beautiful, funny, sad & true

Lately, I’ve made a resolution to be more engaging with people I meet.  It’s safe to say that introverts have a harder time than most other people do, but I’ve been making a conscious effort to reach out more.

Last night’s gig with Susie was a good example.  The event was hosted by someone with an unusual enough name that I’d better create one of those clever pseudonyms to anonymize her; I’ll call her BlondeSinger.  Since I’ve played with lots of songwriters over the years, I’ve played probably five or six shows that she’s been a part of.  I’ve never played with her onstage, but I’ve played plenty of evenings like last night, where she’s been a part of it and so have I.  Also, she once performed on my friend’s radio show, on which I was a regular co-host, including the day of the show she appeared on.

Last night, I was one of the first to arrive.  I set down my accordion and went over to say hello to her.  She clearly didn’t recognize me, so I said, “Hey, [BlondeSinger].   We’ve met before, actually.  I’m friends with [RadioFriend], and you played on his show, and I co-hosted with him.  I’ve been playing with Susie and [short rundown of songwriters] and we’ve played together a handful of times.  Good to see you again.”

“Yeah, you do kinda look familiar,” she said, and asked if RadioFriend was still doing a show, and I told her that yes, he is.  “Cool.”  She looked down at her phone and started texting like mad.  The silence stretched out longer and longer, and it started to become a bit awkward, so I asked, “Who’s performing tonight?”

She grabbed the list of eight or so and explained each one.  There’s GuitaristGirl who’s kinda folky. . .GuitaristGuy who’s kinda like Tom Waits, there’s Susie – she’s really good and has a band (“Uhh, yes, I know,” I said, “I’m IN that band.”)–”  I just felt like an invisible, silent blip on her radar screen, so I decided to be done with that particular conversation.  After I got the scoop on the performers, I got a glass of wine and came back to find Susie and our group of friends instead.

On the way to meet them, I ran into another songwriter who I’ve met a time or two, and once my two friends and I even spent an evening hanging out and chatting with him at Jarra’s Ethiopian restaurant a while back, when we were all there to watch a band play.  I’ll call him Dreadlocks.  I wandered over and said, “Hey, Dreadlocks!  Good to see you.”  He also showed no sign of recognition, so I prompted him with the RadioFriend thing (cause that’s also how I knew him), and the Jarra’s show, and all that.  Still nothing, and I could see that this was headed for another disaster, so I cut it short with, “I’m playing accordion with Susie tonight, and I’m looking forward to hearing you play too!”

Just then, Susie and the rest of our group of friends appeared and saved the day.  We sat together and talked, and watched the first couple of performers, both of whom were really great.  The second performer was the Tom Waits-y guy, and he did a brilliant version of Rainbow Connection, which he followed up with one of my favorite Tom Waits songs, Hoist That Rag.

As a side note, it was brilliant of him to do Rainbow Connection, but for him to do a Tom Waits cover (despite the fact that he did it very well) when he already is so clearly influenced by Tom Waits, just seemed like a No-Duh.  There’s a girl in town who sounds remarkably like k.d. lang, and who even performs a couple of her tunes, which also seems like another No-Duh.  The point of all this is that I’d rather see her do the Tom Waits tune, and him do the k.d. lang tune.  It adds a bit of mystery and depth to a show, instead of leaving the audience thinking, “Gosh, they sure sound like somebody. . .but who?  Oh. . .right.  THAT person,” instead of sounding like themselves.  Just some food for thought.

After he was done, it was our turn to rock the house, and I should mention that we totally did.  Just before we started, however, someone said to me, “Look up there,” and pointed at the ceiling, where an accordion was hanging, completely defiled, gutted and torn to pieces.  You get used to stupid jokes like that; they just give you more incentive for veni, vedi, vici. “It’s okay,” the guy continued.  “The owner of this place is an accordion player.”

“I know, actually,” I said with a smirk (because I’ve played that venue many times before, including one night when the owner was running the sound, and before I had even stepped up to the microphone or played a note, he called out, “Less accordion!” to a round of slightly drunken laughter.  O, the hilarity.) “. . .but it’s still sad.”

We played four songs, and we brought down the house, if I can take the liberty of saying so.  The sound was great, and the two of us performed great.

Afterwards, when Susie and our friends and I were waiting in line at the bar, a SuperCuteGirl came up and introduced herself.  She was very engaging and flirty, and said she loved our set, and thought that the accordion was great.  We each got a drink and sat down to talk for a while, and after about twenty minutes or so, TomWaitsGuy and his friend came over and joined us.  The three of them knew each other, and we talked about the show.  While we were talking, the next performer came up to me and said he was about to go on, and that he really wanted me to hear his set.  He had introduced himself to me earlier, and he’d befriended me via my music page on MySpace, thanks to a couple of my mates from another band.  So I told SCG that I wanted to go listen to the guy, but I’d be back.  “Cheers!” she said, smiling, and we clinked our glasses together.

I watched the guy, who was very good, and talked with our group.  Afterwards, we all went outside to the smoking area, where I quickly discovered that SCG was married to the friend of TomWaitsGuy.  It was a bit disappointing, to say the least (especially since she wasn’t even wearing a ring!), but at least they were both friendly and cool people.  In a funny, only-in-Portland way, we discovered that they had looked at an apartment in the complex in which I used to live.  We had a good time talking about that.

As another side note, there’s a funny story about that apartment, actually, and the girl who used to live there when I first moved into the complex.  Her cat, Hooligan, got in a fight with another neighborhood cat a couple years before, and the victim cat’s owner sued her for the vet bills.  They settled in court, but not just any court. . .The Peoples’ Court.  She totally lost the case, by the way, when the judge asked, simply, “What’s your cat’s name again?”

“Hooligan.”

The audience laughed, and the judge banged the gavel.  “Court finds for the plaintiff.”

All in all, it turned out to be a pretty dang decent night, after kind of a weird and awkward start.  There’s nothing like a gutted accordion and a really great performance to make you forget about the weird stuff.

I had two romantic dreams this morning, the first of which was more so than the second.  I remember very little of the first, except that I was walking through a park, and I saw two young guys practicing a form of acrobatic dance.  I slowed down to watch them for a while as I passed by.  I walked a bit further and saw a girl who was doing the same sort of dance.  What a coincidence, I thought, they should all be friends. There was a long scene that I don’t remember, but I was back to the park later, walking in the direction from which I came.  As I walked closer, I saw that that the guys and the girl had joined forces and were now acrobatically dancing together.  I gave the group a smile as I passed, and the girl grabbed me and pulled me into an embrace that was surprisingly intimate, yet still looked like part of the dance.  “I just had to meet you,” she told me, “I don’t know why yet, but I felt that I needed to know you.”  We sort of danced around each other for a little while, in that intimate way, while we talked a bit and got to know each other.  It was very beautiful.  Then the dream changed to another scene, the rest of which eludes me.  This is unfortunate, because I do remember that it was also pretty romantic.

* * * * *

Dream #2

I was lying in bed with a girl, T, and our relationship wasn’t particularly close yet.  We hadn’t been seeing each other long, maybe a few days, and for some reason we were both wearing pajamas while we were in bed.  She resisted and got annoyed when I tried to cuddle with her, so we had an incredibly long, uncomfortable conversation before we ended up just cuddling anyway.

When we finally got up, we decided to call one of our female friends and go hiking.  We stopped in at a convenience store on our way up to the hills, and after we’d bought some supplies, the three of us hit the trail.  T led the way, then me, then our friend.  T got a long way ahead very quickly, and the other two of us weren’t able to keep up with her.  We walked and talked with each other instead, and said things like, “Man, she sets a grueling pace,” and “I sure hope everything’s okay up there,” and “I was hoping we’d all get to have some time together; I wish she’d stayed with us.”

After hiking for a while, we arrived at a turn-of-the-century inn that was nestled in a little valley between the hills, and since the front doors were wide open, we walked inside.  There was a lot of activity, and the place seemed to be a sort of retreat.  As we walked from room to room, we saw different things happening.  One room was the quiet room, where people were reading books or admiring the scenery out the windows.  Most people were single, but there was a married couple standing by the window.  In the next room was a dancing class, which appealed to both T and our friend, so they immediately took off their hiking boots and jackets and spontaneously joined the group, which the group seemed to encourage.  I gave them a little wave, and continued walking through the building.  I came to a large kitchen, in which a cooking class was in session, where they were making omelettes in the old-fashioned French way, over a fire in the huge oven.

As I passed one of the young women in the class, she was pulling a long-handled omelette pan out of the oven, rather awkwardly, and it looked as if she was having some difficulty, so I reached over and helped her maneuver it onto the prep table.  We made a few jokes back and forth, and had a really short but great conversation, and I thought to myself that already this girl and I probably had a better relationship than T and I had.  I bid her adieu, and walked out of the kitchen into a library room, where I saw a writer I’d met a few times standing next to one of the bookshelves with a guy friend of his.  I walked over to join them, and Writer asked me how it was going with the new girl I’d been seeing.  By the way he worded the question, I could tell that he knew we weren’t particularly close.

“I don’t know yet, we’re still figuring things out.”

He smirked.  “Do I know my audience, or what?  You been together long?  You f**k her?”

“We’re not quite there yet,” I replied.  “Like I said–”

He cut me off.  “Man, I could never do that.  If we don’t have sex, I’m outta there.”

“Hey, most of my friends are girls.  T and I are taking it slow, that’s all.  Seeing where it goes.”

He gave me a dude-I-just-feel-sorry-for-you look, and we changed the subject and talked about other things for a minute, then I took my leave to find my companions.  I saw them in a large dance performance room, which had bleachers on one end that were packed with people.  I found a seat before they did, so I motioned for them to join me.  They were on their way when a girl plopped down on my right, and dropped a huge duffel bag and overcoat next to me.  I told her that my girlfriend’s sitting there, and asked her to please move them underneath the seat.  She grumbled but finally agreed.  T and our friend weren’t able to make it through the milling crowd, however, so they decided to sit on the floor in front of the bleachers.  That figures, I thought, T and I are kept apart once again. The group of dancers walked out to the middle of the floor, and the show began.

At this point, the dream changed and I found myself in my home, which was an old farmhouse.  It was comfortable but needed a few repairs here and there.  I was walking across the gravel driveway, from the house to the shed, when a dog ran by me.  He was running from Cletus, my crazy neighbor with long black hair who was wearing a black suit, top hat, and John Lennon sunglasses.  He was chasing the dog with one of his homemade guns that had a short, flared barrel.  As he ran by, the dog yelled back to him (yes, the dog was yelling), “Don’t shoot me, Cletus, you hillbilly!”

Cletus lived in the next house down the road.  There was a large orchard between our houses, so we didn’t interact very much.  He was about five years older than I, and his two adult male cousins lived with him at his house.  A few seconds after Cletus and the dog ran past me, his two cousins came running by with two guns of similar design.  I said to them, “Okay, guys, that’s enough; just let him go,” and one of them turned and ran toward my shed, where I was leaning in the doorway.  He was either high or drunk, but I knew he was harmless, so I was unfazed and stood with my arms folded across my chest while he pulled out a switchblade and started to wave it around.

“I don’t recommend you do that,” I said, pausing at one point to lean away from one of his pathetic lunges.  “We’re neighbors, and at some point we may need to. . .help each other out.”

By way of an answer, he lit something on fire and stuck it onto the door jamb next to me, then laughed and ran off to join his brother.  I expected it to explode or something, so I shut the door and waited.  Nothing happened, so after about ten seconds I opened the door, grabbed a small hand towel, and snuffed the little fire out.  I’m gonna need to talk to Cletus about this one, I thought to myself, and that’s when I woke up.

I’ve had the same person in five different dreams now.  I haven’t posted any of them here because they’re not interesting as far as dream narratives go (especially my dream narratives. . .she’s up against stiff competition!), except for the fact that she’s been in all of them.  The first three were in February and March (I checked in my e-mail and Twitter), and the most recent one was a couple of days ago.

She’s not anyone I know from real life, and she’s not anyone famous either.   She’s pretty in an understated way, fairly petite, with straight, shoulder-length blond hair (not normally my preference, but I’ve certainly made exceptions!) and she has a brown-and-white tabby cat who has also appeared in three of the dreams.  The dreams are romantic, but have never been sexual.  They always feel like they’re more about the connection that exists between us.  In one of them, we were sitting next to the window in her house, quietly talking and enjoying the sunshine, with the cat draped across both of our laps, purring.   In the most recent one, we were walking in a grassy lot outside of town, near some sort of cluster of buildings, and trying to figure out how to get back to the highway where my car was parked, so that we could get back.  Suddenly she stopped walking and turned to look at me.  “I think I’m in love with you,” she said.  I was pleasantly surprised by this news, and I hugged her and told her I loved her too.  “And I’ve always known it.”   I love the random, awkwardly worded things that come flying out of my mouth in dreams.   For the record, my all-time favorite dream quote is “Gah! What’d you do that for, you penis hole?!“ but there are plenty of other classics.  Almost every single one of my dreams involves weird dialogue of some sort.

So.  Moving on.

One dream involving The Girl was an extremely short one in which she appeared just long enough to say, “My name’s Christine, by the way.”  That was it; the entire dream.  A friend told me the other day that what her name means (“follower of Christ”) is much more important than her physical characteristics.  I told a different friend about that, and her response was [I'm condensing a few of her responses into one, actually], “I sure hope there is some meaning behind her name beyond that.  If not, what a disappointment. Maybe you passed her on the street one day.  Just because you don’t recognize her doesn’t mean you’ve never seen her.  . .just a thought. Her face could just be ‘filler’.  It seems she made a point to tell you her name.”

Very interesting.  RockShowGirl is convinced that this person is my ideal partner.  I don’t know that such a thing really exists, but it is a really nice thought.  I do know that the way to meet an ‘ideal partner’ is to always be the best and most honest version of myself that I can be, and that will attract the kind of people – either romantic, platonic, musical, or anything – that I want to spend time with.

Le Sigh.

Every night I look forward to dreaming, and I even find myself wanting to sleep much more than usual in order to see what happens next in our saga, but I’m guessing that sleeping twenty hours a day may not be the most conducive way of finding and kindling a relationship.  Just a hunch.

When I was about eighteen, I had a girlfriend, B, whose estranged, abusive stepfather was the guy in town who sold worms out of his front yard. He had a very famous and weatherbeaten sign facing Sixteenth Avenue that said in scrawled black letters, ‘BAIT WORMS HELLGAMITS’. I still have no idea what ‘hellgamits’ are, but based on his childlike handwriting and second-grade education, I strongly suspect a misspelling.  Yeah, I know, an internet search would reveal the answer easily enough, but I actually like holding onto that particular little mystery.

As far as I know, he’s still in business.  I haven’t driven that stretch of Sixteenth Avenue during the last couple of times I was in town, but as of a few years ago, he was still at it.  And no, I didn’t stop by to say hello or anything.  In fact, I never met him back in the day, and I didn’t want to, either, all things considered.

And what happened to B?  Well, I was in college at the time, and one of the things college is good for (aside from the whole getting-an-education thing) is meeting significant others.  I think you can imagine where this is going.  After a couple months of dating B, I met K, who would change the course of my life, and I knew that our orbits would synchronize from the first minute we met.  K and I would be together on-again-off-again for the next five years, through both of my mullet haircuts.  B joined the Navy and I’m sure is living a perfectly functional life somewhere.   Last I heard, she got married and had a baby when she was around twenty years old.  My mom really liked B, actually, and they kept a friendship going for about a year or so after that, and wrote long letters back and forth, much to my annoyance, because I felt it sent a terrible message to K, who I count among the great loves of my life.

I still find myself wondering about K occasionally.  She moved to EmeraldCity at the exact same time I moved to Portland, and we went our separate ways and lost contact, somewhat surprisingly, after that.  She’s not on any of the usual social networking sites, and doesn’t seem to have an online presence, despite the fact that she works as an artist for a well-known video game company.

I’m not feeling romantically nostalgic for her, even though it may seem like I am.  I am curious, however, to see how her life has turned out, and every once in a while I’ll see something or someone that reminds me of her, and that will make me start to wonder.  We’ve all known people who really made their way deeply into our hearts, and sometimes the echoes of their voices seem to reverberate back into the world again.

But I’m not a Pollyanna, and I’m not stupid.  There were good reasons for us to split up, despite how much we loved each other, and I’ve never regretted our decision.  Most important of all is the fact that if we had stayed together, I would never have met the myriad of great people I have in my life now (hello, myriad of great people!), or made the changes in myself that needed to be made.  The people I’ve been with since then have affected me even more deeply, thanks in part to the experiences and expectations that I learned from my time with K, but also thanks to all those years of therapy, if we’re being completely honest here.   Doesn’t mean that I can’t wonder about her sometimes, though, and that’s perfectly okay.

There’s a Decemberists song, one of my very favorites, called Red Right Ankle, which has a poignant final verse that sorta sums up this weird, non-nostalgic nostalgia that I’m feeling, and I’m going to use it in an attempt to tie up all of the loose ends of this entry into a neat, tidy little Scooby Doo ending.

This is the story of the boys who loved you, who love you now and loved you then
Some were sweet and some were cold and snuffed you, some just laid around in bed
Some had crumbled you straight to your knees, did it cruel, did it tenderly
Some had crawled their way into your heart, to rend your ventricles apart
This is the story of the boys who loved you
This is the story of your red right ankle.

What a strange feeling this is.   What a strange entry this is.  And not a bit of Scooby Doo in the ending after all.  Sorry about that.

This month has been one of the busiest I’ve ever had.  Recording and/or rehearsals wish IrishBand almost every night, and one night Andrea came to visit and rehearse a song she wrote for her wedding, which is happening on Friday.  I’ll be playing cello and her sister will be playing piano.  From there we went to dinner at Por Que No (one of the best and most authentic (and least expensive!) Mexican restaurants in town) and then went to have coffee and play Scrabble at Palio, one of my favorite little coffee shops.

She won, by the way, but it was really close.  330-something to 314.  There will be a rematch, but I’m not sure when, since we won’t have a chance to hang out again before her wedding, and then of course she’ll be going to Canada for another ceremony with her family and then back to Switzerland, where she lives.

A couple more nights of rehearsals followed, and then I headed up to Seattle on Friday to play bass with my friend Brandon’s classic rock band.  Super fun to play and hang out with him again.  In the morning we went to breakfast and then I raced the three hours’ drive home to Portland, in order that I’d be back to set up for the IrishBand show at 4:30.

The show was a complete blast.  It featured a pair of dancers, an aerialist, a ukelele player, a sword swallower/fire breather, a martial arts/juggling/comedy group (Nanda; check ‘em out.  They’re the coolest group ever, I promise you.), then IrishBand finished up with a set.  Oh, and then there was dancing for an hour or so after that.  It was a great time.  I’m not even going to attempt to describe everything, cause it would take too long, but my modus operandi is that if people do cool things in front of me while I’m holding a camera, it’s my duty to capture those moments.  Behind the scenes is where the real show always happens, anyway.

After partying for a few hours everything was set up and ready, we went out front and mingled a bit.

This picture is fuzzy (or was it just me?  har har) and terrible as far as quality goes, but at least you can get a sense of what the people and the main room were like that night. . .

. . .and then I handed my camera off to Whit, who took some pictures of the actual event while I climbed upstairs and sat in the balcony with the rest of IrishBand to stay out of sight of the audience and watch the show.

After Nanda were finished, we set up and rocked the house for about an hour.  Oh yeah. . .and then I danced.  Yes, believe it or not, it’s true.  I did some moonwalking (both forwards and backwards. . .dang right!) and a whole bunch of ‘normal’ dancing too.   A good time was had by all.  Those of us who were left at the end of the night had the pleasure of helping clean up the place and empty all of the risers and seats and everything out of it by loading them into trucks, but even that somehow ended up being a good time.

In other news, I’m going to see Yann frickin’ Tiersen (you know, who wrote the frickin’ Amelie soundtrack!) on Wednesday night here in little old frickin’ Portland.  And he’s not even playing at a huge venue, either, but the frickin’ Wonder Ballroom, which has about a 400-person capacity, and where I MYSELF HAVE PLAYED.  I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am about this.  I play the accordion because of him.  It’s true.

Le sigh.

It’s been quite a year, I have to say.  Going through and choosing entries was particularly difficult this time around.  I always enjoy looking backwards.  So much has happened this year that it had become a bit of a blur, quite frankly, and it was fun to revisit some of those experiences.  Others, however, weren’t nearly as much fun.  I could have made this entry about twice as long as it is.  There will be another separate entry for the ‘best pictures of 2008′ coming soon.

accordions, Decemberists, and EmeraldCity – This involves a night when I made a noticeable transition from fan to equal participant.

shock – This was one of the worst days of my entire life.

good news and truth – This was the end of said time.

Yakima trip, part one – This was quite possibly the worst Yakima trip ever, in which I lost a friend.

Tinkle – Tinkle is the name of a fictitious product; this entry describes a hilarious parody my friends and I made of sports drink commercials from the early 90’s.

on tour, day 3 – This was one of the best and most memorable days of my entire life.

my dinner with Andre – We read the screenplay in the play-reading group, and there are also some ruminations about why this movie meant so much to me.

’six-six-five and one fucking half’ – This is a rock ‘n’ roll story from way back in the day.

errrr. . .hi, mom – I have to be honest; I really like this particular entry.

O, the hilarity ensues – ‘Good luck driving around with my dead, pregnant wife!’

please ban more books – The school district in the town in which I grew up turns out to be responsible for upholding a ban on a very famous book.  Glad I left that town.

litany – This was a hilarious repartee my friend and I shared.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for your support throughout this last year.  In case this somehow wasn’t enough for you, here’s the entry for the best entries of 2007.

Have a great new year!

OneYearAgo

After yesterday’s post, I walked out and about in my neighborhood and took a few pictures.  This neighborhood is beautiful anyway, but with this much snow it’s even more beautiful.  And the Christmas lights and everything. . .it’s just an amazing treat.

Here are the ones from last night. . .

. . .before I went home to my sort of warm apartment.   I woke up this morning to go to work, and found that it had snowed a couple more inches overnight.  I had to take a picture of my forlorn little car.

Luckily, my friend was warming up his truck to take his girlfriend to work, and they offered to drive me also, since her work is right near mine.  That really made my morning.  There were only a handful of us who actually made it in to work today, and it was so cold inside the building that most of us bailed out after a few hours.  I left at noon, and I’d worn my jacket and scarf the entire time, and even my hood occasionally.  Three people left around ten-thirty, but I stayed until my fingers couldn’t really type anymore.  There were a couple of diehards who stayed on after I left, but they didn’t think they’d be there for long.

I certainly wasn’t the only one who was home from work today, either.  The streets were filled with families and couples who were out enjoying the snow.  And they were friendly, too!  I couldn’t believe it.  Everybody greeted me, or waved, or smiled, or even flirted, in a way that (I’m here to tell you) they rarely do.  I kept thinking, ‘Where was all this friendliness in all those times when I was feeling lonely and sad, and felt like something must be wrong with me because no one would so much as glance at me when I was walking on the street?’  But that’s neither here nor there.  It was nice, and I appreciated it.  It was so nice, in fact, that I kinda wanted to stay out longer, and keep crossing paths with people, on purpose.

I stopped in at Aztec Willie’s for a yummy burrito, which gave me enough energy to shovel my sidewalk, which I found still sucks after all these years.  You’d think that with technology being the way it is, there’d be some sort of process that could make the act of shoveling obsolete.  C’mon, science, can we get on that, please?  The polar bears need all the ice they can get.  Isn’t there some way to get this up (or down) to them?  I mean, JEEZ.

So then it was time to deal with my car.  I got all the snow off it, but the windows and sides are encased in ice that’s about a quarter of an inch thick.  Clearly I’m going nowhere today, unless it’s by foot.

This couple had the right idea; forego the driving and the walking, and go straight on to skiing.

I also have a smallish secret that I’d like to let you in on.  Every time I see her walking on the other side of the street, to the grocery store or something, I want to say, ‘want to go to breakfast?’ or ‘your eyes are beautiful; what color are they?’ or ‘ditch the zero and get with the hero’. . .you know, something really romantic like that to completely sweep her off her feet.

Anyway, don’t tell her I said all that.  She and her guy seem really genuine and nice, and I don’t want to mess that up for them.  Really I don’t.

So to change the subject back to the actual one we’re SUPPOSED to be talking about, I’ll leave you with this nice picture of my snowy, wonderful neighborhood.