And then the big winds came
around midnight, the radio station
was tracking their arrival to the city.
This just in to the West Side first.

Went walking beforehand, foot after foot,
to the knee, deep snow. Deeper-than-dog snow.
Dog bounding through snow and
disappearing between bounds.
I did a fall I call the inverse snow angel.
(Video available upon request).
falling thick.

And then the big winds did come,
rearranging the powder as they saw fit.
I saw it until the windows iced over.
Then came the flashes of lighting
unheard of in a blizzard, light
bouncing between snow and low clouds,
the whole world crackling purple white.

Woke up on the couch at dawn, the sun
had come to breakfast. I was surprised
and went back to sleep. The sun
stayed anyway. Brilliant day.
Sky without a trace of adjectives.
I walked to Macy’s. The coffee provisions
had run out in our orange bunker.

Drank and thought about how
the only way to live a desert is stories.
Silko, Ortiz, first Australians, Bowden, Jews
they all know this. Voices that shape the sand
like big winds the snow. Stories
that shape the ear. But
how to explain that silence?
The space after this stanza,
the long horizon where words are born.

The stillness of staying home.
Stillness rare like snow lightning.
Stillness of cars stuck in the street.

And then the snow plow came
and it didn’t matter much, chaos
is still chaos no matter who
tries to own it. The City
plows the rich
neighborhoods
first. Of course.

Resurrected my sister’s car at sunset
with a borrowed snow shovel.
More is forecast, and what’s here
will freeze good tonight. Good
to think we can leave when we want.
But it’s that silence we’re after.

•
•
•
L

for alison
diciembre 2009

merry haunzakwanzamas & solstice,
everybody

•
•

Avie is surprised to see the sun come over without calling first.

Buen día.

Orange Bunker.

Snow turns the neighborhood back into forest.

Flag is very white, but tries to be colorful as well.

The space between things.

Always good to have arms for work.
I spent an hour moving pounds of snow
that won’t exist if the sun sticks around.
Like all work.

Taller Leñateros is a Mayan / mestizo arts collective from Chiapas, Mexico. I have one of their many fans since I first stumbled upon their workshop in San Cristóbal de las Casas in 2003 and held in my hands their book “Conjuros y Ebriedades” (cover at left). It’s an amazing thing, a collection of Mayan poems and cantos, the first of its kind in maybe 400 years. The Leñateros make their own paper from corn husks, coconut husks, old cardboard, maguey fibers, among many other materials. On this paper they print their words in Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Spanish and English. Then they sell the books over the internet to people all over the world.

This year Taller Leñateros was invited by the renown poetry festival Poesía.en.Voz.Alta to give a rare live performance in Mexico City. That was last week. I feel lucky to have been able to attend, and that I was able to make a high-quality audio recording of the performance. Under a tent in the pouring rain, it was one of the most beautiful stage performances I’ve ever seen. I’d like to share that.

Download the entire recording here. (42mb) And enjoy.

I really enjoy playing with audio. I remember back in middle school I used to use old Mac programs to warp the voices of my friends and do all kinds of adolescent trickery. That evolved over the years, and I’ve been into doing field recordings and ambient mixtapes since 2006. Then came Sonidero Verbobala and the DJ angle, adding a whole new reason to keep my ears tuned. Lately I’ve been doing audio design for video pieces.

Check this one out, it’s called Urban Intimacies by Mexican video-dance artist Nuria Fragoso Armenta. She was recently in Prague to complete a series of projects, this being the first. She directed, danced, and edited it. I did the audio design, using samples from: Juan Pablo Villa, some Glenn Weyant drones, Language Removal Service glitches and street recordings from Cuba and Mexico City. Enjoy!

I wouldn’t be nearly as interested in Facebook if it weren’t such a great tool for helping me do what I do… manage both my own shows and Verbobala‘s as well. But of course just about everyone who complains about “La Face” secretly loves it. So maybe I should just keep quiet like. In the meantime, be our “fan” for the latest info, including a bunch of fotos that just came out:

Verbobala

Here’s an excellent project proposal by a friend and collaborator of mine, sound sculptor Glenn Weyant of Tucson, Arizona. Glenn is using an interesting and trustworthy website called Kickstarter to raise $3,000 for the production of a new double-disc edition of his most famous work, the Anta Project. For the Anta Project, Glenn plays the US-Mexico border wall as a instrument to make experimental drone / ambient music. Political, aesthetically interesting and cool.

Profits from the sales of the new edition will donated in their entirety to No Más Muertes / No More Deaths, a human rights organization based in Southern Arizona that has saved the lives of countless migrants over the years by leaving water in the desert. This is solid humanitarian work that hardly anyone else is doing.

I’ll leave the details to Glenn’s description, but I want to throw my support behind this thing as much as possible. And since I’m short on cash and can’t pledge more than $20, my support means spreading the word far and wide.

This is well thought-out and worth your support. Please join me in making art make change.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1106560155/deconstructing-borders-with-a-cello-bow-and-a-smil

The following article marks my return to The Noise, an arts and culture monthly newspaper published in Northern Arizona. I wrote for them in 2006 and 2007, and they recently asked me back to their pages, which I am very grateful for. Thanks Chuck and Meredith! Expect new writing on Colombia for the next three months or so, posted on the first day of every month. Send along any comments and critiques.

“Colombia’s back” proclaims the travel guide Lonely Planet in its new introduction to the country. But back from what? The violent abyss of past decades? The cocaine-flavored stereotyping by foreigners? The guerilla forces that choked the highways like cholesterol? Well, yes, that’s what they mean. But how did it happen, and what’s changed?

To answer that question, a good starting point would be Álvaro Uribe Vélez. Colombia’s strong-arm president was first elected in 2002 with the campaign slogan “mano dura y corazón grande,” promising something like compassionate conservatism but with guns. Reelected in 2006 and currently enjoying an approval rating of 70% while contemplating a constitutional referendum allowing himself a third term, Uribe has brought about change in Colombia on a scale that Obama could only dream about––not that their objectives are at all similar.

“Bogotá is safe again,” a man selling cellphones in Bogotá tells me. “And now you see luxury cars cruising the streets, stuff like that. Before, you’d never see that. So I think Uribe has done us alright, the money is flowing.” Right there, seen from the street level, are two of Uribe’s principal gifts to his country: security in the cities and foreign investment.

As if to drill the point home, a taxi driver in Cartagena tells me a few weeks later: “Look, you can say what you will about Uribe. But really, without Uribe, you wouldn’t be here talking to me.” Like Lonely Planet alluded to, visits by foreigners are way up as of late, especially among Europeans.

The increase in security has also kicked off something of a rebirth in the arts as well. An entire generation of middle-class young people in Colombia were raised behind closed doors, their parents fearful of the violence in the streets. Now in their roaring 20’s, they have taken to those same streets, bringing with them an explosion of música, new activism and graffiti (more on the street art in a future edition).

This is the boom that resounds through Colombia today. It can be heard in bands like Bomba Éstereo, Tumbacatre, Choc Quib Town, and La Makina del Karibe. It can be understood by watching a crowd of fifty sitting in a plaza listening to a young street poet, or on the faces of tens of thousands indigenous people marching toward Bogotá in search of recognition. It can be seen in the pops and locks of a lone breakdancer busking in the centro to a soundtrack of “Brass Monkey” on repeat. It can be felt as a collective exhalation.

Not that everything is aerosol and roses. Those dark associations that might jump to mind when the word Colombia comes up––blow, the FARC, Pablo Escobar––have hung in the collective psyche of people in the U.S. since Colombia was big news in the 1980’s and 90’s. They are the same living ghosts that haunt the country today.

Take coke, for example. Colombia is of course still the world’s largest producer, and it is mostly Colombian cocaine sold to party people in the U.S. that fuels the “narco-violencia” slaughterhouse spiraling out of control in Mexico––between 3,500 and 4,000 dead so far this year. (Le Monde Diplomatique México, September) The cocaine is imported to the U.S., guns exported to Mexico and dollars exported to Colombia––dollars from both the illicit drug trade and from the U.S. military aide sent to combat it.

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Ewor es entre mis favoritos poetas de la Cd. de México, y además es de los mejores freestyleros que he visto jamás. Y si eso fuera poco, sus hablidades con el beatbox mejoran constantamente. Él es el MC principal de nuestro Sonidero Verbobala, aunque hasta ahora sólo nos ha podido acompañar en nuestras tocadas chilangas. Acabo de salir esta entrevista que hizo el con una radio cultural del DF, que lo disfrutes.

Ewor is among my favorite poets from Mexico City, and also happens to be one of the best freestyle rappers I have ever seen in any language. And if that wasn’t enough, his beatbox skills are always on the increase. He is the principal MC of our group Sonidero Verbobala, although as of the moment he’s only been able to play with us at our Mexico City shows. Here’s a new interview that he did for an arts & culture radio program, I hope you like it.

I’ve finally had a chance to begin digging through the material I brought back from Colombia. Here’s a first taste, feel free to spread it around!:

Come see 40,000 bats fly out from under the Campbell Ave. bridge!
PLUS the spectacle & poetry of FLAM CHEN and Logan Phillips!

the Rillito River Project presents
BAT NIGHT 2009
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 12th 5:30pm
Rillito Riverbed, Campbell Ave. bridge
Bat expert Tar Petryszyn, P.h.D.
Poet Logan Phillips
Tucson spectacle experts Flam Chen
FREE! One night only!

Some video from a late-night performance at Mapa Teatro in central Bogotá, as part of the 7th Hemispheric Encuentro of Performance & Política. ¡Noches surrealistas!

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