A Love Song, Finally

Here is a song I've been working on called "Right."  Lyrics below.  Enjoy it, my lovely friends.


Right


I'm terrified I'm running out of steam
I don't have the energy to even be me
I know that's bullshit
But I can't get rid of it


There's ugly, angry secrets in here
And every word I say just falters
And I veer into my own ridiculous place
But I can't get this off my face


Just the fact that I get to see you tonight
And after that, every night for the rest of my life
It just feels like I've won, finally
It just feels right


I got friends telling me the worst kind of news
Fighting tooth and nail just to beat off the blues
They've got all kinds of problems, and no one to solve them


I got an ache in my heart for the people I love
And a circus in my head that I am still the star of
But I'm trying now, yeah, I'm shutting it down


Just the fact that I get to see you tonight
And after that, every night for the rest of my life
It just feels like I've won, finally
It just feels right


After decades of misbehavior
I know I'm not owed any kind of savior


Just the fact that I get to see you tonight
And after that, every night for the rest of my life
It just feels like I've won, finally
It just feels right.

Right by Annie Stela

Writing

"About ten years ago, I knew I had two choices:  Either I was going to become a Zen priest or a writer.  I opted for writer.  I hadn't written a novel then.  Now I want to stand up at my writing workshops, throw up my hands, and say, "Listen, get out while you can.  Run, you'll be reimbursed at the door."
--Natalie Goldberg, "Wild Mind"

Palm Springs 1987

In the video, they are in her house
taping the baby
he is about to turn one
and they seem the same even after ten years
he is quiet and put-upon
speaking occasionally
mostly just raising an eyebrow
she calls him darling
and suddenly I go all the way back to 7 or 8
when she took care of us at my grandfather's funeral
my cousin and I were too young to go into the back room
and see our grandpa, dead and smiling, in a coffin

So she stayed out in the sanctuary with us

Light oak pews shining with polish

She sat in the middle of us girls in our velvet dresses and mary jane shoes

Tights cabled and itching us

She wore a blue skirt that flowed all the way down her long legs

She was a giantess

Her hand came down to hold ours from an unseen height

Pulled away every once in a while to wipe her eyes with a tissue

Weeping for a man she’d never met

She did not know yet 

that we were a family uncomfortable with crying

But while my cousin looked politely away

I grew drowsy

Leaned into this new person’s shoulder and felt safe to close my eyes

Kept my legs kicking under the pew

My cousin says that later us kids rode in my grandma’s golf cart, 

taking turns to speed down the straight line road of the trailer park

Mobile homes on each side of us colored and blurred in the dusk

There are even pictures of us with our brothers

Hanging off the roof of the cart upside down

Brown bellies exposed

Still I don’t remember

Only the church

And a woman we’d just met

and the loneliness of the rooms in the trailer

Running deep and unheard

Once she’d gone.

Listen and Sing: The National

Above is what I've been listening to all day:  "Sorrow," by The National.  And below is me singing it.  Enjoy!



p.s.  my friend sarah suggested this whole "Listen and Sing" idea, so thank/blame her.  Thanks S!

Here is What is Happening To Me.

I am desperate to make a new record.  I am writing songs, cooking up ideas, humming melodies in my head and calling my phone to record them so I don’t forget. 
But no matter how desperate I am, there is one fact I can’t get away from.  And that fact is that making a record takes money.  Even if you make it in your house, which there is a good chance I’ll do, you need money to mix it, to master it, to promote it, to take pictures for it, all that extra awesome stuff that comes along with it.  And the bottom line is that currently I don’t have any.  Money, that is.  Ain’t it a bitch?  I have tried to ignore it for a while, pretended that I could pull it out of thin air, but truth is truth.  I don’t have any.  So I am working.  I pull together as many part-time jobs as I get offered; I walk dogs, babysit kids, teach piano lessons, teach mommy and me classes.  I will water your mother-effing plants(seriously.  Call me.)

And it’s okay.  You have to work for what you want. 

I just a read a book by Pema Chodron, who stuck this quote to the wall above her desk and looked at it every day: “Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.”  After almost ten years of working at this career, here is what is indestructible in me:  my desire.  My desire always comes back.  Even after I’ve let it lay low and deep inside me for months, there is always a tiny piece of it lurking somewhere, singing songs, thinking about shows, working on words.  Despite the fact that I’ve been annihilated over and over, despite the fact that attempting a career in music is like banging your head against the wall, I keep coming back.  I keep wanting to come back.  It’s what I am.

So I’m going to make a record.  As Ani Di Franco says: “a record of an event/the event of people playing music in a room.”    And I will keep at it until I have something beautiful and hopeful and dirty and raw and all for you to hear.

In the meantime, I have started this blog.  And shit's about to get crazy!  I know it looks super boring on here right now, but soon it will dazzle you.  Until then, just read me.