BlakeAtwood.com

For the sake of my cousin, an SRV lovin’ and talented lead guitarist in his own right, I rode three hours to San Angelo with him to play as part of his band at a citywide, all-church event. Originally it was meant to be a youth event; somehow it transpired to this citywide event with a somewhat much older demographic.

We’d practiced together one time about a week prior to this gig. I was also worried about the couple of original songs they wanted to do that I’d never heard. We arrived at the church with plenty of time to soundcheck and setup, but we did neither. I spent an hour or so typing our words for the screens in the front of the church.

When we actually get up to play our music, it was 10pm, and maybe 30 to 40 people were still at the church. We begin playing, only the lead singer’s guitar wasn’t working due to sound system problems or bad cables or divine intervention. He begins preaching and prophesying over the song we’d begun playing behind him, taking it slow so he could be heard but building to crescendoes at certain times to emphasize the points he was making (although my monitor wasn’t working so I never really heard what he said). We wound up playing 2 or 3 “songs” for two nonstop hours.

It was a very freeing musical moment in that everything I’ve been playing in the last year or more has been so structured. The looseness and creativity required of the music was very cathartic. So, all the worry about playing the songs well faded to nothing because we didn’t play them.

We also got done at midnight, then ate at Applebee’s at 1am, and returned to our bassist’s home a little before 2am.

Join me in a Booklover’s Eden. And no, that’s not a pick-up line, although I should have tried it back in college. Yeah, you’re right, it wouldn’t have worked then either. In fact, the fact that I even think that could be a pick-up line should tell me that I should never try pick-up lines.

On with the linkage: Shelfari.com lets you create a digital bookshelf, write your own opinions of your books, rate them from one to five stars, tag them, and all of that is wrapped up in socially-webbed goodness, meaning that you can get all of your friends involved and see what they’re reading, or just look at collections of other people who have the same books in their collection.

So, for booklovers it’s Eden.

“Being a good writer is 3% talent, 97% not being distracted by the Internet.”

The saddest thing about growing up is the inevitable distances that slowly, surely, methodically, and daily creep into our lives. High school graduation marks a departure of joy and uncertainty, especially for those that move away. The sadness of leaving is there, but it’s muted by the expectant anxiety of new places, new people, and new experiences. You don’t realize how much you miss the people you grew up with until much later in life, and by that time, everyone has kids, or a job, or anything else that takes the place of the innocence and time-lessness of being a kid.

Leaving college is better, but worse. Some people remain in town. Others hang around for a few years until they find their calling. The sorrow of absence is dulled by the slow trickle of the friends still close by…until the day when the trickle stops, because no one’s left to leave. You’re the one left behind, only it’s not the rapture, it’s just growing up.

Sure, you keep in touch – there’s email, myspace, facebook, IM, cellphones – I’ve even heard of these things called letters. But it’s not the same. It can never be the same.

I wish I could go back and tell myself to enjoy that time more, to fully realize how much I took these people for granted, to tell myself that someday, despite all the teacher’s warnings, I would miss those days…

The saddest thing about growing up is realizing how far you’ve come, how far you still have to go, and whether or not the distance from who you were to who you are is impossible to retrace.

This is sure to be a cinematic masterpiece.

Via: VideoSift