stairway to heaven

It's been a while since my last post. In that time I've continued working on my wall, growing mushrooms, and playing music. Kind of ambivalent about this whole sharing on the internet thing, though the momentum of so many friends seems to be sweeping me inexorably along.

Jack and Tim

My friends Jack and Tim are in from Hawaii and last night we went to Brighter Day, played music, and hung out with friends. Tim had his accordion and played a set with the Better Halfs and it was a wonderful bonding experience. Beth refers to him as "a consummate musician." It was great to see them both, as always, a real love thing.
An interesting thing I've noticed about the music - our most avid listeners are usually under the age of 10. They seem very fascinated by the fact that music is being made by these two guys and, depending on their age, they bounce, dance, stomp, stare, and generally groove along. I take that as a positive sign. On some level they're tuning in and letting the music move them.

Better Halfs

Well, I play music as one half of the Better Halfs, and created a MySpace page yesterday. It was interesting to notice how foreign it all seemed, while realizing that I am to a great degree a dinosaur in this cyber-connected age. Go to http://myspace.com/betterhalfs if you want to check out the music. The song "election 2004" was written, as you might surmise, on the eve of the 2004 presidential election. I was full of paranoia, playing my guitar, and out came the riff (inspired by Steely Dan) and the phrase "you don't understand what it means to be a man, anyway." The song got built around that.

Illusion

An interesting aspect of having a blog is that the question of what it is that I want to put out there is now constantly in the back of my mind, like a subtle but persistent itch. Things come and go as possibilities, but when I consider sharing them with one and all it’s like having visitors in the house and suddenly seeing everything through more scrutinizing eyes. Incredible how a slight shift in perception can change the entire world.

Stone wall and shiitakes

Two things that have made my summer more enjoyable.....finishing a stone wall that I've been working on and getting a good harvest from my shiitake logs.

well, here I am in the blogosphere.....

This will be an interesting experience, I'm sure. Haunted by Hippies was going to be the name of a band that never quite got off the ground. What the content of this blog will be remains to be seen. For now, I guess it's enough just to be started.