beautiful, funny, sad & true

I had a really long dream last night, which I only remember a part of. Here’s the part.

I was in a little resort town near a man-made lake. It was actually twin lakes, set at a diagonal angle to each other. One was ‘wild’ and forested, the other was built-up and touristy. Where they met, there was a little strip of land with a hotel, a gift shop, and a row of little food stands that ran for about a mile along the shore of the touristy lake. Everything about the place seemed like a facade. It had been built in the 1980’s, and it showed.

I was there visiting with a small tour group of some sort. There were only four or five of us in the group. We walked single file through a high-walled cement courtyard with those small, circular metal dining tables neatly arranged around the edges.

From there, we walked into the ‘formal’ dining room. It was part dining room and part lounge, because there were sofas with teenage kids lounging around on them, sitting upside down, and sprawled all over the place. Their parents were paying them no attention because they were too busy getting drunk and having their own conversations at other tables nearby.

One of the women in our group was European (not sure from where, though; maybe France?) She and I kept making jokes which I can’t remember, but we were very flirty with each other. She said something to which I responded, “Okay, but that means I’m going to have to carry you piggy-back now.” She laughed and jumped on my back. I carried her all around the restaurant until we were both laughing like hyenas. We came to a part of the room where the kids were sprawled on sofas, and they were leaning out into the aisle. I said, “Excuse us,” and they moved out of the way. It was still a tight squeeze, though, and as we passed the table, the woman I was carrying brushed her foot near to the candle, and her stocking caught fire. I quickly put it out with my hand, but not before one of the parents from the other table had her camera phone out and took a couple of pictures of the crazy guy carrying the crazy lady on his shoulders, with her stocking on fire. She laughed and turned to her family, held her phone aloft, and said, “I got it! I got it!” The woman and I went around to the other side, where I set her down gently and said, “I need to go get something, I’ll be right back.”

I walked upstairs to one of the rooms. I had been at this resort the year before, and I had left a cello behind, so I had come back to retrieve it. I walked into the room I’d stayed in, and decided that it was time to change my clothes. I was down to a T-shirt and nothing else, when a pair of newlyweds walked in the room. I don’t know what this has to do with anything, but they were Puerto Rican. They were surprised to see me, but didn’t pay me much attention as they walked past me to sit by the window. I laughed uncomfortably and said, “Uhhh. . .sorry about this. I’ll just be here for a minute, as soon as I change my clothes.” So I did that, but after I had put my pants on, I realized that I had put everything on inside out. Underwear and all. So I had to take it all back off, pull it right-side-out, and then put it all on again. While I was doing that, I looked over at the couple, who were entranced by a wedding video. It was a What-To-Expect-From-Being-Married video, also in 1980’s style–with bullet points and everything–and I was making a herculean effort not to laugh. At the same time, though, I kept thinking, ‘Well, I guess if they’ve never heard information like that before, at least they’ll get it from somewhere.’

I finally got my clothes on correctly, and said to the couple, “Okay. I’ll be outta here in just a minute, as soon as I get what I came in for.” I opened the closet door, looked inside, and saw the cello there. I pulled it out and held it out for inspection. It wasn’t shaped like a normal cello. While cellos are rounded, this one was all rectangular and ornate. The neck was the thickness of a full-size double bass, and the ‘scroll’ was actually square and overbuilt in the same way that the body of the cello was. I kept looking at it to make sure that it was still in good condition, and the Puerto Rican woman said, “Go on, play us sometheeng!” I pulled the bow out to inspect it too. It too was unlike a normal cello bow. It was square in the same style as the cello, and instead of having a multitude of strands of hair, it had two yellow strings that created the sound. Since it hadn’t been played in so long, it didn’t have any rosin in the bow, so it just made a ‘fsssht fsssht fsssht’ sound as it glided across the strings. The woman said, “Oh, that’s a really nice one. Raimond (her new husband) has one just like that.”

I don’t know how I knew that his name was spelled that way instead of the usual way, but I did, and that’s when I woke up.

The more I think about all of this, the angrier I get.

Here’s what my anonymous stalker wrote, the first time he wrote to me:

I swear to god, dude. You should have an MP3 of Depeche Mode’s “Somebody” playing on a loop in the background whenever someone visits your blog. Clearly, that’s the theme song to your life. In other words: You’re pathetic.

Okay, fine, that’s nice. I deleted that and didn’t think twice about it. He responded by re-posting the same thing right away, and I deleted it again. He posted it a third time, apparently to make sure I wouldn’t miss his point, with a couple of new paragraphs added:

You might believe that your “sensitive lonely whiner” routine will get you laid by women who feel sorry for you, but it won’t. Instead, it pretty much guarantees that you will spend the rest of your life alone. “I want someone to spoon with at night.” *wretch*

Since then, it hasn’t gotten any better. He spent the entire weekend reading through as much of my blog as possible, making snide comments everywhere he went–you can see most of them for yourself (although I did delete some because they’re not worth repeating)–and he even went so far as to create a Blogger profile impersonating mine, which at my request he did take down, although he threatened to put it back up if I continued to moderate my comments. Well, whatever. It’s my blog, so we’re going to play by my rules.

I hope that he’s a teenage kid or something; if he is, I can forgive this type of behavior. If he’s an adult who clearly should know better, then I find this utterly reprehensible. (Although he does know that Depeche Mode song–I do not–so that makes me think he’s an adult, quite possibly near my own age.) All this being said, here are the rules for this blog.

* * * *

1) I’m now moderating all comments. I hate to do it, but it’s become necessary.

2) If someone wants to post something–positive or negative–I’m going to read it and THEN decide what to do with it. I am fair. If I feel that a negative comment has value, even if I don’t like it, I’ll usually approve it. If I feel that it’s just a shitty little ad hominem attack against me, then it ain’t gonna make the cut.

3) As the name implies, this blog is about beauty, humor, occasional melancholy, and above all, honesty. Those are my favorite characteristics in people, in stories, in music, in art, in life…in everything. These are the things that this blog was based upon. People who are generally hostile to these concepts will not enjoy BFS&T very much. Heck, even people who espouse these concepts may not enjoy BFS&T very much. And y’know what? I’m okay with that.

4) I don’t write about politics or current events. I don’t write about religion or ethics. I usually don’t write about economic or sexual or social or racial issues, but sometimes I do. It’s not that I don’t care about these things–on the contrary–it’s just that there are thousands of people who can do that much more eloquently than I ever will, and I choose to read them instead. What I do write about is life, and the struggles and successes I and the people I care about face and deal with along the way. And, of course, a little bit of inspiration for good measure. Oh yeah, and I guess I do write about guitars and cellos and stuff a lot too.

5) It is hereby the policy of this blog not to negotiate with terrorists.

* * * *

The problem, as I see it, is that this person and I are very similar; so much so as to completely repel each other. (Ever see the movie “I Heart Huckabees”?) His issues are very likely the same as my own, or maybe it’s that we’re two sides of the same coin. To give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he’s dealing with big stuff in his own life right now too–in which case I can certainly empathize because I’ve been there many times myself–but maybe he doesn’t have the creative outlets or the insightful friends that I do, so his feelings end up getting expressed by this inappropriate and ultimately impotent rage. I mean, come on. Making a mock-profile of me? That’s not something an adult human being with any kind of healthy self-respect would ever dream of doing. This person may say that he despises me, yet he also seems to want to be me somehow, simultaneously.

After having some time to think, I’ve decided that there are going to be two mottos that set the tone for this entry. One is the famous adage, ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,’ and the other is Oscar Wilde’s funny-and-true saying, ‘The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.’

And now I have bigger and better things to attend to, such as a hospitalized ex-girlfriend and a cello-and-xylophone recording session. And some genuine friends who I care about, and who care about me in return. And hopefully even a nice dinner tonight, too.

In short, I have a real life, of which–for the most part–I am proud.

I woke up to find some very nasty–and anonymous–comments on a couple of my blog entries. Not my favorite way to start the day, but it’s dealt with now, and I’m over it.

The good news is that I just got back from having breakfast with my friend Jack, who I haven’t seen in fifteen years. He lives in Spokane now, and I obviously live here, but we both used to live in Yakima. He’s in town for the week, visiting a friend, so he called this morning to see if I wanted to meet for breakfast. I was just waking up, but I jumped at the chance to see him. We went to Milo’s, which is one of my favorite restaurants in town, and also happens to be right down the street from my place.
(Incidentally, today they had a special eggs benedict at Milo’s, with shrimp instead of ham–or smoked salmon, which is my favorite breakfast–and with Thai curry mixed into the hollendaise sauce. Jack and I both ordered it, and it was mind-blowingly good.)

Oh, right. . .Jack.

Here he was, back then:

and here he is now:

It was fun reminiscing about some of those old times. Former bands we were in, and what everybody’s doing now, all that kind of stuff. Seems that a lot of the musicians we knew have had difficult or tragic lives since then. One in particular has had quite a hard go of it. Many are still in Yakima. One of them–who I’ve actually been talking to also–is now in Seattle, making a decent living as a Professional Musician With A Day Job, like me. (Hi, Brandon!)

After we finished at Milo’s we walked back here and talked for another hour or so. We played each other some music we’ve worked on, and I gave him a Crystin Byrd CD. Jack’s a very intelligent, hilarious and genuinely good person, and I’m really glad he was able to make some free time and get together. It certainly won’t be another fifteen years, I’m sure of that.

Tonight is another gig. I’ll be playing cello, I think. I say ‘I think’ because one of the tuning pegs on my cello is slipping again, when it’s in a warm room. It doesn’t happen all the time, but often enough to be really annoying. I’ll take it into the shop this week. Luckily it’s a really cheap and easy fix.

Anyway, yeah. Should be a really good day and night.

What a weekend.

The show on Friday night was pretty stellar. It was fun to play with BassPlayerDamian (Stephanie’s previous bass player) and DrummerNed (from Dirty Martini) again. We’ve all played together separately many times, but never all together. Breanna sang backup with us, and Paul Brainard played pedal steel (that twangy-sounding instrument that’s usually associated with country music) and trumpet like a champion. “Enough of Empty” went in a completely different and cool direction with the addition of a trumpet solo. This show was also the debut of my new red Hofner guitar. It sounded great, and I can’t wait to see what it looks like in a picture. After we were done, we pretty much stayed backstage in the green room the entire time, talking and relaxing (Incidentally, ‘relaxing’ may be spelled r-e-l-a-x-i-n-g, but in this case it’s pronounced ‘drinking wine’. We had plenty, and not much food to soak it up. Ohmygawd.) We missed the second band, but we came out and sat up front for the third band, Richmond Fontaine. They were excellent, as usual.

Saturday night was the full-band show with Breanna. It was good, but we haven’t been playing as an electric band for a while, so it never quite felt like we really gelled. We never sounded bad or anything–in fact I’d say we sounded pretty dang good–but it just never quite felt as good as it usually does, which is fine. If you’ve spent any kind of time reading this blog, you’ll know that some gigs are just better than others. Ain’t no thang.

Yesterday afternoon was a recording session for a new song of Breanna’s. I got there really early, brought in my cello and accordion, and then, since it would be a while before I was needed, I ended up going for an hour-long walk around the neighborhood because it was so beautiful outside. When I got home, I had a message on MySpace from a girl I went on a couple of dates with a year and a half ago. “I saw you! Walking on 22nd, talking on your cell phone.” It was very funny, in a small-world kind of way.

I think that the Dread Pirate Exhaustion may have been setting in, though, because with the exception of the show on Friday night, I never really felt ‘present’ for the rest of the weekend. I felt like I was going through the motions, even during the recording session.

By all standards, this should have been a two-thumbs-up weekend, but realistically, I think I’m only gonna be able to give it a thumb and a half, because I felt so exhausted and weird for so much of it.

I don’t have any kind of substantial basis for feeling this way, but I feel like this is going to be a good week.

This morning at work, I said good morning to someone I rarely see or get a chance to talk to, while I was loading paper into my printer. “Busy weekend?” she asked.

“Yeah. I have two big shows, actually.”
“Oh really? What do you. . .do?”
“Musician.”
“That’s a nice little hobby, huh?”

Nice little hobby, yeah. Thanks for reducing it to that.

I had a job a few years ago that I quit from because it almost killed me. I’m not exaggerating. It did kill my spirit; at least for a while. This was also just at the the time when I was getting into recording and music production. So I quit, and two weeks later, on the day that I left, a guy walked up to me and said, “Well. . .good luck with your career or whatever.” The funny thing is, he actually thought that he meant well.

For everyone else who’s reading this, I have two shows and a recording session this weekend. The first is with Stephanie’s band, as part of the Voices For Silent Disasters series that starts tonight. Tomorrow night is a Breanna Paletta full-band show, and then Sunday is an ‘acoustic’ recording session with Breanna. Last I heard I’ll be playing cello, and maybe accordion and xylophone; things like that.

Nice little hobby I’ve got going for myself. Hope it all works out or whatever.