I Love Beards! Yes, Beards!

To all of the places that I have known. To all of the places that I have known. To all of the places that I have known. To all of the places that I have known!

I have this visualization of my best friend sitting in first chair next to her rival saxophone player, the heavy brass instrument hanging beside her. He only got to be first chair about twice during middle school, because everyday after school she was forced to practice for two hours to keep that chair. To keep that passion of music. And then when high school came she divided her time between drama after school and marching band before. After graduating from college she moved to New York City and then L.A. to pursue a career in acting. She left that saxophone in her parents house in Virginia.

About a month or two ago when she finally gave up her dreams of being an actress, she started a music blog (it's linked underneath my faded beach picture, selectbypush) and started writing music reviews for popmatters.com. She also got an internship at a record label to really start getting into the business. Her blog is all about the bands that are going to be at Coachella, where we are meeting in a couple of days.

I don't feel like she's really giving anything up, actually. And for her, music never really went away. She's just rediscovering her passion for it. She's brought out that old saxophone and she's finally starting to play it in front of people.

It is called Bunkerhill Saloon and it's on the outskirts of downtown old Vegas. It's basically on a street of apartment complexes and I think as we pull up that we could discover another side of Vegas tonight. When we walk in the opening band is still playing and a couple people are dancing at this old bar and I see beards and flannel shirts and I think: this really could be something. I'm immediately in North Carolina, but this lasts about twenty minutes.

By the time Akron/Family sets up their equipment themselves, half the crowd is drunk or has left. There's about ten of us who are really interested in what's going on and as they begin to play some ass hole by the bar yells: "you suck!" The bass player gladly dedicates their set to him before the second song. It's just three of them, and they are loud, folk, electric, and amazing. I think I'll leave the music writing to my best friend and my roommate, but it truly was one of the best shows I've ever been to. It was seven bucks, a couple of PBR's, and a reminder of how important music is to me in my life.

After the show we tell them what a great job they did, my roommate buys a t-shirt and we say we'll see them at Coachella this weekend. Thursday night we are heading out to the campground after my roommate gets off of work. I was going to go into work an hour early today to get the schedule ready for when our manager gets back into town. We've had a couple of people quit recently, so I've already got to adjust the schedule accordingly. I'll never really know what makes people tick or how people find what they are passionate about, but I feel like something is tilting in my life, spilling over.

I'm already late sitting here writing this blog. I think I'll stay and keep listening to music with my patio door open. I think I'll go into work when I'm supposed to and know that I can get it done later. For right now, I just want to hang out and enjoy some music and think about this weekend...

Blogaversary.

One year ago I started this crazy thing. So I officially know exactly what I was doing a year ago today. Whole Foods, gas prices (75 cents cheaper), Virginia Tech shootings, going to work, the way the weather felt that day, listening to Wilco, going to coffee.

Honestly, I'm just having a weird day. But I wanted to write because it's been one year and it's weird. Just having a blog and writing about myself is weird.

While Hiking at Red Rock...

rocks hardwired to other rocks slipping underneath your gray newbalance shoes luon sticking to a cactus picked out over raw hummus and smoothies and sun gazing over a fake lake paddle boats old school style any style two men smoking cigarettes and one has risked his life for the other you can just tell by the way they swagger around each other and you sit and enjoy some fake grass after trying to catch up on the way up the desert mountain and on the way down you were like a cat, impressive and red cheeks and nose dry in that desert and the strip was tiny, you crushed the stratosphere with your index and thumb all those people making bad decisions below you and earth and breeze and some cashews and dates pictures being taken and remembered one after another with sweat frozen with dust to your forehead and it's so nice to have a day off and see the red rocks in the distance one after another laying on each other so soft and curled up and sitting, one leg on top of the other, you talk about things that have been, travels to what you considered the edge of the earth and to you it's impossible to only have been as far east as Chicago but then again the last time you were in Portland you were four and things scramble on the way down you turn and scale a mountain and miss a yoga class and things don't seem to bother you as much as they used to even as he moves way out ahead of you and even when on the way up you pointed out your family dynamic in a group of friends your mom in the car your dad way up ahead and sister mediating in the middle brother off missing somewhere and you taking a break near the bottom and when you see them at the top the you has wondered off and made it up first and you take a picture of yourself and he then takes a picture of you in a bridge pose and yoga makes you heal and wonder about these kinds of things wandering around the mountain and you both can even see Utah from here and then driving to go get those smoothies and sit by the lake you stop by a neighborhood with hills of fake grass and both see your teenage years in a flash of smoke and you put your broken sunglasses on, crooked on your sunburned nose and you move slowly to something tired, something rested, something unheard of before now...

I think I'll spend my whole life deciding if this is true or not.

I woke up on Sunday morning in an awful mood that I just couldn't shake. Even though I had plenty of sleep the night before and I was getting ready to go to a Steve Ross workshop across town. He was the first person I ever did yoga with, on the Oxygen network, in my living room in Virginia. In the house I grew up in my kitchen is attached to the living room, so my family was hanging around as I tried to concentrate on postures. "Does that really do anything?" my brother asked me mid-pose. "Can't you see I'm sweating?"

My dad firmly believes (he only firmly believes in anything, it's never a half-assed thing for him) that people are born with certain dispositions. Who they are is who they are, and there is no changing that. There are certain things one can do throughout life to adapt to situations, but generally people are set in their ways from very early on.

My new roommate and I went together to the yoga class; he went to a coffee shop to write while I went to my yoga class. In the car and earlier that morning I was just being an ass hole the whole time. I couldn't shake this bad mood and I was taking it all out on him. Telling him I needed space and that I was one of those abnormal people in that I needed time to myself for about two hours a day or I get really impatient with people around me. It was a similar conversation to the ones we used to have when we were dating. I just went right back to that formula.

It's all really silly, anyway. Even as I got to the yoga class, one I'd been looking forward to all month; I couldn't really process how I was feeling. The kind of yoga that Steve Ross teaches is relaxed but intense; basically he wants you to eventually come into your own true self. At least, that's how I see it. He plays hip hop music and expects you to not take yourself so seriously. Toward the end of the class he leaned down to me while I was stretching in a hip-opening pose and said: You're quiet today. Is it working for you? I stubbornly answered : YES!