NOMAD performing at the Crickett’s Fat Daddy Saloon open mic, helping me advertise for Laurelpalooza. I think the audience there had no idea what hit them.
I don’t remember which artist got this going – but someone brought the funk and inspired a little dance party at Java Mammas.
Rick Millman gets to be my first feature at the Java Mammas open mic in Reisterstown, MD. It was awesome to see him play for more than 10 minutes and he was every bit as wonderful as I thought he’d be. 
Hee! We had banditos attacking from behind a rock at the open mic last week!
Yup – we had upon ourselves an act of a play spring forth near the end of the night. Something NEW!!!
Age is a frightening thing. We all know that – to be human is to fight against the real and everyday knowledge that we’re slowly dissolving under the tide of time. “Time is the fire in which we burn”. Ha. Wise words from Star Trek, actually.
It’s an interesting time to be alive and I’m grateful for it. Rowan is convinced that with the geometric increases in the power of computing that we may be the last generation to fear death, that future humans will transfer their memories and personalities to machines upon death. It’s comforting but no more or less plausible than religion.
Watching people go through the trials and tribulations of age, the indignities, really frightens me. When I was younger it was fear of death that eft me staring at the ceiling, willing time to simply slow and stop and leave me Living forever. Now it’s the nightmare images of my father’s fight with cancer, the drawings of Will Schaff of his own father as his body faltered around him. Similar expressions, staring into nowhere, slack-jawed – not with wonder but with sheer exhaustion.
We all wear thin – and every day is a struggle not to think too much about it but the fight is exhausting.
Today I read a news article titled “What to do with an aged lemur?” about the fact that better health care and a steadily increasing knowledge base is allowing animals in captivity to reach greater and greater … scratch that… older and older ages. Jaguars with failing kidneys, black bears with arthritis, gorillas in menopause and a lemur who is slowly developing dementia.
Do we believe animals are people too? We eat them and carve their environments away, tease them and pluck them and keep them healthy and smack them when they’ve been bad. We fight their battles for them and bring them to knew warzones and it’s hard to think where our responsibility begins and ends. We keep them free of infestation and keep them in cages and make sure they’re healthy enough to walk but insure they’re cut so that they can’t fly.
And so how does that apply to me? Theoretically I be able to make the decision for myself – when does Life lose it’s value? When is enough ENOUGH?!
When do you surrender in a losing battle?
I’m sitting in College Perk, itself an aging building kept young by the ever-moving passage of an unending mix of blood. Children and parents and college students and lawyers, indie rockers and artists and outnumbered Republicans all mixing to make a very, very vital place. I have a Love / hate relationship with the Perk and as it has grown it’s mood and flavour have shifted.
It’s so crazy to go back and look at the walls of College Perk and realize that I have just about the oldest hand print on the wall.
Now the venue is in foreclosure – (the article at the Diamondback…. read the comments at the bottom and add your own, no matter what you think of the Perk, the “community response” is pretty damned offensive) – and it hurts to watch the battle. I have a strange kind of faith in Chris Gordon, the owner. I don’t believe he goes about things the right way, but give him a Gordion Knot (ha!) and he’ll go about solving the problem in a way that most of us wouldn’t dare. I admire him for that, but also don’t believe that it can always work that way and sure enough, it looks like his evasions and “direct-approaches” are coming back not only to bite HIM in the ass, but also the ass of those who think of it as the centre of their musical community, those who rely on it for their jobs and certainly those who Live here. I’m not sure what I believe, lawsuits can drag things out for years, but more and more I fear things are stacking up against Chris and the Perk and I fear we’re bound to lose it.
We’ll know more by the end of next week, but I plan to come to the open mic this week, just in case it’s the last one.
Ironically – George Thorogood’s “1 Bourbon, 1 Scotch, 1 Beer” is playing on the radio right now.
