Heather and I do a wonderful thing. We play music! For a LIVING! That’s crazy man – sometimes I have that realization. Sometimes I forget. It’s not an easy job, and now more than ever, though I file “musician and artist” on my taxes my income is that fabulous thing: an income mosaic – and I think sometimes I get bitter and kind of tired of how HARD the work is – but then there will be a moment of realization and I’ll remember how wonderful it is.
Tonight Heather and I played an open mic and I was TIRED. I didn’t want to go our and play, I didn’t want to be “on”… I frankly would’ve Loved to just sit back and watch a movie or something. There’s a little shine off of Louisville this time around because some of our favourite players weren’t in town – and in one case is very, very, very ill (we’ll visit her in the hospital on this trip). Any maybe we should’ve just stayed “home”, where “home” would’ve been for the night – but our friend singer/songwriter Dan Bowlds invited us out to play at another friend’s open mic and we agreed and trudged out into the beautiful, blustery Louisville evening.
And there was great music. And for most of the night I just didn’t care. My performance was lack-lustre – executed but “performed” in the very literal sense of the word. I didn’t play my heart out, I performed and I felt it in my heart that I just didn’t BRING IT to the table tonight. Heather felt it too – no matter how good the other people were on stage tonight (and there were a couple of them that were pretty fabulous), I just wanted to curl up and read someplace quiet.
Fortunately I’d seen Matt Presley’s costume on Facebook before we caught up with everyone at Church on the Rocks at the Monkeywrench – otherwise I might’ve been kind of confused since HE was dressed up as Death / a Nazgul / a generic shade / a tall jawa and the HOST was dressed up as Matthew Presley, i.e. the Bard in Blue! What can I say? When someone dresses up as YOU for Halloween, you know you’re an icon! 
Well, I guess for Halloween there was simply bound to be weirdness. And I mean bound and gagged. To celebrate Halloween not only did we have the host dressed up as the Bard In Blue, but another regular, Chris, was dressed in S&M gear and distributed whippings freely as part of her open mic slot. 
The last poet of the night was an interesting creature with a funny slant on Life – and a delivery and presence and even an appearance unnervingly similar to that of Raising Arizona-era Nicolas Cage. 
Fortunately, someone did come along and snap me out of it – but not even because of the music they played – it was the… well… the performance. They radiated such passion and joy in their playing that it sort of reminded me that what we do is marvelous. What we’ve been gifted with is incredible – and I should never, ever take it for granted.
That’s not saying that I won’t – I’m only human and every human gets tired of their routine – but maybe I’ll need to keep one of their numbers in my phone so I can call them and say “holy crap, flap your arms around and grin and remind me what it’s like” because on nights like tonight I just lose it. I’m thankful that it doesn’t take much to help me find it again!