spacematic.net

People have been giving me a particular and peculiarly consistent nugget of advice for a long time now. They say “Go out and see a thing or two! You’re all cooped-up in that damned schoolhouse, and the world’s pretty big. And no, it doesn’t really matter where you go, as long as you’ve never been there before. For Godsakes, get out there!”

So when a friend of mine called me about a month and a half ago with the unique proposition of seeing Porcupine Tree in Los Angeles, I quickly said yes. For those of you who don’t know, snappy acceptance of such an offer is of late, at least, uncharacteristic of me. I used to be far more adventurous than I am now. I don’t know exactly what triggered the shift, but somewhere around the thirty-year mark, I stopped seeking “newness.”

It’s not that I didn’t want to have any fun – quite the contrary. My decision to move to Little Five Points was one  based on the idea of having a base of operations for the entertainment of my closest friends. After all, L5P had been a favorite haunt of mine since the Mid-Nineties, when my band, The Well Drinkers, practiced in a warehouse called “The Black Box” off Krog Street. We used to pay a couple hundred dollars per month for the pleasure of having a stuffy little room to shatter our eardrums in. That very same warehouse now houses “Kevin Rathbun Steak,” and you’ll be lucky if you get out of there for the same couple hundred dollars in a single night. I must admit, however, that Rathbun serves up a damned spectacular steak. If you’re in the neighborhood and have the appropriate carnivorous cravings, it’s the place to go. I recommend that you dip your chosen cow in truffle butter. It’s like sin drenched in extravagance. Sure, the guilt’s there. But what delicious guilt it is.

In 2004, I moved back from Destin, Florida and set up my base of operations atop the hill across from Variety Playhouse – old Bass High School. Dad’s high school football team used to play these guys back in the day, and I was now living in their auditorium. Strange days, indeed! Stranger, still, that my friends who I so wished to entertain in this little party district were rapidly (not to mention, prematurely) slowing down. They just didn’t want to leave the house anymore. When I invited the old band and other friends down this way, they greeted the proposition with the same anxiety one would a visit to the dentist. This , of course, made me sad. Such friendships became remarkably one-sided, with me trekking always into the ‘burbs to visit the people I knew and loved. Whenever I did, all they wanted to do is drink until closing time and cab it back to the house, where it was recommended that I stay the night. This was the point at which I realized I had less and less in common with those who I once considered my best friends. Without the music to hold things together, old bonds wore thin and eventually broke.

I dedicated the next couple of years to making new friends in the neighborhood I now called Home. Item number one on the agenda was to procure a critter. I found Allie, a Cairn Terrier, and it was through her that I was introduced to a neighborhood of like-minded dog people and others who were either dog-tolerant or at least ambivalent. Regardless, the dog got me outside and on the street, and this was a boon to the recovery of my social life. But as time moved on, I found myself driving less, and I was content with the conveniences only city living could afford. The trouble with such contentment is that you risk drawing ever tighter boundary lines around your world, until you exist almost entirely within a ten block radius. God forbid you find gainful employment within the same damned building… if such a thing happens, as it happened with me, it’s nearly all over.

So when Steve called me, I quickly accepted. Yet,  I had to fight my instincts not to go. There were a million reasons to stay at home, including work. But hell, it had been two years since I had even been to the beach. Aside from that, I had only taken a couple sick days, and then another couple to attend my grandmother’s funeral. It was time I took some kind of vacation.

And what a vacation it turned out to be! Steve introduced me to some great friends, we got to hang out in recording studio houses and eat 7-11 breakfast sandwiches in Beverly Hills. His friend got us after-show passes at Porcupine Tree, where I caught glimpses of people I admired, and even got to wave and give sheepish hellos to a couple of honest-to-God legends. It all sounds silly, I know, but it was a blast. I got to walk down Hollywood Boulevard, eat at the In & Out Burger,  find myself up to no good in Tijuana, stick my toes in the Pacific in Malibu and take pictures of the wildlife on the Santa Monica Pier. All of this (and much, much more) happened in only four days.

It all made me hungry to… I don’t know… DO SOMETHING. I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. I have a great life, I have even better friends, and I have an interesting tech job where I’m constantly challenged to develop creative solutions to complex problems. But something about this little trip woke me up, made me ambitious and got me working on this crazy web site again. Is it hubris? Perhaps megalomania? A little too much love of  watching myself tap-tap-tap on a keyboard? I’ll admit to at least some symptoms of all those maladies. But what’s wrong with wanting to express yourself? And what’s wrong with hoping that someone might actually want to read it? I’ve been down on myself for far too long.

For now, I find myself two Chimay Blues deep into a rambling blog entry at Corner Tavern, with less than ten minutes to go for September 28th, 2009. Is it time well spent? I’m not sure it even matters. What I do know is that I took some time to do something I enjoy. That’s what this site is for – all the stuff I like. So I might hint at putting up entries of music and short stories, as I used to do here, but something tells me that I might be a little more serious about such things going forward. Time to think a little more about that, and then do something about it. Good God, I salute you if you made it this far. Thanks for listening.  –mike