But everyone tried hard to be funny. Everywhere you went - a store, a manicure place - someone was telling a joke. A good one. She remembered it had made any given day bearable, that impulse towards a joke. It had been a determined sort of humor, an intensity mirroring the intensity of the city, and it seemed to embrace and alleviate the hard sadness of people having used one another and marred the earth the way they had.
What strangeness/the brink. Music pouring into my head like sugar-salt. And if the people I wanna play with can't keep from fizzing out I'm still gonna do it. It's a tree growing around a fence, it's grass so high it can't be stopped. Of course, I need community. Of course I understand how communities must develop organically - I'm fine with the flow of things. Of course, I rely on the help of friends (Christine you are the absolute best); the way I see it, you should get what you give. I do give alot/I do get alot. And still, it's not like Detroit/the East Coast here. There are exceptions to this but I'm thinking about something specific: a suspicion of real passion and this weird inhibition that keeps alot of musicians here moored to a romantic handicapped sense of what is possible.
I've seen a sad unprofessionalism, a lack of devotion or concrete vision that stymies me. It's considered passionate to just get fucked up and flail around. There's a lack of discipline, such a reverence for the mess that nothing really transcends the mess. The drama of it just keeps cycling over & over & everyone thinks it's sexy and dog-paddles. There is great talent here. And I see it drowning in its own amniotic fluids.
When I quit my hard-working and relatively successful band (9 YEARS!), I had a different vision of what my life would be like by coming to New Orleans. I left a very real & strong community because I'd grown out of my self there (setting fires, drunk, wailing). I came here with my idea & it started and then poof. Then "The Traumas" took their toll & shifted me onto a different path. It was about bringing out different parts of myself, pursuing a nascent vision. That said, I keep returning to singing and writing/the guitar - I remember who I am even if I seem to forget.
SO THE SHOWS THIS W'END: w/Joey, John, Paul, & Jacob backing up Vic. Then them doing Calexico. And then Black Heart Procession. To be reminded that there's men of my generation out there STILL making smart sexy devastating emotional music GRACEFULLY. That it's possible to push through, to occupy your body, to follow your heart & be in your very own element, and not need to get shit-faced or exploit yr sexuality or freak-a-cize yrself. That it is possible to be unashamed. That even though I am a technically limited guitar player nobody sings like this. Some flame's alive that I thought went into a cave forever. Gold red, it's picking up speed. Will I have to leave to get it out? Well that's the 64 Thousand Dollar Question. In the meantime: that G3's gonna revolutionize me: PEAK here I come.
It's terrifying, to keep wanting things. My appetite's not ceased. There's hours at night with the ceiling and the pillow when I look at my life and just wonder: Why don't I just give up? Holding up the notion of what life was gonna be like to what it is. Wondering if I can't have the life I wanted why'd they give me life at all? These are bone-crushingly sober moments. I shouldn't be telling you this. How many times I've been dared to be other-than-me, to be middle, to sell it - it's enticing, it looks good, the devil's not ugly he's a stone-cold fox and he can look like relief. How many times I've wondered if I could have had ____________ then maybe I'd have had ____________. I'm better at wondering how to get a song outta the head, the song that is the soundtrack to him shining walking away or her picking up hope again.
It was worth the wait and worth holding up past the point of being able. "All I ever wanted was to bring people together," and memories of Athens, the hydraulic lift's red spilling fluid on the airport asphalt, long amble to find that entire school buried in kudzu. I still have those waxy crayons. I still have alot of that.
Assignment: 1. List everything. 2. Diagram it (blueprint=mining the days in the tool & die shop). 3. Copy to acetate. 4. Admitting the influence of K & C, adding my own twist: hold that acetate in front of things and places unrelated to anything in the diagram. 5. Shoot with crappy toy camera and digital and print on watercolor rag.
Assignment: Keep doing things by yourself. Don't arrive or leave with anyone but your self. Usurp, supercede yourself. Fly the white flag. Insomniac.
Assignment: Drink only water.
Assignment: Stencils.
Assignment: Cherries.
Assignment: Follow your good gut tonight.
Assignment: Envision a safe space. Furnish it with anything desired, real or imaginary. Go there now!
In my efforts to cultivate "the light" as it were, I turned to my good old pal, the Google search engine. Typed in the words that best describe "the light" for me: happy bunny. And well, as you see, some very very interesting results occured.
I am reminded of my friend Sarah Jessica and her young toddler son. She likes to dress him up, have him wear a cute cap, bow to the ladies, tipping his cap, while saying in a crude rendition of a Cockney accent (most kids are pretty much flawed in the impressions department), "G'day ma'am!"
It is my humble opinion that this sort of "Play" is the best reason to have a kid. Dress him in a monkey suit & have him jig for sixpence and matchsticks! Feed him chocolate cupcakes frosted with pink and green flowers all day long! Shine a spotlight on him while he's sleeping to make loony unforgettable homemovies! Send him to school in paper hats! Draw on his face a handlebar mustache! Yippee!
Ok, I seriously need sleep and/or coffee. This whole "light" thing is making me drunk.
"What you know you know / What you don't know you don't know"
Justin Hinds & The Dominos, "Save A Bread"
Kinda frustrated today, it's probably just the result of this frickin lingering headcold/lung/snot/ache expulsion. Am I the woman with a hundred projects I'll never finish? Since when? Having a full-time and demanding job doesn't help. Despite the fact that I love my job, I'm blessed, and this job is educating me in ways that my work & my friends' work will only profit from, long-run-wise. But ugh. I have pieces I need to finish and ship, I have so much work on my house that I just can't seem to get to, the yard, the walls, all the things I can't do alone, not to mention rehersals, recordings, bookings, not to mention travel (this summer NYC is a definate must, Fork I swear) - which is just as necessary to my mental health as riding the bike is. I am desperate to get my computer revamped, upgrade my systems, borrow that scanner & get my portfolio together. I am drowning in all of the work I've done these past few years - it needs to get catalogued and packaged so I can start getting my shit out there again. My head will lighten when all of this gets out of my body. The songs, the images. I'm so busy helping others instead of helping myself and that infuriates me! I want the scales to balance! I know I would feel less overwhelmed if I weren't carrying around this illness, however "fine" I am. Argh. It's hard feeling pressure -vs- inspiration. It's hard to wait -vs- act. It's hard to receive -vs- give, for me.
- iced mango tea with lemon
- the man made for singing
- the man made for drumming
- oh my good old friends (climbing over fences into cemetaries to drink and dance to the transistor radio - remember me wiping out and all that blood streaming from my knees? you got on your knees to wipe it off)
- "You are the sexiest woman I know."
- Canadian water! Canadian water!
- I dreamt it would be exactly like this
- How do y'like St.Petersberg now?
- our anxieties can just go to hell
- Amsterdam conversation
- he just put that bike right on top of his car
- The toilet paper in its drawer
- Ceenee, did Arun sit in that chair?
- The rum cocktail with fresh mint and ginger
- The curtains in their closet
- Her panty wheel
- Her indelible private language
- SweAt pea
- The generosity of this city we live in
- The notion of organic sobriety
- "Am I good to you?"
- burned into my retina
- The Uniques, "My Conversation"
- that first cup of coffee high high of the day!
- I'm gonna bring you Chinese carryout for dinner
- It really is another/brand new summer/ahead
onions onions onions all I can eat today is onions
