3.27.07

there are a couple things in life that keep me really happy. the number one thing is music: playing it, writing it, listening to it, watching it, thinking about it, buying it, downloading it, reading about it, and talking about it. sometimes it makes me absolutely giddy. and lately, i can't stay stressed out or bummed out for very long anymore. it's not worth it. and i'd much rather be giddy and dance around to music in my room than sit and mope, to be honest. here's what i'm currently happy about: i bought jarvis cocker concert tickets for late april in san francisco. i can't adequately express my excitement over this.

last night i was in the studio with andy from 10:00 p.m. til 4:30 a.m., with the exception of the time it took to do a beer run and take a forced-break while the custodians were buffing the floors of the hallways. we went over one track in particular quite a lot, and i think we probably got a couple pretty decent takes from it. if nothing else, i now have a pretty good idea of what needs to be practiced and changed about it, and what i should be aware of when practicing it. there are still a couple little glitches to be worked out, mostly things having to do with tempo and pitch and consistency of tempo. a lot of those are things that get harder to get right the more the song is played and the more tired it gets. i'm pretty excited to be working with andy, though. we're getting better at communicating with one another about what's working in the recordings and what isn't, and i feel like we're pretty much on the same page as far as what we think sounds good and the sort of aesthetic we're going for. monday nights will be recording nights from here on out, for a while.

i've gotten better about letting go of the past, almost to a fault, and looking forward to the future. i anticipate a lot of exciting times to come. i really want to move into the city when i graduate - either NYC or san francisco - and i want to just jump right in and do what i can to play a lot of music and do a lot of writing and meet a lot of people and exchange ideas. i think right now is an exciting and important time to be alive and i'd like to take advantage of that and really utilize the currents of energy that are circulating around our society in order to make good things happen. i think that's what all of us should be trying to do. partying and wasting time is all well and good, but i think it should be done in the most productive way possible. i've noticed just how often conversations with my peers center around the notion of cultural and political change, revolution, and artistic movement. i think it's on the forefront of most everyone's psyche and i think its unavoidable. i feel like the energy is there, and i feel like we're alive at a breaking point, as if things are balanced really delicately and they have no choice but to come falling down to make way for something that is perhaps better. i feel anxious and giddy and excited and determined. and i really, really, really love music for its power to move people and its power to be a catalyst and simply just for its goodness and sexiness and newness and ability to be in flux.

3.26.07

i'm tired. i'm tired of thinking about what i should be doing as opposed to what i am doing; what i should be saying as opposed to what i want to say. i'm tired of speaking in order to cater to what i think others want to hear. most efforts i make to try to clarify things for the sake of preventing hurt towards others just backfire because my words are taken as a sign of manipulation. or that's what it feels like. i tend to try to clarify myself and then i tend to be misunderstood and then i tend to think, "screw this. if they don't understand me when i'm trying my best to be as expressive and clear as possible, then do they really understand anything else i do? i mean, how can they understand my intentions when i DON'T make an effort to be clear, if they don't understand my intentions when i do?" then sometimes i feel that i waste too much time worrying about being understood. and other times i don't want to be understood because i feel like others will sell me short in their percieved understanding of my intentions or actions or words.

for some reason i'm thinking right now about the highschool football games that i used to go to when i was in my freshman year of highschool. bright stadium lights and nervous glances and gossip and teenage drama, and getting dressed up for all of it. sometimes i feel like i could subscribe to any culture if i just decided to. which makes it difficult to put much stock in the culture that i do associate myself with; or at least my reasons for the associating. they seem legitimate, but the most legitimate reasons for associating with others might be applied with equal justification to any culture whatsoever, if the reasons are important reasons. that is, if the reasons center around social interaction and conversation and open-mindedness and curiosity. i guess i associate myself with those that i do because i crave creative inspiration and challenges and intrigue and artistic productivity. those football games were the first taste of a kind of youthful freedom that felt so nourishing and clean and fresh and new. now it's strange because having endless options feels a bit like the lack of an option itself. maybe it felt the way it did then because my options were very clearly defined and my role was very clearly specified.

i went from going to football games in the beginning of the year to playing electric guitar and going to rock concerts toward the end of the year. i miss the old local shows in nevada city. there was a different feeling to them. something relating to sincerity and urgency. i guess they felt more angsty but more in a way that was exciting and necessary. there was an air about them much like one might feel standing on the edge of a giant precipice, under a dark sky. a precipice the other side of which might have been too far away to focus the eyes upon. the air outside was usually cold. and the people i encountered incited some kind of awareness of potential in my mind: awareness of the potential in myself and the potential in life and in interactions. i crave that feeling and i miss that feeling. i want to feel like i'm standing on cliffs and running through the jungle and dodging bullets and building palaces. i don't feel like i have anything to run from that i won't end up running back to, and i don't feel like i have the tools for building, and those tools which i have might only be put to use in order to build something that coyly mocks my intentions with an over-the-top display of absurd gaudiness.

3.27.07

checking in with myself is the only way that i can make progress towards where i want to be. and being alone from time to time is the only way that i can really check in with myself. it's not logical, but it's natural and intuitive.

3.24.07

the sun is out, and the allergens are out, and the highschoolers are hitting the town riding razor scooters and wearing hot pants. which is an interesting combination of phenomena. today i woke up and rode my newly retrieved bike, then went to delta to meet steph and kristen and matty. i went home to watch cheap movies bought off of itunes and to soak my eye with hot water because it's inflamed and painful. i've been viewing the world through stunner-shades for the past five days, and i miss things being a bit brighter in color as a result; but, just the same, i enjoy the incognito aspect that life has held for me from behind tinted lenses. it's strange that, amidst a college world filled with keg-standees and king's cup games, the events that give me the most happiness are the simple things: walking through campus in the morning half asleep with a cup of coffee in my hand on the way to class, reading the newspaper in the mornings, doing crossword puzzles, watching strangers walk by and bike by, realizing i really care about the people in my life and feeling pretty legitimately lucky to have said people around me, and having dinner with close friends.

something i've been increasingly aware of in the past few years of my life is the envy that manifests itself in me when i encounter a creative work that i consider to be meaningful. when i watch a band play a show that really moves me or inspires me or makes me want to move around, i get a really intense urge to go home and write music. when i pick up a book that words things in such a way that fodders my mind, i have a hard time reading further without wanting to sit down and write something that the book has made me think about, or write something that i consider to be a step towards such a caliber of writing. when i visit an art gallery, i have a hard time walking around without getting pissed off at my own laziness with regard to productivity in the visual arts. all of these reactions are, when it comes down to it, positive things; because in the long run they will probably fuel me to be more creative and productive if i don't let them humble me to the point of stagnancy.

i've been pretty content and at peace for a while now - pretty much since the beginning of the school year, or at least the beginning of winter quarter - and it's a feeling that i'm not familiar with, but nonetheless a feeling that i appreciate. i don't necessarily think that my luck has changed (although perhaps it has), or that i'm doing better in my assorted endeavors, but i feel that i've sort of reached a point where i'm able to look at things in a less detached way and sort of fit the events in my life into a bigger picture that allows me to be less hard on myself and yet, at the same time, supply myself with enough motivation and inspiration to keep myself working towards my long-term goals. i've gotten a lot more relaxed about social interactions, and by that i mean that i have been discovering that people surprise me more often than not; and that people, for the most part, have something to offer, and in some cases they have a great deal to offer. i've also become aware of the simple fact that those people whom i know are only going to offer me more as i spend more time with them. there's not a limit to a person's potential offerings in friendship or in general. i like the idea of knowing people for a long time, and perhaps not seeing some of them for a while yet still rekindling friendships and starting anew when given the chance. i also like to think that people continue to have an influence on you even after they have left your life, or at least left the periphery of your awareness.

a lot of the time, i just want to sit down in my room with the windows open and the wind blowing in and listen to songs on my laptop and space out to them and let them affect me in whatever way they will. it amazes me that some songs still hit me in the same way that they always have, and that the way in which i view other songs changes as quickly as the leaves. how does anyone ever get bored in this world? sometimes i remember how much there is to be excited about. and when there is nothing else, there are the seasons, and at least they provide a change of scenery. the seasons give the illusion of moving away to a new town, without having to really go anywhere at all.

3.9.07

it's odd that spending goofy time with friends and drunkenly confessing my infinite love for the people that i have in my life - old friends and new friends alike - can make me feel so much better, but it does. i don't know if i've ever felt so blessed to have good people in my life as i do now. and i don't know if i've ever wanted to be around people that i care about for the reasons that i do now, mainly reasons consisting of the pleasure that i draw from talking to them and spending time with them. when i was in highschool, i think i thought i needed people to support me in the things that i go through and make me feel less alone. now, i want people in my life because i love spending time with them, and as if by magic, they tend to support me in everything that i go through when i don't even ask that of them. now, i can't feel alone even if i try to convince myself that i feel as such, because when i see certain people i just get exponentially happier and i can't wait to pick their brains and hear what they have to talk about.

3.7.07

i went to my Chomsky seminar and was particularly involved in discussion today. i had a lot of thoughts running through my mind, and i kept trying to voice them to get the professor's feedback. i don't think i was being eloquent, or they didn't come off right. he said, "NO", and then went into a long monologue about his reasons for disagreeing with me. then i'd try to rephrase what i was trying to say, because i knew i had a point but didn't quite know how to put it using the terms of linguistics that he constantly utilizes. he just keps saying, "NO!" and eventually i got really frustrated. he asked if i wanted to try to rephrase my question again, and i just shook my head, and i could feel my eyes fill up and i had to bite my lip. it was obvious that i was on the verge of crying, and everyone in the seminar (that is, two professors, two grad students, two other undergrads and myself) sort of watched me, dumbfounded. the professor went on with his lecture and it became clear to me that i needed to leave the room, because tears were almost running down my face and yet i didn't want to start full-on crying in the middle of my seminar. i left my books on the table and left the conference room, heading to the girl's bathroom, where i sat in a stall and cried hard for about half an hour. the knees of my pant-legs were soaked from tears. i eventually left the bathroom, timing it so i'd get back to the classroom before it was locked in order to get my books back. the class was still in session, so i waited outside.

a grad student walked out and gave me a snide an condescending smirk as he walked by. one of the two professors walked out and gave me a kind of sympathetic yet awkward half-smile as he walked by, and then ducked his head to avoid conversation. finally, the main professor walked out, and immediately came up to me to apologize for "attacking me" and asked if i was okay. i started crying again the moment he expressed concern. i assured him that it wasn't at all his fault, and that he'd not been harsh at all, and that i was just stressed out and tired and, more than anything, frustrated that i couldn't express myself at the level that i'd like to have been able to pull off. i told him that i hated half-assing things, and that i felt it was all i'd been able to do lately, because of the weight of my school load.

i think he saw that i needed to talk to somone about it, because he told me to come with him to his office, and he sat and just talked to me for a while, giving me kleenex and giving me chocolate and saying everything he could in order to make me feel better. he told me that he treats his students like his colleagues, and that people sometimes don't understand this, but that he talks to them the same as he would someone with an equal level of competency in the field of linguistics as himself; or someone with an equal amount of experience reading Chomsky and discussing it and familarizing the self with his terminology and technical modes of description. he told me that he had felt the way i was feeling right then, and when i said i thought i'd stopped having those moments after highschool, he told me that he'd never really completely stopped feeling that way once in a while, and that it's just something that happens sometimes, to everyone. he said he knew exactly what i was feeling, all too well, and to an equal degree. he also said something that i really appreciated: he told me to never change how hard i am on myself, because he said that that kind of drive and high-standard cannot be taught, and that it's something that, if innate, can cause one to strive to succeed and work hard and always aim to do better. he said to always hold on to it, but to also give myself some slack once in a while. he told me he'd actually really liked my questions, and could tell that i had a solid grasp of the material. he told me not to worry too much about my career, and to take the future as it comes. he also reassured me that what i study in college isn't necessarily what i have to end up studying, and that i should take philosophy classes if i want to because i find them interesting, regardless of how practical they may be. he said, "when in your life are you going to have another chance to study philosophy? you're only in college once." he also told me he'd missed me the two days of class when i'd been sick and that he really liked my presence in the class. he also said, "do you know how many Chomsky classes i had to sit through, too terrified to make any comments at all? i'm asking a lot of you guys and i'm throwing you guys into something that you have no experience with", or something to that effect.

he handed me some kleenex, patted me on the back, said "you're okay", and told me not to feel sorry or embarrassed. he was seriously the nicest guy i've talked to in months. i hadn't even realized that i was stressed to the point of crying until i started actually crying, but i'm glad i was able to let all of that out rather than dwell on it. and i'm glad i had someone to talk to about it: someone whom i actually look up to and really respect.

i went to naomi's, where she was working on bandit masks for her party tomorrow. then i looked at some old bike frames that avi had left there. evan said i could pick one out to keep, so i called my dad and described the brands and styles to him to find out which was better. he told me to photograph them on my phone and send him the files. i did so, and he called me back, saying that they both looked decent and that it was hard to tell over the phone. he told me to take both of them if i could. so i did, and they're sitting on my porch now. he's going to fix one of them up with a fixed-gear road-bike setup sometime soon, so that i can have a road bike to take around campus. i'm excited about it.

ate at noodle city with dan, and just got home. perhaps i'll go to delta tonight to wind down a bit before getting some work done.

3.5.07

i'm good at missing people. friends, former-lovers, family members, and people i've never even met. does that mean i'm good at loving people? i don't know.

last night i was feeling kind of down. i'm not really sure why, but i guess it's because i hadn't left my house at all. jesse insisted upon bringing me coffee and coming to hang out with me and cheer me up. when he showed up, i was sitting in my back yard watching neil young videos on youtube. i started talking to him about music, and about how much i love it, and about how it's what i most dearly want to be doing right now, and about the pressures in my life and the uncertainty in my life and the social intimidation that all of us experience and things of that nature. i sort of teared up while talking to him. i hadn't put my finger on what it was that had been bothering me, but as soon as he got there, it was music that i wanted to talk about, and it was music that made me almost begin to cry. the amazing thing is that it was also something that made me happy, once i started talking. within minutes of discussing it, i was excited and optimistic instead of afraid and bummed out. mostly because of the way jesse responded to the things that i said. jesse has this ability to make me feel 100% better in a matter of minutes. i think it's because he and i are fueled by the same forces. love for human beings and love of music and love of conversation and humor and creativity/ creative people. i've been finding that i have an abundance of people in my life who understand what it means to be charged by such forces, and i'm infinitely thankful for their respective existences. but conversely, i'm thankful for those who are nothing like myself, because i can learn from them too.

long story somewhat shortened: jesse and i decided that we wanted to drive out to the coast to try to find tom waits' house. we found out on the internet that it was in the town of valley ford. we fetched steph from her house and drove there, stopping on the way for energy drinks and food and gas and public bathrooms. i hadn't driven out near the coast in over a year. it was a weird breed of deja vu, but the drive was gorgeous, as was the entire experience. it was exactly what i needed; worth every dollar of gas money that i coughed up. and it put things into perspective, both with regard to geography and with regard to my own emotions and thoughts. we listened to music, talked, exchanged stories, and looked around ourselves at the fields rushing by. old fences posts in long rows where they had fallen. fence posts, unable to fall alone because they are bound to one another. kind of like human beings, maybe.

we looked at all the houses in valley ford, and the three of us agreed that a very certain house had to be his house. it had one lone light shining down from it, the light yellow in hue, and the building stood atop a hill with nothing around it for acres except for sloping fields. it seemed nice enough to be worth a bit of money, yet rustic enough to inspire songs about bourbon and porches and to bring back brooding memories of old loves and old friends and old happiness and old heartache. we drove around and couldn't figure out for the life of us which road led up to the house, because whichever road might go up there was hidden, and presumably snaked around the back of the hill up to the house. we found a few long driveways with locked gates, and assumed that one of them probably led up to it, in a rather meandering manner. whether it was his house or not isn't really the point. the point is that we spent the hours between 1 am and 6 am driving around the coast together, near the water, through old fields untouched by the tread of man for perhaps decades in some places; looking for tom waits' house, thinking in the back of our minds how nice it would be to be able to leave him some cigarettes and a handle of bourbon... maybe a note.

tom,
thank you.
love,
katie

or maybe:

tom,
i love your soul.
love,
katie

what poetry can be written to a poet? i have a feeling that anything i might wish to write to him would be something that he could probably put much more eloquently, and could probably present with far more grace and beauty than i might ever dare.

we didn't really have anything that we could leave on his porch, and it turned out that his porch was impossible to get to and impossible to, with full confidence, discern from the other porches of those others with similar living aesthetics to mr. waits himself. which makes me glad, in a way, because i don't like the idea of random hooligans (like ourselves) paying mr. waits random visits and disturbing his peace. i wish i could say that i would have a problem with the idea if said hooligans were ourselves and only our selves. but i would be pretty okay with that. of course, no one would be happy to have visitors at 3:30 in the morning, even your favorite local night owl, especially if the visitors were strangers. no one with kids would be very keen on such a thing. but there are some things i'd like to talk to tom waits about, mostly things concerning the passage of time and and the meaning of love and the stomaching of alcohol. all of which seem pretty symbiotic to one another, by his modes of thinking.

we drove back, and our energy drinks did little for us. exhaustion silenced us to only laughter. i went to sleep more quickly than any other time in recent history once i was home in my own bed, and then i awoke to a day of songwriting and wine/dessert parties and walks downtown to get coffee while talking to my dad on the phone.

3.3.07

i used to drink water out of hoses when i was little; up in the mountains where hose-water tastes like aquafina. i'd do it after pulling starthistles that my dad asked me to uproot, using huge oversized leather work-gloves that had thistles inside of them buried deep in the leather from the summer before; or when returning home to my mom's house in the scorching sun after spending a summer day downtown, or at campsites or outdoor festivals that took place on pieces of land without conventional sinks. there's something about hose-water that is unlike anything else. you can taste the metal and rubber of the hose when you drink the water. you run the risk or soaking the entire front of your shirt or swimsuit if you don't time it carefully. you can hear the water approaching as you turn on the faucet, and the first drinks of water are warm from sitting mid-hose in the heat of the sun for so long.

the garden-hose is something that i used to know, but no longer know. i used to understand hose-kinks, and why it was that they stopped the water and how easy it was to unkink them. i used to know how easy it was to create another kink while unkinking the first, and i used to take extra effort to avoid doing this. but the last time i picked up a garden hose was when my friend mindy and i were borrowing our friend jon's van and she drove with the emergency brake on. we had to stop the car in front of a large frat house and use their hose in order to spray four smoking tires with it, all in vain. we didn't know what to do so we, being sophomores in college at the time, called 911. then i called my father. he heard the sirens in the background as the fire trucks approached and he said, "what's that sound?". i told him, and he said a long, drawn-out "alllllllright", followed by, "have fun with that," and a hasty goodbye.

it's odd to think about all the tools that you utilize throughout your years, and it's odd to think that the same tool can be used in a situation completely different from any other situation in which the same tool has been used.

my grandfather collected tools, and my father still does. i equate the smell of wood-shavings to both of them. my grandfather made me a wooden chest one year for christmas, when i was probably around ten. it was made of cedar, with a little shelving piece inside of it and with a key with which to lock it. it's nice that my grandpa understood the idea of privacy, even for children, and the importance of a lock and key. i hid many-a-treasure in that box and locked it up. notes from friends and drawings and lyrics and poetry. all the things one can never have enough of or make enough of.

my grandpa's tool "shop" was one room out of many, in the barn at the place where he used to live with my grandmother. country road 96. he had drawers and drawers of different tools of different sizes. different projects that he'd started. science impliments or gifts for his sons or his grandkids, or pieces of furniture. he was careful about who he let in there, and i know that i spent some time with him there when i was young, but only accompanied. the longest time i spent in there was after his death, with my dad. we went there and looked through all the drawers and in all the little boxes, seeking out tools we might want to claim and keep ourselves. it felt like it had been kept untouched, as it had been left, and it seemed to embody my grandpa's entire character in its walls. it's an odd feeling when you walk into a room and realize that something in that room - a chair, or a bit of floor-space, or a tool, or any number of tools - was last touched by someone you love who is no longer there, and since then touched by no one else. to go into a room full of that kind of sanctity felt odd. and thinking about it makes me sad. it's been almost six years since my grandpa's death, and it's still a deep wound. it's deep enough to be hidden some of the time and yet to have the ability to catch me off-guard.

a year after his death, it was the mention of a jar of pickles that drove me to tears. he'd had a liking of pickles and had made it one of his hobbies to make pickles, to pickle things, and to eat pickles. how can an object as ridiculous as a pickle conjure up such a kind of bold and majestic grief? sometimes grief feels like full connection to one's memories. it is when i am best able to remember something lost, or something that has passed, that i most grieve. i think maybe we're all grieving on a daily basis when we think about the past, but i don't think this is a bad thing. i wish there was a better way to put it, because thinking about the past in such a way, although difficult, is also what allows the individual to better understand the scope of his own life. remembering a person, even if difficult, reminds the rememberER of how meaningful a person can be in another's life. and this is not something to grieve about, but rather something to live for.