Just Don't Be Yourself

Dear Reader,

Will someone please take my temperature? It's ten minutes after 11 o'clock at night and I am in bed in my pajamas ready to be asleep and I don't feel a lick of "I should be up practicing" or "I should be up working on the movie" or "Family Guy is on in ten minutes!" I just feel ready to go to bed.

At 11 o'clock. On a Sunday. I think I'm dying.

I have a job interview tomorrow morning at 10:30. I'll probably fail to mention to them that I can count on one hand the number of times I've been awake at 10:30 AM in the past month. But here I am, the night before, my little outfit already picked out, my alarms set, in bed at a reasonable hour. I could be under some kind of mind-control, some weird after-effect of watching too many Derren Brown videos on YouTube (look him up..."the sun is gone!"). Or I could have just finally come to the point when the idea of interviewing for a regular job doesn't cause me convulsions of the spleen and the (will-to)liver.

This is actually my second interview. I had another this past Friday with a temp agency that staffs non-profits. It was an amazing interview. We spent the whole time talking about ragtime piano, seeing as the interviewer was a young, struggling singer who loved loved loved Gershwin. She was sweet, with dark hair and a great smile, and after about thirty minutes she said, "Oh, God, I should probably ask you about your grant-writing experience," but half-way through my answer she interrupted again, asking, "Do you play around here?" She ended up buying a copy of my CD, which marks the first time I've ever been paid to interview for a job. In the words of Will Ferrell: Simply stunning.



Must have been the shirt. Rest assured I'm wearing the same one tomorrow. Dark red plaid, you have my heart.

But I am ahead of myself! Last we left off, I was sitting in my underwear in an apartment in Philadelphia wondering how I was going to drive 347 miles on $13.90...

You're on a highway. You accidentally drove through the EasyPay line getting onto the Turnpike, which means you'll have to pay full ticket price when you exit, which is $28 you don't have. $28 sounds like a fortune to your ears. You stopped outside of Philly to fill your water bottle at the tap in a restroom. You start to wonder if you drove through the EasyPay on purpose because you didn't have enough money to pay for the toll. You are staring at the gas gauge, watching your $8 worth of gasoline burn up. Outside, it is raining. Pouring. The windshield keeps fogging up but you're afraid to use the air-conditioner because it uses too much gas, so you turn it on for a minute to get the fog down and then turn it off, wait for the fog on the windshield to become unbearable, and repeat. You doubt the reasons to stay alive. You think about how silly this is is, how four dollars has never seemed like so much money. You think about what makes a man. You eat a bag full of miniature Oreos, and you pull off at service plaza before you run out of gas only to realize that this is the end of the trip. There is no more money.

Yeah. It was like that.

In the morning, after the last post, I went to the bank and withdrew $12. I filled out the little white slip and waited in line, writing "Twelve and 00/100 dollars" on the white slip, and the teller, when she was counting out my money, gave me a look that said she knew it was my last twelve dollars. "You have a good day now," she said, and held extra long on the "good" before handing me my ten and two ones. I put $8 worth of gas into my car, and I made it 100 miles from Philadelphia before I had to pull off. I had resolved myself not to ask for my father for money. Promised myself I wouldn't. He had already loaned me $1,000 at the beginning of the month so I wouldn't default on my credit cards, and I refused to ask him for more.

Sitting at the rest area, however, and realizing that I couldn't afford a pack of gum, I called him in tears. I was humiliated and desperate. A Great Nothing came upon me, one bigger than I'd ever felt, and I realized that I couldn't afford the toll to exit the road. I am 25, white, well-educated, and have no excuses not to have enough money to drive to Rochester, NY. It's just that, well, I didn't have enough money. I had, uh, no money. Literally none. I called Mom. She promised to transfer money later, which she did.

And of course, being Dad, he went immediately to the bank and transferred money, and I was able to brave the rain and get up to Rochester, NY, where I stayed with my friend and mentor Tony Caramia. He and his wife had a had a nice restaurant picked out for us to go to - earlier in the week I had said I wanted to take them to dinner - and I had to find a way to tell them, no, I was poor and couldn't take them to the seafood restaurant. We ordered Chinese instead, and I counted the $34 slowly. It was a great night, though. They are my musical parents. I handed them a copy of my CD and Tony exclaimed, "Lisa, look what our son made!" Tony, who had written the introduction to the CD, read them out loud for me and his wife, Lisa. He read his words and mine, and I can close my eyes and go back to those three minutes where I got to hear his words in his voice. I stayed late into the morning, enjoying the tranquility that is their company, playing on his beautiful piano, before heading out. He told me I sounded good.

I made it to Alex Bay, which could be like Bermuda but is instead like something out of a Hemingway novel, and not in a good way. Alex Bay is in the Thousand Islands part of New York, and quite stunning geographically, with literally a thousand little islands marking the waters between two lovely tree-covered hills. The festival was being held at the Pine Tree Point Resort, and though it sounds ritzy, my room was something out of an old movie in the 1940's where the guy lives in the closet by the train tracks. There was no central heating, only space heaters built into the wall, and I was convinced, sitting there in my three pairs of socks, that the room was going to burn up around me.

Here's my journal entry from Friday night:

"So. I made it. I am alive, have no venereal diseases, all ten of my fingers, and retain the will to keep on keeping on.

I am so happy with the way tonight went. It seems impossible now, considering the ordeal it was to get here, that tonight could unfold so smoothly.

I was incredibly nervous about my first performance, and I could feel my fingers clamming up. The worst thing I can possibly do is sit and think about the fact that I have to go play the piano. "Ace of Clubs" was first, and it was a poor choice for a first piece. I over-thought it and screwed up, like, big time. Not a train-wreck, but there were definitely some mega-pennies along the track. It was an uncommonly sloppy performance from me. I can easily screw up the musical part of it - playing too fast, not enough feeling, pounding - but I rarely mess up the technical aspects, the "hitting the right notes" thing. Hitting a lot of notes really fast is easy. That's my bag, baby. Hitting them well is very, very hard.

I was only hitting myself after the first performance. The second piece, "Baltimore Todolo," erupted out and not in a good way - it had musical Tourette's Syndrome - and I was sitting too low on the piano and couldn't get over myself and into the music and my fingers were just ice.

Thankfully I had chosen one of my own for my next piece, the new "Theresa Novelette," which is sweet and slow and beautiful. I talked about how I wrote it for my grandma, how she had supported me, how I got the image of her dancing when I played it. After that piece, I was okay. I could play the piano again. I relaxed, and I dug into another solid standby, "Maple Leaf Rag." They really liked it - I got applause halfway through the piece - and I was feeling much better.

I put a few drinks in me which settled my nerves even more, and when I took the stage at 10:20 PM, I was relaxed and feeling okay. I realized I become a fabulous piano player when I drink (fabulous to me anyways). It's kind of blurry in retrospect, and I missed a few notes here and there, but the feeling was there. I opened with "Charleston Rag," put in a soft "The Entertainer" which they really enjoyed, and closed with an atomic "Space Shuffle," which I somehow managed to hold onto even though I was FLYING. The audience exploded into a standing ovation, and I was absolutely thrilled! One of the audience members, one of many kind and appreciative folks, came up afterwards and said, "My husband is an accomplished drummer, and he said he likes you because you play with such feeling." Nothing could have made me happier than to have THAT kind of comment after playing "Space Shuffle." Not "Oh, you're playing is so clean and precise," which is another way of saying "It was too fast for me to enjoy, but it sounds like you know what you're doing." They felt it, felt me in it, and they liked it.

Dude, Space Shuffle rocked so hard my glasses were falling off my face. Usually I have time to reach up and put them back on, but I was hanging on for dear life and just had to hope they didn't fall off. I felt like Harry Potter: Put on glasses, wizard battle, push glasses back up onto my face. And the standing and the clapping and the whooping.

God, I felt like a man.

I stayed up late into the evening. Well, late for these folks. At 2 AM I'm usually just firing up the Avid, but there is lake air here and its cold nip has me feeling a might sleepy, too. After my performance I hung out in the bar with about five other pianists, all of whom are wonderful and just bring something so unique to the scene, and we talked and bonded and got to know one another. I realized that, with the exception of one or two people, I live within half an hour of most of them in Alexandria. I had no idea I had moved into a ragtime "hotbed." Woo!

So now I'm going to bed, hoping that tomorrow brings equally lovely adventures and lots of CD sales. I'm already brainstorming all the funny things I can say. I'm so low on money that I've worked this one out:

"If you like what you're hearing, check out my new CD and take one home with you. Seriously, if you don't buy all of them, one of you is going to have to take me home with you - I can come back for the car."

Etcetera... etcetera...

I am rooting for me. This is the best possible thing."

I spent the rest of the weekend being told I was "brilliant" and "incredible" and "unbelievable." I think I paid for one beer - the rest were bought for me. One of the other performers took to calling me "Master" the whole weekend. Even so, I was so nervous before my performances, I took to drinking, and on Saturday I had a too much, realizing as I was trying to speak to the audience that I was slurring my words:

"Warmer. Considerably. Too drunk to care about spelling.

Notes: shitty performances due to nerves and bad pianos. "Smoke 'em if you got 'em" set falls flat, but am redeemed by blues with Gabriel, with whom I am in love. Perfect musical synergy. Best three hours of the weekend from 11-1:30 AM with John Petley, Peter Hill, and Gabriel Borque. amazing jam session. 12th Street Rag in G-flat major - no one could believe it. Jingle Bells. Did Amazing Grace and it will bring down the house on Sunday. Petley kicks ass. New friend in him and Nowal. give them a card!

Exhausted. Have to wake up in six hours."

I must have used up all my pretty words for Friday's entry because Saturday's come out more like grunting than writing. But, all that aside, I had an amazing time. I sold a bunch of CDs: Forty-two, roughly $600 worth! People were so excited. Many wanted my autograph. I felt like a rock star.

I made some new friends, too, who invited me to their house in Ottawa to stay Sunday night before driving home. I drove across the border and pulled up to a mansion. Nawal, John's girlfriend, works for the World Bank, and her 14,000 square-foot house was full of one-of-a-kind artwork from Bali and Africa and China. John and I hung out in the TV room drinking imported English beer. We ate an amazing meal (Nawal trained in Paris) and drank Courvoisier cognac and ate Irish Cremes and I fell into a bed of Egyptian cotton and slept like a hibernating black bear.

The next day I drove 10 hours home to take out the trash and apply for jobs walking dogs in DC. I think someone turned up the contrast level on my life.

But, I survived. The day after I got back, I sent a CD to my father (he asked for a "complimentary copy" which I thought was hilarious considering he was the only reason I was alive). In it I enclosed a check for $50, marked "Loan Payment #1." This week, I will get a job, whether that is walking dogs (I have an interview Tuesday) or whatever. And I will pay Dad back every cent, pay it back for as long as it takes. And it will feel so good to own my own life. I can't wait to tell you about how good it is going to be.

More later. For now, wish me luck.

Your,
Martin