As most people that know me are aware I've spent the whole of my adult life embroiled in the art, craft, and job of creating music. I was a proud member of some fantastic bands, all of which I left prematurely because of my own foolishness and shortsightedness. For some reason I was never happy where I was no matter how fun or successful it was; always looking ahead for something more, a bit impatiently. There was only one instance where I was asked to leave and it was because of my foolish choices and how I chose to carry myself. Possibly one of the biggest mistakes of my life and it directly led to some of my problems that landed me in the hospital in the first place. I'll leave that story for another time. Back to the business of creation and art, all the while I was playing in bands with other folks I always wrote songs for myself and did a number of solo performances especially at The Sad Cafe in Plaistow, NH. Linda, the owner, was and probably still is a big fan of what I was up to and maybe I'll play there again at some point. I forget the initial genesis of the name but I started calling my solo ventures Building A Better Robot because I've got that pretentious art-ass streak that stops me from just performing under my own moniker. Really though, I like the idea of writing songs and if friends want to help out from time to time, awesome. Kind of a band that isn't a band. The name Building A Better Robot has taken on new meaning especially post-surgery/hospitalization because it literally gave me a chance to rebuild myself. Why a robot? Maybe it's my commentary on the nature of playing music, especially in a particular "scene" or whathaveyou in that as performers we sometimes take on the role of automatons, going through the motions and rituals of playing in front of people. Anyone who's been on tour and plays the same setlist every night can see some truth in that, no matter how many different idiosyncrasies creep up every night it's still the same songs. Hell, practicing itself is a robotic act because it's rote memorization and repeating the same lines, phrases, melodies over and over again.
Or it could be I just like robots.
One fun heartwarming sidenote to this name business comes from my tenure with The Minus Scale. I joined them in 2005(?) and it was like being called up into the big leagues. I had been a fan of theirs and played with them so when I left my band at the time and they asked me to join I was ecstatic. We had a lot of fun the years we played together and I love those dudes. Our de facto leader AJ and I lived together for a spell, spent a lot of time on the road together (as bands do) and he was always sort of the industry maestro for us with his finger firmly on the pulse of our music scene. As far as I recall the only time he ever really gave me a compliment about my own music ventures was when he told me that Building A Better Robot was a great name. Maybe I hang onto that moniker because it got the AJ seal of approval. Who knows? Getting approval and validation from people who I believe are more talented or have a better ear than me has always been high on my list. One good byproduct of all of my hospital time is it's given me fodder for writing and I'm pursuing my music the most aggressively I have since I left my last band in 2009. Or was it 2008?
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My winter was looking to be spent entirely indoors and in a hospital bed. Christmas and New Year's were lost in the halls of Wentworth-Douglas and it was a pretty big bummer. I love Christmas. I'm not really into gifts but I love the feelings of Christmas, the songs, and hot cocoa with cinnamon. For real, if you asked me to describe Christmas as simply as possible I'd say it tastes like hot cocoa with cinnamon. Anyway, at this point in my hospital life I had seen my family a bit, Kelley of course, her family and my good buddy Angel came to visit with his daughter. We had worked together previously and became fast friends. He coached me through some of the bullshit when they thought I was going to be diabetic (he's lived with diabetes for years) and is a genuine friend. Around this time things were progressing not entirely well and the doctors were figuring out where to transfer me for surgery as W-D isn't equipped to handle pancreatic surgery, at least not the kind I needed.
This is all pretty significant because there are only three doctors/hospitals in New England that will do the kind of surgery I required. Three. My doctors got into contact with all three and only one agreed to help me, Dr. James Pomposelli and the staff of Lahey Clinic in Burlington, MA. The reality of that didn't hit me until long after my surgery: if they had said no to treating an unemployed, uninsured very sick dude I would be dead now. I was very, very sick. Whatever higher power is looking out for me saw fit to get me the help I needed in Massachusetts so off I went. My transfer was being handled by ambulance which was a bit weird for me because I had only been in an ambulance once before years ago after a car accident. This was when I was still a little out of my mind because one of the oddest things happened on the way down. I was (and am still a little) convinced the next turn of events actually happened though hearing from Kelley and my family about my mental state at the time casts a pallor on my story. On the way down to Lahey the EMT in the back with me handed me a piece of paper basically saying we know where you live/have your info and are going to extort money from you and your girlfriend. Thousands of dollars which I nor Kelley had. It said if I didn't pay them they'd come to our apartment and kill our pets, harm or even kill us, etc. It also said that no one would believe me if I said anything because I was heavily medicated and not in my right mind. I never spoke a word of it and never heard from them again. Do I really believe this happened? No. However, I think it's plausible that something like that could happen somewhere. A helpless victim strapped to a gurney in an inclosed space could easily be shaken down by scumbags and profiteers. Stranger things have happened. Anyway, we made it to Lahey without incident and I came to my new home for the next month.
I arrived at Lahey Clinic in early January, the 3rd, I believe and spent my first few days on the sixth floor before being prepped and shipped down to the OR. According to my parents' accounts I was still a little combative at this point but I don't remember any of it. Hopefully writing things down will help jog my memory because having long stretches of your life be blank is really uncomfortable. It's not unlike being blackout drunk. I know some fools who think it's funny or a sign of how badass they are drinking and blacking out but it's never been comfortable for me. I'm a guy that likes to know what happens to him and recall events and things. Later I found out that they gave me drugs so I wouldn't remember anything involving and around my surgery but that's for another day. I still didn't grasp that I was close to death at this point. My insides were turning against me and were primed to kill me if we didn't intervene. Thank God we did.
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