The first half of a poem I discovered from a band Tim was fascinated with, Dead Raven Choir. They set rare and profound poetry to noise so dense it drowned out the words. Said words becoming a secret message you had to hunt down yourself. Here's one I brought back (the rest to come when I finish typing it up...)
from William Everson's A Canticle to the Waterbirds
Clack your beaks you cormorants and kittiwakes,
North on those rock-croppings finger-jutted into the rough
Pacific surge;
You migratory terns and pipers who leave but the temporal clawtrack
written on sandbars there of your presence;
Grebes and pelicans; you comber-picking scoters and you
shorelong gulls;
All you keepers of the coastline north of here to the Mendocino beaches;
All you beyond upon the cliff-face thwarting the surf at Hecate Head;
Hovering the under-surge where the cold Columbia grapples at the bar;
North yet to the Sound, whose islands float like a sown flurry of chips
upon the sea:
Break wide your harsh and salt-encrusted breaks unmade for song,
And say a praise up to the Lord.
And you freshwater egrets east in the flooded marshlands skirting
the sea-level rivers, white one-legged watchers of shallows;
Broad-headed kingfishers minnow-hunting from willow stems on
meandering valley sloughs;
You too, you herons, blue and supple-throated, stately, taking the air
majestical in the sunflooded San Joaquin,
Grading down on your belted wings from the upper lights of sunset,
Mating over the willow clumps or where the flatwater
rice fields shimmer;
You killdeer, high night-criers, far in the moon-suffusion sky;
Bitterns, sand-waders, all shore-walkers, all roost-keepers.,
Populates of the 'dobe cliffs of the Sacramento:
Open your water-dartling beaks,
And make a praise up to the Lord.
For you hold the heart of His mighty fastnesses,
And shape the life of His indeterminate realms.
You are everywhere on the lonesome shores of His wide creation.
You keep seclusion where no man may go, giving Him praise;
Nor may a woman come to lift like your cleaving flight her clear
contralto song
To honor the spindrift gifts of His soft abundance.
You sanctify His hermitage rocks where no holy priest may kneel to
adore, nor holy nun assist;
And where His true communion-keepers are not enabled to enter.
And well may you say His praises, birds, for your ways
Are verved with the secret skills of His inclinations,
And your habits plaited and rare with the subdued elaboration of His
intricate craft;
Your days intent with the direct astuteness needful for His outworking,
And your nights alive with the dense repose of His infinite sleep.
You are His secretive charges and you serve His secretive ends,
In His clouded, mist-conditioned stations, in His murk,
Obscure in your matted nestings, immured in His limitless ranges.
He makes you penetrate through dark interstitial joinings of His
thicketed kingdoms,
And keep your concourse in the deeps of His shadowed world.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Mike O'Flaherty Remembers Four Times
from a conversation with Seth Sanders March 14 2008, presented at the Chicago memorial at Geoff Guy’s
PLAYLIST
My first interaction with Tim was when Seth suggested I try out for a show at WHPK. Somebody asked me to submit a playlist. Tim must have been rock format chief. You know how insecure I can get, worried that all my shit would seem too old or there was some cool thing they would know about that I didn’t know about, just worried about social rejection or whatever. Tim was the one who ended up calling me back, told me they’d definitely give me a show. He was just really friendly, interested in the stuff on my list and eager to talk about music with me. I got a sense of how warm he was but how inquisitive too: he was interested in this guy he’d never met. It was a very vivid first impression.
FAR EAST ATROCITIES OF THE 20TH CENTURY
That must have been fall 2002. I must have seen a lot of him because by spring 2003 I felt like I knew him fairly well. We had a couple of conversations where we sat down and talked frankly. Both of us were going through rough periods. He was somebody who I felt struggled with things in a way that was similar to the way I did. I’m really apprehensive about how I present myself to people, but there was an unusual lack of that in my relationship to Tim. You could say he was easygoing but that’s not all--there was a kind of ingenuousness, a kind of spontaneousness, there was nothing put-on about him. That might have been related to his fascination with things that were strange or extreme. I remember talking with him about these National Socialist Black Metal bands, and I think he was just fascinated that people could feel that way about things. There was a certain manner he had, he would talk and there was this slight incredulous laughter at the same time.
I would talk to him about some strange thing I was into, and he wouldn’t make small talk. You could tell he wanted to find out what was behind what you were talking about. I would bring up something like Pol Pot’s activities in Cambodia and he wanted to know why they did it. There was this book called “Annihilation Zones,” a pulp account of mass atrocities in 20th century Asia. And what made this book distinctive was that mixed in with what were at least quasi-legitimate historical accounts, suddenly the author would bring in a completely spurious anecdote that would involve something like forced anal sex that would supposedly completely explain the topic under discussion. So he says that in 1938 Hitler and Stalin met for a final set of negotiations over the future of Europe. And that at some point in the discussion Stalin became enraged, threw Hitler down on the floor and had his way with him. And that was the reason Hitler invaded Russia. And I just remember talking about his with Tim and we were both amused and astounded by it and I think it the joke that we both got was that the atrocity of that period of European history was so hard to explain. These two men, Hitler and Stalin, did things so horrible that put them on a scale that the mind can barely process. So bringing in something that was so invented and so grotesque was this not terribly bright person’s way of dealing with something that was actually beyond explanation or comprehension. Trying to deal with it by invoking such a small-scale violation was really funny--there was something touching and tragic and very human about it.
Tim sometimes had a really hard time accepting the hardness and cruelty of the world, and some of this was his way of struggling, engaging, coming to terms with it. He was so fascinated with extreme things while being a very gentle person himself.
SCREAMERS
When he was living in that crazy apartment with those maniac fraternity guys, I remember that they would have these insane parties where lots of stuff would get broken, and they would storm around yelling at each other and yelling at you, and there was this general vibe of chaos and things coming apart at the hinges. And I remember one of these parties where the cops got called and everybody, like 60 people, ran out the front door. in the space of about 2 minutes. including me. And I remember that even though there were so many people there Tim was really excited to see me and he had some records he wanted me to hear, and we ended up going into his room. It was like a railroad apartment with a really long hallway, the classic hyde park apartment with the bedroom off the long hall, and I just remember we were stitting there in his room, every once in a while there’d be a pause and you’d see some lunatic running down the hallway and then there’d be a crashing sound. We were looking through Tim’s record collection and I remember he ended up putting on the Screamers, which I’d never heard. Listening to music with him was very much about you, he wasn’t trying to impress you, so if there was something you wanted to hear he’d put it on. And we were sitting there listening and watching these maniacs running around. This kind of aggressively fey synth-punk of the Screamers, and the preposterously macho antics of his roommates, met at a certain point of joyfully garish and bold aggression.
I remember thinking how weird it was that we were listening to this really esoteric, really smart band while right outside there were these people who were basically cavemen, smashing shit. But I think the thing was that everywhere he went Tim was at home in the midst of this discordant environment. Tim and his giant crates of weird records just fit in with the whole scene, as bizarre and apocalyptic as it was. And I think Tim was someone who really understood, the side of undergound music that he was really into was that thing of making yourself at home in a chaotic environment where a lot of discordant, seemingly incompatible things were happening at the same time and all sorts of shit was flying off because everything was moving so fast. I just remember how gleefully happy Tim was at the whole thing.
THE NIGHT WAS BRACINGLY ACTIVE
This was a later apartment, I think with Erica and Ashley and Elliott and Ryan and Jenni, and everyone else had gone to sleep. There was the usual turbulent stuff going on in our lives, and I remember it was kind of windy out. Not particularly cold or stormy, an early spring or late fall night. and the sense that the night was bracingly active, there was an alertness about things. There weren’t many clouds but the clouds that were in the sky were moving kind of fast. The kind of night where it would still make sense to be talking at two in the morning and still be wide awake.
So we were just talking about the turbulence, comparing notes about the challenges we were facing. And then the conversation slipped, as it often did with us, to music. The topic was the conversation we had with so many of our friends: that we were looking for something that we hadn’t heard that would push beyond what we’d already heard. It was something he shared with that group but his struggles maybe intensified it. That the history of underground music had become this kind of burden that needed to be shaken off, so that you could have music that would really physically and mentally challenge you and we both batted that one around and talked vaguely about what it was that we wanted, stuff that we’d heard that was pushing that direction versus stuff that was going around in circles and getting way too much credit for it. and somehow we ended up talking about metal and I was talking about how I didn’t really understand metal and was trying to find that thing in the musical extremism of punk that appealed to me, that compressed wall of sound. And he asked me if I’d heard Bathory and I’d never had. And he had the Sign of the Black Mark on vinyl, and he put it on. And I remember that it had the kind of grandeur that I’d always gotten off on in metal without understanding it, but there was also this kind of livid guitar sound, that was buzzing and somehow very dark and very alive. And that was what I’d been angling for in my description.
And he understood music so well, and he understood you so well when you were talking about music, so that when he said something it reflected how he knew exactly what you meant. And the kind of engagement and empathy he had, so that he could really get inside the other person and kind of know what they wanted. And I remember sitting there at the table with that weird night going on and being taken, that it opened up a window into a new kind of feeling, a feeling I’d never quite gotten from music. You could almost see the oars going through the black water while you listened to it. And Tim was watching me listen to it and he saw that I’d gotten out of it what you were supposed to get out of it, and that’s the kind of personal connection you can get from two people that understand music and want to communicate about music to each other. There was a kind of satisfaction both in spreading the word and making the other person happy that I really felt from him in that moment.
PLAYLIST
My first interaction with Tim was when Seth suggested I try out for a show at WHPK. Somebody asked me to submit a playlist. Tim must have been rock format chief. You know how insecure I can get, worried that all my shit would seem too old or there was some cool thing they would know about that I didn’t know about, just worried about social rejection or whatever. Tim was the one who ended up calling me back, told me they’d definitely give me a show. He was just really friendly, interested in the stuff on my list and eager to talk about music with me. I got a sense of how warm he was but how inquisitive too: he was interested in this guy he’d never met. It was a very vivid first impression.
FAR EAST ATROCITIES OF THE 20TH CENTURY
That must have been fall 2002. I must have seen a lot of him because by spring 2003 I felt like I knew him fairly well. We had a couple of conversations where we sat down and talked frankly. Both of us were going through rough periods. He was somebody who I felt struggled with things in a way that was similar to the way I did. I’m really apprehensive about how I present myself to people, but there was an unusual lack of that in my relationship to Tim. You could say he was easygoing but that’s not all--there was a kind of ingenuousness, a kind of spontaneousness, there was nothing put-on about him. That might have been related to his fascination with things that were strange or extreme. I remember talking with him about these National Socialist Black Metal bands, and I think he was just fascinated that people could feel that way about things. There was a certain manner he had, he would talk and there was this slight incredulous laughter at the same time.
I would talk to him about some strange thing I was into, and he wouldn’t make small talk. You could tell he wanted to find out what was behind what you were talking about. I would bring up something like Pol Pot’s activities in Cambodia and he wanted to know why they did it. There was this book called “Annihilation Zones,” a pulp account of mass atrocities in 20th century Asia. And what made this book distinctive was that mixed in with what were at least quasi-legitimate historical accounts, suddenly the author would bring in a completely spurious anecdote that would involve something like forced anal sex that would supposedly completely explain the topic under discussion. So he says that in 1938 Hitler and Stalin met for a final set of negotiations over the future of Europe. And that at some point in the discussion Stalin became enraged, threw Hitler down on the floor and had his way with him. And that was the reason Hitler invaded Russia. And I just remember talking about his with Tim and we were both amused and astounded by it and I think it the joke that we both got was that the atrocity of that period of European history was so hard to explain. These two men, Hitler and Stalin, did things so horrible that put them on a scale that the mind can barely process. So bringing in something that was so invented and so grotesque was this not terribly bright person’s way of dealing with something that was actually beyond explanation or comprehension. Trying to deal with it by invoking such a small-scale violation was really funny--there was something touching and tragic and very human about it.
Tim sometimes had a really hard time accepting the hardness and cruelty of the world, and some of this was his way of struggling, engaging, coming to terms with it. He was so fascinated with extreme things while being a very gentle person himself.
SCREAMERS
When he was living in that crazy apartment with those maniac fraternity guys, I remember that they would have these insane parties where lots of stuff would get broken, and they would storm around yelling at each other and yelling at you, and there was this general vibe of chaos and things coming apart at the hinges. And I remember one of these parties where the cops got called and everybody, like 60 people, ran out the front door. in the space of about 2 minutes. including me. And I remember that even though there were so many people there Tim was really excited to see me and he had some records he wanted me to hear, and we ended up going into his room. It was like a railroad apartment with a really long hallway, the classic hyde park apartment with the bedroom off the long hall, and I just remember we were stitting there in his room, every once in a while there’d be a pause and you’d see some lunatic running down the hallway and then there’d be a crashing sound. We were looking through Tim’s record collection and I remember he ended up putting on the Screamers, which I’d never heard. Listening to music with him was very much about you, he wasn’t trying to impress you, so if there was something you wanted to hear he’d put it on. And we were sitting there listening and watching these maniacs running around. This kind of aggressively fey synth-punk of the Screamers, and the preposterously macho antics of his roommates, met at a certain point of joyfully garish and bold aggression.
I remember thinking how weird it was that we were listening to this really esoteric, really smart band while right outside there were these people who were basically cavemen, smashing shit. But I think the thing was that everywhere he went Tim was at home in the midst of this discordant environment. Tim and his giant crates of weird records just fit in with the whole scene, as bizarre and apocalyptic as it was. And I think Tim was someone who really understood, the side of undergound music that he was really into was that thing of making yourself at home in a chaotic environment where a lot of discordant, seemingly incompatible things were happening at the same time and all sorts of shit was flying off because everything was moving so fast. I just remember how gleefully happy Tim was at the whole thing.
THE NIGHT WAS BRACINGLY ACTIVE
This was a later apartment, I think with Erica and Ashley and Elliott and Ryan and Jenni, and everyone else had gone to sleep. There was the usual turbulent stuff going on in our lives, and I remember it was kind of windy out. Not particularly cold or stormy, an early spring or late fall night. and the sense that the night was bracingly active, there was an alertness about things. There weren’t many clouds but the clouds that were in the sky were moving kind of fast. The kind of night where it would still make sense to be talking at two in the morning and still be wide awake.
So we were just talking about the turbulence, comparing notes about the challenges we were facing. And then the conversation slipped, as it often did with us, to music. The topic was the conversation we had with so many of our friends: that we were looking for something that we hadn’t heard that would push beyond what we’d already heard. It was something he shared with that group but his struggles maybe intensified it. That the history of underground music had become this kind of burden that needed to be shaken off, so that you could have music that would really physically and mentally challenge you and we both batted that one around and talked vaguely about what it was that we wanted, stuff that we’d heard that was pushing that direction versus stuff that was going around in circles and getting way too much credit for it. and somehow we ended up talking about metal and I was talking about how I didn’t really understand metal and was trying to find that thing in the musical extremism of punk that appealed to me, that compressed wall of sound. And he asked me if I’d heard Bathory and I’d never had. And he had the Sign of the Black Mark on vinyl, and he put it on. And I remember that it had the kind of grandeur that I’d always gotten off on in metal without understanding it, but there was also this kind of livid guitar sound, that was buzzing and somehow very dark and very alive. And that was what I’d been angling for in my description.
And he understood music so well, and he understood you so well when you were talking about music, so that when he said something it reflected how he knew exactly what you meant. And the kind of engagement and empathy he had, so that he could really get inside the other person and kind of know what they wanted. And I remember sitting there at the table with that weird night going on and being taken, that it opened up a window into a new kind of feeling, a feeling I’d never quite gotten from music. You could almost see the oars going through the black water while you listened to it. And Tim was watching me listen to it and he saw that I’d gotten out of it what you were supposed to get out of it, and that’s the kind of personal connection you can get from two people that understand music and want to communicate about music to each other. There was a kind of satisfaction both in spreading the word and making the other person happy that I really felt from him in that moment.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Early WHPK Radio show of Tim's
Chris M. found a CD of one of Tim's radio shows, and has uploaded it here:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/2uiq13
http://www.sendspace.com/file
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Chicago Memorial for Tim: Saturday, March 15
Memorial for our friend, Tim Aher
When: Saturday, March 15
6:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Where: Enemy (Geoff's place)
1550 N. Milwaukee Avenue, 3rd Floor
Chicago, IL 60622
Potluck style, without the social pressure and judgment. Georgi's making chili, Jenni's bringing a massive cheese ball, maybe I'll make up some elkballs. If you feel up for making or bringing something (beer is OK, too), shoot me a quick email.
Also, in lieu of a formally organized set of spoken remembrances, we're hoping to solicit as many people as possible to write a couple
words about Tim which people may read at their leisure. These will then be bound up and sent to his family. So consider yourselves formally solicited. They don't have to be epic or all maudlin and Emily Dickinson - brief stories or memorials are totally fine. But if you're up to longer-form writing, or for multiple stories, that's OK, too. If you could email any of these directly to me, [gaguy at uchicago dot edu] that would be highly appreciated. We'll also plan to have pens and paper available (and maybe even a laptop) in case a bite of elkball calls up a stream of Proustian reveries.
In addition, we'd like to invite people to bring non-literary Tim
artifacts. You want to bring doodles or a Grim Slayer plush doll? Any and all fan art would be great. If you've got any recordings of Tim shredding wild on that headless guitar or of his nickel-loaded coffee can, please bring a CD or cassette. I remember Tim writing some record reviews and show reports – if you can direct us to those, we'd like to collect them as well. Similarly, if you're still hoarding photos, you should post them at
this website.
We're considering this open to the public, so please feel free to pass the information about this around. And, don't feel compelled to come with food, or like a piece of writing is your ticket of admission. But help on either front is definitely requested. Basically, we're hoping to celebrate the life of our friend, and the more people who can help with that - whether with food, writing, or their mere presence - the more successful this will feel.
As a final note, we will also be accepting donations to send to the
Connecticut Legal Aid Fund. Thanks all, and hope to see you soon.
--geoff
When: Saturday, March 15
6:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Where: Enemy (Geoff's place)
1550 N. Milwaukee Avenue, 3rd Floor
Chicago, IL 60622
Potluck style, without the social pressure and judgment. Georgi's making chili, Jenni's bringing a massive cheese ball, maybe I'll make up some elkballs. If you feel up for making or bringing something (beer is OK, too), shoot me a quick email.
Also, in lieu of a formally organized set of spoken remembrances, we're hoping to solicit as many people as possible to write a couple
words about Tim which people may read at their leisure. These will then be bound up and sent to his family. So consider yourselves formally solicited. They don't have to be epic or all maudlin and Emily Dickinson - brief stories or memorials are totally fine. But if you're up to longer-form writing, or for multiple stories, that's OK, too. If you could email any of these directly to me, [gaguy at uchicago dot edu] that would be highly appreciated. We'll also plan to have pens and paper available (and maybe even a laptop) in case a bite of elkball calls up a stream of Proustian reveries.
In addition, we'd like to invite people to bring non-literary Tim
artifacts. You want to bring doodles or a Grim Slayer plush doll? Any and all fan art would be great. If you've got any recordings of Tim shredding wild on that headless guitar or of his nickel-loaded coffee can, please bring a CD or cassette. I remember Tim writing some record reviews and show reports – if you can direct us to those, we'd like to collect them as well. Similarly, if you're still hoarding photos, you should post them at
this website.
We're considering this open to the public, so please feel free to pass the information about this around. And, don't feel compelled to come with food, or like a piece of writing is your ticket of admission. But help on either front is definitely requested. Basically, we're hoping to celebrate the life of our friend, and the more people who can help with that - whether with food, writing, or their mere presence - the more successful this will feel.
As a final note, we will also be accepting donations to send to the
Connecticut Legal Aid Fund. Thanks all, and hope to see you soon.
--geoff
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Three Reviews by Tim Aher
From Blastitude magazine in 2002.
Editor Larry Dolman writes, "I think they really demonstrate a lot of the things about Tim's character that the eulogies are referring to - they're very raw and funny, intellectual but informal, sharp and fairly caustic but not so much pissed-off as they are bemused, still full of wonder..."
The first two pair R&B pop diva Ashanti, "the first female performer to simultaneously hold the top two places on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart," with the decidedly more white, low-budget and out-of-control Hair Police:
http://www.blastitude.com/13/pg9.htm
The first question on Tim's mind was what the Italian gangster John Gotti meant to the black hip-hop artists who named themselves after him. Intriguingly, the same question preoccupied that "singular historian and philosopher of American experience" Luc Sante when he wrote about the bandit king that year.
The last review was of a hyped underground show where Tim still found something weird to love:
http://www.blastitude.com/13/pg3.htm
Editor Larry Dolman writes, "I think they really demonstrate a lot of the things about Tim's character that the eulogies are referring to - they're very raw and funny, intellectual but informal, sharp and fairly caustic but not so much pissed-off as they are bemused, still full of wonder..."
The first two pair R&B pop diva Ashanti, "the first female performer to simultaneously hold the top two places on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart," with the decidedly more white, low-budget and out-of-control Hair Police:
http://www.blastitude.com/13
The first question on Tim's mind was what the Italian gangster John Gotti meant to the black hip-hop artists who named themselves after him. Intriguingly, the same question preoccupied that "singular historian and philosopher of American experience" Luc Sante when he wrote about the bandit king that year.
The last review was of a hyped underground show where Tim still found something weird to love:
http://www.blastitude.com/13
From Roger: Rock and Roll Potatoes
Here's a myspace page that Tim made for the Rock and Roll Potatoes, a short-lived False Sex offshoot. Tim is on backing vocals and distorted fuzz guitar.
http://www.myspace.com/rockandrollpotatoes
If you want to download the song, go here for instructions:
http://myspacemp3.org/
http://www.myspace.com/rockandr
If you want to download the song, go here for instructions:
http://myspacemp3.org/
Hymn recordings
Tim, Nick McMaster, Tim Merrill and I all played in a band together. Here are recordings from our studio tracks.
Hymn Recording
I thought some of you folks might like to hear it.
-nk-
Hymn Recording
I thought some of you folks might like to hear it.
-nk-
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