sweet and sticky

The theme for class this week is rock'n'roll (which is why i've attached a picture of waffles!?!?). Yum. This topic makes me hungry. I think about how starving for life-answers and stability I was during my entire music biz career. (And yes, even then I realized that this was not the industry that would offer me smooth sailing into retirement. Book publishing, maybe. Rock journalism, not so much.) I was often sated with tons of fun, mind you, but there was also a sweet-and-sour taste of absolute chance around how my existence might turn out if I made one bad choice (or good choice). And what I got, and continue to get, is that there is no such thing as a right or wrong choice. I mean, I certainly know there were some options that caused me undue pain or that furthered me down a road where my eyes stayed shut, but even in those instances, something of learning came out of the experience.

I actually depended a lot on making choices that required taking chances, even pretending that I knew what I was doing in order to get what I wanted. This was not always wise, but it was often a challenge to rise to a specific occasion. The trick was always to at least pretend that I belonged there...wherever there was at the time: Spin or backstage or on a certain flight. The funny thing was that I was also sure that I'd get exposed any second for not being on the list, or some such. I remember going to the Nirvana unplugged taping with a friend and our seats were way at the back of the room. So when, as we walked in, I saw two empty chairs closer to where the band was set up, I just kept walking to those instead, hoping my friend would follow. He did and when we sat down, I realized that we would need to do a little outer attitude adjustment to give off the vibe that these were our seats. Amazingly, what I expressed on the outside did wonders for what was happening on the inside. I started to believe my don't-you-know-who-I-am attitude even as l was shutting the door on the inner voice that was saying, Yes, you are the person who is meant to be sitting in the second-from-the-last row. Funny thing is, no one even looked at us sideways or came up to claim the seats as their own. Why would they? Whoever they belonged to seemed to just find another place to be. And it made me think that a lot of people around us were scrambling to convince themselves that they belonged just as we were—except maybe the lead singer of Hole and the production crew. I know for a fact that at least two members of the band were skeptical of their own power.

Ah, self-possession. A friend of mine was in town recently whose confidence in the face of strange social situations is epic. I once watched as he convinced Snoop Dogg at a Grammy after-party to make an ice-cream sundae for him by pretending that they were old friends. And it was because J acted so natural with him that Snoop actually believed that they were pals from the past, and there is no more unlikely person that Mr. D-to-the-G would have been friends with than J. It was incredible though how for one full hour (or so it seemed), this paragon of all things tall and high thought J was the man. Other people were hovering and acting nervous around the entertainer, while my friend J was telling the Snoopy Dogg Dog exactly where they were going to go next and what they were going to do. It wasn't until the tall one was spooning rainbow sprinkles on J's sundae that he seemed to snap out of it, looked over and said, Hey, man, who the fuck are you anyway? Then my friend stuck out his hand and officially introduced himself. This kind of brash confidence was an amazing learning curve for me. Not only in a business where what you seem to be is oftentimes the exact sum of what you are, but as far as life itself was concerned. Confidence begetting opportunity more often than the other way around.

That's not to say that there weren't uh-oh moments where a less disruptive choice could have been made instead. I mean, J and I did inadvertently lose one of our coworkers at a downtown NYC sex club that we thought would be a fun place to take a band that the label was trying to sign. The band, who were from the great pacific northwest, took one look at the name (begins with a V) and location (the pre-Jeffrey meat-packing district) and never even stepped inside. For some reason, though, the three of us thought it would still be fun to enter. A nanosecond after we'd entered, I was ready to flee. That was when we realized that we were one human short of what we'd come in with. I trusted that J could perform a rescue mission without me and left. Our coworker was found in a back room, having wandered through the wrong door on the way to the bathroom (which, to begin with, is somewhere you should never think of going in a place like this) and ending up in some kind of all-male crisco show. (Don't even try to put visuals with that.) J made like one of those tarmac guys who wheels the planes in and out (see visual) and led him to safety a few shades paler than he'd gone in, but not altogether damaged. We never discuss the situation. But even then I realized that this could have been much worse if J hadn't had the absolute confidence that he would find our friend and deliver him to safety. Plus I knew that it would make for a good story in future (like about a day later, actually).

Now I find that when I call on my inner rock star, I can rise to many occasions that may otherwise terrify me. It's all in the knowledge that there is no wrong way to go. Kick out the jams, my friend.