Do you like Sigur Rós in the morning?

Or are you a Death Cab for Cutie kinda girl? Or perhaps an in-your-heart biker chick (like the newspaper cartoon mom character in Rose Is Rose) who needs a little Zep to get moving in the mornings? I have been feeling I am living this amazing, yea even platonically ideal, existence where I too can reinvent myself as I please – I could get on Oprah within a year after cranking out a book called The Madonna Legacy over the next two weeks (and hmmm, that would be a fantastic fundraiser for this venture, would it not?) -- and it makes me want to make it worthwhile. Makes me want to leave something behind to pave the way for people like me.

And film is calling, with lilting voice and yearning strings accompanying. A swell in the heart, moving me nearly to tears. I could film that segment again I tried to make yesterday and capture the emotion I did yesterday morning -- but with no film recording. D’oh. But that’s okay. It’s making me think about what to include and not include. Right now I have to put it all in the mix. So this morning I thought of famous fans in history and there are some examples that stand out in vivid relief like Pamela des Barres, the “plaster-caster” lady, a groupie who took her fascination one step further and made it an art form: She earned widespread fame for making plaster casts of the rigid members of real rock stars in the 1960s and ’70s. We talked a little at the Gomez listening party last night about how fine that line between fan and fanatic can be.

And I have this enthusiasm about its effect on my life that is a feeling I want to share. It’s a pinnacle of feeling good about each other that Gomez bring out in me (and I suspect with others) with their music, and it makes me want to get out there and work with other people. Hence this film. I’d like to offer something back to the people who inspire me.

And I was thinking about Gomez. I love the songs they’ve put together on this latest album, and they are such braggards about the volume of material in their total back-catalogue, recorded or not. So I want them to release an electronica album and a dub album and a medieval modal album and a glockenspiel album and collaborate a la Charlie Hunter with everyone they can because they are fucking fabulous musicians.

It makes me want to put something out there the way they do, in hopes of making a pleasing plash in the lives of many, or just a few.

And that brings up another facet of this question: Why me, at this age, when virtually none of my peers are like this? Have I just not found my tribe yet? But that is what I am doing by going out and talking to people and setting things up and seeing opportunities to spread a good word about something I like. For there’s a part of me and a lot of my best people are like this who really wants to try to make it better, better, better, better sha-la-la-laaaaaaaaaaaaaa, hey Jude! Jude Judy Judy Judy Judy Jude! Sha- la- la-lalalaaaaaaaaaaa, lalalalaaaaaaaaaa, hey Jude!

And I figure if I give advice I must be prepared to take it, so I started my film yesterday! I did not film at the event though, because what I had been thinking of filming could not happen. But I was a fool for overlooking the opportunity in front of me.

But maybe I could plan that separately and better, so as not to try and coopt the purpose of that event, which I felt I would be doing. Like invite people to come talk on camera about why they love music. Find some swanky bar or performance venue to film the interviews in, or one of those fabulous studios that stands empty so often over at Immersive or Coupe.

And I’m happy with the shape this film project is taking. I’m staring where I am, with my skills, with my knowledge and history and interests all pulling together. The research will be fun and interesting and amazing and potentially personal too. There’s grief for that music-loving kid I was who got more solace from that than she did from her warring, damaged parents at times. There’s just that pure love of music, like a river running through time [soundtrack: “The River Runs Slow,” by Sonia Dada] . (And rivers. Do you know that one of the things I love about living here is the water? Seeing the same rivers and ditches flow every year? I cannot tell you how precious that is to me. And some of the greatest moments of my life have happened on rivers, during those week-long trips downstream, sometimes easy sometimes hard and always infinitely interesting. Now that would make a great film – or series: Each episode consists of a one-week rafting trip with a company that arranges and accompanies guests on rafting adventures every week all summer. It could be like Fantasy Island, Survivor, Lost, and Shangri-la all rolled into one. And each season would follow one summer with the rafting company, so there are the Real World-type soap opera stuff that happens among the staff and when the staff mix with the guests because it’s like the What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas slogan that is so true for some (I love the line in the Gomez song: “What happens in Vegas don’t take very long.”): After a week on the river, things happen. People do form new alliances or discover new strengths or get really pissed off about something. (I went on one amazing trip when I was 16, and it was a terrific way to rehearse my role in life in so many interesting ways. I found I had to separate from my dad so I could be me (and because he could be such a jerk). I got to be strong and turned out to be really good at steering – I read the river well and pick good paths for big boats through rapids, whether I’m on oars or steering a paddle boat. It still feels like a skill, like riding a bicycle, that I’ll have forever, rooted in my body memory. I should put it on my resume as a skill. On that trip I had a little romance that was absolutely above board. It was great practice in choosing a nice guy. I’d even chosen nice guys already a couple of times and I had a nice guy waiting for me at home.) But imagine the issues you could tackle in a TV series: oil explorers, people wanting to live out their frontiersman fantasies, the BLM vs. ranchers vs. environmentalists; hippies vs. straights, sexuality, betrayal, the power of cliques, alpha-dog pissing contests, bad habits laid bare in front of large groups of people, oh my my I could tell so many tales! Huh!

Marketingspeak in my craw

It's true. Now that I've noticed myself doing it I just want to shut myself up every time I start saying "This is a great this." or "I think that's the best kind of that." Yech.

My theory: Blogs and cell phones: It's mostly about likes and locations

It strikes me that I spend a great deal more time talking about things I like than I used to. I wonder whether this is true. A friend at a party today was talking about a specific kind of foil. I just did the same thing, recommending a kind of stain soap I like (this really simple bar soap called Stain Soap (imaginative, eh?) by Carbona.

That brings me to the core of my theory: That most bloggers and people who actively post on message boards spend a great deal of time talking about stuff they like with the specific goal of identifying themselves and sorting themselves and each other into groups. On the message board where I'm most active, I see people do this all the time. Someone asks, "What's your favorite local band?" and in answering, people sort themselves into groups of shared affinity within and across musical genres and locations and all sorts of random connections. On cell phones, the vast majority of conversations involve location. "Where are you?" "Where should we meet?" I find that people on cell phones often like to disclose where they are, regardless of whether their conversational partner has asked (unless they are Jayson Blair types).

The willingness to state preferences for specific brands of things has been on my mind because of all the hype I've been hearing and reading about "buzz marketing" of late. Marketing often seems to me it's storytelling of a kind that has an easy common denominator. For example, everyone uses aluminum foil, so people know what you are talking about when you recommend a specific kind. And lately I've been going around town advertising a "listening party" I am hosting for the band Gomez. I've had great responses, for the most part, because many people are now familiar with the band around this area. Yet I can't tell how much of the enthusiastic reception to my posting flyers has to do with the band and the event and how much it has to do with me being a polite and relatively presentable person. I guess I'll find out on Friday.

Funniest grudge I heard about all day

My friend said she can't bear watching the TV show Desperate Housewives because of something one of its stars, Felicity Huffman, did many years ago. When they were growing up in Aspen, at my friend's birthday party, Felicity blew out her candles. Worse, my friend ran upstairs and no one ever came after her. So my friend says she thinks of that every time she sees Felicity Huffman.

I enjoy seeing her because she reminds me of the Aaron Sorkin show Sports Night, which I loved (and on which she played Dana). I don't say that too often about TV shows, either.

Gomez listening party invitation

Tallest Giraffe Productions presents:

Rare, precious, valuable?

I had the rare surprise of discovering I have a rare book in my collection. I love Amy Hempel's short stories, and I have one paperback of hers that is valued at more than $55 on eBay. Makes you think about the value of keeping your books, doesn't it? Part of me says sell it! I may very well run into another copy at another thrift store some day. And the other part says, how many people love Amy Hempel the way I do? Not many. So probably not many librarians, who are always being forced to edit down their collections and ditching books by lesser-known authors. So I won't be able to find these on a shelf in 10 years when I want to read that one story again. And it makes me think that some of these books with small print runs may become very rare indeed one day.

Related readings:

Amy Hempel's stories:
"Today Will Be a Quiet Day" and the collection At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom

See Lawrence Weschler's essays in A Comedy of Values about this guy named Dobbs who draws money and then uses it in transactions, but not in the ways you might guess. It will warp your brain forever on the notion of how cultures agree and disagree when they ascribe value to things that may not intrinsically have any, like paper money.

And OK this one's not related, but it's from the same era (what I think of as the Raymond Carver years). There's a wonderful story about language in The Pushcart Prize XI: Best of the Small Presses 1986-87: "Asilomarian Lecture (The Dirmal Life of the Inhabitants)," by Beth Tashery Shannon.

And here's Open Worldcat, which allows for you to find stuff at lots of libraries.

Movin' to montana soon, gonna be a video tycoon

So I am walking out on this new limb. I've decided to start making films. I don't know how to do it yet, but I'm going to try it out. I'm already a good editor, fascinated by storytelling and the art of communication. As I reach out with ideas, I keep getting yeses in return. I'm making connections and reaching out to help. In doing so I find I have a place in this town, this work, this world, even though it feels like I just landed here. And I feel like I'm in the right place at the right time, like the whole marketplace is expanding right now in a huge way.

Seriously, I started subscribing to Netflix (sorry, Video Station!) a few months ago and see it and iTunes as these incredible expansions in our worlds. If I decide to watch all the music documentaries I can get my hands on, I am incredibly fortunate now because I can see many of them on Netflix and request that they get ones they don't already have (and if enough of us ask for the films we love, they'll buy them). I can also buy things online with ease, like most recently the Italian release of the nearly five-hour director's cut of Until the End of the World by Wim Wenders, with a few taps and a click of a button. (And there's more: I was delighted to find information on the internet about "hacking" my dvd player so it would play a region 2 dvd. Someone programmed a little back door that has you use the numeric keypad on your remote to enter the digits of Pi. Somewhere during that sequence the film unlocks and I can watch it on my own Zenith combo DVD/VCR. If I wanted to I could unlock DVDs and copy them to VHS. But who has the time or inclination? Not I, certainly. I'm just happy I didn't go to Target or the new DVD dealer in town (The Video Detective, on 30th and Baseline) and buy a whole new player just to watch one film. Although maybe I'll go to the Video Detective and buy his Almost Famous DVD from Japan, which has the director's cut.... but again I've digressed.)

So I want to make films about music and culture and me and my friends and finding your tribes in the world.

Wheeeeeee! Here we go.