Flying By The Seat of Our Pants

       Yesterday, I spent the day and night with framly (that’s not a typo, and you won’t find the word in Webster’s. I just made up. “Framly” means “friends who I consider family”.). Whilst waiting to be seated at dinner, the cute maitre d in the sparkly blouse caught my eye. When she leaned over to say something to me in the busy restaurant, I liked the way she smelled. So, sizing up the situation, within three minutes, I knew the following: I liked the way she looked, I liked the way she dressed, I liked the way she smelled. I looked for a ring, and didn’t see one. Roger that, Houston. We are a go.
       After dinner, as we were leaving the restaurant, I asked her if I could take her out for coffee sometime. She smiled. She blushed. She stammered. Then she started laughing nervously. I smiled at her and humorously said “You’re laughing at me? I guess I’ll take that as a ‘no’ “. She kept smiling, and blushing, and laughing, and then said something definitive and clear, like, “Well, um, ah, yeah, I mean, it’s like, well......”.
       I knew she had just started working there, so she was probably caught off guard. Her reaction certainly appeared to have a healthy dose of surprise, and it was clear that she really didn’t know how to respond. After all, she could have easily just said, “No thank you”. Maybe she wasn’t versed on the restaurant’s management policy regarding socializing with patrons. Who knows. Anyway, despite the rejection, nebulous as it may be, I left with a smile on my face. She was still smiling as well.
       Being a deep thinker, I sometimes fall into the trap of over-thinking. To balance that, I consciously cultivate my awareness to discern when it’s best for me to just fly by the seat of my pants. If I had mind fucked all the possible reasons, professional and personal, why this woman could say no; or analyzed the logistics (for example, she most likely lives at least two hours from where I do); or dwelled on the fact that I had literally just met her and we knew absolutely nothing about each other; I could have easily talked myself out of asking her for coffee. Fortunately, I immediately decided that this was not a time for analysis, or even thinking. This was a time to act from within and go with my flow. She looked good. She smelled good. I was there. So was she. Ask her out. No harm. No foul. All she can do is say no. Which she did. Sort of.
       Whenever we put ourselves out there, seek a connection with another, ask for what we want, expose something about what we think or what we feel, share even just a little bit of ourselves, we run a myriad of risks. Rejection. Uncomfortableness. Ridicule. Shame. Not being accepted. Not being received. Not being liked. Not being loved. Associated with those risks is some level of pain; and the fear of that pain is what often prevents us from taking such risks. Even little ones. And certainly big ones.
       When I’m flying by the seat of my pants, I’m not thinking about those risks. I'm not thinking about the potential pain. I’m not even thinking about the potential reward. I’m focused instead on the here and now. On what feels fun and exciting and daring and sometimes even a little nuts. In the right context, that’s all I need to do. Like riding a roller coaster, life in these moments is best served by immersing oneself in the excitement of the moment, not on reminding oneself of the statistical odds of the track severing just prior to your initial descent.
       Take a little risk today. Talk to someone you want to, just because you want to. Open up to your friend, or to a member of your framly, or to your lover, just a little more than you might usually. Spread your wings, fly by the seat of your pants, just a little more brazenly, than you did yesterday.



©2013 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

Blood

       The sight, and taste, of my own blood......
       Can really do it for me.
       Drawing some of the red stuff during intense physical activity wears like a badge of honor. Proof that I gave it my all. Testament that I turned myself over to whatever I was doing. That I, literally and figuratively, left it all on the field.
       Put another way, blood is a big turn on.
       When a musician is up on stage, giving it everything they’ve got, laying out their heart and soul for all to experience, we say that they’re bleeding for their audience. Bleeding for their music. As a drummer, I get to bleed for you, not only emotionally, but physically. I’ve drawn blood plenty of times drumming, the sticks rubbing and splintering against the skin on my hands. I dig it. I really do.
       At about eleven or twelve, when I first considered playing an instrument, I was drawn to the drums, unconsciously at the time I’m sure, in part because of the physicality of the instrument. We drummers may not be able to move around the stage, but we move our bodies in powerful, beautiful, and unique ways. We’re always the sweatiest ones up there, if we’re doing rock music right, and it’s a true physical workout. A drummer can get their whole body involved in their music in ways that other musicians, because of the nature of their instrument, simply can not. And, sometimes.......we even get to bleed. For real. Very cool.
       Whenever I played sports, I wanted to bleed. In fact, I would play with a barely controlled reckless abandonment that assured it. For example, I would play softball, in shorts, and slide into a base whenever I had the chance, even if it wasn’t completely necessary. The fields we played on were not of professional grade, so the dirt was rough and corse. I didn’t just get raspberries on my legs and butt; I got whole patches of them. And those wounds would get reopened, week after bloody week. I would usually be bleeding by the middle of the game, which would fuel my passion, and I would go at it even harder, and get into the game even more. More blood meant more energy, more focus, and in fact more fun.
       When I boxed in college, it was the same thing. My best moment, in my two year collegiate boxing foray, was, in fact, when I knocked a dude on his ass, with a perfectly thrown jab, after he had broken my nose and made me taste my own blood. My opponent’s ability to make me bleed profusely actually did more for me than it did for him.
       This is not a masochistic pursuit. Well, maybe it is. Because it does hurt. Sometimes a lot. And I do derive great pleasure from it. But it’s a different kind of pain/pleasure relationship. It’s pain with a purpose. Maybe that’s the key. The purpose is to drive up the intensity, the commitment, the passion, the focus, the drive, the performance.
       Whether it’s drumming or softball or boxing, I’m not bleeding just for the sake of it. If, for example, I took something during a game and cut myself on purpose, in an act unrelated to my participation, just to make myself bleed, it wouldn’t have the same effect. Believe me, I know, because I’ve tried it a few times, in an attempt to psyche myself up for a game. It doesn’t work.
       The drawing of blood has to be part of the action, a piece of the actual life play. It’s not method acting. It’s not acting at all. It’s real. As real as it fuckin’ gets, in fact. Bleeding forms a connection to external physical reality, to what’s actually happening in the world. Being a man of great introspection, a man constantly aware of his inner world, a man of very deep feeling and very deep thinking, a man sometimes far too involved with what’s happening on my inside and not paying enough attention to what’s happening on my outside, blood instantly bonds me to that external reality. And I need that. My being intuitively knows that. So sometimes it goes out and gets what I need; the spilling of my own blood.
       The energy behind that is the same energy that makes me love to sweat, love to engage in physical activity, love to feel the exquisite interaction of my body with the physical world. It’s the energy that makes me a very sensuous man, a very sensual man, a man who loves to touch and be touched. A man who has a healthy dose of physical hedonism in him and doesn’t ever want to lose that.
       A man who loves to bleed.


©2013 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.