"i must be fucking crazy. i must be! am i sick? do i want to get well? these seven bursts of metal with wonderful souls talent so beautiful, none of them will be the single goal, each night will be another cymbal sizzle crash through starlit wind flying past me as im riding so recklessly down the hill, weaving past cars technicolor lit, and its going to blur in the speed to just one stream of light pouring out exhausted. i love the challenge, the sleepless push to hit every next note, keep playing, keep going, i want it.

i can call him up and tell him what i want!

do i want more than this? im making a living at it now. im paying the rent on these outbursts now; and the people are good, everyones mind is reeling in another way and i love the laughs each one gives me. how can i ever come close to knowing them all? is there room for me? do i want more than them? maybe, maybe. real success, that elusive flame of fame, ha ha my musical opening on broadway in 2007, my god, why not, why not. i can call him after all, and ask him for this, right? what i want. what i want."

-Dave Malloy

"i can call him up and tell him what i want!

Jesus.mp3

(first im gonna tell him, again, how i love glorious sound; the tambourine forever convulsing, the concertina and horns in stereo imperfect mirroring, the full stop || to announce the entrance of guitars. the church bells, and beautiful beautiful the one man who comes in wrong towards the end but everyone smiles through. thump thump hit your foot on the floor and all this worry goes away. and ry cooder isnt even really supposed to be cool, is he?)

am i sick? do i want to get well? is such a goal possible? i am goalless, theres just thump thump this beat, and merely attending to each new downbeat, thats what im going to do. after every hit of the drum there another one coming up. on it. right now im riding fast through midnight a slipper of ice, and the walls of night are a million cymbals suspended and waiting for my playful picket fence stick. im hitting more than ever...abandon the metaphor for a moment and revel in the quotidian count, ive got 7 plays lined up for the first 6 months of next year, and i am thrilled psychedelic sick about each and everyone. listen: a cabaret, a song played on a solo saxophone, a train to catch, a gun goes rooty toot toot, russian rock n roll beamed into outer space, prayer both silent and full, and finally a birth of light.i must be fucking crazy. i must be! am i sick? do i want to get well? these seven bursts of metal with wonderful souls talent so beautiful, none of them will be the single goal, each night will be another cymbal sizzle crash through starlit wind flying past me as im riding so recklessly down the hill, weaving past cars technicolor lit, and its going to blur in the speed to just one stream of light pouring out exhausted. i love the challenge, the sleepless push to hit every next note, keep playing, keep going, i want it.

i can call him up and tell him what i want!

do i want more than this? im making a living at it now. im paying the rent on these outbursts now; and the people are good, everyones mind is reeling in another way and i love the laughs each one gives me. how can i ever come close to knowing them all? is there room for me? do i want more than them? maybe, maybe. real success, that elusive flame of fame, ha ha my musical opening on broadway in 2007, my god, why not, why not. i can call him after all, and ask him for this, right? what i want. what i want.

when the whiskey veil wears away for just a second i look down at my hands and they are white knuckled for im freezing cold causing im going so fucking fast and i forgot my gloves or i lost them in a bar on mission street or in the bart station, but i cant go back because i jumped the gate, i jumped the gate again almost every day a bart train renegade heart racing fast everyday but i cant remember right now. i must be crazy. there are so many things to wrap your hands in anyway...and look at her with her mittens fingerless, and her with her hat fizz fuzz blue, and her with her legs i can see fishnet stockings, garter and all, under a wider fishnet hose, that lovely leg all wrapped twice. every woman around me wrapped up different and my fingers trembling no matter where or when for a little more warmth, a fabric new always, why? why? i must be crazy wanting that when ive already got those eyes to get so lost in that temperature vanishes like direction in the dark, floating through centigrade in a shivering sweat flawlessly true. i must be crazy, but i can ask him, what i want, what i want.

i dont want anything, i dont. god, please i dont. please let that be the truth. cause ill get so sad if i want it and dont have it and ive got so much right now that im almost blind. i can be what i want to be/i can choose whatever heaven grants. but i just want to be whatever heaven grants, any cymbal so bright and lovely to be seen when im riding fast like this, god its like a new moon gold in the sky! crash a cymbal that i want to hear ring clear, crash peel, i want to hear them PEEL!

and i fear the shallowness, maybe theres too much and im not there deep where i could be. theres someone ive known as long as possible in real pain and i cant understand it really, cause i felt real pain once and said never again? no, surely not? that was so little...
but solo now so: lo the cymbals,

only the cymbals and my bike out of control too fast, but god theyre so glorious shiny! ive been working on riding no handed so i can grab a stick in both hands and catch my ears in the nodes and hear a mountain range valley strange of waves in the cold night air.

one asked me, why do i perform? i cant answer you, i cant. i have no idea. its what im here to give? its just there and its beautiful and thats all i can do. maybe im doing too much? i can barely feel.

tomorrow ill make the drummer a vegetable lasagna in exchange for a haircut, god my hair is so long, its the only helmet ill wear. i know how to make a good vegetable lasagna; i just have to pick the right vegetables, and only a few, so that its about *mushrooms*, or its about *broccoli*, its about the *one* taste, dont lose it, dont lose it//

(but on cannery row hazel pours all the half drunk drinks into a single jug, and comes home with a wild punch maybe champagne spiked one night and fernet the next. one taste.
i have no idea what all of this tastes like,
i have no idea what god looks like,
i have no idea how there can be so many sounds in the universe that when i open my mouth next time ill sing one brand new song, once and only once always one note to the next never ending, never goal, just sound all the way SHHHOOM! to the end of the universe getting absorbed by all around it cymbalstars bursting and dying brand new)"

-Dave Malloy

these things happened, and now i am those things. im really growing up.

what will happen next? i dont know. but it is sure to be

-Dave Malloy

"on the way hand, yes, i absolutely believe in the idea of life as art, of my every action and interaction and view of the world being the great living artwork that i spend my life creating. and thus so long as this piece is given my attention, concentration, my skill and love, my work towards mastery, then i am living the complete life, the life full and worthy. and my artistic endeavors, the silly songs and scattermess writings, are just a small part of this larger more important whole, my life, my god and love and child. this is the way hand, smiling and clear.

the other hand, is, such a raging jealousy everytime i read or see or hear something that ahs me to the core. and i want to do that! i want to do that! i want to do that! gallileo crying in the snow, this hurts so much. oh it does. it does! i want to write a novel, and have a platinum album, and make a series of internet sensation videos that get optioned by hbo. oh the fame and the quality are entangled, i know they are. i do, damn it, i do! oh hell! i do!"

-Dave Malloy

"so i am learning again the songs of hated authority, watching myself with mystery and glee when i am silent and cold, or harsh and belligerent. never am i so unenlightened as when i am dealing with bad authority. such small electric thrill, the game the cruel game i play to let this man know he does not have my respect. you dont get to have my jokes, my eye contact, my full conversation, my easy compliance. i will hold back from you until you remember what you are doing and start to do it well. so childish i am! so so! and i am not as bad as i was in the teen years, but sometimes i break and i bring it on and i am difficult just for the joy of watching him lose his shit. its human, its what happens, and i wont believe that its all bad when i can do it and he can do it. that is: not all negative interactions are necessarily bad. they are the whole, they call me out and slam me and challenge me and grow me. the world of ego cannot just be ignored. now i keep it down, and i try not to spend dinner in the mess spilling my complaints onto the others as so many crew members do, but i enjoy my private jousts, and i delight with fantasies of it going too far, i tingle when it starts to happen again and theres another experience to soak in.

in school a lot i got accused of challenging authority for its own sake, but this is not so; its only disenlightenment that i challenge, authorities who are cold and closed and cruel. and they get it, they get it from me, and i know its not constructive for them, i cant change them, but maybe it is constructive for me. let me feel it. let me remember my me deep inside, hard and inflexible. let me know how people work, what the lines are---

and most important how absurdity fits into it all. ie what if in the middle of this lecture i just start saying meowing at the man, literally meowing and clawing at my boss like a cat? answer to that one: i will get taken out to the deck and yelled at."

-Dave Malloy

somehow, in spite of all of my feelings of isolation and detachment form the world, my sarcastic spearation and absurdist observing, i am a part of it, im there, and its letting me. the world is letting me pass. im doing just fine. i can stop into the gas staion and fill up the tank and pay with a card and not get arrested, not get flooded with lights and snipers, not be jumped by men of tired jokes and boring clothes and poor musical taste, throwing a sack over myhead and asking mke who i think i am. i cant talk to most people, i cant agree, but somehow ive slipped through the netting and am here, alone, unaccompianed, unstopped. how can i be in lisbon? what the fuck am i doing in lisbon? how can the world of men have let me here? im not that kind of man...i look up at planes overhead and start laughing out loud, start laughing like a maniac as loud as i can and still am left alone. there are old buildings and cars, yes, but there is still ocean and grass and sky, im still there and conneceted through those pieces of nature. and i can laugh at the things i see and wonder at the words people tell me and feel so alone, but im free to do so, i am free to act and think this way. i am getting away with it.

- Dave Malloy