Last night’s open mic at College Perk was, as usual, full of ups and downs. I’m really falling back in Love with the place and Sharif was full of the mirth last night.
I’m unfortunately not having a good Christmas. I’m worried about the downward spiral – where years ago, the year my father died I guess I was thinking “well, next year’s GOT to be better” and then the year after I remember getting to the end of the year and thinking “thank God THAT one’s over, the next one’s GOT to be better”…. last year as well (or WAS that last year?) and here I’m heading up on 2008 and I was talking to a friend and I said “yeah, this has been a rough year, thank God it’s almost over…” and then I thought about it and I’m worrying that I’ve just been waiting out time for years now. And how easy it was to do, how easy it was to say. From Solitaire to hiding under the covers I’ve been hunting time and killing it. Mutilating it, really. Slaughtering it. I don’t have time to waste like this and so I better start enjoying a year here and there. I can’t continue like that.
Snow on my mom’s house. Finally a white December and the potential of Christmas looking right! Though its supposed to be 70 this weekend, so maybe the world’s just insane. 
Winter strikes us as we play at Whtlow’s on Wilson in Clarendon, VA.
And so Perk was full of the forcible enjoyment of Life. And sometimes I forgot and just plain enjoyed it. There’s a new artist frequenting the Perk: Eileen Korn, who’s really amazing. She’s taking people’s hearts apart and it’s a beautiful process to watch – a beautiful woman with a remarkably professional voice. Last night on top of everything else she did some really elegant, strong finger-picking. I’m not sure if I’m watching someone who is really good and just finally coming out (she is just finishing her first demo, hasn’t played out much and is just getting a website together) or someone in the midst of a spectacularly explosive learning curve. It’s enough to sit back and watch her.
The spectacularly sexually stimulating Keegan Corbey. It was the first time I’d seen him play for more than fifteen minutes – the first I’d ever seen him play for more than three songs and I felt sort of like I was gambling on him, but as I saw him engage the audience and steadily belt out song after song I knew that I had once again done RIGHT! Luca is a problem. And the only solution is to ship him to another country. There’s some stupid LOL Catz thingie that I could write here, but I’m not that guy.
I Love watching that initial burn of a new artist. She doesn’t seem to quite know what to do with the attention but is remarkably mature about it and is quietly confident. I feel like Keegan Corbey is going through something similar – another singer/songwriter who is almost obscenely talented, with an amazing voice, really charismatic demeanour, great songwriting… he’s become a much better performer over the time that I’ve known him and right now is just sort of setting incendiaries in my mind.
I’m like YEAH the mic smells bad but I still SORT of wanna put my teeth on it at the Old Bowie Town Grille in Bowie, MD. aggie B joins us to sing … whatever it was that we were singing. Oh yeah – Stand By Me!!! Since then Heather and Maggie have been singing some Christmas carols here and there among other things. Their voices blend beautifully.
Still no-one quite competes for my affection like Dan Zimmerman and his “Great Outdoor Fight”. He writes the songs I wish I could write with metaphors that I can barely fathom, much less hope to generate. The synergy between him and Rowan and Sharif (like with ilyAIMY) creates this amazing greater whole that’s so much superior to the sum of its parts. He makes you want to sway to the rhythm of your own hypnotism.
