There was this moment when someone was speaking about Reagan and how he asked him how he managed to stay so calm amid all the insanity of his job as president. And his answer was that he was always used to being in these crazy situations and looking back to whoever was with him in the room for support. And then one day, he decided to look up instead and look to God for support. And from that day on he felt all the support he would ever need.

So tonight as I was resting in bed, ready to fall asleep, I too looked up to God for support.
An amazing talk with God last night. I'm talking like amazing. this knowing. This grand feeling

Ray Charles has passed on.

The poet flew in from Atlanta to rehearse with the band. he is going to take the drum seat for the upcoming tours. Rehearsing like crazy with the boys for the upcoming tour. all day and all night. five hours on, an hour for lunch, five more hours, a bit of dinner, a few more hours. Great times. can’t believe the energy of getting these five guys in the room together to play music. a super group all coming together to play all these songs. Awesome. JP from DC3 and the pawnshop drunks is playing guitar for us due to the recent disappearance of Vancouver. He is totally brilliant on the guitar, and vocals, and has a great personality. [I say that now—flash forward a few months... Hehe. You know how the road gets.] so its like a whole new band. me and father Bloopy the only original guys left now, but you would never know it. Rockaway has taken the seat for the piano man. it was just an amazing weekend. Cool photo shoot. Great jams. Good times. telling Bas later that night, ‘it just goes to show. I could have taken this craziness with half the guys ducking out at the last minute as a bad thing. could have gotten down about it. but instead I just rode it out. looked for the positives and stayed focused on what we were doing, at the task at hand, and at our goals, and it turned out better than I ever could have imagined.

In other news: the Italian stallion finally emailed me back after a long hiatus. A brief note. I don't think she's ever going to give me more than that. I don't blame her. all my back and forth would drive anybody crazy. Gave each other space for a while. More like me giving her space. I am an insane lover. An even more insane ex-lover I'm afraid. And she and I were/are neither really. Never really sure what we were. I beg her to be friends. She says its my fault and that I was the one who walked away. I say I never walked away from us being friends, just from us being lovers. She says same thing. so that's where we sit almost two years later still. Somewhere between never-friends, not-really-but almost-lovers, and common associates. Great to hear from her though.

Tampa bay just won the Stanley cup. It never snows in Tampa and no one ever ice skates there. but they beat the Alberta, Canada team. Only in America.

Ronald Reagan has passed on. Well that is an end of an era isn't it? this event now truly marks the end of the 20th century some have said. It leaves you with a feeling of ‘where is our guiding light now? where is our spark of hope?’

Last screening: checked this movie called gods and generals. Wasn't too good or bad. But just interesting to see another perspective of America’s civil war. As I experienced the film I was reminded of the little war that is raging between Americans in our own time. That being for the rights and civil liberties of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. Lets hope it never gets to the point of a civil war of course. But its interesting how far apart we can feel sometimes from people we are so close to in most other ways.

Driving to the office today I saw a plane, a very large plane, flying from the east towards this large group of skyscrapers. My whole body tensed up. I watched the plane fly towards them or maybe behind them. I wasn't sure yet. Would it come out the other side, or was it about to fly into them? I watched and waited. Any minute I was going to see one of the buildings burst into flames because the plane crashed into it. God don't let it happen. When the plane finally appeared from behind the group of skyscrapers I breathed a sigh of relief. But I spent the next two hours very sad because of 9/11. Things are different now. Every time we see a plane.... Things are different for us in America. As soon as you think of it you just feel like crying.  

Elliot Smith is dead.

Elliott Smith Dies

Singer-songwriter was thirty-four

1969-2003

Elliott Smith, whose fragile melodies and voice positioned him as a Nick Drake for a new generation, died yesterday of a knife wound to the chest, an apparent suicide; he was thirty-four. Smith's body was found at his home in Los Angeles by a friend yesterday just after noon. He was rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead an hour later.

Last screening: presidents’ series; the four hour biography of Ronald Reagan. Interesting man. Raised a gypsy early in life, college football player, heroic lifeguard, actor, mediocre governor who raised taxes, increased spending, and decreased welfare help to poor people, and called the national guard on protesting students at Berkley. Responsible in the fifties for putting many actors and writers out of work and in prison in the blacklist communism witch trials. Because he really didn't like communism. Spent most of his life as a liberal democrat before finally switching to republicanism. President of the country when fed deficit was highest it had ever been in history and we were in the midst of the worst depression we had seen since the great one, unemployment the highest it had ever been, on and on. But somehow he turned it all around for a while. Great personality. One of the best we've ever seen in the presidency. Hard to judge presidents really. Not all black and white. And after the last few years of studying I am starting to think that you really can’t blame the economy on the president. I think that regardless of how good or bad the economy is it’s a cop out to try to pin it on one man. But it is inevitable. His economic program called Reaganomics that he finally got by the then democratic congress is blamed for leading the country to a fiscal disaster we had never seen. Cutting benefits to the poor and giving tax breaks to the rich. Sound familiar? But again things started turning around. He really believed that the only way to get peace between us and USSR was to build and build. We had the biggest protest in our history during his presidency---against him—against building up our nuclear armament. But he didn't care. He went insane building arms because he really believed that was the only way to defeat Russia—was through a position of strength. At one point pentagon spending to build the military reached 34 million dollars per hour on building weapons. He brought America to the highest deficit we ever had in our history. Still today we are feeling the effects of his spending. But he was right. it worked. Not only did he get Russia to start signing disarmament treaties, he downright brought them to their knees from trying to compete with us. Their whole damn empire imploded. Reagan was an idealist and a revolutionary. He did trade arms for hostages. But he got hostages back. And he did use the money to fund the contras in Nicaragua. But that is because he was trying to defeat the communist Sandinistas. I like that about the guy. You kind of walk away in awe of Reagan after studying him. I don't know if we’ll ever have a president like that again. what a different kind of guy. very heroic. Even if you don't agree with a lot of the things he was about. He brought the damn Berlin wall down and he was in his late seventies flying all over the world trying to make it happen. Unbelievable. I was alive back then but I was too young to know what the hell was going on. I didn't understand the significance of what he was doing. Now we can see it. 

Current Spin: my morning jacket, at dawn. This group is awesome. I am sure they will be entirely ignored.