About 20 years ago, I met Mike at a mutual friend's birthday party.

After not having seen said friend for years, she and I had only just reconnected and nearly against my will: I had been running some mundane errand at Target in my pajamas and it was in this somewhat embarrassing state that I failed to evade her as I was exiting the store.

"You were trying to avoid me, weren't you?" she asked, wryly.

I shrugged and gestured at my unseemly outfit, "Yeah, kind of."

Nevertheless, we exchanged numbers and she invited me to her upcoming birthday party.

I'm not entirely sure what possessed me to attend: I generally feel awkward at parties to this day, and I'm sure the intensity of that awkwardness was worse when I was young. I had most definitely been feeling awkward about that recent interaction, and I was wary of visiting the home of a stranger knowing no one except the birthday celebrant. The party was hosted by her then-boyfriend: a European gentleman many years her senior, who stewed a mean lamb, played the harmonium, and seemed to worship her.

When I got there, Mike and I were the youngest two of the handful of musicians present.

I can't quite remember if I had brought my own guitar or just wound up borrowing one, but I do know that I'd been tooling around with a White Stripes cover and an original song, both of which I played that night. Mike was a skilled improviser. Moreover, his friendliness put him on just the side of charmingly awkward and nerdy in a way my shy young self found somewhat reassuring. Not long after the party, I impulsively messaged him on-line (on MySpace... stars, I'm decrepit) and asked if he wanted to hang out and jam together.

He invited me over to his apartment, which was conveniently near my college campus, and I started dropping by after classes pretty regularly to hang out and work on music. On the night we finally decided to name our project, we flipped through random pages of my Musical Acoustics textbook trying to find something suitable, but everything sounded like an electronica outfit, and even though we were uncertain of our genre, it was certainly not electronica. We switched over to my Art History book and decided on naming ourselves after a Rothko painting: "Pure Yellow Colour."

Then, the next order of business was to find somewhere to play publicly. We eventually found our way to the Lestat's Open Mic on Adams Avenue.

Neither of us had attended an open mic before. We arrived early, entered the cafe, wrote our band designation on a slip of paper and dropped the folded scrap in a glass fishbowl that had been placed on a table in the middle of a colorful sitting room, filled with colorful art and people. I was jittery with nerves so I went to the counter and ordered a chamomile tea, which I'd never had before but was rumored to be soothing. Over the course of drinking the tea, however, I learned I was probably slightly allergic: my tongue became unpleasantly fuzzy for the rest of the night.

When it was almost time to start, the host, Isaac, scooped up the fishbowl and he and the would-be performers filtered into the venue next door: Lestat's West. It was a dark, narrow room, with windows and walls thickly plastered with event flyers. There was a row of prints along one wall that depicted mildly disturbing portraits of Jesus superimposed with photographs of gargoyles. Mike and I took a seat and waited as Isaac pulled names from the bowl to select set times.

When Isaac called us, we opted for as early a time we could get. But just as we were about to go on, Mike suddenly disappeared to deal with a work emergency.

I apprehensively took the stage and asked if anyone wanted to trade time slots because I'd unexpectedly lost my guitarist. The room was silent. Isaac said, "Use it or lose it."

So I used it.

I picked up Mike's guitar and performed a couple of my own tunes that I had not workshopped with him, since I didn't know how to perform what we'd worked on together, without him. I was well-received, despite playing through my set only to realize too late that Mike's guitar was not in standard tuning. Maybe the reception might have only been the politely enthusiastic applause of an open mic community welcoming a newcomer, but Isaac made the flattering if somewhat dismaying assertion, "You don't really need the other guy."

Without "the other guy," though, I'm not sure I would have had the impetus. I was still figuring out what the whole endeavor meant to me. Until then, my writing had been largely cathartic, but somewhat meaningless in the vacuum of my bedroom. With Mike, it meant... something.

Either way, that first experience did not discourage us from returning together the following week.

We continued to write and play the Lestat's mic together for slightly over a year. Back then, it seemed like a long and intense time. The fast familiarity we developed working so closely together so often felt heady, though the collaboration was already falling apart toward the end of the production of our first and only album. We only played three "real" gigs before, in stereotypical fashion, I began dating the man I would eventually marry, and Pure Yellow Colour dissolved through my neglect.

Mike still remains one of my favorite people, and I'm grateful for his friendship and how good-natured he's been about my capriciousness. His companionship is so matter-of-fact to me that it's a bit strange to think that, between the era of Pure Yellow Colour and the present day, we've been out of each other's lives more than we've been in. No matter how much time passes between the times we see each other, we fall easily into our characteristic banter and, at least in that way, it's like no time has passed.

Time still has a way of changing things.

It had been more than a decade since we last performed together at the mic when the covid lockdown happened. When Lou Brazier, the sound engineer and booking manager of Lestat's, passed away in 2021, it seemed to cement the end of live music at that venue.

Earlier this year, at a mic up in Portland, I got to chatting with a visiting musician. He was from San Diego, and even though I suspected he was probably several years younger than me and that it might have been before his time, I ventured to ask if he'd heard of the Lestat's mic.

I was surprised when he answered in the positive, and furthermore reported that it had started up again!

I knew I would be visiting San Diego for the holidays this year, and thought it would be fun to reunite with Mike at the site of our first public performance. My present attitude towards playing publicly is relatively cavalier compared to that of my youth, but Mike's relationship with music no longer extends to public performance, so I could not convince him to play with me. He did agree to attend in an audience capacity, and we planned to meet up a few hours early to catch up.

Walking into the cafe together Monday afternoon, we both remarked in awe at how much the facade and front room felt just the same as it did the last time we were there. As we ventured further inside, however, it became clear that there were significant changes: the ceiling above the coffee counter was raised, and part of the building that used to house more seating was walled off and now belonged to a different business. I never really noticed the back patio before, and now you had to go through it to access the venue, since what used to be the front entrance of Lestat's West was no longer accessible to the public.

I knew it would be markedly different than the Lestat's mic of 20 years ago, but I'm not sure I could be entirely prepared for how different. The interior of the venue was hardly like I remembered it: no more flyers plastering the walls, no more acoustic foam stapled to the ceiling. The stage was smaller and lower and the booth where Lou would run sound was gone. Christie, the new host, informed us that most of Lou's equipment and the old stage wound up at the Kensington Club. Christie had a somewhat nervous energy that seemed the opposite of former host Isaac's cool charisma. When I got onstage, the room was too well-lit and I could see the faces of everyone in the audience. Used to be you could hardly see anything but the spotlight. Now it felt like too much dining room.

There was still the row of Jesus Gargoyle prints along the wall, though.

I hope you're having a good yuletide, whatever it is you may be doing. As I wrap up this letter this Christmas morning, it seems that the sun has come out, after all.

In my opinion, this ought to be a time of rest, rejuvenation, and reflection. Somehow, I think in the classical effort to keep spirits buoyant in the cold and dark, it becomes a time of frenzied obligation when expectation does not meet with reality. It's a mixed time of year.

I'm grateful for this moment of reflection, though, and grateful to you for sharing your time with me.

If I have a particular wish for the new year, it's that you go to some live shows. Not even necessarily one of mine, though I'd love an attentive audience and, again, I do have two shows coming up in January: