sliver of sky
where planes streak
birds fly
guide me to my dreams

(more…)

a set containing all my disquiet.com junto contributions:

use the link above if nothing appears.

pulled in quicksand
big search land
extended waves
and
your head
expands.

your highest bookmark,
an endless dead link dead letter
office file purveyor
of junk sponsors
of the obvious.

(more…)

illustrations: RalphSteadman

In summer 1992, I was an intern in Rolling Stone’s editorial department assigned to work on the magazine’s 25th Anniversary issue. I had always loved RS, and at the time, I was weighing whether to make a go at being a magazine writer.

I had spent the better part of my Junior year at Brown University as the Editor-in-Chief of a magazine called Issues, at the time a “monthly,” 3 issues per semester, each with a 5000 copy run.

Issues on my watch covered AIDS and sexuality, a police crackdown on financial aid protests and even went to Salem, MA, looking for witches. I had seen the impact that a well-put together magazine could have on communities (especially with the AIDS issue), and I thought maybe my future would lie in writing for and/or running a magazine. I wasn’t keen on written letters, though, and spent most of my time (including when I was editing the magazine) producing, directing and writing television shows for the campus TV station, BTV.

In any event, it came to be that Regis Philbin helped me score me an interview for one of the four Rolling Stone summer internships. That’s just a story of dumb luck and not very interesting, I’m afraid. I knew the editor in charge of the internships, Shawn, would be chuffed that a tv icon had called the boss-man magazine icon on my behalf, so I did my best to demonstrate to her that I wasn’t some fluke, and brought the Issues AIDS issue to the interview. And talked about my “passion for writing,” my “love of rock and roll” and the intertwining of my teenage years with Rolling Stone itself. Even though I didn’t really know if I wanted that life, you get in those situations and you have to prove yourself.

And I landed the gig. And all of a sudden had an ID badge w/a photo that opened the RSdoors off the elevator; the same badge as Anthony DeCurtis and David Fricke and Jann himself.

21, about to be an Ivy League Senior, and living the dream.

This was way before 2day’s meganet, but there was QuarkXpress and terminals that took in column submissions from writers around the world. So it’s not like it was that long ago, but long enough that the phone & fax (email’s tin cans & wire) were the backbone of the operation. And my primary function was to learn the backbone. That is, to answer phones and collect and distribute faxes and mail to the editorial department.

Interns were to be effed with and every member of the RS editorial department was given free reign to duff off gruntage on a freshling. But I was okay for getting challenged. Where RS and great rock and roll intersect(ed) is in work ethic. “You have to work to be great” is the loudest of what I took away, though, on the quiet side, the job also taught me the line between criticism and art when applied to music. Because there is a line. You can’t always be your own best critic – only your own loudest critic. So, fast forward, sometime in late June, I was “challenged” with getting hold of Hunter S. Thompson to remind him of a deadline…

“Westy,” said Bob, the Managing Editor, all of a sudden hovering over my desk, “we need to find out where Hunter’s piece is for the 25th.”

“Maybe I could write a piece about calling him for his article?” I tried to answer like I’d been there. Bob perfuncted a laugh as he saw through the act, though, and cut me off.

“Interns don’t write. Remember ‘Orientation?’ ”

Bob had whip-crack memory that went back decades. Mine was shorter.

“Yeah, I do” I said. “ ‘Be here to help.’ ”

“So just get it done. I’m off to lunch. Hunter’s number’s on the sheet.”

(more…)

Listening to the new Van Halen and <3'ing it. The record makes me think of the early 80s and learning how to play the guitar and all the great VH soundtracked-times I had. So this afternoon, I decided to prod at my past with a zapping-stick and searched on my first and only guitar teacher, an acidjazzfusion master named John Macey, whom I haven't seen or heard from since the late 80s.

Low and beholded, up pops this link from themetalfiles.com blog out of Austin last year. The author talks of his affection for a 1981 record by John called Eclipse, John’s only major label release (CBS’s 51 West Records). Fwiw, I still use notebooks he filled with riffs and every once in a while spin my copies of Eclipse and an independently released LP record I have of his called “More Notes For Your Money” (which I shall rip and post soon as a public service). He was very fast, clean and focused and gave me a lifetime of fretted humility.

Thanks, John, wherever you are.