update 1/27/11

D Part Your,

How is the hanging garden? By hanging we mean moving. By moving we mean legs. By legs we mean dancing. By dancing we mean hanging. So, how?

This weekend at the D Note is going to be a magical sleigh ride around the world. (I stole that line from local DJ Terrasonic, who we highly encourage everyone to listen to Saturday noon on KGNU.)

Friday night: We start off at 5pm with acclaimed songwriter and guitarista extraordinaire, Kimmerjae Johnson. Free. Then at 7:30pm we have Dr. Harlan's Amazing Bluegrass Tonic. This is a local bluegrass act that has come up out of nowhere and surprised us all. Great stuff if you like bluegrass, dynamic instrumentals, beautiful harmonies. $5.

Speaking of great bluegrass, there is a killer circle taking shape on Thursday nights at 9pm after trivia, with the pre-legendary Martin Gilmore at the helm.

For the dance party Friday night we have Alejandro Castano manning the turn tables. We say "manning", because this happens to be Alejandro's 21st birthday party. Many of you may know Alejandro, or at least recognize him. He's been playing drums at D Note since he was 14! Now he has shaped up to be an excellent jazz drummer. But he's also a fun DJ in his spare time. He's gonna be spinning the tasty dance tunes Friday night so come out and celebrate. Ladies free.

Saturday we have the Winter Gala Hafla, presented by Phoenix. The Hafla is great. How could several troupes of women dancing creative routines not be great? We suggest getting there by 6pm if you want a seat. Starts at 7pm. $6/$5 kids. After the Hafla we have a new funk band on the scene, Volunteer Funk Dept. Come dancing. $5.

Next Friday we have a Bob Marley 66th Birthday show with Trichome (world reggae) at 8pm and Dr.U (dubstep) at 10pm. Mark your calendar. Also Stonebraker Feb. 12 and Angie Stevens Feb. 19.

Ba dum bum,

D rum

Extra credit: Anne Waldman is a major poet who just so happens to have deep roots locally. With Allen Ginsberg she started The Jack Kerouac School Of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa in Boulder. Here's a poem of hers. It is akin to the poem we featured recently by Frank O'hara, "A True Account Of Talking To The Sun On Fire Island". It also echoes (like a game of telephone) O'hara's line from his Personism Manifesto, "While I was writing it I was realizing that if I wanted to I could use the telephone instead of writing the poem, and so Personism was born."



Phonecall From Frank O'hara

“That all these dyings may be life in death”
I was living in San Francisco
My heart was in Manhattan
It made no sense, no reference point
Hearing the sad horns at night,
fragile evocations of female stuff
The 3 tones (the last most resonant)
were like warnings, haiku-muezzins at dawn
The call came in the afternoon
“Frank, is that really you?”

I'd awake chilled at dawn
in the wooden house like an old ship
Stay bundled through the day
sitting on the stoop to catch the sun
I lived near the park whose deep green
over my shoulder made life cooler
Was my spirit faltering, grown duller?
I want to be free of poetry's ornaments,
its duty, free of constant irritation,
me in it, what was grander reason
for being? Do it, why? (Why, Frank?)
To make the energies dance etc.

My coat a cape of horrors
I'd walk through town or
impending earthquake. Was that it?
Ominous days. Street shiny with
hallucinatory light on sad dogs,
too many religious people, or a woman
startled me by her look of indecision
near the empty stadium
I walked back spooked by
my own darkness
Then Frank called to say
“What? Not done complaining yet?
Can't you smell the eucalyptus,
have you never neared the Pacific?
‘While frank and free/call for
musick while your veins swell’”
he sang, quoting a metaphysician
"Don't you know the secret, how to
wake up and see you don't exist, but
that does, don't you see phenomena
is so much more important than this?
I always love that.”
“Always?” I cried, wanting to believe him
“Yes.” “But say more! How can you if
it's sad & dead?” “But that's just it!
If! It isn't. It doesn't want to be
Do you want to be?” He was warming to his song
“Of course I don't have to put up with as
much as you do these days. These years.
But I do miss the color, the architecture,
the talk. You know, it was the life!
And dying is such an insult. After all
I was in love with breath and I loved
embracing those others, the lovers,
with my body.” He sighed & laughed
He wasn't quite as I'd remembered him
Not less generous, but more abstract
Did he even have a voice now, I wondered
or did I think it up in the middle
of this long day, phone in hand now
dialing Manhattan