| BREATHLESS exgirlf... |
-> R.I.P. kurt vonnegut, the (i think, dang it!) eternally hopeful and quotable: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/k/kurt_vonnegut.html
and http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut ...
-> art fein, who sent me a copy of "man w/o a country" last yr, told me last month that his girl was researching vonnegut & desired his j-hancock (i wrote about kesey at her age, but he already was pushing up daisies) & he actually GOT IT for her... what good timing for the young lady. who knows - maybe she will be one to help carry on the spirit of such outraged, brave, & humane satirists.
-> lately my research has taken a happy turn & i've become hopeful that young folks may save this world, w/the social networking revolution perhaps being a good sign that they want to commune & be involved & the volunteer soldiers who persevere despite inadequate federal support evidence of the driving, inner voice, which manifests itself uniquely, but seems to come from a common & benevolent source. specifically, my stepson, quite the party boy, also does engineers w/o borders & is becoming involved in a green engineering project; young local activists & punks do food not bombs, feeding the homeless, every sunday at noon at central park; my 13-yr old niece, who seems to have eyes only for manga, has a benevolent, fully-formed, animistic spiritual belief at an age when all i wanted was candy, mad magazine, movies, & piano... i think beyond the youtube narcissism & foisted, all-pervasive celebrity-consumption culture, our young people look to be better than we are so far, more other-directed, less vision-obscured (or maybe less dualistic? more accepting of "difference"?), more engaged.
-> well, i woke up too late & piddled around & missed an apt this am, so here is what i did instead, more crude & peppy solo music. brian p & phil are gonna go play this wkend, so i didn't practice w/them yesterday (i'll be at school this wkend - no sense in me being there last nite wasting time when they could've been readying for sat), so i hope that's fruitful for them...
-> in my new band, old 99, www.old99.net , we're doing stuff like 3-part harmony & slick playing, but then when i listen back, i don't barf at all, it's kinda like when i sang choir years ago - whatta pleasure to be a part of a bigger, effusive, team kind of spirit!... then, bonus, the other day we did a chuck berry medley that was swell: i thought, good gracious, wow, WOW!, if we can have this energy level here & there, i'm home!!! the occasional slow or poppy song, well, i guess i can hang w/it. i like that everything's coming from a traditional C&W kinda base rather than anything more "modern," too: this band definitely respects the roots. rob even wants to do some zydeco stuff. yahoo! and there's none of that fake middle-class bluesman stuff that really is gross... we have some recordings down, but they asked we use them for practice, not public, even tho they sound 100x better than what i do alone. (however, i'm realizing how blest i am to get to do it all - the crude & wild alone stuff; the rocknroll duskdevils stuff; the crystal palace-kinda old99 stuff)... a person has to keep trying & occasionally realizing, don't you think? vonnegut's great words: "If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED / FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD / WAS MUSIC" .. ah-men.
