beautiful, funny, sad & true

I’m not gonna lie; I’ve been feeling a little bit off today.

Not sure what it is, but something’s not right. I feel guilty, in a way, for saying I feel lonely, since I have plenty of things to do, and people I’ve been hanging out with, but I’m missing a romantic connection, that’s for sure. I’ve been feeling the void a lot lately.

Parenthetically speaking, is ‘feeling the void’ a mixed metaphor? I don’t know, but at the very least it’s good old-fashioned sloppy writing.

ANYWAY. Enough of this void business. I’m sure it’ll pass. And everything could all change for the better tomorrow.

I’m meeting Sarah Castro right now, and we’re going to see Darjeeling Limited. I love Wes Anderson’s other movies, particularly “Rushmore”, and I’m excited to see this one in the theater.

Tonight, my friend John invited me to go out to dinner at McMenamins’ Edgefield, courtesy of his boss. He works for a fairly well-known software company, so part of his job involves setting up computer networks for Trade Shows and Special Events all the time. Tonight John’s boss needed him to set up a small network of computers out at Edgefield, and that there was “dinner for two” in it for him. At first he balked, because it would have cost him and his wife more to hire a babysitter for the evening than the dinners were worth, so he was prepared to give it a miss. But then he remembered how rarely he and I get a chance to hang out, so he invited me instead. Yay!

John ordered a steak with polenta and grilled vegetables, I had blackened ahi with saffron rice, and we each had a couple of glasses of nice Edgefield wine to go with it all. Suffice it to say that it was an incredible dinner.

When asked if we’d like dessert, we both opted for the same thing, a swirled chocolate/caramel/orange-glaze concoction with a little scoop of chocolate hazelnut ice cream on the side. When the waiter returned, however, he had brought only one. We were surprised at first, but after eating the bread, the salad and the main courses, we decided that splitting dessert was probably a good idea.

After we paid the check, the waiter told us to “have a great night” and “keep taking care of each other”, and then he walked away. Thinking we must have misheard him, we both cracked up laughing in disbelief. He totally thought we were a couple. Apparently two men can’t eat dinner together at a nice restaurant in the little town of Troutdale without raising suspicions, or at least eyebrows.

We were already having a great time, but the waiter’s off-hand comment made the evening hilarious and memorable. Thank you, John, for everything. I hope we can ‘keep taking care of each other’ for years to come!

Today I went to work. Normally that wouldn’t be an unusual thing, except that I was sick for the previous few days. I’m feeling pretty much like myself again.

Shelby and I were supposed to go see Ben Lee on Wednesday night, but I was sick so we agreed to take a rain check. Tonight after work I met her at the Bagdad Theater (yes, for you non-Portlanders, it’s spelled that way), and we went to see the movie Ratatouille. Brilliant movie, by the way. We both completely loved it, and had plenty of “Awwww!” moments. If you get a chance, you should definitely see it on the big screen.

From there we went to meet some of Shelby’s work friends at the Gypsy, which was pretty fun, I have to say. You never know what you’re gonna get when you meet someone’s work friends, but they were a fun bunch of 21-year-olds; one girl and three guys. We all had one drink each, and then Shelby and I invited her friend-girl to the Crystal Ballroom to watch a very unusual event.

It was a listening party of sorts, for the album Zaireeka by the Flaming Lips. It was much more than that, of course, because it involved the playing of all four CD’s at the same time–it’s meant to be played that way, apparently–to create a huge, quadraphonic surround-sound experience. It was incredible. If you live in one of the ten cities that this ‘show’ is coming to, or if you happen to know someone with four separate stereos in their home, I recommend that you buy this CD set and experience it for yourself.

Shelby’s friend and her boyfriend lasted about two songs–didn’t seem like their Thing after all. Shelby loved it, but she only lasted for a couple more songs because she had to work early in the morning. I stayed clear through to the end because A) it was fun, B) I’d never heard of an event like that and I wanted to experience it, and C) one of my friends from work was there too, so I stuck around to hang out with him. First time we’ve ever hung out outside of work.

After the show was over, we walked to a gay bar down the street (my friend is gay). It’s not what I would call a ‘super-gay’ bar, just a classy bar where the majority of the clientele seems to be gay men. No big deal. We probably stayed there for an hour or so, having a good time talking, and then he suggested that we to go to a different place that he also frequents. I was expecting a place like the first, but the second place turned out to be a SUPER-gay bar. Dark, smoky, smelling of flatulence and sweat, with huge projection-screen TV in the middle of the wall behind the bar showing the original “Star Wars” (What the hunh?), with 25-inch TV’s on each side of the projection screen–and in almost every other corner of the room too–showing hardcore gay porn videos. I like to think that I’m a pretty open-minded guy, but the gay porn and over-the-top sexual vibe in the room was way too much for me to deal with. We talked for a few minutes there, while I kept my back to as many screens as I could and gulped down a glass of water, at which point I said I was ‘fading out’ and gracefully made my exit.

Now I’m home, reeking like cigarettes after spending hours in smoky bars, I’m sweating from drinking iced tea at ten o’clock at night (caffeinated, too. . .I’m such an EEDIOT; I haven’t had any caffeine in at least a month), and I’m slightly frazzled from being surrounded by so much over-the-top gayness. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that, but if the majority of your friends are really mellow girls, and then one night you suddenly find yourself in a place where you’re being obviously ogled and your elbow touched as older, slightly grizzled men try to walk past you in a let’s-pretend-it’s-crowded room, with TV’s in the corners that are showing graphic gay porn, it’s a shock to the system. That’s all I’m saying.

I smell like smoke so much that I’m really starting to stink up my apartment, so I’m going to take a quick shower and go to bed. Once I get there, I’m really going to wish that I had a girl I could just hold and cuddle with for a while before we both drift off to sleep.

Okay, I’m going to give this a try. This subject has been bouncing around in my head for weeks, and I haven’t been sure how to go about writing it all out, but I’m going to do my best.

True friends in this life are very rare. I’m lucky enough to have a few, but there’s one person who is responsible for the biggest changes in my life, and without whom my life would still be the same as it used to be.

When I first moved to Portland, I got a job with the Postal Service, after seeing an ad in the newspaper. It wasn’t the usual back-breaking USPS job, we were told, but a computer-based data entry job. Not very stressful; listened to NPR and audio books all day; I even made a few good friends, some of which I still have to this day. (Hey, JohnReneeMarkRosemary!)

For the first few years I lived here, I didn’t have a car. My apartment was right down the street from where I worked, and I wasn’t playing gigs yet, so I didn’t need one. My rent was low, and my job paid pretty well, so it was time to start thinking about doing more music writing. I got a new computer, a new guitar effects processor, and a couple of keyboard sound modules, and then started dinking around with song ideas. Some were completely realized and polished songs, others were just little snippets of ideas, twenty seconds long.

I started taking the tapes to work with me to play for my friends. Without exception they said, “Enh. . .not really my thing.” I’d say, “Hunh. Well, you know I played all the instruments on there; that’s gotta count for something, right?” They’d say, “Well, that’s kinda cool, I guess.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement. Whenever I met someone new, I’d let them listen to the tapes if they wanted to, and after lots of similarly lackluster responses, I decided to just stop sharing it. But–credit where credit’s due–there were two people who were the first ones to really listen, and to take my music seriously; Mark and John. Renee and Rosemary did too, a little later on (Renee in particular has come to a lot of my shows, but that’s getting ahead of The Story), but John and Mark were definitely the first, and their confidence and kind words came along at a time when I desperately needed them. Thank you, to all four of you. I’ve never ever forgotten your kindness.
(Incidentally, all four–particularly Renee and John–are regular readers of this blog.)

One other thing you should know about that job. There were about three hundred people who worked there, on about six or eight different shifts. So it was possible to work there for quite a while without getting a chance to really meet someone, if they didn’t work on your same shift. You’d be in the same huge room at the same time, but your paths might never cross.

So, after working there for about four years, I was coming back from a break and made some jokey comment to one of my friends. This woman named Crystin, who I’d seen plenty of times but never met, overheard that and laughed. She told me later that she didn’t remember what it was I said, but that it was genuinely smart and funny, without being crude or sexist, and that’s what made her think I might be a Good Person.

So we finally met and started talking, and she asked what I do outside of work. I said I play guitar and piano, and I dink around and write some little songs. She said she’d like to hear some stuff. She told me she was taking voice lessons and learning the guitar so she could write songs. In return, she gave me a tape of herself singing along in the bathroom to a Heather Nova song. I thought it was good, I told her, but I really wanted to hear stuff that she was writing. She went and listened to my tape, and then came back with tears in her eyes and gave me one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever had in my whole life. “Oh my gawd. That music made me laugh and cry at the same time! Do you think you can make my stuff sound like that?”

From then on, it was full speed ahead. She brought me all kinds of songs, and we’d record them, and I’d play all kinds of instruments on them. She was married–and still is–to a great guy named Aram, and we became just as close. The three of us became inseparable friends, and Crystin and I took any opportunity to share with people this new thing we were creating.

After we’d worked on about fifty songs together, we thought, “Hunh. . .we should probably start a band.” The idea hadn’t occurred to us. So we went to find some female-fronted singer-songwriter bands to check out. The two that we were both blown away and inspired by–ironically enough–were Stephanie Schneiderman and Susie Blue.

Since I’m trying to keep this entry at a reasonable length, I’ll skip the band-related stuff because it’s all out there on the web anyway. Suffice it to say that we started a band, and that provided just the right kind of support that we both needed to get past our fears and insecurities. We still had plenty, of course, but always managed to talk them out. She’s the one who taught me how to really talk them out, by the way.

So. What’s the point of all this?

I dunno; guess I just felt like I needed to say thank you, Crystin and Aram. I wouldn’t be the person I am today, doing the things that I’m doing, without you guys. I learned what it’s like to have people see through my thorns and facades, and still like what they saw. I learned what it’s like to have people see me in a way I couldn’t see myself, because they didn’t have my internal filters saying, “What’s wrong with me?” all the time. I learned what it’s like to have people expect the best from me, and that in turn brought out the best in me. I learned what it felt like to always (okay, ALMOST always!) be given the benefit of the doubt, even when I didn’t feel I deserved it, or when I was frustrated with my life, or when I was depressed and despondent. You saw past all those things, and saw me for what I am.

Like I said; friends like that are extremely rare in this life, and I owe you everything for helping me transform into the person I am now.

THANK YOU, C and A.

Incidentally, if you’d like to listen some of the songs we did together, go check out Crystin’s MySpace page.

After a long day of sleeping, sweating (I stayed home from work with a fever today), dinking around on the computer and washing dishes, I decided to go back to bed and read for a while. I’m still reading Catcher in the Rye. I got to the part where Our Hero sneaks into his parents’ home in the middle of the night–cause he’s home a couple of days early due to being kicked out of school, and he doesn’t want his parents to find out yet–to see his little sister. That scenario reminded me of the line from the play Our Town. You know the one; “Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.”

I hadn’t seen that play since I was in junior high, and I wanted to see it again and remember the context of that great line, so I scrounged around a bit and watched the 1940 version of the movie on Google. I didn’t hear that line, but the movie was certainly excellent and moving. The crux of it is that we all sort of zoom through our lives without taking time to even see the people that are closest to us, until it’s too late. And if I’m not mistaken, the ending of the movie was different from that of the play…? I don’t remember the play having a Hollywood happy ending.

After all that, it turned out that the line was not from Our Town after all, but from a poem by Robert Frost called The Death of the Hired Man, which I somehow remember reading in fifth grade–and not really understanding it–but that line certainly stuck with me all this time. It also turns out that I had it slightly wrong. The actual line is this:

And now that I’m in my mid-thirties, and gone through some pretty hard times, I feel like I understand and appreciate it.

Amazing how certain things you read can stick with you. I read the poem when I was just ten years old, but the line is so strong that it called out to my little brain and then waited for me to come around and discover it again. Re-reading Catcher in the Rye has been a bit like that too. Even though I read it as an adult (albeit barely; I think I was eighteen), and I should have been able to relate to it completely, I hadn’t really started to live yet, so it was just as remote as reading Isaac Asimov or something. Now I actually find myself relating to the confusion, the humor, and even the darkness that seems to jump out from every page.

Makes me want to go back and re-read every book I thought I’d read before.