Back by popular demand, this weeks mailing reveals what I, Donny, have been up to the last four tuesdays. Some of you might know me as Andre, but on the first Tuesday night while at a house warming party, I played dominoes with Barzell. As some of you already know, one does not use one's real name in the dominoes bizness.
The first game went by so fast that I almost forgot to sign the herb contract now sitting solemnly in my wallet. 'I am a herb' these words confirm. Only I didn't sign Donny, but Andre. Andre Vida, for when I lose as a character, I myself also lose. I like to think of this as some kind of swamp yankee characteristic, but it might just be generational. The ability to sign a herb contract using the name of the character you are 'playing' seems to me a variation of fair weather fanning enabled by the development of foldable baseball cap brims (later co-opted by lacrosse fans everywhere), but I digress. I Donny am not a herb, whereas I, Andre, am.
The next Tuesday was not memorable and in its stead I submit a poem written in the car on the way to my sisters play.

In the town the trees are hobbled

I really have no recollection of that Tuesday, you see here in the Mojave desert we are confronted by such beautiful and isolated terrain, that memory is registered horizontally leaving time its extinct byproduct. Standing amongst the joshua trees, I felt paranoia falling from my feet and heard a brand of silence that feels like paranoia falling from my feet. Not Donny's feet.
The third Tuesday I discovered a creepy genre of film that gamers do called memorial films. The whole world of 'p2p' or player 2 player gaming is a bit beyond my zelda chops. Playing a video game in 'real time' over the internet with players all over the world is so new to me, that I have started to wonder if people now go to bowling alleys to bowl.
The characters in an online game are played by real people who sometimes die. When this happens the gamers get together and pay tribute to their lost guild member, who in this case will have only been known by their 'Donny' identity. 'I didn't know Donny in real life but as a guild member he taught me to turn an orchid into a hurricane.', a dwarf starts crying, then 3 dimensional leaves start falling onto the body of Donny in sleep mode. The gamers edit these films together, put dramatic sounding music on top, then circulate them amongst the guild. I got very emotional while watching a memorial video for 'Ignoramus', when one of the characters, a fuzzy golem with a horse head, said 'the father of Ignoramus is with us. He is standing next to me right now.' The person playing Ignoramus had committed suicide in real life. *
As you can imagine the gaming memorial is a chance for the guild to grieve together, to come to terms with the emotional loss of friend, to spend time online together grieving within a constructed identity. Within this genre there is one film that caused a bit of a commotion in the scene and started me wondering where all the porches have gone.
During a memorial on a lake, a group of guild members and also a smattering of enemies had gotten together to let loose a seraphic light in honor of 'fill in the blank'. It turns out that the smattering of enemies were in fact the scouts for an approaching ambush. As the guild members were typing in their recollections of 'Donny' and collectively crying, the warring party suddenly appeared and slaughtered everyone in sight. No one fought back.
I can't quite empathize with the resulting mood, which is to say that it seems a kind of emotional innovation, a new and unequalled achievement of our society.
"Yes, Jonathan always like red. We should cover the wake in red petunias and he liked ginger ale too."
"I hope you don't find this inappropriate but should we bring...protection?"
"Well, I mean, we always had an open relationship and Jonathan did really like sex. But do you think it is really appropriate to have a...sex party as part of the wake?"
"..." nervous laughter, "...uhhhh we could do that, but what I meant was more regarding whether he had any enemies"
"enemies?"
"...anyone who might come and slaughter all of the attending guests as they grieve?"
"Uhhh, mom has been totally normal the last couple weeks."

The fourth Tuesday, "the flooring of this world is in need of new breeds of rentable bowling shoes."

This coming Tuesday at Schlesisches 42, I will play solo tenor saxophone and then will be joined by friends. I will continue to sign all herb contracts as Andre and let paranoia fall from my own feet and Donny will never be a herb. He may cause me as Andre to become one again and in the case that he does, I will be forced to retire his mendicant hands.

Keep on!
Andre

* It should be noted here that there is an academic who has made a career by predicting the ending of the final Harry Potter novel.

Newly released, 1956, a solo tenor saxophone album available freely at http://www.vidatone.com/Radio/1956/1956.html

aufnahmen von veranstaltungen im wendel, alle rechte bei den autoren
falls nicht anders angegeben, kommen nur eigene stücke der musiker zur aufführung