Complete insanity. Tour half booked half not booked we find out. agents in different countries working around the clock to put it all together. days before we are homeless. Last night I typed in our name into google along with the sleep with you CD title just to check out how our publicist was doing. DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS AT HOME. that's all I can say. After an hour or so of reading I felt punch-drunk. Writers still ravaging the CD to pieces for the most part, totally not getting it. after about an hour I had to flee, go outside and throw up in the streets. I recently told Juliet how easy it was to have this job... I forgot about this aspect of it. But radio promoters and fans of course constantly telling us how great it is, how many great songs are on it and how it is so hard to choose the singles because of that reason, but one would never know it from reading the magazine and newspaper music reviews. I have heard so many good things from people and read so many bad things from other people, that I just had to listen for myself. So I listened to a few tracks today for the first time in a while with headphones and I loved it. I was just kicked back and you know just loving it. Not cringing at all, like you do a lot of the time after you are finished with some project. But just grooving with it and thinking it was fucking great. Just the first few songs really. That was a wonderful feeling. I was like shit this is good. man you made a good thing there. Susanne this hip radio promoter up in NYC tells me “Fishy you gotta change that CD cover immediately. That's why you're getting the reviews that don't match up to how good this record is. I love this CD. But radio people don't care what your artwork is like. We throw it away. So that's why radio people are digging it but writers aren't. They’re reading too much into your artwork. What were you thinking anyway? Putting a naked girl on the album cover? In these times? Howard Stern can’t get away with it, and you think you can?” I'm like, “I was thinking we were making great art. That’s what I was thinking. I thought it was a really nice idea. Very sexy. Artistic.... you know?” She tells me, “You know what? Maybe if you were black... Maybe you could have gotten away with that. But a white guy? A singer in a rock band? A naked girl on your bed? And all those songs about sex? You were asking for it sweetie.” “Yeah, I don't know. I just didn't see it that way. I still think it’s the best thing we’ve ever done. Music and artwork. You really think we should change it?” “You have to. You said you want to make it commercially with this album? Change the cover. You're going to release a single now to radio? Not with that CD cover. Trust me. Change it and watch what happens....”

Drinks with a few of the boys at a local pub on Lincoln road.

Watching more of the president Reagan funeral services later tonight. I'm not one of those cynical bastards like many of my contemporaries who won't give the guy cred because of his policies that they didn't agree with, or the mistakes he made. Say whatever you want about Reagan. At least he was an honest and humble and dignified man. We had been without a leader of his caliber for almost twenty years. and we still have yet to have a president as admirable and honorable as Reagan was. One can only hope that maybe one day soon we will again. Again, I'm not hip to everything he did. But see more honor it than most I guess.

Viewing the funeral proceedings this evening easily brought a tear to the eye for times past, when we were less cynical, less willing to endure deceit and mediocrity at our own expense. Growing up in the Reagan years, looking back now, its easy to feel a bit spoiled compared to generations that have come since. I worked for the Clinton campaign when I was a bright eyed bushy tailed young idealistic college student. I have written about these days many times. We celebrated hard the day of his election and then during his inauguration. After eight years of his buffoonery and chicanery and his inability to understand the respect factor, like most, I was glad to see the good old boy leave. 

As Brian Mulroney said, ‘there is a vast difference between the job of president and the role of the president.’ I hope one day we have another leader who understands this as well as Reagan did.

Watching Nancy and Ron Jr and Patti cry over Ronald Reagan’s casket before they lowered him to his final resting spot I felt like weeping. Nancy looked so frail and sad. I felt this emotion swelling up within me, from my chest to my throat. It was not just for their sorrow as a family. We were reminded in that brief moment that these are real people. Ronald Reagan was a real man. And this is his family. But I couldn’t help but feel a bit sad for the sorry state that we are in as a country today. How split apart we are. And how cynical and disconnected we seem. Perhaps it is just that I was a very young and innocent boy when Reagan was president. I am willing to accept that that might be the case. But it almost felt to me like Reagan’s death this week was some kind of symbolic gesture marking the ending of an era. An era of innocence and optimism that we may never see again. At least not for some time.

We are a grand old nation now. America is still so young in the larger picture. But we are growing tired. One can see signs of it everywhere. Things seem to be moving so fast now. hard to keep up with everything now. Hard to decipher the truth from the riddles these days. Reagan's death took us all back in our memories to times when things seemed a bit easier to understand. [one is reminded that during the Reagan years, just a brief fifteen years ago, there were no cell phones, no personal computers, no laptops, no internet, no email, no instant messaging, no reality TV, no eBay or Amazon, no DVDs, no internet stocks, no online brokers, no online anything. We didn’t even have CDs. We still listened to music on tapes and vinyl records. I have boxes of thousands of them upstairs in a closet that I haven't seen in years. I cant quite get rid of them, but i don’t know what the hell to do with them. Things have indeed changed very quickly for us.] I think that's why the Reagan funeral services were such a big affair in our country this week. I have never seen anything like this before in America. I don't know if we have ever had such a grandiose affair in America, as this week of services was. Not since Kennedy died.

On a personal note, somehow this week meant a lot to me. The long good bye of Reagan’s funeral services combined with this being the last week in my beloved home here in Miami, everything all packed up in boxes all around us as we make our way through our daily routines. Knowing I am going to be living out of hotels for a few months, and then make a move to a new city...  the passing of the great one has coincided perfectly with this moment in my life.

Reminded me of my youth. My grandfather, who was my adopted father because Beaver and I never knew our real father, worked in Washington for the federal government throughout his career, was a staunch and ardent republican his whole life. And he never let any of us forget it. Reagan was a hero to him and to my grandmother, because at least on the surface he portrayed the kind of moral values and etiquette that they grew up with themselves and hadn't seen in American in many years; although to Beaver and me he was just another old man in a suit. Grandpa was an Italian immigrant and a self made man. And he never let us forget that either. Growing up in the great depression, his own father, a banker, shot and killed himself when he found out that he had lost his life savings and left behind seven young children. The legend goes that my grandfather went to work at age eight soon after that, standing on a stool to put on the shaving cream of customers at the local barber shop before their morning shaves. He delivered newspapers, mowed lawns, worked in mail rooms, and did whatever else he had to do in order to work his way through high school, then college, then law school. It is even rumored that he had to walk ten miles to school every morning through three feet of snow. Of course he may have been exaggerating a bit there... 

By the time I was old enough to collect memories, he was already a retired federal attorney and respected judge. Every night for sixteen years (until I left home to never return) we were forced to watch news and politics on the television and discuss what we saw and heard over dinner. He hammered it into us night after night how easy we had it compared to when they grew up, and how important politics and world affairs were to us as citizens of this great country. he told us that youth was truly wasted on the young and that me and Beaver were perfect examples of this. He foretold that just as surely as we were foolish liberals as children that one day when we grew into young men we would realize the error in our ways and become conservatives.

Of course we had no interest in any of this. All I thought about was rock and roll. Elvis Presley and John Lennon and Bono were my Ronald Reagan. So growing up in that environment was not easy for me. I spent many a night, many a year, coiled up under my covers or quivering outside smoking a cigarette after being told that I was a fool who didn't understand the important things in life and that I would amount to no good as an adult. I have long since forgiven my grandfather for this. But the irony does not escape me that many years later, long after my grandfather’s passing, that I have too come to understand and appreciate the importance of politics in our day to day lives as Americans. And that the older I get, the more like him I become in my manners and values. Albeit, I hope that I will one day be a more loving and understanding father and grandfather. I often wish that my grandfather was alive today so we could talk and share. Of course he would still think I was an idiot; and a bleeding heart liberal that had no right to eat at the same dinner table as the wise old republicans that they so prided themselves to be. But I would hope that if he were alive today that he would at least see that I was trying to understand it all and find my own place in it.  

With our young and impressionable minds, Ronald Reagan and grandpa sort of seemed like one person. it was hard to tell them apart at that age. Both such domineering and noble men. You never heard anyone say anything bad about him. Even when they disagreed with him. I reflect on my own life. On who I am as a man; on who I am growing into. I wonder if I will ever be such a kind or generous or intelligent or decent person. I try sometimes to remember that that is the goal. But as I have been my entire life, I am torn between grace and the gutter. Lately the gutter seems to be my stomping grounds. But it’s a graceful gutter. I don't mind that. I honor it. I honor who I am.

But there was a moment today, something, a scene outside of the great cathedral in the early morning as mourners filed in to pay their final respects to the great communicator... it was so American, so Anglo, so white... everyone dressed in their black suits, the singing of the hymns, the sincere and serene faces, the couples walking arm in arm.... I got a little teary eyed. Reminded me of when I was younger, the way I grew up. so traditional and American. And all of that is so far away from me now. Me the wild man adventurer nomad living so out there and free and so far from the mainstream. Reminded me of how far off from all of that I live today. long ago I left all of that behind. Truly traditionless, customless, a normal life of absolute abnormalcy... In my desperate attempt to flee the insanity of my youth, I left behind the many traditions and customs that were once so deeply a part of me growing up. Perhaps still an important part of me that I have just momentarily forgotten. Perhaps. I think about that sometimes. About going back. About heading back to the shores of the mainstream. Settling down like a good old fashioned American guy. wife and kids and pool parties and nine to five and drinks after work with the guys and barbeques and primetime network TV shows and reading the newspaper with my dog sparky and even going to church every Sunday and all that. I think about it. but then I usually feel sick. So I try not to. just kidding. Sort of. But I cannot help but feel that there is a grand purpose in my losing the shackles of all that is traditional, holy, mainstream, or expected of me as a Christian, or an American, or a man, or a human even. I believe in this higher purpose. I believe it is a destiny of some kind. So I just keep heading out to the horizon. Farther and farther I sail. And I rarely look back now.  

I guess the point of it before I shift gears is that even someone as far off from the center as I am can still find inspiration in Ronald Reagan. A real testament to the old man.

After Beaver and his wife had their first baby they became members of their local church. If that weren't enough, it was a catholic church. How could he do this to me? I yelled. Haven't you learned anything? Of course we have spent many moments arguing about it. me being such a strong believer in God and such a spiritual person, I could think of nothing more abhorrent or sacrilegious. They insist that it is an important thing to do once one has children. To lovingly and systematically brainwash the child in the myths and lies and half-truths of organized religion. Mom says that if there was nothing left on earth to rebel against that I would surely still find something.

Old mom is right of course. I cannot help it. I have always been an iconoclast. Long before I knew there was such a word for it. I have always been a futurist more than a traditionalist. Always more an evolutionist than a creationist. Watching the Reagan funeral service today in the great cathedral, I watched as my mind casually imagined a future when one by one we eradicated all of the old myths and traditions of organized religion from our day to day lives. The crosses, the altars, the robes, the rituals, the false pretenses of the stolen holidays. Call me a devil or a heretic or a pagan or a fool even, but as long as religion is used to accomplish such ignoble goals as keeping same sex couples from enjoying equal rights in marriage for example, I will keep praying for and looking forward to the eventual extinction of man’s religions.

When we get to a state of true human worship, along with our love of God; when we finally reach the inevitable state of humanity within each of us that I know we are capable of, a state where being religious means being humane rather than insane or mundane; when our hearts open as widely as I know in my own heart that they are truly able to without the need for or excuse of religion; when we realize as a whole people that God wants nothing more than for us to rise up to his level, rather than look up at him from a feeble and meek and meager and wanting state; when our actions as spiritual beings are as graceful and kind and decent as our words as religious people portend; when there is more measurable truth in our great religions than unbelievable myth; when each religion no longer inherently excludes all the other religions through its dogma and doctrine of exceptionism; when religion and God no longer serve mankind as a means to war or killing or conquering as a divine right; when mankind realizes that God is truth, and if we are to create religions in his/her name, then these religions should be truthful; when this day has come to pass, as it surely will, more and more so the longer we live and evolve in our current form, man will no longer feel the need to create God. Man will be God. And God, in his infinite wisdom, will be happy for it. The circle will finally be closed. This will be the eighth day that the bible never speaks of. God will finally get to truly rest for once.

Until this day comes to pass there will always be rebels and rebel rousers, blindly idealistic guards at the gates of consciousness pointing the way toward our freedom, rather than the religious demagogues and doomsayers who desperately try to hold us down and stunt our full potential as the gods we are on our way to becoming. For now, we the spiritual are in a Cold War of our own with those who call themselves religious. Throughout our history on earth the religious have been winning this war. The great religions of the world, whether Christian, or catholic, or Muslim have been killing us all off by the millions in the name of their various gods. And we the spiritual have been forced to sit on the sidelines and watch. But one day very soon this will change. To steal a phrase, “I can feel the whole world changing. The planet is re-arranging. I can feel it calling us to rise and shine.”

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Tobias Guess. Some will call me a rebel, a devil, a heretic, or a fool even. But don't believe any of it for a second.