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April 06, 2006

I'm sorry, National Poetry Month.

Oh my God... so busy... Vince, traveling constantly, total jetsetter... me, working like dog, doing things I don't know how to do, going to various doctors, being told various things... Chris, school... Jesse, rocking on his own time...

Yes, we are not in very good communication with you, or each other, right now. I don't know what happened, really. I thought March was going to usher in this spring of relaxation and creativity and it just has NOT. Really, March/April, what is your problem? We had all these plans for madness, and we did not quite make it to the level we wanted -- sure, there was some mild musical craziness going on, but full-fledged madness? Not quite.

And it's frustrating, of course, because we'd like to be achieving more, faster. And mostly, it's lonely, because the only two members of this band who live within working proximity of each other are me and Chris, the singer and the drummer, the two least likely to make beautiful music together (not like that -- we know how to make beauti... shut up).

But here is where the Lord sometimes can work his mysterious ways. Just when I was getting really down about it, two things happened to cheer me up.

Scenario A: The other day we were in a coffee shop, and I was saying to Chris that both Chaos were flying all over the place lately and I had not really talked to either of them, which is unusual, and siiiiigh, that's enough to make anybody sad, really. We walk up to order and the guy behind the counter is 1) Chinese American; and 2) handing me coffee; and I get even sadder, because those are two things Vince is really great at.

So, I'm paying for my coffee (so sweet) and just as I was about to turn to Chris and make some mournful sound about this whole thing, the counter guy starts slapping his pockets and says to his co-worker: "Okay... okay... I'm gonna smoke one cigarette, and then I'm gonna start busting some ASS on these counter tops. Yeah!"

I smiled quietly to myself. Cearly, through some ancient Chinese psychic network, Vince was trying to communicate with us -- because that is PURE Vince. Announce. Distract. Achieve.

Scenario B: We woke up the next morning to find a mysterious message on our phone, left at 11 p.m. by Jesse, who obviously thinks we're much bigger rockstars than we actually are. "You need to be prepared to accept phone calls and e-mails at any time of the night if you want to be proper singer-songwriters, so your non-answer at this point... is disappointing."

Maybe because it's getting close to summer again, but I really miss those jags. We might allegedly see each other in July. Some kind of plans are being hatched.

Meanwhile, I have to continue trying to pretend I know how to write songs. I think I've written here about the weird sensation that overtakes me when I go to live shows -- many, many times listening to another band has knocked something loose in my brain and created an urgency so strong that I have to dig through my purse and pockets looking for paper to write down ideas. I never come prepared for this, even though it happens fairly often -- I realize it sounds weird, but it's true. I wrote a good verse or two of Half-Empty Bottles on the back of an envelope in the balcony of the Variety Playhouse at a Jayhawks show. In the dark.

Last night, we went to see Rhett Miller, also at the Variety, and I was struck again with what I thought at the time was powerful inspiration. When we put Be Sure... out, a lot of people asked where I got ideas for songs, and I tried to explain that some of them just seem to write themselves after I get stuck on some turn of phrase or another, but that some of them take longer and I have to kind of wrench them together. In the next batch of songs, I've been so excited to write two of the former and have been working on several of the latter type for WEEKS ON END. I'm not trying to say these songs are great literary feats, or anything. They're not bad, but they usually start with some small idea that is good enough to turn itself into something else. To illustrate, I will now type out verbatim the jibberish I scribbled last night, in the darkness of the bar, on some blank pages of my check book register and an old Kroger receipt. This is how the magic gets made.

warm
heart so warm...
------------------------
Love's wintertime
you can't wash it away with turpentine
you can't wind your way in, all serpentine
waterlogged and sleeping like my darlin' Clementine
------------------------
he had a heart as warm as Panama City*
but she was as cold as she was pretty
.... shitty?
and he lost track of where they were going
... snowing
------------------------
two times around
favorite sound
------------------------
he tried to believe everything was fine
but he'd opened the door on love's wintertime
------------------------
something about the beach?
------------------------

Y'all, seriously. What in THE hell does any of that mean? What, for example, was I thinking with the whole weather forecast element of it all? (Though, truly, if somebody steals that Panama City thing from me, I will kill. I'll make something out of that, somehow.) I remember writing that turpentine line, smugly laughing to myself, thinking I was freakin' Randy Newman, and now it just looks dumb.

But, you know, we learn from our scraps, and at no time is that more true than National Poetry Month, going on now. Sometimes, it ain't that good, but I only put the mess up here to better showcase that what the great and powerful blues poet John Lee Hooker once said is quite true: Sometimes it's in me, and it's got to come out.

Posted by The DMs at 03:53 PM