union rallies.

Day 1
~1,000 people

It has been over a month now, and as I watch the rallies around the Capitol wax and wane, I am just beginning to wrap my mind around what I-- and all of us in Madison, Wisconsin, the US, and the world-- have been part of for the past four weeks.

Day 2
~ 25,000 people

Day 6

The community of Madison has been transformed by this movement, and the impact won't go away quickly with the protesters. Every one of us has been affected by it, whether because we slept in the Capitol building for two weeks straight, or because we were late for work 3 out of 5 days every week because of swamped city buses, or because we suddenly have something other than Wisconsin winter weather to talk about with every single person we encounter throughout the day.

Day 7
~70,000 people

Tom Morello kicks off Week 2
with Rock for Your Rights

Our local pizza place, Ian's Pizza was absolutely swamped with business for two weeks because of hundreds of calls from around the US and the world with donations of pizza to be delivered to the protesters around the Square. Inside their store, Ian's has a board that lists all of the countries calls had come from, and a note that says "All 50 states!". They received more donations than their employees could keep up with, so many so that they started to donate their donations to other local businesses and to refer callers to other businesses to make donations.

Sit-in Feb 27

I attended the sit-in at the Capitol on February 27, fully prepared to be dragged out of the building and arrested. I was there as much for the experience as for the statement. I was moved and impressed by what the people had transformed our state Capitol into, perfectly organized chaos; a huge open communal living space that was both a statement of solidarity against the bullying of this government and a testament to the ability of people to coexist and care for each other when they are driven by common goals and not restricted by the pursuit of money.

I climbed to the second floor of the building with the number for my lawyer in magic marker on one hand and the number of a friend prepared to bail me out of jail on the other. I milled about with around 500 people as the announcement was made overhead that the building was closing at four p.m., then waited with them for the small number of police officers from counties around the state to ask us to leave. When we weren't asked to leave, or dragged out of the building, I was disappointed at first. I had come for the experience, and it was, frankly, a little boring after awhile to just mill about the Capitol listening to a drum circle and protest chants. But, then I was reminded of our reason for being there and realized that we had won this one. It was suddenly interesting to be a part of that, and I slept that night with a sense of pride for my city and my state.

"WE ARE WI"

That sense of pride was completely deflated the next morning when authorities started to restrict access to the building. That was the first moment, after attending more than two weeks of protests, that I realized that we were just going to lose.

The greatest blow, of course, came last Wednesday, when the Senate sneakily pushed through the anti-Union legislation. Although the move re-lit the fire that was threatening to burn out under the protesters, it was still completely disheartening. What are we fighting for anymore? The fight continues, but with each victory for the other side, this inspiring community is looking more and more like an angry mob to me. It seems that no matter how right we are or how loud we shout, the powers that be are not listening.  I don't know what to do to make them listen, and I know we can't possibly stop shouting.  I'm just trying to exist in my city now, witnessing this historic event without being swept up in false hope or heavy disappointment at every turn.

SOLIDARITY
Friday, Feb 18

Rock for Your Rights, Monona Terrace
Monday, Feb 21

Monday, Feb 14
Headed to the Governor's office

Tuesday, Feb 15
Teamsters arrive

Serving Ian's Pizza outside the Capitol

Rock for Your Rights
Tom Morello invites us all to join him on stage

Rules of etiquette inside the Capitol

Sneaking a moment away from work to
check out the action
Saturday, Feb 19

(what I learned in) Boston

Time Travel and Reality

I didn't fully realize that I had left Reality until I had to return to it. Isn't that always the way? Wherever you are sort of feels like it's real until you are forced into something a little more real-- closer to the Real World I've come to dread.

“We should get food at Argus when we get there.”

Thirty thousand feet up, and about three hours away, at least two states between us and the Argus Bar in Madison, Wisconsin, and we were planning our dinner. Four hours earlier, we had eaten lunch in Boston, Massachusetts, at the oldest restaurant in the U.S. Shrimp and oysters that had possibly been caught that day, hauled in from the ocean we had taken pictures of that morning. My hat had floated away with a gust of wind into the Harbor two days before. In three hours, we would be 1100 miles away from that place, back at home.

Before we left, the boys kept talking to me about time travel, and I did not understand. Louis C.K. has a bit about this amazing feat of air travel, and I didn't quite get his amazement. Not quite.

Not until I did it. And, holy shit, they were all right. In a few hours, I went from vacation to the Real World, an incredible distance for both the body and the soul, and a damn fine feat for the human mind and human existence to achieve.

It struck me at that point in the air, planning dinner a thousand miles away from lunch, embarking on a 25-hour day, chasing the sun toward a Wisconsin evening after a Massachusetts afternoon. I had hardly felt the distance between Wisconsin and the East coast; you hardly experience it flying tens of thousands of miles over the land, peering down occasionally at specks of life that are not at all recognizable as the sort of life you know.

I went to Boston because I was ready to start seeing the world. Wisconsin is amazing, but I am ready to see the rest of everything now. One night in December, I told Stefan that I hadn't been outside of the state since I was twelve, and I hadn't been inside an airport since I was eight. We left the bar, and he drove me to Dane County Regional at three a.m. We were prepared to leave town that night if the world was prepared to facilitate it. Unfortunately, there was no flight headed anywhere on this Sunday morning until six a.m., and we were too tired and too drunk to wait three hours for an impulsive trip to somewhere in the Midwest. We decided to postpone our trip, which, incidentally, gave us the opportunity to plan it a little bit.

“Where have you not been yet?” I asked him.

“Boston,” he answered.

“I'll check my calendar.”

Three weeks later, we were packing our bags at the Hart Compound and preparing to catch a bus to Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee.

The buzz of travel is exhilarating, but these boys all looked at me like I was absolutely crazy. I was high on this incredible satisfaction, contentment, this lust for life which had culminated into an overwhelming, all-consuming, completely pervasive emotional drive to live.

“I envy your excitement,” Adam said, apparently having lost the wonder years ago after one too many road trips across Kentucky.

I don't think even Kentucky could take away my wonder.

At the airport about an hour, we ate a shitty meal and drank Milwaukee's own Alterra coffees. Out of nowhere, we heard a huge cheer on all sides of the food court from groups of strangers gathered at the few TVs. Packers versus the Bears, and the Packers had just scored a touchdown with a few minutes left in the game, which meant they'd win and make it to the playoffs. Such excitement from everyone around! It was touching to see groups of strangers in their travels come together for a moment with Wisconsin spirit.

It was sunny and warm for January. We were seated near the emergency exits on the plane, which afforded us twice as much leg room as the other Coach passengers, and Google Chrome offered us free wireless for our flight. It was a fantastic day to start to see the world.

Pulling off of the runway was just as exciting and beautiful as I had imagined it would be-- which is not incredibly either of those but a little bit of each. It was slower than I imagined, which gave me time to watch the airport, then the city, then Lake Michigan and Wisconsin's shore disappear below us. Leaving the ground for the first time is a little bit magical; you can feel the plane lift off and take to the air and cease its reliance on the earth below, and then you are simply gliding through the air at a speed you can't even feel from inside the machine.

After the second day in Boston, I was thinking about moving there. The trip quickly solidified a desire to live on the East Coast for some time, to experience living everywhere, reminded me that I will need to break free and be a transient artist, experience the world everywhere. The entire time I was there, I loved Boston. I loved its transportation and its people and its sights. I ate in the restaurants and shopped in the stores and saw the markets and walked through the rush hour.

The city's population seemed young, and every place felt safe, which reminded me of home and put me well at ease. In contrast to the people, the city itself is very olde, and everything is absolutely beautiful. All of the buildings are olde and huge and majestic, with such character and style that nothing has anymore. The streets and sidewalks are periodically paved with olde bricks, which can't stand the climate at all. They are all torn up, crooked, uneven, and unfixed. This city felt warm to me, exciting, welcoming.

Boston Public Library

Chinatown

Fenway Park

Granary Burial Ground

Clam Chowdah

Harvard Yard

 Boston Harbor

The "T" subway

Now I have returned home, a step back toward Reality, but somewhat comforted by the memories of the trip and the plans that have formed in my mind to leave this place once again to see the next.

My mind is exhausted by the business of Reality. I would prefer to travel and write stories, move through time and space without a thought. I want to eat and drink in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Paris, London, and Bordeaux, pay every tab with a thousand words. In the Real World, I have to instead deal with money, work, divorce, love, school, still trying to write and to live.

I am inspired, though, by my first taste of Life outside of Reality. I am ready to leave this Real World, to no longer toil over its concerns. Money is not real, and love is not real, and school is a creation of the system I reject, and work exists only to move money around. I can experience love in my own way; I can make art instead of work, in this life of my own creation, without the Real World that does nothing but drag me down. I am ready to live in this artists' life, time travel, see the world and record it, live where nothing exists but to Write and to Live.

-The Editor

i am an artist because...

Because in five years I will read this, and I will love my life.  Because I will know how I got there.  And I will regret nothing, because life will be great.  We will build off of all of this beauty, never settling for less, never regressing to some place of average everyday nonsense where we reminisce the days of old and lament what we no longer have.

We will have this (or more) forever, and I will not look back someday and regret not keeping that promise.  I will keep that promise, keep trekking along through the artists' life.

This life is awesome, and we make it fucking awesome.  We will remember these moments through our art.

I am an artist because someone needs to capture the magic, and when I re-read what I write I can feel the magic and music and the love and the people all around me.  Because I wrote these words in a room of musicians and artists; and when I read this in five years, I will still feel the music they made-- the organic crescendo into awesomeness that happened as the air of the room became filled with our passion and each artist breathed it in and survived on it for an hour as we each spat out our own art into the night-- and because I hope you will feel the magic someday, as well, as you read these things, without ever having been there.

coffee addiction.

I am addicted to coffee and I don't want to stop it.  I think the steady stream of caffeine is increasing my stress and paranoia exponentially, though, so I should stop if I decide I want to become healthy again.  I can understand, however, why anyone with a fucked up life would turn to an addictive drug.  Not for the buzz.  It's the illusion of control.  When you don't have control over any of the other shit that is hurting you, you create this new problem, and this one you can control.  It's not actual control, of course; you become addicted.  But you have created in yourself a need that you can fulfill, when you can't fulfill any others.  When you feel the pain of not having the drug, you, finally, have the control to make the pain stop.

Coffee is great for this, just the right balance between addictive drug and completely mundane beverage.  A quite acceptable vice.  I am able to play house with coffee, create the illusion of simplicity in the middle of the shit show by performing the ritual of measuring the grounds and the water, turning on the pot, listening to the classic steady drip as it brews; pour a cup, and warm my hands on it in the morning breeze on the back porch.  Shit feels damn under control in that moment.

living with artists.

This is it.  The life.  Editing the Doctor's work, listening to The Lately's music, film festival this afternoon with an eccentric painter we used to know, writing again.  Writing like mad.  Writing the life of artists.  This is Anais; this is where she was.  This artists' life.  The only way to do it.   Live on band time.  Groupies move into my living room.  Whiskey-sour at lunch, at breakfast for the Doctor.  Smoking, various things, depending on who's around.  No money in savings, but beer in the fridge.  Sex-bruised knees, hot tub at 5am, a picture of early Beatles looking at me from the wall and what we'll someday call "early Little Plaything" clipped to refrigerator door.  The life of artists.  Living with artists, loving artists.  Making art, making life.  Beautiful.

sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

...It sounds so dirty at first; gritty and dark and kind of dangerous.  And maybe the phrase was coined to give that impression, and maybe to most it still gives that impression.  Not to me, though.  It's not dirty at all; it is perfect.  The perfect life, the perfect way to be.  It is this artists' life we live.  We writers and painters and musicians and groupies who follow those around.

It's not just SEX, but also love and community and sensuality and the relationships and friendships made in the life.  And it's also sex, and lust, beautiful women and sexy pictures and late naked nights in a hot tub.

DRUGS...means drugs.  Except that that word has a bad reputation in the world today; it sounds like something that will hunt you down, consume you, and kill you.  It sounds like heroin and crack and pills you buy on the street.  For me, it's alcohol, mostly, and pot and caffeine and a very slight smattering of anything else, in the life in Wisconsin.

ROCK N ROLL is art.  To me, and maybe only to me, all artists are rockstars.  Writers and painters and sculptors and poets and pianists and singers and electric-guitarists-- all live the life and all rock the world.

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll is living in a studio apartment with bean bags and a hammock; it's living in a foreign country to get a new experience out of life; it's gathering with whoever will come and making music in a fifty-year-old basement; it's bouncing from dishwasher job to dishwasher job as they fit around touring and recording obligations; it's taking pictures of sexy women drinking wine and whiskey; it's living and painting in Italy for a semester; it's stealing bar glasses from Wisconsin taverns; it's stealing vegetables from gardens to eat on tour; it's following a band to a hot tub at 4am, body shots and threesomes in your neighbors' bathroom, short skirts, psychedelic sombreros, knowing exactly how to take apart and put together an electric guitar, silently sketching the scene in words or pictures as beautiful music is made all around you, living on coffee flavored with Honey Whiskey, sleeping in your friends' hammock; singing, living, loving life, loving people, fucking, fighting, making up, and making love, making magic and giving it to the world without a care.

It's having a story to tell and being fucking proud of it.  This is our life, this artists' life we are living; we are telling our stories in our own ways, sharing our own brands of beauty and magic with the world.  There is no better way to be, no better way to connect to the world.