We're The Band

        Being in a band is like being married. Except you’re married to more than one person. If you’re in a four piece band, for example, it gets complicated. Because you’re each married to each other. So in a band with four members, you’ve got a total of six marriages, because each one of you is married to three other people. Even polygamists would shun from such an arrangement. But it comes with the territory.
        I’ve never been married, so you’d have a point if you questioned my authority on this. But I have been in lots of bands, had many relationships with significant others, and I know plenty of people who are married. Some of these married people are in bands, and one of them actually proposed the band/marriage analogy to me. So if a married guy that I’ve played in a band with can make the comparison, I’m think I’m qualified to take the ball and run with it.
         Around 1989, my twin brother and I hooked up with our cousin and a buddy of his from high school. We started a band that lasted about three years. It was fun, but internal tensions got in the way of the music. Internal personal mechanics are what usually break up a band. It’s ironic that issues around the music, the most important reason that the band exists, rarely have anything to do with why the band doesn’t last. It’s personalities and people’s ability (or inability) to resolve conflict that tear things apart. The music often suffers if the members aren’t getting along, but not always (look at The Who - they couldn’t stand each other, but they kicked ass). Ultimately, like in a marriage, it’s the people who either make it work or not.
         A few years after we broke up, we got back together again. We were all a few years older, had matured a little, and had learned a thing or two about life. So it was better this time around. Like a married couple that separates, misses each other, experiences some personal growth, and gets back together. And this time, it’s different. You don’t let things get in the way like you used to. You’ve learned that there’s something special about the relationship that has drawn you back together, and you have a greater appreciation for what you’ve got. You’re willing to work harder to keep it going. And you’ve developed some personal skills, like owning you’re own shit, that you didn’t have before.
         In particular, the bass player and I were older, wiser, and had grown as people. In the band’s first incarnation, we butted heads often. And we had pretty hard heads. We were young, had fairly big egos, and possessed strong personalities that didn’t like to back down. Especially from each other. The other two members of the band, my twin brother and our cousin, were more easy going. They would often roll their eyes and attempt to mediate when the bass player and I would go at it.
         But this, the second coming, was a different ball game. The band rocked harder, had more fun, and enjoyed the whole process a lot more. A few years later, though, we had to split again. But this time, it wasn’t because we weren’t getting along. It was for personal and logistic reasons that had nothing to do with our personalities. Where last time the break up was no big deal, and even welcomed, this time, it hurt. All of us. It was hard saying good by. Like in a marriage, we had grown to love and respect each other. There was a special bond this time that was completely lacking the first go around. I remember our last gig. On the ride home, my drum set jammed into my convertible with the top down, I cried my eyes out. I was gonna miss this thing we had. I was gonna miss these dudes who had become very special to me. It’s no coincidence that I took a girl home that night. I was on the rebound and I needed a fill-in lover. Because my true love had left.
         In the years that followed, we all kept in touch, got together socially, and stayed in each other’s lives. After the first break-up, there was much less collective contact. But through the last incarnation and over the years, the relationships we forged had deepened and grown. Which planted the seeds for yet another crack at it.
         This was round three, and it was the best round of all. Third time really is a charm. Our rehearsals were always fun, but now it was like an exclusive boys club whenever we got together. We developed our own short hand language, and our practice sessions found us laughing, goofing around, and doing “guy shit” almost as much as we played. And the music was better, not only because we were all better musicians, but because now there was even more love and respect between us. Imagine that music is the sex of the relationship. And after you and your honey have been apart for years, you get back together. Now, you’re both better lovers. Not only because you’ve boned up on your techniques, tricks, skills, and have become more sensitive and attuned to each other, but because you love each other even more than you did a few years ago. And the sex was great then. Now it’s cataclysmic.
         Well the years go by and we break up again. This time it’s a combination of personal and logistic reasons. But the remarkable thing is, the bass player and I, the two dudes who twenty years ago didn’t want to spend another minute with each other, are closer than ever. We have discussions that go deep, are quite intimate, and cover lots of intellectual, philosophical, emotional, and spiritual ground. They’re the kind of discussions that we have with very few other men in our lives. He therefore occupies a place in my life that few people do.
         If I look back, it’s hard to imagine my life without this band as a part of it. It’s hard to imagine my life without the relationships that this band created. Fostered. Developed. Nurtured. Through music, we all married each other. Countless ups and downs later, there’s still something there. There will always be something there.
         I’ve been in lots of other bands besides this one. I’ve been in bands that have made a lot more money, gigged a lot more often, and played in front of much bigger crowds. And those bands were all like marriages too. But they weren’t like this marriage. They weren’t like this band.
         This band is the love I’ll never forget.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a dowery full of Wrongs) Reserved.

Mistress Music Part 2 - The Glory of Table Drumming

         A simple but revealing insight came to me not long after I began coming out of My Dark Ages. It occurred to me one day, like a flash of sunlight reflecting off a passing boat, that for almost two years I had not been humorously chastised for table drumming. This is because, for almost two years, I had not done any table drumming.
         Often enough (some would say obsessively enough), my fingers and hands are in rhythmic motion, tapping out beats and fills across counters, desks, tables, walls, doors, and people’s bodies. Whether music is playing or not. But I could not remember the last time somebody made a joke about it at my expense. Because for the longest time, I didn’t do it. It’s a silly little observation, but quite revealing.
         The music wasn’t alive in me during those difficult times. Not only was I not quasi-obsessively table drumming, but I was not responding emotionally to music at all. Usually, several times a week at least, a song will move me either to tears, to head banging, to singing, to air guitaring or air drumming, or to dancing. During My Dark Ages, which lasted over a year and a half, I hardly did any if that at all. Maybe only once or twice, and that’s it. When I realized that, I was astounded. It made me realize just how out of sorts I was during that time. A basic staple of my personality had not shown up for almost one hundred weeks. It was as though I hadn’t eaten in almost two years.
         I wasn’t letting music, or anything else for that matter, in. When I’m so walled off that not even music can reach me, well that’s only happened for one period in my entire life since I discovered, in my early teens, the magic of music and how it affected me.
         I wasn’t even in a band during My Dark Ages, and that’s the first time since I started playing at thirteen that I had gone more than six months without being in a group or having a live performance. That may be the most telling emotional statistic of all.
         Every girlfriend I’ve ever had has made light hearted, amorous comments about my table drumming. Every girlfriend that is, except my last one, principessa. She rarely saw me at anything remotely close to my best. She never got to experience more than a fraction of all of me, because I was incapable of giving anything more than that. If I had the opportunity to ask her if she ever remembers me going nuts over a piece of music, be it table drumming, singing aloud, wailing on my air guitar, or spontaneously shaking my groove thang, she’d say “Yes, once”. And I’d know exactly what time she was talking about. It was right before the moment I fell in love with her.
         She had come down to my house on the cape with a mutual friend. We had met about a month before, and I hadn’t seen her since. When she came into the kitchen, I was busy air drumming to a live version of “I Shot The Sheriff” by Eric Clapton. I was way into it. Musically Possessed, you might even say. Eyes closed, my hands and feet moved all over my imaginary drum set in syncopated motions, with a focused reckless abandon. I was oblivious to the rest of the world. Because in those moments, this was the world. I didn’t even know she had walked into the room. For about a minute, she and two others watched me in this trance like state before our mutual friend screamed “Hello Clint!”. I looked up, and saw my future girlfriend there. I had forgotten how pretty she was. I walked over to her, grabbed her gently by the shoulders, and kissed her softly on the lips, saying it was nice to see her.
         Looking back, I know now that it was precisely then that I fell for her. It was a moment of clarity during a time of great confusion and turmoil. It’s also when I got scared stiff. My mind started running away as fast as my heart had tumbled towards. I was coming from my head back then, so I wasn’t in touch with what I felt, even though my higher self knew what was happening.
         These days, things are different. I come from my heart, and music moves me all the time. I’m letting it reach me once more. Actually, because my heart is so much more open now, it’s reaching me deeper and more often than ever. It’s really beautiful, but sometimes kind of disruptive. This extreme openness is still relatively new to me, and I try not to squelch it. Which means that it’s not unusual for me to start crying in the car when I hear a piece of music that moves me. Or air drumming in between sets at the gym. Or singing the song on the radio quietly, but audibly, in public. Or dancing in my bedroom. By myself. It feels good, hurts no one, and makes me happy. It may look (and sound) a little strange to those in my line of sight or in earshot, but it’s harmless. I’m even grateful for the tears, because it means I’m feeling something, when for so long I was unable to.
         Besides everything else it’s given me, music also serves as a barometer for how much I’m letting in, how much I’m letting out, how much I’m feeling. I table drum like mad now because the music is back in me. Even in my darkest moments, I can turn to music to help me. I’ve let her back in. She feels good. And if she feels that good to me, I feel that good to her. It’s a marvelous relationship.
         I’m forty-six, and I’ve never proposed to a woman. But I’ve been married for over thirty years. Married to music.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a loud screaming amplifier of Wrongs) Reserved.

Priceless

        This morning I received a most precious gift from a friend. She wrote a poem. About me. I am moved beyond words.
         And I’m speechless....
         Luckily for the sake of this blog, I don’t stay speechless for long. But there is nothing I could possibly add to what she wrote except to say thank you from the deepest depths of my heart. This is one of the most beautiful gifts I have ever received.
         A few weeks ago, I encouraged people to write a poem to someone they loved for valentine’s day. Little did I know that I would soon be the recipient of such a priceless gem. From this new, unexpected perspective I can therefore say, without equivocation, that it works. Writing a poem to someone you care about is a most sacred event. For both people.
         Open your hearts to those around you. And love them...


Ode to a Sequoia

Beautiful man
Exuding energy and joy
A unique gravitational pull
Engaging the world
Inviting us inside his heart
His battered heart he seeks to heal
His scarred soul he seeks the courage to accept
Wanting to love and be loved
Afraid to bleed again
yet drawn to the blade.

Not living in the pain
It’s easy for me to see the power and strength
He somehow fails to embrace
He’s got the words
He’s got the skills,
I’m watching him struggle and grow
A mighty tree cracking through stone and pain as old as he is
A bedrock of pain that will not be denied,
But has supported the man he has become,
And will always be the foundation of the man he is becoming.

Blessed am I to watch his unique tree grow and spread its branches.
It affords me a spectacular new perspective from its upper limbs
balancing precariously on the newest growth.
His solid trunk provides a safe place to rest when looking out at his domain.
I can lean there, mulling his ideas and growing with him
I hear his music as the wind passes by and through him.

A new sort of tree he is-
His own sort of foliage, proudly, defiantly, standing out in the forest
It’s a beautiful sight as he pushes up to the light
I want to water and tend him,
Help him repel the painful saw
Clear the debris around him and give him space to expand

With time and love this tree will flower and bear delicious fruit
Standing tall in a space all its own.
A testament to the paradox of vulnerability and strength.
When embracing love and pain morphs into power and grace

AES 2/2009