Daniel Bailey's Blog, page 6

i scheduled this post for today, a year ago today

wouldn’t it be eerie if i died between now and then?

i like to get shot out of canons and to spread my body and limbs out mid-air and for my body to then make a hole the shape of my exuberant body in a hospital billboard

even that can’t kill me

which would make it even more eerie if i died between now and then

one time a speeding jaguar nearly ran me over on a curvy street and i yelled “you can’t kill me”

because it couldn’t

and it didn’t

one time i put enough alcohol in me to kill at least three human babies and i did not die

i am like the rare ocean that is incapable of eeriness until i am dead

so many times i’ve climbed to the top of a magnolia tree

up above the roof and the branches never broke

that’s how much death does not need me

it seems like the opposite of death to go to a kinko’s or whatever a kinko’s is called now and let my fingerprints be scanned and fill an entire supply of white paper so subtly and dimly that no one notices the signature i have left of me

whoever works there will reload the finger-scanned paper and future print jobs will be touched by me

i will schedule this post for noon a year from today when the sun is high above the earth or high above the earth and covered with clouds

so that if i am dead when you read this your level of sadness will be lower than if the sun were on the other side of the earth

and even covered with clouds it will be better than night

this will also reduce the level of eeriness

what do i take from this exercise in time and mortality and eeriness?

i take a baby and slam it into a pond

i take a gargoyle into my bed chambers and smash it with a pillow

i got a haircut today from a woman who seemed so bored with her life that she dyed her hair pink

in the great clips light i was able to see several new gray hairs shining like geodes

it was a little bit eerie but not so eerie that i did not feel anxiety about how my hair would look once the trimming was done

i do not like grapes

which is why when i’m dead i want someone to empty my body and stuff it with grapes

there is nothing eerie about abusing a corpse

abusing a corpse is such a blatantly perverse thing to do that it in no way can be described as eerie

what else?

oh yeah

an eerie thing would be to drown in a lake and then to return to life and then swim to the surface and everyone already knows what happened and they’re already prepared to just get on with life again

to not accept a miracle as anything other than routine

a thing that i have become very good at

i intend to die on the exact opposite location on earth from lake eerie

which i’ve discovered to be somewhere in the middle of the indian ocean

although basically all of the continental u.s. finds its opposite earth spot to be in the indian ocean

which takes my ideal death spot to a whole new level of non-eerie

though if i do die between now and then it would actually be pretty eerie if i died in the indian ocean

or how eerie would it be if i died watching a vhs tape of eerie, indiana

or if the baby slammed into the pond is a time-travelling baby-me and that is how i become erased

an eerie anonymous baby-death in the year 2013 or early 2014

i am a catapult

i send vcr’s into heaven so everyone can watch their baby-tapes

what if i decided to never eat food again?

but then it turned out that all food is poison and everyone else but me and the anorexics died

that would be an eerie way to live

i would not like that

though i’ve always found there to be something endearing about the personalities of the anorexic kids we get at work

maybe it’s that they are just too eerie to not like on some level

i want the liquid of me to be brighter and glow so that when i become vapor i will appear more eerie

like fireflies forming a halo above a dead anonymous baby in a pond

i overcome myself so little

i sing “come on over baby” and a disembodied halo appears before me

a halo not of fireflies but of sticks and mud

the point being not to overdo it

or to let too little out of me that i become bloated

i want to pulverize a mirror

snort the details embedded

try to catch the disembodied halo and ram it into the vestigal speakers in the ceiling

let the halo speak its mud unto me

i just ate one too many ears of corn and now i am conditionally dead

god said “give me a cheesy pun and i will send you back to earth”

i said “that was an ear-ie way to die”

he sent me back to earth

and i forgot to mention how much spray cheese i put on the corn

how many details there are to my life

how many conditions

it’s like i lived two different days today

it’s like i lived three different days today

i just watched rudy gay shoot a free throw on t.v.

i bet he has better jersey sales in toronto than he did in memphis

not that that was anything worth mentioning in this post

but i feel that anything is worth mentioning

not that i will mention anywhere close to even a little bit of it

that’s how eerie it is to mention anything

the solitude of the image

how when rudy gay shoots a free throw on t.v. i can only see a little bit of him

to have to assume that he has legs in this moment

how i cannot be proven to be the author of this post by any means other than consistency of style

and what beyond this denver nuggets tee shirt is my style?

i like to believe that the world requires us to continue midwifing it into being

and that to not help push forward is to do wrong

which is why it is so terrible to constantly find a new gone baby in the same pond

but how i must keep images in my mind

if not for the sanctity of memory then for the solitude of moments

and how time can be kept a little

and i would give you an image but i say better yet read joe brainard’s i remember and let a better life live itself inside you a moment at a time

each line like an epistle of thanks

how need dissolves into the pond of discovery

but like pink hair dye

and it comes back

like black hair dye down the lord’s ass crack

like corn in the teeth

like cheese in hell’s ceiling

like another missed shot by rudy gay

or sitting inside the boundaries of another church pew

and you are nine

you invent yourself anew

you overcome yourself by writing fake names and identities on the donation envelopes

and no one will ever read them but you

or your brother

and you will not save them

in fact you can’t remember

years later

what you ever did with those empty envelopes

maybe you put them in the collection tray

maybe you put them back in their little slots next to the bibles and hymnals

held even closer to the golf pencils and the slots for the empty communion wine cups that stack up like shots

above a stupid carpet

above a stupid cement floor

above a stupid church basement

above a stupid earth

where worms leave their gelatin trail

and rocks move so slowly that the concept of movement seems to lose meaning

except for when we sit very still and attempt to cease all movement

yeah it’s impossible

it is moving

all of it

and it will never stop

and i will not let it

though i would rather get shot than have to to prove that it will not stop

and this is the definition of an idiot scene

where every bug i eat right into my heart

clogs me like fog

let your heart suffocate

let it

and let god smother you like a death pillow

holy shit dan let it smother you like a blanket of god unleashed by a cricket of fog and heart and let the weeds grow out of your eyelids and blossom into a could as eerie as it can be

have faith

nothing else

yrfriendliz:Me getting off the plane at DIA tomorrow...

yrfriendliz:

Me getting off the plane at DIA tomorrow obviously.

Me all weekend.

thanks to becky-mi for this gif!!!

me always

last night i dreamed that willem dafoe started playing hockey...

last night i dreamed that willem dafoe started playing hockey for the washington capitals. in a blowout against the colorado avalanche, dafoe scored 5 goals. the blowout was so bad that the avalanche players left the game before it was over, leaving the capitals to continue scoring goals on an empty net, though they mostly just passed the puck around. at the end of the game, with the clock winding down, the other washington players handed shirtless willem dafoe a sword (i should point out that willem dafoe has the same hair and beard that he had in the last temptation of christ) so he could complete his double hat-trick with a a sword. dafoe then skated up to the puck, swung with the sword, whiffed, fell over, time expired, and thusly willem dafoe was unable to complete the rare double hat-trick.

last weekend i read at mint gallery in atlanta. sherri caudell...

last weekend i read at mint gallery in atlanta. sherri caudell took video of me reading a poem called “walking through the artificial light (0-60 watts).” i’m sorry my voice is so monotone. i am literally not a person. the chapbooks in the bag of chapbooks from the end of the video are made out of dead leaves with the word “GADZOOKS” written on them (edition of 10).

markbaumer:title: “…like an imaginary friend…" full...

markbaumer:

title: “…like an imaginary friend…" 
full text: “joey/was/like/an/imaginary/friend/who/started/fucking/an/ancient/crab/apple/in/the/vacant/lot”
more photos: one  |  two
price: $5 [SOLD]

thoughts: It was very easy to make this drawing. I gravitated towards the line “started fucking” because I was raised in a culture where it is normal for people to gravitate towards the idea of starting to fuck. Before I made this drawing, earlier in the day, I had a conversation with a friend about H.R. Giger. In an effort, I guess, to unconsciously mimic Giger’s famous “penis landscape,” I wrote the word “penis” over and over until the entire page was filled.

background info:  This drawing is part of a series/project/thing that involves rewriting each page of Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. So far, I’ve done one new drawing each day.

Please buy “…like an imaginary friend…” $5 (shipping included) [SOLD]

mark baumer has been making these drawings/erasures/rewritings of jonathan franzen’s freedom, and they are all great.

whosoever lives in atlanta has an opportunity to see me read...

whosoever lives in atlanta has an opportunity to see me read poems tomorrow at this event. 

also reading: stephanie dowda, michael hessel-mial, daniel beauregard, some people i don’t know, and an all female rap duo.

doors at 7. this promises to be a pretty weird/next-level event, so you should make an effort to come at least say hi, if not to indulge your secret, dark fantasy of becoming a spree shooter/corpse hugger.

i am going to read poems from gather me and then crumble dead leaves all over the stage or however you describe the floor where i read (much to the chagrin of the gallery owners)(i would be a prime candidate spree victim #1).

go with god.

taoistdrunk:Dan Bailey bought the perfect beer for the...

taoistdrunk:

Dan Bailey bought the perfect beer for the occasion

and now i am in the basement listening to the war albums that i bought at a thrift store this afternoon. war kicks ass. 

karaoke idea

request any crowd-pleasing song that is commonly requested at karaoke events. complain throughout the song to the dj about how you thought this was going to be the fugazi song with the same title and that you don’t know the words.

there is a place in athens not far from where i work called...

there is a place in athens not far from where i work called “TLC videos.” i hope it is a holodeck that allows you to enter TLC videos

markbaumer:“I would love to email myself to you.”-Daniel...

markbaumer:

“I would love to email myself to you.”

-Daniel Bailey –“Gather Me”

if you send me your email i will do just that