Nothing much has happened of note lately; I feel like I have knitted quite a bit, without actually having finished much. The sweater is an endless source of frustration and ripping back, for no good reason - it’s just ribbing, for chrissakes! I have a pattern and a template sweater to work from, but I can’t seem to focus and am desperately drawn to lots of little side projects in a gambit to feel like I’ve accomplished something. Meanwhile, it is getting cold in Germany and my boyfriend is running around sans two sweaters, while I have finished a scarf and a mitten for myself:
Simple ribbed scarf made out of some Noro Transitions I bought on a splurge (hey, closeout at yarn.com! There’s still a bunch left, that I am soo not going to buy. Really.
Close-up of scarf. See how soft and fuzzy and…ooh?
Heading to Chicago for a couple of days, which is putting even more of a delay on the sweater, as it’s a bit impractical to lug around the yarn and the half finished sweater, and to have to try and lay out the template sweater in the car every now and then to see if everything is matching up. So, I’m just going to work on the other mitten and call it good.
Yes, I know, worst knitter girlfriend ever! On the bright side, I definitely will have this done well before December (knock on bamboo needles), so I can call it a really early Christmas gift, as opposed to a ridiculously late going-away present. Hopefully he won’t be completely frozen by the time he receives it.
Gratuitous cat photo-op.
My first encounter with the Renaissance Man was at a party. The boy and I didn’t know many people there, and so we sat there with our drinks in hand, participating / eavesdropping on other people’s conversations. The Renaissance Man had brought a date, a wafer-thin girl with long model hair. Undeterred by the scornfully bored look on her face, Renaissance Man spoke animatedly about a subject in which he claimed special expertise, music. “You know what I’ve noticed?” he boasted, proud as a goose in a sea of ducks. “If you listen to any CD - and I mean any - it’s the sixth track that’s the seminal track, the one around which the artist conceives his - uh, his art. Like, nobody else has noticed this, but it’s true. Go on, name a CD.” The girl did not name a CD, so he started rattling off a few examples for her, passionately elucidating his unique and precious theory.
This was our first exposure to the Renaissance Man, and it would prove to be satisfyingly representative.
A year or so later, the Renaissance Man met a girl capable of understanding his particular brand of genius, and began to date her. He showed up in the sexuality course the boy and I were taking. Renaissance Man would leave his dirty coffee cups in inconspicuous places, generously giving the clean-up volunteers many opportunities to touch a bona-fide, caffeine encrusted, Renaissance Man relic. Also, Renaissance Man was very proud of the fact that he had bagged himself a Renaissance Girl, and took every other Q&A session as an opportunity to announce to the world that he, Renaissance Man, and his girl engage in tantric sex. After class once, Renaissance Man deigned to walk by us peons, and as he did so, he puckered his lips, bulge his eyes and waggled his fingers in a jazz-hands fashion. I think it might have been a gesture of camaraderie, but the boy wanted to return the favor with a punch in his Renaissance Face.
A couple of weeks after that, the boy and I were studying at a coffee shop downtown. Who should come in and sit down right next to us, but Renaissance Man himself! He sat mixing his music on his laptop, while complaining about taxes, very loudly, to the fortunate person on the receiving end. “I don’t have time to deal with this,” he pleaded. “All these forms…ugh. I’ve got my music and so many projects…” at this point the headphones went over my ears, and the boy tried as best as he could to use his book for studying instead of violence.
When Renaissance Man got off the phone, he quieted down for awhile, absorbed in the details of digital mixing and splicing. Without saying a word to us, nay, nary a googly eye or goofy grin, he went over to the attractive young woman who sat at the table on the other side of us, currently absorbed in her schoolwork (?! was there trouble abrew in Tantric Renaissance Relationship Land?!).
“Hey,” he said, feigning shyness, or perhaps it was a rare public revelation of his deep humility. “Can I ask you something? Um, I’m a musician, and I’ve been creating some samples, and I kind of want to get ideas and responses from people. Would you mind taking a listen, and let me know what you think?” He grinned, the earnest smile of a budding prophet.
“No.” The girl looked down at her book. A little fazed, Renaissance Man sat back down and continued his mixing, while the boy and I attempted to weather the contagion of schadenfreude.
The Renaissance Man has expanded beyond an inside joke between the boy and I, and is rapidly becoming a cultural phenomenon. Louise, after hearing my encounters with the Renaissance Man, shared her own. She has the privilege of working with such a legend, and she had heretofore no inkling of his greatness, viewing him as a merely irksome, run-of-the-mill, Lawrence artÃste. When I told Louise about the boy’s undying enmity towards Renaissance Man, she was much heartened by the fact that someone, somewhere far away from our little town, hates the Renaissance Man just as much as she does.
According to Louise, ordinary work is beneath Renaissance Man. The job is a mere backdrop, a setting for the denouement of a truly transcendent being. Sometimes (every day) he’ll commandeer the CD player and put in some tabla drum music, and start “Indian” dancing in the middle of the store, amidst the merchandise, soulfully waving his arms in a celebration of the Renaissance Soul.
Remember, folks, you heard it here first. This guy is going to, in his words, “defibrillate” the music industry with LOVE, and with it, the entire world.
* - You do not abbreviate the Renaissance Man; his essence cannot be contained in a mere two capital letters (if you are a plebe incapable of typing his illustrious title each time, however, you are permitted liberal usage of the copy-paste function).
