![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The last couple days (the last few, to tell the truth) have been a weird sort of frenetic, high-energy alternation between learning to play things (Blindsided and Come Away most successfully), beading shirts, helping Dan move, and trying really hard to hang out with Joodles between his typically grueling work schedule before he goes to Wyoming for a couple weeks.
It's been surprisingly stressful, for few good reasons. I always underestimate how mentally grueling it is to learn new rep on the piano and sing at the same time. Additionally, reviewing recordings of myself to try and find a take I like enough to post it for everybody to see, I get more and more discouraged by how dissatisfied I am with what I can do. And then, editing to publish, even the good ones get fried with repetition. So I do other things in between to quit thinking that I suck.
Breaking to jam with Joodles on the occasion that he's been free has helped. There's perspective in it. And it's an easing of the stress of waiting for limited hangout time. Plus, he's a breath of fresh air whether there's music or not. We took a walk this afternoon, to get us out of a stuckness we'd both acquired over the week; him from 14-hour days at the computer doing renderings for his teacher's architecture competition project, me from doing only new songs and being discouraged I wasn't good yet. So we played on the monkey bars and swung on the swings at the Sunset park and did a wide loop of my old neighborhood, discussing what we'd wish if we had three wishes.
I'll be back at it tomorrow. But I'll go outside, too. There's a piano string around my neck reminding me how awesome things can get when you live up to your potential. I'm trying for my favorite Zep song and a reinterpretation of my Grant-and-Seth-collab Promising Mediocrity. And on a CK shirt-beading jag I took yesterday afternoon, Toto's Hold the Line came on and I was reminded of how I'd always thought that'd be fun to learn. Conveniently enough, it's not very hard, which makes for a nice break from CK tunes and the deathly arpeggiated difficulties of Babe I'm Gonna Leave You. And I'll play through some of the stuff I've known for awhile, to remind myself I really can rock it.
It's been surprisingly stressful, for few good reasons. I always underestimate how mentally grueling it is to learn new rep on the piano and sing at the same time. Additionally, reviewing recordings of myself to try and find a take I like enough to post it for everybody to see, I get more and more discouraged by how dissatisfied I am with what I can do. And then, editing to publish, even the good ones get fried with repetition. So I do other things in between to quit thinking that I suck.
Breaking to jam with Joodles on the occasion that he's been free has helped. There's perspective in it. And it's an easing of the stress of waiting for limited hangout time. Plus, he's a breath of fresh air whether there's music or not. We took a walk this afternoon, to get us out of a stuckness we'd both acquired over the week; him from 14-hour days at the computer doing renderings for his teacher's architecture competition project, me from doing only new songs and being discouraged I wasn't good yet. So we played on the monkey bars and swung on the swings at the Sunset park and did a wide loop of my old neighborhood, discussing what we'd wish if we had three wishes.
I'll be back at it tomorrow. But I'll go outside, too. There's a piano string around my neck reminding me how awesome things can get when you live up to your potential. I'm trying for my favorite Zep song and a reinterpretation of my Grant-and-Seth-collab Promising Mediocrity. And on a CK shirt-beading jag I took yesterday afternoon, Toto's Hold the Line came on and I was reminded of how I'd always thought that'd be fun to learn. Conveniently enough, it's not very hard, which makes for a nice break from CK tunes and the deathly arpeggiated difficulties of Babe I'm Gonna Leave You. And I'll play through some of the stuff I've known for awhile, to remind myself I really can rock it.