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The Long and Winding Roadby George Ziemann This page last modified -- July 13, 2010 -- 6:10 p.m. New Orleans to Westport, CTMy flight was scheduled to leave at noon, so I wanted to be at the airport by about 10 a.m. I was used to the Phoenix airport and wanted to leave enough time in case the New Orleans airport was anything like Phoenix. Joyce had given me a black travel bag to use, about the size of a laptop computer, but would expand as things were added to it. She said she didn't really like it and never used it. I thought it was perfect. Had a couple of pockets on the side. It was pretty handy and, since I wasn't carrying much at all, it wasn't even much of a hassle to carry around or deal with on the plane. I mentally called it my Jack Bauer bag (before I was even done with the one-minute job of packing it) because every tool I had to survive was in it. And so was everything metal that I was carrying, to avoid any unnecessary security hassle. I guess this really just means all my change, since I don't think I even had anything metal. Not even car keys, a belt or a watch. I had left the car and the keys for it at Joyce's house with the instructions that if anyone else came looking for it, to go ahead and give them the keys because the only way anyone would figure out where I left it was if I told them. Thought that I would end up letting my wife know where it was and one of her family would show up to collect it. In the end, I was going to have to go back and get it, but I still had more than a thousand miles to go before I'd even know that. During the time I spent with her, Joyce and I had talked about a lot of things, including religion, which I had mixed feelings about. To capsulize it as brief as possible, I believe in God, but I see organized religion as something to avoid. Joyce is a psychic. Seemed to me like neither one of us should be spouting too much about God. The thing is, when I was a kid, the entire family went to the same church every Sunday -- my Grandmother, my Mom, my three aunts and my uncle, most of the kids. I was deeply religious in my formative years and it burned some behaviors into my psyche that I still cannot easily break. Ironically, those same lessons are what turns me away from any church today. The point is that we did have background together as far as God questions, we touched on it, but didn't go too deeply into it. Still, God was the underlying theme behind the phrase she most often used when I was trying to figure out my situation, what I was really doing, etc., etc. -- "Everything happens for a reason." Before we left, Joyce made me promise to do a few fence-mending tasks with some of my family members if I got the chance. I had also talked to my Aunt Cheryl on the phone, who made me promise to call her if I made it to Toledo, OH, which is where I grew up. My oldest daughter also lives there, along with her son, Zen, who was born on April 12 and is my first grandchild. I really wanted to see them. But I wasn't going to Toledo. I was flying to LaGuardia in New York City, where Cara or Carl were supposed to meet me and take me to Westport, CT, their new home. Joyce lives about 2 or 3 miles from the airport, so being on time was not even an issue. As she dropped me off, she said, "Remember, everything happens for a reason." Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport I walked into the airport right in front of the desk for the airpline I was flying on, a stroke of luck I attributed to Joyce knowing where she was going. I still wasn'y really catching a clue yet. There were two attendants at the ticket counter and only one of them was taking care of anyone. I walked right up, showed my ID and had my boarding passes in just a couple of minutes. Then I headed for the security area to get situated near my boarding gate and, assuming that there was a reasonable amount of time left after the security process, maybe grab something to eat. Security took about three minutes. There were exactly five people in the line ahead of me. I found my boarding gate and it probably wasn't even 10:15 yet. But at least the airport didn't have that lingering smell of death so prevalent outside. I didn't mind the wait. It wasn't like I had anything pressing to get to. Didn't even bother me that much when the flight got delayed to about 1:30 or so because they had to put new brakes on the plane before it could take off from Baltimore that morning. Did present a minor hassle, though, as I tried to call Joyce to have her call Carl to let them know the new estimated arrival at LaGuardia. I found exactly two phones in the concourse. One of them didn't work. It would take your money and connect the call, but the person on the other end couldn't hear what I was saying. Someone was using the other phone. For about a half-hour. While I was waiting for the flight, I watched the news, which was primarily about the Gulf oil spill. I knew about it, of course, but after the Lower Ninth Ward, all it did was make me wonder how much more the city of New Orleans could handle, considering how little has been done to erase Katrina in the past five years. Dolphins, sharks, sea turtles and other marine life was clinging to the shoreline, trying to evade the oil. Seafood restaurants were already feeling the pinch and it was getting worse day by day. On an earlier day, I had watched as General Honore, the man that finally led troops and supplies into New Orleans after Katrina, railing about how the oil spill was the same scenario -- no one was doing much of anything and it was time for someone to step in, make a decision and take some positive action. The only person that I saw with any semblance of a course of action was Kevin Costner, who has sunk millions into a process which separates oil from water. Everyone else, from Obama to the BP executives, seemed to be more intent on evading blame than finding a solution. Eventually, it was time to get on the plane. The schedule was a stop in Nashville, on to Baltimore, change planes for a final, brief flight to LaGuardia. The flight to Nashville was uneventful. The people sitting next to me slept almost all the way. I spent the time thinking about what was going to happen once I got to Carl's place in Connecticut. We had business to do about the new album, decisions about whether to release it immediately with the files I had already sent to him or whether to wait for me to get access to my computer again and do a few more tweaks. Carl had said he already had work lined up for me, but details were fuzzy. I still was going to need some kind of job when I got there. The people sitting next to me woke up about 20 minutes before we landed. I was about to start changing my personality. I'm generally a relatively private person. I keep to myself and don't talk to people I don't know, other than basic civil pleasantries. Kind of introverted, actually, which seems to be in conflict with the idea of being a performer. Performing seems extroverted because it more or less requires an audience, at least if you want to get paid for it. In reality, performing is the most introverted thing that I do. Maybe it's just because I don't get any real stage fright. Sure there's that moment of tension just before the first song of the night, but that's more a sense of questioning whether all the gear is going to work right or what shape my voice was in and other pre-flight checklists. Being in front of a crowd doesn't scare me, though. It scared me when I was starting out, really kind of sucked as a keyboard player, and was willing to keep getting on stage every chance I had anyway. Even if I'm just rehearsing by myself, there is a base level of performance that I'm going to deliver which should be more than acceptable for a live show, assuming I'm past the learning phase. Bring in the rest of the band and the level comes up a few notches. The volume is going to add more intensity; vocals need to be stronger and more powerful just to get on top of the drums. During a good rehearsal, with no audience, I'm going to deliver at the same level that I will bring to the stage. Doesn't matter if it's a cover song that I've been playing for 25 or 30 years and never liked that much in the first place, or our newest original, or if we start and stop a dozen times while we work out our arrangements. I'm still going to play to the best of my ability every single time. Otherwise, I'm just wasting my time and that of everyone else in the band. For some songs, especially if I sing, it becomes a requirement. If I can't work up the proper level of enthusiasm, it's hard to expect the rest of them to do it. That works both ways, though. It's hard to deliver a powerful vocal line when the band isn't even interested. But there are certain songs, like "Criminal Mind" or my favorite Pink Floyd tune, "Comfortably Numb," where I find the beginning, then close my eyes and watch the movie as I play and sing, not even giving it much conscious thought. I consider music to be a true self-actualizing activity. Each and every time you do it, the opportunity is there to play better than you ever have before. And even if you achieve that goal tonight, perhaps you can do it even better tomorrow. When it's time to do an actual show, the world ends at the edge of the stage. The audience is important but the bigger the crowd is, the more it reinforces that invisible barrier. Don't get me wrong. We need the audience. We feed off of their energy and a good audience can bring out a great performance. But when you know the crowd is going to be overly large, that's when you hire actual security to make sure the barrier remains intact and no one comes into our zone uninvited. The stage is our world and ours alone, but that limitiation is extremely necessary. The other thing an audience brings that rarely, if ever, happens during rehearsal is magic. While not the only band I've experienced (or merely witnessed) this with, here's what happens when Hurricane Alley plays. Tim and Manny are the rhythm section (bass and drums). If I'm playing a rhythm part and not singing, I divide my attention pretty evenly between what Tim and Manny are doing and what Carl is doing. When I'm singing and doing leads then I mentally lock in with Carl. It's the closest thing to telepathy that I know of. When we play leads, it's like we're one mind. We can do things completely different for the first time and do it together. We always reinforce each other vocally. Sometimes we unconsciously switch parts. Sometimes, without even looking at him, I get a tiny little voice in my head that says, Dude, you have to hit the high note on the chorus this time. After that, walking off the stage and meeting a stranger, saying "Hi. how are you doing?" and having a relatively social conversation is really, really hard for me to do, now matter how cool they think I am at that moment. I don't hate people or anything, I just have a really hard time relating to most of them. I don't strike up conversations with strangers, although I'll engage in one that someone walks up to me and starts. But when the people I was sitting next to on the plane stirred and awoke from their naps, that's just what I did. Started an conversation with them, asked about their trip, where they were from, what they were going to Nashville for, things like that. I was just starting to get into this new wrinkle in my personality when the plane landed. Most of the passengers got off; 38 of us were going on to Baltimore. We were told to stay in our seats so the flight attendants could make sure we hadn't lost anyone. We did, which made for five minutes or so of most of the crew scurrying off in search of the missing passenger. While this was going on, one of the other passengers was talking to one of the flight attendants. I wasn't really eavesdropping, as they just making small talk, but the passenger mentioned New York, theatre, staging, and a few things like that. My curiosity was piqued. And I was looking for a job. The flight didn't have assigned seating. There was a point after the issue of the lost traveller was resolved and before the incoming passengers were let on board where we were allowed to switch seats if we chose to do so. I went over to the guy and said, "I overheard you talking to the flight attendant. I need to know you and you want to know me, but you just don't know it yet." I introduced myself. He told me his full name, then added that he went by "CP," which I'm pretty sure stands for "crazy person," as I made it pretty clear that that is what I was, and he said something to the effect that those are the only kind of people he hangs out with because being creative requires insanity if you're going to be successful at it. There didn't appear to be a tangible job link there, but we became friends in the time it took to fly from Nashville to Baltimore. Told him the basic story of my trip so far, the whole thing about the dominos, and how I thought maybe he was another one of them, since he worked in my general area of employment. After we landed in Baltimore, I grabbed a little memo book and a pen at one of the shops in the airport, and we exchanged e-mails. I didn't have a phone number to share, but he included his, "In case you're ever in New York with time to hang around." The flight to LaGuardia was a short one -- less than 30 minutes. New York was totally overcast and the first thing that could be seen when we broke through the fog was the Hudson River, which it looked like we were going to land in for a moment because we were so low (eliciting gasps from some of the passengers -- mostly the females, one of which CP had seated himself next to and was "comforting"), but after a minor right turn, we were on the runway. As we stood up to get off the place, I said, "New York. Another domino." CP said, "What? You saw a Domino's sugar plant?" "No. Haven't you been paying attention? The falling dominos. New York is definitely one of them. I've never been here before." "Really? You've got a lot to see then. Have fun." LaGuardia Saw CP briefly again at baggage claim. I had no baggage, just by little travel bag, but that's where I was supposed to meet Carl or Cara. They weren't there. Went outside and, after I figured out what the hell was going on, walked up and down the area to pick up passengers a few times. Nothing. Went and dealt with the pay phone nightmare again (there was only one in the area) and called Carl. They had decided that driving to LaGuardia on a rainy night wasn't a wise idea for either of them, so there was a shuttle driver that was parked in front looking for me. They had gone so far as to call Joyce in New Orleans to find out what I was wearing. Carl add that I looked like "the wizard guy from Lord of the Rings." I thought that was funny. He told me the name of the shuttle service and it took me about two minutes to locate the shuttle. There were three passengers in it already but the driver was missing. He was inside looking for me. Only a couple minutes more and I found him, got situated in the shuttle and met the other passengers. After a brief question and answer period ("You've never been to New York before? Drop him off at Times Square!"), the driver had loaded our destinations into the GPS and we were on our way. Randy Pausch The shuttle ride took a while, but there was a TV screen for the passengers. It was tuned to ABC's mobile broadcast, which was airing a show about Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. On Sept. 18, 2007, Pausch delivered what CMU calls "a one-of-a-kind last lecture that made the world stop and pay attention." Pausch would also expand on the lecture and made it into a book. Here's how it is described:
Pausch died of pancreatic cancer on July 25, 2008. I only mention this because, while looking up the above links, I was trying to figure out why it was airing on that particular day and time. It wasn't the anniversary of him giving the lecture, nor of his death. It wasn't his birthday, either (October 23, 1960). There's no obvious reason, unless I give weight to the fact that it was something I definitely needed to hear at that particular moment in time. Randy Pausch's story, and his lecture, was mind-boggling. If you haven't heard of this guy yet, do yourself a favor and follow the links above. I'm not going to talk about very much of it, but there are two small points that really hit home and stuck with me. Didn't write down the quotes or anything, so I'm paraphrasing. A third salient point comes from Hyperion Publishing's web page for the book and I'll start with that.
These are words to live by. I've already been following that last one for years. It's one of those moral lessons that stuck with me from childhood and, although I can't claim to have been perfectly honest my entire life, I've tried to hold that line for quite some time now. Not because I'm a font of pure knowledge or self-righteous or anything. Mostly because lying is just too much damn effort. When you start lying, then you've got to keep track of what you told to who. Sooner or later you're going to fuck up, and then your credibility is gone. The truth is so much simpler. Granted sometimes I might try to avoid telling the truth, or maybe omit a few things, but if pressed, you're going to get total honesty from me. This tends to piss people off sometimes, or make them feel like I'm coming down on them, but the truth is the truth. There's nothing you can do to change it. Trying to avoid it is living in denial. Sooner or later, you've got to face it, no matter how uncomfortable it may be. If you don't, it's going to turn into a brick wall and you're going to run right into it, face first. These were the things that were going through my head when the driver dropped me off in front of Carl's house in Westport. Westport, CT I've got a small problem with this part of the story because I know I'm not allowed to tell it. It's too bad because there are a couple of great little tangents here, one of which involves Tim Thomas, the goalie for the Boston Bruins, who I had the occasion to meet. The only part of that that I think I can get away with relating is that, after watching a couple of people kind of fawn over him because of his celebrity, Carl introduced me to him. I had to admit that I didn't really know who he was, I wasn't really much of a hockey fan, and if I were, I've been living in Phoenix and we've got Wayne Gretzky, but since I had met him, I'd try to pay a little more attention, at least when Phoenix plays Boston. Actually, I think he kind of liked that, since I treated him like anyone else off the street and wasn't in awe of his fame. He could talk to me without the facade of celebrity since I didn't really give a shit that he was famous. I did have one non-sports question to ask, involving a ring that some homeless guy gave to Carl that he ended up giving to Tim. Sadly, I can't tell the rest of that story and here's why. I've written about Carl and his wife, Cara, and their move to Westport before, his job, what made him move from Arizona and what I thought were rather innocuous personal observations, only to have Carl call and tell me that the people where he works asked to have it taken down. So I can't tell the rest of the story about Tim Thomas, or what went on during the few days I was there. It was a Wednesday night when I arrived (June 16). By Saturday morning, it was obvious to me that this was not going to be a good situation. Carl's job is extremely stressful, he was not happy with the house they were renting, his stress puts Cara on the edge and, as much as I tried to be helpful, my presence in their house was just making things worse. I hadn't slept well in New Orleans, I wasn't sleeping well in Westport and an environment that was oozing tension from every seam was just not what I needed. The work that Carl had lined up for me was months down the road. We had dealt with the business that we needed to deal with. I couldn't stay there. I thought he was going to be annoyed at the least and possibly kind of pissed off, but Carl understood where I was coming from and set me up with a chunk o' cash so I could continue on the road to wherever it was I was going. And he gave me one his of cell phones. It was part of his family plan, he said, he didn't really use it that much, I wouldn't have to pay to use it, it would cost him to discontinue it from his current service, we could at least definitely keep in touch and I wouldn't have to go through the pay phone dilemma again. I called CP, the guy I met on the airplane. Keeping in mind that I had known CP for a total of about two hours, I explained the situation and asked if it was possible to crash at his place for a night or two while I figured out what I was going to do. "Why are you still talking to me? Get over here." I was going to be in New York City with some time to hang around after all. Before I go there, it is worthy of note that another three songs from the album were played out here, with early versions of all of them on the music.
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