Part of my job with The Smooth Jazz Network is to draft questions for musicians. Questions they may answer in the privacy of their home studio, or questions they may answer within the comforts of our own office and studio space.
How old were you when you first did the thing you do? Who has had the most egregious influence on you? If you could have any superpower? If your life were a movie? Which pant leg do you put on first?
Do you think there has been any single moment that has defined either your career or you as an artist?
These artists come in here and sit down with me and we talk and at some point it is completely apparent that the interview is either going to be profoundly awkward or insatiably comfortable. Now I'm just using adjectives for fun. They were two-for-one at Word Depot. Now I'm just being stupid.
The thing about living in Los Angeles and developing a network (mostly acquaintances) is that you inevitably get invited to events in this city that give you access to people and places you could never see or experience anywhere else.
When I was attending film school in Chicago I had the chance to see many famed directors, musicians and artists speak about their craft. I also had the pleasure of working alongside some incredibly talented students who were budding artists themselves. But still, even in those settings, there was a certain amount of restraint.
It wasn't until I moved out here that I began to see the full dynamic. That we as fans tend to forget that people like Seal and John Legend and David Foster and Michael Chiklis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt and all these people whose faces are engraved in your psyche, we tend to forget that they are just people earning a living.
It seems obvious and trite and wicked dumb to mention, but it takes some getting used to. Like last night, while attending a screening of <a href="http://michelgondry.com/" target="_blank">Michel Gondry</a>'s new DVD, cropped up in the lobby amongst a sea of eager fans, when <a href="http://www.saulwilliams.com/" target="_blank">Saul Williams</a> appears a few feet away from me and my facial expression must have said something because he came right to me, found his way through the crowd between us, with his hand out and he asked me how I was doing.
If he only knew how I have two of his books sitting out in my bedroom.
He says, "What's your name again?" as if we have met before. And maybe we have, in a past life, who am I to argue. We share an awkwardly long handshake but it didn't seem awkward or long and I muttered some cliché that showed my petty fanfare mentality.
I won't glamorize it or make it out to be any more priceless than it was. I'm sure he talked to many people last night. But there was something minute and endearing about how he approached me. When I stop and think about it, I'm pretty sure he thought I was Patton Oswalt. Or somebody much cooler than I am. (See also: <a href="http://phrankiesays.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/you-probably-get-this-a-lot/" target="_blank">you probably get this alot</a>.)
Either way. I met Saul Williams and saw a Q&A with Michel Gondry and I could not have been more content.