you don't have to deal with the dealers

it only gets inconvenient when you want to go home alone.

[be still please]

i realized today that there are people in the world who i couldn't seduce with the judicious application of portastatic songs. i even lust after at least one of them! this was a very startling and upsetting realization to have on the bus whilst sitting next to a rather aromatic undergrad, internets. WHAT DO YOU MEAN, NOT EVERYONE THINKS MAC MCCAUGHAN IS ROMANTIC. >:(


then i listened to mandy moore for a while, so i suppose i can't really talk. my favorite thing about her marriage to ryan adams is that, man, she's going to make a really bitter amazing break-up album when that whole thing collapses. and i love mandy moore way more than i love ryan adams, no lie. so i will be sorry for her pain but i am also looking forward to hearing mandy moore's personal version of "don't use my broken heart".

[i got songs that make you cry]

sometimes you reach a point where you stop telling the stories because they don't make sense outside of the moment, jokes about bowls of pad thai and AWEsome and think sexy and tom selleck naked, because you look up and you realize that you're happier to be in the moment than you would be telling the stories about the moment that just passed.


in other news, some boys i love have recently, unprompted, taken to calling me a nickname i haven't heard from anyone since before The Ex and i split up. it's a nickname i associate strongly with a particular set of guys i went to college with, and it's sort of startling but mostly just comforting to hear it from the mouths of other people, unconnected people, new people who love me how i am now.

[a real soft girl who's having real hard times]

woke up with craig finn singing there's always other boys, there's always other boyfriends (and you can make them like you) in my head this morning, and have proceeded to listen to my hold steady albums in chronological order, once i back-listened to my podcasts.


there's something fascinating and sad about their music; i think it's the kind of music i needed when i was in college. back then, a friend once called me "a hot mess", which was pretty accurate at the time -- i liked drama for drama's sake, the rush of causing a scene just because i could. these days i mostly don't feel either, but i'd rather lose the messy part with the hot than keep both.

i defined myself by being a mess for most of my life, i was crazy in that strange desperate attractive sort of way, the way that makes men want to fix you and then go crazy themselves when they can't, and it still sometimes startles me when -- even if i can't figure out how to talk to guys like a normal human being, even if i still sometimes cry over stupid things without provocation -- it startles me when i look at my life and realize i'm not so much of a mess anymore. it isn't what defines me. i don't know what does, or if anything needs to. but that's okay.

[you're the shit and i'm knee deep in it]

i had the most lovely, relaxing, happy weekend, but tonight i can't stop listening to frightened rabbit's "my backwards walk" and it's making me inexplicably bone-tired and sad.


sometimes even all the happiness and contentment with my life can't combat the fact that i wish i had someone to keep me warm at night.

[he said i love you and i'm proud of you both]

i had this moment tonight, where i was backreading the geeky funny blog of a local band i love, where i was just completely bowled over by how lucky i am to live where i live, and to have a job that pays the bills and doesn't suck my whole soul out and allows me to see as much live music as i do, and to have a passion that consumes me.


i live in this place that isn't a city like a lot of people think of cities, but we have this music scene where all these amazing people are making this totally transcendent music, music of all noisy happy folky indie bluegrass country rap metal punk rock varieties. we have all these smart funny interesting talented people, and when they're not making music they go out and they drink shitty beer and they sing neil young covers with their friends' bands and they wear ugly shirts and they kiss their wives, and they post stupid shit to their blogs and they take pictures of their cats and their bandmates making faces and they put them on flickr, and their days jobs are cooler than mine but they are just people like i am, and the things they do, the music they play in our venues and the music they try to make in studios, all of that inspires me to make the best photos that i can make with my camera and my slightly off-center tilted framing and my ironic fondness for pbr and the way i smell when i come home from a great night at the pour house (like beer and cigarettes and like i got hugged by sweaty musicians).

it inspires me to be as kick-ass of a human being as they are.

it was this moment of complete power, of total happiness, where i felt like i could do anything. climb mountains. get out of debt. shoot an eight piece band lit only by a single red light at the 506. fall in love.

[you alone were meant for me]

i am desperately ready for spring to happen, which, while it happens earlier in the nc than it does in many other places, is still at least six weeks off. spring means the following things: national tour schedules ramping back up at local venues; college baseball in the tar heels' beautiful new renovated stadium that is not in cary and therefore five minutes away in bad traffic, not forty five; things that are green. last week at least the cold was tempered by brilliant sunshine and blue skies, but today is grey and sad looking. it makes me want to sleep.


the following things are good about this upcoming week: several excellent shows; the fact that it is the first week of 2009 that will not start with a carolina basketball loss; president-elect barack obama becomes president barack obama. also, i have tomorrow off, which is bad in terms of paycheck but good in terms of going out to take photos, if it's warmed up at all.

sam cooke and i are just going to try and get through this gloomy sunday, first.