Dropping into the groove...

Prior to now that was a music thing for me. I have the luxury of playing in a band with some fantastic musicians who make it easy to love. There's a deliberate monotony in playing with a really successful cover band. Because we've made a good name for ourselves we play all the time, which means we play the same cover songs all the time. If the folks you're playing with don't keep it fun and exciting by exploring everything there is to explore within the concept of groove, you'll burn out fast. Thankfully about half of the cover material we play resonates with what most people think when they hear the word 'groove.' Stevie Wonder, Sly & The Family Stone, Prince, Kool & The Gang, Earth, Wind & Fire. It's all there. Of course the real art is to make people feel that danceable thump in flat-out rock stuff from folks like Tom Petty, The Rolling Stones, Steve Miller Band and so on. Bassists and drummers like Jason Monro, Cory Cisler and Aaron Bishara make that all too easy.

In fact, having played with Sharp Circle Band for six years now (and for a couple years before that with guys like Jason, Cory, Bob DiGiacomo, Andy Robbins and Rob Heath in ÜberGroove) I've come to take the regular level of groove for granted. Those players know how to lock down their tempos (yeah, I know, it's "tempi"... it just looks weird) and leave room for all the other players. They know the subtle variations in playing "behind the beat" (nearly a "swing feel" in a way) or "up on top of the beat" to get that throbbing, Rave-like vibe in the rhythm of the song.

But see, there's this other level. Every so often--not necessarily even once each gig--we break through to some sort of nirvana-like thing. I know when it happens because I completely lose myself in the moment. Playing rhythm guitar becomes effortless, like my fingers aren't even touching the instrument at all. Most recently I can recall it happening during Fred Gablick's sax solo in our version of Mustang Sally. A few weeks ago we were at Grandview Cafe and Fred just lit it up. He built so much energy up in those first eight bars of solo that when the rest of the band came in on the IV chord it was like a serious, other-worldly, giant-black-obelisk-in-2001: A Space Odyssey, mind-blowing, tantric-sex, two-prize-in-the-Cracker-Jack-box tonegasm of infinite beauty for the whole rest of his solo chorus.

I guess obvious descriptor would be that we took the normal groove up another notch (or more), but to me it feels like dropping through the floor into this rushing river that flows underneath everyone all the time. I guess that's sort of my Taoist leanings coming through, but that's how it feels to me--the floor gives way and I drop into this rushing river of sound and feeling that propels me forward without any work needed from me.

So tonight I finally figured out why runners run. As you may know I'm a recovering fatboy (and thankfully down about 75 pounds now), and I've been doing that by better eating and more exercise, which for me has always been some simple gym work and about three two-mile walks each week. In early April I decided to try my hand at running.

I got about a tenth of a mile and contemplated suicide. Or murder. Or possibly the hostile takeover of a small corporation via a leveraged buyout of the majority of their stocks. I settled for a lot of cursing, measured through tightly apportioned gasping for air.

Hell, I've never been a runner; I never liked it in high school gym class; it was the bane of my existence in my brief time in the local police academy sixteen years ago; after that my greatest pleasure in exercising was not to run. But I have good friends who swear by it, so I thought I should give it a go again. That first time sucked, but I surprised myself by trying again the next time I walked, and getting a little bit further.

The rest of that story is that two months later I've gotten up to two miles. My goal is to run 3.11 miles (i.e. a '5K') and I have little doubt I'll get there soon. Tonight I decided to travel the whole five kilometers, running two miles then walking the last 1.1 miles. It was hot and humid tonight and I was already sweating into my first mile, but feeling good.

Then as my iPod shuffled randomly through my "Funk n Rock" playlist of about 200 songs, Van Morrison's "Into The Mystic" came on.

I've always listened to my iPod (iPhone, now) while walking just to enjoy some music, but I never really felt the merging of music and exercise as a palpable, inspirational thing until tonight. In short, I dropped into the groove; I felt that river wash me along without my legs needing to do any work.

I let Van rock my gypsy soul, and I knew I'd get farther than ever. I did too, getting about 2.6 miles of running in before easing back to finish the last half mile at a brisk walk.

Thanks runners, I get it now.

Maybe it's more Zen than Tao to say that it's all connected. I know I've dropped into the groove in other areas of my life too, even at work. But that's another 'blog. For now I'm going to rest and smile a lot.

And I want to rock your gypsy soul
Just like way back in the days of old
And magnificently we will flow into the mystic

The morass that is social networking

Last week I ran away from Facebook.

To be fair, I'd been moving away from it for awhile. At first I started gradually inching away, as if carrying on a conversation with it at a crowded party and feigning a trip to the snacks laid out on the kitchen counter. I avoided eye contact; I answered questions with nondescript head shakes and barely audible mumbles; I played with my phone and pretended to check emails... But Facebook didn't take the hint. It kept yammering away with a thousand updates every second and invitations to do everything from starting a pretend farm to joining a pretend Mafia.

Frustrated, I turned on my heel and walked away. But it kept following me and blathering.

Did I know that 62 of my friends were fans of Skyline Chili?

I assumed so, if not more. I mean, it's just so damned delicious! I'd wager that more than 62 of my friends are slaves to its cinnamon and paprika charms. But I digress.

Was I aware that my wife liked True Blood?

Well duh, we watch it together.

Did I know that Barack Obama was encouraging all 42-year-old men to become police officers?

Admittedly, that I did not know, and I remain skeptical. But hell, the man has already floored me with policy changes he'd promised he'd never make, so I guess anything is possible.

At this point I broke into a full run, moving as fast for the door as I could. It was then that I heard Facebook say, "Hey, this is one cute video of your kid on the swing set!"

Um, what the hell? I set that video (like all my others) so that "Only Friends" could view it. How in the world did it get reset to "Everyone?" I stripped all my videos from Facebook's hands and threw them in the trash. Checking my photo albums, I found that (for the third time on some of them) many had been reset to "Friends of Friends" after I'd set them all to "Only Friends." Into the trash they went too. Now I took off in a full sprint out the door and across the backyard.

Thankfully Facebook has become a fat, lumbering beast and couldn't keep up with me. However, in a move far more crafty than I could have anticipated, it instead sent three separate women from my past on a textbook buttonhook route to intercept me. Despite my clearly happy marriage and family life displayed prominently on Facebook, these women (some in their own ostensibly happy marriages) began shouting salutations of lust and promises of ardor whose intensity would only be matched by its secrecy.

Calling an audible and breaking into a wheel route, I left the skanks face down in the turf and began hopping fences of the neighboring homes until I came to the end of the line--a deep ravine looking over a rocky stream far below. I paused long enough to hear Facebook yell, "If you deactivate your account, don't worry! It can't ever be deleted so it'll be right there waiting for you when you log back in!"

Screw it. Thelma and Louise time.

In the days since then I've been recovering, slowly. I pull out my iPhone and then wonder why I did so, momentarily forgetting that I have about 35 other apps. I miss seeing Jen's status updates even though she's sitting three feet from me in the same room. I miss looking at a roll of 157 pictures from a party in which a friend of mine was tagged in one shot and I rifle through the rest like some barely invited burglar. I honestly miss the updates of about five of my close friends from the past who I don't get to see much otherwise.

As for the rest, I discovered that after the initial coolness of reconnecting with friends from kindergarten through college that I haven't seen since the end of those eras of my life, we all gravitated back to the original state of drifted-apart. Facebook (and other social networking sites) reconnect what life has through its natural course has put asunder, and maybe there's something to be said for leaving well enough alone.

I'm also very happy not to be constantly worrying (as a person in my profession would naturally do) about the constant "updating" of their security policies that randomly make my children's photos visible to the whole world (or most of it) despite my repeated attempts to restrict them to my group of friends.

Finally, since my ego clearly mandates that I cajole people into reading things I've written, I always have this blog to pour my "status updates" into whenever I see fit. Probably the same dozen people who subscribe to this blog were the only ones reading my updates on Facebook anyway, so it all works out.

And for those of you who miss me on Facebook and wonder where I've gone, my email still works. You can "friend me" in real life any time you like. ;-)