My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

So, I went ahead and renewed this domain for… another two years. I usually do a yearly renewal, because, you know, if I drop dead in eleven months and twenty-eight days, I’ve wasted ten dollars. Who wants to waste ten dollars? Not me! Still, what if my life is like a crazy Twilight Zone episode and I DIE when my domain EXPIRES? I have a similar idea regarding tattoos and skin space, but that’s an entire other post. At any rate, I may have actually guaranteed myself two years of breathing and not simply potentially wasted ten dollars.

In theory, I could be immortal, so long as I have cash and the internets keep existing… or I just jinxed myself and I’m actually going to drop dead in forty-seven hours. Who knows? Personally, I’m hoping for some flavor of the former rather than the latter.

…I’ll post something of quality tomorrow.

I spent today doing boring technology-related what-not, which I might write tomorrow.

For now, I watch Coraline, I relax.

So, last night I had a really bad coughing session, and I e-mailed my doctor, and… we’re going to leave the medicine alone awhile.

I feel much better, less nervous.

I know, boring post, but maybe now I can focus again.

See yesterday.

So, I keep starting my writing too late, I’m just too distracted. My trach’s bothering me, and that doesn’t help my writing at all. It doesn’t help anything. I feel… nervous.

A lot of it is, I’m trying to switch from a very narcotic cough medicine to a barely narcotic cough medicine, and the new one hasn’t really worked yet. Withdrawal isn’t the problem, my doctor’s spectacular, I haven’t felt sick at all. It’s just the cough, it gets so bad that I have to temporarily switch back to the medicine I’m supposed to quit.

I’m scared, I can’t live coughing. It’s not living, it’s just existing.

Today was just long, and I’m still really not feeling spectacular, still very melancholy.

Tomorrow, I’ll write much more tomorrow.

So, I’m kind of down tonight, a lot of worries bouncing around in my head.

Anyway, I’ve decided to make another crazy vow. The last one really wasn’t a complete failure, I’ve brought some really good people into my life, and I really am writing less bad.

I’m going to post something every day until November, and continue trying to be the Michael I want to be, need to be…

To Michael – You are awesome, and I’m so happy we got to hang out. Hugs + kisses, Aimee

So, this is my last little artifact from Baton Rouge…

I pre-ordered Charmer on vinyl… for absolutely no reason. I just thought it would be neat to have, maybe I’d hang it somewheres.

Now that it’s signed…

Musical wall-art…

…there’s no maybe about it!

If you’ve never listened to Aimee Mann before, Charmer is a good place to start.

So, the show’s over, people are filing out of the theatre, but not us. In about two minutes we’d be quietly ushered through a maze of twisty hallways toward “the band,” as we’re told by some theatre official.

I decide to not plan anything I would say to Aimee and whoever might be with her. I don’t pre-type anything. No, “Hi! It’s great seeing you again!” No, “Thank you for not doing a song for that Shrek movie, it probably would have damaged me… emotionally.” During the show, she talked about being approached to do a song for a Shrek movie, but everything she tried ended up being too dark, so that project got scrapped. Instead, she stripped down her Shrek song and wrote another creepy fairytale song, Borrowing Time, which would be on @#%&*! Smilers. I won’t mention it. The conversation will be fresh, totally grounded in the moment. I decide I won’t can some phrase and end up having to robot speak it because people won’t know to look at my screen. I figure, if I’m typing something right then, someone will get curious, they’ll ask my brother how I communicate, they’ll ask to look at what I’m doing. Action, Reaction is kind of my thing.

By the time I’m done thinking about all these things, we’ve reached the center of the maze. Fortunately, rather than getting our skulls busted open by a minotaur, we come upon Aimee Mann, Paul Bryan, and that piano fellow whose name I don’t remember and can’t seem to Google.

First, Aimee is a genuinely smart, genuinely nice person. She’s not all facade, “Oh my God, it’s SO good to see you! Enjoy these free t-shirts, I have to go, bye!” She’s the essence of shy coolness and style. She says, “Hey, how’s it going?”

She sees my hands, “Wait, are all those tattoos real?” but from her it doesn’t sound stupid or ignorant, it’s more like she’s just surprised to see her own words permanently etched into to someone’s flesh. I have three of her song titles/lyrics tattooed on my hands, “Wise up” and “It’s not” and “Who knows?” A song about facing your problems before you can ever fix them, a song about realizing someone can’t fix you, a song about not knowing if you can ultimately be fixed at all. I’ve lived these words and I’m talking with the person who wrote them and she’s looking at her words written again, on my skin. The art of words, in full-circle.

My brother tells her I have bunch of her lyrics as tattoos, he asks if he can show her the tattoo I got the night before. I eyebrow, “Yes!”

Aimee Mann and Paul Bryan noting my tattooed hands…

Brian (my brother) showing off tattoo #73: “…kicking is hard, but the bottom’s harder…”

Aimee says, “Wow, I’m honored.” I feel like she means it, I don’t feel like she says it just because she thinks she should say something. She’s just not that kind of person, she’s not a fakey fake celebrity. She’s a lyricist whose trade is honesty, honest words.

Me telling Paul Bryan, “I like kitties!” or something, it was a blur…

Just as I’d hoped, if I was typing right then, people would be curious and read my screen. Paul Bryan gets curious, he and my brother do the reading, I only use the robot voice once, I think.

So, at this point, Aimee asks something totally unexpected, it almost feels like a dream, even now. She asks if there was anything they didn’t play during the show that I might want to hear backstage. She says there’s a piano in the dressing-room, I can hear anything I want. I don’t even have to think about it, immediately I type, “Yes! Looking for Nothing would be fuckiog awesome…” Paul ducks in, reads my typing aloud, and laughs, “Excellent choice.” He produced @#%&*! Smilers, he loves the record too. Aimee says she hasn’t played it in a really long time, but she’s down, she’ll play it.

We’re in this hallway, she’s strumming on her guitar, quietly practicing the song. She asks if anybody has a phone and can “Google the lyrics to Looking for Nothing.” She has such a collection, eight studio records, she’s bound to not have every single song ready at any given moment. She’s not an iTunes Library, she’s an artist, and above all, a regular person. That’s what I like about her, so much, she’s just very real, and kind. She can’t totally remember her lyrics, she doesn’t tell me, “Yeah, I don’t feel like playing that, pick something else.” She picks up her guitar, she Google’s the song, she doesn’t let me down. While she’s warming up, I jokingly type, “If you wait long enough I can type you the lyrics…” I just want her to know that I really love the words, I know them by heart, and I really appreciate that she’s taking the time to sing them for me. I don’t know that I actually conveyed all of that, but I hope she got some of it. There isn’t time to type more, she’s ready to play.

Now, I have a beautiful HD video of Aimee and Paul spectacularly singing Looking for Nothing, me singing along with a voice no one will hear. The spectacular fellow on piano, it’s all captured in 1080p. I could post it right now… but I won’t.

Aimee and Paul didn’t sing for Vimeo or my blog, they sang for me. I feel like it was private, a sacrament not for the entire world, but only for that time, in that room, for those who were there.

I will, however, post pictures…

Are we rolling?

Gorgeously singing…

Toward the finish…

End.

If I didn’t have these pictures, or the video I still watch every day, I might doubt that it really happened. How could anything that good really happen?

This is Aimee Mann singing Ghost World, which is off of her really spectacular record, Bachelor No. 2 (Or, The Last Remains of the Dodo).

I have really nice memories tied around this record, it was Tivoli’s favorite Aimee record. We’d listen to it straight through, on those rainy Summer days, talking about the songs.