McNulty!

Bob and one other guy in the quintet are not performing up to snuff, and I am annoyed. This is not Bamburia but the idea is the same: we are five male voices trying to perform out as much and as well as possible. No other members of Bamburia are in this group, just Bob and I and three NPCs. It is clear in our final warmup/rehearsal in the church practice room that we are not all we can be. Grrr. I throw out the idea that we need some reform in singer practices and standards, and suggest that musicians are replaceable if they do not adhere to the revised standards. Bob is deeply offended, feels that this is fraternal betrayal.

We go into the chapel itself, which is much bigger and more elaborate than the First Assembly of God in Hammonton, but the crowd assembled there definitely has that same feel. All the background memories of being a kid whose parents are intimately involved--in Sunday school, in the music program, friends with the pastor--are there even if I can't sort them all out; it's just a pervasive feeling: I know this place. It is before the service, which apparently includes our performance, but folks are gathered here and preparing for some sort of rite--not a baptism per se, but a family dedication to the Lord, I suppose. There's literature or swag about it in the hymnal pockets on the backs of the pews, but I don't take the time to read what's up: I'm concerned about out quintet's performance, which promises to disappoint. 

Later--I'd say after the performance, but there's no actual memory or record of that--we have a blow-up in the church bowels over my singer concerns. There is also some to-do about my coat; at some point I end up wearing a coat that is not mine and I realize this belatedly. Where is *my* coat? Of course I have to go hunting for where I left it.

There is a purely theoretical interlude where someone--let's say Scott Robinson, though I'm sure it wasn't specifically he--and I discuss theology and morals, Christianity and nihilism. I argue (Scott has heard me so argue in the past, and I'm pretty certain he agrees, so it's not really an argument, more like a pas de deux) that atheism does not preclude morality. I also contemplate the shakier ground of nihilism, which seems to me to require das ewige nein, a total absence of morality, attendant on the total absense of meaning. But I want nihilism to retain morality. I want "soft nihilism", I suppose. All the while we are having this conversation I am playing a "video game" but with real objects: I am using a power drill with a circular bit to cut circles in oversized decks of playing cards, which are lined up in a grid, three across and who knows how many north-south... possibly to infinity. Each circle cut takes out a particular character in the design on the backs of the card decks; each such cut is obscurely tied to a given statement in the "morality" argument. No idea of the particulars, but it is clear as I am doing it.

Later: in the well-traveled path between Point A and Point B there is a very steep hill whose downward approach one must take at a careful, controlled run. I have no idea why I'm on my third time tonight, but this time, just as I have gotten started down, I see some guy walking insouciantly up to my landing point. I have no control but end up sort of crashing into the front of him; and he has the audacity to give me shit about it. I start to explain that one needs to be careful in the upward direction to be sure nobody is currently heading down the hill; but seeing that he is John Doman, I break off and tell him, "By the way, I'm a big fan." He is gracious in response, and we start chatting. I ask him, "What are you doing now?" by which I mean what is he working on, acting-wise, but I immediately realize it could also be read as designs upon his immediate future--which is how he reads it, and he takes me back to his place.

His place is on 12th Street in Folsom/Hammonton, about where Tony's custard or Anna Martelini's house is/was. It's a gorgeous, sprawling, Jetsons kind of joint, where two entire exterior walls are just glass. We have drinks and talk; we do not have sex and there's no real tension in that direction, but at the same time I don't have the sense that it is off the table entirely. A lot of stuff happens from this point on, including some other people coming over socially, but that detail is lost. Mostly I'm pals with John Doman, so that's a big yay on waking up.