Midnight Pub

~inquiry


johano

Nos da, ~inquiry... I was and am a casual Cure fan... tonight I've been revisiting a lot of Kate Bush and Marina...

reply

inquiry

Heard of Kate, of course, but exposure was limited to accidental radio/MTV occurrences.

"Marina"? <looks her up> Oh, wow, does she look familiar. Must have explored her a bit somewhere along the line, but the memories are apparently shy.

reply

johano

Love 'em both in their intelligence and quirkiness 😃

Marina (formerly known as Marina and the Diamonds) has always sort of bubbled along somewhat under the radar, but has always put out high quality stuff...

reply

inquiry
Love 'em both in their intelligence and quirkiness

Sounds pretty danged Midnight Pub to me!

And my wife in spades, actually....

reply

johano

She sounds like a character...

reply

inquiry

After decades of trying to hammer square pegs into what, relatively speaking, has felt more like an "enneagram-shaped hole"... I'm finally with someone at least as proud of seeing things differently as I - which I must admit vestiges of sexism within long considered utterly impossible for that sector (yeah, I know... waaaay to broad - haha - a brushstroke, there..) of the most mentally ill species of all....

reply

johano

Ohhh enneagram stuff... interesting but I haven't gotten too deeply into Gurdjieffian matters

reply

inquiry

Probably wrote about this already (oh, the indignity of aging-fueled forgetfulness...), but I had this friend in late high school whose dad was big in/on Gurdjieff/Ouspensky notions... had several of the books.

My friend himself seemed like he couldn't be bothered by it much, I imagine for having had to listen to it on a far more regular basis. But I was rather captivated as his dad elucidated.

What I didn't know until years later was the milk dad was drinking has some pretty serious vodka content to it, which accounted for much of the spell-binding glory of his delivery.

But I continued on reading the likes for several years, and I found his dad's accounts plenty accurate/consistent.

If nothing else, it engendered a healthy inner sense of "things might not be at all as they seem/appear", which stoked much investigation/discovery down other paths.

<moment of silence for that man, who couldn't possibly still be alive>

reply

johano

My path has gone down various twisty turny ways, Fourth Way stuff is only a part... Idries Shah (who I regard as both a fabulist *and* important) is/was another.

If nothing else, it engendered a healthy inner sense of "things might not be at all as they seem/appear", which stoked much investigation/discovery down other paths.

This is so important to have, along with a boundless curiosity and a functioning BS detector!

<moment of silence for that man, who couldn't possibly still be alive>

Amen, may his memory be for a blessing...

Everyone knows the saying that repetition is the mother of memory... there's a corollary saying, which is:

Memory is the mother of wisdom.

reply

inquiry

I've been wanting to reply to the "path" mention so badly, but... well.... BUT I SWEAR I WILL....

(he says, remembering the hard part is agonizing over what combination of words might actually make a difference)

reply

johano

Do you mean a pun on $PATH? 😃

reply

inquiry

I didn't. There was some thread where I thought you wrote something about a path - as in a path you're on - but I couldn't find it again, subsequently concluding what I was actually mis-remembering was "got messed up by religion" as though perhaps part of a past path....

(My God, words can feel so prohibitively cumbersome at times....)

reply

johano
(My God, words can feel so prohibitively cumbersome at times....)

Indeed they can... but they can also have power when deployed artfully, ask any bard...

reply

tatterdemalion

I'm also a big fan of The Cure. Only saw them live once, though, and was late, if you can believe it.

reply

inquiry

I went through a several year phase discovering Cure and Depeche Mode favorites for having hung out with a particular female - and much bigger - fan of both in a favorite bar back in the 90s.

I was rather amazed I'd somehow not chanced upon them sooner, as I was already 30 by 1991.

Then again, I went through a rather religious period in the early 1980s, which knocked down - and set back - my "worldly" music intake considerably. By the time the likes of Nirvana and Pearl Jam broke though - had all the merciless absent-hood of the vacuum of deep space.

So to me, the 1990s felt like torrential downpours of nutritional sonic bliss.

Of course, that doesn't mean I experienced it to the Nth degree, as of course favorites vied for repeat mode.

reply

inquiry

I suddenly remembered I wrote/recorded a song about the female mentioned in the above.

See... I had a 16-track digital recorder in the late 1990's, leading to my writing/recording a bunch of stuff that, together, I wound up calling "Greatest Hits - 1999". I will admit there's a somewhat "beginner-ish" sound to the recordings. But they remain dear to the heart....

<uploads to Google Drive, changes access to "anyone with the link", acquires link>

I called this song "Fuck the Rules", because I was married to someone else at the time. Never "consummated", mind you (although, interestingly, we did "Indian leg wrestle" once, and when we were exhausted of that I actually said "Did we just have sex, or WHAT?!"). But I'm rather susceptible to guilt, so just sitting in her apartment shooting the shit while sitting in her bathroom as she performed her "transformation" for going out (cosmetics) is possibly something I'll regret to slight degrees the rest of my life.

Anyway... have a listen, and I do hope you enjoy (assuming I got the access shit correct...):

Fuck the Rules

(Huh, that's right... I'd intended to add a guitar solo, but never did....)

reply

tetris

Pretty catchy tune! "A big hipped woman ain't got no soul" had me grinning.

so just sitting in her apartment shooting the shit while sitting in her bathroom as she performed her "transformation" for going out (cosmetics) is possibly something I'll regret to slight degrees the rest of my life.

You regret staying with your ex as long as you did, or you regret something else?

reply

inquiry

I was more regretting sneaking around behind the ex's back just because these days I'm more sensitive to the likes than ever before.

But it turns out she was even worse lying sack 'o the brown smelly than I at the time, e.g. a child from a former - neither of which I was ever told about - but I chanced upon the kid's first name in the place of one of our two sons on a medical insurance card while looking for evidence during the divorce.. (and my current wife and I found a Facebook page for a kid the right age, whose first name was the aforementioned name spelled backwards, and a backwards-spelled surname...).

But in the spirit of another thread in these parts: "but in the end, it doesn't even matter".... ;-)

Yeah, I always liked that "big hipped" line. She was fairly petite with what I'd call a slightly above-average "thigh gap", which just so happened to be what I was physically into at the time. I decided to partially conceal that combo in "big hipped", because some people seem to get tense around the word 'gap' in that context.... <coughs>

reply

tetris

Oh I see. Jesus, sounds like a real mess -- glad you got out of it. Ah I thought you meant she was Disney Pixar mom pear-shaped or something :P

reply

inquiry

The phrase "homely hot" comes to mind. :-)

Speaking of women in my past, when I moved from my home state (US:Wisconsin) to where I'd have my first serious full time employment (US:New York), I stayed with a 76-year old female (she often remarked she was the same age as Ronald Reagan...) with the most glorious so-called Brooklyn accent. She came to mind last night, and searching on her name had me remembering she was rather into haiku, and was actually the editor of some major haiku publication for a while. The search hits actually led me to an installment of that publication.

Love that sort of thing!

She was a real trip. I actually first stayed alone in one of her three units in a large house, but she moved in with me after explaining she needed to make more rental moolah... which led to all kinds of interesting/scary experiences.

For example, there were many times I'd find her crying - sometimes to the point of screaming - over voices she was convinced were "CIA operatives" yelling at and/or threatening her - which OF COURSE led to discussion about whether she was picking up those voices through her metallic tooth fillings....

And then there was the time I was laying on the couch watching TV, and she came in the door from the central hallway cradling a stack of wood in her arms, began telling me something or another, and when I perchance looked down at her legs (eye level), noted a BAT with wings extended clinging to the inside of one of her thighs... I had to say "Um... Lilli... I need you to be calm.. I'm going to express something to you that might sound alarming at first, but... please... CALM...." and then described the situation, carefully took the wood from her... and she carefully left for the outdoors where she even more carefully removed her pants, the bat remaining clawed to them throughout the process.... :-)

Oh! And then there was the time she watched Zeppelin's "The Song Remains the Same" concert (originally typed 'convert'...) video with me... I'll never forget how she repeatedly murmured how beautiful she thought Jimmy Page was.... :-)

reply

tetris

Wow, she was born in 1911? Can you imagine living through two world wars, experiencing all that devastation and technological progress, and coming out sane.

Have you looked her up since?

reply

inquiry

I often do when she comes to mind, but it's unlikely the search results will ever go beyond the couple hits related to her involvement in haiku-landia.

But she was a dear soul. Grew up and spent most of her life in Brooklyn, NY, USA, of which her glorious accent along was sufficient proof.

Understand that I grew up and spent the vast majority of my early days in the so-called "midwest" of the United States, so NYC was essentially a mythical beast worthy of reverence and awe. So when I moved that direction (about 90 miles north of NYC), it was quite a big deal, especially for having endured a few years of being a "fundamentalist Christian" during part of my college years.

The sense of having moved from nowhere to (in my mind) The Greatest Somewhere of All was amplified all the more by suddenly living with of lifelong resident of Where John Lennon Wanted To Be....

reply

tetris

It's funny in the sense that I had the opposite experience, coming from a busy city upbringing and moving out into the sticks for some slice of sanity, and coming in contact with these religious fundies, who, yes despite their atrocious beliefs of other people, treat one another with upmost courtesy and kindness. I've not probed to see how deep the kindness goes, but it's a nice change from the usual "nothing-personal-get-out-of-my-way" attitude.

reply

inquiry

Having been a religious fundy several lives ago, I'm occasionally tempted to engage and play dumb with them - mostly to see how on top of their game they are.

reply