it's an off night...one of those nights where you turn off all the lights and just turn on the special occasion ones - the red ones and blue ones and candles that lie around that you've been waiting to get rid of...

slow piano melodies run thru my head - those kind that make you want to jump off buildings or pull up a movie and rewatch your favorite parts again, like watching Kate Rusby singing "I wonder what's keeping my true love this night" in Heartlands - and watching Colin grow from a shopkeeper to a man of the world.

and the lyrics to the piano melodies are the same "going nowhere" - nowhere at all - and a line that Wilco wrote for that Chelsea Walls movie - "I promise you and you promise me, we will never admit defeat - I promise, you promise me"

But I feel defeated - I feel worn...tired of making the top 20% in tourneys and not the top 10% or the top 1%. Tired of playing gigs and seeing the same faces over and over because we can't build an audience. Tired of being the go-to guy at work. I want to lose my job, my band, pack it all up, sell the unnecessary, and just...go somewhere and start over - maybe even start boozing again - anything to shake it up.

But I can't do that - I can't even be irresponsibly fiscally, cause I'm going on a budget - just nights of sitting up in the apt. You know, I upgraded from the studio to the one bedroom and I'm not sure why....I didn't need the bedroom - I never stay in it unless I'm sleeping, but I guess a studio apt. felt too much like...a prison cell - at least now I get out of the cell into the prison yard occasionally.

The view from my window is starting to turn white - flurries falling - roads icing over - time to resume the underground parking full time.

"It's hard to say who's really a poet" - what a line - how true it is. - are you a poet if you keep writing the same poem over and over - are you only a poet online, and a waste of space in real life....does any of it show any relevance -

Do I trust someone enough to let them shave my beard - trust them to put a razor sharp blade to my neck and scrape away at it - No - I can't think of a single person I'd trust with that job, despite my relatively low concern for living. I have sealed myself off from the world - like the poor man's Howard Hughes. All I need now is a phobia of germs.

How many pieces of yourself can you amputate before you're not you anymore...

Going nowhere - fast...

RB