The Drowning Men at Terminal 5, NYC
This isn’t a show review. Not exactly. It’s a story of heartfelt commitment to one’s craft, to strength and perseverance, and to the bonds of friendship. And by “friendship,” I don’t mean posting something witty on someone’s facebook page, but coming to their rescue in the middle of the night on some desolate highway after a hellish traffic accident, packing their gear into your trailer and managing to cram 19 people onto a tour bus.
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The aftermath, West Hartford, Ct
How can I explain this paradigm shift? I was going along, living my life, within a certain comforting flow of events and circumstances. Ups and downs, to be sure, but overall a sense that everything would be ok. Then suddenly – and it came at me with no warning – this major change. I was no longer sure… of anything. Maybe it was the economic downturn and general malaise and dissatisfaction; the overseas violence and uprisings. Or perhaps it was the odd and increasingly frequent natural disasters. A seemingly endless maudlin parade of surprises. A new reality operating at a completely different frequency that I didn’t understand. At some point when I wasn’t paying attention, I got out of sync. And here we are. Welcome to the new normal.
So it was really nothing out of the ordinary when, on this seemingly benign autumn weekend, a significant portion of the Northeastern U.S. would get a small taste of what everyday life is like for a quarter of the world’s population.
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Yes, a proper ‘musing’, though it’s kind of lame; you’ll forgive me, right? I’ve been sick and devoid of all useful thought. Up next, more bands.
Tompkins Square Park, New York City ~ May 3, 2011
I had driven into the city for a few days to clear my head, see a few shows, and try like mad to regenerate after nonstop work for the past few months. But I felt used up and drained of all life, wandering aimlessly around the Lower East Side.
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Thirty Seconds To Mars VIP Packages, and inset: Bon Jovi VIP chair (from a photo by Richard Perry/The New York Times)
The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, August 15-18, 1969, featuring Richie Havens, Santana, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix… $7 per day. Bon Jovi at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, May 24-25, 2010, the top VIP concert package (with a catered meal, leather bag, and the chair you sit in, custom-designed with the Bon Jovi logo): $1,875. My, how things have changed. In this rapidly shifting milieu of the music business, with a shrinking base of increasingly poor and fewer rich music consumers, new models for generating revenue from the concert-going elite are emerging.
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transcendental meditation, crystals, sun salutations, i-ching, tarot cards, past life regressions. crying, screaming, dancing. consultations with psychics, with astrologers, with psychologists, with charlatans. clean diet, exercise, qigong, drugs, drinking, no drugs, no drinking. live music, bird-watching, getting lost in the woods, getting lost in a book. self-analysis, mindlink, manic mind, empty mind. gardening, ouija boards, going to the movies, long drives, walking around in a crowded city, sitting in a darkened room. i have a home depot full of fancy tools, and sometimes i can’t hammer a fucking nail into a board.
share this: Embrace your pain; use it to create art. Ok, so I embraced my pain, and I created… something. The song is called “Yay Coachella!”, and it’s sung to Weezer’s “Troublemaker”, which WFNX has played, I think, about 500,000 times to date. Once would have been enough. In fact, once would have been too much. We put together this video for their contest to win a trip to the wonderful Coachella music festival out in Indio, California, April 17-19. A partial list of bands I would love, love, love to see: The Airborne Toxic Event, Leonard Cohen, The Cure, Conor Oberst, Franz Ferdinand, Morrissey, Silversun Pickups, The Hold Steady, We Are Scientists, Band of Horses, Bob Mould, Fleet Foxes, Glasvegas, Henry Rollins, M.I.A., TV on the Radio, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Lykke Li, My Bloody Valentine, Okkervil River, Public Enemy, The Orb, Throbbing Gristle (good heavens, Throbbing Gristle??), X, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. All except for Franz and TATE I’ve never seen before, and I’ve never been to a music festival like this (save for maybe one or two low-key things in Connecticut, back in the late ’70s). Wish us luck! (I really need a vacation…)
share this: My muse visited me this morning, in the guise of a Mockingbird spreading his wings and peering up at me on my porch as I was doing my sun salutations, as if to say “winter is nearly over, and I’m ready to fly — how about you?” A chill in the air still and patches of ice on the ground, but Spring bubbling underneath as a whispered promise. First Robin also, as a harbinger and scavenger, investigating under the Blue Spruce for bits of food. Scurrying and then stopping as if to catch the last words of something that was just said by a soul only they can see; a presence only they can feel. I’m dumb to it mostly, but every now and then, in a fleeting glimmer of a sparkling gem, I catch it. And I am able to share that moment with the bird, for perhaps a second or a millisecond, before I’m shut out again and left to admire from afar, with a sense of wonderment and awe.
share this: Gray, drizzly morning, fog thick on the harbor, shrouding secret cruise ships, tankers, military vessels — or perhaps something even more sinister. No one knows, in the mysterious, sensuous gloom. But you feel they’re out there, stealthily lurking to and fro with their unknown cargo. Later on in the morning, foghorns cry their mournful song, harmonizing with the seagulls. These are perfect sorts of days for me, standing on my porch with a cup of tea. Thoughtful, wistful, vaguely sad, though I find it does not depress. On the contrary, I welcome it like a comforting shawl that wraps itself securely around me.
share this: The pursuit of happiness feels to me like a game in a carnival. So difficult. So random. So elusive. All those endless floating ducks circling past you, and you know that one – only one – has your dreams, your desires, your hopes, casually revealed on its bottom. So you put your money down, and pluck one up. Nope, not that one. And more money, and again. No. And still more money, more effort, as time slips by, the hours, the days, the years. You try to concentrate, you try not to concentrate. To focus, to not focus. To clear the mind, to meditate, to approach the matter in a Zen-like, irreverent fashion. They’re not ducks, they’re grains of sand, or toy soldiers, or jellybeans. And this isn’t important, this isn’t your happiness at stake, not the purpose of your life, but a child’s fancy. Let it go, release the expectations, release the fears, release the sense of struggle, the sense of anything. But in trying not to try, you’re caught up in that eternal riddle.
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