Category: Music

Percolatin’

Okay, so me and Mr. Music got together last night and started messing with this ‘thing’ I have in my mind.  I’ve wanted to write a musical since I was in my teens, and his self-appointed job is to fix me with his kindly yet piercing gaze and say, “So nu? you going to write this thing already?”  Last night I laid out what I want to be the linking device between the songs… Gizmo is ‘quacking’ again, lost my train of thought…. oh yeah, and then recited the lyrics to the pirate song.  Because any modern musical must have pirates and ninjas. OH and unicorns, more than one kind of fairy, zombies (I haven’t written the ‘song’ they will sing yet but I know how the chorus will go), squid (as mentioned).

When he showed me a printout of my blogpost from yesterday, wishing to expand on it, I almost burst into tears.  Then, abruptly, I thought I might be standing on the edge of one of those hills in the badlands, the ones made out of solid bentonite clay, during a heavy rainstorm.  I’m about to slide down one of those bastards, and when I get to the bottom, I’ll be filthy, scuffed and exhausted, but it will have been a hell of a ride.

Then we had a LONG discussion about libretto, composition, the role of insanity in creativity (I’ve got some stuff to look up now), ignoring cost and just writing what we want.  Because the most exhilarating aspect of this is that my luck has provided me with the perfect partner for this enterprise;  if I could express in words my longing for such a thing, and how I’ve longed for it over the course of my whole life, then I’d be a GOOD writer.  Musicals are all about longing….. and how to most perfectly delineate it, elaborate on it, and then satisfy it. I don’t want to be part of Rodgers and Hammerstein.  But if I could get a corner torn off the page of Comden and Green and stick it in my scrapbook, my word, I would be happy.  There’s only one way to leave the theatre!  Singing!  Thanks, Mr. Music, I’m in a very up kind of mood today, which is good, because the weather is VILE.

Marcus Aurelius

Chipper sent this link to me under the rather cryptic header “Big Head”.  Marcus Aurelius was a great writer and his contribution to the philosophy of Stoicism should not be forgotten. Here’s a link to the Meditations.

I’m off to see Music Man tonight.  I am starting to think about writing a musical and rather than having a discernable plot, it’s a thirties style attempt to jam about 100 songs with the most minimal amount of plot or discursive linking possible into 2 hours. Like, my parents hate the plot and fast forward to the musical numbers.  Eddie Izzard in an enormous red ball gown as the Master of Ceremonies?  A little girl asking for pirates and ninjas, and she gets the pirates but you never see the ninjas? Of such is the coloured marzipan from which I wish to confect a musical….  A giant squid sings a sad song about the depths of the sea, with its limbs operated by the cast members?  I even have a name for the opus.

OMG. Gizmo, when he’s cleaning his nether regions, makes a noise like the quacking of a really subdued duck.  He just gave about five demonstrations in a row. The quack he emitted on the sofa last night cracked me and Jeff up.

Soon, the mandolin lessons.

New Youtube video, Revelation, etc.

No link – it’s not like I’m ashamed of it, I just think it is not exactly… well…. I’m having WAY too much fun singing it, and that is kinda sorta a bad thing. It really should be sung with as close to a straight face as possible, and I just can’t manage that.

Keith and I read my version of Revelation last night and we ended up giggling like idiots. Then it occurred to me… this just plain isn’t respectful to people of faith. In my defence, I’d like to point a couple of things out.

Martin Luther, one of the greatest theologians who ever lived, didn’t like Revelation and wanted it yoinked from the Bible. John Calvin, one of the biggest dickheads who ever lived, and also a good theologian, did a commentary on every book of the New Testament except Revelation and very very rarely referenced it. There was argument among the church fathers right up until the 6th C whether it should even BE in the Bible (so much for Biblical inerrancy…) and the Eastern Orthodox church dislikes it so much that it grudgingly accepted its inclusion in the scripture but refuses to use any of it in its liturgy, an excellent compromise, and exactly the kind of thing a syncretic church should do. After all, that’s exactly what contemporary American Christianity is doing when it ignores the thousand or so references to assisting the poor that occur in both Testaments to focus its mascaraed eyes on the handful of references to queerness. In other words, ignoring what is actively repellent to it, or politically murderous to it, without reference to What God Wants.

So I will continue to Play with Revelation, but I’m only going to be sharing it with those individuals who demonstrate interest.

I note that a Democrat is suing to have Barack Obama’s name stricken from the rolls of Presidential candidates because it turns out he was born in Kenya. Nice. Personally, I wouldn’t mind if they did the same for the lovely and talented John McCain, who was born in the Canal Zone (note to self, aren’t we all, except for the folks delivered by caesarian).

Well hang

The hang drum (pronounced hung) is a Swiss technological breakthrough in musical percussion.  Now, thanks to the beauty and glory of the internet, you can virtually play one.

This is not a musical instrument which is available in stores. You literally have to fly to Switzerland, prove yourself worthy, pay up front and wait six months for delivery.  Needless to say I covet one badly.

Maybe I shouldn’t record Buy me a Beer after all!

This seems a painful way to encourage alcohol consumption.

I am still recovering from the cavalcade of cheese, but I’ll be in to work as normal this morning, or as close to normal as my inconstant weirdness ever gets.

However, I’m going to poke around and look for another venue, possibly the Heritage Grill, if they’ll let me.

Wedding and videography successful

At least I have my priorities straight.  The wedding was absolutely gorgeous, and took place in Stef and David’s back yard.  I sat with the dykes and a way fun teen named Jacob (we had each other in fits within minutes); the twenty-something hipsters had made me want to cry when they asked me if I salsa, so I got up and went where I immediately felt much more comfortable.  Long about 9:30 I sang “The Housewife’s Lament” and David said afterwards, “Normally when amateurs start singing I cringe, but that was great.”  I smirked and said, “I get that a lot.”  I will never be famous, childer, but I will always have a reputation.

The videography was fun, and I tried to sleaze one more video out of Tamara, whose patience with me should be legendary at this point.  However, the notion of recording “The Weekend’s Over” where I recorded it proved too much for me…. I only wished I’d done it inside, but I doubt the security guard would have been happy about that.  That’s one that will never make it onto Youtube, snicker.  That’s going to go onto a memory stick and stay there.

The NCIS blowout continues apace.  Mark Harmon moves so gracefully – I mean, he’s the yummiest middle aged man on television, although Olmos comes close – and I’m finally not hating Michael Weatherly.  Any guy who was disowned by his rich father for going into acting can’t be all bad.  Sasha Alexander’s laugh could be used as a marital aid.  All right, all right, I’m a fan, but I won’t be insane on the subject until I do filk or write slash, m’kay?

I await a call from Mike, and then, the beach.  But only until 5 pm because at that point Jeff’s going to come get me and take me to Tom and Peggy’s for supper!  Must remember to take mandolin.

Crap, crap, crap.  I have to do laundry today!  Unhappy sigh.
And the stairs at Wreck, twice.  Getting to the beach is always easier than leaving.

Mr. Music comes through

I am now the proud possessor of a Jihmi mix cd, which contains, among other things, a version of Broadway Baby (Follies, Sondheim, 1971, Broadway), TWO of the Angstones tunes from their note-for-note of Sound of Music, the sweetest version of Some Enchanted Evening evar recorded, at least until Joel starts singing, a jaw dropping version of it I Can Cook Too by Patti Austin and now I’m listening to Paul McCartney sing Til There Was You. There’s more, there’s more. But I’ll blog about it later, I’se bagged.

Naughty, naughty mOm

She’s gone off to the wilds, the wilds I say, of Saskatchewan (although whether she’s off to be a Saskatchewan River Pirate remains to be seen) and in the time she’s been gone she’s neither phoned, nor emailed, nor in any matter indicated that she’s still in the land of the living.  pOp and I attribute this to a number of possibilities….

She forgot her own telephone number.  Hey, it happens.

She’s being held in an undisclosed location so that a bunch of well-meaning rellies can convert her to Christianity.  Hint.  Good luck, Chuck!  That’s one die hard mother of an atheist ya got there.

She’s just damned busy and has no internet access.

She’s killed her travelling companion in an attempt to get a little peace and quiet and is working on a suitable body disposal method.  Ontie Mary rocks the free world with her memory and her sense of humour, but the Energizer Bunny hides in terror from her mouth.  I say this as someone who occasionally makes with the pressured speech herself.  Okay, that is the polite way of describing it… I’m a motormouth, are you happy now?

She figures we’re all bloody grownups and we’ll hear about her travels soon enough.

Jeff is continuing to spit blood and yard trimmings over the computer he’s doing up for mOm (it’s not that bad, but it IS a Windows machine).

I had total flow with customer interactions on the phone today.  No nasties, all pleasant and/or funny and/or appreciative of me taking the time to answer the questions properly.  After the weekend, and that SIX count em SIX escalation calls day last week, I figured I deserved it.  I even threatened to kiss one guy when he said, point blank, “So is this marketing speak or what?” about one of the single most pernicious uh, LIES, LIES okay… did I make that clear enough??? that the Marketing wonks ever passed off on an increasingly weary and skeptical public, and I said, “Yup, that’s what it are; a more reasonable expectation of the product’s behaviour, life expectancy and usefulness to your application is….x”. And he thanked me.  He thanked me a lot.  Okay I just remembered, I got off the phone after one call and said “I tremble for my country when I reflect that we have Newfies,” and SalmonMan snickered over in his IT corner.  But the Newfie wasn’t evil, he was just not clear on the concept of a warranty period.

Mike has been phoning me and taunting me to convert my options and sell out.  I’m lazy, I’ll wait for the deal to close.  He lectures me about opportunity costs, blah blah blah.  This time he phoned from Wreck Beach, the bastard; I could practically smell the suntan oil and stray whiffs of reefer and there’s me on my way home from work thinking I should have just taken a mental health day and gone with him.  I’ll get him, dagnabit.  He keeps leaving massage oil here, maybe I’ll grease up the kitchen floor without telling him.

I just found out who one of my lurkers is, via email.  He says he loves my blog.  Hint… he loves musicals.  All the best people do, you know.  It’s a canonical law, in my universe.  Why I even had a dream one time, recounted in this blog, that included a giant insectoid alien singing in a musical.  He was having a gas pretending to be a railroad man in a musical set in the nineteen thirties. Johnny Depp was in it, too.  Can’t go wrong with a twist like that.
It was really weird having garlic bread tonight and nobody to share it with.

Cryptic email and status report

Yesterday at work I got this massively cryptic email from the senior finance person who says check into your share situation.  Normally I have stuff neatly filed but I can’t find anything more recent than 2003.  I don’t think the phone number is even the same from back then for Computershare. Now I have to phone Computershare and find out what’s going on.  Needless to say, there have been public announcements about the company which may not be named and while I don’t imagine this actually means a lot of money I am mildly excited.

Pressured speech commences:  Continue reading Cryptic email and status report

The Truman delusion?

There’s a new delusion on the block, oh goody.  Another form of mental illness I can sympathize with and not actually, you know, catch.

From the time I was little I had no interest in being famous. I watched what famous people went through and thought, that’s just nuts!  No privacy, and then at the end there’s nobody to pay attention to you.  Yuck!  I gave up waiting to be discovered (the psychological failing when you wish that you will be magically conveyed to a land of money and prestige without actually doing anything) in my early thirties, when I got a letter from a relative outlining how she was going to wish her way out of her current situation and I realized “holy crap, that’s me!”.  Now I’m posting stuff on youtube, not because I have some belief that I will magically become rich and famous, but because people ask me too, and it’s fun, and most of the people who see it think it’s cute or funny or useful or bizarre. In fact, cute, funny, useful or bizarre is kinda the focus of this blog, when I’m not whining about something or other.  I have this overwhelming urge, today, to sing the Slimfast and Methadone song into the all seeing eye of Youtube.  I should put that mental aberration aside and just go practice some more.

Still don’t know all the chord forms for Happy Feet.  Sheesh, it’s hard!  Fingees stingee.

Domestic life and creativity

Emily Dickinson would bake biscuits when the poems wouldn’t come.  My creative process is not particularly clear to me; I write more when I’m very happy or very upset – the November before I split up with Paul was a veritable creative ferment – and there are two kinds of songs, easy and hard.  The easy ones come out, chords and lyrics and choon, all in one easy go.  Everything else has something missing; gets shelved; gets worked on; then one night I finish it.  I mostly write songs after dark, but not always.  I quit writing, and singing, almost altogether when I was on Prozac for four months, and the eight months afterwards getting the stuff to clear my system was pretty much a dry hole.  So I guess I have to be a little crazy to write songs.  As for writing on a sheet of paper, the rest of the time, pick a topic and point me at the internet; I can write about pretty much anything that isn’t actually advertising, because my attitude toward advertising is so disrespectful.  Except Blast-Eeze, the Laxative Coughdrops.  I did write a jingle for those, but that’s only because they are an imaginary product.  (There… will be… a brief hi-a-tus…. then… the mentholated… flatus).

Tamara just called and cried off for this afternoon – she’s the videographer I work with.  I’m not in fabulous voice today so I was just as happy about that. We’re re-skedding for next week.  I was supposed to be doing Buy Me a Beer, but some other time I guess. Maybe I could work on something else… or just swither on things.  I think Jeff would like me to clean my room again, but he’s too polite to comment.

Made Jeff french toast and deli bacon for breakfast this morning.  Now that’s creativity.

Got out of bed and out the door rather faster than I wanted to this morning; I heard bloodcurdling screams coming from the alleyway and learned which house it was coming from and banged on the open front door (they had put a waterfall on their front steps, I still can’t figure that part out – why run water down your front steps?).  A button-cute eight year old Asian boy answered and in perfect Canuckistani said, “Hey mom it’s a housewife!”  Didn’t know whether to slap him or burst out laughing.  Anyway, it was just kids screaming, and then their parents yelling at them in some language or other – maybe Vietnamese – but after Brianne Voth, it doesn’t pay to sit on your ass when you hear screaming in this town, so maybe I looked stupid but that would be no stretch, and at least those neighbours know that if something doesn’t look right some nosy cow with a cell phone will turn up and poke around, not always a bad thing.  Note to self – next time tell Jeff you’re leaving the house….

Zow.  That’s the biggest jumping spider I’ve ever seen!  I just had to leap up and grab pictures.

Since I have my afternoon free now I’m going to text Katie and ask her to come over for the movie that Jeff rented for her….

I know it will confirm my reputation for being terminally lazy, but I’m so glad I got the day back.  I’m not burned out, but I’m crisssp around the edges, and this should really help.  Back to bed and maybe do some reading, you know, with a book.

Off to Mission.

I won’t be posting until after I get home from Mission tomorrow; it’s time for the festival out there with my current and previous coworkers, including no fewer than two bosses, and which involves stringed instruments, alcohol and the World’s Best Campfireâ„¢. Continue reading Off to Mission.

Playing around

My new Zoom H2 arrived so I have been playing with it.  It seems pretty intuitive and comes with a kick ass quick start sheet.

Times are ‘interesting’ at work, mostly for other people, and in the sense of the Chinese curse. ScaryClown got himself a week off to think about how nuts he is.  I love him dearly, but sometimes his intense intelligence & perfectionism overpower his somewhat stunted sense of self interest.  A couple of other people have left the building, one assumes not as a result of any overpowering desire to run away.  I mean, I won’t miss either of them (one of my coworkers went so far as to play “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” through the speakers on his desk upon receipt of the email, and I did the weasel dance) but Patricia chided me on my lack of professionalism and reminded me about the adage on “the devil you know”.  She has a point, as always.

The Luddite was over last night for dins.  He cracks me up, and only rarely when he plans to.  His raspberries aren’t doing as well as he’d hoped but the strawberries he gave me are ripening nicely.  He gave technical advice to Jeff about his bike and manifested an immense mass of bitter chocolate from his bag.  Jeff cooked chicken breasts which turned out delightful and succulent.  I made chickpea salad, so I imagine we’ll all be tooting like a toy symphony for the next few days.

It’s hot.  I wore a synthetic dress to work and Jeff blanched as I approached him, so I changed when I got home.

I got a migraine sign this morning, so I should be smart and go to bed.  Buffy Season 1 is over….que l’on continue, as a famous separatist once remarked.

It’s a beautiful day

I’m at the folks’ place in Victoria recovering from one of the more memorable days in many moons.

I got up at 4:30 and left the house with Jarmo and crew around 7:30.  We launched from Burrard ramp.  There were eagles at the launch site.  The launch was hilarious, mostly because the Suburban’s muffler was under water for a good chunk of the launch.  Anyway, that was successful.  Out into the Georgia Strait where the combined one two punch of the Fraser’s two arms dumping into the strait caused incredible lumpiness.  I lost my hat (I had sunscreen), applied sunscreen to the back of Jarmo’s neck and his bald spot, and stood for the first 1.5 hours.  We stopped at Galiano and got ice cream bars and pumped the bilges, after which the boat behaved in a much peppier fashion.

Got to Victoria Harbour long about 11:30, with bunting flying and hordes of people for the tall ships festival, including the Nina, and Jarmo just moseys up to the nicest section of dock and gets everybody a pass to the docks.  I bail to go to Pondside for the filking. 

Shortly after I got there me and twenty other people ran through the Tapioca Song… EVERYBODY there knew it off by heart, it was amazing. Instruments included stand up bass (thank you thank you Peggy) hammered dulcimer, banjola, many guitars, resonator guitar and many harmonious happy voices…..  AND – and this makes me so happy I could burst – it was simultaneously signed in Ameslan. 

I played with Devon Rex cats and listened to some of the nicest and smartest people in the world tell stories and sing songs and play exotic instruments.  Happy, happy sigh.

Then I realized I was exhausted and begged Dr Filk for a ride to my folks’ place on his scoot, which he kindly provided.  There I was thinking I wouldn’t get a ride on a motorcycle this summer, ha! THEN I got to ride to my granny’s place in the Camaro, with the top down, during a cloudless summer evening.  I had a lovely (and brief) visit with my gran, then came back here and drank a cup of tea.  There was a deer in the parking lot across the street from her apartment while we were there.

You have to admit I had an amazing day and I send big hugs and kisses to Douglas and Juliana for sponsoring the amazing event that is Pondfilk.  But I am sun- and windburnt and entirely bagged and my bed is calling me in three part harmony with stand up bass accompaniment, so good night moon.  mOm’s going to give me a lift back there in the morning, and then with any luck I’ll hitch a lift back to Vancouver with Tom and Peggy.

Tired and happy.  That’s me right now.

I wrote a song last night. Like, late last night.

As soon as I got in the car to drive home last night I wrote a song. I’ll be posting the lyrics to my LJ, as looked at in the bright light of morning they seem, uh, a little on the ‘back of the hand to the forehead’ end of the spectrum, not that there’s anything wrong with that, that’s sort of what songs are for. Oh well, this is what happens when you challenge yourself to write something that doesn’t have a happy ending.

I know I’ve said this about 100 times and I keep forgetting it, but seeing live music is a really important feed for creativity. I just saw three live bands in a week! No wonder I start getting all antsy, and walking down the street singing. I wish I wasn’t so wasp-y sometimes, I’d sing in public a lot more.

Just for fun, a fraction of the lyrics for ‘The Hardworking Locksmiths of Sunnydale” which I started writing on Sunday.

When I got out of locksmith school

In the year of ninety seven

The old pros told me that there is

A locksmith’s earthly heaven

Be prepared, they told me

For work on work galore

But make sure that your stomach’s strong

You’ll see a LOT of gore

O Sunnydale, O Sunnydale

until you disappeared

You helped me pay my mortgage off

But man, you sure were weird.