RobertSpuhler.com

Assorted Thoughts About Music Not Worthy of Their Own Posts

The second music article I ever wrote was for the Brimstone, the student newspaper of Glenwood Springs High School.* It was a monthly feature that I pitched and ran for a total of, to my knowledge, two months, on albums or films that staff members liked but were not getting a lot of play from high schoolers. I wrote about the 10,000 Maniacs album "In My Tribe," ending the article with a note about the reformed (sans Natalie Merchant) Maniacs preparing to release a new album.**

If You're Reading This, I Probably Love You

What I Learned in 2009:

If I'm writing an email of more than about three paragraphs, it's probably coming from an ugly place.

On occasion, it's okay to come from an ugly place.

I don't belong in Los Angeles which means, in so many ways, that I belong in Los Angeles.

I'm a bit - only a bit - tougher than I thought.

It's one thing to know that the path to success is different than that of others. It's another thing completely to feel it and understand it.

My karaoke range starts in 1993 with "Laid" and ends ... in 1993, with "Monday Morning."

There is, one has said, no glitter in the gutter.

There is no getting older - only moving backward on the soccer field.

2009

I’m sure this is where I’m supposed to write something to sum up 2008, some pithy statements about loving and losing love, good and the bad, etc. And there was certainly a lot of both: I met some great new people, I did fall in love – followed quickly by falling out of love, I drank more than I should, I didn’t get everything done I wanted to, though I got a lot more done that I could have reasonably expected.

But the entire exercise seems a little hollow.

So instead, I’ll raise a glass of whiskey to my grandmother, whom I miss, to my sister and my new brother-in-law and their upcoming adventure (marriage or Alaska, take your pick of interpretations), and I’ll hope. Because something has to change.

On 30

Three eggs. Four pieces of bacon. A piece of toast. Kinda. I don’t own a toaster. So a piece of wheat bread with butter.

A Death in Claremont

David Foster Wallace was found dead at his home on Friday. His wife arrived home to find that he had hung himself.

Another for a very depressing list.

If there are writers and performers that I find myself emulating, storytellers that speak to me in a way that tells me, yes, there is room for me here, Wallace and Spalding Gray would be two. Both are gone at their own hand.

Correlation does not equal causation. But why is it that those who seem to have the most to say don’t stay around to say it? Or is it facing the void, when there’s nothing left to say, that is so overwhelming and frightening?

The Wooden Anniversary

Five years ago Friday, I sat in a traffic jam on the 10 just outside of West Covina. This was the beginning of my Los Angeles experience (that it started with a traffic jam is both fitting and a slight for which I will never forgive West Covina).

(NOTE: MASSIVE shoegazing after the jump. Don't say I didn't warn you.)

Frustration

“‘They want our way of life.’ They can take mine any time they like.” - Jarvis Cocker, “From Auschwitz to Ipswich”

Another night. Another outline, not good enough. Another showcase leading to nice words and no phone calls or auditions.

In August, it will be five years. In October, I will be 30.

And I feel incredibly lost.

A Sort of Requiem

Dave lived at the corner of my street, about eight houses down from me. He wasn't very smart, didn't care much about school, but was friendly and very charismatic - the polar opposite of the 13-year-old me. We were friendly - friends would be going too far - for a while in middle school, but drifted apart as he ran with people who, almost unanimously, hated me and did the sort of "bad" things that, in retrospect, never end up being that harmful.

I ran into him at the Class of 1996 reunion last summer, I think. To be honest, after "running into" 60 or 70 people from my past, the faces blur together - especially those that I saw on Friday night after drinking enough liquid courage to survive the event.

Corporate Horoscopes

In the nearly four years (gasp!) that I’ve been with a local SAT tutoring company, I’ve watched it mature and grow into the leader in the field (for California, anyway). I’ve gone from being a tutor to a tutor and tutor trainer and then, eventually, to tutoring, training and taking phone calls in the office (yes, I work in a cubicle).

But I never thought I’d be psychoanalyzed.

Inspiration Redux

During my time sans Internet, I had several chances to go see friends “perform” in different manners. One, a classmate at Writers Boot Camp, had a reading of his second act. Another, a former showcase scene partner, finished up a six-week run of her one-woman show. A third appeared in a brilliant show in south Orange County.