Oh, gentle reader. Oh, brave, brave, brave, gentle reader. Since we last saw each other, my life has undergone something of a seismic shift. Internal pressure has been building for some time, and the big one finally hit the other night. I can't write much about it right now, because it's not only my story to tell, and because I'm still sifting through the rubble, trying to figure out what happened.
Too soon to use an earthquake analogy? Yikes. I could say instead that I threw a grenade into my life and watched it explode, but I prefer to think of it as a natural disaster that resulted from shifts in my own internal tectonic plates. Either way, the casualties: 2 human hearts, 1 shared habitat in a lovely, gigantic apartment, goodness knows what else.
Speaking of earthquakes and efforts to recover, Nat and I performed at the Haiti benefit last night. I hope they made some money for Doctors Without Borders, though I sensed that the audience was mostly made up of the performers. There were still a lot of people there - it was more than 5 hours' worth of short sets by rock bands, drunk (but good) opera singers in jeans, and other unclassifiable acts such as the highly entertaining Debutante Hour. I don't think anyone recorded our performance, so I'll have to record us the next time we get together to rehearse. We performed "Pick Yourself Up" and "God Bless the Child". "God Bless..." was new for us, but "Pick Yourself Up" is one we recorded for our demo a while back. We haven't been performing much recently (because we've been putting our time and energy writing), and we felt a little rusty the first time we ran through it last week. So it went on my list. Yes, it's sort of cheating, since I'm already really familiar with this song. But some things get short shrift in the run up to an earthquake.
I have actually continued my Week o' Wonder - "You Are the Sunshine of My Life", "Isn't She Lovely", and "Sir Duke" so far. According to my post-it, today's song is supposed to be "I Just Called to Say I Love You". I can't say I can play any of these songs Wonder-fully, nor did I transcribe any of the solos or memorize them very thoroughly. This is not the week for relentless pursuit of perfection. I will return to pursuit of perfection, or at least my intention to suck a little less each day, sometime soon. Meanwhile, we continue picking up after our disasters, small/personal and large/humanitarian.
p.s. i tried to upload Nat's & my demo recording of "Pick Yourself Up", but there was an error and now I'm out of time - will try again!
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Hello,
ReplyDeleteSorry about the earthquake(s).
And sorry if I keep intruding on your attention and intentions, but I figured that, since you are in your week of Wonder and since he did one of my favorites, I could mention it: Do you know "Overjoyed"? I suppose it falls within the category of "sins committed in the 1980s" but I think it is a beautiful song with a beautiful melody and nice words. You can just listen to it without needing to learn it, though.
Sorry I missed your Haiti show. Some day I will be in town and see a thing you do.
Do good sleeping.
g
i love Overjoyed! it's on my post-it for Saturday, actually. Though now my week's a little messed up because i just don't have the bandwidth to do Stevie justice. But yes, i will be learning that.
ReplyDeleteOkay - so sometimes personal earthquakes are good....although you usually don't see that until the dust has settled and all the stuff that got knocked around gets put back. I'm sorry though....it's really not fun when you're going through it. We learn a lot by the experiences we go through....sometimes it's just something we get to learn.
ReplyDeletethank you :)
ReplyDelete