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valentines day. mardi gras. nba all-star weekend. what’s a girl to do?

man, i just finished playing four gigs in three days while enduring the single worst pain i have ever experienced. timing, right? something happened to my shoulder?neck?back? about a week ago, and on wednesday night the entire right side of my upper body felt like it was being boiled in hot oil. seriously, i laid in bed for eight hours in unbearable fucking pain. didn’t sleep at all. at one point i just started screaming. absurd. lefty must have thought it was the end.

so thursday i got a massage and some drugs. neither worked at all. played a gig that night with lady of the barge at chelsea’s. went home in pain. got about two hours sleep. got through friday with teaching and the southdowns parade and dinner at neil’s with tommy and sarah another gig at a house party, which was probably our best gig yet as a band. something clicked. low pressure scene. good. went home in pain and got another two hours of sleep.

got up yesterday at 7. drove downtown and set up for our spanish town parade gig. went on at about 2. in between setting up and playing i laid face down on the floor of this guy’s apartment for hours getting intermittently massaged by the lovely denise. played a two and a half hour gig in agony, but we had a great crowd. loaded up and went to the second gig (after getting trapped for awhile in spanish town by a second parade) at this cool little place behind chelsea’s. we were supposed to play at 8. we went on at 10:30. it looked bleak at first. real bleak. but a shit load of people showed up (it was some ultimate frisbee tournament party … bunch of good looking twenty year old kids from around the country getting fucked up and dancing their asses off. very odd. i learned so much.) we made some money, and some kid got me stoned at the end of the night and that _temporarily_ alleviated me of all pain. and i slept more than two hours.

heavenly.

strange emotionally, too, this weekend. when you’re suffering and lacking sleep and playing extra music and popping pills hand over fist it does things to your heart, et cetera. i was oscillating between wanting to throw my arms around everything in my life, all my problems, my mistakes, my loves and feeling bursts of bitterness and isolation that made me want to head for zee hills. extremes on the inside. but the outside held, i think. and i had help. i’m in two great little bands with great musicians that are excellent, lovely people. i’m lucky. friends … so good.

it’s raining now. storming, really. and it’s a lonely, painful valentine’s day. and, somehow, i feel like i have things just where i want them …

it’s probably the pills.

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