Oho! Epiphanies, Anyone? Tales from A Good Sunday

Sting is wailing in my living room. A hazy grey light filters in through the semi-raised black cloth-bamboo blinds. Sirens punctuate my morning as an indication that staying in might be the wisest choice of the day.

Kill Bill, Vol. 2, is providing me with intermittent graphic violence as an antidote to the boredom of my sedate Sunday. I’m having a fantastic morning.

I’ve already enjoyed a French press brimming with dark coffee. I’m padding around barefoot, tackling a bit of cleaning here and there in between chapters of Tarantino’s kill-fest. What more can a girl ask for?

Well, an epiphany would shure hit the spot. Thank goodness I’ve had me one of those, too.

Perhaps you’ve already read yesterday’s shameless financial de-veiling of a girl called me? I’ve had some new thoughts about that.

Thing is, money’s been playing a constant theme in my head of late. This being able to cope and even buy a thing or two mode is throwing me for a loop, and that’s why I’m trying to sort out how to improve upon the things I’ve learned and incorporated into my ways of late, so that I can have my cake and eat it, too. I’ve fucked this up before, and my older-wiser self is loathe to see that happen again. Don’t look now, but I’m all grown up.

So it’s with great intrigue that I’ve been trying to figure out what was the major catalyst in the last two weeks to send me into this Financial Figurings Funk I’ve been mired in. And a little while ago I coulda sworn I heard a blink! as the proverbial lightbulb flicked on overhead. AHA. I finally figured it the freak out.

There I was, standing perched over my old school 1991 Sony 5-disc CD changer, taking a boo at what aural delights lay ahead for me, when I should glance upon The Police’s masterpiece, Synchonicity. So I decided to program the back half – tracks 8, 11, 7, 10, 9, in that order – as a soundtrack to my cleaning/puttering.

You see, a week or so ago the Police flew into town and blew two packed houses away, back to back. It was the gig of the year, and I wasn’t there. It didn’t compute until I saw the disc there, shining up at me, but it’s the proverbial last straw.

It’s fucking WRONG that I should miss the biggest gig of the year! There was a time when I was the one who’d always get the tickets to the hardest shows to get ‘em for. Santana? Sure. The Hip in a small 250-seat club? Done. I’ve seen hundreds of concerts/gigs or more in my time. I’ve seen fights, fucking, and fireworks of all kinds. I’ve seen first-ever gigs and last-ever gigs. I’ve smoked more dope and tried more stuff at concerts than I care to remember. I’ve perfected how to smoke dope in a club, in the middle of the dance floor, and not get caught. I’m that chick who can make a beer last for an hour and a half if it means I’m able to afford another gig next week that I just saw the poster for when I was in the washroom.

I’m an audio geekette. I’ve gone out with more music geeks than I care to own up to. The times of my life have all happened hi-fi, y’know? Every period of my life has a soundtrack. I even have a CD I burned for my mom’s funeral, that I gave to all her friends, of her favourite music – John Lennon, U2, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, et al. And, yes, even the Police’s King of Pain made the cut.

So, it pisses me off that they should roll into town and I shouldn’t be able to get tickets. Why? Because, in an effort to change my financial ways, I renegotiated debt a couple years back and chose to cut my credit cards up as part of the terms. Then I fell on hard financial times and my credit just disappeared because I didn’t have a permanent job. Creditors don’t like it if your employers won’t commit to you, you know, as a casual labourer. That sucked.

But now I’m solidly employed. You know what this means, don’t you? This fall I’ll get a credit card and be able to order gig tickets. This won’t happen again. I’ll be at the best gigs.

See, it’s not enough to sit around and ponder how to change your life and what you’re gonna do to make that happen. Everything that happens to us happens because something we’ve just experienced has triggered something in our subconscious. You can bravely go forth into the new now without understanding what set you off, but knowing what tripped the thought process in the first place can be an important part of coming to terms with why it’s necessary to change the status quo.

For me, it’s realizing, jealously, that so many people I knew got to be at that gig. Funny thing is, I’m not the biggest Police fan. I like some of the songs, love singing along, and think Sting’s about the coolest thing since Breyer’s, but a lot of other musicians matter more for me. I just never got swept up in the Police craze. I just woulda liked to be at that gig ‘cos now I know—hindsight, 20/20, et al—how significant they’ve been on the landscape of music in the last half of the 20th century, and how hard it is for anyone to out-vocal Sting. I don’t have to be a fan to understand, is what I’m saying. It’d have been pretty fucking cool.

Add to that, that in a span of 20 minutes I had the above thoughts and also discovered how cheap Greyhound fare is to places like Seattle & Portland, and my summer’s just taken a huge detour, man. It’s nice to have my priorities on track with abilities/reality again. It sure changes the way the world looks. It’s nice. Music and travel were once the two most important things in my life. And my priorities felt peachy fucking keen back then. Somewhere along the way, that changed. Looks like my eyes are opening to that, and change is gonna come.

5 thoughts on “Oho! Epiphanies, Anyone? Tales from A Good Sunday

  1. R&R

    Hi Steff,

    Delurking to say 3 things: 1. Love your blog 2. Congrats on reprioritizing things. Good for you! 3. The Police were actually much more dissappointing than they should have been . First part of the show was merely their rehearsal and did not get good until almost the end (don’t know if that will make ya feel any better or not).

  2. Scribe Called Steff

    ha! it DOES, actually! thank you.

    goes to show you that the best gigs tend to cost you $12 and the “big” shows can never measure up as good as the little ones ‘cos you have soooo much invested in ’em. and when someone can blow you away for $12, then the $100 – 250 tickets have a lotta fuckin’ living up to do, eh?

    i have a $20 gig coming up that should squelch things in me for a bit, but what i really want is the $15 “sure, why not see ’em when it’s that cheap?!” gig that turns into a “wow, we’ll talk about this night five years from now” mind-blower that comes along once every two or three years.

    and thanks for the kind words. 🙂

  3. Scotsman

    Personally I’ve always thought the small gigs and festivals, for different reasons, are better than the big shows of regrouped bands. Small gigs are great when you can see the whites of the eyes of the band members, its that feeling of intimacy, being there before others have got in on the secret. Whereas festivals are good because you get to see so many bands at one time that you otherwise wouldn’t have seen and everyone is there to have a good time no matter how good all the bands are.
    When big bands regroup after splitting I tend to find it a bit of a letdown, rightly or wrongly they just don’t seem to have the same passion and energy as before, of course that’s probably just nostalgia speaking or maybe it’s my cynical belief that they just got back together for the money when they already have more of it than I do.

  4. Beth

    To piggyback on r&r’s comment, Stuart was pretty frank on his web site about how crappy the first show was. Still finding their footings, I guess.

    Still, I’m going to one of the shows at Wrigley Field in July and I might just faint when they take the stage. Sting better be wearing a tight tank top!

    And Steff, we’ve never talked of our mutual love for Sting, but it’s just one more reason why I like you so much!

Comments are closed.