i just came off such a night! this might go on…
i went over to rehearsal time with joshuagabriel, the third of the affianced jewish trifecta. the major difference between jg and my other newly affianced friends is that jg is my ex-husband. there was a period of my life when we giddily filled the roles of husband and wife, and every day i left work trying to find him and hole up in whatever little room he lived in, and we’d make indulgent music, long, random, intense or hilarious songs…we completely amused and entertained ourselves and he pulled me into a cloud of Genius, everything we made was Genius, which was remarkable since we made so much.
he is also one of my dear gemini – i keep several fabulous gemini in close proximity to me even though they flake on me all the time. i just adore them all. perhaps my odd combo of virgo sun scorpio moon means i need some binary companions.
jg wasn’t my first affair of the arts – i once co-edited a magazine with a man who i found decidedly short but he had the most beautiful eyes, no one else seemed to see it. when we were editing i felt a cataclysmic bond, an ardor unchecked by reality. it took me years to heal enough from that to show my writing to another man.
in these cases and others i was always convinced that despite all my misgivings – the fact that i the pleasure activist didn’t Want these men – that the creative passion must still be love. love and sex keep ending up on separate parallel paths through my life. whatever it takes to make something beautiful i suppose. still, i have a bad habit of being completely enthralled only by those who could take or leave me, and let me take or leave them. now i am growing to where i like understanding why i need someone, and why they need me, and that it isn’t just the song. and having since experienced a more thorough heartbreak, felt the coming and going of love, felt the deep chasm of loving someone who doesn’t really know how to sit and receive it, i am concluding that its really quite nice when someone can’t take leave of you. is that too brokeback for the blog?
anyway, joshua and i have now recorded three pre-demo songs, songs that were jottings in my journal with melodies in my head and now they have beats and guitar lines and breath. i am beside myself with the tangible aspect of having songs. i suspect they are really good. time will tell.
then we went to this spot, the glass house, which – how can i even describe it? it looks a bit like a room might look at the bottom of the east river, with all the sort of things one might throw into the east river (toys, toilets, bicycle parts, torn hammocks, bedposts) recreated into a living art of a room. quantity, not quality, reins supreme. but then there was quinn, who sounded quite wonderful, and sported a pair of pants that looked like a rabid woman had bitten the crotch off in a moment of lust…he’d mended with a kerchief, i couldn’t help but examine. there were all these Fascinating Individuals there, 54 alices of different races and genders, a ghanaian drummer, all sorts of artists and hipsters. my baby sister right now has a set of friends who will likely grow into the folks in the room tonight: delightful if inadvertently pretentious – sort of wonderful, in a state of constant creation and battles of the wit. i never quite know what to think of it, i am drawn to people who hold their arts and genius a bit closer to the chest, doling it out in secret in the middle of the night, under alias, afraid to take themselves so seriously. it should, then, be refreshing to be in such a free scene. alas, i fell asleep.
the act of making my words and melodies into songs is exhausting and kind of frightening. they never sound like i thought they would, i want to do them over and over; joshua has to remind me they are just demos, this is just protools, we have a real studio coming. my first two callings combine in songwriting, and the songs don’t really sound like anything i’ve quite heard, so i can’t place my feet solidly in the idea that others might like them. but there you go…the demo is coming!
so is a good night’s sleep. i am making these small steps – less whiskey, less cigarettes, more water, more sleep, less red meat, more walking, more cutting the hair (in the morning i go for mohawkish again!). steps from binge to balance, steps from now to then.