It isn’t simply that you are loved gloriously, or loved beautifully.
But rather that a pitch perfect expression of love for you sounds and sounds,
Rises into the very air.

Though the love itself may fade, I do not know,
The poetry you inspire ascends, ascending
Becomes stars and you, who are so loved,
Look quite infinite up there.

Saturday, January 23, 2010, I went alone to a Brooklyn Vegan/The Bowery Presents benefit show for Haiti at Music Hall of Williamsburg (formerly NorthSix). The audience contained a large portion of infuriating idiots, more so than usual, as frequently happens when “celebrities” are performing (well, Janeane Garofalo and Zach Galifianakis). However, this was one of those shows that blows you quite away and I felt privileged to have gotten to witness it.

Because I am an idiot (I forgot the show was that night), I got there too late to see Britt Daniel of Spoon play his three songs (BD and/or Spoon has played 3-4 different places all over New York and Brooklyn recently and I have managed to miss each appearance. (I did shell out for a ticket to the Spoon show at Radio City Music Hall in March because I saw Björk play there 10 years ago and the acoustics are so amazing it sounded like she was standing in front of us.)

Oh well. Here is Britt Daniel playing “Who Makes Your Money”:

So I missed the frontman for one of my favorite bands, and it does not matter an iota because I got to see St. Vincent and Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) play and then I got to see them play together (Songer Singwriter – consisting of Annie, Justin, a drummer and Brad from Megafaun). Another honor was the surprise guest, Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond), who sang this amazingly gorgeous song whose name I do not know. Her voice and delivery just blew everything else out of the water. She also did a Prince cover, which was wonderful. Had I known anything about her before Saturday, I would have gone to the show she had played the previous night at Bowery Ballroom.

Here is Justin Vernon performing one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen live:

Unexpectedly, for a bunch of delicate-sounding musicians, Songer Singwriter devolved into really balls-out noise (or evolved, depending on how one feels about noise), I mean, a crashing, borderline painful cacophony, particularly at the conclusion of “Jolene”, of which I do not have video.

Songer Singwriter cover Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon”:

And here is a partial clip of Songer Singwriter performing a jawdropping cover of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”:

Unrelated to the show, but having everything to do with Bon Iver, as part of another amazing evening with my friend, Kate M., she introduced me to La Blogotheque, which is run by people who invite musicians to play tiny, intimate shows in France. This is an a cappella version of “For Emma” sung in the hallway of an apartment building in Paris. Love the bewildered residents who came home to find Bon Iver. And, of course, the dog.

[Incidentally, Kate does not know this yet but she consistently introduces me to music that makes me think "This is why life is worth living." Not just the fantastic music itself, but the joy in discovering it exists out there in the world. Thank you, Kate, for also being out there in world.]

And I will leave you with a lovely, heartbreaking rendition of “Skinny Love”, also courtesy of La Blogotheque. Look at those joyous Frenchies who got to sit in a room the size of a closet and drink wine and sing along with this:

The following is the diary of the adventures of M and myself. We live in an officially designated “walkable neighborhood” through which we nevertheless drive. We cook a lot. We entertain our non-single friends at civilized gatherings involving barbecued foods. We attend age-appropriate social events. At a recent art opening featuring some particularly awful paintings, we sampled a Cow Basque cheese, which in spite of pressing events on the world stage, caused us to spend an inappropriate sum of time marveling at the deliciousness of that cheese. I am amused to imagine a younger me and how little I anticipated any of the above. If I’d been more on the ball, I would have taken a cooking class.

May 23, 2009

M moves into my house, which I was able to purchase thanks to the same questionable lending practices that have so embroiled our nation in the current economic crisis. Thank goodness for crooked bankers. We need the extra space in the yard to plant some vegetables.

May 27, 2009

Around the corner is a store called “The Little Knittery”. Over the past two years I’ve taken some joy in making the snarky observation that hipsters must live in your neighborhood when there’s a place there called “The Little Knittery”. This sterling observation may have been funnier when I still felt as if I was one of said hipsters, even just a little bit. Today it occurs to me that I might be a cooler person if I had cause to purchase yarn.

June 2, 2009

With M’s arrival also came a treadmill which I placed at the rear of the garage thinking that would be the end of that. Impossibly, I decide to begin running. In doing this, I set aside the last two decades of sedentary existence, during which time I managed to avoid joining the statistical marvel that is the obesity epidemic thanks only to a very dedicated metabolism. Soon I will be thin and fit, or so I will be told. More accurately, I will soon consider a visit to the jogging store where I will spend $170 on shoes which I will never allow myself to wear out in public.

June 4, 2009

We plant a vegetable garden and unknowingly join a cult of vegetable growing people. Now at least if I die wearing tennis shoes and a cape, it’ll be from something I grew. Like a squash gone horribly wrong. Note: avoid capes.

June 8, 2009

I have now added dorky running shorts with built-in underwear to my exercise ensemble. This slope is considerably more slippery than the warning labels would have you believe.

June 11, 2009

As the landscaping efforts in the yard approach the finish line, M is consumed with trying to find an appropriate spot to install a hammock. This makes her both adorable, and a little manic. Note: Before anyone suggests as much, I should add that I find those free-standing hammocks unsightly and generally objectionable.

June 15, 2009

Proudly sent pictures of our completed backyard landscaping endeavors and brimming vegetable garden to some of the family. My grandmother answers back with the following missive: “Hi!  I’m green with envy and proud of you for having your own garden – and then to make sausage risotto with a home-grown zucchini.   We called it a Victory Garden during WW2 and I remember New Zealand spinach – lots of Vitamin C. The chickens all got some horrible looking bag dragging behind them and eventually Beeps [my grandfather] had to drown them by holding their heads under water in a bucket.”

June 18, 2009

Have harvested one zucchini per day for last four days. Quickly running out of uses for zucchini. Will soon try: nap pillow, nerf substitute for in-home-football-related-chicanery, fuel source for futuristic zucchini powered car (note: invent that car, it sounds awesome), hair tonic and/or nasal decongestant, erotic accessory for dog (note: get dog).

June 19, 2009

M’s mother coming to visit tomorrow. I would be wise to conclude that this strange feeling of pride I feel from being so “adult” that my future mother-in-law would deign a visit, is a sure sign that I am still a child. Also, that I would refer to M’s mother using the above descriptor, is an indicator that M’s efforts to get me thinking about marriage have been hauntingly successful. She is wily.

June 20, 2009

Saturday night. 11pm. Drunk. It was the second bourbon that did it. M and I are in a bar full of people with whom I share an affinity, but who, in point of fact, would not say the same about me. Our topic? I have one year before we need to start having unprotected sex. My internal 20-year-old hears this and leaps with joy even while reminding himself that unprotected sex is “not cool man”. My modern, drunker self in the present tense, knows that there’s no way this means anything other than babies. Babies are now on the menu. And they are hungry.

NEXT TIME

During which time we better get to know M. While perusing paint colors at the local home-improvement-plex, M is recognized for her little-heralded supporting role in a mercifully cancelled television drama featuring melancholic college students. This is the first such occasion to which I have born witness. We end up settling on a paint color unfortunately dubbed “Kitten White”.

AND AFTER THAT

A birthday adventure to Vancouver. We choose this destination based on abundant assertions that Vancouver is a “surprisingly awesome place to visit that one would not naturally choose for a vacation destination”. Yes. People who told us about it used quotes, and they all said exactly those words. This plays into my brand new conspiracy theory that Canada is trying to lure all the good Americans north, thus leaving only a Sara Palin-esque underclass here at home. Canada’s status on the world stage will blossom! They ostensibly accomplish this by having delicious restaurants. Also on the trip, M encounters the friendliest raccoons in North America.

To Teach Is

To stretch your giving heart so bright newness can climb inside.

To be safe soil, earthy incubator,
even when seeds are hard and unwilling.
Even when they would rather stay tight inside themselves,
all possibility encaged.

To point out common miracles and uncommon beauty.
 
To find joy in joy and joy in complexity.

To show what it is to face life’s contradictions,
tease apart the knotty bits
Learning worthy, unworthy, strong and true.

To guide a cultivation of self, to help formulate these life questions that perch in our souls.

What our hearts ask the world.
What the world answers back.

And so sort ourselves out
And so prize our love and hope even when others have no place for them.

To give a gift that ripples out and through, wide worlds unbound.
And from the smallness you once harbored
arose trees to vault the sky.
A whole forest that thinks of you, Mark Murray, with great love.

 

[Mark Murray was my teacher at the Sacramento Waldorf School, 4th through 8th grades. He is also the father of our friend, Ben.]

Let’s see:

a) I can barely tell the difference between emaciated cokeheads who spent hours making themselves look dirty and emaciated junkies who look dirty because they sleep in dirt. I suppose the nose will know(s).

b) “Gutter Punk” is so ’90s. “Crusty Punk” sounds fittingly like a euphemism for syphilis.

c) Williamsburg is not a “family neighborhood”.

d) Hilarious that the half-built luxury condos are now infested.

e) This is why I shun (and loathe) panhandlers. I have ever since living between the Upper and Lower Haight in SF. Fie on middle-class kids who don’t want to work but call me yuppie whatevs while simultaneously trying to wheedle money.

I recently got an email from my mom, who has been under assault by some conservative friends who are deeply worried about the downfall of the empire. These emails have grown more common of late, and in her latest missive, she asked for my two cents on the recent news from The Drudge Report that President Obama has enlisted ABC news to help him with a massive PR rollout of his health care plan on the evening of June 24th. Her conservative friends warn that this is evidence that “The Liberal Experiment” is upon us. I think that makes them sound petty and bitter. Her email (re-printed with permission), and my three cents follow:

Adam,

Hi.  Any comments on this?  My conservative friends are “terrified that the liberal experiment has begun.”  Hmm.

Hope your day is going well!

Mom,

1) Obviously the president has no obligation to present the opposing view to his plan and cannot be faulted for successfully convincing ABC to cover the issue thoroughly.

2) Since Ronald Reagan abolished the fairness doctrine in 1987, no broadcast entity is required to present equal time to opposing opinions. Is this a good example of journalistic integrity? I’d say no, but it is certainly ABC’s prerogative to cover the issue however they please. If the RNC has a problem with it, the proper recourse is the one they appear to have chosen, which is to take it up with ABC.

3) None of the above can be interpreted as anything other than a very media savvy president doing whatever he can to get the message out on a very important issue. I’m not even sure what “The Liberal Experiment” is, but maybe the folks worried about it could find some more constructive ways to lend their voice to our national troubles.

The “Socialism” argument was bunk, and so is this.

The LA Times is reporting this afternoon that a Wells Fargo spokesperson indicated the Atwater Village Farmers Market has escaped the threat of eviction. Though the details of the meeting to negotiate the terms of their continued operation remain vague, it sounds like some wheels got greased afterall.

Here’s three cheers to anyone who called and/or wrote the bank. I have a feeling a little well-placed outrage might have had a little something to do with this turn of events.

Regardless, we’ll take an optimistic wait-and-see approach until the deal is set in stone next week.

More word on the Atwater Village Farmers market closure. I spoke with a rep from Eric Garcetti’s office this morning and he said they were aware of the issue and were actively working to arrange a meeting between the bank manager and the farmers market organizers. I also contacted The LA Times, Metblog LA, The Los Feliz Ledger, and I left a message for the Wells Fargo bank manager, Ricardo Villareal. His number is 323-663-8024.

Email Arsen Melikyan in Eric Garcetti’s office and let him know you’re concerned about this threat to our Farmer’s Market. Also, feel free to give Ricardo a call and at least leave him a message that you’re calling about the Farmer’s Market…if you get him on the horn, then by all means, be nice.

It sounds like the Wells Fargo branch on Glendale boulevard which has hosted the Atwater Village Farmers market on Sundays in their parking lot has finally applied the brakes. Word is filtering in that they have issued an eviction notice to the farmers market to vacate by the 30th of this month.

It’s time to make the post office work for your tax dollars. Send a letter, drop a dime, and heck, stop by the bank if you’ve got a free moment. Ricardo Villarreal is the manager and the man responsible for the eviction. We’ve put in a call and he’ll be at the bank at 10am tomorrow, Friday June 12th. The address is 3250 Glendale Blvd. Stop on by and give him a piece of your mind. Make it clear that Atwater Village won’t take this lying down.

Save the Atwater Village Farmers market, and save the veggies. Go ahead and mention the bank bailouts too. Why not? I’m fairly certain Wells Fargo never took any federal dollars, but that doesn’t mean they get to go ruin a really excellent farmers market.

Get more info here: http://www.oursilverlake.com/threads.php?id=158_0_10_0_C