December 17, 2001
tragic and lovely is the rich man's life. i'm going to do this in the same spirit i always did, before the kid, before the busy busy the shuffling, the car seats, the bottles and nursing and diapers and recording and band gigs and juggle juggle. do you ever have a day when you think about the past? when you say, wow, did i really do that/waste all that time? days fall away like glasses of water get consumed and i cannot believe any of it. i wonder if i spend too much time wondering where it went and what happened and what could be. i wonder. you can make pointed observations and draw conclusions but does that ever change anyone's daily day? what is important, the way the day is spent or the thought about it afterward? what is really important - living productively and making a statement with your life, or just being a good egg and not getting in too many car wrecks? maybe neither really matters and if you start believing this sort of thinking, you can get a little lost. i think we're supposed to want to be productive - we tell each other this stuff every day in our congratulatory and passive remarks, such as: friend 1: i did this and this. friend 2: well i don't know how you do it! so maybe the whole point of life is to make our friends envious. wow, it's great to say this sort of thing and not be freaked about offending someone. i went to a party and i said: some people just want to make sure others fit into the same category (like tax brackets and race) before they accept those others as friends. i was shunned. it's a pretty good bet that if you're shunned in a conversation, you've said something a little bit too true. this holiday season i am really thinking about others though. the ones who really have nothing, no money, no homes, no family to pat them on the back or lift them up, no hope. we all get bummed at times and people are quick to judge others who seem to have a lot, but the truth is we all have our own struggles and worries and joys and if you happen to have things like money and a home, you are may be better off but you still cannot answer the real questions with any more certainty.
September 23, 2001
two days before our son's first birthday. wow. i cannot believe i outlasted all those wakeful nights. i cannot believe i am still able to function almost fully. i cannot believe that we have neared a living danger zone. i feel very blessed to be here. this country, this freedom, this life. but it really is terribly scary to see a war in our own land. live horrorvision. are we preparing to send our youth toward death? i cannot believe it. not to mention the killing of so many innocents. i am adopting the let's just love approach these days. but how can we can all start to feel that way a little more? these poor families. it's heart-wrenching. as i've written here before, this is a beautiful time of year. school starting, the michaelmas, yom kippur, the jewish new year. things starting over, things being examined and released and renewed. this is a good time to be home and be a family. and now, so many parts of so many families are shattered. the rescue workers! god bless them! new york is a beautiful land and the people in it are unbelievable. i just wonder about all the other stuff too. there are dire tragedies - for poor, homeless, hopeless, horror-stricken and hungry americans - that don't make it to cnn. for those in direct daily need of relief, i wish we had one iota of the billions made last night (when the stars showed up on every station) and in all these fast-action funding programs. how can we be so wealthy and so poor all at once?
September 3rd, 2001
what a glorious day. we had the most awesome weekend celebrating my sister's wedding. It was a smash. I am in full recovery mode. I wrote a song for the rehearsal dinner, sang at the ceremony and reception, threw a party and delivered a toast. grueling. the wedding ended with the entire party diving into the pool in their gorgeous formalwear. luckily i had the wherewithal to find the nearest shower and in a particularly choice moment, discovered i had extra clothes from the church. i felt badly for the other drenched bridesmaids who stood shivering in the chilly september air.
this week we get serious about the songs in the studio. that's cool. the record is really, really good. or so we believe. i hope it sells and someone finally discovers my untapped brilliance, as marty stoller used to call it. i would beg to differ about the brilliance part, but i am in full agreement over "untapped." michael k, the emigre, says title the cd untapped. it sounds almost like unplugged and therefore will confuse.
July 17, 2001
i can't believe there's nothing in here from late april til now. well, what's new. i am writing and about to dive headfirst into the recordng process again, one which i totally love and live for. i do love live but in the studio, you can re-write history and make things prettier than they would have been. every time i play live i have a wish list yet in the studio, if it's not good, it's just a bad choice. nice. also, there is this cherubic grin beaming at me endlessly now and every day. my son. i also have to say that everyone talks about the turkeys running the record industry and i have met a totally cool non-turkey who is entrenched in big label madness. the story is: some guy (who may have been very drunk or otherwise altered) came up to me and said he was "blown away" then proceeded to scribble a number down on a paper. "you must call this guy, he has to hear you sing..." was his claim. so, in typical laissez-faire fashion, i didn't call for three weeks. when i finally did, i discover the number is for the head of a&r at a not-so-minor ny record label which is home to many mega stars and some mega unknowns. so i met up with this bloke and he is completely a sweetheart. too bad he's married, judes. back to reality. there is a very smart nine month old playing his mini piano near me and he actually repeats the melody and then laughs. then he scootches (not crawls, scootches) off to find the rubber part of the highhat stand to put his mouth around before he looks at his mom with a sheepish "i know i shouldn't be doing this" grin. i will soon pick him up and take him over to the keyboard for some singing and clamoring before we go down the street for a baby pool dip.
April 29, 2001
today is wendy's birthday. i've known her since 5th grade! happy birthday wen. wow, we played at navy pier yesterday and i saw a few people who seem to come regularly to these gigs. my old buddy frank, for example, who used to work at ludwig drums. he actually worked in the same building i lived in for three years. he's in his 70's. he brings me roses and love notes. i signed autographs for germans and sold cd's like hotcakes. this week i am in a battle of the bands at wgntv. i'm excited. i've never played on live tv and the band is ready to rock! my weekend was two disparate strains of commitment. one: the waldorf school's conference on birth to age three. and two: the music thang. it was a weird parlay of worlds. waldorf is all about fantasy and play and slowing the pace, being organic...and navy pier is work, commerce, capitalism... it's almost too confusing to make sense of it all. i guess that's the fun of it: what we believe and what we do are constantly being challenged by what we believe and what we do. but i am not some vigillante. i'm a chick with a kid and a guitar.
March 8, 2001
if you get accused too many times of being a pop queen, you're going to either become one or defy them. here's a list of all the bands i've been in or involved with and this will surprise some of you:
stephanie rogers band - current band, which i would describe as "doesn't suck"
hipbone - kind of a funk band, sort of like arby's roast beef - what the hell is it, but unanimously yummy
stephanie, ari, can't remember his name on congas and was there a guitar? hippy soul musique
me and sari doing folk stuff in la (kinda like a poor man's indigo girls)
moon zu - super pop, early 90's ish, i looked like a hungover tiffany wannabe
fish of destiny - your older brother who dropped acid then crashed mom's buick
update to this: i have been in brother brother and eddie harrison orchestra for the past year (may 2003)
Feb 28, 2001
anyway, what is it about the self aggrandizement of personal websites? so this the calling card of the new millenium? everyone creates his or her own propaganda. we don't even need press agents or mangers - this is me and in my best light. i can lie all i want on this site. yea, last year i won a special academy award for a compelling though little known performance in "closed spaces," the surreal, post-existential toast of sundance tribute to salvador dali! what? you didn't see it? well, it was a hit at cannes. blah blah blah. just got a thirteen record deal with sony....blah blah blah...can't you see what this medium is creating? and sure, everyone has a website but do they get traffic and the right traffic? i have had something like 40,000 visits to this website. who are you? there are people in france buying my cd's. who are you? who am i? am i everything this site says i am? am i as much as it says? am i much more than it says? what does that say? anyway. you can create any persona or reality you choose, in life and on the web. and what happens to truth. and by the way, if you're here looking for hipchicks.com, buddy you are in the wrong band-o-sphere!
January 17, 2001
"mitten strings for god" is the name of the book my dear friend gave me. and the irony here is that there's no real reference to god or the spiritual new ageness that overwhelms the oprah show and apparently so many of my female friends. again, it's this chick, silje. i've mentioned her here before (she's the one who encouraged me to read ibsen and asked me to make concrete references to him in conversation.). anyway, she has this beautiful grace about her living. she makes things from scratch; she knits; she's an accomplished baker; she reads a lot; and the most amazing thing is that silje isn't one to push you off the phone. when you call her, she makes you feel like she's waited all day to talk to you, though she has a pre-schooler and a LOT going on. she's one of the smartest people i know. i love the way she lives. no tv. no bullshit. when she talks to you, she's really there. not like me, in seventeen places at once. she cooks and creates stuff every day, just because of some involuntary urge.
so, she gives me this book - and a few others - for my birthday and finally i get to it, thinking oh, this is another one of those simple abundance-y type things, where the author tells you how you need to live a more spiritual life. but this book, ensconced in it's perfect place of timing for me, is more like take a walk and hear the rain. i love it! i can't stand people telling me what to do, but i like this stuff. it slows the pace and makes me think that if you're in your early thirties and you have so much you want to do be say learn, you are not too late or too old. this sounds silly, i know, but we do value success. i value success. i guess mitten strings would say you're successful if you live well. and i live well. very very well.
