Failure.

One of my friends posted this excellent comic on Facebook. It's about making friends with failure. Make sure you read till the very end.

http://doodlealley.com/2012/10/10/be-friends-with-failure/

I'm pretty sure I've talked about this before, but I think it's something that bears repeating, especially since I have so many artistic & musical friends. And apparently, we are all really hard on ourselves when it comes to our craft, whatever that may be: rarely happy with our efforts and always pushing harder. As you can imagine, this often leads to incredible frustration and discouragement, but somehow, we keep going.

This strip reminded me of the time a few years ago when Mister and I went to a medieval calligraphy exhibit at the local art museum. (Yes, we have a real live art museum in Nashville, and it's a pretty darn good one.) As I marveled at the manuscripts, I thought about how these long-ago artists had to mix their own paints and make their own inks, as well as make their own brushes and cut their own quills. They didn't have the luxury of going down to the art supply store for a few nibs and a couple bottles of ink. Nope. All those things had to be manufactured by hand. The more I thought about it, the more awed I became.

And then I thought, I totally suck at calligraphy. I'm such a slacker. Why do I even bother?

The same goes for music. I've been fortunate to be able to hang out and play with some stellar musicians, and even be taught by a few. I listen to music all the time, and when I'm not listening, there's still a soundtrack going on in my head. I can wake up in the middle of the night and oh hey, there it is. I practice pretty much every single day. It does pay off (did you hear that, kids? practice actually works!). And yet, I still get this knot in my stomach every time I go down to the pub for session night, because, well, I suck. I don't know ALL THE TUNES yet, and I'm still working on mastering the finer points that still slightly elude me. Just because I can pull if off at home by myself doesn't mean I'll pull it off at full tempo with a group of people.

But you know what? Everytime I sit down to play, there's something that eludes me just a little less than the time before. Every once in awhile, a miracle will occur, and I will nail something I've been working on - after I've already failed eleventy million times. Failing at something means I'm trying, and the more I try, the less I fail. Such a simple concept, and yet, so difficult to grasp.

Till next time ---- go forth and fail.

It's not always what you think.

Humor me. I feel like doing a little experiment here. Let me tell you about some people I know.

Person #1 lives in a farmhouse on 5 acres. She owns 3 cars and wears a big sparkly diamond ring. She nearly always has a neat manicure/pedicure and might be seen wearing Prada sandals in the summer. Now. Think about this description and see if you can picture this person in your mind. What about the house? The cars? The salon where she gets her nails done?

Okay. Person #2 dyes her hair. She likes whiskey and has been known to watch NASCAR. She owns a .22 Winchester her daddy gave her. Her parents come from the country. She's not shy about using colorful language among friends. Got an image in your mind for her? Let's proceed.

Person #3 has two college degrees. She is deadly serious about music, history, and literature and will talk forever about one or all three to anyone who will listen. She likes to do research for fun. She wears glasses. What do you think of her?

Person #4 often goes out in public with no makeup. She recycles paper, plastic, & metal household goods. She likes to cook and prefers to use healthy natural foods. Sometimes she whips up vegan meals. She takes care not to buy products tested on animals. She has an herb garden. She does a variety of handcrafts and makes some of her own clothes. Do you have an idea about her?

Person #5 also dyes her hair. She often wears black or gray and takes delight in adorning herself with anything that has a skull on it. She takes a particular interest in songs about dead people and sometimes paints crazy designs on her fingernails. How about this one?

Do you have an image in your mind for each of these examples? How does #1 differ from, say, #5? What about #2?

What would you say if I told you they were all the same person? Yep. Me.

Yes, I live in an old house on 5 acres - it's rented. I own 3 cars, all of which are on their last legs. Two of them run (usually) and the third is there for an emergency backup. The newest one is a 1997 model. The sparkly diamond ring? Inherited. The Prada sandals? Given to me gently used by a friend. The salon where I get my nails done is my own living room, unless I decide to go visit my friend Jill for something special.

The point of this exercise is that you can't know everything about a person from one description, just like you can't know everything about that stranger at the grocery paying for her food with an EBT card. Don't assume things are what they appear to be, because chances are, they're not. You. Don't. Know.

Till next time - take off the Judgy McJudgerson glasses.

Oh, the inhumanity.

The story of Puppy Doe has been on my mind all week, and is probably contributing to my overall crankiness. September is always our busiest month with events, and I'm overtired and a little bit prickly. But the story of Puppy Doe is one that would turn even a great day to shit.

In case you've missed it on the Interwebs, a young pitbull mix female was found dumped in a park in Boston at the end of August. The person who found her thought she'd been hit by a car and took her to the vet. If only it had been that simple.

After a thorough checkup, the vet determined that the dog had not only been repeatedly beaten and burned, she had also had her legs pulled in a medieval-style "draw." And this didn't just happen once - the vet's investigation showed a consistent history of severe torture and abuse. The dog only weighed 18 pounds when she should have weighed closer to 40. Because her injuries were so severe, she had to be euthanized, but not before she had the chance to have a real meal and be petted on and fussed over by people who cared.

Now, to give a little backstory, a woman claiming to be the dog's original owner came forward and said she had to give up her pet thanks to breed restrictions in her area, even though the dog never presented a danger to anyone. She rehomed the dog via Craigslist and got periodic updates from the new owner until sometime in July. When contacted, the new owner said she had given the dog away. (These details are still coming out, so who knows if they're 100% accurate or not.)

Y'all, I cannot for the life of me wrap my head around this. Not even one iota. Just like I can't wrap my head around people who beat and torture children and elderly folk. I don't get it. To say that it makes me sad is a grave understatement; to say it fills me with abject sorrow is closer, but it's still something more than that. I don't know that there's even a word for it in English.

What I do know is that law enforcement needs to take cases like these with all the seriousness they can muster, because there is a clear link between crimes against animals and crimes against humans. So far, the Boston police seem to be taking it seriously, understanding that the perpetrator is likely to continue this abuse on other animals or people. (Y'all remember a guy named Jeffrey Dahmer, right?) The person who perpetrated this abuse did it on purpose. ON PURPOSE. Repeatedly. Deliberately. Methodically. What kind of a sick excuse for a human being do you have to be to do this sort of thing?

I don't know. I just don't know. We can insist that the abusers be punished, but the more pressing question is, how do we prevent these things from happening in the first place? What makes a person think it's okay to torture a living being?

I can't comprehend.

Till next time - hug your pets. And your people.

The futility of preserving the ephemeral.

You know how we knowledge geeks are. When we're learning about something, we have to compile every little scrip & scrap pertaining to our passion, no matter how insignificant it may seem to anyone else. This includes a multitude of random sticky notes, scrawlings on old gas receipts, scribblings on cocktail napkins, and especially for us musicians, sound recordings of all kinds. We hoard these things like they're rare gold (my preciousssss!), and in a sense, I suppose they are.

In addition to my sticky notes and old receipts, I have music everywhere: Kindle, iPod, two recorders/mp3 players, various thumb drives, and other computer files. I got myself the iPod Shuffle as a graduation present when I finished grad school a few years ago, and it was GREAT! Between what I got from iTunes and what I uploaded from my own CDs, I had a pretty big library. Then one day I opened up iTunes and . .  EMPTY. Nothing there. Zero. Zilch. Zip. Gone. I also had to reset the device because it was glitching, so the iPod was empty too. SWELL. I had to rebuild the library from scratch. Now the computer won't recognize the iPod, but that's a whole nother story, as we say in the South.

When I started going to Irish session night at the pub a few months ago, a friend suggested I record everything in case there was something I wanted to learn later. I dug out my first little voice recorder, which still works great after 8 years, but it doesn't hold a lot. I discovered that for what I paid for it back then, I could get a recorder/mp3 player with 4 gigs of storage. Shut up and take my money!

Well. I had a great recording of the most recent session, including some mind-blowing uillean piping. I mean, really ultra-spectacular. I sat there doing the Simple Dog Head Tilt, and when I looked over at the flute player, he had this look of disbelief and amazement on his face. I can't even describe it to you. It was that amazing. And I had it all on my digital recorder. . . that is, until I accidentally erased it yesterday.

Yes. I was trying to upload some no-longer-commercially-available archival recordings and in the process, pushed the wrong tiny button. If that weren't cringe-worthy enough, I outdid myself a little later by erasing ALL my live recordings. Every. Single. One. I thought they were stored in a different file, and I was wrong. Poof. Gone. Not recoverable. The archival recordings are safe, but all my live stuff is off in the ether.

In the 17th century, when memento mori paintings were a thing, musical instruments were often included as symbols of impermanence. Before recorded music came along, all music was live. Let that sink in for a minute. If you're reading this, you've always lived in a world where recorded music was available in some medium: vinyl, cassette, 8-track, whatever. In the grand scheme of history, recorded music is a fairly new invention. Once upon a time, not too awfully long ago, if you wanted music, you had to either make it yourself or go someplace where someone else was making it. Once it was over, it was over. You couldn't go back and listen to it again.

But maybe, just maybe, you could remember how you felt.

I don't know the name of the tune the piper played, and couldn't even tell you how it goes, but I sure as hell remember how I felt. Amazed. Awestruck, even. Grateful and humble that I had the opportunity to be there at that moment with that particular group of people. And those are things you can't capture on a recording, anyway.

Till next time --- capture what's worth saving and don't worry about the rest.

Ashes to ashes.

(WARNING: This is not going to be a happy post. I have not-happy things to talk about. Proceed at your own risk and don't say you weren't warned.)

I found out last week that a former high school classmate died of a stroke not even two weeks after his 45th birthday. He was away in Texas working on a project and had been in the hospital while he was there, but was released and seemed to be doing well. He was looking forward to coming back to Nashville soon.

He's coming back to Nashville, but not in the way he imagined, and certainly not in the way any of his friends or family hoped.

I didn't know him as well as I would have liked. In school, we had mutual friends, but he was just on my periphery. We reconnected through Facebook, as a lot of schoolmates do, and I enjoyed relating to him as an adult instead of the awkward teenagers we once were. He was kind, and funny, and he loved music. He had a great many friends who thought the world of him, and now they mourn.

His best friend went to Texas to retrieve his ashes and bring him home. I've retrieved ashes before. It's a surreal experience to carry someone's earthly remains out in a tiny box. And even though I am generally practical about death - because, let's face it, why fear the inevitable? - I still have a hard time making the connection between the living person and the parcel of ashes. Logically I know that the ashes were once a living, breathing person, but still my heart somehow wants to doubt it.

I imagine someone, someday, will pick up my ashes and think the same thing.

Goodbye, Grant. I hope you're having a righteous jam with Jimi somewhere.

Till next time --- shine your light and love your people. 

Recover the wonder.

Hi, y'all. I was just poking around my blog stats and noticed I hadn't written anything in awhile. Not because I haven't had ideas or time, but if you create at all, you know sometimes things have to speak to you before you get around to them. (Good thing I don't do this for a living or I'd starve.)

Yesterday I went out grocery shopping alone, since Mister was out of town on family business. I was trolling around the Aldi, scouting for hot deals on fancy cheese, and I heard a little girl singing. Loudly. My first reaction was GAAAAAAAHHHH NOISE, but then I realized the kid had a pretty nice voice for a 6 year-old. She was making up an alphabet song and only got as far as alligators and bears, but she kept singing.

While she was waiting for her mom to check out, the girl amused herself playing with empty boxes, arranging and rearranging them into different configurations, singing and chattering the whole time. Then she found a dime, and was pretty much over the moon. It was all a great wonderment for her.

And I thought, at what point do we lose that? When do we stop singing in public like we don't give a damn? When do we quash that childlike sense of wonder? When do we stop giving people random hugs and telling them we love them, just because we can? Not only when, but WHY?

Now, me, I do still sing in public. If there's some good jams on at the Publix, I'll sing while I'm shopping. I've also been known to dance around in the aisles. I mean, why should grocery shopping be a chore? Heck, more than once, Mister and I have sung in harmony to whatever song was playing on the sound system. We just flat out don't care. Ain't no law against actin a fool at the grocery. (The international grocery is especially fun when they play bellydance music.)

I've noticed, though, that when we perform for real, it can be a challenge getting people to participate. They especially don't want to dance, even though that's what a lot of that music is for. The adults will sit there and listen, but it's the kids who dance. Even at events where we have scheduled dances, it's a challenge to get the grown-ups on the bandwagon. Kids? No problem. They're all over it.

People. Y U NO DANCE? What is it you're afraid of? I promise you nobody cares if you look like a gawky ostrich, because they're too worried about themselves. If you feel like dancing, then GET UP AND DO IT. You're probably way better at it than you think you are anyway.

If you spend any time around kids, you know how affectionate they are. They'll just come right up to you and crawl in your lap and say "I love you" and they don't even have to be your own kids. Now, I'm not advocating that adults necessarily crawl into each other's laps (unless you're in a situation where that's appropriate - winkwinknudgenudge), but why do we have to be so reserved about letting someone know we care about them? Moreover, why are some of us scared to accept that someone cares about us?

I have an open heart as big as the universe. It's probably caused me more grief and trouble than my big mouth ever did. But I'm not going to waste it, and I'm not going to stop caring. (I tried that once. I was miserable.) I try to find the wonderments amid the chaos and drudgery of everyday life. And I won't lie - sometimes that's almost impossible. It seems like an extra challenge for the chronically depressed, especially when you think the universe is conspiring to hold you back. But even in the dark times, something amazing and wonderful will poke its little head out of the dirt. The trick is being mindful enough to notice.

So, little girl at the grocery, I hope you will always sing when you feel like it, and create things out of boxes and other seemingly useless items, and get excited when you find a dime. We cranky old adults need those wonderments. Heck, if we marveled more at the little things, or sang more, or danced more, maybe we wouldn't be so cranky.

Till next time - see if you can't recover your sense of wonder.

Making peace with the unpeaceful.

Every year about this time, we get to read all about which celebrities gave the graduation address at which school, blahblahblah, etc. etc. etc. Usually it's the same tired platitudes about how higher education gives you such a big advantage in the workplace, you're the future of America, yaddayaddayadda, but every once in awhile, someone cuts to the heart of the matter and delivers an undeniable truth, such as Joss Whedon in his address to the graduates of Wesleyan University: "Peace comes from the acceptance of the part of you that can never be at peace. It will always be in conflict. If you accept that, everything gets a lot better."

Normally I don't bother reading these speeches because of the aforementioned tired platitudes, but being a huge fan of Firefly, I felt compelled to see what Whedon had to say to these newly-minted graduates. The idea of being at peace with the unpeaceful isn't foreign to me at all, being a yoga practitioner (albeit an admittedly lazy one) and a reader of Buddhist teachings, but seeing it in Whedon's speech sorta hit me upside the head with a shovel. Yeah. Make peace with the part of you that can never be at peace.

Which part, though? I seem to have several. There's always something somewhere I'm just not at peace with, because I tend to want everything to be just so, and of course it never is. And if I do manage to make peace with it, it's only temporary. But I guess that's why they call it "practice." As a friend's young daughter recently pointed out, practice doesn't make perfect, but it does make progress. Logically I know that's true; however, I'm not generally long on patience and I'm constantly wanting the wheels of progress to turn just a little faster, thankyouverymuch. Add that to my list of unpeaceful things to make peace with.

I suppose there is some freedom in accepting that there will always be conflict somewhere, because even when one problem gets solved, at least one more seems to take its place, forever and ever, amen. Some days it seems like an endless parade. And other days . . . well, other days there's a glimmer of hope, a sliver of peace, which makes the practice all worthwhile and reminds you why you make the effort in the first place.

Till next time ---- make peace with the unpeaceful, and aim to misbehave. 

(You can read more about Whedon's speech here.)