Just like yesterday

Wow it has been over a year since I updated this.... so much has happened, people who need to know already know. I kept a blog on my website, but that site is too closely associated to my professional life, and some of my rantings were not appropriate for all eyes. Now I mostly keep a private journal, because there are things I desperately want to remember, but don't want others to know are running through my mind.

Someone who I would prefer never to speak to again, a person I would prefer to forget exists or ever entered my life, opened up the avenue for conversation via Facebook. The opportunity is tempting, especially considering the mind numbing boredom in the office, I have nothing to do and already finished reading Love in the time of Cholera this week during my hours sitting at the front desk. But I absolutely must resist. However much I would like to forget, I must never forget everything that happened, because once a child burns their hand on a hot stove, they remember not to touch it next time. This is the first week in over a year that I have had peace: normalcy, contentment, rest (within daily routine), days going by without crisis. He just had to stir up the damn pot. He only wants drama and to be his usual, manipulative self, and I am a different woman than I was the last time we spoke, and I will not play ball.

on mean people

There are mean people in this world. I am naive and have not wrapped my brain around this concept yet. Why they are mean is beyond me. Maybe insecurity, ignorance, who knows? Not to say that I am perfect, but I am still not over that rear view mirror thing, and I was cussed out on the phone tonight for trying to get money I was promised for a gig.

I have been accepted to Eastman School of Music to do a masters in jazz arranging and composition. They have offered me a 50% scholarship, plus a living stipend in return for working as a jazz band assistant as well as an office assistant to Bill Dobbins. I can swing that, but is it what I really want?

the twenty-somethings of cincinnati setting a new standard of excellence/ lament over my rearview mirror

So last night I was driving down a street in Mt. Adams at about 2:30 in the morning. I had just gotten off of a gig with Son Del Caribe in Newport, and Brian lives in Mt. Adams which is much closer to Newport than where I live, and we had to go do our church gig the next morning, so I was going to go crash at his place for a few hours before I had to get up. So all the bars in Mt. Adams had let out, and that place turns into a big, testosterone-filled frat party on the weekends, but was unusually busy last weekend, there were hoards of hundreds of people filling the narrow streets, walking in front of cars, stumbling, and generally being obnoxious. A mini mardi gras. I was stuck behind a car whose driver had decided to get out and have a conversation with a pedestrian, and a big, meaty guy in a white button-up shirt walked by my car and casually took a swing at my right rear view mirror with his arm, and knocked it clear off my car. I repeat, he just walked by and KNOCKED MY REARVIEW MIRROR OFF MY CAR WITH HIS RIGHT HAND. ~thwack~ Just for fun. Like, walking down the street..... ~whistling~.... ~THWACK~ Just because he could. I was in my car, my car was running, I was minding my own business. Maybe this is naive of me, but I am completely baffled. Who does that? Do thoughts like this really go through people's head? Do people really have little enough on their mind for the thought to cross their brain "wow, I am going to walk up to that girl's little red car and knock her mirror off". Never, ever, ever, in the 21 years of my life, have I ever had the slightest inkling of a desire to damage anyone else's property. Friends, enemies or strangers. It's kind of an incomprehensible thing to me.

I should also mention that there were three police officers standing on the sidewalk not five feet away from my car when this happened, who did nothing. They didn't try to chase down the guy in the crowd or stop him. I got out of my car and looked at them, and they looked at me like "what? what are you looking at?" Cincinnati's finest setting a new standard of excellence, as well.
So a message to the jerk who knocked my rear view mirror off my car with his steroid-filled arm just for kicks: I hope you feel really big and feel like a better human being for having done that to my car, because it is going to be an expensive repair. Actually, I just hope you broke your hand or arm, or both.

No longer a dumb blonde.

So this year I have been taking a really hard class on live sound reinforcement and digital editing. I am a trombonist, so I knew absolutely ZERO about this subject, and the course is even supposed to just be a review, nicknamed "sound self-defense for 'fucking idiot' jazz musicians." to learn very basic things like what a mixing console is, and how to turn it on, and how to tell a sound guy you have feedback in your monitor in such a way that he doesn't just look at you funny and walk off to the beer tent during your show.

But I've enjoyed the class a lot. I also am a computer idiot, which puts me at a further disadvantage in the course, and I do have to spend a lot of time being like "wait wait wait.... how does that plug into the computer again?" But I have certainly held my own in the class, and learned a lot, and I do enjoy it once things click. I also sort of enjoy hanging out when Bill (the teacher) is doing work and just shadowing him.

So further study on the subject has often been crossing my mind. We also touch a little bit on midi and electronic music, and I wonder if I would enjoy crossing over into this field post-graduation. If anything, at least now I could hunt down some reasonably priced hardware and software, an external hard drive, and be able to do recordings of myself and others of reasonably good quality. Or operate a board at a club in a pinch.

Next week I will be doing a live multitrack recording of Legend Vega into DP, as well as running the sound system, ALL while playing keyboard onstage. Overdubbing background vocals later the following weekend. Wish me luck. I am a dumb blonde no longer.

The Roots

After everything I still feel very uprooted. In the past two months I have been through a breakup, went to a place where people speak a different language, started dating again, was called back for and auditioned at a grad school, registered for more classes than I can handle. Renewed contact with an old old friend with whom I may live with someday. It's too much. It leaves me unable to focus. I still haven't caught up with myself.

I'm going to Chicago for fun this coming weekend.

I had an orchestration assignment where I had to listen to Schoenberg op. 10 and do my best abstract art with pencil and paper. So despite my previous rant, it was a significant experience. My aesthetic is uprooted, as well.

I hope school is cancelled tomorrow for the snow storm.

Write on, write on.

I'm sorry but where do certain unmentioned arranging and composition gurus in the united states get off telling me that I need to take more tunes out of the jazz repertory and arrange them for five horns or big band. What about the music inside of me? Sometimes I don't feel like reworking other people's stuff. Sometimes a great jazz tune is perfect as it is and doesn't need to be messed with.

And who did Schoenberg think he was, anyway? Where did he get off all "not believing in tonality" and shit? And who does Bartok think he is, writing all these hidden palendromes into his music that NO ONE WOULD EVER HEAR ANYWAY, WHICH IS STUPID BECAUSE MUSIC IS AN AURAL ART FORM, and atonal music is stupid because it sounds like crap. No one would ever ever ever, in a million years, come home from a long day at school or work, and feel truly enriched and moved by popping in a cd by Schoenberg or Messiaen or whoever.

What did these people tell their mothers and fathers who didn't go to music school for years and years? Wouldn't a composer like to use their music to enrich the lives of their families, their lovers, their children, their community, their nation? Why would people want to write music that isn't for everyone? I am so tired of the high art/low art divide. Music can be written that everyone can enjoy for different reasons.

Maybe someday I'll understand. If anyone has a good explanation, I have an open mind.