composure

Ok so this is going to get rather vulgar. If you are offended by vulgarity, please don't continue reading. For the rest of you, close your eyes and imagine this:

You are walking home from a weekend of drinking and partying in Pohang, where you witnessed the craziest fireworks display in the history of Korea. (Yes, they were bragging about that the whole time really. It must have cost a fortune.) Your apartment is only about 2 blocks away, and you are anticipating a shower and some water and vegetables and maybe a peanut butter sandwich. The sidewalk is only about 6 feet wide, and the shops have their doors wide open, so sometimes there's only about a 3 feet pathway in the middle of the sidewalk because there is a tree or some other obstruction of some kind also on the sidewalk. There is a nice Korean woman walking in front of you. (It is quite annoying, how slowly most Korean people walk, I think because they are not looking forward to rushing around their work or school so they take their time when walking on the street.) You are a patient person, so you slow down as you are approaching the nice Korean woman. You are thinking about rushing around her in one of the gaps between the open shop doors, but you are carrying an umbrella and a backpack and you don't want to whack her. So, patiently, you walk behind her, you are rather close in hopes that you can overtake her at some point.

Suddenly, she rips a tremendous fart. (Honestly, such a noise has come from me upon occasion, and afterwards there is always many minutes of hooting and hollering from me and my male compatriots.) This fart was so loud and large that it almost seemed like this woman wasn't wearing pants. How she managed to do it while she was walking is a mystery, to me it seems like the kind of thing that you would have to angle yourself a certain way and concentrate very hard to pull off. It was so loud that some guys on the sidewalk on the other side of the street started laughing. You look at them and smile, (I think that they thought it was me). So then you step off the sidewalk and walk quickly around the parked cars, smiling to yourself and imagining that sound over and over.

I was very impressed by my composure that I maintained while this happened. I'm sure that many years ago I would have fallen on the ground laughing and made a scene, and probably embarrassed myself and the farting woman. I giggled inside, but I just had a pleasent smile on my face, really it was very funny. I wish I could have been videotaping when it happened or something.

It reminds me of this thing that happened to me many moons ago. I was in the recording studio with the illustrious John Lyons, it was the first real recording session that I'd ever participated in. I was 15, I played guitar for a band called Gazpacho, it was a musical experience that has shaped who I am today. There is a Gazpacho myspace page, I highly reccomend that you check it out, if you are not familiar already: http://www.myspace.com/gasinyourpoocho.

So we were 15 years old. The 4 of us had a little bit of a penis obsession, I mean really I still kind of do. There was this one moment where John was mixing the stuff we had recorded, we were all in the control room sitting around his analog board marveling at how easy he made everything. So the lyric to the song was "...attain concord without our fists!" And so, Isaiah added this wonderfully emphasized "PENIS" after he sang the line. John happened to solo the vocal track right then, and all of us 15 year-olds started giggling really hard. John just sat there and smiled, never taking his eyes off the board, the spinning reels, and the EQ settings that he was dialing in. It really struck me. I felt like John Lyons tonight.

For the record, I don't know how John Lyons managed to make so many wonderful recordings back in the '90s. It was a time that will never happen again, but we all wish that it would. On the Gazpacho myspace, the songs "green sundae" and "maurie's road" are from that session.