bumpy post a year later can't sleep before worktime

One of the most important lessons I'm learning not only in improv but in my life is to assume my audience understands what I'm talking about. (Not that everyone in my life is my audience or anything.) (OH WHO AM I KIDDING) (but really not.)

Comprehension is weird. You can often understand a language without being able to speak it. Similarly, your audience can follow a narrative. Your audience remembers what you just said. Your audience has heard of things, has lived in the world. You do not need to perform improv in a vacuum. Humor that is purely referential is hoity-toity at best, cheating at worst, but a really good reference every now and again can flesh a scene out in a way that is so personal, because people have not only experienced whatever bit of culture you just grasped at but had a previous reaction to it, and is now going to be drawn in.

It's one of my worst habits to assume my audience means well but at heart is dumb dumb dumb. But it doesn't do anyone a service to work like that. I have to spin tirelessly at the height of all I have acquired culturally, spiritually, academically, streetedly, friendfully, fightfully, all of it in a mush. Junot Diaz does that damn well. The thing is too--if you really go all out--it inspires people to learn more anyway.

I'm reading a bio on Lenny Bernstein, and it scares me in some ways--he was in love with music, and pursued it like a mad obsessed man. For me, it feels clear that music is something simply part of my genetic make-up; I have no choice about it, I sing every day because I have feet and walk everyday.

Method

"The general capacities required of a singer of avant-garde music do not differ from those of the good recital singer:

Imagination,

vocal ability,

research capacity,

cultural background,

personal control,

curiosity, and

the ability to organize and control the raw materials."

-Cathy Berberian

Obviously excellent life criteria as well. Vocal ability included.

Arrival

Tell You What

I'll tell you what I love...
I love a little mouse
she lives in a hole under the ground
I'll never let her out
I'll never let her out
she doesn't deserve to be let out

I'll tell you where I've been...
I've been a little girl
who's been picking and picking at the wire
hoping for a spark
hoping for a spark
I'm gonna keep her in the goddamn dark

you wanna know my life?
I'm wedded to the wind.
I'm like a butterfly
dead, dried and pinned.
but I work it like a job
I work it like a job
I work it like it's mine to rob

I'll tell you what I want,
you gotta come in close
but don't come too close it's no good too close
just kinda lean on in
just lean on in
I'll tell you what I love
I'll tell you where I've been
I'll tell you where our bodies end
and where do they begin
you're looking at my life?
just lean on in
I'll tell you what I want.
just lean on in.

--written 20 past the midnight hour, 23rd December.

Pre-preproduction jitters

"Writing-if you're happy with it-undoes all sorrows."
-Orhan Pamuk


Today I meet with Round Three of make-my-music-plz. The first was I paid a lot of money and got nothing, the second was I paid nothing and got a little bit, and now I'm going to pay a relative little and get a relative everything? I pray? (Look! I'm still writing in the open internet air about it. I still, in the open internet air, think my first producer was a big, dripping asshole!)

as for the non-drip, I'm scared, even as I'm brightening! He's freak-folk, and kind, and his words glitter, and our minds interlock tentacles.

I have to do these things: make music, write, and enjoy people and what they do. I am haunted by this Rocko's Modern Life episode, where Rocko & co. are on a cruise that sails into the Bermuda triangle? As they do, spinning clocks appear over their faces, and age them like bananas under the sun.

sooner or later THIS HAPPENS IN REAL LIFE! so march march march in the lockstep joy dictates!

Snow Day

O Snow! And West Coast snow to boot (har), but lookin' legit. The Wind and I followed the screams to the train tracks, where children outfitted in candy-colored snowsuits streaked down the hill. Until a train actually came:

and I shot that idiotic video.

On the sidewalk, we saw parents tugging a girl on a sled attached to a rope; facial expression this priceless cross between anticipation of a hiccup in the sidewalk and bearing of the cold. I only have a thousand words unfortunately, so I'll end them here.

I feel like you could buy Lebanon for that amount of money

What's the worst part about someone stealing your credit card and spending 19,000 dollars in Lebanon?
Getting a handwritten letter from your cello rental store, telling you the last payment didn't go through. And then realizing you have to return your cello.

So long, Hello Dolly.