What Light?

So these last few weeks have been a bit hectic... But there's a light (what light?)... And the light is a weekend away, wineries, massages, and gambling.

Indeed.

On top of the more immediate weekend light, I feel like there's a bigger light up ahead... many things wrapping up, and many things just beginning...

Good times. Bright light.

jbg

And I Ran

So... It's weird not having a TV this week... Nice in a lot of ways... We don't watch a ton of TV per se, but we do have it on most nights to help decompress from our long days. So with nothing to steal my focus and numb my mind for a couple of days (other than beer), I'm going to try to write about some of the things I've been saving up... things I've been meaning to write about...

The warmer weather over the last couple days has allowed us to run twice since Sunday... the first run, 5.5 miles, was fun and felt good in spite of the fact that we've run exactly three times since November... and none since early January. Needless to say, Monday was painful... hamstrings and calf muscles were displeased...

But we got out again last night (in shorts!) and took on another 5 miles, this time under a beautiful rising moon. It was tough... it reminded me of how my legs felt at the end of my longer training runs... the 18 and 20 mile slogs of last September... only this was at mile 4... But even factoring in the massive discomfort, it was just so nice to be outside running again...

I've missed it so much this winter... that's not to say that our break from running and embrace of swimming hasn't been a good thing... I love our triathlon aspirations and I know my body needed a break from running after almost three years of continuous distance training... It's still amazing to me to consider that before July of 2006, I had never run more than 3.5 miles.

And not even three years later I've completed two half and two full marathons. And I can't remember the last time we had a run of fewer than 5 miles. And over the course of training for my two marathons, I ran no fewer that twenty-four runs of 13 miles or more. The marathons themselves have been almost anti-climactic... mostly owing to the fact that the weather has sucked for both. It's really been the training that I've enjoyed the most...

So many runs stick out in my mind... epic runs in the rain... runs where I held a pace I thought impossible for 10 miles in the summer dusk, hurtling past surprised animals at the Lincoln Park Zoo, gritting my teeth as I reached for the homestretch, gutting out 7:30 minute miles, one after another... 

Probably my favorite were the long Sunday morning runs... I get up at 5:30 and out the door by 6:00 pushing through the deserted city streets in the dark or growing light... I come across the refuse of Saturday night partying, both inanimate and alive (barely)... people weaving on the sidewalks in bare feet, walks of shame... My body struggles to find its stride, my legs feel dead... what the fuck? Only three miles in... I tell myself that it's my body making me conserve energy, knowing I have a long way to go... As the day continues to break, I find myself at Belmont and Pulaski, or some such nondescript northside intersection... more cars on the street now... I'm getting close to my first water break and my first gel pack, a nice dose of carbs and a bit of caffeine... Even more cars and people... I'm through the water and gel pack, and now up on Lawrence where bakeries are starting to open their doors... it's after 7 now and I'm feeling better... my body's warm, my legs are starting to turn over... another water stop on Lawrence and all of a sudden I'm on Lincoln, the final stretch of the solo portion of the run... 9 miles down, 11 to go... I'm greeted by Andrea in front of our place... she's got another gel pack and some water for me, which I need badly, the effects of the first having worn off... We set off south and I am so grateful for the company... I no longer have to satisfy my verbal impulses by talking to myself and shouting at squirrels... I get a burst from running alongside someone with fresh legs... her energy makes it seem like a whole new run... we chat about what I missed at home in the hour and a half or so I was gone... usually nothing. As we wind our way through Lakeview and then Lincoln Park, the city has come fully alive... and we hit the park just north of the Zoo feeling good... we have another gel pack and some water and continue south... I'm at the half marathon point now, feeling pretty good... everything is automatic and the miles are starting to fly by... we continue south beyond the zoo, and then cut east to the lakefront... Now we're on the last two legs... 3 miles north on the lake shore path and 2 miles west to our home... Speaking of the last two legs, mine are burning... everything is still automatic, but I'm really starting to feel every muscle in my legs as I near the three hour mark of running... the path is crowded with runners and bikes... a lot of runners wear the look of having been out running as long as me, a lot of marathon training going on for sure... Our last water and gel pack is consumed just before we turn off the lake onto Irving Park... and now we're on a mission, so close to the end... the steeple of St. Ben's pokes into view and we know that we're so close... our pace picks up as we start to empty the tank of all remaining energy... muscles and feet are screaming now but we're finishing strong... we cut north for two blocks and then finish with a half mile on Berteau... and now we're walking with hands on hips, our bodies still in shock... Up the four flights of stairs on numb and trembling legs and greeted by the usual excited dog... I'm in the shower immediately, and then on to stretching as best I can... Andrea is making whole wheat banana pancakes, our staple post run food... we're downing Gatorade as fast as our stomachs can handle it and have just taken 1000 milligrams of ibuprofen... the smell of coffee runs through the house... And we're sitting on the couch, eating pancakes, drinking coffee, watching Meet the Press, and reading the Sunday paper... our bodies are telling us they've had enough and need to shut down... Slowly, the eyes close and the house is silent... the sunlight of the late morning shines in on three quiet souls, breathing in near unison... legs twitch, the coffee maker turns off automatically...

And everything is good.

J

Hollowed Out Rooms

What a week what a week what a week... Sometimes I feel like my life is one big administrative task... I have all sorts of things about which to write and zero energy to write them.

I want it to be spring for real...
I want to be training consistently again...
I want the hundreds of press kits I have to get out this week to be in the mail and on their way to helping ears...
I want to know what people think of the new record...
I want to be back in our new home...
I want to be completely out of my old home...
I want these hollowed out rooms to be filled with someone else's things...
I want the echoes deadened...
I want to settle into a solid and safe home and a disciplined approach to my art...
I want to write an entire album of songs on the piano, and then not record them...
I want to promote and sell the fuck out of Things We Would Rather Lose so I can record the follow up as soon as possible...
I want to sleep better...
I want to buy a nice piece of art to hang over the fireplace...
I want to walk the dog more often...
I want to have a drink with Mickey Rourke...
Whoa. Where the heck did that come from?
XO
j

New Blood?

Blood on the road And I'm thinking of you As the empire explodes And they're burning the dead In the name of the Son And we're trying to forget What we saw What we saw

jbg

Skyscrapers

So I have it.

The album I mean.

Things We Would Rather Lose.

It's mixed and mastered and locked and loaded... The mastering job was worth every penny... I don't know how to describe the difference between the final mixes to the mastered product... we've listened to it a couple of times since Friday on a couple of different sound systems and... I really just don't have words to describe it. I've blogged a lot about it over the... well, it's crazy to say, but it's really the culmination of almost two years...

I started writing it, I guess, right after (or maybe even while) we finished the first Paper Arrows record... and it was written over most of 2007 and into early 2008... and we started tracking in summer 2008... and now... it's done.

It was originally conceived of as a double album called Skyscraper Hearts... I had 25 songs for it... it was going to be split into a loud record and a quiet record. Jay, thankfully, pushed it more towards a conventional record.

We picked 11 out of 25 and wound up recording 9 songs... some of the songs we left off are really really good... I don't know what I'm going to do with them, but I should do something. But where this project wound up... this particular collection of songs and the way we recorded and mixed them... It just feels like it couldn't (and shouldn't) have been done any other way... it feels right to me.

We really made it our mission to attack each song in whatever way we thought best... so we brought in different musicians including horns... we used different sounds... we had a bigger budget so we were able to record and mix all of it in studios, as opposed to Look Alive, which was tracked in the attic...

I could write about so many different things with respect to the final product... about the performances, about Jay's production, Manny's mix... each time we've listened there's been a new thought, a new angle, a new sound... and I love that through all the different sounds, the styles, the instruments... it is a album about recovery from loss and the lyrics are the thread that connect the sounds... and that diversity of sound, the eclecticity is the perfect way to describe, to convey how complex recovery is... jarring, disorienting, positive, negative, relieved, angry, sad, numb, confused, clear headed... all of those things... and they're all there...

The next steps are playing this House of Blues show on Thursday, and then getting to work on press for the release of the album... which is April 7. I've kind of put writing on hold until I heard the final product but... I anticipate now my mind will be free to start figuring out what comes next... And that's really the question...

I wrote an album of songs that were about loss... losing someone.

I wrote an album of songs that were about recovering from losing someone.

So what happens after you've recovered?

Because... I think I have. Some of the bits of writing I have done seem to be about what I've found in the recovery process... about faith really and not faith in god, more faith in people and love... So maybe that's it...

The one song I have yet to examine here is Skyscraper Hearts. While I'm glad the album is called Things We Would Rather Lose... the original title was Skyscraper Hearts for a reason... I knew I had something special with this song... it was one of those mysterious songs that just kind of... pours out of you... you know what you're writing about but it's something more... it's beyond the concrete thing about which you're writing...

The recording of Skyscraper was incredible... from the killer horn arrangement, to the guitar part Jay and I created on the fly... to the vocals, half of which were recorded on the very last day before mixing, and half of which were recorded on the very first day, the scratch track day...

It's almost too perfect in how the performance even surrounds the recording... listening to the demo version of me singing along to an acoustic guitar part in a tiny little isolation room... and then listening to the final product, which is one of the biggest sounding things we've done...

The phrase Skyscraper Hearts had been turning up here and there in my writing back into probably 05 or 06... it was one of those situations where you have an idea or an image but you don't have anything to which to attach it... it doesn't mean anything more than the words... so it just sits until you experience something that gives it meaning and significance...

And that something to me was the gut wrenching personal loss of separation and divorce... as well as meeting and connecting with someone who had gone through something just as gut wrenching if not more so...

And seeing and feeling what loss does to one... and level of despair to which it can push you... and how you fight to rebuild... and... I could try to write more on it... but maybe it's better to just let the words speak for themselves...

SKYSCRAPER HEARTS Your eyes They fall Upon the ground Your tears They crawl Upon my cheek We rise At night And breathe the starlight We rise At night As big as the sky And time is never there And time is never fair We dream Of empty rooms And moving trucks We wake To find That it's all gone They beat In cages Filled with silence They beat These skyscraper hearts Of ours And time is never there And time is never fair The light It comes when we are falling into dust The light It shines from where the buildings fall into a sea Of love It tries To drown us in our waking lives When in our hearts we're running out of Time is never fair And time is never there And time is never fair And time is never there

jbg