it's in your blood, baby

Today is the last day of 2007 and I'm feeling a bit reflective, per usual. I know as you get older things tend to fly by, but this was a year that flew faster than a condor. That's right, a condor. Do condors even fly fast or are they just big and severely endangered?
Let's think about this.......

My body got to move a lot and my body likes to move. I flew to places from Minneapolis to Wichita, Miami to Rio and the change of scenery did me good.
I moved from a wonderful apartment in a fabulous Square, convenience at my fingertips, fantastic girls that lived there, to a big house with a 781 area code, and a piano and a recording studio in the basement. I still miss that apartment, I still miss that life, I will always love and want that life, but I must say I have taken to the freedoms of being a house dweller. Being alone in a big house isn't as much fun as having an apartment to yourself. An apartment to yourself is a special treat, little things never go unnoticed and are often treasured.
No one's home, take a pee with the bathroom door open. You forgot your sock in the bathroom and are naked in your bedroom, fuck it, walk out in the nude and get it. Don't do the dishes for a few days, play late at night, play loud, hog the TV with a marathon of foreign language films and Miami Ink. Whatever.
In a house, you can pretty much do all of those things all the time. You get a little spoiled. Never spoiled enough to not show your love and appreciation at 3:00 in the morning, screaming with your roommate at the piano playing nonsense songs about Christmas trees and cumber buns. It's times like those that you sit back and go 'God, I love living here'.

So there was movement, physical movement, and that's what I'm most thankful for. Movement suits me, so I've heard, and I never want to stall again.

Speaking of not stalling, I had the pleasure of working with Peter on string arrangements for the greater part of yesterday. Having worked with string players for the past 2 or 3 years, I had an idea of the things that I wanted. Peter, however, took those ideas and made them symphonies. Well, some songs he made sound like symphonies, but other songs, even with a string trio, became these rich arrangements filled with longing and sadness, but were never depressing and always full. That's some string parts! If the actual players sound anything like the cheesy keyboard guides right now, I am pretty fucking psyched about this album.
I was sitting there on the couch, listening to these swooping string lines, the clarinet and horn flourishes, the tubular bells, the timpani hits, and I was brought to tears. 'Is this really my song? Will this song actually sound exactly the way I've always wanted it?'
I don't want to jinx it, we are only 5% of the way in, but I'm falling in love with these songs again and I'm happy to be here.

I also found some time this weekend to watch the first disc of the Scorsese directed documentary on Bob Dylan. I shamefully have never only read Dylan's lyrics, always heard them within the song, but never alone. The documentary is truly inspiring and kind of depressing. Here was this 20 year old kid playing folk clubs in Greenwich Village, before it was taken over by cupcake bakeries and expensive restaurants, and he was noticed not for his looks (though he was cute), not for his voice, but simply for his songwriting skills and magnetism. And there was something about him that you couldn't take your eyes off of. I'm not sure if it's because you have this kid, barely out of his teens, singing a song like Candle in the Wind, or if everyone around him senses that he is a legend in the making, exploding with poetry, voice and swagger. It only happens a few times in a lifetime, and he was that one in 20 million.
The whole time I'm watching the movie I'm in tears because of his genius, his artistic fortune, while also being so sad that music will never happen like this again. Unless there's some sort of revolt.
Normal people no longer flock to clubs to hear it, normal people don't go to record stores to buy it, most people don't pay money for it at all, and labels don't sign artists on merit alone. Music, and all it's magic, has been pimped out for a quick, instant gratification fuck. It truly saddens me that I will likely never be a part of a community brimming with ideas, excitement and possibility. The digital age has given us many advances, making it possible for indie bands to find success without the behemoth major label. But with that, we have seen the death of whole albums, with their impossible shrink wrap, the new paper smell, and the fresh, still stiff binding. Music has been cheapened to a single mp3, the labour of making and producing it is no longer valued like a Picasso or a Warhol. It's just plastic now, and something everyone thinks they deserve for free. And god, it would be great to give it away for free, but it's making it impossible for artists to survive.
Sure, maybe it was all too good to be true then. Maybe everyone was naive and excitable because everything always seemed to change and be new. Now that's impossible. All you can do now is 'be refreshing', which ain't so bad, but it's not something you haven't heard before. It's just something you haven't heard that way. Still, not bad....
It's pretty common knowledge that artists can be bad marketers of themselves, they can talk up their favorite bands till the cows come home, but do it for themselves and it gets a little 'ooey'. Artists that can do that are truly at an advantage now, and those who can't are being forced to learn. Not such a bad thing really, but watching this movie the other day I just thought 'Wow, people got help. People believed in you, and you didn't have to think about radio campaigns, press releases, booking shows, and all this other crap. You got to be an artist.'
I wish I had lived at a time when I could just be an artist. Where my prime interest was producing and crafting work, and then networking was my second interest. Maybe there will be some sort of revolution that happens, where audiences get sick of everything being so easy and handed to them through the internet. Maybe. But I have younger sisters that have not graduated high school yet, and I know better.
I don't really mean this to be such a downer, I just find myself reminiscing for a time that I never even lived in. Never got to be a part of. But no matter what happens now, no matter if people are able to buy 30 second clips of your latest masterpiece instead of the whole 3 minutes (I know it's asking a lot), it's not like I'm going to stop making and creating. The possibility to do it as a profession feels further and further away, but the art of it, the reason for doing it at all, will never die.

So with that said, happy new year. May your days be filled with wonderful and unexpected things, and may you never forget your reasons for creating and trying. It's in your blood, baby.

xoxox

~sarah

I'm not who I say I am

It's December 13th and it's snowed, probably, 7 times so far. Some days it was a sprinkling, some days it left ice, but today it's pounding outside. White sheets are shaking themselves out in the wind, whipping their wet wisps of misery all over my mental health. It's only December 13th and I can't help but feel like this winter is going to tear me down. It's not even technically winter yet.

I feel like a shadow of a person I could have been. Wondering where I would be if I had just pulled the plug sooner, if my heart could have just been cold, if I swallowed all of my selfishness and fed off the supply for years? Why am i so attracted to the idea of not caring about anyone but myself, and being the only one that I have to count on? Probably because I'm incapable.

Production on the album was at a halt for a good two months, it was slightly maddening to say the least. I did play, and Matt and I did rehearse, but the lack of producing something that already has taken years to do made me feel lost. I did not feel like a musician, I still am not really sure if I do.

Now it's December 14th and a blanket of snow now sits on top everything in sight. This is the part that is pretty, this is the part that I can handle. I think I'm heading out of the cloudiness of stagnancy and moving into something more lucid. Maybe because my PMS is over. Fucking female hormones are retarded.
I'm not really a Led Zeppelin fan per se, I mean I like a lot of their songs, and as far as classic rock bands go they are probably up there for me. But I could not stop reading reviews of their reunion show on Monday. I had coincidentally read their Rolling Stone article on Sunday night, and on Monday night I had dreams of how the show was going, a dream filled with lights and magic and supernatural things. On Tuesday I read reviews of the show online almost all day, and I could not stop crying. Really? Yes. I was crying for how great Led Zeppelin was and I'm not even a fan. I own an album. I think.
I came home on Monday and did not hear my roommate in the house making music, as is typical. The lights were on, I knew he was home, but I could not hear him. My thoughts started to race, 'what if something happened to him? What if he's lying on the floor and can't get up? What if he's dead? Oh my god, who would I call? I'd be all alone in this house and there would be no one left. Would I still be able to hang out with his family? Would that be too hard?' Tears started to form, and sobbing started to happen, and then I heard some bass downstairs and thought, 'Thank god'.
Recalling the train of thoughts to him later that night, I started to tear up again.

Hi. I'm hormonal.

Besides working on the album (productivity has now resumed), I have been writing. Lyrics are harder to come by, the bastards, but I have three songs complete and waiting for verbal inspiration. I was hoping to play one of the songs at tomorrow's show, but having one verse and then making sounds like words for the rest of the song might not be that great. Some might say that wouldn't be that different than how I normally sing. They would be wrong. But sort of right too.

Let's see...... I just read Love in the Time of Cholera. I liked it more than 100 years of Solitude. I loved 100 years a lot, but everyone having the same name was really confusing. Even when looking at the family tree every four seconds.
I just read another fantastic book called 'The Brief and Wondrous life of Oscar Wao'. It's written by the Dominican writer Junot Diaz. I loved it. The main character sort of reminds me of Ignatius in A Confederacy of Dunces, in a very smart, awkward kind of way.

ok. anyway..... the assassins have our last show of the year tomorrow, and our first show that we've had in a few months. I hope to see some people there despite the weather and the time of year. I think I need some love and reassurance.

happy new year if I don't drop a line sooner

xoxoox

~sarah