You know that little trick we used to do as kids? the one where you purposely crossed you eyes and people would say, "you're gonna get stuck like that!"....how about the one where you purposely blurred your vision by squinting? Did anyone else do that one? or was it just me?....
The year was 1993. I was 22 years old and ready to take on the world.
I was coming out of one of the harderst seasons of my young life...I had lived through Hurricane Andrew in South Florida with my family and, like most of the people in south Miami, we had lost EVERYTHING. By August of 1993 we had rebuilt our home, and my family was already on notice... as soon as the rebuilding was over I would be moving to Nashville to start a music career, (or as my path would have it, a career in Television).
Shortly before "The hurricane" my music and video production school in Miami Beach had been shut down by the Feds for inappropriate use of student loan money and that dream was pretty much over. I had been in and out of bands for 2 years and playing lots of acoustic sets all over South Beach..after coming home from South Beach disillusioned from my first major music industry dissapointment I joined YET another band, which was actually kind of timely. During those days there was, what I call, a small "circuit" of venues for Christian artists and bands in South Florida.
The band that I played in actually had gotten some local traction and we were playing every stage from Homestead to Orlando and having a blast doing so. I had become good friends with one of the guys that ran one of those venues, to the extent that I had worked with him on a volunteer basis to bring a handful of national acts in to town to do shows at this coffee, House on Miller Road. It was fun and I was getting an up close look at the music industry which was a bit of a consolation prize given the demise of my school.
Another thing that I did during those days, I was very active in my church, and at the age of 22, I guess that I was responsible enough that they trusted me to be one of the youth group leaders and mentors. We had a small group of kids, probably 15 or so and there were probably 6 other mentors, so those kids were beyond "watched over". During those days there was a yearly Christian music festival that took place in Atlanta, GA each summer and that year we decided to take our group of kids to it.
So it goes.
A few months before the trip to Atlanta with the youth group I had visited Nashville to "scope things out", to get a visual lay of the land per se. All of the kids as well as the leadership of the youth group already knew that in a few months I'd be leaving the church to get gone to Tennessee. In time they would throw me going away parties and even raise a few dollars to help me to get on my way. Really sweet sweet people.
We took the trip to Atlanta, we camped on the premises of the festival...Six Flags Atlanta.
It lived up to the hype! on the closing night, the headliner act featured some of my absolutely favorite musicians from Nashville, and as I stood there all starstruck I simply COULD NOT WAIT for August to come along so that I could get going with my plan to show the world who Rudy Landa was. I was ready to conquer Nashville, the world, the universe (poor naive kid).
As many major music festivals go, there are headliner stages that are really big with big lights and huge crowds...and on the other side of the festival there are smaller side-stages for small and up and coming artists that aspire to some day be on the "main stage".
At the time, Six Flags was one of Atlanta's biggest parks, and as such, there were pavilions scattered all over the place....you know, the ones where people meet and have cookouts, the little buildings with the wooden roofs to shelter under? concrete floor and horribly dirty bbq grills that have not been cleaned since.....ever?
They festival organizers had taken one of those pavilions and somehow rigged a small stage where they would be playing small-time, up and coming acts.
(Although I have physical proof of this story in an old scrapbook at home, I will not name names under any circumstance, though I bet the clever readers will figure out exactly who I'm talking about.... Besides, who the famous people are is not the point of this story)
So this TOTALLY unknown act comes up on stage and starts to play...I look at the stage as the lights come up and I FREEZE...
A couple of years before all of this happened (right out of high school actually) I had met someone. You know, THAT someone, we all have one. The one that got away. Your destiny. Your could-have-should-have been? whatever you want to call them.
If you're lucky, you marry them and spend the rest of your life with them. If you don't, chances are they cross your mind often. If you're fortunate, you move on eventually....and if you're not fortunate, you never get over them you just learn to live wigh it like a terminal condition... as far as love goes you simply become nothing more than romantically functional.
I had one of those for a long, long, long time.
We had broken up a few years before that trip to Atlanta, but boy did I carry her with me everywhere I went. The only thing that I longed for that night more than being in Nashville was being with her.
You know? as most people go, you get your first bittersweet doses of the reality of the world between the ages of 18 and 24 and man had I gotten it by the bucketfuls. I would not say that I was "obsessed" with this girl who had handed me my first bonafide and certified broken heart, because that would sound creeperish... but I would say that I was definitely in love with her and I missed her like I didn't know it was possible. Also, in her defense it merits mentioning that I was a kid, and worse, she was even younger than me. To her I was probably still some form of puppy love and honestly, it wasn't her who broke my heart...life did...it was the fact that at 19 it didnt... could'nt...end the way I was dreaming of it ending at the age of 19.
On the bright side, the whole of it had made me a much better songwriter and deep thinker. At that age, all you have in your hands and no shortage of, is time. Most of mine during those days was spent on day dreaming. I was daydreaming of being in Nashville playing for some artist or playing on recording sessions....or I was daydreaming of being with "her" again. That night in Atlanta was no different. i was daydreaming at night because I was wide awake
I froze...she was standing on that stage as the lead singer of that band!!
Wait! what?? she couldn't have been! she was in Miami 11 hours away from Atlanta! in fact I was pretty sure that I might have even known what she was doing that night!
I was probably 100 feet away from the pavilion/stage...so i made my way closer trying to not look like an idiot, but my curiosity was OVERWHELMING! I worked my way to the front of the audience to where I could get a good look at her and..... no, it wasn't her (both to my surprise and disappointment). The closer to the stage I got the clearer it became, definitely not her, totally hot, but not my girl, not by a longshot.
Back I went to the little rock wall that I'd been watching from before. As I sat there and stared at her on stage, I found myself doing 2 things. I started to purposely blur my vision just a little bit...and I swear when I did that, it looked EXACTLY like "her"!!! I could transport her to within a 100 feet from me by simply blurring my vision while looking at the cute singer chick. (that's just pitiful)
The other thing I did, I started developing a serious crush on this girl singing on stage.
I won't bore you with the funny and ridiculous details of all the ridiculous hoops that 21 year old me had to jump through to talk her into staying in touch with me...suffice it to say that I walked away with her home address in Texas so we could "write" (yes, the dark ages)...write!
The Atlanta trip ended, I went home and I got on with the business of moving my life to Nashville. It was August when I got there from Miami and in the heat of summer, Nashville felt exactly as hot and humid as Miami. My move was the stereotypical story of throwing an amp, guitars and a couple of boxes of belongings into a dying little mini-van that I had and driving north and off into the darkness of the unknown. A friend of mine who had moved to Nashville a few years before let me surf his couch until his lease ended at the end of that month and then we went in on an apartment together... and that was the start of my Nashville life.
Every day, every experience, every story, slightly tainted with a little tiny bit of dropplets of broken heart blood which became a bit more and more manageable as time went on and as I met new people. I of course had to get to work right away. First, a paper route (because it was a sure thing) EVERY town had a newspaper delivery work force back then but it quickly became evident that this was taking up wayyy too much fuel and putting miles on my clunker of a car. Then I tried a job being a telemarketer....that lasted ONE DAY. Literally.
At the end of that day, I went to Dairy Queen and sat there eating fries and had a conversation with the emptiness....
I'd been avoiding it and necessity no longer afforded me the luxury.
"OK! FINE!! I'LL DO IT! let's be as generically stereotypical as it gets....".
I called my mom and said, "I'm gonna come see you in about a week...I need my construction tools." (lesson learned, a man NEVER moves away without work tools....EVER!) I had just enough money for a ticket home, and a rental car back home.
Within a week, I has made a run to Miami and was back in Nashville and ready to make a living with my hands. Finding work was not hard at all, in a few days I was swinging a hammer with the good ole boys in the Tennessee summer.
Then fall came.
and then... dear Lord in heaven...Then winter set in.
Mr. Miami with his long hair and his tan. Yeah big boy, Tennessee winters were cold. God of love, it was cold! Everything was frozen. Record breaking cold temperatures that year. My truck was frozen, the windshield was frozen, the tools in the truck were frozen, my feet were frozen, my hands, my brain, and even my thoughts were frozen.
One day I had to drive a ground rod into the dirt, a task which I thought would be a cinch...except the GROUND was frozen. I did'nt know til that day that the ground...yes, the GROUND, freezes. It was miserable, I hated mornings, no matter what I did, "warming up" was a fantasy that winter. It wouldn't be until early the next year that my life would change for the better and I would find a more humane job when my early days of television began.
Sometimes I asked myself what I was doing in Nashville At least in Miami it was warm, at least in Miami I had family. I felt like the prodigal son, except I, at least, had left on good terms. Going back home was so tempting, but my pride insisted I stay in the game.
During that season, my mornings found me going off to work in construction, in the evenings I picked up a couple of guitar gigs relatively quickly playing behind some songwriters that I had met, (people who actually became lifelong friends of mine… Kirsti Manna, Cindy Shelton, Nancy Roark and David Colon). Had it not been for that season where I actually started playing around town, I may very well have packed up and headed home... as the Sheryl Crow song says "no one said it would be easy, but no one said it'd be this hard" man oh man did so man lyrics come to life those days.
It seemed that no matter what I did, especially financially there were no breaks to be had and they usually came with a brutal dose of reality and dues that were due every month on time along with the rent, the power bill and the car insurance. There was no free long distance-calling, there was no email, no Skype...all there was were blistered hands, sore arms, never enough sleep and frozen feet...but what kept me going was that there were also new friendhsips, determination and so much music. I quickly found out that every chance I got, early bedtime was my BFF if I was going to rinse and repeat the routine the following day. In was in the thick of that circus of a life that I was living that one day I got a TOTALLY unexpeced return letter in the mail… It was my friend from the band in Atlanta!!… She actually wrote back!! She caught me up about life, she asked about my moving experience, did I love it? did I hate it? did I miss home? Did I like the city, did I regret moving? The tone of her letter sounded legitimately friendly.
She shared with me how excited she was that her band would be moving to Nashville in about 2 months at the time. She asked me if I could do her a favor and mail her one of those apartment finder publications that back then were littered all around town. I of course was happy to oblige and I sent her several of them to do my part in helping her move to Nashville.
Their moving date came and went, and they moved to Nashville. Their band was actually under a development deal with a record label so they weren't exactly another "nobody-band". In those days, moving to town with a record deal of any kind already put you ten steps ahead in the game than the rest of the rest of us cattle chasing the same blade of grass in the wind.
She shared with me that the end of the month that they moved on, they were booked to play at Cafe Milano in Franklin, slightly south of Nasvhille. There was no way in hell I was missing that and I counted down the days...
When the date came, I showed up at this small club on time trying not to look too excited to see my crush again. Cafe Milano would eventually move into downtown Nashville and become quite the industry place, but this night was still in the club's infancy. It was a small coffee house type of club at the time. I sat in the 3rd row and as much as there were lots of people there, somehow I felt self conscious, like I stuck out or something, like I was "up to something" and like they were on to me... I was uncommonly restless the whole time, and I hated it.
Fashionably late, the band came up on stage and soundchecked. She spotted me immediately and with a big and endearing smile lit up and said "penpal!" into the mic with a little wave. She gave me a very innocent friendly wink (as if to say, "let me get throught this soundcheck and we'll chat")...and that's exactly what happened.
She came off the stage and gave me a hug, introduced me to the band as "the friend who had sent them all the appartment finders". I felt slightly VIP for hangin with the band a bit, and soon they were taking the stage for the actual show.
They played their 8 song set, and as much as I was crushing on this girl, you know what i found myself doing half the time right?
...yup, blurring my eyes.
It was about the 4th or 5th time that I found myself doing this that I lost all interest in the show. After the last song, the entire band got bombarded by people who wanted to talk to them. Industry types, management and record label people, a small crowd of important looking people, not likely people who had to be up in 7 hours to get to the construction site... and as much as I had intended on, saying goodbye to her and to the band, I just left; and as much as I felt like I had unofficially planned on keeping track to go see them play again, it dawned on me that I didn't really care for their music, and it really wasn't even HER that I was there to see.
Something about that felt wrong and almost sleazy. I was privately kind of ashamed of myself, almost exploitative.
I drove home to my apartment, thinking, thinking, thinking. Realistically, I don't think she was into me as anything more than friends at most...(although I do feel that she was sincere about having made a friend). The important part of all of this boils down to the fact that I was crushing on her for the wrong reasons and that simply just felt wrong, very wrong.
That night was the last time that I physically saw her and the band.
Fast forward three years from all of that.
One day while I was at work, a friend of mine named Heidi, mentioned the band in a casual conversation within earshot of where my friend Paul Lopez and I were assembling a broadcast camera with a ridiculously large lens. She was commenting out loud about how interesting it was that "this Christian band" had managed to land a song on the soundtrack of a major theatrical movie release, and how it was a huge success for the Contemporary Christian music industry, and how it would possibly open big doors to the mainstream world for so many CCM Artist of that time and the ones that were to come down the line.
I remember vividly the moment it happened. I stopped what I was doing on a dime and turned and interrupted Heidi who was still talking. "Hey, can you please say that again?"… What was the name of the band?"…
She responded and told me the name of the band. No... could'nt be. REALLY?
I could not believe what I was hearing. The penpal's band had not only landed a song in the soundtrack of a MAJOR movie but it had gone number one in the pop charts in the entire country and arguably the world!! It was surreal... are you sure? and as surrealy happy as I was for her, as soon as the shock of it all wore off, all of the events of 3 years before came flooding back and of course... "her"
yup....still the girl that I thought that I could see when I blurred my eyes while looking at penpal...and my attention to the matter disappeared at that moment and just like that I forgot all about it for a few days until I heard the song play on the radio for myself.
Life...
Ups...
Downs...
Grow...
Learn...
Work...
Love...
Boyfriend...
Dream...
Husband...
Father...
Cry...
Learn...
Grow...
Work...
Life...
Dream again.
It's been 15 years since all of that, and I think of that whole story every single time I still hear the song in a restaurant, in an elevator, when I'm driving and it comes on the radio, or when it comes on randomly on my playlist..and funny, my mind usually goes back to that season, to those days. The days that made me who I am...
and eventually by the end of the song my closing thoughts are always the same thing... that though destiny gave me a dead end with the girl who would become a rockstar, that night after the Cafe Milano show, what I took home with me were my favorite memories, and that 45 minutes later I fell asleep remembering "her" face back home in a much warmer place and without having to blur my eyes. In my thoughts she was in vivid color and she was right there with me as I drifted off to sleep...
In the morning the ground was still frozen...
