San Francisco Daze: January

Back in 2005, while I was in endless revisions on my novel, I realized I needed to be practicing writing something new on the side or I might go batty. So I decided I'd do a daily record of life in San Francisco, in any different forms of prose or poetry that came to me that day. I didn't quite do it daily, but I did do it often, all through the year. It being a New Year now, I thought it might be a good chance to share it at the end of each month. Two disclaimers: It was 2005, so the dates won't match up with days in 2008. I mean, duh, but still. And, although I don't drink now, hoo boy did I then, so don't be alarmed if you see occassional references to it in here. Now, without further ado, here is January...


January 1
After a week's worth of rain
the New Year began
with alternating columns
of
Gray
and
Gold
that lit up the streets
in oily prismatic sheen

January 2
Sugar Bowl's
gilded
lights
reflected in the rain
theatre marquee
orange and peeling
jutting up
against liquid gray sky shingles
of Kan's Restaurant
thick brick, red and lumpy
next to cherry-colored pho place
seen from inside
dusty windows
damp shoe smell
and ceramic cup clink
Café Zephyr
Balboa Street
San Francisco
on a rainy
January
Sunday
afternoon

January 3
Today, on the eighth consecutive day of rain, the precipitation was cut with humidity. The 38 Geary, heaters turned up against the alleged cold and packed to the limit, trundled down to the Financial District like a mobile sauna. I didn't mind standing, except that it meant I couldn't write. That, and the young Asian girl seated in front of me on the orange plastic bus-seat kept waving her hand back and forth in front of her face. To try and relieve the inherent steaminess, I'm sure, but I was afraid it meant that I stank. Now, rolling on the N-Judah toward an open-mic show, life is good. Or at least, I'm heartened by the sight of the chubby girl with curly red hair and geeky glasses, wearing a hip bowler hat, red fishnets and shiny black boots.

January 4
Today was about
clear light over the Bay
framed with pregnant lumps of cloud
light white on top
heavy gray underneath.

January 5
I learned this afternoon that there is a Western Union in the bowels of the Safeway tucked at the end of the Embarcadero. Not so grand a revelation, but kind of useful when Visa has just called your ex-wife in an attempt to get her to call you to scare lose an old credit card debt.

January 6
Leaving work tonight, on my way to meet a friend for dinner in the Castro, bleary-eyed, blazed and glazed with days of budget work, I beheld downtown like a sea of glass surrounded by rising fog.

January 7-9
The lost weekend began with a late night's work Friday, escalated through John's party on Saturday, was catalyzed into its full glory by the curly-haired young blonde accountant upstairs neighbor's techno music and Jack and Coke that was almost all Jack, ushered in Sunday with sleep past noon and ends now, scotch in hand, writing in bed on a Sunday night.

January 10
Looking down from Diamond Heights
Tonight
The hill's bottom
Curved up to the lights of downtown
Muddy pearls
Lost in the fog
And rain

January 11
The Transamerica Pyramid squats in the midst of all of my dreams like a vast friendly marble bullfrog, higher than the sky and heavier than heaven.

January 12
Last night I visited a bar just a few steps shy of being under the overpass on Valencia Street. Amy said she thought it was a biker bar and indeed, a collection of silver and black hogs guarded the entrance. Not that the entrance needed much guarding, it was so non-descript, almost the door to a shack, that most people would easily breeze right past it. We breezed right in, though, and the toughness of the place was belied by the big friendly doorman in muttonchops sheepishly asking for my ID, and the fact that the obligatory TV above the bar was playing the Food Network. It wasn't as if they had no bite, though. They served us a Jack and Coke and gin and tonic both of which may have been flammable, and they had one of the toughest jukeboxes I've ever heard. The MC5, Nirvana, the Cramps, the Ramones and the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club got me through my drink and into the second before we called it a night out of respect for the jobs that waited for us in the morning.

January 13
Walking by Dolores Park tonight I caught the acrid exhaust vanilla-cream whiff of crack smoke coming from somewhere in the bushes.

January 14
They look just like the Amish, but they can drive cars— Overheard tonight at an art show opening in Varnish Gallery on Natoma Lane
Getting there takes an act of faith. You have to pass Mission Street on the approach to Hell on Earth (aka the Transbay Bus Terminal). The next move requires a sharp turn just before Howard, exactly where the Satanic cement overpass of the bus terminal looms. In fact, the rest of the walk is in the shadow of the overpass, down a dimly lit street that is little better than an alley. One side is scuffed wall and cracked opaque yellow windows, part of the bus terminal superstructure, the other concrete pillars supporting a freeway, surrounded by chain-link fence. You pass the boarded up remains of a hip South of Market bar you visited once during the dotcom boom of '99, and just when you begin to doubt, really doubt, where you're headed in life, there it is. The happy little neon sign of Varnish popping out of the night. A swift turn to the left and there you are, in a mid sized gallery with skylights, a full service bar, and additional display space wending its way around the thin metal railing that frames the second floor.

January 15
I left San Francisco city limits for the first time this year. Returning, I was haunted by the sight of the doomed pylons of the second Bay Bridge expanse rising ghostlike from the black waters. Cranes blinked, steel and concrete slick and shiny in the fog, despite all their spectral beauty, destined to be confined to oblivion due to the Governor's decree.

January 16
Looking out my window
during morning meditation
I saw
the eucalyptus treetops
of Park Presidio Avenue
swaying like angry heads of broccoli
in the winter wind.

January 17
My favorite moment on the N-Line is when it first comes out of the tunnel, just before Cole Street. The blank black rushing roar suddenly gives way to a busy shopping street. And there, like a beacon of all the hope and goodness in the world, is the neon sign of BurgerMesiter shinning in the night.

January 18-21
After four days of immersion in the boiling sea of overwork I surfaced during a lunch-time walk down to the Embarcadero to see the real sea. I had only the briefest of glimpses, past the restaurant that stands like a little wooden shack at Pier 29, but it revived my soul. And what did I find, turning back to the hedge that lines the street as I prepared to cut through Levi's Plaza? One of the small historical plaques that lines the street explained how, when the despondent masses of the 1930s hit San Francisco with nowhere left to go, Mother Jones fed them and cared for them. In a building, judging by the photograph, on Sansome Street at the foot of Telegraph Hill, EXACTLY where my office is now. I can't say we're putting it to better use, but it felt good to connect for a second with what went before and to realize that I, and all my busy thoughts, are just passing through this world and enjoying our moment in the sun, spirits lifted by the fresh ocean breeze.

January 22-24
Again I went under, lured by the siren call of completing the 2005 Budget for the Internet company I work for. I was brought back to my senses this morning by the sight of the setting moon, burnished like a smoldering copper coin in the pre-dawn sky.

January 25
What the fuck is up with the buses in this city? Why must we be confronted, again and again, with the pain of waiting 20, 30 minutes with no bus in sight, and then have two or three of them come at once? The 24 Divisadero is the worst offender, but the 22 Fillmore and the 1 California are both suspect as well. The ultimate indignity, however, is the 38 Geary. At peak morning commute hours, all of us who live in the Avenues pile into this, our shinning chariot, like obedient little lemmings. And it is there for us. 38. 38AX and BX. 38-Limited. All aimed like rockets towards downtown, each individual line coming once every 10 minutes. Or so says the schedule. So HOW THE FUCK can it be, as it was this morning, that narrowly having missed one bus, I faced a more than 20-minute wait for the next one? A Limited, so packed to the gills because everyone else along the line had to wait 20 minutes as well, that I refused to claw my way on board with the rest of the 20-minute thick crowd that by then had accreted upon my stop. And not three minutes later, what should come along but a 38, with a 38-Limited fast upon its heels. If there were even a tiny, rudimentary attempt at routing, wouldn't this be mathematically impossible? Oh, the indignity.

January 26
The trees waved lazy green fingers
In the gusts of wind
That sent big puffy white clouds skidding
Through the hollow blue sliver of sky
Peeking out above the swimming pool
In the canyon
Between the two red brick buildings
Visible
Just outside
My office window

January 27
On my way home from work tonight
Shafts of rain falling straight down through the empty night sky
Windows in columns down the towers of the Financial District
Both the same, honeydew gold jewels
Bright
Against black velvet

January 28
Rousting about in the used CD bin at the Green Apple Annex on Clement this cloud swept rainy and sunny Friday morning, I struck total pay dirt. Rifling through the little cardboard box of $5 CDs next to the checkout counter, I started with my usual pattern of picking up one or two "I definitely want this" selections, and then searched for a few maybes, so I could get up to the magical 4 that makes it an even $20. As I listened to the elderly couple behind me ask the clerk about where to find "that movie with Pierce Brosnan and the girl from Terminator" among the DVDs (they found it, it turned out to be "Dante's Peak"), a magical thing happened. Before I knew it, I had 10 CDs in my little pile, and the challenge became winnowing them down so I could get to 8 for the even $40. I ended up with:
- A collection of Fleetwood Mac covers (who could not want to hear the Cranberries cover "Go Your Own Way"?)
- General Public (one of my favorite cassettes of yesteryore, to be forever associated in my mind with high school adolescent yearning)
- A Grateful Dead collection (leaving me only Jefferson Airplane to add to Janis Joplin to have the perfect San Francisco Scene 3-CD random shuffle)
- Guns & Roses' Appetite for Destruction (one of the Great White Whales of used CD bin hunting for me)
- A Judas Priest greatest hits collection (now I can be Breakin' the Law while I'm Hell Bent for Leather)
- The first two Led Zeppelin albums (on the road to fulfilling a New Year's pledge to round out my Beatles and Led Zeppelin CD needs)
- The Smashing Pumpkins first album (ah, the 90s, that brief millisecond when the world took notice of my generation)
I love living in a city where even people's castoffs are solid gold.

January 29-30
Sunday morning coming down. Well, actually, Sunday at 2:00 PM, in the street-level sub-basement café at the Hotel Nikko on the penumbra of Union Square. Two flags wave in the wind next to the polished gleaming faux marble pillars visible through the windows. One is the translucent white and fine blue lettering of the flag of Hotel Nikko International (is it its own country?). And then, barely visible in the gap between the pillar and the window frame, red stripes over white stripes folded over on themselves, wrinkled, my country tis' of thee. And I do love her. Looking out on this street, how could I not? Video Tokyo's printed sign in drab orange and green, but above it happy neon sign spelling out bi-day-oh in katakana. Silver Honda CRV, proud bastion of yuppie glory, and yet sporting a red and white walrus sticker on the side that says "OBEY". Rain worn stone tenements above the shops, discolored curtains in window after dirty window, except for the one with bright kitchen tablecloth style curtains with pink flowers and green leaves. Fire escapes criss-cross in the alley between the buildings above graffitied walls. Ubiquitous urban liquor store sits on the corner, affixed with a neon red Golden Gate Bridge in the window, glowing lure for the tourists who thicken the streets in this neighborhood.

January 31
boarding 38 geary home from work circa 6:15 on a monday night
bus driver impatiently waving people by wendy's sign red haired devil girl just past the montgomery street stop girl of my dreams gets on is brown haired serious faced but why does she have a huge bag of laundry with her powell street stop union square where once a sand dune stood but now just that silly winged statue on a pillar biscuits and blues just off mason where lianne and I went and we had a fight about but really I think it was just that that guy wasn't very good nobody could have complained about seeing finis tansby at the boom boom room for example girl of my dreams gets off at jones with huge overstuffed laundry bag still in tow and then there's leavenworth which always makes me think of prison not so ridiculous after all given the extremely reliable population of prostitutes and drug dealers at that street corner and food and delis and liquor and neons and espresso and tecate drinking guy tweaking on a bike riding it around in haphazard circles on the sidewalk at larkin and then suddenly van ness and the fever is broken mel's diner in silver chrome glory so fucking wholesome you can't believe it and the amc 1000 but there aren't nearly that many theatres there I've counted and the wide busy lanes teaming with cars both ways seemingly designed to cut off the riff-raff of the tenderloin from the cathedral hill hotel and then at the top of the hill why yes indeed there are cathedrals big marble glories but they have to compete in bigness with the weirdly out of place high rise housing of the western addition and speaking of weirdly out of place there's the japantown pagoda with its bizarre antenna to god aperture on top and why is there nobody on this bus here we are at fillmore and it's practically empty the masses must have held out for the limited and now past fillmore everything opens up and its wide and quiet as the red haired lady in the leather jacket face worn and tired who seems to be reading the bible sideways and we chug past divisadero and baker almost to the top of the next hill where the phase shift that began at van ness becomes complete all space and quiet and ease inner richmond like a security blanket laid out before us in little golden lights stretching all the way to the ocean and we roll downhill to where I must take my leave because I've had an appointment with pancho's mexican grill brewing in my mind all afternoon long

Gay guys with girlfriends: Wha’ the-?

This weekend I accompanied a friend to a birthday party here in San Francisco.

Said party was being held at a bar, that, based on the clientele, seemed to be chiefly a lesbian hangout. Being a non-drinking heterosexual male, hanging out at a lesbian bar is very refreshing- there is nothing going on in that establishment that requires any form of action from me. Having nothing to prove, it was a pretty fun evening.

But I noticed something peculiar.

My friend and I were chatting with one of the guys there, a very nice gay boy. He mentioned something in passing about his ex-girlfriend, which I figured was just a figure of speech. Then he introduced us to his current girlfriend and proceeded to hold her hand and put his arm around her and do other things that one might do with one’s girlfriend. She was, among other things, a girl. Like born biologically, currently gender identified, socially signified, unambiguous, straight-up girl. Who was the girlfriend. Of a gay guy.

Now, let’s be clear: I’ve lived in San Francisco for over eight years now, frequently had gay roommates throughout my life, have a social circle that is about fifty percent same-sex oriented and worked for three and a half years in a company that served the gay and lesbian market. I know a gay boy when I see one- I still occasionally do false negatives but I almost never do a false positive.

This was not the guy in college who has a girlfriend because he doesn’t know he’s gay yet. This was not the closeted gay or bi guy who’s with a woman but secretly fools around with men on the side. This was not an FTM who’s dating a lesbian. Or any other ambiguous phenotypes you might name. This was, in speech, mannerisms, facial hair arrangement, dress, and any other signifier you can think to name a straight out of the Castro San Francisco gay boy. And his girlfriend.

But that’s not all. At the counter there was another blazingly apparent gay guy locked in several forms of steamy embrace with a curvy, non-draggy, non-tranny, non-MTF woman. Scattered around the room there seemed to be a few other examples.

Have I missed something? Is there a new trend? Was there an article in the New York Times about it recently that I just glossed over?

Don’t get me wrong, there’s some considerable appeal to the idea of living in a polyamorous garden of delight where anybody could be going out with anybody else, regardless of gender or orientation, at any time. It does change the competitive landscape in potentially troubling ways, though. I’m not sure I can dress as well as, be as funny as, or be in obsessively as good shape as, your average gay boy. No fair re-setting the bar that high!
Maybe it’s time for me to get a Queer Eye makeover after all…

Dating

Among the various things I did this weekend, I met a photographer to get some pictures taken.

It's handy to have a photographer on board, since I often end up feeling like I come out looking like a Muppet in photos despite not looking entirely like a Muppet in real life. Professional help obviously is called for. It's also handy to have some pictures for promotional purposes, since one of my goals for the New Year is to put my creativity out in public more, and some good stills to go with online publications couldn't hurt. That was sort of an afterthought, though.

The main reason I wanted to get some pictures taken was to follow through on one of my other intentions for the New Year: to get back into the world of dating and relationships again after a break of nearly two years.

To be precise, after a nine-month relationship ended in December 2005, I briefly did what I have usually done, which is to get right back out there again. Only to find that I was still acting out my own insecurities by choosing people with whom things were certain to not work. I realized it was time to stop, withdraw, and focus on myself until I could come back to it from a different place, because if I didn't change, then the things that were happening wouldn't change either.

So I began this formal process of withdrawal in February 2006. Except for two brief defections in late 2006, each lasting for two dates, I didn't date, pursue dating or respond to other people's pursuit. Instead I focused on learning to love myself, growing my own life and deepening my connection to my creativity and my spirituality. Especially after I had finally bottomed out on drugs and alcohol at the end of 2006, this was almost my sole focus in life in 2007.

So now, two years later, I do love myself more, have cleaned up a lot of things in my life, have a much larger creative life and a deepened trust in my recovery and that the universe is conspiring to bless me. Not perfect, by a long shot. But real. And feeling the call of getting out there again, because I think some of the further growth lessons in my life are going to come from this realm.

So I met the photographer and I'm working on an online personals profile, which I'll probably go live with by the end of the month or so. This feels momentous, and at the same time very normal and real. The one thing that I am sure of is that, like everything else this past year, it probably won't be like I think it will, and along the way I'll learn and grow.

Here I go….

Hillary

So, I'm pretty much hoping that Hillary gets obliterated by Barack Obama in Michigan on Tuesday.

(Parenthetical note: I can't believe this is the first blog I've written about the election. Watching presidential debates, election returns and analysis on television plays pretty much the same role for me that football season plays for most guys. And election night is like my Superbowl. Except that it only happens every four years, so it's really more like my World Cup. (Parenthetical note inside the parenthetical note: it really doesn't matter if Hillary gets obliterated in Michigan on Tuesday, since the delegates aren't being recognized by the Democratic National Committee. (Tertiary parenthetical note: bravo Howard Dean for standing up to Michigan's calendar-hoping hubris!)))

In any case, I realized today that I really am hoping that Hillary gets trounced in Michigan on Tuesday, and if not there, in Nevada on Saturday. I'm hoping it with a sort of visceral, nasty hope.

When I realized this, I was surprised- despite it being a popular pastime, I've never been a Hillary-basher. I certainly am not put off by the idea of a woman being president. Or a strong-willed, ambitious woman with an edge. Dare one use the "B" word, I habitually end up really liking women who are described by others (or themselves) as bitches. In fact, my favorite of all Hillaries was the pre-domesticated version who, long-hair flowing and eyes flashing, clad in a leather jacket, made a sarcastic apology on the Clinton campaign trail in 1992 for not, "Staying home and baking cookies like the other mothers."

And yet I have felt strongly anti-Hillary throughout this campaign cycle. Thinking about it, I believe this is why: the candidate, her positions, her money, her voting for the war back when it mattered, issuing press releases that talk about Obama's grade school essays, all of it, is pretty much part of the machine. You know the one I'm talking about- the machine that has us in Iraq, that wants us to buy a lot between Thanksgiving and Christmas, that depends on us remaining safely sedated in front of our televisions every night. It's the machine in a woman suit, so it looks a little new and different, but at the end of the day it's still just the machine.

This time around, though, the Democratic field has someone who not only has a non-machiney whiff about him, but also has an imaginable shot at nomination. I don't think Barack Obama is the second coming. Compared to Dennis Kucinich, for example, he's still clearly a pretty conventional candidate. But he's a few degrees off of conventional enough that he's worth getting excited about. He won't be a boulder that crushes the machine, but he might be sand that wears it down.

I, for one, would like to see him pour.

Baby, I'm a star!

Well, that may be overstating it a bit. As a writer, though, I figure I have carte blanche to over- under- miss- or re- state whenever the mood strikes. This blog is reality as I create it, after all, and divine re-creation is the highest human prerogative.

Here's what I can state, with a high degree of accuracy:

I spent most of yesterday (starting with a bracing 6:00 AM wakeup) in the East Bay on the set of the short film I'm one of the writers on. Small production, so far I'm a co-writer, assistant producer, script supervisor and manual laborer. And, as of yesterday, actor.

I hesitate to use the term "actor" since I have a total of eleven words of dialogue in two brief scenes that probably don't occupy a combined 20 seconds of screen time. I especially hesitate to use the term in comparison to Ryan Eggensperger, Aimee Miles, and Bonnie Jean Shelton, three really superb actors with the film who were on set yesterday.

Still and all, I got in to character (which mostly involved being a geek and lying around in bed- both of which were a total stretch), did my takes and took direction from (oddly enough) the director. It's such total joy to be hanging out with all the great people involved in making this film, and working on it is a concrete form of one of the three intentions I have for the New Year: putting my creativity out there in public more. Yaay!

The film will be screening at the Victoria Theatre toward the end of the month with a bunch of other shorts, I'll let you know when it's coming up…

January Writing News

Happy New Year!

January Writing news is fairly quiet. Now that the holiday season has been safely disposed of, though, perhaps things will pick up.

One thing that will definitely pick up in January is that the short film I’m a writer (and assistant producer and, very briefly, actor) on will be screening at the Victoria Theatre in San Francisco at Scary Cow’s fourth screening party. Assuming we finish it in time, but it looks pretty good. It will be showing Sunday January 27th from 3:00-6:00. Information isn’t up on the Victoria’s website, but should be soon: http://www.victoriatheatre.org/ It would be great to see you there!

What with all the holiday hoopla, I haven’t written anything for Metrowize in the past month. I hope to get more active in January.

No specific plans to be reading on stage this month so far, but you never know. But I did recently exorcise my teen angst onstage in Mortified again on December 14th & 15th. I won a competition as worst teen poet. How should one feel about that? Regardless, it was really cool and I had fun hanging out with my beautiful, creative co-angsters.

As for my novel, my agent is working on synopsis materials and hopes to come up with a list of publishers to target this month. Please cross your collective fingers…

And there is always the blog. The latest postings are appearing in three places simultaneously. MySpace deletes older posts after a while, but you can find the whole history at Blogspot and Live Journal:

http://chris-west.blogspot.com/
http://chrisw-insf.livejournal.com/
http://www.myspace.com/chriswest_writerinsf

That’s it for now. I look forward to sharing the writing life with you in 2008!

All is quiet on New Year's Day

I believe that what I'm doing on New Year's Eve has some kind of link to what will happen in the year ahead. We could get Jungian and call it synchronicity, or newagian and call it manifesting a vision, or just plain call me a superstitious ignorant peasant, but there you have it. I first noticed this phenomenon about ten years ago, and the fit has actually been quite good.

For New Year's Eve 2005 I was at a party with an unavailable budding potential ladyfriend, drinking and listening to her friends spin heavy metal records all night long. Sure enough, 2005 was a year of relational mismatch, drinking, and renaissance of interest in heavy metal.

2006 began in a small neighborhood bar, with a single friend, wistful glances at women in the distance and lots of whiskey and beer. The year delivered on the eve's promise of an increasingly small life where distance from people grew as drinking expanded.

At midnight on December 31, 2006 I was in rehab, hoisting a caffeine free diet coke aloft with a few friends from the program. The next morning I wrote that if that meant that 2007 would be a year of sobriety and focus on recovery with a few really good friends in my life, that was all right with me. Blessedly, that was exactly what 2007 turned out to be.

So this weekend I was on a recovery-oriented spiritual retreat in the Santa Cruz mountains. At 11:00 last night, I went to a candlelight meditation in the chapel. After a half hour there, I went to the main lodge where a dance was in progress and got my ass out on the dance floor. At midnight I was surrounded by beautiful, happy people, who had just spent an intense emotional and spiritual weekend with each other, all hugging and wishing each other Happy New Year.

I reckon 2008 will be filled with emotional growth, spiritual connection, active realtionships with others. And love. Happy New Year to all of you!

Happy Holidays…of doom

Am I the only one who thinks Christmas carols are creepy?

I first became aware of this phenomenon when I was living in San Diego in the mid-90s. There’s a neighborhood there that gets so totally decked out in Christmas lights that it’s become a tourist destination. My future ex-wife had a friend visiting one Christmas, so one night we all went for a drive around the prescribed course of this (70 degree) winter wonderland. Signs up along the route advised us to tune to an AM station for Christmas carols while driving.

It may have just been problems with the ionosphere that evening, but the station sounded low volume even when turned up high. Through the echoey staticy haze you could barely make out sonorous music and an occasional line like “merry Christmas”, as “merry Christmas” would sound if delivered from beyond the grave. While the fact that I was unsettled by Christmas music that evening was clearly a matter of delivery, from that night forward I began to realize that even under the best conditions an air of the uncanny pervades holiday jingles.

Let’s look at a few examples:

The Carol of the Bells. This song has always struck me as being like the soundtrack of a nervous breakdown. Not only are the bells relentless and growing more frantic as the song progresses, but the lyrics themselves seem to celebrate this. One seems to hear words from everywhere, filling the air… Oh how they pound, raising the sound... On on they send, on without end… Upon research I learned that this song is based on a prehistoric Ukrainian chant. That actually makes sense, as it sounds like it could be used to summon the Elder Gods from their centuries-long slumber.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. This song produces a feeling that might be called “heartwarming dread”. The fact that it twice tells us that from now on our troubles will be “out of sight” and “miles away” conveys, more than anything else, the feeling that we must be pretty darn heavy-laden with troubles. And then there’s the line Through the years we all will be together if the Fates allow. It’s hard to know what’s worse- is it the crushing inevitability of our forced togetherness for all time, or the icy powerlessness of this togetherness being the plaything of fate?

Frosty the Snowman. The tale of this snow-golem is inherently fraught with peril. The song tells us he was “alive as he could be”. Well, who worked this magic- God or some demiurge? What does it mean to be alive? Though animated, does Frosty have a soul? If not, do we? Then there’s this: Frosty the Snowman/ Knew the sun was hot that day/ So he said let's run/ And we'll have some fun/ Now before I melt away…followed slightly later by Frosty the Snowman/ Had to hurry on his way/ But he waved goodbye/ Saying don't you cry/ I'll be back again some day. If you want your eight year old to grapple with questions of being and nothingness, action and responsibility in the face of extinction, and death and resurrection, then by all means continue to expose them to the existential maelstrom that is Frosty the Snowman.

Little Town of Bethlehem. Now we arrive at the dark heart of Christmas carols. This one is worth quoting in its entirety:

O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.

Deep and dreamless sleep. Silent stars going by. Everlasting light shining in darkened streets. Meeting the sum of all hopes and fears on a winter’s night. This is practically a goth song!

I could go on with more examples, but I don’t want to spoil the joy of discovery for you. I encourage you to go forth and listen, and try not to shudder. And, of course, happy holidays to all, and I’ll see you in 2008!

One Year

Last night as I was out in the Mission I realized, "Holy shit, all I have to do to have one year is go to bed tonight and wake up in the morning!" While you can't take either one of those entirely for granted, they seemed pretty achievable. It dawned on me that I really was going to do this thing.

And lo and behold, I did wake up this morning. And now I have one year clean and sober.

I was actually out past midnight, so technically my reign of non-terror began before I went to bed. Being out last night itself struck me- I was onstage in front of a few hundred cheering people at Mortified, laughed so hard at the other performers that my face hurt, and then spent a few hours after the show hanging out and talking with beautiful, creative people.

I've still got my fears and insecurities. I feel frustrated sometimes with the pace of change in my life. Some things come up now, un-numbed for the first time in years, that I hardly even know what to do with. But a year ago, shaking, sweating, and scared shitless knowing that something had to change or I might not make it, I no longer knew that the kind of night I had last night was even possible.

Now it's not only possible, it's becoming normal. Normal that I'm losing my fear of people. Normal that my creative life is expanding, Normal that my world is getting bigger, rather than smaller. Not only that, I have a chance now to reach out to people who are where I was a year ago and tell them it will be okay. That they can make it. That there's a way out.

I reckon all that's worth sticking around for, and I'll try a year and a day next.

Scene 1, Take 2

This weekend I spent 23 hours on the set of the movie I’m working on, and got an average of four hours of sleep a night. The amount of sleep considerably increased last night, but I’m still pretty punch-drunk, so this will be brief. I loved making a movie. I loved the beautiful, talented people I worked with. And I loved that I am finally doing something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid. In particular I loved this:

Have you ever been out around town somewhere and run across a group of people who were making a movie? I have before, often with a little flash of envy accompanying the “who the fuck are these people who have taken over a public place?” We mostly shot at the director’s apartment, but our last scene of the weekend was in a taqueria at 29th & Mission.

So last night I the fuck was one of those people. Jason, the director, even got a passing mariachi band to take part in the scene. I have never been happier!

I am the Lizard King, I can do anything

Final entry ported over from MySpace! Now I am completely caught up. And all grown up...

*****************************

I know why I will never be a rock music journalist.

I might never be a rock music journalist because it's a hard field to get in to. I might never be a rock music journalist because being over the age of thirty is a little old to be carrying that aspiration. I might even never be a rock music journalist because I have no aptitude for that kind of writing. These are all plausible reasons that I will never be a rock music journalist.

In fact, none of them is the reason that I will never be a rock music journalist. My Muse lends me to nothing more wholly and joyfully than music writing, and age and difficulty are no bar to success when your will is aligned with that of your Muse. It's too bad that these aren't the reasons that I will never be a rock music journalist, because, while untrue, at least they make sense. The real reason that I will never be a rock music journalist escapes my comprehension.

I will never be a rock music journalist because I like Jim Morrison.

It seems that all successful rock music journalists that I can name have an almost unnatural antipathy to Jim Morrison and the Doors. Jim DeRogatis, who I agree with musically on almost everything, personally authored the chapter skewering the Doors in Kill Your Idols, the volume he edited of a new generation of rock critics reconsidering the classics. Chuck Klosterman, who I frequently disagree with musically but so identify with in his musical and personal preoccupations and how they interweave with each other that I feel like we were twins separated at birth by a freak hospital mishap, rails against Morrison repeatedly in the first 120 pages of Killing Yourself to Live.

Klosterman and DeRogatis are pretty much the extent of my examples at the moment. Two seems like a small survey size to base sweeping general statements on, but I've been known to hatch major life theories on no data points at all, so this hardly phases me. Anyway, trust me, there are a lot more examples even if I can't come up with them right this second. Rock critics hate Jim Morrison. And I just don't get it.

The usual rap involves something about pretension and bad poetry, but is rock music really a place to get fussy about this? This is the home genre, after all, of the rock opera Tommy, Black Sabbath songs with titles like "War Pigs" and such classic lines as: a-wop-bab-a-loo-bop-a-wop-bam-boom. I think Jim actually gets zinged because he seriously presented his work as poetry, and asked that we treat it as such.

Was his writing dark? Yes. Serious? Surely. Weird? Without a doubt. But bad? Show me another writer in rock who can throw out the simple brutal beauty of a line like: The killer awoke before dawn/ He put his boots on. Name someone else who could summon forth the lyrical roll and intellectual displacement of lines like: Soft driven slow and mad like some new language. What writer with a lesser poetical sensibility could even get to that point on "Not To Touch the Earth" when the music suddenly lurches to a halt, stray guitar strings screech in ragged disarray and a voice comes out of the suddenly silent space and makes your hair stand on end as it intones: I am the Lizard King/ I can do anything?

Exploring atavistic irruptions of darkness is not everyone's cup of tea and is certainly not a musical mood for all seasons. As often as not, I need silly doo-wop songs from the 50s to keep me regular. But on those occasions when I'm in the mood to ride with the Dead president's corpse in the driver's car/ The engine runs on glue and tar/ C'mon along, we're not going very far/ To the East to meet the Czar there's no one I'd rather go with than Mr. Mojo Risin'.

Even if it means that I can never be a rock music journalist.

Three new(ish) poems

Here are three poems that came out of a writing retreat I went on in September. So far the only poems I've done this year, which is a lot less than last year, but I guess the Muse has had other plans for me this year. Far be it from me to argue with Her, you never win that one.

All three emerged from writing exercises that use words and phrases to jumpstart your creativity. The first two are pretty much flights of fancy that I've left as they originally came out. The third had something more that it wanted to say, so I kept working with it and revised it a few times.

(untitled)

Ted from the Bureau of Assholes

knows nothing

about the geology of the wolf.

Thus nobody can absolve

that nappy-headed bastard cuttlefish

who masturbates to thoughts of Buchenwald

as if his acid copper parody

of an unblinking vigil of

chameleon maiden trollops

could unlock

the pristine entrails

of stellar divinities.

Better he had met

the hogweed accordion of the abortionist

or his mother had used a diaphragm

of marigolds and tapers

to arbitrate the okra omen

of his father's

sparrow song seed husks.

That was when I knew I had to write this

If you wander far enough

you will come to it:

Celestia

the great city

at the edge of forever.

(Standing up to get a hot dog

someone spills mustard all over me.

Dammit!

I was just on the edge,

the way it always happens.

Now my hand hurts

and the opportunity is fled.)

Gone into the land beyond sleep

the land in which the only light

comes from Celestia.

The Great,

city on the edge of forever,

her ruins marked only by

a wild exultation

brought down into stony fragments

of dream and myth.

(It must be very hard to understand.

Don't worry.

Just start with the telephone

and a meal in silence.

You will know that when love calls

you do, in fact, have to go.)

That was when I knew

I had to write this last will and testament

to you.

I Think It Came In Through the Window

The egress through which I let it in

Seemed small,

Too small

To do any real harm:

Just a scotch on the windowsill

Gleaming gold in ice-cube plastic glass,

Volumes of poetry scattered on the comforter,

Their words a swarm of mosquitoes

That congealed

Into a nodding acquaintance

With darkness.

In the darkness I ordered another.

And another.

And another.

Until,

One shaky morning,

I found I had ordered

A box of maladies

That daily unpacked thirsty demands,

Slaughtered the mosquitoes,

And left the comforter

Littered

With dead words

And soaked

In stale sweat.

Viva la mumblecore!

I am hereby joining the mumblecore movement!

I first ran across the term a few days ago in an article that mentioned the "unfortunately-named 'mumblecore' movement" and referenced Andrew Bujalski. I immediately knew what it was talking about- his 2005 film, "Funny Ha Ha" is one of my favorite independent films from the last few years. The movie resonated on an emotional wavelength of unresolved relationships, unspoken longings, understated intentions and general young urban anomie that made immediate sense to me. I pretty much felt that I had spent a lot of my life being the lead character, Marnie. Or at least wanting to date her. (Without ever telling her so, of course, because that's what life is like in a mumblecore movie.)

This spring at Indiefest I saw "LOL", which struck me in exactly the same way. And carried out much of its low-key longing via the Internet and mobile communications, which made it even more uncomfortably on target. And, lo and behold, it turned out that Bujalski was (briefly) in that film and that its director, Joe Swanberg, considers him to be a compatriot.

Having by then seen a couple indie films in this vein, and just generally picking up on the zeitgeist, I thought there was something afoot. Then I read the above mention, and a few days later saw it used again in a review of the just-released "Hannah Takes the Stairs" which mentioned both "Funny Ha Ha" and "LOL". And "Hannah" is directed by Greta Gerwig, who was one of the online muses inspiring the hapless virtual-relationship obsessed boys of "LOL".

I think these films have a lot to say about our simultaneous longing for connection and difficulty achieving it. I love how consciously lo-fi they are, and how keyed in on the subtlety of internal psychology and relationships. And I adore the fact that the genre has ended up being named something that sounds like a musical sub-genre. I feel like I have found a pocket of fellow travelers.

So I am down with the mumblecore revolution! While it may not be televised, it will be webcast; texted, and screened at independent film festivals.

Virgin Megastore of Despair

Late October from MySpace. We're getting closer to real time... I have to say, the Springsteen is not holding up as well to repeated listenings. Lots of good songs, but it doesn't quite add up to an album. It does retain the quality I most like though, of being like a greatest hits album because it covers so many Springsteen eras and moods, but composed entirely of new songs. KT Tunstall is still good clean fun, and Rilo Killey remains excellent. Neil Young is Neil Young, and needs no further justification. Like God and Popeye.

*****************************

This afternoon I spent a few hours at the Virgin Megastore downtown bopping around from listening station to listening station. This is something I do about once a month to check out the new releases, hoping, of course, to find something good. In particular, I'm always hoping to find new bands making exciting, interesting music.

I'm not going to lie to you. It looks pretty grim.

Outside of dance music, which is not my scene, and hip hop, which is mostly not my scene and has also been mostly ghastly for a few years now, I was faced with album after album of slightly bleary emo and slightly bleary pop punk and slightly bleary indie darlings and slightly bleary overly-orchestral metal. The few standouts came from stalwarts, which gave me a fine burst of age-pride, but left me concerned for the future of our youths.

The new Foo Fighters album Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace seems to be in good working order. Sliding even further up the age scale, Mick Jones was showing up the kids with his new project Carbon/Silicon which brings to mind welcome echoes of his Big Audio Dynamite days and even of the Clash. I ended up going older still, walking out the door with the new albums from Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young.

Neil Young is sometimes really off, like during 1979-1989, or when he made that weird "Let's Roll" song shortly after 9/11. Even when he's off, he's pretty compelling. But when he's on, as he is throughout Chrome Dreams II, he's irresistible. The plaintive haunting voice is entirely authentic throughout, buoyed by rich acoustic music and welcome occasional trips into seething guitar that puts one in mind of Crazy Horse in full glory.

As for Springsteen, his album, Magic, is. He's playing with the E-Street Band, which leaves him both more rocking and more relaxed than on Devils and Dust. The overall impression is of a master, thirty years on, able to draw on moods and themes from throughout his career and turn them into elegiac vignettes that are musically polished without losing the quality of being heartfelt. I'm especially gratified with the surging "Radio Nowhere" which echoes my own concerns about the musical wasteland: This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?… I want a thousand guitars/I want pounding drums/I want a million different voices/Speaking in tongues

It does look grim, but it is not entirely forlorn.

Putting little KT Tunstall in a miniskirt and boots on the cover of Drastic Fantastic as she hoists her guitar aloft seems like a dirty trick. On the other hand, it's one to which I am entirely susceptible. Actually listening to it, though, filled me with delight that she's grown more fully into the voice in evidence on her debut album. By the time I got to track six, "Hopeless" I just hung up the headphones and added the CD to my stack because she was too darned good to ignore.

Rilo Kiley's Under the Blacklight was an equally delightful surprise. I don't really know them that well so I pictured them as being part of that indie vein that sounds vaguely like everything else in that indie vein. You know, all the Deathcabs and Postal Services and Iron and Wines and what have you. In fact, Rilo Kiley sound like themselves. And it is good.

I Oughta Be in Pictures

Continuing the great job of porting over content, from MySpace on 10/21. That film project I mention here now has a final script, a great crew, and a tight shooting schedule that commences next week. And besides being a co-writer, I also have a small non-speaking role. Yaaay!

********************

When I was ten years old I wanted to make movies.

My friend Steven and I wrote scripts, loose leaf on ruled paper, which I bound together with those little bendable brass thumbtack things that you fit through the holes in the margins. My efforts were pretty derivative- I didn't see a problem with repeating the plot of Jaws verbatim (albeit condensed to ten pages) nor did the fact that George Lucas had already done a spaceship navigating an asteroid field prevent me from thinking that it was a nifty idea for a scene.

Nevertheless, we had heart. We even went so far as to paint backdrops, figure out which of our toys and models could serve as props, and sign up our friends as actors. Our efforts really fell apart over the lack of a camera to shoot anything with. This was pre-digital video days, so we would have been talking a Super-Eight at a minimum, and nobody's parents were interested in springing for that. Small death of a small dream.

Flash forward ten or so years. A college sophomore, I was having one of those "what will I do when I grow up" crises. I now recognize that any twenty year old who is worried about choosing a life path already should be slapped silly and sent out to play, but at the time it seemed quite serious. I took out a sheet of paper (loose leaf again, no thumbtack bindies this time) and went through the Berkeley catalog, listing out all the majors that interested me besides the one I was actually pursuing. The one that most interested me was Film Theory. But no, that was all so impractical, back to Political Science for me.

Jump cut another ten plus years, to 2005. In the pit of misery at a ten hour a day, 6.5 days a week finance job with a dotcom I asked myself, "If I could do anything in the world right now, what would it be?" The first answer to flash through my mind was that I would go to film school. I actually ended up using my post-IPO proceeds from that job to take six months off and finish the novel I'd been working on for the last few years. Not by any means a bad investment of time or money, but I did notice that the desire to make movies had kept itself alive over a twenty-five year period.

And fade in now, two years later. Call me a slow learner, or, I think more accurately, a slow believer. A few weeks ago I went to the orientation for the latest round of Scary Cow, a local filmmaking collective. Last week I went to the pitch session for the projects in this round and met the various team leaders. And today I met in a diner (itself a very cinematic setting) with members of one of the teams and went over ideas for the script and the production schedule.

Roughly twenty-seven years from conception to production, but over the next few months I will finally be involved in making movies. Yaay!

The Song of My Soul

This is ported over my MySpace blog from mid-October. But I figure, if we all still have souls, it remains relevant. If some of us have become soulless since then, perhaps even more so!

*********************************************

I was talking to one of my new roommates the other night and he mentioned finding the song of your soul. You know, that moment where, in the midst of the shambles of ill-made choices and fears and doubts and life in general, you stumble across that thing that you really groove to. The light breaks through the darkness, however briefly, bringing you back to who you really are and what you really want.

The song of his soul was awakened in this case by an episode of a prison drama narrated with show tunes, but that's beside the point. I knew instantly knew what he meant. This weekend I was lucky enough to have a moment where I stumbled across the song of my soul.

On Saturday I went to Lit Crawl, the closing event of the annual Litquake festival. The basic idea is that over the course of three hours, readings occur in thirty-five venues across an eight-block strip of the Mission District. You drift from one to another, like a pub-crawl except that you imbibe words along the way. I found myself having an attack of the heebie-jeebies while drifting. Not reading anywhere myself brought up fears of being a literary failure. A friend who was supposed to go with me had flaked at the last minute, and going around by myself brought up feelings of being a lonesome loser (it really may be time to start dating again soon). Being jostled in sweaty, crowded bars made me feel like I was being jostled in sweaty, crowded bars.

In the midst of this charming bouquet of emotions, I squeezed myself into a corner near the stage in Amnesia for "The Beat on the Page", a reading by local music writers. As Katy St. Clair read her tale on being propositioned by 81 year-old country/bluegrass legend Charlie Louvin (it's on her MySpace blog, I recommend checking it out), my cares began to fall away. By the time Wendy Farina (excellent musician and writer and also an eminently MySpacable personage) took the stage to perform her piece about a fifty-year-old woman who has just joined a punk band as a drummer and acquired Jimi Hendrix as a dream music spirit guide, my soul was positively humming.

These were my people. This is what makes my muse beat her little wings and wake me up at inconvenient hours to start writing. This is the song of my soul. And when I hear it I don't want to be anyone else, anywhere else than me, right here, right now.

I know you know what I mean, because you have a song too. And so, my tens of readers, I invite you to write in and tell me about the song of your soul…

My Long Hair is More Punk Than Your Mohawk

Ever since I started growing my hair out again three years ago I've experienced repeated versions of the following:

I'll be hanging out with people of a punkish persuasion and someone will start in on a story about how somebody or something annoyed them because it was, "fucking hippie." Whereupon they'll pause, look in my direction, and parenthetically insert, "no offense." I'm really not easily given to offense, but in point of fact this comment always does annoy me, for at least three reasons.

First off, as I keep trying to impress upon people, the hair aesthetic I'm going for is more grunge than hippie. Do you recall the average hair-length of a member of Soundgarden in 1991? Two feet, minimum. Go back and check out Eddie Vedder from that same vintage. Not to mention shoulder length supper-shaggy Kurt Cobain. Never even mind Alice in Chains, the Melvins or that dude from Tad. Hair, hair everywhere. And what about all the other things in our collective cultural unconscious that long hair could signify? There's the country western long hair. Founding Father long hair. Pre-Delilah Samson. I could go on. Hippie my ass!

Second, the third generation baby-punks who often come up with this comment are displaying an appalling lack of historical knowledge. Punks, real original punks, were perfectly capable of having long hair. Have these kids ever even seen a picture of Joey Ramone, for Pete's sake? How about the New York Dolls or the Heartbreakers? Iggy Pop's hair has been the same length since 1969 for crying out loud!

Third, and this is the critical point, punk as a philosophy is antithetical to having to look any particular way. After its initial outburst in the late 70s the machine ate it up and spit it back out at us as a style. It was pretty gristly, so it took a while, but the machine is patient. And so, since the mid-80s at least, there's been a very standard punk uniform that hasn't changed at all. This is so un-punk as to be alarming. What's more DIY and non-conformist- me having to have a mohwak or dyed or spiked hair to listen to a certain kind of music, or me having long hair because I damn well feel like it? Having piercings and tattoos as a sign of group allegiance or being the only un-tattooed un-pierced person under the age of forty in all of San Francisco?

To invert the Sex Pistols' lyric: We don't care about long hair. It's our choice, it's what we want to do. My long hair is more punk than your mohwak! Bollocks to all of you! And I'll listen to Donovan any time I fucking want, too!

Ahem.

Thankful

I've been using the occasion of Thanksgiving to reflect on things that I'm thankful for. Granted, the genocidal origin of the festivities is troubling and the joy of large family gatherings (and indeed the entire holiday season) is highly suspect, but since they've gone to all the trouble of setting up a theme for the holiday, I say we might as well use it. Call me a traditionalist.

So here, in no discernible order, are ten things I'm thankful for:

1. Physical Graffiti- I was listening to this album just before leaving town for Thanksgiving, and man, there is not a single out of place note. Even really good albums generally can't get by without one unfortunate dud slipping in along the way (that "Lily and the Jack of Hearts" crap on Blood on the Tracks, for instance), so the fact that Led Zeppelin pulled off a near-perfect double album is truly a wonderment.

2. The Beach- Although I work just across from it in San Francisco, I don't get there nearly often enough. Yesterday I went to the beach near my parent's house in Moss Landing, and it was perfect. The sky was overcast and the smooth bay reflected back shades of gray, green steel blue and purple-black. It was one of those moments when you find yourself stunned with admiration for this wild world we've been turned loose in the midst of.

3. God- Speaking of the wild world we've been turned loose in the midst of, how about a shout-out to the Blessed Lady who caused it to be brought forth? Love ya, Babe!

4. Ainu and Salaam- I just spent four days with my boys, two of the best cats ever made, Ainu and Salaam. The guest bed at my parents' house is none too comfortable, but sleeping with two curled up little furrbies makes it worthwhile.

5. Friends- I have some great ones. In the past few days alone I've had occasion to feel blessed that my life includes Caille, Chris (no, I am not referring to myself, I mean the girl one), Corinne, Eric, Glen, Helen, Jason, Jim, Jodie, Karen, Laura and Steve, to name just a few.

6. Do-wop- In terms of electronic communications media, being at my parents' house is kind of like being in Poland in the pre post-Communist era. As a result, there isn't a lot to do in the evenings besides watching PBS. Which aired a great show last night of classic do-wop groups in concert. I am not aware that any product of human civilization in the past fifty years has topped the perfection of "Earth Angel".

7. Big breakfasts that include pancakes- I've had a lot of them in the last four days, and let me tell you, they were good.

8. My family- Okay, they drive me batty. One could argue that they made me batty, but you have to concede the larger point that they made me. And are still there for me when I need them. Even if there's a lot of newspaper reading and not much talking along the way.

9. The hip-width to waist-width aspect ratio of the human female- I find this to be utterly delightful. I know that my appreciation has been handed to me by evolution and is in fact a kind of sucker-punch of reproductive biology, but this does not diminish my delight.

10. Being sober this holiday season- Every item on this list, the fact that I'm writing a Blog about it, and that there are hundreds (okay, tens) of people reading it has all been made possible by this. 11 months and 9 days, yo!

And there's my list. I feel like it just got me geared up enough that I could rattle off another ten and another ten after that. But let's pause here, and I'd love to hear what you are thankful for…

37 and counting...

Note: I posted this on the MySpace blog after my birthday in September. But I figure I'm even more 37 now than I was then, so it still has relevance.

I've always been anniversary milestone minded. You know, "It was a year ago today that Svetlana and I…" and so forth. Since I don't actually know anybody named Svetlana that example was purely for illustrative purposes, but you get the point. This past Friday I turned 37, so besides being mildly in shock that my life is now 10% over (hey, who are you to say that I won't live to 370?) I've taken the opportunity to review what I was doing around the time of my birthday 20, 10, 5 and one years ago.

20 years ago: September 1987. I was a senior in high school in Castroville, California. I had never had a drink. Or kissed a girl. I've since sworn off one of those, but I retain high hopes for the other. Speaking of the second, I was meeting or about to meet my first girlfriend, Genelle. Which was very sweet. Everything was sweet and innocent then, but also limited. I was subject to teenage depression, so worried about not being popular, and I yearned to get out of the minimum-security prison of high school and move on to somewhere, anywhere, where life was happening. Flash forward to…

10 years ago: September 1997. I wanted life. I got it! I had just gotten married in San Diego, California. We got married on a boat in the harbor, which was great. We got married to each other, which was, in retrospect, a little ill advised. She and I had been together for five years, having met at Berkeley, lived in Japan and traveled all over Asia together before settling in San Diego for graduate school. There was a lot of love, but I think fundamentally we just didn't fit each other. For my part I was too young and had too many parts of my life shut down to really understand that. I was supposed to be writing and creating but instead I had just finished graduate school in business and was working for an international trading company. In a big, white, conservative, relentlessly pleasant city, which was not at all suitable for an expatriate Northern Californian like myself.

5 years ago: September 2002. Finally in San Francisco, where I had wanted to live my whole life! And separated from my wife for about six months, on our way to divorce. Our life together had gotten progressively harder since moving to San Francisco in 1999, and she finally had the sense to tell me she was leaving and move out. Six months later I was about to start post-separation dating. This was really my first dating in a decade. Or ever, when you consider that I never dated in high school, and barely did in college. I won't out the young lady involved except to say that she is the coolest damn lawyer ever, and it was a great reminder that life could go on and be fun post decade-long relationship. I had returned to writing and had begun the first notes on the novel that is now, seven drafts later, out seeking a literary agent. Finally, I had started working a few months before at PlanetOut, which was extremely welcome after spending a year unemployed in the midst of the dot-bust. I stayed there for almost four years, which was great because gay people rule! So says this token straight boy…

1 year ago: September 2006. I had just started working at the Exploratorium, which was great because geeky science education people rule! The non-profit world also had a lot more human work schedule than PlanetOut had in its post-IPO frenzy. I was working on getting my writing published in various venues while drafting a query letter for the novel to send out to literary agents. On the relationship front, I had taken a break from dating, which I'm still in today; except that now I think it's just about at an end. Most important of all, I was nearing the end of three years of bottoming out on drinking and other things that had made my life increasingly unmanageable.

And there you have it. My life now is actually a lot like it was a year ago, except that having bottomed out and surrendered everything is easier. I'm very grateful to be here now and excited to see what 37 will bring.

20 Reasons Why the 2000s Might Not Totally Suck

So far the 2000s have been pretty sucky. (We also need to face up to the subsidiary fact that nobody has come up with a name for this decade yet. My favorite suggestion is "the naughts", but this doesn't seem to have caught on.) The political and military carnage of post-9/11 existence is the most obvious symptom of our collective malaise, but the decade hasn't been great shakes in musical terms either. I expect this to perk up in 2009 (see my November 14^th entry). In the meantime, even in a musical night there are always dots of light. Here are 20 reasons why the 2000s might not totally suck:

Begin de Cycle

1. All That You Can't Leave Behind (U2, 2000)

As the French will tell you, you can't properly begin a new cycle until you have put the fin to the old one. This album finds U2 in a turn of mood and music that perfectly captures the pivot point between the old and the new. We're all stuck in a moment we can't get out of, and this album just might encourage us to get ourselves together.

Calling out to idiot America

2. One Beat (Sleater Kinney, 2002)

3. American Idiot (Green Day, 2004)

The problem with politically themed music (or art of any kind) is that it can get so caught up in its ideology that it forgets its artistry. Sleater Kinney never fall into this trap on One Beat, producing a record that rocks without pause and cries out in the wilderness to remind us, just a few months after 9/11 and well before the press or the political opposition came to life again, that dissent is not treason. If the ladies from Olympia produced a political-musical John the Baptist, it cleared the way for the Jesus that is American Idiot, a masterwork the is political without getting didactic, punk without getting repetitive and a rock opera that actually works as a coherent story. Let's repeat that- Green Day tried to make a political punk rock opera and pulled it off. Wow.

Muses (Throwing and otherwise)

4. Sunny Border Blue (Kristin Hersh, 2001)

5. Beautysleep (Tanya Donelly, 2002)

6. Title TK (the Breeders, 2002)

As someone on the leeward side of thirty, I find it heartwarming that thirtysomething musical veterans made three of the best albums of the decade so far. Half-sisters Tanya Donelly and Kristin Hersh helped form the rock underground of the Eighties (see, that decade has a name, and it doesn't even deserve one!) and inspired the alternative rock outburst of the Nineties by co-founding the Throwing Muses. Kim Deal meanwhile did the same, in even more influential fashion, with the Pixies in the Eighties and the Breeders in the Nineties. More than fifteen years after starting out all three of them are still going strong, as evidenced by this marvelous trio of emotionally poignant, musically searing, lyrically sophisticated albums.

There's still life in the old beast!

7. Elephant (the White Stripes, 2003)

8. Chain Gang of Love (the Raveonettes, 2003)

9. the Konks (the Konks, 2005)

10. Carnavas (Silversun Pickups 2006)

If the previous three deserve praise for keeping moving past the age of thirty, how about a round of applause for Rock and Roll itself for still being capable of making dangerous noise past the age of fifty? During every musical trough some opining occurs that maybe, this time, Rock is dead. Even a quick listen to these four records shows that that's a bunch of bullshit. The White Stripes and the Raveonettes get there through roots revivalism, the Silversun Pickups surf a wave of feedback and distortion, and the Konks, well, there are no words to properly describe what the Konks do, but it's best to hide the children while they're doing it.

Genre lives!

11. Dying in Stereo (Northern State, 2002)

12. Straight to Hell (Hank Williams III, 2006)

13. Losin' It (Vancougar, 2007)

Three white girls from Long Island putting out a totally fresh feminist hip hop album? The grandson of the great Hank Williams producing honky-tonk music with a punk rock attitude? An all-female pop-punk quartet from Vancouver making a record in four days that is better than anything else you're going to hear this year? These three albums remind you that, in loving and inventive hands, surprising things can still happen in even the most formulaic of musical genres.

Promising new voices

14. Chutes Too Narrow (the Shins, 2003)

15. So Jealous (Tegan and Sara, 2004)

16. Martha Wainwright (Martha Wainwright, 2005)

Each of these albums represents a truly unique voice, in both the sonic and the lyrical sense, coming in to its own. Without sounding like each other, all three abound with lyrical sophistication, clever turns of phrase, a surprising emotional vulnerability and an unnerving ability to slip in the knife and twist it just when you thought you were in the middle of a safe pop melody. I hope that long and interesting careers lay ahead of them.

There must be some kind of way out of here

17. 18 (Moby, 2002)

18. Reveille (Deerhoof, 2002)

19. You're a Woman, I'm a Machine (Death From Above 1979, 2004)

20. College Dropout (Kanye West, 2005)

Despite signs of life, the 2000s as a whole has been stuck in a musical rut. Sooner or later something will come along that will get us out of it. (In 2009? Ibid.) Could it be in the form of electronica and rock meeting, a la Moby? Or through Deerhoof playing the exploded pieces of a power-pop song in asynchronous tightness? With heavy metal as dance music as brought to us by Death From Above 1979? By Kanye West shaking hip hop out of its stagnant gangster subroutine through multi-genre sampling and rhymes that are actually about something? Whether or not these four albums contain glimmers of what the future might sound like, they at least show that the spirit of searching and innovation remains alive.