Seems I'm not the only one trying to make something more meaningful of my musical past than I did when I was living it; word on the street (LeonsTemple Street) suggest that there are folks at both the K'zoo library and WMU looking to assemble artifacts from "the scene."

Bummer the only one I really have is me, huh?

I'm not sure what's more hilarious to me - searching for friends from that era on Wikipedia and seeing how they're viewed in the third person, or the fact that so many of the most important players - musicians or otherwise - get no mention at all, or at best a parenthetical subreference in someone else's article.

I'm having a bit of a time with that whole deal lately.  On the one hand...man, those were easily the best times in my life, and some of the best people I've ever known.  On the other hand, by the time the scene started happening, I'd already been playing out for a half-decade, and I regrettably spent a substantial portion of the period without an instrument, vacillating back and forth between trying to be a normal human being and father, and trying to be the rest of what I am.  Guys who have their own Wikipedia pages now used to tell me that I was part of the reason they started playing.

Welcome to the rewards of not "selling out," eh?

I've been informed that my name appears in the "thank you" credits on the new 2-disc WWE-OMEGA dvd set.  I really appreciate that.  I'd appreciate it a hell of a lot more if anyone from that period of my life would bother getting in touch, even just to say hello.  Not like I'm hard to find.

I wonder what it all means sometimes.  If I listed all of the "stars" that I've known, partied with, played with, worked with, hung with, dated or screwed, it would read like a who's who of b-listers, underground innovators, myths, and legends...but here I sit, broke and alone, wondering if I'll ever be able to translate all the things in my head into anything more than a bunch of borderline-sociopathic rants on a website that maybe a half-dozen people ever read other than to download videogame addons.  So many people over the years - SO many people - have been ingratiating, complimentary, and.or effusive toward me - to say nothing of folks who were just good people and good friends - and then eventually just disappeared.  It's f'n depressing...if I'm so great/helpful/talented/wise/etc., where are all those people now?  Am I like a wisdom tampon, or a talent band-aid, that just serves a short-term purpose and is appreciated for exactly as long as I serve that purpose, and am then discarded and forgotten having outlived my usefulness?  Do any of the hundreds, if not thousands, of people I've counted as part of my social circles over the years ever think of me, wonder what I'm doing, wonder what ever happened to me, if I'm alive or dead?  If so, why don't any of them ever get in touch?  It's not like I'm hiding or anything.  If not, why would so many people, many of whom having no knowledge of or relationship to each other, blow so much sunshine up my ass?  It's not like I've got money or power that they could benefit from, which leaves me thinking the good folks who have been so complimentary over the years were sincere...but then if that was the case, where are they?  Why do other people have these huge social networks and support systems, and I'm sitting here screaming at the wall just to have the company of my own echo?

*sigh* I thought maybe by this point of my life I'd have started to understand people.