when i explain my life to folks, people sometimes clap their hands together, saying they wish they could just hit the road; just, clap, leave it all behind: the job, the stuff. i remind them you gotta take the blood with the guts, and i laugh a little. i get a lot of doubt too. they'll say, "come on, you live somewhere. where'd you last live?" it's the half of that statement that's wrong that's the stinging part, and i have been in those moments the fortunate fool who complained of his circumstances even as he continued to sustain and create them. the world's got their starry, starry eyes for drifters, the ascetics and seekers of eastern olde, the hobo judea-christian prophets & apostles, the knights errant, the bloody churning of armies throughout history, sad old chris columbus, john wayne, the flowers within flowers folk singers and expat poets of the 20th century, train hopper, hitch hiker, car jumper, plane jacker. here and now, in that hallowed tradition, a new generation of long-hairs have "booked their own fucking life," out to suss out "their own fucking god." i see no dead stop, nor any cold scent to this frozen trail. still, for me, where i stand, i am discovering that though it's true the world keeps turning, it's best not to mistake the world for a treadmill. even in stillness – especially in stillness – your place here is secure. with this kind of security in mind, remembering that everything I've ever made will cease to be, and so will i, i am training my gaze more toward the center of the wheel.
i was playing a show in nashville and a young man approached me, shook my hand and said i was great. he said he was a songwriter. he had an Australian accent. his girlfriend, who was not "his", stood by him patiently, as if she were being painted. he asked some questions, the same old same old. he asked me if i was independent. i thought about it. he repeated himself. i knew what he meant, and i answered, "yes. i am." the word is the bond, our brand, and sometimes it's not easy to fish out one's truth from one's lie. it's like trying to grab a little shard of shell out of a slush of raw egg. i am very much at the mercy of mindless elements. continental drifts, microbes, glacial economies as they melt and freeze and fall into the sea, the beach of broken shells that is the history we all walk on. i am not the boss of these things. i am not the man of this fine house. i cannot control what happens to me, nor can i easily tell where "i" stop and where "what happens to me" begins. my bikes were stolen last week off the back of my car in houston. they cut the locks right off. & the chains sit there and dangle now, delighted to be free. but am i?
we have to admit that money exists. feel how you want to feel, but the truth is if we're lucky we've got a little some of it in our pocket. i am not a rock. i am not an island. i depend on the people of the world to survive. i quite literally cannot live without you. the world of blood and bones and dirt and rain, where we reach out to others to give or get help, is built on resources. is it true that the more you give, the more you receive, and the more you receive, the better you are able to give, and so on and so forth? like rivers emptying into oceans evaporating and snowing on mountains that melt into waterfalls that lay down into rivers. during the song diary, i began to believe my survival was more or less guaranteed. lose or gain this or that, i figured i'd be fine. my wealth was inside me, and in the hearts of the people who loved me. if i had a toy guitar to play in a street somewhere, i'd be fine. i saw people clinging to things for comfort. i saw a lot of refrigerators, DVD collections, nightstands, closets with clothes in them, bookshelves full of paper trophies. could my body really tell the difference between a park bench and a king-sized bed? between playing tennis and painting houses? wasn't the distinction only in my mind?, the playground of the shadow puppets. still my mind lies there sideways with the body, inevitably twirling its miserable gavel. the mind (& so with it all its colorful problems), like money, exists.
in some ways, no one really earns the money they make. people act according to a contract, and money comes to them, but the reasons why some have money and others do not are far beyond the grasp of those in whose hands the bills rest. in my internal world i have set my glitter to growing. i toil there in that infinite nowhere, found or unfounded, where the Law of "Give and you shall Receive" is obeyed, to the letter. I remember traveling with Brittany and she asked me, "how did you get so old, David?" The couches were getting smaller. The drives were getting longer. The holes in my shoes and pockets grew, and out of those holes an idea was born, began growing: you suffer for a cause that does not require suffering.
something called me downstream. To avoid getting bit by the bear on the banks there, I needed a new coat of scales, comfort for the David creature my spirit was inhabiting; for the good of humankind!, i smiled: so that i might be better positioned to continue in peace to make things to bloom in the world & in my heart as it died and was born around me. a home. even just a room. a bed that is my bed, a shelf with a few things on it that are my things, a closet with some clothes that are my clothes, and some space to collect some instruments and equipment to record with, a desk to write and work on, a window to look out from, a bike, friends that i see on a regular basis. I began to fixate on this idea, and it led me to mail in a CD to two labels.
One of them wrote back.
i decided to sign to what's considered a small label in Brooklyn. they call themselves Partisan Records, the love labor of Tim Putnam and Ian Wheeler, surrounded by an office of guys and girls who are all pretty young and all seem to be interested in the artists they represent, though i am under no illusions that they (& i) don't still have one dirty sock in society's industrial drier of bigger, hotter, faster, richer, louder, higher, closer, glorious lint torn up and breathed in and collected in the tin gills of an air conditioner.
at it's heart, it is a simple arrangement. a label asks you to make records, and to sell them, and to do both things to the best of your ability. as i am not buying my own records, it only makes sense that i would alert you to this new arrangement. i have promised a company that i am going to make an effort to sell records to you. i can not promise anything but a record in return for your money. the money may go toward some greater good, toward a journey, mine or yours, toward new art, to unfolding staircase rooms in the expanding collective human consciousness; but it might also be spent on bikes that get stolen, clothes that are bought on impulse, worn once and given away, half-read paper trophies, sunglasses that are left in public restrooms, on gifts that aren't appreciated, houses that become burdens, food that makes us tired, medicines becoming disease, dates that become love that brings pain, new phones and computers that are filthy cages.
i finished this record a couple years ago. it is an antidote. my life has been easy. i was born to a pretty well-off family. we took vacations in florida. i was educated in decent schools. i was taught to say the pledge of Allegiance. i was told gently that my allegiance to god was optional. my allegiance to America was not. my parents paid thousands upon thousands of dollars for my college education. they sacrificed much to give me that privilege, & to my regret, i wasted it well; flushed it down my throat, deep into plastic urinals and porcelain young women. i had sadness memorized at that point, and i went out after into the world to recite it. i deserved no home. i deserved no success, no comfort, no friends. love was a ditch to die in. i thought pain and emptiness and anger were more worthwhile prizes, and i pursued them with zeal. i made a carpet and i rode away on it, and i looked down at the world in despair and relief. i dropped songs on it like pennies off the Sears Tower. it was all tolerable only from a distance, only in passing. my feet burn when i stop and the stone of my skipping heart sinks like a sock full of rocks. it is called A View Of The Sky, and it comes out on September 28th.
isn't it okay to have pain? isn't it okay to have fear? to want? I used to work jobs where the manager would ask me to try to "up-sell" people. I had a real problem telling people they needed or wanted these things, because "need" is such a strong word, and "thing" is such a little one. "want" is the box we put our pain and fear in. Am I selling you a hole to fill a hole with? Natalie has the most beautiful voice I've ever heard. her songs are twisted branches in which you can see the suggestion of faces, as if a family were long ago buried in the cursed roots of the tree. she sings and the faces move, the leaves grow and change colors, they fall upwards into the sky. Often she won't complete the song, or she'll rush to the ending. She'll shrug when she finishes. She'll say how bad it is. it's like she's cutting every artery of my heart longways. she is not perfect, but she has value, real value, and the things she makes are celebrations of that value. Not just that, but her songs speak to something in me that has nothing to do with Natalie. they refer to some ancient truth that is beyond her which the song channels. She takes her cup to the river, and brings a small quantity of it to me, and the cup is hers, but the river is not. the river is beyond her judgment, or mine. and so her work is valuable. this simple truth is so easy to see in her, but so hard for me to embrace in myself. my mirror has always been cold to the touch. it's much easier to just call it a hole to fill a hole with.
every commercial, every poster, every slogan, is a way of asking for help. this is a list of strangers, but not strangers. this is my extended family. something I said somenight somewhere, or the way I said it, moved you, and you walked up and you put your name in this little memopad. you said, "hey." You shook my hand and you told me not to give up, & I said i never would. you gave me a place to stay, on a floor or a hammock outside in the rain or a couch that smelled like cat. you gave up your bed for me. you made breakfast. you left a note that said, "eat whatever you want." Some of you didn't have much. Some of you were loaded. Some of you asked me where I was from. some of you couldn't hug me tight enough. for some of you I was full of light, and from the high of a billowing stage, I shone on you and filled you with all the empty suns I'd seen.
david
link to pre-order Vinyl LP from partisan: A View Of The Sky
or you could order it from a local record store (they might not have it on-hand otherwise...)
or you could get it on-line somehow someway
o, and this too: video for "Always"
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official site: www.paleo.ws
upcoming shows: www.myspace.com/paleo
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