SO far 2017 has been a bit exhausting for me. The Holidays always take a large amount of energy (and money) and of course my work is busiest during that time and the weather has been shit; combine that with too many calories and too much imbibing... Happy New Year. I need a nap.
Tina and I decided to stop drinking for the month of January...right before the biggest snowstorm and cold snap Portland had seen in a long time. With booze on the shelf sitting neglected, I drank tea, shoveled the walkway and used our cooped up blizzard days as an excuse to write and record 11 pretty silly songs: Gloopy Globs... A lot of times I just like to bash out song ideas just to see where they go. Some of these songs go somewhere and some of them go nowhere - I hope you enjoy the unedited, lo-fi goodness. Refelecting on the Trumpian times we are in... I feel like I am just now coming out of the stunned trance I've been in since the election. Am I so predictable as the middle-of-the-road liberal who is blindsided by the flyover-state revolt against coastal elitism? It hit me hard. I half expected and feared that Trump would come to pass due to the extreme insider-ness of Hillary. She was a bad choice and the DNC shit the bed. My main mantra through this whole episode - "Things change; get used to it." We don't have the luxury to go back in time to a more stable era that we all remember. We're opening our eyes to the blinding realization that reality is less like we ever thought it was and more like the dystopian sci-fi wet dream of Phillip K Dick merged with an evil Mel Brooks plot. Even our tried and true liberal heroes are far and few between - I like our senators, they always hit the right talking points for me - but sometimes I just feel pacified when what I really want is action. And climate change? Suddenly I'm a whining liberal with a hopelessness complex. Whoops, I'm on the treadmill of life too - it's hard to take anytime to think about protesting when you're working, doing the family things, slumping over at the end of each night and then resting and repeating indefinitely. The woman's march against Trump was a beautiful thing, I'm glad it happened. I felt so disheartened up until that point. I feel better now on some level since apparently, from the huge numbers of people out marching, I am not so alone in my inner panic about having to deal with what I consider a harsh, unpredictable political change. Take nothing for granted, we're in for a bumpy ride.