school

I imagine that in hell there is much more human story. Perhaps in going there you could learn a bit more about things. Maybe you could win your way out. But then would you want to leave?

I tend to take my time, and also take myself too seriously, and have slept on concrete and in a car respectively for the past two nights. Tonight it is back to California and to bed. This morning I woke up in the unofficial city of bicycles and thieves, and I walked where we used to hide with the spoils from the police. The night before I ate with the new wolves that have taken our place. They’ve done wonderful things with the lives we unknowingly passed on to them. At the venue we played the good parts of our songs that we normally skip at big shows and parties, the crowd was small and attentive. Outside an unrelated shirtless yelling match broke out between a very large man and a very large woman, and then we went to Jan’s for tea and breakfast.

June parked the car at a grocery store—our friend who had offered us his home had fallen asleep—and we reclined and opened the windows. My sleep was short and fruitless, so I walked around the adjacent neighborhood listening to Giant and imagining my own melodies. It’s impossible to describe the pride that is felt when people we know make truly good music, all on their own, and in their own way. We spend so much time fretting over our own work and our own lives that a week like this one really crashes into an unsuspecting blind side. And everyone from North Carolina has a peculiar kind of identification with the place and the people there that to others must look like chauvinism, but honestly we are just used to looking out for one another, and aren’t spoiled by the kind of saturation of fame that turns a thing into industry. Permit me this, it’s been a good week. We knew all along that we represent North Carolina. Now we know that North Carolina represents us.

A walk in Greensboro is the beginning of a good idea. In the air there, contrivances vanish. For me, there is also a chorus of ghosts, but I am not troubled by that past at all.