Dave Maass

I’d been hounding Duncan for weeks to let me come down to Hoodlum Towers (his flat) on a Wednesday night to hang out on his couch while he and Matt broadcast their Internet radio show. Finally, last night, after Matt said pretty much “Forget Duncan, you’re my guest,” I got to chill under the pretense of transferring Verberate photos from their digital camera to my computer. Matt’s djed Verberate twice now that Dunk’s busy with his gig at Common. I really dig his stuff and apparently so do the Australians.

Anyhow, I’m on the couch playing around with a gif animation program and a few photos of Segun Le French from Monday night (produced this). Dunk had gone to bed early after his set, so it was just Matt spinning and when he was done entertaining all two listeners, he let me throw on a Country Joe & the Fish song and Eric Burdon & War’s cover of Paint it Black. I felt super cool.

But then, but then. Once he’s done, I go over to his computer to play him a track by Kate Gilbert on the Verberate CD and although he’s shouting at me “Don’t close that window!” I do it anyway and completely erase their recording of the show. I’m such an ass.

Sorry guys. I guess I won’t be invited back.

To make amends, I’m going to plug their show big time this week. It’s next Wednesday, 9pm GMT. HoodlumTribe.com. I’ll have the international time chart up on Tuesday.

Just got a myspace message from Jimi - a guy I used to pal around with in high school in Scottsdale. I remember one summer… every night after I clocked out of the Mobil station he’d roll up on his skateboard and we’d gun it down to Jamaican Blue in my S-10, subwoofer thumping 36 chambers, and then we would drink caramel lattes and talk about picking up on girls but never actually do it. Well, we did once. We spied two of them on the other side of the cafe, invited them over, and upon closer inspection realized they couldn’t have been older than 13. Another time we were stuck at stoplight on our way back at 2am when a carful of girls pulled up beside us and asked for our numbers, telling us they’d call us in an hour to hang out. We must’ve driven around til 4am, just waiting and imagining.

Anyhow, Jimi’s some sort of roadie these days and a band he’s touring with is hitting the MEN Arena in late April. Who needs all-night cafes when you’re “with the band”…

“I don’t give a good goddamn if it pours when it rains.”

That’s the first line of the spoken word piece I’ve recited over and over and over again this week. Every time I say it I believe it, or at least in my own ears I sound like I mean it. But later I find that it’s a struggle to just relax in a chair and savor the sitting and I have to face the possibility that this flood of stuff affects me more than I’m willing to let on. I was a mess last night. It’s been a helluva a week.

There was V for Vendetta on Thursday, my Cardiff rockstar birthday on Friday, London acclaim on Saturday and a long hard ride home in a school bus seat designed for a five-year-old bottom on Sunday. Today I interviewed for a job that, oddly enough, utilized my obscure knowledge of Viktor Ullman’s operas, I taught my two tutorials (and screened the infamous “Crying Indian” Keep America Beautiful commercial) and somehow Matt, Zoe and I managed to keep the Refugee Poets night from spiraling into a fiasco. It was extremely successful. We raised a ton of money. There were no real hitches. I was proud and photos should be up on the site later this week. My only regret was that there wasn’t time for me to read the Togolese poet’s poem.

Now I just want to sleep. I’m so tired. It’s only drizzling outside right now.

Here’s the poem the refugee wrote about Russ and Marybeth and Semantics and I, and all the others taken into police custody at Krisan on Dec 8, 2005:

Why Do You Mistreat Them?
by Anonymous. Translated by Dr David Murphy, University of Stirling

Why do you mistreat those who defend us?
Why do you dishonour our philanthropists?
Why do you chase away our guests?
Why do you threaten those who come to help us?
Why do you arrest those who intervene on our behalf and seek to liberate us?

Why do you mistreat them?
You arrest and you humiliate the “Voice” of the abandoned
He who came to serve and to save humanity
you stand in the way of his mission and corner him

Who are you, why do you fights against the messengers of salvation?
You who persecrute God’s humble servants?
I cannot understand what leads you to destroy your brother.

You terrify your brother who has done nothing to you,
who begs you to do away with our troubles and our woes
Who has come to relieve the suffering of those rejected by society.

Don’t mistreat them.
Don’t mistreat them.

Put an end to the atrocities.
Put an end to intimidation.
We demand our liberty.
Don’t harass them.
They have come to bring us peace.

The police, you have done us harm.
You stir up trouble in our camp.
You chase away our visitors.
You leave us isolated.
You marginalise us.
You control our movements.

The police, you have done us harm.
You prevent us from living.
You stand in the way of our happiness.
You stand in the way of those who came to help.

You terrify the generous.
You prevent the from sitting with us
You prevent them from speaking with the refugees
You endlessly harass them

Thursday, 8 Dec 2005
Was the day you hunted our friends
The three diplomates who watched over us.
You threatened and arrested them.
Before the eyes of the world, the police threaten pilgrims and wise men.

You forced them into the car
Without respect and without asking them who they were
You terrorised them without seeking to find out why they had come to visit the refugees.
You did not allow them to say good bye, not even to glance over their shoulders as they left.
You clearly display your xenophobia.
You confirm your nastiness and your bad will towards us.

This afternoon you arrest the journalists, who defend our human rights
You root through their bags by the roadside
You prevent them from visiting hte refugees.
You cut off all contact between us.
You threaten any refugee who greets them or tries to speak to them.

You arrest them without rhyme or reason.
You lead them into your office
Where the interrogation begins
You destabilize the entire camp?
You make us ill at ease.

The Americans and the Canadians first
Now it’s the German’s turn
Because you are the police “force”
All forms of terror are permissible
You threaten an insult him
You seize his passport
You prevent any contact with the refugees.

Nastily and brutally
You drag him to your office
The arrests go on
The interrogations go on
He rejoins the ranks of the journalists-humanists

Chase away the foreignor
Chase away those who seek to help us (benefactors?)

Why do you hurt them?
Why do you mistreat them?
Why do you arrest them?
Simply because they defend humanity.

Holy Fucking Shit

Semantics has been accepted for the 2006 World Press Institute fellowship. This is amazing: he’ll get to travel all across the US. Here’s one thing it says: “This year’s program begins July 31 and ends November 17. At present our tentative travel plans include Detroit, Michigan; Los Angeles, California; New Orleans, Louisiana; Washington, D.C. New York; Miami and Orlando, Florida; Atlanta, Georgia; and Chicago, Illinois, in addition to rural Minnesota and the “Twin Cities” of St. Paul and Minneapolis.” http://www.worldpressinstitute.org/fellowship.htm

I’m speechless and so happy for him. On top of that, Nigeria has agreed to let Liberia arrest Charles Taylor. I don’t know what all this means for whatever potential film…not going to worry about it now… I’m in London! I’m performing at the Spitz tonight. More about the tour in a subsequent post.
I had a wonderful birthday, though. A bit “shambolic,” but I’ll remember it.

Happy Birthday To Me, in advance. Tomorrow, I’ll be on the blue school bus to Cardiff.

Newcastle, in its grimy and fairly notmuchtodo way, is a beautiful city. Standing on the bridge that crosses the river, you look down on a landscape out of an MC Escher drawing. You can’t tell where “ground” is; it’s layers and layers of mangled buildings, like shark’s teeth, and hills and that big river at the bottom, in which Carter’s car was pushed with a young woman locked into the trunk. Gritty. Loved walking through it, killing hours while all the umpteen bands soundchecked at the space.

The gallery space where we performed was… interesting. Beautiful inside, bright white walls, sinking into a pit where the stage was set. From the outside, though, it looked like the out-of-business bookies it had been before the owners converted it. No sign. No windows. Just the metal panels to keep the hoods out.

It was a fairly pathetic performance. I don’t think audience members outnumbered the performers, and if so, barely. Nevertheless, we all put in the energy, if only because there was a guy with a video camera and it was a nice space for a music video. It was fucking freezing though, and I had to stand by the door taking money all night. We got back at 5am or so.

The editor of Diplo, the Uk-based international politics mag that published one of my refugee articles, is looking for a new editor. I’ve thrown in an application

Tomorrow’s the first daytrip of the tour, to Gateshead, which is pretty much Newcastle. My pals back in the states will think fondly of the brown ale. Me, I think of the original Get Carter with Michael Caine.

Should be decadent; Ben, the bassist for Robin Nature-Bold is buying me a bottle of vodka so I can participate in the drink-off he’s planned with the drummer. He’s warned me that he’ll probably drink it all, anyway, which is really okay by me. Haven’t decided what I’ll be performing; just printed out a stack of stuff. I’ll run with whatever makes sense. I’ll probably also be running the door and merch table.

I had to cancel my Monday tutorials last week for the Kikass interview. I made them up today, but only one student showed up to the first one and only two to the second. Too bad for them. The tutorial was on whether global commodization produces cultural homogenity. To stimulate discussion I screenedthe music video for Amerika by Rammstein. Aren’t I a hip n’ cool n’ clued-into-the-youth tutor? No wonder Kikass wanted me. Click the image for an wmv version of the video.

This ATP tour seems like a fairly incredible opportunity. Because I’m standing in for the legendary Ed Barton, I’ve got the prime spot - between Robin Nature-Bold and Lord Mongo. I’m the only literary/spoken-word act on the tour and researching the venues, it seems like they’re all fairly prominent art gallery/cafes. Kinda like Cornerhouses and Green Rooms. Ben, RNB’s bassist, said it should be fairly low-key, which is reassuring.

Right now, though, what I’m thankful most about this tour is it’ll take my mind off pining after Clare and Alyssa, my two new friends. They’re on the MA Visual Anthropology course. It’s fairly ridiculous how quickly I’ve come to really like and care about the two of them. They’re in Paris for eight days for an ethnographic film fest and luckily this tour’s come up so I don’t feel like a left-behind puppy. Well… maybe I still do, but at least I’m a trick puppy who’ll get to do his stunts up and down the country with this art rock circus.

Completely unrelated, I got great news from Ghana yesterday. Semantics has taken over The Vision as managing editor. He’d pretty much doing all the leadership work for the last year - now, it’s  official. I’m nominating him for an award tomorrow. He has a strong chance of winning, and if he does, it’s a free trip to London for the ceremony. How cool would that be?