How it's going lately

and other true stories

This isn’t my normal fare - how I created a piece of music, creativity tips, an update on my first live album that is coming out in December (EEEEEEE), it’s more of an informal grievance, and it’s personal. A “Big Things Coming” but with liver in the Iranian colloquial sense.

So yeah this is basically an open journal entry. Maybe you can relate, or have related in the past. I’d really like to hear about that.

The ‘n’ key on my work keyboard doesn’t work very well these days, but still I expect a Martha Stewart-ian perfection in all that I do, all I say, all I write, that I create, in my interactions, that I work toward. I do so many, many, many things, and expect myself to give 100% to every single one, though that doesn’t even math right.

A few days ago, nearing the bitter end of election season, I fainted in my office after a morning meeting. Then I picked myself up and continued working. My cat was so concerned.

Yes, you’re right dear reader, that is a fucked up thing to do. The continuing to work part I mean.

SO, I will ramble because I want to. Maybe it’s not the best choice, but it is reckless, and reckless is good because it’s different.

I’m taking a Big Reckless Leap. I’ve planned it for months (yes, this is my version of being reckless, fucking virgo rising), I’ve framed a blue PostIt note in a brass frame on my desk with the true infernal name of the Big Reckless Leap and when it’s planned to happen for now, with a little flexibility of course. I mostly tend to do things for the greater good or for the people I love, but just this once, I’m taking a chance on doing something big for lil ol me. Hopefully it turns into a pattern. To be humble ain’t all it's cracked up to be.

One true story is that I took on a side career tangentially related (and often literally) in politics when Shitbrain was first elected. I wanted to help wipe up this mess however I could since I had an ax to grind, and I wanted to try my hand at a Kind-Of-Regular People Part-Time Job after being totally burned out after grad school. First it was exciting and inspiring, and now I’m (i.e. my doctors are) certain that it’s making me physically ill.

In Jewish philosophy, there is a concept called tikkun olam, which means to fix the world. This, growing up in a reform temple, morphed into, “If you aren’t fixing the world, what is your function?” A true capitalist, paternalistic, pathological twisting of something that was, thousands of years ago, very good. I’m taking tikkun olam back now; that’s for another entry so you’ll have to Waite.

But, I’m very tired. I’m learning a lot by doing all these things right now and actually starting to listen to my body because it is making me listen.

Again, don’t do that. Please know that your body does in fact keep the score and you HAVE TO listen when it shows you pain or dysregulation. You cannot hear it from enough places.

This is the first time in my life that I actually want a time of fallow. I want to turn off spell check sometimes. I want to read fiction often. I want to improvise, for fun, which thankfully I’ve been able to do pretty often, and even in public. I tell my community about argent & sable and the people who empowered me to create it, and I’ll share my new music with everyone who will listen.

In my quest to read more fiction, my friend Erin recommended one called What You Are Looking For Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama (highly recommend, it's so lovely). One story talked about this concept of “parallel careers” – that one career keeps the other(s) fresh and prevents burnout. For a creative mind like mine, I need that. I need color, variety, and newness. In the past, my quest for this led me to more of an I-95 of parallel careers that were, well, Boston traffic at 4 PM.

Recently, I jumped on another lane of I-95 that’s only a few exits down. It’s more of a country road, actually. The people that I meet there are really, really kind, and they’re doing truly great things, and they get their hands deep in the soil and above the canopies. When I get off a Zoom meeting with them, I feel energized and inspired. Just 5 hours per week working with them is giving me a glimpse of what my life could look like if I took that Big Reckless Leap, a leap that’s starting to look less reckless and more cautious with every medical anomaly. It helps me see that yes, keeping a not-music thing as a parallel career to music can definitely be very healthy and nourishing and still very much what I want.

There are two things that make me not tired: One is music of course as my evergreen – recording, writing, performing, arranging again, and the other is pursuing a different parallel career, like the one I mentioned with the people with the shovels and the trees.

I’ve also been helping out a really great band with arranging recently. I haven’t done an arranging project in a while, and arranging strings for a new pile of their songs has lit me up. Collaborating in a fresh way and thinking about how to cast their dense harmonies made me remember a thing that I almost forgot I once wanted to do all the damn time. So arranging is definitely a thing I want to do more of.

A dear old cellist friend reached out and asked to commission a new work, which will be terrifying and very metal, because that is what the querent desires, since we have hung out before on a mountaintop in Tuscany with many bottles of wine and that is what it is. I cannot wait to focus into it.

Angel Grinder cellos will be double-tracked for a forthcoming EP. That stuff is tendinitis bait but is so heavy and delicious and Daniel and I wrote a hymn to a worm ahhh. We need a drummer.

The things that make me not-tired-anymore are things I’m already doing. Soon it’ll be time to trust, harvest, and make space for more of those. Does this sound familiar to you?

Oh, I nearly forgot – The Cemetery Tapes will be released at midnight on December 15 :)