Skip to main content

Give me the beat, boys.

I always get anxious when I think about playing music with someone new. I basically grew up playing songs with Spencer and Kit; doing that now, almost eight years later, is second nature. It's a trust thing, I guess. You know what to expect and it's okay to branch out and try weird things. It doesn't matter if you screw up because everybody is a good friend. They don't care.

With new people, you have to worry about making a good impression. About playing as well as you think they can. About living up to the idea that they have of you. About not screwing up. There's a lot of, "Are they going to dig this style?" and "What if they get bored because I suck?" and general insecurity and self-consciousness that goes along with it.

And it's all a bunch of bullshit.

I'm jamming with Thomas tomorrow afternoon and I am anxious. The last time we played together was in high school with Spencer, and I was playing keyboard. I couldn't even sing and play at the same time. It was fun, but I'm pretty sure the experience didn't live up to his expectations.

It didn't live up to mine. But it was fun just getting together and hanging out.

I crashed my bike today. I say 'my bike' only because the bike in question apparently belongs to nobody. So it's mine. I was riding it around my backyard, jumping off of whatever I could manage and trying to do wheelies and manuals. I have never really been inclined to do tricks on bicycles, so I'm not really sure what drove me to do that. The plan was for me to jump off the terrace in my yard and try to land and wheelie all over the place. Instead, the bike went shooting out from under me and I dropped onto my back and watched clouds drift by over me. The bike rattled and clanged out of my line of sight.

It was excellent.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm a geologist, not an alcoholic.

I thought I had seen people drink before. Hell, I thought that I had drank before. But, clearly, I thought wrong on both of those counts. I cannot, for the life of me, think of a reason to justify all of the drinking that transpired down there last week. There was no rhyme or reason to it, it just was. Field work just makes a man thirsty. Taking this class was easily one of the best things I've ever done. We worked hard every day out in the field. Wake up at 7, leave the beach house by 8, hit the water by 9. My first three field days were in service on the R/V Acadiana , a 58 foot vessel that towed the CHIRP fish , the air gun, and the streamer to measure all the seismic data--looking at the subsurface of the seafloor we drove over. My second ship was the R/V Itasca using the multibeam , sidescan , and grab sampler --getting seafloor surface bathymetry. They were long, exhausting days and we returned to the docks around 6 or 7 every evening. And then, drinking. So much ...
1 comment
Read more

Finger pointing good.

When I was on the boat doing science at Galveston, I saw a lot of dolphins. It was a significant experience for me because I have never actually seen a wild dolphin in real life before. It was sort of a dream come true. And in the middle of the shipping channel, no less. They really are amazing animals. It really kills me to realize I'll probably never see dolphins in Galveston again because of what happened to the Gulf. What is happening to the Gulf. It really is a tragedy. On a much lighter note, I started this Insanity workout program and it was so intense that I threw up before I finished the first workout. That is a good sign, I think. It is certainly an incentive to complete the entire thing. Anything that makes you feel that bad so quickly must be good for you.
3 comments
Read more

The goodest, even.

A couple of days ago, as I was leaving the research campus with my friend to go home, a woman approached me with her bike. "Excuse me," she said. "By any chance, are you headed that way?" She pointed off in the general direction that was the only way to leave campus. "Why yes." I said. "If it's not too much to ask," she started. "Because my bicycle has a flat tire--" "Sure." I said. "We can fit your bike in here, too." And with that, we drove a Belgian woman home. She told us about her family back in Belgium and how we have a better education system here and we're more bike friendly than Europe and how she misses her family and Skypes with them in the evenings. We dropped her off and continued on our original route. Later, as I entered the final stretch of my homeward journey, I saw a large something in the road. As I got closer, I realized it was a large turtle. I quickly pulled off into the should...
3 comments
Read more