Despite the Magic Sometimes the Monsters Come Anyway

So, let's talk about Clarke's Law, little boys and the monsters that drag you away.

Clarke's Law is a law of cultural inequality and it explains a lot of history. It states that "any technology sufficiently advanced will look like magic to less-advanced observer".

This is how Cortez and Pizzaro were able to defeat civilizations outnumbering their soldiers by millions to one. If you think you're dealing with gods and magic then you've put yourself at a disadvantage that may not be recoverable.

That idea of magic is in my life today. Since losing Eckart I've prepared for the moment when his son will ask why his father smoked while in the knowledge it would hurt him - and what does that mean about how his father felt about those around him?

It will be a slightly magical answer - I won't know it, won't understand it.

It is slightly bad magic - the mystery of why he smoked (and we all have things like that in our lives - more on mine in a moment) is part of a bad magic that took him away.

It is countered by good magic - the love and connection that we all shared - still share, though our experience of Eckart is different now - is something we don't understand and can't explain.

So I call it Magic. Like all good stories there is good and bad and sometimes people can learn to harness it and use it in both ways. It's a choice. That's not magic - I hope it's not. It's a choice.

Sometimes my own bad magic takes me over. I get sudden, overwhelming panic attacks sometimes, especially when I'm dancing with friends. With strangers, no problem (mostly I'm nervous about perceived wardrobe malfunctions).

Most of the time I just accept that that's what's going on in my heart and head, I go for a walk, cry it out, sit and breathe or just stand at look at the stars and it passes.

Most of my friends understand and accept it, give me space and still love me. Some people I know try to take advantage of it - I just watch them bluster and don't expect them to be there in any real way.

And often I'd go to chat with Eckart about it. Sometimes for sympathy, mostly just to acknowledge that I'm wired that way and it's the price, I think, for my creativity.

But tonight the bad magic came. I realized, as I sat in my apartment, just up from Maine Ballroom dance, where I'd just left after a record fast 90 second appearance, I realized that he wasn't there to talk there anymore.

That's a different magic than just losing him, a real blow. It was baking a loaf of bread and having no place to set it to cool, no one to share it with.

So I took a breath and headed back to dance with my friends. Good magic.

I think I'm ready if that young boy wants to talk about his dad now. We are all mysteries in some ways - we don't know what's going on and since we don't have explanations we have to depend on magic in certain ways.

In many others we're very clear and engaged in the science of our lives.

But sometimes it all comes down to magic.

Blizzard Watch/Snow Day

Hello.

Can anyone here me?

Hello.

Oh - there you are.

... and tonight I'm at Geno's - two energetic young ladies, strippers from Portland's home-grown burlesque scene; J.R. himself, on the phone giving out booking info to a band from Boston; myself, getting out of the apartment to see the effects of the storm on my beloved little town.

And it is quite a storm. I awoke this morning and got to the Orchard in good order only to have it shut down at Noon. Since then I've been relaxing and chilling out (strangely) - should be writing music but just too scattered.

That's been the pattern. If you've been following me on Facebook you know that my best friend Eckart passed away suddenly of a heart attack just before Thanksgiving.

Since then I feel I've been off balance in some ways, more connected in others.

It feels like I'm in some kind of artistic limbo, it's become very hard to see any one particular project to completion, at least projects that don't have specific deadlines.

At the same time my enjoyment of my work in the Orchard has gotten more and more intense. I really like working there.

I'm part of a community - actually part of several communities.

Work has friends, new ones and old ones, people I've seen and worked with every day for almost two and a half years. I've never known a group of people this well before, it's very strange. I know personal things, professional things, have given and taken correction and comment and not let my natural feelings of immediate threat take me over.

My connections to the tango community have grown - well, as much as I ever manage to grow in a social group. I still don't get invited to parties and still can wander off into my own deep, almost autistic place when watching dancers. It freaks people out but it's worth it to experience such deep joy in listening, writing and dancing.

And my relationships with Eckart's family have grown.

I have people to talk to and, more importantly, people to listen to.

If all this was just watching what went along and not communicating in two directions then it would be unbearable.

I suppose I need to sit down and apply myself to get music written - I also need to think about where all of it is going, because I know what I'm writing is going in some direction - but what that direction is is totally a mystery.

I like mysteries and am OK with not knowing the final outcome of the things I do.

You get a present.

Is it more fun to look at the pretty wrapping, run the taste of anticipation over your tongue over and over?

Do you like seizing the box, shaking it, pulling the ribbons, ripping the paper?

Is it more about looking at the gift, trying it on?

Or do you get off on writing the thank-you notes?

Or do you do all of then?