Musical Education.

I had this idea the other day -- no doubt while I was stoned -- that I should work up a set of my theater songs to play live, so I dragged everything out of the storage closet to get out the box of old cassette tapes (of course it was at the very bottom of the stack of boxes at the very back of the closet) and listen to my old work. Now of course I'm all nostalgic and self-congratulatory.

I have a substantial body of work, which is not surprising since I'm 46 and I've been doing this since I was in my early twenties, but when you're 46 and you've been doing this since your early twenties and you're not famous or at least "making a living at it," there's a lot of pressure to conclude that you haven't accomplished a damn thing. Trying to explain that you have been successful despite the fact that your dream of stardom didn't come true is like trying to tell people that you don't consider your divorce to be the failure of your marriage. (And, in my case, the two are exactly the same.)

The story I tell is that theater school ruined theater for me and art school ruined art, so when I started playing in bands and writing songs I willfully avoiding studying music so as not to ruin that. And, as we do of all those stories we tell, I've often wondered whether this was a true story or just a good story. Turns out it is true.

Listening to this old work -- a lot of it is very rough work tapes and demos, just me in my bedroom with a 4-track cassette porta-studio, my thrift store electric guitar and a toy Casio; it's refreshing to see how naive I was, how willing to let my collaborators see how unschooled I was, and how much I loved that distortion pedal -- I can trace my career from those first songs, when I just jumped in and started doing it, all the way to Y'all and beyond, when I had become a fine songwriter, I would even say a first-rate songwriter. And I think the real success is that every bit of the work, good and bad, was genuine. My scheme took decades, but it worked.

In this box is a rehearsal tape of a Tiny Mythic Theatre Company production of Lorca's Blood Wedding from 1989. It was right after I broke up with my first long-term boyfriend -- six years, an apartment in Brooklyn, three cats and a dog, and he was the one who pulled me into music, playing with a band he was forming with a lesbian couple who were moving to New York from Baltimore. The sequence leading up to my work on Blood Wedding led to my decision to leave that relationship. (The director asked us to write the music, since we had worked together on two of the company's productions the previous season. My partner didn't want to do it -- the time commitment of a theater production was grueling -- so I decided to do it alone. Finding a separate life for myself after being part of a couple for so many years was exhilarating. I wanted to be single again. I left him.)

The task was more challenging by far than anything I had done. Lorca's play contained all these "songs," or sections written in verse with no music. It was like being handed the lyrics for a full-length musical and being asked to set them to music. I like to think of Tiny Mythic Theatre Company as my informal MFA program in music for theater. I worked with them on several productions in the late 80s and early 90s, writing and performing music. How often does a songwriter with barely any experience get to see all his first efforts put on a stage straightaway? It was a rare gift.

After Blood Wedding, Tim Maner (one of the founding directors of the company and subsequently of HERE Arts Center) came to me with the idea of turning the Lizzie Borden story into a rock musical. The first incarnation of Lizzie Borden was a one-act, 5 songs, it was wild and loud and the audience loved it as much as we loved creating it. I think it was while we were working on Lizzie Borden that I was at Tim's apartment and saw a copy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein sitting on a table. I said, "That's my favorite book!" Tim said, "Really? I think it would make a great musical."

Frankenstein kicked our asses, and after Lizzie Borden I hope we get a chance to revisit it. It was too big for us, and it didn't come together, but listening to the songs on tape this week -- we made a soundtrack recording, faithfully documenting every brilliant and dreadful moment -- I still think it's some of our best work. It's easier to see the flaws now, and it would be easier to fix them. At the time, we never questioned our ability to stage a musical with some 18 songs, a cast of 20 or so (mostly non-musical theater performers), with pop rock songs whose lyrics were all taken verbatim from a Romantic novel. We just plowed ahead. It was an inspired process, but it didn't show in the finished production. Half the audience walked out at intermission every night. It broke our hearts.

I think the next thing I did with Tim after that was Las Sirenas, a performance based on the Odyssey, film noir dialogue, and 70s pop music. Most of the songs in it were appropriated pop songs, but I did write an ABBAesque disco song for the girl-groupish Sirens to sing. And then -- or do I have the order reversed? -- Tim did A, a sprawling environmental theater work based on The Scarlet Letter. For that, I wrote a sort of Brechtian ballad about bulimia and a song about transcendence through S/M sung by a full gospel choir.

Red Curry.

In our CSA box we got a bunch of lemon grass, another big bag of okra, 6 or 8 red potatoes, one small eggplant, a lot of basil, two onions, and the usual squash, cucumbers, and assortment of chilies. Since A left some ginger here, and we have all these Thai chilies from the garden, I decided to make a red curry.

I got very good at curries when I worked at Greens. It takes a while and makes our unair-conditioned kitchen very hot, but it's rewarding. I roast most of the vegetables first, which boosts the flavor. (Like the potatoes and carrots and eggplant, cut them in bite-sized pieces, toss with olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper, and roast on a baking sheet in a 400 degree oven until they're tender. Do them in separate pans to get each vegetable perfectly done.)

Our blender died. We have a hand blender, but it's not quite strong enough to really pulverize the lemon grass and ginger, so the curry sauce is a little fibrous, but it tastes delicious.

The sauce is easy. Sautee some sliced onions and chili peppers with a pinch of salt -- I used three small Thai chilies for the whole batch and it turned out about medium hot. (If I had red bells peppers I would have sauteed some with the onions, for more flavor and a nice red color.) Add some broth or water and blend until smooth. Cut up some ginger, garlic, and lemon grass into chunks and blend with water or stock until very smooth. Add it to the pan with some coconut milk (I'd say 2 or 3 parts broth to one part coconut milk) and simmer until the flavors come together. Taste it frequently. Add some paprika to make it redder.

I sliced and added the okra about two minutes before I turned off the sauce, just long enough to make it tender. Then I added the roasted veggies to the hot sauce to heat them through. It's ready now, but J is gone for the afternoon, so it'll sit all day, and tonight we'll eat it over rice topped with some chopped basil.

It's Still Raining in Texas.

1. It's still raining in Texas.

2. I spent two months rent on my new glasses, or I should say lenses, because I still have my old frames. I should just put a big scratch on them now so I can relax.

3. Cucumbers, poblanos, and jalapeños. That's what loves to grow in our garden. Apparently that's what loves to grow in the CSA farm garden, too. And the jalapeños are super wicked hot. I chopped up a roasted one the other day and put a bit of it on a sandwich, and I burned my lip so bad I had to hold an ice cube on it for 15 minutes before I could finish eating.

4. It's still raining in Texas.

5. Lizzie Borden didn't do it. Maybe. I always thought she did, but I'm reading a couple new books that make me doubt my certainty.

6. J and I saw Hairspray this week. It's great. Go see it. Marijuana helps.

7. It's still-- A break in the rain! I'm going to ride my bike to the coffeeshop.

Happy Ending.

I realized that I forgot to post the final chapter in the story of losing $40 at Whole Foods. (It's not "Who Shot JR?" but hopefully someone will find it mildly interesting.)

Not that I tie up every loose end here, or even try, but Whole Foods needs the good press. It's endlessly complex isn't it, the American sport of building up and tearing down successful people? There's plenty to find fault with at Whole Foods, but I mean, please, John Mackay has almost single-handedly changed the landscape of American grocery shopping (I would argue, mostly for the better). Is it really such a shock that he's ambitious and a little crazy?

Anyway, I had told the customer service person that the transaction in question had taken place on a Tuesday. They went through all their receipts from Tuesday and didn't find any cashier's drawer that was over $40, or over at all.

But it wasn't a Tuesday, it was a Monday. I remembered that the super-gregarious cashier had asked me, "Did you do anything fun over the weekend?" which would be an odd Tuesday question. So it had been 3 days until I noticed that I never got the cash. I called back and asked them to look through their Monday receipts. They did, and they found it!

I drove over to the store and they handed me 40 bucks. I had given up on recovering it, so it was like a bonus. Like visiting your grandmother and she passes you a five when she kisses you goodbye.

I Love You, Tomorrow.

J is coming home tomorrow. Praise the lord and get this child out of my house!

A Trip to Target.

I have to admit that I just got back from shopping in a big chain store, and it did wonders for my state of mind.

I bought a shower curtain. That's all. It was $10. It's nylon, but woven fabric instead of a sheet of plastic. The main thing is that it's washable. The mold in our bathroom has been fruitful with all this rain and humidity. I don't know if it will be this way every year; in fact, I doubt it -- "This is not typical!" -- but I got really sick of wiping the mold off the shower curtain.

The sun was out when I woke up today. When I was driving to Target, the sun was still out and it was raining. That was a nice change. Now, another thunderstorm. I am not complaining about the rain any more. I was bitching to Z the other day, and he said, "You know, the only people complaining about this weather are people who've never endured a Texas summer." In other words, "I'll give you something to complain about." No more.

After I found my shower curtain, I wandered around the store for an hour or so, enjoying the air conditioning and the pretty colors. I contemplated towels, gazed longingly at the bright orange plastic bowls and cups, fingered an Isaac Mizrahi quilted bedspread. I picked up a box grater, put it down, picked up another one, put it down. I shopped for t-shirts and underwear, marveling that they could be so white, so pure and clean. I found the styles I wanted, in my size, held them for a moment, then put them back. A handsome man in the camping department cruised me. And then I bought my shower curtain and came home.

I love Target. I'm sorry, I know it's a sin, but I just do.

Towels.

When I went to the bathroom first thing this morning, I noticed there were several hand towels on the towel hooks, and the only bath towel in sight was mine, which struck me as strange because, since J has been gone, there have always been lots of bath towels all over the bathroom. For a while there, it seemed like there were towels everywhere, and I had a hard time keeping track of which one was mine. I think A's girlfriend uses two towels when she showers, and I don't know who else is taking showers here.

I like a fresh towel every couple of days, especially in summer when I take 2 or 3 showers every day, so I put my old towel in the hamper. When I opened the cabinet to get out a new towel, there was only one left. I've been washing towels every few days, which I don't mind at all because I'm using lots of them and I might as well wash them all, but there were no towels to wash. Where did all the towels go?

A and his friends went out of town from Friday until late Saturday night, and they left a basket of dirty laundry on the porch. (Why?) In the basket were two of our towels. We have about 7 or 8 towels all together. Most of them are mismatched, old thrift store towels.

When A got up, I said to him, "What happened to all the towels?" He said, "Towels?" I said, "There are only a couple of towels in the bathroom." He said, "Hm. Maybe we took them swimming. I thought we got towels at ____'s house. Let me check." A few minutes later, when I went to the bathroom again, there were three more towels in my hamper, not including the ones that had been in the basket on the porch. The basket is not there anymore. We're still short of couple of towels.

We also have about 5 pint beer glasses, which we use for everything: iced coffee, water, ... beer. Friday night, there was only one on the shelf, and one dirty in the sink. I found 3 more in J's room (where A is staying).

I realize I am now officially a crotchety old man complaining about "kids today." Some of their behavior can be attributed to their youth I'm sure. But there are bad guests of all ages. How to be a good guest is something I learned because for many years I was so frequently a guest. I certainly didn't know at 20 what I know now. (Most important rule: Wash the dishes. All the dishes. Second most important rule: If you move anything, move it back. Third: Your clothes belong in your suitcase. Even the dirty ones. Especially the dirty ones. Fourth: be quiet. I would have thought that Don't have parties and Don't bring your uninvited girlfriend wouldn't even have to be on the list, but I guess they're not as obvious as I assumed.)

I hope I was a little better at human interaction than A and his friends when I was their age, but I wouldn't bet on it. I have a couple former roommates who I'm sure have unflattering stories to tell.

So what do I do? I think what needs to be done is that this boy needs to be slapped, but I'm not gonna be the one to do it. What I'm trying to do is ride it out, stay cheerful, and try to be a gracious host regardless. I feel more like a put-upon mom than a host. This experience makes me glad I never had kids, and makes me want to call my dad and forgive him for everything.