Remind You of Anything?

Yesterday, when I arrived home from work, my dad had a seven foot rusted iron beam waiting to be carried into the cellar. My uncle may be moving in a few months, and my mom is going to be reclaiming her old upright piano which has been in her old room since she moved out of that house nearly 40 years ago. To support the section of the living room she plans to put it, my dad's been putting beams in the basement beneath the piano's future home. At one point the beam rolled across my hand and crushed my palm, and I needed to lower it to reposition my grip. As I called out for him to wait, my dad scowled that I, “just don't understand work!” It was more a cry of impatience than anything else, since we were only a foot away from where he wanted to put it. As it turned out, the beam was too tall and I managed to convince him to buy a new one from Home Depot that would allow him to adjust the height, rather than cut into the beams as he was considering.

I've blogged ad nauseum about the differences between my parents and myself, and I don't intend this to be another post defending my laziness. I often read more into what people say than what they put into it. My dad is very impatient, and though it will be several months before my uncle moves and several more before my mom gets the piano since she has to have it fixed and tuned, he had to have that beam up IMMEDIATELY. It's true I don't invest as much time in physical labor as his generation does, but I definitely spend a lot of time at the office. Some weekends, I even consider the bands I play in to be work. I'm not sure when that happened. When I was younger, and first had the opportunity to play in bands outside of school, I was amazed that people actually wanted to give me money for it. According to some of the older guys in the bands, years ago there was work every day of the week, and they could make their primary living as musicians. I've always felt that the best kind of work was fun that people paid you for, which may be one reason I majored in art back in college. The only person who ever tried to talk me out of that decision oddly enough was my driver's ed instructor, a veritable character that encouraged us to call him “Uncle Al”. When I mentioned to “Uncle Al” that I graduated high school with a 99% average in math, he told me I was a fool for not becoming an accountant. Visions of a dark classroom and a droning voice explaining supply, demand, economics and research leapt to the forefront of my thoughts, and drawing superheroes and painting pretty girls seemed so much more appealing.

Ironically, some days graphic design can be as exciting as accounting. I'm fortunate to design catalogs with science fiction and fantasy books, and even collaborate with well-known illustrators on book jackets. While the subject matter appeals to me, I'm still sitting in a gray box staring at a computer all day and while that doesn't drain me physically, it takes its toll mentally. At first, when I graduated college, I was glad to actually be working. The music jobs on weekends, once my sole source of income, became icing, a way to bolster my income. As the years went on, and my workload and hours increased, I began looking forward to weekends where I didn't have anything to do. Once I was young, eager, and bored, and needed constant diversion. At some point I began to appreciate having days with no responsibilities, though such appreciation flies in the face of everything my parents and teachers ever taught me about being an adult. So when faced with weekends like this one, with a gig on both Saturday and Sunday, I'll take a vacation day on Monday to get my “nothing” day in. My dad never needed such breaks, and on his days off from the shop he simply did work around the house. FawnDoo recently commented on my similarities to my father, but we have our differences too. Yet “laziness” may simply be a phase of youth, as both my parents have often expressed regret at not helping THEIR parents out more. Maybe there's hope for me yet, and I just haven't reached their sense of responsibility yet.

The shift from play to work with my music “career” is definitely a psychological one. The more I let myself get bummed out about “giving up” a Saturday or Sunday, the more I dread it. Once I'm actually there, it's never as bad. Once I lose myself in the music, time flies and I do have fun. Today's job in Astoria was a breeze, an hour's walk around a few blocks while old women balanced vases on their heads as part of some tradition from the region of Italy they hailed from. Tomorrow will be four hours of nearly constant playing in Little Italy in Manhattan, and while I'd rather just sleep NOW, experience has taught me that I'll be on my way home from the job before I know it.

Since tonight's job finished so quickly, we even made it to Home Depot on the way home to pick up that beam. Driving back, I heard the new Audioslave Song “Doesn't Remind Me” for the first time, and became mesmerized. Chris Cornell hasn't sounded so mellow and Eddie Vedder-like since he sang with Vedder on Hunger Strike, and other songs from their Temple of the Dog album. Every once in a while a new song will grab me and stay with me for days, even months, as my theme song. Has anyone seen the episode of Family Guy in which Peter gets three wishes from a genie? One of his wishes is to constantly have theme music reflecting his every action. Maybe I've seen too many cartoons and sitcoms, but I've often wished the same thing. Life would just be so much cooler with theme songs. Tense music could build as I race to finish a design by a deadline. Jaunty music could play as I walk outside on my lunch break. Driving would be the one place I wouldn't need theme music, since the radio handles that already. More times than I can count, I've sped up and changed lanes because it was appropriate to the music that was playing at the time. I'm a little bit off sometimes.

“Doesn't Remind Me” is a happy little ballad, and Cornell simply lists things he likes, because they don't remind him of anything else. At a time when I needed a reminder of how playing in a band differs from working in a cubicle, how it breaks the routine, the radio answered my tired mental meandering. At the end of a long day, looking back, I have to say that I like walking through the streets playing music, because it doesn't remind me of anything else I do.