the yoke of the yearn

good morning ~

(click the link / thumbs up toad to listen)

My Big Breakthe yoke of the yearn

I recorded today’s track on a poorly felted piano I discovered at my job

I’ll be playing in New York City tomorrow night at Sundown Bar in Ridgewood - - would love to see you there

also the Lot Radio DRONE set from Sunday is now available on YouTube:

(btw if 100 of you could please buy your tickets to 24-HOUR DRONE I would be very grateful)

Settling into the luxury of a double queen room in a fancy hotel we have to pool our resources to afford near Rittenhouse Square, all four of us sharing the one room, exactly the kind of thing we've said a million times that we're too old to be doing and yet we're doing it anyway, my two beautiful friends and all of us in our jimjams, tucked into the sheets pulled extra tight at the bottom, I was exhausted, my allergies were going totally insane, I was full of pizza because the nervous social energy of the pre-wedding dinner made me feel like a greyhound shivering in a sweater and I kept going back for more, the wedding the next day loomed a little bit for me, so happy, the one time I really ever get worried about singing is when I love the people getting married very much, but that was the next day, in this moment I simply let the sounds of Rush Hour on the hotel TV wash over me, I am the first one asleep, all the lights were still on, I could hear my friends giggling, Jackie Chan kicking ass in the background, and then I was deep asleep, profoundly so.

The first night we were left alone to wander the grounds of the nest and assemble the humble dinner we had collected from various markets earlier that evening (tropical fruit, lentils, a package of assorted manchego, rice, and fresh tortillas - a kingly meal). There was a spookiness to it and not just because the building was in the shape of an enormous snake named for a wrathful god of the old ways. The sun sunk low - up in the hills it felt like we were high above it - and its light glinted off of the architectural scales of the serpent, we sat within its jaws. The next morning we were given a tour - oh nice, we thought, a quick little walk around - but it actually turned out to be an all-day affair, we covered acres and acres, the park not yet open to the public sprawled and sprawled, the land of it just kept going and the ideas popping up like dandelions in the turf. Patricia sprinkled our walk with quiet, grandmotherly spiritual musings, telling us that the true light and beauty in the world came from within us. She fed us fruit and bottles of water at the break, she gathered edible plants in her sun hat. Tired from the journey we sunk deep into the belly of the snake. In the morning before we could leave we went through one more meditation. Drawn into the darkest portion of the deepest recess of the concrete serpent we are asked to sit in the dark on the floor and imagine ourselves back within the womb but all I can imagine is an enormous egg containing the world, the business of the world cracking through.

From the Lot were we joined and to the Lot we have now returned, what a gift to get to know these sweet Viennese freaks. It occurs to me as we enter our second hour of coffee chatting on a rainy evening in New York that this is perhaps the outcome I am most often pray for whenever I am doing anything that beams outward - that my efforts might result in making a friend. I have made many such friends this way - what would be my compass if I was not trying to make sounds and share them all the time? Certainly money is not the reward, the real riches were the friends we made along the way, yes! To say to someone: you are like me in these ways, I can hear it in the music that you play...such a romantic remark. And these two were so kind to us when the opportunity to hang in Vienna presented itself at the end of 2022, talking us around, ordering for us, inviting us to holiday parties. Rehabilitative in so many ways. And then years later I am standing on a corner in downtown Brooklyn literally basking in the yellow and pink glow of their paint, my clothes soaked through. Unfortunately, inconveniently, preposterously, it remains very rewarding to try and do anything!

Really one day want to figure out what it is that makes me want to do a good job all the time. And why it pains me to phone it in! When so many do so! All the time! My life would be so much easier - frictionless as high speed rail - if I could care less. There is an evangelical quality to my desire for a head pat from the creator, but did I learn this need from church? Or was the church uniquely suited to appeal to someone who was already constantly in need of good boy validation? Perhaps I was born with the right personality inclination. In California megachurch culture you are told forever that you are imperfect and that Jesus in his sacrifice has made up for your cosmic defects. You can become perfect and eligible for eternal salvation by accepting Jesus into your heart, this is what they tell you. And shouldn't that be a comfort? Shouldn't it release us from the struggle for good boy certification to know that we will always be flawed in one way or another? So why do I yearn, still, to be confirmed as good once and for all? But then what is the alternative? Sometimes I meet the occasional elder who has seemingly given up on virtue - I have been kind enough, they seem to say, their spittle flying as they request the presence of the manager, the B side of my life shall be dedicated to wallowing in the ungenerous. They have retired from grace. I do not wish to live this way. I will continue to burn, the yoke of the yearn. May we be freed from desire and given a gold star in the next life, amen.

But what about you? Are you really doing anything worth doing? Will you sleep in the belly of a snake? Are you - finally, after all these years - a good boy?