Older, but no wiser

This is a weblog. Excuse me for stating the obvious, but I need to remind myself. It is not a book. It is not a magazine. It is not a series of letters. It is not anything but a weblog. There are no set rules here; no editor, no paying customers, no teachers, no standards. Only those I choose.

I said yesterday I needed a break – true; but what I needed a break from was trying to be smart, trying to be wise.

For an hour or two – maybe even as many as twelve - it was a relief not to feel that I “should” be writing something deeply significant. Then I got restless. Sorry guys, I can’t keep away. Never take my word on anything…

[insert sheepish grin here...]

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Tonight is the dress rehearsal for a show I’m involved in - “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas”. And no, I don’t have a big part – speaking about my role of course; I play bass guitar in the band. I love doing these shows, but they’re a lot of work. I haven’t been playing bass all that long – about 5 years - and it takes quite a bit of practice to get up to the standard needed for something like this. A real pro would just come in and sight-read the whole thing; me, I have to go through the score (all 198 pages of it), marking up fingering, working at the tricky bits. Like I say, a lot of work, but it’s fun too.

I hadn’t realised until last night just how much it had been weighing on me. The band – piano, drums, guitar and bass - haven’t had many rehearsals, and I’ve had too many other calls on my time to get enough practice in. I was horribly conscious that there were still plenty of bits causing me problems; I’d been through the score marking these up with sticky (Post-It like) index tabs, and last night went through just these short sections, about twenty or so of them. And it seems to be coming together. Just in time, and just as well.

So the next four evenings are going to be rather hectic. Dress rehearsal tonight, which if past experience is anything to go by will probably run until midnight, then shows Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I’ll let you know how it goes. Oh, and some day I’ll tell you how I came to play bass. One of those little stories that seems trivial but… Oh hell, there I go trying to be wise again. See, it’s so hard to avoid…