didja ever see the Star Trek blooper reel?

it's not required viewing, without which contemporary life has no meaning. lots of actors blowing lines, or doing a crazy dance at the end of a hard shoot.

but one image stays with me.

the little pneumatic noise that the sliding doors make is overdubbed. and since the 60's, automatically opening doors can be found at every Safeway or Home Depot. a little slower, but you can pretty much count on them to open.

the fast sliding doors on Star Trek were pulled open by two guys. reading a script.

and Captain Kirk has never walked up to those doors when they didn't open.

William Shatner has.

but he knows he has to act like he' s sure they're going to open. no slowing down. no forearm in front of his nose.

he has to run right into those closed doors, often nose first. and you see it on the blooper reel.

in later episodes, he seems to puff out his chest, captain style, every time he delivers a crushing exit line and strides purposefully towards the doors. better the chest than the nose.

but it's really painful to watch.

partially, I think, because it reminds us of relationships we've had.

but other life theatres feel like that too.

I swam at the health club thursday and friday, got a massage friday. changed guitar strings, watched CrazyHeart and did scales all the way through, did my hand exercises. I looked at the set list and went over what I was most likely to blow, did some playing Saturday before the show. warmed my voice up in the lower register...this summer, warming up by getting the high stuff to where it sounded good just meant my voice blew out sooner at the actual gig.

I did what I could.

but I had no idea what I was going to have for the ReJuveniles gig at the Little Bear yesterday. both in terms of vocal accuracy and stamina, and physical stamina.

no idea.

I knew from rehearsal it would be more than I had for the last Little Bear gig. I sat for the whole show and didn't sing a note.

pre-operation, I would use up a week's energy credits on screaming, jumping, and turning up my self even louder than my amp. always worth it. it's such a confluence of symbols, feeling like I owed it to myself, the band, the audience, the music, to the amazing combination of miracles that makes life in general and my life in particular a reality.

I think we are all made to shine. at the Little Bear, I want to burn.

but the last few times, there have been these doors.

I was fine at rehearsal wednesday, three gigs ago...saturday, at that gig, I blew out my voice within half an hour. the doors didn't open, and my nose has smarted ever since.

there was probably a small pool going at the summer's Modniks gigs...when is the voice going to go? I got 45 minutes...

yesterday was the first time we wrote down the usual Scott songs on the set list, and I didn't start out in a chair...stood up from the first.

and, from the first, I knew there was no point in half assing it. toning down the beginning of the night, to save for the end...can anything really be saved? more, is anything really shown, to myself, is anything accomplished?

I'd love to have felt like saying, look, I'm back, I know I can do this.

I didn't.

but I puffed my chest out, delivered my lines, and headed for the doors.

I always sweat during those Little Bear gigs. no long sleeve shirts, no matter what season.

but there is a new kind of sweat I've gotten the little I've stood up over the past weeks for a gig.

it kind of says...yo...Dude...sup with the standing? what are you trying to do with us here?

it was there from the first yesterday.

breathe. look ahead on the set list. watch the audience. be ready. watch for the energy credit card to come back declined. watch your balance.

Lloyd , the sound guy, felt shittier than I did yesterday, I guarantee. he has pain to surmount, and also pain medication to surmount. he always gives us everything he has...some weeks, we're the only act he comes in for.

yesterday, he wasn't getting the breaks.

the stereotype of a professional musician is that they fuss with the sound guy til they get the sound they want. my experience has been, fuss all you want, but you won't get more than you're going to get, and you end up pissing him off in the bargain. if a man's home is his castle, a sound

guy's PA is his ferrari. you're given a ride for a price, but he's damn proud of his wheels, and it's his world.

I'm worse than any of them when I do sound.

so, no, it wasn't going to be a day when I heard vocals great. and it takes more than I have not to respond to that by singing louder.

about three songs in, I noticed the yodels creeping into my voice that happen before it goes out altogether. that didn't happen throughout a whole night of rehearsal a few days before.

it's like when someone requests a song you kind of know, or used to do, and you start into it will full involvement, heading for the doors, never knowing when the next line just won't be there.

you guys behind the doors, wake up!!!

but then, if Kirk forgets to do a line and hits the doors early...only himself to blame.

the other piece is that everyone in the band, all my friends in the audience, and most everyone else, knows exactly what I'm doing. if I managed to do some physical stage thing, or some vocal piece, some guitar lead, and I'd look out...I would see as much worry as I saw appreciation. yeah, Scott, you made it through that one...but how far are you going to be able to go?

really helpful.

I've noticed through the summer that, if I get to back off vocally for an unlikely short amount of time...only low stuff for like ten minutes...that my voice will start to kind of come back from the Shmenge brothers yodel mode, and I'll have a little more to work with.

Jim had planned the set with just such breaks in it.

so at the end of set 1, I had a little to give to the finale, which felt reassuring.

set 2 seemed less of, will he make it, and more of, now how exactly can we rock this place?

sound a little better, body kind of looser, voice surprisingly enduring.

in practice, set 2 had been presented as a great time to do our favorite more difficult thoughtier softer stuff. not dead slow, but not the mindless garage rock that still gets people out on the dance floor smiling.

ReJuveniles fans...the Juveniles we play for...have always given us our head about our soft folk underbelly harmony stuff. and with me experiencing a power brown out, I've been incredibly grateful that they do.

but one of the things I feel it's important for the band to deliver in that venue is the Dance Rush.

people dance. when they went on the floor to Sounds of Silence, yesterday, I kind of got a message from the audience. we're so with you...but...can we dance tonight?

any DJ will tell you, only one thing creates the Dance Rush.

The Right Song at the Right Time.

of course, the thing that helps that along a lot is if the band is feeling kind of a rush at the same time. which they do reliably if everyone is dancing. but they also feel a rush, even if it is only fear, when they are called upon to do something they have not done before but might just be able to pull off.

people have danced at every ReJuveniles show. but I haven't felt the fifth gear kick in, the Rush, for a few shows. and I have not been able to contribute to any power shifts.

at rehearsal, I suggested that the second set have an alternate path, a dance option available.

Jim always puts all his love into the set list. to him, it's always Sophie's Choice. which of my children do I save? how do I leave this song out?

then on stage I throw a finely honed, tricky sixties classic away to do, Hanky Panky.

why they put up with me, I'll never know.

but when the dance floor filled for Hang On Sloopy...it's all about guilty pleasure for us and them, ok?...I wanted to shoot for The Dance Rush. and the revised second set, with some small audibles called at the line, was just the ticket.

by the end of the second set, we had surpassed 88.2 miles per hour, and Doc Brown would would have been proud as we piloted the deLorean back to the future.

we had fifty minutes left to play for set three, and about half the people had left.

and I was beat.

imagine fifty minutes into an hourlong aerobics class, with an instructor with abs of steel and a temperament to match. your body is loose, you're doing the stuff, but it takes a little more focus to count to three, and some sideways thoughts are starting to creep into an oxygen poor mind...YMCA is so sped up that the Village People sound like the Chipmunks, and you're imagining Alvin as the indian...

explains a lot about my onstage persona, doesn't it? I get dingy. it's fun. I try to hold it together.

but stuff just happens.

the biggest crowd management mistake I feel a band can make is to pour energy on when a group is just not in the mood for it. (the second biggest is being flaccid when they want The Rush). and I was looking at the remaining diehards, thinking, do they want Wooly Bully? do they want the Tennessee Waltz? Bohemian Rhapsody? are they ready for part two of last set, or...what?

we were going to start set 3 with Crossroads, the Cream guitar-bass-drums workout the rest of the band sits out on, and then do two new songs with lower boogie indices. but with fifty minutes to play, a high power song wouldn't have set the new ones up very well, and there was no sense in anyone sitting out. I suggested starting right out with the new songs.

we did well with them, but I might kind of aim mid tempo new stuff earlier in the night. after we did them, I still had no take on where the crowd was, what they wanted.

I asked them, and they didn't so much tell me.

so I kind of went for meat and potatoes...I did BrownSugar, Jim suggested Honky Tonk Woman which would have been too restrained after Chain of Fools but fit nicely where he put it...and Good Lovin' was just the kind of friendly jam tune to keep a fourth hour crowd's spirits up.

on the previous break, this guy I talk to every show who never asks for anything had spent five minutes imploring me to play the Star Spangled Banner.

I don't like to do that with the ReJuveniles. it can seem like a fast break up the court, but the other four basketball players are at the other end twiddling their thumbs. I had resisted so far.

we wrote down "Won't Get Fooled Again" as our old style last song, figuring that maybe if we write it, I'll get to the end of the night and be able to actually do it. it's putting the hardest five minute crunches into the end of a four hour aerobics class. and just try to fake through it. not going to happen.

so I was on the watch for something kind of special to do this time. to not only make it through the night, but still be burning a little.

in probably the only Who/ Hendrix/ Sondheim medley ever on the planet, I put the Star Spangled Banner into Won't Get Fooled Again, and added a little "(I like to be in) America". I kind of didn't hit the melody great, but at least the theme held.

I was ready to end the song...it was time...and sang the last couplet when I realized I had not given George his drum solo. arrangements deranged while you wait. so I went back around and made sure that happened, sang the last bit again, and made it to the finish line.

Cancer. Answer.

how many people I didn't know I knew shook my hand after the show, said it was maybe the best one ever, that it encouraged them to see me jumping around again, many saying they were recovering right with me from their hard times.

well, whoever it gives encouragement to for me to do it...we're doing it, and I did it, and next time will be better.

nobody goes into the arena, up on stage, to the dinner table, in to work, without having overcome a lot to get there. fire. or depression. hard childhood. money worries. addiction. disease.

I've had this thought since the cancer stuff...that part of the human condition, maybe as hard as vulnerability or mortality or Boxcar Willie, is that we're all the lab rat, and pushing one bar delivers both the beauty and fullness and love and wealth of the world, and the genuinely unbearable heartbreaks and losses and physical pains found throughout life.

and we learn when the light is blue, we'll get food, and when the light is red, we get shocked.

but way way too often there is no light at all, and we don't have any fucking idea whatsoever what is going to happen to us when we push the bar. only that we genuinely can't bear the pain, and we genuinely can't live without the love.

and that maybe the lesson we have to learn is the deep acceptance of our vulnerability that is necessary to queue up and push the bar again. and sometimes, when we can, make a little peace about doing it.

or, like last night for Me, even a smile.

the celestial reliability of seasonal change

is largely offset by the total unpredictability, in Colorado, of when it will occur.

or where. don't like the weather? drive up a couple thousand feet.

I remember two gigs, each on July 4th, one in Alma and one in Georgetown, when it snowed. the one in Georgetown was at noon.

take me now, Lord, I said. I've seen it all.

in my youth in Poughkeepsie, New York (it had "ugh" right in the center of its name), there was less weather than there was climate.

give or take two weeks, Fall fell right on Labor Day, as did Jerry Lewis (prat-Fall), as did the reenlistment of school. the change in the air, the turning of leaves, the -somewhat less dramatic than here- change in light, were all early September phenomena.

you needed a jacket first day back to school. and you needed it every day until my birthday, November 5th, when you needed a coat, and boots soon after.

not hiking boots.

huge shiny gawky geeky clunky black vinyl safe snow foot condoms, with latches designed by Meat Loaf, or Andy Warhol, or Rube Goldberg, some sadistic PVC loving foot fetishist. maybe eight of them on each boot, requiring at least one parent's full attention to fasten...try redoing them when they popped on the way to school, and with mittens on!

mittens.

boots, mittens, and an Ice Station Zebra parka. or three coats and scarf and a -nice try- knitted woolen cap.

earmuffs.

this is not clothing. this is gear. expeditionary equipment.

in Colorado, we take fascinated bets on when the first snow will fall. no bets on when it will disappear...the guy who picked "the next day" would pretty much win.

there was no first snow on the east coast when I was young. it was one snow, in installments. it would go into remission for a day or so, but from October to late April, it would move into the neighborhood and exercise Squatter's Rights. daily life continued apace, only occasionally slowed or very infrequently stopped by the deepening Ice Age.

to a kid, the snow was a medium.

like every yard, every street, had overnight been covered in tingling Play-Doh.

what was cold to a child? the coats and boots and gloves were just a gauntlet, like standing in line for a ride, the admission fee you had to pay to just get out there!

snow balls, snow men, snow forts, snowflakes in your mouth, on your eyelashes, in your eyes! four months ago, you waited for the ice cream man and his treasured Popsicles...now there are icicles on every hand, made of clean clear rain water! no need for an environmentally friendly water bottle dangling from the belt.

elation, the great Leveller of Climate! you weren't cold til' Six O Clock, when it was no longer possible to deny it was dark. and the screen door (that Dad had still not taken down) opened for Mom's none too gentle voice summoning you to dinner, and you had the sense from somewhere deep in the race that being out was starting not to be such a good idea. and you had forgotten there was such a thing as food but it was starting to pull on you as well. and it is getting a little cold out...

home.

one March, I am going to use the model of "in like a lion, out like a lamb" and, day by day, keep track of what animal the Colorado weather was really like.

there's always room for a new taxonomy, I feel.

I remember well the games that have been played with Fall here in years past. getting a bike the Christmas I was 35, and riding it that day. getting a new fall coat a few days before Springsteen played Mile High Stadium in mid September...pretty thick little jacket...wearing it to the show and freezing the whole time, wimping out and leaving at intermission...taking a walk on my birthday in 1981 in a good fall coat and marvelling at how bearable the weather was...doing the same on my 2000 birthday in my shirt sleeves.

they would call it Indian Summer down east, when there was a two week delay in chill in September...these days, it feels more like Indian Giver when some downright affable October weather is interrupted by seasonally appropriate cold.

people in Colorado really have no business commenting on global weirding. weather here is perennially weird...we have no baseline to measure by.

except this Fall.

I put the PA in the shed last Sunday, after the last gig of the summer, pulled down the aluminum sliding door and locked it...and for me, Fall was right there.

Wednesday night the air conditioner was on, as it has been...and it was bloomin' cold! last night it was off, and perfect cool sleeping weather.

I broke down and got a humidifier this summer. Air-O-Swiss. 2055D. I hadn't heard the legend of the wonderfully nurturing air in Switzerland previously...but this non-ultrasonic Air Scrubber did make the room environment surprisingly breathable...a little of the after-a-rain feeling.

I was glad I broke down. then the humidifier broke down.

because Everything I Like Must Go Away. everything that works is too good to be supported in our economy.

I won't give you the list. Ry Cooder albums. Fabe's sugar free pies. New Man clothes. the list is hundreds strong, and I won't give it to you, I promise.

the guy at Bed Bath and Beyond (store chain named by Buzz Lightyear) said that the Air-O-Swiss 2055D model was discontinued. lisa brought home an alternative.

Boneco, Air-O-Swiss' parent company (ok, who named that company?), said, no, the there was no recall of the humidifier.(their hold music was the most Swiss music I've ever heard.) we took back the alternative, and I ordered the 2055D online.

I called the online store...they were out of stock, none scheduled to come in. they called Plaston, Boneco's parent company...a grandparent then, I guess, named by some great-grandparent...

the 2055D has been discontinued.

I scoured the internet and found one. good price, too. it came two weeks later. the ad, the order, the box said "2055D"

inside was a 2055.

I tried it for a bit. not quite the same. sent it back. still haven't gotten the refund. I'm on my fifth humidifier.

so the 2055D in the bedroom now was kind of more expensive, missing some parts and didn't work when it came. ordered the parts, dinked with it til it worked. for now, I'm living on borrowed time, the humidity is creeping up, and the Swiss air is helping me.

what it does to the air is what Fall does to the light in Colorado.

even before the leaves turn gold here in the fall, the light reflects more golden off of them.

Fall light here makes the Summer light seem fluorescent, like the world has been in strip mall lighting prior. it's artist's light, portrait photographer's light, sweeter than Kodachrome.

I saw it as the big aluminum door fell shut.

maybe I just want Fall to start at the drop of the baton.

like I say, it takes a lot for me to want a summer to end.

I don't want this summer never to have happened. there was only one thing this summer I could want never to have happened. everything else was pretty darn cool.

Brian Daniell, court poet of this blog, said that this had been my second summer of love.

I know I cashed in a lot of love coupons this summer, and that my life looked a lot like the table in the Baileys' living room, after Mary asked Bedford Falls for help. ("I bust-a the juke-box" said Mr. Martini)

I'm grateful.

but the corner into Fall is one I want to turn.

kind of like when you get a ticket, and the next day it sure feels good that this is no longer the day that happened in. same consequences...but it was yesterday.

in the morning, in bed, if I put my right arm up over my head, I can feel for a bit exactly the same as I felt before the tumor grew and I had the operations and radiation. I can't, for that piece of time, tell that anything had happened.

otherwise, pretty much, yeah.

when I was having the radiation, I felt like the treatments were a debit I had to overcome and get through. now I feel that the radiation incurred a condition that my body has to recover from.

every index is up every day. but the debit is still there in each symptom.

now, I know that now I am comparing myself to health. that's huge. the possibilities included a lot more options than health this summer. somewhere from many to all of my precious connections to life were threatened. and, note well, the threat has not passed for certain.

so I get to whine that I'm not 100%. but I'm 100% alive, and 105% thrilled about it.

but healing. I'm tired. I ache.

I see the radiologist Dr. Davis on Tuesday. we'll probably pick a date in late October for my first scan.

I'm too contrary to worry about it. I have my health til someone takes it away. healthy until proven malignant. I'm quite content with living in my present life, with its present worries, and projecting that all will be well in all future scans.

the cancer was last season. I got through last season. it's Fall now. what shall I wear?