Wednesday Song Awesomeness

The Besnard Lakes

shortmix for a rainy thursday

King Porter Stomp - Jelly Roll Morton
You're Driving Me Crazy - Django Reinhardt
Toby Dammit Part One - 13ghosts
Slide Show - Travis
Monty Got a Raw Deal - REM
Book of Angels - Jim White
Downtown - Dexateens (coming to the Southgate House next week! (playing the parlour))
Katy Song - Red House Painters
A House - Doves

Word with End

After two fierce full practices we are ready to go on the road...






an entire block and half away...

Tomorrow night, Peter, Brian, Lyz, and I will be debuting our latest at the Catskellar on UC Campus. Here's the info:



Hosted by The Cincinnati Review

Friday, April 3, 2009 at 8:00pm
University of Cincinnati, Catskeller

"Come join us for our first annual Word Without End, an open-mic, cross-genre extravaganza.

Read your own stuff—excerpts or pieces entire—read someone else’s stuff, play an instrument with a missing string, or sob uncontrollably while passing around pictures of your childhood dog. Make YOUR loss OUR loss.

We're hosting a silent auction of once-lost-now-FOUND objects. If you have fabulous crap (like a lone sock, a filthy barbie with matted hair, a pineapple, a hungry hippo) we want it! Proceeds go to the Cincinnati FreeStore Foodbank, which serves more than 160,000 people throughout southern Ohio, northern Kentucky, and southeastern Indiana."

Wing Finger

What was once the only thing
Has transformed into everything
Even you...
Even you...

I sat in the dimly lit room without windows. I stared at the milk colored walls, the paper covered table, the plainly labeled boxes of medical supplies. The young resident neurologist sniffed and sighed and asked me another question. I stuttered my thoughts through tired lips, twisting words, reasoning, reciting...this is what happens. Every two seconds I thought of something else to tell him. Half of those things never got told. They didn't really matter. What mattered was the image on his computer screen. My spine, discs angular and beautiful, a column of uneven lines, a white and dark pattern. The spinal cord itself was stained, small splotches, patches, dark little places in the midst of gleaming bright white. The resident flipped through images, the successive MRI's of my spine and then of my brain. The brain was completely clear, but for a few older lesions. I have a very pretty brain.

Walking
We are growing at the speed of light
Every single piece is synchronised
Even you...
Even you...

I've been waiting for the results of a certain test. Dr. Melanson ordered the test after putting together all of my symptoms at our first appointment a few weeks ago. She thought that there was a possibility that I could have Devic's Syndrome. With the myelitis and optical neuritis, it's understandable.

I started researching Devic's in the meantime, reading everything I could, throwing my energy into this new idea. The trouble is that it's not an easier disease....it's actually much worse than MS, with fewer treatments and no preventative therapies at all. I think that I just became so enveloped by the thought of it because it was something different. Something other than what I've been living with for so long. The results of the test came back negative. This is a wonderful thing, that I just have plain old MS. Plain old MS. I should be joyous that I do not have some degenerative disease that most definitely ends in blindness... But that evening after I found out the results, as I stood in the kitchen making supper, I became completely paralyzed with disappointment and frustration. It seems so silly now. It seems ridiculous. But I just wanted a different answer. I wanted there to be a fluke, Dr. Melanson walking in and saying, "You really don't have any of this. You're just a beautifully dramatic hypochondriac."

Teradactyls, abandoned pianos, your stepdad's bongo drums, the snails that live inside aquariums

Doo-doo-doo-doo...

What was once the only thing
Has transformed into everything
Even you...

- lyrics from Wing Finger by Chad Vangaalen from the album Skelliconnection

Birthday Wishes to my High School (Dream) Boyfriend

Hope For Agoldensummer @ Workplay May 2008

The Heartless Bastards @ the Northside Tavern - Dec 2008

The Heartless Bastards @ the Northside Tavern



Halfway through the show, our friend Dietrik yells "Erica (the lead singer) I want to have your babies!!!!" Doesn't matter that we're standing right in front of her. He later does a handstand on an enormous bulls eye in the street in front of the Northside Tavarn. Beauty beauty beauty for our first real show in Cincinnati.

If you were a river of whiskey, and I was a diamond jar....

Tiny seizures. Tiny sparks. In the dark, as the fan hums in the distance, as James' quiet breath leads him into his restful oblivion, I cannot stop. I am tense. I am drained. I turn. There. Suddenly a jabbing sensation invades my left calf and charges up through these strange tunnels, myelin covered wonderlines, and draws up hands and feet and back and shoulders and...there it goes. Gone.

And then another, my ear - down the side of my head to my shoulders, hands and feet. My eyes smart momentarily, but I brave up and stay the jolting of my body causing Jim to turn and hold tight, as if to hold me down, like it would make a difference.

Nothing makes so much difference as a good nights sleep. That difference is something that I've been fighting for so long. Even now, as I sit in this chair writing you and listening to Claire Campbell play her saw, her sister Page in quiet harmony, the minutes pass, the morning comes so quickly. I am left weighted.

"I can feel my life beating slow, I can feel my life beating low, I can feel your mind, It's right in line with my mind..." - Hope For Agoldensummer, New Whiskey River, Adriadne Thread

I'm still braving it every day at my new job. I have a few wonderful co-workers who trade tasks with me when I need to stay off of my feet. The bottom of my feet are all pins and needles. My boss said that if I needed to wear houseshoes around the office, I can...as long as they're not bunny slippers.



When I come home, James is there. If I feel like I want cook, most times whether or not I have the strength, I do. If not, he takes care of everything. Slow motion. Slow motion these days. Waiting for all of the little symptoms to disappear. We don't know what this is really, a mini-attack...my body warning me to take it easy. Some days I convince myself that I am invincible, that I have all of the energy in the world. I overdo it. James is my sounding board, he's my common sense, he's my tucker-in when he finally convinces me to rest.

I'm in the midst of my second attempt at drawing a Holiday card for all of you. If they don't make it into the mail by Christmas, I'll email them. They'll be beautiful, I promise you.

Love you Kids. Send me suggestions for GREATEST HOLIDAY ALBUMS.
I'm working on a mixtape.

SL