Brass Ring

I have another writing career separate from this blog and in it I find myself exploring a few of the same themes over and over. What it is that draws me to them is not very difficult for me to figure, without delving too deep into my subconscious. One is existence and the other is work. Often I integrate these themes together for I find their relation is more than superficial. Why do we exist? Why do we work? Are our lives, our existence, validated by the work we do? If so, how does the connection affect the way we live, the choice of what we spend our lives doing, the path we stumble down? And how, upon further reflection years later, do those choices, of work, of lifestyle, look with the benefit of hindsight? More often than not, survival becomes a skeletal connector, as we alter our ideals and continue to work at jobs for necessity, for practical rather than idealistic reasons.

I, for one, have taken a roundabout route to where I am at the moment. While I have altered my worldview and the rosy-eyed view I had of my career goals, I still maintain them, persevere and sacrifice where necessary. I haven't been beaten down by less glamorous aspects of the written word, the written work and constant hum of reassuring rejection. In fact, poker has helped me a great deal in the last half year or so, giving me something outside of my regular realm to analyze, ponder and twist around in my head and on these nonexistent pages.

Perhaps my musings can be best summed up by this exchange from an old script of mine.

INT. UNMARKED POLICE CAR NIGHT

Detective Carver knifes the car through the industrial district. Detective Breaux sits in the passenger seat, eyeing the scattered individuals they pass. He cracks his window as the hot air from the dash blows on him.

CARVER
So something has to come after, huh, Breaux? After death?

BREAUX
Thats right.

CARVER
What about before?

BREAUX
Before? What do you mean?

CARVER
I mean before. If there is something that comes after life, doesnt that mean there had to have been something before it too?

BREAUX
There is no before. Life is the before. Were granted life to experience mortality so that we can try to achieve divinity.

Carver pulls up to a red light. He looks at Breaux.

CARVER
Alright. So, let's say that there is a heaven and let's also say that you're going to get there. How long are you going to be there?

BREAUX
How long?

CARVER
Yeah, how long? A week, a month, what?

BREAUX
Forever. Eternity.

Carver laughs. The light changes and he throws the car in gear.

CARVER
Now, to me, that sounds like a pretty uneven plan. Eighty years as a mortal and just like that, eternity as an immortal.

BREAUX
It fits. See, all of life is a prelude to the one time, the one day, the one minute that salvation is in your grasp. We all face it. How we respond in that moment is what ultimately determines the fate of our soul.

CARVER
And you'll be ready?

BREAUX
My faith will get me through.

Carver looks at Breaux.

CARVER
I'm not much for religion, Breaux. I'm more of a believer in balance.

BREAUX
Balance?

CARVER
Balance. Like a see-saw.

Carver tilts his hand up and down.

CARVER (CONT’D)
Nothing before, nothing after. Life exists to sustain itself, nothing more. Sometimes it can't even do that.

BREAUX
You're way off.

CARVER
Am I? You ever hear of the seventeen year cicada?

BREAUX
No.

CARVER
Sounds just like its name. It's a type of cicada that lives as a nymph underground sucking on tree roots for seventeen years. Then, it makes its way to the surface, molts into an adult and spends six weeks trying to reproduce. Then it dies. The newborn nymphs burrow into the ground and the process repeats itself again seventeen years later.

BREAUX
So?

CARVER
So what do we, as humans, do that is so different from the cicada? Instead of burrowing down into the ground we do stuff. We play golf, we go to the beach, we shoot two guys in the back in an alley. Seems a bit of a waste doesnt it? We all end up in the same place as the cicadas.

BREAUX
Why do anything then? Why do you do this?

CARVER
I'm no good at golf and I cant swim. But youre missing the point.

BREAUX
I'm missing something, that's for sure.

Breaux shakes his head.

BREAUX (CONT’D)
Your theory doesn't make sense. If life only exists to sustain itself how did it begin in the first place?

CARVER
It's a fluke, a series of coincidences, luck.

BREAUX
You think life is luck?

CARVER
I think you're lucky to be sitting there next to me and I'm lucky to be driving this car.

BREAUX
I think you're full of it.

CARVER
I'm sure you do. But you're evidence of it yourself.

BREAUX
Me?

CARVER
Your wife is pregnant?

BREAUX
She's in labor right now.

CARVER
Congratulations, Breaux. You've succeeded in replacing yourself. Existence for the sake of future existence. Just like the cicada. Balance.

Breaux looks at him, seething. Carver glances at him.

CARVER (CONT’D)
No need to get angry, Breaux.

BREAUX
How do you expect me not to be? You ridicule my religion, you ridicule me and you expect me to just take it with a smile?

CARVER
I'm not ridiculing you, Breaux. You've got your beliefs, I've got mine.

A small smile grips Carvers mouth. Breaux sees it.

BREAUX
You get off on this, don't you? This is why you like rookie partners, so you can boss them around and give your goddamn lectures.

CARVER
Careful, you're blaspheming.

BREAUX
Fuck you.

Carver nods. He pulls up to another red light and looks at Breaux. His smile disappears.

CARVER
You've got it wrong. I don't like rookie partners, I request them.

BREAUX
What the fuck does that mean?

CARVER
It means that when shit goes down, I know what I'm doing, that I'm not the one whos going to make the mistake and get my ass shot.Life is luck, Breaux, but death isn't. In our line of work death is intentional, not accidental.

Carver smiles.

CARVER (CONT’D)
You are my balance, Breaux.

The light turns green and Carver pulls forward.


Aaaaaand Scene.

I haven't read that in awhile, just popped into my head with some existential thoughts the other day.

Why all this existential babbling? Perhaps it comes on the heels of having the privilege to see a band, an unbelievably talented band that sings songs that make your guts twist, that sings songs that you feel like have been with you forever the first time you hear them? A band who never made it. Maybe they will, someday. Maybe. But in the meantime they work. They play on regardless, over two hundred shows a year, withstanding the barren nights of five people in a bar in the middle of nowhere for a show, for the pleasure of that elusive night when there is a full club, people singing along. They put out albums full of songs dripping with the scars they've suffered, the same bloody knuckles, torn hearts and raspy whispers that you and I know all too well but have never been able to describe.

Here's a taste.



I was able to catch a couple of their recent shows and it only reinforced the decisions that I have made. Watching these guys do something they love, in defiance of society's rules and ideas of what a person has to be by a certain age, flaunting the conventions of what the limits of one can hope to achieve by doing things a certain way, it all struck home. It all became personal. Which is what good music is supposed to do. Good writing too. I hope I can not make it as much as they did.

TWO COW GARAGE TOUR DATES

Aug 21 2009 8:00P
the brass rail Ft Wayne, Indiana

Aug 22 2009 8:00P
Mac’s Bar lansing, Michigan

Aug 23 2009 8:00P
Schuba’s Chicago, Illinois

Aug 24 2009 8:00P
The Triple Rock Minneapolis, Minnesota

Aug 25 2009 8:00P
The High Noon Saloon Madison, Wisconsin

Sep 9 2009 8:00P
Off Broadway St. Louis, Missouri

Sep 10 2009 8:00P
The Bottleneck Lawerence, Kansas

Sep 11 2009 8:00P
Suburban Home Anniversary @ Three Kings denver

Sep 12 2009 8:00P
Suburban Home Anniversary @ Three Kings Denver, Colorado

Sep 13 2009 8:00P
Urban Lounge Salt Lake city, Utah

Sep 14 2009 8:00P
The Badlander Missoula, Montana

Sep 15 2009 8:00P
Tractor Tavern Seattle, Washington

Sep 17 2009 8:00P
Sam’s Bond Garage Eugene, Oregon

Sep 18 2009 11:00P
MusicFestNW- Ash Street Saloon Portland, Oregon

Sep 20 2009 8:00P
Thee Parkside San Francisco, California

Sep 21 2009 8:00P
Cranes Hollywood tavern Los Angeles, California

Sep 22 2009 8:00P
The Radio Room San Diego, California

Sep 23 2009 8:00P
Yucca Tap Room Tempe, Arizona

Sep 25 2009 8:00P
Emo’s (inside) Austin, Texas

Sep 27 2009 8:00P
Double Wide Dallas, Texas