My SXSW 2012 Experience (Part One)

This year’s South by Southwest festival was my busiest as a musician: I played nine shows in as many days.  The first three were all on Saturday, March 10^th: Zorch’s keyboardist asked every band I’m in to perform on the second day of “Escapes,” a series of unofficial shows at Club 1808 that he helped curate.  I jokingly called that day “Sean By Sean P,” due to how often I appeared on stage.

At 4 p.m. I played bass with the Bell Riots, to a sparse but appreciative crowd.  At that point, it was the band’s only scheduled performance that week, due to drummer/singer Westy’s general aversion to festivals.  However, we made such a good impression that singer/guitarist Anna regretted not booking more shows for that week anyway.  That’s what I get for playing in a band with two introverts!

Two hours later, I made my live debut as the Zest of Yore’s bassist.  It was fun, but weird.  Singer/guitarist Stephen decided at the last minute to invert the positioning of our amplifiers so that I stood in front of his and vice versa.  He thought it would enable us to hear everything better, but the room’s cavernous acoustics proved him wrong.  A drunkard heckled us during the set: he praised our “class and style,” then requested a Tool cover.

The highlight of the evening, and not just for selfish reasons, was the Cocker Spaniels’ full-band live debut.  We drew a solid crowd: the front row was full of friends whom I hadn’t seen at any of my solo shows in years.  Everyone had high expectations for the set, and I can safely say that we met them.  My drummer Alan got so excited that he screwed up the bridge of “The Only Black Guy at the Indie-Rock Show,” but no one outside of the band seemed to notice.  I was surprised by how calm and collected I was through it all.  My stomach felt queasy at first, but the feeling went away by the second song.  People moshed during “Cousin Ben,” and cried during set closer “You Are My Favorite.”  I cried with them: the set was the best half-hour I’d had all year up to that point!

Full-band C.Spaniels played two other shows that week.  On Wednesday, March 14^th we performed at Bernadette’s Bar, as part of my friend Danna’s series of unofficial shows, dubbed “Indie Radio Rocks the World.”  A handful of my friends from Houston drove up to see us, which made me happy.  Because of various scheduling snafus, we played hours later than advertised, to an audience much smaller than the one at Club 1808.  The room was dark, and the PA was more suited for a DJ than for a rock band: because of such, I could barely hear my voice or see my guitar.  My playing was sloppy, but my rhythm section was tight enough to compensate for it, and the audience loved us anyway.

On Saturday, March 17^th we performed at the Green House, as part of my friend Justin’s “Local Yokel” unofficial show, which focused exclusively on Austin bands.  From a technical standpoint, this may have been the best performance, but I felt really rushed.  I had to work that morning, and our set was in the early afternoon, so I went straight from my office to the venue.  I didn’t have any time to decompress from work and prepare myself mentally for the performance.  We were asked to play a shorter set than advertised; we only knew seven songs anyway, but it bummed me out that we couldn’t play them all.  Still, the audience liked us, and I sold many CDs after the set.  I think everyone who saw full-band C.Spaniels that week was so excited to see me play with other musicians that they didn’t really notice or care about the mistakes.  That’s my burden to bear, not theirs!

Making the Best of a Bad (Black History) Month

I haven’t let this much time elapse between entries since last year but, by the time this one ends, you’ll understand why; the last three weeks have been rough on me physically, emotionally, and financially.  The company I work for came frighteningly close to bankruptcy, due its owners’ failure to heed my warnings about certain major customers who’d become increasingly delinquent over the last six months.  My van broke down thrice; the money I ended up spending on repairs would’ve been enough to either pay two months’ rent or finish paying off my new digital multi-track recorder.  I contracted a chest cold so severe that singing became painful for me; even after the pain subsided, I spent another week coughing up phlegm.  Last but not least, there was an unexpected death in my family, the details of which I’m keeping to myself, out of respect for the bereaved.

Me @ the Granada House (2/11/12) - Note the "Whitney" LP cover behind me!

Even through all of this, I kept regularly rehearsing and performing with all three of my bands, sometimes against my better judgment.  On February 11^th, the night of Whitney Houston’s death, I performed a solo set of Cocker Spaniels songs at a house party.  My cold was at its worst that weekend; only a steady supply of tea and whiskey kept my voice from being reduced to a dull croak.  I had to restart every other song so that I could spit phlegm into a nearby cup.  I sounded decent despite my sickness, and the crowd loved me, but in retrospect, I should’ve canceled my performance.  Once I stopped singing, my throat was so sore that I couldn’t bear to stick around for the other bands.  I went home and cried myself to sleep, for obvious reasons.

Me @ Cherrywood Coffeehouse (2/18/12)

By the 18^th, I felt well enough to play two gigs that night.  First, I performed a solo set of C.Spaniels songs at Cherrywood Coffeehouse, opening for Dudes Die, a local trio that organized the show to celebrate the release of its new album Coloratura (which I highly recommend, especially to fans of the Dismemberment Plan and Akron/Family).  My voice was at near-full strength that evening, so I was much more satisfied with that performance than I was with the previous week’s performance.  A few of my non-musician friends came to see me, which always makes me feel good.  The members of Dudes Die told me that I sounded like “GBV meets Prince,” in those exact words, without me having to explain my influences; to me, that means I did something right.

The Bell Riots @ the Carousel Lounge (2/18/12)

After Dudes Die’s set, I then drove to the Carousel Lounge to play bass for the Bell Riots.  It was our first public performance since the release of our latest EP, The Tentacles Sessions, which we recorded live at a friend’s studio in about two hours, shortly after the FIRST time my van broke down this month.  Despite its hasty (and, for me, stressful) gestation, the EP’s existence has galvanized us, and I think it showed during our performance.  Anna’s confidence as a front person is steadily increasing; after a while, I probably won’t even have to tell her to turn up her guitar!  We spontaneously inserted a noise meltdown into one of our songs, during which I used a beer can as a slide for my bass.  I didn’t realize that the can wasn’t empty until it was too late; I’m just glad that none of us slipped on any spilled beer afterwards!

RIP Don Cornelius; My Progress Continues

Shortly after waking up this morning, I found out that Don Cornelius, creator and host of the legendary television show “Soul Train,” had killed himself.  Although it didn’t have as profound an impact on my life as it did on ?uestlove’s, “Soul Train” was one of the most indelibly positive portrayals of Blackness that I’d seen during my childhood.  Don stopped hosting the show before I started recording music, but if a show like his existed now, I’d hope to be the kind of artist that would perform on it.  Over the last few years, I’ve been fine-tuning a song called “All Our Heroes Are Dying”; despite its title, it’s more encouragement than elegy, a clarion call for us to continue the good works of the influential deceased.  It’s time for me to take my own advice, and finish writing the song once and for all.

Speaking of songwriting, I’ve been averaging one-and-a-half songs every week since the beginning of the year.  The last song I finished is called “Title Track”; the reasoning behind that title is meta enough to require its own paragraph, so I’ll keep it to myself for now.  The song is about people who cultivate false ambiguity within otherwise exclusive relationships to circumvent addressing their commitment phobia.  The song is heavily based on personal experience, but I know so many other people who’ve shared this experience that I was able to write it without undue specificity.  The song is neutral in both gender and sexuality; when I showed the lyrics to a female friend, she told me that I’d just explained her entire love life.  It conveys its point in 24 lines, which is concise by my standards.

Me playing bass @ the ND (1/11/12), taken by my friend Nari

Since my last entry, I’ve rehearsed twice with the Bell Riots.  We’ve added another song to our set list, and we’ll soon begin writing a set of new songs collaboratively, based on an interesting historical event that drummer/singer Westy recently told us about.  Up to this point, songwriting has been even more of a solitary experience for me than recording or performing, so this will be a pleasant challenge.  We have two shows scheduled for this month, the first of which will take place next Wednesday at the Trailer Space record store.  I’m simultaneously excited and scared about it: the store is dry and dusty, which can wreak havoc on my vocal cords, and to call the staff irreverent would be an understatement.  However, if we can get through the show unscathed, we’ll be stronger as a band.

Conversely, my activity with the Zest of Yore has slightly decreased.  We skipped rehearsal this past Sunday so that singer/guitarist Stephen could spend his birthday in his hometown with his family.  Of course, this means that we’ll probably have a longer rehearsal tomorrow, which is fine with me.  We’ve already received offers to play a few unofficial shows during the week of South by Southwest as the Cocker Spaniels, so I plan to teach them as many of my songs as I can this month.  I already know 11 ZOY songs at this point, so hopefully my band mates won’t mind focusing a bit more on my stuff for a while.

In the meantime, I have two solo performances booked for this month, the first of which will take place on Saturday, February 11^th at the Granada House.  I’m looking forward to this show for many reasons: it’s a house show, which I greatly prefer to shows at “proper venues”; I’m a big fan of every other band on the bill; and I’ll have a guest vocalist with me on one song, which I’ll write more about in my next entry…

Busy, but Neither Unfocused Nor Overwhelmed

At this point, the Cocker Spaniels and the Zest of Yore have fused into the same band, and all three members are better off because of it.  Playing my songs has made ZOY leader Stephen Pierce a better bassist, and playing his has done the same for me; Alan Lauer’s already great drumming has improved through practicing a more diverse array of songs.  Alan invited one of his friends to watch our most recent rehearsal; when his friend’s head started nodding to the rhythm of “The Overeducated Underclass,” I knew that we were on to something.  Our synergy has given both my and Stephen’s songs a new lease on life.  As of this entry, I know nine ZOY songs, and Stephen and Alan know three of mine; I should be ready to play a full ZOY set by the end of next month, and they should be ready to play a full C.Spaniels set by the end of March.  In the meantime, I have two local solo performances booked for February, and I’m trying to play solo shows in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio as soon as I can.

Last week, I wrote a new song called “Exasperated Friend.”  It’s about a newly single man who regrets prioritizing his failed relationship over his friendships; it’s semi-autobiographical, of course, but it isn’t based on my current relationship (which is still going well, despite our increasingly frustrating geographical distance from each other).  I want to teach Stephen and Alan a few of my new songs, in order to whet people’s appetite for my next record, but I don’t feel comfortable doing so until I’ve at least recorded demos for them.

Fortunately, I’m also making strides in that area.  I finally dusted off the Yamaha MT8X that I bought last summer, and started rummaging through the recordings I made before 2004, in order to see which ones still stand the test of time.  This evening, I even recorded a basic guitar-and-vocal demo of “Nobody Knows While You’re Famous,” just to commit something new to posterity.  When I was done, I wanted to transfer the demo to my computer so that I could show it off to the Internet, until I realized that I didn’t have the necessary adapter to do so.  I’m glad that I live within walking distance of a Radio Shack; their employees will probably know me by name before summer.  I also recently put a down payment on a Tascam 2488 NEO; once I’ve fully paid it off, I’ll use it to record my next album.  I wish to bring it home by the end of February, so I’ll have to work hard to scrape up the money.

With all of the time I’ve been devoting to my music and ZOY’s, the Bell Riots have taken a back seat for the time being.  This is neither my fault nor my intention; even before I joined ZOY, it was difficult for me and my housemates to coordinate rehearsals due to our divergent work schedules.  However, we’ve rehearsed once since our last show, and we’ll do so again this weekend.  I hope that we can play at least one show next month, as well as a handful during the week of South by Southwest.

My homemade cookie sales, which I use primarily to fund my musical activities, have increased after a surprisingly slow holiday season.  I received an order from England last week; the customer received his cookies today, with no damage and no complaints.  I also baked a custom batch of oatmeal chocolate chip pecan cookies for a customer in New York City.  Pretty soon, I’ll add a new flavor or two to my menu, in accordance with demand!

Gaining momentum!

This past Wednesday, I played my second local show of the year.  It was hastily organized: the show was supposed to take place at a different venue last month, until the venue abruptly decided to close temporarily for renovations.  The show was also poorly promoted: I couldn’t even afford to print up any posters for it until the preceding Sunday.  Because of these setbacks, the show didn’t draw more than 15 people who weren’t in any of the bands.  However, the venue’s sound system was superb, which enabled each act to perform above its usual standard.

I did double duty again, playing bass for the Bell Riots and performing a solo set of Cocker Spaniels songs.  I finally mastered “Nobody Knows Why You’re Famous,” a new song of mine that I’d been struggling to play correctly for the last two months.  It was written shortly after the dissolution of Kim Kardashian’s marriage to Kris Humphries, but it doesn’t mention her in any way; it’s more about my distaste for meta-celebrity culture in general.  I also attempted a cover of Prince’s “I Would Die 4 U”; I bungled the midsection but managed not to embarrass myself overall.  I plan to practice that song more often so that I can make it a highlight of my sets.

On Thursday and Sunday, I had two more practices with the Zest of Yore, both of which were productive and fun.  I now know seven of the band’s songs, and I hope to be ready to play a full set with them by the spring.  The other members have also volunteered to be my rhythm section for the Cocker Spaniels’ first-ever full-band performances.  It takes longer for them to learn my songs that it does for me to learn theirs, so they only know one of my songs so far.  I’m okay with it, though, because I have limitless patience for people and musicians of their caliber.

This past weekend, I wrote another new song called “Dandruff Cereal.”  To the relief of my girlfriend, the title is by far the grossest part of the song.  The song is about flaky people; I was inspired to write it after two friends of mine confided in me about being stood up for, respectively, a birthday party and a first date.  I greatly sympathized with them: flakiness is so commonplace among musicians that many regard it as an inherent characteristic, and thus neither call out it in others nor correct it in themselves.  This is one of the main reasons why the Cocker Spaniels have been a solo project for so long.

Me w/ Zorch's choir, taken on someone's iPhone

Last but not least, I spent Sunday evening in a proper studio, recording background vocals for a song that will appear on local psychedelic cyberpunk duo Zorch’s first album.  Collaborating with Zorch on stage was one of my personal highlights from last year – our cover of Ginuwine’s “Pony” was unbelievable – so I happily accepted their invitation to the studio.  Out of the makeshift choir that the duo had assembled, I was the only person who couldn’t sight-read sheet music.  I felt slightly ashamed of this at first, but I figured the parts out quickly enough to avoid being a bottleneck.  Before year’s end, I’d like to teach myself how to read and write sheet music, in order to facilitate similar situations.  All tolled, the second week of this year was just as productive for me as the first, and I hope to sustain this creative momentum for as long as possible!

The beginning of a busy new year.

My girlfriend and I began this year together in Houston, with a kiss, while watching her aunt get drunk and crunk with her equally middle-aged friends in the comfort of her own home.  For me, it was a welcome compromise between last New Year’s Day, which I spent bored and alone in my Austin bedroom, and the one before that, which I spent stranded in downtown Houston with a Courtney Love lookalike whom I met at an extravagant party.  After eating her aunt’s delicious homemade jambalaya and lighting a pitifully scant amount of fireworks, my girlfriend and I had had our fill of excitement and sleep deprivation.  She drove me back to my hotel room before the clubs had last call, which spared us from suffering the recklessness of the inevitable drunk drivers.

That hotel room was where I found out about the immeasurably tragic death of Esme Barrera, an acquaintance of mine in Austin who was killed in her apartment by a serial prowler after walking home alone from a New Year’s Eve party.  Although we were never close, I recognized Esme’s face from seeing her at hundreds of local shows, and she never failed to greet me with a smile.  If her behavior around me was any indication, every good thing that has been said and written about her in the last week is true.  I’ve already made a donation to help cover her family’s funeral and burial expenses, and I plan to attend at least one of the local benefit concerts that are being held this week for the same purpose.

In the meantime, my esteem for the Austin Police Department, which was never high to begin with, has plummeted to an all-time low due to its failure to take actions that could’ve prevented further attacks in the area.  According to the composite sketch that the APD released last Monday, Esme’s killer is a Black man with a shaved head and distinct facial features.  Considering how frequently the APD kills young Blacks for flimsy reasons, I’d think that it would be exponentially vigilant about finding this man.  Unfortunately, he’s still roaming central Austin harassing women, while the department maintains its focus on downtown drunkards.

As sad and angry as this situation makes me, I must channel these emotions into a more thorough commitment to the work of my own life; Esme lived for music, so I shall continue to follow suit.  Last month, I joined my housemates’ band the Bell Riots as their bassist, and we played our first show together this past Saturday.  I played well, and my presence freed singer/guitarist Anna up to let go of her instrument more often and engage the audience.  That night, I also performed a solo set of Cocker Spaniels material; despite slightly flubbing the chords on one of my newer songs, I was satisfied with my performance.

As if being in two bands wasn’t enough, last night I rehearsed with the Zest of Yore for the first time, also as a bassist.  ZOY has long been one of my favorite bands in the state, so when its members asked me to try out for them, I was both flattered and scared.  Their previous bassist is one of the best I’ve ever seen in a rock band, and I had no idea how I could play to his standard.  I spent an entire afternoon transcribing the bass lines to four ZOY songs in preparation for the rehearsal.  During the rehearsal, I played three of them right the first time, and figured the fourth out after woodshedding with one of its riffs for a while.  The band then taught me two more of its songs; we also covered two songs by Guided by Voices (surprise, surprise).

Now that I’ll be playing bass in two other bands, it’s reasonable to assume that I won’t have as much time to devote to the Cocker Spaniels, but time constraints paradoxically force me to use my time more effectively.  Playing in bands that are committed to regular rehearsals and performances will increase my technical skill and improvisational ability; playing in service of equally creative and challenging songwriters will stimulate my melodic and lyrical imagination; and, last but not least, working with other musicians regularly will make it easier to assemble my own backing band.  All of these things will benefit my music in the long run.

One of Last Month’s Parties

After successfully re-stabilizing my workplace, I took a much-deserved weeklong vacation to my birthplace of Brooklyn, NY.  Interdisciplinary artists (and total dreamboats) Charly and Margaux kindly hosted me in their Bushwick apartment.  I watched the barely classifiable rock band Pillars and Tongues and Balkan folk revivalists A Hawk and a Hacksaw perform at the Bell House.  I caught up with many friends, including one with whom I recently reconciled; I find it amusingly ironic that she now lives in my old East Flatbush neighborhood.  I also visited my father and my paternal uncle for the first time in years.

The highlight of my vacation was attending I’ll Be Your Mirror, the sister festival to All Tomorrow’s Parties, a sponsorship-free festival that focuses specifically on underground music of all genres.  This year’s edition of IBYM took place a short train ride away from NYC, in the coastal New Jersey city of Asbury Park, which Bruce Springsteen immortalized on his debut album.  Influential English group Portishead, making its first visit to the States in three years, both curated and headlined the festival.  As much as I love them, though, they were a mere blip on my radar compared to the handful of acts on the lineup that I’d been waiting to see live for more than half of my life.

Two of those acts, Chavez and Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, played back-to-back sets on the festival’s first day.  Watching Chavez perform helped me realize why they’re one of my all-time favorite rock bands: the members’ constant, inventive reshuffling of the roles of bass, rhythm and lead guitar.  On “Break Up Your Band,” the bass guitar handles most of the power chords; conversely, the seismic rumble of “You Must Be Stopped” comes from detuned electric guitars.  Beat frequencies, high-pitched squeals and fret harmonics are frequently inserted into riffs; solos often stutter in a deliberately clumsy manner.  Even the drumming manages to be simultaneously powerful and lopsided.

Thinking Fellers’ set was just as revelatory.  Seeing them perform at a venue with a crisp sound system enabled me to hear intricacies that were often blurred out by their records’ wildly variable fidelity.  As dense and dissonant as their songs are, they’re also tightly composed and skillfully played; as goofy as the members’ stage personae may be, their fun never came at the audience’s expense.  Like Beefheart, Zappa and the Residents before them, TFUL282 make music that doesn’t take itself seriously but requires serious talent to execute properly.  They incited a mosh pit in a bowling alley, which made total sense to me.

On the festival’s second day, I watched saxophonist Colin Stetson perform superhuman feats of physical strength and musicianship.  With a fully developed circular breathing technique and an array of contact mikes clipped to his body and his instrument, he unleashed unbroken cascades of notes for up to 10 minutes at a time, while generating textures that often sounded more like distorted guitars or Tuvan throat singers than a single saxophone.  Portishead’s headlining set later that night exceeded my expectations.  They translated the grainy textures and genre-hopping arrangements of their recordings to the stage well, without relying too heavily on technological tricks.  To my surprise, they’re a proper band, with a front person whose voice is strong enough to fill a stadium, and who isn’t too shy to crowd-surf (not kidding!) at climactic moments.

In my opinion, the final day of the festival belonged to Public Enemy, who was supposed to perform Fear of a Black Planet (the centerpiece of what I consider their trilogy of classic albums) in its entirety. What we got instead was even better: two-thirds of that album, a third each of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Apocalypse ’91: The Enemy Strikes Black, a handful of songs from their later albums, plus whatever else Chuck D and Flavor Flav felt like doing at any given moment.  Chuck gave shout-outs to the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, cursed the state of Georgia for killing Troy Davis, free-styled atop AC/DC’s “Back in Black” and let every member of PE’s live band have numerous solos.  Flav drummed and played bass, brought his daughter on stage, ranted about world peace, and let PE’s current DJ flex his skills until I thought to myself, “Terminator who?”  I could tell that Chuck and Flav are still great friends and still love what they do.  It also helped that PE’s classic albums have lost NONE of their urgency over time.  Their performance was the greatest hip-hop show I’ve ever seen.

These were just the peaks.  I also saw reclusive troubadour Jeff Mangum play a flawless solo acoustic set of Neutral Milk Hotel’s best songs; Foot Village push the limits of primal catharsis with nothing but voices and drums; Battles persevere through PA problems to play a solid set of funky cyberpunk; Ultramagnetic MCs display almost as much energy and chemistry as PE, despite Kool Keith’s absent-mindedness; Canadian math-rockers DD/MM/YYYY play its final Stateside show; Deerhoof perform so well that I’d have given them their own paragraph if I hadn’t already seen them live many times before; and, last but not least, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra tug at my heartstrings with yelping, grandiose baroque rock.

As much as I enjoyed being in the NYC area, though, I didn’t dread returning to Texas.  Living here has made me accustomed to cheap rent and personal space, neither of which would exist for me if I moved back.  However, I do plan to visit more often, especially since a certain group of musicians there recently offered to be my backing band for a future tour.  I can’t write too much about that right now, though.

I had an eventful summer.

I use my cell phone mainly to send text messages; I avoid actually talking on it because I can’t multitask while doing so.  I have to hole myself up in a quiet place in order to listen fully and respond articulately.  Unfortunately, most people aren’t good enough conversationalists to justify such undivided attention, and my long-windedness probably makes me just as difficult to listen to.  However, not everyone I care about wants to (or should) rely on text messages and social media to keep up with the events of my life.  Thus, I’ve taken more initiative lately to call friends and relatives whom I haven’t talked to in a while, so that we can trade updates on our lives.  Please consider this entry the online equivalent.

Two months ago, I left my previous cooperative living arrangement and moved into a much better one.  I now share a house with two friends of mine who are also each other’s life partners and band mates.  They get along well with each other and have acceptable personal hygiene, which I couldn’t say about my previous housemates.  My daily commuting has been reduced by almost half due to our house’s comparative proximity to my job.  I haven’t experienced such domestic tranquility since I last lived alone six years ago, and my creativity is accelerating as a result.  Since the move, I’ve written an average of two new songs a week.  I haven’t begun recording any of those songs yet, but I will soon.

Earlier this month, I purchased a Yamaha MT8X to replace the one that stopped working after I released Withstand the Whatnot.  My initial motivation for this purchase was to remix and digitize all of the songs I recorded from middle school to college, but I then opened myself up to the idea of also recording new material with it.  Ideally, the decrease in fidelity will be partially offset by the microphones I have now, which are way better than the ones I used a decade ago.  If I transfer the recordings I make on my MT8X to GarageBand or Reaper for mixing and editing, I should be able to get a sound that I’m satisfied with.  I still have a bit more gear to buy before I get started, but I’m making significant progress.

I even attempted to start a full-band version of the Cocker Spaniels this summer, but the logistics proved to be too daunting.  Every member played in at least one other band; two members ended up getting full-time jobs; and one member didn’t even live in the same city as the others.  It quickly became too difficult for me to organize individual rehearsals to teach my songs to each member, let alone a collective rehearsal.  The drummer eventually gave up, so I dissolved that lineup.  I was sad about it for a while, because I was finally starting to want a band as much as some of my fans want me to have one, but I’m over it now.  Recording will keep me busy for the rest of the year anyway; in the meantime, I encourage any interested drummer in the Austin area to contact me.

I spent most of the summer vehemently dissatisfied with my job.  My boss allowed his company’s IT infrastructure to slowly collapse because he was too stingy to fix, upgrade or replace anything.  When the electrical outlets in my office stopped working, he made me run an extension cord into the nearest hallway because he didn’t want to call an electrician.  When the computer that houses the time clock stopped working, he made me rely on handwritten time sheets to process payroll because he didn’t want to replace the computer.  The company’s eight-year-old computer server was stored in a hot, humid, unventilated room and connected to a backup battery that was barely strong enough to charge a laptop.  My boss refused to heed my suggestions that he upgrade the server and the battery, or at least move them to a cooler room.

After the server crashed twice in as many weeks, all hell broke loose: entire departments were rendered unable to work, sales sharply declined, and employees started getting paid late.  I issued my boss an ultimatum: fix everything in the office that’s broken or find a new accountant. Shortly thereafter, an electrician showed up to fix my electrical outlets; an IT guy arrived to install a new server and backup battery in the coolest room of the building; and my boss’ wife bought a new computer for the time clock.  Last but not least, my boss gave me a week’s worth of paid vacation time, which I’ll take full advantage of at month’s end.

This weekend, I plan to visit my girlfriend in Houston for the first time in six weeks.  Between her search for consistent, gainful employment and my perpetually tight budget, we simply can’t afford to see each other very often.  However, we still love each other as much as ever did, and we take full advantage of technology to keep the lines of communication open.  She’s the only reason why I haven’t deleted my Twitter account, despite my growing social media fatigue.  My current desktop is a picture of us in a smiley embrace at a beach in Surfside, Texas, and I never get tired of looking at it.  I’m not too easy on the eyes, but she looks GREAT in a bathing suit.

I have a girlfriend now.

My girlfriend & I @ SXSW 2011

Last weekend, my girlfriend visited me for the first time in a month, and the timing couldn’t have been better.  I’d spent the majority of May barely clinging to my sanity due to financial, domestic and workplace crises; meanwhile, unemployment was slowly chipping away at her morale.  (I dream of the day when my song “The Overeducated Underclass” ceases to be relevant, but I’ve been saying that about “The Only Black Guy at the Indie-Rock Show” for even longer.)  We’d partially bridged the geographical distance between each other through social media and video iChat, but once June arrived, we both knew that only tangible interaction would fully renew our spirits.  As soon as I had enough money to fill her gas tank, I wired it to her, and she drove to Austin immediately thereafter.

The four days that my girlfriend spent with me weren’t perfect: my housemates’ interpersonal drama had begun to make living there psychologically unsafe for me (I’m moving next month, but that’s a subject for another post), and her chronic toothaches occasionally compromised her ability to fully enjoy herself.  However, our circumstances never dammed the flow of affection between us.  In the three months that we’ve been lovers, let alone the previous five years that we’d been friends, we haven’t had even one real argument.  Our relationship isn’t devoid of conflict, but it IS devoid of hurt, and I believe that it’ll remain that way.

Although I’m 30 years old and my girlfriend is just a couple years younger, neither of us had been in an official relationship before this one, which some might consider strange.  I spent my 20s being everything but a boyfriend: an unspoken crush, an unrequited crush, a best male friend, a friend with benefits, a fuck buddy, an open secret, a mistake, a skeleton in the closet.  I desired a healthy, unambiguous, reciprocal romantic relationship, but I had no idea what it looked like.  The more I searched for one, the more it eluded me; eventually, my desire gave way to desperation, and I began to settle for simulacra.  I mimicked my mother’s martyrdom, her tendency to give too much of herself away for too little in return.  This was a major cause of the depression that nearly ended my life two years ago.

It took a decade for me to learn that I’m likelier to get what I want when I refuse to settle for anything less; that being single, though it may lack the perks of a good relationship, is far better than being in a bad one; and that I don’t have to move mountains to give, receive or prove myself worthy of love.  My girlfriend spent most of her 20s learning the same lessons.  After simultaneously reaching the same level of self-actualization, it was easy for us to fall in love with each other, as our common experiences had turned us into the kind of lovers we’d been looking for all along.

We’re similar enough to have common ground, but different enough to surprise each other.  We know each other so well that we don’t have to explain ourselves very often.  We understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and interact with each other in a way that emphasizes the former and ameliorates the latter.  Although we love being around each other, our relationship is cooperative, not codependent.  My friends and relatives like her; her friends and relatives like me.  Aside from the private moments that all relationships must have, we love each other directly and publicly, without shame or fear.  I could go on and on about the ways that her presence in my life feels natural and right, but I’ll stop here.

RIP Gil Scott-Heron; Long Live Bilal Oliver

A promotional picture of Gil Scott-Heron from the last year of his life

I found out about the death of legendary poet, musician and author Gil Scott-Heron after coming home from R&B singer Bilal’s first-ever show in Austin this past Friday night.  I bought a ticket to the show weeks in advance, in the expectation that it would be the highlight of a very trying month.  Despite telling every Austinite whom I thought would be interested about the show, I ended up going alone.  I worried about whether or not Bilal would draw an audience large enough to justify his trip; Bilal admitted on stage that he shared my worry, which is why he chose to bring only a DJ with him.  I also worried about whether or not he’d perform well enough to justify the expensive ticket price; I’d heard reports of erratic, druggy shows in the past.  Fortunately, people from all over the state showed up to see him, and Bilal exceeded everyone’s expectations.

Bilal @ Venue 222 in Austin (5/27/2011)

Although Bilal vowed at set’s end to return later this summer with his band, I was too spellbound by his voice to worry about their absence.  He stretched his voice like taffy, every segment of his range sounding like it came from a different person: the wobbly baritone, the nasal tenor, the operatic falsetto, the angry banshee, the stoned jazz scatter, all conversing with each other.  The chances he takes with his voice, some of which admittedly sound awkward on record, all paid off on stage.  His stage banter was equally schizophrenic: one minute he’d hype the crowd up to gauge its enthusiasm, the next he’d confuse them with a dark-humored joke or an absent-minded rant.  He used his astonishing technique to bare every nook and cranny of his soul for an hour, which he didn’t necessarily need a live band to do.  I strive for the same stylized catharsis in my solo performances, and I hope to preserve that quality after I start performing with a backing band.  (Yes, it will finally happen this summer!)

Of course, the joy that Bilal’s performance gave me was dampened by the news of Gil’s death.  I spent the rest of the night listening to Gil’s music, eulogizing him on various social networks, and consoling myself with a glass or two of sweet tea rum.  His music had already weighed heavily on my mind over the last few weeks.  As Dr. Cornel West’s continuing criticism of President Barack Obama grew in intensity and pettiness, Gil’s poem “Brother” outlined my opinion on the situation with prescient concision.  As Mother’s Day came and went, Gil’s poem “On Coming from a Broken Home” reinforced my gratitude toward the women who raised me in the emotional (if not always physical) absence of my father and former stepfather.  Most apropos was “The Bottle,” Gil’s cautionary tale of alcoholism, whose refrain reverberated through my mind after too many nights spent using my beloved sweet tea rum to dull the aggravation of discontent.

Although the cause of death hasn’t yet been confirmed, any fan of Gil’s can guess that his decades-long crack addiction had something to do with it.  A New Yorker article from last year provided a detailed, sobering (pun intended) account of the effects that Gil’s addiction had on his body, his career and his personal life.  The “crack head” is a recurring motif in the Black American comedy that I grew up with, from Richard Pryor’s confessions to Dave Chappelle’s parodies.  Even the more serious portrayals of crack addiction in movies like New Jack City and Jungle Fever turned into punch lines eventually.  It is within this context that Gil’s final album I’m New Here feels even more essential when I listen to it.  I must now contend with the fact that I’m listening to a “crack head” whose musings exude empathy, honesty, dignity and wisdom, even in the midst of perpetual struggle and obvious decline.  Nothing on I’m New Here can be mocked or reduced to a punch line.

On that album, Gil’s singing either goes flat or collapses into a grunt at the end of every run; the wear and tear in his voice arguably reveals the hardness of his life more effectively than his lyrics do.  Listening to I’m New Here on the night of his death affected me in the same way that hearing Bilal sing live did just a few hours before: both men used their voices as vehicles for the illumination of their souls, and I hope that I can do the same with mine.