I waited a couple days and then for a good mood and then tonight I called him and left a quick message. He called me back and we talked for almost 50 minutes! The tone was happy and light for most of the conversation--open and connected feeling even though we weren't talking about super deep stuff.
The first thing he asked (after how I was doing) was, "Where are you?" I told him atlanta... He told me he had just been sightsinging beach boys songs with the famous violinist camp-founder and other faculty members at the camp he's a counselor at. Which is crazy. I sort of bantered with him and teased him more than I have in the past. He told me he thought I'd really love this one female faculty member there (he told me about her while we were still together--don't worry, she's wayyyyy older than he is) and I joked that I'd probably have a huge "Girl Crush" on her.
He told me more about singing Beach Boys with the classical faculty, and how someone might be making a documentary about the camp, and I joked about how they were also doing a documentary video at the festival I just went to, coincidentally. We talked about my business -- website stuff, incorporating, naming and branding. I asked for his advice.... We talked about seeing the big picture vs getting bogged down in details--something I'm having to learn with my business--and he told me some really nice Yo Yo Ma stories about that from a musical perspective. And I told him stories about seeing Yo Yo Ma and also the Talking Heads (separate nights) in NYC while I was there.
Earlier in the conversation I also told him that I think I'm finally ready to leave ATL and will probably leave at the end of July and he said, "surprise" (sarcastically) and I said, no, I really am surprised, I've been waiting to be ready to leave and I think I finally am. I told him I'd been reflecting on something he said a long time ago... when I was living in a bad roommate situation in Boston, when we had only been together a year or two, B really encouraged me to leave but I clung to the apartment anyway. And he asked me then, "where would you choose to live if you lived in the sky?" So I told him that story and how I was thinking about it again now, and that if I lived in the sky (meaning, I didn't already live somewhere on earth) I definitely wouldn't choose atlanta. It was the first time I'd really brought up a moment from our past like that, and it seemed to work.
At the end he told me he needed to go to do lights out duty at the camp and I laughed and teased him about it. And then I told him that I'd seen the new yorker mention and that I was really proud and then we discussed that briefly before I said I should let him go and got off the phone.
Nice!! Not sure what comes next. There are definitely more things I want to ask him for help with/advice on, but I figure I should wait at least a week (or two) before calling again. I think it had actually been a couple months since I'd actually called him on the phone, so it felt a little ballsy to do.
