I'm back home from fantastically productive musical weekend in Dallas. I stayed with Derek and Ellen Zock Friday and Saturday night. Derek was the drummer in my band of 15 years ago, The Movies. For some years, he's been (successfully) inciting me to tape my songs on the off chance that someday we'd do something with them. A couple of months ago, he and Ellen came down to visit and he unveiled three of my tunes that he had produced in his handcrafted digital studio. He'd furnished drum parts, he'd had guest musicians come in to lay vocals and guitar tracks, and even tapped the old Movies bass player (Opie Odom) to lay some bass tracks. That spark (or, rather, burning torch) lit off a powder keg of enthusiasms (DeNiro: "...en-duzi-azms, ...en-duzi-azms...") that led to this past weekend and three more tunes. Now the project definitely has a life of its own. We'll work on these three, polish the first three, and lay down some more around the first of the year. When the whole project is done, I'll probably encode the tunes as mp3's and make them available on the website.

Anyhoots, the trepidation I mentioned in my earlier post about old friends' first encounters with my condition was never borne out either way. The former band mates (Opie, and Dave Patton, guitar) never made it to the studio. Although, as social convection circulated me amoungst the Zocks' circle of friends, I did see several folks whom I hadn't seen since before my diagnosis. Derek and Ellen are solid people, and they have pretty solid friends, so, in retrospect, I should have expected no hassles. (Not that I did, but...) I'm sure everyone had been apprised of my situation beforehand, but I'm not sure even that can prepare someone to try to have a conversation with me. Anyway, every interpersonal interaction I had went just the way I had hoped. No one doted on me. But no one was insensitive, either. I sputtered on some water, and I was asked if I was okay without anyone jumping into the Heimlich position behind me. Basically, Derek and Ellen helped me construct my optimal physical and emotional operating environment: only give the disease what it demands (in terms of attention or behavior modification), and otherwise business as usual.

One of my fears is having to someday say (perhaps not is so many words): "I'm crippled, not retarded". I.e., only the interface is changing, the contents of the package are the same. I am reassured every time I visit the Zocks that I'll never have to say that to them. That kind of brings them into a special circle of people who I feel like I'm carrying along with me as I go through this disease. People who can deal with the loss and devastation that this disease promises its victims and those close to them. People who won't give up on the me that they know and care about to avoid the ugliness of (or the work of having to deal with) my shrinking ability to communicate. I wish all my friends were like that. I'm thankful that some are.

Thanksgiving is breathing in our faces. My in-laws are coming into town. In some ways, I feel so disconnected from them that I don't have strong feelings one way or the other about their visit. I expect it'll be moderately uncomfortable for all involved, but that's the beauty of pessimism, no? Set expectations low, and they run a much higher chance of being exceeded. I'll make a full report when the in-house population returns to normal.