invisible hands

my good friend over at All Else Fails reminded me of something to share:


after 25 years of public knowledge, 38 million people are infected...

25 million people have died worldwide from infection...

Africa is slowing down...slowing, but not stopping...

it's on the rise in eastern Europe, according to the 2006 U.N. report...

educate yourself about HIV/AIDS and then educate your family, your friends.



other sites to know and get involved with:

amfAR

International HIV/AIDS Alliance


/public service announcement.

everybody knows this is nowhere

i keep finding words of other writers that inspire me to just...live. do you have any words like this that push you in a similar direction?


To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

-e.e. cummings


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thanks, mr. neil young, for my entry title. looking forward to your heart of gold.

i feel a song coming on

i've been listening to NPR a lot this week, mostly Fresh Air, to change up my music habits at work. by the way, if you don't know the absolute gem that is Fresh Air (i want terry gross to be my baby-mama), it's on every day and then posted on npr.org.

i've made my specific effort to listen to Fresh Air because terry's had Leonard Cohen and Willie Nelson (my papaw-sugardaddy) on talking about new books. Cohen has, of course, a new book of poetry, Book of Longing. Willie has published a book about happiness called The Tao of Willie.

then i was surfing around for something else to listen to and today i stumbled upon the Jennifer Sharpe-produced commentary on Stairway to Stardom, a pre-American Idol public access show from 1980s Manhattan. the videos have made their way to the internet and have garnered a cult following.

and HOLY SHITE i can see why:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=69DFD9F834502B13

watch the videos. there are singers, dancers, and A MONOLOGUE ABOUT RADIATORS by a woman named Precious Taft. and bj the messenger in a ski mask and beret rapping "Crackhead."








i'm shouting because i'm excited.

A MONOLOGUE ABOUT RADIATORS.

a bad debt follows you

"... automatically, worn out by the gloomy day and by the perspective of a sad tomorrow, I put in my mouth a spoonful of tea in which I had softened a piece of the madeleine.... A delicious pleasure overtook me, isolated, disconnected from any idea about its cause. It immediately made life’s vicissitudes indifferent to me, life’s disasters became innocuous, its brevity illusory, in the same way that love operates, filling me with a precious essence: or, rather, this essence was not in me, it was me."

-Marcel Proust


sometimes moments come along that you don't want to embrace, but you have to do it anyway. there have been a few moments in my life like this, moments where i wanted to run away and avoid the truth of the matter. yesterday, however, was the first time i walked into truth and decision head on, impulsively acting on my emotion.

today i feel free of the dead weight of dying flowers. the sweet smell faded quickly and became a choking stench.

at some point that stench with disappear, leaving room for new growth and return to beauty. that point is not today and it will not be tomorrow.

no longer will my decisions be greedily snatched from my hands. this is the last i will say about anything intensely personal here.

i found out that time really is a revelator. god bless gillian welch.

just say she's a rhymer

first, a bit of news.

Modest Mouse is recording in Oxford as we speak. guess who's working on the album with'em? Johnny fuckin' Marr.

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i adore my friends. i also adore my sister, k$. we all had a great weekend together.

after getting a fabulous new haircut (courtesy of roxanne at bridges! we were Brownies together, evidently) saturday afternoon, we gathered at holy trinity on west capitol(note to self: go there and take pictures--great fodder for visual storytelling) for greekfest. it was neat to experience a slice of greek orthodox life. the event was similar to the beth israel bazaar with the foodstuffs and whatnot, but without the auction. anyway, so after eating lamb and dolmas and moussaka and gazing at the talk drink of greek man-water serving me, we headed downtown to Hit the Bricks. my god, what a beautiful day to be downtown!

so this is where the drama hit. i evidently got a bit of egg at greekfest and when i say egg, i mean EGG. i have a pretty bad allergy to eggs and the topping of the moussaka was not bechamel, but hollandaise. the talk dark greek-man fibbed me! so, shortly after arriving at congress st., i realized i was embarking on the best allergic reaction ever. i'll spare everyone the details, but this was me on the bathroom floor of the state street walgreens. the pinkness is the benadryl i had to chug:



let me explain a bit about my superb rendering: my hair looked so much more awesome in person and less toupee-ish. also, i wasn't screaming in terror. also, this is not a real photograph.

um. like i said, k$ is the best sister ever made.

after the reaction subsided, we went back to the art and somewhat music. it's all a haze in my benadryl-induced drunkenness. i do remember talking to jaysus about a book club and our dissatisfaction with the creative community's activity. i also remember lots of pretty lights and beautiful people.

hmm...that was a great night's sleep saturday night. especially after keifer's. whoa. keifer's?


thanks, mary gauthier, for giving me an entry title today.

Freedom has a scent/Like the top of a new born baby's head

after seeing pictures of windsor ruins at the Pretty Fakes blog, i was encouraged to post my own picture from over 2 years ago. it is a ghost of a place that carries a certain sadness of times gone by on its great hulking columns:




anyway, other than that, i did have a funky-fresh-&-peaceful (see Samurai Fiction) road trip with K$ last month. we went to Graceland II on our way back from memphis. i must say, it's really....pink:





anyway, dude thinks his son is elvis reincarnated or something and told k$ and me no less than 5 times that we should "marry my boy and take'em for all he's worth and split it with me!"

hmm. i think i'll pass. dude has like a million elvis related pieces of memorabilia that are ROTTING under lights and lack of climate control. the archivist in me shuddered the second we walked into that house. k$'s convinced that he's building his Jailhouse Rock thing in the backyard so he can keep all the drunken ole miss sorority chicks under lock&key. creeeeepy. i was sort of scared, especially when he told us he'd go put on the gold "lame" (you know, luh-may or just lame) suit and marry us both right then and there!

of course, that won't stop me from going back or demanding that you get in your car right now and drive to holly springs.

bring my car i feel to smash it

i don't have anything particular to talk about really in depth today, but i have some thoughts swirling that, when put together, might make an interesting one-person conversation. because we all should have one-person conversations.

i forgot to post here about the npr.org live performance series. for those of you who are unaware, NPR has been recording shows of the musically great at the 930 club in D.C. the latest to post is Mogwai. my personal favorite is the neko case show. martha wainwright's on there also singing about an orifice or two. and in case any of your forgot my neko case story, let me recap:




went to the hi-tone to hear some tunes (along with the high dials...they were really pretty great and fiddled with a sitar at the end of the set). the show was great (kelly hogan was on tour, so the harmonies were rocking my face off) and it was 5000 degrees in the place, which is why i look sticky and icky. i also look like a giant next to neko case and her 2-ft frame. anyway, so i met her, she signed my stuff and we took a picture. then we ran off into the night and got married in a fever and had lots of redheaded babies.

and then i ran away from the paparazzi. i hate having to ALWAYS travel incognito.



and all of that is true.
or not.
maybe not those last few parts.

anyway, so ends my obsessi...erm, story of neko case.

(in that picture i was actually on my way to Graceland II in holly springs. now THAT'S a story)

so then! i went to subway (the actual eat fresh!, not the infested hole) on state st. the next week about 8ish and ran into my buddy with the rings. he proceeded to recite to me on the way to my car. his recitation included his jesus proclamation, that all the rings are from "dead people" (omg did he kill them? does he want my non-rings, too? does he have the FINGERS, too?!?), and that "they're trying to get frank melton on child molestation. that's like trying to catch michael jackson." hm. frank melton=michael jackson.

that's a funny comparison. funny because it's TRUE. just kidding. bahrain'd never let mr. crazy pants happen in.

and then he fake cried about his momma running away new orleans and the hurricane. and when he suddenly finished his stories, he asked me to buy cigarettes. and saluted me.

man...i love the jackson crazies.

last thought: have you seen the austin city limits festival lineup? i can now profess my fascination and undying adoration to carl newman.

You who are so good with words/And at keeping things vague

i made a conscious decision while brushing my teeth this morning to work on becoming a better storyteller. it is a luscious craft when practiced with enthusiasm and genuine care for your audience. i am/will be the storyteller in my writing. these days my writing takes the form of lyrics. i have creative momentum and it feels...refreshing. now i just need the notes to bolster the talk. creative energy has a rush like none other. i do hope that i am able to wrangle that energy and exploit to my advantage.

i've been reading Positively 4th Street (musings on joan baez, mimi baez farina, richard farina, and briefly, bob dylan). it's something interesting to experience the early musical life of the baez sisters, although i'm also seeing a thread of thievery in joan baez. maybe she just needed to get comfortable with herself, her own presence. that's something similar to what i've been experiencing lately, getting comfortable again in my own skin, asserting my presence, regaining my voice. i didn't think reading something like this would cause such reflection.

speaking of reflection, i had a wonderful moment of clarity saturday night. after seeing the essex green at the red room (which, a moment in itself, was an amazing show and caused a fiery need in me to create--i also had the realization that i know NO ONE in the creative community anymore and that i want to know every single person i saw there), we headed over to Schimmel's to join friends for Subway night. for those of you reading who are unawares of the greatness of the Subway (not the eat fresh! sandwich, kids, a bonified juke joint), i'll fill you in: in a nutshell, Subway was a downtown Jackson dump, a hole in the wall firetrap. BUT! the band, the house rockers, are an awesome group of musicians with true blues in their souls that bleeds from their fingertips. they were often joined by other great musicians. the Subway has since shut down, but the band was taken in by the chi-chi place in my neighborhood.

saturday night i remembered what it felt like to be free. i danced, i danced, i danced. the night seemed so brief and surreal, but it was a moment of cleansing, of clarity, like i said. i even had my own personal romeo, vowing not to hurt me and shower me with care. i declined. i wanted, rather, to delight in my very own momentum.

it's all very overwhelming, but my path is clearing.

and the sky's so deep/you can't find your sleep/keeps you walking through these tears

I'm shocked and saddened by news I learned upon reading that little bitch, Pitchfork, this morning.

Grant McLennan died this weekend.

For those of you who are unaware of the goodness of the Go-Betweens, you're really missing a great piece of musical love. They're highly influenced by that sunny 60s sound plus folk-rock plus some of the best songwriter-musicians to grace this earth. In all, it equates jangly guitars and smart lyrics...as if Fairport Convention married the Velvet Underground. I was really excited about experiencing the surge of new material. Oceans Apart is AMAZING (even though I failed to include it in my personal Best of 2005). They get no listen from the crowds, but the critics love'em...always have.

In honor of a great songwriter passed, I'm listening to That Striped Sunlight Sound today.

(did you know that Tom Petty, the Donnas, the Cure, the Pixies, the Happy Mondays [!!!], and Beck all have rumored 2006 releases???--should make the next year of shows verrrrry interesting.)