It's been a pretty good run, I'd say. I've been level-headed and exceeding expectations. I've got a bright future that I'm grateful to have and hone. I haven't been too stressed out because, well, there's a level of cockiness that hasn't faded, that I'm riding 'til the end. I'm doing alright. The energy is positive.
Still, my heart does tricks on my brain, or the other way around sometimes. The patterns are all the same, but the reactions are different, which I guess could be a sign for growth. I lose my focus and I trip and fall- sometimes try to save myself- but the truth is, I was the one who set myself up for perpetual downfall, because feeling this good just feels so damn GOOD.
Perhaps it's just another form of addiction. Do all people feel this good when they feel good? Why is it so addicting? And do I even want it? For real? Or is it just a nice thing to have something sweet when you wanna indulge once in a while? Will anything really ever compare to real love?
Thursday, November 29, 2018
Sunday, October 14, 2018
Second Viennese Sausages
Post-tonal theory has always interested me. It's fascinating that composers were so bored with music sounding good that they found functional serialism and atonality at the beginning of the 20th century to turn music into numbers, creating atonal systems called pitch class sets, cells, and tone rows instead of melodies, harmonies, and what the classically-trained ear would consider "beautiful."
Arnold Schoenberg (1874 - 1951) is to blame for this brilliant atrocity of musical innovation. He created a 12-tone system that was born directly from late-German Romanticism, eliminating the hierarchy of chords and demolishing the need for a tonal center by using all 12 notes in some sort of order that could change at any given moment in musical time. Apparently, writing music in a key was overrated; Schoenberg called the lack of a tonal center the "emancipation of dissonance," using chromatic melodies and chromatic harmonies in a way that these clusters of notes did not need to resolve. Never had emancipation sounded so painful. Nonetheless, he wrote many pieces, including piano and orchestral opuses. Perhaps his best known work was Pierrot lunaire, an atonal German 21-song cycle for soprano voice and a five piece chamber orchestra. As a pioneer in Expressionism, Schoenberg dealt with emotions of a modern human being in pre- and post- war: fear, confusion, rage, unsettling anxiety, a poor grip on stability, tension, and all the elemental and irrational drives of the subconscious. Not surprisingly, his buddy was Freud.
Schoenberg's music was an angry rebellion against the status quo, and he loved it. So did a bunch of other German white guys, including Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Berg (1885 - 1935) somehow made a 12-tone row sound... good, tonal, familiar, with his musical choices using tone rows that might suggest chords and melodies found in traditional Western harmony. This is made evident in his atonal opera, Wozzeck, about a poor soldier who was so messed up in life that he eventually murdered all of his friends before committing suicide. The opera contains leitmotifs, pitch class sets that are identified with the main characters, and movements with orchestral music in sonata, rondo, and even fugue forms. Webern (1883 - 1945), on the other hand, stuck to Schoenberg's tradition of constructing cringy, cannibalistic-like earworms, using serial technique in thorough-composed pieces with vast instrumentation; he also created actual pointillism in the music as tiny, wispy points of sound. His pieces were not very long because of that- once he used all of the pitch class sets he wanted, he ended the piece.
The Second Viennese School sounded like a hot mess. However, Schoenberg and his cronies did something that revolutionized how we listen to music: they made us actually LISTEN. Because there isn't a steady beat to tap our foot to or a catchy, sing-songy melody that'll get stuck in our heads, what else is there to realize? Well, what's left is a focus on all the other stuff: dynamics. Instrumentation. Articulation. Timbre. Register. The actual environment of performance. The performer himself (women still didn't have free access, even to the New Viennese School #metoo). Ironically, these are all of the elements that music therapists have to pay attention to while using music in their practices. Without Schoenberg, there would not have been the landmark styles of Messaien, Penderecki, Reich, John Cage, Oliveros, Skrillex. If Schoenberg were alive in 2018, I think he'd probably be a gender-fluid, colorblind quantum physics teacher creating tone rows out of cohorts of didgeridoos used as the music to lure small atonal-singing children to ice cream trucks.
If only modern society were so lucky.
 |
| "Birds Singing Atonal Music" by Charles Moulton |
Arnold Schoenberg (1874 - 1951) is to blame for this brilliant atrocity of musical innovation. He created a 12-tone system that was born directly from late-German Romanticism, eliminating the hierarchy of chords and demolishing the need for a tonal center by using all 12 notes in some sort of order that could change at any given moment in musical time. Apparently, writing music in a key was overrated; Schoenberg called the lack of a tonal center the "emancipation of dissonance," using chromatic melodies and chromatic harmonies in a way that these clusters of notes did not need to resolve. Never had emancipation sounded so painful. Nonetheless, he wrote many pieces, including piano and orchestral opuses. Perhaps his best known work was Pierrot lunaire, an atonal German 21-song cycle for soprano voice and a five piece chamber orchestra. As a pioneer in Expressionism, Schoenberg dealt with emotions of a modern human being in pre- and post- war: fear, confusion, rage, unsettling anxiety, a poor grip on stability, tension, and all the elemental and irrational drives of the subconscious. Not surprisingly, his buddy was Freud.
Schoenberg's music was an angry rebellion against the status quo, and he loved it. So did a bunch of other German white guys, including Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Berg (1885 - 1935) somehow made a 12-tone row sound... good, tonal, familiar, with his musical choices using tone rows that might suggest chords and melodies found in traditional Western harmony. This is made evident in his atonal opera, Wozzeck, about a poor soldier who was so messed up in life that he eventually murdered all of his friends before committing suicide. The opera contains leitmotifs, pitch class sets that are identified with the main characters, and movements with orchestral music in sonata, rondo, and even fugue forms. Webern (1883 - 1945), on the other hand, stuck to Schoenberg's tradition of constructing cringy, cannibalistic-like earworms, using serial technique in thorough-composed pieces with vast instrumentation; he also created actual pointillism in the music as tiny, wispy points of sound. His pieces were not very long because of that- once he used all of the pitch class sets he wanted, he ended the piece.
The Second Viennese School sounded like a hot mess. However, Schoenberg and his cronies did something that revolutionized how we listen to music: they made us actually LISTEN. Because there isn't a steady beat to tap our foot to or a catchy, sing-songy melody that'll get stuck in our heads, what else is there to realize? Well, what's left is a focus on all the other stuff: dynamics. Instrumentation. Articulation. Timbre. Register. The actual environment of performance. The performer himself (women still didn't have free access, even to the New Viennese School #metoo). Ironically, these are all of the elements that music therapists have to pay attention to while using music in their practices. Without Schoenberg, there would not have been the landmark styles of Messaien, Penderecki, Reich, John Cage, Oliveros, Skrillex. If Schoenberg were alive in 2018, I think he'd probably be a gender-fluid, colorblind quantum physics teacher creating tone rows out of cohorts of didgeridoos used as the music to lure small atonal-singing children to ice cream trucks.
If only modern society were so lucky.
Saturday, September 1, 2018
New Beginnings
Can you believe it's been 9 years of The September Project? A friendly reminder that I have been emo for almost a decade?
What started as an escape has become my life's work, at least in this edition of the story. The lessons learned, the music made, the love had and lost, all wove together to create a platform on which I stand in this very moment. I've accomplished my goal of getting into grad school- a goal 10 years in the making- and now I understand that it had to take that long for me to be in the position that my heart, soul, and ear can navigate through what promises to be a tough, but enlightening three years ahead.
Getting fired from amplifi, though it may not have been the most graceful exit, was a blessing in disguise. The knots in my heart knowing that this company's best interests laid first and foremost in profit without providing the right tools or resources for their instructors, has now dissipated. I still think about and care for all the students of mine who have come and gone, and hope to keep ties with the ones who want me to be a bigger part of their artistic journey. In a way, we are going through this together, and if I've learned anything, it is that I am not alone, nor do I intend for them to ever feel that way, if I can help it. Nonetheless, a bright future lies ahead and I feel more open to the possibilities of it than ever before in my 32 years of life.
It didn't happen without sacrifice. I've had to learn how to create boundaries with people, addictions, habits, and my own Self- my former Self- a Self that I had to mourn and make room for a new, improved, better, stronger, more productive Self. I've lost friends on the way, but have more room for ones that actually serve me, in turn, serve the world; I've lost familiarity with substances that numbed pain from inner and outer sources; I've had to push myself out of bad habits and force my brain to not fall into the traps of easy ways out, for what is growth if the foundations crumble in chaos? If conflict is inevitable, then my suit of armour has to be made of gold.
Still, music remains my constant, traveling through time, before, after, through me in a way over which I finally realize I have little control. To quote my very first post in TSP:
I'd like to take that quote further: The repression of passion can only be rescued by the willpower to hone the thing that flows so naturally from the tips of your fingers... and for me, also has an intentional value to implicate change for the betterment of humanity. That is music.
Happy September 1st, my friends.
Here is a little improvisational ditty of two other classmates and me exploring the Dorian mode in a practice room on a piano, a 10-note xylophone, and a hand drum. It's a Side A Track 1 of what's to come.
What started as an escape has become my life's work, at least in this edition of the story. The lessons learned, the music made, the love had and lost, all wove together to create a platform on which I stand in this very moment. I've accomplished my goal of getting into grad school- a goal 10 years in the making- and now I understand that it had to take that long for me to be in the position that my heart, soul, and ear can navigate through what promises to be a tough, but enlightening three years ahead.
Getting fired from amplifi, though it may not have been the most graceful exit, was a blessing in disguise. The knots in my heart knowing that this company's best interests laid first and foremost in profit without providing the right tools or resources for their instructors, has now dissipated. I still think about and care for all the students of mine who have come and gone, and hope to keep ties with the ones who want me to be a bigger part of their artistic journey. In a way, we are going through this together, and if I've learned anything, it is that I am not alone, nor do I intend for them to ever feel that way, if I can help it. Nonetheless, a bright future lies ahead and I feel more open to the possibilities of it than ever before in my 32 years of life.
It didn't happen without sacrifice. I've had to learn how to create boundaries with people, addictions, habits, and my own Self- my former Self- a Self that I had to mourn and make room for a new, improved, better, stronger, more productive Self. I've lost friends on the way, but have more room for ones that actually serve me, in turn, serve the world; I've lost familiarity with substances that numbed pain from inner and outer sources; I've had to push myself out of bad habits and force my brain to not fall into the traps of easy ways out, for what is growth if the foundations crumble in chaos? If conflict is inevitable, then my suit of armour has to be made of gold.
Still, music remains my constant, traveling through time, before, after, through me in a way over which I finally realize I have little control. To quote my very first post in TSP:
Love is not an energy that just comes and goes.. it's a chameleon; that energy transforms itself into other forms and there must be some organization to its growth when manifested into art. The repression of that passion, whether formulated by circumstance or happenstance, is what pulls the spirit down into a place not easy to crawl out of, and can only be rescued by the willpower to hone the thing that flows so naturally from the tips of your fingers. Mine is music.
I'd like to take that quote further: The repression of passion can only be rescued by the willpower to hone the thing that flows so naturally from the tips of your fingers... and for me, also has an intentional value to implicate change for the betterment of humanity. That is music.
Happy September 1st, my friends.
Here is a little improvisational ditty of two other classmates and me exploring the Dorian mode in a practice room on a piano, a 10-note xylophone, and a hand drum. It's a Side A Track 1 of what's to come.
Friday, June 22, 2018
Bluesday on a Thursday, Summer Solstice 2018: The Grown Up Blues
the age old question
does life imitate art
or does art imitate life?
or does it thrive on the system on which it was born?
is this responsibility I feel a debt to the society I'm inherently bitch-faced to?
is it quite selfish or simply humanitarian to strive for the idea of what is the betterment of our society
which entails relationships we build with each other
which entails also a necessary destruction of what is already there?
i mean bro
the real question is this
who the fuck are you, someone who is not oppressed,
to even have a valid opinion about the progression of art in this genre
of the oppressed?
personally, i want to hear what you have to say
but in no absolute
NO way
NO shape
NO form
does that validate it at all.
and it doesn't mean that you got away with ruining all the colours
since time.
happy summer solstice
does life imitate art
or does art imitate life?
or does it thrive on the system on which it was born?
The music business hate me 'cause the industry ain't make me
Hustlers and boosters embrace me and the music I be making
I dumb down for my audience and double my dollars
They criticize me for it yet they all yell "Holla"
If skills sold truth be told
I'd probably be lyrically Talib Kweli
Truthfully I want to rhyme like Common Sense (But I did five Mil)
I ain't been rhyming like Common since
When your sense got that much in common
And you been hustling since, your inception, fuck perception
Go with what makes sense
Since I know what I'm up against
We as rappers must decide what's most important
And I can't help the poor if I'm one of them
So I got rich and gave back to me that's the win, win
The next time you see the homie and his rims spin
Just know my mind is working just like them (The rims that is)
is this responsibility I feel a debt to the society I'm inherently bitch-faced to?
is it quite selfish or simply humanitarian to strive for the idea of what is the betterment of our society
which entails relationships we build with each other
which entails also a necessary destruction of what is already there?
i mean bro
the real question is this
who the fuck are you, someone who is not oppressed,
to even have a valid opinion about the progression of art in this genre
of the oppressed?
personally, i want to hear what you have to say
but in no absolute
NO way
NO shape
NO form
does that validate it at all.
and it doesn't mean that you got away with ruining all the colours
since time.
happy summer solstice
Wednesday, May 16, 2018
Bluesday, May 15: Coltrane
12 minutes til it's not Bluesday anymore
Moody AF
listen to this
Moody AF
listen to this
10 seconds til the end
he really meant it man
imagine having that kinda ear
well i mean many people do, i envy them
envy? praise, maybe
so swaggy
he's the King of Swag
i am a peasant worshipping at his feet
at this point he'd already gone deep into his shit
man i seriously think if he stayed alive just a biiiiit longer
he wouldda had a real, real impact on how music is heard
like he would rival any fucking white dude in europe
he'd win
maybe it's just because we have more access to their brains
their brilliance
but this is like, the prologue
the prepared epitaph
and then poof, just like that,
he's gone.
i'm very appreciative of the fact that his legend lives on.
i mean when you think about the jazz greats
like the real OG jazz greats, like
when you feel it real deep in there
into your soul
he's on a lover's like top 5, at least
the way that he can maneuver, kinda like
like a warm dry
previously damp spring-
summer night, weaving through the
traffic
left and right and up and down
no holes in that pocket
all the great ones die too soon.
perhaps it's a chunk of why they're great.
but longevity is something you cannot fake.
Monday, May 7, 2018
The Last Quarter of the Moon
Nowadays my only desires involve being by myself.
I force myself into social situations to balance out my worlds:
The real reality, the one I almost lost because of trying to be someone I'm not.
I love my therapist; she's the only one who gets me, I think.
Before I fall in love with someone, like really press the play button, I tend to tell them I think I'm fucking crazy. Usually their response will determine how long we're together.
The longest relationship I've been in was with someone who was a raging alcoholic.
Just like my birth father. Haha, first I wrote bitch father.
He's dying, maybe. He's hooked up to an oxygen tank and a dialysis machine.
I keep thinking maybe I should say something to him, like I forgive him or I hope he's okay.
Those statements are only half true.
I don't give a lot of myself to anyone but the kids.
I call out people who can't get their shit straight, or I treat them like kids.
They should not be getting paid the same rate as me. Call it Aldrin justice.
I'm sick of sitting back and letting things happen that are unfair or unjust and really, I can usually get what I want by calling white people out on their shit.
That's probably the only good thing about living in Boston.
The only good thing.
I am the face of diversity, the only one who will play their games and play it well.
In the end, the kids are the ones who matter the most anyway.
There are so many of them who won't ever get a chance to tell someone they might love that they're fucking crazy.
When I graduate, I'm getting outta here. I'm gonna be international. I don't care how hard it is or how long it takes.
I used to have this image of the future.
It's gone now.
The only thing left is me, in a foreign land, doing work that I like, work that is meaningful, work that will change lives maybe. The most important part of that is work that I like.
It is all about me now.
And it's about damn time.
I force myself into social situations to balance out my worlds:
The real reality, the one I almost lost because of trying to be someone I'm not.
I love my therapist; she's the only one who gets me, I think.
Before I fall in love with someone, like really press the play button, I tend to tell them I think I'm fucking crazy. Usually their response will determine how long we're together.
The longest relationship I've been in was with someone who was a raging alcoholic.
Just like my birth father. Haha, first I wrote bitch father.
He's dying, maybe. He's hooked up to an oxygen tank and a dialysis machine.
I keep thinking maybe I should say something to him, like I forgive him or I hope he's okay.
Those statements are only half true.
I don't give a lot of myself to anyone but the kids.
I call out people who can't get their shit straight, or I treat them like kids.
They should not be getting paid the same rate as me. Call it Aldrin justice.
I'm sick of sitting back and letting things happen that are unfair or unjust and really, I can usually get what I want by calling white people out on their shit.
That's probably the only good thing about living in Boston.
The only good thing.
I am the face of diversity, the only one who will play their games and play it well.
In the end, the kids are the ones who matter the most anyway.
There are so many of them who won't ever get a chance to tell someone they might love that they're fucking crazy.
When I graduate, I'm getting outta here. I'm gonna be international. I don't care how hard it is or how long it takes.
I used to have this image of the future.
It's gone now.
The only thing left is me, in a foreign land, doing work that I like, work that is meaningful, work that will change lives maybe. The most important part of that is work that I like.
It is all about me now.
And it's about damn time.
Sunday, April 22, 2018
cancelled
It is so natural for me to alienate myself from the world that when I actually have a friendly connection with a human being, it consumes me to the point of paranoia about all the ways that they will hurt, disappoint, and leave me. It's a blacked-out cave with prehistoric hieroglyphics deciphering the self-hatred it took to get me here in the fist place. Add on the molotov cocktails of procrastination, anxiety, amphetamines, and this secret life of inevitable failure and voila! All the love is once again sucked outta my veins, but this time I'm just too damn old to feel sad about it. I haven't had a suicidal thought in a long time, a long, long, time. I can taste the prejaculation of glory with these thoughts of dying, my own blood on my hands. I wonder if anyone would even miss me. In a way, I hope they never find out.
Thursday, April 19, 2018
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
Bluesday, April 17: Arvo Part
Reading this fascinating article about how deep-brain stimulation failed or did not fail in its surgical attempts to cure depression, I realized most of mine was manageable once I remove myself from this world, the industry's world, the phone world, the internet world, fueled by narcissism and an excessive need to "connect" without fitting the proper puzzle pieces, impulsively "express" without the due diligence of definition, and "document," almost like a serial killer returning to the scene of the crime to relive the slaughter over and over again because he can't get his dick up in real life, kill after kill, post after post, tweet after tweet.
Escape, do I; find refuge in the flaws of man, once admitted; crave for the poetry of the Pastoral, perhaps more gothic, twice removed; I remain, I retreat, curiously, in that which I was repressed- artistically, historically, religiously. May I remain, may I retreat, may I reject repression while the world spins in its meaningless meaning, may I find the harmonic convergence in atonal tintinnabulation. It is the key to make all of this fathomable, holding fast to hope.
Escape, do I; find refuge in the flaws of man, once admitted; crave for the poetry of the Pastoral, perhaps more gothic, twice removed; I remain, I retreat, curiously, in that which I was repressed- artistically, historically, religiously. May I remain, may I retreat, may I reject repression while the world spins in its meaningless meaning, may I find the harmonic convergence in atonal tintinnabulation. It is the key to make all of this fathomable, holding fast to hope.
Friday, April 13, 2018
cunts are your mates
may 28, 2013
i saw him at the molé festival in pilsen. he looked awkward and lost, like he didn't know it was possible he could gentrify anything. my friends and i went to the bar afterwards, simone's. he showed up. i was drunk and said hello, my name is corrine. with a certain kind of accent he introduced himself and then joined us. my friends and i went to a house party in logan square. i invited him. we got more drunk. he heard me sing and play guitar. he said he'd pay to see me live. we went back to judy and danelle's house, did a bunch of blow. my radical queer lesbian friends are radical and queer. he was the only straight guy there but we had a connection. it was some sort of magneticism. we made out all night in the nooks and crannies of their apartment. then my friend put him in a cab. i should have gone. i wanted to. but they're lesbians and they're my best friends and i guess they know what's best for me? no, they really don't. so i left with two gay guys to get cigarettes. i don't smoke cigarettes. i smoked a whole pack of cigarettes that night.
i woke up in dirty sheets that weren't mine and i woke up feeling flemmy and gross and i woke up with a stick and poke tattoo of a sharp sign that looks like a hashtag and i woke up with a bloody finger and bloody pants and bloody lips and a 5 page poem i wrote in sharpie and tag calligraphy about nonsensical loneliness. i texted my ex-girlfriend at 6:30 am some weird poetry shit. i still love her. i'll always love her. and i think the aussie was the closest one to kissing like her. he was a great kisser. and he wasn't weird and try to like feel up on me and shit. it was straight up makin out. it wasn't terrible, and i think we could have had a lot of fun. when he left, he said goodbye, and i said cheers, cunt. cuz in australia apparently cunts are your mates.
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Bluesday, April 10, 2018: Ángel Parra
Puedes matarme si quieres,
mi amor no lo matarás,
tengo la esperanza puesta
en volverte a conquistar,
que una vez te diste entera,
nunca lo podré olvidar,
amor.
Puedes quitarme el aire
que preciso pa' vivir
pero no podrás quitarme
la fuerza que nació en mí
cuando mujer, cuerpo y alma
me diste en el mes de abril,
amor.
Quítame la cordillera,
quítame también el mar,
pero no podrás quitarme
que te quiera siempre más:
lo que entre dos se ha sembrado
entre dos se ha de cuidar,
amor.
You can kill me if you want to,
but my love
you will not kill,
I have my hope put on
win you over again,
that once you gave yourself whole,
I could never forget it, Love.
You can take away from me
the air that I need for living,
but you can't take away
the force that was born in me when woman,
body and soul
You gave me in the month of April, love.
Take away from me the mountain range,
take away also the sea,
but you can't take away from me
that I will always love you more:
what between two
has been sown between two
has to be taking care of, love.
mi amor no lo matarás,
tengo la esperanza puesta
en volverte a conquistar,
que una vez te diste entera,
nunca lo podré olvidar,
amor.
Puedes quitarme el aire
que preciso pa' vivir
pero no podrás quitarme
la fuerza que nació en mí
cuando mujer, cuerpo y alma
me diste en el mes de abril,
amor.
Quítame la cordillera,
quítame también el mar,
pero no podrás quitarme
que te quiera siempre más:
lo que entre dos se ha sembrado
entre dos se ha de cuidar,
amor.
You can kill me if you want to,
but my love
you will not kill,
I have my hope put on
win you over again,
that once you gave yourself whole,
I could never forget it, Love.
You can take away from me
the air that I need for living,
but you can't take away
the force that was born in me when woman,
body and soul
You gave me in the month of April, love.
Take away from me the mountain range,
take away also the sea,
but you can't take away from me
that I will always love you more:
what between two
has been sown between two
has to be taking care of, love.
Saturday, January 27, 2018
Still here.
Hello. I think it's time for an update.
I've finally applied to grad school. Perhaps I will be a music therapist in 3 years. Took damn long enough.
I've been making trap beats on Garage Band. I got an iMac recently which is timely since my laptop only works half of the time if it wants. Trap beats. It's the easiest shit I've ever made. It's also probably the most fun I've ever had making music for the sake of making music.
I teach music six out of the seven days of the week. Today I did not go to work because I did not have the capacity to pretend. Not all days are like that. Today was.
I thought that leaving Chicago was the hardest thing I've done. I was wrong. Being successful at being sober is harder. I have better vision now. I can process things more clearly. My anxiety does not dictate my lack of productivity. But. I feel like a part of me is gone. Perhaps it wasn't part of my DNA like I thought.
Which is scary for me, I guess. As I enter a new era in my life, I'm discovering parts of my identity that I didn't even know were there. And while there's space to mix and match and be colorful, I also have to say goodbye to part of myself to make room for the rest of me. I think I tried to do that the first two years of living in Boston, but it was a cop-out. It was a shortcut. It was what I thought I had to do, not what I really wanted to do.
Well, here I am today. I'm getting paid to do something I'm not only good at, but I'm passionate about. I'm more confident in myself, though sometimes I still have doubts. I try to make the most of every day, most days, though I still have days where I don't go to work because I can't pretend. I'm not tortured, but I'm also not super elated about my present condition. I am grateful to have love, but I fear I'm not doing enough to hone and keep it alive.
I can't seem to think in metaphors anymore.... but I see the world in front of me and it's right there. It's real. It's more real than I've ever known it could be.
I think that gives me peace.
I've finally applied to grad school. Perhaps I will be a music therapist in 3 years. Took damn long enough.
I've been making trap beats on Garage Band. I got an iMac recently which is timely since my laptop only works half of the time if it wants. Trap beats. It's the easiest shit I've ever made. It's also probably the most fun I've ever had making music for the sake of making music.
I teach music six out of the seven days of the week. Today I did not go to work because I did not have the capacity to pretend. Not all days are like that. Today was.
I thought that leaving Chicago was the hardest thing I've done. I was wrong. Being successful at being sober is harder. I have better vision now. I can process things more clearly. My anxiety does not dictate my lack of productivity. But. I feel like a part of me is gone. Perhaps it wasn't part of my DNA like I thought.
Which is scary for me, I guess. As I enter a new era in my life, I'm discovering parts of my identity that I didn't even know were there. And while there's space to mix and match and be colorful, I also have to say goodbye to part of myself to make room for the rest of me. I think I tried to do that the first two years of living in Boston, but it was a cop-out. It was a shortcut. It was what I thought I had to do, not what I really wanted to do.
Well, here I am today. I'm getting paid to do something I'm not only good at, but I'm passionate about. I'm more confident in myself, though sometimes I still have doubts. I try to make the most of every day, most days, though I still have days where I don't go to work because I can't pretend. I'm not tortured, but I'm also not super elated about my present condition. I am grateful to have love, but I fear I'm not doing enough to hone and keep it alive.
I can't seem to think in metaphors anymore.... but I see the world in front of me and it's right there. It's real. It's more real than I've ever known it could be.
I think that gives me peace.
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