Grand plans on a distant horizon

So in answer to the question of whether we had good enough karma, whether we had done enough good deeds, is, well, the family that wanted to buy our house has changed their minds. Their inspector told them the same things we told them, but suddenly it seems to have occurred to them that it's an old house. Wish they'd thought of that before we took it off the market and told prospective buyers it was sold. Feels like there's more to the story than that, but they're looking for the contingency that gets them out of their purchase agreement.

They seemed like such nice people, and they seemed in love with the house, and their dog played with our dog, and we imagined such a happy life for them here. I walked around in a funk all day after I got the news.

South America feels far away again, and I'm heading into the marathon part of the Fringe. Tired, sore, stressed out, and behind on my laundry ... again. Getting too old for this.

In better news, my favorite solo performer and dear friend, Rik, done made a great show last night. I'm biased because I directed the show, and three of my favorite people perform it. But still, it rocked. Rik did Glorious Noise, a show about the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and a quest for a song, at the Fringe last year. It was a good show. Then Katrina hit, which forever changed how anyone thinks of New Orleans.

Rik played pied piper to a little posse of Minnesotans at this year's Jazz Fest, including myself. Found myself walkin' slow, talkin' slow, eatin' crawfish, tappin' my feet in a soulful kinda way, and absolutely in love with the place and the people. When Rik and I started rehearsing his rewritten version of the show, updated to include stories after the storm, I wondered how I could have directed the show before without having eaten Crawfish Monica and been to the Church of Music that is the Jazz Festival.

Anyway, he did the show a week ago, and it didn't click. Good show, and the musicians, they always rock. Good stories. But the whole show, as a journey, just didn't click. Rik knew it, we knew it. But with weekly performances through July, and both Rik and I busy getting ready for Fringe, hard to imagine doing anything about it.

Rik went up north with his girl and jumped in cold water. I had insomnia and sent him a long-ass email telling him it had to be truthful and personal - the latter being his best-ducked form of storytelling.

And then, insanely, he rewrote the whole damn thing. We rehearsed once, and the new version was honest, personal, much darker. Last night he performed the new version. The musicians had one rehearsal, Jake was sick, Allegra's been plenty busy writing her Fringe show, having just popped in off the wait list. Nothing much more terrifying for a performer than performing a whole new script with only one rehearsal, except maybe playing himself telling actual stories from a horrifying and personal experience.

Ten minutes in, I knew he had them. That thing he loves where he knows he can take them with him anywhere. And he took them all the way there. Yeah, like that. I couldn't have been more proud. Made me remember just how much I love art that is a big, brave leap into the sky.

Watching that show with a big silly grin on my face, I forgot all about that house thing. Later, lying awake, with yet more insomnia, I remembered the karmic philosophy that has gotten me cheerfully this far. Which is: fuck karma, fuck grand plans on a distant horizon. Grand plans are the stuff of dreams, sure, but the details belong in the head, not the heart. So I'm happily back on track with my lifelong habit of keeping my heart in the here and now, grabbing the happiness that's right in front of my face, and savoring the hell out of it.

Wow, that sounded kinda Buddhist except for all the swearing. Think I'll take the dog for a walk. It sure is a beautiful day.

Happy birthday Eben!

To the coolest brother anyone could hope for, the best roadtrip partner, the bravest laugher in the theater, the most honest and kind-hearted person I know, my little brother who I guess I'll admit is taller than me.

Please send voodoo

The plan is to run away. Really away. Like people do when they're 23 years old. No home, no jobs, no possessions, no stuff. OK, not quite like we're 23, because well, we're not, and because mostly it's running to, not from. But here's the big difference. We've got more of everything - home, jobs, stuff. Easy enough to quit. Took me two years, but otherwise, yeah, easy enough to quit a job. Easy enough to get people to take our stuff. But we own a house, or rather, there's this big brick thing and a bank that own us.

The domino trail toward escape goes something like this. Before we can go, we need money. Before we can save money, we have to sell the house. Before we can sell the house, we have to find someone who wants to buy it. Before someone will buy it we have to put it up for sale. Before we can put it up for sale, we have to make it pretty. To make it pretty we have to fix things, paint things, put in a fence. Before we can do that we have to go to the hardware store. Before we can go to the hardware store we have to make a list. Why does it always start with a bloody list?

So we've been working our way through the list and yesterday we checked off a big-ass bullet point. We signed a purchase agreement on the house. For our asking price. Too good to be true. There have been so many conversations I didn't really listen to that began with, "so we fell out of escrow ...." I should have listened more closely. I don't know how often that happens.

Is it like one of those urban myths that get repeated so often, the stats get exaggerated? Or is it like miscarriages - so taboo we don't know it happens to everyone all the time?

Despite our best efforts to remain jaded and skeptical, we're pretty fucking excited. If this thing happens that sounds like tumbling out of the back of a fast-moving convertible, we'll be damned depressed. I keep waiting for the phone to ring and Alan checks his email obsessively. I wonder if we'll sustain this kind of suspense for 30 days.

So I'm feeling pretty superstitious. I knock on wood surfaces every time I tell anyone. Hell I'm knocking on my desk right now for putting this in a blog. Wood just doesn't seem good enough though. I'm starting to think about what I would do with a chicken foot. We've got the wishbone from last year's Thanksgiving party, but we're trying to decide at what point we use that up.

What if it's a karma thing? Do we have enough karma built up? Have I been good? And kind? Oh geez, I've got to start helping the elderly and the drunks get on the bus. Better yet, the drunken elderly. Gotta go, good deeds to be done!

Race riots and bus rides

The 14 bus picks up ethnicities in layers, especially outside of rush hours. I love this bus. Yes, I'm much less likely to feel threatened or shocked on the 6, but on the 14, I see a nice representative sample of the people who are Minneapolis and it makes me feel more like I live here.

I suppose there are people who ride other buses, or don't ride buses, and imagine that Minneapolis is pretty white; pretty much like them. And they might have to use their imagination or their stereotypes to visualize how the other folks live. I love the little surprises I get every day watching people living the way they do as they go places. Moms, teenagers, workers, crazies, all kinds, doing their shit their own way while simultaneously sharing close quarters with other kinds doing their shit their way.

On the 14 there are people who talk loudly to strangers, and strangers who answer back, and heated debates about all kinds of controversial issues. If someone talks loudly to a stranger on the 6 everyone gets a little nervous and purses their lips at the stranger. Nobody answers back.

Today, a woman with a Latino accent was holding forth on AIDS. She didn't seem to have a particular point to make except that she knew a lot of people who knew people who caught AIDS from prostitutes or women who brought it with them from various East African countries. She worried about kids being born with it. She worried about her kids catching it. She spoke in a sing-song slang that made her sound not-so-educated, but most of what she was saying was pretty educated. Except maybe the part where she talked about disinfecting her kids so they didn't catch AIDS.

Then a really loud guy who sounded Native kicked into a conspiracy-theory rant about how it wasn't monkeys that started AIDS but our C.I.A. About three other voices quietly threw out a mantra of, "Yeah." But then he added that it was the C.I.A. trying to wipe out Muslim terrorists. A black woman yelled, "You fuckin' idiot, the C.I.A. wasn't even thinking about Muslim terrorists yet when AIDS started." Then an obnoxious white voice yelled louder, "It's niggers."

"What?" The Latino woman was incredulous. The black woman added, "What? It sounded like you just said something about niggers."

"Niggers. It's the fuckin' niggers from Africa."

"You didn't just say nigger on this bus, bitch."

"I don't mean black people. I mean these God damned Africans. The Somalis and Nigerians and shit."

Suddenly lots of people were yelling all different things, and all my white ears could hear was the word "nigger" over and over again in many accents. I couldn't see the people behind me, and I didn't look back. Nobody in front of me looked back. But a number of brown male shoulders stiffened and a lot of African heads cocked.

I'm sitting here waiting for my happy little rainbow commute to turn into a race riot when the bus driver, an old black man with a fabulously deep and authoritative voice gets on the microphone and says, "Alright, alright children, that's enough with the name-callin' back there."

And everyone clears their throat and mumbles and chills.

The bus pulls over for someone's stop and the Latino woman gets off saying, "See you tomorrow." Several voices, no longer yelling, "Yeah, have a nice night."

A new voice in the back says, "Did you hear about that kid who got shot in North Minneapolis?" And civility returns.

I don't like people yelling on my bus. And I hate the n-word. But that freaky conversation scared me a lot less than the paranoid rage I see in the eyes of an SUV driver when an immigrant driver moves too slowly for the morning fuck-you commute.

I wish everyone would ride the 14 bus, just once in a while.

Specialists suck

I’ve come to a revelatory observation about the people in my world. I’ve got an odd collection of friends - so odd, I’ve often wondered what they have in common. and I think I’ve just figured it out. All my friends are generalists. As opposed to specialists. This insight came from being rather ungratefully used by a batch of specialists recently.

Specialists are people who make it their life’s work to be the best at one thing. For generalists, experience and variety are a way of life. Generalists get a bad rap sometimes. Jack of all trades, master of none. Ambitionless. Unfocused. Juvenile. Dilettante. Dabbler. Specialists get to be prodigies, wunderkinds, experts, craftsmen.

It all sounds rather admirable, but here’s the thing. Specialists, by definition, have to focus on just one thing. This makes them narrow-minded. That’s pretty dull and annoying to be around. Generalists like lots of things. This makes them much funner to talk to and much more useful in a pinch.

Specialists define success by being the best. Only a few can be the best. So specialists must be competitive, elitist and narcissistic in order to succeed. And yeah, that’s annoying too. Generalists usually succeed by cooperation, not competition. So generalists are much better playmates.

Being the best is a rather subjective thing. It’s often measured and defined by those in the craft with power. So in order to succeed, specialists must become ass-kissers, star-fuckers, politicians and users. Not much fun. Generalists chase experience more than recognition, so they get to just be themselves. They get to be honest, candid, open. Yeah, I like that better.

Specialists, in their desperation to master their craft, become slave to both the craft and the politics of that craft’s measures of success. Generalists are motivated by experience of all kind so their identity isn’t slave to one measure of success. In fact, experience makes them happier than success. Experience is easier to come by than success so they are free from the rules of the game. Free people are healthier people.

When a bunch of specialists get together and form a group, one where their only motivation for cooperation is mutual ambition and narcissism, the competitiveness and hypocrisy in the room are palpable, and it just smells bad. Generalists get together and more is possible. Experience and variety blend into insight. Things pop. “Aha!” moments happen.

Specialists tend to come from a privileged background since such a background lends individuals more opportunities like education, free time, and awareness of the possibilities. This only increases the likelihood of snobbery, ignorance, elitism and callousness in these people. Generalists are often self-made and therefore more reliable. Generalists tend to have spent some time with the rest of the rabble and as a result, are more compassionate, aware and humble. So they’re more likely to actually be aware of other people’s feelings and to actually give a shit.

Generalists make better party guests, trivia contest players, friends, lovers and allies. They’re not better people, just better to be around. They have more to share and more motivation to share.

An important distinction. I’m not talking about amateur vs. professional here. In fact, I know more generalists who get paid for what they do because they have more skills and more flexibility to offer. I’m also not talking about talent. Specialists have more craft, yes. But talent, well, that’s something else. When specialists don’t have talent, they must create smoke and mirrors - elusive definitions of talent that can’t be grasped by those outside the club, and nepotism to control the club’s membership. Specialists need clubs to remind everyone the emperor has nice clothes. Generalists shun clubs. I like that.

It’s funny, I used to forgive the obnoxious qualities of some specialists if they had talent, as though talent excuses all. But I think I’m over that now. I think fuck specialists, I like generalists better.

Do I sound bitter? Well, yeah, still sore from that encounter I mentioned. But I take comfort in knowing that specialists get their just rewards because they are both bored and boring at parties. And they miss the best things in this world. And in the event of a cataclysmic event that puts them on a desert island scenario they’ll be totally useless.

Officially intermediate

That's Max, the most fabulous piano teacher ever. Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. is one of my favorite times of the week. That's my weekly piano lesson. Always wanted to play the piano. A while back, an old friend in retirement used his time off to follow his old dream of learning the piano. Just weeks into his lessons he told me, "Don't wait."

Max used to work with me at the Fringe, and then started teaching piano again. Seemed like a fine way to stay in touch, so I signed up. It's been eight months, but we took one month off. So really seven months of practicing, and today Max says I'm an intermediate student now.

Tonight I had a beer at Tracey's Bar where it turns out my friend Avye works. Avye is soooo smart and sooo talented. And she thinks she wasted her time in school getting a degree in theater and photography because it turns out there's so much moooore she wants to do. She and her boyfriend fantasize about building a raft made of junk, and floating down the Mississippi River. Note to self, all the junk we have left when we're ready to leave the country - if it floats, I'm giving it to Avye.

I know how she feels. She's 24 and I'm 38 and my 15 years on her don't make me feel any further down my list of ambitions. I mean yeah, I've done a lot of things, but the brain muscles that I use to learn new songs on the piano ... well, they're at the infantile stage of development.

So if something as commonplace to some as playing music can feel so brand, shiny new, imagine how much else is out there.

This is Allegra. Allegra considers it a "pipe dream" to do my job. But Allegra is going to play sax with Buckets and Tap Shoes in Finland. Fucking Finland. Yeah, she's cool. Waaaaaay beyond intermediate on the sax. Learning the Fringe, and working towards total mobile monkey world domination on the arts scene (sorry, that's an inside joke, sort of.)

Lots of things I'm advanced at, but so many things I'm pre-beginner about. Like didn't-even-know-that-existed ignorant. Did you know there's a New Orleans band - a family - called The Flying Neutrinos that build rafts and float around the world picking up orphans? Yeah, me neither. It's a big, wide world. And I'm a little tired of specialized and advanced. I want intermediate everything.

So Bob, the guy who started learning piano at 62 years old after a surprising heart attack said, "Don't wait."

Walkin' shoes

Having resisted the rare urge to share personal flotsam with the WWW (Whole Wide World) thus far, recently realized a Blog would save on postcards once we go nomadic. So here I am. Y'all scootch your flotsam over and make room for mine.

The For Sale sign just went up in front of the Powderhorn Palace, so this weekend feels like the beginning - puttin' on the walkin' shoes, looking out over the horizon, thinkin' about gettin' started. Leavin' off the g's at the end of words as I get into a moseyin' kinda mindset.

So yeah, it's official, the house is up for sale. Anyone want an adorable brick Victorian house by a park in Minneapolis? It's the perfect house if you don't find the ownership of a house to be like slow death from suffocation.

The next party theme will be Don't Bring Gifts, Take Our Stuff. Matthew's got dibs on the purple couch. Trista and Dean have their eye on the dining room table. Rik's claimed the BBQ and thinkin' 'bout the lawn mower too. All the rest's fair game.

The walking shoes don't actually go on the feet until October, but this weekend the distant horizon is in my mind's eye and I could swear I smell salt water.

Wow, you can put pictures up here

Just discovered the picture upload function. Bear with me while I play with the new buttons and knobs here. Neato.

Not a lot of photos on the home computer, but pictures are so much funner than words, I'll put up what I've got. This is going to make me use my nifty digital camera more.

Starting with those I love ... Here's Alan, my husband. Handsome, isn't he? I took this picture of him a couple hours before we got married. That's my favorite shirt he's wearing. Not my favorite shirt. His shirt that is my favorite. If he wore one of my shirts for our wedding, that would be just wierd.


This is our dog, Future. He eats many unexpected things. Paper, pens, sticks, litter, dead animals, remote controls, cell phones, rocks, bones. He doesn't just chew these things, he swallows them. I don't really understand how his digestive system works.

But he's very cute. And after seven weeks of obedience training, he lays down on command, and he's putting our cat's head in his mouth much less often now.

This is a man feeding pigeons near Notre Dame in Paris. Many years ago I visited Paris with my friends Rodney, Jason and Greg. We didn't see a lot of the sites because we kept staying out until six in the morning dancing in gay bars and sleeping so late everything was closed. We showed up at the Louvre 20 minutes before closing and had to jog by Mona Lisa and the David statue. Yeah, lame American fags, that's what we were.


This is an herb garden I built once. I had help from friends Michael, Mary and Clifford. Mostly Clifford - he chopped down the trees to make the logs that made the border that kept the garden in. This was when I first moved to Minnesota and lived on Mary's big ranch. After growing things in pots my whole life in CA, I went a little crazy with all this space. Planted a buttload of herbs and didn't know what to do at harvest time. Invented herb jellies and made about 500 jars. Now I'm a city kid again and that sounds sort of excessive.


This is a frog taking a nap in a Lily. I want his life.

Help us leave the country!

Home For Sale: 3325 17th Ave S, Minneapolis
Price: $233,000
Call For Appointment: 612-423-6335

Bright sunny brick Victorian, diagonal hardwood floors, master bedroom with vaulted ceiling and skylights, walk-in closet, kitchen remodel, window seat, ceiling fans, large yard enclosed, lilac bower, perennials, porches front and back, exposed interior brick throughout, 3 blocks from park, great schools, 3-car garage, 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom.