Monday, April 19, 2004
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...
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...
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