Bitches Brew

 

More background: important, for Mary Evelyn Harju, and for those who might wish to know her, to understand her teenage years, in Media and at PennCrest. Mary, in those years, lived her life on the wild side of things, and chose to swing around a lifestyle that you might call pharmaceutically advantaged. This, I have documented in P.F.S. Post. By the time I got to her, Mary's swing-moves were as sophisticated as they could possibly be. Her ability to compartmentalize, in her life, was also jaw-dropping. Yet, there he stands, demanding attention, a mentor to her during her formative years, intermittent hubs guy, and another '76 to boot: John Ian Marshall. When I began with Mary in the early Aughts, he was in Center City, too. For the first five minutes I knew about him, I hated him. Quickly, however, I saw that he was another compartmentalization freak, and someone trying to manifest creativity in the world, and, from a distance, I did like John very much. See if you can spot him in Feel. But back to the Nineties. While I was in State College, and we all lived through Smashing Pumpkins boom-time, John and his posse, including Mary, migrated up to U Mass in Amherst, Ma. John organized trips. Ordained them. Some physical, some consciousness-based. And while the rooms swung around whatever the business of the moment was, Mr. Marshall often used Bitches Brew as a soundtrack. I followed suit, with Mary & Abby, in the early Aughts; and found that the parameters of our vision widened the right way. Even as I was later stunned to realize that my path had crossed once with John Ian Marshall's at a party in Elkins Park while I was still ensconced at CHS. As is karmic, it was just by chance that Mary wasn't with him. The universe, as I like to say, was planning some mischief for us. Peace. 

The Harder They Come

 

Ecstasy and shadows. This one is a slight tangent to what's included in Studio and Painter— the first night, in late 2001, Mary H. spent with me at 154 North 21st Street. Were we monsters of selfishness and vanity to be doing what we were doing? People who follow our story, know— someone innocent was being trampled underfoot. Melissa and Mary already intensely disliked each other. In retrospect, you don't tell a twenty-five year old kid, as I was then, who happens to be bursting at the seams with life-force energy, and channeling all the explosiveness of Center City Philly in the Aughts, to stay faithful when his true cosmic mate arrives. Mary H and I were meant for each other. That night at 154, we drank rum and water (grog, I believe it's called) from large mugs, smoked a few spliffs, and grooved to this, the Jimmy Cliff-dominated Harder They Come soundtrack. We were still only edging towards physical involvement; but the ice was beginning to melt. Euphoria, giddiness, a sense of attunement to higher realities— it was all there. As I marveled, as all Mary's more profound involvements did, at the wide gap between her restrained public persona and the born-to-be-wild riot grrl she was in private. It is still a source of disappointment to me, that I handled my personal life sloppily at the time; but, as the song goes, I had found my true will, and was myself attuned to the higher reality of how pieces in the universe belong. And our together insignia, which began then, was always the philosophy that a little Dionysian insanity, drunkenness and highness (highness emphasized for Mary H), never hurts, if you want to feel, in your body and soul, what it means to be fully alive.  

Starman

 

So: was Mary Evelyn Harju's studio at PAFA as much of an enchanted wonderland as I'm making it out to be? It was, for me. And she did wind up losing hold of it some time in 2002. While it lasted, it tuned into something about Mary I haven't investigated that much yet, even in Equations. As a stickler for visual appearances, let's have it duly noted that Mary was just as much of a glamor-puss as any other blonde bombshell. She didn't wear much make-up, but her appearance, on a day-to-day level, was still extremely important to her. More so, actually than was the case with Abby Heller-Burnham (or myself). That, ultimately, is what Mary would've seen in good old David Robert Jones, and why Ziggy Stardust was often displayed prominently in the studio. She liked glamour. Androgyny has never been my forte, conversely, but I was into Bowie on a songwriting level, and as rock theater. Bowie was big in Philly then. The Goths and the indie rockers all went for him. The association with space and the Otherness inhering was also big for us. Mary would've liked to experiment, and get dressed by Bowie himself, were he available then. And ZS qualifies as heavy-duty Zeitgeist shit for that time, that place. Bowie glamor could always translate as Mary glamor. Even as Miss H was patchy about rock, in general, and let a smattering of different kinds of music speak for her, without sticking to any one genre or cultural touchstone. 

What Goes On

Moving past Al Green: another constituent element of the early Free School experience, as documented both in Synchronized Chaos and Argotist Online Poetry: the giddiness, the euphoria, the high. I got a buzz then from being with Mary H. that was incredibly about ecstasy, a sense of time standing still at the most gracious possible angle. The waves we rode and swam in together were soporific. Flash fast-forward a bit for this one: by the end of '02, Mary and I were ensconced, night by night, doing Logan Square to West Philly and back. Abby could be with us at any moment. When it was the three of us at 154 (North 21st Street), I liked to play DJ for the ladies, often while we tripped. The third Velvet Underground album was a perennial favorite. Then back to PAFA, to understood how the earliest encounters with Miss H ranked, as highlights and talismans to hold for the rest of my life. The Velvets were around for those, too. And this tune takes us to exactly the right skyrocketing sensibility, to understand what it means to fall in love for real. This is how it felt, to be madly in love with Miss H: the mystery, the intermittent sense of division and reconnection, the sense of the sky, the ground, and all points in between as jounced alive, throbbing, active, set in motion. The two of us, as artists, were lucky to get there even once, let alone stay there. That we did remain in that charmed place for that long, after all these years and many eternities, could only have been luck, or a gift, complete and green, from the cosmos. 

Call Me

What with The Painter up at Synchronized Chaos, my mind drifts back to other details which surrounded the inauguration of my relationship with Miss H. It was a bumpy ride. Yet, the wild romanticism of '01 into '02 was, and remains, one of the peak experiences of my entire existence. It made me unhappy that it had to be at Melissa's expense. I'm not a cheater by nature. Yet, as the juggernaut that was to come built momentum in the fall of '01, and Mary and I began to get more special with each other, it wasn't just Aleister Crowley, aa the piece linked suggests, I was leaning on. Is the Al Green-Aleister Crowley chiasmus a vaunted one? Probably not. It had to work for me, though, then, because people who know popular music know, no one's more about adultery and transgression than Al Green. Al Green mythology, to be frank, is about the man being a womanizer.  So there I was, then, slipping into a role I wasn't comfortable with. But I did it. And the thrilling sense of intimacy in the Green tunes, like this one, was there between Mary and I at the beginning, whether in her studio at PAFA or anywhere else. Al Green also works well with Logan Square, especially at night, and West Philly. Both neighborhoods have their own sense of intimacy in-built, with nothing crass, ugly, or graceless about them. No skyscrapers, no monstrosities, no office buildings. In the end, I used Al Green to get my courage up, in a situation which wasn't optimum, but during a day I felt had to be seized. The opportunity with Miss H was one time only. That, or forever hold your peace. I'm glad the Green led me, and us, to victory. 

Writing to Reach You

The epic story of Jen and I, ensconced in the Atherton Hilton in State College in July '96, continues. It's been established that at that particular time, I wasn't what you would call a well man; I'd been messed with. For our Arts Fest stay, in some ways I was OK and could function, in some ways I could not. But a central imperative theme never stopped playing in my head that entire summer, and before and after. I wanted to write some one-acts and have them produced by the Outlaw Playwrights, a theater troupe who were hugely popular on campus at that time, and would consider work from anyone they liked. I started on a side-to-poetry theater apprenticeship in '95, and in '96 I was still on that road. In the end, I wound up having a handful of one-acts produced by the Outlaws, between '97 and '99. The tie-in from this Travis video, to what the center of Pennsylvania looks like, including the Strawsers in Liverpool, is interesting, too. The first Outlaw wave, as of '94 to '96, didn't like me much; the second let me do the damage I did.

Newsflash

 

Filling in some deets as regards what just went up on P.F.S. Post (Season in Hell: White Candle). I've established that Jen and I were staying at the Atherton Hilton in State College, where the piece takes place, to attend SC's yearly Arts Fest. One newsflash that hit the airwaves while we were ensconced there: the death of Jonathan Melvoin, who had been playing keyboards for (The) Smashing Pumpkins on their tour behind Mellon Collie. The Pumpkins were a dominant enough enterprise in '96 to make the newsflash a top tier one; the death had occurred during the tour, after (I believe) a New York show. This is all relevant to mention now because a central home truth of the 90s has gotten a little lost: don't let anyone tell you differently: (The) Smashing Pumpkins were the biggest American rock band of the 90s. In terms of power and influence, right there, right then, no one, including Kurt, could really touch them. Jen and I did our dance then, and here we are in 2024. But the dance of The Pumpkins in the 90s is worth mentioning, because (and here they are, in all their mightiness) this is the music that animated the trip for many of us. And it's as serious, musically, as rock music can get.