The Memorial Show

      All caught up again! I was going to wait until tomorrow, so I spaced them out a day, but since, as we’ve been learning, tomorrow is not guaranteed, and since nothing worthwhile is likely to happen tonight, I figured: “Why wait?” I suppose if I’m going to make the transformation from “thinker” to “doer,” I need to do more. As they say: “There’s no point in putting off until tomorrow, what can be done today.” It’s funny, as you become more aware, a lot of those old sayings seem to make more sense. I did another one today. I had been thinking about having dinner with my parents. I think we may try to get together once a month, but it doesn’t always happen. I know we are busier than they are, but I don’t think we’re that busy. Susan sees her mom once a week, usually. What’s worse, my parents are less than 5 miles from us. My sister works across the street from where I go grocery shopping every week! And I still only usually see them on the holidays. I love them, we just don’t have that kind of thing. I think part of it is that they were gone so long, on the East Coast, and in Ridgecrest, that we never got in the habit. Anyway: I had been thinking about them. Realizing we skipped the month of February. Just for the record: They don’t call me either. Sometimes my dad will text me memes that he thinks are funny, but other than that, I am not contacted. This goes both ways.  (Insert juvenile joke here.) As mentioned, we are just not in the habit. Although, now that I write that, phones are not geographically related. We could still have been contacting each other, even when we weren’t close. I can’t really attribute that to habit. Other than, apparently, we’re not in the habit of doing that either. Anyway: I had the thought, texted, and now we’re having dinner on Saturday. Done!

     This past Saturday was Mark Miller’s memorial. I had met his son once, when he was like 11. That was about 15 years ago. He has special needs, and I had no hope that he’d remember me. He didn’t. Hence, we knew no one there. Well, I knew the co-organizer Jim, who I’d recently met, but that was it. There was also one guy there that used to work with them, I thought I recognized him, but he did not seem to remember me, which I am not used to, so I didn’t approach the subject. Plus, it was pretty much over at that point, and I had no plans on hanging around, explaining who I was. Also, we had been there over 2 hours, and I was hungry. They did have some food, but as mentioned, I didn’t want to go down memory lane with a bunch of strangers. At the same time, I figured if anyone wanted to know anything about me, they would see me the next day at the concert, and we could talk then. It was heartwarming to hear all of the wonderful stories about him, but I obviously knew him less than every other person there, and didn’t really have anything to share. It was a nice, Buddhist, ceremony. My first! People had a lot to say about his optimism, I only knew him as a guy who wrote a lot of sad songs. That didn’t reconcile in my mind. I thought perhaps he became Buddhist after I met him, but people were saying they met him in 1980! So that didn’t work either. Hence, I decided not to say anything.  We were both glad we went. We spent about 2 years with him, so he was a part of our life, but he meant a lot more to the other people there. I did feel people were curious about who we were, but my rebel side kept me from wanting to let them know. I figured they’d figure it out the next day.

     We tried to take it easy Saturday night, but didn’t succeed, and were a little groggy on Sunday, the day of the big show. We got there on time. There were already quite a few people there. I knew we wouldn’t go on for a couple of hours, but I wanted to support all the acts. They were not very good. I’m sorry to say. They all meant well, and anyone willing to get up in front of people and perform, no matter what it is, gets my applause. Deservedly so! But it was not that good. I was warned by Wagz that this would be the case, and I went anyway. But jeez! I still was not spoken to, nor did I speak to anyone. I was still met with looks of curiosity, but no one wanted to break the bubble. There was a lot going on. The event was cool, people really cared. We went last. Due to organizational drag, we had to cut our set from 6 songs to 4. I thought it was important to play the 2 original songs. That was, after all, what we were there for. Bias aside, we were the best act of the event! As was expected. Jim had once said we were going to be the “most professional” act there. It was true. People loved it, most of the other acts got “golf applause.” We got ovations! And, I am proud to admit, I nailed my song! No notes, a few beers in, and it was as if I had always done it. Afterwards, a lot of people said they appreciated how I play bass. I wasn’t sure what to think, so I took it as a compliment. All-in-all, it was worth the effort, and I’m glad we participated. Lastly: At the RKL show on Monday, which was awesome by the way, I ran into several friends. I had not known that the bass player from RKL was a phenom. I knew the people I went with thought that I’d enjoy it. Drunk, one of my friends, who was there, that did not go with us, told me RKL’s bassist is the one he always compares me to. Chills!