Dear Internet (but not really)

1. I have a gig. Today this isn’t a good thing. Missing it isn’t an option.
2. I’m starving. But eating isn’t really an option either for the same reason that missing the gig isn’t an option. Or rather, eating will cause the missing of the gig. Which is unfortunate. I’ll do what I can.
3. Writing and checking in with writing all day has calmed me down. I know that I’m disconnecting, because I’m not even all that worried about the ning thing. Not even enough to post a link to the letter. Not really even enough to post links to anything.
4. I have no feelings for anything about anyone today. I am feeling really cold and unaffected and clinical.
5. Why did I title the post this? Oh yeah.

I have a lot of work to do right now. I counted up the projects. There are 32 active projects. That’s just stupid. They are not all marked “urgent.” Many of them are just mine … just things I am doing. So many of them are different things for people, one person doesn’t really know about the other, different aspects of my life, blah-blah-blah.

I think there are really just 12 things that HAVE to get done. Maybe 7 that need doing by this weekend’s end. Oh wait … no eight. That’s not too horrible. That’s 8 music things. Not eight life things. I still have to function and be a Productive Wife and Member of a Family and Human Being in a Community of Folks Who Give a Rat’s Ass.

(by the way, Mike does not put these ideas in my head. he is very nice. i am a goober.)

[aside. my iPhone just totally FREAKED OUT on me. it's sync-ing with my brain!]

But I will have to get stuff done, is what I’m saying. And if I feel like I’ve got the loose ends I have to say something. So I’m writing a letter to “myself” which is up here now so that I can say, “enough already” … if you’re distracted Mz. D, it’s Enigma Variations time. You’re grounded from the internet. There is too much stimuli. Because what if there’s a hostile takeover or something. An asparagus shortage. An alien landing and they don’t care about us but they have only come here to steal our mayonnaise. Gah! That would be a tragedy!

(why would the aliens need mayo? couldn’t they make it themselves?)

This is less a blog right now than a chronicle of my slow-slip into insanity! I really wanted this to be A Professional Thing. I am A Professional.

Hah. Not So Much. But my songs are hardly professional either, are they. And all the while I do this, I’m working in the back of my skull.

I suppose I should take the good with the bad and just let it happen as it does and do what I need to do to care for myself. Whatever is distracting.

Whatever.

1. I am unusually reluctant to leave the house today.
2. I went to the doctor today, and the appointment was UN-nice. DISTINCTLY un-nice. But I needed to hear what she had to say.
3. I have overdue responsibilities, and am in a process of mildly ruining my life.
4. I still am not really eating all that much
5. I will have late fees at the rental place and that’s just how it is.
6. Everything I touch turns sour and curdles and has to be thrown in the garbage (at least, that’s what it feels like today).
7. I REALLY don’t want to perform tonight.
8. I have to learn another cover song this weekend, which I am not relishing.
9. I’m lucky people love me.
10. I am also damn lucky that anyone at all is paying any attention to me.

I was under the assumption that I was doing well and that things were going great. Sitting at rest for any length of time is a baaaaad idea though.

Sometimes I feel as though I am a collection of symptoms, and not really a person.

the musical

I don’t know what my problem is.  Australia is burning.  This is much worse than what is going on in my life.  I feel so bad for my husband.  It’s his home.

The musicial was, as I figured, devestatingly distracting for me.  I don’t know if I’m going to get the Song Fu stuff done or not.  It’s due at 11:59 PM ET tomorrow.  There’s no telling what will happen, if I’ll finish.  I’ve got vocals to cut.  Who knows.  I’ll also have to mix down.  We’re at Ruta, smoking.  I’m blogging.  I’ve got lyrics and a rough tune.  An idea for accompaniment.  

I almost quit a few times, quit a lot of things.  The musical was devestating for me in a lot of ways.  I really thought is was going to be almost impossible for me to write a happy song.  Everything of mine was hanging out everywhere.  I really don’t know how I’m going to accomplish this “being out in public among the people I used to know” thing.  I trust my new friends now, but all the old people that I used to know don’t get that I have to make complete breaks and complete changes.

The musical was good too.  I met good people.  I may or may not have new friends.  We’ll see what happens.  I’m going to try to keep in touch with people.  Maybe I will go to my band-director friend’s party that he’s throwing in appreciation.  I’m going to try to get over things that bother me. 

The fires have been like the flaming Katrina of Australia right now.

uh-oh

It’s very tenuous, you know.  It could ALL go up in smoke at the drop of a hat.  And it’s VERY, VERY easy to drop hats.  Lots and lots of hats.  I am a fickle creature who is psyched out easily and practically CRAVES distraction.  It’s much like a disease.  

I’m helping a friend out with the performance of another musical.  The facts of it are all a little wonky and make me uncomfortable.  It’s over on Sunday.  I’m hoping that I will not be distracted from my work.  This really has the potential to cause a LOT of problems for me.  My friend says that he really wants to help me with my project on this, but I don’t think that he understands that he could probably help more by … well, I don’t know … I don’t know what would help with this situation other than for it just not to exist.

So now we’re in the next paragraph.  I have to go mail something unpleasant, or not.  It occurs to me that I might need to protect my intellectual property somehow before I mail out these notes.  I’m a little freaked out about doing this.  As usual, I’m freaked out about standing up for myself, feeling all weasely and shifty.  This is one of those things that I would talk about with a professional friend.  And I don’t have one of those I can get good-and-neuro with yet.

fu-fu

I am waiting, with more bait-breath, for some kind of sign about the song-fu thing.  I am impatient.  I have not really finished any kind of solid food today.  I am a freak.  I stayed up FAR too late last night and I should probably consume some blueberries or something.

I have to send in my notes for the musical, because for some bizarre reason they consider them invaluable. I am not sure why this is – since the vibe I was getting in rehearsals was what led me to drop out of the musical in the first place.  We left on good terms, unlike many of my projects – where we have not only burnt bridges, but blown them into dimensions where their fields of reality cease to exist and dangerous event horizon-type things are created and chain reaction horrible-nesses occur all over other galaxies in other people’s alien rock bands.  That didn’t happen with this one.  Things were regretful and polite.  The phrase, perhaps we can work together again, was tossed out by the person I thought I was troubling … and if I remember correctly – I think it was accompanied by looking forward to … I guess if I’m this surpried, this makes me sound like some kind of problem child.

I don’t know, perhaps I am a space cadet.  I do not regret my actions, since I need the time and I don’t have the learning-curve stuff together on the software … I was clear about this.  I don’t know why I’m second-guessing myself.  I talk to the husband about this over-and-over.  And I need to be careful with all future things.  I should be careful with other approaches, even wtih Song Fu, to a certain extent.  If I pour all my energy into songs about lactating weasels (not that I will do this!), this is not really celebrating the strange flower that is myself.

My husband’s homeboy who is my ex-boss is doing some movie about horses and he has mentioned that he wants me to collaborate on some string parts.  I don’t know if this will come to pass or how this will be structured.  I am going to play around with viola noises today, because he brought his guitar into the smoke shop and I listened to his sonic interpretation of horses running in e minor-ishness.  I think I can work with this.  It reminds me of my marine/bro and his playing the theme from ‘Brokeback Mountain.’  I think everyone has a ‘Brokeback Mountain’ story, probably like knowing where where you during this last inauguration or 9-11 or or any other pivotal moment.  Okay – maybe not so much.  Or I don’t know – I think so … it was a fairly large moment in cinema, anyway.

When saying “cinema-anyway” really fast over-and-over becomes recklessly entertaining, you know that you have abused your body … hopefully for the last time.  Perhaps I should shut up and eat my pineapple.

You know that feeling you get when YOU think they think you’re a stalker; but you feel like you’ve just started coming on too strong? Because you’re that co-ey of a friend?

I hate that word. Time to chill.

addiction

I have a little sneaky and insidious problem.  I don’t talk about it, because when you put it on paper it seems like a really righteous thing.  It actually sounds really cool.  Actually, I’m sort of proud of it.  As far as addiction goes, I think it’s much better and less shameful than other addictions – which actually makes it more shameful, and probably (for me) more dangerous.

I seriously think that this is probably worse for me than drugs, or eating, or sex, or smoking, or whatever I’ve been doing.  It’s over-practice.

Over-practice has caused me physical pain, emotional pain.  It’s broken my heart and my spirit.  It’s made me sick.  It’s alienated me from my friends.  It’s completely stagnated me in my career.  It’s given me an illusion of control.  It’s made me feel completely justified that I’m doing the right thing.

You can’t get arrested for over-practice.  Now I actually have had to go to rehab for my addiction, when I had a binge and I popped my arm and gave myself tendonitis or something like that – in January.  I’m lucky I don’t have carpel tunnel.  But there’s really no methadone for the hacking that I do.  In some ways it shares some traits with anorexia; with the striving for perfection.  Anything that is self-loathing about oneself can be rectified in the abuse heaped upon me in the quest for ultimate perfection.  Because it is impossible to score a perfect performance.  If I restrict myself and my career to when I score a perfect performance … that’s a harshness.  An ultimate punishment.  Something that I probably will never live up to as a professional.

Over-practice has its benefits too.  It’s one of those addictions that I’m good at, like sex or eating.  The ones that are legal … that you could do fine if only you could do them in moderation.  See, I’m fine at the just-staying-away from it stuff.  I can’t get hard drugs – nor have I tried them.  I’m a wussy – because if I actually did something like coke and I could get it easily and I derived any benefit from it, I would be totally screwed and I’d be hooked.  And that would be bad because there is a stigma and I am not good at being that kind of problem child.  I am too secretive and I would not be able to handle that kind of pressure.  I think that I’m so above all that though, and I’m really just exactly the same.  Except I’m kind of worse, because I’m in loads of denial about my problem.  And my problem really isn’t seen that seriously because it’s not really that dangerous (like meth or whatever) or troubling (like cannibalism).  I’m totally in denial, bent double-over like Igor with laughing drool squibbling out the corner of my mouth, 3AM-crazy-eyed and wheezy.

But I secretly know I’m not any better than anyone else.  I won’t take signs and signals or no for an answer - the eyes are bugging.  And this scares me in the dead of night, at 3:28 AM when I’ve played the first four systems of the Rondo from the Pathetique over and over and over and over and over for the past hour and a half.  Making it faster and faster and faster and faster.  Thinking that if I could just make it absolutely perfect … that my life would be completely okay and that everything would change for me.  And it’s all because I’m acting out.

My husband says that all these feelings of mine – these feelings about the “new person” and the “old person” (and my lack of control particularly on the latter issue) are really all about the fact that I don’t have my enviornment under control.  I’ve got to finish setting up my room.  I’ve got to clean up my area.  I’ve got to finish putting my software together – that last little bit so that I can do the rest of the stuff that I’ve got to do for the musical.  Then I will be good to go.  Perhaps I will not be obsessing about stupid crap.  But as it is now, I dread the morning – and I sit around and over-practice rather than go to sleep.  Of course, I make sure that I’ll over-practice by ingesting four cups of coffee during the day.  

None of this is smart.  None of it.

But it all looks good on paper as I get more and more flawless technique and I slowly die inside – heading for another bout of tendonitis like I had in January because I pushed my luck with a Liszt piece I shouldn’t have been abusing myself with.

And then, after, the shame of knowing what I have done, and how bad I will hurt in the morning and how I don’t know if I’ll be able to function.  Just how sick will I be from it all?

Barton Springs, finally.

This entry has nothing to do with the pool in Austin.

Downhill Fast

This post is rated PG-13 for a bit of cigar room language (just some color, I’m not describing a sexy colonoscopy or anything…)

job-job-jobby-job-job-job

Some anger and cussin’ and smack talking … eeek …