word is a four letter fuck

Happy Birthday, Michael!

aralgriffen — Tue, 05 May 2009 00:15:21 +0000

It’s Dad’s birthday today, and I have taken the day off work to spend some time with him, by which I mean hanging out and listening to music while I think and write and look at pictures and go ahead and feel however I’m feeling. I’ve decided that if I can in my life, I’m going to try to spend his birthday like this, and also the anniversary of his death. It feels like a good way to check in with myself if nothing else, and I have to find a way to keep living with this.

So I also spent January 7 doing much the same as today, and I think I’d like part of these days to be about reaching out to people, connecting with the people who share Michael with me as a part of the context of their lives in some way.

On January 7 and today, I have written five things in the last year that I wish I could have talked to Dad about. I’m going to share those ten things here, and if anyone else wants to share something in comments that they’ve wished they could have talked to Dad about, or wish you could have shared with him, or wish he knew about, I would love to hear them.

Ten Things Since Michael Died That I Wish I Could Have Talked To Him About

From January 7, 2009, Things In the Last Year I Really Wish Dad Knew About:

1. Barack Obama! God, I wish I could have seen Dad react to Obama’s campaign and election. I would have had to endure some annoying hating-on-Hilary, but he was such a fan Obama’s since the DNC speech in 2004, and I think he would have been so tickled by Obama’s smarts and by the margin of his election. And I think he would have referred back to something we saw Noam Chomsky say when we saw him speak at Western Washington University sometimes in the ’90’s–and this is SUPER paraphrased and perhaps Dad and I filtered his original statement through our own conversational lenses so many times that it became apocryphal to us, so do not quote Chomsky on this, probably–about believing that “the people” or “the masses” are largely and basically rational, humane, compassionate, and peaceful, and would vote and vote accordingly if given accurate information and honest political discourse.

2. I figured out in the last year that being an adult means I can’t rely on Dad to provide my model of living the most “authentic,” self-determined life possible. I have to be my own model, provide myself with the will to do that, make it an act of will on my part, remind myself to question norms and assumptions, remind myself to identify discursive constraints on my agency and resist them whenever possible. I know how to do that, and if it’s weird and alienating sometimes, well, I can remind myself that I’m not crazy, and I also have some really good friends who try to live the same way, and they will remind me, too. I think Dad would be pretty pleased for me to figure that out.

3. I can apparently still kind of play the drums! I sat down at the drum set in the music room the other day and thought I’d see if I can still hold any kind of a rhythm after touching drums only a handful of times in the last 20 years. And I really only played briefly when I was 15, anyway. But! It was crazy how easy it was to immediately hold down a basic 4/4 beat, hi hat and kick drum and snare, and to start mixing it up with variations and back-beats. I even tried some fills, which I was never any good at, and while they still sucked, it was actually easier than I remembered from when I was 15. It was so fun, and it made me think, hey, I bet I could have turned into a pretty awesome drummer if I had kept playing. And when I finished, I thought how I wished I could tell Dad or play for him. It always made him happy to see me being good at things, especially when it was something I didn’t think I’d be good at.

4. Bromance (Wikipedia link for anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about.) I would love to have been able to talk to Dad about the popularization of the idea of bromance, and I would have loved to talk with him about the deconstruction and/or reification of the homo/heterosexual binary with the normalization of bromance as a category of male/male relations, as with metrosexual as a category of heteromasculine identity. And then we would have done a project together with watching Judd Apatow’s oeuvre (ahahahaha!)–and all its Seth Rogen, Michael Cera, Jason Segel, etc.-related output. And it would have been an awesome good time.

5. All the stuff we made for him, did because of him. My zine, Mom’s journal and poetry excerpts compilation, the cds Adam made and the room he put together and the music he performed. All the things people wrote. The movie Jordan and Peter made. All the things people said. The really fun party we had, and the parties and shows other people had, all over. The friendships and love and connection and family he generated among so many people. I think he would find it all interesting and embarrassing and gratifying, and I hope he knew how much we all love him.

From May 4, 2009, More Things Since Dad Died I Wish We Could Talk About:

1. Those ideas Corey and I had the other night when we were talking about music, and Patti Smith, and her relationship to Rock Music as a form of art and as a female artist, and how entirely different her project was from Kathleen Hanna’s project. God, it would have been fun if Dad was there to talk about it with us. I loved talking about music and art with him so much, and he would have had fun thinking that through with us.

2. All the craziness that is our family. I know he had his own Issues, but I have felt his loss in my larger family picture so much this year. He was such a safe haven for me there, too. What an ally in my struggle to see my own reality clearly, to have boundaries, to live unashamed of who I am and unapologetically take care of my own needs. Families fuck us all up, and that was a good kind of support to have. I could count on him to try to be his best self with me, and I could trust him enough to be my best self with him, and sometimes that just really helps.

3. All the stuff I’ve been thinking and learning about race and racism and decentering whiteness. Partly because he had good instincts about social justice in general, but he wasn’t great at thinking critically about race specifically, and we could have been learning how to do that together, like we did with gender and sexuality and so many other things, and that would have been so good. And partly because we share the same white, rural, working-class heritage and formative cultural experiences, as well as many of the same kinds of counter-culture informed resistance to the norms of that background, and I think we dealt with that all similarly in some ways. We sought opportunities to put ourselves out in the world, sometimes going to live in cities, putting ourselves in various kinds of situations out of our element, working and living with people who are different from us. But this was his home, too, ultimately. And it would have been good to talk to him about how to get from here to there in our understanding.

4. How the fuck to figure out the negotiation of financial vs. intellectual/emotional/spiritual needs. My best choices seem to be: 1) work at a job I don’t really care deeply about, but that is sufficiently un-taxing that I can use the rest of my energy to do creative things that I enjoy, and 2) find a job that I do care deeply about and enjoy enough that it’s okay if I don’t have much energy left for other things. Unfortunately, I seem to be stuck in a loop of 3) jobs that I don’t really care about that take up way too much of my energy. Dad seemed to have really sorted that one out for himself and seemed to feel pretty satisfied with (or at least have made peace with) his balance. Though we do both share a distaste for Work in general, of course, and that makes any opportunity not to have to work a cause for joy. In any case, he seemed to be reasonably comfortable with the compromise he negotiated for himself, and I think he probably would have been impatient with my dilemma, maybe, and that might be what I need right now: it’s life, Aral, figure it out.

5. The weirdness of making a day of this, the weirdness of the decision to take two days out of my year and spend them with Dad, ritualistically and formally. It feels like I’ve found a way that works for me to remember him, consciously and intentionally, and bring him with me to the new places I’m going and new selves I’m becoming. (If you can allow me to be a little woo-woo for a moment.) If I can spend two days a year not being forced into compromises with the outside world like this, listening to music like this, remembering like this, writing and thinking like this, hanging out with Dad like this, I will. And I think he would find it amusing, the need for ritual, but maybe he’d get the ways I need to create this for myself if I could tell him about it.

thanks to everyone who participated!

wordisafourletter — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:36:48 +0000

Six months ago we played this video (from 5 years prior) at the memorial:

Family-organized Memorial August 16, 2008!

aralgriffen — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 21:45:16 +0000

Hey folks, so sorry it took this long to get any info about our memorial out to you all.

The Basic Details:

Saturday, August 16, 2008 — 2:30 to 5:30 pm

Gather as early as 2:00 pm, structured time begins promptly at 2:30

(private party to follow)

Van Zandt Community Center in Van Zandt, Washington

Approximately 17 miles east of Bellingham in Whatcom County
A funky, old community center out in the county — yay!
See this map for basic location

Driving Directions:

From I-5, take exit #255 for WA-542/Sunset Dr., head east toward Mt. Baker
Sunset Dr. becomes Mt. Baker Hwy. and after about 10 miles, you will drive past our house just before you cross the Nooksack River
Drive approx. 15 miles on Mt. Baker Hwy., turn right on Hwy. 9 toward Sedro Woolley (just past Deming, the high school, the casino, etc.)
Drive approx. 2 miles on Hwy. 9 and you’re in the middle of Van Zandt. The community hall is just past the church on the left, before the road curves around to cross the railroad tracks and you get to Everybody’s Store

Memorial will include a showing of a video documentary about Michael made by Jordan Rain and Peter Rand (approximately one hour), some refreshments, some live music, and some structured time for people who have planned to otherwise perform/read/speak in memory of Michael. Some photos and art will be displayed, and you are welcome to bring things like that to share during the memorial.

We know this is relatively short notice for people who might want to travel from out of state–again, so sorry! We hope to see as many of you as possible, but we understand the limitations of travel, especially with transportation costs so high right now.

music wakes

wordisafourletter — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:30:20 +0000

memorial shows are being planned…

UPDATE: Sacramento, CA, show is being rescheduled. For more info, email Joshua: thetravelingchef at gmail.com. New date, more info TBA as plans are made.

Oakland CA, Saturday, April 12th, 2008, at Rock Paper Scissors, 2278 Telegraph Ave, Oakland 94612. this is being organized by Priya. if you use myspace: Kreamy ‘Lectric Santa; or kreamyetc@yahoo.com
Seattle, Sunday, May 4th, 2008 (Michael’s birthday) 8pm, free?, at The Anne Bonny, 1355 E Olive Way, Seattle 98122. with Memes, Chaostic Magic (Eric & Corey), Adam Griffen, and many(?) more…
Bellingham, tba

let us know so we can post them here.

noggin big band

wordisafourletter — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 05:16:32 +0000

the long lost noggin big band CD will be out this summer!

track up on cedarville archive: the problem of leaking condominiums has reached epic proportions

artistery, portland

wordisafourletter — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 05:40:17 +0000

I’m sorry I missed you all… my failure to plan for bad Friday night traffic. Hope to see you in future. Below is Eric’s account of the night.
-adam

The show was a great experience for everyone. Arrington, Paul Hoskin and Kelvin Pittman opened with a horn trio. Then there was a trio of Kelvin, Mark Kaylor, and this guy on amplified standup bass named Gregg Skloff that I had never met before who handed me a CD he titled “Threnody for Michael Griffen.” Apparently he had seen us many times in Olympia. Gabe from Yellow Swans did a piece which he opened with a monologue – which was actually sweet and should have been recorded, and also got people comfy with talking later. I get fuzzy on the exacts of what followed from there, but Lars’ group played and Doug Theriault played. Alex, from “keep your eyes peeled” played. At some point I showed films by Danielle, Tyson, me and Terry, which were all well received and gave people another perspective on Michael. Then there was a big jam with just about everyone that somehow didn’t go on way too long, and also had everyone end together! Then Corey and I did the live soundtrack with amplified guitar and violin to Terry and Michael’s burned slides. This went over really well – and even made me feel the way I felt when noggin played in the beginning with my ears being blistered and all sweaty crazy and all that stuff… and I think Corey and I will do it much more in the future.
-eric

Michael Griffen 1936-2008

wordisafourletter — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 07:54:41 +0000

Some rambling about my daddy…

shaunhelen — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 02:11:34 +0000

Hi everybody. I’m the long-lost older daughter, Shaun…There are so many different versions of each of us, aren’t there? Right now I’m missing a very long ago Michael Griffen, because strangely the more recent version of him seems like he’s still right here… So, in a rambly manner: He was my daddy. He was very big in many ways - but not in others! He was actually quite skinny and I have always been able to reach all the way around him with my arms. He sang alot and often whooped. In fact, he worked on his whoop off and on for many years. He said I could make it across slippery logs over streams, and he was right. Every time! With an impish grin, but while still trying to look serious and philosophical, he asked me alot of questions that did not have answers but appeared for a moment as though they did. He often said, “Work it out between yourselves,” “Wait ’til I finish my coffee,” and “Go look it up in the dictionary.” He was one big idea after another. He was very good at rooster-crowing, banjo-playing, and grinning. He didn’t want to talk about his parents. They didn’t want to talk about him either. He loved just about everybody, but sometimes he loved just me. Which was good. Both. When I was a medium-sized girl, he had a way of holding me as he was tucking me in while sitting on the edge of my bed, letting me lay my torso in his arms so I could feel cradled, like a baby. I was especially happy when he let me hold the match over the bowl of his pipe while he was lighting it. He made delicious pancakes. Oh, he loved peanut butter! And coffee! Oh. He melted several old aluminum coffee pots completely into electric burners because he would go off and paint and forget them on the stove. We wondered about a lot of things together, and I am a very good wonderer now.