Well, January is coming to a close and it seems like the holidays were so long ago already. The current temperature as I write this is 6 degrees outside. Yet at this very same time yesterday I was out doing my 3 mile run and it was 49 degrees.
Ray and I have done a TON of stuff updating and organizing his apartment. I put up a few storm windows, he fixed an open outlet socket and put up rods for my new clothes closet. I did a massive rearranging of the living room to actually make more space in the kitchen where one of my keyboards now resides. Ray gave the heater a new filter and put up a beautiful, hand-made coat rack (with a hat rack too) and I've been sorting through dusty, piled up boxes and do-dads for the eventual bigger move of getting some of our stuff in storage. Between the two of us, lots have gotten done...but only as we've taken the time here and there, between our gigs and rehearsals, and in the little free time we have left when we're apart.
And now Ray has a new favorite way to spend his past time!
In less than 4 weeks he's acquired an impressive amount of beginning Banjo skill - and I'm not just being nice. Rarely have I witnessed someone set their mind to a brand new, almost alien musical instrument, and demonstrate such a steady progression.
I have taught piano to adults several times in my career and the percentage who succeed and stick with all the frustrations and experience some success is fewer than 5%. And since I do have experience teaching adults music, I've also learned my lesson about how to stay mostly out of the way for them.Adults have a much harder time starting from the beginning on something like an instrument. We are so accustom to feeling competent and able to grasp new ideas as adults, that the sense of utter confusion and inability to translate the intuitions we've acquired into a new language, like music, often becomes a huge wall that few have the tenacity (and ego-strength) to overcome.
I've quietly witnessed Ray bringing his own expectations for immediate competency to this instrument, only to get met up with instant difficulty. So then he tries a new tactic, looks into more sources for learning the instrument, and goes at it again. He's had a definite learning curve and now he can create very pretty, consistant ringing chords that, 4 weeks ago, had once sounded like muffled rubberband twangs.
There have been a few times I've wanted to post in this blog with thoughts about life and stuff. This is the time of year people tend to be more social and want to have more reunions. I think it's a good thing, as one year ends and a new one begins, that we tend to take stock in our lives and how to live it better - and with whom to spend time real quality time with.
For me, I feel like that prime social time has passed. I've been having a yearning for steady comfort and simpleness for a long time, but I always resisted it with expectations and fantasies about dinner parties, lady's night outings, celebrations, and being the grand host to everyone. I rarely do regret it when I do participate in those things, but my gut tells me that I have to tend to something else right now...Plus I've said all the clever things I have to say already. :-P
But this is not to say I'm shutting it out either. I dunno, it's hard to explain. I am actually looking very forward to a few prime social-opportunities this year. But only a FEW.
Yep, that proves it. I'm a friggin' homebody! LOL
But two family gatherings in 2008 so far ain't bad...especially when there are two crazy, adorable, funny and high-spirited little ones to spend time with!
The annual post-christmas Christmas party that Patty & Wayne hold each year was a huge success and I got spend hours of great time acting like a hyper crazy 4 year old for a whole day! In fact, I will always remember how much fun Zoe, Bryce and I had that last night that we even got to stay up super late and have a sleep-over out in the play-room. I hope we get to have many, many more to come!
I was also very appreciative to be invited to a family reunion-of-sorts with Ray's family and his uncle for a post-holiday gathering at Joe's Crab Shack. Uncle Joe, as the young kids liked to keep repeating, and his wife Sue have seemed to have a career that's taken to live all over this country and thus taken them away from as many chances for family visits. Now they are settling into their new home in the burbs of Chicago (I'm embarassed that I can't remember the name of the suburb) and I understand their children are also having some exciting things happening in their life, including expecting a new baby.
Ray and I shared with them our current plans for a few weeks of camping through Wisconsin and perhaps we'll get to take them up on their offer to come visit their vacation home this summer too, which is also in Wisconsin (I'm gonna have to remember these town's names much better).And as for me?...
Well, Second City continues to be a wonderful gift-of-a-job. And my work now with Wavelength has given me one-to-two chances each month to leave town, travel to a new place and play a simple gig for very good corporate bucks. Dave at ComedySportz continues to use me too on occasion, with requests to produce instrumental tracks of current popular tunes and commercial jingles. And though it's impossible to believe, ComedySportz will FINALLY BE IN ITS NEW THEATER this FEBRUARY!!! I am playing several of its opening-week festivities and then we'll be steadily in our very own theater for the first time in 2 years.
I now work professionally with a few of my prior students from Second City, which is really a joy to do - including getting a chance to make good recommendations and job opportunities for them. One of my ex-students is now working with me in producing a Cabaret act with her original songs (music by me) interlaced within her very hilarious self-biographical story telling.
I just love watching the students whom I really believed in start to grow into their own and become true performance colleagues of mine. Its such a delight to see!
Oh, and I'm also still producing and engineering the monthly podcast for The Hot Karl fellas. This has become another side project that's been entirely different for me. I've been learning how to craft and edit down 90+ minutes of their improv-style interviews and stories in to 30 solid minutes of a full podcast episode at the highest studio-quality sound possible. And the momentum and interest has been growing. The Hot Karl troupe (Stacy and Bill probably remember) are a late-night group of improvisers who have had a long-standing (7 year) run of steady, loyal audiences ---- until we lost our space. They've been taking any opportunity they can't to find places to remount their show, but in the meantime they came up with the idea of starting a Podcast to keep their audiences listening and interested.
I won't post the link here because...well, its not suitable for all audiences frankly. But it's hilarious as heck and I promise it would be easy to track down if you want a very good giggle and perhaps to do a few spit takes as you listen to these guys confess how they live their most ridiculous lives.
And as for my Second City job -- I am now regularly teaching and co-writing original musical sketches with the students in the training center and typically have 2 to 5 scripts waiting for me on my piano to put music to and record. Then I go to the casts, teach the songs and play for their revues. It's one of my favorite parts to my job, but its also required that I play every Friday night from 7 to 10pm for the last 5 weeks with 10 additional more to go (or more).
I can hear my mom's voice now, "Well, that's the life of a musician, so what can you do," followed with a good chuckle and sigh. Even those of us with great job can still find little reasons to complain.
The First Quintessential Song To Learn On the Banjo...Cripple Creek!
Last week I was on two traveling gigs...one in Tulsa Oklahoma and then one in Fennville Michigan. The little town of Fennville was one of the more charming and fun gigs I've had in awhile. The event was held in the reception hall of the town's main winery, Fenn Valley Winery, and so as the night wore on we got a chance to go through their wine-making tour and the cast got to share in all the samples. I don't drink wine, but I know Ray seems to have a refined taste for it, so I enthusiastically set out to find the best one to take home for him to enjoy. And in the spirit of Ray's current favorite box-wine of Fish Eye, I picked up their most popular 3 Liter, Demi-Sec Semi-dry Lake Shore wine in box.We were treated to a one-night stay at the town's very old Victorian Lake Shore house turned into a bed and breakfast. It was my first time staying at a B&B, and it had all the quaintness that you see on t.v., with the postcard picturesque front entrance, the big burning fire place, and super cosie old bed linens and knick-knacks. But unlike in the movies, it also included an unsuspecting Amway-like hard sales pitch for some kind of super-juice vitamins that comes along with the fresh homemade breakfast being cooked for you. The hard sale got so silly that I just had to laugh when the two Inn Keepers, as they were waving goodbye to me from their porch and I trudge back out into the snow to my car surrounded by beautiful tall Oak Trees and the crisp winter look of fresh iceicicles coating the outdoor scene, give me their last words of, "Goodbye...and remember it's just 10 dollars more a month to your grocery list if you sign up!"
Hilarious.
What's to come...
It already seems that the month of February is fully booked. CSz will be having its grand opening, I'll have a small birthday celebration which *gulp* I'm not prepared to accept, my mother has her birthday to celebrate as well, and the month is booked with gigs including one traveling gig to Lockport on the 29th. March will be the month that Ray starts putting in very long hours of set installation for the opening of Carousel and then there will be Easter to plan around. April itself has a few important birthdays to celebrate and I'm still crossing my fingers that Ray and I will get to get away at some point for another long-weekend camping trip.
Yikes.
I promise the next blog entry will have many more pictures and much fewer chit-chat from me!
-Stephanie
