Beautiful Birthday

 
 Birthdays are the most beautiful of occasions. People bestow you with pretty easy and obvious reminders of your luck in life. I am obscenely rich in so many ways. SO lucky. So loved, so enchanted with those I love and the life I lead. and how full it is! Goodness.

The chronicle of this birthday is quite funny thus far. I was incredibly lucky to share yesterday evening with the illustrious Julia Freake and Jeff Grandy as they exchanged wedding vows.
 

Julia is my surrogate sister, and it was the first wedding in our shared family. Other than Nick and Val's wedding I suppose, it feels like the first of my generation's real deal weddings. Everyone was so lovely! Sat at a table and reunited with both of my sisters (all of us together and single for the first time in nearly 10 years) and our momma, a former grade six teacher of ours who sang along to the background music ( Deja Vu by CSNY--one of my favorites) and her family. Danced with my sisters (including Rachelle, Collen & Julia) with my momma smiling on, drank, met new family and rekindled with old. Heart warmed into perpetuity.


The rest of the night was framed by the following moment: Susan ran to get me for a social excursion and slipped (dramatically and 'hilariously') ... still came to get me, and then fessed that she believed she really had hurt her arm.

We tried to be discrete, so not to upset the bride uneccisarily and then proceeded to leave the wedding, get lost trying to find the hospital in Dartmouth for pretty much 2 hours (We went to Sackville first, but the Emergency room there was Closed???  Did you know they close emergency rooms?) then was taken care of by Dartmouth General's really sweet staff, Slept on a few chairs, played trivial pursuit with a sleeping Susan, wrote in my journal,and it turns out she broke her arm, she got a dynacast (self-hardening splint) and a sling and we got home at 9:15am after consuming Burger King breakfast sandwiches. I love my sisters so much. We got grumpy occasionally, but it was actually an incredibly fun time, and Susan was really taken care of and... I think if we had tried to stay up drinking gin and watching movies at we'd planned, we wouldn't have talked and bonded so much. So, though I am sad Suzy doo broke her arm, I had a great birthday bonding time. I always want to hang out with my sisters.


It is now 2:45 on my birthday and I am just waking up, my heart is so full I wanna burst, watching Bored to Death and reading 95 beautiful Birthday wishes on Facebook and blowing my nose and thinking about my epic luck.


I'm pretty positive that this year I'll get to be a better person than ever before. Is this why growing old rocks??
Pumped. Pumped!!!!

Thanks for making me the luckiest lady alive.

One of the quotes of the night:

"I'm sure emerg would love two drunks and a dork coming in" -Sarah
"They're not drunk." -Mom
"I like that they are demonstrably drunk, and you left the dork comment alone"-Sarah
"...well... what can you do?"-Mom

a lil' inspiration

But it is good to remember such small things and of what consequence/catalyst they were to your life and art.
I didn't even know who he was, and Philipe had an extra ticket. I was at this show, sitting in the centre of the Balcony of St. Matthews church with Philipe, Denma and Crane and these songs made me weep. I remembered what music was. You can kind of see some of the atmosphere on Devin's video.

Non-linear checkin

I have virtually nothing to say except I am quite contented.

I just didn't want to leave y'all thinking I was uber depressed. But, I think that is alright. You can handle it, yes? I was just feeling.

And loving a friend. 

Full of music.

Heart confused, but delightfully.

I think?

I certainly feel sassy. More every day infact.

Brain in an immensely productive space.

I go on these epic batch-processing kicks where I can barely sleep with my excitement to accomplish. You should see how clean my house is, and how large and scratched out my to-do list is.

Seriously... if you come over I'll show yee.

I am posessed by music and do-gooding.

MwahahahaHAH!

Do you ever wonder what percentage of your do-gooding is for spectacle?

In part my being sad in my last post was to... be sad. And tell y'all. 

Sometimes I am bad at letting myself be sad.

It takes me so long to realize my body is waiting to be physically sad, and it weighs heavy... and once I cry I feel immensely light again.

I love my family and hanging out with them.

I am a blessed lady. And I kind of hope that, though we are all oddballs in my family, people can always see where I came from in my lovely family. I would hate for people to not see how alike we are. They are that of which I am made!

I wonder sometimes if I am just getting older or becoming straight edge.

I am still a glutton and a hedon, but somehow there is limited appeal in being an inebriated douche bag. Who would have figured?

I like getting old.

I can't wait to be an old lady.

And get enough of a hormone imbalance to have a beard.

I was telling my friend Katie about this and she sent me a message once I left her house:

"Love you and your music, and your future beard! you viking Maiden!"

Once you are fifty, I think you should go balls-out with style.

Why couldn't I have a beard and be proud of it? OWN my beard.

Robertson Davies loved bearded ladies.

I think I would even dye it rainbow to be certain it was not subtle.

I also have fantasies about tattooing my whole body once my first grandchild is born. Just... you know, for a curve ball. Nanna Feltham is coming to getcha!

My sister once claimed that people who were not raised by old ladies often don't even see them. Like they are invisible.

There is a lot of power to being assumed boring, or a stereotype or invisible... you can subvert so many ideas and use your assumed and real wisdom to blow minds.

I am so pumped to be an old lady.

Be I lucky enough to get there.

This is certainly a pointless post.

I hope you see further the geography of my mind.

Where do you go for darkness when you've lit your shadows?

I have a song about being happy, and it is one of the saddest songs I have ever written.

My heart hurts right now.

I usually explain this song as me describing to my family that its okay to be happy, that it is natural and not avoiding reality: but today I remember the real meaning of that song.

My dear and delightful friend, Bruce McCormack, a poppa of Creighton Street, passed away today. I saw Bruce basically every day for 3 years. "You'll always have my heart" he would always say. He was proud to be a life long drinker, would do anything for 'his girls" (the residents of the apartment building he managed), and we loved each others company. He loved one lady his whole life, and she always told him "I am going to have to go one day Brucey" and one day she left. He was so happy, though. He didn't mind in the least being himself, smoking copious amounts, speaking his mind, singing his own dirty or silly words to Q104 songs while watching golf or CSI on mute and reveling his own bad habits and the miracle that he was somehow still alive and living in excess.

A friend and I found a beautiful bird dead in front of his home where the cops had broken in after his tenants saw him through the window on his kitchen floor.

I also have a friend who is mentally ill and doesn't really know it or know how to take care of themselves and it is exhausting and I want to do the right thing but I cannot always take care of them.

Plus, my heart is confused. I adore two men and no one all at once. I am learning that love never goes away and has its own version of memory. And I do not know what I want, or who I am now in the context of love.

And all of these things hurt right now.
I have more material for writing music than I would currently care to have.

But I know they need to happen. I know Bruce hurt for a long time and I will think of him fondly whenever I drink Keith's or listen to Q104 or pass his stoop and I am better for knowing him.

I know I need to get over keeping people I care about at arms length and being terrified to hurt people, and just remembered that I can be hurt too... and am figuring out many-a-thing about being an adult who is vulnerable to love.

I know I needed to be the person there for my friend, and it was supposed to be me who they came to and I have to learn self-limits and to practice better self care.

I can easily draw out the meanings and the common themes of discomfort and growth and getting to know myself better.

... but sometimes knowing that there is meaning to everything, that all things are meant and having an internal dialogue about the reasons why bad things are good, and having a high pain tolerance hurts me. Because I just want to feel sad.

I guess I am sad.
And yet realizing that makes me a lil' happy and steals from my stewing.

Where do you go for darkness when you've lit your shadows?

I will miss you Bruce.

Music is My Madness

Music as an instrument of change

I recently attended Tatmagouche Free school, and one of the questions they asked was "What are your gifts in exile?" And, surprising as it may seem to many since I am addicted to play music, I quickly answered that music is my gift in exile. I hate being called or self-identifying as a musician.


Then: What does music mean to me?

Many a person covets the position of musicians, and my dad is certainly one of those. Though I admire musicians sometimes, I do not envy them. And I don't like talking about music. I like playing it, but I hate using exclusive language and talking about it in an elite fashion. And what is there to covet or be obsessed about with music?

What a treat it is to share such a thing, perform an art. Create an intimate moment between you and countless people...but what is the cost? What does music make a musician? What does the industry do to your art?

Certainly, it can make you influential, and give you the chance to express yourself and create a shared cathartic experience, some money and see behind many closed doors... but a day of a musician is not much covetted in my eyes. What is it to play songs over and over, put yourself in an untouchable place, and sell your art almost always in addition to your face?

My Battle between Business, Music, The Greater Good and my own brainhood.

I suppose it isn't really about the music (though it can feel like prostituting your art) its about the business of personality. And I already have a flawed personality which too rarely gets called on its faults due to my relatively pleasant disposition. Ask my sisters!

"Music is spiritual. The music business is not. " -- Van Morrison

I have visions and neurosis about musicians being douchebags, and so music-centric and self important they don't attend to the most meaningful matters of the world and squander their gift of influence and visibility. I think this idea was brought to a head when I went to the ECMA's in Sydney last year.
But there I realized: Good people still find good people, even in a strange feild of frauds, fiends and friends.

"Music should never be harmless." -- Robbie Robertson

And!
It made me realize that: I am a musician.
Whew. I said it. Why do I hate that title so much? Even when people say "guitarist" or "cellist" or 'singer songwriter" it gets me perturbed. And feeling a wee bit fraudulent.

"The music business was not safe, but it was FUN. It was like falling in love with a woman you know is bad for you, but you love every minute with her, anyway." -- Lionel Richie

I was so worried that I would exacerbate my worst qualities through the sphere of performing art: untruths, self-centredness, overly reverent public, living in a dreamworld, any variety of substance abuse, late nights, flightyness.... but these are things I need to work on anyway.


I think I am in a place where I don't have to worry about making myself worse, and I am quite excited to make myself much better. And conquer my self-made barriers.


And! I think, in my own mind, I have accumulated enough social merit and use of myself outside of music, I cannot help but use music and performance and spectacle to assist in helping all things that I think need to happen to make a better world
.
and its okay if I don't have time to teach people how to be good people. I can be a good person, and do the best I can. And it is okay I am not the best and never care to be... I cannot help but be addicted to expressing myself through music, and playing music and hearing it and using it to speak whatever truths need be said, even if I do dress them up to be a lil' differently digested than they might otherwise be. That is art!

The responsibility of being a public figure. It makes me uncomfortable, and I am not certain it is a struggle of my own ego.  When talking about music I often quote John Gardner:

"Pity the leader caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers."

I often catch myself saying "Leadership: sunk!" Because: What place is that for self growth? I need people to call me out on my shit. I outsource for personal growth, because I know I do not catch myself doing those things that make me an imperfect being. It is pathological. AND I already have a problem with people not calling me out enough without putting myself in a place that is more public and less personally accessible.


I have troubles still with the words "leadership" and "leader" and "artist" in a similar fashion. I have gotten the farthest in not thwarting Musician out of all of these titles.

But, if a facet of being me is being a "musician," then so be it.

And in the words of my friend Kev Corbett, "I was made for a position of service, whether monastic, military or politician... but from the juxiposition of music I can serve all of those feilds best." My dad had said this to me before, in one way or another, but I could not hear him at that time. And much of my musical neurosis clearly comes from his own obsessions with music.
I wanted to live my own dream for my own reasons.


I just have to remember that music is not the most important thing on the planet. It is a method of and instrument of change, and one of expression.

I shall conquer and be made better.
I am going on tour next summer. That is that.
I will try to avoid embodying the following by following those music notes across the country:

And thus I clothe my naked villainy, With old odd ends, stol'n forth of holy writ; And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.