ceciliatan

Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

Sunrise on the beach on the West Coast isn’t as much fun as it is on the East Coast. The rising sun is hidden by the cliffs and stuff. But the sky still gets some pretty colors.

We drove back into LA. My tattoo itched but I tried to ignore it. Matt had said not to pick at it, to moisturize it every day and let the skin peel naturally.

We talked a lot that night. Not about us. About…stuff. Life. Art. Things. And we also were quiet sometimes, like we didn’t need to be talking all the time. Like just being on the same beach or in the same car was enough. I’m not explaining it well.

Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

(Welcome to September! We’re back on our Tuesday/Thursday posting schedule! And don’t forget the deadline for the meme contest —click for details— is September 9th! -ctan)
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So the thing about live music is that it’s live. It’s not always predictable. And shit happens. A cracked toilet at the venue makes a flood that shorts out the lights. A dog gets loose and jumps into the grand piano and knocks it out of tune. People get sick or injured. This is one reason why, to me, it’s so important to stay sharp and not just fall into a rut of expecting it to be the same all the time. Because something is always going to make you change or adjust.

On this particular night some kind of a lighting problem hit us just at the end of a song, right before we had planned to do “Wishing Well,” and to get us and Louis and the show in general back on track we skipped it and decided to insert it later in the set. Fran was fine. Once the show started any nerves she had were blown away and she had given me that circle motion with her hand that meant “move on.”

Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

Confession time. (I know, I know, that’s all the time. But this one is special.) I had a little bit of a fantasy from time to time that without me Ziggy was leading an out of control diva workaholic life, in which he was being slowly driven insane by the pressures of fame and the alienation, from which of course the only rescue or relief was to be found in my arms. This was partly how I explained to myself stuff like, oh, him showing up solo at a random airport hotel seemingly just to see me: that was him escaping from his celebrity tabloid life and getting a good solid dose of down-to-earth Daron medicine.

I know there were times he was trapped behind the wall of his entourage, or by his public facade. I liked the idea of coming to his rescue.

I’ll let you decide who came to whose rescue, though, that particular morning in Los Angeles. I woke up with with my arms full of him and for a while I couldn’t remember where we were or why we were there or where we needed to be next.

Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

It was so much easier to learn Nomad’s set when I had more than two days to come up to speed. Also I wasn’t the only one coming up to speed, since there was a new horn section (one sax, one flugelhorn). Learning new songs is much more fun, in a way, when you have plenty of time to play with them. I say “in a way” because I suppose it depends on your definition of fun. I can’t say I didn’t somewhat enjoy doing what I did in Japan: I did. But it was kind of nice to have the leisure to take more time.

Not that I didn’t get impatient with the process once in a while, but I could tell myself to chill out. I wasn’t driving this bus, and we were all going to get there together.

Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

My home away from home, eh? I was feeling fancy so I heated up the soup in a pot on the stove instead of in the microwave. We sat at the counter on the island, eating it silently, each absorbed in our own thoughts for a while.

You know, it wasn’t just that Remo’s house was a home away from home for me: Remo was a safety net of all kinds. I felt pretty confident that if I ever needed a gig, I could get on Remo’s bandwagon. If I ever needed a place to live, I could move in here. I mean, I’d probably always be too proud to, but knowing that safety net was there… That gave me a kind of footing that a lot of creative people don’t have. For all I’d said to Ziggy that guitar was the one thing I had, I actually did have more options than some people we knew.

I was thinking of Christian.

Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

The next day, Jonathan walked around the house on the cordless phone, telling his parents, talking to his agent, telling a college friend who worked in film but was in London for a movie shoot for the next two months, all while he wrapped his cups and plates in newspaper and stacked them in a box.

“Can I ask you a huge favor?” he said, when he was between phone calls.

Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

(Site news: 1) Here’s the Saturday post I’ve owed you guys for 3 weeks! I’ve finally written far enough ahead I can post a bonus post! 2) Yes, yes, if you would like to see what happened during the J/Daron make-up sex, make a donation and I’ll write it and send it! 3) And tomorrow, there will be liner notes! -ctan)

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The next day I felt better but worse. Better because I felt like I’d gotten a lot off my chest, worse because I felt like I’d been run over by a truck. They use that phrase “through the wringer” to mean emotionally, but physically I felt about the same, tender and stiff.

I had one of those hot showers where most of what I did was stand there with my hands against the tile, letting the hot water hit me in the head. The sound of the water isn’t “soothing” so much as numbing. It blots everything out like static on the radio.

What the hell did you do, Daron? Did you really just agree to stay with him?

Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

The doorbell rang while I was on my second cup of coffee, which was after I had tried all the pies. The caterers had set up a big pitcher-Thermos sort of thing with the last of the coffee and had just left, so when it rang everyone assumed it was them coming back for something they forgot.

Remo opened the door and let out a force-yet-surprised-sounding “Well, hey!”

I could hear Digger’s voice before I could see him.

Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

It was a very professional crowd, it seemed to me. They clapped in all the right places, cheered in all the right places, never got too crazy, but never lagged in energy either. Don’t get me wrong; that was perfectly fine. But it wasn’t special. Or maybe it was me. I was so ready for something to go wrong, and when nothing did, maybe my head wasn’t in the right place.

Ziggy knew how to play a crowd like that. Let’s face it, he knew how to play any crowd, deep or shallow, rowdy or subdued. Lacey didn’t show up as far as I could tell and I had to keep reminding myself she was okay.

I forgot all that when I came off stage and saw Remo standing there, whistling and clapping.