With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
I enjoy paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
February 11, 2008 - 1:41 a.m.
Once again it is after midnight and I'm just beginning to write my entry. I don't think I'm going to break this habit.
As usual I wasted most of the day. There was the usual Sunday open house and I went shopping to escape the home shoppers. As usual I forgot something I needed. This time it was Cajun spices.
The great peanut butter free experiment continues. My skin had a great day. It really seems to be helping. Not only that but I haven't had diarrhea since I stopped having peanut butter. My tongue and body love it but my body apparently hates it. This really isn't fair. In a world filled win uncertainties I could always count on peanut butter. Now it looks like I must abandon it.
I wonder if any of you, other than my family, realize that I'm not kidding.
Tonight I went to see Antje Duvekot at the Uptown Coffeehouse. The drive up there was not routine. It is less than a half a hour from my house yet I went through a season's worth of weather changes on the way. When I left it was flurrying and very windy. If it had been warmer it wouldn't have even been a drizzle, more like a mist. By the time I drove a few blocks the sun came out. Then I got to the Throgs Neck Bridge, that is all of six minutes from my house. It not only started snowing again but it was a full-blown storm. The visibility was down to a few hundred yards. The winds picked up so much that I had trouble staying in my lane. If felt like giant hands were trying to move my car and I had to fight it all the way. Soon after I crossed the bridge the sun came out again. Then when I reached the venue it was cloudy. A few minutes after I stepped inside the storm started again. This is not normal winter weather. You sometimes get this in the summer where there are small storm cells but never in the winter. Blame it on global warming. That means you can blame it on Lena.
Antje is someone that I see fairly often but there wasn't anyone in the audience that I knew other than Norma, the woman that runs the series. I was sort of surprised. Antje was busy before the show so I just made a little small talk about the weather with some people and read the February edition of Acoustic Live. It turns out that I read it one day late. I saw in it that Emily Elbert played last night. I'd have gone if I knew. I thought I signed up for her mailing list.
As usual I enjoy what Antje says between the songs as much as I enjoy the music. One thing I connect with is the fact that she talks and writes so much about religion even though she isn't religious. It got me to thinking why I write about it so much. I think it is because I find the whole thing so alienating. The fact that so many people are either religious or believe in god makes me feel the way you would if most people believed in leprechauns and had arguments about the best way of catching them and the properties of their pots of gold. Leprechauns are actually a couple of orders of magnitude more likely than any religion.
What is also confusing is this quote from the Boston Globe that was on the Coffeehouse website.
Antje Duvekot's provocative, dark-eyed ballads are becoming the talk of the folk world.
What is that supposed to mean? What is a dark-eyed ballad? As the emcee pointed out Antje like Guinevere, has green eyes. Well maybe they're more blue but definitely not dark.
One of the great things about seeing Antje is that she always inspires me to think of interesting things. She stimulates my intellect. That's about as high a praise as I can give.
I was a bit disappointed that Antje didn't have her hand-painted guitar. She replaced it with one she likes far more musically, a Gibson hummingbird.
Antje put on her usual great show. She ended with a Gershwin cover. I am totally blanking on what song. That should not surprise you.
I got to talk to her a bit after the show. She has one song about how disappointing it was when she got to meet one of her folk-singer heroes. I guessed that it was Dan Bern because there were references to Vincent Van Gogh (a Dan Bern favorite) and a Star of David (Dan's Jewish). She assured me that it wasn't and that Dan was really nice when she met him.
She liked my idea for turning one of her stories into a song. I'll really believe it when I hear her sing it.
I of course talked to her about playing The Budgiedome again. Keep your fingers crossed.
The show was at an awkward time, 5:00. By the time I got home it was around 7:30 and I didn't want to start cooking dinner then so I actually ate out tonight. I went to Popeye's I've been craving that so it was nice for a change.
I finally got Alan and Aubrey together to make plans for going out for Aubrey's Fiftieth birthday. We are going out on Wednesday night. That was my idea then found out afterwards that Kelly Flint and Milton were playing the Living Room that night. Something always seems to come up when Milton plays. I'd link to his website but I can't find it. You can't just google "Milton" and expect to find him. It doesn't even help to Google his name plus "In the City" his hit song. I've been seeing Kelly at he Upstairs Sessions but I haven't seen her do a regular gig in ages.
How am I on the third page of this entry? I haven't said anything yet?
Let's finish off my musical auto-biography.
There are two important elements that I haven't written about yet. One is SMAF. It has had a huge influence on my relationship with music and musicians. I was the first person to go to SMAF and I've been at every one but the second. Go and read what I had to say about The First SMAF. Make sure to hit the next button at the end because it took two entries to cover it all.
At that first SMAF and met and became friends with We're About 9 and Cadence Carroll. That's the thing about SMAF, you can't help but get friendly with the musicians. They are all around you. If you don't walk up to them they'll walk up to you. It is also a great place for discovering new musicians. The year before last I discovered to of my favorites, Pat Wictor and Iain Campbell Smith. Go through my older entries and you'll find a entry on it each May since 2004.
The other thread that I haven't touched on is my doing merch for musicians. I'll be honest; I don't remember how it started. Were The Kennedys the first band I merched for? Was it Da Vinci's Notebook? I honestly don't know. I know it was after Shelly started doing it for EFO. Phyllis has been doing it for a number of bands since I met her. I asked most bands if I could do it but Christine Lavin has asked me to step in a few times when her regular merch person was late. I hate to admit it but I really appreciate being comped to the shows. I could never go to as many as I do if I had to pay for them all. I'm kicking myself for not doing it for Nellie McKay when she was starting out as she is now for the most part out of my price range. I am getting nervier. I asked Red Molly if I could do merch the second time I ever saw them. That is how they got to know me. I assured them I wouldn't steal very more than they could afford.
So now that I've finished my musical autobiography tell me what I forgot to write about.
OK now how did it get to be 1:30? How did it take me an hour and a quarter to write this? I don't know the answers to these questions so I think I better get finish this off. I think I had some more things I wanted to write about. Maybe I'll actually remember them tomorrow.
The International Jewish Banking Conspiracy - October 07, 2008
On the Road to Westchester County - October 06, 2008
Inside the Madison Square Studio - October 05, 2008
I'm a Bosniac and I'm debating like I've never debated before - October 03, 2008
Islands in the Stream of Consciousness - October 02, 2008
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile February 11, 2008
