HH,

I should have volumes more to say, but I'm a little overwhelmed by the sudden show that fell from the afternoon sky right into my lap. This Saturday night, May 1, I've been asked to open for Over the Rhine. I guess I'm feeling a little too stunned to say much, because it just isn't every day that you get the chance to share a stage with your favorite band in the universe. (Granted, I haven't heard each band in the universe, but of those I've heard, Over the Rhine tops the list.) As I understand it, it will be a "very special" concert, with just Linford & Karin playing.

Hopefully I won't be quite so dumbstruck afterward and I'll get to tell you all about it, because once again, it's a sold out house. So if you don't have tickets already, I'm afraid there's nothing I can do.

But I'll sing my heart out for you...

HH,

Well, I've received some very interesting news today. The show that I am playing next weekend, opening for Nellie McKay at Dayton's Schuster Center for the Performing Arts, has sold out! I hope that if you were planning to go, you already got a ticket. It makes me wish we could fit more chairs in the theatre, because this means that anyone who wanted to go but who is also a procrastinator (like me) won't be able to get a ticket.

I am very much hoping that you will be able to hear some of my songs on the radio before the show, as I plan to take a CD sampler to WYSO in Yellow Springs (91.3fm in Dayton, or www.wyso.org to listen online anywhere) this week, and I am hoping they will have time to review the CD and play it before the weekend. I will keep you posted on the details.

It is very rainy today. April rain is nice when the air is warm, but today has been quite cold so I've been having trouble enjoying it. I am hoping soon that the temperature will warm up and we'll get some of those sunny spring thunderstorms, the kind that get me in a songwriting mood. I've noticed I write better songs when it's humid.

First, I must confess that I completely stole this concept from Mäery Lanahan. In trying to write entries for this journal, I found myself confused about how I was writing, and particularly about who I was writing to. You have personaility, identity. You are a deep thinker with a thirst for experience. You seek creativity. Yet, I was trying to write to some oddly jumbled mass of people, an overwhelmingly unfamiliar sea of faces belonging to souls I may or may not have met personally. But you, you are familiar. Thus, you needed a name.

Mäery, who is a fellow Dayton-based musician with wildly soothing songwriting and a flair for being exactly herself and nothing less, chose the name Stella for her scattered collection of musically interested, distant friends (also known as a mailing list). I have a friend with both a computer and a car named Stella, so I opted to plagiarize only the concept, and not the name as well. Naming someone is a delicate task, so I consulted a true expert.

Audrey is an experienced authority at naming, for she is twelve and has a fondness for naming the moles in her yard and drinking straws. Naming them pays respect to the personality of the namee. She believes that discarding a drinking straw without first giving it a chance to be somebody would be unjust. They receive names such as Max, Betty, Jesse, and Sue. When I asked Audrey for advice on this subject, she offered those names, plus suggested some more original ones like Droppello and Ephonemus. Ephonemus appealed to me, with the root "phone" being the Greek word referring to sound. (Interestingly, when I looked up the name, suspecting it might be an actual word, I found "eponymous", meaing "giving one's name to something". But that might only be interesting to a grammar nerd, like myself.)

But quite frankly, you just don't look like an Ephonemus to me.

Who do you look like, I then had to ask myself. The answer came clear. You look like my best friend when I was four. At that time (and for the following eight years) I was an only child, and I had just moved with my parents from northern Ohio to Montgomery, Alabama. There, I met History-History.

History-History was the best kind of friend, with me at every moment. He could join me at the doctor's office or play with me in the yard or talk to me when I was supposed to be going to sleep. I used the pronoun "him" to refer to HH, but it was really more of a coverall pronoun. HH was pretty much androgynous, quite balanced in gender tendencies. HH understood my theories about how the starry night sky was maybe just a giant sheet of black construction paper with pin holes poked in it and a bright light shining from behind. And HH liked the songs I was always making up, about rainbows and frogs and crackers.

So it seems only right that you be called History-History, or HH for short. Because, I feel like you understand me and the songs I write now-- usually about subjects other than rainbows and frogs and crackers, but they're no less sincere. Now, the HH from my childhood's full name was History-History Nostril. However, since you are no relation to the original HH, you need not suffer such an embarrassing last name.

Please come back here often, HH, for I hope to write to you frequently and tell you of the many interesting places I'm playing and the fascinating people I meet there, and maybe share with you some poetry and pictures. And forgive me, please, if ever I confuse you with the original History-History, absent-mindedly assuming you remember things you weren't around to recall. Just humor me, if you don't mind. Maybe give a little smile and pretend like you remember.

*rlc

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