I’m giving myself five minutes.

April 02, 2003

I’m giving myself five minutes. I said I would stop sitting down to this thing after gigs because it wrecks me badly for the next day. I think each of these Green Room shows have been pretty cathartic. Firstly its amazing to see how many faces come out of the different Vancouvers I’ve known over the years. Its like some sort of post booze haze reunion. I’m glad to see I’ve not been held accountable for all my past actions. Secondly I keep having the same revelation. Each time I get through a gig I feel like I’ve just played my first one. I say to myself every time, “hey, That was pretty good. Maybe I DO know what I’m doing” -- liar, sometimes I just think I sucked. It would take me a long time to even figure out how many shows I’ve played in my life. Lets put it this way...its in the thousands. I worry each time that I don't know what I'm doing. I think this phenomenon speaks loads about what is yet to come. My head is just grazing the yardstick as I try to stretch to where I want to be. When I dredge up old songs I still want to make them new and better. I don’t want to change them I just want to inject them with a huge dose of who I am right now. I wonder if the “who I am right now” quotient will fit the songs sometimes. Funny. . . it usually does. I’ve gone into all these shows without completely knowing how to play a good portion of the material. If its old Odds stuff I basically have to slip into muscle memory and hope for the best because I can’t consciously summon up vast tracts of that stuff. Its been shunted out to make way for new crops. I’ll dive in and just make it through and then the next show I’ll try that one again and be able to put more muscle into it because I reanimated it the week before. It’s brand new again and I’m learning how to make it work. Old is new. New is still new. I am a rookie each night. Its been so long since I had a jaded period I better start worrying. The big nasty sarcastic bastard in me will surface soon. Then I will just always know it sucked. That took longer than five minutes. Tomorrow is destroyed.