First, a quick gardening note: I'm having some fresh mint and chamomile tea, which remind me that today, I think I finished the last major thing that has to be done in the garden, besides some very minor seed planting. It looks very nice. I cleared away a giant weed that had grown over our fence, and was mostly dead, and replaced it with some very cheap and purple plants. We also relocated the snow peas and put up a white mesh net so they can cling to something, and, we hope, make a green wall between the compost heap and the rest of the garden. I think I can finally sit back, and, with just a modicum of maintenance, watch it all grow. Weeding and harvesting are easy enough.
So, after this morning's major work, I was very tired, but I decided to go out. I mean, it's great to live in a major urban center, which is good, because it certainly costs enough. It's a privileged place, and I always feel like I should, you know, take advantage of it by making a concerted effort to attend the events, eat in the restaurants, see the the traveling exhibits. In fact, sometimes it can get overwhelming, and you find you have too many things to do, either at once, or just all the time, and then you get busy at work, and before you know it, months have gone by and you can't remember the last time you saw a play, or ate dinner out with a friend. An old acquaintance of mine called it (although I don't think he coined the phrase) Fomo, or Fear of Missing Out.
It's motivation based on the understanding, the gut instinct, really, that life is meant to be lived, to have the marrow sucked out of it, to be carpe diemed as much as possible - as well the understanding that it's much easier to keep doing things than to start doing things. I was about 22 and going to college and working full time when I began to value the true importance of inertia and momentum. When I was doing 10,000 things - even now, when I seem to be doing 10,000 things - and my partner says he has no idea how I get it all done, I say, it's easy: just don't stop. Keep going and you can keep on going.
Today was an event I've been meaning to go to but it kept falling on unavailable time slots - every other Sunday afternoon: a SF ukulele meet up. I finally went today and it was basically like every other ukulele meet up I've ever been to: it's always just a bunch of people sitting around strumming ukulele and singing songs, none it very complicated because there's always too varied a range of musical abilities to do anything much sophisticated. We stick to songs the varied audience (ages, background, etc) will all know. It was fun, sure, but it was - as ukuleles can be, especially en masse - underwhelming. There were probably almost 20 of us near the end of the session, and it was still very gentle and sweet and unobtrusive. It's ukuleles. They can only get so insane.
But it was fun, and it was out in the city on a Sunday afternoon, and it's great to be able - to just be able - to walk into a cafe in the middle of somewhere and see a dozen people all playing ukuleles. I even led a couple of three chord songs (Can't Always Get What Your Want and Werewolves of London), and made a pitch for my all-ukulele Jesus Christ Superstar. The walk there and back, on lower Haight - the Haight street fair was going on, but that was blocks away - was full of characters and bright city fun. A Western Swing band playing at the corner of Market and Castro where an impromptu park has been set up recently, couples walking hand in hand or kids toddling behind purpose-driven parents, bus-riders silently rocking out to their own personal musical world via their iPods. There's murals and folding bikes and the scent of cupcakes and sausages. There's hip stores and antique marts and single-origin coffee shops. It's all out there.
My goal, lately, is to get out there more often. I accepted a free subscription to 7x7 (a San Francisco monthly glossy mag) and they list all these compelling things - people cooking amazing dishes, opening amazing shops, and spending amazing amounts of money that both impress and appall me. One definitely needs to pick and chose; there are literally hundreds of things going on daily and nightly in this city: shows, open mics, comedy shows, fine arts, block parties, screenings, openings, closings, classes, concerts and, sometimes, baseball games and Cirque de Soleil. You never know.
Last week, I went to the first Monday reading at 111 Minna, sponsored by Quiet Lightning, a literary non-profit (http://quietlightning.org/). I was there to see Rob Brezney (http://www.freewillastrology.com/) but was interested in the other readers that evening too, even though I didn't know them. I hoped it would be good - because so much writing I encounter isn't very good - and then it was. Good, I mean. Some of it was excellent, a a few pieces were spectacular. Rob was a little bit shocking - I've been reading him, not hearing him, all this time, and although I met him briefly at a mutual friend's CD release party, I'd never heard him *speak.* It was impressive, a surprising and heady mixture of preaching, speeching and invocation, with some singing bits thrown in for good measure. The words were mightily rousing and the energy he released and activated was palpable, but in the end, it was just one guy on stage. I half-expected everyone to get up and start shouting, and singing, and maybe storm the castle (although, to be fair, he wasn't calling for castle-storming, exactly), but no one moved. I was ready to get up. I was ready to shout and make the imaginary come true. I find this often happens - I'm moved to action by a performer, and everyone else is just sitting there.
It reminds me of another classic "fun urban" event, the Sing-A-Long Grease at the Castro a few months ago. The Sing-a-Long films really do it up, with a goodie bag kit of props (glow sticks for Hopelessly Devoted to You and pom poms for anything Rydell High-ish, that sort of thing), a costume contest and, of course, subtitles. At the end of the movie, I and a few others were so sufficiently roused by We Go Together that we had to get up and dance; I mean, come on, the lyrics alone (chang chang changitty chang shoo-bop) get you going, right? I stood up and in an effort to get others to join us five (in an audience of several hundred), I turned around and yelled something like "C'mon, you lazy bums, get up and dance!" Not a single person moved, but oh well. At least I did my part. If they missed out, that's on them.
So, after this morning's major work, I was very tired, but I decided to go out. I mean, it's great to live in a major urban center, which is good, because it certainly costs enough. It's a privileged place, and I always feel like I should, you know, take advantage of it by making a concerted effort to attend the events, eat in the restaurants, see the the traveling exhibits. In fact, sometimes it can get overwhelming, and you find you have too many things to do, either at once, or just all the time, and then you get busy at work, and before you know it, months have gone by and you can't remember the last time you saw a play, or ate dinner out with a friend. An old acquaintance of mine called it (although I don't think he coined the phrase) Fomo, or Fear of Missing Out.
It's motivation based on the understanding, the gut instinct, really, that life is meant to be lived, to have the marrow sucked out of it, to be carpe diemed as much as possible - as well the understanding that it's much easier to keep doing things than to start doing things. I was about 22 and going to college and working full time when I began to value the true importance of inertia and momentum. When I was doing 10,000 things - even now, when I seem to be doing 10,000 things - and my partner says he has no idea how I get it all done, I say, it's easy: just don't stop. Keep going and you can keep on going.
Today was an event I've been meaning to go to but it kept falling on unavailable time slots - every other Sunday afternoon: a SF ukulele meet up. I finally went today and it was basically like every other ukulele meet up I've ever been to: it's always just a bunch of people sitting around strumming ukulele and singing songs, none it very complicated because there's always too varied a range of musical abilities to do anything much sophisticated. We stick to songs the varied audience (ages, background, etc) will all know. It was fun, sure, but it was - as ukuleles can be, especially en masse - underwhelming. There were probably almost 20 of us near the end of the session, and it was still very gentle and sweet and unobtrusive. It's ukuleles. They can only get so insane.
But it was fun, and it was out in the city on a Sunday afternoon, and it's great to be able - to just be able - to walk into a cafe in the middle of somewhere and see a dozen people all playing ukuleles. I even led a couple of three chord songs (Can't Always Get What Your Want and Werewolves of London), and made a pitch for my all-ukulele Jesus Christ Superstar. The walk there and back, on lower Haight - the Haight street fair was going on, but that was blocks away - was full of characters and bright city fun. A Western Swing band playing at the corner of Market and Castro where an impromptu park has been set up recently, couples walking hand in hand or kids toddling behind purpose-driven parents, bus-riders silently rocking out to their own personal musical world via their iPods. There's murals and folding bikes and the scent of cupcakes and sausages. There's hip stores and antique marts and single-origin coffee shops. It's all out there.
My goal, lately, is to get out there more often. I accepted a free subscription to 7x7 (a San Francisco monthly glossy mag) and they list all these compelling things - people cooking amazing dishes, opening amazing shops, and spending amazing amounts of money that both impress and appall me. One definitely needs to pick and chose; there are literally hundreds of things going on daily and nightly in this city: shows, open mics, comedy shows, fine arts, block parties, screenings, openings, closings, classes, concerts and, sometimes, baseball games and Cirque de Soleil. You never know.
Last week, I went to the first Monday reading at 111 Minna, sponsored by Quiet Lightning, a literary non-profit (http://quietlightning.org/). I was there to see Rob Brezney (http://www.freewillastrology.com/) but was interested in the other readers that evening too, even though I didn't know them. I hoped it would be good - because so much writing I encounter isn't very good - and then it was. Good, I mean. Some of it was excellent, a a few pieces were spectacular. Rob was a little bit shocking - I've been reading him, not hearing him, all this time, and although I met him briefly at a mutual friend's CD release party, I'd never heard him *speak.* It was impressive, a surprising and heady mixture of preaching, speeching and invocation, with some singing bits thrown in for good measure. The words were mightily rousing and the energy he released and activated was palpable, but in the end, it was just one guy on stage. I half-expected everyone to get up and start shouting, and singing, and maybe storm the castle (although, to be fair, he wasn't calling for castle-storming, exactly), but no one moved. I was ready to get up. I was ready to shout and make the imaginary come true. I find this often happens - I'm moved to action by a performer, and everyone else is just sitting there.
It reminds me of another classic "fun urban" event, the Sing-A-Long Grease at the Castro a few months ago. The Sing-a-Long films really do it up, with a goodie bag kit of props (glow sticks for Hopelessly Devoted to You and pom poms for anything Rydell High-ish, that sort of thing), a costume contest and, of course, subtitles. At the end of the movie, I and a few others were so sufficiently roused by We Go Together that we had to get up and dance; I mean, come on, the lyrics alone (chang chang changitty chang shoo-bop) get you going, right? I stood up and in an effort to get others to join us five (in an audience of several hundred), I turned around and yelled something like "C'mon, you lazy bums, get up and dance!" Not a single person moved, but oh well. At least I did my part. If they missed out, that's on them.
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