I wanted mariachis and they came. I have been wanting mariachis for days, life has been too sad and difficult and desperate to hardly think about seems like. Deep currents of tragedy overlaid by swift singing ripples of minor stress…and so even small stupid things lately have felt umanageable and I haven’t managed them, they knock me endways as much as…just today I found out about another death, another family tragedy, another person I love destroyed by grief and…and if I were a little weaker, I should undoubtedly have never left my bed at all for some time now.

So to be drunk and singing

Por tu maldito amor,
No puedo terminar con tanta penas
Quisiera reventarme hasta las venas
Por tu maldito amor, por tu maldito amor

Along with other drunk people, thank fuck the gold room is not yet completely gentrified and there are still plenty of people there who know the words, and even though you’re singing about a cursed love and how you’d like to cut your own wrists, or perhaps because of it, it makes you happy…its own brand of happiness, bitter-sweet, shared pain pouring out of you with the melody and you know everyone else singing along and calling out their heartwringing ah-ha-ha-has during the instrumentals has scraped this bottom along with you.

And funny how in spite of the depths and the bottom I am scraping, I can still manage to enjoy myself. When I stop thinking. L.A. is amazing. Last night I saw the first half of Reds over at Charles’ place, how have I never seen the Hollywood movie that features (though briefly) Emma Goldman, the Wobblies, the Russian revolution? Warren Beatty’s labour of loved filmed, I believe, in 1979. Jack Nicholson, Beatty, Diane Keaton, a young Kevin Spacey…no wait, he was in hear no evil see no evil with Richard Prior and Gene Wilder that I saw earlier in the day while babysitting, also a great movie. I raced back for Reds from Norwalk and baby Jones (and the biggest diaper of shite it has ever been my misfortune to change), But Reds…I’m loving it, I’m even loving the very Hollywoodness of it, as I think that makes the events actually accessible to the American public, it’s very clever. And then meeting up with the Oaxacan folks staying over to promote their book that we are publishing (check it out at https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=47), we all went down to a Fandango in Whittier and the music was still going at 2 am when we left, and every time I hear those folks they sound better. An event today…and then drinks and dinner and drinks and more drinks and open mike night at the Shortstop and then the taco truck then more drinks. I met a Black guy who works in fashion and sings exactly like Morrisey, I met a white guy who was convinced Obama would win in a landslide and wanted to explain exactly how he knew in excruciating depth, and I met an old guy who was in the Wild Ones with Marlon Brando and carries around a photo of the two of them, along with a printout showing the grammy winners for I do not know what year…the year he won that grammy for best instrumental. He did stand up at the open mike, old style quick delivery memorized jokes, you know the one where the three guys walk into a bar…and they were all wildly inappropriate, and most of them quite funny as well, though they made people nervous. He himself was wildly inappropriate and he made me slightly nervous…we didn’t talk about why I am not turned on by porn, or what does turn me on apart from music and good conversation…he said we had both. Luckily the lesbian who had gone on and on about the feel of someone else’s fingers on her thighs walked by and he seemed to like her much better. I did find out that the prostitutes at the Roosevelt hotel in Hollywood are the very best…

The other highlights were just the immense courage of everyone who could get up in a bar and perform in front of everyone else, they were all good enough to be quite enjoyable. And the three guys singing Van Morrison with the amazing hair, old school western hipsterized outfits…my fav was the one in the skinny red jeans and white pointy cowboy boots…he had the hip mullet going on. I know it seems like an oxymoron and it really is, but it’s not your red-neck mullet or your lesbian mullet, it’s a new feature in an old familiar style.

But conversation sparkled and I laughed as I haven’t laughed for some time…it was a great evening. And we ended up at the gold room singing por tu maldito amor and I was happy.