After Bart and I ate, we sat around in the mostly-empty restaurant in no hurry to leave. Late night patrons still laughed loud at the bar in the back and waitstaff drifted back and forth with new bunches of fresh flowers for the tables and full salt shakers.
Now that I was full, and probably better grounded, I brought my mind back to more concrete problems. “I don’t even want to see him right now.”
“Ziggy, you mean.”
“Who else.”
My mop-topped bass player of a best friend shrugged. “Sleep in my room again. We can shuffle everybody, or, I don’t care, three of us can stay in the one. You’re really angry at him, huh.”
“Angry’s not the right word.” I pushed a half-eaten serving of liquored-up custard around on its enormous dish with a spoon. “I think I’d just feel better if I didn’t see or speak to or deal with him for a while.”
“Okay, boss. That’s probably easier to arrange than um, I don’t know, counseling or something.”
I barked out a laugh. “That’s a good one, inter-band counseling, like marriage counseling or something. God, I bet there even is such a thing in LA.”
Bart cleared his throat. “You want to hear my current Grand Bart Theory on the situation?”
“Sure.”
“I think you’d be getting along fine, or well, if not fine, a lot better, if you weren’t always butting heads over creative issues.”
I was shaking my head. “That’s backwards.”
“Is it? It’s a chicken and egg problem, I think.”
“Then there’s no telling which came first, is there.” I put my spoon down. “I just think we should give it some time to cool off.”
“Well, let’s try to get back before he does, then.” Bart stood up. “I’m on the job, boss.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I was stuffed and sleepy and tired of angst and feeling the decadence of the city, so we hailed a cab to take us the half mile back to our hotel where we were once again greeted by the night-time army of bell hops. Bart rubbed his stomach in a slow circle as the elevator took us up and smiled to himself. Chris was happy to move into the suite (“Last one back can have the couch, hey?”) and I moved some of my crap into Bart’s room.
He was brushing his teeth and I was getting under the covers when I thought to check the day book. The wake up call would come in too few hours, then it would be eleven more on the road until we reached the next hotel outside of Austin. This would be my first time in Texas and I didn’t look forward to it.
12 Comments
Creative differences? Really?
The more I think about it, the more chicken and egg it gets. Or maybe it’s all the same power struggle, playing out in different ways. How much can I compromise for his sake, or the band’s, before I’m betraying myself?
Creative differences is a nice euphemism for hair-trigger tempers and tip-toeing around each other’s egos on occasion. Well, here’s hoping avoidance works – at least to establish a truce through the rest of the tour.
If avoidance doesn’t work, we can always have another fight. Ha.
“I guess you can say we broke up because of artistic differences. He saw himself as alive, and I saw him dead.”
Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
*snerk*
Weird coincidence, as I’m on vacation and I woke up in New Orleans this morning and proceeded to drive to Texas.
I bet you found “Some Kind of Monster” pretty funny when that came out, huh?
Still haven’t seen it. It’s on ctan’s Amazon wishlist, though so we’ll probably get around to it eventually…!
very sturdy writing. enjoying the concept and your smooth dialog.
Thanks, David!
Creative differences = cop-out. I recall you two making beautiful music together and playing off each other instead of working against each other…until you got pissy about him wanting to write lyrics to one particular song…which turned out better that way.
My hope is dimming but I don’t give up easily.
More like “creative differences=a whole lot of things that are about more than who wrote which lyrics.”
1 Trackback