beautiful, funny, sad & true

I’ve been in a bit of a funk this week, where writing is concerned. It seems that lots of people are criticizing blogging lately, which I find has left me feeling a bit tongue-tied. I want to make each post Beautiful and Funny and Sad and True, but sometimes that’s a tall order to fill.

The other side of that feeling is that it’s a new one for me. It’s only since I switched over to this new page and got my own domain name and all that. For some reason, I’ve felt much more self-conscious about the things that I write, which I never felt before. Part of the self-consciousness has to do with a certain blog stalker, too. If you’ve never experienced someone crapping all over your online life before, let me just tell you that it really sucks, and that you should count yourself lucky. It has affected my writing in ways I can’t even begin to describe, which is completely abhorrent and unacceptable to me. AND it really pisses me off.

Ironically–and, as if to add insult to injury–as soon as I finished writing that last paragraph, one of my friends actually called to ask me if he could use my picture in a fake profile, so that he could write inflammatory things online.

“No, absolutely not. My stalker did that.”

“Oh, dude, you’re right. . .I’m sorry. I totally forgot; that’s verboten.”

“Yeah, man, you’re on your own on that. Use a picture of Darth Vader or something; anything. Online identities are not to be messed with.”

“Well, that’s the whole point of a fake profile, is for it to look like a real person. . .”

Well, that may be the point of a fake profile, but it’s not what I stand for, and it’s not the point of How To Be a Decent Human Being.

The point of being a decent human being is this; if you have something to say, don’t hide behind anonymity, or pretend to be another person, just be honest. You don’t need to blast the other person out of the water. Honest doesn’t mean ‘nasty’, or ‘insulting’, or ‘character-defaming’, it doesn’t mean ‘ad hominem‘, and it doesn’t mean ‘brutal’, it just means. . .well, here’s a definition that I like:

Honesty is the human quality of communicating and acting truthful and with fairness, as best one is able. It is related to truth as a value. This includes listening, reasoning and any action in the human repertoire — as well as speaking.

That’s a good–dare I say ‘honest’?–definition of honesty.

And a word of warning; not only do you have to be honest about what you say, but also about your motivations for saying things, because if you aren’t honest about that, you may get some unforeseen repercussions, or consequences, for your statements. This is why you need to be careful.

We all leave impressions everywhere we go, and I try very hard to make my impressions positive ones. Not all of them are–I admit that–but I think that the vast majority of them are.

And now, may I take this opportunity to urge you to use your powers for Good in this world. Life is hard enough, without having to deal with any more negativity.

I have a whole bunch of things I’ve been wanting to write about, but they’re all very disparate and random, so I think I’ll have to settle for an update, at least for now.

Wednesday night I was invited to record some guitar parts and maybe other things too) by BassPlayerChris who plays in Breanna’s band. One of the other people he plays with is named Matt Vrba (yes, that’s spelled correctly; it’s pronounced VERB-uh), and Matt wrote a Christmas song, and he and the band were recording it. They needed some other textural instruments, so Chris called me. I ended up playing electric guitar, xylophone, and Casio keyboard on the song. It was a blast. First time I’d met Matt, but he’s a great guy. Can’t wait to hear how the song turns out. We recorded at Opal Studios with a guy named Kevin Hahn, and everything sounds really great. I’d recommend him without hesitation. It wouldn’t surprise me if our paths cross again.

Last night, Stephanie’s band played at the Hawthorne Theater. We played well, but it was kind of a tough gig. We opened for a well-known band from Canada, but I think we all kinda felt like we’d been jerked around, from the minute we walked in the door. The show was scheduled to start at 8:00, so we all arrived about 6:45. Well-Known Canadian Band was just starting their soundcheck. Someone came and told us that the show was scheduled to start at 9:00, but we’d been telling everybody to be there at 8:00. In addition to that, we were originally scheduled to play first, then a DJ would play for a half-hour or so, and finally Well-Known Canadian Band would play. This seemed like an odd choice of ‘flow’ for a show, so we asked if the DJ could play first. This was agreed to, but we still needed to have a soundcheck too. Fifteen minutes before the doors opened, Well-Known Canadian Band finished their soundcheck, and we were finally allowed to set up our instruments on stage. Luckily, their drummer invited DrummerDrew to use his drums, which cut down dramatically on set-up time, but we still had precious little time to test the vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, bass, and accordion. Plus, can I just take a minute to mention that the sound guy was a complete amateur? Thank you; because he was. Steph’s acoustic guitar kept feeding back during the show, and I didn’t even get to test my accordion’s microphone before the show started. These things are all pretty much unheard of in professional venues. In any decent-sized venue where there are multiple bands on the bill, each band usually gets a half hour or so to test everything, so that the sound crew knows what they’re dealing with and they can make the groups sound as good as possible.

All that aside, the venue was also very strange. It’s an all-ages place, so what they’ve done is divide the room in half; front and back. The front (by the stage) is all-ages, and the back half is the bar area. While we played, it was still early, so everyone was still in the bar area, which meant we were playing to a great big hardwood floor and a half-empty room, which felt a little bit insulting. As performers, all we have to gauge our performance is the audience. If we feel like they’re distant and unresponsive, it’s a bummer, because we either feel like they aren’t enjoying themselves, or that we’re not doing a good enough job.

So all that, combined with the showtime issues, made for a frustrating experience.

The good news about the show was that BoringFish was there. It was great to see her, even though conversation was a little difficult; shouting over a band isn’t the most conducive environment. But she’s great, and shouting at each other is infinitely better than not seeing each other at all.

The other good news about the show is that the band played well. DrummerDrew and BassistWill are really fun to play with, and they’re getting comfortable and stretching out in a great way. Last night was also the debut gig for my new guitar amp (not to mention the new amp stand that I bought while I was on my lunch break), and it sounded fantastic. So that was really nice, but the gig itself was still really frustrating, overall.

This week at work has been infinitely more stressful than usual, too. Normally there are two other people (or sometimes even three) who work in my department, but this week one of them had her grandmother die, and the other has a daughter who just had her first baby. So Wednesday, Thursday and today I was alone. It was totally crazy, and I’m totally exhausted, which is why I’m sitting here writing in my blog and doing laundry on a Friday night, despite a couple of offers to go out.

In other news, I’m going to a Music Business workshop tomorrow afternoon, to learn about contracts, distribution deals, production deals, and all that sort of stuff. There’s a guy here in town who’s an entertainment lawyer, and he’s given workshops and lectures about these issues regularly (but not often) for two or three years now. He’s a really great guy, and I’ve wanted to attend one of his workshops for quite a while. This comes at the perfect time, too, because I’ve had lots of good opportunities come my way recently, and I hope to be able to capitalize on them.

And now I’m going to get off the computer, because I’ve spent all day using one at work, and I’m starting to get sore. Plus, I bought a DVD today called “The Legend of 1900”, which my friend Leila told me I need to see. I stumbled upon a used copy at Everyday Music, so I decided to go ahead and buy it. I think I’m going to go watch it now.

I hope all’s well with you.