Tim O’Gara writes songs like secrets. They live in fragments and flashes, tucked away inside, like the ghosts in an old cigar box – first grade valentine, fake ID, broken necklace, foreign coins – the things you keep. They are poetry. Gone away images hung on fragile frames that bend and sway and play in and out of time with an underlying frailty and a tender valor. They are tales of nights on Henry Ridge, of demented elves and pink lemonade skies, of papyrus stuffed crocodiles, of rye whiskey and falling mountains. They remind us that life is magically slow and still when we listen closely. To share Tim’s music with another is an intimate exchange that, like the best of secrets, requires a partner with a sincere ear and an open heart. They are the sounds of love and trust. So watch yourself … these songs swim with nothing on. Consider this a warning. A secret. From one friend to another.

***

so tim calls me a few weeks back. a friend is starting a zine and some kind of production company and wanted me to write something about his music for her.

‘sure,’ i said. ‘when you need it by?’

‘oh,’ says tim – still on topanga time – ‘you know. a few, weeks, you know … a little while. you got awhile.’

‘cool man. got it. i’ll get right on it.’

completely forgot about it.

two nights ago, i get a text from tim.

‘did you ever write that thing?’

fuck.

‘no timmy, i’m an asshole and i forgot. i’m good for it, though. when you need it?’

‘oh, well, you know. tomorrow would be good,’ he says.

***

we are in a full blown drought down here. strange that the river is about to burst through the levees while the land around it turns to dust. we are also breaking heat records, which doesn’t seem like it would be possible, but, who knows?

anyway, i’m turning to tim to conjure up some rain for us. i know he can do it.

***

here’s tim and sean and renne and amelia playing scarlet mccreary under the lovely grey topanga canyon fall skies. god that looks nice. i used to get to play drums with these folks. science needs to figure out this whole you-can-only-be-in-one-place-at-one-time hindrance. it’s a real drag sometimes.

i really wanted to be back so i could keep my foot in the door of my old life.

after seven years i had carved out a little niche for myself at topanga days. i felt like i belonged there. played a good amount of music with a bunch of great people. drank a lot of free keg beer behind the main stage. always ran into a hundred people i knew and loved and we hung out after the bands’ sets behind the community house. and i never paid an admission fee. it felt like our own private three day music festival. it was a great feeling, and i really didn’t want to let all that time and all those memories slip quietly into the good ole days without a fight. not yet.

what i learned, though, was that those days … they’re already slipping. my time in topanga canyon with jess and darb and brendan and tim o and sean and renee and maestro and cameron and robin and bella and jane and dina and scotty and greg and cindy and lucy and liz and doug and lisa and lance and ian and naomi and virginia and chin and farrug and bc and sally and on and on … it’s time that happened already. beautiful time that i’ll always have with me. but time i know i need to stop trying to hold on to. because it moves away. i moved away. and things change. people get born and people get dead and people move away and life becomes something different.

we used to leave the festival and gather at darby’s with the grill and the tecate’s and the porch picking and the shit talking and the horseshoes and the dogs and the love and the laughter and we’d go long into the night and we’d do it again the next day and the next and then on and on throughout the summer. and it felt like it would never end … why the hell would it?

i remember one really special little run we had. it was probably three or four summers ago now … me and darby and lance and the maestro dave dale and robin and several other cats from froggy’s got deeply into darts. deeply. into. darts. i don’t know, something just kind of clicked. the universe aligned, and we spent every single night for at least two straight weeks at froggy’s playing darts into the wee hours after the bar closed. the air was warm and the light bites were cold and the windows were opened and the breeze came through and you could hear the coyotes and feel the ocean not too far off and we put music on and got high on the patio and played darts like our lives depended on it and we felt no fucking pain.

one night, well into a session, maestro stopped us all and said, rather solemnly, that we should take a moment and acknowledge what was happening. he said, ‘this is a really, really special thing that’s happening. you know it? and no one really knows why it is, or even what it is, but we all feel it. but it won’t last forever. so let’s just make sure we acknowledge it.’ i remember thinking that i couldn’t believe what he said could be true. that it would ever end. it just all felt too perfect.

but, of course, maestro was right. it did end. just slid away, gently, taking all of the endless summer nights with it.

one trip does not a tradition make, of course. but you gotta start somewhere.

the dingus is a hell of a hula hooper. she carries a portable hula hoop in the trunk of her car.

me and big o …

makenzie …

brendan actually rigged a pulley system to transport beer from the bar to his booth. that’s an irishman with some serious initiative …

our rehearsal was watching tim write up the set list five minutes before the gig.

sean is a guy you’d want in a fox hole with you, because he’s got ice in his veins and can sing really well for when times get slow. it gets lonely in a fox hole.

sean and renee …

brendan …

tim o …

christopher drank all day. much later that night nader, jess, chris and i found our way to abuelitas. chris was completely shit faced. i asked him what he wanted from the bar, and he said, ‘well, i guess a gin and tonic.’ so i ordered one. and sexy jessica the bartender made him a huge one in a pint glass. when our jess saw chris drinking it, she said, ‘oh, good, you got chris a water!’ i said, ‘no, baby, that’s a gin and tonic.’ chicks. always trying to keep us from drinking ourselves to death.

ironically, here’s dingus earlier in the day buying chris beer after beer while volunteering at the bar …

crazy beautiful steve …

semmels …

old bull …

carrie …

brothers duggans …

rose con tia …

the lovely beta farruggia …

whiskey …

moose …

skillet …

captain moonlight …

scotty and doug …

i love this man. carrie’s dad. drives the best grill on the west coast. seen here with the lovely lisa, who i also love. carrie gave her dad a present for his birthday while i was standing next to him at the grill. it was a photo album. on the second page was a photo from the last topanga days of carrie’s dad at the grill. yours truly was standing right next to him. deja vu all over again …

don’t look back …

a young student of psychology with a name almost like mine writes (in an academic essay):

“From 8:45 til 5pm I worked as a cashier for the All-Vendor Demo Day, one of the biggest days in golf retail. For your information: I could give a shit when it comes to golf, I just happen to work in a golf store. To prepare myself for the inevitable chaos of consumerism and misplaced priorities, I took an aderall, a friend’s prescribed medicine for Attention Deficit Disorder.”

aderall and ritalin flow like muddy river in research libraries nation wide (or so i have read). i’m looking for the kids selling opium. opium could stand to make a comeback between these research ears.

a sort of warning spoken some fifteen odd years ago from a young father to his then six year old daughter. the question is telling; the answer is as capital T as truth ever gets:

daughter: daddy, who is rod stewart?

father: rod stewart used to be a rock and roller. now he’s a fucking pussy.

fathers, love your daughters. be real. be wise. speak the truth. no lies.

comedian artie lange, responding to humorist and radio personality howard stern’s lengthy riff on ted kennedy’s brain cancer. stern, in his megaphoned-boston-brahmin “err-a …” kennedy persona, joked that they should just take the brain out. you don’t need it. it’s like the appendix. or the spleen. to which, lange responded, in typical jersey fashion:

“all you need in this life is balls and luck.”

err-a, you are correct sir …

i was (briefly) in the largest target on the planet today. this is an unofficial claim, but if there is a larger target anywhere, i sure as shit don’t want to know about it.

the irony is the contradiction between this image, the postmodern landscape of this economically strapped bastion of excessive, rampant, hyper-capitalist, mindless consumption and the reason for my visit.

not that i’m above mindless consumption or anything. you’re reading the words of a guy who was online shopping for generic finasteride from australia earlier today. look it up. but sometimes, you enter the world of the great american moral purpose, and your reason for being there just doesn’t … quite … fit.

i mean, if i was in need of body wash or swifter sheets or ky jelly or a stopwatch or season three of lost on dvd or easter candy or a new pair of slacks or a softball glove or a toilet bowl brush or a condolences card or nose hair trimmers or tube socks or a mini-pizza-oven or a stackable closet organizer or a tiger-striped steering wheel cover or a hanna montana virginal lunchbox or guitar hero stevie ray vaughan or gum or tampons or ammunition that would be one thing.

but i wasn’t.

i was there to buy dirt. needed to re-pot some herbs that are thriving on my window sill. talk about commodification. i need to go into here …

to buy … dirt.

we’re going away folks. tim o’gara, poet/songwriter/gardener, will appropriately take it from here:

i’m gone away, i’m gone away
tommorrow will be yesterday
i’ll drink until i’m sober
i will fall until i fly

i’m gone away, i’m gone away
this whiskey tastes like ginger ale
you’ll find me
or my footsteps
in the meadow

i can’t remember how this picture got on my phone, but i think it’s pretty hot.

i’m not even positive who this is … (and the lass sings, “i don’t wanna go to rehab, i said, no, no, no …”).

being in a good band having a good rehearsal is the best thing in the world next to being in love …

well, one (and a half) out of two ain’t bad, i suppose …

i went to a poetry reading the other night and a real life poet read a real life poem written about … me. my own poem. had words and images and metonymy (i think it did anyway, i still don’t understand what that is, really).

this was a beautiful first.

i have had friends paint pictures for me on two occasions. by friends, i mean ex-girlfriends. and the inspiration was, in both instances, a sort of visual soul purging following explosive, dysfunctional conflict.

nice pictures, though.

but the poem was wonderfully different. it made me feel touched and honored and proud and warm and loved. that’s a good combination (one that i don’t even think the opium resurgence could touch.)

speaking of pictures, i painted a picture of an orange tree and gave it to a friend once. the tree was the tree in the walt mink song “tree in orange.” and the friend was kevin depugh. the painting was terrible, as i recall, but it was fun doing it. and kevin is a lovely guy. hey kev.

i usually write songs for people. and by people, i mean girls (but not always). sometimes the songs probably aren’t much better than the painting of the orange tree, but sometimes they are ok. i wrote a record called ‘music for activists’ that was for one girl (mostly … songs for a couple other girls made it onto her record, but she never knew). i wrote another record called ‘miss direction’ for another girl. most of those songs on that record were actually about that girl. interestingly, both of these girls had the same name. go figure.

i wrote my first song sitting on a lawnmower when i was 16. that was for a girl too, and it was about how time was going to pass and she would learn one day that she loved me. i don’t think she ever did, but that song opened up some doors in college …

i wrote a song for a girl i fell in love with in prague when i was 20. we knew each other for about ten days. i don’t think it was really love, but i really wanted it to be so i could feel like i was falling in love in prague and writing songs in a little apartment overlooking the city while drinking wine. so romantic … i played it for her and she said, ‘that is such a sad song,’ and then we took each others clothes off.

i wrote another song for a girl in greece when i was still 20. i think i did kinda love her, but i didn’t know it for sure until i got to england and spent another few weeks with her. it was there that i found out she was 16 not eighteen (and i had turned 21 and was no longer 20). our relationship had awkwardly aged three long years in one quick second while sitting at the dinner table with her parents.

maybe i should go back to painting orange trees …

maybe i need to go buy more dirt and try to grow some more.