6 Mar 01 - 9:37am
Been a while. Life intrudes, as it tends to. So I'm going to do some intruding of my own...
Once again I'm riding the fence about staying at the school. We're on our 3rd general manager since September. This new one seems alright (they all do at first). I'm pretty sure we're in agreement about how my remaining time & energy be budgeted, and what projects should take priority. But if he gets pissed off and leaves/gets fired, I'm back to the original conundrum: how long do I stay, and how much shit do I tolerate from the higher-ups? My other coworker KJ... I don't want to leave him w/out someone to back him up... but eventually the question will not be put off any longer. I'll have to face things and decide.
And now the grapevine tells me that another of my "Plan B's" (places I'd send my demo reel to once I'm outta here) is planning to move to LA. The pond is shrinking, friends.
On the plus side: there are no less than four major effects/animation studios well within an hour's commute... one of them is literally a block away from where I live... so when it comes down to leaving, if I can hang on long enough to assemble my new demo (a goal much closer than before)... things could work out pretty well... for awhile...
Two weeks ago I flew up to Seattle to see my long-time pal and former lead singer The King of Seattle. He's been after me to visit for a while now, so I made the time to make the trip.
The flight in: unventful and nothing to see out the window but the cloud tops.
Seattle was under five inches of snow when I arrived. Shuttled in from SeaTac, and gazed out the window at the passing landscape. I hadn't seen the place for a decade. There are still the trees along I-5 that stand bare in the cold months. They stand so densely that their naked branches resemble a fog of color: browns, greens and an odd purplish hue. I shared the ride w/ a guy from Texas who was visiting his girlfriend. Dedicated guy. For some reason I didn't mention I was born there. It was easier to let him see me as just another Californian.
After the shuttle droppped me off I hung out on my friend's floor for the rest of the day. There was much I'd planned to do and see, but for the time being it was enough to sit w/ him and catch up on things. He played me some demos for his new record. His style is developing a new confidence. He seems to be returning to his Eno and Roxy Music roots. I can't wait to hear how it turns out.
Later on, some friends came over and we sat around some more and talked. I think they felt badly that we didn't get out and hit the town, but again the prevailing energy level in the room seemed to favor a more sedate exchange. All except for one among us: she was like some sweet, laughing, grinning, pterodactyl-noise-making goth-y feral child... and we must have bored her half blind.
The next day we headed for the Capitol Hill district... had lunch... stopped at Cellophane Square Records (I didn't see Scott McCaughey of Young Fresh Fellows there, but I did find 'Arcane Device Nine', after 4 years of searching; I also picked up some local music: Cabrini Green's 'Congratulations', which is pretty tasty in a Guided by Voices kinda way)... we saw a guy on a bike get accosted by some angry guy on foot, but no one got hurt... we grabbed coffee at Zodiac (excellent murals and wall art at Zodiac) and I made a sketch of my friend the king... ran into his engineer outside... he was on flyer patrol w/ another guy he's recording... I fondly remember flyer patrol w/ the band we played in, the king and I.
Caught the bus back to his place. Later we hit the town again w/ a vague plan to get sozzled and present flowers to passing young lovelies. We stopped at an ATM and I discovered my card was missing. I stay calm in moments like that, with the sure knowledge that eventually the fuse will burn down and I'll fly at least partially off the handle. I figured there was nothing I could do short of reporting the card lost, and no help would come out of my losng it there on Broadway, so I just let the rain come down and cool my head.
We wound up at the Bad Juju. It was pretty stark and Stygian: tubercular blue light under 15 foot ceilings, bodies at the bar 5 deep, and Sabbath thudding subsonically. We stayed for approximately 90 seconds. I turned to my friend and said, "sorry dude, I'm just not receptive to this right now."
We stepped back out into night drizzle and walked for a while. I had five dollars in my wallet, and tried not to worry about how I was going to get to the airport in two days. My friend assured me he'd front me shuttle fare, and hailed us a cab home.
Back in his kitchen... we sipped whiskey and spoke of old things.
Friendships are such odd things. Some flash with joyous intent, and the possibilities of new adventures... we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with these people and face down the world... we laugh together in code... and then it stops. Often without understanding how or why, it stops.
And then if we're fortunate, it starts again. It starts again, only different. Only the same. That's how it is. It's the condition of change.
All of these things have happened in my times with this friend, this king.
Next day he went to the studio to record some vocals, and I went walking through the Eastlake district.
Things I saw: in a playground, a picnic table bearing a three-foot column of unmelted snow; nearby a girl drew in her sketchbook, her back to me as I passed, he hair pulled back and the color of cherrywood; bas-reliefs cast into the sidewalks, depicting local prehistoric sea life; odd structures that at first glance appeared to be bus shelters, but were in fact some sort of sculptural kiosks, each bearing an inverted and constellated rowing scull with oars upraised; Lake Union, and the Queen Anne district beyond; houseboats; gardens, the Space Needle in the distance... under the I-5 overpass, staring up at the titanic columns and trusses of the bridge, the traffic sounding like a continuous stream of jet planes taking off; "I wonder if that would stay up in an earthquake?", I mused...
...a week and a half later, it did just that.
That evening we rented two movies: 'The Enemy Below', a pretty forgettable submarine drama w/ Robert Mitchum and Kurt Jurgens... and 'Picnic at Hanging Rock', which I'd been wanting my friend to see for 15 years. He was astounded. So was I: this was only Peter Weir's first or second movie, yet he told his story with the confidence of a master film maker.
Up early the next day, I caught the shuttle back to the airport. I hugged my friend goodbye and told him this: "I'll be back a lot sooner than you may think."
Back in the early 80's, when I lived nearby in Tacoma, I used to think Seattle was like San Francisco (hilly w/ water, lots of coffee and books). Which turned out to be a pretty naive supposition, after I moved to the Bay Area.
San Francisco is lovely in a totally unique way: older, expansive, one moves through its streets as though cresting a series of gigantic waves, each one gilded and ornate, surrounded by water on 3 sides and perched on a transform fault, continental plates grinding away like molars...
Seattle seems to come from a younger age, and its ostentation is a bit less persuasive, its hidden vistas smaller and less remote... it's like a city made from draped cloth, it folds back upon and meets itself... "where far off things could be quite near"...
On the flight home I was blessed with a view taken from the pages of some fairy tale: castles made of water vapor, stacked miles above the land. Our plane dodged them and the rough air they made. We slalomed gracefully through the clouds. I closed my eyes, thought of Seattle, thought of the continental plate diving into the planet beneath the city, making volcanoes nearby. I saw this through a heat-haze. I heard guitar chords.
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