It's Monday, the third day of my three-day epic weekend. This morning, I finished Watchmen, yesterday, I saw a theatrical adaptation of Wagner's entire Ring Cycle. What would have taken 20 hours of opera, they condensed into 6, including a 45-minute dinner break and two intermissions. Having given my reaction to Watchmen already, I'm still brewing a reaction to the Wagner, which I'll post as a review (both of the production as a whole and then the music). It's nice to have these Mondays to stop and process. Even though I'm not go-go-going during the week, I still tend to spend most of my productive energy thinking about music, the rest of the time either relaxing or eating. So I'm still trying to find the appropriate time to process. For this weekend, now is that time.
To summarize, for those of you who've missed some episodes, a month ago, I quit everything, cutting myself loose of a handful of jobs, my apartment, and the city to partially move to a house in the woods to focus on my self and my music. I'd been finding that, neck deep in rat race, it's easy to lose focus, hard to keep your eyes on the prize. You learn to be patient, but you forget what you're waiting for.
I was headed in too many directions and needed to pick one: Say No to Say Yes. Saying yes to everything is saying no to everything. Keeping all your options open is to forge no path, to stay motionless admiring the landscape of possibilities without exploring any one in particular. Even if it's just a matter of 3 or 4 options, it's still a problem. These days, after over a month of this, I have managed to prune my tree of many unnecessary, distracting options so that it grows taller and straighter. I don't think this necessarily means that you can't change your mind later: once the tree grows tall, you can branch out later. The only other time I've done anything like this was grad school, and now, 5 years later, is the perfect time to refocus. It's turning into a whole-self project: physical, intellectual, emotional, musical, spiritual. So, weekdays, I'm in Michigan; weekends I'm in Chicago. Last week was a good one, although the blog posts are just so so. I learned a lot about myself, about what I'm looking for at the bottom of the well of music, and ended up coming up with a couple pieces that are big steps forwards down a path I've been trying to hew for a while. It started with an intense conversation with a medical intuitive, who, like a psychoanalyst, shed light on dark rooms I never knew existed. It was époustouflant, mind-blowing, turned my thinking inside out and upside down, leaving me with a great deal of new information that I had to somehow weave together with what I thought I already knew. I came up with some decent ideas early in the week but nothing that I could carry to term and birth. Each week, I start things, polish things, finish things, and edit things. Every day is different, but I tend towards spontaneous creation. When it's good, the other tasks are simpler, manageable.
Friday night, I drove in in another flurry of snow. This time, the roads seemed better but the traffic seemed worse. Or maybe the drivers were just less careful. I saw 2 or 3 cars in the ditch, one I didn't even see until I drove past and its headlights hit the side of my face. I saw 2 or 3 accidents with or without emergency crews. I, though, was appropriately careful and made it without too much delay. I drove straight to a friend's housewarming, which was only a slight shock to my system. I couldn't quite get the small talk juices going and didn't know that many people to begin with. I ended up leaving to join up with Darick.
Darick was going to his friend's show at some place called the Mopery. I had never heard of it, nor had he, but it was in Logan Square, presumably some new bar or club. Neither. It was like a basement but on the second floor. More of a "Space" than a "Venue", it was pretty well packed with hipsters, art students, and punks, all in their early twenties. Very urban and ironic, I felt like someone had brought in New York hipsters from the 70s through today. The music was appropriate for the venue and crowd - to a point. The first person I saw was a girl with a loop pedal, some analog pedals, and a tape deck. The tape deck presumably had some of the beats and other extraneous noises that accompanied her looped and layered moaning and chanting. Like an artist making sound art more than a musician making music. Then there was a band. The band wasn't terrible but it wasn't good. Drums, keys, overly dramatic singer (think Dead Can Dance), and DJ doing some scratching.
The DJ part was fun to see again, and it was just good to have on in the background of our conversation. Then Darick's friend went. She was a much more skilled and professional version of the first girl. An artist with a loop pedal looping her voice, random percussion, hammer dulcimer, glasses filled with water. It was a good performance. BUT. By that point, 1 am or so, the hipsters had drunk through their first 40 and were on their second. [Darick had picked up some beer, so we were drinking Maudite. At the very least, we felt superior in our drink of choice.] So the drunks wanted to rock, or punk, out, and were a tough audience for the mostly ambient layers of sounds coming at them. Some in front wanted to fondle her instruments, her decorative elements. Venue is so important.Saturday, I had brunch with Sarah B and then went back to Darick's. I ended up watching a bunch of South Park on his Netflix and then, wanting something less passive, I saw Watchmen sitting on Darick's shelf. He's been a diehard fan of the book since the early 90s when he read it as a teen. I had only really heard about it through him and knew very little except for his praise. I started in, got addicted, and read about half of the 200 or 300 pages in one sitting. Then, of the 3 parties I had to go to on Saturday, I started with the one at my old apartment, a housewarming for Alan and his roommate. I know Alan - we're friends on FB - and we often end up at the Gallery Cabaret for Sunday night open mic. It was good to meet his roommate and chill as we took turns playing Super Mario 3.
Saturday Party #2 was the release party of The Point magazine. I had been building this party up for a couple weeks in my head - for lost of reasons: musical, intellectual..."social" - and had a really good time. I didn't get to see everyone I wanted to see but saw many others and met some great people. After a band that was good but too loud, the night devolved into a pretty great dance party.
Got back late, did a second amazing parallel parking job, did some South Park, slept till like 9.
Sunday was brunch with Darick and Tim, another illustrative artist, before convincing an exhausted Diana that 6 hours of Wagner's Ring was a good idea. I had already bought a ticket and was committed. The Wagner was amazing. It was a great, interesting, inventive production, pulling out all the stops: Shakespearian acting, puppets, shadow puppets, masks, great lighting. The acting was pretty good but inconsistent. The music was absolutely terrible. Absolutely. There is no depth to my offense at what they did. And yet I still loved the production. What's not to love? It's the epic to end all epics. It's the Teutonic version of the Lord of the Rings. And it's one of those stories that I had heard piecemeal over the years; seeing the whole story in one fell swoop really helped contextualize it. So go SEE it. It was by no means a perfect production, but it was certainly amazing enough to make the 6-hour commitment worth it. I would love to see a slightly more professional version, but they would have to keep all the magic and innovation. The shadow-puppet dragon, the giants, and the "swimming" of the rhinemaiden could not be done any better.I'm nearing the end of my Monday. Soon I'll go teach Isabel piano and drive to Michigan. Hopefully the snow holds off. In general, I'm feeling confident with the present and optimistic about the future. But I'm also feeling a bit impatient. So I keep working to prune, so that I can nip those distracting thought branches in the bud.
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