“It’s been a crazy couple weeks of hodgepodge. I met with the local wastewater engineer & permitting czar, whose informative chats have left me breathless but whose regulations I think I’m beginning to understand, as much as a lay person can. I’ve negotiated timelines and sonic details with my mastering engineer in Budapest, finalizing months of work, while balancing fussy, entitled roses on the back of my tailgate, and digging numerous holes for them. Today I take a break, because it’s raining, and let my hair down with the paint department guy at Home Depot. I call this type of episode: “exploring the matrix”. I confess to him my option anxiety, at trying to choose the proper paint brush. He turns out to be an amazing ally, in an otherwise hostile environment. Ongoing, I try to eat well, not wallow in any of my deeper level trauma, and keep my house clean and organized. Meanwhile, the yard is rapidly turning into a woodland grassland. My batteries are charged; my weed trimmers, at the ready but the rain keeps coming. My goal is to gracefully navigate all these problems, and revel in stolen moments of fun. We’re all under the gun. Whose gun it is, I couldn’t tell you. If you knew the length and breadth of the research I engage in, trying to understand who runs the world, it would exhaust your cranial lobe. Way more gratifying it is, to put metal matters aside, and be an ordinary, dedicated, manual laborer, using hands, eyes, ears to express the eternal revelations of the heart. Humans prefer some measure of routine, and being grounded in what makes sense without controversy, at the most basic levels. A reliable cup of coffee in the morning. A random smile, familiar face, or kind word, popping up around the corner of the grocery store isle. Conversations with chickadees, in which both parties whistle the same tune beneath the pink blossoms of an apple tree, or a chalkboard rainbow drawn by a grand child, viewed upon exiting the woodshed. What is more special than the arrival of co-workers, who feel happy as they jump in to the chaos of what you’re envisioning. Tiny text messages, that say “I’m here”, or “did you get the manure” mean a lot. Picking up the right tool, to do a job, is something I take pride in. Whether its the completion of albums, or correcting the feng shui of a landscape, I’m grateful for my own usefulness. It’s about all I have at this point, but I’m not downplaying it. A person who doesn’t feel useful, is depressed. If we get to laugh long and hard, that is the supreme bonus of being alive. May we all be so lucky.”
