strange week

I'm finally past the hump for this week, and my first quarter of classes is almost over. One more week to go.

The Wednesday Circle meeting qualified as a rough slog, but I can't say I felt any pain. It just was what it was. Eye of the Needle is putting our collective sense of rhythm to the test, and it's hard to describe how surreal it is to begin a piece with the metronome--the most objective musical time reference you're going to find--and then have the experience that the metronome is slowing down.

I can only conclude that members of the circle need to break out the metronome and work, work, work, especially on dividing each beat into units of three and four notes. This is about as basic as it gets.

We tried everything. I introduced the TA KE TI NA rhythmic recitation method (which has worked wonders for me, but may not help everyone). MB introduced VS's version of bodybeat work they've been using in the Boston group, and then she led us through a circulation of the second 4/4 figure. All very revealing, but the solution mainly lies in individual personal practice.

At the grant proposal work meeting afterward, CG said that he usually has the student put away the guitar and work on slapping out rhythms versus a tapping foot. In the end, rhythm is in the body.

Maybe next time I should take the group out for a walk around the block.

And I find myself flashing back to 7th grade marching band and all the work it took to march in step and play "El Abierto." That was a good marching band, and we had some rockin' cadences.

The grant proposal meeting was productive and kept us up late. Although I woke up several times this morning, I didn't get out of bed until about 2 PM, and then it was straight into finishing up some Tech Writing homework.

L received her eviction notice Tuesday morning. I woke up when I heard a male voice announcing that he was from the sheriff's office.

And so L has now gone completely gonzo, screaming and throwing things around in her room. She's not even making the pretense of controlling her behavior any longer.

Somewhere in there, she knows she has to learn to control herself, and has said things to that effect, but I don't know that the penny has quite dropped with her.

I have a feeling that her recent run-in with the police after screaming the "n-word" at one of the residents may have sunk any chance she had to fight the eviction in court. If she went to court, that incident was bound to come up. I overheard her today muttering to herself about it, and I don't think she gets it.

I get the impression from things she says that she somehow believes she has a license to do anything by virtue of being a diagnosed crazy person. She's crazy and therefore not responsible. That may be true in the legal sense, but in the everyday interpersonal sense, she is badly mistaken. She shoots herself in the foot.

On the way to class, I returned SE's call and caught up on happenings in Florida.

He described how a drunken bum came into a Starbucks, sat right down at SE's table, and began aggressively intruding into SE's personal space. I related my story of the aggressive drunk at the bus stop the Saturday night I went to see Electrochakra in Ballard.

An aggressive, grimy drunk--"Gene"--rushed up to me when my attention was focused on the bus schedule. He got right up in my personal space, kept me off balance with profanity and inappropriate personal disclosures, and then propositioned me--"Yeah, I'm married, but really...I'm into men!...A guy really knows what another guy likes...Yeah, you're a gorgeous guy...My hair used to be long, too..."

At that point he reached out with a grimy hand and touched my hair. I was furious. If he touched me again, I was going to rip off his arms and beat him to death with his own limbs.

He had this magic ability to push the situation right up to the edge and then ride the brink without quite precipitating a violent response.

I'm not totally convinced he was actually looking for guy-on-guy action, though. I think he was there to intimidate people and feed off the angst.

In the meantime, the 44 bus to Ballard refused to arrive and this interminable horror just went on and on.

After that last comment, I said, "I'm going to go look at the bus schedule for a while..."

I walked away, and when I looked back a moment later, he had already moved on to another unfortunate person trapped there waiting for the bus.

Finally, the 44 bus arrived about 40 minutes overdue. As this crowd of people got on the bus, Gene sat on the bench, waved goodbye, and cackled. I spent the next 30 minutes of the ride to Ballard struggling to bring my attention to my feet on the floor and fend off a wave of blind, helpless fury.

It didn't pass completely until about midway through Electrochakra's set when the music finally overwhelmed me with ecstasy. Igor A's fretless bass playing just kept turning one badass, funky corner after another, up and up and up, until I thought my head would explode. Just when you thought you'd experienced the most in-the-pocket moment of groove possible, he'd do one better.

No bad vibe was going to survive in this environment.

It may be that encounters with aggressive street people is just part of living in the big city, but I've been considering how much permission I'm going to give myself to just get out of the situation. I gave myself permission to run following the friendly mugging in Covington, Kentucky, so maybe I'll give myself permission in other encounters with drunk morons to just walk or run away and make no excuses.

I adamantly stood my ground in this case, right up until I couldn't take anymore, and I paid for it with a nasty, violated feeling. Is that worth it?