And on with our lives
On Saturday morning we got out the house early (well, for a Saturday), went grocery shopping (always fun on my own with 2 kids), and then went to Adam’s house to play with Emma and Sam. I brought my spare guitar so I can play it while I’m over there and because Emma is keen on learning to play. Duncan and Berry had a good time, playing with the Dora doll house in the playroom downstairs, coloring and experimenting with corn starch. Corn starch works surprisingly well at getting marker off little fingers.
Being in the musical moment
I’m not sure how to explain the experience I just had.
I went to a folksinging song circle this evening held by the Eugene Folklore Society. I had a vague idea of what to expect, having gone to some Golden Link Folk Singing Society and festival singarounds in Rochester. But, still, you never know.
So I toted my guitar and songbook and followed the directions to a strangers house. (Don’t worry, it all turns out well.)
As I walked in the door, a woman was sitting in the stairway, tuning her guitar. I was in the right place. Good. In the living room, a dozen people sat around in a circle – only two with guitars, which surprised me. I quickly realized I was bereft of a copy of Rise Up Singing, which everyone else had. Ah, so it’s a sing out of the song book song circle, not a bring your stuff and we’ll join in if we can song circle. Which is fine. Someone had an extra copy to lend me.
I’m terrible at guessing people’s ages and heights. But I think it’s fairly safe to say I was the youngest in the room by a good two decades. Don’t other 30-something-year-old women like folk music?
We took turns going around the circle, picking songs from the book, everyone singing them together and the guitars all chiming in. With two song leaders across the room, I quietly strummed away on the songs with chords that I remembered.
I managed to pick a song each time it came around to me (from the book I was unfamiliar with). Fortunately, the Beatles were in it. And I found myself singing songs I didn’t know. Or didn’t know I knew.
As the evening went on, there came a point where I found myself singing and playing a song I’d never heard before — as if I knew it somehow. I don’t even remember what the song was now. But I noticed, in that moment, that all that existed was that moment, that song, all our voices moving together in the same direction.
It was like I found my way inside the music, into the notes and melody and rhythm of it. I stopped questioning it, stopped mentally critiquing my performance, stopped worrying and doing anything other than just being. Right then. Right for that moment.
It’s been a while since I’ve become so absorbed in something that times stops and flows by at the same time. I think I’ll go back next month. And get my own copy of the song book.
Saying hello means saying goodbye
As part of my imminent new business launch, I’m cleaning up and consolidating my Web sites.
I’ve got a bunch of domains and some point to one place, others to another. For a while I had a Web site promoting my musical ventures (silandara.com), one for my Web site business (dreamtreedesign.com – which I think I still own but the business has been dormant/gone for a long time) and another for freelance writing (silandarabartlett.com and joannabartlett.com). Oh, and then there’s the music publishing company I created to publish/distribute/release my last 2 CDs, Aradnalis Productions (aradnalis.com).
In a moment or two, all of those addresses will either point here or to the new commercial writing business site.
What I find hard to do is to take down the old stuff. Playing music professionally isn’t in my near future. That’s OK. It’s something I did for a few years, that I really wanted to try doing. And I did it. I decided that I didn’t ultimately want to do the things I felt were necessary to be successful professionally — like tour and live off people’s couches. That didn’t jive with being married, owning a home and starting a family.
But taking down the pages with my CDs and photos from gigs…it’s hard. It’s bittersweet. I’m in a different place now and I don’t want to promote that side of myself. Still, removing it from the public eye kind of means it doesn’t exist anymore. I still have people ask me — 2 years after I stopped gigging — if I’m still playing out. It’s really sweet they remember and know it’s something that was so important to me. But, no, I’m not gigging. It doesn’t fit into my life right now.
The other thing that’s I’m not sure about is what to do about my old blog. I moved a lot of my old posts over to WordPress when I switched blogs a while back. But not all of them. I’ve been blogging about various things on “Silandara’s blog” since March 2002. On one hand, I don’t know that I want THAT much of my history out there for folks to read. On the other, it seems a shame to take it offline. (I’ll save it locally, of course, so it’s not gone forever.)
Anyway, that’s the fascinating update on this end. Better get back to that .htaccess file and its custom redirects.
Manifesting
I’ve been thinking about music and how it seems to have fallen out of my life now. That I haven’t picked up my guitar and played it since Duncan was born. It’s hiding in a corner of my office that I can barely get to with all the stuff in the way — maybe that’s part of it.And I’ve been thinking about how I used to do gigs until it got to not be fun anymore, and then I got pregnant anyway and wasn�t up for hauling around my PA system and entertaining people while all I felt like doing was hurling in the nearest toilet. That was the first three months. After that, I was just too tired.
Now I have a baby.
A friend of mine called me this week and asked me if I’d like to do a gig at Nazareth College. Not a huge payer, but decent enough for it to be worth it were I so inclined and prepared. I don�t think my finger tips could take 2 hours of guitar playing right now, even if I had the energy and someone to baby sit.
But it was interesting that I was thinking about gigging and someone called and offered me one.
I�d like some lucrative freelance writing opportunities now, please. ( Might as well ask, right? Put it out there. Let it be known. Manifest that into my reality.
And now back to working on my Web site to do my part in helping it come about.
Confession
OK, so the real reason I didn’t blog about my gigs and how they really went was because I was vying for a record deal and wanted to sound as big and as successful as possible. Didn’t want any record execs coming on here and reading about the $12 I made in tips, the weird old guys that hit on me or lugging my PA system back to my car in below zero weather.
Had to create the hype, right? Not that there were any record execs. Not that there was any reason to worry. And maybe a bit more bluntness would have helped, anyway.
So that’s me, always trying to make a good impression and get people to think everythings just fine and going smoothly. Surprising I’ve been so honest with all this baby stuff, really. But it feels right to come clean and just be who I am.
Man, this whole reproducing a new human being changes things. Gives you a whole new perspective.