A really nice feeling.
It's the end of (work)day Friday. I'll see Sue, my two daughters, Lulu, and Alice this weekend.
The women in my life. They take good care of me.
Real good care.
Pays my ticket when I speed.
Friday, March 2, 2007
Step back and take a DEEP BREATH
So…starting to get a little squeamish?
A co-worker told me that I was a little angry on this blog yesterday. A little? Hmm…darn it, I was going for a lot of angry; guess I’ll just have to work on that.
Another has said to me a couple of times that if I don’t want her to read this blog to just let her know. (K: it’s really okay. That’s what it’s for.)
I believe very strongly in the shared experience of life. That we’re all in this together. Not that we are all actually are connected in some mysterious DNA kind of way. But I think we, us, all of us, white, black, green, red, yellow, purple, old, young, gay, straight, bi, curly, believers, non-believers, male, female, and anything in-between, can lend a hand to one another just by cluing each other in on our personal experience of this reality we call life. That we have a heckuva lot more in common that we thought.
I mean, isn’t this what this Internet thang is supposed to be all about? Connecting? Reconnecting a world gone awry?
The digital world has connected us in so many ways, but the one thing it did was strip away all emotion. We’ll say things in email or respond to a blog in language that we would never say to a person face-to-face. All I’m trying to do is put the person back in the digital world.
I lived in a neighborhood where the woman across the street from me died, and I didn’t even know it. Didn’t know her, had no idea that she died until her son took over the house. Two doors down a man, a husband and father of two girls, slowly died of cancer and I knew about it, but didn’t know about it either. (Why were all these people dying in that neighborhood? Thank God I got out alive!) These momentous life events—death is a life event, we just don’t talk about it—and everyone looked the other way.
We work so closely together, but retain that “professional” distance. But what’s wrong with knowing that the person who you’re riding the elevator with has money problems? Gets depressed at times? Gets angry? Regarding yesterday’s blog, I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t angry about some of the things that have happened to me and that some people have done to me; there would be something wrong with me if I wasn’t. These really are just regular, everyday, human experiences. As are even the bigger, darker ones that we keep so secret. Shhh...divorce. Adultery. Alcoholism. Drug addiction. Serious mental illness. Nah, just normal human experiences, I'm sorry to say. It's like sex: We really make too big a deal out of things.
I was talking to Ryan Landry this morning, a founder of the Gold Dust Orphans. Ryan is a self-proclaimed 46-year-old queen, and said he doesn’t consider himself male or female. He considers himself human. Now there’s an interesting concept. He and I just this morning were talking about how he tries to show through drag, vaudeville, and burlesque the similarities we all have as human beings.
It’s a risk. I know it is. Not everyone’s going to buy into this. It’s weird, someone might say. Someone else might say, it’s interesting, but I couldn’t lay myself out there like that. I’m too shy. I’m too private. And there’s the inevitable, he’s psycho, run away.
Well, whatever. I repeat: Wasn’t the Internet supposed to bring us all together? One big digital world? Well, what about it? I mean, do you really want to use it for just selling cars and our used crap on e-bay?
A co-worker told me that I was a little angry on this blog yesterday. A little? Hmm…darn it, I was going for a lot of angry; guess I’ll just have to work on that.
Another has said to me a couple of times that if I don’t want her to read this blog to just let her know. (K: it’s really okay. That’s what it’s for.)
I believe very strongly in the shared experience of life. That we’re all in this together. Not that we are all actually are connected in some mysterious DNA kind of way. But I think we, us, all of us, white, black, green, red, yellow, purple, old, young, gay, straight, bi, curly, believers, non-believers, male, female, and anything in-between, can lend a hand to one another just by cluing each other in on our personal experience of this reality we call life. That we have a heckuva lot more in common that we thought.
I mean, isn’t this what this Internet thang is supposed to be all about? Connecting? Reconnecting a world gone awry?
The digital world has connected us in so many ways, but the one thing it did was strip away all emotion. We’ll say things in email or respond to a blog in language that we would never say to a person face-to-face. All I’m trying to do is put the person back in the digital world.
I lived in a neighborhood where the woman across the street from me died, and I didn’t even know it. Didn’t know her, had no idea that she died until her son took over the house. Two doors down a man, a husband and father of two girls, slowly died of cancer and I knew about it, but didn’t know about it either. (Why were all these people dying in that neighborhood? Thank God I got out alive!) These momentous life events—death is a life event, we just don’t talk about it—and everyone looked the other way.
We work so closely together, but retain that “professional” distance. But what’s wrong with knowing that the person who you’re riding the elevator with has money problems? Gets depressed at times? Gets angry? Regarding yesterday’s blog, I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t angry about some of the things that have happened to me and that some people have done to me; there would be something wrong with me if I wasn’t. These really are just regular, everyday, human experiences. As are even the bigger, darker ones that we keep so secret. Shhh...divorce. Adultery. Alcoholism. Drug addiction. Serious mental illness. Nah, just normal human experiences, I'm sorry to say. It's like sex: We really make too big a deal out of things.
I was talking to Ryan Landry this morning, a founder of the Gold Dust Orphans. Ryan is a self-proclaimed 46-year-old queen, and said he doesn’t consider himself male or female. He considers himself human. Now there’s an interesting concept. He and I just this morning were talking about how he tries to show through drag, vaudeville, and burlesque the similarities we all have as human beings.
It’s a risk. I know it is. Not everyone’s going to buy into this. It’s weird, someone might say. Someone else might say, it’s interesting, but I couldn’t lay myself out there like that. I’m too shy. I’m too private. And there’s the inevitable, he’s psycho, run away.
Well, whatever. I repeat: Wasn’t the Internet supposed to bring us all together? One big digital world? Well, what about it? I mean, do you really want to use it for just selling cars and our used crap on e-bay?
Thursday, March 1, 2007
The importance of black
March 1. The first day of the month. I hate the first day of the month. The rent check is due. Child support. Other kids’ expenses. The checking account that looked so hopeful with some serious numbers in it, (serious meaning there’s enough of a buffer that there is no chance of it getting overdrawn) is drained and I have to reach deep into savings that I hope to replace, but still don’t yet know how.
Hope. This world runs on hope. Most of us wouldn’t get out of the bed in the morning if it weren’t for hope.
I have no reason to complain, though, for two reasons: first, I dug my own financial grave, and therefore it's my responsibility to get myself out again. Oh, not that I didn’t have a little help, but that person isn’t going to own up to any responsibility. A true character out of a Tennessee Williams’ play, living inside her own head and fantasies. Or better yet, someone described best by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby:
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…"
This woman has made a selfish career out of ruining other’s lives, her ex-husband’s, her kids’, everyone near to her gets sucked into her little game — she’s so alluring, she plays so well, adept at really fooling others who have no idea of the emptiness and cruelty that reside inside her — then when things fizzle, as she calls it, she just moves on leaving everyone else to pick up the pieces of their lives. They’re called borderline personalities, and if you don’t know about them, Google the word and read about them. If you meet anyone who even remotely fits this description run, run for your life.
But I’m not bitter. LOL. Seriously, if I weren't, I wouldn’t be human.
But I do have one more reason not to complain. It’s in the bible: Where much is given, much will be expected. I have been given an extraordinary amount. I have my health; I feel good. I’m not dying of cancer like someone I know. Hell, I’m not dead, like others I know (Horseman, pass by.) I do have a means of getting along, perhaps not in a grand fashion, but not like the destitute one sees daily on the streets of Boston. I was given talent and drive; I’ve been taught to fish, rather than just given a fish. I been given the ability to enjoy beauty, and to find it everywhere I look, from a painting hung in the MFA to a book of literature to a piece of music to a gorgeous clear morning. But most importantly, I’ve been given loved ones, family and friends. Special people like my two daughters and Sue who love me, as I like to say, despite who I am. And good buddies like John and Baxter and Scott.
So, March 1. Totalling up the tally sheet here, some of it is in the red, other parts are deep in the black. The important parts are in the black.
Hope. This world runs on hope. Most of us wouldn’t get out of the bed in the morning if it weren’t for hope.
I have no reason to complain, though, for two reasons: first, I dug my own financial grave, and therefore it's my responsibility to get myself out again. Oh, not that I didn’t have a little help, but that person isn’t going to own up to any responsibility. A true character out of a Tennessee Williams’ play, living inside her own head and fantasies. Or better yet, someone described best by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby:
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…"
This woman has made a selfish career out of ruining other’s lives, her ex-husband’s, her kids’, everyone near to her gets sucked into her little game — she’s so alluring, she plays so well, adept at really fooling others who have no idea of the emptiness and cruelty that reside inside her — then when things fizzle, as she calls it, she just moves on leaving everyone else to pick up the pieces of their lives. They’re called borderline personalities, and if you don’t know about them, Google the word and read about them. If you meet anyone who even remotely fits this description run, run for your life.
But I’m not bitter. LOL. Seriously, if I weren't, I wouldn’t be human.
But I do have one more reason not to complain. It’s in the bible: Where much is given, much will be expected. I have been given an extraordinary amount. I have my health; I feel good. I’m not dying of cancer like someone I know. Hell, I’m not dead, like others I know (Horseman, pass by.) I do have a means of getting along, perhaps not in a grand fashion, but not like the destitute one sees daily on the streets of Boston. I was given talent and drive; I’ve been taught to fish, rather than just given a fish. I been given the ability to enjoy beauty, and to find it everywhere I look, from a painting hung in the MFA to a book of literature to a piece of music to a gorgeous clear morning. But most importantly, I’ve been given loved ones, family and friends. Special people like my two daughters and Sue who love me, as I like to say, despite who I am. And good buddies like John and Baxter and Scott.
So, March 1. Totalling up the tally sheet here, some of it is in the red, other parts are deep in the black. The important parts are in the black.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
In the Riverside
This is when I realized the US was doomed…
Maybe six years ago I found myself in the Riverside in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It was late. I was tired. Not sleepy tired. Worn out tired. I was doing something that night that I facetiously called, putting the gun to my head and pulling the trigger. Exchanging one pain for another. I thought I’d hit bottom, but the funny thing about life is just when you think you’ve hit your low point, you suddenly feel your stomach in your throat and you’re taking another free fall. There’s never a real bottom, only a series of lows that get deeper and deeper.
But sitting in that bar that night I didn’t know how low I’d gotten…only time would tell me that.
The band was made up of Thais belting out American pop tunes. I can’t remember a single one, though through the haze I do believe I remember something by The Doors. If it wasn’t The Doors, then it should have been. And as they played and sang those Western songs with such energy, not quite nailing the songs and not giving a damn one way or another that they weren’t but putting their own twist on them, I realized that the whole world that I knew was just a sitting duck for Asia. The whole Asian world was young and hot and charged, and the Western world, run by a bunch of old white men in suits, didn’t stand a chance. Young and quick over there, old and stupid over here. It’s only a matter of time.
Maybe six years ago I found myself in the Riverside in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It was late. I was tired. Not sleepy tired. Worn out tired. I was doing something that night that I facetiously called, putting the gun to my head and pulling the trigger. Exchanging one pain for another. I thought I’d hit bottom, but the funny thing about life is just when you think you’ve hit your low point, you suddenly feel your stomach in your throat and you’re taking another free fall. There’s never a real bottom, only a series of lows that get deeper and deeper.
But sitting in that bar that night I didn’t know how low I’d gotten…only time would tell me that.
The band was made up of Thais belting out American pop tunes. I can’t remember a single one, though through the haze I do believe I remember something by The Doors. If it wasn’t The Doors, then it should have been. And as they played and sang those Western songs with such energy, not quite nailing the songs and not giving a damn one way or another that they weren’t but putting their own twist on them, I realized that the whole world that I knew was just a sitting duck for Asia. The whole Asian world was young and hot and charged, and the Western world, run by a bunch of old white men in suits, didn’t stand a chance. Young and quick over there, old and stupid over here. It’s only a matter of time.
Daddy's Junky Music
Man, there is a dearth of music stores here in Boston. Except for Daddy's Junky Music Store up on Mass. Avenue by Berklee (five T stops from where I work) there isn't one place where a poor boy can walk to at lunchtime to clear his head and get to know a few guitars and be back at his desk for bed check.
And that's kinda sad. Kind of means there isn't a whole lot going on 'round here, doesn't it?
And that's kinda sad. Kind of means there isn't a whole lot going on 'round here, doesn't it?
Trying to get to heaven
There are aspects of my job, or maybe it's my mind, that lets me listen to music while I work.
Sometimes I get so jealous. God, I wish I could write like a lot of people, and Bob Dylan's one of them. How does he come up with stuff like this? Great lyrics. Simple melody.
Something just resonates. Maybe I've lived too hard, but I get it...I definitely get it. I get it like my buddy, Scott, and I finish each other's sentences.
Trying to Get to Heaven
The air is getting hotter
There's a rumbling in the skies
I've been wading through the high muddy water
With the heat rising in my eyes
Every day your memory grows dimmer
It doesn't haunt me like it did before
I've been walking through the middle of nowhere
Trying to get to heaven before they close the door
When I was in Missouri
They would not let me be
I had to leave there in a hurry
I only saw what they let me see
You broke a heart that loved you
Now you can seal up the book and not write anymore
I've been walking that lonesome valley
Trying to get to heaven before they close the door
People on the platforms
Waiting for the trains
I can hear their hearts a-beatin'
Like pendulums swinging on chains
When you think that you lost everything
You find out you can always lose a little more
I'm just going down the road feeling bad
Trying to get to heaven before they close the door
I'm going down the river
Down to New Orleans
They tell me everything is gonna be all right
But I don't know what "all right" even means
I was riding in a buggy with Miss Mary-Jane
Miss Mary-Jane got a house in Baltimore
I been all around the world, boys
Now I'm trying to get to heaven before they close the door
Gonna sleep down in the parlor
And relive my dreams
I'll close my eyes and I wonder
If everything is as hollow as it seems
Some trains don't pull no gamblers
No midnight ramblers, like they did before
I been to Sugar Town, I shook the sugar down
Now I'm trying to get to heaven before they close the door
Sometimes I get so jealous. God, I wish I could write like a lot of people, and Bob Dylan's one of them. How does he come up with stuff like this? Great lyrics. Simple melody.
Something just resonates. Maybe I've lived too hard, but I get it...I definitely get it. I get it like my buddy, Scott, and I finish each other's sentences.
Trying to Get to Heaven
The air is getting hotter
There's a rumbling in the skies
I've been wading through the high muddy water
With the heat rising in my eyes
Every day your memory grows dimmer
It doesn't haunt me like it did before
I've been walking through the middle of nowhere
Trying to get to heaven before they close the door
When I was in Missouri
They would not let me be
I had to leave there in a hurry
I only saw what they let me see
You broke a heart that loved you
Now you can seal up the book and not write anymore
I've been walking that lonesome valley
Trying to get to heaven before they close the door
People on the platforms
Waiting for the trains
I can hear their hearts a-beatin'
Like pendulums swinging on chains
When you think that you lost everything
You find out you can always lose a little more
I'm just going down the road feeling bad
Trying to get to heaven before they close the door
I'm going down the river
Down to New Orleans
They tell me everything is gonna be all right
But I don't know what "all right" even means
I was riding in a buggy with Miss Mary-Jane
Miss Mary-Jane got a house in Baltimore
I been all around the world, boys
Now I'm trying to get to heaven before they close the door
Gonna sleep down in the parlor
And relive my dreams
I'll close my eyes and I wonder
If everything is as hollow as it seems
Some trains don't pull no gamblers
No midnight ramblers, like they did before
I been to Sugar Town, I shook the sugar down
Now I'm trying to get to heaven before they close the door
$1 or a smile
A man held up a sign this morning asking for either a smile or a dollar. I grinned, and I'm not sure at what--either the sheer delight of someone, anyone, trying desperately to spread some cheer to the people in this city who can be so fashionably cold and aloof, or his bravado for asking for a buck. Forget spare change, this guy is looking for hard cash. Good for him, I thought. He's thinking big. If you don't ask you won't get it. You could hear in his volume and see in his grandiose motions that he was pushing up against something really big, something big he was fighting. Something told me Fellowship. Something about his overly optimistic view of his fellow creatures, something that I've been struggling with lately.
"You got the idea," he yelled at me. I walked over to him, knowing I did have a couple of dollar bills in my pocket. I knew that because I have to collect them for the parking lot at the train station. I value those pieces of scrap paper. But I could give up one for this guy.
"Here ya go," I said, "what are you up to?"
"Well," he replied, "hopefully by the end of the day I'll have a job."
"What do you do?" this copywriter for Buick asked. Hell, maybe we have something in common, I thought, but please don't tell me you're an out-of-work writer.
"I'm a dishwasher," he answered. He said he was trying to get train fare to Dedham.
Dollars to donuts he won't get the job even if he does get to Dedham. But...and this is a really big but...he might have helped me out more today that I helped him, so I sincerely wish him all the luck in the world.
"You got the idea," he yelled at me. I walked over to him, knowing I did have a couple of dollar bills in my pocket. I knew that because I have to collect them for the parking lot at the train station. I value those pieces of scrap paper. But I could give up one for this guy.
"Here ya go," I said, "what are you up to?"
"Well," he replied, "hopefully by the end of the day I'll have a job."
"What do you do?" this copywriter for Buick asked. Hell, maybe we have something in common, I thought, but please don't tell me you're an out-of-work writer.
"I'm a dishwasher," he answered. He said he was trying to get train fare to Dedham.
Dollars to donuts he won't get the job even if he does get to Dedham. But...and this is a really big but...he might have helped me out more today that I helped him, so I sincerely wish him all the luck in the world.
Welcome to Boston
Heading to the office from South Station today I passed a woman on a cell phone who was walking from the direction in which I was going. Did I really hear her say the words, bomb squad? Funny, I thought, how your ears can play tricks like that. But rounding a corner, what do I see, but the bomb squad with the street taped off. Officers were already beginning to take off another officer's body armor, signaling to me at least that all was clear.
Since I couldn't cross the street I ducked down a little alley where I found a Dunkin' Donuts that was no more than a carry-out window, and lo and behold, little bronze plaques stuck in various places on the ground, like the bronzed garbage stuck in the street in Haymarket. Only, this wasn't garbage, but little plaques commemorating different places in Boston. There was the BPL, I remember, plus a lot more that I don't remember.
That's why I love the city so much: a bit of excitement that then leads you to a new discovery, one more little delightful little corner of the urban world.
Since I couldn't cross the street I ducked down a little alley where I found a Dunkin' Donuts that was no more than a carry-out window, and lo and behold, little bronze plaques stuck in various places on the ground, like the bronzed garbage stuck in the street in Haymarket. Only, this wasn't garbage, but little plaques commemorating different places in Boston. There was the BPL, I remember, plus a lot more that I don't remember.
That's why I love the city so much: a bit of excitement that then leads you to a new discovery, one more little delightful little corner of the urban world.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
This ain't no disco, this ain't no prison either
Ever been in an office and someone mentions that it’s like prison, the way we’re all stuck here? Can’t go anyway. Have to do what we’re told. Sit in little cubes—prison cells—all day and can’t come out.
Once I made that comparison to this guy I knew, and he said, Nah. See, he was a former bank robber. Drugs and all that caused him to do some really bad things. So he did quite a bit of time in federal prisons. (They moved him around a lot, for some reason.) Nah, an office is nothing like prison. No one is trying to kill you. No one beats you up. You’re not surrounded by crazy people who have done crazy things and more than likely will do crazy things again if give half a chance.
It’s like actors saying they work hard. Nah, my father worked hard. He came home tired and dirty every night. Remembering lines and blocking isn’t work. Work is spending cold winters and hot summers on a loading dock.
Both the bank robber and my father are both dead, by the way. The bank robber died from complications from his days as a druggie. He died as clean and sober as a judge. My dad died of a heart attack. He was a smoker.
Once I made that comparison to this guy I knew, and he said, Nah. See, he was a former bank robber. Drugs and all that caused him to do some really bad things. So he did quite a bit of time in federal prisons. (They moved him around a lot, for some reason.) Nah, an office is nothing like prison. No one is trying to kill you. No one beats you up. You’re not surrounded by crazy people who have done crazy things and more than likely will do crazy things again if give half a chance.
It’s like actors saying they work hard. Nah, my father worked hard. He came home tired and dirty every night. Remembering lines and blocking isn’t work. Work is spending cold winters and hot summers on a loading dock.
Both the bank robber and my father are both dead, by the way. The bank robber died from complications from his days as a druggie. He died as clean and sober as a judge. My dad died of a heart attack. He was a smoker.
Monday, February 26, 2007
A cup of Joe
I like coffee. I like coffee with just a little bit of milk. Not cream. Not half-and-half. And not skim milk, either. Milk, the way it comes out of a cow.
I don’t like double decaffeinated latte’s with jimmies, either. I feel stupid drinking them, so you’ll rarely find me in a Starbucks unless a certain buddy of mine pulls me in so the snob can get his ground roast from Kenya or Chile or wherever the heck it is it comes from. I don’t like Starbucks (and a lot of this trendy c**p that seems to come out of Seattle and the Pacific Northwest in general) because frankly I don’t like being made to feel like I’m something on the bottom of somebody’s Cole Haan’s. Nor do I like being forced to order in a foreign language just to appear continental, particularly when they don’t use the foreign language correctly to begin with. If I’m ordering a grande, I want an effing grande, and not a piccolo. Compris?
If I want some fancy coffee drink, and sometimes I do, I’ll go to Dunkin’ Donuts, a nice blue-collar establishment that doesn’t ask you where you went to school.
If I had my druthers, though, I’d prefer some greasy spoon where they serve the coffee in a heavy railroad mug and a waitress named Alice or Gladys or Madge calls me Hon and asks me if I want my coffee "heated up” and knows I like my eggs over-easy with wheat toast.
I don’t like double decaffeinated latte’s with jimmies, either. I feel stupid drinking them, so you’ll rarely find me in a Starbucks unless a certain buddy of mine pulls me in so the snob can get his ground roast from Kenya or Chile or wherever the heck it is it comes from. I don’t like Starbucks (and a lot of this trendy c**p that seems to come out of Seattle and the Pacific Northwest in general) because frankly I don’t like being made to feel like I’m something on the bottom of somebody’s Cole Haan’s. Nor do I like being forced to order in a foreign language just to appear continental, particularly when they don’t use the foreign language correctly to begin with. If I’m ordering a grande, I want an effing grande, and not a piccolo. Compris?
If I want some fancy coffee drink, and sometimes I do, I’ll go to Dunkin’ Donuts, a nice blue-collar establishment that doesn’t ask you where you went to school.
If I had my druthers, though, I’d prefer some greasy spoon where they serve the coffee in a heavy railroad mug and a waitress named Alice or Gladys or Madge calls me Hon and asks me if I want my coffee "heated up” and knows I like my eggs over-easy with wheat toast.
Earrings
Sue and I got our ears pierced this weekend. I’ve been meaning to get another earring just below the one I had. The one, alone, was more than discrete, which is what I wanted; but it was just plain unnoticeable unless you were standing next to me in a crowded subway.
Why would I want a couple of earrings? That’s one of those questions that if you have to ask, you’ll probably never understand. There are those of us who just never fit in, no matter how hard we try. And after awhile you just get tired of trying…we can still play the game, we just don’t have to join the team.
See, I told you you wouldn't get it.
Why would I want a couple of earrings? That’s one of those questions that if you have to ask, you’ll probably never understand. There are those of us who just never fit in, no matter how hard we try. And after awhile you just get tired of trying…we can still play the game, we just don’t have to join the team.
See, I told you you wouldn't get it.
Oh no, not another effing lawyer
Getting off the train this morning I saw a book lying on the seat next to kind of a scuzzy- looking student type: Constitutional Law. Great, I thought, just what we need — another lawyer.
We have way too many laws in this country, and the reason being is most of our legislators are lawyers. Need something fixed? Let's pass a law. That's just how lawyers think. They get elected and the first thing they do is brag about how much legislation they’ve proposed. When will someone come along and instead brag about how many laws they’ve abolished?
A good example is the business about driving with a cell phone. There are already laws about driving to endanger, but people want to make it illegal to drive while using a cell phone. But you can shave, read a paper, and put on makeup when you drive, and while these things probably are even more distracting than talking on a cell, they’re legal. This doesn’t make sense. And don’t say let’s make all that other stuff illegal, too. The idea is make less laws. Do we really need more laws to tell us how to drive safely?
It’s how lawyers think, and it seems to me they’ve set up the system to feather their own nests. It seems you can’t do anything of marginal consequence in this country without a paper signed by a lawyer.
You certainly can’t take a person’s word on anything anymore. And I think we have lawyers to blame for that. I think lawyers have caused us all to distrust each other, afraid that one person is going to sue the bejesus out of the other, when a handshake is really all you need.
We have way too many laws in this country, and the reason being is most of our legislators are lawyers. Need something fixed? Let's pass a law. That's just how lawyers think. They get elected and the first thing they do is brag about how much legislation they’ve proposed. When will someone come along and instead brag about how many laws they’ve abolished?
A good example is the business about driving with a cell phone. There are already laws about driving to endanger, but people want to make it illegal to drive while using a cell phone. But you can shave, read a paper, and put on makeup when you drive, and while these things probably are even more distracting than talking on a cell, they’re legal. This doesn’t make sense. And don’t say let’s make all that other stuff illegal, too. The idea is make less laws. Do we really need more laws to tell us how to drive safely?
It’s how lawyers think, and it seems to me they’ve set up the system to feather their own nests. It seems you can’t do anything of marginal consequence in this country without a paper signed by a lawyer.
You certainly can’t take a person’s word on anything anymore. And I think we have lawyers to blame for that. I think lawyers have caused us all to distrust each other, afraid that one person is going to sue the bejesus out of the other, when a handshake is really all you need.
Another manic Monday
Woke to snow. Just in time for the commute. And because it is so nasty and sloppy out, what I should have done was this: Poured a cup of coffee (because the coffeemaker is set to have a pot ready and waiting for me at 5:30), called in sick, picked up the apartment a little bit, kissed my daughter on the head and let her sleep some more, picked up Alice (and for the washer/dryer, who is Alice?) and run through the scales for a half hour, then put some music on and read some scripts. Then, later Kathryn and I could have put on some skis and played over on the conservation land with Bob, the Wonder Aussie, then come home and snuggled on the couch with a movie--something stupid on the lines of Dumb and Dumber.
That's what I should have done.
Instead, this is what I did: poured a cup of coffee, turned up the heat to warm the water for a shower, washed the dishes from last night (Sue, Kathryn, and I made homemade pizza,) checked email (nothing,) replied to some email from over the weekend from someone from my acting class, freaked at hearing the heat come on because I just paid $200.00 to the oil company, made my lunch, made Kathryn's lunch, took a shower, turned the heat off, kissed Kathryn on the head and woke her up, took Bob out and turned on the truck and cleaned the snow off, went back upstairs, took Kathryn to school, drove to the train station, stood in the cold and wet for ten minutes, sat on a train for 45 minutes, finished The Glass Menagerie, having read it so long ago I forgot about the ending and how painful that must have been for Laura, sat and thought about how nice it is to just sit on a train and rock back and forth, thought about how later in the week Sue is leaving for New York and we'll take the 8:00 to Boston so we can sit together, got off the train at South Station, bought a paper, stopped at the ATM and allotted myself only twenty bucks for the week, walked five minutes to the office (stopping to get a bagel at Finagle Bagel,) rode the elevator to the 12th floor wondering if I actually did hear this woman say something under her breath about me and crowding her with my backpack (if I did, darling, I'm sorry, but stop being so damn angry at the world--it's not all about you, you know,) stopped off in the men's room to clean up, shrugged off my coat and scarf at my cube, got a cup of coffee...
That's what I did.
Looking out the window where I can see the traffic on Tremont moving past The Granary Burying Ground and the sleet still pelting down, I should have just stayed at home.
What we do to make a living.
That's what I should have done.
Instead, this is what I did: poured a cup of coffee, turned up the heat to warm the water for a shower, washed the dishes from last night (Sue, Kathryn, and I made homemade pizza,) checked email (nothing,) replied to some email from over the weekend from someone from my acting class, freaked at hearing the heat come on because I just paid $200.00 to the oil company, made my lunch, made Kathryn's lunch, took a shower, turned the heat off, kissed Kathryn on the head and woke her up, took Bob out and turned on the truck and cleaned the snow off, went back upstairs, took Kathryn to school, drove to the train station, stood in the cold and wet for ten minutes, sat on a train for 45 minutes, finished The Glass Menagerie, having read it so long ago I forgot about the ending and how painful that must have been for Laura, sat and thought about how nice it is to just sit on a train and rock back and forth, thought about how later in the week Sue is leaving for New York and we'll take the 8:00 to Boston so we can sit together, got off the train at South Station, bought a paper, stopped at the ATM and allotted myself only twenty bucks for the week, walked five minutes to the office (stopping to get a bagel at Finagle Bagel,) rode the elevator to the 12th floor wondering if I actually did hear this woman say something under her breath about me and crowding her with my backpack (if I did, darling, I'm sorry, but stop being so damn angry at the world--it's not all about you, you know,) stopped off in the men's room to clean up, shrugged off my coat and scarf at my cube, got a cup of coffee...
That's what I did.
Looking out the window where I can see the traffic on Tremont moving past The Granary Burying Ground and the sleet still pelting down, I should have just stayed at home.
What we do to make a living.
Friday, February 23, 2007
The State of Music
O.A.R. tix at UMass supposedly went on sale today at 10:00. I say supposedly because the links at the UMass and O.A.R. sites seem to be dead. My youngest is a huge O.A.R. fan, and wants to go. She asked me last night if I thought they’d sell out, mentioning a Justin Timberlake concert that sold out in some ridiculous amount of time of fifteen minutes or so. I first assured her that I don’t think O.A.R. would sell out like JT II. Then I mentioned that the good seats are probably grabbed anyway by radio stations and corporations and all that. You know how it works: the concert’s sold out, and the day before a radio station gives out tickets in the first row to the nth caller.
Power to the people, I say.
Spin has a decent special issue on the State of Music. Well, Spin has maybe three good pages laying out what’s been going on in the music world, and frankly, anyone with half a brain can sum it up in one word: digital. And it’s not just in music it’s in film, software, news outlets, everything. In music, though, the rich guys in suits were so busy counting their money they never saw it coming. Proves you don’t have to be smart to be rich. Now they’re screaming foul but the world changed underneath them. The old business model is long gone. Long…gone. The money’s not in selling CDs or even digital downloads. I don’t even want to say the money’s in concerts, although right now it is, but even that’s gonna change. Let’s say the money is going towards events. Wanna make your mark and your cash, get your song played on Grey’s Anatomy.
Anyway, what got me on this tear is my daughter wanting to go to a concert, and you got to figure the next step music execs will take is to recoup their losses in concert tickets. That’s how they think. Again, that’s the old business model. When one revenue channel dries up, try to get it back through another existing one. But they’ll do what Major League Baseball is in the middle of doing, namely, pricing themselves right out of the market and losing their base forever.
They gotta make music cheap and accessible, if they want to keep the young fan base.
When I was even younger than my daughter this was the state of the music industry: I was growing up poor in working-class Cincinnati. (I could never understand people who said when they were young they were poor but didn’t know it. What? Were you stupid? How could you not know? Didn’t you see the beat-to-s**t car your family drove, then look at your friends’ cars and see the difference?) We’d hitchhike to Cincinnati Gardens, a brick box that, when it wasn’t hosting concerts, was the home to Oscar Robertson and the Royals basketball team, some hockey farm team of the Buffalo Sabres, and the circus when it came to town. We’d panhandle for ticket money (spare change, man, got any spare change?) Can you imagine having to beg for ticket money today? With the cost of a ticket today you’d have to start months ahead to raise the cash. I don’t remember but I wouldn’t be surprised if tickets cost maybe eight or ten bucks tops. Neil Young and Linda Ronstadt, the Who, Ten Years After, John Mayall, Alice Cooper, Emerson Lake and Palmer left their mark forever.
Power to the people, I say.
Spin has a decent special issue on the State of Music. Well, Spin has maybe three good pages laying out what’s been going on in the music world, and frankly, anyone with half a brain can sum it up in one word: digital. And it’s not just in music it’s in film, software, news outlets, everything. In music, though, the rich guys in suits were so busy counting their money they never saw it coming. Proves you don’t have to be smart to be rich. Now they’re screaming foul but the world changed underneath them. The old business model is long gone. Long…gone. The money’s not in selling CDs or even digital downloads. I don’t even want to say the money’s in concerts, although right now it is, but even that’s gonna change. Let’s say the money is going towards events. Wanna make your mark and your cash, get your song played on Grey’s Anatomy.
Anyway, what got me on this tear is my daughter wanting to go to a concert, and you got to figure the next step music execs will take is to recoup their losses in concert tickets. That’s how they think. Again, that’s the old business model. When one revenue channel dries up, try to get it back through another existing one. But they’ll do what Major League Baseball is in the middle of doing, namely, pricing themselves right out of the market and losing their base forever.
They gotta make music cheap and accessible, if they want to keep the young fan base.
When I was even younger than my daughter this was the state of the music industry: I was growing up poor in working-class Cincinnati. (I could never understand people who said when they were young they were poor but didn’t know it. What? Were you stupid? How could you not know? Didn’t you see the beat-to-s**t car your family drove, then look at your friends’ cars and see the difference?) We’d hitchhike to Cincinnati Gardens, a brick box that, when it wasn’t hosting concerts, was the home to Oscar Robertson and the Royals basketball team, some hockey farm team of the Buffalo Sabres, and the circus when it came to town. We’d panhandle for ticket money (spare change, man, got any spare change?) Can you imagine having to beg for ticket money today? With the cost of a ticket today you’d have to start months ahead to raise the cash. I don’t remember but I wouldn’t be surprised if tickets cost maybe eight or ten bucks tops. Neil Young and Linda Ronstadt, the Who, Ten Years After, John Mayall, Alice Cooper, Emerson Lake and Palmer left their mark forever.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Wide Open Spaces
Got my daughter’s Valentine today. Opened it up and my heart caught in my throat. I’m not going to reveal what she wrote—that’s personal between her and me—but it sure is nice when your kid doesn’t think you’re a s**t after everything you’ve done to her in your life. (Is there a parent alive who doesn’t think that they’ve failed their children in some way?)
So…as I was driving away I popped in the Dixie Chicks and played Wide Open Spaces in her honor off the CD of the same name. I was playing that CD back in August when her mom and I were dropping her off for her freshman year in college. I turned my daughter on to it on the drive out there, and all of the emotion of day just came out in that song.
That’s the thing about country music: how it can just nail an emotion. It’s also the one criticism I have of popular country music, that a lot of it nails the emotion and then you just wallow in it. I mean, just how long can we pick that sore? The thing that I like about the blues is how it can nail an emotion and then it takes you somewhere else. And then of course, there’s really bad country, songs along the caliber of Kenny Chesney’s She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy.
But the Dixie Chicks do have those nice harmonies going.
So, for Allison’s and everyone else who has ever struck out on their own, here are the lyrics to Wide Open Spaces:
Who doesn't know what I'm talking about
Who's never left home, who's never struck out
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone
Many precede and many will follow
A young girl's dream no longer hollow
It takes the shape of a place out west
But what it holds for her, she hasn't yet guessed
[Chorus:]
She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces
She knows the high stakes
She traveled this road as a child
Wide eyed and grinning, she never tired
But now she won't be coming back with the rest
If these are life's lessons, she'll take this test
[Repeat Chorus]
She knows the high stakes
As her folks drive away, her dad yells, "Check the oil!"
Mom stares out the window and says, "I'm leaving my girl"
She said, "It didn't seem like that long ago"
When she stood there and let her own folks know
[Repeat Chorus]
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes
So…as I was driving away I popped in the Dixie Chicks and played Wide Open Spaces in her honor off the CD of the same name. I was playing that CD back in August when her mom and I were dropping her off for her freshman year in college. I turned my daughter on to it on the drive out there, and all of the emotion of day just came out in that song.
That’s the thing about country music: how it can just nail an emotion. It’s also the one criticism I have of popular country music, that a lot of it nails the emotion and then you just wallow in it. I mean, just how long can we pick that sore? The thing that I like about the blues is how it can nail an emotion and then it takes you somewhere else. And then of course, there’s really bad country, songs along the caliber of Kenny Chesney’s She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy.
But the Dixie Chicks do have those nice harmonies going.
So, for Allison’s and everyone else who has ever struck out on their own, here are the lyrics to Wide Open Spaces:
Who doesn't know what I'm talking about
Who's never left home, who's never struck out
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone
Many precede and many will follow
A young girl's dream no longer hollow
It takes the shape of a place out west
But what it holds for her, she hasn't yet guessed
[Chorus:]
She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces
She knows the high stakes
She traveled this road as a child
Wide eyed and grinning, she never tired
But now she won't be coming back with the rest
If these are life's lessons, she'll take this test
[Repeat Chorus]
She knows the high stakes
As her folks drive away, her dad yells, "Check the oil!"
Mom stares out the window and says, "I'm leaving my girl"
She said, "It didn't seem like that long ago"
When she stood there and let her own folks know
[Repeat Chorus]
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes
It's not that I'm old...
…your music really does suck.
That’s taken from a sticker I have plastered on the side of my amp.
Listening to Neil Young and Crazy Horse from a 1970 concert at the Filmore East at wolfgangsvault.com. From the liner notes:
“Two words for Crosby, Stills and Nash - Crazy Horse. This is rock 'n' roll as it was meant to be played: barely in tune and teetering on the brink of oblivion. No wonder Neil Young preferred rockin’ in the free world with these guys over CSN’s cuddle-folk round-up (Joni Mitchell covers?!... Pleeze!). You can hear the blood and sweat in every stuttering guitar jab, Danny Whitten’s raspy tenor the perfect counterpoint to Neil’s wavering holler.”
The thing is, there is great music being written today. Despite what that sticker says, I don’t want to be one of those guys sitting on a bar stool bemoaning the good old days and complaining about “these kids today.” Eff that. Living in the past. That’s death, or just sitting around waiting for death. No difference. What’s cool is this great long stream of music that extends so far back and how musicians built on other artists. I’m talking all the way back, Gregorian chants and all that, so far you have to be tight with Mr. Peabody and his way-back machine.
That’s taken from a sticker I have plastered on the side of my amp.
Listening to Neil Young and Crazy Horse from a 1970 concert at the Filmore East at wolfgangsvault.com. From the liner notes:
“Two words for Crosby, Stills and Nash - Crazy Horse. This is rock 'n' roll as it was meant to be played: barely in tune and teetering on the brink of oblivion. No wonder Neil Young preferred rockin’ in the free world with these guys over CSN’s cuddle-folk round-up (Joni Mitchell covers?!... Pleeze!). You can hear the blood and sweat in every stuttering guitar jab, Danny Whitten’s raspy tenor the perfect counterpoint to Neil’s wavering holler.”
The thing is, there is great music being written today. Despite what that sticker says, I don’t want to be one of those guys sitting on a bar stool bemoaning the good old days and complaining about “these kids today.” Eff that. Living in the past. That’s death, or just sitting around waiting for death. No difference. What’s cool is this great long stream of music that extends so far back and how musicians built on other artists. I’m talking all the way back, Gregorian chants and all that, so far you have to be tight with Mr. Peabody and his way-back machine.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Ash Wednesday
Today’s Ash Wednesday. The first day of Lent. I wish it meant something to me, but it doesn’t, anymore. I really wish that believing and living in an established religion, that the mere act of walking into a church, gave me the peace that it seems to give some people. But it doesn’t. I wish it were that simple. I’ve tried. Walked in so many churches, opened myself up and almost yelled out, here I am, Lord, I'm yours, and tried to feel something, but…nothing. I’d be faking if I said it did. The quiet is nice. The people, well, a little loopy. They see meaning where I just don’t. God is controlling all. God is taking care of them. (God takes care of the little birds in the field, what makes you think He won’t take care of you? Well, the quick answer is either God thinks more of the effing birds than He does of me, or He doesn’t exist in the first place, at least not in the form that the believers imagine.)
Not that I don’t believe in some sort of greater power. I just think I’m not smart enough to figure it out. I think turning the supreme force in the universe into some God (now why did I capitalize that word? Tell me my Catholic upbringing isn’t ingrained.) made up of three persons, or whatever, is kind of dumbing down whatever it is that controls the universe. Dumbing it down so we humans can understand it. Can’t we just stand back and just marvel? Why do we have to understand everything? Explain it all?
I grew up in an extremely Catholic home. Taught by the Sisters of Mercy (what a misnomer that was!—they had no mercy), a picture of Pope John XXIII hung in the hallway with the palm branch from Palm Sunday tucked behind it, a picture of DaVinci’s Last Supper hung in the kitchen. I don’t know how many crucifixes and statues of the Madonna were around. Let’s just say enough. The home, my life, revolved around the church. It wasn’t that bad, really. I didn’t even think about it. I got up at seven when the church bells rang, went home for lunch at noon when the Angelus rang, and quit playing with my friends at five when the church bells rang again. Fish, or mac and cheese on Friday. That’s what I was, a fish-on-Friday Catholic, and that was fine with me. It was comfortable and was simply a part of my life, like my grandfather’s smelly pipe, and my annoying sister.
When I pray, and I do pray, this is the God I pray to. Old habits. Also, there are no atheists in foxholes.
But once you leave, there’s no going back. The teen years are hard on faith, and the Catholic Church doesn’t like questions, and teens question everything. Just do it. I’ve tried to go back a few times, and each time I would just get hammered by something in the church and think, oh, right, I forgot about that.
Once I went back to Mass on a perfectly normal Sunday and instead of giving a sermon after the Gospel the priest read a letter from the bishop to the congregation. Or cardinal. Somebody. And I remembered how the Church treats you like a child. Why couldn’t you have given me the letter and let me read it myself, and maybe, Father, you could have taken this time in the Mass to give me some spiritual guidance, in the form of a sermon? But you know, the Gospel that day was the same Gospel as the year before, and it will be the same a year to that day. That’s the way the Mass is set up: repetition day in and day out. The priest would have run out of interpretations of the spiritual message long ago…
At least the letter was something new, I suppose.
And you can’t receive Communion unless you’ve repented or gone to Confession or something. You gotta be in the club. And now, when I find myself at a Mass, this is the part of the Mass I’ve learned to relish, at Communion when everyone gets up to receive, and I have to stay in the pew. Once or twice I thought to myself, maybe they’ll just think I’m Jewish. Or Presbyterian. But in the subsequent times I’ve been at a Catholic Mass, I’ve learned to gloat in my sinfulness. Yeah, you bet, I’m a sinner. All of you God-fearing people, if you really want to fear something, fear me, because me, a sinner, is sitting right here in your midst. I’m on a first-name basis with the devil, and as acquainted to sin and sinning as you are to your ritual Mass.
And there’s a really good chance that I’ll see a lot of you sanctimonious hypocrites in the afterlife.
Not that I don’t believe in some sort of greater power. I just think I’m not smart enough to figure it out. I think turning the supreme force in the universe into some God (now why did I capitalize that word? Tell me my Catholic upbringing isn’t ingrained.) made up of three persons, or whatever, is kind of dumbing down whatever it is that controls the universe. Dumbing it down so we humans can understand it. Can’t we just stand back and just marvel? Why do we have to understand everything? Explain it all?
I grew up in an extremely Catholic home. Taught by the Sisters of Mercy (what a misnomer that was!—they had no mercy), a picture of Pope John XXIII hung in the hallway with the palm branch from Palm Sunday tucked behind it, a picture of DaVinci’s Last Supper hung in the kitchen. I don’t know how many crucifixes and statues of the Madonna were around. Let’s just say enough. The home, my life, revolved around the church. It wasn’t that bad, really. I didn’t even think about it. I got up at seven when the church bells rang, went home for lunch at noon when the Angelus rang, and quit playing with my friends at five when the church bells rang again. Fish, or mac and cheese on Friday. That’s what I was, a fish-on-Friday Catholic, and that was fine with me. It was comfortable and was simply a part of my life, like my grandfather’s smelly pipe, and my annoying sister.
When I pray, and I do pray, this is the God I pray to. Old habits. Also, there are no atheists in foxholes.
But once you leave, there’s no going back. The teen years are hard on faith, and the Catholic Church doesn’t like questions, and teens question everything. Just do it. I’ve tried to go back a few times, and each time I would just get hammered by something in the church and think, oh, right, I forgot about that.
Once I went back to Mass on a perfectly normal Sunday and instead of giving a sermon after the Gospel the priest read a letter from the bishop to the congregation. Or cardinal. Somebody. And I remembered how the Church treats you like a child. Why couldn’t you have given me the letter and let me read it myself, and maybe, Father, you could have taken this time in the Mass to give me some spiritual guidance, in the form of a sermon? But you know, the Gospel that day was the same Gospel as the year before, and it will be the same a year to that day. That’s the way the Mass is set up: repetition day in and day out. The priest would have run out of interpretations of the spiritual message long ago…
At least the letter was something new, I suppose.
And you can’t receive Communion unless you’ve repented or gone to Confession or something. You gotta be in the club. And now, when I find myself at a Mass, this is the part of the Mass I’ve learned to relish, at Communion when everyone gets up to receive, and I have to stay in the pew. Once or twice I thought to myself, maybe they’ll just think I’m Jewish. Or Presbyterian. But in the subsequent times I’ve been at a Catholic Mass, I’ve learned to gloat in my sinfulness. Yeah, you bet, I’m a sinner. All of you God-fearing people, if you really want to fear something, fear me, because me, a sinner, is sitting right here in your midst. I’m on a first-name basis with the devil, and as acquainted to sin and sinning as you are to your ritual Mass.
And there’s a really good chance that I’ll see a lot of you sanctimonious hypocrites in the afterlife.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Going legit: The price of stability
I’ve gone legit, and it’s still taking me some time to get used to it.
Legit. A “real” job. One where you get up in the morning and have to go to and sit at a desk even if you don’t have anything to do, and go to meetings that for the most part are pretty pointless. Just the other day I was sitting in a meeting where there seemed to be a lot of extra people. It seemed to me all we needed were the account person, the designer, and me, the writer. But we had a few marketing people in there, and even some people from strategy and analysis. I like to count up the people and multiply that number by what I estimate their salaries to be to figure out exactly what a one-hour meeting costs the company, and therefore the client. When you’ve been in business for yourself, it’s not easy to stop equating everything to either what it’s costing you, or what you’re making. You’re either making money or spending it. There’s no in-between.
There are people, nice people, called bosses who tell me what to do. When I freelanced no one told me what to do. I did whatever I wanted. I looked for work and sometimes I’d find work with people who I didn’t like or the work wasn’t so much fun, so I’d charge a little more for the bother, and I knew the project would soon be over. I figured I could put up with just about anything for the duration of the project.
People say I now have a full-time job, but freelancing was full-time. And people assume because I was freelancing that I wasn’t making any money, although now I make only a little bit more at the “real” job than I did freelancing. But now the money’s steady. The hardest part about freelance writing is getting paid for the work. The next hardest thing is finding the work. But getting paid is definitely the hardest. Putting words together is the easiest thing in the world, for a writer. But sometimes I’d be floating thousands of dollars. It’s not that people stiffed me. I actually had really good clients, good people. It’s just that some corporations have policies about billing. It has to do with the IRS and the government’s definition of freelance and contract. When you’re in business for yourself you quickly learn the IRS is not your friend. On paper, it looked like I had money, but another thing you learn real fast when you’re in business for yourself is that cash in hand is all that matters. I started charging advances on large projects, and I began billing some clients weekly, telling them other clients liked the flexibility it offered and how it gave them a more up-to-date idea of what they were spending. Businesspeople like flexibility, and having information up-to-date, so they believed me, but all I was just trying to do is keep a steady flow of money coming in.
A legitimate job makes some things in life a little easier. When you’re freelancing, if you don’t work, you don’t get paid. Now I get paid for holidays, so I’m getting paid along with the rest of the world that isn’t working, too. And I get paid for a vacation, but only two weeks accrued at the end of a year. Two weeks out of a whole year isn't a lot. And your bosses have to approve when you can take your two weeks. It's like being in kindergarten and having to raise your hand to go to the bathroom. I also get a few personal days in case I have to get a filling or my truck worked on, I guess.
When I was freelancing, I could take time off whenever I needed it—in the middle of the day to do something with one of my kids; I could take time to run errands, and I could spend Sunday nights at Sue’s on the Cape so we had three nights in a row together, and I could drive home Monday morning without it affecting business. What I really miss is stopping in the middle of the day and playing the guitar, just for about twenty minutes or so. I love playing, and it was a reward I’d give myself for accomplishing something. It also clears my mind, so I’d go back to work refreshed.
Sometimes I’d get kind of lonely working by myself. I’d work at keeping in touch with people, like instigating email strings. And I’d call people. You can get a little squirrelly working by yourself. I really like the people I work with now. Creative, talented people — the kind that work at this agency — motivate and inspire you to be creative yourself. I suppose I do that for them, too. I don’t know.
And I like riding the train everyday to work. Riding trains is fun. It’s like riding a bike; if you’re open to it, it makes you feel like a little kid. And riding the train gives me time to read. I love to read, but before didn’t have a lot of time to read. Now I do. I also like working in the city. There’s more to do, and more to see that stimulates my mind. There’s also more to spend money on, and I have to watch that.
The thing I don’t like is the loss of freedom that I had. I’m not a man who does well when he’s feeling he’s being told what to do. Ask me to do anything, and I’ll do it for you in a heartbeat. Just don’t tell me. I guess I wouldn’t have done very well in the army. But I’ve put myself in a position in life where I have certain responsibilities for other people. I’m talking about my kids. But it’s a double-edged sword, because I gave up a lot of time with my kids — and Sue — to make sure things are more stable. I guess the big question is: What price is stability?
Legit. A “real” job. One where you get up in the morning and have to go to and sit at a desk even if you don’t have anything to do, and go to meetings that for the most part are pretty pointless. Just the other day I was sitting in a meeting where there seemed to be a lot of extra people. It seemed to me all we needed were the account person, the designer, and me, the writer. But we had a few marketing people in there, and even some people from strategy and analysis. I like to count up the people and multiply that number by what I estimate their salaries to be to figure out exactly what a one-hour meeting costs the company, and therefore the client. When you’ve been in business for yourself, it’s not easy to stop equating everything to either what it’s costing you, or what you’re making. You’re either making money or spending it. There’s no in-between.
There are people, nice people, called bosses who tell me what to do. When I freelanced no one told me what to do. I did whatever I wanted. I looked for work and sometimes I’d find work with people who I didn’t like or the work wasn’t so much fun, so I’d charge a little more for the bother, and I knew the project would soon be over. I figured I could put up with just about anything for the duration of the project.
People say I now have a full-time job, but freelancing was full-time. And people assume because I was freelancing that I wasn’t making any money, although now I make only a little bit more at the “real” job than I did freelancing. But now the money’s steady. The hardest part about freelance writing is getting paid for the work. The next hardest thing is finding the work. But getting paid is definitely the hardest. Putting words together is the easiest thing in the world, for a writer. But sometimes I’d be floating thousands of dollars. It’s not that people stiffed me. I actually had really good clients, good people. It’s just that some corporations have policies about billing. It has to do with the IRS and the government’s definition of freelance and contract. When you’re in business for yourself you quickly learn the IRS is not your friend. On paper, it looked like I had money, but another thing you learn real fast when you’re in business for yourself is that cash in hand is all that matters. I started charging advances on large projects, and I began billing some clients weekly, telling them other clients liked the flexibility it offered and how it gave them a more up-to-date idea of what they were spending. Businesspeople like flexibility, and having information up-to-date, so they believed me, but all I was just trying to do is keep a steady flow of money coming in.
A legitimate job makes some things in life a little easier. When you’re freelancing, if you don’t work, you don’t get paid. Now I get paid for holidays, so I’m getting paid along with the rest of the world that isn’t working, too. And I get paid for a vacation, but only two weeks accrued at the end of a year. Two weeks out of a whole year isn't a lot. And your bosses have to approve when you can take your two weeks. It's like being in kindergarten and having to raise your hand to go to the bathroom. I also get a few personal days in case I have to get a filling or my truck worked on, I guess.
When I was freelancing, I could take time off whenever I needed it—in the middle of the day to do something with one of my kids; I could take time to run errands, and I could spend Sunday nights at Sue’s on the Cape so we had three nights in a row together, and I could drive home Monday morning without it affecting business. What I really miss is stopping in the middle of the day and playing the guitar, just for about twenty minutes or so. I love playing, and it was a reward I’d give myself for accomplishing something. It also clears my mind, so I’d go back to work refreshed.
Sometimes I’d get kind of lonely working by myself. I’d work at keeping in touch with people, like instigating email strings. And I’d call people. You can get a little squirrelly working by yourself. I really like the people I work with now. Creative, talented people — the kind that work at this agency — motivate and inspire you to be creative yourself. I suppose I do that for them, too. I don’t know.
And I like riding the train everyday to work. Riding trains is fun. It’s like riding a bike; if you’re open to it, it makes you feel like a little kid. And riding the train gives me time to read. I love to read, but before didn’t have a lot of time to read. Now I do. I also like working in the city. There’s more to do, and more to see that stimulates my mind. There’s also more to spend money on, and I have to watch that.
The thing I don’t like is the loss of freedom that I had. I’m not a man who does well when he’s feeling he’s being told what to do. Ask me to do anything, and I’ll do it for you in a heartbeat. Just don’t tell me. I guess I wouldn’t have done very well in the army. But I’ve put myself in a position in life where I have certain responsibilities for other people. I’m talking about my kids. But it’s a double-edged sword, because I gave up a lot of time with my kids — and Sue — to make sure things are more stable. I guess the big question is: What price is stability?
Monday, February 19, 2007
Feeding my habit
It is really dangerous for me to work so close to a Borders, or any bookstore/music store, for that matter.
Went out looking of scripts for my acting class and came back to work with two CDs: Songlines by The Derek Trucks Band, and In Session: Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
If you haven't picked it up by now, I'm a pretty big fan of that mix of Southern and blues.
Derek Trucks is featured in the current issue of Rolling Stone as one of the top 20 guitarists. He's on the cover with John Mayer and John Frusciante, of the Chili Peppers, another big favorite of mine. He's the nephew of Butch Trucks, the drummer in the Allman Brothers, and married to guitarist Susan Tedeschi, another favorite. (Of RS top 20, there's only one woman, Kaki King.)
And just when I thought I had everything by SRV that I wanted, I was starin' ahead listening to Trucks' CD and saw the SRV CD in the rack under gospel. I didn't even have to listen to it first. I know I'm going to like it.
Hey, I'm not spending my rent money on crack cocaine, although the addiction factor is a bit scary.
Went out looking of scripts for my acting class and came back to work with two CDs: Songlines by The Derek Trucks Band, and In Session: Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
If you haven't picked it up by now, I'm a pretty big fan of that mix of Southern and blues.
Derek Trucks is featured in the current issue of Rolling Stone as one of the top 20 guitarists. He's on the cover with John Mayer and John Frusciante, of the Chili Peppers, another big favorite of mine. He's the nephew of Butch Trucks, the drummer in the Allman Brothers, and married to guitarist Susan Tedeschi, another favorite. (Of RS top 20, there's only one woman, Kaki King.)
And just when I thought I had everything by SRV that I wanted, I was starin' ahead listening to Trucks' CD and saw the SRV CD in the rack under gospel. I didn't even have to listen to it first. I know I'm going to like it.
Hey, I'm not spending my rent money on crack cocaine, although the addiction factor is a bit scary.
Taking little itty bitty baby steps
John Mayer one of the top guitarists in the world? Well, yeah, I guess. But I can’t get past what a tweaker he seems to be in person. But…in the Rolling Stone interview, he said, “I’m attracted to what I don’t know. Everyone else I knew said things like, ‘I watched him play, and it made me want to quit.’ I never wanted to put the guitar down. I watched guys who made me want to pick it up. That’s when you have the disease…”
Years ago, before I started acting again, I would sit in the audience of a community theater production and watch the actors and say to myself, I can do better than that. Twelve years later and I’ve found myself so dissatisfied with my acting that I haven’t done anything for over a year, and what I did a year ago was pure crap. I looked back and felt embarrassed for the stage work I’ve done. God, I must have looked like such an idiot up there.
Then a few months back I saw a production of The Pillowman at the New Rep in Watertown, Mass. and thought to myself, I want to do that. I can’t yet, but I want to. I’ve found a really good teacher who is helping me tear a lot of things down. Well, she’s trying, anyway. I’m trying to lay a new foundation so I can build something that I can use to talk to audiences again, if I ever did before.
Last night I was driving home from Sue’s on the Cape, heading back to an empty apartment, knowing I wouldn’t see her for a week because of our work, and sometimes it hurts so much, I can’t explain it. Something real inside hurts. She says it’s because I’m a Libra, and the worst thing you can do to a Libra is leave them. Abandon them. I think it’s more than that.
I drove into the driveway and my truck was the only vehicle there. I knew it was going to be a long night. I just felt it, and on other nights in the past I knew the bottle of Port in the kitchen would have been my best friend. But being all alone in that house, I picked up Lulu, turned the amp up with full reverb, did the same on the guitar, and just hammered. Played Angel Mine by the Junkies in a way I don’t think they meant it played. It’s a sweet song about keeping your promise, but I played it by ripping the scab off the hurt and letting it bleed. But I’ll never betray your trust, Angel Mine. Riiiip. Nice breakthrough. Because I'm just a beginning musician, and really the greatest thrill is just getting through a song and making it sound (sort of) the way it's supposed to sound. But if you can interpret...it means you're feeling, and it means there is a glimmer of hope that you'll win the wrestling match between you and the guitar, or even better, you two can turn into collaborators.
The sole reason I act is so I can learn about this world we live in, this reality we call life. I don't care about being in the spotlight, about the glamour (ha! what glamour?) the attention that so many actors--theater-types--seem to not only desire but need. I couldn't care less if the audience likes me or not. All I want from them is for them to hold up their part of our implicit agreement: That they stay engaged throughout the performance, and I will live as truthfully as I can in the contrived setting we've established. They give me energy, and I give them truth. That's what I'd like to do anyway.
And now I'm learning a new language called music, that is showing me a new way of seeing, of experiencing and understanding this world. It's so exciting to learn something new. To travel to new parts, whether geographically on the globe or throughout the human experience.
Feeling like a baby, taking tiny steps. Wobbly steps. Can’t even talk yet.
Years ago, before I started acting again, I would sit in the audience of a community theater production and watch the actors and say to myself, I can do better than that. Twelve years later and I’ve found myself so dissatisfied with my acting that I haven’t done anything for over a year, and what I did a year ago was pure crap. I looked back and felt embarrassed for the stage work I’ve done. God, I must have looked like such an idiot up there.
Then a few months back I saw a production of The Pillowman at the New Rep in Watertown, Mass. and thought to myself, I want to do that. I can’t yet, but I want to. I’ve found a really good teacher who is helping me tear a lot of things down. Well, she’s trying, anyway. I’m trying to lay a new foundation so I can build something that I can use to talk to audiences again, if I ever did before.
Last night I was driving home from Sue’s on the Cape, heading back to an empty apartment, knowing I wouldn’t see her for a week because of our work, and sometimes it hurts so much, I can’t explain it. Something real inside hurts. She says it’s because I’m a Libra, and the worst thing you can do to a Libra is leave them. Abandon them. I think it’s more than that.
I drove into the driveway and my truck was the only vehicle there. I knew it was going to be a long night. I just felt it, and on other nights in the past I knew the bottle of Port in the kitchen would have been my best friend. But being all alone in that house, I picked up Lulu, turned the amp up with full reverb, did the same on the guitar, and just hammered. Played Angel Mine by the Junkies in a way I don’t think they meant it played. It’s a sweet song about keeping your promise, but I played it by ripping the scab off the hurt and letting it bleed. But I’ll never betray your trust, Angel Mine. Riiiip. Nice breakthrough. Because I'm just a beginning musician, and really the greatest thrill is just getting through a song and making it sound (sort of) the way it's supposed to sound. But if you can interpret...it means you're feeling, and it means there is a glimmer of hope that you'll win the wrestling match between you and the guitar, or even better, you two can turn into collaborators.
The sole reason I act is so I can learn about this world we live in, this reality we call life. I don't care about being in the spotlight, about the glamour (ha! what glamour?) the attention that so many actors--theater-types--seem to not only desire but need. I couldn't care less if the audience likes me or not. All I want from them is for them to hold up their part of our implicit agreement: That they stay engaged throughout the performance, and I will live as truthfully as I can in the contrived setting we've established. They give me energy, and I give them truth. That's what I'd like to do anyway.
And now I'm learning a new language called music, that is showing me a new way of seeing, of experiencing and understanding this world. It's so exciting to learn something new. To travel to new parts, whether geographically on the globe or throughout the human experience.
Feeling like a baby, taking tiny steps. Wobbly steps. Can’t even talk yet.
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