The Good:

Got to see long-lost friends Mike MacIntosh and Chris Cole tonight, as Mikey’s band was playing the block party and Chris was doing sound (and I’m happy to report that both were doing a damn fine job of it).  So good to shoot the bull with those guys.  Wish I hadn’t been working, I’d have loved to tip a few and reminisce a bit.  All in good time, fate willing.  Got a couple of pics and some camera-vid, but other than this mention ‘m not even gonna talk about it until I have a chance to see if it turned out at all.  If it did, I might start shooting rants with that camera, since…

(this is where I start bitching)

I’m not making jack squat at this current gig – in fact I’ve LOST about $60 in the last three days doing it – so I haven’t been able to get the funds out to Utah to get my camcorder’s power supply back in my grubby lil mitts.  I seriously don’t even want to get into all the reasons why This Shit Just Ain’t Working…but this shit just ain’t working.  If not for the 16% unemployment rate, I’d have quit already.  It sucks that hard.  I’ve now worked roughly 220 hours, and I’ve taken home roughly 300 bucks.

This is not what one would call a sustainably affluent lifestyle.

But, I’m biding my time, for the moment.  Patience has never been a virtue of mine, though, and I’m afraid things are going to come to a head real quick here.  I’m half tempted to ask everyone to bomb the crap out of [insert the name of that bar here] and tell them you heard the LEGENDARY AMAZING SUPERFANTASTIC GOD OF ALL THINGS PERCUSSION JOHN HENRY HIMSELF had played at their bar, and they’d be REALLY dropping the ball if they didn’t decide to take me on as a full-time house drummer…but I won’t do that.  If there’s any chance at all of that gig existing and me getting it, I’d rather do so on merit rather than peer pressure.  Any asshole with a budget can buy a gig.  Earning one is another story entirely.

Somehow these blog entries always end up reading like a dirge.  They’re not intended to be.  Well, except in this case, because the next thing on my mind is my ex-brother-in-law’s funeral/memorial tomorrow.  I want to say something; I want to DO something.  I don’t even have a pair of drum sticks to drop in the casket with him.  I don’t know what the hell I’d say.  But *shrug* you know how I am – I’ll end up saying something.

I have had a pretty damned amazing life.  Not as amazing as some, but still pretty amazing.  If I could ever get the money thing worked out, I’d be damned dangerous.  Hell, I’m dangerous without it.  My problem is, I don’t care about money, but the people from whom I purchase things like auto insurance and food seem oddly attached to it.  But I can’t make myself chase the carrot.  As I may have heard on some online college commercial or something, I am not a hamster, and life is not a wheel.

But even that…approach, opinion, whatever it is, is rooted in the day my sister’s boyfriend handed me a pair of sticks and said “let’s see whatcha got, kid.”  That one moment forever changed who I would be, permanently and irrevocably…and I feel like every day since has been an exercise in showing you what the kid’s got.

I’ve felt for a long time now that the point was coming when all the crazy things I’ve said and done and the people I’ve met and the lessons I’ve learned and the blood and tears and sweat and cheers and months and years and hopes and fears realized and forgotten are coming to a head; that whatever it’s all adding up to will finally manifest in the next few months.

Maybe that means I’ll finally end up in a nuthatch and get a nice long vacation to sharpen my basketweaving skills.

Or maybe not.

I guess I give the impression sometimes that I hate people.  That would be a false impression.  I love people.  I want them to love me.  I’m an attention- and approval-seeking freak…but I also have this odd attachment to concepts like integrity, honesty, fair play, empathy, and critical thinking skills, and this puts me in the odd position of loving people, but hating the things people do and the way people act toward each other.  There are times when I just want to start grabbing people by the throat and screaming LOOK AT THIS WORLD, AND YOU’VE GOT NOTHING BETTER TO DO THAN THIS?

I guess maybe when it comes down to it.  ALL my online rambling, ranting, screaming, preaching, flaming, etc. boils down to that.  It’s such a beautiful planet, and we are such beautiful creatures.  Each one of us has unique skill, intellect, talent, beauty, and passion that adds our own unique mark and flavor to everything we touch, and ripples outward into the world.  The offhand remark a friend made to me a quarter-century ago gets repeated in a conversation with a musician more successful than I and turns up as a song lyric months later; something comes out of my mouth that I think is fairly meaningless but someone who hears it thinks is profound, and they integrate into their own life philosophy and pass it on to their friends, loved ones, or children.  Ripples on a pond, oscillating ever outward and changing everything they touch in ways miniscule and titanic.  Each of us creates those ripples every single day, generating with our every breath, word, and movement a series of events that can change the world, end the world, or start a whole new world…

…and mostly, we don’t notice because we’re too wrapped up in the minutiae of day-to-day living, paying the mortgage and keeping the wife happy and getting that damned screen door fixed for the umpteenth time.

So if you happen to read this…take a minute and appreciate yourself a bit.  Tell a friend that you love them and are glad they’re a part of your life.  Call a loved one you’ve not been in touch with.  Speak your mind, and if you’re feeling ambitious make sure you HAVE a mind before speaking.  Buy a kid an ice-cream cone; give a hug; be beautiful from the inside.

Fly.  Create.  Shine.  As only you can, whoever you are.

As for me…I’m keeping a fairly low profile right now.  I’m ridiculously sorry that I haven’t been in touch with more people, haven’t had a chance to go hang with more people, haven’t been oat and aboat as they say over in Windsor and points north.  I guess I’m just kind of waiting and working until I can construct just the right megaphone in just the right size to really start putting myself out there again.

Or maybe that’s just an excuse because I’m a chicken?  Maybe I’m afraid of success – that once I’ve done something Good, I’ll fail to do Better.  Am I a diamond in the rough, or a beautifully cut gem who simply lacks awareness of my own intricate beauty?  Am I just another deluded wannabe rock star who thinks I’m a lot smarter and more useful than I really am, or am I really the person that some people over the years have tried to tell me I am?

Will I ever really know for sure?   Will you?  Does anyone, ever?

I know this:  those four songs I played Sunday night were like throwing two dime rocks at a crackhead…I haven’t itched this much to play in probably ten years.  To call the way I feel right now ‘desperation’ is to utterly minimize the meaning of the word.  It was like a gulp of air to a drowning man; restored vision.  My chops are rusty and my body is out of tune, but for just a few minutes, I felt that old rush again…and now I know that I’ll keep seeking it out until the day they put ME in a casket with a set of sticks and a carefully-created smile of contentment on my face.

I’m a lot of things.  Computer geek, web designer, graphic designer, video editor, misanthrope, longhaired hippie librul, professional driver, savior of corporate IT departments, soft shoulder to cry on, attentive ear, helpful advisor, father, lover, friend.  I’ve seen and done things that other people only dream about, if they even dare, and yet I’ve fallen so far short of my ‘potential’ thus far, and I can’t ever seem to put my finger on exactly why.  Amateur behavioral psychologist; sometime student of theology; Usenet troll; Level 80 rogue; actor; stage technician; heavy-metal hero from days of yore with a secret penchant for the work of Dan Fogelberg and Johnny Cash…

…but before and after all those things, I’m a Drummer.

Period.

Maybe it’s time I finally take my own advice, throw all the other shit to the side, and start being who I really am.