a poem by the bedside...

Rain swarms and branches outside sway hello and
the even the dogs don’t look happy

There’s enough luck to go around.

My sheets are dotted green and white
and though it is time I can’t seem to change
them,
see i’ve been doing that a lot lately,
grasping onto small and unimportant objects
because they contain, like a winged creature in an amber
drop, a feeling, a menacing and nostalgic patter
of
tiny
tiny
wings
and I can’t for the life of me let them escape-
though they are not they, they are just whats or thats,
socks and the colors of the blankets together and with the curtains and the candle and drawer arrangements-
stupid, really,
to think that changing my shirt that for a few days looked good
would shift the earth, my heart, and I won’t get it back,
even
with the second rinse cycle
even
though i believed in its power as surely as i did not.

Air and light and time and Space

April. I had a neighbor named April when I was little. She came over and traded out our Peeps on Easter when my birthday fell on that day- I had a big cut on my eye with stitches and I believe it was my 7th birthday. My sisters and I didn't care much for the Peeps but traded for other gory and colorful stuff brought to us by the american holiday association.

This month has been good, maybe more than that, productive. At the beginning I went into "pre production" mode in my basement and started going a bit mad with arranging organic parts with a synth, which can paint a fine picture but also makes it hard to see the outcome. I wore the same "Dave King is my Homeboy" shirt for 3 days in a row, slept in it once, and was afraid to change it for fear of losing my momentum. My friend James was playing drums with me a bit in my little hovel downstairs and then one day my neighbor told me that she couldn't take it anymore. I asked her if there was room to budge, a good time or a bad time for us to play, and she said "No. I did the whole 'musician living in my house thing' when I was in my, like, twenties, in San Francisco". Oh. That explains it! Despite her blowing the whistle on my months of playing music down there before she up and started working from home, I haven't been much up to being there, and have been just playing around for friends and listening to the demos I do have and gripping slightly for the studio time coming up in May. I decided to do my record half at this studio in Cannon Falls (Home of the CANNON CAMERA!), Mn, called Pachyderm. My record "Lure the Fox" was recorded there. So was Nirvana's "In Utero" and PJ Harvey's "Is this Desire" among many many others, and you can hear it in the way the drums sound in the room- though the studio has changed hands and they got rid of their tape machine (sad), the room sound is hard to beat. The rest of the record we're doing at the engineer's farm house, which, I just found out, used to be a sanitorium. Alright. The cast of characters on this new record is lovely, and I absolutely can not wait for it to happen, have happened, be released. It's a wonderful and sometimes excruciating feeling, waiting on something good.

On May 20th I am participating as the musical guest on NPR's new show "Wits" recorded at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. Apparently each show has a theme and the theme that night will be animals, so I found a couple of fun covers to do that night, and am hoping that an original animal song may appear sometime between now and then? Anyway, the guest author that night is Susan Orlean, who is famous for her book "The Orchid Theif", which I didn't read, but did see that strange movie "Adaptation", which was interesting. More information here.

In other news. Listening to: Bob Marley and the Wailers "In the Beginning", Neil Young "American Stars and Bars", The Strokes "Is this It", Samantha Crain "You (understood)".
Reading: Charles Bukowski "Last night of the Earth Poems". So good...see the one I posted below.

Thanks for reading. Happy Spring!
xo/hb




Air and Light and Time and Space by Charles Bukowski

"-you know, I've either had a family, a job, something
has always been in the
way
but now
I've sold my house, I've found this
place, a large studio, you should see the space and
the light.
for the first time in my life I'm going to have a place and the time to
create."

no baby, if you're going to create
you're going to create whether you work
16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you're going to create in a small room with 3 children
while you're on
welfare,
you're going to create with part of your mind and your
body blown
away,
you're going to create blind
crippled
demented,
you're going to create with a cat crawling up your
back while
the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment,
flood and fire.

baby, air and light and time and space
have nothing to do with it
and don't create anything
except maybe a longer life to find
new excuses
for.

Yeah, yeah, and a birthday cake

I have been lazy with this blog. But that's okay because my MILLIONS of followers are so very patient with me. Tomorrow I will be 27 years old. I have a feeling this year will be good- all the shitstorms of 26 will rest, full, strong. And after my birthday, I will write a proper blog equipped with photos from this month and tell my eager sweating fans what the heck I'm up to these days!
xo/hb

when the ides go marching in (thoughts and pictures of an early spring, i suppose)

The signs are large upon us, the belts, fists,
blooming night skies and we wake up
to the sun, finally, on our blinds and lids and porcelain
stretching across the mounds of a dusty duvet
'the cat hair is free' the pillow says.

my sister paints away a carnival i can never see
a distant parade mumbling sadly in the sand dunes
my earrings humming birds on my lobes,
tiny rugs of beads made by a stranger woman who sold
them in a gas station

we hear each other and never speak
blue eyes are locked and lowered down
like the world's longest hair

high in a tower
he falls to his death
his wings work,
but it doesn't matter-
nothing ever really did, in that 3 seconds
speedily,
when all was made of love and it carried him
to a mud bed face-up and beautiful,
a good friend to the firmament and all who live above
our sleepy lolly-gag



crappy photos of beautiful Torey Bonar paintings taken while in MN last week at Umber Studio.
random poem inspired by these and springtime and astrological signs.

between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.

(Mountains and spikes
crystals and corners
a table and a piece of counting tape
boats and bathtubs
letters and diamonds
a box and an ice cube
cookies and holes
a barette and a pin
a stop sign and a clock)----from a wall in a park....

Me this week, in a moment:
Listening to beautiful music,
reading a really good book
meeting new friends and
new families with really adorable and sweet children
writing new music
watching daffodils and tulips sprout up all over the city and the people
do too, riding and running and walking about in their corridors
and i am in some small way a part of it and i am in some way
very lucky and mystified and humbled because i really don't know
much else other than what is in front of me,
and, recently,
it is goodness.

( Leo, 3, and I drew on a rainysidewalk.)






(Eliza, 4, took these pictures at the park:)

Sweet Tooth/Cryin' Shame/Happy Valentines day

So last night as my friend Suz and I were singing loudly with the crowd to the song "Sweet Tooth" at the Dave Rawlings Machine show, I thought about what a good valentines day it is after all.
It's pretty easy to get sentimental, grossly nostalgic, bitter, or just depressed because of a Hallmark holiday, but if you can just get over that part (tongue in cheek) and let yourself wear red and pink tights, eat chocolate, get purple lips, and think about the good shit, it's actually a pretty great little day. I'm feeling the whiskey from last night's rollicking, but luckily my sweet ma sent me some chocolates and fancy soaps (thanks ma!).
Here are some pictures from my Valentines week that make me feel pretty sweet...
Happy Valentines Day! love, hb

Zach and Eliza and I made valentines using potato stamps, googly eyes, glitter, and Tinkerbell stickers.

At my favorite coffee shop, a beautiful dog stylishly waits by a hydrant for his owner to get his coffee.




Eliza and Pete finally
meet and become fast friends....

The Dave Rawlings Machine at the Roseland Theater!

Me+Suz+whisky+trimet=good time valentines.

And the stinkiest valentine of all is Pete, my sweet old man.

you should, well, read this poem. a few times.

The Possibilities (Beckian Fritz Goldberg)

After a wife’s death a man may talk
to his horse with a great tenderness
as if, just this morning, he had tried on
her pink slipper. And if he has no horse
he may crack his window a little
wider when it lightly rains to confirm
the roofs and trees are made
of paper. If there is no rain
he may make himself a meal at midnight,
sweet artichokes and Danish cheese,
a glass of red wine. If there is
no red, then white. He may suck the knife
clean with his tongue. Later

lying awake he may hear the wild lung
of a motorcycle far off on a far road.
If there is no motorcycle, a dog
trying for any syllable in any known
language. Something falling suddenly in
the closet, according to some law.

Nearness in the dark is a kind of beauty
though it is only a lampshade, a shoulder
of the walnut chair. If there is no chair,
then a shelf. A shelf of books with the devil’s
violet fedora tossed on top. Or something
exotic from the sea, manta ray

like the pulse in the ball of his foot.
A man may walk ten steps behind
his life. It may be sorrow of fear.
He may see her back like two doves rushing
up where a boy has flung a handful
of pebbles. If no pebbles, leaves
where a masked prowler hunches, his belt of
lockpicks, his bag of velvet like the one
from which memory snatches. These are

the possibilities, the immaculate
like miracles which are nothing
in themselves, but in this world a sign
of angels, ghosts, supernatural beings
who watch us. Who listen. Who sometimes
helplessly let us stumble on
their pyramids, their crude observatories
or let us, generation after
generation, speak to the broken horse
of the human heart.