Laying down the gun....

This morning as I mindlessly packed my little bag for work, I pulled the Hope For Agoldensummer album from the towering stack of cds sitting dangerously close to my bed and slipped it into the inside pocket. I had to bring it with me, because everytime I've taken a moment to daydream in these last two days, every minute wonderfully wasted, I hear "Laying Down the Gun" and it has been building and building and building into a frenzied triumphant chorus.

I see my friend Sunni just as she sat on her couch Saturday night, leaning back with Ralph's steel guitar, pushing her golden hair out of her eyes and picking out the all of the tiptoeing, intricate loveliness of every line as we sang the harmonies high and whispered:

"It turns out, instead of blood you've got love songs traveling through your veins. What I found were all the words you ever sang tapped into the bones of your rib cage...."

I think of the first time I saw it performed live, upstairs at the Moonlight, the tense and burning energy turning around the stage. Deb Davis and her xylo. Will Taylor wavering from side to side, cello churning. Claire's eyes are closed. She's sitting straight and tall, her face turned up into the light as she's crying out:

"Instead of stopping our hearts, we play music because we're rock stars.
We come together and we work and we fall apart...."

I listen to the song again and again and it burns brighter every time.

"I play music because I'm in love with silence and sound. Just like a machine I picked my pen...."

And all of the sudden, it stops.

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There is a cave up by Garden City that is rumored to have been used as speakeasy during Prohibition. The Welch* brothers told me about it today. They smiled at me, standing to either side of their elderly mother as she was signing her paperwork, and looked up into the flourescent light above my head and then at each other. Jeff* turned to his brother and then to me,"It's still intact. I think so...at least it was when I was younger. You'll have to use a rope to get down into some parts of the cave, but it's worth it....Banger Cave is the name." Interesting. Sounds like an awfully good adventure for the spring. If anyone possesses any additional info about the cave, please let me know. Joe* gave me some general directions.

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Pictures:
From Saturday night's Skybucket Workforce Extravaganza


Amber and George the Turtle. BFF.

(from a play-by-play sent to gorjus later that evening)

"...the deadly Connect Four match between George the Turtle and Michael Douglas the B.H. Action Squirrel. A few borrowed Busch Lights into the evening, Travis and I dueled (through our plastic animal counterparts) and sadly, I must say that Travis and Michael Douglas won. After realizing that he had the winning row, Travis promptly jumped to his feet, hoisting Michael Douglas with his wildly wobbling head into the air and raced out the front door and down the street, yelling "We WON! WE won! YAYYYY!!!" all the while."



I, in the mean time, collapsed into the floor, defeated and downtrodden.