Challah

            I went over to my lady friends house. I got there a little early. She wasn’t home from work yet. I was parked in front of her house listening to the radio when I noticed and older orthodox Jew with a long gray beard and a black hat staring at me. There was a heavyset woman in a black dress standing next to him. She was staring at me as well. I turned my attention away from them and went back to listening to the radio.  When I looked over again they were still standing stiff looking at me, like a cat stands stiff before they attack. Just then my lady friend pulled up and parked behind me. I got out of my car to greet her. She was getting out of her car when the old man rushed at us. He kind of corralled us.

            “Are any of you Jewish?” he asked excitedly.

            “I’m Jewish but he’s not,” my girl said.

            The old man turned his attention to me. “My daughter tripped over the light and it’s the Sabbath, can you help me?” the man said in a voice that sounded like Woody Allen mocking a Jew. “You want trousers? We have trousers!”  

            “Sure,” I said

            “Oh, thank you, I’ll give you some fresh challah in exchange.”

            I wasn’t sure what challah was but I followed him into his house anyway.

            The old man led the way. It was a very nice house. We walked through the kitchen toward the backyard where we came upon twenty people sitting at a long table. They looked at me with some interest. The old man pointed at an extension cord that had been unplugged. Apparently the man’s daughter had tripped over it. I crouched down and took the extension cord in my hand and plugged it back in, nothing to it. The lights came back on. The crowd cheered. I took a bow.

            “Don’t forget your challah,” the man said as I walked past the kitchen. 

Songs

      I went over to Martin’s today to work on Dust Covered Man. It’s slow going but I’m happy with what we have so far. Today I added background vocals to the tail end of the song. I want to add tambourine and start mixing so that I can have it mastered and start work on another song. 
      I’ve been writing songs one after another of late. I’ve written more songs in the last year than I have in the previous ten. I’m falling behind with recording them. The newest song is always the most interesting song. If I lose interest while writing a song, I’ll scrap it. What’s the sense of writing songs you don’t like?   

Dawn

I woke up at five in the morning and went for a walk. I couldn’t sleep so I decided to do some research for the ending of my first book. It ends with a man standing on a hill watching the sunrise. I did that this morning. It took a little longer for the sun to come up than I remembered, but I think the walk was useful.

            It’s strange to see people moving about at that time of morning. I saw a couple of dog walkers and a lady who backed her car out of her garage and took off in a hurry. That struck me as odd. 
            It’s the perfect time of day to be alone. It’s fresh and new. I heard the mockingbirds sing with first light. It was inspiring. A much needed change in the routine. Try it sometime, it works wonders.

Mariachi Plaza

I took a train to Mariachi Plaza and had dinner with a woman who knew Jack Kerouac. Jack had slept on her and her husband Bob’s couch for a month back in the day. 

One day Jack came into the room and asked the woman for a blow-job. The woman said no on account of her being married, and guilt and all.

            “Oh, that’s okay,” Jack said. “I’d prefer Bob to do it anyway.”

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs is dead. I’d like to thank him for thinking about the artist. As a musician and writer he has improved my life considerably. He included free musical software with each Apple computer and single handily destroyed the antiquated business practices of record companies with the advent of iTunes.

            When I worked as an assistant editor for television commercials, no assistant wanted to work on the Apple jobs that came in because of Steve. He asked for things that nobody wanted to give him. He was demanding and pushed the technology as far as it would go. He insisted that we use Final Cut Pro to edit his commercials and in turn we assistants told Apple about the software's deficiencies. Apple made improvements and Final Cut became what it is today.

            Thanks Steve. Thanks for thinking about the artist. Thanks for understanding that an art driven society is a society that is always growing, always creating, not stagnant, but

dreaming about the world and a better future.  

Dialysis

It was my job to take my dying cousin to dialysis today but for some reason I had trouble remembering it. You’d think with something so important it would be easy to remember, but it wasn’t. I’m starting to wonder if I have feelings, or if I’m being affected by one of those brain diseases. I kept telling myself don’t let him die on your watch, but it didn’t seem to help. I asked a lady friend to remind me to take my cousin to dialysis, she just looked at me in disbelief.

“Are you serious?”

“For some reason it keeps slipping my mind.”

“He could die if he doesn’t go.”

“I know.”

I got him there. I showed up to his house early, as I’m prone to do. He didn’t look so good, but oddly he looked worse when I went back to pick him up. He was weak. It looked like he had the life sucked out of him and in some strange way he had.

Festival

I went to the Eagle Rock Music Festival yesterday. I found myself smiling and laughing a lot. Music has that effect on me. The lead singers had me going the most. They were great. They had personality, no false pretense. They were pure of heart and I appreciated their honesty.

            It was interesting to walk from stage to stage. The crowd was diverse. The age range was from minus one to a thousand. 
            At one point the crowd was biggest near the DJ stage. Live music was taking a beating, but at the end of the night live music had made a come back and reigned supreme. I was happy it turned out that way. Live music is much more interesting to me. It's instant talent and pretty amazing when you think about it. But then again, so is the binary world of digital.