ROCK IN MY SHOE
The problem might be that I feel completely and utterly unloved.

Not that no one cares about me. People care, sure. I'm liked, even respected by tons of people. I get props all over, and certainly there's people around who respect what I do, and how I go about doing it, and all that. But, well, no one loves me.

I genuinely, deeply, truly love a few people. I make a true point of letting them know in various ways, many of them completely obvious (like saying it, like showing it). But it's been so long that I'm genuinely afraid I wouldn't recognize love if it rained on my head, wouldn't know what to do with it if by some magical happenstance it landed in front of me and shined a flashlight in my face. I definitely know there's not much around. Actively seeking it makes it disappear.

I've managed to fritter away every chance at bringing a spark to full flame that I've had this last year, and even when the rest of my life is going well (which this month it kind of hasn't, to be kind of blunt), I can be counted on to fuck up any chance to prove to myself, or someone else, that I'm relevant or special.

Not that I've justified that kind of feeling in anyone. I haven't finished (or been very good at keeping up) anything meaningful I've written, I've neglected what few friends I have, I haven't been booking any shows for the band, my press kit remains in disrepair, my brittle black hot little heart is being broken as I write this, face it, I'm a mess.

When I first moved to New York, my self-worth was validated. People dug me and what I was all about, I was fresh meat, I guess. Now, there's been a steady stream of little putdowns and belittlements that I don't even want to mention, because by saying them I make them real, and I'm really, really trying to transcend such things.

It's not because I think I'm better than anyone else. But I have to believe that all this little shit I've been going through is get-throughable, that there's another side to all of this.

There are people I respect and look up to who have come out the other end of these hassles, who have made it out of the neuroses of their upbringing and of their environment, and have managed to make a better world for them and whoever they love. And whoever loves them.

I truly believe in such a place, such a mindset. I have to. Because right now, I'm getting some short stick, and the only way to stop getting it is to stop.

I need an alternative. Any alternative.

I need someone to believe in me, probably without basis, at least to start. Everyone I know, everyone in this world I care about of consequence has someone they care about who cares about them most.

I'm not necessarily talking about a significant other or anything so ... formal, but how about just a true best friend? Someone who thinks of me first when they have good news (or bad)? Someone who doesn't throw up walls in situations they find difficult as a matter of course? What friends I do have are a million miles away right now, hanging out with their best friends, or otherwise far from contact.

But I've said too much. One thing I've learned in a million different ways is that needy people don't get what they need. The needy are punished. They are the first to get cut out of the herd. Needy people die alone. And dying alone before I get to say my piece, whatever that might turn out to be, is (I swear) the only thing I fear on this earth.

THE PHONIES
If there's a reason this cartoon is not funny, it' s because, well, it's so saddeningly, maddeningly true.

If there's gotta be awards, and I suppose thanks to human nature that there does, and they're to be awarded in such multi-multi-freakin-multibillion dollar disciplines as the Mainstream Music or Movie Bizzes, then there's going to be corruption.

Everyone I know (present company definitely included, and you too, I bet, if you know what's good for you) complains about how [________] is a great movie/ band/ restaurant/ website that's never gonna get recognized by the Greater Powers that Be or any of that capitalist claptrap. And as a result of the Grammys and Oscars and Tonys and Emmys and Razzies and Harpos and Zeppos etc etc ad absurdum whoring themselves ever more blatantly (or am I just noticing it now, and it's always been like this?) to the maximum corporate dollar and away from the whole integrity-of-the-discipline-they're-creating thing, they're becoming irrelevant and without a future.

That's where human-based conventions and recognition ceremonies like the Sundance festival and SXSW/NXNE come from. They're an attempt to create something that brings genuine recognition to the people whose works they celebrate while keeping that shred of artistic integrity that keeps what everyone's doing, y'know, relevant. These examples, by the way, are pretty big. There's thousands of smaller ones happening every day (Mark Litwak and Film Finder have good lists of worldwide indie film festivals, and for music there's, oh, just for starters, Festival Finder (North America), Festival Focus (UK) and the World Events Calendar (which took some looking)), and most of these festivals give out awards in nice ceremonies with varying shades of glitz and lack of network TV coverage. And they can't be a whole lot less repulsive than the crap that the Big Kids are forcing down our throats.

(By the way, this is not, I repeat not, in contradiction with last week's rant about the other side of this argument, and it's certainly not sour grapes about my own current obscurity, the situation of which is definitely changing.)

INSERT STORM-WEATHERING METAPHOR HERE
Spring break is coming, isn't it?

Friday night, I had my coat stolen out of the club while I was on stage. But the show went well. I mean, I miss the coat, and I had irreplaceable stuff in it (including some things that only the cops and management at Sidewalk know about), but -- I'm back to the point I was at a year ago, after the fire. It's just stuff. All of this is just stuff.

Sometimes I just need to be slapped in the mouth with what's really important with things. It's taking less and less to wake me from this altruistic narcolepsy (or whatever) each time, I think, and it seems I'm getting better at occasionally subverting the whole doing for others before thyself thing.

I finished the website design gig yesterday, and so today, as a treat, I put together what would be the next album of songs as it stands right now and started figuring out which ones work and which ones won't, you know, the process of weeding out. And I realized how few songs I've actually written this year. Now, there's all kinds of reasons for that, one or two of them being valid (like, I was writing other things, like the book, like CD reviews - this weblog doesn't really count toward that - this is just - different), but I happen to really like writing songs, and I think I'm pretty good at it, and well, I haven't been.

I feel the need to apologize for that, somehow.

So I'm torn between buying a coat on my overtaxed plastic or toughing it out until I can actually afford a good one some time in the spring. New York winters are pretty mild - it's nothing like Toronto even, and Toronto's balmy compared to the rest of Canada, and while we're probably due for another cold snap at some point, I think we're pretty much done with the snowstorms and way-below-freezing weather here. (Shut up, Murphy.)

So I got jackets and sweaters, and I don't go out much. I'll save that little credit window and buy something really necessary, like oh I don't know, a microphone or something. Yeah.

Cool. Um, thanks for helping me work that out.

WHY CANT JOHNNY ROCK
Over the last few weeks, I've begun to believe that the scene I'm involved with is deeply delusional. There are, no exaggeration, maybe 50 songwriters in this scene (meaning those who spend most of their time hustling gigs and exposure at the Sidewalk Cafe and the Raven, the two clubs at either end of the hep part of Avenue A) who are absolutely convinced that they are good enough to make a living at their craft. Occasionally, someone gets signed or gets a Famous Person to start coming to their shows or something, but with maybe two or three exceptions, the players in this scene are at best in need of a few years more experience and at worst in need of a shot of truth.

I don't like the music most of my friends make anymore. It's like I woke up one morning and realized my shit detector hadn't been working for a long time. Most of these people are just not any good. And many of them are my friends, otherwise excellent human specimens, not at all the shallow careerist-type who one might expect to pollute the talent pool (well okay, some of them are, but whatever), and they have very real ambitions and game plans and expectations of their own performance and multiple CDs for sale and their own name-dot-com and big-assed mailing lists, the whole deal.

And for one reason or another, the vast majority of them suck.

Is this wrong to say or think about my friends? Is it wrong to really believe that an entire scene of players need to give their head a serious shake, and that at least half (way more than that, actually) might do well to either revise their expectations drastically downward or forget the whole business altogether, aside from playing the open mics and in their own apartments for whoever they're trying to (not) impress?

Of course, the clubs in the East Village (just like everywhere else) need to put warm bodies on stage night after night, and quality is often (usually) (okay, almost always) a second consideration to the ability to hustle people to move alcohol or food or whatever. But while it can be a rush to see someone at an entry-level club that takes your breath away, well, it just doesn't happen often nearly enough. It's been a long time, actually, since I heard anything new that knocked me over. Months, maybe.

It is very possible I'm just becoming jaded in my malaise. But I really don't think so. See, this has happened before.

* * *

The last time I got sick of the local bands in my scene it was (god, was it really) 1991. I had no designs on music whatsoever, and I was tending bar and freelance-writing record reviews and covering local bands for a couple of Toronto-area magazines. Fresh from college, I was all hot to trot about digging the local scene in Toronto, which was and is pretty big. Anyway, for the better part of a year, I saw 20 or 30 bands a week.

And after a while, I realized they stunk. Not that they all ran together in some muddy morass, because they didn't. There was something distinctive about many of the bands. The guitarist was flashy, or there was a glockenspiel player in the band, or they performed in space suits or something. They were trying, really. It's just that -- well, they were really, really trying.

Something about them was wrong. Usually it was just that they were boring or inept, and often both. Sometimes it was something else. They were trying too hard, or not making sense, or were all prima-donnaish before they had a right to be, or something.

I complained about this to enough people, and finally someone told me to shut up and start my own band. So I did. I learned the guitar, I wrote some songs, and eight years later, I'm doing my thing in here New York.

And after 14 months in the East Village Scene, I've made a few really good friends and put together a band and gotten involved in the paper of record for the neighborhood, and -- it's not just that I'm unfulfilled. It's that I believe that mediocrity is being encouraged here, and there's not much incentive to get better anymore.

Which means it might be time to leave the nest. Great. Fantastic. Just as I'm getting comfortable. Yeah, well, I guess I didn't come here for comfort.

(By the way, I exempt myself from the whole everyone-stinks discussion. Whether I'm any good at what I do or not is beside the point of this little screed. Anyone can claim a fan base and "credibility," and many crappy acts do. In fact, I've found that the louder one trumpets how the Rest of the World has accepted one's accomplishments, the less deserving of said accolades one is.

Me, I have faith. Some days, not so much. Some days, nothing else.)

THERE IS NO JOY IN THE ANNEX IN FEBRUARY
The problem is, my thoughts are elsewhere.

I finished the zine with about a half hour to spare yesterday, getting it up to Jon (The Distributor) Berger just in time for everyone to not be pissed off about that. Then I came back home and collapsed (okay, wait, I memorized lines with a couple of people for the play that's opening tonight, and then I collapsed), and I woke up today and there was a whole little laundry list of things that had to get done.

Have I been procrastinating? Probably.

You know, this is the winter of discontent for a couple of the people who are closest to me. I wish there was something I could do for them, like make a pie or do a little dance or take out an ad in the paper or beam amber waves of peace at them, and the people around them, if it might make them feel better.

But I barely have the energy to stay two steps behind my own life.

That has to change. And so it will.

I'm off to do the play now. I'm the lead in this freaking thing, and to be honest, I really don't know my lines yet.

Gee, no metaphor there.

THE EXCUSE I'M STICKING TO
I'm in the middle of the big A/M zine-layout blowout weekend. I've got an editorial and three reviews left to write, and while I hear the world allegedly continues to spin and stupid people continue to pollute the gene pool with their idiotic happenings and other people do wonderful, life-affirmingly amazing things that might ultimately save us as a race from the sheer sludge of our own ineptitude and lack of ability to see the big picture, I'm just going to be sitting here coming up with nice (and in one case not so nice) things to say about these records my friends put their hearts and souls and lives into.

This issue is especially important because I didn't actually put one together last month, so I've gotten no shortage of emails and phone calls asking if the thing is still in business. Yes, dammit, yes, but let me get back on the beam a bit here.

(My sense of discipline is selective as hell. I really don't like that about myself.)

Anyhow. back to work. Until tomorrow.

TODAY
is a kind of anniversary.

On February 1, 2000, I had a 9:00 slot playing at the Sidewalk Cafe. It was one of the earlier times I had actually played there, and it was the very first time on stage with two of the three guys that currently make up my band. It was a little cold, but the weather was stable, and about 15 people came out, which at that point was more than I expected, and the whole night was good.

I was in a good mood anyways. I had been in New York City just a couple of months, but already I had gotten a real good job, a nice apartment in Carroll Gardens, a bunch of new friends who really liked what I was doing and I was all this-is-pretty-cool about their stuff too, I had even been asked to be in a musical (Prepare To Meet Your Maker, a comedy about necrophilia) (that's right - necrophilia), as the romantic lead, no less. I was thrilled. I really felt like I had begun assembling a life here, and I was ecstatic about it.

So I played the show, everything went well, the cast of the play came and it was the first time they had seen me, and I spent the night surrounded by apple cheeked women, and I felt almost glamorous.

So anyway, I eventually left (it was a school night), and as I got out of the subway station, I smelled something a little different in the air. After a couple of blocks, I realized it was smoke. A couple more and I figured out it was a fire, and it was on my block, and then I turned the corner and see the five fire trucks (and the entire neighborhood) surrounding my new apartment, flames licking out the windows.

Now, I don't know what the normal reaction to such things is, but suddenly the whole damned situation seemed like the funniest thing I had ever witnessed. I had a change of clothes, and my guitar, and that was about it maybe for everything.

It was about 1:30 in the morning at this point. I called a friend of mine who had come to the show - actually, the guy who wrote the musical, who I knew was a lawyer living alone in a two-bedroom apartment in the East Village - and I told him (I didn't ask him, I told him) I was moving in with him until I could find somewhere better to live. Fortunately, I caught him in a moment of vulnerability, and he left his door unlocked, and I went on over and moved in, and now I've lived here a year as of today.

It's worked out well. He's a bit of a compulsive packrat, and I have no material possessions. I'm learning the piano, and he's... well, I'm sure I'm teaching him something. Anyway, it works out.

Sharon Fogarty has this theory that no one can successfully move to Manhattan without undergoing some kind of major trauma, kind of like a birthing process. You know, it took me two months to stop laughing about the fire, and ever since then I have no idea how I lived through that without losing my mind.

Maybe I did. Oh well. Today marks one year in Gotham.