listen. listen this is important. I'm going to tell you something important and need you to listen and understand. 

A formative experience in my life was the few years in late high school and early college when I would go to an open mic night on Thursdays at a diner in Harrisonburg called the Little Grill. And the Little Grill open mic night was often run by a man named Chris Howdyshell who had a band and worked at the diner and was the mc and would also perform and whether I knew it in that moment or not I was aspiring to be like him and molded by personality to be more like him. The first post on this blog is a story I read at the Little Grill open mic back in 2011. 

And one fateful night Chris Howdyshell got on stage and said that he was into Tom Waits and performed an original song about Tom Waits and I think he also sang a Tom Waits song 

"sitting there just like Tom Waits"

was a line I think. It was a beautiful moment. It's a moment I'm still chasing. Everyone has moments they're chasing. In no particular order, these are some moments I'm still chasing

-sitting in the Little Grill diner at the end of the night listening to Chris Howdyshell perform

-long runs in college with friends

-camp

-smooches n such

There are probably more. Or there could also be less. But the point is I was too young at the time to appreciate Tom Waits's monster gravel voice and what he was saying. I like that Chris Howdyshell liked him but I didn't get it. 

But now I get it. I heard a clip of a Tom Waits song while I was scrolling the other day and my soul and heart has finally accumulated enough gravel and grit and detritus for Tom Waits to find purchase. 

And upon further and tangential reflection here's what I've realized

Here's the moment I'm still chasing. I've just pieced it all together. It makes sense. I've figured it out.

In Kindergarten I would never shut-up and on some level I knew they were making fun of me as they did this but they made me the ringleader of the class circus and they gave me this big colorful plastic microphone and a tophat maybe and my job was to just spout any thought that came into my head and announce the acts. And really at its core the summer camps and the coaching and Chris howdyshell at the Little Grill open mic night is all the ringleader of a kindergarten circus and that just might be the essence of my social existence.

also I'm into Tom Waits now a little. The point of the post was to tell you that I kinda like at least one Tom Waits song now. But then along the way I took the derivative of my identity farther than I've ever taken it. That's a little bonus.