Live For Guitar and Drums...

And goosebumps. 

Lyrics, and voices, screamed, crooned and desperate...barely spoken.  That one riff, that has been played before, and again and again.  Revisited and remade.  Reworked, respected and ripped off.

I find beauty in those chills.  Solidarity in those gasps for air from the meaningful and the (seemingly) meaningless.

I sing (yelling, somewhat in tune) barely muted into my bathroom mirror.  Funny faces that I know Rolling Stone and NME would love....

Finally realizing that, people sing for me. 

I am somewhat satisfied.

Little Sammy Was a Punk Rocker...

"Just because you're better than me
Doesn't mean I'm lazy
Just because you're going forwards
Doesn't mean I'm going backwards"

Billy Bragg sang tonight at City Winery.  And I listened.  He spoke, with conviction and intellect.  He moved me.  Inspired me.  Tapped me on the shoulder, before slapping me in the face, to remind me what it means to have a guitar and a voice.  Everything.

This Is Exciting

I Wish I Wrote This

The Dawn

By Federico García Lorca 1898–1936


Dawn in New York
has four columns of filth
and a hurricane of black doves
splashing in putrid waters.


Dawn in New York whimpers
down the huge stairs
seeking in the chaff
flowers of sketched anguish.


Dawn comes and no one recieves it in his mouth
because there is no tomorrow or possibility of hope.
Sometimes furious swarms of coins
drill and devour the abandoned children.


The first to leave understand in their bones
there'll be no paradise or leafless loves;
they know they go to the filth of numbers and laws,
to artless games, to fruitless sweat.


The light is buried by noises and chains
in the obscene challenge of rootless science.
In the neighborhoods are people who wander unsleeping
like survivors of a shipwreck of blood.

A Design For Life

I am in awe and in debt to to this song.  It made me realize that I was not wrong about the power of lyrics.  It is not just a good tune, it is a life affirming one.  A distasteful piece of sonic imagery.  A confession that we may be fucked, but some of us, we get it.  The most optimistic set of nihilistic verse.  A design for life....