"Call 911 Goddammit" "I don't have a cell phone," Marlena insisted.  It was true. It was a point of contention.  "WTF. Use mine."  "I don't know... do you think I should?" She said half-whining in the cute voice that makes everybody want to be so close.  "You are motherfucking assholes," he said, eyes burning and tearing, dialing the number himself.
"Whoa man," said her friend, this dude, who maybe she knew or didn't, "Maybe you should chill out." I mean it was just pepper spray- the 911 dispatcher said it would painfully wash out in twenty minutes with oil dissolving soap (and totally wash out of auxiliary parts by the next shower) but from every point of view it was fucked up.  His basic safety in a hippie town undermined by a serial mace terrorist in a white truck, his immediate salvation tethered to a stupid person. 


albums I listened to a lot this year:
The Suburbs - Arcade Fire
Look-Ka Py Py - The Meters
Let My Children Hear Music - Charles Mingus
Songs of Love and Hate, and Songs of Leonard Cohen - Leonard Cohen

Winterreise - Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears (Franz Schubert)

Clear Moon - Mount Eerie

Oh You're So Silent Jens - Jens Lekman

Swing Lo Magellan - Dirty Projectors

Dancing in Your Head - Ornette Coleman

I guess that was not as many as I thought

I'm about to go to yoga because I am a narcissist
Then I'm probably going to take a shower and do my homework because I am an entitled narcissist.
Then I am going to go to bed with enough time to get 8hrs of sleep before my 8am class because I am constantly conditionally available and inflexible.  If you want me to say no to hanging out with you just ask, ask, ask

The new generation in the music building knows how to network and I see it happening and it happens to me and it reminds me of another thing I never learned or felt motivated to do.  Its absence takes up space.  I can't sell myself because I have nothing to sell, can't define myself except with no's and not's - things I've never done or things I would never, I refuse to do.  I'm not there but I take up space.

The culture is so nice, here.  Everyone is just really nice.  Supportive.  I am an active member in this, I dunno maybe helped create it.  I'm nice.  I'm like wow you've done something great with this and wow you're doing something great with yourself, which I mean in spite of being afraid it comes from fundamentally a lie.  I believe this culture and also I don't trust it.  I mean someone had the idea that if you think someone is a jerk maybe you should just get to know them to find out the jerk is you.  What if it is the same for nice people - can they be so easily unmasked?  I don't think I want to find out.  I mean someone had the idea that sadness is self-indulgent and self-perpetuating but I say how can you award happiness with superior depth or virtue.  So this culture of nice, I don't trust it but I hear it (amen) and I believe it and I fear it comes from a place of fundamentally a lie.  Cause I'm so busy trying to unlearn this negative space to find the depth in my self-perpetuating identity.

^
I would like to condense this into a sonnet.  It already has the right turns.


a quick dream:
1. I was in a house visiting Andrew and Uwe.  There were huge and steep hills of red clay next to me and I wanted to climb them but no one would come with me. They felt strongly familiar and strongly beckoning, as if I remembered living next to them and knowing them intimately and wanted to go back to feel the strong sensation of remembering.  The sky was very dark like the beginning of a late summer storm, so gray that it was almost green and yellow.
Later in the dream I found myself in the position of taking care of many creatures- nests and cocoons and snails in terrariums.  In particular I had a little slug on my hand, what a little sweetheart.  There were a lot of people in the room, and when it got loud he took it very much to heart and started to shake with nervous violence, and to expand with air pockets the way yeasted dough stretches out.  The little guy was seriously panicking.  I tried to quiet everyone in the room to let them know they were really effecting the creature.  Later when the room was quiet and he was without stimulation for a long time he grew really really small and dark, the tiniest slug you ever saw.

I am filled with shame and anxiety
I am going to name my junior recital 'self-effacing shame runs deep'


the last three correct answers I shouted out in class:
1. "work it!" (the system)
2. "insubordinance"
3. "do you have credit card debt?" (q. What to ask him on the first date)

old friend

This is not a dream, it is real life.
I met up with an old friend yesterday and I am disappointed at the many layers of conversation I failed to breach. Especially since it seemed to be a situation that I was lucky to wrangle the first time and would be unlikely to win again.  I will attempt to contort myself into quirky situations for the right people.  However, I was annoyingly manic and I think I startled the creature.
        We most notice change in ourselves when we return to places we've left.  Our tiny little bedrooms at home and our funny little parents who are right where we have left them, and your new self and ideals out of proportion - that's the timeless and unavoidable situation.  I have lived in this town now for nearly three years (meant to be here for 5 months) - That's five houses unless I'm forgetting one and I have had several lives with almost complete social turnover.  He was in the earlier lives, within the first solid iteration, which I have obviously clung to nostalgically and also with the kind of love that, for better or worse, accepts character flaws that affect navigation of the world as endearing quirks.  It can't be turned off, it can only be chronically waned away.
         It was just like I said.  He seemed smaller, not the latest version, still bizarrely familiar.  The difference in the situation was me, boisterous with my conversation and laughter, with much more traction in the academic and arcata world than I'd had two years ago, and also the security of a sweet boyfriend and stronger sense of self.  (I've previously been more solicitous.)  I can't assess the situation objectively, I was too wrapped up in myself and talking too much.  He laughed at me because I went to my christian friend's house and her dad asked me if I had accepted Jesus Christ Lord as my savior and faltered and said yes I had.  He was laughing for my benefit, the same way he's never been cruel with me as an exception (that quirky love) but I am sure his thoughts were closer to disappointment at my spinelessness.  He's an atheist without faltering, see, not one because of process of elimination or as a natural result of inaction. 
         I knew three people at the restaurant where we met, and a fourth knew me by name but I don't remember him.  This alone marks me different from how I was then, and marks me different from him.  I'm in the golden years of my college career.  Everyone I love is here, everything I do I love.  For him, he's on the cusp of a new decade, definitely into a more solitary life phase.
        I wanted to tell him actually I do believe in god, I'm not an atheist anymore at least as far as it's convenient.  I believe in reincarnation as freedom from having to get everything just so and done in one life.  I believe in being put on the earth for silly and purposeless games, and that taking your spot in it too seriously is the way to fall over on your face and miss the point anyway. 
  What do you think about that.  What do you love.  Why have you been in this town so long when everyone asks you why dont you leave.  Why did we never talk.  
     And most of all I feel like confessing that this happiness that seems to offend you so is just as foreign and sometimes as cloying to me.  I've become boring since May, reveling in everything I appreciate.  I'm afraid to face my former self, who you knew, because she would be insulted and want to be left alone.  I got here from suffering.  The things in my life that make it good are because I had to cope.  I still fundamentally believe the universe is meaningless but I was tired of lying awake all night.  Forgive me.

We got there by an easy route (Who: me and dirty Johnny/JT), from the backside of somewhere like a school we both went to.  It was a shortcut through the high mountains.  I remember we could drive an hour to school or walk this pass.  They were smooth, bald mountains; high plains like nova scotia or Marin.  All of a sudden they were covered in snow and JT and I found refuge in a cabin on top of a cliff.  We had made a fire and were doing fine, talking and enjoying each other's company, but people kept insisting on trying to rescue us.  One couple got crane lifted onto our porch and so we were like, what they heck, and invited them in for cards and a meal.  I got off on the wrong foot by talking about how much I love meat to a couple of vegetarians.  I struggled to recover and looked for a deck of cards.  Rocky, my old dog, was there.  He was 21 years old and looked it, glassy cataracts in his eyes and hair falling off his bony frame.  He used to jump over his dog house when I was a kid!  He had to pee and I was explaining to him that he had to stay inside because he would fall off the deck.  Then all at once the house was in a neighborhood.  I walked outside and off the porch into the financial district of San Francisco.  I saw andrew and tony living like bert and ernie again.  In this dream I was also dealing with stuff, finding it amazing I owned so much and thinking of everything I'd do with the money when I sold all these dresses and mp3 players.  Andrew was like, "I can't afford any of thsoe things, you've got to help me out." I was reluctant, because I know he's making a substantial salary in real life.

It started out we were in a field - me and who? Dr. Moyer was definitely there.  It was a series of soccer fields and dusk.  We were startled by a searchlight of a low-flying helicopter.  I told the kids, hey! Look at that! How close it is! And suddenly the helicopter nose-dived and crashed and we were all very afraid. 
The next thing I remember I was in a McMansion again, very cluttered with stuff, and we were all in the living room away from the walls, due to the possibility of the aftershock from an earthquake.  I went into the bathroom and unplugged a lot of shit as a precautionary measure.  When I came back I fell into conversation with Cindy, who was talking about how everyone (meaning me) should take her class more seriously.  I was like holy shit! I forgot to go to her class all semester!

I was on a weed farm with TS and CD, though we didn't seem to be working.  I had ordered food hours before, reluctantly, because someone said I would be extremely hungry.  I bought a cheeseburger and sweet potato fries from a festival vendor and now it had just been sitting out for hours.  It was a beautiful outdoors place, kind of like Eco Farm.  T introduced herself to me and I was like - we've met already! She apologized and told me this job is just inherently lonely and boring.  We go inside the house, all three of us, to play hide and seek.   It's big and air-conditioned, a regular McMansion such as all my friends had in Burlington.  I think there is background music (probably because I've been thinking about the indicative importance of background music in Twin Peaks) but it turns out to be my phone.  What is this... Avi is calling?  The guy who previously lived in my room.  Appropriate, because he left me this bed and the dreamcatcher.  I remember now that instead of working on the farm I was packing my things to go somewhere and had also arrived at that place during the dream without many things I'd forgotten.  Things I owned & forgot kept surfacing in my mind and I felt relief when I woke up that I still owned them.  In the dream I was super sad about learning to live without them.

Before this: I was at an outdoor restroom of some kind, with metal commode and sink like at a park.  It was under a cover and faced the woods.  I pulled down my pants and had a huge amount of diarrhea and there was some more (a lot more) already in my pants.  It went everywhere (no smell) and I had to clean it with cheap toiled paper and water from a sink with a button that sprays for like three seconds.  When I was finally clean, thank God, a young man with landscape equipment came out of the woods and made polite conversation.  I wondered how he knew when I was done and if he was watching me.

various conversations and other things influencing me now >> running themes: entitlement, guilt

JT: several. One last night about intelligence being a tool and not an end, though I barely heard because I was mostly asleep.  I think he was going through again a stage we both had to reach through humiliating experiences, after going through elementary school with everyone telling us we were smart.  Or maybe another reference to how intelligence is use less without focus, meaning my ADD and first grade knowledge of basically every subject.

Shelby: reassuring me about bread ethics, bra sizes, boyfriends

Madre: A long conversation in the car about affairs and why people do bad things.  (Her: to reaffirm to themselves they are still bad.)  It gave much depth to my perspective of my mother because I imagined her at her worst although she has always seemed quite strong to me.  The conversation (a series, actually after):

A short text message interaction about Jens Lekman: Which left me feeling intensely guilty for imaginary reasons.  A similar example is the time I stayed up all night in the fifth grade because I was worried about my future self not having the capacity to refuse drugs.  Andrew stepbrother says the existential term is angst.

Rhonda bosslady: calls blackberries Bioaccumulators (or maybe I just made that up) and "any woman of childbearing age shouldn't pick and eat blackberries around town unless she wants the evidence on her ovaries."

Carl Sagan: the lost library of alexandria, a six hundred year old metropolis, a speck of dust on the cosmic horizon.  In juxtaposition with headlines I read today about riots in egypt about the military coup to oust the first democratically elected president - current death toll in a week is higher than six hundred

Basically everyone: I tell about Glinda Bridgforth, and how she preaches the attitude of financial abundance.  I examine my finances and see they have the potential for anything I want.  Could I swing a new macbook after a couple months of saving? Totally.  Later I go to work and resent it and remember what people go to work for, and find buying things to be connected with less free time, and I find I value free time above all.  Later I go to the outdoor store sidewalk sale and find that buy-one-get-one free jacket - one sale jacket - is totally out of my price range.  Forget this, I'll take my sense of abundance to the beach and read Cosmos.

another list:
Things I want to do on my last week of summer instead of going camping
1. see buddy reed and the rip it ups blues night at bear river casino
2. fix my bike
3. go to the river
4. have a good riddance summer no one gives a shit about you anyway potluck
5. write a song with things divined from my subconscious.  so, meditate

thinking about what constitutes success: for me I'll know what I am doing is working if I'm happy and free from being crazy.  In those terms my life is pretty much going great.  I'm feeling the happiest and most carefree I've felt in years or possibly ever.
My boyfriend is sweet, intelligent, adventurous, available, and doesn't try to change me. Also I love him with no effort at all.  My family is supportive and kind and they seem to be getting on okay with the things they love, and I'm happy I can and have always been able to call them whenever I want.  My body is fit in the right places and bulbous in the rights places; it is strong and gets me to and from the right places, and it doesn't get sick nearly ever.  I think I picked a silly major, and even though it makes me feel dumb all the time, I call it keeping me humble and feel grateful for so many things I don't have to try very hard to be good at.  I also feel pretty good about my odds of doing something for the rest of my life that suits me - intellectually and creatively stimulates me, helps others.  I have plenty of time to read, bike, go to yoga, learn.  I feel surrounded by friends of many different ages, who know me as I am and still like me and want to do things with me.  Isn't it interesting I thought I was so introverted?  I have the people/alone balance going the right way, finally.  My new house is clean and spacious, my new roommate is interesting and kind and inspires me to play music and read books.  I don't know if life can always be this good, but more than one person older than me says I'm on the right track.  Oh and I get to see my mom tomorrow <3 <3
So I have a lot of love to share right now.

scarlatti pontoon

I wrote this pontoon two years or so ago when going through an insomnia poetry phase, and just found it while unpacking my stuff.  It's rather clever with the alternating lines, I think:

Scarlatti Poem
The time I played it from start to finish:
it can't possibly be as good
as they said it was,
though I had spent days on single lines.

It can't possibly be as good
in the final concert of four
though I had spent days on single lines
and was poised and wore high heels.

In the final concert of four
there is relief it is not much worse.
Poise and wearing high heels
doesn't disguise very much.

The relief that it is not much worse
is of no use in this sleepless night.
It doesn't disguise much
and now is quite possibly a bigger deal.

Of no use in this sleepless night:
The time I played it from start to finish.
It is quite possibly a bigger deal
than they said it was.

Roommate Poem

On the seventh day of living together
it was apparent to us both that it was
neither of the perfects we'd anticipated.

First of all his degree had been twice undermined -
The diploma arrived in the mail and did not
have the word "performance" after "bachelor of music".
Then there was the performance major in the next room (me)
during a regular hacking away of her craft.

What came then is he wanted to put Amadeus
on the list of movies Jason and Nyssa must see
and I said no way, I have seen ten minutes and that too much.

If you are waiting for redemption for the good times,
all of this just happened this morning, so not yet.
Probably it will be retrospectively redeemed.

I was on an unexplained road trip with Jason, Alana, Carol, Drew Mohr, Joey the afro dude, and Joey's friend.  The faded out scene I barely remember was in a restaurant when we were splitting the bill and didn't have enough money, so we paid in different items.  I left a cash tip but paid my portion with my bicycle and the globe I got from the bakery.  Tony told me later the items weren't enough but we'd already left.  Later we're driving again and we're somewhere near Charlotte.  I'm like OMG we can stay at my parents' house! The garage, when we arrive late in the rainy night, is actually the thrift store from reseda and we all spend some time shopping, later separating girls and guys and then it is me, Joey, his friend, and Alana.  The room becomes a cheesed-out concert hall with a sticky red carpet like a movie theater.  I ride around on a floaty chair.  I've become separated and to get back I make the chair move fast across ground and fly up several flights of stairs because I've gained momentum swinging around a pole.  People watching are amazed and I let out a yelp! Alana says, when I return, "I hate when you leave me with these guys!"

Another part: I am with the author of Moral Disorder, my favorite book.  In real life the author is Margaret Atwood but in the dream it's Rhea from Arise Bakery.  I'm telling her how much I was moved by every story in the collection and she asked me if I wanted to star in the movie adaptation.  I am floored and say yes.

selfish and selfless. examples, no conclusions.

I'm thinking often about selfishness.  Have I stumbled through most of my life being mainly accountable to my wants? of course.  Carol and Jason were in my (our) kitchen last night preaching selfishness- Carol, through marriages and dependent children, Jason on behalf of his capitalistic ideals he's testing out as a fervent young adult.

I saw my brother andrew two weeks ago.  He has no friends these days despite being charismatic as ever, though a little more serious.  They take too much maintenance, he says.  I was staying at the one bedroom house he shares with my brother tony - like bert and ernie.  Before I fell asleep on the sectional couch they found on the road and tony and andrew argued about lights out, I told andrew that I noticed he seemed more serious.  He grew concerned and the next morning asked me if I thought he should put bologna in his shoe.

I told them all they'd regret their selfishness.  I am thinking often about selfishness.  JT said when we were talking about this that the luxury of being alone is you get to do whatever you want, but you have to be alone.
I am sometimes bratty about not getting to do whatever I want.  I wrote this at work, I was very angry:
"Like many, many women I know, I'm questioning very strongly how much of a man I need in my life.  I've been dating now for ten years and I find it impossible to ignore a slowly accumulating resentment.  That which makes me feminine and attractive is the same that keeps me from being taken seriously.  In my natural biological interest, I return again and again to deference of my body and mouth and time.  Allowing my partner's assertiveness, I find after a time I have no idea what I think or like, that my will and feelings are fanciful and idyllic.  Naturally the answer is to be more assertive, but I am not sure that I want my life to be a fight.  If I ever get married it will be the beginning of the biggest sacrifices I will ever make. "
This is quite strange to read this, since only two days removed I feel none of those things and it seems like someone else wrote it.  

A very nice friend told me that she almost always knows when she is being taken advantage of, and that it happens frequently.  I can't stop thinking about this, both because she has cultivated enough nice to be gratuitous, and because she enjoys being the secret witness to loud, busy, fumbling greed unfolding.

My response to Charles Bukowski's "Africa Paris Greece"

My response to Charles Bukowski's "Africa Paris Greece"

Prime of life,
always prime of
life women.

Not for you baby!
I'm here for all time.

I'd like
to believe it,
since you do.

I've dated even fallen in love
with ugly/older/intelligent
men. I am in
the prime of life,
it comes naturally.

There was one time
I could not even
be tempted.
He had such
an air of defeat!
Who handed him tenure?

I have the same air,
but it does not mean
we were meant for each other.

dream

Some sort of mysterious retreat - Grandpa Heine was there and I arrived late.  Unfortunately the memories are slipping.  I was building a very cool model house with my mom that was multi-level and did mechanical tricks like catapult things.  During breaks I was painting my toenails teal but I had six toenails on each toe.  Oh! A seventh that my finger was covering! I let a kitten out and it was chased around and it was supposed to be part of the diorama.  Jerome Gray came over and it was fun to see him.  He had forgotten stuff at my house which I gave to him in a green co-op bag with my fiona apple painting.  When he left there was a scene cut and I was wandering in a grocery store.  Indecisive, like reality.  I couldn't decide and I was looking through Rome apples like at the old gas station in Glen Raven where Jerome and I used to get apples and peach nehi in high school.  I looked at an apple and realized I had accidentally taken many bites and that I was hungry.  I searched through the pile and found one almost completely hollowed out, a shell of an apple.  Feeling guilty, I tried to hide it in the store.  I left and saw from a hill top that Uwe had brought out little wing hang-gliders and was getting a running start and gliding - so cool! Saw mom coming and joining.  She already had a bloody nose from a bad landing but seemed to be getting the hang of it.

Another, same night: I was silly dancing with Jenn Hales from Raleigh.  Woke up with 'Spain' stuck in my head.

In the last few weeks I have cut down greatly on cardiovascular exercise (even down from exam season), which has resulted in extra time, a burst of creative energy, and the occasional panic attack.  There is definite irony in stubbornly trying to not do something that is good for you (exercise), or stubbornly making yourself do something not necessarily good for you, such as eating a Toni's bacon mushroom swiss burger for breakfast, yet I insist that careless versatility has greater virtue than a bulldozer of asceticism.  The entire point of not exercising, in addition to being rested and having time, is that I loathe that I have to do it.  I have really enjoyed being able to sleep in and relax for entire days; it is even nicer now after unlearning and relearning it, than when I did it all the time as a kid and didn't care. 
But then sometimes my defenses are lowered for some other reason, too little sleep, too much tedious work, sore muscles, and I become a horrible werewolf and have to go into the woods and listen to metal music.  I do horrible things like call JT fifteen times and tell him we are/aren't/are/aren't going to do something awesome, I text someone who I am almost sure is satan, I eat entire chocolate bars, I cry about how I am going to be worthless and alone for all my life.  There is a deeply entrenched part of me that is sure that if I don't go to yoga or the gym I'll be fat and therefore worthless.  It's shallow and I know it's shallow but it definitely happening to me as a horrible, all encompassing feeling.  That I have horrible stretches of panic when I am fighting it makes me more resolved to believe it is a good fight.

three dreams

From the most recent and back.  (Actually the most recent was just now in savasana - I was thinking, "is this the mermaid crypt freezer?" which, being crazy, tipped me off that I had fallen asleep.)

I was at the bakery standing at the table with Rhonda and Shelby.  Rhonda was showing us this diagnostic tool which looked just like user friendly 2000s computer hardware.  She was demonstrating how you could insert a card and it measured out ratios of something, I'm assuming flour.  She also was recounting a recent interaction with nurses at the hospital (she was a nurse in the dream but isn't really).  They were standing around a young man who had gone soft on his innards and couldn't stand up anymore.  No skeleton, just jelly.  The nurses were all going at him with knives and razor blades, attempting to surgically address the problem, but Rhonda was screaming no! Stop! You're hurting him! It's too late for him.

I was on some sort of old fashioned foot and forest and riverside journey and it slowly dawned on me that in cargo was some amorphous creature that needed my care.  It was so helpless but needy, so I was obligated to sacrifice any thought of individual goals.  I started to fall unconditionally in love with it, and at the same time it began to become a duck made of snow.  When there were long stretches away from the water it would get sickly and I would have to scramble to get it to safety somehow.  At one point we were in a dicey situation and I climbed around a building by the gutters with one arm, the other arm holding my charge.  Anna heard this dream and thinks I am pregnant or pregnant with potential.

Jake M was my goofy brother and we were driving around some volvo dealership looking for a guy to detail our volvos.  I looked at my ipod clock and it said 12:08 and I just remembered I was supposed to be on a flight at 11:08.  I told Jake to hurry up and he told me it would only be another minute.  Andrew Z was the pilot and there was a cut away shot right before I woke up in which he was looking at his gold wristwatch and growing very frustrated.

Things I love when it's sunday morning and a touring drummer supposedly loves me

 

1.  scruffy hungover boys brunching outside renata's

2. outdoor movies in the los bagels parking lot, and a scrappy dog who barks whenever Toto barks.

3. the little girl in the studio at KHUM who asked for Bowie
4. When my request gets played on KHUM and my name gets said five times across humco
5. taking a little old lady very set in her ways to a Crabs game to drink BEER

more dreams

I was at some competition and I only remember being inside and competing briefly.  Definitely people spinning flags and such and we came out and Joelle was upset because everytime a judge looked at her the flag score went down.  She thought it was a vendetta but I told her that as long as she was there the probability of doing something wrong increased.  She was shorter than me for some reason but in real life is taller.  I don't know what I was playing, seemed to be percussion but I wasn't carrying anything.

another: I was in an apartment in NYC with my parents, a really comfortably furnished one, like from a woody allen movie. We were disagreeing about food.  Spaghetti comes to mind.

things I only do in the summer

Walk on railroad ties
Stay up really late and be happy about it
Philosophize
Challenge my mental terrain
Act like a decent human being
Use entire days to go to the river
Eat food in Eureka
Paint
Hang out with Lori
Backpack
Psychadelics
Write besides journaling
Tell myself to shut up and do it (How empowerment actually works)
Drink beer

really heavy afternoon nap dream

I was at sci works, but it was in LA and had the lobby from the Eureka Inn (1890s esque with dramatic interiors but kind of cheap) and the bathrooms Harrelson Hall, the round tower building at NCSU (the rooms are pie wedge shaped and the decor is tacky tin and tiny tiles in seventies colors.) 

Everyone in the bathroom was in line in towels and it was kind of steamy so I guess there was a sauna or hot tub.  I looked at my phone and my friend Elizabeth from the piano studio who I don't know very well but like okay had facebook invited me to her breakfast party a month away at 1 pm.  I was like ok whatever and said going.  I look up and Elizabeth is there and wants to talk to me about her life and give me a massage and I am again like ok whatever.  We're on this pleather lounge chair in olive green (bad feng shui) and my back is always tender sore so the massage felt amazing.  She was pushing on my hips from behind like I was doing to myself in plow pose yesterday and I was thinking "hell yes" in my head. 

Then I got really turned on for some reason and I wondered if my boyfriend would be ok if I had sex with a girl, and I was next walking the halls trying to get ahold of my friend Lori who is the only lesbian I know.  She's not down even though it is a dream because she doesn't want to get feelings involved.  It is a cavernous building - a mix of the NYC planetarium, the NYC museum of life and science, and the Smithsonian Museum of Air and Space - I'm walking out from the inside of a dark huge globe exhibit into dramatic deep blue halls past vivid animal dioramas  - or maybe they're real life animals? 

By this point I know I am dreaming - I feel my phone vibrate a couple times and vaguely hear it ringing.  Also all of a sudden I am driving my car in the lobby.  I am headed toward a sofa chair and I have plenty of time to stop and press my brakes in time but I misjudge the pressure I need because I am distracted and plow into it gently, pushing it about ten feet.  Everyone in the lobby is pissed and I am extra embarrassed because I have a complex already about my distracted driving skills and here they surface again in this hotel lobby which I do not know how I got into the middle of. 

Then I remember it is a dream so what the heck, I screech around on the faux oriental wall to \wall carpet and aim for the double glass doors at the end of the ornate paneled wood hallway.  I carefully check to go only 35 so I can bust through the doors but can swerve to avoid the swimming pool right on the other side.  Screeching turns are super slow and are not sexy and since it is my dream the car takes long dramatic turns and the road loops up in the sky and takes hard sideways stretches.  Very sexy.  I get a text from JT but it was a number he only uses in LA so I wasn't sure if it was him and whatever he said was in one eye and out the other.

The first problem is my 8gb ipod.  That's plenty of music at one time, if I am really listening to it.  8gb will last six months until i have outplayed & can barely listen to my favorite albums (Mountain Goats-All Hail West Texas, The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin, Ornette Coleman - Dancing in Your Head, Lee Perry and the Upsetters - Roast Fish, Collie Weed, and Cornbread, Leonard Cohen - Songs of Leonard Cohen) and have learned to love things I thought I could never possibly love  (Kowloon Walled City - Container Ships, Herbie Hancock - Head Hunters, Alban Berg - Lulu Suite, The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots) but then my love continues to evolve and slip away.  A day comes when I look at my ipod and I can't summon up the enthusiasm to listen to anything, even Rachmaninoff preludes.  How did I get here.  I feel my love slipping away and I don't care.
I hear a Queen song (Hammer to Fall) on the classic rock station while driving to work.  It is really good.  I don't know if it is because it is 5:45 am and I am offguard or because my ears have gotten a lot better since I last heard Queen.  I am deeply moved and I think, Queen, why have I forsaken thee.  Why have I pretended to be superior to classic rock for so many years.
I look at my 8gb ipod and I hate everything on it, and I miss everything it used to hold.  I have some of these albums, I want to put on Cat Stevens and Hall and Oates and Ryan Adams even for just a minute, to hold them close again in my hand.  The first and last problem is my 8gb ipod.  I do not know what to delete, I can't bear to part with any of it.  If I delete these, they are gone forever.  Why can't I hold all of the music I love in my hand, why can't I love it all at the same time.  It hurts so bad.

woods for hours

Sometimes the only way I can get out a coherent thought is to walk uphill in the rain listening to really loud radiolab podcasts.  Adult ADHD is real.  It seems that getting 8 hours of sleep (which happened to me today for the first time in a month ie since JT moved to Arcata and since exam season) only exacerbates the dilemma, and eating a high-energy breakfast makes it so, so much worse.  
When it became apparent I wasn't going to finish the fifteen facebook messages and emails I'd started or play piano or anything like that I went on a three and a half hour walk in the forest.  I listened to
1. Radiolab - REBROADCAST: Emergence
2. Radiolab SHORTS: The Distance to the Moon (Short story by Italo Calvino, read by Liev Schreiber)
3. All Songs Considered - New music from the Polyphonic Spree, Jon Hopkins, and more
4. Flaming Lips - At War with the Mystics

It was an interesting time to hear the first Radiolab episode, because the same topic (the concept of Emergence) is discussed in the Ant Fugue (and throughout) in the book I am simultaneously reading, Escher, Godel, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, using the same analogy.  Emergence is the opposite concept of reductionism (which says that the understanding of an organism or phenomenon can be deduced from looking at its smallest constituent parts) and as I understand without looking it up on wikipedia, also a reaction to it.  It says that many independent agents acting on their own limited knowledge and for their own benefit create very wise and functional systems.  This is wonderful.  I knew this concept already but did not know the name, and now a cohesiveness between many expressions of it emerge.

Expressions of Emergence
1. Capitalism (Laissez Faire)
2. Ant Colonies (Ants following pheromones toward food or other signals, which one ant stumbled across stupidly and by chance)
3. Consciousness (From neurons with no understanding of wonderful complete things like coffee -> the example used in radio lab)
4. The Internet (Google organizes large masses of information on a spectrum of usefulness and correctness and the most popular hits are rewarded by being listed first - thus the mean of human internet wisdom contribution is also the most accurate (if studies regarding the wisdom of crowds to find the count of a jar of jelly beans are reliable.)
5. Symphony (I heard this as an example - but I argue it is not since the contributors are conscious of the overall effect)

The next was the moon story.  It's lovely, you should probably just read or listen to it.  The forest was quite rainy off and on and as I walked in and out of under cover I met swells and decrescendos of rain and brightness which sometimes fit very well with the narrative; pangs of lust, the moon retreating forever, somersaults with moon cheese et cetera.  Fiction is the most supreme form of creative expression, that is my opinion.  Because it is relatable but not about anyone real (explicitly), so you don't have to compare yourself to it or remain entirely accurate - you can vary to make a point.  Also, it is more memorable than nonfiction  and in most peoples primary language.  I envy people who have a great musical understanding in this way but I do not.

At this point in the forest, about an hour and a half in, was when my energy started to not be so frenetic and I was winning my brain back. (Starting to feel like a regular normal human being.)  I started thinking about the journalistic fiction I want to write (being as fiction is the most supreme form of expression and I am uniquely enabled for the form being as I read so many author biographies in prefaces and have modeled my life after them by reading between the lines) and it became very clear that the things that have already happened in the last two and a half years of living in arcata are a very solid foundation for falling in love with a place and having a lot to say about it.  I love Arcata.


I remember the reasons I hated the place when I moved here: people smile at you on the streets, people who don't even know you.   There is no privacy, you see people you know everywhere.  There is nowhere to escape, nothing open 24 hours, no endless streets to wander.  Most of these reasons are exactly what I love most about Arcata now, though I do often wish there were more streets to wander.  I'm sure I've seen every street.
I spent a year cloistered in an austere house on D street, the Mansion on the second floor, with austere homebodied women who were diligent in their studies and religions.  I ran a lot and devoted myself to my own religion, learning piano in the most ascetic way.  (I know people who have not progressed past asceticism study of their instrument, which I find much more hindering than being distracted from boys and jobs i.e., well-roundedness).  I began to unhinge all this by dating and going to shows late at night and interacting in organic ways.  It's evolved into walking around town and talking to a lot of people who I know and don't, being brazenly hedonistic in long stretches, and hanging out with people without an itinerary, just prodding the situation for some spontaneous awesomeness.  This type of living in unprecedented except by my childhood which included a lot of bullshitting and wandering and biking around until the sun set, with whoever lived in my neighborhood.  It demands shutting down the analytical portion of my brain which has until recently been dominant, and being more presently responsive.  It's easier at night when you are drunk, for instance, since your brain is exhausted and doesn't want to be used anyway, but a life that does not forsake intelligence.  In fact, the loosest and happiest friendly and flowing savages in this town have a great reserve of instant wit, probably aided by the fact that they are so relaxed. I have many lovely anecdotes -
(running into dave one million times, him knocking on my window asking to be let in; climbing the highest hill above twinkling arcata with JT to reflect on what just happened ( in the very next anecdote) and also Jason's dream (the view from a very high point looking down on all of california at once, holding hands and singing); a six hour jam session which got very heavy on the synth and t sax and me belting out some crazy song stuff...) - all of this in 24 hours ish - so much more engaging than non-fiction.

Since I am a daywalker between both (generalized) worlds and believe in the virtue of all these conflicting things-
(-Religious zealots with minds of their own and  and also atheists with values
-classical musicians who play the ink and also jazz jam dudes who can't read the ink
-people who make plans to do exciting things and also people who make no plans in faith that exciting things will be stumbled upon and said yes to
-early risers and also night birds
-productiveness reigns supreme and also "the intent of productivity just to manufacture finished things" is abhorrent
-Grateful Dead is stupid, and also Grateful Dead had some good studio cuts, and also remember Europe '76 in Sugaree wasn't that the most supreme music of all history
-Relationship traditionalism (dating, loyalty) and also acting irreverently and passionately
-Shows that start at 8pm and also shows that say 8pm on the poster and mean 11
-Alcohol is indulgent and also alcohol is a superb social tool
-Text messages should be replied to and also text messages don't need to be replied to
-Science is the key to solving worldly mysteries, spirituality is the key to solving worldly mysteries, and worldly mysteries don't need to be solved)
 -I have trouble remembering between all of my friends who will be very offended if I show up ten minutes late and who will show up twenty-five minutes late.  It's occurred to me since first writing this that I am mainly talking about the differences between drummers/surfers/locals or soCalis/growers/gigging musicians and everyone else who represents the real world: scientists/east coasters/classical musicians/homeschooled friends/friends over 30..

Something I was recently having difficultly with, regarding the size of the town, is the exoskeletal waste of previous mini-lives in this town.  Ex-relationships, friends based on GE classes which have since ended, people I had a great back and forth thing at a party with but it turns out we're not going to get that close.. Previous scarcity of human contact in my life has made me reluctant to cut-off the input into any relationship, but the truth is that a relationship feebly maintained by text messages with <3hearts<3 is more of a liability than anything else.  Basically, you go on a walk in this short little town, and you see houses where you used to party and sleep in and love in, and people from these activities all the time.  I greet ex-friends and ex-lovers and wish very badly I could still hold them all in my hands.  
I have had a series of conversations with JT about this, who says you have to just be careful about not doing anything permanently embarassing.  He used as an example three charismatic local characters who've had strings of dramatic inidents with lovers and jealousy that have rendered them socially impotent.  They flirt with everyone at parties and they're gorgeous, but they have had too many flings with too many overlapping strings, and they 'wonder why their lives suck.'  (I want to call attention to his limited truth - I know many assholes that I love who call each other assholes.)
 Actually what he said is something like you have to be okay with the idiotic things you've done.  After two years many people who know me now know the ways in which I am alternately flaky, erratic, obsessive, and isolated still like me or know how to deal with me at least. 

Removing yourself from this culture or actively deciding to not participate also seems to be an common option.  Most people who go to Humboldt State are temporary residents, naturally.  Some people maintain this attitude for their duration and ignore the culture.  They have friends and relationships strictly their age and through the college, and keep the political and street attitudes of bakersfield or LA or whatever.  A few of my friends adopted this when it hit them they were graduating- already people who kept to themselves, they cut ties in January and failed to invest in anything new. (The opposite occurs - musicians who graduate and hang around for a few years to fill spots in Calypso)

I've heard stories in the last few days about legendary houses from a few years ago - The bakery, the c-spot, the brewery, the jungle, the tower - which could be bounced between on a little chunk of 9th street at D.  This community consisted mainly of drummers and there seems to be forty of them, who all are on very publicly intimate terms.  Of course the last of everyone who lived in arcata at the height of this has finally had their senior percussion recitals and graduated.  I was at the liquidation of the last fortress, the Bakery, on Hippie Christmas, ie., May 31st when leases end and free piles are put on the curb.  (June second: the curbs of this city are littered with the bones: coat hangers, useless plastic kitchen crap) From the Bakery I scored a pre 1989 world globe, a brass ring someone found in the garage, a silk sarong, and a bathroom rug which we ended up throwing out because it smelled like pee, and witnessed the administration of the crap by a slew of former residents of the bakery.  There was a lot of "oh, this was mine.  I totally forgot this existed."

I want so badly to ask a million questions about the community there, to build it up in my imagination.  From two accounts I can only gather there was a lot of hanging out.  Like, you are tired of being alone so you go to another house where there are nineteen people like hanging out or drumming.  Many people I know have lived here for six years or four, and I walk with them and kind of trail behind, since they greet everyone with bear hugs (let me be clear, I am again talking about JT) and who am I but this girl who doesn't even play drums.  In comparison to this kind of personality I am inward and shy, but compared to people who are inward and shy I am extremely social and have an enormous network.  I have to remember that.  And at the same time, I am efforting to establish community of my own.  I believe in gathering like-minded friends for activities and living with musicians.  Sounds great.

Sometimes a person will remind me of something I said to them
(You told me the universe does not punish
You called me out on my obsessive tendencies instantly
You said there is no reason to listen to nice music)
and sometimes they'll say it a long time later and I think god damn, I hope the people I go to for advice are not also full of shit

A curious thing about the birthday greetings I got yesterday is that more than a few people shared condolences about how I all at once an entire year older.  Another is "oh. I didn't realize you were older than me."  This is common at school, where roughly half of my peers are 23+ and the other are right on track for regular college age.
I am treated like I am 20, and I don't mind some extra years of wisdom while being underestimated.  But what I can't understand is why anyone would mourn time passing-
(Although I vividly remember lying in my bed in Hillsborough when I was 19/20 feeling very, very old.   Grabbing my stomach thinking, it would be ok, I could learn to love you if you would just never change.  People I love hate bob dylan but his songs are still my walking home very late at night drunk or sober anthems.)
 - since passing time is inevitable and standardized only by human contraptions and is actually fairly interesting - all of those things.

Why mourn things you can't get out of, that happen to everyone?  Growing old is a given, but it isn't as if time has a predictable trajectory.  People talk about growing up and maturity like it is something that happens.  I believe it is a more manual process: Sitting through a very lame recital when your legs are falling asleep because courtesy is contagious; listening to your crazy sister talk about tv series because you love her; eating birthday cake for breakfast but making sure you eat something nutritious for lunch.  That insecurities, and excuses, guilt, panic, and fear of missing out is imaginary or as real as I let it become.  (This is almost exactly what I felt when I was 21 and 20 according to things I wrote too dumb to put on the internet, which is why I should be writing fiction instead of talking about myself for decades)

          We have admiration for people who are really good at something.  But someone who imagines a musician has always been great, did not scrape it by force, is a fool.  I feel especially optimistic at this time in my life, although I am an old lady at 24, because I'm in the middle of things blossoming.  I spend time every day doing things that change with time and me, which I've picked because they have potential for indefinitely unfolding mysteries.  And interesting plateaus.

The far-flung birthday greetings on my facebook wall, which wrenched me around thinking of how I knew these people and where and who I was, has forced me to conclude that life is rich and long.  Fifteen more different selves, even if I only live 24 years again.  The trend is that I deactivate my facebook when I am either the most content or the loneliest or trying to memorize a fugue.

happy bird-day

I had a dream my brown eyes turned blue.  It used to be they were very dark port-holes - when I smile you can't even see the whites - in which one could look and see innumerable interesting things.  What you saw you couldn't describe in words or recreate visually or remember, except as an experience.  What drives you to look in them is something inside you that you don't understand, questions maybe that everyone else has decided to stop asking.  In the dream you were looking and like a sheet of glass sliding over my irises, one turned steel blue and then the other, so that all you saw was your reflection.  I woke up and realized "weird," I am on a nasty couch at school and then weird it is still and actually my birthday

Image credit: Steven Vander Meer

A dream about hoarding my prana, I'm sure

Angry Bird Suite

I can't write music but I do have big ideas.  This is a suite for a small ensemble - Drums, Bass, Guitar, Piano, Alto Sax/ Clarinet, Bari Sax or Euphonium, and Violin.  It is a moody bunch of feeling crumbs I have based on being a woman rolled up into a warm ball in my palms.


ANGRY BIRD SUITE for small combo

Morning Amnesia (Lacrimoso et Fugato)- Oh my god those precious moments before you remember who you are and then it sets in through the depths of sadness that you are ultimately and forever you and alone and another day older AND you have to go to work.  This one really moves into profound sadness/melodrama but becomes ploddingly organized counterpoint by the end.  As far as instrumentation, this is probably mostly piano and in the middle some hard bop maybe, with the piano really working it out out loud how it feels with some help from rhythm

Someone teach the creepers some social skills? (Punk Shuffle) - But seriously does staring like a creeper at a girl at the gym ever work or does being a homeless guy saying "you look beautiful tonight" ever work and dude you are with your girlfriend why you tryin to make eye contact with every woman on the street.  Brassy hits, guitar takes the show, please make some room to throw down.

Night Fight (Allegro con Fuoco) - for all those fights the couples in my house have on our porch.  Horrible invectives, tears, you can't really mean that! Starts with a lonely wandering saxophone (violin?) cadenza.  A second, lower and complementary voice joins (slower, says less) with some imitation but clearly they are both talking and not really hearing each other.  In the middle it gets ridiculously appassionato and furious and one voice basically says fuck it and drops out.  The winding-down cadenza is, naturally, bluesy, subdued, and solo.

the Walk of Shame -  When I was imagining this in my mind, I realized I was just hearing Charles Mingus' Adagio ma Non Troppo because it's a genius bit of composition and I've been listening to it a lot.  And I could easily stick in a character (a young woman) who is reflecting on an act that's supposed to be shameful (walking home after a hook-up) but the morning is so bright and she's searching around inside of herself and realizing what she actually feels is triumphant.  Lots of building orchestration, with ruminative soli interludes, toward a liberated jazzy peak (5:25) - Let my children hear Mingus!!

then there's supposed to be a fifth movement but I lost the sheet that I was daydreaming on in Logic so I have to get back to you.  Collins Symphony no. 1 opus 1.

my list of irrational fears:
1. I'll eventually forget how to talk
2. that I'll depreciate in value every year
3. that there is really nihil novi sub sole
4.
5. someone I love (a specific person) will die alone
6. 
7. myself uncensored

as many lists as are filling my brain

egoic art:
-memoirs (including 'my experience of alcoholism/anorexia/raising a child with adhd and gayness' for your commiseration) and books of personal philosophy
-guys and their guitars and their solo careers
-front men, often
-personal professional websites, blogs
-facebook timeline (well maintained)
-poetry about feelings, especially ex-boyfriends
-journalism without specialty
-maestros, virtuosos, castratos, sopranos
-social climbing 

non-egoic art
-dance, usually
-blogs with no readers (joke)
-performances with an ensemble, especially collaborative or of another's vision
-musical accompaniment
-fiction
-biographical sketches
-satire
-art unadvertised or dispersed or fleeting and unrecorded
-dinner party

indirect memory triggers:
-playing a sequence on the 2nd page of Chaminade Op. 61 reminds me of a walk on fickle hill with a boyfriend when a high school girl honks at him and I get into a minor jealous meltdown 
-breaking apart dried cranberries at my baking job makes me think of the time my boss was being spied on by a guy through her window.  She knew for certain because she snuck to his house immediately after and his truck was warm but he said he'd been home all evening.
-playing a sequence in a little handel piano piece makes me think of my grandpa heine, and when my old roommate nick texted me to tell me our property manager had died, and also of the $10,000 steeple she had crane-lifted on a barn
-a particular pair of tennis shoes makes me think of jumping on dave's rabbit (car) in front of japhys and him pulling me down and throwing me in the car, all in very great fun, and a confused friend recently returned from Europe walking by


what I know about people based on the instruments they play
Violin - guarded and aloof, from another era perhaps
Drummers - hedonistic spiritualists
Piano - exclusive and sensitive, attached to smart phones.  then there's a divergence between assholes and religious zealots.  (I am part asshole and part drummer.)
Most brass- dabble also in science or politics or advocacy for women
Bass - dependable and grinning
Guitarists - dream real big
Saxophone - hipsters, usually horny
Cellists - each the center of the universe.  Can you imagine several in one room?
Oboe - effortlessly the best at most things academic; lack emotional complexity
Sopranos - at first I thought there were too many sopranos in the world and my life to categorize, but my coworker Emma said "chatty"

where I got my manic grin?

Postcard poems from Spring Break San Francisco

n

 

no one gets free jazz, and it's actually really expensive, plus one item minimum

I'm sorry I cannot date you because:

who would my platonic male friends hang out with?
my woman's intuition perceives you as a threat.
I have to memorize a 300 year old fugue.
I only date elitist asshole musicians
   who are highly sensitive
   who need less than 10% of my attention per week
boyfriends make you fat and lazy
my independence is a more marketable asset
I say stupid things which sound stupider when someone else hears them

Poems for People

I found out recently I have to move again by this summer. Dammit.  I've had 18 roommates and lived in eleven houses since going to college.  I reckon I've met a lot of people.  Here are a few poems I've given as possibly unwelcome gifts.
  
1. a composition student at HSU
2. jack of all trades at NC State
3. My stepmother



Second sonnet for Justino:
Even for his love of the tritone, he
Just wants some peace. Must you ask
Questions about theory or some finale task
Impersonating impressionism when you can see
He’s editing an oboe sonata and is otherwise busy
Being an irreproachable paragon of compositional excellence. Alas,
Justino accomplishes the above and more. With his past
In consideration, it’s with remarkable grace, this industry.
The future for Justino is still not clear.
Choices of marriage and career, weighing the virtues of sorrow
And joy for how each contributes to his art.
Will he have as many children as Bach to hold dear
And bear such a legacy? Bury yourself in work and tomorrow
Perhaps breach the truly difficult subjects.




I imagine that when I’m eighty,
I will be more like Chris Cioffi:
 
So resigned to my competence that I will not need a filter.
(What I will say will always right, or by consensus quickly become so.)
I’ll be obstreperous with my sagacity,
so that it ricochets through every room
in every house in the neighborhood!
-(By necessity, lest the young ones forget I’m there.)

But Chris Cioffi, you are so far from old!
Flashing eyes; lithe! And fussy.
-If for once you wanted to fail, try being forgotten.




Sorayasus complicates the definition of true love.
"Fairly boring," she says, "and subtle."
and proceeds to clarify through demonstration,
as if the whole evening recovering forks from a toddler,
bookended by sticky hugs,
was unfolding to affirm her words, again, as true.

I don't feel deflated by an answer for my asking
but I've got to start remembering I can't handle her wisdom.

You grow up and go on and realize you don't have to be who or where you came from -
until three years later or so (a pattern)
when by my own less graceful means I figure out the same thing.
- that boisterously and in spite of myself, I am. 

Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hammer, with Frank Fairfield

Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer, with Frank Fairfield, Saturday March 17th at the Arcata Playhouse

I had known for weeks that I'd be going to this show, carried by the name of Frank Fairfield alone.  I went to some generic indie folk show at the Jambalaya about a year ago (maybe Arborea, with Justino.  Maybe What the Folk by Don.  Regardless, Indie Folk inclines itself to being generic.)  where Frank Fairfield had a brief set.  I didn't expect to hear anything worth mentioning that evening so I got fuzzy with beer and exhausted from good natured dancing, and so when Frank Fairfield hit the stage I was already sitting on the floor, so I didn't have anywhere to go when I was completely taken aback.  After set after set of flowy-garmeted hippies with acoustic guitars, on walks a straight man in a shirt buttoned to the adams apple, 1850s mustache, carrying a fiddle and a banjo along with the prerequisite guitar.  No smiles. No banter.  Frank Fairfield begins to play with the seriousness of a concert violinist, but with the repertoire of Pa Ingalls, and a hootin' and a'hollerin and stomping the stage to beat any one man band.

Frank Fairfield plays Rye Whiskey (Live on KEXP) ("Is it fair to say you just weren't made for these times, Frank?" "Is it? Oh, I don't know, I think everything's just as it should be.")

By tonight, Frank Fairfield has learned to laugh - just a muted chortle behind the mustache, but often and about every little thing.  (It's interesting timing, because a thought that's been percolating in my head about being an effective young person is that you must take yourself seriously, and also, for goodness sake, don't take yourself so seriously.)  It's hard to say if the Frank Fairfield we see onstage is conceit, or if there is some rare creature wandering the country and stepping onstage sometimes to let us in on his magical world.  I'm in favor of stage personas.  The holistic solo artist approach, in which the singer songwriter presents his or herself entirely (personality, distastes, provenance)  for your consideration, strikes me as quite desperate for approval.  And not of musical approval, but of the essence that "I need validation for my entire life. Please."
But if you're of the opinion that music is expressive, ie aims to illustrate some limited aspect of time and space, then letting the audience know about the artist's personal life isn't critical.  The stage presence certainly needs to stem from a place in his or her psychology, but what is presented onstage is deliberate and exaggerated so as to make a point. It isn't critical for me to know Frank Fairfield's personality, distastes, and provenance, but I'd like to think that him laughing a bit comes from the offstage Frank Fairfield, who commiserates with the onstage Frank Fairfield about how fast his cheap banjo loses tuning.

His performance is as expertly executed as his demeanor, very rich nuggets of joy and pain of the old fashioned kind and of every tempo, contained within a neat set.  Six tunes, the procession as such: Fiddle, banjo, guitar.  Fiddle, banjo, guitar.  (I went with Madeline who told me what made it a fiddle was the pegs were on the back instead of the sides, and that he played it in his lap.)  I'm sorry, the only tune names I recall are "Bye, Bye, My Eva, Bye, Bye" and "Short Life of Trouble."  The intensity and volume was unobtrusive, so that by the time it got around to being loud you were good and ready.  His banter is short, his songs, wrenching and nostalgic, are 7-10 minutes but they are too short, his set is nearly an hour but it is too, too short.    Effectively, his set does everything right that the apparent headliners ignore.

Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer - Now I do believe they deserve their reputation as fine and harmonious indie folk musicians.  The trouble is they effort to sabotage their legacy with incongruous costumes (Anais looks fine as a gypsy and befits the tragedy of the songs she sings about maidens, being five months pregnant.  But Hamer - he's got a clean face, a bright red t-shirt, and skinny jeans, which neither suit him, the aura, or his duo) and greedy execution.  If you like the soothing timbre of male and female vocals singing a seven minute ballad, then you will love two hours worth.  You may applaud at the end of two hours and earn another seven minutes of these two story tellers, two hours and seven minutes of soprano and bass.  While Fairfield was playing mazurkas and odes and blues, the only tractable variety between songs of the headliners was in the lyrics.  The songs were neat contained within themselves, but failed to be cohesive toward any larger structure - how easy it would have been to remove about five or so.

Maybe what I dislike about this genre is that it over-relies on the voice as an instrument.  It IS an instrument, but an entire set or band that makes every other instrument the bland support for its vocals had better be interesting or risk monotony.  It's fine, some people are vocal people.  I should point out the very drunken audience, 'silent as mice' according to Anais, were totally digging the set and asked for the encore sincerely.  Another long story about the song and how so funny it relates to what happened while we were on tour and how we met.

Frank Fairfield is the musician's musician; Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer sing pretty songs and waste your time.  Apparently the world loves them.