A Christmas Confession

I had no idea a town like Los Angeles could fall quiet the way it has in the last three days. Friend after friend has driven off and flown away. Streets are thinning.

I can’t think of anyone that I know in town excited about the impending holiday. At absolute best, it’s an interruption. At worst, it’s a catalyst for annual pain. For most, stress and loneliness. I guess it’s taken 25 consecutive years of various Christmas celebrations to arrive at what I think might be the most simple observation I’ve ever had regarding this entire holiday.

First, the irony. The Christmas story is about God arriving on the scene announcing an evacuation plan from what has turned out to be everything the celebration of that story perpetuates. Pain. Stress. Loneliness. The story of Christmas is this: we can be rescued from all the difficult things Christmas causes us to feel.

I probably don’t need to discuss the irony or absolute culpability we all share in this bizarre twist of events. Let’s call it an epic irresponsibility of a great privilege and keep moving for the sake of time.

See, it’s not the pain or the stress or loneliness that I’m having a tough time reconciling. What I’ve really been feeling badly about is viewing Christmas as an interruption. I’ve swayed between annoyed, frustrated, anxious, and sad about what a pain this whole take-time-off-work-fly-to-another-city-where-it’s-cold-and-consume(!) interruption has become.

But that’s just it. Christmas should be and can only be an interruption. Christmas is, at core, the most scandalous interruption to take place in human history.

It’s the story of a great, divine interruption.

This year if you’re lonely or anxious or in over your head and Christmas is the last thing you have time or energy for, at least know this: you’re getting it right. This is the story. It’s a story about a God who knows better than to wait for us to have the time or the energy or right attitude to deal with him. A God who interrupts.

I’ve been fighting the interruption. This is my Christmas confession.

 

videoooo

One of the songs from the Cat Club set…sadly, Justin is cut out of the shot, but he sounds like a million bucks.

 

everything

Sometimes I love to disassociate and look down at myself from the ceiling. Last night I did that and found myself sitting at a small table in a cozy apartment in Hollywood with two amazing friends. There we sat with bread, drinks, homemade lasagna, listening to Chopin. Laughter to the point of tears; copious amounts of silly.

I don’t know what I’ve done to get here, but whatever it is, I’m glad it happened.

I find myself doing that a lot, lately. Stepping outside of myself long enough to realize that this is my life. Of course it’s not true diassociation, considering it’s not only voluntary, and also a result of a positive memory; and perhaps it goes against all that Rabbi Kushner would tell me about being fully present…

And later, a few kindred spirits on the balcony with wine and cigarettes, overlooking the abused and dirty mess of electrical wires, cement, palm trees, plaster, and lights–for miles in every direction. I have learned anything can be beautiful.

The fact that I’m here right now means that I have survived everything.

 

Show Tonight

Hey all, here’s the promised blog-plug about my show.

9.45pm, tonight, at The Cat Club in West Hollywood.
$5.
21+

Full band.

Rock n roll.

See you there!
j

 

old journals

I was reading through some old journals and writings of mine recently, and ran across something an acquaintance of mine, Jamie Tworkowski, once wrote. It occasionally crosses my mind; I’m glad I took the time to write it out when I first read it a couple years ago.

Don’t be like some broken lawyer, always asking for answers, always reaching for rewind. Guilt and regret, those are awful places. You know that. So don’t live there. Do not despair. Do not be afraid. Grace is the interesting thing.

And God must be a pretty big fan of “today”, because you keep waking up to it. You have made known your request for a hundred different yesterdays, but the sun keeps rising on this thing that has never been known. Yesterday is dead and over. Wrapped in grace. Those days are grace. You are still alive, and today is the most interesting day. Today is the best place to live.

 

show soon, and etc.

Hi there.

I haven’t been writing much because I’ve been working really hard on a lot of things.

One of those things is finishing up a bunch of new material and gathering a few great musicians to play an upcoming show on August 25. I’m playing at The Cat Club again in West Hollywood.

Plug: $5, 10pm, 21+.

I’m super excited to give the new stuff a spin. And I would be more excited to play it to real, live, human beings (as opposed to fake, satellite ones.) For those in the area, I hope you can come. I’ll be borrowing the rhythm section of Rival Sons, with Justin “the Nit-Picky” Burrow on guitar. Should be fantastic.

I’ll remind you again soon. Blog. Twitter. Facebook. Text, possibly. Don’t you worry.

No, but seriously.

In other news, I just got back from a family vacation on the east coast. A few photos soon, perhaps. I attempted sailing for the first time in a Hobie Bravo, and after a quick yet peaceful brawl with my dad and brothers, managed to do ok for about 100 feet, until the wind died completely and I found myself stranded in the Chesapeake Bay. As you can see, I was rescued, though I bet the bay has wifi, in the event that I were to have felt compelled to blog while lost at sea. Thankfully, I did not.

 

keeping my neurosis in check

Last night my friends and I were reminiscing about our days in Jr. High and High School and realized we honestly couldn’t remember how we ever knew about concerts and shows without having the internet to tell us when and where to go. Remember when someone used to give you a flyer for something, and you held onto it for weeks? Remember when you used to check the weekly newspaper for event dates and concerts?

Remember when you used to call your friends?

Remember when you used to communicate with someone and know for sure if you were being heard? You didn’t have to carry around that paranoia–did they get my text? Did they see that email? Did they see that twitter? (I refuse to say “tweet.”) Did they see that IM?

Is there anyone on the other side of the glowing rectangle I just transmitted this information to???

Why did we do that? Now we’re just a bunch of paranoid neurotics.

 

If you write anything at all:

Keep me up till five only because all your stars are out and for no other reason.

If you write anything at all: stories, poems, lyrics, melodies, symphonies, speeches, scripts; anything at all, I beg of you to read JD Salinger’s Seymour, An Introduction.

You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. When was writing ever your profession? It’s never been anything but your religion. Never. Since it is your religion, do you know what you will be asked when you die? But let me tell you first what you won’t be asked. You won’t be asked if you were working on a wonderful, moving piece of writing when you died. You won’t be asked if it was long or short, sad or funny, published or unpublished. You won’t be asked if you were in good or bad form while you were working on it. You won’t even be asked if it was the one piece of writing you would have been working on if you had known your time would be up when it finished. I’m so sure you’ll get asked only two questions. Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out? If only you’d remember before you ever sit down to write that you’ve been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world you would most want to read if you had your heart’s choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won’t even underline that. It’s too important to be underlined.

 

not a book review.

I read Heroin Diaries this past week. I’ve had mixed feelings about it, best summed up in this conversation:

When it comes to how tragic some rockstars are in their personal lives, there’s a certain level of amusement, and a certain level of sick admiration (easily disguised as curiosity.) I was relieved that that’s not what Nikki Sixx was going for–I appreciated that, though I generally still resented him (and his friends) the entire time I read the book.

Judging from his diaries, I probably would have been his friend, but he most likely would have ignored all my calls. That type of thing.

Turns out JD Salinger is a regular genius when it comes to understanding people like Nikki Sixx, the rest of the Crue, their contemporaries, all musicians everywhere, and me.

Salinger says it best in this simple statement:

But young poets beware. If you want us to remember your best poems at least as fondly as we do your Racy, Colorful Lives, it might be as well to give us one good field mouse, flushed by the heart, in every stanza.

 

hip kid rock

the playlist for the afternoon, affectionately named, “hip kid rock.”

i can hear you judging me quietly for this. don’t look at me like that.