It's been a crap couple of days. Breakthrough anxiety, indecisiveness, gloom, and exhaustion. Coupled with having my studio in pieces pending a trip to IKEA for some shelves for a new workstation, so there's no art happening.

I've given myself permission to take the day off of feeling bad about not doing anything hugely productive (like go to IKEA alone on transit to bring shelves home on a dolly) so maybe I can reset energy levels and expectations. 

High functioning but sometimes crash hard.

Yes, I've been taking my meds. I still think my dose is right because some days I feel over medicated and other days I have crashes so it's probably a good balance overall? Though I will probably talk to my doctor about being able to self regulate between 10mg and 20mg when I next see her. I think I have the self awareness (and the daily mood log habit) to manage my dose a little. We'll see.

I did a lot of volunteering with the SummerWorks performance festival earlier in the week and at the end of last week and it was great fun and I got a lot of positive feedback. But also it was pretty exhausting, mostly standing, and with all the walking to/from (about 4km each way). So there's a plausible reason for the exhaustion. 

Still, it sucks to wake up and have breakfast and want to go right back to bed. Instead I'm having coffee, typing this, and probably read or game later.

Self care.

Oops, I forgot to take a picture before enjoying.

Ingredients

1 red rose black tea bag

1/4 teaspoon fresh-grated nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon fresh-grated ginger

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

2-3 cloves

1 scant handful almonds

A few raisins

1 teaspoon brown sugar

Instructions

Bring a mug's worth of water, less an inch or so, to a boil. Steep the tea for a few minutes.

Pour the tea and everything else into the vitamix.

Run a smoothie cycle.

Pour into mug.

Enjoy.

Notes

Tastes as good as a "chai latte" and who the hell knows how much sugar (and perhaps fat?) is in those.

If you haven't worked with whole nutmegs before, the "small holes" side of any grater can handle it just fine. Ditto grating fresh ginger.

Mnemonic

Cinnamon and ginger, nutmeg and cloves

That's what gave me this shiny red nose.

Eight bins. 

After my sister Hope had a harrowing and nearly life-ending medical episode lasting from Christmas to March, she resolved that the whole family should get together.  She elected to hold this at York Beach, Maine.

Now, York Beach is your typical beach town. Lots of overpriced goods, expensive restaurants, family amusements and speed traps. (15 MPH over the limit, $230. I'm not bitter, really.) Other than being located in Maine and the water being hypothermia-inducingly cold, you could plop it down in any state from New Hampshire to Florida and the only way you would be able to tell would be the accent.

This is the coast north of Short Sands. The Union Bluff Hotel has been in business since 1868. Real estate along the Maine coast is just as crazy as anywhere else along the coast.  Every building there probably goes for over a million.

So hey, we made pickles again today.

Last weekend, d had reserved a half bushel of #2 cukes from the farmer's market vendor who also has all the delicious herbs (including dill), price $30. We picked it up this morning, along with some dill flowers. Instead of buying garlic from the market, I got pre-peeled cloves from the Korean grocer. Easy that way to be sure they weren't moldy.

So for each 3 litres of pickles (we made 7+) I used

• 6-8 dill stalks
• 4 smashed garlic cloves
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 tsp mustard seeds
• 1 aniseed star
• 1/2 tsp peppercorns
• 1 bag of cheap black tea (for tannins)

One batch had a couple hot chiles chopped up and tossed in. Another han double the garlic. Another had double mustard.

These are submerged in 5% brine and sitting in the closet. I also saved some brine from the last batch and "started" them with a splash of that culture.

It was a team effort. K did a lot of cuke trimming and washing, and also cut down the plastic trays we're using to push the cukes under water. D cut and trimmed and ran to the store for more mustard. All I really did was pack the bins, and do a little washing. It's so much easier with a team. And everyone has an investment in the food they'll later enjoy.

With better process and ingredients that aren't mouldy, I'm reasonably sure we won't lose any to infection this year but I guess we'll find out!

This episode was based on a single tweet - details here.

(I wrote this on Sunday, 8/4. It's really long. There's a TL;DR at the end.)

Last night (Saturday, 8/3) was the final night of The Rock Orchestra's BeatleFest 2019.  BeatleFest (or, our event we call BeatleFest) is where our group of anywhere from 7-40 musicians play every single Beatles song (all 215 of them) in the order they were released, over a series of six consecutive nights. I equate it with running a marathon, but instead of running 26.2 miles on the streets of Boston, we're doing it on a tightrope. We do our damndest to recreate these songs note-for-note, as best as we possibly can without the help of studio magic... though we also really try to recreate those studio sounds live as best we can, too. 

Out of 215 songs, I'm only tacet (not doing anything) on about 7 or 8 total.

For the show, I'm the 3rd singer (I sing the unintuitive harmony parts since I'm a choir nerd). I'm also the "if you get stuck vocally, Jill's got you," and this can even be in the middle of a song. Joe might give me a look and I know to cover (or double) a particularly high part, or I might hear a harmony and notice two people singing the same part, or I might see that someone forgot to sing, so I jump to the missing part on the fly. Or we might have given a female guest singer a song that goes too low for her, so I'll double those basement notes to give her support. Backstage I'm also in charge of running/checking harmonies for that night's tricky spots. I absolutely love getting to do this stuff. It keeps me on my toes, and I secretly love feeling helpful or being able to fix stuff in a pinch... it's been a weird thing of mine since I was a really little kid. 

In addition to my vocal duties, I'm also the main percussionist (shakers, tambourines, maracas, casaba, etc) and one of the two 'aux-players' -- which means if there's an instrument we don't have covered either because nobody knows how to play it (see Indian tanpura and swarmindal) or everyone else is too busy to cover it (hello 2nd drums all over Abbey Road, or organ on Savoy Truffle), I figure it out. Up on my platform I have a billion nouns: everything from a drumset, a glockenspiel, soprano recorder, kazoos, Korg Triton keyboard, motorcycle exhaust pipes (for 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer,' 'Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey,' and for the alarm clock in 'A Day in the Life' when played with a different beater), an Ableton Live rig (for the scant sound effects we can't recreate live, (like the animals at the beginning/end of 'Good Morning, Good Morning') in addition to the usual tambourines and shakers and a bazillion other percussion toys.

Matt, however, is the real MVP aux-guy... he covers all of the melodic extra instruments, playing everything from extra piano, bass, guitar, synth, bari, alto, and soprano saxes, secondary percussion, plus backing vocals when we need four voices. He's a monster!  It's a lot of fun going through our music at home and saying stuff like, "Wait, what do you do on 'Savoy Truffle?'" "I used to play the electric organ part, but now I'm gonna play bari sax. Can you cover the organ now?" "Yup! On it!" 

My dear friend from college, Stefan, who specializes in Medieval and Renaissance instruments and runs Phoenix' hella-awesome early music group Bartholomew Faire (of which I am an alum), flew out from Arizona again this year to help us play the Indian-based songs using his assortment of unusual ancient instruments. He played hurdy-gurdy on most of the Indian tunes (Within You Without You), and he also took the recorder solo on Fool on the Hill, and he even played a crumhorn (that melodic buzzy sound) on 'Baby You're a Rich Man.'  It was so wonderful having him stay with us again-- he is the perfect house guest: cheerful, low-maintenance, a late sleeper like us, funny as hell, self-sufficient, up for anything, friendly with all of the other musicians, and good for reminiscing, too. Anyway, I was sad dropping him off at the airport today. 

This is the second year of the event, and you can tell we've refined things a bit. From a personal perspective, I was able to streamline all of my percussion gear thanks to some new racks, stands, and rack-mountable versions of some of my usual percussion instruments, so I wasn't the thing holding us up between songs like I sometimes was in 2018. I also had more room on my platform this year, so I had everything I needed within easy reach, as opposed to last year where I had to (for example) drag out and then put away a floor tom or a snare and hi-hat every time I played them. 

I also added a footer to the last page of every song with the name of the next song and what I play on it... that way as we're playing the last chunk of a song I can quickly eyeball where my next batch of instruments are, and how I'll transition to them from what I'm currently doing. Why put the tambourine down if I need it at the top of the next song?

Performance-wise, Night 4 (aka "the long night") was probably my favorite-- that's the only night where we play 3 albums instead of just two (Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, and Magical Mystery Tour), though the final Night 6 (Abbey Road and Let It Be, as well as the singles and Past Masters from that year, e.g., "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)") was a very very close second.  My own personal roughest night was Night 5 (The Beatles (aka The White Album)), because I whiffed a harmony or two (in my defense, I was sight-reading one of them after I got a nod on stage to cover it), but it was still a hell of a fun night. Good GAWD how I love recreating 'Revolution No. 9' live. It's a riot!

Once again, like last year, I got totally emotional and lost my shit during "A Day in the Life."  Good god, it's an overwhelming magical brain explosion to play it live with a string section, horn section, and with all of these people I just love so much. At one point I took out my in-ear monitors so I could hear the sound with my 'real ears' and holy mother of crap, it's just stupendous. Plus, it's cool as hell seeing the younger folks in the string section fall in love with The Beatles. 

Physically, this year was a bit rougher than last year. I was getting woefully low on iron in May, and the earliest I could get in for an infusion was the morning of Day 2 of BeatleFest. I did BeatleFest last year sans iron and the crash afterwards was fucking awful, so I decided I'd rather get the infusion on a performance day and run the risk of playing percussion with a freshly sporked arm, because holding off was not a healthy option. Besides, the brain fog was getting bad, and I needed to be on my A-game for this thing.  Infused iron takes about 2 days to fully absorb, and I was excited to be feeling better by Night 4 (the big night).  The infusion went smoothly, and as expected, I felt better every 8 hours or so.   (Speaking of my infusion, I just wanted to jot this down so I remember it: I'm very happy to be back at the hospital's Ambulatory Infusion center as I did from 2006-2010 as opposed to getting my treatment at the Cancer Center as I'd been since about 2011. Contrary to what you might expect, the care is just somehow better and cooler at Ambulatory Infusion than at the Cancer Center. Sure, the Cancer Center has the therapy doggos and the VR goggles of peaceful scenes, but it's still somehow impersonal and production-line-ish; and the blare of TVs blasting The View or whatever is so fucking annoying and inescapable. Also, the Cancer Center's specialty is chemo, not iron infusions, and they actually do iron infusions kinda stupidly backwards there. So yeah, I was happy to be back to the infusion center.)

By Wednesday morning my brain fog had significantly lifted, and my skin sans makeup was no longer corpse-guppy-translucent. :-)

Matt and I both agreed that this year, our biggest challenge was being able to see our goddamn music. It's like in the last 365 days our eyesight has hit that tipping point where music on a stand or tablet is too far away for reading glasses but too close for our usual distance glasses. It might be time to talk to our eye doctor for musician glasses for that middle kinda sheet music distance.

Speaking of sheet music, my magical tablet worked out perfectly-- not a single glitch during the show -- and HOLY BALLS was it a total, total game changer. It's amazing not having to turn paper pages and instead just tap a foot pedal. I was in heaven. It saved SO much time and so many headaches! I kept my paper sheet-music binders on stage juuuuust in case my tablet exploded, but I never needed it for a second. Whew!

We went back to the theater around 12:30pm today to load out the rest of our gear and break down the platforms, and that was pretty sad.  As soon as we got home, we unloaded the car and then immediately loaded it up with Stefan's stuff and then I brought him to the airport. I just walked in a moment ago, and the house is eeeeeeerily quiet and calm. Nobody's rushing around, nobody's woodshedding parts last minute or getting music in order, figuring out what to wear, etc etc etc.  It's kinda nice? I think?

I am pretty distracted by how much my hands really hurt, though. They hurt during the shows, but the combination of joy + adrenaline made it ignorable. But walking off the stage they'd be throbbing. Right now they are still distractingly painful; neither turmeric nor Advil even takes the edge off.  A few years ago I bought a faithful replica of a late 60s-era skinless tambourine that sounds amaaaaazing, but also weighs about 98523823 pounds. Playing fast 16ths on that thing song after song after song really did a number on my right hand from having to grip it so tightly to maintain good control. My metacarpals are on fire as are the muscles in the meat of my palm. Holding things, turning doorknobs, and just generally using my fingers hurts pretty damn good.  But also just doing nothing hurts.  Typing sucks too, but I really want to write this all down, so fuck it. 

In May when we played "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" twice in one day, I strained my right bicep and tricep from that goddamn tambourine, and that's when I became a disciple of KT Tape. Starting on Night 4 of BeatleFest I taped my arm and it really did help tremendously (and had the added bonus of reducing under-arm flab wiggle! Yay!). I may try taping my hand later. 

In some screwed up way, having my body hurt after BeatleFest somehow feels good; like I have evidence that I gave it my all. I'm sure a better, healthier measure of success would be an internal feeling of the satisfaction of a job well done, but whatevz.

I've typed way too much. 

===========================

TL;DR: BeatleFest 2019 was awesome. My tablet rocked; taping my arm helped a lot; getting an iron infusion was smart; I fucked up my hands but I somehow like it? I love getting to make music, especially with these people. I can't wait until next year. 

My local writers' guild has opened this year's Mentorship Program for Emerging Writers, for "members in good standing with a substantial work-in-progress in any genre." The program is free, but limited to a handful of participants. The first round of panel evaluation is ten pages of the manuscript, due mid-August. I've polished the first ten of my Chapter One, and sent it to some folks for feedback. Now I'm anxious. Approaching "clutched." Not many people see my work, fewer still when it's "in progress."

A second evaluation round may call for the remainder of the work. I have about 40k uneven first draft words toward what I expect is a 90k novel, and there's no way I can finish it by the end of August (when selected apprentices will be notified or additional materials requested). Still, I understand a couple folks got in last year with fewer, one with only 12k done. I'll be shoring up those 40k and reworking my outline (it needs help). But I'm already biting my nails, and haven't even officially submitted my application.

It doesn't help that I'm writing genre fiction: a superhero memoir. (Three things in which I have no direct prior experience - writing a novel, writing a memoir, and being a superhero.) I'm hoping the panel can find value in such a superficially silly opus. I'm aiming for seriocomic semi-literary meditative action, whatever the hell that is.

I'm already months past my self-imposed deadline for the first draft. This "block" is complicated, but largely a case of "I need a map." I have a programmer's brain; I code to spec, architect to solve a specific problem or meet a specific need. Give me a problem, I'll work it. Tell me what should appear in a paragraph, a line of dialogue, a scene, I'll write it. But crafting a novel is both the code (the prose) AND the spec (the story, characters, et al). Turns out, I'm not very good at "story." (Or probably quibbling things like characterization, pacing, dialogue, etc.)

I spent a lot of 2017 and 2018 diving into theories of narrative structure, from the good-ol' Hero's Journey (and its derivatives) through Shawn Coyne's Story Grid to John Truby's The Anatomy of Story, and pretty much everything between and adjacent.  Thing is, I've been framing this novel as a memoir, where such forms and formulae start to break down. My research into memoir, fictional or otherwise, hasn't been effective or revealing. I don't want to write formulaic hack shit (looking at you, Dan Brown), but dammit, maybe that's what I need to do to get moving? Ugh.

A degree program has crossed my mind. The local university offers an MFA, and on the (comparatively) cheap side for provincial residents. I'd hope such a program would sharpen my critical/analytical skills, help hone prose technique, and give feedback in the form of student and teacher reviews of submitted work. But will it? Can it?

So this mentorship program may be the ticket. It's only five months, it's free, it's personalized. Maybe it'd be enough to finish this thing, maybe enough to learn how to do the next one. If nothing else, maybe it would indicate whether an MFA would be worthwhile.

But if I don't get in or it doesn't really work for me, well... Hell. The whole "writing" thing may be on the table here. Guess I could always get back into coding. Become the stevedore I never always wanted to be. Say "good morning" to shoppers at a Mega-Lo-Mart.

It doesn't help that I'm such a snob about prose, especially mine. This is my other big "block." First drafts suck monster moosecock. Writing one is like practicing the piano, something else I could never stand long enough to benefit from. It's just constant failure until it's not. Practice sucks. Failure sucks. Not being good enough to do something well sucks. I want to write crystalline, erudite, heart-spearing prose to make the angels weep and the scholars delve and the poets green and all humans say, "yes, yes - perfection." You know, like no one ever has, ever.

I turn my nose up at so much stuff out there because it's not "smart" enough, not "literary." Bear in mind I read SF/F almost exclusively, so the stable is already small. Gene Wolfe, Tanith Lee, Angela Carter, Minister Faust, N. K. Jemison, Steven Erickson, even Clive Barker...yes. But I don't even like GRRM's prose enough to read GoT, let alone Anne Rice or S. King or literally most genre authors. I know I'm missing out on some great storytelling. I know I should suck it up and learn from what they obviously do so well, but...grrrrrrrrrr.

This bit crossed my path while writing this very post, from a free ebook offer - here's the description on Amazon:

A black-ops agency discovers hieroglyph-covered pyramids on Jupiter's moon Callisto. The government forcibly taps rebel archeologist Kaden Jaxx with only two instructions: 1) decode the ancient writings and 2) keep his overactive mouth shut...or else. But what if the writing spells out an ancient prophecy for Earth’s doom?

Seriously? "Rebel archaeologist?" "Kaden Jaxx?" Black ops on a moon? It's like Stargate fan-fic for a high school assignment. The name's even better. I mean worse. No, I won't share it here.

But you'll notice: that's on Amazon.

I'm not.

So who's the real tool here?

Maybe the mentorship program can teach me to get off my high horse long enough to write the fucking thing. I can always fix it later, right?

Right?

I took my 8 year old to Richmond Virgina for a summer roadtrip. We went to the Virginia Fine Arts Museum there - it's free and I'm a big fan.

While in the classical European gallery highlighting 17th and 18th century paintings and tapestries , we see this painting which is clearly not like the others.  So the kiddo asks about it.

I talk to her about how most of the portrait painting here are of (or for) Old Rich Dead White dudes, so a modern artist decided to paint a portrait of a dude who isn't old rich and dead. And we talked a bit about the whys and whatfors.

In the same gallery was this small painting. 

To which my kid exclaimed, "Look mom, and Old Rich Dead White Dog!"

I love that kid.

I was going to take my old Huffy mountain bike to the local shop to get a tune-up, as i hadn't ridden it in 4 years and i've been itching to get back on the horse since GBS.  As we walked past our neighbor's house, he mentioned that he had a road bike he wanted to sell.  I'd wanted to move on from the Huffy, because it's heavy and i'm just not as strong as i used to be, so i ended up buying his bike pretty much on the spot, putting the Huffy back in the Garage of Doom, and taking the new bike to the shop instead.

I picked it up today and rode it for the first time.  It'll take a little while to get used to the new handlebars, but the main obstacle is keeping my head raised, which causes my neck muscles to quickly get very sore. This will no doubt be the primary topic when i next see my physical therapist (whom i started to see recently for fine-tuning my remaining minor issues, mainly my shoulders).