Terrestrial Commuter

I haven't blogged for some time now, which has mainly been because of my constant traveling. I'm getting a little road weary, but I only have one more big trip before my summer ends and I can settle down in Chicago and focus on school.

I am so pumped up about the house I'm renting with my band in Logan Square. It is a beautiful home, and a good enough neighborhood to make me feel safe (pretty hard to do).

Things seem to be going pretty good for me, I'm starting grad school, got a house with Chicago, the band is going well and can't wait to play Nashville next month.

The only problem I've had is being on the road has basically put my social life on like freeze frame, which has made me a little aggrevated and frustrated at not being in the city as much as I like, but I've pretty much already weathered the bulk of that storm.

I keep getting these almost synchronicitic conversations about Portland, Oregon. I think I might just have to travel there and see what all the fuss is about. Maybe this fall or winter I will go out to Portland for a week and scope it out.

Now I have to get back to packing my bags because I'm off to Syracuse for a couple weeks. Now I just need someone like Jack Kerouac or Paul Bowles to write about my road experiences.

Tour Dates

Well I'm finally home again after a couple weeks of traveling, and life seems to come to a hault when you're not on the road.

I've missed Chicago and can't wait to get back. I have place to crash/live now until September or until I find my own place first, which is fine with me right now. I haven't even seen the place yet, but I don't really care to be honest.

I have two gigs this week, one is on Tuesday with my side-project experimental/electronic band Furniture playing at a loft party which I think will be pretty cool. The other gig is Friday night headlining the Elbo Room with Ben Joyce, which if it's anything like the last time we played the Elbo Room will be a very very awesome show.

I'm finally going to start doing some serious traveling, which makes me happy, and I actually have a schedule now of where I'm going to be:

Milwaukee - The first two weeks in August selling fried veggies

Syracuse/Buffalo/NYC - The last week in August until Labor Day. Selling veggies and doing a drum clinic.

Nashville - The Third weekend in September playing a huge showcase for record executives with my band. Very excited!!! Can't wait to play Nashville

Hartford/Springfield MA - First weekend in October.

Mexico - Spring break next March

Brussels - Next June doing a public policy seminar at UN headquarters

Birmingham UK - I'm going to England whenever I have the time between now and next summer.

The Art Of Misplacing Cool

The last day and a half I've been pondering a topic I've never really thought that much about before: Attention.

The art of gaining attention I think is one of the hardest things one can possibly do in this world.

One works so hard to gain someone's attention, and it can be lost so fast. It is a constant uphill battle.

Being both a musician and single, the art of gaining attention is something I'm constantly working at for both professional and personal gain.

What makes attention hard is the aim of the attention. What kind of attention you're wanting to get is hard to achieve. As a musician I want attention for my band, but not in the form of like a horrible revue or something like it, so like attention can also be one of those things that you can regret sometimes as well.

I've also tried to get back into dating lately, and have had mixed results. I feel like I have a hard time getting someone's attention. It seems like I just bother people lately, I don't know what the deal is.

I was talking to a friend of mine about the topic of attention and told me my problem was i'm just being too neurotic about it and i'm misplacing cool. Of course if I'm misplacing cool then I had it to begin with right?

I'm sure it's not as doom and gloom as I pretend it is, but I feel like a baseball pitcher in a rut lately. I'm just waiting to get back on track with my fastball instead of throwing junk all the time. Why can't I keep people's attention? I've been told my three people in the past week that I'm a strange guy. Strange guy is not the kind of descriptive adjective I'd like to use when describing me.

I'm leaving tomorrow for South Bend, Indiana for a week so I hope is fun. I'm getting closer and closer to getting my own place in Chicago and I can't wait for the day that happens, and maybe that's just my problem is my housing situation is just driving me crazy right now.

I have made some travel plans and I'm going to Milwaukee in early August, New York in late August, and back to Massachusetts in October so I am kind of stoked to do some traveling again.

I told myself I wouldn't write blogs this long anymore, but today I couldn't help it.

From Under Bridges Of Silence

I have had a strange and sudden impulse lately get to more in touch with nature. I think this April I'm going to take a trip out west and go hiking. I haven't decided on whether to go to California, Arizona, or Nevada yet.

I was recently offered a job as a writer for a magazine, and I turned down the job because the pay was absolutely awful, there was a lot of work involved for very little, and it was in New York. The idea that a professional liked my writing, has given me the idea to maybe pursue writing, but in a different form. I've been started to focus on writing more poetry, and I think maybe a trip out west would really get my creative juices going. The Midwest is just not very inspiring.

I have been compiling poems from what I call my "Acid Diary." What a lot of people don't know about me is I don't do recreational drugs, but for a period in college I took LSD every 6 months, and I did this ceremoniously for a couple years. While on LSD I kept a diary of my thoughts and feelings while tripping on acid. I did it just as an artistic experiment to look back when I'm sober and try to see my mind's eye. I've recently gotten the impulse to take some of the entrys and compile them as poems. The style and manner is very cryptic, but I find the process intriguing. The poems consist of material that I wrote while on acid and is me totally vulnerable and honest, and have not been tampered while with sober.

The first poem is called From Under Bridges Of Silence:

"Only those that have conquered darkness can understand the embrace of light.
To understand Philadelphia is to understand me.
I have to get out of here.
I thought about living in New York or New Jersey.

I am alive, I am living.
I am resplendent in divergence, am I Catholic?
I am the Keith Moon of my generation.
I have some tricks up our sleeves.

I am still a kid at heart.
I know I am witty.
I am smart.
I am a bastard.

I hate farting.
I feel I don't fit in a lot, am I weird?
I am a human being, I am misunderstood.
It's not all bad, it's mostly good.

I use to think I was cool and funny,
And now I just think I'm an idiot and a dick.
I feel the name Bill Covert is the punchline to a lot of jokes out there.
I think I have a lot to offer that I don't share.

I love jazz, I love baseball.
I thought about living in Montreal.
I feel pretty good about America.
Candles still flicker in Romania's dark..."

- William Covert