Composing, Whooping and Wiggling

Been so busy lately. Have a lot of work I need to do for the Big Show. One of the main things I need to do is compose and polish solos. I have to make a solo using those toys above. I'm not committed to the accordion though. It came with instructions on how to play 2 or 3 songs but I don't know if I can pull off a convincing My Darlin' Clementine by July 17th. Maybe I'll try something more conservative with the monkey chappa player and the frog thingies. 

But writing solos is so hard. That's one of those things that have never come easy for me. I sit down and get up and sit down again and I get one line out at a time--and very laboriously so. I suppose it will get easier someday. 

A friend of mine gave me a great gift a week ago. They're called Muse Cubes, and when you find yourself with writer's block, you pull out these babies and give them a roll. One cube has something you do with your body, and the other one has something you do with your voice. The instructions said that we're more creative when we're not standing still. And they've worked! I've howled and bended, sang and wiggled. It's helped! It lets me get out of my head for a minute and then return to work again with a fresh mind. They're one of the most thoughtful gifts I've gotten in a long time.

It's really get down and crunch time. Two rehearsals this week, plus taiko class and then a wild and wacky parade on the 4th. Craziness!

Break a Bachi

The picture about says it all. Broke my first bachi ever, and of course it was during a performance. I recovered quite nicely, but was aghast a minute later when I see this little girl in the front row playing with one of the dangerously sharp splinters. After the song I ran to pick up my poor little bachi and I exclaimed Abunai! to the girl, and even though she probably didn't understand me, she probably recognized the tone.

Crissy says that in Japan they throw all the broken bachi into a bonfire at the end of the year. Maybe we'll have to get one of those going soon.

Past Exhaustion

Woke up today at 5:30 am. When my clock radio went off, my eyes popped open and I jumped out of bed. I'd be a great firefighter. I woke up this early so that I could get ready to run my Stadium to Stadium 10k race. The race took us from the Giant's stadium to Candlestick park. It was a nice race, flat and fast for the most part. I wasn't in the mood to be fast this morning. I wasn't in the mood to run 6 miles at all. But I put this race on my calendar a while back, and since I paid for the darn race, I had to run it. It wasn't bad. I started out sluggish, and by the time my body reluctantly agreed to be running at such an early god-awful time on a Saturday morning, the 49'ers stadium was within sight. The only catch was that while, yes, the stadium was right there, they made us run around a gigantic parking lot. When I say gigantic, I mean gigantic in the biblical sense. When I've run my limit, my body starts getting loopy, and I feel like I'm going to pass out unless I lift my head and look towards the horizon. Only problem with this is that the horizon is filled with teeny-tiny runners very far away--a distance that I still have to run. But I hunkered down and finished the race without walking. They had a great after-party--free pasta and sports drinks and other goodies. I also signed up to be a marrow donor--one of those bucket-list to-do items.

Then it was off to a 5 hour rehearsal. Learning completely new stuff--less than a month out from the big show. I'm feeling the stress, believe me. And I am so utterly exhausted today. It's a good exhaustion, but enough to make me wipe my brow and hunker down and work and push harder than I thought. It's like running in a way. You think you can only go so far, but you lift your head, and accept the fact that the finish line is still a ways off, and just keep moving your feet. You see the great coliseum, you hear the immensity of all those gathered there. You think maybe you're going to pass out, you think your feet won't carry you. But they do. And you get there, even if you think you couldn't. Even if you think the chasm you must pass is biblical. This is going to be a great show. New pieces. Fabulous talent.  But this 5-hour rehearsal really kicked my butt. When I got home I fell (accidentally?) asleep for 15 minutes, only to jump up out of bed to go to the store to get dinner, and eh, while I was up and at it, I cleaned the house. Picked up my pile of dirty clothes, vacuumed the floors, cleaned the bathroom. I figured if I was so tired, then being even more tired wasn't going to hurt. 

I have so much I need to work on! How am I going to do it? 

Lift my head. Raise my eyes toward the coliseum.

Stillness

My body was tired today. I've been busy every night this week, and my mind is sharp and turning and filled with great big plans, but I have neglected listening to my body, this vessel that holds it all. I woke up exhausted this morning, but brushed that aside with cups of coffee. I put in a full day at work, and afterward went on my run. I contemplated skipping the run, but in my mind were all my plans and schedules, and I just had to get this run in. But the whole time my body protested. Protest is not unusual, and I can usually shake it off, but after a while, when my legs wouldn't deliver their usual kick, and my lungs wouldn't pull in enough air, and there was no bounce to my step, and running up a hill was completely out of the question, I finally realized: Hey, I'm kind of tired. I came home and had a dreamless nap, and woke up, my eyes tired and heavy, and reluctantly I have to admit a sort of defeat. I'm tired!

We push ourselves so hard. I want to run. I have a goal, a race, and I want to be prepared. We can do so much with our minds. We can plan. We can reason. Even when we push ourselves past the limits we have created for ourselves, it is a pleasant surprise when our bodies deliver. But I guess I need to listen to my body when it protests. I don't pamper myself. I need to take the time to sit still and breathe. That is hard to do when my mind is so filled with plans and goals. But this is an important part of being busy too, that stillness. I will have to practice that.

Overload

I am decidedly overloaded. But I'm not complaining. I have a ton of things piling up. The horizon is full. My show is coming up way faster than I want to think about. New songs to learn. Old songs to polish. Equipment to build. I need to make two stands for mokugyo, even though I've never played a mokugyo. I've also got a race 2 weekends from now, and ran my body into the ground the other day preparing for it. A parade. Gigs. Just finished a session of taiko classes, and a new one starts right up again after a week off. I am also a student, and just came back from a class tonight that challenged and thrilled me. I love that class. I love how everything I know gets turned completely upside down and shown to me from a new perspective. I've been given the great gift of time and space to practice my own stuff in--that is a wonderful thing, being able to bang on the drum as loud as I want, work on whatever I want. No noise complaints, no muffles on the drums. I need to really take advantage of that. I've been asked for help to build a drum and I hope I can be useful. I asked a new friend for a little of her time to talk about creativity, and was granted with a wonderful conversation that has me feeling inspired again about writing and reading and thinking about new projects. 

And now it's all about cramming all this in. Inhaling it all. A part of me feels absolutely overwhelmed and paralyzed. Another part is rearing to go. But one thing at a time--that's how I get through this.

Show

I've got a show coming up in six weeks. That seems like a long time, but it really isn't. I have a lot I need to work on. I need to compose a solo and learn a couple of new songs and really get Naori polished. I want to practice and practice, but sometimes I despair because I don't think the group wants to do that. We "rehearse." Which is fine. You get together, go over the parts of the songs, and then go home. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who wants to practice on stuff. I sit at home with my practice pad and metronome and review and drill and do it over and over and over again. I feel we really miss out on important dynamics-stuff when we don't do that sort of practice together. And with only one rehearsal a week how much can we really cover? It makes me feel lonely. I go in early before my classes on Tuesdays to drill and practice by myself. And then I go and practice for hours by myself in the chasm. Sigh.

Not that all that practice and alone-time is a bad thing. I've come to accept this thing about myself: I'm a really slow learner. I'm not calling it a learning disablity, but I have learned to accept the fact that I don't pick things up quickly, and I give myself a break about it. Instead of leaving a class feeling slow and overwhelmed, I just record it and then go over the recording later. I have to learn that way. I guess one of the great lessons I've learned about myself is actually learning about HOW I learn, and then finding a way to work with that. It's made things a whole lot easier, believe me.

But now it is getting toward crunch time. I want to put on a good show. My Dad said he'd come up for this. I'm debuting my new song. Ack, so much to learn and work on! It's that exciting and productive time. Need to ride this wave in.