Last night I spent a few hours researching reviews from the past year of the sleep with you CD. our new CD went out this week for review to the press and I wanted to see what they would see if they Googled us and our last few releases. I already knew that rise and shine was well received for the most part. So I had no attention on that one. but sleep with you... honestly I had been avoiding reading reviews all year... I must have read over a hundred reviews and for the most part we were just torn apart for it... in all honesty... I cannot pretend or deny it away. even the positive reviews missed the point a lot of the time. we just didn't get across what we were aiming for. or perhaps we did... but either way, it was destroyed by most critics... too bad, because I love that album...and am still very proud of it.

There was one writer who got it. he really understood it. began his critique by explaining that the CD was an exploration and celebration of love and sex and romance and relationships and women... not much more, but no less because of that fact... I really appreciated this one person getting that... that's all I was trying to do with that work. That was it. and this one guy got it. [some guy tells me today that its like each of our cds is a diary of that time period in our lives because of the feeling of the songs and the artwork... now HE really gets it.] But everyone else just ragged on us.... especially on me. I read everything from ‘the music is pure generic crap’ to how awful of a singer I was to how bad the drum sounds were to how lame the guitar playing was to how puerile and asinine the lyrics were. Superhero girl was called ‘dunder-headed fluff’ and we were ‘blustery’ I didn't even know what the word blustery meant and had to look it up. well it isn't a good word. In general the feeling was why the hell is this guy on the cover with a naked girl on his bed and why the hell are all the songs about girls and drugs...

Princess Little Tree reminded me that before we began the album I told her that my intention was to create an album about sex drugs and rock and roll and that's exactly what I did. so why should I be so surprised by the reception... you know, with rise and shine I was accused of being too feel-goody and spiritual and lets change the world... and so perhaps sleep with you was a reaction to that. in fact, I am sure it was. but the saving grace is that nothing is cohesive had no secret meaning, no concept whatsoever... it was just us enjoying recording a collection of songs that we liked because we enjoyed making music together. I hope that comes off. I hope it is well received... I don't know if I can take another beating like we took with sleep with you. I spent all night tossing and turning, the harsh words of the various critics spinning around in my fucking head... I will be the first to admit that that is not easy. you can pace the floor and scribble notes and take walks, but the words still linger... perhaps Bas was right after all: “Stop fucking reading the reviews Fishy. good or bad. I'm telling you you're a fool man, they're meaningless. Stop reading them.”

One thing I notice is that all these writers always point to bono and bowie as my main influences vocally – certainly the similarities end there – I don't think my songs have ever sounded like either --- some cat says beautiful one sounds like a bowie ballad... yeah right... it just doesn’t even sound close to that... but none of them have ever been astute enough to get that its marc bolan who all three of us are copping. Bowie has admitted it a hundred times. without marc there would be no David as we knew him back then. you can hear when David first heard marc... you can hear the change in his singing style when he went from copping Dylan and Anthony Newly to copping marc to eventually when he started being David.... at times you cannot tell the two apart... and bono talks about one of his first erotic rock and roll experiences  --- as a kid in Dublin watching the TV and seeing marc bolan for the first time and he pointed to the screen and said ‘I wanna do that.’ when bono gets all smooth and intimate and holds the mic with both hands up to his face and scrunches his mouth up to sing breathy and romantic as if every word was an epiphany... that's marc coming out... I don't consciously ape anyone anymore but on occasion I will just full on sing through the marc filter unknowingly because it just sounds so cool and is so much fun to sing like that... then I'll catch myself and be like ‘bro, you're totally copping bolan right now. ease it up a bit man...’ but its really interesting how no one ever notices. They always call it bono or bowie but never take it further. His influence is so huge and far reaching but the critics just never talk about it. I don't know why. like Jim Morrison in that way. the critics never got marc’s influence. But one day they will.
In the meantime, I really want on this next album we have started to find my own sound. Not just musically, but vocally too. the hardest thing as a singer is hearing what you really sound like. So you could be totally sounding like someone else and not even know it. just because you're singing from your heart and you're totally into it and you aren't even noticing that you are unconsciously sounding like someone else. anyway, I feel the influence of the people I sound like. For sure. No critic has ever pointed out an influence that I haven't felt was there. – for me vocally only. Swy got a lot of comparisons to cheap trick or Billy squire or Matthew sweet and I never checked any of those cats out. but yeah on NIC I reached out like a motherfucker vocally as far as I could to try to get someplace even further... but still... I'm just still really close to that same place. I know a lot of it has a lot to do with tonality. How your voice naturally sounds... James hetfeild is never going to sound like Rufus wainwright. But still... have to get to another place entirely... a unique place. how? Listen to other styles of music. me listen to other styles of music? like what? hoe much further out can you get than I already am? No, its not going to be that. its gotta come down to just getting in there and trying different things... just working at it. musically too. rise and shine I pulled it off. Totally unique. Just out of left field/outer-space if you listen to it now. like where the fuck did that come from? but the last two albums not so much because so much pressure to sound commercial from everyone. Fuck that on the next one. I just want to go someplace that no one has ever been.

Brunch today with Asyra and a new friend from Russia. the conversation was as good as the amazingly beautiful day accented by the blue sky that enveloped the entire city. though it was freezing, it was a gorgeous day. we went to a very chic café where all the beautiful people go in the village every Sunday.

In the restaurant I must have fallen in love maybe ten times in the hour or so we were in there... I made a note while the girls sipped their coffee and spoke casually... “ Realize now that there are so many beautiful people in the world that there is no way that we aren't going to fall in love every five minutes of every day... it is inevitable... that finding that one true love, that magical one that our heart longs for eternally, is going to have to come from a place deeper and more profound than anything we can imagine in our day to day lives. It is going to have to come from a place of karma or destiny or fate or a past life or something of this nature... it cannot be a love of this world if it is to transcend the day to day... if it is to suppress that little monkey inside that wants to love and be loved by every beautiful person we see on the streets and in the cafes everyday. Somewhere there is something bigger than all of that for each of us. that is the dream.”

I had the pleasure of vacuuming tonight. I had not vacuumed in a good decade or more. I thought it was great fun. I would not want to do it regularly. But it does give a kind of instant feeling of a satisfaction watching all the dirt get cleaned up. a simple sense of accomplishment rather easily achieved. I can see how one could easily become addicted to it.

Something else I was understanding tonight.... about Iran... losing the fear... slowly. Coming to terms with the fact that they are just people... like us. they have terrorists. We have terrorists. We all have our terrorists. When I think of Iran or the ayatollah Khomeini I feel frightened and sick like most Americans do, having been bombarded with images of them with these evil faces burning American flags in their streets and screaming anti-American slogans... can a person get beyond that though? I think I am beginning to. although filling out an Iranian visa application the other day I did feel this chill up my spine when at the top of it I read the words “N THE NAME OF THE ALMIGHTY”

When you see something like that you have to wonder, “who is the almighty?” and why is this visa application of mine in his name? why wouldn’t it be in my name? weird.

I think it would be great if someone just came up with an invisible friend like this ‘almighty’ and started walking around acting like he was always hanging out with them. ‘oh don't step over there. the almighty is over there.’ if anything weird happens, like a tsunami or an earthquake, we could call it ‘an act of the almighty.’ We could even blame murders and plagues and fires and all sorts of shit on the invisible almighty. O.k. never mind, we already do that. but still. I like the idea of having my own invisible almighty to hang out with. perhaps we could all do this. each of us could have our own almighty. Of course there would be a massive over-population crisis. The population on the earth could double if everyone got in on the idea. it would be totally insanity. Billions of invisible almighty's running around doing only God-knows-what.

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Best movies of the year: life aquatic with Steve Zisou. Sideways. Eternal sunshine... finding neverland... what the fuck are the Oscars thinking this year? that's what I want to know. if aviator wins it, then there really is no God and we are fucked for sure.

O.k. thank God aviator didn't win. perhaps there is a God after all. that movie was just God awful save Leo and Kate. The only person who deserved to win from aviator was Kate blanchet and she did. that was very obvious, that one to everyone. and if Leo wasn't against such tough competition he could’ve taken it.... but no worries. He's always good... he's just getting started...  hilary won again. didn't see it. can’t comment on it yet. Jamie fox winning was awesome. not only because he did such a great and believable job in Ray and collateral, but also so we didn't have to choose between Johnny and Leo, who both did such great work in their movies. The best actor category was impossible to call this year – totally crazy... impossible... they were all worthy. I am so happy Charlie won for eternal sunshine... that was huge. I thought that was an astounding film. I am very disheartened by Wes Anderson not being nominated for life aquatic. What's it going to take for him to get recognized?

There is a man named yo-yo. Do you realize that?

Marlon Brando died. There's news and then there's news, and even a year later Marlon Brando dying still feels huge and actually quite unfathomable. The man is dead. Wow. Who else is Marlon Brando?

Hunter s Thompson of course is dead now as well if you want to call it that. supposedly he took his own life. he must have been in great pain. may he rest in peace.