Where Am I and Who Are All These Crazies?

Been bringing in some really cool folks to record on the new album lately, and between all of them and the utterly fantastic engineer with whom I get to work, I am simply surrounded by talent and kindness. The creative energy truly just drowns that tiny room in some not-so-fancy but still very much brilliant and exciting ways.

I mean, check this out:

That right there is the phenomenal Ashley Wright laying down some mind-blowingly cool piano parts (think Mozart meets One Republic) for a track that the wicked talented Whitney McCombs  had sung on (read: broke hearts into a million pieces) only a few days prior. I've also had my dear friend Chris Murphy adding some very catchy guitar stuff, and am hoping to bring in some more of my friends—old and new—quite soon. 

This is all so exciting. I mean, I just played a house show with a whole bunch of artists I'd never met. Every one of them was so nice and encouraging and...TALENTED. I'm surrounded by it, drowning in it, engulfed in the mighty wave that is this crazy town and its crazy people. 

I know I've spent a lot of time on this blog complaining and philosophizing (more like angsting, which should really be a word) at length about what's wrong with my life down here. I now have a place to stay for relatively cheap rent, a job that, despite a certain amount of soul-destroying, allows me to live in said place and eat food and pay for gas and buy music stuff and so on... Still, though, there lingers questions of morality in being a part of so many corrupt systems. Those questions haven't disappeared (though going from a car to a bed has made me realize how blurry the lines between societal classes really are). 

However, being generally pretty depressed means I have to find ways to lift my head up and keep pressing forward. Honestly and with all the sincerity in my heart, I tell you the only way I have been able to do that is the fantastically genuine and supportive group of creative folks I've met down here. It is often hard for me to believe I have friends or to know what to do with them once I've got 'em, but these folks are good, unusually honest (and quite excitable about new ideas), and fairly patient with me.  

I hesitate to say that is through others we find ourselves, but perhaps in the midst of others we can at very least get some fairly overwhelming levels of feedback. 

Good, bad, inconclusive. 

People. 

>sigh<