Make a Joyful Noise

In the Shadow of the City

Last summer I spent many of my nights at "The Shop", a dilapidated warehouse hidden in plain sight in the midst of the bustle of downtown. My friend Adam built guitars there, and we drank, played guitars and darts, and climbed through a converted window onto the roof of the abandoned warehouse next door. On it we'd sit with our drinks in hand and watch the world go buy, listening to the concerts at the Orange Peel as they seeped through the open windows, the cheers from a baseball game across the street, watching the fireworks that lit up the sky in celebration of our 232nd year of independence.
I knew it'd never last. It was one of those times in life that whisper their transiency between the moments of breathlessness and thrill.

Last week I once again stood on the roof next door with drinks and friends, waiting for the Beastie Boys to take the stage at the Peel. The sky was marbled and full of the relief that comes just after a thunderstorm. I looked back at the shop and the city behind it and I was full.

The downtown commission has approved the demolition of the Shop and surrounding warehouses. We lose another hidden gem.

(these two photos are courtesy of Clark Mackey, a phenomenal photographer who is very often involved with the adventures at the Shop. I do not own these; I showcase Clark. Go to his Flickr to see them on black; they are even more impressive.)

Truth and Everything Else

Hello…you may remember me as someone who used to blog all the time. Remember those days? Those were good days.

I discovered that the times when I am happiest I don’t write much, because writing is the method I use to scratch the itchy places in my life. It puts my fears, frustrations, hopes and heartaches into words; map them into something I can process; organize them into the stacks of Truth and Everything Else. When I am happy, when I am not itchy in those deep places only I know, my words evaporate into a trickle. Thoughts don’t stay with me long; they alight before words can catch them.

This spring and summer I have been busy. Not hectic; busy. As in full. As in constant. As if I live life like the outline of the soft Blue Ridge and not the harsh extremes of the Rockies. And it has been good.

I’ve been canoeing on the French Broad with Emily, floating gently by the back side of the Biltmore House on a Sunday beatific in its summer uncomplicatedness.

I did a random road trip to south Georgia with Leslie and her gaggle of kids (and aging wiener dog) to sit on a back deck with her parents, drink gin & tonics, eat boiled peanuts and kayak through a cypress grove.

After a particularly rainy week I ended up in a whitewater raft with Doug, his father and Nathan on section IX of the French Broad, guiding those silly guys down Class III-IV rapids with 24oz cans of Modela shoved in our PFDs.

I had a birthday.

I’ve had some damn good kisses.

I took off my flip flops, rolled up my jeans and splashed in puddles in the street after finishing wine at Bouchon while the sky threw the sort of tantrum it only throws in the summer.

I’ve laughed with my whole body.

I discovered that I really, really don’t like sea urchin.

I've tried acupuncture.

When I was in Georgia, Leslie’s mom showed me a green plant climbing the trunk of a massive live oak tree. She said, “That is called a resurrection fern. When there is no rain it withers up and appears dead. It shrinks to nothing. But when the rains come again, it unfurls and greens. It resurrects over and over again.”

I haven’t stopped thinking about that resurrection fern.
Or whether it falls into Truth, into Everything Else, or both at the very same time.

Son of A

This one is for Leslie....

She's Hot to Go

Asheville has the worst collection of radio stations I could imagine compiling so I rarely listen to it. I listen to NPR or my iPod. However I forget to charge my iPod all the time. It has only run out of juice once or twice since I don’t use it that much anymore (commute is half the time and falls during prime NPR hours). Now I have the stock stereo in my car; I never felt the need to update it and so I still rock a cassette player in my dash. Why would I need anything else?
Last night was one of those times that my iPod died and it was an off-hour where my least favorite NPR program is broadcast. It is for these moments that I still have cassettes floating around my car. Most are mix tapes from college that have withstood the test of time and better tastes. I blindly grabbed one and stuck it in and was immediately flooded with memory and comfort. It wasn’t one I made; it was a mix that my dad recorded in probably 1990 or 1991 that is comprised of Lyle Lovett’s first three albums taped from records. The tape has the scratchy and mildly tinny quality that distinguishes it; as if the imperfections make it more personable. I stole it years ago and have kept it because I have memories of listening to the same tape on childhood trips to Maine and Canada; it is something that is so concretely familiar. I have the CD versions of those albums but they don’t have the character of that mix tape.
Thanks for that, Lyle.