RandomCha

It won’t cool down tonight; these fans of mine are all that’s saving me. I’m bored. I know that I get cranky when I don’t write. And I know that being cranky makes me less apt to write. And so on.

The Jim White concert is Sunday night at Schuba’s. I’m so pumped up! I hope that the cute bassist who played with him on Letterman a few weeks ago is still with him. This week is too damn booked up already, though. I hate looking ahead and not seeing infinite free time. Why can’t I just be in a nice, climate-controlled room alone for about three days? Then I could get myself together. Instead I’m just prone to whine.

Listening to the recent Geggy Tah album, “Into the Oh.” It’s great! Catchier than “Sacred Cow.” What a weird Laurie Anderson cameo appearance on the song “Aliens Somewhere”! Maybe I just have too much new music on my CD rack to digest right now. Too much is never enough.

Grr, why do I hafta go to work tomorrow?

Yawn. Kinda tired. Tonight, after the coffee seminar, we all went to the Duke of Perth for a drink. I had a Bellhaven. Wow! It was really good. I wonder how expensive it is to buy it at a store so I can drink it at home.

It’s still really warm outside, almost hot. Hot darkness. That’s the weird thing about Chicago in the summer. It doesn’t often cool down at night. In California, you can wear a sweater at nighttime if you want too. Something about the city here, the asphalt and the concrete, and the climate. Holds in the heat. Makes things sticky. It’s sticky in this apartment tonight. Though I have my fan going. It helps quite a bit. But no under-the-covers sleeping.

Andy is closing at work tonight. I’ll see him tomorrow night. I’m listening to Jimmy Scott sing “Holding Back The Years.” Damn, it’s so good. I hear the words in a way I never did before. I have the next two days off. Will try to write. The David Byrne concert is on Sunday night.

Last night we watched “Alice and Martin” on video. This is the first movie about Paris that I’ve seen since I’ve been back. And I realized I was playing that old game with myself while I was watching it … “Hey, I know that place! I’ve been there for real! That Metro station is familiar! That’s really what it looks like! I wonder where that apartment is supposed to be.” I liked the movie. It was sometimes awkward to watch because of the characters’ behavior. Doing vulnerable things, difficult things. Juliette Binoche is SO SO good. The woman could read a menu out loud & draw a convincing character. Watching the movie made me a bit wistful, looking back at Paris. I liked it there and yet I didn’t suddenly want to move there. I was happy to be there and experience it. And then take that stuff back with me here.

Why Chicago? Why this city? Is it really unique or is it really like any other place? Does it matter where I am? I think it matters. But honestly I don’t know how different Chicago actually is from anywhere else. I just have an emotional attachment to this place. It’s something personal that no one else can understand except maybe through an epiphany. I ask myself how much longer I’ll probably live here, and where else I’d live … trying to imagine what my next city will be. Will I ever feel this way about somewhere else? Am I just refusing to grow up?

When I hear Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Ultra-Lounge, David Bowie, I think about Chicago. Because Chicago is where I first heard them taking root in my ears. My apartment is small, and too hot, and I’m alone, and I’m not rich, and I don’t have a career, or a car, and I don’t really know where I’m going or even where I am, but tonight I’m going to sleep pretty well. Sort of, umm, existential.

Walgreen’s brand Cola, which is on sale 2 for $1, retains more flavor & more carbonation than Coke one day after opening the bottle.

I can’t even believe today is Friday. It’s even harder to believe that I leave in 3 days for Paris. There’s a sort of mental note-list in my head of stuff I need to do before I leave … I’ve made some progress, but now I’m slacking off. I bought “Inspiration Information” by Shuggie Otis while I was in the Loop this afternoon; listening to it now & it’s just as good as I’d heard it was. Wild! Barely sounds like 1974. Boy, I’ll sure be poor when I get back from my trip, but I don’t care.

Andy still has his chest cold & it’s made him (understandably) cranky. I know that I’m going over to his place at 7, but I don’t know what we’ll do … what he’ll want to do. Jody gave us some comps for “Hedwig” tonight. The show is at 9. Andy might not want to go. I’m acutely aware of the moments we have left to spend together before I leave on Monday afternoon. I don’t want to waste them … maybe we’ll just stay in at his place and watch a movie.

Our 1 year anniversary is on Sunday. We’ve planned dinner at Chinalite & then exchanging gifts. I sure hope he feels better by then. I imagine he’s just stayed inside all day, trying to rest up. This feels like a sort of re-run of January, when one of us was sick the whole month. Ugh.

I’m tired now, I could certainly take a nap, my bed calls to me from its corner. My concern is time. If there’s enough of it for a nice rest. Yeah, I should. I don’t want to be all droopy tonight.

This cool breeze coming in through the window is really nice. It rained earlier. Now, it’s cool & quiet outside. I hear the cars going by but they almost sound gentle, like they’re whispering.

The new Jim White album “No Such Place” that I splurged & bought earlier today is so brilliant. How satisfying. What am I going to do with all this energy tonight?

I have tomorrow off. I can’t decide if I want coffee or a beer at the moment. This evening I bought “The Far Eat Suite” by Duke Ellington. His music just continues to dazzle me. I hear it for the first time & I’m filled with a desire to understand it, to find out how it does what it does. Repeat listenings cement these initial impressions. Where Ellington ends and Billy Strayhorn begins we can never know on a recording like this …

I’m too inarticulate to write at the moment. Blech.

Ah, an old flame of mine has somehow found this journal on the web & was so moved as to email me a comment. I love that about the net. Bits of me hovering in the neon ether.

Just back from the Metro, where I saw the benefit for the Neo-Futurists, “30 Bands In 60 Minutes.” Great variety of stuff, some of which actually sounded good … but even the bad stuff was a lot of fun, since each group only had a few minutes of time (some bands stretched their limit a bit). It was heartening to see the concept carried out so well. 30 bands really DID play in 60 minutes; well, ok, they cheated just a bit and it was more like 30 bands in 70 minutes.

As always, Greg Allen is a genius. He was a super emcee & was obviously having a ball. Connor Kalista was there too, helping with some pre-band plays that were performed. Grr, he is still so damn gorgeous. Why did I waste that perfect chance to really introduce myself to him when I saw “Crime And Punishment”? Ah, but that’s another story … if you want to read it, you’ll have to purchase my upcoming book. Ha! The working title is “Indeterminacy.” It’s going to be made up of 100 random anecdotes, each one no more than a page long.

I really wish Andy could have come tonight. He had to work. And I myself have to be getting up at 4.50 am tomorrow to go work. Cold outside. Ready for spring, but not summer. I better get sleepy real soon.

Received a rabidly anti-Ken Burns e-mail today from Derrick, railing against “Jazz.” I agree with him on many points. Am listening to Shelley Manne & Red Mitchell right now.

Writer’s Group last night was pretty good. Everyone’s comments on my piece gave me some juice, made me enthusiastic to work on it till the end. Genuinely interested in what I wrote. Afterwards, we were waiting on the corner of Balmoral/Clark for a bus. Cafe Boost is right there. They were closing up. A cute head-shaven pierced skinny white boy inside saw me waiting & smiled at me and kept watching me. I smiled back. I began to hypothesize out loud to Andy what the boy inside was thinking. Unfortunately, Andy had a sinus headache & generally he felt yucky. He seemed equal parts amused & annoyed. Rode the bus south; he went to sleep at his place, I went to sleep alone at my place.

Work went fast today. Rainy afternoon. Grace Jones on the CD player somehow turned everything outside into a Monet picture, or a Caillebotte (spelling?).

Hung out with Rob at his studio a bit. He painted. I read, watched him. He’s working on a lovely picture. Ate dinner at Royal Thai.

If only I could take a long hot bath, slip into my pyjamas & into sleep. But my apartment only has a shower.

Shame on me, I haven’t written in so long. Charlie Hayden was so cute in the early 60’s! Cuter even than Chet Baker I think. Pretty grey out there today. Despite my coffee, I’m sleepy. I could go back to bed, I could read.

Zach came over tonight & we watched the 1st episode of Ken Burns’ “Jazz” while we drank Rolling Rock. The show was really good but I’m not thinking so much about that right now. I’m thinking about the way this beer feels in my stomach, and how I’m just a little wobbly, and this feeling. This room is my boat, this room is my cradle. My stereo sings to me, and though it’s not jazz, it has that freedom of jazz. Radiohead and Leonard Cohen and George Shearing. And it’s great watching that with someone, with Zach. I can’t describe it, this feels silly, but it’s like I’m at this moment in my life: growing closer to people here and there. To Andy, to Zach certainly. I know Andy is jealous about my friendship with Zach. He’s told me. And he doesn’t have that with Ken, his ex; they aren’t even speaking. I know I can’t communicate my tenderness to Andy right now. I know he knows it but I hope he’s remembering it even when I can’t articulate it. Zach and I hugged longer than usual tonight & we knew what we meant by that. We meant we were close, maybe closer than we’ve ever been, and damn isn’t it great to be NEAR someone. You just feel that surge for anyone who’s ever meant something important to you, and Zach was hear tonight & that feeling was him and Andy and all therest.

Just me with Zach tonight and the alcohol in us and me remembering last year when our lives were younger, were less formed. Knowing that at this moment, as I type this into my computer & as it flies through wires & gets posted online, right now at this moment my life is young and less formed. And it’s that way until I die. Old age doesn’t exist. Life is a continual beginning of a new part and a new form. I’m always young, this part of me newborn & springing into speech and feeling. This awareness of closeness is threatened by articulation. Aware of my own history, the repetition of NOW. But I hafta write. I hafta try and record it, you know? Even if it’s just cracked poetry tomorrow or cracked poetry to you reading this.

Like the jazz guy, I can’t remember his name, but he turned down an offer from RCA to make a recording in 1916 or something & thereby missed his chance to make the first ever recorded jazz. And now we can’t remember his name. He said no to RCA because he figured that other musicians would hear the record & copy him & steal his stuff. He lost it ’cause of his ego!

I don’t want to lose anything because of that, don’t want my words to sit in my head stillborn like other people’s words that die in there heads everyday, just because “I’m not getting paid” or “It’s not my job.” These words are my job even if I’m not getting paid. I’m not as drunk as I was 5 minutes ago, for sure.