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"I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card . . . and somehow the activity of writing changes everything."

--Joyce Carol Oates

There is no way to accurately put into words just how much the above quote rings true in my ears. For over two years now, writing has changed me and everything about me. The way I see things, the way I feel things, the way I live. At the risk of redundancy, if I've taken anything away from my last two years and three months on this earth, it is the feeling that I have become a different person since I began writing on a regular basis, specifically since I began writing this column in November of 1995. And while the journey has been a bumpy, often disconcerting one, the road has been filled with knowledge I couldn't even begin to comprehend back when I was twenty-four years old. In a way, I feel reborn.

I'll say one last time--I know what you're thinking. Why am I getting all heavy on you? Why the sudden philosophical ramblings about writing and the effects thereof? Well, I was going to wait until the end of the Act to do this, but to hell with that. I might as well just come right out and say it: This Act of The Life Of Bryan will be the last one for some time.

I know, I know...how egotistical of me, making a big deal out of it like everyone's going to go run out to their garages and suck down carbon monoxide until I change my mind. I'm not trying to come off that way. I just wanted to make a feeble attempt at articulating what writing this column has meant to me on a personal level, and how much I've appreciated whoever out there has been reading along.

Let's face it--the web is an amazing thing. Where else can you go out and write a journal of your day-to-day life and not only have folks read your self-indulgent scrawl, but actually thank you for taking the time to do so? There were times when the Life Of Bryan was not only healthy therapy for yours truly, but it was a creative release as well. Writing pieces like The Stairmaster Epiphany and Anti-Cipa-Tion (the stories of my split from Dweezil Zappa and the Steve Vai audition respectively) not only helped me sort through the rubble of my professional life, they also felt like true artistic creations. The feedback I got from these particular stories, as well as many others which didn't seem as important to me, was nothing short of remarkable. It was that feedback that finally gave me the confidence to take the ultimate plunge and write a novel.

But I'd be being less than honest with y'all if I didn't admit the following--creatively, I feel very stale with this format. To me, it's starting to sound like a TV show that's run out of ideas. Personally, after writing The Alternate Reality (the tale of the MK-opens-for-Vai tour), it's all been one big anticlimax. I think it's safe to say that things haven't exactly been alive and kicking 'round the LOB as of late. For me to continue to manufacture Acts out of working at SWR, trying to get my manuscript published, and updates in the struggle to make Beer For Dolphins a household phrase...it's just becoming more of a chore than a joy. I despise mediocrity, and I feel that if I were to go on doing this column in the midst of all this lackluster life activity, I'd be doing it simply to post something every four weeks. I'm just not interested in that. I don't think you would be either.

"Lackluster life activity." It's true. Life on this end has been in a holding pattern for a while now. Lots of waiting. Waiting to get my manuscript in good enough shape to submit. Waiting for the next Keneally tour. Waiting for...who knows what? I'm not bitching about it--everyone knows that I've had my share of excitement and good fortune. But lately, there just hasn't been much to write about. I've got a day job that some days I like a lot, some days I don't. I'm in a band that I think is the greatest thing since Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, but we're still trying to convince the rest of the world of that fact. Financially it's a struggle, but I'm doing my best and hopefully things will turn out alright. Does any of this sound familiar?

It was weird how life shoved these huge complex events in front of my face the second I started writing this column. I left Z and broke ties with the Zappa family only two months after Act 1. Two months later we were touring the country in several vehicles that could best be described as "operational." Two months after that, Steve Vai called Keneally and asked him to join his band, which in turn led to my Vai audition saga. Six weeks later, I began writing the novel. Less than two months after that, I found myself on the road again, in the midst of the most insane tour I'll probably ever experience. More life chaos, more material, more writing. I'm more proud of The Alternate Reality than anything else I've posted.

But then things slowed down--by design. I felt emotionally and physically whiplashed by 1996. I wanted to write the novel, and Keneally was going to be gone for a year anyway, so I "settled down" and got a job so I could get going on what I knew would be a gargantuan task. This would be new and exciting, I thought. I could write about day-to-day life, the strangeness of the workplace, the everyman-ness of it all. That I did. But after fourteen months of that, I don't think I have anything left to say about it.

This all could change. A tour would be the most obvious catalyst--I'd still love to write another tour report. Maybe the book will one day be published, and that could lead to a whole new world of people and situations worth reflecting upon. But the way things stand now, I feel like it's time to put this column on an indefinite hold.

Y ou're probably wondering why the hell I chose the "writing changes everything" quote to lead off this Act, considering what I've decided to do with this here column. The truth is, writing has changed everything. I feel as if I've grown eight years in the last two simply from taking the time to sit down and articulate exactly what's been going on in my head. I was a wide-eyed wonderboy when I left Z to pursue BFD full time. It was an easy decision, because I was so young and impressionable, so innocent, that I didn't stop to think of what the effects would be on my life. Easy now--I am NOT saying that I'd do it differently if I had the chance. On the contrary, I'd do it over and over again. For a million reasons, it was the right thing to do. But the point is this: I didn't have the capacity to measure the ramifications of such a decision. There are times when I wish I could be that "young" again, but that's not the way it works.

I could feel the shift in the ground beneath me right around the time of the Vai audition. Failure has a way of doing that to you--making you take the mental leap forward. Sure, I led off the climactic section of Act 16 with a Keneally quote: "In this world of men, I'm the little boy." Looking back on it, I may have used that line with intentional irony because, in my heart, I knew that my days as "the little boy" were just about over. I can honestly say that, the way I feel now, they're long gone.

But I never would have been able to truly comprehend anything in the above paragraph if it hadn't been for the act of writing. That's how much it changed me.

Only once this became clear did I have the nerve (and, frankly, the confidence) to think that I could write a novel. Now that I've nearly completed that task (more on this in a minute), I am DESPERATE to share it with you, for there is where my creative energies have been focused for the past year. I'd be less than honest if I didn't admit that, in the midst of chiseling the manuscript into something cohesive, writing this column became more and more frustrating, because I couldn't say what I really wanted to say. It's all in the book. The best way to fix this is to finish the damned thing once and for all.

And that's exactly what I plan on doing over the next two months. The reviews from The Select Six are in, and the verdict is thus: It needs more work. Not a total rewrite--far from it--but sections need to be tightened, characters must be more clearly defined, and the ending has to be completely reworked. I'm not looking forward to becoming a hermit again, and I don't even know if that's possible, considering that the Keneally activity level is rising with every passing month. But one way or the other, I'm going to get it done. I'm going to make it better. And I'm going to get the motherfucker published.

Shall I discuss Mr. Keneally for a second? He is, after all, the reason you even know about me in the first place. He's living in San Diego now, and I'm up here in Los Angeles, but this has less effect on our relationship than you might think. Even when he was home on break from the Vai tour, I hardly saw him--because I hardly saw anybody. I was locked in my room, spending every waking minute in the same position I'm in now: staring at the keyboard, trying to Make Sense Of It All. Fortunately, over the last two months, I've had the time to go out and just hang with Mikey the Genius Boy, something which I may have missed doing even more than playing with him. Mike is one of my best friends, and there is no one on this earth whose music I feel more connected to than his. Sometime this year, by hook or by crook, we're going to put together a tour. We'll make it work somehow. We always have.

But Mike being gone for the majority of 1997 helped me grow in a way that would not have been possible had he stayed behind, or even if I had gotten the Vai gig and toured the world with him. I feel as if I came into my own as a person in his absence, and it's my sincere hope that my newly-realized wholeness will be of some benefit to Beer For Dolphins in the future.

I want BFD to rule the world. I want my novel to rule the NY Times Bestseller List. I want to have enough money to pay my bills. I want to lose twenty pounds. I want this, I want that...life is a struggle between what you want and what you want. At least, that's what it is for me. Better that than life being a struggle to figure out what you want.

I suppose that's what it comes down to--I can only focus my energies in so many places at once, and if I can't do this column right (meaning in an honest, creative and entertaining fashion), then it's time to stop doing it. For now.

So let me leave you with a set of goals for the next few months. First and foremost, there's the novel. I really need to get this done as quickly as possible. I don't think that the final revisions will take longer than two months, but with Keneally being back in town, and my responsibilities at work having increased, and the usual mess of life events that seem to get in the way no matter what, time is more precious than ever. I've never done this before, but I feel I must now: starting April 1st, I'm requesting a full moratorium on non-business-related e-mail. I can hear my ego shouting at me in the back of my head, "Wait! What about the folks who write you just to say how much they love BFD, or the LOB, or whatever? How could you do this?" It's not that I'm not grateful for all of the wonderful comments I've received over the past two years--it's just a matter of keeping my writing juice focused. Let me put it to you this way: if you send me something after April Fools' Day, I'll most likely read it but not respond to it until my work on the book is done. That's the first goal.

The second goal is to get a Keneally tour off the ground by the end of the summer. MK and I have discussed this at length, and while we're trying to be good businessmen about doing a proper tour to promote "Sluggo!", we also realize that waiting too long will only backfire. Touring is not only necessary from a promotional standpoint, it's vital to the soul of Beer For Dolphins. We need to play live. Los Angeles can only do so much for us in that regard.

The third (and most annoying) goal is not to go broke. I barreled through 1996 without so much as thinking about my finances, and the results were telling--I'm struggling with the debt I incurred from that year to this very day. Somehow this goal must mesh with the other two. It won't be easy, but that's what I'm going to try and accomplish.

Wow. Heady stuff, huh? Hardly. Now you know why I'm putting a halt to this column. I've been writing about this ordinary-life bullshit for a year now, and it's boring me to death. Like I said, when something eye-popping occurs, maybe I'll be back. But not right away. And maybe not for a long time.

That having been said, I'm going to keep the LOB in its entirety up on the web for as long as CEO Chatfield will let me. I don't know how many people out there are just stumbling onto it for the first time, but I think it's a good story from beginning to end. You know, wild-eyed Optimism Boy takes hits from the Cold Hard World and remains intact enough to function. Hey--there may be a book in there somewhere. Of course, I'd have to fictionalize everything, make it more exciting, change some characters, scenes, add in some dangerous elements, give it a slam-bang ending...

You never know. Maybe one day you'll read a book like that. And then you can all say, "I knew him when he wore that ugly fucking red dress and wrote about fingering his imaginary clit while dancing on a tabletop in a hotel lobby. He wasn't such a big deal."

But until that day, I'll still be here, living the Life Of Me. It's been my good fortune that you cared enough to read along.

Indulge me while I stick my tongue in my cheek and thank the entire cast of characters (not-quite-but-almost in order of appearance): Dweezil, Ahmet and Frank Zappa, Joe Travers, former sexpot roomie Joanne Bigbee, Cindy Zeuli, Swan, Bourbon Square, red-dress-maker Kim Salt, Beller's Music of Manchester, CT, the Drunken Drummer from the band Speed Limit, Thomas Nordegg, Rich Lewis, The Eatin' Cock Hotel in Anaheim, CA, Jake E. Lee, Janie Hendrix, the Stairmaster (third from the left) at Bally's Total Fitness in Studio City, CA, Mr. Poison Pentium Brad Dahl, The New York Knicks, The Executive Producer of the LOB Robert Beller, The CEO of Moosenet Scott Chatfield, Jon Finn, Bing-Jang and Arkansas, Douglas "Face Treatments" O'Neill, Slumber Party Frank "Old School" Briggs, Mary Rose Deraco, Luna Park, Musician's Institute in Hollywood, CA, Warren Cuccurullo, Suzanne and Jeff Forrest of Immune Records, Doug Marhoffer, Keith Winston, Joe Dickless from Rent-A-Wreck in East Orange, NJ, Wes Wehmiller, Michael Harrison, Buckethead, The Mistakes, Juha Rompannen, Christian Heilman, Michael Manring, Al Natanagara, John "Xavier" Hargrave, Inga "Miss Kiki" Wohlgemuth, Mike Gaito, Ed Palermo/The Bottom Line in New York City, Scott Thunes, Todd Dever, Janet "rhymes with like" Robin, Cami "rhymes with hike" Slotkin, Ras Daveed and "rhymes with 'the bikes'" Providence, Steve Vai, Mike Mangini, Phil Bynoe, Jim Rome, Ruta Sepetys (correct spelling, even!), Joe Stump, the 1996 Republican National Convention, JoAnn Ekblad, Lisa Valentine, Absolut Vodka, The Studio City Bar and Grill (R.I.P), Tony MacAlpine, Michael Landau, The Supreme Literary Confidant Martha C. Lawrence, Prodigy E-Mail Connect, Joe Flow, Jim Roberts/Karl Coryat/Richard Thompson/Bass Player Magazine, Adolf at Starbucks in Santa Monica, CA, Gary Hoey, International "fuck right the" Creative "fuck off!" Management, Ross Dress for Less, Toss "Lick My Balls" Panos, Scott Baker, Fuckin' Ed Lucas, Gungi, Roger Bell, Magee, Rich "Dick Flynt" and Lesley Pike, Rik Smits, Buddy Miles, Mister Howell of Travelodge in Cleveland, OH, The Space Surfers, Joe D'Andrea, Colin LaMastra, The Swank Family Steak House in Oklahoma City, OK, The Pines Motor Lodge in Long Island, NY, Birch Hill, the entire roster of KeneallyKoncertKopia contributors, my Goddess Of Love Janeane Garafalo, The National Anti-Tesh Action Society, John Entwistle, Tom Wictor, Kelly Castro, John D'Agostino of Taylor Guitars, Sparkle Hayter, Harlan Coben, Billy Crystal, Leo Tolstoy, ESPN, Jeff Buckley, Jason Sheesley, Roommate Matchers, The San Diego Stroker, The Monkey B Virus, the designers of the transmission in the '93 Eagle Summit Wagon DL, the number 11, Doane Perry, Marv Albert, Steve W. Rabe, The Man Who Shall Remain Nameless at Dean Markley, Mr. Grumpo-Tech, Ron Spiegelhalter, Robert Read, Noweheresville, PA, The Well-Tailored Bush, T.M. Stevens, Louis Johnson, Ike Willis, Craig Latta, Joyce Carol Oates...and, of course, Mike Keneally. If I've left somebody out, by this point I'm sure you're grateful.

I think that about does it. Let me just say it one last time in case you missed this point--I cannot thank each and every one of you enough for taking the time to read along and respond to my overblown ramblings. You gave me the confidence to go forward. In the end, that's all anyone can ask for in Life.

Forever yours,

The Bassboy Number Sixty-Nine