Show up early. But don't forget your socks.

In 1889, The Oklahoma Land Rush Happened. I was negative ninety three years old.
In 1989, Community Christian School, celebrated the one hundredth year anniversary with a mock-land run. I was six years old.
I dressed up like a small cowboy. I wore my white leather cowboy boots. I forgot to wear socks. I think I remember that day so well because all I wanted to do was sit down because my blistered heels were chewed all to hell by the shoddy leather sewing togethers on the interiors of those boots. I remember someone had a Radio Flyer, I wanted to lie down in it and be pulled to wherever my family would finally "stake their claim". I remember there were sandwiches. I drive by that school everyday on my way to work and remember those things in that order almost every time.

It's strange the things a mind will choose to remember. Because something hurt. Or something smelled good. Or it was a particularly bright day.

Strange indeed.

Debtors Time Piece.

No one ever tells you when you're 20 what the hours of each day will have turned into by the time you're 25. Each one a cog in a gear, somewhere in between the part of my brian that tells time and the part that tells me if I'm using it wisely or not.
Lazy summer days of drawing, exploring, bike riding, swimming and life loving, I recall:

Lying with my head off the couch and watching upside down my roommate play some familiar 8-bit video game. None of us have shirts on because we can't afford to condition the air but we don't mind. And anyway we all have the bodies of 20 year olds so no one is self conscious.

Playing music and shows and enjoying it just for the community, the performance, the expression and never knowing there is potentially a dime to be made.

Drinking only two and a half beers and finding myself flat on my back laughing as the room spins.

Sleeping in, sequentially, days in a row, and there is no guilt. Time well spent and invested, not wasted nor shameful.

Having the time to watch bad movies just because we know they'll be bad and that's funny. Before we figured out how to be snide, we only knew how to make absolutely everything into a good time.


Now that I'm 25 I've accrued such a great debt, my hours are spent thinking about other hours I should be living, should be using to achieve other things. So now my life is lived out in an absentee existence. I'm not totally here because I should be somewhere else. There's not enough minutes in the hour to worry about the other minutes I've got to somehow figure out how to retrieve and reuse. Do differently. And thus time passes twice as fast. And perhaps this is how we all of the sudden find that we've grown old. chasing oblivion-bound moments into infinity. Rushing by and only groping at things that could potentially be memorable. Maybe that's also why when I run into old faces they only speak about the old days, the old friends. There's nothing they're doing now that can compete with the thorough completion, utter achievement, of those old memories. Relive what was good rather than live what is now.

A glass of warm milk for miles.

When I was a teenager, finally old enough to drive, I would ache for weather like there is tonight. My mom and I lived alone in a big house most of my teen years. My part of the house was upstairs where my sisters used to live and her part was the corner opposite down stairs where she and my father used to live. On nice nights I would climb over the balcony railing and scale up on top of the roof of our two-story compound and lay 30 feet above the ground watching the stars. But on nights like tonight, where the rain and thunder threatened all day but waited until my mother fell asleep to unleash, I would quietly slip out. Those stairs that led from my room to the entry way and the front door screamed more than they creaked. Something happened to me in the womb, or maybe in the excruciating and arduous full-day labor of my birth, but I was granted a great patience. Quiet breaths and careful steps. Adaptability. As I slowly crept step by step down that curved staircase it would feel like hours as I waited for a flash of lightning to sure my next footing shrouded in thunder clap. I would even count the seconds between the prior bright smack and its boom so I would have a better idea of when to set my foot down the next time.
I carried my shoes in my hands. Sometimes I didn't wear shoes at all.
14 shitty-grey steps with carpet nails poking through on the corners were the ladder of decent between our red-bricked landing and me. Once I got to those heavy oak and flimsy glass doors I'd slowly open the first, for a full minute just to be safe. All but shutting myself between them before opening the second door to keep out as much of the sound of the storm's spatter and gale as I could. On the porch I would focus only on my station wagon parked under the tree by the well house in the front drive because frankly the wooded darkness scared the absolute shit out of me. I'd run to the green Volvo, fling open the unlocked door and get in and finally slowly pull it closed until it latched, I'd properly close it once I was out on the street, where I'd also turn on the lights.
The late night drive out to the lake on the east side of town was my ultimate goal but the stealth and escape were equal parts of that sum. Driving in the heavy rain for six miles with no lights around save for my car's headlights was always bittersweet. I'd feel the tug of shame that I'd snuck out and the fear that my mother might wake up and find me gone with no way to find out where I was. There was no cell phone, but I wouldn't have brought it if there were. There was also the liberation of total solitude, driving to nowhere, meeting with no one, setting out to find nothing. Except for the eventual bridge that crosses the lake. That was the holy moment; dimly lit by orange floodlights illuminating thick, heavy curtains of precipitation hanging on either side of it. The water was out there on either side and below me but I wouldn't have known it if I hadn't had prior knowledge. Like the white-sheet tent built with ace bandage rafters strung between the bedposts and doorknobs in my childhood room, I was book ended by oblivion.
That was my favorite part.
After the bridge I'd turn around and make my way home, repeat the same process in reverse, still taking every careful measure to slip in undetected like a hungry mouse or careful ghost. Picking up each footprint I’d left behind. Crawl into bed, sleep a sleep of intent.

When I awoke tonight in a stir from a phone call and couldn't roll over enough times to fall back asleep I carefully slipped through the crack of my bedroom door which is at the top of the staircase in our downtown apartment which leads to a heavy glass door which leads to street. There was no rain; I have no car to run to. I still slowly made the climb down the wailing staircase and carefully slipped out of my front door. Now there's a cell phone and roommates that worry enough to come looking. I still leave it behind. I walked around this sleepy town, through the sleepy neighborhoods, listening to the far off thunder. Once I was far enough away for my feet to be almost too tired and the wind had cut far enough through my jacket to chill my bones the rain spilled over the brim of the clouds and it began to pour. So I turned around and began my walk home down the orangely-lit streets. My mother who lives across town must have finally fallen asleep.

South, South West

Well, I'm making the journey to SXSW this week. This is the first time I'm going and not playing so it should be quite a different experience. Not that playing SXSW was ever a glamourous experience for me, there is no where else in the world where people care less about your band then in Austin Texas during the week of South by South West. If they can get into your show they probably don't want to. everyone looks like they're in a band, acts like they're in a band, and usually acts like their band is cooler then they actually are. I've always opted to seem as non-rocker as possible while down there, once you're surrounded by an oceanic expanse of people who think they are and should make it in rock and roll you start to feel small. But also smarter, more often then not they take on the blasé I-look-this-dumb-and-boring-on-purpose approach to milling around the streets, waiting to play for people that will be too drunk to remember. Anyway, I feel like I'm rambling. Even though this isn't a tour experience, it is a road one so Keep up with the ROAD LIFE, I'm going to try to update it daily and regale you with tales of the adventures my girlfriend and I take on.

Host of Sundays.

Ever since I was a child, Sundays have been lazy to no end for me. Sweeping up memories of being a wee lad, I remember going to church, being tired the whole time and falling asleep in the service after Sunday school. Usually after the tithe envelopes were completely doodled or the supplied tiny pencil was dulled from drawing. I remember coming home after church with my dad in our Cadillac and we fell asleep in the driveway with the windows down on a nice spring day. We were so tired we couldn't even make it inside to start our Sunday naps. I'm sure I wanted to go in but he was the one with the keys. A lot of my memories of my dad are sleepy, but that's another therapy session, errr, blog entry, altogether. There was a Sunday where I was terrorizing the anthill in the back yard with sticks and I got bit on the tip of my left (I'm left handed) index finger by a fire ant. My hand ached all the way up into my armpit. I couldn't rouse my dad from his Sunday afternoon amp so I just laid down beside him and slept it off. I remember feeling feverish and waking up sweaty. On a slightly unrelated note but a glaring nod to my childhood identity, after I awoke I razed that anthill with the all of the tenacity of revelations and none of its grace. If ants go to heaven, these sure went to hell first. I dug up the anthill with a shovel and poured red jugged gasoline into it. I burned that poor antropolis to the ground like late 19th century Chicago.
I'm not sure where my mom and sisters were on these Sunday afternoons; perhaps their Sabbath comas hit them before they could even leave the church parking lot. Now I'm a youngish man and I even still I can't shake the Sunday slumber. I haven't been to church in years. My internal clock shouldn't tick differently then it does on say Saturday. But somewhere in my brain all of my tired stores up and breaks out every seventh day. I mean, I'm tired the other six on most accounts but Sunday is the day I can't face it. I take it lying down. Now that this college boy has turned into something of a workingman doing the nine to five grind, I have some semblance of normality.
Routine?
I guess that's what it's called. Frankly I hate it, because it puts Sunday at the bottom the week-mountain and the weight of the week prior and the week post slide in from either side. Maybe I need to get out of this town, maybe the trees don’t seem sleepy elsewhere, I really only know this place that I’ve grown up in. I lived in a big city for ten months but I was too young to know anything. Show me a twenty year old who knows what it is to be too tired to sleep and I’ll show you the cans from the beer I drank last night just to fall asleep early enough to wake up for all of today. Anyway, If there were a way to unhinge Sunday from my week and slide in a Saturday, I surely would do it.

hear here.

I apologize if you check this blog very often. there's stuff I write here and then it just stays drafted. Counter-intuitive of a blogger's role I know.

I house sat a home studio last week and wrote a rock and roll song for my sisters.

it can be heard here.

Light out.

My best friend is flying to New York on Thursday for an interview for a job he was offered yesterday.

I think I've always been comfortable saying I'll stay in Norman because I've had the luxury of getting out so often going on tour every few months for the last couple of years. And in the winter months even knowing that three or four months in the future I’d be leaving for a few weeks, driving to a different place each day, playing a different town each night gave me a sensation of security I didn't know I relied on so heavily. Well now that's over, the band I was touring with has abandoned any sort of national traveling. And now I feel trapped. A rabbit with his foot caught in the steel trap in the middle of a wide-open field. I can see all of the places I'm not going. All of the things I'm not doing. Watching everyone leave. The first thing I thought when Tim told me he might be moving to Long Island within a month was "I want to go with him". I surprised myself. I felt that twinge I get just before flight. Escape. Abandon. At least for a little while. Then I started thinking rationally and felt the twinge I get just before feeling sad. Missing someone. The prospect of missing someone. The back of my throat sending Morse code spasms to the back of my eyeballs. Pulling the muscles tight like reigns, the headache that comes before the cry.

I want Tim to get out of here. He's bigger and better then anything here, nothing in this town has the capacity to hold the weight of his greatness. Nothing here challenges him to the point of pushing out all of his ability. His excellence has yet to fully bloom. So when He comes back a week from Thursday I want him to step out of that airport terminal and tell me he's got the job and he's moving soon.

Lately I don't know what I need or what I want or who I am. I'm 25, that is to be expected. To be perfectly honest I've felt that way as long as I can remember. But up until this point, I think I've always thought there was a light somewhere in some tunnel I'd accidentally amble down and it would lead me to contentment. Or inspiration. Completion. Perhaps the light of that candle is waning, or maybe my faith is slipping, but I don't feel it anymore. And the weight of that realization is crushing out the zeal of the young man I am. Was. And either I want it back or I want to forget it forever.