02/25/04

with less than 24 hours to spend in my apartment between trips, it's very amusing to see what happens when i open the front door at 8 pm at night.

first i delete spam. i don't answer anything, i just delete the spam and leave everything else. it's like squeezing an overripe pimple.

i put on a bowie cd very loud and started running around yipping and putting clothes that were piled three feet high from the photoshoot we did the morning we left for tourm while simlulataneously
sorting out the real mail and throwing away pieces of trash on the floor and putting objects in places closer to their natural habitats while cleaning a dish or two while replacing bedding tour items to the bed and putting tour tea back on the kitchen shelf (i don't know why i have to do that, i'm just going to pack it again tomorrow).
i like running while doing this, not walking, it makes it seem like more fun somehow.

about a year ago i misplaced my favorite fountain pen, it was small and green and belonged to my mother once.

also about a year ago, i recieved a very strange gift from a friend of my landlord's who swept in for a visit; he had been in some tropical country and brought me a collection of long little plastic bags with different exotic spices. i do not cook. but these were not in jars, and i couldnt just THROW THEM AWAY so i bundled them up in a rubber band and put them on the shelf in the kitchen.
about a half hour ago i found that the bundle had fallen onto the counter and when i picked it up it leaked white and i found that a small mouse friend had decided that the coconut powder was a tasty dinenr and that's why it must have fallen and that is why it was leaking white.

and the green fountain pen was lodged into the bundle of spices.

i really love nights like these.

this last tour was astounding....people in all different cities love our band. i am constantly amazed how the word of mouth is getting people out of their living rooms and into clubs in the middle of nowhere.

02/21/04

head.......is.........imploding.
please god, let me remember why i am doing this in the first place.......
make....music.......
make......music.........
must...make.....music......
not to answer phone calls, send press kits and answer endless emails.

it's happening very quickly, and when is there time to pee and take a walk?

my beau has recovered, and all of you who have sent supportive emails and stories are a constant reminder of how humanity overcomes the wickedness of constant internet communique.
he came home form rehab a few days ago and wouldn't fate just turn i's wicked turn and have me going off on endless tour just when i want to bury my head in someone's chest and remain there for a few months.

it's funny, if i had a graph of where my head wanders when it has a moment to wander.

a few years ago it was turns of phrase and theatrical stage sets and songs and songs and the occasional gas bill.
now it's booking agent business agent manager tour rider email phone email when will i maybe have an hour to drive to lexington and visit my family and curl up in a ball and
the piano has turned into a poetic resting place for unlistened-to cds that i buy on a whim.

but that's a lie.

death cab for cutie's new cd "transatlantacism" has played on repeat about 5 times and the lyrics and melodies remind me that music is there, it's there....buried under a pile of business and triumphant after all.

02/08/04 - and life goes on.....

my beau is doing fine. it's been an excruciating process but bit by bit he started to move his hands, and then his arms, and now he's able to sit up and he is breathing on his own (instead of letting that odd loud machine do it for him) and he should be going into rehab any day. He still cannot talk but there is an odd device that they screw into the hole in his neck(yow) that acts like a voicebox that allows him to talk a little bit at a time. I go in and visit every day i can, when we're not out of town, the hospital has become some weird peaceful second home, the salad bar in the hospital cafeteria is actually not half bad....and sometimes at the cashier counter the cook puts a plate of the leftover ends of loaves of sweet breads for passers-by to sample.....poppyseed bread.....marble chocolate bread.....I try to entertain him by reading some of my favorite short stories (the happy prince by oscar wilde is one of my favorites and i always cry when i get to the part at the end where the sparrow dies). Hospitals are such a foreign real-life world to enter when you are doing things that seem so unsubstantial all day. What is booking a rock show or writing a script to a video compared to the task that is being performed by a man only a little bit older than me, here at my side, deciding whether to take the trachiostomy out or not? what the fuck? what on EARTH am i doing with my life? once again, why did i not learn how to do something practical, something that did not involve getting attention for a living, like...building suspension bridges?

and every day the future is piling up with a scheulde that i don't even really believe in (sort of like the way I don't believe that people REALLY believe in the apocolypse and the rapture).

it's 4 in the morning and i've been up all night coming up wiht clever ideas for the video that pope is going to shoot for "missed me".....it'll be excellent. we shoot at the end of the month between tours and i think we will put out a DVD collection of 4 or 5 videos this coming fall. that seems very far away and also right around the bend. fucking hell, i can't wait for spring.

my two new favorite records:
rufus wainwright "want one": awesome....radiohead meets queen. i think we might cover the first song.
Sufjan Stevens "Greetings from Michigan State": some tracks I can't stand, but the rest I love. Brian loves this one and got it for me.