Days in Oblivion / Nights in Terror

it's evening in Vancouver and there is a magical warm light that's fading into a pale blue sky with nice streaks of cold black and pink clouds. many of my best memories of my life were from various summertimes in Gasquet, California. the evenings would get later right around the end of June.Iit would be so nice and warm and dry outside with a musty forest smell blowing up from the river. Inevitably I would stay outside , reading books, kicking around the dirt, riding my BMX bike. At 10:00 it would still be light out and the Twilight zone would be on, probably a broadcast by WGN 9 from Chicago, one of the five stations we got on our primitive 1980s cable. The bug zapper would be killing the mosquitoes. Maybe Mom would have some ice cream and we'd sit there and watch the Twilight zone together. that's what this evening light reminds me of. I know these are abnormal times. it is inescapable, even if you want to pause the news, there's always a new, brutal, stupid, damaging story that comes up. I'm so worried for the future of my people I love in this country and all those others too. I think unknowingly, like a lot of American gen xers, I was kind of patriotic. Up until age 13, i liked saying the pledge of allegiance. My dad was a veteran and I thought the army was cool. I liked the American flag. 1976 was the bicentennial and I had a Susan b Anthony half dollar. The USA had high self-esteem. I have memories of the 1976 election when Carter won over Ford I think? and then again in 1980 when Reagan beat Carter and I was disappointed. I liked President Carter. I like peanuts. But now, that patriotism, even if nascent, has been beat out of me. I no longer feel anything but numb, and disappointed in the choices of my co-citizens. I know that everyone was just thinking their own thoughts and trying to find their own way with their votes, but they made a big mistake this time. I just wonder how it will go.

Gardening at the Oligarchy

Well ... not EXACTLY gardening, but fence-building. It made me mental when our fence blew down during a windstorm a few weeks ago. The lack of privacy was startling - no more naked trips to the hot tub. Also, everyone could see exactly into the music room, where the noise was coming from. Creepy! I like to create without feeling spied-upon. The weather had been extra shitty for 2 weeks or more , so I (always with the excuse) finally got around to buying some materials for the posts, 2x4's a few other bits and bobs, cement etcetera. FInally last week it was really nice over a few days, so I got out there with Louis and sometimes his friend Dacien too. We got the posts as straight as we could but alas, one is a bit warped and throws the whole asthetic off. I am not a "straight-fence" fence-builder - much like my cooking and music making, I am impulsive and manic, doing some parts according to plan but then going off the rails a bit when materials are short or things start to lean or sag. Aside from the bent post, it is hanging in there pretty well. It feels steady and already has endured anther windstorm. Don't fuck with my fence!

"The Stages of Fence" I've really been enjoying this Nasalrod video - best vid I've seen in a while: Cheers and love to those of us alive in 2025 -Ed

I'm Still Here - Purgatory

I've lacked any kind of inspiration for throwing thoughts away, out into the void. One think - one think-thing I realize - I always liked the idea of blogging to no one. Doing it for my own reason, to write as if in a journal, ephemera of thoughts, less than particles, a few stray ions out there for maybe my future, uploaded-to-the-singularity self to read back on later. Social media seems too low-effort - I don't really like posting my thoughts there for fear of getting into an online interaction. Internet cowardice. What do I like? Purgatory. Reading - very slowly reading - the John Lurie book I got for Christmas last year, "the HIstory of Bones." He is quite a human, a genius at existence, a chaos storm in the form of a man. Right now, I'm still early in the autobiography - his teenage and early-adulthood years. He's searching for meaning, searching for a better saxaphone tone, searching for God in himself, doing yoga, having random hippy experiences, sexually transmitted diseases, riding a bicycle inthe frigid cold winter of Ne wEngland 1971, almost dying and calling a friend to pick him up, suddenly moving to Wales to be near his mother and then staying in a cold little cement beach house while hallucinating. The entire thing reads like a fever dream poem and I love it. I woke up at midnight and read a chapter since i was too caffeinated to sleep and it was pouring rain outside. And I let the cat in - he was very grateful. Also - I hate booking shows for my band, I hate doing pricing for my work accounts and I hate that the house is a disaster mess. I love this tea I'm drinking and also Patti Smith. Later I will try to make some kind of music I can actually stand - pushing through the spiritual muck, into a new vestibule.

April Showers and Coastal Powers

Spring break came late this year - April 1-5th. Tina and I were able to take a few days off of work and head to the coast with the boys for qa bit of frolicking in the fog. Yachats is a place we love, just a perfect little quiet tourist town, not totally overrun in the early spring months. We rented a place overlooking the ocean waves, which were pummeling and stormy most of the time, and cooked food, watched tv, strummed guitars while the kids mostly played games or languished like droopy, life-like figures in a Salvador Dali painting. We were able to visitng with Dave and Samantha, second time in less than a year. We brought over some ice cream bars after dinner one night and then they came over a few days later to check out of place, Dave and I also jammed on some acoustic guitars at his place, was a nice visit. Tina made the most of our outdoors location, exploring all areas of the beach and rocks and trails around town. We hiked south of town on a section of the OCT Oregon Coast Trail (did you know there was an Oregon coast trail that runs from Astoria to Brookings?) to a place called Amanda's statue where there was a statue of a blind Coos woman named Amanda, who in the 1860s was taken away from her husband in Coos Bay and marched back to Yachats overland to an internment camp that was north of town, where she later died. Depressing and awful is our history of cruelty and imposition. The trail was beautiful and at times overlooked the blue ocean south of town. We've tried most of the eateries in Yachats by now but by far our collective favorite is Luna Sea fish & chips, where the catch is so fresh it slaps you in the face. Henry lost his "Don't Trip" hat and we looked all over town for it, coming back to Luna Sea twice before it was found in the bar. Yay! I also wrote in my journal and sent off a letter to a friend. I love a relaxing 1/2 week off - 1/2 week vacation.

Ouch my ears are ringing wait this orange is really good

February has been good so far. I got to go on a work trip to perform a few citrus tasting events up on the Olympic Penninsula. My friend Elissa and I drove up in the work car with a box full of promo stuff and set up a pop-stand at a couple different natural foods stores, the Food Co op in Port Townsend and COuntry Aire natural foods in Port Angeles. Rubber gloves, cut fruit, food cards and strange short conversations with a few hundred people. A highlight was going out to dinner at Alderwood Bistro in Sequim with our posse of produce account managers - incredible food, good conversation and good bonding with our colleagues in produce. Back in Vancouver, we've been working in the yard, enjoying the spastic changes in the weather and also using the inflatable hot tub most days. Therapy! We've been going to our friends bands shows around town - last week was Pink Tornado, Mountain Meadows Massacre and Desert Shame at No Fun bar:

Work continues on the Latinum project. Tina finished the vocals recently and I am now waiting for the band to review the current mixes so I can finalize the project and send it off to be mastered. I am liking doing audio work for a project other than my own recordings. In my personal life, I tend to be a little rushed and slap-dash in my recording process since I'm usually trying to write a song at the same time as recording. With a band where I sit in the engineer's chair, I am realizing how much work it is to parse the small details of someone else's performance. Overall it's sounding really good when I listen to mixes in the car - sounds nice and thick with a reasonable amount of low-end and good clarity. I can't wait for the project to be done so that people can listen to it. My good friend Sleeve linked me to my new favorite band - RMFC Rock Music Fan Club from Australia:

John Peel Music List / 1973 Thin Lizzy

I found this amazing list of most knwon Peel Sessions artist from the David Peel BBC long-running show - it's overwhelming to even think of where to start but I'm starting with Thin Lizzy:

Octoberdome

October has nearly come and gone. We've had a busy month - transitioning out of the summer garden-era, anticipating the rainy Fall-time. Our garden is still bumpin' with tons of tomatoes , peppers and pumpkins and flowers but it is slowly dying back and then we'll cover the beds with leaves and plant some over-winter crops. We've also added some new chicks to the henhouse. We were down to just Lonely Linda, our ever-laying leghorn. Unbeknownst to her , we aquired a variety of new chicks about a month ago that we had been nurturing in the garage, under the heat lamp. During a nice patch of weather last week, Tina brought them out to the chicken run and set up the lamp for those chilly nights. Of course the new chickies are cute as heck, bouncing and trying out their wings and pecking at everything. Linda was non-plussed at first but is slowly warming up to the new comers. The circle of chicken life! Ugh, I'm getting over covid - basically over it but still experiencing fatigue. On top of that my gout toe has returned - why, oh great Gout Toe, do you punish me? I guess everyone gets handed some cards against humanity; mine aren't that funny to me but I know somewhere, someone else is laughing - so be it. A few pics - Tina performing with Latinum last week at No Fun in Portland; Lovely Linda, the broody, fretful leader of the coop; the new chicks.