Happy is as happy does, gang!
First of all, lilacs are my very favorite flowers and they only appear once a year in mid-April and this is that moment, gang. I regale you with the view outside my kitchen door:
And as loyal readers of my lofty blog no doubt recall, this is also the time of year that I link you to one of my very favorite poems of all time:
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd by Walt Whitman
However, the auto-link thingie here on my blog dashboard is suddenly not co-operating, so there you have it. Google it if you want! I'm not up to doing the HTML right now. But it's an incredibly majestic poem if you have the time to read the entire piece. If you weren't a big fan of Abraham Lincoln, however, you might just want to skip it.
Meanwhile...
Wow. What an experience it was, transferring all those old demos to digital MP3 files. (First of all, a genuine thank you to my friends for their hospitality in their indescribably beautiful home -- wow! Jay & I walked in their front door and my little mouth fell open. The house was enormous and just so gorgeous. Everywhere my peepers peeped, you know? It was like, holy fuck, this is a beautiful house! Can I come live here? The transferring-file stuff was done upstairs, but in the hugely enormous basement, they had all the soundboards, live recording stuff, etc., AND the most enormous vinyl record collection I had seen in a really, really long time. It was unbelievable. I was in heaven. What was weird was how many records from my childhood I recognized solely by their spines, you know? I blurted out, "OMG! Is that Blaze by the Herman's Hermits?" And sure enough, it was! I couldn't believe it. The freakin' Herman's Hermits! My host very graciously said, "You want that? You can have it." So home it came with me! Yay!!)
Anyway, okay. Let's get the heck out of that parenthetical phrase that was going on forever. Back to what I was trying to say.
What a feeling it was, to be listening to those old demos on a really good sound system. Even though the demos are really rudimentary, all those intense feelings came flooding back: Me, in my room in that hell-hole tenement in the East Village in the mid-1980s, always holed-up in my room with my guitar, writing songs. And then how it felt to be with the guys in their rooms, recording this stuff over 25 years ago when we were all so young. OMG. I don't know. I think back on all this and I remember a bunch of artistic agony going on in my soul, but for some reason what I seem to recall most now is that it was always sunny outside! So fucking sunny and beautiful in NYC. Even in those lousy fucking neighborhoods we lived in. Can that be possible??? That my soul was always in artistic angst but that NYC itself was always sunny??? (Me thinks it's that "probable reality" stuff rearing its lofty head again.)
I think I'm starting to love my life. Or my memories of it, at any rate.
My apologies
Go out to those of you who are waiting for book reviews from me! I promise you, I am getting to them. I swear! Please be patient. But also keep in mind that tonight is our night to go to "retroland" . In addition to my various Frederick's of Hollywood ensembles (and here's hoping I don't break one of my comely ankles in the 4-inch spike-heeled slippers), we are also bringing along THESE:
(The travel bar and the Pall Malls!)
On that happy note, I'm off to take my walk!! It is so beautiful out there today, it is unbelievable. Thanks for visiting! Ciao, amigos!!
And as loyal readers of my lofty blog no doubt recall, this is also the time of year that I link you to one of my very favorite poems of all time:
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd by Walt Whitman
However, the auto-link thingie here on my blog dashboard is suddenly not co-operating, so there you have it. Google it if you want! I'm not up to doing the HTML right now. But it's an incredibly majestic poem if you have the time to read the entire piece. If you weren't a big fan of Abraham Lincoln, however, you might just want to skip it.
Meanwhile...
Wow. What an experience it was, transferring all those old demos to digital MP3 files. (First of all, a genuine thank you to my friends for their hospitality in their indescribably beautiful home -- wow! Jay & I walked in their front door and my little mouth fell open. The house was enormous and just so gorgeous. Everywhere my peepers peeped, you know? It was like, holy fuck, this is a beautiful house! Can I come live here? The transferring-file stuff was done upstairs, but in the hugely enormous basement, they had all the soundboards, live recording stuff, etc., AND the most enormous vinyl record collection I had seen in a really, really long time. It was unbelievable. I was in heaven. What was weird was how many records from my childhood I recognized solely by their spines, you know? I blurted out, "OMG! Is that Blaze by the Herman's Hermits?" And sure enough, it was! I couldn't believe it. The freakin' Herman's Hermits! My host very graciously said, "You want that? You can have it." So home it came with me! Yay!!)
Anyway, okay. Let's get the heck out of that parenthetical phrase that was going on forever. Back to what I was trying to say.
What a feeling it was, to be listening to those old demos on a really good sound system. Even though the demos are really rudimentary, all those intense feelings came flooding back: Me, in my room in that hell-hole tenement in the East Village in the mid-1980s, always holed-up in my room with my guitar, writing songs. And then how it felt to be with the guys in their rooms, recording this stuff over 25 years ago when we were all so young. OMG. I don't know. I think back on all this and I remember a bunch of artistic agony going on in my soul, but for some reason what I seem to recall most now is that it was always sunny outside! So fucking sunny and beautiful in NYC. Even in those lousy fucking neighborhoods we lived in. Can that be possible??? That my soul was always in artistic angst but that NYC itself was always sunny??? (Me thinks it's that "probable reality" stuff rearing its lofty head again.)
I think I'm starting to love my life. Or my memories of it, at any rate.
My apologies
Go out to those of you who are waiting for book reviews from me! I promise you, I am getting to them. I swear! Please be patient. But also keep in mind that tonight is our night to go to "retroland" . In addition to my various Frederick's of Hollywood ensembles (and here's hoping I don't break one of my comely ankles in the 4-inch spike-heeled slippers), we are also bringing along THESE:
(The travel bar and the Pall Malls!)
On that happy note, I'm off to take my walk!! It is so beautiful out there today, it is unbelievable. Thanks for visiting! Ciao, amigos!!
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