The Hum Of Being Human

Not so long ago I was training beverage distributors for a well known company, mostly in the midwest.  At first it was novel but the work load was monumental.  Paper work, travel arrangements and event planning piled up.  A lot of it was done in hotel rooms in between trainings and traveling from airport to airport. It was rare that in the three months I was on the road, I was home long enough to be a comic.  To be a creative person at all.  During this time, I had obligated myself to a weekend gig as the host for a small music festival that was organized by my friend in Lowell, MA.  I don't remember if I was nervous.  I'm not even sure how well I did.  I just remember being in the middle of some really amazing musical performers.  Got to watch them from the best seat in the house, two feet away from the stage.  I think it saved my sanity.  For one weekend, I felt me again.

There are some religions in the world that forbid dancing.  They monitor music.  See creativity as suspect, a direct route to carnal desires and the devil.  I never could figure out how something so obviously coming from God could be misconstrued. Creativity, to me, is the voice of the soul. Music touches us because it is basic, part of our fabric. Even the simple rhythms and noises from the world can be turned in to music in the right hands.  The musically gifted can pull it from the world and manipulate it into something the rest of us can hear too. That can move our bodies and souls in all sorts of directions.

I am one of those people that need music.  If I can't find it, I will make it myself.  But I have to have it in my life or it is too quiet.  Discovering new music is discovering a companion that I will take everywhere with me, in a hum if the electronic devices are not readily available.  If I don't have it, I feel deprived of something essential. Like that with that job that sent me to the midwest? It wasn't the constant flow of work that drained me. It was the constant flow of work with no creative stimulation.  No heart.  Nothing new to find in the sounds around me.  Just the drilling of normalcy, pounding footsteps to the march of duty, movement forward with no heartfelt guidance thumping a beat to flow in. Like a dead person with motorskills. Never again.

Restaurant Angst

I have been sitting in the Cafe for about ten minutes now. No one on the waitstaff has said a word. In their defense, they all seem to be very nice and may not have noticed. It is one of those lovely mellow moments in a normally busy place with the added confusion of laptops keeping most table turnover  in a holding pattern. I forgive them.

This is new to me. I am a former high strung New Yorker and bad waiter. Patience is not my strongest point in a restaurant situation. I used to take it really personally. "Stop afflicting me with your incompetence!" I would yell in my head and shoot them ugly glares. What a relief to just not give a shit any more.

Somewhere along the line really bad things happened to my family. It used to be so much easier to look at the  the pain annoyances in my own life and cling on to my own image of being a victim, try to bury my head in the shit storm sand but, you know?...anger really wears you out.

A while back I was doing a murder mystery playing an irate restaurant manager.  Pissed Off was her defining characteristic. She stomped around and bitched for three hours straight. I maintained her inner victim until she finally....if I remember correctly....shot someone. Or wrestled someone to the ground. Or antagonized someone else into shooting someone. One of them. Whatever it was, I finished the night and went home exhausted with a headache. Whether she was real or not, it was my body carrying around that real angst and it totaled me for a whole day.

I'm finding out in my way past 40 years that sometimes it just ain't worth it. There is too many real problems out there waiting for me. The truth is, the restaurant is just slowing down its ability to make more money, I was warm, dry and not particularly hungry at that moment and no one was yelling at me or making me feel bad in any other form other than being too busy to notice my existence.

The waiter came over and was very apologetic. He was also handsome and seemed to be a sweet person. I took my time being at his table with my laptop open and he didn't seemed to be pissed off back at me for camping, either. I will come back and don't care if he ignores me. Sometimes its nice to be left alone without the pressure of a menu anyway.

Music Hath Testicles To Sooth The Savage Teats.

First of all, I apologize for the title. It just came out that way. And it made me laugh.

Okay. On to business. My daughter has developed a deep disdain for Justin Beiber. I know some folks may agree but she is 11 and a half. There isn't a whole lot to compare it to.  And, truth is, when it comes to mindless hooks, he isn't a horrible thing. It's music. Regardless of your definition.

I blame myself. For years I cringed at my husband's fixation with the band Journey. I came from a different era. He came from the loins of a now soft rock disc jockey in Texas. I was a former lyric soprano, who, as it turns out, was really an alto forced into lyric soprano servitude by a wayward choir mistress in church who couldn't keep it out of the rafters, never really being able to hit the notes without hurting something. He was a dreamy Donny Osmond-like tenor.

It made sense that I would rebel and be drawn to overly emotional music like punk and lyric whores like My Chemical Romance. That I would love the drama of rock operas like "American Idiot" and loved blasting Bad Brains when embracing my anger trying to find parking in downtown Boston. Adored quirky jumping notes when Regina Spektor sang about my old home, lower Manhattan. Sang along with pride about assholes hurting female mojo with 1960's girl groups.

A lot of times I was running with the outcry and the music was secondary. Or, I would reach out for the other side of the same high. I loved the pure sensation of pianists like Lucavidi Eunadi and George Winston. And I looked down on  simple things, all of those love songs about not getting love or getting dumped by love or loving you in very unhealthy way that insinuates stalker tendencies aka unrequited love, or finding out your love is a douche bag or riding the high of first loving feelings aka it won't last love or all the things love can do to you that, come to think of it, don't always turn out well because love almost inevitably became complicated but feels really great all the same.

Its country music that turned me. I had been raised with a father who loved blue grass and country (he played guitar in a band when he was younger). He liked that twangy Hank Williams Sr. old school country. It wasn't until after his death when I got into  his reel to reel tapes that I found out that he loved a lot of the same stuff that I began to seek out after I heard the "Our Brother Where Art Thou" sound track. It was a life changer. It was the first time that I began to get past the not always pleasant nasal qualities and the old fashioned-ness to it and started to hear the musicianship involved. The olde timey gueetar players had chops. A steel string gueetar didn't ruin a song. It was just different. I began to appreciate classical anything more. To put aside the bigotry and admire the skill. To relax the fuck up and open the mind.

Dad and his friend Gibson

Recently, I have been spending a lot of time with the husband's "Journey Complete" songbook. I can play some of the simpler ones badly on the piano. I've been spending more time on with the notes and can admire the sheer quantity of music, the catchy hooks. It is mostly love songs and I am trying but my inner romantic has a knee jerk gag reflex. I often want to yell at Steve Perry, "Buck it up, Son! Being a wimp will only drive her away!" But, you know, it has its place. It took talent to write.

I have learned to love them, subtly. My far more romantic husband is a love song kind of man. I am a stand up comic with anger issues. Together we give the world balance but I have grown to appreciate and, yes, embrace the appeal of a good song of about love and frustration.

My husband and I always recognized the importance of having music around our child. We sang to her. He played the guitar for her, the one that we bought just before she was born so that we would be able to always have songs in her life. There is often the radio or some other form of music playing, especially when her dad and I are together working in the kitchen. We got an electric piano (it looks real...but its not!) and we find her fingering out notes to songs on it on her own. She plays drums in band at school and is pretty darned good, I must say. For Christmas,we got her a guitar after she started showing interest for my crappy ukulele and her dad's guitar.  There has not been a time in her life without the importance of music being prevelant.

I guess the Justin Beiber thing is  a sign for what is coming. Opinions formed to impress others maybe? Narrowness for things that we don't want to like because it may make us look uncool.  I too have caught myself  listening to a little Justin, bouncing along until I realized who it was. Then I acted like I got caught watching porn. Maybe I should purchase some Beiber music and immerse ourselves in some therapy to open our minds. Or I could just buy some Elvis and show her what a pure soul untouched by industry is. DOH! Okay. Babysteps. You get my drift, though, right? Any music that touches you can be good music. Teaching my kid to listen to it with blinders on to certain styles will just kill an opportunity to love something basic and lovely.

Oh Beiber.

Googling Marriage

I spent the better part of a decade completely wound up about money. My husband is in school, living in a lab trying to finally get done with ten years of life in higher education and get on with life. I am a control freak who uses focusing on minutiae to avoid internal issues. It's not a good combination when dealing with finances. Our communication issues didn't help. I would obsess about finding money to get from debt A to debt B and he would turn to worrying about future expenses. I would resent him and block him out.  He would feel left out in the cold.  So, of course, eventually everything blew up in our faces.  And I'm glad. He began to look for solutions for future debt resolution and I quit caring about what happened to money when I needed to work on the multitude of problems I'd been avoiding with the obsessing. We began to communicate. And we came up with a neat trick to cover each other's asses.

Both of us use Google products. We have several blog sites, email addresses, etc. A while back, Jay's lab started using Google Calendar to coordinate their projects. He suggested I add on to it so that we can both see each other's schedules. His work needs, my gigs, what have you. His schedule is in blue, mine is in red.

I began to write down gig payments in detail and keep my book on my calendar. That way when tax season rolled around, I could get a better look at my expenses. There are options to look at the calendar weekly, monthly, etc. so I could look at the whole picture or concentrate on a smaller amount of time. Also, there is a section on the event that you can put notes on. So, if I did a show, I could put down who for, location, payment type, etc. We decided to take this a step further.

I have been the keeper of the bills for the duration of our marriage. If something needed to be paid that he had the most access to, I would tell him the day of to do it. This probably lead to a little resentment because I felt like I was doing all of the thinking, having to remind him of everything sometimes multiple times because it was not in front  of him. And he felt like he couldn't tread into my control freak turf without angst.  Now, I put it on the schedule, marking the day we should pay it, the day it is due and whoever pays it marks it as done.  I can alert him of our money...or lack there of...situation in the bank account and what I've paid on the calendar. Every day we update it and check it.

Lately, I've been keeping my money stress isolated to the calendar. Say the bank account is low in funds? I don't need to bother him at work. I just write what is in there, what has been written against and the end results. He's a smart man, a scientist. He can figure out why pulling out 50 dollars when you only have 40 is a bad idea. And if it falls through? We miss something? Oh well. Two of us did it together. It's not just my problem...not that it ever really was....anymore.

Also, I used to be adamant about protecting my performing schedule and he would have a hard time figuring out his own evening life around it. Part of the problem was that it as often short notice and I had planned my set, my travel, whatever else around the event and part of the problem is he didn't feel allowed to work around it, assumed that it was a done deal without seeking out alternative solutions. We have recently shifted to include his needs more and by marking everything on the calendar, he can see what the conflicts are...and I've dumped the ones that aren't necessary to manage the family better...and if we want to do something at the same time we usually have some time to figure out how to address child care issues, appointment bookings, and  how to coordinate potential conflicts down the road.

At first, I was a little skeptical about this new system flying. Letting control go really kills your inner self martyr.  This whole I do all of the thinking thing that I had going on took a boot to the proverbial crotch. But we both read the calendar daily. We both deal with what's on there. We both note when the deeds that need to be done are finalized. Gigs, doctors appointments, all potential conflict are put in as soon as it is possible so that when something comes up we can communicate and deal with solutions. And we haven't forgotten a thing so far.

Bills aren't just my sole (and soul) problem in  my head anymore. He is getting more freedom to go do things that he likes without a backlash from my schedule conflicts. I have to say, it really has made a difference. Got to love that Google.

Best Friends

The biggest compliment you could give another kid was making them your Best Friend. Some kids liked it so much they had two or three. Sort of like cheating on their spouses openly. Then there would eventually be a fight about who got to be the Best Friend despite the fact that nobody particularly liked each other at that moment. It was fight for property title, like land barons. But, in the end, you usually went back to the Best Best Friend after the ego got sorted out.  Because you may have wanted to adoration of many, but you couldn't sing the lyrics to the themes to the Saturday Morning Cartoon shows the same and confide about the funny smells coming out of your sister with just anyone. There was history there.

As an adult, it is a rare and beautiful thing, a Best Friend. Usually if you are married, it is your spouse because nothing screams "Best Friend!" louder than marriage vows saying that you will honor them regardless of their quirks.  But being this kind of  Best Friend gets complicated sometimes with Partner, Co-Parent and Sex Buddy. Most other types of Best Friends don't live on top of each other and have to pay bills with each other. Marital problems tend to lose the Best Friend part when you need to get the rest of the parts straightened out. You can tell because the spouse tends to treat the other category of Best Friends better than you because you are at that moment no longer a Best Friend. You are The Cause Of Angst.  The Best Friend is in there but its like if your Best Friend joined the little league on the enemy team  and you had to wait till summer to get over to remember that you both had a undying mutual passion for Marvel Comics and all of the good things you have done before together, all the discoveries and marvelous stories you made. So having another type of Best Friend.... one that you are not legally bound to....is a huge blessing.

 I have a non-spousal Best Friend even though I don't get to talk to her as much as we used to and we don't announce the title when we refer to each other. When things were easier and men folks and children folks didn't dilute our schedules, we would talk on the phone every night. I miss that. It was a regular thing that we did because we could. We don't say Best Friends but she is that person whom I can talk to on the phone for an hour and a half at one in the morning after not speaking for two weeks and not even blink. We've been doing it for twenty years. We've been through comedy and births and husbands and, lately, deaths. She harbors me when things get really bad and is the person that I call as soon as I get something great.  And vice versa in return.  I miss seeing her but she's out there. I know when I'm dead, she's the non-relative person who will take it the hardest. We accept who we are are, warts and all. Although sometimes if the warts get too ugly, sometimes we have to back off a little. It is what it is and a history of this many good times is awfully hard to erase.

I wish I could be a kid Best Friend again. The kind that can hang out for hours on a rock in the woods talking about the important things in the world like moss and The Flintstones and why her brother is being such an asshole....almost always puberty....and what exactly is puberty anyway.  The kind of Best Friend without bills and with four hours to kill just goofing around. But I guess a kid Best Friend can't drive a car to go pick up the Best Friend from the bus when they decide to visit. And order chicken fingers whenever they want when they decide to  Best Friend binge eat together while they talk about boys, falling into the blissful Early Adulthood Best Friend pattern developed so long ago. And watch old videos of each other together learning cool things about life. I guess, when its good, its something to appreciate, hold onto while you have it. And be confident that when the Best Friends fade out with whatever circumstance life has handed you together, they come back again like they have again and again, because a Best Friend is a rare and wonderful thing.

The Adventures Of My Hair And My Husband

A long time ago, when I was first married, I had 32 inch long hair. It was light brown , a little reddish with some blond streaks in there. The only thing it wasn't was black.

I liked my hair but it was very thick and heavy.  I could be dragged by my ponytail without it hurting hardly at all. It took forever to dry when you washed it. Forget blow drying it, it took way too long. Mostly I kept it in a braid that started at the top of my head and ran down to the middle of my back. I don't know why I kept growing it. To see where it would go, I guess. My husband said it was a rite of passage in our house to pull my freakishly long hair from places that it shouldn't be. When I was pregnant and my hair went through a phase of thinning as hormones are wont to cause, I would walk through our house and find a wad of my very long hair wrapped around my feet.

Long hair wasn't really stylish yet. I identified myself with my hair. It probably lost me acting work. I wanted it to go away but was too stubborn to do anything about it. So it was sort of a relief to have brain surgery.

They shaved a huge piece of my hair along the right side of my head in the MRI room the day before surgery in preparation of one last look see and to set the "carve here" stickers with dots marking the surgeon's pattern of attack. It looked like a half-ass-ed demented mohawk. I said, "Hey, aren't you going to take off the rest?" The surgeon's p.a. said that a lot of people only wanted part off it removed so they could grow less back. I told him that three feet of hair will take awhile to catch up with so keeping the rest may not be a great idea.

So while he shaved away the rest, I watched years of my thick hair fall to the ground and felt my head get lighter and lighter. I walked around Park Slope with my new shining head with its peculiar ornamentation feeling a little beautiful even, despite the fact that someone was going to mar it permanently the next day. I went out for dinner...possibly my last supper in my mind....with my friends and then, when my husband came over from Sunset Park with our big old station wagon to pick me up, he arrived bald. In solidarity he shaved his lovely thick dark hair too. We got in our boat of a car with our little girl in the back seat, two shining beautiful best friends driving off to get ready for the scary future together, as bald as two cue balls.

Even now, all these years later, when I think of this man doing this for me, I remember what a tremendous selfless act that was, think of all of the trials life has put us through together and survived and how much I love him. How could you not?

Afterward, when the surgery was past and the staples were taken out of the scar that went from the top of my right forehead to behind my ear, I bleached the short growth so that the bright red line didn't pop out as much. It is long again, now unnaturally white. I wish that I could just let it go back to my real color but I am afraid almost a decade after surgery, just what that real color may be. And once again, I am enslaved to my hair, bleaching it whenever the roots show themselves, getting longer and longer until I must stop it from going further. I'd shave it for him, I think. I'd do it for him too. Still. You never know where your hair is going to take you.

Family Values

I hate what the right wing conservative movement did to the term "Family Values." I also used to be sceptical about the whole concept of what exactly identifies a family value. As we get closer to Christmas, not knowing what next year brings, I get it more. And I think the definition is not nearly as pompous as the aforementioned group has deemed correct.

My life has always been peppered with fear. Fear of loss of my family that I grew up with, fear of never being able to go home to see my mom and dad, fear of losing my family now. Well, you know what? 2/3's of those fears have come to fruition. If my family isn't dead entirely, a large percentage of them are and the home that I would go to on the holidays is gone.  I cannot control everything in my future, but I can grab onto it with both hands now and hold the people most dear to me, the family...Husband, Wife and Child that we created voluntarily and organically through our marriage and love..... and make it the best damned holiday that we ever had.

We have our tree. We plan our meal. We forget about expenses and buy all of the things that we can to make our child's happiness come to a joyous peak on Christmas morning while she is still trying to keep the idea of Santa alive as long as she can despite, I suspect, her knowledge of the actual facts. We share egg nog in various alcohol/non-alcohol versions. We hold hands. We light the decorations in sparkling all over the living room. We will bake cookies and cook ham and have Christmas morning Sunday bacon, inundating the child with sights and smells that she can carry with her into the future when maybe not all of the family is there, when maybe the presents aren't as good or the holiday starts out in a place that doesn't feel exactly like home.

With everything in life, it is best to value what is in front of us. It goes by so fast. People leave. Families fall to the wayside as different wants and needs surface. Now is the time when we can value what we have, our family  that is here with us right this minute using the natural progression of the Christmas season to bolster it.

So, yeah, I believe in family values. Loving them while you have them, doing everything that you can to put them first and make them happy, valuing the joy of togetherness because it may not be here tomorrow. It could last until you die if you are very very lucky but you never know if this is the last day you have with them together and I hold onto that with my whole heart. Merry Christmas, the loves of my life, My Family. Let's make it the best one of our lives.