Some Rock 'n Roll

Awhile ago I compiled a list of all the bands that I have gone to see live. Now, I realize there are people who have seen many more bands than this.. but I also realize there are people who have seen much less.. so it doesn't matter.  These are all bands that tour and have a professional album. I've seen a lot of local bands, but I didn't feel like listing them all. oh yeah, and not all of the opening bands are listed, b/c they were either too terrible or not important enough for me to remember (though I usually forget the name, the experience is never lost, so we can still laugh)  Also, like all of life's experiences, I could probably tell an interesting story about most any concert on this list. So, here we go:

Old 97's

Garbage
U2
Weezer - 2
Tenacious D
Super Furry Animals
Jimmy Eat World
Pete Yorn
AM Radio
Cursive
Wilco

Jay Farrar
Ben Kweller
Pearl Jam
Idlewild
The Sounds - 2
Kill Hannah - 2
Ozma
Nada Surf
Rooney
The White Stripes
Quintron and Miss Pussycat
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Midtown
Reggie and the Full Effect
The Strokes
Eagles of Death Metal
The Get Up Kids
Maritime
Ultimate Fakebook
Mewithoutyou - 2
Anberlin
The Faint - 2
Bright Eyes
Chris Isaak
Natalie Merchant
The Blood Brothers
Blood, Sweat, & Tears
The Appleseed Cast
Michelle Branch (the only thing we could find on my 21st bday....)
Spoon - 2
Ben Folds - 2
The Old Canes - 4
Midday Ramblers - 3
Shiny Toy Guns
Civil Twilight - 2
Placebo
The Billions - 2
Koufax
A Silent Film - 3
Brendan Benson
Dropsonic - 2
The Foo Fighters
Cake
Smashing Pumpkins
The Airborne Toxic Event - 2 (AMAZING)
Minus the Bear

There are also a few that I don't even want to admit that I've seen b/c of circumstances like waiting for the next act and the band was so bad the guy at the door let me in for free. *cough*Simple Plan*cough* oh god, that was terrible.


Moving on, I've started thinking about the bands that are still on my must see list. There are only two bands that really sticks out in my mind: Modest Mouse and Death Cab for Cutie. I've always missed out when they've been in town, and they are probably the last bands I would LOVE to see. (Actually I could've gone to see them in Lawrence with Nikki, but a certain guy had told us he could get us tickets to The Mars Volta, so we held out on spending our money. Yeah.. That didn't work out.) A few others that come to mind: Beck, Jimmy Eat World again (its been awhile,) The Swell Season or Glen Hansard, Silversun Pickups...

The others are more or less older bands that I just feel wouldn't do themselves justice as they would've done back in their prime. So, here is a list of concerts I would've liked to see at the band's peak, if time was no object:

Led Zeppelin (OF COURSE)
The Clash
Queen
The Beatles (obviously)
Nirvana
Beastie Boys! (RIP MCA)
The Pixies
The Rolling Stones (early years, just for good rock 'n roll measure)
Rage Against the Machine (hell yes!)

There are SO many other bands from the past that I would've liked to see, but I couldn't begin to list them all. I know you're sitting there coming up with a list of those I haven't mentioned, but lets just say I would've liked to have taken in every decade. That covers a lot of bases. A lot of stuff from 1965-1975, though. Think of an artist in that time period, and I probably would've liked to have seen them. For instance, Jefferson Airplane. Jimi Hendrix. Bob Dylan. Ok, you get the idea... Similar idea with the punk/post-punk era. That would be kind of fun to experience, right?

Seasons of Mist

Well, congratulations to the US Central Plains for finally jumping into the seasonal routine. I can finally wear a jacket outside, and the fall foliage is becoming quite lovely. Thankfully I was able to take a trip to the North and East this October (the most precious of months,) and was able to take in an Autumn to remember. I'm beginning to miss the magical region that is central Pennsylvania, with is winding roads, gentle mountains, deep streams, and old buildings dotting the countryside.

Glorious Autumn! Besides the colorful scenery, there is always so much to do in the Fall. Did you know there are people that have never been to a pumpkin patch? I was appalled! Who are these people, and where do I find them? I will take them on a tractor-pulled wagon right now! There's apple picking and cider, fall festivals, and bonfires. Anything to get you out in a hoodie in that crisp and chilly weather!

The most exciting part of October obviously comes at the end.. the very end. I belong to that population of adults who may have grown up, but still carry a strong love for the holiday of Halloween. In fact, I think my love for it may have grown as I've aged, since it was mainly about the candy and trick-or-treating when we were kids. I've never been into the grotesque, living-dead, bloody ax-murderer stuff. My parents never allowed us to get into that sort of thing, and I now kind of agree with them. To me, Halloween is a mystical time for spirits and creatures, and letting your imagination thrive. It is easy to feel the energy of its Samhain origins in the October night chill. In Celtic tradition, this was a time when the border between the living and the Otherworld became thin. So for some, the tradition of warding off bad spirits by wearing costumes to mimic or scare, has turned into a commercial horror-fest. However I, like many others, like to take this time as an opportunity to let the imaginative spirits inside come alive, and become what I possibly couldn't be any other time of the year.

 I was very pleased when I threw my first Halloween party back in 2004. Not only did people show up to carve pumpkins beforehand, but everyone came back dressed in full costume...some of which had taken a lot of thought. After that, the annual costume party was something to look forward to every October. Well, until everyone moved away.

And of course, there are the movies. This is the time of the year when I will watch anything with a little mysticism and spook. Anything to get me in the spirit. That said, even though it is now a 17 year old Disney movie, I still have to watch Hocus Pocus each year. Its just a must. I've already gotten it out of the way this year with my brother and sister-in-law in Pennsylvania (they even made up a drinking game - drink whenever you're ashamed to be watching it. ha!) Other good bets:

Spooky Musts
Legend of Sleepy Hollow
The Haunting
The Omen
Dracula

Witchy Goodness
The Craft
The Witches of Eastwick
Practical Magic

Harmless Fun
Young Frankenstein
The Halloween Tree
Its the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
Beetlejuice
Death Becomes Her

You might be wondering about the absence of the most common extreme horror flicks. I'm not really a big fan of blood and gore. I like supernatural suspense and bizarre twists, just not really crazed maniacs with chainsaws. Ooh. But I will say that Shaun of the Dead is a nice little addition to any movie night this time of the year!

Happy Haunting!!

Writer's Block

There are times when I am afraid of the writing process. Afraid of the blank page staring back at me, and the unsatisfying words that I know I'll inevitably scrawl across its surface. I have too many stories built up in my head from years of pushing them back again. When I try to focus on one such plot, another emerges with a greater sense of urgency, until their paths are crossed, and I'm all muddled up. I want to focus. To make my brain stand still for a moment, and really walk through a world I have created. I feel so old, like my time and opportunity are slipping away. I've never had the desire to write a book. Only strings of lovely lines that linger on the tongue and make a print in your brain. Who am I to think that I could amount to anything? When have the goals of a daydreamer ever come true?

IF

I've decided that I love working in a hospital. Its a great place to work, if you've ever wondered, probably one of the best. You get incredibly good benefits, and no matter what your position, you always know that you're helping others. You don't even need to be working directly with the patients. As long as you're working in and for the hospital, you're working for the good of other people. I've never been able to find satisfaction in a job unless I'm somehow helping someone, so this helps me to stay content with my employment (something not easily done.) Its all around me. Everyone is there to help someone. That is the point of our institution!

I'm reminded of that daily, usually by the time I set foot inside the building, if not before. The first time you see another person, you know why you're there. "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." ~Plato. This is the easiest phrase to remember while walking through a hospital. You have no idea why any one person is in that place, but you can almost guarantee that they are having to deal with something they'd rather not.. or at least something out of their daily routine. Now I am usually an impatient person by nature, especially with the public. I'm negative, judgmental, so on, etc. So many people are stupid and get in the way. But in the hospital, I've found it much easier to overlook and forgive minor setbacks. Nobody really wants to be there, and they're probably just as confused as the next person. Something that I probably say at least twice a day, if not more: "oh, it's fine. not a problem!" (I wonder if this demeanor is why random people have no problem addressing me in public.. ie: the old woman in O'Hare who stopped me b/c her cell phone wouldn't work. hmm.)

I also love the constant flow of action in a hospital. There is always something going on. I don't actually want to be directly involved with said action, but its exciting to see it happening around me. Tonight I was walking back from the cafeteria, and two cops came running around the corner from the direction of the ER, headed toward the main building. One had his hand on the gun at his hip. I casually took a step to the side, and kept walking. Sometimes its good to know that my department is locked down 24/7.

So I was thinking. If I ever wanted to move (and yes, I do want to relocate,) this could be a fun sort of plan. Pick a metropolitan area, look at the US News list of Best Hospitals for the highest awarded hospital in the area, and search and apply for a position at said institution. Even at part-time, most hospitals still offer full benefits, so I still do massage, if I so choose. Ah, it seems so easy.
I'd like to redo some of my past decisions, please.

I Always Believed in Futures

Perception is a complicated and bizarre phenomena. Whether it be my vivid imagination or some deep complex thought process gone haywire, sometimes I will come across a situation that will throw off my perception of reality for a brief second or two, and cause my brain to go into panic mode until I can come up with a reasonable explanation. Maybe most people don't live in this half-fantasy world where everything could be something else, and suddenly it can feel like you've stepped into an alternate universe. It isn't something for which I strive, but it does make life interesting.

I'll start with something simple. One day I was in my parents basement talking to my mom from around the corner. She was sitting at the computer with my cat on the back of her shoulders, but as I walked around the corner, all I saw was a cat where my mom's head should be. So for maybe not even 2 seconds my brain froze trying to assess the situation as to how my mom's head suddenly turned into a cat. Was I talking to a person with a cat head this whole time? Where was I, and what on earth was going on? Now I'm not crazy. I know this sort of thing doesn't just happen. As I said, it didn't take longer than 2 seconds, but in that tiny amount of time, my brain tried to process something so unusual that it started to panic.

Another (less safe) example has occurred a couple of times on the way home from work in the middle of the night. There is a bend in the road on I35S just before it appears that you're going to run directly into an oncoming train. Of course you can't see that you're not even on the same level as the train, given that its dark and there are no street lights. You just see this train light barreling towards you, and just as you start to panic, the road bends and you continue on your way. Its terrifying, but thankfully has only happened maybe two times so far.

These are only two examples of situations that arise in daily life that make me stop and think, "WAIT. What just happened, and where am I?" Thankfully I have been able to meet several other people who's brains seem to function this way - mainly in the coffee shops and bookstores where I've been employed. These are the best people. They crave vast amounts of knowledge, always respond with sharp wit, and are game for any sort of bizarre idea. All of life is a movie, and apparently it is sometimes directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

The Grass is Greener

One of the girls I work with is in her early 30's, African American, born and raised in inner Kansas City, had her first child at the age of 14, divorced, etc. You know, apparently the typical scenario around here. Nothing I was very familiar with until I began working here 8 months ago. Now I discuss with my co-workers my life, as I would any other acquaintance, and I am suprised at how often this particular girl exclaims how fascinating my life has been. Fascinating? I don't know if I've ever thought of it that way. Well, I guess I've had my share of interesting adventures and carry a fair amount of spell-binding stories, but some of the things she finds so fascinating are so ordinary to me. Granted, some of these things she was forced to forfeit by having to raise two girls through her own youth - ie: being blackout drunk at retro night dancing with a bunch of gay men - but others have a lot to do with our different backgrounds. For instance, here is a conversation we had the other night. She was going to be taking off an entire week to watch her 2 teenage girls while her mother went out of town. They didn't have much planned except maybe to go to the movies a bunch of times. I thought that was ridiculous.
"You have an entire week off to do nothing, right? With 2 teenage girls?"
"well, yeah.." she began.
"You should go to Colorado! Its only 7 hours away, for godssakes!" I exclaimed.
"What's in Colorado? I mean, why would we go there?"
"um.. to see the mountains...because they're gorgeous.."
She laughed.
"Well, I guess I've never seen the mountains before. That might be nice. I want to see the Grand Canyon sometime too, and that place that shoots water from the ground.. what are those called?" You could tell she had actually dreamed about these places.
"Geysers. That's in Yellowstone."
"Is that near the Grand Canyon? I'm terrible at geography. You've probably been there too, haven't you?"

Well, yes. I have. (and no, its not close to the Grand Canyon, if you're terrible at geography, too.. though relative to the rest of the US, I suppose its in the same general area.) You see, while other kids were going to Disney Land or maybe just heading to the zoo and swimming pool all summer long, my parents took 2 weeks off every summer and hauled us out to every interesting place of natural or historical significance they could think of (Don't get me wrong, we did plenty of the zoo and swimming pool thing, too.. though usually it was free zoos, and the stock tank pool in our back yard.) Luckily, most of this road-tripping consisted of experiencing all the glories the great American wilderness had to offer, but it almost always included some kind of historical sidetrip. Lincoln's home, Fort so-and-so, the Oregon trail, the Amana colonies, etc. Now when you're an 8 year old kid, an old fort out west might be the worst kind of summer trip, but when you're all grown up, you'll be really appreciative of the experience. Everyone else thinks its fascinating, b/c no one else was driven 2 hours out into uni-bomber country to find one of most obscure ghost towns in this nation. And as I pointed out to my co-worker, you don't necessarily need a lot of money to pull off these vacations. My dad was a teacher, and my mom stayed at home to raise 3 little kids. Do you think we had a lot of money? We just pulled 10 hour days on the road, and no we didn't have dual dvd players. My older brother read Tolstoy, my younger brother listened to headphones, and I stared out the window and imagined what it would be like if I could live on a cloud.

I think my parents like to think of most life as a possible adventure. Which I suppose is fine, and maybe overall the best way to look at life. Everything is an experience, whether good or bad. When we lived in St. Louis, we acquired all our clothes as either hand-me-downs or from the local resell-it shop. A lot of our food came from the community pantry, and we actually got some of the pastries that Panera (St. Louis Bread Co) packages up at the end of the day for soup kitchens. When I asked my mom in bewilderment a few years ago how she could've let us live like that, in an apartment that was soon condemned after we moved out, she replied, "well, I guess I was just caught up in the adventure of being poor." Oh. WELL. It was only our childhood, so I'm glad you had such a fun experience. I guess the whole thing wasn't lacking on us, though. Whenever my older brother or I read The Glass Menagerie, we both think of our childhood in St. Louis. It was another life.

It was another life when we moved to Kansas and finished growing up in small town America, and another life when I went off to college. There have been so many other lifes through those years that I don't care to see most people who thought they knew me when I was an akward teenager - only those who have been around through it all.

Life has to be lived to the moment, broken up in separate pieces so you can remember each experience like a story. Each phase in time remembered almost as a different person, though always still a wisening creature. You only have one life, and it is going by with each tick of the clock.

I am feeling anxious again. Stifled, and needing to expand into something more.

We are the Dreamers of Dreams

This past Thursday I drove across Northern Missouri towards Quincy, IL to participate in a close friend's wedding. It was a hot, Midwest summer's day, without a cloud in the sky, and the land passing by me was a blend of yellow and green. The entire expansion of Hwy 36 runs through rural farming country, and as I drove, the barefoot 6-year-old tomboy in me ached to run through the hot stubbly fields of dry grass and undergrowth.

As my paternal grandparents are no longer alive, I have very little reason to make the trip back up to my father's rural "home country" that I considered my home away from home for so long. It had been the one permanent place I'd had my whole life, and it is days like that one that make me homesick for the simpler things in life. As I drove, I envisioned exploring along the creeks with my brothers, riding my bike down the winding country roads, and tagging along as my dad helped out with whatever harvest was in season. Just as I had that last thought, I passed a combine pulling up to a stop sign with a young child standing next to the driver, and I smiled. I passed a small beaten down cemetary out in a lone plot with one of those wire gates around it, and thought about family. Not sadness, but togetherness. Days later I came across this quote and thought it pinpointed exactly what I was feeling:

"I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling." ~Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums

It seems to me that time is so much more evident when you are alone in an expanse of countryside.. and you are so much more insignificant in that moment to time and all greater purposes. Suddenly you are not an important being, but a mere creature on a crust thousands of millions of years old. The land is so old and powerful, it is a being of its own. I craved to sit on one of the hillsides to soak in this spirit again. I thought of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem Renaissance: "God, I can pull the grass apart and lay my fingers on your heart." I wanted to be one with the earth again. To hear the incessant chirp of crickets across the prairie and the wind through the grasses. To let the sun soak deep into my bones. We are not meant to be fixed to one pavement. My restless heart craves the majesty of these wide open spaces.