10.4.02 – manchester NH, tarrytown NY, wilkes-barre PA, bethel CT

Who needs sleep? Well you’re never gonna get it

Who needs sleep? Tell me what’s that for

Who needs sleep? Be happy with what you’re getting

There’s a guy who’s been awake since the second world war

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp – the barenaked ladies

i found vermont to be most agreeable. it’s full of hippies and recycling and vegetarian food: a little piece of california plopped down amid rolling hills of dense green forests. after vermont was a show in new hampshire, one in upstate new york, one in pennselvania, an overnight stop in connecticut and back to boston for a (much too) brief day off. i don’t get to see much of these towns, spending less than 24 hours in each one, but there is time between the motel rooms and peformances and not-quite-enough-sleep to absorb something of the pulse in the people i meet – theatre crews, the hotel clerks and cashiers and waitresses. all those elton-john-esque songs about how hard life is on the road have new sort of resonance now. there’s a meloncholy lurking in each new anynomous hotel room, in the sense of rootlessness, in the distance ringing loud in the long-distance phone calls. chain stores provide a sense of familiarity and comfort – giant neon becons for target, home depot, starbucks, holiday inn looming above the interstate on dark, wet nights.

9.30.02 – burlington, VT

first night out on tour. by happy coincidence, my last night in boston was also the night that Vienna Teng was playing at the wonderfully-funky tiny House of Blues in harvard square. if you haven’t already discovered her, check her out. vienna played with two other women who also have forthcoming debut albums on virt records: Rachel Gaudry and Beth Boucher, both of whom really kick butt.

as i was watching the show, it struck me how stunningly beautiful people are when they are doing something that they love. all three of these women were completely transformed, shimming with some sort of inner light and joy that radiated out into and touched the audience in individual ways. it was awe-inspiring. i know i’ve quoted this before, but here it is again:

people used to make records

as in a record of an event

the event of people playing music in a room

now everything is cross-marketing

its about sunglasses & shoes

or guns & drugs

you choose

-ani difranco

live music, like theatre, is a unique art form because it exists within the moment that audience and performer share. as perfect as a perfect recording of a performance is, it can’t hold a candle to a perfect, live moment. it lives on as a part of audience and performer; we take it into ourselves, we transform it by our own perceptions, our eyes and ears and feelings and the baggage that we bring with us so that no one experiences the same show, and afterwards, when the lights go down, we can say, i was there. i was in that moment. it lives in me.

9.18.02 – little signs

blog entries are piling up in my notebook, as i have much time to write on the bus stop but very little time at the computer. actually, i just have very little free time right now – working lots getting this tour ready to go on the road. or, rather, working lots to get me ready to go on the road with the tour. since this tour has gone out like 10 years in a row before this, it’s like a monster that has its own life and i’m just trying to learn how to hang on.

monday was my low day – there’s always one, the moment when you just want to quit and go home, or at least just sit down and cry from sheer exhaustion and feeling lonely in a strange city and overwhelmed by all the work there is to do. the lows are low in this game, but the highs are high, so it all balances out in my favor in the end. anyway, i got home on a very rainy dark night on monday, and was reading the paper while eating my dinner of re-heated rice-a-roni when my eye fell on this:

If a man loves the labour of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.

-Robert Louis Stevenson

i took it as a sign from the gods that i really am in the right business, even if the lows are low – a reminder that i do love the labor of my trade, even if i don’t love all the details.

9.11.02

let there be peace on our earth and in our hearts.

9.8.02 – the little things

there are few simples pleasures in life as nice as bare feet. particularly when i’m in a big city and am required to wear shoes and do lots of walking on hard surfaces – concrete sidewalks, metal stairs and the like – the very first thing i do, upon arriving home, is tear off my shoes, followed by the socks, and wiggle my toes free. i walk around the house enjoying the different surfaces – cool concrete in the cellar, hard wood in the living room, carpet in my bedroom, cool grass in the front yard. if i could, i’d spend my life barefoot. summers in idaho, i often go months without wearing anything more than flipflops, which is essentially like treating my feet to walking barefoot on a rubber surface all day, with room for my toes to breathe and stretch and wiggle. not surprisingly, i don’t believe in impractical shoes – the impossibly pointy sort which mash and mangle the toes, or the heels so high that they bend the spine and ruin one’s posture. this isn’t to say that i haven’t occasionally been seduced by the prospect of a sexy stiletto, but in the end these shoes live in the back of my closet, and i wear my sneakers until the soles are worn thru.

and now you all know about my feet. they don’t stink, much.

9.6.02 – sunshine

the past two days have been the most heart-breakingly beautiful fall days i can recall. the Poe-esque weather from the in the last post blew away and left behind it long days of golden sunshine, blue skies, and drier air. we keep the windows open in our 4th floor rehearsal studio and a cool, smooth breeze comes in to ruffle papers and the hair at the back of my neck. i’m surprised at how clear the air is in boston; i guess offshore breezes take care of a lot of the pollution. the trees are still green, but here and there i see a bright orange leaf on the street, like a promise of the vivid colors to come. i’ve never seen a new england fall, and i’m looking forward to the tour in october, as we criss-cross back and forth across vermont, new hampshire, massachusetts and the like.

i have a new friend: sunshine, the fat orange cat who lives several houses down on the sleepy, tree-lined street where i’m currently living. coming home from work around twilight, i walk turn into Hastings street and he’s out on the sidewalk waiting to greet me (or anyone else who might happen by at that hour, i imagine). i crouch down to pet him, and he moves around me in clock-wise circles: rub head on my right knee, rub head on my backpack, rub head on my left knee, and plot down and scratch his back on the sideway while i tickle his stomach. nibble at my hand, purr, and repeat. tonight, after 10 or 15 loops i got up to walk him and sunshine followed, leaping beneath me so that he could butt his head against my shin, weaving underneath my tripping feet, and then repeating from the other side. in this ridiculous manner we continue up to my house where he leaves me for the evening. i’m working much harder to win the affections of brownie, the house cat, who, after a week has finally deigned to let me pet him on rare occasions, but still won’t cuddle up or purr.

today’s adventure: driving a huge 15-passenger van thru boston rush-hour traffic. it took a while to pull my big-city driving skills out of the dusty closet where i packed them when i left san francisco, and then i realized that those driving skills were honed for a comparatively-tiny Honda accord, not the maroon monster we’d just rented for the tour. other than being paranoid about getting pulled over for a traffic violation and having the cop notice that the van i was driving smelled strongly of pot (i swear, the guys at the rental place must’ve been smoking out in it moments before they handed it over to us), the journey was a success. luckily the munchie-mobile (as it has been so-termed by the cast) is going out with tour III (i’m on tour IV), so it won’t be my problem if the van gets sniffed out by a drug dog or something.

9.3.02 – the House of Usher

boston is mushy. my script and paperwork is soft and damp, bread doesn’t go stale but oreos go soft, my hair curls up in frizzy little ringlets and beverages sweat profusely. the building we’re rehearsing in (the seriously low rent district) is literally crumbling around us. chunks of plaster dissolve and fall off the walls at regular intervals. “did all this come off the wall today?” i asked, while sweeping up a pile of plaster dust. “didn’t you know?” said adam, “we’re rehearsing in the House of Usher.” “oh. that explains the prevading gloom out there.” it’s been so cloudy that it never really gets bright out during the day, and when it’s not actually raining, the sky continues to mist freely, so that everything glistens darkly and night seems to fall early in the afternoon.

9.1.02 – later

i spent today trying to make friends with boston. the results were on the whole pretty good: public transit didn’t let me down or strand me in any weird places, even when i got on the wrong bus, and the cat, brownie, let me scratch his chin for a while before he remembered that he’s still trying to be aloof to the interloper. the weather is cool and grey, which is well suited to my disposition – which isn’t to say that i’m miserable, i’m just in a slow, quiet sort of mood, such that i might find bright sunshine offensive. i spent part of the afternoon sitting on a bench beneath a huge willow tree in the public gardens, and i found the green gloom very charming – the perfect atmosphere if one were, say, reading Tolkien.

the house, a turn-of-the-century farm house on a quiet street lined with big, leafy trees, is full of eccentricities as one might expect from an older place: turning on the light switch in my room while connecting with a screw on the wall fixture will result in a mild shock; i wonder how many times i’ll have to zap myself before i remember this fact. steam from the shower excites the smoke detector; i learned this one the hard way this morning. this place is more crammed with stuff than any place i’ve ever been. it’s not dirty, it’s just full of clutter. being a packrat myself, i have no problem with clutter, it makes me feel comfortable and less fearful of making a mess myself, but this house has one of the most impressive collections of clutter that i’ve ever seen. the people i’m staying with are both incredibly nice, absent-minded professor types. when my brother was recommending them to me, he described them as “weird.” “scary-weird?” i asked. “no, more like smart-weird,” chris assured me, and his description was dead-on. having spent a fair amount of my time with scary-smart people in the past, i feel at home here amongst the piles of books and papers and academic paraphernalia. the selection of books on the shelf in my room include: Web Application Development with PHP 4.0, The Illiad, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Understanding Biology, A Brief History of Time, and Pride and Prejudice.

the neighborhood seriously lacks cheap take-out restaurants, however. my ideal neighborhood is one, like the lower haight in sf, or sunnyside in nyc, where i can eat my fill of japanese or indian take-out for under $10. i may have to venture further in the city for dinner more often, because i’m not terribly impressed with my own pasta-making skills. take-out is the perfect answer for the single – being alone in this city, i don’t really expect to spend much time eating by myself in restaurants, but there’s a lot to be said for eating chinese food out of a steaming cardboard box in front of a rerun of the simpsons.

9.1.02 – the first day of school

and so i’ve arrived on the east coast. i am renting a room in a neat turn-of-the-century farmhouse in west roxbury, a suburb south of boston. the people who live here, the parents-of-my-brother’s-former-fraternity-brother, are very sweet, and the house is comfortably cluttered, with creaky old staircases and slating hallways and a black(ish) cat, brownie, whom i am trying to win over with love and bits of food. outside my window there are great big leafy trees, creating the sense of cool, green calm in my bedroom – i have arrived just in time to enjoy the fall weather. today i will go out and explore the city, and tomorrow i go into rehearsal at the chamber repertory theatre. gulp. i feel like it’s the first day of school. i pack my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and wonder, what if the other kids don’t like me? what if i get beat up while waiting for the bus?

8.31.02 – i have always depended on the kindness of strangers

reader marymary writes in to note that i sound sad and harried the past few days, and to offer recommendations for sushi in boston. sad and harried is an accurate description of the past few weeks. now that i’ve landed in boston the harried part is over, but i am still a bit sad, and lonely for my other half, my soul mate, whom i last saw thru a blur of tears waving behind the security checkpoint at the boise airport. i will investigate the promise of good sushi, however, and so thank you in my best tennessee williams accent: “ah have always depended on the kindness of strangers…”