A generic Urban Legend featuring the Exhibit(s):

A petrified bar patron frantically called police after a man dressed in ski goggles and leather pants turned up on his stage with a roaring guitar.

Fearing he was about to be taken apart limb by limb the desperate “victim” dashed to the phone to alert officers of the impending bloodbath. But police who raced to the address in southside Birmingham last night arrived to find the guitar-wielding offender drunk.

It later transpired that the menacing character waving the 3ft-long Seagull acoustic had in fact got the wrong address for a fancy dress party.

Police said he had been intent on making a dramatic entrance to the soiree and was dressed as hell-raising rap star Eminem.

Upon realising his mistake he skulked off into the night, guitar in tow.

A Lincolnshire Police spokesman said: “The poor alcoholic was clearly frightened out of his skin.

“The guy turned up at the door with the guitar running and must have looked terrifying.

“Luckily he had simply gone to the wrong door. It must have been rather embarrassing for him.”

Halloween comes a little early this year as the Exhibit(s) take the stage this Friday night, October 27th, for our annual Costume and Body Piercing Extravaganza! Join us at Bailey’s Pub from 10:30 until the wee hours of the morning as we celebrate the ancient Druidic rites of feasting on the flesh of our animal totems, virgin sacrifice, and body shots. Come in costume, and (maybe) win a (barely qualifies as) prize^**. We personally will be there attempting our most ambitious costumes yet:

Real musicians.

I know, I know; too horrifying to comtemplate for more than three seconds. It’ll be fun to see if we can succeed, and even more fun to drink the memories away.

^* Prize may include one or more of the following: broken guitar strings and/or drumsticks, fliers from old shows, the chance to buy the band a shot, or drunken requests to “show us your boobs.”

A while back, I wrote a rather long-winded lengthy comment on the culture of beauty. And I don’t really have anything to add this time around, except this:

Don’t try to live up to the standards that the advertising and marketing worlds have set for you unless you have make-up artists, hair stylists, professional light and photography, and Photoshop following you around everywhere you go.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hibyAJOSW8U]

Of course, this is easy and perhaps a bit cruel for me to say, since I have CL at my side. But still, to all you ugly people the rest of you, just remember, beauty fades eventually.

Unless, apparently, you’re CL. Haha.

(This is probably not something that is followable; in fact, I imagine it’s going to sound utterly nonsensical when I look back on it once removed from this train of thought.  But it’s bouncing around in my head, and even if it turns out to be another abandoned dead end in my Quest for Ultimate Understand of the Universe Around Me, it might make for a good short screenplay.)

Matter and energy are interchangable, yes?  Neither can be created or destroyed, only converted back and forth.

Boy, if that’s not true as I remember it, then the rest of this falls completely apart…

The brain is driven by electrical current.  Our thoughts, feelings, dreams — everything about us boils down to a series of electrical impulses jumping from neuron to neuron.

So when we die, what happens to this energy?  It has to go somewhere, right? And perhaps this energy is imprinted with some part of ourselves — the same thoughts and feelings and dreams that that energy helped shape for X number of years. This is probably not a new thought — it certainly flows along with the ideas of reincarnation and past life regression.

But then, take it a step further, and split that energy, mix it in with the rest of the energy floating around through the universe.  Some of it might become light eventually, or power a jet headed for Boston, or kinesthecize (that’s totally made up, I know) a comet moved through space.  Some of it might mix with other energy, though, and eventually become part of another person, shaping their thoughts and feelings and dreams. And maybe part of an animal, too.

Maybe this helps explain kindred spirits, and pets that feel so naturally connected to you, and why some people feel like old souls and some don’t…

And maybe I should start my meds again.

For some reason, it struck me that the Exhibit(s) were a good fit opening for Chris Thile.

Not that we were bad, mind you; just mismatched.  Chris is a mandolinist (he is part of Nickel Creek), with a voice that at one point I tried to mistake for Paul Simon.  Good songs, talented musician (he’s like the Yngwie Malmsteen of mandolin, in fact — only, to be fair, with taste), but no matter how much of a bluegrass influence Eric might have in his background, our passive-agggressive rock really was worlds away from the singer-songwriter atomosphere that Chris brought to Vulcan yesterday.

I was a really good time, though, and thanks to all who were able to come out.  It was a beautiful day (a bit hot for me, but as everyone is so quick to point out, I’m utterly out of touch with ideal temperatures), and the best moments onstage were feeling the occasional breezes blow past.

It was really nice, too, to have a few things that we don’t usually have: a monitor mix, a soundman, an audience in the triple digits.  But even that was a little weird, and while it may be that I’ve just grown accustomed to playing at Bailey’s week after week, it felt… I don’t know, maybe disconnected?  I think I kind of understand what arena-level artists say when they talk about missing the intimacy of the clubs.  It felt yesterday like we were playing to people; normally, it’s more like we’re playing among them.

I’m not sure that I want to get used to that feeling. It makes it harder for someone to carry a quartet of Jager shots to the stage in the middle of a song, for instance.

On my cell phone is a picture of CL that she took in bed the other morning while I was still sleeping. It’s not a particularly good photo, from a technical standpoint. First, it was taken with a Razr, so we’re talking low-res (640×480), plus I’m looking at it on a teeny tiny screen that I’ll need bifocals to read in another year or so.

It’s blurry, the light is uneven… you get the picture. And yet, it’s one of my favorite pictures ever (not just because it’s CL, though that obviously has a lot to do with it). It perfectly captures so much of her — there’s a relaxed smile on her face (yeah, it’s cropped out, because I don’t want her to kill me; as it is, I might be eating with straws for a week, putting this much of her face on my site), her eyes alight but still enmeshed in morning.  The sun rises right through our window (to the left of the picture), and just enough is coming in that there’s a perfect glow to her head and that one shoulder.

And I look at it and realize that this is the kind of photo that you couldn’t take if you tried.  Even if you recreated it perfectly (and by “you”, I mean a much better photographer than anyone I know), there would still be that accidental quality missing, some sort of intangible emotional quality.

I’m familiar with this sort of thing, from years and years of recording music. You do a practice take, and you hit something wrong that turns into magic somewhere along the way. Because it was wrong, though, and you were too busy trying to get it right, you don’t remember what you did and can’t reproduce that note or sound.  You lay down a guitar solo, hitting the perfect notes with the perfect timing and feel, and one mistake somewhere in the middle forces another take, but you never quite get that magic back, even if you play it note-for-note perfectly.

The best art is emotional, something that strikes a chord deep inside of you — in spite of any reason, it makes you smile or cry or angry or despairing; there’s no logic, no explanation, but no denying that something in you moves when you experience that art.

Those experiences — like the photo of CL — are unique and perfect when they are happy coincidence and unmanufactured.

Nothing lasts forever.  Things change, coming and going from our lives.  Every day, we gain and lose, sometimes for what feels like the better, sometimes for what feels to be worse.

Change is scary, for some.  It goes hand in hand with the unknown, with instability and discomfort.  It plucks you from your secure and quiet zone and drops you into… what?  You never know, but by the time you adjust to the idea, it, too, is fading into the shadow of the past.

Without the darkness, you don’t appreciate the light.  Without hunger, there is no taste for food.  Without the deafening and meaningless wall of noise we live through every day, we never truly embrace the moments of solitary silence that are so few and far between.

There are people out there, surrounding you every day, that have things that you want, that you envy.  Money, comfortable jobs, nice things, happy relationships, friends.  There are people that would trade all but the next twenty four hours to have just what you have; their lives have become that empty and haunted.  And both of those groups have things that you and everyone else wants or wishes were gone from their lives for ever; egocentrism keeps us from seeing that, but it’s true across the board.

Everything you have today may drift or be ripped away from you tomorrow morning, next week, next year.  It might be replaced with something you want more; it might leave nothing but what feels like a charred and smoking ruin.  None of this is any better or worse than you perceive it to be.

In the here and now, though, keep that thought in mind as you walk through the days. As you look at your paycheck and wish it were more, know that it could be gone at a moments notice.  While you survey your material goods, imagine them all going up in flames, or washing away in a flood, or being stolen while you are away. As you are talking to your parents and siblings on the phone, or having a beer with your friends, or kissing your significant other good night, keep in mind that human beings are fragile, at the core, and the bonds that keep us together even more so.

But don’t dwell on what might happen tomorrow.  Tomorrow comes as it will, and nothing you do today will affect that at all.  Instead, enjoy your big television or your new car, revel in the company of your pets or family or friends, appreciate that you can pay whatever bills you can, and drink in the moments of happiness that you find in solace, or the arms of another, or the bottom of a bottle.

Impermanence is the source of the importance of everything in our lives.  Remembering that it is there can help you live like life is meant to be.

That reads almost like an old BASIC bit of code.

10 Print “Sarah”
15 var $Geek = “10”
20 Goto $Geek

Thanks to Sarah, I’m thrown back to high school days and memories of my little brother beating the shit out of me.  On Nintendo, that is.  Because I was never good at those games.

But I will be soon. Because now I have Nintendo goodness wherever I may roam.

Goodbye, free time.

Sweet Jiminy Pickle, I’m done.  Go look, and buy stuff from our store.

The Exhibit(s) online.

Bed.

Trying to get a new version of the Exhibit(s) website up by month’s end — the site is badly out of date, and poorly designed, to boot. I’m hoping to have it done before I start my new job, so I’ve basically got about two weeks left to make everything smooth and clean and ready for launch. I spent yesterday recoding every single page of HTML and poking at the CSS until I felt okay with everything. Still considering the underlying architecture of the directory structure, and I’ve got some work left to do on the merchandising section and a few other little things to add or clean up, but mostly, done (just received an email from Chance about it, in fact: “Wow, Kenn. That looks really great so far. Fun, informative… heck, it’s infotainment!”).

It makes me wish I had more time (and drive) — I’m inordinately proud of the code under the site now, and tempted to changed the entire look just because (in theory) it’s now a simple task, down to tweaking the stylesheet for a complete new look. I’d like to go back and fix all the sites that I designed to be the same (not to mention cleaning up all the sloppy code that I’ve left behind all these years as I learned).

Sadly, I’m too busylazy to do so.

Speaking of, take a few minutes out of your day to read this letter from a Marine in Iraq. Insightful and moving — and if you know me, that should tell you something.

If you don’t know me, it could tell you something, but probably misformation at best.

It wasn’t video that killed the radio star. It was shitty taste on the part of the average listener.

There was an interview that I read some years ago. I think it was Billy Corgan, but it might have been Marilyn Manson or some other alt-rock media darling.  There was a big discussion of how his music and lyrics were all wrapped up an a heavy sauce of angst and depression — maybe it was fried in a batter of gloom and despair.  I can’t remember for certain.

Regardless, the question was posed as to whether he had considered therapy, or medication, or somesuch, and his answer was an unequivocal “no.”  As he saw it, without the inner mounting turmoil, there was no creative drive for his music, and so his career would be over, and he’d have to go in search of whatever work once-famous rockstars can find, not to mention giving up hope on that once-and-future relationship with Courtney Love.

Of course, it was shortly after this that Smashing Pumpkins broke up, Zwan was met with a resounding clap (yep, just one), and he hooked up with Love at last.  So maybe therapy was something he should have considered, after all.

I used to give strong support to this theory, that creativity is somehow directly tied to a sense of misery of some sort. Just about every rockstar worth a damn has done their best work when high — and everyone knows that drug use is just a way to escape negative feelings.  All the best authors are disturbed and sad.  The best movies come from starving and struggling writers and directors, and once the money starts rushing in, the work starts to suck — helloooooooooo, Mr. Lucas.

And now I’m playing the unscientist, refusing to believe my own theory in spite of new and indisputable evidence.  See, I used to push this theory because I’m bipolar — and hey, if I’m that full of potential misery, then I should at least get fame, fortune, and a shot at an incurable STD out of it.

Point of fact, though, is that some (all) of my best creative work came in times of the heaviest depressions.  Music, screenplays… they were all inspired by being down.  And the stuff that comes out when I’m up and happy and really enjoying life — what little of it that isn’t drowning in a tar-like pool of cheese is just flat, uninspired at best and unintelligble at worst.

Of course, when you’re happy, there are better things to do than work to put your feelings down in some time-trapped format.  Like enjoying life, for instance.  And when you’re down, and really revelling in the feeling of hopelessness, convinced that the sun will never rise again except to shine a spotlight on the misery that is you, what better to do than try and exorcise those demons onto paper or canvas or film?

If you’re faced with the choice of being happy or being creative, which path would you take? Not to say that I’ve found a cure for bipolar disorder, or that everything in my life is peachy keen, or that I even have a real decision to make here. But let’s say — for the sake of wrapping this little piece up neatly — that I had to choose between writing and creating good stories and music for the rest of my life, or being really happy wasting time with CL.  One or the other, no middle ground.

Hell, I’m told old for the music business anyway, and all the writers and filmmakers that I like started losing it the minute they became successful, anyway.