Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Salutations
It couldn’t have been New Year’s, could it? It was definitely a night when everybody was supposed to go out with their favorite people. For some reason, none of mine were around. It was my junior year, I think - I had no girlfriend nor anything like one, and all my friends had gone somewhere else. My choices were to stay at home and drink heavily in a solitary stew, or to get out and be somewhere where other people were. Even if they weren’t being with me, I could still be with them. I was a vibrant young person full of vitality and untarnished, more or less, by the patina of cynicism, so I chose to go to CSBG just off campus for a drink or three. I’d get a little buzz, sort out a few ideas, burn off a little energy. And, worst coming to worst, I’d feel better about doing something dull than about not doing anything at all.
My decision to leave the house, brazenly alone, gave me a redoubled sense of potency and capacity. I could decide for myself; I could have new experiences all on my own. Friends would have been nice, but not having any wouldn’t stop me. When I got to the bar it was pretty crowded and busy, with an unusually high percentage of “real” people (as opposed to students). There were even “grown ups” there - people in their 30s, or, heaven save us, beyond. There was no good place for me to sit, so I stood near a low dividing wall, by myself, sipping a beer, keeping my own counsel. There was nobody to talk to, and soon that freed my mind in some interesting new directions. Without a conversation to maintain, I began to pursue some lines of thought more deeply and seriously than I’d been able to do with my friends. My mind churned with ideas, internal debates, random neurons firing off into the inner space of my cranium… I was having some big ideas. It was fun and I was glad to have brought a little notebook so I wouldn’t forget my genius revelations. I fished it out, flipped it open and started sketching my thoughts into words.
I wasn’t more than fifteen feet away from a table of grown ups where a woman sat watching me. I hadn’t paid any attention to her; her party seemed boring and she wasn’t what I’d call visually engaging - she’d just been another face in the crowd so far as I’d been concerned. But as I wrote my thoughts down in my notebook, all about the essence of self and action and such nonsense, her voice cut through the noise of the bar, cut into my thoughts, disrupting them like a veritable Porlockian traveller. “He’s writing in his notebook, see? He’s writing down what people are doing, he’s invading their privacy. It’s unbelieveably rude. He must be an actor.” I glanced over. She looked away but her five friends were not quite so quick. I caught their collective eye and stepped over to their table.
"I couldn’t help overhearing something I may have misunderstood,” I said to them all, looking in particular at her as she stared fixedly in another direction. “Did someone here see me writing in my notebook, and had something to say about it?” The table was silent - the five looked at each other and she looked at the carpet under the next table, her jaw clenched and her face blushing. “Great,” I said, closing with some appropriate valedictory like “happy new year.”
In the end, what I was writing wound up not taking me very far - in the cold light of the next morning, it was much more like drunken blather than anything philosophically significant. But I’m still thinking about that crabby woman who got mad at me for scrawling in my notebook. She’s still feeding my creative compulsion. I wonder how she’d feel if she knew I was still writing about her twenty years later....
Addendum: I just lunched with Dave at a charming bistro near our mutual workplaces. He has convinced me it couldn’t have been New Year in our junior year, and he’s cast some doubt on sophomore year too. I’ll look into the details. I knew I was fuzzy on that part. But it has always felt like a New Year’s story for me, something about change and growth, youth against age, being nice versus being a flaming gaper.... It’ll probably wind up being something like Arbor Day or President’s Day or some stupid thing. But that will never diminish my fervent conveyance of the warmest wishes to each of you for a healthy, harmonious and fully satisfying new year!
Additional addendum: I dug out the actual notebook in question. Yes, I keep most everything I write. I didn’t know if it would help me figure out the relevant date though, since I rarely date my notebooks or entries therein. However, by a quirk of the bemused fates, the entry right after the one that includes “Attention - I hear somebody talking about me. I don’t really need to be seen here,” is a partial set list of the December 18, 1984 Marshall Crenshaw show at Irvine Auditorium. So I’m comfortable asserting that this was a Junior year experience, late in the first semester, but not quite New Year’s. But regardless of the non-neo-annual nature of the event I’m describing, I only redouble my enthusiasm in wishing you all a good new year. I’ll catch you on the other side of 2004.
