Law of Familiarity

Beyond tired. Beyond exhausted. Beyond sad. Beyond lonely. Beyond broke. Beyond scared.

Fred the producer, really need to give him a name, he looks like that shepherding dog from bugs bunny, what was his name, meets with rockaway tonight to give him the rough mixes from the hit factory sessions. They basically have a ‘fishy session’ sharing stories about me rockaway tells me. Fred asks rockaway ‘how well do you know Fishy?’ ‘pretty well man... why?’ ‘I've known Fishy for five years and I still can’t figure him out. why the fuck is he moving to New York now? your band is about to explode. Your finally getting the attention you’ve worked so hard for, that we've all worked so hard for... you have a song on the charts, gigs coming up, You have a new CD coming out in a few days, and you just started work on a new album yesterday and he's moving. The guy makes no sense.’ Rockaway tells me, ‘dude, don't worry, I explained you to him. I understand you. I just told him, ‘look man, Fishy just needs to get into a new scene that suits him more. He needs a doorman, he needs better cappuccinos, and prettier skylines and fancier women to be inspired by. He's not leaving us. he's just getting into a place that's cooler for him. he's not leaving the band.’ I told him not to worry about the band. I'm not worried man. Should I be?’ ‘No dude. You hit the nail on the head. We’re still in a band. I'm going to be doing the same thing up there as I'm doing down here, but I'll be happier and I think because of that, I’ll be more productive for all of us.’ ‘yeah I know man.’ ‘thanks dude. I appreciate that.’

So now I spend a lot of my days having little goodbye sessions with friends around town. lunches and dinners and drinks. Good times indeed. Tonight I spent a few hours drinking with Tony the Tiger. While I had three beers he had ten. never seen a guy drink like that before. I don't know if he even caught a buzz. We talk about everything under the sun for three beautiful hours; getting to know each other better and saying our goodbyes.

I tell him he drinks too much and that I think its from a deep seated lack of artistic unfulfillment. Tony is an actor. He is still slightly famous having appeared in many famous soaps for the last fifteen years, guiding light, one life to live; he ended up in Miami working on one called ocean avenue. But now he doesn’t act anymore. Shares with me the story of Socrates going to see the oracle to ask about the meaning of everything. the oracle answers that the only thing to know is that we don't know anything. So that's why he drinks he tells me. because we don't know anything...

I share with him the story of me and white bear and a few comrades back in the college days. we knew. and we knew we knew because we knew that we didn't know shit, whereas most everyone else thought they did know. and so we had this thing about our group and everyone else around us. people either knew or didn't know. someone new might come into the group and we would check them out to see if they knew or not. You could tell the ones that knew, because they knew they didn't know. that none of us did. but alas, most people thought they did know. and so we had a pretty small group in those days. Madelyn still asks me behind closed doors sometimes when I introduce her to someone new, ‘she seems nice, but does she knoooowwwww?” she drags out the word.

We start talking about books. Books. Silly things really in the bigger picture that we were speaking of, but we indulged each other anyway. beer after beer and we pressed each other. We had read it all. already knew we didn't know. I like that about Tony. He comes off as just this goofy good looking actor, but then you start talking to him and you find out he's this varsity lacrosse captain, scholarship winning award winning ACTOR, capital A, and that he's already gone to the edge and looked down, read it all, thought about it all. you can talk to him. he mentions Celestine prophecy and the like and we both laugh. We go deeper, Hermann Hesse, lao tsu, Sartre, bloodline of the holy grail, Davinci code... I told him that by the time the Davinci code book hit that it was already old news to most seekers who had already known that stuff for years. first started to hit the intellectuals of this generation back in the early nineties. Just now the mainstreamers are starting to discover what a very few have known for millennia, probably since the whole ‘Jesus died on the cross and didn't marry Mary Magdalene and didn't have any kids’ myth was first started.

So there we were, at the figurative edge of it all. he downs another beer. ‘dude, you have to find a way to deal with this without drinking yourself to death. You’ve got serious leadership skills man. You’ve got the gift. And you're not doing anything about it because of all these crazy mysteries of the universe. I know where you're at. It sucks...”

He mentions the book, the alchemist, and he says ‘hold on,’ gets up and starts running. I swear to God I'm just sitting there at the table by myself thinking what the hell is going on. He comes back fifteen minutes later with a brown bag. I open it up and there's this gift-wrapped book in there. ‘this is for you. your going away present.’ He tells me. this guy is classic.

One more thing from what I can remember. He tells me, ‘When I'm on acid it feels very familiar to me, like I'm in the best play in the world that just hasn’t been written yet.’ yes my friend. I know what you mean. But I have given those days up long ago. I now feel that life itself is the greatest play in the world that just hasn’t been written yet.

In between days:
Working a lot on the law of familiarity.     

PATTANI, Thailand -- Thailand's prime minister has said security forces made mistakes handling a group of Muslim rioters and has expressed regret that nearly 80 people died of suffocation while in custody.
"I regret the loss of lives in a way that should not have happened, due to suffocation. I will order a committee to be set up to investigate the situation," Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said on Wednesday.
[So it sounds like now Thailand is officially a “democracy.” M-mm.]