“I wanted to play saxophone, but all I could get were a few squeaks.”
— Stevie Ray Vaughan
Dots Hop House, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
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A Few Squeaks
Tag Archives: Deep Ellum
Eat Me
“Whether you take the doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit.”
― Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Superiority To the Sleeping World
“The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.”
― Leonard Cohen
Above the bar, Three Links, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Ancient Mystic Order of Samaritans
AMOS, Xerxes
It’s out there, it’s all around. You do have to look close.
Ceaseless Play Of Light
Dot’s Hop House, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
“The crystal trees among them were hung with glass-like trellises of moss. The air was markedly cooler, as if everything was sheathed in ice, but a ceaseless play of light poured through the canopy overhead. The process of crystallization was more advanced. The fences along the road were so encrusted that they formed a continuous palisade, a white frost at least six inches thick on either side of the palings. The few houses between the trees glistened like wedding cakes, white roofs and chimneys transformed into exotic miniarets and baroque domes. On a law of green glass spurs, a child’s tricycle gleamed like a Faberge gem, the wheels starred into brilliant jasper crowns.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Crystal World
Dot’s Hop House, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
What Your Myth Is
Deep Ellum, Texas
“Everybody acts out a myth, but very few people know what their myth is. And you should know what your myth is because it might be a tragedy and maybe you dont want it to be.”
—-Jordan Peterson
Almost every important thought – definitely every decision I make – takes the form of a conversation. I’ve been paying attention – this is really true. But if it is a conversation, which person is me?
And if I can figure that out – who is the other guy?
Faster and Faster Every Day
“I am now 33 years old, and it feels like much time has passed and is passing faster and faster every day. Day to day I have to make all sorts of choices about what is good and important and fun, and then I have to live with the forfeiture of all the other options those choices foreclose. And I’m starting to see how as time gains momentum my choices will narrow and their foreclosures multiply exponentially until I arrive at some point on some branch of all life’s sumptuous branching complexity at which I am finally locked in and stuck on one path and time speeds me through stages of stasis and atrophy and decay until I go down for the third time, all struggle for naught, drowned by time. It is dreadful. But since it’s my own choices that’ll lock me in, it seems unavoidable–if I want to be any kind of grownup, I have to make choices and regret foreclosures and try to live with them.”
― David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments
Oblique Strategy: Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame
(click to enlarge)
I have always liked this photo that I took at the Invasion Car Show, in Deep Ellum. I’m not sure, but looking through my archives, I don’t think I have used it in a blog entry before. I might be wrong.
Think about how everybody used to – especially when cars had hood ornaments like this – viewed speed. Travel was going from props to jets and life was speeding up. Think of how wonderful it must have felt. Think of riding in a metal tube thousands of feet in the air moving at hundreds of miles per hour, in comfort, in luxury, while a beautiful woman served you food and drinks. It is a miracle.
Of course, we all know how this speed thing has turned out. The speed increases, props, jets, and now the speed of light through a device held in your hand to every corner of the world, instantaneously. We move so fast now, we don’t go anywhere.
It reminds me of a quote from a book I just read. When the railroads were first built, people believed that they would suffocate if they travelled faster than 30mph as they would not be able to breathe due to the surrounding air rushing past them. Engines were throttled so they couldn’t go over thirty.
They were afraid of a speed that we take for granted. I think they may have been right.
Look Like Chopped Liver
“Don’t start an argument with somebody who has a microphone when you don’t. They’ll make you look like chopped liver.”
― Harlan Ellison
Mural (detail) at Bowls & Tacos, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Taken on the Friends of the Santa Fe Trail Pub Ride.
Oblique Strategy: Lowest common denominator
Another Snippet: From a short story – Slow Advance by me
I finally kicked down the noisy neighbors’ door to find they had moved out. The place was empty. All that was left was their disembodied voices, still arguing. At an incredible volume.
I had to look around, but finally found the eight track player. My father showed me one of those once and explained the tape inside was a loop. It would never stop. I stood there, gobsmacked, and reacted too slow as a cat ran out of the hallway and dashed out the still-open door.
The sound system, such as it was, was sitting on the floor making a dent in the filthy shag carpet. There wasn’t anything else for me to do but to turn the volume knob down and hit the oversize bright blue led-lit power switch. The light turned to red. I spun around and headed home. I had splintered the jamb with my boot, so the door wouldn’t latch. In the hallway I paused, returned, and pulled the plastic box of the eight track from its hole and quickly strode home.
“So, that was quick,” Jane said as I walked back in, “what the hell is that in your hand.” I set the tape down on the coffee table and she handed me my beer. It was still cold, with an archipelago of condensed moisture droplets sparkling on the amber glass. Jane picked the eight track up and stared at it.
“They weren’t home,” I said.
“No, that’s impossible. We’ve been listening to them both scream at each other all day.”
“It wasn’t them, It was that,” I gestured at the tape.
“Well, at least it’s quiet now,” Jane said. “Hand me the remote, I want to watch Glee.”
