Bio •
Musings •


new blogsite

Musings
2005

december 15
Books:
Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything;" "Tori Amos: Piece By Piece;" Kevin Trudeau "Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You To Know About" (full of annoying ads); Harry Potter; knitting.

Music:
Jon Brion movie scores; Ben Taylor; Arden Kaywin; Patty Griffin; Ferenc Fricsay; songs from "Piglet's Big Movie"; Tori Amos' "The Beekeeper"; my last gig as recorded so nicely by Gabriel at Uncommon Ground.

Movies:
"Life is Beautiful;" "Pride and Prejudice."

Posse: Peggy Ward (http://www.mamaphobia.com); Mark Buban; Lee Klawans (http://klawans.smugmug.com/gallery/1027362); Judes (http://www.fornicationallychallenged.com) - she's not new but her wonderful show is.

Veggies: brussel sprouts!

Politics: canvasing for Brian G. - Grossman For Judge!!!

Health: Chinese herbs; Ryan my girl; Network Chiropractic.

Car: barely works, but groovin' vanity plates.

Conversations: Big Brother; NY theatre scene; public vs. private schooling.

Holiday Mood: drearily cheery.

Causes: orphanage in Africa; Katrina.

october
they're tearing up our street. uncomfortable. the neighbors are rattled. today i'm looking at songwriters and reading tori amos's fascinating autobiography. i'm glad she rushed into it at 40, because it's not really an autobio so much as an accompaniment to her music. I like those last two records a lot. i'm listening to her, as well as rachael yamagata and tristan prettyman. and, the unusuals: patty griffin, s&g and jonatha brooke. i am liking the sounds of real songs right now, not so much the sonic paintings of a sigur ros (whom i saw last month and did like). i am not in playing mode. this is the rosh hashanah/yom kippur thing again...writing, introspective, relocating things. atoning. listening... i'm going to start organizing more songwriter circles. they beat the smokey club thing, although i liked the beat kitchen gig last week. there was a nice buzz in the air, almost the way it used to be in chicago, over ten years ago, but a little glossed over with the brush of an itunes crowd. they were listening but unsurprised by the clash of song #2 juxtaposed against song #3. house concerts and small shows are really where it's at for me. i haven't played navy pier since last summer. i tune to the intimate whispers of these new soul singers, and like what i hear. sometimes the music is in the in between.

september
I have always operated under the notion that if you neaten up your belongings, you’ll neaten up your life. This is not new. Tibetan monks, Sufi masters and Julie, the Feng Shui home decorator, all know this. We all know this. Except my grandmother. She did not know this. She was a child of the Great Depression. Not even a child - she was well into her twenties by then - she had not known wealth or probably even comfort so much in her youth. She had this tendency to pack rat everything. She’d collect minor objects, including salt packets and bread rolls from the Bohemian restaurants she frequented. Once, I saw her pour everyone’s leftover soup into Tupperware.

So, if one is to be enlightened, one must clean up her shit. Today I’m working diligently on the fridge. It’s pretty gross, mainly due to the content of old food items, which were never used, are never used and yet remain there with the best of intentions for them to be used. Cilantro, kale, kiwi. Lots of hard consonant foods. I never really know what to do with them, though I know any decent chef would. I do, incidentally, buy food like a true culinary expert. I don’t put the fresh produce in those hanging plastic bags at the store; I shove everything into the cart, resting in naked layers. (I saw a real chef do this once. It looked very professional.)

How I’ve engineered the appearance of the fridge is masterful. Lots of organic, lots of fresh, lots of happy, stacked vegetables screaming to be eaten. Yet what lurks beneath the smiling fruit is a mold-infested drawer of former fancies. What a shame. My pride and guilt are one and the same. I think about how this food could have been given to someone, or how the money to buy such expensive gourmet sundries could have been sent to an orphanage in West Africa. I am ashamed. I am no chef.

Yet with my guilt, I’m in purge mode. I run through the house, collecting things in oversized garbage bags, prepping to throw former valuables into the back of the truck. If I give stuff away, maybe I won’t feel so bad about our over-consumption. But this food, this sad waste, goes to the trash, never to be eaten by anyone. I tell myself it’s ok, that some struggling organic farmer has benefited. What a fine farmer he/she is! It’s not his fault the stuff is unused; he assumed I’d be worthy of its purchase.

Food facts is facts. I have used cilantro once in two years (in a salsa recipe my gourmand friend Mindy gave me), yet there seems to be a perpetual stream of the stuff in my floor drawer. I find it irresistible. And every time I notice it, always in the first aisle of the store, I repeat the twisted habit: “Oh, look, cilantro,” I tell myself foolishly, “I can make something delicious with this.” And, so carefully do I select the most perfect, greenest bunch of flowering cilantro I can find (sometime poring over the process for three or four minutes). Yet there it sits again, in the bottom of this contradictory container. The beautiful glimmering fruits amidst waning, wilting bundles of unused greenery. I will clean and purge, and I will vow, again, to buy only what is utterly needed next time. I will tell myself that kale is only good when someone else makes it; that acorn squash is a pain in the ass to peel; that what's practical is what's healthful.

My grandmother was no health nut. She ate what was available, claiming each piece of pie was the “best I ever had.” She said this about ham sandwiches and Campbell’s soup too. She lived to 92. And everyone loved Marie. She could make a friend out of an orange peel. She was gifted. Her house was a mix of European kitsch and class. She collected plates, ash trays, photos, little glass animals, art, jewelry, clothes ­ my God, the clothes! ­ and shoes, shoes, shoes. The apartment was filled to each corner with well-loved crap, yet come to think of it, no one, not even the most chi-flowing Feng Shui master, would call my grandmother’s soul into question.

august 1
hi. we're back from a great trip where many memorable things happened. one incident stands out. somewhere in berlin, there is a 20 year-old pinball aficionado who has missived me many email questionnaires about my experience as a pinball voiceover/singer. i hadn't clearly remembered the experience of singing the games, since that was about fifteen years ago, but to some people in the pinball scene (which, i believe, accounts for an infinitesimal fraction of life on this planet), they are apparently classics. for me, they were minor gigs or favors for friends, but to max, one 30-minute tossed-off recording as a mechanized robot - along with a few other voices i can't quite recall - rocked his world. my friends ana and janis were surprised by max's four-hour trek to meet us for drinks in frankfurt, and i got a little dose of the star treatment from him. read all about it from max's amusing perspective here: http://www.silverball-magic.com/article-sr.html

i am singing with other bands, people i don't know well. that gets me out of the safety zone; i like the challenge. been writing a little and studying music a lot and i hate it. i hate defining music. this is very awkward for me. i keep telling myself it's for the best, since i've gone a long time without knowing the rules and i used to preach "know the rules" as an actor. i found myself being one of those performers i used to criticize for not commanding their technique. the loss of craft is a real issue to me, especially in hollywood. i love this new show, entourage, because it is so dead-on in describing what the scene is about, but it's also a sad commentary on what the scene is about. i'm almost talking from one era to another, right? where is the craft of it? i feel like a parent lamenting these kids today. anyway, i get my little sparks of glory from guys like max and then spend my time carving out a bit of creativity. this is possible in my life because of a series of lucky breaks, but it is also made possible by merely giving a hoot.

june 2005
i'm writing a lot. with little time to do it. been working the party circuit, which i never thought i'd enjoy so much. it actually makes being creative easier, hearing other peoples' melodies all the time. i'm taking my online class at berklee. starting over with basic theory then i'll move onto pro tools, songwriting, etc... maybe this is another degree. so then i can have two improbable marketing tools: an acting degree and a music degree. but this theory stuff helps the writing, though i've tried to tell myself otherwise for awhile. we leave for europe in one week and i'm looking for the perfect drug to temper my fear of flying. my friend says dramamine. will that allow me to forget we're suspended in air in a metal tube for the next nine hours? what if it's bumpy? maybe something prescribed, but to a wholistic chick like me, that is just pouring scary awful chemicals into the soul. chemicals. does this aspirin-avoiding purist need to resort to something other than yogic meditation and carolyn myss?

april 2005
there is only one reason to write today and that is to fill the void of 2005 musings. let's think about that - what has made lifeasweknowit so bustling and burly that a simple symposium cannot be dictated for many mere months? well, there are no excuses for this. for michael, brian and eric - my triumverate of readers - i can only offer regret and apology and possibly, when you're in the area, a generous portion of home-baked peach pie. i have collected a few new skills in the past months which may be worthy of mention. they are: hitting a tennis ball at high speeds and with excessive vocal drama to display the profound agony required to carry out such an act; growing my hair; avoiding taxes; akashic record reading; beading jewelry; culling the perfect martini basket; planning fancy spa days for burned-out moms; and honing my charm. oh yes, and i am writing new songs and getting ready to kick this band into high gear. we have been in touch with navy pier and dates are coming, people are calling, visitors visiting and soon i will be in norway, singing "hjulene gar bussen" with an overtly amercian twang. and after that, fellas, i plan to rock some more.