love

boys versus girls—switch!—now it’s girls versus boys.  we all played it--are still playing it.   or, what about the tension in the elevator and no one knows each other and it is hard to say something, but then, they get off at their floor and you never see them again.  but you remember them, even now.  why?  or that first time you laid naked next to your love, your first awareness of the power of that kind of intimacy?

but, your lover betrayed you.  you undressed yourself in every way for them, the most humbling gift you’ve ever given, and, they just look back you, blankly, coolly. you realize that the passion between you wasn’t even intense enough to devolve into hate.  maybe she is the woman who is the mother of your child, but now is a disfigured soul manipulating you, haunting you, fucking up your life as best she can.  maybe he is the man who wrote you a love letter every day for a year, and then never said a word to you again when you got pregnant. 

maybe it’s the love that faded like a paper heart in the window, sunlight bathing it day after day until you can’t read it anymore.  even the sweetest rituals can pale to nothing.  who is to blame?  the sun or the heart?

so many ways to love and be loved. it can be so hard.

my love passed away last year.  but, christopher clark, you are with me to this day.  i learned so much from you.  how to be strong, how to be cool, how to be alive, how to be dead.  how to fuck things up, and then fuck them up more and more and more and more.  how to be fearless, set fires, be forgiving, be generous, be myself and love myself.  how to take the beating of a lifetime and then stand up, brush my shoulders off, and walk through the world with a sweet and open heart.  how to be friends. and, of course, how to love. all this from you is with me always. 

my readers, if you are not lucky enough to have a lover today, remember that love is infinite, love is timeless.  it’s always changing, it’s always moving. when love comes into your heart, it will surely change shape, and it may leave you. such is love.  we can’t own it.  we can only recognize it, channel it, cultivate it, and be grateful when our lives are so blessed. sometimes, we can shape it. but not always.   

but, if your heart is open, love can always come in, and it will. i promise. 

happy valentine’s day.

love,

samara

sabertooth cavity releases "en lak ech"

for christopher clark 

reposted from alibi 

V.20 No.6 | February 10 - 16, 2011
This Week's Music

Sabertooth Cavity

New Mexico band releases noise freak-out En Lak Ech

By Samara Alpern

Don’t limit it by calling it music, man. Jazz derangements, electronic debris and heaving melts of guitar are just part of it. What Sabertooth Cavity offers up with its first album, En Lak Ech, is a little more meta. Or a little more Dada. However you want to take it.

En Lak Ech album art

“It’s not just music,” says multimedia artist and Sabertooth guitarist Mat Galindo. “It’s art.”
Sheathed in silk-screened burlap, the album is being released on Saturday, Feb. 12, at the Small Engine, an art space Galindo co-owns.

You can think of Sabertooth Cavity’s work as a reflection of the cities it comes from. “It’s about a whole environment,” says Jef Cameron, who plays flute and saxophone. “How it looks, how it smells. ... It’s about the chaos of Albuquerque.”

It’s also a little bit about Carlsbad, where most of the band grew up. Sabertooth didn’t get together until 2006 when Jef Cameron, Mat Galindo, his cousin Henry Galindo (guitar and vocals) and Rene Aguilera (bass) connected in Albuquerque. Kris Kerby, who plays drums and joined the band in 2007, is from southern New Mexico town of Loving (and he’s got love for Loving—the town’s name is tattooed, thug-life style, across his belly).

As heterodox as Sabertooth Cavity is, the band is pure homegrown New Mexico, both in what they produce and who they are.

“The local scene is rife with influences for us,” Mat Galindo says. “It’s more [about] local people producing, the creative community doing it for themselves. “

Among the local influences is the godfather of New Mexico experimental, Raven Chacon (Tenderizor, Death Convention Singers, Black Guys). He’s also a co-owner of Small Engine, and he’s co-releasing En Lak Ech on his own label, Sicksicksick Distro.

“Raven talks about how music from here is sparse, like the desert,” Cameron says. “That’s definitely true in some of our music.”

And the experimental wave has its influence as well.

“There are no rules,” says Henry Galindo, whose surrealistic vocals add melody and sometimes a little abstract poetry, but rarely anything like straight verse.

“We admire anyone out there who is experimenting with new things, opening new doors, creating something completely original and entertaining,” Kerby says.

And, of course, Mat Galindo will barely grant that what Sabertooth Cavity does is music. “It’s our own type of language,” he says.

luna with pig head

this happened a few blocks from the university:

alaric, who has lived in this neighborhood his whole life, got a pig's head from his grandmother.   the family had just recently slaughtered the pig. 

"here," she told alaric.  "maybe you can give it to one of your mexican friends."

but instead, he went down the street and fed it to his neighbor's pet wolf.


photo submitted by christopher clark
albuquerque, nm

christopher clark memorial wall

my love, he died, and everything was so fucked afterward.  as just one example, i don't even know if christopher has a grave. so this memorial wall by defone means a lot to me.

i just met defone a couple weeks ago.  he says goes by "def one" because he doesn't listen.  but he heard my tale of sorrow, and kindly, kindly offered to paint a wall in memory christopher.  thank you so much, defone.  this wall is behind my friend ben's house, in the alley just south of eton st., across from where christopher used to live. thanks, ben, for sharing your space and being a very decent man. 

so my love is remembered on the street where he was a king, surrounded by flying war machines and the awesome specter of ween rising over the mountains. christopher, i love you so much.  be seeing you again someday. 
 

just like he had on many nights before, the night before he died, christopher left me a love letter on a scrap of paper on my desk. he wrote his beautiful, accidental last words on a checkstub from alibi. i didn't find it until after he was gone. 

 

his eyes are perfect-- blue and silver and dark and gold.  christopher was the most beautiful man i have ever seen in real life.

defone compares his work to a photo

ben has two wolves, naya and luna, who will be keeping christopher company, and ensuring this wall does not get messed with. 

this is luna-- she is a sweetheart, also gorgeous and ferocious.  so i admire her because i aspire to that as well.

alley south of eton, between yale and buena vista
albuquerque, nm

king clark @ ween 2009

 i wrote this when christopher and i first fell in love.

 
reprinted from Wig Wam Bam #92 October 2009 

WEEN @ Sunshine Theater 9/5/09
submitted by Black Cat Danger

 
 “Derelict as fuck,” is how my man tonight describes the teeming fans lined up for Ween: More than a few chicks in dreg spumoni colors, plenty men wearing t-shirts for the eleventh consecutive day. And my boy, himself in tatters and natural ermine musk, seeming to me like their King.   

r.i.p. christopher clark

my love, my heart
christopher clark
april 14, 1982 - september 10, 2010

proof of love

albuquerque, nm

144 spokes

submitted by christopher clark
albuquerque, nm