bad taste.

The summer was coming around the corners and slipping through the cracks, you can smell it on the jasmine near the front door. If time tells then what does it tell you? She gave up all that otherness because it started to seem in bad taste.

zen

this is a picture of my lovely friend Jenna Rae, she is my great inspiration for choosing a peaceful yogic path through life. currently heading to a new studio for the afternoon on my day off. I want to remember days like this when I am once again crazy busy, remember that life can be sweet and slow if you take the time to allow it to do so.

leavin

Leavin on a Jet plane... bought a ticket to MPLS for the 25th of May through the 8th of June. I am going to turn St. James in the Second Season, a series of vignettes written about the disintegration of a relationship based in Minneapolis, into a book of short stories. While the project is already well under way I can't seem to find the right head space to tie it all together and finish it up. Most importantly I find myself falling short on all the things that made me start the project. I can't remember what the air feels like and I haven't been in an old tattered apartment in too long. I need to drink at the C.C and stand on the corner of Lyndale just to remember what it's like, and then maybe my characters will remember too. I need to go to a show at the Triple Rock and run around lake Calhoun, and watch the clouds roll by at hidden beach. I'm hoping that when the time comes to sit down I wont suffer serious stage fright, all the pressure of flying there to get this done, but I figure I will gain what I need even if the words don't produce themselves during my stay. Sometimes the only way to see things clearly is to step back a bit. Either way I am beside myself with my choice to go, and this will be the longest time I have been home since I was eighteen.

fallen

 

I fell in the afternoon, fell hard for you. 

many many moons ago and still days pass with the idea of you slung around my wrist

I found an old red book where I used to write to you

sometimes I forget the way I feel or the way that I felt, 

so like me to remind myself.

go

let's go to Prague. Strahov Theological Hall; Original Baroque Cabinet; Prague, Czech Republic

Candace

This just made my day. This is baby Candace on Easter. Is this not the cutest thing ever!!!

Thin Air

running walking riding around town posting these, I don't know what to call them, fliers, want ad's, lost if found, somewhat of vain advertisements; people stop and stare. What is that girl in cobalt blue jean shorts doing with that staple gun at nine in the morning? On the corner near the coffee shop a guy asked me if they were for a self help group, ya I guess they kind of are. I told him it could be whatever he wanted, that if he wrote to me, I would write him any kind of help I could. So send me anything, send me moments, send me worries, send me smiles, send me wishes, I'll write them all out in narrative. Let yourself see things through the eyes of someone else, gain a new perspective. Isn't that right? It's all about perspective. Thank you for coming by and if you have come here by chance welcome, and if you have come here by love welcome, and if you have come because you saw one of these; then welcome and tell me, where were you when you saw it? And if you're still wondering what this is and where you are... it's my life, colored with creative fiction told in the pursuit of one day attaining pure word choice.

the first three stanzas of time traveler

Looking for a recently misplaced heart or respectable replacement, must fit chest cavity.
Believed to be taken by a time traveler with bright eyes.

Love Always, Rose

Earth

It's earth day and it's good friday and I don't know all that much what either of those mean even though I went to catholic school as a child and have been living on earth all my life. Cheers to both though. Have a good friday earth day full of trees and holy wine.

six

six solutions to seemingly simple situations (in my life.) that I solved today. really all today:

*My room is always, unfailingly, covered in clothes, namingly croptops, levi jean shorts, and spandex:
Solution: Go to Ross (which if you don't have to go there go somewhere else, it was my first and will be my last visit there, the place is a fuckfest of discount shit that although you may think you need, you really don't. I had to pee really bad so I blacked out most of the experience, but what I remember was terrifying.) Anyway, go to Ross and buy some hangers for like four dollars, and hang all that shit up you lazy freak!!

*I spend a lot of the day looking like a banshee because I wait to "get ready" until after I work out.
Solution: work out first thing in the morning that way you can shower and actually look presentable for the day. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out, but it did take me several years.

*Trouble falling asleep at night?
Solution: take up drinking whiskey and or scotch, and if you're really squirmy heat that shit up into a hot toddy. and if you don't know what a hot toddy is then use your imagination, or google because you are on a computer. (confession, I didn't figure that out today I have known that for a long time. works better than putting whiskey on the gums of a baby.)

*I daily change my dreams and objectives, jumping around from project to project.
Solution: I am aware that this is called ADD but I spent a good decade on pharmaceuticals and I am not going back, so my solution is to decide on doing everything. Find peace and strength in the fact that I can be a novelist, a song writer, a teacher, a traveler, and a journalist if I feel like it. Why do I have to choose?

*I hate my job, I find it menial and degrading.
Solution: stop hating it. Everything is what we decide for it to be, and if I want to be happy with serving tables than all I have to do is decide that I am happy. Stop painting such a negative hue on something that has really done so well for me. Serving tables has put me through college, it's going to put me through grad school, it introduced me to my bestfreind, and it has given me the money and freedom to travel the world. So whatever your shitty job is, just decide to like it, decide to get happy. And if you can't do that, if you can't find that sometimes faint silver lining in what you do every fucking day, then find a new job. The world wont end, just find a new one. simple.

*I live in the vein of writing, but don't find myself actually hitting the page as much as I would like:
Solution: I spend a lot of time "writing" but how much of that time is really spent with the pen on the page or my fingers on the keys? Not enough. I spend a lot of time dicking around online and finding all sorts of hilarious people and things to make fun of. I find any excuse possible to get up from the table. So this advice comes from my friend and mentor Ron Carlson, "Erin, stay in the room." I have decided today to stay, every time time I want to get up I am going to stay for another ten minutes. And we shall see what that will yield.

This may seem silly and this may seem stupid but the point is all those things that seem to creep up every day and bug you, or the things that fail constantly to get finished, they are all within your control. It may just be that fixing the simpler things in life will lead to a more creative and fluid process of everything else you want. Try it.

4-20ish

 

I do recognize the irony in posting this a day late, being that it is no longer actually 420. This is more of a homage to the days in which that really meant something. 420 is now spent writing all day and serving tables all night like every other day of every other week of my life. But there were the years, many many moons ago that 420 was a full blown holiday getting more of my attention than any religious holiday. So a nod goes out to my hippie years spent in the grass at Woodgate park and skipping class in the back of Jeep. 420 was spent playing frisbee golf in long flowing peasant skirts and handmade tops, wearing thick hemp necklaces with fat glass beads from Clown. We would run around barefoot and mad with joints hanging on our lower lip, waiting for someone, always waiting. It was a beautiful life living in Minneapolis but those days have long since passed. I am just happy now, that worlds away, I have something so hilarious and lovely to look back on.

running out

You're speaking like you're running out of air. What's the matter?
Just running, you say, but still gasping and dragging your fingernails against the question.
It was a bad idea, and that's coming from someone who is full of bad ideas.
You wont see me this spring, I'm leaving the country to hide out until this all passes by.
But if you want to drop a line, tie to an idea and send it over seas.
I'll catch it on it's way back down and tie to the earth with over written and melodramatic interludes on what love used to look like.
Still running? Thought so.

it's good

 

In case you were wondering, this is what I look like when I'm having a really good time. 

Taken by Lugo from Shorewscrew at La Cave for a Snakebit Drifters show with my three best friends Andrea Cassie and Candace. How's that for name dropping? All Time.

desert daze

Spent some time out in the desert counting stars and spinning winds. I wondered where it was all going but I felt like I had come to a place where things don't go anymore. The roads don't connect and the buildings are all forgotten. Every one that used to love moved on long ago when moving was still on the table. Yet here we are in these same places, still finding a way to make it work. You can see traces of lives that have long since stopped living. Wonder for hours what's happened in this place, between these walls, out on the these graveled walk ways. What did she say to you to make you leave? Did you know where you would go when you left, or was going the only thing meant anything...? You can hit the road for awhile but chances are you wont ever out run it. Always waiting for you when come back around like you never left in the first place. Time has a way of folding in on itself like that sometimes. Makes you think you're going crazy and retracing the same tired steps, because you are. The winds were hot when they came up over the desert and rolled into our conversations and that full moon had a funny way of making you feel like there was somewhere else you were supposed to be beside right here with me.

forgetful

how long is it supposed to take to forget about something like this? bottle it, leave it on the shelf for the next time you pass on by. let it leak out the sides of the room and find it's way to someone else, someone new. just don't leave it lying around for me to trip on. If you try to forget that's not forgetting at all. It only etches it deeper into your state of mind. Leave it outside, let it hang dry. See if the colors fade if you wear it every day, find a way to grow tired of these thoughts. Things aren't looking up and I'm looking lost, so let's find a way out. Unless you like it, then I guess you could keep it. I could get to be okay with that.

Family Sign

I have a special allegiance to Atmosphere. I don't think any music, period, has had such an impact on my life, my personality, my taste, my memories, me. I grew up outside Minneapolis, the city was the only sign of life on extended winters and slow summers in a small town. As soon as we acquired a drivers license we there every day, stomping around Hennepin and Lyndale. Slug's voice sounds like home to me. God loves Ugly feels like growing for me, and I remember stealing my sisters i.d to get into First Ave for a Seven's Travels show sometime in high school. I have every album, every e.p, every piece of vinyl they have printed and have been to more shows in more states than I could ever count or remember. It's an allegiance bred into my bones by growing up on a steady diet of his rhymes when it felt like nothing and no one in the world could ever understand what it was like to be young and stuck in the Midwest. He gave us something to be proud of and now here I am at nearly twenty five, and still waiting patiently and enthusiastically for new music. His newest album, The Family Sign, was released earlier this week on itunes, buy it. I've spent a few days with it, mulling through the lyrics, closing my eyes to decipher which beats I like best, and deciding the inevitable question; is it as good as the old stuff we grew up on? Much like the album itself the answer is multi dimensional and intensely personal. Here is an interview I conducted with myself.


Q: What is your overall opinion on the album as a whole?
A: Well, I'd have to start by stating that, yes, once again, I love it. It's different, but I have respect for artists that are capable of evolution. I think I would be disappointed if he were delivering me the same material I fell in love with at fifteen. Is it better, I don't know yet. The album as a whole is slower than anything we have heard from him. While there have been previous tracks with a similar tempo, this entire album rides on a swagger rather than his usual cut throat delivery.

Q: You somehow just answered that question without actually answering it I think, what about his lyrics? As a rap artist isn' that one of the most important elements?
A: haha yes, I suppose it is. I think the lyrics have fallen in suit with the evolution of the sound itself. They are more grown up, a lot less of a fuck you to the world, a lot less funny. I dig it, but I've also grown up too. I don't think this album would have as strong of an impact on adolescent me as the albums that came out during those times. I feel like I have grown up surrounded by this music, I feel like it's growing with me. It's good, but no it's not the same as it used to be.

Q: Is that a good or bad thing?
A: It's not either and at the same time it's both. I think it's less affective in that gut wrenching find solace from the world sort of way, but musically I think it's better and that's a good thing.

Q: Spending some time with the album what has stood out for you?
A: Well, I usually make notes like this:
          *sounding most like an old groove: "My Notes" it's articulate, creative, and fierce. It makes me want to drive around the lakes on a spring day with the windows down smoking a spliff.
         *most likely to play in my bedroom late at night while I write: "Something So" and "Who I'll Never Be" poetic, slow, and heartfelt these are songs where I see love in the growth made on this album.
         *favorite beat: "Ain't Nobody" I like the Big Bad and Ugly feel behind it. And "She's Enough" it makes me want new speakers in my truck, haha.
         *favorite one liner: "let's not make this an issue, but the truth is I don't miss you"

Q: any last sentiments on the album for now?
A: I'd say thank you if I could. Thank you for this one and every one before it. I am also really curious to see how this material is delivered live, and I can't wait to see him on tour in Pomona this May.

Thanks for stopping by.
Love.

Make Me

 

Semi Sweet's new music video "Make Me' filmed by Jenavieve Belair and Austin M Bauman, edited by Austin M Bauman.

200

this week one year ago Jenna and I purchased Belladonna at an adoption expo for only two hundred dollars. two hundred dollars for endless happiness. what a deal.

cooler than cool

One thing I love about facebook in a slew of things that I dislike are the random links people post. Better yet, the cool links that cool people post. My long time friend Anthony from Minneapolis who is connoisseur of things cool and mostly things vintage posted this link earlier today much to my enjoyment. Thanks Anthony. It's a collection of 75 deserted theaters across the country. I love deserted disheveled things. I wish I could visit them all, but this will have to do for now. The one pictured above is my favorite located in Boston, Massachusetts. Find your favorite.

Locale Action Issue

The time has come once again for the newest issue of LOCALE magazine. This issue is our ACTION issue and you can find me in three pieces doing a slew of new things. My swing dance, In The Swing Of Things (page 110) piece is a colorful account of my surprising dance talents, Your Body is a Temple (featured above on page 38) is a guide to eating healthy in Orange County featuring the best vegetarian and vegan restaurants we have around. My third piece is titled Living Like A Tourist (page 128). This had to be the most fun because Jenavieve and I scoured Orange County for activities normally reserved for tourists like whale watching, riding segways, camping in the dunes, and many many more. Cruise over to the online magazine to read up or if your in Orange County go grab yourself a copy at any of these locations. Thank you Locale and thank all of you for the constant support. xoxo Rose.

rest easy

It happened like seasons. a catalog of moments more or less. pinned to the wall, carried in your backpack. single drinks that don't last long enough and motel rooms where the sun always comes up. it's a lot like spinning circles. it can be good and still go nowhere. you can say goodbye a thousand times but still the story runs the same way. I'd read this. not like it's not real. how much is fabricated conjecture and daydreams? one time you called me contrived. I think by now we both know that the only truth, well, it lies in the eyes. If anyone ever says what they are actually thinking, I hope I'm there to hear it.

it's time!

If you're in Orange County tonight head over to the Hyatt Regency in Huntington Beach and snag the first copies available of Locale Magazines ACTION issue. In this you can find me in several pieces doing everything from swing dancing to whale watching, and eating lunch at the hottest and healthiest spots in the OC. These parties are always quite the event and I must say I am so proud to be a part of this project since the start. With a live acoustic set from Seedless around 9 and a beachwear fashion show a bit before then this should be the best party yet. So come in support, come and enjoy, read, and let me know what you think. xoxo

A Case of You

Just before our love got lost you said
"I am as constant as a northern star"
And I said "Constantly in the darkness
Where's that at?
If you want me I'll be in the bar"

On the back of a cartoon coaster
In the blue TV screen light
I drew a map of Canada
Oh Canada
With your face sketched on it twice
Oh you're in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and so sweet

Oh I could drink a case of you darling
Still I'd be on my feet
oh I would still be on my feet

Oh I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
I'm frightened by the devil
And I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid

I remember that time you told me you said
"Love is touching souls"
Surely you touched mine
'Cause part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time
Oh, you're in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and so sweet

Oh I could drink a case of you darling
And I would still be on my feet
I would still be on my feet

I met a woman
She had a mouth like yours
She knew your life
She knew your devils and your deeds
And she said
"Go to him, stay with him if you can
But be prepared to bleed"

Oh but you are in my blood
You're my holy wine
You're so bitter, bitter and so sweet

Oh, I could drink a case of you darling
Still I'd be on my feet
I would still be on my feet

come in

I asked the sun, "why don't you come in, stay awhile, and tell me what you've seen"
She took off her shoes and laid softly on my white couch, the room so bright I could barely see tomorrow. She had been tired for awhile and while I didn't want to bother her I couldn't help but wonder how she loves. She said, "it's always the same with you, coming back to the same questions, learning the same lessons. I know you and although we have only been together awhile I've seen you and I've seen the things you do. I know you thought it would be different without the moon, but you my dear are still the same. Always have been, Always will be." I made her some tea and thought about how many different ways she was right about me.

Paid Dues

 

PAID DUES review up on orangecounty.com. 

the try.

She asked, "Why do you get so vacant every time you say goodbye?"
He told her, "little girl don't you know that it's all in the eyes?"
He put down his drink between words to make a strong point
but her ice had melting and she hated the choice.
Money is like time, there is never enough
it goes when it comes and it's all about luck.
She tried to stay standing and he tried to stay still
but the two of them know that despite wish and will
a fish lives in water and a bird in the sky,
that although it can't be it is so worth the try.

Foxy Roxy

Some shots of the Pricks family upstairs at the Roxy and late late night at Paramount.

fool

I died my hair blonde. I'm pregnant. And not keeping it. I am moving to Singapore next week. I just got cast on Bad Girls Club. My real name is Nathanial. I think you're funny. I love Hello Kitty. I have never read a book. I hate the south of France. I am sitting on my couch writing this in my underwear. Oh, wait. that one was true. Sorry, I just had to get it out of my system. Aprils Fools Day :)