JOHN RUBENS is no Mother Teresa.

Dear LA Weekly:

Gene Maddaus’ article entitled “The Arbitrator” brought me back to the times I was a lawyer and came in contact with such gangsters in Los Angeles.

I Got Your Back
Dear Mayors De Blasio and Garcetti:

Re: Police Officer Back Turning: Re-Cast the Incident in a Positive Light

One could use videos with narration to reframe the police back-turning incidents. For instance, “We have your backs, if not De Blasio’s.”
Police must be vigilant and the best police work looks at all angles available, not simply “one-dimensional” motivation to retain their job and get regular promotions.

Site Settings ‹ JohnRubens — WordPress.com.

Phoenix and Crater Lake
I saddled up in search of the family. “Crater Lake” they said.
That was a long way off. Thousand miles from Phoenix. Better get started.
Jhonn Will
Phoenix Army Regular (2013)

References:

The End My Friend, Prelude to the Apocalypse by Kirby Wright
Journey of the Magi to visit the newborn King
Journey of Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, or
Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now or Apocalypse Now Redux where Kurtz played by Martin Sheen is assigned to kill the self-made king of the forest, the defector played by Marlon Brando.

@clairefinn54
@TBillsss
@amazon Some Phlem was coughing at the library while I was checking out the stacks at the library yesterday.#Marcuse

Some phlegmatic man was coughing at the banister of the stairs at the Motion Picture Library on Ivar in Hollywood while I searched the stacks for a Marcuse oeuvre. Didn’t find one; not one.

In a letter to the New York Review of Books, Georg H. Fromm, William Leiss et al. outlined the major themes of the book as follows:^[4]

(1) The concept of “one-dimensional man” asserts that there are other dimensions of human existence in addition to the present one and that these have been eliminated. It maintains that the spheres of existence formerly considered as private (e.g. sexuality) have now become part of the entire system of social domination of man by man, and it suggests that totalitarianism can be imposed without terror.

(2) Technological rationality, which impoverishes all aspects of contemporary life, has developed the material bases of human freedom, but continues to serve the interests of suppression. There is a logic of domination in technological progress under present conditions: not quantitative accumulation, but a qualitative “leap” is necessary to transform this apparatus of destruction into an apparatus of life.

(3) The analysis proceeds on the basis of “negative” or dialectical thinking, which sees existing things as “other than they are” and as denying the possibilities inherent in themselves. It demands “freedom from the oppressive and ideological power of given facts.”

(4) The book is generally pessimistic about the possibilities for overcoming the increasing domination and unfreedom of technological society; it concentrates on the power of the present establishment to contain and repulse all alternatives to the status quo.

Consumerism as a form of social control

SKYSCRAPER HEAVENS

The title of the book is
Skyscraper Heavens. It came to mind in the dark before daylight last week.

My buddy, author Kirby Wright, encouraged me to start publishing excerpts of the title with magazines so I am submitting this out on twitter with an excerpt or two.

Skyscraper Heavens rather than Skyscraper Heaven or Hi-Rise Heaven because one, I like the sound and it has more contacts with the connotations I want to elicit in the work of historical and speculative fiction that follows it.

Skyscraper is a male-dominant image, phallus, corporate, higher than you, conception of engineers, developers and heads of law firms, banks and insurance companies, to name a few. It also has a history [See “Tower of Babel”Genesis 11:4 et seq.], The World Trade Center Attack, Manhattan, New York City, New York, September 11, 2001, as well as to objectify in concrete, glass and mirrored terms the concept of professional success in the recent era(s) of our time, perhaps beginning with the Eiffel Tower, but France is not a central character of the underlying work, also known as Installment 77 on

January 2, 2015

John Rubens

P.O. Box 931021

Los Angeles, California 90093

Re: Words or lyrics to accompany Billy Joel’s FANTASIES & DELUSIONS, Music for Solo Piano with Music Performed by Richard Joo (2001)

Dear Mssrs. Steven Epstein, Producer and Billy Joel, Composer and Performer:

I sent a hand written original of words/lyrics to compositions I wrote while listening to the above-referenced CD on April 19, 2003.

Now that twitter is up and running, and KTLA’s entertainment editor told a joke about Billy and Elton’s squabble*, I decided to recopy the lyrics to www.johnrubens.wordpress.com and to my handle @raftofwater on twitter.

*Sam Rubin told the story on air recently about their difference of opinion on composition production. Allegedly, Elton John asked Billy Joel, “Why don’t you compose more?” wherein Joel replied, “Why don’t you compose less!” I laughed and found the lyrics today while preparing records for my 2014 tax return on Intuit’s Turbotax:

1. Intentionally left blank.

2. Waltz #1 (Nunley’s Carousel)

My life

Centrifuge more than solar-powered merry-go-round

Reduced to the vortex

Breath held in like the ice dancer’s arms going into a tight spin.

Then it’s on to the next movement—what’s beyond?

Oh well, we still have love.

3. Opus 7 Aria (Grand Canal)

La Quai

Sombre mais plein, plein mais pas vite.

Il n’y a pas aucune de raison depecher.

Une moment de repose on marche sur la quai.

La Grande Boulevard de l’eau

Ma Grand Canal

Ma fleuvre lentement sous les nuages si pres

Comme le ciel bas

Qui presse de toute moment

[De tout environs] or

[de tout moment, de tout environs, de tout maniere.]

4. Intentionally left blank.

5. Opus 1 Soliloquy (On A Separation)

[Not So Bad]

Stars out at night

Glimmer and I receive their word of light—ever so slight.

Like your love, energy that’s drifted away…

Wisps of fragrance, a special photograph, the sound of you purring on my strings.

What I want is love across the great expanse. On the other side of my orbit you are—**

Will you come capture me for an instant more, before I move on?

I think (perhaps sadly) not

So bright you are, now fading in the expanse—occipital

So many lights at night

But none did test me like yours

Before our diurnal passing.

Items 6, 7, 8, and 9. intentionally left blank.

10. Opus 9 Waltz #3

[Stalemate]**

Kick my ass for a girl

Kick my ass if you care

‘Cause I am worthy to bear the scars of struggle

[Cherchez la femme].

11. Opus #4 Fantasy (Film Noir)

Fantasies move me in ways that are light—light my fire***, lighten my heart

And fantasies move themselves—move into technology, music into space will move the stars****

SCARY—Random—Random?

Jesus walked on water

Helping a friend find his Way.

All lyrics copyright John Rubens

April 19, 2003

*Sam Rubin, Entertainment Reporter, KTLA News Los Angeles

**[Elton John Professional Connection?]

***See Jim Morrison, Doors’ “Light My Fire”

**** See Keppler’s Music of the Universe

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

John Rubens

Excuse the use of cliché, but Kirby Wright is a natural born leader whom one can follow for as long or as briefly as one wants, like the informative lesson learned in the waiting room of a doctor’s office or a stimulating conversation picked up at a café, bar or retreat. As Joseph W. Bean’s [Book Critic, The Maui Weekly] Foreward to Kirby Wright’s Hong Kong Man, Selected Poems [Lemon Shark Press (2015)] alludes, seeds the poet Wright plants in your psyche will linger and haunt till the day you die, the day you burn their remains or the day you use them.

I hope the openness Kirby has shown us as consumers of his craft and his person will ignite the passion to reorganize the Che Café on the University of California at San Diego Campus in La Jolla, California this year.

John Rubens

Hollywood, California

January 2, 2015

“Everything that kills me makes me feel alive.” Disc Jockey at @ClassicalKUSC.

Do the Madonna Police have a loaded chrome revolver pointed at my breast waiting for me to make a false move or is it some other weapon: #TheEndowment.

See also Kirby Wright’s “Perfection Kills Creativity” a poem excerpt reduced to a t-shirt sold at U.C. San Diego, formerly known as U.C. La Jolla or UCLJ.

“Everything that kills me makes me feel alive.” Disc Jockey at @ClassicalKUSC.

Do the Madonna Police have a loaded chrome revolver pointed at my breast waiting for me to make a false move or is it some other weapon: #TheEndowment.

See also Kirby Wright’s “Perfection Kills Creativity” a poem excerpt reduced to a t-shirt sold at U.C. San Diego, formerly known as U.C. La Jolla or UCLJ.