better

stop trying to MAKE things happen.
I don't want to be that person that is so caught it up in where I want to be that I don't appreciate what is now.

I want to Relish in what is now...i want to literally be in love with it. Whatever process I'm going through....or am I even going through a process. What point of arrival am I reaching toward?
When will I ever feel like I have accomplished or arrived? What is the goal?

If the goal is to be better than isn't that process never-ending?
How do I balance striving to be better while being content with what is now? All of this without being complacent, mediocre or settling.

I just want to be better...i'm sure things won't ever be "perfect" but I'll take solid. I'll take heartfelt and passionate, real and life changing...I'll take something that moves me and moves other people...

It doesn't have to be perfect but it has to have that sweet spot...it should feel good. My mind should be free and open...

i want to dwell in each moment...spend time within each second,  taking in all it has to offer and giving each all of me to each millisecond or mini increment of time. to be in the middle...between the cracks...to be one with the present.

Maybe that is what it means to be better...to be here. To offer complete attention to the here and now.

Limitless

There are soooo many ideas and so many things that can be done with music...I think I kinda wanna focus on writing string quartet, well just strings in general really ...

Between listening to and watching videos of Ebony Quartet (i am not gonna write the French name because I can't say it, I can barely spell it and I don't know where to find those other letters with accents over em and stuff) and Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile, and Stuart Duncan play I really feel like the ideas are endless. I'm really excited to try some stuff...

I used to think I was limited by particular numbers of instruments and types and stuff like quartet is only 4 strings, there are no drums and in my mind finding a way to arrange pop music in a way that is authentic to the styles of my songs and what not was a challenge...(long run on sentence and i'm not gonna edit it)...

Anyway...I am excited that there are so many different things I can do...I love the research part of writing, it doesn't stifle creativity it just opens up your ears and puts other stuff in you to expand your compositional palette.

I'm sleepy.

lol.

I don't have favorites.

Top 10 Albums of All time....
That's a heavy question, especially for a person like me who doesn't have favorites...i just don't think about stuff like that, i don't remember specific albums, songs, moments, details etc...i might remember how something made me feel or a particular idea that I got from a song but not really....i can't even think of what albums I've listened to from beginning to end.

I feel like people have this idea that musicians/artists should have this list of favorite songs, albums, influences etc....but I just don't have that.

I don't know the first album I ever purchased.
There is not a particular moment that I decided that I want to be a musician...there are things I can remember along the way but I always feel like I don't have a sufficient answer to questions like that.

And that is ok...who am I trying to be anyway. It doesn't make me any less of a musician just because I can't name my favorite albums...I often don't know what to listen to...like ever, there are tons of songs that are common to "everybody else" that I just don't know. But WHO is everybody else?

It doesn't matter...i'll just be whatever I am...i live under this little rock and God gave me the ability to make music, its what I'm supposed to do and it doesn't matter that I don't have favorites or particular influences etc.

I am me. Listen to my music and stop asking me questions.

It's not that I'm tired.

It's not that I'm tired...I just don't want to be in this same place anymore.
I know that I just got serious about really moving forward and creating ways to make this stuff happen and I completely understand that I can't necessarily "create" opportunities blah blah blah BUT I can be ready whenever opportunity comes.

I am working to get ready but I think now that I've started seriously putting things together I just want to skip steps and make it happen overnight... It doesn't have to take a long time though or whatever. It's just a matter of doing.

That's all.

Life

I am so happy to be alive today.
I love waking up and not having anything scheduled to do because then I can sit down and work on things that I want to work in. It is so lovely.

Toodleloo

Discipline.

What is discipline and when is it appropriate to bend and allow creativity and inspiration to take over?

I have this problem where sometimes I sit down to or I know I'm supposed to practice or write one thing and then something else comes up. Sometimes its something completely new or sometimes its an expansion of something else that I had started before.

I know deadlines and priorities exist but I'm wondering when I can just give into that other thing that is begging to have attention. To completely give into it without resisting instead of choosing not to finish it because of the things that I put on the list before it. I mean, I made the list.

I'm supposed be working on strings and I've been avoiding it. I'm kind of apprehensive about it, I sorta don't feel like it and I just am avoiding the time and tediousness of it all even though I know there will be parts of it that I enjoy.

URG...i do this all the time. I have all of these great ideas in my mind but I drag my feet on realizing it. I want it to be tangible, to exist out of my own mind. It can be such a chore to get it out though and that's what I avoid.

Slowly. one foot at a time.

What is IT?

Soooo..I don't know what planet I was living on for the past...it doesn't matter how long because it's shameful and embarrassing...but I was not practicing. I haven't had a serious practice schedule, routine, or whatever since my organ recital...so like a year almost...

IDK who I thought I was or what I thought I had gotten myself into...I'd been writing and performing a lot more which was cool...felt more like an artist blah blah blah but I had somehow convinced myself that playing was only something I wanted to do for fun and for some reason that translated into "you don't have to practice since you don't seriously want to be a player anyway"....

that is dumb...i've had a complex about playing piano probably since i've been playing well...let's just say since '05...when I went to the Oberlin Piano Festival and this man told me "some people have it and some people just don't"...even though I got angry and said that he didn't know what he was talking about..i really honestly believe that that stuck with me for a reason and while i feel like he was an idiot for saying that, I actually took it to heart...

Believing that some people have"it" and some don't have "it" just eliminates the idea that people have to work toward being good at something. While I believe people are given natural gifts and talents and abilities and what not...that only accounts for a small percentage of their "having IT".  So what is IT....are you doomed from the beginning of your existence if God just decided not to give you IT or does everybody just have an IT and it is your responsibility to mine out all of the IT that God has put inside of you.

I'm choosing to believe that we all have some genius in us...If I believe that I'm made in the image of God of course i have IT...the question is what will I do with it.

Anywho, my practice break is now over...this practicing really slowly and focused and deliberately thing with a specific goal in mind is at the the same time wonderful and horrible...it is difficult to focus my mind and too actually play this stuff slow enough for me to seriously think about it. I have the urge to play it fast but I won't...I won't play this piece (a piece that I wrote by the way so one would think that I would know how to play it but that is not always a given, plenty of people write things that they can't perform...Hell, composers right for all sorts of instruments, its ignorant to think that I should be a phenomenal performer of a work just because I came up with it.) fast until Sunday. For now I will play it RIDICULOUSLY SLOW and I WILL LOVE IT even though I HATE IT.

The other thing I realized is that practicing music and writing and just the whole experience of music, especially when alone, is about discovery and exploration. Its not about finding correct answers, its about finding what you think sounds good.

Love this journey. Now that I've actually accepted that I'm actually gonna be on it for real this time. Glad i woke up...now I gotta stay woke.