Month: September 2004

Well, we are declaring victory for the night. We are 85% packed after a good long day of work. We’re going to crash early tonight, and rise early tomorrow for the move. Get the truck home by 9am, load it, then go to the new place to drop of stuff we’ll need, then put the rest of our stuff into storage, then return the truck.

Then, we make a new home, albeit a temporary one.

My next post will come from the beach.

It’s been an amazing 7 years in Portland. This is a great city, without a doubt. As I commonly said, it’s about as much city as I want to deal with.

I’ve changed quite a bit since living here. One thing this place has taught me is that we are heavily influenced by proximity. What is around us, influences us. The universe vibrates, and we entrain with those vibrations.

Portland has been good to me. I’ll miss it.

But exciting days are afoot…

Where are you, John Kerry?

I’ve heard virtually nothing from you since the Dem national convention. This means that anything you have said (probably lots of verbiage) has been lost in a sea of noise. You aren’t saying something interesting enough that will resonate with enough people to get any attention.

Be bold. Come out and Speak Your Truth. I don’t want to hear mindless nonsense and speechmongering. The Reps have mastered the rules of this stupid game, and the Dems are not going to win with those tactics. It’s time to change the rules of the game, and Freaks everywhere should be taking the visionary lead.

Do something interesting, and quick, or you’ll lose this election just like Gore lost it in 2000.

History seems to be repeating itself.

So I’m beginning to research different options for our upcoming UK trip. I want to in general avoid prepackaged tours; I’d much rather explore on my own for the most part. But I think a one-day tour through the Highlands may be interesting leaving out of Edinburgh. So I thought I’d post several links on this entry:

• Online map of UK
• Scotline Tours Highland Fling
• Heart of Scotland Tours
• Rosslyn Chapel
• Avebury Stones
• Aylesbury Online
• Glastonbury Abbey — in addition, the myths page on that site is very, very informative.
• Severn Bridge
• Cornwall Online
• Caerleon.net
• Caerleon castle

Many of you have heard by now that Cat Stevens was diverted to Bangor, ME and denied entry to the US. But what isn’t as widely reported in America is that Marillion was also on the plane:

Speaking from Bangor, Marillion singer Steve Hogarth, 45, told PA News: “We flew today on Flight 919 to Washington Dulles en route to Mexico City where we have two shows.

“At 1453 (Eastern Time), the plane touched down. As it touched down, an announcement was made by the stewardess that we were not landing in Washington because of bad weather.

“Then there was an announcement made by the captain saying they stopped to refuel. But after another period, of about 10 minutes, the captain made another announcement saying it was, in fact, an FBI security alert.”

Mr Hogarth added: “We all had to get off the plane.”

Passengers then went through immigration and Mr Hogarth was warned not use his camera.

He said: “This was pretty peculiar and I had wanted to record it for my diary.

“I then met a security guard who said the two people escorted off the plane were Cat Stevens and his daughter.”

Mr Hogarth added: “I was really stunned. Everybody knows he converted to the Muslim faith. He is a pacifist and a great songwriter.”

He said security men were swabbing bags as they began the process to reboard.

I think Marillion are discovering firsthand that America is a very different place now than it was last time they were here, 7 years ago.

Yesterday and today have been the first fall-like days of the season. Windy, blustery, highs in the 50s, lows in the low 40s. These are likely remnants of the hurricanes down south.

Normally this time of year is my favorite. I love the fresh feeling of cool when you’ve been baking in heat all summer long. And historically, lots of good things have happened to me in the fall.

Though this trend is definitely continuing, I don’t have the same feeling of excitement now that fall is here. I think it’s because it’s been the mildest summer I’ve had yet in Maine. There are typically a few heat waves in Maine summers; stretches where it’s uncomfortably hot at night and hard to sleep. This year, we had none of those. So it still feels like I’m waiting for summer to land, yet autumn is already rearing its head.

I’ve said all along that I hope we get a good “Indian summer” this year once we’ve settled in to Ocean Park.

I think I just need to find more ways to generate heat in my reality.

Now this is exciting. I have wanted to travel to the UK for many years, and for a variety of reasons. And, I had always wanted to schedule a trip to the UK to coincide with Marillion activities, to be able to see them on their home turf.

Well, as it turns out, we’ll be able to do exactly that in March. An unexpected gift came our way, which will allow my family to travel there. It’s funny how timing works out. The first 3 days of our trip will be spent carousing with a few thousand Freaks in Minehead, near Cornwall (actually it may be in Cornwall; I’m not sure where Cornwall’s border is). Then we’ll have about 10 days in the UK afterwards.

This will, of course, be a huge homeschooling project for us as well. We’ll have to decide exactly where we want to go. There are many possibilities,
Glastonbury, Tintagel, the Rosslyn Chapel, and of course the old standbys like Stonehenge, not to mention London itself. We’ll most likely go up into Scotland for a bit as well.

On a spiritual and intellectual note, I’ve been interested in the Arthurian legends for many years, and the grail image — particularly the idea of the grail quest — has been perhaps the central metaphor in my spiritual pursuits for the past decade and a half. There are of course many places in the UK to visit that are connected to this legend; indeed, the entire island seems to resonate on some level with this mythos.

Luckily, we have several months to plan things, and we can always be spontaneous once we get there. But this should definitely be the adventure of a lifetime. It’s many years overdue in my case; I know LM was ready to go, and Mo is more than a little excited.

Thanks to everyone who made this possible.

This morning, I woke up to the sound of my daughter reading aloud to herself in her room.

Of all the sounds one could hear in the morning, this has to rank near the top of the list. I’m so proud of her. She’s worked very hard at reading, and it’s clear that the light bulb has come on in recent weeks.

I find it very interesting; literacy experts still aren’t quite sure what causes people to be able to read. Their best advice is something close to “surround them with books and workbooks, and eventually they’ll get it.”

I’m happy to say that my daughter is very much getting it.

Now this is funny. As my readers will know, we are moving soon. As a result of the move, we are going through The Purge, trying to get rid of things we won’t need. Well, we had (note the tense) a big padded recliner that we wouldn’t have space for in our new apartment. So we decided to put it out on the street with a “free” sign on it, hoping that we could help someone out with it.

Well, little did we know that the person we helped would be a pyromaniac.

Last night, at about 2:30am, we were awakened by someone repeatedly ringing our doorbell. I got up to see lots of bright red and blue flashing lights coming in our window. And I could smell smoke. I opened the door to see a fireman standing there.

“Is this your chair?” he asked.

I was a bit disoriented, and my natural suspicion of authority figures kicked in.

“Ummm, yeah.”

“Has this chair,” the fireman asked, “been sitting out here for long?”

“Yeah, we’re moving, so we put it out with a ‘free chair’ sign on it, hoping someone would take it.”

I looked over to where the chair was, and saw a steaming, smoldering, blackened pile of charred wood and metal.

“What, someone torched the chair?”

“Yes.” the fireman said. “I just wanted to make sure that there wasn’t also a fire inside the building.”

“No, no fires in here. Wait, you said someone torched my chair.”

“That’s right,” he said. “So everything is OK in here? This chair has been sitting outside for a while now?”

“Yes, since early this afternoon.”

“OK then. Have a good night.”

“Ummm, yeah.”

I’d have to say that this ranks 2nd on my list of most disorienting awakenings in my life. Needless to say, I’ve been quite sensitive to an abundance of fire energy for the past 10 hours… it’s going to be an interesting day at AAA, that’s for sure…

Once again, people are mourning the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9-11-01. I don’t think I can say anything any better than what I said 2 years ago, on the first anniversary of the attacks.

My new guitar, Mae (short for Maple Lake), arrived yesterday. First day, I broke her in in the studio and drilled a hole in her for a strap button. Trial by fire.

She told me her name, but so far she’s given me 2 full names: Mae Wecht and Mae East (she was made in China). Let’s see which name she ends up using most consistently. Mae Wecht definitely seems to resonate more at the moment. (UPDATE: I had a good long talk with Mae today. It’s definitely Mae Wecht).

Anyway, this guitar is impeccably built. The lacewood on the back and sides of the guitar is stunning. This guitar is larger than Annabelle, but its tone is somewhat similar. It’s just louder, fuller, and bassier because it’s a full acoustic design, not a hybrid like the Pathmaker, as well as having a larger, more resonant body. It’s a bit thinner than I thought it would be, but that’s fine. It took some getting used to; the lower bout sticks up under my right armpit more, because it’s a much larger guitar. But now I have a strap that hangs perfectly; I like it sitting up high. Playing this guitar is fun.

The guitar came with a near-perfect setup; I installed a set of Elixir Custom Lights on it and it was good to go as is. I won’t need to make a new saddle for Mae as I did with Annabelle, though I may try anyway just as a lark. I definitely won’t modify this one though; it works just about perfectly. The action on the guitar is very nice.

I recorded some guitar tracks for Too Bad For You last night, doubling along to another track I’d made with Annabelle a few days ago. Together, these two guitars sound wonderful. I’m very happy, the Freakwitch album will sound much better with these 2 guitars on it.

Though Mae is louder than Annabelle, Matt actually noticed more when I played more quietly; bottom line, this guitar has a much larger dynamic range, which will bode well for recording.

I sold my old Alvarez Yairi to get this guitar. The Alvarez served me well in its day, but the combination of Annabelle and Mae suits my needs perfectly these days. I’ll probably end up favoring Mae for studio use and Annabelle for live performance, but who knows. Both are great guitars, and I’m lucky to have them.

Funny how things just keep appearing in my reality that make recording this album easier and better… I’m very grateful. :-)