So here we go with pure impulse…
Madeleine gave me a rose after the show in Vancouver, out of a bouquet she received from some friends. The woman is all class and kindness.
72 hours at home. Laundry, sorting the mail, going to the bank. Sleep. And email—you’d think email could be done anywhere, but as it turns out there’s no substitute for your own desk and the hours between nine and five. The present clamors, the immediate future looms. Further out than that is a broad exercise in self-discipline: what is it that you really wanted to do with this, anyway? Where were you wanting to go?
Found little scraps of music in a handheld recorder, recent enough but nearly forgotten: the best kind. Rhodes piano and a vocal effects box. Drums and beer-bottle slide on a ukelele. Went to see Kaki King play at The Independent, touring her new “plugged” album Until We Felt Red—for all the purity and depth of acoustic music, it seems there comes a time when we each yearn for a little electricity, that crackle and buzz, power in the most literal of senses.
Tired is not the word; regret is not the word. Many have had it much harder than this, and a lucky few have it easier. No accounting for taste. Or for luck, for that matter. Let me just put it this way: some people do their jobs and do them well, while others don’t. Some deliver on their promises, and some disappear at the strangest moments. It’s been an adventure sussing out which ones are which.