This span of unemployment has given me the mental space needed to think about how I want to arrange my life. I’ve spent about a year now exploring various scenes in Minneapolis… Which biking clubs interest me, which don’t. Several of the dive bars and live music venues here. Unhappily, there isn’t anything comparable to the Icehouse here in NE. But biking down to there or Eat Street Crossing isn’t a huge burden to me.

Music, dance, biking—that’s what’s important to me. Live music more than anything else at this point. (And I should also really make it a point to visit the MIA soon… I haven’t been there in a while.) I like biking, it’s important to me. But as I explained to her earlier, and which she and my former supervisor understand very deeply—biking is my walkies. You don’t talk to me when I bike. Well, I don’t have extended conversations when I bike. Pointing out something, discussing a landmark, sure. Going over our careers and hobbies and children and other current affairs? Hard pass. Biking. Is my walkies.

So I’m not really that emotionally close to the various biking scenes here, even though I’ve made a reputation for myself as that cool guy who brings good music and who’s a good conversationalist over the table. People like me… and it’s still very strange to me, how much they like me. I suppose because I always bring something to the table, I should expect that sort of affection—I have very little experience with such social relations. Nothing in how I was raised—the first 18 years of my life—prepared me for this. And after that? It was mostly work, isolated… No social life. Video games, reading, art. Not an entirely empty existence, but.

Almost completely lacking in that human contact that adds texture and depth of flavouring to one’s days.

Now, in Minneapolis, after about a year, I’ve made interesting acquaintances: every outing has been a venture into new, unfamiliar territory. But I suppose that’s life. I suppose on Tuesday, I’ll go back out to Grumpy’s, spend more time with the burners and burner-adjacent—it’s a nice crew that I really like. I vibe more with them than with some others whom I spend more regular time with; I ought to spend more of my Thursdays with Venture Bikes, too. Their slow rolls are… slow. But the community is unmatched. I’ve spent a good amount of time trying to find my tribe here in Minneapolis—it turns out I have a bunch, but there are some tribes that I’m closer to than others.

Navigating all these relationships, all these communities. Finding out “who you are” isn’t a singular, lonesome atomic process, but also a question of “Who do I want to spend time with?” Nobody had taught me that. I didn’t learn it from movies, music, stories, TV. Games like Persona focus only on individual relationships, not tribes or groups of people. The World Ends With You showed the embryonic stages of what I’ve undergone this year. Do people not know how to tell stories about cities? Do people not have them? Not only the stories, but the city?

I was telling my fiancée, some time ago, that when she listens to recordings, she’s only getting HALF the music. I described it to her as the difference between us texting and calling, versus actually being there with each other…

Going to Rootstock at the Icehouse after the Giant Pencil Sharpening block party, that was an electrifying experience. Up until I moved to Minneapolis… the only live performances (outside of the Joyful DJ Bike Raves) I’d seen up close was a production of The Producers done by my local hometown theatre, and some performance of Randy Newman somewhere in or near L.A. (or was it Hollywood?) when he clearly had a cold. I remember the former only dimly (though I did enjoy it), and the latter even less so; I was only a child, and I possibly was too short to see much. The two biggest things I remember of that The Producers production were the orchestra tuning prior to the start of the play, and the performance of the woman playing Ulla. Since Rootstock, I’d been FOMOing into every live music event I can get my hands on.

Listening to music, for me, for the longest time, was a solitary event. Me in my room, with a pair of headphones. Half the time, I was doing homework during it. I didn’t really know what music was like. I didn’t know it was any different.

Now she’s involved in amateur theatre… It’s different, so different. How many people are like me, having grown up never seeing a concert in their life? You miss out on so much. I, personally, would have lost my fucking mind if I saw BABYMETAL and KINGSLAYER perform live.

Goddamn.

Another bike ride, another setlist made. I’ll mix all these properly some day, but right now, I’m content to have curated a bunch of works that make an overall pleasing program. I don’t know when I’ll have the chance to play this metal-heavy set, but honestly, most of the work is for my own satisfaction. I just happen to be good enough that I’ve gained a reputation on social bike rides for bringing great music.

I wonder if my next job will afford me the downtime to work on setlists, like my last one did. I wouldn’t be torn up if it didn’t, but it better be satisfying and engaging. Yeah, I know work is work, but. When you’re not fully aching for money, you’re more interested in working conditions than the pay grade. Am I in a privileged position? You tell me… I gave up having a car (and paying for stupid shit like car insurance, parking, petrol, and maintenance) and I live in a studio apartment.

How unnecessary is a car? Well, Jules and MJ are looking to sell their car after they finish repairs on it… Repairs caused by, guess what, disuse. And this isn’t the first time their car’s been towed because of disuse; people keep reporting their car as abandoned for not being used at all for over a month, and this parking brake set repair, which is going to take at least two months because the parts are on back-order from Japan, they don’t even need a rental car! They’re going to join the growing numbers of Minneapolis residents who don’t own a car, not because they’re poor, but because they don’t need to.

I’m hoping my next job gives me a nice bike-commute. Silver Lake is close by (only 5 miles) but biking up there is ass. And now I feel like writing about the importance of live music…