A Radio With Guts

I like the idea of unstoppable music.  Music that no matter how much it is battered and thrown about it keeps playing with a subtle intensity.  I think being a musician or any type of artist it is easy to feel discouraged at times...a lot of the time.  There are so many mornings I wake up and ask myself what the hell I'm doing.  Sometimes I go through spells where I hate music.  Moments where I can't listen to anything but want to hear everything.  I think I started writing because I realized that half of what I say shouldn't be said out loud.  Loud; a. marked by intensity or volume of sound. b. obtrusive or offensive.  I think I started making music because I realized half of what I wanted to hear I couldn't find.  I think I'm still looking.  Because no matter how much I hate it at times and want to abandon it, it keeps following me, sitting in my passenger seat making trite comments about the sky; but it never leaves, a constant reminder that we're still alive, still making noise. Unstoppable.  And that's why I'm still here singing to you on a long distance phone call, why I stay up at night trying to figure out what three notes your refrigerator is humming.  Charles Bukowski knows what I'm talking about...

A Radio With Guts

it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street

I used to get drunk

and throw the radio through the window

while it was playing, and, of course,

it would break the glass in the window

and the radio would sit there on the roof

still playing

and I'd tell my woman,

"Ah, what a marvelous radio!"

the next morning I'd take the window

off the hinges

and carry it down the street

to the glass man

who would put in another pane.

I kept throwing that radio through the window

each time I got drunk

and it would sit there on the roof

still playing-

a magic radio

a radio with guts,

and each morning I'd take the window

back to the glass man.

I don't remember how it ended exactly

though I do remember

we finally moved out.

there was a woman downstairs who worked in

the garden in her bathing suit,

she really dug with that trowel

and she put her behind up in the air

and I used to sit in the window

and watch the sun shine all over that thing

while the music played.