creative.mother.thinking

I’ve been struggling with writing songs a lot lately. Not like writing songs and struggling with the how or when of writing but more like struggling whether I should write them at all. Does the world need more songs? And bad ones at that, because it takes a certain level of skill and experience which I can’t expect to have yet. Of course you could ask, why do you do all this thinking? Just sit down and do it, for God’s sake!

I’ll answer this question later, but today I’ll say this. I have come to the not unsurprising conclusion that the world really needs more bad songs. Just imagine, if everyone wrote them. You could swap songs with your friends. You’d have meetings where everybody could sing their songs to each other. This would certainly be fun. And I’m sure that the songs wouldn’t stay bad.

I know a lot of jazz musicians. Not very good jazz musicians. More like myself, the ones that say that they’re “semi-professional” (shudder). All of them keep playing the same songs over and over again. The millionth rendition of “My funny valentine”. A song that I never liked very much. And Chet Baker did it better. I know. He recorded it. But a lot of those somewhat mediocre jazz musicians are also writing their own songs.

And always those songs are more interesting to me than the same old same old jazz standards. They are authentic, they are fresh. What would you be more interested in? A rendition of an old song that you could play along to in your sleep? Or something original by a friend?

But apart from the end-product which might be interesting or not there is something to be said for people being creative. Like all that blog-writing going on. Creative people are happy people. Creativity feeds the soul. There is something ultimately fulfilling in being creative, even if it exhausts you.

So in addition to the myriad of projects that I have going on, I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. That’s National Novel Writing month. Every year in November the insane and crazy sign up to write 50,000 words of a novel in one month.

When I contemplated doing it, my husband made me promise that I would not. Well, not promise, but we had one of those talks, where he talks and talks in his very sincere voice and I nod a lot, and at the end I said, “Okay, you’re right. I won’t do it.” And he said, “It’s your decision. You have to decide.” And I said, “No, you’re right, I won’t be doing it.”

Well, I changed my mind. So, my challenge is not only to write 50,000 words on a novel in November, but to do it in a way that it doesn’t interfere with the rest of my life and in a way that my husband won’t notice too much. Wait and see.

Technorati Tags: creativity, NaNoWriMo, song writing

Remember my announcement? I’ll be hosting a private house-concert, where I’ll sing and play for invited guests. Beverages will be served:

Technocrati Tags: house-concert, Tori Amos, practice

So I finally went to the performance-group‘s rehearsal. Last Tuesday. I had been indecisive for the whole 15 days. Should I go, or not? But since my mother was visiting us and could babysit, I called and went.

This time it was much easier to prepare. I already had a babysitter, my toenails were painted, I didn’t care about my outfit, or about the rehearsal at all, because I already knew that I’d probably not be part of this group anyway. But, apart from being real curious about the group, I wanted to give it a chance, and – maybe my biggest reason – I wanted to know how I’d fare in such surroundings. Improvised dancing and singing.

Not to leave you hanging – I was rather pleased with myself. I went there, even on time. When I left the train I set off in the wrong direction, but the performer who had called me spotted me and gave me a lift. The other interested singer was there. I already know her and like her a lot. So I felt quite comfortable. (Here, I might add that I spent the whole afternoon before in stage fright, eating and reading blogs while avoiding to warm me up.)

I put on my quite-stylish-jazz-pants that are probably six years old, and my really cool legwarmers. Nobody else wore legwarmers of course, but at least I had the right shoes – none. There’s a teacher to this group, one of the reasons why it’s not exactly cheap. He started off doing body-percussion-exercises. Despite his nervousness about the two not-used-to-dancing-singers, we had no problems with that. He didn’t know that we both had been taken drumming lessons years ago. Then we had some exercises like walking through the room all at once, connecting with the others, partner exercises where you react, mirror or contrast the other person’s movements, and then the finale, free improvisation with dancing, singing, and sounds all mixed together.

At first I was a little shy with the moving. The dancers are quite good. But then I remembered the old days of jazz dance class. I just went with the flow, and it was big fun. So I’m really happy, because I don’t have issues with this performing, moving and singing at the same time anymore! It’s just gone!

The reason for this is that I don’t mind anymore. I shut my brain down. I stop thinking, “Oh, how I look! Oh, how stiff I am! Look at her, how elegant and fluent her motions! I could never do that!”. I just go with the flow, and sometimes I stumble because I once was strong enough to do a move like that, but I’m not anymore. And I don’t strive to become a dancer anyway.

So I still have to tell them that I won’t be coming back. I feel bad about it. They are nice girls, but I can’t be spending so much time and energy on a project like that. It’s not my sole project. Not by far. What I want to do with this experience is: a) incorporate more movement into my singing warm-up, b) maybe take a modern dance class once in a while, and c) maybe pick up strength training again. Or not.

I wanted to write about a million things today: tantrums, mother’s guilt, not dieting, whatever, but – I got a call from a dancer-singer-actress, and so I’ll be “auditioning” tomorrow in the evening.

She’s a member of a performance-group. They are dancers who improvise and sing. She told me about it last year, when we met at a singers workshop on improvisation. Then I thought “A group? Me in a group, are you crazy? Me in a group with dancers?” I only wanted to do my own stuff then.

I still want to make my own music, but during the last year I found myself thinking of performing again. I stopped performing in 1999 or 2000. Not entirely, mind you, we did a couple of birthday parties and such when requested. But we didn’t enjoy it. So we (that’s my husband and me) put our energy into the CDs instead. And later also into the child.

And that seemed to be right, until I found myself over-eager to sing to people at parties or to do jam sessions. And since I’ve decided to work on the things that are difficult for me, I even thought about taking acting classes. Because, I have a little problem with performing:

I can sing in front of people – no problem.
I can talk to a large audience – no problem.
I can even dance in front of people – no problem.
But I can’t do two of these things together. Let alone all three.

When I’m singing in front of a band, there’s no problem with the singing, but I can’t talk to the audience. I’ll sing like crazy, then smile and say a hushed and very soft “thank you”, and then – smile. I’m even able to make a mess of the jazz musician’s traditional “The last song was blablabla, and the next will be blablabla.”
You have to understand, the problem is not the talking. I’ve presented a paper in front of hundreds of people at a conference. With a microphone. Audible, understandable, and well received (until somebody dissed me out of the conference publication, that is). But I can’t talk, when I’m the singer.

The same goes for singing and moving. I have been to a lot of Rhiannon‘s workshop and there you’re always doing things like sing and move at the same time. Improvising. In singing, the improvisation comes quite natural for me. Moving’s a little harder, but possible. But an aquaintance once joked that the minute I was singing, I moved like my feet were nailed to the floor.

Hm. I’ve been working on it. In our late Brazilian Band I was trying to sing, play percussion, and dance samba at the same time. I actually can do it, but the percussion might be a little off time. And somehow it never made the same impression a couple of half-naked Brazilian dancers would have made.

Last summer I visited a workshop for singers on performance. I thought, there I’d learn how to present myself on stage. The workshop was marvellous. I feel much more confident now, because: a) Now I know that I’m not a beginner anymore. (Takes a while for some of us, being a singing teacher could have been a clue.) b) I’m not supposed to move around on stage like a bumblebee, because obviously my respiration type is solar.

This is one of those esoteric theories that I thought to be completely bonkers, but sadly it works. I’m having a couple of singing students, I found almost impossible to teach until I found out that they are breathing different than me. Anyway, a solar type is supposed to do only one thing at a time, and is comfortable only in rest. So I’m doing fine on stage when I’m only standing there and singing. I’m even finding that some artists get away with doing no announcements or only a few. I’m fine with that.

But, finally having the official “you don’t have to move on stage or do anything other than sing”-badge, left me with the freedom to explore this moving-and-singing-at-the-same-time thing too. And so I’m off to go to a rehearsal for an improvisation group of dancers.

So, what’s the most important thing to do for tomorrow?
Right, paint my toenails. And get a babysitter of course. And give myself a singing lesson, and improvise a little. And get hysterical. And find out, where I have to go. But first the nail polish.

We have bought new recording equipment. This time it’s computer-based. So far I’ve spent about three or four weeks getting the computer to behave, and linked up to the other computer and the internet. I then spent two weeks, putting all the information my husband needs into this computer, and teaching my husband how to use it (and get internet access).

Okay, so far. (Five weeks gone by, but who cares.) On the weekend I spent two days trying to learn how to use the recording software. And you know what I’ll be doing this week? Right: continue learning the software. My husband is now able to record stuff, but not to hear it afterwards. Hm.

I try to lift my mood by picturing how marvelously easy it will be to record sketches of songs on my computer. Any time I want to (if my husband doesn’t need the dongle, that is). But may be I’d rather have a little tape recorder with only three buttons.

…

Nah. But I’d like to have my six weeks back.