Sex, Drugs, and Ragtime

Omg this is the sexiest blog title I've had in months.

Hi! It's been awhile. I can honestly say I've been busy, putting on a ragtime concert with Bryan, working on the polio documentary, finishing up school forever and ever amen, working for Apple... I've been off Paxil for well over a month, having quit cold-turkey after realizing that crap was one of the reasons I was smoking and drinking like a fiend, and so now the only drugs I'm on are for a nasty cold that I caught. I am definitely a medicine-head at the moment, however, so if my prose seems kind of flighty you'll know why.

How have you been? God, we never get to talk anymore. I always feel like there's more to say than I've said. Where to begin.

Sex

Yes, sex. It's been good. I have a great sex life and I'm delighted by it.

Drugs

Already covered. Off of them. I think I smoked half a cigarette three weeks ago and was horribly disappointed with how gross it was.

Ragtime

Ah-HA! Yes! My ragtime life has sprung awake with the lilies. On April 13, Bryan and I put on a ragtime concert at the First Unitarian Church. I wish I had some of the footage to show you - I think I'm going to YouTube some of it, but suffice it to say that we got not one but TWO standing ovations, and it was a delightful return to performing for me. I was so nervous to start out that I completely forgot the first notes of Joplin's "Elite Syncopations" - I had spent the whole day nervous about that evening, and I think screwing up, and surviving, was the best thing I could have done for my confidence. Because after that, I mean, what can happen? You've already screwed up. Worst fear realized, and the audience is still sitting there. Time to move on.

So, I've been good. Playing a lot of piano, working a lot in Avid. My inner life has been interesting recently. As I wander deeper into myself, I'm constantly surprised by the variety of things in my inner-forest: twisted vines, great scars covered by flowers in bloom, strip mines with baby grass peeking through pebbles, streams, smooth stones, lilacs. Jessie's grandfather gave me a beautiful analogy once. He is 90, and so most of his friends have passed on, and he was describing the sadness of it as though they were "great trees who had grown skyward and then suddenly collapsed." I've been thinking a lot about death recently, especially considering the events at Virginia Tech (more on that in a minute), and I'm reminded of when I was in Houston and Emily read my palm. She ran her finger along my life line and said, "Well, mine is longer than yours. Yours is pretty short, actually." And I've wondered, not idly, if she's right, if my life is indeed going to be short. I don't know. I look at the faces of the slain VA Tech students and they look a lot like my classmates, a lot like me. I bet they had the same question when they looked at their palms, wondering how long their life was going to be, what dreams were yet to come. Are the lives of others on our palms as well?

Regarding the Virginia Tech thing, I just don't know what to do with it. I cannot imagine what it would be like to lose your child like that, at that point in life, when you're just getting to enjoy them as a person, a real person. That's how my mom talks about my Uncle Mark, who was killed in a car crash 30 years ago at the age of 21. The sadness was that he was just becoming interesting, you know? Just finding his own two feet. And I don't know if it's tasteless or not, but I think of Lord of the Rings every time I hear of seemingly random violence, think of Theoden donning his mantle of war and all the while wondering, "What can men do against such reckless hate?" The question rings out in my head, wholly unsatisfied with Aragorn's answer, and I feel like it is the question for our times how we as good people respond to those who perform vicious, evil acts.

My first question after I heard the news was, "Where is your God?" The second question was, "How is it right for one person to have the capability of ending thirty lives?" And then I realized that the two questions were connected, both dealing with responsibility, with cause, with reason, and I knew in that instant what I know about my own darkness, and that is it comes from a place beyond reason, beyond motive and purpose and cause. Every person has a well inside of them, a well that, at its bottom, is sludgy and dank, and if its dug too deep or there's not enough water, evil, dangerous things can seep through and bubble upwards.

Friends are the water. Love is the water. And if you aren't filled up, then you can draw some crazy things from the bottom of yourself.

Anyways, I'm waxing. But it does have me thinking about life and about death, about what I'm leaving to the world and whether I'm in danger of dying with my music still inside me. I wish I could spend less time being afraid of not accomplishing enough and more time actually accomplishing, but that seems a silly wish seeing as I'm the only one who can grant it (Disney moment!).

Alright, I'm heading to bed. So little to say, so much time. Wait. Scratch that. Reverse it.

yours
Martin