Paul J Penton – Songwriter
“Release the Muse”
Archive for July, 2009
Yawn – Daily Object Writing – August 1
Author: admin
Lying between layers of winter doonas, pressing down heavy like a juice squeezer, heavy and warm. Sitting in front of a gas fire warm, sitting in a drying room in a ski chalet warm. Eyes don’t want to recognize the light yet but the heaviness of the covers and the leaden muscles encourage an involuntary yawn. Mouth drops open for a sharp intake of crisp air and a gulp of some sort. A wind seems to rustle through the back of my throat.
A foot hangs out testing the atmosphere. Escaping the safety of the covers. Jack frost is out there pinching away at the pinkies saying it’s not safe, but it’s gotta be done. The whole body has temporary exposure as tops and pants are sought. They’re lying like islands on a sea of floorboards and I scoot to their safety.
In the lounge/kitchen it’s straight to the gas heater. The igniter ticks away at the burner and catches. An orange rectangle of salvation begins to glow. I conjure a brother beside it and the fan hums away on full. The kettle being filled is interrupted by another award winning yawn, this one seems to sound all the way to the pit of my stomach, to the pelvic floor and my belly becomes a balloon. The toast begins to crisp and the tea begins to brew, familiar smells ward off the option of any more interrupting yawns. The day has really begun now as the orange lights on the Getz flash an open sign and the door yawns open…
read comments (0)Art Gallery – Daily Object Writing- July31
Author: admin
Nameless heads on nameless walls so Don eloquently put it. Oversized canvasses adorn plain walls in varnished memory of the past. Cracked fading desert lake surfaces yellowed with age and smoke and weariness of hanging for so long. But a picture is told not just in the portrait but in the scene behind the scene, If you look closely a lot of other things are being said. For whatever reason a cloud of heaviness haunts me when in a gallery. My legs becomes lead weights my head starts to droop like a wilted flower and my heart seems to be sinking to China or the South pole or some where down below. The atmosphere, the observation wears me out so quickly. Visual stimulation perhaps overloads the electrical substation in my visual cortex and weariness results.
The balls of my feet start to ache and solace is found in a faux leather bench where I stare up at a Degas or a Piccaso or something in a shapeless mass that means something to somebody. I’m not too educated you see, but I know when something appeals, when a register opens and cashes in a ‘Yes’. I understand this. Do If feel dumb sometimes wandering around these halls and walls, that I don’t know ‘enough’ to make it make sense? I find audio guides useful, the headphones claw my ear, a fluid voice informs me of the history so I don’t feel so stupid and I get educated. The voice seems to flow through me like a velvet river, soothing and smooth, maintaining my interest, taking me further into the hidden past. Motivations seem now to leap from the paint, the choices of colours, the social scenarios, the artists keen observations preserved for me to gain insights and to marvel at. The walls now seem to come alive.
Wisdom Tooth – Daily Object Writing – July 30
Author: admin
A small steel finger of ice slivers into my gum, set to numb down, dumb down the pinkness for the rupture that’s about to occur. I’m sitting back looking up to an over head lamp in a slight shade of off white almost yellow. Doctor Danny hangs above me with a crescent moon mask – wouldn’t want to breathe on the patient now would we?
A few probes with the scraping tool garners no response from me so he begins. This is not going to be ‘neat and orderly’, no pothole being filled here by a passing road crew. We’re talking about digging a sewer here, a full on World War One trench system inside my mouth. When this suspect has been extracted, this spy who has infiltrated the rear of the jaw line, there’ll be a bomb crater. I tense up in the chair as he starts to hack away, some sort of pliers sail just under my nose and my heart is gripped in by fingers of glassy fear. Breathing becomes quick and laboured as the device graunches around the terrorism suspect. He calls for reinforcements and the two of them are yanking away on the modern day version of the torture rack- though I don’t feel much pain. It seems there’s a thunderclap as the pliers come flying out of my mouth. All I taste is blood, blood, blood. Dr Danny whips in with a swab or something and it abates. He sews up the hole with some dissolving stitch-work and I am told to take some strong panadol or Neurophen or something. When the aching will begin I am unsure, but the violation has occurred and my body – injured -will be looking for revenge shortly I am sure.
Drag Race – daily Writing – July 29
Author: admin
Sitting on the line, the motor gurgling and choking. Watching the tree of lights red, yellow, yellow, yellow, green. Go! The supercharged engine hammers the air, grunting and straining as tires slip on the gluey substance laid down under the ‘fats’: The tires that are little more than half inflated black balloons finally gain traction. The long probiscus of the dragster sniffs the tar, digging itself in deep. Aerodynamics make it plough down the dragway. almost as elegant as a dragon fly. In 8.9 seconds it’s all over, just the raw smell of burnt rubber and high octane motor fuel slashing the air. Another set of funny monsters approach the line.
This is the food of the Western suburbs, the take away entertainment they talk about all week The crowd is alive with beanies and Ugg boots and flanel shirts. Hot dogs, pies and cokes coat tongues and future heart problems. Next up it’s a couple of ‘mods’. Normal street cars modified to be no more then a shell of their former selves. Bonnets open with the periscopes of supercharger intakes, rear wheel arches contain ridiculously sized tires and skinnier front ones. The driver sits inside a lattice of protective tubing in case of a roll over. Sitting inside his helmeted atmosphere, breathing slow, tasting the expired nylon of the padding, waiting again for that tree of lights to count down. Under the bonnet layers of carefully crafted chrome reveal the work of a master, each section of the motor given the attention of new born baby. These are the babies of these young fathers and mothers. Their raison d’etre resides in one and a half tonnes of living breathing metal that cry down the track at 250 or more….
Income Tax – Daily Writing – July 28
Author: admin
You’re all invited to the wedding. Roll up. Roll up. Bring your confetti of dockets and receipts and prepare to shower the happy couple, you and the taxman. Every year you get married. The accountant is your wedding planner. You make all the arrangements. Collating the guest list of receipts – allowable deductions who send in their notice of attendance, their RSVP. Work boots, softwares, printer cartridges, petrol receipts. They all come together from far and wide for the celebration and meeting with your accountant.
In a noiseless office with a bay window view of a vacant carpark and some stretched high tension power lines he runs through the standard order of service with rote questions. The pre-calculated package he has on offer as the wedding planner is flashed before you. He ticks boxes and taps away at his Alice in Wonderland calculator- it really does seem too big for him. Maybe it’s so he doesn’t mess up those important numbers.
For an hour it’s a series of taps and twizzles until you realise he’s now wearing a bakers hat and his office has morphed into a kitchen. He’s just about to place a fold of pastry over a bunch of numbers and figures that will bake for 25 minutes at two hundred and twenty degrees celsius in the ATO approved oven. When it’s done it’ll come out with all the fresh baked goodness of apple pie. He’ll deposit straight into your bank account where you can add your own cream or whip off a slice of credit crunch to go. Something to help pay down some debt mountain you’ve accumulated in the third world. A stinking pile of debt, people live around it’s outsides in shanty towns in squalor. Daily walking through the raw sewage and grime and stench of your consumption.
Album Update July 27- 8 more sleeps
Author: admin
A deadline is a useful thing….
Well I have managed to break down some barriers of inertia and now have workable basic tracks for almost all 13 of the tracks onthe ‘olde’ album. Some of these were extracted/ressurected from old programs I have used like Ableton Live and Cubase. These have been succesfully rebirthed and regrooved in Pro tools. Along the way of course I discovered more ’OK’ material that might be worth working on and some which I thought was good turned out to be ‘average’ so it won’t make the cut. I am off for 5 nights for a ‘holiday’. The portable record rig [read laptop] will follow in a trailer as well as the encyclopedia of lyrics that demand attention. Should be a nice relaxing time.
Magic- Daily Writing – July 27
Author: admin
Abracadabra, Shazzam, open sesame. ‘I love peanut butter jelly’. None of which ever worked for me. Magic passwords that is. Rabbits pulled out of hats with big floppy felt ears, cooing doves , tranquil until released. Dispensed from the end of hanging sleeves. How’s it done? Magic!
Card games, special tricks, packs loaded with indented edges, fingers run along them counting the grooves, knowing what you’re dealing. Remembering the code for what it means thinking quick like a cheetah chasing game, but can’t remember and the magic is gone. The moment falls flat.
Magic, when the universe opens up and I drop in the lap of the muse as it passes. I ride on coat tails of unbridled imaginings. Taken to the far ends of the universe and back again. Remembering it as if it’s a dream. Left with a residue of ideas that must be forged and shaped and practiced and remembered. Hard work, but keep an eye on the original. Don’t lose it. Don’t lose the perfect precious valuable diamonds and gold, silver and Myrh. They can’t compare with the price of that magic. Can’t be bought, can only be inspired. A magic carpet ride on the inside.
Conjuring things from behind the cloak of your soul, revealing them to the world. Who else gets that chance, to bight into an insight, to taste it’s fresh zesty citrus smell. Electric shocks, palpitations, light sabre imaginings. Given wings hanging up high above the earth looking down and understanding, Peter Pan breezes flowing across my skin as I go diving down again to the thick cement of reality, the elephant time that drags by with too much certainty. Time that now seems to elude me. Oh how I wish to be twenty, where it was treacle time and the world was just jogging. Now it’s gone by in a blink and everybody’s sprinting. Gone in nothing and unless you weave magic from the fabric of time it’s another day wasted.
Apology – Daily Writing – July 26
Author: admin
A football crowd inside his mind urges the player down the field, his boots hover an inch off the ground, he’s a bullet train with magnetic boots gliding on unseen tracks under the brilliant green astro turf. It seems unthinkable that he will do anything other than score. The ball makes a pinging noise as the square of his boot hits the sweet spot. The ball dimples and then responds to the kick bulleting toward the far post, but the goal keeper has it’s trajectory marked, right until a defender tries some heroics with a diving header, but it all goes horribly wrong. Instead of a deflection he alters the trajectory to the impossible place the goalkeeper cannot maneuver too. The ball scoots to the upper corner of the net. The crowd erupts in a volcanic frenzy of horns and cheers and whoops.
The defender is straddled on the ground. He feels the crushing weight of the cheers and his self worth dissolves into dirt. The humiliation of an own goal is immediate, but apologies and a post match aftermath will inevitably result. He already tastes the wash up like soapy suds on his tongue. He knows he has not done ‘good enough’ and will need to apologise to the whole team – or make up for it with a goal at the other end. As the game progresses the thought of the apology begins to scar his consciousness. He wants to get in there and lift it up and get it healed as soon as possible. He tries to think what words he might use. There seems to be a mountain of them to choose from. It’s an ascent he doesn’t really want to really make………
Hot dog – Daily Writing- July 25
Author: admin
It always feels good to help, in some way. When I’ve taken wing and flown over the Westgate bridge headed for Altona to aquire that small thing that can only be bought at Bunnings Mega Warehouse homeware discount store – they’re waiting.
The sausage sizzle.
Almost as soon as the door opens the stagnant car atmosphere is swamped by the tempting waft of sausages . A small white pointy marquee contains a handful of happy volunteers working for some worthy cause – guide dogs association, or wheelchair disability or maybe the Rotary club. There’s usually a ruddy faced late middle age man with an apron and a set of shining chrome tongs and a barbecue tool tending his babies. I make note as I prepare to assault the aisles.
I put on a mental mountaineering suit. Emergency ropes are slung around my back, pick-axes and a miners light are on my forehead. In heavy duty boots I walk the canyons aisles. Products jut out at me like sharp dangerous rocks. Crevasses of consumables I could easily fall into keep opening below me. I need to stay focused on the summit, the target: Extension leads – in black.
Back at base camp the sausage sizzle gunslingers are dispensing dogs in flimsy white napkins, hot tomato sauce dribbles out from between clouds of white fluffy bread and slightly strangled sausages point a finger to the future. I reach the peak and scurry back to the check-outs where my fantastic plastic speeds through the slot and my money evaporates somewhere in cyberspace. Outdoors it’s real ‘ker-ching’ money and I have none. In the car I remove the water bottle that hides a supply of ready gold coins and head back toward the enticement of the hot dog stand.
Elephant- Daily Writing – July 24
Author: admin
In Fawkner park there are trees I refer to as Elephant trees- this is not their proper name- They might be Moreton Bay Figs or something -but I think the way the bark wrinkles and flaps makes them deserve this name. In a nameless shade of dark grey they form an archway as I ride to work. The light appears in tiny windows between loosely leafed branches as the bike tyres hum along the asphalt. You have to be careful because the toes of the trees have slipped underneath parts of the path and there are humps and hillocks and cracks that pneumatically end about where your fingers are as you clatter across them. More power is needed at the pedals and well oiled muscles and slightly aching knees provide the motive force. Sometimes if it’s really bright the sunlight seems to strobe through those branches like an old hand wound film, though the trees make no sound.
In the morning the grass is still freshly dewed, and diamonds of brilliance shine where the light falls. It smells fresh and new and brisque and is a great introduction to the day ahead, it gets your mind in the right place for when you sail through the doors. You’re already on top of the world and the challenge is to not let anything knock you off. Unfortunately when you get to your desk you remember the elephant in the room. He’s trying to be innocuous in the corner, his snaking trunk tucked up between his feet , but once that computer is on the bellowing begins. The stampeding feet of emails come streaming in. Mundane grey tasks are cleverly orchestrated by he who sits in the corner. The thing is of course there’s nowhere for him to poop is there? So, by the end of the day there’s a great load of stuff to shovel. The old Chinese philosopher ‘Who Flung Dung’ comes to mind . What wisdom would he dispense? Riding home having cleaned up the mess and the footprints in the butter etc etc the afternoon sun starts to soothe workday worries….