We can let out a collective sigh as this weekend approaches. Town is emptying out, flowers are blooming and everyone gets to take a moment. Even if you still have to work, the next week is a nice change. It’s the necessary downtime before the full-on chaotic blitz of spring quarter.
I’ll tell you what, writing this, I’m in a pre-St. Patty’s Day preparation mode: a thoughtless meditation of sorts, waiting for the storm. Working at the only Irish Pub in town means a big day. As you read this, I will likely be in a post-St. Patty’s Day bliss. Same but different. Either way, the words are few for me today.
Life sure can take its sweet ol’ time. It’s funny; as I stretch into my middle years, I find that some things seem to take a lot longer than they used to, and some things seem to go by quicker. For the sake of comedy, I will not elucidate those points so as to let your mind wander to wherever it needs to go. Speculated enough yet? I can wait... Fine.
As I write this, I am playing the waiting game with my borrowed Internet connection. Thanks to my current housemate, Jonathon, who has a little doo-hickey thingy (pausing ...) that can attach to my computer, I can reach the Internet via a cell-phone signal. This is delightful to me because I currently live in a rural setting that offers few amenities in the digital world.
Right now I am reaching speeds not seen since 1996. People don’t design Web applications to go with 14.4 KHz anymore. ‘Tis a pity. I figure I can write this whole opening piece while this beleagured connection attempts to load the most pared-down version of my e-mail. Oy vey. Don’t think I’m complaining. Thankful for the opportunity. Just running out of things to write about while I wait...
It really hit me the other night that winter is coming to an end for real and not in some far-off fantasy land of make-believe. Concrete proof to me was the fact that the Voodoo Birds are threatening to stretch their wings and migrate around a bit, playing music. That can only happen in the spring.
Other birds have been making my scene lately, notably the bluebirds. At least seven pairs of them are nesting in the eaves of our house. A very interested and interesting Cooper’s hawk seems to be waiting around for something to hatch. I’ll send Editor Smith a picture so he can post it on the Web site.
Mocking birds, tufted titmouses (titmice?), chickadees, robins, barred owls, white-breasted nuthatches, red-headed & downy woodpeckers, these fluff balls weren’t too active just a few weeks ago, but now they are in full flight. They are rousing me from my mental hibernation.
I was just accused of being a “casu-ist” by someone in my make-believe world. I denied it. I discoursed about my varied and specious moral stances to my fantastical friend. I let him know in uncertain terms that though I play the trombone (and the occasional slide whistle), I am most certainly not a kazooist. So there.
Are you ever struck with an idea that gives you a “Duh!” moment so large that you feel as though you just discovered you were Charlie Brown after years of thinking you were Speed Racer. I just had one of those. But that sentence took so long to write, I have forgotten it. All for the best. I prefer to remain in my own unenlightened little bubble. I was thinking of starting a radio talk show, maybe on an AM station, early morning.
I have a case of cabin fever so bad I am sweating and occasionally cold chillin’ at my crib, while I crawl and claw my way up, down, and all around my paper-thin mind walls. Sometimes I feel like I can’t catch my breath; that the walls are closing in on me; that something lurks beneath the surface waiting to drag me down, and it’s wearing a stocking cap. Jesse has suggested that we stop watching the “Family Guy” movie “Blue Earth,” and perhaps watch something else for a while.
When we take the dogs out for walks these days, things are inherently snowy. It has been an experience to submit to. The other night we were off down the trail in the middle of the night; one dog had wandered off and we were calling to her, whistling and yelling, as coyotes met our call, very close at hand. (Here's a coyote-howling video that Editor Smith found.)
I don’t know that there is a more thrilling and beautiful sound than a pack of coyotes in full voice, but they were awfully close. I had a brief flight of fancy that led me to see gleaming green eyes in the dark with slavering fangs and thoughts of predation. I shoved it from my mind. Too many horror movies and too often walking down the trail in the dark.
Having been graciously employed by an uptown kitchen recently has done wonderful things for me. More than just having a bit more of the green stuff, it has been good to rediscover the fun I have as a cook and baker, a vocation I grew weary of some years back; that’s akin to my current feelings toward life in the entertainment industry (read: burned out).
It’s been great reawakening my relationship with food. I know exactly what They mean when They say “Soup is good for the soul.” I start my day by going to the walk-in cooler and asking the vegetables, “Who’s ready for soup?” There are always a variety of volunteers and we go clean and wash ourselves in preparation and anticipation.
This connection with the food has provoked a kind of spiritual response in me, helping me to see the interconnectedness of all things, the continuity of Life. As a result, my slip-proof shoes have a new spring in their step, a new edge to the chef’s knife of my brain. Umm.
We should never be afraid to experiment. Getting set in your ways is dangerous. The fear of experimentation stems from a fear to fail. This is one of those Big Crimes that I believe gets foisted on a large percentage of individuals as we grow up.
Perhaps it’s endemic in our language. The phrase “grow up!” can be a soul-killer, a built-in limiter in itself. “Growing up” embodies the notion that one must eventually be fully grown, with no more left to do. That at some point you have finished your life of changes and hit upon stasis and can enjoy all of the lovely gifts that must benefit that station of life, if such a thing should exist (it shouldn’t).
Even a very large tree continues to move oh-so-gently toward the sun, the light, ever reaching, ever growing closer incrementally, until the time to return to the earth comes to call. “Go into the Light!”
Joe Rollino was 104 years old. He was a lifelong vegetarian, didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, and in the end, he was killed by a mini-van. A mini-van. He was the last of a dying breed, an honest to goodness carnie. At Coney Island he dubbed himself the “Strongest Man in the World,” and his acts of strength gained a Paul Bunyan-like hugeness to them, including lifting 450 pounds with his teeth, and 3,200 pounds with other unspecified body parts.
He was a decorated WWII veteran, boxed under the name Kid Dundee, could bend quarters with his fingers, had a bit part with Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront,” and died because he got hit by a mini-van. A mini-van. Not a truck or a train — which he might more likely have bent to his will, like the quarters he bent with his fingers at the age of 104.
The snow is likely still falling as you read this. We seem to be blessed with a wintry winter so far this year instead of the usual soggy, muddy, wet chill-you-to-the-bone kind of crap we usually have to endure. Not to say it isn’t cold. I just like snow better than mud, even if it means I have to hike up and down a snowy hill a couple times a day.
It’s fine for me to have to haul my food up a snowy expanse, but I am drawing the line at the 50-pound bag of dog food! They can pull that up themselves. I’ll hook them up to our improvised laundry basket/trash-can-lid sled. Who knew that going to the laundramat could be so much fun? Ride Jesse, ride (and happy birthday)!
I am lucky to be warm so far this winter; the blessed boiler burning brightly, the radiators drying my shoes and my pants and my instruments. Yikes! Have you humidified your instruments lately?
It’s time once again for the artificially imposed New Year to come around. Most years I find this to be a rather contrived time to formulate new notions of self and then try to impose them, but this year the timing seems to work out such that I am in sync with the rest of the Westernized world in being able to set myself an adjusted course of adventures which which to make my way through the newly invigorated world.
Usually I look to my birthday or maybe even Halloween as a new year start, if such a thing must exist for us, but allow me to embrace this NYE as though it were my own. Winter is certainly a time for reflection. In days gone by, when our livelihoods tended to be me more in sync with the cycles of the land, it made sense to set the winter as the time for renewal.
What’s with all of the Christmas Music Haters in the world? I want to know! I mean, I do despiste the cheesy versions of “Jingle Bell Rock,” but there are numerous very lovely songs in existence. How deep does this hatred run? Pretty deep. A seemingly majority of the people I talk to have a knee-jerk reaction to even the most remote hint of Christmas music. I challenge you all to look deep within yourselves and answer me why.
Granted, the crass, over-commercialization of Christmas has tended to make even the most sincere fan worn a bit thin. The endless parade of tunes, the conversion of particular radio stations to nothing but, and the no-doubt variety of channels of CM provided by Sirius XM are enough to gag a reindeer, but really, have you listened lately?
Your (para) normal Athens Music Scene reporter Eric Leighton (Junebug) is on a magical mystery tour this week and temporarily unavailable to write the weekly column on musical happenings around our fair town. He was kind enough to ask me to fill in, and made it quite clear if I refused he would make me watch a Browns game, so I obviously had very little choice in the matter.
It's been a while since I waxed poetic... I used to write this column back in ’98, ’99, another time. The Swindlefish was the hottest club in town (now gone) and Athens NEWS Editor Terry Smith could still field a hot ground ball at first base without breaking his arteal corpusal bone. (Editor’s note: I still can.)
Tomorrow will be the 15th anniversary of the death of our buddy Johnny B (Bartlett). He was a musician, a father, a husband and a character. His impact on the lives of many is still felt to this day. I believe I can say that we are all thankful for the brush of his life upon ours.
Johnny’s influence on my own existence helped to galvanize my already steadfast adherence to the musical life. His was a banner I assumed. I carried it high and with vigor, as I still do, to whatever extent, to this very day. I guess I need to play the music that he is unable to.
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