Someone I know told me I had given up on this blog.
Probably true. I don't come around here very often, that's for sure.
More and more, I just feel like the truth can't be told. I can't say what I really think and feel; or, if I do say what's actually on my mind, I'd better make sure my commentary is not attached to my real name.
I hold a lot of unpopular opinions on a wide range of topics. I could hurt a lot of feelings among people who know me personally. Past, present, and future employers might not like things I have to say (the Thought Police are all too often corporate rent-a-cops). There is very little room for carelessness. Bridges burn so easily.
There are places on the Internet where you can supposedly go to keep an online diary and really let it all hang out.
And then I read things about how information analysts can identify supposedly anonymous bloggers by mathematically breaking down and analyzing their writing (this of course assumes they have a sample of writing they know for sure belongs to a particular person).
Pretty scary.
Which means that posting to this blog becomes one of those things I just somehow skip over. If I have to water everything down or "code" it, it loses the charge for me somehow. It's not fun anymore.
Still, there's no hurry. Fools rush in and all that.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
ch-ch-changes
I've been lax about posting to this blog now that I'm working and playing around mainly on Facebook these days. If I can figure out how to sync this to Facebook, then I may post more often.
I may also make another committment to post on a daily basis, maybe do one post every day for 60 days. Something like that, just to re-establish the habit.
I'm enjoying my new job as a technical writer for a music equipment manufacturer. They recently laid off my boss, so things have been hectic, to say the least. The remaining team (myself and one other writer) are making headway, but we have a lot to sort out.
The Daily Grind
Typically, I get up around 6:00am, shower, and then head to the UW campus to catch my bus to the office, located in the northern Suburb of Bothell, WA. Including walking to and from the bus stop, it takes around an hour to get to and from work.
This means I don't have much time left over for other stuff, like blogging and keeping my guitar chops. And learning new music for the upcoming Tuning the Air season.
On performance nights, I have to take the bus all the way from Bothell to Fremont, including one transfer to the typically crowded and cramped 44 bus that runs along 45ths St. On a bad night, the trip might take 2 hours, so I have to leave work way earlier than I would like.
Unfortunately, the tighter schedule means I've had to cut back drastically on any guitar circle involvement outside of Tuning the Air. No more House Circle, even on the weekends. I've missed House Circle meetings with Curt for several weeks. I need that time to cook, clean, and focus on getting my playing together for Tuning the Air.
And I'm not able to be at Fremont Abbey early for stage setup; I enjoyed that work, so I miss it. I don't necessarily get any satisfaction from walking in and finding the staging already completed. I discovered the setup period worked as a grounding ritual for me before a performance, and I noticed the difference before-and-after difference in the quality of my state.
So, I'm in a radically different period now compared to my period of "golden poverty."
I'm so damn tired
The time crunch from working means I'm also usually sleep-deprived and exhausted by the end of the week. I get about 4-6 hours of sleep every night during the week, and the sleep debt accumulates. By the end of the week, I get either cranky or totally loopy.
I should know better, but I never seem to learn.
On the bright side, I've committed to the goal that I shall not hit the "snooze" button in the morning when I get up. In the last two weeks, today was the only day when I allowed myself to snooze in past the alarm
Now I need to work on committing to my bedtime. The habit of staying up overpowers me most nights.
I'm getting into this idea of waking up in the morning and getting stuff done on the weekends, so I need to do something about the sleep deficit if I want to succeed in that aim.
Getting serious about goals and focus
I've also gotten heavily into working on formalized goals and scheduling for my daily life. I've been working mainly out of The Power of Focus, and I've also joined a weekly "Mastermind Group" with my flophouse-mates AR and CW.
For the Mastermind Group, we get together to talk about our goals, work on formalizing and focusing our aims, and holding each other accountable (in a spirit of goodwill).
It's definitely made a difference, but I have a long way to go in confronting my habits.
And in formalizing my dreams and goals in writing, which is harder than it might sound. The question, again and again, is this: "Can you be more specific?"
It's actually difficult.
A lot of this came about from waking up to the fact that my plan of moving to Seattle, going back to school, and getting a new, improved job had worked. I count it as the first time that I had succeeded at achieving an inner-directed goal.
A lot of it had to do with using Nicholas McConnell's Brain Organizer. I had it all written out in that format, and when I went back and looked at it again recently, I realized I had achieved nearly everything I had written out.
Daily blueprint
Lately, one big new change for me is that I sit down and write out a daily blueprint for the coming week, with a complete schedule for each day. So far, my days more-or-less conform to the outline I set out for myself. I read my blueprint the night before, right before I go to sleep.
Related to this, I had a moment on the bus one day; I was watching some high school kids board the bus, and wondered what it would be like to be in high school at this time. Would it be any different?
Then I suddenly realized that my daily blueprint work, as an inner-directed exercise, felt completely different, and had a different texture from my previous life experience. In high school, for example, I had a daily blueprint, but this structure was provided (and imposed) from outside, by other people.
Even on a Guitar Craft course, someone else gives you the daily plan, and you go look on the bulletin board to see what will be happening for that day.
To sit down and pull a structure for my day from inside of myself is altogether different. It's hard to describe. Maybe it's a difference in commitment, or an altogether different test of your commitment.
You're on the hook to yourself, and you find out what is important to you. You find out where you have resistance. Sometimes the resistance surprises me--why can't I seem to follow through sometimes on something that is important to me?
You find out when you're fooling yourself about your commitment to your own dreams.
Alternatively, it may also reveal when you haven't dug deep enough and built a convincing set of aims and goals for yourself.
In the last few years, I've come around to the notion that a real decision is energized by emotion, not just the logical, cerebral decision that "I should do this."
If your decision is not energized with emotion, the "decision" you've made to do something has no force. One success author I've been reading even claims that the energy of emotion added to a decision or formulation of an aim is all-important; he says the emotional charge invokes something like telepathy or download from the universe itself.
In other words, if your heart isn't in it, it won't work.
This little bromide is as cliche as it gets, but it also holds some truth.
However, it does not answer the question of how to actively work with the heart. It doesn't give you the "technology" for invoking the heart's blessing to a decision.
Consider that a work in progress.
Which "I" gets up in the morning?
I experienced a moment this week when I confronted that fact that one Ian goes to bed, but a completely different Ian wakes up the next day.
Ian #1 has aspirations and goals; he's gung-ho about getting up early and attacking the day, about moving things forward.
Ian #2 would sleep until noon, and he likes to hit the "snooze" button three or four times. He's completely forgotten about Ian #1's goals and aspirations.
So, first off, this work of not hitting snooze is kicking my butt. I usually feel awful in the morning. The transition from sleep to waking state is hideous. My brain does not want to let go of the sleeping state (on the other end, my brain usually doesn't want to let go of my waking state the night before, either).
Once I'm awake, everything is fine, but it seems to take about 15 minutes on average to make the transition complete.
Anyway, I've been writing my weekly goals on a dry erase board and posting it on my dresser near my bed.
On the morning in question, I woke up, hit the "alarm off" button and stumbled around for several moments holding my head and shivering in the cold morning air in my room.
I looked up, saw a bunch of squiggly lines on a white thing near my bed and thought, "What the %$^# is that?!"
For about 30 seconds, I literally had no idea what I was looking at. Ian #2 had completely forgotten all that stuff, had never heard of it, had no idea what that stuff was. Nada. Zilch.
Then it all came back.
To see how completely I had forgotten shocked me.
On the bright side, I suddenly new my goals again in detail. I was reminded and back on the case.
I've always heard it's important to have goals and such written down and visible to you as often as possible, and it's true.
Pondering future blogs
For future posts, I'm considering posting my daily blueprint at the beginning, and then writing the usual stuff below, mainly in reaction to the blueprint. Some people blog their detailed, daily schedule, but I've never had the oomph! to sit down and figure out how to do that. I've discovered I don't naturally think and experience my day in that sort of structure.
Most of my blogs and private journaling is about the experiential content of the day (and my response/reaction to that), but I've completely neglected the container of that experiential content.
By posting my daily blueprint, I can see the container, respond based on how my day "tracked" to that planned shape, mull over the deviations, and respond to any material that comes up in response to this comparison process.
A three-fold process. I'm not sure how this would track to notions of active-passive-reconciling.
Something else to ponder, I guess.
Oh, yeah.
Someone accused me of being "cheesy" when I mentioned my recent goal work. Maybe it is cheesy, but I don't think so. I'm seriously interested in how successful people function, I've met a few by this point, and successful people seem universally to apply some kind of structuring process to their lives. Details may vary, but they're more similar than different
I'm interested in becoming successful at whatever I genuinely want to do. I've gotten a taste here and there of what it could be like, and I want more of that.
So call me cheesy.
Some people just build a prison for themselves. Have they ever actually thought about what they want out of life? Have they ever written it down? Ever?
Maybe life kicks them around because they let it.
In this world, to be oppressed or dealt a bad hand is a real factor some people must struggle with. But can't we find that little space where we have some control and can make some kind of active decision for ourselves?
Sometimes we have choices, and we don't even realize it.
I'm not sure what else to say about it, except to get snarky, and there's no point in going there. Who needs it?
Alright, I'm gonna let this one go for the evening...
I may also make another committment to post on a daily basis, maybe do one post every day for 60 days. Something like that, just to re-establish the habit.
I'm enjoying my new job as a technical writer for a music equipment manufacturer. They recently laid off my boss, so things have been hectic, to say the least. The remaining team (myself and one other writer) are making headway, but we have a lot to sort out.
The Daily Grind
Typically, I get up around 6:00am, shower, and then head to the UW campus to catch my bus to the office, located in the northern Suburb of Bothell, WA. Including walking to and from the bus stop, it takes around an hour to get to and from work.
This means I don't have much time left over for other stuff, like blogging and keeping my guitar chops. And learning new music for the upcoming Tuning the Air season.
On performance nights, I have to take the bus all the way from Bothell to Fremont, including one transfer to the typically crowded and cramped 44 bus that runs along 45ths St. On a bad night, the trip might take 2 hours, so I have to leave work way earlier than I would like.
Unfortunately, the tighter schedule means I've had to cut back drastically on any guitar circle involvement outside of Tuning the Air. No more House Circle, even on the weekends. I've missed House Circle meetings with Curt for several weeks. I need that time to cook, clean, and focus on getting my playing together for Tuning the Air.
And I'm not able to be at Fremont Abbey early for stage setup; I enjoyed that work, so I miss it. I don't necessarily get any satisfaction from walking in and finding the staging already completed. I discovered the setup period worked as a grounding ritual for me before a performance, and I noticed the difference before-and-after difference in the quality of my state.
So, I'm in a radically different period now compared to my period of "golden poverty."
I'm so damn tired
The time crunch from working means I'm also usually sleep-deprived and exhausted by the end of the week. I get about 4-6 hours of sleep every night during the week, and the sleep debt accumulates. By the end of the week, I get either cranky or totally loopy.
I should know better, but I never seem to learn.
On the bright side, I've committed to the goal that I shall not hit the "snooze" button in the morning when I get up. In the last two weeks, today was the only day when I allowed myself to snooze in past the alarm
Now I need to work on committing to my bedtime. The habit of staying up overpowers me most nights.
I'm getting into this idea of waking up in the morning and getting stuff done on the weekends, so I need to do something about the sleep deficit if I want to succeed in that aim.
Getting serious about goals and focus
I've also gotten heavily into working on formalized goals and scheduling for my daily life. I've been working mainly out of The Power of Focus, and I've also joined a weekly "Mastermind Group" with my flophouse-mates AR and CW.
For the Mastermind Group, we get together to talk about our goals, work on formalizing and focusing our aims, and holding each other accountable (in a spirit of goodwill).
It's definitely made a difference, but I have a long way to go in confronting my habits.
And in formalizing my dreams and goals in writing, which is harder than it might sound. The question, again and again, is this: "Can you be more specific?"
It's actually difficult.
A lot of this came about from waking up to the fact that my plan of moving to Seattle, going back to school, and getting a new, improved job had worked. I count it as the first time that I had succeeded at achieving an inner-directed goal.
A lot of it had to do with using Nicholas McConnell's Brain Organizer. I had it all written out in that format, and when I went back and looked at it again recently, I realized I had achieved nearly everything I had written out.
Daily blueprint
Lately, one big new change for me is that I sit down and write out a daily blueprint for the coming week, with a complete schedule for each day. So far, my days more-or-less conform to the outline I set out for myself. I read my blueprint the night before, right before I go to sleep.
Related to this, I had a moment on the bus one day; I was watching some high school kids board the bus, and wondered what it would be like to be in high school at this time. Would it be any different?
Then I suddenly realized that my daily blueprint work, as an inner-directed exercise, felt completely different, and had a different texture from my previous life experience. In high school, for example, I had a daily blueprint, but this structure was provided (and imposed) from outside, by other people.
Even on a Guitar Craft course, someone else gives you the daily plan, and you go look on the bulletin board to see what will be happening for that day.
To sit down and pull a structure for my day from inside of myself is altogether different. It's hard to describe. Maybe it's a difference in commitment, or an altogether different test of your commitment.
You're on the hook to yourself, and you find out what is important to you. You find out where you have resistance. Sometimes the resistance surprises me--why can't I seem to follow through sometimes on something that is important to me?
You find out when you're fooling yourself about your commitment to your own dreams.
Alternatively, it may also reveal when you haven't dug deep enough and built a convincing set of aims and goals for yourself.
In the last few years, I've come around to the notion that a real decision is energized by emotion, not just the logical, cerebral decision that "I should do this."
If your decision is not energized with emotion, the "decision" you've made to do something has no force. One success author I've been reading even claims that the energy of emotion added to a decision or formulation of an aim is all-important; he says the emotional charge invokes something like telepathy or download from the universe itself.
In other words, if your heart isn't in it, it won't work.
This little bromide is as cliche as it gets, but it also holds some truth.
However, it does not answer the question of how to actively work with the heart. It doesn't give you the "technology" for invoking the heart's blessing to a decision.
Consider that a work in progress.
Which "I" gets up in the morning?
I experienced a moment this week when I confronted that fact that one Ian goes to bed, but a completely different Ian wakes up the next day.
Ian #1 has aspirations and goals; he's gung-ho about getting up early and attacking the day, about moving things forward.
Ian #2 would sleep until noon, and he likes to hit the "snooze" button three or four times. He's completely forgotten about Ian #1's goals and aspirations.
So, first off, this work of not hitting snooze is kicking my butt. I usually feel awful in the morning. The transition from sleep to waking state is hideous. My brain does not want to let go of the sleeping state (on the other end, my brain usually doesn't want to let go of my waking state the night before, either).
Once I'm awake, everything is fine, but it seems to take about 15 minutes on average to make the transition complete.
Anyway, I've been writing my weekly goals on a dry erase board and posting it on my dresser near my bed.
On the morning in question, I woke up, hit the "alarm off" button and stumbled around for several moments holding my head and shivering in the cold morning air in my room.
I looked up, saw a bunch of squiggly lines on a white thing near my bed and thought, "What the %$^# is that?!"
For about 30 seconds, I literally had no idea what I was looking at. Ian #2 had completely forgotten all that stuff, had never heard of it, had no idea what that stuff was. Nada. Zilch.
Then it all came back.
To see how completely I had forgotten shocked me.
On the bright side, I suddenly new my goals again in detail. I was reminded and back on the case.
I've always heard it's important to have goals and such written down and visible to you as often as possible, and it's true.
Pondering future blogs
For future posts, I'm considering posting my daily blueprint at the beginning, and then writing the usual stuff below, mainly in reaction to the blueprint. Some people blog their detailed, daily schedule, but I've never had the oomph! to sit down and figure out how to do that. I've discovered I don't naturally think and experience my day in that sort of structure.
Most of my blogs and private journaling is about the experiential content of the day (and my response/reaction to that), but I've completely neglected the container of that experiential content.
By posting my daily blueprint, I can see the container, respond based on how my day "tracked" to that planned shape, mull over the deviations, and respond to any material that comes up in response to this comparison process.
A three-fold process. I'm not sure how this would track to notions of active-passive-reconciling.
Something else to ponder, I guess.
Oh, yeah.
Someone accused me of being "cheesy" when I mentioned my recent goal work. Maybe it is cheesy, but I don't think so. I'm seriously interested in how successful people function, I've met a few by this point, and successful people seem universally to apply some kind of structuring process to their lives. Details may vary, but they're more similar than different
I'm interested in becoming successful at whatever I genuinely want to do. I've gotten a taste here and there of what it could be like, and I want more of that.
So call me cheesy.
Some people just build a prison for themselves. Have they ever actually thought about what they want out of life? Have they ever written it down? Ever?
Maybe life kicks them around because they let it.
In this world, to be oppressed or dealt a bad hand is a real factor some people must struggle with. But can't we find that little space where we have some control and can make some kind of active decision for ourselves?
Sometimes we have choices, and we don't even realize it.
I'm not sure what else to say about it, except to get snarky, and there's no point in going there. Who needs it?
Alright, I'm gonna let this one go for the evening...
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
new alexander technique experiences
Now that my farewell rant to George W. Bush is over, I can mention a few other recent items...
The biggest thing on my mind lately comes from the Tuning the Air Performance Project retreat in mid-October.
Raft Island
We spent a week at a retreat center on Raft Island, playing guitar, working on our performance chops, and working in large groups along with guitarists from all over North America.
We also had SBC on hand, one of the most super-talented Alexander Technique teachers anywhere. She truly has a gift.
Through the first half of the course, she worked with us while we were seated in the circle playing guitar; she usually comes up behind you while you play, places her hands lightly on your shoulders and back, and then helps you to un-knot habitual tensions and patterns.
During one circle, she had me leaning way out over the right side of my stool. She had noticed that I habitually squinched up the right side of my back whenever I began picking, and as I began letting that go, I became aware of a huge knot in my back, right below my right shoulder blade.
I asked her about it, and she told me that she had noticed this habit on previous occasions when we met; she said I had always habitually held tension in that part of my back, for as long as she had been seeing me on Guitar Craft courses. But, I was only now getting to where I could actually feel the knot. (She also told me that I was almost unrecognizable as the same person after all the Alexander work I had done with Neil Schapera as my teacher in Cincinnati.)
Help! I'm a rock!
As we approached the middle of the course, I could feel that I was unravelling and close to freaking out. I've found Guitar Craft courses to be intense, with little time to chill out, and plenty of psychodrama to deal with; so, I wasn't particularly surprised to find myself several days into the course ready to go on a crying jag every time I heard somebody strike a note. I guess it's just what happens when you begin to wake up a little bit, and you see a little bit of how you are and what you are past the buffers you usually have in place.
The weird part (for me) is when you recognize the approaching emotional overload, but you have no idea exactly when or how it began. I wonder, "Have I always been this way, and I just didn't notice?"
After breakfast, I hid in the bathroom of the dining hall for a while to see if I could get it together.
Later, I became inappropriately angry during a meeting with one of the groups I had been performing with at meals. We had been issued a performance challenge and met it successfully, but now we were slogging; we had little time, the group was briefly noisy and unfocused, and I couldn't "focus my chi" very well.
Igor A. was there helping us out, and he gave me a look. I knew right then I had made a mistake. (I later apologized to the group and everything was cool, but I felt like a heel, and it sucked.)
Then it was time for the Tuning the Air open rehearsal (a large group of the visiting musicians would be observing from the middle of the circle).
Uh...wot's the deal?
There was some weirdness as soon as I walked into the room; my stool was missing from the circle. CG offered a comment in jest ("Ian, we've been talking..."), but the overall tension in the atmosphere of the room was so intense, that I began to wonder if I had been kicked out of the group and delivered the humiliating news in front of a room full of people. I was just about ready to walk out; I had that old chew-your-leg-off-in-order-to-escape feeling percolating through me.
It eventually became clear that they simply couldn't find my stool among all the other hordes of stools in the chapel. But in the meantime I couldn't find my stool, either, and I was thoroughly [sound of lips flapped up and down by right hand index finger].
Eventually, it all got sorted out rehearsal began.
Ian freaks out, but good
I still didn't know all the songs, so I had to sit quietly during a few pieces, which is harder than you might think. SBC went around the circle and worked on us, then went to sit down over near the door.
While I sat and paid attention during "Cultivating the Beat," I began struggling for breath, and I closed my eyes. My back hurt. I was primed for a meltdown.
SBC saw or sensed something, and she came over. She began moving me around on the stool; she pointed out that I was leaning on the guitar, which was in turn leaning on my right leg. And was this how I should be holding the guitar? There was something gently stern in her tone, like "I've been watching this thing in your back slowly ripen. Now it's time. We're going to do this. It's time to let it go, even if you don't quite feel ready..."
She had me lean way out over the edge of the stool again. It felt odd, and I told her so. She said I actually tended to lean way to the left, but now she was going to help me find my center.
Then the knot in my back let go. As the muscles relaxed and lengthened, it felt like the right side of my back was blowing up like a balloon; I had an image of my back as a thin membrane that expanded as air rushed in, as if there were whole areas of my lungs that had been cut off for a long time.
It didn't necessarily hurt, but it felt strange and unpleasant, like "Whoah! My body isn't really supposed to move like that, is it?"; that part of my back felt cartoonishly huge as it opened up, way beyond what felt normal, like my inner sense of bodily proportion and size had been completely out of calibration.
As that tension let go (many years worth of angst stored up in my body), it had to go somewhere. It needed an exit.
I began crying uncontrollably, gushing hot, dripping tears all over my guitar. Time crawled by, and the music all around me just seemed to go on and on and on, even though it was only a few minutes.
An entire section of my back completely realigned, and SBC said it was like I didn't trust my right arm to do its thing when I picked.
After a while, she worked her way outward from that area of my back. My body was putty under her hands, and it felt like she just wiped the tension out of my spine.
Eventually, things settled down, and she brought some paper tissues over. She said she didn't want me to rust my strings prematurely.
CG looked at me. You OK?
I nodded back.
My guitar soundboard was smeared with goop.
All in a day's weirdness
TM and several others later told me this sort of thing was common in circles on courses, and that I shouldn't be embarrassed or worry. They described some other incidents, including an occurrence on a six-week course when one guitarist went through a tension release so huge he fell off his stool and curled up in a ball.
Since then, I find I still hold tension in that area of my back; either it did not all release completely on that occasion, or my habit of tensing that area will take a while to dissipate. It's gotten easier to feel when I'm holding tension there now.
For a while, my right shoulder around my collar bone hurt; I've been told that when you hold tension long enough, not only do you stop feeling it, but the membranes around your muscles eventually change and basically shrink wrap you into whatever shape your holding. Then, when you let the tension go, that connective tissue then has to stretch out and adjust, which can hurt. Everything in your body is connected, and as things re-align, these adjustments radiate and travel outward through your body.
I've always lived very much "in my head," and as time goes on, I'm amazed to learn how intelligent the human body is, how our physical self has its own sort of intelligence, and how it will store all sorts of experiences.
At one time, I was actually a little afraid of Alexander Technique because of this, and avoided exploring it for a few years. On my first Guitar Craft course, I was outside the AT cabin when somebody inside began crying uncontrollably during a private session. It was spooky to listen to somebody going through that kind of release experience; now, I understand that it's not necessarily something fearful to go through, even though it might outwardly appear so.
I once read that Alexander Technique is not concerned, per se, with why someone is physically tensed up any particular way, or how they developed particular physical habits in response to traumas. Insights may arise, but AT is concerned mainly with just letting go of these patterns and moving forward.
The AT eye
I can sometimes look at people on the street now and see all sorts of things written into how they hold themselves and move. I'm not sure what they are exactly, but it's plain that something happened to make these people into pretzels.
I sometimes then try to imagine all the things experienced AT teachers see written in people's bodies.
Energetic contamination
Somebody on the course told me that during a course, SBC often feels like she needs to take several showers throughout the day. All of these hordes of people arrive with all sorts of issues wrapped up in their bodies, and as it lets go underneath her hands, she's right there directly in the path of all this negative energy. It gets all over her.
I think I have at least an inkling of what she experiences.
In the mid 1990s, I had an anxiety attack. I couldn't sleep for three days, and I couldn't seem to get a deep enough breath; usually, when I breathe in, there's a moment during the breath when something clicks in my body, I feel physically satisfied, and then I breathe back out.
In this case, that little satisfied click was not arriving, no matter how deeply I breathed. It couldn't scratch that itch, and it was driving me crazy.
Finally, I went over to see a friend and completely flipped out while sitting on his couch. It felt like a tightly wound spring in my solar plexus was suddenly unwinding and spinning out all at once; as this tension released, I cried uncontrollably.
Afterward, I felt amazing!
I had this incredible feeling that I was spiritually clean.
I later described it (in typical style for me at the time) as a "spiritual orgasm"—an amazing feeling, but the process of getting there was an ordeal, and I don't necessarily recommend it as something to pursue on purpose.
After a few days, the feeling went away, and I returned to the baseline level of habitual angst I existed in at the time.
But I always remembered that incredible clean feeling I had for a while.
The point being that we should try to imagine the opposite of this clean feeling; imagine being an AT teacher on a course several days in, and you're covered with all this negative stuff that has been coming out of the people you're working on—imagine feeling spiritually dirty!
You would have to be pretty dedicated to be in that line of work. Hopefully, AT teachers have some kind of training or strategies for how to deal with this stuff. (Unless, of course, Guitar Craft courses are unusually intense in this way. It may be that in the course of a day-to-day private practice an AT teacher is not exposed to this level and sheer mass of energy.)
OK, I'm done writing now. More later...
The biggest thing on my mind lately comes from the Tuning the Air Performance Project retreat in mid-October.
Raft Island
We spent a week at a retreat center on Raft Island, playing guitar, working on our performance chops, and working in large groups along with guitarists from all over North America.
We also had SBC on hand, one of the most super-talented Alexander Technique teachers anywhere. She truly has a gift.
Through the first half of the course, she worked with us while we were seated in the circle playing guitar; she usually comes up behind you while you play, places her hands lightly on your shoulders and back, and then helps you to un-knot habitual tensions and patterns.
During one circle, she had me leaning way out over the right side of my stool. She had noticed that I habitually squinched up the right side of my back whenever I began picking, and as I began letting that go, I became aware of a huge knot in my back, right below my right shoulder blade.
I asked her about it, and she told me that she had noticed this habit on previous occasions when we met; she said I had always habitually held tension in that part of my back, for as long as she had been seeing me on Guitar Craft courses. But, I was only now getting to where I could actually feel the knot. (She also told me that I was almost unrecognizable as the same person after all the Alexander work I had done with Neil Schapera as my teacher in Cincinnati.)
Help! I'm a rock!
As we approached the middle of the course, I could feel that I was unravelling and close to freaking out. I've found Guitar Craft courses to be intense, with little time to chill out, and plenty of psychodrama to deal with; so, I wasn't particularly surprised to find myself several days into the course ready to go on a crying jag every time I heard somebody strike a note. I guess it's just what happens when you begin to wake up a little bit, and you see a little bit of how you are and what you are past the buffers you usually have in place.
The weird part (for me) is when you recognize the approaching emotional overload, but you have no idea exactly when or how it began. I wonder, "Have I always been this way, and I just didn't notice?"
After breakfast, I hid in the bathroom of the dining hall for a while to see if I could get it together.
Later, I became inappropriately angry during a meeting with one of the groups I had been performing with at meals. We had been issued a performance challenge and met it successfully, but now we were slogging; we had little time, the group was briefly noisy and unfocused, and I couldn't "focus my chi" very well.
Igor A. was there helping us out, and he gave me a look. I knew right then I had made a mistake. (I later apologized to the group and everything was cool, but I felt like a heel, and it sucked.)
Then it was time for the Tuning the Air open rehearsal (a large group of the visiting musicians would be observing from the middle of the circle).
Uh...wot's the deal?
There was some weirdness as soon as I walked into the room; my stool was missing from the circle. CG offered a comment in jest ("Ian, we've been talking..."), but the overall tension in the atmosphere of the room was so intense, that I began to wonder if I had been kicked out of the group and delivered the humiliating news in front of a room full of people. I was just about ready to walk out; I had that old chew-your-leg-off-in-order-to-escape feeling percolating through me.
It eventually became clear that they simply couldn't find my stool among all the other hordes of stools in the chapel. But in the meantime I couldn't find my stool, either, and I was thoroughly [sound of lips flapped up and down by right hand index finger].
Eventually, it all got sorted out rehearsal began.
Ian freaks out, but good
I still didn't know all the songs, so I had to sit quietly during a few pieces, which is harder than you might think. SBC went around the circle and worked on us, then went to sit down over near the door.
While I sat and paid attention during "Cultivating the Beat," I began struggling for breath, and I closed my eyes. My back hurt. I was primed for a meltdown.
SBC saw or sensed something, and she came over. She began moving me around on the stool; she pointed out that I was leaning on the guitar, which was in turn leaning on my right leg. And was this how I should be holding the guitar? There was something gently stern in her tone, like "I've been watching this thing in your back slowly ripen. Now it's time. We're going to do this. It's time to let it go, even if you don't quite feel ready..."
She had me lean way out over the edge of the stool again. It felt odd, and I told her so. She said I actually tended to lean way to the left, but now she was going to help me find my center.
Then the knot in my back let go. As the muscles relaxed and lengthened, it felt like the right side of my back was blowing up like a balloon; I had an image of my back as a thin membrane that expanded as air rushed in, as if there were whole areas of my lungs that had been cut off for a long time.
It didn't necessarily hurt, but it felt strange and unpleasant, like "Whoah! My body isn't really supposed to move like that, is it?"; that part of my back felt cartoonishly huge as it opened up, way beyond what felt normal, like my inner sense of bodily proportion and size had been completely out of calibration.
As that tension let go (many years worth of angst stored up in my body), it had to go somewhere. It needed an exit.
I began crying uncontrollably, gushing hot, dripping tears all over my guitar. Time crawled by, and the music all around me just seemed to go on and on and on, even though it was only a few minutes.
An entire section of my back completely realigned, and SBC said it was like I didn't trust my right arm to do its thing when I picked.
After a while, she worked her way outward from that area of my back. My body was putty under her hands, and it felt like she just wiped the tension out of my spine.
Eventually, things settled down, and she brought some paper tissues over. She said she didn't want me to rust my strings prematurely.
CG looked at me. You OK?
I nodded back.
My guitar soundboard was smeared with goop.
All in a day's weirdness
TM and several others later told me this sort of thing was common in circles on courses, and that I shouldn't be embarrassed or worry. They described some other incidents, including an occurrence on a six-week course when one guitarist went through a tension release so huge he fell off his stool and curled up in a ball.
Since then, I find I still hold tension in that area of my back; either it did not all release completely on that occasion, or my habit of tensing that area will take a while to dissipate. It's gotten easier to feel when I'm holding tension there now.
For a while, my right shoulder around my collar bone hurt; I've been told that when you hold tension long enough, not only do you stop feeling it, but the membranes around your muscles eventually change and basically shrink wrap you into whatever shape your holding. Then, when you let the tension go, that connective tissue then has to stretch out and adjust, which can hurt. Everything in your body is connected, and as things re-align, these adjustments radiate and travel outward through your body.
I've always lived very much "in my head," and as time goes on, I'm amazed to learn how intelligent the human body is, how our physical self has its own sort of intelligence, and how it will store all sorts of experiences.
At one time, I was actually a little afraid of Alexander Technique because of this, and avoided exploring it for a few years. On my first Guitar Craft course, I was outside the AT cabin when somebody inside began crying uncontrollably during a private session. It was spooky to listen to somebody going through that kind of release experience; now, I understand that it's not necessarily something fearful to go through, even though it might outwardly appear so.
I once read that Alexander Technique is not concerned, per se, with why someone is physically tensed up any particular way, or how they developed particular physical habits in response to traumas. Insights may arise, but AT is concerned mainly with just letting go of these patterns and moving forward.
The AT eye
I can sometimes look at people on the street now and see all sorts of things written into how they hold themselves and move. I'm not sure what they are exactly, but it's plain that something happened to make these people into pretzels.
I sometimes then try to imagine all the things experienced AT teachers see written in people's bodies.
Energetic contamination
Somebody on the course told me that during a course, SBC often feels like she needs to take several showers throughout the day. All of these hordes of people arrive with all sorts of issues wrapped up in their bodies, and as it lets go underneath her hands, she's right there directly in the path of all this negative energy. It gets all over her.
I think I have at least an inkling of what she experiences.
In the mid 1990s, I had an anxiety attack. I couldn't sleep for three days, and I couldn't seem to get a deep enough breath; usually, when I breathe in, there's a moment during the breath when something clicks in my body, I feel physically satisfied, and then I breathe back out.
In this case, that little satisfied click was not arriving, no matter how deeply I breathed. It couldn't scratch that itch, and it was driving me crazy.
Finally, I went over to see a friend and completely flipped out while sitting on his couch. It felt like a tightly wound spring in my solar plexus was suddenly unwinding and spinning out all at once; as this tension released, I cried uncontrollably.
Afterward, I felt amazing!
I had this incredible feeling that I was spiritually clean.
I later described it (in typical style for me at the time) as a "spiritual orgasm"—an amazing feeling, but the process of getting there was an ordeal, and I don't necessarily recommend it as something to pursue on purpose.
After a few days, the feeling went away, and I returned to the baseline level of habitual angst I existed in at the time.
But I always remembered that incredible clean feeling I had for a while.
The point being that we should try to imagine the opposite of this clean feeling; imagine being an AT teacher on a course several days in, and you're covered with all this negative stuff that has been coming out of the people you're working on—imagine feeling spiritually dirty!
You would have to be pretty dedicated to be in that line of work. Hopefully, AT teachers have some kind of training or strategies for how to deal with this stuff. (Unless, of course, Guitar Craft courses are unusually intense in this way. It may be that in the course of a day-to-day private practice an AT teacher is not exposed to this level and sheer mass of energy.)
OK, I'm done writing now. More later...
goodbye to chimpy
And now, a rant...
A lot has happened since I last posted, not including outward events like the economy and the election of a new President.
Speaking of which, I'm relieved the whole campaign nonsense is over and that America somehow managed to elect someone intelligent. Now let's hope he gets it right, that he survives, and that he's able to pull this country back from the brink of complete disaster. After eight years of George W. Bush, we're in a bad way. I believe Bush is a full-blown sociopath; that man has killed so many innocent around the world, using our money, in our name. He is directly responsible for a small mountain of dead bodies, but I don't believe he cares. Not even the tiniest bit. And he still has a little over two months left in which he and his cronies can loot the Treasury, steal everything that isn't nailed down, and maybe even get us stuck in another pointless war.
Bush supposedly bought several million acres of ranch land in Paraguay, so maybe he's planning to skip the country once he leaves office (and you will leave office, George, so don't get any ideas about calling a State of Emergency and overstaying your welcome). Good riddance.
We'll see you in the dock at the Hague—right alongside Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Dougie Feith, and other members of the PNAC flying monkey brigade who helped get Americans into this mess.
And, finally, could you please explain why you sat there in that Florida classroom while New York City was under attack? Why didn't the Secret Service do their job and drag you out of there to a secure location, like they're supposed to?
No excuses, please. The truth would be nice for a change.
Oh, whatever. Get out of here.
But don't go too far. There may be a prosecutor and a judge in your near future who would like to chat with you about a few things...
A lot has happened since I last posted, not including outward events like the economy and the election of a new President.
Speaking of which, I'm relieved the whole campaign nonsense is over and that America somehow managed to elect someone intelligent. Now let's hope he gets it right, that he survives, and that he's able to pull this country back from the brink of complete disaster. After eight years of George W. Bush, we're in a bad way. I believe Bush is a full-blown sociopath; that man has killed so many innocent around the world, using our money, in our name. He is directly responsible for a small mountain of dead bodies, but I don't believe he cares. Not even the tiniest bit. And he still has a little over two months left in which he and his cronies can loot the Treasury, steal everything that isn't nailed down, and maybe even get us stuck in another pointless war.
Bush supposedly bought several million acres of ranch land in Paraguay, so maybe he's planning to skip the country once he leaves office (and you will leave office, George, so don't get any ideas about calling a State of Emergency and overstaying your welcome). Good riddance.
We'll see you in the dock at the Hague—right alongside Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Dougie Feith, and other members of the PNAC flying monkey brigade who helped get Americans into this mess.
And, finally, could you please explain why you sat there in that Florida classroom while New York City was under attack? Why didn't the Secret Service do their job and drag you out of there to a secure location, like they're supposed to?
No excuses, please. The truth would be nice for a change.
Oh, whatever. Get out of here.
But don't go too far. There may be a prosecutor and a judge in your near future who would like to chat with you about a few things...
Sunday, August 24, 2008
my friend, mr. finger
I've found myself practicing hours of Primaries, especially the "anchor" exercises. The anchor exercises require that you keep one finger fretting a note while the other fingers work through various permutations from the First Primary. The anchor exercises help develop release by preventing you from yanking your fingers away from the fretboard, but I'm working on them right now mainly to help with develop finger strength and stretch.
In particular, my left hand ring finger does a strange little dance; when my hand is relaxed, the ring finger likes to lean against the middle finger and then rotate into place when it comes time to fret a note. This rotational movement wastes a lot of motion, so I'm trying to develop a new habitual muscle balance and strength in that ring finger so that it doesn't lean against the middle finger and stays closer to the strings.
A lot of this finger weakness become obvious when I anchor the middle or the ring finger. The ring finger actually shakes and struggles to stay in position against the sympathetic tension triggered by the other fingers moving.
Gradually, I'm figuring out how to let the fingers relax into position, instead of using tension to hold them in place. The tension state of the pinky also has a lot to with how the middle and ring fingers relate to each other.
I seemed to progress well for the first three or four days, but last night, I felt like I could barely play, and that ring finger would not cooperate if I didn't keep my attention on it at all times. On off days like that, you just do your best.
Otherwise, old friends keep coming out of the woodwork lately, people I haven't spoken to for years and years. They tell me about their lives, and it seems like I never knew them at all. Then again, it's also turning out that scattered intuitions in the deep past were on target all along. At the same time, I'm also finding out how oblivious I was, and that some old friends may still be driven to negotiate delicate matters that, as far as I'm concerned, are settled and no longer open to debate.
New information about old mutual friends also arises, and I must work to hold this new information in balance against what I thought I knew, but not rush to judgments. In this sense, it's hard to hold contradictions; we want everything neatly explained and categorized, but life is messy, and few people manifest the same way to all of their acquaintances. If we're not careful, we can fall prey to a "funhouse mirror" effect and mistake the reflection for the thing itself; instead, I guess we should just toss these new bits into the kaleidoscope and marvel at the ever-changing combinations.
Maybe we are all ultimately unknowable ciphers to those around us. And maybe even to ourselves, unless we make some practice of observation without judgment.
In particular, my left hand ring finger does a strange little dance; when my hand is relaxed, the ring finger likes to lean against the middle finger and then rotate into place when it comes time to fret a note. This rotational movement wastes a lot of motion, so I'm trying to develop a new habitual muscle balance and strength in that ring finger so that it doesn't lean against the middle finger and stays closer to the strings.
A lot of this finger weakness become obvious when I anchor the middle or the ring finger. The ring finger actually shakes and struggles to stay in position against the sympathetic tension triggered by the other fingers moving.
Gradually, I'm figuring out how to let the fingers relax into position, instead of using tension to hold them in place. The tension state of the pinky also has a lot to with how the middle and ring fingers relate to each other.
I seemed to progress well for the first three or four days, but last night, I felt like I could barely play, and that ring finger would not cooperate if I didn't keep my attention on it at all times. On off days like that, you just do your best.
Otherwise, old friends keep coming out of the woodwork lately, people I haven't spoken to for years and years. They tell me about their lives, and it seems like I never knew them at all. Then again, it's also turning out that scattered intuitions in the deep past were on target all along. At the same time, I'm also finding out how oblivious I was, and that some old friends may still be driven to negotiate delicate matters that, as far as I'm concerned, are settled and no longer open to debate.
New information about old mutual friends also arises, and I must work to hold this new information in balance against what I thought I knew, but not rush to judgments. In this sense, it's hard to hold contradictions; we want everything neatly explained and categorized, but life is messy, and few people manifest the same way to all of their acquaintances. If we're not careful, we can fall prey to a "funhouse mirror" effect and mistake the reflection for the thing itself; instead, I guess we should just toss these new bits into the kaleidoscope and marvel at the ever-changing combinations.
Maybe we are all ultimately unknowable ciphers to those around us. And maybe even to ourselves, unless we make some practice of observation without judgment.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
gig
I went to the Victory Music open mic with GM and Igor K., and I found it eye-opening to get out and play in front of strangers again. Same as it ever was...
We played only a single circulation in E Phrygian, followed by Where It Goes. The circulation was decent (as always, the best stuff seems to happen when we warm up before a gig), and it ended without a full resolution. GM later said he was worried the circulation would go on too long.
Our performance of Where It Goes was "OK," but not stellar; maybe it would qualify as "honorable." We played it all the way through, and considering this group's modest beginnings, to play Where It Goes all the way through like this in front of an audience was an achievement. We began several months ago playing 1 of 1,000 Regrets and Asturias, and these two pieces were a big challenge for the group. We must have worked our way through some of those "transformative increments."
Stage fright sapped my playing and reduced me down to about 70% of my normal playing capacity. Which means I need to work on these challenging new parts that much more, so that I have a larger margin to draw upon in the future.
Stage fright manifested in the usual symptoms: shaking hands, sweaty palms, and a maddening tendency for my right hand to "dig in" excessively with the pick, as if it had a mind of its own. No surprises.
Early on in the piece, I suddenly felt the group wanted to speed up. A lot. We can usually rehearse the piece competently around 74 bpm, but for this performance we dialed back to about 68 bpm. If we rehearse at a lower tempo like 68 bpm, I almost always hear the group wanting to pull ahead of the metronome.
But here on stage, there was no metronome to keep us back; we only had our dodgy internal clocks and the group pulse or "pocket" that exists mostly by unspoken consensus.
GM later said he considered just running with the urge to speed up, but chose instead to pull back. And I thanked him for having the good sense to pull back.
It's not like there's really any other choice; if we abandon reason and speed up, we're heading for a train wreck. Which isn't the end of the world, but it's never fun.
I wanted to make a good impression, and I cared how we sounded; this is a wrongheaded mindset, in its own way, because you can wind up chasing your tail, and it always seems like the best playing happens when you stop caring how you sound and just play.
And so, in the moment before we pulled back from the brink, I was about ready to panic.
All the same, I look forward to playing in front of audiences as much as possible. I need to get used to dealing with stage fright again. I don't think it's ever going away; I just need to get used to it.
Along these lines, I've heard it said that stage fright is fundamentally an ego problem; you think you should sound good and impress people because you're a good musician (dammit), but if you don't sound good and impress, it reflects badly on you. Please like me! screams the ego.
The audience was supportive; the MC said something about needing to "learn to play the guitar" and said we were a "guitar orchestra."
Aw, shucks...
We played only a single circulation in E Phrygian, followed by Where It Goes. The circulation was decent (as always, the best stuff seems to happen when we warm up before a gig), and it ended without a full resolution. GM later said he was worried the circulation would go on too long.
Our performance of Where It Goes was "OK," but not stellar; maybe it would qualify as "honorable." We played it all the way through, and considering this group's modest beginnings, to play Where It Goes all the way through like this in front of an audience was an achievement. We began several months ago playing 1 of 1,000 Regrets and Asturias, and these two pieces were a big challenge for the group. We must have worked our way through some of those "transformative increments."
Stage fright sapped my playing and reduced me down to about 70% of my normal playing capacity. Which means I need to work on these challenging new parts that much more, so that I have a larger margin to draw upon in the future.
Stage fright manifested in the usual symptoms: shaking hands, sweaty palms, and a maddening tendency for my right hand to "dig in" excessively with the pick, as if it had a mind of its own. No surprises.
Early on in the piece, I suddenly felt the group wanted to speed up. A lot. We can usually rehearse the piece competently around 74 bpm, but for this performance we dialed back to about 68 bpm. If we rehearse at a lower tempo like 68 bpm, I almost always hear the group wanting to pull ahead of the metronome.
But here on stage, there was no metronome to keep us back; we only had our dodgy internal clocks and the group pulse or "pocket" that exists mostly by unspoken consensus.
GM later said he considered just running with the urge to speed up, but chose instead to pull back. And I thanked him for having the good sense to pull back.
It's not like there's really any other choice; if we abandon reason and speed up, we're heading for a train wreck. Which isn't the end of the world, but it's never fun.
I wanted to make a good impression, and I cared how we sounded; this is a wrongheaded mindset, in its own way, because you can wind up chasing your tail, and it always seems like the best playing happens when you stop caring how you sound and just play.
And so, in the moment before we pulled back from the brink, I was about ready to panic.
All the same, I look forward to playing in front of audiences as much as possible. I need to get used to dealing with stage fright again. I don't think it's ever going away; I just need to get used to it.
Along these lines, I've heard it said that stage fright is fundamentally an ego problem; you think you should sound good and impress people because you're a good musician (dammit), but if you don't sound good and impress, it reflects badly on you. Please like me! screams the ego.
The audience was supportive; the MC said something about needing to "learn to play the guitar" and said we were a "guitar orchestra."
Aw, shucks...
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
change in the air
Another Tuning the Air performance tonight, the most consistently powerful so far, at least from my little corner of the larger experience. There have been other performances with larger peaks, sometimes so intense they blow the top of my head off, but this show was on a higher average level from beginning.
The circulations tonight were the best I have ever heard from any group. Every single one was amazing.
We had 32 people in the audience, the largest so far, and word-of-mouth continues to be the best advertising.
Several members of the performance team were surprised at the quality of the show when they realized we were smack dab in the middle of the run. CG later told us over beers that the Middle is not automatically bad; we're just conditioned to think of it that way. The middle is the point when the creative leap takes place, and unfortunately, it's often a turkey, and we tend to focus on that experience.
I guess this means the leap was successful.
The house team is also getting better, and MB so rocked when she acted on a hunch to announce the Open Circle at the end of the show. Well done, MB!
Later, while waiting to turn into the Hi-Life from Market St., TS and MB were rear-ended by Jesus.
School's (Almost) Out
The Technical Writing & Editing Certificate Course at UW is almost over. I've met a lot of great people, and I definitely want to stay in touch.
Another transition in progress for Ian. One job interview under my belt last week, and we'll see what happens.
I'm glad I took the course. It has definitely lifted my skill set as a writer to another level, and I am so much better prepared than when I left Songwriter's Market. Now, I need to take this new "book learnin'" out into the real world; I learned so much, but I'm also at the beginning. I have a lot of ideas about how to build and develop my skills, and I must not allow myself to become complacent or stuck. Keep moving.
Ongoing Guitar Struggles
I'm in a strange spot with guitar playing. I am definitely improving, and I'm finally conquering some of the more difficult guitar parts to "Where It Goes," "Trapiche," and "Eye of the Needle." But the process is slow, so slow. I've been working on some of these pieces for years, and I'm still nowhere close to the skill level of the TTA team. They play some of these pieces at unbelievably fast tempos. And then there are a whole raft of pieces the TTA team has been playing for the last five years or so, and there is almost no overlap with the pieces I have pretty solidly in my fingers. I have doubts that I could ever catch up, especially given how slowly I seem to develop.
I guess some things just can't be rushed.
In the meantime, I spent Saturday testing myself by recording overdubbed versions of repertoire in ProTools; like I mentioned, my playing is greatly improved, but mastery eludes me by a wide margin. The recordings reveal numerous small stumbles and rhythmic anomalies in parts I already know well, while the new parts I'm learning tend to derail and trainwreck when I hit a snag. These new parts are not quite in the fingers.
I've also lately been pondering the apparent reality that my practicing is dismally unorganized and inconsistent. I never seem to work on the same piece for more than two days at a stretch. If I could work on the same piece every day for several weeks, maybe I could get somewhere. Instead, I bounce around from part to part, just whatever seems to catch my attention on that particular day.
Not quite ready for prime time
Members of the House Circle have occasionally asked why I haven't joined the TTA performance team. They tell me I'm a competent player.
But, the TTA team plays on a higher level than I do. This is plain to me, but maybe not to other members of the House Circle. The House Circle players will eventually understand well enough as they develop.
It seems to me that I would still need to undergo some kind of development process to even be in spitting distance of what the TTA is achieving as guitarists. I don't believe I could walk in and pass an audition. I was on track in my development with the Chicago group, but TTA represents a different line of development way ahead of the Chicago group; when I left the Midwest, the Chicago group was in the early stages of emulating things we had heard were going on in Seattle.
For now, the House Circle seems like what I should be doing here in Seattle, and I'm enjoying the work. The group is stretching and developing, and I enjoy being part of that process.
And things are apparently not all roses and baskets of puppies in the TTA team. No big surprise. AB was extremely unhappy last season; he had seen where he needed to go in his music composition education at Cornish, and he was burning to move on.
There are rumblings; these things happen. That's life.
I sympathize with the wish of some people to deal with a better quality of problem, but all the same, perhaps we should trust the process. Hang in there.
Or maybe some better situation will come along.
Will the Teacher appear?
I sometimes wonder if I will ever find a teacher; Igor A and I were talking during a coffee break on Saturday, and he was extolling Igor K's virtues as a diligent student. I realized during the conversation that I maybe could not be nearly as good of a student; I tend to argue (being a "smart" guy and all), and I confessed this shortcoming to Igor A.
I'm looking forward to the Raft Island Course in October. I'm beginning to feel like I might be ready for something like that. I feel like I need something in my guitar playing, and maybe I will find it there. Or not. Who knows?
The circulations tonight were the best I have ever heard from any group. Every single one was amazing.
We had 32 people in the audience, the largest so far, and word-of-mouth continues to be the best advertising.
Several members of the performance team were surprised at the quality of the show when they realized we were smack dab in the middle of the run. CG later told us over beers that the Middle is not automatically bad; we're just conditioned to think of it that way. The middle is the point when the creative leap takes place, and unfortunately, it's often a turkey, and we tend to focus on that experience.
I guess this means the leap was successful.
The house team is also getting better, and MB so rocked when she acted on a hunch to announce the Open Circle at the end of the show. Well done, MB!
Later, while waiting to turn into the Hi-Life from Market St., TS and MB were rear-ended by Jesus.
School's (Almost) Out
The Technical Writing & Editing Certificate Course at UW is almost over. I've met a lot of great people, and I definitely want to stay in touch.
Another transition in progress for Ian. One job interview under my belt last week, and we'll see what happens.
I'm glad I took the course. It has definitely lifted my skill set as a writer to another level, and I am so much better prepared than when I left Songwriter's Market. Now, I need to take this new "book learnin'" out into the real world; I learned so much, but I'm also at the beginning. I have a lot of ideas about how to build and develop my skills, and I must not allow myself to become complacent or stuck. Keep moving.
Ongoing Guitar Struggles
I'm in a strange spot with guitar playing. I am definitely improving, and I'm finally conquering some of the more difficult guitar parts to "Where It Goes," "Trapiche," and "Eye of the Needle." But the process is slow, so slow. I've been working on some of these pieces for years, and I'm still nowhere close to the skill level of the TTA team. They play some of these pieces at unbelievably fast tempos. And then there are a whole raft of pieces the TTA team has been playing for the last five years or so, and there is almost no overlap with the pieces I have pretty solidly in my fingers. I have doubts that I could ever catch up, especially given how slowly I seem to develop.
I guess some things just can't be rushed.
In the meantime, I spent Saturday testing myself by recording overdubbed versions of repertoire in ProTools; like I mentioned, my playing is greatly improved, but mastery eludes me by a wide margin. The recordings reveal numerous small stumbles and rhythmic anomalies in parts I already know well, while the new parts I'm learning tend to derail and trainwreck when I hit a snag. These new parts are not quite in the fingers.
I've also lately been pondering the apparent reality that my practicing is dismally unorganized and inconsistent. I never seem to work on the same piece for more than two days at a stretch. If I could work on the same piece every day for several weeks, maybe I could get somewhere. Instead, I bounce around from part to part, just whatever seems to catch my attention on that particular day.
Not quite ready for prime time
Members of the House Circle have occasionally asked why I haven't joined the TTA performance team. They tell me I'm a competent player.
But, the TTA team plays on a higher level than I do. This is plain to me, but maybe not to other members of the House Circle. The House Circle players will eventually understand well enough as they develop.
It seems to me that I would still need to undergo some kind of development process to even be in spitting distance of what the TTA is achieving as guitarists. I don't believe I could walk in and pass an audition. I was on track in my development with the Chicago group, but TTA represents a different line of development way ahead of the Chicago group; when I left the Midwest, the Chicago group was in the early stages of emulating things we had heard were going on in Seattle.
For now, the House Circle seems like what I should be doing here in Seattle, and I'm enjoying the work. The group is stretching and developing, and I enjoy being part of that process.
And things are apparently not all roses and baskets of puppies in the TTA team. No big surprise. AB was extremely unhappy last season; he had seen where he needed to go in his music composition education at Cornish, and he was burning to move on.
There are rumblings; these things happen. That's life.
I sympathize with the wish of some people to deal with a better quality of problem, but all the same, perhaps we should trust the process. Hang in there.
Or maybe some better situation will come along.
Will the Teacher appear?
I sometimes wonder if I will ever find a teacher; Igor A and I were talking during a coffee break on Saturday, and he was extolling Igor K's virtues as a diligent student. I realized during the conversation that I maybe could not be nearly as good of a student; I tend to argue (being a "smart" guy and all), and I confessed this shortcoming to Igor A.
I'm looking forward to the Raft Island Course in October. I'm beginning to feel like I might be ready for something like that. I feel like I need something in my guitar playing, and maybe I will find it there. Or not. Who knows?
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