Had dinner with Mom and Marv both to celebrate everything that's happened lately and to get ahead of an upcoming dental appointment[2]. She asked so many questions, but all so excitedly that it wasn't a bore answering them, even when I had to be careful with my wording. And I showed them some of my favorite pictures that I'd developed the day before-- she noted that they all seemed very lonely, and I guess she had a point: the emptiest parts of rest stops, quiet abandoned corners of fields in fog, reflections in road puddles. I hadn't thought about it much til then, but everything about touring was so LOUD: maybe the things I was drawn to take pictures of were a break from all that. Which is what I told her. "You're always so much more creative than you give yourself credit for!", she said, and asked if I could give her copies of the pictures sometime. It's silly that I didn't make them ahead of time; she's always liked keeping things like that that I've made. She even framed old doodles of circus tents and stages and her in her various old dancing costumes I drew when I was five or six, which embarrassed me a lot more when I was younger than it does now (it still does a little...).
Marv was, as always, a man of few words-- he always says Mom'll talk enough for the both of them and I’m never sure if that’s a compliment or not...-- but I could tell he was proud of me, too, and especially of how far I've come in the past year. A relief from the wary judgement I'd gotten from him the last few times I've visited, so untrusting of the idea I could ever stay clean or get serious about life. It's always been so interesting how they fit together: her so loud, so emotional, so fabulous; him quiet and practical yet very protective of her. Maybe everything with my father-- another more bombastic type, especially in his youth before Granddad ground him down, or so she tells me-- turned her off of trying to find an equal. But they've been together for quite some time now, so it's obvious that what they have is something that works, and that's such a good thing for her. I can only hope to be so lucky! At any rate, it was good to see them both again and to feel worthy of being there for the first time in a very long time.
Have needed dental work for awhile now and finally got the most necessary of it taken care of. Was out of it on painkillers most of this week so I didn't have much time if any to feel embarrassed for my swollen chipmunk cheeks. I told Greg before my appointment that outside of driving me back I wasn't expecting ~bedside care~ or anything like that, but he still checked up on me, switched out my ice packs, heated up mugfuls of turmeric-carrot-squash soup that I'd picked up earlier from Mom, things like that. I was so thankful for it and I let him know... in a very drugged-up oversincere kind of way. He was patient with me, at least; I didn't completely humiliate myself.
I'll be able to get back to singing in a few days; my jaw's still a bit too tight for it and I don't want to risk opening any stitches. Starting to get restless now, hence the writing. I've been sitting in on Greg's practice sessions recently, staying quiet and out of the way, just to have something to work my brain around. Have some lyric ideas that I wrote in another memo pad I've got. Glad I remember enough from music lessons to know which chord progressions to associate them with, so I can bring it up later. I didn't want to be rude and interrupt in the moment.
...Ugh, it'll be fantastic when I can eat substantial food again. Thought I'd be used to having so little, as I've certainly eaten even less in the past and was more than comfortable doing so, but now that I've gotten used to regular meals again and can't have speed to shut off my appetite, the feeling of being perpetually hungry is not a welcome one.
PS: I must admit, also, that it's a wonderful feeling being able to make Greg smile at me. I can want to make him smile, right? That’s fine. I can be satisfied with that.
Came back to work in the studio-- I'd almost forgotten how dingy it was! I guess we really are desperate. Warming my voice back up was thankfully not as difficult as I'd feared. Walt pulled me aside at one point and said that I looked to be in decent shape, that it was important "as a frontman" to be in good shape, that he wanted to mention the idea of a workout plan of sorts before but that it might not be needed anymore. It was so hard not to scoff at him, not least because he's heavier than I've ever been in my life. Why not follow his own advice, right? I was decently polite, though. Told him I'd get back to him on that if I ever felt I needed to. He told me that he'd let me know before I even got to that point. "I hired you to sing good AND look good, you know. You gotta have *charisma* to be a real frontman, and that jackass little poodle (Robert) had NONE of it. Now you, you're already shorter than I'd like, but-- and don't let this go to your head-- your face n' voice can make up for a lot. Even with that beak of yours-- you got that swarthy, ~exotic~ kinda look. Anyway! Sing as good on stage as you're singin' today and you'll be golden, kid.", he said. ...Thanks, I guess? So much of what he says to me is like that. I never know whether to take it as a compliment or not because he adds so much else to it. I hope I'm good enough that he'll stop adding extra. That I'm just GOOD and that's it.
Glad today that I'm not expected to be the MAIN songwriter, here. Was sitting alone in Greg's piano room fiddling with the keys, fooling around with chords, trying to think of words that rhyme and fit into verses, that were simple but not TOO simple, interesting but not too abstract, trying to draw from my own experiences and coming up with nothing I'd want to sing to straight strangers or anything anyone else would want to hear about. It's so much easier for me to bounce off of others' ideas than to make up my own whole-cloth. I hope with practice that can change, but at the same time, why be in a band if you can't or don't want to bounce off one another?
Since I can't write about my own experiences too literally maybe I can figure out ways to abstract them enough? Or just pull interesting images or concepts from them. Hot nights... early mornings.... restlessness.... street lights, strangers, secrets, fear, inner cities, cold sidewalks, desolate plains, loneliness, heartache, heartbreak, love, lust, hope, freedom. Something from that, somehow, somewhere. Or just make things up, of course. But can I make things up that are interesting or told interestingly enough? I know I just need to answer that question by doing.
Ricky,
Remember that asshole of a record exec that told us our songs were too WORDY? Bruce Springsteen had put out multiple seven minute songs of him rambling along at that point and our three-to-five minute songs were “too wordy”. I was so angry, so frustrated, so tired of hitting walls for increasingly stupid reasons and of being insulted over songs that were written so carefully about things so meaningful to us that I scrapped everything I’d written with you. We fought about it, you said I was overreacting, that it was just one record label, there’d be others. You never felt the urgency that I did, but then again, your life didn’t require that urgency as much as mine had. I usually didn’t hold it against you. When I got upset enough, though, I know I must have.
When we finally were about to get signed it was off of songs so simplistic they were almost a joke at first. I remember you starting to play along with them, laughing a little, telling me you could hear the spite biting off every word and note. You took them and made them beautiful and that’s what did it; that’s what finally made them all listen. I don’t know if I can make things beautiful the way you could. I know I need to try. Simple but beautiful.
I wish you were still here to help me. Working with Greg or Nate can be good, but it obviously isn’t the same-- how could it ever be? I can’t love either of them the way I loved you, and certainly not so quickly. Sometimes the difference sticks in my heart and makes it difficult to think of anything else. Part of me wonders when I’ll stop missing you so much. The rest of me never wants to stop missing you (and thinks the other part is a weak little whiner). I don’t know who I am without you, without this to hold on to. I know I need to try there, too. I keep reminding myself that you’d want me to try. Most of the time the reminder’s enough. Other times I need to write to you, like this, as if I could send it in the mail and you could read it. Well, I need SOMEthing, don’t I?
Love always,
Julie
[2]I likely won’t be able to have things like what we had tonight– her typical kind of Portuguese-Persian extravaganza; spaghetti-tahdig with pepper/olive/tomato sauce, spiced lamb meatballs, flatbread, baba ghanoush, etc (well, I could have the baba ghanoush, probably)– for a couple weeks after all that.