What Is Love?

I know I need it, but I'm not sure what it means to me anymore.
I’m on a quest to find the meaning of love. I don’t know how to explain what it is, but I can explain what is isn’t.
It sure isn’t the guy sitting next to me in the bar, who has chatted me up two night and leads me on as if he’s single, but has been married for thirty years. That insignificant-to-him fact is only revealed after direct, specific questioning.
He had already told me all about his business, his hobbies, his land, his cattle, his ranch. He neglected to mention the little woman.
“So do you live there by yourself?”
“No, I have a family.”
“Do you have a wife?”
“Well, uh, yea, but she leads her life, I lead mine...”
That’s not love. That’s co-dependency.
I’m still on my quest.

THE REASON I CALL GENE TAYLOR A MASTER ACCOMPANIST

Floating in the Caribbean, on the top-most deck of a cruise ship, off the coast of Puerto Rico, I was sitting at the fancy piano bar.
It was after midnight, and I was listening to Gene Taylor playing just for the fun of it. It was his down time from performing with the Fabulous Thunderbirds.
It was a very intimate atmosphere. The ocean seemed to surround us in the small, heavily-wooded, glass-walled bar.
There were four of us sitting around the piano, three others at the bar. Taylor’s music flowed from ragtime, N’awlins-style boogie-woogie to standards like Georgia on my Mind.
Right outside the piano bar, a bandstand was set up for any ‘wandering minstrels’ to act on their urges. Only a glass wall separated us from the electric instruments. During Taylor’s soothing performance, a few people outside started playing reggae rhythms that boomed into the piano bar. I was getting irritated at this invasion of discordant sounds. But I underestimated the master musician at the piano.
Taylor adjusted his key, changed the tempo ever so slightly, did other things beyond me and continued playing in the vein he had been, only now the previously invasive sounds were his rhythm section.
I looked at him in amazement. How easily he had made that transition, in mere seconds.
In that moment, I totally understood his value as a sideman, and how lucky any band would be to have a magical keyboard man like Gene Taylor.

THE BAR SCENE

Someone once said "You can either be a good example, or a horrible warning."

Sometimes I'm one, sometimes the other. It makes for an interesting life.

Is This the Horrible Part?
Too many times I’ve heard, "I don’t want to meet people in a bar." Since I go to bars, I wonder why so many people have such a poor attitude towards "people in bars." Isn't that a generalization of the worst kind? Or am I delusional?
I love blues music, so I often go to crummy little joints to hear a good band. Even if no one talked with me all night, the music still soothes my soul. Does that make me undesirable?

Magnificent Obsession
I didn’t like the band so much, Anthony Gomes, but he’s good at what he does. Most of the crowd was real enthusiastic for him and he did have a great personality. He is very Robben Ford-ish but more Hendrix rocky....The blues will come later.
What was best about tonight was the company I kept and a conversation I had with a man (Dennis b/f of Cathy) about him being half a woman. He had no qualms about stating this rather obvious fact, once you think about it. He is indeed, born of a woman impregnated by a man, and isn’t he really half a woman!?
We’re not talking parts, of which I’m sure he was all man. We’re talking PARTS of our beings here.
He mentioned God and asked me my beliefs. I told him I believed not in Jesus Christ but that God is Love-Love is God, there is no ‘physical being’. I said he would be a 'better man' than I if he could define Love for me, because then he could define my god.
Dennis immediately replied “God is a blonde with big tits. Some people bow down and pray to an old man with a long grey beard, I bow down before a woman with big tits. Love is a blonde with big tits.”
He had me there. He had no doubt who he adored.
It's good to be god.