The Rhythm of The City

I’ve been fairly busy for the last few days. My heart’s been getting used to city pace and I’ve been adjusting to the rhythm of New York, getting caught off beat now and again in front of speeding taxis or closing subway doors. This is my first moment of calm since I’ve arrived. As I move amongst familiarities, I’ve been flooded with recollections of the stinging cold of January, of the anxiety that was conceived by the Capitol/Virgin merger, which blossomed and spread thick from artery to vein, taking root in the muck at the pit of my stomach, sprouting leaves from my spine, growing mossy on the walls of my lungs, and branching upwards to the ceiling of my skull. One person after the next was fired, bands were dropped, and for a long time I was doused in uncertainty, the weather suddenly bleak above my spontaneous trip out east.

We were spared. And the weather now is the kind that could produce sunflowers from between the cracks of a midtown sidewalk, bring the vermin from beneath subway tracks to the rooftop gardens. I’m getting accustomed to our new label and situation. I’m discovering that where my skin was once vulnerable and soft and pink its becoming callas, my gaze is now fixed on that which allows me to see beneath the surface, no longer craned upward at the entirety of the skyscraper but at that rare curtainless window with a dim light illuminated in the darkness…

I’m trying to take my own advice about love and hope and the hope of love and the love of hope.

This weekend I spent with The Matches guys, as they played and sucked what they could from the Bamboozle festival in Jersey. I hadn’t seen Shawn since we got coffee in Oakland in December, hadn’t seen the rest of them since CMJ in October. Only blood could bring us closer, yet it seems so odd that we’re still plugging away at this music thing together. I can’t recall those teen center shows we used to play together as kids in the bay area feeling that much different, or the recording sessions in Matt’s parent’s basement. I cant process the places we’ve been, the places we are going – I refuse to even try. Its a total mindfuck.

The Cohen on my laptop speakers is getting me all inspired now, so I’m gonna post this and work on some songs. I’ll check in with you all again soon.