life on this day

another too late night of working. Surely there's a break coming up soon. after starting the work day at 6:30, 1am feels a little later than it used to. I actually had the thought tonight, "I'm getting too old for this". I'm not sure if it was the exhaustion or if that's true, but it feels like a little of both on this night. It's been a roller coaster month, week, day. the highs were glorious and lofty and the lows were at sedimentary levels.

One such lofty day was tracking on Steve's new record. We needed to get a little group together for some good ole group bgv's and it just turned out to be the perfect combination of people for some reason. Judd & Maggie, me, Ryan Greenawalt and an alternating wing men/women/persons of Jeremy Casella and Mandy Mann. The stuff they had for us to sing was just great and we really went crazy with it. very theatrical, but in the best of ways. we all just walked away (obviously STILL) talking about how much fun it was and how excited we all were about people making good records again... making the record that is in them, whether it's 3min and 30 seconds with a target market or not. ..and probably not. That's just where the good stuff is, i think. Make the record you're meant to make...whatever it is that's in you, drag it out and work on it. It makes me think of that story Jonatha Brooke once told in an interview about the 4 min outro with that amazing piano solo on "Inconsolable". The powers that be told her it had to go if she ever wanted them to get behind a single. she thought about it, and eventually thought to herself, "like i'm ever going to have an f-ing single." She just remembered who she was and what she was doing and kept the solo. It is incidentally maybe my favorite Jonatha Brooke song and would be less so without that outro. I'm just sayin.

On the way back from picking up our newly screened screens (mmmm), Patty Griffin's song, "Christina" (that she wrote about Christina O'nasis) came on. I went to change it, then I heard my favorite line of the song, which happens to be the first one. That doesn't happen very often, it seems. Anyway... here's a song for the evening...


If you had the real thing how would you tell
Liars can say it all just as well
Every single word you've heard in vain
Baubles of gold, stars in your hair
Reflections that told that they were not there
And the diamonds on your cheeks have turned to flames
And up in the air they would write your name there
But love would fall to pieces in the rain
Who would know better than you
A hundred love letters and none of them true

Christina, Christina

It's a wondrous world of ridiculous things
With nothing so rare as the love that it brings
In the silence of a smile that understands
A piece of the action, pieces of gold
Everyone's paid well and does what they're told
For the simple daughter of a simple man
And up in the air they would write your name there
Their love will fall to pieces in the rain
Who would know better than you
A hundred love letters and none of them true