Category Archives: art

The Ups and Downs of Life as a Performing Artist

For every spectacular live stage performance you watch that seems like it was seamlessly evoked from thin air, you can bet that there were hours and hours of time spent in dark, crowded practice spaces going over those same songs again and again and again.

The performing life is odd. I don’t even know how to describe it. Especially for a person like me who is a library assistant (pretty much a librarian without librarian pay because I don’t have my MS degree) by day, musician by night. Most days I spend sitting in a quiet, old, dusty building in the middle of a semi-rural neighborhood in the Bay Area, helping old people find books about how to not die and kids find books about farts and diaper superheros. I have to make rent somehow.

library rockstar

My sister drew this for me, to describe my life.

At night, I am in a practice space with other musicians (the members of my band Kyrsten Bean, and the members of Nicky Garratt’s band Hedersleben), working on either songs I wrote or songs my band mates have written and we have all collaborated on. There is a lot of drilling of the same parts over and over again, debating about what works and what doesn’t. We record our practices and then I listen to them while I’m driving to the library the next day, to work so I can buy food and gas to fuel my life.

On Thursday night, Hedersleben had our first little sampler show at the Oakland Metro. It was a blast. I met a lot of awesome musicians in the bands that played after we opened, and in the audience of people who had come to check out this krautrock thing we are doing. It felt very good. I didn’t sleep much that night. The next day was the slowest day ever at the library. I sat at the reference desk or in the back room staring at the walls or ceiling, catching up on library projects, helping patrons, but mostly sitting. Staring. Wondering if the night before had really happened.

hedersleben***

That night after work, I went over to see the launch of my friend Joe’s book, Junkie Love. I helped with the trailer for that one by playing a junkie. My friend Joel was the star. It was filmed in my bedroom.

I was nervous to finally watch it for the first time in a room with 81 people, but when I finally saw it I was impressed. It’s a little love story. About what a junkie thinks love is–about dope being love and love being dope.

Here it is, anyhow:

***

It was the same thing that night. I went to the book launch, it was exciting to see my friends kill it with their readings and to watch the trailer I had been a part of.
After the reading, I bumped into Alan Kaufman, who had come to support Joe. We ended up having a conversation about performing life. I don’t know why I felt compelled to vent to him about it, he merely asked me how it had been filming the trailer in my bedroom. I told him that it had been heavy, and I’d felt like crap for a week afterwards. He totally got it. Alan is a beat poet, wrote the book Drunken Angel (which I am just now cracking open and is amazing). He’s been there.

I told him about how I’d just had a performance the night before, how exciting it was. We had a guy from a record label come out to see us, everyone loved it, I was on cloud nine. There are tours being booked, details being finalized. We are recording an album at the end of the month. I have a show with my own band being worked on for May 30 as we speak. So much of what I love. So much awesomeness. Then I spent the next day sitting at the library.

“That’s awful!” said Alan. I looked at him, and I knew he meant that exactly how it feels to me. That it’s not working at a library or being around books that is awful, it’s the contrast between being in the middle of a cosmic synergistic excitement hub of splendor and then having to drive to work the next day and sit and stare at books.

I’m not complaining, don’t get me wrong! I love libraries. It’s just a strange, deflating transition. I find myself sitting there asking myself if any of the excitement actually happened. Which of these scenarios is my real life? The one where I am on stage in my element, doing what I love, carting gear in and out, talking music language with fellow musicians, or the one where I am sitting still at a reference desk at a library in the middle of nowhere, a city most people don’t even know exists in the Bay Area as it’s unincorporated.

It’s enough to make me feel stark raving mad sometimes, the ups and downs. I love my life. I love doing music. I love that I took my dreams of childhood and am finally bringing them to fruition. But there are things I got to talk about with Kaufman that he just got immediately. Doing performances and then sitting in your room for days trying to decompress. Having your ego fed, having it inflate, and then having the pin stuck in the balloon as the air fizzles out over the next couple of days. Our conversation blew my mind, was just what I needed.  Joel, who had rode with me to the event, didn’t need a ride home, so then I went home to my diet coke and gluten-free cookie and stared at Facebook. Then I went to sleep, and got up to go work at the library.

The Thought Monster

I am going to talk about the thought monster today.

thought monsterThe thought monster seems to have a special love for buggin’ inside the minds of artistic people.

Once a week, I make the pilgrimage out to Dharma Punx  in San Francisco on a Friday night during rush hour traffic for a half hour meditation and hour lecture on mindfulness. It seems to be helping with managing the insatiable thought monster who resides in my own brain.

A few weeks ago, the guy who was speaking, Vinnie I think, was talking about the voice (thought monster) in our heads, how it doesn’t ever want to shut up. He recommended we tell it to fuck off. But not in a way that we are engaging with it. It absolutely LOVES being engaged with, is waiting for a little debate. No, just a little, “That’s nice, now shut up.” Or, “Oh, hey, you’re talking again?”

He also said that the voice tends to pop up more whenever we try to challenge our own comfort zone. The voice is there to keep us from bucking the norm. It developed for healthy reasons over years of evolution, but can be an inhibitor to moving forward and growing outside of your self-created limits if you let it keep you down. Every time you try to challenge what is familiar, safe, notice that voice? Yep. Me too.

Lately, the voice in my head is relentless, likely because I am doing things I’ve never done before with my music. I’m challenging myself and going after what I’ve always dreamed of doing, in spite of the nut gallery going, “Nur, that’s dumb. You’ll never bla bla bla.”

While I’m sitting peacefully at the library or in the practice space or in my room or driving aimlessly somewhere, it crops up. “You should just give up.” It says. “Music is too hard. The band you’re in is too challenging, you can’t do the tasks required of you. They’re going to find out you totally suck and you’re an imposter. Quit while you’re ahead. You’re almost 32, you’re practically dead. Your looks will fade soon and nobody will care, it’s all about image, not talent. Music is for the young.”

It’s all bullshit. Mostly, I act as if that voice isn’t there and continue to practice my guitar, voice and keyboard in the spaces I’ve allotted to do these things regardless of what it says. Sometimes it gets a little bit of momentum when I take a few days off from practice. “You aren’t practicing enough. You suck. You’re gonna blow it. How can you even think you can do a show coming up? You’re such a pretender. Everyone else is better than you. Remember how much you used to practice as a teenager? Where did that get you when you stopped. Nowhere. That’s where you’re headed again.”

Sometimes, I consider what it says for a moment during those times. Think about moving to the woods, living a quiet life without any challenges, without ever changing what has become rote and easy. But that thought makes me want to explode. I am not leaving this life unless I know I’ve worked as hard as I can on what I seem to be meant to do, no matter what naysayers and the anxious nail-biting thought monster in my head that don’t want me to challenge societal norms want me to do. There’s enough room in this world for me to do what I love full-time. Or die trying.

think

Oaklandia

“Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well. To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit?” -Alex/A Clockwork Orange

There are so many topics to write about here. Collaboration. Anxiety. Taking on a plethora of music projects. Learning to work with other artists on a daily basis. I’m sure I will cover all of these topics in the upcoming weeks. I took a hiatus from the last posted entry on April 8, due to suddenly being consumed with activities music and writing related.

My life isn’t much different from the other musicians I am surrounded by in Oakland. Most of us are in two or more bands. Most of us have a calendar clogged with work and shows and practices. Most of us spend a significant portion of our time crammed into tiny practice spaces.

Yesterday, I was chilling in the sun out on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland with a bunch of peers, all of who are musicians. Our conversation was like an episode of Portlandia.

“Soft Cell only has one good song. Tainted Love.”
“What? Soft Cell has the best lyrics ever! Tainted Love is their worst song!”

“Have you heard of The Monks?”
“Yea, I introduced them to you, remember?”
“I thought that was your roommate who introduced them to me.”
“No! He’s always stealing my musical taste and pawning it off as his own.”

“There’s a point where you just get oversaturated with Depeche Mode.”
“What? There’s no such thing as too much Depeche Mode!”

“All I listen to is Krautrock.”
“Krautrock! I love Can!”
“I like Ammon Duul and Neu!”
“I’m into proto-kraut. Haha, just kidding, does such a thing exist?”

***
It’s ironic that a few years ago I was begging to be surrounded by artists and musicians, back in an urban hub. Now that I am, I’m grateful, but also kind of inured to the over abundance of artists I am surrounded by. Add to that the fact that most of us are sensitive and neurotic and slightly psycho and you’ve got a basket full of booby traps at times.

I wouldn’t go back to where I was a year ago for the world. Sometimes, I get down. Focusing so much on music and art and work makes me feel like I might be missing out on something, like family or relationships or love. But…I don’t know. It’s good to be free.

I’ve been practicing with one of my bands, the Krautrock-influenced experimental band, for an upcoming show at the Oakland Metro. Sometimes, our practices feel like Real World: Band Practice, especially when we were trying to determine who the core players in the band were, and had different musicians at every practice. But…I’m sure that’s true of most band practices. Most bands never get off the ground due to not having enough players or personality conflicts. Artistic people tend to be a bit odd. It’s not just a cliche. Sometimes the most creative and interesting people are just…weird. OK, most of the time. Myself included. I know I’m totally sensitive and psychotic and weird and over intelligent and every other thing you can pin on a musician/writer nutcase who came from a musician/artist nutcase family.

So there you go. Busy. Still trying to find the meaning of life, balance frugal living with working on art, doing music constantly and working a day job to fund it. Balking at the dynamics of single people in my age group–ugh. Insanity anyone? Modern life is just wack.

So what is the meaning of life? What you make of it, I suppose. And the only thing I’ve found to assuage my existential angst and anxiety so far is music. The more projects I’m involved in, the more projects I get asked to be involved in. The more I play out, the more musicians I meet and more I am asked to play out. So. All is well. Pretty much.

Playing a Junkie

This past weekend was a strange one. I walk through life rather oblivious of things. I nod a lot and go, “Yea, sure! OK.” So, when I found myself convincing my friend Joe to use my room for a book film trailer, it didn’t strike me as odd. Even if the film was about junkies, and my room was to be a piss-in-the-sink hotel.

I’ve never been a heroin junkie, but I have lived in the Tenderloin in a piss-in-the-sink hotel. I figured, why not help a fellow writer and friend out and let him use my room in a nice quiet neighborhood of Oakland, instead of a hotel where, as Joe put it, “People might assume we were going to shoot porn.”

On a related note, last Saturday night Paul, who runs Bitchez Brew, invited me and some other local writers, including a friend of mine, Joel Landmine, to read our poems at Era ART Bar. It went well, was a lot of fun.

I introduced Joel to Joe at the last Lip Service West reading I attended, the one where Zarina Zabrisky, another local writer, was on fire and wowed the entire audience, and the one where Paul invited Joel and I to read at this past Bitchez Brew. Joe and Joel became Facebook friends.

Meanwhile, Joe was searching desperately for the best younger him to play a junkie in the film trailer for his upcoming book, Junkie Love. He posted about the trailer on Facebook, having learned Evil Ed from Fright Night was going to be a part of it, and Joel posts something like, “That guy’s really nice.” Joe sees an opportunity, and follows up with, “Hey, you look like a young me (a junkie), do you want to star in my film trailer?” To which Joel says, “Sure.” Joe doesn’t beat around the bush.

Some time goes by, and a thread starts on my Facebook, but gets sidelined by discussion of the best place to film this trailer. My bedroom gets volunteered.
Then, the night of the Bitchez Brew reading, Joe approaches me and asks if I want to play in the film trailer too. I shrug. “Sure,” I say.

(It strikes me that if I had gone through with my threat of deleting Facebook for good, none of this might have gone down.)

Sunday morning, Jamie DeWolf, the director, Joe and his wife Justine, and Joel arrive at my apartment. My roommates let them in, and thankfully I was awake, had a cup of french press coffee in my hand. I was up until 3am the previous night. It was now 9am, so I was still kind of like, “Duh.” We moved all my musical instruments out of the room and Joe and Jamie start making it look like a junkie den. Syringes, spoon with “tar” and cotton in it. The mattress is already on the floor, a sheet over the window, etc. I kept looking over and seeing Joe making little “heroin” balloons by my bookshelf.

Justine tells me she needs to make me look like a junkie, so she starts putting makeup on me. Joel by now looks like a bonafied junkie, bags under his eyes, pale complexion (he’s a skinny dude, with that James Dean kind of rough-around-the-edges look about him) and I give him a thumbs up. “Great job. You look like the perfect junkie.”

Then Jamie asks if I can take off my shirt, because he wants it to look authentic. So, soon I’m lying on one side of my bed, Joel on the other. I’m half naked (in a bra) with a blanket over me, Jamie filming, and Joe giving us directions on what to do. Insert lots of Boom Chica Bow-wow jokes about bedroom filming.

I didn’t know the script for the film before hand, which was probably good, because if I had thought about it too much, I might have freaked out. Basically, Joel is my junkie boyfriend in the film trailer. I’m sleeping. He wakes up, goes out to score dope, gets beat the hell up, comes back, then wakes me up. I kind of roll away, go “WTF,” with my facial expression, then spy the balloons he is handing me in his outstretched hand. I perk up. He smiles. I smile. Junkie Love. It’s pretty devastating, if you really think about it. There’s even one point in the film where we were filming in my bathroom with syringes and fake blood for a scene using my bathroom mirror.

We finish filming, go out and eat lunch, and they all head to the city to do a different scene. At this point, I’m actually starting to wake up. I walked through the rest of the day with kind of a blurry, heavy feeling going on. I went and hung out, talked with friends, but I couldn’t shake this raw, intense feeling in my chest. The feeling stayed with me the next day and is still lingering today.

I’m kind of an empath, and so there’s a part of me that is taking in the fact that Joe lived this life, and it’s a life many people live. He must be feeling pretty wack, watching his friends enact scenes from his past. The junkie life was a life I wanted to live as a teen, because I was an idiot, and a lot of my heroes in pop culture were junkies. But as revealed in a short non-fiction piece I’m writing, I was spared that road due to what must have been angels looking out for me. Instead, I just became a raging alcoholic by age 15. The junkies I traveled with at age 15 didn’t like to share, is what it boils down to.

Maybe I’m tripping because had it been different, that might have been my life. Or maybe I’m tripping because at 15 I was a street kid and me and my boyfriend’s two best friends were junkies, used to shoot up in front of us on a mattress in Golden Gate Park. I glamorized them. Now, at 31, I don’t glamorize that lifestyle at all, and re-enacting it was somewhat brutal. Things just seem to affect me much longer these days.

But I’m glad I could help. That was a good thing to be a part of, in my opinion, although I don’t know if I can ever actually WATCH that book trailer when it comes out. Me as a junkie ain’t pretty. See below.

20130319-155246.jpg

Out Here in Limbo Land

I’m in an odd state of limbo. Waiting to get over a hump. My life is kind of hanging in the balance. Musicwise, relationshipwise, workwise.

Right now, my band mates are driving to South by Southwest for their other band project. The other keyboardist in my band got hooked up as synth player and dancer for the other band our other mates are in, and so she’s out having a blast with them. It’s OK. I’ve got stuff to do here. Work, basically. I’m supposed to be writing a melody for a song for this band, and I’ve got two ideas but I don’t know if either is the right direction, so I’m waiting to share them until my band mates get back. Then we’re supposed to put our noses to the grindstone. I talked to my boss today about switching to a sub position where I have flexibility and control over what shifts I pick up around the county. No health insurance, but, well. Don’t we all struggle with that dilemma these days as artists? Permanency and health insurance or flexibility and no health insurance.

There was a time, year or so ago, when all I wanted was to be surrounded by artists. I got my wish, and now I have an arsenal of people to talk to. When I was trying to figure out what to do about my, “I might have to tour,” dilemma, I talked with a couple of people who do music as a living, or did music as a living and they were like, “Yea, go for it,” and they helped me talk about options. Everyone was like, “I think you should do it.” Which isn’t even a question for me. I was trying to figure out how, and now I have an option, I’m just waiting to find out if/when we are actually touring in a few months, or if it will be later.

I also found a really cool guitar player for my own band project, the one that’s more a casual project where we might play a show sometime in the future and have about 8 songs we’re working on right now. So that’s good. Just slow.

And tomorrow I have practice with my girl friend, we started a band called SO WHAT?!? that’s like an avante-garde project. Covers, punk songs, screaming, fun. Everyone we get involved is super stoked about it.

I’m such an excitement junkie, I want to be doing performing, touring, recording and practicing ALL THE TIME. I’m a born performer. Born for excitement and hard work towards music goals.

I’m sure I will get my wish, soon. I’m trying to tip the scales so that’s the deal, instead of music still being something in the gaps. I need outside impetus, like tours coming up or an album to record or a show to play to keep me motivated. It looks like all of this is in the process of happening or I am working towards it happening, whether with these projects I’m currently doing or others.

It’s all learning.

It’s the waiting that kills me. And all the stuff I have to deal with in the interim. Trying to work hard to be the artist I want to be and not be distracted by drama or boys or whatnot.

But I kind of love the drama.

My friend Kirsten reminded me the other day to remember to do my daily practice so I don’t get the freefalling feeling I’ve been getting. Usually, I wake up every morning and write a page, write in my journal, meditate and do tarot. Then I make sure I hike once or twice a week, do strength training twice a week and fit in some yoga or bike riding. I also have to remember to eat three meals a day, stay away from too much caffeine or nicotine and not get too caught up in anyone else’s needs or wants.

Ha. I’ve had people come to me for help recently, with addiction problems, relationship problems, you name it. And these are important things too. I write this blog and I share my experiences with people so that I can help them. My journey here has been rough at times. If I can help someone else get through the rough times, like others have helped me, well, life is meaningful.

Plus, I have to remember to not drive myself into the ground, to actually have some fun. Milkshakes and the like.

I was talking to another friend outside of one of my favorite coffee shops to frequent, and he was talking about having to write some stuff coming up and being blocked. I moaned about having to write a song and a column and do some readings coming up.

Why are we whining? We’re doing everything we want to do. It’s slow, but we’re moving towards our goals. Everything is OK. There are many days with no excitement, and then there’s a ton of excitement. And then many days of no excitement.

That’s life?

The Quiet Times (Boredom Kills Me)

“I hate the quiet times. I need some company. I miss the noise of life. The silence deafens me.” – The Sound UK/Hour of Need

Real life is getting in the way of me having constant excitement, attention, joy and stimulation and it’s pissing me off.

I’ve been pretty quiet here, I know. It’s been one of those interstices where everything was fun and interesting for a while, seemed like it was picking up/going somewhere, and then all of a sudden I found myself waiting again. For something. In the interim margins.

It’s been a weird year in general. In many ways, I’ve been happier than ever before. In other ways, it’s been a major overhaul of almost every stupid ineffective coping mechanism I unconsciously acted on in the past that gets in the way of me being a happy fulfilled artist people are attracted to.

Dull days. That’s where I’ve been. I had that writing and music work-related road trip, and it was great, I did a lot, I got things accomplished, I scored a great amp. But then I got back and everything that was exciting fizzled out. None of my bands got together to practice because one is out of town, the other I missed, being out of town myself, and my own had problems meeting up for whatever reason. I feel like things are going at a glacial pace. The only things consistent sometimes are the things that drive me absolutely nuts, like working for other people during the day part-time, and sitting and facing my own emotional baggage. I feel like I’m partially on my path and partially stuck.

I’ve been bored and restless and looking for a fix. Which sucks, because I had a while there where I was making huge strides and felt very peaceful and positive. I’m mostly making some progress in personal areas that affect my being in the driver seat of my own life. Like I said in a previous post, I used to just ride along with what everyone else wanted from me. I played victim/passenger for many, many years, waiting for my life to happen, and I’ve been working very hard to change that, because no one is going to live my life for me or make the things I desire to happen, happen. And I was tired of being surrounded by people who wanted to run my life. These days, not surprisingly, I’m much more positive and accepting of people, because I’m much more positive and accepting of myself.

This past week I’ve had to take action in two instances. One was with a person I was hanging out with who ended up not being what I thought, and I had to step back. Another incident was when a fellow creative snapped at me in a way that freaked me out and made me think she didn’t want to be my friend anymore.

In the first instance, I could have kept hanging out with the person who wasn’t what I expected, hoping they’d change.

But based on recent past experience, I took note of red flags, looked at my goals and realized that no matter how amazing this person seemed (and this person is amazing), they weren’t what I wanted and they weren’t going to be healthy for me in the long run in the way I wanted them in my life, because they were telling me, blatantly, they didn’t want to be there in that way, yet I kept hanging out, even though I said I wanted something different. So I set my boundaries and have (mostly) stuck to my guns. Because it’s not about other people and what they do, necessarily. It’s about what I allow.

I chose in this instance to go with uncomfortable feelings in the short term as opposed to sticking with something that would make me more uncomfortable in the long run, was distracting me from my artistic goals because it felt good in the moment. Mostly, I was in denial of reality and bullishly wanting to pursue what I wanted when I wanted it, because I felt I deserved it now, on my terms. I ended up learning, essentially, that sometimes things come along that are ALMOST everything you want, but aren’t everything you want, and you have to let them go, even though it’s hard.

In the second instance, when my artistic friend snapped at me in a way that made me shut down immediately, I could have huffed away. I could have sat staring at the menu inside the coffee shop were were sitting in, in total shutdown mode, like a dog who is about to get beat, acting like I was invisible, feeling victimized. Instead I confronted her and asked why she was upset with me, in between both of us acting as if we were gonna huff away or get in a fist fight because of our similar fear of confrontation. Eventually, I told her how her actions made me feel and we ended up talking for another hour, becoming better friends in the process. I realized she felt left out, even though she seems like she’s the coolest girl in school. I was shocked…and learned a lot.

As far as my band, I’ve been trying to find another guitar player. It’s a weird process, and it’s taking forever because we only meet once a week and we sometimes don’t meet during the week because of scheduling conflicts. And I’ve been feeling aimless, anyhow, not sure where I’m going/what I’m doing with any of this. I want to finish working on my songs, record them, and perform them. It seems like it’s taking forever because I have to rely on other people, but I am super glad I have other people to rely on, because I didn’t even have THAT a while ago.

So really, my problem is a matter of impatience. Life is quiet right now. It’s slow. Not much excitement is happening. Things aren’t feeling good all the time. There are lots of lessons to be learned, many ways in which the universe is testing me, and I, like a junkie, just want to feel good. I want a quick fix. But I know that nothing quick will fix me, so I’m waiting, regardless of how I feel, and sitting with the boredom, hoping it won’t kill me. I really hope someday that I am fulfilled in a way that I’m not watching the hours tick away on a clock, and for me, that means doing more music, writing, readings and performances, working with other artists, not having a day job anymore. But there’s an upward climb to being a self-supporting artist. It’s hard, it takes time. Patience. Stamina. Not giving up.

Busy, But Alive

I do admit, sometimes I get a little bored with writing this blog. I know, I know. It’s my own blog, why would I get bored? I have to keep reminding myself of what the point of this blog IS, actually. And the point really is kind of the meaning I’ve made of why I’m here in this world–to share my creative journey and process in hopes what I struggle through and overcome can help other creative types do the same. I want to inspire people to not be afraid of their art, because I have found that art, to me, is one of the most important things in my life, outside of human connection, and the two go hand in hand.

I just spent a crazy week driving to Las Vegas and then over to LA, writing an article for a freelance magazine while in Vegas and visiting my bandmates in the studio in LA while they were working on their other band project. I saw friends and family, and now I’m back home, working at the library and trying to get my own band projects going. I’ve got two readings coming up in March, and one live performance in April.

I’ve been doing a writing group with two of my best friends, and it’s been successful! We all trust each other and are sharing work we’re excited about. I’ve been working on a short book about my teens, when I hitchhiked across the country, and I just shared a chapter with them, which means I’m getting ready to put my nose to the grindstone on that. I have a lot of chapters.

Writing is hard work. It takes time. And balancing writing and music and live performances and travel while you also have to work a day job is difficult to boot. I may always be slightly broke, but at least I’m fulfilled. And I do admit, after weeks of social, social, social, the library is nice to be back at, the hills nice to hike alone.

No huge epiphanies were had on my trip–I’m finding lately that hashing up the past and trying to figure things out isn’t always helpful. People in this country are overtherapized, I think. We talk too much about our issues instead of living life. The moment is now. And now. And now.

I thought I’d offer you a brief update, so you know I’m not dead, or neglecting you, my faithful handful of readers, forever, just kind of getting my bearings after a couple of busy, busy weeks. Decompressing.

Train Hop The Future

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.” -Charles Bukowski

train hop

Sometimes, I believe that when you throw a buncha creative stuff in a black hole it fuels some mythological unknown beast somewhere who holds the keys to creative freedom and one day BOOM, your hard work pays off and it makes sense. But until then, you gotta white knuckle it.

My life is profoundly weird and intriguing. And so is yours, and yours, and yours, if you just look around and see with your own eyes. Like today, I bumped into a guy wearing ostrich cowboy boots on the way down from my hike, and a little girl ran screaming, blasting out everyone’s ear drums in the library. I talked with a girl I met over a decade ago (before I stole her boyfriend, who is ex for us both) who has my exact same name and is one of my best friends and most favorite people in the world.

I texted with a guy who I’ve known since I was five, my psuedo (and psycho punk) older brother, (we grew up in the same church and the same small town), who is my new band mate, about music files we did last night, four hours of jamming, him on drums, me on guitar, with our keyboardist last night, some psychedelic, trippy music we were surprised turned out really well. We are going to send it to the gatekeeper of this project…we need to write a whole album, soon!

I listened to samples of songs I’ve been working on with a really cool drummer and bass player for my own band project on speaker while hiking because I forgot my headphones.

I read a chapter about Faust, a German Krautrock band who were supported by a record deal in the ’70s in Germany to make an album, when record labels were just throwing out money for experimental bands. They got basically a year of free living and recording studio and they fucked it off to make love and do drugs. They told the label they were going to be the Beatles. They ended up being…rather obscure.

I read about Harmonia, members of Neu! and Cluster who escaped the Krautrock drug scene to go be serious on their own, working with Brain Eno at one point before they all broke off into their own solo projects.

I worked on an essay I’m writing for a women’s issues reading fundraiser coming up in March, about wearing a dress to impress a boy when I hate dresses, but I’m trying to make it about so much more than that. It’s about Mormanism and marriage and expectation, about trying to be someone you’re not. At least, I hope it will be.

I read poems I had published years ago, trying to figure out which ones to read in March at a reading series in Oakland. I found a book on Nefertiti for a patron who came to the reference desk at the library, and then I wondered about the ancient Egyptians for a moment, and how they tie in to psychedelic Krautrock music. So much mystique. So much material to mine.

Just another lazy Saturday. The world is full of stuff to write about and learn about and as long as I’m learning, I feel alive. As long as I write and do music. As long as I stay focused on DATING MY MUSIC, and not getting caught up in what other people think, feel or do. I read the beginning of Joni Mitchell’s biography “Joni” today, and the writer was talking about how in our society we have to be defined by these limited structures of what is acceptable. Don’t be too different! Make sure you are only eccentric in a certain construct, prefabricated by the people before you!

Let’s stop modeling the lives of the artists before us and become our own indefinable artists. The world is ready for more trail blazers, more people following their hearts, letting fantasy take them away, thinking big and open and wide and outside of all these lines and barriers that pin us in and in and in, let’s get out, like crazy hot air balloons, go wild, what’s the worst that can happen?

We’re not hurting anyone, but we are pumping air into our art so we can go curbing like Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, riding the wheels of our creations around corners, thrilling in the trip of whatever we believe destiny will be for us. In a parallel reality, I have done and am everything I ever dreamed, which is why I don’t think we are limited so much as we think we are. Nope, the world is filtered through our own perceptions, and the strange cosmic joke is, in order to get more and achieve what you dream, you have to first feel as if it is possible and embody it, validate it.

We are love, already. It’s opening up to that, accepting it, and from that, we attract and build on what already exists. It is IN us. We cannot GET it from anyone else. That’s the key. So train hop to your future, and I’ll train hop to mine, but we will get there, the limits are only in our own brains.

It Takes A Village

A thought struck me while I was cooking breakfast this morning: I would never be where I am today without the things I’ve been through and done in the past. And where am I now? Stoked on life. Having so many amazing moments I didn’t think were possible.

What did it take to get me to lower my expenses, be honest about the fact that in order to pursue my art and be true to myself I couldn’t live the life I was living anymore? It took losing my health and my sanity and my marriage, that’s what. I had to be at a point where I had what seemed like absolutely nothing before I could take the reins of my own life and go after what I know I came here to do in a way I never have before: Music. Writing. Being Me.

Nothing to lose. Everything to gain.

I used to be the world’s worst invalidator–of myself. And because I was constantly putting myself down I attracted people who criticized me in subtle ways that were corrosive and toxic. Then I internalized the beliefs of the people I’d surrounded myself by, as well as my own, that I couldn’t do what I wanted and survive.

It’s just so wack the way the universe works. I had to go through some terribly hard shit to get to the point where I realized life is short, I could die tomorrow and I will be bloody pissed if I didn’t do my damndest to own being the performer and musician and writer I’ve been working at being my entire life. It’s what I’m here to do.

I also used to be really good at playing the victim. I would blame circumstances or other people for my lot in life. It was the doctor’s fault for putting me on horrible back pain and anxiety medications that destroyed my health and nervous system and made me face the bowels of hell (it wasn’t. I sought him out, and I had a pre-existing addictive personality). It was my husband’s fault for wanting a more conventional life and not understanding that art is not and has never been a hobby for me (we were different. That’s all. Neither his way nor mine was “correct”). It was my full-time job’s fault for making me work so much (I chose to work 9 – 5 through my early twenties so I could go on more trips and buy more material things).

And I was real jealous. I had a hard time accepting other people’s successes because of my own lack of success at going after what I really desired. I also thought there wasn’t enough to go around. I held onto an American society competitive market attitude.

So what changed? I got off pills, first of all. Then, I acted as if I already was what I believed I was. I told people I was a musician instead of saying, “Er, sometimes I kind of play some songs and stuff.” I surrounded myself by people who would call me on my shit and demand I take action, instead of supporting me wallowing in reasons I couldn’t do what I believe in. I started taking control of my life instead of being a passenger in it drifting this way and that.

And I continue to do other things. Daily meditation. Journaling for hours a day to find out who the hell I am and what I really want. Making sure that if I’m not happy with my life I make tiny goals to move me towards my bigger goals. Giving myself credit every day and not looking for it in other people as much. Writing gratitude lists.

And eventually I ended up where I am now. Surrounded by people whose lives I respect and admire, people who are successfully doing what I want to do, therefore don’t naysay the possibility of doing so. If you talk to someone who hasn’t tried, they’re going to likely tell you you will fail. I intend to stick with those who have succeeded, and remain teachable. I have faith that if I was given  talents I will be able to use them in this life.

***

Last night, I got to jam out with some amazingly talented musicians doing krautrock style music (irony after all the krautrock stuff I posted a few days back, eh?). I lugged my keyboards and guitar out to my friend’s practice space; a musician girl friend down the street let me borrow her pimped out Fender Twin Reverb Amp. I got to sing, and play piano and guitar. We had an electric violinist and classical pianist who were trying out a jam, like me, alongside one of my oldest friends on drums, and a guitarist and bass player whose creds go back through a ton of amazing bands and decades in the music industry. They’re all paid, working, gigging musicians, amazingly talented, and people I want to be more like.

I came home and face planted on the bed, deliciously exhausted. Tomorrow, I have band practice for my own songs, we are working on seven of them right now. Friday, I’m going to go try out as singer for another band project, we are going to cover some PJ Harvey songs to warm up. This is how I am going to continue working my life. Music, music, music.

You know, mostly in my former life, I was afraid to be myself, and afraid to be happy. I thought I had to be negative and tough to protect myself. And I kept attracting people who reinforced this belief system. But I’ve learned in the past year, after leaving everything that was comfortable to me and starting all over again, that I don’t need to have people near me who make me feel small. I want to be around people who make me feel good and believe in me, so I started believing in myself. I deserve that.

I am grateful to be alive and doing what I love on a daily basis. I’m also grateful to all of the people who have helped me every step along the way. I read a quote the other day that said love is good when given, but better when shared, and I do believe it takes a village to raise an artist. We need each other. And I look around me and am so proud of my kick ass friends, writers, artists, musicians, who have walked with me through this past number of years. We are all doing amazing things with our lives. Success is how you define success. To me, success is managing to do so much of what I love, with or without validation from society. I told one of my friends last night that this has been an amazing year so far. “This will be a year to remember,” he said.

You never know what you can create if you believe in yourself.

You’re Never Too Old To Play Music

I was on a night drive with an artist friend–sometime we go up to Grizzly Peak so we can sit and talk philosophy, art, music and life while staring at one of the most amazing views of the Bay Area that you will ever see. Mostly the other people parking up there are smoking bongs, drinking and making out, but being the prude I am, that’s not what I do up there, I’m that girl who actually wants to talk. I know, how annoying. Can’t help it. I’m turned on by tantalizing conversation.

Anyhow, we were up there talking about music. I was talking about how I recently realized my world is pretty wide open now, it’s just choosing what to do next and how to do it. “I want to do a tour in Europe someday,” I said. “But I’m doing now at 31 what I should have been doing at 20.”

“That’s just stupid,” my artist friend said. “What better time than now?”

I’ve been geeking out on this book Krautrocksampler by Julian Cope that someone linked on Facebook a while back. (You can’t get it in print unless you wanna spend a couple hundred bucks, I checked.)

It covers a genre of music coming out of West Germany in the late ’60s. Musicians in German culture at the time struggled with making music that fit the climate of that German era. They were somewhat influenced by various American and British artists in fits and starts but not as a whole, because the musicians in Germany were mostly outside the sphere of American and British culture and influence, and what was working in those cultures didn’t fit German culture.

Krautrock was born through bands like Amon Duul and Can and Tangerine Dream. It wasn’t a specific pinned movement, more of a collective manifestation of many different artists ideas being honeda t the time. Krautrock lent influence to electronic music, post-punk, and ambient music as well as many other genres.
There’s a cool documentary I watched back in November that kind of covers the heart of Krautrock, which was rocking just to rock, it definitely had that punk ethic of sticking it to the man and doing your own thing, experimentation, etc.

What stuck out to me while reading it today was that the members of Can were already in their thirties when they started the band. And this was the later ’60s. Why do we have this foolish idea that you expire once you get out of your twenties if you haven’t gone big?

It’s a myth perpetuated by the media. Well, not entirely a myth, if you want to “make it big,” whatever that means these days, but what is striking me in digging through the annals of punk, post-punk, krautrock, black metal, and classical music history is that we are due for something different. Why not create something that will make history of this moment? Sure, we regurgitate the past again and again, but history is filled with examples of musicians taking their particular moment in history and either combining everything that came before to make something inexplicably new and perfect, or blowing people out of the water with something entirely unpredicted.

People seem to whine and moan in a pretentious manner that music is crap these days and music is dead and there’s nothing new under the sun, but I beg to differ. We can keep making good shit. So few people take the time to actually look into the archives of music history, myself included. I devoured whatever music I could get my hands on from a young age, but now, the music I’m discovering is blowing the music I was listening to out of the water and I’m realizing just how much mainstream media affected my musical sensibilities and access to music growing up.

Now, with the internet and iPhones and scanners and iPods, access to recording tools, affordable instruments, the removal of the middle man, the sky is the limit, we just have to think outside the bounds of “career,” and “sales,” and “market demand,” and think into the skyline of “epic” and “experimental,” “outlasting its creator.” Throw away all the lines and binds of conventional music making and think on a grander scale, a scale that cannot be defined or boxed in.

We don’t have a hall pass for writing good music that spontaneously self-destructs like Inspector Gadget’s already read letters once we hit a certain age. No! Life is for continuous learning. We are never too old to learn about music, play music and share music. That’s just what they say on the tely. In the subcultures and in regions all over the world, people are rocking out way into their 80′s.

On another note, listening to Tangerine Dream while trying to nap is truly trippy. Who needs acid?