thoughts

The February Funk cannot be stopped.

That’s what it feels like, anyway, I managed to drop my lung-crushing cold in time for my Garbage covers set at the end of January, but the funk had already arrived. I was worn out and behind schedule on everything at home, setting me up perfectly for my oft-lamented month of funk.

And not the George Clinton kind.

One of those things I fell behind on was a Filmstar demo EP. We recorded all of songs live several months ago, and E and I had slowly been re-recording the vocals of the best handful in my studio. I had to promote the process to take up every minute of my non-working waking life for the past two weeks to finish up on time for our gig on Friday.

It involved many, many takes, and those four songs seem to be embedded in both of our brains now in a different way than they were before. We agreed they were four of the best of our show on Friday – at a ressurected Dobbs on South Street.

I feel like I’ve spent my entire life walking by the place – mostly as Pontiac Grille, and there I was in the green room, trading suggestions of fantasy novels with the lead singer of Young Circles.

Circles. Did I write about getting my Learner’s Permit? I don’t recall, but the internet knows. We went for another drive yesterday on roads suddenly free of their snowy margins. It went pretty well – I was promoted from the confines of our own neighborhood to roam the surrounding area, with its traffic lights and 35mph speed limits. My only close call was nearly mowing down some people and cars in an Acme parking lot, but let’s be honest – an Acme parking lot at 2pm on a Sunday is a little high in difficulty for someone on their second driving lesson.

I got into the spot with no problem, though.

I listened to all of Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs on my way to the DMV that day in December, but yesterday I could have covered the same distance in six minutes – one song, maybe two.

This is the paen of the driver – why walk it and waste the time? I felt that way trudging up the hill to the trolley this morning, but then I thought about Arcade Fire, and how I didn’t really get their album until that day, walking through the suburbs in sub-freezing cold to earn the right to drive, a story practically illustrated by the cover of their record.

Now it is Album of the Year. It’s not my Album of the Year, but it might have been the album OF my year, if that makes any sense.

The pressure on my chest has almost entirely subsided.

First, my life had to grind to a complete halt when I became actually too sick to go to work which was quickly followed up by the one-two punch of our snow-storm and losing my voice completely on the same pair of days.

That was unspeakably lovely, let me tell you.

Losing my voice is terrifying for me. You’d think as an only child with a constantly-running internal monologue I wouldn’t mind it so much, since I grew up entirely inside my own head. Yet, on some days my voice is the only thing in my life I feel like I have real control over. I know it can be quick and swishy when I’m talking at rapid-fire pace, but I’m a long way from the boy with no indoor voice or the guy who lost his voice after every big show. I know how to use my voice with intent now, and it’s a big part of my identity – even beyond singing

That’s why this week was so punishing – I didn’t do anything wrong, really, except sing lightly on it for one night, but my entire chest area was in an precarious enough state of affairs that that did me in.

The terrible thing is that in this new age of Peter when I lose my voice I go into this shame/self-pity spiral where I don’t want to do ANYTHING. I had planned to do a special recording project to promote the show last night (more on that tomorrow), and I couldn’t do that. Then I went into petulant mode, where I didn’t want to do anything for the blog because I was angry that being sick put me off my blog schedule.

I remembered a time before my voice really mattered to me – before I even had an inkling of singing and was still a neophyte on the stage. Back then my voice wasn’t what you’d hear out loud coming from my mouth. It was my words on a page. And, even being so hoarse that it hurts to squeak out a whisper can’t deny me that.

So, I started the next book of my NaNoWriMo project. Actually, more than started it – I wrote over 10,000 words in two days, a total bolt of plot I had only a vague idea of before I started.

Now I have my voice back (shockingly intact after last night), the start of a new book, and a chest newly free of pressure.

It feels really good.

As I alluded to in my New Year’s Day post, I have indeed travelled one step closer to possessing a Driver’s License. I am presently the proud bearer of a Pennsylvania Learner’s Permit.

(Actually, I’ve borne it for half a month now and still haven’t sat behind the wheel, but there has been snow on the ground for a third of that, and I spent some time in a state where I don’t have permission to wield a motor vehical. But, I digress. Maybe this week.)

I’ve had a Learner’s Permit before, as the kind man behind the counter at the DMV reminded me as he waived my “New Permit” fee. I was a little surprised that we haven’t reached some statute of limitations on that information, like maybe it would be kept on some moldy punch card in a box at the bottom of a shelf in some state-appointed information warehouse, all-but-forgotten.

But, no, he could see it right on his computer. My half-a-life ago Learner’s Permit, obtained in the same place, maybe on the same dingy little touch screen testing station at the end of the row.

I remember as an early teen I was obsessed with the idea of driving. I wanted my license badly, and all of the freedom and mobility that came with it. I would even have my own car – a boon most of my friends couldn’t boast; we had my grandfather’s boxy old Ford Taurus idly waiting for me to claim while he wilted away in a hospice.

I passed the permit test. I was fine at the actual driving, except for the occasional tangle with a corner in a tight turn. I just could not, for the life of me, park.

In my hazy recollection, that was the primary reason I didn’t take the test – I simply couldn’t park. Spacial relations is my eternal week spot, from geometry to packing a moving truck, and parking a car was like an awful pop quiz of exactly that. I had a lingering dread of time spent circling our block again and again in search of an open spot, and then being unable to pull swiftly backwards into one before another car could snap it up.

(You have to understand that, living in South and Southwest Philly, a significant amount of my life to that point has been spent searching for legal parking or monitoring our illegal parking lest we be ticketed.)

It was too much spacially-oriented pressure for me. Also, maybe I came to the realization that driving equalled more responsibility than freedom, and I erred for the path of the most freedom. After all, we lived in the middle of Philadelphia. Unless I wanted to make frequent trips to the mall, which – why? I was content to ride shotgun, occasionally reclining in the back seat with my guitar to score a car trip.

All of that flashed across my brain when I settled at the battered test screen a few weeks ago. It was the first test of any meaning I had encountered in over half a decade. Can you believe I was nervous about failing? I read and re-read the driving manual I-don’t-know how many times. I took the self-quiz over and over, writing a sentence about any question I got wrong.

I got a 100%, of course.

I trundled back through the sub-freezing wind to the trolley station in Darby, watching the landmarks of my teenage life slide by in my peripheral vision. I lingered at the station out of habit. It used to mark the outer bounds of my known world, the streets behind obscured like white spots on a map – there be monsters – up until the mall.

I slid my headphones on and cued up The Suburbs, beginning the long, frozen, uphill hike through three townships back to our house. A different direction, an older me.

Now, I reflected, driving means more freedom than responsibility.