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Steve Murray is a friend of mine. We used to play open mics together at Zack’s in Durban, South Africa. I met Steve through another friend of mine, Esjay who now lives in San Diego and who is the soul’s core of the band Stealing Love Jones. Before I moved to Nashville I got together with Steve to practice one afternoon and on a whim decided to record the proceedings. In the song you’ll hear Steve and I communicating and since this was a practice there’s a couple of rough bits. I always liked Steve’s style of playing and I miss having chats with him about Seinfeld and beers and music.
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There’s a million and three thoughts going through my brain about life, music, God, girls, babies. I need it to slow down so I can pick a few things out and take a bit of time looking over them. I’d like to reach in and find the ‘off’ switch sometimes but I know there’s not one there so all I can hope for is that things will slow down in there a bit.
You keep moving and doing what you have to do. You don’t focus on the stuff that seems impossible to understand. As soon as you focus on that you lose your mind completely because it all seems ridiculously complicated. But if you keep on keeping on; if you just keep doing your daily things your brain keeps working and these thoughts pop into your head in the middle of doing something else:
I spoke to a woman outside RuSan’s the other night. I was on a smoke break and so was she. She was digging through her purse with a cigarette dangling from her mouth and I offered her a light just as she found hers. So we started talking about the weather and which Hooter's was the best and she ended up telling me about a trip she’d taken on a motorcycle. “We kept to the back roads and only stopped to eat where the locals eat. We figured that the place with the most pick-up trucks outside was the local hang out and we usually got the best food and lowest prices at those places.” After a few minutes I realized that this woman was really cool.
I talked to my co-worker and buddy, Ron about it a little later and said to him that I was really glad I’d talked to her because she was with a party of people whom I’d served and my impression of them was terrible. If I hadn’t offered the lighter and hadn’t had the conversation I would have left that night with a totally wrong impression of her by association with her party.
People get crazy when they eat in restaurants. I know this because I work in one. Even though I know this I still fall into the trap of misjudging people. When it comes to food and restaurants all social normality and politeness falls away. People who keep their own kitchens as tidy as a surgery room will leave trash and bits of food and gum and toothpicks strewn about for their waiters to clean up (seriously people...I don't want your toothpicks..throw them away your own self). So you can’t always judge a person by the way they eat in restaurants (maybe first dates should remember that). But I still do judge people and it’s a shame that I do. I might be missing a lot of opportunities to hear great stories about motorcycle trips.
That’s what I mean though about things coming to you in the middle of doing something else. You get these flashes of comprehension all because you bothered to talk to a middle aged woman for two minutes about essentially nothing at all. I don’t think I could have mined that little life lesson from all the millions of thoughts in my head if I’d been sitting and thinking about it. Maybe you have to be doing life to understand life. Maybe you can’t sit and think everything to its logical conclusion. Instead the conclusions jump out at you when you’re out walking your dog, or ringing up a customer at the till (cash register) or plonking a plate of sushi in front of their nose. Maybe….
