Discipline

I recently stumbled upon a definition for the word discipline, that really resonates with me.

Discipline: Doing what needs to be done, even when you don't want to do it.

I like this definition. I printed it out and I'm going to put it on my wall.

Alone with 8 million

From time to time, generally though not exclusively with the changing of seasons, I feel blue and alone. There has been this weight in my chest for about a month now. It is the weight of undeniable and monumental loneliness.

During these "blue periods" I step back for a second and laugh. How is it that one can be sifting through a city crammed to the gills with people, 8.1 million to be fairly exact, and feel alone? I ride subway cars, sardined with business types in their finely pressed and starched suits, rushing to the important jobs that make the world keep on turning and churning. These people make the decisions to buy and sell and play chess with companies and people. If you make under $100,000 a year, consider yourself a pawn.

One thing about New York is that things are constantly shifting and changing. My favorite place to get a sandwich in NOLITA before it was even really called NOLITA by anyone other than realtors, bread and butter, is now a Cuban restaurant. My favorite German Pastry shop is god only knows what. I just know it closed. My very first gig was at a bar called "the rising", which is now a Mexican restaurant. My very first open mic was at a bar which is now a clothing store.

This change also applies to people. I think New York is a really hard city to forge and maintain lasting friendships. Someone can be your best friend one day and then the next day, they move to another neighborhood, still in the same city mind you, and you never hear from them again. I think of Astoria, well queens in general... It's like a foreign country to me. I never go there and I have no reason to do so.
Friends have moved to queens and have never been heard from again.

I guess at times I wish there were something I could hold onto like a rock, but although New York is built on Bedrock, it feels more like sand. The tide comes and goes and sweeps people away and brings them back or they get caught in the current and are lost forever.

I was having a beer with my friend, Carrie, the other day and ran into a group of friends. One of these friends has just acted weird towards me for almost a year now. This occasion was no different. I can't fully explain in words, but I had confronted him about how hurtful he was being. He is someone who I have valued so deeply. Well, all of the group said goodbye to me when they left, except for this friend. He went outside and acted as if I didn't exist. It cut me to the core. God, I am a stupid sensitive little creature.

I think this experience sent me face first into a puddle of blue. The one good thing I can say is that I do have a remedy for the seasonal blue periods. It's my guitar, black Swan. Last night we had a really in-depth conversation about the end of the summer and I ate Ecuadorian chicken and rice and contemplated buying a ford escort. So, I am not alone after-all with 8 million. I have black swan and fatty chicken and in the end, who could ask for anything more?



photo credit- Carrie Thomas

I kick children, pass the tums

I was talking on the phone yesterday, walking down the street, and not looking and I kicked a small child by accident. He fell flat on his stomach. His parents were horrified and looked at me like I was the devil. I felt so horrible. I'm now kicking small children down. God help me. Maybe I should stick to phones that are firmly coiled to the wall.

Nothing is ever what it seems when you see it from a distance coming at you. It looks like a bunny rabbit and then you see it up close and it's a hyena. It looks like a toy train and just before it hits you, you realize it's a real train. You think you stepped on a piece of garbage that missed the trash can on the corner, but instead it's a toddler.

This is life. Sometimes someone offers to spraypaint your baby and you think, hmmm is that a good idea? but then you say, hey, why not go ahead and spraypaint my baby. I've never seen my baby with purple skin. This is remixing. That has been the biggest occurrence lately. I've been giving people my baby to take apart,spraypaint and put back together. It's both beautiful and horrifying.

I'm eating fatty foods again because I'm stressed. I am so ridiculous. I'm like a 300 lb black women with her period. I could basically dip fried chicken in mayonnaise right now and feel like I've found nirvana. So, many deadlines and so little time...remixes, artwork, doing gigs on the DL. It's enough to make my head spin off into outerspace... Just a side not. Guacamole flavored tortilla chips taste amazing dipped in processed cheese and topped off with spicy sausage and fried chicken. Can someone please pass the tums?

czech please!

After a rather long and grueling day, I decided to stop into a local bar, cheers if you will. I sat alone at the bar. Few patrons had arrived and I was happy to be solitary and write in the little black book that I carry everywhere with me. So I lamented about loneliness and pressure and everything good and bad and ugly that had transpired through my day and week.

Just a note:::: I know the owners of this bar pretty well and they were sitting across the bar with a guy I had never seen before. I paid little attention to this.

So, I drink my one glass of wine and was preparing to leave when the bartender approached me.

"The gentleman at the end of the bar would like to buy you a shot. His name is Joe and it is his birthday"

I wanted to politely refuse but decided to just go ahead and take my medicine instead of insulting birthday Joe. So, I said that I would have a Lemon Drop shot and down the hatch it went. Now, I grabbed my coat and my bag and prepared to leave, but I thought I should thank dear Joe for making me feel obligated to take a shot and of course to wish him a happy birthday.

I go over and say my thank you's which turns into him throwing a fifty dollar bill down on the bar and saying shots for everyone....everyone being the 6 people in his vicinity. I say..oh hell, why not, it's the guy's birthday. He obviously doesn't have friends. They aren't here. I should oblige. So I do. Another lemon drop shot down the hatch. I still just want to go home. Joe by the way is from the czech republic. I start talking with him as he keeps throwing fifty and hundred dollar bills down on the bar and buying shots for anyone with an open mouth and a rotten liver. I'm starting to see double. I don't like shots. I don't like to do shots. I just wanted to have one glass of wine, go home, play my guitar, and sleep like an angel.

Instead I'm here with Czech Joe destroying brain cells. So, I ask him a question....a very simple question.
"What do you do?"

his answer=" You don't need to know"

I still do not know what he does, but I have a horrible feeling that it involves breaking kneecaps for a mob boss of some sort....ugh. Is there a czech mob?

So, of course the next thing out of his mouth is

"I want to go home with you"

I say "No, You're not going home with me. I don't take guys home with me. I have a boyfriend"

his response= "I will buy hotel room. I pay"

my response="I'm not going to a hotel with you"

his response=" not hotel. Motel. I pay for motel. You go with me. I pay"

my response=" I'm not going to a motel with you"

The next sentence out of his mouth was something about me using him for booze and that I'm a slut.

I pack up the little dignity I have left and go home.



God help me.

Remixed, Lonely, and Blue

At times I think of myself living in a world that is black and white in rooms filled with too much smoke, perched atop a piano singing the blues. The audience is filled with people who are dressed to the nines in a way that was just everyday clothing if you lived in my film noir world. I hear the clinking of the ice in their drinks. I am this enigmatic figure, the singer.

I am blue because that is what I am. I probably drink too much and maybe I have a problem with insidious substances. The counter culture of the grainy black and white world welcomes me yet I look down on them and I don't quite fit in the audience with their neatly pressed suits and flower-pinned lapels.

After my weekly engagement singing my songs of heartbreak and longing, I step off of the stage and ask the bartender to give me my regular, a scotch on the rocks. His name is Jimmy, because it just seems appropriate. He's heard it all. His face is stone. His heart is velvet. I know nothing about Jimmy. He's all ears, but doesn't get involved. I probably once had a crush on him but realized that like the Berlin wall, he's too tough to crack and too tall to climb.

After my third scotch, Jimmy asks if he can call me a car. I refuse and walk down the empty streets alone. I quite possibly should have used the bathroom before leaving the bar and have to duck into a dark alley to pee. There's a blind man playing the saxophone and I throw him a nickel. For some reason I envy him. A black cat crosses my path. I think nothing of it.

I reach my small apartment in a bad part of town, climb the stairs sloppily running my fingers against the cracked paint, intentionally making pieces crumble and fall onto the rotten wooden steps that creak with every step. I collapse into bed, alone, so alone. A part of me needs this loneliness. Another part of me so desperately craves love. I have resigned myself to be alone, a tragic enigmatic blues singer who smells of smoke and scotch and of dark alleys.

They will find my body two days after I die and wonder if it was suicide or murder or an accident. The papers will write about it. People will claim to know the answer. Big flash bulbs will pop and newsies will yell "read all about it".

So, I have taken my baby and given it to others to twist and mold and paint as they please. I now have two remixes in my hands which will be part of something soon to come. It's exciting and scary and different. I'm a protective mother who doesn't like to let others hold her baby. I'm learning that she can walk on her own and I have to let her play with other children for her to really be a part of the world. It's so hard watching them grow up.

Maybe I am not fit to raise my baby, but I pushed her out and I feel her with me, still inside me moving. She will always be there. When I'm up on stage, singing the blues with a flower in my hair, she is sitting there up past her bedtime, smiling up at me. I have probably corrupted her, but someone had to do it.

I Love Hate New York

Depending on the day I should either be wearing a shirt that either says
"I love NY" or "I hate NY"
I find that there is rarely an inbetween with this city. We have maintained a dysfunctional relationship for quite some time. NY beats me upside the head, backhands me, burns cigarettes into my clothing.

The next day there is the apology, the flowers, just the right words. I always come crawling back because NY has made me dependent on it. It's taken away my car and convinced me that the subway is the only way to go. It has made me actually fear leaving NY because I don't know how to function outside of the dysfunctional relationship.

I can get pretty much anything I need most times of the day...access to works by almost every famous artist. I pass models on the street. They live amongst us. I can hear every major language spoken in the street and eat pretty much every type of world cuisine.

Yet, I can also see the dark disconnected parts of humanity...the homeless the smell of urine as the subway train approaches...absolute wealth ignoring absolute poverty as it begs for a penny to buy an apple..or maybe some booze. who knows. After you live in NY for a while you become jaded and need convincing that a homeless person isn't just an NYU student pretending to be destitute for extra drinking money.

In other unrelated news and to prove that I have A.D.D. Today, my count of friends on Myspace hit the dreaded number 666. God help us all.

Hollywood Fire Hydrant for reelz, not for fakes

Imagine driving through Hollywood at 2:30 in the morning.
a few blocks ahead a giant gyser of water is shooting up into the air 40 feet high.
the source of this magnificent ?natural? disaster was a car which had crashed into the hydrant. The water had blown the hood off the car, which had blossomed into a beautiful fountain. It was magnificent. I wish I had a picture to show you, but I didn't have a camera. It will live in my memory forever.

My new favorite bar is a place called The Abbey on Robertson and Santa Monica in West Hollywood.

obviously my irrational fear of LA has fallen away, and I apparently had some sort of weird experience that makes no sense to even people who live there. At night, the air smelled like flowers, sweet and sickening, reminiscent of the magnolias from my early years in the south. I drove all over including the 405 freeway and it was enjoyable. nobody cut me off. People stopped to let me merge into traffic. It was pleasent. The weather was beautiful. The people were beautiful, well most of them. The food was delicious and fresh.

Have a found Utopia? Los Angeles is tricking me. It is hiding its underbelly. I must return and seak it out. I'm not fooled by this show of fragrant blossoms and friendly drivers.

and yet, I think I want to move there. oh god.

Fear of Los Angeles

I think I may have an irrational fear of Los Angeles.
I've never wanted to go there, and yet I never really had a reason to loathe or fear the city of angels.

My only real theory is that it is my grandmother's fault. My grandmother was an okie, the people from Oklahoma who fled the dustbowl and ended up in California trying to find a better life, but basically spat on and treated like scum.(see Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath)

Maybe it's a deep resentment of California's treatment of my grandmother, passed down in my genetic makeup. Regardless, I have never been to Los Angeles and I have never had a desire to go.

Regardless of how I feel, I will touch down in Los Angeles on Monday and will not see my beloved New York again until Thursday night. I am keeping an open mind, and who knows I just might fall in love with LA.

Tomorrow I'm back in the recording studio reworking an old recording. I have a feeling that you're all going to pee your pants with glee when you hear the ear candy that will be coming your way. Alright, I'll just come out with it. It's the Walking song.

I'm told people look at you strange if you walk in L.A. I'm going to be driving a mini-van, so I'll be super hot driving through West Hollywood.

Is Faster and Harder Better?

I find that sometimes I become attached to songs after they have been recorded in a certain way at a certain speed. This week, I went into the studio to record a more uptempo version of a song. It sounds hot in its new form, but it will take me a while to get used to this flashier version. Is Faster and Harder better?

It's like a nun wearing sequined high heals. At first, it shocks you, but eventually, you say a few hail marys and settle into the idea.

aWake

Last night I went to the wake of my friend's grandmother. She passed gently at bed time with "farewell to arms", drifted to sleep and did not wake up. This is the universally preferred "way to go".

Broke Ankle Mountain

So, yesterday I fell down the stairs. I quite possibly have broken my ankle, but I continue to walk on it because I am tough as nails. There is no swelling, no discoloration, no real signs of breakage, but it's definitely not right.

I think it was the lack of food and over abundance of theraflu that made me lose my balance and tumble down the steps that lead to my apartment. On the upside though, I have almost completely shaken the strepthroat and am ready to tackle the world.

I got two phone messages this weekend during my convelesence from people saying "you have to see brokeback mountain." "oh it's so good". Alas, I may be the only man of the "man on man action persuasion" who has not seen this tale of manlove out on the range. I've been too busy burning the many candles I burn at both ends. Alas, I may have to wait for this one to come to DVD.

I'm eating solid food, so it's a good day. God, that sounds geriatric.

Strepthroat

As a child I would get horrible tonsil infections about twice per year. I remember going to the doctor in our small Kansas town with my mother and basically begging to have my tonsils out. For some reason, the doctor did not think that I needed to have them out. I have to both loathe and thank the man for doing this.

I have tonsils that are about twice the size of a normal person. While taking a voice and movement class in New York a few years ago, I was forced to participate in an exercise where we all looked at our tongues with compact mirrors. The exercise then progressed to looking into other peoples mouths. This culminated in the teacher having everyone look at my tonsils like I was the modern day equivalent of the Elephant Man.

So, why do I have to thank the man who would not let me have my tonsils out so many years ago? Well, it is my enlarged tonsils that causes these strange sounds to come out of my mouth when I sing, many times sounding much like a muted trumpet.

Why do I loathe the man? Twice a year like clockwork I get strepthroat. My tonsils swell to the point of doctors having to give me steroids to reduce the swelling and keep me from suffocating.

I spent my day today in bed, drinking water and sleeping, occasionally having some theraflu. Last year, my strepthroat hit in the last week of January. This year it's the first week of February. Thank you and Damn you Dr. G for leaving these giant lumps in the back of my throat just begging for infection.

All The Sad Young Men

There is a song that keeps pecking at my consciousness
like an overzealous woodpecker.

I first heard a version done by Anita O'Day about a year ago
and then later was introduced to the version that Rickie Lee Jones did.

I walk into gay bars and I am many times for me,
they are filled with such sadness.
Sometimes it is dressed in Prada with a forced smile,
but it's still there
beneath the surface.

It's maybe not so much sadness but rather a desperate desire for physical
human contact. I have said on occasion that I believe men are more
sensitive than women as a generalization. They are the walking wounded,
scolded for expressing emotion and hardened from feeling so much
and being unable to just cry or scream. I used to be able to cry so much
more freely, now I just lace my songs with saccharine sadness like a radiator whistling
as it lets out small breaths of steam.

The Ballad Of The Sad Young Men,
lyrics by Fran Landesman

Sing a song of sad young men
Glasses full of rye
All the news is bad again so
Kiss your dreams goodbye


All the sad young men sitting in the bars
Knowing neon nights,Missing all the stars
All the sad young men drifting through the town
Drinking up the night trying not to drown

All the sad young men singing in the cold
Trying to forget that they're growing old
All the sad young men choking on their worth
Trying to be brave, running from the truth

Autumn turns the leaves to gold
Slowly dies the heart
Sad young men are growing old
And that's the cruelest part

All the sad young men seek a certain smile
Someone they can hold for a little while
Tired little girl does the best she can
Trying to be gay for her sad young man

While the grimy moon watches from above
All the sad young men play of making love
Misbegotten moon shine for sad young men
Let your gentle light guide them home tonight
All the sad young men

Source: “The Nervous Set” cast album, Columbia Records, 1959

Before You Go

This weekend, I recorded a new song for the album
called "Before You Go." I Played it for the lovely Danielle F. Last night and tears ran down her cheeks. I wish I had a picture of her with the bubble headphones on. She was an 80's beauty.

Oh, we ate Salt and Vinegar chips and drank Saporo Beers and listened to the new Kate Bush. If you haven't heard it, you should buy yourself a parakeet and listen together. It's a very bird friendly album.

There are many things brewing below the surface. These are secret things. I will be able to speak freely very soon, but for now I can only hint.