I have a guitar. It was given to me many years ago by my dear friend Nikki Helmich-Raasch. Unfortunately, the guitar became warped and unplayable, and the repair cost would be just as much if not more than a new one. So, it became art, and for the last 10 or so years it's hung in my apartment. I ask everyone who walks through the door to sign it. Most have, with a few exceptions of some who have politely declined (I remember every one of you, you heartless bastards!). What first struck me as a quirky thing to have in my apartment has really grown into something much more... It's become a diary of sorts. Moments of time pressed up against a musical piece of wood.
They're my memories. Family members, friends, roommates, friends of roommates, ex girlfriends, people who have graced me with their presence as I've lived and breathed through New York City. I was glancing at it tonight, going through the different names and smiling as memories flooded inside me, filling me with particular moments from the past, hopes for the future with these friends... And then I came across one name that struck me a little more than all the others...
Nicole Dolci was my Kansas City twin. She and I met while doing a Ron Simonian dinner theatre production called Blues Christmas I also met my very good friend Wolfgang (then Russell) Butcher during that production. It was a wacky, crazy show that was filled with things like making out with drunken cast mates, seeing Titanic on opening night, and crying our ever loving actors eyes out. And for the first time, really feeling a sense of community in a cast. She fast became my best friend, and we were inseparable discovering together everything from amazing indie rock bands to seeing movies like it was our job, and seriously laughing about a joke that days later we couldn't actually remember but still found funny... She was my Scully to my Mulder. In fact, she even called me Mulder, and Loser as well (in the most affectionate way...). I still remember sitting in a dark, smokey bar in the middle of Columbia Missouri hanging with our friends Kristie and Rob, and listening to the songs that we had heard them sing a hundred times and knowing that each time we both heard something new. I remember being the only ones in a movie theatre (we were seeing The Impostors) and breaking out into a impromptu dance that only ended when we heard the projectionist clapping. Hung out with her awesome family, held her hand as she went through her divorce, and braced myself when she moved to LA.I moved to NY a little over a year later, and flew her down to shoot the movie we had spent four years talking about making. After that, she visited one more time and then we lost touch. Fought over stupid things, and just as fast as she came into my life, she was out of it. Time passes, as it always does, and we stayed in sporadic contact, but not enough to know that she had got sick. Her fiancee Benjie called me one evening to deliver the news. "Nikki," as her family called her, passed away. All in a moment, after seeing that signature, this all came rushing back. And as I look through the other signatures, hordes of other memories do the same. That simple, broken guitar with the writing on the wall has become one of my prized possessions because every time I look at it, it looks right back at me and tells me a story. I can't repair the relationship that Nicole and I had, but I can look back on the great memories that forged our friendship to begin with and smile every time I see it and let that amazing glow fill inside me. I hope you have your own guitar to play, even when it's lost a string or two...
