Good Thoughts

I wrote recently about a friend of mine who is living to the edges with brain cancer. I wish I could say he is the only one I know who is struggling with this particular disease. Today another very dear friend is going into his second surgery for brain cancer. He is also young, at 37, and since the news of his recurrence 3 weeks ago, I have gone in and out of connecting and disconnecting from the anger and despair and just fear this can evoke, not to mention the feeling of helplessness. His wife, a friend I have known longer than not, is facing it as bravely as she can, but the fact is, it is overwhelming and staggering.

So often I think there is always something to be done to help, to move forward, to plow on, even in the face of great difficulty. I felt this part of me buckle and quake when I was on the phone with her this weekend. I asked about logistics and safe guards and told her funny stories to hear her laugh, but the truth is this is so large and out of anybody's hands to really SAVE them from this terrifying experience. The usual modes of coping seem like a game of tic tac toe in the face of the SUPER BOWL of difficult experience. Still, when that's all you have, you try anyway.

There is a lot I don't write about here--and I don't know if it's a combination of life getting larger as I get older and the desire to chose between what is mine and what I want to offer to those here--but I have been increasingly private about very large items in life. Still, I felt compelled to write about this today because if you're reading this--whoever you are, whether I know you or not--your thoughts have power. Somewhere in San Francisco two people could really use your good thoughts. I am holding my friends in my heart today. I am believing in miracles. My faith could sure use some company--won't you join me?

One True Voice

My best friend from high school always has had a freakn’ hilarious sense of humor. After we bonded on comic books and Motown music, we bonded on Saturday Night Live and were THOSE KIDS that had to reenact THE ENTIRE SHOW on Monday mornings. To this day, we have some lingo left over from some of our favorite skits of that time.

She also had a love of phonetic spellings and language. We tried to make up our own slang and I would try to relate some of those “words” and “meanings” to you, but it would take TOO MUCH explaining and STILL would only really be funny to me and her. Don’t even GET ME STARTED on the amount of nicknames we have for each other. The language and its ongoing development continued on into our college years and then when e-mail kicked in, it REALLY went into high gear. She would send me e-mails with photographs of juicy eyed teacup puppies attached with such bylines as: I KINT TAKE EEET. I would send her a reply: Don’t you have work to do??

Do I need to tell you where all this is going? Do I need to tell you what happens to a girl who loves humor, phonetic spelling, and cute images, and who happens to be a graphic designer and a total technology nerd? There’s only ONE WAY to go, people, and that is to the world wide web to create a MAJOR DYNASTY called Cute Overload.


The world ADORES Cute Overload—I also happen to think it is total, hysterical genius—but it is also like reading a public display of nearly every e-mail I’ve received from her since 1997. I went to a party in New York City and proceeded to hear a STRANGER utter the dog sound: BAROOO and I almost FELL OVER. I felt like one of those purist punk rockers who feels the need to legitimize their punk roots by saying, “Hey! I’ve been saying ‘BAROOO’ since 1989, lady—how can YOU be saying it?” Or as I would have said, “How can YOU be saying EEEET?”

It’s NUTS.

I think Meg’s success is one of the GREATEST examples of “Trust what you love.” Or “Do what you are.” Or “Follow your truth,” etc. etc. etc. Cute Overload is original because it’s what is original about Meg. It is SO SPECIFICALLY HER and as it turns out, there is a MAJOR audience for it. When I think of this, I am reminded what the writer Sandra Cisneros said to a crowd at a reading a few years ago. She said, “Think about what separates you from everyone in this room, what makes you different. Then think about what separates and makes you different from everyone in this town. Then think about what separates and makes you different from everyone in this state and so on and so on and then write from that place, because when you die, that one original voice will go with you and we will have missed out on that one true voice.”

Thank god we didn’t miss out on Meg’s one true voice. Otherwise, we’d be missing out on this and who wants to miss out on this?

We're going LIVE!

I've been wanting to maybe somehow have one of my songs up here for awhile, but was trying to figure out how to do with WITHOUT a visual. Finally, I just decided to say SCREW IT (remember?) and I give you a song in progress called "Lonely"--inspired by Roy Orbison's excellent rhyme scheme and totally borrowed from Cliff Murphy's genius.

Here's a note to all those folksters out there who have been thinking of doing the same thing on their little ol' laptop: It's REALLY HARD to play IN FRONT of yourself and it's even harder to WATCH yourself. Like usual when I see images of myself, I wonder how I can walk this earth without children pointing and crying out "What IS that, mommy?"--but there you have it. Thankfully, most people are not me. I mean, seriously. THANK GOODNESS, right?

A Collaboration

Longtime readers of this blog might recall that my cat Kingsley is quite the artist. This weekend I decided to ask him if he might want to do a collaboration. He is usually more of a GUERILLA artist, using what he FINDS and/or STEALS. He seemed reluctant until I suggested the medium he might use: Then he immediately got INSPIRED:

And LEPT into ACTION:

We were both VERY HAPPY with the outcome:

I think he calls it "Pigeons."

Though, as most artists, he is so EASILY misunderstood.

When the Day is Young

Graham has been gone all week and he gets back today (note: HOORAY!). I've had a nutso week that has included staying out until way past my bedtime, an attempt at going to jury duty, only to be thwarted by food poisoning (note: BOOOO!), and just having quiet time to myself. I love mornings as it is, but there was something about this morning, with the windows open, and the quiet that reminded me of those days I lived alone. There is a sweetness of solitary mornings when all you have is music, coffee, and a pen and paper. I have plans to have breakfast with a friend and to go about my usual friday of errands and creating various works, but just to have this morning to myself feels wonderful. Good morning, Brooklyn. Good morning to you.

Completion

Nobody is Watching

The Equation

I discovered the equation for a good day for me. Beautiful weather + the freedom to enjoy it + new discoveries. This whole weekend was like that. Friday was exactly as I hoped it would be. Graham and I headed out to Central park and I got to TAKE MY SHOES OFF and listen to the birds and traffic. Towards the end of our Central Park relaxing policemen in galloping horses came by and the helicopters started circling and that's when it hit me: THE POPE HAS LANDED. We high tailed it home soon after. High profile visits are just a PAIN IN THE BUTT to navigate in certain areas of New York. Midtown is nuts enough as it is, but when Bush shows up, or the UN is in session, or the Pope makes his first American sojourn, blocks get sealed off, traffic gets redirected, and the whole city starts resembling a nose with hay fever--stopped up and CRANKY. We left before it could SNEEZE.

Through sheer synchronicity I discovered a show called Lots of Things Like This--an exhibit curated by Dave Eggers of pictures and words. It had an artist I HUGELY admire, Tucker Nichols, as well as incredible pieces by Henry Darger, David Shrigley, Leonard Cohen, Kurt Vonnegut, JR., and Maira Kalman (among so many others). The battery of my camera needs to be replaced, so I only was able to take on picture of a Tucker Nichols piece:



The real take away for me was the cartoonist/artist David Shrigley. I have seen his work before, but never really GOT it. After some perusal, I kind of became a little smitten with him. His photographs make me think of the writer George Saunders. They might consider a collaboration. It's an eerie fit.

This show, combined with Keri Smith's link to a new favorite blog, Cursive Buildings, filled my entire weekend with creative juice. I wrote and drew and played music and created all weekend. I know I have a pretty good life already--but this weekend I actually NOTICED it.

Central Park Here I Come

It's going to be SEVENTY-NINE degrees today and I want to be with the trees, grass, flowers, and birds. I'm moving my "office" to Central Park today--one of my favorite places in the whole world. Hope wherever you are, you are tasting this bit of spring too.

The Adolescence of Toddlerhood

This month my blog turns a whopping THREE. Drinking age in Dog and Cat years. In Human years it would be, what a parent friend once described to me as, "the adolescence of toddlerhood." This last description came to me after I complained that my three year old brother had suddenly seemed to become a seventh grade girl--openly divisive in his love and affection and having a certain glee at making you feel bad. Apparently, this is not only totally natural, but to be expected. "You think two is bad," my friend said, "But it ain't got nothing on THREE."

I was trying to think of some exciting thing to say about the experience of blogging, but I think I already said it in January. So for my own narcissistic enjoyment, today I was skimming in my ye olde blog archives, looking at where it all began, trying to conjure up WHO I was WAY BACK THEN. It's weird to have an archive and to see the progression of the last few years. I mean, I already knew that I tend to THINK TOO MUCH--but what a strange testimonial the blog is to that very fact. I was surprised to see that I began it just after I had made the decision to move to New York from California to be with Graham. It also marks the three year anniversary of some friendships and the three year anniversary of last hearing from some friends. It definitely was a time of transition when I began this blog and I see, despite my ever present worry and doubt, I was ready for the changes that were coming.

Spring is always a good time to make plans, change cities or jobs, start something new, wash windows, and/or to get some new t-shirts. In a way, a blog is all those things--a new focus, a new activity, a new thing to try on, and a new view. What a cool three years it has been. And as far as my teenage toddler of a blog--two was really really good, but since I am still doubtful and still worried over the course of my life, what a pain in the ass I remain--to myself.

Cube with a View

You're going to have to excuse the excess of images of the chicken purse. She's become my constant companion--somewhere between a rubber stuffed animal and a useful accessory. So far, it has changed so many of my interactions in New York--I walk into a place to buy something and the salesperson/waiter/counter person just starts CRACKING UP. If that isn't a useful tool, I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS.

I don't talk about the specifics of where I work or even my relationship to it because it's just not a SMART thing to do. A guy I work near said to me the other day, "Hey, I read your blog the other day--it's great!" This is why. In the exciting world of the internet, you can find ANYONE and EVERYONE and I have to think specifically what I would like my co-workers and my BOSS to discover. Discussing work on a blog is just DICEY. What I will say today, however, is that my relationship to a lot of jobs I've had in the past is the same one I had to boyfriend relationships in the past--I believed that no matter what, eventually it will end. Some may call this an attitude, others may call it a DYSFUNCTION (to which I say, Schlameal Schlamezel). I keep forgetting I'm not a TEMP anymore--that this is MY GIG as long as I want it.

A huge indicator of this attitude in my current job is that I hadn't done ANYTHING with the physical space. Basically, I have no windows and the surroundings are best described as OATMEAL, DULL WINTER LIGHT, and PUTTY. It finally hit me recently that I could feel a WHOLE LOT BETTER at work if I made the space my own. So on Monday I went to Purl Patchwork and bought the above fabric and hung it in its ENTIRETY on my putty colored wall. The effect was IMMEDIATE and EVERYONE seemed to respond to it. My cube mate, also an artist, who's home colors range from ORANGE to BLUE was ECSTATIC. We suddenly had ALL THESE IDEAS about what we wanted in our space. French posters! Flowers! Anything with color! I felt like we were both Annie singing "I think I'm gonna like it here."

Now when I walk in I feel more at home--or at least more ALIVE. If I can't have a window to the outside--at least I can have a view.

Freak Flee Regress

Last week I stumbled along a FANTASTIC article by the writer Elizabeth Gilbert called Thoughts on Writing. I encourage everyone who is a writer or who wants to be writing or publishing to read it. It's just simple, loving, sweet, and right on. That being said, I've never read anything by Gilbert. I've been avoiding Eat Pray Love because it is just EVERYWHERE and well, there was this part of me that felt a little HUFFY and JEALOUS over the premise of someone having a breakdown and healing from it by spending a year traveling and experiencing exotic places. After this article I just felt compelled to read it.

What's funny about reading this book so far is that I had a similar--or at least my own VERSION--of what Gilbert went through about the same time. I also had my entire life collapse in on itself at around 30—only I didn't go to Indonesia, Italy, and India. I drove across the country in a car I bought at the last minute for $150 and moved in with my parents. My version of Eat Pray Love might be called Freak Flee Regress.


Reading Eat Pray Love has got me thinking a lot about the paths of life and why we choose what we choose. I could say that part of my life was the WORST EVER, but I also consider it probably the most IMPORTANT period of my life so far. I believe it was a—DARE I SAY IT?--a spiritual journey and so much of what I have now, I owe to that time and the rebuilding it forced me to do. Living with my folks certainly wasn’t Italy, but man, I ate well for the year I lived there. My guru was not in an ashram in remote India, but at a shabby natural food company, in the guise of a potty mouth blonde who gave me one of the greatest mantras I could learn at the time: “Fuck ‘em.” My medicine man in Indonesia were actually the friendships I both created and rekindled when I moved back home. I learned how to relate in a REAL, more IMMEDIATE way in my own world. I discovered through these relationships just what was possible when you aren’t afraid of WHAT IT MEANS or HOW IT LOOKS all the time.

I see how clearly I created what I believed at the time, just as I create what I believe now. My sense of life has changed dramatically and so has the SIZE. This is partly due to the deep work I did to heal and partly a natural outcropping of getting older. Life DOES get bigger. The stakes DO get higher. The time DOES get shorter. I take less for granted (well, sometimes). And when I get so caught up in my own existential angst worrying and worrying worrying about where I fit in this grand world, who will love me, what am I doing, I remember what my guru taught me. “Fuck ‘em.” I’m telling you, for me, more perfect words were never uttered.

Walking Around with A Purse Shaped Like a Chicken Does Wonders for Your Confidence

Trust me on this, people. I LOVE my new chicken purse!

First Thriller and Now THIS?

Valley Girl turns 25! This might be Nicolas Cage's BEST ROLE EVER. Well, okay, I also loved him in Wild At Heart, but in Valley Girl he shaved his chest hair to SHAPE A 'V'. THAT is DEDICATION. Plus, Valley Girl ushered in the reign of 1980's teen flicks with KICK ASS soundtracks. The soundtrack features one of my favorite LOVE SONGS EVER. Are you seeing where I am going with this, people? I mean, ever EVER!

Pretty Young Things: Michael and Me

In August of 1984 my mom was on tour with the Jackson Victory Tour--a reunion show with Michael Jackson and his five brothers. I flew to Denver Colorado to see her. It was the first time I'd ever met her on tour before. I entered the strange world of hotels and amphitheaters and laminate passes and men in jogging shorts and Reebok sneakers. You’d think that backstage at rock shows in the 1980’s would be all about sparkle and leather. They really resembled a Nike ad with cigarettes. I learned how to order room service. I thought making my hotel bed was "helping" the maids, but when I got back to the room, it was always remade. I was 12 and came and went from the Mile High Stadium like I was part of the crew that worked and sweated over the enormous stage production which included COSTUMES and PROPS and THEATER PRODUCTION. I saw show after show (probably 3 in total) from backstage.

Then one night my mom said, “Let’s not go back to the hotel just yet. I want to go visit somebody.” I was bored and tired, but the minute our shuttle van pulled into the driveway of a hotel that resembled a large gold Cadillac, I knew something was in the air. We got out of the van and my mom said, “You want to meet Michael Jackson?”

Let me paint this picture accurately: I wanted nothing more than Thriller the previous Christmas. All my friends wanted it. I can't remember how or why, but it suddenly became THE MOST IMPORTANT thing I could ask for. When I did get it on Christmas Eve from my mother--wrapped in a brown paper grocery bag--I was so BESIDE myself I couldn't stop jumping up and down. When I called my dad's wife, Jody, who was picking me up later, she calmly said, "Summer, I am going to go now, because you're obviously a little EXCITED, and well, it's hard to talk to you when you're SO HYPER."

Thriller wasn’t just an album. It was THE album.

So yeah, I wanted to meet Michael Jackson.

The elevator was packed with people. When we got to his floor—MICHAEL JACKSON’S floor--it was CHAOS. There were people everywhere. Backstage it might have looked like a sportswear catalog, but here is what you would have imagined—sparkle, leather, heavy make up, and energy. I looked at the end of the hallway and a kid of about six exited the room in full BEAT IT regalia—sparkly red “members only” jacket, with a silver glove and glasses. He literally checked his sunglasses and STRUTTED past us.

I thought I was going to throw up.

In Michael’s hotel room were yet more people, a buffet of Indian food, uneaten pumpkin pie, and yes, stuffed animals. The only thing NOT in Michael Jackson’s hotel room was Michael Jackson. I talked to a beautiful woman with the longest nails I’d ever seen. “They start to curl if I don’t cut them,” she said. She told my mother I had beautiful hair. Then a door opened and out he came. He wore a black leather jacket and a plaid shirt. He took off his jacket with flourish, literally uttering one of his classic “WOO!” He was wearing sunglasses, so I couldn’t see his eyes. He said “hello” and shook my hand and it was one of the creepiest sensations I had ever physically felt. It was beyond cold fish. It was like shaking hands with someone who didn’t want to be touched. I couldn’t speak and tried to feign this off as charming. I just kept smiling thinking “How do I look? How do I look?” When it was over—and it was over very quickly—I walked out of the hotel totally depressed and disappointed.

I was running errands in Union Square today and decided to pop in to Virgin Records to see if they had the soundtrack to the Diving Bell and the Butterfly (which I just saw for the SECOND time yesterday). Upon entering, I immediately saw a 25th Anniversary Edition of Michael Jackson's Thriller. TWENTY-FIVE YEARS? I did the math. Oh, how time flies.

I remembered how I used to listen to Thriller at night in my bedroom, skipping the number one hits to hear my favorite song, "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)." At a time when I was oh so very young, but oh so NOT pretty, I followed suit when Jackson declared "Pretty young things, repeat after me, say 'Na na na!'" In my room alone at night I was a tall, skinny woman like Brooke Shields or Diane Lane--not as I was at any other time of the day, a lumpy 11 year old with so much long, straight hair. I resembled Captain Cave Man's sister.

After I met Michael Jackson I told people that it was disappointing because he was human, but in fact, it was the other way around. I was disappointed because I hadn’t entered the magic mirror where I became Brooke Shields. I stood there like the mute lumpy girl I was and that was it. But as a kid, it isn’t about metaphors. It isn’t about meaning. For me, at the time, it was how I felt I totally BOMBED a visit with Michael Jackson and how his handshake was as exciting as a glove filled with cold water. Later, I would come to see this as an ongoing lesson in my life: the idea vs. the reality; the star vs. the person; the dream vs. the actual experience and on and on and on. It was, as Kathryn Chetkovich says, “a key I have found again and lost, found and lost.”

I think it’s safe to say that Michael has found and lost a few keys in the last twenty-five years, but let us not talk about the man. Let us talk about the music that, 25 years later, still makes me sing. I never lost that key.

Fleeing The Nest

I think the thing that is most inspiring to me these days is the prospect of moving into a better apartment in a few months. While I believe we have created the best thing we could visually--mutlicolored walls, a studio I love, and all that--here's what you can't record with a photo in the blogosphere: the INSANE neighbors we hear daily both next to us and above us, the various "details" that our former super put in--plywood hammered onto a door to make it fit into a doorway, shoddy, cheap wall to wall carpeting that reminds me of office spaces and fur balls coughed up by my cat.

I love using my home as a pallet for creating art and experiencing life a little differently. I grew up with parents who loved to dabble in the psychedelics, but wouldn't let me paint my bedroom wall any colors, stating that I would get bored of colors. Oh, really? And white is so...NOT boring? For some reason, this reasoning stuck, even though I yearned for bold rooms of colors--especially after seeing the movies Amelie and the Royal Tenenbaums. Thankfully, when I shacked up with the G man, he was ALL FOR painting and I have to say, I will NEVER go back to not painting my home. I hope I always have this green in SOME room in my home. Plus, what' s not to love about a studio that is TOTALLY PINK? Well, don't answer that if you don't like pink. Frankly, I love it.

My new thing this last year has been to try to recreate elements of places I really love to be in. The famous Magnolia Bakery has an aesthetic I love, so I went inside one day and just took notes. One of the things they had were old framed magazine ads of cakes framed. I have a few old magazines from the 50's and so I combed through and framed a couple food pictures and put them in my studio. Yesterday, while walking in the village, we stopped and looked at the window display of Three Lives Bookstore and Graham and I talked about creating something akin to it in our own home.

I love looking at how people set up their homes. I always have. In New York it is so much easier to meet somewhere OUT that it is rare to be invited over to someone's house. When I am invited over to someone's home, I feel like it's this BIG EVENT. More exciting than a night at Carnegie Hall! As a result of all this anticipation of moving and of just loving to look at people's nests, the most INSPIRING things to me on the web right now are about homes. Look at the this artist loft space of the painter Ruben Toledo and his fashion designer wife Isabel Toledo--I mean, HOLY TOLEDO! It looks like something out of a MOVIE.

I am totally into the home tours at Apartment Therapy. I am sure everybody knows already how Apartment Therapy rules. So does The Style Files. And while I have no children, I am TOTALLY obsessed with the Cookie Mag house tour blog.

It's all like a veritable FEAST for the eyes. I tell you, I cannot wait!

Big Red

I am posting this picture because this is what I WANT to happen in our home--I want Kingsley to go back to his careless RELAXED state that he normally inhabits 24/7. We are in the midst of what Graham and I have come to call THE TOTALLY HORRIBLE CAT EXPERIENCE.

About a year ago Kingsley was sniffing around a plastic shopping bag I had left on the floor and he got it caught around his neck and proceeded to RUN AT FULL SPEED around the apartment trying OUTRUN the scary, crinkly LOUD white creature that hung to his BACK. When he made a mad dash under the bed, the bag caught and broke its grip. He spent an hour under the bed contemplating the questions of such a universe that would create such a LOUD and FREAKY CREATURE.

About 6 months ago, I pulled out yet another random plastic bag filled with mixed tapes from a box and left it out about a half hour too long, when Mama Kitty got it caught around HER neck and proceeded to try to outrun the crinkly crazed beast. She was a little traumatized, but Kingsley was having FLASHBACKS to his own experience. He suddenly saw Mama as the beast and for 2 days he tried to ATTACK her howling furiously. He went from the dandy lion we all know and love to a personality we have come to call as BIG RED. I didn't know our kitty could get SO HUGE and FEROCIOUS.

Cut to this morning. Now, before you say anything about me and plastic bags, I want to tell you that we are VERY CAUTIOUS about the plastic bags. We've almost ERADICATED them from our home ENTIRELY. They are not only evil to THE environment, they are evil to our own HOME environment. The ones we have left are kept under LOCK AND KEY. Well, not really, but in a CABINET far away from kitty paws. There were no plastic bags IN SIGHT. Graham was cleaning in the living room, and I was in the bedroom trying to hang some art. I went to go get my small metal box of nails and tacks, and when I returned to the bedroom my kimono sleeve caught on the door knob yanking me back with the nails in the metal box. Apparently the sound of the nails in the metal box mixed with the suddenness of my movement has RE-TRIGGERED BIG RED. Kingsley got HUGE and proceeded to attack Mama Kitty as if she were THE WHITE DEVIL.

Here's the real issue. In about 2 hours we have a house guest arriving for 2 days. It's hard enough having a house guest due to the smallness of our space and the cats SENSITIVITY to change and people. Now we not only have our friend, but we have BIG RED staying with us and that means we have to keep the two cats separated for at least a day, probably two, until Big Red calms down and Kingsley regains his footing and REMEMBERS who and where he is.

I cannot adequately explain how royally this SUCKS. I want our home back! I want Big Red to go back where he came from. It ain't intestinal flu, but it still feels like we're all shitting ourselves.

And the winner is...

LIDY! From the Netherlands!

Thanks to everyone who commented on the great Felicia Sullivan. She is the cool beans! I will be posting another Artist in the Office interview at the the end of April--stay tuned!

Your Guitar Questions Answered or How to Write a Song or Fake it for Fun and Profit

This morning as I was checking on the ol' e-mail, this little comment/question trickled in:

My question to you is: before you learned to play the guitar, how did you stay focused enough to get a song written? Every time I go to write some lyrics, and sing them aloud, I find I'm sounding more and more like a song I've heard before. I have your CD and have listened to it quite a few times. I just love the stories you paint for us. The way you're able to find the right thing to say at the right time is a talent all in it's own.

Any words of wisdom you'd care to share?

-Amanda from Santa Cruz

My first thought was, OH YEAH, I FORGOT I am a songwriting musician. I'm approaching the year anniversary of my last gig, where I said, "That's it. I'm done performing like this. I need a real change." This doesn't mean I don't play anymore--I just don't do it outside my home. I actually have even been writing songs again and that is always a HAPPY experience. Maybe not for my cats and husband who have to hear the same song OVER and OVER again, because it gets a little OBSESSIVE, but hey, that's called MARRIAGE.

So Amanda, this is where I should out myself right now: I learned to play guitar BY writing songs. After a botched attempt at trying to learn "Leaving on a Jet Plane" I just SKIPPED the whole learning by example and literally created a new song for every new chord I needed to learn. The upside to this was that I was writing A LOT of songs and learning to play guitar in the process! The downside to this is none of the songs were actually THAT GOOD and it took me another TEN years to feel I could play anything else beyond my own songs and the words HACK and SHAM came to mind every time somebody said to me, "Hey, you wanna jam?" Um, I CAN'T. I don't know HOW.

That being said, ANYTIME you begin something brand new, you will sound like somebody else. Do not PANIC. This is not only totally natural, but a good sign. It means you HEAR something and can MIMIC it. A lot of people can only hear things, but not take it the next step further. I was hopelessly like Liz Phair until I wasn't. I can't tell you the number of Ani Difranco's I met or Dar Williams in the folk scene of 1999. Don't even get me started on the amount of wanna-be Bob Dylan boys I came across. If you are worried about this, just know it is just the monkey mind telling you STOP TRYING SOMETHING NEW. Tell that monkey, SCREW IT and move forward. I guarantee you, if you stick with it, your own voice will emerge slowly, but surely.

This is what I recommend beyond all else: read and listen. We all know what we like when we hear it--there's a reason. There is something about a song or a piece of writing that can speak to us so clearly. Find out what speaks to you and use it as a filter for your own work. We all have our own relationship to music, but what I LOVE about it beyond all other mediums is that it has the power to make me remember something SO CLEARLY. Nobody looks at a Picasso and says, "Man, that takes me back." Yet, if I hear Psychedelic Furs' "Pretty In Pink" I am 13 years old again on dollar night at the Island Theater in Coronado, California, and I am full of hope and dread about high school.

Music also has this unbelievable power for making you feel like you BELONG to something. The first time I GOT that a song could do that, a friend of mine played Bruce Springsteen's "Spirit of the Night" on a guitar for me, and it was like a huge hammer hitting a BELL. I actually don't like Bruce's version of that song, but something about the way Evan played it made me realize what I was looking for in music: a sense of belonging. My favorite songs make me feel like I belong to something. I wanted to write songs that made me feel like I belonged to something.

Then there's just the lessons on songwriting you can learn by listening and reading. I remember the first time I heard Lou Reed's song "Dreaming" it HIT ME like a TON OF BRICKS: Oh, I can put DIALOGUE in a song? That was a wake up call. When I read Anne Sexton's poem "Letter Written on a Ferry While Crossing Long Island Sound," and I read the lines:

and I am on the top deck now

holding my wallet, my cigarettes

and my car keys

at 2 o’clock on a Tuesday

in August of 1960.

I realized that being SPECIFIC in writing has REAL POWER. This one poem has had more influence on me as a songwriter than any other piece of music or art. It taught me not to be vague. It taught me to not get lost in words like "love" and "hate" but to show SPECIFICALLY what love and hate looks like to me. When you get your heart broken, don't say, my heart is broken, say what you are doing around that heart. What are the objects of your life? What do you do every day? Or to quote Don Henley: Do you drive by his house, even though he's not home?

So that's my LENGTHY bit of WISDOM. Come from what you love always. Write the song you would most like to hear. Don't sweat the questions of originality. Just try. As the Estonian proverb says, "The work will show you how to do it."

The Picture

When I was fourteen my dad was dating a woman named Ming, who would become an important life long friend to me. We went to view an exhibit at Stanford University of the photographer Peter Stackpole. Ming knew Stackpole from a previous photography exhibit she had helped curate some years ago. Stackpole was one of the original photographers at Life Magazine. A great deal of his work displayed in the show was of Hollywood in the 1930's and 40's. A nostalgic even then, I loved the photos. My favorites were all the "snapshots" of the greats of Hollywood in the 1940's at dinner parties and award ceremonies. Alfred Hitchcock, Vivien Leigh, Ginger Rogers, all smiling and laughing, and eating mints and wearing orchids in their hair. I thought they were all magical, but my absolute favorite was one that depicted Joan Fontaine gazing emotionally at her Oscar for Hitchcock's Suspicion. I loved the expression on her face and the quiet it seemed to reflect, among the noisy crowd that sat behind her. That picture stayed with me for a long time afterwards.

About six years later, Stackpole came out with a book of his work in Hollywood and Ming gave me a signed copy for my birthday. I was extatic. I immediately wrote Stackpole a fan letter praising his work. This began a warm correspondence that would last for the next 3 years. It was one of those old school correspondences that don't exist anymore because of e-mail. He typed all of his letters and hand wrote his postcards.

Finally, he invited me for lunch at his home in Novato. He and his wife Hebe were like the magical artistic grandparents I had always searched for. Hebe, herself was an amazing artist and her drawings and paintings dotted their home. We ate lunch and I feasted on Peter's stories of his childhood and experiences in Hollywood. His father had been a prominant sculptor in the Bay Area. Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo lived with him when they came to San Francisco. A Rivera piece hung in the living room, along with his father's work.

Later, Peter took me into his studio and he let me go through the piles of his work dating back into the 40's. He said, "Choose a print. I'd love to give you one." It was like asking a sugar addict to choose from an aray of the best desserts she'd ever seen. I didn't know what to choose! How could I choose? It was between the Fontaine image and an older one he had taken of the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. I hemmed and hawed. Peter leaned in and held up the Fontaine picture. "Why don't you take this one--it seems to mean a lot to you." He was right. It wasn't just the image, but what it symoblized to me.

I have moved across the country many times in the last 15 years. Both Peter and Hebe are gone now, but this photograph still remains in all of the homes I have ever had. Like so many artists, Peter was disatisfied and looked at other people who had been his colleagues--like Dorothea Lang, and felt he had been slighted by posterity. I think he loved that he had a young fan and that is why he was so generous to me.

I had the photograph professionally framed and so the back is sealed, but I know there is a secret message that Peter wrote to me on the back. It said, Thank you for your wonderful friendship. Peter, thank you for your great effort.