if i die an old maid

If I die an old maid, would it not be better for the sake of creating art? Shouldn’t one always wonder about those old loves who got away? Speculating and musing make for great sparks in the imagination. Unfulfilled destiny gives way to great acting! You live through your characters everything you don’t achieve in reality. Maybe I will become a monk. Crucify myself for art making. If only I found discipline though. It’s a beast I can’t tame. I prefer thinking to doing. Not a great quality at times. Really a terrible quality. A killer. 

It could be a bad idea to live for art.

“If you were in a burning house and there was a cat and a Rembrandt, what would you save? The cat…you would save the cat, because the cat is alive. The art is dead. It’s just paint on a canvas, ink on a page. To live for art is to deny life. It’s just to destroy life.”

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Cicely 1992

nothingness

In the Great Lull I find my eye balls moving furiously under my closed lids. And I drift as if my back was against the wet of the sea and I hear the depth of it rumbling and groaning below me in terrifying yet alluring sounds. And the waves barely lift, they just hum back and forth carrying me on. Carrying us all on in a slow way. Slowly we go to the destination. You can barely see it when you’re lying down. You can’t lift your head when you are doing the back float. If you lift it, your limbs go under and then you have to tread furiously to keep yourself up. So keep on drifting, dreamer. Drift and dream. And go on lifeless, loveless, drinkless, sexless. Cause in the Great Lull you are like a nun. You just breathe and stare at the sky humbly. You write words in it with your eyes. It can seem like a bad state to be in. But its a state of nothingness and nothingness can lead to wherever you want. So let it be good. And write your dreams in the sky even though your dreams are dreams and not life. No boats pass by, no music to inspire. But nothingness is a key to deeper things. It’s a key to a new song. You will see. You will know it. 

a lovely lull

I’ve been in a great lull lately. I haven’t written music in a while. I thought that would drive me crazy, but it’s actually been a good thing. I don’t know what this means, but I know that I used to be such a control freak when it comes to goals and dreams. Now I just don’t care that much. It’s a nice space to be in. 

I actually found something new to work on. It seemed like a tangent at the time or a distraction. But now I’m realizing it’s the main road I am on. Well, the main road for now. Cause I would like to get back to my band. But somewhere in the middle of the witching hour between my dreams and my insomnia (which is pleasantly fading), I found a script for a short film. I really did find it at 4:00 AM. I woke up from an insane dream, I literally woke myself up to pull myself out of the the unsettling dream. And the idea came to me, I saw the characters, I saw frames of it. I typed it up into my phone with my eyelids at half mast. I really wanted to sink back into my bed, but the more I typed, the more ideas came spinning out of me. I’m really excited to see how it writes itself. It’s coming together slowly. There’s not much I can say here about it. But hopefully in the next year I will be getting it together.

:-)

All good ideas arrive by chance. 
Max Erns

Nighttime is really the best time to work. All the ideas are there to be yours because everyone else is asleep. 
Catherine O’Hara

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats. 
Howard Aiken

There is no idea so stupid or hackneyed that a sufficiently-talented writer can’t get a good story out of it. 
Lawrence Watt-Evans

and...sleep.

Sweet, sweet insomnia. I’m so delusional. But not anymore I decided I will snap out of it. I’m gonna magically come out of it (I know that’s not possible, just allow me to sink further into delusion please). I’m addiction prone to the night. I’m not even trying to write a song. But I did find something at the piano today. I sang it into my old school tape recorder.

I sit at home and eat from a can

Knowing that I’ll never see you again

I’m finding a new energy in me right now. A bit of a resolve. A “fuck you world”.  I don’t know what I’m talking about. How do you not know what your own insides are? I don’t. I think a witch doctor could explain me to me best. A gypsy woman once told me I have psychic abilities. She also told me I’m a good, honest person who doesn’t cause troubles, but trouble always comes to me. Sounded like a gospel song. I gotta write that song…hmm. Oh, but it would be so much more interesting if she told me I was a mischievous rebel excommunicated from my hometown. In some ways that is true though. I guess I would believe anything she told me. She could tell me I’m light and it would be true and she could tell me I’m dark and that is true too. I can be either or. I like to be extremes. It’s the actor in me I guess. I dive too deep into characters all the time and I’m not even playing any of these anywhere. I guess I need to start booking more acting jobs soon. I’ve been on hold in that area. 

“Seeing Stars”

Everyday I wake up

It’s the same I wake up

With stars in my eyes

And I’m going blind

You can tell me something

But your eyes say nothing

Looking so unkind

I’m losing my mind

It’s your fault 

It’s your fault that I’m in love

two glasses of wine in...

And not much more left. Well, plenty left. However, not much for lightweight me to become incoherent. 

Wish I could find an original thought at the moment, but I can’t. I’m up against a wall. Oh, but a pretty wall it is. A wall of texture, spaces between the bricks, flowers growing in the cracks. But I’m not interested. I’m interested in going somewhere. Not slamming my head here. I think if I stare in the crevices I can find a million places to go. It’s the small things that matter, right? Who am I quoting? No one. Of course.

I have photographs strewn along my piano. Photos that are not in frames. Photos that should not be in frames. Well, some could be. But the crazy one of Chucky Cheese’s from the early 1990’s is not really framable. But it brings out a reaction in me. I do not know why. Perhaps I know why, but this is not the appropriate venue to discuss. My older sister is in this picture. It’s an ordinary day. Well, it was my baby sister’s birthday. My older sister is holding a camcorder the size of Russia and pointing it at a table. At the table I can see my mother wearing a blue floral dress, her back to the camera, a fork in her hand, something unknown on her plate. In front of her is my grandfather, tall, grand and intimidating as I remember him (RIP sweet friend). He’s slightly bent over a plate. His face is not hidden from the camera, but his expression is giving no clues. He’s holding the crust of a pizza in his hand. And his sister in law is seated next to him, I remember her. She’s my dad’s aunt, she came from Egypt and stayed with us at that time. She stayed in the extra room in the basement. It was creepy down there. I would never have done it. I hate that room in the basement. I hate that bloody basement. 

The rest of the picture is arbitrary nonsense. It’s a mess of people wearing early 90’s fashion, sitting at long tables like mannequins stuck in non-human expressions. You can see the stage in the distance. I see the big fat Gorilla on stage. I was scared of that thing. But surely I wasn’t afraid when this pic was taken, cause it was the baby sister’s birthday party and I had grown up just a bit. I think I see myself in this picture. I’m not sure if it is me. But I’m in the distance with that familiar big frizzy hair. And my mouth is open in mid-sentence. But of course I would be in mid-sentence wouldn’t I? And someone would capture that. And that would be the portrait of my life. Me in mid-sentence. In the in between. Stuck between the past and the future. And the present is just an uncomfortable position. It’s a waiting room. 

Damn my moon sign! (I’m a scorpio moon) I never believed these things, but I think it’s true. I’m way too intense with every kind of emotion I experience. 

These pictures on my piano remind me of things. I go into them when I sit there playing arpeggiations. I know who I was. I remember those from which I came. You can spend your whole life wondering, “who are these from which I come from?” Ah, but you are that from which you came. But am I? 

Maybe one more glass and I will find another tangent to take me farther from the answer. It’s more comfortable to dive into pillows of questions rather than slam yourself on the hard pavement of answers. I don’t want to know anything. 

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You can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and still come out completely dry.  Most people do.  ~Norman Juster

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.  ~Bertrand Russell

To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of ignorance.  ~A. Bronson Alcott

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe.  I dispute that.  I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.  ~Frank Zappa


Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.  ~Albert Einstein

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press play

Sometimes I don’t do well with life in “play”. I hit rewind a lot and go over things that have already happened and I like fast forward cause I live in anticipation most of the time. I’m looking for the next thing. It’s a curse of working free lance and a curse of creating art. You’re always kinda in your head musing to the point that you are losing the present moment. I have to remind myself to hit the play button and just be a part of life as it unravels.

If I stand at the edge of the night, will I see into the next day? No. The present is a friend. The future is a worry-ridden enemy. It’s a false comfort to stand at the edge of everything looking at what is coming next. It’s why I think I give up writing songs so many times through the year. I’m on and off. It’s a violent relationship. Writing seasons don’t last long for me. I think its cause its filled with so much of that anticipation that keeps me away from what is happening now. I feel like I turned my blog into an explication of Eckhart Tolle’s teachings. Oprah, are you reading?

But there is some truth to this. I say some cause I do’nt fully trust myself when I get analytical like this. I have some major turning wheels in my head. Those stop the play button too. Pause. Yes pause. I like living my life in pause. It gives me a second to freeze the world and think. I like thinking. It’s the same problem though as rewind and fast forward. The same fear involved. 

in.som.nia

Insomnia= something from the BFG’s witching hour (Roald Dahl). And it becomes like a peak shift effect for my fantastical thoughts and weird twisted art (it gets weird at this hour). There’s something about this late night restlessness that a creator craves like a drug and something about the sun that makes it melt as if a passing fog. And then it all becomes vague like you were unaware and you really don’t remember that trance. But for now all is grossly heightened. You kinda accept it as reality, but it isn’t reality right now. You kinda like its darkness, its sick but you are so attracted you can’t help drink it in. 

Everything is bigger in the witching hour. I wouldn’t flinch if I did see a BFG outside my window right now. But why, oh why, oh why can I not write one lyric tonight? My piano is a waste. Had some crack heads move it into my place. I’m serious. I went for the cheap. Got the piano for free from some grumpy old man in Sheepshead Bay. Never met the man. Just hired my dudes (never met them before hand either) who showed up smoking cigarettes in my apartment with the piano sitting in a truck outside. They walked through like they live here, assessed the doorways like they knew what they were talking about (they didn’t). They were the strangest hodgepodge of people. They hauled that thing up the stairs like a dead body, heaving it recklessly over each step. Mainly the skinny guy with the big hair and big baggy shorts was lifting. And it was pretty warped when it got here. I gave them the $200 cash and watched them walk off. And its music eludes me, I just stare at it begging it to give me something. I’m tired of being an artist, you’re always fishing for a line, fishing for a melody. And it always comes from pain. Even the happy songs come from pain. I stupidly want things to be easy. But maybe I don’t. I think I like difficult.

There was a time when I would jump without thinking. Two years ago. Jumped. Got on a plane, went to London. No plans, no friends. No place to stay until the night before my flight. I lived everywhere. Couches, guest rooms, had an 81 year old roommate in South Kensington, lived with a lovely English family in Hammersmith with their three red head children and feisty black cat, house sat for a friendly couple from New Zealand at their studio in Chiswick, got stuck on the street one night but with a quick text landed in Rick’s guest room, hopped over to Omar’s futon shortly after. I wasn’t always happy. But the jumping, the risking was great. 

Right when my saturn return hit, I was back on a plane (immigration’s decision) to NY. This was after an 8 hour flight TO london after I took a short break in the states. Then I had a lovely ten hour “break” sitting in detention at immigration. Back to NY they said, so after skipping across the Atlantic once, I did it again after answering a slew of ridiculous questions, eating wilted sandwiches, losing the trust of the people I lived with and talking to the other “criminals” in that nice smelly detention room for hours and hours. And I went back to the same couch I was on just a year before that in NYC. Back to square one again. Back to the same risks. Thanks Saturn for the run around.

Always jumping, jumping. Risking, fishing, trying, prying, plucking, yearning, groping for truth, for words for a song to sing, for a sound. And then what? Start again. Start again. Never satisfied. I wish I could just “arrive” as a musician and an actor. But its a journey. I’m trying to be more journey oriented, I’ve been very results oriented in the past. I wonder, will I be doing my best work at the end of my life? Is this work really that important? Is love a better goal? Or can we have it all? Love is an art too. Pulling away, giving space, coming together. There’s a time to argue and a time to make love. A time to give freely and a time to stand up and say what you need. I’m not trying to quote Ecclesiastes here. I’m not so fond of the tension in creating art or in creating balance. I just want to wander down a quiet stream, my legs kicked over a boat, just sailing with my fishing rod hanging over effortlessly catching things like its nothing. Its hard work to stay inspired. Maybe hard work to stay in love too. Is the artist forced to pick one over the other? I’m opening up a can of worms. Too many subjects.

How to tie this up? Insomnia at least keeps you in that sedated spot where anything flows freely out of you. Are thoughts really honest in the middle of the night? I would think they are more laced with worries and anticipations that are too exaggerated. Its the witching hour. One of these nights I’m gonna write a good song. 

“When I am with you, we stay up all night,
When you’re not here, I can’t get to sleep.
Praise God for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them.”
—Rumi
From Essential Rumi
translated by Coleman Barks

Tuesday July 21st, 4:00 AM

rehearsal was GREAT!

HEY!

My bandmate and I had a GREAT rehearsal the other day. He just returned from Europe. Both of us were kinda in a lull musically and not really coming up with anything new. I spent most of May acting in short films so my songwriting took a backseat. And he was away, so we were doing our own thing. 

We have a show soon at The Delancey on Wednesday June 10th at 7:00 pm on the dot, early show. Go to www.thedelancey.com for more info. 

We got together to refresh our set a couple days ago and just like magic wrote two new songs spontaneously! Sometimes a little break can bring the inspiration back. :-) Hope to see you next week. 

C