See the sky about to rain

Thank goodness for electrical outlets on trains.

I spent a total of about 20 hours on buses or in shady, shady greyhound stations in the last 48 hours, where the slightest of amenities is overlooked, having been deemed entirely superfluous. Now epic bus trips are nothing foreign to me. I have a romantic flair in me somewhere, and have at least on one other occasion undertaken to ride a bus for an unneccesarily long pilgrimage with the intention of "learning about myself" and "seeing the country." Too bad the people who ride greyhound buses are so fucking scary that it doesn't really matter how well-intentioned your goals are.

But more on that another time.

The good thing about traveling (for me anyway) is that it almost always yields a huge chunk of inspiration for writing. I dunno if it's the change of scenery as much as just the feeling of getting something done without having to acutally do anything at all. Things progress whether or not you want them to. Its actually the closest thing I've known to a sacntuary in my lifetime; there's no pressure to be doing something else since you're stuck where you are, so whatever you happen to accomplish during that time is bonus material.

I've kinda stalemated myself, though. Things aren't coming quite as easily as I'm accustomed to during travels. I knew that two weekends of weddings in a row would probably depress the hell outta me, but I didn't think it would drain me down to skeletal proportions. Last weekend, while weddinging it up, I felt a strange piece of paper in my blazer pocket, and pulled out a ticket stub from the first play I saw with her, complete with her name printed on it. I felt sick for a day. You don't want to go to more weddings when you feel that way.

Now I'm on the aforementioned train after meeting up briefly with my dad, stepmom and brother in DC. It was really nice seeing them, though I was so thoroughly exhausted that I fear I may have been pretty poor company.

Seeing Funk and Jason at the wedding really was worth the trip. It's nice I have friends you've got such a cool history with, even if they're practically on the other side of the world. A nice surprise was seeing my old friend Chris Tillman again. I'd totally forgotten how cool that guy is. Funk and I came up with a movie idea all spur-of-the-moment like at the wedding. It's times like these that frustrate the hell outta me andmake me really wish that Project Ginger had been telepods (Fly-like mishaps aside).

Back to the train. My dad had recommended a specific side and view for the ride, but it's become so inky dark outside that all I can see is my own reflection. I never seem to look the way I should, or the way I picture myself looking. Right now I look like some hunched Dickensian poet, and the writers block only makes this more image more pathetic.

Dad gave me my old middle school saxophone today, which I haven't used in probably like eight years. I'm stoked to bust it out again and add it to my ever-growing menagerie. Guess I need to pick up a mouthpiece somewheres.

Can't stop listening to Neil Young's On the Beach. A mostly forgotten album. Feels familiar.

Kingdom Come

Feeling antsy led me to busking for about an hour last night, starting around 1 am. Not prime time for such a thing, especially with erratic train schedules due to construction. I didn't make a dime, but it purged me of my restlessness, so woohoo.

Over the weekend while attending a wedding in the Poconoes, my "sore" wrist that I'd mentioned a few days ago became grossly swollen to the point where I was freaking out a bit. It's gone down since, but last night it flared up again, proving to me that this probably has something to do with my strumming. I don't feel like I'm doing anything wrong per se, but evidently my body feels differently. Or maybe my epic four and half hour stint on Friday was simply too much for my wrist to handle. I dunno. But I guess I'm gonna lay off for a while.

Thank God I have a real job right now. I was imagining myself as a lone balladeer wandering from town to town in the wild west, playing for breadrolls and sleeping on straw pillows...couldn't afford to have a bum wrist in that scenario. I'd likely turn into a left-handed gunslinger or somesuch. Actually, I feel like anybody with a bum anything back then would be pretty much boned.

New song: "Turn" by Travis.

Leechwater

Went busking for so long last night that my strumming arm was rendered completely useless for nearly 24 hours. I've never quite experienced that level of fatigue from playing before. Well, sometimes vocally, sure. But my strumming is usually basic enough not to cause any unusual behavior. I dunno if I fancied things up last night, if it was just a really long time to play, or if I'm sore 'cause I hadn't played much in about a week. Not important, just interesting.

Setbacks, setbacks. I had the day off today, but was entirely incapable of getting anything done. Unless you count watching The Bridge, a totally fascinating documentary. Not something I should be watching probably, but whatevs.

This week I finally did accomplish a few things that I'd been meaning to get around to: I mounted my guitar hanger on my wall so as to display my beautiful (and as of yet, unnamed) telecaster, and nailed up a picture of this big ole music note. It used to be my dad's, and since I was a kid I've always loved it. There's a little conductor standing in front of the mammoth note, his arms splayed out in mid-conduction. There's not really a way to describe how cool it is (that's why there's the picture), but let's just say that if I had a shirt with this note on it, I probably woulda got into Music Under New York, easy. But I wouldn't want that anyway.

I played the little-known Radiohead song "True Love Waits" for the first time tonight. So good. I'm not sure that subway stations contain the most appreciative audiences for that sorta thing. But I played it three times anyway.

A few minutes after started playing, some religious dude showed up and started passing out pamphlets. At first, I was kinda concerned that people would think we were in cahoots, and assume that all the songs I was playing were somehow linked to righteous lifestyles or something. This really got me in my head, and I began self-consciously scanning what I was singing for conservative/spiritual content. It seemed like just about anything could fit into that mould. (Mold?) "Heart of Gold" sounded suddenly preachy, "Make You Feel My Love" seemed frighteningly hymn-ish, and the aforementioned Radiohead song took on a much more after-school special feeling than it actually has. Not that I have a problem with any of that stuff, I just don't want to peddle that sort of stuff on the hapless patrons of the fine MTA, you know? Luckily, he seemed to repel so many people that they sought me as a comparative refuge, with all the dollars that come along with the services of such a haven.

I'd like to write more, but things are getting fuzzy in regards to my last outing; I think I've hit the highlights. The goal for this coming week is to finish revising and recording the songs I've been working on since May, which number about 20. We'll see what actually happens.

manta rays and munsters

It looks as though Nick at Nite's come up with an original program. Lord help us all.

The last two weeks have emulated the last five months, acting like an ever-shrinking, ever-quickening cyclone, spinning memory debris all over me and tossing me around like a bale of hay that's come apart. It sucks reliving stuff over and over again, and I'm not positive if I'm doing it to myself or not. It feels like you just can't help some things. But sure, I'm over it.

But what's weird is I can't talk about it. At all. If she's mentioned in the slightest, off I go again down some muddy mental slip 'n slide. But I literally can't bring myself to tell someone that I'm still upset about it. Or mention it, even. It's not like I don't want to, and I feel like I probably should, and that that stuff's all just going to fester into some mound in my gut if I don't coax it out like a tapeworm. But haven't I done that already? Like months ago? It's pathetic at this point. How long is this tapeworm, anyhow? I need to get over this. But I'm not yet. And I just can't admit it.

I guess that energy has to go somewhere, so I've been upchucking it all into my notebook. I have no idea what kinds of songs I've been writing; they're frighteningly abstract, yet as close as I'll probably ever come to clearly and "publicly" discussing the stuff I'm made up of. Like last fall, inspiration is coming from mystery, hoaxes, myths....so much so that I'm starting to think its all I'm capable of drawing from. At least its a quasi-niche in singer-songwriter berserk-hyphenated land. But lately the pieces I've been working on have like literally scared me. They don't sound like me. It's like I've been digging and digging and it turns out I was performing an epic root canal, and now that I pull back and think on it for a sec, I'm some tiny tiny miner peering up from a crater inside some dark molar, and its clear that I never meant to take it this far because my rope sure ain't gonna get me outta here now. Not like I'm going off the deep end or anything, just that I've unleashed a tiny gremlin out of my head, and he's never going to quite fit back in again, and wouldn't really have done anybody any harm had he stayed in there to begin with. It's like someone representing me has screamed out these songs in protest of my stoicism in order to get my attention, to wake me up.

At times like these I always think its good I don't partake of heroin or something. I have, however, just finished a behemoth of a plate of fishsticks upon realizing that the only food I've got is a box of government-condemned Topps hamburgers. Maybe I shoulda ate 'em just to test out how well e. coli stands up to my new health insurance.

Is it bad that I'm more upset that there's a pumpkin shortage than glad that there's not another flu vaccine shortage?

I can't stop this gross pull to the stations...its like this every night. All I can think about is how badly I need to perform this stuff, even if its just to a bunch of MTA patrons who are probably too busy direct-feeding a Top 40's I.V. right into their brains to notice some morose kid banging on a stringbox. It probably is better that way, heaven knows how awful these songs actually are in all likelihood.

This is kind of a weirder post, but my mind's getting all cannibalistic on me, so I may as well let it do its thing.

New Radiohead album in a few hours. Pathetic as it seems, i'm sure i'll end up feeling immensely unaccomplished in some overarching sense after I hear it. That being said, I can't recall the last time I felt this excited about anything.