Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Blogoliloquy: Boston! (and, we open...)

After walking the long route to work followed by a day preparing for quarter-end client reporting and a treadmill run and an orange juice and honey-roasted peanut supper and accompanying the first full run of the  hand-pounding musical that opens a month from today (that's 2 straight hours of JRB piano stylings, baby) and a half-hour nursing an Ultimat Mule (mmm, ginger beer....) and the saltiest french fries known to this city while waiting, I met Justin at Franklin Cafe Southie last night just before 11 so he could find room for post-rehearsal supper (direct quote when asked the last time he had eaten: "I know had breakfast and I think I might have had something about 4....") and a couple pints of Brooklyn Lager to unwind from the last rehearsal for the Boston blogs performance extravaganza he (naturally) conceived and wrote and directed and produced (and even re-hung the lights in a black box theatre just before the final run when the seating arrangement required unexpected readjustment) while doing things like having a full-time job in Manhattan that requires regular cross-country air travel and enjoying a lovely wife and 9-month-old son and moving from Plainfield to Jersey City and asking someone on Etsy to build him a kitchen table the new place and, hell, simply living in New Jersey and coming to Boston to direct and produce and hang lights for a show that he wrote and conceived when he also has an organ-playing gig on the Thursday after the Wednesday opening and and the Sunday morning after the Saturday close in, of course, New Jersey, and while we were unwinding early into this morning (did we just about close the place?) he was kind enough to say to me (exhausted and tipsy and over-sodiumed  and articulating the inertia of having lived in the same apartment for nearly 6 years and having the same job for almost 9 and going to the same church for more than 12)  that one of the things he most appreciates about me after nearly 10 years of solid friendship is that I have this way of "creating home" wherever I end up (including in this blog, which he has read from the beginning almost 5 years ago), to the point where maybe my inertia is simply not wanting to leave the comfort of something good and to some degree, that isn't the worst thing in the world, and I was reminded that the things I appreciate most about Justin are how he always finds a bigger picture in my smaller gripes, how he makes a big world feel manageable, and how he lives large and, even though I may kick and scream on the way, how he insists on trying to take me with him.

Thanks, friend. Break a leg.

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