Always be with me...

I feel like hell. Woke up feeling flu-ish and cold with the changing seasons. And something’s fucked up with my neck. Can’t turn my head fully without pain. Went looking for some tiger balm but couldn’t find it, so settled in at my desk with the first cup of coffee. A half an hour later when I went back to the kitchen for a second cup, this little red heart was on the counter. I have no earthly idea where it came from. I live alone now, Summer’s things and hundreds of pictures of her covering every space of wall. This heart just appeared. I have no earthly idea because its appearance is ethereal. Hi, sweetheart.

In dreams (cont'd)...

Dreamt last night that I was in Summer's old apartment and cleaning in a frenzy because she was on her way home after being away (I don't know where) all this while. Looked up at the clock and figured I had just enough time to either take a quick shower or run down to the corner and buy her a dozen roses. I headed out for the flowers. And then woke up...

Endless Summer, indeed...

Summer, even tho’ a Cali girl, wasn’t particularly a fan of the Beach Boys. Part of it is a generational thing, of course, but she did love plenty of 60’s music (an early gift when we had just met and were in rehearsals for “Tir na nOg”, was her handing off the entire DVD set of The Beatles Anthology to me in a Safeway bag because I’d made some obscure Harrison reference) and there are pictures of her as a teenager in the 90’s totally kitted out in hippie gear with her girlfriends. Summer’s tastes (and mine) ran to DCFC and Bon Iver and The National and Low and Goldfrapp and Radiohead and Fever Ray and Beach House - the people who influenced our own music. No, what cemented the Beach Boys for me in thinking of Summer was firstly, her doing the first major production outside B’way & London of Stoppard’s play “Rock n Roll”. It was a long gig and hugely successful, a co-production between SF’s ACT and Boston’s Huntington, she was brilliant and grateful and I saw it a dozen times and they used some Brian Wilson in the show. Further, I was always trekking back n forth to see her on Virgin America and they had those great early tracks on their mp3 player (why doesn’t any other airline do this? It’s brilliant). Finally, a confirmed, dyed in the wool New Yorker, I had my chest blown open by the unadulterated, ten billion kilowatt LOVE that emanated from Summer’s very being. She put a thousand thousand G’s of California in my soul. I need her. I am broken. But that is an unimpeachable fact. And that is why even if it hurts like murder, it seems the right thing to do - listening to this when it came upon me tonight and over and over and weeping (“we could be married/and then we’d be happy” ) - because I know little sweetheart, that you are with me, however ethereal, and that I will be with you again forever and soon. To paraphrase a spoken word friend of mine “never be ashamed to cry for that girl”. Love you forever, little sweetie, little best friend… xo-m

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0spkrwl9Qk

Down on the road...

Having an unbearably sad day and finally made myself go for a long walk. 30 blocks outta my way to get a pound of coffee at Fairway. The guy there asked me about my sharpie tattoo. It happens. I told him the story and he asked if he could take a picture of it, much to the bemusement of the couple sidling up for a half pound of Italian. When I got home, as I iced the rehabbing heel, I thought to have a look at something- this clip of Joe Strummer on David Letterman.

This and the show I went to at Irving Plaza were his final appearances in NYC before his sudden, untimely death (of an undiagnosed "congenital heart defect") just before Xmas in 2002. I was flying to London on an overnight and got the news after landing when DJ Krispy met me at Heathrow. Later we went down to Ladbrooke Grove tube station and watched his funeral cortege pass with hundreds of other fans in the rain.

The first time I found this clip on YouTube, I immediately sent it to Summer and we were both in tears. It's one of the most soulful, moving, ethereal performances I've ever seen. I hadn't watched it in a while. Maybe not since The Worst Thing Ever...

"Let the Summer time sun fall on the apple.
Fall on the apple...
Lord, here comes a Buick '49
Black sheep of the angels
Riding down the line
We think there is a soul (we don't know...)
That soul is hard to find down on the road.
Down on the road
We know every road..."

My angel knows. Can't wait to be with you. So very lonely waiting here down on the road, down on the road...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kJ2S9BasUc&feature=related

Goodnight...

Every day I wake is one I don't want. Going to bed now and all I want is to find myself back with Summer. This life without her is empty.

In dreams...

Some Holy Ghost...

Amazing, soulful, moving, perfect Low show last night in Brooklyn with Jason and Renee. After, we waited on the sidewalk until most everyone had gone and they were turning out the lights. Alan came out carrying his amp and I walked up and quietly spoke with him for a few moments to tell him how much their music has meant to Summer and I and all of us. He fucking hugged me. What a lovely man. God bless him and Mimi. Some music, that was "our" music, is just too painful to listen to anymore. But I will never stop going to Low shows. I know you were there, sweetheart. I could feel you. And we spoke your name like prayer...