For posterity. . .

. . .What is the place of mysticism in the life of the atheist?  It's there, but where does it go, or where does it reside?

Maybe more on this later.

When I cook. . .

I usually have some idea in mind of what the meal might be; my habitual meals tend to be Asian in nature (and very regularly tend to be some sort of curry).  But I rarely have a specific recipe in mind until I put the first pan on the stove.  But there is a strong chance that it will involve garlic.

The kitchen is one of the most common areas for me to practice improvisation.  There are others, of course. The performance venue is a given, and so, too, is the sales floor.  The sexual act is also one, but as this isn't exactly an active area, I think it's best to leave that aside.  That is a different sort of improvisation, anyway, though an important one.

I have a peculiar style in the kitchen that always seems to surprise people:  I almost never measure quantities.  When constructing a soup, for instance, the general mode of operation is "a splotch of oil that is that big, twice as much garlic as most people I know, not quite this whole onion, and go".  Amounts are measured by how big it looks in the pan, or the physical feel of how much I've shaken out of this jar, or whether I decide to use the entire vegetable or just most of it.  It's a method that necessarily involves involvement with the process of the cooking; I am usually tasting things as they simmer and cook up until the moment it's done, adjusting on the fly as necessary.

Recipes do get used, especially when I am trying something for the first time, or when I am trying to remember the order of operations of a dish.  Conjuring a korma from nothing would be impossible without at least a general understanding of the spice content, or what oils to use, or whether this recipe has tomatoes or potatoes or milk or cream or cardamom or whether it's prepared in two pans or baked or seared or broiled. One must know the structure.

But once I've made a recipe once or twice, and sometimes before I've even made it through the recipe once, I begin to experiment, to try new things, to play around and see what else I can do.  This is often practical, especially when I am converting a recipe to a vegetarian cuisine--I won't use steak, but maybe this combination of mushrooms and eggplant will work instead--but other times it is simply the notion of curiousity.  What happens when I add this?  I'm not particularly fond of that, so perhaps this instead?

Sometimes the meal doesn't work.  But it usually does.  And sometimes magic actually does slip out of a pot onto a plate, and you can see just how beautiful it looks.

A friend recently said something about not cooking because she was single, and cooking for one is a bit of a drag.  As she said that, I found myself thinking about how I don't really know how to cook for one.  I can make a sandwich, of course, and prepare food specifically for myself to eat.

But I don't know how to cook for one, anymore:  I just end up with too much, instead.  I cook for more.

After the Caravan

Today is the first full day back at home, post-course.  There is still an enormous amount of information to be processed; in keeping with a concept that I have been working with and writing about in a private journal, the feeling is more like I'd been gone for quite a bit longer than six days and some hours.  Could it be that time really does become relative to the content coming in?

The course was, personally, incredibly validating:  it was a huge amount of work to pull it off, but what is even more amazing was how incredibly well it all went.  There were some wrinkles, to be sure, but from a logistical standpoint, the entire running of the course was exceptionally smooth and straightforward.  This is also at least partially due to the participants, as well:  the general quality of the beginners was really high, the talent on tap from the more experienced folks was palpable, and the Orchestra work that presented itself was really good.  Good enough, in fact, that I totally understood RF's decision to exhibit it in public performance--turning up the heat was the most logical thing to do to push the course to the next level.

* * *

As the course began to rumble into inevitability--to move from the conceptual to the "no, we really are about to have close to sixty people on this relatively small piece of property"--I was gradually becoming aware of a personal shift coming.  I think this might have started to percolate right around the end of this past season of performances with GCNE, but it crystallized three days before everyone arrived.  That Sunday was spent on site at Camp Caravan moving things, assembling beds, cleaning spaces, and loading in the first major load of foodstuffs.  Interestingly, the timing of the course meant that we were "inheriting" the space immediately following a short Movements seminar that was being held on site; several of us in the Circle shared the seminar's closing lunch that became our opening meal for the day's work.  

Partway through the meal, the conversation that had been slowly building came to a very short and small lull.  This was nothing particularly interesting in and of itself, but I suddenly became aware that Silence was peeking around the corner, for just a brief moment--the taste is unmistakable, even though I was a little surprised to notice it so early.  It didn't take hold in the room, and was quickly gone again, like a drop of water into a lake, but the ripple continued on throughout the day.  At the end of the day, as we completed, and I noted that I had moved to Boston exactly 7 years prior at that time, the shift happened:  I was aware that the next stage of my life had begun.

And how it has begun--I am so glad that it began with this course, and in this way.  The presence of love among us all throughout the week was undeniable; the need to begin this next cycle of life with love was not quite something I'd been thinking about, but I can see just how vital it was to begin in that way.  On a personal level, last year was very hard on me, and I was very hard on myself, and to get the chance to begin again with a bit of love and hope was far more valuable than I had initially expected or considered.  Times of transition are hard for most everyone, to be sure, and this period is no exception.  But to find the depth of good will in this world, and to get an insight into what is personally satisfactory, is about as much as I could have hoped for.  In fact, it is far more than that.

One interesting thing about the week was the regularity with which people looked to me for help.  Also, the regularity with which I found myself guiding and directing things, having to answer questions about processes and practicalities and Crafty things, and making choices and acting in ways that I wasn't quite preparing for.  At one point towards the end of the course, a fellow participant referred to me as "Mr. Guitar Circle New England".  It was partially in jest, and fully out of respect and in search of an answer to a musical question, but I still felt awkward about it.  In fact, I truly felt fraudulent.  I wanted to tell him, "No, you're wrong, I'm not your guy, there's so many other people here that are more deserving to ask that question."  Even so, my only option was to answer his question anyway, to give the right answer, regardless of whether I felt able to do so.

I wonder if this is what teaching is really like, at times.

* * *

One incredibly powerful moment, for me, came during the day of the full-course performance.  In a session with Frank Sheldon, the intermediates/advanced players were invited to begin walking around the auditorium with guitars on, being aware of the space and what and who was around us, with the aim to continually find the largest space in the room.  This would constantly change, which added to the challenge; one had to continually move around.  At a certain point, Frank called for those with names beginning with a range of letters to form a square in the room.  Another group formed a triangle, and another group continued to move around.  As the session progressed, each group continued to shift, to move, and to interpolate among the others; our square eventually de-squared and began to move faster through the room.  By this point, we were all circulating and improvising at the same time we moved through the room.

At the height of it all, the circulations and playing began to grow even more adventurous, and movement around the space was growing very energetic.  A circulation came my way, and for the first time that I can remember, along with the feeling of the note passing along, I had the unmistakable feeling of receiving from and giving to the same person at exactly the same time.  There seems to be no word for what it was except direct contact.  I could almost look at that moment and the whizzes from the first night and the performance as being worth the entire week's course.

* * *

So what next?

After getting home from the course, I took a good long nap, as I'd needed for the past few days, and found myself waking up at 6 p.m. and realizing that I was going to go to the Bennett group meeting that I hadn't been expecting to attend.

Some hours later, returning home from the cross-town trip, I found myself fixing dinner, sitting down, and then typing out the application for the AAD course that begins tomorrow.  Even as involved as I have been with this work, it's been largely focused on a local level, and I can't help but think that I need to move my involvement up a step.  RF said something at the opening meeting for this past course about how things tend to breathe in and to breathe out, and how the work of the Circle-at-large seems to be on an outward-bound breath.  At this point, I don't feel I can afford to stand by and simply watch it happen (even as I can barely afford to pay my rent!).  A Hellboy strongly suggested that I find my place in music.  At the moment, it seems like it's here.

And upward.

To say that 2011 was a difficult year is something of an understatement.  Our country, already struggling with a very upsetting period in economic history, one which has fueled a progressively histrionic election season and laid waste to many people’s jobs, has found itself in a bit of an identity crisis, unable to decide whether it is liberal, conservative, theist or agnostic, successful or downtrodden.  Even as some parts of the economy have begun to stabilize, other parts have become gangrenous and been cut off:  my second home for six years, Daddy’s Junky Music, went underwater three months after I took my leave to try and stay afloat elsewhere.  And as much as I detested working there in the end, it was still one of the most difficult decisions I have ever made, though I knew that it was absolutely the only smart decision I could make at the time.  But nothing will ever be quite like working at that store.

My own finances continue to be in dire straits; between the pay cut I was given at Daddy’s (an austerity measure that was misguided) and the even lower pay I took to begin working at Macy’s, I actually managed to make roughly $6000 less than the year before.  If my wages were at the normal median level* of most adults in the United States, this would still be a tough step backward, but since I am decidedly on the lower class side of the tracks, that actually represents an entirely different standard of living.  Living paycheck to paycheck is not just a way of life at this point:  now, it is the only way that I can survive.

This is not to say that 2011 was without its virtues and merits.  The Circle continues to grow though in ways that I continue to be surprised by, and in different directions than where I expect.  Actually, it feels very much like there was a significant contraction in the second season, though it was more of a conservation, a preparing of energies.  From a personal musical standpoint, my abilities have improved noticeably, and things continue to happen with my fingers and ears that surprise me.  And this is not to mention the personal advances I’ve made (admittedly small) in starting to understand myself as a person, or the various pieces that go into the semblance of the person.

I think I’m a nicer person than I was, this time last year.  I am absolutely a nicer person than I was two years ago.

The sadness and strife of losing T. contributed a lot to that.  There is no doubt that it was the single defining process of the entire year, and that there are sections of that equation that are still sorting themselves out (always remember your order of operations).  But these things happen.

All this being said, this past year was a pivotal year in my life—downplaying that would fall far short of accuracy.  And it seems vaguely important that I’ve lived in Boston now for close to 7 years.

Success continues to elude me in its most obvious form of financial floatingness.  As mentioned before, I took a job at Macy’s this past July for several reasons; the primary motivation was that I knew Daddy’s was going to take a nosedive, and had been looking for anything to take instead.  And, to be perfectly honest, Macy’s was the first job that said “yes”, and I could see that the manager I’d be working under was a nice guy who was still clearly a good manager.  It was also an attempt to help and patch a struggling relationship—working at a failing guitar store was preying on my personal life much more than it ever should have.

So I took the job.  It didn’t help, but it did get me out of a job at a business that went under roughly three months later.

And for about three months, I didn’t care about the job.  Those who know me well know that I tend to take things up as a cause, whatever status they hold in my life:  everything, from my pursuit of music to my struggle to see myself to my relationships with people to my method of paying bills, becomes another flag to carry, another thing in my life to be mindful about.  Instead of this, and probably in reaction to the churning of my internal life, I actively chose to stay unattached to the job of selling clothes.  It didn’t matter that I was selling things that people want:  I didn’t have any interest in clothes as a general rule, and I didn’t have any personal commitment to any of these scraps of cloth.  That jacket might be $600, but I can’t play a G chord on it, no matter what tuning I prefer to use.

And then I started to care.  I don’t think I could say exactly when the change happened, but this is how I am.  Customer service, and service in general, is one of those things that comes naturally to me.  Also, after all these years, I have a strong feeling that it is also just a coping mechanism for me:  when in stress, it is sometimes easiest to just work.  At least that can yield results, even when nothing else does.

And it did yield results.  I found that I enjoyed selling clothes, and my regular geek impulses latched onto the models and the numbers and the cuts and how they fit on people.  As I managed to sustain enthusiasm (which is probably one of the only ways I know to completely navigate the trials and tribulations of holiday retail work, especially at the company that essentially defined what the holiday retail world is), I got more and more positive attention from my peers and my higher-ups.  As this went on through the holiday season, this attention became trust—my bosses knew that they could rely on me, and acted as such, tending to throw customers to me when I was available.

Moving past the holiday season, and into the month of January, I began to notice that I was getting even more attention from someone who was not my boss—Ingrid—but who was our representative for two of the clothing lines that we carry.  A long story short, Ingrid eventually dropped a few hints to people that mattered, had a couple of talks with other people that mattered, and I found myself being offered a specialist position for one of those clothing lines.  It is something of a small honor, but the line is a well-known brand, and they take care of their employees.  Naturally, I accepted.

This meant a small raise, as well as a substantial bonus in the case that the brand performs well.  It almost always does perform well, but it does take some work and care to ensure that things run smoothly.

But it’s not what I want.

A couple of weeks after I got the official nod and took on the position, I found myself thinking about being stuck.  To be more specific, I was considering the job that I had just taken, as well as the notion of why we do things.  And, unsurprisingly, I found myself looking at this new promotion—one that I had worked carefully to get, and that I was happy to have.  It’s worth noting that I can do the job pretty well.  In fact, that was my internal dialogue: 

“Yes, I can do this.  I can do this and be pretty effective, in fact.”  

“Yeah, there are a few things you’re pretty good at.  But this pays the bills.”

“True.  Still, though, I can do this.”

“But why?”

“Because I need to keep a roof over my head.”

“But you don’t want to do this.”

“. . . Fair point.”

The notion of doing something, simply because I am able to do so, suddenly showed itself for what it was:  a trap.  This was qualitatively different than the choice to begin working sales at Daddy’s, or to move away from the trumpet and towards the guitar, or to invite a person to Boston.  As opposed to an attempt to try and stabilize my position, or a surprised shift in identity, or a clear step forward, this concept of simply treading water, of sticking around and trying to make a life out of something that I’m pretty good at doing, simply because I could continue to do it, was so clearly a trap that I was shocked I hadn’t seen it earlier.

So, in rebellion, I realized that it’s finally time for me to go back to school.

It’s funny to me that a step up, one that I could milk for a very long time and parlay into a semi-decent career, is the final trigger for this.  It’s been a very long time coming, and I don’t think that it would have happened without all the struggle of the past year, especially since July.  And it will not be an easy path; some of the choices I’ve made over the past few years have thrown some serious wrenches in the works, and I will essentially be starting from scratch.  Well, not entirely—I know that the only way I’ll be able to go back is as a musician, though this is not on the original instrument I originally studied.  And the instrument of NST guitar is an entirely different beast anyway, and one that I may have to relegate to a support position while I learn the specifics of an older beast.

But, all that aside, I’ve begun the process of applying for federal aid, talking to teachers, and getting prepared for the application process to school.  It is not an easy way, but this is the necessary way forward.  It’s about time.

   

*In 2007, it was $31,111 nationwide.  For 2011 in the Boston area, it was around the $85,000 mark. 

Pushmepullme

One of my very good friends, Becky, is moving back from London to Boston in about a week or so.  She and I lived together in the Cambridge apartment for about a year and a half; she had traveled up from NYC during a snowstorm to spend the weekend looking at different apartments, but decided after just seeing my place to move in with me and whoever my other roommates were.  We've been friends ever since.

A couple nights ago, we were chatting online, and our discussion turned to our respective jobs:  me and my recent promotion at my store, and her with her job search.  One of the things we found ourselves agreeing about was the hesitation we both were feeling at doing something "just to do it".  For her, it was about the whole act of just taking a job to have a job--this is a sentiment I feel a lot of empathy for, having gone through essentially the same process last year (though for slightly more complicated reasons).

My promotion at work has a bit of the same flavor to it--I am very happy to get a slight bump in pay, and to have a bit more responsibility (and freedom, by way of this), but I'm also a little wary of the opportunity, more from the standpoint of commitment.  The actual commitment itself is not what concerns me:  it's more the curious lattice of what commitment I put into my job, the guitar circle, my personal work/playing/practice, and my personal life.

Tessa used to insist, whenever I would muse aloud about some idea for a musical-or-otherwise project, that I didn't have time for it, unless I dropped something else.  I am inclined to disagree--I really do have more free time then what I use--but I am becoming much more aware of what commitment goes where, and what returns I get on my investments.  The game is also moving from a short-term investment to a more long-term plan, though I am in that weird in-between moment.

Back on the subject at hand, I'm seeing this question of "why" popping up quite a bit, lately.  If there is one thing I have learned in the past three years, it is to at least acknowledge the gut reaction--it has a power that might not be 100% right, but there's probably something of value there.  There's also that fairly important difference between a gut reaction and "I like this".  That can probably be summed up by asking which one is more of a trap.

And that's sort of the crux of this.  One of the really freeing aspects of working in the circle is the knowledge that, while I have a great deal of personal commitment and loyalty to my work within the group, I could walk away tomorrow, and the other members would understand.  I also believe that, if they did not understand, or if they noticed a logical inconsistency in my reasoning, that they would bring it to light--that's what friends do.  I might be wrong, but I don't believe so.

Extrapolating this out a bit, into the everyday world, I think this is why so many people end up unhappy with their lot in life.  Sometimes, it really is the case that we simply trip over our right life path by trying something a little different, but then that can eat up the available attention for noticing when the really big "pull" shows up.

More later.

This is actually happening.

There is an exercise which involves different emotions.  At a certain point, "He is I" and "I am he" are introduced.

The patriarchal terms have no value--these could easily be female terms.

It took me a bit of not actually thinking about the issue, but I think that I've gotten a good insight into those last two.  "He is I" is, to my eye, a phrase that is used in place of the term "empathy".  "I am he", on the other hand, is a substitution for "compassion".

But why the substitution?

I think it's something to do with language.  Empathy is a pretty well-known term and emotion, but it's somewhat abstract in that form.  "He is I", on the other hand, puts it into action.  "I know that feeling", "I feel your pain" and the lot--it's recognition of oneself in another, in the moment.

"I am he" could easily be the same, but I think it's more accurate to assume compassion.  It's the same idea--compassion in action through recognition--though it might be a little more subtle in execution.  The phrase "walk a mile in the other's shoes" comes to mind, though not in the empathic sense it means.  Maybe "lighten the other's load" is a little closer.  Either way, mercy plays a big part in this.  So, too, forgiveness.

This seems to lean back to the "blind spot" musing. . .

It's been a rough week.

It's been a rough year, really.

Last week, on the way back home from rehearsal with the circle, I talked with V. a bit about my notion about the "blind spot" bit. It was a pretty wide-ranging conversation, and as he usually does, he had some useful things to say. I'm not sure he'd be comfortable with being seen as a teacher of more than guitar and music, but he teaches more than just those, all the same.

On my way to work, today, I had a sudden moment of clarity that I wasn't quite expecting, though I get the feeling that it's been coming for a long time. I am loathe to use the language I am about to use, only because I don't want to use someone else's words, but I don't have much else to work with, right now.

Deprived of my attachments, I do not exist. Brad is not.

A lot passed by in a heartbeat, so it's hard to really get the idea across simply. But, the best way I can put it right now is: if someone were to remove the things I am attached to, then I disappear.  I can look at my physical body and see it, I can recognize that there are internal processes and watch them happening, but when I lose the things that I am committed to (love is a good one to think about), there's not really anything left to leave.

This doesn't really even describe the situation correctly.

=-=-=-=-=

Slightly more context on this version.

Hard on myself.

At work, tonight, a coworker of mine--my boss, really, though it's a little funny thinking of a girl that is several years younger than me as my boss--noted that I tend to be really hard on myself, and asked why that was.

I gave an evasive answer, saying that it was something I was working on.  Not untrue, but I didn't really want to get into the answer that leaped into my head at that moment.  Not yet with her, anyway.

Though I have taken on mistakes as a sort of constant cause to work on this year (the school year starting in September), and have found fear as a corollary to this, a post from RF's diary (and several subsequent mentions) has me thinking about something that I have been reticent to look at.  Scroll down to section VIII to see the relevant part of his post.

"Work" literature refers to this something as the chief feature, while RF prefers the term blind spot.  I like his term more:  it's more direct, and a little less intellectual-sounding*.  I've mostly avoided this subject for myself, in large part because of the nature of the concept--an extremely basic ingredient of everything that we do, to the point where we don't see it because it's literally always there.  It's daunting, and as much as I'd like to believe I've got a bit of an idea as to how this animal works, I suspect that the answer is not something I want to hear.

I get the feeling that it has something to do with giving, though.

*This is something that I really admire about RF's work:  he's taken all this work and made it completely his own.  And I love his writing style, as well:  his British humour gently coats everything, even when he writes in a highly technical manner.  I personally want to see some of these big concepts expressed in a less academic fashion, though.  Layman's terms, if you will.