Oh yeah, huh, I have a life too

I’ve been hanging out at Panera Bread quite a lot lately, in part because the aforementioned Chicken Pomodoro on Sesame Semolina Panini bread is to die for, in part because they offer free soda refills, and in part because they have free wi-fi. I find that when I am out of the confines of the sanctum sanctorum (the new one, not the old one, obviously) I am more prone to take care of the non-musical things that need taking care of. Including but not limited to updating the blog, here. Besides, the new s.s. can get quite chilly, it being in a basement halfway built into the side of a hill and this being a New England winter, and all. Anyway.

Several people out of the context of this blog have made sure I was OK, after reading the tales of woe and tribulation stemming from some entries here last September and October at about the same time as I was finishing up Luminous City (or rather at the same time as I thought I was finishing it up). A brief recap, and then, as William Least Heat-Moon wrote, I will shut up about that topic… until another four or five months pass and I am compelled to vent my spleen again.

I’m currently back at home with my parents, and on one side of the coin there’s a bit of guilt about that and maybe some mild embarrassment too that I should be there at my age, but on the other side the circumstances dictated it and what the hell, I’m damned lucky I had a place to land after the house sold. I could well have found myself out with the homeless veterans that Bill O’Reilly says aren’t really out there.

The divorce is not yet final; in fact it has not yet begun. We’re separated, legally still married but that’s about the only sense in which we could be said to be so. The good news is that the grand plan to stay friends seems to be working, so I guess we haven’t been in too much of a holy rush to rock the boat.

My church asked me to become a member of the Board of Deacons for this year and next, and after more trepidation than I could remember about any recent decision of mine (including the ones to ask my wife to marry me and the one to agree to separate from her), I said yes. My fear ran mostly along the lines of the amount of time I could give to the cause, my ability to carry out the extra-ecclesiastical responsibilities incumbent, and my ability to get along with the others– never mind that I’ve known and liked them all for years. As I write I’m to be on retreat for part of the day tomorrow with the other eleven Deacons, and am still nebulous about my role and what I might be able to offer.

The job search is coming along. I have interviewed twice with the State– once in mid-December and once in late January– and, it being the State, I have not heard back on either position yet as from this writing. I interviewed at an IT consultancy at the beginning of this month and at a major insurer about a week and a half ago, and have not heard back on those either.

Hmm. I registered as a Democrat in my new/old home town. In elections past I stayed an independent, but in the wake of this wretched administration, I could not conceive of any possible instance in which I would ever consider voting Republican again– and racked my memory of previous elections to recall whether in fact I ever had, and came up empty. So I was happy to vote in the Super Duper Tuesday primary, and I hope my American readers (both of you) will vote when it’s your turn at the primary pinata. (I have not yet figured out how to make n’s with the tilde character over them on this new MacBook Pro. Which reminds me.)

I began putting together a brand spanking new live rig in anticipation of doing a lot more gigging this year. The rig so far consists of an M-Audio Keystation Pro 88 controller keyboard– weighted piano-style action so as to minimize the mini-clusters to which I’m prone with my fat fingers; a MOTU Traveler interface, not only to talk to my keyboard and my computer but to record the follow-up to Luminous City with much higher resolution; and this MacBook Pro, which is to be the brains of my rig. The soft synths load in here, I play from the keyboard, the Traveler sits in the middle and mediates. That’s the plan, anyway. And that leads me to…

I have actually been gigging quite a bit, though not with the rig I’ve described. Monday nights mostly, at an open jam halfway across the state, but it’s led to a number of very good musicians throwing some live work at me on the weekends, which in turn has led to some phone numbers being exchanged between me and (a) other musicians and (b) a few of the ladies. Having lived with Luminous City for so long, I figured it was OK to start playing other people’s music again, as long as I could do it and could actually make some bread doing it. And that brings me to…

Luminous City is done… again. I have tentatively added a seventh song to the running order: tentative because I hope to use the CAPE version of the song with the performances of a variety of other individuals. I’ve obtained permission from most of them. The song more or less ties in with the album’s loose theme of The Things We Do That Hurt Other People.

I think that’s it– the last four or five months in a nutshell.
Other than plowing through the first three Earthsea books, Bird By Bird, and Genesis Chapter And Verse in a vain attempt to catch up on my reading.