2012-04-24 - 12:23 p.m.
Hello there! How art thou? (Who am I even talking to? Surely no one actually reads this anymore. If you do. . . damn man, I admire your patience.)
Well, it's been more than three years since I last checked in here. That's a little disturbing, because it doesn't really seem like all that much time has passed. Oh, things have certainly changed, a hell of a lot of things have changed, but it still feels like I just recently did an arbirtrary Diaryland update. It certainly seems sooner than March 2009, good god y'all.
But you know what, as strange as that seems, even stranger is this - today marks the ten-year anniversary of this blog. My very first Diaryland entry was April 24, 2002, ten years ago today. Now that's pretty unfathomable. For all the same reasons too - sure, it seems like a completely different lifetime, and in fact the two years contained within these fertile online walls document a whole slew of changes and developments in and of themselves, but it still doesn't seem right that it started ten years ago. For example, if I jumped back another ten years, to late April 1992, and charted the decade between those two dates, it would be pretty ridiculous the amount of stuff that went down (1996-1999 especially). Lots has happened in the last ten years of course, but I don't feel all that different. I guess that's the main thing. I don't feel terribly different today than I did in April 2002. I'm just. . . ten years older. . . good lord.
But I digress! Things are good! Things are very, very different (though not too different - I'm still a male, for instance), but things are very good. I'm still in Minneapolis. Still living the life of a musician - standard not-tremendously-exciting day job, balanced by a whole slew of tremendously rewarding gigs and circumstances. I do still have my own music, but lately, I haven't been focusing on that as much as I've been working as a sideman to other projects. I'm a full-fledged member of Art Vandalay (keys) and The Federales (drums), the latter of whom just had their first gig last night, as part of a big tour sendoff for The 4onthefloor. I also sit in pretty regularly with Mother Banjo (more on that later), and a wonderful songwriter named Jaspar Lepak. She's about to move to Seattle, so that'll be one less thing, but I'm sure something else will take its place. I also play a weekly church gig at Our Spiritual Center (think UU only not quite so hippie-professor-ish), and my friend Brandon and I are co-hosting a monthly songwriter series at the Beat, entitled Songwriters And Storytellers. It's a lot, but it's wonderful. After years of being so discouraged, with practically everything related to being a musician (promotional woes, lackluster band members, and my own personal misgivings about cover bands and the stifled local scene), it's been so great and refreshing to reach a point where music is just plain fun again. I love supporting other artists, it's a thrill to think that I can help them achieve their musical vision, to add whatever I can (be it percussion, keyboards, or harmony vocals). I've met so many interesting people, all of whom are also in it just to make a little money and have a lot of fun. I can't tell you exactly what changed, but it was gradual, and I'm grateful it happened.
Rainey and I never got married. We had a lot of slow-boiling, constant issues between us, which I could never quite overcome, and after two postponements and her move back to Iowa, we pretty much coasted to a halt earlier this year. It's sad, I hate being an asshole in any situation and I'm sure I came off that way here, but I also know we're better off our separate ways, and I hope she knows that too. Anyway, I'm now seeing a wonderful woman named Ellen who plays the banjo and writes songs and hosts a radio show and directs publicity for a kickass record label (Red House), and who I'm very happily involved with.
And no matter what, much like my musical endeavors, for the first time in years, maybe the first time since I moved up to Minnesota, I just feel alive. I always worried I'd have to have everything in my life figured out by the time I was 30. Things would be settled, perhaps the music would be over, I'd be working a solid career and that would make me feel good. I'm not sure why I thought that, I think because that's how old my mom was when I was born, it was this silent deadline I was holding myself to, and the closer it approached, the more anxious I got. Now, I realize, that was all in my head, and I should never sacrifice the things that fuel my personality and muse just because I'm 31. I don't think we're ever supposed to turn into shells of our former selves, and I certainly don't think we should do it a quarter of the way through life. That's ridiculous. And man, I'm just happier now than I was the last time I wrote. Even if everything isn't going how I'd like it to, or if there are things I wish I could have but don't, what matters most is, more often than not, I feel happy. And alive. And real. And that's very important to me.
Anyway. I'm amazed and delighted this Diaryland account still exists. Nobody I know of uses this anymore. I'm not even sure if anyone I know blogs regularly. I certainly don't. I really lost interest in late 2004, and tried picking it up in small fits and starts, but never got the consistency back. But I'm glad it's here, especially the further away I get from that time period - the two years documented on this account were really special. I consider them my formative years, the time I first moved away from home, and got to experience a tremendous deal of culture, music, arts, etc, that I keep with me to this day. Almost all of my favorite music is stuff I first heard during this time period. Most of my favorite bad jokes hail from the Olive St. apartment. Those were the years I learned to sing out, and wrote a lot of great songs (some of which I still play today), and made a lot of wonderful friendships. I guess you never quite know, but I have a feeling I'll always look back on the last two years at UNI as the standard I'll measure most other experiences against. That's not supposed to be defeatist or pessimistic - it's just the truth, those were two extremely golden years, and almost everything I continue to do, I owe to that era. And as a bonus, I have this Diaryland, to keep it all encased in a little time capsule. It starts just before I move away from home, and it ends just before I move to Minneapolis. My next blog is far stranger and bipolar, since that move really shook me, and it took a long time to feel settled. I'll still go back and read both, to be honest. But if I want to really jaunt back in time, and lose myself in the heady days of UNI and Olive Street, Cucumber Soul and random adventures with Leah or Q or Justin or Katie T or Brooke, double breves with hazelnut, lunch at Hong Kong and evenings at Rudy's and the Lava Lounge, frenetic Saturday mornings at Cup of Joe, percussion ensemble concerts and juries, random trips to Iowa City to see my brother sing or catch a show at Gabe's, nights wasted to making mixtapes for my friends, and of course, the occasional study session or midterm paper - if that's what I'm going for, you're sure to find me here. As I was, ten years ago today.
Take care, effer-buddy.
