D's Journal
-as a general rule and without thinking about it specifically, i tend to stay on close terms with friends and people who naturally assume the best of my intentions, and conversely do not stay close with or in contact at all with people who will assume bad things about my intent. if there is a circumstance wherein i seem to do something that is unexpected or not easily explained and the communication has dropped for a bit without me being able to convey the logistics, a friend in this world will in the meantime work explanations in their head that assume that it was beyond my control and that there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the behavior or lack thereof. a person who was not really meant to be close to me on the other hand, will assume that i must not care or i can be put in a box or i am 'just not the person they thought i was.' and maybe i'll grant them that.
-contrary to popular belief, i'm here to let you in on a little nugget of truth from someone who has firsthand experience with living in many different places, and who will testify with total conviction: there exists absolutely the SAME AMOUNT OF RACISM IN THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH. yes, it might manifest differently, but i will say that anyone who has ever had some smug little bit of self-righteousness that they are from a northern state and were lucky enough to live within a more open-minded environment that wasn't in the confederate south is simply living a misinformed lie.
-i believe that most all time spent doing anything can be loosely broken down into two categories: CREATING and CONSUMING. any person can form whatever reasons for categorizing certain activities into either, for themselves, but i can for myself generally know if my mind/the world around me is being fed by what i engage in or not. that said, i attempt to live in a way that more than 50% of each day is spent creating rather than consuming.
-out from my lifetime of observation, i seem to notice absolutely no neccesary correlation between WEALTH and HAPPINESS. i have seen just as many decidedly unhappy wealthy people as i have seen people who live very humbly but who live in a fairly constant state of happiness and gratitude. that said, it amazes me how obsessed culture at large seems with beating a seeming correlation between the two into our heads. (and of course i acknowlege the exception being the extreme side of the povery spectrum, but i am mostly talking about prioritization of what one spends his or her life living for..)
-an observation about the people in this world to which i seem to gravitate: i am much more interested in being involved with people who live in a state of CURIOSITY rather than those in a state of JUDGEMENT. if you haven't even lived a third of your life yet and you can already classify, box up, and know what you think already about what someone is telling you, what a movie is going to be, what a band sounds like, what someone probably is like, etc. then you apparently aren't too interested in taking in and learning tons more from the nectar of life, and i wish you luck in your fulfillment.
-i hate the concept of what a REPUBLICAN is. that said, i hate the concept of what a DEMOCRAT is. thomas jefferson warned us about it more than two hundred years ago and it's still true folks: bipartisan politics simply suck. expecting everyone to be serviced by a system which endorses the power of only two parties is like expecting two huge clothing companies to meet the fashion needs of everyone in the entire country.
-some days i feel as though i have had the privelage of knowing some of the most beautiful humans who even exist.
-it is no groundbreaking revalation to realize: THE MUSIC INDUSTRY IS IN CRISIS, in unison with the completely postmodern, twenty-first century, age of technology. having said that, i will be the first to acknowlege that the very same amount of great music is being produced as always was. it is simply becoming a very different beast to go acquire it, to make it, to learn it, to experience it firsthand, and to be involved at all in creating a business around it. musicians: to live in a creative capacity is a simple input:output principle-- you simply cannot create great music unless you take in a constant backdrop of great live music, great recorded music put into every day, and immersing yourself in the skin of the great artists who came before you. this means learing their songs and learning why they just work.
-i have no nice way to put this, and don't really feel the need to sugar-coat it: i have every reason to believe that within any population of human beings, there will always exist the same amount of stupid people. you may believe that there is one privelaged enlightened place or group of people in history or segment of the populus that has it right and that breeds an enlightened way of life, and you may believe in the concept of 'book smart,' 'academic communities,' 'tribes of spiritual perfection,' 'unfortunate underprivelaged' et al.. but the fact remains that within any populus or community there exists the same amount of raw material for intelligence and the same amount of people who are able to handle big ideas in capacity and the same amount of people who have the ability to do big and great things in this world (and conversely, the same amount of people who may show every indication on tests and 401k stats that they are a smart agile asset to their community but really do little more than populate and pollute.)
thanks if you were willing to spend the time to get this far. comments surely welcome of course.
middle week i was on the campus of UPenn sweating it out, doing some writing, getting video imagery, etc... and here i am again, caved away in the snow, wondering if it was all just a dream.
i don't know why i came to place so much weight on the importance of that sweet st. patty's day parade that happened today in ole baton rouge, but with the weather and the needs of my heart, geography aside the whole thing just feels so far away right now. maybe it is just how the benedettos mean the world to me, maybe it is how the event seems to gather EVERYone in one place and one happy disposition, maybe it's how the whole thing represents baton rouge's own morph of the offspill of new orleans culture... but i'm missing like mad.
my request: if anyone has photos, photolinks, video, sentiments, stories, any leftover memorabilia from the event, send it this way, ok?
and here is what i have to give, in a season where nothing can seem to really come clean.. i have put my all into this next of the video series- while i feel as though the other three were kind of primers, were of the learning process... i feel that this is something that actually gets somewhere.
here is my favorite Ani Difranco song, 'Dilate'. i hope it fares well.
http://www.ringo.com/videos/videos.html?videoId=202621333
so i was gonna write a lil sumpin sumpin for the grand ole holiday of mardi gras anyway, and then i get a note from my dear friend nikoma in italy that all that changes on this page are the pictures of the rockstars and god forbid the sung words themselves. so now i am meeting the needs of at least two people. which is how i like it.
my brother writes me about how the weather there down south has been perfect and so the parades and crewes have been well-attended. which makes me jealous of course. at the same time he is chomping on a piece of king cake, appropriately adorning his neck in mr t. fashion except in plastic not gold, doing a whole year's worth of glorious exhilerated peoplewatching in a few moments, i am up here in the city i claim is so new orleanslike stepping purposefully and slowly through the blackened snow dish called a street so as not to fall and resemble a pollack painting whilst wondering if i still actually have nipples. not that i actually need nipples, as a male anyway, but i'd prefer to have them, you know, for the pool parties.
my roomie alaine recently decided to bust a move and not the kind young mc prefers so the rowhouse here is quiet and swollen with metaphorical question marks. but there are about 18 items all gracing the to-do list of the type of piscean fellow who would have back in the day sliced a to-do list on a spike much like a completed order in a kitchen.
the big news i think kinda deserves its own post and that is the jellyfish news, so i will not write that. i will post it as 'jellyfish mayhem' or 'o my gawd you HAVE to read about this jellyfish like stuff!' or 'umm..huh? i just woke up. but there's jellyfish..' sometime in the near future.
but i am doing a fine job of making it out to see all the dear glove-wearing bundled-up peacoated yankee kids where there are music scenes going on, and other than that i have been caved up and taking in various media and trying to write what has been rattling inside of my ribcage for so very long. we shall see.
but thereafter i will do a little journeying to maybe west virginia and cinci and crazycold north ohio, and then i can drop south for my day of celebration of breathing air for the first time and the wonderfied grace of st patty's day, a baton rouge tradition. that will be just beeootiful.
but i have posted some little windows of video, that pretend on giving some sort of version of reality while you can't quite be at exactly the same location as me. you see the perks of this newfangled technological age of '07? anyway, maybe the 2 inch cubes are worth it, maybe they aren't.
and i put up a waay better version of subterfuge and a version of sitting on sides that was chopped down like some sweet ass raw piece of meat at the butchery. maybe some of that's worth the couple minutes too.
i hope everyone is well. i check on this shist sporadically but mostly just hate this mind-numbing tv-in-disguise. but thank you for always checking on me and making sure i am safe and alive and still eating home meals that are made from peasant flour and meat from rotating pig heads.
i've only been in baton rouge a few days, but there are so so many things i have seen and done right off that have made it good to be here:
-going up with jason in the copilot seat of his grandfather's tiny plane and flying over to false river, and him even letting me pilot for a bit. feeling the weightless surreal high of flying in a small plane built in 1961.
-going to see the whole choir after practice at ruby tuesday's, and remembering wendy working there.
-going over to kidnap adam's yamaha vino scooter which i guess i still partially own anyway, and zooming all the freak over this stillsmall town like these things were meant to do.
-CC's bread pudding coffee
-reviewing the new album with adam, talking volumes about musical directions and theory for the future, recording, etc, and playing our instruments in the comfortable way we always do together.
-mom's frog-in-a-hole; dad's corn and shrimp soup.
-making videos from inside the bright flourescence of mondo-br-thrift kingdoms for those far away.
-fruilessly turning my folks house upside down looking for 'the compleat astrologer's love signs' book i left here, feeling the despair after the empty search, only to find out it sells on amazon.com for 1.48
-going to their storage to find in such random places the randomnest things from my past, to muster memory i wouldn't have mustered myself.
-assembling the most kickass vinyl collection west philly's never seen from my own, louis', and my dad's past records.
-the classic back alley cellphone-convo walks.
-coffee call
-wine and pizza at jason and anna's new house big enough to hold 3 large ethiopian families with them.
-celebrating my brother's b-day at their house and having him express that he'd rather do the quiet more personal at-homeness than the formalities of a restaurant.
-wittnessing an numb-skulled fratboy fight outside the caterie and amusedly feeling like i was at a sporting event.
-speedin like mad on two wheels by the mossy wonderful louisiana nighttime lsu lakes.
...it feels so weird to not have alaine, my b.r. connection, here to call up and see what the deal is for the evening. now ironically i'm the one relaying what is up in b.r...
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oh, in other news, "Elixir" won gold in the pop/rock category of the Songwriter's Association of Washington Awards, and "Tiny Spaces" won silver in the R&B category. i'm honored and excited.
..so i'm gonna be flying on up there to play the awards gala and do some shows, which is kinda ass-backwards, but there you have it.
i am in the middle of my grand voyage southward and metaphorically back thru time for me, and i already feel as though my head is opening up and gaining a wonderful sense of meaning and joy. it helps perspective so much to change locale, and to invest all the heart you can into spilling over into the spaces of those who matter. i must have spoken more than 2000 words today and heard 5,000.
-boston: i began here, and most definitely had the goodness of all the bustling peacoated scholarly people around, and i got to hear some fantastic music and see people i haven't seen in too long. it definitely made up for the fact that to get around the place requires more directional skill than lewis OR clark and the savvy of a nyc cabbie. i really had it easy when i could park my car in the back of this big house there back when and didn't even realize it. this time it was spending 10-15 minutes 3 times a day negotiating parking. i figure if i could spend that same amount of time doing grannie tasks by the end of the week i would have a quilt and a bakery storefront.
-connecticut- this state is filled entirely with wealthy people. there is not a poor person in this state. i met bums who gave me four gold pieces each just for the ability to shine my shoes. it was great. and so i finally got to play that place called 'the space' in hamden ct that i have wanted to for so long. and it was such a well set-up room with such appreciation and great sound. it was like a mini grey eagle without the dogs coming up onstage. and i met the daria gal from ny that night who is out there kicking arse with her trio band singing with her whole body, and some kinda unexplainable way i knew her birthday was right by mine after seeing her perform, and it was a day from mine. anyway i hope to get on back to this place and that it keeps its groove on..
-living room, brooklyn- well i didn't quite make it here bc i was told by miss sophie that i HAD to come play this mic in central square boston at a place called 'all asia' that had painful comedy and huge drinks that came with 'free' t-shirts and a host guy who sang so sweet and high and buckleylike and so it was cool enough but a sopping wet night that had little to keep me from driving off into the night in a moonlit enchanted race for southern sanity.
-philly- so i opened for michael glabecki, the singer of rusted root, and it was a damn fine eve. despite the string break at the beginning i feel like i was able to build up this arc of energy that briefly wove thru my whole catalogue and tried some new stuff, and i felt good and a lot of people went home with my recordings. he was sweet and travelling on the road with his little long-haired son, so cute carrying in guitars and getting coffee for him and then disappearing into the back to read his hardy boys book. michael did his yodel thing and worked himself into a fury, and ended with a dance-happy 'on my way' that had the whole place feeling simple, elemental. all the coffee and late-night deleware diner with gail afterwards got me right on my way and sent me right thru dc on down to sunrises and richmond garage sales and sweet carolinas where i am now. i have been taking in the mountains and small-town brevard and films and huge huge conversations with sage, and i don't even know what hour it is and that is utterly fine for now.
i will be in atlanta and more soon, so i hope everyone will be in touch. sorry for the novel, but i thought i'd give the update about everything. i hope everyone is feeling the winds as though every piece of them was meant to move, to gravitate in motion and resistance to sloth flaccid apathy.
so the relevant news is that today i had my laptop with my entire life, creative sentimantal professional and otherwise, on it,
STOLEN from me in philly, along with my iPod containing my whole music library.
i guess the first point would be that i can't really be online much at all during the next lil period of saving up for another, as filing the police report did not leave me the most hopeful of campers.
so if you are in touch in that way there may be a little bit of a delay. it's all dependant upon various computer-borrowing circumstance.
the second would be if you are close to me and have sent mail, photos, or files which may involve my appirition and soul, don't delete em because i don't have em.
the third would be that i'll be taking this as a pretty potent sign as far as focus concerning my life, so i will be concentrating for awhile on important relationships and the music within me.
thank you to whomever might think this a good time to order the new disc or give me a hello.
be good to your world. want what is naturally yours.
love your time and your present company, not the things around you and your feedless obsessions.
d
so i have now officially released the new disc. went to
so somewhere along the way recently i acquired a scanner. and this happened curiously in a timeframe coincidental with me being in a completely new period of my life. in the moving process i have had these albums of hard pictures, and it’s really weird to me that they are becoming sort of old-world technology as every household in this country slowly acquires some sort of digital camera and begins to forget ever going to the local pharmacy store to have their pictures developed.
it’s interesting to me how people process memories, and what different sorts of people consider worthy of picture-taking. my dad goes to different places and i always make fun of him because you can totally tell he is an architect- we end up with loads of pictures of buildings and monuments with not a soul in sight. some people photograph nature because it reminds them of how they felt at a single moment in time. i usually never do because i can never really capture the way mother nature looks in person.
anyway i don’t know what gave me the impetus to scan all these shots from these albums, but i always had the notion that the dl website was a big step away from my personal life and was meant to focus on the musica. well i still feel that way but i thought it would be pretty fun to stick all these up there in a random life gallery of sorts. i know a lot of people who visit the site anyway would get a kick out of all the cool people and places who have made the journey so fantastic.
most of these pictures i didn’t take myself. and so i can’t really lay total claim of the whole ‘picture-worthy’ aspect of the taking that i was talking about. but in my life what mostly ends up being taken are pictures in and around the act of making music, and pictures of me around the people to whom i’ve really been close.
so anyway what sucks is that there are a lot of people who aren’t included in here with no reason other than the fact that this is just what ended up on hard photos, and it’s pretty random at that. but i do hope that y’all will enjoy em all and comment as needed (:
so it’s september 11th. 5 years after.
so much has happened to me. everybody remembers where they were at that singular point in time tho.
yesterday alaine and i became absurd caricatures of ourselves in one swarming moment, and all we could do was embrace it. riding down
!!??!!
now first of all why couldn't he choose his brother over you, and then what kind of guy casually says he's hoping you can make it, because if so, you'll happen to be the best man? i'm not sure how out of the norm this sounds to everybody else, but it always plagued me and sounded like something a guy with a 40 in his hand would say.
well. finally i can now say i understand this song. my bestest friend a la junior high formative musician bike-riding era is getting married in the field right next to his apartment, and he lives in baton rouge and knows i'm all the way up here. they decided not to wait any more because they have long been planning this whole wedding and too many details lined up and it is just TIME. and so they decided to do it in a couple weeks. and so i get an e-mail saying look, i know it would be really hard to get down here but it is going to be real small and informal and just intensely packed into this one immediate space, but he's hoping maybe there'd be some way i could be down there, because if so i would be the best man.
RIGHT. i understand you now, young m.c.
also, i was drinking gatorade today and really started to with devout attention pay mind to the taste.. has anyone ever paid close attention to this classic taste and in one fine moment tasted overtones of SALT? i thought, no, this is supposed to quench every need i could have in an athletic fit of manhood, how could it have salt like some anti-agent built to collapse unwanted weak ancient pyramid brick stackers.. but i turned the bottle around and discovered right in the middle of all the horrific ingredients, there it was. SALT. does this surprise anyone?