In Progress...
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__________________
Back when the neighbors wore good clean shirts--cotton--with pockets stitched loudly from a machine you could hear sometimes when they were standing close, back when the yard was work you did because it was your land right, it was your flag, to mow, to rake, to sweep, so many active verbs used on that plot with a mailbox a cool 20 seconds away with its firm handshake of an arm sticking up for the mailman as hello, like a message in a bottle he will pick up and chaperone to its next place. Back to there, where it will be opened like a fortune cookie from Mr. Chin's-where the shrimp low mein is not too oily- and whoever opens that letter will have their fortune changed, as sure as there is Mr. Chin to begin with, with his smile and bow that makes you wish you were that nice and gracious every day, which you vow to remember next time you are with temper, next time it tracks you down in its relentless way, that you'll bow to it but not lose anything in the exchange, as sure as that wish, the day, that letter from the mailbox from the house with the yard from the person in their shirt with the cotton and the pocket with stitches --it all zooms in slow motion until the lens fogs and all you can hear is your breath against a small pine cone you held in the park when you were six, and smelled while it scratched your nose. Oh that smell that smell reminds you now of christmas with snow and presents and cinnamon flurried on to baked cookies which by now remind you of trees, but way back
then is when the picture had no frame. The frame comes after time. Sometimes it's mahogany, sometimes it's no-nonsense oak, sometimes it comes from the box under dirt, but better to put your hand to it before then. Build it while the neighbors look on, even, because they should be minding their own business and heck you did put up curtains. But build the frame around it all, as you wish it to be.

He put on his best white shirt- cotton- buttoned it on the porch he had built. Solid ground, he thought, as he walked towards the silo.

Prelude:

Soon, the mason dixon filling station
approach the soft hot vapors so inclined
to settle and rinse the parched, arid well.
braided pines and sun like glass cut through
an opening to close this quiet from any sonic
boom. here weigh the beat of your cacophonous heart.
parhelion mysteries watch your eyes and remember
to love from the ferocious place you began
without country yet or allied choices
pulling what's inside out
but without danger of bleeding to death.

Well another beautiful night at McCabe's happened last night. What a wonderful room to play. An honor. It was John Gorka's DVD release concert, so I opened for him and then sang harmonies with him. His DVD, called "The Gypsy Life" is now available on his website.

Here's what I played for my portion of the evening:
Windchill (on upcoming record)
Delayed Effect (from Seamless)
Medicine (perhaps on upcoming record)
This Town (New! played on guitar)
Harlan (New! played on guitar)
Fade Away (New!)

Gene Simmons is very well-spoken.


I wore a dress this weekend.


Certain chord changes make me mourn in a nanosecond.


i love food and like to eat with my fingers.


why does every rock star pronounce you as "yo" ? (it started with alanis i think)

i'm now sitting at the phoenix airport. the above meanderings were from my hollywood apartment. think i'm getting the hang of this complete removal of privacy thing.

for those of you who are my myspace friends, my beautiful friends who say "hey! i didn't know you had a gig, why didn't you tell me!" I'll say this: pretty please get on the mailing list. (with love).

I mean, we all love this space out here. But the bulletins are obviously best used for the WHORING TRAINS!!! . I do post show info there, but it's tough for people to weed thru all that stuff.
Scrolling thru 146 pages to be reminded that someone I totally dig is visiting LA on the very day I'm playing at hotel cafe...well it's just too much for a girl.
AND while I have my hands on the high hips...
If I ask you for your myspace email address so that I can put you in my top page...are there people who don't get that it makes it much easier to find someone in their friends list? I love the community with other artists (especially new LA pals). But when i ask them for that one piece of info- so that I can put them in my top page (Where they will win Millions of Dollars, Worldwide Acclaim, and a chance to board the whoring trains!!)- aside from the blank look i can see from HERE, you'd think i was asking for their DNA.
Really, I don't want your DNA. If I happen to get some of it, I hope it's because I know you pretty well. Otherwise, I'm just trying not to scroll thru 4200 friends in order to find you. Beautiful you. Wait til I have a million friends. Then I'll really be in a tizzy.


(breathing)
yes, this phoenix airport is making me scrappy.
Today, I just want 10, 000 friends. Yes I do. I want them all to be here with me at the airport, and then I'd do a concert, just like the Southwest guy just did at gate D6, singing and playing to thunderous applause from Groups A to C.

I'm on my way to Texas.

Oh! now I was going to mention something else about the mailing list.
Here's the thing-
if you were on it, you'd get to know me, and see that i'm quite philosophical.
Here's a snippet for the one that just went out in LA:

"You know the saying- when one window closes, a door opens and there is a penguin."

C'mon! You can't BUY that kind of mystical rumination.

I'm very behind in all other communications-
I was going to email Texas people to tell them I was coming, but I suspect they know.
They have that extra sense that makes them stay one step ahead of the law.
The Fuzz. The Heat. Breaker Breaker.
You got yer ears on?

I'm taking my brand new Taylor Guitar with me (right now named Miss Tizzy, for Miss Lizzy, for Elizabeth..Taylor. It's not a done deal.)

I'll be adding to this very deep collection of thoughts soon.
But for now-
peace/out/

Since my new friend William referred to this article in a comment, I thought I'd repost it here from my website. It was originally published in New Texas Magazine. Their theme for that month's edition was "Men". They gave me lots of leeway (always a good idea).
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Spicer On Men
by Amilia K Spicer



OK, I admit it. I like the sound of "Spicer on Men". I should just wrap it up right now and let the beauty of that headline resonate. My extracurricular activities seem to make me a shoo-in for this subject- I've been such a fan of men that it always seemed cruel and unusual punishment to have to choose just one. My compromise- one at a time (although factoring in Eastern Standard vs Pacific, oh never mind.) In celebration of them I'll start by talking about that yearly ritual, the annual Mother/Daughter banquet.

A few years ago, when I was wearing my best dress to Sunday school and singing in the choir (to be denied during the Rolling Stone interview), deep in the wells of the Methodist church we would gather for something called the Mother/Daughter dinner. There in the basement were long tables covered with that mysterious lay of buffet land- the wares of domestic sport, steaming under corningware, and promising to fulfill all your dreams. You'd anxiously wait as those in charge put each offering out, lining them just so, so as to at once delight and deny. No, you can not get to the desserts before slinking across the miles of good-for- you. Seven kinds of meatloaf, all needing ketchup. If only I could get to the scalloped potatoes and rice krispy treats. Dutifully you'd spoon a few green beans onto the paper plate (green beans made with ham, of course. We were so misled about that "good for you").

After a few years at this event, you would start to recognize returning assailants, which dishes to stay away from. And whose mother was making them. In a succinct way, it changed your view of that mother, and by default, your friend who came from that mother. You no longer saw your childhood friends the same, now that you knew their mother was responsible for THAT CASSEROLE. Did they have to eat it every day at home? Were their holidays celebrated with those strange, sticky Minute Rice remnants attached to chunks of sirloin? No wonder they are so pale.

I triumph in my own offering, my mother's offering, which was by lineage, my own. Yep, that's right, WE made that good chicken. That's our family. After dinner there was entertainment, an assortment of delightful musical moments and comedy, some intended. The final event was the big contest. I am not sure if I will be breaking any secret code by divulging to the male audience what happens after dinner at the Mother/Daughter banquets. But carnations were involved. Small pots of carnations sat cheerfully at various spots on these tables, and one by one, were given as prizes for exciting competitions such as who had traveled the furthest to be there that very evening, or who was wearing the most buttons. As a competitive youngster, these moments were thrilling. As with the buffet choices, experience was your friend: Before leaving the house, I would count my buttons, anticipating victory over that pesky "grandmother" (probably an interloping Catholic), The year I arrived neatly packed in by 21 buttons (you try it), was forever marred by the announcement that everyone should start counting their zippers. Crestfallen, I realized that they were on to me. I had been too smug in the buffet line.

The kitchen help at these dinners were men. Husbands, fathers. They wore chef's hats and aprons, and became pink-cheeked early on from the heating and reheating. They didn't't talk much as they gripped the silver handles on those big vats of mashed potatoes, looking slightly more confident than when they carefully chaperoned the jello molds from the kitchen. They were the same men who looked so dignified every Sunday. They were the Ushers, the ones who quietly led you to your seat, the men who wore the white carnations. Those same crisp little flowers that eluded me at the banquet looked so dignified on dark suits, and they seemed to make men stand straighter. If you got to church early enough, you'd see their boutonnieres in a little glass, with the pearl tipped pin ready for to puncture their lapel. Sometimes those silent men would give you the carnation after the service, and you could take it home to soak in colored water, and marvel at the streaks of red or blue. But it was in my adult life that I met a man who was tailor-made for carnation-wearing. And I doubt he'd ushered anyone anywhere except perhaps through his living room to get him a Budweiser. He was my neighbor Bob.

Now everybody at some time or another probably has a neighbor Bob. But this particular Bob was one of a kind. He was 70 something, and resembled Clark Gable in his old pictures. Struck by polio as a child, he hobbled around his small apartment, thin and gracious. He'd lived there for over twenty years, and had practically wired himself closed in there with all his electronics and gadgets. Televisions peered through every crevice, VCRs, books, pictures, records, tapes and tools filled every dust free space. He could recite Shakespeare, storyboard Wells, and still find time to fix every appliance dropped at his doorstep by the Armenian children who lived above him. He sat outside his door in the summer time, and saw me swimming not long after I moved in next door to number six. He waved from his lawn chair. Two days later when the moving trucks arrived with my boxes, he walked over and dropped an exacto knife on my doorstep. It was a curious little thing- bright orange and festive. Something you might find added to the Ginsu Knife Collection as a special bonus (if you called NOW). He dropped it there for me without comment and walked back to apartment five. We became friends. Months later, acclimated to the heat and smog of North Hollywood, I'd sit on his couch and trade quips with him. He fancied me the younger sister to Jodie Foster, and had our pictures hung side by side. We watched movies, an event not at all marred by the fact that he was legally blind, and selectively deaf. He had all the classics taped from cable, marked and indexed alphabetically in drawers. He called me the girl next door, which of course, I was.

But as time went on, my neighborhood filled with more hoods than neighbors, and this girl next door was reminded by visiting friends to double bolt the door. I scoffed, confident that this discomfort was helping me write. But the accumulative absence of beauty was taking its toll. As more time passed, it became clear that Bob was the only thing keeping me there. When I talked about moving, he became quiet. And then he stayed quiet for a few days.

The day he told me he was dying, he spit the words out like he just didn't have any room left for them. They had been taking up space in an already cluttered apartment , and now he was feeling indignant. He started giving away things. For me -his reference book, the one he had edited and revised in pen. His notes and exclamations rubbed against the printed ink like an impatient elbow, reminding me not to believe everything I read.

The day I moved, I parked the moving van in front of the building, and made sure he never saw the boxes. On that same day, I helped carry him out to his daughter's van parked in the back of the building, on its way to the hospital. That was the last time I saw him. It sounds so dramatic, but I assure you I've taken no license here. It is satisfying that he never knew I left. He would have liked that kind of ending in a movie, and I would have yelled "Give me a break".

Sometimes the mark of a man is that he's always remembered as the boy next door.
_______________
amilia k spicer
copyright 2002
In loving memory of Bob Curnow

This wasn't a song...i guess it's a poem for lack of a better category. I wrote it in the late 90's. But, (are you ready for this trail of breadcrumbs) ..."Streets" ended up inspiring something else I wrote later, in 2002, (also poem-ish) called "Words", which ultimately I'm integrating in to a song called "Karma", which will be renamed at some point to: "Words I Say" because, well I am using those words, and let's face it, I need to break the one-syllable curse... And THAT song is one I'm working on for the in-progress CD, which is not done. Shit that's a long path. Everybody rest.
So here was step one of it. Which I lived.


Streets

Past little Armenia
Rode Sunset east
Passed on the right by the Shangri-la
Bus
going 40 at least.
With its hopeful inhabitants
wishing there was something to see
Guess the Euphoria was full.
Haven't seen a tattoo in half a mile
hieroglyphics in my head have been here a while
Rosie's got something clutched in her hand
Riccardo was here, but he's back with the gang,
so he's checking out
peace
with his down looking eyes
Rosie said he never really did try
to get out
like she tried to learn sign language
and tried to read more
but she's the same as she ever was
she says to the floor
You reap what you sow
Can't change what you know.

Riccardo and I spoke in Spanish at night
ran with the boys til the fire inside
made us burn, we'd lick the salt off our rims
locked the doors, crawled the floors til the morning came in
can't change what you know
sometimes you forget
when you're deep in the arc
in the small of your back
i said we're the same
at least for the night
Riccardo looked away
down streets out of sight
can't change who you are
he'd say in my ear
someday i'll go back
and you'll disappear

and i always thought
i spoke better in tongues
i'd dream in spanish
wake up knowing none
he'd put on the suit and the tie and the smile
with one tattoo tear stained under his eye
it s a permanent thing
one last piece of his style
he thought his colors might fade in awhile
all day i'd remember
cilantro and lime
craved his crazed shaking moment
soaked it in through my vines
and i ran my tongue over every mark on his skin
and i pushed myself so deep into him
i became the tattoo
he'd have to erase
all lines lead to this
you can't change the place
you began
or the when in the end
not yours to write
leave a mark where you want
i'd say
leave a mark on your life.

Then one night i heard him rewriting words
shouting my name like brando
outside my door
with the boys he'd been running from, down streets doubled back;
they all led him there to the tire marked track
and the signs were all gone
True colors back on.
That potion tequila had changed him again
so he howled like a wolf
that had once been a man
and cried my name out
in the streets last dead end
i heard him til sunrise
then i heard him again
and i always thought
i spoke better in tongues
i'd dream in spanish
wake up knowing none
But the santa anas are blowing today
One more gust and I'm flying away
down sunset's divide, out to the sea
where the el nino tides speak in spanish to me
you can't change what you know
you just find a place
on streets that go back
sometimes you escape
and you run until something
keeps you awhile
but you keep what you own
just a piece of your style.
**************************
aks
© Copyright
1999 or so

What fills the night
When we're induced to dreaming?
Fear of flight,
or kites untied for keeping

Put down your signs
Disregard your fences
Outside the lines
Are halls now made for dances.

Remember what I said about the only thing I'll ever know?
That love won't disappear or melt away under the snow.
It is a lion to contend with and defend with in to the storm
It is the christmas day, the hanukah, the chant we're born with.

Under the pines my footprints are receding
My coat unwinds, I see where I begin.
Can we forgive the strands that sting and leave us bleeding
Can we unbreak our hearts of porcelain?

There is a majesty in shaking hands that find a candle
What if the prophecy was that we could light the world?
Then maybe we could see the tumbling meteors outside the window
And hear a harmony as they collide outside our door.

And if I've loved you then you must know all these things-
That days for praying are the gifts we have to bring
So what we mend with and we bend with in to the storm
Becomes the christmas day, the hanukah, the chant we're born with.


*********
My Christmas Song copyright 2006
written december 14, 2006, hollywood ca
amilia k spicer

Lyrics to "Summer Song":



I've been thinking about how beautiful life can be
and then there's you and me
hitting the fan.

And I see you as a perfect landscape
but I'm just a handshake
from blowing the deal.
From blowing the deal.

And I would give you almost anything dear
it's just not perfectly clear
what that would be.
Diamonds or rubies, or years of home movies
that show until midnight but last all the years.
That last all the years.

And I love you like summer
fell in to the fall.
But here it is winter
remember, remember it all.

But I've been listening to some gypsy music
Some tamborine voodoo
under the moon.
And it shakes my senses with its rattlesnake dances
and I only know I'm no longer in view.
No longer in view.

And I love you like summer
Fell in to the fall.
But here it is winter
Remember, remember it all.



© Copyright 2004

I had a show with Richie Havens last week in Suffolk, Virginia.
It was unbelievable.
The whole night was just magic.
He was so gracious, such a light. Such power in his humbleness.

And I didn't know his music before that night! (I'm glad you can't throw stuff from there)

I went out afterwards with the crew (yes, a crew, it's a BIG arts center, and there are lots of folks runnning around with walkie talkies. All of them formidable competition for whiskey drinkin)

I've had the good fortune of touring with John Gorka as of late, and I could write a book about how freakin amazing he is. We laugh alot. I sing harmonies with him. Sometimes I know the songs.

In these ways and others I'm quite lucky.

I have a few aches too
some of them bigger than I can hold right now

but I'll remember
how sweet some nights really can be.

Ok, so this is a small brush stroke. I'll add more later when I've had some sleep.
But
I'm back from 3 weeks in Texas, which included 18 days of camping during the Kerrville Folk Festival. It was a great festival, and I was daggone busy for most of it.
Taught song school this year, which was amazing, played Mainstage, Threadgill, and hosted Ballad Tree.
Galloped in to Austin to do Bryan Beck's morning show on KGSR, sauntered to Fredericksburg to join Rick Starr on the air at KFAN, and then...
think I did eat a meal in there somewhere.

The ranch was dusty. When I talk now, little puffs of dust come out of my mouth.
Kerrleechie. (why with all the "kerr" jokes has no one called Kaleechie this? and how do you spell it?)
My new tent did not leak. It only rained once so not a big test, but still. Not getting flooded during a rainstorm was a revelation.

I made the cover of 2 papers while there, which will please my mom, and I did not get any chigger or spider bites, scorpion stings, the kerr-boli virus going around, or ill-thought-out shoe injuries. This will also please my mom.

I left 5 miller lites in a cooler at the ranch if anyone wants one.

I saw old friends, made many new ones, and hugged approximately four thousand people. give or take. i happen to love the 105 degrees it mostly was, and never went without my cowboy hat (or outback hat. i've branched out).

Crocs are the perfect camping shoe. bright yellow ones WILL startle people though.
especially hippies.

i met someone who knows my ex who lives in thailand.
with all the story swapping we did, the salient point is that he missed my shows.

that's page one of the wrap up.

i am secure in the fact that i did indeed mess with texas.