I called him last night at 3 a.m. Somehow, I thought he’d be more awake.

I was working over at Alastair’s the last couple of days. Not at home, yet still, it’s up for argument.

His place is a gentle time-warp, like a mirror only vaguely curved. I hear whispers of old conversations in what we say now, as if once we lived downtown and everything that’s been past is only traffic on the other side of the door, or as if our time apart was only a phase in an ongoing relationship that was never broken. Then I go outside.

A false sense of summer – barefoot, wet and warm, heat without end, amen – saturates the Drive. Unbidden, the words to PASSION spring to my brain and I chant it to myself in time with my footsteps as I cross the street. Reine’s sister stops to say hello, I’ve only been out the door less than a minute.

Back inside, music on, old records I remember spinning in the old eastside studio – Kid Koala, NinjaTunes, DJ something-spelled-with-a-K. I remember dancing all night. We would stay up, bass loud, crashing into the windows, making them shudder like glass drum-kits. Talking about the parties we were going to host, talking about the next gig, the latest thing the kids were into. The phone was perpetually ringing and the paintings on the wall never sold.

The Boy will be here tomorrow.


This time last year:

“… allow me to present Koreans sublimely breaking, scratching and beat-boxing a cover of Pachelbel’s Canon in D, (hosted on the always awesome Transbuddha). With thanks to dear Larry for digging it up, I’m wondering if anyone has any leads on whatever else this group has done. I love dignified cultural mash-up’s. I think taking stylistics that evolved from the South Bronx in the 1970s and combining it with a gayageum cover of a baroque german composer is possibly even more brilliant than Dr. Fu Manchu, rocking out on Casio synthesizers.

Similarly beautiful to the Korean clip is the riveting UK promo for the tv show LOST set to Portishead and enchantingly directed by David LaChapelle. (LaChapelle is the man behind Rize, the recent must-see hip-hop documentary). It reminds me of Massive Attack’s video for KarmaComa…”