Hard to Keep Believing

Some nights it’s really, really depressing to b e where I’m at doing what I’m doing. It’s hard to keep on doing things that seem to lead nowhere. On nights like those I write songs like this and I write essays something like what’s written below. It’s kind of funny if you think about the state of mind I must have been in to write this...

“The music is too loud and the lights are too dim. I’m dealing with another difficult customer. The atmosphere in this place is hard to get around in sometimes. It ‘feels’ if you know what I mean. Atmosphere shouldn’t ‘feel’. You shouldn’t really notice it but in this place on some nights I can’t get away from it.
The computer lights glare into my eyes, contrasting with the dimness of the rest of the room. The carpet, despite being swept and vacuumed every night, is full of embedded soy sauce, wasabi, soy beans and fish. In my mind these pieces of food are intermingling and festering and becoming something like that large amorphous glob of goop from that movie, “The Blob” that eats everything in its path. If they took a sample of the carpet from here and analyzed it, like they do in CSI, they would find large amounts of organic foodstuff residue along with all sorts of air fresheners like Febreeze.
I’m leaning in again trying to hear what ‘sushi eater’ is saying. I apologize, blaming the music for my inability to hear, so as to put ‘sushi eater’ at ease.”


I stopped writing there because I figured it was an exercise that wasn’t positive or helpful to my soul.
This is my life and my dream. I do this for a reason. I do this so I can pursue a career in music. And telling myself that over and over again is what keeps me going. Sometimes it helps to write it out too…which is why I decided to let you read it.

I don't think Darius Rucker would mind me saying that I shook his hand and said, "Hi. Nice to meet you." last night. I also met John Daly and I'm pretty sure my dad will be a little bit jealous about that. I think he might also roll his eyes at the fact that I didn't know who he was until someone told me later. I kept thinking, "Why does this guy look so familiar?".

So in the past 5 days I've met three famous people and went to the Grand Ole Opry for the first time. My friend Drew Davis got me a backstage pass which was pretty cool of him.

I was a pretty big fan of Hootie and the Blowfish back in the day so it was a cool experience to meet Darius.

All of that has nothing to do with the video that I've posted here. The video is a couple of my songs. That couch I'm sitting on was given to me by my aunt TJ. Please feel free to comment on both the video and the couch.

Famous

So I bumped into “famous person” (FP) last night at the restaurant. Actually I didn’t so much bump into FP as serve them sushi and green tea and call them a cab. They asked where the bathroom was and I feel like I did a pretty decent job of directing them.

Here’s the thing about meeting famous people; They are really just the same as you and me but it’s hard not to get excited about it at the time. It really was the highlight of my working night. I like to think I handled myself with a certain amount of grace and poise but I probably didn’t. I gave FP my card and they very graciously acted like that was a cool thing to do.

I’m having visions of FP sitting in a hotel room, bored and clicking on over to my website and listening to my music. It would be pretty cool if FP bought my album from iTunes and listened to it while they were jogging on the treadmill at gym.

The weird thing about meeting famous people is that you feel like you know something about this person even though you really don’t. You’ve seen them on t.v. and heard their songs on the radio and so this person feels somewhat familiar even though they’re a complete stranger. In their minds they must unconsciously have a scale on which they measure their fans. The scale goes from “mouth-frothing idiot” at the bottom to “pretty cool and potentially memorable” at the top. I think most people would rate somewhere in the middle which is “non-descript, harmless person”.

I used to think about raindrops hitting a car speeding along a highway. If you traced the journeys of the car and the raindrop backwards to their respective points of origin would you ever guess that a particular drop of rain would fall on a particular car at a particular point on the highway? If the car sat in the driveway for a second longer, or if a light had been red instead of green things may have turned out differently. I think that’s why it’s so cool to meet famous people; at least one of you leaves the encounter thinking, “What are the chances? Sweet!” Hopefully the other one leaves thinking, “Pretty cool and potentially memorable.”

Strong Week

Monday: $400 to ‘fix’ my car. I got pulled over last week with expired registration. So I had to get my car tuned up so that I could get the emissions test done so that I could get my registration done. Waiting in line at the emissions testing grounds smoke starts pouring out of my exhaust pipe. One of the guys operating the grounds points a finger at me and tells me to get my car out of there. So I go back to the ‘mechanic’ and he says maybe I need to drive the car on the highway to get rid of the smoke before I go back.

Tuesday: Today I leave for Louisville, KY. I need to rent a car now because I’m not convinced my car is fixed at all and it’s not registered and I don’t have time to go back to the mechanic so I can get the test done. $413 to rent the only car available at Access. The other places had no cars available and I need to leave in the next 30 minutes to get to Louisville on time.
I love this car. I’m being spoiled by driving this Chevy Trailblazer with a Bose sound system. I’m fantasizing about actually owning one of these and driving it all the time. The open road makes me feel good about life. I’m relaxed and enjoying my drive to Louisville.
I arrive in Louisville and meet Heather Davis (who I still think of as Heather Askelson) who I haven’t seen in about 15+ years. We drive over to her friend, Natalie’s house and then drive to the country club to get some supper. They want to know about my music and about my ex-fiancé and why that didn’t work out. Natalie pays and I thank her and I feel a little awkward because I’m not sure she intended to pay for my food.
We head back to Natalie’s house and get ready for the party at which I’m playing. People start arriving and I eventually start playing music for a bunch of minglers. People buy my CD and I play some more music and end the night playing pool with Bob who beats me very soundly.
Back at Heather’s we talk until 3am about people we both know. I feel like Heather and I might have been good friends if we hadn’t lived across the ocean from each other.

Wednesday: My eyes pop open at 8:00 am. I have to be in Beaver, WV at 5pm so after a shower and a quick breakfast during which I get to know Heather’s little ones and in-laws a bit I hit the road.
I’m enjoying the road again and looking forward to playing again tonight. Get to town with an hour to spare and Sam drives us to the venue, Cultural Delight, a little international café. It’s Wednesday night so there aren’t any customers in the place but I play a set for Sam and Josiah and the owners of the café.
The owners invite me back to play for lunch tomorrow. They hope they’ll have a crowd for me.

Thursday: Lunchtime crowd is 5 strong and there’s a couple of stragglers getting take-out orders towards the end. I’m having fun playing and not really concerned about the numbers right now.
6pm finds us making our way towards the As You Like It Café, which turns out to be a great place to play an unplugged gig. Fifteen or so people show up and I enjoy the set because everyone is listening intently. I take a break and mingle and then do another set. CDs are sold and signed and more mingling happens.
Back at Sam’s we start discussing ‘life and stuff’ until about 12pm. My alarm is set for 3:30 am.

Friday: 3:30 am came and went with barely a nod from me. I open my eyes at 4:20 am and run around getting ready to go. My rental car has to be back in Nashville by 12:15 am and I have 444 miles to drive to get there.
I stop twice along the way and make it back to Nashville at 12:25 am. Dance for joy at not being charged for an extra day.
I go home and take a nap and head to work at 5 pm. Not dancing for joy at the prospect of working tonight but I need the money so…

This is the dream apparently and I love it. I decide I need a lot more weeks like this one.

West Virginia is Delightful

West Virginia is mountains and trees and lots of trucks on the highway. Of course I haven’t experienced much of it. I’ve been here for about 20 hours and I spent some of those asleep.

I’m sitting in the Cultural Delight Café, located in Beckley, WV. The owners seem to like my music. I played here last night for a crowd of about 9 people which included the owners and Sam D. Smith (www.sdsmith.net). They said I should play again here today and hit the lunch crowd. So here I am. My set is over and there were a few people here. Now I’m waiting for a burger (how very culturally extravagant of me) and attempting to catch up on blogging.

Sam filmed a little bit of my performance last night, which you can watch here.

Over and out for now but stay tuned.

Sometimes I wonder if the things I wonder about are normal things. I mean it doesn’t seem strange to me to but I wonder if everyone thinks about the same kinds of things:

I have a friend named Kevin. He was my best friend when I was around 9 years old. When you’re 9 years old your best friend might as well be your brother. There’s an acceptance and innocence in friendships when you’re young that doesn’t exist when you get older. My brother will always be my brother and I’m fortunate to have a great one. But even if he was a crap brother he’d still be my brother. That’s the kind of friendship I had with Kevin. I haven’t seen Kevin much in the past 23 years but I still think of him as a friend.

My family moved overseas when I was young and I used to wonder how different Kevin and I would be if our families had reversed roles. What if I’d stayed in America and he had gone to South Africa? How significant was that one big move in my life? How has it shaped my reality? I wonder.

I wonder sometimes about how people’s lives turn out so differently than they imagined. Mine has anyway. There’s a homeless person who cycles by the restaurant sometimes and I’ve talked to him a few times. His name is Harley. The last time I saw Harley, he had a huge gash in his head that was all stitched up. He’d fallen off his bike apparently. I gave him some money so he could get his prescriptions filled. I don’t know if he used it for that but I felt like maybe he would and if I didn’t give it to him maybe he wouldn’t get it.

I wonder what Harley dreamed about when he was a younger man and I wonder why he was never able to follow that dream. For me to follow mine took more than just my own will. I had a lot of encouragement and help and sometimes a bit of pushing and shoving. I had guidance and wisdom from other sources. I am like one of those little trees; tied to a piece of wood so that it will grow straight until it becomes thick enough to stand on its own. I guess Harley never had a good straight stick to grow against. But the thing I wonder about is whether Harley thinks about that at all.

There are bombs of a nuclear nature being made and tested in North Korea. I can’t begin to know how to think about that. Isn’t there enough shit in the world that countries should stop spending so much money on guns and bombs and implements of war? But then shouldn’t we prepare to defend ourselves in case some stupid thing leads to another and we find ourselves in need of defense? I wonder if I was a North Korean if I would feel the same way. I’d probably be scared that America might decide to bomb my country even though as an American I feel like that’s a bit ridiculous. But then again we are one of the most war-involved countries of all time. I wonder how it’s possible that any government anywhere doesn’t get that a modern nuclear war anywhere in the world would be devastating to the entire planet. Even if you’re the aggressor and you get yours off first you’re still just shooting yourself in the foot.

I wonder if it’s normal to wonder about normality.

Rain Drops, Hot Dogs, Wisdom

It’s raining…very, very hard. Lightning. The sky lights up in blue flashes. It’s seems close but I can’t hear any thunder. The rain on the roof is very loud. I’m trying to decide if I should wait a few minutes inside or just make a run for it. More lightning. This rain isn’t letting up anytime soon and I’m locked out of the restaurant. More blue flashes. So if I wait I have to wait in the back foyer which is covered but not really pleasant. Lightning.

I’m running across the parking lot towards my car. I’m soaked in no more than ten seconds and I have a good way to go to get my car. I’m nervous about the lightning and it all strikes me as incredibly funny. I have a huge smile on my face and I’m laughing out loud running through a soaking rain. It feels good to run. I’m really stretching my legs out fully and jumping puddles and running hard. I haven’t run like this in a long time. The rain is cold and feels good after such a hot day.

The weather in Nashville is whimsical and extreme. I’ve never experienced so much weather in all my life as I have in 6 months in Nashville. I’m in the Red Door Saloon in East Nashville. I love this place. It’s loud with people talking, the sandwiches are good (read: cheap) and it’s a good place to watch. There is a tornado watch in effect until midnight. I decided while driving home that if a tornado comes through I want to be around people and not in my apartment (I’m afraid it might fall down around me).

There’s a barmaid with an interesting hairstyle. She looks a little like Reece Witherspoon in the face and of course she sounds a little like her since this is Nashville. I think she’s older than me but she’s kind of pretty. I have my Chicago Dog in front of me. I have my PBR. My hair and clothes are soaked. The rain has driven a lot of people here tonight and they are mostly around my age (give or take 10 years). Age doesn’t matter in Nashville. Tattoos matter. Piercings matter. Hairstyles matter. Isn’t that what matters everywhere? When they named this place “music city” did they ever imagine it would become such a wonderfully vibrant mix of people? I imagine some guy in a cowboy hat came up with the name. He had no idea.

The rain has subsided. My dog and my PBR are finished. There’s a sign on top of the t.v. in the corner that says “I’m not bashful. I’m from Nashville.” It says a lot about the atmosphere in this place. I’m reserved by nature. That sign is kind of like an instruction to me. I look at it every time I come in here. If a wise old woman were going to give me advice about how to get by in Nashville, in America, in life; they could do far worse than to say; “Don’t be shy!”