Texas songs and burnt-toast

Still in Austin, where it is hot and hip and student-filled. I feel comfortable because there are hippies here and you can get soy anything and sprouted everything, if you like that sort of thing. Which I don't, mostly. Most days we just try to stay submerged in the cool green river water up to our eyeballs. Here are my two little songs inspired by Texas:
"Swimming within the City Limits"
(coming from Santa Cruz; the prospect of swimming in a natural spring WITHIN the limits of Austin WITHOUT endangering your future offspring is a novelty and a joy!)
and
"Eating Sea-food in a Land-locked place".
(There are more crab shacks here that in Maine. O.K. that's an exagerration. But there are a whole bundle of them!)

Pete and Coop and Lucia left the day before yesterday. I was sad to see them go, and I hope The Van makes it up to Los Alamos. They got the starter fixed on Monday, so hopefully it will. Now there is nothing to do but be on vacation.
We saw "Howl's Moving Castle" last night. It was charming, with a totally random yet utterly convincing plot. I like the sensibilities of the asian narrative, because it doesn't seem formulaic to me--not having grown up in that culture and all. I don't EXPECT burnt toast to have a spirit that lives inside it that looks like a charred dough-boy with a slit for a mouth.

Apology

So I've worn myself out crying and can't even begin to describe how shitty I feel for being such a cruel dumbass. Please let me apologize to Todd Snyder, to Will and Tommy and Paul and Dave and EVERYONE involved in their operation. They deserve nothing but my utter respect for being sweet, generous, welcoming people who put on an amazing show.

That said, all the opinions I ever express are MINE. I do not work for The Devil Makes Three, I am merely their friend who travels with them and sells their merch. I bet you don't agree with everything your friends say or do. I bet that you couldn't stand by everything they ever say. Please don't blame The Devil Makes Three for what I say. They don't even read this blog.

Please calm down and stop sending me cruel things.
Thanks for your attention in this matter.

Sincerely,
K

Read my apology to Todd Snider fans below! Todd Snider and his band rule! I'm serious.

bad daughter

Yesterday I forgot my mother's birthday. I always think it's the 26th, probably because my birthday is the 26th. I am so self-centered! I even think that Christmas is the 26th. I'm serious. So here is me doing penance.

Happy Birthday (yesterday) Priscilla Smart. You are the light of my life and I love you so much. I only aspire to be as sweet of a person as you.
(Happy Birthday also Evelyn Hoban!!! You're in Italy in paradise so...um...enjoy!)

On Tour with The Devil Makes Three

We exist between cool springs (Austin) and hot submerged driving (Dallas). I almost expired today. I have to be honest. Texas is good to us. The people are the sweetest we've met anywhere. Austin especially has a rebellious streak. A rebellious streak in the land of rebellion: The People's Republic of Texas. Supposedly touring with Todd Snider is "dangerous". Perhaps because of his song " Conservative Christian Right-wing Republican Straight White American Males"


I'm not kidding. Here's for the record: I am allied with the Gays, the People of Color, the Pagans, the Democrats. Every time I swear, and apparently, so is Todd. Which is good. I'm not representing anything I don't believe in. I know I'm a minority. I don't care.

Tour with The Devil Makes Three

How hot is Arizona? Here I am on tour with The Devil Makes Three (not pictured) with our trusty camels "Petunia" and "Chodeface".


The main highlight of our 3 day travels to TEXAS was stopping to get Gatorade ((I'm a convert: Aimee told me my leg cramps were due to electrolyte deficiency from 'ahem' some excessive drinking so I've been chugging Gatorade for the last three days--probably not the solution Aimee had in mind--but damn does it work. Thanks homeopathy!) and the fact that the VAN did not break down! YAY! We did have to drive WITH THE HEAT ON and NO AIR CONDITIONING at about 50MPH through 100+ DEGREE WEATHER. The wind is HOT here, kids. It was almost better to shut the windows and bake in the furnace. Texas actually was good to us. There are TREES here, and greenery and we can now understand why someone would say proudly that they are from Texas...it's because they mean CENTRAL Texas, where there are rivers you can swim in (which we did yesterday) and Trees and Lakes and Waterslide Parks (which we can hopefully go to soon).
Much to Cooper and My delight, we have found a cafe with internet and grilled egg sammiches in the heart of Austin, Rejoice! We have been Motel 6ing it (with one unfortunate night at Super 8 Motel: land of jankyness and dead hookers under the bed) and the band does not let me pay for anything. I'm like, a guest or something. Also, The Three have a magical power which makes everyone love them (it might be the fact that Lucia looks like a magical pixie sprite who will grant you wishes if you do nice things for her) and take items off the restarant bill and offer to let us stay with them and stuff.
Today is our first day off...no driving and no gigs. The first show was last night...The Three played on the Americana radio show of courty singer and grizzled boot-wearer Ray Wylie Hubbard. It was one of those live before a studio audience things. Very cool, especially cause they had free beer and AC! Texans are also very friendly and polite in sort of an old-fashioned way, much, I imagine, like yours truly. So that's nice too.
Tommorrow we play Dallas (I say "we" so get used to it. I'm not in the band I just sell T-shirts). Back here in Austin on Friday. Mykle will be here by then hopefully, so he can see the show. For tour info go to The Three's Show Page!
For more Kai info, stay tuned here. Was originally going to call this "How many poo jokes and references to sweaty balls can Kai endure in a two and a half week period?" but now I'm calling it "I love everyone because iced coffee saved my soul!"

TEN YEARS AGO

Holy shit! Who's the eyebrowless manx in the bathtub cradling the rat???? Nice tights! Times have fucking changed eh? (this refers to my banal fashion soliloquy- see below)

banal fashion soliloquy

Observation 1: Listening to Gillian Welch is emphatically NOT how you get yourself amped to go dancing at a goth club.

Wine-sipping girl sits on the edge of her bed tenativley dressed in the most girly thing she's worn in ages. Army green, sheer wrap dress that has a "gasp" plunging v-neckline and combat boots on the striped legs, she dangles and dismays at her retiscense to appear in public in something skintight. This from someone who used to pose nude for artists and go to work in tops made out of tights (O.K. I got reprimanded for that)!
My self-image has changed dramatically since I have moved to the city/cut off my hair. I somehow feel like I dress androgynously (Mykle begs to differ, but this ain't his blog is it) and my fashion inspiration is an old man from the 40's. Little stingy brim with a corded hatband, big corduroy coat, pants that button, ginham shirt...you get the picture. Also due to my bikeriding I have lost self-consciousness about appearing in public with a dorky mushroom helmet and my pants tucked into my socks (aka I'm becoming my mother). Before I was content to halter-top and mini-skirt the issue. Now I bundle up and wish I had more cowboy shirts and dungarees.
Up there is Louise Brooks (again! the third time in this journal I might add), who dressed in drag or in drop waists or in pearls or in nothing (I'll post that picture soon), and was the sexiest EVER. Bless us all Louise, you libertine, you living doll, of the pearly elvin smile.

Dollies

I have discovered a new inspiration for making dolls...perhaps brought on by Michelle's recent interest in it. I have a couple doll exoskeletons lying around with their wire bones exposed, and took pity on the unfortunate things. The worst off was Seamus, who didn't have a storage place when I was living in the back room at Rigg St and therefore endured me stepping on him quite a few times! The tips of his ears broke off, and his left hand had a large hole broken into the palm.
This week though, I think I have absolved myself of my former abuse of him, as I made a body and clothes for him! Here he be in his newfound glory as a rustic woodsy elf-person:



He is made of fimo clay (head, hands, and feet> over a wire armature. Note the bandaged hand. His eyes are small glass beads.





He looks like a quite agreeable and joyful little figure, I think. He stands about 6 inches tall.


Eventually I want to have a page on my website that will be a gallery of dolls, marionettes, sock-monkeys, and other doodads & fabric things I have made. I have my fingers in so many craft pies that I may as well represent them all in my portfolio! I worry about that, spreading myself too artistically thin and not focusing on building up a series in one medium. I treat myself to these artistic whims though. I'm nice to myself in this way. I guess thats the freedom you get from not relying on your art for your livlihood:)

Yesterday at the art island

Myrrhia, Mykle and I went to a strange and fascinating spit of land that sticks into San Francisco Bay from Albany. It used to be a landfill, then a homeless camp, and now is covered in brush (fennel, pampas grass, blackberry, rattlesnake grass, some palms) and strange and fascinating works of art that people have fashioned out of art. Everything is hidden along the twisting unkept paths. It was hot and windy and the bay sparkly: a milky green and blue-black. The flotsam and jetsam that the ocean threw up and that the little pennisula was made of was fashioned by humans into little constructs: miniture towers, huts, or just collage on the rubbled landscape. Hopefully Mykle will put the pictures online that he took of these spontaneous works of creativity.

Tangent on filth

I'm not sure if there's anything that is too disgusting for me to bear. I think it has to do with being an artist and being able to look at anything objectivley - as a composition and not as a vomit-splattered curb or the contents of the oozing wound that is the eye of a homeless man. For instance. I'm just saying.
When I was a girl and I'd go camping or to Loch Lomond to fish with my parents, the other kids would enlist me to remove the fishhooks from the poor creatures we caught (and threw back with bloodied lips, for the fish were small fish and couldn't be eaten). I kill mosquitoes, ticks, fleas etc. with my hands. I grew up shoveling manure and breaking up the bits of horseshit by hand. It usually helps if no one else is around to see you deal with something that is disgusting - like cleaning the bathroom at work and scrubbing urine stains off the rim of the toilet bowl. Without gloves. If someone else was around to flip out I wouldn't be able to just deal, wash my hands, and forget about it.
It's just a collection of colors and shapes, I tell myself. It's a part of the world that is rotting and foul. Of course, some things are harder to deal with than others. Maggots in the compost bucket, for instance. Gory movies are very hard for me to watch. In fact, I hate them. These moves, though, are made for entertainment. I may be able to handle things that disgust me, but I'm not going to go out of my way to revel in them.
All I'm trying to say is that I'll hold your hair out of your face when you puke.

I took my art show down today and moved al the paintings back into our flat. I've been trying to find places for them all. I sort of rearranged the ones already on the wall to make room for more. I even hung one in the hall. If soemone feels like climbing up three flights of stairs to steal it then they can have it free of charge.

Being in our flat is like being inside of my brain now that the walls are covered with bright pictures out of my subconscious mind. Everything is "Kai" colored: Phalo blue, Cadmium Red, Gold, and sometimes Phalo green or white. People that visit often remark on it. I can't help it, I am an encruster. I have to decorate everything that is around me, layer upon layer. I live in my own coral reef of wrought iron spirals and milagro hearts and tattooed vines and gold filigree and tapestry and dust. Always dust.

Unfirmations

I'm never going to be athletic.
I'm never going to be golden-tan.
I'm never going to learn the trapeze.
I'm never going to write a novel.
I'm never going to be clean and sober.
I'm never going to learn French.
I'm never going to go to therapy.
I'm never going to be religous.
I'm never going to stop making dorky noises and rolling around in bed like a puppy.
I'm never going to become a great chef and roast lobsters and stuff pidgeon.
I'm never going to be a Paris showgirl at the turn of the Century (damn!).
I'm never going to own a parrot.
I'm never going to be a train-hopping hobo.
I'm never going to join a band.
I'm never going to dye my hair black.
I'm never going to be one of those people obsessed with their cat.
I'm never going to stop loving my family, and friends, and lover, and ex-lover, and...whew!
I'm never going to "tone it down".
I'm never going to become a teacher.
I'm never going to start collecting Santas or teddy bear figurines or stuff from the Franklin Mint.
I'm never going to make conversation by talking about the great deal on drapes I just got at Wal-Mart.
I'm never going to let up on the relentless optimism.
So everyone can just get over it and I can get over it too!

Gosh, that was cleansing!

In other realms I've decided to stop swearing. Its totally passe. Some real zingers are losing their shock value. Some Blue words are becoming Beige by being repeated by highschool students at the rate of aprox. 15 times every sentence.
I'm going to start by not swearing online. Then, not swearing in public in the real world. Then, not swearing in private among my filthy and foul-mouthed friends. Then, I shant swear even when I am alone in a closet with the lights off in an empty house after the apocalypse!
I fucking swear it!
(no really)