1. it is fine to fall asleep upon your couch, if you are a snake.
2. when a snake purchases a couch, s/he must get delivery. Also they require assssssisssssstanccccce with their wallet.
3. Another song will come out today. Well, probably many will, but I mean another Psychotics song. For now, it’s going to be the only way that I participate in the contests unless the song faeries scream at me. It’s time for other things to happen; time to finish things from before that have been left undone. I feel okay about this, because I tend to feel odd if I’m not actively involved in a Thing making new material. Like I’m killing a practice routine.
3b. I came back in here because one of the things I’m doing is that I’ve changed two of my old contest songs I dislike and made them into one song that I like more. Right now, it plays well live. Soon, I’ll do a decent demo. It may go on part of The Project. Teaser: I’m calling it ‘If I Had One more Time To Panic.’
4. I’ve been stuck in troubling practice cycles before. Practicing is good, but I once gave myself tendinitis. I was never as good. When you hurt a part from working it too hard, those muscles and other moving parts don’t trust as much again.
Sometimes when I practice, I can hear my body thinking “yeah, right…” and I feel myself tense up.
5. I’d be a looser and less tense performer if I were a snake. But this would be irrelevant. Snakes don’t have hands.
Category: Songwriting Contests
when a person/peoples believe in you, it can be pretty powerful.
Validation goes a long way. Especially in these days of instant social gratification (“look at me! I have posted a photo of Gandalf saying something droll! And someone from the cast of Full House ‘liked’ it!!” (this never happened to me)).. you can grow rather lonely waiting for a project or idea to percolate without an “atta boy/girl/naked squirrel” applied at the right place/time.
This can cause havoc with your discipline. But you get to a point where it’s just not PROFESSIONAL anymore to need constant love and coddling from the folks who surround you in order to work. It is this that has finally made me realize The Thing. The Answer to The Big Question.
When is one a professional?
I used to think “when one gets paid.” After a while, this didn’t make a lot of sense to me. It didn’t make sense to me because people are constantly getting paid to do sub-par work. I have done some of my most ridiculous, unrecognized and informal sit-ins with names that would look nice on my résumé, and I didn’t stick around to pursue further work and schmooze time on further opportunities in some of those directions. I seriously don’t talk about the time I played once at a little show with such-and-such because they’d be all “who the hell is she?” And usually at the time I was being professional in other capacities that look spotty and ridiculous now; mostly getting poorly paid at gigs which don’t matter. But I learned a lot at every gig that didn’t matter – sometimes picking up really important skills that translated well. Usually learning something like “don’t do ThIs or That, it doesn’t work.”
I haven’t been consistently paid in a long time. When those days do come, I bet the source/s of income will look very different than I ever imagined they might. I’m going to have to get creative to succeed at being me, and make up being profitable at it; simply because I don’t think that way. I haven’t even gotten the foot out the door of “make really bad ass content available.” Moving out of Thinking time into Doing is scary, particularly when you shut the door because it’s time for your Validating Individuals who Love and Care to do Their Own Things and Not Your Drama. Then it is All You and Oh My God I need cake right now.
And so, what do I think, of Work?
I think I am producing content. I think that I’m busy. Perhaps I am working, even. But I don’t know if I’m getting the job done. I may have to write another job description, and fire my ass. Perhaps I will hire another Me.
I certainly feel like I work all the time. At the moment, most of the things that I do I think of as practice, to justify the unpaid nature of it all. But I have withdrawn a bit because I have things on the back burner that are not items for practice. I “haven’t had time” to do them. I’ve been distracted.
I think it might have something to do with validation, with belief. When I started doing these contests, for instance, they were a mixed blessing. They came with communities. And the communities both held you up and back. When you’re in a group of people, you start feeling like you should do things to fit the mold, even if it hasn’t been communicated that you should. That’s just crowd ethic, perhaps. It’s not law though.
Joining communities that do things recreationally that I’m trying to break into professionally, even if the lines are really blurry, is going to continue to confuse me. It’s silly not to keep it up since I think I’ve made some lifelong relationships; but it’s also dumb to let my whole life continue to be swallowed up by it all.
I played some songs I wrote in the early 2000s. Some even earlier. I was already doing well. I was writing with confidence. I had a style I owned. Lately, I write songs as though I listened to song reviews, tried to insert several other people’s concepts of how to write hooks, and then lost how I put stories down into words to sing against verses. And I need to take what I have been given and remember how I used to flow with it.
I love my work and lately, I haven’t as much. But I think it’s slowly starting to change back.
I keep Almost finding an audience, a niche. Then I pull back, last second, and settle into the warm womb of relationships. Collaboration. I don’t trust my own gut. I don’t sit in my own silence. I’ve always trusted what I had to say before. This fear is a new thing, brought on by too many surrounding voices. Too much need for approval and too much stimuli.
It’s been both good and bad. Mostly good.
I think it’s about balance. And the things that stick, you keep. Hopefully, the rest shakes off okay.
1. I have been selected to participotato in a not really all that secret Thing. It’s like a compilation album. I am sure that my friend Brigitte London, a musician of the Outlaw Country persuasion, selected me because of my cleverness and ninja abilities, and not because of my glittering resume (even though I’m kinda-shiny-sometimes-aly). Nonetheless, I will endeavor to send them a somewhat bitchin’ track (this will be easy because I have been in song contests and especially songfighting – and My New Peers have been growling and insulting my work on a weekly basis so I am not worried about crumbling under professional scrutiny). It has just been a matter of which track. I have asked a few people, not too many, and have narrowed it down and (most likely) chosen one.
2. I am a little worried about my bio, although I sent it to my bud Jules and she said I look fine and gave me helpful hints. I will probably not tell dirty jokes in the bio, for example or mention @suspiciousden’s Dailybooth … so Jules is a good person to ask about these things because she knows how to bottle the creepy factor when need be (I’m sure she is enjoying this blog) … As far as where on earth these extremely well organized and professional people are going to be able to find me on the interwebs, since I am all over it like a bad rash, I may whine a little more:
3. Go to http://www.denisehudson.com. Go ahead. There’s nothing there, is there? Well, that’s pretty sad, isn’t it. This is because I have the internet aptitude of a three year old. This is why you are currently reading this poorly designed wordpress content here and not in a zippier, sexy location of my choosing – with mood lighting and incense and dancing boys and chocolate and internet squirrels bringing you virtual Courvoisier.
my website will be this smooth and fly. like Griffpig. The World’s Coolest Sunglasses.
But I am going to attempt to rectify this situation like RIGHT NOW since I own the place, meaning my name. I refused to Sell to Worthier Denise-s, no indeed – not at Any Price. But sadly, I know NADA-NADA-Enchaladda about such things.
4. But I can do it because I have many, many brain cells. Together they make AN ENTIRE BRAIN. So guess what goblins… I’m going to USE that brain to MAKE WEB HISTORY. And just LOOK OUT!!! Blogathon is NEXT MONTH! You know it!
5. However, I will probably be whining a LOT because we are also MOVING houses during this time when I suddenly have to make it seem like I have been an active member of the music community and not like I have just been sitting on my tuckus producing content.
6. Yes, I know I can use a Psychotics track for this compilation. Duh…..I should have gone as a Psychotic for Nur Ein, and for Halloween. We all know this. Flarg. This is HIGH on my list of consideration, seeing as this is my most Awesomeist of material and will Blend Best. Stay Tuna-ed.
I can’t even think anymore and there is pizza to be had. I will probably make and exciting google plus list later, and stalk the rest of the Honeys maniacally across the internet, becoming ever more intimidated with each passing click. I know that this is not The Point of camaraderie and fellowship and internet collaboration and that living in a tiny cave practicing my scales should come to an end. This will be good for me. I am an Upwardly Mobile Producer of Content and Country Musicians everywhere want me to go to their Barn Dances even though I came from the planet of Xondor. Yee-haw, y’all.
Nur Ein results are up. I lost. None of this – ‘there were five winners’ crap. There were four dudes who knew what they were doing and one clueless little thing who had a good guest round. People said I made rhythm mistakes in my work; and instead of defending my work I got all unsure, assumed I was wrong and didn’t even bother to check and think I might be right, or that I might have been going for a flavor of something. And if wrong, understandably so in the same sort of way others overshoot the mark in their ways when they apply an effect. Now there’s an odd taste in my mouth about the Trying of the New Thing.
By the time I thought to somewhat defend myself it was too late – ironically, I failed the tongue twister challenge. If 7 is a lucky number I deserved an 8. I’ll think too deeply on the math and raise you. Right on its side is the number of infinity.
Will I do Nur Ein next year? Probably. Will I win it? I think I’ve figured out I shall never win it! But I will continue to try.
This was not the Nur Ein of last year where I came out feeling awesome and like I’d nailed the dismounts but cracked my ankle a bit. This is one where I tried new interpretations of all my old tricks while everyone else strapped on cool-as-s4it electric guitars or iron-clad reputations and the panel looked into my messy dreamworld in disbelief and said “wtf is this craziness?!”
Xondor. Welcome to Xondor.
Someday I will write the stories and the characters and the planets and all the little silly things I have been writing about but really, honestly……..
…….my shit IS stories. It’s even been said.
“no one wants to read a novel.”
Not only did the losing thing happen, the whole Nur Ein itself was filled with uncomfortable underlying and embarrassing social challenges that made it difficult to do my work. Interpersonal problems. Weirdnesses. Connundrum. Crisis of conscious-type stuff. Pestilence. Deaths. Sick pets. Relationship problems. Family issues. Internet “stuff” that is upsetty (these things happen). Stuff you can’t complain about on the boards because it sounds like you’re making excuses for why your song blows.
I found the entire time I couldn’t communicate with people in the way I wanted. I couldn’t get my point across. I felt uncomfortable with the discussion in and around the conversation (what does that even mean??) It had that odd vibe around it that a kid has when the adults are arguing and it’s like “shhhhh…let the grown ups talk….” but you know something mean and shitty is going on. But all you can think to do is cry and say “but, but…this is DUMB! Why can’t everyone be nice?!” so you feel lame and keep quiet. And it’s good that you did. This is just how the adults talk to each other! You would have embarrassed yourself! (again). Things are all fine! (_yep)
Mostly all this is me hitting the apex of Things; the top of the pile Ive needed to scale in order to make hard decisions about how out-of-hand I let things get in both professional and personal life.
I’ll never be “ready” to “do it” if I’m not ready already.
That’s what my lucky numbers indicate. Signs point to now.
No, I’m not quitting. No, I’m not even quitting contests. I’m too old for musical methadone clinics. But I’m also too old to change, to force my fat butt into a rock and roll cheerleader uniform. And certainly too old to do such things on my own.
I am going to pause and give myself the silent moment of extreme credit for the massive amount of work and accomplishment I know I’ve done. I think I’ve stretched myself more in 2 years than is really believable. That doesn’t really get prized in any way. You prize your own self for that by getting up in the morning and not quitting a Thing.
And I think I’ve been a little bit brain-fuzzy in thinking. Yes I have thoughts for the new title. Amazing ones. But more importantly I’ve got some plans for some other stuff I’ve let go undone for way too long that I used to be up to all the time.
I never did talk about Blogathon, or do anything about it, did I?
{edit: I do have to say, and not just to be PC, if you go to hear this round…the songs are all excellent. I didn’t lose to anything mediocre.}
I have a love / despair relationship with SongFight! Nowhere else can I finish a major production in less than a week that makes me feel like an engineering badass because I’ve learned several new skills that it would take a normal person a committee and schooling to achieve…and I did it quietly and on my own. And then in the space of a few people’s comments I suddenly feel like a silly little thing made of candy and fairy spit who cannot put a project together and also yes, probably girlz got no rhythm.
I’m overstating the point. I’m internalizing things. I’m taking three years of comments and sticking them into a big fat cry I’ve needed to have for a long time. I really need to just curl into a big ball and be a huge baby. Also, I am not sure how to explain my artistic decisions without sounding whiny and all… “but! but … ! eeh. eh!!!….”
I will say this. This is Round Six of this contest I’ve been in (I’m DJ Ranger Den). I made seven songs for this contest. This started sometime in April? May? I’ve lost track.
This weekend I slaved over this song that *I*, at least, feel really proud of. I have no idea what will happen to me. I will be surprised at neither outcome. I will be disappointed to be cut, and disappointed if I move on. I’m tired. Also, I am honestly not sure I have more to give. Eight songs is actually a really small album, and it sort of fills me with despair because some of these people in these communities have written albums in one day, or done other acrobatic feats of songwriting that it rips my mind open to contemplate. You could spend your life trying to top this. I’ve spent my last three years writing about this odd little culture that is so fascinated by this life. Because I’ve basically stopped working because I make better music now that I’m sucked into all of this. Better music than I did when I was a professional. I don’t know if that’s sad or just terribly, terribly interesting. Either way, SongFight Live is going to be very interesting this year, just as Nur Ein has been very, very emotional.
So, what DIDN’T I do because I was Nur/Ein-ing-SongFighting this week.
1. Snack copiously while watching TV (I lost about 4 pounds. Over the past 2-3 years I’ve lost almost 40 pounds. I started off calling this the SongFu 15 … and then it became the SongFight diet. They all contribute to this maniacal life though).
2. This one is important:
I did not attend my 20th high school reunion. This was kind of a personal triumph for me, mostly because I forgot that it was on. It was a triumph for me because in 2006 sometime I was sitting in my living room crying, surrounded by amplifiers and recording equipment. I wrote a poem later about how the amplifiers smelled like the house of my ex-songwriting partner, who had dropped off the equipment at my house at my insistence. It was my equipment, all of it, and I wanted it back because he wasn’t allowed to see me anymore and we were not to work together anymore either. I had invested all my energy into a duo with him and I was devestated and didn’t know how I was going to write or record or do anything.
I knew I could write without him but I didn’t know what I would do next and we’d gone to music school together and right alongside him I’d built up contacts and followed him around and just generally walked around in a fog and then melted into my church society and forgot my own existence as a person.
I decided that day that I would never sit in a living room and hopelessly stare at pieces of software and gear; frustrated because I didn’t have a man to help me do something I should know how to do my damn self.
It’s 2012 now. I learned how to work the computers and eventually even switched to Mac and all that. I’ve stopped and started and quit and done a lot of different things since then. I really started the online thing in 2010ish because the Austin thing just wasn’t working for me anymore and I wanted to really concentrate on learning to record.
But I had gone to high school with Him… and he had reconnected with me. He’d started reminiscing about the old days. The band, things that used to be. I guess when the people you used to know start seeming like stronger people, it’s easier to remember the good times. And I am in a MUCH better place.
But I’m not that old girl now.
So the fact that I didn’t wait, and prepare, and obsess, and think about who I was going to look like, and what I was going to wear … the fact that I was thinking about what five other guys, three of who I met in New York and one who I have only messaged but that I’m in a mysteriously organized online band with – and the remaining one overseas (who has a pattern of impartiality/partiality to my work that I can’t figure out for the life of me!) .. the fact I was wondering what THEY might be thinking, doing, having for breakfast…yaddayadda … thinking about three+a group of other guys … wondering what THEY were concocting; what their plans were, what THEY were going to bring to the table, if they were skipping THEIR reunions, getting into trouble at home, if their bathrooms were as nasty as mine, if they needed to be reminded to brush their teeth or take their meds because they were really tired after this whole Ordeal – if any of them were 1/200000576th as Neuro as me ….
well … I forgot my reunion was on. And this was a triumph. I’m crazy because I’m addicted to Songfight. I’m crazy because this is an indicator of personal growth. I’m crazy because this indicates that there is hope for my re-matriculation into Professional Musical Society. But I Do Not Care. Because I Am Happy.
So If I get eliminated. I still won. And I’m not just saying that because I bought the Extremely Pink “Song Love” t-shirt.
As far as feeling bad about the reviews, and enough to cry about it …… I do realize that I am probably just tired and that drinking little but Mountain Dewwhile I vainly struggle Not Getting Paid doing something I am meant to be doing professionally while I learn to do what I used to do less of but better is probably a sure path to whining. I’d say other people on this board do not whine, but I’d kind of be lying. It’s just that when they do it, it comes across as debate, or champions defending territory. When I feel snitty, it comes across as petulance, so I keep my mouth closed. But I do feel this artistic rebellion welling up inside me and at some point it’s going to surge out of me. in a huge way. And if it does and I get more “meh” then I’ll know that I’m ready because I’ve been in the right place. I’ve learned that no one on the planet really gives a crap about what we make as artists and this is a really good place to learn that – where people will mercilessly take your work and completely eviscerate it in front of you until there isn’t anything sacred about it anymore for you. And it is then that you are ready to stop being a show pony about it and really do justice to song writing. It’s then that you’re ready to stop being proud and stop being a hero. Maybe you were wrong about something. Maybe your idea wasn’t that cool, or fresh. Perhaps you are wrong and your reviewers are right.
I always think that when I get teary over any reviews because I am tired and I have laid my spleen before the altar of Cubase and set it on fire again.
But then I think that perhaps I sacrificed not-in-vain to the song faeries, and that I’m fine and everyone else is full of crap.
Only time gives me this balance. And I think this is something everybody, absolutely EVERYBODY goes through. And no one can really know what it means. And where the hell the downbeat TRULY lies.
So I think I’ll put the emphaSIS on whichever SYLaBLE I feel ka-like.
ps. Here is a backwards photo of the Kombucha Tea (or “tea with creatures”) that I am drinking today. It’s a new flavor, made with apples. From Buddha’s Brew.
Im going through the wreckage I made of Denise during 2010 and the ways I also rebuilt her and made her better. Im organizing myself and my book and some music I need to make. A lot of it is from old writing hanging around.
I had a hard time writing Song Biographies, so I rarely did ones that made sense. I want to say that this is because I am a very private person. Lately I haven’t been, but this is artificial and I have had a lot happen this year where I have slipped out of step and standard; forgotten to breathe. I remembered fight and forgot flight.
So the mystery of me is now covered in catsup and pickle relish, presented on an unappetizing sesame seed white bun. Yee-haw.
I found myself rushing to speak. To explain. I found myself craving attention. The more attention I crave, the less I am needed, wanted. My product sucks.
When I wrote some of my best material, it was with others in mind at times, but if they never knew, then I really didn’t care. Now I find myself explaining the puzzle frequently and often to many.
This can all be traced back to a few things, but no matter. 
I DO know from personal experience, both in the past and quite recently, that if you do not speak others are more than happy to speak for you. But I find that I am protective of both me and mine and also afraid of akwardness and conflict. I like things to be polite and nice and so I sit. I used to be happy to do this.
Now as for song biographies; this tends to render them too revealing when I am a revealer of the self in songs; and it makes reviewing the songs of others neigh on impossible.
So sometimes I write poems about my characters. If they’d made different choices. Lately I’ve been thinking of silence alongside these types of structures.
I have missed my poetry, my actual writing-in-blogging and WRITING-writing .. and my piano. I am far from me.
This is my first offering.
*****
THE ONES WHO CHOOSE NOT TO FLOAT
I have a tiny little box of me
I’ve lied you see
I haven’t lied to everyone
There are others, some that see me
I’ve chosen to remain
aloof, for reasons that make sense
to me.
Actions have their consequence
Attacks, they have their defense
It’s common to sense that
there’s something wrong
around this time
it’s about the time I turn away,
about the time my eyes go blind
and arms go limp..
about the time my mind goes wild
and far away..
about the time the lies
accompany the sinking ship.
the treasure is already airtight
and the biggest lie of all is that
you’ve got me in the lifeboat
as you flee from all this wreckage.
You radio home to say that you’ve
acquired the package
And I settle down in depths of safety;
wet and cold and shaky -
but I’m quite alone,
and I can rebuild skeletons
from these forgotten shards
of splintered bone.
*****
in closing, I live someplace else now and have for months. I have plans to go nomad-ing somewhere in the next few months. Maybe close, maybe far away. For now there is a cafe nearby which I have not tried, and I will practice piano, write with a pen, and go out of doors once each day.
I will blog sometimes and make lists.
I have not used Twitter well, I’m afraid.
1. I am starting to feel a little paranoid. You know what Kurt Cobain said about being paranoid…
2. I’m actually doing really well today. I’m going through some old tracks of mine, and I just figured out that it would be a SUPREMELY ill advised idea to rename ALL of the files because then the program that used all those file-thingys to… uh… do stuff with (does this sentence even work anymore?!) … would get all… uh confused and I would want to hurl the computer into the sea. It wouldn’t be the macbook’s fault. But I would, nonetheless, blame it once again. So I was an ace of a coolkid, and took a PAUSE. Smart me!
3. I went to La Flor and saw a friend. He called me mi amor, and I felt all Austin-y. The tacos there are outstanding, and he is in a band. Being in a band is like breathing. We all can do this. It’s everywhere.
4. I can DO THIS!
5. Everytime I “get online” just to take a break, a little something upsets me for reasons of my own sensitivity. It’s gotten to where it’s even too difficult to explain. To explain would take too long a conversation, or be too embarassing. You know that Jewel song, the one about her being sensitive and wanting to stay that way? That’s kind of how I am feeling right now. I feel kind of bruised and weird.
6. It’s always different, unexpected stuff, coming out of nowhere. And it’s not like I’m not strong, or don’t have goals, or know what I want to do. It’s not like I don’t know who I am. I know exactly why I’m here. The stuff I expected and signed up for, that doesn’t upset me.
I will provide an example for illustration.
I was just in a song contest and got eliminated. It stung to get eliminated, but for me – it did not really sting for the reasons one might expect. The reasons I got upset about it were my own, and are complex.
The surface reasons: what were said about me in reviews, where I hit in rankings, the pure MATH of the situation … if it were *real business life* and an actual paying situation, and not a simulation … like a magazine or a rankings list, or for money or charts or something … I would have to accept these things. This is what people do. This is how it works. I have done this before, and I remember it. I remember doing it in school, other places. You take third, or worse, fourth. There’s reasons for it – good reasons. You take LAST after your FLAWLESS performance. It’s cutthroat.
I remember what it is like to Not Be Good Enough in a place where Not Being Good Enough is pretty damn ridiculous. I still have not quit. So I think at this point that’s saying something.
We are way beyond doing this for personal enjoyment. We are into phycosis.
I was reading an article that an interested and concerned reader tweeted. I think we’re gonna have to go for a combination of 2 and 1b.
Left brain doesn’t entertain the notion for a second that right brain doesn’t have plans.
For me, the idea of “drama free” began in a poem which I wrote back in 2006. I discarded it because I grew out of the reasons for writing it.
Later on it came back up and combined with a new reason for writing it. It became a song then, about leaving and coming into my own. It was about something I went through religiously.
I may someday make a ‘story of a song’ over it. I feel like Graham gets it, because he covered it. I feel like Joe gets it, because he is talking about it and remembering it, and it sticks in his mind as something that belonged to me. I feel sometimes like other people get me. Oftentimes, I feel like people … don’t.
EX: raise your hand if you knew that I had never heard of Sue Storm until AFTER the Round One listening party?
This means I should write a Round One story of a song, and I probably will. There’s some golden eggs in there – some intended specifically for Travis Langworthy, but it’s a little silly joke that I was telling. It’s also a very STUPID joke and a pretentious joke that is very much MY sense of humor!!!
Anyway, some people get my little “off” sense of humor and what I’m trying to do. And it’s nice to have any audience among my peers. some people that know that I’m always trying to do something transformative which is about what the lyrics are attempting to reveal about me. And that I’m trying to do it in this particular way. And that when I listen to people too much and try to change what I’m doing into what they think I should be, that it will never work for me.
I can’t really sacrifice what I have to say for audience, for money … for anything. I’m just going to have to find another way.
As a songwriter, I am a diarist. I can only write what I know. I only know – me.
Part of me has learned from these competitions that I’m not really cut out for them. I’m not like Edric, who writes a song that he is told to write, and does it brilliantly. I go through painful transformative cataclysms until it is done. I am not the master of the song, it is the master of me. I invited who I THOUGHT the judges were into the bedroom this time, and then hit on them in a tawdry and clumsy way … then I got REJECTED. Like in an embarassing way. Like I staged this whole cheezy scene. Thinking I was all… beautiful or something and … well … shoulda known better.
It’s a horrible metaphor and doesn’t really fit. But I feel dirty and gross. Nothing worse that raping your own self. That’s just dumb. And I realize that for a piece of something awful, my tune is actually pretty skilled, compared to a lot of things. But this is why everyone is always feeling very sorry for Brittney Spears. She’s not a bad performer, but she keeps shaving her head and gaining and losing weight and flashing her yow-yow every which way.
So my tune was an abberation in a lot of ways. Albiet classier. It’s hard for me to embarass myself. It’s something slutty that I did. And I think that I hate it. I’m ashamed of it. I’m glad that it put me out. Just like I’m glad that my first song in Song Fu six, ‘Rain’ did enough damage to my total score to knock me out of a shot into the Final Round. Because in THAT case, I listened to what someone else told me to do. They told me that my instincts weren’t good enough – and that I had to start all over and please someone else.
I know that I’ll be told that I’m being too hard on myself. I don’t care. This is all just rehearsal for me. I’m doing this now so that I won’t have to do it more painfully later. I don’t think for a second this is it for me. I’ve been saying this since I was 16.
Anyway, with these thoughts, I’ll show you the poem I wrote so long ago. It’s called Lucky Charm
LUCKY CHARM
I said I love you and you said it back
You’re the only one
who’d complicate
so simple a clean fact
You’re my lucky charm
pulled from the lion’s mouth
with tiny little hands
You made me look so obvious
infants could understand
You were the one who babysat
me through the evening
So now you’ll stay
alone with you
Because I have to
Leave in company with me
the only way you’ll be okay is
Drama free and naturally
you’ll rue the day
And I don’t know
what on earth we’d do
In this flimsy house of cards
without you!
******
I did like the phrase enough to use ‘drama free’ for a hook later in a song.
I don’t know that you can copyright a phrase for a hook. I’m not popular enough to really be remembered enough for doing something cool or clever. But I was at least memorable enough to get covered, and brought up in the memory of a judge when a really cool phrase which I also discovered long ago once got brought up once again.
I wonder if anyone else has also discovered it.
I’ve sprinted upstairs. I feel decadent, dirty … ashamed. I feel like a liar, and a cheat.
I’m having an affair with an online songwriting competition. Again.
I actually had stuff all planned out. I wasn’t even going to WORK on this until later tonight. I was even going to work on my List of Things To Do. THAT used to be an addiction. Making lists. I would be oozing all over THAT.
Maybe the trouble is that I have an addictive personality. Whatever I am into, I am stuck like jam to and it is impossible to pry me off. If I am interested in you, for the week, look out. You’ll be completely overpowered. You won’t know what hit you. You’ll be my new fad. Until I am distracted by a new Bright Shiny Object.
Am I really that person?
The song has mutated into something dark and angry; developed an unlikely antagonist. The lyrics getting too long – the secret lair developing caverns. It will all have to be trimmed. The clutter is starting to look like the piles of crap in the bedrooom, the laundry. The stuff that needs doing while I mix and move lyrics around making my next move – working my sixteen hour days … lies UNDONE. Orchestrating stuff that doesn’t get relased because it isn’t perfect yet. Honing piano parts. Making setlists that look like perfectly clear martinis with olives floating in the triangular glass.
I can’t even explain what I’m trying to say here. I haven’t blogged in a while. I get really into my skull. I have felt kind of alone, a bit lately, with the writing.
I am too shitty a housewife to also become a shitty songwriter. Me with my issues and all.
I feel manipulative. This blog is on Twitter. I feel like I’m covering my ass, because I have people who are pulling for me. But who’s pulling for the wife, and who’s pulling for the musician? And then there’s the thing …
Do I have time to be putting out silly videos that are … well, silly?
I’ve been looking at the way that other people do their videos, and it’s time to up my game. The only problem is that I can’t tell if I’ve developed some kind of a low-fi style that I need to get better at, or what. I don’t know. If that’s the case then I really need to figure it out.
I’ve got some stuff cooking, regarding that. Stuff involving other people.
But that stuff really involves me ALSO becoming a much better Austinite, and a better housewife, and a better friend, and a better live musician. All of which …
I suck at. Becuase I would much rather have an affair with competition after competition, waiting for my husband to leave so I can stop folding underwear and sprint upstairs to butcher my third draft of lyrics and strum the same four chords and work on the eighth version of a piano.
This is Not Healthy.
My name is Denise, and I’m ………
Ack. I think I am just feeling really angsty, and I am maybe trying to work myself into a good organizational place. Maybe trying to use my audience (you know…. the VAST SEA of you ALL … 
… to motivate myself into HappyFunDenLand, which is a place that I have Just Made Up and which makes me use Inappropriate Capitals in my Sentences like a Freak.
Oh, isn’t it Joyous! #thisisn’tworking.
I do actually feel a little better. I shouldn’t complain about my husband. He is long suffering, and brings donuts.
Twenty Shiny DXets to the first person who ever tells me that sometimes, I have to suffer too, and that sometimes … OCCASIONALLY, it is SOMEWHAT feasible that even though yes, he is EXCELLENT and AMAZING and that SURE, his RIDICULOUS SIDEBURNS are filling out, I can sometimes suffer too, and Mike can be Tough to Take … and that I am not the only Problem Child in this Relationship.
I do not need saving today, and I do not even need to be a hero to save myself.
… we’ll be fine.
