Both of the hobbies I've picked up since my move here are very flexible and encouraging of alternative techniques.
Knitting is like this. Since everyone learns to knit from their mother or grandmother, that's the right way, and everyone's is a little different. Some use a continental style and wind the yarn around their left hand, some "throw" like I do with their right, and in one class I took there was a lady from Mexico who did something different again, more like continental but sort of upside down. The thing is, however you get the string wrapped around the stick so it stays and makes cloth, that's the right way for you. Since it's a folk art, everyone is very much open to alternatives and sharing.
And I'm finding out that guitar is like this too. I had a crisis recently because I was working "Twist and Shout" which was on my list of "Open Chord Songs" as a CFG one. I was having trouble with the strumming pattern, mostly, so I went to YouTube and found the clip of the Beatles at Shea Stadium. But it was the left hand that caught me up - George was playing chords that were nothing I'd ever seen before, way up on the neck. What was he playing? And why had my teacher taught me the open chords?
I ended up posting to an online guitar forum and actually got some really helpful advice back. And then my teacher came back from vacation and I saw him today (see previous post) and he was able to explain it further - there aren't any right chords. What I learned from all these helpful more experienced guitarists is that it's the ratio between the chords that matters. ADE is the same as DAG because the distance between the notes on the scale is the same ratio. And then you can play A's and D's and what have you all over the guitar. And you can use different fingers to play them. And what I found out tonight is that you can even leave some strings out entirely, but it's still the same chord. What he said was that it's possible to find "open chord" tabs for every song out there. That might not be the way the original artist plays it on YouTube, but it follows the ratios in the same way. So, to practice open chord playing, which is where I am right now, I should look for those open chord versions in the online tab-o-sphere. And I should look for songs that include bar chords so I can get used to transitioning to them. And only then can I work on the rock chords that leave some the top and bottom strings out, and then I will have the option of playing Twist and Shout like George Harrison does on the Shea Stadium clip.
I have stunned respect for all guitar players now. When I played the cello in school, they just sat the notes in front of you and you played them. Guitarists have to understand chord theory and intervals and transposition and all sorts of theory stuff, just to understand the basic concept that there aren't "the" chords to Twist and Shout, there's technique, and ratios, and facts about how notes fit together, and then there is a universe of guitar players, and then there are a million different ways to do everything.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Doctor
I was tearing the address labels off a stack of magazines to put them in the recycling (I don't mind publishing all my inner thoughts and feelings out here on the internet for all the world to see, but I am concerned enough about identity theft that I don't like having things in the recycling bin with my name and address on them), and one of them is addressed to "Dr. Ellen _____"
That's my name, and back when it was new it was very important to me to always use my title. Coincidentally right when it was new I moved to Australia where titles are required for every address you give to anyone - bank account, setting up the phone, library card, everything. But now not only do I not really use it professionally, hardly anyone knows that I have it.
Seeing it there I could imagine an even more extreme experience, where I'd for example moved to some uncharted tropical isle and had been living very simply, very close to nature, with a group who had a culture very different from my own, learning their language, adapting to the rhythms and colors of that life. And the coming back, and having those experiences people describe like being alarmed at sharp corners in rooms inside buildings, and forgetting that you have to use money before you take things out of a shop, and feeling insecure from not being able to see the sky and the birds and the movement of sun and stars all the time, and all that. And my feeling today is a small version of the feeling that person would have when stumbling across an address label that had "Dr." on it.
Yeah, that was me, but so long ago it was like in a different world. Yeah, that's something I did, but I hardly remember it, the now is so different from what that past was like then.
That's my name, and back when it was new it was very important to me to always use my title. Coincidentally right when it was new I moved to Australia where titles are required for every address you give to anyone - bank account, setting up the phone, library card, everything. But now not only do I not really use it professionally, hardly anyone knows that I have it.
Seeing it there I could imagine an even more extreme experience, where I'd for example moved to some uncharted tropical isle and had been living very simply, very close to nature, with a group who had a culture very different from my own, learning their language, adapting to the rhythms and colors of that life. And the coming back, and having those experiences people describe like being alarmed at sharp corners in rooms inside buildings, and forgetting that you have to use money before you take things out of a shop, and feeling insecure from not being able to see the sky and the birds and the movement of sun and stars all the time, and all that. And my feeling today is a small version of the feeling that person would have when stumbling across an address label that had "Dr." on it.
Yeah, that was me, but so long ago it was like in a different world. Yeah, that's something I did, but I hardly remember it, the now is so different from what that past was like then.
Anthill
So, in keeping with the New Year's momentum to keep doing the next right thing, I am starting to deal with the boxes that the stereo's in. They have been sitting more or less in the kitchen since early February of last year.
The magnitude of the box problem has been stopping me from commencing this process (see myriad previous posts) but I could have guessed there was something else. I unwrapped a pile of speaker cables and extension cords, and they were dusty from sitting behind the stereo in various houses, and the extension cord was even a bit grimy. And that reminded me of the overall grime that would accumulate in houses with him. Everything in my house here is new (and when I look out the window the whole world is covered in pristine white) but with him every time we moved you'd uncover grime.
And then I found a cardboard package that had been for the dish-scrubber I got when I moved to my new house after it all fell apart. I kept the package so I'd know the brand for getting replacement sponges for the end of the thing. The package has the company address which is in St. Ives, NSW. The dish scrubby thing deteriorated enough that I threw it away rather than move it, but here is the package from when it was new. And that makes me miss New South Wales, and back when it was normal to see Australian addresses on things I bought.
I have the iPod on Shuffle which is perhaps dangerous because there are so many of his albums ripped onto it, but so far nothing too heart-stabbing. The first song up was Mike Ness, "Rest of Our Lives", which has some stuff about loneliness and being apart from one's love, but it's also a straight ahead American traditionalist rockabilly tune, and that's been my obsession all weekend reading all the guitar stuff and working out what direction I want to go in (I keep stumbling across that nexus of country, blues and punk - a Scotty Moore article in Guitarist, an interview with Billy Zoom, the Wikipedia entry on Social Distortion). So that song represents both past and future.
And I found the Magnetic Poetry Kits, remember those? The feature of every hip college student's fridge, a few years back? I opened up the box and just pulled out the first words that caught my eye, and now my fridge says:
blind from yesterday crap
I'll change it once I make a bit more progress, to something more hopeful.
The magnitude of the box problem has been stopping me from commencing this process (see myriad previous posts) but I could have guessed there was something else. I unwrapped a pile of speaker cables and extension cords, and they were dusty from sitting behind the stereo in various houses, and the extension cord was even a bit grimy. And that reminded me of the overall grime that would accumulate in houses with him. Everything in my house here is new (and when I look out the window the whole world is covered in pristine white) but with him every time we moved you'd uncover grime.
And then I found a cardboard package that had been for the dish-scrubber I got when I moved to my new house after it all fell apart. I kept the package so I'd know the brand for getting replacement sponges for the end of the thing. The package has the company address which is in St. Ives, NSW. The dish scrubby thing deteriorated enough that I threw it away rather than move it, but here is the package from when it was new. And that makes me miss New South Wales, and back when it was normal to see Australian addresses on things I bought.
I have the iPod on Shuffle which is perhaps dangerous because there are so many of his albums ripped onto it, but so far nothing too heart-stabbing. The first song up was Mike Ness, "Rest of Our Lives", which has some stuff about loneliness and being apart from one's love, but it's also a straight ahead American traditionalist rockabilly tune, and that's been my obsession all weekend reading all the guitar stuff and working out what direction I want to go in (I keep stumbling across that nexus of country, blues and punk - a Scotty Moore article in Guitarist, an interview with Billy Zoom, the Wikipedia entry on Social Distortion). So that song represents both past and future.
And I found the Magnetic Poetry Kits, remember those? The feature of every hip college student's fridge, a few years back? I opened up the box and just pulled out the first words that caught my eye, and now my fridge says:
blind from yesterday crap
I'll change it once I make a bit more progress, to something more hopeful.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Mind and Body
My guitar teacher has been on vacation and I'm struggling. I'm still madly in love with guitar playing, it has the feeling of a new grand passion and I think about it almost all the time, including in meetings when I'm supposed to be concentrating on toilet paper market size. I've been hanging out on online forums asking questions of experienced players, and lurking around picking up the lingo and learning everyone's opinions about all sorts of gear. I bought five different guitar magazines on Friday evening, to get immersed in them and work out which ones I want to subscribe to. I listen to guitar music all the time, and have been grabbing my little notebook and writing down songs I want to learn and amp sounds I want to emulate (Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Green River" was the one today, playing in the background at a coffee shop near the university). I stay up too late watching Jimmy Page videos on YouTube. I read my new Guitar Handbook and wonder about blues chord progressions and scales. I've got it bad, bad, bad.
But my playing is deteriorating, without regular instruction. I just play the same stuff, over and over, but I don't feel like I'm getting any better. My fingers are still stiff, the chord changes aren't smooth or fast enough. My D string buzzes all the time, and I think it's me and nothing about the equipment. I can't integrate bar (or barre) chords into a stream of other chords, I have to stop, take a second, look at my hands, place all the fingers, then strum. I've been sort of picking out little melodies but I don't know where all the notes are on the fretboard. Bottom line, I am not yet good enough to express through the instrument the music that is inside my soul.
I was reflecting on this asymmetry today. I know that I'm an unusual student because of my age and background, and my teacher always remarks on how quickly I pick up the theory stuff, and the fact that I come in with theory questions at all. Most of his students are little kids, so I'm sure I'm learning guitar the other way around to how they learn it. The mental stuff is easy for me. I'm a trained philosopher, I have ten letters after my name, I read all the time, I have an overactive busy brain, I crave learning new things, of course I'm going to pick up the theory stuff easily. Brain stuff goes in easily. I've always been good at brain stuff and I enjoy doing it.
It's the body stuff that's frustrating. The only way to get good at chord changes, or to get reliable tone out of your dumb fingers, is to play things five hundred billion times each. And when I do practice regularly, or back when I had my last lesson before Christmas and had some new stuff to work on, I could tell that I was getting better, that things were getting easier. But now, during this break, lacking focus, lacking a clear assignment - there's nothing he specifically gave me to work up and show off with when he gets back - I'm just going around in circles. From all the listening and YouTubing, I have sounds in my head and heart that I want to emulate. But in my body, I am far from being able to achieve that sound. And while I was feeling like a prodigy right at first (my teacher is brilliant that way, he loads on the praise so I feel special and am motivated to keep working, and even if he's lying and says this to all his students, I don't care because it works on me), now I'm realizing how very, very far I am from competence. I might not actually get to tour, and change the face of electric guitar playing for historical posterity, and get my own page in the next edition of the Guitar Handbook, and have lots of my own videos on YouTube. I might not live that long. Or worse, I might not have the raw talent to support it! Argh!
But I should keep on, right? Because the difference between talent and accomplishment is hard work. Woodshedding. Practice. Playing everything five hundred billion times, until your fingers are as smart as your brain.
But my playing is deteriorating, without regular instruction. I just play the same stuff, over and over, but I don't feel like I'm getting any better. My fingers are still stiff, the chord changes aren't smooth or fast enough. My D string buzzes all the time, and I think it's me and nothing about the equipment. I can't integrate bar (or barre) chords into a stream of other chords, I have to stop, take a second, look at my hands, place all the fingers, then strum. I've been sort of picking out little melodies but I don't know where all the notes are on the fretboard. Bottom line, I am not yet good enough to express through the instrument the music that is inside my soul.
I was reflecting on this asymmetry today. I know that I'm an unusual student because of my age and background, and my teacher always remarks on how quickly I pick up the theory stuff, and the fact that I come in with theory questions at all. Most of his students are little kids, so I'm sure I'm learning guitar the other way around to how they learn it. The mental stuff is easy for me. I'm a trained philosopher, I have ten letters after my name, I read all the time, I have an overactive busy brain, I crave learning new things, of course I'm going to pick up the theory stuff easily. Brain stuff goes in easily. I've always been good at brain stuff and I enjoy doing it.
It's the body stuff that's frustrating. The only way to get good at chord changes, or to get reliable tone out of your dumb fingers, is to play things five hundred billion times each. And when I do practice regularly, or back when I had my last lesson before Christmas and had some new stuff to work on, I could tell that I was getting better, that things were getting easier. But now, during this break, lacking focus, lacking a clear assignment - there's nothing he specifically gave me to work up and show off with when he gets back - I'm just going around in circles. From all the listening and YouTubing, I have sounds in my head and heart that I want to emulate. But in my body, I am far from being able to achieve that sound. And while I was feeling like a prodigy right at first (my teacher is brilliant that way, he loads on the praise so I feel special and am motivated to keep working, and even if he's lying and says this to all his students, I don't care because it works on me), now I'm realizing how very, very far I am from competence. I might not actually get to tour, and change the face of electric guitar playing for historical posterity, and get my own page in the next edition of the Guitar Handbook, and have lots of my own videos on YouTube. I might not live that long. Or worse, I might not have the raw talent to support it! Argh!
But I should keep on, right? Because the difference between talent and accomplishment is hard work. Woodshedding. Practice. Playing everything five hundred billion times, until your fingers are as smart as your brain.
Friday, January 9, 2009
No, thanks, already got one
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying everything's perfect. For example, I took my gym stuff today intending to go after work, but didn't, so no foil star on the calendar today for me, and it's another Friday night staring down a weekend with no social plans of any sort with anyone. So some of the standard failures are still with me...
But tonight I was at Barnes & Noble after work and walked past a book with title "Live the Life You Imagine!" and I had a very powerful feeling that I did not need to buy that book because I'm already doing it.
But tonight I was at Barnes & Noble after work and walked past a book with title "Live the Life You Imagine!" and I had a very powerful feeling that I did not need to buy that book because I'm already doing it.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Victory - being ready
Today I got another foil star on the calendar because I actually made it to the gym, and did (plus or minus) everything I intended to. See? I don't need a trainer, I know what I need to do, I just need to do it.
It was nearly another day of failure, I was supposed to get up at 5 and go before work but couldn't sleep at all last night, was up basically until 2, so 5 wasn't going to work. But I remembered to take all my stuff and I ended up going after work, which was actually perfectly fine.
(I've had two occasions of getting myself to do unwanted things, two occasions on successive days, and I'm trying to observe what goes on in me during these times, the psychological phenomena that traditionally lead to a block. It's usually after work, sometimes after something else too, and the alternative is to head home, cuddle up on the couch, do something brainless like watch tv or knit or both. The feeling that blocks me from doing horrible unwanted things like go to the grocery store or to the gym is associated with a desire for a hug. I think I get blocked when I feel like I've suffered enough and need some love and cuddling (safety, protection, nurturing) instead, and also some pleasure and some entertainment. What I'm trying to do is convince myself that I can love myself, while doing the hard thing - treat myself lovingly and protectingly while grocery shopping, or while at the gym. I observed myself on the mat once I was finally at the gym, and thought, "See, this is me, here, here I am now, and this is fun, right? We like this, we're having fun, right?")
Going to the gym regularly is going to get my body in shape that I would be ready for a physical challenge should it come up. I could run up the stairs between 3rd floor and 5th floor at work (not being able to do that is what sent me to the gym in the first place last April). I could lift a heavy thing. I could shovel, or push a car out of the snow, or spend a whole day skiing hard. I would be ready, I wouldn't be scared, it would be just something I would rise to and do.
And another thing that felt like that - last night I went to a meeting of a Poetry group. I'd been once before but not for a while, and I'm hoping to attend more often. But they are all kind of real poets, with like published books and huge sheafs of works and that kind of thing. I'm not a poet at all, I'm a blogger. But I thought I would push the envelope a bit and take some blog entries. As it turns out, there were more listeners than readers during the open-mic section of the evening, and so it was easy to just skip reading, so I chickened out. But I didn't need to have - listening to the other poets, I knew that my stuff was perfectly good enough to stand along side theirs. It's even Wisconsiny - I had brought a few pieces that dealt mainly with descriptions of the weather ("Online too much?", "Pre-winter" and the Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder Springtime Haiku). I had a look at them after the meeting and though, yeah, those are perfectly well good enough, they stand along side the stuff the proper writers were reading, and I'll bet they would like to hear them. And also, I realized that my writing this dumb blog and through the happy accident that every once in a while I have an observation I write down that goes all profoundish or pastoral or whatever, just by spilling out this blog as I can't even help but doing, I've now got a large body of words that I can draw from, take the best bits out, print them up and take them to the poetry group the twice a month that it meets, and I have a body of perfectly good enough stuff to read out loud to them. That's a good feeling.
And at work I'm trying to cultivate this feeling as well. I've been there a whole year now, so the first year trepidations and panic and insecurity are gone. People say positive things about what I do, I've been given some new opportunities, I can proceed with a bit of confidence and security now. Touch wood. But also, you know, I haven't had a boss since July. I still don't have a boss, I'm temporarily reporting to the Senior VP of the whole division until they can work out a home for me. The whole organization is being restructured and no one knows what anyone is supposed to be doing. So, all that worry I felt every morning for my first 12 months about every little task or project, all that anxiety about the details and things left undone and unpromptly, that should all actually really go away now. The whole organization is being evaluated in such broad strokes that the little things aren't even being observed. And my new job is not tactical and executional and "in the weeds" as they say there, it's more strategic and consultative. And I can do that. I have lots of skill and expertise, and ability to communicate and explain things to people and teach them, and I have creativity and vision, and I care, and all of those things are just like having a huge body of blog entries that I could draw from and print out and read, or just like a basic level of physical fitness. I can relax, because I am ready.
Perhaps this is the up-side of being 45, nearly 46.
It was nearly another day of failure, I was supposed to get up at 5 and go before work but couldn't sleep at all last night, was up basically until 2, so 5 wasn't going to work. But I remembered to take all my stuff and I ended up going after work, which was actually perfectly fine.
(I've had two occasions of getting myself to do unwanted things, two occasions on successive days, and I'm trying to observe what goes on in me during these times, the psychological phenomena that traditionally lead to a block. It's usually after work, sometimes after something else too, and the alternative is to head home, cuddle up on the couch, do something brainless like watch tv or knit or both. The feeling that blocks me from doing horrible unwanted things like go to the grocery store or to the gym is associated with a desire for a hug. I think I get blocked when I feel like I've suffered enough and need some love and cuddling (safety, protection, nurturing) instead, and also some pleasure and some entertainment. What I'm trying to do is convince myself that I can love myself, while doing the hard thing - treat myself lovingly and protectingly while grocery shopping, or while at the gym. I observed myself on the mat once I was finally at the gym, and thought, "See, this is me, here, here I am now, and this is fun, right? We like this, we're having fun, right?")
Going to the gym regularly is going to get my body in shape that I would be ready for a physical challenge should it come up. I could run up the stairs between 3rd floor and 5th floor at work (not being able to do that is what sent me to the gym in the first place last April). I could lift a heavy thing. I could shovel, or push a car out of the snow, or spend a whole day skiing hard. I would be ready, I wouldn't be scared, it would be just something I would rise to and do.
And another thing that felt like that - last night I went to a meeting of a Poetry group. I'd been once before but not for a while, and I'm hoping to attend more often. But they are all kind of real poets, with like published books and huge sheafs of works and that kind of thing. I'm not a poet at all, I'm a blogger. But I thought I would push the envelope a bit and take some blog entries. As it turns out, there were more listeners than readers during the open-mic section of the evening, and so it was easy to just skip reading, so I chickened out. But I didn't need to have - listening to the other poets, I knew that my stuff was perfectly good enough to stand along side theirs. It's even Wisconsiny - I had brought a few pieces that dealt mainly with descriptions of the weather ("Online too much?", "Pre-winter" and the Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder Springtime Haiku). I had a look at them after the meeting and though, yeah, those are perfectly well good enough, they stand along side the stuff the proper writers were reading, and I'll bet they would like to hear them. And also, I realized that my writing this dumb blog and through the happy accident that every once in a while I have an observation I write down that goes all profoundish or pastoral or whatever, just by spilling out this blog as I can't even help but doing, I've now got a large body of words that I can draw from, take the best bits out, print them up and take them to the poetry group the twice a month that it meets, and I have a body of perfectly good enough stuff to read out loud to them. That's a good feeling.
And at work I'm trying to cultivate this feeling as well. I've been there a whole year now, so the first year trepidations and panic and insecurity are gone. People say positive things about what I do, I've been given some new opportunities, I can proceed with a bit of confidence and security now. Touch wood. But also, you know, I haven't had a boss since July. I still don't have a boss, I'm temporarily reporting to the Senior VP of the whole division until they can work out a home for me. The whole organization is being restructured and no one knows what anyone is supposed to be doing. So, all that worry I felt every morning for my first 12 months about every little task or project, all that anxiety about the details and things left undone and unpromptly, that should all actually really go away now. The whole organization is being evaluated in such broad strokes that the little things aren't even being observed. And my new job is not tactical and executional and "in the weeds" as they say there, it's more strategic and consultative. And I can do that. I have lots of skill and expertise, and ability to communicate and explain things to people and teach them, and I have creativity and vision, and I care, and all of those things are just like having a huge body of blog entries that I could draw from and print out and read, or just like a basic level of physical fitness. I can relax, because I am ready.
Perhaps this is the up-side of being 45, nearly 46.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Defeat
Defeat. Defeat, defeat, defeat.
Here are the things I was going to do this evening and did not:
I want to just stay up now, keep surfing, keep virtually interacting with virtual folks, get some practicing encouragement from the Fender.com guys, read the whole Guitar Handbook book and memorize every music theory thing in it and then learn all scales, all intervals, all popular melodies of the past few centuries, deconstruct them, work out how the work, be able to improvise and express the music that's inside me, be able to play bar chords well enough to play Ramones songs. I scoffed, but Ramones songs are really fucking hard. Stupid Ramones.
Or just watch YouTube videos of all the guitar heroes - Ramones, Spazzys, Jimmy Page, Jack White, all the ones I'm only just learning about, all the ones my guitar teacher lists as influences on his bio page on his band's website. Or just look at photos of my guitar teacher in concert, or that video of them in Menominee. Or find some more tabs of things I like, and try to puzzle them out, and listen to all my records and triangulate on the sound I want so I can work out the guitar I want and the amp I want.
Guitar is actually what is keeping me up late, I think.
Anyway, and then this. Wrote this. So I suppose all of that is something. My back hurts, from being up too late last night. My eyes will be red again tomorrow. I will try the gym again on Wednesday morning. It's just the end of vacation, I will get back in the routine. My job is not hard, now. My job is strategic. Everything is cool.
I've been mantra'ing some positive phrases lately, stolen from the 2008 media:
"Yes, I can!" (from the Prez-Elect, of course)
"You can DO this" (from a cheesy commercial advertising cheap homes saying you can save tens of thousands on a new home by acting as your own general contractor, just write away for this easy instruction book)
I can do this. I can do some of this. I need to work out which of the thisses I can do. And then do them. Or something else. Which becomes the new this.
Anyway, let's see if this whole bed thing works better tonight. Goodnight, blogosphere.
("Goodnight, Ellen.")
Here are the things I was going to do this evening and did not:
- Get birthday card written for cousin, to mail first thing tomorrow, which will anyway make it like 2 days later for her birthday which is on Wednesday, and the main reason I'm sending it is I forgot to get her anything for Christmas but did get things for her mom and step-dad
- Write a big explanation of what I think philosophers are doing when they propose definitions of words and then talk about my metaphysical theory of the nature of emotional states and why it is reductivist but not determinist - I owe this as a response to a friend of mine
- Actually work hard on guitar and try to get some chops back - was a horrible, stiff-fingered mess of an experience instead, and as my ear gets more sophisticated I am less and less satisfied with my amateurish skill level (plus I think I was strung out on too much caffeine, too much sugar, not enough sleep)
- Start knitting sample patches with the new yarn to work out what kind of scarf to make
- Print out some blog entries to take to read at the poetry group, which I think meets at the bookshop tomorrow night - for which I will miss yoga but I am kind of excited about the poetry group, as long as they let me read blog entries instead of poems because that's what I have
- Cook
- Eat vegetables
- Get car washed (too cold for that, actually, I keep seeing cars, mostly Ford Tauruses for some reason, driving around encased in like an inch of ice, with icycles hanging off all around, people who couldn't wait and wait ahead and went through the car wash when it's 10degF. I worry that I will get trapped inside and won't be able to get the doors open. Until spring.
- Pack for the gym
- Get to bed, sleeping by 9ish so I can get up tomorrow at 5, get to the gym by 5:30, get showered and to the Dr appointment by 7:30, then to work on time-ish.
- Go by the Scirocco tapas bar and pick up some tickets for the Cory Chisel solo show that is Thursday evening. He's a local musician made good, actually nationally touring and has a band and he actually comes from Appleton, and I'd love to take this opportunity to go see him, but as ever I have no one to go with. Could buy a spare ticket and try to round someone up. All but two of the possibilities are married, so maybe I could buy two extra tickets. But starting on Tuesday, and with my usual success at this kind of thing, how likely is it I could get anyone to go? So maybe I should go by myself. But what if it's a restauranty, datey kind of place where being by yourself would be supremely weird? Maybe I won't go. Or maybe I will. Or drop by and see, on the night. Or go, and pretend I'm a rock journalist there to cover the gig for some important publication, and just listen and have the experience and not be self-conscious. Or just skip it and go to the student coffee shop down the street which also has live music on, on Thursday. Or skip it and go to yoga, which I'll miss tomorrow to go to the poetry thing. Or skip all of it and just stay home, in bed, head under the covers. Covered in a sheet of ice and icycles. Blah.
- Went to the mall and got a watch battery, on the very day that the battery died, from a shop that is an authorized reseller of the very brand of watch I have.
- Got a gift card to put in cousin's birthday card if I actually get it mailed.
- Went to the drug store and got a prescription refilled.
- Wove in the loose ends of yarn from a very crazy "fun fur" scarf that I was working on all Christmas and is now done. Finally a finished knitting project! Although it's weird - black, light blue and dark blue stripes, really really fuzzy, really fake-looking, the yarn purchased at Walmart and last time I was at Walmart I saw quite a few women in similar fun-fur scarves. So maybe it's dumb. But it's done, and I did it.
- Watched John & Kate Plus 8, in which they announce to the kids that they're moving.
- Caught up on Facebook, XKCD, Fender.com, Cute Overload. All these communities are full of people. I can't tear myself away because I'm lonely. I wish I had someone to tell me goodnight at night.
I want to just stay up now, keep surfing, keep virtually interacting with virtual folks, get some practicing encouragement from the Fender.com guys, read the whole Guitar Handbook book and memorize every music theory thing in it and then learn all scales, all intervals, all popular melodies of the past few centuries, deconstruct them, work out how the work, be able to improvise and express the music that's inside me, be able to play bar chords well enough to play Ramones songs. I scoffed, but Ramones songs are really fucking hard. Stupid Ramones.
Or just watch YouTube videos of all the guitar heroes - Ramones, Spazzys, Jimmy Page, Jack White, all the ones I'm only just learning about, all the ones my guitar teacher lists as influences on his bio page on his band's website. Or just look at photos of my guitar teacher in concert, or that video of them in Menominee. Or find some more tabs of things I like, and try to puzzle them out, and listen to all my records and triangulate on the sound I want so I can work out the guitar I want and the amp I want.
Guitar is actually what is keeping me up late, I think.
Anyway, and then this. Wrote this. So I suppose all of that is something. My back hurts, from being up too late last night. My eyes will be red again tomorrow. I will try the gym again on Wednesday morning. It's just the end of vacation, I will get back in the routine. My job is not hard, now. My job is strategic. Everything is cool.
I've been mantra'ing some positive phrases lately, stolen from the 2008 media:
"Yes, I can!" (from the Prez-Elect, of course)
"You can DO this" (from a cheesy commercial advertising cheap homes saying you can save tens of thousands on a new home by acting as your own general contractor, just write away for this easy instruction book)
I can do this. I can do some of this. I need to work out which of the thisses I can do. And then do them. Or something else. Which becomes the new this.
Anyway, let's see if this whole bed thing works better tonight. Goodnight, blogosphere.
("Goodnight, Ellen.")
Friday, January 2, 2009
A poem (written at -13C)
The reason I have lived here for one year and two months and am still not unpacked
by Ellen In Appleton
Lizards, when put in the freezer,
their metabolisms slow down so much
they don't move
they barely move.
by Ellen In Appleton
Lizards, when put in the freezer,
their metabolisms slow down so much
they don't move
they barely move.
The Resolutions
The Resolutions, 2009. There are quite a few, I'll add to this list as I think of them:
And "make guitar teacher realize that I'm the one he really wants" is probably in contradiction to #6 above, so we'll leave that one as "Idle Fantasy"
- Meet some more people who don't work at work
- Find a new boyfriend
- Invite people to dinner (when table back from refinishers)
- Exercise 3 times a week, for real
- Stop being cagey about my age (already added "year" to Facebook profile, just this morning)
- Stop getting crushes on unviable people - just find out, and move on
- Clean my damn house
- Finish the Scavenger Hunt, no later than midnight June 11, Central Time
- Plan to go to things in evenings, weekends etc., put them in the calendar, and then actually go - keep promises to myself
- Find people to do those things with
- Pay off the damn credit card
- Visit Australia
- Try to calm down when going to work, not worry
- Appreciate the snow while it's here (tick - been doing that all day)
And "make guitar teacher realize that I'm the one he really wants" is probably in contradiction to #6 above, so we'll leave that one as "Idle Fantasy"
Thursday, January 1, 2009
12:05 and feeling much better
I heard from my belovedest loved ones - Mom and Dad on the phone, and my sister on the IM who was hot-tubbing in Antarctica (long story...). And two different Facebook friends were on and IM'd me too.
Watched the SNL DVDs from the 80's and they were way less depressing - my stars were not Robbie Robertson and Jerry Garcia but Duran Duran, the Go Gos, and Mike Meyers as Wayne from Wayne's World with Aerosmith as his special guest. Altogether happier superstars.
I flipped back and forth between NY's coverage, ended up on MSNBC but actually missed east coast midnight and the ball-drop (that was when I was still watching SNL music and was mesmerized by Neil Young's band that had two Les Pauls, one black and one a goldtop - probably fitting in some way that I was ogling guitars instead of counting down to midnight), but then on our local NBC channel they played it again at midnight Central Time so I got to see the whole thing after all. Happy New Year!
The announcer pointed out that 2008 had an extra second added to it, a leap-second, because the earth is rotating too slowly or something (that's what she said, in those words), and she asked us to think about what to do with that extra second. And I knew right away - I would spend it in gratitude, for all the beautiful things about life.
One, Mississippi, thank you beautiful world, Mississippi!
And bring on, bring on, rock on, 2009!
Watched the SNL DVDs from the 80's and they were way less depressing - my stars were not Robbie Robertson and Jerry Garcia but Duran Duran, the Go Gos, and Mike Meyers as Wayne from Wayne's World with Aerosmith as his special guest. Altogether happier superstars.
I flipped back and forth between NY's coverage, ended up on MSNBC but actually missed east coast midnight and the ball-drop (that was when I was still watching SNL music and was mesmerized by Neil Young's band that had two Les Pauls, one black and one a goldtop - probably fitting in some way that I was ogling guitars instead of counting down to midnight), but then on our local NBC channel they played it again at midnight Central Time so I got to see the whole thing after all. Happy New Year!
The announcer pointed out that 2008 had an extra second added to it, a leap-second, because the earth is rotating too slowly or something (that's what she said, in those words), and she asked us to think about what to do with that extra second. And I knew right away - I would spend it in gratitude, for all the beautiful things about life.
One, Mississippi, thank you beautiful world, Mississippi!
And bring on, bring on, rock on, 2009!
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