“Steve Ferguson was the original guitar player with NRBQ (yup, before Big Al Anderson), was involved in Johnnie Johnson’s great album Johnnie B. Bad and has made great music for many years…

From Tom Staley (NRBQ’s Original drummer):

Dave Marsh recommended I contact you to get the word out about Steve Ferguson.
I created a donations page at www.stevefergusonfund.com
and I’m organizing a benefit here in Tampa at Skippers Smoke House.
I understand Terry is bringing his new band to Louisville for a benefit soon.

He is undergoing treatment(chemo and radiation) and is responding positively but it is really just buying him some time as it is bone cancer and has spread into his lymph nodes.
He just started the treatment 2 to 3 weeks ago and remains resigned but upbeat
about it all.

Donations are what is needed as he has a family and the medical bills
are going to be huge.”

Help if you can. Give back what he’s given to us…

PS- if you want to hear some live vintage Ferguson-era NRBQ go to Amazon and download Ludlow Garage…

9/20/08

When you return to the past
While in the present
You access the memories of stories
And the changes of time
You witness oxygen rust and cause trees to broaden
You feel the sea pull through you like an endless sob

How the smells were stronger, almost romantic
Before your nose began to age
Some roads paved and level, others rutted and grassed

The song of the backshore remains the same

Through the trees it calls you, the rumble of a cycle

Getting out of bed, walking wet down the concave path
The spongy moss springs back after each step
The bounce in your step not your own
The rumble becomes wave, again and again
Blow down root maps show you the underside of life
The forest ebbs and closes, the path changes near the end
The ax has not made the last straight or clear or dry

The rock welcomes you and you remember what a skill you need
To bound from ledge to boulder, kelp to slimy stone
Exposed by waning tide, barnacles and periwinkles cluster
Like a gem’s cousin encrusting the shore with decoration
The flotsam tossed and wedged into the landscape

The trash becomes tramp decoration, festooned from mounds and tree limbs
A mason’s day off becomes an unfocused earthwork

In the end nature left to grow creates a thicket of bramble
The areas cleared are surrounded by a rich tangle of things
The graveyard mowed but the stones tilt and fall
The earth has settled along the older plots

He rests in a corner under a low spruce
His flat marker home to a small flowerpot and chosen stones
In all directions outside the fence the low swollen bushes hold sweetness
Blueberries and mosquitoes blanket the ground and the air
We gather the ripe and swat the infringers
We say our words and wipe away the tears
We speak to the lost and the lost hear our words

And I know understand the importance of the marker
That it is for the living to connect with themselves
In this place where the differences are so amplified
Where we all spend the winter somewhere
Where we all are richer and poorer than someone else
Where we all are dreaming of hunting eagles and perfect waves
Where we all wish we knew the score but fear it as well
Where we all return to the past
And are rich with love and promise.

(for my brother Sam on the anniversary of his birthday, 9/14/08)

There has been an ongoing conversation the past few days over at Newsgang Live, a conference call/podcast that I sometimes participate in. I suspect it’s actually been going on since it’s inception earlier this year. When Steve Gillmor opened the doors to people outside the Gang (well, Calacanis did, but Steve always could have flipped the switch), this somewhat open source roundtable began to find its feet behind the Democratic primaries and Twitter. I have participated as my schedule allows and also done my best to listen whenever I can; I miss a few either way.

This group has begun to develop a voice of its own, distinct personalities and interest points that usually start around political news and end up either at an unexpected vista or in the weeds. The risk you take with an amorphous group and no clear format or topic is the chance for either the freedom to go wherever the group needs to go or total anarchy. Steve is good with making sure that his opinion is heard; some will use this as a starting off point or react to it like a magnet pole charged oppositely, compelled to go directly away from the point of contact.

Recently Steve has left the group to its own device, chiming in when either the ship starts taking water or lifting into the sky. The effect here has been both chaotic and strangely stimulating, others having to assume roles they either haven’t had to or didn’t want to. For the most part, everyone wants to talk about what they personally want to talk about. The political types are up on the latest news and angles; the tech types are watching the flow and looking for workarounds. The interesting part to me is those who are attracted to the intersection points, who, like Steve, see it all as one big organic organism that may be too big for anyone of us to see the connections or perhaps too simple for those of us who tend to complicate every equation.

I often expound my thoughts on how groups and group energy can be focused or wasted depending on either the effort or mutual release of control by the group. I work in a business where I see crowd control and crowd manipulation on a grand scale. The efforts to control a crowd for safety or efficiency often look futile; when the kids are released from the ticket line in order and told to walk orderly to the pit, they often ignore the security and each other, running with total abandon to secure the spot they want, that they feel they are entitled to, that they feel is threatened by the person behind them, often putting themselves in harms path. The container fills much like a bathtub, the low points filling first and leveling off as physics allows. In the time before the show, the crowd amuses itself with games, including chants, cheers and doing “the wave”, all requiring the ability to interact with others.

The next example is a little different. A good performer with charisma can make a crowd do things with a simple hand gesture, a funny look, an outrageous action. More often it is with words or a melody that the most powerful effect is reached, often songs that a group as a whole knows very well and has an emotional attachment to. The group moves as a single organism, sings together as a single voice, maybe not at pitch but remarkably close to either what their brain remembers from a recording or the reference of the sound coming from the speakers.

(from Wikionary)

1. energy (plural energies)
2. The impetus behind all motion and all activity.
3. The capacity to do work.
4. (physics) A quantity that denotes the ability to do work and is measured in a unit dimensioned in mass × distance²/time² (ML²/T²) or the equivalent.

What I now offer is a theory I have been playing with for a while to try to explain my own personal energy experience with work. Certain people have the ability to take groups and get them to direct their energy towards them in order to perform at a higher level. This is true with a good team leader or performer. With certain performers I find that I am twice as tired because they require intense focus from every one of us. When energy is processed properly, it can be a positive but draining experience. Sometimes if you don’t stay centered and allow the exhaust of the energy burning process to be removed, it can be toxic. Ask a massage therapist who does a poor job of releasing the tension they removed from a client.

The audience also feeds the performer. A better audience often inspires (fuels) a better performance. The energy fed to the performer is focused and redistributed to the crowd. The artist can either hog the energy or be free with it, making the experience more intense for the audience.

OK, where does this intersect with a podcast and micro communities?

(from Wikionary)

community

1. Group of people sharing a common understanding who reveal themselves by using the same language, manners, tradition and law. (see civilization).
2. Commune or residential/religious collective.
3. The condition of having certain attitudes and interests in common.
4. (Ecology) A group of interdependent organisms inhabiting the same region and interacting with each other.

I have personally experienced similar energy transmission within the web community. It may have not been as physical but was certainly just as visceral.

(from Wikionary)

visceral

1. Having to do with the response of the body as opposed to the intellect, as in the distinction between thinking and feeling. Often described as intuition; cf. gut feeling, gut reaction.

The people I have met with my connection to Newsgang Live are certainly intelligent and passionate about their interests. While some people become charged over elections, they are not all interested in the details. The same with Twitter and “social media”; I constantly get the dog-watching-a-card-trick face from very engaged and smart people. I know that among us are ADD, OCD and ADHD types who latch onto things hard or just to any bright shiny thing that catches the sun. Perhaps I’ve lived in a tour bus too long or in a city without many friends, but the community I’ve fallen into there is both stimulating and confounding.

Of all the people involved I’ve only met Steve and Tina; that was short and rushed in a work situation but you get a great sense of so much more from a face to face. That said, those I have not met, I still have a visceral connection to, the way we tumble the rocks put before us and find gems that pave the way forward. We are learning to listen as well as trying to clearly express the merging ideas in our heads. We get sidetracked but we seem to keep moving, perhaps some days away from where we’re headed, perhaps in circles, but we are moving.

I again wonder if we need to stand still and listen for answers, the difference between prayer and meditation, the act of group listening an action, not a defeat in a race to be heard or get the perfect spot on the barricade. This is not submission, it is surrender, an action, a choice to no longer fight the traffic and allow the chaff to fall around us, exposing what we’re looking for. Our actions will resume soon enough if I am right about the people involved but these moments of quiet are not only good but mandatory for me. We’ll find the words, the vocabulary, the questions and the answers…

(from Wikionary)

community

1. Group of people sharing a common understanding who reveal themselves by using the same language, manners, tradition and law. (see civilization).
2. Commune or residential/religious collective.
3. The condition of having certain attitudes and interests in common.
4. (Ecology) A group of interdependent organisms inhabiting the same region and interacting with each other.

It’s summer in Scandinavia, the sun is out and everybody is getting it while they can… go over to my Flickr account and see what I saw…

I wait for them to leave first and walk on the other side of the street
My call is not their call in so many ways
The need for fuel isn’t just for the body
But for the eyes and soul
Predatory viewing, consuming passing people and silent buildings
The way the light strikes some and caresses others

I mind my words, stay silent, walk and sit alone
Either causing nary a ripple or building concern

A quiet American is not usual, meaning something else
Unlike the thunder of a group of them
A loud song or a table overturned,
A wall of loud cotton entering a McDonalds

Sliding into a local cafe a view of the traffic of life and love available, strong coffee and a polite position
The dance of invisibility may only be an illusion to me but it’s my time, my way today
For the overly verbose blowhard to find a still place beside a sea of strangers
Trapped in my selfish single language
Seeing words that align, ones that certainly don’t
I’ll push the same ones around into a different shape, the same view earns another painting,
A lifetime of seeing what the eyes see when filtered by the heart

There is such a sense of community, the city center is alive
Not like the ghost towns of the Midwest and south, their downtowns treated like a husband left for a more passionate lover in the suburbs
But walking streets filled with stores and cafes,
Bicycles and trams keep most cars garaged
And the people mix and speak and run into one another,

Happy accidents that a word or two resolve something that a car culture couldn’t do

Without a lawyer or an insurance company or two

Then adding a soundtrack something else occurs
Their faces change and the removal of their voices
Makes everyone who passes a portrait in motion
Each detail of their face something worth capturing
Beautiful, damaged, worn, hopeful
They each have a clear quality with the volume down

The importance of feeding an artist’s soul
Cannot be overstated
Without it, all the other delights in life
Are hollow and bland
Like a missing family member
Or an ingredient in a stew
The moments of light keep the darkness
From taking a fatal hold
Upon the fragile path
Of breath.

This one is from Göteborg and Björkö, Sweden…

This one is from Antwerp, Belguim…

And this one is a few odds and sods from other places in Europe and the UK.

I also have appeared on a couple of Newsgang Live podcasts while I’ve been over here…

Newsgang Live 7/03/08

Newsgang Live 7/01/08

Newsgang Live 6/30/08

Newsgang Live 6/20/08

Well, a post is in the works believe it or not… hope to have it posted in the next day or so.

Hamburg, Germany

The lack of visible writing
Does not mean a poet’s heart has stopped beating
When the phrases begin to bleed out in emails and web updates
A time to wonder why I haven’t put pen to paper
For my most honest art
Where my love and fear cannot be hidden

Why do we turn on the things that bring us comfort
The things that feed our deeper self, that sweep away the selfish
Denying our voice to be heard, for others to have a chance to know
Part of what we really think, how we feel what we see and see what we feel?

Even to step out of the room for a while
That feeling of not fitting in, language, class, culture
The signs of your kind behind closed doors
Drifting smoke and wadded black gaff in the hall
Jettisoned from a shoe, gathered, carried, dropped, forgotten

Your clothes and face have people change their language mid-sentence
Until you begin the dance of minimal words and gestures
Caught when your limits show, no shame other than the person selling you water
Being better educated than you
The ancient trusses of the looming station reverberate with rubbing metal and bored announcements
And you can’t capture the feeling with your phone camera

Have you been there? Have you seen beauty alone?
Did you wish you could share it or fear you were the only one
Who wanders lost, still alive in some ways, the others gone
So comfortable in foreign scale, walking at my own pace
My path would confuse or anger some but alone it is just where I’m going

Does the sound of the train pulling away make you feel anything
Anything that you would want to admit?
I wonder where my heart is, what it is doing
And then a shadow crosses a wall
And the light does something new
And what is old is new again
And then you know that your heart never really left
You just stopped trying to walk through each day
The disconnect between your life and love a weight
You didn’t want to carry

To allow the song back into your heart
And the artist’s eyes to see
Not a pack mule or a bridge support
Living, feeling, the need to express
These angles that give me pause, elements crossed so I can understand
My path as I wander

No, I’m not from around here
I’m not from around anywhere anymore
A well paid vagabond
A word used for drunks, hobos and Walt Whitman
I guess I can live with that
I just want to be able to write my momentary truth again
And share the sounds of a train station or the reflection of running water
And be who I’m meant to be.

Back from a great trip to Colorado and the first batch of photos is up at my flickr site…