Reconstructing Stacey

On the road - The July Project #3

9:58 p.m. (a note about the July Project)

Tonight is the first night in almost two weeks I have had a moment to myself. I got home from work and almost danced down the hallway when I realized no one was home. This is because I left home at 2:30 a.m. July 2 to attend High Sierra Music Fest, where I blissed out for 4.5 perfect days of sunshine, trees (and therefore wildfire smoke), live music and friends. I got home last Monday night, showered, went out to dinner for a friend's birthday, went to work the next day and within 15 minutes of getting home from work, my sister and her friend arrived for a 3-day visit. I worked during the day and hung out with them at night; on Friday, we picked up our rental car and drove down the coast to Santa Barbara, then LA, then San Diego, and back to LA. I was picked up in a shuttle at 5 a.m. this morning, landed in SFO around 9:30 a.m. and went to work until 6:30 p.m. (This is also why I haven't written in more than a week.)

So yes, I almost danced down the hallway when I realized no one was home except for my very affectionate kooky cat.

I shouldn't really complain, since the past two weeks have been incredible... it's just that when I don't have any time to myself I get cranky. 

High Sierra Music Fest was heavenly. Truly, the festival is four day of pristine happiness where the only thing you have to concern yourself with is what band you go to next, or what delicious organic vendor you're going to patronize for dinner. I stopped thinking about my future, my writing, my work, my upcoming travels to Ohio and Israel (!!), my endless to-do list, my lack of any romantic prospects. I tuned out all the analytical noise in my brain and instead of dwelling in the mundane bullshit of everyday life, I marinated in music and my own body odor (90-degree heat, camping and one shower doesn't really leave one any other choice, but since I happen to enjoy being dirty, I capitalize on situations in which it is socially acceptable to smell). Anyway, the point is that I was present. I lived in the moment. I danced when the fiddle or guitar or banjo or drums moved me, and I laid down when a ballad reminded me of my fatigue. I didn't even take a single photograph, since lately I feel as though a camera makes me distant from what's in front of me. (My friends took lots of pictures, so the weekend is memorialized.)

Musical highlights included:

• Railroad Earth - Whimsical, danceable and gorgeous bluegrass.

• Rotary Downs - Genre-defying rock band from New Orleans.

• the everybodyfields - Twangy alt.country band with songwriting that's full of sorrow. Female lead singer with a voice like silk.

• Trombone Shorty and Orleans Ave. - Funky blues band fronted by a hip-hop singer who also rocks the trombone and trumpet

• Dusty Rhodes and the River Band - '70s-rock-band-influenced indie band that made me shake my groove thang

• Cornmeal - Let's just say I have never seen a bluegrass band shred like these guys do. Chicago-based über talented group with a standout fiddle player

• Oneside - Four-piece folky band with a banjo instead of a second guitar. 

• Benevento/Russo Duo - Mind-boggling that two guys can make such a loud sound. Experimental jazz meets rock and roll meets indie boogie.

• The Slip - Sort of a jammy indie rock band with an electric glaze. Easy on the eyes.

• Surprise Me Mr. Davis - See above then add a dash of brilliant songwriting and a gooey folky center courtesy of the next Dylan, Mr. Nathan Moore.

• Nathan Moore - A genius who with his acoustic guitar fills the stage with insight and pretty music 

• Carolyn Wonderland - It's like she conjures Janis Joplin from beyond the grave.

• Stephanie Wrembel Group - Awesome Parisian-influenced funky jazz music.

Music feeds my soul in a way that nothing else does. So of course HSMF is my most ideal respite from reality.

So after this fantastic excursion, I took another vacation the following weekend down Hwy 101 and Hwy 1 to Santa Barbara, which is my new favorite place in California (behind most places in the Bay Area, of course). It's stunning. You've got the ocean and the mountains and a warm breeze all in one fun, bougie college town. My sister, her friend A and myself fell in love. We stayed in a hostel just blocks from the beach. It was not in the best condition, but it was a fine place to sleep. We ended up going out for a late dinner after arriving into town and then happened upon retro night at some random bar, so of course we danced for a while. When it got crowded and we grew disturbed by the many scantily clad women doing body shots on the bar, we decided to peace out to another bar, where we continued to dance until we were totally spent. We indulged in almost 6 hours of beach time the following day. I can't recall a time when I felt so at peace and not bored while laying out.

Yesterday (Sunday), we drove to San Diego to see my great Aunt Charlotte, who my sis and I had not seen in five years. She is a delight, especially because she's a lot like my grandmother (her sister) who died slightly more than five years ago. I miss her often. I think R does too. So it was nice to spend the evening in her apartment, help her make dinner and sit around shmoozing about food, politics and a bit of family history. For instance, I finally learned how my grandma learned to sew (she was a MASTER seamstress and would definitely have kicked ass on Project Runway: Bubbe Edition). Turns out she hated school and protested going as a teenager so much that her parents allowed her to "drop out" as long as she learned a trade. They found a talented seamstress who agreed to let my grandmother apprentice, and so she did. And that's how she learned. 

It's been 20 minutes but I'm not totally done with my little freewriting exercise. Therefore I will keep going.

Today I had my first coaching session with the journalist who's teaching my online writing course. It was spectacular and illuminating and went on for more than 45 minutes (I was only technically allotted 30 minutes). I had sent him a draft of a story last week, and we went over it together. He gave me all these helpful pointers and I spent most of the afternoon doing some extra reporting after he pointed out many holes in the piece. It only served to remind me how little guidance I'm receiving at my current job, and how much I crave support. It also made me realize how little time my professors spent talking about the writing process, and how much time they spent on the reporting process. This is unfortunate because the best reporting is dulled by rusty writing. Anyway, I hope that tomorrow I can rewrite the piece and make it feel polished and vivid. 

10:28 p.m.

'The music's never loud enough'

My orchestra is gigantic
This thing could sink the Titanic
And the string section's screaming
Like horses in a barn burning up
-- Josh Ritter, Rumors

There is something transformative about seeing your favorite musicians live. It is otherworldly. There they are, in front of you, on stage, sweating under the bright lights, grinning -- playing songs that have made you cry and laugh, feel joy and sorrow and clarity. You know every song. You sing along to every verse. You remember how it felt to listen to song A on road trip B, or song C during weekend D. I love how it feels to hear the music live -- the music that saves you time and again. 

I have been lucky enough to have two such evenings in the past month, the first being Wilco in Berkeley, and the second being Josh Ritter, tonight, in San Francisco.

Josh in particular is special (and not only because I want to marry him and have his babies). He is special because his songs have gotten me through some very difficult times, most notably in the spring of 2006, when Josh released "Animal Years." The album arrived thanks to Claire, who sent it amongst other items in a care package after I wrote a horribly depressing blog entry about how buying new socks was like the highlight of my month. Sad, right? So she thought I needed a little Josh love, and voila, I popped the CD into my computer and immediately uploaded it to my iPod. It remained in The Rotation for months.

The songs on "Animal Years" helped me find hope in a chapter of my life that was otherwise bleak and lonely. I felt like every song was written for me. So when Josh played my favorite tune tonight, Monster Ballads, I felt mentally transported to a totally different time. Here's a few verses for you:

Out on the desert now and feeling lost
The bonnet wears a wire albatross
Monster ballads and the stations of the cross
Sighing just a little bit

Ones and zeroes bleeding mesa noise
And when you're empty there's so much space for them
You turn it off but then a still small voice
Comes in blazing from some vast horizon

This is why I love music, why I crave my headphones, why I have spent and will continue to spend hundreds (okay, probably eventually thousands) of dollars on live music. Nothing moves you like seeing your favorite musician sing a song that feels like he wrote it just for you.

Oh. And. Josh. Rocked. Out. With a horn section, too.  Go see him.

Happy anniversary, San Francisco

Exactly 365 days ago, I woke up for the first time in my new home of San Francisco. This means that today I celebrated my one year anniversary as a resident of what I now believe to be the best city on the planet.

I knew the date was approaching, but didn't fully deconstruct it until I arrived in Golden Gate Park after work and located my friends in a crowd of Jeff Tweedy fans. They greeted me with hugs and smiles and cold white wine. Overall, an excellent way to celebrate a Friday, especially one which marks my one year anniversary. In between songs, I told E how, cheesy as it sounds, I still feel nothing but gratitude about my locale. I remembered that when I made the choice to move here, I felt bold and brave and daring, a Risk Taker. Now I see it wasn't so much courage as common sense. I realized that life was more than work, and as such, I needed to find a way to experience that sea change of thought. I predicted moving to SF would be a start. As I reflect on the past year, I am thankful that I was right. I was so very right.

As Tweedy reached into his vault of songs and played ditties from "Summerteeth" and "Being There" and even "Anodyne," the sun cast a golden glaze over the park and the air was a perfectly cool, crisp fall day. Beautiful birds zoomed over head, dark bullets against the clear blue sky. God's airplanes.

We hung out in a clearing behind the crowd just before leaving the show. I did cartwheels and J did somersaults while A-squared made shadow dancers on the grass. I felt free. Totally unhinged, light as air, free as a bird. May we all bathe in such peace at least once a year.

I'd like to leave you with the text from last year's Oct. 4 blog posting, which I wrote the night before my SF arrival.

"My life is about to profoundly change. It's overwhelming, really. I spent 7 hours in the car today. It was the first time in a couple of weeks that I had the space and time to think about my destination and not just the logistical bullshit involved in getting there. (Moving by yourself is not something I recommend, nor is it something I want to do ever again).

San Francisco will offer me a community I've never had before. A huge, exciting, diverse, cultural city where some of my best friends reside.  It's such a giant idea. I'm going to be like a kid in a candy story for the first few weeks (or months?). I can meet Adam or Erica for coffee, which seems so small, but I haven't gone out for coffee in 16 months because the Tri-Cities doesn't really have a cool coffee shop that facilitates good conversation and steamy windows. I can see independent films in the theater. I can hear authors speak, musicians play every night of the week. I can take dance classes, creative writing classes, knitting classes.

On the morning of my last day of work, I woke up paralyzed with fear. After a good, brief cry, I went to the office and while getting my French vanilla coffee creamer out of the fridge, I suddenly couldn't breathe. The feeling passed almost as quickly as it came. But it made me realize that even though I'm going to an exciting place, and even though I'm ready for the change, I'm still terrified.

Like I always say, deciding to change is much scarier and harder than change itself. I was scared. But I ended up happy, smoothly sliding into the change, making new friends, keeping the old, creating a community.

Sorry about gushing, again. Perhaps my one year anniversary will also mark the conclusion of fawning over the city in which I live. But no promises.

Listening to:
 
Mr. Jeff Tweedy at bluegrass weekend!!!

Still got time

I think Monday nights are too often used for boring things like laundry or bill-paying. I'm shaking it up. Last Monday I went to stand-up comedy. This Monday I saw a movie. The latter made me think. And cry. And want to give all the music in the world a bear hug.

The film: Once. It's an Irish flick about this depressed, lonely Guy who's stuck in the black hole of longing. He misses his ex-girlfriend. He writes songs about her while watching videos of her on his laptop. At night, he stands on barren street corners in front of shopping malls and sings angry love songs. Then, he meets Girl. And she's sad too, but for different reasons. Music brings them together in an incendiary, ethereal way. The first time they sing/play together in the back of a used musical instrument store was so powerful I couldn't help but cry. During the scene, I felt like I was a fly on the wall, watching two strangers realize their meeting was proof that fate can intervene, flagging you left when you might  otherwise go right.

The movie reinforces the idea that a person’s impact on your life often is not measured by time. That is, sometimes people come into your life for a week, a month, a year, then go. Life happens, not everyone gets to stick around for the duration. But before they disappear, they wiggle their toes into the sands of your soul. Their essense remains. You’re changed because you met this person, and their absence doesn’t and shouldn’t depreciate their value.

I think this is a dangerous and beautiful idea. The former because you certainly don’t want to go through life being totally laissez faire about people, otherwise you’d make no effort and have no deep relationships. But it’s also a sweet thought. If you must let go of someone you once loved, then at least hold onto and embrace what they taught you. Let their impression make you better, instead of mourning their figurative passing.

                                         . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Now, going in reverse chronological order, I want to briefly share last Monday night’s revelations. So I’m at this comedy club with A (note to E: I’m back to using first initials, what do you think?). We’re chit-chatting with the people sitting near us, about A having to wake up at 4 a.m. and how V creates the questions that tele-pollers ask registered voters. Somehow we get around to the topic of Dream Jobs. It comes around to me. I don’t know what to say. I always thought I'd work at a major metropolitan daily, but now I don’t think I want to, or at least, don’t think my life will turn out that way, and I’m not sure what else I want to do. Then A interjects and makes it all clear.

“Stacey’s pursuing the Dream Life,” he says.

He elaborates. He explains that for a few years I chased the dream job, an aspiration that took me to “such exotic places” like Cedar Falls, Iowa and Kennewick, Wash., but then I decided to take a break from the chasing-career-goals pace to live in a Great American City. The change has allowed me, therefore, to pursue “the Dream Life,” as A so nicely phrased. The Life Pursuit (thanks belle and sebastian) includes such excursions as comedy clubs and national parks and concert venues and meeting friends for Friday lunches downtown. The Dream Life values happiness over success. (Though consider: If you’re happy, aren’t you also successful? Happiness don’t come easy.) It prizes close relationships over bulging clip files. It cannot be explained on a resume.

The Dream Life. A perfect way to describe the fruits that have grown on my San Francisco tree. Oh, and the stand-up comedians were funny, too.

Listening to:

Summer outside the city

So I just had the best 5 days of my life. Well, probably not the best 5, to be realistic, but I guess I'd place these five days in my Top 10 Best Consecutive Days list. Yes. Yes, definitely in the Top 10.

I went to High Sierra Music Festival in Quincy, Calif. It's four days of music and camping, but it's actually so much more than that. You see, High Sierra is unique in that it's a destination for the musicians as well as the fans, and the fans are also quite unique, because unlike Bonnaroo or Vegoose, High Sierra draws only a small crowd (about 5 or 8,000 compared with 80,000 at Bonnaroo) and the crowd ranges in age from like 2 months old to 80 years. Tons of people bring their kids and strollers and diaper bags, and camp in the designated family camp area. So the festival feels like this utopian village in the mountains.

Let me back up. So there are 5 stages that have live music from about 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. every night. This is an amazing concept for any music lover. A full day of music, four days in a row? It's unreal. If you don't like the show you're at, you simply walk 5-10 minutes to another stage, and voila, a different band. Then, throughout the day, in the indoor buildings ordinarily used for the County Fair, High Sierra organizes playshops and "troubador sessions." The former brings together one or two musicians to talk about something technical, like afrobeat percussion or picking on a ukelele or mandolin. The latter brings together 4-5 musicians, who take turns playing songs. They tell a little background about the song they are about to sing, then they say: "Ok, this is in the key of A, if you want to join in." And then the musicians, who never play together under normal circumstances, jam out on an acoustic number. Everyone listens. It's absolutely amazing. Furthermore, because the musicians camp in a designated area that is in the center of the festival, as opposed to somewhere outside of all the fans, the musicians jam all over the festival grounds at various times throughout the day. We happened upon Dan and Steve from ALO playing a late night jazz show in between two RVs, and we also caught Chris Thile playing his mandolin in a garden courtyard.

The other cool element of High Sierra is the music goes on till 4 a.m. every night. These "late night" shows cost a bit extra, and usually the musicians bring out various special guests. I only went to two late night shows in the same night, first Phix, a Phish cover band, and then Hot Buttered Rum String Band, a fabulous bluegrass/newgrass outfit that's actually based in the Bay Area. We rolled back to our tent at 4 a.m. I felt like a rockstar.

The music continues even when you want to take a nap in the shade of your campsite, courtesy of High Sierra's shortwave radio that broadcasts music from all the stages. Thanks to Adam's circa-1994 boombox, we had music pretty much all day and night long.

Adam told me I'd feel like a kid in a candy store, and I absolutely did. The first day I had to acclimate to the crowds, hot weather and 5,000 feet elevation, but after that, I became a total pro, wandering around by myself to catch the music I really wanted to see, and then meeting up with the group throughout the day, since we had our favorite spots at each stage to make finding each other a simple endeavor.

High Sierra was an interesting study in intentional communities. A tent metropolis sprouted up in the middle of the mountains. People were kind, helpful and generous. Because it was so so so hot, people walked around all weekend with these pressurized spritzer things and blasted people with a cool mist. When we went swimming at the community pool just outside the festival gates, people offered us Sno Cones and icecream as we waited in line. In the bathrooms, Nature's Gate provided organic soap for all to use, and everyone followed the guidelines scrawled in a Sharpy: For all to share. The food was mostly organic and delicious. I was blessed with dairy-free coconut milk icecream. And periodically throughout the day I'd pass a local farmer selling his freshly picked peaches or avocados (the latter of which I ate with a spoon on the spot). I felt really safe and happy all weekend.

And I didn't even mention that the day before the festival we rented a pontoon boat on Lake Oroville and spent all afternoon drinking Coors Light, swimming with noodles, laughing at our good fortune to be with each other in this beautiful lake.... The evening concluded with an awesome fireworks display (since it was the 4th of July).

So, the company was perfect, the music was perfect, the sunshine and my sunscreen were in perfect harmony. On top of all of this, I spent 5 full days -- 120 hours -- outside. I was dirty and smelly and sweaty and tired. But I felt free. Conclusion: Being outside is good.

I also danced my ass off. I calculated how many miles I danced this weekend, and (based upon the idea that I walk a mile in about 20 minutes) came up with a rough estimate of: 33 miles. If anyone wants to offer their massage services, my sore muscles are available.

And now, drumroll please, The List of Music I Loved (in no particular order and including old favorites and newly discovered gems) from this weekend:

1. Po'Girl
2. Carolyn Wonderland
3. Mother Truckers
4. Xavier Rudd
5. ALO
6. Hot Buttered Rum
7. Brett Dennen
8. Papa Mali
9. Mammals
10. Tha MuseMent
11. Soulive
12. Eddie Roberts/New Mastersounds
13. Bassnectar

And though it may be hard to believe, I missed so many musicians due to time conflicts or naptime.

Thank goodness there's always next year.