A couple days ago I was at the Lizard Lounge open mike, which I’ve raved about on numerous occasions in this here newsletter – just packed with talent, and your gracious host Tom Bianchi is just the bee’s knees, host-wise.
By way of explanation, I should note that I, sad to say, am attempting to graciously lose whatever hair I have left, and this necessitates a rather more, shall we say, closely-mown haircut than I’d prefer. And while the woman who mows my hair is something of a genius, my afro is, sadly, a matter of history. So it was the Monday after Halloween, and Tom had gone to his annual Halloween gig as Mr. T (of “I pity da fool” fame, for those of you who’ve blocked the 80’s out of your minds), and he’d given himself a mohawk. And that weekend, he’d let his 11-year-old buzz-cut the remainder of his hair. I like to schmooze with Tom when I get onstage for my set, and so I complimented him on his haircut, and he replied, “What would happen if we rubbed our heads together?” And so I rubbed my head against his head.
Now, you have to know somebody pretty damn well to do this, and while I hold Tom in the greatest esteem, he and I are not best friends. So I feared, briefly, that this sort of stage logic might not have been especially welcomed. But to Tom’s credit, he reassured me, later, that no, I had not crossed any particular line, and implied, as I felt at the time, that the logic of the stage moment required it.
But there was more, on this particular evening. My wife, She Who Must Be Taunted, and I have recently returned from a multi-week automotive sojourn, which, in addition to being a tremendously welcome break, followed a path almost identical to the one I’d followed, myself, fifteen years ago, right before I met her. And so it seemed that the appropriate thing to do was to perform the two songs I’d written on that previous trip, back before I figured out that I could either chronicle my journeys in song or enjoy them, but not both. The second of these songs is “The Visiting Uncle”, and while it’s not a maudlin song, it’s not a laugh riot, precisely. And it killed. I had this room – this basement bar – in the palm of my hand. Right up until the last line of the song, when I suddenly realized that I’d captivated a room with a sentimental song and choked on the last line. This happens to me occasionally – I step outside the moment and recognize what’s going on, and it catches me by surprise, and I stumble. Not often enough to worry about, but often enough for it to be annoying when it happens. I had them in the palm of my hand, dammit.
Never laugh at your own jokes. Never tear up at your own nostalgia. I break these rules all the damn time. But ignoring the logic of the moment? That’s death. So I generate static against Tom’s skull, but swoon over my own history.
The stage is a strange place.