1. You’re in more than one band or project at the same time.
Do you find yourself constantly consulting a calendar so that you can squeeze in another band practice? While you’ve got four band projects going, do you get asked to take on an additional band project and say yes because THIS project might be the big one? Do you find yourself on multiple email lists or text clusters with various groups of musicians you call band mates trying to once again negotiate the details of the same weekly practices you’ve been negotiating every week for a year due to everyone having various work/life schedules? You might be a modern-day musician.
2. You work a day job for less than you’re worth in order to balance band practices/shows and tours.
Do you find yourself spending another day staring at the cottage cheese ceiling at your day job wondering why a talented mofo like you is spending so much time for so little money doing something they don’t even like to do? Do you have to constantly remind yourself that you CHOSE this job so that you could dedicate the majority of your time to music? Do you stare at your bedroom with the mattress on the floor and thrift store clothes all over the place, eating another bowl of beans and rice in front of your keyboard bench which doubles as a table for your outdated laptop? You might be a modern-day musician.
3. You have no consistent love life.
Do you find yourself put out by how quickly your friends are hooking up? Do you stare at photos of your married friends and feel a slight twinge of doubt about your life’s path? Do you find yourself so busy with work and band practices and eating rice and beans that you consider hooking up with one of your multiple band mates just for the convenience of the matter, but remember the cardinal no-no of bands just as you find your band mate making moonie eyes at you and look away? You might be a modern-day musician.
4. The thought of actually going on tour excites and horrifies you at the same time.
Do you kind of dread the go ahead to tour from your band mates/manager/band leader because you know it means quitting your job, eating more rice and beans, cramming into a van with your smelly band mates, schlepping gear and playing in small clubs/houses/coffee shops day after day? Do you also get thrilled at the idea of random discoveries, playing music every night, serendipitous encounters, all the new people you’ll meet and being able to say to people, “I’m going on tour in the fall?” You might be a modern-day musician.
5. You play bills that include two or more of your bands.
Are you the bass player in one band and keyboardist in another? Do you sing backup vocals and play guitar for one project and main vocals for the second? Do your bands books shows with each other and go on tour together, making it so you end up playing back to back every night you play out? Does this seem normal to you? You are most likely a modern-day musician.
I’ve even spending an exorbitant amount of time when I’m not at work or at one of my many band practices sitting on the mattress in my cheap rented room geeking out on space rock music from the late 60s, early 70s, and newer. Bands like Midday Veil and Ash Ra Tempel.
It helps that I’m in a Krautrock band. What the hell is Krautrock, you ask? I explained it a while back, here: You’re Never Too Old To Play Music.
On Friday, I found out about a show playing at the Gem and Bolt in Oakland, a beautiful live-in exposed-brick warehouse converted to show space at times, one of the coolest spaces I’ve ever been in. I decided to go for research and enjoyment. The opening bands were impressive, especially the drummer, who helped the first band, Brain Fruit, from Seattle, out on this night, but belonged to the second band, Midday Veil. Both bands had a strong Krautrock vibe, and it felt synchronicitous, just like this whole endeavor I’ve stumbled into. I feel like ever since I was turned onto Krautrock music last year, it’s taken me on a ride that is just beginning to pick up steam. Who knows where it will go. It’s like all the musicians who channeled their energy into this psychedelic, soulful, spacey music put out enough energy to reach decades into the future and fire up musicians that hadn’t even existed at the time, like me and most of my bandmates, for their own tripped out journeys.
The band I’m in, Hedersleben, is full-on Krautrock influenced. We’ve been meeting up to three times a week to work on music, and I’ve been listening to hours of our wacky and amazing jams practicing riffs and pulling out ideas to run by my bandmates, because apparently we are playing a show in Oakland in May. To go to a show where at least one band was doing what we intend to do, but in an amazing, realized fashion full of heart and feeling, was really cool. Lights and projections and amazing aural soundscapes.
The night at Gem and Bolt ended for me somewhere around 2am. Nommo Ogo, a band I also really dig, was played trippy dark music, costumed people were dancing around, the lead singer, a tiny mustached guy with his shirt off, was gyrating and embodying his freaky self while chanting behind a glowing purple orb as a guy with a sophisticated projector etch-a-sketch type thing and a sheet over his body drew light pictures on everyone. At this point, I was exhausted, and I was wondering how many people around me were on psychedelics. Not that I mind, I just don’t do them. And I needed to ride my bike home before I collapsed. So I fled. But I had a blast, and learned a lot. It’s so important to go to shows if you’re a musician, to see what other people are doing.
I’ve been sick on and off for about four months, no joke, from flu to bronchitis to spring cold and maybe bronchitis again. I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve been attempting to keep up at three bands, a county job and writing performances in the middle of what is still a kind of stressful bohemian time for me, but it’s frustrating. Maybe this is just what doing music full-time in your thirties while working a part-time day job to make ends meet feels like. It’s inspiring me to take better care of my self so I can have the energy to continue schlepping around amps and keyboards and guitars and singing into a microphone for a long time hence. Nik Turner of Hawkwind, a quintessential krautrock band, is in his 70′s and still going strong. I want to be that person too when I’m older, playing music as a life path, not for a fleeting minute of fame. It’s who I am, not a flash in the bucket.
A lot of synergy happening lately. It’s a good time, albeit stressful and busy. I’m fulfilled doing music projects most of the time. Scheduling around a county job is hard, but often things work out, regardless. And I’ve had the best luck with music equipment lately. I got rear-ended, but it didn’t cause much damage, so instead of replacing the bumper on my 2006 Honda, I was able to find a keyboard amp and a guitar amp for insanely reasonable deals. Gear is one of the hardest parts of being a musician.
So this is a meandering post. I’m exhausted, but wanted to throw out an update. I’m enjoying the odd moments when I get the practice space I pay in on to myself or when my roommates are not home and I have peace, quiet and space, because in Oakland, there is not a lot of those things. It’s a lot of social, busy, hubbub and I can’t hear myself think or contemplate without going to the woods. And being sick so much has inhibited my woods adventures.
So…here’s to maybe a future where I can carve out more peace and quiet. Or maybe someday afford my own quiet space. Ha. Not in the Bay Area, right? Gotta accept what is. Roommates, noise and cheap rent. It is what it is. I chose the life of a musician. Or it chose me. Less money, more time on music. Hard work in the dark for years without any monetary rewards, but happiness at doing what I love and knowing if I died tomorrow, I did my best, maybe more, to live my dreams, regardless of what people told me about what I should be doing instead.
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.
I’ve been meaning to get back to that one, as I’ve struggled with this quandary myself for years. Just today, I was ranting to someone about how I hate having to work a day job, that our society is set up so that I can’t afford to pursue what I love to do. And then the voices come into my head of other people who say, “That’s just the way it is.” Well, screw the way it is. I’m gonna find a way to be a fully self-supporting artist without having to work for someone else in a rote schedule, mark my words.
So where can creative people afford to live? Have I found any solutions? Well. I’m not certain you want to follow my route. I broke up with my husband and moved to a Victorian flat with two roommates in Oakland. I live in a nice neighborhood where I feel safe. Oakland is an awesome place to be right now. I’m surrounded by musicians and artists and writers and beautiful weirdos of all kinds. There’s always something to do, always a show to go to, a coffee shop to write in, a restaurant to eat at, a hill to hike. My rent is under 400. I live on about 1,000 a month. I ride my bike, I have a budget for groceries and gas (mainly I use the car only to get to work). I have a good friend who has kept his rent around 400/month too, he lives in a warehouse room with a loft. There’s a pipe over the bed, and the bathroom is down the hall, but he’s able to go tour in Europe for six weeks out of the year and record in LA for a month without losing his music clients (he teaches lessons) or his place to live.
It’s a lot about who you know, too. I got my place because a friend had lived there. My friend got his warehouse place because he knows the owner of the building. So there is always that to consider.
Is my current situation ideal? It’s better than it was. Sure, there’s guilt for not being a conformist member of society, for not forcing a broken marriage to work, for pursuing my dreams. And I may have to live predominately on potatoes the rest of my life, however long or short that is, but I’m trying not to think about that.
But aside from that useless emotion, when I look at the bottom line, I’m in business for myself and music/writing come first. With writing, it’s easy to work it around a day job. With music, not so much. There’s touring and recording in the studio and all of that. Day jobs that have a set schedule and health insurance and permanency, like the one I have at the library, are not drop and run types of jobs where you can be like, “Yea, I need to go on tour in June, can I have six weeks off?” Nope. So I haven’t quite find a total solution to my current dilemma which is, there will definitely be studio recording coming up and touring, but I don’t know how much, how long, or when exactly, and I have a set schedule at the library that is not flexible, except with long term planning and enough vacation time. I am not sure what I’m going to do to accomodate my music/writing come first goals without starving to death (yet), but I imagine I will figure something out.
As it stands, I’m exploring my options, but I’m feeling a bit stuck. OK, a lot stuck. I’ve been able to work my local performances and freelance jobs around the library schedule so far, which is four days a week. But nothing as big as what’s ahead. There’s the option of asking to be a permanent intermittent employee, which is basically someone who substitutes around the county at different libraries. That would give me some more schedule freedom ideally, but you can’t pick really what’s going to be available or open and sometimes it’s a crap shoot. And no health insurance. The only other job options I can think of are bartending, waitressing, the same old drill. Which I’m down to do if I need to, though I wouldn’t necessarily love either.
In a perfect world, or my ideal world, I would continue to develop the community of artists, writers and musicians I have around me and we would help each other out with sublets, jobs, shared dinners, essentially be a total community for each other. It’s happening more and more for me lately, the human network, and I’m really happy with it, but it’s still a total struggle. Living alone as an artist seems to be more manageable to me than trying to live with a partner, but maybe someday that will happen again, too. I don’t know.
So maybe my next post will revisit what jobs artists can do that won’t detract from their ability to pursue art, because that seems to be what I ended up talking about here, aside from my current sitch and how I’m trying to pin down a set schedule for upcoming recording/tour so I can decide whether to jump or keep my feet put.
Last September, I sublet my friend’s practice space while he was on tour in Europe. Having just gotten back into an urban area, and never having used a practice space before, I was stoked. There was a PA system, I could hook up my guitar to my little 4-watt Vox and blast my vocals through the microphone, scream if I wanted to. I went in there whenever I could. My schedule was basically work, eat, practice space, write, sleep. I was able to get a lot of my songs into more useful shape, and the work I did in there led to me recording a little demo in November, which has led to more projects and nice feedback.
I wrote a while back about how I was getting into this whole Krautrock music thing. I’ve been reading Krautrocksampler. I also got a really cool book from the San Francisco Public Library called Cosmic Krautrock and Its Legacy, which has pictures of all of these compelling experimental bands that came out of West Germany during the late ’60s, early ’70s. Some of the bands, like Neu! and Faust have been credited with being proto-punk: precursers to punk music.
Youtube and blogspot are the greatest things ever for finding entire ripped LPs of music that is out of print or hard to find. I’ve been taking naps with Harmonia and Cluster and Tangerine Dream and Neu! playing in the background, getting dressed while listening to Can and Amon Duul. Right now, as I write this, I’m listening to Faust.
After months of discovering obscure post-punk and metal music, this trippy experimental psychedelic ambient music made of organic instruments and sampled sounds and strange undulations of instruments meeting in a rise and fall together and separately is totally awesome.
And it feels likes it’s sucked me into some strange alternate universe.
About a week ago, a friend posted that one of his bands needed a keyboardist who was drama free and available to tour and record. I saw it and wrote in my journal that I wanted to do something like that. About five minutes later, he called me up, asking if I could play prog keyboards. I told him that I was more of a keyboard-light person, but he insisted I get the name of the guy in charge of this signed Krautrock project. After a number of very positive emails in which I sent clips of my work and some background about myself, confessing I was mainly a singer/lyricist/guitarist, the guy in charge of the project sent me about 14 Krautrock songs I’d never heard before that he said he is influenced by for the project, some sheet music of songs he is working on, and invited me to come to one of their practices. I felt like I was in a really cool Krautrock school for about three days, as I listened to the songs and practiced ideas based on the music he had sent from the project.
Then, I was hauling my two 88-key keyboards and electric guitar down to my friend’s practice space a few blocks from my house, along with a Fender Twin Reverb amp my neighbor had let me borrow.
There were other people trying out that night, a violinist and a Krautrock influenced concert pianist. I took over the microphone, free styled some spacey spoken word poetry, sung some on-the-spot melodies, played some piano and guitars and basically kicked ass, while everyone else kicked ass on bass, keys, drums, guitar and violin. We all made some lovely music that night, and it fit, it was fun and felt good.
The next night, I had my own band practice, and the following night, I was invited to West Oakland to jam out with some old-school punks who have a recording control room in their practice space and wanted a female musician to round out their songs. I made up words and a melody to one of their songs, they played some of mine. The light was dark, the amps were big, and we did the best cover of Fascination Street by The Cure I’ve ever heard. We played my songs, Iggy Pop, Joy Division, and PJ Harvey. I basically screamed into the microphone for four hours, dream come true.
I came home Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night and face planted on my mattress. It took me a good half hour to hour to get my shit together enough to get into my pajamas. I’ve been trying to kick this nasty bout of bronchitis for a few weeks now, so after the excitement I had this week I spent the majority of three days in the house, on my bed, totally sick again. A friend had a show down the street, another was spinning some of my favorite music at a bar down the street, but I went to neither, just sat in my pajamas, and time crept by like nothing had happened. Until the guys I’d jammed with Friday sent me samples of the covers we’d done and I was happy all over again.
It’s been hard to let it sink in, how rad last week was. On Sunday, I got to sit in on a practice for the new Hawkwind lineup, another project the gatekeeper in charge of the Krautrock band is in charge of, and I wrote a few pages of writing in my notebook and at one point, my friend was trying to drum and sing at the same time and they all three looked at me sitting there and before I knew it I was singing vocals to Lemmy’s song “Silver Machine,” the one that hit the charts back in the ’70s, as a placeholder while they recorded their run through for the keyboardist.
You would think at this point I would be like, my life is freaking weird, but I wrote something in my notebook while I sat in on that practice for three hours: “If you’re tapped in, all the synchronicity doesn’t seem so weird. If you have a master plan, always, once you focus, the players come out and then everything makes sense, but it’s because from the beginning, from the get-go, you believed that something would come through. You made it happen.”
I posted on my Facebook music page that the best compliments I received last week were, “She’s got some pipes,” and “You’ve got a great scream.” A friend of mine added, “You also joined a Krautrock band with a couple of legendary bastards.”
Anyhow, it’s been busy. I’ve also been working on a piece of writing for an upcoming reading, a profile of a new favorite coffee shop for Oakland magazine, and a crapola of other writing, in addition to trying to get my own songs polished up. I never realized what hard work it is to be in charge of writing all of the songs for a band. The bass player and drummer I’ve been working with on my songs since November are great at helping me add transitions and space into my songs, but we are moving at a pretty glacial pace, and my amp is a piece of crap unless split into a bigger speaker, which I don’t have. So my new goal is to save up for a good amp, which means I need to not be sick anymore, and have some free time when I’m not working on writing or music or at the library. But I can’t really see that happening any time soon, so I’m going to come up with a Plan B, which is to stumble onto some funds or a side project.
Friends have been texting and calling, “Let’s hang out,” and I’m always off to practice or doing some writing. But this was the life I’d wanted and planned for years. I’m not complaining. I’m happy as pie immersed in music all of the time, constantly digging up new music to listen to, reading about it in books I get at the library, writing about it, creating it. No matter what my sicknesses I catch or how sad I am over missing my ex-husband or whatever, I can find a home in music. Like my friend Kirsten said to me last night, ” You’ve always been a musician, you’ve always done music, so whatever project comes along, it’s what you were born to do. It won’t go away.”
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.
I think a lot of people have the misconception that for artistic people, creations just fly out without any forethought, planning or daily routine. Maybe if you are Billy Childish (a prolific musician, poet, writer), but not so much for the rest of us.
I know a lot of writers, musicians and artists. The Bay Area, especially Oakland and San Francisco, is a magnet for us. Of the ones I know who are successful, there is a daily routine, whether it’s sitting down every morning to write a number of pages, or getting into a practice space alone or with a band to work on music.
I think we get this idea that creating music, writing or art is something that just POW happens. I assure you, it’s not. Sure, I’ve had many moments where I’m on a long road trip and some tiny little line comes into my head, for example, today as I was walking to my car to go to work I was thinking about how punk in Oakland has become this glam thing all around (what happened to cutting your own hair and sewing on your own patches? When did all the punks become fashion models?) and I thought, “Well, fashion punk is not dead.”
Inspiration comes in random bits. And the bits are what we make of them. If I scribble stuff down when it pops into my head, I can pore through all my scraps of paper later and maybe cobble together a song or poem.
But in the interim, I have to do things like wake up every morning, meditate, throw some tarot cards and write a page in my writing notebook. That way, I have a center, and a notebook filling with writing. A page a day doesn’t seem like much, but at the end of the year, that’s 365 pages to choose from. Two pages a day is 730 pages.
Same goes for music. Right now, I practice music once a week with other people, and work on songs in whatever spaces I have, usually late at night from midnight until 2am. For the once a week practice, that’s 52 days of practicing songs with other musicians. Twice a week is 104. And on it goes.
So, even if those morning pages or that band practice is shitty on that day, you are showing up on a routine basis for the muse to strike when ready, and while you’re not looking, you’re getting better at your craft. If you have a routine, you don’t have to stress the fuck out all of the time, because you know every morning, (or night for you night owls) you can go back to whatever you’re working on, pick up where you left off. It becomes a habit, and if people ask, “So, what have you been doing lately with your art?” you can validly say, “Oh, just writing (practicing music, painting, etc) every morning.” It also makes that crazy passion and intensity a bit less like a firework waiting to explode.
And now, when you look back in a few months or years, there’s actually going to be something to draw from. Of course, you still have to make sense of what you created, but…it’s a start. It’s harder for random life stuff to knock you off balance when you’re strong in your own center of gravity, and that strength can come from something as basic as showing up for yourself in a simple routine.
I’ve been doing real good with a morning routine in general the past eight months, but the past few weeks I got sick and then in desperation to get out of the house I went out to shows and to the city and did social shit, which kind of knocked me off my routine because I drank coffee and stayed up late and got all manic from interacting with dozens of people, and then couldn’t sleep because I had to process all the interaction. Another routine I got out of because of being sick is hiking and kettlebell, both which serve to calm my mind dooooown. So, as much as I hate anything seemingly stagnant or, god forbid, boring, I cannot wait until I am feeling well enough to kick some hiking and strength training ass and get back on some sort of stable routine in other regards.
A writing group serendipitously sprung up on Facebook the other day. It includes a few of my writer friends, each from a different strata of a past or current life. A friend from childhood whom I met when I was 11 years old in the church parking lot when we both were ditching church. A friend I met at age 19 when I was obsessed, in a musician envy sort of way, with the band her boyfriend was creator of. A writer dude who used to be in a cult-popular local punk band and lived on my street briefly before moving away. A dude who reads in the same literary circles I read in and is friends with a number of mutual friends: writers and punks and musicians. A Russian friend who is a total female rock star writer blowing up the literary scene in the Bay Area. A friend who I met when we read at Lip Service West together, and who I often bump into while loitering at an Oakland coffee shop seemingly everyone we know either hangs out at or works at.
The group started when one of these friends tagged me in one of those posts where you tag a number of people, you know, those posts you usually ignore. The game was that you had to look on page 7 of your manuscript and transcribe 7 sentences to post on Facebook, and then tag 7 other writers.
I was bored, and sick, so I pored through a bunch of my crappy writing to find a story that was actually seven pages long. I had to go back to my early twenties, when I was going to San Francisco State and studying Creative Writing. I tagged some of my writer friends, and the thread became super entertaining as they all posted excerpts of random stories that were either tragic or hilarious in a disturbing way. Then one of my friends said the thread, which got to over 90 comments long, was making her want to start a writing group.
So we did.
I went off about the ebils of Facebook a few weeks ago. I had decided to disconnect from it for a while, went all crazy on it in my rants. It helped. A couple of guy friends asked me if I had deleted it because of some dude. Wouldn’t they like to know.
Anyhow, I got a necessary pause and when I came back to it, I learned to let go of the outcome, to use it like a tool. I now observe everyone’s awesomeness without getting caught up so much in comparison and envy. I have given up (mostly) on expectations of any specific result from others, instead focusing on what is cool about it for me. If I share things with people without making it too personal, writer and musician discussions abound. Connecting to friends of friends, learning more about family, finding awesome music and bands…the pros outweigh the cons for me right now. Who gives a who who thinks what about who.
My whole philosophy on this upcoming year is, instead of trying to find out the purpose of MY WHOLE LIFE, to ask myself, “What’s next?”
I was talking to a musician who had just gotten back from tour. She was floundering a bit, because the tour had been her goal forever and now it was over. “I don’t know what to do with my life!” She said.
“What’s next?” I asked her. Baby steps.
Instead of comparing myself to others seemingly further along the path than me, the myriad of friends I have who are currently touring or have multiple books published, instead of letting the green-eyed monster consume me…just bloody DO something already. Take action. Don’t stew. Move along. There’s no time to be jealous unless it propels me along on my path, spurs me to action. If I want something I feel I can’t have, what can I do to obtain that thing, if it’s possible for me to obtain? Can I at least try?
There is no room anymore for being grouchy or sulking, playing a victim or blaming anyone else for my success or failure. There is only room for growth.
I fell in love with words at a young age, words that stretched my brain, made me think about something in a new way. I forget this sometimes. I’ve become inured to them in a sense after so many years of using them, harhar, but some words intrigue me. I want to write them out by hand, create songs using them. Anathema. Heathen. Decay. Beauty. Puissant. Ruse. Misguided. Orbital. Fractal. Shattered. Entropy. Dystopian. Cathartic. Transcendence. Translucent. Tumultuous. Turbulent. Trepidation. Isotopic. Isolation. Isotope. Sweetheart. Stilted. Lilted. Lover. Tumble.
When I was locked up in a foreign country boot camp type school as a teenager, we had six hours of self-guided class a day where we were to sit and do work while staff watched us to make sure we weren’t talking or misbehaving or non-verbally communicating or note passing.
Instead of the algrebra books and such, I pulled a dictionary from the shelf and hand wrote the definitions of words I found interesting, for hours. I wrote poems with those words. I sent the poems home to my parents.
Before the boot camp school I had a gutter punk boyfriend, my road dawg, who would get mad at me for using big words, as if it was a threat against his intelligence. “Stop trying to make me feel stupid,” he would say. Other kids used a lot of slang and dumbed down words. But I couldn’t stop using big words. I read a lot as a kid. They were stuck in me. To stop using them would be to stop being me.
“People always ask me if I’m English,” I said once to a friend. “Because you can actually articulate words?” he said. I’d never thought of it that way. I always thought big words made me exotic, using them in sentences made them interesting. There are so many words with so many different meanings. Some words I repeat over and over in my head. Some songs are titled by one word, one word which resonates through the body of the song, conveys a mood. Yet so many songs named by the same word are different.
But that’s the beauty of language. That all of us can write these songs based on one word, or encapsulated in one word. That words can mean so much, or so little. There was a guy once who told my friend, his girlfriend at the time, that he was ambivalent about their relationship. I thought that meant he didn’t care about her, so I freaked out. “Why would he say that to you,” I told her. “What a jerk!”
But then I looked up the word and found it meant conflicted. He’d been pursuing me while with her, and my own loyalties were ambivalent. I was young. But it made me more intrigued, that he could use that word to describe a relationship. And that the word applied to not one, but two situations in my current reality.
To be honest, when I started this blog, I called it The Stifled Artist because I was feeling very stifled. I was in my twenties, and I kept choosing jobs I hated, so I decided to rant about them on the interwebs.
The blog was also an attempt to simply write more. And I’ve kept it up since 2007, so…
I also wanted to connect with other creative people. I would say I’ve been pretty successful in that regard, too. I didn’t find the millions I was looking for, but I did find a handful of cool people, fellow writers and musicians, who I know still read this thing even though they don’t comment. Which is one thing that keeps me still writing it. My psychic ability to deduce whether or not people are still reading it. Yep. You are. Don’t lie.
And why are you still reading it? Because. When you can read this thing and peek into my insanity, it makes you feel better about yours. Admit it. You’ve read this blog and been like, “Damn. She’s crazy. At least I’m not THAT crazy.”
How do I know this? Because. I do the same thing when I read other people’s personal writing. That’s the point. If it’s not entertaining, it makes you want to cry. It helps to hear what other people have struggled with. That’s the whole reason I do this thing even though the only reward really is the catharsis of being able to rant in public. We all make mistakes in our journey to get ourselves out there into the world. No artist is birthed in anything other than embryo with the potential for growth.
So, it still feels silly to call this The Stifled Artist, because I don’t feel stifled in the form of my art. But I don’t want to change it to something stupid like The Growing Artist or The Abundant Artist or The Jolly Happy Clever Artist. That would not reflect my macabre self-deprecating sense of humor and general cynicism mixed with an epic jug of hope.
***
When it comes to writing non-fiction from my personal life and writing lyrics to songs, I am shocked at the power of words to convey emotion across time and space. I never would have started writing anything here at all if I didn’t believe in that power. If you read some of Aleister Crowley’s writings on magick, he talks a lot about the magic of the word for manifestation of events and realities. Alan Moore talks about it too, as I mentioned in Writing As Magic.
I’m baffled by how writing something down can lead to that thing actually happening. I think we simply don’t believe enough. We keep ourselves beaten down because we’ve got this circus in our head of parental figures, teachers, exes and ratty neighbor kids telling us that our ideas are stupid and to get in the real world. It’s easier to limit ourselves, to create self-made boundaries and lines.
Well, I’m here to say that the real world is what you think the real world is. Beyond the physical structures that make up what we see in front of our eyes is a world we can’t confine or define, made up of our creations.
Here’s a personal example. I had a lady once tell me that she believe that the lyrics to songs she was listening to created her reality, so she only listened to happy songs. You’re integrating the words you listen to into your head every time you listen to them, she said. Imagine what that does to your subconscious.
Since I listen to a lot of very dark kind of mopey post-punk type music, I was averse to her projection. I am NOT going to stop listening to The Cure, I thought to myself. Robert Smith is amazing.
Recently I found an old song I’d written, that had seemingly come straight from my own subconscious. And what do you know. The lyrics applied exactly to a situation I was currently having in my life. Word for word. It was uncanny. I’d created precisely what I’d written about in my song in real life. Again.
I started listening to the lyrics to other songs of mine and found the same thing. In some instances, lyrics that had applied to an old scenario, now applied to a current situation as well.
What the fuck?
Words are powerful things. If you believe in the Bible (I think it’s likely a work of fiction, but I grew up being read the stories), the first line says, “In the beginning was the word.”
We create our realities to a large extent. How we perceive people and events around us, what our creations mean about our perceptions. Creation is a powerful tool. A lot of times we overlook that power because real life seems so subtle and innocuous and non-descript. Sometimes we’re just numb to our powers. It’s too scary to know how much we actually have.
Does this mean I’m going to start writing happy songs about bluebirds and Sesame Street type scenarios?
No.
But it does give me food for thought about how much energy to invest in creating songs about broken things. It feels like my songs are a boomerang sometimes. I throw them out there hoping to get rid of certain scenarios and emotions I’ve experienced, wanting to help others going through those same scenarios, but the scenarios and emotions just return right back to me.
To think I could create something and have it not be a part of me again is ludicrous I suppose, but I always thought once I created something it became it’s own thing outside of me with a power of its own to exist beyond my own limited interpretations. I think this is still true. But I’m starting to be more careful with what I’m manifesting with the songs I’m creating and listening to over and over again.
What if I created lyrics pertaining to a situation that was fabulous and awesome and not fucked up and then found myself in that situation? It’s worth an experiment.
