verbal diarrhea

Ok, so I've been doing a lot of free writing lately & on Tuesday night, I helped myself to a few top notch brews (Bell's Two Hearted Ale + Sierra Nevada Pale Ale)... While in my semi drunken stupor, I wrote the following... I thought about making a poem out of it, but I'm too lazy & I kinda like it the way it is:


i've been doin a LOT of art lately. this can mean only one thing... art keeps my worried mind quiet. my art is the product of a frustrated heart. my art keeps me a busy bee, too busy to see whats underneath. the work keeps me blind to the hurt my heart is trying to get to me... work keeps me safe from the truth...being focused on projects chokes the truth raw. the floodgates of secret pangs gush out any form of progress. the stars and headlights of cars. the diagram of my hearts constellations... my wall's running out of room and i'm running out of excuses. it comes soon, i'm used to being one with affliction but that doesn't mean i welcome the pain. i'm abstaining from inner shades of blue. my heavy heart takes refuge in the layers of my creativity.i plunge deeper into the work. filling my time with diversion. the more i create the more i shut away. constant investment in self preservation. art is an excuse to keep whats bubbling underneath oh so still on the surface. it keeps me sane, it keeps me strong. it sustains me. the infamous outpouring of emotion. my curse and my salvation. the louder the colors, the more elaborately my mind is bent.....the more i'm holding in, the more i should be confronting the subcutaneous storms of my heart's horizon. the more i throw out at the world- the more i resist the travailing downpour that breeds within. my true passion takes any form of artistic freedom. my creative motor hums hardest during my desperate stand offs with reality. if there's something welling up under my surface..you'll know it. thats when i strangle myself with a need to be busy with projects. the artistic process my savior..but also, my barometer for the intensity of pain to come.

that can't eat, can't sleep, reach for the stars, over the fence, world series kind of stuff

i've been repeating "Landslide" from the Fleetwood Mac Live LP (1980) & it got me to thinking...

the older we get the harder it is to know anything about love. we think we know. we act above the childish ways of first love...but i'm starting to realize, we really don't know shit. age brings complication. i think young love, the greenest of the green, gets the closest to showing us how it should be. as we get older, we're only getting more cautious, more practical.

practical? ugh, i HATE that word. i'm satisfied with going it alone because i've been all to familiar with that one dreaded word... practicality will not be an ingredient in my next love potion.

give me something reckless. something bold enough to not make sense. i'm tired of planning for the future. i'm tired of the notion that love means being economical. give me something cocky, something loud, & something unjaded. let's go against the grain & hold out for that can't eat, can't sleep, reach for the stars, over the fence, world series kind of stuff!

12 x 15

(photos courtesy of Concrete Cowgirl)

The older I get, the more my childhood home becomes its own wilderness. I stay up late in this 12x15 jungle & get lost in the thickets of my mind... Draped in secrets, I blanket this old ceiling with question mark clouds.


My room looks like A.C. Moore's schizophrenic sister... littered with colors & textures & mistakes. New projects begin before others finish & coffee breath scorches tangerine walls.


Here, isolation is my armor. Silence is my switchblade. And solitude nurses the scrapes of inquisition marred on the skin of my youth.

01-01-10

The first day of the New Year is up and at-em. Now, I'm not going to pledge all my 2010 resolutions, but I am going to post a bundle of some of my favorite quotes... hoping to stir hidden passions & light a fire under all our asses. Let's make twenty-ten the year we find that certain lust for life we had as children. Stay open. Stay vulnerable. Stretch yourself...



"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." Albert Einstein


"True feeling justifies whatever it may cost." May Sarton


"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." Aristotle


"I've come to learn that the only real pressure is the pressure you put on yourself." Pete Sampras


"To err is human, but it feels divine." Mae West


"So in a world dominated by the digital, the metronome I listen to beats inside of my chest." RJD2


"Do you want to be an artist & a writer, or a wife & a lover? With kids, your focus changes. I don't want to go to PTA meetings." Stevie Nicks


"Every man dies, not every man really lives." Braveheart


"Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always." Rainer Maria Rilke


"I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things... I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run against the wind." Leo Buscaglia


"How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself." Anais Nin


"For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice." T.S. Eliot

M-E-L-O-D-Y

I think Kate & I should be BFFs... officially.
http://www.myspace.com/kateearl


No matter what has ever come to me
I got my own brand of company
I got da da da inside my head
And i play songs back to back until i got to bed...

...Wandering, waking in an empty wood
It is quiet here, I am powerful
I look down below serenade the world
From inside my soul

My top 3 according to itunes...

There's nothing better than waking up after a full nights rest on clean sheets... Now I've got my coffee and I'm listening to some music in my itunes library. Just curious, I clicked the play count tab to see what songs I've habitually gravitated to over the years. I was impressed (but not surprised) with what the numbers revealed. Here's my top 3 according to itunes:

1. In Your Atmosphere - John Mayer


2. I Still Care For You - Ray Lamontagne


3. Secret - Maroon 5

Battle Studies Premiere

Ok, so this is my first album review... here goes!

During my first run through of the track list, I'll have to say that only two songs really stuck out to me. The rest seemed like one giant blur of calm, simplistic sounds... Definitely not what I was expecting after devouring his previous bluesy beast of an album:Continuum.

One of my immediate favorite tracks was Assassin & after immersing myself in Battle Studies for the past two days, I feel that an assassin is exactly how this album operates. Simple, genuine, soft spoken... then WHAM! You're done for.

His 2nd track, All We Ever Do Is Say Goodbye, brought out emotions in me that have obviously been lying in wait. That's where I think John gets it right every time. Honesty always prevails... An artist brave enough to broadcast his vulnerabilities will always draw out honest emotions in the listener. John never fails to uncover all those things I work so hard to avoid & bury deep within myself. His music is infectious because of that.

As the tracks progress, I feel as if it subconsciously draws out more & more of me with it. An immensely mature sound, paired with his heartbreakingly honest lyrics leave me wanting just that: more!

I drift & die during tracks like Heartbreak Warfare, Half Of My Heart, Perfectly Lonely, & Edge of Desire. Truly great music pushes us to explore & question the depths of our own lives, love stories, & self sacrifices. Simply said, John Mayer's art validates & sustains me throughout all the transitions in my life.

I live for music that makes me sink & swell into a restlessness for something more... & Battle Studies is doing just that.