rock and roll musings by Tim Byrnes

Ghosts in the Answering Machine: Something Creaky This Way Comes

    1st off I was wrong, as usual. The Tension Envelopes reunion will not take place in January, but in April. All other previous info still applies.

     So, who are these Envelopes, and why are they so tense? I was talking to guitarist Rick Neblung the other day and he commented that bassist Carl Simmons has' a memory like a steel trap' and I agree. His historical reminiscences re: Tension Envelopes on burninglight and elsewhere are likely yards more accurate than anything I might vaguely remember beyond feeling.

      But, oh, what a feeling.

     Anyway, it was 197something and I was like 6 months away from my second divorce, alcoholism was a comin' to git me, I was working as a receiveing clerk for a Great Metropolitan Communications company and playing 'Sweet Jane' in one lousy barband after another.

     Enter Rick Neblung. Introduced to me by a female guitarist friend Allison Ruta(who helped me realize I had no business being married and for which has never been properly thanked or apologized to). It was this introduction that set the stage for Tension Envelopes.

     The start, of course, was false. Rick and I and Allison and Tom Fraunberger (remeber Tom?) made our cbgb debut under the Envelope name and were rickety, drunk and split down the middle between my and Allison's songs. We also turned into kinda a punkdrunk Fleetwood Mac as Tom hooked up w/my not-yet-ex-wife and Itried, pathetically and unsuccessfully to hook up w/Allison.

     Allison, if yr reading this I am sooooooooooooo sorry. Truly.

     Anyway that version imploded. Rick and I hooked up w/drummer Don Gunning for essentially 6 months of power trio basement jams. A great 'woodshed' period but Don wanted different thinbgs than Rick and I and we all realized it and that band split up as amicably as pie making room for the ACTUAL Tension Envelopes.

     Enter Carl Simmons and Mike Hegger. Carl plays bass so Rick moves to guitar. Here's what I remember.......

     The 4 of us 1st set up as strangers in Neblung's loft. I'd just written a 3 chord slice of psychodrama called 'Danny Miller', a death ballad for a fictional idiot who snorted a boatload of heroin 'cause he thought it was coke and, as a result, died. It starts...

'i think you better sit down, Ii got some news, Marie

About the man you loved and I wish you didn't have to

Hear this from me.....'

     The riff, in Rick and Carl's hands was suddenly huge and commanding, like a giant stepping down a mountain in the silverain of Mike's cymbals and the thunder of his toms. Electric blood flooded the room. I crouched my best Johnny Rotten and continued to the chorus, which swung it's song of doom

 '.... someone sold pure smack to Danny Miller

Thought it was cocaine..... but he was wrong.....'

     Each powerchord accent became the tinsel explosion of the punch to the eye. I grew a backbone and believed the words I was singing as never before......

' Stoned celebrities urging kids DON'T DO DRUGS!!!!!

Someone's dealing death out by the playground swingset

Someone's turning our children into ghosts.....'

     Everything got louder and taller and smarter and hipper and finely tuned just right. Guitar chords crashed like jetfighters, the drums generated a freakin' magnetic field and I started swinging that mic stand, guitar forgotten. I'm a singer now, dammit, trying to dress up empathy as sympathy.....

'Somewhere somebody's visiting theoir own private heaven

Huddled in the cold w/a needle in their arm

And maybe for 20 minutes thay ain't got no problems

Finall, sleeping like a kitten in some kitchen

Comfortable ........... and warm.'

    At this lull w/no prearrangement other than knowing it had to be this way,m the 4 of us crashed on the downbeat, ponding that riff like we were nailing it to a cross. It was that perfect and important. I improvised the lyrics we ended the song w/ever after....

'If you can love me black I just might love you back

Love me back, mommy.'

    Crashburn, slow cymbal dissolve. Neblung picks up the riff in a ticktock rhythm. Carl's bass slides across sympathy notes like grace on skates, Mikes rolling down an endless flight of stairs while my guitar speaks in tongues of flame and feedback. It ends w/a crash that echoes in the vast space like waves on a beach.

     Mike looks up w/that 100000 watt smile and, as Rick reported elsewhere, asked 'Well, am I an Envelope?!' Truth is, in that moment we were all of us, finally Tension Envelopes.

     We've lost Mike Hegger and it truly breaks what heart I have that he and I never got the chance to know each other sober, to talk as men and perhaps settle differences; to forgive and be forgiven. I was a mess and yes, made messes, may of which I still regret (sorry again, Allison, you deserved better) but I wouldn't trade a day becausee there was such glory in the noise.

     It's that noise that kicks the ass of the James Taylor/Confessional crap that soaks the spirit in self-pity, sending it sounth towards self-destruction. It's that noise, those songs (and new somgs) played by those people that right now signals if not redemption, then a pretty funky form of vindication.

     A second chance. To not just do what we do best but, I daresay, to be who we are best.

     The beast is awakening. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 20:57 | link | comments (3)

Sherman, Set the Wayback to I Don't Remember

Random thoughts: Ok, either it's reality or it's television. It can't be both. Now there's a grand, sweeping statement (yeah, it tells the world ya ain't got a clue). How's the weather up there? I don't get to ask that question very often 'cause I'm like 6 foot 2 damn tall and people alays ask me that stupid question and Groucho Marx once said that the best way to answer that question was to spit on the guy and tell him it's raining, but has yr weather been as hot as ours? 102damn hot for the last 3 weeks. Or, oh my god, is yr place llike underwater in the flooding? I'm so sorry to be bitching about heat while people's lives float and drown and change irrevocably . From experience all I can say is, it sucks but that's all.

Try to find the good. Apparently that's what makes us human.

Wonder what makes a human torch?

  Feel like I'm living in a bad movie of the week about rural southerners and Hollywood's interpretation  of same as a kind of cartoon gothic opera. Suddenly my already seedy ghetto's been invaded by, and I'm sorry to say this, but ,,,,,,,,, stereotypes.

I myself have sunk to the stereotype of the grumpy old man who yells at the kids to 'turn that shit down' and while it breaks my heart on one level as I suffer not from an irony deficiency but in my defense it usually is shit and it's always too damn loud. And big ol' German Sheperds tied up all barking madness and teethteethteeth. Hank Sr blaring from the car radio at 1 am. Drunken howlings at the moon. A loud .love of life from louts who havn't learned that life is largely levels of loss.

When you choose to look at it that way. I guess.

And guess what? The (legendary) New Jersey barband Tension Envelopes will be reuniting sometime in late December/early January in the rocknroll hotbed of Fowler, Colorado. Ex Paul McKinney Band drummer Paul Costello will be filling in on drums (but not said drummer's shoes) for the late Mike Hegger. Still in the ridiculously early planning stages of this but suffice to say the more it hits me what we're actually going to do, the more twisted and excited this page is gonna be. Expect some type from both Eric Flesch and Speedy Firbank on this one.

Growing old in public.

tim

Posted by: timbyrnes at 21:36 | link | comments (14)

Bo Diddley Was a Gunslinger: On Mortality and Bomp Bomp Bomp Ba Bomp Ba Bomp Bomp

     Bo Diddley is dead. Long live Bo Diddley! Long live the spirit and the memory of the young heart articulating it's sorrowjoylovehatesexandmadness by spouting gibberish atop some driving beat. Long live the superherodom attained by strapping on a Stratocaster and plugging into the Marshall stack of collective conciousness. Long live the hopeful hopeless in their mission to get someone, anyone to LOOK AT ME and somehow register as more than a blip on local radar. Long live the attempt, through sound and words, to transform the randomness of the semi-wasted life into a culture. Long live the garage. Long live the cheap guitar. Long live the street dance. Long live the corner bar. Long live the idiots yelling out for 'Free Bird' when you've been slamming out Clash covers all night. Long live the woozy, frowzy drunk chick who can make you feel like Hendrix w/just one unfocused look and perhaps a lick of the lips. Long live the mixtape, the anarchist's answer to lousy radio. Long live the open mic night. Long live punk rock.

     Long live the blues.

tb

Posted by: timbyrnes at 22:46 | link | comments (2)

Themes for an Imaginary Western

    Viva Obama and his little old Mama and that's all I'm gonna say about it.

     For now.

     What I'd like to play around with is what kinda theme songs will the candidates choose. Obama's been pumping 'Beautiful Day' by U2 through his victorious speakers, while I believe Hillary was still using Fleetwood Mac's 'Don't Stop" and Old Man McCain was playing 'Glycerine' or 'Sixteen Stones'.

    Something by Bush. Get it?

     OK, it's patently obvious that I have nothing to write about and am simply sitting in the library typing at y'all and that ain't fair. It's a beautiful day - and speaking of which, I heard that Bono (not Sonny) has asked the Obama campaign to cease and desist using the tune of that same name, although no reasons were given. Or needed.

    Oh yeah, I have an empty head and busy fingers this morning. So how y'all been?

     I recently left one job to go back to another, the convenience store I almost had to manage. But now I'm the late shift (2 to 11) utility guy. I'm getting lots of hours and almost staying out of the politics, but you know what happens when you put 3 people in a room. They might not pick a leader, but they'll surely pick somebody to hate. That's from an old Star Trek and the best description of the birth of Politics I've ever heard. So far.

     Buster and Sarh say hello. Camille and the 100 cats all say meow. I say Watson whatever happened to J.F Murphy and Salt?

Be back when I have something to say. MMMMMMMMWWWWWWAHHHHH I Love you all!

tim

Posted by: timbyrnes at 20:24 | link | comments

We Need a Bigger Piano, Phil: How Sonny Bono Invented Feedback

     Once upon a time, back in the 20th century, there lived a homicidal record producer by the name of Phil Spector. Running his own Philles record label, Spector specialized in teenage girl group mini-symphonies; kinda like Roy Orbisson records on helium. He heard, in mis mind, what he called 'The Wall of Sound'. A typical Spector session would consist of 5 or 6 guitar players 4 or 5 piano players, 3 drummers, multiple percussionists and just about everybody in the building at the time on background vocals and handclaps.

     Still, Spector felt the sound was still not huge enough.

     Legend has it that during the sessions that resulted in 'Be My Baby', Spectors, and perhap's rock and rolls 3 minute high point, that Spector was frustrated that the sound STILL wasn't big enough.

     Enter Sonny Bono. At that time a promotion man for Philles records and as ambitious a rack jobber to ever marry up and into stardom as ever strolled down the pike, was hanging around the studio trying to position himself in such a way as to bask in the great man's glory. At this session he was struck by an idea of Newton vs. Apple proportions.

    'Phil', he said - and I paraphrase - ' here's whatch do! Look, ya got what? 7 pianos here. Open the lids on those babies and hear the difference! Ya see, piano's being essential stringed instruments, are prone to what we at the Acoustical Institute call 'sympathetic beatings...."  etc. etc.

     Basically, Bono was referring to the acoustic phenomenon known as 'transient harmonies'. Dig: 88 keys times, say 7 pianos. Piano 1's 'c' note will be microscopically out of tune w/say, piano #5's. Multiply that, adding the natural tonal variance acheived by 7 piano players pounding out the same simple rhythm and suddenly the air will be filled w/harmony notes that, while heard, are not actually being played.

     Acoustic feedback, Brought to you by Sonny Bono into yr radio, yr llife, and as a result, yr history. Legend also has it that when the rough mix of 'Be My Baby' came into the control room Bono wept. Legend also has it that Spector said 'Hear that? That's GOLD coming out of those speakers. So once again it seems that for every Elvis Presley dancing the holy dance there's a Colonel Parker changing money in the temple.

    Ii prefer to line my chips up w/the likes of Sonny Bono, who only saw/sees the beauty that results from the mechanics and ain't so focused on the reward.

Authors Note: Social experiment time here at prb. As we all know Jim and I have been having this circlejerk 'debate' for far too long. As a result I am going to boycott responding to him and would like yr help. So from now on, for purposes of pest free writing here at OUR punkrockblues Jim Muglia no longer exists. Thank you. Tim Byrnes/punkrockblues.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 19:38 | link | comments (5)

Regular Posts: Life, Death, rockandroll and the Problem That is Jim

   Hey Limine, I also miss you and the regular posts. Remember when this page was filled w/flamboyannt prose extolling the sea of Patti Smith's possibilities or the populist dreams of Mott the Hoople?  Oversentimentilized memories 'burned to the sheen of science fiction"?

  Oh, yeah, this boy used to be able to write.

  Then came the on air breakdown, the divorce, the Denver fiasco and prb became 'All About Tim', over indulgent, sure, but I'd like to think it was part of growing up in public (and besides in Denver, the 'net was my world) and representative of the narcissistic honesty that has probably kept me from being any kind of success, but at least helped me to sleep at night that, raw or whatever, I put it out there fearlessly.

  Oh yeah, this boy used to be able to write.

  It was in Denver that I was introduced to Jim Muglia. A little history: Simmons and some friends reviewed one of my CDs on a messageboard for a band called Daniel Amos. Not a contemporary Christian band as I was told in no uncertain terms, but more like the Christian underground. Anyway, a bunch of the posters were slamming this Muglia guy and being the underdog loving buttinsky I am, I started defending him. Mainly because he was getting slammed after being banned (from a Christian site! This should have been my 1st clue, huh?) .I couldn't imagine that anyone could be as annoying as Jim Muglia was being painted by these folks.

  As anyone who's even skimmed this 'debate' he and I have been having these last 3 (!) years can see I was wrong. Jim, much like I, is a mindless pundit in love w/the sound of his own voice. Our main difference, I think, is that I have never presented myself as anything more than a crackpot theorist while Jim maintains that he is the Voice of Truth.

   To which I, of course, say bullshit.

   So now I have folks like you, Limine, suggesting I set up a new blog and 'not tell this Jim person'. As much as the little peckerhead annoys me, I think that that would be cowardice on my part. Yes, I wish he'd go away. I've asked both viciously and almost politely to, alas, no avail. Thought we'd come to something of a truce these last weeks but after maybe 3 days of civility he comes right back w/the 'what you ought to say...' crap. I realize that there is no way to tell this dumb motherfucker that I'm not here to debate. I'm not even here to entertain, I'm just here.

  In the midst of coming to terms w/Mike Heggers death and Tim Byrnes' life and the sorry state of rockandroll and the wholesale slaughter of what I perceive as the Amerikkkan dream (and I don't hate America, Jim, just what it's become. Much like this page) I've lost all energy for the fight, good or ill, that Jim insists on continuing.

  Let an old man rant, you weasel, you are obviously no longer welcome here. But I will not take the totalitarian approach of banning you or blocking you as that is not the (spiritual) anarchist's way. I will simply abuse you because yr a balloon that needs to be deflated w/yr Truth and yr God (and apparently only you have this god character sussed - once again, bullshit) until you find another house to haunt.

 Neither will I go away, letting this terrorist win.

 Oh yeah, this boy used to able to write. but right now I'm kinda stunned. Between my housefire, job change, Mike's death and this annoying little mosquito of a man pissing in my cyber wheaties, claiming victory "driving (me) back to (my) cave" and all that shit I'm just tired. And sick. And, no Jim, the answer is not 'getting right w/god'. I don't believe in god and no amount of yr crap will change that. If anything your tripe has strengthened my atheism so, good job, Saint Asshole.

  I've really let you ruin what was once a place of solace for me, a place that was mine where I could explore and share my thoughts and feelings. It's a shame that it's become the Tim and Jim show.

  The saddest thing to me about Mike Heggers passing was that none of us (Rick, Carl or myself) knew until 5 years later. We'd all lost touch w/Mike for different reasons. It's just sad that we had to learn this way, that we weren't there for him. But as Simmons said 'it was time to grow up and move on'. I'll go along w/the 'move on' part, but I still see 'growing up' as a capitulation. From what Rick's told me Mike never took any shit and I know from experience that that's a career killer. But not taking shit or kissing ass (be it job, school, god or the police) is the one thing in my life I'm proud of, for better or worse.

  But it occurs to me that someday, probably soon, one of my 6-week hibernations will simply never end. That one post here will be the last one and who knows how long it'll take before somebody knows I'm dead and posts a notice to the few friends I'd have left in cyberland? Man now I'm even depressing myself.

  In any event, if this is indeed my last post, if I'm struck by a stroke or a speeding tractor on my way to work this afternoon, I'd like to say thank you to most of you for reading this crap and even for taking my side. And if I have any last words, if these are the last words, as much as I hate to waste them on the pox that is Muglia, here goes.

   Don't die, Jim, but do fuck off.

tb

Posted by: timbyrnes at 20:32 | link | comments (9)

Here Now the News

     First off, Jim did not drive me away from this page. My work situation has changed. The convenience store where I used to work offerred me my old job back and I took it. While it affords me more hours and as a result more money, it lacks the Internet access I had at my last job so I've been unable to post. And you know what, I barely missed it. I emailed Simmons and Neblung and got sad news regarding Mike Hegger, a mutual friend and drummer for our old band Tension Envelopes. It appeats Mike succumbed to leukemia in December of 2003. I just got the news not 10 minutes ago and am still reeling. So do I write about our history, as ugly as it got at times, do I reminisce about someone I remember faintly through an alcoholic memory?

    No, not right now. Too much to process. Too many lost memories surfacing at once. And this page offers no comfort anymore now that it's been reduced to the useless and endless arguing between Jim and I and any/all takers. All I have to offer is pain and maybe a little humor. All you offer now is god, god and more god, which I've gone down on record repeatedly as finding useless.

     So fuck you and fuck god and fuck me for the person I've become. Claim yr victory Jim. Yr gonna anyway. See you in hell.

     I'll be the one w/the nicer apartment.

tb

Posted by: timbyrnes at 19:36 | link | comments (4)

Not That It Matters Or Anything: The punkrockblues Presedential Endorsement

      My girl Arianna Huffington recently nailed the Republican party w/the following characterization (one which I'll never top): 'A party that believes in torture but not evolution'. Now that is, of course, a sweeping generalization, but essentially sums up my problems w/the Bushwhackers, especially John "George the Third" McCain, what with his 100 years in Iraq, which while not quite the baldfaced 'deaf to America' move as Cheney's "So?" in response to the FACT that over 70% of Americans are against the Iraq war, but too close for my tastes and, anyway, the man (McCain) did say that people's economic problems are 'psychological', did he not?

     And it pains me to say that this type of foolishmess has gotten elected (well, inaugurated) not once, but twice, and I expect that come January 2009 they'll be playing 'Hail to the Chief' for McCain as America will always put the old white guy in office over the brother, no matter how intelligent the brother might be, or how out of touch, or evev evil, the old white dude is. You can look it up.

     So it's safe to say I'm not backing McCain. Which leaves the Democrats. Hillary, what happened? Sniper fire in Bosnia?!!  'Shame on you, Barak Obama?!! And has anyone else noticed that, in her infamous '3 am phone call' ad, that she let the damn phone ring 6 times? Just asking. I'm left w/the feeling that this woman wants to win more than anything else, including doing what might be best for her, and my, country, and will apparently stop at nothing to do so. Deception, method acting and smear tactics. Shame on you, Hillary Clinton.

     So, whither Barak? Smoother than smooth gets smooth, so slick he don't sound slick, which is as slick as you can get, I want to believe he believes what he's saying, but the whole 'aide goes to Canada and nudge, nudge, wink, winks' the whole antiNAFTA stance of the campaign as empty promises for the populace leads me to believe that Obama ain't as above it all as he so convincingly speechifies himself to be. Clearly the best of a pretty bad lot, and probably the man I'll actually vote for, Obama's also probably a lost cause due to America's tendency to not vote for folks who make them feel stupid, and of course the whole 'old white dude' problem.

     But if I were to truly pick a person who unflinchingly sees America as the great idea gone horribly wrong that it's become and has the courage to point out painful, but obvious, cracks in our beloved system then there is only one man I see on the horizon as an honest leader, courageous enough to scream that the emperor has no clothes and that it actually was (and is) our foreign policy that's responsible for 9-11 and refuses to jingo dem bells in false patriotism while the ship is not only sinking, but on fire. A man that sees American complicity in torture and puppet regimes as what's truly anti-American, not the engaged dissent of those genuinely disappointed in what the current administion represents so reprehensibly. A man who I see as a true patriot, unafraid to stand up and decry what America has become in the view of the world.

     Ladies and gentlemen, the punkrockblues Presidential endorsement goes to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And before you call him a traitor (or worse) remember, America was founded by traitors. And worse.

Wright in 2008

god damn america.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 03:21 | link | comments (38)

'Scuse Me While I Dismiss This Guy: Why Jimi Hendrix Ain't Shit

      It's been getting a little too friendly here at prb lately so I figured I'd better get to curmudgeoning, which is after all what I do best. I know it approaches heresy (and there's a laughable concept if ever I heard one!) for a guitar player of my advanced years to NOT worship at the altar, so to speak, of Jimi Hendrix. Well, heresy's one of my favorite activities along w/long walks on the beach and cuddling so here goes.

     On the bootleg 'Early Hendrix' we find our left handed mutant hero playing rather pedestrian r&b w/a pickup band called Jimmy James and the BlueFlames. Recorded in May of 1965 at NYC's Cafe Wha?, a time and place important for many reasons, the most important, to me at least, is that the Velvet Underground were plying there actually original trade not 7 blocks up and over at the Dom on St. Mark's Place. Before this Hendrix played w/saxophonist King Curtis and the mid period Little Richard, in both cases playing rather traditional and pedestrian r& b. Sure he had the 'playing w/his teeth' and 'playing behind the back' tricks at that time, but so did T-Bone Walker back in the late 40's/early 50's and he (T-Bone) played a stellar combo of jazz and blues that was never trad or pedestrian.

     But, lo and behold, just a short 1 and a half years later, Jimi's all tripped out and psychedelicised, setting guitars on fire and becoming all sorts of famous by combining the aforementioned T-Bone tricks w/the kind of feedback wail and freeform, noisy improv that were Lou Reed's stock in trade in those halcyon days of the Velvet Underground, before Lou heard footsteps and fired John Cale.

     At this time, Reed hired guitar tech Bill Lawrence to install various 'effect boxes' in his Gretsch Country Gentlemen; fuzzboxes, tremelo, crude harmonizers and delays. All this before Jimi and Roger Mayer made the Fuzzface, Octavia and Univibe essential parts of any guitarists toolkit who wanted to be taken seriously in the late '60's.

     I don't think it's too vast a leap to wonder if maybe, just maybe, Hendrix, on an off nigfht from a King Curtis gig or something, wandered into the Dom and perhaps saw Lou Reed reinventing the electric guitar and thought to himself "Hmmmmmmmm." I'm just saying it strikes me odd (and grossly unfair) that 2o hits of acid later, Hendrix is crowned King of the Modern Electric Guitar - to the point that he still routinely winds up on the cover of Guitar Player 2 to 3 times a year while Lou is, well, Lou Reed respected for past work and not much else.

     Which makes me think that the main reason Jimi (and to a slightly lesser degree of adulation Stevie Ray Vaughan) has been so lionized is the fact that he is dead. DEADDEADDEAD!!!! So we never had to sit through his 'roots' record, his 'world music' record or his, by now,de riguer recordings from The Great American Songbook. Folks always say that if Hendrix were alive today he'd be 'so far beyond everyone else it wouldn't be funny'.

     I think if Hendrix were alive today he'd be just as boring and anacronistic as Clapton, Page and, yes, even Lou Reed. And that wouldn';t be funny either.

    

Posted by: timbyrnes at 04:41 | link | comments (6)

I'm the Devil and I Approved This Message

     If the world would stop moving like a skateboard for a minute I'd like to say something. Many things, actually and as usual tangentially, but at the core of all the following blather lies a take-a-deep-breath-consider-the-source-own-what-you-own apology.

     Of sorts.

     I clearly must apologize for telling Jim Muglia to fuck off and die when I really only wanted him to fuck off.

     And while I'd like to hide behind the Bill Maher shield of 'I was only kidding', when I typed those words I was pounding the keyboard like the young Little Richard,. I'm telling you, people, I was committed. And now I am ashamed and sad.

     Wishing death on another living being goes completeley against what little I admittedly believe. (I'm guessing at least a couple of folks' 'pro-choice contradiction' lightbulbs just went off, right? Listen closely, I will say this only once: my position on abortion is that, as a man, I have no say in making a woman's decision. Does it break my heart? Of course it does, for a few different reasons, but who am I - and who are you - to order someone to reproduce against their will? My answer is, as always, education and personal responsibility.)

      But such are the passions flamed by this ridiculous argument. Especially when those involved are 2, at best, inspired amateurs who love the sound of their own voice, wrapping their slightly talented minds around issues so complex as to make them like 2 mosquitos on the hide of the universe.

     We've both, Muglia and I, been small, petty, vindictive and largely ill informed and in engaging in this endless and rancoric 'debate' that our knowledge of the patently unkowable is correct (or in my case, feasable) we play right into the hands of whatever devil there might be by losing sight of god.

     Both of us.

      Throughout the last year plus of Byrnes/Muglia bullshit has there been much humility? No. Compassion? A little maybe, but not nearly enough. Understanding? Not really. Forgiveness? Don't make me laugh. Shame on me.

     And, speaking of which.........

     My feelings on the Catholic Church have been well documented here and elsewhere and, while I still find the reprehensible reprehensible I know as well as anybody else the good work done by the Church, usually by those on the lower end of the food chain; the parish priests and nuns, the neighborhood volunteers etc. I know it's a force for good in the world despite it's shady hierarchy and for what it's worth I salute that goodness.

     My current working model for god is this: god is an elemental force of good in the universe that is constantly being created and sustained by humanity through good works. Of course this then leads to the inevitable questions of 'well, what's good?' and 'Is what's good for one bad for another?' 'and Many others?' And all that human crap that gets in the way of perfection, which likely doesn't exist in the first place apart from an idea/ideal.

     In any event, speaking for myself, I have added precious little of anything close to good here lately. My natural, dramaqueen response is to give up and delete this site, or at least change it's name to 'Jim's an Idiot' and bail but, apparently I'm not that immature, after all. At least not tonight.

     And it's not like I don't appreciate the irony in as futile a gesture as apologizing to readers I've driven away, but I must and I do. Sincerely. And like that drunken boyfriend you and yr mother both know is no damn good for you, I'm gonna try to win you back by writing from my heart like a punk rock bluesman and leave the dogma to the dogs.

(Coming soon: "We Need a Bigger Piano, Phil": How Sonny Bono Invented Feedback)

Posted by: timbyrnes at 03:17 | link | comments (5)