It's All About Relationships

2010-12-23T05:17:00.001-05:00

Early start to a powerhouse day. CTM presentation at 530am! www.crossternal.com

2010-12-21T09:14:00.001-05:00

the lunar eclipse was great. see pics!

2010-12-20T21:01:00.001-05:00

Hope to see all my local networking friends at the MGCA networking lunch / holiday party Tuesday Dec 21. http://bit.ly/f72ikr

2009-11-05T05:45:00.001-05:00

Reminder: Steven Greene invited you to join Facebook...

2009-10-03T23:26:00.001-04:00

Reminder: Steven Greene invited you to join Facebook...

2009-09-03T08:01:00.001-04:00

Traffic... Annoying

2009-09-01T10:35:00.001-04:00

Hi lydthd@ping.fm,

I set up a Facebook profile where I can post my pictures, videos and events and I want to add you as a friend so you can see it. First, you need to join Facebook! Once you join, you can also create your own profile.

Thanks,
Steven

To sign up for Facebook, follow the link below:
http://ping.fm/uzM1r

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2009-08-31T13:54:00.001-04:00

The car wash. So clean and so effcient is the car wash. Why doesn't everyone use a carwash?

2009-08-30T20:37:00.001-04:00

Decisions decisions. Always something to decide

2009-08-30T20:25:00.001-04:00

Nearly the end of august

2009-06-21T07:30:00.001-04:00

fathers day.

2009-06-20T17:15:00.001-04:00

discovery...

2009-06-20T06:49:00.001-04:00

only rained 2 hours yesterday...

2009-06-19T08:56:00.001-04:00

TFIPF... rain is ok.

The day of Friday

2009-06-19T08:55:00.001-04:00

The day of friday.. the end of the week, the beginning of the weekend... an end and a beginning.

2009-06-19T08:53:00.001-04:00

nine straight days of rain... will it be ten?

2009-06-19T08:11:00.001-04:00

from ping... multiplying the powerhouse!

chapter 4

2009-06-02T07:22:00.000-04:00

4

I first got into the whole thing a long time ago. Just sitting and thinking. Not even in a meditative or Zen way. Just relaxing the mind. A purity of just being. All this thought gave you a developed sense of control. When things around you seem to speed up and get out of control, most people react with tenseness and stress and make mistakes in judgement. The trained mind unwinds, steps back and views everything from a different perspective. Slower, more deliberate, more casual somehow. Delibrate. Being able to control the mind and the emotions had its advantages. An advantage that I might have used to my advantage, if I had only thought of it when I needed it the most.
There is a lull before a performance. A calm before the storm as it were. You have to focus and get in touch with yourself, and, yet open up at the same time. Thoughts come back. It's acting really. You have to be happy and entertain, regardless of how you really feel. It's an acquired skill. Some people can't do it at all. They carry everything around with them all the time. Performers just don't have that luxury, but life for us would be a lot easier if they did.
I had about a forty five minutes before I had to start. Time could pass slowly at this point. Usually, I'd make a set list, but not for a while. Didn't make an sense anymore. I would never follow it. Instead I just made a list of all the songs I knew and kept it on the stage. It was really nice at first, nice and neat and done up on the computer in 72 point arial font and put in a plastic sheet for longevity. I'd just scan it from time to time to get ideas, and of course, I took all the requests that I could. I tried to do at least half original material, but sometimes, especially late in the night when your playing for a mostly drunk crowd, you tend to do mostly cover material. Give them want they want, and leave them wanting a little more, simple, and the only real key to success in this music business.
I stared at the notebook/journal in front of me. I was sitting at the table that the girls and the foreign guys had been sitting at. I thought about writing something. I really had to write more, to chronicle things. To get the ideas on paper. The book would come, the short stories, everything would come with time as long as I was consistent with the writing. And yet, now I stared at the notebook, I went over to the bar and got a beer. Sam Adams. Might as well get the good stuff, it was part of my pay after all. I walked around the room and looked out the window. It looked like a quiet night, not many people on the street for this hour. It was one of the first cool nights of the year and maybe that was keeping people in. There was a football game today and maybe the tailgate parties got everyone too drunk and they were taking the early evening naps gearing up for the big evening blow out... Who knows?
I looked at the stores and the bars across the street. I started to walk to the front door just to take a look outside, but I decided just to sit down and relax and wait. Waiting was hard, that was well documented by lots of people. Right now, I was experiencing why.
Again, I stared at the journal. The edges splintered and torn. This book had been through so much. All the travels of the past four years, all the ups and down. It knew things that no one else had ever known, about me, about life, about things in general. I opened it up to a random page and read. Sometimes when I was driving I'd dictate into a cassette and transctbe it later. This appeared to be one of those entries.
...I drove into the sunrise. Somewhere near Charlotte NC. Or maybe we were still in Georgia, I don't know now. Somewhere near but not close. Just another exit on an anonymous interstate through the haze of the early morning. I was coming over a bridge and the crescent of the sunrise was highlighting the warehouses and run down buildings along a river. Black buildings against an orange and pink sunrise sky, and in a pure sense, quite pretty actually. Silohetted. The structures seemed to be long ago deserted and left to rot and be looted and broken into. I could even see the sun through the empty windows. Scrap buildings. Square and unimaginative in their architecture. Dark and impersonal, functional buildings. Not designed to be pretty, designed for purpose, one thing and one thing only. Maybe at one time this part of the city was a thriving port and these buildings were important to the local economy. For all I know they still are, but they don't look like it. They have large windows and large doors, and, in the sunrise, they take on an eerie overbearing form. Orange penumbra of the sunrise in the background, bringing the hope and melody textures of a new day. Just beyond the warehouses is only the sky. Blue. And today a few clouds. Just a few. Then, only the openness and the far away, and the infinite.
I had plenty of time to think. Everyone else is asleep. Everyone doesn't care anyway. Not their thing. They are too busy with the daily rituals that is life on the road. Looking for places to eat. It's not so easy along the highway to find a place that 9 people with varied eating habits like to stop at. Arguing about where and when to stop and eat. Looking for places to go to the bathroom. Arguing about places to go to the bathroom. Looking for things to read. Not caring about what anyone else was reading. Looking for the Penthouse that somehow left in their suitcase and is now stowed away somewhere. Looking for their smoke to ease the boredom. Trying to share but at the same time be sure that you had enough. Listening to tapes of our shows and other shows and arguing about what to listen to.. Evaluating, overevaluating everything. Let it flow. Plenty of time. Let the time dilute everything. It always does anyway. The stimulus is there all the time.
We have at least 50, 60 miles until the next stop. I wasn't tired but my mind was fried. Up since 5 the previous morning. A little hungover from the consumption of the previous night. I little spacey. Sleepy, but not ready or able to be asleep. Afraid I guess of what I might dream. In a good state of mind, but a bad situation to create. If I had a guitar in my hands right now, I might even write a good song. Maybe a sad song and probably a meaningless song. A song that someone somewhere out there can relate to because it's also happened to them".
The notebook is hard to use when your driving, that's when the little tape recorder comes in handy. There were times I'd drive and one of the crew guys would act like a steno or something. Take dication. Lots of neat stuff come out that way. For one reason, I could just go off. At the same time, his couldn't write too quickly, or to legibily and things would get put down that were never said, but were cool anyway.
And I thought about all kinds of things. How horrible it was that mothers couldn't feed their babies; how sad it was that the same mothers later in life didn't care enough to see that the kids got to school. How it almost made me cry to hear about all the crime and the death and the intimidation our culture had but on each of us. It isn't so easy to just "be" anymore. You have to always be on the look out, you have to have someone looking out for your back. Making sure that you're not getting taken advantage of. Not going to lose it all for some cheater who only wants to take the easy way out. What ever, that was the sad part.
These were big problems. I had my own little problems to deal with just like everyone else. I had lots of bills. I had a rent for a place that I rarely ever used, and of course food and car insurance and all that stuff. It all added up. And the inside didn't always cut it. More bills then the deposit that went in the account. It was expensive being on the road. Paying for every meal, staying in hotels most nights, gas, everything.
More or less my financial situation was like anyone else, a function of how the cash came in, versus the money that had to go out. I didn't really care about the bills, but I didn't like the hassles that I got when I wasn't able to or simply didn't pay them, and the fact was that I was honest and tried to pay on time. As of course, like everything else, I had my philosophies about the whole thing. Money and greed was the root of a lot of the problems. You couldn't be a true artist and worry about money. They could not exist in the same place at the same time. The suffering and struggling artist transmuting pain and anguish into things of beaury...
But truth be known, the problems were simply that we all didn't make enough money and the lack of it is what put me in the hole. I could still philosophize all I wanted with a big wad in my pocket or my bank account.
You can always fake poverty, but it's tough to fake affluence.
And I had acquired a lot of things, like guitars and materials to support the music of course, and I had to have them of course, and them I had my tape decks and notebooks and my "life tools". In the big ledger sheet somewhere up there in sky, I felt that the bottom line was good to me... but I had no way of proving it.
I had little personal things to deal with too. Little things mostly, but the little things all added up. Seems like there were no medium size things in life. Just large and small, trite really. And so many what ifs... but that, is life. How different things would have been if I had gone to a different college, was born to different parents, or if I developed my skills like others, become a violinist , or an architect, or a steel worker, or a marine biologist, or a writer? or something else, anything, or a maybe, a prodigy of some kind.
These thoughts were somehow out of control now as I sat at the table waiting still. They weren't conscious decisions. They were handed to me, and I did with them what I could at the time, but for now I was forced to deal with them. I always had this rationalization if and when all else would fail, "It all worked out a certain way for a reason ". Everyone questions these things at one time or another I guess, at least I do. The raison d'être all that. Time... What if... what if... and the end result doesn't really matter, because you're where you are at the moment now anyway. Does it matter. It matters if you let it, if it's still a part of you, then it matters. At least where I leave it for now. So now, looking back, driving along at about the same speed as the early morning rush hour line of cars on either side of me, staying in my lane, avoiding hitting and being hit, I think back to the small ones, that made the big decisions what they become and how the time continuum would have been different.
I didn't want to limit myself to only one thing. That was too much. Had too many things to do and too many things to accomplish before the long long ride was over. The long long ride that is one lifetime. The short ride itself wasn't all that bad, but it was a ride that had to happen. You have to be able to get from one place to another so you might as well enjoy it. Sometimes you see a lot of interesting things just driving around. New places to eat, new places to drink, new sights to see, new things everywhere. On a nice day the sheer feeling of motion can carry you through the ride, and on the bad days, well, it can get really bad. And then there's commuting. Commuting can be an ugly word.
It was time that didn't really exist. Time that had to be devoted to something not really all that practical. Not useful time, mindless time, Time when you had your car, your tapes or your radio, and your out of key voice singing along, and, what's more, even the music was the same after a while, and the signs on the side of the road, and the other cars, and your scenery and your directions and your focus and, if you were lucky, a clear road ahead of you.
And I drove along, and at that point, suddenly, although it had been building for some time, I realized that, slowly and in a festering way, I had wasted so much time and so much energy. So much time and so much energy on things that meant nothing, then or now. I felt like pulling over to the side of the road and letting it all out, but I couldn't. That was an admission of guilt, of being wrong somehow (and that was too much of a defeat - now or forever) and I wasn't ready for that yet, just the realization was too much for now. The admission was something that had to be taken a little at a time before things could be "all right".. It was time to move on, but I had known that for a while. It was time to look back and take stock, but I knew that already too.
And I floored the accelerator in an attempt to leave it all behind on that bridge and move ahead to places that were warm and comfortable and safe, but the thoughts just kept coming faster and faster...
There was a time when living in the moment was de riguer. Everyone was doing it and it was the thing to do. If you wanted to be popular and cool, you lived in the moment. There were a lot of casualties from living in the moment. People who took it all to the nth degree and worried about nothing, let it all pass by, material, and interpersonal, until it didn't matter anymore. For that really was the point anyway, it really didn't matter. So many days and nights spent experimenting with what could be accomplished. Experimenting with the mind at large. Who's life was it anyway? And we all petered on. It was a weird combination of peer pressure, and peer motivation. We all helped each other drift. We all helped each other rationalize when things weren't going along as they should have. We all thought about what was right and wrong, but we made our own definitions as a very small social sect. But we could get any with it. We were the only ones that we had to answer to. No one would know or care. Who could know or care anyway? So why bother? That was the point of view, the prevailing point of view that me and all my friends had. And it was practical and it worked for all of us. In the isolated closed system that is college, in the microworld lies somewhere between thinking that you know everything and realizing that you know a lot but not enough, but then revising that to including now knowing enough PEOPLE, there is a fundamental truth that you either get, or at some point later in life, you get given to you whether you want it or not. And not always at the right time and place. I was lucky, I could see it coming, not everyone else I knew had the foresight to plan, or the foresight to anticipate, or the sheer strength to ignore all the signs. See, I had all the signs as plain as day, as clear as they could have ever been, and I just chose to ignore them. Up there were the air is clear and the sun never sets and the world is like a big piece of candy waiting to be swallowed, I didn't think things wouldn't always be as sweet as they were then, as sweet as they were those long summer days. Days that were so packed with energy and activity and results, that the sheer inertia carried you through onto new and higher things. See it all made sense at the time, and "at the time" was all that mattered.
So I looked across the highway, billboards everywhere, we were going right through Charlotte now, almost to the next exit, the next stop, someone else would take over the wheel. Thirty miles, just like that. Hidden in the distractions of the mind. Sometimes, when you have a lot on your mind, it fills the void that is created by the block of time itself.
You have to be there, you might as well be there doing two things at a time. I told myself that the world was round, I took that in faith. I wasn't sure whether it really matter if the world was round or not, it was just a fact that had a lot of peoples lives and beliefs together. That's all. Just a simple idea that everyone chose to believe for now and forever even before they could prove it, they believed it.
Sort of like the past, I have to believe it, even though I never lived it. Now I'm not sure why or how, but I did live it and in many ways I'm proud of what I did and proud of why I did it. Not that anyone knows or cares, but you have to have you're own little victories in life. You have to create your own battles and you have to win them. Every minute of every day. Without that you really don't stand much of a chance to get anywhere. You never have the chance to win.
I steered the van off the highway and after a few turns we were sitting in the parking lot of a Denny's. Denny's was OK, especially for breakfast, no one would complain. I woke everyone up and went inside and hit the bathroom. There were the usual profundities on the wall of the stall, but one, even now sticks in my mind. It was intended to refer to bodily wastes, but somehow, it also represented my thoughts at the time...

if it's yellow let it mellow
if it's brown flush it down

Suddenly, it was time for the show to start. It didn't matter that me and the bartenders were the only ones in the room. That didn't matter at all. It was time to start and that was the agreement, so I started.
I had been reading about traveling so I decided to start with one of my songs, Last Exit, usually I sang it fast, almost R&B style, but, to an empty room, at lower intensity, it came out more like a ballad...

I'm leaving the east coast and
heading out to the west coast
I don't know which one I want the most
All I know is that I want to be with you
And I've got to make that choice now
Wishing every turn off was the last exit home to you

I'm cruising Pennsylvania
Speeding through Ohio
Using up petroleum
just like it's beer I've been drinking
Driving stoned and bored
Wishing every turn off was the last exit home to you

Now I'm flying through the flatlands
dreaming about your soft hands
I drive into my daydream
I get caught doing 91
State trooper says,
"You're in a heap of trouble son"
Wishing every turn off was the last exit home to you

Now I've been with you on the west coast,
but now I miss you on the east coast,
just when I get my roots set,
I hear the road call,
and life can be so lonely
Wishing every turn off was the last exit home to you

Home to you...

chapter 3

2009-06-01T16:31:00.001-04:00

3

I felt down and a little sad thinking about all the things gone past. They had been some good times... I wanted to filter out all the bad and keep just the good. Have it on demand just when I wanted it.That's what I really wanted to do... save the good. But, it just isn't that simple.
The conversation at the table now came back into my ears. They were ten feet away and I could only hear the guys talking. It was the usual banter of New Brunswick... Buses, the stupid buses, they are so cold in the winter and so hot in the summer. Did it matter? Divestment from South Africa, what could I person really do? Tuition increases... Building a new football stadium while there weren't enough classrooms for everyone?... The university had it easy. Most students were only there for four years. By the time they got active, they were usually sophmores or juniors and they'd only have a year or two left in school. Many would drop out somewhere along the way and stay in town and try it that way, but generally it was all temporary. The school had been around for 300 years, a bunch of students carrying signs wasn't really going to change anything.
That was the band too in some ways. Business, a lot of people would go to benefit concerts, regardless of the cause. There was some group I can't remember which now which would show porno movies and donate the money to some radical cause... freedom for the Contras in El Salvador, something like that... and they'd pack them in... the business of the protesters was attracting attention really.
Personally, I didn't really care at the time, and I cared even less now. Activism wasn't really my thing although the band had done a number of environmental cause benefits and as one point I had even written a song about acid rain to the tune of Purple Rain. Once I wrote a letter to the school newspaper about student protests. The point is that the band some how became the main attraction at many of the parties and assemblies and benefits that were held to raise money for all these causes. And we did so many gigs in a short amount of time that it solidified our local following once and for all.
But, this was when it all distilled out, for me, myself, and the promotion of the band. I had my own personal problems and concerns, and the band had its own agenda. More so, I hadn't picked up many girls demonstrating outside the Old Queens building trying to convince the Board of Trustees not to raise tuition. But playing benefits... everyone is so thankful. "It is so nice of you to be here, is there anything we can do for you". "Well now that you mention it". Maybe I was just selfish. Maybe I had my own agenda. What's the difference, nothing ever changed from the protests and the benefits. The University did not divest in countries that did something with South Africa. The whole thing now seems like a passing fad.
The girls appeared to watch attentively as the guys talked. Probably some engineering talk or something like that. 'yes you see the parabola reflects the ultimate arc of the scalar vectors and that is where the source point is...' at least that's what it sounded like he was saying. The other two nodded in agreement and the girls drank their drinks sort of looking at them, sort of looking around. One yawned. And one was really cute, beautiful infact, and I found myself staring at her ...
Just as I thought I was making eye contact with her, she got up and went over to the bar to get another drink. My eyes followed her all the way to the bar. She was awfully nice to look at. I caught myself and glanced over at the table to see if they noticed. They didn't seem to care. The second girl was talking about the correct way to steam rice. They laughed.
"What a party!", one of the guys yelled.
"We've done it", his friend bellowed. The girl at the table hugged them both simultaneously. The girl at the bar looked over and looked back and yelled "Easy". The guys laughed some more.
"This is a great party." They banged their bottles together and drank.
New Brunswick is a big melting pot, although still fundamentally a small New Jersey city. It's reached down to the most basic level of heterogenity here at this table in this cafe. That is what I thought.
When I finished my master's I put on one of the biggest most protracted parties I'd ever seen. Four straight days anyone and everyone who wanted to stopped by the house to pay their regards. Just don't show up empty handed. And the collection of intoxicants that passed through the house and my system those 96 hours was a virtual pharmacopoeia of recreational chemicals. Lots of relaxing. Lots of a lot of things. Very little true recollection of any details. But still, infinite volumes could be written about that lost long weekend, but never were and never will be. The only thing significant now is that it was the first time that I played the guitar and the keyboards in the same gig with the band. It was also the first time we played "Road of Life" - my biggest 'hit'. We played it at the third day of the party in the back yard while people milled around and no one really listened. I passed out in the hammock in the back with Shari. My arm fell asleep so completely that I lost feeling my my entire arm for 3 hours.... But that was a another story.
So I looked over at their party, and well, it the party as they were throwing it just wasn't cutting it by these standards. But these were different times. And these were different people. I would have taken a celebration up at lest a few levels.
After I finished setting up the wires on the stage and it was time to do a sound check. Hey ladies and gentlemen, test 1-2-3 check 1-2-3 click click... so annoying to the audience, so essential to the performer. The grad students looked up and noticed. No one else did.
"Anything you'd like to hear", I asked them, "soundcheck time."
At first they didn't say anything. They were heavy into their conversation now. Something about the welfare system, I don't know. I asked again, this time into the mic. The sound system had a lot of reverb on it and the want to hear...want to hear...want to hear echoed a few times.
"D'yu know Brown Eyed Girl? You know, Von Morresun?" the Indian guy said with an Indian guy accent.
They broke into a chorus, "Yooooo - oooo my brown eyed girl", laughing. Maybe the alcohol had more of an effect than I thought.
I knew the song and after some fiddling with the electronics, I started playing. I did most of the chorus and they sang along. The girls with the parents looked over. They didn't seem all that happy about a table of five graduate students, all drunk on 2 beers, all singing off key and disturbing their dinner. They looked at me unappreciatively. The grad students were having a good time. Of course, none of them knew all the words and by the middle of the second verse it fell apart, and I went into the chorus again and finished.
I stood up and waved my hand at them, summoning the non-crowd to show their appreciation. Like when a famous guest star comes on stage for a cameo appearance or when the conductor directs the applause to the audience.
The two girls and the parents barely looked over. At that moment they were quiet, after a second, they went back to what they were doing, which was probably discussing the daughters student loan, or upcoming exam, or something serious and academic.
The table in front of me clapped and yelled among themselves. They were partying now. I was glad, I wanted to meet the girl with the great walk..
"Sound OK?" I asked. They nodded.
"Oh yes. Very nice", the Chinese girl said.
"Staying for the show, starts in about an hour."
"Must be going, have a party to go to.", said the American girl I wasn't interested in anyway. She was putting on her coat. A winter coat in fact. It struck me that today was one of first cold days of the fall., chilly and windy. It reminded me of playing soccer in high school and the first chill that you felr when you took off your swear suit right before running out onto the field just as the game was about to begin. It wasn't that cold, but too cold to be out without a coat, and certainly a sign that it was going to be a while before it was 85 again. A lot of the frat boys would still wear shorts and be manly, but the girls, ah, it would be while before I'd see my next bare midriff walking down College Avenue.
The other girl was so cute, and the ski jacket looked nice on her. As she stood up I noticed her overall look. Guatemalan pants, a dark pattern, a cotton shirt, a pale yellow, which as quickly as I noticed it, she covered with her jacket. . She had long dark blond hair and as she tossed it over the collar of her jacket, I noticed her earrings. I had a friend who made earrings and I asked her where she had gotten them.
She had gotten them at a craft show somewhere that she didn't remember. I told her about Suzy (the earring and bead maker), and she said she'd like to see her work. I told her Suzy'd probably be back at the show selling (which was true). Her friends were waiting for her at the door by now, and ever so briefly we made eye contact. It was only a split second, but it was long enough for me to have my first look into her blue eyes. As she walked out she gave me some hope..."Really enjoyed your song, maybe we'll come back later." She waved. "See ya..."
Of course I didn't expect to see her again, or any of them. It was a standard remark, like saying you'll be back to buy something in a retail store. I mentioned my tapes for sale, and again maybe when they came back.

A haiku for U

If it were easy
to say things that I felt for
you, i would do it.

Chapter 2

2009-06-01T14:48:00.000-04:00

2

I sat backstage at the Slide Rule. A sometimes hip restaurant / bar and for the night my place of employment. It was very quiet now. They had served dinner, but it had been relatively slow for a Saturday. That had nothing to do with me, I was just there to play into the night, but somehow the manager gave me a look that made me feel like I should be responsible. I wasn't and I didn't feel that way. Sort of the reverse of the guy in Billy Joel's Piano Man - it wasn't such a good crowd for a Saturday, and the manager didn't give me a smile for the people you see only wanted what they could get for free, and forget about life for a while...
I had the gig for a while now, a few weeks, steady. The nights all ran into eachother. But I started right after school started up in September. I didn't make much money, but I didn't care. It more than paid the rent, and I looked at it as being paid to practice. It was a 5 night a week gig too. Wednesday through Saturday. Every week. This was more than most of the local musicians were making or playing. Since I stopped working full time with the band, this was a good in between, it kept me in the music, and it kept me in some money, I got to meet a lot of local people who I'd gotten out of touch with while I was doing a lot of touring, I was somewhat of a local celebrity, I new a lot of the people that usually came to hang out, I felt comfortable, and, well, it was fun. I guess, for now, it gave me some identity.
I knew most of the bartenders pretty well and they gave me more free drinks than the agreement that I had with the manager allowed. Most were college guys, just working to make some extra cash, some were going no where (like me?) just doing this for now, and a few were girls. Always a nice plus. There was one that I was attracted to and we used to flirt all the time. After hours we'd sit at the bar and do shots. I didn't think she had any interest in me. Within the context of the bar it was fine for us to flirt and talk about sexual things, like the last time we'd gotten laid (lies) or how drunk we were the night before. Outside of the bar, it was an entirely different relationship. Almost like the other one didn't exist.
One of the bartenders Patti, who I openly joked with about "everything" while she was behind the bar, completely blew me off when I had tried to pick her up at a party the weekend before. It was like our lives only intersected inside of the bar even though we lived less than a mile apart. What do you know?
For me, this was life post-band, PB. I was into that scene for 8 long and exciting and very draining years. The band had gotten bigger and bigger and pretty soon it was bigger than could be controlled and when that happened, the fun all went out of it. Like a balloon looks like a month after it sits in a corner; sriveled and deformed. The record company and all the pressure they put on us was the stake in the heart. Forever. It became worse than a job really. Even putting out the records didn't seem to help. By the time they came out to me they were ancient history. We'd record an album in 1986 and it would come out in 1989. Some of the songs on the album were out of the repertoire by then. I still hadn't resolved all my "issues" with this period in my like. In fact, that was one of the reasons I was playing here. Gave me time to sort things out I guess. I don't know how much sorting I was really getting done, but I do know that I had to time to do the sorting.
At any rate, I liked playing here. I didn't feel any pressure. I didn't want any pressure. And it gave me enough to hang out during the day and work on my music and my writing and my yoga and my running.
Despite all the objections from family and friends about wasting my life and my education and my talents, it was what I wanted to do. I was happy. I had enough. I had friends. I had places I could work for a day or two at a time if things really got tight (which they sometimes did), a deli where I could make a few sandwiches or flip egg sandwiches in return for lunch, and a pizzeria where I could deliver food in return for lunch or dinner and a few bucks. And I got to network... I had something mom. Really, I had a scene...
Friends. I had a lot of friends. People I liked to hang out with. People who I thought understood me and my ways. buddies. Guys to watch the football games with. To drink beer with in bars and in living rooms. Girls who acted like guys. Now this is totally a male perspective, but it is my perspective and in some ways I got along with better with girls who could just sit around and be themselves, not hung up on things...
I had a few women who'd put me up and make me dinner and take care of me in a pinch. Part time lovers. Nothing more. People who I could go on walks with. Places I could stay when the nights were cold and long. Stops on the road of life where there was a warm smile and a backrub, and more, if I was lucky. I didn't want anymore than that right now. Things had gotten so weird with Shari that I just couldn't support anything to emotionally expensive right now. It was 6 months already. But, nothing was changing my mind, yet...
The right person would fix everything, I was sure of that. Questions was, where was she? I'd never get a girl who needed a lot of money spent on her, but right now, I would have found it difficult to spend any emotion on her either.
So at the Slide Rule, I got dinner, and beers all the time I was playing, and all the beer I could sneak for my friends who came down. That depended on who was tending bar. The owners girlfriend of the month was bad for getting away with much, but the college kids liked me and didn't like the boss and didn't care anyway. It wasn't their money or their beer. (It's a sad day in your life when you realize that you have to be responsible for the things you do) At the end of the night - fifty bucks begrudgingly from the owner and maybe another thirty in tips, that was up to the crowd.
You'd collect the tips during the set breaks. "Well we'll be passing around a hat now for the struggling artist performer." Or maybe you'd want to buy one of these tapes, all original stuff, good stuff, really. And I'd always sell one or two, that was nice.
There were two breaks in the night. I'd try to time it so my set would end when the crowd was peaking in size to maximize the tips. Unfortunately this also sometimes had the effect of deflating an enthusiastic crowd and having a lot of them leave and go somewhere else. It was a fine line you had to walk. Personally material gain versus art and energy and the intangibles.
Of course the owner couldn't have cared less about the tips and bitched when I stopped at what he thought was the wrong time, but that was his problem. I did pretty much what I wanted to anyway. Depended on the night. There was a lot of freedom in those days before I started to take everything so seriously again.
If I went around myself and got the tips, I'd make a certain amount. If one of my drunks and disorderly friends went around and asked for them I'd make less. If a nice looking girl would do it, I'd make more. The math was really quite simple even at this level.
That's where Julie, sweet Julie, came in handy. If only I wasn't so friendly with Glen... At any rate, the nights would usually go fast and I'd play to the crowd, mostly what they wanted to hear, requests, just me and my guitar and my effects boxes. I'd play songs that they knew and songs that they didn't know, and ones that I wrote. I wrote a lot of songs back then. Before things got so crazy again.
And usually I had a good time, a real good time. Of course, that was up to me.
It was nice and crowded some times. The nights my friends would come down was always a good crowd, a hard drinking crowd to, the kind a bar owner likes. But usually it was just another stop along the bar hopping main drag called Easton Avenue. With bars and restaurants on both sides of the streets for six blocks and college kids and local kids flowing back and forth, night after night in search of nirvana and a new face that somehow had eluded them every other night they had done the same thing - the sloppy buzz, the perfect kiss, - if they were lucky, a story that they could tell their friends later that was true.
The Slide Rule could have done very well. It had the location, it had the ambiance, a loud section for the times you wanted to let loose, celebrate something, a quiet section for just you and your date, or the times you needed to get away from the crowd and talk about something important, decenct food, and of course, alcohol. Unfortunately, the owner was basically a greed driven ass who refused to cater to the clientele who had many a lot of others around town successful, the students.
But on weekends, the owner insisted on charging a cover charge despite none of the other bars on the street charging one, and casual onlookers would pass it by because of that. So often, pretty girls would peak there heads in, ready to sit down and listen to me play. I knew it, I could sense it in there faces, and they'd be turned away by the doorman asking for the measly dollar that the owner insisted on, or his stupid PT Barnum rap.... ''We got him, super guitar player famous songwriter, star of The Reason (my band), best songwriter in town. The guys going places and you can say you saw him here first. This stuff isn't free you know. That's right, here are the Slide Rule, we support the arts and local musicians and everything." It was a lot of rhetoric. In truth, as it goes with all businesses, the bottom line is just that, the bottom line. Decisions were never made for the sake of art, the dollar ruled. Always did and always will.
And now there were just a few couples in the main dining area, mostly college age kids, and a table of graduate students (slightly older than college students) sitting right next to the small stage where I had moved to adjust the sound system and fix my equipment. Another table with a few girls and two older people who I supposed were one of the girls parents. Up on a big Saturday night taking the little girl and her roomie out to dinner.
The grad students laughed pretty often. They talked, even though it was quiet, I couldn't tell exactly what they were saying, I gathered that one had just finished defending their thesis and they were out celebrating. At least celebrating as they defined it.
It was a typical group of Rutgers grad students. Different nationalities. A mini-UN and a few Jersey girls. Laughing at the common things that the students laugh at. The lousy bus system, the lack of fun things to do (in fact quite untrue), who was dating who, how they thought that so and so was going to get together with so and so, but they never did, and who liked who and all that.
When I was in school, which was only a few years ago, though now it seemed like a long time, these were the same complaints and the same profonditities. I had spent four years in undergrad in Lancaster Pennsylvania (that's another story in and of itself). It was a time of growing and developing. College, and the college years taught me what I needed to know about life. Maybe I didn't have the grades to show it, at least not what I was capable of if I had put the nose to the grindstone, but I got by. Good enough to make it to graduate school at a major university with a full assistship which covered most of my costs including tuition.
School itself was actually pretty easy, but time consuming. And I spent a lot of time in the lab doing a research project on histidine metabolism and taking classes with titles like - "Nutrition: Biochemical and Physiological Basis" and I learned a lot. I even published a few scientific peer review type papers. The next time your in a medical library check out The European Journal of Pharmacology, Vol 37B, No. 6, pages 345- 351. _____________________. I liked being in school. When the time came to start looking around for jobs, or doctoral programs, I decided to stay put and do some more work for Rutgers. This was the safest and easiest choice afterall, and one that was surely the least resistance. There was no stretching of my comfort zone, and I was minimizing the unknowns. And frankly, I needed the money and the security.
Well, that lasted a few years as I got more and more into my music. I played the guitar and keyboards and sang and wrote songs. Lots of songs. More than 200 in fact. Some were really lousy, but a few, were really strong. I spent hours playing scales and exercises on my front porch as I watched the world go by with a blank stare. People would stop and listen sometimes and I started to make a whole new set of friends. Some of them were in fact excellent musicians and they'd bring their own instruments over and we'd play. All night sometimes. There was one summer just spent out there every night on the porch. The cover charge was a six pack, preferably good beer, but we took what we could get. The world was very insulated for me at this point, and I valued the things that I had. I had everything I needed and I was stable.
I liked writing the songs the most. And I wrote a lot of them. Some were really awful and stupid. Some were actually quite good. I'd play them over and over and the porch crowd got to know them and like them. And slowly, more and more people were showing up and hanging around. It was more fun than a bar, and cheaper, and it was so nice just to sit outside on a summer night in the open air. And amazingly, that entire summer, the cops didn't hassle us even once.
There was a bar in town that had a weekly open stage night. on Monday nights. You would just go and sign up and play for 15 or 20 minutes, sometimes longer. There were nights that the only people there were the people playing so we didn't even bother going up to the stage, we'd just play at the tables since we were just playing to eachother anyhow. It was a great synergy, and the most productive and creative period of my life. We'd help each other with our songs and ideas and improvisations and styles and how to perform. It was like a little artist colony once a week.
And of course, with time the circle expanded outside the bar and many of my coffee house friends started hanging out on my porch as well. We'd write songs together that we called "group aural sex" and there were and still are a number of great songs that came out of the period of time. As the summer ended and the cold air blew in, we took the whole thing inside and the big living room of my house became the place. The gathering site for my expanding group of musical friends.
Soon, the music group became a travelling show alternating houses and apartments and it didn't take long for the whole thing to become a seven night a week hang one place or another. We'd play guitars, and bang on pots and pans for drums, and someone, I forget his name, actually had a really nice conga drum that he would bring, but he wouldn't ever let anyone else play it. Someone showed up for a few nights with a trumpet. And then a beautiful girl in a gauze shirt came one night with a harp. Ahh. My heart stopped. It was so soft and gentle that we had to play "molto pianissimo" (very soft) to hear her, but she could jam. Turned out she went to the art school and studied harp. I guess she was sort of slumming with us, the musical proletariate. The best part was that there were NO hang ups. No issues. We needed so little and we had so little. No one was concerned about anything... that sounds so nice right now...
And it was one of those otherwise indistinguishable nights that I first met Shari. At a party on Handy Street. She sat there swaying with a morocco or something while a bunch of us played. I kept looking at her and losing my place in the song. She had a constant smile on her face. And was she great looking. A sweet and innocent smile surrounded by sweet and innocent lips and sweet and innocent eyes. She wore a gauze shirt and a skirt. She had beaded earrings. The perfect "bohemian look". And we both had the same birkenstock arizona sandles. I still remember the electricity the first time we held hands...
There were a lot of really interesting and talented and very cool people who hung out in this group. Many were working "day gigs" and doing alright, and some were students and some were "bohos" and some were just there for the ride one day at a time. There was Chris who could have been a pro guitarist (he really was that good), but preferred just having fun with it while he finished his doctorate and was engaged to a girl also named Chris, and Shandy (who took his music much more seriously than everyone else), and who just put out a CD, and and TD (who we never really liked but always brought a lot of girls with him) and Donna and John (who later got married!) and Mellow Tom (who sang with his hand on his ear of all things - like Don Pardow on Laugh In) and mellow Tom's sister Annie (who was the quietest person I ever met who I tried to pick up the night I got the drunkest I ever did in my life (she said no thanks)), and Terry (the guy) and Terri (the girl) and Virginia Joe (our token biker) , and Jose and Blue Lew and some guy who was only ever known as Snow, and Everett (our token nerd), and Lee (who had a very lucrative day job and didn't play any music but bought way more than his fair share of beers), and Mona (who never showered) and Don (who also didn't jam but would bring his tape recorder and tape everything) and Kyra (who gave great backrubs) and Greg (who just disappeared one day and never came back) and Rena (who I always had a little bit of a crush on but never did anything about it) and Sue (who had a fantastic voice) and another Sue (who didn't have that great a voice and played the clarinet out of tune - she later switched to kazoo...) and yet another Sue (who later married Lee) and a couple of Leslies (one of them, I don't remember which now, is a congresswomen in the NJ state assembly) too, and on and on.
One of the guys, Mark, who hung out was in a band. They played aroung town and were doing pretty well. He came in one night and said that they needed someone to sit in for a few gigs since their regular keyboard player was going away. He was leaving, moving on to go to graduate school in Wisconsin. My ears perked up. It was something that seemed the natural evolution at the time. The next step, the next challenge.
I did the short series of gigs after we crammed to learn the 30 or so songs that the band played. Most were local, frat houses, and bars, but one was a party at a frat house in Ithaca. And can't remember how the whole thing got arranged now. We drove 6 hours to get there, played for 4 hours, partied the rest of the night and drove 7 hours home (we were tired). While we were there it was all new. People were nice to us. We were, and I use the term very loosely, Rock Stars. Celebrities. Guys brought us beers and other stuff, girls wanted to talk to me. What little sleep I got that night was on a VERY uncomfortable couch with a big rip in the fabrix was an unknown girl with her shirt unbuttoned next to me. The thing was, it was really fun. And it sealed my decision to join the band.
I also joined the band because I liked the other people in it. They were, at the time at least, my friends. We busted out butts and through a lot of ups and downs we started doing well. We went from playing local clubs and parties and fraternities to the Jersey
Shore (Bruuuuuuce) and the city and a Thursday here and there and all the sudden we were working full time hours, but for very part time money. There were weeks we'd pull in hundreds of dollars, and weeks we'd make almost nothing at all.
I had to decide whether to stay working at Rutgers or not. It was making it tough to go on road trips with the band, playing until 2 in the morning in Washington DC and driving all night to be in the lab by 8 am... then the same 6 hours the next night in Richmond, etc... I was getting so drained... so I just cut the cord and made the committment. At the time it seemed so natural. The Life.
The safety net was gone now. I had some money saved, but not enough of consequence. But it was a committment. It was do or die by music. I knew it was going to be fine, but I didn't know how long it would take.
I didn't even talk to anyone about the decision. I told my supervisor in the lab and she told me I was nuts, but accepted it. She said I'd be back in a month and that I may or may not have a job. I told all my friends and they thought it was great and were jealous. I asked myself what was really the right thing to do, and you know, I really wasn't sure, but it just felt right, and I always wanted to trust my intuition... and I was going to have so much fun... and Shari said it was OK. I could always stay with her ...
The band worked full time hours but didn't get paid full time pay at first. So, I had all sorts of odd jobs. Delivering pizza (cool), gave guitar lessons (which was fun), installing water sprinkler irrigation systems (good in the summer, sort of - too hot!), working as a lackey in a recording studio (seemingly cool, but really boring), mowing lawns (ugh), selling knives (only 3 days - double ugh), selling frozfruits at the beach (semi-cool), fixing bicycles (which I enjoyed), driving a delivery van for a flower store (don't even remember anything about it now)... all of them seem so remote now. Did you really ever happen? Now and then, I ask myself that and sort of laugh, sort of...
Surprisingly, music business people started taking some notice in the band. Through a lot of effort, and a lot of legwork, we got signed to a record contract. We started working on the first album and touring a lot more. And a lot further.
Sometimes we'd be away for weeks. All over the country. The south, the northeast, the midwest, the west coast, back to the south, to lots of tiny small towns with a school, a few fraternities, a bar and a main street. They were quiet. There was nothing to do. When the band came to town they had something to do. We hung around and we made a lot of friends. I met all kinds of people. At the same time I was completely losing touch with my friends in New Brunswick. I liked meeting people. I met a lot of girls. I really liked meeting a lot of girls. We were popular. People wanted us to stay at their houses. People wanted to give us things. Things were basically good. I got used to all the bad things, like spending 15 hours a day in a van, and started to think that things would just keep getting better and better. In fact they go up and down, spiral like the stock market, up and down, but generally up.
I could have lived anywhere, it didn't matter, I was rarely home anyway. I decided to stay around New Brunswick when I wasn't on the road. I liked the area, and I had friends there, even though I hardly ever saw them and we had less and less in common anymore. But most importantly, there was Shari who was the only person I ever missed while I was travelling. We were tacitly smart enough not to classify our relationship. That would have killed it. When we were together we were together. That was the only committment that either of us needed.
Somehow I rarely called her from the road, we just knew where we stood with each other. Radar love... We could be apart for weeks and pick up exactly where we left off... and amazingly, to her credit and my delight, she stuck with me, through some good times and some bad times. I imagine she had many others. I couldn't blame her for being lonely. And there were countless guys who would take her. And she had to know what was going on "out there". She wasn't naive. She just said, if I'm important to you, then you'll be there for me.
When we played at home, and nearby, she come and watch the band play and dance and smile. She had graduated now and had a job. She was "on her own". I secretly knew she was with other guys and I didn't care. That wasn't the point of our relationship anymore. As long as she was there for me. We talked about everything that meant anything at all. Sometimes we even fought, and we made up. We met each others families. We talked about living together, but never did. We shared our fantasies. We slept together most every night I was home. I read poetry to her while she took baths. Some I wrote and others, like Shelly and Browning, I interpreted. We saw friends relationship come and go and tried to figure out why. Right after I'd be home, I would long for her the nights I was away, yet somehow as the tours grew longer, that would fade, and then, when we reunited, as time went on, I knew she was drifting away. Through it all I held out hope that it would work out. We had a foundation after all. So much that we'd been through together, surely that would count for something.
If I could have been there to hold her hand one night in the summer when lightning struck a house down the street and scared everyone to death, maybe things would have been different....
But I traveled with the band for the better part of the year while she stayed in New Brunswick and tutored math and science or something academic while she worked as a middle school teacher. Hanging around with her friends. And I know there were times that she had to be lonely too. And there were a lot of guys who would want to be with her. I know that and I knew that. But I never thought about it. I had plenty of opportunities too on the road... and sometimes, I have to be honest, I took full advantage of them and she wasn't on my mind at all...
I called once, from the Grand Canyon. The worlds largest vagina (why did that make me think of her?) just to say hi after watching a particularly awesome sunrise. I had thought of her, I could have thought of so many others, and yet, when I called, she wasn't excited about my sunrise at all, or my whole trip for that matter. It was the 8 in the morning after the lightning storm and the fire and she was late for somewhere and had to hurry. The most expensive call I ever made in my life and she has to hurry. Exactly 23 quarters, 5 dimes and 11 nickels into the slot on the pay phone and I'm left with a "talk to you soon". I wanted an "I love you and please come home soon". I needed a simple "I care".
I should have known right there, I should have, in my mind, let the whole thing go, but, one doesn't always think clearly, and after two months on the road, 51 shows in 61 nights. With a crowd of people, yet alone with my thoughts most of the time with lots and lots of thoughts, Jack Kerouak jr, living in a van and just going, going, where?. just going...
Coming up Rt. 81 through Pennsylvania the thought of a warm body next to me sounded very nice and I called her from a rest stop somewhere near Harrisburg at 1:30 in the morning. I stood in a warm August rain that had followed me from Western Virginia somewhere. Over the roar of 18 wheelers pulling in and out, I pleaded with her to just think about everything and give it all another chance. She held out for a few minutes.
I told her not to leave the light on and I'd let myself in. About 5 hours later we were making love like nothing had ever changed. I told myself as I watched the sun come up out her window, that it was all right, things would be fine, I would be home for 3 weeks, then back to go into the studio to work on another record. That would stabilize things a little. We could get to know about each other again. I was getting tired of the road and she was definitely the only person that was going to lure me away from it.
And of course, she had her own long and winding story in her life, and she was getting older and maturing now and wanted her life to really begin. She knew that she couldn't be 21 for ever. And she, unlike me, was able to act on that reality. And one day , when I came back from our first tour of Canada, and oddly enough the only time I ever sent her a postcard from the road,...the ax just fell. Not even sharply and unkindly, but we both just knew that things had changed. And, well, we couldn't go back again. She had started seeing someone else seriously who could give her the things she wanted now (house, family, etc.) and felt bad about it, but, well, ... he hugged for a long time. I never wanted to let go. I bit her hair that fell across my mouth. I put my fingers between the vertebrae in her back. I concentrated on her hands on my shoulders so strongly. I had trouble swallowing. I didn't realize until maybe 6 months later that the feelings I had were nothing unusual, just my heart breaking.
She was my first adult love. All others since them were and are somehow judged by her as a standard. And while we never made a formal committment to eachother there was no questioning how we felt about each other. But there was so much going on at the time. I have asked myself ten thousand times how things might have been different. And all of it was away from her. It was a cruel twist of fate the timing. But she gave everything a relative scale to be valued against and once it was over I made sure that the band was successful. The price of addmission had been so high, that I had to make sure I got all I could out of the show. She wasn't the first, but up until that point, she was the deepest. And in retrospect, I know she didn't think the same way about things, and sadly, she probably didn't even try to.
How would things have been if I'd sent that letter to Shari I wrote. All the way from Ithaca to Madison. 14 hours in the van. The letter was 24 pages long. There was nothing left out. I put it all in words, nice words, musical words, rhythmic words, persuasive words. Words that I meant. Words that I wanted here to hear . Words that I simply wanted to say. Where would I be now if I had only had the guts, or the desire, or if I was simply man enough to send that letter?
And finally I realized that you have to only judge life by your own standards. Things had been good. Very good for so long, especially for me. As she said later, everything was good if it was judged by my standards. Problem was, judging by her standards right now, well, that was the enigma.
Now, all I had was the band, and things went up and down like a see saw but without a proper fulcrum. Craziness and out of whack. In and out of the van. In and out of bars. In and out of smoky rooms and the noise and the volume and the awful food. Life was good, bad, intense. One thing, it was passionate. There was nothing like the band. Every night I layed it all on the line. It was my creativity, my energy, my soul and in reality, my livelihood. It was the balance of art and business and simple survival.
I had too much time to think about everything that I wanted and didn't want to think about. The ideas flowed and flooded my mind. There was peace, then no peace. There was never any real rest or privacy, or time for complaining. And there were some priceless highs. Being on a stage in front of 7000 people at an outdoor festival while the sun set over a distant hill...
I was into the spiritual and the mystic. The part of me that was born in high school creative writing class, nurtured by chemicals and poignant conversation with cohorts throughout college, and blossomed when I moved up to New Brunswick. Not having any friends (distractions) gives you a lot of time to think. A lot of time to think and I, being an active and aggressive person at times, went inside myself just to see what I could find. I knew a lot was in there anyway. I was born that way. I knew a lot was in there too because of chemicals. For better or worse they show you a lot of things you not otherwise care to look for. I always wanted to look for them, and I had. Just that it was just usually in a group, or with other people, not usually something personal. Now i was into personal. I would meditate and think about the great beyond and stuff like that and try to communicate all of this with mysef in journals. No one else in the band really cared, at least they never acted like they did. It was hedonism to them. Where was the next big buzz and good time going to come from.
I was looking for escape. I was looking to get out of things. I was looking to do something that I knew I really didn't want to do, to force myself to suffer, somehow, to blame myself for ruining a relationship that had been sabotaged by infidelity and wanderlust and the mistaking of lust for romance and the uncontainable energy of youth and I guess ultimately the fact that we simply weren't together. Who could blame me. I didn't blame myself. I needed a little fun. I needed a break. Mentally, I needed a break from just being me.
And withour going into the details now, leave it at this. After a whirlwind of eight years, I left the band. It was all just too weird by the end. Moving all the time, but now getting anywhere. The crowds less consistant. One more ass of a bar manager hassling us about something that we had no control over, and most of all, the endless hours on the road on the van...
Once, in some place that I can't remember, while the hurt of losing Shari was particiularly encompassing, and I wanted to start my life all over again from the first time that I kissed her... I sat down and wrote a song in about an hour. It became one of my biggest "hits". People always asked who it was about when I played it, but I never said. It was called "When I Loved You."
And somehow this all came into focus now sitting on the stage of the Slide Rule. I had just finished setting everything up mindlessly.
The guitar now tuned and the strings changed, I strummed the first few chords of the songs and quietly, thought about what might have been so beautiful and feeling a little misty, I sang to myself..... and to the room.

I remember a time when life floated on air
and the days went by like they weren't even there
And the seasons changed and it was good to know
that from my world you'd never go

You can call us friends or lovers 'cause it don't matter now
for our paths have split and I think somehow
We could have made it work if we'd only tried,
we could have made it work if we'd never lied

That's when us was we, do you recall the time
when you called me yours and I called you mine?
When even the birds seemed to sing our songs?
That's what I miss the most and
now I'll always long to feel that way
When I Loved You

Time can put a tarnish on the finest gold
and it took your warmth and it left me cold
and it happened so quickly while the earth spun by
and all the history still occurred
and now the tolls mount high

For we gave it all if even just to know
what seeds we could plant and which would start to grow
What would overcome all the hopes and the fears
and those perfect wishes and the silent tears

For the lonely days now and the reasons long past
why you broke my heart with the spell you cast
Why I gave to you what others had to steal,
why I'd start again just to know it was real
and to feel that way
When I loved you....

2009-05-31T18:16:00.001-04:00

Baseball. So exciting. So dull. So captivatng yet so mindless. Why did the ball bounce the way it did and why not. It was outside but called a strike. Steal..

2009-05-31T17:17:00.001-04:00

Celcius. What's the point of farenheit? And why can't we all just be kelvin? I ask!

2009-05-29T15:18:00.001-04:00

In line waiting. Thinking. Trying not to think. Waiting. Anxious Noise commotion. Sensory stimulation. Franticness. Calmness. Movement and stillness. So many

2009-05-29T09:42:00.001-04:00

Carwash haiku

Carwash oh so clean

Carwash needed yes or not

Carwash make me shine

2009-05-27T08:15:00.001-04:00

rain. rain. sun. hot.. rain.. cold. sun.. cold.. rain .. hot.

a haiku

the grass grows, sunlight

shines for all to see. each day

bringing more green life.

2009-05-24T11:45:00.002-04:00

chicago monolith sculpture at night

2009-05-24T11:41:00.002-04:00

the monolith during the day.
so cool.

2009-05-24T11:34:00.001-04:00

2009-05-24T11:27:00.001-04:00

2009-05-24T11:08:00.001-04:00

2009-05-24T10:59:00.002-04:00

here is a test video..
testing the technology.

let's see if it works?!

the combination of video and pics... very cool.. love the blog.. just love the blog.

2009-05-24T10:58:00.000-04:00

2009-05-24T10:57:00.000-04:00

chapter 1

2009-05-24T10:24:00.001-04:00

One

I turned the corner out from the underpass and there it was. The sun broke over the telephone poles that bordered the corn field. It was weird having a corn field there, being so close to the highway and all, but that's where it was. Someday they would turn it all over and build a mall or something on top of it, but for now it was just a corn field. One night people even went out and slept overnight in protest of a rumor that the field would be converted into some type of industrial park. There was some emotion here. Even with the way I was feeling, I could sense that now. This was not just a bunch of 4 foot high monocots reaching up to the sun on this bright spring morning, the field had a life of its own, and a history and a story it could tell if you had the time and sensitivity to listen.
But now I just didn't. I had my own affairs. But I tried to appreciate the field for what it was. And at this moment, the field fashioned the stage for a beautiful and vivid sunrise. The corn field was used for research, part of the university agriculture system. It just happened to be next to a highway. US route #1 in fact. One of the oldest and longest highways in the country. Goes all the way from Key West to somewhere in Maine. With countless little points like this field right along side it. It's an old road, replaced or supplanted interstates like I-95 now.
Personally, I didn't have any strong attachment to the corn field, although, right now it was saying something to me. I didn't know the language, and I didn't go out of my why to try to translate. Maybe it I had, everything might have been a lot simpler later on.
It had been a long time since I'd seen the sunrise. Real long time. Unless you count the times that I never got to sleep before the sun came up. I don't really count them. When that happens you tend to count it as something you do just before you went to sleep. But now today, this was an honest to goodness, a just got up and first thing in the morning sunrise.
I probably would have missed it but I couldn't sleep. Not much at all in fact. Laying in bed with the cat coming in and out doing his cat things, and I tossing and turning and just when the mind would stop racing, thoughts after thoughts, and the body would start to relax and begin to drift, more thoughts, more disturbance in the mind. Dreams, or something like them. Visions or something like them. Some surreal and others all too real. Some based on things I could relate to and others so vague and mysterious.. Some things I could control and others I couldn't. Rewinds and instant replays of the events of the past 36 hours.
While running had the therapeutic effect of clearing and restoring the mind, you also ran the risk was going the other way, to the dark side, to the very thoughts that you're trying to suppress and escape. That's not why I went out running this morning. In fact I hadn't run before noon in years, but that's what this run was turning into. A recounting and retelling of the previous night which was in fact a recounting and retelling of the previous 36 hours, which, then again, was a retelling and recounting of the previous few years.
And now, the stream of thoughts was coming back. Out on the road, it's all the same. Like trying to sleep and being restless, the tired body tugs at the mind to let it rest but, ultimately the mind controls all. And out next to the field, the mind took over, and the thoughts came, one after another and steady and strong.
How could it have all come apart so quickly and so thoroughly and all at once? Where would it go from here? What would they do? What would she do? What if I had done this then? And once the dam broke, it broke, for there was so much being held in. It wouldn't end. I can always trace things back to somewhere in the near or distant future.
I came around to the back of the field. I swore right then and there, that, no matter how it might hurt, and no matter how intense it might get, this would be the last time I think these thoughts and feel these feelings. I would confront them and then let them go, say good-bye and turn away.
So while my legs and arms swept and pendullumed along on automatic pilot, my mind drifted off. Off to places that are and remain very real, yet are no longer realities. Not for the first time, but, as I promised myself, for the last time. And I recounted everything as best I could, not for prosperity, but for myself and, it seemed right now, for my sanity. I knew there'd be others after her, but, right now...
And so I ran down the path, along the cornfield next to the highway, soft cool spring wind at my face, heading into the sunrise.
I was alone with my breath, and my heartbeat and my past and my present.

When tomorrow comes will yesterday dissappear?
Another bland sunrise to reliquish the fears
That I slept with
That I kept with
My heart...

Preface to the book

2009-05-23T11:03:00.000-04:00

Preface

Why did I bother to spend countless hours writing this?

Well, now this is an interesting question, or comment, isn't it?

Well I'm a good storyteller and I like to write. I don't love the process of writing. In the same way, I love music, but I came to hate the process and business of music.

I thought it would accomplish a lot of things by writing this book. Now these things are, in no particular order. To write an interesting story, to tell an interesting story, to resolve a lot of issues that haven't yet seemed to come full circle, and try to give some insight to others who have had similar ideas or experiences, etc.

See, I think I've led an interesting life. Now this is of course, my opinion. But it is especially true a period of ten years when I played in a band, and another three in which I played solo in the small club circuit. This story takes place during the latter period but it is influenced by all of it.

The band was successful on some levels. That is to say that we were able to support ourselves full time. We travelled all over the US and played as many as two hundred and fifty nights a year. We had a record deal. We put out 4 CDs which we fairly well. We got some airplay. We played some shows before lots of people and we opened for some big headliners. But we fell short of really "making it".

We stuck with it valiantly, but eventually the air went out from under our wings and that was that. One by one, the band fell apart, at least for me. Depressing times.

Most of my relationships during this time had a parallel course. It's tough to be in a relationship when you simply aren't there. Out on the road. The road. And the tempations out there on it.

While travelling as much as twelve hours a day in a cramped van between shows you simply don't have all that much to do. I read countless books. I taught myself about astrology. I taught myself to play the recorder (well) and the harmonica (sort of). I wrote at least an hour a day in a journal, or I'd dictate into a pocket tape deck. I tried to read books in french. I did self-improvment lessons on tapes. I learned about all sorts of other things about trivial facts (my dream was to be on Jeopardy when we played in LA). I did the crossword puzzle in the local daily. I listened to tapes of the band from live shows, always looking to improve. I argued with the other guys in the band about how things should be done. They argued with me. I missed my friends at home. I missed people that I met along the road. I was glad to be away from many of my potential and real problems. I worried about what was going to happen next with the band, with myself. I did a lot of other things that I can't even remember right now. And I was bored a lot of the time and I had a chronic back and neck ache from sleeping in contorted positions.

The idea of writing a book was always there in the background. I wrote songs. In fact I wrote a lot of songs, and the music. The band played most of them, but some, just weren't suited to the band and I did them in my solo period. They are presented here without the music, but the music exists as much as anything else here.

So the book grew out of the "adventures" of being on the road, and the reality of stopping and "settling down" and trying to do it on my terms. It was like going 70 miles an hour on an expressway and then suddenly coming off the ramp onto a road witha 25 mph speed limit. Everything just seems so slow. Slow motion. You are so accustumed to moving fast that it becomes the normal. And then normal seems painfully slow. Almost a withdrawl.

Think how sad you are just after you've lost love after having it. Are you at the same point you would have been if you had never have had it at all? Surely no. The difference is that you are changed by the experience. The question is how much and how long? While so many have tried, can we ever truly express this feeling? I'm not claiming that I can either...

Now at the same time now, I still had to relate to 'normal people' - the one's who were going 25 all along. Sorry, but you just aren't on the same wavelength. It's very weird, and very hard to describe, just like love. See writing this was an attempt to get back to the normal. Feeling like I'm going 25 in a 25.

So what's the deal? Is this a novel, is this a collection of short stories, is this a collection of poems and songs, is this a true story? Well, it's all of them, and it's none of them. I'm not going to answer that question.

There's a unique feeling you get, when you're sleeping a strange place, and you wake up in the middle of the night, and for a split second you don't know where you are... that's the feeling that I (I) have as I start this opus.

You know that eventually you'll figure out where you are and how you got there, and perhaps even where you're going, but you aren't sure how.

2009-05-21T12:23:00.001-04:00

Salad for lunch. Good healthy and filling.

just another day

2009-05-12T21:47:00.001-04:00

is there such a thing as just another day? every day is an opportunity. every day is new. every day is a repeat and a chance to reinforce the positive. And yet... who takes advantage of this everyday?

airport

2009-05-06T15:49:00.002-04:00

where IS everyone going: so fast so far so much so long so simple and so complex...
airports .... in out, out in and back again. stressed that you'll miss your plane or stressed because you have to wait in a hot and uncomfortable place, but yet excited that you returning home, or going somewhere exciting or prosperous. airports. train stations are the same, but yet not.

Day 5 - Chicago

2009-05-06T06:55:00.005-04:00

so my to do and see.. cant take it all in in a short visit... hence must return at some point. but you do what you can do in the time that you can do it...
did...
eat in 5 different cuisines in 5 nights (6 if you count lunches also).
went to a cubs game at wrigley field
took a boat tour of the city
walked miles and miles around many neighborhoods
went to museums of all kinds
saw some old friends that hadn't seen in years
did a fair amount of business while here too.
recharged and ready to powerhouse for the month of May.

Shuttle B

2009-05-05T07:40:00.001-04:00

Shuttle Bus winding slowly through the streets seeming to being going around in circles... it IS going around in circles since all the streets are one way. Light. Traffic. Action. Sitting in the bus, it all basically looks the same on the outside... streets, car and people going about their lives lots of people walking around and going whereever and also going in circles because at some point they are going to end up back where they started too... right? and then. we drive past.. public art... who would have expected it. right there in the middle of the same old same old is public art. in the middle of flashy is something which appears to have actual substance... it is... the bean. the fountains and the bean. not tacky, but interesting and relevant. yes, should art be relevant? should writing be relevant? people walking across the water to the other side... to the faces on the walls change as the watch them walk across to the other side... and the people passing by, some watching and some participating in some micro and macrocosm of what is going on every where... to or not to participate or just to observe life... and there is the diversity, but all have commonalities. and all at once and allin the same plance, but... having arrived from very different places. so all sorts of unlike comes together to make one big giant like of a symbiotic and cooperative entity joined only by a common interest in trying to be the same... if only for just one fleeting moment... and something that they won't be able to define anyway... but they don't have to.

The Windy City

2009-05-03T07:41:00.001-04:00

In chicago... the windy city. but it's not windy... actually it's warm and sunny

there is much going on, especially since we have lucked into being at a hotel that is right in the middle of just about everyting. noise, people, activity, everything.

2009-05-01T07:02:00.003-04:00

TGIF or ready to powerhouse on Friday.

there is no weekend here.

last day of april

2009-04-30T21:36:00.004-04:00

its the last day of april. the end of another month. it's the end of one cycle and the start of another. what does all this mean? I think as the seasons progress sometimes you get more cynical about things... it's spring, but where is the eternal hope that comes this time of year for some? however, I am not cynical... just feeling that I need to get more accomplished each and every day and this is a time of year to get energized and more it all happen.. in short.. powerhouse.

2009-04-29T10:32:00.000-04:00

some scenes from the cruise... cool collage made with Picasso

It's almost May!

2009-04-29T06:09:00.002-04:00

this is the best part of the year... the weather is great... the flowers are blooming and everying it turning green... it's almost summer and I am not thinking about wearing a coat for the next 4 months... yes!! it's a time of the year of hope and promise and expansion...

2009-04-28T20:50:00.000-04:00

water slide on top of the Carnival ship... nice touch.

2009-04-28T20:33:00.001-04:00

Yes. I get it all now

2009-04-28T19:33:00.000-04:00

mini golfing on the deck of the Independence of the Seas... very cool. My best round was a 23 (9 hole).

2009-04-28T19:12:00.001-04:00

Test post from mobile

2009-04-28T19:03:00.000-04:00

yes!!

2009-04-28T19:02:00.000-04:00

you have to love a nice sunset. #1

2009-04-28T19:01:00.000-04:00

the aforementioned hieneken...
oh yes!

2009-04-28T19:00:00.000-04:00

yes, that's us after we went kayaking and snorkelling in St Maarten...

yes very nice stuff...

and no sunburn, and got to have a real Dutch Hieneken!

trying to be consistent

2009-04-28T18:33:00.000-04:00

I am trying to be consistent with the blog. well since I haven't used in it 14 months, I would say that's not very consistent. but I will be more so now that I got a new laptop with internet access... ok.. yes... I can do it!!

The basics

2008-06-11T07:14:00.000-04:00



	Steven Greene Senior Manager sendoutcards.com Phone: 215-540-8378 www.drstevengreene.com sgreene@makethegrade.net View my Profile	sendoutcards.com provides a cost effective, efficient and personalized way to maintain client contact, as well as break ground with new contacts. sendoutcards.com is an internet based contact and reminder system, as well as a direct marketing hub. From your PC to your clients USPS mailbox with a stamp and a postmark... amazing! View More...

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Blog Links

2008-06-11T07:11:00.000-04:00

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2008-06-11T07:10:00.001-04:00

Click here to view Steven's Fast Pitch!

It's About Relationships

2008-06-11T07:01:00.000-04:00

Life, Business, Success... no one can do it alone. It's all about building and cultivating relationships.

I have spent my career as an educator and entrepreneur learning exactly how to do this.

In this blog I plan to share my experiences in an effort to

a) continue to build my relationship circle

b) help others do the same

c) increase prosperity for all