Thursday, September 24, 2009

"Streets Lights Staring at the Old House"

I wish I had those old cassette tapes that I would pop in and press record and tune in to 94.5 KSMB. It would sit me back in a yellow-green floral sofa, bundled near a retro gas heater while listening to all the creatures from dusk to dawn sing their song, which seemed like there was no wall between us. Every time I pass near the old house is seems gone. I don't hold a grudge against it like Jenny does in Forest Gump, but it's just a weird frustration. Someone now has bought it and has made plans for renovation, which is O.K. because it was a beautiful home, and I want it to be beautiful for everyone new that steps in it.

I just recently posted songs on this blog site. Of the four, only one of them have true value and sentimental meaning to me. For a year or so I had a really folk-like guitar lick that I played constantly. I first played it when I learned how to drop my guitar to an open D tuning that I learned from Dashboard Confessional guitar tabs. But the guitar part to me was very catchy and I always wanted to add lyrics to it but sometimes just wouldn't fit. But finally I added lyrics and decided that I just want to stick with it and not be so picky.

The songs called "Growing Wild". It plays out the episode that took place on my last night in the house that I was raised in. The house has family history that dates back to 1900 by the Trahan's from my moms side. It was a old house, beat down, and passed down to my parents. My mom always had dreams of one day building her own house and having the kitchen she's always wanted. Finally they deserved it during the beginning of my second year of college.


The old house:


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The weekend we moved out I was out of town in Austin for the ACL music festival. So the plan was when I drove back in that early Monday morning I was to go to the new house because everything had been moved out. Well due to long late night driving I sort of forgot the fact that we had moved out that weekend. Like in the movies. I pulled up to a home run down, old, beaten, and hopeless. The curtains were gone. No car in the drive way. No ones there. It was like being away from home for 30 years and coming back expecting to see everything the same way it was left but it wasn't. The orange street lights were staring down on it and to me it was the only thing that was lit up on the whole street. I decided to walk inside say my good bye and had a flashback moment of my whole life.

To me it was that first step of growing old. Life moving on. I remember thinking was so sad by the fact my childhood is now gone. Then the 5 oclock church bells rang which started the day. The bells brought a bit of life back to me. Optimism and excitement in my bones. So I told my last goodbyes hopped in the car and drove my new home, my new home where my new life would start. and it was so exciting because look where I am now.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Dust Bowl

Dust Bowl is a song about the inspiration brought out by travel and setting out. It's easy to look out the window while riding in a car and analyze everything around you. I remember one time riding through the farm hills right outside Austin with the windows down and I could of sworn that I had my life plans figured out. My heart was popping with such a positive feeling.
But I use a lot of imagery which I think is important when traveling. I use imagery as signs to life and keys to the questions that I've been having forever.

I just finished the book The Motorcycle Diaries. It's a travel log of the young 23 old Che' Guevara. He set out on an expedition across South America on a motorcycle in search of himself and what made him the man he was years later. The man that I refer to in the song is the actual spirit that not only lived in Che' but the spirit in everyone while traveling. So I sort of bring along the spirit with me through out the song.



DUST BOWL