proteanme

Posted some old photos of me, mostly young butch, even with the long hair I think. It was 1972 and all the cool guys I knew had long hair. I wanted to be a cool guy.

Gosh, I’m feeling kinda melancholy today. It’s not something dramatic. It’s not something I’m trying to ward off either. It just is what it is. Lots of little things and nothing big really, although I feel I’ve had some big revelations lately. The funny thing is big revelations don’t always lead to big changes or big action, especially when it’s about mostly understanding who I am in the world. If I had to try and say it better, I’d say things change your life, but that doesn’t mean your life changes. I guess I’ve also had some big longings lately that are just longings, at least for the time being . The “just” in there is not meant to minimize their intensity, but to say I can’t make anything solid come of them, anything more solid than lots and lots of words. Frankly, I’m amazed at the amount of words I got inside me. Sometimes when people say what’s going on, I wanna say nothing much except everything, but that sounds kinda corny.

Good lord, am I so easy that I’ll give it up for some strings and a little trumpet?  I am talking music here, in case I’m giving anybody the wrong idea.

That’s right I’ve been dating. The more I date the more specific I get about what I’m looking for, which is frustrating because in general I’m just not finding it, except for this one girl (“girl” being her word) and I can’t really tell what’s gonna happen there. I know I want someone who’s got some details about ’em that I can dive into. And I mean authentic details, not the kind that just get performed. Not that performance isn’t fun, it’s just there’s gotta be something going on underneath it. Obviously, I like my women willful, a little larger than life, sensitive, smart and quirky. And hot, of course. And now I’m thinking gimme some imagination too, but temper down that self-involvement with a little humility and still be ambitious about making being alive special.

I’ve been thinking about this music mix that this girl I like made for me, and it’s perfect in that it grabs my attention and pushes at me, but it’s not so greedy that I can’t get caught up in these kinda heartbreaking details, a cello coming in, a note extending just a little bit longer that I thought it could stretch, a piano line that builds on itself then fades. I think that’s what I’m looking for in a date.

I had this fantasy I was gonna turn myself out as a stud. Date and fool around. But without the right details I can’t quite get it up, so to speak. The last cutie who showed me any detail was working the check out at New Seasons on one of those foxy lady shopping days, and she noted how I put the heavy stuff first and then reminded the bagger to take notice and divide the heavy stuff up between sacks. It was almost kinda hot.

I’ve been writing a butt load lately, and depending on who you are are that could be alot (which can be awfully nice) or maybe not so much. Maybe that was a bad stab at humor. Anyway I’m experimenting with some prose here. Trying to figure out how to use landscape to evoke longing and disappointment about love.

Baby let’s not end up like one of those busted down motels out on North Lamar, a couple low slung barracks facing each other, with the curtains drawn and the doors shut, all hollowed out on the inside and chipped and peeling on the front. A guy showed up once carrying around his amity in a couple plastic bags he fished out of the trash and I couldn’t stop thinking about what happens when the bottom falls out. We’re fooling ourselves if we think we’ve rigged up something better. Cause you can leave the TV on all day and all night, and you’re still going to pass her on the cross walk. She’ll say hello like it’s the nicest thing anyone has said to you all day, and then when she asks you for dollar, like you’re her best friend, it’s gonna break your heart.

There are certain parts of songs – a piano line, the beginning of a chorus, a little bitty guitar solo – that feel like my girl’s running her fingers through my hair, all absent minded, but I’m leaning in anyway to what feels so tender.

Except for personal projects, self-expression has no place in design, but constraint is vital to design. No component fuels creativity more than constraint.

I went to a fundraiser/show last night called a Naughty Little Cabaret. It was a spectacle, but likely not the kind they were hoping for. There was a youngish drag queen, very energetic and kinda hot. At one point she was down on all fours, doing this sexy do me from behind thing. Looked promising. But when she got up she somehow (and I missed the transition) she ended up kicking her legs around alot in what looked like a river dance gone awry. After that I had about 5 minutes of missing all the great drag queens I saw at Bullwinkles as a young butch in the 80’s . There was this one in particular, Vicky Lane, that we got to watch start from scratch and then become the “it” queen. She was so hot; everybody had a crush on her. She did a number once with this 6 foot boa constrictor. Yeah, it was MTV, and it sounds trite now, but MTV was new then.

Back from Austin. Whew. It kinda feels like I dreamed the whole thing up.

I’ve got a new song in rotation: Challengers from the last New Pornographer’s record.

In taking a stance for freedom of speech online, I’ve added some sex blogs to my blogroll. Enjoy or not.

And for Peggy, here’s one for the new book. Check her out for yourself.

I’m at SXSW interactive, which I’m not all that interested in blogging about except to say it’s not really all that cool, or actually it’s not as cool as I thought it would be. Although I am convinced that it would be much cooler if Amos still lived in Austin.

I do have a SXSW hook to make a tangential jump to another kinda fragmented rumination post. I’m staying with my friend Christopher, who I’m happy to reconnect with after on and off contact over the last 10 years. He lives about 6 miles away from all the action, so this morning I took the bus downtown but did not really nail down the directions to walk to the stop and from the stop to the convention center. Predictably, I got turned around. I got turned around twice to be exact and arrived about a half hour later than I’d hoped. Once I finally sat down in the small hall where I attended my first session this idea lodged in my brain -“how long can I to go in the wrong direction before I turn around.”

I think I’ve learned or am learning that I can’t think hard enough or close my eyes tight enough to turn north into south. Right as I typed that I thought to myself, god, north to south feels so loaded, in contrast to east to west which just feels so big. Almost too big. But I feel like these days I’m trying to figure out the degrees of things. And degrees matter. Certainly one can get lost, maybe waylaid, just by starting out a few degrees off and then marching on anyway. And the offness multiplies. And thinking about all that offness I’m so tempted to segue into these life and death scenarios played out in the northwest wilderness when a hiker miscalculates sunset or a backpacker loses the trail. But I’d like to turn down the volume on that kind of tragedy, which my mind seems almost tweaked to track.

Things don’t always have be tragic and maybe lost is not the right word. Maybe it’s just you don’t end up where you thought you would. And that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Christopher took a wrong turn last night on our way to the Salt Lick, and we had a beautiful 20 mile drive out to where the sun was setting in the start of hill country. I had forgotten what it is like to see for that many miles.

All this may be my attempt at a round about way of saying lately I’ve been thinking there are places, or really just one place, where I’d like to end up but I’m not sure how to get there. I mean I think that’s what I’m trying to say here, although it feels less straight forward, so I don’t wanna say it without adding some poetry to it. I keep thinking about life being short, not in a fatalistic way, but just that life is short and like M Ward says and, “my heart is always on the line, I’ve traveled all kinds of places.“

This will be pretty fragmented, but I’ve been thinking a lot about the stories we tell about ourselves,  the narratives we construct to make sense of ourselves to ourselves, and how careful one has to be to not to get jammed up by blowing the dark ones out of proportion so we can’t redeem ourselves, or the stretching out the good ones into these grand myths where we don’t need redemption.  You don’t really  wanna buy into the hype either way, ya know.  In fact, sometimes you just wanna look at why your even telling this one story, over and over.