Bio
Musings •
View Steph's
online presskit >>
|
2007
November 8
"I'm not the most graceful" is a line from a nice song by my friend Janis. Janis was one of the troopers who went to a weekend workshop with Lori Carson a few years back. I feel like that song today. I also just like saying that line a lot and the more you say it, the more it's true. In fact, we can really think anything into reality. I'm thinking this moment now into reality. I'm also thinking about writing a solo show for the theatre. It would be quite something if I actually make it come about. I've wanted to do a solo show for many years, dating back to 1990. I've never had the guts. Finally, maybe now that I'm not 22 and beyond caring, this is the time for such endeavors. My game plan was really to get into the nitty gritty songwriter thing, which I've done a bit, but the thespian in me is always yearning to get out and I can't resist the fact that I've had two friends in the last couple years put up solo shows (which is inspiring). Add to that the fact that I never quite hush up, and the idea of my blathering on about this or that in front of a paying audience seems more and more likely.
july 14
Today, in the midst of some of the most beautiful weather Chicago has seen this year, I bide my time in bed. I have the feng shui report from Lynne, the doctor report from Elgin and a few odds and ends to read. But. This homeopathic euphoria will not last all day. I have to go to work this afternoon. My favorite thing work-wise is the gig I have today, at Navy Pier. There is no party, club or basement workstation more awesomely satisfying musically than playing at the Pier. It's a tourist scene. It's a mob scene on some days. But it's been my "home" for eleven years, when I first started playing music professionally. I love the vibe, the air, the water, the autograph hounds. It's very now-we're-a-rock-star tapped with a lot of free flow. Sometimes I just wing it and it is always an utter thril. I can't cancel today's trip to the Pier. I will hopefully forget my illness and traipse around as if nothing's wrong, enjoying yet another day in yet another year of entertaining every imginable type of person from various states and countries, while I gaze out toward a shimmery Lake Michigan.
june 17
i kind of love listening to my first recordings, so aimlessly, naively sweet. i don't want to re-think the arrangements, but appreciate them for their wonder. those recordings go back several years and by now, i've established myself and have grown and continue to see the possibility... it takes awhile sometimes. it's exciting. artists are unique in that they can really look back at things on a personal level with a body of work to examine. also, this blog seems to withstand certain trappings of time, and it comments on where i've been and what i've done but also could have been pieced together in one oscillating night of tipsied free speech.
sunny may day - II
my favorite writer of all time - i would read anything he ever wrote - is tom wolfe. tom wolfe takes any subject - architecture, wall street, acid - and churns it into sweet gooey buttery yumificatoin. i want to drink his words because they make me feel alive. this is also how i feel when i listen to a great band, or when i'm at my spots in california (urth cafe in los angeles; the monterey beach; mill valley; the coast). remember the guy you used to pass in the school hallway? maybe you went to all of his fencing matches? that guy - the music, california, tom wolfe - is the excitement i truly live for. such lucky, breath-taking, minor life moments are so easy to take for granted, but how often in a week do most people get them? how often in a life? rufus wainwright puts some of that thought into "cigarettes and chocolate milk" and i get what he's saying heartily, though i haven't smoked in years. now that's a great song.
sunny may day - I
i am doing updates and re-grouping. moving out of the city was weird, so i'm picking up the pieces of my former self and pushing forward. i have been pleasantly pleased at the amount of fun folks coming out to my gigs these days. and tonight i cannot wait to rock it with the band. hopefully everybody will be up for the hang tonight, because i am feeling so suburban and out of the loop lately. i actually find myself inventing reasons to go urban lately. "oh, i need lemons and the only fresh lemons available in all of chicagoland are at stanley's on north ave..." or: "i have to see what developments they're making on the building at irving at pulaski..maybe a quick drive???" i am worried about losing my edge, as diane o'c puts it when she talks about suburbanites who left the city. well, there's no doubt that things are just easier out here (almost too easy actually until then one day you find yourself becoming a brownie-gulping, ten-pound-heavier version of your former self). so, i'm making these secret little trips. yesterday i waited on the 94 for one elated hour just to see my girl ryan at division and wolcott (one hour on the kennedy nine months ago would have been painstaking). it was worth it. i am the first to admit it: i have two lives. not as in two of the nine a cat would have, but more two separate, unrelated parts (though, when one sees the school moms dancing and getting wild at one of my gigs, one might think those two lives do cross paths). the other night, i stayed for the band beer hang and had a ball up in that limey, smoke-filled green room and the following day, i was out on the courts wearing clean clothes and pronouncing midwest weather witiicisms like a proper tennis-playing lady. both as if i truly belonged.
|
