12/2/09 - Skin tastes so salty, there's sweat on your belly. Sun beats so hot, beats so hot, sun so hot. I want to gorge my heart on moss.
12/1/09 - At six in the bed in the room with the other children. At night there were ghosts. Ghost of the children there before. Ghosts of those who lived and those who died. In that room, in those halls. The nurses talking quietly. To them. To each other. The darkness outside the windows with angels hovering outside each one. Waiting for us. Me. Waiting outside the windows for us to become ghosts. Like the children that haunted the halls. The angels floating near the ceiling, so loving and kind arms, so protective and comforting. Seek me only. And the light from the hallway. The hospital lights so bright. I heard the little girl across the big room cry. Crying in hushed, gulping embarrassed sobs. One after another, we would whisper to her. In this our children’s hour. So late at night, so dark the room. It will be okay. Mom and dad will visit you tomorrow. Don’t cry. It will be okay. And the loving angels hover closer to the window. The nurses stop talking to each other. The nurses start to run. The hallway outside our large room becomes a flutter of quiet but urgent fear. Lights flicker, angels fly, and the little girl stops crying, and the nurse’s start. Hushed, gulping embarrassed sobs. And I look out the window and I wish for anything but this. As I see her outside the window. Outside in the night and the trees and the moonlight. And the nurses are crying, and the stars are twinkling, and in this our children’s hour, and in this our room so large so clean so empty. And outside the policemen, cab drivers, and clerks go on with their duties unaware of the nurses embarrassed sobs inside and unaware of the terror in that dark room in this our children’s hour.
11/24/09 - In a dark, messy night the windows are spinning and the world outside is brighter than filaments of the peppermint gum inside her mouth. And in this night of whirling heat, a heart comes apart to mend and repeat. So loud, you’ll do it . . .
10/4/09 - Long, foggy, and cold. This is my life now. My caring too much and my love not enough. What do you think? Where did you go? This isn’t the first time to happen but I thought the last. No. Not the last, but a train lumbering down the track; unstoppable and unwilling to yield to anything but its force. Daughter, daughter where will you go? In this I am dead.
9/23/09 - I see that; an inner life that binds it all together.
I see that; I never knew it was so strong everything was. While I was struggling so far away, there were feeling flashing before her eyes. I see that; In the dead of winter she laid waste her sleep for me. I see that; I didn’t think of it any further. While I was wondering through life and its precious, she was starting to think of ago. I see that; she never complained when I hurt or made a mistake. I see that; she remembered me when all else failed. If I would have seen. If I would have known. If I would have known and I would have seen. I see that.
8/30/09 - It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you. Sunny, I miss you so much . . .
8/23/09 - Yeah. That same exact thing happened to me, too. But it wasn’t in a clean suburban second floor bedroom in 1947. It was on a cold, foggy, rainy, miserable north end parking lot, eight feet from Lake Michigan on a late May night in 2004. It might even have been early morning. Anyway, I realized at that point, my life had come true. I was so tired but, it had came true . . .
7/12/09 - As she lies in the bed in the home, night falls and the signals overhead. I finally get it, I understand what she was doing, while the signals overhead. The music, yes. The smiles, yes. The patience, all three a part of this. I finally get it, I understand what she was doing, while the signals overhead. In the backyard with a wild sun, in a rocking chair on a midwinter night. I finally get it, I understand what she was doing, while the signals overhead. Never afraid to stoke tenderness. Always willing to try again. Can’t do anything but complete love, while the signals overhead. And back as she lies in the bed in the home and I walk out into the world, I’m sideways with the weight of it, and of everything ahead. Finally, finally, I finally get it; I understand what she was doing.
It’s taken so long for me to find out, while the signals overhead.
6/28/09 - The first single from the upcoming Hollydrift release ‘Wreath of Algoma’ will be out soon on the n0theen.com compilation called ‘Thanks for Notheen.’ The compilation will have a ton of Creative Commons bands and should be an excellent soundtrack to the rest of your summer. The single is called ‘Pom Pompeii’ and is the gate-opening to a new element I’ve added to the Hollydrift sound; my voice. Up to this point, I have always had my writing separate from my music and I’ve decided to change that. So far it’s been pretty cathartic. That’s what music is to me; therapy, and putting words down makes everything closer, more honest . . .
3/20/09 - Working all night, sleeping part of the day. So hot the day, so bright with sun and all the hope. And she comes to wake me from a hard, undreaming sleep. My awareness slowly presents a shining summer midmorning with the start of Sesame Street on the TV across my room. The sun barging in to obliterate the screen. I lean forward to see lovely cartwheels in the dry grass, in the sunshine. White hands flat against the midsummer ground. In the sparkling, glowing summertime. And my eyes burn with the night before. Not of sweet, fragrant valley girl sharing my pillow, not of sweet sensei hot and snapping in the bowl, but of cigarettes and new music in the low light of radio. And if Terry was there, we would be like the old days, like the old radio used to be in the first romantic. The old romantic I guess, since they called us the new romantics. Even if we didn’t know what it meant in the hot, humid, relentless night spinning music to a dozy city. This city. The one I love. And I open my burning eyes to a new summer day, and I focus on the blue eyes and loving smile of the prettiest girl ever. In my bed with me. To keep me alive and awake in this shimmering room, to go outside soon, into a lovely afternoon. Love, life, discovery, and all of our everything. Such a heavy heart when I remember ten years before; I’ll meet you on the way down. A hundred years from now. Working all night, sleeping part of the day.
2/12/09 - I have to admit that writing and recording is a bit difficult. In fact, I can safely say I avoid the studio most of the time. I envy those who chomp at the bit to get in there. For me it’s a bit much; the things that dig up, the dust that swirls. Yeah. Anyway. Therapy. I should find a place to sleep. Come on, come on. A child or two in the 1940s would get up in the middle of the night. In the middle of a long hot night and sit in front of the open fridge. Maybe in this house. Surely in the houses down the street. Little girls and boys; teenagers, in front of the new thing. That new modern icebox standing or sitting in their brand new life. Brand new house. Brand new world. And it’s all down there the unlocked door. A door to the old world. And in another part of town on this dark summer night, a girl walks across the bridge to revisit. This is where the accident happened; this is where she will haunt forever. Her friend is lost, her close and dear. She stops and looks over the edge where the car flew with such heaviness. She never imagined her life like this. She won’t be back to school for a long time. Not until she no longer haunts. This bridge. Every night. Until it’s over. Until her heart is mended.
1/24/09 - This Thursday afternoon at 4:00pm CST, the ‘Peachfuzz EP’ will be featured on a loveliness called n0theen, a net radio station (to use an old term). Hollydrift will be on the show called Moonlight Zombie Dance. Such a nice ring to that name, no? Also, the ep will be on regular rotation on n0theen. Thanks, Nicolas!
1/20/09 - The new Hollydrift ‘Peachfuzz EP’ will be released worldwide on the lovely Test Tube netlabel. Thanks so much, Pedro!
1/10/09 - Let me describe something you know so much about. It’s a constant battle, isn’t it? You’re different, not box-able, odd, and you can’t help it. And nobody likes it and nobody seems able to tolerate it. And you hope it will change one day but you know it never will. Welcome, my friend. Welcome to being an individual. Welcome to being genuinely unique. It’s not the I’ve-seen-it-in-the-movies unique but a genuine difference, a distinct separation from the world. I know you. And you know me. But what about the sparklers? The sparkle storms all everywhere? Such a suchness. A beautiful, lovely, breathtaking, heart stopping, glad to be alive suchness. Sparkle, sparkle, sparkle. Glisten. Shine. It’s the sun and her strawberry breath and her vanilla syrup voice . . . And when I walk by the houses I don’t see the glowing screens, don’t see the hybrids, the Modern touches me not or that. I only see what was; the girl talking to her friend in the driveway, a leaf skidding off the roof, the sprinkler waving its hissing vigil in the empty backyard. Hot, wild days. Cold, still nights. A Heartbreaking moment in a forgotten bedroom in 1947; She thought Dorothy would be her friend forever and now she thinks they all hate her, they don’t want her around. Rejection as bitter as the night outside. And the vacuum cleaner salesman walking by looks up. Through the window he sees a girl face down on her bed crying. All this pink around her and all this sadness. His heart sinks. He has a little girl at home (if you can call fifteen little) and he desperately hopes she never feels this bad. Yes. No. And. Sadness; as it reaches . . .
10/24/08 - Yeah. Winter is here in the land of newfie soaked Wisconsin. And it just makes me want to be in Bay Roberts more than ever. It could be my Valhalla. I have found that as time passes I have less to say. Or talk about. My silent throat and unparted lips seem to render a different me. This is not how I ever was. This is not how I wanted to be. I said to mother “I love you” and then I said “Thanks for everything” and I really meant it. The hospital. The walls. The wet window with even more wet beyond it. The leaves and the grass impossible colors under the influence of a cold rain. The rain runs down the window and . . . Well, you know the rest. This place I grew up in before I moved to newfieland. Liz, remember when we drag raced that guy in his hotrod on University Avenue? Remember how we blew his doors off in mom and dads station wagon? And how we laughed so hard about it that you almost ran off the road? The guy thought he was all that. But wasn’t. Like most guys think they’re all that. And aren’t. And the dope we smoked. And the things we said/lived through (always being maligned because we lived in suburbia. Hell, what does anyone know about it, right?). And I will never forget the little purple bong I used in the summer of ’79. I worked so hard to get the girl at Lake Street Record Station to sell it to me. She said I was too yummy to be eighteen. I laughed and wondered what that meant and thought “you want to talk cute? Let’s talk about you!” But then, what did that matter? We were all young and full of joy and life. And then the music. All Prophet Fives and CR-78s. That new music. That new music from across the pond; “Democrats are out of power, Across that great wide ocean, Reagan's president elect, Fascist god in motion.” Yeah. When you could say what you feel. Back when America was free.
10/15/08 - Goodbye, Season. It wasn’t bad seeing you around Oz County. I should have said hello when I saw you outside Java House. Damnit. Everything will be okay. You’ll make it to the next drink. God loves you so much. Bye.
8/18/08 - A school mate singing in the isle of the Sentry store, do I do, or maybe something more new. It was 1975 or somewhere near there. She was blond and I didn’t really know her, I just knew she was living. And beautiful. A bit beyond me. Luigis. Sentry. The liquor store with its sharp smell and silent, cold inside like walking into a carpeted refrigerator . . . knowing me, knowing you. What was she saying? It seemed that way. It seemed she was taking one of those opportunities eleven-year-olds get every so often. She was following along, singing with the music coming from the speaker in the ceiling above her. She was looking right at me from the isle that was across from the front door cash registers. I walk in; she sees me and starts singing along do I do pulling the cart that her mother is navigating behind . . . And looking at me like she’s pushing everything further than she knows. Knowing me, knowing you. So long ago. And my lonely eleven-year-old heart leapt at the thought. I remember seeing her at school and she seemed so much more grown up. One of those girls who had no time for little boys like me. Sheepish grins and crooked hats. She was so lovely, I guess. Long blond hair framing a perfect face with painfully pretty blue eyes. I was too damaged for her. I was broken. She would want someone whole and new. Like she was. Like I wasn’t. And I didn’t blame her. And the music played; knowing me, knowing you, do I do.
7/9/08 - The sun is down and I feel I went with it. The dark has come and I feel I’m down in it. Can this mean everything I know and everything I had? Not that this has anything to do with why I feel so bad. I’ve been wandering now for almost 50 years with nothing much to show for it; bit of noise and a bit of fun and a lot less than I care to admit. And just when I get back on track pulling my head out of the clouds, I can feel some things coming apart; I can feel the breaking of my heart. The sun is down and I feel I went with it. The dark has come and I feel I’m down in it.
5/25/08 - I am, for the most part, feeling like the last person on earth tonight. It’s a sadness that I cannot describe or even express. I’d like to cry for a week. Anyway. Tonight a storm blew into town. Nothing huge but a lot of wind, lightning and thunder. Early summer storms like these are always quite enchanting. I hear long ago voices in the wind and the rattle. This house, the shutters and doors have so many spirits in them. So many families have been protected from the weather by this house. For so long. Longer than you and I have been alive this house has stood guard and served sentry to the souls within. If I thought an apartment built in 1941 had some stories imagine what I’ll find out about this 113-year-old house. This structure that we are quickly bringing into the modern world with working hands, working workmen (and women), and money, a lot of money. What hits me at the moment is that our house was standing before and during the entire timeline of Bill Caddick’s ‘The Writing of Tipperary'. This house stood before, during, and after the Edwardian era and saw the end of the Victorian era. And on it goes. But now we’re in it.
4/22/08 - I don’t quite understand where life takes me sometimes but I can’t help it. I like to kick things up even if I don’t come out of it too well. A job is a job, right? And work is work. What is life if you can’t follow your heart? Brenda, Brenda. All I can say now is Tora, Tora. Have a good life. I see it on the panels and behind the glass. The faces, the smiles, the places. This is it. This is your life. This is what you’ve done and where you went. From these roots, from the earth that smelled damp and like rust. From that girl that lived in the house behind you. That girl with the dark around her eyes. The girl all the kids rejected. The person. The person behind the black hair and the scary, dark eyes. The girl who’s room smelled like stale sheets and patchouli with no pictures on the walls, just smudges. The girl who’s only defense was to lash out with verbal reproof, black hair in her eyes, as she declaimed her needy, impoverished heart. But she was weird. But she scared us. Them. Scared them. Not me. Like the girl tangled in her yo-yo string that no one would help, this girl never scared me. She broke my heart. My heart was broken like hers. But how do you tell that? But. I wanted to tell her that. But in the heat of July in a treeless suburban backyard in 1971, all I could do is watch from the wings (a swing set seat) as my sister lashed back at her with an arrogance born of privilege. What did my sister know about any of this? How did I know about it and she didn’t? Weren’t we protruding from the same branch of wood? Weren’t we blood? How then did my sister seem so alien to me? How then did the girl with the black hair in her eyes and the loud voice seem closer to me than God? As she stomped away, I grabbed a steel bar of the swing set to steady myself. My hand hurt from the metal cooked by the sun on a July afternoon in a treeless suburban backyard. I wanted to pull my hand away but I didn’t. I wanted to feel solidarity with her broken heart. My palm ached. I gripped harder. Her heart ached worse. And she lost her grip. Late on a school night I woke up. I walked down the hall to the dark dining room. I sat in my place at the table and looked out the window. I saw a flashing light. Red. Rotating. Lonely. December 1973. Across a cold winter suburban backyard, to an even colder winter suburban driveway, I saw a white sheet over a lump on a steel mechanism designed to wheel humans to and from unthinkable tragedy. What is this? What happened? As the white and red station wagon with the flashing light crept its way between the houses and then gone, my heart hurt more than ever before. The lonely little girl. Those lonely children. They wander everywhere and ache for someone to love them. They’re flawed and difficult to get along with. They bother you and are irritating. They make life difficult. Your life. Because their life is already difficult. Because their life is so confusing and hurtful and unloving, they reach out to you the only way they can. And what do you do? Turn them into a lump under a white sheet on a steel mechanism designed to wheel humans to and from unthinkable tragedy. But this time, only to.
4/5/08 - Betty and Abigail sit across from each other in Betty’s room. 2:23pm on a dark January afternoon, 1692. Between them is a Venus Glass and their hopes and dreams are riding on the slow shapes they are watching. No one else is home. The girls are alone. They want to know. They want to know the future. Mommy where did you go? Your Betty needs you so. Abby at eleven, needs a suitor for her heart to leaven. Such a dark and winter day. Such dark and melancholy girls . . . Wait, I know what to do! We can act like those stories from the Indian servant! We can stare and shake and shout . . . I’ll bark at daddy like a dog when he rebukes me, for he is such a foolish man! I’ll throw the bible! I’ll cause them to concern with me and wonder if I’m ill. Pray tell the story you hear. That old man Jacobs beats on Sarah when her work fails to satisfy him. Oh, that old horrible man! He should be careful who he beats, I pray you to think of what power your victim may have one day. And you found that power was not in your hands. You found yourself hung. Dead. . . . The girls so lovely sit in a room lit by candle on a purple winter afternoon in a house in an isolated Puritan community. A glass between them. Isolation. Sad girls. Alone girls. So misunderstood girls. No one listens to girls. Not here. How much more terrifing can things be? Just wait. Just wait until Byshop. She will be the first. Oh, my heart, sweet Betty. Yours will hurt forever . . . What do we have to do to be heard? What do we have to do to be taken seriously? What? I am no witch. I know nothing of it. Nore am I and what will thou think? The girls in the room say they will have a husband. They will be okay. They don’t believe a word. They are so afraid. They have seen too much. They have seen death close. They have had the stink of death in their clothes, in their skin. They are so scared. The elders are pressuring them. From what they have been through already, the are suffering ptsd. A modern term so suffered by Salem girls.The women. All of them stand accused of sundrey acts. The blackness of the latter part of life. For them, caught in a web of sickness, opression, and misogyny. They know nothing of it. And one laught. She never thought it would end like this. Oh my heart. These women of intelect and maturity. These women already kept down. They will now face men who have already decided who they are and what should be done with them. These women who have cooked dinners, baked bread, pulled water from the well. These women who have already toiled for their men-folk. They have already given their lives. Now they must die. With not even a drop thereto of wine or spirit. The ultimate submission. I am clear of this sin, she says. But they don’t care. It’s spring. The flowers are blooming everything is fresh and new. But the hatred is mounting and the fear has made everything black and cold. It might as well have stayed winter. Or so thought Martha Cory. And Susannah Martin. And Mary Parker. What hath thee done little Elizabeth? What hath thee comitted Mr. Hathorne? You have brought unearthly pain and sadness to all of the girls and women of Salem. Did God have mercy on you? Pray tell I think not. And the cold turned to warmth. And the warmth to heat. And the birds sang. And the flies buzzed. And the buggys snapped and rattled. And the hoofs clopped. And the breeze rustled the leaves on the trees outside the window of the meeting house. And the voices inside can be heard outside the walls; the accusing and pleading, fits and shouting falling onto the dust outside and soaking into the earth and the wood and the walls of Salem Village. Poor girls. Poor women.The town will reak of this sickness forever.
2/21/08 - The Look Folder has been updated with some wintery stuff.
1/13/08 - So goes the recording of the new CD. Lot’s of ideas are flying around and the mental purging is rampant. This record is going to be a lot more sonically dense than I thought. As always, I start out to make something empty or sparse and it ends up being a huge, albeit mellow, wall-of-sound. Meh. Anyway. In video news, I want to thank all of you who have sent kind words about my videos. I do enjoy making them along with the high therapeutic index the activity affords. Just a reminder, all Hollydrift videos are available for free from hollydrift.com. You can download them to your computer or iPod. There are files for both from the download link. Also, a wonderful artist by the name of Lila Sakura used some images from the ‘Stay Forever’ video for her spoken word piece "Dear Creator" from Lila’s upcoming V-day 08' CD release Soul Killer. Lila’s had a rather difficult past and she is bringing it to light with this CD. You can find her videos on her website and here as well. You can find out more about the extremely important V-Day here
1/5/07 - The halls I’ve walked. The rooms I’ve occupied. The words I’ve said. The words I’ve eaten. I do not feel sorry for myself. I could have sought help. I could have told and adult. I could have told my parents the truth. They could have told someone else. This happened how many times? Every time I left the house I walked into some devastating hell. But it was never like I thought it would be. It wasn’t like on TV. It always happened with such delicate subtly as to render me blissfully unaware until I was in the middle of it, involved and unable to escape. Or be held unaccountable. Or be innocent. Or to say I wasn’t there. Or to say I didn’t like it although I really did. Innocence. Looking through the window well, I can see a lifetime in the backyard. Ancient toys buried long ago, the ones we held so dear. Grass has grown over the sandbox, and the trees are so much bigger. And all of this is why I never feel sober on Mondays. This is why sometimes I can’t move. This is why I’m different than you.
12/28/07 - Good evening. I have posted a new Hollydrift track. It’s called 'Grounded' and you can get from the download link. The song is a small reminder that behind every boarded up window is not always an empty room. Until later, greetings from snowbound Ozaukee County.
12/8/07 - More frozen weather is rattling against my window. I hear the howling wind of a friendly storm. This is fine with me. Evening has come. I’m waiting for the Lunesta to kick in . . . I don’t think I can top yesterday. That’s the fickle nature of creativity; illusive, hiding in the shadows refusing to be seen. The magic dust needs to be collected before it’s provoked and spent. And I dig deep. And I say too much. I don’t really have to worry because no one’s paying attention, anyway. But how can I give it up without giving it away? I can’t. I have been found out. No wait, I decided to tell. Mysteries, secrets . . . I’ve said way too much anterior about my interior. This life inside my head and all the things outside. The outside world that I cannot manage. What happened? And I was a part of this? Seems unlikely but there I am. Was. It went down and I handled it the best I could. I’ve never been an Olympian at handling tragedy. I wasn’t then and I’m not now. I just muddle through. It’s a mess. A completely different planet away from everything. Some things I haven’t thought about yet. Things that happened so incredibly long ago. Darling daughter stumbles upon them. Without knowing she shakes the memory box and suddenly something falls out so old that I can’t place it ever being in my life. Then she wants to know everything about it. And I don’t have anything to say. Yet. My lovely one, where were you, where was I. The questions so old I left the question marks off. They aren’t needed. They will never be answered. And I remember being in the kitchen in Madison making dinner. And I never heard the little voice inside me say; do you know what's going to happen to you in Cedarburg? And there was nothing to warn me. Not that I needed it. I was waiting for so long. And there you were. And I can’t believe my first thought was about Elizabeth, like she had any part in it. Just a distant forgettable moment in history. My history, I think.
12/3/07 - All of this and the time of year cause me to become romantic and nostalgic about what happened . . . The poor girl down the street. She had been in that room forever and she waved to me from it one dark winter day. A pensive, do-you-see-me wave. To me, walking by her window tugging on the stings of my hat, I looked up to see her. Wave back. And see her some more. Her hair was dirty and long. She hadn’t combed it in so long. Her face soft but here eyes hard (or maybe the other way around). She’d been kept in that room for so long (some sort of punishment-a long forgotten disobedience). But once, awhile ago, she was outside with me. It was an autumn afternoon when the setting sun made everything shine gold. She hurt her hand and I wanted to help. I said, let’s go inside and tell your mom and dad. She said no, I don’t want to go back in. She said, I want to stay here with you until its dark. I want you to stay by me and keep me safe from the cars with ugly music coming from them. I want you to keep me safe from those people over there who want to hurt me . . . Worse than my parents. Her hand was bleeding and I reached out to hold onto it. She let out a croupy sigh when our hands met. Like this was some sort of relief. My hand and hers smeared and stuck together with the biology of her pedigree. I said, we should get you inside. She said, no, and then looked to the house. The big stone house with three stories and thousands of square feet. She was thinking sooner our later they’d find us and she’d have to go back into it. She blinked her eyes at the house and the hair draped over them bounced with the movement of her eyelashes . . . She looked . . . And turned back to me (our hands still stuck together in coagulation) and looked through her hair at me looking back at her. Did she have no sense of self? That she left her arms and legs smudged with this and that? Such an unclean girl, smelling of some old perfume, something found in the attic were she was kept. The sweetness of it mixed in with her and formed a smell of desperation and loneliness. Of isolation and sadness. Here eyes darted until she locked them with mine slowly letting her hand drift away and travel to my shoulder where it rested, soaking. (I was kneeling. Why stand over her like her glowering father did?). Her hand was so heavy; the dirt under her bitten fingernails seemed to be so much a part of her . . . Her gaze moved to the street. Across the lawn it was an ambling street lined with large trees and impossibly ornate streetlights. A charming street, those passing through would say. She watched the cars passing. I followed her gaze suddenly to feel her weight and self disappear. She was running. Running as fast as her bare feet let her. Faster than my mind could process. Across the lawn, off the stone fence onto the sidewalk and, without a word, into the path of an oncoming car. It leapt forward and howled. The thump made me sick as she rolled of the hood and dropped to the street. As she lay, a small crowd materialized. I sat down next to her broken body, shocked with disbelief. Her eyes staring at the curb in front of her. She said my name. I said hers. She said, people from that office will have to come now, right? I said, yes. She said my name again. I said hers again. She said, now they’ll come take me away and give me a bath and pretty new clothes a brush for my hair. I said, yes, now they would come do that. She giggled almost silently through her open unmoving mouth, lips resting on asphalt. I said, don’t move. She said I don’t have to, they will move for me. They will bring me flowers and candy and tell me, I love you. She said my name and said, it hurts. She gurgled. And sighed. And then was gone. I looked at my hand with the blood of a few minutes ago. A few minutes ago when all we needed was a bandaid. And then the voices and the sirens. Such an intrusion and too late. I looked back at her and noticed a sticker stuck to her bare shoulder; half curled like it got there by mistake. A pink bunny with words printed in red below its feet; I Love You. And I knew at that moment I would never recover from this. And through the years since, I have found it strange how the winter always reminds me of the little girl and the howling car. And how she smelled of an old perfume. Even though this happened on an autumn afternoon when the setting sun made everything shine gold.
12/1/07 - And maybe if I write. Maybe this will pull it out. More snow coming this weekend and that’s fine. I’m ready for it. Sheets of freeze in layers and layers. Like people here. So much to get through before you arrive at the actual them. And the townies never take off their coats. They get up and go out into their day and the coat never leaves their shoulders. Indoors the hood or hat may come off but not the coat. We live in the cold, we walk in the snow and there’s hardly a reason to pull off all the layers when you’ll be leaving again in an hour. Just hang out in the kitchen. And I exist with the heavy boots that trip me, and the big coat that I’m always moving out of the way of something breakable or a doorway or a passerby on the sidewalk . . . All of them clanking, too, with the heaviness of Eskimos. With the weight of winter. And we move slowly. And we eat a lot. And we watch the dial on the wall. And the mittens in the closet. And the salt stains on the floor in the doorway. And the cold coming off the windows. Winter.
11/23/07 - I wonder what the thought process is. How it’s decided who steps into eternity. And when. The great decision. The last moments. And you are loved beyond anything. We’ve had so much of it here lately. It’s almost like something’s wrong there. Something is occupying that length of earth. And it won’t let go.
11/10/07 - Good evening everyone. Welcome to Hollydrift.com. Here you will find everything you need regarding my artwork. However, let me share this caveat: After 7 years of doing noise collage, I am done with it. It was okay for awhile but I’ve gone beyond it. For those curious about what I used to do, you can download this zipped folder of old Hollydrift. This folder is a time capsule of my last 7 years work. It contains a lot of music, videos, interviews, photos, etc and is 335mb in size. So, depending on your connection speed, it might take forever to download. As for the rest of the site, it’s pretty intuitive. For those of you who stuck with me during this dry/transitional period; thank you very much. It means more to me than you know.
