my heart goes out to my friend today.
he called and i could hear it in his voice, it hurts. i can almost feel my heart breaking. i could hear his heart breaking too but the music is so loud he can't hear it. he told me he missed me and that he loved me and i told him that I haven't gone anywhere.
i am so vain sometimes; always assuming that about 5 minutes after i stop doing something, that it goes immediately out of style. apparently people are doing cocaine again. sad. it hadn't occurred to me that with 80's fashion coming back, that perhaps the drugs would come back too. a lot of my old friends are dead. i loved them. they died a long time ago and i grieved a long time ago too, but today i am feeling it all over again and i don't like it. i would have liked to see what 30 something would have been like for them.
i want to play music to touch people, heal them, to give them an experience, to show them how much i love them and that they can do it too~that's why i'm there.
and because i have to.

i don't remember ever being this tired. i'm wearing my headphones at work with hedwig on rotation, wig in a box and midnight radio are the current favorites. normally it's origin of love but i am trying something different...i have been sitting in the same spot for about 8 hours today. can't move except for the mochi ball run about an hour and 1/2 ago. i've talked myself into the fantasy that if i can't hear you, then you can't see me.

~i'm invisible.

went to the wedding in san diego friday/saturday, then talked two carloads of friends into following me to la jolla on the way home for a walk on the beach and dinner, may as well make a full weekend out of it! juli left for her road trip to NY, she has been calling all along the way on her new cell phone (after 9pm please).
the last two days have been spent working at an "adult novelties" convention in universal city, hence the exhaustion and sensory overload. i have been laughing for about 48 hours. it was several hundred smart and funny people working in an industry that is used to being outcast and discriminated against on a pretty regular basis, but at the same time envied on some level because we are the ones who no longer care what people think. well..okay, i do care a little, sometimes.

thinking of going home and dancing in the living room.

Going down to San Diego tomorrow for Lara and Ian's wedding. I am singing a Burt Bacharach song for the ceremony with a jazz trio, and Beth is filming the whole thing. It's going to be strange and sweet, they are the first of our group of friends to get married,
We'll probably cry a lot.

i am so excited, just booked my ticket for august 5 to oakland, a long overdue vacation. my dad is picking me up and we are driving to his house in Fort Bragg. i sleep better there, the ocean is right outside of the kitchen window...

I sent my friend Chio this e-mail today.. we were discussing our current "craziness"

...I have recently decided I am going to make a conscious effort to stop referring to myself as "crazy" I realize that I do it a lot, it is an old idea about myself..a way to disregard my intuition and my emotions. Just because I change and grow and feeeel doesn't make me crazy. It makes me human. Even when the feeling is confused and constantly changing. We are organic beings and we feeeeel. It's part of living and it's not "crazy".
I think we need to go through all of these things to find out who we are. To get into relationships, make friends, date, dance, talk, watch, listen. Get into the mix, join the game, fall down, skin our knees, make messes.
DO.
How do we find out what we DO and DON'T want if we don't first TRY?

Let's make beautiful music. Give it to the world. Open up our hearts. Give them an experience. Help them feeeel. Love them until they weep. Heal them. Heal us. That is where we can be of maximum service to them all.
xo
lisadee

Saturday night~the Brewery.
Evangenitals go on, everyone is talking, drinking, laughing.  We begin and one by one they sit down, on the floor!  They start to listen, to laugh at the funny parts of the songs and sigh at the sweet parts.  They are WITH US.  Completely.  It is the strangest thing, not one person left, no one moved, talked, nothing.  They just listened.  It is overwhelming to think about, the floor was a sea of people.  Every single person in the room sat down and listened in complete silence for the entire set.  I don't know what else to say.  There is nothing else to say about that.
 
Sunday~
I was sooo tired from the night before, leaving the Brewery at midnight to run across downtown to sing at the Hangar 3 Shots party.  The difference between the two shows was like night and day.  I ran in 4 minutes before I had to go on, threw my stuff in a corner and jumped on stage.  Then stayed to see Linister at 3 AM!  Worth every minute.  Alice Lin told me she read my blog and for the first time it occured to me that anyone actually looks at this thing besides me.  :o

Then I spent the day on the beach in Santa Monica with my friend Kenny.  He plays volleyball with a group of guys every weekend, I played with them once last summer and they remembered me from a year ago!  Mostly I just read my book though, having a quiet time.
 
I have a tiny bit of a sunburn.

I have to say, I work with some of the most magical people I have ever met.  Hidden in our Silverlake storefront, behind mirrored windows, unbeknownst to our neighbors, hide some of the kindest, quirky, loving, hilarious people ever.  This week I have listened to tears, held hands, walked around the block several times and laughed until my face hurt.  Some are going through relationship break-ups, some are quitting smoking, some are falling in love.  Some of us are barely 20, some are over 40.  Artists, writers, musicians, homeowners, renters, sports-fans, derby dolls, dancers, designers etc..  We take breaks to go outside and talk about our work, our lives, our feelings, our loves and fears.  We celebrate each others successes and sympathize with perceived failures, saying things like
"well, that situation really wasn't good enough for someone special like  YOU anyway!"
We joke about our little dysfunctionally/high functioning family, our high-maintenence workplace, full of sensitive artists and fragile egos. 
I can't imagine ever having to work a "normal" job again,  with "normal" people. 
 
This is the place I love to complain about.  The place I love.

i love this town, keeping it simple..

current favorite song..linister's "you were born"

i just looked up Pleasant Hill CA on the internet and it gave me the city's new website, complete with a virtual tour of the new downtown (formerly the site of the feed and fuel)! That is so weird. I grew up there and in the 70's, that town was only known for having tons of walnut orchards and that's all. I used to ride my horse home and try to hide her in the back yard overnight without my parents finding out. We never locked the door, there was only one stop light, and I remember when the 7-11 opened. I would have to tell people "you know the green hills in-between Berkeley and Walnut Creek? THAT'S Pleasant Hill!
I build the best forts, I really can get into it if you leave me alone in the trees for a while. Think I may start one up by the lake..

stevie wonder makes me believe in god.

current favorite songs on rotation~
Too Shy To Say/If It's Magic/They Won't Go When I Go

brett wants to make an evangenitals DVD, with the last in the series being just cuts of me telling stories of my crazy life. I speak of love and faith and honesty while occasionally jumping into some random story of the time I was fighting with my boss (an ex-panther) at the black newspaper on San Pablo and MLK or the times breaking and entering, getting held up or stealing motorcycles with my best friend michelle rodriguez in high school. That's normally when the room gets quiet for a moment and then Brett laughs and says
"Girl, you are so crazy, I love you!"

I have always wanted to be a sweet old woman with a rich history and lots of stories.

Yesterday I was at a bridal shower in Glendale for a dear friend. I am singing for her wedding at the San Diego Yacht club in two weeks. The ladies all looked beautiful in pink pastels and eating cucumber sandwiches. Attorneys and statiticians all looking at houseware gifts from Crate and Barrel and laughing about how they used to be roommates in rehab.

life is funny and unpredictable. you can't judge a book by it's cover, although the cover normally gives you an idea of what is inside, that's what covers are for.

this kitty deserves a re~post!

i feel better already. funny how that works. juli and just hiked up to the top of debs park and i built a tiny boat of flowers and sailed it in the lake.
life is good again.
how quickly i forget my purpose, to love within the mess.

I woke up this morning to the phone ringing, it was my dad. He said "I sensed something in your voice yesterday and it feels like something is up, what's going on? Are you okay kiddo?" (sigh)
My pop is psychic, an intuitive of the real variety. Not for any other purpose but personal these days but he KNOWS. I told him he is right, something is up.
I am changing, again. Falling together.
Things that used to work, don't anymore. I am getting clearer about who I am and what I want. I am realizing my own worth for the first time and praying for strength to act accordingly. Slowing down in a whole new way. Stopped running. I have been "busy" for so many years I don't even know if I want what I have. Old ideas are no longer true and new ideas are becoming actual possibilities. Things that used to work, don't work anymore. That which used to be acceptable, is no longer. I am losing the ability to do 10 things at once, I don't want to do it anymore. I feel as if I am waking up~again. The thing is too, the more popular this music gets, the less anonymity I have. My DAY JOB started out as a way to put myself through school. I quietly and anonymously hid in the back and worked hourly while leaving to go to classes, voice lessons and auditions. When asked "what do you do?" I said.."I am a student, a singer"
Now here I am working 4 years and 2 promotions later and I look at myself and think, I am still a student, and still a singer but~
what do I DO?

Anyway, these days I am thinking about Quality vs Quantity.
I need less, but the "less" needs to be MORE.

I breathe differently.

El Cid was another magical night. The line up was perfect and the whole evening just flowed smoothly. Zoe Moss is adorable, Eric Layer rocked. Addi the balloon bass player is always incredible, he has been so supportive of all of my projects and is becoming a friend and someone I really admire.
This was a premiere of my new group Las Panchas. Our first show and it was wonderful. I love these girls and the music is so raw and sexy and the harmonies and rhythms just feel good. I am able to let myself free in this music, to go to new places musically and within my soul.

Now to Evangenitals..
Something happened in the middle of our set that I don't know how to describe with words. I think it was somewhere in the Ween cover where the music started to build and the energy was vibrating all around us and Jules and I were singing harmonies that we have never even heard, much less sung before. Suddenly the lights got brighter and the colors vivid and there was this power flowing. Not from but THROUGH. I felt stronger and more alive than ever and almost like I was floating in time and space. After the show we all asked each other
"could you feeeel that? what in the hell was THAT?"

I am not questioning it, just releasing myself to it.

After all of this ride, Linister finished me off with some gorgeous harmonies and soft melodies that broke my heart wide open. At one point Alice was playing and singing and she started to cry and I was with her in that moment, tearfully watching and listening and it was beautiful.

Fuzzard did my favorite cover, Wildfire. Being an only child, my horse was my best friend growing up. I had my own business in the 7th grade giving riding lessons and when i was tiny my dad and I used to drive around and sing that song at the top of our lungs and it will always be special to me.

I am grateful for my life and sometimes I think perhaps I am too sensitive and I should have thicker skin, but I wouldn't trade places with anyone.