The wall next to my desk is a window, about twelve feet high and fifteen feet wide. It overlooks the UNC campus from high up in this building, which is perched high up on a hill. The sky is a bright blue this morning, the leafless trees are swaying, and the only sounds I’m hearing at the moment are the vents rattling as they pump out the toasty warm air, the click click of my keyboard, the rustle of a newspaper from a coworkers desk. Any second the phone could ring, the elevator bell might signal the arrival of a student or a coworker or a random guy in a suit yapping into his Bluetooth headset, or an email could float into my inbox compelling me to complete some random office-guy task. It’s Friday. Again. Seems like it was just Friday. A few rebels are wearing jeans, rebels because we don’t do that casual Friday thing here at the Business school. It’s just not a very business-y thing to do. But anyway, it’s Friday, so who cares what pants you have on. Friday means I’ll not be very productive today. I’ll goof around here on my blog, looking focused and busy of course, until about ten thirty or so. That’s when I go next door to pick up the mail and, more importantly, a cup of Starbucks coffee. After I sort the mail I’ll take a little coffee break. I brought in a bagel and some cream cheese for my mid-morning snack. At some point I’ll get some work done, I guess. But who cares. It’s Friday. Again. Time really does seem to be speeding up as I get older. It’s freaking me out a little, really. This life, this nine to five, Monday through Friday grind, this live for the weekend sort of life, is like a train rushing down a mountain, picking up speed by the second, heading who the hell knows where at an increasingly alarming rate of speed as the hair grays, the lines around the eyes groove in deeper and deeper, and the sense of “things’ll change for the better as soon as this or that happens and then I’ll be off this train and then maybe things will slow down a little and I’ll finally get a chance to really catch my breath and get some momentum going in this other direction”–that sense swells in the belly, increasing the pressure ever closer to the hypothetical popping point. Or maybe there won’t be a big pop, but the pressure will just hiss away while I sleep and work, and keep sleeping and keep working. Maybe there won’t be a big glorious kaboom after all, but just a series of stale farts squeezed out a little squeak at a time. But who cares. It’s Friday. Again. Today I can meet Jeff at the Open Eye Café after work and shoot the shit for a little while. I have time for that today. And I can grab a burrito at Carrburritos, and read through the Independent Weekly, and go home and play my guitar and maybe watch some TV and have a beer. And maybe my wife is coming to visit me this weekend, and not because I’m actually writing this from a psychiatric hospital but because she’s been in Kentucky finishing her doctorate degree. If she does visit tomorrow, then we can hang out, because tomorrow’s Saturday, and I’ll have time to hang out. Then on Sunday I’m going to finally get that professional massage I’ve been wanting to get for the last eight years. And I can play some more guitar, or go for jog, or watch a movie with my wife (if she’s here). In any event, by the time dinner time rolls around on Sunday I’ll back on the train, thinking about what to make for Monday’s lunch, wondering if I have enough clean socks and underwear to get through the week, through to another Friday. Another Friday… Oh shit, it’s ten thirty. Coffee and bagel time. I’m not sure if I have enough cream cheese for both halves of the bagel, but who cares…
Wide awake at 3am
I had already been at the office for two hours when my buddy Matt sent me this “Death Metal Rooster” video via email. The subject heading read “WAKE UP!!!”
I watched it with the volume muted, to keep up the appearance that I was working on the monthly accounting report. Eventually I did get to working on the report, and the day passed in an uneventful haze. A coworker gave me a ride home, which added about forty-five minutes of precious me-time to my evening. Once home, I decided to finally tackle the job of dismantling my condenser mic to figure out why it was no longer working properly. I was ready to give up more than once, but persisted in taking the mic apart then putting it back together, a process which miraculously resulted in the mic working once more like a charm. Relieved and self-satisfied, I headed off to bed, albeit a bit later than I would have liked.
As often happens, I popped awake at about 2am feeling restless and stiff. I fell into a meditative trance while loosening up my muscles with gentle, subtle micro-movements. After about twenty minutes of this, it happened. Again. A sense of clarity dawned on me so intensely that the last several months of waking life seemed like a coma by comparison. All the life issues I’ve been struggling with felt either completely resolved or else utterly unproblematic. I knew without a doubt what I needed to be doing with my life, how to refocus and realize my full potential and destiny. Part of this crystal clear life plan involved re-immersing myself in my study of Somatics and Integral Psychology, so I ran downstairs to look up a few books online. Flipping open my laptop I noticed a new email. It was from my father-in-law. He had written the obituary for his father, who has just passed away at the age of 94. I knew his father and felt a profound admiration for the man. When I married his granddaughter he gave me the honor of wearing and owning the wedding band he had worn on his finger throughout his more than fifty-year marriage to his wife, who had passed away a few years prior. Reading about the man’s long, full life made me feel even more intensely awake and committed to living my life full-throttle. I could hardly go back to bed at this point, so I picked up my guitar and began to strum a few chords. Within about thirty seconds a song idea came to me that promised to be my best ever creation. I quickly recorded the basic idea then jumped back in bed. It was about 3am by this time. Only an hour had passed, an hour I would normally spend dreaming and drooling.
This was not the first time I’ve caught a glimpse of crystal clear consciousness and I hope it won’t be the last. I knew it would fade. I knew the alarm clock would ring with cruel precision at 6am. I knew I’d have to drag myself through the day in a relative fog, and I knew that by the time I got home I’d barely have the presence of mind left to tap out a hasty blog post about the whole thing.
For whatever reason, I felt the need to post something on Twitter last night before I surrendered to unconsciousness:
I just woke up, as if from a coma of 10 years. Suddenly, everything is possible. Books, albums, written in my head. 3am. Back to sleep?
135 characters — five to spare… Life!
Henry Miller: “Alive to the end”
Amazing. An interview of my hero, Henry Miller, from his dying bed. “Alive to the end.”
Minor Stars Vault
For years I’ve been encouraging Eric Wallen (the heart and soul of Minor Stars and My Dear Ella) to let the world have a listen to his impressive collection of song idea tapes and demo recordings. We’ve been talking about creating an online “vault” of demos and bonus material for so many years that Jack White had time to telepathically steal our ideas and launch his own version.
Well, the time has come and the Minor Stars Vault has been unlocked and launched into cyberspace at long last. Here’s Eric’s announcement and the first two offerings:
The Vault will put on full display the underbelly of Minor Stars and its members. Demos, riffs and jamz from practice, live videos, old abandoned songs, rough mixes of the latest song we’re working on…the stuff that might not otherwise see the light of day but that is often the most interesting and exciting. Anything goes.
Our goal is to add a new Vault post every week. In addition to offering up cool content, the Vault is meant to keep us focused and dedicated to writing and recording music regularly, and to loosen up the stranglehold that I’ve (Eric) always had on material I haven’t considered to be in its “final” form. I’m dropping all that. It’s never gonna be in its final form, or it already is and I don’t know it yet. But it really doesn’t matter, and now it’ll be in the Vault for all to hear.
No regrets
There’s a girl who lived on my block
She wore pigtails and bright purple socks
She could sing before she could talk
She had wings but she’d rather walk
A ghost of a prayer still floats in the air
Keeping me longing from the depths of my despair
I don’t expect a kiss or that you’ll stay the night
or that you wave your hands and make everything alright
I just want you to know when you’re going out that door
I don’t regret a thing
Jeff Mangum – Oh Sister
The reality of the internet still amazes me every day. I was too tired to get out of bed and go to the Dynamite Brothers/Transportation show last night (Sorry dudes, I’m sure it was awesome), but still I get treated to Neutral Milk Hotel songs I’ve never heard before. Awesome.
Jeff Mangum – Two Headed Boy part II – Live at Jittery Joe’s
My favorite Neutral Milk Hotel song. This performance of the “unfinished” version is a real treat. Love the little kid clapping at the end…
Minor Stars launches new website!
The new Minor Stars website— Minorstars.com— is officially up and running, featuring the opening track (The Death of the Sun) off our soon-to-be-released album, The Death of the Sun in the Silver Sea. Listen, download, and share to your heart’s delight.
We’ll be featuring a new song on the site each Monday in November. Explore the site, keep in touch with us on MySpace, Twitter, ReverbNation, and YouTube, and we’ll see you at The Reservoir on December 4th for our next show.
Sunday Dustbin: Naked Eye/Brainstorm
[photo copyright: temples of grey]
This week’s studio noodling combines a section of The Who classic Naked Eye (off Odds & Sods) with some heavy riffing/experimenting with guitar effects. As always, it is what it is, which is how I like my Sunday sessions at Green Desk Studios. Enjoy:
East Burke, Vermont
Gotta love Vermont in the Fall.
My wife and I rendezvoused with her family at her Dad’s cabin in East Burke, a little town known for skiing and its world-class trail system for mountain-biking. We were only there for a couple of days, but it was an awesome time. I hit the bike trails for the first time and was ejected from my vehicle only a few times and without incident. Now I know what a black diamond means when posted on a trail sign.
I don’t think I’ve exerted myself so much since high school. I was beyond ready to throw in the towel several times, my legs bursting with lactic acid from hip to toe, but my 61 year-old father-in-law kept riding—and with a smile on his face—so I couldn’t let on I was so exhausted. Before the trip I jokingly asked him if he’d packed a defibrillator. It never occurred to me that I’d be the one needing it.
I can still taste that crisp, clean mountain air. Here are a few photos: East Burke, VT – October 2009.