there are so many drawbacks to playing music for a living... but one great thing about it is that drinking alcohol is really in the job description. it's of course not a requirement, but it is a bonus, and one of the only jobs i know where you can actually drink while you're working and it's even encouraged. as singing cheerleader of the room, a drinking musician can boost sales, which boosts the club's bottomline... and don't we all know, it's all about the bottom line.
i aspire to play in honkytonks and dance halls.
and yes yes a good listening room too from time to time.
i don't drink that much at all and i'm not endorsing drinking alcohol...
just all this to say, i recently played in a couple of cafes on my trek out West.
wow.
seems it's been a long time since i really left the house.
i was thinking, "Cafe" ~like the old 60's coffeehouses where there's live music and a hearty exchange of ideas. poetry. hippies. performance art.
no.
it's all cyberspace now.
cafes are now cybercafes.
the human race has now merged with the computer mind and we are now cyberpeople.
creatures who barely glance up from the computer screen and are slightly annoyed with anything that interferes with the all important work in cybermyfacespace.
everybody's clean-cut.
and there's no alcohol served.
it's hard for me not to be surly playing music in a setting like that.
(granted, one of the cafes was in silicon valley, so what do i expect?)
it's just that it's surreal and so stunning!
it feels to me like i've stepped into a 1950's sci-fi flick or a creepy twilight zone episode.
for one thing, i, personally, can not do anything else when there's music playing. complete one-trick-pony here. am completely taken with sound.
but the new human is a mighty multi-tasker~ (and who knows how many windows they've got open and are working in? or is everybody just on facebook?)
i saw the movie about the genius boy portrayed to be a creepy guy with no friends who stole and created the facebook and became the multi-billionaire. there was a line in it where someone says something like, "people used to be on farms, then they moved to cities, now they're in cyberspace."
and here am i, blogging, like nobody's business.
i need a drink.