Transformative

Tonight I'm tackling a subject I don't usually breach on this blog: love. I suppose it's only fitting that I should be so moved to finally tackle the L word (no, Scott Pilgrim nerds, not "lesbians") because of something that I witnessed, not something that happened to me. It helps me keep my gruff and curmudgeonly exterior.

This particular tale is about a friend of ours that my roommate works with, who for the sake of this blog and his anonymity we'll call Bento. He's a good guy, but for the few years that I've known him, he's always been kind of a lovable drunk. Granted, the times I'd usually run into him was after he was leaving the bars and coming to hang out with our crew, but without fail, he was more or less stumbling drunk. That didn't make him any less a fun person, or a nice guy, quite to the contrary; he was always fun to hang out with and nothing but friendly -- the type of guy anyone would say has a heart of gold.

Another mutual friend noticed, as I did one of the last times I hung out with him: for as fun and lighthearted he is when he's at the bottom of the bottle, he's actually a really fascinating and charismatic guy when he's sober. We'd just never known because we'd never really seen him dry until recent times that we hung out.

Now that I've got that background out of the way, let me jump to last night. My roommate had told me over the weekend that Bento's woman of his dreams was in town for a few days, and that his current girlfriend of the last year or so was none too pleased about it. When I was invited to go out with my roommate, Bento, the girl of his dreams, and the girl's sister, I just couldn't pass it up. My roommate had gone on and on about how much different Bento was around her; he hardly drank, he had nothing but her best interest in mind in everything he did, and he just comported himself much differently, so I had to see it for myself.

We met up at the local bar, where Bento was nursing a beer, which I discovered later was the only one he had all night. We decided that rather than going to another bar, we'd grab some beers and go hang out on the roof deck of the hotel where the sisters were staying. It ended up being a fantastic night; we sat out on the deck, watched the stars, listened to music, and had great conversation until sometime after two in the morning. Bento indeed seemed like a changed man - he was practically beaming from ear to ear, re-living old times with a woman with whom he once shared an intimate bond. My roommate and I gave them their privacy as goodbyes were said, but after that, I drove the three of us back to our house, and that's when I got the full story: he had met this girl years ago, fell for her immediately, they dated until she had to move to Chicago for business. He followed her there, only to be absolutely miserable (with the city, not her -- he just couldn't hang with the winters), so he ended up coming back to San Francisco, and they kept up a long-distance relationship for some time, until finally resigning themselves to just be friends.

Up until a few days ago, it had been almost two years since they'd been in touch, but as he described it, when she sidled up next to him at work on Friday, it was if she'd just gone down to the store and come back - every bit of the intimacy, affection, and love was still there. The problem with this, of course, is that Bento has had a girlfriend for nearly one of those years. Much to his credit, he did hands-down the most respectable thing he could have: he came completely clean with his current girlfriend, saying it would be cheating them both if he kept going out with her, knowing full and well that he was in love with another woman, even if she does currently live on the East Coast.

But what struck me most about this whole story, now that I've gotten through it all, was the cliche idea of the "transformative power of love". I've heard a lot of people give it lip service, but to see it in a situation like that, I was almost at a loss. It was incredible; here was this guy I have known for years, but he was like a completely different person, and it didn't have to do with the alcohol in his system, it had entirely to do with the love in his life. I could say he was literally glowing, which is overstepping and misusing literally, I realize, but it isn't far off. I've never seen anything like it, at least not in a long time. Bento kept saying, and I noticed, that when he's around her, he feels like he's about ten feet tall. It was like seeing someone finally realize and live up to their potential. I know it sounds like I'm gushing or being flowery with my language, but that's how intense the response was.

Granted, waking up at our house today, he was kind of in the opposite shape, knowing that as we sat there on the couch, the woman of his dreams was on a plane back to the East Coast, only to hope that it wouldn't be another two years before he saw her again, but I guess that's the necessary evil you have to experience with affairs of the heart. Either way, it was an absolutely fascinating and heartwarming experience to witness from a third-person point of view, and I only hope that I and everyone who reads this will experience love like that at least once in their lives, and kudos to those of you who already have.

Distracton

No, I'm not talking about the distractions in my life that have kept me from updating this blog on anything more than a sporadic basis. I am just kind of lame, and my moderately quiet blog life is more a byproduct of the occasionally hectic, occasionally banal lifestyle I'm currently living. Sadly for this blog, much of my creative energy is being funneled into Hello Monster world (there will be a new CD sometime before the summer is out) and into the fits and spurts of fiction writing I've been trying to pull together.

But yeah, distractions. See, weekend I spent a lot of time hanging out with a lot of people. Under this blanket term, "hanging out" generally encompasses sitting in places with other people, from two up to probably about 25 at various points, in people's back yards, houses, at BBQs, at bars, you get the idea. In each instance, save for one which I'll address later, there was a widely common theme: distraction. There was always something else going on somewhere which caused people to split their attention from the conversation at hand. I know that it's wildly indicative of our fast-paced modern culture, but it is also a somewhat disturbing trend. Why do we always have to multi-task? Still, there is always a TV on somewhere, or there is someone doing something internetty, or even something as small as everyone constantly checking their phones for missed calls, texts, emails, and all that business. I am a firm believer that if you're going to hang out with someone or spend time with them, that you really owe it to them, if not yourself, to really be there. It's sad that we've lost this ability, but it was really a common theme of much of my weekend: being surrounded by people who were by and large focused on something other than interacting with the people around them. It wasn't constant, but there were so many "oh, hang on, I've got to take this" or "have you seen this internet thing? I'll pull it up on my phone for you" that there was no real reason for people to actually be in the same space.

Now, before I move on, I'll make myself perfectly clear when I say that people will break conversation for phone and internet reference stuff, I am absolutely as guilty as the next person. I do my best to give mostly undivided attention if I'm spending time with someone, but there's a natural tendency in our generation to take any lull in attention or conversation to sneak a peak at your phone. I do it, you probably do too. It's okay, I'm not saying we're bad or insensitive people for doing it, but it does make me a little sad that it's so widely accepted.

But moving on to the exception: today was an absolutely beautiful day in San Francisco. The sun was out, there was a light breeze, and I'd had a wildly productive band practice. I left the studio to see a message from a friend wanting to see if I wanted to hang out, maybe have a few beers, and just enjoy the day. So he came over, and initially I figured we'd watch some TV or maybe play video games or something, but instead we did a fantastic alternative: we sat and talked. Yeah, I was playing music in the background, but other than that, we spent pretty much the whole afternoon sitting in my living room, talking about life, discussing job hunting stories, and just catching up on what has been going on with each other in the past week or two. To make matters even better, a few hours later, more folks came by, and the four of us just sat around talking for another hour, before we went in separate directions for dinner. Even as I was sitting there, I was realizing: this is much more what people used to do. People would visit, friends would go to people's houses to socialize, and you all got a better sense of people as individuals. It sounds cheesy, but I really feel like I know these friends a lot better after spending a few hours just talking about nothing in particular with them. Yes, I have known all of them for years, but there was just a great connection made all the way around that I don't feel as often as I used to when hanging out with people, and I think most of that can be chalked up to just spending a little time doing nothing but talking.

After all, as Anne Morrow Lindbergh said: "Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after."