poetry
-
sometimes I think the only place I can make a song is when I’m at the grocery store, listening to the sound of people while waiting in the checkout line. I keep an eye and ear open for what people cast off: half-sentences. corner store English. if the timing’s right, I’ll catch a major blowout between…
-
yesterday I swapped the everyday for staying at home, to hum and strum, and make music without being noticed. a day by myself, to do only what I love to do the most. I didn’t feel lonely, or miss anyone, or wish I was somewhere I was not. some might find that sad. but why is allowing myself,…
-
if there is a heaven — pretty sure there is one — it must be something like the boardwalk at Coney Island at 4 PM on a beautiful spring day, the Atlantic Ocean on one hand and Deno’s Wonder Wheel on the other. The annual Blessing of the Rides ceremony takes place today at 10…
-
a walk in the park/my heart goes bang bang, thinking of you/I shout at the East River hoping it will shout back/where do you go at night, is it to the one who calls you, the one you love/when I thought that me and you will end, I/didn’t think it would be like this,/a thousand…
-
some nights, when I’m perched on a stool with just my guitar, keeping a little crowd fixed (or at least I hope), it hits me: the only time I don’t feel like such a fuck up is when I’m making music. or playing it for people who care. choosing to be an artist is really…
-
I’ve been thinking about this recently. it’s something we talk about a lot in group. we wrestle with, at the same time, trying to maintain this sense we’re OK as we are, and where we are, being works in progress, while striving each day to climb out of someplace dark over to somewhere brighter. it…
-
my mom loves, really loves, this song. so much so that she named me after something sweet and surprising she heard in the lyrics. (it’s at the 1:07 mark.) it was released in 1970. she couldn’t have known then (she wasn’t even born) how much the words, hold on, it’s gonna be alright, you’re gonna…
-
just off the entrance to the Brooklyn-Battery tunnel into lower Manhattan, in the Red Hook neighborhood, there’s a budget motel, the Brooklyn Motor Inn. a couple of people that I know who have stayed there (no, nothing like that) said the whole place smelled like smoke. beer bottle caps in the drawer. smallest fridge, ever.…
-
when I made this song I was thinking about West 4th Street Courts aka The Cage in Greenwich Village. but it could be about anyplace in the city where sirens wail while streetball is played and two ropes swing on beat. you gave that person your heart and soul. you might have lost them, but…
-
playing notes is the basic idea of music. but it’s an impression, and just a shallow one. it’s not enough to play the notes. what I really have to do as a musician is everything that is not in the notation (which by the way I can’t read anyway). the same way I need time…
cookie nieves 