New things, new old things.

I've played an open mic nearly every week so far this year.

I don't know if that's what I'm supposed to be doing, but that's what I've done.

We went out Wednesday to Aqua * Sol's open mic. Aqua * Sol is a sweet venue - it's right on the C&D canal, next to the Summit North Marina. Perhaps an odd location and a little bit tucked away, but that just makes it something of a hidden treasure. The open mic was well-run and we made some new acquaintances... the guy who runs it also will make a recording of your performance and if it turns out, you can buy it from him. That's kinda snazzy. Since there were four of us, we asked if he could just do one CD of all of us. Haven't heard back from him about it yet but I got my fingers crossed. Stefan did a really sweet improv and the thing about improv is, if there's no recording, it exists one time and one time only, generally....

It's nice to try something new every once in awhile. Stranger, though, to have people with me when I'm trying something new. I guess most folks don't even like to do new things unless they can drag someone along with them... I like getting out of my comfort zone, though, and I find that if I try something new and I don't like it, at least I didn't make anyone else suffer through it with me. If I do like it, I can drag people back the second time.

But nooooooooooo, turns out I have friends who also like trying new things and stuff like that. Weird!

I like this story, so I'm going to tell it: we split from Aqua * Sol, but we didn't get far before we found somebody broken down at the 896/71 intersection, which is a pretty major intersection and not a good one to be broken down at... so we pulled over, Shane and I jumped out, and asked if we could help. Turns out we couldn't, but the guy was really appreciative of our offering. As we stood there, Stefan and Kayley drove up and asked if we needed help. At this point, the guy was overwhelmed and said loudly, "You people are awful young to be so nice!" (or something to that effect, of course) We were instructed to notify our parents that they had done well.

Anyways, that was that. Last night was an awesome basement show at the Palk house and I didn't play and I enjoyed the snot out of myself. Some really fantastic musicians came from pretty far away just to have a chance to play a few songs. I think that's what music does to people. It drives you to strange places to play for complete strangers and usually it works out pretty good, or if it doesn't, it's somethin' to tell the grandkids.

What music's doing to me... I feel new songs welling up. I haven't been obedient to that and sat down and wrote them out, but maybe that is what I'll do this weekend. Sequester myself and write music. If somebody could bring me a meal at some point that would be great since I'm pretty sure I'll forget to eat.