To speak into the void.
So I’ve had this idea simmering on the front burner of my brain for several months now. But first, I should probably introduce myself, or do a bio, or something. Maybe this will take several parts, because I’ve never tried to write a bio, and I feel like I’ve done a good job living unconventionally with my first 30 years here…
I was born in ATL, Georgia, that is. No brothers or sisters. Great parents. Always totally behind me for some reason. I got pretty mediocre grades at the private school they sent me to, and spent most of my time getting in trouble. Nothing big ever, no real cause for concern, I just didn’t really feel like fitting into their mold over there. I realize now in hindsight that I left high school with pretty low self esteem after being told for half of my life what an underachiever I was, how much potential I had that if I just “applied myself”. I had some really good friends, though, and at some point found music.
I’d been in the school band since 6th grade, trombone. I realize now that I never knew how to read music. I think I learned the parts by listening to whomever I was sitting next to. That amazes me in hindsight, but nobody picked up on it, least of all me. I was that into the trombone anyway, I was much more into the drums. I used to get on my band directors nerve because as soon as we got into the room I’d be back in the percussion section, not learning the trombone parts.
“Why didn’t you just switch to percussion?” you might ask..
“Because we need trombones” was the answer I got for years and years whenever I asked to switch to percussion.
There was one time that I was really into building model planes. I didn’t use plastic cement, for some reason I used a hot glue gun. It was messy and my models turned out looking like crap, but that’s not the point. One time I’d set my glue gun down, with it pointing into my glass of water. It had dripped some hot glue into the glass, apparently, right before I took a sip. I burned the crap out of my top lip and had a huge ugly scab for weeks. The band concert was coming up that week. I couldn’t play the trombone. I got to be a percussionist for a week. It was like heaven. I couldn’t read music for the bass drum either, but I damn sure could make the part up. Nobody ever knew, and I never told them. I totally forgot about that until now.
Anyway, at some point I got more or less kicked out of the band. I skipped a mandatory concert to go on a youth group trip with my church. I asked them if I could skip the concert to go on a youth group trip and they said “no”. This would’ve been a reasonable answer, except that five minutes before my best friends James had asked them if he could go on the exact same trip that I was asking to go on, and they told him “sure”. So I went anyway. Now I remember why. Amazing this blogging…
Anyway, now I’m in a band, and right now I’m on a tour bus heading to the GA theater in Athens. I’ve got some time to kill, so I’ll keep catching you up, whoever you are. At this rate, I’ll get to my big idea in another 20 posts or so.