TSawyer84
01-07-2010, 04:39 PM
After I got fired from my wannabe corporate career, I began a period of wandering. I would stay up late, and sometimes just get into my car and cruise the city, maybe stopping at someplace for a midnight snack. I went back to my old office a few times, just driving by. I would pass through late at night, and as I looked at my old office building, I remembered what it was like to be there again.
When I was at work, I was always walking across the street to drop papers off to another office a block or so away. In those early days, I had only been dating my girlfriend for a few months. Everything was so fresh back then. I used to have a Blackberry Curve, and would text her every other day. I would be walking across the street and feel the buzz of my phone in my pocket. I would look at it and see a charming message from my girl. I never thought something so simple could make me feel so good. And I never thought something so simple would seem so hard to come by.
I was 23 years old, just another post-grad trying to make a name for himself. I was a clean slate. Nothing too bad about me.
The days would fly by. I was always so busy, and so motivated. Romance was on the rise, as well as my checking account. Back then, I was succeeding in everything that I was doing.
To see things slip away can often be a sad thing. My father once told me, "You always think you can see the shoreline." I've always had the habit of getting wrapped up in the past and failing to recognize change.
These days since I've been unemployed my life feels a lot like cruising. You have nowhere to go, but you just want to go somewhere. Sometimes I feel like a drive around town, or a mile jog, to try and get away from my troubles. It never works, but sometimes I end up meeting someone interesting.
That's how it was when I met Alex. This guy was 31. I met him at a small coffee lounge near the local college. He was a musician, and played piano, keyboard and guitar. He was a child prodigy born in Paris, France. He attended the school of music and became a classically trained pianist before the age of 13. His mother was American and he moved to New Jersey at shortly after. Somehow he found his way down South and attended the local college. He graduated with a Liberal Studies degree that carried him nowhere.
He said to me, "I could have done other things, but I've always done music my whole life - it's what I do."
He was a typical musician. Long hair, goatee, old clothes and spacey personality. Behind his rectangular glasses were eyes that stared off into oblivion. He was very intelligent but painfully soft spoken. He would just mumble stuff with this laid back, Beatnik kind-of tone. And he never said anything negative about anyone or anything.
When I first met him, he was sitting outside the coffee shop, playing a classical guitar with his friend. We talked about guitar chords, more specifically the II-V-I chord progression often found in Brazilian music.
He was unusually shy when I first approached him, but I could feel a rapport growing as I talked to him. He showed me a CD of his that he said he recorded in Miami in 2006. He said he recorded it on a Mac computer and a portable keyboard. We played the CD in my car and we talked about music. All of his music was awesome, and so tasteful. His sound was electronic - like ambient, downtempo mixed with jazz and bossa nova. I could hear that this guy really had some talent, but was held back by his absent mind. I invited him back to my house, to listen to some of my music on my ipod stereo and play guitar for a little bit. He told me to just drop him off back at the coffee shop later. It took me a little while to figure out he was homeless.
When we went back to my house I put on some of my music. He picked up my guitar, a nylon-stringed Cordoba, and began playing it softly with his fingers. And then I was amazed, because I would play a song on the stereo, and Alex would be able to start playing it by ear on guitar. I put on the song "Polaris" by Zero 7 and within a few seconds into the song he was feeling it out on guitar. By the middle of the song, he was just jamming along with it.
I told Alex that I had no job, because I had been fired. He said, "You don't seem like the type of person that someone would want to fire."
Over the next few weeks, I would frequently hang out with Alex at the coffee bar. The more he told me about himself, the more it seemed like what he was telling me was only the surface of his nomadic life. I asked him what was the craziest thing that's happened to him and he told me that he woke up in the middle of the desert in New Mexico with 5 shotgun barrels pointed at his face.
He said he just makes cash playing a lot of different gigs around the city, giving piano lessons and tutoring students in French. He told me one time he ended up playing at the city mayor's Christmas party, and a series of private parties for some rich developer in the city. Yet the money seemed to come and go over time. He would always invite me to his gigs, so I decided to go see him play a few times.
The first time I saw him play was at an art gallery outside the city that had a bunch of wealthy people eating hummus snacks and drinking wine. I walked in there and saw nothing but good looking older women, decked out in clothes from Jacobson's and fancy pearl bracelets. The men there were intellectuals. They all had blue blazers, crooked glasses, and voices like Fraser Crane. Through the wine-fueled socializing I could hear the classical piano, coming from a room around the corner. I walked up and saw Alex, with his eyes closed and forehead inches from the keyboard, immersed in his playing.
I approached him and said, "what's up?" He awoke from his trance and greeted me with a handshake as the other hand continued to play the keyboard. A Buddah-sized smile spread across his face. Someone came up and asked him about the artwork that surrounded him and Alex fielded the question in detail while continuing to play his elegant classical melodies.
Midway through the show, Alex took a break and smoked a cigarette outside. He concluded it was a good night because of the hummus, $20 tip, and continuing gig that the art gallery's curator offered him. He chatted with me about the series of gigs he would have coming up next month.
Alex had no car. No home. He squatted among friends. His keyboard and a backpack full of books were the most valuable possessions that he had. He drifted through life making money wherever he could find it. He was able to carry on with the bare minimum, as long as he had friends and a musical instrument. As a self-proclaimed student of life, I wanted to ask him what he has learned so far.
He said, "Just when you think that time runs out, someone comes through. Something happens. It always works out in the end somehow. You just have to go where you feel like you need to be. And if you miss an opportunity, another one always comes along."
As he tossed his cigarette butt into the bushes, I looked inside the glass window of the art gallery at the crowd of people surrounded by colorful paintings, sparkling quartz sculptures, and black and white photographs. I saw two men exchanging business cards, a young blonde woman talking closely to a man who leaned back against the wall with a glass of wine at his hip, and an artist dressed in black explaining his work as a group of photographers snapped pictures of him. I thought about what my father said to me about looking back to see the shoreline. I realized that the shoreline wasn't behind me. It was in front of me.
Excerpt from the blog, Diary of a Corporate Burnout (http://diaryofacorporateburnout.blogspot.com/2009/11/galaxy-guy.html)
When I was at work, I was always walking across the street to drop papers off to another office a block or so away. In those early days, I had only been dating my girlfriend for a few months. Everything was so fresh back then. I used to have a Blackberry Curve, and would text her every other day. I would be walking across the street and feel the buzz of my phone in my pocket. I would look at it and see a charming message from my girl. I never thought something so simple could make me feel so good. And I never thought something so simple would seem so hard to come by.
I was 23 years old, just another post-grad trying to make a name for himself. I was a clean slate. Nothing too bad about me.
The days would fly by. I was always so busy, and so motivated. Romance was on the rise, as well as my checking account. Back then, I was succeeding in everything that I was doing.
To see things slip away can often be a sad thing. My father once told me, "You always think you can see the shoreline." I've always had the habit of getting wrapped up in the past and failing to recognize change.
These days since I've been unemployed my life feels a lot like cruising. You have nowhere to go, but you just want to go somewhere. Sometimes I feel like a drive around town, or a mile jog, to try and get away from my troubles. It never works, but sometimes I end up meeting someone interesting.
That's how it was when I met Alex. This guy was 31. I met him at a small coffee lounge near the local college. He was a musician, and played piano, keyboard and guitar. He was a child prodigy born in Paris, France. He attended the school of music and became a classically trained pianist before the age of 13. His mother was American and he moved to New Jersey at shortly after. Somehow he found his way down South and attended the local college. He graduated with a Liberal Studies degree that carried him nowhere.
He said to me, "I could have done other things, but I've always done music my whole life - it's what I do."
He was a typical musician. Long hair, goatee, old clothes and spacey personality. Behind his rectangular glasses were eyes that stared off into oblivion. He was very intelligent but painfully soft spoken. He would just mumble stuff with this laid back, Beatnik kind-of tone. And he never said anything negative about anyone or anything.
When I first met him, he was sitting outside the coffee shop, playing a classical guitar with his friend. We talked about guitar chords, more specifically the II-V-I chord progression often found in Brazilian music.
He was unusually shy when I first approached him, but I could feel a rapport growing as I talked to him. He showed me a CD of his that he said he recorded in Miami in 2006. He said he recorded it on a Mac computer and a portable keyboard. We played the CD in my car and we talked about music. All of his music was awesome, and so tasteful. His sound was electronic - like ambient, downtempo mixed with jazz and bossa nova. I could hear that this guy really had some talent, but was held back by his absent mind. I invited him back to my house, to listen to some of my music on my ipod stereo and play guitar for a little bit. He told me to just drop him off back at the coffee shop later. It took me a little while to figure out he was homeless.
When we went back to my house I put on some of my music. He picked up my guitar, a nylon-stringed Cordoba, and began playing it softly with his fingers. And then I was amazed, because I would play a song on the stereo, and Alex would be able to start playing it by ear on guitar. I put on the song "Polaris" by Zero 7 and within a few seconds into the song he was feeling it out on guitar. By the middle of the song, he was just jamming along with it.
I told Alex that I had no job, because I had been fired. He said, "You don't seem like the type of person that someone would want to fire."
Over the next few weeks, I would frequently hang out with Alex at the coffee bar. The more he told me about himself, the more it seemed like what he was telling me was only the surface of his nomadic life. I asked him what was the craziest thing that's happened to him and he told me that he woke up in the middle of the desert in New Mexico with 5 shotgun barrels pointed at his face.
He said he just makes cash playing a lot of different gigs around the city, giving piano lessons and tutoring students in French. He told me one time he ended up playing at the city mayor's Christmas party, and a series of private parties for some rich developer in the city. Yet the money seemed to come and go over time. He would always invite me to his gigs, so I decided to go see him play a few times.
The first time I saw him play was at an art gallery outside the city that had a bunch of wealthy people eating hummus snacks and drinking wine. I walked in there and saw nothing but good looking older women, decked out in clothes from Jacobson's and fancy pearl bracelets. The men there were intellectuals. They all had blue blazers, crooked glasses, and voices like Fraser Crane. Through the wine-fueled socializing I could hear the classical piano, coming from a room around the corner. I walked up and saw Alex, with his eyes closed and forehead inches from the keyboard, immersed in his playing.
I approached him and said, "what's up?" He awoke from his trance and greeted me with a handshake as the other hand continued to play the keyboard. A Buddah-sized smile spread across his face. Someone came up and asked him about the artwork that surrounded him and Alex fielded the question in detail while continuing to play his elegant classical melodies.
Midway through the show, Alex took a break and smoked a cigarette outside. He concluded it was a good night because of the hummus, $20 tip, and continuing gig that the art gallery's curator offered him. He chatted with me about the series of gigs he would have coming up next month.
Alex had no car. No home. He squatted among friends. His keyboard and a backpack full of books were the most valuable possessions that he had. He drifted through life making money wherever he could find it. He was able to carry on with the bare minimum, as long as he had friends and a musical instrument. As a self-proclaimed student of life, I wanted to ask him what he has learned so far.
He said, "Just when you think that time runs out, someone comes through. Something happens. It always works out in the end somehow. You just have to go where you feel like you need to be. And if you miss an opportunity, another one always comes along."
As he tossed his cigarette butt into the bushes, I looked inside the glass window of the art gallery at the crowd of people surrounded by colorful paintings, sparkling quartz sculptures, and black and white photographs. I saw two men exchanging business cards, a young blonde woman talking closely to a man who leaned back against the wall with a glass of wine at his hip, and an artist dressed in black explaining his work as a group of photographers snapped pictures of him. I thought about what my father said to me about looking back to see the shoreline. I realized that the shoreline wasn't behind me. It was in front of me.
Excerpt from the blog, Diary of a Corporate Burnout (http://diaryofacorporateburnout.blogspot.com/2009/11/galaxy-guy.html)