waits54

07:55 am: early morning blues
I'm not really blue. Well at least no bluer than usual but lately I've felt odd. My music sure as hell shows it too but since when hasn't my music shown my blueness (can I say blueness?). My sleeping schedule is so messed up. I don't think I've been able to sleep through a night in at least 5 days. I keep waking up around 2 or 3am and then staying up the rest of the night. Of course, I get mad tired during the day and pass out around 6pm or something like that and it's no wonder why I wake up in the middle of the night. My mind and body thinks it's morning. It's about 8am now and I've been up for five hours. I watched Seabiscuit for the billionth time and I went to the sunoco station to get anti-freeze for my car. The damn thing still leaks anti-freeze. One day I'll get a new car but until then it's buy a container of anti-freeze everytime that little hellish red light comes on to remind me that my car is dying. My eyelids are getting heavy on me but I can't sleep now. I have work to do and a friend is coming to town to play a show with me. This wasn't the week to mess up the sleeping schedule but such is life. Off to tackle the daily grind once again while wishing for a good nights sleep like it's a million dollars.

09:43 pm: who are you who am I who are we?
Last night, I sat for my friend Jen who is a terrific artist and wow what an experience that was. Seeing myself through the eyes of another human being stimulated all of these thoughts of how and why I am here and who I am and what my purpose here is. See, we all have our own thoughts of why we are the way we are and who we are and all the traits we think we have and don't have, it's overwhelming at times to hear the crazy, scattered thoughts in our minds that can sometimes keep us up at all hours in the night just because they are so intense. When I looked into my own eyes through the eyes of somebody else I saw myself in a light that's way more spiritual and surreal than hearing your voice on tape for the first time or on some stupid home video. I just couldn't help but question if it was me or not. It certainly isnt' what I see when I look in the mirror. Not because it wasn't accurate but because it wasn't my perception. I think it was accurate and that's the important thing here. We are what each different person thinks of us no matter how different it is from what you think. People say you are what your mind says you are or something along those lines but is that really true? How can it be when your just one person on this silly little earth letting your ego dominate your actions and opinions of yourself? You screw up one night because you had too much to drink and maybe a whole bar thinks your an ass from now on. Then however, you save a little boy from drowning in the ocean because it's your job and that whole family thinks of you as an angel and sends you a fruit package every christmas and yet you still think of yourself as stupid because that's what your father called you since the day you were born.

I can't help but question who I am, if my music means anything to anyone else, if what I'm doing is what I'm supposed to do or if there's any meaning behind of these things I and we do everyday.

03:59 am: the off limits hot sisters
What can you make of the off limits hot sisters?

They are out of reach, out of touch, so far and away from your bed.
Do you want them there? Yes, you do but not in the way that is so typically misunderstood.

Yes of course you would bang their brains into oblivion but that's not the same as making love using one's mind. It's so different but yet can be very much the same thing. Something about the scares me.

However, I won't bang the off limits hot sisters. At least not anymore. Oh yeah, with my mind that is. However again, wouldn't that be the gentlemen like thing to do?

Yes oh yes that is the gentlemen like thing to do.

03:35 pm: restless
I want to sleep. I want to get a good nights rest before the show tomorrow. I really need to catch up on my rest too. This week was insane and being one who tends to burn the candle on both ends on a regular basis doesn't help much either. It's such an odd feeling to be so beat and pretty much a walking zombie yet when you lay down you can't sleep. I guess tomorrow has the opportunity to be a great night. Not just the fact that I'm playing but for other more important reasons that concern issues that are on a much larger scale than me singing some songs for a couple hours. I'd say what they are but I don't want to jinx anything. I'm sure i'll be writing about it soon enough though. Let's hear one for vagueness!

02:39 pm: getting there
Last night Stevie B and I were having a conversation about music and making it and all that crap. What exactly is making it? That's what we were discussing and how Ashlee Simpson really didn't have to go through any process of making it by starting at the bottom and working her way up. I kind of think it's silly. Is it really possible that if you have the money you can totally bypass the climbing up the ladder process and totally skip any sort of musical development. Maybe that's what's wrong with music today. Nobody engages in any sort of musical community. At least these popstars don't and that's why they piss me off like no other. The way they totally separate themselves from the fans and act like they are the gods of the universe. It's totally sad when you think about it because these bands will fade into nothingness over time and it will be like they never existed in the first place. Don't get me wrong I don't hate the people in the bands but I hate the way they act. Music was never about competition. Personally, I like the idea of starting at the bottom and working my way up. It's such a great experience even if nothing were to ever come of it I'll always be able to look back on all of these great times of writing songs and playing them for people who came out to hear them. It's such an amazing thing to share my crazy, scattered thoughts with people through music. I don't know why anyone would want to alienate themselves from the people who listen to them.

12:05 am: Poor poor Salieri
I recently watched the movie Amadaeus for the first time and one it's totally an awesome flick. Seriously, it's one of the best movies I watched this year and of course it won an academy award in 84 but I had no idea. I was only three years old then. Anyway, I've watched it once all the way through and of course as I usually do when i get into a movie i'll watch certain scenes over and over again. There's one great scene in the film where Salieri writes a welcoming March for Mozart's arrival in Vienna where Mozart eventually proves that he knows the tune by heart after only hearing it one time through. He then starts to point out what is wrong with it and totally expands on Salieri's tune sitting at the piano, giggling away as he is composing a masterpiece right off the top of his head. That was what i found so cool about Mozart and never knew about him. He was such a vulgar, laughing, ridiculous human being yet he was such a genius at what he did. It's not that he didn't take his music seriously it's that he didn't take himself seriously and that's what is so awesome about Mozart. What a character. That's why I felt bad for Salieri. Mozart was simply a god but Salieri wasn't too bad in his own right. I mean he wrote over 40 operas! He wasn't Mozart but he was still pretty damn good. I remember reading a similar story about Clapton and how he would get so depressed that he wasn't as good as another fellow, Jimi Hendrix and that it killed him. But I think it's safe to say that Clapton is great in his own right too. I mean people wrote "Clapton is God" on some random wall in England. Personally, I think Clapton is the man. Especially, when he played with Cream. He could take 5 notes and make the most beautiful phrase out of them rather than getting all self indulgent with hundreds and hundreds of notes being played back to back that would amount to absolutely nothing.

Salieri was so jealous that people say he is responsible for Mozarts death, which the movie didn't really show either way but that's the rumor. Mozart seemed to be, and I say this in a good way, a total freak. He just had the perfect genes for music. He was capable of writing an entire opera from his head without even hearing it played first and he didn't have to make a single correction. Salieri should have just realized that he didn't suck and that Mozart was just a superhuman musical madman and that was it. Salieri, poor poor Salieri tortured himself over nothing. He was writing some good shit. I mean if I had that kind of musical training I'd love to write an opera as good as Salieri. However, the closes thing I could get to writing an opera is a folk/rock musical, which may actually be pretty cool. I think i've already found the libretta (is that what it's called?). Anyway, I'm out!

12:19 am: Please forgive me for having no subject
My website went up today. FINALLY! Damn, it took long enough but I swear it wasn't my fault Actually the new webdude only took a week to get it up and running, which is awesome because I was waiting for about 4 months before. Well thank god good things come to those who wait because the site looks pretty damn cool. Much better than that piece of crap i had lingering around for the past month. Anyway, enough of that. This weekend was pretty crazy. Friday night was an interesting night and I think i figured out that if you play poker all night only to break even you feel pretty much just as frustrated and pissed as you do if you walk out losing say 100 bucks. After having a few drinks at the brewpub with the dudes we went and played cards till dawn and of course i broke even. I really was never up much or down much, pretty much even all the way. Does anyone else think of that as a waste of time? Saturday night was also pretty ridiculous as Herscher and I decided to hit up my friend Caitlins birthday party in west philly. I told Herscher we were going to west philly and he thought I didn't really mean "west philly" but just western philadelphia, apparently where he lives (aka yuppyville), and thought,,,well I don't know what he thought. We got down there and he said "oh shit we really are in "west philly" and whoa there's a skyscraper" He then proceeded to roll up his window. The party was fun and Caitlin was wasted as she should be on her birthday. Actually, everyone there was pretty much wasted and I managed to get myself in and out of trouble a couple of times for silly, trivial reasons, which most reasons for getting into trouble are when you think about it. Unless you break the law and even then you might find yourself in court for something stupid. For instance following your friend at 7 am down a one way street and gettign pulled over by the same cop who decides to give you two tickets, one for going the wrong way for about 3 ft and two for having an expired insurance card, which of course expired about 7 hrs ago at midnight and you had yet to receive the new card. Well, well you may not think it's stupid but if you had to wait for 5 hrs in a courtroom to have a judge hear your case to only take two minutes and clear all charges you'd probably have a better word than stupid. I'm just tired and can't think of any others at the moment.

12:59 am: fighting my closing eyelids while listening to Tom Waits
What a crazy weekend. Visiting PSU was great. Catching up with everyone, meeting new cool ass people, and partaking in activities that I've missed dearly. Ya know, shotgunning beers, taking tequila shots out of paper cups, mixing drinks with used cups, eating hot wings for breakfast and washing them down with a vanilla latte. Damn, I think i just found the reason for my upset stomach but we all make sacfrifices every now and then and I definitely had a blast. However, now it's back to work. I'm excited to finish these new songs that are really coming together and thank goodness this writers block crap is over with. I don't ever wanna experience that feeling ever again. I felt like I was living that dream where you're trying to yell and nothing is coming out and no matter how hard you try you can't get a single word out of your mouth. That's what writers block was like to me. No matter how hard i tried nothing came out. I realized though that trying so hard was my mistake. The weird thing is that every artist goes through this but still, when you're in that phase of agony, knowing that every artist had gone through it doesn't even come close to being a comforting thought. Oh well, back to not believing in writers block again. Full circle man, total full circle. So what else is there to say. Oh, Tom Waits is a god. That's all there is to it. I'm listening to "inbetween love" over and over again. Where does one come up with a line like "trying to scheme love". Brilliant, so damn brilliant!