easter
every world tradition, be it religious or just plain cultural, has some sort of ritualized passage in which the individual starts anew and is reborne into purity for the oncoming season of spring. for some reason i feel this feeling this time in particular. all around me there has been great change, really sad stuff from friends and their beloved others and life-molding moves and such, and i feel as though i am truly entering into a new stage of life here. maybe it's just the sugar.
i had my college perk show right smack in the middle of everyone's spring break, and it was slow starting and i felt bad bc lelia had driven all the way from philly to play the show, but i ended up just letting things be what they were gonna. i think i'm getting better at that given the traffic up here- it's mind excercise to drive around here because it is baby steps and stares at beamer bumpers halted in gridlock, so if you're late you can either go crazy or subside in the zen-like practice of peace with your own limited power over circumstance in this world. that said, it turned out that the energy just grew and grew, and the second i took my vicegrip off my expectation and jus started playing music the night culminated into a good roomful of listening people and good vibes. too bad she couldn't stay to see this demonstrated before her.
easter was a feasting day it turns out, starting with a quiche brunch and easterbaskets at the homestead here, nap, and then over to the gatsby house (west egg?) for a mediterranean extravaganza of polite convo questions from adults to the kids about school. i played a terrible guitar there, flipped thru a book of kandinski, ate lots of perfectly-made hummus, and spoke about handheld technology, wisconsin, and guns, neccesarily in that order, until i could come home to paint on some jeans. but it is really nice yet again to be taken in in such a way by a family that is intruiged by me at best. i love to play ipod dj as j and i cruise the roads around here. and now i got a basket full o shell, yo.
i have been watching the dvds of my so-called life, and i am reaffirming how damned good that show actually was. it was written for everybody, has really touching substance to every episode, and is one of the only real depictions of teenagerness to grace the prime-rib publicly-traded tv-waves. they just nailed it. and where is rayanne these days? i hope she is somewhere remote living a good life with all the hearts of now-20s boys everywhere tucked away safe amongst her.
today was a beautiful dreary-type rainy day which turned out to be perfect for thrift shopping with my other inherited fam and finding out that chili's is simply not the chain that it used to be. shame on you, shitli's.
i am about to fly on out to tulsa. i'm sure things will be much differently the same around there but it will be a good space i am playing on a huge stage to a whole ton of people and that will be just grand parker's band is having the big cd release. they're gonna rawk, like buffalo tom.
i have this room like maximized i think- with crazy cool guitars all over it and a big mondrain print and the workity desk (no damn tv) and just a lil portable dvd player and momentos and wardrobestuffs and a good amount of simplicity and stimuli. i really admire rooms that are simple.
jon's building me this mondo-computer that is gonna catch me up to the ultraspeed world of silicon up here. maybe i will be able to do a lil studio in here and have some fly-ass audio programs on there. there's no telling what kind of madness would follow that hooplidy.
i'm sorry to anyone with whom i've been out of touch. i can't really explain what getting set up here has meant, but i feel in a really good space here and i am ready for so much. my message to everyone this eve is to just imagine the possibilities. they are so far-reaching.
home for the holidays
there's something about the way that my mama makes a frog in a hole that just can't be replicated. and yes i've learned how and they taste fine, but when it comes down to it, when i come back down here and sit me down to one, i think the main ingredient is love.
baton rouge has been good. as good as the whole way down here. and there has been just as much reassurance by all the people coming out of the woodworks to come see the music, and.. see me, as i've needed. we could literally see the weather's changing expanse as this country's spacious diversity gently unfurled. and there's something about this world that keeps reassuring me that it is entangled with itself.
the atlanta limerick nite was great. even tho the stormy wetness gave a few the excuse to keep quiet in their homes, more people than i could asked for showed up to have a good ole school nite of tunes that were off the cuff and didn't take themselves too seriously but were my dusted off heart. i tried to garner a group up for some round-table sushi before, but everyone had disappeared into their little hedges not to be found and i think atlanta has turned into the legend of zelda. tis ok, next time i will come properly equipped.
baton rouge was wrapped up in good meals and hometown people and the remaints of green and silver beads are still strewn about the neighborhood lawns around here in the aftermath of the beautiful b.r. st. patrick's day parade. the consistency of that thing just kills me. has it been a year already?
the show at avoyelles went really well and the whole room listened and it was a whole big mixed crew of people that i did get to talk to and others who just silently made their good presence known. i felt a real energy, and the only drawback was that i was cut off by the onset of a double-booked private party. business as usual. jason and tom played some fine tunes during a break, and i really was happy to hear the way that he (and them)'s settled into a groove, one that just breathes, and one that not trying to be of anything but its own accord. the beautiful lady in red went about taking the monies, and i finished off playing before i could do my own cover of that tune. for that i am sorry.
i had a birthday here too, and i thank anyone and everyone who called, wrote, made sure i knew that they surrounded my existence in this place. i have so much love for u guys.
anyway, i am headed out into the wild to drive on, and slowly make my way north again. every time i go, it feels like i barely had any time here at all. i always have this little vision of what my time here is gonna be like, and i can almost see myself saying things and doing things, but then i actually spend the week or so and it is nothing like my imagination. it is real. it is better.
snowbandonment
i want to put together the perfect 80s outfit that would be so putridy 80s that people would have to scratch their heads in the nostalgia of wearing exactly these items mass marketed in bad taste. it would start with the t-shirt, which would be a vaurnet, you know the kind with the big 'V' in the middle and the circle around it in neon green, pink, and blueish colors. 'Vaurnet, France' why did people wear these!? that is so random. supporting that would be the classic members only jacket. yes! this shit is only bought by members only, so don't mind that i look like a total tight-ass dweeb, i only buy top name brand shite here man. to top it all off would be the z. cavaricci pants, with about 30 beltloops and pleats and superflaring wide around the knees and thighs but extra small around the calf and ankle area so that your figure resembles something like an hourglass, oh wait, no, with half of it broken off.. damn we knew how to look our best.
so the weather has been playing games with my gigs. the snowstorms actually could not have matched up more perfectly with the big ones i've been excited about for so long, so i think mother nature's taste has moved on to post-indie. anyway the iota show was cancelled and it'll be rescheduled sometime in may. there was a crazy snowy night on thursday the nite of the mayorga show in silver spring, but we still played to the cool collection of winter-brave folx who'd gathered there. it was me, adam and monty (cello and percussion) and i really had a good time there- i really wanna play it again. the place was decked with 'holistic harvest' murals all over representing a multi-ethnic expanse and earthgod attitude so i didn't want to bring my doritos in there since they were anti-organic goods, and we made sure not to play in lydian modes or anything that might be construed as representing repression. adam and i had worked the entire day before on all the cello parts and it just makes me ignited and on top of the world, even more than starbucks, to play with that beautiful thing in the mix. here are some pix from that nite:
mayorga1.jpgmayorga2.jpgand my friends rounded me up to enter into 'GUITARMEGEDDON' tonite, which is basically a contest Guitar Center puts on for shredders. i tried to tell them that i haven't listened to yngwie malmsteen for like a decade, but it was to no avail. instead, i will be playing in a crazy guitar contest with an archtop looking not very the part. i guess i will have to remember how to sweep pick and play as though the rules are that the room is burning and the only way i can leave is if i finish playing every note of paganinni's 24 caprices, and i have a spastic neurological disorder related to my hands. wish me well. i might win some strings or something.
and it is gettin about time to clear out my car and stack it will with all the essentials, because it is about to run the roads and go all the way down this coast to both old hometowns (atlata and baton rouge) to have some goodness, rememberences, dvd releases, and love that has long been anticipated. can i leave my jacket in the back seat?
