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Editorial. It's my page

Wednesday 18th of April 2007

I’ve realized I don’t actually like to read editorials in the newspaper. Maybe it’s because the editorial pages are anonymous and representative of a board. But I can’t connect with that anonymity. I read the paper fairly religiously (when I can at least get a seat on the damn subway). I find the details difficult to absorb, but I have a nearly compulsive need to know “generally” what’s going on. I particularly like details of events in Spain and Central and South America. It’s sort of silly but sometimes it makes me happy to know I’m more interested in the least read articles than most of the other readers.

Right now the news is so completely heavy (jevi), intense and simple overwhelming. The details about what happened in Blacksburg continue to unfold, and are so much more shocking to me than I could imagine, I can barely process them. But I’m compelled to keep checking and checking and there always seems to be something new. What’s breaking my heart on top of the fact that 32 people were killed, many others injured, (frustratingly I can’t actually find the exact number of injured survivors anywhere) and hundreds of thousands if not millions of people are grieving, is the pain and loneliness and destruction and evil that mental illness can manifest itself into. I don’t DARE to suggest that there is pat, trite liberal analysis of this tragedy. But someday, when it’s not so raw and the horror has quelled slightly, we must look beyond the face of the murderer and see what our culture facilitates and perhaps there is something we could each to to make it less bleak.

The fact that today the supreme court upheld the abortion ban and those absolute motherfuckers continue to erode women’s rights and choice makes me even more despondant. I don’t even know where to turn. But actually I do. To my friends and loved ones. To tell them I love them and even when we may feel distant, our love isn’t too far.

Let’s get to work.

Soy La Zorra De Suerte

Saturday 30th of September 2006

I apologize to my gentle readers (all 2 of you) who don’t read Spanish yet. It’s my effort tointernationalize the world by incorporating Spanish into my everyday vocabulary and thereby forcing my friends to learn new words and think new ways. In the last year I have been to Spain 7 times. I’ve lost it I know. But it’s ok. Now that my Spanish is better I am trying to learn some Euskera, Catalan Gallego and Portuguese. Now that is crazy. Basque (the language with no origin) is so crazy and so cool with XX’s and KK’s and ZZ’s everywhere.

Anyway, La Zorra De Suerte = Lucky Bitch and right now I’m the luckiest because I’m sitting in a beautiful barn studio in Massachusetts listening to Ted Leo record his new album and it’s making me crazy with excitement. So far they have 14 songs tracked and he’s working on guitars and we’ll see how many make it onto the record but it is sounding so incredible and uplifting and danceable and smart and important. The studio has horses and hot tub and a SAUNA and the rolling stones have written songs here. I am so pissed I have to go back to the insanity of NY, but I must. Sean Na Na plays tomorrow and I have to see my Ben and Jeremy and work my ass off this week. One of the guys on my team at work quit on Friday so until or if they replace him I have to cover a ton more. Locust are also in the studio creating their own masterpiece and The Donnas are recording demo’s and Love or Perish is practicing a ton and I have to go to Montreal for the Future of Music Conference and god god god. It’s a lot no??

But throughout it all I am so stoked because my friends are making the best music in the world and it’s all I want to listen to and that makes me lucky. I like everyone have desire for things I don’t or can’t have but I really really try to remember what I do have and what makes me lucky and happy. My friends and music and punk and air and horses and train rides in New England looking at the leaves change and thinking about you.

9/11 never remember

Monday 11th of September 2006

Oh I remember everything. I was asleep with Chris. His mother called us from New Hampshire at an airport in Manchester. She was bringing Chris' brother home or coming back from visiting him in Vermont. It was about 6. We went to the bean bag chairs and sat in front of the TV. There we were when the second plane hit the tower. There we were to learn about my hometown getting hit and the plane that was on it’s way to the white house but diverted. And learning about people close to us and close to the people we love being killed. It was painful and so real. And it gave me cause to realize I grew up in a city that could be considered by many to be the center of the world and surely the source of so much pain and anguish and death and it should be and could be a target of some sort. Not for this murder, but for action and outrage. But I never felt like I was living in a target. I was never afraid. I roamed the streets at night alone, in the forests with my friends, drunk in cars with boys I just met but I never worried. I thought, that freedom that I take for granted perhaps is something that is truly gone forever. My brothers will know a world that is so truly different that I did, how can we even relate. But we can. We can relate that there is so much work to be done for peace for understanding for respect and for love. It’s the only thing there is to work for. I am trying god dammit. I am in LOVE WITH LIFE and it’s the thing that makes me jump out of bed to get in KONSTANT KONTACT with my family around the world, to make music and records and laughs and do whatever I can to live life to the fullest. I will not let some asshole idiot in the whitehouse or in the hills of Pakistan fuck with that ok? If I die in a plane on my way to Madrid that’s the fucking way I want to go ok? I live in New York City because it’s the best place in the world, I work next to Grand Central Station because that’s where the money is. Who’s gonna stop me from doing fucking anything? I wanna dance and live and drink and eat and make out and it’s HAPPENING.