He's this amazing paradox, a true folk musician. He pens amazing protest anthems that stand toe-to-toe with the Bob Dylans and Pete Seegers and Woody Guthries. He also writes heart-rending ballads about god, love, restlessness, life and death. On top of that, he has done some plain ol' rock-n-roll that knocks my socks off, and then there are the hilariously crude tunes (like "Tiger Woods," the first line of which is "I got big balls").

He's another one of those songwriters whose creativity, talent, and prolific nature leave my envious mouth watering.

Love came and flew as blood in my veins
Emptied me of myself and filled me with beloved.
Each part of my being she conquered
Now a mere name is left to me and the rest is she.

- Abu Sa'eed

The Welsh have this word, "hiraeth," that roughly translates to a Wales-specific longing for home. It's not widely used, but in the references I've found to it, it has been widened to this concept of yearning for a spiritual home, for a place where your soul can be easy.

I totally get this. It hits me when I read Sufi poetry, when I write music, when I stand on the beach watching the sun come up over Lake Michigan, when I think of travelling to Stonehenge or Macchu Picchu or Egypt or Persia or Scandinavia, when I visit the Tribune Building downtown and touch stones from buildings all over the world, whispering millenia of history to those who hear. When I think of the point of my life, and how working a desk job for a megalith corporation while struggling to make music and find enlightenment and the love of my life....that just seems so paltry compared to what my spirit seems to want to do.

Maybe I read too much epic fantasy, where the good guys struggle daily against evil overlords bent on conquest and, well, evil. Of course, in the middle of one of those, the hero never stops and says, "Crap, is tomorrow the first? I gotta get the landlord a rent check! And don't let me forget that I need to pick up toilet paper and cat food."

Sometimes I feel like I carry an ember around inside my chest, and sometimes I feel like it's going to burn through my ribs and my whole body will combust. I feel like I must be vibrating with trying to contain whatever it is inside me that can't get out.

I'm having one of those moments right now, and I can't sit still, and I've already spent an hour singing my lungs out, and it's not helping. I want to yell, at the top of my lungs, just yell until whatever it is quiets down enough so I can get on with my day.

I'm going to a wedding reception tonight, to be a friend's designated drinker. I am refreshing the dye job as we speak, adding some streaks, 'cause why not? I have my sexy shoes (black ankle strap sandals with four inch heels....rrrrowr), I'll be rocking some significant cleavage, I may even break out the hooker red lipstick. Who knows? If I'm lucky (and drunk enough), I might even get some tail.

Here's hoping.

My ten year reunion is coming up, and I'm not sure I want to go home for it, if I'll even have the time. At first, I thought this was because I didn't give a rat's ass about the people I went to school with, but I'm starting to realize that's only part of it. I was worried that I would step into that stereotype of deriding most of the folks I went to shcool with, who still live in the area and have marriages, families, jobs, houses - all that mundane stuff that I've always been bored senseless with. I worry that I would try to lord my own life over them....but the truth is, they're probably twenty times as happy as I am. And I'm jealous of that - not of their lives, per se....but of their happiness, and their ability to be happy with what they have. I couldn't. Hell, I can't be happy with what I have now.

I lay awake some nights staring at the ceiling, wanting something more than what I have, but unable to name what it might be.

Maybe it's overdramatic or melodramatic or pathetic or just plain crazy....I can't help that. And I can't seem to shut it off. Might as well write about it, right?

Recent entries...
27 December 2007: 2007: Finis.
17 December 2007: A ruse, a rant, and a poem. It's short.
11 December 2007: Music & falling....story of my life.
08 December 2007: Briefly...ish.
29 November 2007: A poem, a rant, a lesson.