Austin Portland New York

 Something I wanted to get done this year--as articulated on Dec 31st--was to see more music--although a resolution like that seems kind of lame.  I guess it's somewhat akin to The Office's Dwight Schrute's New Year's resolution: "Meet a loose woman," because seeing that's not hard to do but sometimes you maybe forget that you can.

Because every summer, New York is the loosest woman (or dude, to be fair) for free live music. Just last Thursday--on ONE night in NYC, George Clinton was at Rockefeller Park, Neko Case was at the World Financial Center, and The Village People/Gloria Gaynor/Trampps were at Coney Island. The South Street Seaport's already had one big hipster music fest and last night Eleanor Freidberger from the Fiery Furnaces played with the Ex-Cops. There's free music every Wednesday night in Madison Square Park and every Thursday night in Tompkins Square Park before the free films.

 Today, A. and I crashed the Stuy Town Oval in the East Village to sit on grass and see Ben Kweller from Austin and Blitzen Trapper from Portland. We were kind of blown away by both and I even got a BT tee, just like the old days. I put some videos that I thought reflected today's performances up here.

While sitting in the grass, listening, I did some of my Artist's Way homework. One of the homework pieces was to imagine five imaginary lives for myself. So here are three: one was to be a touring rock musician based in Austin; another was to be a cafe/bookstore owner in Portland. A third to be a writer in New York. I guess I'm kind of living that now; I just need to amp it up--like a lot.

ALSO--speaking of New York and musicians, it's Woody Guthrie's 100th birthday today!  His daughter, Norah and Billy Bragg were at the Coney Island Museum this afternoon (where Woody lived for awhile) introducing a film and signing a book on Woody's New York.