Jun. 12, 2003 - 11:50 a.m.
Dear Vincent,
Your attic apartment one man music mangler is someone I am also aquainted with on a certain level. But the 'he' is more than often a 'they' and the 'attic apartment' is a 'garage' instead.
Being raised in my neighborhood are children of all ages. As each age group swells into their high school years, without fail, the neighborhood manages to vomit up at least one or two 'garage bands.' At least one of these bands is born, and finished within the course of one glorious (or gory) afternoon. The band members swagger into the garage and spend an unprecedented number of hours sitting around and talking about 'getting gigs' and how to get the money together for their first c.d. As far as dialogue goes, most sentences start with, end with or are puncuated by the word 'dude.' When dusk starts to hit, they try and play together for about forty five minutes. The enormity of what they've undertaken seems to silently strangle them. And when they dis'band' for the day, with promises of "see you next saturday, dude" and fancy high fives and hand shakes, at least one of them has no intention of coming back. And by the time next Saturday is a reality, most of them have reasoned that it won't hurt to miss one practice to play video games or to take Allison on a date.
Garage Band type B lasts longer. Though longer can span from days, to monthes, and once there was a fairly dedicated band down the hill who stayed together a few years and even had an actual gig in Towson- which is a hub just outside of Baltimore. Type B gets past the first rehersal. And for many weeks, I get to listen to them count to three with cut throat consistancy. Sometimes they get to four, that's always exciting. "A one, two, three, four..." cue the musical mayham. Unbelieveably, they usually spend a lot of time arguing about when they 'go.' "A one, two, three, and" the drummer starts playing after 'and' but the lead guitarist started his chords on 'three' and the singer thought that they were going on four so he didn't start at all and so on and so forth. Then the lead guitarist yells at the bass for not clarifying when they were going, but the bass doesn't know what the hell the lead guitarist is talking about "'cause dude, my mom just called my cell phone and I had to answear or she'll wig." By the time they finally get around to starting together I'm at the point where I'd like to suggest they count in from six, or seven or something other than one, two, three, but by then, it's not worth the confusion.
Eventually they all start making noise together. There's the drummer's three muffled taps on the symbol and suddenly an explosion of what can only be called, angry noise. The boys start to wear black and they sing about the world not understanding them. I have a theory on that. When they sing, their lyrics are often unintelligble. I think that when you jerk your head around and jump up and down, it makes it hard to articulate and enunciate what you're singing. Perhaps if they minimized the movement, and stopped yelling, someone would understand them. Just a theroy. I always love when they learn dynamics. If they ever get to that stage. When the band finally opens the garage door, it is a sign that they feel good enough to take on the world. But they usually only take on their girlfriends, a few preteen girls who can't drive, and more often than those, angry neighbors armed with the demand disguised as request, "Johnathen, could you go see if you Mother is in for me?" Despite years of the garage band tradition the neighorbors never seem to adjust. Though they've grown stupendous at overlooking it when the little kids have brawls and beat each other up with whiffle balls and plastic bats.
(But this is nothing as compared to Diane's neighborhood where the children pee in their driveway and shoot each other with bee bee guns.)
Amoung various very intelligent things I said today, I spouted a sentance that read as follows, "If, but, well, I know."
Since you write your albums for yourself, what would you do if you were suddenly struck by fortune and fame Vincent? Would you try to live up to your previous success with another album? Would you use your music career as a springboard for your comedy career? Would you buy a car so you could play your music with the windows down without cringing?
Should I assume we've forsaken 'Atonement'?
Today I was baking cookies when I realized that I had come up one cup short of the most sterotypical, cliché thing you can come up short on while cooking. As I glared at the empty sugar bag, and the empty sugar bowl, I thought, this is ridiculous, no one runs out of sugar because everyone expects to. Never the less, I had run out of sugar. This left me with the question, who, can I take a cup of sugar from? Notice I did not say 'borrow' because Vincent, to be honest, I have no intention of walking back to someone's house when my sugar stock is replenished brandishing one cup of perfectly leveled sugar, cursing at the wind as it steals some off the top, only to ring their doorbell and have them look at me incredulously as I proudly proclaim, "here, is the cup of suagr I borrowed, I am returning it to you."
I did not want to borrow sugar, I wanted to take some, and maybe they could have some of the cookies. And you cannot take sugar from just anyone. The neighbors to my right work all the time. I don't think they eat. Or at least not at home. I don't think they really sleep there either. The neighbors to the left just moved in, I don't think we're friendly enough yet to be taking each other's sugar. I finally called Kate down the hill and she told me to come down. I never walk down my hill, I run. I'm too young to walk. I'd forgotten that with all the rain, the water table under the hill would be rather high. And as luck would have it, the hill is holding water like a sponge this year.
It seemed to all happen very slowly. My foot hit the ground, sunk with a splat and slid. Both feet flew up in a cartoonish tangle, and the orange measureing cup spirled upwards out of the grasp of my fingers seeming to hang in mid air. As I hit the ground I sunk in soft brown wet mud. But my adventure didn't end there. My momentum sent me sliding down the rest of the hill, through the mud. The fence at the bottem of the hill stopped me. And I lay in the mud puddle for a few minutes fluctuating between an assortment of tears and laughter. I contempated the fence. It looked a lot taller from flat on my back. Robert Frost muses in his poem "Mending Wall" about why his neighbor insists on having a wall as, to paraphrase, Frost is all pine, his neighbor all apple orchard, and Frost's pines will never infiltrate his neighbors orchard and eat his apples. "Good fences make good neighbors." says Frost's neighbor. This must be what my neighbor at the bottem of the hill believes. For there is little from my yard that would trespass into his. Grass maybe. But perhaps it is me he seeks to keep out.
Though I would not normally trangress the boundaries between our yards and steal stealthily into his, perhaps the fence was built for just such a purpose as today's events. Perhaps, he built it so that if I skidded through mud, slipped and slid to the bottom of the hill on my back the fence would stop me from streaking mud across his otherwise (and what else?) immpeccable lawn. I retrieved my measureing cup from mid hill where it had fallen. And went to Kate's where she gave me a horrified look, an interrogation, some comfort and some sugar. Now I am clean for all intensive purposes, though there is still some mud in my hair. How I love levity.
I'm sure your album will be remarkable. Did you stick with 'Ugly Bungalow' as the title? You'll get the last song.
Subdued,
Meghan
what they said - what they will say
