Everything Went Wrong

There is a line in the movie French Kiss that always resonates with me, when I'm not too busy giggling at Kevin Kline's clever accent.*

Meg Ryan's character has just walked up to her (now ex) fiance and his new flame on a beach in the south of France. She proceeds to explain how she came to be there. She says she somehow overcame her paralyzing fear of flying, landed in Paris, and was determined to win back her then-to-be-hubby until, according to her, "everything went wrong."

I think we've all had days, sometimes weeks, and possibly years, where it feels like everything is falling inwards at a dizzying pace. Everything we're scared of happening happens, everything we're working for collapses, and the tiniest things become emergencies. I can't think of someone who hasn't gone through this on some level. It's an awful feeling.

On a much smaller scale, this is how my studio session went last night. We only have two more songs to record until this album is done, done, done. We have finished a truckload of work at the expense of my paychecks, and we can finally see the light at the top of the studio stairs. I am leaving for India in a month, and as such, we have a very real, very looming deadline to work with. Last night we had hoped to get the parts for one, and possibly two songs finished, so that we would only need to worry about guest musicians this coming weekend.

Right.

Without going into excruciating and potentially dull detail, here are some snippets of what happened instead:

- I miss my bus, and arrive quite late.
- Dean forgets to bring a nice borrowed guitar to the studio, and has to run back home to get it.
- We spend ages trying to get the sound working, and discover that his new $1200 pre-amp is blown.
- He spends time on the phone getting upset about the pre-amp while I sit in a very cold part of the studio. My hands turn to ice.
- Dean tries again, to no avail, to get the pre-amp working.
- I notice that the kindly-lent guitar smells strongly like it has been on tour with a very sweaty man for about 10 years. This is confirmed by Dean. I start to feel a bit dizzy.
- We try a different setup and start recording. We are both feeling out of sorts and I forget all the words.
- We decide to abandon the guitar song and move on to a banjo song. Dean moves all the mics into the other studio.
- I discover that an integral part of my banjo strap is missing. It has mysteriously fallen off. I can no longer attach it to my banjo.
- My throat begins to hurt. Dean says that he just needs to yell really loudly for a second. He does so.
- We give up on the studio and decide to go drink beer instead. We leave the studio. It rains on us all the way to the pub.

I'm sure there are many more things that went wrong, but I probably blocked them out in a frustrated stupor. Either way, I've taken the day off work to let my throat recover, and I plan to spend my time doing not much of anything. If the songs end up working, they will work. If they don't, I still have nine nearly-completed songs to play with. It could be a whole lot worse.

Plus, when we got to the pub, two of my best friends were there with their ultimate team. It was a total surprise, and my Better Half came to join us not long after. It was a welcome pick-me-up after such a frustrating evening.

I think some knitting is called for. And hell, I might as well just curl up and watch French Kiss. There aren't many movies where you can really feel the pain of someone with bad lactose intolerance and still be laughing so hard.


*Every time he says, "When people tell me they are happy, my ass begins to twitch" I lose it.