I'm having a restless day, my head full of wailing uilleann pipes and roads untraveled. Last week's predicted wild storm blew too far north of the city for any of it to hit my place, and the sense of unconsummated buildup lingers, leaving me feeling unfinished, wound up, and kinda cranky. Though angsty, life has been unremarkable lately - work, plants, music, sleep....I'm longing for some adventure, something exciting and new and revolutionary.

I guess it is a bit of a sad commentary that the most exciting thing for me recently was harvesting herbs and greens for dinner, and noticing that my marigolds and nasturtiums are budding, and will likely bloom sometime this week, which is awesome. And it really is exciting - I feel like growing my own food is such a great accomplishment, a big step towards disengaging in consumerism and becoming more self-sustaining. But it's such a mundane kind of excitement, and I want something more glamourous, I guess. I'm not sure why I'm not satisfied with this, but I'm not. I'm just not.

One of my favorite exercises to try to diagnose unfulfilled needs is the ol' chesnut where you write out your idea of the perfect day. What, if money wasn't an issue, if material things were not a factor, would the perfect life look like? I think, for me, it would involve creating and performing music, maybe teaching or some kind of community service, definitely gardening (maybe even year round? Exciting!), some sort of political action, and spending my nights wrapped around a partner who made my toes curl regularly. That doesn't seem all that much to ask, does it? Le sigh.

"This is what you've waited for
Your chance to even up the score
And as these shadows fall on me now
I will somehow
'Cause I'm picking up the messes
And I'm closer now than I've ever been before
So if you have something to say
Say it to me now."

- "Say It To Me Now," Glen Hansard

I wrote an e-mail to my sister last week, for the first time in eight months. I've heard, through family, that she's having a rough time right now on a few fronts, and I am going a little batty not knowing what's going on and not feeling like I can at least offer her an ear. I've tried, with various levels of intensity, to put out olive-branch-feelers....a card with a note when I was home for the holidays, a call at New Year's (where I discovered she'd changed her number), e-mailing her with my new number when it changed. Nothing particularly aggressive or overt, but feelers.

My sister always has been better at maintaining anger and holding a grudge, and even in this case where I believe my actions were wholly justified, where I am just plain not wrong, and for once, I'm not wanting to be the bigger person who lets go of my own anger and self-respect to apologize for not being graceful and take the steps needed to reconcile....even in this case, I think my willingness to shut her out or stay angry at her may not last as long as hers in return. I don't know what I think about it, other than maybe some unfriendly thoughts about spoiled brats who always get their way...but regardless of all that, I made a move, and whether or not it yields anything, I feel good about trying. No matter how angry I am, no matter how much conflict we have, she's my sister, and even if we have less of a shared experience than I always assumed, there's still a bond there that nothing else can compare with. And I worry that if I can't make peace in that relationship, my ability to trust others and to form close connections to people in general...may always suffer for it.

Ah, well. Only time will tell, right?

I'm working on The List. You know: The List Of Things I Want To Do Before I Die. I'm practically 30, I figure it's about time I put one of these together. So far, here's what I've got:

** Ritual in Stonehenge.
** Travel to: Great Pyramid, Great Wall, Indus Valley, Macchu Picchu, Athens, Rome, and damn near every other major archaeological or cosmopolitan location on the globe. I'll forego listing them for the sake of brevity, and you can assume that if it played a role in history or has some cool ruins, I want to visit.
** Cross a desert by caravan.
** Spend some time living out of an RV like a gypsy.
** Meet a President of the U.S., preferably in a way that lets me give them a piece of my mind.
** Jump out of a plane.
** Take an intercontinental cruise.
** Write a book, and get it published. No idea what about, but it's a goal.
** Do something directly to make the life of someone else better - by which I mean building a house for Habitat for Humanity, or volunteering in a third world village or something.
** Spend a week lounging on the deck of a yacht in the Med.
** Get a song played on a Top 40 radio station. Or at least a non-internet and non-college radio station.
** Achieve carbon neutrality. Possibly manage to live off-grid.
** Walk on every continent. And possibly on the moon, if there's commercial travel there before I die.
** Visit every state in the union. I'm only at 39. ** Play a leading lady in a stage play for once, instead of always the funny sidekick. (not that I don't love that, too, but I would like to try the other side)
** Join the mile high club. Because, uh, why not?? (Although, if solo action counts, I'm already there. But somehow it feels like cheating.)
** Learn another language, and more than just enough to order a drink and ask for a bathrooom. Maybe even learn more than a smattering of Latin.

That's what I have so far. Obviously, it's a work in progress.

I don't really like musical theater.

I know, I know. I'm a musician, I'm a performer, surely I should eat up musicals like they're going out of style. But no. I really don't care for them. Sometimes I like the music, but as a rule, I don't really care for the plot device of characters randomly bursting into song. Sometimes I don't mind film musicals - notably just about anything Mel Brooks ever touched, classics like "Singing in the Rain," some Disney animated musicals. But live musicals? Don't really enjoy watching them. (Love-love-LOVE acting in them, but it's been a few years since I graced a stage in that vein.)

I mention this because the Tonys were on last night, and I happened to catch a little snippet of the montage from Duncan Sheik's "Spring Awakening," which caught my ear the way a lot of "musical" music doesn't. Of course, when I heard it, I didn't know it was Duncan....but my friend the internets told me it was, and all was illuminated. I heart Duncan Sheik....so it only follows I'd enjoy the music from his musical. Especially when the songs have titles like "Totally Fucked" and "The Bitch of Living." (Yes, I'm crass and juvenile. Shoot me.) Anyway, I decided that maybe this might be a musical I'd enjoy watching...and in the meantime I'd like to track down the songs and listen to the whole magillah.

DENIED!

Yep. Nowhere in the wide, wide world of the worldwideweb was I able to locate an electronic download option for the Original Cast Recording. Or even anybody covering the songs. Nothing. I could listen to clips at Amazon, and order a CD (say what? an actual, physical CD? what would I do with such a thing anymore?), but nothing downloadable. Because I want the whole thing, too, I was actually not just looking for freebie mp3s I could gank from some blog or other - I was looking to spend money....but I still couldn't find anything on the usual download options - because I am old fashioned, and think I ought to be able to download a song without having to download a whole fucking program to manage my song downloads (yeah, iTunes, I'm fucking talking to you - also Microsoft and your poorly considered decision to switch from the awesome MSN Music web-based interface to a standalone app with a name that sounds like a mispronunciation of Mazda's sales pitch). So. Now, I can order a physical CD (wasted CD I will only immediately rip to my laptop and thence to my mp3 player and never touch again; wasted packaging; wasted fossil fuels getting it delivered to me; probably more expensive, too)...or I can bite it and figure out if I can use Zune without getting the goddamn Microsoft Zune player.

Attention, any digital music marketing types who might be googling whatever product I may have maligned in this entry: if you want me to pony up my hard-earned dosh for an mp3 file, make it easy for me to do so. Do not make me download, install, learn new software, search, subscribe, or any other tedious bullshit. Set up billing account, click and download: this is how it should work. End of story.

Oh, and just to make sure no rant goes unspoken: fucking Wal-Mart-dot-com. I should've known better than to even come close to your evil empire, but I was on a musical quest, and I'm willing to bend rules in service to that particular grail. But, apparently, in addition to your anti-union and otherwise employee-unfriendly practices, your questionable environmental and community-impact record, and your contribution to the national trade deficit with China...apparently, you also think that people shouldn't be able to download music that contains naughty words. Excellent. Keep the poor people buying environmentally-unfriendly cheap Chinese shit from your surly underpaid workers, plus censor artistic expression. Good to know your agenda, assholes.

Today's Playlist:

"Fidelity" - Regina Spektor
"Life is Wonderful" - Jason Mraz
"Stop This Train" - John Mayer
"This Year's Love" - David Gray
"Say It To Me Now" - Glen Hansard
"Closer" - Joshua Radin
"Iron Woman" - Devin Davis
"Next in Line" - Dean Fields
"Littlest Things" - Lily Allen
"You Don't See Me" - Josie & the Pussycats
"Dear Chicago" - Ryan Adams

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.