for those who think and feel

The calendar claims that something is almost over, and that something new is soon to follow.  Our culture has a frenzied way of announcing new diets, behaviors and future goals right around now, and in years past, I've done the same.  Today, I've got none of that for you.  My diet has consistently focused around vegan Mexican fare and various coffee beverages for the better part of twenty years now.  I tend to do too much, rest too little and wish I'd done differently later.  My body, aside from the occasional new tattoo, hasn't really changed since I was about seventeen, no matter how much I pay attention to it or neglect it.  And, I write basically the same song over and over, but trick you all by employing the magical assistance of a capo from time to time.  This is it, it would seem.  New year or not, I live in this body and this mind.

I sat on my couch all day yesterday, still battling with the residual illness of my most recent bout of strep throat.  I watched what felt like fifteen thousand episodes of the The Office (the American one), and half-assedly knit a birthday gift for a thirteen-year-old I'm sort of related to.  This is what resting looks like for me.  It's dreadful and dull, and all I've really got in me these days.  It's been a long year, after the thirty-four long ones that preceded it.  Next year will be the same, and I no longer have illusions about that sort of thing.  I was born with a certain set of equipment that makes my life feel like this.  Some days it's incredible; others, less so.

I'm usually a musician.  When I feel or think things to any kind of extreme, I write my way out of it.  It's been a handy coping mechanism, and one that I place tremendous value on.  I very much believe that it has saved my life a time or two, and for that I'm quite grateful.  On a lighter note, it's also given me more laughter and delirium than anything else, hands down.  Because of this, it has priority seating in my arena.  The past four years that I've spent in Nashville have been the most prolific for me, to date.  I could get into bragging about how much I've written and recorded in that time, but I've recently realized that I think that's gross.  The race to win, at whatever it is people think they're competing for, looks really lame when you see it from the sidelines.  Who cares if I wrote one or three hundred songs?  Anyone who does care is weird, in my opinion, as it's no one's business but my own.  Let's just say that I made some work that matters to me.  That's what counts.  Some of it's wrapped up with a tidy bow and some of it's still in process.  Lately, progress is at an all-time low, and I mostly think about the work in the abstract.  People are waiting on my actions (some more patiently than others), but it changes nothing.  I don't have the drive today.  And yes, that feels very strange for me.

I recently watched the documentary about the band Rush.  Aside from that group of men being profoundly inspiring in every way, their story gave me some comfort and hope to hold on to.  Not being a diehard Rush fan, I was unaware of the timeline that their music followed, most notably around a very long hiatus they took in the wake of Neil Peart's personal losses.  His daughter and wife both passed away within a very short time, and Peart literally drove around the country on his motorcycle for several years, abandoning everything in his life, including the music that had been so central to his story up to that point.  All three band members assumed the project was over, and they accepted that, wholly.  That was what blew my mind.  No ego was entered into the equation.  No terrible non-Rush project formed out of the ashes.  No shitty solo albums emerged.  They just accepted what was happening.  Isn't that just the key?  I've never been part of a real brotherhood like that, where if one of us needed to fall apart, the others would allow it and love that person through it.  Nor do I have that within myself.  I wasn't taught it.  That kind of love, tolerance and acceptance is the product of masterful parenting and support.  I didn't get it and I don't have it to give.  (I can hear my friend Josh correcting me, telling me that I do, in fact, have this quality to give... And I love him for it, but it isn't true.)  It doesn't mean it's not mine to have in this lifetime, but I am currently without this component.

On my couch, my mind listens to the Committee of Useless Thoughts, and we all begin to agree that I'm probably nuts beyond repair, destined to repeat the patterns that I'm wired for.  My six-month-old Taylor guitar is snug in her very nice case in the other room, untouched.  Two of my dear friends bought me my own SM7 microphone for Christmas, and it's still in the box.  I have eleven songs that await my editing and post-production, and they're trapped in the hard drive until further notice.  Lastly, I'm three songs into a really wonderful new record with a band that shaped up towards the end of this year, and I can't move forward on it at all.  I've got nothing.  And I'm having a really hard time accepting all of it.  Who am I these days?  Where's the girl who's always working on five different things, with a high fever about all of it?  I don't have any more of an idea than you do.  But, if you see her, tell her to call me.  I'll be watching reruns of a TV show.  And when I run out of those, I'll find a new show.

I heard Tom Waits on the radio the other day.  He was dodging personal questions that were being asked in an interview by rambling on about all sorts of other eccentric B.S., as is par for his particular course.  He's artful in that dodgy way.  Most of what he said was what you hear in his music, and having been a listener for many years now, I'd heard it all before.  But, he did rather eloquently describe the stage that I find myself in lately.  He compared the creative process to the structure of music.  To paraphrase, "In order to have music, you have to have rests.  Sometimes you're the sound, and sometimes you're resting."  So, after many years of being the sound, I'm in the rest.  This too shall pass.  This too, shall pass.

Thanks for listening,
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