i’ve been running myself ragged. i’m doing this stuff for my 12-step program, which normally brings me a lot of joy, but it’s really been quite crazy, and frankly, as per usual, i’ve brought it on myself in a lot of ways.
i’ve been itching like crazy like lately. don’t know what it is, either. mosquito bites, i thought. but it isn’t figuring. and people suggested flea bites. that doesn’t make sense for a lot of reasons, either. i thought it might be chickenpox back for a second mild go, since i had them mildly the first time. but i don’t think that really pans out clinically. i don’t think. i’m just beginning to think that it’s “stress hives.” that’s the last thing that makes sense from some internet research. but it’s puzzling, to be sure.
i stayed at home today. woke up sick … pounding headache, run down, feeling shitty .. not to mention couldn’t sleep with all the scratching. been itching for over a week now. i ended up having to go out to do an errand … for this 12-step stuff, so i went into work around 7:30 and worked until a little past midnight.
of course, that threw me all off, and i’m realizing just how fucked up i’ve been lately. the summer masks all mania and depression SO fucking well. and i wonder why i crash SO hard in the fall. it’s the weather, but it’s the weather also because the summer hides other stuff so well.
so, i just took my meds and i won’t … can’t fall instantly asleep. i thought .. hey, i’m going to get some music and just drift off to that. i’ll get a little meditative. and i grab this shitty boombox that i have and i open up the CD player. it’s a burned CD — anna nalick. it’s one of my favorites. swirly girl (i’d link but i’m emailing this post in) sent it to me awhile ago. she’s been on my mind SO much lately. i see her facebook stuff and get her tweets on twitter, and i feel like her heart is heavy. maybe i’m projecting that, but i just feel like i should be reaching out to her, but because i’m neglecting EVERYTHING by making this bid my higher power, i haven’t.
anyway, i open up the cassette part, and there’s a blank cassette in there … well, blank in that there’s no label on it. i remember i actually put in an old amy grant cassette a few months ago to help me sleep. i can’t remember what the thought pattern was, but i did it. so i think, what the hell.
and i hit play. there’s some hissing and what sounds like talking. and then … the first notes of “danny’s song.” it’s one of my all-time, hands down, unbelievably favorite songs. and liam davis is singing it. and then steve frisbie comes in on harmony. and there’s something so wonderfully comforting about finding that song on this tape right at this moment. it hearkens back to a time when things were simpler. i wouldn’t want to go back to then, but in some ways, i was happier in a dumb, ignorant way.
“you get what you deserve, you’re going to find out what it’s worth ….” here comes big star. my roommate, ann marie, had a minidisc (oh, all the technologies that didn’t *quite* make it. 8-track, cassettes*, laserdiscs, minidiscs, zip drives, etc.), and she had recorded some of the many trips we’d make to hear steve and liam play out at pops highwood (that’s pops for champagne @ highwood).
when people ask me if i’m “friends with frisbie,” i always hesitate a bit. i wasn’t to begin with … i was just a girl at a big star show. and i’m a very specific kind of friend now. we know about each other’s lives, and i definitely think there’s a fondness and a particular level of intimacy, but it’s specific to the situation. i don’t have that kind of friendship with anyone else in my life.
point being, “everybody knows this is nowhere….” no. i’m just kidding. that’s the next song on the tape. point actually being, that when i think about when things shifted from being only “groupies**,” for lack of a better word, to friends, was all those tuesday nights at highwood. aside from some friends of theirs showing up here and there, who else were they going to talk to (wry smirk)? we had lots of good talks and laughs and plenty of drinks. and i loved every minute of it, even as i manically and obsessively-compulsively wrote down every song of every set.
so, this tape, i had asked them the week before, maybe, to learn “danny’s song,” and they did. who knows, it could have even been my birthday. who knows. maybe “vibration man” asked them to do it. or maybe a real old school version of that is what i’m hearing next. i guess these things are salves to my soul, because i’m having a minor “1/3 life crisis” lately, too. whatever. i should blog more. it helps me sort some of this out. time for bed.
*i was giving a friend (who just turned 25 on sunday) the business a few weeks ago, because we were in reckless records and there were still used cassettes for sale and i was teasing him saying “oh, YOU don’t even KNOW about cassettes. what it’s like to rewind and REWIND and REWIND your favorite song over and OVER and OVER!! you don’t know anything about that!” and he said he had a car that only had a cassette player, so he knew. (and i actually wanted to ask him why he didn’t get a portable CD player with a cassette adapter, but it was sort of past the point.)
**i just hate the word groupie, first and foremost because it calls up all sorts of visions of a pamela desbarres (wiki her if you don’t know), and that’s NEVER what it’s been about. if my favorite people would have gone there (frisbie, dan wilson, rhett miller, etc., etc.), it would have ruined a LOT of what i love about them. that they’re really great guys with cool personalities and sensitive, intelligent sides. if they go and are all smarmy and fuck around on their wives, that’s uncool. and if i’m all whore-y and TRY to get them to do so, that’s even more gross and ugly. and the other reason i hate the word, is because i feel it has the connotation of desperation attached to it.
will i hang around to meet and talk to people i like and respect? sometimes. will i go out of my way to do it? it depends. will i ask to have photos taken with them? no. if it’s paul mccartney, sure. will i ask for autographs? hardly ever. and if i do, i’ll generally try to come up with something creative. i asked rhett miller to sign a copy of ‘catcher in the rye’ cause he has a song that is called ‘rollerskate skinny.’ i asked dan wilson to sign a bird book i had as a kid on the turtledove page, because one of my favorite songs by him is an old trip shakespeare song called ‘turtledove.’ i’ll take setlists cause i have a documentation/pack rat/history streak in me. i take photos during shows because i think i’m a good photographer (i wish i had a better camera/SLR) and i like to document the show in that way. i think i get good shots of things.
but i don’t think i’m desperate to meet these people. it doesn’t rock me to the core. i don’t think they’re better than me. if anything, i think i hold this fantasy that i have all these wonderful things we should be talking about over lunch. or that i’d be a great vanity fair/rolling stone interviewer because i have all these great questions that would get them talking candidly about so many wonderful, interesting things that no one has ever talked to them about before from such a unique perspective, because i’m their inquisitive equal. i know, i’m a freak. i think these things about all sorts of people all the time.
so, yeah. i hate that word.
the smussyolay 