The Weekend in Foolish Attention

Bits and bytes of the week

FINDING THE RHYTHM. The fun of jazz is that there is a sense of both competition and collaboration within each brand new composition, each player acting as both participant and leader all in sync. It is the rhythm and the agreement of chord choices that grounds the thing. Since coming to Chicago last winter I’ve been playing daily jazz with an almost constant ebb and flow of work life versus home life like a trumpet player who jumps from gig to gig but never stays put with any combo.

The result of this trends toward two distinct outcomes: a host of amazing experiences with incredible players and a lack of any discernible sleep pattern. Finding the rhythm in work, from managing teams for completely different audiences for completely different shows, is a blast. The essence of each concert or event is like trading fours with brand new players almost every night to audiences from across the messy spectrum of humanity. Finding a cadence at home, in my tiny apartment and personal life, is a it of a challenge.

All this to say, my sleep pattern is a mess. I’ll find it soon enough. In the meantime, old man Hall is tired.

THE CLOWN CAR, SHE FILLETH. The big news of this past week is the insane choices Trump is making to fill his cabinet. Woof. I don’t have any predictions of how this shit is gonna shake out but I can guarantee it’ll be more entertaining than the Jake Paul vs Mike Tyson fight.

WEBSITE BEGONE. I’ve had a personal website for as long as I can remember that I could. In the earlier days, I used it as a way to brand myself, to put up my writing, to be seen by potential employers. You know, the website thing.

As I’m in the churning of transformational waters, I’m in the process of reevaluating the necessities of those things taken for granted. I have this SubStack. I have Literate Ape. I have very little exposure on social media. Why, exactly, do I need a website to say I’m here? I don’t. The best part of the modern technological world is that when I decide I may need a website, I can build one in record time.

If you’re reading this, you already know me (or at least know of me) and my guess most of you have visited my donhall.me website twice if that in years. So, like going through my closet and recognizing I’m paying a monthly fee to have a pair of shoes that I never wear, time to toss those shoes.

IS WOKE LIKE DISCO? Meghan Daum writes:

The woke age is over. And we mean it this time. We’re not talking about the “go woke, go broke” exhortations to virtue-signaling corporations that have been circulating for a while now. This is more like “get off the woke train before you find yourself wearing bell-bottoms in 1982; now, that was embarrassing.” Or maybe even “stay woke and find yourself on the wrong side of history.” (I say that with apologies to Erykah Badu, original purveyor of the modern day of “stay woke” coinage, and zero apologies to the lemming brigades that have spent the past decade compulsively setting their watches five minutes ahead and defining “wrong side of history” as anything that happens in the meantime.)

Another quote I heard recently (I can’t recall from whom) was that progress was amazing, it just went on too long.

I don’t know about the exhortations that the social justice movements spawned by the police killings in Ferguson, MO are a thing of the past and I hope not. There has always been backlash against zealotry after a fashion and the rage-filled attempts at over correction are almost always met with a counter movement. The progress that doesn’t encounter resistance is the quiet, steady, piece-by-piece sort of progress that sneaks up on everyone. As I say at the job I don’t write about “You eat a 72 ounce sirloin one bite at a time.”

NO MORE HEAVY METAL PRINCESS. It was fun for a bit, then it became tedious. All in all, I’m glad I met her—her presence brought me back from the Graveyard of Deceased Romance. It turned out that non-monogamous meant exactly what I suspected in that she was enough like the third ex-wife without the occupation attached to be anything but an exciting blip on the road. When someone you date finally talks at you about the “intense quantity and frequency of her deep connections” the writing is on the wall.

It’s another brick in the ‘language is culture’ concept. The third ex-wife decided to become a prostitute but couched it in the language to describe herself as a sex worker and position herself as providing sexual therapy. The new girl didn’t take money but her delusion was to paint a picture of an ongoing series of intense and deep relationships that substituted sex for emotional vulnerability and growth. Intense and deep are not the same thing. She was also pretty young and I’m sure that contributed to the fizzle.

I had an intense and deep relationship with a woman years ago as I was railing her in a back alley but it didn’t work out. I couldn’t remember her name. Which is to say, I have been no more moral or high-minded than either of them in my life, I just don’t pretend it’s anything other than fucking around.

Before I was done with romance. Now I’m not but I’m smarter about it so I won’t, as my dad advised, have to tie my johnson in a knot.

THE THANKS OF THE GIVING. I have a lot to be grateful for this past year. This time a year ago I had been nursed back to a functioning state by my family, my dad was in better health than I’d seen him in some time, my sister was thriving in her career, mom was recovering (like a champ) from her second hip replacement, and I cooked the whole gang a Thanksgiving meal.

I had decided, in an act of optimism I thought had been squashed by a Vegas disaster, to move back to Chicago. I had no job, no prospects, no money, no real plan. I’m thankful for David Fink for putting me up as I looked for a gig and a place to live. Debts mounted to the folks at Millennium Park for bringing me back to a job I had in 2018 that opened up an opportunity to hone a philosophy about hospitality and events that had long been brewing as well as entry into working for the Chicago International Film Festival and a place in the oldest theater in Chicago.

David, Bob, and Joe have been each instrumental in my finding the right vibe in my new/old city and I made a lifelong friend in Gisela.

While I’m not going to Wichita and my family for Thanksgiving this year (it’s my only day off during a week that resembles a non-stop musical torrent), I’m thrilled that I’m driving down for a week for Christmas. As I get my rhythm in the new gig, I’ll get back to writing more, creating some more events around town, checking out live music and theater. Hell, I might even date someone my own age.

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That’s about it this week. Been a lift of sorts but I’m crawling back into the light. Have a great holiday!