Saby Davis, Jr. profile picture

Saby Davis, Jr.

I am here for Friends and Networking

About Me

I write about music in a dozen or so (mostly weekly) newspapers throughout the U.S. That's what I do for a living, and it really is a dream job. Other than that... music, cinematic images and dialogue, miscellaneous writings and visual (design) ideas come to me all the time, like popcorn popping out of my head or thick beams of light and color in one continuous stream. This, I suppose, is what I "am" first and foremost. And it's difficult to not be overwhelmed by it. It's also difficult to put it in context of activism and necessary social change, but I am seeing how they are intertwined just as much as the need to do more becomes more apparent. And, it might sound strange, but when I open myself up to the creative urge, it reflects on real life in ways that are uncanny sometimes, not so much that I am manifesting what I "create" or "receive" in the "real," physical plane, but that somehow thoughts and things come from people -- sometimes people I don't know very well -- and later end up coming to bear in some way. As if, through imagination, I was able to abstractly or inadvertently tap into something that is being exchanged between certain people and myself in ways that neither party necessarily sees or is aware of at first. This, in my opinion, has tremendous implications. It suggests to me that there is another layer of reality that we can access. For me, that layer feels more "liquid" and it is becoming unmistakably clear that there are concrete aspects of other people filtering into my creative space. Anyway, my work of various types is beginning to trickle onto my website, http://www.whoneedscritics.com. I also play in a free-form improv thrash riff/modern jazz-aspiring band called Pillowfight Accident. (We are/I am trying to stretch the rhythms of metal out into improvised drone/trance repetition and blend it with the harmonic breadth of jazz in a way that they blend together at the root, instead of just going from, say, a metal part to a "jazzy" part.) Listening to music, watching films, and reading books alone could be a monk-like vocation, as self-indulgent as that sounds. On the other hand, listening and interacting with people on a real, sincere, giving level could be another. I do not do enough in either category. (It's hard to know what the importance of art is when the world is burning and 80% of the population can't afford to eat.)Pillowfight Accident at work (I'm on the right):

My Interests

Since when is thinking not ENTERTAINING? -- Bill Hicks

I'd like to meet:

you? humans that act like the opposite of pack animals and frenzied, rabid, witch-hunting children (but I guess that means all of us?)

Music:

on record: Morphine, the Police, Black Sabbath, Jane's Addiction, Living Colour, Anthrax, Joe Walsh, Tears For Fears, Orbital, Howard Tate, Wilco, Steely Dan, Cheap Trick, Thelonious Monk, Sepultura, Voivod, Death Angel, Celtic Frost, The Beyond, Primus, Tool, Helmet, Barkmarket, Failure, Devo, the B-52's, the Meters, Van Halen, AC/DC, Alice Cooper, Blue Oyster Cult, the Funk Brothers, the Beatles, Napalm Death, Carcass, Joao Gilberto/Stan Getz w/ Antonio Carlos Jobim & Astrud Gilberto, Caetano Veloso, 3rd Bass, Soundgarden, Babybird, Slowride, etc, etc.in concert: Jane's Addiction, Rollins Band, Fishbone, Beastie Boys, JAMES BROWN!, Melt Banana, Gaylord, Drums N Tuba, Pantera, Cuong Vu, Respect Sextet, Primus, Nuclear Assault, De La Soul, Snaggletooth, Sulaco, the Dillinger Escape Plan, Monotonix, Taylor Ho Bynum/Nate Wooley/Ken Filiano/Tomas Fujiwara, the Fay Victor Ensemble, the John Scofield Trio, the Roots.

Movies:

The Fisher King, Alien, Lone Star, Ghost in the Shell, Apocalypse Now, Big Night, Midnight Run, Goodfellas, Happy Together, Uzak (Distant), Crane World, the Band's Visit, Persepolis, Coup de Grace, Born into Brothels, Manufactured Landscapes, Blood Tea and Red String, Kontrol, the Vertical Rays of the Sun, Spring Summer Fall Winter & Spring, Whale Rider, He Who Must Die, Down By Law, Donnie Darko, In the Bedroom, The Fugitive, Crimson Tide, Hannah and Her Sisters, I am Trying to Break Your Heart, etc, etc.

Television:

almost none, w/ some exceptions... NOVA's Evolution series from... '02? Narrated by Liam Neeson. Bill Moyers' interview series w/ Huston Smith. Cowboy Bebop, Texhnolyze. the entire month of baseball playoffs. just got introduced to Arrested Development. Sports Night's first 8 episodes. just been starting to appreciate the art involved in the sitcom format. fuck commercials and inhuman plastic smiling anchors. reality tv = brain death.

Books:

Shame -- Salman Rushdie, The God of Small Things, The Cost of Living, and An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire -- Arundhati Roy, The Long Emergency -- James Howard Kunstler, Italian Neighbors and Home Thoughts While You're Away -- Tim Parks, The Woman Warrior -- Maxine Hong Kingston, A Leg to Stand On -- Oiver Sachs, The Cosmic Serpent -- Jeremy Narby, Zen Guitar -- Philip Toshio Sudo, Guns Germs & Steel -- Jarrod Diamond, Hit Men -- Frederic Dennen, Broken Summers -- Henry Rollins, The Autobiography of Malcolm X -- Alex Haley, Dreaming War -- Gore Vidal, To Kill a Mockingbird -- Harper Lee, etc, etc. gotta check out some Toni Morrison and about a million other books. Tim Parks is the first author I ever felt like "wow, gotta go out and read all his books" and everytime I do, I feel like I'm in the company of an old friend, which is of course wonderful but also strange as I don't even particularly relate to what he's writing about, but something about his style... and, though she hasn't written a book yet, Masumi Elrod is THE writer of the 21st century, bar none. she (and others) will think I'm just saying that b/c she is a friend. rubbish! credit is simply due where it's due. and here, it is most certainly DUE. and then some.

Heroes:

people with the destructive energy to change things. I like people whose jaws drip with a taste to chomp the status quo in two. impatience and maniacal grins coupled with a fearlessness at showing their soft side. anybody with the rabid burn to resist having others think for them. I like people who are so mentally strong willed that they seem almost broken, incapable of being spoken for or thought for. um-hum. (and my cat familiar, who does the latter when she sits on my lap as if to say "CHILL, you're getting carried AWAY!")

My Blog

the woman warrior

an eagle landed on my windowsill the other day now it's gone or at least momentarily out of view but i can still hear it screeching... agony intent and desire drifting across the calm flat surface of ...
Posted by Saby Davis, Jr. on Thu, 12 Jun 2008 01:13:00 PST

do the desolation!

shimmy shimmy shake shake surf the barren surface when there's everything to lose yet nothing's at stakefor everything feels already lost. keep your motion slick'cuz if you stop this thing will consum...
Posted by Saby Davis, Jr. on Thu, 29 May 2008 02:53:00 PST

a gale-force nightmare at slow-motion speed

your words scrape across the landscape tearing out everything they touch. I am left in tatters but you won't see me huddled in my room holding together the remains of what you've wrought with your ton...
Posted by Saby Davis, Jr. on Thu, 29 May 2008 04:19:00 PST

light pollution

pushing me up against the wall a force so oppressive it's going to take a little bloodshed for me to express to you exactly what this means and in the meantime I'd really appreciate it if you didn't b...
Posted by Saby Davis, Jr. on Thu, 29 May 2008 04:02:00 PST

thrusters aft

feeling the burn now the glide recaptured I am soaring above the earthand it's a shame that I am tearing through youlike a shark that needs to keep moving in order to breaththe taste of this carcassit...
Posted by Saby Davis, Jr. on Wed, 21 May 2008 08:29:00 PST

the shrill cry of the baby cyclops

cyclops in pretty skin unleashing a cyclone of one-eyed blindnessonto the world. see what you want to see. see what you want to see. choke on my demon imageand soon enough you will be free. little wou...
Posted by Saby Davis, Jr. on Wed, 21 May 2008 07:45:00 PST

it’s funny

thinking about the yearning... about how it always seems to come to this, how things seem like they're well on track and I always introduce some form of tension and then it nearly knocks out the bridg...
Posted by Saby Davis, Jr. on Fri, 25 Apr 2008 03:46:00 PST

the best you can hope to do

is curl up in a ball and wait for the punches to stop coming. 
Posted by Saby Davis, Jr. on Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:50:00 PST

sheets of gloom

sitting on a sandy beach under grey sky the water is angry everything is grey the gloom blows across my face in a mist that has a force to it suggesting that it has the power to swallow me I thought I...
Posted by Saby Davis, Jr. on Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:21:00 PST

bleached

why must you take so much joy in robbing people of the importance of their feelings? I don’t even think you do it on purpose, but you bleach the color from everything, infecting other people&rsq...
Posted by Saby Davis, Jr. on Fri, 04 Apr 2008 03:28:00 PST