So, it turns out that the podcast only shoots out one track at a time, so for those of you subscribed to that thingy, I’m reposting the demo version of ‘Up Into The Blue’ here, since it didn’t make it to your magical downloads.

For those of you who are thinking, what exactly are you speaking of, I will repost here the commentary I made about the song below the track…:

[display_podcast]

Here are a couple of versions of “Up Into The Blue” off of ‘Midnight Door’. The first is the album version, and the second is a rare demo cut.

Up Into The Blue is yet another song where the imagery of my Catholic upraising plays a prominent role… this idea of absolution for our wrongs in an almost whimsical way, of waiting for the holy parade pervades this song. In some sense I feel like this song is about my older brother. We were inseparable growing up, and the last verse of the song especially reflects my strong memories of being best friends, and perhaps the extend rumination at the end of the song is a meditation on the things that have changed since then… not in a bad way, just the pulse of life gets quicker, things get more confusing as you grow up. Obviously this is a fairly emotional song!

I like how the demo gives a version of the song that is a bit more whimsical and a quicker tempo. It is a very different perspective

The first track off my first solo album (1997) is available now over at the page for

One Sung Over

The whole album will be available soon on the site for registered users.

By Bruce Springsteen.

Best rock song ever? Arguably.

This morning the wildfire’s smoke has blown down from the mountains and into our valley here in Nevada City. The sun rose red and wearily I made the coffee and the protein shake and headed out the door.
Stay tuned here this week for a couple of things:
One Sung Over, my very first album, will be available to those of you who register (create a user name, password easy, 5 seconds).
The first video off of ‘Midnight Door’ – “Closure”

Last night I put together a stack of 20 or so packages to send off to various places my music. From Sub-Pop to Filter Magazine. I’m confident that if only people give the album a listen, it will catch people’s ears.

A long weekend, spent some hours watching Shakespeare play (“The Taming Of The Shrew”), some hours working on video for closure, many hours on packages, and other hours on catching up on much needed rest.

Harvesting tomatoes from my garden, making salsa. Life is good when you do that.

Currently reading :
The Shadow of the Wind
By Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Release date: 25 January, 2005

Moonrise 1 2,
originally uploaded by haikuluke.

so last night I went up to the side of a mountain to check out the eclipsed moon rising full. It was a subtle effect, by then the eclipse had mostly passed.

I sat on my tailgate and checked my compass because I couldn’t even tell which way was east, exactly.

It was nice though to run into a fine fellow who was an amateur astronomer, he had a lot of fascinating stuff to say about telescopes, gravity, quantum physics.

Could be on my way to something, could not, you never know.

Change has been prevalent, and yet, as it is with most people, its not fast enough, big enough, rich enough, glamorous.

But I have a new job. Any kind of job at this point is somewhat amazing… and you know, it feels alright. I like to not feel like crying everytime I have to cough up rent. Rent is horrible. Especially in this town. But now I just throw my money away happily. Maybe that isn’t an improvement. But either way, jobs allow that to happen. Yay!

South Yuba River State Park – October – 1,
originally uploaded by haikuluke.

Up late last night, endlessly reading Kafka On The Shore, last book read was ‘no country for old men’ by cormac mccarthy and before that ‘the first horseman’ by john case. well, a strange mix of literature, a strange obsession with reading lately. an escape within an escape i suppose.

On the road out to Bridgeport State Park, only to find the road is closed. No troubles, drove down and past the signs and found a nice spot cropped out looking over the river.

On a sunny day the sound of the distant river moves from one ear to the other without pattern yet hypnotizing.

I spent the afternoon lying on my tailgate, listening, watching, thinking, absorbing the sun, reading, and taking pictures.

I’m such a loner lately, but that’s ok I think for now. Its how I’ve always been. nothing new there. Sometimes I think I just need to appreciate that so that I can appreciate my friends and friends yet to be. Or just so I can appreciate my own identity, and find solace in that. I think there is nothing wrong with a little solace in that. I wish I had more time to put into it, and that more people found that to be valuable in some way.

Tonight just letting time flow around me. Very quiet. Back and forth between books and wine and this computer.

October time.

Dracaena – 4,
originally uploaded by haikuluke.

The Yankees and Tigers are on the TV, I don’t know why I’m letting myself sit here watching it, but I am and I never do so that’s that. Last night’s beer bottles on the table. Lunch? Bread and cheese.

Kate left on the road today to go visit family in Sebastopol and then to head up to Portland to visit that fair city. Her sister and nephew are along for the ride.

And so I’m on my own in Nevada City for the week. I’ve got an album to finish, things to work on, but I will miss Kate. I’m a lucky guy with her in my life and I feel that when she goes.

Tea Shop – 5,
originally uploaded by haikuluke.

Those who know me lately know that I’m: anxious AND i drink a lot of coffee. You could reverse those and claim cause and effect. Either way. BUT all these things in my life are changing slightly at the moment.

For instance: I am drinking tea a lot, and I feel like it is different entirely.

I have a job to go to today and that is also different entirely

it is really cold

i feel that yes i have too much yet to get done, but the pressure is lightened.

TEA is good for you. I like white teas and oolong, probably because they are expensive and it makes me think they are fancy.

I took a lens off my old (real) camera and taped it backwards to my digital camera. I don’t know why I did this, I just wanted to see what might happen. Well, it kind of turned the whole thing in to a magnifying glass of sorts and hence, the macro pictures are amazing. that’s all you can do with a second lens taped to your camera, but nonetheless, its neat.

So this is it, checking in after all these months.

How is it life? It changes every day. Right now I’m sorting through old files and hard drives, trying, vainly, to get it in order. I want to bring order to things, to make them brighter.

I’ve been sort of in Nevada City for a while now, having my way and not. Suddenly I’m feeling stuck. As if too much has gone on without going on.

We went to Samoa, and felt the humid air, watched my brother get married, celebrated, fretted, felt what it was to be in tropical paradise with a lot of questions hanging around your life. Questions I can’t even relate here.

But they seem resolved.

Kate is in the kitchen making pumpkin pie, zucchini bread, and broccoli casserole. Couldn’t get any better really. The air is pushed around by the fan, Summer outside, as usual. Music in the making, the album sits on the hard drive. Couldn’t get any better really.

And yet, I’m feeling the missing of a vital part of my life. The part that feels that I know what I’m doing, that I’m in any kind of control whatsoever. This time here in this town has been up and down, but never really rapidly toward anything… each new alleyway seems to end up a dead end, back here, wondering what to do, and what I’m doing, with my self.

I’m so desperate for decent work, for a bit of cash, for direction in my wanderings. I long to have a bit more crystallized beauty in my mind and waking life, and I’m tired of having nightmares, regularly.

I’m tired of feeling old, older, and not feeling that it is leading anywhere. I long for the spiritual, and the practical. I long to be released from a long dry spell.

So here is to it. nothing new to report really, just letting it get down and out. letting it be where it will.

May. Day. Its that between Spring and Summer thing, where truly there is reason to celebrate, if you are into the sun at all.

Things have indeed changed here, finally, too long on the waiting list quickly evaporating.

I’ve found work, which, though I’m not anywhere near working my dream job, is a big huge sack of lead off my shoulders. I’m even doing some work that I really like and want to do a lot more of, working for a photographer and framing prints. The other work is another persona, where I show up, make money and leave.

And the apartment is alive, full flowers are bursting up from the warm soil all around the house. I’ve taken to planting as many houseplants as I can, attempting to start new ones, and generally fill this place with life.

Kate is painting and she is painting amazing things, her series on hands is so beautiful and profound I stop everytime I see them, and they are in our house everyday.

What else… o, you know, taking pictures, making music. Inspired, but in a slow way. I think that, oddly enough, now that I am working I will have further impetus to push the results of my work in music to further levels, and not discount it as much in my life… working crummy jobs gives me reason to want to put out great music.

My cello is to be fixed soon.

I’ve been discovering the rivers around here, and finding out that Nevada County (California) is a fantastic place, with amazingly beautiful Mountain and River scenery and feel.

And that’s that, I’m exhausted, but wanted to check in.

It has been a while to check in. I feel like I’m building up commentary for when the real excitement begins, but then, this could be it so… I’ve yet to find steady work, though things floating hallucinatorily on the horizon. That would be nice, idle hands are making me update my blog.

I don’t feel like documenting too much of the trip until I’ve got some income coming in. And so I am putting it off a little bit. I am right now, however, reviewing the minidisc recordings I made during the trip. Some of which are really neat. Some of which seem to have been recorded over accidentally.

Life is filling itself out, slowly, its like waiting for the shower to get hot in a freezing bathroom. And its taking a long time.

And yet though not a born optimist, I look forward feverishly.

The goal is to finish the albums I’ve got started, play a bunch of great shows, move in and out of different cycles at will. Enjoy. That is the goal.

Kate set four alarm clocks this morning for six o’clock, a necessary precaution to make it to work by seven. I got out of bed and as I walked past the mirror I unfortunately saw myself, looking as if I’d been asleep for ten years.

But then I got excited because it snowed last night, and I decided that I’d go out and take pictures before the whole loud world woke up. I drank like seven cups of coffee and headed out.

The world is loud, man, I don’t mean to complain about mundane things, but right now somebody is operating a leaf blower (in the snow), and its this constant loud annoying on and off of an engine specifically built to annoy the hell out of people. It might as well spray itching powder while its at it. Its far too early for leaf blowing.

Which is why I can’t do a landscaping job… OK, working at UC Santa Cruz there was this general hippy ethic that you didn’t really douse things in chemical solutions in order to make them grow. Around here its considered the work of God to plant bio-engineered pansies in rows next to astro-turf and then to coat in a few millimeters of anti-life solution. Many hyphens in that last sentence. In fact, I’m not kidding, I’ve read a ‘series’ in the local paper (two stories, should have been zero) about the big growing business around Nevada City: brush clearing. So rich scum buy promising real estate so that they can have a longer commute to jobs that they hate, and they look at their land, and they think to themselves, what if this were just… lawn. So they literally, quite sadly literally hire people to plow down every living thing, brush, trees, animals, flatten it, just flatten it, so that they can have a nicer view of the highway from their mcmansion. This is a true story, I wish I were making it up.

And then food serving. First of all, it is highly desirable to have a (very expensive) college degree (in music, so it almost doesn’t count, unless you live in Berlin) and work a food serving job. Everything you could wish for really. But that’s fine, I can’t knock it for now (desperate) because you can make a lot of money and literally be asleep in terms of actual responsibility, which sounds like shucking the idea of responsibility, but that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that you can go home and start right away to do whatever it is that you care about doing (in my case music) because its as if you just rolled out of bed mentally.

And there are so many positions for ‘admin asst’ out there, which basically is shorthand for ‘do the work I don’t feel like doing’. Including the ever stimulating data entry, for companies you can’t comprehend staying out of the red financially. Maybe someday you will be elevated to the person who buys everyone frappe’s a few times a day from the Starbucks down the block. Yay.

That’s my ever so optimistic outlook on jobs at the moment. I need to get it out of my head because it makes me insane how flat the world can seem some time, constantly striving for the lowest point.

But I do need work, badly. I need work to keep my hands from becoming idle. I need work because it makes me feel good. I like doing good work, and getting things done. That’s part of the reason I enjoy making music, I feel like there is an ultimate end that I have trained myself to get to (almost there) where I can produce quality music because I know how. Not as product, don’t get me wrong, music ultimately will never be product, but as something filled with intention. Good intention.

When I work I can focus on something intensely. I would not notice an earthquake if it happened to take out my neighborhood, I do not notice fluctuations in temperature, the need for food or hydration, I do not lose focus for anything. Its satisfying.

I took some pictures this morning, and now I’m creating the next project. I’m spending my days thinking about how I’m to pay rent somehow. I can’t wait to not have to think that thought.