This may not be exciting to anyone else, but I just went for a windblown walk behind my house in a dried out riverbed and saw this knotty tree:
Sometimes just looking at something nature made can make all the difference in terms of perspective. All day I was torturing myself with past mistakes. And now I look at this tree and it’s like, ‘What mistakes? Are you kidding?’
Talked with a friend last night about Woody Allen movies and how many of them seem to finally just say enjoy the chaos, it’s all we’ve got. I like the idea that someone would chase the same idea over and over. The chase is everything really. I hope.
There are windchimes and some kind of maybe windsock or other windcatching device outside on my neighbors’ stoops creating a choir of wind-sounds. It’s nice to be able to capture those things and be an instrument. Sometimes I feel like I wish I wasn’t at the whim of the winds so much. Maybe I’ll learn to be less so. At any rate, I don’t think too much is lost by rolling with things the way they are, even if they are a mess of knots. It doesn’t always pay to demand straight lines. Would I really be here if I made myself walk the straight and narrow all the time? Doubtful. That’s not how nature is anyway. I guess the key is balance. Balance.
I like that John Gorka song, “When I grow up I wanna be a tree”. We sang it together a few times in Ohio and other places. New Jersey.
This morning I woke up and finished a song I had started 3 months ago. That’s the second time this week this has happened: woke up, remembered a song idea from 3 months ago, finished the song. Why? They seemed so mistaken at the time, but now they’re perfect because they just describe a feeling. That’s all a song has to do.
Tonight it’s time to sort some bills and do boring stuff. Tuesday I get to record some more new songs (the ones written the past two mornings) at my friend Mark Addison’s house. Really looking forward to that. The songs for the new album are coming together. I feel really close to done. Maybe one or two more. I think I’ve written about 30 in the interim. That seems like a good warm up. I hope the album comes out as perfect as that tree.
