In which Science is employed to reveal Connexions between Disparate Entities, falsely so called . . .

The Sabitathiblog Science and Wildlife Department presents:

Things you, my dear reader, have in common with my fish:

1. You're not very bright.
2. You're plotting your escape.
3. You remain unaggressive, even when one of your tankmates has nibbled off your tail entire.

Join us next time, and remember! A generous tax deductible donation to the Sabitathiblog Science and Wildlife Department is a great way to say 'Thank you Science, for all you do!'.

The sunshine bores the daylights out of me.

The Nunnery
8:14 PM

More quality time with Rashid last night, which was of course Saint Patrick's Day. Food and margaritas, then back to the Nunnery for some water (him), pale ale (me) and conversation (us).

The original plan was to 'get silly drunk' with M, but she's still in New York, her flight having been delayed due to weather. I'll see if I can talk her into getting silly drunk with me some other time.

Wake up and smell the coffin.

Got up late today. I'm not telling you what time, so don't let's start with the twenty questions, shall we? What is it anyway, with you and all the time with the questions? It was pretty late though, that much I'll tell you.

But whatever, because yesterday were auditions, the last auditions before Fall semester, apart from a few stragglers - the occasional above-it-all bassoonist or a few deadline-blissfully-unaware double basses or whatever other riffraff the goddamn cat drags in. It was the largest scale audition day the Greatest Music School on the Whole of God's Green Earth has ever seen. . . and now it's over. It's no longer in my future or in my present which, thank god, e-nough already. So I'm not gonna be too hard on myself about getting up so late.

Spent quality time last night, Saint Patrick's Day Eve, with Rashid, whom you know, and Spengler and Redmond whom I'm sure you'll remember from earlier.

We met up at Sidebar and, four shots of Patron later, I was safely behind the wheel, on the move to some place in the highlands* where a friend of ours works, Hand in Hand I think it's called, which is a stupid name for a bar, or for anything else for that matter. The name should have been enough to tip us off that the bar itself was, in fact, also stupid. Too crowded, too loud, not really an atmosphere of people who're having fun, just people pretending to like places like this. Or maybe I'm just being autistic. So one quick shot of patron later and, like my boy Willie, we were on the road again, heading back to the Nunnery, where a fine time was had by all and there was much rejoicing.

*Kids, don't drink and drive.

And now for something completely diffident ...

Lunch today with Rashid at Slice on Poplar. What follows is a sliver of a conversation we had with our waitress, I think her name was Cara:

Cara: Do you know what you're going to have?
Sabitathica: Yeah, let me get my usual. . .
Cara: Whoa. You've got evil eyes.
Sabitathica: Oh god. . . No I don't. I just didn't get much sleep last night. I was up at fucking four-thirty this morning.
Rashid: Plus, he's sort of always sinister-looking.
Sabitathica: Oh yeah. Well, there's that too.

Just another undiscovered, down-on-her-luck opthademonologist waiting (tables) until her (intern)ship comes through. . .

Looks like I chose the wrong week to quit clubbing baby seals.

And now, for your theater-going pleasure, a playlette:

Sabitathica: Work is busy right now, real fucking busy. Maybe I'll tell you about it, but later, okay?, not right now. Right now let's just relax and enjoy each other's company, what do you say? What? What was that? Did you just snicker? Oh, what, is just hanging out and unwinding and enjoying each other's company too much to ask or something? Whatever, listen, don't be difficult. If you're going to give me a hassle here . . . don't make me pull this car over.
You: Sabitathica, hey are you okay? What are you talking about?
Sabitathica: I'm fine. Shut up.
You: What? What's the matter with you? You're acting weird. Is your job making you act weird? Are you cracking under the pressure of auditions? Honestly, I wouldn't blame you if you were. I don't know how you do it. I remember this one time when I saw some particularly villainous auditions bring down a fully-grown fucking Zen lumberjack before. Reduced him to fucking marmalade, they did. Ghastly to witness. And he wasn't even autistic ...
Sabitathica: Stop talking please, you're being prattish. Go away. And I'll let you know when you're allowed to read my blog again, which is probably never. I've decided I'm cleaning house. All my old readers need to go ahead and fuck off. I want new readers, better readers. From here on out, I only want good-looking, self-aware, fiscally conservative readers. Everybody else has to go away. Beginning now. Thank you.

Exeunt.

The preceding has been a public service vignette, made possible through the continuing generosity of Sabitathiblog and the Foundation for Concerned Citizens Against Auditions.

The power of Hahnemann compels you!

Sick, slightly. Took the day off from work for the first time in several months. Woke up with M to the alarm and NPR, but put off beginning my day when I swallowed and found my throat had fallen host to evil spirits in the night. Being the good, observant catholic boy I was raised to be, I took some homeopathy and put in a call to my local parish's exorcist, who really ought to be here any minute, so I can't talk long.

Slept 'til noon-thirty, woke up, sat, brushed my teeth and washed my face. Then to the one and only Carroll St. Cafe to order a yogurt-based late breakfast, body unbathed, hair unwashed, looking like a (slightly) sick rock star. Or a slightly sick music school admissions officer, the line is so blurry there.

There's a bustle in my hedgerow!

Ah, spring break! The time of year set aside by mother nature for non-terminating twitterpation and frolicking festivities! Or, alternatively, for working in an office so un-busy it'll make your ears bleed and so quiet you can hear your own pulse. You know, six of one, whatever...

The Narrow Way: Part Three

or
following the path as it leads toward the darkness in the north

My shoulder has become errant, somewhat dislocated, fallen slightly from the Grace of its rightful place at my side. My left side, for those at home playing along. And yes I saw my chiropractor, who again said something that made me think he didn't recognize me (this time it was, You've been here before, right?). Ah, the personal touch that invites my perspicacious, possibly-autistic nature to thrive!

Dopey memory lapses aside, he was in good form. Banterish, convivial, and present enough to adjust me well. Except. While it is true that, to his credit, he adjusted my spine well, especially C3 and C2 which, goddamn did I need that, I remain unconvinced that he addressed the true heart of the matter with my shoulder.

For one thing, he was banterish and convivial while he was adjusting my shoulder. Not banterish with me, mind you, but with the other two Chatty Cathys in the room. Who in fairness, I want you to know, were likable guys both.

And three guesses why I wasn't bantering with my chiropractor while he was adjusting my shoulder. That's right: it's Sabitathica's New Golden Rule ~ Part the Second:

It's impolite to distract someone while they're doing something they're good at.

And lest we be made to face accusations of partisanship, or suffer charges that we've let my good-natured chiropractor off the hook too goddamn easy, let us acknowledge that Sabitathica's New Golden Rule ~ Part the First applies in this situation as well, to wit:

It's impolite to allow someone to distract you while you're doing what you're good at, though the distracter probably won't see it that way.

Either the Chatty Cathys should have shut the fuck up, or my chiropractor should have told the Chatty Cathys to shut the fuck up. Neither happened, and we all lose. Especially my shoulder. Attention is to an individual what cash flow is to a business. A scarce enough resource without allowing it to slip through our fingers or be onanistically dissipated.

But the real reason I remain unconvinced is that my shoulder still aches, which I guess pretty much settles the question, and not all the Golden Rules in the world are gonna help me there.

Now playing: Rehearsals for Retirement, the Phil Ochs song, but sung now-today by Mark Eitzel, the formerly-miserable singer/songwriter for the American Music Club.

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.