Better

I've been neglecting this 'blog... but, no, really I haven't. Fact is, I know barely anyone reads my posts anyway, and that's OK. Living life is better than writing about it anyway, as much as I enjoy writing. So I've been doing some of that, and hopefully you (whoever you are) have been as well.

There's been some travel. My trip to Egypt last year was incredible, of course; this year began with the traditional visit to Brazil, though I spent less time there than usual. Gina and I spent a relatively warm February weekend in Cape May, then decided soak up some sun in Key West for a few days in April. We did a little tour of New England over the long Fourth of July weekend, spending a night in Boston (where no one at Cheers knew our names), another one in Portsmouth, NH (where we had a delicious breakfast at La Maison Navarre), a short, rainy jaunt through Maine culminating in scrumptious lobster rolls with a lighthouse view... and two nights in beautiful Vermont. We did some kayaking, admired a waterfalls, visited the Ben & Jerry's Factory (well, we arrived just before closing, but we still managed to get some ice cream and peruse the gift shop and the Flavor Graveyard), held some baby goats, and just loved the hell out of the Green Mountain State. And each other.

Catsitting in April, dogsitting in July... I lost an aunt, my mom's sister, suddenly in May. I got to see a friend and former colleague, along with two current colleagues from Egypt and two from the US, with Gina at a great Turkish restaurant over Memorial Day weekend. More of my attention has been spent on Netflix (and Prime TV, and Apple TV+) of late, but it's probably safe to say that I still watch less TV than most of my friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. I did get Gina into "Black Mirror" after showing her the "Joan Is Awful" episode, and she and I are making our way through "Peaky Blinders" together (just finished season 2). And then there's the car situation.

A week before we embarked on our trip to New England, my old Corolla was totalled in a three-vehicle collision on Route 17 in Paramus. Fortunately, I wasn't injured at all, though the crash did pop up in my mind's eye randomly over the next week or so, including a few times as I was drifting off to sleep. Loads of fun. Gina went on a few test drives with me, and I'm happy to report that I'm now zipping around in a Pontiac G6 (which I've named Gisela), and I really enjoy this car, in a way that I never quite did the Toyota. Don't get me wrong, it was a dependable vehicle, but it just didn't spark joy the way the Pontiac does.

In hindsight, getting a pic of my car at Lyndhurst's
"Kingsland Explosion Memorial" might have been tempting fate, but...

All in all, things are better. Yes, I did put out a new song in May, "Spark Rekindled." My music output has slowed down rather a bit. You're welcome.  ;-P   If I wrote songs, or 'blog (or social media!) posts, solely for feedback and commentary from others, I'd have stopped a long, long time ago. I do have a few unfinished song ideas I'd like to finish, and I'm considering re-recording a few tunes for an EP, but there's no rush at the moment. I'm still getting a little more comfortable with the ukulele, and it might be fun to switch over to that for a while once I'm done with the other projects. We'll see.

In the meantime, there are two months of summer left as of today. Enjoy 'em; I plan to!

"Hole in the Wall," Roger Waters, CDBaby, and Hurricanes

Just ten weeks ago, I was enjoying Key West with some old friends. Today, it's being battered by Hurricane Irma, as is the rest of Florida. Considering I've got quite a number of friends and family in the state, and I'd like to visit the Conch Republic again sooner rather than later, I'm hoping that FL fares better than some of the islands in the Caribbean did last week.

Rhonda and I saw Roger Waters perform at Newark's Prudential Center last Thursday, and I'm gonna say it was one of the five or so best concerts to which I've been. And I've been to a lot. Pink Floyd's The Wall has always been one of my favorite albums (the favorite for a long time), and of course Roger is responsible for the bulk of it. On this current "Us + Them" tour, he plays a good mix of Floyd's music, though only a handful of his solo tunes, and those only from the new album (Is This the Life We Really Want?, which is also an excellent piece of work). I'd have loved to have heard more from The Wall, but I've got no complaints about the music, the band, the multimedia, or the lasers. :-D (As always, pictures are in my Gallery... of Death!)

Over the next day or so, I started thinking about my own song, "Hole in the Wall." I came up with the idea and wrote a few lyrics for it waaay back in 1991, finished them ten years later (with a bit more experience in the subject matter), and figured out the music in time to record it for 2004's Joy in the New. The song, of course, is my interpretation of something that wasn't on The Wall but should have been. When I was deciding what was going on last year's I'll Live and what wasn't, I knew I wanted to remix "Hole" and include it on the new album.

The thing is, though... I'd never played the song on guitar since first recording it in the summer of 2003. Not at any of the Make Music New York shows I did, not at home in the privacy of my own living room. While it's not an especially complex song, it is layered, and I guess I just never thought to try to summon the tune from just a single guitar. And so I quickly forgot exactly how the song went, and didn't bother trying to find out. Until Saturday.

Now that I have worked the sound out again, perhaps I'll come up with an arrangement that lends itself to one guitar. At any rate, I threw together a 'vlog entry, coincidentally the first new one in exactly five years, yesterday featuring a little bit of me playing the song on my Kona and Danelectro guitars, and a bit from the recording...

And this is where it all comes around again to hurricanes. CDBaby, which I've used to distribute both Joy in the New and I'll Live, announced last week that the net proceeds of all digital sales through the site this week, between Monday the 11th and Friday the 15th, would be donated to helping victims of Hurricane Harvey. Sounds like a good deal to me, so if you're interested in my music at all, this week would be a good time to buy I'll Live from CDBaby here. I've got friends in Texas, too (no exes that I know of, though), and while they got away mostly unscathed, I know Texas and Louisiana suffered a lot from Harvey. Let's hope Jose and Katia, the next two hurricanes lined up, don't pack as much of a wallop as the last two did, and let's also not forget that it's not just Americans, and not just the continental U.S., being affected by these monster storms.

Check out 'vlog #10 below, and again, please consider buying I'll Live:

Forget It, Brother, You Can Go It Alone!

I go it alone a lot. There are a lot of events and places where I'd rather have accompaniment, but my friends are often uninterested, unwilling, and/or unable to join me when I do ask. Some live too far, some have families, some live too far and have families... As a result, I've just gotten into the habit of going and doing what I want, when I want, instead of trying to convince or coordinate with someone else.

Of course, having a strong introvert streak and the occasional bout of social anxiety both makes it easier to do things on my own and makes it harder to interact with others when there isn't someone there to provide some social lubricant. Last month in D.C., I opted to buy a ticket to the "Can't Stop the Science" event after the March for Science, then almost talked myself out of going. I did make my way out there in the end, and found myself standing alone at a bar table for a few minutes until, as luck would have it, a social scientist happened by and asked if she could share the table. Over the next hour or so, another six people came and went at different times, and I found myself in various conversations with my newfound tablemates.

Last weekend, I went to the Parkside Lounge in NYC to take in a live science fiction comedy show, "Wild Women of Planet Wongo." It's an interactive show, and one of the aforementioned Wild Women (or Wongettes) approached me during a dance number and told me she needed a partner, and she'd teach me the dance. I was taken aback, but the Wongotini I'd consumed earlier probably eased my acquiescence, and I attempted to keep up with her during the alien dancing. After the show was over, I got a picture with Maya, the actress playing the Wongette, and we chatted for a bit; she commended me for coming to the show alone, and we remarked on how we both prefer to do things solo than to skip 'em when we can't find someone with whom to go.

Yes, I got leid, too

A few days later, I was back in Manhattan to see Tania Stavreva perform again. I usually feel a little awkward and out of place at the receptions afterwards when she has them, and this time wasn't much different. I did talk with Jon Ososki, another musician I'd met at Tania's last performance, a bit. After a few minutes of solitary standing, I noticed a woman out of the corner of my eye; she looked like she was preparing to approach me, but surely-

She did. She came up to me and smiled, said hi, asked if this had been the first time I'd seen Tania perform, which led to my explaining how I'd met the pianist through Goli, the Cambridge band I'd found accidentally one night at Caffe Vivaldi. We talked for a while, joined eventually by an indie filmmaker named Bryan (and I then found out that my temporary companion was a script supervisor named Marilyn), before she became ensnared in another conversation and I found myself... well, kinda alone again. Naturally.

I do have friends, of course, and I do see them and get out with them. Over the past month, I've seen the Revolution in concert with Rhonda and Jenn, gone to Lambertville's Shadfest with Barbara, had drinks and watched "Alien: Covenant" with Yesika, and spent a fun day in New York with Dawn. I see my parents every other weekend and celebrated my dad's birthday with them yesterday (it's today). While Greta's Unmentionables will apparently split up, we'll do so amicably, and there's still Not An Exit as an outlet for creative collaboration. And I am very much looking forward to seeing Mel, Joyce, and Sue in a month when we tackle Key West together.

But for all that, when I hear about Chris Cornell's suicide, and I'm reminded that Jeff Buckley died twenty years ago today (I'm listening to Grace right now), and I see myself doing more on my own than I do with others, I can't help but feel pretty damned alone. Sometimes.

Love is not a victory march,
  It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah...