Stardate 31

I'm gonna take flak from some Trekkies about that title.


Two things happened today which fell on opposite ends of the 'cool' spectrum, and both were in relation to previous posts. The wicked cool thing was that I got to play music, not once, but TWICE today. This, of course following my childish display yesterday when I whined about not playing as much anymore. The other thing was that I got called out by Kristen (who is actually Brian) in the comment section of day 29's post. She/he pointed out, and I'm still trying to figure out how this happened, that I met someone... two times. So, in the interest of actually meeting 365 different people this year, I give you yet another twofer. You people are the luckiest blog followers I know.


First, I met Heather. She played hand drums and sang backup for Rob at an open mic I went to tonight. (I met Rob, too. He'll be back later in the show.) Heather had some good chops. I told her so afterwards. She told me that she'd lost her boyfriend to a political party recently. Yes. You read that right. I think it was because I met her among her friends, but she had no problem sharing that and some other personal stories with me. A guy she met 30 seconds earlier. I really appreciated her candor. Too often I keep these types of conversations surface-level. Not with Heather, though. She encouraged me to be more honest with people. Not to give my life story to everybody I meet, mind you. Just to be more transparent about who I am and how my day has gone.


Next, I met Rob. To be fair, I've played music with him before. I just never met him. I know that sounds weird, but he was in a room with some 20-odd (some, very odd *rim-shot*) other musicians. I just walked in and started playing. There weren't many introductions. Tonight, however, I actually met him. Rob's a very good musician. This meant that I talked to him like I talk to all very good musicians: I tried to sound cool. Cool and very informed. There are some bands I only mention in this context. They tend to be really on-the-fringe of some made up genre which only I've ever heard of. I mention these bands to sound cool. It rarely works outside the confines of my brain, but I try anyway. Once I dropped the name-dropping routine, we actually had a good conversation. We talked about local open mics and some ups and downs of local music. I learned something from him. This was more of a self taught lesson, but Rob helped me see that I should shut my pie hole and listen to people sometimes. I know this sounds contradictory to what I learned from Heather, but I don't think either lesson can be too generally used. I just have to work on a person-to-person basis.