DJ Oy Vey & The Beautiful Moments That Distract the Tragic

The week that was was a week that found me floating, feeling untethered, drifting loose and alone among the other lonely souls that dance around the periphery...and then bound tight in the warm concentric grounding circles of friends and family...it is some family...

Monday night, River Gods. My friend Melissa, aka DJ Big Missy, invited me a few weeks ago to co-host the Weekly Wax series. Theme this week was “Apopalypse Now,” featuring songs related to the end of the world. It was fun as hell; River Gods is a great little neighborhood Irish bar, very authentic (and they make a fantastic veggie burger). Place holds maybe 50 people, very intimate venue and a real warm vibe.

That warm vibe is what really struck me....I’d sent a blind email to a healthy number of friends, extending the (admittedly selfish) invitation. First off, it was great to hang with Melissa, since we hadn’t seen each other in months. My old friend Tom came by with his new girlfriend; Tom & I were friends at UMass way back when, then lost touch until last summer when we ran into one another at a downtown sushi joint. John Laurenti, another ‘BOS castoff who’s too talented to remain on the beach for long....and also just a good friend. My buddy Steve Morse, the tallest man in whatever room he’s in, also came by...and when a 30+ year rock critic says he digs your playlist, you take it to heart. My friend Michael was there too, taking a break from creating the best audio imaging you’re likely to hear.

Point is, I was really touched by the crowd being there and hanging out. It was a beautiful moment, shared with good friends...those beautiful moments are invaluable, reminders that we’re part of something larger than ourselves and supported and liked simply because of who we are. No agenda beyond that. This was one of those times when it mattered more than usual, where the weight of it felt heavier and more significant because it was needed more. I needed it.

For a while now, I’ve been pondering....why is it we’re shitty to the ones we love? Why do we treat strangers better than our own families? Is it because we hold those closest to us to a higher standard, some unarticulated yet expected pattern of behavior that inevitably leads to disappointment precisely because our expectations are so ill-defined?

Every family has its drama, and mine is no exception. Sometimes I think that because of the large and fractured and fragmented nature of it that my family has more than its share...but we don’t. It’s impossible to have any quantifiable measure. It’s not a competition anyway; the last thing we need is yet another wrinkle added. All I know is that there is a lot of hurt, a lot of sadness. Some of the damage is irreparable, some isn’t. But it will all be irreparable if we substitute inaction for resolution, if we limit ourselves to finger-pointing and blame-shifting, if we fail to look past ourselves and see another’s point of view. After all, you only fail when you no longer try.

All I know is that it’s all so goddamn unnecessary. It’s all such a waste of time and energy. Life is too short for this fucking nonsense to continue. Life is too short not to try again. Life is too short to not put our egos aside and be honest with ourselves, with each other. We’re never given more than we can handle. I can handle entertaining a room full of people, I can handle love and heartbreak, and I can handle my family...I just can’t handle not trying. I can’t handle waking up filled with regret someday.

Apopalypse Now, indeed. The theme was appropriate in more ways than one.

If you’re interested in my “End of the World Songs” playlist, email me & I’ll send it.

A Great Big Dish of Awesome

I love diners. Always have. After all, I'm from the city that built the first production diner cars. So from the prefab-retro 50’s style to the authentically unhygienic, I love them. Neon, formica, chrome, salty waitresses and saltier food...the whole package. Some are more upscale than others, sneakily serving gourmet fare along with the traditional short stacks, omelets and hashes of various types (not that type.)

A favorite is Johnny’s Luncheonette in Newton Centre (they prefer the slightly pretentious French spelling). Great breakfast food all day long, as well as sandwiches, burgers and the like. In these tight economic times though, eating out has become more of a luxury, what with a gallon of gas costing as much as a side of bacon AND a side of home fries. So what is a man to do but recreate his favorite diner dishes at home? You know, minus the chrome, neon, formica, Guy Fieri and the rest...

So last night, after a long afternoon in the library and then attending Matt Taibbi’s book signing event, I came home hungry for grease, preferably with a side of protein. I still had some pastrami from Trader Joe’s that I hadn’t used yet; and suddenly inspiration struck! I’ve had the Pastrami & Eggs combo at Johnny’s many times...why not make it at home? And make it greasy?

Heated some olive oil while dicing a sweet Vidalia onion...let the onions get some color, then added the pastrami, sliced into small pieces. Let that cook for a couple minutes, melting the fat in the pastrami and blending the flavors of the onions & oil before adding the egg mixture. Let that set, then added some low-fat mozzarella cheese, scrambled it all together, and WHAM! A great big dish of awesome!

Sometimes, it really is just the small, simple pleasures that make life grand. This was one of those moments. Bon apetit.

Moments to Memories

Woke up this morning-several times, actually-and just wanted to sink deeper into the covers, as though they’d shield me from the world, make it all go away. Then I remembered that I’m not 10 years old, so I got up.

Feeling adrift, feeling like I’m floating along some ephemeral track circling real life. Moments with friends, moments of sheer beauty with a real beauty, moments with family...moments become memories as soon as they’re over. The struggle is not to dwell on memories, but rather to work toward creating more moments.

But then, isn’t life just a series of moments? Great moments, awful moments. Moments that become snapshots of memories, the memories themselves stretching and taking on a life of their own, a heightened glow of days made perfect only through the lens of hindsight. You can appreciate them, but you cannot live in them. There is no going back, ever.

TImeshifting

It’s a rainy Friday night in this nondescript coffee shop, at a window table with a prime view of the strip mall parking lot facing. Stores I give not a whit about. Fast food grease palaces that give me a feeling of pride in not being part of that kingdom. It’s early May, but feels like late November outside. Feels like winter inside, too.

I was thinking today about time-relating cliches, its inexorable march and all. Yet there’s this duality of time, of certain things remaining timeless even as time moves forward. Music. Friendships. Family. Dynamics may shift in all, but in their essences they remain the same. I’m listening to the KOPN Deadpod podcast right now, a gem of a 1980 show from the Spectrum in Philadelphia. The show was nearly 28 years ago, Jerry’s been dead nearly 13. Yet in my headphones, it’s as fresh and vital as if they were playing right here, right now. Weir’s soulful “Lost Sailor/Saint of Circumstance” carrying me off to a distant ocean, alone and navigating only by the stars. Thinking about her, about what once was and what could have been...and thinking back to being there, to being at a Dead show. The scene in the parking lot. The marketplace, everything from grilled cheese sandwiches cooked on the radiator of a VW bus to dorm-made tie-dyes to the dreadlocked Trustafarians playing their roles to the hilt, blissfully unaware of their BMW-driven hypocrisy. All I ever wanted to do at those shows was dance, to just hear the music, let it pour over me and through me and let me feel a part of something, instead of apart from everything.

Those shows were a long time ago. As vivid as those memories are, that’s all they are. Memories. Memories with mementos, but still. They belong to the past.

Time is infinite; life is not.

It’s the future I worry about. The dancing days of youth are long past.