fave band – MOIRARTS

5 More Minutes

This morning I woke up from a dream involving Royal Crescent Mob, a bunch of old photos that hadn’t stayed in the fixer long enough and were blotchily faded, and a haircut I’ve never had (chin length with bangs).

The haircut was unfortunate and the photos were an entirely typical result of our slapdash approach to the darkroom, but Royal Crescent Mob sent me down a rabbit hole to my 16-year-old self. “An American four-piece punk funk/funk rock band from Columbus, Ohio,” Royal Crescent Mob was a band I adored 30 years ago. I lived in Indiana and was a RHCP superfan (yes, I was Jason Mendoza and I am absolutely going to The Bad Place); there was no chance I was not going to be into RCM. I had a t-shirt that I wore constantly and a signed promo photo given to me somewhat as a joke that I still treasured. (Sidebar: At least once a month now I regret getting rid of my collection of high school t-shirts. Shocking the neighbors with the Mother’s Milk album cover is very much my 2020 mood.)

What else did I learn from Wikipedia? That one of the members of R.C. Mob was a touring manager for the Goo Goo Dolls, possibly at the same time that my oldest friend was their merch guy. That was last fall when my back had enough functionality for one event and that event was a trip to North Carolina for my brother’s wedding, not an overnight trip to Richmond to hang out for a night selling stickers for a 90s alternapop band, as much as I absolutely would have loved that.

Thank you, little brother, for the holiday gift card that you probably thought I’d spend on some antiracist literature or a biography of an obscure feminist artist. I bought a CD of ridiculous songs from my youth!

The Perfect Girl

Ten years since we made it legal with a courthouse wedding. This strange girl wouldn’t change a thing.

Florida

Florida on the mind today, just as Puerto Rico was on my mind yesterday and Texas last week. All the while South Asia drowns and doesn’t even break into the news cycle.

Friends, parents of friends, former neighbors, children of neighbors: all are flying and driving as far north as they can. Flights are being cancelled because the crews have been working nonstop; rescheduled flights are likely to not be soon enough to get out ahead of the winds. Empty gas stations along the road, kids and dogs piled into cars trying to get even as far as a house with a cement basement and a generator.

This hurricane season is going to be the line between our lives before and the felt reality that global warming is past the tipping point. Be as safe as you can, Florida.

I Palindrome I

Something cool about this week is that all the dates are palindromes in North American date notation. Something seriously uncool about this week is that some jackhole stole my iPod from my car. A song about both palindromes and murder seems appropriate.

Don’t Let’s Start

Woke up today with “I don’t want to live in this world anymore” running through my head. This country, this world–all heavy and likely to continue getting worse before getting better. Whatever “better” means in a context where white supremacists are getting away with murder and there are no longer even performative motions toward restraining the power and money grabs of obscenely rich people.

We are getting crunched from all sides and the only possible bright side is that we are now aware that we all live in the same shitty world, well-meaning white liberals and the oppressed people of color who have been disappointed and betrayed by them for years. Yay?

Love’s Recovery

This week we went on a date, an occurrence that has been embarrassingly infrequent. Indigo Girls with the National Symphony Orchestra was both nostalgic and uplifting, an evening well spent. They played a lot of older pieces from when they recorded and toured with a larger band, therefore well-suited to the musical accompaniment of dozens of other musicians.

They didn’t play this song (and Sarah McLachlan was not there) but it’s the one that’s been stuck in my head for the last few days. I missed ten million miles of road I should have seen.

People As Places As People

With a young child, you can’t skip any holidays. They are making cards at school, learning history, preparing surprises. Even if you think some of them are based on complete imperialist fabrication or others are the commercialization of a fantasy that messes up our expectations for real life. For example.

So, today we’re expressing our love for each other and remembering what that means and what we want it to look like. Traveling the globe, sipping coffee in plazas and squares in the cities of the world, hiking volcanoes, sleeping under the stars, combing the beaches. In early middle age, all of that seems both less possible and less desirable than it did when we were 20.

What we love now is time with people who make us laugh. Sitting around drinking our own coffee and swapping tales of the times we traveled and slept under the stars. Realizing that if we had only a little time left to us, we wouldn’t be getting on a plane. We would be right here.

We’re the places that we wanted to go.

Mystery

Autumn. In five element acupuncture, the season of metal: discerning, sorting, grieving. Facing unwelcome truths and letting go what no longer serves.

My mental radio is also seasonal, and this one seems to only come around in fall.

My heart the red sun, your heart the moon clouded.

Sparrow

[retroactive]

October 15th is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. I wish I didn’t know so much about how a family can lose a child, but maybe it’s impossible to get to 40 and have it be otherwise.

Today I am thinking of my friends whose children were taken by miscarriage, stillbirth, birth defects, prematurity, and SIDS. I remember each of them, very much wanted and still missed. We hold a space in the heart of our family for the children we were not able to know, that place in our lives where they should have been.