The Weekly Walk With Me

4 Things That Made Me Question The World I Live In

1. The Espys.  I was completely conned by this award show.  I had no idea who any of these people were, no one was pretty, they all had problems reading teleprompters...  Like are these people actually good at something? Like are they capable of superhuman accomplishments using sheer force of will and Greek God like bodies?  Was it like profiles in courage or something? Trash.

2. Nick Cave and family's horrible tragedy. Nick Cave is an acquired taste-like Tom Waits or Leonard Cohen.  His storytelling is timeless and horrifying at the same time.  He's on my list of people I want to hug just to see what would happen.  (Maybe more on that next week.) My heart is broken for him and his family as news traveled that one of his twin sons died from a fall off a cliff.  I cannot fathom it.  Life has imitated your art and it is devastating. Love to you Nick Cave.

3. WTF, I'm totally into Shawn Mendes right now. His little song Stitches is my newest guilty pleasure. And he's Canadian. I think we all know how I feel about that.  Not long ago he played in my town and I sat stuck in traffic in front of the venue staring at an unending line of gawky, brace-faced, giraffe-legged girls.  And every 10 girls or so there was a woman in Keds and khakis trying desperately to be the cool Mom.  And every 15 girls or so, there was a miserable looking man wishing he could be anywhere but there trying desperately not to look like he didn't want to be there for his baby giraffe's sake. I remember feeling a bond with those men--all of us stuck in the seventh circle of hell, a gridlock of  rush hour traffic and 14 year old girls. I might've even locked eyes with one of them, and the look was probably not unlike something that inspired Apocalypse Now.  And now here I am, betraying our brotherhood. It's a heavy, heavy day.

4. National Ice Cream Day.  So I realize it's Sunday and that technically means it's next week already, but I just can't let this go. Everybody knows that "National Whatever Day" should always fall Monday through Friday.  This is so you can hear about it on the way in to work and stop and get extreme deals/free stuff so you can talk all about it with your co-workers and look like you're totally in the know about shit (which you're not).  Or, if the "National Whatever Day" requires some sort of ribbon for awareness, then you would wear said ribbon to make other people think you care about shit (which you don't). But National Ice Cream Day on a Sunday?  Could we have gotten more advertising on this?  Because I only found out about it a few hours ago on Twitter--already in my pajamas and sitting out a horrible storm that blew half a tree into my yard and knocked the power out in the middle of my brussel sprout roasting.  And really, who is going to see you long enough to be jealous on a Sunday?

But you don't find roses growin' on stalks of clover...

What is it that makes a weed, a weed
and an orchid, an orchid
or a rose, a rose
what is it that makes us plant shrubs for the butterflies
but repel the moths
what is it that makes a beetle a scarab-
to be immortalized in stone
and amber
and skin
what makes us afraid to get wet in the rain
but compels us to swim in the ocean

what human instinct was it

that made us smoke the bud
or eat the berry
but poison the dandelion
is it that we cannot control where or when it grows,
that we do not control where the wind takes its seed?

And what is it that makes always, mean always
and never, mean never
what is it that makes a word true
when dirt turns to mud, we wash it away
when dirt turns to clay, we covet it.

And I'll Find Me a Soapbox Where I Can Shout It...

Today is throwing me all the way back to 1975.  I wasn't here yet, but some of my favorite people happened in 1975.  And today Jack White is 40.

I remember the first time I really paid attention. 2003. There was buzz around this new lo-fi "band". A boy and girl, just a guitar and drums.  A front man from Detroit with a weird ex-wife-sister situation who looked like the not so scary corpse in an R.L. Stine story.  Seven Nation Army was all over the radio.  There was every reason I shouldn't be interested. But a friend gave me a copy of Elephant, and I couldn't bring myself to get out of my Honda Civic until I had heard the very last track.  Including Ball and Biscuit which I re-played probably four times before I could let it go.
Ball and Biscuit, for me anyway, is the single most sexy song recorded in my lifetime.

This man doesn't steal glances, he looks long. He watches, he leers. And he dares you. He flicks his cigarette and lets the curtains catch fire. And then he smolders.  He kisses deep, he holds tight. Not desperate, but sure.  He doesn't give a shit about dinner, or dishes.  He goes down, dives deep, devours. He worships. Dirty and predatory and longing and high. Seven minutes in heaven.

That is a song, Mr. White.  And I thank you.  Happy Birthday.

The Weekly Walk With Me

I feel like I've spent Independence Day weekend freeing myself from the month of June.  It was the longest month ever, and for no reason at all really. Maybe that it began with an executive meeting with a woman who had the nerve to wear shower shoes (Hint: It wasn't me.) and ended with my Dad's birthday blowout (where he wore shower shoes).  You see how this exhausts me...

7 Things in June-In No Particular Order

1. The losses.  Jean Ritchie and Ornette Coleman.  This gave me the sads, but an excuse to revisit their works and celebrate my music nerdist tendencies with edibles and patchouli.  OK, everyone knows I absolutely draw the line at patchouli, but I did let my wife burn incense when I wasn't home once.

2. True Detectives.  I want everyone involved in this project to sit on my face.  Except the children. And Kelly Reilly because I've always sort of hated her.  But she does manage to pull off a heavy bang and a blunt lob at the same time as if she were 25.  I could probably do a whole Walk With Me on this show and I'm only 2 episodes in.   The highlights for me so far:

• Lera Lynn
• Rick Springfield
• "I will come back and butt-fuck your father with your mother's headless corpse"

3. Alabama Shakes live.  This show was hot and sweaty and drunk and absurd.  And that just describes me, and the 75 year old man trying to eat nachos during the show-not the opening act.  If Brittany Howard is not on your radar, you are bad person.  You just are.

4. Following Anne Murray on Twitter.  These days I find myself surrounded by Canadians, which I'm OK with because I've always been infatuated.  When I was a little kid--I'm talking like 6--I was completely obsessed with Anne Murray.  I had a portable turntable/cassette player that closed like a suitcase and I carried it around with me everywhere.  I had a few 45s that changed up every other day or so, a Chipmunks LP, and an Anne Murray greatest hits cassette that I played TO. DEATH.  Most kids had a security blanket, I had all of the above with me at all times.  I'm not sure how a 6 year old found herself entertained by the sweet,sweet sounds of a soft-butch Canadian singing every song written by everyone else but I never claimed normalcy, and I definitely wasn't a My Little Pony kid.

5. The realization that my father, at his aforementioned birthday blowout, is walking around without eyebrows.  Apparently my mother didn't want my Dad's old man eyebrows to get out of control and talked him into giving them a trim.  The problem is, he can't see (or hear) and refuses to admit this. So he doesn't need your help, thank you very much. And now there are no eyebrows. None.  Like Uncle Leo on Seinfeld. Or Divine Miss M without her face on.

6. I wore a bathing suit.

7. This:

I will rarely discuss politics here.  I follow politics and current events closely and have my opinions, and a lot of them might surprise you. But I like to keep this forum as surfacey as possible so no one knows there's a tiny pot of gold in my cold black heart.  I can't help but touch on this, though.  I mean, June is Pride month. And there was kind of a major thing that happened. And I happen to be part of this community.  The gay one, not ISIS.  I just want to know how many Arabic speaking people are aware of this and completely offended that fat stupid Westerners think their language looks like butt plugs and dildos?

I've Got A Blank Space Baby...

There are some people whose stories you have to ask for, like maybe they don't even have one. And there are people whose epics project on a big screen when you encounter them, their credits rolling as they walk away.  I am blessed (or cursed) with being the former. I've had missteps and lapses in judgement, but nothing I can blame on a parent's divorce or a tragic loss or a rapist uncle. Life happens--and I eat my feelings, cry in the shower, and get over it like any other normal functioning adult.
Not long ago I sat down with a friend I've known about two years; it's one of those no holds barred, instant connection kind of friendships. Until that evening we hadn't really spent any time together without our spouses or large groups of people around.  And then he asked me, "So what's your story?" It was asked as if we'd just met, like it wasn't unusual that he didn't know by now. And I really didn't have A story. And I realized that's probably why I have so many tiny stories to tell, why I manage to meet all these strange and interesting characters that do have stories.  I'm a sponge, a blank slate--I listen and experience and turn other people's stories into something else for them. Essays and Op Eds. And it's almost as if they know it.
A Wednesday or two ago, hungover from an Alabama Shakes show, I found myself day drinking on the water with someone going through a gut-wrenching breakup. A couple hundred dollars later we were chain smoking cigarettes with Asian Brian and his friend Matt. (Asian Brian is how he introduced himself-and I've actually known more rare Brians.  I once knew a Brian with one testicle, and that's exactly how I set him apart from all the other ones. "You know, Brian with one testicle." So I'd rather sound a little racist than get Asian Brian confused with One Testicle Brian.) Anyway,  me having once known One Testicle Brian led into a whole conversation about genital health with total strangers.  Which led to us discovering that one of their phone numbers spelled out WET-TWAT. Which opened my companion up to laying herself bare with these two guys we had just met about what a shitty shitty time she was having.   Turns out Matt is a pretty realistic and compassionate guy who had his own story of love and loss and been there done that. We learned about his family, his mother, his former friend who betrayed him, the fact that he had actually been trying to avoid Asian Brian all day, and that he had helped recently engaged friends move that afternoon.  And there was weight to every word he said, he analyzed every bit of it-start to finish.  Or maybe he was just looking at her boobs.  Either way, to hear her tell it, he gave her some of the most cosmic, important advice she's ever heard. And after a hot shower and an egg sandwich she was better.  Not healed or whole. But better. Because now she has a story.
And I'm better, just for having watched and listened to and absorbed two open books with no fear interact and fix each other the way human beings do.

#TBT

you are lost
found
out
in
happy
sad
fat
thin
woman
man
caged
free
spent
saved
proud
ashamed
wasted
salvaged
hungry
fed
you are here.
you are home.
you are short
tall
modest
vain
plastic
real
pretty
plain
quiet
loud
dying
alive
forward
behind
hurt
healed
you are here.
you are home.

A Memory That I Cannot Gather Anymore...

I saw a woman at a Furs show a couple of weeks ago and I've been thinking about her a lot.  Of becoming her, actually.  She was older, but probably not as old as she looked.  A hard living mid-fifties I'd say.  She was working at the venue, which is something I've always said I'd do when I retire-be the old lady usher.  She wore black mom jeans and combat boots. She had purple hair with that old punk cut that's part mullet and part mohawk. She was falling asleep at her station.  Standing up against the railing.   

Something about her told me she wasn't always like this.  She had a husband once, maybe still does. The tiny diamond ring with a wide gold wedding band gave it away.  It was perfectly ordinary in the way that ordinary hard working women keep their rings on no matter what they're doing, letting their hands turn to leather around the metal. She grew into those rings, but the jeans and the hair only happened about a decade ago. She was a little more middle of the road, maybe even closed minded about some things once. But something in her changed at some point and she got interested in something she never knew before and she just stopped giving a shit.

Maybe her mother had a special talent for making people feel meaningless. Maybe she lost a little girl to a junkie and family politics and had to live with the guilt of that little girl thinking she wasn't loved or wanted.  Maybe she had one too many dinners at chain restaurants with the kind of women who use the word "hubby".  Maybe she drove a GM. Maybe she didn't sleep well at night and at some point just stopped sleeping at all. Maybe her days were full of bullshit artists thinking they were going places on the backs of people who just wanted to be anywhere but where they were.  Maybe she had to say goodbye to someone in her head because it was just better for everyone whether they would ever know it or not.  Maybe she just got tired of taking her shoes off at the airport. Maybe she just didn't have anything else to say. Maybe her health started failing and she was tired of achy bones and water retention and stomach ulcers. Maybe she knew that everyone else would always come before her because that's just the way she'd let it happen. Maybe she just wanted everyone to just shut. the fuck. up.

So one day she left her husband sitting on the sofa watching a Burt Reynolds movie and spent a day on her own.  And she wandered into this club and had a beer while they were setting up for the show that night.  And she asked about a job.  And she was at the right place at the right time.  And even though she was wearing a sweatshirt with a wolf on it and meant it, they gave her a chance. 

And then there she was. For herself.  And for me. And all the ladies who disappeared into their teens again when Heartbreak Beat happened.