Category: Diary

Some of you will know where this comes from, others maybe not. This may be th height of laziness for me though.
Restless eyes close, maybe it’ll go away
Please rest tomorrow, bring a satisfying day
The restless urge of love that’s worth the burning for
Surely it’s that one true thing, love to give you more
Any thought could be the beginning of the brand new tangled web you’re spinning
Anyone could be a brand new love
Any tie that holds can be broken, it can tear your bitter world totally open
Anyone could be the brand new love
You won’t be the first, your twisted change is normal
Gossip, dirt, whispered to the nodding head
Thrilled you fell apart, instead of them
But they will
Any hope for love can be killed
If you need a different face, it’s definite time to destroy this place
Any thought could be the beginning of the brand new tangled web you’re spinning
Anyone could be a brand new love
Follow what you feel, you alone decide what’s real
Anyone can be a brand new love

There are few things as tiring and satisfying as what I’ve gotten to do at work the past few days. As you can imagine, we have been covering the Coretta Scott King funeral stuff a lot. I have been sent on assignments to record audio of the horse-drawn carriage procession taking her to the state capitol, and to record audio for the musical celebration the included performances by Gladys Knight and an address by Oprah Winfrey. I guess one of the things I am proud of this city for is that it is steeped in the MLK legacy. I have been to the King Center before, but these assignments allowed me to touch that world in a completely different way. Doing these the recording and putting together the consequent multimedia pieces has moved me tremendously, despite the long hours it has taken to put everything together. Anyway, ultimately I am so satisfied with the products and the experience. I have been moved to tears many times during all of it and have been completely emotionally wiped. If you would like to take a look at the pieces (on was mentioned previously) here are the links:
Coretta Scott King: Lying In State
Coretta Scott King: A life remembered

I was asked late in the day Friday to go and do some audio recording of ambeint sounds for the transfer of Coretta Scott King’s body to the state capitol this morning. She will lie there in state until Monday. The burial is on Tuesday. I have teared up a few times since her death this past Tuesday. The King legacy is one of the things that makes me happy to live in this city, I love driving past the MLK artwork at the corner of Boulevard and Freedom, even though it is not the best example of public art. Today I woke up later than I should have, expeceted to go to the Old Fourth Ward to the funeral home, which turned out to be on the West End, so I headed to the capitol and waited and waited and watched people and recording helicopters and people talking and leaves and finally the motorbikes and horses and then she came along. I almost lost it right then, but kept my journalistic distance and integrity together long enough to join the masses on the capitol lawn, and still kept it together, until the bagpiper played ‘Amazing Grace’ and my eyes moistened, and then her body was taken in and the people spntaneously started into ‘We Shall Overcome’ and I sang and burst and had to walk away.
Here’s the product of the day, the recorder stopped working before the bagpipes and singing, I guess it will be just a memory, with no evidence, for me now.
Coretta Scott King: Lying In State
Reload the page if you have problems getting it to play smoothly.

What do you do when all of your devices have given up on you? When you decide to kick the sauce again, to dream a sober dream, to make this writing thing a go again? What do you do when Faulkner will no longer lull you to sleep? When his demons, and his characters’ demons, continue to strike too close to home? And no bubble bath will take you away? And no phone call is on its way? And there are dead felines that you once loved to hate to love to live with etc? And when there is a woman singing directly into your ear who has always made you cry? And a woman singing indirectly into your ear who even the thought of the voice still makes you cry? And then there are the voices that just set you back, and the ones that push you forward. And out there fathers are dying, and love is dying. The fact is, that tonight someone is breaking up. Someone is announcing to the other that they cannot go on like this – that by the end of the week they will be gone. They both live inside me now. What happens when what you have done won’t let you sleep? What happens when Mrs. King is gone? What happens when the dreams won’t come anymore? What happens when the last question is asked?
I guess you just learn to do it all differently, recreate a life, or finally create one, and stop this tidal ritual.

I cannot bring myself to sleep in the bed tonight, so I think I will turn on a movie and sleep here on the sofa, like a man who is in trouble with a woman who sleeps in the other room.

Oh let’s do the first kiss
all over again.
Tomorrow I will go
to the theater to see
someone else believe in
themselves for a while.
I can hear your heart
palpitate too on this
strange recording.
It’s the strange way
these things roll around.
In this city,
you will come to understand,
that we like to eat,
but just as surely
we like to dream.
We make it up as we go,
even when the script
has been written forever.
I said the L word…
Oh, fuck, I said the L word…
This pillow is too big tonight –
too big to hold just my dreams,
so I will try to dream for the both of us.

That clock never worked, now did it? We never could find the weight so it could tell time, so time just stopped. It has been perpetually 3 AM or PM in this house since the day it first graced the mantle. It seems so strange that it takes a little weight for time to move on, but to much weight can bring it to a halt again.
I have just passed 3 AM tonight in the middle of another one of my fits of insomnia. Out with L to the movies and dinner tonight, I came home alone and restless and that clock just sat there telling me nothing much has changed. I had to get out of the house again and go to places where the timepieces do keep track. I need to feel like I am moving on, even if this place can seem warped in time.

(more…)

I know I have told some of you about the very close relationship that the former president, Bill Clinton, and I have forged over the last few years. Since he invited me to the White House during his second term to perform Tom Wait’s cover songs, he calls me at least once a week. Usually these calls come from a phone with an unregistered number so therefore it does not show up on caller ID. He must be letting his guard down however, because his call this week actually appeared on the little LCD. So all of you naysayers can go eat crow now!

I have been sitting here peeling this orange for five years, or maybe two, or just a few months – and as it unfolds I am waiting for that sweet fruit to fall into my hands – but instead it unlayers like an onion – layer upon layer of orange rind with no discernible fruit. I wait. I peel. I hope. But, alas there seems to be no fruit there, and I begin to wonder about the truth of fruit, sugar, diabetes, hope and sickness. All I ever wanted was to get to the fruit, to feel that rush of fructose as it hits the bloodstream, but I get rind, I get zest, and no fruit. I can’t figure out if the fruit is reacting to me, or if it is just me, or you, or another – or is it the rind that is all of us. I am trying to discern the nature of citrus in the middle of January. I might paint over the fruit and call it ‘soap.’ I might write something that has nothing to do with oranges and call it ‘citrus.’ I think I will put the orange back on the tree, attaching it with super glue and paper clips, and sit and wait a while longer.

If I cannot truly understand what is in my heart, how can I expect anyone else to? I believe I may become a recluse and deny anyone access to my presence, much less my heart. I don’t like secrets so much, but feel that my life and those around me are shrouded in them. I have a few good friends with which there is transparency between us. Maybe that is all I can ask for, but ultimately it all will need to be tossed out. Ultimately I will live in my basement with just the one window for light and I will grow pale and old there.