In the meantime, I may or may not resume my blogging activities.

Music by Abner Jay, Billy Bragg, Woods, Hank Williams, Cheyenne Mize & Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Panda Bear, Neil Young, Mt. Eerie, Iron and Wine, Sleater-Kinney, Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, Man Man, Bill Callahan, Magnolia Electric Co., Deep Dark Woods, Chuck Ragan & Austin Lucas and Marianne Faithful.

The first ever Morning Stoner Morning Radio Hour can be found at soundcloud.com/morningstoner. You can also follow the show on Twitter and Facebook.

Music by Caribou, Elephant Micah, Grateful Dead, Paleo, Eat Skull, Timesbold, Mekons, Ducktails, Lee Hazelwood, War on Drugs, Neutral Milk Hotel, Dock Boggs, Gram Parsons, Silver Jews, Chris Bathgate, City Center, Nic Garcia, Mirah, Sparklehorse, Thermals and John Fahey.

When I began writing this blog, I wasn’t sure about what it would be. Despite proclaiming myself a morning stoner, I didn’t want to make getting high the basis. Despite living for music, I didn’t want music to be my sole focus. I thought I would simply write, and see what came of that. Without pretension, without big ideas about what it could be.

Now I think I should write less. I’d like to update more, but write less. There is something about seeing my words in print that makes me, that has always made me, a little uneasy.

Give me a chance to reclaim the momentum I lost. By the middle of September, I’d like to have this entry swept from the first page. I am also working on a pet project, the tools and skills for which I don’t currently have, but am slowly acquiring. It will be a twice-weekly podcast, called The Morning Stoner Morning Radio Hour, and it will be my sole contribution to this blog as more than the editor-in-chief. Whether you prepare to face the day with a pipe or a coffee cup, whether you stay at home or commute, I hope you will let me provide the soundtrack to your mornings.

I’ve often wondered how society as a whole could return to nature after doing so much damage to it, how we could get rid of the incomprehensible amounts of waste that are rotting in landfills and floating in the ocean. I hope Joachim and Terreform are successful, that they’re not torn up in the machine, and that their inspired, futuristic designs are kept intact.

now playing War on Drugs – Buenos Aires Beach

A few summers ago I read Living the Good Life by Scott Nearing, and the summer after that, his second book, The Making of a Radical. Since then I’ve felt trapped by city living and longed for a dirt road that leads me home, a garden named Victory that grows my diet and my medicine, a house built in the trees.

I went for a bike ride earlier, through Buechel Park and various side streets, avoiding all roads home. I felt free looking down a tunnel a railroad made through the woods, and again crossing a bridge over a quick creek.

So although I don’t yet have the great outdoors, or the piece of mind that comes with it, I take from it and I keep it with mine. There is a mountain inside of me that will grow even after I cease to, that will outgrow me, until I can tend it’s valley’s soil and be sustained.

Pamphlet (.pdf): Edible Forest Gardening by David Sansone.

***

“It is very hard to really untangle the real reasons why you do anything. I was always interested in music. It seemed to me I always played guitar. I always associated song and singing with some sort of nobility of spirit. The first songs I learnt were of the Workers Movement and I always thought that this was the best way to say the most important things, even though these things, I don’t mean the most ponderous or pompous things, I mean the important things like how you feel about things, how you feel about someone else. I always thought this was the way to do it.” – Leonard Cohen, Pacifica Radio, 1974 : Transcription here

now playing Neutral Milk Hotel – Engine

*”It’s a thousand times better than whiskey – it’s an assistant – a friend.” – Louis Armstrong

END THE WAR ON MARIJUANA
now playing WUPX 4/20 Celebration

Church bells chime Linus and Lucy
like a drunk punk Ray Charles,
smashing keys sharp as teeth.

She was at a dance when he came in, looking for a ride uptown. He originally asked her brother, who told him, “I can’t drive but my sister can.”

Williams introduced himself as Merle Travis, but Travis was from nearby Rosewood; Granny had seen him before and knew otherwise. “You’re not Merle Travis,” she said, “I know who you are.”

She drove him to the liquor store for a bottle of whiskey, and all the while he rested his head on her shoulder.

now playing Hank Williams – Pan American