I need someone to get me a fruit juice, stat.

I am an extroverted performer trapped inside a introverted observer. I can't get enough of life and living; the smallest details just blow me away.

(...I was born on a hot summer day in Upstate New York. Like, waaaay upstate, practically Canada. I was well on my way to becoming a flannel-wearing, hockey-playing, snow-shoveling, 4-wheeler-driving good ol' boy when my family up and moved to Oregon. I was seven years old...)

I'm getting older, and wiser. I play music of the ska and reggae variety, and I am slowing building a career within the structure of a unique and engaging museum in Seattle.

(...We trekked for six days and five nights across the USA, in the dead heat of July, 1992. The U-Haul was an old, busted-ass piece that barely made it from coast to coast intact. I read Jurassic Park the entire trip, and I don't remember what the interior of the US looks like. When we got to Oregon, my first impression was that everything was wet, green, and mildewy. Also, people talked slow. We lived right on the beach, with the great big Pacific Ocean roaring uninterrupted through my adolescent years...)

I pride myself on my punctuality. I congratulate myself on my conspicuousness. I'm enamored with myself for being so enigmatic. I'm authoritative on the subject my own authenticity. I smolder on the small stuff.

(...I was always an outsider in Oregon. A transplant. That kid with the weird name who watched hockey and was way better at math than anyone else in his grade. The locals were strange. When I was ten years old I learned to surf. When I was thirteen, I lost my virginity three days after learning to play bass. At fifteen I was sneaking wine from the box in the fridge. At sixteen I bought a '67 Impala, learned to smoke weed, taught myself how to record music and went to see the Stones in Tacoma. At seventeen, I skipped school regularly to get high, surf, and play music with my stoner/musician/surfing buddies. I wrote a lot of poetry, and made a lot of beach fires. I always got good grades until my senior year, but I had already been accepted to art school in Seattle...)

I can't say I'm that self aware. Sometimes I wear a shirt that really brings out my eyes. I have heard that mentioned before. Also, I've been told I don't stink. Other musicians really dig my bass playing.

(...My parents left me on the street across from The Old Spaghetti Factory when I was eighteen, and said good luck in college, don't let this big city change you. I dropped out a year and a half later, moved to West Seattle, started working at a museum, and played in bands. I missed the ocean and surfing in a way I can't describe. I basically fucked off, rocked out, drank, moved to Ballard, and spent every dollar I earned until I went back to art school in 2012, at twenty-six years old...)

Books: Sometimes a Great Notion by Kesey. Anything by Douglas Adams. Moderately bad alt-history. Regular history. Catch-22 by Heller.

Music: The Clash. Toots and the Maytals. Soul Coughing. Paul Simon. Fugazi. Any and all dub. Mike Doughty. A Tribe Called Quest. Beach Boys. All the indie shit posted at tapeop.com. The Stones.

Movies and TV: I don't want to come off all holier-than-thou, but I can't stomach any TV, and very few movies. When people try to tell me about TV shows, my eyes glaze over. I can't make it past the second act of of most movies; they're so fantastical I just can't believe them.

Food: Yes please.

(...and dropped out again six months later. I read Sometimes a Great Notion once a year, watch High Fidelity once a month, listen to Graceland by Paul Simon once a week, and I'd eat Mexican food every day if I could...)

Live music. Human voices. Black Butte Porter. My favorite jeans. Recording device. The satin edges of blankets.

(...I've recently re-discovered hiking. I get in the ocean whenever I go back to Oregon to visit. I'm in three bands. If I can't get some silence to meditate in once a day I will go crazy. I hear the roaring of the ocean in my ears when I close my eyes...)

I spend a lot of time thinking about free will, and the underlying quantum mechanics of the universe and how it relates to reality. I mourn the passing of the infinite possibilities when the waveform collapses. Also, what the fuck is up with airline food, right?

...I still work at that same museum, eight years later. I'm a tough bird to kill...

Well, right now Friday is my Sunday, and Saturday is my Monday. I know, it's stupid. But Friday is therapy day and I'm usually ruminating on what my therapist and I talked about while unsuccessfully talking myself out of going to see that band I really wanted to see, then packing down Mannys at the show and telling myself four hours of sleep is plenty. Rock and mother-flippin' Roll.

(...We tell ourselves these stories about ourselves, and we're always the main character, never the bit player. Redemption is always one act away, and the curtains won't fall until the plot lines are all tied up. Which pretty much brings us up to the present. Sometimes I imagine a diner booth full of all my ex-girlfriends (it's not a huge booth or anything), and I imagine the things they say about me to each other. It makes me laugh...)

I've been an iron-clad lover my whole life. I don't get wrecked by failed relationships. But the last one ran me over like a garbage truck, and I haven't peeled myself up off the pavement yet. It's an alien feeling. I wrote a whole album about it: https://soundcloud.com/calewilcox/sets/invisible-machine

(...And now that I'm staring down the barrel of thirty, I'm just trying to forget numbers and stories and nostalgia and superstition and constantly soaking up this weird, weird ride I'm on...)

You cannot stop yourself. Or you feel you need a drinking buddy. Cheers!