The Finns were sitting in the pews waiting for the Christmas Eve evening service to start when I noticed that the congregation kept requesting obscure pre-service hymns that were on pages that were prime numbers, “Page 41,” and “Page 67,” and 53, 43… It triggered my impish side.
I was wondering playful nitpickity things like, “Why fill a sanctuary with pagan Winter Solstice symbols like a decorated tree and garland,” and “Why do the offertory prayer after the offertory if you’re not going to switch up the language,” – thereby reminding worshippers to give after the baskets have been passed. A combination of cart-before-horse meets “Oh, I promise I’ll remember next time.” My sister was synthesizing cynicism when she was asking stiff like, “If God loves everyone, how can He play favorites?”
I was at the height of my mockery when I jested to my mother, “and a Lutheran Church using NRSV Bibles. It really takes the beauty out of the language. When Linus from ‘Charlie Brown Christmas,’ has a more beautiful-sounding message… I mean seriously, to rephrase such great verses as, ‘Behold, I bring you tidings of great joy.’ Who rewrites that???”
I believe oldold lady Finn was up above listening to me n sis because after our candles (with the new, cheaper paper guards) were lit, the lights were dimmed n O’ Holy Light begun, I sobered up my
mood.
I started my prayer as I always do – a blessing for an old friend – and I started to feel a burning passion for the evening. Then that burning passion focused into my hand – the hand holding the candle.
“Ouch! I hate these new, cheap guards,” I tried not to shout as my fingers were burned by the candlewax in record time. I looked up towards Him n oldold lady finn n oldold lady Bourne (who probably came up with the idea) and I realized I was taught a lesson in humility, again. I think it was the first time those two oldold ladies agreed on anything. The moment made me chuckle.
Don’t tell me that there isn’t a metaphysical something up there.
I would have taken pictures of the candlelight vigil so I could show y’all its majesty, but some things are best left to the moment.
“That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown,” — Linus to Charlie Brow (A Charlie Brown Christmas, by Charles Schultz)…And, yes, these kinds of lessons run paramount in Book of Blues.
I hear cards a-shuffling. Pre Christmas-dinner Euchre games have started.
Happy holidays, all. Thank you for the gracious, turnkey year. Stay warm.
“And to all, a good night,” (Clement Clarke Moore).
a bird's footprints in the snow - image by Lize Rixt
Much like New Yorkers, Those from The Regionflock as fast as they can down to the shady palm trees of Florida. Especially the Gulf side. We in The Region call them snow birds.
This gulf shore sprint is among my family’s more recent holiday traditions: trimming palm trees, dressing up golf carts for parades and swimming and sunning after Christmas breakfast.
The simple, sad truth is that I didn’t always partake in these family holiday traditions. My family didn’t start to all meet in Ft. Myers for the holidays til around the time I was attending Denominational University. They didn’t do this simply because I was at Denom U. I certainly didn’t take it personally, but I first avoided the family holiday trips to Ft. Myers, Margaritaville. The reasons for my absence were not because I was holy-rolling and they were hip-deep in vices or anything. I come from a dry family – aside from an infrequent Holiday toast. I even had a father whose life we learned from in spite of his actions. His life reaffirmed our family’s sobriety. (more…)
It only took those 4 simple words said in a back alley Broad Ripple bar around 2:15 AM by a supportive lady with designer blue eyes to Brian Wilson me into an emotional cocoon for the following ten days. Barenaked Ladies summed up the agonizing experience in the song, “Brian Wilson,” from around 1992. Take a listen / view:
I’m strong and secure with myself until I remember that Book of Blues is still not published. I mean, how does she know I’m a writer? She hasn’t read a word I’ve thrown down. She’s just had a couple conversations with me. She knows I won’t drink too much. That in itself should give her an indication that I might not be any good.
The cocoon became accelerated even faster when I talked to my cousin a couple days later and, though he likes the book, he’s only on to chapter 2. Not his fault. He knows I’m getting impatient, but I didn’t get the instant gratification I needed.
The cocoon starts off simple, small – almost unnoticed: waking up in time to do the necessary things – work or school, writing / blogging, the other whatnots – and starting the day still feeling stuck in the tail end of REM sleep. Then finish the day’s activities before someone notices you exist, skip social activities or the auxiliary events such as going to the gym or watching prime time TV – because all the worthwhile shows can be seen online. Go to bed early, again, get the extra sleep to shake the sleepiness, and the circle continues.
It took me a year and a half after my time at Denominational University to diagnose this first sympton. This time, it took 4 days. I’m getting better. Once the symptom is diagnosed, the hard stuff begins.
For some, it’s fighting the drinking and smoking and carnal vices and the other La-la-LA-LA, Hey Judes, but for me, it’s comfort food and video games. Actually, it’s not even video games any more. Just overeating. Without thinking, I’m grabbing the extra donut at work and downing it before I’ve realized there was a donut. I’ll get more than enough food because I’m afraid of going through the day with less then a full stomach or with something in the bladder, afraid of the Sci-Fi channel B-movie worst case scenario happening to me in my high-risk environment of a table seat in a corporate office and not being fully prepared to handle it. Overeating forces hibernation, and the circle reforms.
Little stresses become big stresses, big meals look like little meals, hours turn into minutes and the world flies by at a bully pace. And I run and hide till I’m ready to draw a line in the sand, relearn my relationship to the world around me and live again. The days become struggles, but eventually the routine is back. It’s the haunting, mutated variation of being conscious of your own breathing and trying to breathe without thinking about it.
The good news was, while in a cocoon, ideas swirled around for the Book of Blues sequel. The title is solidified (a first), rhythms and story lines are forming. I don’t have a middle yet, but I didn’t last time either.
I’ve got a month before I go into exhile at Ft. Myers for the duration of the holidays. I dunno if the book of blues sequel will be diagramed by then – wouldn’t put it past me if it was- but I have a feeling quite a good chunk of the sequel will be written. In the mean time, I have to grind out days as a SEO Specialist / Copywriter in Chicago. I grind them with joy because living plan B (career) while I’m working on plan A (published) is still a great place. I just have to relearn it once in awhile.
A crafted stone baptismal fountain in the sancturary of Immanuel Lutheran Church. iPhone photo by DB Fraizer
My mother told me the news in that “I haven’t had a chance to tell him,” sort of way as we rode with my grandfather to our Sunday night dinner.
I knew who my great uncle was more than I knew him. We were family though we weren’t that close. We weren’t distant – he lived along a long country street with my grandfather’s family but for the couple years he lived in Minnesota (I don’t normally mention Minnesota this much in a lifetime). Our relationship was a textbook case of happenchance amongst extended family. All the same, I respected and took pride in him. He ran the physical plant services at Valparaiso University. They named the energy center after him some time ago.
But as we went in to Immanuel Lutheran Church to attend my great uncle’s wake, I quickly became re-reminded of the power atmospherics play in an event: thick brick walls, rustic stone floor, a sizable, soothing baptismal fountain and a big pipe organ that is rumored to have been donated by my great-grandmother (my grandfather denies the rumor so much that it only makes it plausible). I’m not saying that DaVinci’s work adorn the walls and Michaelangelo painted the ceiling, but the first “Christian” churches were little hidden rooms in the back of store thatches, out of site from the Roman government that would have hauled them away had they been found. And, yes, they were found often. I’m not trying to claim “victim” for the Church, they were persecuted until they got power and then they persecuted until a balance was maintain (if…but that’s a story for another day), but Immanuel Lutheran Church does a great job holding to the materials, colors and tones of the biblical area, mixed with a big pipe organ. The ambiance artistically pays homage to the beauty and humility of the Church as opposed to the power, majesty or fraternalization most churches project. No gold chalices and blue-eyed Jesus’ in these dwellings. Immanuel Lutheran Church has the blend of beauty and respect you can’t find in a funeral parlor, making it the archetypal reason why churches make for great wakes. That, and that metaphysical connection…
It’s those little things this lowly copywriter (or copy writer) from the Chicago, IL area tried to keep in mind, that penitent sense of beauty and respect, as I wrote my book of blues. It’s the same approach I strive for now as I try to learn how to publish a book of blues.
It was August 19th, 2008. I was groaning over an ex-girlfriend’s birthday and over the thoughts that she was in the city (Chicago). Petty, figuring I haven’t seen her in a while, but I still get competitive over who’s doing better. I do miss those legs. She also always seemed to fumble her away into being a step ahead of me on music, be it a cooler stereo, a more thought-out music collection – her step dad helped quite a bit. Two on one.
“Not always fair,” I graciously bemoan…
I was groaning over the work and wondering if I missed the fine print on my contract that said, “40 hours a week only if the week ends on hump day.” That day, had I been given a copy of my contract, I would have sworn I was seeing double. It sucks having to clean up the messes of the paranoid and reckless.
Anyway, when my supervisor told me the news, I thought he was lying.
I went to the only university that didn’t overplay Dave Matthews Band. Yeah, that school: Denominational University. About 7 of us knew of Dave Matthews Band. I got into Dave Matthews Band because I had a roommate from Virginia Beach who introduced me to their music. DMB always seemed to release a CD, be it studio or live, just as I thought I was going to lose it. My last bit of work at Denominational University was done while pulling an all-nigher, taking a ritalin every three hours to not think about the anxiety, and listening to “Before These Crowded Streets.” I got more of a religious experience from their music than I did from Denominational University. Experience and authenticity: religious necessities for healing.
I thought my big Prometheus college gift for my high school sister would be the Dave Matthews Band studio album “Under the Table and Dreaming.” To my surprise on Christmas morning, her gift for me was the same CD. Our relationship seems to always be this way.
Anyway, after I couldn’t get my supervisor to crack his poker face, I went to cnn.com. I calmly turned to him and said, “I’m going to go home for lunch.”
I don’t know if it was his death that brought upon the tears as I sped home so much as it was Leroi Moore’s death being another reminder that life is going by, as the Allman Brothers once sang, “like hurricanes and faster things.” Leroi Moore isn’t my favorite musician in Dave Matthews Band. I’ve seen Dave Matthews Band live 13 times and there were moments when I’d wish he’d hurry up with his bit so Boyd Tinsley spin some more pixies off his strings. I thought LeRoi’s Death might have simply been a personal life face slap that our Book of Blues still isn’t published, nor finished being edited.
Then I remembered how I wanted to see Dave Matthews Band this past summer at Toyota Park near Chicago. I remember telling a concert-going friend, “It’s okay, I’ve seen them 13 or 14 times. They’ll be around next year. I’ll see them again.” And then we finished buying pit seats to see Jack Johnson at Alpine Valley in East Troy, WI. Not that we couldn’t have done both, but my work was getting crazy. This a clip from the show and this was about our view for the show:
No real knock on Jack Johnson. I really do like listening to him. My appreciating is paradoxical because I’m typically not one for just strumming and a younger me would have been a guitar snob pointing out the simplicity of his style, but an older me appreciates the way it calms me. It was a soothing show. Kenny Chesney and Toby Keith have tried to be in line to take over Jimmy Buffet’s kingdom, but it will be Jack Johnson who wears the crown. He’s mixed Buffet’s beach persona together with Bob Marley’s authenticity (as the clip shows, he puts in bars of Marley and Buffet in throughout the show) to make stories about marrying your college sweetheart and recycling sound peaceful, soothing and enjoyable. His songs seem to give me an indication where my life could had been had I not taken the road less traveled (and all that Frost shit).
I do wish I had my iPhone 3G then to take a picture of the lawn after that Jack Johnson Alpine Valley 2008 concert. I felt bad for the Alpine Valley Resort staff. It sucks having to clean up the messes of the drunk and reckless.
But during that lunch, as I dealt with the pain of finding out about LeRoi by gouging on Diet Coke and peanut butter and jellys, I realized that one of the great treats in my life, one of the refuges I resided in for hours at a time in my life – taking in Dave Matthews Band shows – was never going to be the same. Oh sure, there’s Boyd and Carter and Steffan and that dude with the acoustic guitar tucked under his armpits, but the original lineup will never be on stage again. One of those faster things took it away from me. Not to be selfish, one of those faster things, in this case: an ATV, took somethings special away from everyone in that refreshing world I frequent.
I find myself appreciating his artistry more. I find myself wishing I could hear LeRoi Moore live, again. I might finally buy that Code Magenta CD. Maybe most importantly, I find myself not wanting to have to be the ‘what if’. I’m feeling the panic of not publishing Book of Blues. I don’t want to take anything more for granted ever again.
I need to call my cousin tomorrow. He has my paper draft of Book of Blues. More on him tomorrow, but the fact he didn’t call me a week after he had it is surprising. I know he’s read it by now. He’s usually the kind to call and life face slap withouth much regard. I’ve been waiting for the harshness. I told him to bring the pain because we want Book of Blues done right. We didn’t write it for ourselves. I can’t wait to hear what he says. Yet, he hasn’t called. I don’t have the courage to believe that old saying about what “no news” is.
NOTE: A special thank you goes out to legendary photographer Danny Clinch for granting me permission to publish his LeRoi Moore photo. I emailed him saying that I was an aspiring old blues man-to-be and I wanted to publish the photo. I told him why I wanted to and about Book of Blues and he wrote back saying he was an old blues man, too and I could “go ahead.” Danny, if Book of Blues ever gets published, I will send you a copy, as promised.
