dear reader,

technically, obversity is not a word. what are your thanksgiving plans? do they involve football? (mine do, actually. believe it or not.)

thankfulness is one of those things that 1) i only notice when i really don’t have it and 2) i really need when i really don’t want it. i am stopping deliberately this morning to be very, very thankful, because i believe it’s right; but as is always the case, when i decide to be thankful i realize how truly good my life is. i’m not going to talk now about the specific circumstances for which i might be thankful or thankless these days, but i am going to share a bit of a new song.

i’ve talked, or typed, long-windedly here about my fetishization (also not a word!) of change–i want it, i need it in all forms, i never want it to stop. since there is now a whole lot o’ french spoken here and i am not particularly enamored of french, it’s been very helpful to cast the torrent of new words, phrases and wanton genderization (technically a word, but only if you are a linguist) in my brain as change. it’s new. i can express certain things, albeit just a few at this point, differently than i could before. in some cases, the francophonic (say it with me… not a word) lens lets in a little more light.

change! cultural mash-up! bilingualism! it’s fantastic, isn’t it?

except that for most of history, learning a new language is something one did most often because he or she was far from home, and probably didn’t get there happily. i submit a sad page from early american history involving some of that kind of relocation [say “‘cadien” with a fake french accent (unless you have a real one handy), and you’ll have a big clue].

from the chorus of a new song:

i’m gonna flow down south
and learn that prairie french
make some cajun friends
in the country’s mouth
so long a derangement
they’ll never find me out
when i write it down
in my new language

if my longing for change, newness, is so acute that i can desire true dislocation, as it were, then frankly i am missing something. to value what i have so little is truly thankless, and that’s the obverse: it’s my bizarre, slightly unstable propensity for launching the escape hatch into black space that feeds back somehow into an understanding that i must be really blessed.

ps: i am thankful for my family, my musical family, my job and my cats. i’m thankful for our apartment. i think i’m thankful for french. i am not thankful for nancy pelosi, but i am working on it.

pps: happy thanksgiving.

This weekend, we made two fabulous appearances in Pittsburgh, Pa.  On Friday night, we played at Howler’s Coyote Cafe, where a fantastic night was enjoyed by all, thanks to Paul Luc, Delicious Pastries, Jo (Howler’s booking manager), and a great array of friends and fans taking in the evening.  Perhaps someone else would like to elaborate on the show, because I’d like to call your attention to something else.

Last summer, our friend-but-we-didn’t-know-him-at-the-time-of-writing Drew Cucuzza, wrote a  article in Pittsburgh Dish about GN,S.  He said ““A gorgeous, melodic album with songs that immediately draw you in; a kind of “just right” sound-production that most bands go their whole career without achieving… What they sound like is Good Night, States and they deserve to have other bands compared to them.”  To be honest, I want to cry when I read those words, because that’s what we’re trying to do here.

Well, on Saturday morning, our friend Jeff Baron (thanks, Jeff!) hosted us at the Saturday Light Brigade for a live acoustic on-air set.  Hopefully an audio version and pics/video will be coming to you soon.   Our host, Larry Berger, was a joy to speak to and be interviewed by.  At one point in the conversation, he paused, and tried to explain who he thought we sounded like…and he was stumped (in a good way).  He said that Good Night, States sounded like Good Night, States and that was the highest compliment an artist could hope to have.

It’s true, Larry - it’s a high compliment, and we appreciate it.  Thank you for having us, and thank you for listening.

Friends, we’re gearing up to make more songs that sound like Good Night, States.  Songs of hope in the midst of fear, joy in the midst of despair, and change-for-the-good in the midst of change-for-what-seems-like-bad.  Hope you’ll join us for the ride.

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?

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.