Breaking and Making
This blog was originally posted to The Dresden Dolls Diary.
Such a strange mix of feelings.
We’ve never cancelled a single show, and now three days before the flight we’re pulling out of an entire tour.
Brian doesn’t want to go, is going through his own thing, and I am very supportive of him….while also going through my own understandable frustration about it. I know, deep down, that we’ve made the right decision and that things could be no other way, but then I find myself plagued with haunting visions of a girl from FInland showing up at a Festival that she’s spent a years allowance on a ticket, defied her parents orders and driven 23 hours with her best friend who is dying of leukemia only to arrive there and find, a la the Wally World scene in “Vacation”, a tattered sign scotch-taped to a chainlink fence, blowing in the wind: “Sorry, Dresdin Dolls show is Cancell”. She the bursts into tears and forthwith curses my name every night before she goes to bed until she dies. fine fine. maybe it won’t be that bad.
We’ve done a complete 180, Brian and I. I remember back when my nickname for him used to be Mr. Get In The Van because he was so gung-ho about touring. I, on the other hand, was always dragging my feet and really reluctant to leave. Now I’ve acclimated and Brian is feeling the reverse. It just goes to show, nothing’s ever the way you think it will be. I am still going to go play the shows we were scheduled to do in Scotland, alone, which is slightly terrifying but should be fun. Emily is coming with me and it’s fringe-festival time in Edinburgh, which I’ve dreamed about going to see I was a Wee Bairn. I’m bracing myself for a flood of emails about Why The Tour Is Cancelled and Are You Ok and Is Brian Ok and general What The Fuck and am deeply considering coming up with some kind of auto-reply to spare myself typing the same email 148 times. Meanwhile….I spent the last three days just keeping body and soul together, drinking tea and staring at the wall a lot, while everybody hustled and bustled this way and that and tried to come to the right decision. I stepped back. I took long bicycle rides. I did no work. I sat by the phone. I went to the movies. I finished two songs. I met with old friends. I tried to remember myself. I tried to find some love. I tried to get my mind off of everything. The movies really do help you do that, I noticed, after I left the theater. I didn’t think about my problems at all for two hours. No wonder ticket sales for movies skyrocketed during the depression. So I went back to the movies again. I highly recommend “Me and You and Everyone We Know”. ))<>(( Miranda July is a woman I think I would marry if I were the lesbian type and the marrying type.
The Recording is supposed to start in a few weeks and I’m feeling cautious but also looking forward to it. We recorded 19 songs in Sean and Paul’s new studio in Revere (nicknamed “Severe” around these parts; not the savoryest part of Boston but certainly has it’s charm). They’ve jsut moved in there and nothing has been touched (or cleaned?) since 1957. The control room looks like the Brady Den, replete with wood and fake-stone paneled walls, like a ski lodge. There was an old mason and hamlin piano in the corner but after cutting a few tracks with it it was just impossible to play, and sounded icky, so we ended up cutting all of the tracks with the Kurtweill. Another 180: I used to abhor playing a keyboard, now I’m pretty much committed to the conclusion that I am not a piano player but a kurtweill player and it’s possible that the album will be tracked with keyboard And Piano and that’s just fien with me. You couldn’t have gotten me to agree to that a few years ago if you’d held a paintball gun to my head. The material sound really, really good. My relationship to this new batch is a weird one. These songs are, generally, a lot less personal than the batch on Record#1 and for some reason that makes me feel very funny inside. I’m just not as attached. On the last record, every song was The Song and had been The Song for some perdiod of my life. Bad Habit was The Song for a few years and so was Slide and so was Half Jack. But on this record….none of these songs have rooted themselves inside me and festered. So they feel…..well, not Not As Good but maybe Not As Real. I think this will be the case for every record I make from now on. I think the first record is like the first true love, or losing your virginity. For better or for worse, i don’t think you ever feel that way again, ever.
Still, I am taking care of myself, meditating every morning, doing yoga every day and drinking my greens. My voice is getting stronger and I’m laying off coffee and cigarettes and alcohol and yes of course all that crack cocaine I usually smoke, and it’s sounding pretty good. Pope and Z are away in vermont and Lee is back from the hospital (he’s fine), so things here are quiet and peaceful. The rain has been bashing down and I got caught in it yesterday while riding my bicycle and it felt really good to be poured on and I got home sopping wet and put my bathrobe on and there’s nothing like that feeling of walking around in your warn apartment wet from the rain with your bathrobe on and the sky dark and your wet clothes hanging on the shower rod.
yesterday i read a new set of lyrics to a friend and he liked everything except the part where i mention an ampersand. he said nobody knows what an ampersand is. i found that impossible to believe. so my activity today is to ask everybody if they know. and if i get at least a 50% positive response, the ampersand stays. if not, i’m fucked and need to find another word for ampersand, which there ISN’T, so i’m just fucked, plain and simple.
&
a
