A Couple of Kooks Hung Up on Romancing*

Someone new and close to me recently told me that the best things in life are good food and good drink and good music. She's jaded, and I understand, but there's more, I said. It's the little things. They build up into huge things.

When I was younger, maybe ten, I went to my first concert. I already fanatically listened to the pop music that my mom was always filling our home with. That meant The Carpenters, Neil Diamond, The Monkees, early Beach Boys, '80s Dolly Parton, and James Taylor. I never really liked James Taylor, though. There was a Tubby's Subs in Port Huron where we went for lunch one day, and they had a contest to win tickets to the Monkees reunion show at Pine Knob. My mom won the contest, and we went to see the Monkees. Weird Al opened. I used to like him, but not after seeing him live. Whatever. That was it. I blame the Monkees for my descent into musical fanaticism. Soon after, I got tired of listening to the radio because it was the same shit over and over and over again, and it was driving a spike into my brain. Maybe when I was twelve, I was trying to find something different on the radio, and I found the local college station, WSGR-FM. First I heard "I.C. Water" from Psychic TV, which was a tribute to Ian Curtis from Joy Division, then I heard Jello Biafra's "Pledge of Allegiance." Shit, that was it.

Music became such a big part of my life that I didn't care about anything else at all. I barely graduated high school with my low attention span and distaste for algebra. Yet, I somehow finished in the top 25% of my class. I was that guy who could handle the classes without a problem, I just didn't give a shit. Same thing with college, too, actually. In my 10th grade English class, we had to memorize a poem and then read it. I read a song from Lou Reed's album "Magic and Loss." I think it was "The Sword of Damocles." See, all that mattered to me was music. When you're a teenager, and kind of a loner, what else could there possibly be? I had some friends, but no one I could really talk to. No one who liked the things I liked.

After that came community college and college radio. Within a year I was the music director on WSGR-FM. Of course it was meant to be. I was also the copy editor on the campus paper, and that was where I met this guy Ben. He was living in a local halfway house after getting out of prison on parole for something stupid like possession. Part of his deal was that the state would pay for him to go to college while he was living in the transitional house. Ben was a punk. I found my crowd. People who knew what I was all about. I should also add that right after high school, I became close with this girl Lori who I had been in school with since kindergarten. I never really knew her until after school, though. She's the first person who showed me that you can add good friends to good music as the best things in life. Ben and his crowd weren't really close friends, just people who understood me. There were so many people in those first three years after high school (1994-97) who showed me the little things in life that make it all worthwhile.

I don't really understand how one can go from being such a loner in school to knowing so many people that they can't keep them straight, but that's what happened. Then I moved to Detroit. That's where it really happened. There's something to be said for going out with good friends, having good brunch downtown, drinking ridiculously expensive Mimosas for hours, then just spending the rest of the day in someone's backyard barbecuing and drinking cheap beer and fiddling with the CD player, changing discs every three songs. Good food, good drink, and good music. But...this is where it becomes obvious. You have to add good people into it. And the little things. For some reason, on that sunny summer day last year, I was taking a lot of pictures with my digital camera. I must've taken 50 pics that day, and almost ALL of them were just people's feet. Or someone's head down in the corner with the wall in the house taking up the rest of the frame. Is that weird? Most of the photos came out really well. It's just something stupid and small, but again, it's the little things.

Now, I'm 29 years old. When I was a teenager, I never thought I'd make it to 30. Its not that I didn't want to or that I was afraid, its just that I really didn't think I'd make it. There's lots of good, and there's lots of bad. I have regrets. I've done some things that even I can't believe I've done. Breaking hearts, burning bridges that I'll work so hard to later rebuild, turning my back on my dad, living in ways that I can't afford to live, giving away my heart only to get it crushed like peanuts. But there are good things, too. Road trips for rock 'n' roll, unintentionally 'acting' in a documentary about a bar on the west side, getting drunk (and high) with rock stars, and ALL of the friends. These are just the things I can think of right now. In the past seven years here in Detroit, there have been so many good people in my life. I have at least three who I can easily call my chosen sisters. Thank you Amy and Angela and Shannon. I'd be nothing without you. Unfortunately, Tim, my chosen little brother is no longer with us. I miss him, but I will move on with him at my side in spirit.

I barely know where I was going with this anymore. I'm just rambling. Digression is the spice of life. The little things aren't so little, I guess. They're big things. Good food and good drink is fine. I like it. But there's more. I'm weak, my heart has been broken a few times, but I move on, and I don't blame anyone. I used to think you can't always get what you want, but maybe serendipity is on our side. Maybe it's karmic reaction, I don't know.

To the only girl alive, there's more to life than good food and good drink and good music, there's also good people. I want you to remember that, and if you can't, then I'll show you.

*listen to David Bowie.