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10 july 2000
----- Today turned introspective, although I never would have expected it from my awakening at 6am, cellphone insistently ringing from my nighttable, over and over and over, I finally answered. It was someone from our New York office who couldn't get her email. She didn't know what a mail server was. She didn't know what a mail client was. I talked her through it until 7am. I couldn't fall back asleep. I checked my email, this time a message from Fritz, who had invited me to see a band last night, but I got the message too late. I sent him an email of apology last night, and he wrote this morning... Well, you didn't miss much, and we only stayed for this one hour anyway... Talking about music, something funny happened to me this morning: Ever since I woke up (fucking quarter to six in the fucking morning), I have this new song of yours in my head, and it just keeps going: da-da-dada, da-dadadadada, da-da-dada... Can't get it out. Guess that's a compliment, then! Well yeah, that's a fucking incredible compliment. I guess the song is finally coming together. And just last night I was beginning to think I was hallucinating the mass of people singing along with me at the gig. Who knows? I may have a hit on my hands here. Now, if we can ever get around to recording it... And with that thought, I stole downstairs and hooked a walkman up to the cd burner, and burned the one copy of that song I have onto a cd. Back upstairs, I ripped it to MP3. What a weird thing ... I'm listening to it now. A little history ... this "recording" was made in late February, on the night I first presented the song to the band to learn. We went over each part, verse, bridge, chorus, for three hours, we slaved, and I sang all the incomplete lyrics, and finally, I remember clearly, IceDog said "Wamba, run tape on this, we're gonna try and play it all the way through. Throw a mic in the center of the room, record it, and when you're done make six copies. These victims are gonna take it home and learn how to play it." What wound up on tape is, in retrospect, embarassing. My singing voice was nearly gone from three hours of screaming the same lines, over and over again. Musical mistakes abound. But still, even though the song is at least 100 times better now, the lyrics are almost done, even though it's basically ready for "public consumption," I step back and listen to this five-month old recording and can't help but smile, if only because it was the beginning of a really good thing. And Fritz can't get it out of his head. Cool. Cool? I wish I could consider my life as "cool" as my music. But life isn't my music, although maybe it should be for all the pleasure I'm deriving from song. On the other hand, life seems just fine until I start measuring myself against others. At that point it seems like I'm struggling to justify my very existence. A cellphone conversation with my friend in DC, who's getting married next month, who makes more money in a year than I'll see in my life. "xx,000? That's all you're making?" "Well, the new job, if I take it, will raise me $25,000 at least." "Still man, you're still in five figures." "Fuck you, I work two days a week for those five figures. The other three days I lie in the sun in Malibu, do my eight hours work in an hour, and cultivate my non-existent tan." He didn't have a reply to that. But then, I thought about why I'm wasting so much time cultivating my non-existent tan if I could be doing something more productive, like songwriting, or whatever I love... Whatever I love... Why can't that be whoever (or whomever) I love? Sitting at the Little Rock Bar in Tarzana with Fritz tonight, lusting after the bartender. She was my "type," and a myriad of fantasies played through my mind as I ordered drink after drink. In my mind, I wrote our whole lives together, from courting to first kiss to marriage to kids to retirement to growing old and dying together. And I hadn't spoken a word to her. Fritz left to tend to his son. Jen arrived from her office in downtown. "Why does that attract me?" I asked, pointing at the bartender. Jen seemed a bit put off that I had reduced a human being to the word "that," but answered nonetheless. "She's skinny, self-confident, totally your type." Then she thought about it and continued. "You have an incredible sense of aesthetics, an eye for physical beauty..." (I thought ... ok, this is someone who went to architecture school with me, so she'd know) "but, at the same time, you're cursed, because you were also born with a pure heart, and as soon as you start talking to these physically beautiful specimens, you're turned off by their lack of soul, and they become unattractive, right?" I thought back to most of the few ("most of the few?" don't ask) physical beauties I've ever had the courage to talk to, and yes, Jen was right, the attraction soon went away. So I nodded back at her. She continued. "You either keep the fantasy, or kill it with reality. Aesthetics only last so long." So I never "talk" to this woman and stay infatuated with her, or I risk conversation at the potential expense of being totally turned off, or even worse, humiliated as a complete nerd who's totally out of his league. Somehow, I prefer unfulfilled infatuation. I was flustered ... "But I haven't been laid in six months." (I can talk to Jen like this) "At least you've gotten some recently." (I can borderline talk to Jen like this ... in this case, the alcohol was speaking in part, and she knew it) She gave me a look. I apologized. She laughed and responded... "Those were moments of weakness on my part. Weakness that you don't have, otherwise you'd have gotten laid too." So she turned it around to make me feel better. Wow, what a good friend. I'd be lying if I said it made me feel a lot better, because it didn't. The bottom line: she was sexually fulfilled, I wasn't. I retain an undamaged conscience, she doesn't. Fuck that, I'm still horny as hell, and I unabashedly lusted after the bartender. Some deep down demonic part of me just wanted to reach out and wrap myself around her ... "No, don't talk, don't ruin it, I want you to be my ideal of you as opposed to the you I'm afraid to know, the you that is truly you..." Holy shit, what am I saying? I'm talking like my ex-girlfriend. Oops, didn't mean to say that either. Horniness does horrible things to men. At the same time I'm thankful for friends like Jen. Wow, that rhymed. I'm a poet. Now you know it. Jen ... I was never attracted to her in a physical/sexual sense, which probably allowed our friendship to reach the point it has. And yet sometimes, I wish I was attracted to her in that way ... it would make life so much easier ... best friend and lover, never worrying about saying the wrong thing, never putting my foot in my mouth. What the fuck is wrong with me? That in itself is a question for another day.
In the forum: 10 july 1999: : didn't write 10 july 1998: bye bye bluesinrhythm : I've gained fifteen pounds since May. I now weigh more than Stinky.
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