A few years ago, I was doing some pro bono work with a small, rotating-cast musical ensemble.  I was doing a lot of this kind of work at the time, which amounted to 1) show up, 2) get handed a stack of charts, 3) learn 30-45 minutes worth of music in an hour or so, and 4) play it.  It’s great for extending your musical reach, particularly if you’re not familiar with the musical genres you’re being asked to come up with parts to (which I wasn’t, really).  There’s a lot of down sides to this kind of ensemble, though.  The biggest being that you will never sound better than the least experienced member du jour.  Woe befall everyone if it happens to be the drummer. 

It was shaking out to be one of those days.  The team wasn’t overly strong and we were trying to get to a lot of songs.  The bandleader, who we will call Jerve, was clearly struggling.  In these kinds of gigs, it’s not my job to be the place where the buck stops.  But I do know a thing or two about music and arrangement, and Jerve made it clear from the beginning that he wanted my 2 cents, so I was offering what help I could. We got to a brand new song (let’s call it Blarfingame), and everything just stopped.  I mean, literally ground to a spark-spitting halt.  It wasn’t a hard tune by any means, but the band chemistry and this song just didn’t get along. 

Jerve plowed forward, leading the song largely by himself on guitar.  After we’d taken a pass through the tune, I had an idea or two of how to make Blarfingame easier and more dynamic.  Jerve listened to me, agreed it was a good idea, but in the interest of time, he wanted to stick with the arrangement we had just slapped together.  Fair enough; been there myself. 

So we did.  And Blarfingame didn’t sound bad.  Not great, but sometimes any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. 

Flash forward a week.  Smaller group and Jerve has the week off.  Ah, but the keyboardist from last week is the bandleader this time, and Blarfingame is on the setlist again!  Okay, cool.  So we practice the other tunes in performance order.  We get to Blarfingame.  I make my suggestion about arrangement again. 

She informs me, in all earnest and without an ounce of duplicity, that “this is how we’ve always done the song.”

I ponder that whenever someone appeals to tradition as an authoritative benchmark.

-anoN

There’s a place in the California mountains that’s the closest I’ll ever get to having a personal spiritual retreat.  Literally out in the middle of nowhere, with limited internet and in a cell-dead zone, there’s nothing to do but revel in natural splendor.  Smell the pine and creosote. Walk along the ridgeline and see down into the Fresno valley, surrounded by trees, tall grass, and meadows as the warm sun embraces you.  It’s easy to empty yourself of all your cares and just…be.

It was on such an outing that I was empty enough to ask a curious, unanticipated question.  That being: “What if everything you ever believed is a lie, and you have only lived to advance another’s agenda?”

Weird question.  Even weirder response. 

I’m glad nobody was around.  I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t see straight.  All I could do was feel a burning, haunted, acidic rage.  I wanted to break something. I wanted to burn the skies down.  I wanted to shout rebellion and defiance to the universe.

When I got back, still seething with anger, I didn’t so much write as open the emotional floodgates and get out of the way. In less than 15 minutes, the lyrics to the song Defiled were complete.  And for the record, this isn’t how my songwriting process usually works.  Which is good – it would be way too fatiguing if I had to go through this every time.

Defiled is not a pretty song.   It’s a revenge tale dripping with sadomasochism and torture imagery. As a songwriter, I don’t go out of my way to shock or offend; I don’t have anything to prove one way or the other lyrically.  Sometimes, though, there just aren’t words jagged, or hateful, or malicious enough to communicate what you’re really feeling, so you punt to the imagery our culture understands.  If turtles and rainbows communicated all the angst I felt in writing the tune, then the song would be about turtles and rainbows.  And it would still be ugly. 

The up side about writing lyrics like this is that it pretty well dictates where the music should land.  Aggressive and unrelenting.  Current heavy music usually dictates a slower, grinding tempo, but this felt more like it belonged to the thrash metal days of barely in control riffing.  I think the basic musical sketch took less than 2 hours to form.  The use of synthesizers and loops on this tune was in the plan from the beginning. I wanted some tones that sounded epic (and even intentionally dated) without sounding hokey. Distortion-saturated guitars can only give you so much sonically, and I’m quite happy with the contribution of the keys on this one.  It was also liberating to bust out the metal chops and push to keep up with the tune.  Don’t ask how long it took to record the guitars.  This one was literally painful to play sometimes. 

And, of course, it went without saying that Oily would sing it.  We tried some supporting stuff with both Julie and hitch (hoping it would have that male/female duality a la KMFDM), but the female vocals never quite sounded right.  Oily kept pushing to have the single singer, and I kept pushing back with trying the girl thing ONE MORE TIME.  I’m glad he was persistent in his opinion; the tune is way more cohesive and brutal with just the male vocal energy paving the way. 

Funny thing, even after all that.  When we were mastering the song, Rick (our engineer) turned to me with a half-smile and commented, “You guys had fun recording this one, didn’t you?”

Yes, yes we did.   

-anoN

Sometimes, though, a song isn’t necessarily ‘about’ anything.  All Fall Down is one of those.

Funny thing.  This single, repeating “And we all fall down” chorus line was one of the first things that popped into my head some years ago when Tanya and I were starting a new band.  At the time, I heard it over a faster tempo, with distorted, heavily delayed guitar riding over busy tom fills. Hey, everyone ripped off U2 back then. Sue me. Maybe because of that, I could never figure out the rest of the tune. So it went onto the back burner – a dusty little folder titled “Lyrics: In Progress” in the low-rent part of my computer.  And stayed there. 

Fast forward a few years to Mirror Darkly.  We were finishing up the studio work and I was starting in on the collection we now call Infernal Divine.  Decided to see if there was anything worth working on in the back burner.  Usually the answer is no.  The folder is embarrassingly well-populated with orphan song ideas – a line or two here; a paragraph there; a concept that never made it any further than that.  Opened up the file for All Fall Down… and finished the lyrics in about 15 minutes.  Kinda helped that I’d heard a King’s X jam that, while totally different from my original vision, had the inspiration for the main riff that I could hang the rest of the tune on. 

There were some firsts on this song.  This was the first song where I wanted the drum programming to sound like an actual drummer.  Even though it’s fundamentally a 4-on-the-floor groove most of the time, we gave it some fills and turnarounds that a live drummer would use.  I think it’s also the first song where I started specifically creating synthesizer lines in bits and pieces as opposed to flowing through the entire song.  Mostly so it was easier to record them.  Nothing more depressing than having to play a part perfect for 6 minutes (because the part never stops), messing up at 5:54, and having to start all over. 

It's also the first song not performed by a self-identified member of the ensemble. I had planned on Tanya singing this one, but she didn’t feel like she was doing the song proper justice with her interpretation. I asked a friend of mine (Crode) to give it a shot. She agreed, and gave the tune a feminine, somewhat gritty vibe. She added the ‘ring around the rosy’ part without telling us she was going to; our response was “Yeah, that’s cool!  Let’s keep that!” I didn’t provide much direction on the harmonies either; I totally dig the eerie, melodic vibe she created. 

I suppose that if the song IS about anything, it’s about feeling overwhelmed.  There’s all manner of things that want our attention in this noisy world.  Some of them are welcome; most aren’t.  For me, the “All Fall Down” of the chorus is “I give up”.  Not in despair, or failure, or anything like that. More like throwing up your hands and saying enough.  So yeah – no great conclusions, no specific ideas, no boy meets girl, no lost love.   Just a musical expression of those times when you feel like everything is pressing down on you and you don’t see any easy fixes. 

-anoN

Now, having said that, I almost don’t want to do it. 

Does anyone remember getting a new CD or (heaven forbid) LP when you were younger?  Or even now? You’d charge home.  Rip open the packaging.  Gaze at the artwork and liner notes.  Slap on the headphones.  Hit the opening track. And be lost in the experience. 

I think part of the reason that time seems so transcendent (other than the usual ‘good old days’ thing we all gain as we age) is that so much of the musical experience was your own interpretation.  Yeah, the artwork and the liner notes guide that, but everything else was your own.  As you listened to the music, you felt what you felt. Your mind’s eye conjured its’ own images. The music didn’t dictate your emotions… they gave you a diving board to explore it on your own. That’s how, for example, a song like “Southern Cross” can become Our Song with me and my girl, even though it’s a song about failed relationships. 

Enter MTV: the game-changer of the early 80s.  And yes, they did play music on it at one time. 

Visuals have long been a part of musical performance, to be sure.  And even though a lot of those early videos were embarrassingly bad, it gave artists a new dimension to play with. And for the first time, a mass-audience could actually SEE what the band looked like.  Being able to get a small slice of that live experience was pretty compelling for those of us who grew up in tiny towns with conservative parents who would rarely let us see shows.    

But that comes at a certain cost.  Visuals are strong associative cues. And once you get those in your head, it’s hard to let them go.  I like a good vid as much as the next person.  But too often I feel like videos have the (possibly unintended) side effect of telling you what you should get out of the song.  Or, perhaps more cynically, the song really doesn’t have any depth in the first place, and the video is simply a) a way to deflect attention from that fact, and b) something modern rock artists are obliged to do as a part of marketing their brand.  By the way… yes, I DO believe there are good songs and bad songs.  But that’s for another entry.

I don’t want to tell anyone what they should or shouldn’t get out of our music, or music in general.  I’d rather you draw your own conclusions. If a sad song makes you happy, or an angry song gives you some serenity, then cool. I’d be the last person to tell you that you got it wrong.  It’s one of the reasons I’m reticent to do videos as well.  I’m not opposed to the idea… but the stars would have to align just so.  Probably for the better; my mental visuals of late would probably be considered too blasphemous or surreal for the average video consumer. 

So, having said all that, I’m going to regale you with tales from the writing desk and studio anyway.  And why not?  Some of it is pretty funny.  Some of it is uncomfortable.  Some of it is just weird.  I hope that knowing what went into this particular sausage doesn’t spoil your appetite for it. But the stories and insights of what went into Infernal Divine are worth telling, and who knows – knowing some of the grist may take you to new places when you hear one of the tunes.

Still reticent about doing a video, though.

-anoN

* Shai Azul

Infernal Divine – our second compilation – is 95% tracked.  We thought we were done a few weeks ago, but then we got the clever idea of trying out our new female alto (call her hitch) on one of the songs.  That gets done tonight.  We have a guest guitarist emailing us a few guitar solos as well.  We started mixing last week; that’s an interesting time.  It’s when you take everything you’ve been working on so carefully and diligently over the course of months and throw half of it out.  Not that it was bad, mind you.  Just too much stuff going on.  Album photography was completed earlier this year.  Beginning work on the art/packaging.  Still not sure if we’re going to press any CDs or whether this will all be digital.  Early 2012 looks like the release date.  Work on the 3^rd album is already in progress, with about 6-7 song ideas being bandied about.  With our present lineup being pretty stable, I’d sure like to be talking about pressing CD number three this time next year.  Awfully ambitious, that.  But it could happen. 

* Redshift Heretic

Vic and I have combed through about 14 different scratch tracks and have landed on about 7-9 of them to start producing.  I still want to have a few more songs in the 85-120 bpm range, but we have plenty to work with as is.  Once Infernal Divine is mixed, this project is going front burner.  If you don’t hear from me between December and February 2012, I’ll be easy to find.  Just look in the home studio for the guy with headphones on.  People still keep asking us what the difference between Shai Azul and Redshift might be; after all, the music has a lot of crossover (techno/industrial/metal/pop/rock).  In short – the lyrics in Shai Azul have emotional weight and significance.  In Redshift, the lyrics are less about content and more about ‘does this sound cool?’.  It also lets us try out things like spoken word, wildly effected vocals, narration, and other ideas that don’t necessarily fall into the typical realm of sung melody/harmony.  For that matter, some Redshift songs are straight instrumental. 

* Starspawn

Oily’s solo project continues to evolve and write.  So far we have 3 songs solid in addition to intros and outros; we’d like to have 5 actual songs on the first outing.  Oily is working on the overarching story and arrangements.  I, on the other hand, am working my extreme metal chops, which is something I am really enjoying.  I didn’t get a chance to play in any metal bands until I was older, so this is like unwrapping musical Christmas presents every day.  First half of 2012 looks good for this EP. 

(Quick crash course in extreme metal.  Thrash=Metallica prior to the Black Album; fast, riff-heavy, intense.  Death=similar to thrash, good luck understanding the lyrics. Black=see Death, add overtly Satanic imagery, tremolo picking, and simpler production.  Doom=see Thrash, slow it down by 300%.   Starspawn has elements of all these.)

Time to head back into the studio; I just got a new keyboard module that has me rethinking the synth tones for ALL the projects…

-anoN

Julio (name changed) and I were headed to band practice a few years ago.  Julio didn’t have a car, so I’d pick him up in Greenwood and we’d head across the Aurora Bridge into West Seattle 1-2 times a week for rehearsals.  We’d always talk about our days.  Julio was (and still is) a great conversationalist.

I remember that day being particularly brutal.  At the time, I was working at a company with a large volunteer corps.  Several thousand, actually, spread across the globe.  That’s not an exaggeration.  I was in charge of them all.  And whether it was fair or not, there were forces within the company that held me at least partially responsible for their actions.  My weeks were full of meetings, policy documentation, program creation, and uncomfortable conversations to the tune of 55+ hours a week.  I suppose what I was doing was important at some level to someone.  I just mostly remember being exhausted and waking up at 4am with my mind ablaze.

Julio listened, nodded sympathetically.  Julio is arguably the best guitarist I have ever played with.  His intelligence simmers quietly behind kind eyes, and you don’t realized how capable he is until you find yourself in need of some skill or knowledge and invariably Julio has it.  He could be a player in many arenas if he wanted.  But he had chosen a simpler life.  He works to make money to do what he wants to do.  That’s enough.

His turn.  “So, Julio, what did you do today?”

In his slow, thoughtful cadence, he recounted a day of getting up a bit late, playing guitar, making lunch in his small apartment, culminated by a walk down to the park.  “I fed the bunnies”, he recounted, a small smile spreading across his face.  It was clear that he enjoyed the experience. 

Julio is not lazy.  He’s a hard worker and not afraid to get his hands dirty.  He is, however, doing what he wants to do.  And on this day it was feeding the urban bunnies that live in our parks.

I like working hard.  Just like the majority of the 99%, I am sure.  But I also like having time for other pursuits.  For a while there, the two were almost incompatible.  The job demanded more and more, and I slept less.   The pay was okay, but the pressure was nonstop.  And forget having any time to feed the bunnies.  You have more important things to do. 

Until that evening, when Julio gently reminded me that there’s a big difference between what is important and what is necessary. 

Getting to work by 6am?  Late nights drafting documents?  Postponing celebrations to hit deadlines?  Hitting goals with limited budget?  Endless forum management? 

Necessary.  It’s what I was hired to do.  No surprises or regrets there. 

Being able to sleep through the night?  Hang out with friends?  Create?  Be spontaneous every now and then?  Enjoy occasional moments of serenity?   Feed the bunnies?

Important. 

The company that was demanding so much of my time would soon reorganize and dissolve my position.  Twice, in point of fact.  All my hard work is now, at best, a footnote in a disused server somewhere. 

Important?  Probably not. 

I still work hard.  I put in 20-70 hours a week on music, depending what’s on the burner or if I’m on tour.  I still sometimes wake up at 4am with my mind on fire.  I still agonize over things that probably aren’t that meaningful.    

But there’s time now.  Time to do the important things.  And that’s worth a lot.

I haven’t gotten to actually feeding the bunnies in the park yet.

But soon.

-anoN

We went in with one project and came out with 3. 

Oddly enough, that’s part of the plan.  It’s still weird when something actually goes according to plan. 

I’ve gone on at length in the past about how Shai Azul is an ensemble, not a ‘band’ per se.  I’ve been in a million ‘bands’.  I know how they breathe and work.  And I wanted something else.   I wanted a creative place where people could come and go as they were able and interested. That has its’ own set of headaches, yeah.  But it has some upsides. 

This summer, while in the studio, some of our ensemble had drastic changes in their availability.  Nothing toxic or dramatic, just changes in life and careers.  Thing is, if you’re a ‘band’ and a key player steps aside… you’re pretty much done.  In our case?  Projects that existed as concepts and back-burner ideas emerged to fill the vacuum. 

The scary thing is that these other projects have arisen in addition to Shai Azul, not as replacements.  These days, it’s a case of listening to a new scratch track or composition and wondering “Hunh… who gets THIS tune?”

The first, which I’ll call “Caligula”, is closer to my original vision for Shai Azul; electronic/industrial dance hall music.  Some have asked me what the difference between the two projects is.  It’s admittedly kind of arbitrary. The best way to say it is that Shai Azul is far more lyrical, and became so early on.  Songs MEAN something, with an emotional content we want to communicate, whether it’s a heavy, fast tune or a more atmospheric one.  Caligula, on the other hand, is all about having fun. Nothing to prove here. Just thumpy, sweaty, have another gin and tonic, turn-it-up-loud and dance/drive/do housework/whatever fun.  Some of it is strictly instrumental.  Some of it is a chance for Vic and I to try our hand at singing.  Caligula is developing a sci-fi bent, from the actual name of the project to the proposed artwork to the tonalities of the keyboards to some of the lyrics (one tune is based around an HG Wells quote).  We’ll see how much that sci-fi thing ends up sticking.  At this point, it’s mostly me and Vic; we’ll probably drag Oily and Carl and one of the girls into it at some point.  We have about 7-8 scratch tracks for this one so far. I’d like to have about 12-15 to choose the best from.  Having this out by the end of the year or early next is realistic.

“Operation Bluebook” is Oily’s baby, and a bit harder to explain. I’ll try to get him on one of these blogs at some point.  Oily has an ambitious science/horror/ambient concept that he wants to get across in about a 5-6 song EP.  Instead of producer, I’m a player and arranger.  It’s already pushed me musically.  I mean, how do you compose something that emotes rising panic, or claustrophobia, or dread of an undefinable horror without the lyrics spelling it out?  The whole project is like this, and I am enjoying it immensely so far.  We had a great session this week where we collectively figured out our overarching direction.  This will also probably be the first project where we’ll need to recruit some folks from outside the usual Shai Azul orbit.  Hard to say when this one will come out; look for first quarter 2012 as a guess. 

Shai Azul remains cohesive and vital, if somewhat delayed.  I’m not ready to announce any lineup changes yet; some things are still in flux and I want to let those things sort themselves out a bit first.  And in an ensemble like ours, nobody ‘leaves’ permanently unless they decide they don’t want to be a part of it anymore.  We are continuing to record Infernal Divine (did I just mention the name of the second CD?  I guess I just did…); in fact, it’s about 85% done and mixing will commence in October.  We are still looking for the right vocalist to complete 1-2 of the songs.  AND we are already writing scratch tracks for the third CD.  This is not the kind of energy you put into a project you’ve written off. 

So, yeah… change seems to have made the ensemble even more creative and vital. Between Shai Azul, Operation Bluebook, Caligula, and all the other projects in the works, it’s going to be a busy fall…

-anoN

I took this picture a few weeks ago while on tour with the theatre troupe.  We were about an hour away from performing the first show of the season to about 600 kids and adults.  We’d set everything up a little more downstage than normal, which meant that even our usual rat’s nest of cables was hidden behind curtains or back walls.  In short, we ended up with a relatively wide, uncluttered corridor from one end of the stage to the other.  That doesn’t happen very much.

Some people might call it stark, or empty, or black.

I call it peaceful.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the number of times I’ve hit the stage in a musical or performance capacity over the years is easily in the 4 digits.  I don’t get nervous or jittery anymore.  In fact, I think the last time I had any performance butterflies was for a show at Folklife, playing for, oh, what… 3,000 people?   Even that was at least 4 years ago. 

Still, I find that I still need to get ready mentally, even if my stomach isn’t doing flip-flops.  My Other will attest that I usually vanish off by myself about 60-90 minutes before a gig.  Don’t mean to be rude.  Just need to be silent for a bit.  Tune up.  Maybe run through some warmup exercises (a must when playing with the metal band).  And just take in the stillness. 

I can’t tell you why lurking in the shadows like a dime-novel villain amps me up for a performance.  All I know is that it does.  I don’t question it.  And I don’t feel quite right if I don’t get a chance to do it. 

Shai Azul is in a calm of sorts right now.  The singers are recording and re-recording their parts.  Collaborations are waiting for other comments.  Disc 2 is approaching completion; disc 3 is forming.  Not a huge amount for me to do personally right now.

Other than find the dark, quiet place.  Breathe.  Focus.  Rest for a moment.

Because the curtain always goes up eventually. And you need to be ready when it does. 

-anoN

What really fascinates me about the music creation process is how much more organic it is than visual arts as  far as the actual creation is concerned.  There is a great deal of back and forth collaboration with the band mates, audio engineer, songwriters, singers, etc.  The music can change course at any 
moment.  It was a new form of artistic creation and expression that I had not experienced before even though music has been such a huge inspiration in my life and my art.  Anyway, I thought it was high time that I had some input on the blog about my experience with Shai Azul, and I figured that this weekend’s session was definitely worth writing about.  So let’s begin ^_^

Tanya was in town for the weekend so we decided to hit 3 new songs that needed her vocals: Communion and the songs I wrote, Faith and Infrared.  On the way to Birdhouse Studio I was talking with Tanya about my discussion with anoN concerning more emotional impact in the songs.  Technically they were very good, but as an artist I felt that we could take the vocals to the next level.  I had a few examples that I thought had an emotional impact for me: Bjork’s All is Full of Love and QueensRyche’s Someone Else (acoustic version).  Both of these songs had a way of tapping that emotional lizard brain for me and I wanted to have our new songs deliver the listener a visceral response.  Have you ever stood in front of a painting and after staring at it you feel draw into the canvas?  Feel emotionally 
connected to the scene, the color, the texture?  This is what I would like out of our music, to draw the listener in.  To make the music visual.

The session started out very well despite Tanya being a bit sick.  The first song, Communion, was executed very nicely.  I recommended that we add a very deep monk chant in the background of the chorus.  Our comrade, Anthony, was able to pull it off after some experimentation.  With a slight tweak by our engineer, Chris, we had an awesome and haunting chant that sounded like it was in a grand cathedral. I was still thinking that we could get more emotion in the music.  So I decided to call my brother, Alberto, in Manhattan.  He is an actor, director, and published playwright.  He is also a professional acting coach.  I talked to him on what I wanted out of the music and he said 
he could do some coaching to Tanya.  After she wrapped Communion I put her on the phone with him and the rest of us took a beer/smoke break.  

Not long after, she came out of the sound-booth and seamed a bit...different, emotional.  We tied up a few loose ends with Communion and jumped into Faith.

Faith is song that is emotionally charged with despair so I was anxious to see how it would go.  After the first verse I knew that my brother’s coaching had brought a change to the surface.  Her voice was 
rich with sadness and loss. It was something new.  She was taking her voice to a new level and we all new it!  We did a series of takes where Tanya experimented with some different ways of singing the 
chorus and other takes to correct a variety of other items.  By the end of that session we had a solid emotional track.  I had never been more impressed by her performance. 

That is, until she started the next song. }:-)

Next up was Infrared.  Since it is a duet we had temporary tracks of Oily’s voice and Tanya was going to redo hers.   Now, this song is in a complete 180º direction as far as the content of the lyrics and 
musical style.  Its sexually charged, naughty, laced with innuendos, and has a pounding rhythm.  After listening to the tune, and doing the mental exercise my brother taught her, she dove into the song.  Oh... Wow!  The song suddenly exploded with energy and intensity.  We did several takes with Tanya owing the music and bending it to her will.  Sometimes, the way she sang... well it made us giggle and blush, haha!  Chris had some extra fun by adding some cool audio FX. In my humble opinion, we had the most fun recording this song.

Faith and Infrared are my first two songs that I have seen to near completion.  I don’t think that it could be going any better as far as the experience is concerned.  But, there is still much to do before we 
release this album.  Now it’s my turn to level up so anoN let me borrow one of his keyboards and I will be learning to play, at least enough to get the music in my head into chords and notes.  I feel the 
need to be more connected to the music instead of just writing and directing my tunes.  As an artist, if you are not fully engaged with your medium, be it music or photography or painting, the observer of 
your art WILL know it.  This is why it is so important to me for us to be engaged as much possible with the music we make.

I want you to share in the experience of our music.

-Vic

The old parade grounds, by the way, make a perfect place to fly kites.

Which is exactly what we did, a few weekends ago.  Me.  My Other and her delta-winged kite, which she can get aloft when there’s hardly a whisper of wind.  Oily and Sylvia.  Vic, Kelly, and their  son, Leo.

Oily and Sylvia brought their dual-line kites; parasails on strings.  It’s been a long time since I flew a dual-line.  We had a delta wing dual line kite early on in our marriage, when we had lots of time and not a lot of money.  We flew it enough (and crashed it enough) that we eventually wore it out.  But these parasail constructs looked much more capable of taking punishment.  And Oily was having a great time buzzing us and making it dance in midair.

He turns to me with a big grin and says, “Wanna give it a go?”

I give it a go.

I am less than graceful.  I crash it quickly several times, much to the amusement of the rest of the gang.  But I slowly remember how to control the dual lines.  I remember how to make it go left and right.  Oily instructs me on how a parasail works.  A tug here and this happens.  A sharp, repeated tug on both lines and it rises. 

Soon I am making it do figure 8s and guiding it across the breezy sky.  I’m not as good as Oily is, but I’m having a blast. 

I don’t know what any bypassers might have thought, seeing two grown men hoot and yell with delight as we guided a flying sail through loops, bends, and near misses with the ground. 

But you know, it doesn’t matter.

This world isn’t much for encouraging dreamers.  It will always tell you that you’re too something.  Too thin.  Too fat.  Too uneducated.  Too awkward.  Too old.  Too young.  Too late.   Too early.  Too risky.  Too unattainable.  Too anything. 

It’s not personal.  It’s just that there’s always reasons NOT to do something.  Which it seems are all too quick to be pointed out to you one way or another. 

Me?  I’m tired of giving those voices any more credibility.  I’m going to go fly a kite.  I’m sure it looks stupid to some and I’ll crash it a lot.  Hey, whatever.  It’s not life or death.  It’s flying a kite.  And it’s fun. 

Besides.

You might be with me one day at the park.  And I may turn to you with a big grin and say, “Wanna give it a go?”

-anoN