Literally, the Best Thing I've Ever Seen. Seriously.

Brunettes and whiskey. What drunk genius nailed down my two favourite things in the world into this real advertisement? It should have been me.

You Didn't Know The Words

I wrote this a long time ago...years ago. I haven't read it in as many. Maybe I didn't know what it meant to me then. Now, it reminds me of good love, and it reminds me of feeling right with the world, which I currently do...

YOU DIDN'T KNOW THE WORDS

The young man who keeps fortunes in a mason jar,
Tells himself growing old doesn't scare him.
He couldn't be more right.
Light bulbs in the darkest light.
The girl smells sweet next to him in the swing in the summer night.
Smooth white magnolia in her hair.
She flies under the radar, she flies everywhere.
He has plans and pennies, the courage and a view.
He sings a timeless tune.

Patrick Sweany - Corner Closet

Dressed All In White

Snow day in Austin. Don't get many of these around here...

What Would You Say to Bob Dylan?

Todd Snider On Bob Dylan (1/21/11)

it's hard to think of new ways to consider bob dylan and his work
he's probably the most debated and discussed singer to ever live.
but here's a question. especially for songwriters.
what are you going to do if you meet bob dylan?
have you thought about it? do you have a plan?
i've been working on a plan since i was about twenty years old
and still don't really have one.
is it presumptuous for someone to think they might meet bob dylan?
i don't think so.
from what i hear, he likes to stay on the poorer side of town.
and we know from the story about the cop who didn't recognize him
that he goes for walks.
i know a guy who thought he saw him on a street corner but wasn't sure
if he was bob dylan or a hobo that looked like him.
bob caught him staring and said "it's me"
my friend didn't say anything back.
i know a guy that was in a studio once with him and witnessed a situation
where somebody's booking agent gave bob a rambling speech about
the impact his music had on the world as he was sticking his hand out
to introduce himself.
my friend says bob just stood up without extending his own hand, walked
over to an exercise bike and got up on there
and started pedaling without saying a word.
in front of people no less.
what are you gonna do if you ever meet bob dylan?
i know another who was on a dylan session where they came back in
to listen to a track and after all the famous musicians got done with their two cents
bob asked the intern gopher kid what he thought and went with that.
i don't know what the hell i'd say if i was around bob dylan.
another buddy of mine had a band that played a festival in europe with him
and he said to get back to the hotels everybody had to take the same ferry
leaving the bands, bob included, exposed to the crowd.
my friend found a table with a chess board on it and sat down
and noticed bob dylan leaning against the rail and looking at the water.
at first nobody noticed him but eventually he started to get surrounded.
my friend got up and walked right up to him and said
"bob we got the chess board you wanted"
and bob saw his chance and took it. my buddy got to play silent chess with him
the whole trip and as long as bob seemed engaged people seemed to
leave him alone.
i don't know if i'd have had the courage to do that.
i also know a musician who got a call from bob dylan's manager
saying that bob wanted to ask him a few questions about a certain instrument.
my friend didn't know bob even knew who he was and was floored.
"of course" he yelled. "when?" ...
"how's today" the guy answered.
"fine with me" my friend said "what time"
"how bout now" the manager answered.
"sure . . . where do i go" my friend shot back
"well." the manager went on. "you seen that brown van out in front of your house?"
"yeah"
"bob's in there."
holy shit.
i got another buddy that said he was gonna audition for bob once
and the plan was for bob to come over to my friend's house.
my friend was supposed to have tuned guitars ready. he did.
bob came in with his dogs and kids. the kids started right in messing
with the guitar pegs and a dog shit. they never spoke of either thing.
then bob wanted to know if there was any other guitars and so my friend went out to the garage
to get a new one and somehow managed to get himself pinned under his own garage door.
so within a few minutes of meeting bob dylan my friend was screaming out to him for help.
i'm hoping if i ever meet bob dylan that i don't end up pinned under a garage door.
speaking of doors i heard another story from a studio in memphis where bob came in
to sing on somebody's record or something. they all say he didn't speak a word to anyone
the whole time. even when spoken to. and then, upon leaving he turned to the receptionist
and said "big doors huh."
no one remembers what she said back.
i have another buddy that worked with him once and made fun of his hooded sweatshirt
disguise. and bob brought him a hooded sweatshirt.
that seems like it worked
another buddy of mine auditioned at bob's house. he said he was kept waiting a while.
he said he told bob how great he thought he was. bob said nothing.
they picked a bit and bob got up and left.
ouch.
i have another buddy that was staying with a famous guy on an island.
one day putzing around on something to do street he sees bob dylan
and screws up the courage to walk over and say
"hey bob i'm so and so and i'm staying over at so and so's house,
i know he'd love to see you. you want to come with us."
he says bob just stared at him a minute and walked off.
i don't think i'd try to insinuate some mutual friend thing if i ever met bob dylan.
but what do you do. tell him you like his lyrics for fuck's sake.
or a particular song? are you kidding? a particular song?
no fucking way. or a period. can you imagine what he does here?
can you imagine how many people that never even consider once what
they would say if they met bob dylan get to.
and i'm standing around here like a schmuck.
and what do they say? they say shit like "my dad loves you"
or "my kid loves you" or "when are you going to do this or that again"
or "we loved you in the '60s"
you know i bet he gets as much of that as he gets the
"what did you mean by this" or "what made you say that"
or how bout the odd "were you talking about me"
fuck i've got that before. and i'm a folk singer from the '90s for fuck's sake.
they don't even really have those.
imagine how much crazy shit bob dylan hears?
especially all you traveling musicians who hear crazy shit yourself sometimes.
imagine how many of us have gushed him blue in the fucking face.
imagine how many superstars have just superlatived him sick in the fucking stomach.
should everybody just leave him alone? that doesn't seem right.
it seems like sometimes he should get to hear a "thanks bob"
which is essentially what all of it really is.
thank you. that's the only part of my plan that's been in there for a while.
i can't help myself from wanting to add.
"and not just for the songs and music either, but for the books and movies and interviews
and videos and photo shoots and concerts and the big dome house and the shades.
and all that shit. and speaking of the songs and the music. i love all of it.
every inch of it. every song, period, show, band, outtake, fucking all of it.
no favorites.
but you see here i go . . . now i'm starting to talk to the very bob dylan
the same way i talk to my nephew about bob dylan.
in that spastic way that remind me of an old far side cartoon
where the two gorillas are under a banana tree gorging on bananas
when one turns to the other and says
"you know man, i know we're supposed to like bananas. being gorillas and all
but i think its different for me. i mean, i really like them"
that's how most true bob dylan fans sound when they start trying to explain him.
that poor fucking bob dylan shouldn't have to meet anybody.
i wonder if he likes to sometimes. i wonder if there are compliments he likes.
anyway i better wrap this up. i'm heading over to my nephew's bar mitzvah.
god i hope bob dylan isn't there. i'm not ready damn it.
i'm just not ready.

I Still Love You

A lot.

Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - Rise Up With Fists! from Team Love on Vimeo.

Push Pin Reminders

I want to drive a convertible.


She & Him - Don't Look Back from Merge Records on Vimeo.

Redemption and a Prairie Fire

I've learned, if I've learned anything,
That "never" has no place in the main ring.
You can turn your lover from the inside out.
Irish whiskey in the cupboard, saved for the title bout.
Old memories and beleaguered years keep rising to the top of the cream.
I think just maybe you might have heard those muted screams.
Directed to a pillow.
In the midst of a dark midnight.
Nothing ever told me, "You don't have the right."
In fact, it's the exact opposite.
All this regard brings the wondering to the top of it.

To the top of everything, where we breathe sweet helium.
And a sad note only lasts a minute.
Forgiving a satisfied wound is a perfect tune.
You can only tell someone enough of what they want to hear.
And they can only tell you everything you might have to fear.
But I've heard it before.
And there's NO WAY I'll listen.
Especially when I know the score.

I compensate my English with a dark blood wit.
I could shudder to think, and throw the towel to quit.
But there's something in me that won't die,
And I damn sure won't lose on the back end.
When you're as blessed as I am, you're blind to the floor.
In a place where less is more.
I'll pretend.
The great secret is that I don't have to.
What you see is what you get.
And all the change that comes in between has already been spent.

I do use what I need,
And I'll be damned if there's a place for greed.
There is the relief in knowing that when I get to the bottom of this glass, I'll find rest.
I'll sleep on it and wake in the morning to something beautiful and refreshed.
It's with focus that I train my desire,
And I can make things work through redemption,
In the middle of a prairie fire.

When There's Nothing Left To Do...

Late night dust up...

Agree to Agree

This girl's got the sand...

Cary Ann Hearst & Michael Trent - The Thread from The Moving Picture Boys on Vimeo.

CHRISTMAS BELLS, THOSE CHRISTMAS BELLS!!!

We wrote a holiday song...

Your New Favourite Video

For this weekend anyways...

Being a Man

"COURAGE IS DOING WHAT YOU’RE AFRAID TO DO. THERE CAN BE NO COURAGE UNLESS YOU’RE SCARED."

— Eddie Rickenbacker

"Talking to God is Laurel Begging Hardy For a Gun..."

They say youth is wasted on the young...

They couldn't be more right.  When you get older you have to bend all the rules.  Every.  Damn.  One.  Of.  Them.  If the rules don't give you the bend you're expecting, then you owe it to yourself (in a form that calls on madness) to break them in half.  Break the holy shit out of them.  Let's call a spade a spade...there is a wick in every candle, and it's only so long.  When it burns out, you're just left with a mass of formless, empty residual.  I think that speaks volumes of the biology we've been so intrinsically tied to, and to some degree found prisoner to and (to an extent) our own little delicate psyches.

Growing old doesn't scare me.  Growing stale does.  That's why I want to burn bright.  Like that little ferocious birthday candle that won't give in to the wind.  I've never felt truly numb and I never want to.  In fact, I know that I won't.  It's just not going to happen to me.  However, the minute I do, the Good Lord has my invitation to take me home...no matter the age I find myself sitting in here...inside my own head.

It's funny...I've spent the better part of my life thinking that everything is going to click like a light bulb in the darkest night.  Like everything is going to be illuminated and tangible.  You can see it, you can pick it up, you can feel it's contours, hand it to your friend, show them how it works, heat burns their hand, looking at it through a magnifying glass, write instructions for playing with it, leave it on a shelf and be mobile without it...drop it on the floor and know it won't break.  If that does happen, I imagine it won't be that way.  It will be a little more intricate.  Or maybe it won't.  Maybe it is that simple.  Maybe it's that great simplicity that seems to be the problem...just flying under the radar of all our great complications and distractions, successes and victories.  Better said, maybe it's the undeniable ability to recognize the lives we live which is the problem, and maybe it's the hope for what they might turn into that's the blessing.

I was born at 10:10pm.  I was a lucky baby born on an unlucky day.

http://cults.bandcamp.com/track/go-outside?auto=mp3-320

California in the Morning Always Made Me Warm...

There's a giant western sunset, beyond this here horizon, pointing it's finger at me with invitations on the table. To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under Heaven. I can already hear the surf break on the shoreline and feel the little hand I might be holding in mine. Hello love! I'm floating...

Sun Was High (So Was I) - Best Coast

Here's To The Day

This song is owning my mood right now...all warm and floating with eyes opened wide.

The Flood - Delta Spirit

You and I Have Unfinished Business

I want you to yell out loud if you need me...I'll be there if I can.  You be your woman.  I'll be your man.  

Damn Sam, I Love a Woman That Rains

And I will settle for nothing less.  I'll walk this world alone till I find the one that does.  I want her to be sweet.  I want her to be engaging.  I want her to be welcoming like the women in my family.  I want her to look me in the eye.  I want her to be clear as a silver bell.  I want her eyes to be blue...or whatever color they may come by.  I want her to have eyes, preferably.  I want her to be soft and smell good.  Like rose water, or bluebonnets.  I want her to be smart and speak with grace.  I want her to disarm me with a glance.  I want to glance off her ricochet.  I want to change her tires and cook her a country breakfast in the mornings.  I want the stupid pillow talk.  I want to slap her ass when she walks into my kitchen.  I want to put her name in my phone as "My Lover," disregarding her name.  I want her to laugh out loud with my sister, like she does.  Cackling at the moon and everything underneath.  I want to write her silly poems that I leave in envelopes, hidden in places she'll find before work.  In fact, everything I write is to her...before I even know her.  I am as sound as an old fucking engineer.  Ryan Adams is a Scorpio, just like me.  That means nothing (I'm listening to him).  I am at a point where I feel very blessed.  Age does that to you.  You count your eggs, and they mean so much...big, round, and full.  Hearty, as they are.  Full of sustenance.  Good things abound and I feel filled to the brim.  I have everything I need and then some.  This boy is full of blessings.  I wouldn't trade it for anything.  I do want a woman.  A woman that rains.  On me.  Damn Sam, I do fucking love a woman that rains.

Play This Song

"Undertow" by Warpaint

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130693015

Saw these interesting kitties at ACL this year.  Despite falling in love with them on a totally non-music-related level, I fancy them because they can write a mean tune.  Rawr.

Let The Poets Cry Themselves To Sleep

You're the yellow bird that I've been waiting for.

Rare

I laughed, a belly laugh, at God tonight...or more accurately with.  Because of, in spite of, and in direct rebellion and welcome response to free will. Tears were streaming from my eyes during a bone-rattling laugh. I literally took a knee.

Why is there always a carrot in front of that damned old mule? What a torturous prank. Or is it?  God is a tricky cat. He'll toy with you till you learn the point and swallow the lesson. It will be learned. Carefully studied. Dangling in your face. Just beyond your reach.  He keeps watch over His flock by night.  As the vipers lay in the garden, sprawled amongst our ankles, to wit, armed against us.  

All you can really do is laugh.  Focus on one point and breathe.

I Sank My Teeth Into...

Things that should be felt and never heard.
The unbroken horizon on a blood-moon night.
Contradictions and alterations and silver coins that left no divot.
Fertile soil in a harvested row.
The face of youth while it flew all around.
All seething age as it comes crashing down.
A marked forehead with an ash-cross burn.

An anthemic route for a voice to be heard.
The bone, where the marrow lays bare.
The scars on my chest, and the wounds beyond there.

Worldly pursuits like meat on a stove.

Sanctity and benevolence and purity and love.

Mountains of fear and oceans of doubt.

Modernity and all the filth it spews out.

The halo on her head and the crest in her wings.

The vindictive instability the other one brings.

The Scorpio's good form.

The Aries' burning ire.

The Taurus' quick tongue.

The Libra's desire.

An antiseptic of spiritual redoubt.

A deception of will that poisoned my mouth.

An unbearable heretic conflagration.

The words of my iconic heroes, steeped in admiration.

A powder keg of sentimentality.

My ancestral heart for the courage and the nerve.

Things that should be felt and never heard.

As an Aside...

There is currently an infestation of lady-bugs in my apartment. At any one time, I will find 10-15 on the ceiling and along the walls. I thought about calling the exterminators to rid of the invaders, but decided against it in remembering that lady-bugs are good luck. Considering the innumerable and less desirable unwelcome guests from the insect world, I figured we'd live and let live here. This, after all, is a house of welcome, a house of respite, and who am I to decide who is worthy of that or not...just short of poisonous or winged attachments. Add that to the fact that I've had hallucinatory medicine-head for the past four days (attacking this vicious cold), on top of the fever dreaming, one in which a car horn outside actually kept the beat to the "Green Acres" theme song playing in my dream.

I've read paradigm-shifting quotes from Marcel Proust and delivered a personal "Waterloo" of sorts all within the past three days. This is a real watershed moment for me. Weird changes are happening in my head and around my life.

Some people write to make a living; others to share their insights or raise questions that will haunt their readers; others yet to understand their very souls. None of these will last. That distinction belongs to those who write only because if they did not write they would burst... These writers give expression to the divine — no matter what they write about.
 
--anthony de mello

The Clever Men of Manor Farm

Don't listen to the voice you're hearing,
In the halls of strong conviction now.
It might make sense somehow.

But can you hear the horns?
They’re singing.
Out loud for the mighty men you know.
But they don’t know,
That it’s a long way to fall.
And they’re not really men at all…

Riot of discontent on the horizon.
Where foreign winds take you.
Turning into arcing storms on this incendiary night.
Where discordant words aren’t true.

Mistaken sides,
Pour into the night to save their lives.

Oh, you know I’m dangerous to you...

Delightfully Anachronistic

My old soul will save me one day. It wrestles and grapples in awkward vengeance with the modern world. It doesn't really know the current methods or violent systems. It finds itself lost and confused in the swell of uninspiring convention. It takes unruly missteps. But it will find a soft landing place at some point. I know it will. Maybe it will bring her home to me someday, too. Maybe she'll put her key in her pocket and bring it with her so she can unlock this deadbolt buried in my heart that I've hid from everyone but her. Maybe we won't try to break each other in half this time, because time has gracefully aged our old souls. Eloquent and poetic. Old souls are tender at heart. The harlots and hyenas running around us in frenzied chaos won't be wasted on either of us anymore. Maybe I'll write a few sentences that change your life. Maybe I'll write a few that change my own. Old souls thirst for these things.

Disarming the Null and Void

My heart is a pounding war drum.
My eyes are long blue telescopes scanning the horizon.
Affixed and darting like the fireflies in my periphery throughout the heavy green vines, sweating fluorescence in the summer's sweltering choke.
My ears are deciphering sonnets and whispers charted in code.
The breeze lifts them into the air, and like radar I'm privy to what is heading this way,
So I can greet as friend or foe.
Whiskey is my petrol and my stomach burns like a combustion engine,
Shooting fuel into my amber-soaked brain...
The throttle is open.
It always is.

I've fired the first salvo,
But I've been lashed with a shiner hovering over my eye.
My aim was true.
True as my intentions.
Self-favoring is their vision and deceptive regret is the monologue.
I will raise no white flag on this hazy evening for I am a madman.
Mad as hell with a head full of bubbles and a tongue like a fuse.
I run with the moon and howl like the wild creatures stalking the cut in the middle of the night.
With blood in the nostrils I can feel kerosene pumping through my ventricles, and straining through my capillaries.
I hold no hostages, and I pour salt in wounds.
My favourite nerves hold tight and secure.
I clench my jaw and shake.

Painfully hungry, but no seat at the table.
I've got a plan, but some problems arise.
I've no more to give than what was already there.
Roads in black and skies in gray, sitting above your home...
You just gotta try harder, or feel alone.
Tell me something I don't know.
I'm angling for peace, and I do it standing up.
You're exhausted while the lights are on,
And I just want something graceful.

These are diamond-tipped offerings from the heart of a wanderer.
Everything means something.
A professional bleeding heart.
Everything you can see matters.
A poker face aimed at God and the devil keeps them guessing.
A ransom on the auction block for my soul.
It will take a strong arm.
It could be the great return of the wandering boy.
Tying cuts of ribbon to the trees he's passed so he can find his way back.
If only the storms hadn't untied and carried them off into the firmament.
I would lead you, but it's too absolute.
First I yelled.
Then I knelt.
Then I healed.

Everything you can see matters.

I Bid You Farewell

In light of the truth we stand before you...
Loose cannons with shaky hands.
Sober by morning through our self loathing,
Because the prodigal youth lament their sins.

Some say moral conscience has evaporated,
I’m afraid we don’t see it that way.
In the late night hours we stagger forward
Looking out and up for a better place.

The steps we take away from you,
Aren’t with our feet, they’re with our heads.
We’re naked, dirty, and too far gone.
They said we’d end up this way.
And they say we’re all insane.

If you venture this way, come expecting a mess
Cause every fool has a song
This makeshift virtue is truly painful
Judged for all the things we've done wrong.

This lost generation can’t live forever.
Marked by doubt and fears unlaced.
With dust in our teeth and whiskey in our eyes
We have no idea where our limits lay.
They say we’re all insane.

That’s why they say, we’re all insane…

Ruin Me

Just do it. I want you to. You're the highly-evolved zenith I've been stumbling around all these years. Long-winded diatribes be damned. I've no time for that tonight...probably didn't any other time anyways. A man to a little boy when you're around. Fumbling words, like nothing makes any kinda damn sense. Head spinnin' around dizzy as a damn fool. I'm afraid my love and lust buttons would sync up all too terrifyingly compatible with you. You are poisonous, and I want to inject you directly into my veins intravenously. I want you to do it. I want you to. I want you. Good Lord, I want you. Yes ma'am, I want you.

The Dust Settles A-Okay

Most everything hinges on fundamentals. There are certain absolute truths that I've experienced in my time, and I must admit they move like concrete...which is to say, little to none at all. One of those truths is that life, when given the opportunity, will check you at the plate with a high-rising fastball to the chin, or tell you to have a fucking seat at any moment. I guess I always have, but I'm starting to see the beauty in this. It's good for the soul. It really is.

Nothing is guaranteed. I've seen failures and successes of all shapes and sizes...my own and those of my acquaintances. Failure and setback give you two distinct paths to choose. And it's not even failure or setback...failure is a whole different animal right now. I guess "adversity" is what I'm currently facing. I've got a big white whale in front of me and I need to find a razor sharp harpoon with some expediency. There's no doubt that life has been extremely blessed for me lately, but there's one 800-lb gorilla in the room that needs a talkin' to.

Lucas Jackson had it right when told to "stay down" after being beaten to a pulp within an inch of his life.

His reply, "You're gonna have to kill me."

Carolyn

Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Caroyln, Carolyn, Carolyn...

Carolyn...

Yep

Fuck it. Fuckitty, fuck it. My thoughts, my paranoia, my enthusiasm, my writing. I'm fine with all of this. I am pretty sure I am fine with all of this.

Pay No Mind, I Have No Time

Pay no mind to the aberrations I create.
Only know that I do this because I'm haunted if I don't.
When every person is busy spinning, weaving, and climbing their webs,
I effort to make orderly little formations with the thoughts in my head.

Pithy observances,
So full of excitement and dread,
That I will readily drop once boredom arrives.
Mad little perceptions and curious inspirations.
All-colored threads, they weave through our lives.
I honestly don't know what I'm confined to do.

I can no longer pretend there is a moment coming,
A moment when I will come to know everything.
Everything there is to know about oneself.
I am constant and I am formless,
I am floating and I am fluid,
I am sinew and plasma.
I am translatable only by your tongue,
And I mean nothing for that which I meant.

Bouts of fiction against truth can only be told when they violently collide.
I do not censor my thoughts,
So I must not censor the way they find breath every morning.
The seedlings and the Master made a deal before time began.
You must grow the way you were designed, or forever be damned.

I Pay No Attention To Red Lights

Before I'm even done with my meal, I've decided we're going to pick a fight with one of Austin's favourite sons. Before I even finish my first glass of wine, I already have the melody in my head, and it's anthemic proclamation. They have no idea the tactical assault I'm sketching in the back of my mind, all quiet-like, while we smile and talk of jobs and inane shit; while they fork through their pork tenderloins and gazpacho. I am planning to launch this in the coming months. At worst, it will give me something to do; at best, it will cause some sort of rip in the fabric, no matter how small or insignificant...one that makes people (specific people) take notice. All the great one's need a foil. Marianne Faithful, Sedgwick, Simon, Nico, Joplin, etc. Someone benefited from the back and forth dynamic...the competition. Although, I will admit, the thought of this annoys me...I really don't want to give her the satisfaction. Any of them for that matter...non-deserving sponges of attention. There's no reason to claim reason, but there is a reason for everything, and as it stands, there is a reason for this.

Reason #1: My infinite and incomprehensible sentimentality. It springs from a well that knows no regulation or fears no exhaustion.

I would do this in front of everyone. I would be completely oblivious to their averted scoffs and silent judgements. I would defy all the sound reason that well-adjusted people carry in normal social circumstantial behavior. I would do it if they'd all jettison judgment and just know that I was half-kidding and half-serious, so when it worked or failed, I could conveniently fall to one side of the fence or the other and we could all go on about our normal course. I would do it if I knew I wouldn't be some social pariah because of an excessive show of overt-sentimentality. But I suppose that's a boring concept in some circles. I suppose it's much more riveting to talk about mind-numbing TV shows, temporary jobs, uninteresting movies, shopping, stores, drinks, apartments, houses, condos, parties, parties, parties, drinks, people who aren't here, dear God.

I would throw down my napkin, shuffle around the table, politely excusing myself for inconveniently walking around these boringly sensible people and their delicious meals, and I would put my hands on her face and say, "I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I FUCKING LOVE YOU." Then I would kiss her on the forehead, under her newly red-streaked hair. I would turn and look everyone in the eyes like a wild man from some mountain hut. I would light a cigarette (INSIDE...she hates smoking) and then I would turn and walk out of the door, off into the night, under a streetlamp like some character in a James Dean flick. They would wonder why I didn't pay my check, if I was going to need a ride home, or if I was going to catch a cab. They would wonder if I was simply mad, or just collectively decide that I had gone completely batshit insane. You know...all the things people would concern themselves with if someone actually did what I would do. I would do it without regret. I would do it in a way that only I alone could, and she would see me. Maybe even wonder what it means.

Reason #2: The tendency, I've found, is to push the issue even when it's a dead-end street, on a fruitless plain, underneath a rainless cloud, on a starless night. I should probably find a way to stop this.

Because there's something truly romantic about a tragic, insecure girl. She needs to be "saved," right?! They need to be saved from the dark side of the world and all it's pointed barbs and thievery. Stealing and coaxing them into the dimly-lit back rooms and alleyways of the world. Assholes. They use tempting lures like fame and fortune to get the attention of those who need attention. Crave attention. Need it like oxygen in the lungs. It's amazing. And I need them in the same manner. Or at least I've partly convinced myself of that. Because I am the antithesis. I am the flashlight in the alley, waving my hand, "come this way...we'll get you into the light." I am the antiseptic that pours over the toxic scrape of the viper's fangs. I am the gigantic fucking hug in the middle of the thunderstorm like that uber-gay jewelry commercial. I am the roof over the head. I am the defibrillator in the middle of cardiac arrest. I am the rain in the middle of the desert. Or at least I've partly convinced myself of that.

Oh, of course I can psycho-analyze myself all the way through to the other side of myself. I know what would be said about it. I'm just trying to embrace it. The most important part though, is to keep what you really know about yourself inside. There's always someone willing to take, take, take. There's always someone there to call you crazy. So you're picky about what you show. Because in the end, it's yours. I'll have an outburst of sentimentality, and then withdraw in horror when I realize what I've done. I think people confuse it for being "emotional" or even "melancholy," but I don't think that's entirely accurate either. Everybody has those elements on some level or another. I think maybe it's more of an observational thing...and some are more in tune to it than others. I think it's something akin to how animals can pick up certain scents that we can't. Some of us are just programmed with more sets of sensitivity to certain stimuli than others.

When he's around, he always wins. That's why I'm picking a fight. When he's around, I'm invisible. It's no mystery.

Wankers

Posting political quotes on your Facebook account that you copy and paste off of Google, while at work, does not make you socially-conscious. I don't care how many of your retard friends reinforce your "wisdom" with their comments. Even if they do get into the double-digits. It's about as cool as being the best tracer in third grade.

Everyone That Mattered Went To Bed

And so it is. South By Southwest is LITERALLY efforting (in countless ways) to end me. There's only 15 ways to end a day. I chose one and did it. Yet I still stand, bloody, bruised, dizzy, and supremely happy!!

Walt Whitman, You Are a Friend of Mine

Bad Grammar Kills

It kills deader than dead. Errant and reckless, unchecked and negligent, indolent and hasty...it wrecks sentences. Complete sentences. These are not of my LOT! Fundamental exchanges ruined by shoddy workmanship, like a rusty knife might distribute. It's hard to prove a point with sloppy indignation.

I goddamn drank a whiskey, in genuine and sincere homage, inside the exact bar where Dylan Thomas drank his liver green and died shortly thereafter, because of my superlative reverance for the English language in it's correct and competent form!!!!!



I...........AM A FAN OF PROPER GRAMMAR.




**And apparently tequila, tonight.

One Was Texas Medicine, The Other Was Just Railroad Gin

I've been exhibiting some rather comfortingly incidental behavior as of late. I've made myself a friend of risk. Like a real man should. I've abandoned certain lines of thought in an effort to find grace. I was told I was a "catch" tonight, and simultaneously told why I haven't been "caught." The people who have it all figured out are those I remain leery of. Speculation makes me laugh in the most secretive of ways. Everybody has an agenda.

Black and White and Read All Over

This isn't a subject I've ever really given credence to on this...thing, but since this is the first real incarnation of any press we've received, I think I'll concede and at least give it notice.

THE DAILY TEXAN

By Mary Lingwall
Daily Texan Staff
Published: Thursday, February 11, 2010
Updated: Thursday, February 11, 2010

Usually, it takes a few years for a local band to get notoriety in Austin. However, only about seven months after its first jam session and a few weeks away from recording its debut EP, Guns of Navarone is quickly gaining an enthusiastic, eclectic fan base.

When Guns of Navarone played at The Parlor on North Loop Boulevard a few Fridays ago, I was struck by the diversity of fans at the show. Amid the plaid-clad regulars of the Austin music scene, I also ran into two college students in cowboy boots and quite a few fresh-faced college-aged women.

When Guns of Navarone started playing, I realized why the band’s fan base not only packed The Parlor to capacity, but also drew from diverse music subcultures. By mixing alternative-country aesthetics with detailed and upbeat guitar riffs, and bass lines of a Southern rock flavor with the songwriting and vocal stylings of Americana and folk traditions, Guns of Navarone’s sound fills a unique — and largely vacant — musical niche in Austin.

Guns of Navarone’s sound is the natural product of a collaborative process between Seth Grueneberg on lead guitar, Cory R3inisch on vocals and guitar, Richard Knox on drums and Dustin Meyer on bass guitar. Longtime friends and former roommates, R3inisch and Knox have played music together since college.

“We did mostly covers,” R3inisch said before starting to laugh. “Well, that was a lie, it was all covers. [And] we have been talking ever since we graduated that this was something we wanted to continue and do our own original stuff.”

Oddly enough, R3inisch’s aesthetic — born out of a lifelong attraction to bands like Wilco, Whiskeytown and Uncle Tupelo — caught the attention of Grueneberg, local musician and former guitarist for local punk outfit Consider the Source. After meeting at a happy hour, R3inisch and Grueneberg began talks about putting a band together.

“Seth kind of lit [the] fire under my ass,” said R3inisch. “I thought he was just bullshitting me, honestly. Until he showed up at my house.”

Even though Grueneberg’s musical background is more in tune with more roguish styles of rock, he has actually become the spearhead of the band’s folksier edge. Guns of Navarone’s occasional mandolin-playing comes straight from Grueneberg’s affinity for the instrument.

“Seth is just such a naturally good musician that he picked [my mandolin] up and started writing these amazing parts with it,” R3inisch said. “When we bring a song in and we feel like it needs something added, we just do whatever feels natural.”

On their way into the studio to cut their first EP later this month, the bandmates are humbly aware of their freshness in such a music-saturated scene.

“Seth has been there with Consider the Source [for all those years],” R3inisch said. “And he has seen bands go up and have their falling. [We know that we] are still so young and new and in the infancy stages.”

But veteran knowledge and green ambitions haven’t given Guns of Navarone a sense of entitlement.

“I just want to play something [like] this,” Grueneberg said matter-of-factly.

“And we’ve got a great guy in our corner with James [Taylor, of Giant Steps Productions],” R3inisch said. “He’s been helping us with shows. And without him, I think that this would have been a much more strenuous process.”

With a full set of songs under its belt, the band is already preparing for a full-length recording this summer. But big plans and growing attention hasn’t changed what these guys really are — a group of friends down for just about anything, from talking about music to offering dating advice.

“You’ll wake up someday, and it will all make sense,” R3inisch said.

But, for some reason, I think his advice is more apt for his story than mine. After toying with his guitar almost his entire life, I think R3inisch is finally onto something.






Rebecca Miller/The Daily Texan

(link to article)

Furiously Active Nucleus

It seems I'm at the center again. The place where the dam broke and became the catalyst for so much introspection and hyper-sensitive decision about how I was going to live out my days and the person I was to become. I've marked that day on my calendar, in blood no less, and use it as a reference point to determine the timeline of my life. Through miles and miles of memory and effort and regret...it was a big bang. One that certainly forced me to become the person I am today, for better or worse. Mostly better. I owe that time in my life a "thank you" note, and at the same time I owe it a shot to the face with fists clenched. I guess I owe it what's fair. To be acknowledged seems fair. To write some dizzying manifesto might do it justice, but I think everything I've touched since has left fingerprints all over the place.

All footnotes and diversions have been washed in bleach and driven away. I just need a handful of evenings to figure out an infinite equation that few have ever solved, much less even attempted. I've cleared all the lanes. I've paid all my debts. I've cleansed the system. Flushed the pipes. I've armed myself, and wiped off the windshield. It's time to process and make some sense of my staggering sentimentality...to see if it's ever justified...because if I can't reconcile it now, I'll never be able to make a case for it in the coming days. More importantly, it's time to project what it means to me moving forward. Two steaming locomotives marching towards collision. It's high-noon and here we are, staring each other in the face again.

Act Nice and Gentle...

...with me. That's all I ask.

I End Up Buying Flowers

For every transgression. As it should be. Nobody should be afraid of nothin'. We're all taken care of in one way or another. As it is, at the end of the day, I'm appeased by a life I'm reverentially grateful for. Quiet. Loud. Quite loud...are the voices in my head. "Quite possibly" couldn't be more possible than any possibility should ever allow. The hours keep tabs as we stumble along. Blissful and naive. As it should be...within reason.

Just nod your head in agreement. We all know our limits.

Happy Birthday Will. It will never cease being a diabolical scheme with you and I. I love you.

Oh The Sweetest Winds, They Blow Across the South

I enjoy the perfect absence of sound, when silence is all there is to be heard, and I'm privy to free-formed movement and thought. No ranting or wild speculation about how things are or how they should be. In fact, I need it. I need it to function and process. How we weather upheaval is something that intrigues and challenges me...in the best of ways. The ever-present ebb and flow of consequence and change moves in us and opens the door for reflection. I feel somewhat compelled to mention that. It's in the perfect absence of static that rationale comes into the fold.

An older family member that I greatly respected passed on and moved into greener pastures today. In the midst of the crowd, he kept, with perfect sweetness, the independence of solitude...in that, his soul wasn't swayed by the incidental or unforeseen. He held his core and he held it tightly no matter what life sent his way. I have the highest respect for that. An unwavering loyalty to yourself, and your ideals, is something I strive to emulate, no matter the consequence. Everything he did was with zeal and empathy. Even if it was something as simple as reading a book, or engaging in menial conversation. That's respectful. This was a man who worked as an engineer in the Navy and helped build the runways for the Enola Gay in the Philippines. He married the love of his life, endured after her passing, raised a wonderful family, and extended his tranquil soul to all those he encountered. He was a sweet man, and he lived a life of virtue and cordiality, employing an unrelenting humor and serenity. He was from the dying breed, and while his part in this story is over, there's a security I feel from having known him. It's a blessing to live a full life. Enriched with every sense of humanity one can encounter. It's a blessing we can all hope for before our own card is pulled. Life is happening all around us. No matter where we wander.

He was one of the good ones. I raise my glass.

Unfailing Loyalist

Everyone within earshot is wondering who's directing this here symphony. Driving down habitual impulses can be a heavy charge. I feel change, and I feel like I should change or be left in the silence. A moment before, where you could see everything luminous and clear has suddenly become a disjointed haze. Something akin to wiping the fog off a window, but the fog won't wipe off. It's on the other side of the glass, it seems. There's some type of metaphorical gun pointing it's shaky crosshairs at my forehead right now and I don't know where it's coming from. The aim is quite unsound. I don't know where to hide or even where to shoot back, or if I should do either. They don't hand out medals for bad behavior. In any case, most courageous acts occur where no one else sees or bears witness, and even the decisive act that leads to it is done somewhere in silence.

I always leave a light on in that window. I don't know why.

I hate to ask you this, but could you sit right there while I settle an old score?

It Sounds So Soothing To Mix a Gin and Sink Into Oblivion

And deal with it then. Patience, you are a valuable ally. One that has profitted me something beneficial. Even among the venerable assembly of characters from the long shadows and uncertain light. I'm thankful for my recent time amongst the pines, figuring all that is to be figured, with those who make the figuring consistent and accurate. At least, from my point of view perspective is everything.* So it goes. I have goals. Wrote them down on a 3X5 notecard and stuck them in my wallet to carry in my back pocket at all times to remind me of effectual perspective. 2010, here I come...I hope you're ready. Degrees of certainty notwithstanding.


*And also, immediately listen to Telekinesis. Songs are Coasts of Carolina and Foreign Room.

Giant Ghosts Of The Winter Drift

You are a friend of man.
And my thoughts are left to picking battles.
Unequivocal discovery,
Finding you in the realm of love.
As words from the old bard,
"What's in a name?
That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet."
Your presence is so overtly significant,
These feelings have not yet been named.
Spinning and shining from where things are,
And where they're supposed to be.
What will be,
Never will be.
I can't convince myself you're really there.

Through life's rich pageant,
I dance with you.
If only fleeting and timeless.
A great commission for touch and embrace,
That which you cannot possibly possess.
Scared.
Sacred.
You have my sympathies.
And to whatever devil or saint you accompany,
When you're not roaming unchecked in my own reverie,
I raise my drink to the contenders.
Never will they have faced such an invisible and unconquerable foe.

I only posture when necessary.
I only parade when asked.
Risen,
From the ice world.
Where you've grown oh so cold.
Where you live oh so cold.
Embers only dying now,
From a fire long ago.
With a knife in your belt,
Stabbing for my soul,
You are no friend of man.
Taken,
In the night.
Like an aviator's baby boy.
With no steps through the door,
Levitate across the floor,
With the cold wind in the lunar light.
I tire more expediently than before.
Yet, the mind loses no step.
It is the crime of the century.
Profoundly significant confusion.
I am terrified,
There will be no conclusion.

Why did you find the most sentimental of lovers?
May it haunt you as you haunt me.
So what can you see up there?
Where no one exists.
How does it look up there?
Hovering high above.
On the pedestal where I've placed you.

It Ain't Gonna Save Me

Blood splattered in Pollock-esque brilliance when he split his temple with the business end blade of that black Flying-V guitar.
"Ahhhhh fuck all...here we go..."

Mania, like a tornado, starts picking up alarming velocity in shoulder to shoulder proximity. Beer cans start sailing like Spitfires at the heads of the bandmates as they scurry off stage. It was all out war. Mortar rounds lobbed from the crowd, drumsticks like bayonets, a mic-stand makes an effective mallet, bass guitar like a battering ram, punches thrown...haymakers, sweat, blood, misty breath in the freezing cold, bouncers rush in with veins bulging out of their neanderthal foreheads. Spontaneous fucking chaos. I'd seen it once before in some sanctimonious Nirvana documentary when Cobain splintered the skull of some poor hooligan like he was a Chinaman driving a railroad spike. You drink too much, you embrace anarchy, you get your eyes crossed by a 3-inch-thick plank of glossy wood and nickel-wound strings; swung maliciously by the long-haired shrieking demon you just paid 20 bucks to pound your ass into raw meat, all the while accompanied by a fitting soundtrack. When cornered, wild animals go to great lengths to vacate the situation. Human civility notwithstanding, punk rock musicians are no exception.

She bought the tickets. She asked me to accompany. She was wide-eyed, hairs on the back of her neck stood up straight. Electric air, charged and fused with hysteria. A bit hypnotized she was, you might say. Pure wonderment and primal fear. I quick-scanned the room, found the easiest exit to usher her out, clinched my fist in my coat pocket, turned my beer bottle upside down (a fitting armament to sink into some wayward animal's jugular, should it come to it), grabbed her arm and ushered her to higher ground as a defensive maneuver.

We are on the Austin360 A-List the next day. We look like we belong there. The first time I saw her, she was dancing in the middle of a brightly colored hoola-hoop, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a wonderful bar, in the middle of warm lights reflecting off the middle of her small brown-haired head.

We walk past two delinquents with their faces smashed and pressed up against the window of the cruiser, being read their rights. Dried blood down the face serves as an unfortunate reminder that you do. not. fuck. with. punk. bands. in. Austin. Texas. She trembles a bit at the two poor rioters and the shape they're in. She puts her arm under mine and rests her head on my shoulder as we walk past the ignorant youthful anarchists. Inconvenienced policeman in 28 degree weather means handcuffs and arrests. Arrested. Arrested and thrown in the clink.

She looks up at me from her scarf and pea coat and tells me she has fun with me. Arrested.

I seem to be arrested.

All is lost. There is no hope for me.

EPIC

I'm fucking epic. I have an epic name. Cory Will. I live an epic life. I live in the raddest city in the whole of civilization. I know the most interesting people. We are collectively observant and effortlessly engineer the best fucking hypothetical scenarios to ever exist. Our conversation is unrivaled and airtight, rhythmic and fluid. Unceasingly thrilled and inspired. I threw the best traveling-road-show-party last night, ever...without any help. A girl made me boob-shaped cupcakes for my birthday. I have tomorrow off. Today is second Saturday. I have a head full of glorious, multi-colored hair. I wear v-neck shirts, and I look fucking amazeballs. I sometimes stare in the mirror at myself and agree to myself that I would make-out with myself. My chest is proportionately streamlined to my waist-line. I'm sweet and I have a good heart, and all the while I can ride a horse, change my own oil, field dress wild game with a pocket knife, roll my own cigarette, and I've never lost a fight I've been in. I'm not apologizing for any of this. I'm a shot of whiskey and a Bible verse. I'm a walking revolver. My momma likes my songs. She says her little boy is the greatest. I've spent the last 30 years being unnecessarily hard on myself. I've listened to other people for too long. I'm not arrogant. Far from it. This is just my "naked rain-dance" phase...to paraphrase a dear friend. If we're going to hold to the theory that we're all unpredictable, complex, multi-faceted beings, well then...I'm owed this. If someone had an intervention with me, I'd say, "I saw this coming."

Is that what you look like now???? Jesus. Herbert. Christ. You age well. Too bad looks don't really mattah anymore. I've been making eyes at you.

The Windmill At Which I've Lowered My Lance

I'm finally to a dedicated point. A plateau where I feel comfortable buying what you're selling. I don't feel like I'm sliding down the shiny edge of a thin razor, nervously looking over each side hoping not to fall, but longing to get off all the while. I am finally beginning to come to understand what I already know. The horses are comfortable in the stables and the need for furious running is only shown in flashes of white-knuckle focus now. Rested and weary, I can reload with efficiency now. You can't stop progress, and you can't deny preparation. I've rattled off long enough, headstrong throughout a vacant southern land, looking for my place at the table. Suddenly, a chair seems pulled out for me and a plate has been set. I am terribly focused right now.

Katy Bar The Door

Ever the vigilant, I know that life can tell me to have a fucking seat at any moment. It's not that I have a morbid sense of impending doom, but I think we do have to carry a circumspect ambition towards most things in life. If nothing else, it allows us to be prepared.

Because of this, or more naturally, in spite of this, I feel strongly compelled to give credence to the way I've been feeling lately and how my environment has been emitting a (very welcomed) nice warm glow.

George Bernard Shaw said, "The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." I like that quote. Not because I'm cynical, but because it recognizes the (what would seem to be an obvious fact) ever present element that life can be downright fucking rotten sometimes; what with human frailty, the presence of pure evil around every corner, death, disease, and good intentions gone awry...and to deny this is ignorance. However, it takes a certain amount of effort to keep from viewing the world this way in totality. The yin, the yang...I suppose. Light, dark.

Screaming non-sequitur: It's why I love the movie No Country For Old Men so much. I was always baffled as to why people didn't understand this movie. "I didn't get it. What was it about? It just ended like that???" The whole movie is about chaos theory and how we can't stop what's coming to us and the total lack of control thereof. There are themes of boredom interspersed with flash storms of violence. Elements that have forever plagued the human condition. But we're equipped with quite possibly the most formidable weapon with which to fight back. Hope. All you need to know about that whole movie and the hypothesis it suggests is to listen very closely to Tommie Lee Jones' monologue at the very end. The Coen brothers give the secret away at the end in, what I'd say is, the most genius of ways. The last minute-and-a-half is exactly what that movie is trying to say.

Point being, there's enough desperation to go around, and desperation is a wanderer. That's why it's so important to take in the freedom of harmony, and allow yourself to accept serenity when we find it.

Gratitude.

I am so thankful for the things I have, the people I know, the people I love, the people I have loved, the experiences I've had, the people who have helped to shape me, and the person I have become...and all that it entails.

I love this wonderful city where I reside. There is no place I would rather be. I think of the many twists and turns my life could've taken if I'd decided one way or another on so many things that seemed oh so important at the time, and I'm so thankful that I'm here, in this city, writing this right now.

I love my friends. The old adage about the measure of a man being found in his friends is true. They're all so unique and different and this entertains and amuses and warms me. But they all share common ground in that they're good people. So many good people.

I love my family. I love my family. I love my family. I love my family. I love my family. I love my family. I love my family. I love my family. I love them in a way that can never be contained by spoken word or harnessed by a thought or communication. I love them so much.

The opportunities I've been afforded are a king's ransom. Like all, I'm guilty of apathy and frustration at times, but I've been provided for by the universe every step of the way. In fact, I've been overcompensated. There's a quiet confidence that is growing in me, and the places I want to be are looking more clearly defined. I want the courage and determination. I want to line my fears up and step into the ring with them.

I've been in love. I've been in love with them, and they've been in love with me.

The older I get the more apparent it is to me that every moment we have here is to be cherished and that we truly are fleeting and fragile and beautiful. I can see it all around, and I can feel it inside. I can think about it, I can sing about it, I can write about it, and I can manifest it. That was given to me for no other reason than for me to have it. That is fascinating.

So I sit here at 30 years old with as much hope as I can ever remember.

-------

This is one of the sweetest songs I have ever heard and I love it.

You Bet, Avett...

RE: Every blessed word as a recipe for my great heart's desire HOT DAMN!!

Things Are Happening

Good things...good things I've wanted for awhile.

Damn, I love Austin.

Will The Circle Be Unbroken?

There ain't no more goddamn frontier. The only untouched places on the high plains of this world with waist-high grass and free-roaming herd animals are those in the unseen depths of our minds. Its within our heads and the veins that envelope our hearts to provide the only vast horizons for our eyes to see nowadays. Choirs sing about it. Congregations sweat over it. Untamed places where cowards cringe and the courageous barely survive are readily available, but traipsed by few. Counterclockwise motions send the bucket down the well with forearms a-pulsin' to ascend with anything it displaces, bringing into the light a drink of fearful madness. From the pits of Hell sometimes. A sin and a thought catching a ride up to the surface. Sometimes it takes a revolver to put down what was brought up, and sometimes it takes a careful set of loving, graceful hands to care for what finds new breath out of the depths. This is my favourite time of year, when those things work their way to the forefront...out of the prairie. Out of the heat. They greet us with a head-nod and a hay-maker shortly thereafter. But they acknowledge you at least. They let you know their purpose. Sometimes they're here to give us our own. Damn them all and all they carry. Some kinda high lonesome sound they sing. Always. Damn them all.

The ending of my relationship with you was a necessary casualty for getting to the place I want to be. To some parties it's difficult, but necessary, to say that my journey with you, at this point, is now over.

In the sky Lord, in the sky...

I Was Young When I Left Home

My daddy loved Dylan, and so do I. That is all.

He hung on every sad word that fell from her mouth.
All the confusion and abandonment denies everything she could possibly ever let out.
So he swaggers on, one foot in front of the other, while the questions in his head mount.
But the muse for which his heart sang and his purpose in the matter left no doubt.

"The Graduate" In Gentleman's Form

I feel as though I was seduced by the world and all her cinematic shameless self-promotion. I wonder what it'll be like when I meet the girl of my dreams and everything is fucked? When I was a child I used to think the glittered specks on the ceiling were little holes where Heaven sat in the attic, because light was the saturation of color and it hovered above us. I used to think divinity rested, perched on top of our heads, and the halogen-lighted room was where the angels sang their praise-chorus. It resided above us, and it made sense. And where is my guilt? It's everywhere. I don't know, but I've been told, every little thing's been bought and sold.

Who else feels this raw shit? Am I the only one in my little circle? I'm drunk.

The most effective poets will whine themselves to sleep. Goodnight moon. Just stop talking now.

Couldn't Have Said It Better...

"I have hoped as many hopes and dreamed so many dreams, seen them swept aside by weather, and blown away by men, washed away in my own mistakes, that — I use to wonder if it wouldn't be better just to haul off and quit hoping. Just protect my own inner brain, my own mind and heart, by drawing it up into a hard knot, and not having any more hopes or dreams at all. Pull in my feelings, and call back all of my sentiments — and not let any earthly event move me in either direction, either cause me to hate, to fear, to love, to care, to take sides, to argue the matter at all — and, yet ... there are certain good times, and pleasures that I never can forget, no matter how much I want to, because the pleasures, and the displeasures, the good times and the bad, are really all there is to me. And these pleasures that you cannot ever forget are the yeast that always starts working in your mind again, and it gets in your thoughts again, and in your eyes again, and then, all at once, no matter what has happened to you, you are building a brand new world again, based and built on the mistakes, the wreck, the hard luck and trouble of the old one."

~ Woody Guthrie

Lilly Mae Mathew's Guide To the Over Compensated Life

Straight from the hip I shoot with my best writing taking the air like tender meat. There's always something to be said for vulnerability, but who has the time, much less the desire to throw yourself in a frying pan? I do. And so it is...

It's raining tonight on these streets where it never fucking rains, and there's plenty of piss and shit to be washed away on these brick-lined avenues. Sickly enough, both literally and figuratively. You see, Cinderella's pumpkin turns into a festering gourd here from time to time, but much more infrequent than it did in the paper city just North of the Trinity River...where I lost my mind...in all it's filthy bronze elegance. So I think I can readily take this in stride and somehow manage. Life works in cycles, and we're all in this together, right? Sure.

.22 bullets used to fly like single-file flocks of albatross in the stratoshpere when I was younger. My aim was true out there, back then. Always.

That little town, Rochelle, which burned down in a white hot sunstream when it was up for county seat in the late 1800's. It had the disgrace of not being named after a famous Texas, slave-owning general. It lost because the rail head and locomotives gave Brady (Mister Peter Brady) the jurisprudence to govern the small county in which I was raised (Confederate General Ben McCulloch), but my ancestors pulled for their territory. It was a few votes short (despite 22% living below the Brady poverty line, but who knows that, and more importantly, who seems to care? That's another clothesline for another afternoon).

The Hill Country never looks sweeter than it does between our homeland and San Saba County. Lilly Mae saw it, but she didn't pay much care though...with her French-styled counters and ice-cream offerings for every child-like humanoid that passed through those arched doors. She was there because God, or the universe, or some force of nature told her to be there. 50 cents on the dollar was her standard price, and a smile and handshake was all it took to make a transaction. She was as beautiful as those hills, and her smile was welcoming like the big oak shade trees. Commerce still found her on any day, sunny or overcast. Sodas and nails, soups and flour, cash...no credit...but she held tabs.

I can still pick out the exact trees where my mother used to escape those she was surrounded by and lose herself in Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Dostoevsky. There's a strong "V-split" in a tree about 200 yards South of the ranch house...next to the crumbling livestock barns, where she would sit for hours and educate herself from herself about the world that she hadn't seen. Away from her brothers, and away from the chaos that filled that little rock-lined, hand-made house. Hours she would sit and take the Hill Country, and inspired words, in like a sponge, and she felt free and near God, or something more significant than what she'd seen. It was the same draw from her chest that pulled me to sink a cross made of cedar-posts about three feet deep into the ground where nobody ventures. It's where I thought I might find the most appropriate place to talk to God. He hasn't disagreed with the placement. Not yet anyways.

Someone once stumbled upon it, and questioned it's existence in a way that spoke of inquisitive despondence, but I never gave a fuck about those who inquired about the time I spent on my knees. I pray there when seas get rough. I pray there when skies are blue. I pray there when passing by, and I pray there when I feel inclined. I like to think she did the same in her own place. In fact, I know she did. I know of two trees that hold significance to her that she's never shared with anyone in her family. That is a mother/son conversation...and I inherited my mother's sentimentality. Thank heaven for it all...and damn it all. It's wrecked me and saved me. But mostly saved me.

I remember Mathews Grocery, before they tore it down with the mid-sized wrecking ball. There was a wicked, black 1990 Ford Ranger for sale out front that I coveted a few years before my legal driving age. But they tore her store down after she passed, like the world tears down our history, and consequently our innocence. America shreds it's history like a failed document in a corporate conference room. Ashamedly so. But nothing could've supported the belfry in that building. It was beyond it's time, and heavier than most. Like most everyone I know...myself included.

She used to sit behind the counter, serving sandwiches and smiles like a gypsy, enjoying her time pulled from the killing fields. Sent a couple of her sons over in planes made of bailing wire and super-glue to fight for Europe. Her store sat before our little parcel of land on the highway leading there, and it was always the halftime show during day-long work trips that sat more like dread as mold on wet carpet to a young boy, or glorious afternoons yanking fish out of our ponds with my father and little sister.

I drink whiskey, like my grandfather...like my sister does. It's in our blood.

You try and follow your heart, and if you're serious, you're not disappointed if it leads to complete and utter madness. In fact, you should welcome it if it beckons. The fire burns anything it wants. It's up to you to put it out or fuel it. Nobody else. It's not done for you. I think that's one of the strangest things.

Ahh, Mr. Guthrie, say it ain't so...

There's a black wind blowing through the cotton fields baby. I sit here with my unfortunate old soul, delightfully anachronistic. Sarcastically smiling where nobody understands but me.

Nothing seems to be more important in this life than understanding who you are. Nothing has shown me that it is.

Reset

Our greatest triumph will be that which we overcame. Measurement will tell us so, in due time. There's things that mean everything to me that can't be dulled by the general minutiae of life. "Each wrinkle on your face, I know it at a glance, you cannot run and hide, nor duck nor dodge them. Your carcass and your deeds, will fertilize the seeds of the men that stood to guard my thirty thousand."

I'm reminded of particular direction offered from my father on some sweat-soaked, work-heavy day on our Central Texas ranch, driving fence-posts. "You NEVER hang your head for anybody, but you NEVER place yourself above anybody. We're all in this together." There's a dark wind that blows through the cotton fields, but we weather the storm. In the cellar, or with bloody fingers in the field. Either way, we process that sentiment because of those that came before us in a far and distant time. I wonder?

We are all in this together. Hell, I see you still have his toothbrush in your bathroom. I take that for what it's worth and continue my ceaseless search. Can you blame me? No, you can't. I can't blame you either. I'm proud and deflated by certain things, but as Hemingway said, "A man can be defeated, but never destroyed." And Oscar Wilde said, "Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future." True.

You play every part scripted for you perfectly in my dreams. They are frequent...admittedly so. I also read some book about our star-signs and how compatible we are. The jury's out...

I'd stop the dreams if I could. But I'd never touch them with reality, because there's no way you could fulfill their lofty expecations. So I leave them in a satisfied, hazy memory. It's where you belong, after all. In reality.

Ships With Holes Will Sink

And this has me thinking about my true friendships. You navigate and effort within the best of your abilities to control the dynamic within the parameters of intimate relations, but how much control do we really have? In one of my irrelevant songs I say, "We slide in and out of change, but nobody ever really changes." Time, circumstance, life...it all has infinite elements that shape and mold who we are. We share our experiences like a prescribed personal essay with the people we hold infinitely dear, but what if they don't reciprocate? Or better yet, what if they simply don't want to hear your bullshit, or tire of your presence? Especially when it has a foundation in what previously seemed unshakable. I like to convince myself that the friendships I've cultivated are immune to change, but that's probably myopic on my part. In fact, I know it is. I don't hold anybody to their alleged obligations anymore. Shit, I never really have. People are free to flow in and out of my life. This might be shortsighted on my part, but I have ideals that aren't going to change; no matter who is present or who isn't. I am who I am. While I hold personal expectations for myself (in a perfect world), I won't stop being who I am because of some "potential" construct of personhood that someone has placed on my head. I didn't choose this life, I'm just living it...sometimes poorly, sometimes gracefully. To add to that, I'm not regretful. I choose, and pursue, the things I enjoy, and avoid that which I don't. I'm only participating in the paths that have been laid on my plate on a daily basis like every other person in this world. Potential is a dangerous word. I'll navigate around it in the only way I know how...and I have my blueprint (like everybody else)...I don't need approval. In the end, I only have to answer to myself (and I hold myself to higher standards than anybody in this world, or the next, can possibly hope to impose on me). But I'll deal with the consequences of my decisions, like a man, like the way my father taught me, when it's my time to answer. I once read a great quote, "Let the world know the weight of who you are, and then let the world deal with it." I'm an idealist, so naturally, that's gonna ring true to me. How can I not? Really? My ideals sometimes get me in trouble, though. It's all I know.

Doors open and doors close. I'm not in the business of lies, and I'm certainly not in the business of slamming doors shut on those I love and respect. I'm not sure I'm ready for some of those doors to close just yet. But I have no control over certain elements, and I shouldn't be ashamed of that. I won't be. I just wish there was a more efficient means of communicating that unfolding dynamic. But it is what it is. It is what it is. I've had enough life under my belt to understand that I know ships with holes will sink. Sometimes sad, but sometimes unavoidable. It is what it is. As my musical hero Ryan Adams says (and I say this with no arrogance), "I always win in the end." I say that because I hold true to my ideals. I'm not ashamed to lose and let go. One of the most important lessons I've ever learned is to let go. I'm not afraid of this. But maybe that's my problem?

Abandonment issues in their twisted vacuum. Maybe that's the issue? Maybe not.

I promise, I'm not self-involved. Very much the opposite. Don't know how to handle recent developments. But this is how I've chosen, I suppose.

On another, unrelated note, life is good. I have my first "band gig" next Tuesday. I couldn't have picked three better gentlemen to play with, and I'm finally doing it. It's what I moved here for, and it's actually happening. I like our songs, and I hope people like our performance. We'll see.

Someone once told me, "You think too much." I love the person who told me that, like a brother, and I don't ever take it as an insult although I think that was it's original intent. I take that as direct fucking representation of who I am. If you don't like it, I can't change that. I'm sorry.

Faith (in every respect). Patience (in ways that need to be learned). "Heal your vines, you'll heal inside eventually."

Movies

I just watched "500 Days of Summer" and even though I had at least three glasses of wine while doing so, I've come to the conclusion that if I had the talent to write a movie about my 20's, it probably would've been that one. It's great...it made me squirm in my seat...and it's haunting. To me.

I'm tired of being the set of training wheels for girls before they get on their big bikes. But nothing in the prior entries of this blog should lend surprise to that.

Let's Not and Say We Did...or Maybe Not Never Did Do Anything

I've told myself, many times, that some things never change. When they do it's often surprising...the outcome, the motive, those involved, everything. When things don't change you almost get used to it's familiarity. Like that train that picks you up every day at the same time and takes you past the same buildings and drops you off at the same place. That same structured black hole you find yourself inescapably falling down every time. Well today was different.

You see, I've had a problem falling down that black-hole-piss-pot situation for awhile now, and now that she's decided to add recreational drug use to her mantra shouldn't surprise, nor offend. However, the ruse for which it came about is suspiciously strategic, as were other recent moves on her part. I'm pretty sure both of which were aimed at me. That's neither here nor there. Even if the dialogue and movement from either side says otherwise. This is how I deal with it.

For those who deal in extremes (a trait, after trial and error, I've definitively found repulsive) the coming is as easy as the going. I'm not to escape blame...I was buying what she was selling. Literally, and figuratively...ashamedly so. But in spite of the fact that I had to drive home today to sleep some of it off during the middle of the workday, on a Tuesday notwithstanding, I found her proposition had a very different kind of appeal to me today.

To piss on one's tree, one must enjoy that which he is marking, and subsequently hold indignation for those trying to impose their unwelcome presence. Well, I thought about it, because for fuck's sake, here was my chance...

"I'm in self-destruction mode today...are you?"

"Hmmm...I've been avoiding self-destruction mode as of late...but you know I'm no stranger to decadence."

"You wanna go crazy tonight?"

"You KNOW I'll call your bluff on that, maybe."

"Meet me at my house in 30 minutes. Stay with me tonight."

"I hope you're alright."

So I sat, staring at myself in the mirror...getting my haircut, and somewhere not too far down the road there was a girl. And this girl was probably burying her day and her trials under piles of red-stained turbulent devolution. And I'm sure there was a guy next to her. Possibly on the couch, or maybe in her bed. But this time...this time...it wasn't me.

The girl who normally cuts my hair walks by, looks me in the mirror and asks, "Hey, you stayin' outta trouble?!?!"

"I'm trying."

For the first time in awhile, I wasn't lying.

L'Arc-en-Ciel

There's people and places I've seen and heard and felt.
There's signs and pathways that point and travel and fail.
You sit in a dark room long enough you'll go blind.
No need for eyes.
Nothing to hear.
Nothing to feel.
Nobody to be.
Turn the lights on and hear faint buzzing in the bulb.
Feel the warmth of light.
Everything illuminates in the circuit of electricity.
Everything illuminates because of my hyper-sensitivity.
I watch no channels.
I memorize no lines.
I sit and dream up prolific times.
Nothing makes sense and everything is relative.
Bend some laws and stretch most truths.
For a moment there I thought it was you.
Dressed in clothes arched in red and green.
Dancing in a sky soaked blue.
I try not to understand until something gives,
Or the dust flies off and the shine comes through.

Corinthian arrogance is not just a biblical affliction.
It's a novel world; it's a present condition.
It's platinum everyone.
Can't be chained by what seems real or what seems fake.
Everyone hiding behind secret spills and stains.
I've made the strangest mistakes I can't really explain.

Your chromatic spectacle.
Your untouchable mirage.
You are only illusion while mercury is blowing the top out of the thermometer.
So I boil in collusion and add to the confusion.
Battle Hymns of a Modern Man...the devil has a counter on his turnstiles.
God has a welcome mat.
The great folly of life is that nothing is fair.
Yet I stand here, resolute, breathing the mist of a passionate air.

By Way of the Green Line

I watched this again last night. The best scene from one of my favourite movies of all time.

You Can Wake Up Now

Impartial, wasted and free...

The only girl I cozy up to is Austin herself. She makes an interesting partner and bedmate, and she makes this all oh so much fun. Her virtues never fade...only in the North. She just keeps teasing me with the possibilities, and they are numerous. Like krill in a shallow sea. Tell me another place that rivals the personality of my love and I'll call you a liar. She never lets me down.

Desperation is a wanderer around certain parts, and I've carefully observed it with my own eyes. It'll visit my home from time to time, but do what you want cause I won't remember. Just don't call your shot cause it never sticks. Only those who keep from themselves are those who suffer it's fate. And fortitude has nothing to do with it. There's about 5 million caustic items to call to attention. However, they all roll on for reasons that make perfect sense to me. Like a soaring bird of prey, we (each and every one of us) have the opportunity to see things as a small map with pieces moving back and forth, to and fro. They all seem small and insignificant now.

Rubbed wrong, don't mattah...just wave inspiration under my nose and I'll come right round.

I Will Have You

I don't know how, I don't know when, and I don't really know why, but I will have you.


Or one just like you.

Stand It Like a Man

Please Grace...Don't take offense to my nonsense...

I possess a staggering ability to presuppose personality traits that I find attractive and attach them to things that are not so attractive in retrospect.

That's a "me" problem.

Hoo...

Ray...

Don't Be Afraid of What You've Learned

There are two things a person should never be angry at; what they can help and what they cannot."

~ Plato

The French say anger is a bad counselor (le wise!). I say that's probably a fair assessment. Anger can also be sharpened into an efficient utensil. It certainly has its place and its necessity in this world and within our hearts and minds. If it weren't for anger injustice would prevail...at all times. Cruelty and malice would be ever-present. Anger is a useful tool with providence to drive these things back into the woods and let them know that we mean business. That such action and decorum will not be tolerated. But anger is a pretty poison. It beckons with ease, and welcomes during the initial onset. Be that as it may, shame has a wicked ability to rear it's ugly head if anger isn't channeled in proper avenues.

I find myself being less angry. Not necessarily in measurable instances, but moreso in duration. I don't rightly recall a moment in time when I decided this to be the case or convention, but let's call it a "gathering of evidence" over the years. I've found that if something is addressed immediately without an unfortunate festering, resolution always follows shortly thereafter. Any emotion really. Happiness, melancholy, worry, anger, elation, pride, jealousy, guilt, longing, excitement, loneliness, joy, anticipation, optimism, remorse, lust, relief...all these things are what make us truly human, and I'd venture so far to say that without each of these we're probably getting the short end of the stick on this great ride of life. The magic trick seems to be balancing them though.

Mama always told me that in any relationship (any relationship) you should surround yourself with people who have a center line and don't swing erratically from one side of the pendulum to the next without reason or the capacity to find their footing at the center. A "true zero" (for lack of a better term) is a valuable thing to possess, because it allows us a frame of reference. There's always something to return to. Something that allows us to operate within a comfortable degree of certainty that we are who and what we actually convince ourselves we are. A blueprint for reality, if you will...I'll spare you the laborious dive into metaphysical objectivism and leave "reality" up to the brain people.

Some of this newfound comfort with emotion is akin to the wonderful process of aging. As we age, we refine our ability to place emotion into circumstance. 5 years ago, I would write a miniature thesis about conversation that rubbed me wrong till my sleeves were bloody. Now, I just sit and think awhile...assign my emotions where they are most useful, complete their mission, and move on. Trust me...it's not a perfected campaign, but it's showing signs of maturity.

In the world of moral relativism, emotion never really takes allegiance to a side. We often assign it an allegiance to "right or wrong" because we're clouded with whatever overriding sense of humanity seems to be pervading our every thought at the moment. But saying anger is wrong is short-sighted, and conversely saying happiness is good is also myopic. Anger is anger. Happiness is happiness. Carrying guilt for either one is gratuitous. You're human...it's quite alright.

Separating the rational from the emotional, as it turns out, seems to be an exercise in futility...as anyone can tell you. Even so, balance between the two certainly brings clarity. But you have to be careful to give each their fair say. Let them be heard.

Having an emotion means being human.

Controlling that emotion so that it prevents damage is maturity.

Accepting maturity is grace.

And grace is providence...


It gets easier. Even if we don't know why.