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Musings
2006

a sad november evening
it's hard for me to feel celebratory about birthdays when i have just lost a friend and the world has lost a comrade, a fighter of justice, radical, activist and compassionate soul. brad will was an usually amazing guy and the son and brother of my dearest friends. brad will presente! if you'd like to learn about brad will, his life's work and the memorial that occured yesterday in new york city due to the work of hundreds of other incredible people who knew brad or knew about brad, check out: http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2006/11/79239.html. warning: a graphic image appears on this link.

August ending
okay the creepiness of this moment...5:27am the morning after the night before the night before we move. boxes abound. some full, some waiting to be filled. stuff surrounds. i surf the net. cannot sleep for anything. look up info about the evanescence lead singer, spending ridiculous amounts of time searching for her background. she does really blow my mind, though i'm not sure i want to see the live show at the riv in october. i always find the riv a perfect goth scene, but the guitar work is so loud and now, well, i'm sounding old i guess. and i am not so goth. i have three new song ideas, carved out of a weekend in san francisco. well, actually they were carved on the plane ride, and my only choices were to sleep (which is never really a choice) or do something creative.

Sometime in June maybe

in a rare moment of letting her guard down, here's a song i've just written on the mac (sounds like a bad demo, and all demos sound bad naturally, but this is a bad-sounding bad demo) which begs the question:

It All Goes Away   .mp3   .mov

old men in grey jackets paying their monthly rent
tired eyes and hunched back on concrete pavement
the rain's come back, the winter's cleared way
the yankees, the cubs, how's the weather today, today
a young guy walks right by, doesn't even notice the view
or the still smiles and wide eyes reminiscing old school
this winter was rough, had to turn the heat up, reminds me of '51
saw dimaggio play his final game on the color tv dad bought
do you think that time is yours to hold, do you think life stays so good
do you think you're living for today when it all goes away?
i find it kinda funny that i am as old as i am
i always thought that people my age were wholly uninteresting
but now i'm a wife, and i'm a mom, and i guess this is middle age
i have a car, i live in a home with lots of things i think i need
do you think that time is yours to hold, do you think life stays so good
do you think you're living for today when it all goes away...
old men in worn coats shuffling the pavement
tired moms in new cars sounding their lament

April 23
so i'm still hung up on the luck notion. i was supposed to have played my big match tonight, but my opponent got hurt (not so lucky), and alas, lucky you, you get to hear me rant. (we don't use paragraph breaks here, or any other grammatically predictable codes of behavior for that matter). last night, i was one of 20 or so lucky folks who got to go to jonathan's earth day party. i didn't have the bernstein wedding, so hubby and i took to the streets. there, on the streets (not literally - it was, however, above a street) we met some moguls and had some fancy - yet - for me, highly allergenic wine. first, i met the mega millionaire long-haired maui resident and his lovely social worker wife. then the three chic best friends (the kind of gals you'd want commentating in the background of every party you attend). onto a couple of interesting entrepeneurs and musicians, a record label guy, a few rogue artists and then...lo and behold...a vision from my past. i couldn't quite place the vision - what? an ex boyfriend? a musician i used to jam with in college? i couldn't figure out who the mystery cutie was but he reminded me of my old flame, jon mintz, who wore his black hair long and impressed girls with his insatiable charm and parent's disco ball. so, i walked over and exclaimed: " i went to school with you!" and the frightened vision uttered (in his head): "i have no idea who you are you loon!" and after he realized he probably wouldn't need to have his hand on the cell phone 9-button anymore, we both realized that his mom and my mom are best friends and though we hadn't seen each other in years, we are people we each should know from jon mintz (or anyone) at a party. the guilt soon passed, then a few stories about our hilarious parents (my mom rolling up her window after offering a polite "no thank you" to a lewd request from a drunk foreigner at a stop light...his mom habitually aiming her bare assets at helicopters). and then, the news: he had moved back to the suburbs. apparently it's no longer just disco balls and rolled up windows in the suburbs!

March 18
indecision is the fortunate man's cross to bear. as i say in one of my songs: "how do the fortunate ones justify living?" meaning, how did we fortunate, lucky bastards manage to get so damn lucky? but with good fortune - starting with shelter, food, money to buy clothes and leaping into such extravagances as vacations, a nice home, high def television - often comes complication. there may be guilt, if you're even a little aware of how most people live; and there may be too much excess. there may be spoiled children and unkind people and too much privilege and not enough appreciation. taking for granted all the many fortunes one has. if you go to a church where all the parishioners are well-off, you wonder how the messages hit. do they hit? the most religious people are also the poorest. the poorest countries have deep religion. wealthy countries, like wealthy people, are often devoid of faith. "i did it myself." i do not call myself religious, being fortunate (haha, you're in on the joke now), however i do not think i brought on any of the things i appreciate solely. buddhism. good karma. good vibes. so, anyone who seems very lucky in this life was a hero last time around? maybe we're defining luck differently. you have hope, you're lucky. you get sick and someone's there to care for you, you're lucky. you have someone to celebrate holidays with, lucky. you have a family, a job, a sense of value, lucky you. you get to do something you enjoy, yes. it's hard to hear from someone on the luck spectrum and it's hard to say the stuff without sounding like a rat bastard.

February 26
This is getting didactic.
If you take a look back on these musings, which were a blog before I even knew they were a blog, it seems I used to spend inordinate amounts of time (with a small child in tow) reflecting on the meaning of life. I don't have time to reflect now and I've seen the turning tide of these writs. I did, however, get a recent astrology reading done and in it exists clear evidence that I am due for some reflection. I will seriously consider this.

january
Good technique helps. It’s the difference between merely doing something and doing it with panache.

Take tennis, a game of skills - hand/eye coordination, movement, placement, commanding the strokes, strength - that challenges the mind. You can play to your strength and your opponent’s weakness by relying on skill. I’ve played since I was a kid, took a million lessons, went to tennis camp in the summers, played on the all-state high school team. I’ve earned a few tennis chops. But there are other areas where my technique falls flat. For example, I’ve studied voice since college but not before that, when those initial ideas about music took shape. My singing started from instinct, not discipline. This might nudge me toward the soulful side, but it doesn’t help me sing correctly without thinking about it first.