beautiful, funny, sad & true

I have a cat staying with me for a few days. Her name is Zooey.

After all the stress and craziness in seemingly all aspects of life lately, not to mention the heavy subject matter (and arguments) here on El Blog-o lately, there’s nothing like a cute wittle kitteh to make you forget about all of it.

I came home from work yesterday to find her curled up asleep in the bathroom sink. Oh, how I wish I had a picture of that. She jumped down immediately and started rubbing on me. Cutest thing ever. After dinner, we both curled up on the sofa and watched Rock School. Hilarious documentary about a quasi-megalomaniac who teaches kids not just how to play instruments, but how to be rock stars. And no, he doesn’t hold back at all.

More good news; I’m going on tour with Breanna this summer, and we’re gallivanting all around the western U.S., the highlight of which will be a festival in Utah. ‘V. exciting,’ as Bridget Jones would say.

Not on this blog. Not anymore.

My sincere apologies to a few of BFST’s regulars, who often use ‘anonymous’ and then sign their names somewhere in their actual comments. I wish I didn’t have to do this, but it’s become necessary again to step up the security around here.

I try to keep this a civil place, but not everyone abides by those rules.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled, witty and insightful blog, already in progress.

After a sick day I had not too long ago, when I stayed home and spent endless hours watching videos on WebSiteLikeTV, I mentioned my idea of doing a series of entries about 80’s rock, and some of the bands I used to like back in the day. I have to confess that I don’t exactly know where to start with all of this; the natural place would be at the beginning, but since rock music is a bit of a continuum, I guess I’ll jump in by starting with the music that I came across first.

I didn’t grow up in a major metropolitan city, I grew up in an isolated little town in the middle of Washington state. No cable TV, no live music or touring bands to speak of. I’ve played piano since I was three years old, so I grew up listening to classical music, and then a little bit of stuff from my friends, but not much. The majority of my musical childhood was spent listening to whatever my parents had in their record collections. My dad had a sizable collection that was all classical. My mom had about 50 records, including some Simon & Garfunkel and Beatles, and some classical, and some folk, but nothing really earth-shaking.

I’ve always hated 70’s arena rock and all that boring blues-based stuff. I’ve always hated that wispy 70’s folk that was the antithesis of arena rock. I didn’t discover rock music that I actually liked until I was about ten or eleven years old, but that was pretty much just whatever was on the radio at the time. Nothing particularly earth-shaking there either.

When I was twelve or thirteen, my parents had been divorced for a couple of years, and my dad moved to the Portland, Oregon area. That was when I finally got to hear some new and different music. Portland had two whole radio stations devoted to classical music. They had jazz, all kinds of different pop music and dance music, as well as hard rock, which was what I took a particular interest in. My dad also had cable TV, which included the still-fledgling MTV, which was just beginning to have a huge effect on popular music. I will never forget some of those exciting, innovative and strange early videos. Here’s the obvious choice to show first, the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

Lots of things were happening in the early 80’s that affected music greatly. Cable TV, particularly MTV, led the way in creating a new look and style for the changing times. Technology was changing daily as well, which meant that computers, synthesizers, camcorders, VCR’s, cassette recorders were all inexpensive and readily available, which meant that almost anyone could create things at home that could be seen by lots of people, relatively easily and cheaply.

That, combined with the all-pervasive ‘bigger than life’ ethic that exemplified the 80’s made for some interesting music and videos. Duran Duran were one of the biggest bands of the time, and deservedly so. They combined intelligent, catchy songwriting with youthful good looks, and the ‘exoticism’ of being English. Here’s “New Moon on Monday.”

And it wasn’t all new groups, either. More, um, seasoned bands like Yes and Kiss breathed new life into their careers by ushering in new members and taking advantage of the new technology to update their sound and look.

Here’s “I Love It Loud” by Kiss, and “Owner of a Lonely Heart” by Yes.

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This was also the decade of the widening “generation gap” between adults and their kids. Unlike the “My Generation” kids of the 1960’s and 70’s, kids of the 80’s seemed to have a completely separate existence that was entirely their own. Times were changing at a breakneck pace, and many parents seemingly had no other choice but to abdicate.

This seems like a good start, and there’s plenty more to come.

I heard a couple of funny statements today, from different people, that got me thinking:

“Last I heard, I’m not stupid, so–”

and

“I’m the most passionate person you’ll ever meet.”

It seems to me that ’stupid’, like ‘crazy’, is not a diagnosis that can be reached by self-assessment. If it turns out that you actually ARE one of those things, then your objectivity completely dissipates, and your opinion is meaningless. Besides, it’s not very likely that any adult person is going to walk up to you and say, “Wow. . .you’re genuinely a stupid person,” even if you are one. That rarely happens in adult life. It happens all too frequently between children on the playground, and practically everywhere on the Web–anonymous blog hecklers and message-board flamers come to mind–but that kind of thing is very rare in society. In many cases, stupidity and craziness can run unchecked for decades, but because “last they heard” the person saw him- or herself as an enlightened super-genius, the myth gets perpetuated forever.

Same thing with ‘passionate.’ I’m lucky enough to know quite a few very passionate people, and the thing about them is that they don’t need to tell anybody how passionate they are, they just go and live their lives passionately. I get the feeling that the person who made that statement actually meant ostentatious; interested more in the outward display rather than motivated by genuine impulse.

This entry may sound a bit cynical, but I just immediately felt that those statements didn’t ring true, so I wanted to dissect them a little bit, and figure out why they bothered me so much. But then I suppose that anyone who has met my dad would understand why that particular brand of braggadocio would send a chill up my spine.

People who are genuinely intelligent, passionate, and well-adjusted would never dream of bragging about possessing those qualities. In fact, they’re often the most humble people you will ever meet. They choose to put the energy into their life, as opposed to making a flashy show out of everything, or talking endlessly about how much they know about a subject, or how they wish they could be doing something ‘if only–‘.

The point of all this is that if there’s something you’re passionate about, or that you would like to achieve in your lifetime, then stop talking about it, and just start doing the things you need to do in order to make it happen. It may be something small and simple, or it may be something huge and life-altering, but it can be done, whatever it is. Give yourself permission to do it, and then it will start happening for you, as if by magic. But it ain’t magic; not by a long shot. It’s constant vigilance and attention to everything.

God–not the devil–is in the details.

It’s 11:30 p.m., and it’s a very stormy night.

Nights like tonight are the nights that I really miss my old Taylor House apartment. You know, the one on the third floor of the hundred-year-old mansion. The one with the beautiful views of the city from three different directions. The one that I could watch fireworks downtown during the Rose Festival, the Starlight Parade, and on Independence Day. The one from which I watched almost every single sunset. The one that I called the Rock Star Factory. The one in which I learned how to play the accordion and the cello. The one in which I learned how to become a recording engineer and producer. The one in which I went from being a regular guy with a crappy job to a really talented guy doing what he was meant to do with his life. Basically, it was the place I lived when I learned how to do (and to be) all of the things that I’m doing (and becoming) now.

On stormy nights like tonight, the wind would beat the rain against all of the windows, and threaten to blow the roof off of the building, and I loved every minute of it. In fact, the more the wind howled, the more I enjoyed it. I would crack the window open, turn off all of the lights, turn off all of the music, light a candle or two, and just listen to the wind. I’d sit at the window and look out over the lights of downtown, or, on the warmer stormy nights, I’d stand outside on the fire escape, drinking a glass of wine, daring the wind to blow me down.

I wish I would’ve had a camera back then, because the sunsets alone were priceless. But then there are the countless memories of Katrina Petrovisky-Mouskewicz (the best cat ever), Amber and her fearless blind cat Kati and her mischievous rat Hannah, Craig, Kevin, Jeri, Meechai, Pelsang and the constantly rotating crowd of Tibetans, Erika, Daniel and the constantly rotating crowd of Brazilians, Henry, Morgan, Kristi, Amanda and Simon; the house parties until 4:00 a.m., Decemberists sing-alongs until the wee hours, mix CD’s which I still cherish and enjoy to this day, Jake and Skip flicking cigarettes from the fire escape to the street below, endless hours of recording my parts for Crystin Byrd’s “My Silence” CD, S.S. Flint and her pencil drawing, Jaime and Becky’s “Bus Song” and “12 Step”, rolling up the rug and recording the sound of Laurena the flamenco dancer weaving her magic spell, playing the cello badly while Andrea played the piano beautifully, climbing onto the roof for no reason at all, reading in the sun on the fire escape, seeing BoringFish again, walking with my guitars to the recording sessions at Jackpot, and a myriad of other things.

Here are some pictures of the apartment and me at the time. I have more, but they’re not on this computer. The best ones of all are the ones in my mind, anyway. The two gables on the right (top floor) are that apartment. Yes, I had a fireplace. And yes, I used it often.

I lived there for three and a half years, from when I was 30 and change to when I was 34. Moving out of there, while it wasn’t easy, was the right thing to do at the time. Sure was sad, though. It was by far my favorite place that I’ve ever lived, and I fully appreciated it the whole time I was there. I look back on it fondly as the place that I lived during the biggest changes of my entire life.

LoveItLoveItLoveItMissItLoveIt.

[edit: Incidentally, my gesture in the bottom picture has prompted a few questions. Since Crystin Byrd is the one who took that picture, I was doing an imitation of something our bass player and his girlfriend at the time used to do, which was to randomly make that face and gesture, and at the same time make the sound of a hissing cobra. It was very funny, and they would do it all the time. They might sneak up on each other in the kitchen, or it could be just as likely to happen when they were sitting and watching a movie. They could do it in a romantic and funny way too.

So there you have it. Not that it's going to make any more sense, but at least you know the context, and that it's not a "Hey, baby, lemme grab ya" expression or anything.]