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.