I Looked Away

I Looked Away

We stopped in Indy at the library, then the post office. I'm getting my mail thing together. Then we went for lunch to Steak & Shake.

I hadn't seen Amanda in a few weeks. It was...nice. I didn't really feel anything stronger than that. It was just nice to see her again. She was going on break, so another girl took care of us, but we got a couple little bits of talk in. And I'll be damned if those eyes don't still do things to me.

We went to my Grandma's so that Katie could play with her cousins. It seemed to go by too quick. But we might be seeing them again in a couple weeks.

Grandma made another significant contribution to my next month's ability to survive and prepare to move into my own place. I'm completely shocked at the amount she gave me, without me asking for a dime.

I got to the gig a bit late, but setup still took a while. B (who will be called Layla from now on, because I'm utterly perverse about these things) wasn't there at that point. I was kinda happy. She showed up later, after we started playing. Mom and Dad and my sister brought Katie in about 20 seconds before we started, and they stayed longer than I expected them to. Katie only really heard half an hour of us though. That kid can be knocked out asleep even with a rock band's speakers pointing right at her 20 feet away.

Actually, *I* could have fallen asleep during the first set. Other than a couple high points, it might have been the worst we've played in months. The alternate drummer seemed to have his energy sucked out when a couple of the guys suggested he was playing things too fast. A couple songs, yes. But the fact is, we are so used to a drummer who is the only drummer I know who plays too fucking SLOW half the time, that our sense of tempo has been severely fucked with. I told him not to take the comments too seriously and just try to be sensitive to which songs had the most words for the singer to spit out (which is where it obviously can be a problem) and he picked up again on the second set and we played quite well the rest of the night.

A couple in their 50s were there early, and even danced during our soundcheck. I walked past their table on a break and they said some VERY kind things about my playing. The guy is apparantly a musician himself (they're coming to one of our July gigs and he said he's played there before) and they were a lot of fun to watch. He's a tall bulky guy, she's a little tiny thing. Both look like they've put down enormous amounts of booze in their time, but they emanated nothing but fun and love for each other as they danced.

I got my turn later.

Most musicians I know look down on this activity. I think they confuse the ACT of dancing with the usual SOUNDTRACK. Most of what passes for dance music in our culture is horseshit on a cosmic level, but hey, you can dance to ANYTHING if you have an imagination.

I always say I don't dance. But during the five songs S sat in on bass, I was out there with Layla and two other women. It was...interesting...

I am fine when I have my bass as a prop. I move around a lot, and though I'm not above a bit of posing here and there, I mostly just move the way I feel the music moving me. There are times I feel like I'm dancing up there. Which is probably a horrible thought for most of the people who know me, but seriously, I get nice comments on this kind of thing, and to be honest, I'm finding myself less tolerant of musicians who simply stand there and do the job, no matter how good they are. You don't have to do anything weird, just FEEL the music, for fuck's sake. Get it in your body, and let it move your dead white ass. Be natural about it, but have some goddamn FUN, assholes.

I find Play That Funky Music White Boy to be both totally absurd and kinda fun, because it's one of the few opportunities I have to get the funk out in any meaningful way in this band. (Spooky, by the Classivs IV is another, and I really like that one.) It's infinitely easier to do so with this drummer. Last night, we closed with it and I managed to pull out two things I've never put into it before. One was just my particular idea of a Rocco Prestia groove. Rocco is the unbelievably cool bassist for Tower Of Power, whose first album tore my head off years ago, and who I've heard a few killer live recordings of recently. Rocco is known for his way with fingerstyle 16th-note funk grooves, very distinctive, extremely cool.

So I tried some of that as fills here and there. I fucking NAILED it a couple times.

Of course, then I got the "white boy" thing out by sticking the riff from Yes' Roundabout into the groove too. That was pure genius/stupidity on my part, if I do say so myself.

This shit works. It gets people up moving, and goddammit, that's a good thing.

When S first took my spot on stage, I was sitting next to Layla, trying to find a way of checking out her amazing, delectable legs without being too obvious about it. I probably failed. She took her shoes off, and leaned back and...oh lord, I want something I can never have...

Another woman came over and dragged us onto our feet, and before I knew it, I found myself doing something I've long wanted to do, but never really felt loose enough to do.

Like I say, it's easy with my bass as a prop in front of me. But without it, out on the floor with three women (one of whom I was desperately wanting to look cool to, even though it's just goddamn WRONG) I felt really, really weird.

I've let go by myself before. That's easy. I can put on a King Crimson CD and dance in 17/8 like some crazed mutation of John Belushi and Robert Fripp, for fuck's sake. But that's when nobody's looking.

I can't believe how inhibited I felt. I enjoy watching people dance while we play, because sometimes you get people who really let go and are fun to see, but usually I enjoy it because of how ridiculous some of these white girls look, dancing the way their grandparents might, sorta dancing, but sorta looking really uptight and inhibited.

And yes, based on last night's venture into this activity, I dance like a fucking white girl. JUST like the three white girls I was on the floor with, maybe a little more loose than them, but not much.

I need to work on this. I think it might just be one of the most liberating things I ever do.

I learned something utterly amazing this morning.

Mom told me how much they enjoyed the part of the show they saw, and that they stayed well into the second set (with Katie sleeping like a brick) because Dad wanted to. He doesn't see us that often, and he really enjoyed it.

He was enjoying more than us, though.

Mom told me that he was having a lot of fun watching the older couples dancing (especially the one I mentioned earlier) and said something to the effect of "I couldn't do that anymore."

Anymore?

When I was little, I remember the other couples that my parents would have over, or go out with. i havne't seen any of them in years, they haven't either.

What I never knew is that they often went out dancing.

My parents.

My DAD.

One of the most uptight, stiff, anal-retentive people I know, who drilled conformity, fear, inhibition, and SHIT into my head for as long as I can remember...this man used to LOVE dancing.

My fucking DAD.

I can't fathom this. This is information so left-field, so totally unexpected, so completely at odds with what I know of him at age 36 (he's 65 now) that I just can't process it.

Until Mom tells me more. Then things start to make sense.

He used to dance with the other wives. Mom hardly ever danced with him. She wasn't into it, felt weird about it, never could do it for long.

Things are never as simple as you sometimes think they are.

I tend to think of my Dad as the one who shuts all the fun down. Fuck knows that's been MY experience. But I had an epiphany this morning, and I had to hide it from Mom, because I suddenly felt an enormous amount of anger towards her.

That went away quickly, and was replaced by sadness. And now, just more understanding.

What has happened for the last six years since I moved out, when I call home and she answers?

Probably 70% of the time, when I merely ask her how's she's doing, she can destroy my mood with one sentence. "Not very good." Delivered with the kind of pain and suffering of a woman who just KNOWS that the whole universe is fucking with her, and she's going to feel sorry for herself no matter what.

And the bad thing is, I recognize this shit. I can just go look in a mirror if I want to see somebody else who can do that stupid shit sometimes.

My Dad used to do something *I* can't even quite get myself to do.

And my fucking mother killed it.

Oh, she didn't mean to, and that's where the anger turns to sadness, then to understanding. We seldom mean to kill the things in our loved ones that they need for their happiness. We just DO it.

It usually goes both ways. He's certainly killed some things in her. But it never occured to me what she could have done to him.

Fuckin' hell.

My DAD???????????????????

The biggest lesson I've learned about my family in the past few years of getting into genealogy isn't who they were. It's what they BECAME. I was fascinated to find that so many of my ancestors were Quakers, who at one time were about as forward-thinking a collection of white people as you can imagine. They had some weird tendencies and bullshit ideas, just like most religions, but these people were way ahead of the game on issues of race, education, women's rights, gay rights, etc.

I've asked myself many times in the past few years this question - how could THIS group of people have turned into the ignorant, racist, narrow-minded FUCKS who I grew up around.

Easy. It's called INERTIA.

When I took that walk a few weeks ago that caused me to meet my Dad's third cousin, I was walking on property that had been in my family since the 1830s. It still is. My Dad was born there. And the family hasn't left.

I grew up four miles away.

It's interesting to think of the better sides of a group of people staying in one place. It is kinda cool, in a sense. They were among the first white people here. Indian land was mere yards away from that part of the county when they first started coming here (I believe my gggg-grandfather's brothers were here in the 1820s. He was here by 1836.)

But the disadvantages are obvious.

When you stay in the same place, and never venture outside of that world except for a week's vacation (and I've met people in this area who haven't even done THAT, who in fact have never even left this COUNTY one time) and only hang around other people like you...what the fuck do you THINK is going to happen?

I had a sense of something being wrong with this picture from a very young age, but it was so drilled into me that I never could put my finger on it.

Moving out of this goddamn place was the best thing I could have done for myself. I started moving out in spirit in my last months of high school, when I dug deeper into the rock and roll that pretty much destroyed my religion. And thank God for that. You hear one Frank Zappa album, and you're either gonna run back to the withered arms of your fellow Narrow-Meisters, or you're gonna run headlong into THAT stuff, that sense of freedom.

Well, maybe not headlong. Maybe not even running. It took me a while. But I began moving.

Another big jump in the move out spiritually was around 1997, when I first got online and started meeting people from around the world. I moved out physically in 1999, came back, then moved out for good in 2000 when I went to Cincinnati to be with Sheryl.

It's become a cliche to talk about how 9/11 changed people. but for me, that change was pretty drastic. And very different than the "change" (yeah, right) that most Americans talk about. Watching those towers go down over and over again on the TV that day, sitting there holding my infant daughter, that was terrible. but what I saw in the days and weeks afterwards was what nailed down the thought that I had to spiritually distance myself even further from my upbringing. I DESPISE what this country has become, and it's because of people with the same mindsets as the ones I grew up with. People with no sense of what lies outside their tiny world. Are they better company than assholes who fly airplanes into buildings in the name of THEIR bullshit? Of COURSE they are. Believe me, I'd rather party with W than Bin Laden.

But that's beside the point. MY people are in need of change. THEY are the people who I'm around every day. I'll take them over the other guys, but that's hardly my concern. My concern is how to make my corner of this planet a better place, and I can only start within myself. I've started. I've come down the road a good distance, but there's more steps to take. Towards freedom, not just in the sense we hear aboutfrom our "leaders", not just in the sense of not being so fucking dependant on others like I've been my whole life, but also freedom from the shit that is still lurking in my noggin, years and years later. I could quite easily point at these fuckers who taught me that shit, but I'm 36 now. I've gotta do this work myself and let them take care of THEIR shit.

I need to learn how to dance.

That is the next step. The inhibition I felt last night was put there by other people. It's only going to be done away with by ME.

A perfect metaphor for my life. Trying to dance, feeling constricted and full of doubt, with a woman five feet away who I would love nothing more than to be absolutely without inhibition with. I can't have her, she's not mine to have. But what she represents to me now - freedom from the chains I felt on me last night while she was RIGHT THERE NEXT TO ME - that is something to pursue. I'll have to find another place to pursue it, but I'm glad she was there at that time, because looking back to last night with the knowledge I gained this morning, I may not be able to love her, but I can love what I saw there, that moment when she was by me while I tried to shake loose of that inhibition.

It was funny. She had the inhibition too. But it's not in her eyes. She looks very free inside, it's one of the things that draws me to her. She's got an incredible spirit. But on the dance floor, she shut down the way I did. She didn't on the first gig she came to after having her baby, though. I remember being totally knocked out by how free she looked THAT night, less than two weeks after having her daughter. So obviously the inhibition doesn't completely control her. She can let go sometimes.

I hope S comes back and sits in on another couple songs sometime soon. Layla sometimes dances with a couple of the guys who come out to see us often. I might feel guilt over part of my feelings here, but there is no reason I can't ask for one thing if the opportunity comes around.

I'm gonna ask her to dance with me.

It'll get me off my knees, you see...

Love,
Dougie

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