pretty much my favorite quote:

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

-Dr. Suess

Spiced Tea and Regret

I was at this Ethiopian restaurant in Oakland that I really like and haven’t been to in a while, catching up with a friend from LA who was in town. I took her first to my favorite coffee shop where she compared the area to nice suburban area a few miles away, meaning she found it quaint and quiet and cute. In a stifled rage I explained that Oakland had nothing to do with those things and that she needed to drop it. I didn’t know how defensive I could be of my hometown. “You got pretty miffed backed there,” she said to me when we walked out. I promised to prove to her that though the particular stretch which I get my coffee at and crash one friend’s apartment or another is pretty “cute,” its juxtaposition to the grit of the city, to all the tensions of an odd place like Oakland, an international port city with a history of free speech and civil rights and the black panthers and crack wars and so on and so forth, makes it a whole other kind of “cute.” I probably just needed caffeine.

Whenever I get Ethiopian, I get spiced tea. And it just so happened that somewhere towards the end of dinner I knocked my tea all across the table and down onto the floor. I wonder why you feel like such an idiot when you make a mistake like that. Probably because you awaken the entire restaurant to your clumsiness with a big clink and thud and louder-than-intended “dammit,” because there is so much pressure instilled in us all our lives to put that infallible face on over our imperfect bodies and self control, our imperfect knowledge of the consequences.

I was talking with a friend the other day about regrets, and he told me he had none that he could think of. I figured that it was best to just drop the conversation rather than explain to him that regret was that feeling when you had done something that you wished you hadn’t, like treat someone poorly or let someone treat you poorly, that as far as I could tell, such things are unavoidable. Though maybe if you’re happy with the moment you’re in right now, there is nothing to regret. If all the ups and downs cumulate into a singular pleasant feeling, then maybe it’s okay. If I hadn’t spilt the tea, I wouldn’t be enjoying writing about it now.

I wonder if at some point a big sigh of regret will echo across our entire country. I don’t really pay too much attention to politics. I’m effected by it in my daily life as much as any other person I would say, but I get the feeling that one day we’ll look up and realize that we aren’t headed towards a society without freedoms and without expression and privacy and the ability to be yourself without fear, but that we are already living in it, and have been living in it for some time. It bums me out so much that the people who are in control can just get away with anything, that the average person feels so uneffected by it, and is content to throw his or her money right back to those few that have it all, to sit and watch the inane reality shows that kill time between commercials, to eat the same crop at each meal just processed in a different way, to be satisfied with fitting the standard.

If we keep the discussion on Britney’s shitty VMA performance then we wont be thinking about torture or health care or education or invading Iran or the strange weather. Everyone might be happier living in 1984, having everything structured for them, not having to make decisions. Can you really say anything you want now? Can you be anything you want now? I think so, and I think that the only way to make sure it lasts is to be creative and express yourself, to write and sing and paint and share it because its so easy to share these days.

I just get focused every now and then on the ever-changing tide and I get the feeling that our generation will, for better or worse, be witness to a really interesting time. There are so many forces pushing in so many directions, multiplying exponentially. Really heavy things are happening so quickly on such a grand scale while the world is shrinking into something that you can carry around in your pocket. I’m sort of morbidly curious and excited to see what happens. It could be something scary or it could just be spilt tea.

I think about this sort of stuff from time to time

I love to hear it rain

The weather is changing now. I prefer the bay area in this state. The clouds and fog are so thick that the sky is a slate of flat white behind the trees, which shake and drip away the day. Everything is saturated, a little darker, and the faces of those I pass appear more thoughtful, more delicate. The change in weather is bringing about a change in mood. Some of my friends have been depressed. I’ve been doing a lot of listening. The contrast between inside and outside is growing. The coffee shops are getting cozier and the first chill when you step out the door cools you down to the blood.

I’ve been back in Oakland, though I drove across the bridge yesterday to get a few things done. I love the composure of our infrastructure beneath stormy weather. The rain and wind and trees and cars are moving wildly, struggling to keep control, while the tires are gripping down on calm asphalt. I lean in and turn a quiet song up loud, peer out the window between streaming beads of rain at the cars I pass, sheltered in the sound of the song from the sound of the storm outside.

Oakland is a steady flow of past cutting through the present. I recognize faces everywhere. I’ve been to a few parties where its flooded over until I’m up to my chest in murky past. The other night it was all folks that had meant a lot to me when I quit school, had taken care of me, and they still mean a lot, but I hadn’t seen many of them in a year. They all asked where’d I’d been. I was a little surprised that I had been gone so long too. I found myself at another party a couple weekends ago with familiar faces from high school, middle school, elementary school and college. All people I had lost touch with, really had made no effort. People grow and get skinny, or put on a few pounds, cut their hair, get pretty or lose their looks, but their eyes don’t change. I could recognize eyes that I had known when I was four or five or six. That shit from the earlier chapters, it never leaves you. I blacked out. I couldn’t take it. There are a few clips of whiskey bottles and conversation, of James and I struggling back to his house through the early morning drunken haze, like we were fighting wind and sleet and rain.

The rain is actually coming up right now. I can hear it on the roof and see it falling like static between the windows and the trees. I’m going to go open the door right now and listen, get close enough that the tip of my socks get wet.

I love to hear it rain.

Albums I'm Currently Into

The Band - The Band
The Band - Music From Big Pink
The Band - Stage Fright
Bruce Springsteen - Greetings From Asbury Park N.J.
Counting Crows - August & Everything After
Eagles - Their Greatest Hits (1971 - 1975)
Emmylou Harris - Wrecking Ball
Fleetwood Mac - Fleetwood Mac
Gram Parsons - GP
Leonard Cohen - Songs Of Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen - Songs Of Love And Hate
Leonard Cohen - I'm Your Man
Leonard Cohen - Dear Heather
Radiohead - The Bends
Radiohead - OK Computer
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water
Tom Petty - Highway Companion
Tom Petty - Wildflowers
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Echo
The Wallflowers - Bringing Down The Horse
Wilco - Sky Blue Sky

more often than guitar these days

Late Nights

So about an hour ago I got around to messing with our myspace page that was long overdue for some sort of change. I added some songs from Charmingly Awkward that had never been up there, some photos from tour, and sent out a nice bulletin from all of us. Then as I’m checking over my work, making sure I didn’t accidentally upload a picture of my cat or something, I find a message in our inbox commenting that it is pretty mind-blowing that someone from the band would be up at Four AM doing such a thing.

Of course, it was only One AM on the west coast, and with the schedule I keep, I wouldn’t be surprised if I am still up playing guitar, reading Woodie Guthrie’s autobiography, writing, listening to Wilco, or still trying to get that damn myspace page to look halfway decent without giving it too many bells and whistles when four o’clock rolls around. Every night (er.. morning) I seem to look up from something and gasp at the numbers on the clock, try to turn my engine off and get to sleep.

It just struck me as sort of crazy how connected the Internet makes you. I hadn’t ever thought that by a couple clicks of the mouse I could declare to 10,000 people that I keep late hours (and am so out of touch that I send my bulletins when most are asleep). It makes me wonder what the effects of sharing myself on this thing could be. When I write on here I don’t think much about the reaction of an audience anymore. Being open, I feel, has been only a positive thing for myself and for others.

So I will continue to tell ya’ll what’s running through my head on here, though myspace will probably just keep on freaking me out.