Archive: December 14, 2010
It’s twelve degrees outside. At this very moment it is twelve degrees. I know that for many of you that’s not such a big deal but to me, and considering the humidity… that’s very cold. The heater in my van broke early in the summer (rather the fan broke and therefore the air conditioning as well) so I was landlocked in my house. Bound to my kitchen, trying to keep warm in my basement apartment and thinking of nothing. I couldn’t leave so I watched Hulu all day and wished I was reading instead. But these sorts of days happen. I’ve had these snowed in days before.
But watching television all day made my 4 a.m. walk through desolate East Nashville just magical. I ran down the street and stopped abruptly to skid across the ice. I twirled around in circles. I laughed and ran and walked. I tried not to fall and succeeded. I listened to a rooster crow. I heard the wind, like waves, or an approaching car, talk to me from the frozen tree branches. Each kind of tree singing a different song. I marveled in the fact that my walk with Daisy just hours before felt like a frustrating chore for reasons I don’t understand but this… this was a great moment. It represented the reason why I love night, why I love running in the night, why I love being in the night.
Maybe, I, like my friends am obsessed with the idea of nuclear winter. Actually, that’s irrefutable, and one of the reasons why we are so close. It’s interesting to think that you could be the only one alive. I marveled at the suburban housing, the intrusive feeling of running into a manned car in the desolation, the way everything looked like the pictures of mid-west suburban life in the winter of 1984. I picture in my mind walking through Switzerland in a desolate snow storm. Trekking the white terrane to some unknown, coming emergency. I invent stories of the world as it could be were I the heroine in a Tom Tykwer film. I picture myself as the character of an Innocence Mission song.
I walked to the back yard of Stratford Highschool and looked at the untouched snow. Not yet played on and enjoyed by children. I looked at the baseball diamond and the football field, the streets around me and the slippery hill I would have to climb in order to return home in obscurity, unmet by passing cars.
I watched the glittering snow fall in front of yellow street lamps and thought about living in Scotland. The knowledge that I was always cold, never really warm at any point of the year, the magical buildings of Edinburgh towering in every direction. The Catholic church always offering candles to light in prayer for 10 pence. Edinburgh Castle towering over my head, Princess Street stretching out in front of me. The Elephant House offering me refuge from the cold, whipped creme for my coffee instead of half and half (I thoughtlessly asked for creme instead of milk), The Cameo Theatre. The beautiful architecture of the restrooms. How desperately cold I was all year. The snow brought back everything.
It also reminded me of how much I miss California. Truth be told I haven’t been back enough over the last 3 years and I physically ache for the sun in all it’s glory, the experience of not ever actually ever being cold (and when I felt cold for some reason it always felt like there was some horrible injustice being done – or I was kicking myself for not taking a jacket – a jacket… not a coat – to San Francisco. I miss not being in such a racially tense environment. I miss not having to pretend or perform for anyone for any reason. Less scrutiny. More grace. But certainly more gross materialism and vanity in pockets of the state… less in others. Really really warm people.
The tour will be a collection of mostly house shows that I am waiting for their final cementation on. The upside of booking house shows is that they’re more laid back and communal. The downside is that you’re often not dealing with professional promoters and so it takes quite a long time to get the final information on everything. So I will get all that to you as soon as I have it totally ironed out. Please stay posted.
I think EVERYTHING is about to change. And I don’t really know what that means. But even being gone for 2 weeks and some change feels so permanent for some reason. Maybe it’s just because my heart aches for California. Maybe this tour begins a season of intense and quick change. I am leaning on that likelihood pretty heavily.
These are the days where To Do Lists are imperative. I am working my butt off to try to get all my financial stuff strait before I leave town and get everything cleaned and ready for Raleigh to house sit. Hoping he has a really inspirational time in my writter’s nook. I am sending out the last of the Christmas e.p’s and hoping to have enough money to visit all my friends, see Eric Pare, my old manager, go to San Francisco to spend some time with the city, emailing songs out to my band in Fresno, getting ready for the radio interviews, trying to plan my outfits, doing laundry (as soon as the washer unfreezes… no joke… it’s literally frozen), writing, playing music, making sure I have Mom’s Christmas gift with me, trying to prepare myself mentally for the pressure of the holiday season, missing my dad, defending the truth of unicorns. And getting ready for the inevitable and crazy culture shock that is waiting for me in Fresno and the rest of California.
Here’s to a slammed week. Here’s to 2011. Here’s to the future being completely out of my hands.