knOx bronson

more info tomorrow. fading rapidly …

louie louie

“What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.”
—Beethoven

I do not have anything to say about Beethoven, the man who freed music, that has not already been said.

I was introduced to Beethoven in my early twenties by two newspapermen, Ed Frisbie and Fran Ortiz, both of whom worked at the SF Examiner where I was a copyboy. We would sit around the M&M Tavern at 5th & Howard and talk about the late quartets, the Grosse Fugue … and I would try to soak it up and I’d go buy pieces they recommended … and I’d listen to them when I tired of Bowie, Roxy Music, and Captain Beefheart.

I am forever grateful to the two of them.

Fran was a great news photographer whose works – four pieces as a matter of fact – were chosen by the New York Museum of Modern Art for their retrospective of twentienth century photojournalistic excellence. He was a gentleman, a kind man, a great cook, and quite the ladies man: he gave me a lamb recipe for the first time I had a woman over for a serious dinner date. It worked.

But this is not really a story about Fran, or Beethoven, but about Ed Frisbee, one of the most serious drinkers and most entertaining story-tellers I knew in my early life. It was another era. I had a lot to learn about booze.

Read the rest of this article at my old site, Sun Pop Blue. Recipe included! (in the comments)

I’m sorry about what happened, for the loss you all feel. But he did it, no one else. And he is gone, quite a while now. You are not honoring him by creating a false nobility for him.

The time has come to let go of the dead, and to respect the living.

By his final act, he relinquished all claims on the house, the yard, on her, and their daughter. He abandoned them.

As he abandoned all of you.

So you show no respect with your actions here: no respect for her or her struggle to keep going since his departure. In fact, you are showing no respect for him. He wanted to be gone. He is gone. Let him be gone.

You are, in fact, making it all about you.

And I can assure you: it is not about you. It is about her and the little one. She is still mourning the loss, although she is healing. She is as courageous as any woman, or man, I’ve ever known, with a beautiful heart.

The little one—I don’t think was even two yet, so it was early this year—said to me, one day, out of the clear blue sky,”My daddy went home.” And then  she was on to something else.

Some days, I look at those two and I wonder, “How could any man leave them like that?”

I have lost almost thirty people close to me to suicide in the course of my life, including my brother, Nate, and my best friend Greg, who was like a brother to me. I’m not counting the overdoses, like my sister or Tony M.,  who was like a brother to me as well. Greg and Tony left within a month or two of each other.

In fact, you probably know Jeff, who was Tony’s brother, and who lived on the property.  Jeff still owes her two months rent. If you care so much about her, why don’t you go after him to pay up? I am forbidden to contact him: in his moral cowardice, he is once again hiding behind her. (This is not the first time.)

In this way you would be focusing efforts where you could actually do some good, if that is your intent.

My brother Nate in 1973, second from right

My friend Greg

I know about suicide. The first guy to do it was my boy scout patrol leader at the age of 14. That was 45 years ago. Then my best friend’s dad dropped us off at school (Berkeley High) one morning and drove to the Bay Bridge and jumped off. Then another high school friend Brent and another guy I drank with in my early 20’s, Stuart … and the list kept growing: my brother, women I had dated, old school pals, drinking buddies, friends of my parents whom I knew well, on up to Greg, about five years ago.

While I mourn them, the great and tragic loss, I do not forget that they took their own lives, causing immeasurable pain and chaos in the lives of people who loved them.

I have lost everything—everything—more than once in my life, drunk and sober … and I have hung in because, as much pain as I was feeling, I could never get to that level of black-hole self-centeredness that is required to take one’s own life.

So allow me to reiterate that I feel for your loss, but it is time to look to the living, the ones who stayed, the ones who have the courage to keep going and be there for each other.

After Greg and Tony died I was in so much pain, it was physical. And one day I was compiling a list of my people who had died and suddenly it hit me: I had to let them all go, let them all be dead, for my sanity and future happiness.

And I respectfully suggest you do the same.

I have never in my life seen more shit swirling around someone than I do around her. Everybody seems to have expectations of how she is supposed to live her life, with no consideration for her. People seem to believe they have some kind of dominion over the  house,  or over  her, or both.

It’s sick. No one has a claim on any of it or her: not them, not you.

The fact that you took the time to find two sites of mine and, like a coward, post anonymously amazes both of us. And upset her, which makes you no friend of mine.

Somehow, sometime, you will reveal yourself.

Meanwhile, I will try to feel compassion for you and the rest of the meddlers, but I’m not doing a very good job, ‘cuz it never fucking ends.

I was in the pawnshop today, making sure one of my guitars could play the blues, with authority, sometime in the near future.

A woman, somewhat older than me, was buying some drums for a couple of men. She was slender, well-kept, smelled of money. She was quite gregarious and had a lovely smile.

She asked me if she could give me a card. She had prayed for an image and the Virgin Mary sent her a picture and then Buddha told her to hand out one million cards with these teachings:

1. Be one with the natural world.
2. Enjoy Earth as it is.
3. Join your Twin Flame.
4. Live as Kings and Queens with your friends.
5. Surround yourself with Fearless Warriors.
6. Embody spirit resourcefulness
7. Be crystallized in who you are, together and apart.
8. Share your temples.
9. Command your spacecrafts.
10. Love yourselves and you will love others.
11. Know thyselves as God.
12. Ascend and Descend into Shambala.

I accepted the card with a smile and said,”Well, you are one card closer.” She smiled back.
Now, I have known this woman before, rich girl turned new age seeker with borderline personality disorder. She keeps pets, man-pets, buys them drums and vegan dinners. Woe unto them who displease her or fail to praise her vibrational wisdom.
And with that, I am off to join my Twin Flame.

And to be amused.

Meet Maia and her daughter, Sophia. Muse and amuser. Some of you know my song “3 Seconds Before Maia Smiled.” (original instrumental on Deus Sex Machina, reworked with lyrics for Pop Down The Years. Yes, both are still available on iTunes and Amazon!

I recently wrote another Maia song, “Maia, It’s You,” which may very well be on the next cd of original songs, as yet untitled. It’s quite nice, with a potentially anthemic chorus which could easily be stretched out a la “Hey Jude” or that Arcade Fire song – you know the one. I’ll probably just keep it classical guitar, acoustic piano, lush strings and white noise. Yes, white noise is coming back to my music just as soon as I get the Roland Jupiter 6 with the Europa mod from my friend Gus.

It is my plan to release a cd of acoustic love songs, covers, mostly from the sixties and seventies, next. And after that, I am thinking that I will release a very odd mixture of music: mostly acoustic vocal tracks, mixed with some very electronic instrumental works. Who knows?

It occurred to me that I take pictures of four things with my iPhone: my cat Baby for her blog babysnohelp.com, Maia and Sophia, my instruments, and the occasional flower I pass on the street.

Alright, here are the girls.

More later from me.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever — John Keats

So it goes full circle and I am back where I began, with a simple and beautiful nylon-string, classical guitar.
I have forgotten the pleasure of holding and playing an exquisite instrument. Many years I spent making music with machines, some of which I truly loved (and still love), for some of them are quite quirky (my handmade Serge Modular for example), and computers, which I value for the power of creation: I can’t hire an orchestra, but I have one in my Mac Mini. And don’t get me wrong: I still love electronic music!

But we must go where the Muse takes us and it seems that my path, ever since the release of the very electronic and orchestral Pop Down The Years, has been back to my early days of learning songs, practicing for hours, with just one lovely guitar.

This one is certainly the nicest guitar I’ve ever owned. I have adorned her with LaBella Argento Silver strings, very expensive jewelry, and they shimmer and sing!
Okay, enough time at the computer. I must play. We are getting acquainted, she and I. And like a great woman, she only gets better with the passage of time.

Let’s see if a picture gets resized.

This site is, for the most part, a drug-and-booze-free zone. It is also a guru-free zone. Knox grew up in the sixties, a fourth-generation West Coast lad, and came of age in the seventies.
He partook freely in the pursuit of sensation and elation through much of those decades and beyond and has, unfortunately, seen far too many of those closest to him fall into the abyss, too often with fatal consequences. Suicides, overdoses, car crashes, all manners of drug and booze related death has Knox witnessed close at hand. Knox himself has been booze and drug free for seventeen years.
For those of you who still buy into the romantic notion that creativity comes from drugs and/or booze, Knox suggests you listen to the Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow, one of the most musical and sexy and romantic (manifesting the naive and wonderful optimism that was once so identified with the West Coast) albums to come out of the golden era of pop music, and then listen to their Bless Its Pointed Little Head album, a cocaine-and-booze-fueled barrage of live drivel from three years later. If that doesn’t demonstrate the fallacy of drugs/booze=creativity and musicality, write Knox and he’ll send you some more examples.
But be assured that Knox is not anti-drug. Knox is, however, pro-sobriety. Knox has no problem with earth-people getting drunk or high or whatever it is they do on occasion.
Knox is not preaching: please feel free to use any of the drugs he somehow missed in the old days, as well as any booze he failed to drink.
Put on some music! Have a glass of wine.