The John Butler Trio

John Butler, head of the appropriately named John Butler Trio, is an Australian born musician who really blows my hair back. His music melds Celtic, folk, bluegrass, and blues to create a sound totally transcendent of genre. His long acrylic fingernails allow him an incredible finger-picking/strumming hybrid style of playing. His instrumental pieces communicate feelings which render words useless. He is an incredible musician, and if you're reading this, chances are you will like him.

I've been staying up later and later into the night over the past couple of weeks. I lie awake on my computer listening to my roommate's snores start every night at nine thirty, reading forums, talking to people, reminiscing. My move to Austin has prompted me to question just about everything in my life. For my first semester, I was largely without that which is most important to me, my family. I'm glad that that will no longer be the case. Being on my own, making my own decisions, trying to be a semiadult is a very strange thing to me. Sometimes I feel like I am still an infant, grasping at communication, just learning how to walk, realizing that things exist outside of me. I see my little brother as a mirror of my development. While he is learning to literally walk upon the ground, I am trying to learn to walk through my life. He is learning how to speak, I am learning how to communicate as an adult. He starts to have some idea of continuous existence while I realize that some of the people I love and care for most have their own lives, are their own people and may have moved on without me and no longer consider me as an important part of their lives. It is a normal part in the development of a person, to learn to accept that some people let go and move on, and to cling to those that don't, but it sure doesn't make it much easier to deal with. I find myself spending most of my time reading, studying, and feeling nostalgic. I am somewhat disconnected from my studies. While I consider myself dedicated to them, I do not feel a connection with them like I do with other things, and that worries me. I wish I could make enough money playing music on the streets to support a family some day, but I know this isn't the case, so I instead am learning to engineer cells, alter the very fabric of human life, and build nanomachines. I make art, doodles, drawings, sketches, songs, and I am never very satisfied with it, but in the words of an immensely wise man, "Creating is the only point." In the absence of family, as I lay alone in seemingly endless nights, creating gives me a fulfillment, a genuine happiness that few other things can give me. Breakfast with one of my best friends, laying with my brother, hiking and talking with my dad, having hours long conversations with my stepmother, and creating art and playing music. Something connects these things because they all give me a certain sense of belonging. They all make me connect with that which is most human. And in doing so, I am fulfilled.

our so-called friend

i hope you feel better now that its through
we were never together though i was with you
i'd have held your hair back if you'd get sick
and you'd cut off my hands
i wonder how you feel now that its done
i wonder if you remember me singing about a gun
i'd drive on for hours just to see you
you'd leave me to stand

standing for hours waiting for you
the rain a cold shower the water a pure blue

i gave all i could you never gave back
i'd bring love to your door you'd respond with attack
and now as i write this i wonder aloud to myself
why did i care so much
you had so much to give to me, you beat down my fears
you still have it all you just don't show it so clear
you have your own life and i'm not a part of it at all
i still care too much
lying for days lying with you
you held my heart in your hand and you made it turn blue
with your icey cold hands you know where i stand but where are you?
do you think about me now that we haven't talked for weeks
even when i think about it now it makes me feel weak
to think about all the potential i felt in you but now all gone