people care a lot and not enough

I was in New York for nearly a week. I didn't mean to, it just happened. My original plan was to hang with a friend before they ventured off into the great unknown, but in the process I landed this gig in the Williamsburg Live Songwriting Competition in Brooklyn. I had to play one song, I got to drink with some friends, made new ones, and hung out in a city that I love with people I love. Great. Awesome. That's all I expected or wanted and that's all I was planning on as I made my way to The Lucky Cat in Williamsburg on Friday. Well, somewhere in the process of hanging, talking, playing, smiling, flirting, drinking, and smoking (not something I normally do but that night I was), I ended up making it into the Semi-Finals of the competition. Awesome! Totally unexpected and wonderful for a girl like me that #1 never gets into competitions/festivals no matter how many I enter and #2 hardly ever wins anything. So everything was great except for the fact that I had only planned on being in NYC till Tuesday, and the Semi's were Thursday. Oh well. In the great words of Tim Gunn, 'Make it work'.
The next days in NYC were glorious and the weather was perfect. I went to the Neue and saw Klimt's in person for the first time....I was moved to tears. I went to the MOMA (holy shit should it be illegal for one museum to have that many great works of art, my god!) and saw Monet's Lillypads. I had seen them before 15 years ago, but this time....I was moved to tears. Every room I walked in I got a headache from how many amazing pieces of art were before me. How could one possibly see it all in a few hours? in a day? in a year? It was overwhelming, I couldn't take it all in, I wanted to lay in the middle of the museum and have all the paint and bronze from every painting and sculpture drizzled all over me so I could somehow feel it all.
Where are the Basquiat's though? What floor? I missed them, and I'm sure at least one lives there.

Tuesday rolls around and it sends me on my way back to Boston the way I came in to NYC....in the rain. I had a grey trip back, I listened to Debussy, Satie, Cocteau Twins, and Diane Cluck. I contemplated my visit, and felt the sensation of something missing start to creep inside me.
I got back to my apartment and I felt like only a piece of myself. There are still boxes around, my life is incomplete, and I had just spent the past few days in an ecstatic whirlwind of music, museums, and amazing food, how could I possibly ever be the same?
36 hours later I was back on the bus to New York, psyching myself up (and failing), to play my one song again for the Semi's, but I couldn't shake the feeling of this looming sense of missing.
I love Brooklyn. After 5 days in Manhattan it was so wonderful to be there in a community vibrant with art, boutiques, and music. The weather was beautiful, perfectly sunny and slightly crisp, Williamsburg is right on the water, and the venue (Galapagos) was RIGHT next to the river. The day went off without a hitch, and I grabbed some lunch at a local Thai place, dropped my bag off at the Uncle Monsterface house, and spent the rest of the afternoon waiting around and doing various video interviews. It was lovely and fun. I love that shit. As the night loomed on the missing feeling was creeping all up in me and I tried to get rid of it with a cocktail...didn't work. With a walk....didn't work. With some hugs...didn't work. With a 'Tell me I'm awesome and I can totally do this' from a friend...didn't work. And then I found out that I was performing my song last. It was an antidote that I wasn't supposed to know, they were supposed to announce who went next a few people before you went on. I honestly wish I could have waited in suspense the whole night, I think that would have given me my edge back, but I didn't, and I sat there trying to shake the missing.
Some amazingly talented people played, it was an honor to be in their presence, I was truly impressed and was enjoying myself...too bad I had to play. Anyway, my turn comes and the missing disappears as the lights shine in my face and I start to feel normal. My uncle said I looked nervous. Maybe nervous is normal for me because I didn't feel it. I play my song, not the best, but pretty darn good. I wait. As they call the names of the finalists I start to think 'I really might be able to make this, I am worthy', plus everyone I really liked was getting called up. And then someone I wasn't so excited got called up, and I turned to my friend Dan and shook my head, and he shook his head, and at that point we knew that if this person got up there, there was no way I would be in the Finals. It was settled, I didn't make it.
Well, shit and fuck and damn and whatever. I had a really great time, but I did want to make it. I went outside to call my father that was stalking me like a jilted lover, when a bunch of people started coming up to me and saying wonderful things, thinking I should have been up there, saying I was their favorite, and it truly meant the world. I don't give a shit about competitions if someone at the end of the night comes up to me and says stuff like that, it validates me in this secret 'I want to be popular' way that lives deep inside. I gave them all samplers because I loved them.
Thank you whoevers you ares.
The night ended with me and the Monsterface boys drinking vodka at Sputnik and bitching and moping and trying not to take anything to heart. It's hard, your subconscious can be a motherfucker.
I said good-bye to New York at 12:30 the next afternoon. I spent the evening by myself watching a movie, and cable TV. I haven't had a night like that in over 4 months, I think I really needed it. I talked to my mom, I talked to my dad, I talked to a friend or two. They love me and I love them. No matter who lets me pass go, or go on to the next round, I know, somewhere deep inside me, that I am good at what I do and I just need to keep doing it. The accolades and the praise are a great ego stroking that I unfortunately need for reassurance, but the reason why I do this at all is because I love it. And the reason why I can make it through the day is because of the people that love me. And love is a crazy thing. So crazy that when it's gone or even away for a little bit, it can make you feel like something's missing. But love is there even if it can't be held, and can't give you attention. And until you can see it or hold it again, I recommend red wine, a pen and paper, a piano, a door that locks, and a friend that will come knock on your door from time to time.

WLSC review from Friday the 15th

As if the rain gods were offering up a gesture of good will, the clouds cleared up early yesterday evening and allowed a stream of people to fill up the Lucky Cat for the first night of the Williamsburg Live Songwriting Competition. Sure, the guitar cases helped me identify some of the songwriter contestants in attendance, but I could have picked them out from the anxiously excited expressions on their faces. With Tom Rhodes taking the reigns as the slightly dangerous MC, the competition took off and when the drone of the air conditioner was all that remained, 3 winners were cheered on to the semi-finals: Lizzie Grant, Dan Torres and Sarah Rabdau.

Grant’s sound is shy, damaged and sympathetic. Her “Pawn Shop Blues” was filled with touching metaphors and the sad, wavering delivery won over the room. You aren’t awed by music like this so much as you fall in love with it. The other two winners performed with go-for-the-throat grandiosity. Easily possessing the most powerful voice of the evening, Torres wailed off a room-filling song called “Where I Stand.” Indeed, by the time he had finished, it was clear from the enthusiastic audience response where he stood: the ghost of Jeff Buckley has raised a new prophet for the hopeful who own a tear-stained copy of “Grace.” These two writers dueled with guitars, while Rabdau choose piano to deliver “Autumn Spills.” She falls into the Tori Amos school of showmanship and during a musical breakdown she grasped the microphone in true rock star fashion. There was more than a little Rufus Wainwright in her style as well, and as Rabdau sang “autumn spills into my window / I think I’ll go back to him,” many of us knew exactly what she was talking about.

Blue Bell Knoll

I have fallen in love with the Cocteau Twins record 'Blue Bell Knoll'. I didn't think I liked the Cocteau Twins until a friend recently introduced me to them again; he had a similar experience with them, not really a fan until he heard a track off that record. I can't stop listening to it. Over and over again. I haven't played a record like this since I was 16 years old.
Last night I was walking home looking at the voluminous moon against the evening sky listening to Liz Fraser's voice pull and swirl notes around effortlessly, drenched in reverb, the breeze lightly seeping in through the hole in my hoodie, and it was ecstasy. I was happy.
I came home and cooked dinner, put up my curtains, took out my CD's, sat in my room smelling the fresh paint, and listened to Blue Bell Knoll again. And again. And one more time. I put on some other CD's but the whole time I just wanted Liz to be singing to me, I missed her when she wasn't there. So this morning I put it on again while I was on the T.

I love my new room. I can't stand white walls so I had to paint immediately when I got there. I have new sheets that are the softest things ever made, a new bed perfectly firm and soft, new curtains, everything is really warm, I can feel me wanting to be productive. I set up my keys the other night and they taunt me, 'please play me, please play me', and I want to. So badly. But I'm holding off until the need is so great that I explode. There's so much to do, so many things to set up and unpack, so many places to go, errands to run, friends to see. I can feel the needing buzzing in my ear, and in my heart, and in my soul, and everyday I ignore it the sadder I get. The less I feel like myself. But I have to organize, I have to get all this other stuff done, I have to be ok on the outside before I can venture within.

Until then, I'll hide in the Blue Bell Knoll and pretend Liz's voice is my own. The sweeping soundscapes the siren songs that bring me through the storm and crash me on to my piano bench.