Just saw “Up in the Air,” and don’t know if I should be depressed or not. Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney, is the quintessential road-warrior, who spends over 300-days a year business traveling and he loves it. He’s a firing expert who works for a firm that gets called in when it’s time for lay-offs. The job isn’t “fun” but he’s found a balance that works for him and it doesn’t include any relationship commitments. His foil is 23-year-old Natalie Keener, played by Anna Kendrick, who has come in to make the job more efficient with technology. She has her whole life mapped out and it’s completely the opposite from Ryan’s.

The movie is basically about life choices and the stories that we tell ourselves to make these choices work. Ryan’s life is a set package and he’s happy. But he has to contend with those around him who are convinced that he’s made a mistake by not settling down and making a lasting relationship investment. Sans the mega-frequent-flier mileage and movie-star good-looks, I seem to resemble those contentions. Alas, it’s been my observation that most of us make these life choices long before we’re even aware that we have a choice. Those first few years after high school and those first few years out of college, set us on paths that tend to be impossible to break away from. And most choose not to, and make their lives there, for good or bad. Then there are those of us who get a wake-up call and/or have a higher expectation for ourselves.

For a long time I was jealous of this one friend, a fellow Biola University graduate, who seemed to be on this straight path, right through his undergrad (in accounting), working for a Newport Beach firm and marrying the boss’ daughter. There was none of this meandering that I’d already done to that point, going from one university to the next, and several majors along the way. Then I found out some time later that he quit the firm and that he and his wife had bought a water-bed retail store. He was happy being the salesman while the wife (also an accounting grad) worked the books. Life is funny that way.

zen fountain by joe bustillos

Oddly, as much as I seem to have not fostered any romantic attachments for a number of years, unlike the Ryan character, I’m not cynical about such connections. I like to think that I’ve decided that being alone is better than being with someone who isn’t right for me. And truthfully, at my age, with the moving across the country and the getting kicked out of my doctorate program and buying a new place and working at a teaching position that doesn’t recognize the 40-hour work week, I’ve chosen to not go out there and find someone. It can suck around the holidays, but I have more than a few friends who’ve confessed to having fantasies about sleeping alone and not having to put up with their mate’s chatter. So, life-choices. I’d like to find the important connections in life. I guess I just have to do it in a way that works for me and so far I haven’t found it. I’m at that age where if I go out and do something or some activity it’s because, at it’s core, I enjoy doing that thing. I’m not going to do it “to meet chicks.” I do need to get off my ass, but just because it matters to do the things you love as often as possible. Life-choices.

Peteca toma seu banho by elbragon

Then Brother Matt mentioned during his recent Florida visit that my current and persistent lack of a girlfriend was causing mom to openly worry whether I’ve changed my gender preferences. Thanks mom. The truth is I’m beginning to wonder: have I become lazy, too cautious or too picky when it comes to dating?

This is hardly a new phenomenon. I went through a pretty long dry spell after breaking up with a live-in girlfriend in the early 90s. One friend spoke up at the time and said that he and my other friends were worried that I’d given up on having someone in my life. I was just beginning my teaching career and pretty much every waking hour and ounce of emotional energy was being poured into surviving those first few years. I thought I was, for the first time, being smart and acting like an adult. Apparently not. Damn.

past girlfriends by joe bustillos

Another friend, who knew that I’d been very fortunate with the level of attractiveness of my former girlfriends and female friends, said that I needed to expand my preferences beyond curvy playboy playmates. Out of frustration she quipped that at our age all the good ones were already taken anyway.That one left a scar. I mean, if all the good ones are taken and I’m not taken then does this mean that I’m not one of the “good ones?” Shit. That didn’t leave me with a particularly hopeful sense of having a future with someone I found attractive.

So at least one part of moving across the continent over a year ago was to get a new start on social things. And as much as I’d been warned to not have high expectations by two very good friends who have lived in the area (I mean, after all I’ve spent a lifetime spoiled by all the pretty people in Southern California), my dateless-state is not for a lack of attractive women where ever one goes. So, again, am I being lazy, overly cautious or just too picky? Sitting here staring at these words reminds me that the fact that I reflect and try to think through all of this is just not normal for guys, so my well-meaning friends say. Ack.

When I was in the process of moving here one friend suggested a couple websites, like meetup.com, where one could easily meet like-minded individuals centered on common interests. I signed up but never got off my butt. Another avenue to meet new people would have been to join a church. I used to inwardly chuckle when someone suggested that I should check in to see the size of the singles group before getting involved. But I couldn’t see making my choice of church based on some babe-meter. I had other issues about churches, so I never really even considered this as a meaningful option. In fact, being as busy as I’ve been over the past year, getting involved with anything for the purpose of meeting women hasn’t been enough. Put another way, there has to be a value to the thing beyond just meeting women. I am the complete inverse of several of my good buddies who’s main reason for doing anything is to meet women. That’s just not me. Don’t get me wrong, I love meeting new people and I generally find the people I encounter fascinating, but given how busy I am there are scant few hours dedicated to meeting these fascinating people.

One of the take-aways of my last relationship was how much better things seemed to come together for me when I’m in a relationship just in terms of energy and a sense of purpose. It’s not that I need someone for these things as much as having the benefit of someone to share the journey with, just in terms of bouncing ideas off of and getting outside of my own head on a regular ongoing basis. At the same time I do have a very full life with my career and writing and just the stuff that fills each day that I’m not entirely convinced that having as much freedom as I have isn’t much better than the complications of letting another voice into my life. Part of the problem is that I am very good at adapting to living all on my own and convincing myself that I really don’t need anyone. Too lazy, overly cautious or just too picky? I think I need to work the “friends” angle and just get out more to be with other people and find the joy there. No pretenses, no props, no re-inventions, nothing that’s not really a part of my life and passions. I’ll dare to go to the park without the borrowed dog and see what happens. jbb

Jessica at Laguna Lake by TravOC

Sources:
Image: Peteca toma seu banho by elbragon, http://www.flickr.com/photos/elbragon/3183246877/ retrieved on 10/15/2009, Creative commons/attribution license.
Image: Past Girlfriends by Joe Bustillos, http://joebustillos.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/mygirls-1.gif retrieved 10/15/2009. Creative Commons/attribution license.
image: Jessica at Laguna Lake by TravOC, http://www.flickr.com/photos/travoc/89394031/ retrieved on 10/15/2009, Creative Commons/attribution license.

What would you do if (name-redacted) sent you a friend request on FB? Would you confirm or ignore . . . I still regularly think about (different name-redacted) – almost daily. I’m worried I can never get past her. And yes, I just got a friend request from her.

image by clipart.com

I’d been letting my “being-too-busy” dictate my social life (or the lack thereof) lately… okay, for the past year. But this dilemma required a response, so I sent the following back to my buddy:

Good question. First I’d be totally shocked because (name-redacted) isn’t an Internet “social networking” person. Second, I would be suspicious of her motives. All that said, I’d probably confirm. It’d be fun for a few days and them I’d remember that it didn’t work face-to-face, there’s even less for me via FB. Then I’d move on, per se, as one can move on from someone who’d previously defined ones life and crushed ones heart.

I have been over a year now without affection and intimacy in my life and that’s because of her. I think about her pretty much every day too, but I think of her as the one who had the chance to have everything I could give and rejected that so completely that I had to move to the opposite end of the continent, away from everything I knew and loved, so that I might start a new life and find someone to love me. I wish her well but in my mind I can’t get past the fact that she chose to not be in my life when I offered it. Now, it does help that I’ve benefited in every way imaginable by this rejection beginning with my job, to my friends here, to the new place I’ll be moving into in about two-weeks. But I think of her as the “oh well” in my life. I know Holly would ask, but if she said that she’s got it all figured out and she wants me back, what would I do?

There’s a danger being overly definitive about previous relationships, but my ability to trust her on any meaningful level has been permanently damaged. There’s no way in hell that I’d leave what I have going for myself in Orlando “to be with her.” If she said she’d come out here I wouldn’t believe it or trust her. The latter would be very destabilizing if it were to really happen (awkward!). Nope, I left everything I had to give. That well is complete dry. I gave up over a tenth of my life to her, almost to my own ruin. She’s not entitled to any more of me. I have to integrate all of that back into my life and be present in the good that is a part of my life now. Like i said, she’s the “oh well” of the past six years of my life.

And you, my friend, have got to do the same with your former flame. As (name-redacted)‘s psychologist once described me (not knowing that we were still seeing each other): “he was a wonderful memory which will give you warm feelings later in life, but nothing in the here and now.” amen, end of chapter. Hope this helps. Much love, jbb

image by neva

Over a year ago I wrote about my friend Neva:

I wasn’t living in Long Beach when Melissa Etheridge made her breakthrough playing locally at a club called Que Sera on 7th Street (funny that her wikipedia article doesn’t mention Que Sera), but every time I come out and watch Neva I think I’m seeing the beginning of the same thing. – neva rocks taco beach! *video* – May 4, 2008

I don’t remember how long I’d been going to my favorite watering hole, Taco Beach, when I happened to be there on a night when Neva was performing. Nothing formal or flashy, just an acoustic guitar and amazing voice playing over the bar PA, taking the passing attention of the audience between their conversations and drinking. Doing a solo acoustic set in that setting was not for the faint of heart. The audience wasn’t overly obnoxious or disruptive, but I’ve seen pretty talented musicians stare down at the floor, reduced to mumbling through their songs because they couldn’t break through the conversational sound-barrier. Sometimes it seemed to take a whole band to grab the audience’s attention, or at least something electric and loud. Neva had a backing-band a couple of times, but most of the time it was just her and her guitar and she was able to get the whole place rockin’ in her direction.

Wanting to be a supportive fan I checked out her MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/nevamusic and was met by the typical unappealing sprawl of a page where she’d post a poster for an upcoming gig that broke the pages frame and left one scrolling in all directions because one couldn’t see the whole poster at once (NOTE: I’ve shrunk the example page so that the viewer can see the whole poster at once. Notice that the list of gig dates along the right column are entirely illegible and the multi-spacing added to the confusion). Of course almost all MySpace pages are noted for their amateur quality. Regardless of the visual quality of her MySpace, between her MySpace and Facebook accounts she’s been able to muster up an online following of more than 800 folks. It’s difficult to figure out how many fans she has who are not online, but I’d guess that the online number is only a third of the folks who come out to see her shows (this guess is entirely based on the wide variety of folks who attend the shows I’ve seen, from college kids to retirees). Anyway, over the years I started taking pictures of her gigs and posted the results on my Flickr account. Then I started to shoot some video. I’ve only managed to edit and post one “performance” video and one “slide show” video (the latter video being mostly about my moving away from So Cal, Taco Beach & neva concerts). We talked on occasion about her website, but nothing came of it. Then she moved from Southern California to Lake Tahoe and I moved to Florida.

Just before I left So Cal I heard that she was working on a studio recording and eagerly bought the six-song set when it came out last February.We talked a couple times and she was doing pretty good with the CD but wanted to sell a lot more and joked that she’d sold a copy to all of her friends and family and still had a lot to sell before she would get to the point of having paid for the studio time and CD manufacturing. One of my first thoughts was that she’s not exactly living in a music mecca, living near Lake Tahoe. But then over the past few years I’d been following the careers of a few successful independent artists and part of the key to their successes was generating Internet buzz and gathering a much bigger following than they ever could with just public performances.

Lessons Learned From Those Who Went Before

The first on the list is a former software writer who decided to celebrate the birth of his first child by quitting his job and going fulltime with his music career. Jonathan Coulton built a strong following with the technorati in part because he spoke their language and found a way to be quirky, funny and touching usually all at the same time. Coulton produced and released two CDs, Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow and Smoking Monkey by 2004. Podcasting was just then taking off and Coulton offered to help his friends who were experimenting with the medium. But what really seemed to help Coulton was that he offered every song from the two CDs as a free download on his website. He understood that the free music would help generate a lot of interest and buzz and that at the same time those who became real fans would willingly buy his CDs (which were just one click away on the CD Baby website). The combination of speaking fluent geek and free-to-buy worked perfectly. But that alone does not a successful career make. Coulton kept interest up by deciding that the following year he would record and release one song a week for the whole year, and following the success of the last releases, he offered the recordings on his website for free, with the understanding that there would be CD collections made following the end of the year. Thus, the incredibly successful “Thing a Week” project was born, which resulted in a four-part Thing-a-Week CD collection. This past month Coulton released a follow-up CD/DVD project, BEST. CONCERT. EVER., recorded from concerts performed over the previous year, which includes fan-video, internet personalities and various interviews.

Looking at Coulton’s website one would not assume that this is the work of a genius, or wunderkind self-promoter. It’s basically an old-school unglitzy blog, low on graphics, big on text, with a tiny header and row of tiny buttons/links along the right column. It’s definitely the kind of thing that a former software writer turned successful musician might produce. But if one digs a bit below the text, one will discover that Coulton does two things right. One: everything a fan might want to know about him and his music, including the lyric, guitar song-sheets and the download-able songs are all just a click away. Two: he welcomes fan music videos, fan concert videos and fan involvement with his wiki and forums. And maybe this is the biggest key to his success, he came from and is still part of the community that now supports him. There’s no cult of personality or detached stardom. There a genuineness that bands and artists from major labels can’t hope to pull off. There’s no promotion machine trying to convince us that we want to listen to him. Just the craziness of his songs and simplicity of his performances are enough to general real interest and fun.

The next role model, Geoff Smith, is a Nashville musician who splits his time performing in a piano bar that partly owns, running a successful musical ringtone business (using a free/plus-premium model), writing jingles and doing live-video-streaming concerts with and for his friends, most notibly Cali Lewis from Geek Brief TV. The first time I saw Smith was one night during the holiday season a couple years ago. He’d turned on his web-cam and was streaming live-video from his living room, sitting at the piano taking requests from the chatroom that was attached to the live stream. He spent the whole evening playing Christmas songs mixed in with a little Beatles and other pop-tunes, bouncing between his piano to acoustic guitar. His talent was obvious and his enthusiasm and playfulness made for a very fun night watching this stranger from across the country while I worked on whatever project I was working on at the time. Not too surprisingly, Smith’s website conveys a lot more personality right away, but it’s also very user-friendly and transparent for the fans. In an email correspondence I asked Smith a bit about the blogging platform he was using, because I recognized the WordPress theme as being related to the one that I’ve been using for the past few years (Revolution, which became StudioPress by Brian Gardener). Smith confessed that he didn’t know too much about the inner workings of the blog because he has a friend doing that part of the business.

Like Coulton before him, Smith connected himself to many of the A-List podcasters, offering his services as a jingle writer and performer. He also offered his fans something a little different from Coulton’s free-to-buy method. Smith recorded a CD, Ones and 0s, and if you bought it directly from his website you’d get a bonus track subscription which entitles you to download new songs/videos that he updates on an ongoing basis. He recently released the 21st upgrade track from the CD. Buzz, community, relationship and using online/new technology to connect with the community/fans.

neva-music.com version one

neva-music.com version 1 by joe bustillos

The website is important, but as we learned from the two examples cited above, it’s completely meaningless without the willingness of the artist to be available to the community and fans in a way that was never realized (or really possible) in the pre-Internet world. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Ustream, Stickam, these are all tools to connect artist with community/audience. Getting past the fad-ish attention these technologies are getting from the general media, these tools can revolutionize relationships for those willing to let them into their lives. Transparency, genuineness, vulnerability, real-ness.

A couple things were paramount in my mind as I was putting the website together: 1) promote the brand, 2) make the  CD easy to get, 3) make the calendar/gig schedule easy to find, 4) make the website very visual. As I noted above, Neva’s MySpace and Facebook pages were none of these things. The best part of the MySpace page was that her music started to play as soon as you landed on the site, there was usually a giant poster about her next gig or schedule of gigs for the month dominating the page and way below everything else fans could make comments. But visually it was chaotic and her name didn’t stand out all that much. It looked like everyone else’s page.

1. So I put her name and image way up front (more in #4).
2. More could be done to promote the CD and make purchasing it more obvious. I found a “discography” widget that was made to list the CD and  the singles with links built in to sell the CD and singles. She just has the link to sell the whole CD, It’s a work in progress. I love how Geoff Smith has icons on the footer of his page connected to all of his products/projects, and these icons are persistent across all of the pages of his blog.
3. I wanted to put some kind of calendar on the front page that was click-able to info about where and when she’d be doing her next gig. I found a widget that did the gig thing in a list form. It’s a lot more clear than the MySpace version, with click-able links to venue information and maps. But having a calendar would have been visually more involving. I created a calendar using Google Calendar that I could embed in her website, but didn’t get it working the way I wanted.
4. Besides being a talented writer and performer Neva is very easy on the eyes and WordPress template(s) I’ve been using have become more and more visual. Color, image, feeling, I prefer this version of a promotional website to what she previously had on MySpace and Facebook.

So, this is still version one. Supporting community/fan communication is essential and this model only allows for comments to individual posts. The other thing is that i don’t know how much or if Neva is going to want to do individual update (e.g., blog entries). Additionally, I’m considering an experiment using the SquareSpace online publishing/blogging platform because it takes the layout/visual webpage/website design up a whole level. It has the design sense of iWeb without the irritating template limitations.

Big Picture: Facilitating Community

As the technology/Internet coach, I see my part of this as the one to find a way for Neva to comfortably interact with her community using the these tools. She knows her audience. She knows the people she wants to work with, on the music end of things. My part is to help her get started using these tools to communicate her beautiful voice to an Internet audience. jbb

Sources:

Image: Neva in an Alley, http://www.myspace.com/nevamusic

Image: screen-grab by Joe Bustillos, Neva’s MySpace, retrieved on 7/27/2009

Image: screen-grab by Joe Bustillos, JonathanCoulton.com, retrieved on 7/27/2009

YouTube Video: When You Go by Jonathan Coulton, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPBsSlYYezc&feature=player_embedded, retrieved on 7/27/2009

Image: screen-grab by Joe Bustillos, theGeoffSmith.com, retrieved on 7/27/2009

YouTube: I’m a Twit by Geoff Smith, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3biEam1_GgY&feature=player_embedded, retrieved on 7/27/2009

Image: screen-grab by Joe Bustillos, neva-music.com, retrieved on 7/28/2009

Image/slideshow: nevamusic @ Taco Beach by Joe Bustillos, http://www.flickr.com/photos/joebustillos/sets/72157603250930056/, retrieved on 7/28/2009

image by joe bustillos

In the time that I’ve had my one dating experience most relationships have gone through whole life-cycles from discovery to death. Truth be told, the vast majority of my time with e-harmony I haven’t been actively pursuing anything as much as kept the service in my emotional back-pocket as a “Plan B.” I had a lot of fun the first few months when I was convinced that my former relationship was over and loved the possibility of meeting someone who was specially selected for me. Then that former relationship came back… kind’a. Well, it didn’t quite come back as much as it just took an extended period to expire. In the meantime, some of the air was let out of my e-Harmony expectations to the point where I just kept the subscription so that I could feel like there was a possibility of something for me in the future. Then when that former relationship really expired (for real this time!), it took almost all of my ability to trust myself and relationships with it. At that point I kept the e-Harmony account because I wasn’t ready to kill it too. Lately I’ve been thinking that it’s time to change a few things.

Something a match wrote in her profile reminded me of a quote from one of my favorite movies, American Beauty, when the main character, played by Kevin Spacey, is accused of being a bastard, to which he says, “Nope; I’m just an ordinary guy who has nothing left to lose.” In my case, with 1,251 rejections to my name, I’m clearly doing something wrong and I most definitely have nothing to lose. It should also go without saying that I’m counting on my results turning out way better than how things turned out for Lester Burnham, the American Beauty character by Kevin Spacey.

So, I started to think about putting some effort into opening up the social circle using Meet-Up.com to get out and hang out with folks with similar interests. I’ve also been hearing good things about the Plenty of Fish dating site. But none of that is all that different from what I’ve been doing for ages. So, the “got nothing to lose” twist is that I’m thinking that, given how much I post online, I should include a link to my Facebook profile (or this blog) in my e-harmony profile or whatever website I sign up for.

This definitely isn’t a plan that Dr. Warren from e-Harmony would recommend and there is a definite danger of giving away too much information too quickly, which is a bit like insisting on telling one’s whole life story when someone just asks “how ya doin’?” And there’s the risk that being this open makes it more difficult to walk away from an unwanted match if the match is persistent. Of course, once someone that I meet online knows my name all of this information is just a Google-search away anyway. So, what do I gain from this level of exposure? It counteracts the possibility that someone is going to close a match because nothing popped out at them in my initial profile or in my answers to their five questions. If they click the links they’ll get to know the things that are important enough to me for me to write about (assuming that they’d bother with the links… which is a big assumption).

Another thing that I’m thinking about here is that I’ve always seemed to do best in my relationships that were more based on friendship first, where the level of communication is left as open as possible, where there’s no real fear that saying the wrong thing might chase the other person away. This idea does run a risk that has been a running theme of my relationships with females, of always being seen as the buddy and never as the lover. But I’d much rather do the work needed to be the lover with the foundation of a kick-ass friendship than be someone’s lost weekend with nothing to talk about in between (not that I’m having to turn anyone away… [sigh]). I do have to work on a lot of bad habits, beginning with putting almost no effort into meeting or spending time with new people. I love having a lot of control of how I spend my time, but Life is passing me by while I ponder the words of this blog entry. Onward and upward: “I’m just an ordinary guy with nothing to lose.”

Sources:
image: Emotional Cut-Out by Joe Bustillos, © 2009 · Some Rights Reserved ·

video: American Beauty: Trailer, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q3ltyPJJMQ Retrieved 7/10/2009

image: mouseguy, microsoft clip-art

Originally uploaded by fensterbme

It was Valentine’s weekend for some. For me it was just another weekend spent grading student blogs. But after reading an article in the UK’s Telegraph online newspaper titled, “Valentine’s Day: Technology is killing romance,” one of my students wrote a blog entry weighing the article’s premise that, because of technology, people don’t write love poems or letters to each other anymore. She said that a survey of over two-thousand people revealed that 62% had never sent a love letter (via the postal service). At the same time most everyone said that they had sent a text-message love note. My student shrugged that even though a text message isn’t anywhere as good as a real love letter, a text message is better than nothing. I’ve heard this one before: if it’s not on paper, written by hand, it’s just not as real. I don’t mean to be cruel or even crude, but I think that’s just bullshit.

Well, I was a little gentler when I began my response:

I’m curious, what is it in an electronic Valentine’s message that make is not “expressing yourself with your own thoughts”? I’ve been known to use every communication means at my disposal to let my beloved know that I was thinking of her. From 140 character text messages, to “Hello” IMs, to overly long voice-messages, to rambling emails, I found the “electronic” experience to have a certain level of “presence” that I didn’t experience before. Granted I might have over-used said technologies.. a bit… resulting in … let’s just say that my options are very flexible these days. But that’s not because of technology, that’s because some folks just don’t know how to put one word after another in a coherent (and passionate) manner. What’s that old saying about a good painter never blaming his tools…

long-haired writer

On a completely different note I was just told by a potential “match” that my e-Harmony profile photo was “a little scary.” WTF? It makes one second guess. The photo is dark and pencil-sketchy. Does that translate into dangerous and scary? I haven’t taken an official teacher-photo in several years so I’ve been using Photo-booth pix. Good thing I didn’t use any of the fun-house effects. I really shouldn’t let these things bother me, but I do wonder at how often I’ve been bumped off because of some misperception beginning with my profile photo. Then again, someone unable to appreciate something a little artsy probably isn’t going to work well with my continual self-assessment and re-interpretations of my self. Damn. Of course, having posted this photo of myself for the millionth time, I probably come off as totally self-obsessed and self-absorbed. I switched my profile photo to a “I voted” shot, which will probably piss off someone because it’s “political.” sigh.

Source: Adams, J. (2009, February 9). Valentine’s Day: Technology ‘is killing romance’. Telegraph. Retrieved http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/technologynews/4568243/Valentines-Day-Technology-is-killing-romance.html

love tattoo by Jenn_Jenn (cc)

The ideal of love is it’s unconditional nature. The closest we usually come to that kind of love is the love between a parent and her child. But even that love has it’s limits, it’s conditions. I know that I’ve come up against my own limitations with a love that I thought was permanent and eternal. I thought I saw the face of God with this love and poured all that I had into it. But I was wrong. Time and trust were broken and I had to walk away. So much for the face of God.

I’m looking for a hard headed woman,
One who’ll take me for myself
And if I find my hard headed woman
I won’t need nobody else, no no no.
- “Hard Headed Woman” by Cat Stevens

I found a level of intimacy that I had never dreamed existed. The face of God. I was inspired to be my best self, not wanting to hide any part of myself but to bring all of it into full expression and creativity. Wherever I thought I lacked I set about to push through to be better, to be the best me because I was renewed by this powerful connection and boundless intimacy. Fearless, complete, committed, doubt-free, a self that I hadn’t seen in over a decade came into existence. A love of my music that had lain silent and had been a forgotten memory rose in me. I saw, I felt, I touched, I tasted, I couldn’t get enough. I became part of something much bigger than myself. The face of God. My world changed. I changed. Then I waited. And waited some more. I waited longer than I ever imagined I was capable of waiting.

He came from somewhere in her long ago,
the sentimental fool don’t see,
tryin’ hard to re-create what had yet to be created
once in her life.
She musters a smile for his nostalgic tale,
never coming near what he wanted to say,
only to realize it never really was.
- “What a Fool Believes” by Michael McDonald

Yeah, I knew better. I understood the circumstances. It all made sense. Clearly it wasn’t what I thought it was. It had been our special secret for so long but in the light of day it was something she’d rather no one else ever knew about. I wanted to shout about it from the mountain tops and she was pained to even acknowledge that i had been a college friend. How could something so powerful be so much the creation of my own head, a delusion that I never asked for? And if that were true, then did I really see the face of God or was that all wishful thinking too?

Hello. How are you?
Have you been alright, through all those lonely lonely lonely lonely lonely nights
That’s what I’d say. I’d tell you everything
If you’d pick up that telephone yeah
Hey. How you feelin?
Are you still the same?
Don’t you realize the things we did, we did, were all for real, not a dream?
I just can’t believe
They’ve all faded out of view yeah yeah
- “Telephone Line” by ELO

I wonder. I never expected for it to happen when it did. Does this mean that if some lovely with a dainty cross necklace smiles at me that I can go back to believing in the Man behind the curtain? Somehow that seems twisted. But there I was a few mornings ago, looking through the profile of one lovely e-harmonette, and the thought struck me that if this were “the one” than would I again become best friends with the Man behind the curtain? I mean, we stopped talking because for all of those years that I spent waiting I was hearing that He knows what I want before I do and wants to give that to me and the fact that it wasn’t happening must mean that A) I’m doing something wrong, B) she’s not “the one, C) Not now, or D) Any combination of A, B, or C. Eventually I began to wonder that it might be: E) there is no Man behind the Curtain.

The best proof of love is trust by dopesmuglar

And as much as I’ve spent the past year living like it’s option E, there is this part of me that needs for there to be someone there to talk to in the darkness of my own soul. At the same time, even if I were to be blessed with the mate of my dreams, how do I trust someone who stood by while my heart was slowly broken and brought to this place of doubt? I’m willing to acknowledge that I got it all wrong but where do I find the place of trust again? Needless to say, none of this is going to be attractive to anyone looking for a Christ-led home and looking for someone to love them like Christ loved the Church. Yeah. I understand the analogy but I’m not even going to pretend to live up to that expectation. I have the hair and the beard, but that’s pretty much the extent of it. Funny thing is, someone who hasn’t gone through this “intimate faith” experience or doesn’t believe in anything doesn’t seem particularly attractive to me either. Alas, I seem to have conditions piled on conditions piled on conditions in my pursuit of unconditional love. Lord help us.

So long, I’ve been looking too hard, I’ve been waiting too long
Sometimes I don’t know what I will find, I only know it’s a matter of time
When you love someone, when you love someone
It feels so right, so warm and true, I need to know if you feel it too

Maybe I’m wrong, won’t you tell me if I’m coming on too strong
This heart of mine has been hurt before, this time I wanna be sure

I’ve been waiting for a girl like you to come into my life
I’ve been waiting for a girl like you, your loving will survive
I’ve been waiting for someone new to make me feel alive
Yeah, waiting for a girl like you to come into my life
- “Waiting for a Girl like You” by Foreigner

I’m so happy that my friend, Neva, has finished her CD, One of these Days, and now my other friends can enjoy a little taste of what I’ve been enjoying from NevaMusic! I say a little taste because the CD’s six tracks are closer to being an EP than full length CD. I guess the adage, “Leave ‘em wanting more,” definitely applies here. Whether you’ve seen Neva’s amazing solo-acoustic shows or caught her in a rare “band gig” the CD captures all of the energy, emotion and personality of this genuine, talented artist. Add to that all of the harmonies and powerful percussion that you may have been hearing in your own head during all of the solo gigs are there. As I’ve written before, I wasn’t living in Long Beach when Melissa Etheridge made her breakthrough playing locally, but every time I hear Neva’s songs I think I’m seeing the beginning of the same thing. I look forward hearing her next recordings and watch her popularity cut through the crap the labels and Reality TV tries to sell us. Neva is the real thing.

“Seven” by Neva from her “One of These Days” CD