good morning ~
(click the link / downed willow to listen)
today’s track is made again from one little grab of piano improv, plus some audio from slo-mo footage of a pond
been really into this Ry Cooder / V.M. Bhatt album lately after reading about it in a Teju Cole book
a buddy of mine is in need of some mutual aid fundraising and is running a fun raffle in order to do so - she makes really sick customized clothing and the winner gets either a piece or a gift card from her shop - - more details on Instagram, throw down $5! at the very least you help out a deserving person and best case scenario you get a rad pair of pants
worth noting: for the first time in, like, fifteen years there are currently no Ben Seretan shows on the books. that will change soon probably, but I wanted to acknowledge the caesura on the record, feels kinda good :)
"I needed this win!" I said out loud over the music at the bar, thinking I was joking. That kind of thing happens often, I believe what I'm about to say is funny but within it a truth, a stone at the center of a plum. Our band sounded pretty good, for sure, and Xe was really bringing a true rock 'n' roll lead singer energy to the songs, but I felt like the DEVO cover band had it in the bag. They came with the classic matching costumes, they had made t-shirts, they had a gaggle of people on stage and as a huge fan of the source material I was definitely thrilled to hear someone playing Whip It live. Plus it was so crowded in there that I literally could not enter the room from the backyard, I watched from a window outside, what a great night.
Not to say that the real prize money we won was the friends we made along the way but truthfully chatting in the crowded bar I had forgotten that there was actual money on the line, was very happy just to bend our lives around these songs for a few hours, happy to drive my friends to and from practice and to and from the gig. But when I walked by the bar owner, literally elbow deep in the little paper ballots that people used to pick their band of the night, he smiled a little devilishly at me, hollering out "another one for Sparks!" And then a few moments later he called it for us, handed us an envelope stuffed with cash. We won it, I was grinning, we divvied up the 20s between us and basked in the glow.
I imagine a dangerous climb up the side of a cliff. There are moments where you are safely and securely anchored, clipped into an immovable medium, carabiner secured. Then there are moments where you move from one anchor to another. This is where the danger lies, because in order to hoist yourself up, you make yourself unsecured from the cliff. I have lived in for many months now an unsettling lack of anchor, just kinda feels like I'm haphazardly gripping here and stepping there. The brief but profound feeling I had in that bar in that moment of victory felt very much like, at least for a little while, I had somewhere to clip in, some kinda anchor, tied in to it.
Not like my one quarter cut of it would change my life, certainly not, but it would cover my gas for a couple of weeks, plus I took my wife apple picking with some of the prize money (another huge win). And it's not like playing a set of three Sparks covers is anything you can build a whole life out of. But I'm always wanting some kind of celestial head pat from some external force greater than myself, I want to be scratched under the chin and told that I'm a good boy. Here's one for you. My friends and I were good enough to win a goofy music contest at a cool bar we like. That felt pretty good, felt like someone had blown on my embers a little bit.
The thing about any kind of win is that the intoxication of it only lasts so long. And any meaningful kind of victory has to some extent be snatched from the jaws of defeat - the easier the win, the less potent the feeling, the less long lasting the effect. And losses, phew, I mean, they really do seem to stick with you. I mean I don't often suddenly remember a random triumph of mine in the shower, but I will vividly recall a moment of putting my foot in my mouth from over a decade ago. So must you keep winning in order to feel good? I think the answer is actually yes. But there are forms of quieter, perpetual victory that can be brought about. Waking up each day is a kind of triumph. Letting that standing tone of hope earnestly resonate within you for a short time, that's a win. Defeating your own most self-destructive tendencies should come with a championship cup.
Tuesday night we made a fire and cooked our dinner over it - big win, the baba ganoush rocked - but we were obviously distracted waiting for the voter returns to come in. Our own Greene County voting experience was nothing spectacular - local firehouse, republicans running unopposed, local fire department offering a takeaway pot roast dinner plate for seventeen dollars, I could smell the beef while coloring in my ovals. There was nothing on the ballot that challenged anything about our status quo or the fabric of reality. We weren't up late enough to watch it when it happened but as we sat down to lunch the topic came up. Have you seen the victory speech yet? No, neither of us had, whip out a cell phone and pull it up. I feel so cynical, so inundated by the trickling-down machinations of billionaires, beset by misinformation and AI slop (by the way: I got some potentially good news yesterday, but via an email that was really obviously written by ChatGPT - it did sour things for me, I have to say). I do not feel particularly capable of enacting change despite feeling so sharply that drastic change is necessary. But the now months-long triumph of Zohran and his appeals to basic social fabric decency are giving me something. He spoke very beautifully - poignant at times, fierce at others - and it really cheers me in a profound way to think that public transit for the least economically franchised people in the city might measurably improve. The assholes in charge have never ridden a city bus in their lives. Damn, I needed this win, too! Victory snatched from the jaws of the jailers, the landlords, the vampiric, the cruel. Feels good today, may it also feel good tomorrow.
But what about you? What Ws have you put up on the big board lately? What’s the quietest victory you’ll experience today? What pea of truth are you sliding between the mattresses of jokes?