or, hopefully, an ep or two worth of them.

dear reader,

having been somewhat burned in the songwriting department by the experience and schedule of 2008’s internet singles “experiment,” i’ve had some anxiety about the prospect of a new record in 2009. am i still “inspired”? if so, by what? is inspiration even real?

over the last two weeks my fears have been put to rest. partially, this can be attributed to the successful penning of lyrics for my last contribution to “in the impossible tension” (which joe and i have been doggedly recording); but, mostly i admit unabashedly that i am tremendously excited about the complete failure of western financial markets. i know full well how insensitive this is of me, and i don’t take the personal losses of millions of people lightly, but the silver lining of this dark cloud shines so very brightly.

a good friend of gn,s’s commented at one point that we were “an apocalyptic band.” i’m not sure whether that description applies to every aspect of what we do, but the more i turn the phrase over in my mind the more i realize how applicable it is to my songwriting. i predict the failure of everything earthly. i predict the end of me, you, the national [no! surely not!, in my best (which is not very good) eddie izzard], cheap gas (these are not necessarily listed chronologically), amazon.com, hezbollah, those fake keychain carabiners, CDs, thai food, and then, eventually, money itself.

again, tremendous excitement. some days it feels more like anger, and i think maybe we’ll start recording protest songs. but even that is just sideways excitement. all through 2006, 2007, and 2008 (some of the “short films” songs were penned before that), i wrote about dissolution, the end of the old, inside & out. it’s an eternal truth, though sometimes writ very small in temporal circumstances; now, the graffiti’s so big it’s all you can see.

seriously. huge. hedge funds are going to start failing left and right. adjustments will continue, prime rates will stay near 0% for quite some time, deflation will deepen and spread despite the rabid out-of-control inflationary efforts of the Bush ‘N’ Barack economic policy, the u.s. will end up owing more money to china than even i personally care to consider for very long, and we will all lose money. a lot of it. (i think at last count there was something like $500 trillion+ to be “adjusted”–that means LOST, folks!–worldwide, but that might be now replaced by a bigger statistic.)

the weight of this presses down on my heart so hard that it’s like an energy there is being compressed and focused. all things appear in great clarity. the urgency, the need to put pen to paper and hands to instrument is almost overwhelming at moments.

certainly, there is the temptation to feel guilty, but at it’s core this is not a situation of rejoicing at the losses of others–far from it, in fact. art exists beyond all reason as a struggling, defiant expression of all that is real and true but unrepresented in circumstances. i write songs because my body’s motions everyday outline a universe to which i belong only secondarily. my left hand receives wages for the work it does. my right hand writes a lyric about the absurdity and emptiness of currency itself.

and this is beautiful. i find it breathtaking.

so, new record in 2009? yes.

what else are we going to do with all the new songs?

While I am slightly pained to write a relatively unimportant post following Steve’s meaningful post (a preemptive apology, Steve), I would like to speak to the grueling touring life of this band.

Last weekend we traveled to Connecticut, NYC, and Philadelphia and while enjoying very difficult sleeping and off-duty accommodations (thanks for sharing your wonderful home as always, Mr. and Mrs. Gretz), I decided that we should have a Good Night, States typing test.  Why?  Well, because the last time I took a typing test was in high school, and Steve types with only one hand (but shockingly fast), so I wanted to see how well he would fare in a heated battle.  A quick Google search for “typing test” yielded www.typingtest.com as the first result, and after all parties warmed up with “Zebra - Africa’s Striped Horse”, we then began the actual competition with “The Enchanted Typewriter”.  The results are all from memory, and may or may not have been blurred with the passing of time…

Megan - 200 wpm
Dan - 86 wpm
Steve (one-handed)/Joe/Trevor - couldn’t break the 60 wpm mark.  Feel free to dispute, gents.

The winner:  Megan!

Also, Joe invented a game called “Be The First To Pick Your Opponent Off The Ground”, which is a refreshing change - imagine if you had to pick your opponent up instead of tackling them down in football or pinning them down in wrestling.  If you ask me, football and wrestling are obviously for girls (typing, too!) because gravity is helping you.  BTFTPYOOTG is obviously a greater test of strength.

The winner:  Dan!

We also played a surprising amount of Fluxx this tour.  Really, it’s just not that fun of a game, but helps to pass the time.

The winner:  Trevor once! and Dan once!

I also think I took Joe at a single game of backgammon.

The winner:  Dan!

Um, and I think Steve’s brother Jeff was playing a lot of World of Warcraft while we were there.

The winner:  reality!

Also, at our friend Kristen’s house, she had a Nintendo 64, but we sadly did not partake.

The winner:  eating lunch!

Somehow, in the midst of this gaming frenzy we also were a part of three amazing shows.  I’m sure we’ll tell you about that soon.

The winner:  everyone who saw us play!

dear reader,

good morning, and welcome to the first day of 2009 as history will remember it. in the near future, the past 19 days will likely be relegated to phrases like “amidst a worsening financial crisis,” and the bitter cold that so recently swept the majority of our country isn’t even going to get that much attention.

by the time i’ve finished this post, we will probably be only a few minutes away from the first words of a greatly, enthusiastically anticipated president’s inaugural address. this is a man riding an incredible wave of centrist popular sentiment, like a more global, liberal ronald reagan, swearing on lincoln’s bible and reaching hard for the heights of fdr’s historical acclaim.

but despite his every effort to enter the white house in a great cloud of history, the forty-fourth president de los estados unidos represents to the world one thing: change. america is anticipating newness. i, in a rare moment of non-isolation and waning misanthropy, am waiting for it, too, standing in my heart on the mall as one of millions. if someone, chosen as a celestial juror for his or her ignorance of irrelevant detail, looks on objectively and perceives a slight difference in my attitude, it is perhaps the eagerness rather than fear with which i expect the annihilation of the known, and the person to whom my expectation is directed.

change, as i have written before and will write again, is the principal in a great mission. it sweeps aside–abstracts out–inconsequentials too beloved and incidentals too familiar. the new details of existence it brings are despicable by design, and the lesson is clear: despise the particulars, the incidentals; or, if you must love them, do it for their absolute dispensability and for the sake of the rock these receding sands uncover.

i cannot match the power of james a. garfield’s expression at his inauguration: “we may hasten or we may retard, but we can not prevent, the final reconciliation. is it not possible for us now to make a truce with time by anticipating and accepting its inevitable verdict?”

happy 2009, good reader; happy truce.