Sometimes We All Wish We Could Sting Ourselves To Death or Immortality

The sun made its soft decline as larvae from dead wasps propelled themselves to the hospital green pillowcase I used as a branding mat.  Almost transparent white with what appeared to be a black stinger, the larvae tried and tried to form a complete circle with itself, thus completing the circle of life and death at such an early stage; perhaps a sting to its own head, its own heart. 

             First it was the horseshoe (a true, iron brand) on the donated jewel cases from Black and Read. The literally red-hot branding iron glided on the plastic like an ice cube glides across a summer time Formica countertop.  The smell permeated the air; the smell of burning plastic or the smell of death (of both the infant wasps and jewel cases themselves).

            Soon the sun was completely gone and the night’s waning moon was hidden from my view but shining up above my shed.  Wasps continued to fall periodically and the fire continued to burn.  No more sold iron brands to use.  This “branding iron’s” purpose was to brand meat before being barbequed.  I couldn’t imagine a piece of chicken with “I love you” branded into it or a T-bone steak with “Jeff’s Meat” evenly etched on the left side of the vertical bone.  I guess someone could though.

            Branding words were no easy task. During the first removal from the fire, the letter “y,” the abbreviated title  (TSDTR) and an iron loop that held the letters in at one end slid into the burning coals.  Using key rings bent with pliers, I made sure “Sandusky” would stay.  It did.

            29 plastic jewel cases were branded. Horseshoes and Sandusky.

            Now the leather.  Red first. Mimicking the way I branded the plastic, I pressed the iron horseshoe into the leather.  The leather shriveled up immediately.  The red turned to an infected-scrape-white. Less pressure.  Lesson learned. 

            99 covers branded. 

            The dying embers of the fire and the branding irons cooled as did the night. Wasps no longer fell from their nest.  Tomorrow morning they would be dry, invisible to the world, an afterthought to the long night, but forever immortal in my mind.

            Much like the music that will be nestled inside these cases and covers.

Mr. Murphy's Lovely Westword Review of "The Settled Dust That Rose"

Sandusky

The Settled Dust That Rose
Self-released

By Tom Murphy Thursday, May 6 2010

Largely released digitally, this latest full-length from Sandusky includes different artwork for each song when played on the computer. "A Prayer for the Unification of Bootgazers" opens the album as a statement of purpose: Much of the album's material is post-rock, yet it manages to be genuinely haunting rather than merely coming off as a self-indulgent display of minimalist musicianship. On "Steam Engine Ways" and "No Good Horse Thieves," the sonic imagery captures the sense of the high plains without waxing into the territory of Americana. Samples weave between melodies like ghosts of recontextualized sound, adding to a sense of the otherworldly. Mostly, though, these songs capture the melancholic introspection that serves as an undercurrent to most of the best music ever to come out of Denver.

The "Album," The Settled Dust That Rose...

My mother recently sent me a box from North Syracuse, NY full of miscellaneous memorabilia: a couple of bad books, a Very Distribution mail-order catalog from 1995 with a place to order a cassette demo for my hardcore band, two Ziploc bags full of concert tickets, two picture ids from high school and a manila envelope stuffed with words/poems/thoughts printed from either a typewriter or from a dot matrix printer.  Outside the manila envelope was written, The Westwood Diaries.  I have no idea what that means. I recall neither the place nor the dot matrix printer. 

            I have yet to read any of the writings. 

I don’t know if they were meant to be read by me again.  I’d like to view them as some sort of catharsis for a time and place that was full of Upstate New York humidity and darker days. 

I don’t know if they were ever meant for publication.  For me to write them was one thing, but for me to write them and then have even my closest friends read them would mean more of me would be exposed. Exposure frightens me.

And now there is The Settled Dust That Rose.  Much like The Westwood Diaries, I was not sure if The Settled Dust That Rose was some sort of catharsis for me once Sandusky was definitely only me.  TSDTR may have been meant to be recorded by me, listened to once by me and then stored away in my closet next to other burned discs of bands like October Smiled Back and Infusion and Julie Dante.  In one sense, I would Henry Darger it.   Keep it for myself and be proud of what I had done down in my basement morning after morning, cup of coffee after cup of coffee.

Obviously I decided against that.  Why?  I could not tell you.  Is it hubris? Is it an innate quest to remain twenty years old?  Or is it simply proof that I was once on this earth creating and not simply existing.  I tend to side with the latter often enough, perhaps from recycling thoughts of the one poem by Ronsard that struck a chord within me one afternoon in French class:

                Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle,


Assise auprès du feu, dévidant et filant,


Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous émerveillant :


Ronsard me célébrait du temps que j’étais belle.

Lors, vous n’aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,


Déjà sous le labeur à demi sommeillant,


Qui au bruit de mon nom ne s’aille réveillant,


Bénissant votre nom de louange immortelle.

Je serai sous la terre et fantôme sans os :


Par les ombres myrteux je prendrai mon repos :


Vous serez au foyer une vieille accroupie,

Regrettant mon amour et votre fier dédain.


Vivez, si m’en croyez, n’attendez à demain :


Cueillez dès aujourd’hui les roses de la vie.

— Sonnets pour Hélène, 1587

I’ll never know why you’re listening to this and maybe it doesn’t matter why you either chose to listen to this or chose not to.  I do know that I’ve listened…

Download Available: Music For The Horse Stealing Season...

While entering gently into old age, my aspirations no longer seem far stretched and unobtainable.  They appear simple, direct and self-centered.  During two weeks in late 2009, while the snow fell outside and one dog nestled under the covers and the other buried himself in the snow, I entered the expanse, the cement prairie, the wilderness that is Wild Wild Wyandot with the aspirations to make something for me and me alone.  I wanted to simply make music that I could listen to while I read.   Like language, music must be at once simple and complex.  Sounds have to drift in and fade out much in the same a short poignant Carver-like sentence is followed by the thoughts of a character carried out over an entire page in Proust-like vastness.  Commas are Casios.  Dialogue is the subtle connection between this pedal and that pedal. Conflicts are the noises that shouldn’t be there, but are.   

And for some works there should be no periods.  Something read once and then read again becomes something entirely new.  Something heard once and listened to again becomes more complex, more dangerous. Time and location play a part in this: where you read this, when you listened to that.  I leave that all up to you.  Whether driving while a loved one sleeps in the passenger seat through miles and miles of apparent nothing (though you can sense its beauty) or whether you sit next to a river and watch a mighty ocean going vessel drift easily out of sight.  Home is good too. Keep a book nearby and listen carefully.

            Thanks for reading.  Thanks for listening. 

http://sandusky.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-the-horse-stealing-season

Bootgazer Manifesto

Bootgazing Vaquero Manifesto

I.                    All actions must produce the tendency to ponder one’s boots thoughtfully.

II.                 No reins before any reins. Genre limitations are creative limitations.

III.               Consider the space it represents, tumbleweeds of any kind should be free within it.

IV.              Aspire to encompass the ideals of one or more of the following.

a.       Nudie Suits

b.      Space Suits

c.       Adobe Coats

d.      Road Trips

e.       Android Federales

f.        The American West

g.       Cowboy Boots

V.                 Process before product but not before road trips.  Highways are a vaquero’s driveway.

VI.              Presets are stagnant urban products; manipulation is a rural survival process.

 VII.            Keyboards are kin to banjos, and slide guitars are genetically the same as samplers.

VIII.         Less vaqueros are often more vaqueros.

IX.              Mistakes are cosmic fortunes.

X.                 All creations would be at home on an AM radio in a pick-up truck driven by Brian Eno on the way to an open ranch or at a rodeo held by Gram Parsons.

XI.              No good horse thieves stare and share.

XII.            High noon duels are best won by refurbishing culture, recognizing the advantages of working within a limited range of possibilities, and reconciling with repetition.

XIII.         “Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.” Cormac McCarthy