beautiful, funny, sad & true

The play reading last night was a blast. It wasn’t public, but it still felt like an Event. And hey; how often do I get the chance to see a great new play for free, eat yummy food and have good wine for free, and play the cello all at the same time? Good times.

For those of you who also love The Theatah, it was a contemporary play called “The Lights.” Here’s a synopsis:

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Winner of the 1994 Obie Award. THE LIGHTS is a dark investigation of the lives of a young couple as they struggle to exist in a large urban city that threatens to devour them. “Korder writes up a fury in a jackhammer blast of imagination that delivers tenfold on the promise of his earlier works…nothing, however, could prepare us for the lyrical authority of [his] voice in THE LIGHTS, which resonates with jagged elegies for a lost civilization.” —NY Newsday.

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Which is all well and good, but here are some pictures–taken by Todd S. –of the actual event:

I had a tremendous time, and I can’t wait to do it again.

My friend Todd–who is an actor and theater director–called and told me yesterday about a series of readings he and his group have been having for a few months now. They go to a friend’s house, sit outside on the back lawn and read completely through a play. It’s not a public performance, but it’s a chance to keep up everyone’s skills and find compelling new material at the same time.

The last reading of the season is this Wednesday night, so Todd thought it would be nice to have some musical accompaniment between scenes. Apparently there are lots of short scenes, so sometimes it will only be a few seconds of music, but it sounds very exciting.

He was originally thinking of accordion, but I suggested cello, and he agreed. So on Wednesday night after work, I get the opportunity to provide incidental music for a play, which I’m very excited about.

But that’s not all; there’s more good cello news. I got a couple more gigs with Breanna Paletta today, all of which will feature the Breanna/violin/cello trio, which if you’ve spent any kind of time on my blog lately, you know how excited I am about that particular combination. I’ll keep you posted about the shows as the time gets closer. So far, there are a couple in August, a couple in September, and one in October.

PART ONE:

Kelly’s seeing somebody else now. I found out the day before I left for Nevada. I’m not going to go into too much detail about it, but the timing of it was pretty painful. After a couple months of not seeing each other at all–but still writing a lot–she and I had started spending time together again, and enjoying being close again. After a few false starts and ups-and-downs, we were trying to figure out what our relationship was going to morph into. But it seems that she wants me completely out of her life; at least that’s what her actions are saying.

I have a good track record of remaining friends with people I’ve been in relationships with, and so does Kelly, but OUCH. I’m really reeling from all this. I do miss her and care about her a lot, even still. After ten months of being deeply involved with someone, it’s hard to make sense of everything when it comes to a complete stop. But like I wrote the other day, it helps to have a busy, fun life and great friendships to fall back on. I’ve gotten some good, straightforward advice from the people I trust. And I’ve listened.

PART TWO:

I was at work when I got Kelly’s e-mails, and I felt like I’d had the wind knocked out of me. I needed to get away from the computer for a while. I went downstairs to get some coffee and take a walk outside. One of my work friends was already in line. He was with another girl who works with us, and he introduced me to her, saying, “This is Todd. He plays in that band I told you about that we have to go see.” (He came to see Stephanie’s band the most recent time we played at Jimmy Mak’s.) They asked when our next shows were, and I said, “Well, tomorrow Steph and I are going to Elko, Nevada, actually. We’re playing at the college down there. We played there last year with Dirty Martini, and had the time of our lives. I’m really looking forward to going back.” Just then our coffee was ready, so they went back upstairs to work, and I walked over to get a ‘vest’, or whatever you call those things that you put around your cup to keep the coffee warmer longer.

There was a woman waiting in line behind me, who had overheard our conversation. She asked me, “Did you say you’re playing in Elko? I have a friend who lives there. . .” She appeared to be about my age, and she had a faint trace of an accent, possibly an Irish one. She had short brown hair, and her name was Kelly. We had a really nice conversation about the friends we both have who have somehow ended up living in places and circumstances that don’t befit their temperaments and desires, and it even seemed mildly flirtatious. What would normally have happened next is that we would meet at a mutually-agreed-upon location at some specified time in the near future, but I was not in my usual state of mind, so that didn’t even occur to me. I hope she doesn’t think I was blowing her off. She seemed like a genuinely good person to know, and those kind of people are extremely rare. And who knows? We each now know that the other exists. Maybe she even reads blogs. Let’s find out:

Kelly–who I met in the Blue Heron coffee shop in Portland, with the geologist friend in Elko, Nevada–this is Todd. If you’re out there, I enjoyed our conversation very much, and would love for us to have another one like it.

There.

What I learned from the Blue Heron experience is that I shouldn’t get too disheartened about this new development with Kelly, because there are plenty of other good people waiting in the wings. They tend to make themselves known when I’m least expecting them, but they’re out there, and they want to be with me. They will appreciate me the way I deserve to be appreciated, and treat me the way I deserve to be treated. I will do the same for them.

I’ll write more about my sadness et cetera some other time soon, but in the meantime, it’s like I’ve always said. If you’re having a rough time emotionally, it helps to have great friends and a busy, fun life to fall back on while your wounds heal.

The trip and the gig were both a total blast. Stephanie and I flew down to Reno, then drove four hours to Elko to play at Great Basin College. We played there last year with Dirty Martini, and Steph had played there twice before that, with DM and on her own. So she has a considerable base of fans there, and it turned out that I even had a small (but strong!) contingent as well, which was surprising and cool to learn. It was just an all-around great experience.

We played outside this time, in the ampitheater right in the middle of the campus. It was a warm, breezy night, and it was particularly beautiful. Steph played acoustic guitar and piano–they wheeled a real piano out to the ampitheater for us to use!–and I played electric guitar, accordion and piano on a few songs too. We were totally on. We barely missed a note, and we felt totally in sync with each other. After some of the tough gigs we’ve had lately, this was a welcome relief. Total blast, and I have a feeling we’ll be back down in Elko again before too long.

After dropping our instruments at the hotel, we decided to try our hands at gambling. I tried a slot machine at the first place; put in a dollar and instantly won eight dollars back, so I took that as a good sign and stopped. We walked through the rest of the place and were unimpressed, so we walked across the street to a larger, more bustling casino. We each got a drink, and she played blackjack for a while. I don’t know how, so I watched. She got on a nice little winning streak too, earning twenty dollars from the five she started with, but she left empty-handed after a few more hands, despite one of the other players’ advice, “Hey, you should quit now, while you’re ahead.” We walked around again, and I decided to try some slot machines again, since I’d had good luck with them before. I started with twenty dollars, got down to almost nothing, and then won thirty five, so I decided to quit too.

The drive back was really nice. Steph had about a million phone calls to take care of, so I drove the whole way back to Reno. We stopped at a wide spot in the road called Trinity, which I think used to be a mine, but has since been reduced to a rest stop on one side of the highway and a dilapidated truck stop sign on the other. We stopped for a few minutes so I could take some pictures.

At the rest stop there, we encountered the most foul and disgusting porta-potties either of us had seen in our entire lives.
Steph opened the door to one and instantly stepped back, hands over her face in horror. “I’ve never seen anything that disgusting before,” she said. With a statement like that, my morbid curiosity was piqued, so I took a peek. The inside was smeared with feces, and there was an enormous pile of it on the back of the toilet seat. Repulsive. We both cracked up laughing, and I said, “I’m so sorry you had to see that.”
Good-hearted Steph gave the unknown person the benefit of the doubt and said, “Maybe it was dark, and they just couldn’t see what they were doing.”
“But there are huge flood lights everywhere. I can’t imagine they wouldn’t be able to see. I’m gonna have to ‘poo-poo’ that theory.” (Now THAT’S good comedy.)

We arrived at the Reno airport and ate at a really good little brew pub there. The flight, however, was pretty rough. Despite the nice weather, there was lots of turbulence. We were all getting increasingly nervous as the plane kept shuddering and lurching. Finally it settled down and so did we. But once again, when we started our descent into Portland, it happened again. It was very nice to be down on solid ground again. And can I just say how nice Portland’s airport is? It’s really beautiful, especially in the evening sunshine.

I hung out with NeighborFriendSusan for a little while, since I hadn’t seen her for a few days, then I went to bed at 10:30. Slept until 11:30 the next morning, when BoringFish called to see how I was doing. We talked for a while, then I got up and decided that today is the day I’m going to get my pictures framed and hung in my apartment. I chose my favorites and took them over to the photo printing place, where they’ll be done any minute now, so I’m gonna head back out. I’ll take pictures of my new-and-improved apartment once I get them hung. I daresay you’ll be impressed with the new look.

Despite my melancholy-ness in the morning, yesterday and today were great.

In the afternoon, I recorded more accordion parts for the upcoming Susie Blue CD. We also tried some piano, glockenspiel, and acoustic guitar parts, but as usual, the unsung hero of the day was the Omnichord. That little thing has proven to be worth its weight in gold.

After I got home from the recording session, Joan and I went to see Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox, and it was amazing. We were surprised by the amount of sadness and pain their family has endured throughout the generations, including the current one. Fantastic story; much more about family dynamics and spiritual worldviews than about soap, definitely.

From there we went to Hama Sushi, where neither of us had been before, but turned out to be a hidden treasure. Their sushi was incredibly affordable, yet still very well-made and tasty at the same time.

After we’d had our fill of sushi, we went to Ikea. It wasn’t Joan’s first time there, but it was mine. She bought a small bag full of cool things for like $35, but somehow I ended up empty-handed. I was really only there to look, since I’ve bought so much new stuff for my apartment already. I was impressed by their use of space in their designs. Many of the pieces are meant to cram as much functionality as possible into as small a space as possible. Oh, and they also have frozen yogurt cones. :)

This morning was S & W’s wedding, which was beautiful, personal, and incredibly touching. My favorite part was where they had each guest drop a rock into a container while they poured salt over it, creating a container full of salt and stones, which symbolized the friends’ good wishes and hopes for their future. It was really beautiful. I dropped in the biggest stone I could find. Oh, and during the reception, guess who caught the garter? That’s right; good ol’ Mr. T.

Oh yeah; in case you didn’t know, my nickname is Mr. T.

The rest of the day I spent on apartment-related stuff. I found out last night that what I’d bought last week and had been using as an incredibly uncomfortable, heavy, small comforter actually turned out to be something called a ‘featherbed’ which is supposed to go UNDERNEATH the mattress pad, and make your bed softer and more padded than it was before. Sweet! As if it was possible to love my bed any more. So I put the featherbed where it belonged, and got an actual comforter.

In addition to that, I got rid of my old CD shelf (it went to someone else in my building) and a bunch of books and stuff are going to Goodwill tomorrow morning. I also put the little shelves I got from Alyssa in my bedroom, and rearranged my books and CD’s appropriately, which means that the living room is now even more opened up, and the bedroom no longer has books, CD’s, and instruments strewn all over the floor. Quite a successful day, I’d say.

Now I’m having a glass of wine and watching a nature show about macaws.

Can’t wait to try out my new-and-even-better-than-it-was-before bed. If you’ve been reading my blogs since the MySpace days, you already know how much I was in love with it, and that I’ve already raved about it at great length, but now it should be even softer and more amazing. I’m not sure how that’s possible, but I can tell you that a third–or for me, it’s probably more like a fourth–of my life just got that much better.