Letters.

Who wants them? I'm writing on average one a day.

randallmholt@gmail.com -- send addresses. you'll receive. everyone wins.

I might not be updating LJ, but know I'm writing. Constantly. Journals mailed back and forth to friends with letters to each other written in them, (the journal-letter correspondence will eventually be edited and the best letters collected into a book), as well as a collection of short stories. Thank you, traveling lilies and stationary volcanoes who allow me to climb your stoops.

Since I quit the computer job, I don't get on my computer very much anymore. Meaning, very little LiveJournal postings.

I'm doing well. I play for now seven bands, teach students, work part time at a bakery/pizza shop my friend owns. Keep up with me on facebook or twitter, or, ugh, myspace.

randall holt - austin tx network
twitter.com/randallholt
myspace.com/randallholt

or, eventually, randallcello.com will be finished. it's not even started yet!

i hope all's well with everyone. ciao darlings.

eyes
--
"you can be my friend, love, lover, but nothing other.":you are intimidating and intriguing and you listen hard to the things that i say. you will never let me get away with a cop-out answer. i don't know what to do about all this. i am afraid.

these are the things i think about when you don't ask me.
--

Talk about being confused as fuck about my emotions.

I was sick, but now I'm well. There's work to be done.

The angels in your palm sing gentle, worried songs, and the sweetness of our dreams, like mountains made of steam.

Ever have those days where you feel like everyone you know is a gross imitation of themselves, so disgusting that you want to puke at the things they say?

Yeah, today's one of those days. Sorry friends.

I want the inspiration that transpired non-stop for seven days in Minneapolis this last week to not die because I'm now back in Austin, damnit.

I'm going to Minneapolis tomorrow, for seven days, and it's going to be fucking awesome. Why Minneapolis? Well, there's no family, no dead people, and tons of fun happening. With the loss of five friends and loved ones, battling depression, making life-changing decisions, old failed and new strong relationships, among many other things, I feel like I need to hit the reset button.

The end of one of the shittiest and best years of my life brings me to view 2009 in a different manner than I did even two months ago. With all I've had develop recently musically, and my finally making the decision to pursue cello again as adamantly as I did when I was in the running for becoming a professional symphonic cellist, I feel really strongly about 2009 being a great year. I'll turn 23, and prime numbered years have always been my favorites and the best years I've had. 3 was fucking amazing, 5 was pretty cool too. 11 was when I started playing cello, and you all know what joy I get from that. 17 I competed in DC, graduated high school, and performed in Carnegie Hall. So, yeah, prime numbered years kick ass.

I've reconnected with my core in a way that I've never thought imaginable. I never once seriously thought that I could have a professional career in music again after got I carpal tunnel, put my cello down for a year, dropped out of the music department, dropped out of school, and virtually stopped playing. Now I've brought the axe out of the closet, dusted it off, gave it some love, and gave myself a lot of love as well (four straight months of weekly acupuncture appointments, and will be starting again on a bi-weekly schedule when I get back from my trip). It helps. I know that, for the most part, my classical career never started, and never will, because I can't handle that level of intense playing. My body just won't ever be up to it. What I laugh at these days is that because of my classical background, I'm plenty able to play rock music, and honestly? I'm having a lot of fun doing it.

I can tell that for the first time in a very long time, I'm becoming happy, and it has largely to do with the fact that I'm rehearsing three or four nights a week with very serious bands. On that note -- all the music shit I've been talking about is getting along great, and my goals are coming closer and closer every day. My father went through this as well, at around 26 or 27, when he put his guitar away for four years to focus on raising his kids, gave up his dreams of being a rock'n'roll musician. He took the guitar out and immediately started learning how to play blues, and now, several years later, he's one of the better blues musicians in Austin.

Ramblerambleramble. I guess this year couldn't have been as salvaged as it was without the help of all you guys, friends close and not so close, but friends all the same who've been supportive and encouraging, friends who've called me out on my bullshit for the past several years, friends who've bullshitted me, I love you guys. And gals.

I'm pressing the reset button. I'm going to leave my computer in Austin while I'm gone, as well, to completely disconnect from everything, so, if you need to get ahold of me, call my cell. I'll have that, but that's it. Otherwise it's off to meet old friends, make new friends, read some books, smoke some cigarettes, and party like it really isn't going to be 2008 anymore.

Cheers. Have one for me, and I'll have six for you.

So, I did it -- got the birds on my arm that Skye also had in the same place. Also expanding it into a full-scale scene with clouds/moon, which will end up playing into the tone poem that I've posted here before in kanji with translation. The kanji will start at my shoulder and go over my right shoulderblade.

It's turned out well so far.









The angels in your palm sing gentle, worried songs, and the sweetness of our dreams, like mountains made of steam.

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VAST just announced a Spring US tour.

Michael (their bassist) called me the other night and confirmed we're getting together this week to work on his side project, which will most likely end up being a full-time thing for me and him.

So, since last week he mentioned they were looking for a cellist, and that he had mentioned me to Jon, and we're getting together this week, I'm feeling like I'm in the right place at the right time.

Calmdowncalmdowncalmdown.

I'm gonna be a rockstarr.

Dear internets,

If there is a god inside you, I pray that you will grant me good luck and fast, dexterious fingers when I get together with VAST to prove that I can play so they have me play shows with them.

Yes, I'm -this- close to playing for VAST as a cellist.


PUT THAT IN UR PIPEZ AND SMOKE IT.

EBM/Industrial stomp party at the NOC tonight. Funker Vogt, Grendel, Suicide Commando, etc. I forgot how much I love this shit.

Of course, this is accompanied by the missing of several of you I don't get to see on a daily basis anymore. You're in my thoughts.

My grandmother's in the hospital in Farmington, my stepmother's in the hospital in Austin. I can't wait for this year to be over. I hate my job, I hate these overnight shifts, I hate feeling so alone.

Please keep me and mine in your thoughts. I'm about to go brave my mother for the first time for Thanksgiving.

I passed out in my favorite shirt this morning -- the one that reads PETA: People for the Eating of Tasty Animals -- that Skye gave to me. When I woke up, my phone was ringing, and the screen read "Skye calling." I answered, didn't say anything, and heard Skye's mother on the other line start conversation. No, you weren't waking me up, I was in the process of getting out of bed anyhow. What can I do for you? My address? A present, an Advent? Okay. Goodbye.

I started walking to my kitchen then, or maybe I stopped at the bathroom mirror to make sure I was still Randall and Skye was still dead, but the end result was to distract myself with cooking. I hadn't told Skye's mother about the coincidences of her phone call, or how much I have been talking about Skye lately, or how much she's been on my mind. So I called back, she picked up, and we talked for another twenty or thirty minutes as I made my waffles, sausage, and eggs. We talked without boundaries, about everything, my current relationship and how hard it is to try and work at it every day while thoughts of Skye come to me every day, about Skye's bulemia, how the toxicology report still hasn't come back, how much we miss her. We cried over the phone together. She asked me to give a call next time I was in New Mexico, I told her how hard it'd be for me to get back anytime soon, emotionally. She told me her best friend lives in Austin, and that she'd look me up the next time she came to town. Skye's mother is awesome.

We got off the phone and I proceeded to eat my breakfast. Those were some hard eggs to eat.

And now? Now I'm at work for another eleven hours. Shit sucks to be staring at this screen with nothing to do but sit inside my head.

It's been 463 days since I last saw her, and sometimes I think I should have never left.

I got a pipe. And a new scarf, and some reading glasses in the last month.



That is all.

Here's a convo that happened a few hours ago while I was still at work, online, describing in more detail the previous post:

[05:03] Anisovaya: Do you have the sound?
[05:03] Anisovaya: And the youtube?
[05:04] Anisovaya: Well anyway. This is what I'm in love with. http://www.youtube.com/user/yonataptk
[05:56] STASIA 4 U: It's so sad.
[05:57] STASIA 4 U: No lyrics, though.
[05:57] Anisovaya: There's a version with a singer that I can't really make out the words. It's more like she's just floating her voice musically.
[05:58] Anisovaya: I've decided to fall back in love with the world.
[05:58] Anisovaya: I've listened to this song pretty exclusively for the past thirty-six hours.
[05:58] Anisovaya: I just came across a passage in the book I'm reading that inspired just that very thought -- falling back in love with the world -- while listening to the vocal version of the song.
[05:59] Anisovaya: '...plila i pela, pela i plila...'
[05:59] Anisovaya: '...she floated and she sang, she sang and floated...'
[06:00] Anisovaya: One of those moments where I see through all the bullshit I have surrounding me, inside me, and experience the core of my self and my world I create. The part of me you love.
[06:00] Anisovaya: Figured I'd share.
[06:00] STASIA 4 U: That may be the best thing I've heard all week. I've had some pretty ugly dreams about you recently. I was getting so worried for awhile.
[06:01] Anisovaya: You know the look I have on my face, and you know how I feel right now. You're one of the few who've been around when I'm experiencing it visibly.
[06:01] Anisovaya: I'm extremely calm, slow, resolved, sad.. I have that sad smile on my face.
[06:02] Anisovaya: I feel the burdens of everything I've taken on for years, I feel the weight of the world, I sustain it, I welcome it, I breathe it.
[06:03] Anisovaya: I want to cry. I feel it coming.
[06:04] STASIA 4 U: I want to say things but I don't want to take away from your experiences by equating them to my own.
[06:04] STASIA 4 U: So I have an idea of how you feel, and I can't tell you how relieved I am for you.
[06:04] Anisovaya: Ah, don't worry. I'm fully the mountain, as well as the river and the lake and the tree and the wind currently.
[06:04] Anisovaya: Sprach.
[06:05] STASIA 4 U: Awhile ago I did some internal alchemy that made me feel joy every time I was so sad I had to cry
[06:05] STASIA 4 U: Because I had the presence of mind to be sad about something that wasn't me.
[06:05] STASIA 4 U: It seemed like a gift.
[06:07] STASIA 4 U: Every emotion, every experience. A gift.
[06:08] STASIA 4 U: Frustration and anger are the only 2 I have difficulty with anymore. I'm working on them.
[06:08] STASIA 4 U: Anyway. I have to get the children to school.
[06:08] STASIA 4 U: Goodnight, Omi. I missed you.
--
It's Tuesday morning, cloudy, sporatic showers over my house. I'm on my porch, beer and cigarettes ensue. I exit. I exist. Sporatically, but I still exist.
--
[06:09] Anisovaya: I'm back. It's been a long time.

..plila i pela, pela i plila...
..she floated and she sang, she sang and floated...

Summer 78. Yann Tiersen.

Pnin. Vladimir Nabokov.

I've decided to fall in love with the world again.