Long Weekend

This was the first long weekend in many years that I didn't spend it in the traditional fashion with my dad and my best friend around a fire with beers and meat on a stick and the smog of the city behind us, the smell of smoke instead embedded in our jackets. I did manage to get my best friend down into the smog for a similar day of drinking and eating, with some sunshine as well. But its never the same as a trip away. She ended up getting the chance early Sunday to jump in with some friends and get goin' up the country. She needed it almost as much as I did.

There were only two rightful places I should have been Sunday night. Either I would succumb to the expense of travel and hop a bus, hitchhike or steal a car and get up north to see my pops, or I'd be coordinating acts and sound-checking at the open mic. Where was I instead? At a wedding.

Of my boyfriend's best friend.

I chose to spend the sunny day all decked out in a dress and heels instead of a ripped shirt and messy tresses as the bbq or the show would have normally found me. While I've exhausted the first-time-you-leave-your-kid-alone metaphor, I would like to state that the feeling is especially strong when you've left your kid alone to go someplace where you could easily buckle and go check on them. I am proud to say the show went swimmingly and my co-hosts majorly killed it. It was clear to me immediately that this was more important to me than the fact that I didn't perform or see the show myself.

I want to leave a mark in the planet. I dug a giant hole once, which I imagine is still there, so I suppose that is a solid start. But jokes aside, this whole thing has become more to me that I was prepared for. So you have the kid, and you love it cuz you gotta, and then it grows up and starts doing things on its own that you couldn't have guessed at and are tearfully proud of.

The show went long, and lots of people got up there, including some friends of mine who came out to support what we've been trying to do knowing I couldn't be there.

I also had the fortunate/unfortunate business of hearing about the ways in which the night was shit. All the details of sound quality, or friends of friends being kicked out for minor but still foolish behaviours, some acts not getting to perform because the show was running late already and they were tardy...

I began to pick apart each of these items, and deal with them all. I didn't have to spend more than a minute or two on how to proceed. I panicked upon hear some of the hiccups, but quickly discovered an innate ability to identify and target the issues. I burned no bridges, found out the strengths and weaknesses of myself as a host and my stand-ins, and was confidently able to (somewhat) gracefully work out the kinks for the next show. Its an odd feeling accumulating peers in the industry you want to be a part of. I have invested so much of myself into this that I don't want to let anyone down, but I'm also only piecing together my identity in this capacity. I think my best advice to myself (and to you readers if you feel you have some use for it) is that the best answer is usually the one that leaves you feeling like you can walk away from the question smiling, or at least not frowning. This may sound cliche or useless but so far its been a fantastic yardstick. I imagine myself deciding how to talk to the owner or the bar, or the act who didn't get to go on, and I am reminded of my father.

He says the best answer is the simplest one. He also spent the first few years running his restaurant having as much wont for the place to feel like a family as to function like a business. This is both the peak of our strengths and the most difficult of our faults. The nature of his, and my, endeavours is rooted in people and community. He and I have such desire to please everyone around and to befriend the world that we aren't taken seriously or given the respect we might feel we deserve. The is little room for cold, calculating business at an open stage show, or a family restaurant. We both needed to learn how much of it to inject in to run our figurative shows as best we can. I don't want to become the hosts I've seen who slot their friends in, sling their band' merch like drugs and can't plan enough time into their breaks to thank their performers and staff at the venue. I also have to maintain a standard of professionalism with my colleagues, and set my prices accordingly. All of this takes thought, instinct and attention. This weekend I learned how to put things in place, let them go, and debrief with an eye toward where to go next.

I suppose if I'd made it up to the lake and sat on the dock with my feet in the water and a beer in my hand, I might have intellectualized all this. But living it out in the city might have been what I needed, more than a getaway. The show went on, the tunes were good, my hosts got to really push themselves and had a blast, and I got there at last call in time to hear all of this after spending an amazing night celebrating love with the man who had so much to do with this show happening from the start. Why would I want to getaway from that?

What Else Could I Be?

All apologies. Its been a month nearly and I suppose my journal has also suffered with my life so full of stuff. I wonder if it bodes well for readers of blogs that when they get something from us it's when our lives have calmed enough to see us type them up. But this reflecting aside, there is much to explore on the front of what else I could be, other than a foppish quoter of lyrics. Raise your hand if you saw it coming.

I could have been a teacher, although right now I AM in some capacity. He knows three chords already! But my real aim here was to take the two things I am most in love with right now and put one in the hands of the other. Like all teachers, my end game is a relatively selfish one. It must be an ancient animal instinct to want to see a man holding/using/building something out of wood. Us ladies can't seem to resist a man splitting a log, carting a little one in a wagon, or playing a guitar. The command of an instrument is not unlike the taming of an animal. Its magnificent and sexual to watch somebody masterfully (or adorably stumblingly) use an instrument that mystifies, excites, and eludes them.

I could have been an erotic novelist.

There was room in my head a long time ago for social work or psychiatry. If there were such a specialist willing to desert themselves in the most vivid and terrifyingly cerebral landscape: the artist's mind. Everyone else who I would deal with would surely leave after one diagnoses. I don't agree with the idea of normal, and generally speaking people seek out the comfort of that title. I would be happy to tell every patient they were functionally f*cked up and let them go on, with some guidance perhaps on how to deal with the un-crazies they'd unfortunately encounter in our sometimes very plain world.

I could have been a philosopher. And I'm by no means money-hungry, but this kind of a gig is really only lucrative if you have an empire who funds your work while you graze in fields all day and converse with civilians in the streets to rouse some heady dialogue. And for this, it would need to be both a very different political system, and probably also 400 BCE.

Failed scientist, mathematician and engineer are also career options for me. I guess right now I'm failing excellently at these, and will count them in the win column.

But for today, it seems, I have lined up two co-hosts for this week's open mic which I won't be able to attend, and it has become a symbolic moment for me. If I can create something that can't be easily measured or contained, whose future is unpredictable and whose potential is immense and completely dependent of my own efforts, I can do a lot of things in this lifetime.

I can run it into the ground, or I can run away from it, or I can just run. Just run it. There's still time for me to be all kinds of else.