The best of times, the worst of times; and how being a Gomez fan is the opposite of television

What a strange and terrible year it was, 2008. Like making a top-films list, I couldn't face the depth of it immediately, either on or before the first day of the new year, when people traditionally enter in their yearly ledgers these laments or celebrations of the time gone by, which also can feel like a clearing of the decks. "Let's sum up all we can about this year, for posterity, and because for the less lucky of these suckers this will be their fifteen seconds of fame, never to be heard from again."

But today I saw the film Milk, which I knew I needed to see, perhaps not least because like Harvey, I have always wanted to extend a message of love, hope, and acceptance to the kids and adults for that matter who despair of ever being around people who don't think they are bent or fruity or outright sick-in-the-head. And Milk was all that and more: a love letter from director Gus Van Sant to the gay-rights movement, a showcase of marvelous acting from not only Sean Penn but also James Franco and a slew of people, and a faceful of spot-on details and set-dressing decisions. (Pies in the face became a San Francisco activists' tradition at board meetings for some time after, I remember from our time living in the Bay Area in the 1980s.)

I felt I was seeing the actors and director bloom before my very eyes. This is Van Sant's newest of his series of meditations on violence (see also Elephant, My Own Private Idaho, and Last Days, among others, for examples of violence in response to societal pressures--both externalized, with gays as targets, or internalized, by suicidal rock stars who can't make their inner world match up to the outer one for example. Or here, where one man, the once-closeted Harvey Milk, takes personal responsibility for the well-being of an entire movement, not just himself or his closest circle.

It was such a gift to be able to appreciate the verve and joyfulness of Harvey Milk--and the gaping void that opened in Harvey's absence. Van Sant not only showed us why we need to have hope for our futures but also what is at stake if we don't fight for the rights of "all the Us-es" as Milk says in the film--the gays, the disabled, the elderly, the blacks, the women, the Jews, all of us. For if one of us isn't truly free, then we all feel those shackles sooner or later.

I know everyone's lining up to say the likes of this right now, but If Sean Penn doesn't get the acting Oscar this year, I will eat this post. But what I'd love to see even more is a directing prize for Gus. That would be super! (Incidentally, the mimeographs and typographical accuracy of the campaign posters were among the pleasures of this movie, esp the "Harvey Milk for Supervisor!" posters with the "Super" underlined--so hip!)

It's gotten quite late but in reviewing photos some of my top moments of the year were spent with family and friends of course, but also writing, taking photos, seeing and trying my amateurish hand at making films, and going to Chicago to see Gomez & friends. One of the magical things about that latter experience was getting to witness first-hand what happens when a bunch of people decide to put themselves in the story of their favorite band for a moment. It was like the polar opposite of watching television. Some people seized hold of the opportunity to see and be seen while others needed to maintain some distance, some anonymity, for the whole thing not to tumble like some proverbial house of cards. And most of us fell somewhere in between those extremes. I was delighted to have the opportunity to see that happening up close, and to be able to join in the fun in my own peculiar ways. I have not a regret.

About any of it. Happy out-with-the-old and happy new year. I wish us unity, compassion, strength, health, hope, and happiness. Who says we can't have it all? Or is love all we need, like the wise men said?

Uploading fun

There are several things I feel I should be doing instead at this moment, but this one is the one that's calling. I feel like I'm starting to get the idea: the notion about standing up for what I believe in no matter what because a) no one will do it for me, and b) no one could do it for me because I'm the only one who has my perspective, my vision.

So I'm so excited that at this very moment the final video clip is downloading from my camera. Mmmm, all those movies I made in Chicago at the Baby Atlas bar, downstairs from Matilda, down the street from the Vic. I heard when some of the fellas from Gomez arrived in the upstairs bar after the show wind-down, at first they didn't know anything was up, but someone steered them down the incredibly steep staircase. "There's a sign, on the door, with your name on it!" "Oh, there is?" Can you imagine coming in and finding us -- 50 or so people who are in various stages from shock to delight to wonderment about your very presence and your talents, most with nametags, just on the other side of that door?

I am very excited about editing my videos! Woo! I may need to grab some new audio to replace some of the audio that may prove just too noisy and muddy for salvaging. I feel just like that editor I recently mentioned, Jen Dean, who said she realized what her role in film production was when she just wanted everyone to go away so she could be alone with the film. That's how I feel. And I think my pics are uploading to flickr, too, although I'm slightly less confident that this is really happening. We shall see.... *Edit* It wasn't happening -- my instincts were right on target. So I started that process over. And what I didn't take into account was how long it would take to get my videos into my creaky old version of iMovie.

Another funny story that I was reminded of, watching these video clips again: Many of us had nametags, most of us with our forum names on them. RuffStuff went outside for a few minutes, and a woman he'd never met before sidled up to him and said, "Hi, there, RuffStuff! I think you and I should go have a drink somewhere!"

Gomez started something for a bunch of us that feels like a continuation of an event that I feel a personal need to keep paying forward, carrying like an Olympic torch onward into new territory.

Rats, caked again!

Random notes from the great Chicago experience:

Note I jotted to myself after looking at a lot of tall buildings: "Here in Chicago, all the buildings have skins."

And another little scene from the post-show party with Gomez:

Me: [talking about heaven knows what and gesturing wildly, only to scoop a gob of icing onto my hand and then onto my ass]

Olly: You've been "caked!"

Me (embarrassed but delighted): Ooh, I didn't know that was a verb!

Later I heard several people had been similarly afflicted that evening by that cake. Too funny.

A fun tidbit to overhear was Ian talking about his kid and how he likes to mess with the tuning pegs, so as a challenge, Ian will pick up the guitar and play it the way his little boy tuned it.

ocean told me that he asked Olly which musicians he admires most. Olly told him he would be most awed to meet Tom Waits.

Catch me up

Well, at last I'm catching up on breath, sleep, family and cat time, food. And able to reflect a little from here.

I loved what people have been saying on the Gomez board about all of us -- regardless of who traveled to Chicago for the rock band's one-off-in-the-U.S. reprise of their first album -- never having to explain this Thing, this Love of Gomez, within this community. That was cool enough to experience last week; even more astounding was reality warp of suddenly being in the midst of a social occasion with the band in question. How many people ever get that chance?

More than one who has was in our midst have had that chance. ocean was a great example. (I loved meeting him and the fabulous Kim, whom I will share a plate with any time. Thanks to them, I had an amazingly fun trip to Chicago. I only hope in retrospect I didn't ask too much of their time!) Anyway, ocean has hung out with the Grateful Dead (and never found them all that gracious, truth to tell), with Robert Plant (his personal rock god), and with many others. He saw the Who with Keith Moon (I was just a couple of years too late); he saw seven of the fourteen shows Little Feat recorded for their live Waiting for Columbus album, can you believe?! (And which I had not been aware was made from so many shows.) Incidentally, ocean's trodden much of the same ground I have locally, too, having lived in my hometown, although he apparently interacted with a separate bunch of people along the way. He remembered some of the bands-about-town I do, like Tommy Bolin and Candy Givens of Zephyr, but not the awesome fusion powerhouse Fly and the Zippers or Dusty Drapes and the Dusters, who my mother was dancing to when she went out after she and my father split up. But enough about me -- what fine and fun people to hang with. I felt I'd known them for years.

And everyone was like that. centrechick, whose first-ever concert by anyone was Gomez, October 2, 2008, at the Vic Theater in Chicago, had been saying something about how one of the band members had more interesting content in his little finger than she did in her whole self, but I completely pooh-poohed that (on film, no less). She's awesome, and what's more, she's starting to Get It that she's not only just fine the way she is but maybe a lot more. I found myself as starstruck meeting jman and mrs. jman as I was meeting the band, especially after someone said to me, "I've heard she would fly to New York to buy a pair of shoes." And later I realized why I called jman "Jason" when I first met him: online I think of him and jasondent (who could not be in Chicago with us) as "the two Jasons," for some inexplicable reason. (Keep reading for more goofy misunderstandings.)

Cutest couple: guest & mr. guest. The way she looks at that man reminded me of how I feel about my sweetie. Dancing with mr. and mrs. rocknroll and Kat and guest for a while was amazing, and then it was fantastic going wild with ocean up front and center, and SweetErina and Barb up front too and squirrel and Drew and Stella and musicsaves (whom I may not have met) and rabidog and Bri and Kat and Fenn and the gracious and lovely mytvc15 and her significant other and I'm sure I'm forgetting lots more all around me. I kept looking around with amazement and gratitude at the crowd, just as I used to do at Dead shows. And it's easy to look back and say it in hindsight, but it was not possible for me not to see myself there. I feel I'm just as proud of making that experience a reality as centrechick said she was, in the cab with me and her friend Mitsuko on the way home. She'd just called her mother to let her know she was fine and on her way back to her hotel. Then she said to us, "Just so you know, at home, I don't even go to the movies by myself. So this is big for me!" Like Shannon, our new front-row kindred spirit, centrechick picked the right time to make things happen. She and lots of us talked with a bunch of the guys in the band. Olly was awesome. He's such a gentleman. I instantly regretted turning on my camera but I honestly didn't know what to do with myself and all the questions I'd had for them ("Where did the song 'Rie's Wagon' come from?" "Are you going to keep making records and touring together?") had long flown from my brain in the vibrating hum of the moment.

It was fun sharing our baby pictures, though. I do so love Ian, and have since before a phone interview in which he told a very simpatica me how he "loves the 'ladies' in West Hollywood," where he had just moved with his new wife. Back then I confessed his songs had me believing he was a gay junkie, and he laughed and said nothing. Later he'd said, "Sure, to some extent I do put on a persona onstage." (Does he remember that interview, or has he done too many -- and was he still drunk on the brandy Alexanders from the night before?) Look, there are faghags, and there are Ian-hags. Guess which I am. I'm sorry but the guy is freakin' cute. And he also has a very cute little one whose name in the din of the bar Mrs. ocean and I both misheard hilariously ("Was that m-u-e-l-l-e-r?" and me at dinner with Brains the next night: "Oh, his name is the Hawaiian word for chicken wire? Interesting!") Tom I love for his mind and wit. But I couldn't really think straight enough to have a good chat with him or Olly, or even approach Ben, with whom I may have the most in common out of all of them. Blackie and I had a pleasant jaw about racial segregation in Detroit and other places.

But I couldn't sustain anything that night: it was a little too loud, and the air was filled with too much pressure or some other ineffable substance that resulted from our all being thrown together in close quarters. I probably affected the mix by turning on the camera. I felt like the folks from the board had been warned I would be filming, and if anyone wasn't up for it, they'd let me know. In that time, that never happened, except for a feeble wave of a hand from one woman who continued talking with Tom when I swung my lens around toward them. All evening she kept saying no pictures (which made me suspicious -- does she have something to hide?) and later I heard she said "I never post there; I hate the board," but I don't think she really minded having Tom's attention while I was filming. I noticed, though, that I finally filmed the whole neon word when I panned around her while she talked with Tom: ASS. I could not help laughing when I realized what I'd done. All night most of my pictures and videos had only included the "SS" -- the word rose from the floor toward the ceiling, in enormous capital letters. But I had picked that moment to finally work it all into the frame.

Another hilarious moment culminated in my apology to mr. mytvc15 for not realizing who he was in the gang. I got dizzy and sat down. He was just the most welcoming and warm person; I thought he was the owner of the bar. He was being all chummy and was clearly a local, and when I got woozy he was one of the couple of people who asked if I was all right. I needed a Coke, and I asked him for one. He was so funny. "A Coca-Cola?" he asked, drawing out the long vowels. "A Pepsi-Cola? A diet cola?" "A cola-cola," I said. "No diet. Just cola." I needed the sugar. I'd just had a weird experience. I started eating appetizers and was enjoying one of the little roll-up baked bready tubes with pears and cheese and bacon inside, but then had a bite of the bruschetta and thought I was going to die. It's like it sapped my strength -- something about too much sharp vinegar. It was weird. I'd succumbed to my dizzy spell right after that.

"What is your name?" I asked him, and he said, "John. To you: John-John." And John-John-to-me as I think of him now was so attentive. I admiringly watched him dance through the room, mingling and smiling and chatting and making sure everyone was having a good time, and still not knowing he was part of our group I leaned over and said to Kim, "I want his job!" "What?" Kim said. It was hard to hear in there. ocean just laughed. "He's clearly in the hospitality industry," I said, full of admiration, like a groupie. "Well, yeah; he's a chef," Kim explained. "He is?" And then it all came out that he was mytvc15's husband and therefore one of the hosts. I felt sooooo silly, and not for the first time that evening. "I still want your job," I told him later, once I'd found out what it really was.

I told guest the next night that I had been so gullible that day. But it wasn't just that day -- it was all weekend. I believed everything I heard. (Me, asking about the three-song soundcheck we'd missed when Kim and I went for a walk before the pre-show free gig at Yak-zies, across from Wrigley Park: "What did they play?" Fenn: "They played 'Dude (Looks Like a Lady)." Me: "Really!")

Unspoken perhaps were all the questions that lurked in our minds about whether any of the band knew us by our board names/personas. I got a nametag but never found the marker, so never had a name all night. It's become a repeating motif: Gomez still don't know who I am, darn it!

But that's the nature of inspiration, right? That's why I went: to see what I could make of this, to see what parts are about Gomez and what parts are about me. To see who I am next to all of this. To go be me with some new people with whom I had something important in common for a few incredible hours of my life that I will never forget.

It was so intense meeting each person and seeing who they are "for real." I don't even believe it's still fair to say that face-to-face is the more real representation of the self. I think some of us are our truest selves online. But it was great fun to get this whole new layer of information about who we really were in person compared to all those online personas.

And I loved that I came right up against my own quirks: my gullibility, my glomming-onness, my social awkwardness (that I refuse to believe is a call for medication), my manias (I couldn't find things; kept wanting to change things that were perfectly fine). My desire to document everything, to set it down before I move on, to make sure there's a relic to savor later.

Something about the entire experience reminds me of getting back to my kidness, too: what I thought was important when I was little and still had some of that boundless optimism about the world and my place in it. I saw some before pictures of someone like that recently and I wonder what happened, and how I can make sure I never lose that sense of possibility. I love, as I've said here before, volunteering at my daughter's school so I can see the kids, so I can be another person who really tries to see them for who they are. They love that so: they sparkle so much when you do it, really peer in there and wave to them right where they are. That bright optimism is something I don't feel every day. But I did feel it when I decided to go to Chicago to unite with all these kindred spirits. And it absolutely was great fun to peer in and wave and hug and shake hands (and even a boob -- oops, sorry, rabidog! But I am quite sure you were the best possible person whose boob I could have squeezed upon meeting in person for the first time!). It was a delight to see who was who and how each person seemed to react to this amazing situation.

Again, it's more anecdotal evidence for that community-size notion that posits a community of 200 or fewer people is ideal and gives its participants a chance to have unique roles, to know each other better, and to reduce hierarchical distortions of relationships. I think we have that here: a community of around that size that was represented by a subset of folks who gathered in Chicago on October 2 to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of a band's first recording. Now that's a club I am truly a part of. It was wonderful to spend a whole weekend without having to explain it.

I am a little skeptical anything like this will ever happen again in my life, but I loved, loved, loved being a part of it and will never forget it, nor regret taking the opportunity to hang out with my favorite band and their friends for a few incredible hours.

Mystery genre blues

I was trying for the umpteenth time to describe Gomez and their music to someone. Every other writer who has ever written about them, myself included, describes them as "genre-bending" (we try to inform, really, but we just can't help ourselves!). They have an abiding love of raw, rootsy blues and folk and rock music: Junior Kimbrough, John Lee Hooker, and more recently people like Tom Waits -- but in their music you can also hear a love of electronica and house and Kraftwerk, and a love of The Grateful Dead. Alongside Gomez' rendition of pure psychedelia that turns up now and again, you can totally hear 1970s and 1980s power pop and prog rock in their tunes. The band also owe a debt to the Beatles, the Stones, and I daresay Crowded House, as well as a respect for all the old bluesmen and folk musicians who came out of the South, some of whom were "discovered" by outsiders and then the mainstream when Alan Lomax started his collection of recordings starting in the 1930s.

You can see that this group of five plus a sixth erstwhile member might be a little hard to pin down. This seems to be, commercially speaking, a tough obstacle to overcome. Fun for fans but worse for weekend shoppers, Gomez' style and approach tend to range a lot from album to album and even within a single album, so you never know what to expect, nor where exactly to file the CD in the shop, nor quite how to sketch a brief summary of what they do in a two-paragraph review.

But I seem compelled to keep trying, like a blind woman groping her way around an elephant, trying to get its measure.

Workin' on a film film, workin' on a film

A low-level preoccupation simmers on a back burner of my mind lately: I keep hoping I haven't freaked anyone out with my talk of making a movie. There was a resounding silence when I asked if anyone wants to participate (and the same thing happened when I reached out in another direction), yet I am trying not to make up stories about those things and just rolling along. I was reassured that people played the making-up-Gomez-lyrics game with me. And I know I would be cautious around someone like me, too: film is more permanent, and some people change when a camera is on.

But I a few Ideas I have up my sleeve might make this seem more fun and less intimidating. First, I do not want to be the filmmaker and film all the time, even though I've hinted at wanting to do that. I'm just me and I am really looking forward to the chance to get to know some of these people better. Second, I would really like to hand the camera around and let other people film. I think that would be a hoot. (o jeez I'd better make sure I'm stocked and batteried, and right quick, eh?) Finally, I think of this film as a project about me. I'm not trying to capture every experience and perception of Gomez possible. I don't have room for that much material. I just want to share some of my own joy. Other than that, I really don't have an agenda about making this film.

Goin' to that windy city

I'm listening to Poi Dog Pondering's In Seed Comes Fruit, which is my current favorite Poi album (it was Pomegranate for a very long time), and I open my drawer to put away a shirt and find that all three shirts are the same color. It's like a slot machine coming up all three the same. Ka-ching! Here's the thing: Poi play regularly at the theater where I just bought a ticket for Gomez's upcoming show, where they will recreate their first album, so that's creating this extra magnetic pull for me. Then I remember that Chaka, one of the Poi crew, commented on my blog last time I posted something about Poi. I went to look for a way to write her a note and turned up someone with a name spelled almost the same as hers who makes documentary films, which is what I'm hoping to do at this event. It's like everywhere I turn all signs are pointing one way. Here: This Way. So this is my call out to the universe and Chaka -- maybe she or someone knows someone whose apartment needs sitting around October 1-4.... Faith is the substance of what we hope for, the elegance of things we just cannot see. It's true!

Free to run

I just thought of trying to write a Gomez song, everyone on the message board who wants to play coming up with verses. We could each write a verse and then pass it to the next person. Fun.

I have to sleep on this -- I can't just come up with one off the cuff.

Seeing something different

Let's try this again. I am blogging from the bus, on my way to the Denver Art Museum. I tried a few minutes ago but running the iPod seemed to make it ultra-slow. Nothing really post-worthy yet but I'll let you know if I see anything great.

***

There was one painting that stayed stuck in my mind after I had left the museum. It is in the Western art section near the bridge between the Gio Ponti tower and the soaring new Daniel Liebeskind building. The painting was made by a Nebraska artist named Keith Jacobshagen, in 2005-06, that shows a sliver of flat farmland from an oddly distant vantage point occupying a thin rectangle along the lower edge of the large canvas, the remainder filled with a vast, soaring sky with wispy clouds and dissipated jet contrails. It is called, "By June, The Light Begins to Breathe."

As always, I love seeing the impressionist pictures and landscapes. They are a kind of medicine, that reminder of the possibility of representing something very specific about the way you see the world.

The information nugget I gathered today was during the 2 p.m. tour, when a docent said that Monet only painted with about half a dozen colors, and never black: "There is no black in nature," he was said to insist. Monet also didn't blend his few hues (which included just a few colors: cadmium yellow, white, and madder rose, cobalt and another blue) on his palette but mixed them on the canvas with his brushstrokes.

It's as if I need continual reassurance that it's both okay to see differently but also to represent individual versions of reality. It feels, in the same way listening to Gomez does, like permission, a key to a door.

I dare me

I know, I know: the world needs another reporter on her inner life like it needs another hole in the head.

But still: I keep daring myself to do wacky things, like develop an online presence, fly to England and interview Gomez, write books, and someday I'll write a movie and get up on a stage with some musicians, too. And what, exactly, are these ultimatums (ultimati? ultimata?) to myself? Do this or you'll be forever wimpy? If I think of that as the worst that could happen, it's always more compelling to take the dare and do the new thing. Always.

And now I can see that even though I haven't converted my Gomez experience into a Rolling Stone piece (yet), that experience served a panoply of purposes for me. I suppose one could say all this is a rationalization of an impulsive thing I up and did. Yet I found it sufficiently life-changing to learn that a) I could set up an interview with people just because I wanted to and b) the people I picked to sit down with had thoughtful things to say about working really hard at their collective career, information I found useful. Later, that experience nudged me beyond my pure fandom and toward action, if not exactly the action I was expecting when I wrote their then-manager an email saying I'd be in the area anyway (that second trip to London with my mother was one of the best trips ever).

If you dare me, I will try again to publish that piece on being a Gomez fan (because it really wasn't just about them; it was about me, too), but right now I have to get back to work on the book. And think up a new dare for myself.

Incidentally, all of this daring feels like good practice for something, even if I'm not sure what it is: I think of the Beatles and Gomez and Diablo (can't help it -- I'm a little preoccupied) and all the kids who have been willing to get up in front of the other ones and just scream it out, the ones who have dared to do what the others aren't willing to do themselves. Isn't that what writing stories and music and performing are all about?

Soundtrack: Spoon: My Little Japanese Cigarette Case

Conversations with Gomez

Ooh, it's coming together! There's a documentary about the Gomez message board a brewin', to which I am very much looking forward to contributin'. (And not just because of the production credits for one and all! Woohoo!) The question I started turning over before I started writing was, just what was it about Gomez that got me, anyway?

I was keen on the song I first heard, their first FM radio "hit" that I was aware of, "Revolutionary Kind." My Dad and I both noticed it while we were having one of our idyllic summer drives, this time around the nooks and crannies of Chatham, on Cape Cod, listening to WMVY, the Martha's Vineyard station (where you'll hear more Carly Simon and James Taylor than you hear on most other FM adult alternative stations).

Then when I heard a guest DJ set by my previous Favorite Musician, Neil Finn (of Split Enz, Crowded House, and an illustrious solo career), during which he spun a tune by Gomez on Nick Harcourt's show, Morning Becomes Eclectic in Santa Monica, it was all over.

I saw they were coming to town, bought us some tickets, and brought home the Liquid Skin CD.

"Who are these guys?" my sweetie asked, incredulous.

"Just some English guys," I said. "I don't know much about them."

But we went to the show, and bought the next album, In Our Gun, quickly followed by the first one, Bring it On, and Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline and the Machismo EP, and then I was really gone, heels over head. For about the next six or so years.

Coincidentally, during this phase, I happened to become a mother. Turns out being a parent is quite the identity-challenging experience in many ways. Looking back over all the objects of my deepest musical affections, I believe the imaginary creative alliances (dalliances?) I have enjoyed with my Important Bands (The Rolling Stones long ago, The Who in my teen years, Crowded House and Michael Penn in the '90s and Gomez in the oughts) have all been incredibly fruitful, if one-sided, affairs that have gotten me through many an emotional swamp and sandpit.

I don't use the language of love lightly; I do fall in love when I fall in love wiht music. I go gaga. I drove my Ma around the foothills near my house on a recent visit and made her listen to the voice and tone of Elbow's singer, Guy Garvey, whose voice just grabs me there. On the days when Gomez would come to town, I couldn't think or talk about much else on the days they were around. My daughter came to recognize their tour bus.

But after my one big venture (literally a peak experience for me: going to Brighton to interview them at the end of 2003 during a trip to London with my Ma), I never really let the band know who I was, except by posting on the message board occasionally (formerly Step Inside and now an official board tied to the band's official website instead of one maintained solely by fans). All my feeble attempts to join post-show meetups fell through every time.

Yet I persisted in thinking they knew me when I hopped around in sync with Tom at their frenzied noisefests at the Fox. I thought they might recognize me dancing to them and to Ozomatli when they taped an etown show at the Boulder Theater.

But this past Halloween, I had a deflating little experience with one of the members of the band and saw what the true order of the universe really was.

I was sad then, and I feel the same sadness writing this now. It still feels like a love lost, a fantasy that reality could not support a moment longer.

Yet true to the same optimistic, pioneer spirit that sent my parents to San Francisco in 1966 (we often heard "Go West, young man!" exclaimed with a twinkle and a tongue in cheek back then), I decided to Make Something of It. For this all unfolded on the very eve of the month-long Nanowrimo competition, during which I planned to start writing a 50,000-word novel. "If I don't make some of my own noise, no one will ever know who I am," I told myself, and slunk home after Gomez' set to nurse my bruised ego for the night.

The next morning, I wrote out the scene that had put me in my place the night before at the auditorium in Denver, and I felt much better. I proceeded to write 50,000 words during that month, and have since started the second draft. Gomez may not figure as strongly in this version of the story, but they helped me start it off and that's another thing for which I am grateful.

But I'll always be most in their debt, I feel, for inspiring me by just going out and doing the thing they wanted to hear being done, regardless of not having all their ducks in a row. They have said they were fairly ignorant about guitar and music in general when they got started, but they went after something they liked nonetheless and showed that the results can be pretty cool, if a bit uneven in hindsight (sorry, fellow fans, but the ending of "Tijuana Lady" still makes me laugh).

On KFOG, a San Francisco radio station, the news guy, "Scoop" Nisker, always says, "Remember, if you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own," and I feel I have received the same creative carte blanche from Gomez. There's an artistic conversation I'm eager to become a part of, and now I know it's my turn to put myself out there. They showed me that you can just go ahead and do that, and doing so can start a thousand conversations (many of these on the message boards, a topic for another post; specifically, I think it's interesting how people on the board have a sort of collective agreement to stand in for the band for one another. That's my theory and I made it up myself).

Gomez started a conversation with me and it's not over yet. They have helped me remember that no matter how my roles may evolve throughout my life, being and expressing myself is worthwhile. Every day, they inspire me to put my ideas out there, to make something I want to see in the world, and to start my own conversations as best I can. For that (and for spending nearly three hours with me in 2003 so I could write a teensy little story for a local paper -- Rolling Stone didn't bite on my query), I will forever thank them.

Wearing other people's shoes

My granddad is a big believer in the Pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps School of Life Management. Besides the obvious fact that pulling on your bootstraps tends to get you nowhere fast (try it next time you have boots and straps at the same time), I have always questioned whether the people who advocate this argument the most strongly are able to understand the obstacles that others face, having the capacity to understand that the playing field truly looks different to everyone.

"Et tu, Brutus?"

How many twenty-year-olds today could say where that came from, not to mention say what the question meant when it was uttered? Do younger learners have a lack of emphasis on what has come before, on learning myths, classics, Bible stories, Arabian nights tales, upanishads? (And does this rant mark me as a fogey? Yes. I know.) I wonder whether we, by not learning these stories and myths, lose some of our ability to empathize and have compassion for others. If all we get is TV sitcoms and movie thrillers with lots of explosions, how can we really believe in each other?

But when we learn of the travails of Odysseus (and the way they were kept alive by Homer), there's something to hope for in that effort having been made to communicate those travails alone. And the writer had the hope to write the story down and include lessons about our time and people and place in the scheme of things, and in seeing the poetic renditions of his journeys you feel for the man who has been separated from his wife and life and wonders whether she will remember him when he comes home. By the same token you must stop and wonder what it is like for Helen every day to fend for herself in the new post-Trojan War climate with no husband to stick up for her.

The instigator of this chain of thoughts was a big story in yesterday morning's paper about more than a thousand arrests in a U.S. Immigration Service raid on a large meatpacking business in Greeley. Today's paper had a follow-up story about how all of the service providers for the people affected are seeing a spike in requests for help, and the story featured the police department's pledge to have at all times a dedicated Hispanic advocate in place. Anxiety in the community is running high.

And there are an awful lot of people whose great-grandparents and even grandparents immigrated here but they can't see how this isn't different. They say, "If they're illegal, round 'em up and send 'em home."

I tend to stand on Mr. Laudisio's side when he says it is embarrassing for us to pretend we don't all depend on the services these people provide. I think he's right: if you rounded up everyone with faked papers and sent them home, who would mow your yards and change your oil and clean your Sears store and wash your restaurant dishes? Who would launder and press the clothes at your dry cleaner? And this is an embarrassment. I can't tell you the number of people I have met from other countries who were not able to use their skills here, like the fellow who had a motel just off the beach in Fort Lauderdale, who was a professor in Argentina. But to get people here to see him as an intellectual was impossible.

I cannot help remembering what it was like to arrive in Germany completely unable to recognize street signs and speak at all. Having no one get my jokes for six months. It was difficult -- and that was in a country where everyone speaks English, too, because English really has become the lingua franca. (Does anyone growing up now know what lingua franca means? Does anybody really care?)

But you might not know when you got to the U.S. whether to call it "the seven-eleven" as people here describe the chain of convenience stores, or whether you'd say "the seven-to-eleven." (Incidentally, since I seem to be in history mode, because most of the stores remain open around the clock the source of the name is no longer clear, but it was revolutionary, when convenience stores came along, for one to be open from seven a.m. until eleven p.m. (giving its proprietor barely enough time to sleep -- think about that life).

Somehow we must always preserve our ability to envision life in someone else's shoes, without coveting their life or the trappings thereof. (Sure, I envy the guys in Gomez for always getting to hang out and play music, but they've put in the thousands of hours to earn that for themselves. And that's just a message to me to do what I need to do in my life, right?)

I don't envy many people, having what feels like a very good life, but I always need to remember that not everyone makes their decisions from this comfy a perch in the world, and I could stand to put myself out there on others' behalf a little more than I do to level the playing field.

Seems like a lot of little people aren't getting what they need. I want to help in the best way I know how, and maybe that's writing something that can reach a little farther than I can one-on-one. Because I do have empathy for the cleaners and the immigrants and the people who aren't getting enough of the picture. The girls of the world.

And I must address this in a way I care about, and remember that is worthwhile, and I must make sure it is worthwhile, not let it slide into entertainment without any other reason for existence. That's what literary fiction is to me: fiction with meaning.