all you create and all you destroy

As human beings, we are creators of nothing. We are organizers. Whether we achieve this by invention, or education, or politics, we all seek to organize the best way we can. Everything is traced back to God-given matter, it is what we do with it, how we choose to organize the pieces we touch, that makes us unique.

We use words that make it sound like we have really created something, but our language has allowed us to be rather generous when it comes to personal credit. "You created a mess" for example. I didn't create a mess- I didn't create the shirt that's on the floor, or the sock that's hanging from the closet door, none of the actual things that make up a mess. But I suppose it's neccessary to have terms like these to shorten our explanations for why we let what is ours out of our control.

When I write a song, I'm not creating any new words or chords. I'm piecing together what already exists in a new way. And I call this collection of words and music a song. It's my way of organizing a bit of the chaos around me- that's what I've been given. And this new organization of the old is why you can hear a song you've never heard before and have it sound familiar, hit something inside. These common elements are certainly not exclusive to music- the old, the already in existance is why we share universal questions and feelings, and often solutions to basic problems- the family unit being essential to literal survival, for instance. So whether it's writing a novel or solving a math problem, all we're really doing is rearranging our bit of chaos into something of order, something that one can understand, satisfying our instinctive need to organize.

Make that 16-12.

Make that 15-12

Make that 14-12.

And I was totally there at the Garden, screaming my team to victory. It was awesome.

Make that 13-12

I love my team

Blazers are 12-12 after stomping the Nuggets tonight. Yeah. Buddy.

don't turn your head back over your shoulder

I know where I am and where I'm going and I'm still lost.

all by yourself

Music is enough to get me through the day, but it is not enough to save me.

It's a bandaid, a spare tire, meant for temporary relief. Not that it is a temporary pursuit, just that it fills the space temporarily (and not entirely) that is meant to be filled by something else. Something more. Something real.

walk down that lonesome road

Today was easier, for some reason, than most of the yesterdays in recent memory. Instead of feeling like this had to be the hardest things would get, it was more like the hardest was finally almost over. On to new difficulties. I know there will be more hills to climb, even mountains, but this one I'm on right now... I'm pretty close to the top. And it's all downhill from there. So I'll hold my breath a little longer, I'll wait, a little longer. Because this is almost done.

Audience Participation

One of the Portland radio stations does a "celebrity playlist" thing and, evidently having a very loose definition of "celebrity", I've been invited to be a part of it... providing me with the opportunity to choose my "five favorite songs" to be played on the radio. It's comforting to know that even though it will only be a brief period of time, there will actually be something worth listening to on the radio next week. In my "professional" opinion.

Feet First

I don't know who all is following the weather conditions in the Northwest this week, but I am.

There was a taping for a special tv broadcast thing for this Christmas compilation CD that benefits children's hospitals that I'm involved with this year in Seattle, so I drove up Thursday to be there for that (and by "I drove", I mean "I was in the car while somebody else drove"). Mom came up Saturday for the actual taping, I met Sanjaya, hung out with my Steves, and stayed in this strange hotel- Not strange scary, strange... artsy? very Seattle, I guess. Tiny elevators. Definitely not Marriott.

Me and Mom headed up to my aunt's house north of Seattle to hang out and shop for a couple days after that. And get our hair done. We were all over the greater Seattle area on Monday, and I have never seen it rain like that. Neither had the locals, apparently, but it was seriously bucketing all day (in the end it got 2nd place for record rainfall in a day for the area ). We were involved in a minor vehicular cosmetic issue on the freeway, but that's off the record and no big deal. We watched the news that night back at my aunt's, and learned that a 20 mile stretch of I-5 was CLOSED (at Chehalis, for those of you who know where that is). Shut down. Completely flooded. Kind of an important freeway to have open. For me. This week. So there was no hope Tuesday of getting home, which was fine with me. Off the record.

It's not like an accident, or even a tree falling on the road- you can't really clear water off, and it means that all the other alternate routes around it were out as well. Then the next closest alt. routes were shut down by idiot drivers who thought that their car was magic. We got varying reports of when I-5 would be open again, none of them promising. The flood waters finally started to recede today, half an inch an hour, but even so the reporters were heard to say things like "unsure of the structural integrity" and "concrete strewn about the freeway like Legos in a child's bedroom".

With our options limited, Mom and I headed out this morning with an atlas and took the very, very long way home. Seattle to Salem, via Yakima. That adds about 250 miles to the journey, for those keeping track at home. But it was a pretty drive, I saw new places, we had good weather (until we reached Portland), we're safe, and I was kind of in the mood for an adventure.

Not that I would wish it, but the whole thing was kind of exciting. Home is kind of anti-climactic.