Six days to go. I can do it. MAYBE I can do it. The songs are written. I’m finally at a place where I think I can actually focus on constructing listenable things. I had a breakthrough last night at around 2 and then posted the results in the last entry. So, let’s keep hoping for those victories.

Tonight I’ve been going through old sounds I recorded with my android last year. Most of them are these weird ambient recordings I did on the train hoping that I might eventually use them. The rest are awful song ideas I’ll probably never use.

There was one recording that made me a little bit homesick for Studio 11: I guess sometime last April I got lonely and played “Lua” for my roommate’s cat. I know… that’s kind of… sad. But hey, since I have nothing else to post for you tonight, here it is.

Maybe tomorrow there will be genius, but tonight there is nostalgia.

I’ve been listening to Depeche Mode and The National a lot. And watching Doctor Who. And getting rejected by a lot of people for a lot of different positions. And indulging in the occasional cheap beer at classy drinking establishments.

I Regenerate by djcreepshow on SoundCloud -

Alright folks: Back in the day I used to put on these epically depressing Valentine’s-themed radio shows. Well, actually, some of them were probably less depressing… I remember playing “Melt With You” one year.

Anyway. This year I’m trying something different. Yes, this year there is a “Side A” for all of you who are currently feeling pretty great about love in general… and there is a “Side B” for people who prefer the heartpunch. You’ve been warned either way. Enjoy.

PICK YOUR POISON:

Side A: “Head Over Heels”

Side B: “Loveless”

Part of project “Seriously, Try Not To Be Cynical” is, inevitably, to get through Valentine’s Day with a smile on my face and a song in my heart. The smile may require those things dentists use when they’re filling a cavity, and the song may be “Love Will Tear Us Apart” but STILL. I will try.

My understanding of love is sketchy at best. I took a class called “The Sociology of Close Relationships” in college where we learned about all of the different forms of love – they have Greek names because the English language is quite limited when it comes to such things. I flunked the final, and no the irony is not lost on me.

So, to the best of my understanding, love is this:

-My Dzadek’s blondewood upright piano, the smell of Camels and coffee, and the sound of waves breaking on the shore

-Sitting on my father’s knee and watching the lights on the stereo while he played Neil Young records when I was five.

-Mom writing postcards from grad school, probably every day for eight weeks during the summer of 1988.

-Rachel taking my picture when we were fifteen.

-Summer nights spent sitting on stolen docks with the boy from up the street.

-Mark talking me through late-night panic attacks during the summer of 2005 when I went blind, and Ben describing episodes of Futurama when I couldn’t see them.

-Getting tattoos with Kyle and Jason when Mark died.

-Copley Square, and the perfect carton of yellow heirloom tomatoes that tasted almost exactly like peaches. .

-Shouting the lyrics to “Wake Up” under the moon with 75,000 people in Tennessee, Summer 2011.

-The uneven brick sidewalks of Portland, the scarred knees gotten from them, the realization that I have quite possibly found home, and the comfort in knowing that, despite this, I am still restless.

The two year anniversary of See Here, Chicken passed a month or so ago without any sort of to-do. I am still working every day to heed Conan O’Brien’s message of positivity – and yes, not chiding myself for writing things like this is a Herculean task. There are pros and cons to not living behind a protective shield of caustic barbs (I’ve switched to a slightly less harmful cloak of wryness). Life is better when you get around to living it, so love something. .

I’m still here. I’ve yet to record more than a few half-assed demos. I’m putting it off, really. I want to focus more on the songs themselves this year – I want them to be fully fleshed-out ideas as opposed to sketches. Goodness knows that I’ve got the time, at least at the moment. The last six days have essentially been: Get up. Make tea. Pick up instrument/turn on keyboard and noodle around while tea cools. Drink tea and peruse job postings. Apply for one or more job. Shower (maybe). Work on lyrics while eating lunch. Look for more jobs. Watch MST3k on Netflix while resting brain/doing dishes/tidying. Depending on day, go to Historical Society and catalog dead people’s letters. come home, attempt more composing. Open GarageBand, think about recording something, sometimes ACTUALLY record something. Eat dinner. Maybe go out for drinks with friends, possibly dance. Come home, review compositions of the day. Red Dwarf (or suchlike). Sleep. Repeat.

It might sound relaxing, but the whole being unemployed thing got old back in October. I’ve been temping a little. I had a job at a cafe – the polite thing to say is that “it didn’t work out”, and I’m trying ever so hard to be polite these days – and I’ve had a few interviews. I try to remain positive, but it is getting harder. I never ACTUALLY wanted to be a starving artist. I STILL don’t regret moving to Maine in a down economy… but hoo boy. I’d love to collate the SHIT out of something right about now, and I have no idea what that means.

RPM is a great outlet. It gives me a sense of purpose – other than sending out resumes and cover letters and generally BEGGING people to give me some kind of work. I’m sure the nice guys up at the comic shop, and pretty much any one in ANY shop at this point, dread my visits. Someday when I am “comfortable” I will look at this period of my life fondly – like the way my grandparents talked about the war. Except the way they talked about the 1940s it seemed like everyone banded together for the greater good. People looked out for one another. Kindly shopkeepers didn’t take advantage of their inexperienced young workers who… There were Victory Gardens! And parades!

The point is, when this month is over, I’ll have something to show for it. Yes, I hope more than anything that I can find work – that’s the most important thing on the agenda right now. But having ten new songs – that’s also something to feel good about. Great about, even. I’m glad for this project.

RPM 2012 at about 10:30PM EST

Ah RPM day 1. The crazy has yet to set in. There is such optimism in the air. Things are easier this year: No job to take away from valuable composing and recording time! No housemates or old clanging heat pipes to add unwanted (yet highly rhythmic) sound effects. Nope, it’s just me and the fire station next door to contend with.

Today was productive. I recorded two (HORRIBLE) demos: “I’m Your Man” (not a cover) and “Heaven Forbid”. I also wrote a song on piano which I have not done in… well… months. Maybe since last year. It will be the title track – once it is recorded – “We Were Promised Gold”.

Last year I tried to stick to a a general framework-traditional folk and country themes like drinking and being broke. It helped my creative process in kind of a dry spell. This year I don’t need quite as much help. I’ve got all the boredom/unemployment/heartache/loneliness I need to get me through another month of country-writing.

The real challenge this year is making a record that sounds OK. I’m shooting for OK. I’m recording directly into my computer because hey, I don’t have a microphone. I know, immediate crap sound. RPM isn’t about stellar recording though – it’s about GETTING IT DONE, and I will have to remind myself of that daily as I slog through this thing.  I’m a perfectionist with a bad set-up and a poor sense of timing…

Please, allow me my attempts at rock and roll.

I’ve been dancing again. It’s weird. I never danced in Boston. OK That’s not true.

I USED to dance in Boston. A lot. Twice a week, sometimes three. Ceremony on Monday nights, ManRay whenever I could get in. And then later, Axis. Goth, Fetish/Industrial, Gay Disco. Assorted other clubs and basically any excuse to get out of Allston and away from the pressure of Berklee. And to be myself – whatever “myself” was 9, 10 years ago. It was mostly dancing alone, wearing black in corners. Hoping to hear Depeche Mode and Kate Bush and trying to look as morose as possible. I loved being goth because it meant there was no social pressure to touch another human being, and that meant little to no risk of rejection. I was such a regular at ManRay at one point that the go-go dancers would let me stash my stuff in the dressing room and then give me rides after the club closed.

It was nice. It made me forget the trauma of junior high school dances which always made me feel like an even bigger outcast than I generally was in class. In high school all of my female friends took dance classes. I did too for a while, but I could never keep up. I was always far too self aware in the sort of way that prevents grace and being light on one’s feet. Not being a dancer was such a huge part of my identity. To be a Dancer meant being desired by boys and… well. I guess that’s when I became “one of the guys”. Not in the sense that I played sports or DRESSED like a boy… but in the sense that I became extremely uncomfortable around girls and started to favor the company of boys. They were easier to talk to. Were awkward in the same ways I was. Wanted desperately to start bands. To this day I have one close female friend who lives far away, and spend my social time exclusively with men. Which SOUNDS sexy, but mostly involves a lot of debate over what makes something punk, and which girls are the cutest.

Which brings me to my current dance-related situation. Portland, as you are likely aware, is pretty small. There are however a surprising number of dancing establishments and for some reason my male friends are pretty gung-ho about GOING dancing. A lot of it has to do with the fact that the Asylum has $2.50 well drinks on Thursday nights and the DJ is guaranteed to play the following. “Running Up That Hill”, “Let’s Dance”, “Personal Jesus”, “Love Is a Battlefield”, “Take On Me” and “Kiss”. And there are girls. A lot of girls who dance pretty much like they assume that there will in fact be no tomorrow and, in that case, why not keep drinking PBRs, because since the world is ending, there probably won’t be class tomorrow morning, right?

There is something infectious about drunk college girls dancing their hearts out to songs they are not even remotely old enough to have heard when they were new. So I got sucked in. I started dancing and remembering what it was like when I was 18 to feel FREE of all of the pressure in the world. Except… now there’s this new and frightening element in the mix. It’s the clock. I kind of picture it hanging like some kind of garish Flava Flav-inspired albatross around my neck. It is a weird position to be in given that I have yet to find a job, that the number of Doctor Who-themed t-shirts I own far outweighs the number of digits in my bank account, and the fact that I still consider Spaghetti-O’s to be a nutritional lunch. No one on that dance floor would ever peg me for someone who is pushing 30. OK, maybe not “pushing” so much as kind of awkwardly nudging… but still. When I was a kid dancing was a release… and now I kind of see it for what it actually is: A means to an end.

Which… OF COURSE. DUH. NO ONE DANCES TO DANCE. It’s a fucking mating ritual. But traditional dating has always been so far off my radar that I never saw dancing as a tool. Actually, I’ve never HAD tools. I just kind of… found myself in relationships. But, now I’m in a new city that socializes differently, and I find it fascinating. The ritual of buying drinks for people and then kind of dancing near them to prove… what? I’m young and free and… I guess also… marriageable? I’ve never thought of marriage in a serious way, not even when I was in long term relationships. Not even when my friends started marrying off and having kids and mortgages. But there’s something about being in Maine… or maybe Portland that brings it up. I’ve started looking at my future and settling down as a realistic thing. I’ve been restless my whole life and I still definitely am. The concept of tradition is suddenly appealing and I HATE it.

I never wanted to be THAT girl. Or I guess I never thought I would be. I never wanted to be the kind of girl who dances and maybe goes on dates and thinks about getting married and… Jesus. Kids. I don’t want kids! Or, I do. Shit. Stupid dance clubs.

Stupid Maine! What is it? The smaller population? The cold, hard winters? It’s far lonelier up here. I’m spending a disgusting amount of time alone with my thoughts and really having to face parts of me that I never wanted to. I’ve had to start accepting that I’m a female and I have female feelings. Gross. Then there’s the allusive “Adult” thing. We’ve been over that a million times.

So I guess that brings me to… Do I keep dancing? Do I continue to acknowledge the clock/albatross? OR do I find a way to go back to how I was before I noticed my condition? Can I go back? How much does the desire to settle down change me fundamentally as a person? As an artist?

Ack!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,200 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 37 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

I want to talk specifically about my history with New Year’s Eve. I love New Year’s Eve. It is my favorite holiday. It is about dressing up and drinking too much and kissing and basically just letting go. And I like that. Last night was the first New Year’s I’ve spent in Portland since 2004. It was a surprisingly appropriate way to finish off my first decade of adulthood.

(What follows is an account of my past decade of New Yearsing. Some details have been left out because this is the internet and that isn’t your business. Last names have been left out to protect the innocent except in cases where there are Famous People. In that case I left last names intact in order to look cool)

I don’t remember a whole lot about New Year’s 2002 simply because it was so long ago. I didn’t drink back then because I was 18 and on top of that, I didn’t do ANYTHING back then. I went to a small party with my date, who I had met at art school. I’m pretty sure there was pizza. And video games. I remember midnight coming and going and not much being made of it. My date drove me to my parent’s house which was about an hour away and kissed me goodnight at around 2AM. He  was so sweet, and I wasn’t  I’m still sorry.

2003 was the EXACT opposite. I went to this huge magical party at the Cloud Club in Boston. It was a masquerade theme and I got there embarrassingly early. I was at my gothest. There was a veil and a lot of white pancake make-up and a floor-length black ballgown and very high heels. It was the first time I’d ever gone to a party alone, specifically one where everyone was a total stranger and most assuredly quite a bit older. Bands played in the basement. People drank champagne in the garden. My mind was blown. At midnight I found myself sitting on the floor watching the Dresden Dolls cover “New Year’s Day” by U2 (this will be a theme). Someone passed me a bottle of champagne. Brian, the drummer, kissed me full on the mouth and I’m pretty sure I died. I took a cab back to Allston at around dawn and experienced my first real hangover.

I spent 2004 with friends at this dive bar in Portland called Amigo’s. I used the fake ID (well, it had been SOMEONE’S real ID, just not mine) I’d acquired in Boston so I could get into shows and gay bars. There had been a plan to kiss my friend J. at midnight, but when the ball dropped he was either in the bathroom or getting a beer and so my friend M. did the honors. I’d had a giant crush on him when I was 14, so I thought this was rather poetic. I think we watched Family Guy after that.

2005 was the first year I’d ever had a real boyfriend on New Year’s and I remember that being pretty exciting. I wore a silk Chinese dress and red lipstick and a sullen expression.  We went to a house Party in Rockland, ME and my boyfriend, T., kissed me. This will also be a theme… 2006 was pretty much the same. Different outfit, same everything else.

2007 was kind of great. A bunch of my mime friends from all over the country converged on Richmond, VA. We’d been on tour together that October, so this was kind of a reunion. We all played a show the night before. There was a lot of baking and chopping of vegetables and a house full of wonderful, beautiful people. I kissed my friend D. at midnight because he’d never had a midnight kiss and had recently learned that it was in fact a tradition. We drove back to New England after sleeping on the floor with twenty of our friends.

2008 was weird. I went to New York with my by then on-again/off again (and very soon to be permanently OFF) boyfriend. We got into a massive fight in Strawberry Fields which is a very strange place to have a fight. We did some kind of weird performance art for the Dresden Dolls show at The Hammerstein. We kissed in a flurry of confetti and black and white stripes at midnight. I went on stage for the encore and thought a lot about how strange it was to be where I was and how far I’d come in five years. I woke up in Brooklyn on my friend Cullen’s couch. We had eggs at a diner.

I spent 2009 at a small house party in Cambridge. We drank champagne and watched Dick Clark. I kissed D. (different D.), my boyfriend at midnight.

2010 was a mixture of bad and good. I was in the process of moving out of the apartment I had shared with D.. We had broken up before the holidays and I’d been spending a lot of time in Maine or on Cape Cod. A friend had somehow gotten me a ticket to the symphony where Amanda Palmer was performing. I was mostly jazzed about seeing Sxip Shirey play in such an amazing venue and seriously, if you ever get the chance, SEE SXIP SHIREY. Anyway, there was a lot of wine and fancy seats and dinner. And more wine. At midnight I kissed this young conductor guy called Walt. I think he’s internet famous for doing an orchestral arrangement of “Poker Face” I witnessed this live. It was kind of awe-inspiring. After the show we walked a few blocks to the after party at the Cloud Club and I played piano and climbed the tree they have in the attic (I KNOW) in heels which was a giant mistake because I fell and had serious bruises for months. We stayed late. I had a discussion with Neil Gaiman about the weather at around 4AM (which I had a panic attack about the next day because – Seriously? I meet the guy who wrote probably the greatest comic series of all time and all I can think to talk about is the WEATHER?). Eventually my best friend Liz and I took a cab to The Distillery in Southie and slept in our new home for the first time.

Last year I had a sprained ankle. My housemates and I party hopped around the building and then went to a party in Chinatown. The party was up a very steep flight of stairs which were in no way pleasant. There was a huge punk party on the first floor and we crashed. There were easily a hundred people crammed together. I got stuck to a girl’s studded wrist cuff. I felt old and kind of out of place in my cloche hat and Link boots. I kissed my roommate at midnight while waiting in line for the bathroom. One of my housemates was being a bit over-festive and we volunteered to get him back to Southie. I half-carried him to the corner so we could hail a cab and cursed my swollen foot. We sat in a snow bank and I tried not to think too hard about it. We went home and my roommate and I watched Queer As Folk and drank champagne.

This year I spent an unnecessary amount of time getting ready. I reinforced the seams on this vintage dress I got from Oona’s a year ago but which never fit right on my beer swilling, eight-hours-a-day computer job, T-taking Boston body but which fits great on my walk-a-mile uphill to get anywhere form. My lifelong friend B. shot down my four-inch-heel dreams with his weather report while we waited on the arrival of the rest of our crew. We made our slip-sliding way deep into the West End and dropped in on a fancy-dress cocktail party where my Miller High Life promptly fizzed over on to my beloved and much fretted-over blue satin dress. We stayed for 45 minutes. I talked a lot about Doctor Who because that is what I do now. We went to another party where the lights seemed too bright and I didn’t know a soul. B. and I hid in the kitchen where someone gave me a glass of wine. The ball dropped. I think I may have nudged B. or something. We left at 12:01. I got home at about 12:10. I drank champagne in my bathrobe and listened to records on my floor. I thought about how far I’ve come in a decade, what it is to be an adult. What I’m doing with my life. How awesome I hope 2012 is. My resolution and whether or not being resolved is always the best idea. I thought about how much I love my tiny apartment and my friends and my new, quiet, mostly solitary life. I thought a lot about the choices I made in 2011 and how, for better or worse, they led me back to Maine and what it means to live here. What it will mean. How happy I am to finally close various chapters and to actually, for real this time, start anew. The first hours of 2012 have been bittersweet . I have no idea what the future holds but for once I feel… pretty optimistic. There will be things that will devastate me, surely – stiff upper lip and all. But the rest will be so, so good. It has to be.

December art walk, corner of Congress and High, Portland, Maine

The Christmas tree is up and lit in monument square which means that it is coming and there’s really no stopping it at all. So this year I’ve decided to just embrace it. Or at the very least whine less about it. Maine looks like Narnia for at least a third of the year as it is, so being anti-holiday is a losing battle. I’m not going to decorate, I am simply going to attempt cheer.

Really.

It’s the least I can do… and honestly, I can’t help it. Portland is doing all of this weird juju on me that I don’t fully understand yet – and I’m not sure I want to. It’s nice. And Unsettling. And nice. I’m still fascinated by the number of people who actually go to the monthly art walk. It was maybe 35 degrees last night and the sidewalks were jammed. The nice girl I met at the Victoria Mansion told us that they’d had something like 750 people in three hours. 750. There are entire towns near here that have half as many residents.

I have this theory that maybe people are more enthusiastic about things like art walks and shows up here because, well… it’s not an everyday thing. It’s a privilege. I’m starting to appreciate things more than I did a few months ago. Daylight. Conversations. Friendships.

Basically… Portland, what have you DONE to me? I was talking to a friend in Boston today and he said that I’d like someone because we “hate(ed) the same things” and I told him that I was making friends with people who LIKED the same things I like. Seriously? Basing entire friendships on shared interests rather than mutual loathing?

I think I’m sort of getting the whole “meaning of Christmas” thing. Well, minus all of the Jesus-y this-n-that. Christmas is about sincerity and kindness and giving and… I dunno… probably drinking at some point.

"gruel" was actually Dickensian slang for "Colt 45".

Essentially, this whole anti-cynicism thing I’ve been working on since I started SHC almost three (holy shit) years ago has proven to be a bit tougher than I thought it would. It is happening though.

Good timing, too.