A day of conquest! and joy! (and open mic)

Yesterday, around lunchtime, I got this mad idea that I ought to quit talking about “hypothetically” playing some “hypothetical” open mic nights and actually get off my duff and do it. So I called the Wild Buffalo and discovered, to my simultaneous horror and joy, that their open mic was that very evening. I immediately felt like throwing up.

But I took down the info and decided that I would be there at 7 p.m., well-tuned guitar in hand, for sign-up. I spent the rest of the afternoon agonizing over my three-song set list, humming through tricky spots in my songs, trying to commit my newest (and most favorite) lyrics to memory and also, occasionally, working. The nervousness came in waves.

Here, I will insert a flashback: in high school, I made weekly pilgramages to the now-defunct Cookie Cafe for their Wednesday night open mic with a few dedicated friends (of whom Mitch was one). We drank tea and tuned our guitars obsessively and hid behind our hair as we sang angsty power ballads about riotous teenage things. I always played too loud and sang too soft; I could never hit the high notes in public like I could in the quiet of my bedroom, and when I got nervous my throat went dry dry dry and quivered in what I hoped to pass as vibrato.

For the evolution of my thoughts on music, you might hop on over to an earlier entry, She returns to her guitar, and finds it likes her well enough, and then hop right back here, where I will leap forward several years to 7 p.m. last night, when I found myself timidly approaching the bar at the Wild Buffalo and accepting from the bartender a big red square of construction paper on which was printed the number 10.

10 meaning that I was the tenth person to arrive for sign-up, which meant that I would be left with either the very first spot or the very last.

And sure enough, those were my choices: dead first, or dead last.

I took first. And then I ordered a pint of Rogue ale and grabbed a table and began to tune my guitar.

By now, I was determined to have fun regardless of whether I bombed or not, and this worked much to my advantage when the announcer called his first act, “Thee-uh”, to the stage for set-up. In the ten minutes before he mispronounced my name over the PA, I made four trips to the ladies’ room, I thumbed through my notebook obsessively, double-checking lyrics, I tapped my toes and then, inexplicably, I calmed down. At which point Mitch leaned over to me and said, “Now I’m getting nervous.”

“Here,” I said, passing him my now half-empty pint. “Have some beer.”

Now, jump-cut to me standing in blue spotlight on a quite nice stage, politely interjecting through the mic that my name is actually “Thay-uh” and then (deep, unsteady breath) beginning to play.

I didn’t throw up, after all, and though my throat went instantly desert dry, I managed to sing nearly as loud as I do at home, partly because I could see Mitch sitting at the bar, watching and smiling, and I knew that he knew I could sing these songs, and somehow that worked to boost my confidence. In a nice reversal, my voice overpowered my pitifully amplified guitar. I felt like a rock star.

Really, I quite enjoyed myself, and when the announcer boomed omnisciently from the sound booth, “Let’s hear it for Thee-uh!” I shrugged, and bowed, and exited stage right. And so open mic night was officially kicked off. Here are some highlights:

• The second act turned out to be the guy who used to run the Cookie Cafe open mics (one of those odd Bellingham connections). He played an amazing rendition of “Rocky Raccoon” that I actually have stuck in my head right now.
• I got a free beer for playing. Hoorah!
• After the feature act (a phenomenal barbershop quartet named something like Double Deuce) sang “Fishers of Men,” a rather interesting fellow with black-framed glasses, mad white hair and a walking stick hijacked the floor in front of the stage and began prophecying in a very loud voice something to the effect that every baby born nine months from today would be Jesus. This was greeted by shifty eyes, drunken laughter and a red spotlight, dramatically trained on the guy as the quartet cleverly talked him down and kept the crowd laughing. The bass said casually, “Well, I can see we’d better lay off the religious songs…”
• An individual of dubious gender batted her (?) eyelashes at me and swatted my arm drunken- and/or playfully and told me I’d just have to stop staring at her, because I know how that makes her feel–at which point I believe I might have actually said something witty, because she giggled, swatted me again, and moved on, but I cannot remember what I said.
• Because it was the announcer’s birthday, he made the rounds with a tray of free cupcakes, which were delicious. Free cupcake, free beer. Good times.

I have princess feet!

It’s true. My feet, if you could see them, are downright royal.

My bosses treated we office ladies to a spa day (yes, we are spoiled absolutely rotten), and so Debbie, Erin and I spent yesterday morning at the Chrysalis Spa as the warm and cozy recipients of pedicures and facials. I had never been to a spa before, never had a pedicure nor a facial, and so I positively melted.

Or not quite. Not at first.

My brain is on “constant chatter” mode these days, and it did not help that the night before our spa trip I got into a rousing philosophical discussion with my friend Paul. This discussion was fueled by a few glasses of wine, and by the time I made it home my head was all full of ideas–some of them swam peacably around my brain like little goldfish. That is the normal state of things: goldfish. Others of these ideas were downright vicious, like pirahnas, and these mean ideas attacked the pretty, gold ones, and there were scales and fins and fishy-idea carnage everywhere…

I’m sorry to get off-task, but you must understand that my brain can stage battles like this to an extent that I do not sleep, I ponder furiously, and no amount of aromatherapy candles and pleasant woodwind music can calm me down.

Even heated towels and green tea and steam had a tough time getting my mind to coast into relaxation, but there’s just no denying the power of a facial. You’re warm, you’re cozy, the room is quiet and dark, and a lady with a soothing voice is rubbing all kinds of nice-smelling goop on your face and then wiping it off with a hot towel, then rubbing more warm goop on, then wiping it off. Blissful, really.

When the time came to re-robe and move on to the pedicure, I found it quite difficult to blink or wiggle my fingers, let alone leave the warm massage table, but somehow I managed, and while we sat in the sun room drinking tea, Debbie (who had already had her pedicure) rubbed her toes together and said gleefully, “I have princess feet!”

My feet had never felt particularly un-princessy to me, but by the time they’d been parafinned and jet-tubbed and buffed with all kinds of odd implements and my toes polished a dark, dark blackish purple, I understood. All afternoon I smirked to myself, remembering my dainty, soft, spotless toes and thought, princess feet. And, spoiled rotten.

Hearts and chocolate, cha cha cha!

I was the only girl in the flower shop yesterday. The rest of the patrons were anxious-looking guys placing orders for “something red” or “you know, not too Valentinesy” at quarter to six while covertly glancing at their watches, visibly assessing travel time between the flower shop and whatever cozy, candlelit restaurant they’d selected, after much heavy dropping of hints, for a romantic evening.

Mitch and I are generally pretty low-key about Valentine’s (we’ve been known to forget it altogether), but last night we splurged on dinner at Chiribin’s and a fancypants bottle of wine, and I had the delightful experience of presenting him with a single orange Gerber daisy and making him blush furiously. Our only code has been “no pressure”–as in, some years he’ll get me something and it’ll be all the sweeter because it was unexpected, and sometimes I’ll embarrass him publicly by bursting into “You’re Nobody Til Somebody Loves You” at the dinner table, or making him haul around a heart-shaped cellophane balloon that says something great like “Sweetcakes” on it in white script (haven’t done that last one yet, but you can bet it’ll happen), and sometimes we’ll do nothing at all.

I like it this way, particularly because I’m not the one being serenaded by off-key Dean Martin songs. I feel that Valentine’s loses a bit of its appeal (you know, the spontaneous expressions of love) when certain gifts are expected, or hinted at, or openly requested. I’d rather have a silly handdrawn card out of the blue than a dozen roses on the fourteenth. But of course that’s just me.

One cat goes missing but, to the relief of everyone, is quickly found

We had an interesting moment this morning when I realized that I hadn’t seen Sparrow (one of our two cats) in quite a while. Hmm, thought I. Where could she be?

Well, our apartment is not big, so after we checked the closets, bed, nooks and crannies and so on, our search fueled by occasional plaintive mews from somewhere unidentifiable, we began to get a little worried. I was even set to peek outside on the odd and alarming chance that she might have somehow gotten out, when Mitch noticed that Gunner (other cat) was pawing at my dresser.

Mitch opened the drawer and found a wide-eyed Sparrow nestled in among my socks. Sheesh. At least it wasn’t the oven or the dryer.

Books I reread often

“Often” = every couple years. Without further ado, I give you:

• Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott
• Travelling Mercies, Anne Lamott
• Small Wonder, Barbara Kingsolver
• The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis
• The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis
• Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis
• Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller
• The Abhorsen trilogy, Garth Nix
• The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
• Harry Potter (any and all books available), J.K. Rowling
• The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris
• Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
• Walking on Water, Madeliene L’Engle
• A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken

Books that will make it onto the list, but have yet to be reread:

• Atonement, Ian McEwan
• Franny & Zooey, J.D. Salinger
• Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
• House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski

"Winning is a wonderful deodorant"

I’ve wanted to use that line since the end of the playoffs, when an NFL announcer dropped that gem in reference to the Seahawks. He finished with some breath-taking punchline like “…and it’s smelling strong around here,” but I’m afraid my recylced joke is no longer applicable, what with the Seahawks, ahem, losing the Superbowl and all.

We watched the game with my dad and step-mom (both die-hard Steelers fans, previously mentioned in an earlier entry, Who gives a crap about football?), with the idea that a little competition might liven things up a bit. After all, what fun is watching the Superbowl when everybody in the room is rooting for the same team?

I should’ve known, though. I should have realized that my feeble allegience to the Seahawks (the average duration of my NFL enthusiasm is roughly 7.65 minutes per year) is nothing compared to Karen’s life-long devotion to her hometown team. This did not quite sink in, however, until the moment we walked into my parents’ kitchen and beheld the dining room table, draped as it was with Steelers T-shirts and jerseys and Terrible Towels. The focal point of this black-and-gold display was a chocolate cake, complete with hand-frosted Steelers logo, beside a Virgin Mary votive candle.

Oh boy, I thought. Oh, boy.

As far as I could tell, though, in the moments that I glanced up from my book, it sure did seem like the Seahawks played a good game. But I must say this: “retirement.” For the love of God, somebody please pass the message along to the Rolling Stones.

She returns to her guitar, and finds it likes her well enough

I have been quiet for some time now. Though I made plenty of noise in high school, playing guitar and bass in a couple different bands and singing loudly (but not necessarily well), during the winter of my senior year I developed a problem in my wrists and collarbone that effectively sidelined me, off and on, for two or three years. Not until this last year have I really begun to play my guitar with any sort of enthusiasm, and not until this last summer have I taken up writing songs again, and not until now have I felt confident enough in both music and voice to consider doing anything with either of them.

Musicians are curious folk, and for the first time in a long while, I’m starting to feel like I might fit in with those curious folk quite nicely. The other night I found myself listening in on a conversation between my friend Sarah and a fellow we met, and ended up playing a game or two of pool with, at the Nightlight. They discussed his job (he was a welder), and when that topic petered out, he said, casually, “…but my real passion is music.”

This is a trigger, a test, designed to perk up the ears of any musicians in the room. To mention that word, “music”, at a party, in a bar, will bring a whole flock of newly-interested strangers your way in a matter of seconds.

I couldn’t help myself. In a conditioned response, I asked, “What do you play?”, and the conversation was off welding for good. I’m not sure it returned to anything non-musical for the rest of the evening.

Music is an odd little community, and if you can answer that question, “What do you play?”, you’re effectively in. The trouble with my hands ended my short but passionate career as a bassist, and though I often miss the fit of thick bass strings beneath my fingers, so sturdy, so substantial, I am growing accustomed to life as a guitarist–an acoustic guitarist, no less (I began on the electric, picked up acoustic as a last resort). The thinner, more delicate strings of my trusty Yamaha begin more and more to feel familiar, as I learn to treat my acoustic guitar as its own instrument, rather than as a different-sounding electric guitar–I learn to strum lightly, to pick out individual strings with my fingertips, to let my voice carry, unamplified, over the chords.

My friend Shawnee plays a mean guitar, she writes beautiful songs, and I envy her her pretty strum patterns, her lyrics, her lovely voice. Today, we spent the morning cross-legged on my living room floor, taking turns playing our own songs for each other, and it was strangely refreshing to notice that, though I was nervous, my voice didn’t freeze up, my fingers didn’t falter when it was my turn to play. We talked about doing some open mics together–each of us playing solo, but providing moral support for the other–or about putting on some small acoustic shows around town.

I would love to do that. Though my hands aren’t entirely healed (in fact, they’re aching now), neither are they holding me back, and so I feel brave, but humble, as these last few years of timid re-entrance into musicianship have made me re-think why it is that I write, and play, and sing, and for once I feel as though I have a good answer: because I like to. That’s all.