owe you some... and you truly deserve it... Dear Steph,     Just so we’re clear... I am not happy... but I see that there was a time when I was when I was with you...  maybe one of these days we’ll find our way back to the end of the rainbow... Dear Dan,     Just so we’re clear... you are right (for now)...  but there’s gonna come a day when I prove you wrong;).... ...for real for real... Sincerely, Tito

]]>tmindflow@aol.comNone2010-03-26T03:27:28-04:00http://www.mindflowmusic.com/page7/files/293d6f1c18b1de372815c32589e550f2-6.html#unique-entry-id-6http://www.mindflowmusic.com/page7/files/293d6f1c18b1de372815c32589e550f2-6.html#unique-entry-id-6Friday, March 26, 2010 

237 ... so the weird thing about being single again is that you have no one to answer to when you finish a gig and come home at two in the morning drunk and ridiculous... ... so you can write whatever the fuck you want to write and expect no repercussions (I'm realistic enough to know that that's not completely true... but you get what I'm saying)... ... and so the music goes on and I begin to write... ... the days are a fucking mess now... " it is what it is"...  if I hear that or say that one more time I'm gonna pull my own head off and toss it into the ocean... ... it is not what it is... it is nothing... this is nothing... this is everything... this is just a fucking drag.... is what it is... .... good times... K & GT... for anyone that knows me... which I believe are very few now... so if you know about K & GT- give me a call... although... the last time I was in Barbados (which was probably the last time I had K & GT's!) my phone got stolen out of my room... so if you call then I probably won't answer cuz I can barely deal with reality at the moment ... let alone a strange phone number...! ... just switched the music to jazz... cuz Matisyahu was making me think too much... now instead Bill Evans... Here's that rainy day.... ... and I couldn't think of a better tune... cuz yes... let's give it for them rainy days!!!! and while we are at it... let's give it up for those fucking messes who write 'round midnite' and also at 2:24am... and also at 2:37--- the only reason I feel like mentioningit  is cuz I've become obsessed with it... in the afternoon and in the middle of the night... cuz 237 was my number in basic training (Army)... and although I can't remember the other correlations that it used to have...  I now know that 237 will somehow have an impact on my life.... not sure how yet... but it seems like anytime I notice the clock it has those numbers on it... ... now I'm feeling like a mental patient putting this out there... cuz there's been other shit that had 237 but I can't think of it at themoment... ... anyway... 237 matters to me... not sure how yet... I keep thinking of that Mel Gibson movie (and Joaquin Pheonix)... the one about aliens... can't remember the name... when all the shit that they've gone through in their lives suddenly comes clear at this critical moment in their lives... and it helps them defeat the aliens... ... so I keep thinking 237 is gonna save me... or help me... at some moment in my life... ... not sure how or why... but I have faith... ... lately I have so little faith... ... but now... "Autumn Leaves"  is playing... and Miles Davis is playing... and I am writing... and I am connected for a fraction of something... to these things... the song,.. the players... the I.... ... I am smoking a joint that Bill snuck me in a handshake... ... as a tip I guess... ... can't complain about a tip like that;) ... but it doesn't stop me from being sad aboudit... not the tip... just the "aboudit" ... cuz not sure if anyone knows "aboudit" anymore... ... it used to be funny... now I feel sad saying it... .... anyway... I'm drunk and it's now 2:47 and I missed my opportunity... for whatever was sposed to happen to happen... now I will wait for the next  237... ... I spent the day breaking apart and painting the remnants of Stephanie and Bob... ... and I will only say this... I wish I was able to truly capture the moment I am trying to capture on this canvas... ... cuz the beauty of  Bella and Bob... deserves to be seen... ... and "take 5"  by dave brubeck kicks on ... and the night suddenly seems lonely and wasteful... ... but I am hopefull... slightly;) ... but still so fucking sad aboudit!...............

]]>tmindflow@aol.comNone2010-03-12T01:38:51-05:00http://www.mindflowmusic.com/page7/files/de6e094b458a615d56608759b79723e9-5.html#unique-entry-id-5http://www.mindflowmusic.com/page7/files/de6e094b458a615d56608759b79723e9-5.html#unique-entry-id-5I just finished playing a gig with George Victory... it was beautiful... as are most gigs I play with George... but when we started I was a little under the weather...

...see I worked a crazy long 14 hour bartending spring break marathon yesterday and it caught up with me at 5am as I sat numb in front of the tv wondering what I should eat before I went to bed... I was heavily congested... heavily unrested... slightly innebriated... ridiculously frustrated... apparently righteously violated... and painfully aware of the sorrow that I have caused to the most important person in my life for the past two years...

... so I took a pill, quoted myself on facebook and went to sleep to avoid the thought of it and all things reality based...

... now I’m home tonight... feeling purified... I floated for the first 2 hours of the set tonight from cough medicine... then teetered the rest of the set on Jack Daniels and Miller Lite...

...but the whole time I was on stage I wanted to come home so I could write something wonderful... and apologetic...
... something to start the healing process... something to help ease the pain... and somehow help us both understand how and why love lifts and levels with such a lack of rhyme or reason at times...

... I wanted to say I was sorry...
... and so tonight I came home to write... but the first line of this Neruda poem kept coming into my brain and it made me seek it out to read the whole thing again... and suddenly I realized that somehow Pablo had already written my apology... and until I can think of a better way to phrase it, this is all I have to say....


The Song of Despair   by Pablo Neruda

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot’s dread, fury of a blind diver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness,
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief was my desire of you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was the voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still broke in currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only the tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one.
]]>tmindflow@aol.comNone2010-03-01T03:20:02-05:00http://www.mindflowmusic.com/page7/files/bd6fe8a8542d21c378ad1903ce566187-3.html#unique-entry-id-3http://www.mindflowmusic.com/page7/files/bd6fe8a8542d21c378ad1903ce566187-3.html#unique-entry-id-3
I once drunkenly read the greatest poem written by an American in the
last 50 years (Howl by Allen Ginsburg)... from beginning
to end aloud to a woman I loved deeply but who I just didn't love enough...
desperately naked and lost in an a mixed up apartment overlooking
Fenway Park... my beloved cats, Jazz and Madu, can confirm this in Heaven...
when or if any of those of us involved actually make it there...

I suppose it's not important now... so much of life is like that... where
you and/or the ones you love will be the only witness to the epic moments
of your life... no matter how important or insignificant it may all seem
to the rest of the world... we all have moments when we achieve greatness or
hit rock bottom...

could be performing cpr when someone needed it... giving blood... giving
forgiveness... giving a hand to hold... a kiss at the perfect moment...
... a hug when nothing else made sense... giving one kind word when that was
all that was needed... or shutting up when another word would ruin everything...
we all have had that moment of... winning a gold medal... setting foot on the moon...
having a child... raising that child with hope... writing a hit song...
or just writing one song... in our own little way...

or it could be the other side... when you have broken... or when you cause
someone you care about to break... when you made the wrong choice...
when you let down the only people that matter... when you lost the game...
when you had one too many... when you had 8 too many... when you were a bad
friend... a bad partner... a bad lover... and bad human being... when nothing
has rhyme or reason...

I am... all of the above... I am... alive... I am... afraid... I am... lost...
I am... on my way... I am... far from perfect but always aiming for perfection...
I am... wondering what happens next... I am... picturing praying... for humanity...
for the ones I love... the ones I hate... the ones I never met... the ones I
have lost... the ones I have found along the way... the ones I will always be tied
to... and all those cut loose... and for myself...
I am... sometimes that's all I know... I am... I am here... that is all...

...witness...
...soothsayer...
...hero...
...victim...
...addict...
...saint...
...dictator...
...pagan...
...comedian...
...clutz...
...shadow...
...muckraker...
...deviant...
...soldier...
...clairvoyant...
...metaphor...
...class act...
...leper...
...genius...
... "a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king"...


... so I don't throw many stones...

... and I try to remember to hold each moment sacred... if at all possible...

... I forget to do that alot!...

... so tonight I'm remembering to hold this moment... and so many others I've
been blessed with or cursed with... as sacred...
cuz life is...

... and I am... and we are... and it will...
... and whatever happens... I'm not going out without saying a few things first...
... so fucking howl my friends... you might as well...

...cuz in the end, if nothing else, you can do something...
...cuz nobody remembers the one's who did nothing...



HOWL
by Allen Ginsberg

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear,
burning their money in wastebaskets and listening
to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through
Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares,
alcohol and cock and endless balls,
incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and
lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson,
illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery
dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops,
storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree
vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn,
ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless
ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine
until the noise of wheels and children brought
them down shuddering mouth-wracked and
battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance
in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's
floated out and sat through the stale beer after
noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack
of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to
pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,
lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping
down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills
off Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts
and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks
and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days
and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the
Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a
trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind-ings and
migraines of China under junk-with-drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the
railroad yard wondering where to go, and went,
leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing
through snow toward lonesome farms in grand-father night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy
and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively
vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary
indian angels who were visionary indian angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore
gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight street
light smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston
seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the
brilliant Spaniard to converse about America
and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving
behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees
and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the
F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist
eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting
the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union
Square weeping and undressing while the sirens
of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed
down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked
and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight
in policecars for committing no crime but their
own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were
dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts,
who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly
motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim,
the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose
gardens and the grass of public parks and
cemeteries scattering their semen freely to
whomever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up
with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath
when the blond & naked angel came to pierce
them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate
the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar
the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb
and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but
sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden
threads of the craftsman's loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of
beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along
the floor and down the hall and ended fainting
on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and
come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling
in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning
but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sun
rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,
who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad
stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these
poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver-joy
to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls
in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses'
rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with
gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station
solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in
dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and
picked themselves up out of basements hung
over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third
Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on
the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the
East River to open to a room full of steamheat and opium,
who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment
cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime
blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall
be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested
the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their
pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the
bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts,
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned
with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded
by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty
incantations which in the yellow morning were
stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht
& tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot
for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks
fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique
stores where they thought they were growing
old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits
on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse
& the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments
of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the
fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the
drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten
into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley
ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of
the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes,
cried all over the street,
danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed
phonograph records of nostalgic European
1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and
threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans
in their ears and the blast of colossal steam whistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying
to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude
watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out
if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had
a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who
came back to Denver & waited in vain, who
watched over Denver & brooded & loned in
Denver and finally went away to find out the
Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying
for each other's salvation and light and breasts,
until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for
impossible criminals with golden heads and the
charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet
blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky
Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys
or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or
Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the
daisychain or grave,
who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hyp
notism & were left with their insanity & their
hands & a hung jury,
who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism
and subsequently presented themselves on the
granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads
and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy,
and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin
Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational
therapy pingpong & amnesia,
who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic
pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,
returning years later truly bald except for a wig of
blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible mad
man doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East,
Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid
halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul,
rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench
dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare,
bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,
with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book
flung out of the tenement window, and the last
door closed at 4. A.M. and the last telephone
slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room
emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture,
a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet,
and even that imaginary,
nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination
ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and
now you're really in the total animal soup of time
and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed
with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use
of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane,
who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space
through images juxtaposed, and trapped the
archangel of the soul between 2 visual images
and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun
and dash of consciousness together jumping
with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human
prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent
and shaking with shame,
rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm
of thought in his naked and endless head,
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown,
yet putting down here what might be left to say
in time come after death,
and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in
the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the
suffering of America's naked mind for love into
an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone
cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio
with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered
out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.
What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open
their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unob
tainable dollars! Children screaming under the
stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men
weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the
loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy
judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the
crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of
sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment!
Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose
blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers
are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo!
Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows!
Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long
streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories
dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose
smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch
whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch
whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch
whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen!
Moloch whose name is the Mind!
Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream
Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in
Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!
Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom
I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch
who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy!
Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch!
Light streaming out of the sky!
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs!
skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic
industries! spectral nations! invincible mad
houses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pave-
ments, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to
Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies!
gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole
boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions!
gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs!
Ten years' animal screams and suicides!
Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on
the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the
wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell!
They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving!
carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!
Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland
where you're madder than I am
I'm with you in Rockland
where you must feel very strange
I'm with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother
I'm with you in Rockland
where you've murdered your twelve secretaries
I'm with you in Rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humor
I'm with you in Rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter
I'm with you in Rockland
where your condition has become serious and
is reported on the radio
I'm with you in Rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit
the worms of the senses
I'm with you in Rockland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the
spinsters of Utica
I'm with you in Rockland
where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the
harpies of the Bronx
I'm with you in Rockland
where you scream in a straightjacket that you're
losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss
I'm with you in Rockland
where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul
is innocent and immortal it should never die
ungodly in an armed madhouse
I'm with you in Rockland
where fifty more shocks will never return your
soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a
cross in the void
I'm with you in Rockland
where you accuse your doctors of insanity and
plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the
fascist national Golgotha
I'm with you in Rockland
where you will split the heavens of Long Island
and resurrect your living human Jesus from the
superhuman tomb
I'm with you in Rockland
where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com-
rades all together singing the final stanzas of
the Internationale
I'm with you in Rockland
where we hug and kiss the United States under
our bedsheets the United States that coughs all
night and won't let us sleep
I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night
]]>tmindflow@aol.comNone2010-02-19T02:17:52-05:00http://www.mindflowmusic.com/page7/files/f85c3c3bfd99941df4fa4fc69de0b8a5-2.html#unique-entry-id-2http://www.mindflowmusic.com/page7/files/f85c3c3bfd99941df4fa4fc69de0b8a5-2.html#unique-entry-id-2
"Life got in the way"...


... every once in a while I say that line to myself... 

... when I think about missed opportunities...
... ruined relationships...
... lost loves...
... distant friends...
... departed relatives...
... whether or not Jazz and Madu are still alive...
... the kids I want to have...
... the home I want to build...
... the woman I want to marry...

... trips I meant to take but never did... 
... Australia... Fiji... Prague... Moscow... Costa Rica... San Francisco...
... all the other places that I can remember swearing to myself that I would one day return to yet haven’t for one reason or another...
...Vancouver... Victoria... Seattle... Chicago... Huntsville... Nice... Paris... Venice... Mortara... Wimbledon...

... things I meant to master but never did...
... things like languages... Spanish, French, Italian, Sign...

...various musical instruments...  starting with guitar and piano... but also trumpet, violin, drums and whistling with my fingers... and pretty much anything that can make a melody...

... along with surfing...
... auto repair...
... painting...
... cooking...
... and chess...

... my mind always seems to have the one too many things up ahead to stay focused on the matters at hand...

... I have lived the majority of my adult life looking way too far ahead...
... or always looking back into the past... and letting life get in the way...

... what I’m starting to realize is that I have missed out (and am missing out) on much of my present...

... and it’s not so much that life got in the way...
... it’s that I’ve been so busy envisioning how I thought things were supposed to be...
...and how they used to be...
... that I’ve forgotten what it is to just be...

... lately it just seems to me that I have gotten in the way of life...

... and it suddenly feels like life is pushing me out it’s way...
... telling me that it must go on!!!...

... and it makes me think that that excuse, “life got in the way”, is a cop out...
... it’s just an easy way to say... I gave up...

... fuck! life is in everyone’s way!
... the ridiculous man/apparent confirmed bachelor/musician/dreamer/poet/bartender/drunk...
... the crazy woman/innkeeper/best friend/waitress/shrink/unfulfilled American beauty...
... the students...
... the lobstermen...
... the nurses...
... the lawyers...
... the contractors...
... the mothers and the fathers...
... the sons and the daughters...
... the holy ghosts... the dancing fools... the angry mobs... the hungry hearts... the brow beaten... the love struck... the young guns with the same old stories...  the contemptuous suitors of precarious situations... the rabble rousers and those that have been roused by the rabble... the juxtaposed opposition... the manimals of the concrete jungles... the frequent flyers and the fallen angels... and everyone else in between!

... so I am officially writing off the saying... “life got in the way”...

... and just gonna say this...

“life is the way”... 
and I think it’s time for me to get going:)
]]>tmindflow@aol.comNone2010-01-22T02:24:11-05:00http://www.mindflowmusic.com/page7/files/c93cfb9dd62e01e7fd2818ef303e6fa7-1.html#unique-entry-id-1http://www.mindflowmusic.com/page7/files/c93cfb9dd62e01e7fd2818ef303e6fa7-1.html#unique-entry-id-1
... it's a Dave Matthews song (I recommend you listen to the song while you read this post:))... I've just listened to it like 6 times in row since I walked in my door... and I keep thinking... why does anyone ever hate on the Dave Matthews Band... he usually gets it right:)... and sometimes he's even perfect... his last album just oozes with joy and pain equally and for some reason... at this moment I am thinking I need music like that...

... just home from a gig... my first with George Victory (www.georgevictory.com)...

It's weird cuz... I'm happy... because I just played a beautiful gig... (even Eddie Standifer showed up... anyone who's seen me play with eddie knows just how perfect he makes a gig... just check out the videos from this past weekend:))...

... but...
... everyone missed it;) (not everyone... there was a bunch of tourists and a strange conglomeration of new and old fans who I thank for being there!)... and I'm not bitching... (trust me, I would have loved to go see Joe Bachman and the Crew last night... but I just needed one night not in a bar and not drinking... so trust me I get it, in Key West it is impossible to support ALL your friends!... you either go broke or you are drunk 7 nights a week... and the only way to maintain some sense of normalness here or get any real creative output is to stay in every once and I while) and I know how many of you came out last weekend:) and I'm know how many of you come to see me wherever and whenever you can:)... and I thank you for that... it's what keeps me playing... but something in me just wishes that I could capture some of these crazy beautiful moments... someday when I'm old I won't remember them... and most likely the few who were there won't remember... so it makes me wonder if they ever truly existed... but that's not really the point I'm going for...

... point is... Me, George and Eddie got our reggae on tonight and I wish more people coulda seen it;)...

... but it comes in waves... and I know that (Thank God)...
... and soon the tide will change... and there will be crazy busy weeks and then empty seats the next... and there will songs one day and then none the next... there will be love and then all these other moments of awkward non-love (we are meant to love and be loved!)... there will be everything til suddenly there is nothing... there will be joy and pain... heaven and hell... etc. etc.... but I will somehow, someway get through...

cuz it comes in waves... that's what you've got to remember... that's what I've got to keep reminding myself... that's just how it is... (the older I get the harder it is to remember and believe)
but all I'm sayin is that...
in these nights... I am realizing I am getting back to my old self... hungry and lonely... (which is a good place for me)

but it doesn't stop me from missing that Bella Luna...
and this small world...
and sunny days...
and the fall...
and broken rivers...
and BC buds...
and surfer's point...
and the Key West homegrown...
and the lost in the waves...
and Jazz and Madu...
and the jock...
and the soldier...
and the poet...
and the musician...
and the lover...
and the dreamer
and everyone I ever was.......
and everyone I might still could be......................

and all i'm saying really is:

it's funny the way it is... (Don't worry Dave, I got you)
]]>tmindflow@aol.comNone2010-01-06T23:00:45-05:00http://www.mindflowmusic.com/page7/files/f5cd23b65fb73eadae4d0d9bcaa0c252-0.html#unique-entry-id-0http://www.mindflowmusic.com/page7/files/f5cd23b65fb73eadae4d0d9bcaa0c252-0.html#unique-entry-id-0