Archive for December, 2005

True Hallucinations

Saturday, December 31st, 2005

December 14th 2005:

I was out on lunch break, walking down Queen Anne Ave. going to get a burger from my favorite neighborhood joint. As I brushed past the window, I saw the owner wiping tables inside the restaurant. The day before we had briefly discussed our mutual interest in conspiracy theories – so I tapped on the window to get his attention and pointed up to the sky where there was a jet flying by leaving a long insidious streak.

We both laughed through the glass, but couldn’t hear eachother. I went inside and ordered a boca burger and he asked what the deal was with all the chemtrails. I just shrugged and said that my friend JK always talks about them, but that really, I hadn’t studied them in depth.

It was a busy lunch rush, so while waiting for my soy to grill I went outside to gaze and wonder at the fumes pouring out from the back of the jet and inundating our lungs with experimental chemicals (or whatever wacky theory you want to believe). Speaking of which, JK has been watching the trails and taking pictures of anomalous “orbs” floating next to them. He has a whole collection of digital camera zooms! I had never see anything like that myself, but I figured “what the heck” and casually browsed the skyline. By this time the jet was just a blip, and now that it was firmly outside of the city limits it had turned off his
nauseating trails. I just shook my head and wondered in awe.

That’s when I noticed it, er… them! Three silver discs sinking in diagonal arcs, criss crossing eachother and then disappearing – right in the path where the jet had faded away. I was totally mesmerized – these things were moving in a motion that I had never seen before. Here I was PURPOSELY trying to see a UFO and I was SEEING THREE!

I grabbed some random pedestrian and forced him to corroborate what I was seeing. He squinted and said “oh yeah. I think it might be some balloons?!”. But you could tell in his voice he wasn’t 100 percent convinced on that theory, and he backed away from the tight grip I had on his arm, continuing on down the sidewalk.

I made my way into the street and put my hand up to my brow to shield the sun, to get a better look at what I was seeing. I just kept thinking “my first ufo! my first ufo!”

I shuffled back into the restaurant and motioned for Nicolas to come outside, pulling him away from the frech fryer. I was so excited by what was going on, but I was also worried he wouldn’t see it and would think me an insane nutjob – after all, it was only the day before that I had revealed to him in whispers that I believed in such things.

We went outside and searched the horizon up towards Edmonds. Nothing. The sky seemed to sparkle, but I couldn’t spot them.

Thankfully he caught sight of one of the flashy discs, and my pride was spared. We sat they saying “holy shit” over and over again, trying to figure out what the hell we were witnessing. Military experiment? Helium balloons let go of at a school? Weather devices? If they were balloons, they would have to be spinning in some sort of whirlwind – their motion was just so peculiar and all I know is that I can’t explain what it was that I saw.

Does this sound like some sort of explainable phenomenon? What I don’t get is that it was right in the middle of the day, right over a major city? Surely, someone else must have noticed them and wondered? Right? Right?

The Tunnel Singer

Friday, December 2nd, 2005

You have to check this out: The Tunnel Singer
From the site:

In 1995 a friend told me about an unusual “tunnel” in Port Townsend, Washington (PT). He used words like “other worldly” and “mystical” to describe sounds uttered in an underground water catch at old Fort Worden in PT. He told me the reverberation lasted an amazing forty-five seconds before it faded completely…. I have sung and recorded in spaces with an 8-second long reverberation, but preparing to sing a space where each note lasts 45-seconds stretched my imagination. I listened to Stuart Dempster, Paul Horn and whales. I considered renting studio time to practice singing in an electronically created long reverberation. I dreamed of being underwater.

About eight months ago I was really into the idea of moving out to this same spot and trying to get a residency at the Fort Worden State park and record albums in these abandoned (and supposedly haunted) ruins. Now I see that someone has already done it – and that there is a giant “cistern” there waiting to be played inside of !!! Miss Shoemaker apparently didn’t have the upper body strength to go down into the cistern, so as far as I know it is still has not technically been played inside of (she just sang down into it).

My friend (and new roommate) Ryan and I are preparing to write up a draft so that we can get down there and play! Listen to those clips of her singing, it’s totally amazing.

By the way, I just remembered that I put up some new clips of The Datura Blues on the site, but haven’t extended any links. Ryan brought them up when he moved here, and they are the last show I played with that band back in Arcata almost two years ago. We’re currently trying to set up an orchestra all via craigslist (we’ve got electric violinists, trombone-ist, sax’s (etc) all meeting this Sunday!). These Datura Blue clips are pretty upbeat and fun compared to some of the more melacholy spacey stuff you can already find on the site under “Tribal Music”. But here, check them out too:

1. Sunset Ave.
2. Herbal Perts Psychadelic Grass Band
3. Happy Birthday
4. Follow the Green Song