beautiful, funny, sad & true

I had two strange dreams this morning, and will share them both, in two different entries.  This one is the stranger—and much longer—of the two, and it does involve the F-word a bit later on, so if that’s something that bothers you, I’m letting you know now that it’s coming.  Now then, on to the dream at hand.

* * * * *

I wake up in a strange bed in a pink room with dirty taupe carpets and cheap wood paneling.  I have no idea where I am or why I’ve been sleeping there.  Four cats are on the bed with me; two are biting my fingers and the other two are still fast asleep on my shoulders, essentially pinning me down.  It is very early in the morning, maybe half past seven.  A group of obnoxious young kids bursts into the room, and they pick up some of the toys that are strewn around the floor, and play with them very loudly.  Some of the kids even jump onto the bed and start rough-housing, despite the fact that I’m still in there.  My phone slips off the bed and disappears.  I am becoming quite annoyed by now, and I crawl out of bed to look for the phone.

Finally some adults enter the room.  There are around ten in the group.  A couple of them appear to be hippie circus people preparing for a performance, and the rest are dressed in more conventional clothing.  They all start to have a surprisingly casual conversation, despite the utter chaos surrounding them.  I tell one of the older men that my phone seems to have disappeared, and that I need help finding it.  “It’s black,” I say.  I realize that’s not much of a description to go on, and I almost add the fact that it’s an iPhone, but I decide not to.  I know no one in the room, but despite that, they all seem to know me, or at least they don’t seem to be surprised that I’m staying in the room.  I feel like it would be rude for me to ask these people who they all are, so I decide to wait for a friend to appear, or perhaps someone will give me a clue as to what I’m doing there.  No one else appears, and no clues are given.

I have the vague notion that I’m on tour with a friend from BigAppleCity (who in real life is a member of that group of blue men), but he is nowhere to be seen, and my notion is vague enough that I’m not even sure he’s really supposed to there, even.  I think to myself, Maybe I’m on tour with someone else?  Maybe I’m just passing through and needed a random place to sleep?  I wander through the house a bit, to hopefully get my bearings.  I walk to the garage and see my ancient brown Toyota Celica (kinda like this one) inside.  It is a surprise to see it sitting there.  Am I on a solo road trip?  A mechanic is lying on his back on one of those roller thingies underneath the car, making a repair of some kind even though the car doesn’t need it.  I open the trunk and find that it’s completely full of toys.  I grab a blanket from a nearby workbench and stuff it in the trunk on top of the toys, because hey, you never know.

I leave the garage and the mechanic and walk back into the living room, which just so happens to be very similar to the living room in my childhood home.  I am introduced to two African guys, one of whom is a huge fan of my music (How does he know my music? is my instantaneous thought) and he keeps pushing a notebook and an orange marker toward me and asking for my autograph. I sit down on the sofa next to the two guys and take the notebook.  The huge overstuffed sofa cushion on which I’m sitting begins to swing back and forth wildly, and I’m barely able to stay seated, let alone to write anything.  I hand the notebook back to the African guy to hold until my cushion stops pitching. “This is crazy,” I tell my two new friends. “I can’t even sit on a sofa!”

The three of us begin to have a slightly philosophical conversation, and a thirteen-year-old boy walks up and plants himself right in front of my face, trying to pick a fight.  “You guys are STILL talking about that?”  He laughs and pushes me hard in the chest.

I snicker at him dismissively. “What are you doing? Go the fuck away.” He is dumbstruck by the sudden profanity, and turns and slinks away to the side of the room, muttering, “Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck,” as if he’s autistic.  His dad, a greasy man in both the literal and the figurative sense, runs over and gets right in my face just as his son had.  Gee, I wonder where the kid learned THAT trick, I think to myself. The dad is yelling at me and gesturing toward his son, who is still muttering the F-bomb to himself while his dad is getting increasingly riled up.  It appears that I’m about to get punched.

“Fuck?” he yells. “Seriously? You have no right to talk to my son that way!”

I decide that a healthy dose of diplomacy is in order, and fast.  “I shouldn’t have said that, you’re right.  I apologize.  But didn’t you see what he did?  He shouldn’t go around picking fights.”   The guy seems placated, and walks back to join his son.

The African guy hands me the orange marker and notebook again. The marker still doesn’t write very well, and I tell him I can use the black pen that has just materialized in my hand somehow.   He insists I use the orange one, takes it back, and fiddles with it in an attempt to make it work, telling me it’s all about the balance of the art in the notebook; something weird like that.  I’m not much of a visual artist, but I half-heartedly attempt to draw something that even remotely resembles the type of things that other people have drawn already, and then I sign my name.  It is practically illegible, and unrecognizable to me.  Good enough, I think to myself, that’ll have to do.

I stand up from the sofa and walk into an empty living room, still completely mystified by everything happening around me.  I decide to search for—and hopefully find, let’s be honest—my suitcase so that I can take a shower, to clear my head and get away from all of the strange people and interactions.  I walk through a few more rooms, but my suitcase never turns up.

Last night, my friend and I went to see a movie called Holy Motors.  We were intrigued by the preview, and thought it looked interesting and very stylish, but we had no way of knowing what a wild ride we were in for.  Here’s the trailer.

This is not a review.  This is a plea for you to watch the movie so that we can discuss it.  It’s not for the faint of heart.  It’s dark, and shocking, and lovely, and melancholy, and mysterious, and joyous, and occasionally hysterical, and it’s a myriad of surprises from beginning to end.  I don’t even want to say anything about the story, because I want you to have the same experience I (and everyone else in the theater) did.  I feel like I’ve already said too much.  Worth mentioning is the fact that I almost titled this entry, “Holy crap!  Holy Motors!”

More shocking than the movie, however, was what happened after.  It happened at the Living Room here in downtown Portland, at the early showing.  The film had just finished, but instead of getting up to leave, everyone stayed in their seats, talking quietly.  The guy sitting next to my friend and me said that he’d gotten up to take a five-minute bathroom break, and asked what he’d missed.  Another guy chimed in that he’d missed a bit on a bathroom break as well.  We did our best to remember, and we told him.  Then other people started to chime in and ask about what the group thought a scene meant, or how various elements tied together (or didn’t).  Before long, everyone was jumping into spontaneous conversation about the film, and comparing it to other films, and suddenly it became Movie Club.  The staff had to tell us first politely, and then a bit more pointedly, that they did have a lobby, and we were welcome to go out there, but that they had to clean the theater, and we had to vacate.  The group congregated in the hallway and continued the discussion for another fifteen minutes.  Everyone who was in that little theater stayed and participated in the discussion.  I’ve been going to movies for decades now, and that has never happened before.  It was fantastic, and it made me wonder why it doesn’t happen more often.

I want so badly to post pictures and scenes from the movie on here, but I’m not going to.  You can seek them out if you want, but I would encourage you not to, and to see it with no prior knowledge of the story.  Also, I recommend that you see it on the biggest screen available to you.  I imagine that it’s still playing in some arthouse theaters, but if it’s not, it’s out on DVD.

What are you waiting for?  Go!  See this film!

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“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.  And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.  The world will not have it.  It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions.  It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.  You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.  You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate YOU.  Keep the channel open.  No artist is pleased.  There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.  There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

-Martha Graham to Agnes de Mille

Thanks to my amazing musical friend Kyleen for making me aware of this quote.

A thought occurred to me last night; while it’s true that I’ve been good about keeping up my blog lately, it would be nice if I had some help.  That thought led to, What if I recruited some of my friends, all of whom are creative and intelligent in their own right, to contribute a story every once in a while?  Brilliant.  A bunch of new and (hopefully, ha ha) compelling content for BFS&T, and my friends get to have an occasional outlet that most of them don’t normally have.  Not to mention the fact that I get to find out something new about each of my friends who contributes.  Everybody wins.  So don’t be too surprised (or do, if you want) if some guest bloggers appear from time to time.

On the home front, times are still really tough.  I’ve applied for about a million jobs (okay, a few hundred), which have led to exactly one interview and not an ounce of success.  The problem is that I have plenty of skills in music, but precious little going for me outside of that.  The types of jobs that I’ve gone to in the past have evaporated in this slowly-improving-but-still-crappy economy, and by the colossal number of un- or underemployed people here in MyFairCity.  To add insult to injury, quite a few gigs have cancelled in the last month or so (due to ‘lack of budget’), which has left me with essentially zero income.  If not for my family’s intervention, I would be on the street, in my car, or in any number of other untenable situations.  I was struck down the other night by feelings of utter hopelessness, which is a new and unpleasant trend lately.  I could use some good thoughts, or advice, or prayers, or whatever parlance of your choice.

I’m trying desperately to maintain my famously indomitable spirit, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult in the face of the constant and crushing feeling that my life is careening out of control, and I’m going slowly crazy.  Suffice it to say that anxiety and depression are off the charts.  Creativity is practically nonexistent.

It seems to be a season for suffering.  A week before Sandy Hook, Portland had its own gunman shoot up Macy’s in the nearby Clackamas Town Center mall, which traumatized the city.  A couple of weeks later, one of my bandmates and her wheelchair-bound significant other were struck by a car that blew through a stop sign and blindsided them in a left turn as they walked across the crosswalk.  They were only slightly injured, thankfully, but it’s now been quite a few weeks since the accident, and they’re still dealing with the physical ramifications, the emotional frustrations, and the insurance issues.  A very well-known musician friend has been recently diagnosed with cancer.  Particularly cruel is the fact that it manifested itself in his neck, and he’s a singer.   The support shown by the community has been absolutely astounding, but he’s far from being out of the woods yet.  Here’s a link to his story, and how to do what you can to help.

Be all that as it may, this was not intended to be a pity party, I just felt I should let you in on the magnitude and severity of the things I (and others, whose issues definitely put my own in perspective) have been dealing with lately.  But it ain’t all gloom around here.  More frequent breaks in the weather—as well as the longer hours of sunlight—are proving to be worth their weight in gold (Can time and light be worth their weight in gold?  ANYWAY.  Moving on.), and I’ve been going for long walks almost every day.  I do have a couple or three music production projects scheduled for to begin in the near future, and that’s the best way I know of to improve my spirits and slough off the yoke of dark thoughts.

So that’s the news at this point.  I appreciate your continued support and good ‘parlance’ in these stressful and difficult times.  Here’s hoping they’re over soon, and dare I say it (albeit in a Tiny Tim falsetto voice), may God bless us, every one.