Our Creative Lives
A few weeks ago, my landlord sent (finally) the maintenance guy (Waffi) over to deal with a variety of problems in the apartment: an oven that wouldn’t light, a bathroom sink that wasn’t draining properly, a busted hinge on the hall closet door and a perpetually dripping faucet in the kitchen. We’d been living in a state of disrepair for several weeks. Waffi is a sweet but incredibly busy guy. Everyone wants a spot on his dance card and we’d been waiting a long…
Today I’m writing about other people and how they impact our creative lives. Of course, “other people” is a broad swatch. It can include friends, fans, people who buy our products/services, family, “the competition,” mentors, audience members and possibly, the crazy next-door neighbor. Unless you’re living and creating in some isolated spot far up in the Himalayas, other people are going to eventually wander into your creative landscape in one way or another. So how do they affect what you do? Do they inspire…
It’s actually the “Caribbean Seasoned Roast Beef Torta Sandwich"– a monster of a feed with a whopping 10 ounces of beef on a ginormous bun, topped with a garden of cilantro and enough jalapeño peppers to kick you from here to Texas and back. It’s the ultimate gastronomic bliss-out for meat eaters. And oh yeah, I’m a vegetarian of over 20 years now. Did I ever think I’d be writing about a roast beef sandwich on my blog? Er, no. So why am…
It was around this time last year that I started work on my e-book about the business of vocal jazz. I wrote diligently throughout the summer and by fall, I’d completed the first draft. The plan was to do rewrites over the course of the winter, to tape the video segments for the book and to ultimately release the book in late winter/early spring of this year. But things didn’t exactly go that way. In the early part of November, one of my freelance clients…
The other day I was talking to a fellow musician who had recently experienced a disappointment on the career front. She was understandably upset and was deep in that very familiar pit of lamenting, second-guessing and self-doubt. She was questioning her worth as a musician and contemplating as to whether or not she should continue. I dangled my legs over the side of the pit and peered down. God, I’ve so been there. My friend continued her devastating query, moving on to skepticism…
Courage According to the Cowardly Lion, courage is “what makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist or the dusky dusk.” John Wayne said, “Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.” And the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “mental or moral strength to venture, persevere and withstand danger, fear or difficulty.” Clearly, courage is a big subject. I think about it a lot. I have spent the better part of my life standing on the edge of a high dive…
Lately, I’ve been slammed: psycho slammed. I’m working on a sizable writing job that will pretty much go until the end of the year. I’ve got another big ass job for one of my regular freelance clients. On top of these demands, I’ve been gigging a lot and also just trying to stay on top the usual life stuff of being a mom, driving the carpool, feeding the teen animals and paying the bills on time. And of course, there’s the added frenzy…
Today’s post is about going the distance. Let’s face it: the universe does not always shower us with inspiration and flowers on a daily or, sometimes, even weekly basis. Every artist that I know occasionally goes through periods of seeming stagnation; long stretches of waiting for the phone to ring or the grant monies to come through; uncomfortable dry patches with no gigs in sight and no love from the club owners that are normally happy to book you; or an abysmally slow month…
Over the weekend, I was writing in mud. I spent over seven hours in front of my computer, toiling away on something that should have taken me an hour and a half or two hours to finish. I battled with every word, for the most part unsuccessfully. They stood stubbornly in the distance, flipping me the middle finger. It’s actually been like this for about a week now. I keep pushing down on the gas pedal. The gears grind and grind but I can’t…
Fear appears to be an ongoing theme in the lives of many creative people, or so it would seem judging from what I see out on the blogosphere. On any given day, I come across multiple posts on this topic. I’ve certainly written about it myself a time or two. (Here and here.) For as much as we go on and on about it, fear remains a curious challenge for most of us. We are perpetually trembling. SO, WHAT ARE WE SO AFRAID OF ANYWAY?…
