Been working on my new song the last 48. I’m very happy with how it’s turning out, and have decided to use the scratch vocal as the main track. Love it when I can get away with that. I will definitely play it at my next show on the 27th of this month at Room 5.
Went to a party this evening to celebrate a friend’s 80th b-day. No, seriously; his 80th. You wouldn’t know it by looking at him or talking to him. He looks 60 and has the attitude the same. It’s uncanny the life this guy still has left in him. My dad’s 74, and moves half as slow.
They’re sort of a quirky (in a good way) California couple. If you’ve been a loyal reader of this journal, you may have remembered me mentioning his daughter who suffers from schizophrenia. He was a big time TV writer for westerns like Bonanza and series like that.
His party had no one under 62, it was great! And what was funny was the way I ended up taking control of the party. I went around the room and asked everyone the same question til the circle was complete. Then, on to the next question. I like doing this sometimes as it (in a social experiment sort of way) really brings out some interesting points:
#1: The people who wouldn’t normally talk get to talk.
#2: You can learn some pretty amazing things from people if they’re asked something about themselves.
#3: Subset of #2: People LOVE to talk about themselves, even the shy ones. And this is NOT a bad thing.
I’m telling you man, self-validation is the one simple truth of human beings. And usually, the most interesting and perhaps valuable thoughts and stories come from the ones who would have normally remained quiet the entire night!
Questions along the lines of: How far did you go in school, what was your first job, what was your childhood dream (to be when you grow up) and did you accomplish it?
Some of the most fascinating things came out of this. Two of them served in WWII; one in the Pacific Theater (The birthday boy, actually) and the other in the German Theater. One woman, who serves on the Board of Supervisors in a northern california town, revealed that as a young girl she blurted to her mother that she wanted to be the “mistress of a famous man!”
An uncanny theme too happened to be the fact that many of them wanted to “escape” the lives of quiet desperation of their childhoods. They were children of the depression, of wars, of southern & midwestern poverty. Their dreams were sometimes the direct result of listening to the radio: old performance broadcasts that glamorized the “big city.”
One man, who’s name was Royal (yes, as in Tennenbaum) was given the opportunity to study at a university in France upon the conclusion of World War II. He sort of figured, “why not?”
This and so much more…
Let me tell you: Who says you can’t party with octogenerians? It’s all in how you phrase the questions, right?
