the opposite of absolute

I feel like I spend a lot of my online life apologizing, and usually for exactly what I’m about to apologize for yet again – absence.  It’s interesting to go through one’s day full of things that I want to share with my friends and fans, and then find weeks passing before I’m able to actually sit down and put those thoughts to the page.  It’s stranger still to look back at my calendar and realize that I’ve gone for months now without a single public performance.

This time last year, I was racking up the shows left and right on a college tour.  What the hell happened?

Well folks, first off, I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch.  There, that’s done.

But I’d like to share some things with you all, in support of my apology, and probably as fodder for the tabloids should my music ever make me famous.  But if you’re reading my blog it’s probably because you’ve invested something of yourself – time, money, emotion, etc – in my music, and you deserve the story.  So a few things:

1) I am currently working full-time in an office job again.  With my desire to get back into the studio, I needed a stable way to pay for said studio time (as well as those pesky bills that keep showing up every month), so I spent the majority of the summer immersed in resume revision and job application.  It’s amazing how difficult it is to find a job in the current market…or maybe just for me.  I wanted something that would challenge me intellectually and pay well enough to keep me from stressing over finances, and as it turned out, that was harder to achieve than it sounded.  But thankfully, I’m set now, and can concentrate on that recording I’ve been wanting to do since…well, since I released my last album in 2006.

2) I am actually making concrete plans to record, finally! In spite of this being the major goal for these past few years, it’s taken a long time to be happy with the songs I wanted to put out next, and the method for doing so.  I’ve got a meeting this weekend to discuss recording with some guys I like and trust, and if all goes well, I’ll be in the studio in a few weeks.  I’m really excited about the new music – some of it is stuff you’ve all heard on the road and on the DIY Rockstar EP I’ve been selling at shows, but some of it is brand new and really embodies the changes that have been going on in my life.  As always, the majority of my music is autobiographical, but I have a feeling that in the current state of disarray we’re all enduring with the economy and the election and the crappy job market, these new songs will hit home for some of you as well.  I’ll be keeping you posted on the recording plans.

3) I am not perfect. Yeah, I know that’s a pretty silly thing to say, but it leads to something I haven’t put out there before and, maybe, shouldn’t be putting out there even now – but I’m going to do it anyway.  I suffer from depression, not the occasional doldrums or the frustration with various episodes in my life but the real kind with a DSM-IV diagnosis and a constant impact on my life and my ability to function like a normal adult.  It’s pretty obvious in some of my music, and many of you may be reading this and thinking, “Duh – who didn’t know that?”  But if you weren’t already aware of it, there you go.  It’s not an excuse, and yet it is my only excuse for such long absences as the one I’m coming out of now.  There are simply days – and unfortunately, also weeks and months – where I have nothing to share with the world and can barely motivate myself to take my dog outside.

But there are also days – and lots of them – where I am excited and inspired and loving the life that is mine.  So I don’t intend to spew all the downward spirals that possess me out into this space – I’m a little self-absorbed but that’s the bonus of being a singer/songwriter and I don’t intend to overextend my freedom in that arena.  Just know that these extended absences are not a sign of my departure from my music, and I always come back.

That’s the same thing I tell my puggle when I come home from work.  “I always come back.”  She’s starting to believe me now. 

who turned on the fall?

Fall (or autumn, for you hardcore season junkies) is my favorite season. I’ve always loved it, even when I was living in California and fall was more of a calendar concept than an actual shift in your daily weather experience. Growing up in Wisconsin I got to see some of the most beautiful landscapes when the millions of trees would start exploding into red and orange and yellow and even a red so deep I’d call it purple, and of course we had the annual tradition of raking every leaf in our yard into a giant pile under the crabapple tree and then jumping out of the branches into the slippery mess. At least, we did until I jumped out one year and my pants stayed attached to the tree, causing a pretty impressive tearing sound and a bit of an awkward landing.

So it’s not like I was dreading fall or anything.

But on August 31, the greenery around our new neighborhood was vivid and warm, and it felt like summer would never end. Then I took Evey out for a walk the next morning, and it was like someone just hit a switch at midnight on September 1 and turned on the fall. Half the trees on our street were noticeably bare, brown and red and yellow leaves were filling up the gutters, and the temperature had dropped about 20 degrees – and it’s stayed that way ever since.

All I can think is “Crap, I didn’t spend NEARLY enough time outside during this amazingly gorgeous summer, and now it’s too late!!” My legs and belly are still winter pasty white and this past Saturday was the first time I broke out the bikini all year. I’m so lame.

Anyway.

I’ve been stockpiling things to blog about for weeks, and now I’ve got so many that I’m going to have to divvy them up over the next few days. To kick it off, I’d like to introduce you all to the music I’ve been obsessing over for the past month. It’s not that Katy Perry song “I Kissed A Girl,” though when I finally switched off NPR long enough to realize that everyone wasn’t talking about a revival of Jill Sobule’s quirky tune by the same name, I kinda started to dig it.

No, no, this isn’t on the radio or in the clubs. This is way, way better.

Picture Neil Patrick Harris – yes, Doogie Howser, MD, all grown up – starring in a musical about an aspiring supervillain with a serious crush on the redhead at the laundromat. Then add Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, my all-time favorite show), and top it off with a trio of guys in cowboy hats who serve as a singing telegram for a horse.

I know. It’s nuts. I’m in love with it.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

If you’re not actively singing about your freeze ray by the end of the day, you and I will probably never be able to hang out. I’m sorry.

this person

I recently started reading a book called No one belongs here more than you. It’s a collection of essays and short stories by Miranda July, whom I had never heard of before but who I’m starting to think might be my alter ego – the version of me that chose grad school instead of music, writing instead of performing. Not every story is dead on what I would have chosen to write about or say in those situations, of course, but there’s this underlying pathos, this feeling that she is constantly trying to see the world from an optimistic and witty point of view but everything she has ever experienced in her life is telling her that it’s not possible to go on that way.

It wasn’t until I read the brief essay “This Person” that I grasped this about our connection, and was finally able to voice it accurately. It is just under 4 pages long, and I am sincerely tempted to spend the next half hour typing the whole thing in so that you can all read it and appreciate exactly why I’ve fallen in love with this author, much like my obsession with Jeanette Winterson that began in college and continues to this day.

For now, though, a few of the lines that caught me the most:

“…a long, laughing, rambling phone message in which every person this person has ever known is talking on a speakerphone and they are all saying, You have passed the test, it was all just a test, we were only kidding, real life is so much better than that.”

“…but it would be so like this person to become depressed on the happiest day ever, and so this person bucks up and joins the crowd.”

I know these lines on their own don’t have the desired effect, so I highly recommend picking up the book – at least in a library – and reading the whole essay. Buy it, though, if you can, because there’s more. I found these in the first story:

“Are you angry? Punch a pillow. Was it satisfying? Not hardly. These days people are too angry for punching. What you might try is stabbing. Take an old pillow and lay it on the front lawn. Stab it with a big pointy knife. Again and again and again. Stab hard enough for the point of the knife to go into the ground. Stab until the pillow is gone and you are just stabbing the earth again and again, as if you want to kill it for continuing to spin, as if you are getting revenge for having to live on this planet day after day, alone.”

“Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is worth the trouble? Look at the sky; that is for you. Look at each person’s face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing.”

P.S. Next time you’re having a shit day – the kind when you just can’t imagine yourself feeling anything but sad or angry or, worse, empty, for the rest of your life – buy a box of berry-flavored Mike & Ike’s and eat a few handfuls of them. Even if you don’t like Mike & Ike’s. Or go get a blue slushie.

Because it is impossible not to smile, even if only for a millisecond, when you realize that your cheeks are stained with mascara and your eyes are unrecognizably puffy, but your tongue is the bright festive blue it used to be when you were little and carnivals and lollipops were the highlight of your week. Back when you didn’t even wear mascara or know that crying made your eyelids and cheeks puffy and cemented your contacts to your irises. Back when it was easier.

the perils of being, well, me

August is supposed to be the month when I make up for so much lost time in June and July. The “lost time” was mostly lost to procrastination, frequently in the form of my Xbox 360 (I can’t help it that Guitar Hero released an Aerosmith version of the game, I was helpless in the light of the computer-generated Steven Tyler).

So, I entered this week with optimism, a daily schedule, and every intention of doing certain things every single day (walk Evey, work out, spend 6-8 hours working, etc). I also planned to finish unpacking, get the cable and internet installed, and make this place feel like home.

It is now Saturday night, and we have internet. And I walked Evey today. That’s as far as I’ve gotten.

Aside from the various distractions that often come with anyone’s day, here are a few of the random issues that have either sidetracked or completely dislodged me from attaining my goals:

• Wednesday night, I stayed up all night to build the new closet organizer, along with some smaller furniture I’d picked up that day. After the hammering and drilling was finished, I took the empty boxes and other trash out to the dumpster – or, tried to. Our apartment complex has two dumpsters, one on either side of the U-shaped building. Unable to find a route to the closer one, I hauled the heavy load of trash all the way through the back alleyways inside the building to the farther one, in a narrow fenced-in alley against the outside of the building, and heaved the trash in. I then discovered that the door I’d come out of had shut behind me, and has no doorknob or other method of opening it from the outside. Crap. So I headed for the gate just past the dumpster, which leads out onto the sidewalk and, thus, safely to the front gate. Except you can’t open this gate from the inside (or the outside – no key works in there). After 5 minutes of futility trying to open both the gate and the door, I chucked my shoes and keys over the 6-foot high fence and climbed it, barefoot, dropping into the neighbors’ lawn. At 4am. Thankfully no one called the cops on me.
• On Friday, ComCast guy showed up 10 minutes earlier than the 3-hour window of time I was supposed to allow. Thinking we’d get all set up in a hurry and I could go rollerblading, I let him in and showed him what he needed inside the apartment. However, to get to the cable box for the building, the landlady had to guide us – out the front gate, past 5 other buildings down the block, around the corner, to the PotBelly’s behind our building where there is an alley for their dumpsters and deliveries. This is not the route we get, though, as the actual path to the back of our building involves squeezing between the alley’s fencing and a huge overgrown strip of shrubbery that reaches at least 10 feet into the air and almost entirely obscures what may, at one time, have been a foot-wide path about 50 feet long. ComCast guy looked at me like I was insane, but dubiously disappeared into the jungle behind PotBelly’s, coming back 5 minutes later to tell me that he cannot reach the boxes and we have to go get his ladder. Back around the block to my building, he unhooked the ladder from his truck, then back around the block to the impossible path. Where I then found myself hunched over, shoving leaves and sharp branches and, very possibly, poison ivy out of the way with my bare arms and my face as I helped him shove the ladder down the “path.” We finally emerged in a small clearing at the back of my building, where, sure enough, two large cable boxes are attached about 15 feet up on the brick wall. He did his thing, we braved the jungle once more, and voila! Two hours late, we have internet. (Yes, it was worth it – no, we’re never changing our service, because I’m not going back there.)
• But best of all (using the most sarcastic form of “best” I can possibly invoke) was last night at the Gaelic Storm concert. I love a lot of Gaelic Storm’s music and have seen them once before; you’ve actually seen the two lead singers – Pat Murphy and Stephen Twigger were part of the steerage band in Titanic. You know, this scene. Anyway, I was out with a group of friends watching them perform at a venue on the south side, having a great time, singing along to “Johnny Tar” and drinking a Smithwicks or two. A little less than halfway through the show, some sort of goofing around ensued in my row, and I twisted my body in laughter. This shouldn’t be anything notable – except that my cell phone was in my lap. About 10 seconds later, it hit me that my phone was no longer in its precarious place, and I looked down…and saw my BlackBerry Pearl, leather case and all, ass-end poking up out of my beer. It was completely soaked. It is now fried.

So…if you’ve been trying to call me, don’t bother ’til next week when I will get yet another replacement phone from dear Verizon. For now, I’m just thanking whatever god is out there for giving me internet just before my phone left me. Sad but true, I don’t think I could handle being completely out of touch with the world unless I planned for it – I’d probably have a nervous breakdown.

back from the long silence

It took much, much longer than anticipated, but we are finally living in our new apartment in Hyde Park!  The packing took over a week longer than I’d planned because the A/C in our old place was out and we were waking up at 7:30am to 85 degree heat on a daily basis.  Not conducive to packing boxes, or cleaning, or doing anything really.

But I’m sitting at the Borders near the new place, Evey is snuggled safely in bed after sleeping a straight 12 hours (that dog is so lazy, I am constantly amazed), and I am trying to relaunch my daily routine.  Be productive!  Yes!

This from the girl who just rolled out of bed at 11:30am.

I have an excuse, though.  I was up all night installing a closet organizer I bought at Target.  I’m normally more of an IKEA girl, but a trip to IKEA is a full day and I only had a few hours yesterday, so I picked up a replacement for the crappy wire thing that collapsed on Sunday (spilling all my dresses, dress shirts, tank tops, and the boy’s button-downs and sweaters crashing into crumpled piles on the floor).  And then spent 4 hours last night / this morning building it.

Do you know how hard it is to drill holes in a wall and pound plastic screw-holders into the holes <em>quietly</em>?  I do not advise building furniture in an apartment at 3am.

But it’s done.

I’ll be updating more regularly again now, catching up on emails, and booking more shows again.  Stay tuned!

things that make you go “uh…”

* The other day I was driving on the freeway, and a woman in a mini-van cut me off rather rudely. I honked but saw no response whatsoever, so I switched to the next lane over and accelerated back to my original speed. As I pulled alongside of her, I realized why she hadn’t noticed me or my bright blue KIA – she had one finger completely buried up her left nostril and was, apparently, totally immersed in trying to latch onto her brain and pull it out her nose. Gross.

* I committed homicide the other day. Well, okay, seagull-icide. It was a freak accident, and the absolute freakishness of it was all that kept me from feeling gut-wrenching guilt all day. You know how seagulls (and most other city birds) sit on the road until a car is almost on them, then take off in a blinding blur of feathers but somehow always manage to fly clear of the vehicle? Well, this one dropped the snack he’d picked up on the street, and went back down to get it just as his friends cleared my hood. One other rolled up and over the car but made it; unfortunately, the first guy was done for. PETA, come lock me up.

* I love NPR. I frickin’ love it. I’m a total geek, I know, and I don’t care. I love Fresh Air, Talk of the Nation, This American Life, the BBC News Hour, Day to Day, the works. However, I (like many others) do not love pledge week. Or, in the case of Chicago Public Radio, pledge purgatory. Two straight weeks of unfettered begging and pleading by everyone who works at the station for those of us who listen to give, give, give some more, give this amount and you’ll get an unbreakable umbrella, give even more and you’ll get to watch the 4th of July fireworks on the roof of a downtown skyscraper. Yes, I donated. And then I was still forced to listen to the day-in, day-out monotony of the pledge drive. Couldn’t they have a password-protected station that you could listen to, uninterrupted, after you’d donated? Or at least use the regular announcers to talk during pledge week, because whoever decided that the people behind the scenes – the ones who aren’t ever the voice on the radio, who have no skill whatsoever in verbal communication, and who get nervous when placed in front of a microphone – should suddenly become the voice on the radio – that person deserves to be drug out into the street and forced to listen to pledge week.

* Speaking of NPR, one of the few actual bits of news I managed to catch was the recent decision by the Supreme Court to lift a 30+ year ban on gun ownership in Washington, DC. The implications of this decision are potentially massive, or potentially minimal, but I believe one man said it best when asked about the types of guns that will now be allowed in DC homes and glove compartments. If you’re talking about machine guns, he said, it’s pretty unlikely that any city or state government will allow your average citizen to carry them around. “But if you’re talking about semi-automatics, I mean, everybody’s got a few.” Um…yikes.

* I used to love trains. I now abhor them. Last week, I swear the train god was out to get me. Every single day – seriously, every single day – I was forced to sit at one railroad crossing or another, watching a seemingly endless string of freight cars chug by at quite possibly the slowest rate that anything can go without leaving the “in motion” category altogether. Mostly, this happened at 2am when I was so tired that I barely stayed awake for the caboose.

* And, while not really a thing that makes you go “uh…” or anything, I have an announcement to make:

I finally finished reading Harry Potter.

That’s right, the whole 7-book series, in hard-cover, all the way from start to finish. It took me a few months (mainly because I only read the books during Saturday morning breakfast at IHOP or on rare restful Sunday afternoons), but I’m done. And now I really want to talk to someone about the whole thing, Snape and Voldemort and Dumbledore and why on earth J.K. Rowling decided to make the epilogue occur a full nineteen years after the story ended. Alas, I don’t want to ruin it for anyone who hasn’t yet gone the distance and is waiting for the last few movies to come out. So email me. Or comment. Or something.

the finger of God

Well, for those of you who came out on Saturday to Summerfest – thank you.  And I’m sorry.

If you missed it, let’s just say the first 15 minutes of the set were fabulous.  My band for the day, a duo I like to call The Gypsy Bloodsmen, were dead on, the crowd was all energy and smiles, and for once I had a sound guy who actually paid attention during sound check.  It was great.

And then the blue sky turned black, rain started pouring down in waves, and lightning surrounded us.  The show was cut.  Almost an hour later, at 4:15 (when my set was supposed to have been wrapping up), the clouds parted and all was blue and sunny again.

Therefore I have decided that God did not want me to play my kickass new song at Summerfest.  I don’t know why, it’s awesome and there were even going to be backup singers.  But there it is.

Luckily, the next day’s Best of Chick Singer Night show went well, and I’ve got a show coming up at Turner Hall in Milwaukee that everyone who missed Summerfest (or had to run for cover) can attend instead.  The Bloodsmen are going to play again, and Missy Higgins is headlining, so how can you say no?

(Bonus points to anyone who can identify the reference to “Gypsy Bloodsmen”)

old notebooks

I’ve decided to debut a new song, possibly two, at my Summerfest show in 10 days. This would be fabulous if I had a new song, or two, completed. However, what I do have is a list of 8 songs that are in the works, and about 30 notebooks of all sizes where I’ve scratched out lyrics and ideas amid the to-do lists, journal entries, and promotion plans over the past few years.

Digging through my notebooks is oddly, oddly entertaining. Or maybe it just is for me. But if I’m ever famous, these things will be worth a mint to whoever wants to put me in the loony bin.

A few of the more random things I came across in my search for lyrics:

* a poem I wrote during college French
* quotes and ideas for my next tattoo (at least twice in every notebook)
* a list of everything I ever wanted to do or learn, when I was 21, regardless of how obscure
* artwork (i.e. pencil scribbles) by a then-3-year-old girl from an after school program where I used to work
* ideas for articles I intended to write during my brief foray into journalism

And my favorite, if only because it is so completely ridiculous and was such a waste of time and paper:
* every single name and phone number in my cell phone circa summer 2006, handwritten, in alphabetical order

people are stupid

A few things that have amused me over the past week, even as they have annoyed me:

** I received a letter on Thursday from the government. The envelope was stamped with giant red letters saying “ECONOMIC STIMULUS CHECK.” Eagerly opening it up, I discovered…a letter telling me that my economic stimulus check should arrive any day now. I’m really glad that our government is so fiscally responsible – I mean, printing and postage for 300 million or so letters, plus another set of 300 million or so checks, probably didn’t cost much, right? And I was so comforted to know that my check would arrive between 2 days and 6 weeks following that letter.

** At Bally’s over the weekend, I was fully immersed in my workout, doing sit-ups between sets and alternating with a medicine ball (the really heavy basketball thingy) and a stability ball (the great big bouncy thingy). This woman walked over to my corner of the mat, and without looking at me, took both balls. I stopped what I was doing, a little perplexed by her obvious ignorance of gym etiquette, and caught her eye as she walked away. She snarled, “You got something to say to me?”

Annoyed but trying to be polite, I responded with, “Most people ask before taking equipment away from someone at the gym.” I expected her to do one of 2 things: a) apologize and ask if I was still using the balls; or b) roll her eyes and walk away with one or the other. What I did not expect was c) a slit-eyed scan up and down my sweaty body, followed by, “I’m pregnant, what’s your excuse?”

For the record, I’m in pretty good shape. I rather like my body. So this stranger with whom I had no previous interaction, good or bad, calling me fat right there in the gym was just incomprehensible to me. Thinking it would be a bad idea to get into a fist fight with a pregnant lady, I tuned her out and went back to my sit-ups, though I caught something about how disgusting it for a woman to be as fat as me and the shame of being a size 8 (I’m actually a 6, but I don’t see anything wrong with being an 8, or a 10, or a 24 – if you’re happy with your body and you’re healthy, who the hell else should care?). Next time I see her, though, I may suggest she put the baby up for adoption. With a mom like that, the poor kid’s going to have self-esteem issues straight out of the womb…

** And one thing that isn’t stupid but is really kinda cute – I was at Barnes & Noble today, reading through a few potential purchases in one of the big comfy chairs, when an announcement came over the intercom. But it wasn’t an employee, exactly; it was a robot. Or, at least, an employee pretending to be a robot. And the robot was telling us all about the “Buy 2, get the third free!” DVD sale going on today.

I don’t normally pay attention to those announcements, but this one was just so random that the two guys sitting across the table from me both looked up, bewildered, and we all kind of looked at each other and giggled. Robots are amusing.

I cannot wait for Wall-E.

the week from hell

This has been, in fact, the week from hell. Not necessarily for me personally – I can think of other weeks where my direct daily life was far more difficult and frustrating. All things considered, my daily life has been pretty simple this week, actually. I didn’t sleep a whole lot, pulling 2.5 all-nighters in order to allow myself some down time this weekend, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

No, the week from hell is more like the nagging feeling that an interdimensional portal from hell has opened and is attacking my friends and family at random. It started last weekend, when Adam’s grandma apparently went into the hospital suffering from what seemed like a heart attack but is currently still unclear – she was in the ICU for days. We got the call Monday afternoon, minutes before we got another call from a close friend whose mom had died over the night. Her daughter found her alone at home, peacefully in her easy chair.

Suck, suck, suck.

Then the daily onslaught took force. Another friend whose 2 year old daughter was diagnosed with leukemia, another whose appendix ruptured and sent her to the ICU (5 doors down from Adam’s grandma), another whose job was unexpectedly terminated with only 1 day of notice. By last night at the post-funeral reception, we were both desperate for the weekend to start so the week from hell would be over.

Today, we went to see the new Indiana Jones (good god…suckage) and were forced to leave shortly before the end when the onslaught of phone calls signaled bad news. Sure enough…another member of the family, set to get married in less than 2 months, was calling to let us know that her fiance’s dad had drowned in the ocean while swimming with his young daughter.

Fuck.

I’m afraid to answer the phone. In fact, I turned it off.

*sigh*

On an up note, Evey’s had a fun week. Last weekend I took her to her first dog park – a fenced-in corner of a big park where you can turn your dog loose and let it frolic. She had a ball, and she made her first boyfriend: Rocky. He’s another puggle, about 50% bigger than her, and (thankfully) fixed. He fell in love at first sight and his owners and I had to separate the enamoured couple. I held her for a while, and the poor boy just sat at my feet patiently waiting for his new girl to be set back down. I told Rocky’s owners that I’d like him to call her once or twice, you know, at least take her out on a date before they start getting physical.

I took her to the dog beach on Lake Michigan later in the week, finally getting together with Rory Miller (my fellow Chicagoan in the FameCast Finals) and her pup Lucy. I’ve never seen Evey so happy – a giant beach full of other dogs and tons of sand and all the freedom to run around and play in the world. I was worried that she wouldn’t come back to me at first, that she’d run off and disappear, but she was just like a little kid at their first day of Kindergarten. She’d run and play with other dogs for a while, but come back to me every 5 minutes or so with a big dopey puppy grin on her face, checking back in with mama and showing off her new friends.

God I love that dog.