Quite the weekend!

Woot woot! I had Friday off, I did recording, I got sleep, I saw Switchfoot, I played my sweet lovely new guitar, and I ran my legs off for hours with friends in the comfortable April air. And I guess it was Easter too :-P

Compared to Easters of the past when we would go on pronounced family vacations, this one has been very low key. It sounds bad to say, but the only thing that really made it stick out to me was that I had Friday off, and we had special music and a skit at church. I guess I'm lost in my own whirling world. But Mom came through, as she has in every Easter. As I was drifting to wakefulness Saturday morning around 11am Daniel was like, "You know, there's Easter baskets and stuff down there once you're up." I'd forgetten, dude! Sure enough, down on the coffee table lay the Easter basket that hearkens back to deepest childhood memories (Oh, how magical those Easter mornings were). This year, though, we got hit by the Bulk Bunny! A lone basket lay upon a mysterious blanketed pile on the coffee table. Beneath we discovered Sam's Club flats of Sun Chips, Starbucks drinks, fruit punch, candy bars, cashews (yes!!) and gum. Sweet! :-) Heh - how things change.

Saturday was hardly a part of this weekend at home 'cause at 2:30 I went to the Quinlisks and rode with Nate and Shannon to Columbus to see Switchfoot. That whole adventure is totally removed from the rest of the weekend in my mind, like a superscript or something. Friday was kind of the bulk of the weekend for me. It was glorious all day Thursday remembering that there was no early morning waiting for me around the clock. And the day itself was glorious in laid-back good times bolstered by some satisfying productivity. Mom woke me up at 10:30 for a great breakfast of sausages and waffles, and after cleaning up and collecting ourselfs Mom went to Curves and Daniel and I headed out for some shopping. We hit the thrift store first and had a great time sorting through the random cheap clothes and picking out sweet stuff (like a perfect AE orange rugby shirt for two bucks!). I got a comfy suit jacket, which I've been wanting to find for awhile. Then to the mall to get resistors for our busted subwoofer, check out Lids, hit up AE, and drink Vault. Goes down like a soda, KICKS LINE AN ENERGY DRINK!! Vault - get to it! :-P Ooh, and we popped into Hot Topic and I found a perfect chain for my ring. Yay for a new non-rusty long-enough chain! That was a great time--driving around the warm sunny air, through the familiar hills and stores of our chain-store metropolis, picking up sweet stuff and being brothers. Golden times, and it wasn't even Saturday :-)

Friday night everybody else went to Youth Parent Care Group, so I swung by Taco Bell and picked up Mike, who was chilling with the crew who had watched Narnia at the Maxi Saver. We came back here and he helped me record drums for 3 hours, running the "R" "W" and spacebar keys like no other :-) We were working on "Nail-Pierced Hands," which I'm redoing because of terrible vocals and many mistakes in the existing version. I got my snare sounding dry and poppy after much fiddling, and we worked out the mic'ing pretty well. I was excited about the kick drum--it sounds better with no effects than any I've ever recorded! Unfortunately, I think we're gonna need to redo it 'cause the acoustic track I threw down turns out to be rushed. Arg for not having a well-developed sense of timing, and generally sucking at drums. How ironic that I'm the drummer in my band! That recording time was pretty sweet, and it was great to have Mike there to help and make it much more enjoyable. Any time I record I'm so happy, 'cause I always want to do it but I often lack the initiative to make myself go down and work at it. Thursday night I recorded a new song I wrote recently, and that was sweet. New Parkwood, new recording computer (finally working thanks to Eric), simple song, solid vocals...everything recording should be. Anyway...

Ah, the Switchfoot concert. It was funny--my other concerts had been huge deals, much-anticipated and very planned. This one was just sorta hoooking up with Nate a week ago and being like "Sure, I'll go see 'em with you." It was also different 'cause I didn't have to drive, and we didn't have a big group of people. Both of which were good in their ways. Just much more low key than my previous concerts.
We drove for 3.25 hours, we found a Chipotle, we walked back, we scooched into the crowd, and the opening band came up in about 15 minutes. They were similar to Coldplay, and though the guitar parts were fairly creative and the overall sound was pleasing, it got old after 5 songs of the same droning emo stuff. Then the long long wait for the sound people to get everything ready for Switchfoot. At last the lights went out and the music stopped, and everybody started cheering. The 5 guys whose music has been with me and in me for years were walking up on stage 20 feet in front of me.
The defining characteristic of this concert was LOOSE. Unbelievably loose. Though when the band all came crashing in on the main parts of songs they were tight and powerful and slick, those parts were constantly alternated with loose, open stuff. Every time they came to a bridge Jon wouldn't go right into the singing like normal, he'd back off, wander around the stage, sometimes start up some little vocal part, and eventually get back to the mic and go on with the song. He talked a ton between songs, walking around on stage, talking to people in the audience, talking about songs, and just being himself (as far as I can tell). Having seen them in September, it seems like they've toured so much that they've ditched all the slick impersonal rock show stuff and just get up there and play their music for a couple hours and hang out with the fans. Jon kept pulling his in-ear monitors out, taking off his guitar, carrying his mic stand around, and sticking it out over the crowd and letting us sing. My favorite example is when he got to the first chorus of "Dare You To Move." He had been playing it just on acoustic, and when he got to the chorus, which normally comes in with a big crash, he ripped out his in-ears, stopped singing, and just played and listened to the whole crowd singing. How personal and free! He just seemed to be into the music--listening to it, feeling it, savoring the crowd, crying out and singing out what was inside him. At one point in "Twenty Four" he sang a line of a prechorus or something and said real fast "That sounds good, that sounds good, do that again" while motioning with his hand to the band. So they did those 2 lines again, then then they went on with the song. I love stuff like that! It's like what I would do if I was up there. Soak it in, feel it, sit back and rest in it, experience it! A rock concert is such a fleeting, mysterious, otherworldly thing, it was great to see someone throw off the normal routines and just live it and love it. When they got to the bridge of "Meant to Live," the very last song, he stood there for a second, hesitating, and then just ditched his guitar, grabbed his mic, hopped off the stage and walked through the crowd, as everybody sang the bridge. When it got to the chorus that normally goes crashing on, the band kept it quiet, everybody sang, and he wound up sitting on the railing in front of the stage, singing into his mic and looking around at everybody. Way cool! Even though I rather despise the stereotypical screaming "Oh, I touched him!!!", I have to admit it was really cool to press forward and stand right next to him as he walked by. There's just something indescribable about being right by a person who has created something of such broad popularity that means so much to you, and is normally just sounds coming through your stereo. There he is--the guy who sang those songs that live in my soul! The guy who wrote them. He's a real guy, and there he is--soaked in sweat and short of breath, right in front of me. Though I will say that I refrained from sticking my hand out and touching him like everybody else was doing. That's just weird :-P And yes it's stupid and stereotypical, but I was quite bummed that my cell phone was out of memory so I couldn't get a picture of him right there :-P It hurts--'twould have been a sweet sweet pic.
The drive home was pretty nice. I talked a lot, trying to work through and express all that was stirred up by the concert, and listening to how it hit Nate and Shannon. Eventually I curled up on the back seat, having said all I could say, and drifted away, happy that there were others around me who were active. I woke up for the gas station around Wheeling, but curled right back up when we got back in. A few minutes later they were waking me up and saying we had arrived. I was and still am weirded out at how fast that time went. I must have fallen dead asleep, 'cause it felt like no time passed at all. But regardless, I dragged myself and my bag into the Quinlisks' dark house, shut off the light in Mike's room, wondered where Matt and Ryan were, and disappeared into the cot's warm embrace. Quite a nice little adventure, and though it hadn't been glowing in my mind's calendar for weeks before, I still came away deeply affected, as I often am, by Switchfoot's people and music. It just hurts me how good their songs are, how deeply they affect me and other people, how personal they are. Somehow the only way to reconcile this seems to be to do the same thing myself; but I'm not Jon Foreman. I don't have the skills or the dedication to take it to a national level where you have tens of thousands of utter strangers loving your songs and knowing them by heart. I dunno. As much as their music is inside me, it hurts me that I'm not doing the same thing. I can hardly imagine that God would ever bring me to a place like that, touring with a real band, and I really can't expect that of Him, so I'm left aching to do myself what means so much from others. But don't get me wrong--God is amazingly, perfectly good. I say unhesitantly that I want nothing other than His plan, which will most likely never include something like what my heart aches for. It's just an ache; a yearning of my heart to do something...a brush on the nerve that's designed for heaven.

And moving right along, I slept through my snooze Sunday morning and rolled into practice apologetically late. Playing second acoustic was fun, and I loved having space to play different stuff and a guitar to play it on with ease and quality. The youth's skit was well practiced and well performed, and Mr. Pierson's sermon was a heartfelt outreach to those who like Thomas doubt the reality and effect of Jesus' physical resurrection.
After church the Behrens and Schuchs congregated for Easter lunch at the Quinlisks. Chicken Parmesian baby! Tasty food, and nice to sit at the little table and talk and laugh with our fellow little-table-people. Then we hung around playing guitar in Heather's room and I set up her guitar strap, taught her 4 of the best chords on guitar (open E stuff), and wrote down the chords for "You Were Everything." Ice-cream cake finally arrived (once it had been picked up in exchange for the frozen lasagna first procured :-P), and after enjoying the delicious blend of heavy ice-cream and mediating frozen crust, we headed for a park in Bethel Park to play volleyball on a real sand court. The Pierson clan showed up (all three generations), and we played 5 great games. Volleyball is cool 'cause you get to enjoy who each person is as you all stand around and then try to work together for brief spurts of activity. My team cleaned up 4-1 :-)
And as if that wasn't enough, most of us headed to Quinlisk Park around 5:30 to play frisbee with folks who had been at the Calano's for lunch. We ended up with six on six, and battled out a fierce, intense game to 15. My team got beaten under pretty bad, but we fought back and tied it at 14, only to lose to two eeked-out goals at the very end. I got pretty frustrated, as I almost always do when my team just can't win, but it was still a lot of fun, and high quality play. Then we kicked around the parking lot for ages talking about a bunch of confused hypothetical plans. Eventually I gave up on it and let Heather drive my stick shift around. She did much better than before, and my clutch never got roasted like it once did :-) She even drove home from the park, woot woot!
And if you thought the hanging out was finished, HAH! Everybody bustled over to Get Go and picked up a bunch of snacks, and then we sat around the big table eating macaroni & cheese and hot dogs and taking pictures with Mike's camera. And speaking of Mike, I must stop here and bow in awe to Mike's amazing hair :-D He had kept running his hand backwards through his hair all day, and running fast, and the two had shooshed his hair up and backwards, making this amazing flow of poofed-up hair with a big part in the middle. It amazed me every time I looked at it, and it made him look quite different. Way sweet man! :-)
That was pretty fun sitting around the table, taking pictures and being picture taken, and at the end I busted out some Switchfoot songs on the guitar, and then Mr. Q threw us out :-) Quite an extended day, and when you put that on top of the whole concert voyage since the previous afternoon, and stick that all after this sweet free day Friday, it made for quite a weekend. It was fun hanging with the Quinlisks, uniquely augmented by the Schuchs, and joined at points by the Piersons, Middelmans and Calanos. And Nate. Who's just the coolest dude ever :-) Good times in Pittsburgh, and one of those weekends that makes it seem like weeks since you've been to work. I'm definitely bummed that I have to go to work tomorrow, especially knowing I'll be dead tired in the morning and probably get there late and have to leave late and screw up the whole second half of the day and still have to shut down my life and go to bed on time so I'm not dead Tuesday morning and maybe get sick from not enough sleep. Arg, the grind of full-time employment. Somehow, it's how everybody lives their lives, and it's what life is going to be like. But somehow, I just wonder. I dunno. We'll see. Less and less I'm feelin' the be-and-engineer-all-my-life prospect, though it seems pretentious to think God will do something different. We'll see. It's 100% in His hands, and I'm as interested as anyone to see what's around the calendar in the coming years.

Mmmm, tiredness descends, and I still must shower. I'm thinking about closing my eyes right here and curling up on the couch....it would feel soo good....but I'd have to shower in the morning, and everything would be screwed up. Maybe just close my eyes for a minute, though.....

--Clear Ambassador