Of Gold Watches & Tortoise Shell Combs
Listen, I know my life isn’t all sturm und drang.
I had lunch with a longtime colleague of mine today. Now, I rarely do lunch. I usually eat a salad at my desk. But lately, that I can combine a work conversation with a change of scenery (that is, something other than my computer monitor) is a huge revelation, and relief. So anyway, I’m at The Lodge, Viacom’s fairly lame cafeteria. But the fairly lame cafeteria has a deck about seventy-five feet above Times Square. So I was basically sitting parallel to that huge NASDAQ sign you see all the time on TV.
Anyway, Paul asks me how I’m doing. I’ve known Paula long time, so I proceed to unload, leading with something like, “I’m strugglin’ dude.” And while that’s maybe a hair melodramatic, well, I kinda’ am. A little bit. So we talk, and — as a husband and father — he offers some decent perspective (as many of my male friends have of late). Most of all, though, he just listens, which is kind of invaluable in its own right. So, just before I reign it all in and start talking about meetings, work flow, and the network’s product development process, I say, “Yunno, when we were eight-years-old, our legs ached at night. That’s how we knew we were growing.” The metaphor kinda’ stuck.
Tonight, I walked home in a warm drizzle listening to “This American Life.” I wasn’t really feeling the episode (“The Missing Parents”) in concept, but the sound of Ira Glass’ voice backed by the dull rush of tires on wet pavement was somehow soothing.
I ducked into D’Agostino and called Abbi.
“I’m at the D’Agostino. Need anything?”
“I’m at Whole Foods,” she replied. “Do you need anything?”
And I thought there was some nice, vaguely “Gift of the Magi” symetry going on there.
Back home at The Westport, Abbi walked me down to the gym and introduced me to Gary the, um, I dunno — The Guy Who Runs The Gym. Anyway, Gary signs me up, and teaches me how to use the fingerprint recognition system that gains me entry to work out. Yeah, you heard me. Fingerprint Recognition System. That’s some crazy Daniel Craig level shit.
Then Gary, The Guy Who Runs The Gym, shows me (and Abbi, and my Cannondale M900) to the bike room. First coup: my ($125 a year) parking spot is right by the door. But it get’s better. There’s a compressed air pump right there in the bike room! Bad ass.
So upstairs, Abbi microwaves some coconutty chicken dish and pours salad from a bag and we settle down in front of the boob tube and what’s on? Bill Moyers Journal. Damned if we didn’t skip American Idol and Lost to revel in Mr. Moyers thoughtful deconstruction of media’s failure in the march to war. Even Abbi, who’s a tad more conservative than I like to admit, had to laugh when she heard Bush utter the phrase “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud” for the fourth, fifth, and seixth time.
So my legs ache a little bit (yunno, metaphorically), but, all and all, not a bad day.
Oh, wait. Here’s the clincher. Bubba Gump Shrimp Company manager Carly Shanklin finally got back to me.
Hello Benjamin!
I am SO sorry. Since the beginning of spring break this place has been a mad house and I have not gotten around to writing you back. Ok, so I went back outside to the restaurant and showed Tom your picture that was on the inside of the CD and this is what happened:
Tom: Ummmm, Carly, thats not the guy who left me the note with the CD. Who is that?
Carly: OH MY GOSH!!!!! Thats the artist from that CD and I just sent him an e-mail about how his marketing ploy worked! I am such a doofuss!
Tom: You really sent that guy an e-mail?!
Carly: Sure did, oh well… Everyone thinks Im crazy, whats one more person gonna hurt?
And that my friend is pretty much where this story ends. Sorry to disappoint you. I wish I could of wrote a tale of all tales that involved laughter, tears and triumph, but sadly this story ends with merely a shrug of the shoulders and an e-mail.
Nuttin but the best of luck to ya!
Carly
The mystery is solved. Mistaken identity. Now I can go to sleep, and dream sweet dreams of massive productivity, prolificness, and, um… prosperity. And the cover of The Rolling Stone.
Sleep tight!
How Not To Disappear
I feel like I’m fading away.
There’s only one section of my interview with “Generation X” Douglas Coupland that didn’t make the MTV News article or even my complete transcript.
Towards the end of our conversation, he told me (as he did The UK Register a few weeks prior) that “For about four months back in the ’90s I kept what was once called a diary, and I enjoyed doing it. But what happened was — and I think this is a very common response — when you start living your life inside your diary, you become quite mercenary, and it’s all about ‘Will this make a good entry?’”
To that end, Dear Reader, I’ve puzzled for days as to what to write following Saturday’s great reiteration of my anxiety provoked by my imminent irrelevance. Nothing, however, seemed substantive enough.
Truth is, there’s plenty of substantive stuff going on. Tons, in fact. Making a new home with someone is full of twists and turns and surprises and all sorts of unexpected revelations about both of us. That’s the hard part. Someone making your coffee exactly how you like it? Kinda’ cool. Someone to lean on? To share with? Very cool.
The bulk of my burgeoning domestic life, though — not to mention wedding planning, which you know from every E! show ever premiered (not to mention a good 1/5 of my previous five years of posting) is loaded with all sorts of baggage — feels off limits. As it is, the fact that four out of six (inadvertent) respondents Saturday night said of my “Under The Red, White & Blue” post (below), “Yeah I read that” freaked me out more than a little bit. If I blog about everything, what’s left for me? (Not to mention if I blog about Abbi and me, what’s left for us?) Moreover, if some student who wants me to hire them reads in my blog that “I feel old and irrelevant,” where’s the boundary?
So, with that caveat, there are no real headlines. Nothing is happening, at least nothing that makes a pithy, witty, or “deep thought” entry. We’re relaunching MTV News, and I’m relaunching my life. That’s it. That accounts for the eighteen or so hours a day I’m not sleeping, but it doesn’t tell you much.
Last night, a friend of mine mentioned a book she’d just finished, Nicole Krauss’ “The History of Love.” The novel’s protagonist, Leo Gursky, is a retired locksmith who immigrates to New York after escaping SS officers in his native Poland, only to spend the last stage of his life terrified that no one will notice when he dies. “I try to make a point of being seen. Sometimes when I’m out, I’ll buy a juice even though I’m not thirsty.”
It occurred to me then — and I told my friend — that maybe that has something to do with why I write songs and post these blog entries, and why I feel so invisible these days. It’s been a constant refrain in The Daily Journal: how not to disappear. I’ve always worried about being a tree falling in an empty forest. Now I’m worried about being just another tree in a crowded forest.
For years, my life has been centered around making stuff: songs, words, movies, photos, paintings — anything. Somehow, that stuff confirmed my existence. Right now, though, the stuff I’m making is invisible, intangiable, and personal. I don’t have time for the other stuff. Heck, I hardly have any ideas. And so I feel like a ghost.
I know in my mind that this is temporary. The pendulum has swung one way, and will swing back. I will find a new balance. Jason Walsmith makes marriage, fatherhood and rock ‘n roll work. So does Bono. So can I.
Meantime, poke me, prod me, push me. Remind me that I’m here.
