Expect The Unexpected...And Ye Shall Reap Thunderous Rewards Of Happiness!!!

“Expect the
unexpected…” The Arizona Babe

When I write whatever I write about on my blog, I usually write for me and how an issue, problem or turn of events affects me. I usually don’t expect any responses, since I turned off the comment control button due to unforeseen circumstances earlier last year (2005).

I do hear from old and current friends who do comment or critique my work, which I sort of half expect, but when I received an email letter from someone I didn’t know, I was completely floored, but happy.

The letter began, “Hello, I just read the wonderful blog you posted about your experience with my brother Michael. My mother found the link and forwarded it along, said it was wonderful as well…reading it made us all very happy and proud…I’m so ecstatic it seems I am beside myself. Thank you, your post made my night…best, Stuart.”

Then I received this one the today.

“Hi I am Michael's mom. I just want to say thanks for your blog on Michael. He has left a very huge hole in many people's lives. I am sorry you did not have the opportunity to get to know him better; I think from what I have been reading on your blog that you would have been good friends. He was a stellar person and is sorely missed by many. I have learned so much about my son since his death. I am glad to know him better; devastated at the situation that has brought me to this sudden familiarity. Again thanks; maybe some day we will get a chance to meet. With fondness, Sydney (Michael’s Mom)”

For those of you who have been following my blog since the early days of when it began at the end of March last year as an outlet for what I thought would be my poetry, has of course merged itself into this great little space of my wisdom, thoughts and experiences.

The letter above is referring to an essay I posted back on July 25 of last year (2005) on my experience by a nice fellow who is no longer of this earth and of course, I’m referring to none other than “Michael Mumbler,” late drummer for Silkworm, conceptual artist & idealist for the great idea of The Mumbling Orchestra.

When I read both Stuart’s & Sydney’s letters, I wept softly to myself, because it means to me more than anything else that my writing touched someone else’s life, if even for a tiny chance encounter between two souls.

To recall briefly what transpired last year, I was in a furtive state of mind, I had just began private throat-singing lessons in Chicago, I had auditioned for a sound movement orchestra based on Walter Thompson’s Sound Weave technique in New York which used hand gestures to conduct the orchestra and I had hooked up with Michael Mumbler, who wanted to start a mumbling orchestra; which was a great concept I thought at the time.

But like all things, Michael put it on hold; I suspect the band he was in (Silkworm) was taking off and he told me on the phone sometime later that the project was on the backburner. Then in mid-July, his life along with two other friends (John Glick and Doug Meis) of his were killed instantly when the car they were traveling in on Dempster Street in Skokie, Illinois were smacked from behind from a young suicidal woman who had a death wish for herself…yet she lived and the rest as they say is history. (To read the original essay and the entire experience, click this link: http://themishegasmaster.blogspot.com/2005/07/mumblers-orchestra-concept-well-ahead.html)

Life is not fair. They take away the people we love and leave us with the crappy ones that hurt, maim and destroy what we formally had. All we have left is our happy memories and that’s just enough to make us smile.

This coming Saturday, January 14 (2006), Cabaret Metro, 3730 N. Clark Street in Chicago will play host to a memorial as well as pay tribute to the many friends, family, & the music community throughout Chicago, gather to the lives of Michael Dahlquist (Mumbler), John Glick and Doug Meis.

The show, titled “3FRIENDS Memorial and Benefit Show,” is an all-ages show, with the bands Exo, The Dials, The Returnables & The Negligents. Doors open up at 6pm and the show starts at 6:30, which seems to be an early time for the Metro, considering all the shows I used to go to, when I went to the Metro last century! Tickets are $10. I’m going to do my best to go and ask my friends to go as well.

That’s why life can be so brutal at times and as much as I hate thinking about it or writing about it, I can only hope that tonight after you’ve read this essay, that you will pick up the phone and call, email or write a snail mail letter to someone like a friend, your parents or a sibling and tell them how much you love them.

One never knows the fate of where our souls are headed, from one day to the next.

Thanks for writing to me, Stuart & Sydney, you both made my week!