Quote of the Day

"You play right up to your limit and then pass your limit and look back at your former limit and wave a hankie at it, embarking. You enter a trance. You feel the seams and edges of everything."

....TALENT IS ITS OWN EXPECTATION.


-from the book Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It's so weird and I can't put it down.

Routines

I was going to say something nice about routines giving me confidence. It just occurred to me what was missing from my athletic development: I'm not superstitious enough. Rafael Nadal, a great tennis champion, was so reliant upon his routines that he declined an invitation to meet the Queen of England at Wimbledon, saying, "It was disappointing for me but the Wimbledon club knows I have my routines before the match." Most of the routines I do have now are about food (e.g. packing the cooler with pre, during, post match snacks, then enough calories for the ride home), but I could get weirder about my watches or the way I tie my bootlaces. Hmmmm...

Traditions

It's not just the name of a local shop that sells ceramic knick-knacks to old ladies who have nothing better to do than shop for ceramic knick-knacks.

Townes Van Zandt

A girl at church (Laura) was the first person to mention him to me after she'd been to one of my shows, asked me had I heard of him. Then, at a record store downtown the guy in the store pointed out a TVZ vinyl double album (Live at the Old Quarter) and spoke of it with such reverence I regretted giving my turntable to my dad. The latest sign was Brother Rufus (my harmonica player!) loaning me an issue of American Songwriter that featured Townes Van Zandt, and the article quoted several musicians. These resonated with me:

Guy Clark:

"And that poetic nature that's so richly inside Townes' work is like standing in front of a Van Gogh or a Renoir. You want to be able to access that part of any artist or writer or poet... They show you what a true artist is capable of doing."

14-year-old Elijah Berlow (Proctor School, NH)"

"He's such a poet, a really, really sad depressed poet. I tell my friends: 'Listen to the words...,' because at first, you know, they don't; they're about the sounds. But you put on 'Flyin' Shoes' and they don't have a chance. I tell 'em, 'Keep listening! Over and over 'til you get it' and they always come back blown away. My friends are inspired. They wanna write songs, but then they realize this is way hard."

Grace Potter:

"...you hear a song like "Waiting Around To Die" and there's such enormous despair, you're consumed by it. Taken whole from a very few, very pure lines... and as a writer, who doesn't want to do that? The way he does it so completely? Wow.

"And it sets a standard. Even his voice is poetry: The beauty is in the broken places! He always chose the perfect place, the perfect word to break... and he never overdid it. As a singer, that's part of it, too: He knew his voice inside out, how to deliver his lines so he could deliver that pain and never let the emotion take over, but be so real because it's true when he wrote it; you know that, but it doesn't make it true every time you sing it. That's the deeper poetry."

Good things come in threes, so I'm sure supposed to get into him now. The good Lord thinks I'm ready to learn from his songs.

And this is just brilliant:

Legs to walk and thoughts to fly

Eyes to laugh and lips to cry

A restless tongue to classify

All born to grown and all grown to die.

From "Rex's Blues" by TVZ

Naked Dream

I walked into a department store completely naked. I think it was the shoe section. This tall sales lady with long blonde hair is gossiping loudly/making fun of me to someone else. She said, "Who leaves the house without pants??" very sarcastically. So I walked right up to her counter and said, "Yeah, I'm naked." Apparently someone had taken my clothes, but to me there was no shame or embarassment, just a matter-of-factness about the situation. Then I started to say something, can't remember exactly, either "someone took my clothes" or "hey I need to buy some clothes." I think it was more about fear of confrontation, or my lack thereof, which is good! Despite my obvious handicap, I took care of business. Take that, tall blonde harpy.

Femininity

It's something I'm putting emphasis on lately. WHY?

When it was still cold, a friend (Gage) called me out about my track pants and huge men's training sneakers (that "even (he) wouldn't wear") and ar-teest Unplugged In New York sweater and challenged me to do at least one feminine thing a day. Don't become "one of those!", he warned. And I knew he was right - I could've taken it personally in a negative way, but knew he had a good point. If it wasn't worth the effort, he wouldn't have suggested it.

AND WHY NOT?

It's strange, as a woman, to be asked to justify my choice of attire, because dressing nicely with mascara and hair down really is a huge departure from my usually indifference. There must be some agenda! No, I just want to look nice. Hopefully I've never been some poster child for women who refuse to be attractive because wearing make-up is selling out.

WHY NOT?

And you dudes out there who say they love women who wear their hair back in sweatpants and wife beaters, God bless you. See you when the weather bans skirts again.

a Tarheel's hatred I understand

The Daily Tar Heel

February 9, 2010

Ian Williams

1990 columnist

http://www.dailytarheel.com/content/why-i-hate-duke

(In Summary)

"Now I realize that school spirit is a pretty goofy thing to some people, but I'll tell you something: I hate Duke with an infernal passion undying. I hate every leaf of every tree on that sickening campus. I hate every fake cherub Gothic piece of crap that litters the buildings like hemorrhoidal testiments to imagined superiority. When I see those Dookie boneheads shoe-polishing their faces navy blue on television, squadering their parents' money with their fratty elitist bad sportsmanship antics and Saab stories, I want to puke all over Durham."

...now THAT'S hatred.

I for one have had experience with Duke students, and I can pretty much concur. Trying to perform my weekly gig at Pasta Bella in Durham about five years ago and four couples from Duke were out for some dinner before some function, and I couldn't help but overhear their talk about boarding schools and new cars. Ugh. I'm sure I've been influenced by all the friends I had at Carolina, but take it from me: I understand.

Baseball

I've written about how much I love baseball before. It's a new season, and the Red Sox look terrible. But April isn't even over!! They'll come around. The Braves (the team I grew up adoring but sort of abandoned when their pitching staff was traded away) have a new hot shot rookie, Jason Heyward, a 20-year-old who hit a dinger in his first AB in the Show. There's already been a no-hitter. Peter Gammons is gone from ESPN and works strictly for the MLB network now (which is super cool of him but I miss him, however John Kruk's presence on Baseball Tonight sort of evens it out).

My point is this: last year, I didn't watch enough baseball throughout the season. This year is going to be different. I love BASEBALL. I don't have a hardcore passionate allegiance to any one team, but there are those I follow and root for (the Sox, Braves, Cubs, Dodgers, the National League in general) and there are teams I have a strong dislike for (Cardinals and Yankees, however in the case of NY it's pure, unadulterated hatred). I'm somewhat ambivalent toward my "home" teams of Florida, the Marlins and Rays just don't do it for me, even though the Durham Bulls are the AAA affiliate of the Rays and I used to go to Bulls games all the time when I lived in NC.

This year, I will watch more baseball. It makes me happy. It's a beautiful and unique game in so many ways, and I'm not going to look back in October and again say, "you know, I didn't watch many ballgames during the season."

Regret is the biggest sin!