March 22, 2008
Second day was just as odd as the first. May’s roommate had a problem with me. So I was kicked out of her house in the morning, and I ended up in a hostel for $25. As soon as I got a room though I set out for downtown again. It was about the same distance of a walk, but this time I had my guitar with me. It was really hot out.
None of the clubs were even open, so I went to the farmers market, then asked around for job applications. No one wants to hire a high school dropout who has no previous work experience. But in all my wanderings I met up with a musician who said he played saxophone for B.B. King. He gave me a crash course on being a musician, telling me about the Arch and Salvation Army and pointed out that all I had to do to get into the clubs was bring my guitar. He even showed me where the blues jams were.
What on earth is God wanting me to do? Yesterday he warned me to go home, today he gives me directions. Maybe he is going to show me how bad hell can be. I’m starting to feel the heat, actually. Tonight might be over, or it nearly is anyway. Some girl helped me out at the bus stop. Why are girls so nice all of a sudden?
Full moon tonight. It seems that the music has engulfed my mind during the daytime, but when the sun goes down all I can think about is Nell.
I grew up Christian. I went to a Christian school from Kindergarten to 4th grade, and my uncle started his own Baptist Church around the time I entered 6th grade.
I’d always struggled with the idea of the invisible Man in the sky. Even when I was 5, praying with the other kids before lunchtime, I thought to myself, “These people can’t possibly believe this.” But they actually did. And since they were older I accepted that maybe they knew something I didn’t and went along with what they preached, feeling guilty if I peeked while praying or said a bad word.
As I got older, I realized that all the people I thought were “grown ups” were actually just ordinary people, flaws and all, just looking for answers and direction in their lives. I also noticed all the logical flaws in the mythology and the seemingly arbitrary rules that everyone followed.
One of my heroes George Carlin hit on a lot of the points I had always asked myself growing up. He once quipped, “One of the things they told us was that if a boy or a man went into church, he had to remove his hat in order to honor the presence of God. But they had already told me that God was everywhere. So I used to wonder, ‘Well if God was everywhere, why would you even own a hat?’ Why not show your respect, and don’t even buy a fucking hat!”
To be fair, I saw and liked the good points that they made too. If you want to be a Christian though, you have to accept the whole belief system, which was impossible for me to do because I refused not to be 100% honest with myself. I could try fooling myself into accepting a belief system like this 90%, but there would always be that nagging 10% voice in my head going, “You know this is fucking stupid, right?”
I stopped officially going to Church around the middle of high school. However, I still used God as a fictional, literary figure.
March 25, 2008
First show on Sunday was terrible. Amp was too clean. Pick broke. Worst of all, Alan Haynes saw it.
I went to the bathroom after I played onstage in a small club downtown on 6th street. As I was finishing washing my hands and coming out, a man came in and said if I play more in front of people, I’d get used to it. I found out from some other people in the bar that his name was Alan Haynes, a local blues guitarist who was semi-well-known. It seems I was broken up about it at the time, but I had no real idea about his music or who he was (and still don’t).