(things I wrote down on half an hour of sleep this morning; as ever, if it's in brackets they're not my words)
blood half-caffeine, churning and shaking, I stare at 9:00 in the morning with the same eyes that saw 9:00 the previous night - barely rested, sore, and suddenly shaken by the final chord of a four-month-long song. that which had become my nucleus is splitting and I am pinned here, looking up to the sky, heart pounding out delirium, no sleep until I know what happens next, no sleep till I can't stand it anymore.
[thought of you as my mountaintop, thought of you as my peak
thought of you as everything I had but couldn't keep]
what of it now? what to believe? bonds forged in the giddy hours of the morning, taste of diner coffee on my tongue and the good tired feeling of laughter in my throat. something has changed on a deep, irreversible level; a commitment has been made, but what of my promise to myself, what of this tentative declaration of love that hangs clearly visible in the air like our breath in the frozen morning? I'm going on - no time to settle that which matters in the course of a life until the last chord finishes ringing out.
--
saying goodbye for now to one of my friends this morning, she said, "I'll miss you most of all, Scarecrow!" to me. just about broke my heart, for some reason. I'm always afraid people aren't going to miss me.
sometimes when monumental things happen in my life I imagine hearing a massive guitar/piano chord in the background, like the end of "A Day in the Life" or "Love Reign O'er Me" something. I can't be the only one.
I think I've said the word "bizarre" a thousand times since yesterday afternoon. it's fitting though. things have been bizarre. wonderful, mostly, but bizarre. like spending the night in the sketchiest office ever, sleeping on a couch, and walking half a mile to a diner for breakfast on the coldest morning you can remember yet this year. at this place on Beacon Street they serve what I think are fried bagels and give you paper placemats with maps of Greece on them; they don't seem to be affiliated with the Greeks in any other way.
I have no idea what's going to happen next.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Friday, December 3, 2010
thumbin' my way down to north caroline
I wrote a blues song about shit I did this summer. it's called "corners of the midwest" and it's kind of not terrible, maybe. in other news, my voice is terrible, and weak, and too quiet. I always think it's okay until I record it and play it back. eurgh I sound like I'm twelve and have strep. which happened a lot, I had strep every other week as a kid. hey, maybe that's why I can't sing?
I also wrote two songs (and various fragments) about this kid I like a lot. and another song about cutting out and driving to California when you feel like it. these are the things that are on my mind. and shit. at least I'm playing guitar again? and the last couple I wrote have actual chord progressions that aren't just 1-4-5, so.
I averaged four hours of sleep a night this week. I was doing really, really well at not being dependent on caffeine, and then "having to learn how to be a section editor of a daily college newspaper" happened and now Dunkies coffee (and its ACTUALLY NAUSEATING amounts of cream and sugar) is my bff again. but I spent Wednesday night drinking cheap wine and yelling about basketball with other people who are insane enough to work for a newspaper. good shit.
did I ever write about the time I accidentally found Lake Erie over the summer? I was thinking of that when I was writing today and it ended up in one of the songs. that was a cool moment. I miss summer. I think somewhere deep in my brain I believe that as long as I'm still listening to predominantly Springsteen (which I am) it's still summer.
I also wrote two songs (and various fragments) about this kid I like a lot. and another song about cutting out and driving to California when you feel like it. these are the things that are on my mind. and shit. at least I'm playing guitar again? and the last couple I wrote have actual chord progressions that aren't just 1-4-5, so.
I averaged four hours of sleep a night this week. I was doing really, really well at not being dependent on caffeine, and then "having to learn how to be a section editor of a daily college newspaper" happened and now Dunkies coffee (and its ACTUALLY NAUSEATING amounts of cream and sugar) is my bff again. but I spent Wednesday night drinking cheap wine and yelling about basketball with other people who are insane enough to work for a newspaper. good shit.
did I ever write about the time I accidentally found Lake Erie over the summer? I was thinking of that when I was writing today and it ended up in one of the songs. that was a cool moment. I miss summer. I think somewhere deep in my brain I believe that as long as I'm still listening to predominantly Springsteen (which I am) it's still summer.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
to you and me that's jingletown, that's home
When I went to Ireland with my family, just about the first thing my brother and I did was try to convince innocent Irish people that we were Canadian. I have no idea why this happened (although the overnight flight from New York, which left at 10 PM EST and landed at 4 AM EST...which is 9 AM Ireland time...and the absolute lack of sleep on that flight may have had something to do with it), but we walked all around Shannon Airport yelling "EH" and talking about the Edmonton Oilers, in the hopes that someone would mistake us for Canadians. I think we also talked in southern accents (terrible, terrible southern accents) and did Fargo impressions for a little while, and then I passed the fuck out on a bench for an hour and a half. I don't think we convinced anybody of anything, besides that we were complete jackasses even for Americans.
Right now I'm wearing an Oakland Athletics hat. I have four baseball caps in regular rotation, for teams based in Pittsburgh, Boston, San Francisco, and now Oakland, plus a Minnesota Twins one that has been sporadically important in my life (plus my Pens hat, but that's separate). When I wore my Sox hat the other day, this kid on my floor told me I was being a disgrace to San Francisco, and I had to stop and explain to him that I'm not actually from California, even though I ran down the hall whooping it up with my friend who is when the Giants won the World Series. Before that, I wore my Giants hat to the newspaper office, with a Pirates shirt, and got the Spanish Inquisition into why the hell I would ever wear a Giants hat (also got the question "is it Barry Bonds Day?" No, sir, it is never, ever, ever Barry Bonds Day in my life, and you're lucky I didn't slap you for saying so).
I guess there's a definite thread of me wanting people to think I'm from places I'm not from, even though I love where I actually am from (more so now that I don't have to be there year-round). It's just more interesting that way. I mean, I have a reasonable claim to Boston now (I can navigate the city much, much better than I can Pittsburgh, which is a source of guilt) but I just like walking down the street, seeing people notice my hats and think of me as a Californian, or a Minnesotan, or a Chicagoan the times I wear my Blackhawks shirt, and so forth. I want to know what it's like to be from everywhere, how you think of yourself if you're from Wisconsin or Florida or New York or New Mexico, what people want to convey when they identify themselves with one place or another. I personally feel connected to a whole lot of places; hence, the hats.
That's why I got back into sports in the first place, you know - wanting something to connect me back to Pittsburgh. Going into junior year, I was starting to think, and be concerned by the thought, that I could go to school - let's say - in New York and have nothing to distinguish me from people from Cincinnati, or Kansas City, or what have you. And people always expected me to pay attention to hockey, since I play, and I thought sure, I'll just become loyal to the Penguins, and that will be that. The rest is history, obviously, but sometimes I realize that's about the weirdest damn reason to get into something in the world. It worked, though. When I think of home I think of Mellon Arena (rest in peace, old buddy) and PNC Park (you'll see better days, I promise) and walking across the Clemente Bridge in the summer with my family, standing in a crowd of 375,000 Penguins fans on the Boulevard of the Allies celebrating this thing we believe in on June 15, 2009. They don't have that shit in Philly or Dallas. That's just home.
Right now I'm wearing an Oakland Athletics hat. I have four baseball caps in regular rotation, for teams based in Pittsburgh, Boston, San Francisco, and now Oakland, plus a Minnesota Twins one that has been sporadically important in my life (plus my Pens hat, but that's separate). When I wore my Sox hat the other day, this kid on my floor told me I was being a disgrace to San Francisco, and I had to stop and explain to him that I'm not actually from California, even though I ran down the hall whooping it up with my friend who is when the Giants won the World Series. Before that, I wore my Giants hat to the newspaper office, with a Pirates shirt, and got the Spanish Inquisition into why the hell I would ever wear a Giants hat (also got the question "is it Barry Bonds Day?" No, sir, it is never, ever, ever Barry Bonds Day in my life, and you're lucky I didn't slap you for saying so).
I guess there's a definite thread of me wanting people to think I'm from places I'm not from, even though I love where I actually am from (more so now that I don't have to be there year-round). It's just more interesting that way. I mean, I have a reasonable claim to Boston now (I can navigate the city much, much better than I can Pittsburgh, which is a source of guilt) but I just like walking down the street, seeing people notice my hats and think of me as a Californian, or a Minnesotan, or a Chicagoan the times I wear my Blackhawks shirt, and so forth. I want to know what it's like to be from everywhere, how you think of yourself if you're from Wisconsin or Florida or New York or New Mexico, what people want to convey when they identify themselves with one place or another. I personally feel connected to a whole lot of places; hence, the hats.
That's why I got back into sports in the first place, you know - wanting something to connect me back to Pittsburgh. Going into junior year, I was starting to think, and be concerned by the thought, that I could go to school - let's say - in New York and have nothing to distinguish me from people from Cincinnati, or Kansas City, or what have you. And people always expected me to pay attention to hockey, since I play, and I thought sure, I'll just become loyal to the Penguins, and that will be that. The rest is history, obviously, but sometimes I realize that's about the weirdest damn reason to get into something in the world. It worked, though. When I think of home I think of Mellon Arena (rest in peace, old buddy) and PNC Park (you'll see better days, I promise) and walking across the Clemente Bridge in the summer with my family, standing in a crowd of 375,000 Penguins fans on the Boulevard of the Allies celebrating this thing we believe in on June 15, 2009. They don't have that shit in Philly or Dallas. That's just home.
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