Video Break #4

Just stumbled across this video entitled "I Met the Walrus" by account imetthewalrus...and had to link it immediately. 

The bio for it read: "In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon's every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon's boundless wit, and timeless message."

Daily headphones: "Better in Time" by Leona Lewis, "Addicted" by Saving Abel, and for some related Christmas cheer John Lennon's version of "So This is Christmas"

(note: see below post for weekend events)

Rounds

I might be late for something not scheduled - cause everyone else knows the rules. 

I might have writer's block thick as mortar, and not enough time to call out sick. My ballot might be getting a few poor reviews.

And you can tell me what it's like to be something else, to be something mathematical and ordinary....cause that's when I might listen and forget.

But then the next ticket gets punched --- nod to the teller, walk through the turntable and keep up the motion. It's another round to risk. 

I spent the painfully crisp weekend judging 10 rounds worth of young high schoolers anxiously trying to make something of themselves. They gathered in the hallways talking as if future execs/actors...in slightly off-fitted and ironed business suits. 

(I was a hired judge @ the annual George Mason Univ High School Forensics Tournament. click title for video) Ballots. Placing. Time signals. Dropping rounds. Awards. Coaches. DI, PRO, EXT, DEC, ST, IMPR, POE, DUO, etc..

There were minutes spent hiding in the judge's lounge (with panera food!), breakfast with YouTube videos, careful runs across the snowy campus to a round, covert phone calls to and from my brother in the tab room, ...and all around people that knew where they were going, without advance notice. 

                                And of course that infamous piece or two that makes the tournament. 

For 3 days I went MIA from the bullshit and commentaries in Towson, and from my own obligations, traffic lights, and job. 

At 6:30 in the morning on the 2nd day of the tournament my brother and his 3 friends bolted across dicy sidewalks in suit&tie and wool trenchcoats, (with me in tow)

...and long after I zoomed the Capitol Beltway for Baltimore, they're there; with their team. Picking out ties, making "noods in the Tdome" and traveling around the country improving their craft. They've decided something, and skipped some of the nonsense.

                              They say "gentleman is coming back". 

Hey, who cares that the voice escapes and cracks, the labels aren't labeled, the feet tired from speeding to the next temporary place, the finals looming treacherously. 

Who cares what they're saying out there, its all subjective. 

It may just all be rounds of motion, and I'm glad I didn't hide. 

I'm glad we burrowed under blankets.

The semester is ending, and I can't tell where it's going. 

But regardless, I'm ready to watch the snow fall and forget to count calories. I'm ready to finish unpacking the thousands of boxes worth of Christmas decorations in the other room, light the last Advent candle, and check out the new "French Press" coffee shop by the library (link)

I'm ready for laziness and eggnog, lasagna and holly branches, party dresses and wrapping paper, and time to indulge in my own art (without time constraints). Cause long ago I decided something.

Daily headphones: Keane's "Spiralling", and Blue October's "Do You Ever Wonder?"

This weekend (sorry been slacking on sharing ahead of time):

• Thurs. Dec 11th - Center Stage College Night - "Caroline or Change" musical, discounted tickets and free food @ reception
• Fri. Dec 12th - Halfway to the Moon, Apathy Eulogy, Fairgreen, and Oh! the Story, play @ Recher Theatre. 
• Sat Dec 13th - All Time Low, Cities, and Brighter Shades @ St Johns Hamilton. Tickets at door only. 
• Sat Dec 13th - 98 ROCK presents Saving Abel @ the Recher. 
• Sun Dec 14th - Holiday Concert @ the Walters (FREE admission)

Full

There's playtime in the air as the holidays tumble on in. Suddenly old names are ringing on your phone, and things just get pushed aside & forgiven-in the nighttime celebrations. Without explaining, without making time apart known, and without taking up the quiet tones (and longer minutes) that should be devoted to important conversations. 

But the glasses are full.

...Oh, the lights are going up on the trees along the road! I see Christmas trees, menorahs, and bows in some windows! Oh, it seems like the new night's twinkling is a cure, is hope bottled, or, is something of an excuse to smile....like walking hand-in-hand over a bridge and through the streets.

Window displays, home-cooked feasts, parades/games on TV, shopping splurges, revamped mall. The first snowfall falls early and piles, and we adjust to feeling full. 

Full to the cup/waistband's edge, full to the brim with something that grows sickly later---Maybe that extra serving wasn't a good choice. 

Maybe no one has a clear mind, when they feel so full.

Maybe the celebrating, and the road, turns dicy-and we make it so? 

Maybe there's something slightly forgotten/abandoned (besides diets)?

                                 The other weekend I sat watching a friend's band play a rare acoustic show, and sitting indian-style on the same carpet two little boys sat memorized for the entire 20min set. One watched motionless, they other air-drummed to the beat. They sat-to my amusement, completely riveted in their tiny frames and tiny experiences, at the idea of something magical. Just for that moment. Just for that moment, at five years old, they were full with something that gets lost on us young adults. They seemed inspired, they seemed collected, they seemed safe, and somehow...thankful. 

And me, I almost forget to be thankful for what I'm thankful for now, I almost forget who I'm coming home to. I almost forget the safe routes. 

In all the movement, the choices, and the busying dizzying ideas trying to formulate; I almost forget where I am.

I almost forget next year I might be very far away from Baltimore-without the chance to even come home to the 410. 

So where do we go when the first break ends and we wait for the next? 

You can remember the past year; smile at the good stories made, shiver at old caresses, go forward after mistakes... and really, you can only be so very thankful that in all your searching, all your filling, you don't destroy yourself.....or someone else. 

Then, when your hands shake with cold-unlocking the door so late and disorderly, forget how different home becomes each year....because Dear, 35th street will always be lit. 

And every year the season will come like squelling children. The finals will end, the papers (hopefully) finished, the sanity (hopefully) saved, and the great traditions (hopefully) kept.

We're getting closer to a fresh start, caught-up sleep, dressy occasions, and more days off! 

...we go home in so many ways, because next year can't be known. 

Daily headphones: The Fray's "Dead Wrong", an old classic from the Pretty in Pink movie-Otis Redding's "Try a Little Tenderness", and Kayne's "Coldest Winter"

(Poem-Something On the Wind)

In honor of the revamped layout, I will brave sharing one of my poems.  Newest one at the moment (need to get back to writing more frequently), and the title is still a working one. Hope you enjoy it. 


The wind is calling the names of lovers not yet;
Like the motion of shaking sheets,
On the grassy ground above a cellar-
That grows mossy with the dripping bacteria.
And I'm cold inside.

Those Inquisition candles now burn only a reader's mind.
Stimulating particles growing macabre,
Growing sad with the waking, darker hours.
I'm stung a hundred times in one dream;
Waking confused within the buzz.

So I roll, upon the safest convent tile-
Smiling insanely between the moss
In thoughts of my own novels.
And reach, to caress...
The place for listening beyond refurbished windows-
For names upon the wind.

And reach, to caress...
In a hushed encounter by the door.
Followed separately by premature ice
thats grows like mold

Cluttered Rooms

There's a room that's overstuffed to the very top, and every dust-crammed corner seems to hide something. Every stacked, crammed, and shelved book holds the oil fingerprints and strokes of reader's past. And the inhabitants never notice that the fox-hole pathways are growing smaller, and the tile is getting black and cracked. 

I've never walked barefoot in that dwelling. 

But I've been waking as if it makes up the particles of my brain. Coming down the avalanche of back-to-back migraines. Trying weakly to scratch the cobwebs from my eyes, while so many falling books (of ideas un-defined) dent my skull and seem to reverberate. 

I'm forgetting to stop and decide, unable to commit what'll bring the right returns; running back and forth between the swells of weekends. 

And outside in the misty cold there's postcards, posters, and fliers stapled upon the same telephone poles. They all seem so stenciled, so emphatic, so inviting, I'm almost convinced they've already been lived. 

The pencil bleeds into planner pages, begging not to be scratched out - so much could happen in a night. It's that intoxicating feeling in the sight of orange street lamps, and excuses to find your breath visible.

Baltimore itself is stiffening up between swells. Like a feast it's bracing for holiday returns, hiding the invites from public view, and pulling us together; closer into the dark where the airplane lights don't reach. Where the visitors never look. 

It'll be a little more overcrowded soon. It'll hustle and bustle, and smell like cinnamon. 

It got to be winter so quickly this year.

And everyone is saying "I'm tired" like its something new. Tired. Tired. Tired. They're tired. We're tired.....or are we just exhausted by our endless to-do lists? Are we bored?

There's a jittery alternative; the addictive, provocative notion of organizing the chaos of ideas into creation. (if only you can make it through the rooms, and over the sore muscles). And holidays approach with time to sleep.

So, smile at a fine semester, and the events of its close! Keep adding stories to the shelves...even if they wind up in a heap---they went written. 

Daily headphones: The Script's "We Cry". And for added fun...clip from a Guy Fawkes party a few friends took me to last weekend: 

Video Break#3

It's amazing to live through events that will be written into history books; that we can recap in whispered excited tones when all the hairs are grey and the bones tired. And here, it feels joyous this time. 

New things approach; with the 44th president, the year 2009, and all the sparkling of the holiday season.

Wish I could have been at this celebration. Cya Jan 20th in DC!

A Vote, a Name

There's a huge weight of anxiousness racking the brain waves right now. It's been hovering and making the conversation failed. Now add on top.... outside there's a catastrophe - of an entire nation waiting in suspense. Opposing sides. Nothing left but to wait, for the future of the next four years. For the invisible future of ballots cast or un-cast. 

For change. 

But what are we voting on? What do we cling to in the last minutes before midnight?

Sometimes it feels like a machine of jittery results. A camera flash. A shaking-head motion that doesn't provide any more answers than a tease. 

In the end we reach for answers, for rationalizations, for soothing thoughts. Ache to feel satisfied.

But we reach. Putting trust, faith, and even our hearts in the hands of people we may never completely know (or even meet). 

It happens a thousand times in a lifetime. 

We vote not just for lying politicians, but for lies, love, and humanity.

"Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!" -John Proctor, in the Crucible

And maybe that's all that survives...a name. 

Maybe that's what we vote for -  the name itself. 

Or do we pick, jittery, in the hopes of what the name could posses to our lives? 

It's the name that survives. The name backs itself.

Then, terrifyingly a reputation could prove infinitely weighty. It could destroy and save, just as the soul does, the art does, and the soft touch does. 

I wake to my own name.

But in the last minutes before midnight - does any of it matter beside the feeling you're left with? 

Does any of the facts really matter if you're left feeling teased and deceived, confused and baffled, stressed and pressed, or most rarely; adventurous, blissful, and understood? 

It's a risk worth taking. It's a reach must extended. 

There's always a winner, a loser, and the one who didn't vote at all. 

Tomorrow we'll have the results...but not the answers.

Daily headphones: Katy Perry's "Hot n Cold", and Metro Station's "Shake it" (love that they joined the party this weekend) for hyper-relief. And New Amsterdam's classic winter-approaching song "Hanging on for Hope". 

Exchange*

What's the exchange rate these days? There's high-tech, high-profile, high-exposure rates of communication zooming past us at the rate of an old hang-over....and it all gets mushed up. In the fibers of everything I don't want other people's opinions on, or the new dialogues that feel like relaxing finally. I have to retrace the verbatim quotes, and the word-for-word phrases that once created some wonderful reaction. Last night or last year, going up and down 83, 495, 50/301, and 702. 

We try to capture the words spoken outside one's own mind. 

"...talk is rich, even when it sounds cheap: a mighty means of measuring and asserting power, of confirming one's place in the scheme of things" (Ben Bratley, NY times issue 10/24/08, pg C6) 

So maybe that's it-the rich blanket-phrase of "the scheme of things", the "it" in life, that keeps speech exchanging. The currency equivalency changing, the trains running, the tires spinning, the traffic lights flickering, and the people trying for....something. 

But then sometimes I'd like a pause. I'd like a sign painted across my very clothing reading: "", (like the saturday afternoon hiding in a perfect corner in Starbucks, headphone-clad, hot cocoa in hand, and paper spread about the tiny round table. Do not disturb-you're ruining my mellow creepy old men). 

And I'm wondering, walking away, ...what prompts someone to pick up a "how are you?", a friendship, a project, a book, or a phone? Is it the need to hear someone's voice and response (nearby through w/e mode), or is it a cheaper substitution for real touch? Real feel?

What matters more--the kindred souls, or kindred hands? 

The friends you create with, or the friends you remember with, or the friends you play with?

Exchange. Exchange for me the money poorly spent, for the priceless penniless things. Exchange the mistakes, for the times of proven correctness. Exchange the silence for speech. Exchange words for...active quiet. 

Still this weekend (sorry i've been slacking on these lately): 

-"The Crucible" at TU, see drama website for times . I hear it's well worth the $7 cost for student tickets ($12 otherwise)

- Sat. Oct 25th - sold out Pepper show at the Recher

Daily headphones: Ingrid Michealson's "Way I am". Warning: it will stay in your head for hours after one play. And local fellas the Hint's "Things we do in the Dark". In response to multiple questions- this song and cd IS on itunes, buy it. 

(400w essay-"Still")

To a certain group of nautical friends, and a certain place... <3  

Still

On rare nights the fog hangs still by the Bay, making everything drip and crawl like a weathered rope.
It clogged thick the trees, the bugs, and the rusty fan on a chipped wood ceiling above.
Underneath my borrowed shorts the old picnic tabletop was soft with something like dew.
I leaned back on my hands carefully and stretched a little.
It didn’t help; the heat was still gross, and enough to hate.
So I counted mosquito bites on my legs. I’m allergic and there were enough to worry. But each was a war wound from a previous night; a cooler night spent debating, drinking, and stargazing by the water’s edge.

Surrounding me, the outdoor wood pavilion was littered with picnic tables of old childhood friends. The same friends who stole into the shadows of trees, or the sanctuary of the pavilion, on the nights we came together.
No one tried to compete with the fog, the approaching waves, or the music from two guitars and a ukulele.

I fidgeted every now and then.


Just a few feet away an unseen wave spoke like another friend, catching between concrete rocks. I turned, leaned, and tried to see where the night sky met the Bay. It was hopeless. But I could still feel it there.
I could even smell it there.
A guitar string went “piink” and snapped. Someone groaned and the music paused. Some others shifted.
“so going swimming later”.
I wanted to imagine splashing into the water that I couldn’t see, I wanted to see who would agree.
No one spoke.

The three musical friends resumed their song.
Some of the girls watched, and some of the guys drank.

A friend’s cell phone said the time. Hours ago my parents expected me at home instead. It was midweek; I had work at noon. There were more mosquito bites on my skin.

I peered around at our scattered crew, each in chosen places. I had missed their company, and the time away was ready to be made up for.
I liked the idea that it always came back to these waters, and these rolling friendships.
I even liked the fog, the darkness, and the song being played by a tempting voice. I pretended it was about me.

Ultimately, someone would stir and nod goodnight, heading to parent’s boats for sleep. Sometimes in a pair.
So I’d listen to flip flops crunch the gravel across the back lot, reach the first pier plank, and vanish.
Still I waited to depart. There might be possibilities afloat.

It was the thickest night I could remember. It made the hours slow.
An odd feeling, of immobility and imagined chances.
Like imagined romance.
Alone and stepping lightly the next morning, the deck ropes were wet below my feet. I tried to wipe the heat from heavy eyelids, tried to shake the stillness from my muscles.
Already I missed my couch bed on the sailboat. Already, I couldn’t wait for the workday ahead to be over.
I couldn’t wait to return here on Friday. It was like camp. Like a home, and a few stolen spots only some can value.
I put the windows down in my car.
The pavilion looked bare, the fog was slinking back.

A Million Places

There are a million places to be at any moment. And you have to pick just one. There's a million opportunities, a million risks to take, a million options for giggles, a million protective barriers. And we can only pick just one at a time. 

One atmosphere, one spot, one goodnight at a time. 

......It feels a little like being cheated; of all the things that can't be done, and all the cities left uninhabited. All the sentences I could have spoken, the thought made sad with all the liqueur-filled stomach turns. 

Yet something grows rejuvenated. Growing, in the veins of highway lanes new to tires. 

Refreshed, though the wind suddenly hurts outside the parties. 

But none of it matters-my throat can hurt, and my muscles can cramp. 

Some are meant to sustain the cold. 

And we're all frantic somehow. Studying. Declaring. Looking. Spreading out from Baltimore in all directions across every map; no matter where home is, or once was. 

I feel the intimidating presence of dear persons in my life being in so many places away. So many places I can't be all at once. It aches a little, but it means they're all destinations. 

They're all still somewhere to be found, and reunited with.

Destinations to one another's presence.

So let's get on with that squealing sound, and start to celebrate hitting the town-if we happen to be in the same spot. 

Besides, for the time between there's plenty of work and more work, and procrastinating and nagging.

Daily headphones: David Cook's "Light On" is actually worth sampling. And Ray Charles's classic "Mess Around" will instantly boost a mood and start accidental toe-tapping. Mess around!

Playing cards

Last week I went to see the student-directed production of "Zoo Story", and like any good play, its stuck with me days later. But in this case, it wasn't really the ending (which I won't reveal i promise!)...it's the idea of unplanned events, and sensations. 

We all indulge in routines, obscure/validated, with the files of every past day hovering in our own shadows. Hovering inside dreams that go forgotten with the annoying alarm buzz, or dreams that we label and put on a shelf to accomplish, or, the dreams we always remember--of nights/days we have lived. These are the ones that lurk, whether in a chuckle from jokes impossible to retell, or a cold breeze that somehow reminds of an old touch, an old love, or an outfit worn on an old self. 

"when you're a kid you use the cards as a substitute for a real experience, and when you're older you use real experience as a substitute for the fantasy. But I imagine you'd rather hear about what happened at the zoo."(Zoo Story) 

....so what's more satisfying? or rather, what's more adult? what's more artistic? 

In the time we spend to walk to class, read a book outside, or just keep to whatever routine makes us feel secure...memories bubble up evil ghosts of ourselves---or righteous tales too often unwritten/unphotographed/unexplained. 

    Today I doodled instead of studying for the millionth hour, parked in a different lot...and as I drove home the long way blasting a song I know someone likes, a new trumpet man began playing outside the gallery that sometimes shows my work. 

Towsonites were going about their Mondays-but just ever so slightly there was the unexpected. 

So what's that say? - to embrace the things that feel like fantasy; like they're part of dreams you wake from in the too-early mornings...all the while knowing that the past tidal-waves up and follows you forever along? you tell me 

Daily headphones: "Galvanize" by the Chemical Brothers goes with the absurdity of 8Odegree October days, and offers relief from the mind-numbing of too much midterm studying.

Watch and plan

I've been talking recently about unique tales of homeless people, and scary reports of bus passengers. 

Going over ridiculous aspects of things a little unfamiliar. 

Brought to us by huddled oddities - the same in New York and Baltimore, the same anywhere else that the feet travel and the newspapers clutter pavements.

           And ever, ever so slightly, the feeling of being watched. The feeling of strangers, in the very heart of familiar walks or bus rides up&back.

It challenges a sense of reckless abandon, it sends a trickling form of giggles up the spine...making home warm, welcoming, and catastrophically hard to detach from. Resting a head on something smooth. 

        Then there's the exposure, and the exchange of it...passing new conversations on a parking lot spot, chatting in quiter tones at breakfast by the stairs before class. Awkward jokes, new reasons. 

The over-walking of nights so collectively past, with an evermore overlapping/second-guessing/re-configuring of new things.  Minor travels double-booked atop hometown commitments and faces. I reach and grow tired and amused. Run down the gas tank, catch up on sleep, go for options 3 or 4 or...?  BOO!  Where's the leap? Journeys of miniscule distance go post-poned, re-arranged, over-looked. 

Newspapers fall in piles, & people watch. They watch.

They reason.

Plans guessed, and projects put off an hour longer- for a sense of giggles and movements and memory. Tingles. Restlessly filling in the odd. And preparing the Halloween masks :)

Daily headphones: 

The Scene, " 'Last' Weekend" (400w)

In honor of concert nights recently past/ahead, here's an updated&carved up version of a creative essay I wrote for a class last sem....

Standing immersed inside a growing line, outside, and below a glowing venue sign. Under a concrete-yellow roaring highway, dreaming up adventures in my heavy sighs – mingling with the steam from a nearby street vent; reminder of the cold that dirties everyone near.
We’re waiting in the Baltimore nighttime.
While just above the dyed heads and juveniles, are floating ideas for coming hours; hours wasting time before a blinding, misty dawn. So clear the feeling, I can almost catch someone else’s floating by with an ungloved hand.

And it’s like a routine of racing tires. Between the interrupted sense of volume; with ringing ears and dark makeup. Between the calm collaborated days of work, are dives into a local scene.

I know a few of the faces, a few of the back doors, and a few of the show-night traditions. Everyone knows someone here. Everyone watches.

While I listen inside a "time machine" van to warm-ups and chords. And listen for the words to describe the weekends that I find. 

The comings-together of inspired, hungry artists.
The invites and penciled in reminders; that long for themselves to happen, that long with increasing passion for solidified follow-ups.
                Exclusions from the norm; the elite within an outside circle. Losers of high-class, rock stars of the underground.


But time passes in-between the homecoming/tour-leaving/CD releasing/reunion events. The bands tour and morph, the music changes, the faces wrinkle. With too few photographs to notice the differences.
With crumpled stacks of small show flyers, free demos, screentshirts, and ticket stubs-- weighted down with three bottle caps and a leave-behind guitar pic.
Weighted with the hazy memories of great sets, great line-ups, and great after-parties.

So we wait. We wait at the desks of our bosses, the desks of our draining lecture rooms, and the desks of our own offices for creativity. Remembering the papered doors of favorite venues. The bands that play them, the people that promote them, and all the anticipation on the nights we live within them.
Meanwhile there’s articles being written about these Baltimore ways, away from the heads that know a few of the real stories, the real lingo, and the real price for it all.
Someone out there is about to document it.

And you’ll find me there, waiting in line. Waiting with heavy sighs of steam vents and cigarettes, for the plot lines and lost descriptions of dreamt-up adventures. Held in an ungloved hand the friends up there onstage; horrific jolly jokes of all-night chases, and fashionable people.

Daily headphones: Silent Film's last CD "The Scene is Dead" (best of luck in future endeavors to this local band). 

Video Break #2

There was time to spare today. Just briefly enough to gloat in it. Just briefly enough for dessert and long breakfasts.
And now there's just barely minutes of time that I have before the last class of my day, before the thunderstorm breaks, and the shoes are kicked off. Already skipping ahead in thoughts to Friday afternoon.


Take a gander at this video I found while researching the 60's (for scholastic reasons for once) It's got Johnny Depp as Jack Keroac...I was going to save it for later, but why wait with a good thing?


Weekend events (lots to cover):

-Thurs Oct 2nd- "Are your Ears Blind?" multi-media performance at 8pm in Ruth Marder, CFA. Discounted tickets for students.

-Fri Oct 3rd- REVEL dance party at Fletcher's returns (strictly 21+, very generous drink specials).

-Sat Oct 4th- "Parade of Gold" along York road by campus, for local Olympic swimmers Micheal Phelps and Katie Hoff. (**part of York, & Burke roads closed for it!!!)

-Sat Oct 4- The Hint, Cities, Oh! the Story, Fairgreen, Silent Film, and Ever Since Ebbwood, at St Johns Hamilton in Parkville. Great local lineup, say your favorite at the door for cred (hm, what'll be mine? hah), and a few of these guys are in the process of recording-so catch them now before new legs of tours start soon. Tickets at door only, starts at 5:30.

-Sat Oct 4th- Last day before Jim Dine (free!) exhibit closes at the BMA. Need to make it there myself.

-Sun Oct 5th- TU Homecoming Concert ft T.Pain, doors at 6pm, limited only to TU students and alumni with advance ticket purchase.

***MON OCT 6TH- FREE the Kills show at the Ottobar! brought to us by MyspaceSecretShows

-*note: Fell's Point Haunted PubWalk continues on (Fri & Sat nights) through Nov 28th, (21+).

Daily headphones: Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody". To quote who recommended me the song "if you do anything with your life-download this". And for an indie jazz crawl, India Arie's "The Heart of the Matter" is hot off the S&TC soundtrack, and straight to my daily playlist.

Outside Directions

Like outside my own room-scratching at wood boards looking to put together clarity/sanity...a sweets-filled stomach, and sleeping the day away for the first time in weeks, there's a weight to it.  There's construction sounds, little fliers on the county sidewalks, and raindrop smeared directions. 

There's a ringing phone under the pillow for some reason. 

There's too many stop lights. Monday will arrive. 

...as the banks go bankrupt, the debates go on, and the directions are googled...Where's the trumpet guy on his Towson corner these days? Where's the fabled finish to all the construction? Where's the BELIEVE campaign, the old Baltimore Sun, and the party photos I could have taken?

Then, late Sunday afternoon I was meeting a population of intellects and actors, hidden within Hawkin's Hall; in lawyers suits and holding small black binders. A different breed; living novels, poems, and monologues-within provocative shortly-timed intervals. Cuts. Interps. Duos.  Buttoned up, and fast-forwarding just the same.

Outside, I dug it. 

Outside, distracted from all the melancholy nonsense that piles up on Sundays, from the retrace of a whole month/week (moving into a sunny 78degree Monday). 

And when I came home, there was a fridge full of food!

September, with all its new forms of chaos, is ending very soon. There's a settling-down everyone needs now.

Daily headphones: Katy Perry's "Hot n Cold" for indecisive entries, and traffic jams. While DC band (who played a free show on campus this past Labor Day weekend) Army of Me's song "Perfect" almost sounds like blowing leaves, and putting on work clothes. Plus, it's a free download on their myspace page for a limited time. 

(Video Break)

Forward motion seems to be fast forwarding these days. Today the wind was blustering, and today the flags outside the Admin building ripped in the pre-rain freeze. There's pen'd in plans approaching, and I'm anxious to live them, to revamp from within the little gadgets that spin the clock hands, and tink against other gadgets. 

It requires a rising level of patience. 

So, I'm in the mood to be painfully brief today. I found this weird video on YouTube, made an array of faces while watching it (at work), very intriguing and unsettling! - share opinions?

and, just because...

**This weekend:
- The second to last weekend of the Jim Dine (printmaker and pop artist), exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Which, may I remind everyone has FREE admission, year-round.

- The Annual Book Festival is downtown. 
- Sat 9.27 - Sonar's semester-annual "Rave" Dance Party. Cause there's too little excuses to go dirty dancing anymore..like Havanna nights...in the sketchy warehouse Baltimore style

Daily headphones: Elton John's "Mona Lisa's and Mad Hatters" makes you almost wanna wander the city streets in the early morning. A short remedy for the indecisive music mood that always comes this time of year. 

Boatrides in the Dark

2am on the day after 4th of July, the Bay was swallowed up into pitch darkness. My brother was at the wheel of his Mastercraft skiboat, sending the boatload of grinning friends spiraling and spinning on a satin surface of the familiar waters. We were spiraling & spinning without handlebars. 

Awakened with sweet drinks, and heavy stories. There were lobsters that never had that talk. It was weeks before autumn reunions and declarations, and hours before dawn came; humid & bright. We were toasting, and munching on popcorn.

All those nights of last summer, I'm holding onto certain minutes of, and the next mornings of...And I wonder when the right decisions got made. 

Cause now the relationships change, now the couples have to make important choices, and now I wonder if its even worth going out after 1am.

There's paths we might be meant to take, no clearer than a blind woman's vision...an after-midnight moonless Bay; calm and haunted after scalding fireworks. Calm and haunted by the movements of the engine and friend's hollers. 

Now I'm laughing with a hearty feeling-outside a diner-wearing boots and layers, and the air is breathable and cold again. Busy and busier, and calculating when the right decisions get made. The people making them, the people breaking, the people creating/moving/sleeping/learning/risking/digging it... and the people staying right there with you (wherever that is, wherever Baltimore can be).

Daily headphones: Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" will have you checking the stars and karma, and looking forward to Halloween. It's jazzy and old-school.  

Recher Sept13 (Photos)

Great show-music blasting till 11:30. Friend's band Hotspur (^), came up from DC to rock.

  

Fools&Horses (^) played over an hour!, celebrated CD release with free glowsticks & a video intro.

The Lake Effect ( ) was a good surprise. 

* See more of my photographs fr the concert on the 'space page&albums. www.myspace.com/kebdesign
(thinking next local concert I'll attend isn't till beg of October...(when I get to see some long-lost friends))

***This weekend: 

Sat 9.20 - Fire in the Hole(the newest version of), Jimmie's Chicken Shack, Ever since Ebwood, and Outreach at the Recher. First saw FIH my freshman year of HS (at a Bryn Mawr BOB against All Time Low & others) and they've still got that same signature sound. 

Sat 9.20 - "24 Play Slam" here at TU - free show for students at 8pm. Come out and support those theatre/film majors

Jolt and Crash

A few nights ago I threw all my covers off my bed, while half-asleep. Half-asleep, hand X'd, arm bruised, and completely disoriented in my own blue room. It almost took hours before I processed the complete darkness, and finally dug up the sheets from the floor. 

Like a brick wall had hit me, sober, without any cause. 

I was furious there were no conditions to blame. I felt sick. Cheated or counter-attacking out of nothing but darkness. Run...and-BANG into that wall. 

And ever since I've been 10 minutes late. Leaving, joining, replying, returning...completely late.

Like a maddening cycle of still--jolt--crash, and back again. 

Causing a morning heavy, sloppy, form of stalling. Causing longings of reclusiveness, fighting against the ones of tart concoctions. Since the muscles ache and the inspirations don't come on command.

It's the mad rush of discarding...and confused-trying to right what'll grow dirty on the hardwood floor.

It's the homeless man on the median strip who let me take his portrait-bursting conversation, it's the little old bag lady running across a York Road intersection, it's the cop who saw my telephoto lens and (I'm convinced) stopped to pose in mid-directing of a traffic jam. 

All the people looking for an even rhythm. These are the weeks where weekends tingle with so many places to be. It overwhelms and exhilarates those it doesn't pass over. For a couple smiles, a couple photographs, and a couple minutes it feels like yourself-complete,...before the mood shifts again....and again...

Before another hour goes by in the 410.

Daily headphones: Matt Nathanson's "I Saw", get the live acoustic version, and just unwind.

Drainage

It's like falling humidity somewhere between sewer drains and my conscious knowledge of everything that'll need to be done. With repeated swallowing and choking up of the same words-in the same lines-across a plain of roads driven. 

Feelings of so much more to do, in so much less time, like the projects will crush below the drainage line of social lives. Pressure. Expectation. Sleep that never is enough. 

Sometimes I've got to shut it down and walk steadily away. Steadily on one opinion?

Could the car keys guide themselves, the conversations forget themselves, & the hours change themselves? Then maybe I could pick a point.

But there's something like dowsing rain, running between the crosswalks. 

There's a chill in Baltimore that's approaching-it freezes over from Bayside summertime; the hot vacationlike nights (the ones that whisper still, though now in draining volume). 

There's the lonely smoker on the city corner, outside a window of the couple sharing a firelit table. While all the inbetweens/fakers--alike, their fingertips and noses grow red with the chilly wind.

Waiting crowds, lonely artists, get ushered into heated venues and coffee-roasted places-in boots and scarves. Less lingering. More air to twitch and shiver. And wind. 

And that's Baltimore, as it's more sad and inspiring self. 

I think I'm always excited for it. There's eerie moons, and warm treats, there's hauntings and new clothing. There's change.

((see previous blog for weekend events)))

Daily headphones: DC fellas Crash Boom Bang's song "It's Only Me". It's a bit slower than their other tracks, this one's got an alluring touch of echo and oddity to it. 

International Floor

Friday night, as the tropical storm rolled in outside, I found myself sitting on the floor in a crowded circle around a box of sugared wheat crackers (in "lightbulb" packaging covered in Chinese letters) and a steaming plate of Chapagetti (champagne spagetti). 

Our shoes were spread outside the open-door apartment, and as an American, I was in the minority.

We all kicked back on the carpet, and let our hustling, bustling, jolly hosts run to and from the kitchen, with plates of champagetti and solo cups. While one party-goer kept running from the cat, and everyone shared in hugging goodbye. "Sharing is caring", "Incredibly!"

And I had forgotten....there's an entire population of Baltimoreans out there who, at one point, will grab their passport, hop on a plane, and fly on home. 

They're changing faces of Charm City. They're changing under the native noses. 

What is Baltimore to them? 

And where along the way do we all swap customs and car rides, lemonades and language, and all the comings&goings through BWI and 695?

This weekend (lots to cover): 

• Thurs, 9.11 - TU Art Faculty Exhibit opening reception in CFA gallery 7:30-9pm

• Fri, 9.12 - the weekly Revel Dance Party (21+, hosted by Jeff Hurn & Uber Pat, @ Fletchers) has an unknown fate this week...?

• Sat, 9.13 - Fools & Horses, Hotspur, the Lake Effect(TU guys?) and the Perfect Excuse @ the Recher. You may have heard F&H on Starbuck's "Off the Clock" CD, but Hotspur may just be the odd-man-out group worth coming early for, Dave the keyboard player can even play while hopping up on the stand! ((got my ticket weeks ago)) 
• Sat, 9.13 - Apathy Eulogy (TU guys) Silent Film, Coast to Coast, and Cities (a newly begun band, from the members of Boy Crazy and the more recent Mir&the Moon) @ Fletchers. It's always cool to see a new band at its beginning, & this one is an evolution of members' pasts.
• Sat, 9.13 - Sonar's TAXLO (18+, drink specials for 21+)

• Sun, 9.14 - the Raven's game on TV @ 4:15

Daily headphones:  Mika's "Erase", proves that this fun cartoon-pop-singing Brit ("Relax, take it Easy", "Grace Kelly"), can also spin a slow mournful song. Put it on blast, and maybe reevaluate that long contact list. And for anyone away and missing Baltimore this fall, check out Bleed the Dream's version of "Streets of Baltimore", you might be quoting it in an away message within one listen.

Blog Ambitions***

 I once wrote a paper around the thesis that the 50s/60s generation had parallels to the Millennium. It proved more successful than the following 7pg one spent tearing apart beatnik exile William Burrough's Naked Lunch (don't let the title lure you...it's traumatizing, not in a good way).

This summer, I finally started reading Jack Keroac's On the Road, and for much of it, it was like a sweet tooth addiction. 

I made nostalgic references to the bitter fall of hitch-hiking to confused/amused faces at parties, and formed flimsy plans to visit friends on tours. 

In the end, I wound up racing most Friday afternoons down 702, to stay the weekend on my parents sailboat - that was my Route.

So, I'll to bring out the beatnik in Baltimore, the rolling arts and entertainment, and the small thoughts, (before finally studying abroad). It might be a bumpy ride. It might be a 120-mile an hour hung-over blur, or a sleepy afternoon class morning spent indoors. It might be an intriguing set of the random, or a Monday-morning story. 

Or it might be virtually pointless and chaotic. 

There's always certain oppurtunities to consume the cash, the late hours, the tall pints, and the studious days. There's stories to tell. 

And all the while Baltimore is shuffling it's dirty soles against the city slabs and the suburban reservoirs. 

Want to dig it?

((And with my very first online blog/journal/diary/article, I'll try to organize a certain chaos of "beat", like a certain way of morphing creative writing penmanship into blogging. 

It might just fit.

...and along the way - cut, share, divert, connect, and virtually link to the kids around town studying/working to be artists. (Thinking of throwing in some of my own work too).))

Daily headphones: Tune the blue, try jazz? Melody Gardot's "Goodnight" and "Worrisome Heart" show a sweetheart, pop-like turn to the genre worth sampling

....maybe jazz will be on limewire one day?