Paid Gig

"Hey, I'm Mason." Not a shred of celebrity about him as he strolled up beside me to check out the stage. I had no idea who he was, so you can imagine my surprise when I saw him up there performing a few hours later.

I was paid to watch Mason Jennings and Guster perform on Monday night. Yeah, I helped move their gear around for a bit before and after the show, but that's just because I was feeling so strong from dinner.

A special thank-you goes out to Eli for introducing Bruce and I to coconut rice. Apparently, rice steamed in chicken stock tastes even better. That's frightening since Coconut Rice rules the world of Thai cuisine along with his queen, Green Currie.

Guster was incredibly talented; switching instruments every song and belting out these beautiful three-part harmonies. A fun live show ended with not one, but two encores! The second was a very acoustic song – without the benefit of a sound system.

"We're going to try something without the PA. You can help us by being very, very quiet."

That didn't stop screaming girls from cutting loose one strum into the song. They were quickly shushed by more intelligent fans who have a better grasp of the concept of sound.

A beautiful evening.

Subway Thoughts With Dave

No book, no fodPod, no friend. This was my first trip on the subway without a something/someone to keep me company since I started school in September. And on top of that ... add THIS! I had minimal mattress-time last night, so, against all logic, I'm hyper today. Next stop: imagination station.

Have you ever wondered what the person next to you on the train was thinking?
If I was sitting next to you, this is what you would have have wanted to know.

I turned around in the hotel lobby and this guy was standing there with his hand on a kid's shoulder. He smiled at me and said, "Hey, I'd like to introduce you to my son." We talked for a while and I guess I have an honest face because he decided to confide in me. He lowered his voice as he said, "It's too bad, really. We don't know who the mother is. I used to go down to the pub to pick up a lot more than I do now. Must've been some nine-month stand."

I've got my feet on the ground and my head in the clouds. There are only a few options here.
- gigantism
- a summit
- low clouds
- decapitation

When I get married and have all eight boys we're going to celebrate Christmas by exchanging gifts. Then we're going to take something we don't use anymore from a previous Christmas or birthday and give it away. It'll give the boys a more balanced understanding of the season.

I know who I am! - quarter-life crisis averted

Okay, I may be running too far on a tangent, but I feel like I left the last post somewhat unresolved. So I will enjoy the flavour of my leftovers-mixed-into-soup lunch (in all its appropriateness) and recount for you a two-dimensional version of a revelation I experienced this very morning.

To re-cap: I attempted to define myself according to my familial relationships. I am a son and a brother. I figured that the relationships I share with these people would describe who I am. I was so close! But it took a little more time to refine this raw idea into a more workable concept.

Now – a disclaimer here – I'm still working this through and I'm open to objections or suggestions. That said, I think this is at least a big step in the right direction, that being toward my own elusive identity. (This is far too wordy, hang in there! Dave tells fantastic stories if they don't bore you to tears.) I was so focussed on my identity being within myself, a core, a true-self hidden deep within the recesses of my being. So deep was this caché of personality, that even I could never fully uncover it.

But I was searching in the wrong spot! Identity is not inside, it's outside. By that I mean – I discover myself in my relationships. To be human is to be a relational being - a being that relates in a unique way to others who share the same relational capacity. Through relational activity, we discover exclusive distinctions about the 'self' - our identity. (I just took 'thereby' out of that sentence. Whew. It would suck if, as I relate my thoughts, I discovered that I'm a huge nerd.)

What if I'm stranded on a deserted island? There's nobody to relate to! Good question ... Dave. I would go so far as to say that we are designed to be defined by our relationships, the most important of which is our relationship to our designer. It is in the pursuit of this relationship that self-discovery unleashes its full potential. Who could know me better than the being that created me?

This is a beast of a post, but I'm glad I wrote it. Writing these things out (and talking them out too, I guess) helps me fill in the gaps between big ideas. Thanks for sticking around.

In the spirit of this post, I leave you with a distortion of Tyler Durden's words ...



You are not your job. You are not the car you drive. You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not your bowel cancer. You are not your censored khakis. You are the all-singing, all-dancing people of the world.