The Circumference of Unseen Things

2π700,000

The horizon is yellow, something like 2π700,000 km away, probably a bit farther. Atmospheric pressure buzzes and pounds, tense as a swollen tire. Toward the east, and toward the west are faint lines radiating right to left, parallel with each other, opaque, questionable. These lines hum like the hydraulic system of a small plane, dog-whistle high, brushed-metal shrill, yet warm, shaped in the way that rust bleeds from one part of an old object onto another, in the way that paint creeps under tape.

The ground I stand on gives to the touch, it bows outward, in toward the crust of the earth, away from the fingers, neither hot nor cold, the temperature of a massive, cosmic room. Dust bursts from cylindrical scorings in the earth—is it earth? What does it mean to be earth? These hairbreadth etchings darken momentarily and then release thin veils of dust, and I touch the ground feeling ungrounded. I stand on my hands and dust bisects the plane of my body, creating for a moment a four-bladed cardinal star, pinned down in a state of kinetic immobility.

Looking once again toward the horizon, I am below the earth or the ground, a permeable and impermeable surface, the bare air supports my feet, my head supporting the ceiling shedding dust cylinders. To the south and to the north are dual horizons, yellow paling to white, no closer than 2π700,000 km and rapidly receding. The sound of the horizon receding away from itself is a trifle pitchier than a compression brake releasing, or a pressure cooker spitting. A hair harsher than the sound of the last fibers of wood splitting. On either side faint lines radiate left to right in infinite array, stacked one on top of the other. Objects seem to swim amongst the lines, crossing and moving within them, forming new, momentary planes, dimensional hinting. Vapor exits the earth ceiling and evaporates into bottomlessness.

Ringlets of yellow dust hover around me and drop, disperse, with the last moment of clarity shoot toward the horizon, merge with objects swimming in a sea of shimmering lines, burst with visual tentacles, reverberate with the tiny echoes of the shell of a seed cracking. A sudden scent of pine, more lemon than the yellow of a fading horizon, sharper than the crackle of flames in a de-pressurized cabin, brighter than a burst of silent light. Other smells as well, as the lines to west and east become more haphazard, as these lines veer suddenly toward each other in steep and sharp angles toward minute infinities held between fingertips that will never touch. The smell of water evaporating on dirt, a breath of Eucalyptus in boiling water, the buoyant, citrusy essence of high toxin permeating cranial walls.

Now I walk on my hands, my hands guide me toward the northern horizon, the floor-roof moves me into a grand arena where parallel lines approach intersection points, where shadowy objects orbit in tense, coordinated dances, revolving bee-like in ever tightening spheres, gaining momentum, pulling the horizon back to yellow, back to roughly 2π700,000 km give or take. My ears pop and jaw slackens as the pressure reduces, a faint crack pierces the now-visible atmospheric barrier, bubbly ions squirting through the pin prick spraying iridescent ink, bleeding and rising toward me, a hint of copper, the taste of ammonia thick on my tongue, ghostly spirals of lime rind circling around my head, rotating me around them, polarities shifting.

The yellow horizon pulsates and expands like a boil, perfect lines thinly gild shallow pools of water at the edge of each of my extremities. I am on my back, shoeless, shivering, covered in fine, grey dust, a kind of geometric star crushing my palm, searing and steaming. Small biting insects orbit my face and fall upon me in a mist. All around me razor thin currents of dust guard the still water. I blink at the slow sound of giant fanblades beating, cleaving the invisible into pieces. No wind, no tenses, no words. An aroma of maple and peroxide lifts itself off of the land, attaching to objects in flight. All of this I glimpse in an instant, in the periphery, before the yellow horizons close like clamps and raw speed consumes all notions and impressions. There is nothing now but force, gorging itself inside out..

On 1.16.13

One of our favorites Geist & the Sacred Ensemble, will be playing their first show in Seattle since the Summer. Joining them on the bill; Angelo Spencer (K Records) from Olympia, Wa and OHIOAN (Infinate Front) coming up from Arizona. We hope to see some of your smiling faces!

Event Page

Gordo Goes to South America Volume 1

A woman stands on the loading platform of the bus terminal in Osorno, Chile. She tries to keep from crying. Her arms are folded tightly against her chest as she peers at the bus to catch a glimpse through a window. She mouths ¨te amo¨ as we pull out and away, eyebrows furrowing slightly, mouth quivering. I look back at her companion behind me, engrossed in a newspaper, expressionless. The bus continues on through the slate gray day, past volcanic ranges and vividly colored housing blocks made dull by the clouds. A little girl sleeps on her mother´s lap, peacefully, as the mother stares out of the window, a private concert in her headphones.


In San Carlos de Bariloche a rag-tag troupe of dogs come limping, dragging and barking, away from the stone plaza, toward the cold, severe shore of Nahuel Huapi, and between chasing motorcycles and digging in the traffic islands for mice, wag around me smiling and nuzzling, accompanying a new friend in need of a friend.


An awkward calf chases some small pigs on a hillside overlooking a dappled green valley on the Gran Isla de Chiloe, the pigs narrowly escaping beneath a ramshackle wooden fence, toward apple trees and freshly cut wood and the smell of cypress smoke. In the distance the fog gathers like a folded comforter, unfurling over the hillsides bringing the stinging and healing rain as I swing silently in a hammock, solitary, tea steaming in a window well, books in my lap, Don Liberato returning to his vast homestead with a chainsaw over one shoulder and a handsome wooden axe over the other.


In Puerto Montt men with scarred faces drink by the bus terminal, and a little boat ferries people to Isla Tenglo where small dark shops await with hot soups and stiff tonics, a single cross illuminating the highest peak on the hill, surrounded by barbed wire. By day, wrapped in our belongings, we wait in the tent as the wind and rain batter us, poles bowing like slight tree limbs, sweeping like an avant garde sound composition, in intervals according to their own logic. But as the rain ceases the arcirises appear, stretching from the andes to the islands, point to point, a multicolored partial halo for the pod of dolphins surfacing in the shallow surf, near the empty bottles of french perfume, boxed wine and plastic bags. Wild blackberries for breakfast and a cardboard fire for the night, stopping even while it was starting, roaring in negative, the black soot an inferno of opposite light.

A Campesino band plays traditional Latin music by a little outcropping in front of a small harbor and restaurant serving Curantos - mesh bags full of leaf-steamed shellfish, potatoes and fresh sausage. The band persuades some people to dance, Chilote style, tissues in hand, bottles of white and red wine littering picnic tables while an adolescent boy exits a wooden boat holding five giant fish. The sun sets over the archipelago as Ibises alarm, Pablo talks politics with some young Chileans from the North, and children run red faced between relatives and friends, receiving pats and admonishments and invitations, finally receiving the high tides and tidings of the night, softly darkening over hills of a thousand greens.

The Bell by Kelli's Starlight Wishes

A new music video for The Bell by Kelli's Starlight Wishes and directed by Kook Teflon. She just released a new album on Aphonia Recordings. This video also features the Hoping Machine which is a portable pyramid designed to collect positive rays from the cosmos. It was created by our good friend and artist Mary Rothlisberger. Yay community!

Dried Petals

Toy Box Trio w/ Kelli's Starlight Wishes this Thursday!!!!

For only $5 our friends Kelli's Starlight Wishes will be playing a very special show with Toy Box Trio this Thursday 8 December at the Can Can.

If you've not heard Seattle's own Toy Box Trio you are simply missing out. They're a charming three piece that plays original classical compositions on toy piano, double bass, typewriter, concertina, and more. Not the type of thing you're likely to come across twice.

And If that's not enough to get your juices flowing check out this video of Kelli's Starlight Wishes playing Dandelion Serenade in the open air of lovely Marseille, France during their summer tour of the country.



Kelli's Starlight Wishes - Dandelion Serenade by LARTSENIC

Us, Everything, and The Century of the Self

In further examination upon our quest to seek understanding of "everything" we cannot help but to delineate two ultimate truths at the very get go. The first is that there is the world "within" ourselves and the second is that which is everything "outside" of our self. The more we consider the influences of one upon the other the harder it becomes to separate the two. Where exactly does the line between inside and outside begin/end? If we evolved in response to our changing ecologies over billions of years or even within our own lifetime (as in personal consciousness), than isn't the self merely an expression of everything outside?

Perhaps another way of looking at this same problem is to try to distinguish the difference between innate or instinctual behavior and that of the rational mind. Since the conscious mind evolved within the changing ecologies of the ancestral mind than we must once again ask if one is merely an expression of the other? This is for you to think about.


Now, in concentric thought circles, we will turn our attention to our old friend Sigmund Freud. We all may know something about this man but whether or not we agree with his interpretations of the human mind, none of us can deny his grand influence upon society at large and the evolution of human conception.

Freud understood, that below our conscious mind lay unconscious animalistic motivators that he believed are inherently bad and dangerous to civilization as he knew it. His second grand realization was that an individual's rational behavior could be overridden through the manipulation of these unconscious motivators. Thus, we have the basis of psychotherapy and so much more...


So, it is with these thoughts that we lovingly leave you with our feature presentation--a 2002 four part award winning BBC documentary created by Adam Curtis and titled--The Century of the Self.

In this series we will explore the influence that Sigmund Freud, his daughter Anna Freud, and his nephew Edward Bernays had on the development of our modern time. Learn how Sigmund's thoughts on human psychology were used by politicians and big business in order to manipulate the behaviors of common people. The origins of modern advertising, political campaigning, and consumerism as we know it.

EPISODEs 1-4