August 31, 2004

11:39 a.m.

Maine, Saturday night, something something, late, full moon tomorrow

I've successfully forgotten the date and time. This has been a wonderful and productive retreat. C&C came up a couple of days before me and they'd rearranged some things from last year. You must know that the house was left as Chris's mother was living in it, when she moved to North Carolina, so all the family stuff is still here, as though everyone has just stepped out. I think she's been gone several years. There are some serious cobwebs in corners, and we only have a rather paltry canister vacuum to clean with (I always long for my Kenmore with the power head, but it just won't fit in the car with everything else) so sometimes I have to deal with major allergy reaction to the dust. I'm on a little Prednisone for three days this time -- I haven't had to do that the last couple of times up here, but for some reason it hit me.

Anyway, they'd moved some things around in the "kitchen" -- it's really a small galleyway from the entry to the living room, not a separate room at all -- to make traffic flow a bit easier, and also Carol is sleeping in the Tower as I think I mentioned, so that she can have more privacy. I don't know why we just didn't do this sooner. It's worked wonders. Carol has come up with two songs after a dry spell of, I hate to guess, a few years. They're both good and will be fun to work up when she's ready. At least one was inspired by what we heard at the festival last weekend. I'm working on my third and it should be presentable tomorrow. My fingers hurt.

It's another blue moon. I think we had one in the last couple of months already. I love the blue moon. You have to wait and wait for it, and then there it is, all glorious and perfect.

It was so hot today none of us did much this afternoon. My room is taking ages to cool off. Yesterday I had an hour and a half walk up to a vast blueberry plateau, from which there is a view of mountains from both sides. It was so quiet up there I just couldn't believe it. Mostly the blueberries have gone by, but I found a little patch next to the path that hadn't been harvested, so had two or three good handfuls. I didn't see a soul on the walk except a car or two on the first road. The flies were prolific especially in the woods though, so I walked with two handfuls of long ferns, swishing them past my head like horse tails as I stepped along.

After a day of heavy mental work, we like to watch movies in the evening, so last night we saw Grand Canyon with Kevin Kline, Steve Martin and Danny Glover. It's a bizarre film but very interesting, and in some places extremely funny. Tonight we opted for The Producers, which I hadn't seen since it was first out, and that was even funnier. Can I just say that Gene Wilder is one of the cutest and most cheek-pinchingly adorable persons in the world? Thank you.

So I have the option of going home Monday, which would make tomorrow my last full day, or postponing my lunch with Sig and staying here an extra day. Is three songs enough? Do I think I can come up with something else if I hang in here longer? I'm enjoying watching those answers unfold.

I stayed in my red (men's) flannel snowman boxer shorts all day, and a threadbare shirt that doesn't go, and no bra.

Ahhhh.

********

"How many times can you PLAY that song?" I think. This is why I'm glad I don't live with anyone. We're separated enough here that, if we choose, we can be soundproofed from one another, but I can see how Carol just doesn't want to go through the repetitive process with Chris in the house. I love it; I love, as Carol describes it, the "puzzle" of working out the words and the music and finding the way they'll fit together and express just exactly what I�m trying to say. But I'd hate knowing someone else was having to go through all that, thinking about it, wanting to make suggestions, wanting to help or trying too hard not to hinder. I'd so much rather finish the thing and then come out going, "Ta-daaa!"

So one song is about a trip Rose and I took a few years ago, driving back home after visiting mom in Georgia. I wanted to go by our old house in Virginia, the one where we'd been little kids, before all the military travelling started. We talked about everything we could remember about those years, the neighborhood, our friends, stuff that happened at home. We've moved so much there is literally no one in the world besides each other who knows about our childhoods any more. We are our only links to our past. So I've finally been able to write something specifically for Rose that will be as meaningful to her as it is to me.

Another is a funky, slightly tongue in cheek (but rather sexy notwithstanding) ditty comparing Will to various kinds of chocolate. (I believe the term "Milk Dud" is used to great effect in the bridge.) The third is a lovely ballad in open tuning dedicated to my bandmates and our times up here in Maine, which are special beyond reckoning and for which we are grateful beyond description. It also utilizes the word "revenant" which, as I mentioned earlier, I heard in a lyric last weekend. I just couldn't let it go; it's too good a word not to spread it around. Revenant, revenant.

Tired now.

********

Next Morning

It rained hugely in the wee hours last night. I awoke to the thrumming on the roof in this little side room, and got up to check the windows that had been left open. My bass and amp were wet under the living room window, so I dried them off and moved them, and closed everything up. I think they'll be all right.

I slept badly in general; between the Pred and being wired from writing, I just couldn't get to sleep. Then my dreams were strange and unsettling. As a result I slept in a little and feel I've wasted much of the morning.

Still, the rain has stopped, it's overcast but cooler today, and I have a song to finish.

********

Tuesday morning, back home

My bar-chord finger is so sore I can�t play much right now. But I�m meeting Sig for lunch today and will attempt to play the new songs for him. A fourth one formed yesterday morning, one I�d half-started a couple of years ago, and it�ll take some time to shape. I�m getting into all these stretchy chord formations that my hand isn�t used to. Then, when I�ve mastered them sitting down, the next step is to play them standing up, a more difficult orientation.

But meanwhile I�ve accomplished some key things this morning like having the electric switched to the new apartment, and the gas put in my name, and sending out a spot emailing to Florida for our gigs this month, and changes of address at the banks, and a deposit to the movers, and updating files. It�s bizarre being back here after Maine. But in the next three days a lot is going to get wrapped up, and I�ll feel a lot better.

Rose is back from her New Orleans blowout weekend and says she has something for me that�s so cool she can hardly contain herself til tonight when I see her. :)