Vetiver Vetiver Vetiver!

I spent most of this weekend in bed with a cold, and while it's always good to rest, I hate knowing that my precious weekend is just about over. I should put more effort into going out after work, but where is my stamina? It's Monday, and I took the day off.

Yesterday I devoted a great big block of time to washing and moisturizing my face. I ate many salads and drank lots of juice. I even thought some creative thoughts while watching dogs play in the sunshine, while listening to music. At the moment, I've got this Vetiver CD playing:



Vetiver has this layered, complicated folk sound based in unexpected harmonies and sudden, interesting chord and key changes. There's a pretty droniness to these songs with a barely noticeable sinister thread, and I love how Andy Cabic's sexy vocals cooperate with the rest of the instruments rather than strutting around on their own separate stage. I figure if you could combine George Harrison with Iron & Wine with Jerry Garcia with America (the band, not the continent) with the wind blowing through the grass as a way of mediating Will Oldham, you might end up with Vetiver. They aren't afraid to play slowly, to linger on a note.



Anyway, in listening and searching around on the web I discovered they'll be playing here in SF, along with Kelley Stoltz (another favorite). So I went ahead and bought a ticket - just one - because though I'm dating again, I guess I'm not feeling it. Unless by "it" I mean ambivalence, which, I am feeling a bit of. Wait, now I'm ambivalent AND confused. Ah, well. Lately I've met a couple of nice, respectable, attractive men, that's all. I'm afraid of letting myself like anyone, because right now I'm not strong enough to be surprised by the fact that I don't matter a speck to someone who's spent time with me. It's a hard lesson, one I don't want pounded into my psyche. Dang it, I still want to think I'm a neat person and a great catch. I still want to think that people are good and nice and beautiful inside, and that's what two people respond to in one another.

Last night, dying to get out of my place, I went to an early show featuring guitars, ukeleles, and a young female vocalist with a voice straight from the depression era. Afterwards my friend T showed me some pictures from her mother's 80th birthday. The backstory: back in the 1980s, T's father gave her mother a gift, which she stashed, unopened, in the linen closet. Even after T's father's death, her mother never opened this gift until, for some reason, the day she turned 80. T caught the whole thing, from beginning to end, in this amazing series of photos, and it was one of those moments T said I could borrow because it's perfect for a short story or play. The thing is, I wasn't there and it's not really mine, so I probably won't, unless I can dredge up something from my own history that gives me real access. We'll see.

I slept in late this morning, and though I'm still coughing, I see the light. Tomorrow I'm back to work, and I think I have a little extra to give in that arena. But I don't want to push myself too hard right now. I'm wrestling with my ambitions, I guess.