reflections on a conversation

It is a rare and delightful treat to begin a blog with the following line:

The sun was setting over West Hollywood while in an art gallery off Santa Monica Boulevard, I mingled and sipped a caipirinha.

Damn, that felt nice.

Anyways, yesterday/gallery/West Hollywood/caipirinha. I was talking to an intern at the gallery who was in his early- to mid-thirties and was at first taken aback by his openness and eagerness to bullshit with a complete stranger. I've been around the trendy artsy types before and typically don't get the time of day from them, at least not in Salem. But this guy was pouring out his life story to me just mere moments after he walked up and said, "How's it going, man?"

Dig this: He moved to Hollywood to be with his girlfriend who, at the time, was attending UCLA's school of design. He got into real estate and had a fair amount of success. But around the time he moved past the 30-year mark he started to feel that his life was unfulfilled and that he had this crushing urgency to validate his existence by immersing himself in the artistic community, even if it meant interning at an art gallery, helping sand and repaint the floor and walls in between ingoing and outgoing exhibits. And he was so happy. It was oozing from him.

I asked him what the hardest part of the transition was for him, in an attempt to try and relate with some of what I've been feeling lately. His answer was interesting. It had nothing to do with the material, practical things. He said, "Knowing who I am."

He went on to explain how a lot of people move here with overinflated egos and underdeveloped abilities, and are surprised when Opportunity simply neglects to fall out of the sky into their laps. Transversely, he explained how a lot of people move here with the intentions of following their dream but lack confidence to pursue their path and instead get caught up in a steady job, making the monthly payments, and just "getting by" and they end up in the same place they were in before they moved to LA, only in a more expensive and arguably intimidating environment.

I shared with him that one of my biggest difficulties in any aspect of my life, musically or otherwise, is that I am constantly battling between two inaccurate views of myself: the Alex who can do really well at anything he wants to, and the Alex who can't seem to do a damn thing right. On an intellectual level, I know that both of these are inaccurate. What's absolutely nuts about this is that a lot of the time I will find myself ping-ponging between these two poles at such a high frequency that it feels like they're happening simultaneously.

I think a lot of this has to do with the principle that says, "We become who we think everyone else thinks we are." I am constantly falling into and climbing out of this trap. One of the things that drives me crazy about myself is this chameleon-like persona that I assume in certain crowds. I can usually tell right away based on group dynamics if I need to be the funny-guy, the smart-guy, philosophical-guy, or the serious-guy.

When I'm with a group of people who I don't know that well, I will usually lock onto a persona and be stuck with it all night. Worst of all is when I simply don't know who I am within the context of a certain group, and I end up defaulting to nothing-guy. This persona retreats to the wall at a party or slumps into a recessed corner of a booth at a restaurant. My face becomes expressionless which unfortunately causes me to look like I'm upset or unhappy, and because I'm usually not upset or unhappy, this confusion only adds to the downward momentum of my mini-identity crisis.

This causes me to realize the value in the friendships I keep. I would rather be very close to a handful of friends than to be on casual terms with a couple dozen. I keep this handful close because I know who I am with them. I am not compelled to put on an act. I find peace and rest in the fact that neither my achievements nor my shortcomings will increase or decrease the respect or love that they have for me. In the same way, I find that there is nothing more fulfilling than being in a friendship where I can be that for someone else. To be a constant support, a safe refuge, where the other person knows that they do not have to earn my friendship nor do they have to fear losing it if/when they fuck up.

This has been one of the greatest realizations I've had over the last two months since everything came apart. I have been humbled and moved at the response of friends, some of whom I've known all my life, others only a short while, who were all kind enough to just be near me and let me near them. These friends are not overly concerned with talking about my failed marriage-- they don't want to know how it happened or what I need to do to fix it. They aren't preoccupied with getting me "back on the market" or hooking me up with a friend-of-a-friend if only for a one-night stand. The friends who have emerged lately are saints in that they are happy to just hang out. To just "be." Sometimes this is just sharing a meal, other times going to a concert. Currently I am enjoying the graciousness of Kent and Irene who opened the doors to their one-bedroom Los Angeles apartment by letting me sleep on their living room floor for a couple nights.

The hardest part of being down here on this exploratory trip is not worrying about where I will live or where I will work, whether I will have enough money or anything logistical. It's picturing me cut-and-pasted onto this strange, busy canvas, severed from the beautiful mosaic-- my support system, my community back home. If I were to leave everything and move down here tomorrow, it would be bearable; difficult but attainable. It would hurt when I tear the bandage off but at least the healing could begin. But the reality is it will take probably two years before I can make the transition, and by then I fear that my ties back home will be all the more inseparable.