Words: Disheveled Daily Prose:

I have been haunting the local music scene, wandering the dark street dives and bars, looking for a counterculture moment or two: starry-eyed youth, gliding into the night, lost in music and rainy streets, in heaven... do you see them? They in their bohemian clothes, starstruck, hand in hand, even in Bakersfield where the city glows into the night, but whose people only sneak in the midnight hours. Such literary moments. They're here in Bakersfield. They're wherever a writer choses them to be, really. One could write about an ant, its journey with a grain of bread. But to lift up the Southern Valley I simply can't ignore what I love: music and wandering. So, I'm helping to give it a voice, narrating stories of music and downtown adventure. That is the fodder for literary topic of late. But such literary topics have to be woven into story form to have deeper meaning to the author. I will be coming back to such philosophical delving in the near future by writing a major work of art, reflecting the music scene, its energy, its dark haunts, its lively moments, its tragic despair... the characters are punks, the reflection of which are the people I meet, loosely based, but there, hidden in the storyline, and wandering just as they do in real life...

I haven't posted here in a while. I have been doing most of my writing on the music review pages. But it's time I get back in touch with you as the author you all know I am. After all, I am about to release the most controversial book to ever come out of the Southern San Joaquin Valley. And more than that. This isn't just a book. This is literature, horror, media macabre, an isolated story about people who isolated themselves while in their secret lives. Of course I could have focused my story on the open, mainstream lives led by the Lords, but then, that isn't what you want to read about is it? Stay tuned. I am going to show you some things that are going to make you want to lock your doors, close your curtains, and keep a rosary by your bed at night... it's just that scary. In the meantime, take another look at chapter one.

Tonight I have a meeting with this totally angry dude here in Las Vegas down at the Peppermill, across from the Stardust. I can't say his name but I can show you his blog titled Pig Entrails. He knows the Hollywood Bakersfield Blogger just as I do, but I have yet to meet this guy. He's a techy dude, don't let either of them fool you. They just both lead opposite and crazy lives. They're just as comfortable at reading what's up in blogs along with the rest of us.

I should also add that I am going to be posting more details about Lords research. It's not for the faint of heart and is downright creepy. There's pictures, audio stuff, transcripts, strange ghostly photos and more. I wasn't going to post a lot of this kind of material until after Part One was released, but with that strange note from the other day, what else can I do but let the good people know what really went on behind the scenes.

Although copies of all this research are locked away in vaults in two different states, I think it's time just to let you all in on some of the most creepiest stuff to ever happen to me in my entire life. ALl I can say is, stay tuned. I'll let you know more as the weeks go on...

We arrived at the mortuary just after the sun dipped past the coastal range. The mortuary itself looked clean, strangely inviting, and though dark, there was an unusually jovial aire about walking up to its front doors. We were here to talk music; not wish a fond farewell, or arrange bagpipe funeral tunes. There would be no harps playing to last angelic moments of remembrance, but talk of punk rock and brit pop, the Bakersfield music scene, and more.

Kenny Mount gave us a quick tour: “Here’s your standard chapel and over here’s a bathroom. This is an overflow visitor room. This is where Mr. Mish keeps his retro chairs that I want to sell on ebay…do you want something to drink? A Pepsi?” Mount, dressed in a white shirt and tie still showed hints of his punk rocker roots: his disheveled hair, his rebellious and laughing personality that was in full Descartian swing: skeptical of all around him. Don’t’ get me wrong; Kenny is one sharp dressed mortician, with gleeful eyes and a sense of humor like no other. His jokes were right on, and though I won’t repeat them here, his charisma made for a strange business type of meeting, one for the Southern San Joaquin ages; one for the Bakersfield arts.

Gerhard Enns of the Dalloways was on hand too. He had his hip daddy-o Elvis Costello swagger, though more timid, and jumped right into the fun. And he had a lot to offer. We were all there to talk music, how could life get any better? There was even talk of the old band, Brian Jones was Murdered. Gerhard and Kenny realized old connections and talked about them. “You’re the dude who drove from out of town to sing with them…” and so on.

Before we sat, the tour had ended with a glimpse of a viewing. The deceased rested in peaceful slumber in a dim-lit room; eyes forever closed and unthinking. Flowers adorned nearby tables, and the solitude of such a moment was a glum reminder that we should do everything we can to better ourselves with the short amount of time allotted to us. Artists tend to burn out quick. Yet everyone in the room was around 30ish—already beating the odds I’m thinking.

Without spending time on the meeting agenda, I should say that what came out of it was as refreshing as that put in: that everyone at the table wanted to see success for bands from this little town in Hollywood’s Backyard. Hope is never lost for artists like the Filthies and the Dalloways. There’s always a refreshing strategy, a new-found energy in taking on self-promotion and the path to a record contract. And there’s community spirit.

As a writer I can only hope to help keep such a community spirit alive. Tonight’s Thursday Night War will be an attest to that. It isn’t really a war. It’s more like a gentleman’s competition, or even a good old fashion hockey fight. You give it your all. After the game you shake hands outside the rink, or in this case, have a beer and play a gig the following week. Just ask Tempred and American Standard. Though they weren’t really competing against each other last week, they’re soon to pair up. As for the War? A popularity contest; you bet. But only a contest for a brief time. Each and every band has the same goal: to get noticed by the music industry; to somehow break through the firewall set up by talent scouts; to set themselves apart from the rest.

Kenny walked us out of the mortuary into the dark Bakersfield night still telling jokes, still the youthful punker laughing at the human condition: life is out of your control even when you think you have it all solved. With that said I’m sure Kenny was also thinking just like me, that though life is sometimes out of our control, we can still do everything we can to push it in certain directions…

I spend a lot of time writing, working on music reviews, tending to the family, talking to friends and nurturing relationships in the community that it is difficult to breathe sometimes. You know. In the end I just want to sell books. For the here and now, it's about working for the community, so the community will have someone to believe in. I chose the arts. And I am starting with the local music scene and a small blogging community. I've only been doing this a month and have had a little success. That's no guarantee to sell 3000 books when the time comes, but it's a start. Hell, I don't even know if more than 2 or 3 people read this blog.

Well today was one of those days where you work on all of this stuff for your career, and then you suffer an unexpected setback. The first major setback I suffered was a few months ago when my agent and mentor died in a tragic car wreck. I lost a year's time with that one. Today it was something else--and that's besides the creepy letter I got on my doorstep from who knows... Anyway, just whatever you do, always back your work up on your computer... for someone like me and who has an entire life on a computer, you can lose a lot. So I went out to have a nice drink with my friend Flower in the Dale. She was good company and provided just enough pity that I was able to come home and show my optimistic side... which is, there's always a new beginning to find in everything.

I have been receiving some kind emails lately from various folk in and around the valley, and from distant lands such as Arizona and Nevada… Writer Saul Cuevas sent me a kind note yesterday: “Keep up the good work and don't look back, something might be gaining on you... I love your cover for lords.” Saul wrote an engaging Spanglish book titled Barrioztlán published with Orbis Press. If you can read Spanish, better yet, Spanglish, then you can tackle such a linguistic work of art from the barrio.

I also heard from one of my dear friends in Las Vegas, Nevada, once assistant to the editor at both University of Nevada Press and Stephen’s Press. There's a whole story there about a drunk two-bit editor who lost her job, and a publisher who my old mentor called... well I can't say what he called this person. He was contracting with this certain party and the certain party sure made him work for peanuts, which wasn't fair at all... Quite the story there too if you can get me drunk enough. Anyway, she’s running off to an Edinburgh castle to get married. Sounds like a nice vacation. Just bringing home a few extra bags with that one. Just kidding. I wish her nothing but the best; an Edinburgh castle no less! I’m not even sure I’ve been to Hearst Castle. Although I will say, for art museums, the Getty down in LA is a masterpiece for both architecture and display of art. No Munch stealers(they stole again!) would ever dare thieve from such a Mecca of artistic triumph…besides, they’d have to be dealing with the LAPD.

Just released online today is the latest book, Cubicles, to soon be released. You can read an excerpt and view the cover exclusively designed by Turkish artist and photographer Nur Polat. I will post a bio and provide links to other material soon. Here's a brief: Nur hails from the lovely city along the Bosphorus, Istanbul and has a photography degree. With a specialty in taking photos of sleeping people and other interesting accents in human form, Nur is an up and coming artist becoming popular in the local cafes of her wonderful city. She sent an entire series of Cubicles photos that I hope to have on display at a local coffeehouse very soon in a joint Belardes/Polat art show. I will keep you all posted!

I haven't put up an excerpt in a few days. Here's something from Thick White Crust. I was discussing this book with a friend today and read recently that the author of Pocho had been out at CSUB. It's too bad I read that news too late or I would have gone to meet him.


THE STREETS Bus rides in Bakersfield are dark, even in the daylight. In the noontime I have seen cowboys in black sit and talk endlessly of prison, while faces stare out windows, never smiling, with thoughts focused on cowboy conversation and strange destinations.

“Dallas—that’s where I lived, and Texarkana. Huntsville, now that ain’t a place you wanna pick up a hitchhiker. There’s a prison there. You know I never knew how big Dallas was until I was with a friend who had a car impounded sixty miles from the heart of the city. Now that was a walk.”

On the buses few people talk, except for the people who know each other, or the strangers brave enough to start a conversation. Many faces are scared, and some have attitudes and yell and scream at the bus drivers:

“I am under house arrest! Can’t you drive any fucking faster?? Excuse me, ma’am? Drive faster!”

During the nights I have seen young blind boys with radios and white sticks sit on the bus in their own little cocoons, not caring that the night holds more solitude for me than the day. For them—it is perpetual sounds and vibrations, the feel of the bus turning, the anticipation of being able to tell the bus driver where to stop because they can sense where they are.

“What a nice young man,” I said about one young blind fellow. I had moved up to the front of the bus. I was the last passenger left before the bus was to go out of service for the night. “I wonder what his imagination constructed for him regarding the attacks. It was so visual. Would his mind make it appear worse or better? Maybe it’s better that he didn’t see…” The driver seemed to ignore me.

The bus station was deserted except for a few janitors. I walked up 22nd Street to F, then headed north toward Rosemary’s Ice Cream shop. Everything was closed and I was the only person walking on the street. It was around 11pm. In Las Vegas I could take a walk at the same time, walking Theresa’s border collie, and see a lot of people milling about. But then, I was only two blocks from the Strip, and only a little more than that from the Graceland Wedding Chapel. Tourists were seen walking about late at night, but it was mostly the bums and poor folk, addicts, and hookers who were out near the Federal Building, toward the intersection of Bonneville and Las Vegas Boulevard.

Union Avenue girls with torn shirts and big breasts wander down the street as I wait for the bus to pick me up. People frequent the markets across from the only casino in town—the old French restaurant, now a haven for local gamblers. I have come to search for a job and inside I see the owner of a downtown restaurant wander through, searching for the right blackjack table or poker game. He’s Asian, has long hair, and smiles at the drink girl, a young Chicano lady with full lips and metal-rimmed glasses. I later find out she is sleeping with one of the card dealers. I spent too much time in the casinos of Las Vegas. Why do I need a job in a Bakersfield casino? There has to be something else. Bonifacio’s couch is a safe haven and a curse. But this casino job I want so I can have some money to publish my books, and money to pay rent, and eat food, and start my life over. I can help manage a casino. This town is full of gamblers.

Bus rides are a dark, murky thing. I stare out dirty bus windows at cars. I long for my own car, for full-time employment, for an escape from my surreal life. I think about working outside, in farmland country, on a ranch, in the coastal mountains by the sea. I think that I do not want the factory life again, or to work in a grocery store bagging groceries and cutting my hands open with box cutters. The bus bumps and sways. My knee hits against the stop indicator strip. It’s a long rubber strip that riders can press so the driver knows to stop at a bus stop. The bus driver pulls over at the next available bus stop, then grows angry when no one gets off the bus. The bus bumps and sways again. My knee bumps against the rubber strip again. The driver pulls over next to a pole with a metal sign that shows the icon of a red bus. He yells: “Is someone leaning against the strip??” I shift positions in my seat.
Soon the driver hums as if he is an extension of the engine. He had just been given a butterscotch candy by a limping man who got on the bus. He’s opened it and plopped it into his mouth. I stare at the young Chicano girls and old men on the bus. I wonder about the crossroads of existence. The bus makes a loop into the CSU Bakersfield lot. I get out. The students are refreshing. I eat free food handed out on campus: a burger, chips and lemonade. My heart aches for Theresa and I wonder if life is good for her.

GHOSTS The girl who brought me to Bakersfield; her name is Marietta, and she can see ghosts. Her mother is from Halifax, Nova Scotia, where superstitions run rampant in an Irish culture, where hurricanes once in a hundred years wash ghosts onto shore; where Gaelic is spoken and people speak in strange breaths: inhales and exhales of syllables and thoughts, and throw salt over their shoulders in anticipation of foreboding tidings. Marietta has seen ghosts float past her bedroom windows, and her mother has too. An old Indian has haunted their house, haunted them, watched over their movements the way smoke hovers over a campfire. She has an Irish look about her—reddish-brown hair and pale skin. And she likes to talk about the unknown as if her ghosts are with her all the time. I think that they are.

The ghosts who are with me have come from deep within California. They are old Indians, like the old one from Marietta’s house. The old ghost in my life began during my childhood, when the old stump in the backyard of the ghetto house I lived in as a young boy developed the facial features of a weathered soul-watcher. Mother called it Ghostman. It was the stump of a dead pepper tree and it poked from the ground in a strange angle and had a face that seemed about to laugh. She said it was an old Indian. I asked her what kind of tree it had been, but she would just shake her head: “My little one. That is no tree, and never has been. It is a spirit of goodness that watches over us all.” I believed her. After that I would take my toys out to the stump and place them on it and around it in joy that the spirit would wander into my room at night and watch over me and cast away the demons who continued to pound their way into my dreams. I would turn from my fright, toss under covers from the demonic faces in my dreams, and picture the complacent wooden face staring forward, eyes wide open, warrior-like, almost in a grimace, and protecting me like a great Easter Island tiki.

While we sat at dinner and ate the horrible tasting casseroles that mother baked, the house would creak and shift, settle into its nightly bed under California stars. Mother would look up and say, “The old Indian is out. His spirit is making its way through the walls of our house.” Nobody would giggle when mother said this, but a sense of calm would cover over us, and I would feel reassured, as if mother had just hugged me; as if the Indian had just warmed my very soul.

But there must have been other ghosts, because the nightmares would come. I don’t know who puts the dreams and visions into my head, but it could not have been me. To this day I am troubled with visions and dreams—. Dia de los rascacielos I whisper. The towers. I saw them. In a dream several months before the attacks I was in a jetliner that screamed toward those two towers. At the last moment it veered straight downward, parallel to one of the buildings. I awoke terrified. I felt the ghosts in the room shiver right beside me for putting such thoughts into my head. They were always doing such things with airplanes and jetliners, putting such visions in my mind just before a real tragedy would occur. I dreamed of a crash into an ocean, and the next day a flight fell from the Alaskan sky into Pacific waters. I would also dream of war. I dreamt of a great war between Arabs and Americans, and awoke and said: “There will be war.” And there was in Kuwait.

Those Indian ghosts. They are warriors. They haunt and they see a future that they put into my dreams; and it scares even them. I am afraid they don’t even look at the dreams they give me. They put them in my head, and then they too grow terrified. As human spirits are still human, there is fear within and without the physical body; and there is compassion too.

The old Indian poked from a backyard sandlot in San Jose, California. He followed me to Bakersfield, to the Ohio woods, to Cape Hatteras, across the Texas countryside, into the sin-heart of Las Vegas, beneath petroglyphs of shamans in the Valley of Fire, and back to Bakersfield again. He walks beside me in the University darkness. He shows his teeth in my dreams. He bites at the demon dreams, and his face comforts me from the bloodied face of mankind, whose hell and damnation drips into my red-faced dreams like wax.

The girl who can see ghosts I sometimes called my shrink. But these days we all need help, because now my nightmare attacks have become other people’s realities. Dia de los Muertos, I mumble, for it haunts the Dia de los Rascacielos. It shines its skull-lit eyes into the chasm of impending war. I pray the old Indian will protect my family from the ghosts who have been created new to this country. I am afraid they have already spread themselves across the nation and world, to haunt, and to put dreams into the heads of those who will cause great destruction. That could be the beginning of the next world war.

"Take down the chapter."

"I'm not taking down anything. In fact, I'm seriously considering posting chapter two."

"The hell you're not. Do I have to put a stop to this?"

"You can't put a stop to this. It isn't your book."

"Yes I can, and you know I can. What is it with you, anyway?"

"The people need to know. The book isn't out yet, but I'm already wanting to give Lords in its entirety to the good people of Bakersfield. I wish I cold just give it to them for free."

"You are talking so insane. Don't throw away a gold mine."

"I'm not. It's called a teaser. I hook them; they want to read more."

"You give them too much and all the people who won't like the story won't buy it."

"Who wouldn't want to know the seedy underbelly of Bakersfield, CA? If you live here, then you're going to want to know what happens. Plain and simple..."

"If you breach your contract you could get dropped. I ought to talk the publisher into dropping you straight away. But luckily I like you and what you're doing."

"Great. Film at 11: the story of the barely liked author."

"Go ahead, write that one down."

"What makes you so sure I didn't?"

...and yet another battle, the battle of the bands, Bakersfield style. I haven't heard any of these bands play. I'm looking forward to seeing how good they are... starts at 7pm.

I was reading on the Baketown Blog a few days ago about how many blogs have been springing up lately. My goodness, this is a positive force we’re seeing as an ‘enlightened’ group of local folks have grasped onto the writing tools now available at the touch of a fingertip. As a writer I constantly encourage folks to write. That’s part of my constant job as a leader taking shape in the community. I meet so many people who say, “I wanna be a writer but I don’t have the time.” They can all go to hell. I’ve given up on that mentality. I’m for the forward progress of the machinery… Writing is an act you commit to today, not yesterday.

I often come across abrasive in my online comments, and will soon be accepted or rejected completely by all the good writers I’ve met lately; that’s because I’m simply showing hardworking writers that commenting in such a manner is normal behavior for me who is feeding writing back into the community by challenging, fighting, and getting people to do it right. In turn, I get the same in return. Gerhard Enns of the Dalloways, my now dead mentor Don Ackland, John Maynard have red-inked me far beyond the tolerance that most artists can take. I pass it back out less abrasiveness than most—critiques and comments that in the end will lift community writing to an unheralded level.

Pretentious of me: In the next year or so I will be falling into the role as local leader of a writing community that is just beginning to plant its seeds. If I don’t, who else will? Gerald Haslam? He doesn’t even live here. Local romance writers? No. Does anyone have the bulk in novels that I have in my arsenal? I wish people did. It's my goal to get others there. My plan is simple for when Lords comes out. When I advertise this and other blogs by actually taping posters to college campus creative writing doors; when my name is plastered in the paper and I actually speak out in the newspaper and on radio and say, “Yes, there is a writing community here of writers on various levels, academics, bloggers, social commenters, journal-keepers, music reviewers, and such, then the community has no choice but to take notice. Yes, Baketown, I value your writing (In case you think I never do). I value all of the people in this enlightened community spirit that will be spearheaded by a concerted effort to get the word out. I only lead in forcing books onto bookshelves that will stir up the dusts of prose, and by being an aggressive force in doing so. Baketown is doing her bit, and gets her just-deserved traffic as a result; but the impact of Lords: Part One, followed by Thick White Crust, Cubicles, Citrus Girl, Lords: Part Two and so on will get so many kids and college students to take writing to an unheard of level. It will take Baketown to a new level. When such traffic pours in, one can’t help to notice and work harder, and strive for even better blogs than ever.

For it to work however, a few things have to happen. For one, there needs to be a local publishing company that caters to the unique blend of writing here in the Southern Valley. It could happen. The skills are here, the fire is here, but the capital is not. On top of that, there must be a vigilant community of writers constantly getting the word out that there are local books to purchase—HIGH quality local books, AND high quality blogs to read and be a part of. Regionalism can grow from there—attacking the major book warehouses and distributors in such a fashion that they will BELIEVE Bakersfield books are just as lucrative as the Fresno Poets and their enclave. The bridges are being made, the word is out, the blogs are gearing up for battle. And yet, the war hasn’t even started yet. Are the bloggers going to be ready? Are the musicians going to be ready to back us? Will the newspaper support us? Will academics simply get jealous and thumb their noses? Or will prose culture flourish and grow like never before? You tell me…

If anyone out there actually reads my news links, then don't worry. They will return tomorrow. Any significant happenings in the news today, you're on your own... I'm sure it's just filled with the usual fires, disasters, global threats to mankind... just minus my snappy and subversive headlines.

I have finally added a real blogger.com blog to my blog page. I know--it sounds redundant. But it is necessary. And, you can actually leave comments now. So all those people who hate me can type crusty messages for all the world to see. Unless people want to just keep sending emails. That's fine too. I'll try this out for a little while and see how it works. Thanks for being patient.

My life is so filled with music these days. Yesterday I hung out with Gerhard Enns of the Dalloways at the Syndicate coffeehouse. We talked about my upcoming Lords book. He’s one of the few who I have allowed to read the manuscript. Hold a gun to him and too bad—he’s already pinky-sweared secrecy or death. The man knows how to form great sentences. How can I not tap into his brain?

Last night I watched honor bands perform at the Bakersfield Civic. The orchestra and band were magnifique! Wow! One of the orchestra leaders I had met at a Dalloway’s show. He’s a heavyset blonde dude with spectacles. Nice enough, seems cool. I think he peruses this website. After the show I went with family over to one of my favorite pizza joints in Bakersfield—Pizzaville, USA. It’s one of those old fashioned parlors with picnic tables and signs that read, “Ye old watering hole” or something like that outside the commode.

So there I was, chowing down on a slice with the fam, when this orchestra director comes in. Right away I’m having flashbacks to my old Junior High, Emerson. I believe I was part of the first group bussed over in the age of desegregation in the late 1970s. I was distinctly imagining several excellent food fights… Anyway, I walk over to the change machine where he’s slippin’ in his dollar and say, “Wanna play Ms. Pac Man.” Maybe he thought it was a come on, but he said he was just there to play pinball. Damn it if the Ms. Pac Man and Galaga game were out of order just to spite me.

The pizza came and after the director dude was done with his pinball game he went and talked to the bartender for a few minutes, and then just like that, he was gone. I figured this kind of dude would have some big shindig to go to with administrators all drinking and shitfaced saying, “Yeah I hate kid number d-4567,” or “You know, I never liked musack.” I guess I should have offered him a bite of the old pepperoni pizza. Anyway--that was weirdness.