Parker played this for me the other night. He saw it (heard it, felt it) at All Good a couple of weeks ago. And loved it.
Makes me want to drum. Funny how a string band can do that to you.The Show comes out Sept 1. Complicated is part of it.
*Note: He's probably saying the Sense of something coming down this telephone wire. I like Scent better.
I love that Lauren recognizes that there exist belting-out-of-car-windows, dancing-to-in-fields and humming-to-softly-en-route-to-climb-granite-in-the-Wind-River-Mountains kinds of songs.
My cousins Amory and Parker agree that a lot of Dave Matthews Band falls into that category.
It was in the desert, in a car, with the windows down that I first heard this song. It was my first Dave Matthews love, the song (and situation) that made it clear to me why people love him (and the Band) so much.
The Maker is track 1 on disc 2 of Live in Chicago.
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Joe de Grazia, my dad, makes his internet debut...
And, Paul Hughes, since I know you're reading this, I mean it 100% lovingly when I call you a mad raver.
Note the Grateful Dead logo on the cabinet between our heads. Parker drew that baby when he was like 11. I love it. We feature Led Zeppelin and Phish art in this kitchen too.
And note Pops's last comment about thinning our own herds. Yikes. He's not really that crazy. Just a rookie video blogger looking to make a name for himself.
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Steve Forbert's Midsummer Night's Toast is track 3 on the mix Parker gave me for Christmas. It was the first song on there that caught my attention. This is the second. It's track 7.
I love how it doesn't reveal itself as a love song until the last verse. And I love the mystery in that turn.
My brain is like a drummer
Trying to hold a groove
You know the whole song's about to change, but you don't know how.
Above the Thunder is track 10 on Home.
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My cousin Parker drives to Wilmington, North Carolina to start his first semester of college tomorrow. I cried thinking about him leaving tonight. And not because I was sad that these past six months are over - a six months during which P and I have been geographically close enough to have had the option to hang out almost any day we've wanted to (and taken the option quite a bit). But because I am overwhelmingly excited about how much I love that dude. And because I am overwhelmingly excited about the next phase of our friendship, a phase that I'm sure will be even better.
Parker and I made a big connection listening to this song and talking about it this fall and winter.
It's called Sailing to Philadelphia, and it's track 2 on Sailing to Philadelphia. Mark Knopfler and James Taylor are involved.
And that's P in the picture. Our grandfather took my sister, our cousin Tyler, Parker, and me flyfishing one day last summer.
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The guests were about to arrive. Hal the grandfather realized that we had no Coke for the rum. Amory the cousin had just walked through the door, toward me, and into Hal's eyeshot. Hal pulled out his wallet, threw a bill, and told us to be back with Coke and Ginge as soon as possible. I grabbed the mix that Parker (Amory's little brother) had just given me. Amory and I raced to Hal's car.
Track three came on. Amory stopped mid-sentence and reached for the volume.
Amory: I love this song. You know it? Steve Forbert.
Jake: No. Never heard it. P gave it to me today.
Amory: Dude you're gonna love it.
That's all I need to hear.
Steve Forbert's Midsummer Night's Toast is track 2 on Alive on Arrival. More importantly, it's track 3 on what's turning out to be a totally excellent Christmas present.
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The Carrot Project was born on a boat. In the purple water. Sailing toward Osprey Reef, a lonely and magical coral lagoon 100km east of the Outer Barrier.
It was October 2006, and I had raced down from Beijing to spend 10 days working on Big Mama, an 18 meter yacht that operates out of Bloomfield, a tiny rainforest town three hours of dirt roads north of Cairns, Australia.
I did strange things with my vacations when I lived in China.
Big Mama is my uncle's boat. He and his friends built it from scratch many years ago, and they now serve a tiny sliver of Tropical North Queensland's tourism market: the brave glowing lunatics that choose adventure over comfort.*
That night two years ago, I was on watch, half-seasick, and harnessed to the guardrail. With me on deck was Chris, a candle entrepreneur turned volunteer conservationist executive, and he and I were in charge between 2am and 6am. Our responsibilities included watching for other boats, trimming the sails as needed, making sure the autopilot didn't change its mind on us, and staying awake. Technology was cooperating, and the wind was steady, so we sat and talked.
My big life plan at that point had already started coming together, for Chris and I had been scheming for months. I would spend another six to eight months in Beijing, wrap up work there, and then head on down to Cairns. While I was extracting myself from Beijing, Chris would plug me in with the necessary Aussies, and I'd lock up work with one of two sustainable agriculture projects. Bananas, possibly. Or, if not, sugar cane. Either way, the direction was clear: plants, soils, chemicals, greenhouses, food. Growing sustainable abundance.
But that night we drifted. We talked about markets, about capitalism, about greed, and about business. And we wondered what radical transparency and consumer enlightenment might mean. What would we buy if we knew what buying meant? How would we live if we could see every impact we had?
And we wondered what the internets had to offer. If there already existed a library of the essential statistics on companies and products and manufacturing processes. If there was a way to compare brands and their relative social and environmental responsibility. If there was a tool for educating consumers about the impacts businesses have on our long term well being.
We figured that something must already exist, and we figured that, if it didn't, somebody ought to make it happen.
About four months later, I had dinner with Ludovic, told him about that night on Big Mama, and the life plan grew bigger, crazier, geekier, and much more exciting.
I write this not because of any Carrot Project announcement or breakthrough and the nostalgia that something like that might unearth. I write because my cousin Parker is on his way to Australia, because soon he'll be out on that water, out on that Reef, and out under those stars. I write because I'm jealous. And I write because I'm grateful.
That night in Australia gave me a project that has hooked me so deep that I'd rather be right here, in my grandfather's office, in a suburb of Wilmington, DE, cold wind whipping on the windows, than on a plane with Parker, flying to the wild side of paradise.
*Note: The pirate in the picture below is our uncle Kim. We think it's good that he looks like that, gold hoop in the ear and all. It properly limits his market for charter customers.
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My cousin Parker and I just watched a movie we made five years ago. A full family effort. Our tribute to Best in Show.
Below the Belt.
The story of the greatest heavyweight title fight in history.
Last Christmas, Zoe, another cousin, put the movie on a DVD and added interviews from the movie premiere, outtakes, and deleted scenes.
When we made the movie, my grandmother was very much alive, very much a part of the summer when we shot the movie and the winter when we edited and released it to our world.
And Parker and I saw her tonight, on that DVD. She walked through the party at the premiere, dressed in her costume ball finest, and she walked through a scene in the outtakes, making a joke. Making us laugh. Doing what she did best.
No one I would have rather seen. Been almost 8 months.
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