Wednesday, September 26, 2007

STOCKYARD

Tonight is the nicest it's felt in days. It's a beautiful fall night with a cool breeze rolling over the back of my neck via a partially-open window. Slightly high and walking Chacho earlier, the street at the edge of a near-by school soccer field looked gorgeous below the blue sky. A huge gush of wind hit me, reminding me of the late '80s and early '90s and the perspective of being smaller and crawling through brush on nights like this. I'd forgotten about that perspective.

Right now is an incredibly busy time which, mostly, feels good. It could be argued that this year has been my busiest and most productive although I've been hit by a few periods of feeling low. It's a little confusing as one generally inspires the other to opposite effect. Attempting to figure out just what the problem is reminded me of the first time I felt this way: August, 1998.

The band I was playing in had a show almost every weekend that summer. It was an exciting time but I didn't have a job and we didn't practice so the week between each show was spent agonizing over the downtime. Going from the preparation, adrenaline, and release of a show was taxing but wonderful -- nothing like it in the world. Waiting to get back to that state... dreadful. That summer I read Get In The Van for the first time. Rollins described in great detail the nightmare of downtime and it was easy to relate.

Other enterprises have taken the place of playing in a band but my workload is a bit bigger. Luckily, the process of conception to completion has changed for the better (re: easier) and the energy is dispersed over weeks as opposed to a day. With that said, the DJ night went extremely well this month. It's the closest I come to performing and more satisfying. The downside is that it takes a few days to recover and relax. If I was DJing to this number of people once-a-week rather than once-a-month, I'd be a fucking mess. Still, the few days since then have been a little messy and I've wanted something to take my mind off this.

Tonight, Robert came to the store to work on the next soul mix. It won't be long before the relatively simple process of editing the songs and drafting the art is over and we start selling them. I was hoping he'd bring beer like last time but we had sushi instead. It didn't quite do the trick of bringing me out of the slight dumps so I was pleased to come home and finish off a j-bone some others had started. Unfortunately and not-so-surprisingly, it didn't do the trick either.

Also, I'm dying to move.

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