their exits and their entrances

Moliere once compared writing to prostitution. Bizarre comparison, possibly. But not unfounded. Those who are so literarily lured to write do so initially for love, because they enjoy it. Then they write for a few close friends, and eventually for money. I myself have stumbled upon the realization that when you put a time limit and price tag on what you write, when you write, and whom you write it for, you simultaneously remove the passion and love about the whole thing.

This is not intended to act as an excuse of any kind for my absence from and neglect of my lovely little canyon. It’s just that my recent writing-world whorishness seems to be getting the best of me. It’s soulless and exhausting, as I’m sure you can imagine. So I’ve decided to return to the garden and write once again for me, for my friends, for love, for free.



A couple weeks ago I made my yearly Pacific sabbatical. I went for a holiday in Sunny CA. My only sister happens to reside there.





She’s the kind of girl you want to visit.





I envy Cybil’s Southern California lifestyle. She breathes a different air, a familiar air—the salty restless ocean air. She falls asleep listening to it and it welcomes her in the foggy morning. She teaches surf lessons in the day and bartends in the evenings. She lives on Manhattan Beach’s quirky Strand. Her place is dotted in shark eggs, shells, sand dollars, starfish and a barrage of tokens from various island endeavors. She lives with a sweet Samoan surfer named DJ. There’s not enough wall space for surfboards, but there’s coffee and beer and a ‘sick’ porch view. Nothing but a single-row community parking lot separates her from the powerful Pacific, and when the sun warms off the fog, it offers a blinding reflection off the cold boundless Blue.

When I say “yearly sabbatical,” I mean this in the most simple and nontraditional sense. Every trip offers completely unique surprises from the piñata of this summer sojourn. One year I saw The Who at the Hollywood Bowl. One year Willie, Ryan Adams and Neko Case. One summer I went to State Street’s Fiesta Parade of Flowers. One summer I ate a fig from the Santa Barbara Farmer’s Market that I still haven’t been able to forget. There have been art shows in LA, reggae shows in Malibu, costume parties in Santa Monica, mechanical bull riding on the Sunset Strip. One year I went to the Emergency Room after an unruly bicycle pier pub-crawl. One year I found myself in an innocent affair. This year I had the enviable privilege of going to the Festival of the Arts’ Pageant of the Masters moving pictures performance.



This year the celebration was especially memorable, as it was the 75th birthday of the very first presentation of ‘living pictures,’ which began in 1933. The theme for this year’s Pageant was “All the World’s a Stage.” For those who aren’t familiar with Bill’s infamous prose …

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,

All of this tableaux vivant got me thinking about the fleeting nature of beauty, unquestioned adoration, and the blinding/crippling/clouding effect this has on our judgment. The ability that our minds have to play tricks on us in terms of what is real and truly exists vs. what we assume to be so. The skill we possess to train ourselves to cherish small, but significant moments and value them for the way they make our hearts soar.



I find that in today’s world there exists an underlying theme of instant gratification. We ourselves have created this expectation of availability and implemented the means to achieve it. Name your desire …

Coffee? Drive to the corner, get in line and leave the car running. Your favorite song? The voice behind the speaker will place a warm cup of joe in your hand while your opposing thumb wheels through Blonde on Blonde tracks on your pocket-sized, hand-held, car stereo-adapted appendage. Talk to someone? Call their cellular device. They might be in a meeting, at the gym, or in the loo, but thanks to iphones, blackberries and text messaging, they can let you know in real time.

We as a society seem to live under the umbrella of thought that fast equals functional. But have any of us stopped to think of what we might be passing up with all this pace-making productivity?





What if you took a mid-morning stroll to the corner for you coffee? Gave yourself time to observe, think, dream. Walk into the café and admire the artwork on the walls. Smell the warm aroma of dark roasted espresso. Banter genuinely with the counter girl about her morning, your walk, her accent. It is in the hastiness of these encounters with one another that this instantaneous lifestyle is robbing us.





A questionable memory can pose constant challenges for a writer, learner and avid thinker. This is one area that the age of instant information is an incredible resource and benefit. For example, if I want to liken the sweetness of a sunny day to the sound of one of those old European music box organs that were used to teach canaries to sing, the fact that I do not speak French and cannot remember the name of this particular obscurity are not boulders. With google on my side, a sunny day can sound like a serinette. Unfortunately a vast majority of our world is more interested in Lindsay Lohan’s lesbian liaisons than music boxes that sound like canaries, but whatever you need or want to know, you almost always immediately can.





With all gives and takes considered, the burning question I’m left with is “When did life’s tasks replace the actual ‘living’ that should fill our days?” Are any of us satisfied with a customer service smile that is so ultimately unfulfilling? The only difference between a familiar face and one that is unfamiliar lies in our own ability to engage ourselves and live nakedly, honestly and openly.

Lou Diollon once described this gratification of living outside of momentary, self-fulfilling, one-sidedness in her personal style credo, of all things.

“What attracts me is something broken, something a bit off. I never comb my hair or make anything pretty. When people look too beautiful, it's too easy. I know I'm dressed wrong if the businessman turns his head. But I like to think that after an hour of sitting next to me on the train, he'd look. I'd have grown on him.”



I believe that when you live in defiance of life’s apparent disconnectedness, therein lies a natural selfishness, but not of a timely nature. When you live life as who you are, you take an obvious gamble of risk and fear. By unapologetically wearing that cloak of brokenness, the possibility exists that you may give too much of yourself. You may weep into the counter girl’s tip jar. You may laugh until coffee comes out your nose. You may have an unforgettably spontaneous afternoon. You may open yourself to someone cruel or ruthless. You may fall in love too hard.

But at the end of the day, you can honorably admit that you’ve lived. Really lived. In the only way that you know how. You’ve been you. You for everyone to judge, to watch. To laugh at and with. To kiss, too hold, if even for a moment’s time.

Voltaire: Obviously not a tap dancer

Prices are up, economy down. Weekends too short, paychecks too small. Celebrities too celebrated, and leaders too misled. The Midwest is sinking. The globe is warming. Astros can’t hit a single run. Walls are being constructed like bunkers for those worthy of liberty by war and oppression. Young soldiers who have completed their tour are returning to an all-too-familiar hell they have already survived. Extreme weather, war and unrest continue to rage on, and as distress turns to despair, apathy and corruption ensue. Unless you are R. Kelly’s legal team or a same-sex Californian couple, these times haven’t brought much to whistle about.

It was Voltaire who once said that to succeed in the world you must be both stupid and well mannered. I don’t wholly disagree, but I tend to believe in a success of another kind. I believe that life’s successes require the act of outwardly seeking and approaching experiences. Now I’m no Miranda July, but I have more faith in the power of PMA than just about anything else these days. It cannot be naïve to trust that success could likely be obtained by a positive mental attitude—assuming that happiness is considered success, which is likely not the success that Voltaire spoke of. If drumsticks could tap dance and my joy and sweetness weren’t inclined to hide in a dark tomb somewhere, then there wouldn’t be need for conversations like these.

I’ve been thinking recently about the effect that friends, moments, music, surroundings and experiences have on our psychological and emotional state and overall health. This particular query has been brought to my attention many a time, but most memorably [or most recently] on a lazy Saturday summertime trip to the picturesque hill country destination of Kerrville, Texas.

I mentioned this to my favorite east coast friend. It’s been longer than usual since we last spoke, and I’m racing through the (dis)organization of my pristinely uncanny [ahem] memory for the moment in our lives when we last touched base. It doesn’t take me long to find a landmark.

“I don’t think we’ve talked since before I went out to Kerrville.” There is a pause on the other end. In Lindsay language, this is a moment of inquiry, “Okay, so what is this?”

This. Man, this is a place that no one would ever expect, but everyone should. This is a place where strangers are never strangers and hugs are never awkward. Where peaceful people wear tie-dye, smiles, guitars, unicorn costumes, gnarly dreadlocks, unruly beards, hats with feathers, and satchels with babies. This is a place where people eat, cook, sew, shower, sleep, party, and play music outside their tents under sweltering to starry skies. This is a place just past Turtle Creek called Quiet Valley Ranch. This is an inconspicuous Mecca for people livin the search for the good life. This is a place that restores your faith in the inherent goodness of humanity. This is a place that you can barely even convince yourself to believe exists. This is an amazing adventure.

This is the Kerrville Folk Festival.







In her editorial address, Festival producer/manager/empress, Dalis Allen is quoted in her welcome saying, “Kerrville is just one celebration after another. A celebration of life, of loving one another, of having respect for one another and respect for our earth.”

What better to celebrate than life, love and respect? As we pulled into the festival entrance we drove under a painted sign that read Welcome Home. There is hula-hooping, hacky sack circles and face painting. Yoga and harmonica classes. Canoe trips and bike rides. A man at the camp next to us spent his days nestled in the trees working diligently on his sewing machine.





Picture this vivid imagery: I’m sprawled under the starry sky, imprints from grass blades all over my skin, stomach full of delicious chicken curry. Countless minutes, possibly hours, pass while Kate and I sit drinking, smiling, content with our thoughts until an old man in a crazy hat walks in front of us, smiles, and waves. He’s certainly not the first to do such an act. We nod with soft, comfy grins resting gently on our warm faces. After this particular man passes us, Kate—the eternal realist, drinking Cabernet out of a mug next to me on the blanket—admits her contempt for the dreaminess of all of this. “Stop being so nice. It makes it harder to go back to the real world.”

This is exactly how our Kerrville experience felt … like a perfect alternate universe full of hugging, camping, smiling, crazy hat-wearing, folk-loving hippies. From the moment you arrive at the festival, you are never without folk music. The first person we met outside the entrance was a shirtless aging folk-hearted hippie friend belting out folksy tunes with his guitar. Come to think of it, there were a number of those. There were almost as many musicians in the campgrounds as trees. You sleep to, wake to, dance to, and sing to any variation of string instrument, whether on the festival grounds, campgrounds, or the parking lot.





We caught sets by the comedic and theatrical Austin Lounge Lizards and Noel Paul Stookey, better known as Paul from the folkster trio Peter Paul & Mary. As the sun started its heavy retreat from a long day in the sky, a folk legend and Kerrville favorite took the stage. Peter Yarrow (also of Peter Paul & Mary) helped found the Kerrville Fest 37 years ago, and on this night at Quiet Valley Ranch, he was celebrating the festival’s history, the future of folk songwriters, and his 70th birthday. Along with the family of festival goers, some very special guests were in attendance for the celebration including his daughter, Bethany Yarrow. Bethany is a songwriter herself and joined him on stage for a breathtaking performance. She is a beautiful woman with a soothing voice who dances like a gypsy and radiates positive energy.

Lady Yarrow was joined by fellow New Yorker and virtuoso cellist, Mr. Rufus Cappadocia. Together with Paul, they performed a completely valid version of Wayfaring Stranger and the best rendition of a jamming This Little Light of Mine that broke into a heart-stopping cello solo. With the contagious hand claps and amazingly soulful harmony, this performance was one for the memory books. At one point, Peter invited all the hippie kids in the audience to join him on stage for his birthday serenade. “You’re three at last!” he exclaimed when one child proudly announced his age. Together, all the children and performers sang Happy Birthday in rounds, and when Paul requested that the final chorus be sung “kindly and gently,” the children did just that. It was beautiful and uncommonly peaceful. As a grand finale, Peter introduced the last song of his evening set by addressing the children on stage.



“As you grow up, all through your life, people are going to tell you that this song is about bad things. I’m here to tell you that it’s about dreams, and love and friendship. So you can tell them that you know it’s not about bad things because you heard it today right here from the dragon’s father’s mouth.” And of course, everyone broke into a dreamy chorus of Puff the Magic Dragon. I decided at that moment that when (if) I am a mother, the little bambinos and I will make a yearly sabbatical to the Kerrville Folk Festival. It’s just good for the soul.



Before the headliner of the evening took the modest wooded Kerrville stage, Kate and I decided to retreat back to the campgrounds for some relaxation and commentary at our little dome of a home in the hippie woods. The campground is such a sacred place of peacefulness and community among people who have likely never before met, yet immediately share some common thread of appreciation and love for the simple things that are so often overlooked in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. People at Kerrville don’t shake hands. They hug.

Sitting outside our tent, we would hear campers walking among the trees, carrying on the most interesting of conversations. We would pick up excerpts that even without context made us smile, sigh and laugh. Sometimes these excerpts sounded prophetic like, “The proverbial ship is going to pass tonight!” and “Oh what a happy ending!”



And what a happy ending it was. The final performers on this particular evening of the festival were The Band of Heathens. It is possible to fall in love more than once. Even with the same love that you’ve already fallen for. I know this to be true thanks to the band of beautifully soulful heathens.



My love affair began, as many have, listening to Jodie in the KGSR studio with the heathens. Irony: I never drive my car during the workday. I walk everywhere I need to go on any kind of a normal 8-5 basis. But I was driving on this day at this particular time of afternoon to take care of some unforeseen errands. It was my first introduction to the music of these so-called heathens. In the studio, they sounded calm, humble like regular southern dudes playing irregularly awesome southern rock. It was love at first listen.



The second fall was at this Kerrville Folk Festival that I’ve been dripping over for the last 1500 words. Barefoot and beautiful, these guys couldn’t have provided a better close to our ethereal evening. Though they’ve been compared to Dylan and Levon’s “The Band” in energy and musical style, they also offer something completely distinctive. The harmony is releasing. The harmonica is sexy as hell. It’s folk rock and Texas country that wears its heart on its sleeve.



The third fall was different in that it was not stumbled upon in any kind of irony, and didn’t require a journey to a hill country campground. One sleepy weeknight right down the street from my humble abode, the raggedy marquee at South Austin’s legendary Saxon Pub announced the Heathens in that evening’s lineup. We sat right in front of them in this tiny venue tapping our toes, swaying to the sad soulful songs. As if the show could get any better, the lead guitarist sits down with a slide guitar and delivers a ridiculously beautiful cover of Townes Van Zandt’s If I Needed You—a personal favorite.

The Heathens just returned home from a short tour along the east coast, so catch them this summer while they’re playing around town. You won’t be disappointed. The 38th Annual Kerrville Folk Festival will be May 21—June 7, 2009. Bring your tent and your peacefulness. You’ll see me there.



I’ll leave you little green lovelies with one final note on life’s adventures and positive mental attitudes … My good friend and partner in crime, Kate, departed this weekend in search of her own experiences. This particular journey will take her to upstate New York for a yearlong broadcast journalism graduate program at Syracuse University. I sent her off with desperately long hugs and a crafted piece of memoriart covered with fleeting moments of good friends and good times. Kate’s influence affected my existence in countless ways, but she taught me one particular lesson of life for which I will be eternally grateful: If you truly want to be happy, nobody can stop you. She lives her life as an example of this seemingly simple idea, and I have no doubt that she will be successful in all of her adventures. Here’s to you, Sheehy.

mudbug madness

I mentioned You Ain’t No Picasso a couple weeks ago, and I think it only fair to give some props to the most marvelous masterpiece of a music blog ever created. Several years ago a good friend directed me to the three-man, highly Canadian, indie-focused music (mostly), art, and culture webeauty that is Said the Gramophone. Since, I believe I’ve visited this hideaway at least six out of the seven long days in every week. It never gets old.

I have always silently appreciated what StG brings to the music-loving, word-adoring, blog-reading world. Specifically mine. I admire the way they review an album like a place. A feeling. Those guys have an uncanny ability to creatively bridge a song’s colors and shapes so much so that the song becomes tangible. A song suddenly becomes the warmth of the sun creeping through nature’s shade onto my warm, smile-sore cheeks. Or as if I’m 350 miles off the coast and just awoke to find myself bobbing recklessly in the wake. But I’m comfortable. Or frantic. Lonely. Content. Invigorated.



People have mastered this before, true. Many before us have proven their ability to make a review of Louis Armstrong’s Potato Head Blues sound like a sweltering, filthy stroll through the olden-times streets of the French Quarter. But the challenge that the gramophone guys have tackled carries much greater complexity. In their reviews I’m actually strolling to the rhythmic scrape of a washboard, and I’m looking at the thin man’s sweat-beaded face, playing it for passerby’s nickels. There are others on the street with me, carrying overstuffed shopping bags. Smoking cheap cigars. They are colorful and each have their own heart-wrenchingly devastating stories, but no one’s talking today. It’s too hot. I’m smiling at them. Some are smiling back at me. Some only with their eyes. The setting sun is blinding me, but I’m unconcerned. My belly is full of crawfish etouffee, soft-shell crab po-boys and oysters contraband. The remoulade is still on my face and the creole still under may nails.

It’s an amazingly lovely thing they do over there on their little green weblog, I suggest you pay them a visit.



Speaking of crawfish, I've been craving those critters all season. Seeing as the season's almost up, last week I enlisted my foodie friends to scout out the best crawfish and local Cajun scene in the Austin area (besides Evangeline, which for some bizarre reason doesn’t sell those suckers by the pound). A few days later, we we’re at this crazy little BYOB dive off Spicewood Springs and 183, getting nasty on some creole crayfish.



Just so we’re clear on things … I’m not too old or too cool to play with my food. And don’t judge me, because you aren’t either. I mean you may be old, and probably cool, but I certainly don’t believe that either of those things in any degree have anything to do with playing with your food—or refraining from such activities.



Crawfish are playful creatures. They’re lifeless, yes, but so are dolls [creepy or otherwise], and each of us—blue and pink—played with those in our age of youth and innocence, before awareness of social stigma or etiquette adherence. Now I’m not saying we took these suckers out to the abandoned lot with a paper towel cylinder and went 6 innings with em. We just shook them around a little and gave them ridiculous voices. Named them. You know, typical crawfish-eating activities. We had a very diverse gang of blood-red bottom feeder buddies. Hanz, Lefty, Juliet, Lieutenant Dan, the Reverend Al Sharpton …



I think that one was Simon. [Not the guy with the wind wood. I didn’t get his name.]

I guess SamBet’s draws some serious stray cats. One guy offered us a free basket of mudbugs, asked if he could join us, pulled up a huge cooler to sit on—but before he did, opened it to offer us some Jameson whiskey which he presented a nearly consumed bottle of—slurred and struggled to focus his vision, asked each of us if we owned a vehicle because he would detail them for a good price. What price, he couldn’t say. He’d surely go to your car and give you a quote, though. Where are you parked? Did you drive? He owns a detail place ‘right down the way.’ ... I’m telling you. Cruisers.



And check these guys out. I don’t know why they pointed, and I’m reasonably sure they hollered something, but I’m not sure what. Lucky for us, “Could Have Been Anything” is one of my favorite games to play. Here’s how it goes: Look at the picture, and pretend they’re saying anything. Candid Camera! Celtics Suck! Zero Down, Zero Percent Financing! I’m Goin to Disneyland! Nickelback Rules! … See? Fun, right?





This little joint was a trip. It shares a strip mall with a huge Asian Market and a super shady looking hardware store, in front of which gathered pretty much the only cars in the lot. Ryan says the hardware bodega is known for crooked under-the-table transactions like selling glocks, conspiring against the evil regime, burning files, hating those fuckin pig cops, and other things that sound completely crazy. Ryan knows these things. None of us know why or how, but I’ve fact-checked his crazy claims many-a-time to find they’re completely legit. Did you know that red bull is made from synthetic bull urine?





That’s our waitress, and the back of the owner’s head. Doug is his name. He is really something else. He came out, sat down. Looked at us all crazy-like. We introduced ourselves. Said nice things about the place. He told us that his cat had croaked earlier that day. I hugged him. More than once. Poor crazy Doug may not have had a hug in a long time. I would like to believe that I needed crawfish and Doug needed a hug, and somehow, everyone always gets what we really need.

If you’re feelin the need for some good crawfish eatin, the Alamo is doing a boil up in full style this weekend. Get after it.

Moms and Bobs

If there were 12,000 months in a year, my mother would deserve to be celebrated in each day of every one. So, being the officially deemed and nationally observed Mother’s day and all, I figured I should make a trip down to Houston so that she could see my face, and be reminded of the constant adoration I have for her that is written all over it every time I see her. I brought Kate along with me for this celebration of mothers, as Kate’s mum, Lynn, is in Susanville, CA (not a simple weekend destination), and mine considers her a surrogate daughter. It was a beautiful and memorable weekend.



Be it known that my mother and her mother are far from any archetypal mommy-type. She’s my rock, yes, and my compass, and sometimes my disciplinary and therapist, but she is in all honesty my best friend. In fact, she refers to our relationship as “junior and senior roommates”—a term of endearment rather than of residency. I’m not sure what other 25-year-old women and their mothers do to spend time together, and I’m sure there’s a vast array of mother-daughter relationship types, all individual in their own right, but if there were any normalcy that existed in these types of things, I’m quite sure that we don’t qualify.



When we’re together, she wears her pearls and I my tie-die skirt, and we get in her fancy little sports-suspension bmw and jam out to CSNY, Devendra Banhart, Van Morrison, Great Lake Swimmers, Dylan and Joni from any one of the countless musical compilations I send to her regularly in their painted packages … that she saves, as if she could ever have a use for them again, or believes they are truly pieces of art that will gain emotional and memorable value with time. I guess it’s that macaroni necklace syndrome that only mothers understand.



Every time I’m about to come see her she asks the same questions: “What kind of beer are you drinking these days?” (She’s not necessarily a beer drinker, but deeply respects my love for the craft.) and “Are there any shows you want to catch while you’re here?” (She will have already checked out local listings and give me the lowdown on the Houston venue scene for that given weekend.)



One of my funniest memories is a couple years back when she bought us NIN tickets, obviously without a clue of what to expect. However, to her credit, she held her own in her pale pink camisole and endured the hardcore, rambunctious fan base. Earlier this year she even requested we see Marilyn Manson at Verizon … But only if I thought I would enjoy it, of course, but she was just throwing it out there because she was sure that I would think it would be quite an experience. Well, didn’t I?

I alerted her when Aimee Mann came to Houston a while back, but something came up and I couldn’t make it at the last minute, so this amazing woman went by herself to the show. And bought me a CD. I’ll get calls from her while she sits a few rows from Ryan Adams and delivers her commentary about his performance.

Obviously, she’s fantastic.



Together we go to dive bars, museums, rodeos, dance lessons, live shows, thrift stores, funk clubs, fancy Italian restaurants, and seedy country western dance halls, but one of my mom’s happiest places is by the water. Just ask her. The sound, the salty aroma of the Gulf waters, the spirit of the sun-drenched surroundings …



There’s this wild solidarity about time spent by the never-ending ocean. Whether you’ve found yourself in the swell surroundings of a family-filled diaper-clad holiday weekend at an umbrella-dotted public beach, or perched on the farthest point of a fisherman’s jetty blinded by the salty breeze, or sitting on the dock of the bay joined only by your favorite book … just one long look out to where the water meets the sky miles out of merely estimated miles has always been able to take me to a place that is so remarkably personal. It may be the feeling of being so insignificant in the face of such a grand, vast, powerful body of water and life, or just the sheer bliss from an ocean breeze brushing your sun-kissed cheeks.



So as one can assume, we went down to the Gulf’s bay to celebrate her fabulous motherhood. We ate crab, shrimp, pineapple and snapper, drank my favorite Jamaican lager and Bloody Maria’s (that’s tequila with some Tabasco and tomato for flavor), browned our skin, swang on porchswings, dipped our toes in the beautiful chilly blueness, listened to a great live couple who played a bunch of folk jams, reggae, and Townes Van Zandt covers/renditions, tap danced in our heads to the rhythmic shucking of fresh oysters (well I did, at least), waved at the fisherman, witnessed a breathtaking bay sunset, and contently contemplated life’s complexities.





My sweet mother is so incredibly beautiful, and I am so incredibly lucky to be hers. Happy Mother’s Day for 12,000 months and more to every mom out there. You fools amaze me.



Also—and entirely off subject—if you haven’t heard the Andrew Bird cover of Dylan’s “Oh Sister” you most definitely should. I kind of despise Dylan covers. This one is perfect. Plus, Dylan turns 67 on Saturday. Cheers, Bob.