They say that waking up is hard to do...

And now I know, I know that it's true.

Dr. Bombay's
10:30 AM

Now playing on the in-house system: The theme to Get Smart, arranged for jazz combo, organ and horns. Sweet!

In other news, on Thursday I watched Inland Empire, the new David Lynch film. This film is rated 'OMGWTF' and is not recommended for those unable to accommodate a warehouse-full of ambiguity.

Sabitathica's official assesstimate: It had something to do with a woman. Unless it didn't.

And now playing over the inestimable Doctor B's sound system: Dino's version of Mambo Italiano, possibly my favorite song of the last six weeks. I just can't seem to get enough of it. If you aren't listening to it right now, you really should be. In fact, why don't you go ahead and download it right now, as we speak. Download it and listen to it. Go ahead, I'll wait.

The Narrow Way: Part Two

Today was a day of auditions at the Greatest Music School on the Whole of God's Green Earth. Which means I was there early, managing the show. And now I’m tired. I’m sooo tired.

Here's a representative sampler of my morning for you:

At 9:20, after the panel of speakers had their say, but before both the music theory placement test and the parents’ meeting, a man approached me, a father to one of the auditionees. Here's what he said to me:

'I died a few years ago. I can remember what happened twenty years back, but I can't tell you what I had for breakfast this morning, so I’m going to be writing down everything you say. So . . . is there any way you can get my daughter a scholarship?'

What. the. hell?

Every audition day something bizarre happens, like some guy telling me he’s dead and can I give his daughter some money. Every time. The pattern suggested by events like this has led me to formulate

Sabitathica's Apophthegm: The more concentrated the event, the more oddness will be attracted to it.

I also got to see erstwhile buddy Natasha for the first time in a while, over a year I think. Her first words upon seeing me: You're old. Awww, what a sweet thing she is . . .

Oh, and props to my two assistants, Brendan and Diana (pronounced Deeana, and don't you forget it!) who were (and are) reliable and cheerful even while doing some of the necessary grunt work. And this despite the fact that I've fired them at least twice a day since August and regularly tell them to stop showing up for work.

Yes, I'm reading the Catcher in the Rye again. Deal with it.

. . . or kindly fuck off.

Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddamn curb, I had this feeling that I'd never get to the other side of the street. I thought I'd just go down, down, down, and nobody'd ever see me again.

This line, and you may recognize it, is Holden Caulfield having a Holden Caulfield moment. Holden has the disease, undiagnosed and unnamed, that I saw so much of in my high-school years and late teens on the coast, south of Boston. Almost all my friends had it growing up. Two of them even died needless, stupid deaths because of it, deaths unworthy even of far lesser people.

I got an email from an old friend which has been having a time-machine-like effect on me, a time-machine that only knows how to take you into your past and leave you there.

Niles was the first friend I made after my family left my childhood home to move closer to the city. He was the first and most significant friend of the second phase of my life. We had our first explorations of drinking together. Several times he took it upon himself to try and correct my almost impossible naivete in the area of sex (there were some very funny conversations). It was Niles who convinced me to pick up a musical instrument for the first time. And I was with him when I almost blew my thumb and first two fingers off my left hand with some sort of firework that he had rigged to, as he said, 'make the fuse last longer'.

Jules was different. Difficult, frustrating, creative, well-meaning, his horses eventually got away from him. His mind was always moving and he had a real gift for crisp observations. I lived with him in his rent-controlled house in Dorchester for a little while after I left school. We were in bands together, so many of them I can't even count, at least five or six, me a bass player, him a drummer which, if you know your music, is a traditionally sacred relationship if ever there was one.

These were good young men. No more confused than anybody else I knew. Male friendships are rarely mentioned in this culture, unless it's a ridiculous caricature on a sitcom.

~~~~~~~


10:22 PM

So now I'm thinking (for reasons both terrible and trivial) about Sylvia Plath and what she referred to as her bell jar. Sylvia grew up where I grew up, and she went to school where I went to school, in the Pioneer Valley in the middle of Massachusetts. Of course, she went to Smith; and, while I obviously did not, I did take two classes there. Combinatorics and Real Analysis. The combinatorics class was a joke, but it was that analysis class where I had a strange non-reoccurring experience toward the end of the semester.

The class discussion had for some reason digressed into the topic of voting systems, and we were working through a proof of either Gibbard-Satterthwaite or Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, I don't recall which, when, in my experience, the whole room temporarily receded and, for a spellbinding quarter-minute, the proof seemed actually to be about human psychology, and not about voting systems at all.

This was striking me as a Sylvia Plath-like moment. I don't know. Maybe there's something in the ivy at Smith that induces distressing transpersonal experiences. Either that or I'd been drinking before analysis class again.

The Narrow Way: Part One

Just got in from seeing Children of Men with Jennifer. Sabitathica's official assesstimate: Better than Cats!

Everybody I know: Hey, Sabitathica.
Sabitathica: Yes, what is it now?
Everybody I know: Who do you think's going to win the Superbowl?
Sabitathica: Prince. I think Prince is going to win the Superbowl.

New Year's Eve redux

Dr. Bombay's
8:35 AM

Now playing over the in-house system: my new least-favorite version of Mood Indigo. It is, if you can believe it, a cross between eighties hair-metal and barbershop. A genuine stylistic disaster area, ill-conceived from da capo. Someone should quietly wrap a full roll of yellow police tape around this song. But still, I have to say . . . it's fascinating in a morbid way, like slowing down near a car wreck, or witnessing an execution. It's hard to turn my ears away.

How to explain last night? Remember when I told you about my well-documented winter holiday? Well, it fell to Josh to take the whole goddamn variegated mess of footage and edit it together into a 26-minute film. Vlindinhauer, Vlindinhauer's wife M, Josh and I screened the world premier last night. Nota bene dear reader, that they three were all in Boston and I'm here in Bedlam- I mean Atlanta. So circumstances required us to video-conference the event.

There were at least two distinct successes last night:

1. The film itself was brilliant. I told Josh it's the best thing he's done that I'm aware of. It was so good we watched it twice.

2. The strangeness of videoconferencing a social event quickly became a source of entertainment in its own right.

Please don't ask me to explain all the reticulate meta-levels of hypercommunication that were inter-knitting each other at every turn last night. All I'll say is that the videoconference itself was being filmed. And it wasn't long before the film of the vidoeconference was being used in the videoconference.

Stir well. Repeat as necessary.

If that doesn't sound like fun to you . . . well, maybe that's why you weren't invited, sunshine.

Even if I were able to 1) reconstruct for myself and 2) explain to you the myriad levels of communication that were being juggled last night, like maybe by drawing you a Venn diagram or something, I wouldn't do it. I swear to god it would make your head explode.


~~~~~~~

Now playing: Naima by Coltrane. Once while I was at Hampshire I had the great pleasure of playing (bass on) this song with Yusef Lateef. Only, he had reworked it, putting it in 5/8.