Being solo, Music work, Music fun...

I can't get my mind off a weekday day trip to the beach these days. It's just something that occurred to me the other day and, with the weather as pleasant as it's been, it almost seems a shame to not be taking advantage of the proximity and plenitude of beaches here.  So, I've got my eye set on one and, unless I find a friend who's off during the week like me, I think I'm just going to go.  Lately, I've been doing things like that, not waiting until I have someone to go with and just going.  Sometimes it's even better to go alone.  You meet people, you can leave when you want and you don't have to worry about whether you enjoy someone's company enough to spend an entire evening/day with them.

I met a new friend at Marie Christine Giordano's dance performance on Saturday night, for example, a dancer who had just moved to the city, and we went out for a beer after the show.  And of course, I went to that networking event solo and made a ton of new acquaintances there.


And MCG's dance was spectacular, by the way.  She collaborated with a visual artist who built a light sculpture, a spherical object made from tubes of, I'm guessing neon, lit up blue, as well as an amazing lighting designer and a composer, Al Comet who worked with samples.  All of it was amazing and I'm glad I made it.  MC and I may collaborate soon too, for one of her open rehearsals.  We met for lunch this Wednesday and discussed me coming by and seeing her rehearsal space next week.

On top of that, I was asked to score another film by a filmmaker that my current director is working with.  Ben, my director, recommended me to this guy and he emailed me earlier in the week.  This is the second such out of the blue recommendation in recent weeks, so it's kind of cool.  This fellow is based in Italy right now and has put together a 23 minute short Samurai flick.  It plays really well and I'm going to have fun scoring it with some traditional Japanese style instruments but it's going to be a challenge.  As with Sides of the Track, learning about the instruments and/or digging deep to recover the tiny bit of knowledge I still have about them, as well as finding people to perform them, is going to be the bulk of the work for this film.

And I still have the Sundance cut of "The Life," the Ballerina scene from "The Life" and any last tweaks to Ben's score that may crop up in the next few days.  It's good to be busy.

Most of my blogs lately have been on the subject of how much work I've been doing, which is a good theme.  I think I like it.  It's not all work though...it is all music though, for the most part (with some voice over thrown in...got another direct invite the other day and submitted a pretty kick ass audition but now I wait...as per usual).  There has been some recreational music based activities as well.  Today I jammed with a new friend from work who is a drummer, and a pretty good one at that.  Murat is moving to NYC from Philly this week and as soon as we all sort out practice space/storage space for all of our equipment, we're all three going to be starting a band.  Lacy and I are still preparing for gigging in the fall as well.  So, it just keeps getting better.

And top all of the above off with the fact that I'm finally on a more human shift.  I just finished my first week of it and here I am chilling on my second full day off in a row after having actually slept, during the night on both Sunday and Monday nights..didn't have to stay up all night, nor sleep during the day.  And, can I tell you? It was amazing to do that after two and a half years of that crap.

So, anyway, been thinking about how much better my life is now compared to, say six years ago, because of how much music is in it.  I'd be languishing if I hadn't come up here to pursue this career.  I was in a rut before I decided to go back to grad school and depressed to boot, couldn't see a way out of it.  And what I have now seemed a million miles away.  A complete impossibility, a vague dream I had.  And now, here I am, not exactly making it, but at least surviving and doing what I love.  All because I stood up one day and realized that the only way I was going to achieve anything was by taking the initiative and doing something about it.  I knew what I wanted to do and I knew that I needed some experience if I was going to do it.  So I put myself in a position to gain that experience, accepted that it would take years, lost a relationship over it but then decided that since I was free, I could really do anything I wanted.  It was a powerful epiphany and after that the rest just fell into place.  I knew there'd be jobs up here, I knew I'd always wanted to live in a big city, I knew that NYC was high on that list of places and I knew that if I didn't throw myself out there that I'd never know if I could have done it.

Now, here I am talking like I've arrived.  I admit there's still a long way to go but in the context of looking back to see how far I've climbed (clumb?), I think it's okay to give a nod to my achievements.  Just a random assessment, as I take note of the fact that music is all around me now, the way I wanted my life to be all those years ago when for a period of time I was too afraid to follow that dream.  Boy am I glad I wised up and got off my ass.