It was comfortable on the porch so we had tea and coffee out there. The squirrel that had been coming in and eating any crumbs the girls left was sitting on the ledge. He seemed irritated that Elias had patched the hole in the screen where he had been coming in. I named him Richard.

“Do you like Leonard Cohen?“ I asked - I knew the answer already. I was going to play “I Can’t Forget” because it seemed like it suited the moment, but just like restaurants, 2 people can have 2 different ideas about that. Richard seemed aloof.

Later on I threw the ends of a couple corn cobs out the back door into the grass. And later, some …ahem….lettuce.

Bean seems more insistent that I give him a taste of whatever I’m eating. I may have created a monster here, but I understand. A piece of toast? I will pull off a little piece of crust and give it to him. It’s more about being willing to share that seems to make him feel satisfied. I never give him very much. I’m willing.

Darby and Chuck (the guinea pigs) spent the morning on the floor in the pen eating apple slices while I cleaned the cage. I filled it with the bedding, then added compressed cedar chips. When they see me walk by in the morning they start chirping, it’s really a beautiful sound, but I realize, I’m like Santa Claus at the North Pole, all these creatures recognize the sound of my shuffling feet and they all want…. Food.

I picked up Chuck and felt her little soft chestnut hair and her fluttering, bird-like movements against my firm holding of her. She seemed to be saying you can’t control me! But in the end I did. I pet her for a while cause I believe, even though they don’t like to be sort of kidnapped and whisked out of their cage, it’s important that they know I’m the boss, and their shepherd, and they need to do what I tell them, and the craziest thing is cutting their claws! I had NO IDEA that was part of the job description of the Guinea shepherd and I would have flatly refused if I had I known that- because it is a delicate and infuriating task, when one of the 2 parties required for the activity is determined to thwart your efforts.

I called the vet down the street in a moment of frustration. “Do you cut Guineas nails?” “No sir. We don’t do exotics.”

I made a tuna salad, and I added French mustard like my mother in law does. I had it “open-faced” on gluten free bread which, when eaten in that context, actually is fine. Toast it a little.

Then I worked for a few hours, learning the Roland Drum Machine I paid a small fortune for. I think it’s like paying your own tuition: you pay more attention when you do.

I pretty much stayed in the kitchen, or in the breakfast room all day, I had my computer set up on the breakfast table. The girls would come in at 2 or 3 hour intervals, but staggered, so it was more like each hour, wanting snacks, meals, and I made toast, peanut butter on banana, chicken bites and soy noodles, corn muffins. Nothing special really. Nothing green, I’m sorry to say. The twins used to come crawling in on the floor and come up to the surface of the water and open their mouths and I put a cracker with tuna salad on it in their mouths- “Whale food” - I offered it and they both came swimming up.

All day long I kept saying to myself “I love Sundays.” They are like no other day of the week, they hold a magic spiritual power. An auspicious day for reflection, resolution, caring and cleaning, cooking, relaxing, reading, watching sports.

Last night we watched the WNBA. Caitlin Clark was getting mad they weren’t calling any fouls on the opposing players. “Caitlin seems like she gets made at herself.” Lillie said. “Sophie Cunningham doesn’t seem like she does.”

I made a Playlist for Brown’s diner Sept 8. It’s going to be like a birthday party, cause my birthday is a few days before.

I spent a little time on Instagram but I started to feel paranoid.

I think the other thing about Sundays that I notice, is people tend to give you some space. They don’t bombard you too much- there is almost a protective bubble around the day, “I wouldn’t want to bother him on a Sunday.”

The town feels dry. I found myself wishing for a thunderstorm in the afternoon. If we were in the mountains, we’d get one, but down here in the valley- no such luck.

Do you like Suno? I think the CEO guy is a twerp, but that’s just me. I wish Nashville wasn’t so thirsty about being “left behind” and the industry stance was more like “Fuck Suno, we have the best musicians and studios in the world! We don’t need it!” But it seems like they are more neutral about it, not saying it’s amazing, but also, not saying it sucks. I love playing guitar and I don’t want a robot to do it for me. But I also love drum machines and synthesizers and sequencers so I don’t know where to draw the line. I guess I feel electronic music can be very warm and humans working in collaboration with machines can be very interesting. I don’t know why Suno pisses me off so much, maybe it’s just that guy trying to tell everyone learning an instrument is too hard. You don’t get the satisfaction of standing back and listening and saying “I made this!” That way, but maybe they do think that?

I need to change some strings. We are playing, me and a few pals, at the Chloe Hotel tomorrow evening. Hope you can make it. It says “Lera Lynn and friends.” If you don’t know Lera’s music, she’s incredible. Ta-ta for now.

Lillie found a bunch of bananas from this spring in her car. They had fossilized. She calls it “BananaGate” -

Tilly was on the treadmill practicing her performance. I took my car in to Beaman to get the oil changed. I was grateful Michael was there waiting when I came out of the service garage. He played me some new recordings of his on the way back into town. His band “Warm Luck” has a very “New York, 1977” energy about them.

The heat is oppressive. This morning I took Bean out for a walk I couldn‘t wait to get back inside.

GOOGLE FIBER

Last night, Google fiber sent me 5 dollars. The kids have been complaining that the internet doesn’t work/ is slow. Maybe they have had enough complaints that they just sent everyone 5 dollars.

I took the 5 dollars to Bi-Rite and bought 2 things of mustard potato salad.

FIREWOOD

I got a message from the firewood man. He said he’s delivering wood for his clients early this year to get a jump on the fall rush. It is definitely NOT time for a fire. But I can tell the angle of the sunlight is changing and soon it will be (well somewhat soon) .

It’s always a struggle for me, what to do, when I’m left to “my own devices”

We have a broken cuckoo clock.

RECIPE

I have suddenly developed a passion for potato salad. Emmylou told me her mother’s recipe:

-Boil potatoes and while they are still hot, peel them (you need gloves)

-Pour “Bubbie’s Bread and Butter Pickle” juice over the potatoes until submerged

-Put in the fridge for 3 hours,

-Chop up celery and a few of the bread and butter pickles

-Drain the pickle juice and add the celery and pickles

-2 large tablespoons of Duke’s mayonnaise

-back in the fridge for an hour

(Top with chopped parsley and diced hard boiled eggs if you like )

YUM

I find that little melodies sometimes keep looping around annoyingly in my mind. Do you get that? They aren’t famous songs or anything like how much is that doggy in the window but more something my brain is doing.

BROWNS

I’ll be back at brown’s with some friends on September 8th for anyone in Nashville. It’s time, I suppose, to download instagram today and begin to “promote” but I think I dread this. Maybe I don’t. I could do it for “fun”

FUN

I read this thing on Reddit that said if you have anxiety, do everything “for fun” and that way nothing is serious. Anxiety thrives on the seriousness of everything. Do a co-write “for fun” - go to the dentist “For fun”

ALL WINE IS THE SAME

My friend has this theory that it’s the same buzz (I don’t drink wine so maybe anyone who does can confirm) no matter which wine you drink, Trader Joe’s “5 buck chuck” or “Meomi Pinot Noir” it’s all the same drug (alcohol) so there is no difference in the effect it has on you. I wanted to disagree with him but I couldn’t say why at the time. Now I know why I would disagree. The intangibles. The factors that can’t be scientifically quantified, that affect the mind and body. Same amount of alcohol scientifically, but a different experience altogether.

It’s too hot to go for a walk. Not too hot for anyone to go for a walk, just me.

The things I crave now: Watermelon gummies, Dark chocolate, potato salad, chicken, cranberry juice, tea.

Things I’m no longer interested in : Fried chicken, Burgers, Fries, Nachos, barbecue, steak, mashed potatoes.

DISCO

I like it when people that are known for doing ballads, suddenly get a disco itch and let it rip.

GRAPHIC NOVELS

My kids all love graphic novels. I like them a little bit, but sometimes they annoy me, because part of the fun of reading is to make (direct) the film of what you are reading in your mind. I guess now that I think about it it’s a different thing. We called them comic books.

UP LATE/ BORED

I’ve been staying up somewhat late playing scrabble and watching YouTube tutorials. This will all come to an end soon when school starts and we are all up at 6. I’m looking forward to that and at the same time I’m not.

Everyone is bored. “Dad can we order Starbucks.” We let them. There goes another 50 bucks.

I was so bored all the time. It sent me into the world of imagination. I have never left.

I worry our children aren’t bored enough. “How bored are you?” I asked the other day. “I’m fine.” Said one of them.

I guess it’s silly to want your kids to have the same inconveniences you had. Even if they build character.

New era, new inconveniences, building new character.

SEEN AND UNSEEN

What’s affecting you now? seen and unseen ?

Seen : the heat, the schedule, and late night scrolling

Unseen: ?????

STAGE VS FILM

Michael Caine talks about the difference between “stage acting and film acting” - film acting is much more subtle. You could say a musician’s performance in the studio could use more or less of either one, as a method of helpful suggestion. “Play it like you want the last person in the nosebleeds to hear you” or “Play it like there’s a camera taped to your face.”

POTENTIAL ENERGY

I see a ton of potential energy in a lot of objects around the house. A box of dominoes contains the plutonium-like kernel of a memory, a game between me and one of the girls, played by the fire, on a winter’s night. A ukulele contains “Moon River” Or “Stardust” - I can romanticize anything.

WINDSHIELD WIPERS

They should detect the BPM of the song currently playing in the car and synchronize themselves to it. Come on people let’s get this in progress.

BAND NAMES

Every time I think of a good band name, (ex. “Pool Sharks”) when i go look on Apple Music there’s already a band with that name. They usually aren’t very good. “This is what happens when technology falls into the wrong hands.” My dad used to say.

ICE

There was a woman in line ahead of me at Pet Smart, she had a button on her purse that said “I like my ICE crushed”

AIMEE MANN

I hadn’t listened to her in a minute and I went down a wormhole yesterday and I can confirm she’s still one of the baddest b’s around.

TACO BELL

Taco Bell drive through had no cars in it.

POOL

The girls want to build a pool and I think it seems like a good idea. I like to do laps. I’m going to have to charge up my little pool Walkman thingy so I can listen to Miles Davis while I swim. That’s one of the best 2 things to do at the same time.

BLOCKBUSTER

The way you would deal with the summer months when i was young is you would go to blockbuster video and get movies when it was too hot to do anything else. You could work your way through the “Foreign” section - things like “Cinema Paradiso” would do the trick, even if it was a sad movie. I identified with that kid.

COKES

Another thing I love to do when i don’t feel very good for one reason or another is to get a Coke. With Ice. It always lifts my mood considerably and revitalizes the humors.

FAMOUS PEOPLE FROM MISSOURI

Sheryl Crow, Brad Pitt, Sza, John Hamm, ….

Well that’s the update. More soon.

Not long after that we moved to Thousand Oaks, CA. The sky was purple in the morning. The western sky does that for some reason. The sun felt different on my skin. I had a bike and my dad put playing cards, clothes-pinned to the spokes. It sounded so cool. Like a motorcycle. It was 1981.

Micheal Jackson premiered the Moonwalk on live TV, nobody had seen anything like it before. I was supposed to be in bed and I remember peering down the stairs into the little TV that was in the den.. Billie Jean.

One day, a group of kids about my age came up on my in my yard and beat me up. There were 5 or 6 kids. They kicked me and punched me. “They just want to see how tough you are.” My mom said when I told her about it.

I never hit anyone ever, still haven’t. Probably should have but my hands just don’t want to do it. In Back to the Future, when Micheal J Fox’s dad works up the courage to knock Biff’s lights out, I really felt that scene, and I wished I could time travel and kick the crap out of those kids. I wonder where they are now? I remember the main kid was short and blonde, he had a menacing look in his eyes like he was out for vengeance on the world.

But i escaped and so can you. I escaped from the past, it doesn’t hold me hostage anymore. I broke the chains of regret. I melted them down into scar tissue. I have scars all over my body and mind, but that’s not what this is about.

Lately I think about Tallu a lot, Lillie’s cousin that died. I think she would have loved to still be here, and watch her kids grow up, and feel righteous indignation about this world, and the state of America. She would love to write, to have a chance to put pen to paper, which she did, but I’m sure she would have loved to write more, to find her voice that way. I think about her when I feel sad, angry, annoyed, happy, tired, honestly all the time. I feel her ghost. Haunting me, reminding me to appreciate what a gift all this is. All of it.

She would love to be annoyed by some professional slight, or someone else being chosen for something. She would love to feel the sting that I felt when I see Tilly sliding across the floor in a laundry basket. She seems so young and other times growing up so fast. I don’t want to let this time go by too fast without savoring it. Yet I’m distracted. Long conference calls, I’m on my phone all the time. It’s like a gravitational force I can’t really avoid. Writing some sentences in a journal this morning I noticed my grip on the pen was tense. Harder than it needed to be.

My dad is in what they call “Memory Care” - is that a name for an emo band? Anyway he lives there, and they care for him. We go, me and my mom, sometimes Emmylou and Steve Fishell, and we sing for him. Sometimes he’s asleep and doesn’t wake up, other times, like yesterday, he seems happy and aware that we are there, both for his entertainment, and to honor him. Then after, I kiss his head, saying goodbye, and that’s what takes me back and I’m 3 years old, riding on his shoulders, in the sunlight, Sunday morning in the parking lot of the Unitarian Church in Westport, Ct. He would walk and then, start running out of nowhere, it was frightening and exhilarating. AGAIN! I would say. It was wild to be up so high. So this was what being grown up felt like, way up here, you can look down on everything.

I couldn’t wait to turn 16 and get my driver’s license and start to have some freedom, my first car, was a Volvo. Station wagon. My grandma Gladys bought it for me. It was the greatest ever. Tigerlily is 15 now and showing no interest in a learner’s permit or driving. This generation is different. She’s completely content to be driven around, and doesn’t like to wait after she’s decided where she needs to be driven. “Dad I need to go now!”

My dad showed me some things on the guitar. He used to teach me Iron Maiden licks, U2 chords. Bill Doggett’s Honky Tonk - that was the first solo he showed me. He really loved Little Walter, Muddy Waters, he thought Mark Knopfler was the greatest, and I sort of do too. I realize I’m speaking about him in the past tense as if he was gone, but you know a lot of him is already gone. But there is still a part of him here. The parts that are gone come to visit me in my dreams, and if you want to know what I really think, about dead people and their spirits, is that I believe in ghosts. I think that Tallu is haunting me, and there’s part of my dad that’s haunting me too. They have insights to teach me. Ghosts can enter the dreamworld. That’s what I personally believe, if you want to get in touch with someone who has passed, do one of 2 things ; play some music, and close your eyes, or go to sleep.

So there we were, in the sleek black car, me and my dad, weaving through traffic, floating, he wore a black t-shirt and aviator Ray Bans. I was proud to be seen with him, people were noticing us, both the unusual European car, and the 2 of us, looking like a couple of gangsters. There was nothing in our way, and we were almost like brothers. He looked young and tan and happy. I can’t remember where we were going but it didn’t matter. “Check this out, Danny.” He was saying, showing me how smooth the ride was. It felt like we were on a cloud.

“Let’s just move.” Says Lillie. She’s not wrong. And yet, I feel a deep connection to this humble ranch house with its awkward rooms, built in 1947, as it says on the door frame. Its plaster and concrete walls, impossibly hard to hang anything in or on, “This wall is undefeated” said Emmanuel, holding his smoking, exhausted drill woefully. “If you come for the king, you best be ready.”

“Is there a way to make 2 rooms out of one?” I ask.

“I mean we could…but still…why not move?” She says.

I don’t want to feel like “the stick in the mud” - the curmudgeon holding my family back from a bright, instagram-ready future, with a home theater in the basement, a pool, a popcorn machine. White walls and tan furniture. Nothing on the island in the kitchen except a bowl of limes. But here I am. The holdout. Well, I’m not the only one actually, Tinkerbell is on my team. She’s very nostalgic and doesn’t want anything to change. She didn’t speak to me for a couple of days when I traded in my Subaru for a Toyota. “I didn’t get to even say goodbye!” She finally wailed tearfully. But then she gradually warmed to the new truck. “It’s got its own WiFi network Tinker!” I said, trying to sell her on it, making my case and listing features I thought she might find appealing. She still had her arms crossed but I could tell she was thawing slightly.

They say you see what you want to see. I remember one night, drinking in a bar, I could see out the window to another building across the street, in the window I saw a beautiful Steinway upright piano. “Now that’s a good looking piano. Maybe a songwriter lives there. Maybe she likes to write in the morning, then take her dog for a walk at 5- like the man in 101 Dalmatians.” I kept staring admirably at the walnut colored piano. Leaving the bar, walking down the sidewalk, I discovered it was just a cheap laminated bookshelf.

I can also imagine more doomsday scenarios just as effectively. My imagination goes both ways.

I got a tick bite and then I realized in short order that it had developed into Lyme disease and it was a rare case which was rapidly making me unable to play the guitar. All this was based on no knowledge, just an assumption that Lyme disease could result in the crippling variety of palsy. Nevermind. I would program synthesizers with my eyes. I would invent a way to communicate with scrabble tiles once my mouth no longer formed sentences.

The voice of imagination, good and bad, is constant and unending. Michael Singer says if you can observe the voice, you aren’t the voice, because you can’t be both the observer and the voice at the same time. But he doesn’t know me, I could probably figure out a way.

I’ve been playing NYT “Crossplay” when I’m up in the night. There’s a lot of luck involved. Sometimes you get the good letters and a beautiful spot to play them appears. Sometimes you get I O U O I O N. All one-pointers. No future in that. Everyone wants something to look forward to. I look forward to a 50 + point play. I look forward to shellacking my friend the bass player whom I cannot seem to beat.

I also get lost in music lately. Hours go by, the kids are at the pool, and I’m happily creating. Putting the imagination to work- “Earn some money if you’re going to be fabricating!” I tell it. But it doesn’t know how to stop once work time is over so I have to keep giving it jobs, like Crossplay, until it’s so tired and my eyes are crossing that it has to give up and turn to fabricating dreams. Lost in a hotel, a matrix of elevators and hallways, different incorrect keys. Hollywood.

“America is still a young country, we’re not like Italy, we haven’t had a government for more than 1000 years- We are still working out the bugs- learning the ropes“ I tell this to my friend who watches each political development and prepares a doomsday basement with toilet paper, canned tuna and distilled water, these are for when Russia disables our feeble power grid, which they could do at any moment they are just waiting for the time to be the most inconvenient.

“It’s hard to predict political outcomes.” Says another friend, when I say the republicans might get pummeled in the midterms. “Pummeled in the midterms.” I repeat, almost like a mantra.

“The album is dead. Only thing that matters now is a single. Then another one.” One YouTuber recently decried.

The comments section was full of people like me, rushing to defend the magnum opus, and its obvious primacy.

“Not in my house it isn’t!” I wrote. I remember an old black man saying that, in a pickup game of basketball at the YMCA. Anytime anyone got in the paint he would yell it: “Not in my house!”

It’s hard not to yell at clouds. It’s hard to just watch them go by.

“Rage Bait” is the thirst trap of the basement dwellers. Am I a basement dweller? I once told Phoebe Bridgers I didn’t think she should be smashing guitars. But it was none of my business what she does with her guitars, really.

By a wide margin, this was my most popular and unpopular instagram post. “Terrible take.” Someone wrote. It was covid, so people’s imaginations, mine included, were running wild and there wasn’t much to do besides weigh in on the internet on stuff that has nothing to do with me. I turned to making albums when all else fails.

“Shut up and sing” is the phrase folks (usually on the right) use when they don’t like a musician’s or an artist’s take on something. “Nobody want’s to know how you feel about ICE! You only have one good song anyway!” Man. Having one good song is harder than it looks. That means everyone knows it. That’s one of the hardest things to do in the world is have a song everyone knows. I think people who can do that should be given more respect and their takes should be at least considered, before being dismissed flippantly. (I don’t have a song that everyone knows by the way, so feel free to dismiss any of my takes.)

They play the best music in the country-ass Piggly Wiggly. The other day I wanted to make some fried rice and I needed scallions. When I walked in the door, I heard the unmistakeable sound of Steve Cropper, “Duck” Dunn and Booker T. doing.. yup : “Green Onions”

One time they were playing “Sunday Morning” the great Velvet Underground masterpiece. It always makes me think of the painting by Edward Hopper.

Hopper’s studio, I learned, was in the village in New York City. A several floor walk-up. Heated by coal. In the wintertime, early in the morning, well into his 80’s, you could see the tall lanky Dutch descendant, carrying a bucket of coal and making his way up the stairs. He could be cranky with his wife Josephine, also a painter. On their death they left a lot of their work, the two of them, to the Whitney museum, which archived Edward’s paintings, and reportedly, threw most Josephine’s in the dumpster.

“How do you want to be remembered?” Someone asked me. “What is a legathy? That means nothing, when I’m gone, I’m gone.” Said the boxer Mike Tyson. It was surprising to hear from someone like him. I would have thought he would say something like “I want to be remembered as the greateth bockther to ever do it!” Or something like that. But he was strangely self-aware. I guess getting hit in the face a lot can sometimes make certain things clear.

“I’d like to have painted a painting that was good enough that my great grandkids would want to hang it on their wall.” I blurted out. I wasn’t aware that I felt that way until I said it. Why did I place so much emphasis on painting but almost never do it? It’s all about how you want to see yourself when you look in the mirror I guess.

“I bet when you’re in the studio working, you don’t have anxiety.” A friend suggested. This is largely true. My mind is too preoccupied with finding Japanese T-shirts on Depop.

“Just Call Me Angel of the Morning- Angel!” Rang out over the produce section - I’d never noticed before, my favorite embellishment in music, the tubular bells. Talk about one good song everybody knows. I’d give up my painting dreams to have that one. Chip Taylor.

I’m fascinated by what comes up in google when you start typing a phrase:

“How do you learn…”

And the first thing, the most popular was “How do you learn to love yourself”

The answer is daily compassion and self-acceptance. Repeating the phrase over and over: “There is nothing wrong with me!”

But what if there is something wrong with you? I suppose you can fix it with enough willpower and focus. You also have to set something called “Healthy Boundaries” - telling people to f*ck off who don’t have anything to do with your dreams, in fact, they make you feel worse and tell you it can’t be done. Those people can kindly f*ck off.

“What do you want your last words to be?” Was another question. I thought about this for a while, and I think the proper thing to do is come up with something witty like Oscar Wilde: “This wallpaper is dreadful ! Either it goes or I go!” That’s a joke that kills.

It could be polite and deferential like Ian Fleming’s “Sorry to bother you chaps.” - talking to the ambulance drivers.

“And now, I bid you all adieu.” That was a good one, in a book I just read.

My grandmother Jeanne’s last words to me, as far as I know, were “The day has started well.”

She said this because I brought her a cup of tea and read her an E.B. White poem.

In the essay “Once More To The Lake” E.B. Visits the same lake he used to visit as a child, but this time, his son is with him. He finds himself re-living childhood memories and living vicariously through his son, observing his actions and finding, they mirrored his own exactly, waking up early and taking the boat out by himself. A rainstorm comes up and the children all want to go swimming in the rain.

“When the others went swimming my son said he was going in too. He pulled his

dripping trunks from the line where they had hung all through the shower, and wrung

them out. Languidly, and with no thought of going in, I watched him, his hard little

body, skinny and bare, saw him wince slightly as he pulled up around his vitals the

small, soggy, icy garment. As he buckled the swollen belt suddenly my groin felt the

chill of death.”

There’s a point at which you can’t live vicariously through your kids anymore. The brain becomes aware of the charade and won’t let you proceed with impunity.

Buddy Rich, the great and cantankerous jazz drummer’s last words were supposedly “Country Music” -as a nurse asked him what was bothering him - he pointed a crooked finger at a TV mounted in the corner, stuck on CMT.

“Free Palestine!” Is a good one, and will surely echo well down through the decades. But it’s not for me.

I think it would be hard to sum up how I feel about this place, and put it succinctly.

“Life! You can’t beat it!” -

While I have no plans of leaving anytime soon, many years from now, I would like to say something to the effect of how much I’ve loved being here. How beautiful I think this place is, and how much I’m going to miss all the wonderful people that I love when I’m gone. But I also realize I can’t continue to take up space, food, water and air forever, and it’s the right thing to do to yield to the next generation. No big deal needs to be made about it, but if you did want to leave that painting of a green banana up for a while, well, I certainly wouldn’t mind.

I thought of my latest song, running over the lyrics in my mind:

“Ooooh I keep holding on, though your love is gone” …. Hmmm

I knew with absolute certainty they could be improved, but I wasn’t sure how…

The New York Times list of the 30 greatest living songwriters sure was a pot-stirrer! I was warmed to see the inclusion of one of my favorites-the mighty Stephen Merritt.

“Let this be the epitaph for my heart, Cupid put too much poison in the dart”

He’s, in my opinion, our modern day Cole Porter. Gay, astonishingly good at tender, cutting words, and the music seems effortless and perfect. How could I take a page from his playbook?

I heard once that he claimed to write his best songs on napkins. In bars. Posted up like Truman Capote, his keen, gin soaked observations scrawled out in ballpoint, later withdrawn from a pocket, un-crumpled, and paired with majestic music. When was the last time I was in a bar? When was the last time I wryly observed young lovers and their courtships? When was the last time I was rejected by a young conquest?

“You do something to me- that nobody else can do.” A wonderful line, and back then, homosexuality was a crime. Love was a felony! Can you imagine? A thread of deeply-embedded heartbreak runs through the lyrics of Mr. Cole Porter. Just living an emotionally well-adjusted life would be impossible, when everyday romance and companionship could land you in prison. You had to conduct your affairs with spy-like precision.

“Day once dawned, and it was beautiful.” Nick Drake used to take his mother’s car out, driving aimlessly at night until it ran out of gas in the middle of the English countryside. Then, stumbling to a phone booth somehow, at 4 in the morning, would call his dad to ask him to come retrieve him. “Where are you?” “I don’t know.” He would sometimes reply.

Lorenz Hart, the gay, closeted, alcoholic lyrical genius who died at 48 of Pneumonia (a friend found him in a gutter shivering near broadway) had quite a nimble pen as well:

“Blue Moon, you saw me standing alone, without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own.”

“These are very good words.” My grandmother told me once, showing me the song “Where or When” - it’s so very romantic indeed.

Hank Williams was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, posthumously for his "craftsmanship as a songwriter who expressed universal feelings with poignant simplicity and played a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life." Although, my friend Scott says some of his lines were actually written by Fred Rose, “The silence of a falling star lights up a purple sky” others say a songwriter named Paul Gilley wrote them, and sold them to Hank before drowning at age 27. Either way, it’s a miraculous song that’s so good, lots of people want to take credit for it.

I took a walk in the woods. I thought about Thoreau, his disdain for crowds. I thought about how I hardly ever just listen to the sounds around me on a walk - I always have my headphones blaring a podcast. It was eerie to be alone with no sounds besides the frogs, the birds- one mockingbird, for some reason, was really driving it home incessantly. “Okay I get it. You don’t have to be so insistent!” I said aloud. I was disgruntled. I was feeling there was no way to live up to the promise that my heroes set out for. As one of the keepers of the flame of the “Singer Songwriter” - I felt that I had nothing in my catalog to prove my worthiness for calling myself such.

“A good song is a done song.” Said Ross Golan to me one time. “Not all hit songs are good songs” said JT Harding. “And not all good songs are hit songs.”

I thought if I really tried, really hunkered down, I could do it. I’ve always over-estimated my abilities. I signed myself up for a pedal steel session once, I borrowed a friend’s steel. They counted off the song and it was obvious that I couldn’t follow the simple changes. I’ve always jumped in the deep end in my life, getting married, having kids was no different. Shoot first, ask questions later. Well… now I was asking questions -Why would I choose a profession where the greatest examples are all broken men and women (ed: one of the exceptions is the mighty Carole King), strangers to their kids, haunted by the demons of compulsion, gifted with astonishing ability, and sensitivity, and yet, I’m sure almost any of them would trade it for a “normal” life. I heard about Robert Johnson, the legend, that he went to the crossroads, and the devil promised to make him a star, but that his soul would belong to him. I always thought that was lore, but now I understood the metaphor of it. To undertake any art form at the highest level, was a deal with the devil. It demanded full and total focus and concentration, and a willingness to give your heart and soul to the other side, to drugs that could enable a mystical vision, to alcohol, to numb the ever-present ache of doubt and insecurity, and at the very least, to be a shadowy, ghosty presence to all family and friends.

I heard the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami writes every day, runs a few miles, eats some fish, listens to some music and goes to bed. Then he does it all over again the next day. It’s not a normal life really. He doesn’t go to any parties or concerts or out to eat. He is like a monk. There’s something appealing to that, but still, it’s so severe.

I thought a lot about who to pattern myself after as a young person, whose direction I could point my compass to. If they died too young I couldn’t accept that, I wanted to live a long time. If they were an addict I couldn’t accept that. I was running out of heroes quickly with those 2.

David Hockey died recently. He smoked like a chimney every day of his life it seemed like. I loved that about him. I love old people that smoke. Smoking in their 90s. I loved the simple way he drew and painted. He was always interested in the people and places around him - the local scenery. I liked the idea of being intimately acquainted with and connected to a place like that, of having a home.

“It’s alright to be little bitty.” Said my mom to me, quoting the great Alan Jackson song. “It might be better, in fact, to just be kind of, you know, NORMAL.”

Yeah. I’ve always wondered what that was. What was normal? Was it normal to think about all these things, all the time, about how to live up to some kind of “Golden Songbook in the Sky” - Leonard’s “Tower Of Song” - a retirement community of the greats, all of them in rooms, on a morphine drip, to calm the frayed nerves of those who have traded a normal life for something else. Something they aren’t sure if it was worth the bargain.

“Came So Far for Beauty”

Leonard Cohen, 1979

I came so far for beauty
I left so much behind
My patience and my family
My masterpiece unsigned
I thought I'd be rewarded
For such a lonely choice
And surely she would answer
To such a very hopeless voice

I practiced on my sainthood
I gave to one and all
But the rumours of my virtue
They moved her not at all

I changed my style to silver
I changed my clothes to black
And where I would surrender
Now I would attack

I stormed the old casino
For the money and the flesh
And I myself decided
What was rotten and what was fresh
And men to do my bidding
And broken bones to teach
The value of my pardon
The shadow of my reach
But no, I could not touch her
With such a heavy hand
Her star beyond my order
Her nakedness unmanned
I came so far for beauty
I left so much behind
My patience and my family
My masterpiece unsigned

This fascination with the stewards of the land and flora is not new. I idolized Peter Sellers in “Being There” - Chance the Gardner was my alter ego. I often had no idea what was happening in the world of adults, and his interpretation seemed reasonable to me.

I bought a pair of scissors. “These are the most beautiful pair of scissors you will ever own.” Said the woman who sold them to me, as she wrapped the little box in pretty Japanese paper and closed the wrap with one elegantly placed tiny piece of tape. I liked that confidence. I’d like to be able to confidently say that to someone if I worked in a shop. “This is the best slice of pizza you will ever experience in your life.” She said it plainly, with no emphasis, like Chet Baker playing a melody.

When we first moved into our house 18 years ago (!) we had a garden. We grew squash and cucumbers and peppers and eggplants and you name it. I got some panty hose and put them over my squash plants because there was this little tiny white moth that was destroying them. I waited for it with the hose at dawn. I was like a coiled snake ready to strike. It was my main job in life, defeating this moth. It consumed my thoughts night and day. I hit it with a hard jet of hose water and it was momentarily deterred, but as soon as I wasn’t spraying it, it went back to menacing my plants again. Initially it was euphoric, the garden was booming and we had so much harvest that I would give giant baskets of tomatoes and cucumbers to my mom and neighbors . Then the heat set in, and I became less inclined to go out there, just watering, no weeding. Then the Bermuda grass started strangling things and reclaiming its dominance in our yard. The stuff appeared in America from Asia and Africa in the 18th century. It was likely a stow away in contaminated hay, aboard slave ships. Its heat resistance has made it a staple in southern ground cover, and around our yard, an indomitable pestilence.

The next year, we scattered a few seeds and a few things appeared, but we had lost our swagger and excitement about the garden. It just got too hot, and life intervened. I was doing more songwriting, we had a baby now, and there wasn’t as much time.

Across the street, our Neighbor Nord is a brilliant gardener. He has really transformed his yard into a kind of urban paradise. A little slice of nature. Flowers, bees, chickens, all very beautifully maintained. His chicken coup had a heater in it for the winter, and window boxes with more wildflowers in them. Nord is really a real gardener. He’s not thrown off by the hard labor, the digging of holes, the blistering heat. He’s taking this out and putting this in, pruning, trimming, installing fencing. After 18 years, it’s the most beautiful spot in the neighborhood without a doubt. It’s his passion. He doesn’t want anyone picking the flowers or parking on his grass and I can understand that.

I think I can tend to be attracted to the accoutrement of certain things, the fly fishing vests and the colorful flies and beautiful rods. The time to wade in a stream and reflect on life. The solitary pleasure of building a wood fire and smoking a little trout you just caught for lunch, the self sufficiency of it all.

Who doesn’t want to live off the land? Or at least be able to.

I felt a little guilty about my garden. Well…here’s another thing that you’ve started but couldn’t keep going. Another of my furious passions that burn white-hot at first, then peter out almost as quickly. Add it to the list: Bowling, Billiards, Orange Theory, Modular Synthesis, Amateur film making, Photography, Sewing, Ballroom dancing, Pleinair painting, novel writing, the list goes on and on. If it’s hard, if it takes a lifetime of dedication to get good at something, sign me up for 6 months. That’s been my motto.

The only exception is music. And painting, to a degree. Those are the only 2. Well maybe a little photography.

Then I started to realize that thing Picasso said, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. Music is my garden. My ideas are my seeds. Winter comes, then spring. Things get buried, you don’t think they will come up, then one march morning, a little flash of green appears! What a miracle.

I’m not as fly-by- night as I thought I was. I have been a dedicated gardener of my music for many years. I have endured droughts and seen wildly bountiful seasons as well. I have fought off moths, and I have put on a sun hat when it was 101 degrees. I have tried to keep the weeds out of my soul and my heart. The vines will start growing, they want to strangle you - instagram, Reddit. They want to take the nutrients of your soil and rob you of the harvest of your time. They will strangle you by the roots if you aren’t careful and get another app to make them dormant (weed control?)

Michael Ford gave me a THE BRICK and I’m grateful. It’s given me a lot of time back (well some anyway I still do crosswords and spelling bee and sometimes even … TETRIS. But these are gardens too, even Instagram, is it’s own strange garden. I overheard a friend say “My instagram is really funny and awesome. My algorithm is really great. Except, every once in a while, it shows me something very dark.” Well yes it does, because thats what gets the clicks and draws you in, like a car crash.

I have been kinder to myself lately. Eating good food and getting plenty of rest. Taking naps when I need them and I’m starting to feel better. I was a bit burned out I think. I was starting to lose sight of the forest for the trees. I got back on my anti-depressant. I’m finally figuring out what I can eat and what I can’t. I guess it takes a while to figure out what your garden likes, what the pests are, what you can grow easily, what takes a lot of time and effort, what you actually LIKE to grow. What you can eat, what recipes are good, what you can store for the winter, what you are tired of and what you NEVER get tired of. It takes a while to figure all that out. Everything is a Garden.

I never try to change my body clock, I just let it do its thing. Birds chirping? Probably time to move. Tired? Probably need a nap. Dark and quiet? Let’s go to bed. Up in the night? Let’s play Crosswords. I just roll with it. Not ideal.

But everyone needs guardrails. I have been trying to get on top of my diet lately. I got a great new nutritionist and she tells me what to eat and that’s that. No deviations. No wild cards. Just what’s on the list. It helps me simplify my life because everyone THINKS they want more choices, but what they REALLY want is LESS CHOICES.

I’m not saying I’m not hungry, or that the idea of a burger and a shake doesn’t sound good. One of her books is called “Your Tastebuds are A**holes” which is a very funny title but that says it all: They are thrill seekers and adrenaline junkies and they don’t give a shit about the person they are attached to. So selfish.

I’m into small things. A small guitar, a small amp…taking up less space in this world.

I had this realization the other day, and also I’m reading Mel Robbin’s “Let Them” and it’s pretty amazing and so simple. Let’s write a book and charge people 20 bucks and tell them the world is just doing its thing, and we need to let it. Not taking it personally. I’m on board I think it’s a work of genius and inspiration, and clearly, the world agrees cause it’s a huge book. I don’t mean it’s really long, I mean a lot of people like it.

People like to be told how to look at situations, me included.

“So glad we are getting this rain, we really needed it.”

I go to extremes, I know. But once something clicks, I don’t want to hem and haw and deliberate, I just want to move.

Lately I’ve been feeling like selling all my music equipment and just having one guitar and a laptop. I’m not going to do it, but the urge to simplify things so there’s no decision to make about which guitar to play. Which mic to use.

But the realization I had was “You can always elevate.” You don’t have to be happy with the status quo. The mainstream of music, film, art, fashion, whatever it is- whatever is popular, you don’t have to chase that, or make your stuff like that. You can elevate it. This is particularly useful thought in terms of pop or country music because it has a tendency to get on these kind of patterns where a lot of the songs are similar, and artists and writers (myself included) can have the thought “Well if I want to be on the radio, it needs to be like this.” But that’s not the case. There’s a lot of noise in culture today. Between 100,000 and 120,000 songs are released each day on the streaming services. So this means, I mean, if I’m looking at that, the more different mine sounds, the better. I’m not saying I want to invent a whole new style of music or anything. I’m still moon in June, sky is blue, you love me and I love you, but you get the idea. I really liked how Burt Bacharach music sounded so different from everyone else’s. I bet he never got sued for copyright infringement like Ed Sheeran, because people can hardly play Burt’s songs, let alone claim that THEY came up with it first. Okay, if you came up with it, then play it!

“When you say no, your price doubles. “ That’s what a friend told me the first rule of show business is. I’m gonna try it out. I just need something to say “no” to.

Slowing down, chewing the food properly, not eating standing up, like I usually do. That’s part of it too.

Not grabbing the half of a peanut butter sandwich Tilly didn’t eat, and wolfing it down like a leopard.

No caffeine! This one is really wild. I don’t know how to describe the feeling but it’s kind of terrible and awesome at the same time. When was the last time you quit caffeine. You feel superior and sleepy at the same time. It’s a vibe. I’m not as restless and doomscrolly at night tho. I think in general I have MORE energy and require less naps. What the heck does that mean? Caffeine might be a hamster wheel. I’m not saying hamster wheels are bad or anything, I think the world is like a hamster wheel in a lot of ways but it’s okay to get off the wheel sometimes and get on a different wheel.

Everyone tries to get me to listen to the band “Elbow” - I will! I just have so many things I want to listen to. I know I’m losing valuable time I could be enjoying Elbow.

When somebody says “Oh man! This is RIGHT up your alley you have to check this out! Introspective lyrics, dark moody atmospheric synthesizer, minimalist beats.” My first thought is “Nooooo.” What I want is something that’s not up my alley, something that’s not in the same hamster wheel. Tell me about a forgotten symphony by Dvorak that was just unearthed. I think of myself as having good taste, but you never know, my tastebuds could be snobby jerks.

But i like when a song catches me “off guard” and brings tears to eyes, out of the blue like when I hear it at a middle school choir recital. The most recent song that made me cry was “A Million Dreams” from the Greatest Showman, sung in microtonal intervals, by the 7th and 8th graders at my daughter’s school graduation. Part of it was the passing of time, and being young, and the things you want to go out and do in this world, and will you even get a chance to and all that, but it’s still a really great song.

Kids singing is really great. Like 40 kids singing a Coldplay song like “Yellow” and I will burst into tears instantly. Well I was a kid too, like when that song came out. A college kid maybe, but a kid nonetheless. And I remember what it felt like, to be a kid, and I’m still a kid in my heart. I’m still the same. I never let the world change me, I never let it get to that room inside my heart where I live in my dreams. I still feel the same as when I was 5 and I know what’s wrong and what’s right. Protect the small and take care of the little things. Be loving to all creatures and look out for them, unless a dog bites you, then it can burn in hell. Not really, but my spirit is on or off. In or out. There’s not a million choices. Only 3. There’s only yes or no, and occasionally maybe. Mushrooms, no. Steak, yes. Lemonade yes. Marmalade ? I want to like it, but it’s bitter… maybe…

But starting with it COLD is tough. Im going to try for 15 minutes.

-You should, when you are at a party, look for someone who isn’t talking to anyone and talk to them for a few minutes. Maybe it’s the shy teenage son, or an older person. Don’t just talk to the popular attractive people who are already convivial. Spread the party atmosphere into the corners where it hasn’t penetrated yet. Ask them if they have any bird feeders and what type of seed they put in them. Going to a party is never just about having fun, it’s a responsibility to the community to bring the edges of the social circle a little closer to the center. You can see what a drag it is to be me haha!

You should always stand a few feet back from the baggage claim so that people can see and collect their bags, you should never have your knees right up against it. I made this mistake once and someone reprimanded me, and they were correct, I see that now.

You should stand in front of a painting that you like for a long time. Let’s say it’s Sargent’s “Madame X” - you shouldn’t just glance at it and say “Yep…there it is!” Like Chevy Chase at the Grand Canyon. You should look at the edges of it, how it looks from far away and close up. You should notice how small or large the brushstrokes are. Even if you aren’t a painter you should because you are standing before greatness. You should imagine Sargent, with a cheese sandwich in one hand and a paintbrush in the other and the strap falls from her shoulder and his left eyebrow raises.

If you like a song or a record, you should go to the shop and buy a copy. Or amazon. You should buy the vinyl. Buy one for a friend. If you don’t have a turntable you should get one. Even the cheap ones can sound great! And it’s a great experience to sit with a record and take it in. Take in the thing someone that you like took the time to make.

You should spend some time writing with pen and paper. You should send things in the mail to people out of the blue, like books or a nice postcard of an Edward Hopper painting. You should have some stamps in your bag. You should have a fountain pen, even though they are inconvenient.

If you find something you like, like a pair of pants or a shirt, you should get 2.

You should spend money. You will find more if you run out.

You should have a psychedelic experience or 2. A bird will encounter fermented berries from time to time and be drunk and relax a bit.

You should quit drinking if every time you drink you annoy people or your wife.

You should never ask couples how they met. You should never ask someone how they are doing. This is one I know some people will disagree with. But I find that to be a withering question I personally never know how to answer because I’m alright, but I’m always one step ahead of crippling anxiety and depression and I don’t want to look over my shoulder which is what I do if someone asks me how I’m doing. Ask them to tell you something they want to do before they die. If you need to make idle chit chat, the weather is one I really enjoy. It’s a metaphor for the weather inside and it can be a way for people to describe their current relationship to the world. “I can’t stand this heat a minute more!” “Oh really? I’m from Arizona so I’m a lizard and I like it!” I love talking about the weather.

If you are crossing at a crosswalk and someone stops, you should wave at them and hurry a bit across.

You should tip more than 15 percent. If you have a windfall you should pick up the bill at a restaurant dinner party. If you are rich you should pick it up every time. Unless some other rich person beats you to it. Even if someone else pays, if you have any cash, you should leave a tip.

You should talk to the taxi or uber driver a little bit about how busy the night has been. If they want to talk, unless you have a headache or some other debilitation, you should listen. You can be annoyed, but you shouldn’t ignore them completely like an entitled snob. You can play them a song - say “Do you mind if I play a song?” And they will hand you an aux cable, you can play “The Blue Danube Waltz” by Strauss and it will turn the ride into a psychedelic experience. You could also play “Driving My Life Away” by Eddie Rabbit, which could be amazing, but it might make them uncomfortable and you don’t want to do that.

You should crack open books you have already read that were great and read a page or 2 randomly. “A Confederacy of Dunces” is gold on every page.

If someone has an incorrect political opinion, you should contemplate what happened to them that caused them to feel that way about the world, that it’s full of hostile illegal aliens or that people that look differently to them are the enemy, you should look at them and treat them the way you would treat someone who is sick. With kindness and compassion. Offer them some soup and a cup of tea. There is a war going on inside them and they cannot see through the smoke on the battlefield. Someone set a hate trap for them and they fell into it. They have been robbed of one of the essential happinesses of life - joy felt for someone else. You can’t heal them but at least you can show them the same kindness you would show someone who is correct. Treating them coldly and disrespectfully will only prove their suspicions that people look down on them and further entrench them in that belief. You shouldn’t spend too much time doing this, only when absolutely necessary.

Okay. That’s all I got for now.

What a dream I had last night. I was dropping the kids off at this new learning center run by Mexican women. It was a library mixed with a craft barn mixed with a performance center. You could do flower arrangements there were wildflowers everywhere. Closer investigation revealed the flowers were wilting and dried, but I still made an arrangement and showed it to Lillie.

“Nobody wants to hear about your dreams.” A therapist once told me. She was very cut and dry, and to her, dreams were a sort of “funny business” branch of psychology. She didn’t want to get into all that. Freudian and Jungian she could skip- there was enough about the real world, and it was psychedelic and random enough for her. But I remember thinking “I’d like to hear about one of your dreams.” I wondered did she dream of a long corridor of black doors? That’s what I pictured her dreaming of.

“Dreams mean nothing.” She said flatly. That’s like saying color has no meaning or music has no meaning. Maybe she was right. Maybe there is no meaning. A sparrow dies. No meaning. A child is born. No meaning. It just is. I wonder about this.

“The meaning of life is death.” My mom told me once. “What? Why?” I asked.

“Because only death can give purpose and clarity and meaning to life. If you aren’t ever going to die, there’s no reason to do anything. You’ll get around to it some other time.”

I thought about this. I started to feel “meaning” creeping, tip-toeing in the room. I didn’t often contemplate my demise as a child. I contemplated when would I get to see naked ladies. When I was married probably.

I saw a sign. I didn’t know what it meant but it was definitely a sign. It was big and unmistakeable sign. It was there for me, right when I needed it. It was there to bring clarity and understanding. It was there to bring the end to a long, strenuous bout of hand wringing, contemplating, talking to myself in the shower. It came at just the right time. It was mother mockingbird, she flew next to my head in a kind of dive bombing swooping gesture. I realized I had gotten too close to her nest, which was in a nearby hedge. I could hear the babies crying loudly. “This is a sign.” I said to myself.

“A sign that I need to do something, and I need to start now, while I’ve got the momentum and the inspiration.”

I remember an article in the readers digest “unbelievable” column in 1978. A man swore he heard voices when he walked past a graveyard. He kept telling people he could hear ghosts talking. Nobody believed him. So he took a tape machine out there and recorded the graveyard all night. There were voices on the tape, moaning and weeping ghosts. Very creepy sounding stuff. Then everyone finally believed him and then they wrote the article about it.

“Aliens are here already.” My mom said the other day. “They just move around in a spectrum of light that we can’t see.” That made sense to me. Maybe they tried to show me a sign. Maybe the ghosts are aliens. Maybe when you die you become a ghost alien that can move in the white light spectrum of the rainbow. Maybe you live in a rainbow. Seems legit.

I’m not a growing boy anymore, at least physically. I reached my peak now I’m slowly shrinking. But my mind is still growing. I put stuff into it all the time. New music, new shows, new jokes, new chords on the guitar, new expressions, new wisdom about people, things, new ways of doing things. My friend Rosie showed me how to get kale off the stem. You sort of hold it vertically and gently chip away at it with a knife. The leaves fall to the table. Stuff like that. “Hacks” they call them. I love hacks. Somebody give me some hacks! I’ll give you one: Put a rusty pair of scissors in a glass of coke for week. It won’t fix the rust, but it will give you something interesting to watch all week as you check the progress and it sometimes seems like it’s working or at least doing something and that will make you feel like you have taken control of your life and domain in a commanding way which will bleed over into other aspects of your life. The scissors won’t matter anymore after a while, and then the ghosts moving around in your house won’t matter and the aliens living in the rainbows won’t matter and you will eventually be hungry.

I’m a cat person. I like the way they are aloof and go about their elegant life. They don’t seek your approval in any way, they know what they are about. They do seek, however, your affection from time to time. I’m also a dog person. Dogs are finely attuned to their masters. This makes the master feel like a king. People like to feel like kings. A dog wants to earn approval. They appreciate if you approve of their “dogness” (finding something gross and eating it, sticking their noses in people’s crotches, running after squirrels) and ask that you don’t only approve of their “human pleasing” actions. That’s a fair ask. But the dog’s Karma is such that it is asking forever to be allowed to be itself and is for the most part, denied due to the inconvenience of chasing your dog everywhere and washing it when it has an altercation with a skunk. Wolves, foxes, they are another matter.

I heard a song the other day that opened a door in my mind. The door had been closed for a long time. It’s hard to keep an open heart in this world. It’s hard to not become jaded and become a capitalist. Time is going by. But when i was 7 it was easy. I didn’t have to pay for anything. I didn’t have anything I particularly liked all that much. The things I loved were songs, movies, shows. Some stuffed animals. You could take anything from me, and I wouldn’t mind. Take my jacket. Take my shirt. Leave me a pair of pants and some shoes and a t-shirt but take anything else. Take my bed, take my dresser, take anything that is “mine”. I didn’t choose any of it, it was all given to me. I felt no attachment like i do now. I have so many things I love. Don’t take the things I love. But when I heard the song, I felt like it cut some of those strings inside my mind, inside my spirit, tethering me to this dimension, and all the things in it. To this part of the rainbow, to these colors, and I felt lighter, like I might float away and it didn’t matter if I did, because I’d come back down, and anyway, it didn’t mean anything.

Ex. Some warm organ, shakers acoustics, a violent Vox continental etc.

I don’t immediately know like Richard does, But lately I’ve started pretending I do, and that seems to work almost as well.

When people send me songs, I do feel flattered that they thought of me, but also, what if I don’t like it? What if it’s “not my cup of tea” ?

I think I’m fairly open- minded and I can appreciate a lot of different things. For instance, “Screamo” , that mercurial genre, wherein the singers lacerate their vocal cords in effort to project the dystopian lack of upward mobility in the Midwest. Screamo has never been “for me” - it doesn’t resonate, but I can appreciate the commitment, the relentless hammering of the bass drums, the 7 string bass required by the genre. It’s brutal audio assault. But somebody has to be working at the intersection of white poverty, meth, incarceration, MMA fighter aspirations. It’s just not for me. Go with God. I already have too much anxiety to handle those types of moods.

But what if I don’t resonate with a song someone sends me? I would look for something admirable about it, and focus on that. But I really have no idea what anyone should do about anything. My opinion is utterly useless beyond encouragement. I could say “I think you need to put more tambourine!” But how helpful is that?

I think the assumption is that I could do something about the songs people send me. I could get them to an artist, suggest to an artist that I’m working with that they record them, or in the case of a young artist, produce them. And so I’ve noticed that for me, and for a lot of people, songs become sort of problems in a way. “Okay you’ve written me, now what are you going to do with me?” They hang around like shifty strangers in a bus station. You wake up in the morning and, even though it’s a new day, they’re still there. I’ve got so many of my own songs that I don’t know what to with as well. Maybe I should start sending them to people. I think the answer is to release more albums of material. I have several unreleased albums of this and that. I could compile, as one friend mentioned, a “mixtape” -but that kind of thing doesn’t have much impact. To me, and you may disagree, that smacks of a kind of desperation. A need to get the songs out of the house so bad that you send them off to A.D.H.D camp. Or maybe the answer is to write less songs. Leonard Cohen is the one people always mention : “Leonard would work on a verse for 2 years.” - That’s way too long for me. How about 2 minutes? I wouldn’t discourage anyone from sending their songs to others, it’s a form of comraderie and communication, and we do all need encouragement. I sent a song to a friend who’s very successful once. I don’t know why I sent it. I guess maybe I thought he might hear something in it and tap me on the shoulder and say “Hey! I’m doing the new Dua Lipa album and what we need is that thing you sent me!”

He did graciously reply “ This is dope!” Which was good enough for me. I went to the song and hung a medal around its neck that said “So and so thinks you are dope!” - Now that song is no longer a shifty stranger, it has a job in the bus station telling the other shifty strangers to keep their chins up, their bus, or their medals will be arriving any day…

So what do you do if you write a song and you are tempted to DM it to Charlie Puth? I don’t know a lot about Charlie, other than that he’s a very capable prolific songwriter…but I can tell you with absolute certainty he doesn’t want you to send it to him. He’s got his OWN shifty strangers that have been rejected by Beyoncé and are looking at HIM in the morning, with expectant “take me to the dog park” eyes. The other reason he doesn’t want anything sent to him is that some will claim he “ripped them off” and will sue him. I have (and I’m sure Charlie does too) songwriter’s insurance in case this happens.

So what do you do with songs then? I decided to post them. I recently did a challenge called “Jamuary” where you write a song each day and post it for the month of January. I’ve found that just putting them out into the world one after another really helps them get some sunshine, and dream about what they might want to be when they grow up. A friend who was working on an album heard one and decided he could use it. Once a stray dog, has now found a forever home. But I didn’t send it to him and say this might be good for you! He found it on his own. It was his idea. And I let him write on it and change it so that it suited him better.

But the songs really are a problem. It’s probably best not to write them if you don’t know what to do with them. I’ve found that when a song is needed, that’s the best time to write it. Ex.: “We need one more uptempo ballad for this album.” Got it.

Here’s “Pineapple Jack Clement’s Ten Tips for Songwriters” - May it help you feel good about your latest waltz.

You can grab any moment inside a 7 minute track and know if it‘s good or not…. Scroll to the middle, you’ll see what i mean. The sonics are all excellent. Everyone has every plugin to make it loud and impressive. What everyone doesn’t have is style, musicality, and an understanding of harmonic architecture and geometry. These are big words, but I mean them in the way that Mozart understood what might be pleasing, instinctively. He was able to look at the landscape of Vienna at the time, see what was missing, and paint with (I personally believe) relative ease.

A good house song, like a good classical piece, can continue, and will not annoy or distract, but provide one with a gently invigorating backdrop.

Making a smoothie-

Tinkerbell: “How much yogurt should I add?”

Me: “Depends on how yogurty you want it to be.”

I’m an infuriating parent I’m sure, but these children of this generation HAVE to learn to do things for themselves. Trial and error is so important.

We live in such a safe place. I frequently leave doors open, studio and cars unlocked. It’s foolish, and could invite calamity, but it’s also a luxury that I want to sometimes take advantage of. Of course nobody is 100 percent safe from crime, but overall, we live in such relative and pastoral safety, that sometimes I feel gratitude for that fact alone.

All music is the same, in the sense that it should clip along. My thoughts turn to The Beatles - “He loves the Beatles!” My dad said to me once.

”Who does?” I said

“Vladimir Putin.” He said. For a moment, and it was brief, I saw a little flicker of kinship between myself, and someone I considered to be a cold and heartless murderer. Then it was gone. Also, it made me like Vladimir Putin more.

Listening on the way to school to Ryuichi Sakamoto’s ETUDE - he’s so elevated. He’s a COMPOSER with a capitol “C” - Yellow Magic Orchestra was good, but he went on to create some things as good as Mozart. Beautiful, unexpected harmony, gorgeous melody and arrangements. BRASS, SYNTHS, traditional Japanese Violin…

“Wanna hear a hit song from 1962?” I asked Matilda once when we were in the car together. “Sure.”

I put on “Green Onions” - She closed her eyes and nodded. It still slaps.

A similar opportunity presented itself with Tigerlily. I wracked my brain about what song might make an impact. Getting a song into rotation with Tigerlily is like climbing Everest. It would be easier to convince Adele to record “B-I-N-G-O” - the song about the farmer who had a dog. We had a couple miles left before she would be gone. This was my chance to alter her destiny…what would it be???

I’m going to spoil the ending by telling you that I bombed this opportunity massively. Not only did the song not make it into rotation for her, I’m pretty sure I insured, once and for all, that she will never listen to Grimes again. “That’s actually pretty good.” She said when “Oblivion” was over. (Translation: that was terrible, please don’t ever play that again.)

“Cleaning Windows” is a song I recently heard again for the first time since the 90s- featuring the most wonderful guitar from Sir Mark Knopfler, and the most miraculous organ. It’s about the joy of a job…doing it well, no matter how small or humble. It’s one of those songs that can bear a lot of listens. He tells you what he does, how it worked, what he listened to, what he ATE, what he read. He takes you on a ride through life in Belfast in the early 60s. Wow.

“Can we listen to something that I know now?” She asked when it was over. “Sure.” I said, covertly wiping away a tear of joy and admiration for Van Morrison’s mighty spirit. “Anything you want.” I said, and handed her the phone.