Witch Hazel

One of the great joys of gardening in front of my house is mid-January, when the witch hazel comes into bloom. Its smell is truly intoxicating, and not easy to describe. It's rather medicinal. But in a good way. And when I snip a few branches and bring them in, the scent of the blossoms slowly takes over.

Here are a couple of witch hazel branches which I'm taking to dinner at my friend Bailey's house tonight.

RIP Dream Smith: 1976 - 2008

dream killed himself sometime after 1am on new year's day in seattle. he had sent me several songs over the past few weeks. most were new mixes of songs he had been working on with our band. some were songs he never intended to perform with other people. (he liked to perform at open mikes, such as the ones at mr. spot's chai house in ballard or trabant in the u district.) the tracks he sent me in early december all showed up in my itunes with the album title "begin." the ones he sent me late in the month had the album title "end." 

i didn't notice the album titles at the time, much less attach any significance to them. now i think that they must be a clue as to what he was planning to do.

i have many feelings at once about dream's death. i'm sad, obviously, but i also feel guilty, angry, stunned. and because almost all of my interaction with him was musical, i am obsessed with thoughts about his music. what is going to happen to it? so much of it, especially the last half dozen songs of his that he wrote (that i know about), are much better than 90% of the songs i hear on kexp. if songwriting ability were the sole determinant of success, dream would have already become the rock star he wanted to be. 

a line in the last song he sent me was going through my head for several days before i knew he had died:

he's well past the point of saving

i never thought that that line applied to dream himself, until after he was gone.

Fuck fuck fuck

I just got email from someone I've never met that our guitarist, Dream Smith, died on New Year's Eve. I had not heard anything from him for over a week and was frankly at the end of my rope trying to figure what what was going on. I still don't know what's going on; I just emailed this bearer of terrible news to find out more details.

Dream was a very smart, sensitive man. I wish I had gotten to know him better in the six months or so of our acquaintance. Dream was also a brilliant songwriter. Some of his songs (not ones he was doing with us) are on his MySpace page:

http://www.myspace.com/softblanket

There is a local memorial for Dream tomorrow night. I am going, though I may not know anyone there other than my "date," Kaley.