CHASSIS

I know this word because my father was a race car driver. I was raised in the dirt of the pits, hearing either The chassis is fine, or The chassis is shot.  To this day at the start of any race, tears spring to my eyes at sound of the gun. Some instinct has been built-in. 
 

The chassis ("chassy") being the steel undercarriage of the wheeled conveyance.  A tectonic support system.  Emerging unscathed from the crash.  Carrying all weight like a feather, fast.  

Fast forward.

In 2000 I went to Mills and made a deal with myself to always make music, records, tour. #LIFESWORK style. I began.

Then I crossed paths with Clare Amory (also of Excepter) who introduced me to Pilates, and became a close friend.  So taken/ecstatic by Pilates' gentle yet powerful corporeality I became as passionate about it as music. DUDE. All movement through the core. Hook directly into your anima and download the light.  Clare said I'd make a good Pilates teacher, and it is a great job for a touring musician.  

Insert move from SF to BK to get Pilates bona fide.

Insert the way in which life is like a sponge capsule that expands into dinosaurs in a glass of water. 

Clare passed away, five months after a stage four diagnosis. I took on Flesh + Bone, the Pilates studio in Williamsburg she started; named for the medium of Pilates. I had figure out how the hell to be a business owner, while getting fully certified, while grieving. 

I had made my last record just before leaving California, Vibrant New Age, had dedicated it to Clare.  Everything about this new age felt like crashing.

It took two years to complete the mission. It took me completely away from music.  At 6am the morning after finishing my Pilates certificate, I boarded a plane.  Living my favorite lyric from Fugees' The Score: "I do my work then I catch my ticket to Jamaica". I could not believe my luck meeting Geddes, Tony, Cameron as they were in Babylon working on music.  Being there with them there was sweet and ripe as the fruit we ate.  Jamaica turned the tide.  The music!

Not too long after Jamaica I knew I had a record to make. I told Geddes I wanted to record with him, booked a ticket to Los Angeles to sleep by his dogs, and started demoing at odd hours.  I specifically wanted CHASSIS to have form and content. The finished record would of course be electronic and replete, glistening with patina (especially with Ged at the controls). Yet inside every track would be a song that could be sung bare.  With no electricity, in a room with a piano. I built in each a sonic chassis, a core. 

These are reasons I am proudest to put this record into your hands.  CHASSIS is the fruition of a terrific pause. What I want now is a natural delivery for it. More loving hands moving it into the world to meet ears.  Truth be told, my reasoning for teaching Pilates and for making music is the same: I want to help people make contact with themselves. I want each person to suit up, strap in, and DRIVE!

Maybe it's all the Pilates but I have so much burning energy I know is fuel for something good.

pulp

i think that my asceticism will strike me down, like lightning. i have a bruise on my forearm that i wish i knew how i got it but i know that i didn't get it in the way that i would like. it's fat as a

pretty words

so the book is bound to begin. i looked up at the iridescent wine glass on my side table, plum full of sparkling water, and the bubbles said to me 'no one sees us the way you do'. the light shining on the languid lazy slowdancing bubbles, bathed in pink green milk pastel sheen. bare rainbows in the thinnest glass that a thought could break. and i think my mother may have ruined me at age four; playing a word game she invented in which we'd take turns stacking adjective upon adjective to describe something pretty. dovetailing and piling on words for beautiful things. gilding the lily, a hill, unicorn, hair. 

and the sadness imbued by this water glass. pale colors, calm posture. open-mouthed, long stemmed solidity, clarity.

my mother may have ruined my chances at harnessing the hardness of the world. but yet i must thank her my budlike burgeoning. we must toast the encouraging tiny needly burbles of air that hold their breath underwater

love everything to the ground

i'm home and i know i will have a book to write.  today my father asked me in all seriousness (thank the lord for anti-psychotic, anti-seizure medicine) if i would write "the book" and he thinks it's his story i will write, as charity/equity, for him and for hollywood, for the men of the family.  i said yes, of course, i will write the book.  but the thing is the book will not be his.  it will be mine, through my filters, my lack of them.  i'm done with the darkness handling me.  it's time for the white hot light to burn through and love everything to the ground.

it just started raining hard, i can hear through the window.  a godsend for sleeping, and i must catch up to the people who are already snoozing.  but the thing is i have a feeling i can't shake.  it's deep, it's good, and it's very very scary.  it affects my digestion.  i want to talk about it all the time, but i think i have to just wait and sit with it.  so i am going to go to sleep beside it.  under a thick and comforting blanket.

re-up the let-go

constantly. the cat jumps up on the thing and you lift the cat down from the thing; the cat's then back.  and so, i thought i could save my father, by calling the museum of broken peoples, but they don't do pick ups, and you can't force someone to donate. 

other thoughts abound:  the goodness of the girls, good job, how many paw prints everywhere.  sand on the palms, finding your way walking on hands.vcccssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

that was the cat, back up on the thing.

what is the plainest way to say it:

i have to let go of my dad's life.  if he's losing it, it's his, it's all of ours, to lose. 

and then any newnesses:

let go of wanting specifics.  guiding principles seem OK but can't hold onto anyone's life, actually, but my own.

how am i still seventeen walking across the grass

the table's round as the moon.

today find the music

no letting go

you lose your bones, you feel no pain, you find them again, the feeling returns.  today i couldn't walk fast enough to get through the social streets.  i wanted to walk in emptiness, no reflection in passing glass, no need to scowl or look away.  my clothes felt oppressive, holding me in the worst way.  i should know what this means, instead i've downloaded an application.  can't be trusted today and should sleep. 
no letting go, is making me tired.  just should let the current take me, but am of course frightened by the loss of control.  the illusion that there's any control anyway.  there isn't.  just all the mistakes collected and collated, stapled and handed in.  the successes sweet and transparent, fleeting. 
the deadening feeling closing in, the doing of the dishes.  what what what what what
music is waiting, always waiting, words gather.  you lose your bones, you feel no pain.  til it rises again and the feeling returns. 
a little worried my cat jumps out the window.
wool-gather, fluff, worry. 

liminal preliminary

she loves wildness, and wildness fills me.  paperweight lifted and the papers scatter.  and it is perfect.  you know what else.  how impossible it was to taste with a sour taste.  and how the sweetness can replace, replace.  salt and sugar is just for shorthand.  just time passing.  i do not write even one letter, because that letter would need an envelope to hold all of time that has passed.  which is a brimming, bucketful, galloping, gobbling, eyeful, spill, mouthful.  of red fruit soaked in white milk in a bowl dipped with a spoon to be gentle on the tongue.  i am protecting this place i've found.  standing at the center remembering it.  the particular spelling of it.  the directions clear, how to, so much.

face, fair copy, feature, fiction, file, first approach, fleece, flimsy, flour, foam, form, free admission, free pass, free rider, free ticket, glass, glaze, graph, grass, guest pass, hand, holograph, homily, ice paper, instrument, ivory, journal, lace, lath, leaf,  letter, manila, matter, memoir, mere shadow, milk, newsprint, nonfiction, note, note of hand, onionskin, opus, outline, page, paper house, paragraph, parchment, pass, pearl, penscript, plank, play, poem, post,  preliminary, screed, scrip, script, scrive, scroll, second draft, sepia, shadow, shake, shaving, sheathe, sheet, shingle, silver, skeleton, sketch, slat, slate, slip, snow, soup, special, speech, splinter, stone, streak, study, swan, thatch, the written word.