bruised

So apparently the directors thought my song sounded "too thin" and want to add people to it. There's a girl who plays banjo back in town for the holidays who is going to see if she thinks she can do it and call me in the morning to figure out more stuff. I'm mad at the timing. Why did they let it go this long before "auditioning" me? Now it's 2.5 days before the show, and one of those days is Christmas and half of the other day I'll be working.

I won't deny that I am pretty heartbroken. I've been working hard for a while now on this one song and while I have had bouts of nervousness, I had gotten to a point that I felt good about it. Not fancy, brassy or loud, but sweet and heartfelt and honestly delivered. I wanted to be good enough the way I am, loved and appreciated for my uniqueness. I mean, the song was sung by a frog puppet fer crying out loud, it's not like his voice was all that full. He did have a string section backing him up, but where would I find something like that on short notice?

Tempting as it is to completely hand off the song to someone else, crawl into a hole and die, I'll keep trying till Saturday to work something out so they like it by adding more voices and stuff. If this is really what I want to do, I need to start putting myself out there and actually doing it. I guess if nothing else I'll find out faster if it's going to work or not and if not, the faster I can move on to something else.

This is where that line gets weird and blurry of "Be your creative self" that the books and teachers say who are trying to encourage artists. It's one thing to be yourself by yourself, it's quite another to have other people pay attention while you are being creative, and yet another thing to be in a situation where you don't get to call the shots, where someone else is in control and has the last word.

But part of being an artist IS sharing the things you do.

Am I too soft for this? Am I not good enough? Not ready? Delusional? Because eff - if I am embarrassing myself, don't play nice with me, don't mess with my head. That's not doing me any favors.

I'm exhausted. Two super late nights in a row trying to do cookies and stuff, and now I'm not even sure if I have it in me to finish off the effort to plate everything up. G likes the gingersnaps, he'd eat them all eventually...

Roller Coaster Ride

Oh yeah, so that emotional roller coaster I was mentioning in the last post, we took a little downhill turn today.  I'm still overall very much happier than I was a few months ago, exciting things are happening, little jobs are coming in for a little bit more money, I'm keeping really busy and being more social, and I almost wouldn't register this little blip except that I'd kind of like to keep some sort of record of these down times to see if/how they coordinate with my monthly cycle, which I suspect strongly that they do.  But as always, it's not that the emotions aren't there and then magically pop into existence, it's just that my abilities to ignore or deny or stuff them down weakens at certain points, or when I let myself think about it for extended periods or a certain circumstance brings it to my face...

My current class on Melody is really bringing it up.  I have a hard time with feeling stupid, with allowing myself to learn new things.  It's particularly hard when I have a dichotomy of my brain understanding the underlying theory behind something, and my hands just plain not having the built in or trained ability to make it happen.  It's scary and frustrating because I don't know how much practice it would take to get to that mind/body fluency, if I would ever even get there, and if I DO have the capacity, what would be the fastest way to get there.  So I end up avoiding it altogether, doing stupid things that give me a false and fast sense of accomplishment like dopey games on Facebook - "I made it to level 24!" and such.  The Melody class makes me feel stupid.  Makes me think things like, "Well, maybe I should just be a lyricist..."

This is a deep, deep pattern, procrastinating to the point of not having much time to finish a project, so that I have a "good excuse" if it ends up not being very good - "of course it's not, I didn't spend much time on it!"

I have wild vacillating moments of thoughts that seem normal at one second and then seem wildly audacious the next - I saw a site for a songwriting contest and started pondering if I should enter - it's $35 per song, which is not that much and yet kind of a lot of money.  It's definitely a barrier to make sure people are sure of themselves to a point that means a certain level of quality for the most part.  So I was really thinking about it like it was no big deal, just try it without any expectations sort of thing, and then I started seeing some of the names of people who had entered and won or even just been finalists in the past, people I really admire and think are great songwriters.  And then I quickly spiraled down into comparison land again - "Who am I to even try to put myself up next to those people?!"

But tiny things give me hope - working on a song with someone I trust, who will tell me when things aren't working, and then her saying for one of them "This is really pretty."  Getting asked to record a little, and comparing that recording to a big name and thinking it actually sounds pretty good, sound quality-wise anyway.  (There's another one of those things where I do something that seems normal at first and then suddenly audacious).  A nice comment on a YouTube video.  Online musician friends taking my requests for advice seriously and giving me real feedback.  Last year a pop singer visiting from LA, who has been signed to a big label years back, telling me that she really LIKED my melodies.  Twice.  And that was stuff I wrote years before this class!  I don't know what it will/would take for me to feel like I have permission to be here, to do this.

I talked to G and he said he didn't think I should give up so easily on songwriting.  That maybe I needed to take more classes, spend more hours on the work.  That frustrated me because we looked at the financials months back, when I was deciding to do the whole certificate program, and there just wasn't any way that I could just take classes (like maybe 2 at a time) and not be bringing at least a minimum amount of money in to cover bills.  I feel like I've really minimized my expenses and I don't really see any areas where I could cut back further.  I've gotten even more creative in trying to figure out trades/volunteering/working for certain things that I want/need to have/do.  

G was maybe also implying that I just need to be patient and take more time, however much I need, but I feel so much pressure to do/be/have/get started "for real" NOW NOW NOW.  Because I know we want a family both family and career are things that everyone says are best started young and I'm not getting younger!

If I just wanted to write songs for me to hear, well, I do that already.  The problem/challenge is I want to be successful.  I don't know if there's anyone in the world who knows how to do that, really, not with a formula.  Well, there are formulas for pop stars maybe, but even then, why does one person or group catch on with "the public" more than the other, when all other things seem to be equal?

And then I think and wonder - do I really want to be even partially famous?  How famous does one have to be to be sustainable?  Whatever that is, could I handle it??  Not that I think that would really even probably be a problem for quite a while, or really that it's one I'd be lucky to have.  And I read the blogs of the independent artists I admire who are working their asses off and the are struggling to stay afloat and people are watching the TV's in the bars instead of them, and I see the shows here in town where the cafe which is small already feels empty and I'm trying to discretely count how many people are there and figure out the worst possible scenario for how much they need to spend on gas and will they make it to the next town but thank goodness they have a free place to stay tonight at least and why on earth would I want to put myself through that, huh?

Well, the reason why is because of the friggin amazing moments I have listening to those indie heros and heroines - transporting, heart opening/healing, soul connection, deep understanding, uplifting, belly laughing, epiphany moments.  I can't receive those moments and NOT be inspired to attempt to reciprocate, not necessarily with them, but with the cosmic energy - I get such a charge I feel like I need to give back however I can.  And somehow some part of me thinks/feels I need to do it in song form, rather than any other myriad ways that one could give back.  The blogging about musicians and the radio show helps a little, but it's really not enough.  I need to do it myself.  Writing songs is what watching the performances inspires me to do, not paint or write novels or whatever, writing a song.

The other thing that frustrates me about a lot of the classes I take is they seem to want to teach me about the blues.  I like the blues live, and for dancing.  But I don't sit down and pick out a blues album to listen to when I want to listen to music.  It's not the kind of music I want to write (at this point in my life at least!  Don't want to be definitive when who knows who/how I will be in the future).  I know that there will be principles in blues music that will apply to any kind of music, but it feels like a roundabout way to get to what I want.  I actually like a lot of what I write, at the time I write it at least, but I don't have the perspective to know if it's any good in the eyes of the general opinion.  I know there will always be people on the full range of the fence, but there really is a general consensus on a lot of things.

I really need someone I can talk to about this, maybe several someones, but people who can both tell me the truth about where I stand at the moment, and what my chances are, without crushing my soul or making me feel dumb for even considering it.  I know my beautiful, wonderful, amazing friends and family can give me all sorts of encouragement, but it's very very sad to say, I don't generally trust them to give me the more objective feedback I need.  It's good, because I also DO need a group of people to love and support me unconditionally, I need that very much!  But I think I'm ready for that other level of feedback from a different group of people, that pushes me forward...  

Late night freak out ramblings....

Bam. Whoa.

Went to the Ellis concert tonight. Had my heart blown open. Felt kind of shaky and raw afterward. I remember having two big realizations and they've left my mind by now, but maybe if I keep writing a little they will come back.

One of them might have been about how worried and protective I get of "my" musicians. Hoping that everyone is liking them, understanding, getting it, enjoying the show. Which is totally ridiculous! I can't control how other people feel and react! So I kind of watched myself freak out and worry about it, and it was kind of amusing.

I think another might have been something about how Ellis seems so cool and collected and has everything together, but juxtaposed with how creative and spontaneous and how she's really searching and trying to figure things out in life. And somehow by admitting to a big group of people that she DOESN'T have it all figured out somehow means that she DOES. I'm not sure how to have that make sense. Except it somehow does...

She often writes about the times she is scared or confused or doesn't know what's going on in life, but somehow it's uplifting and expansive. She said something about yoga, how usually in class it's like stretching "ow, ow, ow." and then after she leaves there's more room, and that she wonders if life is like that in the hard moments, like being stretched, and then if she'll get to leave the yoga room soon, and feel opened up.

And I got scared, during and after, because I thought - oh, I need to open up, I need to show more of my insides if I want to be effective in reflecting back to people who they are. I was talking to H.L. afterward and she said she could see that I was raw, but it was good, where we were supposed to be, more open. It's terrifying to be that vulnerable! But the kind of terrifying that makes me feel more alive, and like something big and important is happening.

I hung around after the show, listening to conversations, doing my best to have a few myself. I wonder what it is, that I'm so much more forward online? I guess it feels safer behind the screen. Whatever reaction a person has to my output online is not something I have to deal with in the moment. I get to wait until they react, if they do at all, and then I have time to think about my response to that, because writing is a much more deliberate thing.

Doing the radio show has helped a lot I think, being in the moment, talking to strangers. It's still a little different than being in the same room with someone, one on one, looking in their eyes. It's much harder to just be present with them, and be willing to not know what to say at any one moment and still stay with it. I'm not sure if I just think slower than most people or what?

Rock Paper Scissors opened the show. They're working on a CD and suddenly they've been writing all sorts of new songs. Their entire set was originals! Gemma said they have 9. Awesome. I always liked the few originals they had when they did them in shows, but now the balance can flip to mostly original and a few covers. Nice. Cuz the songs are still informed by some of the old fashionedy stuff they do, so they have a vintage flavor to them, but new. Love that.

Oughta get to bed. Need to get more done tomorrow than I did today, yeesh. Looking forward to the workshop with Ellis and Terry tomorrow about more of the business side of things.

I did it

I picked up my guitar for all of 3 minutes before work and I FELT it. It was out of tune and has a little buzz that I should get looked at if I even knew where/who/how, but in spite of all that, I FELT it. And it felt good. I need more of that.

The new buzz around the web today seems to be that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. Apparently that's 5 years of 40 hours/week. Damn. At the rate I'm going I'm pretty screwed. But then again, I don't supposed you have to be an expert at something before you start doing it. Indeed, you HAVE to start doing it to become an expert!

More reason to take more classes, at the same time, to really dive in. But I'm scared, I'm way behind with my ONE class, I don't know how I'd keep up with 2 or more! Not to mention I don't know how I'd pay for them. If I sell my car that will pay for this one and my next one, but after that?

I'm SO loathe to go into debt in such a big way again. I still have $600 more left from my B.A. that I'm letting sit because it has a lower interest rate. And it's not something like going to get my nursing degree where you KNOW there's a need for nurses and you're guaranteed to get a job that'll pay it back. For all I know I'll take a bunch of classes only to find out that I suck, or am mediocre at best, and that I should stick to promoting the real talent.

Seriously, how terrifying is that, to throw a huge bunch of money at something when I have absolutely no idea of the outcome? It's like gambling! I suppose on the one hand it's like a vote of confidence in myself, that I DO deserve it and I DO have something worthy of developing, and that THIS is the path to get to it. I know that a bunch of people I admire have gone down this path before, but it's not like a magic wand either, I have to to do the work. So that's the question - do I have the confidence and the drive?