I Trust you to Kill Me

Damn your transcendental paralysis!…Bad Religion.

When I got back I felt so good about everything.  I felt like I had made real peace with the issues that plagued me.  I knew I wanted to live my life in a differant way than I had before.  I saw that what I experienced was not fueling me, barely feeding me.  Not even close to inspiring me.  But it was experience I thought.  I was wrong.

Not to be a hater, but I look around me…there are 100,000 people around here.  I wonder where the artists are.  What makes things push, what makes things pull.  What sparks your interest?  Who reads books like mine?  Al should know…but he does not want to share.

Where are you?  I think I need to move to Madison, move in with Charlie of the Better Musical Palatte than me, and court Wendy.  Or I can take more unisom, and call it a day.

I feel good.  I like my life, and now I gotta go find something each day to get me going.

I wonder about this stupid obsession with past girls.  Is it just thinking about the familiar?  I mean, the Laura thing is just nutty.  She married some guy, had some kids, and is living a life I am sure…yet I have this fantasy that she is going to call me again, and we can get it started one more time.

I thought about Amanda the other day, actually for a few months.  She went to the grad school I wanted to go to, but she went first.  Now she is a Librarian at the UW.  She has a pretty cool blog.  I write her a letter every few years, and once I sent one.  I got a honest response from her, and we all know that is not what I was looking for.

So dear friends it has been a while.  I got out of town, and completely loved it.  On last wednesday I went with my buddy Frank to Milwaukee to see Lucero at Mad Planet.  I forget that Mad Planet is ultimately the greatest bar in the midwest.  That bartender with the crossed wrenches tattooed on her chest breaks my heart each time I look into her eyes.  It results in the largest tips on a single glass of Point beer I have ever seen.

I find it fascinating that Mad Planet serves PBR, Blatz, and Point.  Like badges of honor.  When most places run to this micro brew or that boutique beer…the Mad Planet is a great Riverwest bar.  Sort of the design of what a club should be.

I saw Lucero that night.  Perfect band.  I will get into this all later, but I want to just get a bunch of stuff down.

That night me and Frank slept at big Ross’s apartment.  An amazing place really.  We got into a fight at Oakland Gyros at 3 am, and it will make some young mens memory.  I am sure the next day they tell the story of kicking the old guys asses.  We stole a cab to get home.  Why not.

Then the next day I got up, and had to run, as I was off to Chicago and looking forward to seeing the Scott Holt band.  The greatest band in the land I say.

In Milwaukee I ate a late lunch at the Comet.  I had the open faced Vegan Meatloaf sandwich.  It was so awsome.  I could have ate it over and over again.

Then I walked to Laacke and Joy and ended the water bottle problem.  I bought a new Sigg bottle.  Red.  Like a swiss army watch red.  I am glad with the purchase.  I really am.

Then after a few hours of walking around the eastside, and being unable to find a bus map, I just called a cap to get me to the train station.  Because I was off to Chicago.

It is cool to be in a town as a visitor, for one day.  I like looking at sstuff for the first time, or the last time…or just that moment.

So when I was talking to Exxene, I we talked about writing. Very few people view writing of words like I do, and I am pretty sure that she might not. But few people worship the direct connection to there own words. That they are not seperate from themselves. That these words are what we have, that there is nothing other than that. Right now. Right here. These words are mine, the way my face is mine.

A world full of filters, and disconnections…and Exxene is connected to her words like no one in the world. She is getting real respect for the book, and the tour coming. I am so excited for the travel aspect of what comes next, and I never thought that a tour like this is something I thought would be good. Having lost Naomi the way we did.

Exxene and I were talking about CE blog, the one that she rights about music…or something. It was so cool because I was struggling with the Klosterman issue…and Exxene put it together for me. Talking about how it was really well strung together sort of adjectives, descriptive disconnection…lacking a personal voice, a connection to either the writer or the reader. Just a sense of that sort of intellectual interplay of words that leads to no truth, though it veils its disconnection in a real intellectual play. A real sense of smarter than thou. The hipster poet if you will.

If the hipster is disconnected. Just an observer, the critic…Cusacks charecter in High Fidelity talked about the great critic, and how life changes when you put something into the world. I am not sure what I make of that in relation to CE’s writing, because I love some of her writing. I mean it literally shakes the world from time to time. And I learned a ton of stuff from CE about newspapers.

It amazes me that when I talked to CE the last time she talked about how she thought I was putting her down, talking about the things that she does not have or is too weak to do. I think I was rambling on about voice and process and writing in one of those 8 hour phone conversations. Well it was weeks later that she and I talked, and she told me that she thought I crossed a line…that she thought I was saying that nothing she did was ever good enough for me…that I would never be cool enough to be my friend.

I kept thinking about it. I kept thinking about why in gods name does that even matter. I mean I live in the Midwest, in a small Wisconsin town. I mean I might be a smart cat here, but ultimately I think I am merely wallpaper in Milwaukee or Chicago. Just one of many. This is a person who hated the city I live in, with such a passion that I thought she was just going to burn it all down one day. Literally nothing was good here…she could go see a movie here, and see it again in Chicago…and it was a tremendously better movie in Chicago I think. I just went absolutely red when she would do that shit. She made a ton of writer bones here, celebrating local musicians. But I think she was so false in that. She wrote articles about bands that she did not like.

I am not Ian Mackaye or anything, but I cannot imagine writing about something that I was not interested in. I know I would not do it, because I have not done it. A local weekly has asked that I write about music for a while, lots of people have encouraged this…and I simply do not want to. I do not want to give the time and ink to some of these bands. But CE was doing a job. I suppose.

Either way it was a cool perspective that Exxene had about the whole thing. It is an amazing sort of leveler to hear her talk about this stuff. She and I are so far apart about the issue of the war, and the sort of tree of issues that surround it. I have been reading her blog tonight, and I simply do not understand plugging into that sort of jingoistic stuff. But I tend to think that there has never been a woman I have loved from afar the way I loved and love Exxene. The brilliance of the dance, the top down long run. And she owns both Bill Perry and Scott Holt records, and has seen them both in concert and appreaciated it.

I gotta poop. There is more stuff tonight.

Studio 60

Packing

Toothbrushes

Element

Stocking Caps

So it is rare that I want to be excited about television. But I have been eagerly waiting for a real television show for about a year now. The show is Studio 60, and it is on NBC. The amazing thing is it is the next show from Aaron Sorkin. Sorkin created my favorite TV show, and the only show that I bought on DVD, Sports Night. The coolest thing about Sorkin is the moments are the best moments, he creates and elevates the dialogue to the juice from the squeeze. Its the important thing, the big things, the power moments. Its the good stuff really. And the patter is so amazingly well timed that there is a real visual sense to the movement of the voices. Really painting.

Well Studio 60 has absolutely lived up to everything I wanted it to be. Bradley Whitford and Matthew Perry are sparklingly flawed, and not at all wallowing. The last show was all about the creative process, the pressure, the big idea…the chasing of inspiration. It was amazing.

So I have been thinking about the bag I am taking to Chicago for a few days now, and it appears that it will be my messenger bag. The big one. The thing is this…I am not taking the powerbook, I know I know. But I am going to be gone for a few days, and I am going to take the moleskine to write in. So your going to have to wait for updates later on. I just want to have a good time, unfiltered.

I think I need to buy a new stocking cap for each year. Now that my head is bald, it is harder to pull one on. I like the one I have on now, it is a small Element beanie that someone gave me, last year I was not a fan of the beanie, but this one fits pretty well.

I am going to go. I am tired, and the poop was calming. Sort of centering in my own body after all. I hope that your still there in the morning, still laying there thinking I am okay…or I hope you sneak out while I am sleeping. That way I do not have to feel bad about it…and it was good.