April 18, 2004

11:11 p.m.

Dog Dreams

Okie-dokie. I'm back from Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

We did well this weekend. I kept not remembering the names of the towns where we were, but I did manage to know our hosts' names so when I came down to breakfast I didn't say, "Good morning, um...eh... good morning!" Overall we sold very well, and the fees weren't so bad. AND, it's Spring everywhere now, it seems. Virginia is blooming profusely, and all the bulbs are up like miracles. Pennsylvania had that newmown grass smell. And Pompton Plains, NJ was warm and sunny.

It made up for the fact that we played in a couple of very traditional type male-God-oriented churches (and I swear the pastor this morning kept glancing at my pendant and I all but saw the question mark lighting up over his head -- either that or he was looking at my left breast, but I'm not even going there). Fortunately our more spiritually-laced material is a "one size fits all" for religions, and no one much asks specifics about our beliefs. Some might be a little nonplussed if they did.

A case in point is the church we played on Friday. This is a lovely sanctuary, and the minister, Hyram, and his wife, Nan, who hire us are old friends of my bandmate Carol's. They're really nice, and Hyram also teaches high school physics. He cares deeply about his "sweathogs" and feels personally responsible if any of them flunks out or doesn't do his best. He also has a lot of fun science-related books in the guest room where I sleep. When I came into the kitchen at one point in the evening after we'd played, my bandmates were in discussion with him about this book we'd heard recently on CD, "The Da Vinci Code," which you may have read. We loved it -- it's intriguing, suspenseful, well written and researched. However, Hyram was really disturbed by it because even though it's a work of fiction, the premise puts forth hypothetical, historical evidence of certain things that aren't in the traditional bible -- such as the notion that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and that the early Christian sects advocated the Sacred Feminine as a main theme of their belief system. And this is all tied up with Leonardo Da Vinci, who was a grand master of a secret organization devoted to keeping these old mysteries alive, and gave visual hints to them in many of his ostensibly traditionally religious paintings. (I won't tell you any more because it's just too good a book -- go and read it.) Well, Hyram is a real literal interp kind of minister, and he was so upset by the book that he asked Nan to read it and give him another opinion. She's more open and didn't seem so troubled about it, but then Hyram took it to his superior at the church and now there's all this buzz about it in their office. I imagine it's representative of a greater stir in the Christian community. Oh no, it might give people scary ideas! They might start thinking for themselves! It's bad PR!

I personally loved the way it made me think differently about a critical historical period in which I was NOT present (that I know of), and don't know anything about really, except the hearsay of a certain few carefully chosen translated documents. And fiction or no, it made a great deal of sense and made me further curious about other topics. I can't see anything wrong with that.

So when I show up at these churches with my band, and we're singing at a morning service to drum up more business for the evening concert, I'm acutely aware that I'm in the midst of other beliefs, and among people some of whose minds aren't willing to stretch beyond the narrow bounds of their creed (here it is again, right in the program booklet for today). And yet I still respect their choice to embrace these beliefs, and I have no desire to try to shake them up. I love the idea of having a ritual, and the comfort of knowing what that will be. I'm still developing mine. Meanwhile I go to offer my voice and my words, and they get something of value out of that. I still don't know what I'd say if someone points to Artemis around my neck and says, "What's that?" It would be a scary moment for me. But I still wear it, every time.

********

When Carol arranges lodging, I always have her find out whether there are animals in the house, and whether any of them typically sleep on the bed where I'll end up. Mostly I'm allergic to dust mites, but dogs and cats tend to give me a reaction if I'm in really close contact with them or with where they sleep. We'd just had a discussion about that for next weekend, and so when we arrived at our hosts' on Friday and had done the necessary chatting, I went up and checked out my bed -- a pull out couch. They'd put on a nice handmade quilt and I set up my pillows and all, then went to wash my face and so forth. When I returned from ablutions, I noticed the light in my room had been turned off. That's peculiar, I thought. I flipped the switch; nothing. It had been turned off at the lamp. Then I noticed there was something in my bed. Something BIG. Possibly as big as a person. I went carefully into the darkness, found the lamp switch, and turned it on.

Under my blankies was the largest stuffed dog I've ever seen.

It was kind of a Pluto-type hound, maybe three to four feet tall, in a sitting position but lying prone in the bed with his head on my pillow.

I immediately targeted suspects.

When I heard giggling from the room next door, my suspicions were confirmed.

********

I had a literal "dog eat dog" dream, our first night out. The traffic on Thursday was wicked; there was extensive construction on 84, down to one lane, and the highway was backed up several miles. I was in the jam for almost an hour before I got to another exit and was able to get off and find another way to the Tappan Zee bridge. I met my mates in NJ. Friday was no better; we got a late start from Carol's parents' house because she had a meeting with the realtor in the morning, the heating guy had to come and fix the boiler AGAIN, and we had a phone meeting with our publicist. The NJ Turnpike was horrible and the Delaware Bridge was backed up, and we lost about an hour and a half so had to go directly to the venue instead of our lodging. We arrived an hour and a quarter before start time, which isn't enough when we have to set up our own PA. I think we started 15 minutes late, not bad; but we were also underfed so it was a challenge to muster up energy for the duration. They had Subway sandwiches for us, and we'd had sandwiches for lunch, so I certainly was feeling good about getting my RDA of bread and turkey. I'd felt all through the driving day that the bad traffic, the fact that it was getting hot now and I have no a/c in the car, and all the other nitty things that were pissing me off were a personal attack from the universe -- it was everyone else's fault -- the heat was C&C's fault because THEY have air conditioning, and Carol doesn't even have to drive so why should she complain about being so tired? And my exhaust pipe is loose so it's rattling like Archie's jalopy, an undignified way to be idling in traffic. Etc. Deep breaths were taken. It was okay by the time we were set up and ready to play.

Carol hadn't showered in the morning, thinking she could do so at Hyram and Nan's when we arrived in the afternoon. Since that wasn't to be, she showered at the church, where we were told our "headquarters" would be one of the more or less public ladies' rooms in a back hallway (they didn't have a greenroom). Of course there were no real towels, but Nan came up with a plastic shopping bag full of tea towels from the kitchen. So Carol went off to shower after we'd set up.

A few minutes later I went into the bathroom and there was water ALL over the floor. I said, "Oh no, something's leaking!" and Carol poked her soapy head out of the shower and said, "No, I just forgot the towels!" They'd been left across the (large) bathroom, and she'd had to get out of the shower and dash across to fetch them, leaving a river in her wake. Then she had a small epiphany about our publicity photo, which proved a very good idea. I left her to dry off with about a dozen hand towels.

A bit later, Chris went in to change. There were a few people in this back section of the church setting up a raffle, and Chris had just whipped off his shirt when a woman breezed in to use the toilet. She was quite startled to see this half-naked man in the ladies' room, and he haltingly explained that they'd told us to change in there and store our things, and, and... but you know when one goes into the bathroom one has a certain momentum that is hard to stall (HAR, good pun), so she just said, "Oh, that's okay, I'll..." and started going into a stall ANYWAY. Chris stammered something about "just leaving," and then she came to her senses and said, "Oh, I'll just use the other bathroom!" and left.

This is one of the moments when we stop and say, "Man, it doesn't get any better than this! ...and that's the problem!"

The gig was nice though, and there was a man named Tom whom I remembered from two years ago when we last played there. I remembered him when he came up to me with his hand extended, because he has the worst stutter I've ever heard. He can barely get any word out at all, and his face gets all red and he looks like he's in pain. But he loves our music so much, and I seem to recall last time that he had told me he wrote poetry, and that it was a way he could really express himself without dealing with the stutter. I believe he offered at that time to send me some, but he never did, and the offer was not iterated this time.

I don't remember much of the Dog Eat Dog dream except the redneck Scottish breeder of border collies was feeding the runt of the litter to the other dogs. A very unpleasant surprise at the end of an otherwise nice dream.

Saturday we played a very cool gig at the Schwenkfelder library (which Carol still can't pronounce) in PA. A fan from a Morristown gig set this up after seeing us several times; it was the first effort he and his wife had made at putting on a concert, and they did extremely well. The whole thing was to raise money for cancer treatment, and they pulled in a bunch as well as paying us nicely for the night. They also took us out to dinner at a beautiful, posh restaurant in a restored building from the 1700s. It's the kind of place where the entrees are served in the middle of enormous plates with a bit of parsley sprinked around the edge, and everything is just perfect. We avoided the dessert tray and opted for some cheesecake which was among the refreshments donated for the concert.

Speaking of incredible desserts, we had a cake today (the concert included a pot luck) that was way too good, and it turned out the recipe was way too simple: take a Duncan Hines golden cake recipe, and instead of water, use peach nectar, and instead of oil use sour cream. This cake does not need any icing. It's perfectly moist and has a nice dense texture. Please make it, so that I won't.

Anyway, back to Saturday; after the concert we had to drive about 2 hours to get to PA, as we were playing at a morning service today. They knew to expect us late. Our hosts were nice again, and I loved the room I stayed in. It had dormers and partly slanted ceilings, just like my old apt. in Willimantic that I loved above all other apartments and miss terribly. I slept well and even napped today over the traffic noise.

We're always amazed that strangers will take in strangers and trust them to be good guests. They gave us a breakfast spread of fruit, bagels, muffins, and guava jelly (she said it was a nod to her husband, who is Chinese). After the morning service we ate lunch at a diner, found a bank to make our deposits, rested a while at our hosts', and showed up again in time to set up instruments and have pot luck for dinner. After the gig, which ended early, I drove home and arrived just after 10:00 -- very early for a gig night!

********

I got two messages from Will over the weekend. He'd been allowed to go home on his birthday -- might have been the 15th. He says, "I'm healing in a way that seems unnatural, because it's so fast. I can hardly believe how well I'm doing." So the package I'll send him sometime this week will contain wrapped things, and the message, "Happy Rebirth Day."

********

Carol is not the only person who spouts Malapropisms. My sister Rose told me that her friend Cathy once, when talking about someone's hard luck, said, "Well, you know it's a Doggie Dog world out there!" There was a pause, and Rose said, "A what?" "A Doggie Dog world! You know!" She was quite shocked to find out that it was "Dog Eat Dog." "What kind of sense does that make?" she countered, incredulous. "Dogs don't eat dogs!"