Are you Experienced?

(Jimmy Hendrix to his father, August 1965)



Dear Dad, 

I still have my guitar and amp and as long as I have that, no fool can keep me from living. There's a few record companies I visited that I probably can record for. I think I'll start working toward that line because actually when you're playing behind other people you're still not making a big name for yourself as you would if you were working for yourself. But I went on the road with other people to get exposed to the public and see how business is taken care of. And mainly just to see what's what, and after I put a record out, there'll be a few people who know me already and who can help with the sale of the record.

Nowadays people don't want you to sing good. They want you to sing sloppy and have a good beat to your songs. That's what angle I'm going to shoot for. That's where the money is. So just in case about three or four months from now you might hear a record by me which sounds terrible, don't feel ashamed, just wait until the money rolls in because every day people are singing worse and worse on purpose and the public buys more and more records.

I just wanted to let you know I'm still here, trying to make it. Although I don't eat every day, everything's going all right for me. It could be worse than this, but I'm going to keep hustling and scuffling until I get things to happening like they're supposed to for me.

Tell everyone I said hello. Leon, Grandma, Ben, Ernie, Frank, Mary, Barbara and so forth. Please write soon. It's pretty lonely out here by myself. Best luck and happiness in the future.

Love, your son, Jimmy

Heroic listlessness

Who can I say you are starshine

The Thresholds

The nude fieldhands you caught slowdancing with an invisible whip in the middle of a busy harvest, are modeling for a story about post-emancipation fantasies that will run in TimeOut and be funded by an ad for Crystal and another ad for fake eyelashes. The clash causes silence. You fold that into a gentle house and enter it. It's the black Betty Davis versus the white Betty Davis saying in unison-- you will all crave the duel I carry in my image like kites meeting in the wind and strangling one another with affection but nevermind -- they can only cooperate as bards, they can only pray the visitor isn't another pudgy dandy afraid to remember them but loves to say their names in trouble. But the models in the picture for the story that will run in TimeOut, about a defunct plantation turned brothel, are in a duel-craving phase, but have so much dignity they seem naive and bold and impossible and only you and they know better than to pose like this but say nothing cause it pays so well in choices to make a decision--

If it wasn't for the coup I'd be back there now --- I only like masters, I only like masters --- our whole rebellion turns us back into slaves and famous articulate traps and it's as if the tender warcries have been hijacked and scattered across the over-crowded intercoms of several divergent streetcar lines, and the cries are disguised as destinations and catchphrases in the pace of truce and don't wait up -- - don't back down, don't back down: Paris, Mississippi, 1960, Wu-Tang Mountain-- And the dirty clapping blood in the sound of the announcements makes you cheer, up, say way/say what, you're in luck, you're so lucky there's a man tucked in my mind where the risk should be -- I'm so free, I'm not free. I have to dance alongside his lassoing whip so it misses me, he keeps missing me. Most people see rescue as a threat, oppressive. So do we keep all this justice to ourselves? When I'm less distracted I'll save your soul

Reality is a petty alibi