I left Athens, OH, Sunday morning, being gently hit in the head by perfect little icy spheres, clear versions of the colored tops on heads of sewing pins. I made a choice between lunch or just coffee, letting the choice maker be the parking space. There was one right in front of Casa Nueva, so I ate.
I noticed something, the same thing I’d noticed at Donkey Coffee, when I stopped at a Starbucks about halfway to Louisville. It’s not something I’d ever seen before, but here it was twice in two days. There were two tip jars filled with money, and above them a sign with arrows. At Donkey Coffee, for example, they pointed to: “Which would you rather zipline into: chocolate syrup or whipped cream?”
They post the answers the next day. I love this. In a fun way, it demonstrates everything I’ve said about the way capitalism should be used. Your money can often be more powerful than your vote, supporting companies that support your ideals (Trader Joes v. Whole Foods), and boycotting ones that don’t (Walmart). People seemed far more inclined to tip as a means of voicing an opinion and becoming invested in a question. Sneaky. Smart.
Kristen checks out an accordion at House of Musical Traditions. One of the cooler designs we’ve ever seen. These beesties are almost ALWAYS pretty ornate, but this one had buttons like we’d never seen before, a family name picked out in rhinestones and in general, enough glitz for three drag-queen Elvi. 
Another cool find at HMT. A beautiful hand-made classical guitar with off-set frets. Seeing an instrument like this forces you to realize that the math of music is not nearly as neat as I’d like to pretend. I’ve seen compensated fan-fret guitars that are meant to be ergonomically perfect, but I’d NEVER seen anything like this. I was pretty pleased that Steve (the head luthier at HMT) knew I’d be impressed and took the time to show it to me.
I walk into Church on the Rocks not long after it’s begun around 9pm. The Troubadours of Divine Bliss, who normally run it, are away on tour. Of course, it’s not the same. But there is something unbelievably welcoming about that place. The local bass player sits in with me. I joke during my set on the stage that it really is like church, or at least, the closest a Jew like me will ever get to church.
I let myself into the sleeping house of my friend, Emily. Though six people live here, everyone is invisible away in their rooms, and Emily is out for the night. So I have the rare privilege of a soft bed and a door of my own to close.
I stayed up until 4 a.m., looking at pictures in the ilyAIMY tour journal from that crazy 65 days we once spent on the road seeing things I’d always longed to see: The Painted Desert, the redwoods at Muir, the true plantless desert before Mexico… and my favorite picture, the one I’d gone looking for, of me holding a hawk in Albuquerque.
These adventures seem like a dream now. In the earliest pictures from more than seven years ago, I’m not even 23, impossibly fresh faced. I don’t remember what that girl thought or felt, but I remember how she gasped when the painted desert opened before her. Now, it’s been two years since I’ve been to California, or any further west than about St. Louis. Gas on that trip was less than $2 a gallon, I think. Shudder to think what it would cost us now. How the hell did we survive?
Heather rockin’ in the studio. 
Scott Bergstrom. 
Back to the studios of Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore – Sharif is laying down basslines for a new, heavier version of rearview. I hadn’t noticed that his hat was hanging up in the background. Somehow it just makes it a perfect Sharif vignette.
I write rob a quick note, thanking him for having his camera all the time all those years, so I can look at these pictures now … tiny me against backdrops I saw just that once.
http://www.ilyaimy.com/journal/1501thru1600/1541.htm
http://www.ilyaimy.com/journal/journal_images/2007/2007-03-25/_Desert2.jpg
Last night, after spending the day at Heine Brothers coffee on the internet and meeting Emily for dinner, I headed to Stevie Rays to try my luck at the open mic.
Sitting outside of a very dark Stevie Rays about 20 past 8, their opening time. Someone is either running late, or something is weird. A young guy with sandy blonde hair gets out of the car with the Indiana license plate in front of me, and asks me if I, the girl in the car with the Maryland license plate, know anything. I do, in fact. Emily mentioned over dinner she didn’t know whether Alanna Fugate or Justin Lewis was hosting tonight, and I had jokingly said, “Well, someone will be.” Perhaps I spoke too soon. I call Emily and she starts making calls.
From two cars back, a gray-haired man with a Kentucky license plate is asking questions now, too, but also has information. Apparently, a guy named Taylor Wallings is supposed to host. I text Emily. Yes, she knows him. “I’m on it. Hang tight,” she texts. Somewhere she is playing detective for me.
I leave at 9 p.m. when Emily and I both know nothing more, and head to the open mic I know Divinity Rose is running at Zazoo’s. At 9:30, Emily texts me the answer: Apparently, Stevie Ray’s did not have electricity. Damn.
I enter Zazoo’s, and a guy named Jon-Mark Sandquist with a great voice is singing. Very Chris Cornell. By this point I am the last name on the list, and don’t know how I feel about that yet.
Just as the comedians are in full swing and I’m thinking about leaving for some much-needed rest (I’ve got some bronchial thing), someone taps me on the shoulder. It’s the gray-haired man from earlier, the sweet, southern-voiced Dan Bowlds. His facebook profile picture tells you absolutely everything you need to know about him (below). He is accompanied by Quinton Christenson, a young songwriter friend from his same town, about 90 miles or so away. So I stick it out, admittedly a little embarrassed that I encouraged them to join me over at this open mic.
Dan’s songs are pure Americana, beautifully written kernels of truth about coal mining, farming and life. He plays a beautiful three-vignette folk song of his about his grandfather working behind the plow as a metaphor for a true line in life and love, about how our strength fails us as we encounter loss and finally head “home.” It’s a blissful reprieve from an hour of often crass (without being funny) comedy. And Quinton’s voice surprises me with an original, indie feel. And I leave hoping, sincerely, that I will run into them some other time. I think we have songs to trade yet.
I stay up way too late again, and take today pretty much off in the name of the greater good: being amazing this weekend in Indianapolis and Spencer, IN.
Instead, I sit in a coffeehouse and fall in love with what seems to be the moment’s perfect soundtrack to the gray and the solitary, Pinback’s Talby: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG3yew6SbiI
They are playing the whole Blue Screen Life album as I get news of a shocking death in the family, my 27-year-old cousin. And I feel in love with the music and being there to hear it at that moment, and grateful to be alive for it. And I feel very much alone.
I pile into the borrowed bed in the quiet house, and start to read a review of Joyce Carol Oates’ memoir about losing her husband, and this line levels me:
“How I wish I could believe these words! Brave, defiant words that claim, for the writer, a privileged life of meaning, significance and value beyond that of mere ‘life’ – the claim that art is compensatory for the disappointments of life.”
Which is what I am thinking whenever someone tells me I don’t need anyone because I have my art, and that my art is my love. My hurts have given me fodder for my art, but in the end … I do not want to roll myself up in a blanketed cocoon of old hurt to be warm. And even if I did … the art, like a pet, has questionable affection for you. It is more house cat than lover; A roommate who visits, inspires … you can feed it and beckon it, but it goes and comes as it pleases. It is not enough, and it does not love you back. And the consumers of your art may love you back, but it is not really you they love. You are forever a mistress in the shadow of your own art. I am actually the Other Woman. And maybe we are greedy, some of us artists, for it not to be enough.
Oates proposes that even Twain would have, given the choice, never written Huck Finn if it meant he could bring his dead child back. And the world might have been a little lesser for it, but we would not have known.
