Stayed home all weekend. Didn't even want to start the Flex. Been on the road all summer and just staying home seemed like jaded decadence.
Yesterday I experimented with a new painting technique I stumbled upon. I call it flooding gravity. loading up my brush with a little paint and a lot of water I flood the paper with it, then turn the pad upright allowing the water to run down, which creates great patterns. Kind of Japanese watercolor patterns. Here is a good example. This is Zion Rainstorm:
If I approached this from the other end—trying to paint the subtle fall of rain, I would never, in a hundred years approach this technique. Very moody. Love it.
Mickey Free is never far from my mind. This morning I was inspired to start an apocalyptic landscape and I ended up with this scene:
Covered in ash, the two moved through the burning landscape like shimmering ghosts.
I was just thinking the other day, Damn it, I need to get some new music into my life. Well, I got it today from an unexpected source. This afternoon I was lounging in the bedroom reading The New Yorker ("An explosion is beauty before its consequences.") when Kathy started surfing iTunes looking for new music. Couldn't stand most of the stuff she was listening to. Mostly Jazzercize driven dance stuff. Can't stand it, probably because it reminds me of Jazzercize and the numerous times i have gone with her "for the sake of my heart". This went on for about twenty minutes and I considered getting up and leaving because it was starting to irritate me. Then, like a fresh wind, out from her computer came a honkytonk shuffle and I put down the magazine and said, "Who the hell is that?"
Hayes Carll, she said. Hays Who? Never heard of him. Can you play me more? "It ain't me, I'm just playin' a part, a bad liver and a broken heart." Holy crap, that is my kind of music. Play me more. She did. He's a little bit of Joe Ely and a whole lot of John Hiatt (and that's a good thing): "Doesn't anybody care about truth anymore, maybe that's what songs are for." and super funny lyrics, Secular Texas Redneck style (by that I mean hippie-enlightened-hillbilly: think Willie, Jerry Jeff and Lyle):
"I got a woman who's wild as Rome
She likes to lay naked and be gazed upon
She crosses a bridge then sets it on fire,
lands like a bird on a telephone wire."
—A Drunken Poet's Dream
And then a duet with a Bonnie Raitt gal on a tune KMAG YOYO (Kick my ass Guys, you're on your own)
"You were falling like the Alamo
Drinking fast and talkin' slow. . .
"Were you hittin' on that stripper
Cause you couldn't afford to tip her?"
which leads to this exchange:
she: "Well, you are probably a democrat."
he: "What the hell is wrong with that?"
she: "Nothin' if yer Taliban."
—Another Like You
This is my kind of redneck!
"Don't worry about judgement day, all these people goin' to heaven are just in our way."
—Hayes Carll
