This past Christmas, we gave our niece a pass to come visit us in the city for a week this summer. So, for the next few days, Pip will be junkin’ out on all the good chillin’ Lofto Relaxo has to offer:

Special thanks must be given to two of the smartest, sweetest and cutest girls on the planet, Meta and Frankie Hula, for their pivotal role in ‘sticks‘, thinfilms‘ winning entry into this year’s 10 Second Film Festival curated by the Soap Factory:

click here for mobile version

there was no magic moment when meta and frankie hula met they just became sisters:

Last night in the car, the radio began to play this tune by Dave Loggins. By some fate of radio potluck, up until that moment, Pollee hadn’t heard it and imagine her surprise when I started singing along like a seasoned Dave Loggins groupie.

Now, there is quite a bit of back story here but I’ll keep it short. It’s rare that I know a song from the 70’s era that my wife doesn’t, owing to our different experiences growing up. As a kid, her life revolved around popular music and mine was devoid of any music deemed “secular” and therefore, there are still many songs and musicians out there that I’ve not ever heard of – the upside being that I get to “discover” bands and musicians that the rest of you have known about for, like, ever. Used to bother me but now I consider it the way one would consider finding money in an old coat.

So, that explains why we pulled the car off the road, into a huge parking lot, opened the doors, turned it up, got out and stood there under the light of the moon together listening, laughing and simply being thankful for music, music we’ve heard, music we haven’t heard, music we’re hearing for the first time, music we may never hear – all kinds of music – in our lives. What would we do without music? What could replace these moments, even such an odd song as this?

““Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid” – Frank Zappa

Thanks, Frank and thanks, Dave Loggins:

Easy to take this all for granted. Breathing. Walking. Seeing. Feeling. Any sense. Pick one. And it’s even easier to stroll through this whole thing blind to the possibility that this may just very well all be some dream. We know nothing about what any of us are doing here.

In the meantime, we find things to make it about: for some, it’s about love and a sense of belonging. For many it appears to be money and fame. That’s surprising, isn’t it? Celebrity only seems to present new problems. It doesn’t change anything. It steals privacy, creates further issues with identity, but doesn’t provide any solutions for this singular dilemma. Nothing does.

So I am writing this to myself.

When people die, people close to us, it kindles something. What is that feeling? It makes me calm, reminds me of our connectivity to everything. It may be morbid, but I am oddly comforted by that loneliness, walking around in that stupor. Pleased to be again so intimately conscious that we have no control over any of this schwack. I am at peace within the moments of tragedy in a way I cannot be to quite the same degree otherwise. i don’t need anything in those times. I’m not hungry or thirsty. I’m not tired. I just seem to be picking up some signal that can’t be known coming from somewhere, everywhere. Call it shock if you want. There’s something more going on there, something unseen that has properties. As if ocean waves generate this frequency that we haven’t even considered the possibility of, or clouds being ghosts that have trapped themselves here, not having let go of their lives here on Earth yet. I laugh at what we think we know. Even if it is correct, it is always, ALWAYS, only the tip of the iceberg.

We can buy this, travel there, pretend to be this or that but it doesn’t help.

As Vonnegut used to say:

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.”

Are we evolving closer or further away from this awareness? What are the advantages of each? Disadvantages?

What could this awareness do for us? Is it important?

Does it change how we treat each other? Ourselves?

Do we care?

December 24th, 2009 – December 25th, 2009

In his heyday, Chuck was the life of the party.
His beacon was extinguished prematurely, however, when a deluge of icy rain taxed his fragile body too far earlier today.
Friends and family will gather to soak the pain of his passing in a sea of cocktails this evening @ Lofto Relaxo: his one, true home.
You were #1, Chuck, and weren’t afraid to show it. Your memory lives on in those you touched.