sun spots

I am doomed.

Thus I thought as I sat in my very own back garden today, as the sun shone and warmed my legs. first time on the chair out there, and although i did do a lot of yard work beforehand, still, it's a dangerous precedent. the sitting, i mean. because once you're out there, it's to hell with all the obligations, isn't it?

here i am, a singer/songwriter. i've got so many jobs i have to do to keep up the gigs, the writing, the promoting; and that's only for the regular stuff. but i've also got the show this year - my zootcase project, and with that, i have created an enormous job for myself, especially since help is so hard to come by. (nobody cooks the dinner, or washes the dishes, and god knows, the sheets need laundering once in a while).

no, can't afford the household help, but i was actually talking about musical help - people out there who might want to support an independent musician in this, in any, endeavour. now, i do have friends. and many of them have stepped up to the 'giving' plate by purchasing my upcoming cd in advance. that helps finance the manufacture. so thank you to them.

but there are organizations, like the arts councils; can't seem to break into that little clique (you have to hire someone who knows their way around the application and requirements). then there's the local radio station that says it wants to "support jazz performers in Canada", but sadly, they do not support me - neither by playing any of my songs, nor by helping with this show ('you can rent our space for over $1,000.'). well, if i was a corporation, maybe, but i'm just a music performer, singer, etc. maybe they don't 'help' me because i haven't got the big machine behind me; i'm not performing with the biggest names. i'm not a big name either.

no, i'm just a simple independent music lover; i play with people who are fantastic musicians, but also people i like.

so i'll probably end up financing this work of love by myself, and that's ok, since it originated with love, and is still a love story. love makes the songs go 'round, i reckon.

so as the sun goes around and gets warmer and brighter, i'll just enjoy all the decadence of just sitting, and the music that keeps going around too, my friends, and the wee shoots that are coming up in the garden, and whatever i get done on my own. god bless' the child that's got its own.

your eye a heap, not to mention your head

when an old boyfriend appears in your dreams, in some strange house; and then your sister turns up, telling you that she's just so, so angry, what is one to make of that? am i simply bored? lost in the dreary and all-enveloping grayness that is currently covering our part of the world? the rains continue relentlessly, and yet they don't seem to really wash anything. i have no sense of clean or new, or any kind of refreshment. is this the strange house that is my lot these days?

gosh, oh golly!! i must be alzheimering. after such a fun time i had last night, singing with the jazz trio, and really enjoying the music. you see how quickly i forget. perhaps the rains are indeed washing away things. i'm becoming like those horrid little children that i am occasionally forced to spend time with in the classrooms of this city - the ones that must be constantly entertained and/or amused every single minute. catered to in any manner possible, and god forbid they should ever move their own three-lettered anatomy and make things better themselves.

hey! that must be the angry sister speaking up.

it's a dull saturday night when a person has to attend to their own psyche for amusement, playing all the parts. but i do seem to be doing a good job, and yes, i do want to talk about it.

i promise myself that tomorrow i will do some more music. it hath charms. but also, as i told myself just the other day, i owe it to myself for all the meals i cook with love, and all those hours with the ingrates at the schools. i am paying the bills, after all, and so i figure i'm indebted to that long-suffering person, - me - who is saddled with the job of keeping this body alive and housed. i owe me big time to get out there and do something interesting with all my talents. using that word in the biblical sense, of course, but also in our modern usage, just a little. don't want to be falsely and overly uriah heepish. i owe it to my girlish self to have fun.

but tonight...i'm just goofin' around and goin' nowheres fast.

send in the roses

it's just too nice outside to be sitting at a computer, and besides, i have to exercise my body and try and repair the damage that i've done to it lately. right after the last blog, i went out, came home, got out of the car, and immediately went smack onto my tailbone. the one bit of snow that we've had over this winter, piled up on the sidewalk, then immediately melting, and at night turning into a treacherous slick of black ice. i went down really fast. it still hurts when i walk, but i'm not hanging back, not me. it's onward and tailward.

until yesterday, when i rushed with gleeful anticipation into the showers at the local, on my way to the pool, and once again, damn if that old world of objects and such didn't get in my way. what the hell is a door doing closing so fast that i don't even have my foot out yet? and why the hell do they have that little step up there anyway, just so's it makes a trap for the wee foot. toe, actually. and now it's purple. much like my language when that happened. poor little woman in the sauna didn't know what catastrophe was landing on her previously serene moment. my apologies to her and anyone else who heard me. it hurt.

and it hurts now to let the toxins of these injuries course through my otherwise pristine body. must away to the outdoors and walk them all off.

here's hoping i make it home safely. (by the way, is this a cosmic message, or something? should i be slowing down to smell the roses that aren't yet blooming? somebody, please, send me some roses.)

flights of dalliancy (I made that word up)

got all excited, over there at my zootcase blog, about the black rhubarb i had dreamt about, then the description that i later found online. never knew it really existed, honest. but there i was, dreaming it, and connecting it to my 'heart' venture, only to find out the next day that this strange 'growing thing' from ancient times could give a person the feeling of flight and overcoming gravity. this is exactly what i need, not only for my project, but, i would say, every day.

of course, one can't always be all mystical and supernatural, can one?, - levitating all over the place. but they do recommend searching 'the dreamiest dalliances of your own heart', and that, i can earnestly support.

dally away, all ye who would fly, and delve into the black rhubarb of your soul.

bleary blues

been too long on the computer today; my mind is fading fast. i really want to
get myself into the pool and do my zen-inducing laps. just got so damn much to finish first.
speaking of finishing first, i've actually watched a fair amount of the vancouver olympics, unusual for me. great fun, except that i found that it produces 'olympic ass' after a few sedentary hours, quite the opposite of all those astounding,vital young bodies throwing themselves fearlessly into the air, or speeding with such control, or creating such gorgeous moves. no bleariness there.
not so great that Canada lost the hockey match last night, but hey, it's a game, right? and it was a good, fast one.

and so what am i accomplishing today, you might well arsk.
just doing the normal necessaries to get the music and the shows out there.
had a great night on saturday at the private jazz whoop-de-do. does anyone use that expression any more? well, we had fun; musicians played their usual amazing abilities, i sang my little heart out, and all the party patrons ate and talked and enjoyed the music all night long.

the 'underwear' video is coming along. i'm hoping it will be on youtube in a couple of weeks. don't wet your pants.

i gotta go. the water is calling me: return to the womb, zoe. splash and frolic, and tune out the world. ich com, ich com (don't know how to spell german).

quand il me prend dans ses bras...

such a romantic song, (see title, although i know that's not the title, but everyone should know that one) and saint valentine's day just around the corner (i walk a little faster). i wonder how many song titles i could work into one post. no, i haven't got time (gotta put it in your pocket till i get back!).
lovely day. got a couple of gigs coming up - the private one (sorry, folks) on feb. 20 with the jazz trio, then two on st. paddy's day, where we'll be parading all the irish tunes we know, and talking with an irish accent, nach bhuill? sure, and of course we will, because when i'm not taking after the italian grandfather, i'm after taking after the one from connemara, the west coast of ireland, where all the ponies on my website were that rainy day on the mountaintop.
in that photo,i look like one of those fat people on oprah's list of losers, but it's really just the six woolen sweaters underneath the hastily purchased raincoat that give me such a rotund figure. i'm really just a slip of a thing, and sure, lovely too.
but getting back to the french, and himself putting me in his bras, (such a strange one), - i hope everyone has some love come their way this sunday, and what the hey!, every day.
because what the world needs now....

hogging the ground

one of these days, i'm going to publish the story of when i first moved out of Toronto, and into the wilderness of the Haliburton bush. oh, what a thrill!!!
you know how naive and idealistic all the city-dwellers can be. how they hold such romantic notions about living in the country and eating their own home-made bread, and loving, just loving!! - everything possible about nature.
yeah.
that's before they experience living with black flies, and the joy of covering oneself from head to toe before you can even step outside the door (so much for the great outdoors). and the story i refer to above, which is the ground hogs. yes, very funny creatures in a movie, or charming when they're on a newscast telling you spring is coming. but monsters from HELL when they invade your car, via underneath the hood, and they eat all your car wires: spark plugs, brake linings, and whatever else whets their stupid little appetites.
whoops. went all mentally unpolitically correct there. supposed to love them all, right? sure. you try having to park your car a mile away from your home, at a corner gas station, and then riding home in the pitch black, which you have to (not) see in the country, away from all artificial light, to believe, and all that on your rickety bike, because otherwise they'll eat the new wires you just replaced, and thank god when you drove you didn't fly over the highway ledge with no brakes, and into one of the numerous lakes we are blessed with in Northern Ontario, or worse, smack dab, at high speed (oh not too high because your car is running on the only one out of four cylinders that they didn't eat completely), but still, any speed is dangerous when you run head on into the Canadian Shield - that's rock, cold, hard, granite-type, face-smashing and unforgiving.
so actually, i hate the critters, truth be told, and if the damn thing poked its head out in my vicinity on a february day, or any day, i'd just as soon shoot it, if i had a gun.
i'll tell you another time about the mice.