Spending weekends in Canyon now and then has been really healing, and Art is much better on several fronts; gaining weight, strength, and cognition. I come to bring light, and food, and energy, and put right difficulties from a rapidly dwindling list. There are further hurdles ahead for sure, but we are pushing forward on the plan to play Cotati again.
Soon it will be the five-year anniversary of the broken ankle, and a week later, the big Seven-Five! I am mostly healed, though every once in a while something reminds me, that little catch where the muscle crosses bone, or maybe how my knee takes some of the unspoken stress. The ramp, and the threshold, are sites of well-deserved caution. There is so much water under that proverbial bridge, what’s left of the bay tree that fell is mouldering into the side of the hill.
It’s odd to be back in the studio. Maybe odd is not the word. It’s enough just to be here. Things that survived don’t mind the rust, or the damp, or the odd patterns mildew leaves on a canvas panel if you turn your back on it for three years. Projects I thought of doing then seem simple now, with brush control and instinctual reach for materials. Synapses that were drawn then come with muscle memory.
Sleep in the old Westy is easy, it’s so dark, and the rain is a lullaby. For some reason the bad circuit breaker is not broken, we got the automated cat feeder set up, removed and replaced the metal cabinet in the bedroom. Maybe the on-demand water heater will finally give him hot water in the kitchen, might get that resolved next time. The more we work, and talk, and eat, the stronger he seems. Every day is a miracle.
I had four posts in draft form, all different. Deleted them all. They were nonsense. I read back over the last few attempts and let them go. The stories of my life are no longer synching up. My beloved has a serious health problem that in the few weeks since it was discovered has changed everything.
Here I am in the roofing house again, much as I left it over three years ago . . . I did come back a few times in the intervening and poke around a bit. Yes, Petaluma Parade weekend, ouch. Last year when I came to load out the sound equipment for the Saw Festival I camped here two nights, swept up and pulled some things out. It’s not in bad shape, all I need is some acrylics and brushes. I am somewhat surprised at what I left rat-safe in the filing cabinet: books, magazines, canvas panels, frames and glass. Many things I have no room, or need for, artograph, light box, four bags of LP’s. I did NOT find the big sketchbook with handles that I so want to see.
Woodrat built a tinker-toy nest of bamboo skewers and forks, and some scraps of paper, in a crate, a foundation of plastic bags at the bottom. I pulled it all apart and tucked it into a grocery bag, might write “free rat’s nest” on it.. I swept, used the leaf blower, wiped glass, rehung prayer flags. It’s a delightful little space. I think I’ll be here again.
There were a lot of things Art needed help with. He’s so skinny. I brought beef stew for the weekend, raw butter and grass fed ground beef for the freezer. He gets food delivered from the school Monday thru Friday. I made cauliflower soup and veggie juice in the Ninja he had in storage, never used. Built fires in the wood stove in the cold mornings.
We had a few deep talks at the table, eating stew, him taking his remedies, sorting unopened packages and mail. A circuit breaker had failed and broke, he can’t get it to come out. He has someone who can fix it, so I rerouted cords and plugs and got the porch light working, installed a power strip in the kitchen, got the ceiling light and light over the sink working, and plugged in appliances. Wedged two metal plates under the kitchen sink outflow pipe under the house to stop the drain from leaking all over, ew.
48 hours, Saturday to Monday, I’ll leave sometime after noon. He called me an angel. How much do I owe you? No, dude, you fed me and emptied my bucket for three months after I broke my ankle. You don’t owe me.
He slept and napped, I puttered in the RH and did his laundry and camped in my van, OMG I could hardly get the pop-top up, it has been so long. I am so at home here, the things I thought I had lost forever, my parking space, my studio, all is as it was when I left in abject misery. Who else knows his habits, his quirky home and proclivities? Only I. On the way here I saw a free box and picked out a pillow for Westy, immaculate white, with a bird embroidered in navy, burnt orange, teal, ochre, a Bird of Paradise, a Phoenix, a rebirth. If only for now. Yes, so mote it be.
Just some adventures and souvenirs to start the year: I took a ferry ride with James & L.B. to Fisherman’s Wharf, but crab season was delayed so we had prawns from who-knows-where, then coffee, then cocktails. Another thrifting trip to Santa Rosa netted a cat carrier from Italy for Art’s birthday. The unofficial flower of Berkeley, the ubiquitous FREE box.
For helping LB with her garage clean-out I won an Italian puzzle lamp shade I put together and took apart. STILL these freaking signs show up on the street by a school nearby. My nighttime comfort, Alliger, and a pillowcase I got from Barbara.
A sequined skirt Vikki gave me that needed almost every thread end knotted and tucked. I ordered a package of sequins to replace the ones that I could tell had recently come apart–the chain stitch threads still hanging on. And finally, another trip to Petaluma where Westy met a friend. I’m unsure what convenient update has made it impossible to caption photographs, so, oh, well. ‘Tis the future.
I have edits! I have clips! I have links to videos with lyrics!
It took me almost a month to get here, learning to edit with Quicktime, easy, but losing sync once it is saved; then fighting my laptop to update a corrupted iMovie, consulting chatGPT (stupid), chatting with eight different people on tech support (clueless, but thanks for trying), and a visit to the apple store with no resolution. I finally erased my backed-up laptop and set up a ghost account for Nellie Wilson. I upgraded to the latest OS and was able to download a fresh iMovie to edit and add titles. Saving to my external drive I was able to keep Nellie Wilson as a separate partition , and go back for a “final” edit. After all that I can’t find way to change the aspect ratio and keep Grif from getting the top of his head clipped off, but decided to go ahead and post this version with song titles.
Art for a poster by Grif from one of our many little gigs and appearances around the Bay.
Edited with Comma-Blocker, professional punctuation reduction software. 😉
Sometimes there are just no words. I mean, there are words, but I am sitting here typing words but I forgot to click on the place where words would appear, so it apears there are no words. Another operating system upgrade to figure out.
We went up to Samuel P. Taylor to see the salmon spawning. The photos I took were not so great, but I did find some nice mosses on a fence there, and a tree with personality.
Last month I rescued a sweet little oak dresser. Too bad someone took the drawers. One was broken, I could have fixed it. But I will add shelves and store my patio pillows, and maybe a cat will come sleep in it.
Life is pretty good, pretty cappuccinos and free stuff on the street, thrift store clothes and incipient cats. Plus, I got my broken tooth fixed. Bridged, anyway.
I guess I was waiting for the posed photo to come through, but it never did. The Polka Cowboys played Sunol, we got band photos, it was great, I had a neat outfit. I had gone to Canyon on the Friday to load gear because Art had had emergency surgery and wasn’t supposed to lift more than 15 pounds–Art made dinner, I spent that night in my Westyhaven, we carpooled in the big Tesla to the gig, then got to set up and play, break down and load, and back to Canyon for another night, because we were too tired to pull all that equipment out. It was pretty sweet tho. Sputnik was recovering from shoulder surgery too, his arm in a sling, and played drums through it. Woah. Trooper.
A great band photo to come . . .
A couple of weeks ago I heard from Grif that he had found a VHS tape from our November 1990 performance on La Val’s downstairs stage–I forget what we called Down There. During two broken strings I shirked the opportunity to tell the very long story of how I worked at La Val’s from just after they opened in 1976 through early 1979; before I was playing music, when I was breaking up with Pilmer and hence nearly homeless, and via some strange interactions out in the street around a protest over the cancellation of Tim Yohannon’s show on KALX met up with the Frank Mooreons and thereby found myself playing drums at the Mabuhay Gardens weekly Thursday night dinner shows for four months with the Outrageous Beauty Review and the Superheroes . . Thus began my music and stage career.
After playing in some funky little garage combos I met Grif on Thanksgiving of 1984 at the new home of our ex-neighbor and mutual friend. Grif had brought about a dozen LP’s for entertainment, and I pored over them with surprise and delight–oh! yes!–HP Lovecraft, the Incredible String Band, and Oh, what’s this?? Robin Hitchcock! the Comsat Angels! He played guitar and wrote songs, so we arranged for me to bring my little Yamaha traps around the corner to his place and see what’s what. We hit it off, and found a bass player, and that was Tiger Swallowtail, which became Wingfinger, until Lou left after some random couple of years.. We designed logos and cassette covers and fliers.
La Val’s kitchen is where I met Melokie, and when they opened the basement as a venue we got to wait tables and see the music events, and when there was zero business we would hang out by the backdoor and smoke Export A’s. She and I would take off after work for San Francisco and the clubs on Broadway and thereabouts, or around campus to Cloyne Court or Barrington Hall or Berkeley Square or the International Cafe to see some really great bands of the era, the Mutants, Tuxedo Moon, the Avengers, the Jars, friends of ours. And then there was Rather Ripped Records, a small record shop where live bands would play, I think the Police played there, maybe Patti Smith? And on campus where there were free shows like the time Talking Heads played to a spillover crowd in Sproul Plaza. All this before I was a Musician per se.
Meanwhile I played with other groups as well, the bluegrass-influenced Magpies around 1985, and a jazzy trio where I met Stevie and joined him in the band INCHES–which would eventually become the Cavepainters, and further down the road, the Lost Hippies.
And there was Spent- a thrash combo of 22-year-old college students, who all graduated and left town that spring after a trip to Portland to play the Satyricon, and Gilman Street. And there was Zenarchy, and the Waterdogs, and a couple other opportunities to make the drums-to-bass transition.
Around the time of this gig at La Val’s Grif and I had been playing little cafes up on College Avenue or University, and too bad, we felt like just us just wasn’t enough. I had always wanted to play bass, and it appeared to be easier to find a drummer than a bass player. So it was sometime in spring of 1991 that I took $150 cash to Guitar Center and waved it around, and ended up with a pretty neat Japanese fake-Fender Jazz bass, gig bag, strap and cord. I taught myself to play–heck I knew these songs by heart, I played drums and sang harmonies on them for five years–so I plunked it out until I felt up to speed. I think the first tune I learned was Grif’s Big Dream. Then we did get a drummer, and another name, Hoddyman Dodd, after an English counting poem–and we put out a couple of cassette tape albums.
Hoddyman Dodd, With ChrisSometimes we still had that duo vibe, tho
Somehow, another misspellable name on a marquee lead to a name change, and then we were the Ravines, with a key board player, and eventually another drummer. But that’s all written up elsewhere, perhaps.
Then there were the Silver Kittens, and that crazy year 2009 when everything broke up and the Possum Family Singers were born, and then the Lost Hippies . . . and that sad story. I could have gone on and on.
Looking back, though, this was a good show. Tight harmonies, good stage presence, catchy material. I could have told a good story in the break, or I could have mumbled inaudibly for three minutes, I dunno. Coulda been somebody, y’know. Still are, really.
Shout out to my friends John and Linda on cameras and master control.
I visited Buslab about yet another clunk heard rarely and only under odd circumstances, namely a sharp turn, or driving over the two gutters in Vikki’s driveway–they said, yeah, drive it over and we’ll take a look. Well, it’s that stripped bolt on the upgraded swaybar–again? Thought we replaced that. Okay, whatever. Funny how a scary noise can disrupt things.
I had dropped it off and walked to the nearby bakery for a cup of coffee and oooh, pumpkin cheesecake! which they put in a little box. I was carrying my book on German silent film, a pastry in a box, and a cup, and must have shoved my wallet into my back pocket. I walked back around the corner to sit under a tree and read, and at some point noted the zipper pocket in my little purse was open and—–NO WALLET! Reminiscent of the day I stepped out of my studio with my hands full, and broke my ankle, yeah. I searched all around the tree, and walked back to the bakery, scanning the sidewalk and gutters full of brown leaves for a brown leather walled tooled with a design of brown leaves.
Long story diminished, after two trips, and while Jonathan follow me out to search again where I had been sitting, my phone rang. It was my dentist’s office calling to say someone had found my wallet with an appointment card and their phone number. My van was ready, I drove off without paying, took several wrong turns before I found the address just two blocks from my starting point. My offer of an unopened box with a slice of pumpkin cheesecake accepted, we exchanged stories–she found my wallet while looking for hers, which had jumped out of her pocket to rescue mine.
I had just got back from another thrifting trip to Santa Rosa, and stopped at the Antique fair on the way back to buy a couple items of silver jewelry, and a small porcelain cow. Back home with holiday lights, waiting for the rain. Next gig, the Sunol Regional Wilderness Heritage Festival, two sets with the Polka Cowboys. It’ll be a hoot. Saturday October 18–A free event. Bring your dusty dancing shoes.
Posting on Steve’s birthday, he would be 77 today. So, we have cake! I am going to The City tomorrow to have birthday dinner with my first beau Pilmer, carrying a mid-price Bordeaux and a gluten free chocolate cake that is about to come out of the oven. He will make Beouf Bourguignon once his roommate leaves for Burning Man today. I’ll pack a stainless steel flask to decant the wine lest he has no appropriate glass container for the job. It’s my birthday dinner: his birthday was this week, the delay comes from my reluctance to hike home from Bart past twilight vs the awkward kitchen scheduling of roommates.
Saturday was the long-awaited Cotati Accordion Festival, and all kerfuffle aside it was splendid. A few people dancing to almost every tune we played, and my friends of Stony the Cat fame came and took photos. It’s so great to be onstage again, and I attribute my current relaxed demeanor to having this creative outlet. I went all out on my outfit, finally wearing the blue beaded and fringed flapper dress my niece had sent me in 2021 (which had needed some poorly placed details removed). It was spectacular. Afterward a change of costume, and a barn dance near Petaluma.
thrifted silk dustergreen room
The previous weekend we hosted the International Musical Saw Festival, and I helped set up the stage and run the sound board. It was a 180 from last year when I was so bedraggled and out of sorts, still bruised and baffled from the separation. I felt quite welcome and at home, and quite enjoyed myself.
I had Westied out to Canyon early on the Friday to sort and pack the sound system Art had set up in his music room. I spent some time in the Roofing House, now replete with rodent droppings. I swept up a bit and picked out a couple of keepsakes. It was sad, but not terribly so. I hadn’t been to Canyon since the unhappy April of the previous year, and the Petaluma parade. Nothing had changed except for the mysterious arrival of a large gold-framed mirror, almost a welcome-back gift, which I set up in the little window bay.
Art made dinner, and I spent the night in Westy in our old parking space. Saturday we drove separately down to Santa Cruz and I spent an hour in a traffic jam from bridge to beach. I got to the Saw Jam at the statue just after 2, and Art showed up right behind me. I had a yummy crepe and we played until 3 when we headed to Roaring Camp for a picnic with all the sawyers, and a sleepover in the parking lot for the (two) sound crew (us). Up at 6:30 AM, I made coffee, we got to the stage at 8 and were mostly set up by 10:00. All went well, great fun had by all, and I was home by 7 PM. It’s all good, I am looking forward to the Sunol Harvest Festival October 18, with two sets, the full band, and yet another spectacular costume. Plus, I’ll get to sing a couple or so of my songs . . .
I’m SO TIRED lately. I have a decent social life, accepting many invites, and when I get home I just want to crawl into my cozy bed with a laptop and a big mug of creamy decaf. Maybe I am over-decaffeinating. Something astrological, yes. It will pass.
My drawing practice had gone a bit fallow. Tho i recently picked up a quantity of watercolors and tombow pens at a yard sale I haven’t done much but swatch and clean them. I wish I had asked what her story was, two palettes of tube colors totaling about 75 full half-pans of expensive paint, a full set, unopened! of Arteza brush pens, among some kid’s paint boxes which I gave away. Just in the last few days I have felt pulled to my sketchbooks again. The table had been taken up with the sewing machine/ seat cover project, after two jigsaw puzzles I wanted to vet before packing them off to my sister for her birthday.
It gets too hot and bright in the afternoon to sit at the table, but when the sun drops behind the house next door I open the windows from the top down to let the heat out and I draw into the wee hours. I’m really enjoying my Derwent watercolor pencils even though I don’t use water with them. I have so many screenshots in files on my laptop, and with a podcast playing in the background I just copy, copy. There is often that pesky little threshold to get over, but I am feeling freer, faster, looser in my technique, always learning something new. Each one of these is in a different sketchbook. Some tiny, some huge.
It has been a long time . . . life is very strange lately, and I like it. I recently spent four days in Santa Rosa, visiting a human, and a dog who is enamored with me, shopping, making a pot roast, the usual. So happy to be home with my bed, my garden, my silence, my local routines.
I am seeing an acupuncturist, adjusting my diet, finally getting the diagnosis that concurs with my suspicion that my mercury fillings are the source of my tinnitus, ear infection, and leg discomfort. I am attempting to contact a recommended dentist to remove the leakiest of the three amalgam fillings that still remain. The dentist I am calling is Iranian–more’s the pity, with the war at fever pitch now.
I did a big detox, a fast, and was living on smoothies for a week. I returned to solid foods in anticipation of the Meadow Muffin, and thereupon helped kill three bottles of wine with my two invited guests on the first night. I also recall storming the stage with my Martin bass and jamming with Maaatt and another bass player for an hour that night. The next day Art and I played some of our repertoire, and Maaatt joined us to steamroll some Lost Hippies material. He takes all my vocal parts, so I can’t harmonize. If I do, he jumps the track and sings what I am singing. Ah well, just as well to be rid of it. On the Monday after, I went up on the bare stage alone, with my Martin, and sang a bunch of tunes while folks rolled wires and packed the sound gear away.
Varmint pod padmy festive new lightsat the waterfrontthe old oakMuffin L Monday AM
Art and I are getting on, as friends. We’ll play two festivals in August, the International Musical Saw Festival on the 10th, and the Cotati Accordion Festival with Greg on the 18th will pay for the gas it takes to get there. Oh yes, plus the yummy chicken BBQ lunch. I didn’t think there would be a time that I would be Okay with it again, but here we are.
There have been some odd dreams of late, as suggested by the current Jupiter/Neptune square. James had a wonderful NDE type dream of angel people who basically said, it’s all right, don’t worry. I had a dream about my studio at Howe Street. There was an actual ARTIST there (me??) taking up the full half of the two-car garage that I had 1/4 of, climbing over dog shit, furniture, paint cans and storage bins to access. An older (like me) guy, dramatic landscapes, must have been acrylics (or pastels?) because I don’t recall the smell of turps. There was a doorway, and a woodworker in the other half, so yay! Framing! and sawdust? I don’t recall that smell, either. Then we walked out to the street, which had become a road, overlooking the bridge through trees, and sparse traffic driving through knee high mist, with the City in the distance. At some point, he (me??) kissed me! Did I receive a blessing from the pastel gods?
I’m pining for those studios, sad to recall how appropriate both Howe Street and the Roofing House were for pastel dust, which I never realized. I had so much fun with my acrylics then, and just painting walls and building shelves and hanging lights and stenciling floors, all the prep work that goes into having a working space, only to be ejected, and abandoned. So frustrating. What can it all mean?
So I’m airing out my pastels, I bought some board to try, small panels that fit in a pouch I can carry about. I have a sheltered space and table in the garden to clear. There is so much junk I have been getting rid of lately, it’s groundbreaking, making space for me–even Steve’s circular saws and MAAP gas, out on the curb and snatched up in moments by someone who might actually use them. Not letting go of the jigsaw and Sawzall tho, yo.
So much time in the garden, and it’s feeling really settled. It’s all about letting things unfold, following the whim, letting the Crows be the birds in my garden, I can’t fight them. I put in two more raspberry plants, two more high bush blueberries, two thornless blackberries my neighbor had put on the street. I have cut the Insipid Pink Pearl back to three fruits, and there is more wood to take out to make room for the Pink Lady, which has its first apple this year. Every day I get out into the garden I make huge progress, with my worm box in place, and new attempts at weaving the patio chairs underway.
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