Walkabout: Watch Your Head and Step 2 – September 3rd, 2002

by Bing Futch

(continued)

Love 6.0 Expansion Pack: The West Coast Experience

“First, luck;

second, destiny;

third, Feng Shui;

fourth, virtues;

fifth, education”</i></center>

Jae and I caught up with each other and then lost some ground over the months of June and July. While still very much in love, I was still not fully convinced that this was such a smart thing to be considering. You know, as far as neurotic, psychotics go, I’m one of your more balanced lunatics walking the streets with access to sharp weapons and what have you. I’ve got my share of issues. I carry them around in a big bread-basket for everyone to see so there’s no mistaking who’s fault it is later on when my psychosis becomes a pain in the ass to somebody. This should make sense. It wasn’t making sense to me at one particular time with Jae because I thought it had been plainly stated from the very beginning that I wasn’t interested in a relationship. Said it a lot. Had lots of reasons for saying it a lot and would’ve said it more often if I thought it would’ve made a difference. Too late, of course. We already had a relationship. You can’t just “mute” someone, although you could if you really wanted to. Fact of the matter was, I enjoyed Jae’s company and our chemistry worked fine industrial wonders. It was a matter of trusting myself to move forward, to not be gun-shy. It was also a matter of making sure that I had gotten my ya-ya’s out. One gloomy relationship after another and the odds-bodkins lifestyle I had procured out of a need to be creative had driven me to the point of quiet insanity and what I really wanted to do was go out on the town, live a little (after giving a lot) and hopefully taste some of what I had been dreaming about while waiting for the deal with the house to settle. One thing led to another, as they often do in these situations, and we had a big, explosive blow-out the day before I headed out to California to see my oldest son, Vincent, graduate from elementary school. It was unfortunate timing, but in retrospect – everything happens for a reason. I’m sure of it.

My companion on the plane was a book called “Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal” by Eric Schlosser. I do believe it’s had something to do with my new resolution not to eat at any fast-food restaurant besides Subway and Papa John’s Pizza. What this guy digs up on the big fast-food giants is so stomach-wrenching and profane, it’s enough to turn any red-blooded American into an avid herbivore. I also picked up Michael J. Fox’s biography “Lucky Man”, which seemed to be likewise placed in my reach for specific reasons. In fact, all the way into Los Angeles I was catching snippets of media and seeing signage that sometimes seemed to speak directly to me. Sort of like the freeway condition signs in Steve Martin’s “L.A. Story”. I half-expected billboards to say “Involved in an accident, Bing? Call the law offices of….”

My ex picked me up at the airport and we headed out to pick Vincent up from school. A nice dinner and a street fair capped off the evening and we prepared for a good night’s sleep. Early in the morning would be graduation ceremonies and then, as a commencement gift to Vincent and his mother, I was taking the two of them to Las Vegas. He had never been before and I was certain that it would be almost overload, even for him.

The early morning ceremony was ambitious, a look at the decades leading up to the new millennium, rendered in song, dance and video testimony. Afterwards, the kids posed with their classmates and teachers for pictures. One of Vincent’s fellow graduates, Jake Hays, is the son of actor Robert Hays and singer/artist Cherie Currie and the two of them were present at the ceremonies, politely posing for pictures with other classmates, mainly for their starstruck parents. For the remainder of our visit, the image of Hays disco dancing in “Airplane!” kept my inner child amused.

Vincent is my first-born and I love him dearly. But he suffers from the same kind of behavioral curses that dad fought and continues to fight, so the road to Vegas was a trying one. Since I’m not accustomed to disciplining him, Debby gets the grand honor of issuing the “sit down!”’s and “okay that’s enough”’s and the ever-popular “if I have to stop this car” which was actually invoked once or twice. Every now and again though, I would underscore his mother’s rumblings with a “listen to your mother, she’s got a long drive here” and the balance of power seemed to work well. I kept the Luxor a surprise until we actually pulled into the parking lot right on the Las Vegas strip. The big black pyramid glinted brightly in the desert sun as we approached the casino. Perhaps taking a lead from dad, Vincent began scoping out the possibilities for fun in this resort haven. “Ooh, look at that babe!” he shouted, bouncing up on his toes and peering over the rockwork into the pool area. “Look at all those babes! Let’s go swimming!” His mother and I exchanged glances.

“He gets that from you,” I said.

“Why? Because I’m a lesbian?”

“You don’t point out cute chicks to him?”

We laughed our way into the casino, themed with cute little sphinxes and curvy Cleopatra type statues with nipples proudly displayed. I could never bitch about the new morality of the 21st century because I’m only doing what my parents did when I was Vincent’s age. Exposing him to the stuff. Trips to Vegas were the norm for me and my mother. They didn’t even have rollercoasters and ride simulators then. Now, I was exposing Vincent directly to the intoxicating effects of Sin City, pretty much walked him right up to the gates of Pleasure Island and said “take a look around son, you’ll be wanting to come back here when you’re old enough.”

We counteracted the overload of carnality upon arrival by rising the next morning and heading out to see “Lilo and Stitch”, which got enthusiastic reviews from all three of us. Particularly poignant was the sequence during which Lilo remarks on how her family is “broken”. The three of us were acutely aware of each other during this scene as it hit so close to home. The day was spent hustling back and forth on the strip, riding a few rides, ascending the great Stratosphere Tower and looking down upon the ant-like denizens going about their hot, sweaty, bacon-fried lives. By nightfall, both Debby and myself were looking forward to a little adult “me” time, so I dashed off to the spa for a good long immersion in hot, steaming purifiers and icy cold plunge baths and she managed a trip down to the soothing saunas as well. Later on, we both snuck out while he was sleeping and caught a 1 am showing of “Miinority Report”, which seemed like another big wake-up “hello” in the ongoing media suggestion campaign that I’d obviously been enrolled in. All part of the program.

Before we left on the third day, Vincent found two bits of treasure in a store called Inner Space, located across from the Hamada restaurant where we had enjoyed dinner on the first night in town. The first curio was a big bowl fountain that had a thick, curling mist pouring over the lip of the bowl. Thinking it was dry ice, we both plunged our hands into the water to find that the effect was rendered by way of an atomizer. This enchanting bit of sculpture immediately captured my imagination, though I wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe it was the way that it reminded me of fog on the water, reminescent of my time spent up in northern California for that first disastrous year on my own. The second unearthed delight came in the form of a large white bowl, though not filled with water. This frosted crystal vessel sat alongside two other bowls, one larger and one smaller, all perched upon columns. Hanging nearby on a hook was a couple of what appeared to be mini-crutches – wooden sticks with a rubber stopper on both ends. A nearby placard read “quartz singing bowls.” With an image in my head of someone “playing” a wine glass by moistening one finger and then running it around the rim, I took one of the sticks and began running it around the outside of the bowl. Slowly, an otherworldly ringing, like a gong in reverse, began to emanate from the piece. I found that if I maintained my connection with the vibration, the sound became louder. Soon, Vincent had joined in on another bowl and we had a harmonious wafting of tones ringing throughout the small, atmospheric store. Apparently, the tone of the bowls creates a vibrating sound field that is capable of healing the body and aligning chakras. I made a mental note to visit the site once I had settled into where ever I was going to settle.

The final odd thing that happened before I returned to Orlando was this: I somehow managed to purchase an original painting by Blue Man Group, the hyperkinetic music and art troupe that has been featured prominently in those wacky Intel commercials. I had sidled over to the Blue Man Store located inside of the Luxor to purchase some of the group’s music, which is quite tribal and very empowering. For whatever reason, seeing the actual show was decided against, I really had no concept what the presentation was all about. As I read the photographically enlarged reviews on the wall outside of the exit to Blue Man Theater, it became apparent that my decision had been a rotten one. Soon, a store employee came rushing down the hallway as though the hounds of hell were descending upon her. In her hands, she carried a canvas which appeared to be still dripping as she whisked into the store. Following in a cloud of curiosity, I watched as she propped it up next to a painting that was culled from the seven o’clock show. The latest show was exiting now and someone would be interested in purchasing the artwork, as was custom for each performance. I looked at the multicolored splotch of Pollack-esque work as it continued to drip and ooze across the pre-Gessoed surface. Then it struck me in an acid-flashback kind of way. Cocking my head to one side and then the next, it became clear to me that this was a portrait of America as seen through the haze of medication that most Americans take in order to deal with the concept of Life In The Flesh.

“How much for this painting?” I asked.

“Fifty dollars,” came the reply.

“I’ll take it.”

The ride back was frantic. We had to leave at an insanely early time in order to get Vincent back in time for the last day of bowling league. His half-brother Patrick, my second born, was also on the team and I’d be spending time with him and his mother, Brenda for the remainder of the day once we got back. Whereas Debby and I have always had an open flow of dialogue, Brenda and I had a history of communication problems and rage issues long before we even broke up. But we had finally bridged the gap earlier this year and this was our first chance to hash it out face to face in over eight years. And Patrick, whose ladykiller looks are already earning him admirers at the age of ten, seemed happy that mom and dad were actually sitting at the same table, something that he’d only seen in a huge group outing last summer at Knott’s Berry Farm. After a bruising romp at a valley-based funspot, we returned to the L.A. basin and let the boys get some playtime in before falling down on the couches in Debby’s apartment. It had been one hell of a long day and emotionally, we were all wrung out. Laughing and joking would give way to vivid recollections of key points in each relationship that didn’t work out and why. Everybody looking for some closure, something to call whatever it is that we indulge in. Debby related to me that it didn’t really matter if I was around or not – they had developed just fine for so long. Brenda concurred. I didn’t really need to be there, but it was nice to have the help. Really, I’m just the fun bonus that comes along every once in a great while and that’s a role that I’m okay with. There are some times that I feel it’s best not to educate the young-un’s in the way of dad’s slippery connection with Real Life. Three out of three moms agree, just send money, A.S.A.P. You don’t need a dad, you need a male figure, you don’t need control, you need a little green grease. For the single moms and single dads, you do it right because you want to do it in love, raise them in love, educate them in love, teach them love’s basics, show them love, live life as an example to help them recognize love. Sometimes it takes one to love and two to hate and before it gets to that point, you need to break it down. Life’s too short to be screaming at each other. We made our choices – we live with them every day.

So I pay my child support and send off a gift from Amazon.com every now and again to my three progeny, something educational, something that will edify. I make time for the occasional phone call and everyone’s cool with that on the west coast. I have a far more rewarding relationship with my daughter Katrina, who will be five soon and is attempting to pawn kittens off on the household. Because it’s early in her development and we’re in the same state, she sees me more often and enjoys visits to the new house because there are all kinds of cool, intriguing things to get into. Her mom, Chris, hinted that a playset in the backyard would be a plus. It’s a good thing that she’s mechanically inclined, I can’t assemble a thought in real time. It seems to me that my kids generally want what I wanted out of my parents for the first 18 years of life: attention and money. They don’t care about my views on life or what my expectations are of them, if any exist at all. Though all three know me as “daddy” – the boys know that I’m Mr. Fun, because when I come around – there is no such thing as “no”, much to their mom’s chagrin. Granted, there have been some important “no’s”, but I try not to utter the word with them, trying feebly to make up for lost time. A 35 year old with Peter Pan Syndrome is not the best source of discipline for pre-teen boys, at best – I’m an instigator, encouraging the leaping into fountains and the mad scampering through crowded spaces. “You’re as bad as he is,” says Debby. I could always give more time, but then again – everybody’s looking to save time because there’s not enough of it to go around. As the mad rush of life slowed down during Walkabout, it became simple to to ignore time. Watches were abandoned, clocks not stared at, no schedules made. Lo and behold, time seemed to slow down, even the sun’s glowing arc across the sky came off as a labored effort. However, The Quickening has begun, it’s been in play for awhile now. People are suddenly starting to look at certain things around them, seeing the patterns for what they so plainly represent. The days fly by infinitely quicker than they used to, natural disasters and unbelievable crime occurs more and more every day, it appears that the planet is on a collision course with critical mass. Do you see how life forms in patterns? Some literal and some in themes, those coincedences and happenstances, twists of fate and destiny’s child, yadda-yadda.

We’re just meat, we’re not sitting in the driver’s seat.

So time is really not the issue, but rather how we view time. Not by hours and minutes and seconds but with moments and thoughts and associations with friends, places or beverages (Beer-Thirty anyone?) It wasn’t that I didn’t have enough time, it was made clear. It was that I didn’t allot proper amounts of time to proper areas of my life. Sure enough, when I got radical and cleared the plate completely, all of a sudden there was plenty of time to read a book, make a phone call to a friend, smell a rose, take a walk, write a letter by hand, hang out with my good friends and spend time with my children, travel places and explore the inner psychic world of the soul with my girlfriend.

When I got back from the west coast, I told my real estate agent to go directly to hell sir, called up some other agents and began searching anew for a house. $40,000 was a bargain for the place that I was originally looking at and that price would’ve allowed me additional funds as padding for what was sure to be a rough season ahead. But now, nothing else in that price range looked even remotely good, in fact – they were more ghetto than ghetto ever was. I couldn’t fathom building a successful production facility in a depressed area. I’ll give back to the community when I swoop through there on a Sunday morning for toast and eggs at some Parramore diner. Though I balked at the idea of renting, my friend Katie found a house that had a lease option-to-buy on it, located strategically near downtown Orlando. I called the guy, named Chris, and arranged to come by and see the place later that morning. Jae and I enjoyed a nice lakeside breakfast and then headed over to the house, sitting on a third of an acre in a very pleasant neighborhood. It was a beauty. 50’s design with nicely landscaped plant beds and a cheery yellow coat. The house spoke to me upon entering, its hardwood floors and trim, checkered kitchen tile and kinetiscopic bathroom set up, its many windows all swept into my reason and logic channels, obliterating all frequencies. Two weeks later, I had moved in.

“Please stand clear of the doors…”

I’m actually considering the idea of marrying Jae. I don’t see any announcements coming soon, but it speaks volumes about where we’re at with one another now. Walkabout helped me sort through libraries of issues that I possessed in this whacked skull and lasted longer than I thought it would. It weren’t no cakewalk either, son. There was some painful stretching of skin and a bonifide mental rape to endure, coupled with the ever-expanding world of the spiritual which is now easily a day-to-day sort of awareness. The house I’ve moved into is as haunted as the first house I rented in Orlando. A few days after signing the agreement with my landlord Chris, I took some candles and sage over to the empty house to begin a series of purification rituals to cleanse the energy in the space. I didn’t get far, from the front door to the hallway, when I sensed a presence. “We’ve got a ghost,” I said to my friends, who stopped quickly in their tracks. Over the course of a week, I visited the house each day and burned sage, walking through each room and sending waves of positive energy into each and every corner. Then, sitting down with a pa kua that I had traced from a book, I set about the task of furnishing the house according to the principles of Feng Shui.

This Chinese sort of environmental science concerns the positioning of furnishings and items within a household to promote harmony, wealth, success and happiness – something we could all use a lot more of, I’d venture to gather. Surprisingly, I hadn’t expected to have the house fit in what’s known as the “desired direction” for total harmony, which for my astrological symbol, is southwest. The front door faces 222 degrees southwest precisely. Using a floor plan and the pa kua as a guide, I worked an elemental theme into each room along with two cultural themes to reflect two of the past lives that I recall the strongest.

How very Shirley MacLaine, shut up with it already.

So, I got it all working like automatic mojo and I sensed that the spirit was satisfied with my efforts to get things off to a good start. The first couple of weeks were fairly quiet. Then, his favorite attention-getter, loud taps on metallic things, began to surface at times during the night. Blackjack Savage the Cat and myself just turn our heads, send a little love in that direction and continue on. He has freaked out house guests with the loud knocking. Jae thinks he’s an old guy and doesn’t approve of our unmarried wild fucking. I don’t care what the guy thinks, he’s a voyeur one way or the other.

Other than Casper Sr., this place has become my sanctuary. A place of utter calm and peace where friends pop by and sink down into the calming spirit of the house. Houseplants and fountains fill the rooms with moving, living energy and the many windows allow refreshing sunlight in to infuse the day with healthy ultraviolet. For four years, I’ve been active in the local music scene, getting out there in the trenches and showing support for all manner of bands. It’s been my main drive, something that I strongly believe in. Along with that, my thrust has focused on writing and performing, which led me up to that breaking point earlier this year where I just had to shove it all off of my plate and reconsider what it was that I wanted to do or more importantly, what I needed to do. I needed to get my crap out of storage and into a house of my own without any chicken-fried roommates or fruit-flavored ex-wives to share space with; I needed to get my child support current so I could get my driver’s license back; I needed to get a vehicle bigger than a bathtub to haul the band around in; I ,needed to get out of Orlando and see a few places with real culture before I went stark raving bloomers; I needed to fly close to the sun without melting the wax, to see if I could float back down to earth.

Mission accomplished: welcome back to the Land of the Legal.

What I needed most of all was to get back to the course I was on long ago. Back when Crazed Bunnyz was the mission, back when there was actually a Plan of some sort. I’ve sat on my hands and diddled the fiddle long enough, now that I’ve got a taste of the juice, it’s on.

I was led to a van, a 1991 Ford Aerostar with 125,000 miles on it. $2995 for a nice Eddie Bauer Edition that someone had taken pretty good care of. I was simply riding my bike down Mills Ave. when I decided to take an alternate route home and ran across the emerald green van with the tinted windows sitting in an auto mall. It was no Winnebago but as a band transport, it looked to fit the bill. The thought of two other guys trying to squeeze into a Geo Metro tickled the back of my brain as I made the purchase and thought about immediate road trips back to Key West, up to Gainesville and Jacksonville. Hell, where ever it was that we saw fit to go, as long as the machine didn’t turn out to be a lemon.

Somewhere towards the end of my walkabout, as I looked into the future and saw my return from seven years of outlaw-living, giving the big middle finger, rigid and defiant to every cop I passed while smoking a big fat splif, driving an uninsured vehicle on a suspended license with expired tags, I felt as if I was walking through a portal in some part of the VAB out at Kennedy Space Center. Mr. Bulletproof, living in plain sight, but not really. The kind of wickedly hedonistic lifestyle that I indulged in for so many years was perfectly suited to who I was at that point in time. Time, as mentioned before, can be thought of in those precise calculations on the face of a watch, behind the face and inside the gearworks, precision movements keeping the time on schedule. Nothing in life is ever that perfect except that which seeks to regulate life. Flesh and blood, we don’t snap into precise schedules, there are variations, fluctuations, probabilities that are all influenced by hundreds of other little influences. Why on Earth would we attempt to live our lives by something that couldn’t empathize with our inability to reach that sort of perfection?

And other questions suddenly crop up. Like why does man need to be governed? Why is it that desire rules the species? Are good and evil just flippers in a big, billion-people-full pinball game?

Since my initial experience with the salvia, I’ve only smoked a total number of four times since May of this year and they were mainly one-hit puffs that did nothing but begin to drag me forward into the twirling morass of life’s altered time-works and the last time I did it, took a bigger hit than I expected and had to sort of run around the house and re-orientate myself. All time is constant, I was shown before coming back. We live parallel lives and there are slight changes in each one, different outcomes. Like when you dream about someone that you know and the scene looks like something you’ve done, but something else happens that you don’t recall. Like what happens after several nips at a Jagermeister bottle. Determined to find out more, I went to find information on the herb and found a comprehensive web site that pretty much underscored my feeling on the plant in general. Again, it’s not a party favor – it’s something to be used in conjunction with meditation or prayer. The Salvia User’s Guide is something that I print out and give to people if I turn them onto salvia, offering to be a “sitter” for them since the trip can be so overwhelming and intense. Since salvia’s not addictive, I’m much more forthright about suggesting it to people who might be interested in that sort of experience. All I know is, the single most defining vision of my life came courtesy of this extraordinary plant and I don’t think it was coincedence that brought it within my reach. In fact, I believe less in coincedence now and put more stock into channeling.

Grape nuts. Perhaps I’ve gone stark-raving grape nuts. I do eat Kashi for breakfast, along with organic, lactose-free milk and Sugar In The Raw. Second Nature yolk-less eggs in a milk carton and Boca garden links. That fast food book left me feeling like I’ve been eating in a slaughterhouse.

Walkabout led me to this point, where J.O.B. Entertainment Incorporated is a real-deal business, with employees, a business model and plans to bring in a profit. I’ve decided that it’s really all just part of the program and perhaps next time around, I can come back as an Australian sheep herder and forget about all of this high tech information doublespeak. Knowledge is the drug. It’s not who you know, it’s what you know.

As a producer of multi-media, I’ll no longer be giving away my services for free. In the past, I’ve freely offered my assistance with writing press releases, shooting photos and taking video, but these are services that most professionals charge for. As it is, the requests that I get for my work makes it nearly impossible to help out everyone, so I end up feeling frustrated even as I’m trying to lend support. Likewise, it’s rather difficult for me to wax objective about the local or independent music scene when I’m so close to the sources. From here on out, my work will fall under an editorial/opinion umbrella and I hope to encourage while remaining truthful and up-front about any improvements that can be made. Which means there’ll be more pissing people off, but as the bumper sticker so proudly proclaims, “ain’t skeered.”

We discontinued WWRR on M4 Radio because we felt we should focus our energies into getting our own station launched without having to contend with platform-pounding and a sense of apathy about the local scene. Open Mic XTREME! is now running two nights a month and Mohave Rides Again! and Naked Head are both gearing up for heightened fall activity. With the urging of Jae, I made a decision to perform more solo gigs and seek out a vocal coach instead of kvetching about my limited vocal range. More importantly, after a good long sit on some beaches, a few choice moments in the desert, after the long hot summer sun falls on another perfect Florida day, I’ve come to the conclusion that time’s not as controlling as we think it is. If you think all of this is classic crazy, or horse shit or the God’s honest truth, you’re right about it all. The only thing that matters is your perception of it. Feng Shui teaches balance in life, like the Serenity Prayer. Know what you can change and work with it the best you can while accepting the fate and luck that comes your way for what it is. Everything happens for a reason and we all live to die, live to feel pain, live to have a gauge for what love really means because all roads lead to love. No matter.

All roads lead to love. I do get it. And hopefully so do you. Okay, I’m done with all of this introspection, I’m thinking. To those of you who stayed with me through the summer, you are more precious than gold and I appreciate your e-mails, phone calls and even the occasional annoying drop-by-without-calling-first-visits. To the people who want me to go away, I appreciate your e-mails too – it shows the balance of my effect and validates the Plan. Or at least validates the presence of red beans, rice and fish in the kitchen. I sit in the Dark uploading, smiling, waiting. It’s good to be back. It’s good to be alive. If you came in late and truly don’t understand why anyone would give a shit, please go back to the beginning of this saga and be sure to pack for a nice, long trip.

This voluminous, drawn-out, meandering instrument purports to present a textual and graphical transformation of a spirit living in the flesh. From a full-blown slamming on of brakes to the first fresh twist of a key in the shiny ignition of a brand new rig, this road of love has taught me that in order to fly you must be grounded. Keep your head in the clouds and your feet upon the Earth. Be well and raise hell, you’re living for a reason. I’ve still got a lot to learn, more pain to endure and cause, more joy to reap and create. As you are my witness, I bear witness to you.

Get it?

Pa gjensyn,

“bfsig”