Good evening, all sore throats; all shimmied and shook; all patterns of paper. Welcome to Words From The Midwest: Silver Edition.

I don’t even really know why I’m writing because I don’t feel inspired. I, first and foremost, feel tired, but also bored and listless and, in truth, a little pissed off.

This was supposed to be a good week, too, but the show I played last night I played to a handful of people – though I played well and had a good time – and the show I played tonight was a complete disaster. Never book a show at The Root Cafe in Lakewood. Ever.

I won’t even elaborate, because it’s not that big a deal and really the only issue was that they didn’t have a working PA so I played unplugged and just plain sucked because it’s loud in coffee shops. It just is. It is not and will never be condusive to a guy in the front window singing and playing an acoustic guitar. Sorry; not sorry. Etc.

Whatever.

Best not to dwell on absurdities. I got a delicious free sandwich and the worst Chai tea I’ve ever had. But oh, the other tea: you know what I mean…that was alright. And enjoyed with a pretty rad dude, so I shouldn’t really complain.

Oh, look at that, I’m over it.

Otherwise, in short, I just feel like being productive so I’m writing this and am going to reread The Way It Is and hopefully write a couple pages tonight. I haven’t touched the thing in weeks becasue my computer screen has been broken (I got a monitor so it’s all good now) and, in general, I just really haven’t felt like writing. Again, I just haven’t felt inspired in some way. I have, however, began the writing process for my next record…my next next record. It’s going to be called War and Fashion. I think I may have even told you about all that. But before that comes out I have to write another eight songs or so. And so, in the very near future, I’m going to record Dad’s Typewriter – the full band version – and have already begun taking photos to have for the booklet that’s going to come with the CD.

I’ve got nothing but ideas, I suppose…Ideas. And an ever-growing body of work most people – even my close friends – have never bothered to delve into, which hurts in a very strange and visceral way.

No matter. I do it all for myself anyway. And I happen to think most of it is pretty fucking good. And I’ve got some pretty high standards. But I don’t mean to sound conceited. It’s just that as an artist, you have to, on some level, feel that you’re god al-fuckin-mighty and can do no wrong. And thirteen-odd records and four books in, I have to believe in myself by now.

And I do.

I didn’t always.

So, I’ll end this jaded entry into what will become my sixth book (after The Way It Is is done, which will be by the end of the summer) with the hope that you have a good weekend and are as excited as I am for the prospect of spring and everything that entails.

Regards,

Michael

Good evening, all rapidly receding; all trim inhibitions; all bold or tectonic. You, the passerby on the sand, irrecriticly unpronounced on the riverbed, shapeless and beguiled inner states.

I sit here writing to you from a computer with a broken screen. Even as I write this, there is something of an old school tv fuzziness and a large crack diagonally from left to right. But, really, my point is that please forgive me for any misspelled or made up words. I’ve found in all of my time writing that sometimes I use a word that I’m almost certain I’ve never heard before. It’s a strange little trick of the mind; it’s like when, in conversation even, you use a word that you understand in context but can’t define. It’s compulsions, the both, but, telling, so to say.

And commas. Lots of commas.

So, at any rate, I’m used to sounding like a nutcase. But isn’t that the best kind of normal: the lunacy; the derivitives and odd asides. The punctuation and Capitalizations that you want to Believe mean something to the heart of the piece, but the metaphors end up mixed and overwrought and teaming with undesired mish-mash and dirty words. I am what I produce, as they say; or I say…But in being that which is conjured, I can be anything at all. And so I invite the insanities, the oddities; the best and the worst of a mind, twisted. Just to Teach what comes from this place of despair and deceit and darkness, trading such a life with the bright sun of July. Please don’t just up and die, they said.

Now that all that’s out of our system, I can only begin to tell you a little bit about whatever-it-is-these-days: A coupling of mad creativity and the watching of movies I never finish. Just today I couldn’t watch Easy Rider and I couldn’t watch Broadcast News, the former which I’m sure you know was one of the most influential films of the early 70s film explosion in the States, and the latter which is a James L Brooks movie whom I’m supposed to know about or something.

And I’ve been listening to some music. There’s hundreds of those artists begging to be heard on a national level. International, even. And, honestly, they might get there. They might tour regionally for the next howevermany years and play until they’re dead, making a shit living, but affording a lifestyle, nonetheless, and getting to Europe a few times over the years, and busking in Dublin…I think I’d be just fine with that. I mean, I do have expensive tastes, in one regard, but I also can make cheap, shitty food taste really pretty good, although, I must say that it might just be that all it usually consists of me doing is frying it with some butter or canola oil. Sometimes Olive Oil but that’s a bit more expensive. I buy a gallon of Canola (which I should have capitalized to begin with) for like fifteen American Dollars, or whatever, and, yeah. It’s whatever. It’s oil.

I digress.

I bought a new outfit which I’ve been wearing sincee I bought it yesterday: grey wool pants with a polyester lining, and a real cool plaid button down, 70s style shirt. One of the ones with the little pieces of plastic in the collar to keep it straight. I’ll have these clothes for the rest of my life. I really like being in that place in my life where I’m doing what I want to do and making the music I want to make and rambling on the internet about whater-the-fuck, but also of knowing I’m going to live in this apartment for another year and a half, and finally being in the position where money is coming in…And everything I buy I’ll never get rid of. I was there years ago and then purged when I moved West…I’m getting the CDs made for the Simplifiers LP this month sometime and I already have the sleeves made for about a dozen of them: I bought stickers of the album cover and stuck them to the center of grey, 100% recycled cardstock. I think I’m also going to get a stamp with The Supposed So written on it so I can buy some more of those sleeves and do the same thing for a good number of my back catalog.

I’ve got some shows coming up, which is cool. I was basically just emailed by a touring artist coming through Cleveland, asking me if I wanted to play a set to open for them. And, of course.

There’s more to be said about all of that, I’m sure, but all I really want to do is to drink this beer and smoke a Pall Mall Cigarette and sit in the very bearable 40 degrees and actually enjoy the whole of the smoke: Winter time is no good time to be a smoker. If only I could smoke inside.

That would be gross though. I already smell like cigarettes all the time anyway.

What else…

I wrote the first four songs for the album after Dad’s Typewriter (or maybe before, I haven’t decided which songs I want to get out faster). They’re really good. Probably the best shit I’ve ever written. The LP is going to be called, War and Fashion.

More on that at a later date, perhaps. Perhaps not.

I’ll leave you here, as I can only go on for so long before the redundancies float in and the words melt into each other; the punctuation is off, the context is dim.

No matter.

We seek for strength until warmer days.

They’re coming.

Regards,

Michael