Mark

I'm going to write this down because I think of it often and it was one of the better experiences of my lifetime, even though I feel writing it down could ruin it because it sort of takes it out of the aether.  I need some sort of place to park this memory.  This great moment came from a sad event, but ultimately I guess this is what made it so impactful.

A friend and pillar of the local music community passed away a couple years ago, and a gathering was held in his honor at a venue known for its support of local music.  Our local music scene has a very storied past and everyone was there.  Everyone loved this guy.  We all remembered our friend with short stories and tributes that each of us, in turn, told from the lone mic on the stage, standing next to his guitar that had a spotlight on it.

My story was about meeting him 5,000 miles away from home, with a few others of us from the hometown.  The story was essentially about feeling very much at home while being so far away from it, and how he was an instrumental part of that moment.  

I know everyone, no matter how seasoned, gets a little nervous before speaking in front of a crowd, and I certainly did, too.  But here's the thing; I spoke with ease.  It was seamless.  The story had a beginning, middle, and end, and it had anecdotes.  I had a point.  I said exactly what I wanted to say and was never lost.  It was fully sincere and came off exactly as I wanted.  What happened next was what made it one of the greatest moments of my life.

After I said my thank you and left the stage, the room echoed with heartfelt applause.  As I made my way off the stage and back through the crowd, people I didn't know were patting me on the back and saying "Good speech".  I got back to my spot and one of the friends I had been standing with leaned over and said "That was a good story."  Cripes.  I really connected.  In the time that I was working my way back to my spot, with the applause still going, my closest friend in the music community was making his way to the stage to say a few short words, and he's a beloved member of the community that people were happy to see and the applause only increased when he stepped on to the stage.  He was brief and awesome.  When he returned he told me that he wasn't going to say anything but I had inspired him and he wanted to follow me.  We do play in a duo together so I was happy for the pairing.

When everyone who wanted to speak had finished, we returned to mingling around the room and people whom I'd never met were engaging in conversation with me.  People who hadn't previously paid me much attention were reaching out.  A longtime, popular local musician struck up a conversation with me, the bar owner told me he appreciated my story, a local music reporter just randomly started telling me his life story, another stranger started talking about her guitar to me...  For just a brief moment I became a guy everyone wanted to talk to.  Obviously my story really tapped into the love everyone had for this musician.  It was a great feeling.

But here's the real thing; my speech was memorized.  Maybe not word-for-word, but it was mapped out and sometimes directly quoted.  About a week before this memorial service, I took the time to write down the story I remembered about our friend, and all the time I needed to spend searching for the right word or the best phrase I had already invested, in private, a week ago.  I wasn't up there reading off a prompter or index cards, but I had organized my thoughts, and I know that made the difference.  We all loved Mark. He really was a pillar of the local community, and I'm so glad that his memorial service evolved into one of the most warm and impactful moments of my life.  Never been to any other service that felt so much like a celebration of someone's life and contribution, and this is where Mark's memory sits.  Thanks, friend.

Legos

This oversimplification will quickly run into trouble, but let’s not let that stop us.

Musicianship generally falls into two main categories:  the people fully understand the instrument and use it to express art, and the rest, for whom the instrument is like a puzzle that sometimes makes art.

A true musician looks at the fretboard of a guitar for example, and sees the shapes that evoke all the different moods.  The happy and sad sounds, the tension, the mysterious, the disorienting... basically they understand the palette and can paint any picture right there in front of you. 

For the rest of us, guitar is a puzzle that we sometimes know how to put together.  We hear something we like and we practice practice practice to imitate it.  It's like a parlor trick.  We may call it up from time to time (and actually pull it off in the moment!) but it's mostly rote.  The real musicians sit down and start sketching images and the rest of us do our best to recreate those sketches - almost like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.  We learn all the pieces and assemble it.

But I’ll tell you something about us jigsaw puzzle players; we're having fun. The puzzle has a lot of pieces that can be put together thousands of different ways, and not all of those ways make music (those are the bad days - it happens) but somehow it doesn't really make the guitar less fun.  Well, actually yes it does.  But so what?

So while us Puzzle People would love to sit down and freeform sketch something compelling, we don’t really have that, and that usually leads to becoming discouraged.  Not all us punters share the “guitar is a fun puzzle” outlook, but it can definitely help those bad days when you walk over to the guitar and step on a Lego.

Strippers, probably.

    I never went to a strip club because it was my idea, but the two or three times I went, I saw some stuff. And I don't just mean the nekkid women.  

There was that time someone called over a stripper, pointed at someone else at the table and said, "This is Scott.  It's his birthday."  It wasn't Scott's birthday and I can't see how that would matter, but I guess maybe the only way to know is to try.  Fun Facts: strippers, by definition, don't care. 

There was the time that Brian, who was an excitable gent, found himself particularly attracted to one of the strippers and when she came over he basically announced that he wasn't going to be able to contain himself, whatever that meant.  Upon hearing this, the stripper opted out.  Brian spent some time in prison and died a free man not long ago.  You see, Brian got involved in dealing drugs for a time.  When plainly asked "why" by his friends, he freely admitted that he was not blessed with the type of brain that would ever land him great fortune, and he was perfectly happy to experience some amount of wealth even if it landed him in jail, which is a place he might well end up in anyway.  In the end it was brain cancer that got him but either way, clearly that stripper made the right call.

The story that sticks with me from The Brian Night doesn't involve Brian at all.  The group of us sat at a table, and at the table next to us was a young man who was paying a stripper by the song.  He had a roll of cash.  It was clear that he had become enamored.  If the direction of her gaze was any indication, the stripper seemed like she wanted to be anywhere else, but the young and evidently very incompatible man had a plan to slowly hand over his life's savings.  Now, once again for the record I would like to state (whether you choose to believe me or not) that I do NOT have much experience with strip clubs.  They honestly aren't my thing (and I know I'm not alone in that) but one thing I think everybody knows is no touching.  Right - well here's the part that sticks with me.

Shorty after we arrive, the stripper who is being monopolized by the young man with the bankroll manages to break free between songs, goes over to our table and, for no money, starts dancing for Joe.  Joe sits there with the body language of any normal person, that says "What the fuck am I supposed to be doing about this?"  Then the stripper says something in Joe's ear.  She motions to a bouncer (female!) who immediately comes over, and like an NFL ref negotiating a coin toss, the bouncer says something to Joe, says something to the stripper... and then Joe and the stripper start making out.

I say - Joe and the stripper start making out.

And the bouncer is right there.  I mean right there, squatting next to Joe and repeatedly clenching her fists to increase blood flow to her forearms, but the makeout session just ends.  The bouncer nods and says "Okay?"  Everybody nods and that's that.  The stripper returns to the young man with the bankroll.  I lean over to Joe and say "What did she say to you!?"  Joe said, "She said, 'I want to kiss you'."  And that was all.  Joe didn't ask her for anything.  He didn't pay her anything.  None of it was his idea.  Except walking into a strip club, I guess.

Again, I don't really know how strip clubs work, but I don't think they work like that.  Seems obvious that the stripper was trying to get the young man with the bankroll to lose interest.  But it didn't work.  She was back at his table right afterward.

Weird fuckin' night.