It's good to leave the city, and it's good to be back home in Brooklyn. It's good to travel, and the Berkshires in western Massachusetts are beautiful even when it's raining. I've been real worried about the state of the world: about dead-eyed consumers and the greedy grab culture, about the war, about people with power who seem to lack senses, about people with wisdom who lack the means to project their voices. What a luxury to get really relaxed, to abandon the world to itself for a few days as I did this weekend at the yoga spa. Ironically, or perhaps in reaction, my dreams became more anxious. This time it felt like a release of old anxieties stored up, that and me being used to being nervous like an old bad habit. Ran into songwriter, bassist, and one heck of a singer, Laurece West while I was there. Would it thrill you to know that within 15 minutes of the first time we met she was touching me all over smearing mud and herb-infused oil all over my body? That's because she's an Ayurvedic practitioner and I met her while receiving a treatment. Personally I get a thrill over the fact that someone as talented as Laurece is so far off the grid, off the Web, because it's like finding out a secret to have heard her CD. And this woman, who also works as a voice teacher, has one great set of pipes and knows how to use them, let me tell you. And I know Erica Smith and Robin Aigner (both of whom I added to the links page today) and I like to think I know a thing or two about carrying a tune. Laurece complemented my show announcement e-mails, which I do enjoy composing, but sometimes feel gnatty about sending, knowing how-over stimulated with information we all are anyway. She said I have just the right amount of "macha" as in female macho. Love the term, love the perception! 6 days until the big WonderWheels show at Crash Mansion!