Thumbing the Muse

Time, man.

It's a killer.

In a different era, when I was a much different man, I was fond of telling the people around me who complained about not having enough time is this:

"Time is not something that's given. Time is something you make."

And I was right.

Still am to some degree.

But what I didn't conceive then, was what happens to you when you've spent your life making time and then you've reached the plateau. I've mastered bending time to fit my needs. Pushing out fluff and minutiae. Forcing the people who needed me to find another hero. I come first. Me me me. Write what you want on a post-it and I'll get to it when I get to it.

Then I became a dad. And time wasn't about me me me. Time suddenly became far more zen-like. Time became about the now.

Art, any art, is an open ended commitment. Sure there are some far more disciplined writers in this discipline of writing who can schedule a forty five minute writing session and then move on to the next priority, but their work is the result of craft preceding the muse, and always ends up feeling like a lesson in song-craft more than a moment of clarity.

No offense Mr. Hammerstein, I'm sure you meant well.

Moments of clarity hit with no warning. They strike with impunity and disregard of situation. The further the writer distances himself from the world around him, the more clear the signal, the more apt the writer is to capture lightening in a bottle.

The rub, of course, is that the muse exists in the world around us. Not in a tiny, one windowed studio, but in a bus and on a train, with a goat and in the rain. We exist, we observe, the moment of clarity drops like a piano on our tiny cartoon selves.

Boing!

But what immediately becomes apparent when one becomes a parent is that when lightening blasts its way out of the universe and falls into the level just above your sub-conscience

calvin

See! Right in the middle of a sentence, my son walks into the room and wants to type his name.

But what I was trying to say was that when the muse strikes, there are diapers to change. There are an infinite amount of Connect Four games to play. There are hot wheels to push around, legos to construct and let's go fly a kite.

But I embrace this. I feed off this.

"Castle Park" isn't about my experience, it's about my son's. I masterminded a way to incorporate the open ended commitment of both artistry and fatherhood in a way that allows me to be both a good father and a good songwriter.

dad mom taylor

Sorry. He wanted to type "dad" then "mom" then "taylor"

Taylor is his sixteen year old brother, which if you've been following along is the person I normally refer to as "the sixteen year-old" (Don't think I didn't miss the fact that he wanted to write "dad " first. The dripping sound is that of my heart melting)

But that's just the thing. I thought I had it made. I thought that I could have my cake, eat it, roll around in the vanilla frosting, and thumb my nose at the impossibility of writing a great album, be an awesome dad, the perfect husband, a fun blogger, great at my day job, six feet tall and a full head of hair.

I write this because of december 23rd.

It's 11:15pm.

I'm sick with the kind of cold that can only be caught from snotty little preschool noses. Calvin has a double ear infection and has been restless, but cuddly in a way that only a sick child can be. He's finally asleep and laying in his bed, breathing the soft sugary breath of christmas dreams. I look about the house and decide there's nothing I need to clean, nothing that needs picking up, nothing that can't wait till tomorrow. I tiptoe to the bathroom to strip the coffee stained clothes off my body. To brush my teeth. To blow my nose. The nightlight in the hall gives me just enough illumination to see my ghostly reflection in the bathroom mirror.

She falls.

There in my head, welling up from my sub-conscience, is the first verse.

The first verse to the song I've been laboring over for the last two months.

She's so perfect. The lyric, the melody, they both flow seamlessly into the chorus I've already imagined.

It might have taken two minutes, two hours, I don't know.

It was an unending commitment to capture her.

But I was exhausted. Baby finally to bed. Work in the morning. Restless wife warming up the covers.

I moved instinctively to my guitar, but the mirror caught my eye.

How did I get this old? How can I look so wasted? I must have lost weight, because the image was more skeleton than man. My strong body looked frail, and my normally shiny, ready for anything eyes told me the truth.

Not tonight, man.

Your life needs you tomorrow. and the next day, and the next.

Let her go.

She'll be back.

She'll come to you again.

She always does.

Get some sleep.

Inboxes

I missed a deadline.

Not just any deadline, a serious deadline.

The kind of deadline that caused panic in the streets and inured me with the title "Jerk-Ass of the Week"

How did I miss this deadline?

Glad you asked.

I missed this deadline because I forgot to check my personal work email inbox on a friday afternoon. And then again on Saturday morning. And then again on Saturday afternoon.

I checked my Facebook seventy-two times in the same 24 hours.

I checked my work email fourteen times.

I checked my personal email ten times.

I checked my blog at least five times looking for comments.

I checked my iTunes sales once. (The Australians are streaming!, the australians are streaming!)

I may have checked my myspace twice. I can't remember.

I don't twitter. But if I did, I would have. I did send five texts to my wife. Three of which were too dirty to share and the other two something about picking up wine and returning videos to Blockbuster.

I did not, however, check my personal work email. This is the separate email account I have at my place of business so that I can communicate sensitive material. So it is possible to be both obsessive and non-commital in the same breath.

Why did I not check this one? No idea. Just plain forgot. Well, maybe sub-consciencely I ignore it because it never has anything but spam and bad news, but that's a whole 'nuther uncomfortable conversation.

And the deadline; same dead line; every third week of the month; I have had for over two years.

So not only did I not check my email. I lost an entire week. Which is a much bigger problem than has been dreamt of in my philosophy.

Checking inboxes has an evil twin however. My boss's boss once referred to the inbox as the almighty Time Suck. Inboxes, email accounts, and social networking can very easily drain hours out of a clearly mapped out calendar. I've tried replacing my smoking habit with the inbox addiction, but alas, those monkeys play nicely together.

Although great danger and responsibility lies within the immediacy of connectivity, this revolution leads us to a new social zen.

The Life-Work-Inbox Balance.

So today, I reinvest my time.

I get in, check my mail. I go to lunch then check my mail. I map out the last 13 minutes of my day so that I can check my mail and still have at least ten minutes to deal with whatever problem may arise, or even better, tell someone that I only have nine minutes left in my day and there's no way I can run to the rescue. I get home, kiss my wife, yell at my kids, I do some light dusting to prepare for a party tonight, pour myself a half glass of zin, and sit down to check my inboxes. I will only do this while the pasta boils.

But there it was.

A message from a dear old friend.

His beautiful baby daughter was born premature and is in and out of the ICU.

And what was supposed to be a silly blog becomes something else entirely. Suddenly, a connectivity rant, a joke on the yin and yang of the computer age, escalates into a personal plea to the universe to bring a friend's life back into balance.

I once told a buddy that the real change from being a man to being a daddy is courage. You always think that you'll step in front of a bullet, you think you could run into a busy street, you're pretty sure you could kill a bad guy with your bare hands,

but when you become a dad,

you know.

So my friend doesn't need courage. He's got that.

He probably needs sleep more than a phone call, and I'm too far away to do some light pick-up around the house and cook some soup.

I don't believe in God. But I do believe in prayer.

Amen.

And thanks to a little click of the mouse, I can send all the love and good vibes that I've been saving for myself.

All the love and good vibes any man could respectably handle.

And it is his for the taking.

Whenever he gets around to checking his inbox.

An Ode to the Filler Song

Considering the holiday, with my belly stuffed with leftovers and a fridge full of stuff that will be nibbled but not fully eaten, I figured its as good a time as any to talk about the kind of songs that are tasty but have no true value.

I speak, of course, of filler.

Filler in my rough definition is the kind of song that is written to fill out the twelve song quota of the modern album.

These are the songs where we listen to the first few bars and immediately recognize that we've no intention of listening to the whole thing and inevitably hit the advance button on our ipods.

Now filler is not so much a new phenomenon as it is a fact of entertainment.

Act I: Give em a little excitement.

Act II: Give em a little plot.

Act III - Act IV: Filler

Act V: Kill someone the audience likes

Acts VI & VII: Filler

Act VIII: Happy or Sad: the play is over.

House lights to full.

I finished a piece of filler a few weeks ago and I'm not happy about it. Oh sure, there's some craft involved, some nice pieces of lyric, a slightly formulaic chorus, basically a ditty.

I should be able to write a ditty without feeling bad about it.

But I do.

(Quick pause to play baseball out in the backyard with Calvin, more on this later)

So why do I feel bad about a little ditty?

Simple.

I have a lot of rules wrapped around the songs I write. And still even more rules for the songs I'm writing for this album:

No cliches. No bad rhymes. Hummable. At least one stylized turn of phrase. For "Castle Park" the song has to be thematically intertwined with Calvin and myself without a hint of melodrama. Tough bill.

I can break anyone of these rules as I see fit, but there is one rule that is steadfast and unbreakable.

I have to be able to play it for someone without feeling embarrassed.

And filler songs embarrass me.

And, dammit, they shouldn't.

Filler songs let us know the Little Orphan Annie is still in danger.

They're the kids picked for the team between the jocks and the uncoordinated.

They get Tony from the soda shop to Maria's balcony.

Filler songs are the great B Sides that the Baby Boomers relish with glee.

They're a breath of fresh air before John Lennon takes us into "A Day in the Life"

They add volume to substance. They're long eyelashes, platform heels, and the hint of perfume.

And at the end of months of late night dead air, when the body has been saturated with fast food and cheap wine. And the painful feelings of inadequacy walk hand in hand with the shadow of imminent failure. When sleep fails to provide solace. When everyone around you is trapped within their own desperate lives,

A filler song is fucking salvation.

Castle Park has some great songs. It has songs that are fun to play, fun to sing, nice to listen to. Some of it is silly, some of it will reach into your heart and make you ache. What it doesn't have are the songs that give the other songs depth and meaning.

Yeah, I would like to create one more piece of pure magic for this album. But until then.

Its filler time.

Someone Loves Angie

Before I dig in, please have a little faith that this is not a nostalgia piece. This isn't about boyhood lost, or the paving over of some memory.

Live in the now, Fat Kid, live in the now.

So anyway, if the beginning of this story smacks of sentimentality, bear with me.

Ready?

A building just outside of Sonoma was recently torn down.

What was the chipped facade of an old hotel is now rubble. A pile of bricks enclosed by a chain link fence.

I don't know its full history. I never touched it or went inside. The only thing I know about this once majestic heap of trash is one little fact:

Some how, somewhere, once upon a time, someone loved Angie.

I know this because written sloppily in spray paint just below the second story window was this:

"I [Picture of a heart] angie"

Who was Angie? I don't know.

Who loved Angie? Was it a drunk teenager, or a mildly retarded janitor? No idea.

Doesn't matter. But in order to make sense of this little diatribe I have to flashback a few days.

Went to see an interview with Stephen Sondheim this past weekend. And aside from the fact that I got to be in the room with one of the most staggeringly genius songwriters of the twentieth century (along with 1700 of his closest admirerers) I didn't really learn anything new.

Sure there were a few anecdotes that I had never heard before, but the real education came in the form of reaffirmation.

His process is my process. His approach is my approach. He is a songwriter. I am a songwriter. We live, we learn, we fail, we succeed.

He told the story of a married woman who was involved in a tempestuous affair, and though it broke her heart to do so, she broke it off for the sake of her marriage. Then one night the phone rang and she heard her ex-lover's voice on the other end of the line,

"not a day goes by"

Song!

Eventually, of course, he was asked where his ideas come from. But its an impossible question. No writer can tell you where they get their ideas. But everyone can tell you where they got "that" idea.

It's the waiter who asked Billy Joel if he wanted a "bottle of red, a bottle of white." Or the couple sitting next to Sting who noticed a "little black spot on the sun today" In fact, Castle Park is all about those little moments that send the creative juices a-whirling.

But to get moving forward I have to flashback about eight years.

I was at work when the phone rang. A dear friend had fallen from a ladder and broke his neck. He was laid up in a hospital bed and couldn't move.

When people you love are in pain, you go through many different reactions all at once. Panic, fear, who do you call to get this gossip off your chest, will my boss think this is important enough to let me go home early, what the hell can I do, what the hell does he need, should I be the rational cool guy or just freak the fuck out.

That's the first few seconds.

But then I backed off the initial reaction. I made few phone calls, covered the next few of my shifts and the shifts of his girlfriend who worked for me, went home to pick up a few CD's and a few books, gassed up the car and got on the road.

It was a long drive. And I had a lot of time to think about my life. A lot of time to freak out. Jon had the presense of mind to know that his life was a life of the theater. I had quit the theater and was adrift in my metaphorical sea. My friend was hurt, and I was as helpless in life as he was in that gurney.

The radio became a source of irritation so I flipped it off.

Alone with my thoughts. Waiting for the light to turn green.

Then I looked up.

I looked at the cracked facade of a brick building.

It was one of those V-shaped buildings on the corner of an intersection where the two streets meet at a very non-perpendicular angle. It was obviously abandoned. A fire had scorched the inside. All the windows had been shattered by rocks and there were scattered bits of graffiti along the wall.

But when I looked up I saw another trashy bit of graffiti below the second story window.

"I [picture of a heart] angie"

Song!

All the questions were mine to answer. Or not. It could be about a moment in time that has been forgotten by everyone. The possibilities were freaking endless!

And the possibility of me being anything other than a songwriter was at an end.

Jon recovered.

I look back at theater fondly but without regret.

The building was torn down by the city and the owner is currently looking for some one to buy those old bricks.

I have never written that song and maybe never will.

but somehow

somewhere

once upon a time

Someone loved Angie.

An Ode to the Song Hole

To write or not to write. That is the question.

Whether it is nobler in the mind to pen rhymes on scattered shopping lists strewn about the house and suffer the slings and Legos of a complacent four year old in his outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of accumulated junk piled six feet high and ten feet deep.

And by opposing the pack rat tendencies of an indecisive wife, end them.

To write, to think.

To think, perchance to dream.

Aye, there's the rub.

For in that dream of life, what songs may come?

When I have shuffled off those ill fitting clothes, broken toys, and Ikea furniture and finally have time for pause.

There's the respect that makes calamity of such a messy garage.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of a sixteen year old boy who only wants to sing and dance, even if it means totally destroying my ability to compose a melody without the infectious groove of Lady Gaga sneaking her off key harmonies into my middle eight?

 Alas, the song hole is emptied of most of it's clutter. The space is open, the door is closed, there are pens with ink, and countless spiral notebooks waiting to be filled. There are musical instruments of every kind.

 And a leather chair that leans back.

 But I digress.

 Some of the best songwriting advice I've ever been given came from a book.

 That's right, a book.

 Not one of those "Learn How to Write a Top Ten Hit!" kind of books, but a large paperback written by songwriter Jimmy Webb simply called "Tunesmith"

 This book should be required reading for anyone who puts words to music.

 Yeah, its a little outdated now. And some of it is too technical for a dilitante. And my personal copy has broken bindings and dog eared pages, and more than one coffee stain, but its such a nurturing manual for the art and craft of songwriting that I'll probably make Calvin read it as soon as he graduates from Dr. Suess.

 More to the point however is that the book insists that the writer absolutely must create a safe place for themselves.

 A physical space that can't be corrupted by ringing telephones, fights over video games, and the disney channel.

 I have had such spaces in my past. In my single years, it was my room. In my college years it was the space beneath the main stage that housed the old velvet curtains. Just before my nephew was born it was a guest bedroom at my soon to be in-laws house down the street. 

 Since then, however, my song hole has existed only in the quiet of the late evening, or the peace before school lets out. My song hole was always at the mercy of a family schedule.

 My garage is the perfect space.

 But it's not a studio. Even though the door to the house is weather sealed, the outside noises are crystal clear. Any microphone would pick up cars and dogs several blocks away. The water heater and washing machine are constantly battling over "most noisy appliance. And it's simply not breathable during the summer when the styfling heat sucks the life out of me. But when the rain begins to fall and the air begins to clear, I can feel my whole universe slip back into focus. Melodies rise easily from the din of white noise, and lyrics guide themselves as I hold the pen to the paper. Even though I may never use it to record a tune, the song hole is a place for creation.

However, it fills up with clutter so fast that when I go in there to write, I can't even wheel my chair from the desk to the piano. Squeezed by so much clutter I feel claustrophobic and writing becomes a violent act of fighting compression.

 So yesterday I cleaned it out.

 An entire truck load of junk.

 And now I have my space again.  

 And today it begins to rain.

Go bird go!

Today was the first day of preschool.

Not some hippie lets roll around in the mud and talk about our feelings kind of preschool, but the kind of preschool that is in a square little room covered in boxes and flash cards and toys. The kind of preschool where the teachers have seen three generations pass, they drive American cars with fake wood paneling and probably need to sneak off for a quick smoke during free play time.

Not that I'm knocking on the modern, open minded, high energy, exploratory experience that my over anxious contemporaries swear by . . . 

. . . no wait, I'm totally gonna talk some smack.

two years ago, a customer of mine convinced me to take a tour of a world renowned local preschool that was the "cats meow" of modern childhood development.

It cost $300 a month.

For two days a week.

And parent participation once a week.

But I was (and still sorta am) a bit anxious about making sure that my demon seed had all the advantages I could possibly pave.

I showed up one day for my tour. Baby Calvin in my arms. (He is 1.5 years old at this point and not eligible for another 1.5 years)

I needed to take the tour because the waiting list for this mecca of toddler enhancement was miles long and supposedly if I didn't get my application in by the end of spring, then there would be no hope to Calvin's future success. 

The application came with a $60 fee and the promise that if I didn't sign the check I was relegating my son to a career in slaughter houses, substitute teaching, or god forbid, retail.

As I made my way across the gravel parking lot, I made eye contact with a tired looking old lady sitting on the bench outside the door.

I smiled. She glared

I said hello. She glared harder and cocked her head.

I made my way to the door and the old crone barked at me with both anger and a slight measure of panic.

"What are you here for!?" she said.

Now first of all, I may talk a tough game, but seriously, I'm 5'10". Neatly dressed. I drove into the parking lot in a powder blue Toyota echo, and I'm carrying a one year old in my arms.

The only thing that would make me less threatening would be a kitten in my other arm.

On top of that, I have never, ever, not even once, been barked at while in the company of my son. One of the reasons I take him everywhere is because people just melt at the sight of babies. Especially if they are quiet and relatively cute. And Calvin was quiet as a mouse outside the home, and he's even got a little dimple on one side of his cheek when he smiles. He ruled cute.

It took me a whole beat to catch my breath.

"Um, I'm here to see Leslie for a tour." I fumbled.

"Let me get her." she barked as she sped past me and through the front door.

A few moments later Leslie walks out. She asked me why my wife wasn't there, and I told her that my wife was working. She seemed a little put off, but began the tour in earnest.

Suffice it to say, the place was a wonderland. A summer camp for enriching the information starved minds of a little boys and girls.

I wanted to go there.

Old crone aside, I was totally ready to sign my money and my time on that dotted line.

But Leslie kept talking to me about how much my wife is gonna love this place.

How much fun my wife will have with the other mothers.

How much my wife will be able to learn about young childhood development from "Bev"

"Bev" of course being the gate keeper/attack dog I met outside.

"Bev" of course being a world renowned authority on early childhood development. 

"Bev" an obvious underachiever in basic adult communication skills.

Then it finally dawned on me. Though the application clearly said "parental participation" hidden in the unspoken water mark was this:

"Hey you, yeah you, the one with the post pubescent penis, you're totally not welcome here."

This was summer camp for soccer moms, not daddies. Cool moms who let their children play in the dirt, not men who would tell a four-year old with a skinned knee to "throw some dirt on it"

Now I have related this story to several people who are more familiar with "Bev" than I would ever care to be, and the reaction is usually shock.

They have very fond things to say.

yes, they are all girls.

Be that as it may, I didn't give preschool much thought after that. But for years it has loomed.

And my parental anxiety has shifted to a much more hands off conciliatory response. Let him play with guns, I say. Except I did spend fifteen minutes waiting around the corner just in case he tried to run out and find me, and then the two and a half hours I spent biting my nails and waiting for the phone to ring with tragic news on the other end.

But it's time to push a little society on him. Send him out into the dark world with a flashlight and a juice box.

So as I went to Calvin's first day, I sat filling out paperwork. The teachers made it very clear that they don't encourage parental participation. 

"Makes the children act weird" Gwen says.

I really like Gwen.

Most of the kids were dropped off by dads. Awesome.

(Awesome except for the very real possibility that those dad's recently lost their jobs. To which there is really no good response)

I finished the paperwork and kneeled down next to my son.

"I'm gonna go. Wanna give me a hug?" I said.

"Uh huh. Vrooom." and he sped off to the play area with his blue race car.

I walked out the room hug-less.

And then a truth occurred to me.

The emotional scarring of early childhood development isn't his. It's mine.

There's really nothing "Bev's" childhood wonderland does except ease a parents pain. Makes the wound a little less deep in the beginning. Falsely sets those fears some place else for later review.

But as every man should learn from every father:

"Son . . . measure twice. 

Cut once. 

And throw some dirt on it."

Call me Dad

August and September have completely disappeared.

I, for one, blame the iPhone.

It's genius mobility and ease of use has totally decapitated my "stop and smell the flowers" time. Sitting down with my lap-top feels archaic and slow. Anywhere I go I'm connected to everything and involved in nothing. As my readers will be quick to point out, I haven't published in almost two months. I haven't written a single line of verse. Were it not for the insistence of my wife to continue performing, I might not have even plucked my guitar from the wall and strummed a few bars.

I played one show. But very few people showed. Just family, and die-hards. Thank the world for them.

And something happened in the haze that really surprised me.

Calvin started calling me "dad".

Not "Daddy"

Just "Dad"

It's small and innocuous, but it hit me in this weird way as if I had just walked out of the theatre bathroom found my seat and discovered that Mercutio was dead.

"What the hell?" I would whisper.

"Shhh" my date might say.

"But he was so full of life!" I would whisper, cupping my hand over her ear.

"That was two acts ago! Now shhh!" she would reply.

"Daddy" is cute. "Daddy" is comforting. "Daddy" is a term of endearment. Coupled with big blue Bambi eyes, "Daddy" says I love you, I need you, can I have a hot chocolate, or eat some ice cream even though I never really finished my dinner. "Daddy" is a full body hug. It's a two syllable snuggle.

 "Dad" is something you call, 

well, 

your dad. 

Its the word you use when you need a ride to the mall, or an extra twenty bucks for "whatever".

Even the vocal placement of the word dad is different. Try saying both words and you'll notice that "Daddy" lilts between your soft palate and the tip of your tongue as it clicks behind your teeth and across you lips. The long "e" 

The word "Dad" explodes off your teeth as the short "a" shoots right out your nose with all the soft subtle nuance of an air raid siren.

I don't even call my own dad "dad". I discovered in high school that I like the sound of the word "Pop" much better. Its cooler. It's retro. It's the least formal and totally male.

Thinking back, I may have started calling my father "Pop" after reading and watching "The Outsiders" It just feels like a greaser word.

It also reminds me that my life is never more than three degrees of separation from the great Patrick Swayze. God bless him.

I bet his kids called him "Pop"

But "Dad" is just too utilitarian for my taste.

God forbid, however, he ever start calling me "Father"

That'll be the day I give up on my vicarious rock star dreams and buy him a breifcase. He'll probably need glasses, and braces, and a 401k.

Anyway,

Maybe the iPhone is to blame for my having lost two whole months.

Maybe it is the heat.

Maybe I just ran out of steam.

Such is the examined life when no one is looking.

Calvin is four now.

I'm dad.

Except when Calvin really wants my attention.

Then he calls me Josh.

Hello Boy, Hello Deadline

I don't know how I feel about deadlines.

When it comes to my job, a job I won't discuss in this forum, I'm rather irritated by them. They seem to strike in the very moment when I can give them my least attention. Their very nature elicits mediocre work. I never accomplished anything good for a deadline, just half-assed. Gimme a little space and let me set my own priorities, and I could take over the world. Ask me to write a sales plan by next friday, and you're gonna get a single page report that has the word "very" scattered about 87 and 1/2 times. I can't argue the necessity, just it's disfunction.

Now when it comes to music, total 180.

And it's like that for all songwriters.

Imposed pressure seems to fire up the creative juices like no other.

Actually .  . .

. . .  what happens is the inner critic, sensing a songwriter's angst and vulnerability will start in on them like an alpha dog housewife. 

The songwriter, dressed in a tank-top, jeans and work boots (metaphorically), appreciably backed into a corner, will stand up forcefully and say something along the lines of:

"If you don't shut the fuck up and let me watch the goddam game I'm gonna .  . . "

At this point the inner critic retreats to the kitchen and proceeds to cry silently while scrubbing the same spot on the counter over and over again.

Eventually the inner critic will call her mom.

I use this disturbing display of domestic dysfunction to relate several things:

1. Although the inner critic has many useful functions, such as not allowing the songwriter to make fools of themselves, or to just keep them from stretching their sanity past the breaking point, the inner critic should be nowhere near the creative process, and should just keep quiet until the songwriter is good and ready to take out the trash (again metaphorically)

2. Songwriters are assholes. All writers are assholes. 

My wife and I only fight because I'm writing or I've got a gig coming up. Of course, we don't fight about those things specifically, we fight about everything else. Why? Because when I'm engaged in either of those two things, I'm an asshole.

If you're a writer, then yes, you're an asshole too. If you're not an asshole, then you will never write anything worth paying attention to. Get a job with Human Resources, you will then learn to become an asshole, and by virtue of the transitive property, become a writer.

But back to my first point,

If you're a writer, deadlines rule.

They're like the extra line of cocaine during finals week at Trinity College.

My wife thinks it's stupid to have a self imposed deadline for this album. Better to work when you can work, and let it go when you can't.

But nature has a much better idea.

Calvin can now pee standing up.

I don't know the exact moment it happened, or really what the hurry was. I never taught him how to do it. I never employed various methods of energetic excitement, or systematic shame.

My mom bought Cheerios once in order to see if she could teach him how to do it with perfect aim, and she learned a true lesson in Calvin.

He'll get there, but on his own terms, godddammit.

So there it is. Calvin can now pee standing up.

It may not seem like a lot. What boy doesn't pee standing up?

I can in fact testify that only two thirds of the men in my household pee standing up.

However, peeing with your feet firmly planted on the ground is one of the few rites of passage left to a man in an ever progressing world.

(Side note: I don't begrudge the intermingling of gender identities, girls should play with guns and learn how to spit, I merely make the point that peeing standing up, will always and forever, be a male dominated activity)

So it is with great concern, enthusiasm, and trepidation to discover that Castle Park indeed has indeed been given a deadline.

One day, not far in the future, Calvin won't want to go to the park.

He will have physically outgrown the swings and be emotionally unmoved by wet sand.

It won't be a sad day. I'm not going to mourn. My life will be too full with report cards and emergency rooms. Piano lessons, woodworking, car repair, culinary arts, these are the things that will graciously take the place of our Monday outings to the park. And for that I can only dream.

But one day. No park.

No park, no album.

So time is my deadline.

For this project at least.

Maybe then I'll practice how to be less of an asshole.

But not likely.

Cracked Rearview

Why yes, that is the title of a "Hootie and the Blowfish" album.

So then, why in god's name, you ask, are you starting off from there?

Wow, good question, I say with an understanding bob of my head.

I'm also looking blankly at the joint between the wall and the ceiling as if I didn't really have a good answer.

First: I started transferring songs to my iPhone, and Hootie didn't make the cut.

I simply couldn't think of a single situation where they would come in handy.

Pat Benatar on the other hand, got the full down load treatment.

As did the Beatles.

And Bad Religion.

and most of a Neil Diamond Greatest Hits album.

Which didn't have "Coming to America"

For some reason.

But Hootie didn't make the cut. It was, after all, my wife's album.

I swear.

Second: Hold My Hand came on the radio today as I was driving home from work. Which lead me think about the Beatle's "I Wanna Hold your Hand"

Which was one of their first hit singles.

And since holding hands back in the early sixties was a dangerous sexual activity, akin to auto-erotic asphyxiation or 40yr old men with myspace pages, I guess I'm willing to give them a bigger benefit of the doubt than poor old Hootie.

Dad and I had a discussion recently talking about the shear "Moon-June" tripe in some early artistic endeavors. The Beatles, Billy Joel, I am sure lots of others, but what the discussion reminded me of was having Dad listen to one of my early songs in which I had rhymed "Shelf" with "Self"

I'll never forget the look of disappointment in his eyes.

I should have told him that the lyric "putting my heart on a shelf" was literal, and that my girlfriend was cutting me with razor blades to see if I could feel.

But those aren't things you're supposed to tell your father.

Especially if they're not true.

Third: My Ovation twelve string is hanging above my computer. There is a monster crack all the way down the body of the guitar.

this leads me to two thoughts,

A: I've just borrowed my dad's 12 string because his has a better sound, a better feel and it's easier to play live. I now however have two twelve strings at my disposal. And that's too many.

I can't sell the ovation.

It's against the Musician's Code to sell an instrument. Too much love, too much memory in every chord, too many stories to hand off to a stranger.

There is a "Buyers Remorse" clause in that particular rule but it involves never having built a lasting relationship with the instrument, and possibly several angry wives.

I could give the guitar away. This is powerfully positive artistic Karma. To give a much loved instrument to a younger generation will settle your account in Saint Peter's book.

But giving away a guitar requires the kind of research and interviewing that is mostly reserved for adopting children and picking out a beer.

So why not just keep it? The other one is on loan anyway, and what if you're invited to a twelve string jam session and your best friend doesn't have one and so he has to sit alone on a Saturday night cutting himself.

How would that make you feel?

No, I won't be finding an axillary home for my twangy beast. My wife is just gonna have to wait until the 16yr old leaves for his first day of college and his step father turns his room into a studio.

Which leads me to thought number B:

That crack, staring down on me, has a good story, and leads to a poignant ending.

Once upon a time . . .

Two lifelong friends, roommates by then, were stringing their guitars, dreaming of super stardom, smoking whatever was left in the bowl.

The shorter one had his beat up old twelve string on his lap. The taller one . . .

some thing else . . .

I can't remember.

Without a tuner available, the shorter one strung the guitar to what he thought was an approximation of E major.

He placed his left hand on the neck, fingers splayed out to his favorite open G, and strummed.

And then "Wham!"

The bridge holding the strings blew apart like the emotional stability of an animal rights activist at a welcome home party for Michael Vick.

Wood, plastic, and little metal bits flew everywhere.

The short one and the tall one sat stunned. But there was nothing they could do. Except possibly search the kitchen in vain for some munchies.

So they fed the fish, and turned on the TV.

The guitar was repaired a few weeks later by a local luthier which cost twice what the guitar originally cost, but it was more than worth it.

The short one has since learned that when stringing an Ovation its very important to align the strings balls horizontally so as not to crack the weak edge of the seat. He also learned that it's important to have a least one instrument in tune at any given time for reference, and that he probably wasn't meant for rock stardom at seventeen.

Since then, he has learned not to rhyme "self" with "shelf", how to change keys in a song for dynamic and emotional effect, and how the girl who cuts you, while fun, probably isn't a keeper.

That crack lets me see the error of my ways, reminds me fondly of old friends, and of the different lives I've lead.

Yup,

She's a keeper.

Of Being at Peace

Today I had to take a toy away from my sixteen year old step son because the three year old was screaming that it was his turn to play with the toy.

The toy was my new iPhone.

And i got into a verbal argument with the sixteen year old on how we are supposed to share things.

I can't believe I had this argument.

They were both yelling at each other and so I took the phone away from the big one and handed it to the little one.

Was I not being fair with the usage of my new toy? Was I taking the side of my biological son over the side of the son I have raised for the last decade? Have I failed on both sides of the fatherhood aisle? Was I spoiling the little one while treating the bigger one with disdain?

I'm sure I will never know until I meet another parent out there who has had the fortune of raising two sons thirteen years apart in age and comparing notes.

Another of my dad's aphorisms, and I quote:

"Parents don't want justice . . . they want quiet."

I believe this more than anything I have ever believed in my whole life. Especially being a man who values quiet and logic above all things.

I don't care who's right.

The little one is quiet when he's playing with the phone.

that's all that matters.

And how does this relate to music? You ask.

Well, shortly after I ended the argument I saw that my old phone had a few text messages.

I opened it up and discovered, to my horror, that my booking agent has gotten me some new gigs for the upcoming months.

Now don't misunderstand. My booking agent, manager, brilliant friend, biggest fan, will do everything in her considerable power to see to it that I go far. She is an unyielding force, and there is no safer human being that could be entrusted with my faith.

Knowing this, I immediately replied "Yes" to both new gigs. Because it's awesome. And I need to break out of my comfort zones.

But even she might be surprised to know that I am suffering from both a serious amount of stage fright, and an incredible inferiority complex.

Frankly I'm scared to put myself to the test.

Even though it is everything I have secretly dreamed of.

Even though I have been practicing diligently for the last six months.

Even though I now have several successful gigs under my belt.

I'm terrified I'm gonna fail.

I'm not afraid of looking the fool. Or losing any street cred (cause I never really had any). No what I am afraid of is the moment when I have to recognize that I am too old, too fat, too married, too mediocre, too impossibly established as a suburbanite to ever consider dreams of rock and roll independence.

That's the day that I have to realize that the life I have lead has finally suffered its first major sacrifice.

That I became a man instead of a star.

But as I write this, I'm listening into the living room as the little one is playing his driving game on the iPhone, and the big one is reading the seventh "Harry Potter" along with the book on tape. They are sitting on the couch in peace.

My wife is watering the lawn and will soon be doing the dishes. Not because she's the wife of the house and these are her duties, but because she's the wife of the house, and those are the things she's taken responsibility for.

There is peace in my house.

And peace with myself.

Regardless of who I am.

Regardless of who I may become.

of Ball Point Pens

Sometimes . . . the universe is out to get you.

Now I'm not one who is easily dissuaded from an idea. I take my dreams seriously. I work hard, and push myself unreasonably toward my goals.

I was told once by an algebra teacher that there was no way I was ever going to pass his class. I was told by an acting coach (and dear friend) that I better learn how to be a character actor because I couldn't be a leading man with premature baldness. I was told by a Grammy award winning producer that my songs had too many words in them.

They were probably right.

Except the algebra teacher. (I aced his freaking class . . . and still had time to smoke a lot of pot.)

My first album, as I have alluded to, was an absolute disaster.

Everything that could go wrong, did. Every song has a story in it's recording that could take up far more time than I have to write about tonight, but the moral of the story is that a six month project took me five years.

But I did it.

And I know it wasn't very good.

And I know very few people liked it.

And I know its neither the pop sensation or indie rock underground cool that I so desperately wanted it to be.

But I did it.

It took everything that I had.

And I did it.

And now, embarking on a far more ambitious project, I am adult enough to leap over my previous hurdles and hope for the best.

But today caught me by surprise.

So far I have endured bad reviews.

Snarky comments and pure dissbeleif on the concept.

And an impinged nerve.

I still don't think "impinged" is even a real word.

I took my little snot monkey to the park. In my bag was a notepad, a camera, and a ballpoint pen.

I decided it was time to write again.

For those of you who don't write, the only method for pushing oneself past the block stage is to sit down and decide to write what ever comes. A free flow of ideas that opens the portal to the otherwise unreachable universe of inspiration. It's not tough, but we forget how to do it all the time when life intrudes and depression sits shotgun. We might catch one good line and then stare at it for hours hoping that it will continue on its own.

It doesn't.

So we push on. And then we forget to push on. And then we read the entire "Harry Potter" series from start to finish because we don't remember how to begin.

I wasn't going to let one bad line stop me from vomiting up all the ideas that have been meandering around in my head since I stopped writing.

I started to write.

Calvin was on the swings.

I wrote some more.

Calvin insisted on going to the other swings.

I wrote some more.

Calvin wanted a big push.

I pushed, and then wrote some more.

Calvin wanted me to help him find his flipflops because he had lost them down the slide.

I ran up the slide, threw his shoes down to him and raced back to my notepad.

I was feeling the pull.

Inspiration had opened up to me as I knew it would.

I had gotten off my ass and started being a man again.

And then my pen died.

Right in the middle of a sentence.

My pen died.

There weren't anymore pens in my bag. And I had my wife's car. And she doesn't keep 50 pens hidden in the glove compartment, seat pockets, or door spaces . . .

cause why would she?

I was running an RPM of 7500 and my pen died.

That's just not freaking fair

Not freaking fair.

Inexcusably unfair.

You know . . .

I haven't read "Lord of the Rings" in quite some time.

Of First Kisses

Memory is hazy.

But the details of a first kiss are crystal.

I've got five things on my mind tonight, all of them rolling around in a frightening symbiosis.

The first of which is cosmology. I'm reading Brian Greene's "The Fabric of the Cosmos" which is more or less a light introduction to quantum mechanics and the state of the universe as we know it. I'm at the part where a subatomic particle doesn't function like a bullet, it acts like a wave. It doesn't really exist, it only has a probability. Like, if no one is looking at the moon, its not really there. But when measured, the probability wave collapses, and only the single aspect of the measurement can ever be known. You can know its location but never it's speed. You can determine it's rate of spin, but only along one axis. Don't even bother to ask me what I mean.

I've decided I don't really like quantum physics.

Especially not at night.

Especially not after two glasses of wine.

The second thing I'm thinking about is Thursday night's show.

My friends where there. My family was there. Everyone had a good time. I played too fast. I forgot lyrics. My voice hit many bad notes. But my arm was okay. And I didn't die the next day as I went to work. And even though I know that there is something inside of me that makes possible a universe in which I am a talented musician and songwriter and performer, I can't shake this sensation that I have failed in a fundamental way.

What might I have been like had I not chosen a life over a dream?

Miserable, probably. But just like those stupid protons, my probability wave has collapsed. And we'll never know.

Third, I'm thinking of my father.

His mom, my grandmother, just died.

And I won't bother to eulogize her because there are far better writers in the family for that sort of thing.

But I will say this;

I've never seen my father sad before.

Angry, yes. Frustrated, yes. Melancholic about what night have been, sure.

But never sad.

Never mournful.

And I am sure that he has had his fair share of tragedy. The death of friends. The death of dreams.

But my dad is a half full glass kind of guy.

He had to be. He's been mending us broken winged blackbirds his entire life.

He once told me that he had never thought of suicide, which was a shock to me since I have contemplated it from the day I was ten, and every day afterwards, till I held my newborn son in my arms.

The luxury of parenthood.

But dad is sad. And it's what he needs to be. And there's nothing I can do.

That probability wave has collapsed and as much regret as there might be in the universe, there's no calculation of sadness for a man who misses his mom.

Fourth, and this is by no means in order of importance, Calvin asked me how old I was.

"thirty two" I said.

"When will you be three, like me" he said.

"Daddy's never gonna be three again." I said.

"But . . . I'm gonna be 'one' someday." he replied.

"Sorry sweety. You can only go up." I said.

"But I want to be 'one'" he yelled.

"Nope. You can only be four. and then five. and then six. But you can never be 'one'" I told him.

"Why not?" he asked.

"Cause you can only go up." I replied.

"Oh . . . " he said.

And in that moment, I gave a three year old his first introduction to mortality. His first introduction to the collapse of his probability wave.

Fifth.

Shanna Guzman.

My first kiss.

Silverwood Middle School.

Ten feet from my locker. Fifteen from my English class.

I had a crush on her for longer than I can remember. One day we started to talk. One day we started to have long phone conversations. One day I rode my bike miles to her house.

She was into the B-52's and wore cool clothes and had her bangs aqua-netted into the stratosphere.

We started going steady on a Monday.

In the last moments before recess was over on that Monday, with her friends several feet away giggling, we decided to kiss.

The reason I say "decided" is because I was unbelievably shy and she had to talk me through the whole thing.

"Do you think we should kiss?" she said.

"That would be nice." I mumbled

"I think we should kiss" she asserted.

"Uhh, okay"

and then I leaned down toward her, calling upon every ounce of courage the universe could bestow upon me.

And touched her pink glossed lips with my trembling chapped mouth.

And then I scurried away to class.

The next day, standing by my locker, with the same giggling friends just feet away, she told me that she didn't want to be my girl friend.

"Okay" I said. But I kept the wallet sized photo of her on my wall for months.

Shanna Guzman friended me on facebook today.

I don't know what I might have been to her. Or why she would even remember who I was. But she was my first kiss and I'm overwhelmed with curiosity.

What might have happened if I wasn't such a loser? We went to different high schools. We never talked but in passing. Her life is her own. My life is my own.

Alas . . .

That probability wave too . . .

. . . has collapsed.

There's too much going on in this life to quantify meaning.

Brian Greene, I hope you love what the universe means to you. but write a cheerier book next time.

Friends and Family, I hope you had a good time at my show. You keep me believing that I can live a life and dream my dreams.

Dad, mourn. be depressed. be angry and sad. hate the universe. nobody needs you right now. but don't be afraid to tell me you need some love.

Calvin, sucks dude. but grandpa will probably get you that motorcycle for your fourth birthday. Which is nice.

Shanna, love and kisses.

Of Resurections

Forgive me dad, for I have probably sinned.

It has been several weeks since my last post.

I felt terrible. It took me three months to drag my lazy ass out of the wussy column and back into the moderately nonathletic. Three weeks to get feeling back into my fingers. One month of incredibly uncomfortable physical therapy. Four days of being the perfect husband in order to get my wife to love me again. Five days after that being a real shit because, lets face it, the girls don't respect the perfect husband, they want nasty.

I really hate physical therapy.

Rather fond of nasty.

Better now.

A confession is always better when said publicly. Get the humiliation out of the way. Let Nelson emit his "Ha-Ha" and have done with it.

So I'm back.

One week till the next show. I'm practicing for 45 minutes a day. Calvin practices with me. he doesn't yell so much any more when I play a song he doesn't like. He just wails away with dear old dad until his fingers hurt.

Sissy.

He will however stop me in the middle of a very emotional chorus because he dropped is pick in the sound hole and won't be consoled until I shake the hell out of the ukulele and get the pick out.

He's very particular about his picks.

He also throws balls out temper tantrums whenever he can't get his capo on.

"Man-up, dude!" I yell at him.

"Why?" he asks.

"Why why why why whywhywhwwww"

"Shhhhh" I say. And leave it at that.

But I'm back in shape. Ready to go. Feeling good. Working hard.

Come see the show.

Joshua Macrae Live
Thursday, July 9th 8:30pm

Streets of London
2200 Lake Washinton Blvd.
West Sacramento

http://www.streetsoflondon.net/

Have a good summer.

Of Songwriting

Oscar Hammerstein not so famously quipped that there is no such thing as inspiration. Only hard work.

He was kind of an ass.

I prefer Leonard Cohen's answer when asked if he sweated over the good lines.

"Only before and after. The good ones just appear." he said

Then there's my dad's quip: "I hate writing, but I love having written."

I'm not sure if he stole that one, but if he did, I'm better off not knowing.

There's the classic story of Archimedes being forced to find a method of distinguishing real gold from the fake stuff. He went mad trying to come up with something, until his wife told him to go take a bath.

As legend has it, he noticed that his body displaced a certain amount of water in the warm tub. Then the idea hit him!

There is a mathematical ratio between weight and volume.

Only materials made up of the same stuff will have the same ratio.

Therefore anything that doesn't have the same ratio as real gold must be the fake stuff.

(Warning: This next sentence may contain Adult Nudity.)

"Eureka" he screamed. And then ran naked through the streets.

That's right . . . naked.

Now Aronofsky fans will remember this little allegory, because when the story was told, the main character says "Yeah, Yeah, I got it. Taking a break from a problem will lead to the answer"

Which is followed by his mentor who says "NO! The story tells you that you need a woman to give you perspective."

Wierd movie, great scene.

So I told you these two stories in order to tell you this one.

Since I've been puttering about the house, I've been having Calvin play the piano. He will sit next to me and ask me to play numbers.

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-1

or as you might now it,

Do-Re-Me-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do

As you can imagine, this got real irritating, real quick.

Then I started mixing it up.

1-2-3-2-1

and then

1-3-5

and then

1-3-4-5 (Oh, when the saints)

and then just for giggles,

1-1-5-5-6-6-5--4-4-3-3-2-2-1--

Or Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are

or A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-Lmno-P

Again, this got really irritatinger, really quicker.

But he can play it. And loves to play it. Over, and Over.

And over. I was almost to the point where I kind of wanted him to knock it off. To let me pace about the house with some semblance of silence. Or at least without twinkle haunting me.

Then one day, as I was laying on the bed, half heartedly moping. My wife came in from the bathroom.

"How does my hair look?" She asked.

As she said this I could hear Calvin at the piano playing two notes together. First 1 & 3. Then 1&5. Then variations where he kept the beat going on 1 and would play other notes on alternate beats. 1&3&1&4&1&5.

"Honey, listen, he's experimenting with basic harmony!"

"Uh-huh, how does my hair look?"

I barked at my wife. "Did you hear what I said? I didn't teach him how to do that! He's three an a half! That's when most kids are still banging on the keys like it was an ivory "whack a mole" toy and he's trying to work out which notes sound best together."

My overzealous imagination, clearly without moment's notice, shot me down the vicarious path of baby genius. I might fail to write another note, but this is a momentous occasion. All my puttering, all my depressed pacing, all my tossing and turning hasn't resulted in a damn thing but this! My son, oh yes, MY SON is going to have the skill of Mozart, with the temperance of Bach, the rock star prowess of Metalica with the down home earthiness of John Denver.

He could never get in an airplane.

But just as Icarus needed the sun to burn him out of the heavens, sometimes husbands need their wives to get them back to work.

"Did you hear me?" I asked

"I heard you" She said. And then she spoke slower and more deliberate.

"How . . . does . . . my . . . hair . . . look?"

We Can Be Invincible

In the car I have the radio cranked.

So what if its NPR?

But the news started to get a little redundant, even for NPR, so I turned the radio over to a music station.

I do this rarely because A) If I listen to music too much during the writing process, I tend to extract melody lines that aren't really mine, B) I hate commercials and C) Talk radio is slowly giving the sixteen year old an ulcer.

That just makes me laugh.

But low and behold the moment I switch to my favorite rock station, there she is.

Pat Benatar.

I'm sorry . . .

THE Pat Benatar.

That's right.

And she's runnin with the shadow of the night.

Oh, yeah.

My volume knob goes up to 36 before the speakers begin to bleed.

Take that! Nigel Tufnel.

However, the chorus begins to repeat itself over and over.

Not in the usual pop song way, we're talking 8 or nine times. And then, instead of the Fender Strat power chord and Fatty compressed drums kicking in, there's this Casio style beat box followed by sample bars from other songs.

A remix?

Who the hell remixes Pat Benatar?

Doesn't this person understand that there's no conceivable way to improve upon the pop rock goddess perfection that is Pat Benatar?

Now my wife would argue that I'm a total ass and that clearly Joan Jett deserves the rock goddess mantel.

But Joan Jett doesn't have the boobs to shimmy in a pink prom dress.

My best friend Jeremy would vote for Jane Weidlin. Cute, but unfortunately lost in Belinda's ever growing shadow.

Dad might argue for Janis. (he's old, p.s. Happy birthday Dad)

Calvin would say Cat Stevens. (still having trouble with his pronouns.)

The sixteen year old would most audaciously vote for Rhianna. But he prefers his singers to be off key. However, my sixteen year old self would have probably put in a good word for Tiffany.

I take no responsibility for anything I did before I was thirty.

So anyway, I was so muddled by this bad remix of Pat that I told a co-worker I was going to have to dig through my old CD's so I could hear the right version and get this awful remix out of my head.

Then I told the truth and said I was going to have to find it on my ipod.

He told me it was probably going to be in the "Most Played" file.

yes I said, it probably will be.

So I'm driving home.

"Shadow of the Night" cranked to 35. And when it stopped, I put it on again.

And then I let the rest of Pat's greatest hits continue on.

And then I came to a red light.

Windows rolled down.

"We Belong" cranked to 35.

I made the mistake of looking to my left.

A grizzled former contractor in a beat up old truck staring at me like I was one of those hippies.

Then he nodded his head to the beat and turned back to look at the light.

Because really . . .

If you haven't rock out to Pat Benatar, with the windows rolled down,

You're either a communist,

or my mother.

the Momentum Method

So it's no use denying it now.

I'm in a total slump.

this "impinged" nerve in my back has totally proved that Newtonian physics are fully applicable in the magical world of creative endeavors. Inspiration in motion will stay in motion until acted upon by a greater or equal force.

I was on a six month high. Gettin it done, as it were. But when I came to an abrupt physical halt, everything, including my desire to break every songwriting law I know, shut done like the landing lights when Johnny pulled the plug.

The tower? The tower? Rapunzel, Rapunzel.

But, as I stated much earlier on in this narrative, this ain't about writer's block. It's about method.

So yeah, I haven't been writing. I haven't been performing. I haven't been out partying or curling up in a ball and crying myself to sleep.

I have been banging away at every little idea that cropped into my head. For better or worse, I've been working without producing anything.

So yeah, I'm in a slump.

But there's a little secret I know.

Passed down from oral histories, Rolling Stone interviews, and parental guidance.

First, clean your room. Eat some fruit. Go for a run. Pick up another instrument. Pick up another art form. Be nice to your wife. Cook an amazing meal. Let it go. Feel human again.

I think what I'm doing is a good idea. I think it will produce some of my best work yet and here's how I know.

Years ago, I was in a little musical.

It was my first lead role.

I thought my excrement existed without odor.

During a matinee, one of my new acting coaches was in the audience. I wanted to impress the hell out of him. Make him think I was the coolest kid in school. He wore jeans and cowboy boots to class, smoked in the theatre, and was the kind of professional actor I knew I would be some day.

But I had a horrible show. I didn't forget my lines, or miss any entrances, I just didn't feel like I was at the peak of performance.

After the show, he came up and we began talking. He asked me how the show went and I stupidly told him that I felt lousy about it.

Then he asked me how I dealt with it.

I, of course thinking how volcanic my excrement was, when into a long diatribe highlighting my professional ability to pull it all together in the end.

He shrugged and went away, fully aware that my monologue was pucky at best . . .

. . . miserably whiny self conscience twaddle at worst.

Hindsight really sucks sometimes.

He couldn't have cared less about the show, or me for that matter.

What he wanted, as any good teacher might, is to have the opportunity to instill a little bit of wisdom, and he knew I was way too full of myself to listen.

Had I not been such a schmuck, I might have learned in just a few conversations what it took me another decade to learn.

So yeah, I've once again found myself without a magical key to creation. But there is a secret of gaining momentum. Of pushing Newton's body at rest into motion.

Give yourself the peace of mind that comes from organizing your physical space. Fuel your body with good stuff. Get your body strong. Show a little fragility. And listen.

Of Pasta Salad and Prop 8

Tonight we dined.

Barbecued chicken breasts and day old pasta salad.

Day old pasta salad doesn't sound like a culinary delight, but oh how wrong you are.

Give the pasta salad a day to absorb all the flavors from the dressing. The fresh garlic, the extra virgin olive oil, the balsamic vinegar, and the fresh thyme. A day to soak up all the fantastic tastes (including the bacon slices) and the day old pasta far exceeds it's day-of younger brother. A glass of wine and a little cracked pepper, and you, my friend . . . are in heaven.

It would be nice to say that its an age old recipe, brought to the new world from my scottish-italian forefathers.

(Note: there's really no italian in my ancestry, but my son is half italian and that makes me sorta honorary)

But this pasta salad is really a concoction of ingredients invented by my father and I.

To start . . . we were kind of poor.

Not "mismatched shoes from the goodwill" kind of poor, but we did have a van that used a coffee can as an oil filter.

Pasta salad was a dish that my dad and I could make on a friday morning and still be nibbling on by sunday afternoon. We used to eat barrels of the stuff and the recipe always changed depending upon what we had in the fridge. Sometimes it had broccoli, sometimes chunks of cheese (Monterrey jack was my favorite, but extra sharp cheddar was my dad's). Sometimes celery, but always carrots.

Most of the time there were bacon bits, and Dad always splurged on the marinated artichoke hearts and Bernstein's dressings.

Gotta love him.

(Thirteen year old debutantes riding on their new ponies couldn't have been more spoiled)

Pasta salad was my first introduction to cooking. How to boil pasta and check for doneness. How to wield a chef's knife and not cut my fingers off. How to make bad puns by confusing colander with calender.

Good times.

It also taught me, that sometimes, day two is the best. You gotta let things stew awhile before they reach perfection.

Proposition 8, the amendment to ban same sex marriage in the Californian constitution, was upheld this week.

I'm angry. and frustrated. and disappointed in my fellow human beings.

I needed comfort food and day old pasta salad fit the bill.

Now, I'm no activist.

I don't even like ordering specially prepared burgers in the drive-thru.

"Just pick the pickles off!" I say to the sixteen year old.

But a blog is a soapbox, even when the town square is empty. And I have personal vendetta against homophobia. A fire which unfortunately will never be extinguished.

When I was eighteen I worked in a bookstore. One day, a well dressed man in his late forties berated me for ten minutes about the homosexual content that was available in our human sexuality section. He didn't use foul language or raise his voice, he just spent ten minutes of my life to display his disgust with me and my bookstore, regardless of the fact that I had no control whatsoever of the titles we sold, and how ashamed of myself I should be.

Now, I've dealt with really god awful people in the retail world and I am fully aware that weak people seek out confrontations with sales people because they know that there are no repercussions from offending a bookstore clerk, but what really upset me isn't that I was powerless to argue with him, or even that I lacked the courage of such confrontation.

It was that fact that he had no way of knowing that I wasn't gay.

The miserable, stupid, condescending ass might not only been offending my pride but my whole existence. He could've incited violence. His monologue could have been the catalyst for an unfortunate confused teenager to commit suicide. His tirade had no purpose other than to hurt and to emasculate me as I stood there too unsure of myself to speak up.

So I've been thinking about this immensely since "Yes on 8" posters were littered across half the lawns in my neighborhood.

Why? Really . . . why?

In fact, what kind of society am I raising my son in where this kind of inane mental retardation is considered the norm?

And it occurs to me that the weak minded, the uneducated, the brainwashed by propaganda insufferable bigots of this world need a rallying point for their fear. It's a final stab at relevancy. It's Laertes' final thrust of the poisoned sword before they become marginalized by a progressive society that doesn't require their ilk any longer.

You have the activists (again, not me) to thank for the turning of the tide. It's their continued fight that will keep that poisoned sword from slicing into the delicate skin of our children.

As for me, I get to teach my son how to check for doneness, how to wield a chef's knife without cutting off his fingers, how to love, how to be far more sure of himself at three than I was at eighteen, and, hopefully . . .

that day two will be even better.

Duets and B-flats

"Why are you Broken?" is a duet.

It just is.

I can't tell you why or how I know it. I haven't got much beyond the first few lines, which I won't bother to share yet because they are bound to change.

I don't have a true melody line, a bridge, or a chorus.

Just a title and an idea.

The title came from Calvin. The idea came from a friend.

A good friend. A loving friend. A lifelong companion who called me up way too late at night.

She asked me what I thought of starting a band.

Remember now, it was late . . .

I told her that it was a terrible idea.

She plead her case anyway.

Knowing that it was too late for me to even think about thinking about it. I told her to call me back the next afternoon and pitch me her idea.

Then I went back to sleep.

Sure, it was only 10:20pm, but I'm freaking old.

The next day I mulled the late night idea around in my head and decided that I was still right.

It was a terrible idea.

See "This is Spinal Tap" for a full disertation.

But I loved the idea. I miss playing with other musicians. I dream about the production possibilities that could come from not filling in all the space myself. I even kind of miss yelling at the drummer to stop playing for jut a moment.

But the real reason I loved the idea is because I want to hear my wife sing again.

It pains me to think of how much of her life has been sucked out of her because she has no place to sing.

In fact, if I were to point to any tension in our relationship, the root cause would be that she has no opportunity to express herself beyond work and motherhood.

So that's it.

"Why are you broken?" isn't just a line fed to me by the three year old. It's not just about the phisical pain I'm am feeling, but the emotional pain between two people who are both broken.

It's a duet.

and I'm gonna make my wife sing the girl part.

also, its a piano duet.

This has a much less esoteric reason.

I pulled my guitar out today for the first time since the show. Calvin saw the case a ran into his room to get his guitar.

On his tippy toes none the less.

"Play with a pick daddy, play 'booty fool girl' daddy."

I began playing "Beautiful Girl"

A little uncomfortable at first.

A little achy,

oh yes

even a little breaky.

Until I hit the b-flat.

(Its a bar chord, nothing as tricky to learn as F-major, but you need a little stretch)

and then something popped.

Like "Holy Sh*t, don't let the boy see me cry" kind of pop.

"It's break time sweety" I said.

"Can I play Mario Kart now?" he asked.

"Do you mind if I play the piano?" I asked

"No, just don't be too loud."

Sorry . . . no death for you

Well, I don't have gout. I don't have tendonitis nor the aforementioned tendinitus (again a fine distinction) I don't have cardivascular disease. My blood pressure was 144 over 75. High, but normal. I'm not suffering froms SARS or swine flu.

No, unfortunately, I have a perfectly normal impinged nerve.

Impinged?

That's not even a word.

I checked.

And the treatment is perfectly normal as well.

Rest.

Do you want muscle relaxers?

Yes Doc, yes I do.

I found it funny how tired and unresponsive to humor my general practitioner would be at 2:30 in the afternoon.

She asked me what kind of job I did.

I told her that I worked in a coffee shop.

She didn't seem all that impressed. Then she asked if it required a lot of repetitive motion. I told her yes. She nodded her head in a very knowing way.

She asked me if I wanted to take a stretching class.

"Like naked yoga?" I asked.

she didn't respond for a moment and then said she might be wrong about her diagnosis and asked me to go get x-rayed. Then she prescribed muscle relaxers and gave me some very half hearted directions to radiology.

I thanked her for her time.

Indifferent medicine is embarrasing.

Turn to your right. Breathe in. Take off your shirt.

These are the directions given by doctors and aged prostitutes.

I just hoped to feel better.

but I ponied up my co-pay and went home.

And then took my muscle relaxers.

My dad asked me the next day if they worked at all.

I said no.

He said "take two"

can't. . . not . . . do stuff (part deaux)

Ow.

No really.

Ow.

Calvin gave me the perfect line for the next song.

"Why are you broken?"

It'll be like the anti-power ballad. I envision incredibly peppy satirical lyrics wrapped around minor key melodies.

It takes the perfect song cliche "I'm broken, you're broken, we're all broken" and kind of tosses it in the air to watch it splatter to the ground.

I live for turning phrases.

Live for for it.

So what to I do now?

ow . . . ow . . .

I might have tendonitis. or tendinitus (a fine distinction). I could have bursitis, or cardiovascular disease. (Just ask WebMD) I could have a dislocated shoulder, or gout.

That's right.

Gout.

The advice nurse at kaiser asked me if I had ever had gout.

Thank god it was over the phone so she couldn't see me finishing my sausage in abject horror.

Then she asked if I had diabetes.

Then she asked me if I was pretty healthy.

Then she asked me if I was pretty and if I liked naughty girls.

I made that last part up.

But I am. And I do.

But the moral of this story is that I can't play. if I can't play, I can't write.

this is because I discover melody by mistake. I play and I play until I reach a particular zen with the universe and then everything spills out of my head like half eaten lipstick from a bag lady's purse.

I even worked myself into a very cozy postion with my back on the floor, my feet on the couch and my ukelele resting on my chest. No luck.

Any pressure on the frets sent shocks down my arm.

Then Calvin jumped on my belly and told me he was hungry.

I tried the piano with just my right hand. I leaned my face down on the bass keys and let my bad arm dangle.

You wouldn't have guessed it, but even dangling hurts.

If I wrote hip-hop, a painful dangle would be the kind of stuff legends are made of.

So I'm frustrated.

Not by writer's block, but my own potential and looming death.

And if not death, then maybe just inactivity.

Which is like death.

But with an ending.

can't . . . not . . . do stuff.

Haven't written a darn word in almost two weeks.

Did I die?

Sort of.

Actually, two days after my show I threw out my arm.

No big bang, no little pop, just woke up and everything hurt.

Can't sleep. Can't move. Can't make non-fat lattes, can't pick up a guitar. Left arm totally en fuego. (that's spanish for %$@$^).

In italian it's "basta!"

In french its "eaux"

Now a normal person might find this predicament rather enjoyable. Lay back on the lazy boy and rewatch six season's of Buffy the Vampire slayer. Have the wife fetch you a corona with lime and a handful of ibuprofen.

(Yes dad, I do know that you can't mix alcohol with Tylenol or your kidneys will shut down and you will die a horrible death. my way's just funnier)

Sit down. Put your feet up. Ain't gonna heal if you don't sit still.

But I can't not do stuff. I need two good arms to do my job. I need to drive places, I need to pick up toys from the floor, I need to reach things in the cabinets that are too high for my wife. I need to play music, I need to write my stupid blog.

But it hurts. Oh my god how it hurts.

I hurt typing "It hurts"

quick story before I go.

So my dad (known to my boss as my personal physical therapist . . . shhh) was working on my shoulder. (he actually is a physical therapist, but it sounds much cooler if I don't mention the bloodline when asking for time off work.)

After about an hour of torturing me (get a terrorist to talk by kneading a bruised tendon), my Calvin came up to the table.

"What are you doing Grampa?" he asks.

"I'm fixing your daddy" says Grandpa.

"Daddy?" he asks.

"Yes . . . ow . . . what is it sweety?" I reply.

"Why are you broken?"

If he keeps feeding me perfect song titles, I might have to get him his own ascap card.

of Cliffhangers, kick-ball teams, and the horrors.

Seems I left the last post with a bit of a cliffhanger.

did I suck? Did I kick ass? Did I spontaneously explode from a deadly mixture of Guinness and adrenaline?

Not so much.

So where the hell have I been?

Well. There's work to do. Flying monkeys to feed. Nieces to see perform. You know, normal stuff.

So allow me to digress, expand, condense and allude.

First, the show went great. I arrived at the pub to see friends who had already arrived.

There was a moment of shear terror when I realized there was no power outlet anywhere near the performance stage. Luckily, thanks to my wife, I am a serious over packer, and the extension cord I grabbed from my electric lawnmower was just long enough to reach up to the ceiling plug usually designed to illuminate the neon beer signs.

Also lucky enough my friend Brian was able to reach the plug while standing on a bar stool. Its nice to have friends. Its even nicer to have tall friends.

There was another moment of panic when as I began to do a sound check, half of the room screamed a powerful scream of angst. I was deafened by the roar of their furry and almost began to tear up.

But a second later I realized that the TV behind me was showing the last few minutes of a ball game that ended badly for the local fans. Whew. Although I did go to the bathroom shortly afterward to make sure I didn't have a little urine stain on my jeans.

Just before I was to begin, my wife was calling furiously because her and Frank had gotten hopelessly lost. Bless em.

Large group of women wearing league t-shirts entered the pub. It was the local kickball team.

Digest that for a moment.

A freaking kickball team!

I hoped they'd stay and get rowdy. But they went outside.

Too bad.

An impromptu kickball game in the middle of my second set would have been the kind of thing only dreamers dream.

I started my first song, no wife in sight. I stopped after the first verse to adjust my PA. Total amateur. But the levels were painful. I went through the first song again. Much better.

I got through the second song, wife walks in. I mention this fact to the crowd. I begin to play "I've just seen a face" by the Beatles. Awesome timing.

I adjust my PA some more. I rearrange the speaker so I can hear myself better. I'm a little bashful. Not nervous, just weirdly shy.

And the whole night went just like that. I was fully warmed by my second set, and then just rocked out.

It was a good two hours. All of my friends stayed. No one had the painful after show look that says "Gee, I don't know what to say" There were a few bar flies that stayed a little longer to listen, but I did get the feeling that the bar tabs that night weren't unusually high. No one got trashed. The bar tender was congenial, but not overly enthusiastic, he may invite me back. I'm not sure.

The point is, I did it. It was good. I'll do it again. Soon.

Then I went home. Went to sleep. Slept hard. Went to work the next day a little tired but flush from a successful show. Went home, went to bed. Got up. Went to work. Went home. Took a nap. Went to see a show. Got home. Finished my book.

I could do this I think, I could be a gigging musician and have a real job, be a real dad and maintain some semblance of cool. In fact the most draining aspect was the fear of anticipation.

One or two more gigs and even that will wind itself down.

I have all my friends to thank for showing up. They were somethin special. Nobody has better fans. I simply could not do this without their support and love.

I want to write more about my niece's show last night (Little Shop of Horrors) where I got to witness something spectacular, but the little guy needs attention.

ooh . . . another cliffhanger.