Let's Do Lunch

What have I been doing you may ask? I’ve been recording My Blood, the cowboy tune. It’s a departure from my other songs. I plan on adding drums either this week or next. I have a drummer lined up who’s trying to improve his reel as they say in the business. All I have to do is take him to lunch. Talk about working on the cheap, unless of course he insists on steak. I’m going with my gut on this one. I haven’t even heard him play. It will be interesting, that’s for sure.
I'm also working on a short story. I have a book of them if you're interested. Po-po Mulato. Click on the icon. 

Twenty Nine Palms

I asked for a little cash and I landed a job with my friend Bill. Bill restores old American cars and I’ve been helping him around his shop. I need to make a little cash to improve my artistic operation. I can use a new computer and some monitors for my studio, some musical software, a new microphone, and to pay for my sessions. 

            Yesterday I drove out to Twenty Nine Palms to pick up a couple of fenders for a 1972 Pontiac Grand Prix. It’s a nice car. It only has seventy thousand original miles on it. I want to buy it for myself.

I found  the junkyard all right, but when it came time to load the fenders into my car I ran into a problem. Mainly my problem was Frank, the owner of the junkyard telling me it couldn’t be done, that the fenders wouldn’t fit in my car.

            “I’ve seen this before,” he said to me.

            It’s a strange feeling when you’re trying to make the impossible work, and somebody’s telling you it’s impossible. I felt like a crazy man for trying. 

            Frank got a phone call and left me alone for a moment. I got one fender in. The fenders were huge, and somehow my mind figured out a way to get the other fender in. When Frank came back out he was astonished.

            “You got them in? I can’t believe it! Those fenders are the largest fenders GM ever manufactured,” he looked at me in disbelief, "How'd you do it?"

“I’m a packing genius.”

            

The H

I’m out of focus today. I’m not sure what to work on, music or the short story? What’s the next move? It’s not like I have a lifetime to get things done.

The H on my keyboard is malfunctioning. I have to hit it real hard for it to work. It’s amazing how many H’s you use in a sentence. It’s a real pain in the ass. I suppose I could try to fix it. I’m afraid of making it worse. As it stands, it still works, and if I start to tinker with it maybe, just maybe, it will stop working altogether. 

I’ve been recording the cowboy song. It sounds pretty good. It's thematic, dramatic, a real humdinger. 

All and all life is pretty good right now. I could use some extra cash, but not to worry about that, I just can’t worry about that.

            

You Want To Be Clean

I just ate the biggest fattest burrito in the world. Carnitas. Not good for the religious folks of the world, but good enough for me. Pigs. Pork bellies. What’s the difference? It all tastes like stew to me.

            To be truthful I don’t eat meat all that often. I can feel it clog up my insides when I do. I try not to be greedy with the meat. I can understand why some people choose not to eat meat at all. My friend Franklin died from colon cancer. He loved the short ribs tips. He’d go crazy for the short ribs. I can’t say for sure that’s what killed him, but he kind of looked blocked around the colon. He had a big round belly and walked with a slow gait. He looked plugged. You don’t want to be plugged. You want to be clean.  

Birthday Love

            I celebrated my birthday on January twenty-first and I’m just now recovering. I tried my hand at keeping up with twenty-one year olds. I lost. It’s not easy to admit, but yes, a pair of twenty-one year olds, women I might add, drank me under the table.

            It must be something in the DNA of the modern drinker that helps them sustain themselves. I felt like crap afterwards. I broke all my rules with regard to mixing as did the young women, but I suffered and they didn’t. I had a good time. It was a fun birthday. Beauty is the beast that can kill your liver.    

My Blood

            I wrote the cowboy song and now I’m recording it. It’s called My Blood. I went into the studio with an acoustic guitar part and words and true to form, I improvised an electric guitar part with a Fender Telecaster played through a Vox guitar amp. There’s a wicked sound to it. It’s kind of spooky in a way. 

            I had the intention of trying to avoid the cliche cowboy sound, but I’ve learned that the cowboy song has a will stronger than my intentions. It just came out and I can’t rightfully reject what the cosmos give me. I suppose I could and I have in the past, but in this instance the part I came up with is unique enough to keep. I’m looking forward to adding some bass and some more guitar parts. It should be a pretty good tune when it’s all said and done. It would be nice if it found a home in a western.   

Flowers In My Mind

I’ve been riding the trains to and fro. I was sitting on a train the other day and I found myself getting a little uptight. Most people who ride the trains in Los Angeles are poor like me. I was looking at the people on the train and for a moment I somehow put myself above them as if I was not one of them. I settled down and told myself I’m here now, try to appreciate the beauty.

            In that instant the faces on the train became more interesting to look at. We're all here for a short time. Some of us have our marching orders and some of us don’t, or at least some of us aren’t paying attention. We’re part of the system. The system is set up so the wealthy can steal without reprisals. The poet in me thinks it’s all silly. Materialism is silly. It can turn good people into the dirty faces of the poor. The same faces that are now flowers in my mind.