...you were a high school student, or an undergraduate, and things were just *cool*?
Not everything mind you, but a ride late at night with someone's new CD, or the bar you'd go to after classes, or this new book or this class you were taking...
it was just cool, like it made you think,
"hey, a lot of life might be boring or tedious or crappy, but there's this place that isn't like that, I'm gonna find out more about it, and though it isn't a physical place, I'm still gonna move there, because all travel is mental travel."
I'd say that, for the moment, I've found it in Houston.
Of course, that doesn't mean that Houston is all *cool*, or that there is more cool here than in in DC or London or Opelika for that matter.
It just means that, tonight was cool like Coronas with lime and philosophy class. And that matters not because I think for one moment that work tomorrow won't be frustrating and tedious. That's not the point. The point is that, it occurs to me that that feeling of cool that existed in college wasn't illusion. No, that's not the point either. Hard to express this... maybe this: you don't have to be young and naive to feel that way. Or, it is possible to feel that way in spite of knowing what in time you inevitably find out about the world.
Tonight, in case I didn't mention it, was a house concert with Sarah Golden and Anais Mitchell. But more than the concert (which was amazing), tonight reminded me of sitting around at Maps while T and KP played guitar and sang Indigo Girls, reminded me of A & H coming over to Opelika and drinking tequila shots and doing thrashy dancing with black eyeliner. Cruising the Alabama cyclone with T listening to Counting Crows before they recorded Big Yellow Taxi. Making tiny snowmen in Auburn at 2am during a freak snowstorm for while A was in bed.
Etc etc. Point is that it doesn't require lots of alcohol or a teary movie or photo album. Just spending an evening with a lot of open, lovely people who enjoy music. Who talk to each other. I could tell the story here but I'll save it.
And, for the record, I missed all of you and wished you were here to enjoy it with me.
***************
About the videos below. Started big, then small, then camera died. Quicktime format. Sorry about the guy's elbow. If you only have time for one, try The Wall (Hadestown).
Oh, and these are ridiculously big files, so it's gonna be Monday probably before they are up.
Namesake
Friday Night
Dont Fail Me Now
The Wall (Hadestown)
Changer
Venus
Out of Pawn
Before the Eyes of Storytelling Girls
Shenandoah
The Belly and the Beast
Autumns Ashes
I Wear Your Dress (start)
Others not recorded:
Orion
Hades and Persephone
Song of the Magi
Your Fonder Heart
Time after Time (Cyndi Lauper sing-along)
Two Kids
1984
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Friday, March 16, 2007
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Storm Front Coming
Thinking about heading WNW to SXSW.
Or remembering which way winds blow in winter, I may just kick back and watch the clouds gathering, and contemplate how close lightning may strike.
Or remembering which way winds blow in winter, I may just kick back and watch the clouds gathering, and contemplate how close lightning may strike.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Currently obsessing over
AntiChrist Television Blues
Oh! my little mocking bird sing!
Oh! my little mocking bird sing!
I need you to get up on that stage for me, honey,
And show the men it's not about the money.
Wanna hold a mirror up to the world,
So they can see themselves inside my little girl!
Oh! my little mocking bird sing!
Oh! my little mocking bird sing!
I need you to get up on that stage for me, honey,
And show the men it's not about the money.
Wanna hold a mirror up to the world,
So they can see themselves inside my little girl!
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Light
Some days are happy ones. Maybe it's getting 3 hours sleep. Maybe the big breakfast at the local greasy spoon on an empty stomach. The waitress in the funny cowboy hat. The glorious sunlight on wisps of clouds, fresh morning air. The black and yellow birds drinking from puddles in the always cracked pavements.
Anais Mitchell playing on the stereo.
There is much to love in the world. More than fits in a little mind at one time.
But my, my, my.
Isn't it something special when it overflows.
Anais Mitchell playing on the stereo.
There is much to love in the world. More than fits in a little mind at one time.
But my, my, my.
Isn't it something special when it overflows.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
New Music, Old Friends
Well, not so old. But Anais Mitchell's "The Brightness" and The Arcade Fire's "Neon Fire" are out now.
God bless iTunes.
Reviews to come.
God bless iTunes.
Reviews to come.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
roots
so like i said i've been wanting roots for a long time.
or to be more precise, what comes from roots.
fruit.
i want fruit trees.
blueberrys like in grandmas yard
blackberries by the fence
loquats and kumquats
hell even a fig or two, and I never ate those as a kid.
for 15 years i've moved place to place
never longer in one apartment than about 20 months with KP in Opelika
dreaming of a nice house
a quiet car to drive to the theatre
and enough money to eat good food and buy books
but each place has been temporary
with D&G in a spare room
in dorms
with T&T chasing rats and throwing darts
cold wet english dorms
sunny opelika
mother in law's
roommates at A's university
flat by the trains in Woking
and by the trains in Leatherhead
in J's spare room in Virginia, driving weekends to Boston
apartments in Fairfax knowing moves were coming for both A and I
and to Texas, next to a nice grocery store
total lawns mowed: 1
I turn 35 this year, and the closest friends I've had are very far away. I talk to them much less than I'd like to, and am often ashamed by how little I know of their daily lives. All our lives are only to get more complicated and busy in the years ahead.
That scares me.
Several months ago, when my parents first came to visit me here, I wanted to take them out for dinner. I realized I only ever went to a few restaurants. That's all I had ever done anywhere except Auburn and Foley, the two places I had considered homes. Every other town was temporary, passing through. Waiting for the place where the careers and the partners and the friends and family all came magically together.
Several weeks ago, I realized that if I wanted to be able to entertain people when they came here, that I needed to get to know the city myself. It is fun to visit a city when you know someone who lives there... really lives there. Not someone who hangs out in their apartment and kills time waiting for a better tomorrow. I found the new Zagat survey for Texas restaurants, Zagat that I had come to love in Washington. Friends from work came down on business expenses, I could entertain them. I found a storyline for adventuring into the city.
Several days ago, I was sitting in my car on a Sunday afternoon. Garrison Keillor was on the radio, a rerun of the previous day's Prairie Home Companion. I remembered how 13 years earlier I sat in my car on a warm day in Auburn, outside the Post Office, love letter in hand to send to A, but waiting to hear the end of Prairie Home Companion because you could actually get good reception in that parking lot. How I had thought then that if there was something good, soul-affirmingly good (like M&M) about the world, and about America (which I was considering leaving), this was it. And how years later, after September 11, when so much of what I had grown up loving, fiercely, fiercely, about the United States was being sullied and perhaps destroyed, when my love for the country was feeling increasingly like an unrequited love for an illusion, how it was then that I heard Garrison Keillor speak, as Jimmy Carter had spoken, about the fundamental decency and goodness of the country not in fearful, hateful, selfish terms, but as something precious that must be protected not by guns but by the voices of people not afraid to speak truth to power and prejudice. And hearing that voice on a Sunday afternoon, as cars from the mega-church filled cafeteria parking lots, I thought how I wished I had seen him perform in person. And then wishing fulfilled, hearing that he would speak to the Progressive Forum in Houston.
Several days ago I sat twenty feet from him, and his spirit filled me with the hope that (paraphrasing I think John Adams wishes) our country would be honorable and successful, but failing that, honorable. Walking from dinner to the performance hall, I passed the city theatre, the Alley Theatre, and remembered Sundays in Atlanta to see musicals. I haven't listened to a new musical I liked in years, but I loved those trips, and the dream of a life filled with unimagined wonders. Yet in 10 years in the suburbs of London and Washington, I had seen fewer plays than any one year as a college student in Auburn or Manchester. I bought season tickets later that night.
Several hours ago I got a phone call that the life of an aunt I love was in danger. Five hours earlier I walked back from lunch in the new heat, thinking that in life it is important to know what you want, but to plan based on what you expect. I said, "for example, I hope nobody I love ever dies, and I've been very lucky that I've lost almost no loved ones my entire life. But I would be foolish to believe and plan that nobody ever would." I thought of this as A had spoke to me of her worry about presenting her work, and how she hoped being left off a presentation list wasn't a jinx. I thought, you accept the fear that bad things can happen, but then move on to what you can do to make matters better. And that there was no such thing as jinxes.
Five hours later I was thinking of jinxes again.
Wishing I could do something to make things better.
Hating that my job, which indirectly keeps me away from those I love, is acutely doing so now.
Not knowing who to call.
Not so interested in the political scandal of the day or stock prices.
Wanting to hear how everyone was. Wanting to sit in the waiting room and get someone coffee. More thankful than is rational that T wants to have coffee at the airport tomorrow.
With A asleep in London, and the Alabama contingent manning the phones, I sat to reading Tiny Cat Pants and was impressed not just by how consistently Aunt B can open her mind to people, but also by how effectively she has knit together a community of strangers and not-so-strangers across different geographic, age and political distances.
One post that got my attention involved those who say that "all we can do is pray", and the response that more is asked than prayer - action is required. And I think of Oprah's statement (that I'm not sure I fully agree with but anyway) that it is not Love but Courage that is most valuable, because without courage love does nothing.
Action, love, courage, community. Things I believe in, things I'm trying more every day to live.
or to be more precise, what comes from roots.
fruit.
i want fruit trees.
blueberrys like in grandmas yard
blackberries by the fence
loquats and kumquats
hell even a fig or two, and I never ate those as a kid.
for 15 years i've moved place to place
never longer in one apartment than about 20 months with KP in Opelika
dreaming of a nice house
a quiet car to drive to the theatre
and enough money to eat good food and buy books
but each place has been temporary
with D&G in a spare room
in dorms
with T&T chasing rats and throwing darts
cold wet english dorms
sunny opelika
mother in law's
roommates at A's university
flat by the trains in Woking
and by the trains in Leatherhead
in J's spare room in Virginia, driving weekends to Boston
apartments in Fairfax knowing moves were coming for both A and I
and to Texas, next to a nice grocery store
total lawns mowed: 1
I turn 35 this year, and the closest friends I've had are very far away. I talk to them much less than I'd like to, and am often ashamed by how little I know of their daily lives. All our lives are only to get more complicated and busy in the years ahead.
That scares me.
Several months ago, when my parents first came to visit me here, I wanted to take them out for dinner. I realized I only ever went to a few restaurants. That's all I had ever done anywhere except Auburn and Foley, the two places I had considered homes. Every other town was temporary, passing through. Waiting for the place where the careers and the partners and the friends and family all came magically together.
Several weeks ago, I realized that if I wanted to be able to entertain people when they came here, that I needed to get to know the city myself. It is fun to visit a city when you know someone who lives there... really lives there. Not someone who hangs out in their apartment and kills time waiting for a better tomorrow. I found the new Zagat survey for Texas restaurants, Zagat that I had come to love in Washington. Friends from work came down on business expenses, I could entertain them. I found a storyline for adventuring into the city.
Several days ago, I was sitting in my car on a Sunday afternoon. Garrison Keillor was on the radio, a rerun of the previous day's Prairie Home Companion. I remembered how 13 years earlier I sat in my car on a warm day in Auburn, outside the Post Office, love letter in hand to send to A, but waiting to hear the end of Prairie Home Companion because you could actually get good reception in that parking lot. How I had thought then that if there was something good, soul-affirmingly good (like M&M) about the world, and about America (which I was considering leaving), this was it. And how years later, after September 11, when so much of what I had grown up loving, fiercely, fiercely, about the United States was being sullied and perhaps destroyed, when my love for the country was feeling increasingly like an unrequited love for an illusion, how it was then that I heard Garrison Keillor speak, as Jimmy Carter had spoken, about the fundamental decency and goodness of the country not in fearful, hateful, selfish terms, but as something precious that must be protected not by guns but by the voices of people not afraid to speak truth to power and prejudice. And hearing that voice on a Sunday afternoon, as cars from the mega-church filled cafeteria parking lots, I thought how I wished I had seen him perform in person. And then wishing fulfilled, hearing that he would speak to the Progressive Forum in Houston.
Several days ago I sat twenty feet from him, and his spirit filled me with the hope that (paraphrasing I think John Adams wishes) our country would be honorable and successful, but failing that, honorable. Walking from dinner to the performance hall, I passed the city theatre, the Alley Theatre, and remembered Sundays in Atlanta to see musicals. I haven't listened to a new musical I liked in years, but I loved those trips, and the dream of a life filled with unimagined wonders. Yet in 10 years in the suburbs of London and Washington, I had seen fewer plays than any one year as a college student in Auburn or Manchester. I bought season tickets later that night.
Several hours ago I got a phone call that the life of an aunt I love was in danger. Five hours earlier I walked back from lunch in the new heat, thinking that in life it is important to know what you want, but to plan based on what you expect. I said, "for example, I hope nobody I love ever dies, and I've been very lucky that I've lost almost no loved ones my entire life. But I would be foolish to believe and plan that nobody ever would." I thought of this as A had spoke to me of her worry about presenting her work, and how she hoped being left off a presentation list wasn't a jinx. I thought, you accept the fear that bad things can happen, but then move on to what you can do to make matters better. And that there was no such thing as jinxes.
Five hours later I was thinking of jinxes again.
Wishing I could do something to make things better.
Hating that my job, which indirectly keeps me away from those I love, is acutely doing so now.
Not knowing who to call.
Not so interested in the political scandal of the day or stock prices.
Wanting to hear how everyone was. Wanting to sit in the waiting room and get someone coffee. More thankful than is rational that T wants to have coffee at the airport tomorrow.
With A asleep in London, and the Alabama contingent manning the phones, I sat to reading Tiny Cat Pants and was impressed not just by how consistently Aunt B can open her mind to people, but also by how effectively she has knit together a community of strangers and not-so-strangers across different geographic, age and political distances.
One post that got my attention involved those who say that "all we can do is pray", and the response that more is asked than prayer - action is required. And I think of Oprah's statement (that I'm not sure I fully agree with but anyway) that it is not Love but Courage that is most valuable, because without courage love does nothing.
Action, love, courage, community. Things I believe in, things I'm trying more every day to live.
40 days and 40 nights
...since a decent post.
That's really pretty pitiful, so I'm gonna remedy that now.
I have greater respect than ever for Aunt B at Tiny Cat Pants. It's easy to start something, the challenge is staying with it day after day.
Also, I like to do fun and exciting new projects which leave little time for old habits.
I've gotten out of my exercise and good eating habits a bit. Haven't really gained any weight back, but I can tell the difference walking 3 miles once a week versus 5 times a week.
I find myself missing friends and family a lot. This especially over the past 2-3 weeks. Then I spoke to T today after M's surgery, and I'm so looking forward to just sitting down with her. There are many times when I question my life priorities, made worse with A being so far away. I've learned to really enjoy parts of Houston; it's becoming a place I like being, but it's hard to overstate my envy at those who can just go over to the hospital. I used to be able to go over to the hospital. I hate that I can't. While I've always had the desire to see the world and enjoy things that are not available in a small Alabama town, I've never had same degree of negative things pushing me away as some of my other loved ones. Maybe that's because I moved away so soon after high school and never really lived there again. But for whatever reasons, I really do love so much and so many there, and I have wonderful memories that (while I recognize them as just memories) are painfully dislocative when I want to be with the people I love.
I'm in KP withdrawal due to lack of posts, and T withdrawal due to lack of cell reception. I had gotten used to chatting with T a few nights a week when he worked at the hotel, and am hoping very much that his new schedule combined with my Gulf Coast location will make it possible to spend more than a few hours talking. It takes more than a few hours.
I also know KP will be increasingly busy, if not very soon then in the near future. I know people who really do well with phones, I remember hearing of G/D calling A or S calling A daily or more, and I had a friend at work in Virginia who talked to her mother daily. And I remember an old girlfriend once saying that she envied me and my cousins, saying she had nobody so close. I find myself envying me then as well.
Which leads me in part to posting. I've found at work that, and maybe I'm different than most folks on this, but I hate bothering people. I've mentioned this before. The fact that A and I so often do everything together probably informs or reinforces this, but when I'm wishing to be spending time with people and thinking how poor a substitute phones are, it seems a bit of an inconvenience to take people away from those they are choosing to be with, so they can spend time on ... horrors ... the phone.
I mentioned work but then left that hanging.
Often in my job I have to go and ask for other people's help with stuff. I do it cheerfully and it is often fine, but it seems inevitably I have want to ask about more things than they have time to discuss, so I'm left in the awkward position of trying to figure out when to just leave them alone. I don't like that sense of imposition. Me, I try again to be very cheerful and friendly when people need something from me, and people get surprised how much time I take to help. It's flattering but depressing - I think everyone should do that, and it makes me aware that others are more jealous of their time than I am. So "people are busy" plus "phones suck" equals "calling someone is equivalent to asking someone if they can hold the flashlight while I fix the engine". Sure you might have a nice chat at the same time, but it's really a hassle in the scheme of things.
Or maybe the fear is that someone else will consider it that. Probably more along that line. Classic fear of rejection, or simply a fear of reaffirming how far apart people really are?
Okay, on that cheery note, I've been thinking that I ought to find some way to share what I've been doing in town, because as I mentioned before the self-pity session, I have been actually enjoying Houston.
I've mentioned the restaurants. I'm posting photos of restaurants on Flickr. Most of these are drive-bys, but as I try them I am getting multiple photos of those. Perhaps posting some reviews up here would be interesting?
I've also been going to the theatre. I've seen Homebody/Kabul and Hitchcock Blonde. I also heard Garrison Keillor speak at the Progressive Forum, where the guy who wrote The Weather Makers (an influential global warming book) will be speaking in a week or so. I used to think when I was in college that I'd move to Atlanta and get season tickets to the Fox Theatre. I bought season tickets to the Alley Theatre in Houston, and they are the first season tickets I've had since Auburn.
I've been missing roots. This is a whole 'nother post, and the thought "break them up like Aunt B does" is ringing through my head... what the hell...
That's really pretty pitiful, so I'm gonna remedy that now.
I have greater respect than ever for Aunt B at Tiny Cat Pants. It's easy to start something, the challenge is staying with it day after day.
Also, I like to do fun and exciting new projects which leave little time for old habits.
I've gotten out of my exercise and good eating habits a bit. Haven't really gained any weight back, but I can tell the difference walking 3 miles once a week versus 5 times a week.
I find myself missing friends and family a lot. This especially over the past 2-3 weeks. Then I spoke to T today after M's surgery, and I'm so looking forward to just sitting down with her. There are many times when I question my life priorities, made worse with A being so far away. I've learned to really enjoy parts of Houston; it's becoming a place I like being, but it's hard to overstate my envy at those who can just go over to the hospital. I used to be able to go over to the hospital. I hate that I can't. While I've always had the desire to see the world and enjoy things that are not available in a small Alabama town, I've never had same degree of negative things pushing me away as some of my other loved ones. Maybe that's because I moved away so soon after high school and never really lived there again. But for whatever reasons, I really do love so much and so many there, and I have wonderful memories that (while I recognize them as just memories) are painfully dislocative when I want to be with the people I love.
I'm in KP withdrawal due to lack of posts, and T withdrawal due to lack of cell reception. I had gotten used to chatting with T a few nights a week when he worked at the hotel, and am hoping very much that his new schedule combined with my Gulf Coast location will make it possible to spend more than a few hours talking. It takes more than a few hours.
I also know KP will be increasingly busy, if not very soon then in the near future. I know people who really do well with phones, I remember hearing of G/D calling A or S calling A daily or more, and I had a friend at work in Virginia who talked to her mother daily. And I remember an old girlfriend once saying that she envied me and my cousins, saying she had nobody so close. I find myself envying me then as well.
Which leads me in part to posting. I've found at work that, and maybe I'm different than most folks on this, but I hate bothering people. I've mentioned this before. The fact that A and I so often do everything together probably informs or reinforces this, but when I'm wishing to be spending time with people and thinking how poor a substitute phones are, it seems a bit of an inconvenience to take people away from those they are choosing to be with, so they can spend time on ... horrors ... the phone.
I mentioned work but then left that hanging.
Often in my job I have to go and ask for other people's help with stuff. I do it cheerfully and it is often fine, but it seems inevitably I have want to ask about more things than they have time to discuss, so I'm left in the awkward position of trying to figure out when to just leave them alone. I don't like that sense of imposition. Me, I try again to be very cheerful and friendly when people need something from me, and people get surprised how much time I take to help. It's flattering but depressing - I think everyone should do that, and it makes me aware that others are more jealous of their time than I am. So "people are busy" plus "phones suck" equals "calling someone is equivalent to asking someone if they can hold the flashlight while I fix the engine". Sure you might have a nice chat at the same time, but it's really a hassle in the scheme of things.
Or maybe the fear is that someone else will consider it that. Probably more along that line. Classic fear of rejection, or simply a fear of reaffirming how far apart people really are?
Okay, on that cheery note, I've been thinking that I ought to find some way to share what I've been doing in town, because as I mentioned before the self-pity session, I have been actually enjoying Houston.
I've mentioned the restaurants. I'm posting photos of restaurants on Flickr. Most of these are drive-bys, but as I try them I am getting multiple photos of those. Perhaps posting some reviews up here would be interesting?
I've also been going to the theatre. I've seen Homebody/Kabul and Hitchcock Blonde. I also heard Garrison Keillor speak at the Progressive Forum, where the guy who wrote The Weather Makers (an influential global warming book) will be speaking in a week or so. I used to think when I was in college that I'd move to Atlanta and get season tickets to the Fox Theatre. I bought season tickets to the Alley Theatre in Houston, and they are the first season tickets I've had since Auburn.
I've been missing roots. This is a whole 'nother post, and the thought "break them up like Aunt B does" is ringing through my head... what the hell...
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Eat more
I should, I suppose, be writing about more interesting things. What am I doing, you might ask.
Well, still working on the web site thing. About the only thing that I would consider "artistic" was this illustration I did for restaurants without photos:
For those wanting a brain teaser, this is the sort of thing that I have been pondering. (Charles might be interested in these...)
1) Imagine I were to draw a closed shape on paper, all straight-line edges (no curves). Then using carbon paper (remember that?) I put a dot at each vertex. Then I hand you the carbon with just the dots. Would you be able to reconstruct it from just the dots, if I told you that none of the lines/sides cross each other? Note that the shape may be concave.
2) If you knew both the coordinates of each vertex and where the lines went, and then I gave you the coordinates of another point, could you determine whether the point was inside the closed shape *without* graphing it? ("Inside" in the sense that the center of a crescent moon shape is *not* inside the shape.) What formula/algorithm would you use to determine this?
That's all to say, this is why I haven't been blogging. Not exactly dinner conversation.
Off to measure another hundred coordinates on the map...
Well, still working on the web site thing. About the only thing that I would consider "artistic" was this illustration I did for restaurants without photos:
For those wanting a brain teaser, this is the sort of thing that I have been pondering. (Charles might be interested in these...)
1) Imagine I were to draw a closed shape on paper, all straight-line edges (no curves). Then using carbon paper (remember that?) I put a dot at each vertex. Then I hand you the carbon with just the dots. Would you be able to reconstruct it from just the dots, if I told you that none of the lines/sides cross each other? Note that the shape may be concave.
2) If you knew both the coordinates of each vertex and where the lines went, and then I gave you the coordinates of another point, could you determine whether the point was inside the closed shape *without* graphing it? ("Inside" in the sense that the center of a crescent moon shape is *not* inside the shape.) What formula/algorithm would you use to determine this?
That's all to say, this is why I haven't been blogging. Not exactly dinner conversation.
Off to measure another hundred coordinates on the map...
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