|
return I have been most remiss (and in so many ways). I went through this period of feeling that my ramblings in this diary were self-indulgent and stupid and useless (mostly after reading a bunch of other people's diaries and thinking what pathetic sad fucks some people are, and how I hope and pray I have better things to do with my life than verbally masturbating on the internet. And then, I started catching up on Ms. Shirley's tour diary updates on garbage.com, and I determined that while I'm nowhere near as high-profile as she is, I'm equally cool, talented, intelligent and pretty, so maybe I do have something to contribute after all. In the future, however, I'm going to try to avoid having this be a sounding board for my petty bitching and make it something a little more enlightening; I shall not write unless I have something more clever to say than, "watched TV, ate dinner, smoked, drank, had sex, MTV sux, woe is poor little me, blahblahblah." That shit is all too easy, and as a pseudo-intellectual, I know very well that nothing is all that neat and clean and easy. (No, not even your beloved Windows XP or that scary-as-hell .Net bullshit, you Micro-soft-in-the-head fucks.) What's changed? Not much, really. I think I'm just fully awake again now. I've gone through a little bit of hell over the last few weeks trying to determine where I'm moving (the stress of which must have contributed significantly to this horrible virus I'm now getting over -- my voice is slowly returning to normal), since I can't stay where I am now, and even if I could, it would mean a rent increase of over $200 per month for what I feel is a dwelling place not worth that kind of money. After much deliberation, my new abode will be a place about twice the size of what I have now down in Brewery Square, for which I will pay less than I would be paying after that massive rent hike where I am now. As with all decisions which precipitate the spending of enormous amounts of money, now that the step has been taken, I'm terrified I made the wrong decision and will now obsessively second-guess myself for an extended period. There were other options, but I've chosen to live on three edges: the edge of a rather notoriously dangerous neighborhood, the edge of a very up-scale street of condominiums and beautiful historic buildings, and the edge of a river, situated between two bridges which lie less than a mile apart. I'll no longer be able to walk everywhere, which will force me to explore alternative means of transportation, as I don't want to drive everywhere either. Hopefully, this will spawn creativity of all sorts in my recently rather sedentary existence; perhaps I can actually find some way of beginning a regularly-occurring artists' salon (a throwback of sorts to 19th-century France) as a means of forcing myself both to work and to be social. (There must be a strong Gemini influence somewhere in my stars. Why else would I be so completely both extremes of everything?) Yesterday, I went to try to fix Kendra's computer (I didn't have enough information to be successful; I'll go back whenever she has a moment.), and while there, we started discussing my past as a classical pianist. She wants me to play with her on Prokofiev & Bach violin sonatas. I'm completely thrilled with the idea, but my fingers are so out-of-shape...It's both funny and sad that no one I currently know even realises that I was once really pretty good; they all know me as kamikaze singer, and only a few are aware that I can even play pop tunes on the piano, let alone Mussorgsky or Mozart. We also got into a discussion about what sort of relationship I really want to be in, and truthfully, I know it's time I started looking for a woman with whom to settle down, but I think I need to get a couple of inappropriate crushes out of my system first. These dalliances with boys are all well and good, but I've never met one that I felt as connected to as the women I've dated. The thing that I really wanted to say today, though, is that I am thrilled beyond words at the reunion of the original three members of my favourite band of all time, Concrete Blonde. I'm uncertain how to describe their sound, as I don't believe there's anyone else on the planet quite like them. Jim Mankey's jangling late-night humid rain-slick summer city guitars, Harry Rushakoff's by turns thunderous explosive train-wreck rock or transcendental-tripping hip-gyrating Eastern-crossed-with-Mexican drumming, and Johnette Napolitano's bass, which starts miles below the planet's surface and pulsates all the way up into your throat, and her vocals, the upper-body eruption that picks up the bubbling soul of humanity where the bass left off and spits it miles into the air...All that emotion, all that poetry...It leaves me in tears. Goth-country-punk-flamenco-soul-rock...They're trains and buses and subways and empty trashy streets with steaming grates and the unmarked dive bar filled with the most uncommonly wonderful and unknown freaks..."Beautiful Losers," as Leonard Cohen said. I wouldn't have survived high school without them. "And still the whining of the wheels sounds closest to the way I feel, and winter comes, and winter goes, and always has and will. Another hour, another day, another year you pissed away. Remember walking in the rain? I'm walking there still." She said it best herself. Anyway, my friend Peter in Seattle alerted me to their reunion (He saw them live a few weeks ago.) and the fact that they have a new album out called GROUP THERAPY. I think it's fantastic, and I'm driving up to Cambridge (my least favourite place in the world to drive) to see them in concert on Wednesday night. If you're unfamiliar with them, you should get familiar with them. (RECOLLECTION, their "Best of" compilation from 1996 has a great and fairly representative track listing if you can find it.) "Life is beautiful and terrible and strange. Only the best, r Now Playing: Holly Cole, DARK DEAR HEART
|