January 21, 2000

Josh: People send me the weirdest stuff.

You started it.

August 27, 1997

A few days ago I was walking up Wells Street north of downtown. Six or seven policemen emerged from two squad cars and were putting on latex gloves as they approached a building. As I passed one said “Hey you, want to make a few bucks? Put on some gloves and come with us.”

July 18, 1997

I dreamed again that I saw Jandek play live. I arrived late. Jandek was extremely pale and had red hair. He commented that everyone in the audience (we were all sitting on the floor) was very pale too. G— was there and he was starstruck because Jandek was pale and red-haired like himself. Jandek had an electric guitar and a single cymbal on a stand. He sang a couple of songs, then started showing us scenes from his favorite Hollywood movies on a little TV.

July 29, 1997

Last month I bought a bicycle. I’ve been riding it everywhere. I was riding it through downtown Evanston yesterday. At a stoplight an old man hobbled by me, his leg in a cast, and croaked at me, “Wear a helmet! Wear a helmet!”

So I went to the bike shop and bought a helmet. Today I rode my bike through the very same intersection where I saw the old man, and someone sarcastically shouted “Nice helmet!” at me out their car window.

March 19, 1998

PLAYBOY: This might be somewhat far-fetched, but are you a religious cat, Miles? Are you into God and Jesus?

MILES DAVIS: Ain’t no fucking Jesus, man. Get out of here. Shit.

August 18, 1998

Dream: I can’t remember the rest, but I saw Mark E. Smith at the airport and he was carrying fistfuls of Cecil Taylor CD’s.

January 6, 1999

My temperature is 102.4.

June 29, 1998

Josh: So, are you going to publish it?

Only if the author comes to my apartment and personally gives me a window into an underground subculture of sexual obsession, gender confusion, and drug addiction.

August 16, 2002

“I’m not writing a book on the science of irony.” — Marcel Duchamp

March 25, 2003

As God is my witness, K— and I did nothing to provoke that man into pulling his trousers down.

April 4, 2003

In the old days, an artist could make toe sucking videos (or, in the very old days, a toe sucking cave painting or carved idol) innocent of “theory” and “jargon”.

April 10, 2003

A shudder of disgust, or an orgasmic shudder?

December 1, 2001

Another Viennese who ended up in California was Alfred Polgar. The sixty-seven-year-old essayist who spoke only broken English was lucky enough to get hired as a writer my Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He had, however, great difficulties in adapting to Hollywood and was homesick for Europe. “My life is 99 percent memories,” he confided to a friend. “I’m not very interested in the hundredth part.” His dejection brought forth a bitter short story, “His Last Mistake”: an American editor is telling an emigre writer that what is done and said in his fiction is not done and said in the United States; the writer’s characters live, love, laugh, and cry in ways that are not American ways. The emigre jumps out of the window of the thirty-second-floor office, and the editor, now really angry, shouts after him, “In America one doesn’t jump out of the window!” — Paul Hofmann, The Viennese

November 18, 2001

I’m boarding my mother’s cat while she’s in Australia. Changez Les Blockeurs by the New Blockaders makes him freak out and charge around my apartment. He’s fat and my floors are slippery, so he does the Scooby Doo running-but-not-moving thing when he goes around a corner.

March 25, 2003

Tell him that you will print out his E-mail and rub it against a picture of Boulez.

April 8, 2003

Josh: overheard at work: “You make a little hole in the watermelon, pour in the everclear, then boom: breakfast.”

Have you seen the film Boom!?

April 13, 2003

Josh: On my stereo unit: Harry Bertoia — the LP with the b&w photo of the sculpture on the cover.

Yeah, that’s my favorite one, too.

April 2, 2003

Ben Ratliff: So you would say that your approach to guitar that you learned during that period was influenced by tenor saxophonists.

Sonny Sharrock: I’m a tenor player, man. I’ve always thought of myself as one. I don’t like guitar, I don’t like it at all, and I’ve always been influenced by horn players.

Ben Ratliff: Why didn’t you just pick up the tenor?

Sonny Sharrock: I’ve got asthma.

April 13, 2003

The record shopping dreams replaced a dream I used to have, the finding-lots-of-change dream. First a nickel or a quarter, then three or four more coins, then more and more. Sometimes the change was under sofa cushions, sometimes on the ground in the park. The more of it I found, the more there was.

July 10, 2001

Another bird just hit my window. Bonk!

April 5, 2003

Spacemen 3 interview:

SONIC: I really like pyramids and triangles — I’ve done a study on them, how you can sharpen razor blades, keep milk fresh in them indefinitely.

FE: What’s the longest you’ve personally kept milk fresh in a pyramid?

SONIC: Well, I haven’t.

April 2, 2003

Ben Ratliff: Were you listening to any Indian music?

Sonny Sharrock: No. I listened to Indian music when everybody else did. Everyone said Coltrane was listening to Indian music, so we listened to Indian music. I like the food much better.

March 25, 2003

I told every dark-haired girl I saw you said hi.

March 25, 2003

Have you considered sealing him in a thick, noise-reducing protective covering, aka “blimp”, as used in the early days of sound cinema to reduce audible camera noise on the soundtrack?

December 6, 1996

I worried I was going insane, near the end of something like six hours of tossing and turning while believing that the resulting configurations of the sheets represented townspeople’s opinions and questions about God, arranged in rows and columns and directed at me, the town preacher. Or something like that.

October 21, 2001

I spent two hours killing mealy bugs with alcohol and Q-tips. They infest my jade plants. I spilled the alcohol twice.

April 26, 2002

I could drive furiously all the way to Austin, dip my toe in your creek, and then drive furiously all the way back.

April 13, 2003

I hear there’s a Jewish holiday involving hammers and crossdressing. Do you know about this?

April 13, 2003

168:Is that a picture of R—? Dang!
188:lying. It is the photo from your web page. Dang! That's why I couldn't find
273:Dang! That's it: I am cutting you off. I think you should spend this weekend
289:Subject: Dang!
340:Subject: dang! makes Linda Barry...
340:Dang!
351:"Elite" group? Dang! Had I known I would have been part of an elite group
468:Dang, girl, get off my case!
630:Subject: Dang!
704:Dang! Yous hould have done something with the
780:Subject: Re: Dang!
99:Dang! I just did a web search on Johnny. He has a record of his own on
99:Dang! I just called Antone's Records, who "specialize" in blues here in
99:Dang!
273: Josh> Dang! It seems like the only place you aren't taking her is
273:make any situation funny: monkeys, swear words, and "Dang!"
398:since this Thanksgiving. I was like, "Dang! Get a life."
400:Dang! I've got a bunch of those. I think R— put a scratch in my
417:> Josh> Dang! Alright, you don't have my CD's, ok?
468:Cecil Taylor played with Boston?! Dang! And I thought that record
500:Dang! I'm going to have to reconsider my friendship with you.
560:Dang!
568:Dang. I guess I'll have to go for the Dinosaur Jr. box set then...
583:Dang!
585:Subject: Dang!
628:what happens. Dang. I hope I am more sympathetic when
656: their eyes pop out of their heads and they say "Dang!"
661:Dang!

May 6, 2002

O master of the clever reply to clueless E-mail, advise me in this matter.

April 13, 2003

Josh: What next? “Activities we think you might enjoy: sticking pointed stick in eye...”

Your own eye or someone else’s?

February 10, 1998

You want me to wear an ascot so I can look like Nikki Sudden?

March 24, 1998

Do you think it’s:

Look outside genitals

as in, “My love for you is more than merely physical”

Or:

Look outside
Genitals

as in, “Look out the window! Genitals!”

January 11, 2001

At http://www.thomasbernhard.de/ you can hear an actual recording of Thomas Bernhard saying (in German): “Intellectuals... the biggest assholes are the so-called intellectuals.”

December 23, 2000

Ask me about the Dick Higgins exhibit!

July 29, 2007

I often think of Jim’s set at this concert, but have no memory of the sponge remarks that structured it.

May 14, 2007

I still think D— looks like he ought to be portrayed on U.S. currency.

January 13, 2003

Josh: Do you think she is interested in Ligeti’s use of obscured formal structures in his works of the early 1970s?

I think you should wait to bring that up until after sex.

April 13, 2003

I hate waking up from those record shopping dreams.

April 7, 2003

Josh: It’s obvious that “R—” is totally hot for you, perhaps enflamed by the photo of the back of your head on your website.

That would be understandable.

April 16, 1999

“In much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow” (Ecclesiastes 1:18)

July 15, 2001

It’s too late to start thanking people.

July 2, 2007

“Wherever there is objective truth there is satire.” — Wyndham Lewis

November 7, 1995

Tell him you’ll smash all his Modern Jazz Quartet records.

April 23, 2003

All the Chicago girls come to Austin but then don’t meet up with you.

August 4, 1995

I’m “Alan Prospect”.

August 7, 1995

I want to breathe some bus exhaust, almost get run over by a taxi driver, or be drooled on by a derelict on the train platform. Any of those would really hit the spot right now.

July 8, 2007

In “Chinese New Year” by Clipse it kind of sounds like they’re saying your band’s name. But instead of imitating frogs they’re imitating gunfire.

December 31, 1997

Did I tell you about finding one of Richard Meltzer’s pubic hairs at the library in DeKalb?

July 23, 2007

It turns out I have competition in the Furqan-the-Chechen-based one-liner department:
http://tojoshronsen.blogspot.com/2007/07/february-11-2002.html
http://www.plambeck.org/oldhtml/journal/journal2002feb.htm

April 21, 2007

I think Keith Rowe overheard me calling him “the man with the cleanest teeth in experimental music” because of all the electric toothbrushes in his tabletop full of gear.

April 2, 1996

If only S— would apprise the world of his whereabouts more often, so we could more closely approach the ideal of being aware of his every act or movement.

November 21, 1997

You should have seen the spread at the free Lachenmann concert last weekend. An old guy in a tux just kept bringing out more platters of food.

May 11, 1997

I interviewed Radu Malfatti and Werner Dafeldecker on WNUR. Upon being introduced to me Malfatti asked me “Are you Protestant or Catholic?” During the interview, he kept making squeaking sounds by rubbing a piece of styrofoam on his chair whenever Dafeldecker was talking.

July 29, 2007

Josh: What would you do, for example, if you hypothetically posted on CraigsList, as a joke, that you were looking for a lead guitarist for a Viking Metal band and four people responded, serious about playing in said nonexistent Viking Metal band?

I would milk it for all it’s worth.

March 20, 1996

CANT SLOW OKAY RON NOSE BYE

The exact meaning is unclear, but the urgency is palpable.

August 12, 2007

Josh: You would like D—, who teaches in Cali now, but has a girlfriend in Chicago who owns a store that sells buttplugs.

Should she give them away?

May 7, 2007

I still have not been able to locate the source of this quote:

“In the healthy, uninhibited human, there is no sexual drive and no curiosity or interest in sexuality. Contrary to traditional thought, sex is a wholly artificial preoccupation. When a man or woman is given a chance for decent, normal, artistic activity — painting, writing, music — the so-called sexual drive withers away. Sexual activity is the covert, hidden form under which the artistic talent operates when mechanistic society subjects the individual to unnatural inhibition.”

However, I did find this:

“The oddly prepubescent curve of her back, her ricey skin, her slow languorous columbine kisses kept me from mischief. It is not the artistic aptitudes that are secondary sexual characters as some shams and shamans have said; it is the other way around: sex is but the ancilla of art.” — Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

March 12, 1996

SULK COLT LOSS LAG FISH FIN

Young horse loses race by width of fish’s fin; afterward, sulks.

May 25, 2007

J— accused me of trying to make his cover letter sound “like Gertrude Stein”.

February 9, 1998

Josh:I just checked out the Jandek page. Very nice. Could be a bit more detail oriented...

I know when I’m being made fun of.

February 8, 1996

I think “polite and informative, but occasionally sarcastic” is a description of myself I can live with.

January 3, 1999

“My new house/ Is my beatnik hang-out” — The Fall, “My New House”

February 3, 1999

On my refrigerator are two words of magnetic refrigerator poetry from the previous tenant:

CANDY    UNIVERSE

This gives me an idea to start my own magnetic refrigerator poetry set by stealing one or two words each time I’m alone around someone else’s set.

December 6, 1999

“There are many people who say that we are doing is a lot of rubbish. But they can only say rubbish compared with something else; none of them has ventured to categorise it as rubbish per se!” — Joe Harriott

August 14, 2007

Submit the question to Marilyn vos Savant, and when she gets it wrong, make fun of her.

August 7, 2007

December 2004: Seth rents and watches Woodstock.

July 22, 2007

He says “Only an immense book can teach people why the stars have tongues.” (I composed this with the aid of my sister’s refrigerator poetry kit.)

July 2, 2007

Why not just trim off the “oh bondage up yours!” part and replace it with “leave a message”?

April 26, 2007

white guy with dreadlocks tells woman working merch table, “I prefer vinyl”

July 10, 2007

I wonder what he smells like now?

March 28, 2003

Surface: scratched.

August 22, 2007

“Wolf” is not an adjective, nor is “Hair”. They are nouns. In the context of the band names, they are attributive nouns, also known as noun adjuncts.

June 12, 2007

Attention Boston Herald, Jandek does not wear leather pants.

May 17, 2007

Maybe the space/time continuum doesn’t like being wormholed through.

August 6, 1999

Boy, was I ever wrong.

February 10, 1998

They bake bread together and dry each other’s hair.

July 28, 2007

When a woman describes something as “no biggie”, I am charmed.

August 25, 2007

I am reading a book by Jon Ronson. Are you jealous?

August 7, 2007

Do you think theorgansandfunctionsofsexuallifewillbecalledbytheirpropernames.com is taken?

September 1, 2007

GET OUT OF TEXAS NOW  GET OUT  GET OUT  GET OUT

July 24, 2007

The ultra-1960’s lyrics to “Something in the Air” by Thunderclap Newman (“hand out the arms and ammo, the revolution’s here”) were inappropriate for an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, but the barrelhouse piano solo was completely appropriate. Our server was so old she could barely carry our sundaes to our table.

April 21, 2007

YES WE HAVE BEEN MADE AWARE THERE IS A DRINK MINIMUM THANK YOU VERY MUCH

July 26, 2000

It’s a feel-good movie about nuclear war! I will drag you to this.

August 26, 1999

Josh: I hope you make it to Austin. I’ll take you to the big Stevie Ray Vaughan statue by the river downtown.

That’s it, I’m definitely coming.

February 3, 1998

Redness. Puffiness. Itchiness.