I keep wondering if I should sign up for twitter, then hating the idea. I dunno if byte-size is really my forte. I’m gonna pretend for a minute I am twittering and see how it goes.
the indigo girls were like two pillars of a temple. they were both equally powerful and they stood side by side at a weight-bearing distance channeling the harmonies of the goddess (ack I think that was too many characters!).
we moved the baby chicks over to the neighbor’s house this morning. it was raining. thomas the mouse was watching with yellow eyes.
ohhhhh it’s kind of like haiku, dig it! 5-7-5
everyone on airplanes
is reading that book called “blink”
should I do it too?
grilling asparagus
isn’t as quick as it looks
on the food network
oh, those are terrible, I sound very bourgeois!
i hate this post!
i will post it anyway.
that’s the culture we live in!
two old videos
Wed, May. 13 2009
hi guys i think these videos are already on myspace but i never posted em here and looking at them makes my heart yearn for last fall when i got to open these tours for bon iver and then ani difranco w/ hamell on trial. bon iver was singing this sarah siskind song a lot and i got to sing it a couple times. me n hamell shared a dressing room most of the tour and we learned this lou reed song. you can see ani playing vibraphone in the back, what a badass.
"Lovin's For Fools" w/ Bon Iver, Paris, 2008
"Waitin for my Man" w/ Hammel on Trial, Amsterdam, 2008
ferron
Tue, May. 5 2009
i was lucky enough to open up for ferron in montreal this weekend, it was really something special, i grew up listening to her records, 'shadows on a dime' was the big family hit, my dad made sure we knew the words to every song on that record, i can see it now, the LP, ferron on the cover in some kind of leather or maybe it was a sports jacket leaning in the door of a building, she looked very strong, manly and womanly at once, a serious poet.
here are some great ferron lines:
"hearts are like meadows, with their weathered potential, with their reasons diluted by reason itself..."
"life moves so mysterious with its cute little spins/and it's everyone's koan and door to get in/it's old human nature/it's cold or it's hot/i think of you often/i like you a lot/if it's snowin in brooklyn/i'd say snow's what we've got."
also it was very affecting when she directed this line right at us the audience during her show: "i don't forget about the factory/i don't expect this ride to always be/can i give you what you wanna see?/can we do it one more time?"
one song i didn't grow up with, but discovered on the new 'boulder' record produced by bitch, is 'girl on a road':
"my momma was a waitress/my daddy a truck driver/the thing that kept their power from them slowed me down awhile". oh my GOD that is a good fucking line.
i had this feeling watching ferron sing like that she is a kind of a priestess. no kind of pious mind you. but she said something backstage about when you say a word, like 'door', you "summon the spirit of the door". it made perfect sense, words have power and medicine in them, all you have to do is utter them, that's a nice thought on an off-night.
portland cello project
Thu, Apr. 2 2009
from a hotel in anchorage, there is elevator music playing in my room it is sooooo bad, but I’m too tired to get off the bed and figure out how to turn it off, I see the speaker it’s coming out of, but it’s all the way across the room. oh god i am going to turn it off. one sec. did it!
it’s cold and white here, there’s lots of magpies and yesterday we saw a mountain goat. it is pretty much one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, except for the anchorage sprawl, which is just like any other sprawl.
I did three shows in the pacific northwest as a special guest of the portland cello project, they are so fantastic, they arranged and played several of my songs and we also learned this one sesame street song because we thought PBS was going to be following PCP with a camera for a few days, but then they bailed (postponed), but we sang the song anyway. I learned it from a mix tape, cookie monster sings it: “if moon was cookie”.
between Madison and Chicago I was joined for three shows by noelie macdonnell of galway, beautiful guy, i was lucky to have him along because a couple of the shows would have been pretty bleak otherwise. there was this one small town in southern Minnesota called Lanesboro. it comes as a surprise after miles and miles of corn, looking both old-westy and new-englandy at the same time. we played in a theater that once showed movies, quaint and old. there was not a big crowd but very appreciative as often is the case in small towns. before the show I was sitting upstairs in the greenroom. the place smelled of mold and shag carpet and insulation. I was drinking red wine from a cup-and-saucer cup and working on a song. I looked around at the walls which were made of that plastic stuff that is meant to look like wood and I had one of those flashes where what is cheap and weird is suddenly very beautiful. the whole scene, but the plastic walls in particular; I thought, “that’s beautiful”. noelie came up and we started playing some songs. townes van zandt ones for example. out of the blue noelie started describing some footage he’d seen of townes & steve earle and some others playing songs in townes’ trailer. “the walls were like this, beauty board,” he said, gesturing around. “I don’t know what you call it here—in Ireland we call it ‘beauty board’.” it made me smile!
on my way home now to practice with SPUTNIK! (me & n. are in this eighties band) for our FAREWELL SHOW at Langdon St. this friday the 13th. people come out if you’re around. the band is going on indefinite hiatus to “pursue solo careers”. also, the eighties is so five minutes ago. it’s a little sad though. everything I know about the keyboard, I know because of the band. I am gonna try and hunt down this video of us singing “we are the world” along with like our whole town at this festival last summer. if I find it I’ll post it here. over and out, anais.
folk alliance
Mon, Feb. 23 2009
folk alliance was pretty great. for those of you not in the know it is this conference that happens once a year in Memphis, tons of songwriters and other folk people take over the marriott and for four days there are songs coming out of every room on four different floors of the hotel. there are these showcases, some sponsored by the conference, others “guerilla” style, and there are some folk scene industry types there that might give you a gig or something but the real beauty of the thing for a lot of people is seeing so many comrades at once of the songwriter tribe. it was so fun and also made me want to go in a room and not come out till I write a dozen new better songs.
for sure there are not-great and great songs, but the interesting thing is how many totally different ways there are to write a great song. some people string imagery together pretty abstractly and it is stunning even if almost incomprehensible. other people are very narrative and they pull you in and tug you around in the most heartbreaking way. some songs leave much to the imagination and others very little and I know I’ve heard great songs in both of those camps. there’s nothing like listening to a great new song in a roomful of songwriters. like at five am one night this character cory branan wandered into our party and sang this song that I can’t remember anything about except the refrain went “what didn’t kill you make you wish you died” and there were like a dozen songwriters gasping for air and then having to go smoke cigarettes.
two more discoveries, joel plaskett of Toronto was absolutely delightful and apparently two of my favorite singers, ana egge and rose cousins, sing all over his new record coming out soon. and john Elliott of LA, I had met before and thought might be a genius and as it turns out he definitely is. there’s many other comrades I’ve mentioned them before so I won’t list them here but from the bottom of my heart I am so grateful to be in the tribe. rose polenzani has this line, “someone plays a song and it’s like a miracle… it’s like a miracle!” xoa
tour video from london, post-inauguration
Fri, Feb. 6 2009
"1984" live at the Luminaire (London, UK) January 21, 2009
notes from europe, and child ballads
Sat, Jan. 31 2009
watched the inauguration from a south english living room before the show. the next day the london tube was full of people reading newspapers with the headline “AND HE CAN DANCE” and footage of our man on the floor lookin good. finally got to play two gigs with the bowmans, they’re beautiful and so’s their music and we had fun talking psychology on the drive to newcastle. also in brighton I played with sharon lewis, my god what a songwriter, and afterward we sang some ballads, her voice being fragile and strong. dublin, my old friend robert blake was in town, we took a long walk down a country road and talked about everything. amsterdam, rotem perach, we ate raw herring in the frosty street, we went to a club called the new anita, it was full of dutch hipsters reading pomes in dutch, and illegal salons, what does that mean? smoke pot in the street, but do not under any circumstances get a haircut. hamburg, the angelic jan, I finally met tish hinojosa, we drank “mexicanas” which are tiny bloody marys. berlin, the “creaky boards” (ny), we talked about g-d and drank a lot and got desperate for peanuts, the soundman brought us to his basement studio and played us a song he’d written for his girlfriend in german.
reading my way through the “child ballads”, it’s five volumes, ten sections, 305 ballads many having multiple versions, and smart funny scholarly information as well. it’s really quite a treasurebox, it’s a world you enter, the vocabulary is all of a piece, for example, hands are lily or milk white, a steed or a gown might be berry brown, and so forth. very taken with a couple of them. one great one from the first volume comes from a time when christendom existed alongside the old world, must have been a crazy crossroads, anyway Thomas the rhymer who is like a poet/prophet who was given his gifts by the fairy queen, is sleeping under a tree when said queen appears to him. he takes her for the virgin mary but she says, no, I’m not as holy as that, but I AM the fairy queen (or is it elf queen). she takes him away with her and they walk and walk and he gets tired and then he sees a tree full of fruit and reaches up to pluck one… but she stops him, saying, this is how your people got in so much trouble, sit down on the grass with me I have some bread and wine. which they do and then she says, do you see that narrow path in the woods, covered with thorns etc.? that is the path of righteousness which few men will ever travel. and do you see that broad path covered in flowers, that is the path of wickedness, though some men call it heaven. and do you see that third path which is neither one of those? that is the way to elf land, and that is where we are going. isn’t that just fantastic?
gaza
Thu, Jan. 8 2009
hi guys
today i got this note from my friend. i thought i would post it here. as thinking feeling people we have got to be able to criticize a government, supported by our own government, whose actions are atrocious, and know that this is not a criticism of "jews" or "israelis" or any other thinking feeling people. xoa
"Hello,
Some of you receiving this are close friends of mine, others are mere names on my contact list. I have never sent out such an mass email, and probably will not do so again. I am writing to ask you do take some action in your life, large or small, to stop the savagery in Gaza. I need not tell you that, as I am writing this, at least 700 Palestinians have been murdered in the past few days, almost half of them unarmed civilians (10 Israelis have been killed also, 4 of them by "friendly" fire). Thousands have been badly wounded, many of whom will die slow, horrible deaths, as Gaza's hospitals now lack medicine, anesthetic, and electricity.
Most of those to whom I am writing, like me, are U.S. citizens. As such, we are in a unique position of responsibility. The rest of the world has consistently opposed Israel's relentless and chronic contempt for human rights and international law via the United Nations, and through large street demonstrations all over the world, yet they can do nothing to stop Israel. Israel can and will continue to do whatever it likes, as long as the U.S. gives the thumbs up. Every crime that Israel has committed in its short, brutal history has been done with U.S. money and weapons. Ours is the only approval that truly matters to Israel. Palestinians can do nothing to stop Israel from killing them and stealing their land. Europe and the Arab world can do nothing. Only you and I, as Americans who still retain some influence over the actions of our government, can stop this horror.
It is easy and enjoyable to look back on the great crimes of history, American slavery, the Jewish holocaust, etc. with moral indignation and the comforting certainty that we would have been in the minority who stood against these crimes, had we been been there. It is much more difficult to stand up to the contemporary incarnations of these atrocities, to choose to see through the thick veil of lies and justifications woven by the executioners.
If this letter has been an irritation to you, I apologize. If, like me, you find it difficult to sleep lately, thinking about the unimaginable cruelty being inflicted on an imprisoned population by a people who claim to have been "chosen" by God to rule a land which has been inhabited by others for thousands of years, about our elected government's uncritical support for the killers, about our soon-to-be President's refusal to comment on the atrocities, than I ask you to take action, whatever that means to you. It might be as simple as writing to your Senators and Representatives. Or attending a demonstration. Or taking more direct and militant action. Just do something, please. Don't let this moment in history be one on which you must look back with secret shame because you remained silent.
Sincerely,
David Symons"
are ideas overrated?
Fri, Dec. 19 2008
I’ve been thinking about this. at first it came from reading eckhart tolle. there was this beautiful concise passage about how we often look at the world and attach words to it, that is, we say, ‘that’s a bird’ or ‘that’s a tree’, and then think that we understand those things. but in truth we don’t understand them, we have only ‘covered them up’ with names. n. taught me a game where you make a picture frame out of your hands and then look at the world through it, if you’re driving in a car it becomes like a video, either way you try to see the world as a composition of shapes and colors and not identify things with words. it is more fun than you might expect!
then, I started thinking how well-versed most of us are in the language of ideas. we are taught from a very young age to look at a complex variable mysterious world and simplify it, recognize patterns in it, try to bring it under conceptual control. the texts of academia as I remember them (I studied politics) had little to no IMAGERY. it was a bloodless language that saw forests but not trees. what I wish I had spent more time studying is storytelling, the meat of the world. stories are more interesting than ideas.
my brother, as devil’s advocate, said something about how actually, there’s something about the human eye and the human brain, that is like… when we’re looking at the world, as much information is coming to our eyes from the brain as from the world, that is, the brain is saying, ‘look for parallel lines, look for these color distinctions, etc.’ and there was something about how when colonial ships were approaching the eastern shore of this country, many native Americans could not even SEE them, because they were so foreign that their brains were not telling their eyes to look for them. so my brother’s point is that actually conceptualizing the world is a big part of seeing it at all. good point… what a delicate balance that must be for the eye.
yesterday I’m listening to the radio washing dishes. the vermont ‘administration secretary’ or someone like that is taking calls about the cuts to social services the state government (contrary to what you’d think, we have a republican governor) is proposing in order to face the recession. this is public radio and there’s all kinds of liberal Vermonters calling in saying, ‘why not raise the gas tax, or tax the very rich, or this and that, instead of cutting funding for services to our most vulnerable citizens? the secretary is pretty slick and knows how to field this kind of thing. you can hear he’s very anti-tax. it’s a principle for him. then there’s a call from a guy who says something great. he says, ‘I think the secretary’s position is more ideological than logical.’
so simple but true. anyone can understand the value of the IDEA of low (or no) taxes, the idea of small (or no) government. what is harder understand is the reality of it. free market capitalism was an idea. and there is something beautiful about ANY idea when it exists only in the pure realm of ideas. but the reality of it, if it is taken to its logical conclusion… is illogical. much worse than that. seems like, attached to any idea, there are idealists, and there are profiteers. the idealists are chumps, and the profiteers are despicable. this must be true for ideas on the left and the right. so how can we live in this world? I wonder if going back to what my brother said, there’s no way NOT to see the world in terms of ideas, but that somehow we have to strike this balance where we see things more for what they are than for what we want them, or don’t want them, to be. having read this post I see it is a pretty conceptual bloodless argument itself. anyway I am sittin here by the fire in a blizzard and n. just went to put the chickens in.
the president
Wed, Nov. 5 2008
we don’t have a television so we went down to the neighbor’s house with the last of the bottle of scotch I brought home from europe. I wanted to believe it was a sure thing but I just couldn’t. me & n.’s second date was exactly eight years ago when we watched the bush/gore election together in a dorm room and went to sleep thinking gore had won. then there were the recount days when nobody knew what the hell was going on but when the ‘official’ call was made we all took it on the chin. I guess what I was feeling before last night was utter uncertainty about the depth of our corruption, like we were cutting into a fruit that may or may not have been completely rotten.
OH MY GOD I AM SO GLAD FOR THE WORLD. as slim put it: “he is almost better than america deserves, but since he will in many ways be the world's president, i think he is the man the world deserves.”
tour videos
Mon, Nov. 3 2008
Live with Rachel Ries @ Club Passim (Cambridge, MA) September 12, 2008
Live @ Berns (Stockholm, Sweden) September 23, 2008
graffiti
Thu, Oct. 23 2008
I’m sitting backstage of this venue in freiburg and there’s some funny graffiti on the wall. it might only be funny to bands of a certain type but I’m gonna transcribe some of it for you. it seems like someone just started a list of things you hear on the road/in the music business and other people added things and all of the things are numbered and at this point there are 67 of them though like half of them are crass and unfunny but here’s some good ones
1. it sounded great out front
3. don’t worry, it’s only a coldsore
4. it looked full to me
5. I love what you guys are trying to do
11. royalties? what royalties?
15. the hotel is close to the gig
18. no one has ever complained about that before
19. ac/dc played here and THEY didn’t complain
20. I’m really tight with those guys
32. I thought you took care of that
33. you’re going to rake once you recoup
ok actually it makes me feel kinda sad looking at that. there’s graffiti in the iron horse basement that says “your mom is a jamband”.
contra la por
Fri, Oct. 17 2008
in ireland we were involved in not one but two pub “lock-ins” where they do last call and some people leave while others stay and they lock the front door and draw the shutters and continue to serve tall dark and handsome guinesses and out come the cigarettes and, hopefully, the songs. as a singer i am all for the smoking ban which seems to be sweeping the universe but I must admit to a great feeling of old-fashioned underground excitement linked to the whiff of cigarettes in a public place. we had a great “sessioon” in county clare during which I sang, a cappella, every ballad I could think of which was not many. shane had introduced me to paul brady (his music, not him personally) and specifically his “definitive” version of the song “arthur mcbride” which is now a great favorite of mine in fact I tried to sing it in clare but could not remember all the lyrics and had to resort to wild gesticulating to get the end of the story across. kevin and mick of the most wonderful and charming band GUGGENHEIM GROTTO for whom I was opening also recommended “raglan road” and one other I can’t remember. I am crazy for these ballads man. it has happened before that I go to the uk or ireland and suddenly remember why folk music is important and beautiful. these british isles songs stab my heart much, much deeper than appalachian ones. I heard this song about “musgrave” or is it “musgrove” which I think is the british version of “shady grove” and I found it much more compelling.
now I’m in catalonia with the ani tour. tonight I am gonna attempt a song in catalan, it’s by a famous anti-fascist songwriter: RAIMON. it is called “contra la por” here is a rough translation:
“come, let’s call things by their names. if we don’t break the silence, we’ll die in the silence. life is against fear. love is against fear. we are against fear. against fear, without fear.
come, let’s call things by their names. all those who have suffered the weight of the immense boot and the sharpened blade (okay I dunno if “boot” is right) know what fear is. and know that it is difficult to call things by their names.
life is against fear. love is against fear. we are against fear. against fear without fear. without fear. without fear.”
copious
Fri, Oct. 10 2008
I actually cried in the taxi when the time came to leave the bon iver tour. it was a rainy dublin late-night and the cab driver was very friendly. that song came on the radio: “I ain’t missin’ you at all...” and I thought, “I miss those guys!” and I cried. it was like a movie. they are just BEAUTIFUL. I am the luckiest girl alive.
but you can’t step in that river twice and now there’s a whole new river. n. is visiting for a week in ireland. we cannot drink as much as irish people can it is physically impossible last night I said to someone, “the irish wit gets sharper with a few drinks but the american wit (if there is such a thing) surely goes the other way.” n. has got some great wool pants and a jaunty hat he looks like he could be from any era.
a lot of musicians look both older and younger than their age at the same time.
irish people have a great way of using fancy old-fashioned words in an off-handed way like “copious”. love. anais.
bon iver etc.
Mon, Sep. 22 2008
in Stockholm at a hotel. I was planning to sleep on the bon iver tour bus every single night to save money but after a week on the bus as awesome as tour buses are I was pretty ready to spring for a room. all day I’m dorking out it feels great. reading ‘the kite runner’ which is so beautiful. I’m trying to become one of those people who read contemporary fiction. I used to say I didn’t do it because if I was going to read I might as well read the classics, but in actuality I just don’t read enough at all. and it can be hard to get into classic-head especially on the road so lately I think it’s fun just to go to borders and see what people are reading out there! I read ‘water for elephants’ and ‘a new earth’ on this particular kick and got a lot out of both. ‘a new earth’ is making me notice how most of the things I say and do are motivated at some level by a desire to show off. so childish! like right now actually, it’s likely I am doing it. I could write volumes about the ego but I’m afraid it will come out preachy and I of all people by no means have a handle on my ego. but the book shed some light on it that’s for sure.
so. bon iver is f-ing unreal. the music is a howl in the darkness. warm, animal, sonorous. the songs are very special inspired subtle and gigantic. I am so lucky to be with them. also they are the funnest bunch of people. they are playing these beautiful halls full of beautiful people who are in love with their songs. that’s as good as it gets…
country e.p. w/ rachel ries comes out september sixth!
Tue, Aug. 19 2008
I wanted to tell you all that my friend rachel ries and I are releasing a little recording in just a couple weeks, it is called ‘country e.p.’, it’s five songs, two of mine, two of rachel’s, and we cover one song by our good friend louis ledford!
rachel is from chicago. she is one of the greatest singers, songwriters, and people I have ever known. I think she is classically trained and she learned to sing harmonies in church and she’s so good, she makes you want to weep. she has had a good deal of influence on my songwriting. there’s this one song on the recording, “o my star!” when I wrote it I thought to myself, “I am writing a rachel ries song”.
we’ve done some tours together. one time we were in milwaukee at this pub. there was some mix-up or maybe the soundman was late because I remember we didn’t go on till hours after we were scheduled. instead we hung out in the girls’ room and sang songs. I have always loved singing in bathrooms. that’s when we learned “bartender blues” it’s a james taylor song that goes, “I’m just a bartender, I don’t like my work, but I don’t mind the money at all…” we sang that every night of the tour. I think that song had something to do with the “country” idea. also louis ledford’s song, which is a perfect country song.
so we made this recording and the fun thing is if you buy it, you have to buy a little 7” vinyl record with three of the songs on it, but you also get a cd with all five songs. and we are excited that RBR is putting it out for us. you can get it at these shows we’re doing on the east coast, which by the way we are doing with a killer band. hope we see you!
mystery
Mon, Jul. 21 2008
n. is often quiet, and then he’ll say something very eloquent in an off-handed way. for example when I asked if he preferred john or paul as a songwriter he said, all in one breath, “I’d say I identify more with john’s abstract emotionalism and political fervor; however, as a bass player, I can’t help admiring paul’s sense of harmony, and his quirky gentlemanliness.” then the other day we were thinking back on a show I played with n. & his band, PARIS BATHTUB, and he said, “I love music, I love playing it, I love to be in a sweaty café, something lusty and imperfect in the air…” we were talking about “the mystery”. I said I thought of my songs a co-write between me and the mystery and he said, “but even that is once removed, the more accurate thought is, you ARE the mystery, the mystery is YOU,” and I knew he was right, whatever that means, it’s like what l. cohen said in I’M YOUR MAN about he used to think of himself as the hero of his own melodrama, then he “sank into the masterpiece”. the other night I was at Charlie-O’s, our local dive and there was a jazz band playing, guys we all know quite well, they were really rocking, it sounded great, I was watching their faces and suddenly I felt quite sure I could see a dual striving, on the one hand it was ego and pride and the rush of the stage, on the other hand it was selflessness, zen, spiritual service, and the interesting thing was I could see them both at the same time and they were not a contradiction
prairie dog town
Sun, Jun. 22 2008
nuther one down, I’m at the bouldin creek coffeehouse on south 1st in austin waiting for my flight this afternoon. this was a very fun trip with antje duvekot www.antjeduvekot.com and austin nevins. texas, new mexico, colorado & oklahoma. there was carslbad caverns, with its snack bar deep in the earth, roadrunners were a bit of a theme, also margaritas, I think I have decided I like cointreau in a margarita, the weirdest stop on the trip was “prairie dog town” somewhere off interstate 70 near the co/ks border, kind of a low-budget prairie zoo which housed, besides prairie dogs: raccoons, foxes, coyotes, pigeons, badgers, buffalo, many rattlesnakes, and then, believe it or not, two mutant steers, one with five legs, and one with six legs and two assholes both of which are functional.
antje is a beautiful woman and a beautiful songwriter. she has really infectious melodies. sometimes touring with another artist I start to get the other artist’s songs in my head like crazy. it can be annoying for the other artist I imagine when it’s like nine in the morning and I’m tunelessly humming their songs. touring with rachel in the past we had a rule, no singing of songs before noon.
just before my first set at kerrville the mc gets on the mic to announce that the democrats have settled on a presidential candidate and it is: OBAMA!
that was very exhilarating. to those who say it doesn’t matter, that he’ll be fed to the dogs, or that he’ll be elected and then rendered ineffectual, to those who say they don’t want to get their hopes up just to be crushed as they have in the past, I say, well what do I say? I say, we ought not underestimate the power of inspiration, inspiration goes a long way, I believe in it way more than I believe in american democracy. I wrote a brief poem for the man nothing special but I thought I might share it anyhow, yours, anais.
Prayer for Senator Obama
Lord, let him not be like the others
Let him not be proud
And bright-feathered
Let him not be a fruit
Rotted at the core
Let him not be a fish
In a school of fish, Lord
Let him not fall prey to the spiteful
Lord, let him not be slandered or worse
Let him not fall prey to sycophants
Lord, let him not learn conceit
Steady his hand. What he holds in it
Is precious and ugly, Lord, like a rat
With a diamond in its belly
Let him set it free
cosmic geography
Sun, May. 25 2008
before anything else I have to say, thao nguyen is a real and true rockstar, they don’t make them like her anymore, everyone should go see that show. I just opened a little run of dates for her and the get down stay down in europe and there were dance parties, card games, absinthe, peanuts, long hours looking out the window of the van at green fields and shocks of yellow rapeseed and intervals of self-cleaning toilets on the autobahn and vending machine cappuccino. it was fun—did it happen? it’s a shame to move so quick.
now I’m in turner’s hill, a small town in sussex, uk. it’s a magical place for me as my very first overseas gig was in this town—a wonderful promoter happened to hear a song of mine on the radio and sent me an email—did I want to play his acoustic series in sussex? there is a cosmic geography thing that happens when you book your own gigs, a message comes out of nowhere, a herald angel, then maybe a second one confirms the idea, suddenly you’re on the west coast, or across the sea, it’s the closest thing I can imagine to what a young man used to do in the olden days when he went to “seek his fortune,” a matter of picking up clues and interpreting signs, and this pleasure is somewhat diminished with an agent, not that it isn’t a hundred times more humane having an agent, it’s just a thing I notice. I wonder if agents have these cosmic feelings? I bet some of them do. but then again the agent never gets to strike out on the trail, she is more like the lady with the crystal ball...
in those days
Fri, May. 2 2008
I just posted this photo, an old one from the very first time I went to Buffalo, NY. I was at a bar called something like “Sportsman’s Tavern” where I actually had a gig despite the big screen TV overhead. In those days I was not fazed by that kind of gig, I was so happy to have a gig in the first place. Once in those days I drove from Charlotte, NC to Somerville, MA in one day because it seemed of great importance that I get to a gig there, something like a half-hour slot in a songwriter night at a bar with fifteen people who passed the hat. Thinking back now it seems that I was very happy, thumbing through the atlas was a sheer pleasure, there was free wine, I could sleep in my clothes in the car in the parking lot of a big hotel. But everything looks better in the rear-view. Here’s a poem I wrote one time.
My Single Days
I miss my single days.
I painted my face in parking lots
and public bathrooms.
I wore my clothes like feathers.
I swung like a dagger in a sheath.
I liked liquor then, and I danced crazy,
and for the sake of a man
I could shout all night over the music
about things I didn’t care for
or understand.
There were others more beautiful,
but I had a whole trump suit of my own.
It took years to collect and now
I don’t need it anymore.
Come close and I’ll tell you how,
for example, when he spoke,
instead of my gaze holding steady his eye,
I might let it follow the motion of his mouth.
A slight thing, but always effective,
I learned it from a friend.
And then, when his hand met mine,
I might grasp two fingers instead of the palm.
Just two fingers, the fore and the middle.
I discovered that one myself
and it never failed.
I ran upstream like the salmon run
I clung to the back of a silver bullet
And spun out onto the blacktop singing
I tell you, in the rear-view mirror
everything is suddenly cinematic.
Anyway at the Sportsman’s Tavern this old guy came up to me, I think his name was “Bob”, he was wearing a cowboy hat and he had a t-shirt that said, “you wouldn’t understand, it’s a black thing”. And someone snapped this shot. It’s one of my favorites from those days.
spring cleaning & stockpiling
Mon, Apr. 14 2008
just now I started cleaning the kitchen and couldn’t stop, you know how that happens? way leads on to way. there was a steel grease pan hidden under the side of the Vulcan that apparently hadn’t been emptied in decades and I burned my forearms with a weird cleaning product. there was a snow squall in the afternoon but the sun shone thru the whole time, it was cold and bright, n. and two friends were pruning the apple trees, they came in the house brushing snow from their clothes, the yard was strewn with boughs and branches. the trees have grown wild the last few years so their fruit is small and tart, one tree miraculously held onto its apples all winter long, they just froze there in red little bunches, and they are still there now. deer like to stand under that tree.
I remember my grandparents used to store apples through the winter by wrapping them in newspaper and keeping them in the closet under the stairs. they stored acorn squash on a high shelf and potatoes in the cellar. there were also many fruits and vegetables in the freezer in square plastic containers marked “strawberries, july ’85” and so on. that depression generation is full of homesteading tricks. I’ve fantasized a little about things we might stockpile in case of the next great depression, for example I’ve thought of wine, but the fact is if we had a stockpile of wine we might just drink it, wine is hard to ration. I know it will probably never come to it but don’t you agree there’s something fun about the idea of stockpiling? here are some things off the top of my head we might all want to stockpile:
coffee
if i smoked, I’d stockpile cigarettes
sugar
chocolate
frozen concentrated orange juice
rice
flour (but would it become rancid after a few months? I don’t know)
aspirin
tampons
contact lenses
birth control
firewood
batteries
lightbulbs
candles
film
blank cds & dvds
guitar strings
paper
pens
I could go on but I’m going to bed, please add to the list if you are inspired to.
love pome
Sun, Mar. 16 2008
Love Poem
I.
Before we met I lived alone
And purified myself with books
And curled tight inside the bud
Of my perfect childhood
But blossoms fell out in the street
Blossoms fell around my feet
The night he brought me home with him
The night he brought me home
II.
The place was a nightmare, stacks and stacks of
Books and papers, warped with age
Record jackets, cans of beer, mattress feathers everywhere
And he stood in the midst of it
Bare chest, slow smile
We’ll sleep out on the roof he said
I said okay
O and the loving stung me some
O and the loving rubbed me raw
O and I watched him all night long
And we were young and young and young
We’ll sleep out on the roof he said
I said okay
III.
His mother and I at the hardware store
For things that go around the house
She wants to buy chrysanthemums for us
In different colors
She says, "when he was little we would drive out to the farm
And buy the biggest pumpkin he could put his arms around"
I see his tiny hands
He staggers to the van
His mother looking after him and emptying her wallet
IV.
I hope I die before him
I hope he holds me just like this
A snail shell, a warm fist
I crawl inside forever
"mutual envy"
Mon, Feb. 18 2008
cabin fever is on man, i am kind of freaking out up here. i started surfing the net looking at the websites of my friends and comrades, then on to the websites of famous people, suddenly hours had flown by and i felt inexpressibly empty and wished i had spent those hours reading or writing a letter or staring at the ceiling instead.
(i will say one thing, i like the medium of a real website, as great as myspace is, it is not the same thing. also i think there is a bit of a sweet spot in an artist's career during which they are able to maintain a really great website. too little or too much success spoils it. the really cheap d.i.y. ones are annoying to look at and navigate and the really swish ones never have enough intrigue, they're all publicity soundbytes.)
the internet can be dangerous just like women's magazines are dangerous. they masquerade as intimately informative, but they are really elaborate vanity games in the spirit of commerce and self-loathing. the phrase from brothers k. was: "mutual envy". that about sums up myspace don't ya think? do i exaggerate?
love anais.
the dirty old moon
Mon, Feb. 4 2008
news:
the “groundhog” “saw” his “shadow”
we “might” be “headed” for a “recession”
ani difranco is a conduit of great power and light
p.s. I really hope obama wins this thing. I liked him a lot at the beginning, then came round to thinking every single candidate was beautiful each in a different way, specifically identifying with clinton’s struggle as a female candidate, how she is damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t act feminine and how unfair that is, and seeing edwards get his hair tousled by letterman on late night tv in such a charming way, but now I have to say I am firmly in the obama camp and it has to do with: a. simple aesthetics, what it looks like to our friends abroad to have a photogenic well-spoken black son of immigrants with an arab name and diplomatic manners leading this country and b. the fact that he might just be able to sweep the citizenry off its feet, that is, perhaps he won’t do anything sweeping himself as president, but rather inspire us, the people, to do some sweeping ourselves. I fear that certain people will vote for clinton because she is so wonky and smart, but that those people are thinking small because they are dreamers who have got crushed by their grown-up lives and are taking it out on the young and naïve every chance they get. and I fear that all that wonkiness might add up to not much legislatively speaking, not to mention the citizenry kicking back thinking we’re safe now that the democrats are in office. if they do get in office (surely nothing is sure).
p.p.s. on tour with mc I watched a good deal of late night television. I saw my friend austin nevins playing guitar on letterman with josh ritter for example, that was very exciting, I could not believe my eyes. i once wrote a song that was too dorky to sing in public, though I did sing it a few times, but I thought I would share the lyrics here that they not disappear in the quicksand of the cutting room floor. the important thing about this thought, to me, was that the kind of tv show where the audience has to be prompted to LAUGH is the most depressing thing in the universe. laughter is such a spontaneous human muscle of delight. if we don’t know what we find funny, we don’t know ourselves in the least.
late night television
people making fun of michael jackson
some things never change
they flash the sign and everyone starts laughing
seems to me it’s strange
it isn’t even funny
late night television
flickers from the corner of the bar
fortune and fame
wearing dark sunglasses and stepping into cars
always stepping into cars
they’re wearing dark sunglasses
it isn’t even sunny
i’ve been drinking all night
I been thinking bout you all night too
I wish that you were here
I’m going in the girl’s room
and blinking at this blur in the mirror
all my walls are caving
I’m flashing in the pan
I see michael jackson waving
semen on his hands
midnight glistening
blue lights flashing
nobody listening
everybody laughing
oh there was later a chorus to this song, I THINK it’s the same song, that went like this:
here’s to the man behind the mask
here’s to the boys in the back room
here’s to the dirty old man in the dirty old moon!
games
Wed, Jan. 2 2008
today (i wrote this some days ago) is the last day of many many many days of Christmas for n. & I, who have been to four fambly gatherings in three states. we played a lot of games, the grease in the gears, time-honored trick by which families spend time together without driving each other crazy. in my immediate family the traditional game is pinochle. we used to play four-man when I was a kid (you can play w/ 3 or 4), I was always partnered with my dad and my brother was partnered with my mom, it is a very serious awesome strategic card game and I’m proud to have been taught it as a kid so I wasn’t stuck playing “go fish” and “bullshit”. apparently one of our ancestors was shot on a riverboat near cairo, Illinois for cheating at pinochle, he had a crazy biblical name like Ezekiel. this year we indoctrinated n. who picked up the game very quickly. I thought: “I married well.”
the other game from my dad’s side of the family is called, “who, sir, me, sir?” my grandpa, the patriarch who usually leads this game, was not in attendance this year but I did teach the game to some friends about four a.m. at a party in vermont. everyone sits in a circle around the leader and the one to his right is the “head” and the one to his left is the “foot”. everyone is numbered right to left 1 2 3 4 5 etc. the leader begins the game saying,
“THE prince of paris lost his hat, who stole it, number five, number five (it could be any number here)…” at which point number five jumps in,
“who, sir, me, sir?”
“yes, sir, you, sir”
“no, sir, not I, sir”
“who, sir, then, sir?”
“number two, sir…”
“number two, number two, number two…” and if number two happens not to be listening, or not to remember her number, etc., then the leader continues, “number two to the foot” and number two has to move to the foot position, thus forcing number three into the number two position, and so forth down the line. apparently in my grandpa’s college days this was a drinking game so I suppose there might have been a bottle of something at the foot I dunno. this is a great game I recommend it. but at some point if you play it a lot, as is the case with my family, everyone gets so quick that the game loses some of its lustre.
we also played pictionary. but the real game of the year for us is “apples to apples”. apparently we’re not the only ones because n. went to the toy store to buy it as a gift and they said they can barely keep it in stock it is so popular. it is a very simple word game, no board, no dice, just cards, kind of like taboo but more subjective and interesting. I played it first at a party in Virginia, also at four in the morning. I haven’t got it in me to describe the game itself but I have to say, if your fambly is looking for a way to talk without talking, this is one way.
and in this moment I feel I can say: games with boards and game-pieces and dice are boring. they are a ruse on the part of game companies to codify a game so that it can’t be reproduced. monopoly could be an exception BUT monopoly is depressing. who disagrees with me? everyone loses, except one person, who feels like an asshole.
lonesome wolf, holiday inn
Sun, Oct. 14 2007
late nite hotel topeka ks. wolf hungry and it's too late for foraging. today i took a long walk in lawrence, who knew it was such a happening town? it had:
-music venues
-vintage shops
-good espresso
-student-types
-hobo-types, at least types who look like they have nothing to do, which i think is important for a town to have
-pizza by the slice (i wish i could have one now)
-the new york times
(hey i was thinking, if anyone else wanted to post THEIR ideas of how you know a town is happening, they could do it here.)
it's been raining like crazy and as i drive i'm listening a lot to this british version of brecht's threepenny opera- 'the british army will make salami..." f-ing brilliant, i have never heard a translation like that, well i suppose i have never heard any translation at all, but i just read the play and the lyrics were not near as evocative. "salami" is quite a word, because it's phallic as well as calling to mind the meat process, so it's sex, death, and tasty fat little sandwiches altogether. is anyone following.
i have a little theory about english/german, which i will now summarize quick-like as i seem to be falling asleep in my chair. anyway our english language has germanic origins first and latin influences second. seems like a lot of our words that relate to primary drives, basic needs, visceral things, come from the german like "ich, mutter, vater, will, liebe, hasse, haus, feuer, etc. i just love german, i actually find it more beautiful than the romance languages except maybe portuguese, because it makes you FEEL things not just glide along in perfect ballet-form, and in any case, i find that the poems and songs that make me feel most alive are ones with a lot of german vibe to them, for example think of the english word "love" which in german is "liebe" or some such as opposed to the more romantic "amor(e)". and the german word for hate is "hasse" i think, doesn't that sound awesomely snakey, whereas the romantic would be "odio" or i dunno in french, italian etc. but think how our english word "odious" compares to "hateful". it sounds pretty snobbish and i suppose it evokes one thing, but the german, the german brings your very innards to tingly wakefulness.
actually have i talked about this before? that would be embarassing. oh, oh yes back to the threepenny opera SO i guess a lot of translators kind of romancified brecht in translation, whereas this translation is very dirty and german and wham, i highly recommend it, i don't know who it is though, my friend gave me a burned copy.
more thoughts on nashville pop country. as there is a lot of that round here. i think what a lot of these nashville guys are doing, and what the radio is looking for, is the song-version of these tiny little books people keep by their toilets. one whole sub-genre is based on "you might be a redneck if..." and a whole other one is based on "life's little instruction book" or "chicken soup for whatever". these little books are kitsch in the purest sense and yet of course they can be very funny and moving. for example my grandma the other day over breakfast read aloud a passage from "all i ever need to know i learned in kindergarten" and the water sprang to my eyes. there's also some connection here with the reader's digest, what a weird institution that is, i used to enjoy it as a kid though.
if i were writing one of those little books you keep by the toilet i would include this advice which i thought up today for myself. because i can sometimes get into a very judgmental mood especially around other judgmental-types. the idea is that when you notice yourself judging someone or something, first let yourself silently make the judgment, then think if maybe the situation is funny, i mean if there's humor to be found there, and let yourself laugh about it, and then see if you haven't got a bit of compassion in you for that person or thing, perhaps this is convoluted, but i think that laughter, from the right kind of humor, opens a door in the heart, and compassion slips in. hot off the presses. god, listen to me.
well now i have spilled all my secrets.
i had a lot of other things i had planned to write about but i must lie down.
man i'm hungry.
talk to you soon!
deine anais
barack obama & hillary rodham
Fri, Sep. 7 2007
at the airport in newark i bought a copy of barack obama’s book THE AUDACITY OF HOPE. i was in the mood; i remember feeling so surprised to learn after the fact that al gore had written an environmental treatise years before his campaign, and wondering why nobody had read it. of course barack’s book is a best seller and there he is on the cover in every airport bookstore looking so handsome, compassionate, smart, kind of birdlike in his immaculate suit. i have only read a couple chapters of the book but i’m impressed with his writing. he can definitely construct sentences. he tracks the devolution of partisan politics from a more cooperative, dignified state of affairs to the current either/or platform which doesn’t reflect people’s needs or values. he surely comes from the left and he writes about his anti-authority ideas getting out of hand before college, but he also describes how by the time he got to college: “i began silently registering the point in dorm-room conversations when my college friends and i stopped thinking and slipped into cant: the point at which the denunciations of capitalism or american imperialism came too easily, and the freedom from the constraints of monogamy or religion was proclaimed without fully understanding the value of such constraints, and the role of victim was too readily embraced as a means of shedding responsibility, or asserting entitlement, or claiming moral superiority over those not so victimized.” that rang pretty true for me, I had that same dorm-room conversation.
then yesterday the times had an article about hillary rodham clinton which i found totally delightful. i kept wondering if she is an aries like myself, does anyone know? i had not realized she was actually a model young republican when she arrived at college but the events of the sixties swung her in the other direction. she became very active in the anti-war and civil rights movements but was always interested in change at the institutional level, by way of the system, that is, she wasn’t a take-it-to-the-streets kind of gal. i imagine that having come over from the republican side she had to deal with a deep sense of rift from her family and the values of her upbringing and perhaps being furiously by-the-book with her politics was her way of spinning out, but only so far, from the world she came from. so that when she went home for thanksgiving she might have to duke it out with her father intellectually, but not personally, like he couldn’t say that she needed a shower, or that she should stop smoking pot, since she didn’t. this is all just speculation of course but there’s something in it that i recognize in myself, not that i was raised republican, but that my own rebellions have also been kind of “managed”, and i tend to look at out-and-out rebels who have completely disowned the values of their fathers with a. a certain admiration but b. a certain disdain and c. a sad sense that these rebels, having orphaned themselves completely, will never really be happy no matter how they proclaim their happiness from the rooftops, they remain chained by rebellion just as most of us are chained by submission.
i get the sense that neither of these guys is very radical, but that they are both very admirable. and actually i don’t believe there’s room in the united states presidency for a radical as we understand the term. if i’d heard myself say that seven years ago i’d have disowned mySELF, and i DID vote for nader and it DOES make my heart crumble to think that my own father was right when he said that there was no room for a third party president and that all i would do was hand over the presidency to the republicans. in fact i think he even said i’d understand when i was older. i said dad, i’m young, it is my duty to vote for ralph nader because YOU OLD PEOPLE will never do it. and that was true. but i suppose the last seven years have shown us how low it can get, and plus, there is so much room for radicalism in schools, co-ops, town meetings, businesses, art, airwaves, we in vermont even have a pretty radical US senator, and these things are all MORE important than the presidency, because what we need in a president is someone to stand there, look concerned, speak intelligently, and NOT MAKE THINGS WORSE while people do the real work at the local level.
but then again i get a weird sense that maybe i’m not as radical as i used to be either. i have a homeowner’s policy now and i’ve started enjoying npr.
california
Mon, Aug. 27 2007
i’m writing from the town of tehachapi, ca, the trains roll through it dozens of times a day, I’m lookin at one now out the window of a diner. on the radio they’re playing “friends in low places”, i’m remembering watching that guy on the grammies when i was a little kid, it’s actually a pretty great song, with a rhyme like “places” “oasis” and “chases” that doesn’t seem forced, yah, maybe pop country has deteriorated in the last ten years. i listen to a lot of pop country on the radio when i’m driving, i can’t quite explain it, but it keeps me awake, i appreciate the craftsmanship, and once in a while it makes me to dissolve in a puddle in the driver’s seat, which is powerful, because it is so transparent, that is, one KNOWS one is being manipulated, but the power of a story well told is undeniable, no matter how kitschy the story is.
milan kundera said something in UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS about kitsch, that what kitsch was was not just children playing in the sunshine, but also the one watching it and shedding a tear saying, “isn’t this great, and isn’t this right and good that I should be moved by these children playing in the sunshine.” it was deeper than that though when he said it. there was also something about kitsch being “the denial of shit.” i have gotta read more books. one thing i did this week was watch a lot of television. it was all because my friend aj roach (visit his website he’s brilliant) got in the car with me in LA and didn’t get out until santa cruz and he was into this series FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS which we ended up watching many, many episodes of in two different cities. so funny! “they’re turning kids into slaves so they can make cheaper sneakers, but tell me what’s the cost, cause the sneakers don’t seem that much cheaper, your sneakers are made by slave kids, what are your overheads?”
another train going by. this town has a lot of far out hippies in it, but it is in the most conservative county in california: kern. there are definitely two worlds at work. i’m looking across the counter at the pies, i used to work at a diner, our pies looked just like that, so puffy. the waitress just asked a guy did he want more? and he said ‘no i’m on a diet, got to watch my figure’ and she said ‘yeah i’m on that seafood diet, i see food and i eat it’, and she did not skip a beat, i was never good at that kind of thing as a waitress. there are some things you say in service jobs you’d never say otherwise, for example, “bye now”, “have a good one,” and i learned to call people “honey” which i almost never do now, it only comes out sometimes, for example if i pass a guy on the street and he asks me for change and i don’t have it or don’t want to give it, i say, “sorry honey” because there’s something about the use of it that humanizes the exchange, as well as making me feel in control, in a maternal sort of a way.
well i got to get going. thank you california it’s been a pleasure, california, your brow is smoother than the brow of the east, california, you have so many hybrid vehicles, you are a good cook, you sing to yourself, i love you, love anais.
song women
Mon, Aug. 13 2007
i met some beautiful ones recently.
peggy seeger. helped me & mc with the saturday crossword over breakfast at a hotel in bethlehem, pa this weekend. then she told the story of how she met her late husband who i think was a famous english song collector. she is a very bewitching woman and mc and i fell under her spell pretty quick. she would just start singing ballads right there at the breakfast table when they came into her head.
last weekend: emmylou harris. she stood onstage in a black dress, sparkling black tights (so pretty), cowgirl boots, and an especially great red western shirt with white fringe coming off of it. and of course, her hair. she sang a james taylor song that made me cry (the one about the mill worker, who works the rest of the morning, the rest of the afternoon, the rest of her life).
and before that: ani difranco. who is beautiful and tiny and has a beautiful and tiny baby. i was afraid to hold the baby for most of the little tour because i have this feeling that if a baby doesn't like you, and begins to cry while you're holding it, it signifies some secret dark energy within you that only the baby is capable of picking up on. but at the end of the tour i tried my luck and it was fine. in fact i loved it. anyway ani rocks so hard. she rocks so hard and she thinks so clearly. isn't that a rare combination?
what else?
n. and i bought a house, and then the housing market crashed like the next day. i don't think it was our fault though.
at home on the farm, they're making hay, i'm gonna help out, for all the city slickers, that means riding around on the back of a truck, stacking up hay bales, then unloading them in the hay barn.
we know a joke about a vermont farmer and a texas racher. the texan says, "sometimes i wake up at sunrise, get in my truck, ride it around the whole perimeter of the ranch checking fences, and when i get back home the sun's going down." the vermonter says, "yup, i know what you mean, i had a truck like that once."
amelie-les-crayons (and the end of an era)
Mon, Jun. 11 2007
at the very last minute, like a couple weeks before the tour, we (me and my "people"- ho! ho!) got an email from b., a french music manager from lyon, offering two support slots for his artist "amelie-les-crayons". we had not heard of b. or amelie but b. seemed to be a kindred spirit and i was going to be in france anyway with not a lot to do, we said "oui!" and after a big night in paris with the purest comrade of my heart, aj roach, and his fantastic band, i got on a train to lyon. the first show was a sort of private concert for friends and family of amelie and her gang, they were just pulling the drapes off all their new songs (i guess their record comes out in the fall) and the second was a more formal show, part of a festival that took place in a factory in the tiny town of perouge.
the reason i'm writing this is that this woman, amelie-les-crayons, turns out to be an absolute goddess like you cannot imagine. she sings what they call "chansonnes francaise" (i'm sure i spelled that wrong but anyway that's like the old school edith piaf style stuff, very dramatic and delightful and the audience claps in time) and for this show there was a whole theatrical set, costumes, a lighting designer, and amelie-les-crayons, serene, crazy, gorgeous, sat atop a tall tall stool and played a piano also raised up up high with the pedals basically suspended in mid-air, and my mind was fucking BLOWN, may i say, i could hardly play my sets, i felt something like a toad that has somehow got itself invited to the most beautiful tea-party and sits in a saucer blinking at everyone with "gold-rimmed eyes" (if that's not a fairytale it should be). anyway please find this woman. here is the url of her label's website, where you can find out about her and b. who turned out to be every bit as kindred as we'd imagined. http://www.neomme.com
riding back to lyon with the handsome young band, we talked about the french government and its support of artists. i guess as a musician if you can prove you play eighty gigs every ten months, the government will cover whatever living expenses you haven't been able to raise yourself (kind of a wild thought!). i have really no idea whether this system is effective or totally exploited, but just the concept that the state would recognize that the material support of artists (not just "the arts") is in the best interest of society... is radical and great.
also in lyon, the time had come, in fact was overdue, to re-blonde my blonde hair (which if you are an unnatural blonde you will know has to be done like every month and a half) and for various reasons i decided, instead of continuing down that expensive route, to go back as nearly as i could to my natural color which is... brunette! i share this with you because what i dread most of all is having to TALK to people about it, about my hair, as that is one of the most ridiculous dead-end conversations in the whole small-talk canon, and i had after a year and a half only JUST got to the point where people had stopped commenting on my blondeness, so... if you catch my meaning...
all best from the lanes in brighton!
-anais
the brothers k
Sat, Jun. 2 2007
can you believe dostoyevsky wrote this in 1880? i love this man. this is part of alyosha's collected remembrances of father zossima's conversations. when i read it i felt a shock of recognition! see...
"We are assured that the world is getting more and more united and growing into a brotherly community by the reduction of distances and the transmission of ideas through the air. Alas, put no faith in such a union of peoples. BY INTERPRETING FREEDOM AS THE MULTIPLICATION AND THE RAPID SATISFACTION OF NEEDS, they do violence to their own nature, for such an interpretation merely gives rise to many senseless and foolish desires, habits and most absurd inventions. They live only for mutual envy, for the satisfaction of their carnal desires and for showing off."
hove
Fri, Jun. 1 2007
when i was eight my whole fambly including grandparents and some aunts and uncles took a trip to england. it would probably have been 1989. in hindsight i was too young to appreciate it but perhaps as a child one does some other, deeper thing with the world than "appreciate" it. some memories of that trip: reading king arthur books & epic poems with my brother; my dad cursing as we drove round and round picadilly circus; canterbury hill, which was covered in stinging nettles-- my mom likes to recount this story as she finds it illustrative of the difference between my brother's and my personality-- my brother cleverly found a stick to push the nettles aside as he carefully and slowly made his way up the hill unscathed while i charged ahead, bare legs covered in welts, shouting "I HATE THIS I HATE THIS I HATE THIS." there are others but the most vivid memory i have is of a water park we discovered on the coast near brighton... it had three big fiberglass tubes, yellow red and blue, snakish, the water rushed through them and you went down on your butt or if you were brave, frontwards and headfirst, and it WAS the most exhilarating thing that had ever happened to you thus far! well i speak for myself.
i'm staying now in the town of hove just west of brighton and yesterday in an effort to stay awake/beat the jetlag i took a walk down to the seaside and behold! THE WATERPARK! it seemed to be closed, perhaps for the season, but it was unmistakably the same one that set my eight-year old heart to a joyful pound. i saw that it had a ridiculous name like 'duke ferdinand leisure centre' (not that exactly but something very british like that). i must also relate that it was a depressing scene, the fiberglass, the concrete, the candy kiosk nearby, all of it seemed poverty-stricken, faded and murky, the seawater met the stones, sketchy young guys tried to make conversation, the place had an asbury park feel to it, which made me wonder, is that a recent development or was it there all along and i, as a child, just didn't notice?
still it was way more beautiful than the wealthier streets with the many shiny real estate brokerages and salons and the grocery stores with the japanese-style plastic-wrapped fruit. if you know what i mean.
i live my life cradled in nostalgia, i like it that way.
if i recall correctly the waterslides were lined up from least to most crazy-scary, the yellow would have been the simplest one, the red was intermediate, and the blue deposited you hoarse and wet with your heart in your mouth! i also remember that back then there was graffiti on the sidewalk nearby that read, "oh do shut up you are all so boring" which in my family we all got a big kick out of. "oh do shut up you are all so boring." with love, anais.
autotranslation
Sun, Apr. 22 2007
many thanks to g for pointing the way to what i can honestly say is the greatest review i have ever received, autotranslated from god knows what language:
'The Smartness' showcases the faithful interpreter of Anais Mitchell
Anais Mitchell is a even vocalist/ birdcall author from Green mountain state,
with a natural endowment for storytelling. Her sheet music is Family line,
until now every bit a peddle of modern solid. Mitchell's cushy syrupy
spokesperson compatible with deltoid melodies allows the medicine to exist a
calming receive. Her newest record album The Light is a ingathering of
short-range stories featuring lovemaking, loneliness, redemption, and go for,
told with smother escaped lyrics and euphony.
the toad
Sat, Apr. 14 2007
thanks to nellie for sending along the mary oliver poem i was talking about. here it is-
Toad By Mary Oliver
I was walking by. He was sitting there.
It was full morning, so the heat was heavy on his sand-colored
head and his webbed feet. I squatted beside him, at the edge
of the path. He didn't move.
I began to talk. I talked about summer, and about time. The
pleasures of eating, the terrors of the night. About this cup
we call life. About happiness. And how good it feels, the
heat of the sun between the shoulder blades.
He looked neither up nor down, which didn't necessarily
mean he was either afraid or asleep. I felt his energy, stored
under his tongue perhaps, and behind his bulging eyes.
I talked about how the world seems to me, five feet tall, the
blue sky all around my head. I said, I wondered how it seemed
to him, down there, intimate with the dust.
He might have been Buddha- did not move, blink or frown,
not a tear fell from those gold rimmed eyes as the refined
anguish of language passed over him.
the mouse
Fri, Apr. 13 2007
mid-april and we’re still buried under snow. I’m watching thomas-the-mouse sprawl in the golden armchair. a miracle. his fur is soft as a rabbit’s. his yellow-green eyes, smiling and crass like a lizards. the pads of his feet are pink and black, like a kind of candy I can’t remember the name of. he squeaks at seven in the morning. he likes to join people us the bathroom sink when we’re brushing our teeth and he especially likes to be present during a bath, he perches on the edge of the tub with his paws in the water as though fishing.
we got the mouse from the humane society. it was an arduous process. the very first time we arrived he was there, in a little cage with his longhair sister, who we fell in love with immediately, but unfortunately she had yet to be spayed so if we wanted her we’d have to wait. I had a soft spot for the mouse even then and I said to n., well, what about this one?, and n. looked at the mouse and the mouse turned round in the cage exposing his tiny ass and shat right in front of our eyes at that exact moment, which we took to be a sign of some kind, and after all, we were in love with the sister. so we got a “hold” on the sister, we described her to friends, we even gave her a name: “edie”. then there was a series of frustrating visits where we thought the spaying had been done and went back to pick up the kitten but she wasn’t ready for various reasons, and then on the FINAL day when we were just bursting to have a kitten, the humane society made a mistake and forgot she was on hold at all and gave her away to another family. we were devastated and the humane society women felt so bad that they offered us any other kitten for free. so we took the mouse, who was still there waiting for adoption. we gave them twenty bucks as a goodwill gesture (usually a young kitten costs like a hundred). it’s funny for us to imagine that we “bought” the mouse for twenty bucks because he is like our favorite person.
last night at dinner someone said, people like to hang out with their pets because it’s the same thing as being alone and people like being alone whether they realize it or not. I wonder if this is true. when I was a girl I had a horse, a big beautiful round brown horse, three quarters morgan and one quarter quarter horse. I used to spend a long time talking with this horse about the dramas and difficulties of my pre-adolescence, while he stood in his stall munching grain, his big wet brown eyes watching me, mute but not entirely indifferent. it was cathartic in a way I don’t know writing in a journal could ever be. it’s nice to hear the sound of your own voice washing over animal ears. there’s a great mary oliver poem about that. “the toad”. I’d post it if I could find it.
the mouse knows when I’m about to go on tour. he begins acting up when he sees me packing. now… I’m outta here!
there's a guy craig bonell he has a great blog called songs:illinois check it out:
http://songsillinoismp3.blogspot.com/
he asked a bunch of peeeeeeople to send "postcards" from sxsw so i sent him one. then i thought hey i might as well post it on MY blog so here it is! still you should go to his site because he includes lots of sound clips of everyone i am talking about.
sunday morning comin down
impressions from sxsw.
thursday
my official set at momo's and i was so excited about the rest of the bands on the bill that i spent the night there, a luxury really not to have to elbow around on sixth or anything. ana egge played after me with tony and jason-- so rockin-- i have got this real thing about ana's voice like i'm always thirsty for it, for it and her songs, thirstythirstythirsty. also on the bill, stars of track and field and the winterpills, they both sounded so good, the room was full of sound. then sean hayes, i had never heard him but he came highly recommended and in fact he blew my fucking mind. we all sat on the dirty floor of the club looking up at his little haunted face under his little hat. his acoustic guitar sounded, i could not think of another word, GLAZED. his voice too was glazed but with a different sweeter rougher glaze. i can't remember a word he sang or what any one song was about but his poetry made perfect abstract sense and a couple of times i think i even pumped my fist for a killer line. it was like a trance, what he created. me i was charmed, my snake was charmed. finally i met matt the electrician.
friday
the caritas soup kitchen. props to laura thomas and that great organization. flatstock convention, some really beautiful stark work, i was very taken by small stakes among other companies, i got to say though there is an emotional coldness to a lot of rock poster art, i dunno if it's always been that way or if it's a trend, but i don't like it. saw bill kirchen at the continental club with ana and tony. i really came round to it and felt like dancing and did dance. i noticed tony is an exquisite human being. smell of meat out the back. dinner with southpaw jones and his lady friend, also exquisite. later my comrade danny schmidt at the hotel. i tried to nap on the floor before his set but the guard waked me and got me on my feet. danny is brilliant i hate for him to play in a hotel. then we rushed over to sixth for ron sexmith. i could watch and listen to him all night. he had a three-piece band behind him including jason mercer on bass. he sweated in a suit jacket. outside on sixth the people flowed like spawning fish. we went up on a balcony for a drink looking down on it all. a south austin party. ambitious to go to a party at that hour and soon i was cold and tired.
saturday
a long day for me of little engagements. finally the house show at jon and vanessa's-- such a delightful cast of comrades including DANNY SCHMIDT, NELS ANDREWS, AJ ROACH, KRIS DELMHORST, and SAM BAKER. my heart was bursting. i cannot say enough. the workers in song! we rode in the back of a pickup with a silver flask. people waved from the side of the highway. to waterloo to see the band of heathens, band of my dear old friend colin brooks, who just won a big award. they are five men all very handsome singing man harmonies. i danced with an italian guy. in my enthusiasm i sang him a part of bella ciao, an italian political folksong. "this is a song against ze fascists" he said. "FUCK THE FASCISTS!" i cried and he echoed me "FUCK ZE FASCISTS." i drank lone star. the night devolved a bit after that. though i will say aj roach and nels andrews are exquisite human beings. and colin too.
maybe it's the people i was hanging with, like for example the righteous babe people, and a few others i met and got to know, but i will say overall i found many people who genuinely love music for all the right reasons and are in the industry as a means of getting the music to the people, and this was beautiful. i expected a much higher degree of sleaze and happily didn't find it and i'm grateful for that, also inspired, what a lot of bright lights there are out there.
thanks for reading, xo, anais.
dan rather
Thu, Mar. 8 2007
hello. a chelsea apartment! "and the sun poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses; won't you stay? we'll put on the day, and we'll talk in present tenses." at the house of norman salant who is a wonderful songwriter. he is singing over by the window and his two little finch-like birds are chirping in the cage.
well it has been quite a week. the universe had its way with me last week. i was very disappointed to have to cancel my little run of dates in the uk at the last minute. there's more... an obstacle course of sorts... i won't go into it...
on the bright side, i find i keep bumping into these bright bright songwriting lights everywhere i go. the "workers in song". they are everywhere. i am going to name some names which i usually don't do in my zeal for anonymity, names i might not have named before
nathan moore & the slip (surprise me mr. davis). you can hear me & brad barr of the slip singing some of nathan's tunes at the following site:
http://www.percyboyd.com/pickin.html
ana egge, aj roach. WOW MAN. both of them i associate with texas for whatever reason but i also crossed paths with both in memphis and again in new york where i am now. here are their sites
http://www.anaegge.net
http://www.roachmusic.com
also i was honored to open up for peter mulvey last night in manhattan. peter mulvey is on my short list of ideal men. like watching dan rather as a child. watching peter one feels that all is right in the world and good will prevail.
speaking of dan rather i remember watching full of emotion as he narrated the play-by-play presidential election of 2004. it was the end of his career, i don't even understand all the ins and outs of why he had to resign when he did, but during that broadcast there was definitely something funny going on, there was a boyishness and almost a senility, he kept saying exuberant old-fashioned things like "if a frog had side-pockets, he'd carry a handgun!" which i couldn't make sense of but i felt a love for that man like he was my grandpa or my crazy uncle. i felt that like the rest of us he wanted the dems to win though of course he strove to maintain his professional neutrality. i don't have a television but whenever i stumble upon some slick-headed or perk-breasted young anchorperson discussing the news like it was a gossip column i think, i miss dan rather. the era is over whether it ever existed or not. the idea that you could trust a man on tv to tell you what was going on in the world.
anyhow. love. anais.
more on cells
Mon, Feb. 19 2007
the thing about having a telephone on your body at all times is, there is no true solitude (and it's not as easy as turning the phone off, because owning a cell phone is a state of mind, a real addiction, not at all easy to re-program) and as someone i admire said, "greatness comes from a lonely mind," and this is one reason why these noisy little toys destroy our (one?) chance to live inspired, romantic lives.
even as i write this i see that it sounds hackneyed and reactionary in the boring way that old people can get about new technology. but i am being perfectly honest here and only just realizing the extent to which my whole mind has been hijacked by various insidious technological developments.
the simple life looks better and better. just before the tour n. and i got trapped for 36 hours in our little house by a nor'easter that drifted over our driveway among other places. at the same time we ran out of propane and so we had no hot water and could not use the gas range. we ended up cooking all-day soups on the woodstove and even discovered that one can fry eggs on the woodstove; it's slow going, but the eggs come out REALLY GOOD.
and what of the big wide world? there's something about experiencing it alone in silence, something of beauty or ugliness, craziness, loveliness, and NOT rushing off to share it right away, those things crystallize in the soul, they are another angle in the secret prism of the soul, refractive, illuminating. with the telephone we spill the sap before it turns sugar.
in any case i better begin to practice this little sermon now by warning anyone who calls me that i'm planning to keep my phone off as much as possible until i am finally able to give it up forever...
with love,
anais.
cells
Sun, Feb. 18 2007
very. sleepy. in this moment in Pennsylvania.
tomorrow I will write a real missive.
funny thing my cell phone is broken and I am enjoying it SO much, driving the snowy highways, listening to albums, not knowing what time it is and not caring, writing things in the notebook to be reckoned with later. it may well be that cell phones are speeding the devolution of the culture, just thought I’d throw it out there.
I could elaborate.
too tired though.
tell you tomorrow
ironism
Thu, Jan. 11 2007
Last night we watched David Byrne’s movie TRUE STORIES. It was really pretty great and it seemed ahead of its time in that it involved themes of corporate consolidation and American consumer culture that became widespread in the nineties, but the movie was made in 1986. N. said that maybe those ideas were there all along and we were just too young in the eighties to understand them, which could be true. Still David Byrne must have been a voice in the wilderness. TRUE STORIES was kind of a cousin film to NASHVILLE in my mind. I was moved more deeply by NASHVILLE, but I love the Talking Heads and have a feeling that David Byrne has/had something very special and un-nameable to teach us.
Then we got into a talk about “what is irony?” which has come up before and I have never completely understood. TRUE STORIES is about some of the darker aspects of our society but never do we get a feeling like D. Byrne (the narrator) is judging or finger-pointing or making a simple condemnation. He narrates the whole story in his crazy deadpan optimistic voice, and indeed there is a lot of beauty in the film despite its grotesque elements… the woman who has so much money she never leaves her bed… the malls and housing projects taking over the open fields of rural Texas… On the other hand it is not a sarcastic film, it’s not like D. Byrne is saying, “American consumer culture is so great” and we are all supposed to understand he means the opposite. To my ears there is not an ounce of sarcasm in D. Byrne’s narrative voice.
Some would say it is an ironic movie. Last night I maintained it was definitely NOT ironic but I think I may have be confused about that word and what I meant was it was not sarcastic. I understand the classical definition of irony, which can be explained via tiny vignettes (“an old man turned 98…” thank you Alanis). But people are always referring to this or that as ironic and it means something slightly different. And somehow I’ve come to really look down on this idea of “irony” and blame it for a lot of “the problems” of our culture today even though I don’t quite know what it is. Because I associate it with A. sarcasm and B. not saying what one means, not meaning what one says, not wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve and C. an attitude of looking down on the story one tells (or the life one lives) from a critical distance instead of diving in and inhabiting the story to its fullest emotional and spiritual extent. And I associate ironists with like the critics in the arts section of certain big urban newspapers, and more generally those people whose favorite occupation in life is to cut others down to size, to belittle their dreams, and to pin their ART as it lives and breathes to the wall with a tiny placard next to it that explains with condescending brevity how it fits or doesn’t fit into today’s society. BUT you see how I am getting carried away and it is quite possible that this is not irony at all I’m describing, but something else entirely. Whatever it I'm against it.
If anyone has any thoughts on this please let me know.
mishmash
Sat, Dec. 30 2006
I had a thought about the corporate music industry which I don’t really have evidence for but it was kind of begun in another post in a very confused way and then I had some other ideas about it and I thought I’d write them. It has to do with androgyny and the fact that a lot of rock stars of the past had an androgynous thing going… to me I could almost see it going back to like the castrati that used to sing opera… but then for sure a lot of classic rock guys, while they were very masculine energetically, also had long hair, were at the forefront of the long hair thing, and the tight pants, there was Mick Jagger, and then later of course Michael Jackson, Prince, and a bunch of eighties bands, Patti Smith representing the women’s side (there must be more right…?), okay, are you feeling me? There’s also something thrilling about a vocalist you can’t quite tell the gender of, like MJ, or certain Motown guys, or Tracy Chapman, or my friend Jesse Aycock who lives in Tulsa (check him out) has another of these rare post-gender voices that cut right through the noise and straight to the heart. So anyway I’ve always had this feeling like the corporate music stars used to be WEIRD, totally bizarre freak-out kind of people, and that society understood that a musician was something different than a supermodel or a Hollywood celebrity, but that nowadays that distinction is less respected and we get these people that look as beautiful and generic as they sound, and they don’t freak anyone out in the least. And so then it hit me that maybe the problem is that the corporate world has become a bit afraid of androgyny, that their girls are too girly and their boys are too boyish and there is not enough overlap to make for a compelling cultural icon (let alone compelling art). I know so little about the corporate scene that I’m not really qualified to make this statement but someplace in myself I believe it to be true and it seems insidious and dangerous for kids to grow up thinking women are like this and men are like that.
I have to add though that the modern folk world is kind of an interesting case as well… I would say in some ways that the modern folk world is also a bit straight-laced as far as gender goes… these are sweeping statements but there ya go… in some ways, where the pop world has in the past embraced androgyny in MEN but not so much in women, the folk world has done the opposite, there are TONS of butch women in folk but not a lot of men bending it… anyway I’ll think more on this. There’s a good reason for androgyny and creativity going together and Virginia Woolf said it in A Room of One’s Own.
SO Holidays wow. The new year is yet to come and already I’m socially exhausted. We had four family dinners plus one tea in three different states. What happened… it snowed finally… Thomas The Mouse systematically caught and killed nearly all of our glass tree ornaments… N. & I finished reading Anna Karenina which we’ve been reading for like a year and a half, always aloud and mostly on driving trips. A really beautiful book, full of casual moments of blinding insight into human experience. Russia becomes more and more curious and exciting all the time. If I ever complain again about the trials of writing a three-and-a-half minute song you can hit me over the head with a big fat Russian novel. The next thing… as a gift to myself and with a kind of crazy optimism… I picked up Pity the Nation by Fisk, which I’ve been meaning to read for years, but it is another of these eight hundred pagers or what have you and my track record for these books is not good. But on beginning it I am completely swept away. It’s good to read about the real world, as tragic and incomprehensible as it is, as this book is about Lebanon in the 1980s, full of all kinds of figures and ideas I used to study in school and then conveniently forgot about in the happy vacuum of Vermont.
In sad news, two of our chickens were eaten up while we were away. We thought it was three until N. discovered a live chicken hiding in some kind of discarded stovepipe. Thankfully there were no remains, just a lot of feathers, so I hope it was swift and painless and whoever got them enjoyed a full holiday meal. Also I hope it was a fox because I’ve seen some red foxes lately and admired them, and I’ve always been fond of “The Fox Went Out On A Chilly Night” in which the fox, who is usually vilified, is the protagonist, “and the little ones chewed on the bones-o.” A worse thing happened to my brother’s ducks, who we think were killed by a fisher-cat. In his case it was five out of six ducks and in more than one instance the fisher-cat decapitated the duck and left only the headless body of the duck with stiff little feet—that is to say, the fisher-cat killed for vicious glee and not for food. Chickens and ducks are so intrinsically funny and Far-Side-esque that it’s hard to talk even about their death with the right kind of seriousness, but the truth is it was very sad, we cried (well I did) and we felt guilty for not having protecting them more vigilantly. In any case, life is short, art is long, if you’d like to see the chickens I’m talking about, skip over to the links section of the website, and you will find links to two videos of the chickens on YouTube, both very artfully made.
In music, etc. I am suddenly adrift. The opera was so, so fun and I think we did some great shows. We will do more, I’m hoping for fall ’07, once we figure out the next move creatively. Sputnik scrambled together a brave new set with many new songs, some of my favorites being “Money Changes Everything”, “Diggin’ in the Dirt”, “Train in Vain,” and “Once in a Lifetime”. Tomorrow we are going to play in my old hometown of Bristol, VT, as part of the Five Town Massive arts festival that happens every year there, run by these guys I went to high school with, who are doing a beautiful and honorable thing with the Massive. But as for Anais Mitchell shows, I have not played one in a while, so I think I have some work to do before I can go on tour again.
Feliz 2007.
well since it is now in the news section...
and since it is up on their website...
i suppose it is safe to announce here that righteous babe records is putting out THE BRIGHTNESS in february!
HOLY F***ING S**T! is the only way i can think to express the honor and excitement i feel about this. i could say all kinds of things about it and perhaps i will do that later. but for now i'll just say HOLY F***ING S**T! because it's one of these things like if you had told thirteen-year-old me, stumbling over the chords of "both hands" with little uncalloused fingers, or fifteen-year-old me learning to drive a car and listening compulsively to NOT A PRETTY GIRL, or seventeen-year-old me with my very first devastating heartbreak sobbing over "untouchable face", and on and on, that this brilliant woman with her finger on the political and emotional pulse of a generation would someday put out a record of mine, i'd have... i dunno what... something drastic. so that is all i have to say about that at this point. much respect and gratitude.
HADESTOWN. i don't want to deconstruct it or get nervous or proud or anything about it until the end of the run (we are still playing in vergennes next weekend and you should all come). i only want to say that i have had more fun putting this show together than i've had in a long, long time, because everyone involved is so wonderful and brilliant, that goes for my collaborators m. chorney and matchstick as well as the whole entire unbelievable cast. i feel like i'm in the middle of a passionate love affair and i can't eat or sleep right and i simultaneously want it to go on forever and know that it will be over soon aaaaaaaaaarrrrrr!
that's all.
happy holy-days.
love anais
In Virginia Towns
Sun, Nov. 12 2006
Jesus hangs around
In Virginia towns
In Virginia towns
Jesus hangs around
He hangs with the ladies in dust-smelling shops
He hangs with the workmen wasting their time
He hangs with the kids on the banks of the river
All chilly and shining and flat as a dime
In Virginia towns
Jesus hangs around
Jesus hangs around
In Virginia towns
He hangs around where the white clouds shift
And the blue ridge beckons by cleft and by thrust
He hangs around at the foot of the mountain
In wainscoted houses gathering dust
Jesus hangs around
In Virginia towns
In Virginia towns
Jesus hangs around
Lord have mercy on the lonesome traveler
Lord have mercy on the lonesome sound
Of the highway calling her sons back home
To the lonesome towns where Jesus hangs around
In Virginia towns
Jesus hangs around
Jesus hangs around
In Virginia towns
Jesus hangs around
Jesus hangs around
Jesus hangs around
In Virginia towns
twitch
Mon, Nov. 6 2006
I’ve just got through a manic cleaning of the house. wanting to leave it nice when I go on tour wednesday. honest work felt good after many long hours of opera writing and planning. this morning I wrote quite possibly the worst song I’ve written in years but didn’t realize it until I had recorded it and distributed it to members of the cast on the “finished” version of HADESTOWN. then when the long day was over n. and I sat down and listened to the opera start to finish twice and laughed hilariously during the new song both times. it was really terrible. but I may recycle that melody if I ever write songs for sputnik, our eighties cover band. I wonder if the song was influenced by “rent” which I watched the other night. I am a complete sucker for musicals and I was in a puddle at the end of “rent” even though there was much in the writing that I couldn’t abide, I mean “rent” is to like “Sweeney todd” what a hallmark greeting card poem is to Dylan Thomas, but no matter- “there’s only yes, there’s only this”- a puddle I tell you! also then I watched the whole bonus dvd about the poor man who wrote “rent” toiling away in obscurity in new york city for years and then, the night before the show opened, his heart just burst and he died.
my kitten is sleeping on my lap (there’s room for him and the laptop) and his tail is twitching all over the place. WHAT DOES HE DREAM ABOUT? I’m crazy to know.
tomorrow is election day. hopefully you all go vote. hopefully we take back the power mon and we can at least put the brakes on the freak machine. it will be my first time voting in our new town. hopefully I can find the place.
and after that I will be on tour with my great friend rachel ries. she is from chicago, a beautiful woman, a beautiful writersingerplayer and especially exciting for me, a beautiful harmonist. she can cook a good meal and be counted on to drive through the night if one is sleepy. she can introduce one to hip young bands one would never hear of otherwise. we are going to pass through some great towns and play with some wonderful admirable people like birdie busch and devon sproule. who also cook better and know more bands than me.
www.rachelries.com
www.birdiebusch.com
www.devonsproule.com
what else to report? as greg brown says “the moon is as round as a banjo.” I had the great honor of opening for the master himself the other night in lexington mass. it was great to meet him face-to-face without his shades or visor. I learned various backstage secrets about him which I shan’t divulge on the internet. I used to listen to that song about his grandma and weep. everyone needs a song about their grandma. there is some powerful poetry in his new songs... an abstractness almost… go out and get his latest record “the evening call.” salud amigitos.
sputnik & hadestown
Mon, Oct. 23 2006
hello friends!
this weekend SPUTNIK is going to open for MAD DUB at the masquerade ball at Langdon street cafe. sputnik is our eighties cover band; me, n., sara grace & jay ekis are in it for this show (the band shifts personnel a bit, well just the guitar player really, but I really like j. and I hope he stays with us, though he is involved with a lot of bands including this iron maiden cover band, anyway he is awful sweet and has a great ear and at our first rehearsal he jumped right in singing vocals on little red corvette, it was really something). speaking of which. there is nothing like the lyrics of the eighties. much of the time they make no sense (ex. “you look so fancy I can tell!” “killer… diller… chiller… thriller!” “color me your color baby color me your car!”) and then at times they are so vivid you can’t bear to listen to them for EXAMPLE: “I guess I must be dumb cuz u had a pocket full of horses, Trojans, & some of them used”. not only a bad pun, but can somebody tell me WHY this woman is going around with a pocket half-full of used condoms? is she saving them for something? not that I’m knocking it I mean that is a great f-ing song. it just makes you wonder. man it is so fun playing synthesizer. I barely know how to do it but each time we have a show (which is not very often) I learn something new and interesting. anyway come to the show! all of you. we open at 9. show is on 10/28 and a costume party.
also a lot of other news.
hadestown. it is all happening man and I am now going to copy paste the press release which is a little dorky as press releases are but it has all the info and I want you all to know. and with that I’ll leave you until next time, xo, anais.
For Immediate Release October 20, 2006
ANAIS MITCHELL, MICHAEL CHORNEY, MAGIC CITY AND BEN T. MATCHSTICK TEAM UP TO PRESENT NEW FOLK OPERA HADESTOWN, BASED ON
THE TRAGIC GREEK MYTH OF ORPHEUS & EURYDICE
HADESTOWN TO DEBUT IN VERMONT THIS DECEMBER
THE PERSONNEL:
written and produced by Anais Mitchell (Hymns for the Exiled, The Brightness)
arranged by Michael Chorney (viperHouse, Orchid, Seven Deadly Sins) for Magic City
directed by Ben T. Matchstick (Bread & Puppet Theatre, Insurrection Landscapers, Cardboard Teck Instantute)
THE PERFORMANCES:
Old Labor Hall in Barre, VT
Friday, December 8th at 8pm
Saturday, December 9th at 2pm & 8pm
tickets $10 in advance / $15 at the door
available from the Barre Opera House box office- 802-476-8188- www.barreoperahouse.org
and the Langdon St. Café in Montpelier
Vergennes Opera House in Vergennes, VT
Friday, December 15th at 8pm
Saturday, December 16th at 2pm & 8pm
tickets $10 in advance / $15 at the door
available from the Vergennes Opera House box office- 802-877-6737- www.vergennesoperahouse.org
THE PRODUCTION:
For centuries, the tragic Greek myth of Orpheus & Eurydice, in which the lyre-playing Orpheus descends into the underworld and attempts to win back his fallen bride Eurydice through the power of music, has been mined by artists from all corners of the world – a testament to its depth and universal appeal. Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown, created in collaboration with composer Michael Chorney and director Ben T. Matchstick and supported by the Vermont Community Foundation, brings this timeless story into a contemporary context that is poetically, musically and visually fresh. Debuting in Mitchell’s native Vermont, the folk opera takes its inspiration from Depression-era America: the underworld is not the land of the dead but an exploitative company town; Hades is a sadistic wall-building boss-king whose wife Persephone moonlights as the proprietress of a speakeasy; and Orpheus wields not a lyre but a banjo. But the opera is not so much a history lesson as it is a rich patchwork of artistic vision, social commentary and raw human emotion. Old-fashioned symbols of poverty and exploitation are fused with a kind of futurism — albeit a clunky, analog, “vintage” futurism (think post-apocalyptic Jeunet/Caro films City of the Lost Children and Delicatessen) — which prompts reflection on just how much we’ve evolved (or devolved) as a society since the 1930s. Above all, Hadestown is a love story – a love story exploring what becomes of the human condition under the most tragic and trying of circumstances.
phil collins
Thu, Sep. 28 2006
i really love phil collins. i wouldn't even call it a guilty pleasure because i'm not ashamed. just felt like putting that out there.
austin
Thu, Sep. 28 2006
what a beautiful trip with d.! chicago to austin in eight shows. d. is really a genius i am going to quote you some of his lines here:
"o clearwater tick tock tickyticky tock the gift of life in a plastic bottle... a little bitter but i ain't bothered filled my glass from the tap like the asked and it tastes just fine safe for now now is just a matter of... time"
and
"people pitched me pennies and they pounded on the glass then they left to see the painted man and i left to pack my ass good goddamn another empty town goddamn another shell goddamn cuz when i ride back home i'm a stranger there as well"
anyway i could go on but you should just buy the record:
www.dannyschmidt.com.
unlike other trips i feel MORE energized than when i began and like a big kick in the ass to write. i'll tell you some beautiful towns in the country. fairfield iowa. lupus missouri. tulsa oklahoma. don't go writing conde naste or nothin but dayamn there are people in these towns who know how to live right and get things done without acting like they're trying to get things done. austin goes without sayin. after the cactus last night we rolled down to momo's to see my friend c. in his band "the heathens". they were great with like five part MAN harmonies and everything. it was me and d. and my old friend g. from the republic of georgia. a beautiful man, kooky and smart with thick glasses and a spring in his step. me and g. used to deejay at our college radio station back in the day, o latenight leonard cohen, electronic adagios, the night all chilly and pretty and the cafeteria coffees, the piles of unreviewed albums, both of us underage, beer being more fun then than ever again, g. and i used to write poems, his gothic and epic, mine youthful and brief. i never have enough time with anyone but maybe it's most beautiful that way.
soon i'll be home with n. and our kitten: "mouse". apparently i missed his formative weeks and he is an adolescent now. cheers-- anais.
like the best artists are androgynous at heart
Tue, Aug. 29 2006
last week was a great week. session americana came to the cafe thursday and rocked really REALLY hard! then friday was rose polenzani and fdr- brilliant. i made a giant pot of borscht so no one could say i was not a good wife. late friday night after the show f. had his heart set on recording a song with everyone at the party. i dug out my neglected mbox and microphone and f. set about recording in multi-multi-tracks what was in fact a collective and creative effort. my turn came though to lay down something and i suddenly became cross with f. and his big plan because i always seem to freeze up when called on to improvise. but finally i did sing something.
i used to have a whole theory about how men and women's creative processes were related to their biological apparatus, that men cast many seeds in a great bukowskian splooge, most of them missing the mark but some of them bullseyeing and blossoming, while women were more likely to incubate one idea for months and only bring it to the light of day with a fair amount of struggle. in fact i think it is not true but it makes a certain amount of sense for me. that's why i don't always trust my brethren who are big bukowski men. and like the best artists are androgynous at heart as virginia woolf said in that book of hers, so what does that mean?
the dark is falling outside this terrible restaurant. i come here because the wireless is good and the food is bad so none of my friends come in and i can work uninterrupted.
boy it is me me me all the time in this blog. meanwhile in the middle east... goodnight and good luck.
p.s. i am attaching below an essay i wrote about fdr. i was going to revise it to be a bit less starry-eyed but to hellwithit, why not have stars in there.
FDR
FDR is the new incarnation of NYC songwriter Felix Mcteigue. He was incarnated when Felix embarked on what he