Night 4 and day 5- Concert and church

Greetings everyone, from Londondenderry NH! The trip is complete; we have returned to our respective drop off points and I for one miss it allready.

I posted Day 4 a bit early since I didn't know what was going to happen that night. Well, enough happend to warrant disclosure on this here blog. Note: I still don't have my USB cable, so I will have to upload pictures later. Possibly tonight, when I can put my SD card into my Dad's camera.

Shortly after posting the last blog, dX got off of the phone with his friend CJ. He said CJ was going to a show in Epping, and he could take us. Epping... we drove through there on the first day of our trip! Since biking was out of the question, the hudson home was kind enough to let us leave our bikes with them and pick them up later.

After waiting a long long time, CJ finally found us and picked us up. We threw our packs in the back seat and drove off... CJ and dX go back along way and were talking about the old days while I sorta chilled in the back seat. It was funny just to listen to their conversation. Eventually dX told CJ to take a left at exit seven, meaning to take a left after pulling off the highway. But CJ interperted it as "exit 7 will be on the left". So we missed that road. He decided to get off on the next exit, but it wasn't the right highway. They puzzled over the map just a bit and then CJ looked at dX and said

"Dude, do you want to find this the like we used to back in the day?"
"I'm game."

With that, CJ took the directions and crumpled them up into a ball, then threw them into the backseat.

"You must swear to not open and offer advice from those directions."

"Upon my honor." I replied.

We pulled out in the general direction of the concert laughing and having a good time, deciding that getting unlost could be just as much fun as the concert, but actually we found it very fast. We had pulled over to get gas and CJ chanced to ask where the venue was. The girl gave him a weird look and pointed out the window and said "Right across the street." We got there in time to still see 3 or 4 opening bands, though one of the bands that CJ had freinds in had allready played.

I was going to try and describe what the concert was like, but it was so huge, I think I will save it for another post. I'll just go into a little detail this time:

Okay, the music. I will be honest- Hardcore can be somewhat of an aquried taste, and even for me, I am not always in the mood for it. Its got alot of energy though and there really is alot of talent to be heard in it. The first band that played was "Our last night". They were a 5 peice band- drummer, guitarist, a singer who I think played guitar as well, a screamer and bass player. The unusual thing was that the screamer was 13. But he was incredible.

Trevor, the lead screamer of Our Last Night, in all his adolesent glory

He was having so much fun, jumping around, interacting with the crowd- the band was AWESOME. He got the crowd going, too. The other band that I thought was really good was Sparks the Rescue- they had two guitarists and a bass player and an amazing drummer. They played what I've heard reffered to as "fantasy guitar" though I'm not sure if that is the proper name- its the kind of almost cheesy sounding guitar sound used alot in the 80s. But it really sounds cool with these guys, and they are REALLY REALLY tallented. They kept doing call and answer stuff back and forth with the guitars really fast- playing a riff partly on one guitar, then on the other, then back on the first one all within a second or two, then playing the chords together in perferct sync- very technical and really impressive sounding. They did this all while jumping around and dancing all over the stage, just short of hitting eachother. I'm not sure if this does the music justice, I suppose you just would have to be there.

The dancing was inSANE.... but I will leave that and my analyztion of it for another post.

After the show we went back to CJ's house in Wilton and crashed there. His room was so crowded with music stuff- guitars, drum kits and cymbol peices everywhere, a keyboard, a piano, sheet music- it was ridiculous. The room was small too- there were two futons, but both were full of stuff. They basically just started grabbing stuff off of it and throwing it in corners and under the beds- wherever they would fit. I got the floor, but I had to twist my self into unatural shapes even to fit on that. It was cool though.

The next morning was Sunday, and we went to dX's old church. He suprised alot of people by showing up, and it was neat to see so many people thrilled to see him. He caught up with alot of people briefly and then we left since CJ had to drive us back to Hudson to pick up our bikes before he went to work. We had accepted an offer for Lunch at someone's hosue in Merrimack but we called back to cancel since it would have meant putting at least 20 more miles into our trip and by this time we were needing to get home.

We arrived back in Hudson got our bikes out, thanked the family again for their awesomeness, and headed off. We made good time, though we got sore quicker then usual and took a breather. I had a peice of jerky and a crumbled poptart, but it occured to me that dX hadn't had any breakfast at all. He was feeling it I think. We got back on our bikes though, and I even pushed mine to 25 to say that I did it.

Somewhere between 1:30 and 2:00 we rolled back into our home turf and let oursleves in. It was a good feeling, though no one else was back from Church yet.

So thats it- the trip is over! It was alot of fun and yet it seemed shorter then expected. We learned alot. The tone of the trip was totally different then we had thought orginally. At first, we thought there was going to be alot more camping, but it turned out to feel only like a bike trip when we were on the road- we had so much fun with everyone at our host homes that when we were off the road it only felt like hanging out with our friends- which is fine, I assure you. dX kept mentioning how amazed he was at how nice all my friends were that we stopped at.

Though sometimes it seemed taxing while we were on the trip, we know we didn't ride nearly as much as we could have. Next time I do this I plan on doing something bigger.

All in all, we traveled 99.6 miles or so according to my calculations. I might as well say that we biked 100 because I'm sure some of the unrecorded stuff totals .4 miles easy.

100 miles in 4.5 days. Not bad at all. But it has only wet my appetite- I know I can do more. I mean, we didn't even get to make our smores or light a fire outside for crying out loud- we went house to house so quick there was no camping needed. Next time I think, I want to use the tent or loose the tent- poor dX carried that and a blanket- I only carried a blanket- that we ended up never using. We ate the ramen only at our host homes. Same with the hersheys. It was really fun, but in retrospect it seems a pity we packed that much stuff we didn't need. Of course, on a longer trip with out such cool friends we would need it... but I am rambling. In the end, it was an amazing experience and I got to have fun not only with dX but with everyone that I hung out with- I really feel blessed that I got to get to know so many awesome people better.

To everyone who helped us out on the trip: Thank you so much!! You made our trip go waaayyy better then either of us planned for. You were all so wonderfully nice, and I think I got to know all of you better. Sharing your home with someone you know for a day is awesome enough, but sharing it for two vegabonds is incredible. I dedicate this trip (is that possible?) to you guys.

Until next post everyone... thanks for reading.

Second poest contains the moest woeds.

Yes, I know. It’s been a bloody while. I should have known that I set myself up for a fall when I committed to do a two part post. Stupid eewah.

I know nobody really cares, but I feel as though I should explain my delinquency. On the one hand, I wrote this towards the tail end of vacation, when I knew my window of free blogging time would be closing. Stupid Eewah. On the other hand, I decided to say that my next post would also be poetic in nature. Stupid Eewah. I hadn’t gotten the time and inspiration to finish this post until just now, but I HAVE had several other ideas for posts that I set myself up not to develop. What where they you ask? I don’t…remember. Because I didn’t make them. But I bet they were genius and would have improved the world. Oops, sorry.

So…now to the meat of the post. I suppose that last bit was the gravy… I am stepping out of the serious for a second and introducing you to

Gregory K, from gottabook.blogspot.com

This man I recently found by watching a vidcast that mentioned a new form of poetry he invented: The Fib. More on that in a second- first allow me show you some of his other material:

HOLD MY BREATH

On Monday at the swimming pool,
I acted like a total fool.
“Hold my breath? No way!” I cried.
Then little Joe came to my side.
“I’ll hold it for you,” Joe did say.
So I gave him my breath... and he ran away!
Now I can’t speak or sneeze or cough.
I can’t blow the fluff of a dandelion off.
I can’t call Mom or Dad or you.
There’s really nothing I can do.
So if you see Joe somewhere, somehow
Tell him I want my breath back NOW.

I think this piece is one of my favorites. I was going to do another one of these little funny ones, but I think in the interest of brevity (ha! Riiight…) I will move on. You can get more at his web site.

Like I mentioned earlier, he also has invented a new form of structured poetry called the “Fib”. Fib is short for Fibonacci, a simple mathmatical sequence in which the pattern consists of the last two numbers combined. A fib applies this to how many syllables each line has- clever, eh? So the pacing goes like so: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc. They are a lot of fun and he suggests that they are good for warm ups for getting yourself in the ability to rhyme and match rhythm in your poems. From what I can tell, it seems it really does work. But enough of my jibber jabber- lets here some by him:

One
Small,
Precise,
Poetic,
Spiraling mixture:
Math plus poetry yields the Fib.
---
Ants
Can’t
Wear pants
When they dance.
Plus I’ve heard the news
They never put on dancing shoes.

There a lot of fun- and now you know what I was doing 2 posts ago! As you can see, Greg K. has only takes his to 8 syllable lines. I think I went to 20 something- of course, my friend GreenDragonRider had to not only 1 up me, but out do me by about 30 syllables. Her amazing achievement in literacy can be viewed here.

I’ve thought about this and my imagination was sparked- the flame caught a small flash fire of paper and I came up with a whole bunch of different schemes for poetry: Mirrored Fibs, backwards fibs (other people have also thought of this though), and Pi poems (poems written in 3, 1, 4, etc.) The flames quickly died down however, though they did not go out until after I had produced this ‘mirror fib’.

Math,
Art-
The two join
To create beauty
The syllable count ticks to eight
Then hangs gracefully in mid air
Falling once more down
It dissolves
And fades-
Art,
Math.

For some reason the balance really makes it cool for me.

Ok, now back to the serious…
Previously on uttereast.blogspot.com I asked my readers to give their interpretation of a song. Well some people at least said they tried, but I'm still waiting, lol. So here my humble interpertation of the song BLEED SEASON. I believe this song is all about a man who becomes a believer and is experiencing the struggle of maintaining a holy life…In my oppinion, if you read the whole song it follows a man from becoming a christian to dealing with the fact that there are still life issues to be dealt with even when Christ is with you. The title Bleed Season is about the times of peril or struggle in our lives-

“Is this my time to feel? Is this my time to breathe? Is this my time to bleed? Change the season”

For is not their coming as sure as the changing of the seasons?

Here is my interpretations for the verses I posted earlier:

Trace the tree and the veil will flee me <--Think of a crime scene- when someone dies, they trace the position in chalk. The tree obviously here is the cross. The veil- the infamous veil in the temple that separated the holy from the holy of holies- and symbolically, us from God.
And now I see with salty eyes <--Seeing through his tears
Consistent tragedy persisting in me
This disability's my soul's demise
Deaf to self and mute to mind
Muddled wallowing nebulous blind <--Something’s still wrong in him…

My crippled confidence is chafed away <--Its getting to him
With the answers I'm pulled astray <--He now knows what is wrong and right-
The habits laced embrace me <--Yet his old patterns are not broken
With a cold, chaotic flinch
Kiss of old deaths erase me <--Love this line… the things he thought he had killed are coming back to him…
Soft, subtle, inch by inch <--Baabbby steps…. But very EVIL baby steps, lol.

Awesomeness…. You gotta hear it. It rocks really hard.

OK.. moving on number B... Though not officially a ‘poet’, while we are on the topic of hard bands with amazing lyrisicsts, I think I should mention Bean Bag.

Bean Bag
By the time they had gotten to only their second studio released album, Bean Bag had obtained a polish and artistic maturity that is not seen in many other bands in their entire career. Their last album, Well Adjusted was a masterpiece. Unfortunately, just as they were hitting their artistic stride they were not hitting their business stride. They dissolved the band and, as sure as I know, all went to get ‘real jobs’. Check out the lyrics to the song These Stains off of their last album:

I am shame, can I enter?
I hold your name on my placenta
it has fame to see adventure
call its name to find dementure

oh, why did I leave you? I am
here but shame told me
'always' and it is soldering out these stains

sold my peace for anarchy
it took me to the sea
holding all I have to be
I shook the rug out so delicately

oh, why did I leave you? I am
here but shame told me
'always' and it is soldering out these stains

if I had just listened to you
if I had just focused in on you

oh, why did I leave you? I am
here but shame told me
'always' and it is soldering out these stains

oh, these stains

Hahaha, tell me what THAT one means… its probably even harder then the last one. I didn’t get it until I was depressed enough. Then it sort of snapped into place, and that made me happy and I haven’t solved any Bean Bag songs since then. What do you folks say?

Poetry post one, take two. Action.

Some of you are looking at the size of this post and going “oh lord, that’s a big post” (or something to that effect). First of all, allow me to congratulate you on your observational skills. VERY GOOD!

Second- uhh, Sue me, I guess. Yeah. I’ll take a Leah approach and say “This is my blog, I don’t care if you don’t like it” even though that is total hogwash since I get a lot of satisfaction from the comments area. But wait! I am a considerate blogger- that’s right! You see, this is actually a cut version. Or rather, a sliced version. I have decided to slice up my poetry post- hereafter referred to as my “poest”- into smaller, more digestible mini-morsels or poest perfection.

This poest I supoest, (sorry) will include (I)ntroduction through (S)hwab… I know that doesn’t mean anything to you, but it made me laugh. Anyway…

Like many things in life, I respect, admire and attempt poetry- but I usually end up being too distracted by other things to do much of any of those verbs. And so, like most everything else, I will go on a binge, or a mood, and just take in or write poetry. This is basically how I operate; I do the same thing with computers, movies, electronics or anything that fascinates me. It is probably a blessing or a curse, but more likely a mix of the two- but alas, that is another topic altogether. This is a poest after all.

My current poetic kick probably started with lit class- We were to get some 20^th century poems to read. I chose my friend, Mr. Frosty. I decided to do In a Disused Graveyard.

I heard a lot of good stuff, including some pieces by people with weird names like E.E. Cummings, and people who’s names half of us mistook for the wrong gender. Next class is 21^st century American authors. We are supposed to bring our own poetry or short stories. I of course, am not intimidated by this; I have a good poetic arsenal I can draw from as you can see by the new link on the right side bar to my poetry and prose page. But there are so many other people I wanted to share that I am fighting hard for the ability to show case their work as well… In case it doesn’t make it, here are some of the contestants:

Andrew Shwab

First the lead singer from the hard rock band Project 86, Shwab has recently self published several of his own short books. If you were a fan of his lyrics, it would seem a no-brainer that he would cross over to poetry; his lyrics have always been amazingly poetic, despite his hard-edged aggressive vocal style. As I have seemed to misplace my book of poetry by him, I will instead give you this example from his song “Bleed Season”. See if you can spot the symbolism:

Trace the tree and the veil will flee me

And now I see with salty eyes

Consistent tragedy persisting in me

This disability's my soul's demise

Deaf to self and mute to mind

Muddled wallowing nebulous blind

My crippled confidence is chafed away

With the answers I'm pulled astray

The habits laced embrace me

With a cold, chaotic flinch

Kiss of old deaths erase me

Soft, subtle, inch by inch

You can find the full lyrics here.

I will go into some more, cooler yet poetry in my next poest. Until then, discuss! Comment like you care. Humor me. What do you think the song is about? (Read the whole thing for context). I think I've cracked it, but I'm interested in other interpertations.

I love music as if it were indeed my job

Seriously guys- I love music so much, I should just up and marry it.

I don't mean just the light and fluffy listen-to-the-radio love for music.
Not the top-40 love for music. The hold-an-obscure-album-in-your-hands-as-if-it-were-a-lost-treasure sort of love for music.
My siblings have seemed to also developed this trait- all of us like to sit down with a new CD and just read the lyrics and listen to it with our undivided attention.... well, thats the plan anyway. Usually thats impossible in our house, but we try, and thats what counts. Little man just rocks out to it, which is cool- though I can't tell if he has a finer appreciation for it's nuanices. But it sure is cute.

I have listened to the new P.O.D. album several times- each time paying attention to the vocals or the drums or the guitar specifically. With really good bands, you pick up all these little flavorings they throw in that could easily be missed if you were just savoring the whole pie of musical goodness.

And to brag on my family a little bit, everyone pretty much has a nice diverse taste in music. Yes, I tease my mum about her honky tonky artificial twange country, and some of my more abstract electronica gets on my parents nerves, but other then that everyone basically enjoys all good music over here. Here are some things I've been listening too recently:

P.O.D. - Kind of hard, hybrid of several influences including rude-boy-rock, rastafarian, metal, and rap. But it actually sounds good.
Joy Electric- Pure retro electronic goodness. This guy prides himself in being a purists- building all his sounds from scratch on a moog synth. Also sings crazy lyrics- his latest full length album was about a family of asassin archers in the 17th century or some such craziness.
Nickel Creek- Awesome blue grass rooted band. Amazing music- lots of energy and very well crafted songs. Plus you have to check out their site cause right now they have a hillarious version of toxic they played live. Great band.)
KJ-52- White rapper. Wait, come back! He's good. Funny sometimes and rocking when not. I didn't always like him but after after seeing him at inside out soul fest and listening to his newest album (thanks Becca!), I officially like him. He's officially cool in my book. Not that that matters, but I bet he sleeps better at night.
RelientK- Borrowed their second to lastest Album from Becca (again, thanks!) and I like it. What I've heard of their newest one (titled "mmhmm") I like even better. I dunno exactly what to call them... mellow rock? Emo/pop punk? Good stuff, whatever it is.
Eisley- CRAZY CRAZY GOOD BAND! Melodic harmonic awesomeonic sibling rock. Holy cow they are so good. They are so good they homeschool. I'm just to tired to try and describe this band to you, so I wont. But seriously, check out the site I've linked but also Eisley.com. Wow why do they rock so hard? Can you tell me- can anyone tell me?