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The process of Digging out
Sep. 17th, 2024 10:59 pmSo, I've got a couple of things I've been looking for, and it's reaching the point where I'm not going to take it, anymore. So I decided that in an effort to eliminate one very possible place where that stuff could be (I already checked one potential location, and it wasn't there, so I've got a huge box in my meditation/music space that I'll have to deal with before long, because, see below.
No luck so far, and I'm down to two boxes. I want this done, because the things out of that closet become things in the way, and I want to do things in the other half of the closet (dual sliding doors, so unless I dedorrify it, which I don't want to do, it's one side or the other at a time). And yes, theoretically I could open both of them half way, but that means I'd have two spaces I couldn't use to do much inside of either one. And there's the problem of two musical keyboards in cases (okay, one is in a gig bag) and three other keyboard cases plus my guitar hard shell case in the way of that side of the closet. I also want to get rid of the pseudo-hoarder trails in that room, so the project is going to get finished as soon as I can, which means unless something goes off the proverbial rails I'm going to go through those boxes tomorrow, and I hope the stuff I'm looking for is in there. If not, it's the garage, and it's not garage weather, and also, I'm going to need a spotter for that kind of thing so if I damage myself there's a witness and someone to get me to the ER.
So, since I'm dragging this post out and someone reading this would say "Hey, Blonde Blind Broad, get on with it", I've made progress, though some of it might be more of an issue than I wanted it to be. I've dropped the number of boxes that will go back in that closet by three. One of them sort of came apart as I was returning it to staging, and I incorporated the contents into a cleared out box, but there's been a lowering of the number of boxes that will Douglas McArthur into the closet.
In this, I've encountered a couple of things that I want to leave my home and never return. First off, I've got a sealed in the plastic set of Blum's runes, along with that book he wrote. I got them at a holiday gift exchange, and I haven't been back to one where people who didn't have them or would want them were at. Make them go away. If you've got someone you know who's said they wanted to learn the runes, or at least this Czech variant of using them as codified in the late 1800's, Grant their wish and also grant me the space they're taking up right now. I've also got a ceiling fan globe. It's nothing special, but if someone needs it or wants one let me know and it's yours. Note that me shipping it to you isn't in the cards, and Texas DPS has banned me from driving sans eyesight (judgey, aren't they?) so it's going to be you fly or you buy. And I've got two more boxes, who knows what'll show up in that deepest darkest bottom of my closet? And who knows what I decide is no longer mine to deal with?
The urgency is that I've figured out a way to resolve a little issue I've been having centering around space dynamics in my live rig and my brain has gifted me with an answer; it can be nice that way sometimes. But it means I need to find a couple of things, and I'm going to make sure they get found and placed with other things so they can swap recipes and talk shop with each other when I'm not using them, and they'll be where I have a far better hope of finding them.
I have a piece of music that doesn't much go anywhere right now -- it's not bad, and there's some nice chord work in that B section, but the A and B sections repeat three times -- I realized that it needs something, like, another section. That'll turn the form from ABABAB to ABABCAB. I know what I'm going to do for that section, and if anyone really wants me to spell out the chords I can do it, but it'll take me a few minutes to juggle pitches and find what chords are implied by the three notes, one of which is a static pedal point. The cool thing about this is that there's a possibility the guitarist I work with can drop in some great variants, all while I can play a solo (this tune has Harmon muted trumpet as the melody instrument, though it's more added texture than any sort of cohesive melody), and stick to the key from the non-moving pedal point, and my guitarist (well, to be honest, he's his guitarist, but he lets me borrow him for music making sometimes) can get interesting with his chords. I know some of that may be Greek to you, and it's not important unless you're someone who's into music theory things. But this has sparked an interest in working on the album again -- I'm thinking it's been long enough since we started work on it in 1988, it's time to get it recorded. Oh, and for musicians reading this, this is exactly what we did for part of Jazz Theory class, use specific pitches to build scales and chords from them; It'll be interesting to use those chops again.
This means we'll need some rehearsing, and that means the room needs to be cleared out, and that means the closet exploration needs to get done to clear that space. Also, my trumpet is in that other closet and I want to practice it (though Dixie whines at me if I don't use a whisper mute), and I also want to get aa computer out of that side so I can do something about all the floppy discs I want to get content off of.
I also updated my tasks spreadsheet, which seems to be more a study in procrastination than anything else, but there's also some resource issues (like, for instance, money, time, tools, or skill) so it's not all procrastinating.
The big issue with my live rig is that I can't do any programming -- my big keyboard has a dead battery, and it's big, as in, 76 pounds big. The access panel is on the bottom too. Also, my other keyboard has an editor that doesn't talk to my screen reader in polite ways (or maybe the impolite comments are coming from me), so I can't program that one either, and for some of the stuff I want to do that's kind of vital. It's even more vital if I do a gig, because right now my rig isn't ready for that level of humiliation (due to gear issues more than idea issues).
Oh, and the standard disclaimer, if someone local wants to help me with any of this (and other things too, because that isn't all of the frustrations in that arena), I'll appreciate your assistance, but to steal a title of an Andy Summers and Robert Fripp album, I advance masked. I also want folks coming into my house to do so too, because to be blunt, y'all are plague rats for those of us with immune system issues, as my three week stay in the hospital demonstrated last summer.
Back to the tasks spreadsheet, I was updating deadlines and I realized that I had tunes slated for the album that we have no intention playing for that album. Two vocal pieces got the axe, which is good because this is an instrumental project and they're both already slated for potential albums. Another one is a jazz standard, and this album is going to be atypical enough that it doesn't fit. The last tune is something the guitarist wrote, and he's got it on something he did, because yeah, he's the kind of guy who'd go on without me. That's okay, because I've gone on without him too, so we're even. So, if I crank out another tune that I've been toying with for a very long time, and include another piece that fits the album concept, I'm still two pieces short. I've got a healthy opus list, so I can check for something else for those two spots, but we may come up with something together that uses a lot of looper tricks to get way textural.
And throughout all of this, I'm still writing. I'm sure the current modern fantasy novel can hit 50k words, and I prefer longer stuff, so I'm thinking of some short fiction to fill out the page count, the kind of things that don't need longer works.
And why am I up writing this as late as it is? A prescription snafu means that I won't get a refill on my sleep meds until, at best, four days from now. So I have to run my batteries down to the point that I fall over instead of getting lulled to sleep like I usually do. FWP, of course, but perspective means that ignoring other people's struggles is problematic, but downgrading or dismissing someone else's is also bad, even if it's my problem (one of you has given me both the steely gaze and the shaking finger feedback on me minimizing my challenging opportunities, and I like to learn from my mistakes ,so I try to keep what I'm dealing with in mind with the broader experience of others.
Oh, and I got nailed by a dream last night, or to be more accurate, someone in a dream. That can be somewhat frustrating
One more thing -- just to verify, my profile picture is a sprite, unclothed but not flashing anything, sitting with her legs pulled up to her chest, in profile, right? I want to describe it and also add a couple of pictures to my profile.
Sleep well, and I'll try to also.
No luck so far, and I'm down to two boxes. I want this done, because the things out of that closet become things in the way, and I want to do things in the other half of the closet (dual sliding doors, so unless I dedorrify it, which I don't want to do, it's one side or the other at a time). And yes, theoretically I could open both of them half way, but that means I'd have two spaces I couldn't use to do much inside of either one. And there's the problem of two musical keyboards in cases (okay, one is in a gig bag) and three other keyboard cases plus my guitar hard shell case in the way of that side of the closet. I also want to get rid of the pseudo-hoarder trails in that room, so the project is going to get finished as soon as I can, which means unless something goes off the proverbial rails I'm going to go through those boxes tomorrow, and I hope the stuff I'm looking for is in there. If not, it's the garage, and it's not garage weather, and also, I'm going to need a spotter for that kind of thing so if I damage myself there's a witness and someone to get me to the ER.
So, since I'm dragging this post out and someone reading this would say "Hey, Blonde Blind Broad, get on with it", I've made progress, though some of it might be more of an issue than I wanted it to be. I've dropped the number of boxes that will go back in that closet by three. One of them sort of came apart as I was returning it to staging, and I incorporated the contents into a cleared out box, but there's been a lowering of the number of boxes that will Douglas McArthur into the closet.
In this, I've encountered a couple of things that I want to leave my home and never return. First off, I've got a sealed in the plastic set of Blum's runes, along with that book he wrote. I got them at a holiday gift exchange, and I haven't been back to one where people who didn't have them or would want them were at. Make them go away. If you've got someone you know who's said they wanted to learn the runes, or at least this Czech variant of using them as codified in the late 1800's, Grant their wish and also grant me the space they're taking up right now. I've also got a ceiling fan globe. It's nothing special, but if someone needs it or wants one let me know and it's yours. Note that me shipping it to you isn't in the cards, and Texas DPS has banned me from driving sans eyesight (judgey, aren't they?) so it's going to be you fly or you buy. And I've got two more boxes, who knows what'll show up in that deepest darkest bottom of my closet? And who knows what I decide is no longer mine to deal with?
The urgency is that I've figured out a way to resolve a little issue I've been having centering around space dynamics in my live rig and my brain has gifted me with an answer; it can be nice that way sometimes. But it means I need to find a couple of things, and I'm going to make sure they get found and placed with other things so they can swap recipes and talk shop with each other when I'm not using them, and they'll be where I have a far better hope of finding them.
I have a piece of music that doesn't much go anywhere right now -- it's not bad, and there's some nice chord work in that B section, but the A and B sections repeat three times -- I realized that it needs something, like, another section. That'll turn the form from ABABAB to ABABCAB. I know what I'm going to do for that section, and if anyone really wants me to spell out the chords I can do it, but it'll take me a few minutes to juggle pitches and find what chords are implied by the three notes, one of which is a static pedal point. The cool thing about this is that there's a possibility the guitarist I work with can drop in some great variants, all while I can play a solo (this tune has Harmon muted trumpet as the melody instrument, though it's more added texture than any sort of cohesive melody), and stick to the key from the non-moving pedal point, and my guitarist (well, to be honest, he's his guitarist, but he lets me borrow him for music making sometimes) can get interesting with his chords. I know some of that may be Greek to you, and it's not important unless you're someone who's into music theory things. But this has sparked an interest in working on the album again -- I'm thinking it's been long enough since we started work on it in 1988, it's time to get it recorded. Oh, and for musicians reading this, this is exactly what we did for part of Jazz Theory class, use specific pitches to build scales and chords from them; It'll be interesting to use those chops again.
This means we'll need some rehearsing, and that means the room needs to be cleared out, and that means the closet exploration needs to get done to clear that space. Also, my trumpet is in that other closet and I want to practice it (though Dixie whines at me if I don't use a whisper mute), and I also want to get aa computer out of that side so I can do something about all the floppy discs I want to get content off of.
I also updated my tasks spreadsheet, which seems to be more a study in procrastination than anything else, but there's also some resource issues (like, for instance, money, time, tools, or skill) so it's not all procrastinating.
The big issue with my live rig is that I can't do any programming -- my big keyboard has a dead battery, and it's big, as in, 76 pounds big. The access panel is on the bottom too. Also, my other keyboard has an editor that doesn't talk to my screen reader in polite ways (or maybe the impolite comments are coming from me), so I can't program that one either, and for some of the stuff I want to do that's kind of vital. It's even more vital if I do a gig, because right now my rig isn't ready for that level of humiliation (due to gear issues more than idea issues).
Oh, and the standard disclaimer, if someone local wants to help me with any of this (and other things too, because that isn't all of the frustrations in that arena), I'll appreciate your assistance, but to steal a title of an Andy Summers and Robert Fripp album, I advance masked. I also want folks coming into my house to do so too, because to be blunt, y'all are plague rats for those of us with immune system issues, as my three week stay in the hospital demonstrated last summer.
Back to the tasks spreadsheet, I was updating deadlines and I realized that I had tunes slated for the album that we have no intention playing for that album. Two vocal pieces got the axe, which is good because this is an instrumental project and they're both already slated for potential albums. Another one is a jazz standard, and this album is going to be atypical enough that it doesn't fit. The last tune is something the guitarist wrote, and he's got it on something he did, because yeah, he's the kind of guy who'd go on without me. That's okay, because I've gone on without him too, so we're even. So, if I crank out another tune that I've been toying with for a very long time, and include another piece that fits the album concept, I'm still two pieces short. I've got a healthy opus list, so I can check for something else for those two spots, but we may come up with something together that uses a lot of looper tricks to get way textural.
And throughout all of this, I'm still writing. I'm sure the current modern fantasy novel can hit 50k words, and I prefer longer stuff, so I'm thinking of some short fiction to fill out the page count, the kind of things that don't need longer works.
And why am I up writing this as late as it is? A prescription snafu means that I won't get a refill on my sleep meds until, at best, four days from now. So I have to run my batteries down to the point that I fall over instead of getting lulled to sleep like I usually do. FWP, of course, but perspective means that ignoring other people's struggles is problematic, but downgrading or dismissing someone else's is also bad, even if it's my problem (one of you has given me both the steely gaze and the shaking finger feedback on me minimizing my challenging opportunities, and I like to learn from my mistakes ,so I try to keep what I'm dealing with in mind with the broader experience of others.
Oh, and I got nailed by a dream last night, or to be more accurate, someone in a dream. That can be somewhat frustrating
One more thing -- just to verify, my profile picture is a sprite, unclothed but not flashing anything, sitting with her legs pulled up to her chest, in profile, right? I want to describe it and also add a couple of pictures to my profile.
Sleep well, and I'll try to also.
