Kevin sent the kids a CD of a song he thought they’d like. I honestly don’t know who the artist is. Yes, I’m getting that old any lame.

In any case, the song is a hit with the kids. They love it. They dance to it at home. They decided to dance to it at the church talent show last weekend. And, by magical coincidence, they got to dance to it at Chuck E Cheese a few weeks ago at a friend’s birthday party.

Here are there performances.

Chuck E Cheese:

Church rehearsal:

And a bunch of clips from last weekend, including a bit of their actual church performance:

And, while I may be musically lame, I’m still technologically proficient. Shazam on my Droid tells me the song is I Love You by Michael Franti and Spearhead.

I did perform a few songs at church one week, but that hardly counts as a gig. Neither does an open mic, but it’s what I’ve got going for me at the moment.

I have no proof – no photos of videos – but you’ll have to believe me that I was at the Monroe St. Cafe open mic night yesterday. Adam can testify that I was there.

It’s apparently quite popular. By the time I arrived at 7:30 (it started at 7 pm) there were 13 people ahead of me. Given that each person has 10 minutes, that’s more than a 2-hour wait. I think they were only on the second person, too.

We settled in, with spicy chai tea, and enjoyed the varied performances. Some were quite good, some funny, many quite “Eugene.” I enjoyed the duo playing songs about not letting Corporate America win. And the irony that she was wearing an Old Navy shirt.

There were a couple of spoken word acts – one recited poems about the state of our society and one about future cyborg humans. Maybe one day I’ll get to become a bionic cyborg mermaid. Apparently in 2012.

It got to be past 9 pm, and I hit a wall of tiredness. We got up to go home – there were still 4 people ahead of me – but the host convinced someone to switch places with me so I bumped up a few places. I must look like I can play music or something.

It was good to get out my purple guitar and play a few songs. People quieted down and listened to my quiet, original “Daydream Song” (there was no mic at this open mic), sang along with “Let It Be,” laughed in the appropriate spots of “Wilder Than Her” and applauded each song at the end. It felt good to be performing for an audience — honestly, that crowded cafe had more people than some of my gigs in the past.

My finger tips are still a bit sore today. I should toughen them up.

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.

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.

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.

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.