Last night I drove to Jeremiah’s house to smoke a therapeutic bowl after he’d put his kid to bed. At first I felt like a nuisance, but then the two of us sat down at the kitchen table & had a nice, quiet conversation. Seems like I learned more about him & what his life is like in an hour than I have in the past year that we’ve been friends. We talkt about Cat Power, of course; he’d introduced us to her album What Would the Community Think? earlier this year, his friend Asher likewise having introduced him the year prior. We talkt about how his mom’s going deaf; it happend in like a week’s time, according to him. “It might just be a game, I don’t know,” he said. “Especially in the mornings while getting ready, ‘Whas the playun? Hanh??’ almost shouting. It’s weird.” He told me about his routine vomiting from a stomach disorder. He described how at a certain point in the cycle the sides of his stomach touch, then it gives way & the floodgates open up. “I’m an expert on it. It sucks.” Then we talkt about scales & the math of music. He’s learned everything he knows from tabs, which is the opposite end of the learning spectrum, kinda (from where I am with my present “formal” education). It’s made him think of the frets as simply a system of numbers that for some reason he can’t crack in the way that he wants. I tell him that the tabulature system is just derived from whatever the strings are tuned to, and the real math in music is in the intervals between notes, whether in melody or harmony. He’s already pretty damn good for a completely self-taught player, but once he gets that concept down he’ll be able to do some crazy shit.
Lo & behold, I come home & talk tornadoes on AIM with May—whom we also met thru Jeremiah, as a matter of fact. She & he started a poetic romance via LiveJournal earlier this year. They bonded especially due to both having a child under the age of two, as well as both having somewhat recently lost a close friend to suicide. She lives in Mexicali, in the Hi Desert north of San Bernardino. Her actual name is Maybellene, like the Chuck Berry song. Jerry thought he might be in love. Flew her out to Tennessee in July; she’d never been east of the mountains. It didn’t work out for them but they still remain casual friends, and like I mentiond on 10/19, she helpt us get that show in Albuquerque where her dad lives—even tho that gig fell thru for completely unrelated & retarded reasons that I won’t get into here. [This show 12 oz. Mouse is cracking us the fuck up right now. So bizarre & crudely drawn, it’s like the cartoons we use to pass each other in history class. The character “Golden Joe”—a green blob with big ears & mouth & gold tooth with dollar $ign, voice exaggerated by reverb—I’m crying. “What do you know about tanks?” “They are big as HEYUL!” (reverb-erb-erb…) & yep, even a clueless stoner cop, shaped like a blue peanut.]
And today, I skipt Lit & Aural Skillz to drive south to renew my tags. Two years I’ve had my 1992 Toyota Camry—with its manual gear, white with black trim & navy blue interior (ooh-la-la). Stopt in Cool Springs to deposit some checks, and went into Barnes & Noble to use the restroom. On a whim I checkt the CDs for Cat Power & there she was, the only two discs of hers they had were ones I didn’t have yet: You Are Free and Speaking for Trees, which is the film of her singing & playing guitar outside somewhere in upstate NY. It’s quite enjoyable to pop in & watch, like a private concert. She repeats most songs tho, which kinda sucks & kinda doesn’t. You Are Free is alright—some of the songs are lame. I know she can write better lyrics than “Free.” I guess it’s like a transition album; I have a feeling The Greatest will be way better.