Last week was absolutely insane. My father, stepmother, and little sister were all visiting from Thursday to Sunday. Monday I drove up to Sacramento. Stayed there until Wednesday. Then I plowed down the inane stretch of I-5 and arrived in Long Beach at around eleven. Three days later I’d be on the biggest stage I’ve ever played in a near meltdown of nervousness.
Will the emotional exertion that had my body quaking allow me to play out regularly once I move to LA? I watched one video of my performance and watched my face contort and mis-shape itself, my brow furrow at the simplest chords and my tongue undulate in my mouth as if working to escape through my nose.
The family and I went to Yosemite last Friday. On the way in, I wondered if this flagship of America’s National Park System was actually just a glorified chunk of the Sierra Nevadas. These are beautiful mountains, there is no doubt, and on the long road to Monument Valley, we passed a few profound valleys, but I wasn’t in awe until we bored through the belly of a mountain and spewed out alongside two dozen European tourists overlooking monument valley.
The monolithic nature of the rocks bordering the broad flat valley was numbing. There was half dome, like a broken relic of a lost civilization of giants. So too, El Capitan stood like it once supported a vast bridge across the valley. Thousands of pine trees, all uniform in height, carpeted the valley, wrapping around the half dome and vanishing as if they were themselves the river. Here are some pictures I took:
My father was especially excited to see the Sequoias. I was confused by the common East Coast idea that Redwoods are the biggest trees. They’re big, but not as big as these things. It’s hard to communicate the profundity in picture, but to think that these freestanding living things are 3500 years old, predating most modern civilizations and almost entirely undisturbed. Those that have fallen don’t decay due to the density of the Tannins. The root structures were magnificent but I’ll put those pictures at the end of this entry to focus on enormity rather than my preoccupation with the profane:
I wonder if the experience of seeing Monument Valley, like some beautiful tumor in the landscape, would have been lessened had we gone the next day. The congestion of Yosemite is often parodied. Traffic rivaling Los Angeles, except for the entire towering walls of stained granite and misting falls two thousand feet up thing. I can understand how the utter glut of tourists could really dumb down what is otherwise an incredibly spiritual experience.
The presence of family made it a little hard. I wish it was just my father and I. While I am fond of my stepmother and half-sister, I experience a neurotic mindmeld with my father when they’re around. Women, the bane of our joint existence. It’s startling to see all my female issues manifest in a man over twice my age; cheers to psychological inheritance.
To my father’s credit, he has given me very precise criteria of what makes a good woman, which I easily ignored. Being the person I am, I often wonder if I will ever be able to find such a vision of perfection (good parents, mentally healthy, great sex, you love her, etc…) who would conversely be able to understand and accept me. I wonder if a woman could come from such supportive circumstances with complexity intact. I’m sure it’s possible, but so often when I meet people from great and unbroken families and I feel like Montezuma or some crazed prophet off in the margins. I think it would be very hard for a real upstanding young woman from a great family to accept that her boyfriend you know, sees ghosts all the time, lives at the whims of divine archetypes, and has an unhealthy affection for whales. Sometimes this is hard for my friend’s to accept.
When I was in Los Angeles my buddy Dave said something rather hilarious. I mentioned my abduction offhand and he said:
“You know, I was talking to James about this, how people are always saying ‘the universe is out to get me today.’ Well, I actually think it’s out to get you.”
I certainly was given a bizarre wrung of karma I’m still unraveling. It’s a life waiting for the other foot to drop.
Sacramento was interesting. The staff meeting was abbreviated. I came out with no greater knowledge of the inner workings of my parent company, but my supervisor and friend did help me assemble eighty copies of my demo CD! I met a few fellow VISTAs and in particular, Kim, who is a tribal member of the tribe she’s serving with offered a great glint of hope for the project down where I work. I am coming to wonder if many of the blocks I am seeing are really tied to my color and my outsider nature. I have resolved to recruit my VISTA replacement from the tribe, seeing that an Indian would be able to make such great headway having already gained the trust of the community. The only issue will be finding someone who is neutral.
R and I were discussing the youth committee, and as we broke down a potential core group, he was referring to neutrality among children. It is so bizarre to think there could be issues of factions even among the very young. It’s as if the banding and grouping of indigenous peoples begins at birth and it is no wonder so many of the traditional practices were tied to binding the individual to the set way of doing things and to respect.
I was also able to see an old buddy from mine in Sacramento. To briefly return to that sitting cross-legged and drinking beer in a park and not giving a fuck kind of lifestyle, culminating with my being brought home by a woman, an experience that I’ll qualify as not physically satisfying, but emotionally cleansing in a really sad way.
Leaving the next morning, after a night of incredible darkness, crooked dreams, and fear, I felt as if I was leaving behind something bad for me and it was hard to muster the sympathy I used to. My guilt was tied to that. The lack of physical presence on my part still has me baffled, but I realize I used to be dependent on the unhealthy women to keep me going. I feel as if I am experienced a paradigm shift in my overall personality and sexual nature and I wonder how it will play out once I get down to LA, what kind of women I will find.
Mark, my dream analyst, really scolded me for having done that, gone home with a girl, but I am really so much happier in relinquishing myself to pure experience without seeking it out nor evading it. This has led me to some dark places, but the knowledge I emerge with is always invaluable.
It was a long drive down 5 to Long Beach, but I was lucky to catch the second to last day of DNC coverage. Bill Clinton’s speech was profound. By the time Biden was speaking I was in the heart of Christian country and the station was fading. It was as if I were receiving the station and its echo, for it all layered in a sea of static and the mournful wail of a smooth jazz saxophone beneath it. I was raised a democrat and I feel like I may have forgotten that for a minute.
While I do retain hope for the spontaneous methods of human organization, ie anarchy, I am very frustrated by the extreme left’s cynical response to Obama, a 45 year old community organizer from a bi-racial family who attended the black church! I mean, Jesus Christ! I was all about voting Green to help that party get it’s five percent, but then I heard an interview with the vice presidential nominee, Rosa Clemente, and it’s stupid but I just didn’t like the way she talked. It was all slam poetry and I mean come on, but I guess she’s part of what they call “the Hip Hop Generation.” Call me old fashioned but oratory is very important to me. I like Cynthia McKinney a lot (green party presidential nominee), good talker, not this girl, so cynical, so harsh. We’ve been talking for so damn long it’s a shame to see it so simplified.
I don’t know, people talk a lot of revolution but it doesn’t really work that way. I was listening to some coverage of RNC protests and the chant was saying: “give us revolution now.” Give you?
People need to watch the John Adams miniseries and also realize the South won, you know what I mean?
Baby steps or fucking go for it. Start a god damn congress or something.
The next few days were entirely band practice oriented, absolutely exhausting, but the songs were slowly coming together. Many of the concerns I had stirred up into a frenzy back up in Prather dissolved. The only problem was the building hype. I opened an issue of the LA Weekly only to see a blurb about me. I wish I could use it as publicity, but unfortunately it discussed my volunteer work in a way that would not be appreciated up here.
We also got bumped up to the biggest venue, and loading in, jesus. For you Boston people, think the middle east downstairs X 2. We soundchecked (whoa, sound!) then went to run some quick errands. The line already went down the block. Dave and I jointly realized that we were at least six years older than all these kids. We discussed it later and realized we were once those kids, that’s the audience…still feels strange…26.
Show went amazing for the most part. We all had our little flubs, but we practiced four times! The reaction was incredible and a few people came up to get CDs after the show, offered me money even though I said free. I left some on the merch table and apparently there was a little money pile beneath them for a while, no doubt pocketed, used to buy beer, for the night it was, I wouldn’t have had it any other way (unless it was in my pocket that is).
Playing was incredibly difficult. It’s such a strenuous effort for me and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because it was my seventh live performance ever, for the other guys were relatively effortless, bouncing around, or kneeling in a sea of feedback. I had trouble willing my hand to strum, to control my distance from the microphone. By the end I was so exhausted I couldn’t even play. My arm stopped working, just lightly brushing the strings, and when Sean, the organizer of the festival said I should play acoustic on the patio, I couldn’t even remember what my songs were.
I was falling asleep on my feet after dinner and it was only when I met my friend Veronica that I came back alive. Love that girl.
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