Midnightspiration

I should be asleep. Really I should. Not only do I have a morning writing appointment and I should get up early and maybe...um...write a bit...or at least gather my ideas around me like a blanket to warm me from the cold cold first 15 minutes of the co-write, always an awkward date.

Also it's raining, little peppering pellets on my roof here, dribbling streams down my driveway, better than 100 sheep leaping over imaginary fences of my imagination.

Thirdly, and most importantly, the Advil PM I took. Its bad news to take 2 of these and then fight the drowsy. It makes for restless REMs and bad dreams. Believe me.

But I'm home for the first time in more than 2 weeks and I like the sound of the rain and I like the creaky silence of my house. And I'm trolling the web, discovering new music.

I spent a few years doing the singer-songwriter contests. Rite of Passage. Finalist in all the major ones. A few I won. A few I lost. [side note: I always felt like the goal was to reach the finals. The end result of who won and who placed 2nd and 3rd etc. just seemed sometimes too arbitrary to wrap my ego around and so I just decided early on to try to reach the finals, sing the best I could on that day, and leave the rest to the sky (and 3 judges) and smile and be happy for the results but not attach too much meaning, good or bad to the number at the end of the day--and when I've been a judge, I've done my best to pass that along]. It's been a few years, so now I watch from the side of the stage and remember the tremors. I usually can't watch a whole contest. Makes me nervous. I hated them myself and I remember I never did my best work in the span of a 2 song set with judges with notebooks in front of you not watching, but writing. Tonight, however, I thought I'd go and listen to some that either won or were finalists in these contests. The ones with the buzz. The ones where people say "Oh yeah, he's really great..." I wanted to hear them.

There's nothing like the goosebumps of hearing a really really good voice, natural and open and honest. And emerging. Someone who hasn't heard the buzz. Or has and isn't embodying it. It was a really really nice thing tonight to just be a fan of singer-songwriters, trolling the net, listening, learning, enjoying.

So Advil PM be damned. I got inspired. And tomorrow, maybe the midnight rain will have dripped some ideas through the ether of my dreams and I'll have something to sing about.

Thanksgiving

I was going to start this with a list of things I'm thankful for on this day-after-Thanksgiving-reflective-windy-grey-cold sort of day. But I think I did that in my last blog, so I'm going to sail on a different pond today.

I woke yesterday to the smell of coffee brewing and children playing. I admit, I woke up slightly dreading the day. My first Big holiday "officially" single, rather than those others where nobody really knew what was going on with me yet I came uncoupled. Big holiday=Thanksgiving. Christmas. New Years. Little Holiday=4th of July (see my previous post). Even Little Holidays can provoke panic attacks in those of us facing our 40s uncoupled, decoupled, never-coupled. And even more so unchildrened. But with a good year of therapy and meditation under my belt and a confidence that my choices this year have been right (for me), I was going to face this day with joy. Damnit. Even if it killed me. So I started the day by writing. A purging kind of journalling that I do most mornings. Then I decided to go for a run, my first run in over a month. And it was a hard run, although a very short one. The first mile was all uphill and my breathing was just not cooperating with my legs, nothing felt easy, my heart felt like it was struggling out of my skin and it was all I could do to make a metaphor of this attempt at cardiovascular activity being directly related to my psychological grasping at centeredness. I kept repeating the mantra "Do what is directly in front of you. The next thing. The next step." And I pushed past the aching knees and the clipped breathing until the run got easier, the breathing flowed and I was on the next mile, breezing past woods and A frame log houses, and the clean air scent of a stone fireplace. The sky was grey but a patch of blue opened up over the field where a horse was grazing on a stack of hay and I passed a couple of runners, struggling up the same hill I'd made it over on my way up. We waved our sweaty hellos. I said "Happy Thanksgiving." He said, "And after this, we can enjoy it!" and I smiled, widely, and then looked out over that field with the horse and felt this sudden burst of total joy. Grateful for the healthy use of my own body, that I was able to run, that I would be surrounded by family later. Just deeply grateful.

Of course, later, there were moments surrounded by family where my joy would sink a bit. Small moments of fighting the feeling of being the alien in the midst of the earthlings. Everyone coupled. Everyone with their 2.5 children. Beautiful children. Healthy and playful. And everyone with "ordinary" jobs. I know that my "career" is awkward for some people to wrap their heads around. I've had good friends from college question me, confused as to how is it possible to be making a living doing music when ... well, to put it bluntly, I'm not famous. Because most people don't know about the middle class of the arts. The Upper Class=famous. The Untouchables=that guy who dropped out of college to make it as a rockstar, got signed to Sony for one record that never came out, got dropped by the label, picked up a coke habit, and is now either teaching guitar at the local record store grumbling about his one shot at fame, opening for Dylan on one gig, OR, more likely, got clean and went to law school and is now a 3rd year associate at some white shoe law firm in Chicago. But this Middle Class land of journeymen/women musicians is a mystery to so many. There are many of us who make a living patching it together by concerts and teaching, and we are not famous (well, maybe famous in Slovenia, but not in the U.S.). As a friend says "We don't make a great living but we have a great life." Its hard to explain that to questioning relatives over a holiday meal, who seem to feel sorry for a woman in her 40s who is childless, husbandless and who travels so much it seems impossible to have what they like to think of as a normal life. "Oh, you travel so much...it must be so (tilt of the head) hard...." they say. And I say simply, "No. I love it." and then drink the wine and change the conversation. Its ok. How would they know? Its impossible to explain the fullness of a life lived as a gypsy. But at the same time, these concerned relatives do touch the fear nerve in me and all of us. Of course we wonder (all the time), did we do the right thing? Will we ever have enough in the bank to retire or will we have to be doing 180 dates at 70? Will Carrie Underwood ever record our song and allow me the cashflow to take a month or so off to write? Am I working hard enough? Am I working too hard? We all think this. Even those of us with "real" jobs. So if we're all constantly embroiled in the same questions, the same anxieties, then I choose to believe I'd rather be doing what I love and what I feel called to do, regardless of my paycheck, than simply choosing something that would make more sense at a family reunion. And maybe I read into what I perceive are the questioning looks from friends and family. Maybe they are proud. Or maybe a bit envious, as sometimes I am envious of them in their houses with their 2.5 children and PTA meetings.

And so, Thanksgiving came and went and there was much joy, and a deep sense of pride that my family is large and close and we gather each holiday to celebrate ourselves and those that passed before us. And we celebrate (and illuminate) our differences, sometimes arguing and sometimes avoiding the issues, sometimes stumbling on our attempts to reach out. But we always gather.

I started the day with that run, like a meditation on where I was in my own body, in my own skin, and that moment when the run got easy and my legs felt stronger than any 16 year old, and in my sweat and matted hair I swore I was happy. I don't believe we all have the unalienable right to happiness. Rather, we have the right of the pursuit of it. So I pursue happiness with zeal, grasping for it in dark corners, in quiet conversations, in crowded gatherings, by myself here writing and listening to the wind whistle through the few leaves left on the birch outside this borrowed bedroom window. I pursue happiness while letting go of relationships and ideas of myself that are illusions. I pursue happiness in the grand gesture and in the simple non movement of one breath. And yesterday, while I was running and ruminating on whether or not I believed in God, the sky opened up and great joy passed through my skin and I thought, whatever that was, blessed be.

November Happy List

A list of things that are currently making me happy.

Marianne Faithful's version of "Its All Over Now Baby Blue"

Homemade Apple Wine from my hosts in State College who capped a bottle for me

Creamy tangy blue cheese from England

Bare treetop branches that reflect sunlight as if covered in ice

Tremolo pedals

New Zealand Pinot Noir and vegan soup that Pat Pattison made

My Berklee online Songwriting Class that's kicking my ass and keeping me in the zone

Emily Dickenson poetry

Chuck Brodsky's new song about sleepwalking

Drew Nelson's latest CD

The thought of wandering the West Village for the next few days

The dream of a pair of Fiorentini & Baker boots (not gonna happen)

My 9 year old niece Alexine Platz playing guitar!

Constantly tinkering with the new song, trying to get it right, while playing it in front of people

High school football games in a small town

Flannel sheets

Christine Kane's blog

Thanksgiving with my entire family, cousins and all

Telling the truth (and hearing it, even if it hurts)

Old friends who make me laugh and will fly south to spend New Years with me so I'm not alone

That Dairy Queen has a "happy hour"

The Turnip Truck in East Nashville

Karen Mal's voice near a fire in northern Michigan

The french horn in the intro of "You Can't Always Get What You Want"

A sunburst Gibson J-200

the Delaware Water Gap

People who host house concerts and people who give us a bed for the night

Tea For The Tillerman

The smell of wet fallen leaves on earth

Speakers Corner, Phoenixville, PA, where a tired girl blogs from a musty old motel room on 23 West

This is an unabashed, unashamed plea for your loyalty.

It's also a call to arms.

It can be both at once. Self-promotional and hopeful universal.

There is nothing wrong with Taylor Swift. Except that she doesn't speak to me. Nor anyone I know. The world of music lovers doesn't have a ceiling at 25 years old. To be honest, when people ask me, now that I'm in Nashville, if I moved there to "go country" I giggle and say "Look at me. Look at the CMAs. Seriously?" I love Folk Music. I love Americana Music. For many many reasons, not the least of which is that those genres not only allow graceful and poetic and relevant aging, they embrace it. Buddy Miller and Emmylou Harris are the posterchildren of Americana. We in the folk world think Pete Seeger and Joan Baez have more to say to all of us, kids and adults, than the 20 somethings (or even 40 something) so-called Emerging Artists.

We complain that the world is too commercial. That our radio waves that we grew up to listening to and discovering rock & roll and folk & country and talk radio are being cluttered and clankered by dreck, by 360 deal Disney "artists". There is room for The Jonas Brothers. But not to me. The Jonas Brother will never speak to me (not that, as a 16 year old, they would have spoken to me then. Back then I was in my full on Madonna vs. Cyndi Lauper war, but I'd also discovered The Stones and The Beatles). I do admit to an 11 year old moment of Shaun Cassidy, which, looking back, was pop trite. A glamourous girlyboy dressed up to appeal to the Teen Beat sensibility. That's cool. I practiced kissing my pillow thinking of Cassidy. I have no shame about it.

We can stamp our feet and demand our XM/Sirius, our Paste Magazines, our No Depressions, our podcasts and Little Stevie's Underground archives. We can dust off our The The records and wallow in a beautiful despair, just like we did in 1988.

BUT. We fail ourselves and our world at large when we don't accept that the music industry, the art world, the theater, the movies, the books are all dumbing down not in spite of us, but BECAUSE of us. Its our fault.

We are not getting off our asses and going to live shows.

We are not pledging a bit of money to community-run radio stations.

We are not finding the local art gallery and checking it out.

We are failing our local bookstores by shopping online.

Just sayin....and this is for me. A reminder. To not sit at home and be a dumbass.

Live venue ticket sales are at an all-time low. Many are closing.

Festival sales were 30% down this year.

Many radio stations are being forced to change their formats to all-classical/all the time and get rid of the volunteer-run specialty shows we love (think Vin Scelsa).

I tour the country all the time. I'm grateful for every show I do, for every single person who gets out of the house to pay the small amount of money to come support me and hear me sing. If I don't thank you personally and directly, please accept this as me on my knees thanking you for my career, for me being able to do what I love the most in the world and share it with you. Yes, I'm talking to YOU. You there in the coffeeshop, you over there, feeling a bit awkward because its raining and only 4 people showed up and 2 of them seem to be old friends of mine, so you feel exposed there, a stranger in a tiny audience, feeling a bit sorry for me, having taken a chance on a poster and an unknown artist. Thank you for doing that. (and p.s. just so you know, yes, its disappointing and sometimes difficult to play passionately for a tiny house, but be assured that I've done it and been surprised at how sometimes those shows are my BEST and those nights are the memorable ones)

And for those of you who email me the next day saying "Damn, I wish I could have come but... Just let me know when the next time you come to town" I want to say something and I hope this comes off grateful but truthful. There's a chance that I might not be able to come back because of my 50 fans who really wanted to come but it was raining/something was on TV/etc., only 5 showed up and the reality in our world is the venue has to make money on me, not lose it. So I won't be invited back and there might not be a next time, no matter how many Facebook/Myspace friends I seem to have. So please, next time, if you like what I do and I'm coming your way, please come join me.

Nicole Atkins, a kickass rockstar of a girl from Asbury Park, who has toured with The Avett Brothers, recently stopped by to play a show at a bookstore/venue owned by a friend of mine in Baltimore called Cyclops. Andy Rubin, my friend the owner, has been booking amazing folks to come through and play shows. And the audience is trickling in. And if you hear Andy tell of the night Nicole Atkins played, this almost famous chick sat down with a guitar and personally serenaded the few people that were there. She has played the Big Club in town. But on an off night, she played this bookstore. How cool for those 4 people who trudged out in the November night. And how sad for those that saw the poster and thought "Hey, that might be cool, but you know Grey's Anatomy is on so I think I'll just go home...."

I've been lately really into the Local Food Movement. Granted, I live in my van, so "local" is relative to me, and I haven't yet been able to implement it into my life in a daily way, but I'm fascinated by it and think it makes at least philosophical sense. How about a Local Art Movement. I lived in the NYC area for many years, my last address being Jersey City. Every October there's a Jersey City Artist Studio Walking Tour. LOCAL! But there are neighbors who said they'd never done this, never heard of it. I knew of a metal sculpture studio down the block. I never went. Shame on me.

Local community theater companies keep art local, keep it small and cost-effective. Give the community a way of creating something together.

Local art galleries showcase local artists.

Local live music venues showcase local musicians. And national musicians, who are bringing their music directly to you.

If you go to a show and you like the music, buy the CD directly from the Artist. The money you give them goes to them. If you wait, and buy it on I-Tunes, the money might go to a 3rd party (a label, etc.) and never really trickle down to them. EVEN BETTER: buy it in advance of the show at the small, local CD/Record store (My favorite: Tunes in Hoboken!!!!) -- even if the Artist might lose a bit of money to the label or the distributor, you and the artist are teaming up to keep that small record store alive. A place that probably has the $1 bin where you could come across an import of "All Things Must Pass" for $6, a place with a turntable and headphones to preview your purchase, where you can linger by the comic book section and meet like-minded music freaks. Of course, if the artist isn't coming to you, then by all means, surf Amazon and I Tunes to your hearts content. Just so you get the music in your hands.

But if the artist is coming your way, support them. Go to the show. Take a date. Take your 16 year old daughter. Take your mother.

We can't blame the destruction of the music industry on Rich Men in Suits Who Run Major Labels, or The Taylor Swift Phenomenon, or Clear Channel. We can point the finger in the mirror as a call to arms.

My good friend Paul Reisler's mission is to teach songwriting and music to children to encourage them to be "Creators not Consumers". I believe this. I believe that even if you can't pick up a guitar and write a song, by sharing in the community of live music, going to a show or pledging $50 to a .org radio station at the far left end of the dial, you are joining the Creative Community in your own way.

Go see the grassroots acts and then watch the grass grow. I.e. Dave Matthews Band, Phish, Ani DiFranco.

Ok. I'm stepping off the bucket in the corner of Hyde Park and taking a nap now.

With love and respect, your adoring fan-

Amy

The Scrapyard

I'm way up in Harbor Springs, Michigan at Lamb's Retreat for Songwriters, a cool weekend 'retreat' where some of us are here to teach and some are here to learn and all are here to write a song in 72 hours. John Lamb gives everyone very evocative songwriting assignments and then we're off to the races, in the time-spaces in between presenting (and attending) the classes and the meals and the hanging and connecting and reconnecting and walking along the lake as the sun sets and the sky explodes into pinks and greys. I was here teaching 3 years ago. I'm happy to be back. But I'm a fairly slow writer. Some songs fall into my lap quickly. They are rare. Mostly I wrack my soul in torment over a song until its done, staying up late into the night if a song catches me and puts me into a vice grip, not allowing sleep nor conversation nor any coherent way of walking through my life until the damn thing is done with me and I can emerge, spent, from my cocoon haze of writing. Even the sucky songs do this. And believe me, if someone is challenging me to write a song in 48 hours, then 75% of the time it is gonna land on the suck side of the fence. But those songs, the ugly children, deserve to come out too and I do my best to finish them, warts, crap cliches, stolen melodies and all. This one is emerging from the stone of my tired tired brain. I'm dragging on few hours of sleep and so far, I've turned over 3 different styles of how to approach this song. I started in 1930s Disney. Then went to 1970s Townes. Now I'm hanging out in Grey's Anatomy-soundtrack land. I think I'll stay here, cause I don't tend to write in the key of pop.

I should be asleep. But its taken hold, this damned song, hooky piece of stinky pile of poo that it is so far. Like a soursweet mountain of rubbage, I'm hoping if I keep digging, I'll find something useful.

Had to write something other than rhyme for a bit to get me out of the lyric for a bit. I'm reading to put on the fins and mask again.....

This is not about a couch

After what seemed like longer than it should take, the furniture is in its place and boxes are unpacked and this rented house is starting to emerge, looking like something that could be mine for a while. It's old and creaky, drafty and a bit like the slow cousin who comes to the family reunion and stands there by the appetizers all day, quiet and in mismatched clothes, next to her more stylish relatives. There are these cute renovated houses that surround me, nice paint jobs, manicured lawns. I'm trying to not have lawn envy. I've never had lawn envy. In fact, all of this is new: this living-in-a-house thing. I joke that I moved every year with a new lease, but truly I've lived on the Upper West Side, the West Village, the East Village, Brooklyn, Hoboken, Jersey City Heights, Van Vorst Park area and downtown Jersey City, with a stint sleeping on a couch in SoHo. All apartments. Some lofts, some studios, 2 3-bedroom pre-war apartments (once, I rented the "maids" quarters for $400, which was teensy and had a toilet in the closet). I've had plants. I had a backyard on Bright Street that I did nothing with. And I gardened in my Jersey City studio. But now I have a lawn. A front and back lawn. I don't own a mower and quite honestly, I'm not investing in one because these 2 very nice young men were leaf-blowing my neighbors' house yesterday and I waved them down and got myself on their circuit of lawn care. Of course, they are songwriters (you can't spit here...kind of like in NYC everyone's an actor/playwright). Halloween was humbling. I was unloading boxes and had forgotten that it was Halloween. I've never had trick or treaters in my NYC-New Jersey places and I don't have kids and I don't particularly love candy (although I'm a sucker for candy corn and those little orange pumpkins with the green tops). Evening came and my street exploded with witches and ghosts and vampires and skeletons and aliens and Harry Potters and Super Heroes and princesses and fairies. The folks across the street had decorated and so had a lot of other of my neighbors, while I--lameass newly moved in citygirl--had to turn the front porch lights off as I had nothing to offer. Sadly, a few stragglers would knock on my door and I'd sheepishly call out "I'm sorry. I don't have anything." Of course, I could have driven over to the store and bought stuff, but I was awash in boxes and books and files.

This is not about a couch.

Once I unpacked, I realized I had a load of borrowed furniture and not one comfortable, lie-around-and-watch-a-movie couch, that would pull out or fold down if a friend came by. Just my grandmother's funky old antique that's nice to sit on, but not so comfortable to spread out on, and certain nothing anyone would "crash" on, and being alone here, I think I'm open to the "crashing". So first thing -- I went and bought a couch. But sleepers are extraordinarily ugly and bulky and really, in the end, not so comfortable, and futons remind me of college, so I got one of those click-clack pull down couches that's like a futon but looks more like a couch. Its super comfortable, but quite honestly, I think its pretty ugly. The dirt cheap ones were ugly AND uncomfortable. So I went with something that was semi-ugly, not miserably pathetic, but super comfortable and won't take up the entire room if pulled down. So it encourages use. I'm doing my best to find some kind of "design" sense, although I feel a bit like a post-grad with a mish-mash of things. I had a great design sense when I shared a house with a man with a shared love of Mission and Arts & Crafts, but he also had a good job and furnishing a place as a couple is vastly more fun and easier than trying to do this alone, on an artist's budget. I'm hoping the collection of Indian print pillows I have thrown on the couch hide its warts. Like I said: its comfortable.

I know this is silly. Wasting the last half hour writing about a couch. Or furniture. Or a new house. But its all new. This putting-things-in-their-righteous-place-in-a-semblance-of-a-newly-discovered-or-long-recovering-aesthetic-while-trying-not-to-freak-out-that-I-don't-yet-have-it-all-together thing. I did heave a huge sigh of relief when I got rid of the crazy room--the room someone had painted dark brown and bright blue with a tree, branches of blue bleeding into the brown and visa-versa (yep. seriously). I painted it a nice neutral sandstone/adobe. And then sighed a pleasant, calming, ah ha. And unpacked my books into my new shelves I bought cheaply, and put things away. Put things on the walls. Lit some candles. Sat on my new couch. Poured a glass of wine. And proceeded to ....

...cry.

Which was a surprise. 5 days of figuring out where things go, of buying what I lacked and reshuffling what I had. Excited to see the whole picture emerge. And when it did, the wellspring opened. Which took me by surprise. But it was brief and I got some lyrics out of it (a total cliche of the songwriter blubbering, tear-stains on the composition book, guitar in hand, singing melodies through the sniffles and sobs). And I let it pass. And this morning, I woke up and sat in my ugly couch, drinking my coffee watching MSNBC and felt, still, a bit out of sorts, but felt rather ok about being unsettled, still. The couch isn't perfect, but its what I could afford and it works for now. The house isn't perfect. The lyrics I wrote last night certainly are not only not perfect, they kind of suck. But I wrote them and they're mine.

I've been writing for a year in this blog about segues. Transitions and metamorphoses. This is about life and art and self and study and love and loss. This is about embracing the moment when you get what you need, even if its not exactly what you thought it would look like. This about having what's good for right now, rather than what you think you might want eventually. This is about letting the grief come and go like a wave and not allowing it to define. And having a pot of soup on and a bottle of wine and a good couch for sleeping so that this space can embrace someone else who needs it.

What I hear most often from these creaky walls is the distant sound of a train. I don't know where it is, where its coming from or where its going, but there's nothing I love so much as the sound of a train. It takes me backward to memory and forward to dreaming. It wakes me and lulls me to sleep.

Like I said, this is not about a couch.

THE RAILWAY TRAIN.

I like to see it lap the miles, And lick the valleys up, And stop to feed itself at tanks; And then, prodigious, step Around a pile of mountains, And, supercilious, peer In shanties by the sides of roads; And then a quarry pare To fit its sides, and crawl between, Complaining all the while In horrid, hooting stanza; Then chase itself down hill And neigh like Boanerges; Then, punctual as a star, Stop -- docile and omnipotent -- At its own stable door. (Emily Dickenson)