If I Could Teach My Chihuahua to Sing

This is one of those random-thoughts post. Anyone looking for a well-constructed argument best move along.

I've got some attention issues right now. I've got someone else's script to read and story edit, an outline for a cartoon to deliver by Monday, and another outline that I really should get in at the same time. For the last two days I've been pulled apart and discombobulated. On the procrastination scale, it's been about a 6.1 -- which doesn't sound so bad until I tell you this: the procrasitnation scale is like the Richter Scale. It's exponential.

So today, sadly, is a bit of a load-bearing day. And once more, I'm probably going to be working through the weekend, which isn't too bad because I don't have too much planned this weekend.

Anyway, last night I went to see Texas singer-songwriter Joe Ely at Toronto's legendary Horseshoe Tavern. It was both Joe and the Horseshoe's birthday, and both were in fine form. I keep going back and forth about whether I'd seen Ely before. I saw him a couple of months ago at Massey Hall in a songwriter's night with Guy Clark, Lyle Lovett, and John Hiatt...but I can't remember if I'd also seen him on one of my trips to Austin in the 90's. It was either him or Guy Clark. I can't remember. Too much tequila.

Anyway. Last night we were at the back of the half-full 'Shoe, and there was a drunk Maritimer there. (I don't mean a salty seaman, I mean a guy from Nova Scotia.) I have been known, in my time, to be loud. But this guy was the loudest human I've ever heard. When he sneezed, dust came down from the ceiling. There was a blast radius of about ten feet around him as people tried to get away from his cellphone conversations, silly observations, and excruciatingly personal and banal conversations shouted at top volume to his pliant friends. He was roaringly drunk, and probably had no idea how loud he was being. The funny thing was, none of his friends mentioned anything to him. I found that telling.

Random thought number one:

When you're a writer, you can find yourself spinning out whole scenarios about a guy you've never met based on one detail, and the reactions of others around him to that detail. You can do this in the back of your head, whilst listening to a live performer you're really digging. It's a background process that just chugs along. And no matter how marvellous a skill this is, it is no guarantee that in the morning, your focus will be any sharper on the thing that you're actually trying to complete. Sigh.

Ely is a storyteller. He had a great one last night about turning forty above the Arctic Circle in Norway, not knowing a soul, waiting for an icebreaker to come and clear a path so he could travel south. Now that is a bad birthday.

If you check Joe Ely's tour schedule, you'll see that like Bob Dylan these days, he's a guy who basically lives on the road. I find that fascinating. I always wonder if that's an attempt to run away from something, or just a way to keep yourself from running to something. I know that the few times in my life where I've had extended work assignments on the road, I've hated it. And I'm a guy who doesn't feel particularly rooted anywhere.

One thing Ely did, though, was remind me how much I loved Texas. At least the Texas I saw. I didn't much care for Houston. But something about the flatness and the loneliness of the land really appealed to me. San Antonio was moving, and Austin ... well, if I ever chuck my life and disappear, people should know to look for me in Austin.

The funny thing about Texas, for me, is that though the majority of people outside the Austin area hold political views that I find ... well ... reprehensible ... the people themselves are warm, generous, inviting, and funny. Desperately funny. I've always had a wonderful time there. I miss it, in a way that you can miss somewhere you don't really know very well. Maybe if I spent more time there the bloom would fade.

Random thought number two:

People who have traveled or lived in other places are always more interesting than people who haven't. Even people who are from somewhere else and came somewhere and stayed there. I've spent time in L.A. and in New York, and in both places you find a lot of people who came there and stopped. L.A. was their destination, and now they're rooted there (as much as you can be) and they're done. And I think this reflects a lot in the entertainment that comes out of there. The blandness, the sameness of L.A. is, to me, one of the great shortcomings at work in entertainment today. If you don't have weather, how can you expect to have a diverse and singular understanding of the world? (Similarly, if your idea of "getting out of the city" is Brooklyn or Far Rockaway, we got trouble, kids.)

I've seen racism in all its ugliness at work in lots of places: the U.S. south, multicultural Toronto, cosmopolitan London, prairie Alberta, South Africa, 'tolerant' Vancouver -- and you know what I most took away from Paul Haggis' Crash?

I was bored. Even the racism in L.A. bores me.

I wish I'd backpacked when I was 19 or 20. I was so eager to get out of school and start working, and I never felt the wanderlust then. It's probably why I dream of Texas now. Or New Orleans. Poor, sad New Orleans. But one thing I do know: the perspective change I've gotten, whether as a Yankee living in Canada, or Florida, or being two continents away working in Cape Town, or laughing and enjoying the company of people I think are political idiots in Texas -- it's all that that makes me look at the loud drunk in the bar and wonder about him and his story, rather than summarily hate him and dismiss him.

Now...I did wish for some duct tape. Don't get me wrong. I'm human, after all.