I posted some more workshop stuff here.  It started out as a place to put the fiction, but as more prompts come up, sometimes I end up writing stuff that’s true.  The most recent true piece is the one titled “Suffering Waits,” but if you’re not interested in that, skip down to “Interim.”  I’m kind of liking stuff like “Interim” more nowadays, anyway.  Or, if liking it more isn’t entirely accurate, I guess I’m writing more like it.  Everything I say comes out spooky.  What a way to start spring.

I didn’t feel like posting “Suffering Waits” at first, because it’s much more personal than what I’d normally put on the Internet.  But then I remembered that hardly anyone reads the fiction site, anyway, and even if I link it here, most readers seem more interested in when I talk about zombies, burritos, and Keith Richards.  I can’t say that I blame them.

So congratulations if you want and manage to read it.  If so, you’ll probably have a better understanding of what I planned on saying all along:

Do you remember the last time you bought a record and loved – completely, fiercely, loved – the whole thing?  It’s becoming a lost experience now that people hardly buy whole albums anymore (which I don’t necessarily think is a bad thing, but it’s a bit disturbing to realize that an entire generation is coming up without ever buying and hearing a whole album from start to finish because fast-forwarding the tape is hard).  Shit, I’m one of the few people I know who still pays for music.  But since I do come upon my music honestly, I’m more careful about what I want for keeps.  When I buy a full record, it’s because I expect it to blow my fucking mind.

When it doesn’t, I’m pissed at myself.  When it does, I fall in love with everyone who made it.

Considering that, I’m in love with Jason Webley.

I can’t believe it took me 11 years to find this.  Against The Night was released in 1999, which blows my mind almost as much as the record itself.  It’s just been out there, existing and being awesome, for more than ten whole years and I just found it a few weeks ago.  I’m just shocked at myself for missing it all this time.

I first loved Against The Night because it so reminds me of Tom Waits, but after listening all the way through a second time, I realized that it’s his songwriting and that fuck-it-I-am-making-art-here-so-you-can-freak-out-with-me-or-go-home attitude that just slay me.  Also he plays the accordion.  Genetically, I am pre-disposed to love the accordion (both my mother and my father’s mother played, the latter having a beautiful custom-made one with her name – Shirley – spelled out in mother of pearl along one side).  I used to beg my parents for accordion lessons and am still occasionally pissed that I never got them.

I found out about Jason Webley because of his Evelyn Evelyn collaboration with Amanda Fucking Palmer, who is 1000% amazing and has long had an honored place on my blogroll (and not just for alphabetical reasons).  Evelyn Evelyn is such a weird and silly project that I bought Elephant Elephant, and I liked it so much that I introduced it to Graham, who liked it so much that he agreed to come to the Dresden Dolls show with me and we rocked the fuck out.

Which brings me to AFP’s blog entry from yesterday, because it perfectly explains why I fall in love with the stuff that blows my fucking mind:

one by one, i wish i could kneel before every single artist who has moved me deeply and gently rip my chest open for a few minutes, show them all the various pieces they’ve healed and fixed, watered and tended and fertilized without their knowledge, all the pieces of their music and art that have become me, that have shaped me and turned me into whatever i am.

some music not only stirred the things inside there, the music itself gave me a map of how to get there – before i hadn’t even known there was anything inside that chest, it was locked, dusty, packed with evil, brimming, empty, un-examined.

I mean.  Damn.  Damn, AFP.  And the same goes for Jason Webley, and, of course, for Tom Waits, and all those artists I’ve fallen in love with for various reasons, including the above.  It’s this love that caused me to bomb the feed today, because I really didn’t plan on posting four days in a row.  But seriously, if you’ve seen Anchorman (and if you haven’t, I’m sorry but I don’t know what you’re doing here), you know that when you have love like this, you want to SHOUT IT FROM THE TOP OF A MOUNTAIN.

But I didn’t have a mountain.  I had this blog.