June 2010 Archives
You can ask anyone—I'm not one of these people that talks about living your dreams or following your bliss or any of that. Many of the dreams we dream are stupid dreams that will never come true, and much of the bliss we follow is a butterfly bliss that will dance ahead of us, effortlessly eluding our childish grasp, until we wise up enough to realize that bliss comes when it comes and doesn't much like pursuit, actually.
And yet.
And yet.
A few decades ago, a friend came back from his freshperson year at college with a bunch of jazz records. We were both crazy about music, and this was a revelation. I listened and listened and listened, and by the time I was 20 I was convinced I had to learn jazz piano. And I put my best effort into it. I took lessons and listened and practiced and studied and when I got out of college I joined commercial bands so I could justify practicing more. The drummer in the first band was the friend who got me hooked in the first place. I did that for three years. But in the end I saw that I wasn't ever going to be the jazz pianist I wanted to be. And I didn't like the professional musician life, the Top 40, the clubs that smelled like stale beer and cigarettes when you took your gear in the afternoon before the job. Everyone wanted to believe that I loved it, because that's the mythology, but actually I didn't love it. "I play bad music for bad money for bad people," I would tell them. And at the end of three years in the business, I quit the whole thing.
I played with people every now and then, but after a while I discovered the newspaper business, and then magazines, and photography too, and that suited me better, really. I still had the piano, but I played only now and then, sometimes only once every couple of months. And that went on for, well, a few decades. The vinyl albums sunk further and further back in the closet, and music mattered less and less.
And then a few years ago I went to a party and ran into a guy I had worked for years before. We got friendly, and it turned out he had been a bass player with a successful rock band in the 80s, and he was interested in playing jazz now and then. Just casually, no big deal. So why not? We got together a couple of times, enjoyed it, made it a regular thing. We started playing for parties he and his wife had. We started thinking more seriously about it, researching tunes we wanted to play, talking about technique, inviting other musician friends to sit in.
Then a drummer came by to play with us, and we liked him and it seemed mutual, so that became a regular thing. The drummer started egging us on to play for the public, and we started considering the idea, not without some trepidation. And then the bass player sagely decided that the way to make jazz connect with the public was to have a singer. So he advertised on Craigslist, and got an answer, and this nice person who sang very well and was good at lining up jobs started singing with us.
And then she signed us up for a set at a little ad-hoc jazz festival in Philadelphia.
This set me off on months of feverish practice. It seemed far off when it first was arranged. Surely, I thought, I could bootstrap myself to the point where the one set would be no big deal. But we all have demons, don't we? I've discovered that. Every single person I've ever met is walking around with demons inside. My own demons said I wasn't good enough and would have stage fright that would make this a disaster and who did I think I was, anyway, wanting to play jazz in public.
I told the demons they could take a flying, basically. I practiced and practiced. I went to open-mike events and played. I was nearly hallucinating with nervousness the first time, somewhat better the next, a little better the next.
And then the big day.
Was I nervous, when the time came? Yes, folks, I was nervous. I played very tentatively, until the end, when we played the big rousing fast number. By then I knew it was in the bag, so I played aggressively for that one last tune. And that was as good as it could have been. I couldn't have played with masterful confidence this first time, it simply wasn't a realistic goal. But I kept it together, played pretty much the right chords at the right times, held my own. It wasn't a disaster. It was actually, at times, a lot of fun. I'd grin at the other players, making a point of enjoying the whole thing.I was making music, pretty good music, with my friends. Occasionally I would risk a glimpse at the audience, especially when they were clapping. It was like looking down when you're climbing a mountain, but looking down is where the thrill comes from.
So finally we hit the last big chord for the finish, and we were done. No humiliation, no disaster. Just a sense of jumping a big hurdle, and landing safely. "I'll take that," I said to the drummer, as I stood up. And then I packed up my gear, just like back in the day, and went and got a free beer that pretty much amounted to my pay for the occasion, and sat and listened to another band play. They were really good. I enjoyed their music. But I also enjoyed the idea that I'd taken a risk, but done the work beforehand and maintained the right attitudes and handled the fear well enough. I'd played piano in a jazz trio for the better part of an hour, in front of an audience, and lived to tell the tale. It wasn't perfect. But I hadn't let my friends down. And that matters, folks. That matters.
So we'll build on this. I'll play jazz in public more, and better. That youthful dream will get fulfilled, if it be Allah's will. Better late than never, no doubt about it.
I don't know what this means about dreams in general. But I know one thing—if you want to play an instrument, or learn to draw or paint, or do anything at all, if there's anything that you think you could care about, give it some effort. And give it some time. Maybe you'll only learn how hard it is to do that particular thing. At the very least, that makes you appreciate people who are accomplished in the field. But maybe you'll get somewhere yourself. You won't know if you don't try. I can tell you that it feels good, getting something accomplished. Getting the work done, playing your parts, not letting your friends down. Putting a little more good music out there. Brightening people's afternoon on a hot day in the city. I can remember, you know, the days so long ago when the conviction came on me more and more that I wanted to play jazz on the piano. And yesterday, I did. It was a long time coming, but it was worth the wait.
And yet.
And yet.
A few decades ago, a friend came back from his freshperson year at college with a bunch of jazz records. We were both crazy about music, and this was a revelation. I listened and listened and listened, and by the time I was 20 I was convinced I had to learn jazz piano. And I put my best effort into it. I took lessons and listened and practiced and studied and when I got out of college I joined commercial bands so I could justify practicing more. The drummer in the first band was the friend who got me hooked in the first place. I did that for three years. But in the end I saw that I wasn't ever going to be the jazz pianist I wanted to be. And I didn't like the professional musician life, the Top 40, the clubs that smelled like stale beer and cigarettes when you took your gear in the afternoon before the job. Everyone wanted to believe that I loved it, because that's the mythology, but actually I didn't love it. "I play bad music for bad money for bad people," I would tell them. And at the end of three years in the business, I quit the whole thing.
I played with people every now and then, but after a while I discovered the newspaper business, and then magazines, and photography too, and that suited me better, really. I still had the piano, but I played only now and then, sometimes only once every couple of months. And that went on for, well, a few decades. The vinyl albums sunk further and further back in the closet, and music mattered less and less.
And then a few years ago I went to a party and ran into a guy I had worked for years before. We got friendly, and it turned out he had been a bass player with a successful rock band in the 80s, and he was interested in playing jazz now and then. Just casually, no big deal. So why not? We got together a couple of times, enjoyed it, made it a regular thing. We started playing for parties he and his wife had. We started thinking more seriously about it, researching tunes we wanted to play, talking about technique, inviting other musician friends to sit in.
Then a drummer came by to play with us, and we liked him and it seemed mutual, so that became a regular thing. The drummer started egging us on to play for the public, and we started considering the idea, not without some trepidation. And then the bass player sagely decided that the way to make jazz connect with the public was to have a singer. So he advertised on Craigslist, and got an answer, and this nice person who sang very well and was good at lining up jobs started singing with us.
And then she signed us up for a set at a little ad-hoc jazz festival in Philadelphia.
This set me off on months of feverish practice. It seemed far off when it first was arranged. Surely, I thought, I could bootstrap myself to the point where the one set would be no big deal. But we all have demons, don't we? I've discovered that. Every single person I've ever met is walking around with demons inside. My own demons said I wasn't good enough and would have stage fright that would make this a disaster and who did I think I was, anyway, wanting to play jazz in public.
I told the demons they could take a flying, basically. I practiced and practiced. I went to open-mike events and played. I was nearly hallucinating with nervousness the first time, somewhat better the next, a little better the next.
And then the big day.
Was I nervous, when the time came? Yes, folks, I was nervous. I played very tentatively, until the end, when we played the big rousing fast number. By then I knew it was in the bag, so I played aggressively for that one last tune. And that was as good as it could have been. I couldn't have played with masterful confidence this first time, it simply wasn't a realistic goal. But I kept it together, played pretty much the right chords at the right times, held my own. It wasn't a disaster. It was actually, at times, a lot of fun. I'd grin at the other players, making a point of enjoying the whole thing.I was making music, pretty good music, with my friends. Occasionally I would risk a glimpse at the audience, especially when they were clapping. It was like looking down when you're climbing a mountain, but looking down is where the thrill comes from.
So finally we hit the last big chord for the finish, and we were done. No humiliation, no disaster. Just a sense of jumping a big hurdle, and landing safely. "I'll take that," I said to the drummer, as I stood up. And then I packed up my gear, just like back in the day, and went and got a free beer that pretty much amounted to my pay for the occasion, and sat and listened to another band play. They were really good. I enjoyed their music. But I also enjoyed the idea that I'd taken a risk, but done the work beforehand and maintained the right attitudes and handled the fear well enough. I'd played piano in a jazz trio for the better part of an hour, in front of an audience, and lived to tell the tale. It wasn't perfect. But I hadn't let my friends down. And that matters, folks. That matters.
So we'll build on this. I'll play jazz in public more, and better. That youthful dream will get fulfilled, if it be Allah's will. Better late than never, no doubt about it.
I don't know what this means about dreams in general. But I know one thing—if you want to play an instrument, or learn to draw or paint, or do anything at all, if there's anything that you think you could care about, give it some effort. And give it some time. Maybe you'll only learn how hard it is to do that particular thing. At the very least, that makes you appreciate people who are accomplished in the field. But maybe you'll get somewhere yourself. You won't know if you don't try. I can tell you that it feels good, getting something accomplished. Getting the work done, playing your parts, not letting your friends down. Putting a little more good music out there. Brightening people's afternoon on a hot day in the city. I can remember, you know, the days so long ago when the conviction came on me more and more that I wanted to play jazz on the piano. And yesterday, I did. It was a long time coming, but it was worth the wait.
I've gone past this sign numerous times and tried to figure out what the rationale for it is, and in the end I've just decided that the sign is doing what I've done myself on countless occasions—it announced its name, got nervous because it didn't know what to say next, and just blurted out something absurdly obvious. It has a certain awkward charm, actually, for a laundromat sign.
I know, I know, when the marketing jackals sink their fangs into a word it instantly becomes overused by definition. But all of the sudden I'm seeing all sorts of things described hopefully as "vibrant," the hope being, of course, that rather than think about what the word really means, you'll read it as "very very good and worth spending money on." I noticed a long time ago that careful writers are at least mildly interested in what the word they're using means—its denotation. But marketing people are almost exclusively interested in the connotation—the things we associate with the word, and especially the emotions it evokes. People can be vibrant, and often we like such people. Cities can be vibrant, and often we enjoy visiting them. But this?
Vibrant Technologies buys and sells used IT equipment including servers, storage and networking equipment. A top reseller for used server and refurbished ...Some people are vibrant, as we've noted, and some places. But I can't imagine how a refurbished server or a person likely to be selling one could possibly be described as vibrant. Anyway, connotation and denotation, OK? Thanks.
Sufficient to the day are the stressors thereof, like usual. But Venus has been unusually bright lately, which is something to be grateful for. I'll come out of a township government meeting, my head buzzing with the various workaday matters discussed there, and look up, and there it will be, blazing away like a lantern in the humid night sky. It takes you out of yourself for a moment, if you let it, and that's rather nice.
Years ago I spent a week at Cape Cod, just wandering around the various towns there, and noticed something: People would get lunch from a takeout place and then pull up facing the ocean. You'd see some working guy in a the cab of a pickup truck, taking a bite from his turkey hoagie with one hand, taking a pull from his bottle of Sprite with the other, the whole time looking out over the ocean with a faraway gaze, for all the world like a Zen monk deep in meditation.
I live a hundred miles from the ocean, so it's not available for lunchtime contemplation. But I live directly beneath the night sky, and it's always handy. Last night I was listening to some people play jazz in a coffee shop and wondering when I'd feel confident enough in my own piano-playing abilities to sit in with them. I was thinking about that driving home, that and everything else, all the things going on, and then I made a right turn and saw the crescent moon with Venus above it.
I won't say all the stressful things suddenly melted away and didn't matter, But it was like the ocean was for that guy in the pickup—it shifts your perspective just a bit, it soothes and refreshes. There's something in us that wants to look out over the ocean, just stand there and look, and something in us that can't help gazing at those lights in the sky, floating over us, so lovely, so impossibly far away. It's one of those deep-down things that just about everyone responds to in some fashion.
So it was hardly surprising that when I got home and got out of the car, I saw that my neighbors were sitting on their back porch, looking out to the west. I said hello and then turned and looked with them, and we all were quiet for a moment, watching Venus, shining away over the treetops.
Years ago I spent a week at Cape Cod, just wandering around the various towns there, and noticed something: People would get lunch from a takeout place and then pull up facing the ocean. You'd see some working guy in a the cab of a pickup truck, taking a bite from his turkey hoagie with one hand, taking a pull from his bottle of Sprite with the other, the whole time looking out over the ocean with a faraway gaze, for all the world like a Zen monk deep in meditation.
I live a hundred miles from the ocean, so it's not available for lunchtime contemplation. But I live directly beneath the night sky, and it's always handy. Last night I was listening to some people play jazz in a coffee shop and wondering when I'd feel confident enough in my own piano-playing abilities to sit in with them. I was thinking about that driving home, that and everything else, all the things going on, and then I made a right turn and saw the crescent moon with Venus above it.
I won't say all the stressful things suddenly melted away and didn't matter, But it was like the ocean was for that guy in the pickup—it shifts your perspective just a bit, it soothes and refreshes. There's something in us that wants to look out over the ocean, just stand there and look, and something in us that can't help gazing at those lights in the sky, floating over us, so lovely, so impossibly far away. It's one of those deep-down things that just about everyone responds to in some fashion.
So it was hardly surprising that when I got home and got out of the car, I saw that my neighbors were sitting on their back porch, looking out to the west. I said hello and then turned and looked with them, and we all were quiet for a moment, watching Venus, shining away over the treetops.
It must be nice to sleep the sleep of the just, to lay your head down at 10 and sleep uninterruptedly for eight hours and wake refreshed. I can't remember the last time I did that myself—it must have happened a couple times in my life, I suppose, but not lately.
But it's not so bad, actually. I woke up in the small hours the other night, wondered if I would be able to fall back asleep and eventually decided that I wouldn't. So I got up to see what was going on, because if you're a light sleeper you know that night is not just a boring nothing-happening time. The moon was full, for one thing, setting through a cloudy sky. I couldn't get a decent image of that, and I also failed to get a nice one of the moon framed by the tree branches. But I got one of the moon by itself, and that felt good.
By the time dawn arrived, there were several bats circling around out front, obviously chasing an invisible swarm of insects. I tried to shoot them too, but they kept dancing around out of reach, but it was an interesting exercise. I did manage to get an image of a bird against the cloudy sky that I liked. Just me and the cat, a cup of coffee, and the world waking up. Last night I did actually sleep soundly, and this morning I woke to the rising sun painting the clouds. But that spooky, otherworldly stuff? Slept right through it. Once in a while, it's worth it, not sleeping well.
