To Hold the Stone

In times of excess energy such as these days of high summer there is nothing quite like the act of moving. And certain kinds of motion, I'm conviced, are divinity itself.

I have spent nearly every morning at a high school track I recently discovered about 8 miles from my house. I feel at home on a track. I love the meditative state it puts me in when I walk in circles. I love the sweat that drips down my stomach and dampens my whole head when I run up and down the bleachers. I love feeling spent.

I listen to things in my ear buds and inhale the scent of the pine tree grove and nearby marsh as the sun comes up. It smells green.

Today I was at the track relistening to an astrological chart reading I had in late June. This line jumped out at me: Don't make sense of it. Don't settle down. I kept walking. It was raining a little.

As I navigate the creative process of recording an album and as it spills over into my personal life, and as I make circles around the track, I'm rewinding my life back to innocence, back to remembering who I was before it got complicated and encumbered. Back to whatever God is.

We are what we are, and I've never been anything except a traveler. Motion is my currency. It is the only place that makes sense. What's changed is that I don't need to be the driver anymore. I can ride whatever is moving...the stream, the train, the creative process, a song. I'm not in control (never have been) and I know it. I welcome it now. It's strangely calming and reassuring, this letting go. What you do is pick your ride or allow your ride to pick you. That's it. And then you go.

The other day I was at a bar listening to a song that one of the band musicians had composed. The song had an exquisite motion. In some kind of nameless way I knew exactly what it was. I recognized it; I saw myself in it. There I sat, with my lips slightly parted, absolutely still transfixed by the beauty that came from and through someone's mind and made manifest through wood and metal and electricity, with hands. I felt found, and found out. It was incredibly upsetting.

The last time I had experienced this was with a movie made by a Japanese filmmaker about Gaudi.

This is what we do then. We catch glimpses of other's souls and see our own. Every so often the veil is lifted and in that direct transfer the mind is blown. Language is inadequate. I've been trying to understand it for days now with no luck. I've been trying to tuck myself back into my old form. No luck. I'm rendered silent and without edges, a ripple close to the stone but never holding it.

"Don't make sense of it. Don't settle down."

This is why I walk the track. To have a shape. To keep from spinning out inside. To rewind the bullshit. To stay with God for one moment more. I'll be there tomorrow, and the day after that, and after that. And maybe after a lifetimes of days I will hold the stone.

Sitting Still

I finally hit my first physical test during making the album. It was the moment I kind of feared.

I've been doing a lot of travel, drinking alcohol, going out late, sitting in smoky bars, and seeing friends and music and all. I knew I was feeling really good and wondering when it would end.

Looking back I see signs..the headaches, the night sweats, the sinus pressure, the afternoon fatigue, the lathargic mornings, the vocal chords that weren't there, the feeling off.

It wasn't until we had 3 strike out sessions for lead vocals that I realized I hit my wall and needed to slow down. And slowing down was something I was dreading because it meant being a little self-reflective about my life. Sometimes you don't want to think. You just want to live.

Anyhow, I tried a bunch of bodywork and it was all lovely, but by this past weekend it still bloomed into full blown illness...the weak throat, the wheezing, the incredible fatigue. And I couldn't take it. I felt like I was falling into that spiral that was all too familiar and I never wanted to experience ever again.

So thank god for the people I've worked with over the last few years. I don't have to wait and wonder and worry. I call and they take care of me.

Acupuncture was on order for today and we found lots of lung stuff going on, and after the needles I swear I haven't felt my throat and upper chest this open in a long long time. And then I get to put these herbal crystals in hot water and drink down a sugary antiviral/antibacterial tea. Yum, sugar.

It's also at this moment that the advantage of having a co-producer becomes exponentially clear. I would have tried to plow through the vocal sessions, and kept on my trend towards burn out like I had with all my past projects. But with outside ears at the vocal sessions (and really good ears) it was a no brainer to stop.

So while I allow my voice time to heal and my body time to get its mojo back, we'll excerise the bend and not the break. There is plenty to do that doesn't require my body to have my back: guitars, strings, album art, etc. Now if I can only sit still long enough.

In Pursuit, Completely and Without Expectation

I feel like a hundred things have happened since I last spent time at A Burning Ember. Most of it seems somehow too personal to blog. That's probably a good thing. We all need our own secrets, our internal worlds which are held like cards tightly to our chests.

This has been a rough year for me. I'll say that. But it's also one of the best I've had. Somehow the chronic medical stuff that I'm still trying to erase takes a back seat to my obsession with album-making. And my album-making leads me like a Band-aid ripped off of a wound back to the source of what ails me. It's all the same thing.

When exposed to the elements of music and living I fester. I float around like a lost piece of driftwood on a swelling sea. I know what I want, after years of not knowing a goddamn thing. And I have been given permission to drift in it a while, just to remember what being alive is like. I had no idea I wanted to float so badly. I, who had been trying to put down roots because I imagined myself to be a tree.

So yeah, this entry is a little opaque. I guess the point is I'm happy and I'm at home out here, even with the chronic stuff. And I'm also more heartbroken because I see the dark clouds off in the distance. At some point there will be a mad swim to some strange new shore. Desire is a double edged blade; it is waves and weather. Mixed metaphors. Whatever.

I'm pretty sure I won't get the objects of my desire. I'm ok with that. That's not really the point. Conquest is not the point. The point is the pursuit, completely and without expectation. Whether it's the music I'm chasing -- we wrapped up Rhodes parts recently, had a beautiful pedal steel session, and completed some lovely electric guitar -- or the rather effortlessly found funds to finish the project (yay!), or the life I'm hoping to embrace because it's mine, art and life conspire. I'm strung along. I don't even care. And I don't care where it ends.

On Not Being a Machine

It's been months since I've bothered to sit for a moment and reflect on A Burning Ember. This can be interpreted in a number of different ways, mostly positive. Basic tracking began for my new album last November, but because of the holidays and everyone's busy schedules, we didn't get wrapped until early January. From there I spent a few blissful weeks regularly practicing on a grand piano at a neighborhood church in preparation for recording for 3 songs that definitely needed the real thing.

And then began this unraveling that really caught me off guard. I was following every strand, stretching thin, and losing the big picture. Strand one was to look ahead to financing post-production, even thought we were just starting overdubs. My logic was, keep this puppy moving. I overloaded by submitting my first grant proposal and procrastinating on promoting a second crowd funding campaign.

Strand two: I realized I was going to go over budget on the recording phase and I don't have reserves because of my medical expenses. This, more than anything, has really pushed all my old buttons. I'm pissed I didn't accurately budget the studio time it would take us to edit and comp all the material and sing vocals. I could have raised that last summer.

And I've gotten lost in strand three -- making overdub instrumentation and arrangement decisions. We're kind of at a second pre-production phase, which is fun, but not fun when I find myself worrying about how to fund what the songs need to be done right. Can we really afford a choir of voices? Can we really afford two extra instruments on this song instead of just one?

I was at the pinacle of crazy-making two weeks ago, and a few things happened to knit me together. My co-producer reminded me that nothing about this project is worth rushing at the expense of getting done right. These 11 songs have a great foundation. The songs with piano have gorgeous harmonics and tone. It's worth it to get it right, rather than push to get it done.

And my boyfriend and partner on previous albums said this great thing to me the other day. We were driving to the grocery store two weeks ago and I was getting all hamster on a wheel in a cage about the various strands, and he said, "You always get like this at this part of the project." Whoa. Is that where I am again?

It was like a door opened. I saw the room I was in and it was somewhere I never wanted to be in ever again, so I decided to walk out. I needed no walls and a little more joy.

This is what I have done:

-- I've given up on trying to do lead vocals for now. Clearly I'm not ready.
-- I've streamlined my overdub decisions to two: my piano and Chris's guitar. That's it.
-- I've totally let funding go for now. I should have plenty of funds to cover guitars and piano. I'll look at what's next when I get there.
-- I've gotten massages.
-- My new measure for too much is this: If I don't have enough time or energy to cook meals for myself at home, then I'm doing too much. So far so good.
-- I have reintroduced fun by getting back to songwriting. FAWM has rolled around again and I have written 2 songs so far!
-- I've committed to making people more important than my work.

By Sunday earlier this week I was bored and relaxed and well fed. I look forward to a 2-day trip out of town to visit a good friend from high school. I took the time to have some tough conversations with someone I love, because in the end it matters more than a record.

Armed with astute observation and advice from Jeff and Randy and a little will power of my own, I've broken through one of my biggest negative patterns of over-extension and extreme multi-tasking.  This is huge for me.

This is also not to say that I won't find myself in the room of over-extension again before this project is done, but for now I celebrate.

It's good to be human and not a machine.