I've been stalled out lately. Not with everything, just with this blog. It's kind of hard to write about other people's music when you are obsessing about your own. My music has come out of hiding. I brushed off the tiny black spiral notebook that holds any song I've written of quality. The rest are on scraps of paper and Greyhound bus tickets inside of an old, faded, purple binder on the bottom shelf in my office. They are too embarrassed to be seen (they seemed like good ideas at the time).
So I've been wanting to write about the stories behind my own music, even though I'm sure these posts won't draw a crowd like talking about how 'Pretty Girl Rock' makes me want to stab myself in the eye, at least they are true to me and something that I feel needs to come out.
What caused the musician in me to come out of hibernation? A little divine intervention I think, if you really want to know the truth. My life, as of the past year, has been doing this weird circle thing that most lives seem to do (at least that's what the songs tell you - I hadn't had the experience myself until recently) **Total song side-track - "The Circle Game " by Joni Mitchell or "Wheel" by John Mayer - Discuss **
VS.
Back on track - I was dragged to Maine for the 8th grade, what seems like years ago, from Buffalo, NY. I was already a sullen teenager - this move did not help the process. I went to school in a tiny town and lived down a mile long dirt road on a horse farm. I came from a house that didn't have a front yard - what's grass? - I was in shock, in many ways. After a year in that tiny school, I moved on to high school at a slightly bigger, but still tiny by my experiences, school, in a different tiny town. After 4 years I graduated, went off to college, and tried to find out who the hell I was and why I was here. In those 4 years I started playing guitar seriously and had dreams of being a professional musician. I also fell in love, got trampled on, and repeated the cycle like it was laundry day.
Flash forward to 2 years ago. I'm living with my husband approximately 30 minutes from that tiny town that I always swore I would get as far away as possible from and I decide to write a book about that time in college when everything was ripe, in your face, and wrenching. I finish the book and a funny thing happens - I get a job as a teacher at that same tiny school - in the same tiny classroom.
In comes the janitor to clean my classroom and we start chatting. He plays guitar - small world, me too. He's from just outside of Buffalo - smaller world. He runs an open mic night every month - Do I want to come play? Funny you should ask...
And as it is in the circle, my time in the tiny town comes to an end just after a year and I move to another school in (you guessed it) the slightly bigger, but still tiny town - across the street from where I went to high school. There I get an email from someone else who works in our school district, who has heard about me through the man from Buffalo. He has a band that needs a singer. I am a singer that has always wanted to sing for a band. Through our chatting it comes up that I have lots of my own tunes, and even a book that I'm trying to shop. Turns out he doesn't just have a band, he has connections.
So here I am, exactly 2 weeks away from recording my own album of songs that will be a companion to the book I wrote. None of which could have been possible without many, many things happening in my life. So whether you believe, "we can't return, we can only look behind from where we came, and go round and round and round in the circle game," or "that's the way this wheel keeps working", that is the way it has worked for me.
