Just a quick note about staying with Damian, my old office-mate from Glovia. Here is one of those people who frequently mentions “Sometimes I wish I could be doing what YOU’RE doing” – he is a contradiction, in a way – one of my most “grown-up” peers. Perhaps a sign of where I’m SUPPOSED to be. I always feel nervous around him for the moments of our meeting, because he’s just gone so much further in Life than I have, and without the drastic measures.
He Lives comfortable in a nice house with a beautiful wife – he hangs his photography on the walls, a journal of travels made easier by a steady job that he takes satisfaction in – something that he’s very good at. He has a natural ease and confidence and charisma that would make HIM an ideal on-stage musician if he ever put his mind to it (Plus or minus that whole tone-deaf predilection towards didjeridoo and 80’s pop)
He has that almost everyday Life of careful adventure and suburban joy that I sometimes find very, very attractive. I miss the ease of my Life back when I had a steady paycheck, and I admire how he just – deals with the world.
Whether or not touring and wandering and writing is an attack on the world – a full-frontal foray into meeting and greeting the U.S. face by face – or a tail-turned scampering run, escaping the realities of rent and utilities and a daily schedule…. I change my mind every day, but in truth, I guess it’s a combination of the two. It’s the only way I could make Living in this kind of world attractive. It is, perhaps, very much an act of desparation.
Today, we’re spending the day back with Chelsea and Beau, back in Richmond, getting ourselves ready for another show with the spectacular and intimidating Ember Swift – Beau has been sick, with a pretty nasty fever – sick enough that he remembered nothing of our arrival, just that we came in while a really hideous band was playing on Conan O’Brian.
And he’s right… they were horrible. We stood dumbstruck with how bad they were.
We’ve GOT to be able to get on that show.
Hrm.
Anywho, we were looking forward to playing outside today, but it’s just too damned cold. Last night we played an open mic and explored Charlottesville – and were somewhat confused by the prevalance of Lewis Carroll imagery – a mushroom themed pizza parlour, Jabberwocky Pizza, Brillig Books… just strange. Met a couple of other musicians, including a scrawny long-haired white boy who played the blues with a voice that was being channeled from a 300 lbs black man somewhere buried deep in the mud of the Lousiana delta (I told him to please excuse the homoerotic imagery, but that he had just slathered my body in thick warm chocolate and to please do it again), and Curt, who introduced me to yet ANOTHER method of looping one’s own music and being more band than any one man has any right to be.
Oh, and don’t let me forget Julie and April, the two unworldly blondes with angellic voices who “have never done this before” but who’s beauty (both vocal and facial) kept Heather and I in the back of the Baja Bean, chatting with them, long after we should’ve gone home.
A good night. I soo have to update my open mic list, but it’s so weird and unwieldy now… sigh.