Set List!

So I'm crafting the set list for the first gig I've had since May of 2007. I'd forgotten how hard it is! Gotta balance enough covers (ugh) with originals, which originals to play, the proper order, playing certain songs of a certain tuning together, etc. Then it's about what you're going to say. It can be a diary that you're opening up for everyone there to hear you read word for word. If they're reading between the lines, anyway. I don't mind playing covers, but I don't really play ones everyone wants to hear because I like deep album cuts (Hairshirt from Green by REM, Breakaway by John Mayer, Planet Telex by Radiohead, Pale September by Fiona Apple - not that any of these are necessarily on the set list!) It's one thing when you're singing in a romantic restaurant filled with old people you're hoping will tip you so you sing what you think they want to hear (what I refer to as "whoring"). Industry rule number 4,081 (4,080 is record company people are shadyyyy!) - if you want to make it, you have to compromise your heart, soul, mind, strength, and (of course) body. Ugh. But I say screw it, I'm going to play what I feel like playing for my own reasons and if that's good enough for you bring $2 and prepare to have your mind covered in Napalm.

One thing that is FO SHO FACT - if you plan on singing to someone in particular, they aren't going to com. Like Nuke Laloosh said, "Sometimes you win; sometimes you lose; sometimes it rains." I mean I guess you could say "hey dude, I'm gonna serenade you Saturday night so I suggest you show up" but jeez boys scare easier than bunnies with a heart condition! So planning to sing songs thinking Mr. Inspiration will be in the audience and planning to use the force of that chemical reaction between you to propel the set is kind of pointless. I reckon it's like most everything else - better left to fate to decide. Good ol' fate.

That's another thing - the element of surprise. There's nothing greater than dedicating a song to someone who loves it and never saw it coming. I did that to Jess Elf a few years ago when I played 32 Flavors (but then of course Drunk Jodi went over and was all blablabla during the song she could barely enjoy it, but whatev. Drunk obnoxious show go-ers is another blog entirely). I can't tell anyone what I'm going to play! That would totally take away my powerful position up there! And boy is it powerful! Heh heh heh.

So once I finish the set list I'm gonna try to find some body guards, a la Kevin Costner. I was actually telling a couple guys (Gabe and Serge) after church this morning that I need a few big guys I can trust to keep my stalkers away from me that night. Gabe was all, "you have stalkers? that's awesome!" and I said "man I can't even tell you how NOT awesome it is". And they laughed. They've obviously never had a stalker! UGH! :(

But! Be there Saturday night! It's a surprise! With shiny wrapping paper and bows and it smells like home and true love and Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on game day, all in one perfect little package.

Audrey said just the other day...

"Oh Haylee! Don't overthink it!"

Man she knows me! My dawg! Hey remember when we were at the John Mayer show and we stopped and peed in that dirt-road, forest-y driveway and the people came home and we were still mid-stream with our pants down?!?!?? ... and he played Not Myself and we had arms intwined in one of the greatest friendship moments of all time! You're my favorite artist, by the way. And my favorite herpetologist! :)

But yes, as I was saying, don't over think it, especially the future. Focus on now. Right now. That breath you just took, the light of the sun reflecting off those trees coming into your eyes, your muscles sore and ready for some rugby action!

They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. Jonah 2:8 (KJV)

And hey Audrey, remember when I was with you and Michelle (Cohen) in downtown Athens shopping a couple years ago and I came across that magnet that said,
“Be happy for this moment is your life” – Omar Khayyam
but I was too cheap to spend $5 on it and I've thought about it almost every day ever since? Oh the irony!

But yes, I must remember to Be Happy For This Moment (RIGHT STINKING NOW), This Moment Is My Life.


(so I'm going to get off the computer now and do something vintage)

I Am Truly An Artist:

I was just so focused I forgot to eat the dinner I'd just cooked!

Telescope

I think God made me a songwriter to give me a way to figure out what I'm feeling. It wasn't until recently that I accepted that I possess these feeling things and it's perfectly normal, even if I'm not. Funneling and filtering all these experiences, observations and imaginings down into something catchy and clever is the creative focus of each present moment I remember to truly live.

There's no way I could say it better than Bob Dylan did in his book, Chronicles, Volume 1:

"If anything, I wanted to understand things and then be free of them. Things were too big to see all at once, like all the books in the library - everything laying around on all the tables. I needed to learn how to telescope things, ideas. You might be able to put it all into one paragraph or into one verse of a song if you could get it right." ... "A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true."

My college-years journals have lately been opened more and more in my quiet time and it's funny - all the lines I wrote back when I thought I had no clue what was going on were pretty accurate descriptions of that particular reality.

I look at what I'm writing today, which I'm now able to do from different perspectives or from outside myself entirely, and maybe I can draw the same conclusion -

There's my self-deprecating side:
This is such a metaphor/deja vu, seen it before/such ironic play on words/white and black come back for thirds/here I go but I digress/it's so silly but I must confess/it's my quest to impress someone else without sounding like I'm pleased myself.

My old guy sitting in a rocking chair outside the barber shop chewing bahaya grass with his hat tipped and arms crossed side:
Sow your oats before you come back home cause oats don't grow down here.

And I have my cynical, defeated side:
I don't care/but I could/I'm willing to see/if I would/but in all likelihood/he won't be anything to me.


?

Label Whore

Hi my name's Haylee, and I'm a Label Whore. ("Hi, Haylee")...

Was practicing (on my Martin D-18) guitar last night and decided to upgrade my yellow guitar-string-and-body Fender fleece wiper rag up to Gucci (the big one with the fabulous colorful bugs design I bought on sale, 40% off, at Saks last year for $97.50 in white - and just HAD to buy Audrey the one in black) Then thought, or maybe Pucci (a blue and yellow classic pattern bandana that Dennis bought me for my birthday). Went and got the Gucci.

This is coming from the same person who cut things off with a guy because his driveway went Porsche, Tahoe, Mercedes and he had too many fireplaces. That kind of materialism really turns me off. :)

My List of Reasons Not to Like Him grew so long I had to start another page!

Have spent more time reading old journals lately, and last night found The List that got me through the worst heart break of my life (which, as I've said before, was also the most valuable experience I've ever had). Was having trouble getting over the douchebag I guess (for the record, we're buds now), so began jotting down all the bad things he'd done to me and general flaws to help me stop focusing on the way he looked at me, the way he looked in rugby shorts, etc. HAHA. The List began with things like this:

1. doesn't like baseball
2. chews gum
3. sometimes acts 12

But with time, it got much more substantial:

1. slept with one of my teammates (apparently I "drove him to it", according to one of his friends. huh)
2. not all about his truck
3. chews gum (for some reason it's okay for me to chew gum in athletic situations but it looks stupid when guys do it)
4. doesn't like baseball (this is still a big deal, it's basically like not having a soul)
5. ripped my heart out ON PURPOSE (in fairness, I was trying to do the same thing to him the whole time - oh the maturity!)
7. brought another girl to a party at my house (this was his checkmate move - just didn't have anymore countermoves left in me at that point, jeeeeez this was SUCH an F-ed up situation)
9. he'll be fat and ugly when he gets old
14. sometimes acts 12
15. never said he was sorry (not that I had either...)
16. not as good at music as me (this one isn't really fair, haha)
17. ruined several great songs for me (such as Comfortable, which we never were, but "ruined" came to mean that the situation helped me experience some songs on a deeper plane, like Don't Think Twice, It's Alright)
18. BAD dancer (you have no idea)
19. he's ANNOYING (this might go back to the "sometimes acts 12" one - and boy did it annoy me that I couldn't stop thinking about someone who annoyed me so much...)
21. doesn't get it (I was expecting a 22-year-old male to "get it"! - what was I thinking?!?!?)
25. HE MADE ME HATE HIM (this was probably the nicest thing he couldn't done at that time)
26. we brought out the worst in each other

So yeah, I left some out, but you get the general idea. This is another one of those many things you want a lobotomy for but laugh like crazy about it down the road. But this wasn't the last time I employed this tactic! There was another dude I'd crushed on forevah and wanted to cut him out of my head/heart like a tumor, so I made The List for him too:

1. lives far away
2. alcoholic, or getting there fast
3. has potential to get fat
4. has probably slept with lots of hos
5. not a Christian

As you can see, I'm still kind of shallow (look, I don't want to wake up next to a fat guy when I'm 60), but whatever works! He ain't the right one, so whatever I can do for self-preservation's sake, I'll do, because the subject my consciousness devotes time to had better be more valuable than some clueless slag in little shorts. Thus, The List of Reasons Not To Like Him has been very helpful for me with that whole moving on bit, and consequently getting back into fruitful thought processes, so I highly recommend it! If you ever find yourself liking someone you don't want to like, just grab a pad and pen and focus on their flaws - be brutal!

myspace boycott

I HATE myspace. I used to have an account but canceled it, mostly because I was a musician on there and couldn't ever get my songs to play correctly and I got tired of people posting on my wall "did you know your songs won't play? I can't hear them!" Oh thanks for the info! I'd never heard that before!!

My friends were all, "dude, you canceled your myspace account, is everything okay?" Yeah, I'm freaking fine. Oh excuse me, I'm less of a person now that I don't live my life through freaking myspace! I hardly even exist anymore!

Facebook is bad enough, but there's enough people I care about with whom I'd never stay in touch if not for that website. When facebook started it was this elite cult thing solely for college students. Now everyone can join, even pimply-faced high school creeps. But it's still classier than myspace, with all its advertisements and pedophiles. Ugh.

I'm getting to the age where I'm rejecting new technologies like iPods (which I'd probably enjoy if I weren't too cheap to buy one), iPhones, Wiis, Blackberries, and other freaking nonsense we're conditioned to believe we "need", such as new-skool communication methods like social networking. Kids don't talk to each other or even make eye contact for long because they're too busy watching their stupid cell phones for updates on how one of their 673 "friends" they've never actually met had her relationship status downgrade to "it's complicated".

It's just like Jessica said about computers in Kissing Jessica Stein: "They're numbing and obscuring our humanity." Not to mention turning everyone's grammar into CRAP with their freaking texting language - 2=to, u=you. I guess when you're trying to save time and space phone-to-phone it makes sense, but hells bells! I've seen these shortcuts show up in letters to the editor in newspapers and on blog posts and so forth. If you've ever read 1984 by George Orwell, you'd know that one way Big Brother maintained control was by reducing language people used ("doubleplus ungood") to deplete their ability to articulate thoughts and express themselves.

Alright, maybe I'm paranoid, but these are just a few reasons why I HATE myspace.

Prolificity

pro·lif·ic Pronunciation[pruh-lif-ik]
–adjective
1. producing offspring, young, fruit, etc., abundantly; highly fruitful: a prolific pear tree.
2. producing in large quantities or with great frequency; highly productive: a prolific writer.
3. profusely productive or fruitful (often fol. by in or of): a bequest prolific of litigations.
4. characterized by abundant production: a prolific year for tomatoes.
[Origin: 1640–50; < ML prōlificus fertile. See prolicide, -fic]

My creativity tends to ebb and flow with the seasons. It's surging right now and it's almost freaky. In the past a wave like this would be a side effect of serious neurotransmitter party and I'm almost surprised that it's happening now that I'm taking balance pills. But I'll take it! I got really scared the other night but a calm voice inside my head (it's always nice when the kind voices speak up, haha) gave me a pep talk, told me not to second-guess myself and let me know it's okay because this is what God stitched me together to do! It's natural. It doesn't make me cocky as long as I acknowledge that the songs are gifts from God and just a method of telescoping ideas and feelings into something other people can enjoy.

Last night I finished a song I wrote the chorus for at least three years ago. Then I just started playing a new chord progression that I might match up to old lyrics or make new ones for. I don't know - that's the cool thing. I'm going through my old journals and have found at least 10 songs that are 75-90% finished and just need for me to pick up my guitar or sit down at the piano with a fresh, blank mind and play through to decide how it'll be. I try to let the song decide what it'll sound like in the final analysis. I hate for anything to be too crafted or contrived.

The last thing a songwriter wants is to fall into a rut of writing with the same meter or theme. I'm writing a song making fun of myself how I always try to be ironic and clever in all my lyrics. A songwriter's greatest fear is having the well run dry and thinking "is this all I've got?" Hemingway commented on that in A Moveable Feast:
"It was wonderful to walk down the long flights of stairs knowing that I'd had good luck working. I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. . . . If I started to write elaborately . . . I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written. Up in that room I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I was trying to do this all the time I was writing, and it was good and severe discipline."

In a conversation about being creative with someone who doesn't have it in him, I said an artist can't help it. You don't have a choice. You create whatever it is because you have to because it's what and who you are. So call me crazy - I'll never be normal by any conventional standard so I'm just rolling with it.

It's getting to be studio time again. I almost have to lay it down and then memorize it from there because I'm not one of those poets who go around with the ability to spout their own crap from memory unless I've been playing it for years. But it'll be my fourth record and I'm looking forward to it.

Boy Hall of Fame

I'm less and less impressed by the boys I meet. No one stands out against the members of my Boy Hall of Fame, which goes like this (for now, it could change in twenty minutes - it actually just changed four times as I was typing it):

1. Bobby Hill
2. The C-Word
3. Lloyd Dobbler/Dreamboat (Tie)
5. Chicken Legs

You could actually hear the clicking sound of the bar being raised when I hung out with these kids. Some have similar characteristics - sincerity in sweetness, long legs and brains, an air of mystery, three of the five wear glasses, and all but the Dreamboat are rugby players. I dunno. Maybe if I analyzed it more deeply I could identify a pattern. Whatever.

I haven't really dated much but realize that the whole process of elimination we go through to find a mate is basically just trial and error. So it isn't a complete waste of time. These jewels of experience produce memories that I hold close in the back of my mind. And I can honestly say that if I don't find one that outshines all of them, I'm satiated.

I Guess It's What You'd Call Maturity...

It's ironic - as I'm getting older and my biological clock is ticking, I feel less urgency to get with someone than I was back in my prime!

One thing I've noticed lately about my prowess with the fellas is that I don't require immediate gratification anymore. Man, back in the day, I'd be burning up to get next to somebody and it was considered a failed play if I didn't get to right then and there. These days I'd rather wait it out to see if the dude is worthy of spending time even talking to.

Maybe that's arrogant. Yeah, it probably is. But the most precious thing we have in this life is TIME, and the last thing I want to do is waste it. So I guess on one hand you could say "I may never see this kid again! Carpe diem!" and on the other, when you aren't sure if he's boyfriend material but has potential, you just kinda get set on offense, make plays on defense, and let the game come to you. I prefer the latter these days and am just less aggressive in general than I used to be.

So I reckon it's safe to say I'm getting further down the road on the way to Grown-Up Town, which is probably a good thing.

You Were But a Dream

I lie awake and reckon
Where you might be
Who you might be with
If you're thinking about me
I hug my pillow close
And pray you're safe and warm
Turn over to the window
And listen to the storm

Nights like this together
We'd fill the air with words
And begin to notice sunlight
And hear the song of birds
Been so long since we spoke
I wonder if you sound the same
But it all runs like water
Down my windowpane

Cause here alone in the dark
I can't escape my thoughts
Counting old regrets
I claimed long ago forgot
I could try to win you back
But would not know where to start
Don't know where you are out there
But still feel you in my heart

Even if I drifted off
Sleep wouldn't be serene
So I stare into the darkness
And wonder what it all could mean
I'll be fine come morning
In my daily routine
I'll act as if we never happened
And you were but a dream


This is probably the best of my unfinished songs. Gotta get on it! It's so sweet. It's not really about anybody, never had the experience of spending loads of time with someone, staying up late talking, not getting sick of them. It'd be cool though, to lose if I got to love first. Actually, this song sort of came true 1.5 years to the day after I finished writing it, so maybe I shouldn't write songs of imagined pain lest they become self-fulfilling prophesies. (The only other time this has happened (I think) was a song about drinking wine with this dreamboat I had a crush on forever, and the experience turned out to be like something out of a movie, really neat!) Whatever, Faulkner said (this was actually quoted by Mary Carillo during the French Open men's final broadcast this past Sunday morning), "Between grief and nothing, I'll take grief." Totallah.

Choice

I'd rather be the mule than the racehorse.
The privilege of a thoroughbred to be choosing
Is offset by the loneliness of the track,
Where mules never face the prospect of losing

Gatorade poem

I rode up to work one day
at The Stadium
on my bike
And came up on a TV crew.

I said, "What's going on here?"
He said
"Filming a Gatorade commercial,
if that's alright with you."

The Lords of Discipline

My second favorite book by Pat Conroy, after My Losing Season.

Here are the lines that stood out to me when I read it last summer while I was volunteering in Alabama:


"helpless to translate the murmurings of the inarticulate lover I felt screaming from within."

"Honor is the presence of God in man."

"...stars spoke the language of light years"

"There's this delayed reaction for all my emotions."

"I will speak from memory - my memory - a memory that is all refracting light slanting through prisms and dreams, a shifting, troubled riot of electrons charged with pain and wonder. My memory often seems like a city of exiled poets afire with the astonishment of language, each believing in the integrity of his own witness, each with a separate version of culture and history, and the divine essential fire that is poetry itself."

"We came...from cruciform towns with a single intersection..."

"...it was obvious that they loved each other very much. It was good to be around them, and I studied how people were required to act when they were in love so I would know the forms and nuances of that sweet delirium if and when it happened to me."

"Do everything well...leave nothing to chance. There was no such thing as an insignificant detail, and everything has a name."

"Athletes have a strange but genuine compulsion to touch each other's asses."

"But it was my destiny and my character not to be able to recall the exact feeling, the exact one, of those brief seconds."

"You had to decide what was estimable and precious in your life and set out to find it. The objects you valued defined you. So did this quest."

Vamos Rafa!

Soy loca para el campeo'n guapo Rafael Nadal.

Over the weekend, he routed - I mean SMEARED - world #1 Roger Federer 6-1, 6-3, 6-0 in the men's French Open Final, making him the first since the great Bjorn Borg to win four in a row at Roland Garros. The 22-year-old from Manacor, Spain on the island of Mallorca is 28-0 at the French Open and shows no signs of slowing down on clay. He'll attempt to take this momentum into Wimbledon and make the transition from his favorite surface to grass in three weeks to be ready for his first round match at the All-England Club on June 28th.

Yeah, all that's pretty cool, but did I mention this kid is smooookingly HOTTTTT? I normally don't dig the ones with long hair, but it just adds to his European flavor. As I previously mentioned, he's 22, which is even cooler. AND, he's RIPPPPPPED - probably the most impressive physical specimen in all of men's tennis. All tan and has dimples and dark eyes and dark hair and whenever he wins a trophy he always poses with it in his mouth and a big grin on his face - UUUUGGGHHHHHHH! Sign me up!

So yeah, it's love.

What Does Prayer Do?

Obviously, a lot of things. Serves many purposes.

But it occurred to me to pray about a situation to give myself a future frame of reference around which to learn the lesson. It's an avenue to allow divine guidance to your growth.

Prayer probably isn't a strength of mine. Okay, it's not. I do pray, usually at lunch time when I go for a walk to enjoy some sunlight. It's usually about small things, but I guess if that's what's worrying me at the time, it's the perfect thing to pray about at that moment. I pray at night when I'm trying to fall asleep. Hmmm, it just now occurs to me that if I actually set aside purposefully wakeful time to pray about whatever, I might be able to lay down and not have scattered, bounding thoughts about randomly stupid things and actually sleep.

(By the way, have I mentioned that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different resullt?)

ANYWAYS...

It seems another chapter is to be written for a book my mind's been working on for at least three years now. I'd be more specific but there's some dirty laundry I like to leave in the hamper.

So it seems prayer is a good answer to everything. I'm gonna go try to pass out - Lord willing it shouldn't take more than half an hour! :)

The Perfect Analogy

Baseball.

You can compare it to anything, and it makes perfect sense.
It can be life, love, or war simultaneously - or it can just be the perfect, pure game you played as a young'en that your daddy taught you to adore.

Today, we shall examine the classic Running-the-Bases as levels of intimacy. Debate exists over what each base actually represents (with 1st generally being a kiss):

1ST base is kissing.
2ND base is heavy petting (although with my version a double includes getting thrown out by the catcher via backslap for putting a hand near my midsection)
3RD base spreads just as much disease as...
Home Run - no explanation necessary. It's such a big deal it's only intended for married people, and if you ask me, NOTHING is worth that crap!!!!

I've even heard a different NUMBER of bases -

At work one day (when I was employed by The White Devil), Meegs (my favorite teammate from when I was privileged to play with the Raleigh Venom) and I were discussing this subject related to gayness. I said something along the lines of lesbians only having three bases, she said "Nuh uh man, we have like, twelve." It was funny of course, only because I'd been exposed to the complexity of seeing emotional involvement between my teammates (I love you, I hate you, we're friends with benefits, we're best friends, etc., within a month of meeting...)

(Just to interject, I'm watching Rachael Ray (yes, Rachael Ray) because I usually do and was sick and tired of hearing about freaking Paul Pierce, and as luck would have it, she's having a baseball-theme episode! Of course including hot dogs and slaw. It's a sign - wow I'm actually starting to like her a lot more hearing her rave about my favorite sport using the same points I do)

I'm really into chastity, okay? Sue me. Not that I don't feel like not every once in a while, but 11 months out of 12, the rare thought of intercourse is shrouded in those tempting fantasies about getting married, and if you know me at all you know I equate marriage with a form of death (not the ultimate, damning death of raising children). Ergo, I am extremely conservative. I've never been a joiner.

So, my RTB analogy goes like this:

First Base = An intelligent, flirty conversation rife with eye contact.
Second Base = Holding Hands
Third Base = To quote Crash Davis, "long, slow, deep, soft wet kisses that last three days."
Home Run = I dunno. Not sex. That's like MLB on steroids. (notice my clever simile? just proves my point). Probably, since I'm a "grown-up" now, I'd have to say the birth of a real relationship.

Therefore, I am a virgin!

If's, And's, and Man-I-Wish-I-Was-That-Good's

If Momma hadn't grown up in an ultra-conservative household where she was told that landscape architecture was "a good avocation, but not a good occupation" for a woman, she wouldn't have gone into the traditionally female field of nursing. If my mom hadn’t been working as a nurse at the hospital in Clermont and taking care of a friend of my dad’s who'd been in a car wreck, they wouldn’t have gotten together. If they hadn’t gotten married, I wouldn’t have the hella-cool last name of “Slaughter”. If I hadn’t been born a Slaughter, chances are I wouldn’t have been brought up as a die-hard Gator. If I hadn’t been born a Gator, it wouldn’t have been my life’s goal to attend UF. If I hadn’t attended UF, I wouldn’t have expanded my mind with highly stimulating courses like Anatomy. If I hadn’t taken Anatomy my sophomore year, I never would’ve heard about the women’s rugby team at UF. If I hadn’t played rugby for UF, I wouldn’t have gone to the 2000 Mardi Gras tournament in New Orleans. If our coach hadn’t dropped the ball and had actually officially signed us up to play at the tournament, I never would’ve picked up with the North Carolina girls. If I’d never met the UNC rugby girls, I never would’ve lived in Chapel Hill. If it weren’t for living in Chapel Hill, I never would’ve heard of “Love, Actually”. If I hadn’t bought the “Love, Actually” DVD for my sister and watched the bonus interview with the director, I wouldn’t have noticed “Both Sides Now” being played during the scene where Emma Thompson realizes her husband has been having a mental affair with his secretary. If I’d never discovered “Both Sides Now”, I probably wouldn’t have been as humbled as a songwriter as I was when I found out Joni Mitchell wrote this song when she was 21 years old!

Twenty-one just happens to be the age when I really started crunching out songs, but they sure as heck weren’t as insightful and universal as this one:

Joni Mitchell

Both Sides Now


Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that way
But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
Its cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all

Moons and Junes and ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I’ve looked at love that way
But now its just another show
You leave ‘em laughing when you go
And if you care, don’t let them know
Don’t give yourself away

I’ve looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
Its loves illusions I recall
I really don’t know love at all

Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say I love you right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I’ve looked at life that way
But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I’ve changed
Well something’s lost, but something’s gained
In living every day

I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
Its life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all
I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
Its life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all


Holy crap. Should every up-and-coming female singer-songwriter measure herself against this standard? Yes. Is it fair? Yes. Because there’s already too much overly-specific garbage out there about getting hurt by some guy or unrequited love or some other such BS. And yes, those are the kinds of songs I wrote when I was 21. But if you settle for creating trite junk just to make yourself feel better, don't expect to ever be considered great. I just wasn’t as smart or as talented as Joni Mitchell! Why God, why!??!!??? Well, because there can only be, like, ten in a million great singer-songwriters every generation. We can all get better the more we do anything, but some of us have a little bit extra, kind of like an athlete who has an extra gear no one else seems to have. That isn't to say that there aren't people (e.g. friends and family) who will appreciate or even enjoy your pain-driven musical memoirs, in the same way that even a mediocre athlete has fans rooting him on. But if you're gonna do anything, why settle for being just okay?

What makes a great song? First of all, the melody. It has to be catchy and stick in the listener's head. The lyrics have to be poignant and relevant in at least some small way to anyone who hears it.

Have I written any great songs? I can name one, called "Optimism". However, it is instrumental. It's the purest thing to ever come out of me; I wrote it for this kid I thought I was in love with in college (maybe I was, who knows?). I still get this soaring sentiment whenever I play it. So no lyrics - it was never intended to have lyrics because what I felt couldn't be articulated and to attempt to do that would only water it down.

But I digress. If I'd never played rugby, I never would've met the Men of My Life (a song title from my first record, Several Realizations Ago) who inspired my preferred art form. If I'd never gotten into writing songs, I'd probably be in a mental institution.

What does all this mean? I have no freaking idea.

Singing on the Bike

This is the best. My favorite is singing "Comfortable" while riding in the rain. It just sort of fits. Lately I've been belting Fiona Apple. It makes for good endurance training because singing in her style of vocal acrobatics is pretty challenging during aerobic exercise.

Singing while riding a bicycle just adds to the "Gosh I feel six-years-old again!" feeling you get as you glide along with the wind in your hair. I highly recommend this activity.

He's Just Not That Into You

Have there ever been more liberating words uttered? One of the best Miranda story lines on Sex and the City was when she met Carrie and Berger for dinner and was stressing about some guy who hadn't called and asked Berger's advice. He said, "Maybe he's just not that into you." She loved it! She went around for the rest of the episode at ease and somewhat smug with her newfound information. Out on the streets of the city she couldn't help but overhear a conversation in which a girl was whining that a guy hadn't called, and Miranda went up to her and said, "Hey, maybe he's just not that into you." She walked off smiling, as if she'd passed on the secret to life, and the woman was confounded and blurted out, "Bitch!" Haha, sometimes the truth hurts.

I'd heard there was a little book about this a few years ago, and I'm not sure which came first, but either way - it's BRILLIANT! How much time can women save now, armed with this idea? Mixed signals? No phone calls? Looking over your shoulder at other girls when you're talking? (okay I can forgive this one because I can't help but notice if some tall drink of water enters the room) You have to consider how much more time you want to spend obsessing about someone who may not like you as much as you like him. To me, that's the ultimate anathema, and if it's the case, it's my goal to run as far away from that as possible. I love Garth's recommendation to Stacy on Wayne's World - "Get over it, go out with somebody else." In my experience, nothing helps getting over the last one like the next one. You can't think your way into right acting, but you can act your way into right thinking.

So freaking get over him already. He's over you (or was probably never even under you) and isn't wasting any brainwaves on it anymore (if he ever was), so move on. He's just not that into you! Maybe take solace in the fact that there's a number of dudes who are into you that you just aren't into. Poetic (though unfair) justice. Is unfair justice an oxymoron? Whatever. Time is the most precious thing we have, and to waste it on some loser is choosing not to truly live. So freaking get over him already.

Where Black Is the Color, and None Is the Number

This song blows me away every time:

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
Bob Dylan
from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963)


Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son ?
And where have you been my darlin' young one ?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what did you see, my blue eyed son ?
And what did you see, my darlin' young one ?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin'
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin'
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand takers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son ?
And what did you hear, my darlin' young one ?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin'
I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin'
I heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin'
I heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin'
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, who did you meet my blue-eyed son ?
Who did you meet, my darlin' young one ?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burnin'
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded in hatred
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

And what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son ?
And what'll you do now my darlin' young one ?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin'
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are a many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I'll tell and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'
But I'll know my songs well before I start singin'
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.