Picture Day

Remember when you had picture day at school? My mom used to make me wear "cute" shirts and I had that god-awful "pixie" hair cut and teeth that were too big for my face. Today we had to take some publicity pics for taiko, and I was kinda having flashbacks to those picture days. I've never taken pictures for taiko before. I mean, I've had my picture taken while I was playing taiko, but I've never had to stand there with my arm up in the air (with Janet whispering over her shoulder, put some tension in that arm!!) and putting on a smile while I was only pretending to play. Anyhow, I grew into my teeth, my hair is short again, but less pixie, I put on lipstick (a rare event, indeed) and today the outfit was super cool, though a little motley since we all were wearing different costumes since our regular costumes aren't ready yet. We arranged a bunch of pretty drums around us (my Baby shime included--cause she's so pretty) and stood there while groupie Ed stood on a ladder with a high-res digi-cam. Actually, it was pretty cool to be standing there with our plastic smiles on taking publicity pics. That's not something you do every day, is it? Or in my case, ever.

Anyhow, after pics, it was back to work. We worked on Matsuri, and I have a solo, though now it seems a bit short, but long enough for the moment, and I think I played it ok, though it got stepped on before I finished, but eh, there will be other opportunities. And we worked on a new version of an old song. Janet and I worked it out on Wednesday, and we got through it today. Then we put the finishing touches on yet another song, and then we were done working out all our songs. Seven songs in our bag of tricks. Not bad, eh? Not bad considering we decided in December that we were going to do this show in March, and now it's only the end of January and we have all the songs worked out, and now all we need to do is work on projecting the energy of them and memorization and all that. When we were working on that big show for Emeryville Taiko it took from February to November, two or three times a week to get through about 6 or 7 songs. True, there is some overlap with the songs, but the arrangements are completely new, there is completely new material, and new solos. But I think that it's a sign of my progress and ability to handle new stuff, or at least completely new arrangements of familar stuff, or at the very least, to not totally freak out. I don't have the same kind of worry as I did before. It'll be ok. All I need to do is smile.