and finally,

"i heard somebody say
today is the day
a big ole hurricane
she's headed our way
knocking over the buildings
open your eyes boy
we made it through the night
 i think we are safe....
.. and i raised my voice to the air
and we were blessed.
it's hard to give,
it's hard to get,
but everybody needs
a little forgiveness"
          ---patty griffin


so, there was: chopped basil, shoyu, scallions chopped, sesame oil, rosemary, diced portobello and whole wild french mushrooms, all soaked together, and then sauteed and the egg added and the slices of fresh mozzarella to melt into, and the sun dried tomatoes on top, all on top of a tortilla. new year's eve.

the fireworks are going off in every direction: green, blue, red, white. the kids across the street have been setting their own off for days, excited and restless.

and tomorrow is tuesday.

ps: ok, it was a silly opus

my favorite movie of all time (today) is big bad love. yup. it's depressing as hell, written and directed by arliss howard and stars his wife, a chick named debra winger, who is a badass lady if there ever was one.

it's a tom waits-heavy epic about a man's relentless pursuit of the thing that eludes him; what it is, you'll have to watch the movie and tell me. i haven't seen it in a long time, but it's a really, very, excellent idea, that movie.

i should have said happy new year already, being that it nearly is. so, happy new year.

opus

my sister sent us red roses this week and they sit on the kitchen table, opening. there are tall stalks of white somethingorother, the stalk-y kind of flower ive forgotten the name of, but they perfectly offset the color and the quiet exuberance of roses. it's a great pairing.





on christmas day, we made christmas quesadillas for breakfast on yellow corn tortillas: chilis, gruyere and parmesan, scallions and rosemary, cooked in with little scraps of bacon. it's not all that important, but we enjoyed it, and washed it all down with fresh-juice mimosas.





for lunch, or "christmas dinner" i pulled out the tuna and we had seared tuna tartare with just a hint of wasabi and ginger and a mean butter lettuce salad. the bread board and cheeses rounded it out...why am i telling you about our food? food is good. i like food. it's one of the few objective things i can talk about without launching headfirst into some diatribe, im trying to get us there gently! ;) (uhoh, you say?)





more objective news: there are a pile of rome apples in the kitchen still that we havent gotten used up. today they will become a compote or a crumble, depending on who wins. im betting on the compote. would it be terrible to throw some basil in? i know mint would be better, but basil might just knock us into the new so completely that we like it.







in the neighborhood yesterday, i could swear i heard the bleating of lambs. im not crazy, and im not living in farm country so its worth mentioning. serious! urban sheep, man! or something resembling their sound. i will not even discuss the rooster, which i am now certain is my karma to always be in the vicinity of--just cant escape the fuckers. (pardon me if youre a rooster)







this morning my daughter woke up and asked for coffee, which wasnt very hot anymore cause it was late, and said"mom, i hate to burst your bubble, but you're not dying." (we had a funny night and woke up in the middle of it. the moon was still strong and interruptive and had me saying things you say at night, even to the wrong person.) sounds funny now but she may be right.







the thing about cataloging a year, and looking into the next one is, i remember every detail about where i was, how it felt, all the full-frame life events that came to bear on it.





over the holiday, juliet has read flaubert and wharton, just hangin out. i took a shower. and changed the bulbs. and hung a mirror. and took the trash out and got the mail. and swept, of course. i cant seem to read right now. or write.

writer's strike

yeah yeah. i go on those all the time. the damn wga nor the dga has/have sent me a royalty in ages. ;) aint it funny how nervous conan gets, tho/ ;) apparently-- so ive heard. all my pop culture is apparent, i dont interface all that much. ok. except, im insane on winehouse, amy. esp back to black, that's a fact. my friend amber made me up a mix tape of her stuff and been listening. cant tell you how tired i am of not having the proper backing band.... we could write shit in action in rehearsal, for god's sake.

anyway, that's not it. im reading, actually. was recommended to read a book by a network chiropractor i recently met, getting off the table, i saw this really pretty cover. it had food and flowers and prayer beads on it, caro mio. oh yEAHH. so i checked out the title while she was looking at her calendar for our next appt and asked her about it.

keith over at the northern trattoria located in the belly of whole foods on 5th & lamar made us up a plate to share of risotto and smoked mushrooms with a little black truffle oil.

and there you have the reason this book caught my eye: not only because ive been looking for another love (book) but it involved all three of my favorite things: love, food and spiritual journeying. as in, travel, both outer and inner. badASS. yes. so im happy again, and ive only just started it.

im a freak for travel memoir as a genre, esp when it involves great humor and sex and food. wow. theroux, fallaci, nin, wharton, kincaid, crichton, bowles, mayes, bryson, goldberg, pirsig, dinesen, attenborough and that irish lady who writes about travelling around on her bicycle. (think im missin my library.) and really, this whole book is about her conversation with god. yeah, me likey. i may even not have to write about my divorce, she's got it so covered here:

"we were weary in that way that only couples whose marriage is collapsing can be weary. we had the eyes of refugees."

anyway, been taking out the gibson for some musical journeying a bit more. it needed it, it was angry, if a guitar can be. and it doesnt like the cold, so its been angry AND cold, two very bad things to leave a guitar in for long alone, much like a woman.

plus and ps, book people had good n plenty. so the world has not yet officially ended.

family style

all the folks from d/fw and beyond... love and happy holidays and everything ;)















and here's will's holidaze greetings from his studio:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuLM9eLLDfs

...and one from a long time ago, fdr, great-uncle jimmy allred and lbj hangin and smilin... i just found this on someone else's myspace page, man you have to go far to come across a family photo these days.

everybody in the place get wil'

"lord have mercy...
i know that you like my style
i know that you like my style
gonna drop it on your a** right now
everybody in the place get wild
[so what you sayin']
what's up, what's up with you girl
what's up, what's up with you girl
what's up, what's up with you boy
what's up, what's up with you boy"

       justin timberlake, my style



o yea. ba-da-ba-da-ba-da...

unstrung

talked to aaron tonight. its as cold here as it is in nyc. thats just mean.

he went to see a movie tonight, about pat martino's life. aside from being arguably one of the best living jazz guitarists, what a story! what a life.



here he hammers it with john scofield:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2RRUVAD9Mc



amazing, to live. and esp, survive.

in a nutshell

the benefit over at ruta maya was packed, the gourds were total mayhem. bad. ass.

and here, molly ivins nails down, a long time ago in a column (her first as co-editor, i totally just ripped off the observer website) my sentimentals exactly (altho she neglects to reference the terrible machismo, but implies it anyway, and that: there is no mercy at all in texas): go here:

http://www.texasobserver.org/molly_archive/hello.html

goin home

such as it is. at randall's in westlake this am there was a massive cuppa very bold coffee and super good stories about life and music. you do what you can.



and so it goes... thinking i should just BE coffee, easier that way. could cut back on my drinkin.



went for a walk today in the warmth, in a rash of birds. what is going on? this place is overrun with birds. there was a guy directing traffic in orange, and some chicks talking tough on the corner, and more or less, it was all good.

and soon, other things.

so

i miss my dog and that's it: he's been advising me to move on. knowwhatimean? so. im gonna have to. shep doesnt do halfway:


how long have i been dead?

um. almost a year, shep.

ok then. you see what i mean.

no. what?

its been almost a year jenn.

right.

and, so..

so?

so its time. to move on. and stop being an idiot.

y'now, shep, you never did much understand about being human.

o yeah i did, i watched very carefully, and i dont even have to, im a dog, remember, we just get these things.

what things?

oh, how you guys hold on to shit and make it last all out and drag it along like something nasty on your shoe. you just gum up the works totally, and slow things down, and take too long.

whatever.

now. i know youre ready, i can feel it.

shut up, shep.

im serious. better go buy new food. and a collar. and this time, --

dont say it.

ok, but do it. and DONT wait.

shep! shut UP! change the subject.

omg, i can totally tell youre excited. that's nice, jenn. that's nice.

hows about them...uh, lakers, huh?

uh-hunh.


cant a body get any peace? ;) anyway, super nice sunset tonight.

bread and roses

there's a cloudsky today. i like a good cloudsky. easier to be inward if you need to be.

driving back from houston it was raining. there were stretches of no cars on the highway, just landscape and some cows and a good-lookin barn or two. those stretches are what i go lookin for, when its just you and the landscape and between the two you get some problem-solving in.

like, when will i feel like im there? how will art ever survive in the morass of ignorance in commerce? did they discontinue good n plenty candy or what? and, why? it's so good. among the million other more private and serious landscape-worthy agendas, all fueled by that beautiful global conglomerate coffee, in a short cup with an extra shot.

here's december which is fine but i am not up to stomaching the usual drone of overplayed carols and whatnot. on thanksgiving i fasted-- it was my antidote and i was quiet to listen for a real feeling of thanksgiving, which came after i'd gone to bed and in the dark the feeling came, and i felt peaceful for the first time in a long one.

ive been reading books that have been given to me or left on my bookshelf by visitors. the witch of portobello by paolo coelho, firebrand by marion zimmer bradley. a rash of novels which i never read but it's been good. ive had to spend time in bed so it's helped.

there's gecko which has turned into a monster living at my front door. he hangs out on the wall whenever i go out and slips back behind the jam if he gets nervous. i didnt know they could get so big.

town & country revue

is the name of a bluegrass outfit you might want to check out---if you can find their cd, consider it a coup.

reading rumi

i wasnt reading him yesterday, but someone sent me this because they were:

"if you haven't left the child's play, how can you be an adult?
without purity of spirit if you're still in the middle of lust and greed and other wantings, you're like children
playing at sexual intercourse. they wrestle and rub together, but it's not sex!

the same with the fightings of mankind.
it's a squabble with play-swords.
no purpose, totally futile.

like kids on hobby horses, soldiers claim to be riding, boraq, muhammad's night-horse, or duldul, his mule.

your actions mean nothing, the sex and the war that you do. you're holding parts of your pants and prancing around,dun-da-dun, dun-da-dun.

don't wait till you die to see this.
recognize that your imagination and your thinking and your sense-perception are reed canes
that children cut and pretend are horses."

there is a tradition where women cut all their hair off when they are in mourning, i think only to let pain take a course for healing. makes sense to me.

don't look back

"you dont need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"


some folks just will not be a dancing bear for any reason. some folks just plain arent interested. some folks would rather get on with it and make a sound that feels right with a reason to make it without any more reason than that. and some folks would rather not have to say a howdyfreakindo to the folks who are all about the dancing bear thing and the simpleminded game of things but just get on with the singin. its hard enough just to get the song right without having to bother about irrelevant shenanigans and whatnot.

and just about when folks are thinkin they could hang you up like a sunday suit on their pinned hopes and plans and what youll do for em, you whip out the electric and change it up so's everybody can see, whether they like it or not. i thought it made great sense that dylan went electric, right when he did.

it'll drive you crazy if youve got nuthin to say, and crazy if you do, so what's the damn difference? but i can tell you this: if you have something to say, best say it. it makes the whole day pass better and you'll outlast storms you never thought in this world you'd see.


"you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears, take that rag away from your face cause now's not the time for your tears"


i never really heard bob dylan's recordings before about two years ago. i did know the twenty-odd  verses to songs he'd written only cause my dad sang em when i was little and so we sang em too.

"pretty is just pretty, like blue is just blue. it only really matters what you do."

aint no use to sit and wonder why, babe

if you dont know by now.

happy thanksgiving, folks.

word

k so, if i repeat, that's how it is. ;)
someone told me today, you know jenn, youve told one particular story on your blog? SEVeral times, y'know. SEVeral. i was like, hey man, thanks for reading. cool. and he was like, um yeah, but youre rePEATing yourself, yknow? and im like, yeah, i hear ya, thanks. for reading, and hey! for um letting me know.

cute. prob true but i dont think i'll revisit to check. im sure he's right. makes me a little nervous, the claustrophobic feeling that we kind of rotate a few significant or not details about our experiences and come back around over and over, sometimes without awareness of it. hmmmm. anyway.

its nearly christmas again, and another new year. what the heck? i still have this moisturizer ( i reMEMber writing about it) that i picked up in brooklyn a couple years ago. and a box of these weird white plastic toothpicks that this chick who subletted (ok subleased damn!) her place to me left behind (unopened, ok?) and said i could have. remnants from a different life but still around.

kept listening to that van morrison song and i dont care if its wrong, i love it. cant find it anywhere online except over on youtube narrating a james dean tribute. geez. its plain. as can be. he can make the most extravagantly overtly boldly simple things completely unsentimental because he never disconnects from them, COMments on them, standing away from them looking back. always connected. or he's fucking insane. perfect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFdef2FQs2g

;) [how's that?]

texas if you do, texas if you don't

spent the whole day yesterday working on little scrappy mixes to get out to michael, the fellow producing the next record. he's leaving on sunday for japan or singapore, and needed me to make the dang demo for him already so we can get a liftoff. there's a lotta hours in between hartford and kyoto or wherever, and he wanted to have a chance to "brew". quite right--i needed to get it down, and so i spent the day trying to locate copies of lyrics, song notes, replay little riffs id nearly forgotten in the haywire dash of the last few weeks-- everything's still everywhere and i leave again soon. trying to find a song to lay down on a sketchy structure like that was bad enough; i was still trying to CHOOSE the damn things! ;)

then i had to run the thing out to fedex before x oclock to make sure it made sat delivery. then?

then, just laundry. pizza with a friend. doctor visit (im going under cover in a very foreign country ;) nahhhh. but i AM wanting to watch this movie everyone keeps recommending to me.....

ps we didnt make the pangaea grand opening at the old drafthouse, where i hear the dj is a lunatic. which i love. heard it was madness so will have to go dancing this holiday season....

jellycream

the first day of the tour last month, i got a call from harp magazine just after we got on the road but didnt listen to the message til i was waking up in houston the next morning. they were giving me a guitar. it was an acoustic composite, or a composite acoustic that they were going to ship out to me. according to wayne at the magazine, it had been sitting in his office and he'd had the opportunity to take it out and play it and the sound was amazing. i told him id pick it up in dc since we were going to be there in a week.

turned out, when i got to dc, that i was to come round to the harp offices which were located in the hilton building on colesville rd in silver spring. i asked for the address several times and stared as we pulled up at the place: it was on the corner opposite from the building that used to be my grandparents apartment when they moved out from ft worth. it was still called colesville towers. now it was a condo residence of some kind, next door to the library where my grandmother had worked. she had an english and library science degree from radcliff; she had lived near the college in cambridge in a tiny flat with her mother back in the days of women's colleges.

ive been playing the thing at shows since then. it felt to me like a gift from my grandparents; its a very sweet sounding, completely composite-material guitar. totally back to the future. the only thing i had to do in exchange was to take a photo holding the guitar for them to put in their rag. kinda way cool really.

been one heck of a month, but things like that have interspersed the whole way with the others, tipping a crazyscale into balance just a little. still working out the selections for the next record which we'll be starting on next month. ooh, baby baby its a wild world.

and its cold now. very. not a cricket to be heard.

november tribute

"down & down once again
down & down gone again"
  iron & wine, "sunset soon forgotten"



the top pic was taken by david kraai, after the velvet lounge gig. (the second is by aaron farrington, 2005.) there was a huge tree out in front that several of us, the owner and manager, stood outside and debated about, wondering what kind it was. i made a guess, they made others. in the end, a guy was driving past on his bike, and stopped to put us right on it, but i dont remember the name he said, it was unusual. but he knew alot about it and had a good bit to say. then he complimented them on the club and left, and the conversation went back to the australian band that was playing the next night.



im not sure i am enjoying anything at the moment. that's what i am thinking tonight. im not sure i love anything right now. and for me, that's bad. i love most things normally. its easy to. but now, no, i dont.

i havent enjoyed the sky nearly. or my talking with anyone. i dont care about things properly. i think i am numb. nothing is beautiful. not words and not music. not the
man i thought i loved. not the people i have fought for, or the things. i may have spent so much in the loving i emptied the whole bowl of my heart into them and left nothing to drink for myself.

i have wondered sometimes what could have induced my grandmother to take her own life when she was very little older than me. she and my mother were pregnant at the same time, my mother with me and she with twins. and no, dont be obnoxious and unoriginal and send me emails saying not to take my own life- i am not thinking the same thing. its not that at all. but i have wondered how she could have missed the importance of remaining. of living through things, even living for awhile just for the people who cared about her. but last week, i think, and last year-- i am beginning to see how you might, how she might have, how i might see only the part of things that appear too painful to bear.

once a friend, an actor, said to me, after his father died, that he had had a first thought afterwards. it was, 'i must remember this, and use it for my acting'. i felt nauseous. he was strip-mining his own soul, stealing his own life from himself as though it had no sacred in it. i think my grandmother must have lost the sacred altogether, and it is possible, to lose that.

there are days when my knees buckle, just from the pain, it hits that hard. i dont want to write a song about that. maybe it will come, maybe it wont. its just a change in order. i think i have to hunt around here for something sacred, a sweet tooth or at least sweetness. my brother says, it's time, jenn. so did my ex. so: time it is.

cry me a river

as played by ken peplowski on 'grenadilla'--- now that's living. the free-fall, the spaces, the absolute lung of his understanding in every note. fine. you can hear it here:

http://www.emusic.com/album/Grenadilla-Ken-Peplowski-MP3-Download/10587943.html?fref=150051

i thought of a soundstage i was standing on about two and a half years ago in los angeles, somewhere like figueroa all the way down at slauson or something, that awful warehouse-studded part of the city you would think so ugly no one would be composing all the media to conduct a world from, but yes. it's there, the conductor's pulpit of hollywood-wizard-of-oz here's how you do it industry. it was the day i decided to leave and not participate anymore. no particular thing about the day, just a hottish, blue sky LA morning too early for anything but the film world.

jazz is skydiving. its sex and skydiving, at the same time. if it's done right.

there's a song by the oscar peterson trio too, on the human stain soundtrack. it's more jolly than the ken piece, but still- all the oppression, and the fear, and the transcendence is in there if you close your eyes. i definitely got it bad and that--




'xactly.

boys who dream of flying

ive known them. and as men they remember maybe only faintly, but they remember. the way that it felt, and the height, and the rightness of it.



i sang a new song at the memphis gig. it was meant as a gift that night. i wrote it about a month before we left, and i had a group of real people in mind i was writing about, people who had suffered that i knew, and were i thought made ripe by the suffering. but i knew they werent all ripe, and i wrote it like a premonition of things to come. and they came. but i sang it anyway that night, although maybe none of us deserved any mercy.



i think my boy might have dreamt of it, flying. he felt like a flyer to me.

(pix by d. kraai)

brer fox and the miller lite girls

they were there. they're always there. the miller lite girls. it can be said: in a pinch, in a pickle, the miller lite girls WILL be there. ;) man. we got hat'ted by em this time--and came away with spoils:



these photos were taken by andrea bohnert. this one is called 'sick as a dog':



but really there was heartfelt participation, and i have andrea, francie, slim and ritchey to thank for commitment to excellencesilliness, which is a very high spiritual condition open only to initiates of a particular sort. or sumthin. ;)

furthermore, there were sea smells and breezes, and a soft sun, and the ladies of isla, a particularly enjoyable rags store that was promoted in every artist gift bag and we got over there (i imagine most of the girls who saw that promo at least wanted to, only a few were that lucky). now im not saying i bought anything but that has more to do with finances and opportunity than anything else. but there were shoes, i can tell you, and dresses, and esp tshirts and a very fine pair of boots. i would say more but it would cost you.

i made an important decision this weekend, beyond the many that came with a very deep and painful experience i wont forget in this lifetime. but no, beyond that ;) i decided to simply quote folks. yes, i am going to quote folks. people say the most unbelievable beautiful or extraordinary or peculiar yet important things to me. so i am going to begin quoting and i wont stop until im through.





;)


(an br'er rabbit, 'e don' say nuthin. an' br'er fox? 'e lay low.)

where the wild things were friday nite

man, never been over that bridge out of the rio valley before. we played a really cool spot over there, and set up on this pier over a bit of water. when we got rockin, or when a boat went past out at the lip of the harbor, the little pier would set  a motion going you had to focus to play through. kinda like someone else playing something while you're doing a different rhythm. fun.

two tons of steel went up after us, and we climbed off the pier to go. the air, the breezes, the sound, it was a good night. jeff anderson took the pics below...



there wasnt any moon. went over and caught mike doughty's set later after mine, he was singing some really good new songs off the new record which isnt out yet. treat.



next night the same pier had all the austin ladies on it--ginger leigh, suzanna--and it was grad nite too, everyone cross-legged listening on the "peer" floor. a fella named will sexton kept callin me a shepherdess due to my headgear; i couldnt get warm enough.

cachaca

is apparently some very intense brasilian drink that you can pick up on the cheap. its also the name of a little jazz club in the village. we went and saw yosvany terry and his quartet play original stuff one night while i was in town. aaron knew him from days in a musicians hangout cafe in havana .

these pix are by pricilla gilman, a lovely lady ;)

ps is it just me or does everyone have the suicide girls epidemic? its such totally excellent porn, and great tats. no, i said tats, as in tattooes. ;)  major fun. makes me need a yoga class.