This was inspired by this piece that I stumbled across online a few weeks back. I adapted it to a “real” canvas, and adjusted the sound waves to be three syllables… or three words… or whatever you want them to be.

Colored pencil on canvas, 2012.

These are écussons (lit. “coats of arms”) that I picked up in each area I served in. I’ve never been exactly sure what to do with them, so taking a picture of them seems to be one of the better things.

After one of the restaurants I was working at reopened, there were a few snafus, notably with the alarm system. My area manager gave me an alarm code that halfway worked: it would deactivate the alarm properly, but it would also trigger a silent alarm to summon the police.

The first time that happened, I had a laugh with the responding officer, then called my area manager and politely requested she get on the horn with the alarm company to get me a valid alarm code. She said she would take care of it that day.

The next morning, I arrived at the restaurant before 8 am to begin the day’s work. Beginning the day at the Hut meant, among other things, starting the dough, taking out the previous night’s trash, and prepping the kitchen.

I went straight to the back after turning off the alarm, and kicked off the first batch of dough, which would take 13 minutes to mix. While that was going, I wheeled the trash out the back door and to the dumpster. Having completed that, I had a few minutes left before the dough was done, so I started prepping the kitchen.

Below is a rough diagram of the restaurant:

Unbeknownst to me, my alarm code was still flagged by the alarm company as invalid, and the silent alarm had been triggered. I had also neglected to close the back door completely after taking out the trash. While I was in the walk-in cooler, a police cruiser silently rolled into the parking lot.

The responding officer – a different one from the previous day – knew nothing about what was going on, except for a report of an intruder and a slightly ajar back door. He drew his service weapon and crept in through the back door.

At this exact time, I had loaded my arms with two cases of cheese and a case of pepperoni – about 55 pounds of food. Since my arms were full, I kicked open the cooler door as hard as I could.

I don’t know what the officer thought, but I can imagine a loud noise coming from directly in front of you when you are responding to a burglary call isn’t the best feeling.

I looked down the hallway and saw a policeman pointing his gun at me. I froze, and almost dropped the food.

The officer asked me, ”Everything OK, chief?”

I like to think that I said something witty to defuse the tension, but in all honestly, I was probably about 3 seconds away from soiling my pants. I mutely nodded, and the officer lowered his weapon. Once that threat had passed, the officer was “treated” to an explanation as to why the alarm was triggered again, received a profuse apology from me, and I sent him on his way. I gave him a coupon for a free pizza, too.

By this time the dough was done spinning, my arms were shaking from holding the pizza toppings, and my head was swimming in a cloudy mess of confused emotions — thankfulness that I didn’t get plugged by a cop, mixed with fury at my area manager for not taking care of something she said she would.

I finished my morning prep — less smoothly than usual — and jumped more than usual when arriving employees would knock at the door to be let in for their shifts. After lunch, I sequestered myself in the office, called my area manager, and… as much as I would like to say that I ripped her up and down for my experience this morning, the edge was slightly taken off when her voicemail greeting started playing. I still did my fair share of yelling, but quickly petered out since there was no real response.

The next morning, my alarm code worked, and I welcomed the officer from the previous day’s events to the restaurant to enjoy a nice lunch with his family — on the house.

I was serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which makes me one of those guys with the white shirt, tie, and black nametag wandering around wanting to talk to you about a certain blue book. I was living in an apartment in Perpignan with three other missionaries. We were divided into teams of two, and each team shared a bedroom and study area, while there was a common living area, kitchen, and restroom for the two teams. The facilities were definitely not equal, and seniority in the apartment generally determined who got the better room, study area, etc.

It took my companion (members of each team are referred to as “companions”) J.B. and I exactly 30 seconds after the other team was transferred to a different area to start claiming all the good stuff left in the apartment – the good set of bunk beds, the good mattresses, the good study area, and so forth.

While we were rearranging the furniture in the bedroom for our convenience, we had taken the mattresses off the bed to make it easier. I had leaned my mattress up against the wall to keep it out of the way.

I should note at this point of the story that most of the light fixtures in the apartment were of the “bare bulb” variety: to keep costs down, the apartment wasn’t outfitted with fancy sconces or anything like that — the wires just came out of the wall and there was a light bulb attached with a very basic connector. Not exactly spartan accommodations, but not luxury either.

Having done a good deep-cleaning and rearranging of the apartment, J.B. and I went to get some dinner and pick up the arriving team of missionaries at the train station. After that happened and everyone walked back to the apartment, I went into our bedroom to get something from my desk, turned on the light, and retired to another room to read without turning the light off on my way out. (It was starting to get dark outside, and the natural sunlight into the room wasn’t cutting it anymore.)

A few pages into my book, I noticed that there was a funny smell coming from… somewhere. At first I chalked it up to my neighbor’s cooking, but soon I realized that that wasn’t what it was. I got up and investigated the smell a bit further, and found that it was coming from our recently-claimed bedroom. I looked around some more and pinpointed the source of the funny smell to… my mattress. Specifically, the part of the mattress that was still in contact with the light fixture. More specifically, the part of the mattress that was on fire because of the contact with the bare light bulb.

I called “Fire!” and immediately dragged the mattress out to the spacious living area — I guess I figured there was more room to maneuver and less stuff to catch fire out there. I grabbed a large blue bowl, filled it with water from the sink, and with J.B.’s help, stuffed the mattress halfway out the living room window and doused the fire. We were four stories up, but thankfully that window opened onto a small alley, so I don’t think anyone got an unexpected shower. We retrieved the mattress from out the window, sat it on the living room floor, and sat down on the couch. By this time the other team of missionaries had finished unpacking and had come to investigate and have a good laugh at our expense.

In the middle of our conversation, I looked over at J.B. and said, “Mattresses smolder, don’t they?” He looked at me, realization spreading over his face, then agreed. We then set to work doing the only thing we could do — systematically tear the mattress apart to make sure that there weren’t any “hot spots” waiting for us. After a few minutes, we were satisfied that we weren’t going to burn up in the middle of the night, took a few pictures for posterity, and then retired for the evening… after putting a spare mattress on my bed.

I was inspired to create this a few weeks ago while I was going through a somewhat rough period in my life. I had seen a couple of “melted crayon” style art projects on the Internet, and decided to do a variation on the theme, by removing the original melted crayons I used to create the rainbow cascade and inserting black crayons in their place.

For me, this symbolizes that color can flow even out of the darkest periods in our lives. You might get your own meaning out of this, which is perfectly fine.

And why “(first draft)”? If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a writer, it’s that ideas can always be revisited/revised/etc. This is my first time doing a piece like this, and I plan on revisiting this medium again, so I can get a better result.

Fall

from Citizen Saint’s album “Waiting For the Light” (2008)
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This is one of my favorite bass lines to play because of its driving nature. I was listening to a lot of Muse while we were working on this song, but I don’t necessarily consider that a huge influence on this piece other than the fact that there are a lot of notes played really fast. This was also my first piece where I experimented with having the bass line parallel the vocal line rather than the drums or guitar. I’m very pleased with how it turned out. Plus, the guitar solo on this song, by Kent, is one of my favorite ever of his, and really turns this song into something uplifting. We would always close our live shows by playing this song.

Until Tomorrow

from Citizen Saint’s album “Adventures of the Crestfallen” (2009)
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One of the things I was experimenting with on this song was making the song into distinct sections. This one has three sections: the verse is very funk-inspired (I think I was listening to a lot of Tower of Power around this time), the part under the guitar solo is an asymmetrical riff based around the chord progression. The post-chorus/outro part is more pop-oriented. I think I achieved my goal with this song, and I almost feel like the bass line creates its own “song” within the overall song while staying true to the theme of the larger work. We would always open our live shows by playing this song (under threat of me quitting the band).