There and Back Again

Hi!

Okay so two month hiatus - I'm back.

So much. So much has happened. I sold my car, my baby: a purple 1995 Ford Thunderbird. This was the car that carried me around in Florida, shuttled movie peeps back and forth to shoots, slid up and down hills in the winter. There was a dirt parking lot behind Full Sail and some of my best driving memories ever are from whirling my rear-wheel-drive V8 around in that sandy pit. I felt like the duke of Hazzard. All that was missing was the ability to jump in through the driver's side window.

What else. School started, a fresh new semester with some really neat classes. My favorite has to be 'Ancient Epic,' in which we're reading The Illiad and The Odyssey, as well as The Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses. Interested as I am as a Virgo in deciphering the patterns of the universe, this class is the equivalent of crack. You can literally see the web being spun that it is western literature. It's all there, in elegant poetry. One of the coolest things I learned so far is that, when the Odyssey and Illiad were first set to paper, Homer (or whoever) deliberately chose an older style for the language. It would be the equivalent of me sitting down and, in an effort to tell an old story, write in the style of Shakespeare. These poems were old 2700 years ago! To think that one can pick up a book and instantly be connected with millenia... tonight in my other class, Arthurian Legend and Cultural Change, we spent an hour in the special collections room of Hillman Library putting our paws all over medieval manuscripts. There is something magical about those old texts, voluminous works that are all hand-written, all transcribed by hand. It's amazing how text, when composed by hand, becomes more than what it is, transcends the page into art. When you hold one of these books you feel like you're holding something important. Maybe it's because it is unique, even if the words are not - like a painting of a familiar image that is a unique piece of art unto itself. Put some vellum and some leather-wrapped wood between your hands and you get a sense of just how precious those words are.

I've also become, in the past two months, a huge fan of World of Warcraft. It's a massive multiplayer game that loosely follows the rules of Tolkienien fantasy, and it is addictive and amazing and the best game I've ever played. The coolest thing about it is the interaction with other real people, not just little computer-generated characters - my whole apartment shares my addiction and it's been a great way to get to know one another and spend time together. It always gives us something to talk about in case we can't think of anything, and it's built a sense of comraderie which I value.

Ah! An update on the living situation: I. Love. Squirrel. Hill. It feels like the center of a little world, complete with amazing pizza and a grocery store right up the street. Of all the possible ways the apartment situation could have worked out, it really has worked out for the best. Thanks amorphous deity who I can't bring myself to call God!

If all this seems too easy to be true, I do admit that there's been a lot of rumbling about not having steady work and not knowing what my plan is for next year. I've had a couple professors I respect encourage me to follow the route of the educator, even going so far as to suggest schools to go to and the like: Columbia, Berkeley, Northwestern. It'd be nice if they'd recommend a school that one need not be Doogie Howser to geet into, but oh well. I like to think that my particular brand of intelligence is just hard to quantify. Can I get an amen. So, that's been kind of stressful - the GREs and letters of recommendation - I need to get a move on lest I cut slices of pizza at Mineo's for a year until the next round of applications is due.

In other news, it looks like I'll be performing at a ragtime festival in New Alexandria Bay, New York, October 12-14, 2007! Tony Caramia, my piano mentor and good friend, recommended me to the festival director as a sort of replacement after his retirement from ragtime, so I feel like I have some HUGE shoes to fill.

I feel like that guy in Rent who wants to write one good song before he dies - I've been working on this "Riding the Wind" rag for a year now, and would like to finish it before I'm too old to play it. I think I'll be playing in Sedalia again next year as well. Bill has been urging me to go with him to the World Old Time Piano Playing Championship in Peoria, Illinois, under pretenses I consider hopelessly optimistic. "Come on, we'll dominate," he soothes, unaware that neither I nor he have any chance against what are, frankly, some of the best ragtime piano players in the world. Then again, I bet it'd be a lot of fun and a good chance to meet other players. So, basically what I'm saying is that I feel blessed to have people who want to hear me play the piano :)

It feels good to post in retrospect - the emotion of the moments has dimmed leaving only the facts, which are rather happy. Things are going well. How are you?

always,
martin

24 on the 24th

Hi. It's my birthday :)

That's right: 24 revolutions around the sun ago, I was born. At 3:30 AM, no less, which perhaps explains why my blog entries are always posted in the wee hours of the night. I was a night owl from day 0.

Mum used to tell me that I was a "white-knuckled baby," having entered the world the most reluctantly out of her four children. I like to think that I was making a dramatic pause before my grand entrance. The more likely truth is that my big head had to triangulate the exact physics of just exactly how it was going to navigate those tempestuous moments through bone and sinew, that delicate dance all babies do on their way to the world. And man was my head big.

I am happy to say that I am glad I made it. Life, all of it, has been crazy and good.

There were a couple of awkward moments I could've done without. If you ever see my sophomore picture from high school (which you never will, and if you do I will interrogate you and find out who showed it to you so I can persuade them that their remaining fingers would be best kept out of their yearbook (this means you, Calland!)), you would know exactly which years I am referring to and why.

This is the first birthday where I am truly okay with the thought of getting older. I don't really feel any different than I did when I was 22. I feel a little stronger, a little more confident. I have fewer questions about myself and what I believe, which is something I used to fear but now realize is an act of mercy, a reward for surviving adolescence. The people in my life who I love are still here, and I've added a couple more to the list. I drive a better car, own nicer shirts, live in a new place, and have better sex. Things have changed, but largely for the better. So many new experiences and beautiful places seen...

I started a journal when I was a child. I think I was 8, and I had a tiny little notebook, no bigger than my palm, in which I scrawled my secrets and my stories. In it, I made a list of things I wanted to do in my lifetime. Mom had suggested the exercise, and her flowing script on the faded pages reminds me of the winter evening we sat on the couch and wrote down them down. Some of them are wonderfully dreamy: Fly an airplane. Have a big train-set. Own an old-fashioned car. It's so neat to hear old priorities read aloud, made alive again.

[I truly did desperately want an old-fashioned car. There was a 1926 Buick 8 parked outside a dusty mechanic's shop where I grew up, and I remember staring at it every time we drove by. I don't really remember what it represented to me. I only knew that it was old, and that it had been beautiful once.

One day, to my great delight, we stopped there and my parents asked if I could sit in it. I can still remember the hazy smell, the coarse fibers of the seat fabric, the big numbers inside round gauges, the cold metal of the steering wheel...]

Other dreams seem oddly precocious. One of the things I wanted to do was see Victor Borge in concert. Most people my age have never even heard of him, but when I was 8 I was already a fan. I remember my grandparents watching a special of his in our living room, and I thought he was some kind of magician. He died in December 2004, but not before I saw him in concert in September, my birthday present from Dad when I turned 22. What a night! I felt like a child in his presence, the way he held the audience, the way he mastered the piano.

So, I'm 24 today. Which is one year less than half of 50. Yes, I am old. I can feel it in my knees. I can see it on my scalp. But I also feel stronger in other places, physically and spiritually. Maybe that's what the game of life is, our weaknesses the furniture in a big living room that we move around as we get older, adjusting for the shifting sunlight. Maybe all my little questions have condensed like water on a glass of cold milk into one big question, THE big question: Why? Why am I here? What is it I was sent here to do? I want so much to be able to answer the question without selecting E)All of the above. Peace about that question would be an awesome birthday present. No fucking certificates, Universe. I want it wrapped with a bow. And a funny card.

The dodgeball championship is tonight. This is for all the marbles. Mark, Mat and I had a great warm-up session earlier. As silly as it sounds, my experience with Dodgeball in many ways reflects my life. When I started, I was reluctant and afraid. I didn't think I could do it. I would drop easy catches, I couldn't throw worth shit - I came into it with white knuckles.

Now, though... now I salivate for it, can't wait to sweat for it. Every time I go out onto that little court in that little building in the big world, I become less and less afraid. Call it one revolution around the sun. Putting the couch in the corner. Turning the wheel on the Buick 8...

Yours always,
Martin

Give Me an I, K, or 8!

So, the iBook and the girlfriend are now sleeping dreamily in West Virginia. I'm typing to you on the equivalent of a typewriter, a 600MHz Celeron Dell Inspiron 3800 that used to be my sister's. Technically it still is hers, but I've got it on long-term loan.

Aside from a tiny 12" screen and 10GB hard drive (snazzy!), the only thing that's really kept me from using it is that this past April, in what can only be explained by supernatural phenomena, the K, I, and 8 keys ceased to work. At all. It seemed like something related to the sperm-killing temperatures: the laptop would get hot, K, I, and 8 ceased to exist, and then I'd turn it off and the next day it would be fine again. Until, of course, it wasn't fine and those letters/number didn't return.

At first I thought I could get by without them. I mean, really, how often do you use the number 8? I figured I could get around 'K' by spelling things with a 'C' and people would think I was linguistically dangerous and, therefore, virile. What really killed me, though, was 'I.' Metaphysical blow-your-mind philosophizing aside, this little letter is a bitch to go without. There were eleven I's in that last sentence alone, so there went any chance of working on the novel. The main character's name is Nione, so everytime I would write "Nione said," I would have to copy-and-paste 2 I's from things I'd already written before the Breaking of the Keyboard.

So, I thought the little laptop was pretty much done. I had the iBook over the summer to keep my fingers warm, never considering that this night would come, when the two things that made me smile the most over the summer would be sleeping sweetly two hours away. Enter the Inspiron. I dug it out of storage, fired her up, and lo and behold there are 26 letters in my alphabet again. Rock it, bitches. K, I, 8. It sounds like a spy agency or something.

So, long story short, I can write to you again. Sure, I know the two-night break probably scared most of you, but I is back. Literally.

In other news, I smoked my first and last cigarette last night. My friend Bill is in town from Philadelphia, taking a break from his gallavanting while his wife attends the family reunion in Ukraine, and frankly he is a terrible influence. He's a classical pianist, a damn good one, and an old friend. He's back for the week, so I invited him out last night to see my new place. The night air was cool, the windows were open, he was smoking like a tool, so instead of yelling at him I just asked for one, he lit it, and I puffed and coughed my way down West Liberty Ave.

Now the scary part, the part I didn't expect, the part that I'll share here in the privacy of the internet, is that contrary to everything I ever thought I would feel, I actually *liked* smoking. Sure, it dried out my mouth and felt like breathing in car exhaust, but I was holding fire, BREATHING fire. I felt like a dragon. I *was* fire. Because there's smoke in your lungs instead of oxygen, your whole body mellows out, softens up, finds a comfy chair, and now the road is less bumpy and the air feels good on the hairs of your arm and you just want to sit and not think and feel the blood flow through to your fingers and back. I can see why smoking makes people pensive, reflective, calm. I can see why they do it in bed after sex. I still don't understand why they want to do it in restaurants, but to each his own air.

Tonight ended with a Soul Caliber III romp with Luke, Mat, Margaret, and Thomas. We then followed it up with what is quite possibly the funniest two hours of television I've ever seen: The Comedy Central Roast of William Shatner. We seriously laughed the entire time. If you don't believe me, perhaps this will change your mind: Betty White ('Rose' from the Golden Girls) was one of the roasters, and the things that came out of her mouth would make a dead nun blush. Find it. Watch it. Love it.

Also, Monday is half-price Margaret day, so if you have $5, a plow penis, and you like Jason Mraz, give her a call.

A beautiful night. The air is cool and clean on my skin. Lovely for sleeping.

-M

Long Day

Today began at 6:45 AM, waking up next to Jess at the apartment in Squirrel Hill. I could get used to seeing her first thing in the morning - having a warm arm wrapped around you as you drift into consciousness is a lovely way to enter a day.

We had offered to babysit for my sister on Thursday night so she and her husband could have a few hours to themselves. I don't get to help her much, so when Jessie volunteered us, I was happy to have a chance to help. It turns out my little niece was really sick and couldn't go to daycare today, so Anna asked after babysitting on Thursday if Jess would come back at 7:30 AM and babysit this morning. Not wanting her to be there alone, I came along (okay, she threatened violence if I didn't), and we had another adventure with my 11-month-old niece, Mariah.



I know, she's painfully cute. Don't look too long or your eyes will start to go mushy. She makes the best facial expressions, too - she has eyes that really look at things. Sounds funny to say it that way, but you can almost watch the billions of synapses fire as she learns how to work the world. The only stressful thing was that, as a sick baby, she was nigh inconsolable all night and much of the morning, so her usually happy disposition was sadly missing. When you're sick, nobody but mom will do - it was traumatic trying to be the surrogates. I've gotten a lot better with kids in the past couple of years but babies still scare the shit out of me. I'm so afraid I'm going to do something wrong, miss some crucial signal. I wouldn't want to babysit alone. Thank goodness Jess was there - she's been babysitting since 6th-grade, so she had a measured calm about it that was reassuring. The cutest moment ever was when she sang Mariah to sleep. It was one of those perfect moments: soft, pink light through the windowblinds, the subtle wind from a fan, her beautiful, lilting voice. I found myself swaying back and forth, my eyelids heavy, my breathing slowed. If I had a blanket, I might just have zonked out, too. Lullaby's are serious magic.

The most fun, of course, was trying to give Mariah her medicine when she woke up. I'm about as clumsy as it gets with a syringe. I have ragtime thumbs, i.e. it either all squirts out or none of it. Poor Mariah - it took a couple of tries and a lot of tag-team holding to get her to swallow a tsp. of Motrin. I think the experience gave me a chance to taste parenthood, and I'm definitely a decade away from kids of my own. It's strange, though - I find myself thinking about things like, "I want my parents to be alive to know my kids," and "I don't want to be old when they're young." You really do change in your mid-20s. Weird.

I went with Jess' fam up to the West End Overlook, an incredible vantage of Pittsburgh. It was evening. A low, purple dusk set upon the skyscrapers, their distant lights twinkling in the waning summer air. We were there for some free concert, but we missed most of it, so instead I enjoyed the view. We then took a car tour of the southwest of Pittsburgh, through Crafton/Ingram where my Aunt Irene lives, down to the infamous Broadhead Manor apartments where lots of people got murdered in the 70s and 80s. I didn't know that Pittsburgh had Projects - that was an unwelcome revelation. So many dark corners of the world.

Sleep well, loves. Catch you soon.

-M

Just My $.95

Yup. That's what I have in the world right now. $.95. Oh, little decimal, what a difference though doth maketh. I spent my last five dollars on Sunday at the Shadyside Arts Festival, where I bought what was in reality a gallon of frozen lemonade. Much like lighting off fireworks, there's nothing quite as intangible as consuming your own cash. It's like how death and mortality is what truly gives anything value - and when you spend the last of it, the moments should be savored.

The lemonade was terrible, of course. I don't know why I always buy lemonade at festivals expecting it to be good. I might as well buy some sugar cubes, spit on them, and then grind them up with ice. This would probably be my advice to high school seniors, if someone were ever to ask me someday, just three little words that would inalterably change the course of young lives: Make your own.

My dad remarked today how he'd never been golfing with someone who only had $.95, to which I replied that I was usually the child taking him places he never thought he'd go: a ragtime festival in Missouri, the ER in Winter Park, FL, the dance floor at Donna's wedding. I think it was a kind of watershed moment in our relationship; I realized that even when I had absolutely nothing, I had everything I would ever need.

Jess is leaving on Sunday, which is a sentence that is weighing down all the other ones on this page. To commemorate, we spent the evening chowing down on italian ice and reading old e-mails to each other. She read hers out loud, and I would read my reply. It was even more fun when we acted out old IM conversations - it read something like a taut screenplay for a successful romantic comedy. I was Billy, she was Meg. It was strange to hear our new voices giving bodies to the old ones. These are mostly e-mails from 2000 and 2001, so the whole evening had the air of a mad scientist's experiment, a wormhole bursting open on her parents' couch and cramming the entirety of the time-space continuum of our experience together into one thin moment.

Me love you long time, crazy girl. This one-line paragraph is for you.

I'm going through laptop withdrawal. I don't know what I'm going to do when it heads home for the Springs. How will I write to you from my bed? How will I surf eBay and Amazon and Apple forums from the comfort of the sheets? I don't believe in wireless keyboards or meeces because of the quarter-second delay between intention and the screen. You know what I mean, that little, tiny moment between thought and word. It's like watching a video where the voice is out of sync with the mouth - I was born to perceive the subtlety, hard-wired to know the discrepancy, and it is maddening and I just want to poke at the screen with sharp things until it goes away.

Ditto with the wireless keyboard. Maybe I can do some case-study, submit my body for the betterment of my computing situation. I wonder how much silicon I'm really worth. The new Core 2 Duo is salacious...

Speaking of sex, I've been bummed recently because my documentary filmmaking class has been cancelled for the fall. No word yet as to why, but I'm really disappointed. I've had the feeling for a couple of months now that something, something big, was coming in the Fall that was going to re-angle my life, change its trajectory (the scary thing is I just totally Freuded on "trajectory" and initially spelled it "tragectory," which is of course my fear that the change will be painful). I was hoping it was the documentary class - come on, Universe, your poker face is too good.

I have a deck of tarot cards. You probably think different of me now after knowing that, but that's okay. I haven't dealt them out in awhile - sometimes the blinders are comforting - but I'm thinking I should find them and ask a few quick questions. Just two or three steps ahead, that's all I really need. They've never been wrong. They can't be wrong because they reveal what's within you; what you see in the images is what you are, so to speak. Nothing magical about it, just art eliciting reality, windows and soul and all that jazz. I'll let you know what they say.

In the meantime, stay classy, and if you read, friggin' comment. I'm off to my computer-less bed, wishing you all were in my lap.

Lurve,
M

Happy Birthday, Jessie!

Yay! August 5th, and Jess is 24 years old!!! Happy Birthday, baby :)

Festivities began tonight at the Monterey Bay Fish Grotto on Mount Washington, a beautiful restaurant with a grand view of the city (they actually call all the restaurants up there the "Grand View" restaurants, and truly, if you come to Pittsburgh, it shouldn't be missed). It was a deliciously-spent $99 and a lovely meal... I had the sockeye salmon and Jess had the Naigari Marlin - delish. They also have, to date, the world's best french onion soup. Highly recommended.

Later today we're heading out with her family for another dinner, and then Sunday it's a pool party with the peeps over at Tara and Ben's.

I've been drama lately. Had a bit of a crisis today in that I am totally adrift, steerless, rudderless, washing up against the shores of interest and wondering whether the sand is sturdy enough to set foot. Translation: What the fuck am I supposed to do here on this planet? We saw Superman Returns today, and I left the theater enthralled, entranced, and utterly depressed at reality. When I watch a movie, I give myself totally to the experience. I invite it in, hang its coat on my wall, and let it take me where it shall. That's why I can't watch scary movies - for those few moments, what is up there is real. I can't distinguish between the waking world and the screen, and when I leave my world is forever altered. It's a small price to pay for the truly transcendant moments, and it is why I love movies, but it is exhausting.

I'm still in the twin bed at mom's house. It's amazing the number of reasons one can find to put off moving. It would be easier if Jess were not here, if the apartment had internet access, but Saturday night is the night. THE night. I need to find the sheets for the bed, finish building the computer desk, and go.

I was in Cleveland on Thursday for a job. We were at Key Tower, the headquarters for Key Bank, a lavishly decorated temple to the dollar: gorgeous mahogany on every wall, windows so towering that one can see for miles and miles over Cleveland. While we were there, on the 56th floor, a thunderstorm raged through the city, and the clouds were passing by us at eye-level, curling around the building, dark and creeping. I felt like I could have opened the window and let in the storm. It's amazing the places you'll go with a video camera and a microphone.

I've been looking into the Writing for Stage and Screen masters program at Northwestern University. It seems like an amazing mix of education and opportunity. You write, among other things, a play, a screenplay, a thesis, and you get $5000 to produce your thesis. I'm sure it's very competitive, and they evaluate you based on a 10-page writing sample. Your words, naked in front of a stranger, in the context of thousands of others stories that are also 10 pages... the odds of navigating this asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to... yeah. It's a longshot. But it would be a new adventure in a new city, studying with professionals who've made something of themselves. So many of the people I interact with are in the same boat, all looking at each other for directions on how to row, and what I think I need is to consult people who've had their sea legs for a while longer, find out the strokes that best use the oar.

That's what I really want, I guess; to go to bed at night having meaningfully displaced a little water.

The night air outside my window has a taste of magic on it, like somewhere nearby, in the trees in front of my house, a few of the old songs are still being sung. I find myself wanting to sleep outside, curled up in the grass, blanketed by night. It's rare now to hear the old melodies, to get a chance to dance to the old rhythms. I desire very much to hear them more often. They are soft and quiet and very much alive.

Yours,
Martin

Holy Wow

I am in love:



I am so learning it this way. That is all.

Martin

Here's Squinting at You, Sweetheart

So, the day before I left for the family vacation to Virginia Beach, I broke my glasses. My titanium glasses; you know, the stuff the Batmobile is made of. You'd think the simple act of cleaning one's lenses wouldn't scratch, let alone break, titanium glasses, but it did.

Fortunately, I have a prescription pair of sunglasses that I've kept around for seven years in case of just such an emergency, so I spent the week eating family dinners with the reflective cop-shades on at the dinner table.

I went to America's Best with Jess upon my return and got some contacts, which is something that I've wanted to do for a long time because I liked contacts when I had them. The unfortunate thing is, either I'm defective as a person or the people at America's Best are incompetent, because I have to go back now a second time and tell them just how wrong the contact-lens prescription is. I am sitting on a twin bed in my mother's house, three feet away from the 14" computer screen, and I have to squint to see the words that I am typing. This is maddening. And it's not like I can crack out the sunglasses at 9:30 PM.

So, I'm going back tomorrow with an ultimatum. Either they fix my vision, or I'm going to accidentally drive into their store having mistaken it for a Sunoco.

In other news, Jess, Tooch, Scott and Mat were all a big help on Saturday with the whole moving out thing. Luke kindly agreed to let me keep my stuff at his place over the summer, not realizing that the room the stuff was in was wet and damp and therefore moldy. Eep. Jess and I still smell like Lysol wipes, having murdered countless mold colonies on my speakers, my TV stand, my coffee table, etc...

The place feels a lot more homey with my stuff in it. I have nice things, which I've enjoyed procuring, and they make it feel a little more mine. I'm going to force myself to start sleeping over there on Wednesday. I say 'force' because there's no internet there, yet - that's not until Monday - and also Jessie is on this side of town, so those are two pretty compelling reasons to stay put.

Jess is leaving for three days to go visit her Gran in Erie, so I'm going to use the spare time to finish moving and also to work on my movie. I've been putting it off, and there are a lot of things left to be done. For starters, I'm going to capture and edit the fight-scenes, so one can watch the whole film, from beginning to end, and evaluate it accordingly. Wish me luck!

Yours,
Martin

Riddle Me This, Riddle Me That

So, everything has worked out with the new apartment. All of the worrying, all of the frantic phone calls and awkward conversations, and now it has finally come to this, and it is good.

As of this Sunday, I'm moving out of Mum's house and into an apartment in Squirrel Hill, a little urban suburb of the City of Pittsburgh. It's a three-bedroom, five houses up from the main drag, and it feels like it's in the center of the world. One block to the bowling alley. .5 blocks to the Starbucks. Two blocks to the art house movie theater. Lots of little restaurants, the best pizza in the city, etc.. Talk about a new adventure! My entire living away from home experience has been spent in what were technically fortresses of solitude, replete with fireplaces and cathedral ceilings, and now I will have roomates to whom I'm not related in a part of the city I've never lived in a bedroom the size of my one at Mom's.

Bring it.

I'm sorry I haven't been writing to you as often. I had a week or so there where I was overcome by the urge, nay, the need to write to you, and of course the first date is always the one where you trip over your own words and talk too much. I'd like to think we're mellowing out, getting to know one another, finding each other's comfy places and easing back into something sustainable and good.

I learned how to make an awesome rum drink on vacation, the recipe of which I will share because, frankly, my only job in life is to spread happiness:

In a blender, combine:

1 can of limeade
1 limeade-sized can of rum
Ice

Blend. Pour into cups about 3/4 full, and then fill the rest with club soda. Add a lime wedge. Holy yum.

You love it. Admit it.

Bermuda Bound

Yay! Can't believe June 24th is already here... I'm leaving with Jessie's family today for Newark, NJ, headed towards Cape Liberty for a five-day cruise to Bermuda on the Explorer of the Seas.

I know, I know, I hate me too!

I'll be out of internet range, but I'll post pics when I get back on Friday. Stay well :)

Martin

Pure Land

Hey.

Short post this morning. I think my muse is loose sexually - I've come to her the past couple of nights asking for a blog entry and she barely had the energy to pull the dried cigarette from her lips. I'm rubbing her feet now, sneaking a few words out while she isn't looking.

Jessie was rifling through boxes today and found literally hundreds of the e-mails we exchanged in the first year of our relationship. I was in Florida, she was in Meadville, PA, and so it was an exercise in IM, e-mail, and the occasional phone call. It's hard to remember what it felt like early on - we're very different now, of course - but I remember that we had perfected the art of e-combat. Somehow fighting over e-mail and IM would make us feel closer, give us something, even something sour, to keep the taste of each other's company in our mouth. We'd talk for an hour and a half over IM starting at 10 PM, and then by 11:30 we'd be getting tired so we'd fight about something stupid, she'd go to bed angry while I wrote a furious 2-page e-mail, she'd write back in the morning, and by noontime we'd made up and apologized.

Rinse. Repeat. It's a miracle we made it through that first year. I was a lost cause as a boyfriend for lots of reasons, most too interesting for a blog of such stunning mediocrity, but she stuck it out with me, and so far so good :)

As fun as it is to find old letters, it's dangerous to read old e-mails. A friend once warned me that old e-mails, like old spirits, were best left undisturbed. Unlike a handwritten letter, an e-mail is so casual, so intimate, like a bandage over a fresh wound or wet saliva sealing an envelope. They are little pieces of you splattered about, and the old ones, loving or hurtful, draw blood on their way into fresh air. Mourning for a lost friend, nostalgia for a young love, promises unkept... add as many melodramatic instances as you care to. Old e-mail is risky business. The little rivers that seemed like raging floods, the grand proclamations that were really semi-colons... It's a miracle anyone is afloat, no?

I wish my muse had a name. Mat's is named Caissa, which is lovely, and I've borrowed her many times, usually returning her naked but satisfied. My own muse hasn't told me her name yet. She usually crashes on the couch long after I'm asleep. I haven't minded not knowing until right now, watching her ease softly into sleep. Names are really the only things connecting us sometimes.

sweet dreams,

martin

No Such Thing as an Ugly Blowjob

(just put a bag over her head, poke a hole for the mouth, and yell "did I tell you you could turn around?")

Other possible titles for this post were "Tennyson's Titties" and "Your Gun is Digging Into My Hip," but only this supreme quote of the night from Benjamin could truly capture my first titty bar experience at the Tennyson Lodge.

The Tennyson is set amidst the picturesque hills of Bethel Park, PA, a quiet little town nestled between a laundromat and a Dairy Queen just off Rt. 88. The Lodge's small, unassuming structure has the charm of an Elk Lodge and the cameraderie a Kiwanis Club, only all the elk are naked and everyone is staring at the flapping pairs of kiwanis. And they were small kiwanis at that, little flapjacks flitting back and forth like a hummingbird's wings to the singing warble of, you guessed it: karaoke.

Curious buttf*cking George I hate karaoke. I know this makes me an almost unbearably wet blanket in 19% of social situations, but the only things I hate more than karaoke are brussel sprouts and child molesters. Karaoke. Killmearaoke. Put-the-microphone-in-a-boat-and-implode-it-araoke. Not only are we going to make bad music, but we're going to make it LOUDLY, insert it directly in your brain past your shriveling cilia, and wedge it right between your will to live and your need to destroy.

Only at the titty bar they don't call it "karaoke," they call it "baraoke," and so for three hours every Wednesday and Friday night people gather to stand up on stage and get fondled by "Sage" and "Seven" and, God help you, "Kimmy."

Now, before you think me some heartless purist with a piano up my ass, I should note that I have nothing against people who enjoy karaoke. All of my friends love it, and I've been told there's others like them. It's a small, relatively harmless (unless you're an eardrum) way for people to be a star, for non-musicians to make music, for regular Janes and Joes to express themselves and have the spotlight on them after a hard day's work. For them I have nothing but quiet admiration, because they have the balls to get up and do it and I don't.

That said, I also applaud married people having great sex, childen recovering from surgery, and llamas having baby llamas, but that doesn't mean I want to watch them do it. Lots of life's little triumphs just don't translate onto the stage, especially not for three hours at a time.

Now, you may think that this being a titty bar and all, the aformentioned titties would be a welcome diversion from the karaoke onslaught. You, sir/madam, would be mistaken, because there were no breasts at this bar. The only real breasts there belonged to my girlfriend, and I could only see the top couple inches of them.

Now, I know what you're thinking: Why Martin, you are a strapping young man who is most likely outfitted with man parts of a considerable size and girth. How could you possibly not have enjoyed seeing boobs that belonged to *other* girls?

Well, for starters, the teeny tiny breasts were attached to teeny tiny women. I wanted to like the one girl, my sweet Seven, but felt nasty because she more closely resembled a 13-year-old hairless boy. Jesus, I have bigger tits than these people, and nobody has to pay to see mine.

Secondly, going to a titty bar is a lot like watching the Food Network: "Here is something absolutely delicious that I just whipped out and I'm going to now wave it in front of you, tell you how good it tastes, and then go to commercial." No touchie. No touch.

Thirdly, and more seriously, I couldn't help but feel really sad for all the girls dancing there. It's a strange sensation because they are all adults and have made adult decisions, but when even Howard Stern says, as he did on Sean Hannity's radio show, "If your daughter is dancing on a pole, you've failed as a parent," there's something unmistakably off about your profession. They are, after all, someone's baby girl.

I was listening to an interview on "Fresh Aire" today, and although it seemed extraneous at the time, Terri Gross was talking to an author about writing sex scenes. She was asking if it was hard to write a sex scene, and the author replied, "It is hard to write a sex scene, because what are you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to titillate me, to arouse me? Everyone's had sex, good sex. Nothing you can write can titillate me more than the real thing. So every sex scene I wrote I asked myself, 'What is this doing? What is this telling us about the characters?' Sex has to reveal someone, has to educate the reader. Sex needs to be in the context of a soul."

Looking back on it, I think that's why the titty bar just wasn't all that exciting. The dancers just took off their clothes, shook their vaginas, traded smiles with men and their dollar bills, and then kept on dancing. Sure it was kind of exciting for the first few moments when you don't know where to put your eyes, when you're afraid to look away because you might offend her, but then it became this sort of mechanical thing, this pussy production line, and I found myself longing for the intimate mystery of a girl with her shirt on.

Like music, it is the space between the notes that truly moves you.

Next up is a gay bar, because I am ridiculously curious, and then a straight bar with male dancers. I want to see Jessie's reaction, to see if she feels the way I did about the Tennyson Ladies. Maybe the Lodge was just a sketchy enough place that the tinge of desperation was able to rise above the cigarette smoke and that a more upbeat establishment would have left me with a different taste.

Much like the Food Network, however, it doesn't make much sense to be hungry in the living room when there's a good cook in the kitchen...

ever as always,

martin

I Love Kermit the Frog

I do. I really do. Even when he poses nude for Ford commercials or smiles at Lily Tomlin, he's still the frog for me.

I think this is because my favorite book to page through is a coffee-table book that I got years ago as a birthday gift called "Jim Henson: The Works - the Art, the Magic, the Imagination." If you love your inner child you will go buy it here: Click Me

All my other books have the stain of years on them, but not this one. This one I always hold gently and fuss after like it was a little plant, careful not to dent its leaves or get it too wet. As a kid I took it with me on beach vacations, had it constantly by my bedside table to read before sleep. It's a great book about Jim Henson and the people he inspired, about the Muppets, about the movies. It still appeals to me because in a lot of ways I aspire to be Jim Henson. He was a mythic hero of my childhood, the man who worked with Lucas and Spielberg, the magician whose spells cast the Muppets. He was a master storyteller, and he is part of the reason I love telling stories so much. [TMI sidenote: I actually just bought the LP of "The Great Muppet Caper" soundtrack a few months ago so I could crank up "Happiness Hotel" and dance around my apartment to it. I realized, upon listening to it, that this was some serious formative shit - that tune is total ragtime, and I loved it then without knowing why.]

And always Kermit was Jim, Jim was Kermit. So pose away, Kermie. You're the frog for me.

In other amorous tidings, Jessie is the bomb. When we first started dating those many years ago, I used to worry that our interactions could never be "deep" enough. She seemed so surface-level, so situational, and I was the layered, troubled artiste who could never possibly be understood because I was so complicated.

Tonight, though, was a warm reminder of just how keen and "deep" she can actually see. She is my best friend, so I'm a little biased, but I can honestly say that Jessie is the only person I know who can interact with a person for five minutes and instantly know exactly what to say to make them cry.

Now, this doesn't sound like an admirable trait. I think it was one of those gifts developed as self-defense to survive being a tall girl in grade school. And, yes, it has been used for evil. Sometime you have to get Jess to tell you the story about the girl in band who picked on her, so to shut her up Jessie told her "At least my parents loved me and didn't put me up for adoption."

She was sent to the principal's office, which is hilarious on many, many levels.

The gift of the ability, though, at least for me, is her ability to put people into context. She keeps me from taking things the wrong way, from worrying about who feels what or who thinks such and such, from playing the same tapes over and over in my head. You see, the great illusion about me, and I assure you there is only one, is that I appear not to take seriously what is, in truth, for me life and death (all part-and-parcel of my own unique complicatedness that you could never possibly understand... Jesus Christ when does the teen angst ever die). Jess sees through it, both in me and others. Sure, the price is that she could yank out my soul, but it's a small risk to take for a sweet, savvy morsel of genuine interaction.

I love you. Each days yields a new reason why.

Giovanni DeChiaro is serenading me. I think its Joplin's "New Rag." The trio plays like a dream. I'm off to meet him somewhere in the middle.

sweet dreams,

martin

I Came Inside Her Head

If you're confused and frightened by the title of this post, you should be. This is one of many deliciously sexual comments made tonight during "Total Geekout 2006," otherwise known as Margaret's-heading-back-to-New-York-on-Friday party. This particular gem was made by the inimitable Mat, whose idea it was to corral the Pittsburgh remnant into the same place for an evening of beer, pizza, and Soul Calibur III.

It was a blast. The fact that I'm typing this at 5 AM tells you the kind of fun it was.

This is an old ritual for this particular group, all of whom are part of the production company for "Hunt for the Holocron." We go all the way back to the first Soul Calibur, which tells you two things: 1) We've been working on the movie a long time, and 2) We'd rather play Soul Calibur than work on the movie.

Only because it's inevitable will I say that yes, indeed, the soul still burns. I got my butt summarily kicked, but I have always and will always hate Sophitia, so no news there.

It's always an adventure getting the movie crew together. I'm not really a "group of friends" kind of person, so the situation is always a little awkward for me. A guy I knew in Florida named Jeffrey talked constantly about his friends from back home in Texas. He talked about them so often that even though I only met them maybe once or twice, they became my friends too. They were all best friends, had known one another since birth, had dated each other, gone to high school together, etc... Jeffrey's entire life was spent in the company of a group, a pack, a tribe, and they were as much a part of him as he was of them.

I can honestly say my first friendship that wasn't pre-arranged or manufactured by my parents didn't come until I was in 8th grade. No joke, it took me that long to figure it out, and ever since I've found myself attracted to individuals and intimate interactions. I'd much rather conversation over dinner with a good friend than party night with a 'gang.' Not that I'm a stiff - it's just my wheels roll better in the company of one.

Regardless, tonight was great fun. I bought a six-pack of Miller Lite and enjoyed all six of them in rapid succession. Tipsy is always good, and nothing beats drunken Soul Calibur. Margaret, Luke and I hit Eat 'n Park after the responsible contingent had to go to bed. While waiting for our water with lemon to come, she pulled out the digital camera and we made funny faces and pretended to cut each other with the butter knives. Behind us sat three heavy-set truck drivers, tattered men who regarded us with a mix of suspicion and curiosity, and every time the flash went off I caught them looking at us with a sort of indescribable, melancholy look.

I felt bad for them. I think they'd forgotten how to be silly.

Birds are chirping. Soon the sun will come up (it rises ridiculously early this time of year). Best to shut the eyes before day breaks over the windowsill

Until next time,

martin

It's Moolicious!

Jess and I made it to Hershey Park on Saturday. This is the first time I've been there in like 15 years, so I kept having weird deja vu moments. Random things would cause it: the bavarian architecture of the chocolate hut, the yellow letters of the "French Fries" booth, the line for the "Comet" rollercoaster. It looked much smaller than I remember. I felt taller than most of the buildings.

The title of this post comes from the Chocolate Ride at "Chocolate World," Hershey's scarily similar version of the Wonka Factory. The whole building, millions upon millions of dollars worth of rides and displays, is basically one giant corporate masturbation. This place puts the "milk" in milk chocolate, but the best part is they give away free peanut butter cups. There's even an interactive ride with singing cows! Hence the title... never mind that the thousands upon thousands of dairy cows who provide all that tasty goodness, the cows who are the reason Hershey was built where it was, are routinely artifically inseminated, unable to turn around in their stalls, kept in a constant state of pregnancy, and plugged into painful milking devices so they can produce the millions of gallons of milk that go into making milk chocolate.

Go ahead, Timmy. It's a tasty treat!

For those of you who don't know, I am a huge rollercoaster buff. I don't wear funny t-shirts or annotate videos for the Travel Channel, but I consider myself a coaster junkie. I especially like wooden rollercoasters, and on every one I ride I always try to sit in the back. It's the only way to ride - the back seat is the roughest, the fastest, and the most likely to fly off the track at any moment.

My favorite so far is the Thunderbolt at Kennywood here in Pittsburgh. My record is riding it 13 times in a row, 26 times in a day. It is, how you say, coaster perfection. When I was a kid my mum had a bag full of popsicle sticks, and I spent a week gluing 200 of them together in an attempt to recreate the Thunderbolt. I had elaborate plans on how to make the trains, too, and had visions of watching my own coaster fly around the tracks. I made it to the first hill and ran out of sticks.

Hershey has some awesome wooden coasters (must... ride... Wildcat... again) and I'm going to make it a point over the next five years to do a tour of amusement parks and hit up all the wooden coasters. I'll make a travelogue and sell it to some TV station. People loves the rolling coasters.

So, Jess and I had a great time. We managed to spend less than $150 on the day, and didn't get sick from the corn dogs or the ultra-sweet lemonade. The hardest part of the day was actually driving home. We didn't leave the park until 11 PM, and it's a two-hour drive back to Berkeley Springs, so it became a game of "how closed can martin's eyes get while still able to see the road"? Yah, we nearly died like three times. I never understood how people fell asleep at the wheel until Saturday night. Holy balls, it felt like a dream.

I'm back in the 'burgh now, along with Jess. The awesomest of awesome news is that I'm typing this on her iBook, which she's lending me over the summer. Sweet! I've been hankering for a laptop for some time now - oh the advantages of a computer in bed next to you - and now I get to enjoy a Mac for free. Good times. It's not one of those newfangled MacBooks. This is old school iBook, with a bona fide G4 processor. Sad but true, it's faster than my monster PC. Go figure. All it needs is another 512 of RAM... maybe I'll invest :)

We're heading to Idlewild tomorrow, which is a small amusement park in the mountains of Western Pennsylvania. It's the third-oldest amusement park in the country, and the 10th oldest in the world. It doesn't have lots of flashy coasters or anything
(it's only coaster, the "Rollo Coaster," is a simple out-and-back that's about as exciting as this blog) but it's got lots of good food, a decent water park, and a whole giant "Mister Roger's Neighborhood" recreation that I've never seen but heard is awesome. Should be a fun afternoon.

Stay classy. I'll catch you later.

Martin

Robin Williams Night

I'm in the Springs with Jessie tonight, sitting on her full bed with the slats that fall out. I'm on the bed, she's on the floor. We both have laptops in front of us, and we're not speaking. Comfortable silence. I'm staying at her place through the weekend, a chance to be together before a summer spent living with our parents, stealing kisses when they aren't looking.

It's going to be impossible. I don't know about other people, but I like to have sex with someone beside myself at least once a month. To stay in practice. To stay sane. It becomes increasingly difficult when parents are asleep nearby, more exciting, yes, but more difficult, and I know soon I'll be yearning for the days when I had my castle on the hill, my own queen bed, my own candles burning.

I arrived in Berkeley Springs late last night after a tragic dodgeball loss. The only bright spot of the evening was when Margaret showed up as a surprise at the end of the last few games. It was a good surprise. I haven't seen her in eight months. It looks like New York hasn't dimmed her one bit. Mark's getting ready to go there at the end of the summer, and I am looking for roommates to live with in Squirrel Hill until I'm done with school next May. Seems like everyone's heading somewhere.

We saw "RV" tonight. Not your typical fare, sure, but it was genuinely funny and didn't pretend to be something it was not. There is something eternal in watching a man struggle to make others happy, especially when it's his own family. If you're looking for something light and airy to dissolve on your film tongue, I'd recommend it. Like water with lime, it goes down just fine.

To bed, to bed. We'll share our warmth and laugh, dream of tomorrows to come and yesterdays long gone. I believe a picnic is the order of the day tomorrow. Maybe we'll hit Hershey Park. The last time I was there I was a little boy. I wanted to go on the roller coaster so bad, so I made my mom wait in line to go with me and when it finally came time to get on, I freaked out and started screaming and crying and flailing because I was so afraid.

Upwards!

Railroad Rhythm

Click Here
Here's a little video clip from Sedalia. It's not exactly high production-value (note the lady's head in front of my fingers) and the sound isn't great, but it does show off my nice pink shirt from the Gap. The room looks empty, but there were about 30 or so people there. Thought you might get a kick out of seeing it.

Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival '06

So I just got back from Missouri and, as promised, here is the “full report” on Sedalia. It’s long – you may want to grab a cup of coffee. I’m writing to you from the airplane, basically curled up in the fetal position over Dad’s laptop because the guy in front of me insists on reclining into my lap. I wanted to write to you when Sedalia was fresh in my mind.

First things first: I had a blast. Dad did, too. We heard a lot of great music, and I got a lot of opportunities to perform. We arrived on Thursday afternoon after a highly entertaining drive down from Kansas City. The best part was the billboard for, I kid you not, the “Testicle Festival.” It had a picture of a bull on it, and all I could think about was what goes through a person’s mind at a testicle festival, what exact thought process made them go, “Hey, you know what I could go for right now?”

Missouri. Hmm.

We stopped at the ragtime store, picked up my performer’s packet, and to my great surprise I was scheduled to play not three times but six. I sort of freaked. I was only going to be there for two days – how was I going to stretch the two sets we worked out into six? In my surprise I almost knocked a $300 glass “Maple Leaf Rag” statue off the shelf, so Dad and I decided to find some dinner, check into the hotel, and head out to the “Easy Winners” concert to try and relax.

Back at the hotel Dad went to sleep and I went over to after hours, which was pretty tame compared to what I remember. After Hours is where the performers gather back at the hotel along with festival patrons to drink and play the piano. It's a huge room at the Best Western hotel that has a makeshift stage in the middle surrounded by big tables, and it's where you hear the best piano playing around. It’s really weird going to it alone, though, because when nobody you know is there you sort of just stand there, beer in hand, wishing you were at the piano so you could feel like you belong. I missed Jessie most in those moments. I was nervous about the next day, nervous about doing a good job, and I knew I had to get my hands on a piano before I could sleep.

I finally got up the courage to play, so I snuck up on stage and played “Loose Elbows” and “Kitchen Tom.” The response was pretty warm, nothing too crazy – I was in “I am an artist” mode, not “I am going to light this piano on fire and beat you all around the head with it” mode. Mimi Blais was there as I walked off, and she told me she liked my arrangement of “Kitchen Tom.” That was pretty cool. The best part of the festival for me this year though was the group of performers my age who were there: Michael Stalcup, Dalton Riden(h)our, Eytan Uslan, Bryan Wright, Adam Yarian, Adam Swanson, and me. Over the next few days we were to form a sort of ragtime “wolf pack,” and the most fun I had was hanging out with them talking music and playing duo-piano.

I wasn't a paid performer. There are only a couple of those out of the 138 musicians who were there (including 91 pianists. sweet mother of god that is so many... I didn't know there were that many in the country). I was there as a replacement for a pianist named Brett who broke his wrist. I found out later, however, that I wasn't the first replacement - they had a invited a German pianist named Hans, but he had died the weekend before the festival, so that's why I ended up with so many slots.

It's hard to talk about it in good taste because on the one hand it's kind of hilarious that someone would rather die than play at this festival. For what it's worth, I knew I was doing a good job when one of the performers came up to me and said, "I'm kind of glad he died. You're amazing."

I got the chance to meet Bryan Wright, who runs the "Elite Syncopations" radio station over at Live365.com. He’s 23 and a great player. Nick Taylor introduced me to him, and we found out that not only we were the same age, into the same music, but that we both go to the University of Pittsburgh. I asked him if he wanted to play something together, and we did a smoking version of “Charleston Rag” with Bill Edwards that brought the house down. We're going to put on a ragtime concert in Pittsburgh. You should come.

That sort of underscores something else that was kind of disappointing. At the festival they have a number of paid concerts named after pieces Joplin wrote. When I was there in 1999 they were a huge deal - it was scandalous that I was playing at one of them - and all the good performers would gather there and put on amazing shows. This year, thought, the level of playing just wasn’t that good (with the exception of the “Music Hall” concert which was awesome). The performers who were there didn’t seem to take it seriously – all the headliners were in the tents at the same time and playing better. There wasn’t any reason to go to the concerts. And, what kind of sucked for the younger players, they arranged it so that all the headliners played at different times, so a huge swath of people would just travel from one major performer to the other. I played after Sue at Gazebo Park, and she generously introduced me (and sang a song to my dad, haha) but when she finished her set 80% of the audience stood up with her and she said, “Don’t go! You have to hear Martin play! Don’t make me come down there!” When they left it was kind of a bummer, but what could I expect? My name wasn’t in the program. In the program it said “Open Piano: 2:00-2:20.” People couldn’t put a name to my face or read my bio, so why would they stay?

The flip-side of this is that contained within those 91 pianists were a large number of amateur players who really struggled to get through pieces. If I wasn’t following Sue Keller I was following some well-meaning amateur who would inevitably chase the audience away. It was a pattern that repeated itself for almost all of my venues and I found myself playing to really small audiences, but I played just as hard for 10 people as I would for 100 and it worked out great. The people are just so nice there, so appreciative. They’d stop me in the street to thank me, to say they enjoyed my playing, to ask me my name (again). It was easy to want to play well for them.

I met Dave “Mazak” (I’m not even going to try spelling it), and he was hilarious. I met Hal Isbitz and am learning his “Midnight” and “Miranda.” I had like a three hour conversation with John Gill where I got to know him a lot better. When I met him in 1999 I was really scared of him. I met pianist Virginia Tichenor for the first time and really enjoyed listening to her play. She's the daughter of a very famous ragtimer named Trebor Tichenor. She saw my last set at Maple Leaf Park and told me I had a “monster left hand.” I played “Swipesy Cakewalk” with John Gill at after hours late Friday night but I played it so fast that he said afterwards, “Christ, man, no need to stain the bed sheets.” Coming from him, wow – in the ragtime textbook this is under “How to know you’re playing too fast.” I was totally seduced by how good it felt, and I made a note to avoid that for the remainder of the weekend.

The only bummer was that I didn’t get to play for/with Brian Holland at all – he and Jeff didn’t stay at after hours more than a few minutes, so I barely got to say hi. They remembered me, though – lots of people did. My name, anyways.

Speaking of which, Dad was amazing. He helped me to gauge the audience, and was always encouraging when I got stressed. We expressed often to each other that we wished you were there, too. Performers like you really bring a lot of class with them, and I know I missed that. I played Euphonic Sounds in almost every set because I wanted people to hear some Joplin that wasn’t in a barrelhouse style. I carried the Billy Mayerl torch – I was the only person playing him there- and people absolutely loved “Railroad Rhythm.” When I asked Dad how I did after it was all over, he said a good job. I kept my mouth closed while playing, told stories, and smiled a lot. I may have even been too engaging – we filmed one set with my camera and I’m bouncing around like Jo Ann Castle.

I'll post a clip from the video. It's pretty funny.

I finished off last night with a set of four pieces to a packed after hours: Charleston Rag, Maple Leaf Rag, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, and Railroad Rhythm. People went crazy. One thing has always been sure about my life - I can play the piano really, really fast. They loved it and clamored for my name - it was most likely the first time many of them had heard me play (there were 6,000 people at the festival) and it was really exciting and a great way to end the weekend. People were clamoring to know who I was. They kept asking for my name and where I was from and shouted “more!” Other performers came up and shook my hand and asked me "How do you do that?"

I felt like I belonged there.

It was a unique, emotional experience. When I was there in 1999, I was the "prodigy," the kid who could play stride piano. It took some cahones to go back, to return as a balding 23-year-old who has other priorities now besides the piano. I'm grateful to have been invited, grateful to have gotten a chance to perform again, and I'm excited for next year.

They haven't heard anything yet.

Martin

Taurus the Bull

"Well, I got a Dodge Neon and a Ford Taurus."

So ended my rental-car fantasy. I chose the Taurus, if only because I have something personal against the Dodge Neon. I don't know why or for what, but man do I hate that car. The Taurus is blue - old man blue - and is built about as sturdy as this wet Kleenex that's hanging out of my nostril. It's chincy, cheap, and it makes the most annoying sounds you've ever heard.

No joke. Parking brake on? WAAAHWAAAHHHAHAHHWHAHA. Seat belt not on w/in 2 minutes? SCRREEEAM. You just want to hit it like an overbearing stepmother. I found myself talking to it as I was driving - "My your air conditioning is cold. Just feel the tips of my fingers" - I guess so far so good. The bad news is that the Honda needs some work - $500 worth of work - and seeing as I don't have $500 just lying around, I've been formulating a new plan. If I sold the Honda (and the T-Bird... almost.... there...), I could pay off my credit cards. Totally. Completely. Debt free, credit card wise.

Now here's the crazy part: With no monthly payment to make on my credit cards, I could afford new car payments.

I know what you're thinking. "But Martin," you'll say, "why would you replace your $5,000 debt with a $25,000 debt? Isn't that just multiplying the amount of money you'd owe to a creditor by five times?" To you I say, well, yes. I hadn't thought of it like that. Thank you very much for crushing my car-buying fantasy. Do you work at Enterprise Rent-A-Car? Enterprise Take-Your-Money-and-Give-You-a-Fucking-Taurus? You should apply. They think like you.

[dreamstealers]

I've been on edge this week. Snippy. Snarky. I felt so good this past weekend, so in-motion, so in-gear. Music always did give me a sense of direction. Playing a piece on the piano is like unwrapping a gift to yourself, your fingers with each stroke of the keys drawing the colorful veil back farther and farther back until you can see the corner, and you spend a few moments trying to guess where it's going, what's on the other side. With music you always know where you're headed. It's like a movie: At some point, this movie is going to end. Inevitability. Sweet inevitability. Beginnings and ends, and you standing above it all, making it all happen, the frithwebbe, the peaceweaver, weaving the songs together. Your hands take you there, keep you there, and you have to trust them to bring you back. At some point all the paper is gone, the bow stuck to your forehead, and all you have left is the gift you made for yourself.

Be joyful. Play for yourself, but be selfless with your music.

Martin

Enterprise

I get to rent a car today!

The Honda has gone from making a low whimper to a constant, shrill scream, and like a baby at a fancy restaurant I just can't take it anywhere. The right-front brake sounds like hot metal-on-metal action, and so I'm taking it in tomorrow morning at 9 AM (jesus nine in the morning fucking hell) and then Enterprise is coming over to pick me up and take me to my temporary new car.

I've never rented a car before. My little rental-car fantasy is that they'd have all the regular cars out front but then, upon seeing me, they'd give me the special handshake and guide me down past all the regular people who drive Chevy Aveos and Pontiac G6s and we'd take an elevator down to the "basement" where they keep the Maseratis and the Ferraris. I pick a red one, drive out from behind a bush, and I'm on my way...

We'll see how it pans out. I've got a busy couple of days coming up. Fortunately I have some paying work, which will feed me until I can find some more paying work. In the meantime, I'm about to start working on the manuscript for my newest piece, "Ride the Wind," this awesome new rag that I wrote. I hope it makes a splash at Sedalia!

You know you want to,
Martin