further deconstruction of umbrella & other news

i was in the chiropractor's office while i was home, he wears a white turban and has a really long beard.
in the waiting room there was a copy of "Real Simple" which, as i understand it, is a magazine about living more simply.
the tagline of the magazine:

Real Simple: Life Made Easier.

what would have henry david said about this one?

but that is not the funny part of the story,
the funny part of the story was the fact that when i opened up the magazine randomly to see what was in there, i opened to an advertisement for something or other. i think it was actually a ad for another magazine, which also makes me laugh in retrospect.

anyway

the advertisement was a modern black-and-white affair with text and a photograph of a very weird-blender-looking-high-tech-device-with-a-handle

the text said:

"I don't know what it is, but I want it."



....................................................................................................................................................




being not in the habit of writing music anymore and anyway being disgusted with myself at the thought of using my own personal not-even-very-large heartbreak to write lyrics, i went to the local hipster bar instead.
i drank two oatmeal stouts and talked to a girl named rachel who has worked with the blind who approached me because she recognized me.
we talked about the coasts.

then i wrote in my journal and then i got sick of that and bummed a cigarette off a bike courier and drew a picture of myself feeling sorry for myself. i'm still 16. i can't handle the fact that my romantic self is dying, that i'm getting old, that doing the unexpected is too much of a bother.

that i know too well how things will go - because i do know, because i have the experience - and so i let go, i don't do.

i don't want to let go.
i want to torture myself, i want to feel hurt, i want to feel my own heart breaking, i want to remember what it's like to fall in love. it's been too many years, i've loved nothing but my self and my own creations and the scenery that goes along with it. fuck that.

meanwhile, my balanced self nods wisely saying: this is the pain that you have to experience to grow up. finding balance means feeling the pain of not doing certain things.

but i WANT to drive to other people's driveways at three in the morning and declare my love. i want to make things happen. irrational things.

exactly, my self says....but you don't.

but i don't WANT to be rational. i don't WANT to be responsible. that means i am OLD, and DEAD.
i realistically have nothing to lose.
why can't i be like i used to?
i want to be stupid.
run out naked into traffic and all that.




exactly.


.................................................................................................................


i just got an email from michael franti. we have the same management company - madison house (great bunch of people and dogs there).
we met a while ago in australia and went to each others shows. our music couldn't be more different but MAN the guys got soul. he is very very very tall and rarely wears shoes and writes overtly political reggae-rock-inspired songs about peace/politics/fucked-up-ness. he's a marley/mellow clash. i had no idea he was actually famous until i got home from that trip and they were playing his CD in my yoga studio, and everybody knew it. it's nice when you meet famous people and you don't know it. he's recording a new record in LA and doing yoga in the parking lot. he sounds like my long lost brother, except i'm not black. ok.


.........................................................................................


from comments:
"Sorry about your cat. I always looked at temporal bodies as slingshots being pushed to their breaking point, and when we die the trigger is released. I'd like to think your cat is getting the ride of it's life right now."



thank you for all your Cat Still Exists confirmations.

i had a dream last night and Govinda was in it.

here it was:

i was in my old house, the house in lexington that i grew up in. almost all my dreams take place there. my best friend, who's a shrink (go figure) says that the old house represents my Self. it's stable, never-left, never-changing, a good repository for whatever images my poor and over-worked little brain-imagination can stuff inside it. (i also have very frequently recurring dreams in which all my possessions, and my self, get immersed in some body of water but we'll leave that to another blog SHALL WE).

i was running around, distracted and breakneck speed, wearing sweatpants and a dirty t-shirt, as i usually did back then. i kept feeling something trapped in the cuff off my pants, something like a little furry animal still alive, and i kept thinking i would tend to it, but i kept forgetting. finally, after too many bouts of running around and doing, i remembered to reach my hand up through my pants to see what the object was.

it was a tiny yellow chick, just barely hatched and hours old, beaten and bruised from all of my hustling about. i felt a guilt so heavy i couldn't bear it: if only i had paid attention sooner. i even knew, i felt it moving; yet i did nothing.
it's eyes fluttered open but couldnt stay open. it was barely moving, barely breathing. i thought to myself that maybe i should kill it and put it out of its misery.

i did do that once.
i was at some friend's house and all alone because they hadn't arrived. and there on the ground by the side of the house was a dying bird, a chickadee, a little one. it was obvious the end was near, it was barely moving, heaving little bird breaths.
my heart was breaking and before i could think about it twice i lifted my right black mary-jane (i remember not wearing my boots, because the sole of the show was paper-thin) and stepped on that bird as hard as i could. and then again. and again. it was harder than i thought. which reminds me of how easy it is to be killed but how hard it is to kill yourself.

anyway, my right foot reverberated for a long time. even now, under my right arch i can feel that little warm body and the bones crackling, not giving as easily as i thought they would, defying death.

this bird in the dream was like that bird. i put the bird down on the floor of my old bedroom, which was emptied of all the original furniture though the walls were still covered in mess-collage.
under the window on the wooden floor where my futon used to be.

i was grief-stricken, guilt-ridden, panicked and convinced i was working against time to save this little life, if that was even possible, which i doubted.
i ran down to the kitchen. there was my mother. i started rustling through drawers and cabinets:

"i need something, quick. a bird upstairs is dying. something warm. some safe place to put it."

she didn't seem phased and she suggested that i use some of the leftover warm tea-bags that were being used in the dish she was making.

"no! those won't work....i need something NOW something and quickly."

and i grabbed a dishcloth and a big bowl and ran back up to my room. in the place where the bird had been was little kitten. not a newborn kitten but a grown-enough one. fully functional.
my logical mind ignored itself and i thought:

how amazing
the chick has evolved into a kitten, and lived.
and then i thought to myself: that's completely stupid.
chickens don't turn into cats.
but i was under some sort of fantasy-dream power so i let that one go.

the kitten hopped up onto the top of my old bedroom closet, where govinda was lying on her side, white belly bared, being her very happy and alive and very soft-and-furry self.
the kitten cuddled up against her and they seemed to get along famously. i felt a surge.

i jumped down from the closet ledge and saw a large plastic cat-carrier sort of structure on the bare wooden floor. an incubator. it was emanating warmth and peeking in it, i saw a large pink blanket folded and in the corner, the newly-hatched yellow chick sleeping soundly. my mother had put it there.

when i told this dream to my friend, i burst into tears telling that last part.

i am broken-hearted and feeling old and losing my sense of freedom and self. my step-sister gave birth two days ago. i'm an aunt.


i know what most of it means.



.........................................................................................................



from comments:

"
Well you know what they say. If you've gone over the cliff, as we all do once we struggle out of the womb, you can do one of two things:

1. Enjoy the view
2. Scream the whole way down

"

exactly.



....................................................................................................



i saw st. vincent play in boston at the middle east.
i think she's the most incredible thing i've seen/heard in a long time & i highly recommmend checking her shit out

regina+pj+joanjett+doris day

http://www.myspace.com/stvincent



go see her live if the tracks don't do it for you.
tell her hi.



.............................................................................



the other day, while driving back from the hospital and being faced with several faces of death, i was reminded of a poetic theme of my life: massachusetts avenue. i grew up off this street, many of my major epic break-ups and hook-ups and massive other goings-on have taken place on this street. i started composing a song in my head. i forced myself, when i got home, to finish the song.

it was not terrible, but it was Terrible. upon completing 47% of the song, it dawned on me that it was a complete, shameless rip-off of the jeep song, truce, ampersand and one other song which i forget now. that;s how bad it was.
i tried to finish it but instead lost myself back into the harsh reality that song-writing (any art, pretty much) is a craft that must be practiced, not mustered

(fuck, i really wanted to be artistic and lazy)



..................................

you can run into my arms
it's okay don't be alarmed (?)
come into me (delay: come into me)
there's no distance in between our love



ok stop right there.

there's no distance in between our love.

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN????

it makes no sense.



....................................................................................................


two years ago i joked that i would only ever endorse one product if i had the choice: Dr. Bronner's Magic Castile Soap.

we wrote them some fan mail and they responded by sending an entire box of soap. i was thrilled. i gave the soap away.

i wish i could give this soap to everyone.

now they have made a movie about Dr. Bronner's life and family and soap (Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox) and brian and i went to see it the other night at the coolidge.

it is an incredible film: the moral ABC, heartbreak, family, mental instability, human connection, the holocaust and it's long-reaching aftershocks. all there.

go see it if it's at an arthouse near you:

the site for the film:

http://www.magicsoapbox.com

A human being works hard to teach love to his enemy, to help unite all mankind free, or that being is not yet Human; so, go the second mile, hold the other cheek brave, not meek! For we're All-One or none! All-One! Exceptions eternally none! ABSOLUTE NONE!

ALL-ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



.............................................................................




from comments:

"I'll fess up: I kinda dig on that "Umbrella" song. Deep down, I'm just a dirty pop whore. I can't help myself. Don't get me started on "Fergalicious," and if you aren't familiar with that song, stay with that. It's the purest form of audio crack. Hear it just once and you're hooked."

audio crack is a very good way of putting it, but is it necessarily - de facto - bad for you?

i have been re-reading books that i've always meant to get back to. i have been trying to do more of that lately.idiotic
i have found that re-reading certain books from my teenage past that i found amazing then are even more amazing now, profoundly.
so i am going back Again and again.
in the past week i've been reading "the unbearable lightness of being" by milan kundera. i remember being stricken by it at 18, so stricken that i continued on as a fan and read 4 or 5 more of his books (immortality i also remember being striking, i'm going to re-read that in edinburgh).

let's talk about rihanna's "umbrella" in the context of kundera.

here are excerpts from the past few passages that i just happened to read on the plane (sabina = czech at-this=point-currently emigré painter):


Sabina's inner revolt against Communism was aesthetic rather than ethical in manner. What repelled her was not nearly so much the ugliness of the Communist world (ruined castles transformed into cow sheds) as the mask of beauty it tried to wear - in other words, Communist kitsch [for you Regina Spektor fans out there: Soviet Kitsch]. The model of Communist kitsch is the ceremony called May Day.
She had seen May Day parades during the time when people were still enthusiastic or still did their best to feign enthusiasm. The women all wore red, white and blue blouses, and the public, looking on from balconies and windows, could make out various five-pointed stars, hearts and letters when the marchers went into formation. Small brass bands accompanied the individual groups, keeping everyone in step. As a group approached the reviewing stand, even the most blasé faces wold beam with dazzling smiles, as if trying to prove they were properly joyful or, to be more precise, in proper agreement. Nor were they merely expressing political agreement with Communism; no, theirs was an agreement with being as such. The May Day ceremony drew it's inspiration from the deep well of the categorical agreement with being. The unwritten, unsung motto of the parade was not "Long live Communism!" but "Long live life!" The Power and cunning of Communist politics lay in the fact that it appropriated this slogan. For it was this idiotic tautology ("Long live life!") which attracted people indifferent to the theses of Communism to the Communist parade.

-

long live the punk cabaret!

-

you can stand under under under my umbrella.

-

i just listened to it again.
it's the synthesizers.
it is aimed to hit all the brainwashed children of today
PLUS everyone who loved Disintegration.


............................................


And in fact, Soviet films, which flooded of all Soviet countries in that cruelest of times [post WWII], were saturated with incredible innocence and chastity. The greatest conflict that could occur between two Russian was a lovers' misunderstanding: he thought she no longer loved him she thought he no longer loved her. But in the final scene they would fall into each other's arms, tears of happiness trickling down their cheeks.
The current conventional interpretation of these films is this: they showed the Communist ideal, whereas Communist reality was worse.
Sabina always rebelled against this interpretation. Whenever she imagined the world of Soviet kitsch becoming a reality, she felt a shiver run down her back. She would unhesitatingly prefer life in a real Communist regime with all its persecution and meat queues. Life in the real Communist world was still livable. In the world of the Communist ideal made real, in that world of grinning idiots, she would have nothing to say, she would die of horror within a week.


-

when the sun shines
we'll shine together:

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN???


does it mean that ONLY when the sun shines, we'll shine together?

meaning that when it rains we will NOT shine together, meaning that now that it's raining more than ever, you CAN'T stand under my umber-ella
ella ella e eh eh eh?


eh eh?

eh?

-


i played with a full band, Aberdeen City, this weekend. the four days that i spent before the run of shows were sublime. i went to their boiling hot allston rehearsal space and we worked non-stop for hours on end to arrange the songs. we ended up playing: five of mine ("don't take the flowers" - a new one, "night reconnaissance", "you owe me a coke' - which i have to re-title but actually i kind of like it, "awful detail", "the mouse and the model") and two tasteful covers ("together" by avril lavigne and "take ecstasy with me" by the magnetic fields). the peak experience came on rehearsal night three when we went for a beer run and i felt something akin to losing my band virginity. none of them knew it.

miller time in summertime. is happiness simple? answer = sometimes yes.

the shows got better and better each night and though i got the distinct feeling that the hardcore fans didnt want to hear guitars mixed in with my piano playing, i didn't care. i was having too good a time. aberdeen city gave me a blue mandolin and a chord book as a going-away present. i want to drink the champagne of beers forever. I want to get back to writing songs, eh eh eh.


as for aberdeen, go see the band in their own glory:
i highly recommend the songs "god is going to get sick of me" and "pretty pet":
http://www.myspace.com/aberdeencity

i usually describe them as mid-latter-day radiohead, but they would probably hate that.
i think what i love best is that i don't know what they are. they are an excellent band full of excellent, that's all.
also highly recommended live.


-


the germans have an expression for when you can't get a song out of your head: they say that you have an "ear worm".



-

She stood in front of her easel with a half-finished canvas on it, the old man in the armchair behind her observing every stroke of her brush.
"It's time we went home," he said at last with a glance to his watch.
She laid down her palette and went into the bathroom to wash. The old man raised himself out of his armchair and reached for his cane, which was leaning against a table. The door of the studio led directly out to the lawn. It was growing dark. Fifty feet away was a white clapboard house. The ground-floor windows were lit. Sabina was moved by the two windows shining out into the day.
All her life she had proclaimed kitsch her enemy. But hadn't she in fact been carrying it with her? Her kitsch was her image of home, all peace, quiet, and harmony, and ruled by a loving mother and wise father. It was an image that took shape within her after the death of her parents. The less her life resembled that sweetest of dreams, the more sensitive she was to its magic, and more than once she shed tears when the ungrateful daughter in a sentimental film embraced the neglected father as the windows of the happy family's house shone out into the dying day.
She had met the old man in New York. He was rich and liked paintings. He lived alone with his wife, also aging, in a house in the country. Facing the house, but still on his land, stood an old stable. He had had it remodeled into a studio for Sabina and would follow the movements of her brush for days on end.
Now all three of them were having supper together. The old woman called Sabina "my daughter", but all indications would lead one to believe the opposite, namely, that Sabina was the mother and that her two children doted on her, worshipped her, would do anything she asked.
Had she then, herself on the threshold of old age, found the parents who had been snatched from her as a girl? Had she at last found the children she had never had herself?
She was well aware it was an illusion. Her days with the aging couple were merely a brief interval. the old man was seriously ill, and when his wife was left on her own, she would go and live with their son in Canada. Sabina's path of betrayals would then continue elsewhere, and from the depths of her being, a silly mawkish song about two shining windows and the happy family living behind them would occasionally make its way into the unbearable lightness of being.
Though touched by the song, Sabina did not take her feeling seriously. She knew only too well that the song was a beautiful lie. As soon as kitsch is recognized for the lie it is, it moves into the context of non-kitsch, thus losing its authoritarian power and becoming as touching as any other human weakness. For none among us is superman enough to escape kitsch completely.

No matter how we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition.



take that rihanna











love
a

self-portrait in london, august 3 2007.

ella ella eh eh eh

i got home this morning. early; i took the red-eye from san francisco.

i'm back in my apartment. drinking some weird vanilla-infused vodka that pope must have left here, because i certainly don't drink this shit.
but right now it's perfect all watered down with tap water and no ice to be found ion the house it's boiling hot. cathode is on the stereo, i am finally landing. i haven't been home for seven weeks.

the true colors tour went off without a hitch and we had a relatively awesome fucking time. we got to sing happy birthday to cyndi lauper backstage (rainbow connection) and a week later, to debbie harry (space oddity). we made new friends, we got to see first-hand what our lives could possibly be like if we're still touring 25 years from now. the tour seems like a long time ago because of all thats happened since. i took one day off in LA and went to Santa Cruz to visit with jason webley and Evelyn and Evelyn. sandy fishnets stopped by (www.myspace.com/sandyfishnets) which was pretty awesome. she Always wears sunglasses.

while we were there, my mother emailed me that my beloved cat from childhood, govinda, passed away. i loved her a lot and was sad.
she was my mostly companion and a very smart cat. there was a cat named poo-roo at the house and poo-roo would cuddle with me every night and so i felt there was some sort of cosmic cat-happening.
jason comforted me by pointing out: Cat Still Exists. that somehow made me feel better. wouldn't it be wonderful if it worked that way with people. for instance, if your loved one suddenly died but you could just walk outside and see another person on the sidewalk and say: "wow. look! another Person. how handy."

i went to LA for a live interview/conversation with henry rollins, which went splendidly, he's an amazing man. very neurotic and very black and very white and very passionate about everything he talks about. he talked alot and i listened and tried to get him to probe deeper into his intimacy issues. he said he simply didn't hug. i gave him grief for that repeatedly over the course of the night ( we were in a beautiful outdoor courtyard at the hammer museum and as we talked the sun set). we wrapped up the talk and both greeted fans and i noticed that every time henry would go to do a photograph with a fan he would do this trés military stance with his person, whereas i would sort of melt into my person like a polyamorous barnacle. a photographer came by at the end of night to get shot of us together and henry grabbed he in a great big bear hug and everybody applauded. there is hope yet for breaking down his intimacy barrier. maybe i will crochet him a little Black Flag throw pillow to hug in the meantime.

then i flew back up to santa cruz to work on my some music. we did a day of pre-production in the house behind the strip mall then we drove up to a chicken ranch studio north of san francisco where tom waits recorded most of his stuff up until 1999. it was quiet and covered in hay and just stunningly beautiful. the piano was a massive baldwin grand from the 60's that had just been re-strung and restored and it sang. i wrote a brand new song in a studio that was empty and painted with corn stalks.

we recorded it the next day. i've read about people doing this i never believed it was possible. but music doesn't need to be so precious when you're not thinking about it. so i just didnt think about it. we cooked omelets in the morning and worked into the nights. there was nothing else to do but make music. we just played. i pulled out some of the old stuff, provanity, another year, point of it all and we did new basics because the piano sound was just perfect perfect. i don't even know yet what happened. i'm going to have to decide when i listen back. but i think it was amazing. i was just on this weird Make Music autopilot. i only answered what email was essential (my inbox right now is at 519) and jogged. i tried one morning to get into laura nyro and failed.

there were huge blackberry bushes across the street from the studio and i picked them and my hand turned all purple and i came back to the ranch all smiling and holding my hands up and the studio interns thought i had murdered someone or been in some awful accident.

i was in LA for a few visits. on one visit i saw the world's only live mash-up band Smash-Up Derby play at safari sams and danced til i was devastated (go go go: www.myspace.com/smashupderby. i recommend "smells like billie jean", but "closer to rock and roll" was pretty excellent as well, especially for you NIN fans). i drank on an empty stomach one might with zoe and ariel and only vaguely remember spending the end of the evening in ariels bathroom getting really fascinated with the micro-zoom feature on my digital camera and taking a lot of pictures of my teeth. on another visit i met with this incredible string arranger, paul buckmaster, that ben introduced me to who i think is going to work on the record. he told me all about the mag-lev train in shanghai and katie kay came over to pick me up and he made us strawberries with creme fraiche and sake sauce. i found a film agent. i'd like to do soap operas where i can play somebody named Alexis or Chandra or be in the color remake of eraserhead (and play the deformed infant).

i went back to san fran to play at paul's absynthe party. a few hundred people and a truly fantastic space. i saw a colorful collage of girls in powdered white wigs, silver paintings on the wall and huge day-glo mannequins and the rest is kind of a blur. i remember dancing topless at a pole in the dancing room and eating an extraordinarily delicious pad thai. then i got on a plane and came home.

somewhere along the way i finished reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. i mentioned it in the last blog and now that i'm done all i can do is say please read this book. it ties it all together.
we were lying there one night and jason's friend had just died and we talked about the way that Here We Are. how it all happened is totally random and very soon, we're going to be gone. Cat Still Exists, on a grand plane. all you can do is not take it too seriously, try to enjoy yourself and this confluence of coincidences and laugh at the fact that you happen to exist RIGHT NOW. now now now.

i read the part about the buildings coming down when i was on the plane to come back to santa cruz to see jason. i knew he had read it. i cried the whole way, i had just finished tour and i was raw as shit anyway. nine eleven, dresden, love death and finishing and everything old and dying and everything new and not understanding. people falling in reverse from the floor to the sky and back up into the smoke and making the last call where we who are still standing standing can only imagine, the way you have toif you stop for a half second to think about it. who hasn't imagined that.

i have a few days to gather myself, see my family and rehearse with aberdeen city for our three shows and then head to scotland to be with my people at the fringe.


and

all i know is that "umbrella" is haunting me like a crackwhore i owe money & i have to deconstruct it and destroy it to find peace.

ella ella eh eh eh eh. ella ella eh eh eh eh.
ella ella eh eh eh eh. ella ella eh eh eh eh.
ella ella eh eh eh eh. ella ella eh eh eh eh.
ella ella eh eh eh eh. ella ella eh eh eh eh.
ella ella eh eh eh eh. ella ella eh eh eh eh.
ella ella eh eh eh eh. ella ella eh eh eh eh.
ella ella eh eh eh eh. ella ella eh eh eh eh.
ella ella eh eh eh eh. ella ella eh eh eh eh.

sometime in my lifetime i will find the answer to the peaceful between pop schlock and freedom.






love
a

On Wrinkling

when you are constantly being photographed, and used to seeing
photographs of yourself in candid and not-candid moments on a day-to-
day basis, you get to know your face outside the mirror and through
the photographs.
if you don't mug to the mirror the way you mug to the photographs,
unless you have a lot of time on your hands or you're one of those
mirror-muggers who regularly spends hours locked in the bathroom
making faces at yourself from different angles for hours on end (we
all go through that at some point or another, some more than others.
don't lie), then you get more information form the photographs than
you would from the mirror.

so starting about 3 years ago i noticed that wrinkles were showing up
on my face that weren't there before. and i noticed they were only
showing up in photos in which i was smiling broadly.

lately i've noticed that there are a lot more wrinkles. lots and lots
more. then i noticed the other day that when we were being
photographed i was thinking that maybe i shouldn't smile so broadly
because i might look more haggard and old. then i realized that was a
very fucked up thing to be thinking.

i can't deny that i've gotten happier as i've gotten older. it's a
fact. every year, i am happier. i care less what people think about
me, i enjoy my days more, i worry less about what i'm doing and worry
more about how i'm doing it, which is more fun. i struggle but don't
struggle so much with the fact that i'm struggling. i am still
totally confused by whether my life, my music and my art is a path
i'm supposed to FIND or MAKE and i change the answer every day, but i
stress it less and less.

i was confronted with some of this aging shit when i was in bordeaux.
i was sitting outside a cafe one night, eating my dinner and writing
in peace and a group of very loud and drunk french teenage boys and
girls decided to convene across the cobblestoned pedestrian alleyway.
they were screaming and laughing and being drunk teenagers and it
occured to me that i was not only irritated because i wanted to write
and think and enjoy my pasta without noise but i was ENVIOUS. i
somehow wanted to be on that side of the alley, not on mine. they
looked over at me, laughing, and i saw myself through their eyes. a
woman, in her thirties, sitting at a table, alone, drinking a glass
of wine and eating pasta and writing in a book. i was shocking
myself. i somehow fixated on this: me = old, them = young. line in
sand. why did i care?

maybe it was because i was simultaneously coming to terms with the
fact that i could actually be too old to take someone to bed without
feeling weird. i think your twenties are that perfect sweet spot.
nobody is too old for you or too young for you. you can be 25 and
bang a 19-year-old or a 49-year-old and not really feel the sting.
but once you pass thirty, it doesn't matter how cool or hot or rock-
star-affiliated you are. you're old and if you end up in bed with
someone who is twenty, you're going to fucking feel it. and so are
they. not in a bad way. just is.

maybe i should be optimistic about this and embrace the fact that
awesome and sexy people in their thirties and forties will take me
more seriously because i'm officially not young and dumb anymore.

there is a line between my eyebrows (or where my eyebrows would be,
if i didn't keep making them disappear) that used to be two lines.
the two lines were sort of always there, a little 11 in the middle of
my face. one was longer than the other. then the longer one absorbed
the shorter one and they created a unified front in my mid-twenties.
then one day, about a year ago, it didn't appear only when i was in a
furrowing mood. it was just THERE when i woke up in the morning. then
one day it went away again. and then came back. and now it's here to
stay.

the other wrinkles are appearing around my eyes and mouth and show up
when i smile. crazy, that. this is that creepy ass botox-phenomenon.
if i simply stayed emotion-free, i might look thirty-one forever.
but life would blow.





these are from hawaii. you can see the wrinkles quite clearly in the
smiling picture.

maybe it's also why people in hollywood never smile? i can never
decide if plastic surgery really counts as lying or not. i think
it does. but whatever makes you happy.
my friend had a E cup and got a reduction. i had a friend in high
school who was very into getting a nose job. and i think she did, and
it made her happier. i know some women who are getting into their
fifties and getting their faces stretched back. it freaks me the fuck
out. on the other hand, their faces are just their faces. it's like
an extreme version of doing your hair up. i'm relatively thrilled
about the way i look, most of the time, even as the wrinkles appear i
find a way to get excited about them (look!!!! i'm WISE!!!!). i
wonder how i would feel if i truly considered myself ugly. i wonder
if i would want to take a knife to me face and carve it up
differently. i wonder if i would hate people like me for saying Just
Love Who You Are and want to punch me in the fucking face because i
was born with a pretty standard and relatively attractive WASP mug.

when i look at footage of myself playing, it's no wonder. i furrow
frequently. christ, sometimes i look like i'm constipated. and i
smile a lot. i make lots of faces. i am a face-maker.

so i started thinking i should probably take pride in these appearing
wrinkles as they actually denote amount of life lived as opposed to
years lived. this thought comforted me.

lately, when people ask me to guess their age, i ask them to smile.
then i look at their eyes to see if there are wrinkles. then i guess.
i'm HORRIBLE at this game. i usually guess about 7 years off, often
erring on the side of too old, which insults people. what i usually
end up doing is taking my best guess and subtracting about 20-25% of
the total so i don't sound like an asshole. i think everybody does
this. but anyway, the smiling gives people away.

i've been meeting people who i think look my age only to find out
theat they're 20. this freaks me out. am i just a terrible gauge? i
can also never tell when people are tripping, rolling or on coke.
sometimes i can't even tell when people are drunk, unless they're
hammered and puking. then i'm like: wait, somethings wrong here.

i've noticed that this age-freakiness has been seeping and poisoning
some of my decision-making, or at least creating an added level of
neurosis.
the downward spiral goes something like this:
ok, if i finish the record this fall i can put it out my march. but
maybe i should take more time with it so i can relax. but if i take
more time with it, it'll need to come out next fall. then i'll tour
it in the spring. i'll be 33. holy shit, i'll be 33 when i'm touring
on my solo record. that's when jesus died. fuck. let's not even get
started on the beatles. they had BROKEN UP by the time they were in
their late 20s. fuck. i'm doing nothing with my life.

i've been reading live reviews of cyndi lauper and debbie harry from
this tour. and it seems like once you get past a certain point you
are either "showing your oldness" or "looking great despite your
oldness". what the fuck?? why does it have to be like that?

i suppose it's the same thing if you're young and bright eyes at 17.
you're either "showing your youngness" or "sounding amazing despite
your youngness". i thought about his recently and decided that you're
only really in the clear if you're over 21 and under 45. before and
after that, you're fucked. especially if you're a she.
speaking of which, i coined a term for the paris hilton and linsday
lohan phenomenon:

"chickwreck"

i'm sure someone else somewhere has already thought of this.

(there was a time when i had brian convinced that "marcia marcia
marcia" would be a great name for our band and lo and behold someone
in ohio had already thought of it. what did people do before google?
i suppose there were just a bunch of bands with the same name and
nobody cared until lawyers got involved. but thank fucking god. the
dresden dolls is way better.)

i am reading an extremely excellent book by jonathan saffran foer
called Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. i had it sitting on the
shelf i have in the kitchen of books i would like to read, it's a big
shelf. it's a bookcase. almost anytime someone recommends i read a
book i buy it, because books are so cheap now on the internet.
anyway, when my friend was staying at my house he saw the book and he
picked it up and said: this, this is a good book. or he said
something to that extent. anyway with the double endorsement i
started reading it and i am in love with it a little. it is many
stories in one and i recommend it highly.

his friend died of cancer the other day. he knew for a couple weeks.
she was older, but not extremely old. we've been talking a lot. we
were talking a few days ago about how zen sort of sucks because
sometime you decide to choose to feel more than detachment because
you decide to do that because you decide that that's life. this is
from page 180 in the hardback version, which page i read about an
hour ago.

When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder.
Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me
feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could
have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney
ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table.
I spent my life learning to feel less.
Every day I felt less.
Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?
You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself
from happiness.

and now the weather

and now the weather

this is the sky right now in santa fe



i am deliberately not paying too much attention to anything lest i implode.

coming-back-together with brian, the Drummer of The Dresden Dolls. hard.
being back on tour. hard, but not so bad.
being around famous people. weird. but good. not hard.
being in touch with people who are dealing with dead or dying relatives and friends....

interspersed with trying to figure out which direction to take with my solo record. very hard.

it's been an odd month.

i did some yoga on the strip in las vegas:



someone commented with a bunch of questions in a row.
here are the answers:

#1. Is it really weird to be meeting all those hoards of fans after shows? You and Brian were really nice, but I couldn't comprehend what that feels like. I thought for a second I stared too long at you and we made eyecontact for a nano second (I think?) and I felt REALLY creepy. Like I looked like the creepy old lady in line.

no. it's not weird. not weirder than anything else. it feels like what it looks like. imagine having a birthday party every day for an hour and you get an idea. i love when people get all emotional. it makes me feel like i'm doing something right. it makes me a little sad when people feel they have to pre-amble with "i know you hear this a million times a day, but...." or "i don't want to sound like a creepy stalker fan-boy, but....". it's like, you and me, two people talking. you do you think i am? i LOVE THIS SHIT! i also completely relate to being on the other side. when i was around 16, i waited in line to meet edward ka-spel after a legendary pink dots show at axis in boston. my heart was racing like mad and i couldn't believe i was about to be face to face with the man who had written the soundtrack to my life and who had changed my whole musical mental landscape. i breathed and breathed deeper and rehearsed what i was going to say so i wouldn't waste his time or sound like an idiot. it was my turn and i looked straight at him and said "i hope that someday i will write music as beautiful as you do." and he smiled at me and was so kind and human, and talked to me and signed my whatever. and i'll never forget that interaction, ever. so i give that back every time i meet someone. the only thing that bums me out is when people don't make eye contact and don't seem like they actually want a connection. the other day, some guy was actually ON HIS PHONE and just handed his ticket to me and brian for an autograph without stopping to look at us, talk to us, or even say hello to us. we were like, what's the point, dude?

#2. Does it creep you out to know that everybody in line is lusting after you and frothing at the mouth? Because they are. Do you block it out or embrace it?

oh, come on. well, ok, i answer truthfully. i love being loved. and if it ever gets creepy, i'll duck out the back door and go home and read a book. easy. i'd also like to think that you're not speaking for everyone. there are plenty of fans that i meet that i think have no desire to fuck me, and that's fine and dandy. it probably means they're better able to listen without being....disturbed.

#3. Where does your confidence come from? Will you write a self help book? Because I had to stop myself from saying "Hi, My name is Jen, I work for an insurance company and my life is really lame.",then burst into tears.

oh, darlin'. i don't really know how to answer that. i think my confidence comes from being very lucky growing up and being given a very large and free playground in which to grow as a person and an artist. i was never shut down very much, and when i was shut down i had a lot of supportive teachers and family and friends. but i also had to deal with a lot of shit as a teenager and i think it may surprise you to know that a lot of what confidence about isn't just having it, it's being able to APPEAR that you have it. i can't tell you how many times i've been onstage freaking out that this/that/theotherthing is fucking up but i smile and bang away as if nothing is wrong. very much like life. act as if. people will buy it. i'm more insecure than you think. i just wait until the end of the night to talk about it.

#4. Have you ever heard of The Bindlestiff Family Cirkus? I saw them perform in Cleveland last night and I thought man, it would be awesome if The Dresden Dolls went on tour with them. They are like an old school punk rocky adult circus. Check them out!

FUCK YES!!! i've been down with those guys for years. they are amazing. we've never done a proper tour together but we have shared stages. sxip shirey (www.myspace.com/sxipshirey), with whom i often tour and collborate, is a performer and composer for the Bindlestiffs.

..........................................

we sign autographs and meet fans after every set on this tour (which started in las vegas about three weeks ago and has crisscrossed the country twice).
sometimes people come up to me shaking and crying and loving our music and i love that and i hug them. we talk to hundreds of people every night. they're there, they're real, they're listening.
i never forget that, but seeing the human face of our music community reminds me to snap the fuck out of it. sometimes i get so caught up in the void that i forget who is out there.

the media is a trick mirror.
i go through phases with how much media i consume. sometimes i'll pile it all on and buy a stack of rolling stones and magnets and spins and catch up on my pop culture to see what america is being exposed to. often when i'm flying (and i make sure i balance out all the music garbage with some Teen People and the Economist or New Yorker).

i used to read all of these music magazines wondering where my band would fit in. it's only now that i've been realizing that i may forever be exempt from the world of mainstream media, and that's given me some food for thought. i used to look at these giant national magazines and wonder why bands who had a quarter of the fans that we did were getting giant photos and articles and hype. the dolls have been together for 7 years, we've always managed to miss every bandwagon and wave of hype, and lots of the bands i remember seeing so much of a few years ago have vanished. we've never declined. we've only grown. for the number of records we've sold and the amount of fans we have, we have stayed (by no means willingly, since we always answer to the call of the press when it comes) almost completely out of the mainstream spotlight for the duration of our career. sometimes i feel grateful (who else has managed to do that? besides the string cheese incident? i suppose if i knew, then i would be disproving my own rule. if i was aware of the unknown, how would it be unknown?). sometimes i feel gypped.

there will always be people richer than you, and people poorer than you, you will always see people who seem happier and sadder than you, more and less famous than you.
the key is not to try to get on top, the key is to make peace with what you've got. madonna sits at home and stresses about god knows what. the A-list celebrities have a laundry-list of fucked-up priorities that you or i wouldn't ever want to have to grapple with and most of them don't seem to be genuinely happy. meanwhile, people all over the world pay homage at the altars of superstardom and trash-gossip. why? this has been coming up as a topic of conversation on tour. the general theory is that it's always been this way but that it's particularly disgusting right now because the larger backdrop has become so threatening in it's hopelessness. the war? over it. darfur? AIDS? over it. the fattening and overmedication of america's youth? eh. paris? lindsay? THERE'S something we can all connect about. let's talk about THAT. ok!

we determined that people can't talk about the weather anymore because it's also too depressing due to global warming.
once you can't talk about the weather you are fucked - gotta talk about lindsay.

but i look at all this and i think about myself and where i fit into it. i was just reading an interview with jack white of the white stripes, he said

"in this day and age, every band wants to say, 'come look at what we do', all the time. 'you wanna see me in my underwear? you wanna film me while i'm sleeping?' america has traded culture for entertainment and technology. how can you ever come back from that?"

i stopped and thought. if anybody wants to see me (sleeping or non) in my underwear, i'm usually happy to oblige.

so. for whatever reason, jack white and i are different. should i feel guilty about that?

but there's something more to this. jack's saying that we've traded culture for entertainment.
i don't fully buy that. entertainment IS and has been a huge and important part of culture for...ever. jack white is an entertainer. technology is culture. always has been.
technology and entertainment ARE culture, they DRIVE culture. but i understand what he's saying....i was reading an interview with Bansky and he said something to the extent of

warhol's prediction is going to warp. in the near future you're not going to be waiting for your 15 minutes of fame; you're going to be waiting for your 15 minutes of anonymity.

in youtube and myspace culture we're all mini-celebrities. but i think what jack is actually complaining about, and Banksy as well, isn't the phenomenon itself so much as the content involved. if teenagers all over the world were myspacing at the speed of light about how they could use their collective power to end hunger or stop global warming instead of swapping britney snatch-shots, would anyone be worried? hell no. we'd be ECSTATIC.

whatever it is that drives me to want to connect to people on the level that i do, it simply is that way. thinking about it seems to be pointless. i can drive myself crazy this way.
what do i want to do?
why am i making a record anyway?
if i want to videotape myself in my underwear and someone wants to watch it, don't i have the responsibility to make it a meaningful underwear-video?
should i be thinking more about what i'm doing?
like, really sitting down and trying to make some larger, more comprehensive decision about my life instead of just constantly saying "sounds good" to whatever happens to land in my path?
should i learn how to play the piano? really? should i take a year off and learn how to sing before i destroy my vocal chords because i don't know what i'm doing?
at least that way i'll have more ammunition when the underwear-video police knock on my door.
it seems to be the rule that the more talented you are, the more you can get away with. but who determines if you're talented? dead end.

cyndi lauper thoroughly destroyed her voice, went to a voice therapist, and brought it back from the dead. she steams it before and after every show.
"you could blow it amanda" she says. "start now, while you're young".
jesus christ, i'm 31. that's YOUNG???
"do it while you can" was also her advice about my choice to sport the hottt bra onstage instead of the tank top:
"when you're my age, honey, fuggedaboutit". i love her.

debbie harry also shed some enlightening perspective on my struggle over the production of the solo record.
"ah" she mused "when i made my last solo record the producer stole it, got on a plane to [guam? somewhere.] and held it for ransom."
"what did you do?"
debbie harry is very calm cool and collected.
"i paid him and got it back."
"god, i'm sorry. that blows".

i used to make all of my decisions through some sort of divine, and perhaps naive, assurance that i knew what i was doing.
on optimistic days, i take my recent faltering and ambivalence not as a sign of weakness but as a sign of growth.
on those days, being not sure of myself = evolving into a person who is open to anything.
on pessimistic days being not sure of myself = being a totally neurotic and shit-scared wuss.

highlights of the past few weeks have included rosie o'donnell falling in love with us (how awesome is she?), singing "when u were mine" onstage with cyndi lauper in boston (can die happy now, pretty much), and playing at radio city music hall (both brian and i had a moment there). brian and i also sang "rainbow connection" to cyndi backstage in texas for her birthday. she was so sweet, she actually sang along at the end. she's such a solid fucking woman, she really tries hard to tie everybody together. i hope i'm like her when i grow up.

i took some days off in chicago and spent them with good friends, which fed me. we went on a boat (thanks to stuart):


lane the triumphant


jeffers and me

...........................

from the UKULELE/PIANO DEPT:

re: the myspace covers project: i am thinking of going home early in july just to tackle this. why fucking not? i will try to make it as fast and furious as possible, with, like, a 12-hour turnaround.
yay the internet.

...............................

from the COUTURE DEPT:

and since y'all keep asking:

the skirt came from katie kay's roommate's who run a clothing line called skin graft. they work out of their living room. i slept int eh living room. so technically the skirt and i slept together. and then, in true romantic fashion, we could never part. go see:
www.skingraftdesigns.com & http://www.myspace.com/skingraftdesigns



the black boots, sadly, are last seasons. they were made by fine fine john fluevog (www.fluevog.com) and you could try ebay (the style is roosevelt).

...............................

here are some awesome dancing and busking musician brothers and sisters i saw in washington square park on a walk.
i bought a disc but can't find it right now so if you know them (they're local), drop a line



...............................................................

from the VIDEO DEPT:

there's a great new clip of me playing "astronaut (a short history of nearly nothing)" at the paradise last year
gorgeous camera work and lighting. edited by the stupendous peter sand.
i love this song. it was still a bit different back then, the ending has changed since this performance....but its goood:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udHpzUnoHSk



unrelated.....one of you posted an alternate "california girls" homage (sorta) that KICKS OURS IN THE ASS:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P3Wc-37pC4

aphex twin. it's long, but watch it, it's pretty fucking awesome. he's brilliant. i'd marry him if i was more into techno.

.....................................

and here is a picture for jack white of me in my underwear,
which i coincidentally took in NYC in my hotel room long before i read his damning interview.





suck it jack



love
amanda

the last of the mojitos

.





when i was in bordeaux i found myself getting caught in the occasional thought-trap of "how will i explain/write about this feeling/thing/person/event". for that reason itself i am looking at the blog like a source of scariness - you might lose your life fucking watch out. don't start thinking you're living in your own movie. when i'm overtired like this, raw and alone and kinda hungry at the end of a long day (we played chicago tonight), i feel like it's the best time to write because i won't bullshit or get flowery. i'll just dump.

bordeaux already seems like a distant experience. it was a beautiful, hard trip. i've let it all sink in and what i've learned most is that i don't do "vacation" well since i am not a normal person with a normal life and job (but what/who is fucking normal? nobody i know, and i know shitloads of people). i had a gorgeous little house all to myself in a quiet garden right outside of the city center. i spent the first 24 hours in a letlagged and slightly hungover haze (that was my wonderful host's fault, he fed and drank me over at his house upon arrival) just thinking i was the luckiest girl on earth to be afforded this luxury, this solitude, this beautiful place. it started raining non-stop and within 48 hours i was feeling depressed, confused and totally unmotivated. not gloriously alone, just isolated.

i didn't start feeling better until i started doing what amandas do. meeting people and setting shit up. so i met william through the kaiser chiefs show and told him i was climbing the walls and wanted to set up a solo show. he took me to el inca, i met milos, and within another few moments i had made friends, established a favorite bar and had a show to get ready for. then i felt more like amanda and i could get to work. funny what i need to be happy. a show, something to look forward to, a motivation to write. i started writing a handful of new songs (i rented a keyboard and amp for the house) and read a few books and re-watched the royal tenenbaums and whacked off a lot. i slept odd hours and cooked omelettes. i pedaled my ass into town every day and met up with new friends but mostly hung around cafes outside eating whatever i wanted (which usually involved chevre, which is very delicious goat cheese).

i took a lot of get-myself-lost bike rides and spent long hours in various cafes in various squares scribbling away in my journal, trying to figure out what the fuck i'm going to do with my record, my upcoming year, my life.

i drank a lot. of wine. and coffee. i became a fixture at el inca and saw a bunch of shows there inbetween sitting and writing at the bar while drinking very tasty fresh mojitos and sampling every kind of infused rum milos had brewing (vanilla, hot pepper, strawberry, ginger, and a few i forget). ludovic-pierre and i stole wine glasses from the creperie where we were eating and took the bottle to the river and stayed up into the night. one day my wallet got stolen from right out of my backpack at a cafe and instead of being pissed off, i was actually excited to have something to do (which was to go to the police and explain the situation in my pigeon french. it was a blast). the second to last night i played my show at el inca and it was just pure, unadulterated old-school awesome. just PLAYED. i had a few new tunes to try out and did a few covers but mostly just soaked up the simplicity of banging on the keyboard to an audience. handfuls of people wandered in having no idea who i was. just american chick banging on a piano. no discs to sell, no mailing list, no fucking nothing, just being handed a wad of greasy euros in the kitchen after the show split three ways between me and the other two bands. it was paradise.

i spent my last night glued to the bar at the inca, chatting with milos and desinging a little goodbye drawing to myself entitled "last of the mojitos". i plan to return to bordeaux as soon as fucking possible, the house is there when i need it care of the french government.

i have decided that what "vacation" means in my life is that i pay less attention to business and i drink and eat more. and that's it. it's not site-specific.

spending four days in vegas last week affirmed my feelings. people come HERE? deliberately? to have FUN? you're fucking kidding me. it's a nightmare disneyworld for adults but without the childhood nostalgia. but i managed to figure out a life there: i just found a cafe that i liked in the paris casino that closely resembled a real cafe, pretended i wasn't in vegas (i think thats also sort of the point when you're there, it's like one big virtual reality since all the casinos are theme parks of other countries) and ate decent food while i sat and wrote and fantasized along with all the other schmucks. i jogged a lot on the strip and in the casinos (jogging in a casino: try it before you die) and fucked with peoples paradigms. jogging to the buzzcocks is good. (also while in vegas: i shot a new karaoke video for MTV to air later this summer. it may or may not be to a cyndi lauper song that may or may not be about girls wanting or possibly not wanting to have fun.)

it's all about context. i went to bordeaux, i realized, because when i saw it on my off day it was during one of those typically miserable european tours where everyone was insane and grouchy and i really needed to get away from it all. the weather was gorgeous and the city and it's quiet winding streets just embraced me, it was exactly what i needed. at the time. it was like what food tastes like when you're starving. the place was a backdrop to a badly needed escape.

you never step in the same river twice. i didn't find that bordeaux again until the show at el inca. i set up my gear and had about two hours to kill and didn't want to hang around the club and talk and lose my voice and be tempted by different varieties of infused rum. so i went for a walk to get away. i stumbled into the most beautiful tangle of streets i had yet seen, it was twilight and a bunch of local artists and sculptures were partying and chatting away out on the balconies above their closed workshops busting with paintings and plaster. i felt, finally, like i had found what i came for.

i'm in love with my new songs. guitar hero is sounding better and better live and i think is up there with the best songs i've written. i only hope i can give all the songs the care and feeding they need to translate onto the record. i'm starting to have terrible self-doubt-feelings about how to make these songs work out of the live context and am starting to think more and more and more that less is more. with so many options of what to do, what sounds to make, i'm feeling overwhelmed. i'm going to be in santa cruz for a few days in july to arrange some songs with estradasphere (one of my favorite new bands, they share 3 members with the secret chiefs and are part of the mimicry/sleepytime gorilla museum/mr. bungle-type family) and will see how they come out. they are top-notch musicians and total sweethearts. jason webley and i found them by accident one night in boston when we were working on producing evelyn and evelyn's record. our jaws dropped. (here's links: http://www.estradasphere.com, or myspace: http://www.myspace.com/estradasphere. speaking of jason, he and i are going to hopefully finish producing the twins' record in july and it sounds just beautiful. we've been trying to convince them to put up a webpage or a myspace page but they don't do internet very well, so we're working on it.

between france and true colors, at home on a whim one day i called up my friend noah and he helped me set up a home-recording studio in my bedroom. we just miked the piano and set up a vocal mic and plugged it all into garageband on my mac. i think the recordings i did that night and the next night might be the best i've ever done. they're just so fucking blunt. i wasnt thinking about posterity or mistakes, i was just recording for the sake of archiving the songs before i forgot them. now i listen back and i'm like: go to a studio why?? fucking finish this shit in your bedroom, amanda. that said, i got an even better idea: to do a cover song every day for a month. or forever. i'd like to have to do it on command at the mercy of some sort of online lottery of fans, or get a a nice little random jukebox robot who wakes me up and says GOOD MORNING AMANDA TODAY YOU WILL BE COVERING MARGARITAVILLE BY JIMMY BUFFETT WOULD YOU LIKE HONEY IN YOUR TEA post the shit up on myspace for a day at a time, then never again. just fun. i miss having fun. when i do covers, i have fun. when i play my own songs, i feel like i am working.

aight.

in band news: the "shores" video is rocking hardcore !!!!!
i am AMAZED, though, at how many people don't get the david lee roth reference. the WHOLE video is a pardoy, almost shot-for-shot, so it's weird for me to imagine what it's like to see it out of context.

anyway, here's a fun 8 minutes:

watch the original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmbhfI8f_Ek
then watch the shores video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awnjw36mNEs


it's currently got 17 honors and it creeping towards 60,000 hits. go us!!!!!!!!!!
post it, link it, spread that shit. even weird al yankovich wrote me an email to say that he loved it!!!! :) um, i'm high.
though depressing to see all the WHERES BRIAN comments from people who arent in the loop. we had really wanted him to be there....i missed him on that shoot more than anyone. so it goes.

we've been on the true colors tour for almost a week now and it's been in-fucking-credible. there's lots to tell, most of it fantasy-level. i'll write more soon, i need to go jog to the buzzcocks now (actually, i think i'm going to jog to the new NIN record) and try to answer 256 emails and work on my voice for the five-in-a-row we have coming up so i don't sound like a fucking corpse with a cold on stage. to all of you who i've met in the past week, thank you, thank you so much for making it out. we've been signing after every show so if we haven't hit your city yet and you're coming, find us for love (after our set and during debbie harry's), we're usually set up my the merchandise tables but miss margaret cho will always announce exactly where.

oh and one last thing, i'm switching instruments
i'm fucking sick of the fucking piano.
new results can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek5ZNgw8Vdk



and here are some photos from bordeaux.

my backyard:



the inca (thats milos on the right):



inside the inca:



view from my barstool:



drunken self-portrait in the middle of the night, with bicycle:



up late w/ william & his friends from leisure:



ludovic-pierre in front of st. pierre:



outtake from a photoshoot with greg behind my house:



still life with legs:



very last night in bordeaux:







love
a

luminescent dandruff

.........................




rolls head around high-school library poll:


....i wish i was on a plane.....to france....

- claire ("it's a fat girl's name"), the breakfast club, 1984



so
on a plane....to france.....not for tour with the band or for promo or work this time but for Actual Fucking Vacation....like, do nothing shit.

feel so guilty even saying it, i know i've earned it, must be those puritanical new england roots of mine

i've gotten on lots of planes in the past few months to do yoga retreating, recording, video-ing, family-and-friend-visting, but this is different, this has no structure. not quite sure what's going to happen and thats the way i like it.

the woman beside me is reading a cheesy-ass airport romance novel

but i like her



i have not, in the last 7 years, purchased a plane ticket to JUST GO SOMEWHERE. so i did. when i was in bordeaux about two years ago with the dresden dolls i decided i was going to come back, someday, for a vacation. i don't know how i decided. i just did. it was the perfect south-ish of france day, the perfect weather, and as i walked through the streets of the town, something just struck me: this is the perfect place to come and be by myself. endless small winding streets, a labyrinth of squeezed-together blackened buildings all low to the ground, lots of mellow south-of-france people, old everything, croissants, coffee. wine.

how much of it was informed by my love of the breakfast club, i will never know. we tend to have poisoned and collective fantasies.

warning: i think this blog is going to be really fucking long. sorry. this flight is 6 hours and 50 minutes and i haven't taken an ambien yet.

i thought i was going to get to go on this fantasy bordeaux vacation last year but the usual crunch set in and it was lost.

i'd actually forgotten about that. until a few days ago. then life played a cruel joke as i was searching my sent items on my mac using the keyword "bordeaux". the first thing that popped up was an email that i had sent to ben a few months before he died. the email was a picture (a drawing, really) of an old old bordeaux that i found on a google image search and the text i wrote to him: THIS IS WHERE I AM GOING. i had been sharing with him my nascent bordeaux fantasy. i've been thinking about ben more than usual lately. maybe it's the time of year, i dont know. maybe it's because i lost the headphones that i bought because he had the same ones. they got shuffled away in the video shoot. the first thing i did when i came back to boston was went to the same store to see if i could buy the same pair. had to special-order them. special-ordered them. some things like that are important. for a few months ben kept popping up in the address field every time i would email ben folds. i had been emailing ben chapell so much, i suppose, that the mac just said: "this IS the ben you want to email, right?" i removed him from my adress book but i hadn't forseen the possibility that he'd come back from the dead while searching for flight information. i miss him. i miss him.

it's been a crazy fucking few weeks: truly, the happiest of my life so far. yes. i can honestly say that. there's been so many incredible moments that i wish i could bottle it all, save it, stretch it out, wish i could toss a few of the spectacular moments that maybe i didn't need in case i find myself hungry for good days when i'm old and doddering.

random thoughts from comments:

1.
i appreciated somebodys comment about the spin class equivalent of noga: nin. think of all the other possibilities for active non-exercise. such as norobics and nogging. nin as a form of exercise had a very nice ring to it as it conjured images of somebody focusing very hard on weightlifting an imaginary trent reznor. since it is an imaginary trent reznor, it could be the fishnet-clad 1989 version of trent reznor who is much skinnier than the present day buffed-out version of trent reznor and therefore much easier to lift were he not to be a theoretical trent reznor but i suppose if you're practicing nin and that means that by virtue of it being a non-exercise and therefore a non-existant trent reznor it really wouldn't matter either way.

2.
thank you for the link, but you will be proud to know that i DO already own a zen alarm clock. it is one of my most prized possessions and i think i have also given about 5 of them as gifts over the years. i first saw the zen alarm clock (which wakes you up by ringing an actual soft chime with a hammer in increasing increments of time, it's delicious, look for one on ebay, they run about $50-$100) at my friend sasha's house in brooklyn back in the day. she was playing bass and violin for king missile and invited me to crash there or visit one day and when i saw the alarm and said WHATS THAT she said: that is the zen alarm clock, it will change your life. and she was right. waking up to the fucking radio or a buzzing piece of shit alarm clock or a ringing hotel phone is one of my least favorite ways to start a day and i didn't even realise how much it was affecting me til i changed it. now, if they would make a TRAVEL zen alarm clock so i could take that shit on the road, given i am only at home with my zen alarm clock about 15% of the time, i'd be set. will somebody please invent it and drop me a line.

3.
somebody asked me my thoughts on the following artists:

Joanna Newsom - i like her, even though she looks and smells like a gelfling. the voice on the first record really turned me off but she seems to have toned it down for ys. i find it hard to relate to the lyrics, even though the can be captivating, they seem Away, a bit too literary for my taste. i have to admit ive barely listened to either record, but that's my impression. i am mostly impressed by her ability to be seemingly totally original, herself, what-she-is, no bullshit and draw people in. that's very special and i appreciate whoever does it whoever they do it, whether they are joanna newsom or devendra or fucking eminem.

Sigur Ros - i think they're amazing, bought my first album about 4 or 5 years ago in germany, and and and i want to see them live. i've heard they slay

Regina Spektor - its funny you should mention that now, because i've been thinking a lot about regina, how could i not. if you've known me for a while you'd know that i am a huge fan, bordering on the obsessive from back in the day. i was turned onto her music by a friend (im pretty sure it was anna vogelzang, a great piano-singer in her own right) a while ago, maybe in 2002, long before she blew up. somebody mentioned her, i went out and found soviet kitsch (actually, i think i pulled that "hey i'm in the dresden dolls can you send me a CD?" card and she mailed it to me) and spent the next 4 or 5 days in a love haze. it was the first time in years i re-discovered listening to music for pleasure instead of business (i would repeat this experience about a yar later with a bright eyes record) and actually Took My Walkman To Bed because i was so excited about hearing the sounds that this woman made with her piano and voice. we invited her to open up for us on a tour of new england, maybe 4 shows, and that was how we started getting to know each other. more shows and sleep-overs ensued (regina once stayed over at the same time david j was in town, a true convergence) and we would talk on the phone every few months to catch up about our respective lives in the weird Major Label Machine. she was working on the beginnings of "begin to hope" back then, and she was oh oh excited about how good it sounded. i remember talking to her once when she was walking from the studio back to her apartment and she just sounded fucking High on the process, so happy with what was coming out...

i saw her last show at avalon in boston, with full band, and was just blown away by how far and how fast it can happen for some people. i used to say to people: "looking at what is happening with regina every month is like watching an alternate/quantum version of my own life"....because she was doing the solo piano thing, which is what may well have happened if i hadn't met the drummer brian viglione and started the dresden dolls. i would sometimes feel jealous of her solo-ness ("damn. she gets to be alone on stage, tour alone, and do whatever the fuck she wants"), sometimes badly for her solo-ness ("damn. she's all alone up there. no drummer to make bang bang loud loud") and certainly, when she blew up big time, envious of the mega-attention the label had given her ("damn. what if OUR record had had a budget & TV placement like that...?") but mostly i am just in awe of her abilty to move me, every single fucking time i see her play (and often just via headphones). she is a song-writing genius, in my opinion, done, if anyone ISN'T already familiar with her music: i recommend starting with "soviet kitsch" and then moving to "songs" and "begin to hope". "11:11" isnt really worth it, nowhere near her best. regina plug over

4.
re: the new avril video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ25-glGRzI
well, we were waiting to see which direction she would go for record #3 and the votes are in: CHEESE FEST.
where'd brooding, angry avril go? this fucking video makes ME brooding and angry. it's the most hate-ridden, ignorant, mean-bitch-promotin' video EVAR & makes me wanna hurl. omg SO over it. that said, "under my skin" will never leave my top ten.



back to life

the birthday show in nashville i find it hard to describe. it's been so long since ive toured or played live shows that i was really bowled over and touched by how loving and generous everyone was. we put this show together in literally four days and then...hundreds of people show up. there is all this energy, all these gifts, all this attention. i feel like i have a magic faucet plug into the universe. how did i get so fucking lucky?

i wanted to rock out so i put a band together with bass-playing jared (from ben fold;s band, he knew some of the songs anyway from the recordings) and drum-slaying doni (from ...and you will know us by the trail of dead and nowadays more in the band Forget Cassettes) and we had one only-slightly-beer-sodden rehearsal the day before the gig. they were both pro and intuitive, incredible musicians and i felt that holy-shit-MUSIC! feeling as we plugged in and played those first few songs. i had jotted out a brand new song, rare for me to work that quickly, the night before they came and so i went for broke and arranged it with them. we also broke out a cover of "sister christian" by night ranger and by that point in the set my life was complete. i think 5 separate people brought cakes, i was given at least 12 ponies (i re-gifted a few of them to the 6-year old in attendance), and a pair of girls brought a pinata which i slayed out on the smoking porch. they didnt tell me it was filled with glitter and so my head was covered with glitter for a few days, which was nice, it was like luminescent dandruff

(the woman beside me just made a funny comment when the french steward brought me my wine. i have noticed lately how everybody on planes are always on their number one best behavior. from apes in the jungle to being stuffed in a box like this, hundreds of us, for seven hours!!!! evolution and socialization: fucking impressive

oh you'll sleep well, she said

you bet your ass i will, wait til i pop the ambien, bizzatch)

at the show i played some the new songs that ben and i have been working on and Holy Shit do they sound good live....any doubts that i was hanging onto festering have fully melted and i felt like a fucking powerhouse, ripping through one song after the next, sopping up the audience that i'd felt so missing in the weeks of recording, as i sang into a response-less microphone and empty room. now the music was real. people could hear it, i cold hear them hearing it, i could feel them feeling it & this is what i like about being a musician.

after the show i went on a til-dawn bar-tour and playground-tour of nashville and got to sleep after the sun came up.

the LA shoot for "shores" was.......breathtaking? awesome? i'm running out of adjectives. it's irritating that all this good shit is happening at once, it makes it all seem a little less incredible. fuck. i seem to use "incredible" and "awesome" a lot. whatevs. plainly priceless, as you can plainly see from the pictures posted up on the myspace (more coming...). there were about 50-100 people hanging (so patiently, especially as the cold rolled in) on venice beach and i kept doing this "fucking pinch me" thing to whoever would listen because i was so happy. all the friends there, all the love, all the work, it was just (fuck adjectives) FUCKING INCREDIBLY AWESOME. i saw the rough cut for it yesterday and i think we came close to capturing the magic, we'll see. editing videos is weird, it's so hit and miss. the director, andrew, and the producer, frank, were great gentlemen (and broke my not-working-with-michael-pope cherry gently....pope is, by the by, doing great and currently living in brooklyn and working on a new feature film, which will most certainly be amazing and feature some kind of amanda cameo, even if i have to be naked and blowing somebody....and i would not put his past michael pope...i would count on it....long parenthesis over). frank gets special love for taking me on an epic motorcycle ride to the best sushi view in hollywood.

(oh the sky is orange right now outside the plane the plane)

in LA i stayed the whole time at katie kay's magic house near los feliz. staying in a house or apartment of a friend (especially the house or apartment of an amazing friend such as katie kay) tends to change everything. hotels are not Home. when not feel home, do not act Home. when you are Home you are happier. i would rather stay at Home and deal with very small inconveniences like Sleeping On The Couch and Waiting For The Boyfriend To Get Out of the Bathroom than stay in a fucking soulless hotel room. granted, hotel rooms are great when you need Very Alone and what not but good friends are usually very chill in the Alone dept. and in this case, i actually wondered if i was encroaching on katie's Alone because she had so much Shit To Do for the video. she killed it, all the costumes, NAILED, the woman is a shining light of brilliance and inspiration....we spent long good talks eating and juicing and driving around LA. emily came to town to join the fest, erin maxick dropped in and took us to yoga. the night before we shot the video (all of our alarms were set for 5:15 am) i was listening to the track over and over and decided around midnight to go out to the street for a good ol dance-and-lip-synch fest for practice, inspied by watchi david lee roth 16 times in a row and being stunned by his earnestness. emily asked if she could video-tape and i said yes and i have yet to see the footage of me bopping around hollywood at midnight in my sweater, lipsycnhing music that only i could hear, but my guess is it's hilarious.

the morning of the shoot i woke up at 4 am with a very christmas feeling in my stomach and knew that going back to sleep would be impossible. so i decided to be a good yogi, went to katie kay's dark kitchen, brewed this great white/green te mixture she has stocked, and took my mug of tea and a blanket out to her front lawn to meditate across from the little buddha statue sitting under the tree. i sat for about half an hour, got up around 5 am all proud of myself for being all centered and enlightened and promptly tripped across katie kay's front steps, smashing her mug into several dozen pieces on the cement and very possibly waking up several neighbors. i laughed very hard at this.

when we showed up at the beach the whole crew was already in full swing and the rest of the day was a blur of sand and whacked out clothes and faces and color and love. the characters on venice beach blended nicely with ourown collection of freaks....costume changes at the cadillac hotel every twenty minutes....david j from bauhaus showing up in his dapper white suit....margaret cho showing up in FULL belly-dancing regalia....kelly from "kelly likes shoes" showing up in full dress and making out with me in the sand...jason webley showing up and teaching the entire cast of school girls the "elephant elephant" song (another gem from the record we're producing by the amazing siamese twins, evelyn & eveyln, more details on that later i assure you)....the bodybuilder who just happened by and decided to oil himself up for the shoot...the roller derby girls who came all decked out...the stilt-walker troupe...everybody freezing their asses off....my A&R guy david bason and my art director jeff from roadrunner getting in the video with their bare legs clad in high heels....i could go on: my only regret is that the video won't feature HALF of what was happening on venice beach that day. there's only 3 minutes for the whole video FUCK!!!!!!!


there is a STAGGERINGLY gorgeous and huge photo-set of all this madness up at :

www.pixievisionproductions.com/gallery/dresden_dolls050307

pixie is the BEST.
& video should be done by june.....

the shoot wrapped at around sunset and i felt a level of tiredness in my body that i used to only feel after a double shift of stature work on top of a three hour drive. a heaviness in my limbs that was so infused with satisfaction that i could ever decide from moment to moment what to focus on. superkate, my kick-ass assitant for the day, drove us back to katie kay's and i sat there like a zombie in the front seat, unable to process everything that had just happened. it was as if the best moments of my life had just been compacted into 9 hours and i was trying to digest it all. i almost fell asleep. i SHOULD have gone to sleep. but instead i went to a club dow the street where jason webley was playing. i was delirious. i became more delirious. every time i see jason play i am inspired, the guy is just so fucking GOOD at entertaining a room of people, i've never seen him not play from the darkest depths of his fucking heart.

we stayed up late into the night and the next day was a complete recovery, we all went to madame matisse and ordered huge omelettes, jason drove off to his next tour date, and i collapsed back into bed until the next day. had two meetings, more film and tv agent meetings and huge sushi galore with em.

then i flew home and slept for like two days, for reals.

once i woke up i had to deal with the onslaught of mail and email and Basic Shite That Is Always There, but i took it in stride. i saw a lot of music. i soaked up the scent of my apartment and the incoming springtime, the flowers bursting like mad in my neighborhood. i Let Shit Go. i am getting better at this. one night patrick wolf and amy winehouse were playing at avalon and me and becca jumped in a cab to check it out. patrick was adorable as shit and inspired me to order, at no great expense, a baritone ukulele from eBay. he was pure energy on the stage. all my old family/crew was converged there, wonderful wonderful. i went over to central sq to see cuddle magic with andrew (a-fucking-mazing: www.myspace.com/cuddlemagic) then we went back for the amy winehouse afterparty. patrick danced with the drag queens (YES, THE VERY SAME ONES WHO PLAYED SOCCER WITH THE KAISER CHIEFS....how lucky are THEY in the rock dept. this month??)

a few nights later i went to see the arcade fire.

i must pause here for a moment of fucking silence for the Arcade Fire. oh oh oh oh oh oh oh............



this band....o...this band is doing it for real, my brothers and sisters. the only time i'd seen them was when i met them and saw them for all of two minutes at coachella a few years ago.
they BROUGHT IT, they PLAYED. the production itself was brilliant: video-feeds screaming big brother surveillance, neon lights that bent ironically towards heaven....they were so not afraid to be performers. they have the tunes; they have the talent. we said hi to will and win the singer (who is way taller than i remember, but just as gracious) and as soon as we exited to the street i heard "HEY AMANDA" and i turned and there were two guys, fans of the arcade fire and the dresden dolls. all High from the show. we chatted up i noticed that oneof the guys had a cast on his arm. it went all the way to his fingers; his hand was cocooned. his friend was wearing an arcade fire shirt that he had made out of bleach. i complimented him on his handiwork. then anthony, or me, i don't remember, asked

"what happened to your arm?"

yeah, it sucked. lost all my fingers, except the pinky.

how? we asked

at work, factory accident. sucks doesn't it.

then quiet

but he was wearing the biggest grin on his face.
the arcade fire show was still pumping through him, making all limbs and lack thereof irrelevant, maybe

we made the usual...at least youre here, at least you're not dead........

out hearts were swollen like killer tomatoes when we got into the cab home


home.
Home.



oh well, can;t really tell the difference anymore ?


i watch my packing habits. packing for tour, packing for shoots, packing for whatever. i;m always doing it.
i watched myslef packing this morning and got really hilarious with it. sometimes i'll REALLY let myslef go and talk to myself, out loud, in a completely un-checked stream-of-consciousness.
for example

"now go to the bathroom. toothbrush wait take the charger for the toothbrush now put it in the backpack pocket ok yay you did that now oh shit you need your passport let's go get it ok ok it's in the filing cabinet yay we're going to the filing cabinet ok passport yay it's actually in here ok now we're going to put it in backpack what else is in there oh gross now list list list let's see the list list time to pack books but dishes maybe dishes ok so the place isn't rank when we come home ok dishes time dishes dishes maybe just water all over them but dont actually clean ok ok put on an elliot smith cd good dish music yay really listening to music"

mind you, these are not THOUGHTS i am quoting, i am TALKING here, out load: to myself and the fleas.
sometimes i stop and notice it and fucking crack up laughing. then i shut up out of weird leftover self-consciousness.

i was planning on taking one small suitcase and igically ended up with two large ones.
how did i morph from minimal "i will take one blank book and maybe two pens" ? into a library of books and an amelda marcos collection of shoes for one photoshoot in france?

i put it this way to my housemate troy:

"oh my god i will have free time maybe i can learn to knit maybe i can learn to play autoharp maybe i can learn to read MUSIC!!!!!! maybe i can read EVERY FUCKING BOOK IVE ORDERED FROM AMAZON!!!!!!!!! HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IN TEN DAYS I CAN EDUCATE MYSELF SO FAR INTO THE CONFLICT WITH IRAN THAT I WILL NEVER FEEL IGNORANT AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!"

add one photo shoot on top of that and you've got two suitcases stuffed with possibilty

(the thin texan behind me just asked, REALLY condescendingly, im ASSUMING you dont want these? re: the three empty plane-wine bottles cluttering his foot space)

and

today before i boarded the plane
oh oh oh oh oh
today was really beautiful
this was the best.

i was invited to accept an award today at youth pride, which is basically the high school version of regular gay pride day, and i was supposed to be out of town. but then ben's show at the symphony came up ( i had to go, but i missed the infamous brawl) and i stayed a few extra days in town so i went, not knowing what to expect at all. about 2,000 high school kids were gathered at boston common to be out and out and i, rarely vocal bisexual that i am, accepted an award from my old high school's gay-straight alliance. i stood there thinking quick about what to say....i wanted to say a lot but i had nothing planned. i was just blown over by the sheer beauty of all these freaky high-school kids, all dancing and loud and proud and easy, the way i'd always fantasized about in high school...everyone decked out and united in happy celebration of being queer. me and three of my friends (claire, mehran and fred, aka kasha) in high chool founded the first incarnation of this gay-straight alliance group that presented my with my styly award. we caled ourselves Bi-GLASS (bisexual gay lesbian and straight society) and we mostly existed to throw parties and draw pictures of our group's logo, which cosisted of the "B" of Bi-GLASS taking the shape of a man's buttocks while the dot of the "i" transmorphed into a cock penetrating said ass. my god, we had fun back then. we were sick and having a great fucking time, i must say. we didn't accomplish anything, i think we went to one rally. probably tripping. but watching it having morphed into an actual organization at my old high school was pretty heart-warming.


i think things have changed, if only slightly. in 1993, when i was in the middle of high school, it was JUST BARELY cool, even if you were a freak, to admit you were bi or gay. now, from a distance at least, it seems like an acceptable badge of alternative honor. maybe im just jealous again. but the kids that i met at this rally were like a best-of: all caught up thinking, social, mad, lost, happy, delirious in the blitzing moment of their own creation right there on the big grassy historic-common thats seen revolution, civil rights marches, you name it, weep it...

in a fabulous twist of fate, the drag queen who MC'd right pride was from the Kaiser Chiefs/Amy Winehouse debacle-rama. i love life

i had thought that i would take off right after the awards to dash home and pack for the bordeaux fantasy but the kids kept asking if i was going to be a part of the parade and i knew i technically had time. so i stayed

(i just took the ambien - not much longer for this world)


i got into a world-war II-era combo land-water duck boat with the organizer (btw YOU GO KELLY, you may have ditched high school but look at what you've fucking organized, you fucking bitch!!l) and some of the other kids and we did a circle of the completely desolate financial district. this was saturday, i got the feeling that it was the cops idea of a cruel joke to be like "sure, you can have a parade, we'll take you through the financial district on saturday where NOBODY WIL BE and we will revel in the uncomlicated trafficlessness of it all"....and so it was a parade, but with no street-side spectators, which was kind of awesome because you mostly felt the inner resonance of this group of 2,000 people all cheering themselves on, all taking care of each other. then shit gets fucking weird: all cinematic, the parade passes by marcus stern, the director of the onion cellar. he and i had some heavy struggles with each other but we caught each others eyes and smiled all-gone all-good at each other, pressed fists over hearts, let the past go. we held each other's gazes for a while. could this parade get more surreal? yes:

the truly bizarre moment kicked in when the driver of the duck boat announced that he hadnt brought any music, did anyone have a CD? i struggled for a second, because i did. i had a "yes, virginia" stuffed in my purse in case i needed one for a gift (and indeed, i ended up signing it and giving it to kelly), so kelly grabbed it and shoved it in the CD player and for a totally surreal 35 minutes i watched a group of high-school kids in a duck boat singing my songs at the top of their lungs to a mostly empty sidewalk. it was weird enough, but it got weirder when i noticed that it didn't seem to make these kids feel weird to realize that the person who had RECORDED this shit, Stood In a Fucking Studio And Vocalized This Fucking Music was there with them. no, actually///// it didn;t seem to to faze them. my presence was an afterthought at best. it was the music, the music, the music. not me. not ME.

we got to the corner of tremont and boylston just as the last chorus of "sing" was playing. whatever was happening outside the boat, at that point, was irrelevant. crowds of saturday shoppers were standing in the street confused by this boat of traffic-disrupting teenagers who had an army of dead-pan flat-ass boston policemen on motorcycles keeping the road parade-ready in front of them...

and they belted out

"LIFE IS NO CABARET"

while i stood there sort of dumbstruck

"WE'RE INVITING YOU ANYWAY"


and they sang those word to the outside world like an anthem that they weren't even thinking about anymore, because the words were so familiar, like a given



and its not the wine at high altitude, oh maybe it is - they say in vino veritas, though i know i usually cry at any airplane movie, including harry potter, once i'm airborne

but i'm letting myself cry anyway no matter what the woman beside me thinks


because


i finally feel like i'm real















............