Things are changing, the rain won’t let up, the doorway is rotting, and only Rilke makes any sense for now.

This is derailing my PRO-cess, as the Canadians say.

My stream of consciousness drop everything and write it down fast before it’s gone drop everything and grab the guitar quick before the moment passes stay in the present do whatever a person does and must do to make shit happen versus allowing nothing to happen.

You know, the creative PRO-cess.

My friend Jane says there is nothing to do now, I am in the tractor beam. “I think it’s funny how you think you can decide about this,” she says, grinning a mischievous grin at me. Meanwhile, Jane’s currently pursuing a hot fateful romance which looks to me like dangling a mouse out to a rabid feral cat. She’s got the mouse covered in fish oil, holding onto it by the tail with her teeth, while she calmly tells me to let go and go with God. Or down the river. Or some other metaphor about letting go.

I am letting go and getting on a goddamned plane just like I decided to do when I was on another plane, ATL>PDX, making aforementioned mix tape in my head and into my iPhone, then watching The Help and weeping, then apologizing to the woman to my right who shushed, “Now now, you did just fine.”

To get on the plane though the mix tape must be impeccable, inspiring, THE PERFECT MIX TAPE. There’s the timing (45 minutes per side!) and the sequence and then the pausing and the recording and the pausing and then listening and re-arranging, only to then tackle Side B so that it lives up to Side A without overpowering it but also closes like a champ.

I’ve listened to this 90 minutes of tape at least a dozen times. The best I’m hoping for is that the damn thing will get a listen from end to end from another set of ears. It’s a lot to ask these days, 90 minutes of a person’s time, uninterrupted.

I don’t remember mix tapes being this labor-intensive, and adventurous. But my ticket is purchased, my bags are half-packed, both cassette decks are hooked up to the stereo, and something tells me 2012 will be the year I put my hand back on the Record/Pause button, faithfully.

King Abid
Schlachthofbronx
Sexion D’assaut
Shazalakazoo
Javier Estrada
Tartit
Owiny Sigoma Band
Theophilus London
Teki Latex & Orgasmic
Sorie Kondi & Chief Boima
Gulls
Matanza
The Very Best
Contakt & Mayser

. No check I’ve signed for the past 4 days is dated correctly. My unconscious believes strongly the year is 2010.

. I give good presents but am late, and like clockwork.

. Singing a song with a particular person in mind, and then publishing that song, is excruciating. I don’t know how musicians tolerate the not knowing.

. Talking talking talking is what happens when I get nervous, which is unflattering.

. “Tangled Up In Blue” amazes me. First, the order of the verses is impossible to remember (after the second one, which is easy to remember: “She was married when we first met/ Soon to be divorced”) . Second, those seven verses seem to cover about two decades of the narrator’s life if not more which blows my mind. Third, Dylan shifts up the tempo every time he plays it live and I have no idea how his band can keep up with him.

. Nothing is more important than cultivating strong, trusting, long friendships.

. Rilke. Lots and lots of Rilke. “For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been given to us, the ultimate, the final problem and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.”

. Inevitably NPR is broadcasting something awesometastic as I drive home from the gym at night. Tonight: Terri Gross interviewing Pamela Adlon on “Fresh Air”. Pamela Adlon is the voice of Bobby on King of the Hill, the character Marcy Runkle on Californication, and assorted Louis CK characters. This part of the interview is hysterical – she’s talking about the fallout from playing a girl in drag on Night Court:

PA: That was literally like my whole 80s ouvre was me in drag on camera, and then I became famous for doing that in animation.

TG: Did a lot of people assume you were a lesbian?

PA: Oh god yes. I hope people still do, I don’t want to ruin anybody’s thought they have in their head about me … I won an Emmy for King of the Hill when I was pregnant with my third daughter and I desperately didn’t want to wear a dress. I never want to wear a dress!

TG: I don’t understand why women are expected to wear a dress just because it’s formal.

PA: I hate it! Growing up part of it is when I was in elementary school I think that I got into a fight one day with a kid in second or third grade, I used to get into a lot of little mix-ups, I was a little toughie, and I think it was the only day of my entire life I was wearing a dress and I felt like I had no power. That’s just me, that’s who I am. I need pants and short nails to feel in my body powerful. I’m not making a judgment of anyone else, that’s just me.

. NPR’s Susan Stamberg read the story “First Day” by Elisa Albert during the first days of Chanukah – listen.

. Word on the street is that I am to trust the unfolding of my life, which is no small request.

Favorite albums*:

Wild Flag s/t
Destroyer, Kaputt
Tune-Yards, w h o k i l l
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, The Harrow and the Harvest
Yacht, Shangri-La
Thao & Mirah s/t
Adele 21

* I have clearly neglected key albums which made most obsessive music bloggers’ top 10 lists, for instance Bon Iver and Wye Oak. Maybe I will get around to those, maybe not, but for whatever reason the list above is what gravitated my way.

Favorite live moments:

• Gillian Welch/David Rawlings @ Roseland
• Wild Flag @ Doug Fir
• Pavement @ Edgefield
• The Blow at Crocodile

*****

Never thought I’d see the day when we all entered the year 2012. And still, here we are.

Happy New Year!

Introducing, the now surely obsolete Tascam GT-R1.

Add two Gibson guitars, lovers in arms, and a music blog exploding with goodness including this one by These United States, and voila. A new blogging experiment sure to bring me nothing but ridicule and trouble.

[Remixes [DFA] ]

[Buy the album Shangri-La]