Navigating the strait of jazz-schmooze

What is writing to me? Is it self-expression? Is it a search for a self to express? Is it a plea for attention from an imaginary reader? I don’t know, but sentences form in my head to try to explain things, particularly when things aren’t to my liking. As were many things today at the jazz jam.

I had come up with some wise general statements a short while ago as I tried to meditate, all of which I’ve forgotten. I have only this: Other people are often the cause of annoyance for me, not always through behaviors, but because I feel they cannot “see” me as they go about their activities. Likewise, I cannot “see” them. These personalities all around me—they seem insignificant, in the long run. As, of course, do “I.” I’m more torqued about my own insignificance than theirs. After all, I can give them some significance if I want to; I can pay some attention, make some comment, pretend they are real. These are good moves, because my existence depends on these others, in a way. If I acknowledge them, they might acknowledge me. However, sometimes they don’t, despite my ministrations.

I wonder why I was in such a bad mood though? Granted, I wasn’t as enthusiastic about going to the jam (which was at The Dish today) as I have been. It’s been three weeks since a jam, due to a fifth Sunday followed by Easter Sunday. (Of course there have been open mics, but that’s a different set of “other people” with its own problems.)

I’m supposed to (in my own mind) “love” Kirby. And I’m supposed to (in my own mind) “care” about Wil (who seemed in a very positive frame of mind last night when we saw him at the VBC after the Bela Fleck concert, and gave him a ride home). I remember feeling glad that he seemed to be doing better than he had been, and that he was actually exercising some, he said. I wondered if he’d be “dressed up” today or not.

He was not. He seems to have embraced the dark-colored androgynous turtlenecks and soft pants he bought for his trip to Florida. There’s still the wig, though—unkempt, inappropriate, odd. That is always enough to annoy me all by itself. His impulse to perform is as healthy as ever, and I always wonder why he doesn’t see himself as I see him, and try to improve his appearance and disorganized approach to music before getting up there and singing. I attribute his bizarre confidence to being brought up as a male and to having made a more-than-adequate living with his math smarts so that he worries not about paying for his new Subaru. Which makes his apparent wish to be female (in a mostly superficial way) more than a little ironic. One thing, perhaps, that trans women don’t understand or try to adopt (who would?!) is the constantly nagging internal perception of oneself as a second-class citizen, a basic (early) feminist-observed phenomenon, and probably still a reality for many women.

I had been planning on singing “Close Your Eyes,” and asked Pete if he still had the music. He said he did. Though I am frequently hesitant, I thought, well, I’ll SING it, then, when I get the chance. Kirby got up first; a microphone was brought and produced such horrendous feedback that I rose from my chair and left the room (but not in time to save my ears). Kirby sang and I played some harmonica (which I’m getting weary of on “Stormy Monday”) and Ted sang, and then Kirby sang again, and then Sharla arrived.

I am sweet to Sharla, despite my internal grumblings. She’s a semi-innocent diva with pitch troubles, but a great tone and of course, beauty, which she is very conscious of using and maximizing. And she also plays flute on instrumental numbers, so I knew she’d do more than one song. Therefore, I essentially gave up the idea of singing my song, and said so to Ted (who was sitting alone behind us (me, Wil, Kirby) in a black hat and exuding a vaguely Napoleonic air). I was surprised and not pleased when he rushed up there immediately after Sharla’s “set” to sing “Blue Skies” (his second song!) without encouraging me to sing instead. (I suppose I really am depending on the kindness of (relative) strangers! My attitude was slightly passive-aggressive.) I went so far as to hold the lyrics for Ted since there was no music stand. He had no idea how pissed off I was.
    Kirby had some more guests (from the mosque) come in, so of course she had to sing another one, and I got to play melodica. But I had really wanted to sing.

Additionally, Tom Branch began bashing the drums so hard, I got up and almost left the room again, muttering something. It doesn’t cause actual pain in my ears, but it creates some sort of shock.

I usually have some “kindness” (that is, calculated acknowledgement) to dispense to Rick Pappas and Deborah Saylor, but today I had none. I had no energy for goodbyes, either, so I just left. Inside I was pouting, but I try not to whine in front of anyone. I merely start thinking how rinky-dink this whole enterprise is. And how rinky-dink I am as a participant. This harsh judgment of my own pastimes may have originated with Felicia, but it wormed its way into my brain, and will poison almost everything if I let it. It’s related to the more general idea that nothing we humans do means anything—because of impermanence and death (not to mention unstable value/meaning systems). Also, Felicia accuses me of pouting as part of her persistent treatment of me as if I were an unsatisfactory child. That said, our family zoom today was probably the better part of my day, since we didn’t overtly argue.

Back at home after the jazz jam, I ate something-or-other and then went through a few minutes of WHAT-THE-HELL-IS-WORTH-DOING?! In these golden years, mindless exercise is frequently my answer to that question, since it contributes to so-called health, but this time it seemed pointless. So I meditated for ten minutes, because I’d just watched an interview with the writer George Saunders, and he said he was a meditator. (I do imitate others, more than I like to admit.)

To top it off, Russell is anxiously getting ready for his drive to Knoxville tomorrow to visit with Widower Bob for a week, so he’s not listening to me when I speak, and continues to be distracted by Facebook and YouTube while also trying to wash clothes and pack. There are many times lately (maybe it’s always been this way?) that I feel do not get what I “need” from him. But who says he has to provide for my psychological/emotional “needs”? What if he simply can’t? What if I can’t for him? What if neither of us can for ourselves?

And then there’s Brian, who pretends he has no needs; look where it got him! Living in an alcove behind a curtain in the cluttered little house of his older sister. Strangely, today I have not worried about Brian very much at all, so he has been the one person who has not gotten on my nerves. But I’m sure his existence will trouble me tomorrow, though, which would be normal.

 

The terrible, horrible, no good night...

What’s missing these days is that urge to write. I used to have an eagerness to get typin’ especially when it was about myself. But now I see myself as a helpless peon dismayed and fearful like everyone else who’s paying attention—as far as the outside world goes—and worrying about my mortality and my life’s worth on the inside of me. All while compulsively playing and singing songs over and over again at meagerly-attended open mics.

Tonight’s open mic was a disaster for me, mentally. I’d yelled at Brian earlier in the day, and thought I wasn’t disturbed by it, but I must have been. Everything was wrong at Liquor Express. Everything around me, what people did, said, looked like. Kirby was there, with Roy and Andrea, which flummoxed me. They’re JAZZ people! Wrong scene, clash of cultures, or perhaps my inability to play both roles at once. And I had nothing much to present musically. So I wound up doing “Ain’t Nobody’s Business” and “Easy Street” on the acoustic, which I wasn’t used to doing. Later, after Kirby left, I noodled on that weird electric thing from Australia, to an open tuning…while Tim was packing up. I’d soothed myself last night with that.

While I was at the open mic, Debbie texted me to suggest her and Rob taking me and Russell out to dinner TOMORROW. Not enough notice, and I can’t do that sort of thing anyway. (Just as I won’t be able to take her up on her offer to accompany me on a day excursion out of Huntsville). So I texted back how busy I was. And she got upset because I didn’t THANK HER FIRST for the offer. I tried to explain but she didn’t want to talk about it. And here I thought she was a counselor.

But, is going out to eat with another couple a normal thing? Whether it is or not, it’s not something Russell and I have done in the past twenty years. We tried earlier in our marriage, and nothing went wrong, but it was not fun. The thought of it NOW scares me. (And this is after bragging to Paige last night that I was so at ease, socially.)
    Perhaps all this “ease” is another masking. I certainly will only actively socialize if the time frame is limited. Three hours (open mic length) is just about too much. A crowded party is a little better because one can seek out a variety of conversations. But the forced “good behavior” of dining with another couple?! Without alcohol? I cannot consider it. And that was foremost in my mind when declining the invitation. Too bad, because apparently expressing appreciation was THE most important thing to Debbie. She doesn’t want to talk about it, but I do. Maybe at Allana’s.

I am neither aghast at my own neglect of “manners” nor proud of my quick, rotten responses. But where can I be “myself”? How much of what I have been thinking lately as MYSELF unmasked really is that? Am I only myself at home? And intermittently? Russell is always chiding me for some verbal faux pas or other. We discuss, I rationalize. Is it that I don’t KNOW what other people want and/or how I should treat them? Or that I don’t care? Some of both?

Being in a pissed-off mood, I made a loud remark toward Tim’s girlfriend (or ex-wife) about being “substituted for” when I returned from the Liquor Express restroom and found Tim playing harmonica with Mike Perry. But it was half insincere. I apologized to Tim’s girlfriend (ex-wife?) once Mike’s set was over (and I’d played on “Beautiful Boy” anyway), but then she insisted on trying to cheer me up or boost my “self-esteem” or something and she was really getting on my nerves. I told her it would all have been better if I’d been drinking. She said, “So have a drink!” I had to explain, and that was more than I wanted to share. With her anyway. She left later and sat at the bar. I had told her straight up that I was a JERK, and I was. People may need to start accepting that about me, because apparently, I screw up the simplest of interactions.

 

I’m inclined not to take all this heavily, but part of me does. I tell myself that it’s OK to yell at Brian because the less comfortable he feels here, and the crazier he thinks I am, the sooner he’ll find a place to live and leave. But that’s probably not the way it works. The source of my anger seems obvious, but not to him. How can I say, “I don’t want you here and I never did!” So it has to be about something else, in this case, his dismissal of my good deed in putting his bike behind the gate when he’d left it out in plain sight. “I think you remember when it was almost stolen,” I said. He said, “So you said.” I yelled that he was saying I lied. But the best thing I said was, “No, we can’t talk about this later. You can’t just slip on a rainbow coat of rationality— we’re HUMAN.” His mild-mannered, calculated calm in all matters drives me nuts. I did make him slam the door slightly, and I think that might have been good for him, but what do I know?

You know, I want to be “right.” I really do. I bristle when people disagree with me about certain observations I might make or about things I think are self-evident. With an emphasis on “self.” I bristle when I’m told how to do things. I bristle when Brian interjects into every overheard conversation his encyclopedic “knowledge.” I just bristle all the time. I try to keep it at a low boil when I’m “out” or relating to non-intimate friends. But today I simply failed. Is this the beginning of the end? Both Mike and Ted texted me later to see if I was “OK.” Well, that’s nice. But I can’t really TALK at length to either of them. And now I probably have (even more of) a reputation as a “difficult” person.
    Fuck it. Nothing great was ever going to happen with this scene anyway. I’m either not good enough, or too weird. And I wouldn’t want a bar gig anyway. Nor would I want a “house concert.” My specialty is hit-and-run; I can only be “inspired” for short bursts. Four songs is almost too many (although I slogged away for four hours at the Green St. Market last summer, but that was different).

I’m losing my impetus to practice my old songs. But I’ve written a new song to that open tuning mentioned earlier, though I didn’t play it tonight. It might need memorizing, it is so fast-paced (which reminds me—all Eric’s songs tonight were awfully slow, which yes, made me bristle aesthetically, but I’m not going to mention it to him). To what end all these attempts to maintain acquaintanceships though? And to what end all these songs, which in my case are really poems in disguise, set to music to make them more palatable?

Felicia questioned (by email) why I didn’t pursue a lucrative “career” starting in my twenties, but I just wanted to laugh in her face. If I try to explain about the times, the hippie ethos, the REAL underlying causes of the women’s movement whose achievements she benefited from, she just asks more questions. Unfortunately, I like to answer those questions, and so it goes on forever. She’ll never understand. Is she alone in that? Does anyone around me understand me? Russell “manages” me, but does he sympathize? And when I tried to ask Felicia some questions about herself, she said she’d already answered them years ago. She is a person who doesn’t enjoy writing about past. How can that be?! Does that mean she’s less selfish? I don’t think so, because in Zooms she’s impatient, critical, and likes to direct the conversation.

About focusing on one thing, though—how do I ever know it’s the RIGHT thing? Plus, I don’t enjoy anything enough to do it all day and all night, and when I anticipate getting something done “in a minute” and then open Facebook, I am easily distracted by the impulse to comment on things that stir a thought or two, as if people needed my input. (This occurs in person, too, though I don’t address every damn topic as Brian does). I am not sure this has anything to do with my imagined struggle to get any serious consideration of my “work” in this Huntsville music scene (small portions of which are all I dabble in anyway). Maybe more gigs with Mike? I don’t know. Maybe it’s the ukulele. Also, I’m almost 76 years old. What can happen NOW? Only decline. And naturally, invisibility, even if I sing loudly and include “bad words” in my lyrics.

If I listened to my sensible side, I’d quit this racket and start farming in my backyard. We might need the food.