Rock Star Hour

Still Rockin' Out with my Cock Out, I tell you

I wrote another song Saturday night, the night the Death Cab for Cutie show was cancelled. You know you've got it bad when you're writing a song and you're almost glad your favorite band's concert was cancelled so you can go home and finish writing it.

Something happened with the sound system at Numbers. They said the band was inside and you could meet them. I worked my way through the front door in the massive crowd of people who were all looking for Ben Gibbard and the rest of the band, no doubt, let out a fuck thissigh, and backed out into the drizzling rain toward my car and then home. I mean, I know I haven't had that many opportunities to meet Ben, but for something like that you should already know what to say in advance. Like how my friend Matt told me this totally poetic, huge compliment he gave to Orenda Fink of Azure Ray when he saw her at the last show. He's been smitten with her since he saw her play that show. Anyway, I wasn't about to wait a long time to get my moment and then make a complete and total ass of myself.

Besides, last time they played Houston I drifted somehow effortlessly from the left, almost back of the crowd to the front center row, and stared and stared so much like I'd been struck by lightning love. I couldn't even take notes in my tiny little rock journalist pad. And then afterwards, I couldn't stop thinking about him for three straight days. I felt guilty about going home with my boyfriend that night. We probably had some sex too.

Oh, well. Besides, meeting Ben Gibbard now and thinking lovey dovey thoughts about him would feel like cheating on my ne w indie rock sweetheart William Wilson. Prince William is the singer/songwriter/guitarist of Aveo, which is also on Barsuk records and is quickly becoming one of my favorite bands as well. I me t W illiam when Aveo played Odessa. I was there on Spring Break; they were on their way to play SXSW. It was fate, I tell you, fate.

I hope I don't sound like the sad groupie that I am. Damnit, the secret's out. But at least I know some things about the music and shit. Because I swear I've seen some chicks at shows who were only there to see boys, on stage and off. Prime Example: the last Bright Eyes show I went to. BB

Back by popular demand, uh-huh, er something

I wrote a new song last week, like I intended. It's my new favorite song, too. I love how every time I write a song it becomes my favorite. Not just because it feels like progress, but --

OK, I've got to to interrupt myself for a minute just to let all of you know how much Coffee Heathbar Crunch Cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory kicks ass. Had some today and it ruled, if I do say so.

Whatever. I don't really want to talk about songwriting all the time. I talked about other stuff on my other blog, I know. It's just been a long time since I've felt passionately about anything. If I ever did.

This is incredibly surreal. The content-ness (?) I'm living in this v e ry moment. My sister is playing "Landslide" on her guitar. Just finished, actually. She's good. She doesn't give herself enough credit, but she's good.

I'm moving to Odessa. Did I tell you that? Ellen and I are getting a house. I decided that I'm a grown up, and that my happiness is my decision. Everything's a decision. Even the cages we build ourselves in. But the thing about the walls are that since you build 'em yourself you can just as easily tear them down. I swear.

And I'm tearing mine down like a snake sheds a skin.

I'm re-reading my favorite chapter of a book I read last Christmas by Robert Fulghum. It's this one about renewal. He talks about how people let their lives go from order to disorder and order again, in cycles. He talks about cl e aning out a drawer on a Sunday afternoon as a metaphor for it all. He lists things that are supposed to be in the drawer, verses things that are in it a month after cleaning it out. Sometimes he even takes things from that drawer and puts them in a bigger drawer in the kitchen that he will clean out later.

It's not a coincidence that some of the best writers in the world have been teachers. Fulghum and Jonathan Kozol both taught for many years, and they both have this amazing sense about life and human nature. Such a keen sense of social observation.

Rebecca live: thank you very much. She's still playing for me. She's so awesome.

I can't wait to know a million songs. I can't wait to be comfortable with rhythm and fingerpicking and audiences. I will be a force. I am a force. Those of you who don't know me, if any of you are reading this, might even think I'm conceited, but like Ellen told me recently and I agree completely, like everything else this too will balance out. But going from an ultimate self low and waking up to the greatest heights in the sky of your mind every day is almost like culture shock. Eventually, when you go to a new place the novelty wears off and it becomes commonplace, I think.

I don't know. I do know, though, that I wrote on my old blog once that unrequited love is the greatest love, and lately I've come to believe that there is no love like self love. And if you can't love yourself who can you love? And if you can't be yourself then who the hell can you be? And if you have a feeling in life that you're supposed to do something, how can you be wrong to follow it? And if you are lucky enough to fall in love with a place as much as you ever thought you could love a person even, then why shouldn't you live there?

I'm not trying to be dramatic. It's just that once you realize how much of life is a choice, even when something is given to you or taken away, all these invisible doors become visible, and things that used to look lik e dead ends turn out to have hidden pathways marked with flowers all around the edges.

When I'm lying on a bench at the Menil on a sunny day and the leaves change color in the glittery light and I've got my guitar beside me there's no place I'd rather be. I wonder what I used to do. I honestly don't know. With so many hours in a day and I swear you can learn how to make just one feel like a million. It rules. When you make believe that time doesn't exist it begins to disappear. The same way power naps wo rk. You can make 20 minutes feel like 480. It's not that much work either, once you get the hang of it.

Fulghum says in that same book I mentioned earlier that in life change is neutral. It is how we interpret the change that it becomes a negative or pos itive experience in our memories which perforate our everyday living actions.

... And that is all.

Except I just want to say again how great it is to wake up every day with a smile on your face like it's Christmas morning. And with open eyes the smile on my face returns. It's just like when you're a kid and how you hope you were good enough that year for Santa Claus to visit you and he does.

Life rules...

Rock Star in the Making, I swear

I came to school with nothing to do. I came to school because I needed to get out of my house. I needed to get away from my new song.

I've written three songs, and am working on the fourth. And I've only had my guitar for a few days past a month.

I wish I could say I were some kind of prodigy; I'm not. Pretty close, though. I'm going to be such a bad ass.

I'm going to rock West Texas, and then Big City Texas and then the fucking world.

Hear Me.

I spent many, many hours for three straight days on each of my first songs. It's day two for this one, and I'm getting close. It's like that feeling where you're writing a story and you can feel the climax coming and you are almost at that breaking point where the falling action needs to begin, but you can't do it because you have that feeling. You know, the feeling you have after you've studied for days with almost no sleep for a very important test. And then you're finally taking the test, and all the information's in your head but it's almost the hardest thing in the world -- just spitting it out.

So it's circling in my head. A couple riffs and the rest of what is already written. But the best part is the part that isn't finished. I love that part already. Love it.

Watch out, world, 'cause here I come to rock you.

So I've decided to start a new blog. And no, I'm still not cool enough to have my own domain name. I might be someday though.

The recent change is something I'm trying to balance out with the living change that is my life. The momentum of the change seems unstoppable these days.

Learning to make everyday decisions and then finding delight in them is turning out to be quite easy, though exhausting when your moving toward that from the old version of similated happiness you were once so used to.

For example, I always, always, always wanted to learn to play guitar. Old Cara would have told herself she couldn't afford one. New Cara, after spending $100 at a bar one night, in a string of nights, er a couple of weeks of drinking heavily after purposely losing a boyfriend, then not-so-on-purposely losing a cat, and then pledging undying devotion to an undeserving friend, realized that priorities can do a lot for a person, and her entire sense of self.

So you cut down on the drinking, and the going out to eat, 'cause it was really your ex who always liked to go out for eggs and potatoes and you were really just too tired of cooking for him to suggest anything else, and you find that you have money for a guitar, and a guitar case, and art supplies, and to go to the movies, and to eat whatever foods you want to at home, including your must-haves like your Wheat Thins and Nilla Wafers; and you find that even with all that you have money to fly out to a West Texas town and fall in love with the damn place while spending four glorious days with one of your best friends in the world. And you think, it's almost unsettling how happy I feel. It might go away.

And you think the feeling might leave you when you step off the plane back to the awful, concrete, dirty city and the piece of shit college you realize does nothing for you except cost you money for an education you feel is worth less than most of your experiences in the last five years outside of the classroom ...

But it stays with you. And the music comes, and you write a couple songs, and you practice changing chords. And you spend time at the parks in pretty weather.

And you think, I could get used to this. I could even write a song about it. I think I could.