The Weekend

I should have known how it would go from the beginning. I have this gut feeling, you know? I just I knew it would turn out a bit sour.

Well, I don't have much time so here's the short version:

It began with a post on that goddamn myspace; you know the one. Anyways, a band from Minneapolis posted about needing a drummer. I happened to like this particular band very much, so I sent them a reply saying I'd be interested in the gig. I guess I got this crazy idea cooked up in my head that I could move back to Minnesota and play in this band and it would be a good time. Well, lest to say, the wrote back. They invited me up, in a manner of saying, and what else could I do but accept? So I did, only the thing is, I only told a select few people about it. I didn't want the whole goddamn state knowing I was coming up to try out for this gig in some ghost of a chance I might get it and once again become a citizen of the northern state. Well, things went to shambles from the beginning, but in such an array of different variables.
1.) On the car ride up the first day I have a very long, very gut-wrenching conversation with a former Someone whom things never seemed to go quite right with in one way or other. (I realize that that sentence was riddled with ambiguity but I need to respect the other person's privacy, though I do feel it is a relevant occurance on this recent adventure.)
2.) First session with the band: knowing only two songs from their page I played them both accompanied by a bass and two vocalists. No guitars, no sax; but at least there were hi-hats (I'll explain this later.) The whole thing lasted about fifteen minutes after I had spent nearly forty-five trying to find the goddamn practice space in the middle of the city.
3.) The hidden message: The whole time I am up here it is seemingly for a visit, but as I stated before I wanted to keep my alternative agenda hidden for the time being, both for fear of it blowing up in my face and so a certain person need not know about it until the time were appropriate. My former bandmate of the old band has been wanting me to move back up since I left and start another thing with him. I just can't do it. Not for that. Not that alone. I don't care about being signed or any of that other bullshit. If it happens, cool, if not, who cares? I just want to play some damn fine music, you know? My friend has opposing opinions. Actually, I won't elaborate any further, this is a tale for another time. It goes way, way back.
4.) Ten inches of snow everywhere. Need I say more? It was 68 degrees when I left Joplin.
...ten.
5.)Session two with the band: This time, bass, guitar, and two singers; almost everybody. But... just as we were about to start the old drummer came in and confiscated his hi-hats. Apparently they weren't his and he needed to return them. Talk about fucking timing. Anyways, the vocalists left the guitar and bass and I played what we could with what we could. Doo wop is impossible without hi-hats. I know this now.
6.) The old bandmate finds out about the whole deal. Yup, now the cat's out of the bag and he probably thinks I am a backstabbing sonofabitch. Well, so be it, I guess. Sometimes you have to go for your own, you know?

There were some damn good things about the trip though too. My dear friend Nick and I had drinks and talk about time, space, and the philosophy of transportation, as well as the lady bartender at Book'Emsm ay yi yi. I played with the little man Carter, who is wild and I feel will take to drumming quite well when he's old enough. The kid hits everything, its awsome. He's a little over a year old, by the way, and my friends son. I finally got to hang out with my cuz. You know, I live up there for a whole fuckin year and see him once but I come up for a weekend and stay at his house twice and find out he can play the goddamn piano like a madman as well as the guitar. Damn those really talented types. They make me feel like an insufficient fool. I didn't get to see everyone, but most of the ones that I really wanted to see. I literally slept in a different city every night. Now I am tired and I have to shower then sleep to wake up to hard, laborous tasks bright and early tomorrow.

I am sorry this could not be more elaborate and detailed. I have a problem with stories, as you might be able to see.

-Charlie

To Find Words, Is To Find You, Is To Find Myself.

In my attempt
To conjure some words here and now,
It feels as if some beast,
Drinking by the riverside
Dismisses my grasp and want
Of submission.

I let leave the beast,
Let leave those words I need,
And walk onward towards
The never-ending horizon before me.
Distances covered,
Sunset settled to sleep
Beneath the soft clatter of my feet.
Stars break above me in the blackness,
And for a moment I feel them pressing down
As if in one swift strike
They should burn away my being.
But I further on,
In the primal dust of shear nothingness.
Forever searching for the words
I once remembered falling all over me
Like sprinklets, specs, and pieces
Of grass and water and sunshine.

Discovering a man upon himself,
That is to say, upon the bit of land he long stands upon,
Finding nothing before, beyond, or behind him,
Is to discover innocence evaporated.

From this land I now acquire,
Bereft of simple pleasure's aspire
I find no way to mimic lines
Without my doing them in the living day.
If we are those that spend
The currency of life in such a way
As to redeem a story or a thing to say
Then let us burn on with this fire
Or leave it alone for another's desire.

What Does?

While the rest of the world was sleeping I was awake, riding the rings of Saturn at 45,ooo miles per hour, but the cold winter wind blew hard against my cheek and I was roused from even that delightful flight. So I got around... chugged some coffee, chewed some mints, breathed a cigarette and walk about the place in all its dull and lifeless presence. Spent the whole day doing so, too. Spent it riding on blue carts instead of white particles of ice chips, snowballs, and bonsai glaciers. Then the day was done, my freedom won, and the car started, puttering me away into the three-o-clock streets again.

Everyone is moving always. Everyone is staying always, too. Thirsting for a drop of knowledge, we all are, and ever thirsting for whats next, whats new, whats just around the bend. What is just around the bend, anyhow?

I think it began somewhere back in 1999 when I was young and things were easy and music was the new territory to explore and employ myself about. Take me back to that day and take away my sticks and see what I should have been composed of by now, I wonder. Is that a regret? I think not. I think it's a curiosity of sorts. I don't mind that I picked up the sticks and made nine years of it. But what if I hadn't? Ah ha! It's a "what if," that's what it is. Well then... What if I had been born in the time of Alexandria? Would I sit with Archemedes and study the stars? Would I fight in the great army of Alexander's and conquer new and different places? I can tell you this much: were I born back then I would have been nothing special, nothing noted, nothing of importance of my time. Just another backdrop. Just another extra in the hindsight of time.

It's not that I want to depreciate my value. It's simply that I know I would not have stood out. Very few really did. Those were the days of Gods; gods for everything. The few that stood out were those that dismissed the notion that the sun is a god, that the earth is the center, that the stars are holes in the great black blanket of night.

It is too hard for me to judge my worth in this time. I am too young to know what I will amount to. Most of us figure that if it hasn't happened by now it won't, but its simply not true. There is always time. Just a little is all that's needed. A few moments to change to course of history.

And then there is me, sitting here in my empty house, thinking about a hundred things at once with no connection or purpose. Furthermore writing them for the empty massed like you to read.

You few little spies, you few little curious cats. What do you do tonight? Take a peak at my words and say, "that boy is simply absurd." Well, fine then, cheeky monkies. It never makes sense, I never make sense. What does?