I'm on itunes

We've made it! Steven & I were  honored to be a part of such a fun and meaningful theatre community project, The Battery's Down, created by our hilarious friend, Jake Wilson.

Our fun little number, "Video Chat," was in the Season 2 Premiere last April. For a 45 second song, I think Steven & I got a lot out of it. Most of the appeal was visual, so definitely check out the episode especially to see the adorable faces of Andrew, Nina, Jake and Cortney. Andrew's lines in the scene before the song crack me up EVERY TIME!!

And we were honored again to be included as a bonus track on the brand new soundtrack for Season 2. I hate to implore, but please buy this album. I will actually make money if this album makes money. All the songs are written by wonderful theatre writers, some of whom have Pulitzers! And they're all my wonderful friends.

You can buy a hard copy of the album on the Sh-K-Boom Records site. Or if you can't buy the whole album, please buy at least MY SONG-- it's only 99 cents! Thanks in advance :)

And look at all this ink we're getting:
Theatermania!
BroadwayWorld!
Tubefilter!

highlands

Well, I didn't get fame or fortune in old New York. But I did get some mighty fine friends. Even if they do tweet inappropriate and embarrassing (false) things about you....sigh.... here are some highlights from highlands.

above photo by Peter Sheik
...and some Bryan Ferry Roxy Music. From one of my most recent favorite film scenes.

american idiot

Tonight, I'm going to see American Idiot at the St. James Theatre. I've heard reviews on both sides of the fence and everywhere in between, but I have a feeling I will like it. That's not to say that I'm going to think it's theatre at  it's best. But I have a feeling it's going to fill a void of a particular kind of show right now that I think Broadway always needs one of-- an angst-y show. A loud show. Something convulsing.


I mean, about half the cast comes straight from my favorite angst-y show, Spring Awakening, (same director too) so I'm sure that says something.


From what I've heard, too, I think Tom Kitt did a phenomenal job on the orchestrations. And who doesn't love great orchestrations, RIGHT?!? And, btw, congrats, Mr. Kitt on your PULITZER effing PRIZE. That little ol' prize has been on my super short list of lifetime goals for about ever, so it's always motivating to see another theatre guy pulling in the big fish. Even though, true to form, the Pulitzer for Drama is less than the others, at $10,000. But hey, I'd take it. You could still say you won a Pulitzer.


Edited: post show-- Tom Kitt is the MVP of this show. And directors aren't writers. That's where I'll stop.

I highly recommend working with geniuses

I love my writing partner, Steven Jamail, so much! And this is just a prime example of why. How adorable is this mashup of "Telephone Hour" from Bye Bye Birdie and Lady Gaga/Beyonce's "Telephone"?

And I have to say that every time I see the Rosie's Broadway Kids perform, I am blown away. And Steven is the musical director of the program & did the fantastic arrangement you are about to watch! Wait for the uber cutie at 1:57 and prepare to have a toothache.

In other news, tonight is my birthday party at Highlands, the amazing Scottish bar in NYC. I am hoping for amazing evening filled with Scotch and friends. ALSO! It's Scottish week here in NYC! Who wants to come to parade with me tomorrow?? xoxo

a city that lives in the imagination of the world?

   “Those guys who wrote Deuteronomy, you think they had to deal with this,” Simon joked. “ ‘Ooh, there’s not enough parchment.’ ”

Pretty much everyone who knows me knows of my extreme love of The Wire. I say a lot that there are only two TV shows-- The Wire, The West Wing.

But now, it turns out there might be a third television show worth giving a shit about. Treme is from the creators of The Wire. Their same brilliant brush strokes, but about musicians instead of drug dealers?? And in New Orleans?? I vote YES.

When I was in college, I had the most lovely boyfriend from New Orleans. I loved going there to visit his family. I loved how the streets were confusing, I loved the pastel, the low-hanging moss, I loved the drive-thru hurricane stands. I loved the houses. You KNOW I loved the houses. 

Something about New Orleans made it seem like the lovable, well-adjusted illegitimate child of my two regional parents, the old South & Las Vegas. 

There was a great article in New York Mag this week by Emily Nussbaum about David Simon (Photo: Peter Hapak)my favorite irascible creator. I loved it. Made me even more excited for this Sunday, when it premieres. But I especially liked this little section:
When I get back home, I send Simon my question again: Why create drama, not documentary?

He writes a long note back. “We know more about what Huey Long represented and the emptiness at the core of American political culture from reading Robert Penn Warren than from contemporary journalistic accounts of Long’s reign. We know more about human pride, purpose, and obsession from Moby-Dick than from any contemporaneous account of the Nantucket whaler that was actually struck and sunk by a whale in the nineteenth-century incident on which Melville based his book. And we know how much of an affront the Spanish Civil War was to the human spirit when we stare at Picasso’s Guernica than when we read a more deliberate, fact-based account. I am not comparing anything I’ve done to any of the above; please, please do not presume that because I cite someone else’s art, I claim anything similar for anything I’ve done. But I cite the above because it makes the answer to your question obvious: Picasso said art is the lie that allows us to see the truth. That is it exactly.”  --Emily Nussbaum

 

how can love survive in such a graceless age?

I've been thinking a lot about responsibility these days. About the things we say to each other, promise to each other. And then what we do after we make those promises. Whether its a few weeks down the line or few years. I wonder if people know what it means to to be accountable anymore.


I sort of feel like our fixation on happiness has made "but I'm not happy" as the ultimate fly the coop excuse. And you can reneg on any promise you have made by saying you aren't happy. It's nice because it can get you out of ANYTHING. Your marriage, your soon to be born baby, your job...any commitment you might have made is optional, conditional on whether it's making you happy every minute of the day. Completely forgetting that-- You and You alone are responsible for your happiness. And, shit dudes, sometimes, you have made yourself responsible and accountable for and to others. It's not just about your every childish whim about what will make you happy.


If you keep doing that, you'll jump from situation to situation never being happy. Because what makes you truly happy is expanding within the commitments you have made. Growing with the people you are accountable to. And there is happiness in knowing you are person of your word. That you honor your responsibilities.


In this day and age, I wonder how I am ever supposed to believe the word of any man I meet. How I might even consider putting a fraction of my trust or well being in the hands of a generation of men who have absolutely refused to be men, take responsibility, honor what they say, what they promise, what they vow. Nothing seems to mean anything to them. Except their own priorities. And aren't all those responsibilities so INCONVENIENT? How am I supposed to believe that they won't run out at the worst possible time?


Certainly, there are times when you move past a place, a job, a relationship. But there's a classy exit strategy, if that's what you need. One that honors each of the experiences you're graduating from. If you don't-- if you cop out of everything, sacrificing your word & your honor so you can pursue every little thing you want, you will never ever be happy. And worse than that, you'll be a coward.


I could live with a lot of disappointments in life, but I could never live with being a coward.

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”

winter always turns to spring

Probably the best birthday ever. I can't believe how many people were so sweet to me today. Sweet Morgan Karr bringing me licorice & diet coke. Bebhinn got me the most beautiful bracelet in the world! Everyone's lovely (and abundant-- almost overwhelmingly so) comments, phone calls, etc. Promises, Promises was also the best time I've had on Broadway all season. And couldn't have asked for better company.


So many people are struggling right now. And there are lots of examples of why it's easier, safer, less messy to avoid serious attachments to anyone. But it's days like today to remind me, and hopefully everyone, that we're better off for all that we let in. And like the man, Nichiren, said:

"We are as if in winter, which never fails to turn into spring. Never have I seen or heard of winter turning into autumn."

From the Gosho.


My thoughts are with my very wonderful, special, fighting friends. Especially Miss Emily.

Happy Birthday to Me!

I don't have much to say today. It's a beautiful day. I'm seeing Promises, Promises in the Front Row with my lovely friends tonight to celebrate. And I'm feeling happier than I've felt in probably about a year. Maybe it's just Spring talking, but I think 28 is going to be a great year!


Special shout out to my birthday week comrades, Amy Weber (April 1st) and Bebhinn Timmins (April 4th)!


I'll leave for today, something that makes me very happy: Keats's home in Hampstead Heath. :)

children & art

Just about one month until the amazing Tigerlily (TL) is born. I’m getting really excited. I’ve gotten her some of the cutest things ever from Mountain Aven Baby—check it! http://www.mountainavenbaby.etsy.com

And in the midst of that excitement, I get the news from Erin (I called it completely, about a week ago, before she mentioned anything) that she, too, is going to have a baby!

I do get genuinely more excited about my friends’ children than I used to. Although, it’s matched by my sense of feeling left behind. Which is certainly not a feeling I feel towards my friends, but towards myself. Or perhaps, just about my life.

I think about my choices all the time. I wonder, even, if it’s wise to leave New York at this stage. I’m so eager to be somewhere else, but already, the things I’m going to miss out on by not being in New York are starting to stack up. Productions I want to see, concerts, opportunities. Does leaving now mean the end of me writing for theatre? If I wanted to come back, would it be the same?

But I just feel, that if I don’t get out right now, at least for a little while, that I’ll never devote enough time to writing to get anywhere. And I’ll keep running on a wheel trying to scrape some kind of life by on an arts salary. And worst of all, that if I stay in New York, I will never get married or have a family.

I saw RED on Tuesday, a play about the painter Mark Rothko and I keep thinking about it. Painting is the one art form that I don’t seem to get. I don’t have the kind of visceral reaction to paintings that some do. Indeed, the idea of spending $50,000 or whathaveyou on a painting is downright ludicrous to me. Maybe it’s because I’m not so much a visual person. A painting could never make me feel what a song does or a poem does. The way old books feel in your hands or smell. (I just got a 1899 copy of the full poems and letters of Keats and I’m in heaven with the thing.)

The only way I’ve ever really gotten a window into the emotions of it all is as a metaphor for something else, or—as is the case with RED or Sunday in the Park With George—as the topic of something philosophical through words and music. I see the point with the permanence of a painting. That you make something that wasn’t there before. It’s a fixed image, whereas live events, even songs have a beginning and an end.

I  guess it’s just one more way to view that I live my life with my mind and not my body or even my eyes. And I might have a hard time having a family all in my mind. 

A Rich Inner Life

Speaking of letters... 

I go back to them all the time. Not just because of Keats. Or because of my compulsion to write them. But because, at least from one dear, art-filled friend, I have received letters worthy of reading, re-reading, savoring, feeling that someone saw me. 

I remember being 16, 17, 18 and waiting for these letters from what is surely a classical, romantic 19th century kind of friendship. The kind of friendship the modern day would call a stranger. Or an acquaintance. But on a very foggy day in Berkeley, I made a friend for life, even if I did only see him twice a year if I was lucky. A kindred spirit of philosophy and thought and clownishness. 

Mostly, I felt like an alien growing up. I think, actually, he might have been the first person I ever met that indicated there was a whole other kind of people out there in the world who were like me. 

His thing was never even so much about language or eloquence or whatever (not that those were ever missing) but his thing is something else entirely. It’s a point of view. An order. An interpersonal specificity that most people just aren’t capable of, or don’t take the time or energy to create. He can hone in on whatever is uniquely magical about anything.

He took me across the university campus in Arizona to show me his favorite tree, which was like a gigantic rose stem. Teenage boys just don't DO that.

One day, I had a letter that started like this: "Do you know who the Sugarcubes are? They're an Icelandic pop group that Bjork used to front. If you don't know them, I'm sure that they must know you. They had an album in the late 80's called 'Life's Too Good' and I feel certain they wrote it about you."

This among others that I don't have memorized, but remain in a box in my Dad's basement, are the best letters I have ever received or hope to receive. No one has ever said things as nice as he has said to me and about me. No one.

I am so lucky to have him return to my life, at this new transitional time in our lives. Lucky to still be receiving his letters. Lucky that we always seem to show back up, find a new way to communicate when needed most. I remember my theory of orbits. And am so happy he appears to be in mine for good. During this tumultuous time-- for us both-- I hope we can remember the idealistic curly haired blonde twins we were over ten years ago.

Another one of my favorite Scotsmen and professor at St. Andrews, Don Paterson. This is one of, if not my favorite, piece of poetry ever.  

"and the true path was as lost to me as ever when you cut in front and lit it as you ran. See how the true gift never leaves the giver: returned and redelivered"

--Don Paterson, my favorite Scottish poet

jon stewart love

I suppose I could post Jon Stewart every day and never get sick of it. But I have a special aversion to violence and this attacking members of government with death threats over health care is particularly both idiotically, humorously insane and also enraging. So here's this one.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Health Care Slime Machine
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

The Raven Days

Been thinking about my writing ancestors. Yesterday, Meredith and I went to the Birthday Festivities for my (distant) cousin, Tennessee Williams (aka Thomas Lanier Williams). I got a very cute shirt and a tote bag with Tenn's face on it.


The whole thing was kind of...well... Labyrinth Theatre Company masturbating all over themselves: catering to celebrities and their own employees and lots of somber folks taking themselves way too seriously. Especially for a festival honoring Tenn, who was a rip-roaring flamboyant hilarious party animal.


But I started to think about genes and what's running through my blood. Certainly, a propensity for substance abuse and mental anguish. But also, writing. Writing and writing on all fronts. From Jessica Daves, to Tenn to this guy on the left. Also not such a shabby writer. Lots of poetry and love of language. So it feels good to know that I'm going to go around the world if I have to to join their company.

The Raven Days
Sidney Lanier


OUR hearths are gone out, and our hearts are broken,
And but the ghosts of homes to us remain,
And ghostly eyes and hollow sighs give token
From friend to friend of an unspoken pain.

O, Raven Days, dark Raven Days of sorrow,
Bring to us, in your whetted ivory beaks,
Some sign out of the far land of To-morrow,
Some strip of sea-green dawn, some orange streaks.

Ye float in dusky files, forever croaking--
Ye chill our manhood with your dreary shade.
Pale, in the dark, not even God invoking,
We lie in chains, too weak to be afraid.

O Raven Days, dark Raven Days of sorrow,
Will ever any warm light come again?
Will ever the lit mountains of To-morrow
Begin to gleam across the mournful plain?

a knife cannot cut itself

pull those threads through

Looking back on past writings, it's really fascinating to see what part of your thought processes seem systemic. Some ideologies keep turning like a machine, some evolve, and some seem so foreign I wonder who that person was that wrote it.

I have a feeling that one day myspace (where my blog used to be-- that's how long it's been) is no longer going to exist. But there are some threads from there I'd like to pull through into my present life. If only to remind myself what I thought and how I thought. So here's one.

Originally dated May 29, 2007.

I've noticed that, often, the advice and wisdom I enjoy the most, is the advice which serves to validate and affirm positive life choices that I'm already making. That's GREAT advice! I think to myself, and feel smug that my shit is so together.

Which is probably why I think back to the parts of What The Bleep Do We Know that totally back up my Buddhist practice, while I shy away, or at least, seem unable to really explain well, one of the most fasciating points of the whole thing: that we are totally and chemically addicted to our emotions.

Even the good ones. Even positive experiences create an addictive synapse in your brain, and cause a chemical withdrawl when you try to change your behavior.

It's a tumultuous life to lead, being addicted to emotions.

Which is maybe why so many people choose to swap out that addiction for an addiciton to something else.

It's easier to be addicted to alcohol or nicotine or drugs. At the very least, more predictable. At this stage in the game, we are inundated with the outline of what will happen to you if you drink, smoke, or do drugs too much. We know the course it will run.

And in a way, the safety in that course is what you buy when you trade in that other unwieldy addiction.

Numbed out or strung out cancels out the kind of "messed up" you can be off your emotions. And I've never had a hangover half as bad as the chemical withdrawl of a particular emotion.

Maybe that's the reason for my seemingly endless karmic nearness to substance abuse. The continued presence of my mother in the lives of everyone I meet.

Maybe, in a way, I'm envious of what seems to be/tricks us into believing is a simple straight forward addiction like nicotine or booze....you crave it, you find it, you get it.

But me...I'm addicted to things that are much harder to nail down. I'm addicted to the past, to what might have been. I'm addicted to the future, to what might be. I'm addicted to lost causes.

All of which have no cure and no real fix...besides maybe art, or daydreaming.

Luckily for me, though, I am also addicted to changing everything I possibly can for the better; addicted to a real and true inner Human Revolution for myself and for those I care about.

And again, luckily for me, for maybe the first time in my whole life, I am also addicted to the present. The current moment, more and more, these past few months, finally feels like a real and actual now-- instead of the previews I have to sit through until I get to do what I really want. The really real moments.

I am and always have been addicted to the rigorous and specific plans I laid out for myself. This has been the hardest lesson to get through my stubborn skull.

I have-- begrudgingly-- allowed myself to loosen the GRIP I had on most of these plans over the last few years. But as much as I still whole heartedly work to shape my life and my future, more and more, I see now how ARBITRARY most of these plans are. Ideas I had as an almost kid that I refused to change.

The plans themselves weren't even so great, but Oh, how their familiarity was! This intense, chemical soothing. That's what made returning to them over and over as fulfilling as I can wrap my brain around any drug being.

More and more, I'm realizing how over-rated hopes are.

Not HOPE.... not hope in general.... I am ever hopeful and I don't think I could be jaded if I tried (I think I did try once and failed miserably at it.).

But particular hopes. Plans.

Because while you're wrapped up in the plans you made 5 or 10 years ago, you're missing what's real and all around you.

Hopes are intangible and move nothing until they are backed by something else. Until something makes them, instead, a determination.Which always leads to a reality.

And then, when it really happens, and it is no longer theorhetical but concrete, it will never pull away from you.

It's there, in the history of your life. You'll have pictures to remind you. And stories.

And you realize, hopefully not too late (not that I'm even sure I believe in 'too late') that what DOES happen will always be better than what could have happened.

feel flows

Happy first day of spring!

It's 74 degrees today and sunny sunny sunny in NYC.

Amy Weber and I are headed to the Architectural Digest Home Design Expo. I think in another life, I was an interior decorator. I really do love it. I guess it sort of runs in the family, since that's Lindsey's main squeeze.
A day like today-- pale and mellow and sun-filled--feels like, sounds like "Feel Flows" to me. What's funny is when I was thinking that, I was specifically thinking of the end credits of "Almost Famous" where the soft focus polaroids flip as the song plays, making you remember all the days that let you feel flows and feel free. And then, when I went to post the song, this was available, so I thought, YES!
I feel like I don't live in my body in the winter, but spring comes and I suddenly remember my senses and want to move!

a brighter word than bright; a fairer word than fair

I've been thinking a lot lately about love letters and the way we speak to each other in the modern age. It's really disappointing, if I'm being honest. It's scared and imprecise and general and almost entirely without risk or commitment or power.

But not John Keats. Man, his letters to everyone were so so special. They're so poetic, they're almost better than his poems. It's in his example (along with the tradition started in my life at YTI) that I decided many years ago to write truthful, supportive letters to as many of the important people in my life as I could. Every time I feel moved to write one, whether I intend to give it as a speech at their weddings or just mail it off, I feel like I know what my life is about. They're almost never love letters in the way that Keats Letters below are (although I suppose a few of them have been-- and we'll get to actual love letters in a minute) but nevertheless, I feel love and loved just by writing them. I spend hours and hours on them. Crafting, reading aloud, reading in my head, retooling to get the right words-- le mot juste! Because I think it's important to be precise and to be true in your expressed feelings about people.


Now, love letters. The juicy ones. It's been a long time since I wrote one of those. I've written a few in my head the last few years, but never sent them. Maybe that's why-- that for me-- one of the properties of romantic love is that it's only in my head. One of it's essential and inherent characteristics is that it is unrequited.


Which I don't dwell in too much when it comes to thinking about Keats. Only that, what if his love had been unrequited? What if Fanny hadn't waited anxiously for the letters he sent? What if the energy only flowed one way and she never sent letters back? How long would his spirit have been able to keep that up? How many letters and poems wouldn't we have?


Luckily for the English speaking world, she did love our Keatsy (how could you not, really?) and so we have Bright Star and Lamia and La Belle Dame Sans Merci. And we have:

"Do understand me, my love, in this. I have so much of you in my heart that I must turn Mentor when I see a chance of harm befalling you. I would never see any thing but Pleasure in your eyes, love on your lips, and Happiness in your steps."

Just listen. Perfect.

Word like a bell--The while let music wander round my ears

okay, okay say what you want about this book, or this movie adaptation of this book. But I love Julia Roberts. And this trailer features 2 of my all time favorite songs: "Oh My God, Whatever, Etc." Ryan Adams, and "Dog Days Are Over" by what is shaping up for certain to be the artist of 2010 for me, Florence + The Machine (makes me think of Scotland- YEAH!) So that's gotta mean someone working on this thing has some taste.

cosmic love+ scotland

Even before I knew I was going to Scotland, even when there was just the hope that I would go there, this was the song of that hope. Of returning to the primordial. The origin.

For indeed, for me, there is something basic, original, primitive and tribal about Scotland. Violent, compassionless landscapes. Stinging rain but beautiful fog. Misty, Majestic, Mystical, the root. The feeling of a full gallop. Running in the middle of nowhere at night.

This song sounds like returning to that. To be stripped down to what is most basic about me, about what it means for me to be human, where I came from. Before I came from New York, or from Vegas or from Georgia. Before I came from my parents and their archetypes. For a long time, history was old enough. For a long time, New York was old enough and Georgia was old enough, and sepia photos were old enough. And now I need cosmic, stars, mountains, primordial ancient. Castle ruins, monks chanting, drums beating, blood in your veins ancestral ancient. That's what this song is. And every time I hear it, I count down another day until I am reunited with my origin, the beginning. I can only imagine what I'll feel then.

for you SXSW'ers

I'm taking a very brief time out from my Keats daydreaming (more of that soon, though) to give a shout out to anyone going to SXSW. You must see the Afghan Raiders. Yes, I am completely biased (I've known Mikey since I was 14, he's married to my best friend, and father to my future partner-in-crime surrogate niece child, TL). But additionally, for someone who doesn't consider myself all that cool, I sure feel a little cooler listening to Afghan Raiders. GO SEE THEM!

Negative Capability

My whole life, I think this is the one concept that I'll always come back to. I think Keats' negative capability is entirely a Buddhist concept. So much so that I wrote a massive paper on it in college. Out of everything I struggle with, negative capability is what I am most drawn to and what I somehow can't ever quite seem to master. But, oh, how it is such a beautiful thing. That was the moment, when I first fell in love with Keats. When I read this:

"several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason."

Keats believed that great people (especially poets) have the ability to accept that not everything can be resolved.

I can't stop listening to the Bright Star soundtrack, especially this:

the glister

Just started one of my NEW professor, John Burnside's novels, The Glister.

So far, amazing. Feeling so lucky to have been taught by such great writers already and all the great writers coming up!
Check it out!

Bright Star

In my infinite insomnia, I finally saw Bright Star last night. Most have criticized it as boring, but oh, not for me. In my past-life believing depths, John Keats is my soul mate. I love him beyond loving him. Beyond having met him, beyond any criticism of his poetry, etc. If I were to choose a dinner table of people I dream to meet, it's basically Margaret Mitchell & John Keats....well... and Camus.

No matter how many times i go back to his work, even in the movie, I felt a kind of psychic connection to it. The other characters would ask him to recite something, and I would know which poem he would choose and I would instinctually begin to recite that poem with him. It was uncanny.

Tonight, I feel like he'd say:
On leaving some Friends at an Early Hour

GIVE me a golden pen, and let me lean

On heap’d up flowers, in regions clear, and far;

Bring me a tablet whiter than a star,

Or hand of hymning angel, when ’tis seen

The silver strings of heavenly harp atween:

And let there glide by many a pearly car,

Pink robes, and wavy hair, and diamond jar,

And half discovered wings, and glances keen.

The while let music wander round my ears,

And as it reaches each delicious ending,

Let me write down a line of glorious tone,

And full of many wonders of the spheres:

For what a height my spirit is contending!

’Tis not content so soon to be alone.

But last night, and when this first started in the film, they said, "Mr . Keats, please recite something." Ane he began my favorite. And I KNEW he would say it. I could see it in his eyes before he began. And he and I said together, "When I have fears that I may cease to be before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain..." He choked up in the middle, but oh! And so, I am renewing my devotion to my first real boyfriend. And recommitting his works to memory, like I had done in college.


WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love! - then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.


Posthumous and Fugitive Poems

music memories

My dad was part of an amazing band in the 70's called Steamboat Springs. They were kind of a big deal-- in fact, Alabama, the band stole a lot of their early stuff from them.
The idea of my dad in this band has inspired a lot of my ideas about myself, about writing-- both as a songwriter and a general storyteller. My story Babies & James, which I'll post on here soon, is about my mom and dad and how I imagine they met. (I know how they met, so this is a fictional elaboration on what I already know.)
My ideas of this band are why I love "Almost Famous" and "Crazy Heart" (like a combo of each of my parents main identifiers! Alcoholism + Country Music! [dad is obviously country music, mom is obviously the booze])
And a kind of melancholy I specialize in-- a romanticizing of a place in time that no longer exists.
Well now they're having a reunion concert in Myrtle Beach this summer to celebrate the life of Giant Jeff, who recently passed away, but founded SXSE before he died. If you feel like swaying to some southern rock and remembering the good old days, come hang in the bygone romantic town of Myrtle Beach, SC this June 12th. One of my last Southern sojourns before I head North North North to Scotland.

joy in la la land