Mayflowers May Cause Rashes

Happy May! For those who don't live on their own, the first of the month always signifies financial panic, and a landmark career reassessment question, like, "Why the hell am I writing for living when I can't pay rent?" Or, more pointedly, "What the fuck?" These are the quandaries that keep me awake at night, like mental mosquitoes disturbing my peace of mind. But then I remember two things: we all die without money, and also, I can always prostitute myself. Either or both are comforting on any given first of the month.

All this misery is misleading, though. Life is anywhere from benign to good on an average day--even the day that I have to trudge across the street to my landlord's house, ablaze with the fear that this might be the last month I can laze at home sans day job. But, even with a sky-blue rent check presently sitting just outside my peripheral vision, I can genuinely declare that I don't give a crap. Money comes, money goes, sometimes there's a surplus, and sometimes there's a deficit. Money is like food: sometimes you're hungry, and sometimes you're full, but you're never just satisfied.

What's truly satisfying is music. And all this talk of paying rent is making me even more thankful for the free shows I got to see, and I'd like to relay the best one I saw in April. First and foremost is Hiromi's Sonicbloom--they're an electro-jazz-fusion-rock band...well, they're hard to describe, but they shared five nights at the Blue Note with Avishai Cohen's trio two weeks ago. Good marketing move by Avishai Cohen--Hiromi (a 26-year-old Japanese virtuoso of a virtuoso who has faster fingers on the piano than anyone I've ever seen in person, maybe Jordan Rudess from Dream Theater excluded) is completely hot, and her band of one Brit, one German, and one Baltic European made for a festive night of internationality and drinking at my table. I, of course, got stuck going to the show alone, but because I had a press ticket they gave me the best table, front and center, with friends and family of the band. So there I am, drinking a beer, talking about Big Ben with a British fan while I'm trading contact info with a Japanese woman and Australian man, a married couple, both of whom are graphic designers. The following exchange actually takes place towards the end of the show:

Me: So how long you guys been married?
Husband: It's actually our 11th anniversary!
Me: Holy crap! Congratulations! You guys doing anything else after the show?
Wife: Yes, well-
Husabnd [Interrupting, holding hands on his belly]: We're going back home. I can't tell you what we're going to do there!!

To my shock, and the to the shock of every uptight, courteous bone in my body, the wife didn't shoot laser beams through his skull. She just threw her head back and laughed, as if to say, "I'm so drunk that I don't give a shit what he says!"

Happy anniversary. And happy first of the month.

Stay Sonically Bloomed, Hiromi
MC Marital Relations