February 2005 Archives

I love how when I log in to do an entry, I am greeted with:

Welcome to perpetual bliss.

so I'm at work, not working, anticipating snow and the frames and a trip to seattle and if the rent will get paid on time or not. and in my obsessive email checking - for what, I am not quite sure - refresh refresh refresh DING! I see a note from the ray lamontagne mailing list. listen today, it urges me, on wsomething and something and click this link and 2 pm and that's now! that's right now! shit! I attempt to inform my coworkers who, as usual, think I am insane.

I stumble and putter around, where's the link, balls, windows media error, DAMMIT! and I find it, finally, and stream the show. we open with some damien rice, michael penn, and new tori amos.

and then ray. glorious, beautiful, wonderful ray.

(side note, they are going to be playing andrew bird, willy mason, and a few other notables in the next hour. have I found the follow up for the daytime, after john in the morning in the morning?)

he speaks, he sings, about breaking guitars and the shoe factory where he worked and hearing steven stills one morning and having it be the first time anything ever got under his skin the way it did. about seeking out albums and songs and finding his voice, and our dj asks if it scared him when he first heard it. yes, ray. yes.

our set list couldn't have been any better:

hold you in my arms
joleen
shelter
trouble

as I sit at my desk, eyes closed, ignoring the ring of the phone and the sting of the tears. ray, we love you. and as kristin reminded me today in her bright eyes review from 2002, it's we.

it is always we.

more gallery goodness, y'all.

rio karma, with accessories and exchange warranty: $425.00
binge at exile on main st. (with $50.00 in trade-ins): $40.00

realizing the artist you're going to see is playing full band (yuck) AND she'll be solo at the space in a few weeks before you drive all the way to cambridge and spend ten bucks to get in plus gas and tolls:

priceless.

come on, you haven't cried over "guitar man" at least once?

Josh Rouse track to appear on the Bread tribute "Friends and Lovers"

-- courtesy of Jonathan Cohen, N.Y. for billboard.com

(the following is a barely edited rendition of what I scrawled furiously on the steps of the stage after the show, it was just about midnight and colin meloy had turned everything I knew upside down. I'm leaving it mostly raw for fear of destroying it.)

kristin, do you find yourself reviewing as you're watching, knowing you're going to be writing about it? lines and snapshots and shining moments...

colin stood in front of us wearing a childish smile, well tailored jeans and a soft old button down shirt. faded blue and white... the kind that looks like it should have pearly white snap buttons (but it doesn't).

slowly, song by song, it became a part of me. he sings:

I am a writer
I've written pages
trying to rid you from my bones

and right then I wanted to remember every moment of brilliance, of nine fingered women wandering the desert and cheap trick covers and tinkling notes softly on his knees. so silent you could have heard someone blink between the notes just then... glasses like my father used to wear a long time ago, and the kind of hair you push forward from the top with the palm of your hand. a triumph for all the studious uncomfortable boys.

the way he sang out the corner of his mouth was like hearing a dog speak impeccable french - total insanity and total perfection all at once. like nothing I could ever comprehend, and my legs gave out a few times at the very sound of it.

I want to erase those sentences for fear of not doing that holy noise proper justice.

tuning on his tiptoes, smiling through stories of lost bikes, I swear the girl next to me is crying softly as I stand there in my combat boots wondering just how much they've seen. my aching feet, your soft stenciled letters, colin (los angeles) I'm yours... I want to own and consume and overexpose myself to everything you've ever done, to all of you, like long light through the window in the nighttime forming a beam and a square on the grass and burning into everything I know.

silver threads running through the fabric of your shirt now, catching the light, soccer shoes and another cap for the taking.

searching, staring at the lights suspended from the ceiling for words... lyrics... answers... smiling when you remember and when you forget. spinning moment painting pictures girls giggling at your pricelessness. you walked by me just now to gather your guitars, not more than a foot from where I am sitting, and maybe you had a moment of wondering about me... and it floors me that I am so far gone into what I am doing that even if you had I barely would have noticed.

and now the rain has washed me clean, they told me I'd know when it happened...

I know, all two of you have been waiting so patiently...

for some reason, updating this huge backlog of photos is a seriously daunting task. but check the gallery, I put up shots of the glass blowing factory we visited in mexico... holy awesome natural light and stuff piled up on shelves that hadn't been touched in forever. worth getting jacked $20 by the asshole taxi driver that should have charged us $10, and then never came back to pick us up. but I digress...

carry a lamp,
for when you need more light
develop your photographs
and show them to the world
sit
and write
in the dim corners of massachusetts
for hours
don't waste a second
and let your mix tapes
be the soundtrack
for the drive home...

lay down in the grass
finished, spent
eating pineapples
and know that they already love you

talk to strangers
when someone asks of you,
"what is it that you do?"
don't tell them what pays the rent,
tell them what sets you on fire:
write ARTIST in the occupation box
of your passport
and be proud that you're a groupie
and a part-time freak

take pictures of your feet
and write about the show
you went to last saturday
and give it to the world

go on -
you were going to do it anyways...

a little early, but I've got a plane to catch.

on the phone to saturday where did you go 'cause the tequila from your kiss is still around and you're down to remind me 'cause I know that you're away but you're not gone... reeling inside she wants to call and she can spin my motivation like a record off the wall don't you try for anyone but yourself but you do for me, don't you... I can feel it's on your mind kristina falls down to the floor (she is fine and it's alright) she says to me, "I am drowned and drunk in you - no one had ever looked at me like you before you did..." did you know that if you go down the plain side I will be there waiting for you at the top of the stairs and you will be so beautiful yeah and I can feel it's on your mind kristina falls down to the floor (she is fine and it's alright) she says to me, "I am drowned and drunk in you - no one had ever felt like you before you did..." oh and Kristina said "let's have your party in december" and I don't know why you try to be so real why you try to be... did you know that if you go down the plain side I will be there waiting for you at the top of the stairs and you will be so beautiful yeah and I can feel it's on your mind kristina falls down to the floor (but she's fine and it's alright) she says to me, "I am drowned and drunk in you and no one had ever looked at me like you before you did..."

should anyone become mamed, impregnated, published, overwhelmed with my absence, struck drunk, or wants to say goodbye before suddenly disappearing into a witness protection program, here's where to find me:

villa del palmar, cabo san lucas
011-52-624-1457000

for the few people actually reading this, have a great week... the words will be in my little black notebook from now until then. xo

tonight, we prayed together
and I cried with relief for the second time in my life
twice in ten days now...
only tonight it was laced with fear
instead of joyousness...
see, when you disappeared
down the stairs
I wanted to take a
photograph
because I never know when the next time I see you will be.
and you made sure your last words were
I love you
before the car door
slammed
and shut off the sounds of the outside from me.
and I made sure that I
had my hand on your
brown sweater
while we listened
to moments of gratitude
and moments of death,
and we looked up at the exact same times
and now jonny is singing through my mind:
and you would know it instantly if I died
feel it way down deep inside
or if I turned my back on you
and cut the thread, you'd feel that too...

because when they speak of the funerals,
I often think of you
and when we pray for the lost souls,
you'll dance through my mind every once in a while
and when they talk about unbroken bonds,
we grab for each other's hands
because we don't always have to speak
and we always, always
understand
still
it was painful to not know you tonight,
until the ride home
until the fifteen minutes had passed
and the truth rang out
but really, nothing is more true
and consistent
for us
than this

and I type because I couldn't wait for my pen and my notebook and if I lose the moment, then it's gone forever, like you might be. at least now there's one of these I can save...

you stopped in your tracks to me...

crying at my desk
not unlike you over my words
only now
it's me over you over me
better than the boy
writing the song about me
(that I never really liked anyway)
better than anything
I ever thought I wanted
as we write the next chapter
full of everything
we'd ever dreamed
I love you
so totally and completely
my soul is singing with it
yes
these are only words
and thank you
just doesn't hold enough
weight
for your words
and your moments
and your love
and your patience
and for opening the cage
for me
years ago
it just took me so long
to figure out
that I was already free...

You characterize very well with the term: "living and writing in heat." - And in fact artistic experience lies so incredibly close to that of sex, to its pain and ecstasy, that the two manifestations are indeed but different forms of one and the same yearning and delight. And if instead of heat one might say - sex, sex in the great, broad, clean sense, free of any insinuation of ecclesiastical error, then art would be very grand and infinitely important. Poetic power is great, strong as a primitive instinct; it has its own unyielding rhythms in itself and breaks out as out of mountains.

~rilke on love and other difficulties

and could it be any other way, on a scrap of paper pulled furiously out of my bag during the last song because my notebook was (gasp) home. and I really was there and sitting like that and I've been wearing my combat boots for a week now since TB had to put his shoes on and I needed something to hold up the fort.

combat boots
stickers on my car
mailing lists
front row
cross-legged on the floor
back stage
waiting for the band
we'll drive for hours
back to where
we are...

and the stickers too, I'll send pictures. now I'm going to start crying. I fucking love you, man. I mean it. (and I'd say more than my parents, but then my dad might zap me with lighting or something.)

five days, nine hours and thirty minutes until departure. please fasten your seatbelts and return all trays to their upright position.

this playlist has become an obsession.

the last ninety days, the perfect songs, the flow, using every available moment and I've gone through five discs trying. (see, sometimes it sounds fine until the sleepdriving test, and then it fails miserably). and as it completes itself, after tearing home and throwing down my keys to rearrange the order before it leaves me, I am struck by my surroundings.

I'm making mix tapes. really good ones. in my own apartment. while I read the website that I am writing and look at the pictures I am taking. I have arrived and it is truly, utterly and completely all happening. because a year ago right now, it was the best I could do to think - just think, because I didn't speak aloud about things that shook me so - am I where I'm supposed to be? and today the only question is this: is it all out there, as best as I can manage? and I answer with a resounding yes - a hell yes, if you will. because now, there's really no other way to be. not any more. I've lost my virginity again, and I'm not going back.

on a side note, I had a dream last night that rudyard kipling's name was in the opening credits of the brady bunch as producer or director or something. maybe it's the extra hole in my head.

africa and karma police are to howie day as:

(a) thunder only happens when it's raining and will you still love me tomorrow are to tom conlon,
(b) annie's song and la isla bonita are to jon rodgers,
(c) all of the above.

what is it with these adorable musicians and their bizarre choices of covers? I'm not quite sure, but I'm lovin every minute of it.

tonight found me sleepless and starry eyed from the beginning. after a one shot tall and a great meeting, I rushed off to the space on steve's recommendation that I check out tom conlon. walking in at the end of opener number three (did I mention kristin not going to bonnarroo?), I frown at the ten dollar cover. hmm... oh, that's right! I don't have anything to lose. I fork it over and claim my seat, front row stage right.

it's the end of the first song and my jaw is slack. another moment of being tuned in so perfectly, I should have known - the first thing he did was take off his boots and the second thing I did was move from my chair to the floor. I'm cross-legged and back in the land of bumper stickers, mailing lists, back stage passes and combat boots.

the next two hours are brilliant, with a few religious undertones but put so universally you don't even notice. a song about a cousin who legally changed his name three times, then a story about sadness and hiding out for a whole year. and in the midst of all of it, moments of covers so perfectly chosen like they fit there all along and just needed to be spoken aloud.

after the show I waited patiently, not wanting to go without giving thanks. I wander up to the merch table, sign the mailing list, and notice a sign next to the cds:

there is no set price, what you can afford is what they are worth.

I pick up a cd and throw in a twenty. today has already yielded a fifty dollar piercing (plus tip), a two dollar brownie, and a ten dollar cover. I'm fucked anyways, like when you're trying to sleep before an important day and it starts hitting four, and then five, and then why don't I just stay up? there's no point in napping.

back to tom - I'm so tongue-tied in these moments, I only get a few sentences and forty five seconds at best without breaking into stutters and sweaty armpits. I manage:

hey everything tonight was perfect and I haven't been sleeping because I've been writing alot and it couldn't have been any better or any more perfect and thank you, please just keep making things

and with that I threw my arms around him, and ran away. to messages from kristin and threeimaginarygirls and hey, I pierced myself today and mexico is coming and maybe I'll get to see charlie post and frames and more writing and photo gallery and...

wow. keane on saturday night live. good for them.

wandering around today
(it's the greatest day
I've ever known)
I stumbled into a french bakery
ray charles pouring through the doorway
singing
for the love of women
and everything
this one I'm watching
wants her decadence
for a bargain
and she just can't see...

as I edited for a moment
writing today
I started to feel things
slipping away
your settings have changed
returning the leaky bed
the fort reduced to a pile of blankets
as I washed the sheets
it came to me
that I hadn't slept in my bed
since the night you left

shattered intentions
a makeshift rosary
old french windows
chocolate truffles
the sun on my hair
warm breeze for the first time in years
today
it seemed

I don't want to be your distraction
but I have to keep this going
and maybe we can curl up
the next time it's snowing
so off I go
for more holes for my soul
to let out the beams of light
(see, I'm glowing)

for me
there's little use in crying
it's the wide awake and dying
that I'm used to...

without my glasses, I see photographs
close to my nose is sharp and defined
and the rest fades off into the distance
and I say,
how have I not looked at things this way before?

and this morning, charlie speaks:

life comes fucked up with strings attached
and the porno girls all arch their backs
and the streets breathe steam after a summer's rain
sometimes the sweetness
can conquer the shame

and the difference between writing and typing, that kristin quoted to me once, becomes clear...

tomorrow might feel completely different but this is today.

I have just spent a number of years - years - internalizing and editing and holding back. not writing and being numb to it. fulfilling the need to create with putting my yogurt containers in order, in an exact straight line, by date of expiration. there's a bleeding in that, but not like this. and recently the shift has come, and now I'm bleeding all over the place. mostly for the good. of notebooks and things taped to the walls and here, needing to write, plagued by not sleeping since about six am when the end of the music awoke me with a start and I saw a letter that needed reading.

I'd like to open up the polls for your opinion - yes, you - every vote counts (so, like the three people that read this, feel free to share)

what is the crackhead level of going to see charlie post play on wednesday night in dc? it's about a six hour drive, show at 9, if I leave by midnight I come back to shower, maybe a quick nap, and straight to work. keeping in mind that I have a half day friday and am leaving for cabo at 5 am saturday.

kristin went 3,049 miles, and I'd have to pull off 624 round trip in one night. hmmm...

I have to say that this is the first time ever the words "hey, winter's going by pretty quick" have come out of my mouth. and as I scour websites and the advocate and the phoenix for dates, I am thrilled at the extravorganza that is about to ensue:

sat. 2/12 - leave for cabo
spend a week with mom in the sun, avoiding that uncomfortable holiday that hallmark invented to make us feel like we have to do the one wonderful most fantastic brilliant thing no one has ever thought of before for the person we're smitten with. and then do it again the next year, bigger and better, with cards and chocolate and weeping. I don't know about you guys, but I'll take the beach and no expectations.

sat. 2/19 - back to branford
arriving on america west at 10:42 pm

sun. 2/20 - show #1
go see colin meloy at the iron horse and revel in the spectacularness I've been promised by his fans.

spend a week enslaved by the man, and then...

sat. 2/26 - show #2
go see anne heaton at the lizard lounge in cambridge. I don't even know where the fuck either of those things are, but I love anne madly. soulful stand up and sing your heart out at the piano goodness.

wed. 3/02 - show #3
go back up to mass. for the frames at the paradise. give me that look again... my toes are curling up just thinking about it. all attempts to stand front row stage right will be executed to the fullest.

thu. 03/03 - road trip
leave to drive down to boca with eve. really. I haven't done something like this since I went cross country - shit, I can't believe I'm going to say this - ten years ago. except for james taylor new year's eve 2000, but the guy was an asshole and it didn't count. maybe we'll run into chris carrabba in the record store down there.

who knows what we'll find between now and then... ray at the avalon on april fool's and edie carey in may already. memorial day in seattle? back to south beach in june? hell, I'm driving to boston saturday just to have coffee - and every time I say that it can't get any better, it does. I cried out to the gods, I want. My life. To make. More sense. and here we go...

I'll keep coming. for sure.

I'm eating ramens, making mix tapes, putting shit up on my walls, and I haven't turned on my television in days. it doesn't get much better than this.

things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe, most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all the things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.

~rilke, letters to a young poet

you wouldn't believe it, even if I told you.

scene:
I'm reading rilke in a parking lot, waiting for The Boy (you remember The Boy, don't you? of stalking and ray lamontagne fame...) and I'm engrossed in a letter about irony. in my brief recollection, rilke is sending this young poet a message of not forcing irony, to seek where it is natural and if that place can't be found, to go as far away from what it isn't as you can, and only there will it present itself, if it is meant to. fascinating, a tribute to all the times when we say, "you know, you just can't make this stuff up!".

ring. ring.

me: hello?
TB: it's jon. (keep in mind, there is yet to be any verbal communication between us since the dozen words in paradise.)
me: whoa.
TB: (laughing)
me: I'm here, I got up here a little bit early.
TB: um, that's unfortunate, there was a guy in an electric wheelchair on the T and I missed the train. the next one won't get me there until two.
me: good, I can finish this book. it was just talking about irony and funny, that's right when the phone rang.
TB: alright, I'm going to try and not freeze my fingers off while I'm waiting by holding on to this dunkin donuts cup.
me: I found a little coffee shop before, I'm going to go back there and hang.
TB: I'll see you around two?
me: keep your fingers warm and hurry up...

I sit there, stunned for a moment, because I had worried for the absence of an opening line. stunned at the irony, at the sound of his voice. smiling in the sunshine. I pick the book back up, figuring I'll read and go back for coffee and clean up before coming back to the T stop. perfect. only I'm giggling and distracted and I drive back towards the way I came. must write, then book.