useful words I made for a slow day

1. fl’anger: little tiny flurffs of passive aggressive steam let off online; to take the pressure off (not to be confused with a FLANG{ER}, which I think is a sound effect used by the combination of infinitesimal delay and chorus-type things to vary the tops and bottoms of your envelope, I think… it can go WHRONNNNG if you like.)
2. flurff: a unit of emotion
3. sklorg: the sense of nauseating unfairness that crushes your soul when someone has metaphorically eaten your adorable chocolate bunny; and the entire World is cheering them on Whilst it is being Done to you.
4. zwip: a philosophy of happy calm realism that allows one to roll with all Punches.
(husband wants to know if there shall be a book called ‘Zwip and the Art of Motorcycle Repair’)
5. shoggs: shoes that have suffered a Dastardly Puddle Invasion
6. blurgged: you sat in a puddle. In jeans. So this describes you now.
(I didn’t though. I just thought I’d clarify! Nor did I step in a puddle)
5. stoozered: “Jay said ‘Den go to bed’ and she was right ‘cuz I’m *stoozered*…but I finished my work anyway…” (jay did not say that in this Particular Instance but would have had she thought to Do So)
this means too tired to work but Pressing on to the Finish.

those are some words. there will be more later. I am sleepy now.
Here is a medium -sized photo of a little Lego farmer being abducted by aliens for your Viewing Pleasure…

Sanity. Because somebody has to do it.

1. I am considering a return to sanity. I was thinking about just letting it all go, and drooling on myself. But I’m not going to.
2. I’m going to spend the next hour doing something I want to do.
3. Then I’m going to do some list making.
4. I will then FINISH a project. This will be finished tonight.
5. I will then FINISH writing a song.
6. I will probably figure out what to do about that song at that point. I will implement that plan tomorrow.

Tomorrow, I’m going to deal with Nur Ein and what will maybe be loose ends of my project. I hope, no. I hope it will be done when I’m done. A decisive finish that is good and clean and acceptable. I can hear it in my head. I hope it is awesome. God, I hope it is awesome.

After that, I have some rehearsals to prepare for. I can’t afford to suck on these Monday rehearsals. I also have to forward a song that I co-wrote this week to the guy I co-wrote it with. I have to get those tracks down for that so that we can have a decent demo for it. I have to learn 6 songs for one rehearsal and I don’t know how many for the other one. But I know they have at least 13 on the set-list. I also need to nail down my set list for Tuesday, and figure out if I’m going to cast.

I feel like in all of this I’ve completely forgotten that I have a solo thing that *I* wanted to do. Eventually, I’d like to book some shows.

I feel like I’m making a list now. I feel like I need a vacation. Or a nap …..

I don’t even want to talk about the state my house is in!

veryveryalone-stuff.

I am about to clean my house and cut a song. I will be doing both these things at the same time. It is like a cathartic thing. The song needs to be done by tomorrow. I am hoping to have things substantially nice around here by the time we go out of town. We’re going to a major cigar event and I’d like to have my other blog out of obscurity and up and running, as well as the twittering I never really do from my cigar-related place. That’s a part of my life I haven’t been able to relax into, and it feeds a social part of me that I’ve really been ignoring. The going to Ruta Maya/Habana House part and writing a review. I used to multi-task a lot better than this. I used to not be so bogged down in work that I couldn’t really follow through on and finish.

It’s all about lists, I think. And mine has gotten away from me too fast, and too big. I want to do everything, and in order to do that, you need a lot of help. I am not a big enough person to tackle all of that in the right order; to know how to do it. So I need to stick to my original plan, and remember why I do the things I do in the first place. Luckily I am a pack rat, and I remember exactly where I put the last bookmark. It’s like I imagine a sewing or knitting mistake to be. Unravelling something. I don’t really know, but it seems both tedious and rewarding at the same go. It’s conducive to getting me back into being happy alone and oblivious.

Any interest I got from people (small though it was) really shocked the hell out of me. It’s shocked me both online and locally with people who become my friends. I don’t do compliments well, although I crave them as I crave love and attention (even though I fear it and need my solitude). If I could shield myself from all people somehow (AND still get the exposure needed to grow a profitable music career that would sustain me and my family + allow me to practice and create + be desirable as a collaborator); if I could be veryAlone and not get lonely … if I could pick and choose my times and not alienate …

well, that would be selfish, wouldn’t it? Yes. Selfish. But I am a selfish creature. I love the humans but I do not play well with them and I like my cave and I sit in it and I want to be veryvery alone. But it’s LONELY there. So I am always Not Okay. Unless I am at the piano. Then I do not think of anything. Everything dissipates. And my attention is caught again if something is shined at me (usually a discussion of something I love. like a piano. or something related to this thing I love).

I think about this online endeavour and my goals for it. I never do anything without thought for how it fits into what I do musically. I’ve always been goal oriented, I used to be this way about writing, now it’s wrapped up into the both things. But online is awkward for me. I met my husband online, yes, so I’m not incredulous about it.

But it is so much easier to be whoever you want (or not) online. It’s made it easier for me to hide myself away. I can really focus on being the queen-bee of vague. I did it in Song Fu rather well. Song Fu is really a personal story of what I went through physically as a woman, dealing with songwriting challenges and personal feelings about coming out of one mental transition into another. Moving from one group of persons to another. Hopes and dreams and fears and feelings. I put it all on the line. And now it’s time for me to make another “album” of sorts where I start revealing other things. Or maybe mixing the things I reveal with a more streamlined, professional approach into the working process.

We’ll see how that goes. I already know that it sounds very … different in my head and I have already started bringing in characters who are not me to supplement my experiences in the songs. So if you start hearing far-fetched things in my music … now you will know – why.

And at this point, after the rain-stormy horrible-but-wonderful mistakes I made in this me-scented-charade…. why wouldn’t I?

Enigma Variations and Homework

I use music to think. I am quite selective. It’s picky for me. I usually think with very tune-ful things. I think this is because I am a songwriter. Either that or metal, which is also very tune-ful.

I have a bit of a short list. I would of course add an lp which I have of Claudio Arrau playing the Chopin piano concertos.

1. Barber’s Adagio for Strings.
2. Gould plays Beethoven piano concerto
3. Bach pieces make me think of Lord of the Rings and getting over stupid-boy-disappointment to a soundtrack of Brandenburg Concertos (to this day, *I* think of Hobbits and Elves and Orcs and Dwarves and think of the Flute/Harpsichord/Violin of five, with its epic Harpsichord part! And yes … the person who commented in the video is correct. It is an EPIC harpsichord solo. Getting to play it is on my bucket list, and I DO have the music for it and tool around with it every now and then).
4. Nimrod of course (Enigma Variations -below)
5. Albinoni of course, which I’ve probably used since I was about thirteen (this church in Plano, TEXAS has a really stellar recording and performance of this!).

I still don’t know how to explain myself. I’ve always tried, and it’s always gotten me into trouble. I’m even explaining myself less and less well and less and less efficiently with music these days. I’m becoming more and more entrenched in my own style and finding it harder and harder to deal with other people. I’m turning into a solo person and becoming more difficult to work with every day. I don’t know if this is aging, a hermit phase, or some kind of diseased mindset … or if I’m protecting myself from professional ACK-ness. Who knows these things?

I did write a poem, after listening to my 10-15 seconds a few times over and over … For those who are reading this and don’t know, read the blog entry where Jules talks about what I said to her over Twitter about what happens at around 50 seconds in the Elgar – Enigma Variations.

“12 seconds or so”

for you
this flower opens joyfully
(it’s perfuming all the rooms you see)
it always starts this way
each puzzle is a way to halt the disengage
I look around, out of my quivered center
I paint the world with fantasies
my silly notions… complicated schemes of love
and brilliant things envelop me
… society, kitchens, airplanes, picnics, forks, religion
all prevent these things from coming to reality …
my vision spins – then,
I collapse too quickly
rather than sighing naturally in closing with the sundown
I drag my grace behind me retrogressively
and make a classy exit
that I might roll alone again
inside my velvet cave

So … yeah … Jules always makes me think. A lotalot…..

Thinking is complex stuff. There really aren’t lots of words for that are there?

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.

Keys and Lies

This is a blog about my SongFu shadow entry. It’s going to be very stream of consciousness, as I go …

THE STORY
One of the things about this story is that it’s DIFFERENT from the original Bluebeard song! This is because it is a different wife. The first wife I envisioned for my king I had to make up. This is because Joe made me very, very nervous.

Joe isn’t just older than me agewise, he’s fuller and richer sounding than me. He has a more sophisticated sounding accent to me (to my ears). When he records himself, he often does this “man on the march with a very large army” thing with chorus-type effect and it makes him seem very present. Whereas I sound often very young and thin. I often wrinkle around the pitch and I haven’t quite come into the bottom-out of my range. I can feel it coming, but it hasn’t arrived yet. I think we work in a duet sitch because our vibratos just happen to match up. It’s odd because our voices do not. The only way I resolved this problem was to make a character piece till I learn the puzzle around our vocal chemistry better.

The basic thing is that he’s a remote cold ruler of a country and my first wife is a young and easily impressionable childlike slip of a girl that is completely overcome by this man. He teaches her EVERYTHING about love and she is lost in him. But yeah, curiosity kills the cat. She finds the key and all the women are hanging on the hooks.

It makes me want to finish it, in a trilogy. How did he become a serial killer? Hmmm. I swear I’m not a psychopath! Maybe I want an album of feminist fairy tale songs.

The story didn’t feel over. I wanted this king dead. And the real story is about the wife that is saved. I don’t like that. I want the girl to save herself. So I change the story. I want her to poison him. I think poison is very romantic. Maybe she has a cool ring that she keeps poison in. Maybe it’s the ring that the previous wife (who was her friend, after all!) didn’t have the good sense not to use at the first awkward breakfast after that stupid business trip to the orient where he went to get the textiles or whatever it is he does overseas …)

There’s an argument happening in a development happening between this husband and wife leading up to the line “what will you kill me for / I’ll kill you for – curiosity” The characters are not in sync. The facade of the marriage is starting to fall apart. It’s all based on sex and mourning for a mutual love. The wife was too fascinated with the intense love story of the original Bluebeard marriage (“I watched you love her” – from the first stanza), and Bluebeard was kinda (sorry!) sexing his troubles away with her. This new wife is very sensual … but not “the one.”

This is because Bluebeard has a problem with women. But he screwed up because he fell in love with the one from FuSixRound 2 and now he’s acting out. He really should stop killing his women. Perhaps he needs a ‘shrink.

In the blues part, it’s pretty certain that they do have a bit of a thing for each other. They certainly are addicted to propriety, an ideal of marriage, sex, the mourning of an idealized love that they both witnessed (and he experienced!) in the previous marriage (the ‘Something Very Horrible’ one). They need the One More Night. But this girl has her head on a bit straighter and she’s got follow through. She rises to the challenge and remembers that he can drink himself a bit and that she’s just got to suck it up past her fascination with this man. What’s her lie? Maybe that it’s okay. Who knows.

They both know it’s not okay. The whole situation is easy. It’s like a duel.

I have a little scene in my mind about the “ties that bind.” Like he imprisons her and then lets her out for one more night. This tracks with the Bluebeard story where she begs for ten more minutes. Mine becomes one more night. This is admittedly why I drag out section two a bit. I’m trying to stretch it out like you try not to say goodbye.

But onto the next section. The compositional ideas are, once again for me, not coming across in the recording … yet!

The Recording
1. I haven’t had a guy vocal in my songs since … before …. I’m experimenting with a themed thing. I have access to a lot of tools I’ve never had before as well.
3. This song is not finished. I’m not happy with it yet.
4. I think the engineering is very “tentative.” I think that this is because I am at a very tentative point in my life. I’m both confident and unsure.
5. I am also taking more risks and trying to bring together all the “things that I wanted to be when I grew up” into one cohesive style. It’s hard to amalgamate everything.
6. Joe has this opinion about the first Bluebeard tune. He said other people have shared this opinion, and I have since had that confirmed. It’s that my vocals are buried back in the mix and should be louder. This got into my head on this recording. I think I over-compensated. As a result, my vocals are too loud.
7. Joe’s vocal is not loud enough. His reverb is not right yet. I need it to come up and I need to spend time finding the right reverb for him. This is still in discussion. I fear I will never find the right effect for him; although I have gotten pretty good at editing his position and his wave when need be. I did it REALLY well in Bluebeard. Although … he hardly needed a thing because the man can lay down a track …
8. I want another instrument in here. Or three. I ran out of time, simply that. Also, I really wanted a real drumset. SXSW intervened. Maybe I’ll get my wish sometime.
9. The vocals are also out of sync a bit, in my opinion.
10. It was hard to line up the track to the instrumentals. Usually it is not hard to do this. Cubase has been acting up. The computer fully crashed twice during this and I actually lost a lot of data once!

I think I was having “marital problems” with the song! Just like they were.

Sometimes things don’t come quite as easily. However, I like the concept a lot and I think this has a lot of potential. It feels right. More mature. It’s worth a work-on. So I’m gonna keep at it. Which feels weird to say, because I can’t play it live or anything.

Anyway, the listening party is soon and Joe is casting so I’m off. I have to admit that I’m a bit nervous about this one, so will post this blog now.

Thanks for listening.

rock poem

This hot horrible stone will grow
and eat away
what’s down below

the one inside my head will too
will worm its way in-side ….

insidious what stones will do
and how they try to hide …

But my own truths spill forth, despite my bite
for everyone to see
and trust is plainly out of sight

the fate of gurus (march eleventh)

I think that a hot, wet pillow in a stomach
I think that a fist not swallowed down
I think that one half helmet of tight red-clamp to ear-backs
and sweat-slickening neck
should be enough
to maybe take a little guess

-well maybe not to subject;
but, on that, yes, I digress

I’ve worked hard for the little things-
my sanity, my papers;
each keychain, kitchen sink, and later
maybe even the right to splay
a hypothetical “faerie-me” out to make-up takers.
I’ve earned the ring
(the right to keep it on or take it off and sing!)
but I’m standing at a high place now -
if you will: a precipice

two roads never diverge in wooded shade for me;
there’s always intersections
always honking
always scary-busy…
I always wish I’d stayed home;
with my cheesy macaroni
with my piano…
it was fine to be forgotten
it was fine to be let go
If I forgot to be a legend
well no one was to know …

so if you find yourself in my crossroads,
split off but still mildly intrigued,
please understand it’s not a hunt
not jealousy! -but static cling
consider love, attention, learning, fantasy!
who are you?
is there something you could do?
could the fate of gurus maybe end with you?

a weird two days

It’s been a weird couple of days. Yesterday was the happiest day ever. And then today was the angst-iest day ever. All during this I have felt jealous, unprepared, paranoid, and over-bearing. And so, so unsure.

It’s really been going on for a while.

I just really don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not going to be up for long. I’ll make a list, because it’s late.

1. My neck has been hurting all the time again.
2. I’m not getting enough sleep.
3. I’m online too often, and not in a good way.
4. I’ve become clingy and codependent.
5. I am worried about what people think even though I have never met them before.
6. There are all these coincidences in my life that are not really coincidences.

I’m also really freaked out, because I’m coming more into myself. This isn’t a problem at home. We’ve known this was in process for a long time. But as usual, it’s kind of a problem out there. When I come out and say it like that, it gets the predictible responses – about how I should just be exactly who I am. But what if the person that I am is a person that makes people uncomfortable? And what if I make people uncomfortable in a way that they can’t really even define? What if my lyrics become more and more transparent? Less and less neatly metaphorical? What if I use you, for instance (whoever “you” are), as an example – or just mention you because it’s not even really a metaphor anymore ..?

It’s far easier to be uncomfortable because you’re being actively pushed – because you know really well that you disagree with something/someone. It’s the light disapproval that I hate. It smacks of the old things that we have left behind – all for good reasons. I hate the expectation that I would act in a certain way because I am of a certain station. And I feel it all the time, even though I make my own path and you’d think I’d have left those things behind. I actively chose and picked my life. Down to the molecule. We do as we like, as we see is fitting. We are careful of these things.

I don’t know. One thing I do know, once again, is how TIRED I’m getting every single night!

Another poem

Here’s another one. Two (maybe more if I feel like it) in the same day.

I’m thinking about doing a series on intimacy. It’s one of my favorite topics. Maybe it’s the social skills thing. How I get really attached to people. How it’s weird. I wrote this one long ago, when I just got really FASCINATED with this random guy’s eyes at a cafe. He had these really strange dark blue eyes and his female companion had the most beautiful wrists. But I tried not to stare, because even though I feel like I have a god-given right to stare at the other humans (because I’m a songwriter, so I think that all people have been given as my personal inspiration fodder-eye candy-subject matter I-know-I’m-horrible!) … even though – well … it’s RUDE.

So I just wrote a poem instead. Because if I’d been abducted by a hostile alien ship, and so had my anonymous blue eyed dishy friend … well, he certainly wouldn’t mind me staring into his interesting eyes and even hearing me talk about these things. Whereas now all I can do is bore my husband and close friends with this crap. Or make you read about it. That is if you’re still reading. And not thinking perhaps this poor woman’s husband should institutionalize her and find a nice girl who can successfully make soup.

Ha, ha. Just kidding. I don’t belong in an institution, and I make AWESOME soup. At some point, I will post an entry called ‘Tomato Soup Night.’ You will LOVE IT!

For now, here is the poem …

STRANGERS

If you and I
were stranded
on some desert isle
-or absconded with
by aliens
who only thought of
recipes –
of human meat …

If we were trapped
inside their spaceship-kettle
would you cling to me
as desperately as you now cling
to your precious
anonymity?

If we were in a
prison –
awaiting execution
would we bind together
in our commonality –
discuss a revolution?

Or would we look away
as on a subway
or a street
and think that universes
parted us?
would we hold each other
in a subway’s
uncommitted, stern embrace
-the one-night stand
of forced proximity
enforced by traveling space