oh

oh hey, i've blogged like three times this year, but not here--it's at my other blog now. I used to update both with the same info, but that's dumb, or I'm lazy.
Anyway, go there to stay hardly updated, but still more updated than you'll be if you're still lingering here.
much love.
j

Ash Wednesday Maybe

Thinking about Ash Wednesday and Lent for the last few days. My mind has been completely out of the loop recently as far as the religious calendar is concerned. In fact, my upbringing, while highly faith-filled and filled to the brim with church, didn't really make room for certain celebrations like Ash Wednesday and Lent. I was raised with lots of Baptist roots, and Baptists, like many evangelical traditions, don't really put as much emphasis on the death so much as the resurrection.

Dan Allender once said something like, "No Christian has the right to be an optimist, because of the death. And no Christian has the right to be a pessimist, because of the resurrection." I think about that a lot.

I'm thinking about observing Lent. I've only ever observed it once, and never came out of it. I guess I've been known to over-observe. Three years later and I'm still not eating meat. Sometimes my will is a little too strong.

I also am thinking about observing Ash Wednesday tomorrow, which was the point of writing this in the first place. Does anyone know of an Ash Wednesday service I can attend in LA? The church I usually attend isn't having one. Part of me would love to observe it Catholic style, or in a different atmosphere than I'd usually be found. Suggestions?

My Christmas Confession

I had no idea a town like Los Angeles could fall quiet the way it has in the last three days. Friend after friend has driven off and flown away. Streets are thinning.
I can’t think of anyone that I know in town excited about the impending holiday. At absolute best, it’s an interruption. At worst, it’s a catalyst for annual pain. For most, stress and loneliness.
I guess it’s taken 25 consecutive years of various Christmas celebrations to arrive at what I think might be the most simple observation I’ve ever had regarding this entire holiday.
First, the irony. The Christmas story is about God arriving on the scene announcing an evacuation plan from what has turned out to be everything the celebration of that story perpetuates. Pain. Stress. Loneliness. The story of Christmas is this: we can be rescued from all the difficult things Christmas causes us to feel.
I probably don’t need to discuss the irony or absolute culpability we all share in this bizarre twist of events. Let’s call it an epic irresponsibility of a great privilege and keep moving for the sake of time.
See, it’s not the pain or the stress or loneliness that I’m having a tough time reconciling. What I’ve really been feeling badly about is viewing Christmas as an interruption. I’ve swayed between annoyed, frustrated, anxious, and sad about what a pain this whole take-time-off-work-fly-to-another-city-where-it’s-cold-and-consume(!) interruption has become.
But that’s just it. Christmas should be and can only be an interruption. Christmas is, at core, the most scandalous interruption to take place in human history.
It’s the story of a great, divine interruption.
This year if you’re lonely or anxious or in over your head and Christmas is the last thing you have time or energy for, at least know this: you’re getting it right. This is the story. It’s a story about a God who knows better than to wait for us to have the time or the energy or right attitude to deal with him. A God who interrupts.
I’ve been fighting the interruption. This is my Christmas confession.

videooo

One of the songs from the Cat Club set...sadly, Justin is cut out of the shot, but he sounds like a million bucks.

everything

Sometimes I love to disassociate and look down at myself from the ceiling. Last night I did that and found myself sitting at a small table in a cozy apartment in Hollywood with two amazing friends. There we sat with bread, drinks, homemade lasagna, listening to Chopin. Laughter to the point of tears; copious amounts of silly.

I don’t know what I’ve done to get here, but whatever it is, I’m glad it happened.

I find myself doing that a lot, lately. Stepping outside of myself long enough to realize that this is my life. Of course it's not true diassociation, considering it's not only voluntary, and also a result of a positive memory; and perhaps it goes against all that Rabbi Kushner would tell me about being fully present...

And later, a few kindred spirits on the balcony with wine and cigarettes, overlooking the abused and dirty mess of electrical wires, cement, palm trees, plaster, and lights--for miles in every direction. I have learned anything can be beautiful.

The fact that I’m here right now means that I have survived everything.

Show Tonight!

Hey all, here's the promised blog-plug about my show.

9.45pm, tonight, at The Cat Club in West Hollywood.
$5.
21+

Full band.

Rock n roll.

See you there!
j

old journals

I was reading through some old journals and writings of mine recently, and ran across something an acquaintance of mine, Jamie Tworkowski, once wrote. It occasionally crosses my mind; I'm glad I took the time to write it out when I first read it a couple years ago.

Don’t be like some broken lawyer, always asking for answers, always reaching for rewind. Guilt and regret, those are awful places. You know that. So don’t live there. Do not despair. Do not be afraid. Grace is the interesting thing.

And God must be a pretty big fan of “today”, because you keep waking up to it. You have made known your request for a hundred different yesterdays, but the sun keeps rising on this thing that has never been known. Yesterday is dead and over. Wrapped in grace. Those days are grace. You are still alive, and today is the most interesting day. Today is the best place to live.

show soon, and etc.

Hi there.

I haven't been writing much because I've been working really hard on a lot of things.

One of those things is finishing up a bunch of new material and gathering a few great musicians to play an upcoming show on August 25. I'm playing at The Cat Club again in West Hollywood.

Plug: $5, 10pm, 21+.

I'm super excited to give the new stuff a spin. And I would be more excited to play it to real, live, human beings (as opposed to fake, satellite ones.) For those in the area, I hope you can come. I'll be borrowing the rhythm section of Rival Sons, with Justin "the Nit-Picky" Burrow on guitar. Should be fantastic.

I'll remind you again soon. Blog. Twitter. Facebook. Text, possibly. Don't you worry.

No, but seriously.

In other news, I just got back from a family vacation on the east coast. A few photos soon, perhaps. I attempted sailing for the first time in a Hobie Bravo, and after a quick yet peaceful brawl with my dad and brothers, managed to do ok for about 100 feet, until the wind died completely and I found myself stranded in the Chesapeake Bay. As you can see, I was rescued, though I bet the bay has wifi, in the event that I were to have felt compelled to blog while lost at sea. Thankfully, I did not.

keeping my neurosis in check

Hello there.

Anyone else hate the internet?

I don't mean in the way that's trendy to hate the internet. I mean, a real actual hate toward the internet.

Last night my friends and I were reminiscing about our days in Jr. High and High School and realized we honestly couldn't remember how we ever knew about concerts and shows without having the internet to tell us when and where to go. Remember when someone used to give you a flyer for something, and you held onto it for weeks? Remember when you used to check the weekly newspaper for event dates and concerts?

Remember when you used to call your friends?

Remember when you used to communicate with someone and know for sure if you were being heard? You didn't have to carry around that paranoia--did they get my text? Did they see that email? Did they see that twitter? (I refuse to say "tweet.") Did they see that IM?

Is there anyone on the other side of the glowing rectangle I just transmitted this information to???

Why did we do that? Now we're just a bunch of paranoid neurotics.

Miserable, I tell you.

That's all. Ok thanks bye.

If You Write Anything At All:

Keep me up till five only because all your stars are out and for no other reason.

If you write anything at all: stories, poems, lyrics, melodies, symphonies, speeches, scripts; anything at all, I beg of you to read JD Salinger's Seymour, An Introduction.

You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion. Never. Since it is your religion, do you know what you will be asked when you die? But let me tell you first what you won't be asked. You won't be asked if you were working on a wonderful, moving piece of writing when you died. You won't be asked if it was long or short, sad or funny, published or unpublished. You won't be asked if you were in good or bad form while you were working on it. You won't even be asked if it was the one piece of writing you would have been working on if you had known your time would be up when it finished. I'm so sure you'll get asked only two questions. Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out? If only you'd remember before you ever sit down to write that you've been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world you would most want to read if you had your heart's choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won't even underline that. It's too important to be underlined.

not a book review.

I read Heroin Diaries this past week. I've had mixed feelings about it, best summed up in this conversation:



When it comes to how tragic some rockstars are in their personal lives, there's a certain level of amusement, and a certain level of sick admiration (easily disguised as curiosity.) I was relieved that that's not what Nikki Sixx was going for--I appreciated that, though I generally still resented him (and his friends) the entire time I read the book.

Judging from his diaries, I probably would have been his friend, but he most likely would have ignored all my calls. That type of thing.

Turns out JD Salinger is a regular genius when it comes to understanding people like Nikki Sixx, the rest of the Crue, their contemporaries, all musicians everywhere, and me.

Salinger says it best in this simple statement:

But young poets beware. If you want us to remember your best poems at least as fondly as we do your Racy, Colorful Lives, it might be as well to give us one good field mouse, flushed by the heart, in every stanza.

hip kid rock

the playlist for the afternoon, affectionately named, "hip kid rock."

i can hear you judging me quietly for this. don't look at me like that.

accessories

One of my roommates just commented to me that she liked my scarf and earrings, and I realized that both of those items were gifts, one from each of my sister-in-laws. And I thought that was pretty cute.

Thanks to Michele (and Josh) for the scarf. It's from Paris.

And thanks to Mere for the earrings. She made them. She makes jewelry, check it out.

An Angel with a Switchblade.

One day, during approximately second grade, I was riding my bike home from my friend's house. Like many little girls, I occasionally had the dreadful experience of unknowingly wrapping my shoelaces around the pedals of my bike. Never in my life have I heard of this happening to boys, but for whatever reason, almost every girl I know can tell a story of a bad fall on a bike due to shoelace wrapping gone unnoticed.

A phenomenon, perhaps. A curse, more likely.

Back to the story. One day, while riding my bike home, my shoelaces began to wrap around my bike pedals. I was riding my bike on the street, and there wasn't a soft landing point for about another half of a block. I knew I was already past the point of no return--both feet were fully attached to my pedals. I had to decide: fall on the pavement and maintain the ability to manually untangle my shoelaces, or pedal further and magnify the tangling, but attempt to reach the grassy ditch at the end of the block for a softer landing?

I recall this entire decision making process quite vividly.

I decided to go for the ditch at the end of the block. I knew I wouldn't be able to untangle my shoelaces without help, but it seemed better than falling on the pavement.

I barely made it to the grass.

By the time I wiped out on the grass my shoelaces were wrapped so tightly that I couldn't even get my feet out of my shoes. I was literally fastened to my bike and completely helpless.

Luckily, I chose the ditch across the street from my friend Amber's house. Even more luckily, she came outside while my bike and I, now a single unit, sat in the grassy ditch.

I called her over, and told her I needed her dad to come out and help me get my feet out of my shoes. Like a really good friend does, she told me her dad was busy and that he couldn't help and went back inside. And left me there.

To die.

And then it started raining.

Of course.

By now, I was rather upset. I had been totally and completely abandoned in my time of need. I couldn't move, and I didn't know what to do. Plus, I had just taken a pretty bad fall. Little girls cry when they fall off bikes. Only I didn't even have the luxury of falling off.

There I sat, alone in the rain. Just when I thought things couldn't get worse, an old beater car pulled up next to me on the street. It was a really scary looking car, and inside the car was a really scary looking man. I remember he had a lot of chains hanging from him, and looked about 40 years old. He had long hair and a long beard--he looked the part of a stereotypical biker. Leather. Chains. Tall and scary.

He stopped the car, and simply looked at me. I was instantly terrified of him. I said every prayer in the book that this man would go away, and fast. A few seconds later, my prayer was answered and he drove off.

Relief.

Now, back to the issue at hand. How am I going to get myself out of this ditch and out of the rain and how am I going to get Amber to come back outside and help and---OH NO, HERE COMES THAT BEATER CAR WITH THE SCARY MAN, AGAIN!

That's right, he was back.

This time, he stopped his car and got out; still tall, still scary, still leathery. Then, he reached into his coat and pulled out a knife. From my perspective, the knife was a giant switchblade, about five feet long. It might as well have been a sword, because I was a little girl, and a scary man in a scary car just pulled a knife on me.

I was literally paralyzed with fear.

He walked over to me. Neither of us spoke a single word. I don't think he even looked me in the eye. He simply bent down, and cut my shoelaces.

He put his knife back into his coat pocket, walked back to the car, and drove away.

And that was it.

I brushed myself off, and walked my bike home. I never told anyone about the man with the knife.

I went to bed that night and wondered if maybe that was an angel sent to help me.

Maybe.

No Things

An excerpt from Billy Collin's "No Things"

The leafless branches against the sky
will not save anyone from the infinity of death,
nor will the sugar bowl or the sugar spoon on the table.

So why bother with the checkerboard lighthouse?
Why waste time on the sparrow,
or the wildflowers along the roadside

when we should all be alone in our rooms
throwing ourselves against the wall of life
and opposite the wall of death,

the door locked behind us
as we hurl ourselves at the question of meaning,
and the enigma of our origins?

What good is the firefly,
the droplet running along the green leaf,
or even the bar of soap spinning around the bathtub

when ultimately we are meant to be
banging away on the mystery
as hard as we can and to hell with the neighbors?

banging away on nothingness itself,
some with their foreheads,
others with the maul of sense, the raised jawbone of poetry.

Man oh man I am loving me some Billy Collins right now. I read that poem yesterday when I was at Starbucks, and I was smiling so big by the end of the poem that I actually lifted the book to my face to cover my expression, long enough so that my expression faded to a size that my hand was capable of hiding.

Later, a group of young girls assembled nearby, and in my mind I played a little game called "Cheerleaders or Small Group?" A game not too different from another favorite, "Hipster or Homeless?" I was on the line about this particular group, but then they started reading aloud from an Anne Lammot book, each taking a page to read before passing it to the person on their left.

Small Group.

It reminded me of the days I spent sitting in a similar circle of similar girls but with way more conservative material--all fond memories, regardless. We were always reading relationship type stuff, namely, "When God Writes Your Love Story." No, I won't get all cynical on you in light of what's been written about me thus far. Cynical is boring and lazy. I just wanted to take you on an awkward detour to get to the next quote I read yesterday. I can't remember if it was from Dan Allender or from Elizabeth Gilbert (an unlikely pair of people to be confused, but I read from both of their books yesterday. And if you want me to be honest, the two really aren't that different from each other.) It's one of those things that will drive me crazy enough to actually re-read both books, just so I can find one quote. I've probably re-read Catcher in the Rye a dozen times, on that basis alone. I know the quote I'm looking for is on the left-hand side of the page. And that if you broke the words up into fifths, it'd be the fourth fifth. And part of the sentence is in italics.

Point is, it told me this: it's much better to imperfectly be yourself than to perfectly be who you aren't.

An honest day's work; the sound of your own breathing.

One may make a unique observation or suggest a creative idea, and only those who do the same know right then that it was contrived. It wasn't necessarily contrived in the sense that they are not unique or creative, but contrived in an attempt to prove that they, in fact, are unique and creative.

A lilac trying to be conscious of its own lilac scent in order to know that it is a lilac.

A dog barking to assure itself that it is a dog.

It doesn't make them any less of a flower or an animal that they occasionally check in, just to make sure they are the same thing that they were the last time they looked inward.