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.

[and i won't back down]

today, while i was standing outside my office getting some fresh air, i saw an older gentleman with a large format film camera. it was a beautiful camera, and he was rocking an excellent fedora. he took some pictures of the abandoned bar that i'm obsessed with and we talked about cameras for ten minutes before he went on his way and i went back to drafting database specs.


i'm also obsessed with trolling the raleigh craigslist photo listings constantly. i'm looking for a cheapcheapcheap 50mm/f1.8 lens for boomer, my film SLR. i want to know what i can do with that lens on a film camera before i commit to either an f1.8 (cheap) or an f1.4 (beautiful) for six, the dslr.

also i am listening to tom petty and watching oregon/okstate, the pacific life bowl. thus far: no whales. tom petty and cameras, awesome; this game, less so.

[dreamed we were walking down the aisle]

sometimes i dream about photos i've never taken -- shots i missed, or shots i've never seen. i think maybe they should make me sad, these dreams, but mostly they just make me feel peaceful. i think about those photos more than i think about the ones i actually do take.

[from a pay phone in la]

just give me a beer and give me a bed
chase the demons out of my head
play me a song and sing me to sleep
and meet me in the middle of my dreams

[don't you know that's okay]

until someone loves you, i'll keep you safe

[one more shadow leans against the wall]

it is very, very quiet in the ch today, all the students gone for the holiday weekend a day early, and probably half the university employees, too. it seems like there's even less car traffic than usual, or maybe that was just the early morning feel of things. the sky is very blue.


my boss has failed to appear thus far today, which has relegated my day to a total useless waste; i would rather be home in sweatpants watching sportscenter than in the office, but in the office i am and in the office i will stay until at least 1 pm, because it's good to leave the house sometimes.

tomorrow my parents are putting my new nikon D60 into my hands, and i can't think about that too much or i start to tip over with barely restrained unabashed joy. instead i'm distracting myself by looking at old pentax 35mm cameras on ebay and reading photo blogs.

[is there sunlight on your bed]

street photography -- taking pictures of strangers -- is one of the photographic things that scares me most. that said, i may try this project after the new year, resolve to get better at doing the photographic things that freak me.


that, and also convince the american aquarium boys to let me shoot a series of promo photos that involve them wearing suits and standing in the shallow end of a swimming pool. and also have a real official photo show somewhere that strangers will look at my pictures.

[don't you know it's your disaster now?]

the south san gabriel/centro-matic show last night was so unbelievably good, so unbelievably exactly what i needed (will's huge cinematic noisy complex music thundering through my chest), that i can't even manage to put words to it. not the best show i've seen all year, but maybe the one that was the most necessary.


and then i had this conversation with will afterwards:

me: blah blah blah love the new album blah blah blah glad you came back because we missed you in june, we were out of town seeing someone else.
will: yeah? who?
me: jason isbell.
will: :D :D :D :D YOU SAW A BETTER SHOW, GOING TO SEE JASON.

will johnson, you are trufax my favorite this morning.

[adding up the cost of these dreams]

i've had wildly swinging moods all day, and it's so exhausting in so many ways. i woke up elated and energized -- OBAMA PRESIDENCY -- and then i swung back to panic attack and frustration and loneliness -- racist butthurt republicans at work, several systems not working the way they're supposed to, getting yelled at for something that wasn't my fault -- and then i told a. all the things that made me scared and sad, and i walked out of the office and it was suddenly sunny, rainy skies clearing like hope, and surprisingly warm, even for north carolina in november, and i feel peaceful and centered again.


i managed to bookend the election with a drive-by truckers show on the eve before -- patterson hood in a barack & roll t-shirt, a gut-punching version of "angels and fuselage" (and i'm scared shitless of what's coming next) -- and a mountain goats show the night after, john darnielle playing songs that make me cry in what's close enough to his current home to be the hometown show.

i keep feeling like something's about to break, be it good or bad, and i am just waiting. i have things to look forward to, i have things that make me sad and scared and angry. it's all a very delicate balance, and it takes all the energy i have to keep it hanging there. it's worth waiting, i think.

[you ain't playin' for free]

the weather here has gone from cool to crisp, and this morning when i was waiting for the bus the sky was clear but somehow washed out, the same color as cigarette smoke and my breath while i fiddled with my ipod and tried to figure out if it was the ipod or the headphones or user error that was causing the left channel not to play. now it's blue, and still clear, and still crisp outside, the sort of weather that tastes good to breathe. (it was the headphones, for the record.)


i have a lot to do today, interesting complex work before a few more weeks of necessary but boring and tedious work, and i am listening to a sun records three disc box set. tampa bay beat boston. i have a roll of 400ISO in the camera right now, and tomorrow i may go use it on the cemetery on campus, if it's sunny.

aside from the headphones, today is okay.

[won't somebody save us]

i think our little coffee maker is broken, because even though i plugged it in and loaded it with coffee and water this morning and then even actually remembered to turn it on, it refused to make me a pot even though i stood in the kitchen and stared balefully at it for ten minutes. eventually i put the still dry grounds and fresh water into the big coffee pot and called it good, but coffee pot. >:(


the little coffee pot's refusal to do its job is actually a fairly accurate metaphor for my professional life at the moment, right down to me staring balefully at all the people who are making my job harder rather than easier, and even though i should probably put real pants on and pick up my pay check sooner rather than later, for the moment i'm going to listen to centro-matic and drink spiked coffee and sit on the porch.

[making money you can't spend ain't what bein' dead's about]

i watched football and drank beer and texted a. about crazy truckers fans, and then mike cooley made me cry, but what else is new?


it's been more than a year, and he's moved on, and even though i ended it, i called it quits, i keep turning around and finding these scars on my heart and my head and my soul, scars that he left there because i was never good enough or pretty enough or presentable enough. i'm fucking lonely, and i don't trust anybody not to hurt me enough to even try being not lonely.

i'm trying to change my life, and i can't figure out how to do that when i can't stop being angry that he could tell me he loved me and that i wasn't good enough in the same breath.

i don't know how to move on from something i wanted to be over, and that sucks the hardest. i keep falling in love with men i can't have because it's safer than actually putting my heart on the line.

[i wouldn't even mind that war damn eagle is a dumb fucking fight call.]

games at auburn -- and i snicker every time they call auburn/lsu the tiger bowl -- make me wish i really had a sweet boy from alabama to fall in love with. he could be a 'bama fan or he could unironically chant war damn eagle, as long as he took me to the iron bowl. i'd even wear orange or crimson if i had someone to curl up with during the espn saturday night game.

frankly, i'd settle for a wake forest fan right about now, as long as he was sweet tempered and interested in kissing me.



i know a lot of you don't get it, but college football in the south makes my heart and my stomach flip over in that way that happens when you love something too much.

[may you one day carry me home]

oh the sweetest winds, they blow across the south


ryan adams is sort of (completely) the world's biggest douche, but sometimes he writes lines that dig right up under my rib cage, in that soft spot next to my heart.