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somewhere over the rainbow (and other stories)

  Exactly two years ago I found myself flying through a corner of a rainbow, and landed in Oaxaca, Mexico. It was the last film festival I traveled to, a brutal and sweet experience in the harshest of realities, trying to wrap my arms around the slipperiest industry and failing magnificently. Surrounded by fresh faces and eager eyes I ran from the rooms and into the street time and again, wandering off with the camera in my bag as a companion. I took pictures of a blind man that sang on the same corner every day, of wedding parades, of an old woman waiting to see the dentist.  Literally somewhere over the rainbow, I met the ugliest answers to questions I had been dragging my feet towards for years. Cramming the most delicious food into my mouth, joking at the nightly rooftop cocktail parties, grinning like the Cheshire Cat it was all coming to an end. Actually, it had ended before it even started though - and on the plane back to New York and finally Moscow the bone-crunching ...
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this is the day


This is the day. The epic banging downstairs has subsided, appearing randomly at no earlier that 6 at night when it does. There is no good explanation for why I restrung the old guitar today, and then the new one. I am almost drunk on the smell of their cases, like a museum of good intentions - here are scraps of paper with old lyrics on them, a spare cable, a phone number from a show three years ago. I have been writing these songs for over a year now, and today is the day the good microphone went on a stand.

That is how things happen - when you least expect them.

It is a fairly terrifying moment.

I think we all like to say "we need to get out of our comfort zones" which mostly means something like bungee jumping, or getting a new haircut. The idea of singing the confessions of a bunch of imaginary people feels like walking a tightrope with no net. Seeing it done well does not give me any false confidence. It just makes me respect those brave souls that shoulder a guitar and let the words tumble out. It may be one of the greatest magic tricks.

The living room is a growing forest of stands and cables. I am digging in old boxes looking for adapters, for finger slides. There are so many memories crammed into the backs of these drawers. I have been preparing for this moment for years actually, long before I even started on these songs. They say it takes half of your life to write your first album and then you only get a year or two to write your second one. I find myself laughing, already way ahead of myself, already seeing the footsteps in the sand leading to the ocean, the jangled nerves of the journey, the storm, the smell of salt and sweat, but most of all the open cases.




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