Welcome to my random ravings
Why am I doing this?
I’ve started a Substack for a few reasons.
To share exciting thoughts, ideas, information, and experiences
To share my photography
To practice writing
To make it easier for people to keep in touch with me
This first post is going to be a lot longer than I intend my usual posts to be because I want to include an example of each of the three major types of posts that I intend to make. Future posts will generally cover just one topic at a time.
Or I might forget my plan and make every post with a unique structure. The unexpected is the spice of the journey.
Interesting Stuff
Last December I discovered Rocksmith 2014 Remastered. I remember being vaguely aware of the name Rocksmith prior to this, maybe as long ago as 2014 or 2015, but I assumed based on the fact that I was totally ignorant about Rocksmith, that it was an Ubisoft shovelware RockBand clone. So I ignored it.
But during winter break last year, I was perusing Steam looking for interesting games to play when I ended up on the Rocksmith 2014 Remastered store page. I took the time to read about the game. I realized it wasn’t a Rockband clone. I looked through the songs list and found that there’s a huge catalog. Many are songs that I loved when I was in high school. A bunch are songs that I still love and listen to regularly. Radiohead! Alice in Chains! Primus! System of a Down!
I started playing bass when I was 12 years old. It was a whirlwind romance. I was proud of my total disinterested in music until I heard Def Leppard’s song “Pour Some Sugar on Me” on the radio. This is super embarrassing to me now. For whatever reason, I became obsessed with that song in the way that only a child can be. As I listened to the song over and over, for the first time, I paid close enough attention to a piece of music that I could pick out the individual parts. I was fascinated by how they wove together. I wanted to know how these sounds were made.
I bought a guitar from the local used guitar store. It was called Al’s Guitarville. After a few weeks, I realized that the guitar couldn’t make the sounds that I wanted. It didn’t go low enough. So I sold it back to Al’s at a loss and bought a plain wood Peavey 4-string bass. It came with a black clamshell case. There was something about the way that the bass made my body resonate that felt right.
In high school, I played in the jazz band, the jazz choir, and the orchestra for school plays. I also played in my own band. When I was fifteen my band was playing gigs in bars around Seattle. Into my late 20s I played in bands. Music was my life. I played bass every day. I had band practice three or four times a week. My bands played shows a few times a month.
Bands broke up and reformed. The last two breakups broke me in some way that I didn’t understand and couldn’t articulate. One day music just wasn’t something that I could bring myself to do anymore.
A band is a hugely complicated social relationship. Ostensibly everyone is there for the same reason, to make music. But in reality, everyone has a lot of different reasons for being in the band and many of those reasons are irrational or self-contradictory. Friction is unavoidable and I couldn’t deal with the social side of it anymore. I was so disillusioned that for decades I’d pick up my bass to play and within a few minutes I’d be feeling depressed and panicked. I was physically capable of playing but emotionally playing music was torture.
Circling back to Rocksmith, I bought the game and a few songs that I had always wanted to learn how to play: Man in the Box by Alice in Chains, Tommy the Cat by Primus, Epic by Faith No More, and a bunch of songs by System of a Down, Soundgarden, Cake, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Tom Petty, and more.
It’s June now and I’m still playing! I’m enjoying music again after all these years.
More on this subject in later posts.
Photography
We’ve got a path in our front yard that’s made of wood chips. The yard was a horse paddock for decades but the horses are gone and the grass is seven feet tall now. Wally has made a bunch of paths through the grass and we’re working on clearing out the Himalayan Blackberry infestation and getting some trees and gardens started.
Every morning I walk Wally through the path and this year there have been so many mushrooms growing! Every morning there seem to be new patches popping up.
A few days ago we took Wally to the beach for the first time. At first, he was so interested in the driftwood at the edge of the rocks that he didn’t seem to realize that the largest body of water he had ever been near in his life was just a few feet away.
After a few minutes, he stopped sniffing the logs and walked out onto the rocks. He then squatted and dropped a huge deuce, not a care in the world. I found myself exquisitely aware of all the other people there. I picked up the poop in one of the bags that Wally thoughtfully keeps in the dispenser built into his harness.
Finally, he saw the Puget Sound.
He sniffed around but seemed freaked out by the waves.
I didn’t have my camera with me so there aren’t any boring pictures of Wally not going in the water. However, we went back a few days later. I brought my camera and Wally got the zoomies.
Enjoy.
Next time we take him to the beach I’ll kneel when I shoot because I think a Wally-level view would be more interesting.
Writing
Here’s a short story that I wrote a while ago. The subject of this story is Real Shit. I feel like the subject of every story should be Real Shit and it should just be a given but whatever, don’t read it if today isn’t a good day for Real Shit.
103.6 Feet per second
Almost thirty years later and it’s the saxophone that I can’t understand. Why did he leave it on the sidewalk? Why did he bring it with him to the bridge? Where was it during the graduation ceremony? I guess the rest of it doesn’t make sense either. But after thirty or forty years you get used to people not making sense.
That saxophone was a part of him.
He had to have had it with him at the graduation ceremony. It was tucked away somewhere because it wouldn’t fit under the creaky gray metal folding chairs that they’d used for every event at the high school since the 1950s. They set them out in regular rows with a triple wide aisle in the middle, like how you’d set up chairs for the audience at a wedding. But at graduation, the audience sat in the bleachers.
The chairs are uncomfortable. They’re hard. They creak. If you shift your ass wrong the feet make an unholy squeal on the burnished wood basketball court flooring. Everyone will turn and look at you. The speaker will pause and peer over the top of their glasses as if they’re making a note of who will need to be punished later. The people in the audience who sat in those same chairs on that same gym floor thirty or forty years ago smile a little because they are remembering the time when they made the squeal and got the stares. It’s the fucking circle of life.
There’s no room under the creaky folding chairs for a saxophone in a blue and gray zipped mesh case. I just remembered what his case looked like. It had black mesh with Velcro on the outside because in the 90s everything had black mesh and Velcro. The case would have poked out from under the chair six or seven inches on both the front and back.
It must have been in the band room. The case was big, as I remember, and it wouldn’t have fit in a locker. The case was too tall. And he wouldn’t have had a locker anyway. Not at that point.
Yes, the saxophone must have been in the band room.
But why?
He wouldn’t have had classes for a few weeks. Did he leave it there on the last day of class? Did he forget it? Did he just not want to play anymore?
So, why was it there at the school? Had he stopped playing after the last day of class? Was it just an expensive widget that he set aside as soon as he no longer needed it?
I can’t believe that. Having heard him play. Having played with him. Having heard him grow and develop over the three years I knew him. He had soul. I was going to say that someone who could play like that wouldn’t be able to just set down the instrument and forget about it. But I haven’t played in years now. I go months sometimes without even listening to music.
So, that makes me wonder, did he plan it? Did he leave the sax there in the school on purpose knowing that he’d be back on graduation night? Knowing that he wanted to leave it on the sidewalk? Why didn’t he just leave it at the school? Why was it important enough to bring along? But it wasn’t important enough to take with him?
Was that his plan? Did it just turn out to be too hard to climb over the railing with his sax in hand?
But the saxophone was inside the case. Zipped shut. Tucked safely against the side of the pitted, lichen-encrusted, and pollution-stained cement railing. The Aurora Bridge was built in the 1930s and it looked like it.
No, he left the sax there in its case on the narrow sidewalk on purpose. But why?
What went through his mind as he dropped through the darkness? Did he admire the city lights reflecting on the black surface of the water as he plunged down through the warm June air? Did he think it was beautiful?
I’ve been there. Not to the exact spot. I don’t know where it is. But I’ve walked across the bridge at night. I’ve stopped to admire the view of the city. I’ve looked down, down, down, 167 feet into the black surface of Lake Union and been captured by the beauty of the lights rippling and shimmering there like photons smeared out across space trying to escape from a black hole.
3.2 seconds.
That’s plenty of time to have a few last thoughts. To admire the view. To realize that the coming end is real in a total and unavoidable way.
He had accelerated to about half of terminal velocity when he hit the water. About 70 miles per hour. That’s 103.6 feet per second. I looked up the height of the bridge. And even though math isn’t one of my strengths it’s a simple enough calculation. 32.26 feet per second, per second.
And while he was plunging through the darkness his sax sat on the sidewalk, zippered up, safe in its blue and gray case. Gently held in place by soft foam padding.
And it was still there when the police officer went looking to see if he’d left a note. They do that sometimes. People who jump. They leave a note in their bag or purse. Or in their coat pocket. Some typed out. Others hastily scrawled. Some long. Others short.
He had not left a note.
I guess his plunge into the icy black water less than an hour after the graduation ceremony was all he had to say to the living.
When he struck the surface of the water at 103.6 feet per second his body would have been catastrophically destroyed. I hope that he was knocked unconscious. But I fear that he continued to be aware as he crashed through the cement hard surface and the cutting cold water and plunged toward the bottom of the canal. I worry that he was aware. Alone. Shattered. Drowning. Bleeding. Dying.
Did he regret his choice?
What was he thinking about as he drifted in the water? Was he remembering the joy of blowing his heart and soul into his sax? Was he hoping no one would steal it? Or did he hope that it would be stolen and that whoever stole it would play it and love it like he had?
Or was it just a thing that he carried with him out of habit?
That saxophone. I can’t stop trying to understand.
That’s it for the first post. Hope you enjoyed it. Comments should be enabled so feel free to share your thoughts.
Abe
Wow. That story. Of course, the pictures, but that story. Well done, sir.