where art thou failure?

how long can this last? call me a pessimist if you must, i don't care. i have been riding a wave of good fortune for most part of the year now and i am scared. when will the hard surface of failure make contact with my face?
one after another, things just have been swinging in my favour and i am genuinely petrified. never in my life have things been so smooth and decidedly right. things even drop into my lap uncalled for. from a professional level, my career couldn't be doing better. for the first time i am gaining the respect of my colleagues and my bosses think the world of me. sure, there are some sacrifices on my part but no skin off my nose when i come to think about it. whats a few sleepless nights compared to what i reap in the end. for god sake's i even found out that i've won a slogan completing contest today!
a part pf me feels that i deserve it after all the years of struggle but another part just cannot come to terms with it. when will i fall? when will failure lunge out from the dark corner and consume me whole and then spit out the bones? where is the pain that lies waiting, all the time rubbing its grubby hands in glee?

dreaming of little fairies

i had the strangest dream ever. i mean this must rank pretty high up in the oddball department. the pixies were playing a live concert in my frontyard. my porch had been removed to make way for the stage and there were tons of amps and speakers on it. a short while later the band hit the boards and started into a song. i do not know what the song was. after that one song they went off stage. apparently the band was pissed off by a portion of the crowd who had this funny ritual of waving towels in the air. frank black found it irritating! the crowd was kind of milling around after that hoping that the band would reconsider. the drummer finally came back and tried to do a solo but it was not the same without the rest of the band.
what the hell could all these mean? sure i am a big fan and i did undergo a rediscovery of the band's backcatalog but that was months ago. stranger and stranger..........

sweet morning

woke up this morning and fired up the old pc to check my email. all of a sudden something unexpected floated in from my open window. someone was whistling a sweet traditional song down from the road below. there was hardly any traffic at this hour and the melody twirled playfully unopposed. at first i tried to see who it was but after a while decided that the best thing was just to stay still and enjoy it. what a perfect way to begin my sunday morning!

tortured

No singer/songwriter has been more deserving of the tortured ‘troubadour’ tag than Jason Molina. Labouring under the unpronounceable name of Songs:Ohia (how the hell do you say it?), he has been floating around for years in the sphere of the lonesome hitchhiker lost out on some nameless highway armed with only a guitar and a broken heart. it does not take any stretch of the imagination to picture mr molina sat out on an unfamiliar porch after being taken in by some strangers he met just today, clutching his battered guitar and proceeding to pull maudlin countrified chords out of thin air. despite himself he soon has everyone around either transfixed or crying into their beer. in the distance the wind gently carresses the trees and a lost bird cries out to its flock.
the neil young comparisons are inevitable as they both have in their hands the ability to write the kind of open ended music that says a lot by saying almost close to nothing. i have been listening to nothing except songs:ohia/magnolia electric co. for the past 48 hours and is constantly struck by the wide open spaces conjured up by his music. whether going it alone or surrounding himself with a full band the negative spaces are the means to an end.
at the center of it all is the voice; gruff but at the same time tender and vulnerable. paired with some stunning imagery from the words, the effect can be very unsettling. 'momma here comes midnight with a dead moon in its jaw' (from 'farewell transmission') is just one example.
in an age when manufactured pop reigns supreme, jason molina is that rare breed of songwriter who reminds us that after all the glitz and glamor has close shop for the day, we all still have to go back to a place called home.