Waiting on my (appliance repair) man: shows this week/a zen rant

Happy Tuesday, friends and lurkers, 

I had a fantastic, if exhausting, solo run over the weekend; just got back last night. Audiences strong in number and enthusiasm make a troubadour feel damned fine. I thank you for being there, listeners and hosts. Thanks too, to my booking agent, Rodney Metoyer, for making all of these dates happen. After a restful and bumpy night (dreamed I was playing with Chuck Berry and at least ONE of us was way out of tune, though only one of us seemed to care) I’ll be staying in town this week, playing two shows:

Tues 8/19   Stone Fox   Nashville   5pm (Happy hour show w/Amelia White & Anne McCue)

Sat 8/23    Mercy Lounge   Nashville   8pm (opening for Gov’t Cheese)

Grateful too, that in my own little corner of the chaos, life is downright bland for the moment: I’m on coffee #3, waiting on the appliance repairperson to show up and bring our brand new dishwasher back to life–it worked for TWO DAYS then died, mid-cycle. Sigh . . . but yeah, if that’s all that’s worrying me that’s “closer than the house next door”(Steve Forbert), I’d say things are pretty fine, really. Yes, the news out there is bad, worse than it’s been in a while, with all the predictable human games being played with the truth, though what that is seems impossible to tell. I guess it’s been said a million times by now: how stupidly ironic it is that we are the most watched/recorded population in history(by our “authorities”, our employers, our media, and ourselves), yet for all the cameras on dashboards, in phones and on corner light posts that a mutually agreeable, objective view of a given event can remain more elusive and contentiously debated than ever. While the fallacies stick like ticks on a dog: No, it does not matter if or when Brown stole the damned cigars. I’m so sick of it all that I think I’m going to do something truly rebellious and read, or listen to, or watch something beautiful, that’s not trying to sell me something, or lie to me,  or cast blame. (For just a few minutes, because Lord knows you gotta hustle around here to pay for that live feed from the crime scene, and one’s other entertainments….) To be in the presence of something that just is. Like the meager garden out there on the east side of the yard: a wild mess of zinnias, herbs, and volunteer tomato plants that keeps spiking the air with new flowers, leaves, and fruit; that will live on as long as it can, doing only(!) that. Would that we could more often play similar tricks in this world, while we are here. Beyond fear, beyond the framing and the spin: The being. The giving. The good.