Showing posts with label Cat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cat. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Onward and Upward...

I'm trying to find a non-cliché way of saying "when it rains, it pours," or "it's either feast or famine."  But to be honest, the schedule's been so jam packed lately that I have barely had time to grocery shop and do laundry, let alone come up with clever ways of saying that I'm effing killing it right now apparently, in terms of booking work.  I meant to blog about this the other day but after yesterday, it was more important for me to write about Penny when I had the chance to sit down.

So, anyway, Edge Studio called me again last Thursday with a quick VO gig for the next afternoon.  Another $200 job that took under a half hour and I was able to squeeze it, miraculously in between NY1 and a scheduled rehearsal with Lacy that morning.

I've been lucky that it worked with my schedule both times but to be honest, as long as they're calling me with work, I will most certainly take great pains to clear my schedule because I want to be seen as available.  I also want more experience and more stuff for my reel.  So this makes VO gig #12 and with it I even passed another milestone/yearly goal of mine: get two VO gigs within the space of a month.  Hell, I just got two in as many weeks!  Not bad I'd say. Not bad.  It may sound funny but I have a Google Doc with all of my goals in each arena (music, voice over and film scoring), plainly listed and have been checking them off quicker in some cases than I'd imagined I would.  It's a good feeling.

This second voice gig from this past Friday, I felt particularly good about especially since it took me just under 15 minutes to wrap it up.  I was hitting the mark the whole time and only had to do a few pickups before the director, who had phoned in for the session, was satisfied.  In fact, if I hadn't suggested two different pitch levels with my voice to the director, we might have finished sooner.  He liked that idea and had me do a take each with the two separate voices.  This was a 90 second corporate promo for a telecommunications company that will be working closely with the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia.  Can't wait to hear the final result.

On top of everything, as usual, Lacy and I are still kicking it with almost a show a weekend these days and certainly for the next three weeks (this past included).  We played a small show at Alphabet Lounge the other day and, despite technical difficulties got to try out a few new things with me looping and even iron them out a little.  On Old Languages I figured out a way to capture the essence of the song with just a few layers of looping and it totally went over.  Lacy herself enjoys performing like this as well so we're really looking forward to playing on a Cable TV show in White Plains, NY called Alive with Clive this coming Friday, the 7th of June where we will be looping that song and Dancing out of the Dark as well as playing two others from the new album.  On Saturday the 15th we will be performing at Marie Christine Giordano's open dance rehearsal as well.  Some of the same stuff and we'll be drinking wine and hanging out watching the rehearsal afterwards too so that should be good fun!  More to come on upcoming shows.

Meanwhile, I'm mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted but have determined, throughout these past few months that I can totally pull this off.  In fact, there are a couple of things I have learned from this experience.  First, I like the feeling of getting up in the morning and getting straight to work.  There's something invigorating about the morning air...however, I can't imagine getting up much earlier than 7am and liking it as much.  Second, no matter how early I got up and no matter how little sleep I'm running on, there is no guarantee that I will fall right asleep when I get home at midnight.  Working hours like these on a sleep schedule like this is still nothing compared to the fatigue I felt after an overnight shift when I had been up for 24 hours straight.  Thankfully, I still have the weekends to recharge though.  Third, there is no underestimating the value of a few minutes of sunning in the park between jobs for my psyche.  Fourth, (and this is more a thing remembered and/or actually applied from my basic intellectual knowledge of a yoga), I don't have to be in yoga class to be practicing yoga.  Simply stopping and breathing when dealing with tough or stressful situations is, in effect, practicing yoga.  It's a mindset and it's a good thing I have it because I haven't been able to take class nearly as much these days.  Three days a week and one of my classes isn't technically a yoga class but some weird cardio-fitness hybrid coined "Sculptworks" by the YogaWorks brand.  It's fun but almost too "boot camp-y" for my taste.  And it hurts my abs.

Anyway, there's talk of more work coming from TruTV after my CNN hours are slated to dry up and CNN may still call me for weekend work after July.  And I have some film scoring stuff potentially on the horizon that it's still too early to talk about.  But for now, I'm tired and am going to stop writing and start trying not to fall asleep at work.  Daoust: Out.


Monday, June 3, 2013

Eulogy...

Today I had to let go of my sweet cat that has been with me for the last 8 years, through thick and thin.  Who has seen me through 8 different apartments, a bitter divorce, a life changing move across state lines, all the hurdles and high points of the last 8 years through the lens of a docile, mostly clueless house pet.  Probably had no idea what was going on, she just hung around and chased shadows on the floor, spent hours looking for the most comfortable spot in the house only to pick the most random, aligning herself where she could just passively observe the activity in the house until something moved her to jump up into the window and chatter at the birds.

She had as simple a life as any house pet.  She was always there in the morning right when I woke up, jumping on the bed to remind me that she needed to be fed, as if I might forget about her.  And she'd always jump up again at the end of the day to say good night, letting me pet her for at least a few seconds before deciding she had more important things to do.  In between, during rehearsals or when I was composing, she would sit in my room and listen intently, one of the few times she would actually sit in my lap.

On some level, I think she really enjoyed the music, which totally makes her my cat.  I recall a time when Lacy and I were practicing a song of hers that was particularly sad (a song from her first album about Diane Fosse and the gorillas in Africa) and she sat up at the end of it, walked over to Lacy, looked up at her and meowed...almost as though she could feel the emotion of the song and identify with it somehow, on some cat level.  The two of us busted out laughing in the moment, but I was sure, as is every pet owner, she must have been able to comprehend to some degree.  But then again, this is the cat who would chase shadows on the floor, going so far as to try and bite them.

I will miss her dearly.  I will miss her presents (my favorites being a bird's nest, a garden snake and a live chipmunk), though she hasn't been outside to bring them to me in years. I will miss the way she would seek my attention by lifting a paw up to my knee as I would sit at my desk working.  I will miss her coming to greet me by trotting over, plopping down on the floor and rolling over, meowing and clearly begging me to rub her belly.  I will miss the way she would lick and then nibble and then bite, or sometimes reach a paw out and scratch for no reason other than sheer cat boredom.  I will miss picking her up, her going limp, rag doll cat that she was, and holding her until she would squirm, signalling that it was time to put her down again, a period of time that would get longer the longer I had her and she grew to trust I would not drop her.  I will miss her talkativeness, a personality change that arrived when I removed her from the company of our two other cats that my ex kept.  Seriously, we used to have little conversations.  I'd say hi, she give a short mew, and then there'd be a back and forth exchange that could last sometimes up to a minute, me having no idea what she was trying to tell me other than some kind of small talk type, "I killed a bug today" conversation that I had to use my imagination to decipher usually.

I've never experienced losing a pet since my childhood cat died and I wasn't there for that so this is new but it's true what they say.  It's like losing a family member and a friend at the same time.  Well, she was both.  I'm sad but I'm glad that I could at least be there and end her suffering mercifully.  RIP Penny.  2005-2013.




Monday, February 11, 2013

Discouraged, I am not...

Discouraged.  That's what I'm trying not to be right now.  I've had a couple of hits in a short amount of time and I'm trying to turn my mood around because, after all these years of plugging away at this, I realize that it does me no good to dwell on negativity. 

An exercise then.  To list what's bothering me so I can go ahead and decide how I'm going to deal with it all.  First off, my mandolin somehow broke itself while sitting in its gig bag on the floor beside my bed.  We use it on an acoustic version of one of Lacy's songs and we may have to perform said version at an impromptu show next week.  I'm sitting here hoping I can find one to borrow because I do not have the money to replace it and will find out tomorrow if I have the money (and the time, for that matter) to fix it.  My day starts out kind of wonky and several tiny things get under my skin while making breakfast and while heading to yoga, to which I was late because the train sucks.  On top of that a fairly new pair of boots I have been trudging around in broke today.  We're talking two months old pair of leather boots, salt stained from walking over snow and ice-treated sidewalks and streets that I bought on sale for $40, and the sole underneath the right heel cracks and breaks apart from the uppers and I'm walking crooked for the rest of the day.  It's true that I go through shoes a lot more quickly now that I walk everywhere but two months is absurd.  Add on top of all of that, that I finally got around to listening to the competition for that remix contest I entered tonight at work and everyone sounds amazing compared to me.  I feel like I'm standing naked in front of thousands of people who have on really nice tailored clothes. 

And all I have at the end of it all is a gluten free beer and a cat on my lap to comfort me...oh, and the promise of money from the government in a few days in the form of my tax return, which isn't going to come anywhere near paying off my credit card debt, especially considering I now need a new pair of boots and possibly a new mandolin.  I really want to crawl inside a cave right now and hibernate for the rest of this bleak winter until the sun returns. 

But, I realize that this is detrimental thinking.  I can't get discouraged.  No, this is supposed to be an awesome year.  I just picked up a freelance job at TruTV and will hopefully be starting in March, I'm able to afford gluten free beer, my cat still loves me, I'm still making music and learning tons from the people I'm up against in that competition and elsewhere, getting closer to finding my niche even.  I can still get voice over jobs and, though I sometimes can't tell, I'm getting better at it, I think.  Boots and mandolins are replaceable and sometimes fixable.  Life goes on.  And besides.  This shit day ended about 30 minutes ago.  And next week, there's a strong possibility that I'm going to rock the eff out.  In Philly.  So with that said, I go to sleep and tomorrow welcome a new day...and none of this neg-head downer crap!    

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Confusing wisdom...

Finding wisdom in the inside of a label on a bottle of tea is pretty standard stuff these days.  And I drink a lot of tea.  But today, I had one of those interesting days where I seemed to be getting signs from not just tea bottles but just about everything around me and some of the signs were conflicting with others.

In truth, it all started with an impromptu discussion with a co-worker and friend of mine about working in the corporate world and how it's always going to be the same no matter where you go, as far as workplace politics go and you're really only ever going to avail yourself by being your own boss.  Which, in a way, has simultaneously discouraged me from even trying to job hunt for a better career in this climate and encouraged me to work that much harder at being freelance eventually.  The end of that conversation actually found me feeling grateful that I have a job and a lot more level headed about my general situation than I have been for months when at times, I tended to get rather frustrated that things weren't better with the money situation or the hours.  

It's file checking week at Learning Ally where we go through all the audio book files that have been recorded and spot check them for errors.  Today, one of the audio books that I was checking today at Learning Ally was some kind of business text book that had a ton of chapters about building resumes and interviewing for jobs, etc.  So, while I waited for my assigned booth to open up (the last volunteer was still finishing up her session), I perused a bit of it and got thinking about what I was doing wrong with my last few attempts to find a job.  Here I am now swinging back the other way in my thinking about what I need to focus on right now.  Should I take another shot at job hunting but be more focused this time?  Should I be so cynical about the job market?

On the inside of my tea bottle was this quote though: "Lack of money is no obstacle, lack of an idea is an obstacle." - Ken Hakuta

Maybe I just need a good idea.

Here's one, I'm doing some freelance audio stuff for George's next film and if it needs music, I'll likely be doing that too.  The audio stuff will be operating the boom mic for the first few scenes of a pilot for a series he's going to be putting together.  The scenes will act as a teaser/short for the pilot which will eventually be shot and pitched a few places to get support to do the series.  It's exciting because it could be some steady work and it seems very interesting.  I won't say too much else about it so as not to jinx it.

But anyway, all those confusing signs and I'm tired.  Need sleep.  Tomorrow I see apartments.  The first one is in Park Slope and I might just fall in love with it, so long as it's cat friendly.  Good night.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Caffeinated...

Yerba Mate can be my salvation when doing these overnight shifts.  It has just enough caffeine so that I can push my way through the last 8 hours of a 24 hour period of wakefulness that is often only broken up, as in the case of today, by a meager 40 minute nap.  A nap that was interrupted by my precious and wonderful cat scratching around in the litter box.  She seriously has some kind of compulsion where, after she uses the litter box, she repeatedly wacks her front paws against the side of the box, probably in attempt to dislodge little disgusting granules of cat litter with no regard to the fact that I'm sleeping like a BABY!  Or that I was sleeping like a baby, that is.

I'm in a little early tonight and working on the laptop in my "office" overlooking 9th Avenue.  Okay, so it's just a conference room that I have no claim on that happens to reach Google's guest wifi.  Anyway, I spent a lot of time last night looking up alternatives to a plugin that comes with Mainstage that's used for looping.  I have it all set up as such (see blog on main webpage here), and yet I'm having issues with record latency so I've downloaded two open source plugins, one called Sooper Looper and the other Mobius.  Tonight I'm going to be devouring all I can about the two.

This week, Mohammad and I will try and do a test screening Sides of the Track on the big screen.  If not, this week, then next.  It's still not solid yet when we will do it, but expect impressions on that once it happens.  I'm excited to see and hear it in a big theater.

And, with any luck, I'll have some updates on the state of the apartment that will not include rants about interrupted sleep.   I anticipate work being done during the day tomorrow and Tuesday, outside and I'm hoping that my super and his guys will be working demolishing the walls and ceiling in my cousin's room.  I implored him not to come on Monday or Tuesday but to definitely come at some point and, even if they aren't yet finished on the outside, to at least start cleaning up the mold and disgusting-ness inside.  Hopefully, that will pan out in the best possible way.  I have a guest coming to stay with me this coming Saturday.  Let's just say the apartment is going to be a little bit crowded if Katrina can't sleep in her own room.

All this has gotten me thinking about my luck lately. I've got so much floating up in the air right now, from little things like the payment for the Celiac disease study to much bigger things like the resolution of the apartment debacle, that I can't wait for it all to just resolve itself and have found myself hoping that at least something will work out for the better.  Because I've had a handful of other things come to rather disappointing resolutions lately, not all of which I will talk about here.  Have you ever gotten that feeling like several things are about to happen and any number of them could go any way?  Yeah, I have that now.  And it's the anticipation that drives me nuts.  You almost stop caring about the outcome out of a sheer desire for something to just happen already!  But then, I feel like sooner or later, my luck just has to change and maybe something will turn out the way I had hoped.  With the apartment situation, I just wish I could be comfortable again soon whatever the outcome is.  With my music, I just want new jobs and to pick up some momentum on my own projects.  With voice over, I just wish I had the time to devote to it and could finish my new demo on my own.

The good news is, and I hesitate to say too much about this but, I came up with a musical idea today that may actually turn into something.  I was sitting in church this morning and our new interim minister was reciting a Rumi poem that really hit me, so I googled it on my phone, copied it and pasted it into an email to myself.  While I was sitting with Jennie after brunch, enjoying the weather, and waiting on our friend Dawn to meet us, I read it out loud and it still resonated.  So, this evening, while I was laying in bed trying to drift back off to sleep after my at woke me up, a melody and accompaniment started to swim around in my head.   Ultimately, this is what made me finally give up on the tossing and turning and catapult myself out of bed and toward the piano.  I plunked out the idea I had and luckily it fit the first few lines quite well.  I played through a few things and scrawled out my ideas on some staff paper that I keep on the piano.  Tomorrow I plan to drop it into Sibelius and flesh it out a little (or a lot) and we'll just see where it goes.  The rest should fall into place as long as I still like it when I sit down with it tomorrow evening.

All in an afternoon's work.  That having been given away, I hope soon to have something basic I can show to my choir director and maybe we can get another piece of mine premiered before the end of the year.  I think the choral music might become a staple for me since I have a definite outlet for it.  It's hard to write my chamber pieces without any idea of when or how I could get them performed.  The piano works of mine are probably going to become another important area for me, especially piano with electronics, now that Tania and I are working together so closely.  She wants to premier something new at a concert in Feburary and we are planning on doing the Rhythmic Movement concert again at some point later in the year.

Anyway, I'd better go for now.  Hope this rambling blog made some sense.  Cohesion is not my forte in the wee small hours.