I’m at my Engineer’s house. I can finally talk about him and his going-s on more freely. Like that he has a girlfriend who massages stuff. I don’t like to talk about people freely because it’s really none of other people’s business. That’s my philosophy on blogging anyway.

She actually massages people. That sounded really bad. She’s a professional. We’re all professional here.

Anyway, one of his projects is the Disciples of Sound. He’s doing their CD. He asked my opinion after he played a track. I had just gone to see them live at Headhunters a couple days ago. Headhunters is a club that is located right next to Hoboken Pies somewhere downtown. Apparently, my friend says that it’s the sweet kind of New York pie, rather than the salty one. And that the water makes the pizza. Not here in these pies, but in actual New York. I told him to bring pizza water next time he went to New York to visit his parents. I’d tell him to get his parents to bring me some pizza water, but this guy has sent his extremely classy mother my extremely UNCLASSY list of our compiled horrible band names. When they come here, they fly here in a very small plane. They think that I am weird enough.

I have this fantasy of Mike and I tossing perfect pizza in a pristine kitchen that looks like a lab though. I slide down the fireman’s pole from my library into my studio. Then I go into the conservatory (where the piano is) which is of course connected to my little studio (my studio is not very big because although I am an awesome and famous song-writer composer-performer chickie, I am kind of still a dilletante engineer – having no taste for numbers and no attention span for album names or band statistics or gear specifications). I go through the secret passageway in my conservatory into the kitchen. Why yes, it does look like the one in Clue.

The opinion I gave him on the Disciples sucked, and probably didn’t help matters at all. I can’t give a good opinion of harder bands. I’m feeling pretty shitty about my engineering skills lately you might-could-tell, which is probably why I haven’t really been on the ball about setting up my studio. The lack of fireman’s pole or secret passagway or light-filled-conservatory-with-BadAssed floor-which houses-a-Fazioli could also have something to do with this.

… I haven’t really been doing anything about anything other than learning to play jazz piano. I’m not really finishing songs. I’ve started looking at venues, but you kind of have to comit to that intention. It’s a step. People all around me are mounting major video making campaigns. I’m NOT on the band wagon. I’m freaking out about this. Ack!

But it’s good that I’m learning to play jazz piano. It’s turning me into a bad ass piano player. I know though at some point, I’m going to have to crack open Cubase and deal with my damn problems. I’m going to have to book gigs, and take photos of my self, and videotape things. And have a real recording made of myself.  And finish cleaning out those two rooms so I can put up the friggin soundproofing, which has been sitting there like a constant reminder of how I suuuuuucccckkkk.

He’s editing drums now. Not the Disciples of Sound. It’s funny how he talks. Watching him do drummy-druminator thingys (not the technical term for what he is doing, and part of my problem), leads me to understand a few key things:

1. Saying “cockn’balls a lot may turn me into a better engineer, over time.
2. I really can’t give good feedback on stuff that is “heavy  music.” Seriously. I have nothing meaningful to say. I just smile and look like I have the IQ of a champagne grape. This will not turn me into a better engineer, over time.
3. It would be real helpful if I had two large monitors in my life because having everything out on huge-o screens it AWESOME for big, fat editing.
4. I’m happy I’m a Steinberg girl still (even though I know not what I am doing), and ProTools can still suckit.
5. I LOOOOVVVVEEEE Leslie speakers

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.

everything falls apart …

It’s all in a complete mess.  There’s no stability, no excuse.  No center.

I try to do the right things.  Try to move on.  I don’t understand why she gets to behave as she does.  Gets to do whatever she pleases.  It’s completely untoward.  God only knows what else she is doing …

Is she trying to reactivate the little social group that got her into trouble in the first place and ruined things for me?  Does she really think that it’s going to all just be fine, fine, fine?  It was bad enough with EXT sending stupid update emails to my husband – but there was really nothing that we could do about that.  I hadn’t decided what to do about his mother’s birthday card.  None of this makes any sense to anyone but me.

He’s not allowed to talk to me.  I’m a huge threat.

So what on earth is going on with emailing my husband.  Who does this?  Are the rules just changed somehow.  I just want to write a stupid email or something:

“Dear Clueless Wad of Denial - 

Things are good with me.  Had a birthday.  Yeah, the Denise lot’s actually slowly improving … although one thing that hasn’t changed is that I still talk to my husband all the time, every day … about every little thing.

The All Knowing, All Seeing, 

Not Really.

PS.  What’s in your wallet?

PPS.  If your mail is still being screened, my husband actually comes with baggage; and thusly cannot be an object of nostalgia for anyone …”

Now wouldn’t that be lover-ley? {evil smile}

Puh-Poo and Sharpened Blades

The excrement has really hit the fanblades of destiny now … I think this is a wakeup call.

The other morning I woke up at around 4AM, and couldn’t get back to sleep.  I was restless.  I tried everything.  Now I’ve made some revelations since my last post, so I haven’t been quite as antsy … and I’m almost ready to finish my backlog of updates and stuff I have lying around on my computer and really start this online experiment that I’ve been trying to do for awhile.

So I was lying in bed, thinking about why I dawdle.  I was thinking about how I don’t like to put things online because of the fact that I have been worried about censorship for the past ten years.  I haven’t wanted people to get offended.  There’s more, of course, and I’ll probably get deeper into it in some other online places … but really I’ve been watching myself.  Sometimes it’s good to watch yourself.  But really, I hold back – trying, wanting, striving … to be perfect.

Yes. Perfect. The me actually believing it can be done and is required of me.

What is perfect?  Not me, of course.  And I’ve always hated that fact – much more than the avarage person.  In a way that is very, very self destructive.

So I lay in bed that fateful morning thinking about this stuff and how I think too much and blah-blah-blah (basically thinking too much about thinking too much).  And I decided to get up and do some work.

I fired up the old gal (my inspiron 1150).  But it didn’t fire.  The network card, which is being held together by green electrical tape and is embarrassing anyway, got stuck.  The little black pushy-button-doohickey thing that you push in to pop the card out was permanently stuck way out of the computer.

I took the entire computer apart that morning.  Down to the bare innards.  I’ve seen deep down into that computer’s deep inner being.  I feel as though we truly, truly know one another.

I am now typing this entry on a brand new MacBook.  It’s white, pristine.  I feel like I’ve cashed in my long standing relationship – a ten or twenty year marriage, perhaps, for a zippier hot blonde or something.  I feel like a dirty old cheap man who has decided it’s time for a playboy bunny now that the surgeries aren’t working for his older, fifty-year-old model anymore.  

Husband thinks that I anthropomorphize these things, I’m willing to bet.  But the Mac is so sleek and white that I couldn’t help but mess it up a bit with the sticker that GEB gave me (that stands for something for a reason).

He kind of unwittingly helped name my computer because some people at his job gave him some sticker from a label maker.  His other job I mean.  During some days, he is a coffee shop person, although I don’t know what you call a man-barrista …

What are you if you are a male Barista?  A Barrister?  Isn’t that a lawyer?  Why does a guy get to practice law and a chick make your coffee … who made that rule?  I’m getting all mad now, over stuff that I don’t understand.  I’d ask GEB – but then he’d probably learn that I had a blog … he’d probably learn who they sold the droids to – and that would lead him back … home {ulp!}

This post is too silly to continue.

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…)

a quick one

We’re going to the cigar shop. I just put a poem on myspace. I think that this was an ineffectual decision, but probably much better than writing strongly worded letters to people in my past. This would accomplish nothing.

I’m “trying out” for a band today – in about four hours. I’m also going to try to make it to lodge. I told Christina that I was thinking of it like “I was going to audition them” though.

EXTRA: Something justhappened that makes me really angry. I am not going to talk about it though. I may post another poem, but here this time.

A CHICK WITH A STICK, AND A GEE-TAR PICK #2

at the humidor

I’m at the humidor writing my second review, and I just saw a poster. I am going to finish my review -but I didn’t want to make non-review related comments on the review.

The poster was for the John Lennon thing at the coffee shop which I frequent. I was in the bathroom after having spooked this poor woman out by peeking out of the stall at her because I thought that she sounded like Christina (hopefully she didn’t think that I was stalking her). Well when I was done I washed my hands. What was once my “ex-whatever’s” band name is now “His Band Leader and the Band Names”

They used to just be the “Band Names”, I think. It’s pretty amusing to me. Not the usual sinking feeling of “oh crap … I don’t have a gig!”

Now the curly dude in the cap that does computer all the time is having a secret conversation with Mike. Mysteriouser and mysteriouser …