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....

Momentary Panic

My brother is a prolific YouTuber. He went out to San Francisco for the YouTube live event. Just 3 days, he took Friday off work and the event was on Saturday and we went to pick him up in Des Moines today.

G had to get a hardtop suitcase to carry a desktop computer to the trade show in Dubai, so we stopped at the Samsonite outlet in Williamsburg. There was a buy one get one half off, so we got a new big suitcase for us to replace the falling apart one I brought to Colombia. I also got a new laptop bag, a padded silver one that I'm SO wanting to take out to a cafe somewhere so I can feel terribly romantic and professional. Maybe tomorrow. :D

Anyway, G also needs a black suit jacket, and we were trying to figure out if we should just make T wait longer and stop at one of the nice stores at the outlet mall or continue on and go to the mall in Des Moines. We opted for the latter since we were pretty behind schedule and didn't want to make T wait too too long.

I called my cousin who lives in DM (and only about 5 minutes from the airport) to see if she might be able to pick him up so he could wait at her place instead of in the airport. She was out but said if she went home before we got there she would swing by and see if she could see him waiting outside.

T's flight was supposed to land at 2:15. I tried calling him at about 2:20. Straight to voicemail. Same deal several times after that. It's just a temp, pay as you go phone he only uses for traveling. We figured he probably wasn't freaking out that no one was there quite yet and would remember to turn on his phone as soon as he wondered where mom was. Called my mom to let her know what was going on in case he called her (she was originally going to pick him up).

My cousin drove by the airport around 3:30 and didn't see him, and he still wasn't answering his phone. I called the airline to see if his flight had landed and it had. G and I got there a little after 4 I think and T was nowhere to be seen. Des Moines is a tiny airport, you can walk the whole area that you're allowed to walk (baggage claim, ticketing and foodcourt/gift shop) without a ticket in about 5 minutes.

This is where the panic sets in. My mom had called him once while he was in SF, but he didn't answer. I knew he'd made it to SF because he'd sent out a Twitter saying so but hadn't heard anything after that. The airline people can only tell me that he hadn't changed his reservation but his original flight arrived on time. I don't know if they actually KNOW if he boarded and just can't tell me or if they don't even know. There didn't appear to be any operators working the white phone paging system because it just rang and rang and rang. I started crying. My mom called me back to say that she'd talked to his hotel and he had indeed checked in on Friday and checked out that morning, and she was trying to look up his flight number and call the airline to see if she could track him down another way.

G points out that there is another flight coming from Dallas (T's connecting city) at 4:30, which by now is only minutes away. I continue to freak out. T finally, finally calls, he is indeed on the 4:30 flight and it has just touched down. His flight from San Fran was delayed due to weather in Dallas or something, and when he got to Dallas his phone didn't work. He didn't check any luggage, so when he gets off the plane we can go straight to the car.

On the way to the car, he tells us that he had had a headache, and ended up watching the event on his laptop from his hotel room. He'd left his sunglasses at home, so apparently walking around all day without them gave him a headache. (He does have really sensitive eyes.)

It turns out he couldn't find the place it was being held, even though his hotel was supposed to be a 7 minute walk away from it. Apparently the map was misleading. By the time he figured out he was lost and went back to his hotel and got help with the directions, and made it back to the event, THEY WOULD NOT LET HIM IN. Even though he had an e-ticket. Which was apparently fairly meaningless, because it was first come, first serve, and he was late enough that they said they were at capacity. I thought the point of tickets was to RESERVE YOUR SPACE at an event?!

So now I'm pissed. Here's a guy, YouTube is a MAJOR part of his life, he has over 400 videos and watches plenty more than that. He can tell us all about these people by their screen names, many of which are a combination of numbers and letters like xx23pandaxxx. It's his community. I don't know how many people actually watch his stuff or if it's a one-way connection, but he took a whole day off work, spent money on a ticket and a hotel, and made at least two videos that clearly demonstrated how excited he was to be going. One was him simply dancing around in pure joy, and the other an improvised rap. His stuff is nowhere as polished and professional as his idols, but you have to give him the devotion and passion points. And he gets to this party/concert event that is being billed as a community building event/celebration, and ends up watching the thing on his laptop in his hotel room. It must have felt like a betrayal on some level I'm sure. Thank goodness the hotel at least had internet. It would have sucked even more to not get to see it at all.

Here's the thing, my brother has a mild learning disability. In school they called it ADD, I think some later time they called it a form of asbergers. It's not a big deal and he's fine living on his own, but it's little things like my mom did want to make sure he had family nearby, so T lives in his own apartment in the basement, he's probably never going to drive a car, and he sometimes seems to ignore people when they talk to him. I think it's also why he wears sunglasses a lot, because normal life/light is too overwhelming for him sometimes.

But some people aren't going to know all that. Some people are just going to think he's weird, or stupid or stoned. And they're going to be mean and make fun of him. I've seen it in some of the comments people leave on his videos. And the big sister protective vibe kicks in big time. But all I can do is give those comments a thumbs down, and that's probably more than I can do in most of real life. I've gotten a lot better at not taking it personally and making it my responsibility to protect him all the time, but the whole thing still breaks my heart sometimes. He's such a good sweet person, generally happy and mild mannered and creative. And the YouTube thing has given him a chance to reach out and connect. I just hope he doesn't get too discouraged by stuff like this.

Maybe I'm the one more bummed out than him, he's already got a bunch of plans to tell the organizers how they could do a better job next time, and he's already got some ideas about how he can be proactive from his side (finding out how to get to the venue is the night before the event, trying to meet up with some people he can go with from the same hotel, etc.)

Anyway, he's home safe, and learned a bunch of things.

And now that's off my chest I can remember that I wanted to mention this morning I stopped by the cafe because Anais had run out of CD's at the concert and was supposed to bring one by this morning, but it turned out she'd really run out, so she said she could mail me one. I brought my box of jewelry that I'd made for the Farmer's Market and let both of them pick something out. Rachel immediately grabbed the green chunky bracelet that was on top, and looked through a couple other things but said, "well I think I might have already found it", and I said "I had a feeling you might like that one" and she said "who me, green?" hehe. At that particular moment, she was wearing green glasses, a green hat and had long green fingerless gloves. Then Anais said she had to choose carefully because she tends to just wear one jewelry item at a time until she loses or breaks it, and picked out the big wooden etched medallion on a sheer green ribbon necklace. It matched really well with what she was wearing. She asked if I was saving it for anyone special and I said I would be happy to for her to have it. The fangirl in me really wanted to take a picture of them wearing the stuff, but I didn't want to be too, well, obviously fangirly. heh. Would much rather be a friend.

Then they had to go, for a quick dash to The At Home Store for yarn, and then back to Chicago for one more show of their mini tour. (We were a quarter of it.) Sharon was out in the lobby playing her guitar so I sat down and talked to her for a bit. She asked me what I had and I showed her the box of stuff. She particularly liked one set of earrings and said she'd buy them from me later, but I told her she could have them as an early Christmas present, because I was probably going to give her something and it was probably going to be from that box so she might as well have one she liked. I told her about my experience FEELING the guitar, and she agreed that it's pretty easy when you get into the business side of it to forget about why you started at all. And then G called cuz he was ready to go to Des Moines. So a good little quick plug-in with my music peeps for the morning, glad I made it over while they were all still there.

Do you ever have that thing...

...where you are making chocolate chip cookies for a bake sale and you've already agonized over whether or not to get the full on organic butter or just the GMO free stuff because it's cheaper and oh crap they're automatically going to have GMO's from the soy lecithin in the chocolate chips so who really cares if they're full on organic and the point is just to make some money anyways and you decide you are going to add some extra special things like cinnamon and coffee to make them different and amazing and wonderful because plain old chocolate chip cookies are boring and everyone else is probably going to bring them anyway and so you're pretty happy with yourself for being original and then it comes to the point where you actually portion out the spoonfuls on the cookie sheet and you start to panic because you don't know what size they are going come out and are they big enough, are they worth it, will people be happy or feel ripped off to pay 50 cents for them and omigod I thought a double batch was going to make more and what if this isn't enough and wow look at what a drastic difference there is between the ones on the baking stone and the ones on the baking sheet and maybe they just sort of taste weird, omigod did I just waste all those ingredients and wreck my bedtime and who's idea was it even anyway to HAVE a bake sale for this event, oh yeah MINE, or is that just me?

PS in other news I am much, much, much, much better with just a teensy bit of a cough left. HOOROAR!