having to go a short ways, having it take a long time

having to go a short ways, having it take a long time
Current mood: mischievous

I cried twice in the past week, once on the beach in Bournemouth, late at night, then again last night in a crowded theatre.

I'm tired of stubborn advice. The kind your mother would give you. "It's going to be alright honey, everything will work out." "How about you just keep trying?" or "Don't worry, things will get better." Advice like that is cheap, easy. Small talk.

I'm tired of adages and euphemisms. For the first time in my life I'm starting to feel like I'm doing it just for the money. And I've never had the money to do anything for.

We are driving through the countryside, from Sheffield to Derby. Almost the end of February but the grass is green and the sky is littered with sun lit cotton balls. Last night, my friend Glen told me that the island of England has this dark, black force that drags you down, makes you feel weary, uninspired, uncomfortable. I've been feeling that for a week, just didn't know how to put my finger on it. But this morning, with weather typical of a early spring day in New England, somehow my mind doesn't hurt per the usual.

Yesterday Isaac and I talked about what we want, if wishes were being granted. A year ago he wanted a wife and a career in music. Now he has both and said he doesn't need anything else. I want to be happy and I want to find a place to live. Moving around is taking its toll. Finding a community, a small town, with brick buildings and old storefronts habited by mom and pop breakfast joints, book stores, a river, characters.

Sometimes I just need a change of pace.

Bournemouth: Lost in Translation

Even though we all speak the same language, I'm lost in translation. Simple conversations often take a few "Pardon me"'s before I can decipher what we're actually trying to discuss. Bournemouth is on the ocean, or maybe the channel. I still have no idea where we are. But I see water. And gulls. I guess that makes me feel a little better. If I need an escape route I know where to go.

The Feeling may not be my type of band but they are great performers and musicians. They outperformed the Fray in the states this past fall and they are 100% outperforming them here. This is exactly what needed to happen. The Feeling rehearsed before their tour even began. What a novel concept. There is a lot to be said for professionalism. Most people in life don't expect anything to just happen to them or to come their way. I've seen it work the other way and it is nice to realize again that we are all just as good as we actually are, and no better until we make it that way ourselves.

My creative juices have stopped flowing. Imagine being on point all day long, every day, using every synapse in your mind to make things look intriguing and fascinating, no matter your subject matter. I wish people would respond to the camera, use it, interact with it. You can't tell a story with no words and no actions. Well, maybe no words, but the actions have to be pretty powerful and they just aren't.

Where are you? What are you doing?

a record review from the UK

“They’ve sold more than one million albums in America, and it isn’t hard to see why: the Denver band make music that would struggle to wake the horses, never mind frighten them. They are co-managed by the son of a former Sony BMG bigwig, and you might conclude that they’d have to be spectacularly bad not to go platinum with a leg-up like that. What’s truly offensive about the Fray is the complacency and lack of invention in the music: song after song rolls by, with Isaac Slade pounding his piano and emoting emptily in his Curtis Stigers whine, and each is as crease-free, as people-pleasing, as the last. These are songs for the shopping mall and the elevator; life and nature observed from an air-conditioned automobile. Sadly, they’re going to be huge.”

pounds for pounds

“It’s a giant sausage party in here”, said one security guard to another.

Touched down in Norwich on Thursday afternoon. Everything looked sunny and I wore just a sweatshirt comfortably. Found Brian and Jimmy in a Public House (Pub to you blokes), saddled up to a pint or three of beer and I joined them. We wandered back to the Maid’s Head hotel in the early afternoon to catch a few winks of sleep before dinner with the rest of the wild bunch. The Maid’s Head was a hotel put together of several buildings dated pre 1850 and it was as if the architect of the place had completely disregarded the fact that none of these structures had been built on the same levels, heights, and dimensions. At points you’d cross through a crouched doorway and stumble upon another hall of rooms, with a floor that was either a few steps up or a few steps down.

“Here! Knock a hole through this wall chap, we’ll put more rooms here. The floors don’t match up. Don’t worry about it mate. Pint?”

We tasted sweet Indian food that evening. Curry was originally introduced to the British as a way to disguise the nasty rotted meat that the colonials were eating; disguising the maggots and other various animals living in a block of salt pork. I ate red curry with vigor.

Woke up in the morning to the arrival of the rest of my friends who needed a shower and thus our day had begun. Taxi rides on the other side of the road and hello Norwich University.

Fioana knows how to cook. Just follow your nose to Taste Buds Catering from Glasgow whenever you are in this neck of the international woods. They travel with the headlining band and prepare up fresh, new meals daily. Every day a new run to the grocery store or market to conjure up a menu that you wouldn’t even cook at your own home (unless you have a cook who cooks at your own home). I enjoyed cups of tea and assorted nibbles from the dining room all day while we set about getting the show in order. There were t-shirts to count, e-mails to write, cups of tea to brew, gear to unpack, camera batteries to charge, cups of tea to drink (that’s been about a five minute seep right?).
The evening was less inspired than I might have imagined given all of the professional circumstances and experience collected over the past year but folks were generally tired and overwhelmed from a day spent figuring out this new country to be home for the next three weeks. Afterwards I shared a drink with Dave, Jimmy, and Steve. We drank to something witty, which I can’t recall, and then Jimmy chimed in “To being single, seeing double, and sleeping triple.”

It was then fitting that we walked back to the bus alone, a double decker bus with fourteen beds, two lounges, one up, one down, three flat screen TVs, a full kitchen, and no heating system that my slumbering body could remember how to turn on.

I awoke but fifteen minutes ago and the tile of the kitchen floor gave me an ice cream headache. We’re in Wolverhampton. Wherever that might be. It is rainy outside, foggy, and I’m drinking proper tea.