Shimmer.

She danced on the table barefoot as the trumpet moaned and laughed in cahoots with her from the bandstand.Hands upturned in a hosanna,hips loose and rolling,nimble and fleet footed she dodged flirty crystal and stoic flatware.

The last day of the year and she was queen of all that she surveyed.As far as the absinthe addled eye could see…..

Every cold eyed women in the room wanted her dead as their men sent up impure thoughts and dirty wishes borne upon fleet wings and plumes of dirty cigar smoke.She stood in a quivering blancmange and shivered as the chocolate oozed though her eleven tiny toes and the drum solo matched her wanton heart, beat for syncopated beat.

“She is so cool” sighed the waiters from the service entrance devouring her with greedy underpaid eyes as the light played with the gold sequins coating her carnal carriage,her fornication worthy frame……

If you can return to the scene of every crime and memory can you wipe the past and build a future?

My life,the social experiment.Behold.

The playful puppy is now a card carrying hound of Baskerville  and the tumbledown shed a bonafide recording studio.Abundant squeaky toy festivities with the Dee-Dee dog and songs to be sung.Now,what could be finer on a sleep deprived Sunday,I ask of you? What a difference a year both makes and brings.Pictures of my past everywhere so I shut my tired eyes and gave Blackie the voice that he requested and wanted.

“Too professional! Too good! Make it rougher…”

I have to smile when I think of all the abuse that I used to get in the studio for not being good enough.He patiently explains the simplicity of the structure and suddenly the light bulb, dim as it may be,flickers in my taurine soaked brain.I match my breathing and dictation to his and double it flawlessly.I sound like a country educated 6th grader and as the maestro is satisfied ,I think its a wrap.

I strap on Luke’s bass and tear it up while playbacks are being studied and decided on.I like that people know that I can bring it,that they ask me to cloud up their albums.It is rare that I feel useful so I will preen in it while I am able.Guest voice du jour.I wink slyly at a picture of my lost boy,caught in the glare of his former and now faded glory,me safe behind four strings of Fender goodness and  manage to remember who I am and what I came from.I run the bass line from “Habit” and sing it under my breath.Think about what it has cost and caused, getting this far.Nina asked me how old I was today and I told her that 27 just seems to keep on rolling….Luke and I talk about my album and I vow to get all my tracks in order when I go away in February.I like the studio that he has built and feel that good things can bloom within the safety of its poster plastered walls.

This is more important to me that I know how to articulate.To be safe to create again.Bootcamp and then down to stay in the ‘gong and tear my black heart clean out, surrounded by my necessary miscellany of a  million notebooks,my framed pictures of Fleetwood Mac and The Ramones,tarot cars,old ticket-stubs and my plaster bust of Elvis.I need to do this by myself and for myself,with trusted and kind friends to wipe all the crap from my musical past.From the munted,weed dependent,beer-soaked cocksucker in Tourettes who made me feel like I was useless and told me repeatedly that “Your not a real musician Michele” until I believed it.To the battering my confidence took as a guitarist and a person on the tour of a thousand tears with my dreadfully messed up and forever lost inamorata.

I figure if I can do this? Then I can do anything and write my own ticket.Lilli was chatting to Marcus post Looking Glass gig on saturday night when he so sweetly said “You know I am in a band with Michele now?” She grinned and hugged him as its all I can talk about.

A vigorous un-lubricated jailhouse buttfuck the cunts who put me down.

Wow,I don’t see Gene Hoglan asking you to be in a band with him and then saying you are one of the greatest vocalists he has ever worked with on the record or Glen from Skin-lab asking you to move to San Fransisco to front his new band for that matter.Nope.Jeepers,didn’t see you in the studio when I was doing vocals for Strapping Young Lad or the Hard-on’s.Nor did I catch sight of you in any film clips with Rose Tattoo or The Murder Dolls among others…oh!…That’s right! That would be because you weren’t fucking in them were you?

I could bang on in this vein for alot longer but I wont.(“Breathe Michele,go to the happy place.”) I will make my teen-aged self take her Ritalin and go to her room.

I get to wondering if the hurt ever goes away or if I just bury it till it ups and gives me cancer.Or another album.

Hmmmmmm?

So I am petty huh ? So what? Like you are not? That is just what I thought.As humans that is how we roll,it’s all details really,the tapestry of a life.At some points our slights are what define our battles.I just chose to air my grievances rather than pretend that I am cooler than I am. Rather than pretend that spite rolls off the oiled back that I was quite obviously not fitted with at birth.

I hear it take shape and I know that I am good enough to play it all and that I am roping in so many of my heroes.Calling favors and color me utterly delighted at the reaction to my stuttering requests.Gee shucks,fuck yeah!

Luke said that I was more terrifying acoustic that hardcore.I can see that.I am sitting still vibrating with all the pent up shit rather than sweating and punching it out behind a wall of sound.It would be hard to watch.But that will come later.The cage of sound.It has been so long since I fronted a band.Oh! but what a band it was. Last run was with Meldrum in 09 ending at The Whiskey on Sunset.Good lord,how time flies when you are on the run.Shame that memories are tainted by accusations that were so baseless that I have to laugh lest I weep. My ex accused me of servicing ,for want of a better word, my whole band while on tour.

Gene so badly wanted him to be on that run.Said that they would have been one of the best rhythm sections since Bonham and JP Jones. But he didn’t do it and I got in the van alone.Yet I never hesitated to give my all to him over a million miles and shows.I wish that it could have worked out.I think that I always will.

I am not good with unfinished business and lose ends.Nor do I roll comfortably with people who give themselves to trash and conduits of desperate disarray.Bitter fuck-holes with mercenary intentions.Pinch faced peroxide rodents hocking the hot Hollywood ticket.Succubus’s who attach them selves to names and master in the art of drug related extortion.

My lead wrapped knuckles strike at the bag like a viper and it is that face that I see as the sweat blinds me and I push though another set,another 3 minutes.Inspiration is inspiration is it not? Work with what is available to you.If you were fighting for your life would you win?

Like an illusion I sneak back stage and start again.Take up my birth bound mantle one again.A mirage ,I tempt you from your arid loveless place with promises of teenage anarchy and adventures on the high seas of sound.I tempt you with scar heavy kisses that thieve the breath from your lungs.Do ya? Do ya wanna? I know that you do.I saw it in your eyes,your palms flat against my cheeks,studying me,your equal,your lost,your anemia.

In the vast space of your absence I think of you constantly.

( Qui m’ont conduit et t’ont conduite,

-Melancoliques pelerins,-

Jusqu’,a cette heure dont la fuite

Tournoie au son des tambourins.) *

I shimmer on the periphery and wait for you to take your true place by my side.

(*- Merci Paul Verlaine,mon amour.x)