I can't keep staying up all night pretending like I am. It's bound to catch up with me, right?. OR ........ maybe I'll end up being that really old guy who's at all the parties with kids half his age, and everyone humors him, and I'll have my own stupid catchphrases and some lame secret handshake.

I'm halfway to becoming that guy, actually. I don't go to parties with 19-year-olds yet, but I do still live in my college town. I guess that's why I never go down to the campus -- to keep from feeling old and irrelevant.

Cause college kids are hip and relevant, man! With their Marley and Pulp Fiction posters, and stupid cheap hemp hats, and Che t-shirts, and.......

Yeah, I know. I wish I was back there too.

I guess I like staying up all night cause I don't want to miss anything. And all my friends are really cool now, and I will definitely miss something if I'm not careful.

I never have any problem getting URL's, or email addresses, or finding myself on Google.

It's the simple things.

Just watched Jon Stewart's interview with Studs Terkel. Wow. What an amazing feeling it must be to 90-something years old and have contributed something unique and captivating. I guess I've always felt older than am, which really doesn't help when you're trying to function in a youth-oriented, freewheeling industry such as music. But the skill of listening, really listening, is something I've been able to do in my private life but which hasn't necessarily translated into my professional life and work. Well, maybe a little -- my teaching, I guess, and my work at APTP (aptpchicago.org). But turning it into art? Hardly. My songs are transparently self-absorbed.

It would be nice to tell other people's stories, without filtering them through my own pathetic experiences. I'll have to think on that some....

Traveling from Columbus and back has been hard enough, but now I've got 4 different cities in 5 days (Chicago/Columbus/Kalamazoo/Vegas). Insert sympathetic vocal sound here....

Ah, yes, Vegas. Place makes me smile and gives me a stomach ache all at once. The palpable sense of desperation that lives beneath the filmy buildup of glitz and flesh (much like the film on your shower curtain lining) really upsets me. On the other hand, I can also see a huge chunk of Middle America enjoying themselves without losing their life savings in the process. For every impossibly tanned and measured bombshell, there are 4 overweight, pasty trucker-types wearing freshly purchased "O!" t-shirts and basking in simple pleasures, like walking all over the place with your alcoholic drinks ("I can DO that??", the woman from Wisconsin asked incredulously to the eleverator attendant). It still sucks that I can't afford to do anything there. I simply refuse to pay $100 bucks to see a shortened version of a Broadway show that I can see in NYC for $35. The clubs all have nice sound systems, though.....

Maybe I'll write a Vegas song for my next album.

Just spent $499.99 (US) mailing 100 CDs to radio stations across the country in hopes that someone will notice little ol' me and play one of my songs over the public airwaves. Ridiculous. That's about half of what it cost to press 1,000 CD's in the first place! Ah well...... makes me wish the digital revolution would hurry up and make postage irrelevant. But mostly, it makes me appreciate even more what record companies truly offer -- DISTRIBUTION. No big surprise, I know -- they certainly don't offer taste or subtelty or any real reflection of the world in which we live. Just long tentacles that reach millions of ears across this great nation of ours. And if your album is loud enough or filthy enough or NOW enough, then the number crunchers in the back room might just make you a star....

Wow. I'm whining a lot. Sound enough like an over-the-hill, bitter musician?

Funny -- "over-the-hill". Truth is, I haven't even BEGUN to write my best stuff, or enjoy music the way I will, or truly apreciate the gifts and the blessings I have been given in order to make art every day. I'm still a youngster when it comes to really loving what I do. I'm still caught up in trying to make a mark, to be noticed, to MATTER. Such a waste of time.

To CREATE is to MATTER. That is all.