more lists. just to get through the night.

1. Audio, if you do it correctly, can get REALLY lonely.
2. Piano, if *I* do it correctly, is SUPPOSED to be solitary.
3. I have not been alone, and I am suddenly afraid of being alone, and my own shadow.
4. I am suddenly addicted to attention, like a small child. This could be why I am hedging on getting the gigs again. I know better than this.
5. Something is once again missing from the puzzle that is my ridiculous brain.

Screw the lists. Practicing was lackluster today, as I knew it was going to be. I knew it was going to make me into an angry red sore to be around. I knew it was going to take my mojo away. I knew it was going to make me un-sexy. I knew it was suddenly going to be stupid. It was going to be “Denise what’s wrong?” and … whatever. Even if it was in my own head. I knew that it would be tempting to run away from slow hands and burning wrists and clumsy fingers. I knew eventually I would HAVE to run away from a twitching in my right hand because if I overworked it we would get another Hungarian January Repeat (specifically the friska! – which I will never play this way! … because few can, I can’t even get through the music so much) and we don’t want that.

By the way, I would kill for Horowitz’s trills. They make me cry.

more about me and my process than you care to know

1. I think in 140 character or less segments. This is a Problem. I think that I have become attention seeking and desperate. I don’t know if this is because of the music business, chat rooms, or both. I suspect a little bit of both.
2. I have stopped completing songs with me in mind. I think that I USED to complete songs with “me” in mind because I used to keep myself in kind of a forced isolation mode. While this was not exactly healthy, I did control the stimuli around me. I could think and I could write. Things weren’t good last year, and they were better in 2005 production-wise.
3. I think that maybe my husband being home all the time is affecting me somehow. I’m not sure how. I think that maybe it is making me NEED to be around people ALL THE TIME. Even on the internet. When he leaves, I don’t let out a huge sigh of relief and start running to the piano. I run to look to see what someone else has posted. I think this is because I know that I’m not going to get a 6 hour block of time to work. I don’t think that this is anyone’s fault. It is what it is. So I’m trying to do the type of work that one does in these short bursts. The practice-practice can come later I suppose.
4. It’s going to be a little hard for me when he goes back, because I’m going to have to go right back into being the person that I used to be who is more focused. There will be less of me … around … all the time. I’ll be sitting at my instrument for 5-7 hours at a time. I’ll be sitting on my computer, and it will be disconnected because I’ll maniacally be in the folders shifting the lyrics back and forth. Because I have hours of time to just be thinking in clips and poetry. I won’t be going on YouTube and getting ideas. I won’t be immersing myself.
5. I’ll probably stop listening to other people’s music for a while, which I’ve gotten some raised eyebrows for. But I know that I’ve actually just isolated and wiped everything off my iPhone, and put maybe less than 100 tracks on there from time to time (I have less than 100 tracks on there now). I don’t really like music in a traditional way. I don’t feel like I have that luxury. I think about music in form, I think about it in flows and feelings. It has to make me feel a certain way. I will pick out a simply AWFUL song which I hate because the first eight bars of groove makes me feel ABSOLUTELY turned on. Then I will just rewind it over and over and OVER again to that and only that.
6. I’ve become obsessed with covers and gigging, which I didn’t use-d to be (bad grammarandIdon’tcare).
7. I like the way I talk, and write lyrics. I doubt I’m going to be changing this.
8. I had a strange moment in the studio. I went in to help with pianos and … [EDIT] …I was going in for tech reasons, because I have cool pianos. I’ve “rendered” (that’s what I call it – I think you actually say “modelling”) a bunch of pianos with pianoteq; and I thought they were really great. I use them in my work. I also made some synths and some little wurlys. Some little cute organs and some other things. I practiced a solo for one of the songs, because I thought – {edit, “maybe I’ll be called upon to do something on amother song on this record; and”} … it will be {edit “something“} with an instrument like this. But I went in [EDIT-OUT]

The {edit: “person who ended up playing the piano on the track that WAS worked on that day is a different sort of player to me. I wouldn’t have fit into that song, had I been called upon to play it. So it’s good that they had another player. But it does make me realize how much I really don’t get the vibe sometimes, of other people’s music. How differently I interpret things.”}

I am not really a masterful fit anywhere, but with my own music. This happened in the TMA as well. Well, it happened in a specific project in the TMA, and I had to kind of negotiate around that. Typically, I thought it would end in disaster, but it just ended in an interesting relationship that is strange to say the least. I’m full of strange relationships. The other collaboration I did is more confusing, because I fit into it so seamlessly that I’m still thinking about it and it bothers me a LOT. I didn’t play an instrument on this one.

I write in this blog because no one is really paying attention anymore. I can read the signs of when people get too busy and kind of tell. I got a lot of votes this time in the Song Fu, but this is a good time for me to keep flying under the radar. At least, I hope so, because I think I’m getting to that point where I’m starting to slip and to lose myself.

Plus, and this is a big worry – I don’t know how many (really), of my votes were “shiny votes of the other sort” and not really votes I would have gotten with a song of my own complete effort. I’m rather nervous about the next round. Maybe I made too much of a good decision. I’ve never been so grateful for the support of Austinites, and never been so SURPRISED at them crawling out of the woodwork at the last minute.

Now, I suppose that I will have to do a quick video – going against everything I believe – explaining a silly thing I say. I’m part of a community whether I like it or not. I can’t really explain this weird little family that we have. It’s pretty intense to say the least. I don’t really know my role in it either. I guess I worry too much about stuff. :S

Listy McAllister wants to barf on her computer.

I have been feeling SUPERcalisuckaliciousmegacrappadocious today. Gack (that’s an “ack,” but even stronger. Reserved for those special times in a girl’s life where it’s really cold and SUPER SUCKY!)

1. I cannot get my #$&(% together on the video-creation front. I have audio in one channel. I’d like to throw iMovie into the sea. Everything Mac will not work with my Apogee Duet, and I don’t understand anything. I’d just like to videotape myself. Yes, I know that we are not calling it “videotape.” I’m not a doofus. I was born in the 70s. Get over it.
2. My house is a mess, and I can’t find the cable to my good videocamera, which is where all the Harry-Watermelon footage is stored.
3. I’m doing charts for some TMA thing, but my heart’s not in it today. I’m making dumb mistakes on a scratch track that I should be able to do in my sleep. I think it’s because it’s cold and dark in my house. And because nobody loves me. Or I don’t love myself. Or because Finale won’t let me delete the last blank stave, which means that no one will love me, because it’s a simple frickin’ thing, isn’t it???
3&1/2. I need to stop posting random stuff all over the interenet, because no one is paying attention.
4. I need to do the dishes.
5. I need to clean my room.
6. I have four people that I need to stop net-stalking. Seriously. Get a frickin’ life!
7. I want my husband to come home and entertain me.
8. I need some friends that are interested in me.
9. I need some local gigs at cool places that interesting friends will find … uh … interesting and that I will not want to barf when I play there.
9&1/2. I need this subversive thing that I’m doing on the internet which I will not talk about for fear of being made fun of for the rest of my life to get “another installment” so that I can get another “fix” and be happier. It’s not as bad as net-stalking but it’s close.
10. I need to figure out how to blog and write about myself without wanting to barf.

I need to not click publish, but I’m going to and that’s just too bad …

Nice New Post :)

I’m not going to elaborate much. It’s not cool. But it’s time for me to get A LOT more professional about how I deal with my emotions. I’ll probably find that there will be a lot more time in my day.

In other news, here’s 10 EXCITING THINGS that have occurred.

1. I’m learning all about the II-V-I chord progression in jazz. This is basic stuff to some people, but this is stuff that I just kind of glossed over. It’s not really something I ever utilized much.

2. I finally bought a Longhorn shirt. At Academy.

3. I renewed my Austin Public Library card.

4. We went to Costco and all we got was Q-tips and Listerine.

5. When I went to the library with my friend (the massage therapist who owns the turtle), I checked out an OBSCENE number of books:

-Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, The Name of the Rose (Umberto Eco)

-The Lovers (Pearl S. Buck), The Good Earth (also Pearl S. Buck), Bound Feet & Western Dress, The Beauty Myth

-Jass, An Equal Music, One Bite with a Stranger, Bergdorf Blondes

6. I have till midnight to have – my Brahms Intermezzo, and I think I’m gonna do it.

7. I cleaned my fridge

8. I worked on three songs and started some new lyrics

9. I buckled and downloaded a superfluous app for loyalty points in Vampires Live

10. I got to wear long sleeves three and a half times.

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?

interesting …

Obviously, I haven’t wanted to write.

I’ve had tag shame, and I’ve had clutter shame. I wrote about this more intimately in my lj (I won’t link it, it’s in one of the blogrolls!). I haven’t been able to work.

I have been having practice trouble here. I like to strut around pretending that I’m okay and that the places in my life are all compartmentalized and that I’ve really got it together with the structure that is me. But I don’t. It’s like a messy little city block with the wrong materials going up into the wrong buildings. And this is a baaaad metaphor. It’s like I’m doing a cigar review … here. And cussing too much. Which I shouldn’t really do anymore, here. Not much. Not without warning you.

I’d like to tell more people about what I’m doing here. I haven’t told anyone officially what I’m doing here. I haven’t told the people at work – about my cigar blog … haven’t really pressed anyone to read what I’m writing. I don’t self promote. I say I’m not ready.

This is all just “rehearsal.” I’m trying it out.

I’ve been working on the Ab major Polonaise, even though I know damn well that I’m not a concert pianist. I had this weird hallucination that the notes were melting off the page. This meant something – but for our purposes here it means that I’m not getting my work done. And I have many, many things to do.

I’d just like to say that this morning I got out of bed, went downstairs, and made up a complicated piano part to a new song. I haven’t been allowing myself to songwrite because I’ve been bogged down by the limitations of “I have to do the already existing CD.”

I have to finish the recordings of what I already have before I am allowed to make new music.

And I don’t write anything new to people, because my organizational systems are a mess. I might “tag” wrong or disorganized (meaning people will make fun of what I think of as my “inside-the-denise-brain [SEE 'RANDOM SNIPPETY FOOTNOTES PAGE']‘ tagging.

But it’s hard to work, without getting into a work frenzy. I guess I’m just going to have to learn to balance things – without going overboard. It’ll be interesting.

job-job-jobby-job-job-job

Some anger and cussin’ and smack talking … eeek …

Practice makes Perfect!

PG-13, mild language post

nightnight

it’s looking a little nicer on here, and a little more “me” … so I’m pretty pleased. But I’ve got “mouse cramp.” Which I think is actually sort of sad.

This is definitely a different kind of “work,” I remember now! And when you’re trying to express yourself in your professional life, well let’s just say this is very different from what I remember doing. There’s much more presentation and research involved. I’m setting up a lot more. I’m thinking about other aspects of things as well. I’m doing a lot of other things off the computer.

I have to try to tell myself that practicing Stravinsky, while seemingly not a high yield activity, is just as important and necessary for my “final mission” as waiting for phone calls and working on this blog which will eventually split into many different things (or just settle into itself on a website) … at any rate – it will just mesh into my eventual home. The goal is to have the myspace site point away from itself to a more permanent home where I do all my internet “living.” So we’ll be coming off of denisehudson.com – which is parked and I own it (I’ve parked it). People have offered me for it, but it’s mine!

Anyway … I’ve got to sleep now. I REALLY need to go to martial arts in the damn evening tomorrow. This is important to sanity, peace, quiet, and balance in the universe.

I pray for all the trouble around us. Whatever “pray” means for me these days, because I don’t even know. I need to work on that song too.