This one's more of a rocker... the type of song I sing acoustic that used to drive REDACTED crazy: "You're wasting these songs by not having a band!!!!" Feh. Thanks for not wanting to be my friend after I left your band, REDACTED. Where's my video, REDACTED? Maybe to sing Making a sign Cuts the mist out of my mind Calling sound Culling it down Brings the lightning to ground Soften the sanity focus I'll be the upside down roses I'll only see by my own Bright Light Is there a tone A word or a rune I can carve into my bones? Draw me a card Mirror in shards I am wholly in the parts Yet another song about making music and the creative thang. I started this one on the 19th, promptly forgot what I had played, then figured it out again last night and this morning. Next!

It's probably the first full song I've written in a year or so. Culled from a couple of false starts and listening to lots of Son Volt, Eleventh Dream Day, and Go-Betweens. As should be expected, it doesn't sound much like any of 'em. Called "It Will Matter," here are the lyrics: Can I talk you down From the highest roof in town Can I make the sounds Clear but not too loud That'll make you wanna? Can any body Really get inside your head? Can any body Put your tears to rest? Can I make you smile Like you haven't in a while Do I have the style Low but not too wild That'll make you wanna? And I'll bring Cooling water And I'll bring A sturdy ladder And I'll sing Enough that it will matter I'm of no mind to flatter That might just bring your laughter I'll still hold my hand out to you (repeat verse two) --copyright 2004 Matthew Wayne Selznick Maybe this will bring the muse out from hibernation. It is Spring, after all.

There are So many fucking Christians In this desert town When strangers meet They exchange churches Like kids comparing baseball cards Cell phones Are the boom boxes Of the new millennium The desert encourages Forty year old women With fifty-year wrinkles Brown And Crevassed To wear tight sweaters Short denim skirts And fuck-me boots In a group of ten teenage boys Eight are skinheads Seven are puffy gym-class bodybuilders Four (or five) are white supremists In hip-hop baggies Two Are missing Home, hovering over their laptops Plotting their catastrophic statements And cowering in fear of their peers. NASCAR should have a church here. Seriously. New blue jeans Pressed Equal dress slacks I wonder how the Punks Hippies Pagans Queers Democrats Skeptics Last 'round these here parts? And where do they hide? And where do I find them? -- written from a Starbucks in Victorville, CA, USA