ALL THIS, AND I GET TO WEAR A SWANKY SUIT TOO
So this is the weekend where I get to play suburban kid for a little while. I'm typing this at my mom's computer in Amityville, waiting for everyone to get back so we can get on with the wedding. Ah, the wedding. It's my youngest cousin this time. With two older brothers who've both hitched up in the last five years, the family is kind of weddinged out, and Rich and Nicole are not big house in the outer suburbs kind of people. Well, okay, they are, but not to the degree that many of the other cousins are. Within the space of a couple of generations, the family has gone from rural Euro stock to everyone living in Brooklyn and Detroit to settling nicely into the inbetweeny lands of the outer suburbs, with all the wonderful (and terrible) things that means.

I find transitions like that fascinating. I've been Strictly Pavement since I first moved downtown at 16, but the thought of living in the middle of nowhere in a shack with nothing but a coffee machine, a guitar and a Selectric is not without its charm.

Anyway. I'm reading the following poem at the wedding, which is actually kind of moving in ways that these things aren't supposed to. A little cheese before the vows usually suffices in times like this. But hey, the author knew his stuff, and it shows, even in translation:

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms,
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because there is no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

- Pablo Neruda

Happy Spring, everyone.

AH DONE BEEN HEALED
Let me start by saying, I don't get sick.

There are people who always have some kind of cold or flu or allergic thing going on with them that they're fighting off. You know these people. Some people are always aching or contorted, for various reasons. (This ain't a value judgement - at least I don't think so. I've been rather cavalier about evaluating others this last week; see the post below about Liza's wedding, f'rinstance, and I'm trying to keep being the SNAGgy pushover songwrither type airbody's come to expect outta me, really, I'm trying.) Some people, for whatever reason, Get Headaches, have them all the time, have to deal with what must be a constant hell of having to deal with the pressure in their head as well as all the other crap the rest of us have to deal with on top of that pain. It's gotta suck.

Well, for the last month, I was that guy. I'd pulled a muscle in my chest from coughing so hard, my neck was stiff and immobile, I coiuldn't breathe in without starting another coughing fit, the headaches would move through the different quadrants of my skull and neck like a shark in a tank, och, it was terrible. (I bet you know what this feels like, either chronically or from some hopefully-distant memory.)

I clung to the hope that this was all stress-related. The stress level in the old apartment was pretty high, and I had no idea how much living on top of someone else was distorting my worldview.

But the speed which all these ill humors have left my body is startling. I've been in the new place all of 72 hours, not even, and except for the last vestiges of the cough, all the symptoms have disappeared, and I can breathe deeply and see the glorious sky again. (I even had coffee in the morning for the first time in forever. You would not have recognized me.)

That's all. No other news. Just that, sure as the weather shall rise and fall like a yo-yo on the space shuttle, sure as Halle Berry, no matter how hysterical she is about winning her Oscar, will remember to thank her lawyer (three times!), sure as sure gets, I have been healed, cured of my bad stress, my symptoms gone, gone, gone, and now I can get on with the business of my life, the only grief coming from my own ineptitude and not someone else's bad day!

That sound is me exulting. Next up: fix the computer.

ALL THE FUN OF A DIVORCE WITHOUT THE WHOLE EX-WIFE THING
So the move went good, and my stress level is going down. If I had access to a working computer, I'd post pictures of the place, if only to show you how empty it is. It's lovely not living on top fo someone else's stuff. I haven't had Only My Crap ina place since, gawd, it's been years.

I'm at MTS now, doing the Spontaneous Combustion series. A bunch of playwrights sit down on Friday afternoon, write a series of short plays around a theme, then the actors come in on Saturday, and the plays open Sunday night. (I'm in this operetta about horny yoga practitioners. That's not a typo.) It runs until Tuesday, and I can vouch for that it's a good time, funny as hell mostly, well worth the dough if you've got a notion to come. (Reservations are recommended. I think tonight is sold out already.)

But there is a part of me that just wants to go home and Be in my Apartment. It's lovely. It's peaceful. It's mine. I'd love to show you around, even with the minimal furnishings. I'm digging the whole spartanness of it. Soon, I know, the cascades of stuff will flood in through the door and pile up in the corners, and then the middle of the floor, like the glaciers of the next ice age. And I'm looking forward to that as well. But oh, the peace of the space right now.

THE SOCIAL EVENT OF THE SEASON
Sometimes it's hard to tell if the world is improving, especially if things have sucked for a while. You just get used to reading dumb headlines and feeling like hell, the grass grows around the edges of your happy place, and your perspective goes to shit.

But this weekend, I caught a glimpse of the Up escalator. I'm still weak from the bronchitis of a couple of weeks ago, and the show I played (good thing you didn't come, all 6 billion of you who missed it) was awful - I couldn't get through a song without having to take a break in the middle to catch my breath. At least, that's what it felt like.

But the complaints are getting a little smaller. The St. Patrick's day parade was more cops and uniformed people from all over the world than it was about Irish stuff, which is apparently the norm for the New York version of this party, but still, the thing had the feel of a May Day parade in Moscow c. 1977 or something instead of the shiny apple-cheeked bagpipes-&-clowns-on-trikes greenfest I was sort of expecting. It was fine, though, even though it got cold. I usually don't even bother saying this, but it does sometimes merit mention: the locals were way nicer than the tourists.

The thing that's pissed me off most about the weekend, though, was that I missed Liza Minelli's wedding, which turned out to be a semi-public affair (who knew?), and which went on at the same time as the St. Patrick's day parade. It too caused stoppages of traffic in lower midtown, and the idea of being able to go see the Social Event of the Season (because hey, any time Liza Freaking Minelli of all people hitches up to some homonculus-looking collector of Shirley Temple memorabilia (it's true - look it up), which happens about every other year, far as I can tell, it's worth clearing your calendar for, no really. Besides, like Liza said herself last week, and I'm paraphrasing here but this was definitely the gist,

"After the horrible tragedies of September 11th, it's time for New York and the world to turn their attention to something truly important and wonderful for a change.")

would have made the weekend wonderfully complete.

I have this theory that David whatever, the groom guy, yeah him, he was actually in a Liza Minelli lookalike contest somewhere in which the first prize was her hand in marriage. (Someone asked her why, out of the four men she's married, three of them have been gay, she replied, "Oh, really? Which one wasn't?" Hee. Now that's a woman with her priorities in order.) But regardless of how they got together, the wedding was clearly wonderful, and she was right: a little spectacle for no sake was exactly what the city, and yes, the world, needed. And with Michael Jackson as the best man and Elizabeth Taylor as the maid of honor, you know there's nothing but good omens for the future for this wonderful couple.

So hope springs eternal after all. Because, really. If two lovebirds and their million-odd yentas, acolytes, fartcatchers and gossipmongers can grip hands and fly over the rainbow, then why, oh why can't I?

...AND A CLARIFICATION
My part of the show on Sunday night at the Elbow Room (144 Bleecker Street at Laguardia, 212-979-8434) starts at about 6:00. Again, do bring canned goods, they're good for a discount.

And ignore the ad in Time Out that refers to me as "Tony Highteller." Don't these people know who I am? Gawd, I mean, really.

OH, ONE OTHER THING
Just because I've been uncharacteristically verbose this week doesn't mean I'm going to be like this forever. I'm going to keep working on the book and the album, and that might mean less time (and more importantly, less energy) for dropping pearls of wisdumbass into this here Evil Twin pool. I promise the same thing I've always promised - to do my very best, which often is plenty good enough.

But - well, I am at a pay terminal right now. And even though I signed a lease today (Hey, check it out - I signed a lease today! I'm legit in this town, finally! Huzzah!) my computer is still quite fritzed and unfixed, so my online limping-aboot won't go away completely for maybe another month or so yet.

All that being said, something very wonderful has happened, and I've been downright rude to not mention it. Amber is back in the game. She deserves way more love than it seems she's been getting of late. Welcome back, sweetie. I made pie, enough for everyone.

MY MARCH MADNESS
Just because I'm not as pumped about college basketball as most of the people in these parts are doesn't mean I'm left with nothing to rub my sporting tummy these days [I have a sporting tummy! So do you, I bet!]. The hockey season is wending its way toward a wild windup, and with my Leafs in the thick of things at the top of the Eastern conference, I'm feeling good like Saturday night.

Today they picked up Tom Barrasso to spell Corey Schwab (who's been fantastic - I actually got to see the Toronto-Philadelphia game on ESPN2 a couple of days ago, and he looked great), which means that Toronto'll stay strong into the playoffs, where they'll wind up either playing Ottawa or one of the New York teams, from the look of it. If they can get one more solid defenseman before the trade deadline, they're going to be doing a lot of damage in April and May, and can I get a hell yeah for that.

I KNOW A FEW IRISH TUNES, I GUESS
I've managed to finagle a show at the Elbow Room for St. Patrick's day this Sunday. Come out - I've got new songs and I'd love to play for you all.

Now, you shouldn't come out just because I don't play too often these days, or because I'm sharing a bill with antifolk Methuselah (and pal o' mine) Joe Bendik (as well as Blue Sandcastle, Lockdown, Mappari, Received, Tai Burnette and We Are Scientists). Nor should you come because there's going to be discounts on the booze once you get in.

No, you should come because it's a benefit for City Harvest, an organization that literally brings wasted leftover restaurant and supermarket food to New York's homeless. I hope you have no idea how much this service is needed, not just in New York, but everywhere. Just come. It's the best kind of good.

The show starts at 5:30, which means you can drink like a Kennedy and still be home early on a school night.

Oh, bring some canned goods, and they'll give you a break on the $7 cover charge. Please. come.

DRAFTHIGHTOWER.COM

Look. It's not just because we share a last name. I actually happen to think he's pretty on the ball, and if the Draft Hightower movement goes anywhere, I'd be proud to help him out anyways. If you don't know who he is, well,

Jim Hightower is a former 2-term elected Texas Agriculture Secretary (a more impressive political resume than George W. had a when he ran for president!), radio talkshow host, prolific writer, electrifying speaker, brilliant commentator and 100% True Texan. This site is devoted to convincing Jim to run for president in 2004.

Look, we all know Bush is going to escalate this war thing until half the country is scared to vote for anyone else and the other half is beaten into submission, and the only way that we can break out of that cycle is if there's a real and rational alternative, not a shrill jackass who'll try to out-asshole the Republicans (which I don't believe can be done) or stand above it all and intellectualize themselves into oblivion (cf. 2000).

I doubt he'd run, but if he does, I'd climb aboard his bus in a heartbeat. Perhaps he and Ralph Nader and Ann Richards and Paul Wellstone and the rest of the progressive braintrust in this increasingly intolerant country can get together and put together a coherent plan for shifting the dialogue in a better direction in '04.

[thanks Kelly for the heads-up]

HOOP DREAMS
While we're on the topic of important social events I'm not into watching, tomorrow is the beginning of the NCAA basketball tournament. I just can't get past the fact that even at the championship level, there's gonna be 99% of these kids who will never see the inside of an NBA locker room, and they'll be stuck with varying degrees of actual practical education (sure, they might have a degree, but so what), and next to no preparation for any world that doesn't pay them handsomely for dunking a basketball.

There's a show on ESPN or someplace called "The Life" which I've seen a couple of times. It's an interesting show. It follows professional athletes around, into their houses and lives, showing the inside of their mansions, following them to Jag dealerships, being recognized and adored everywhere they go, and you can safely bet that to some second-stringer on, say, the Central Connecticut State team or somewhere, that show has got to be pure porn, a perfect paradise, so close he can see it from his spot on the bench at courtside, though even now it's still a Matterhorn of what-ifs and dumb-luck occurrences away.

As of this typing, there are still 64 teams in the running to go to the Final Four in Atlanta on Easter weekend. Most of the kids in these schools (as well as their families, their communities, and everyone all around them, all by necessity, because you don't get even this far without everyone around you sacrificing for El Dream-o Grande) have put basketball so far in front of everything else in their lives, I wonder what else about the world they're actually learning. Most of them aren't going anywhere near the NBA, and, ill-prepared for anything else, I fear for the future of many of these kids.

I hate math, but let's do some.

There are something like 500 people actually drawing an NBA player's salary right now. Assuming 12 active players per college team, there are 768 players involved in March Madness. Even if 10% of the pro players retire or leave the game this year, that leaves those 768 people (that's tournament participants alone - this isn't even counting players overseas, those in smaller colleges, all the developmental leagues, and any other walk-ons) angling to fill about 50 spots.

Such a massive build-up with such a tiny promise for payoff, especially when the process is so instituionally entrenched, dampens my desire to follow collegiate sports much. The TV networks and advertisers (not to mention the schools themselves) are making insane amounts of money on the backs of these kids at the expense of their proper initiation into adulthood, and I've heard too many horror stories about graduates not being able to read their own diplomas, and so the lie they're selling kind of breaks down. I know such stories are probably (I hope) not the norm, but they're far from rare, and so I find the college game hard to follow with much gusto at all.

Pro sports are a different story. At least they're getting paid, usually pretty well, for distorting their lives. And in other disciplines where there's very little chance of amassing a fortune, or in amateur or collegiate sports that have less of a mainstream media presence, most of the participants have taken the extra trouble to develop some kind of outside career. But in basketball (and football, for the most part the same deal), the two sports where collegiate athletics are big-time multi-multi-freaking-multimillion dollar businesses, I don't feel comfortable giving time, money, attention or even encouragement to kids who, even at this final tournament level, are overwhelmingly due to get a serious cold shot of reality for which they have been singularly unprepared.

Besides, there's way more significant ice to fish through these days. The NHL season is wrapping up soon. And you know? I'm going through a bit of a change in my life, and I'm not so sure girls are icky anymore - I might even try talking to one someday, even. Don't push me, though.

9/11
I kind of made a point of not watching the 9/11 special last night, and I'm kind of glad I didn't. There is a part of me that wanted to know as much as possible about what it was like, to have been inside the building, to smell and feel and hear what the people who actually were dying were feeling, and I spent the better part of two or three days after the attacks just taking pictures and deep breaths. I never wanted to forget my first impression of what had happened; the burnt-concrete plasticky smell that I had only smelled once before, in a crematorium, and not one thousandth this strong, and certainly not outside; the completely abandoned streets of Lower Manhattan, walking down the middle of West Broadway at mid-evening and finding not a single living soul anywhere near; the sirens, everywhere, 24 hours a day, outside my ash-streaked window, two blocks away, miles away, it was like the whole damned world was either locked down or screaming to get somewhere; the dust, the goddamned dust, which I still see everywhere I look, like I'm Lady Macbeth or something; having the phones down, the electricity on & off, the only connection to the outside world being the cable modem (oh, broadband, godsend), logging on to Metafilter to find out what the hell was really going on because the tv networks were no help (CNN's Aaron Brown standing atop a building babbling like a freak was just not really what I needed at the time); wandering around the streets, just staring at shellshocked people, watching them stare back, just as shellshocked, and coming home and not being able to write anything coherent beyond sending out the same email, over and over again, it felt like a thousand times - I'm safe, things are hell here, details later when calm returns a bit - I never want to forget those initial reactions. Those are the only things I still trust about that day.

Documentarians find their own angles. News networks and papers need to attract eyeballs. People retell stories until they're polished down like beach glass. When I hear others tell their story about where they were at the time, I almost don't want to know. I mean, I do, but I don't. After that first rsh of whatthehell'sgoingon, I consciously remember shutting it down. Everyone started making this their own story, and I wanted it to remain mine. Not so that everyone's story would be my story, but so I could keep the part of this that I remember as pure as I could.

I will never forget that morning, or the few days that followed. I'm sure of that now. I don't want to bastardize my memories by hearing a retelling of it through someone else's eyes, regardless of their agenda. That said, I hear the documentary was pretty good.

HOFREAKINGSANNA
I think I might have a place. I went and put a down payment on this largish studio joint in Midtown, and I sign the lease on Friday (The Ides! The Ides!), unless they find out about all those outstanding warrants and my Summer of Love among the Afghanis (please don't tell!). Maybe there'll even be crash pad space for you if you ask and there's space.

But mostly, it'll be all about the solitude. Oh, the solitude. Then see what great work comes from my typer. Provided, of course, that my computer gets fixed and my neighbors aren't jackhammer-wielding psychos or death-metalheads using their flats for rehearsal space. Or whatever.

THE THIRTY IDES OF MARCH
Today I did something I've never done before.


I canceled a recording session because I didn't feel like going through with it. I'm no Cal Ripken or anything about having to go to work every day even if I'm about to die or something, but -- I didn't feel like it. For me, that was a big deal.


I mean, it was true. We've reached a logistical crossroads, and the thorough road to making a great album is gonna be hugely long and pretty expensive. Well, more expensive than I can handle right now. Not pricey in the Michael-Jacksonian sense, or even the Significant Indie Rockian sense. It's just more than I got. (Curious investors inquire within.)


Also, I had been laid up with bronchitis for almost two whole weeks, and I still have these asthma-style coughing fits that kind of scare me a little. I haven't slept through the night in literally weeks with the stress of living somewhere I'm aggressively unwelcome. And my computer is still in little bitty pieces, which has cut me off in a way that's bothering me more than I thought it would. It's not like I depended on the online world for my social life or anything, but the lack of access to even reading other weblogs, let alone news I can trust (i.e. not US-based jingorahrah outrage-du-jour stuff), has not helped my sense of isolation.


Yeah, poor me. I'm all alone in Manhattan. Pobrecito mio. Well, laugh it up at your own risk, pacocito. I know more lonely people here than anywhere I've ever been.


Good news, though, in that it all ends. In 30 days I'll be living somewhere else (could be Queens, could be Midtown, could be under a bridge, but it'll be somewhere), and I'll be back online a bit more regularly at some point. And if I'm not feeling like working on the record right now, it's not because I'm not feeling the whole creativity thing: I've been writing chapters of the book again, and they're only getting better, more even, wittier, you know, descriptive and stuff.


So aside from the fact that I'd trade my left arm for a good night's sleep in a place that feels even this [ ] much like home, I'm spending a little time taking care of the really basic things before I get back to focusing more on matters of greater sophistication.

UPDATE

Just so you know - my computer died. Like, really died, like black-electrical-smoke died, and so I cannot get email, even, much less anything else. (I have a disk somewhere with all my recently updated passwords, but until I find it, my server is going to have a case of proverbially blue e-balls, and if you've emailed me in the last couple of weeks, I flat-out don't know about it yet).

I'd wax rhapsodic about my sweet baby, but I'll save it for later, when there's a real need for a decent insomnia cure. If you need me, you can email me here, and if you have any leads on where to get good repairs in NYC or environs, I'd love to hear it.

The record is going along swimmingly. We're deep into preproduction, and the songs are getting tighter, and I'm learning how to deal with a professional engineer not named Vaughn Passmore for the first time in my rock and roll life. He did both my previous albums, and while I love how they sound, he still lives in Toronto, and Alex Abrash comes highly regarded. It's going to be a lovely little pop record, and I hope you'll like it.

The recording would be going even faster, though, if I weren't so sick right now. I've got some kind of bronchitis, and between the chills, the coughing fits and the shortness of breath, I've had a hell of a time trying to eke out decent singing parts for these songs. We've typically had to go halfway into a song, stop while I gagged and wheezed a little, and then finished the take. I've had so much cough syrup this last week I'm starting to channel Lester Bangs, and if I have one more freaking cup of tea with lemon and honey I'm going to turn into a bee. I'm getting better, though my not missing work combined with the shaky home life these days is not helping my general recuperation speed.

Oh, yes, the home life. Well, I'm moving out of the swanky new Hell's Kitchen pad I've been in for two-plus months now. It just wasn't working out with the housemate, and so I'm cutting my losses. I'm looking for a place by myself, and I don't care if it looks like the POW camps in Guantanamo Bay, as long as it has its own kitchen, bathroom and lockable door, I'm all over it. (I have a sublet set up if nothing else works, but I'm not going to give up looking completely.)

The novel is on the shelf, if only because I'm not anywhere I can write for it. Home was no good for working even before the computer fritzed, and now I have nowhere to concentrate. I figure, when I move into the new place, I'll be able to create my own environment, and I'll start on the book. At that point, the record will be far enough along it won't need the same kind of energy anyways, so there you go.

Anyway. That's why I've not been around this last month. I'll be back at some point, probably soon (the itch to write here and elsewhere has been immense), but there's been way too much stress and too little solitude for me to collect my thoughts and make something coherent out of them. Case in point, all of this.

Don't be afraid to keep in touch. I miss you.