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.

dear reader,

are you enjoying the fall air? our apartment is actually quite cold, since september is not the time for heat, and that’s made it an excellent week for hot food.

the weather and temperature have not conferred any special advantage, however, on my songwriting this week. the clear evenings and slow mornings seem promising, often, but i forget quickly how much timing (and precise timing, at that) is of the essence.

generally, things go something like this: inspiration strikes and i write some good songs, effortlessly; then, excited by the new material, i decide to write some more songs; lastly, with much effort and not much success, i give up on writing ’til the inspiration strikes again, and come away with a newly-minted resolution to respect the visitation of that inspiration.

(if i were a literary device, i would certainly be that of the untrustworthy narrator. how do i lose something that i’ve lost and subsequently found so many times prior? on one hand, such a propensity to weakness is something i strive against as i struggle to build continuity of consciousness that i do not feel as a fragmented person in a fragmented world. on the other, each new day brings its newness as strongly as it brings its misremembering. perhaps i should be thankful.)

inspiration: the unseen movement of an unknown, shorthand for what is probably a long list of misunderstood phenomena. all i can say is that it is fleeting.

“boldness has genius in it” comes to mind–perhaps on the subject of an impetus to strike while the proverbial iron is hot?–not only because of its content, but because its widely-attributed author, goethe, didn’t say it. some scottish guy, in a work published 1951, included the famous “translation” with some of his own writings on a similar subject. i suppose it’s possible that he deliberately fabricated the line, but i’d like to think its much more likely that he simply misremembered.

yes, fleeting: both inspiration and memory. maybe there’s only room in us for one.

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,

hopefully you have heard or will soon hear our new single, “the odd and the even.” we’re pretty happy with it. i’ve been mixing it on and off for a couple weeks, and as always the last few days have been a non-stop push.

but far from resting in the traditional sense, good night states is going to spend this weekend songwriting. dan, trevor and megan are going to work half days today and drive out to nj, where we’ll spend halloween playing music together.

i hope the weekend will be refreshing, if not physically relaxing, and we may even take some time out saturday night to support my father in a concert of no small notoriety (at least locally). i’m pretty excited about this, for many reasons: my parents are so, so supportive of us, and of course my dad has played a large role in my life-long love for and involvement in music; the album that maranatha made in 1971, soon, is something i just couldn’t be more fascinated by, though i think i’ve only listened to it four or five times. it’s just so… real. check it out:

anyway. i’ve got, as usual, a lot to say, about life, music, the truth, and of course politics, but i’ve also got a lot to do today and blogging is only one item on my list regardless of how many or how few topics i tackle in this post.

for now, be not so fearful of this tumultuous time; the panic of 2008 will surely pass (as did the panics of 1857, 1873, 1893, 1907, and 1929–am i forgetting any?), but our ability and obligation as people to choose the right and good never will.

enjoy some candy corn, some “the odd and the even,” and, if you find yourselves in north jersey tomorrow, perhaps some maranatha.

dear reader,

i don’t have time for a proper post, but it’s been a long, long time since i’ve uttered a peep here. this weekend was both a high for me (we were writing a new song that’s coming along beautifully) and a low for us [we talked a lot about this whole conundrum of being an independent band, critical mass (not the bike thing), and what we’re doing right and wrong].

the end of the discussion never came, and i’m sure it will not come for quite a while yet.

chances are that if you read this blog at all, you’re already someone who’s helping to spread the word about us, but i’ll say it anyway: please share us with your friends. it would mean a lot to us. send them a link to this site, invite them to the show, or e-mail them one of the mp3s you’ve downloaded here.

if you’ve been to a show lately, i’d really like to know what it was like for you. e-mail me, or comment on the blog.

normally, this is where i start talking about the either the weather, something totally metaphysical, or politics, but i really have to sleep. a lot. having worn my les paul for about 10 hours yesterday, i am now the proud owner of a shoulder in pain. man, am i gonna be ready for our “behind the music.”

and to all a good night.