January 23rd, 2004.

Played Puddinghead’s last night before leaving for Home. Fantastic night, though perhaps best described in pictures…. an open mic that at first was slightly discouraging. A bit sparse in patronage upon first sight – the guys who were playing had been playing for a while, and KEPT playing for a while – and kept saying things like “you all don’t mind if we play one more, right? Look there’s 80 people out there asking us to play one more!” “How about one more?” “Oh, I don’t see the host, you all don’t mind if we play one more?” – which always rubs me the wrong way. But at least they were good musicians, a good bass player – fun to listen to.

No-one really told me what that MEANT!

When Indian Steve plays his hat – well there’s a metal hatband running around the bass of the hat that acts as a pickup, and he pulls down those hat strings and plays them like a washtub bass almost.

We started off the night playing Push – and had the audience right from the start. The sound was perfect, my voice was doing really well – it was just a great performance night.

And then – there’s this floppy bass sound – I look at Heather’s guitar, thinking she’d lost a string or something – and then realize the host, Steve, has come up and plugged in his HAT! He sort of stabilized after a while, and I even gave him a bass solo during Deep in the AM. During Locomotive Breath, he picked up his flute and experimented with playing along – but we play it with a capo on the first fret , and he couldn’t adapt…

So I scoot over and ask him he could play along sans the capos – he says yes, so Heather and I do a little break, and knock each other’s capos to the ground, and he breaks into this spectacular flute solo.

The audience goes wild.

Good CD sales that night. Very pleased. I wish HE could come to PLOJ. He and JR would make quite the pair.

Also at Puddinheads, there was a spectacular woman working the counter with a star on her back. I admired her for a while and then asked her about the star over banana bread – most people have a story about their tattoos, and I was pretty sure this one had to be a good one – as the tattoo was sooo simple, and so prominently displayed.

I must admit, I’d been expecting some sort of simple response – a star because she’s GOING TO BE A STAR!!! Or, more likely, I was expecting something about Paganism and witchcraft (which I DID end up getting, but it was like second down on a list of reasons – and it wasn’t the expected “oh, it’s a pentagram because I’m a witch!)

When I asked about it, she went through a pretty lengthy “uhm and ah” phase, where she seemed to be sizing me up as to what she could tell me. I gave her the “pentacle” lead because I wasn’t sure if maybe she’d run into trouble explaining – maybe Richmond is conservative enough that some people would get pissed-off if there was any hint of DEVILWORSHIPPINWITCHCRAFTCOMMIETREE-
HUGGIN about.

But she explained that the five-pointed star was a representation of perfection, related to the Golden Mean, phi, and the natural proportions that crop up again and again in… er… nature…. there was a huge explaination that I’m not embarassed to say primarily went over my head. I left my fascination with numbers behind a couple of years ago, and though there are times that I miss it…

Anywho, I was semi-familiar with the concept through art school – that there are naturally “perfect” proportions that exist, that we find attractive. I’d never run across the five-point star as a representation of that, but it makes sense as a culmination of those concepts.

Another reason had to do with the representation of humanity being perfected through the joining of a man and a woman – I think going back to Pagan symbology. I was curious about what this implied about her beliefs – about what she thought about equality vs the popularized concept of feminism, etc etc – But you don’t get into that conversation with somone while they’re trying to bus tables.

It was good back-story – (no pun intended) for a woman who will eventually fade from my memory – being nothing but what I write down here and an image of a star. It’s strange to think that in another couple of years she’ll be nothing but a couple of paragraphs and a star and a memory of crystalline eyes.

It’s a shame – this Trip is about communication, you know? But I feel like we’re moving too fast to create any ties. Quantity over quality? I just don’t know.

With any luck, she’ll look over the Journal and say “IT JUST AINT TRUE” and email me a better description… and maybe even her name.

Sigh.

Gosh… am I creepy? I hope I’m not creepy.

I think I’m about to get a half-dozen emails from people saying “yep, you’re creepy.”