Its new years and if there is a better time for self-reflection I can’t think of it. I am truly blessed, and blessed is one of those

Me and William the Conqueror

words I hate. Its usually uttered by people in lifetime movies whose lives seem far from blessed.  Its uttered by people who think that every misrung item at the grocery store is a message from Heaven rewarding them.  But I will use it because in this case its true. For Christmas I got a life back, a different life the one I had before but life none the less. I have been incredibly fortunate not just from  Scott’s graciousness, But the amazing people who helped in my care: my Dialysis team of Lindsay, Jenn, Kate and Chonda. A team that helped me to establish a new albeit temporary normal. I can’t state enough how incredible they were, they went above and beyond, bringing me from someone who couldn’t really walk and was a mental mess, to a normal productive member of society.

The team at the U being equally amazing: my surgeon Ty Dunn who is the kind of doctor that I thought only existed  on TV,  personable, real and went  far beyond the call of duty. The nursing staff of the transplant clinic that helped through  the rather rough transitional period, Dana and Rita in particular. This isn’t just about  the medical side  but the also important human side as well.

For those who are late to the story and in need of recap allow me to catch you up. On December 1, (2009) I received a kidney transplant,  after  6 month on dialysis (often refereed to  Happy Fun Time), this after being diagnosed with IGA Nepropathy (referred to as Harold) 3 years prior and probably having it since high school or junior high. My kidney donor the nicest man on earth Scott Pakudaitis and i arranged the whole thing via Twitter and Facebook, not meeting in meatspace till Thanksgiving,4 days before. (i did know him prior but not well. He named the kidney William the Conquer; he who defeated King Harold) .

They  say that in getting a transplant your essentially trading one disease for another, Its a disease thats not has bad to be certain. But its not without  its issues at least in the beginning. To be precise most of the first month after getting out of the hospital was spent going back and forth between the transplant clinic at the U. Getting infusions  which is a fancy way of saying iv treatments. In the beginning it was an anti-rejection drug called Thymo, a 5 hour affair  chock full of side effects like nausea, mystery rashes and my personal favorite red eyes giving me the appearance of an albino rat- not my best look. From there I moved on to saline , a much more palatable 2 hour process. Of course combined with testing and such it still made for 5 1/2 hour day (starting at the unreasonable time of 6:50 am). My new diet has an addition of some 40 separate pills a day, in addition to a minimum of 2 liters of fluid a day.  My job is in a sense to take drugs ,drink, pee and sleep; while that sounds like Hunter Thompsons dream life; it’s a lot less glamorous  then it sounds.

Of course these drugs have side effects, sadly none of said side effects are anything cool (once i want to take a drug where the side effect is  telekinesis  or invulnerability as opposed to” loose or watery stools”) I am finally getting over the side effects of a drug that I got in the hospital which was to make me very emotional. I would get teary eyed at the drop of a hat; at commercials,  “Bring it On”, an episode of Extreme Makeover. It made for an interesting holiday season.

Recovery is a weird process, mine was a bit more complex then anticipated, in part because of wacky blood pressure/ dehydration issues. int the beginning my blood pressure would barely be at 100/70 and would plummet to 65/50 when standing. Normal blood pressure is 120/80. Now i am on pills that make me hold on to water, which  in turn raise my blood pressure to 140’s/90’s  and then blood pressure bills which lower that to the the 130’s over 90’s I still drop 30 or so points when standing, but its still enough that i can stay walking.  Needless to say that sort of keeps me from getting back to a more normal life. But its a month out so really its not all that bad. The transplant coordinator, sort of your personal cruise director for your post transplant experience tells me this isn’t all that weird. and it will get sussed in the next few weeks.

The greatest risk in transplant rejection is in the first month, then it lowers by some big percentage for the first six weeks, then the first six months. Each anniversary the percentage lowers more. Rejection is treatable for the most part, but even still I’d rather not find out.

My goal is for this not to be a big deal, much the same way I dealt with Harold in the beginning refusing to let it define my life. I  still made records, made a film, not to mention a glorious if not completely unseen pilot for KTCA. The problem is for the time being recovery sort of takes precedent over life.  But that time will come when this is just an answer on a post card, much like

Me in Dialysis

“did you know George Lopez had a kidney transplant- say have you seen his new show. Yeah me neither”. In the meantime everyday i feel a little better, a little more me like.

I would be remiss also if I didn’t thank everyone for there support  which has been amazing  almost a 1000 comments on my profile the week of the surgery, and even more during the recovery time . I thank each and everyone, that made this so much better even though i was alone in my hospital room , just me and a morphine drip I knew I really wasn’t. That kind of support can literally help you move mountains. I am a amazed at peoples  generosity, be it with time, food , gift certificates for more food,a toy squirrel,  comics or just a nod in my direction. It is truly overwhelming and most humbling. I also need to mention how amazing my wife is: Mo went above and beyond,  she really was incredible and continues to be.  My wife rules.

The big fear with this: who am I when this is all done. We are in fact a big collection of chemicals  you change that balance you change your definition. Plus how much of the last year has been me and how much has been Harold. With Harold I felt old, really old. Every day that i had Happy Fun Time, I felt like i was being put out to pasture. Like it was a life less then vital, which for me was a special sort of  hell. I have been pretty fortunate in being the thick of things for most of my life/career, and now i felt like i was in the old hipsters home. Now I don’t feel that way at all its like my own personal youthquake- in spite of the fact I can’t bend over or lift anything more then 10 pounds. It feels like the start of act 2, as opposed  to the middle of the third act.

I have no idea what the future is going to bring right now, but I can’t wait. Whatever it is it’s gonna be amazing.

And Scott , i promise to live up to the potential you gave me

Ok, so some of you may have noticed my sort of staggering lack of writing here as of late. There is good reason for that. for the last six months or so my day job has taken up a huge amount of time. Something it hadn’t for a while, they need some problems fixed, which sort of took over my life. Its the great thing about hiring a compulsive problem solver, is that they don’t rest till the problem is solved- alas some problems are above my mere mortal skills. In the beginning of this month I found myself laid off.

As bad news as that is , I am thinking of it as a gift. A gift of escape, a get out outta jail guilt free card if you will. Knowing me I would have stayed always trying to fix what is ultimately unfix-able. I spent a lot more time dealing with corporate politics then being creative. Its very easy to get lost in the deal and by my own admission I am one of those guys who can get lost in it.

So I find myself with the glorious question :whats next? and to that i really haven’t a clue. There are a few other details that I may have forget to mention:

1. The missus and I are opening a hair salon called Miyagi, hopefully our doors will be open Mid-July, its in NE Mpls (411 E Hennepin right next to the Terminal Bar). The other ginchy thing about this is it will also provide me with a decent office to work out of, no disrespect to my spider filled basement.
There are a few pictures on my Flickr account if you want to see them. Its a pretty cool space and some great folks have been involved. Its been our secret project since last September I even went to Aveda business college to learn the specifics of their lanuage. The oddest part of this is hat I helped build a salon before during the Hair Police days, so this is a very odd Dejà vu, minus old friend and Focus 21 hairspray.

2. I have been working on a tv show for the past year, called “Conversation” It’s very cool, and all things willing the pilot episode will be done soon. I think I know where its going to live but my mouth is shut till we see an air date. You will forgive me if I am a litle sparse on details on this one. Timing , state secrets and all that.

3. I also produced a massive remix for te Vibro Champs, and am mid way through my first solo music project in ages “The Holy Roman Empire”- it’s sort of anti-music, experimental but hopefully not to self indulgent. That will see at least a Myspace page fairly soon.

So its not like I don’t have anything going on, in fact I seem to be busier then ever. My future plans do involve a lot more writing, for this space and others, but for the moment I have to float a little where the river takes me. Of course the problem is I have no idea where its headed, and while apparently it has some rapids, I am pretty sure I can still stay afloat. I know this, I want to make art , and thats something I really haven’t felt for a while.

So there you have it. No stunning self revelations- at least none for public eyes, just me. For years my sense of self identity was based upon where I worked or what i did I don’t need to be Chris of blank anymore, lets face it that all started with Jesus of Nazareth and that really didn’t end so well for him. So Its just me Chris, and it really is all cool.

Sort of like this video from Black Kids, which couldn’t fit my mood any better.(thanks J for sending it along)

What’s in a name? I ask you oh dear and gentle reader, if you’re into numerology quite a bit. Lest we forget the 666’s of Ronald Wilson Regan, and conspiracy tales of old- that Regan was a minion of the devil. The devil of cloven hoof and pointy pitchfork one is to presume. Personally I like to think that he was the Anti-Christ, and the second coming sort of lost his or her way somewhere in Los. Angeles wound up working in bikini pictures that wound up on Cinemax, but I digress.

Names are in interesting thing; it’s no surprise of course of the Hollywood types who have changed their names, after all what better for a manufactured name for a manufactured image. Though in the case of Rip Torn, you really have to wonder what they were thinking. Names are changed to protect the innocent, and the not so innocent. Wives routinely change their names to match their husbands, and of course the new age husbands are now changing theirs to match their wives or worse entering the hyphenation generation.

Does a name define you? My mother wanted to name me Christopher Robin, as opposed to Christopher Anthony – a somewhat Appling trend my father started of naming his children after him, that started with me and has been passed on to his next three children. It was my father who decided that being named after a character from Winnie the Pooh would all but guarantee playground fisticuffs. But there were still foursquare dustups, in point of fact I was the official nerd of the neighborhood, (yeah like you didn’t see that one coming) nothing was stopping me from getting my ass kicked. It was I fear, my destiny.

Not that middle names make a difference, they usually only come into play when your on a first date, and you have that moment where you look at each others ID’s (usually whilst being carded) then there is that cute moment where you see each others middle names, talking about the great aunt you never knew that your named after. Gawk at the truly horrible photo on said Id, and make many awkward jokes. On the plus side if it all goes well from there you will most likely be making out within the hour.

My real issues cam from my nickname, the name I was called by everyone until I went to college. It is a name that would stir my other pacifistic self into a furious frenzy at the mere utterance of it. It was a name that didn’t define me so much as enslave me, trap me into a little box. A box with a brass nameplate, the name: Kip.

Being the weird kid is bad enough, but being the weird kid, with the equally weird name and you have a margarita of misfortune. I grew up in Fridley, Minnesota, A suburb of Minneapolis in the North East. For some reason NE s’ are the same everywhere; cold a little industrial, tight knit and a bad place to be a stranger. Fridley is no exception. With a strange name and a Prince Valiant haircut (thanks mom!) and knickers- yeah no matter how you slice, some body is getting punched in the playground at 3.

My parents thought they had invented the name Kip, or Kippy as it was known till high school. This was before there were the “famous” Kip’s: Kip Winger,Kip King (a stand up comic of little renown), and the guy Tom Hanks played on Bossism Buddies. Kip as a name set the bar pretty low for greatness.Kip is the guy who has a tough time getting a date. Kip should be somewhere in Nantucket rowing a boat reading Emerson. You will never be tough if your name is Kip, being a Goth kid in a prep school named Kip- yeah that’s just unfortunate of course that’s who I was.

My first day of high school, I had decided that I would be Chris, then of course as the first home room bell rang, and the very first roll call of my new school career started, and I knew that this would be the day that everything would change, I waited anxiously practicing how I would say this name that I had never used before in spite of having been born with it. Finally my name was called, and I was supposed to say how it was pronounced, etc. I took a breath and just as I was about to say “call me Chris”, the one person in the school, who came from my old school blurted out” His name is Kip” and just like that I was a Kip.

Oddly enough the same girl went to college with me, this time I stopped her in time and became Chris. But to be honest it never felt quite like my name, sure I answer to it and obviously it’s my name, but for the longest time it felt a little foreign. Like a name you give a cat, because the cat needs a name, and eventually they answer to it- mostly just as habit.

While I might not have been completely feeling “Chris” I had a full Hate on for Kip. I refused to answer to that name or any variation of it. Which mostly just served to make the holidays awkward. To this day Chris never sounds right coming out my parents’ mouths. Its like they have to think about it first. Anyone who called me Kip, was met with scowls and glares, if I was drunk enough the threat of violence- of course it was a threat I could never make good on.

From that point on I was only called Kip by people who wanted to make me very very angry, mostly ex band mates, and the occasional ex girl friend. Kip became my secret, something I would only admit to at the most clandestine of moments, or alternately after consuming large amounts of Whiskey. Kip became my shame, the flowers in the attic of my troubled youth.

About a month ago, a drunk friend and soon to be former bandmate called me Kip in an attempt to pick a fight, this time I just shrugged my shoulders and said “ eh, that’s all you got?” and walked on.

Names only have power if we give it to them. Melvin is arguably the dorkiest name ever, but Mel Gibson is incredibly smooth, or at least he was until he became the most reviled Anti-Semite this side of Hitler. The point is there is power in a name, what took down Rumplestiltskien? Guessing his name, Babba Yagga? Same thing, it seems a lot of magic is taken down by the mere act of knowing a name. What is a name after all if not the truth.

So know you know one of my truths, but in telling my secret, it lost its power over me and I regained a little bit of my past. So you can call me Kip and I won’t want to shank you, I might not respond but you gotta start somewhere.