convince the others it's a dance party

Episode XXXVIII: We'll Meet Again

2008-10-06T01:57:00.003-04:00

My home is an island that is about forty square miles. I will be leaving home in a few days. There is no word for goodbye in our language here. We just say what translates to "we will meet again." My heart is broken.

2008-09-09T21:07:00.001-04:00

I rescheduled my final radio show. It'll go down at midnight the evening of October 2nd/morning of October 3rd, east coast time.

2008-08-22T00:58:00.001-04:00

Thank you to everyone who ever went with me to see this man play music. Some of the best evenings of my life.

2008-08-03T22:52:00.004-04:00

My last radio show is coming up. East coast time will be midnight (or maybe 11 p.m., I can never keep track of when you all change your clocks) the evening of September 4th or morning of September 5th, however you want to look at it.

Episode XXXVII: I have seen too much (you haven't seen enough)

2008-07-11T01:09:00.003-04:00

Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was,
that savage forest, dense and difficult,
which even in recall renews my fear:
so bitter--death is hardly more severe!
But to retell the good discovered there,
I'll also tell the other things I saw.
-Dante Alighieri, "Inferno"

I just got back from another island where I met up with some good friends. Hadn't seen any of them in over six months. They're all spread out over the islands here, working for the same organization that I am. All of us will be leaving in the next few months, some of us traveling a bit, but all of us eventually going to the States more or less before the year is out. It was hard to say goodbye to them knowing that the next time I see any of them will be in the States. Regardless of the years that pass, when I think of any of them I will always think of us sitting on some beach that will forever go unseen by anyone else any of us know, talking and laughing with no idea what the time, day, or month is.

Below is the set list from my radio show a week ago. It was a shorter program. I just played the songs I needed to hear and didn't worry about filling the entire hour. I have found overwhelming good here, but I have also seen other things and this show was about those other things. Each song stands for a time in my life here or a specific event, and they're in chronological order.
"Gone" U2
"The Moon" Cat Power
"Idioteque" Radiohead
"Out of My Hands" Dave Matthews Band
"Ashes of American Flags (live)" Wilco
"No Way" Pearl Jam
"See You Soon (live)" Coldplay
"Ain't Talkin'" Bob Dylan

2008-07-02T19:08:00.002-04:00

Apparently the east coast did their spring ahead thing. So my radio show may be on at 11 p.m. Thursday night. Just turn it on at 11 and if I don't come on until midnight you can listen to island music.

2008-06-28T01:11:00.002-04:00

My penultimate radio show here will be (east coast time) midnight the eve of July 3rd/ morning of July 4th. Every show I have done here has had a theme. My last show here will be the memories, the goodbye, the heartbreaker. But this next one is the conclusion. That's where I'm at now, how I feel. All stories need an ending. So the story of the ghost gets its ending in a few days. Email me if you want to listen and need the link.

Episode XXXVI: Too Many Secrets

2008-06-06T19:46:00.006-04:00

One could go back knowing better the things that one fought against, knowing better the kind of thing one must build.
-Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country

journal excerpts...

5.13 "All at once the world can overwhelm me/ There's almost nothing that you could tell me/ That could ease my mind" This current adventure will soon be over and leaving will be as hard as leaving the Farmhouse. Nothing will ever be the same. This has been perfect in all the best and hardest ways. I often feel so lost and grateful.

5.15 Just spent almost an hour writing a letter and then threw it away. "No way, I don't need it, I don't need your love to disconnect." One of C.'s little friends has this new high five followed by a fist bump. He introduced it to me tonight. My time here has me feeling as if I know a secret that most people the world over will never be pinned up against.

5.16 My family had a barbeque for me tonight. It was also C.'s kindergarten graduation today, so we took some family pictures with him in his outfit throwing up the hang loose sign.

5.19 I have a viral infection. I usually wear nothing but a pair of board shorts, but I am currently wearing two shirts and I'm still shivering. Took my students on a field trip to the L. ruins yesterday. None of them had ever been back there even though this is a tiny island that many of them have never left.

5.27 "Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell./ Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,/ Yet grace must still looks so" (Macbeth IV, iii). Seem to be finally over that viral infection. Sickest I've ever been for an extended period.

5.31 Went to the north side of the island this morning to help build the new church up there. Shoveled a lot of sand. My back is sore.

6.6 Went diving yesterday and the day before. Saw a school of chevron barracuda the first day. Yesterday we dived around and through a bombed Japanese ship and gunned-down American plane from the Second World War. Visibility was less than thirty feet and the water was all eerie and green. Saw some rays too and L. almost ran into one because she didn't see it.

Episode XXXV: I ain't ever gonna let the elevator break us down

2008-05-02T19:48:00.008-04:00

We've had nothing but rain for three or four weeks here, and then the sun came back. So I had to break out some danceable jams. "Burn This Disco Out" is the best dance song you've never heard.

And if I find Susanna I'm gonna fall upon the ground

If I do not find her, then this young man surely dies

Aw, but when I'm dead and buried, Susanna, don't you cry

And I said, Oh, Susanna, now don't you cry for me

'Cause I have come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee

And I said, Oh, Susanna, now don't you cry for me

'Cause I have come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee

When I think of heaven, when I think of heaven

When I think of heaven I think of you

Do you think of me too?

We've had nothing but rain for three or four weeks here, and then the sun came back. So I had to play some danceable grooves. "Burn This Disco Out" is the best dance song you've never heard. My radio show playlist from yesterday...

"Bamboo Banga" M.I.A.

"Rip This Joint" Rolling Stones

"Wait Until Tomorrow" The Jimi Hendrix Experience

"Joy Ride" (live) Dave Matthews Band (for M.: enjoy Blossom)

"Head Held High" The Velvet Underground

"Rain King/Oh Susanna"(live) Counting Crows

"Blue Black Jack" Mos Def

"If I Had Eyes" Jack Johnson

"Rag and Bone" The White Stripes (for Captain Awesome: we still alive)

"If I Ever Feel Better" Phoenix

"Your Sister Can't Twist (But She Can Rock n' Roll)" Elton John

"Burn This Disco Out" Michael Jackson

"Let's Go Crazy" Prince

"I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)" (live) Jay-Z w/The Roots, Pharrell, Dash

Episode XXXIV: Signifying Nothing

2008-04-23T00:33:00.003-04:00

Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow,
A poor player who
struts and frets his hour
upon the stage,
And there is heard no more;
A tale told by an idiot--
Full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Doing the radio show here at midnight the night of May 1st or morning of May 2nd (however you want to look at it). That's east coast time.

journal excerpts:

3.25 Went diving last night with a few people from a couple different countries. We each had a glow stick on our tank and carried a flashlight. When I held the flashlight beam against my chest and waved my hand in front of my face little neon green sparks of phosphorescence lit up. This dive was even better than Bully Hayes's sunken 19th century pirate ship.

4.1 From "Leaving for Kenosha" by Richard Ford, fiction from The New Yorker, March 3, 2008...

"No," said Louise. "I was thinking about going to Italy or maybe China. And going alone. And not coming back. And never seeing anybody that I know today ever again."
"Would that include me?" Walter said.
"And Mother, too, probably," Louise said, and gave him a look of cold implacable certainty. A look that saw the future.
... He would make no more efforts to answer Louise's childish questions about Italy and China. No words were really the right words to answer with. In a day he'd forget all this. This was a smart child--Louise--but not smart beyond her years. She would forget many things, too.

Walter is a bastard. F*** him, Louise. China must be beautiful.

From the issue a week later, from Patricia Marx's article "Tech Stuff"...

Phones now have names like Heat, Chocolate, Rumor, BlackJack, Shine, Tilt, Pearl, and Wing, all of which sound like prophylactics, for what reason I do not know. Nor do I know how much you will pay for your phone, because that figure is determined by a God who plays dice with the price wheel and various calling plans. Whatever you pay, though, is guaranteed to be more than you would have yesterday or will tomorrow, and much more than people in other Zip Codes pay.

All the more reason not to get one.

4.2 Adam Gopnick on magic: "Magic is imagination working together with dexterity to persuade experience how limited its experience really is, the heart working with the fingers to remind the head how little it knows."

4.12 M., M., R., G., and I sat on the beach last night, drinking wine, talking about anything. We noticed some phosphorescence in the wet sand and I picked up a hunk of sand and had a speck of neon blue in my palm.

4.13 Just got off the phone with M. She received some crushing news from her family in the States. When she told me I felt every feeling of any kind leave my body. Just felt hollow.

4.21 People shouldn't make promises they can't keep.

Episode XXXIII: Children in Bloom

2008-03-01T21:27:00.006-05:00

Episode XXXII: The Consequence of Actually Feeling

2008-02-28T22:27:00.002-05:00

This was about 6:45 in the morning a couple Saturdays ago. Some days here are rough in a way that I'll never be able to relate in words to anyone, but some days are unbelievably fun.

Here's the playlist from my radio show today. Hope some of you got to listen and enjoy. Some of these song titles might not be exactly correct, but I don't feel like looking them up.

"The Midnight Choir" The Thrills

"Thirty-Three" Smashing Pumpkins

"My Love for You Is Real" Ryan Adams & The Cardinals

"Holland, 1945" Neutral Milk Hotel

"Corrina, Corrina" Bob Dylan

"Another Horsedreamer's Blues" Counting Crows

"Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl" Broken Social Scene

"Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) (live)" Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band

"Mercury" Counting Crows

"Mama, You Been on My Mind" Bob Dylan

"Goodnight, Rose" Ryan Adams

2008-02-21T21:27:00.002-05:00

Radio show in seven days: Thursday at 11pm east coast time. It'll be just like this picture, so don't miss it. Email me if you need the link again and/or if you have any requests. (Picture courtesy of Captain Awesome.)

Episode XXXI: All the little things that make up a memory

2008-01-24T21:11:00.000-05:00

Been in America for a few weeks. This picture was taken on the kind of day that serves as evidence that life can be sweet, kind, and surprising.

I lived in this house in the 80s. I used to sit in the bay window and wait for my dad to come home from work.

Episode XXX: I got a friend hidden in every street in this town

2008-01-15T00:07:00.000-05:00

I didn't take many pictures when I was in Vietnam a couple months ago. But I just got ahold of some.

Episode XXIX: After the Fall

2007-12-27T20:13:00.000-05:00

"When I left my home, the sky split open wide
I never wanted to go back there, I'd rather have died"
-Bob Dylan, "Honest With Me"

from my journal:
11.29.07 M. and I took kayaks out into the mangrove channels yesterday. Just sat back and drifted at one point, bits of sunlight coming through the mangrove canopy. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.
12.9.07 I was sitting in the school office a few days ago when Sue Ann walked in. On her way out, I told her she was very good at the game we played at recess. She smiled at me, and it was the purest smile I've ever seen. Really struck me.
12.15.07 Our conference with the people on the other islands is over now. Hadn't seen them in over a year. I'm feeling lonely right now, and I don't entirely know why. There are just too many good people in the world; I want to know them all.
12.17.07 Sometimes I wonder what piling up all this experience is doing to me.
12.24.07 "Oh, sun, beaches, and the islands in the path of the trade winds, youth whose memory drives one to despair." -Albert Camus, The Fall
Trade winds are kicking up right now. This life is too good to be true. Just a long dream.
12.27.07 Sometime around third grade I figured out that the tooth fairy didn't exist. Why would Omar get more money per tooth than me when my teeth are just as good as his? And if the tooth fairy wasn't real, I reasoned, then neither were any of her ridiculous friends: the Easter bunny, Santa, the leprechaun that my first grade teacher said we'd just missed because we were late coming in from recess, all lies. Of course, I didn't consider any of them ridiculous until after my epiphany. Only after figuring out the truth for myself did I realize the absurdity of the crap everyone I knew had been pushing on me for years.

Went to a conference on an island that was about a quarter of a square mile. Bunch of other Americans doing the same work I'm doing over here. All of us are on different islands, and I hadn't seen any of them in over a year. I don't know them as well as my family and friends in the States, but in terms of understanding this time in my life they're closer to me than anyone else ever will be.

at the office

dinner

getting some work done

Doing the radio show today, already have my playlist ready go. Starting with some holiday cheer and then diving into Dylan. A lot of it is his newer stuff. He's released three of his best albums in the past ten years, and his current persona is by far my favorite of his many facades--the haggard old cowboy rebel. And he's at the point where he doesn't have to affect the voice he's trying for, it's really just that gnarled and growling anymore. "Summer Days" is especially significant for me as it has been played at I think every Reds game I've been to in the past four years. The live "Cold Irons Bound" puts most modern guitar rock bands in their place. Here's the playlist...

"Santa Clause Is Comin' to Town" Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

"Things Have Changed" Bob Dylan

"Honest With Me" Bob Dylan

"I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)" Bob Dylan

"Isis" Bob Dylan

"Mississippi" Bob Dylan

"Queen Jane Approximately" Bob Dylan

"When the Ship Comes In" Bob Dylan

"Summer Days" Bob Dylan

"Spirit on the Water" Bob Dylan

"Cold Irons Bound" (live) Bob Dylan

Episode XXVIII: I'll be alright long as I ain't see it all

2007-11-16T00:48:00.000-05:00

couple hours outside of Hanoi

Episode XXVII: I'll be the one who'll break my heart; I'll be the one to hold the gun

2007-11-02T00:06:00.000-04:00

Played all Feist on my show last Friday. She's on the two Broken Social Scene songs and she sings the second half of the Kings of Convenience song. A good friend of mine and I saw her play once a couple years ago and she said she wrote "The Build-Up" which is cool because it's a good song. See her if you can. I think I listened to "When I Was a Young Girl" a dozen times before I caught the last line. Gives me goosebumps now. And the last 40 seconds of "7/4 (Shoreline)" is some of the happiest music I have ever heard. Do whatever it takes to get ahold of that song.

"Mushaboom" Feist
"When I Was a Young Girl" Feist
"7/4 (Shoreline)" Broken Social Scene
"Sea Lion Woman" Feist
"I Feel It All" Feist
"1 2 3 4" Feist
"Inside and Out" Feist
"Tout Doucemont" Feist
"The Build-Up" Kings of Convenience
"Windsurfing Nation" Broken Social Scene
"Brandy Alexander" Feist
"Past in Present" Feist
"The Park" Feist

Why would he come back through the park?
You thought that you saw him, but no you did not
It's not him who's come across the sea to surprise you

Episode XXVI: The Stars in the Ocean

2007-10-20T23:13:00.000-04:00

9.26.07 The sun sets at about 6 p.m. here everyday. While biking at about 5:45 p.m. today, the sky was cloudy and the full moon was burning through the cracks between the clouds like a second sun. When full, the moon is much brighter than most Americans realize. The moon is astonishing.
9.30 I am so blessedly happy here at times. Of course, there's never been a time in my life when I could go more than a few days without being able to say that.
10.5 It's night. It is 77 degrees. I'm cold. The artwork for Graduation (especially the sequence with the bear in the city streets at night) is exactly how it feels to graduate. V.'s mother died last week so I hadn't been over to his house in a few days. Went over last night. I'm going to miss him when I have to leave. My American mom sent me a mix cd. I think it's the first one she's ever made--she clearly took no care in sequencing. I'm listening to Floyd's "Us & Them" which, on Dark Side, doesn't actually end but just bleeds into the next song. So I have my headphones turned up a bit because the song is kind of quiet, and then, WHAM, the opening riff of "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" scares the **** out of me.
10.16 I like where I am right now: I don't really miss anyone anymore, I'm halfway through my time here, I'm comfortable, and I've let go of caring what other Americans think of me. I like these lyrics: "So he slept on a mountain/ In his sleeping bag underneath the stars/ He would lie awake and count them/ And the great fountain spray of the great Milky Way/ Would never let him die alone"
10.17 This past Saturday night we had a party at a hotel, a farewell for one of the Americans who is soon to leave. We were hanging out on the rooftop of the two-story building that looks right down into the ocean, and someone thought he saw some phosporesence in the water below. Turned out to be the stars reflecting in the ocean.
10.21 The passport I'm using to get to Vietnam (I have two) has my old address in Pamplona penciled into the space for my overseas address. And the space for my permanent address has my mom and dad's house in Ohio, which I will have to change. Something about having two passports with a foreign country written into the "permanent address" lines... kinda cool.

Vivo sin vivir en mi
Y de tal manera espero
Que muero porque no muero
-San Juan de la Cruz

2007-10-20T00:38:00.001-04:00

I'm minding the 1's and 2's again at midnight the night of October 25th/ morning of October 26th (for you east coasters, rest of you figure out the time yourselves). If you want to listen and don't still have the link, email me. The cup in my hand is from The C.I.

Episode XXV: He sees a way out via intensity, extremes of experience

2007-08-24T02:24:00.000-04:00

I wasn't there for long, but I fell in love with the Spanish countryside, the reds and browns. They have these rolling hills and mountains and it's as if you can see the layers of the earth or something, the colors going back and forth from red to brown across a field. The ocean here is like that. Clouds move over our island, letting the sun through in places and blocking it in others so that you have an effect of faded blues, back and forth from dark to light as if the ocean has moods or something.

I was on the radio a few hours ago. I miss seeing Dave Matthews Band in the summers so I played myself a mini show. All these songs were live versions from various shows.

"Don't Drink the Water"

"Don't Burn the Pig"

"The Stone"

"#41"

"American Baby (Intro)"

"The Last Stop"

"Minarets"

Episode XXIV: Put in more than you could ever get out

2007-08-06T23:29:00.000-04:00

Episode XXIII: Listen to the [mangrove swamp] sing sweet songs to rock my soul

2007-07-23T02:24:00.000-04:00

Episode XXII: Sunglasses & Cigarettes

2007-07-06T02:10:00.000-04:00

I'm making eyes through my sharp sunglasses
She's such a brat now I'm packing her cigarettes
I guess I'll take off these sharp sunglasses
And make her look me in the eyes before she's taken away

Before:

After:

Episode XXI: DIRECT ACTION Gets The Goods!

2007-06-22T01:52:00.000-04:00

journal excerpts:

5.21.07 A few days ago, I put away the calendar my parents sent me and all of the cards I had taken out of my wallet a few months back (some of them are ID cards with pictures that annoy me).
5.24.07 Didn't get much sleep last night. In the dark, I started wondering what it would be like if my parents and grandparents all died in a car accident while I'm here. With no siblings, I would end up having to go through my parents' house on my own, sorting through everything by myself.
5.30.07 "And once again I discovered, first of all that memory has no power of invention, that it is powerless to desire anything else, let alone anything better, than what we have already possessed; secondly that it is spiritual, in the sense that reality cannot provide it with the state which it seeks." -Proust, The Fugitive
"Come on--Hey don't you know how we started/We forgot about love--But weren't brokenhearted" -Jim James, "Wordless Chorus"
6.2.07 For emotional and practical reasons (which no one who isn't here will never understand) it is difficult to keep in touch with people in America while I'm here. I'm afraid that this will result in me losing a few friendships.
6.18.07 "And then they started to forget themselves, which is what happens when you forget your friends." -Roberto Bolano, The Savage Detectives
6.20.07 When water from a rain storm that has just wrapped up drips off our corrugated tin room, the angled afternoon sunlight makes the little drops look like falling diamonds for a split second. Or it's that diamonds are an expensive imitation of these drops of rain shot through with sunlight.
6.22.07 "Oh, traveller, you visit this place and you are lucky, because the people who are buried here are holy and close to God." -translated inscription from the grave of an Islamic prophet in Merv, Turkmenistan

a good while ago, maybe six months ago, wandering around on the island

maybe three months ago, got to stay in a hotel here on the island for a conference

this was about four months ago, just off the western side of the island

Wow. I am entirely unqualified to do a radio show. But we ironed out all the kinks and the following songs were played (all more or less new music):

-"Objects of My Affection" Peter Bjorn and John
-"Young Folks" Peter Bjorn and John

-"Ragoo" Kings of Leon

-"Arizona" Kings of Leon
-"Elevator Music" Beck

-"Nausea" Beck

-"Sweet Caroline" Dave Matthews Band (live)

-"The Idea of You" Dave Matthews Band (live)

-"The Well and the Lighthouse" Arcade Fire

-"(Antichrist Television Blues)" Arcade Fire

-"Either Way" Wilco

-"Hate It Here" Wilco

-"My Moon, My Man" Feist

-"1 2 3 4" Feist

-"Pink Steam" Sonic Youth

-"Do You Believe in Rapture?" Sonic Youth

2007-05-24T23:31:00.000-04:00

next radio show at midnight the evening of June 21st/morning of June 22nd, however you wanna look at it... email my gmail account me if you need the link again... anonymous comments are lame

Episode XX: 'Twas in Another Lifetime

2007-05-12T00:24:00.000-04:00

Episode XIX: Doncha Wanna Get Higher??

2007-04-13T02:27:00.000-04:00

"No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful. If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC"
-Kurt Vonnegut

Started off a little bumpy with this show. The past two shows I've done, I've had one of my friends in there with me to hang out and, more importantly, to help out. This time instead of a helping friend I had some guy who works for the station trying to have a conversation with me in a foreign language while I was trying to switch cds and push knobs. Still, the music all got heard, Tom Hanks made a guest appearance, and the following joke got told... What's the difference between a female Yankees fan and a pile of garbage? The garbage gets taken out once a week!... so all was well in the end. And I read a comic book and ate a candy bar after the station employee left me alone.

"Don't Look Back in Anger" Oasis (for the brick counter)
"Joe Dimaggio Done it Again" Billy Bragg & Wilco
"Summer Days" Bob Dylan
"One Big Holiday" My Morning Jacket
"Fuck This Shit" Belle & Sebastian
"Holes to Heaven" Jack Johnson
"Blue Sky" Allman Brothers Band
"Mr. Blue Sky" E.L.O. (what a terrible name for a band, by the way, no wonder they just went with the letters instead of the full name)
"I Want to Take You Higher" Sly & The Family Stone
"Brokedown Palace" Grateful Dead (live)
"Butterfly" Dave Matthews (live)
"One Sweet World" Dave Matthews Band (live)

some journal excerpts:
3.3.07 Read this short story in The New Yorker about mountain climbers. Talked about people needing to test themselves at least once, to push themselves hard. I did that last year in Boston. And I'm doing it now, which I often forget. Perhaps it's just life that's the test.

3.7.07 I have a new sitting spot at the beach. There's a bent tree trunk that stretches out over the water when the tide is in. The leaves from the tree provide shade, and there's a nice breeze.

3.27.07 Wish I could sleep better here. I'm usually either too happy and excited to sleep or I'm thinking too much, letting my brain keep me up.

3.29.07 Been reading about God more lately. My lower back really hurts. ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky" is amazing. Coming home from the wedding reception tonight, our truck broke down. It was dark, raining, and all of us in the bed of the truck had to get out to push to help get the truck started again. The driver had steered the car into the middle of the road, and a car was coming up behind us as we were running down the road. The driver had the window up because of the rain and couldn't hear us yelling to get the car back in the correct lane. Life is so much fun.

4.8.07 Just woke up from a dream that had me lost in Barcelona at night in the pouring rain. I kept trying to remember my Spanish but the local island language kept coming out. I was able to get out enough Spanish to find my way back to the hostel.

Episode XVIII: and then nothing turned itself inside out

2007-03-30T00:02:00.000-04:00

walking to some cool stuff

the official island method for entering the water for snorkeling (someday I'm gonna bother to figure out if it's snorkle or snorkel... not today)

So that's all I got. Don't feel like sitting here any longer. Have a nice day. If you're feeling a little down, I recommend ice cream.

Episode XVII: In the Middle of a Cloud I Call Your Name

2007-02-28T22:31:00.000-05:00

my new puppies

see the point that comes out into the ocean? pretty much where my house is

the baddest game of wiffleball this side of the Great Barrier Reef

Playlist from my radio show a couple weeks ago:
-"Happy Valentine's Day" Outkast
-"Let It Die" Feist
-"The Love You Save" Jackson 5
-"Better Together" Jack Johnson
-"Oh Yoko!" John Lennon
-"Sweet Thing" Van Morrison
-"Desire" U2
-"I'm a Cuckoo" Belle and Sebastian
-"Don't Stop Believin'" Journey
-"Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town" Pearl Jam
-"Love in Vain Blues" Robert Johnson
-"Baby Be Mine" Michael Jackson
-"You Make My Dreams" Hall and Oates
-"Razor Love" Neil Young

I've already started thinking about the next radio show. It'll be sometime in mid-April, a few days after Opening Day, so I'm going to go for summery sounding songs. I have also decided that I would like to start telling jokes on the air (the impetus for this being I want to tell a Yankee-hating joke), so if you have any jokes you want me to tell please email them (don't put them in a comment here, it'll ruin the punchline for anyone who reads this). The more childishly cloying, the better. Also, I'm always open for song/band requests.

I have just received Beck's "The Information" in the mail. As with "Guero" he has created the perfect party mix in one album. The third song on the album steals the opening bass line of Herbie Hancock's album "Headhunters" (easily the funkiest bass line ever). WHY HAVE YOU NOT HEARD THIS ALBUM YET??

And, Dad, new Kings of Leon album out April 3rd. We're setting this as a Top Priority Mission. Put your best agent on it.

Episode XVI: It's Never Been Like That

2007-01-25T23:23:00.000-05:00

A couple years ago when I was in Pamplona, Spain, a friend emailed me about how cold Ohio was and that I'd better be enjoying the warm weather. It was 30 degrees and snowing in Pamplona at the time.

A few posts ago here I included a picture of the bridge that leads back to a restaurant I have been to here on the island. My dad referred to it as a ropebridge. There is no rope anywhere in the picture.

One of the other Americans here on this island was back in the States for the holidays. He said a lot of people told him they thought he'd have more of a tan. He probably has the deepest tan of any of us Americans here.

Everyone romanticises where I am and what I'm doing. Spain was cold in the winter in the mountains, just because it's a bridge on an island does not mean it is a ropebridge, I am just as tan here as in the summers in America, and, for the last time, I am north of the equator. North.

By the way, my old university email account is not working. I have not been able to get to it for two weeks. If you have my aol account, you can use that.

I will congratulate the Bears if they win.

Episode XV: Maybe If I Leave You'll Want Me (To Come Back Home)

2007-01-19T00:27:00.000-05:00

Picture of Chicago from two Decembers ago. J., remember The Green Mill? Cusack is sitting at the bar of The Green Mill for like thirty seconds in High Fidelity.

My feet a few days ago. Mosquito bites, band-aid from kicking a log underwater, blood under a toe nail from kicking a rock underwater, sandal tan from the sun.

The waterfall A., L., M., and I hiked to a couple weeks ago. About 45 minutes of hiking through a river to get there.

My next radio hour will be (east coast, USA time) February 15th, 11pm. I'll be playing a couple requests, a couple dedications, and a whole gaggle of love songs for Valentine's Day. If you need the link to listen online, email me.

Episode XIV: What He Does

2007-01-05T18:43:00.000-05:00

So this was New Year's. We get a lot of packages here because everyone loves us. But we have no use for cardboard. Other than to light it on fire.

Inez: One always dies too soon--or too late. And yet one's whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are--your life, and nothing else.
-Sartre, "No Exit"

Hugo: I don't care what he thinks or what he wants. What counts is what he does.
-Sartre, "Dirty Hands"

Episode XIII: In Which Caprice Is Blended With Virtuosity

2006-12-29T00:31:00.000-05:00

Have a bike now. I rode for an hour on the road adjacent to the ocean, stopped my bike, and jumped off a pier with my snorkle and mask on. Swam for about forty minutes, biked into the capital, picked up lunch, then headed over to the radio station to chill with M. while she threw down some hot tracks on the weekly radio show (it's good even when I'm not on).

Christmas was supposedly a few days ago, but I didn't believe the hype. It was 85 with tropical thunderstorms.

I was talking with M. the other day about being young. You know, when we come back to America we'll be a little older but still feeling very young. One of my favorite memories from this past year was taking a day off from work to drive into West Virginia to go snowboarding--random weekday, no one there, rode for about ten hours.

"There were all brimming over with the exuberance that youth so urgently needs to expend that even when it is unhappy or unwell, obedient rather to the necessities of age than to the mood of the day, it can never let pass an opportunity to jump or to slide without interrupting and interspersing even the slowest walk--as Chopin his most melancholy phrase--with graceful deviations in which caprice is blended with virtuosity."
-Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove

Episode XII: The Ones and Twos

2006-12-16T00:35:00.000-05:00

I had an hour on the island's AM station last Friday. It's the only station on the island. Every Friday, one of my friends or I (we rotate, there's nine of us) play music and pretend that we know how to speak the local language. Here are the songs I played:
"Sweet Home Chicago" Robert Johnson
"Thunder on the Mountain" Bob Dylan
"Don't Wait Too Long" Madeleine Peyroux
"Daddy Sang Bass" Johnny Cash
"Let It Ride" Ryan Adams
"California Stars" Billy Bragg and Wilco
"One After 909" The Beatles (Let It Be... Naked version)
"Idlewild Blue (Don'tchu Worry 'Bout Me)" Outkast
"Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key" Billy Bragg and Wilco
"At the Beach" The Avett Brothers
"Sweet Virginia" The Rolling Stones
"It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" Bob Dylan
"Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart" Whiskeytown (Strangers Almanac version)
"2,000 Miles" Coldplay
"Up From Under" The Wallflowers

An hour or so before the show started, I realized the station here is on the internet. I didn't have time to email everone I knew, but I did have enough time to post a message on a board some of my friends and I use. So three of my good friends listened to me do a little radio show on the other side of the world. It was fun.

If you want the link to listen next time I'm minding the ones and twos here (about two or three months from now), email me so I can get it to you. I take requests as long as it's a song or artist I have access to here. It was strange to play "2,000 Miles"--didn't fully hit me until then how far away I am. The song is about how hard it is to miss someone at Christmas time when the two of you are 2,000 miles apart. Excluding the one friend I have also living abroad, I would have to go 5,000 miles to find someone I've known longer than three months.

Here is a picture of me playing Duck Hunt in a good ol' friend's apartment. It is a strange picture to me because I am wearing jeans in it. I think I remember jeans.

Episode XI: I Have Worries to Give to the Sea

2006-12-08T01:44:00.000-05:00

Being away is what it is, but I am happy. Worries creep up sometimes, but I find some place to put them. Here are some happy pictures:

sometimes I just get so excited!!

the footbridge back to the deck where I had Thanksgiving dinner and hang out sometimes

me throwing a rock a couple months ago (explanation of the pants and collared shirt on the beach: I had to wear pants and a collared shirt while I was still in training)

with our language teacher a couple months ago

Episode X: If You Still Love Rock and Roll

2006-12-02T00:06:00.000-05:00

I ran for my college cross country and track and field teams. After hard workouts some of the team would head to the ice bath (or cold pool, whatever), a big metal tub of water. We would dump huge coolers full of ice into the water and then put our legs in. The first time I stuck my legs in it hurt. After two minutes, I had to look down to be certain needles weren't jutting out the sides of the tank into my legs. However, the next time it didn't hurt as bad. By the third time, my legs just went numb after the first couple minutes.

The two times I have left America to live somewhere else, I have felt a bit of pain. Some might call it a breakdown. It isn't the travel that does it, it's the wrenching away of everything I know.

This last time I left I did so with a gaggle of other Americans. So it wasn't until we all went our seperate ways that the bit of pain hit. Breakdown isn't the right word. I break apart, split open, and everything in me pours out and I don't know anything anymore. Nothing, you know, it's just all gone. A disarming pain strikes, carving out any final scraps of comfort that might be left in me somewhere. Then, (and it always surprises me how quickly this happens) it doesn't hurt anymore.

This is where I stop being able to descibe the experience of travelling. You don't become a different person. Maybe it's that you begin to discover personal qualities you didn't know existed, but that doesn't quite explain it either. I don't know.

Here is what I know: You breakdown, you crack up, you lose your sense of self, but then you gain a new sense of self. And the comforting aspect of this process is that the little qualities you had are still there. I may relate to loneliness differently, I may relate to God differently, I may have a different sense of injustice, maybe I've changed or grown--but I still love rock and roll.

Here is a picture of me and J.M. in the Village this past February.

Episode IX: the distances written on the ticket to remind you where to stop and when to get off

2006-11-25T01:39:00.000-05:00

journal excerpt:
11.24.06
Having a great week. Thanksgiving was yesterday. Went out on a boat to the middle of the harbor to chill with some friends. A few yacht owners were there with us, they're boating around the Pacific. It's weird to see riches when I'm doing what I'm doing. Thanksgiving dinner was later that night. It was a nice dinner. We had turkey, stuffing, all that. Feel as if this is my home. I'm sitting on my front porch right now, listening to R. on this week's radio show (over the sound of the rain on the tin roof), drinking coffee.

Some pictures for you all.

This picture is from a time of my life I enjoyed very much. It's still on my camera, thought I'd put it here.

Most evenings I grab a book and walk down my driveway to the beach at about 5:45.

Being all Indiana Jones, walking through the middle of a gigantic tree trunk in a rainforest.

Chilling on the western side of the island. Had a really good time out there. The night before this picture was taken I sat out on a footbridge with M., talking about everything, drinking rum, and looking out over the moonlit ocean.

"They would, she thought, going on again, however long they lived, come back to this night; this moon; this wind; this house."
-Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Episode VIII: I Feel I Never Told You the Story of the Ghost

2006-11-17T22:36:00.000-05:00

"I'm going away where you will look for me
Where I'm going you cannot come
And no one's ever gonna take my life from me
I lay it down--a ghost is born"
-Jeff Tweedy, "Theologians"

Just spent an hour typing out excerpts from the last month and a half of my journal. It all got deleted. I try to keep in touch with my friends and family; I write letters to those who write me, and I post internet messages to my friends. Still, it's cathartic to let my friends and family in on some of the daily thoughts I write down. Oh, well. I'm not staying in front of this computer for another hour doing the exact same thing.

Wish I could watch The Game with my family this weekend. In elementary school, the week leading up to the game, the OSU fight song would be played over the p.a. system before the morning announcements. It's part of my childhood. I like being from a region that considers a childish, fun little word like "game" important enough to capitalize it.

I'm doing well. I try not to miss anyone or anything too much; sometimes I'm successful, sometimes I'm not.

Episode VII: Ready for Silence and the Heat

2006-09-22T18:24:00.000-04:00

Some excerpts from my journal.

9.2.06
Leaving for L.A. The airport is a bit cold. My mother cried; my father almost cried. I spoke to my grandparents on my mom's cell phone just a few minutes ago. I'm important to a few people.

9.9.06
Got to O'ahu's southern beaches by 2p.m. Had lunch and brightly colored drinks by the beach, then swam in the ocean, then wandered inland for dinner. L., S., and I bummed around the streets of Honolulu for about an hour, making fun of the items in gift shops and figuring out the bus routes.

9.10.06
I hate the city. People walk everywhere, but they are only looking to buy something. No one ever just stops and sits. But I miss the city. The city is cold, and it is harsh. I miss the cold that slashes, cuts, flays. Harsh warmth is different, not at all bracing. I'm sitting outside with half the group of trainees. Two people are playing their guitars. On the table I am writing on is a pink flower, a small shell (white), and a piece of bone-white coral. Going to dinner now.

9.14.06
The dinner on the 10th was perfect. Patio overlooking the lagoon, very few lights in the trees around the lagoon. A shooting star arched perfectly, slowly across the sky in front of us. P., Z., L., and I were the only ones who saw it. I walked to training today. The view from the causeway (which links my tiny island to the main island) reminds me that some things are beautiful enough that everyone considers them beautiful. There are some things no one can ignore. Went to a waterfall this afternoon, tropical rainforest, very glamorous. The stars tonight are beyone what I can understand. I see them, there they are, but I will never understand them. Despite this, they mean so much to me. I miss my dad.

9.18.06
Trash. This is it--this is how we kill the planet. Not war, not hatred, but neglect. Visited some old ruins yesterday. People walk around these ruins, think, this is amazing, I can't believe anyone built this. Perhaps some don't fully understand them or know their purpose, but all see it as something that was accomplished. I hope this is everything my life is, in the end. Snorkling was good, swam out to the end of the first shelf of the tide pool. Felt a little as if I wasn't supposed to be there. A tourist came by and jumped off a high rock into the water. Our conversation:
Tourist: You should jump off that. It's awesome.
Me: Looks kind of shallow. I can see the rocks.
Tourist: Worst thing is you'll break something, they have hospitals here. Come on, it's worth it.
Me: If I break something I might have to go home. I want to be here for a while.
Tourist: Oh. Okay, have a good day.

"I wasn't jumping, for me it was a fall
It's a long way down to nothing at all"
-Bono, "Stuck in a Moment That You Can't Get Out Of"

9.23.06
Just checked my email. A lot of junk mail, some nice words, some harsh words. Amazing that out in the quiet, in the heat of this place, I am happy. I step into air conditioning, use the internet, reconnect with America, and I can be viciously levelled.

"And in those for ever exiled waters, I had lost the miserable warping memories of tradition and towns."
-Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

Still, I do miss my friends, my family, baseball, the Ohio River, Chicago, and autumn.

Episode VI: Upon His Date of Departure, The Jedi Contemplates The Duality of (at the same time) Wanting to Leave and Wanting to Return

2006-09-02T12:29:00.000-04:00

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and brining up the rear of ever funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand on me, that it requires a strong moral principal to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
-Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

Well my ship's been split to splinters, and it's sinking fast
I'm drowning in the poison, got no future, got no past
But my heart is not weary, it's light and it's free
I got nothing but affection for all those who've sailed with me
-Bob Dylan, "Mississippi"

Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

2006-08-21T13:14:00.000-04:00

I said hasta luego to S.B. at a concert at Blossom Amphitheatre in northern Ohio. Goodbye is a dirty little word, and he advised me to use "hasta luego" from now on.

I saw Jimmie Vaughan and Bob Dylan play a show at the minor league ballpark I used to see games at in elementary school. Eric Clapton came out and played with Vaughan. During his set, Dylan sang, "But even the President of the United States/ Sometimes must have to stand naked." Those lines are carved into the sidewalk up the street from a coffee house I used to go to in college.

Once I arrive in L.A. on my way out to the Pacific islands, I'll have visited New York City, Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles in about six months. It's my rock star national tour. I stood in the most snow Central Park ever got, I ran The Marathon, I took my dad to Wrigley, I said hasta luego to a couple of my oldest friends (whom I have known for only five years, I am young), and, well, I'm not to L.A. yet.

I'll be saying goodbye to our Empire in about two weeks. That knowledge hurts. But then I'll come back. Remember in the film version of Breakfast at Tiffany's when Holly is talking about leaving for Brazil? She's wandering around Manhattan and she says she'll come back some day when she has children because "they must see this." That's how I feel about America.

Episode IV: A New Hope

2006-07-23T19:43:00.000-04:00

Making an entry with pictures obviously takes longer, and I don't like spending much time using the internet. Still, I want to put pictures on here from time to time. Here are some.

This is the inside of the cathedral La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Standing in such an immense cathedral while it is still under construction is fascinating. Can you imagine standing in Notre Dame while it was being built?

Here is one façade of the cathedral. You can find better pictures of it elsewhere online.

I saw the bulls go running from the balcony of an apartment a friend of mine in Pamplona got me access to.

This one is the Plaza del Castillo, the center of the old part of Pamplona, during the Fiesta de San Fermín. There were more people, trash, and lights than when I studied in Pamplona two winters ago.

This is the invitation-only bar above the Café Iruña during the fiesta. A friend of a friend got L. and I in here.

Three in the morning, a few hours after the Bastille Day fireworks, I had some red wine.

C. and I biked around the wine country outside of Vienna. It was a nine hour tour that led us to a few different villages. The guy in the red shirt was another member of the tour group. This was a good day.

During the Austrian wine tour, we ate lunch in the back room of a family's house in a small village. This family made their own wine, jam, schnapps, owned deer and boar, and had a small trout farm. The sausage in the foreground is filled with cheese and wrapped in bacon--this meal doubled my body weight.

And here is a picture of my friend D. entering a southeastern Ohio pond by way of zipline. This was a few hours ago.

And here is me doing the same.

Pictures never capture as much as I wish they did. They're good reminders though. Ones like these give me hope. I have some more life to live, and I want it to be as good as the moments represented above.

Episode III: Things That Seek Their Way

2006-07-19T05:29:00.000-04:00

I have not had a cell phone or more than a few minutes of internet access for 16 days. I like it.

I saw the bulls run through the streets of Pamplona. I had a drink in an invitation-only bar above the Café Iruna in the plaza in the old part of Pamplona. I wore white pants, a white shirt, and a red bandana tied around my neck (as did 1 million others). I watched fireworks go off above Pamplona's citadel from a friend's grandmother's apartment balcony. I took a boat ride on the Seine. I bought a poetry book at an English bookstore in Paris (Shakespeare and Company) that is about New York City and written by a Spanish poet. I saw the Bastille Day fireworks from the lawns around the Eiffel Tower. I saw Sofia Coppola's new English language movie in Paris a few months before it will premiere in the U.S. I saw The Third Man--black and white film noir featuring possibly the greatest entrance in movie history--in Vienna, the city it was filmed in. I have loved this movie since early high school. And I took a picture of myself in the same doorway which that legedary, shadowy entrance centers around. I biked through the wine country and small towns an hour outside of Vienna. I swam in the Danube. I played sand volleyball with some Australians, an American from Ohio, and one Brazilian. I walked around in the ruins of the castle in which Richard Lionheart was imprisoned hundreds of years ago. I went to an outdoor Austrian horror film festival and saw a movie from 1960 starring a very young Jack Nicholson. And there have been other little adventures as well. Such as typing a weblog entry on a keyboard that has the y and the z keys switched (takes longer than one might think). I will post pictures in a few days when I am back in the U.S.

"Don't ask me any questions. I've seen how things
that seek their way find their void instead."
-Federico García Lorca, "1910"

p.s. My friend C. just showed me a picture online of her brother in a Viennese garden. The picture was taken three or four days before she and I were walking through the same garden. Sometimes paths cross; sometimes they don't.

Episode II: I Hope I Am Always This Young

2006-07-05T18:29:00.000-04:00

Upon arriving in Barça, a city I have never been to, I felt at home. I remembered the Spanish culture and felt comfort. I have not spoken the language in many months, but the words, phrases, slang, it all came tumbling out of my mouth as instinct.

Italy beat Germany last night to advance to the World Cup final. Walking along the beach after the game, I could easily tell who the Italians were--the ones whipping their clothes off and running and screaming into the sea.

Before the Portugal vs. Italy game tonight, I visited La Sagrada Familia, the most visited unfinished building in Europe and probably the world. Gaudí started the cathedral in the 19th century, and it should be done by 2030 (fingers crossed). When asked why he was worrying so much about the details on the peaks of the towers (who would ever see them so high up?), Gaudí replied that the angels would see them. That quotation says more about the building than I ever could.

In a few days I will visit Pamplona for the Fiesta de San Fermín. Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises is set during the fiesta and the book was to the expatriates what On the Road was to its generation, both recording a time and inspiring it. In Spain the title of Hemingway's book is simply Fiesta.

Passionate experience is often associtated with youth (at least in the movies). A friend of mine posits that the reason so many people fall in love with foreign countries they visit during their twenties is because we grow so much during this time of our lives; everything is new. If this is true, I hope I am always this young.

Episode I: Hello

2006-07-02T19:15:00.000-04:00

On September 6th, I will head to the Pacific and live on a small island for a couple years. I wanted to start a weblog for my time there, but I will be spending the next 17 days in Europe... so why not just start a blog now?

Tomorrow afternoon I will fly from Columbus, Ohio to Barcelona. In addition to Barca, I plan to spend time in Pamplona (during the Fiesta de San Fermín), Paris (around Bastille Day), and Vienna. I will return to Ohio on July 20th. I will post again when I have something I think is worth posting and when I have internet access.