Colorado...

This is seriously becoming a blog about travel.  Lately on the music and voice over fronts I've been languishing or just straight not doing much and waiting.  I've gotten a few royalty statements in the mail, I occasionally hear about the progress of The Life and True Love, the last two projects I worked on, I'm still trying to get back together with the couple I was jamming with but life and New York City get in the way.  And I even auditioned to be one of Voice Bunny's on demand voice talent but got a reality check instead about the mediocre state of my set up at home (too much room noise...too muffled, etc.).  But I've got plans to take over the closet in the other bedroom in my apartment once my girlfriend moves in in November.

That said, I'm getting a new feel for how much I truly do love to travel.  Traveling never lets me down.  When I get out there, no matter how much I've built up a trip in my head, I still have incredible experiences even if they don't live up to what I expected.  That is to say, I'm always pleasantly surprised because I always find something new, whether or not it's what I thought I might find.  And I come back vibrating with a new energy and enthusiasm about this place I've just seen, ranting and raving about it like I'm the first person to discover that place.  And I feel so alive.

Here's Colorado.  My friend from Carbondale planned out a whirlwind trip for us, showing me the finest her state has to offer, taking me to some of the highest places in the state and sometimes even in N. America.  We did a lot of driving and winging it when we needed to, shifting plans to accommodate our whims, having adventures and close shaves, climbing mountains and taking pictures to prove it.

On the list of sites:

We first hit Downtown Denver, then caught a show at Red Rocks Ampitheater (holy crap, what a beautiful venue), Sound Tribe Sector 9. They put on a fantastic show.  The next day we drove over Independence Pass then came through Aspen on our way back to her hometown, stopping briefly at a wine, beer and spirits tasting close to where my AirBnb was on the last trip.  We found a nice local cider, picked up some food and then went back to her place where I cooked us some steaks.

The following day, we took a yoga class at True Nature, a beautiful yoga studio and meditation center, which was followed by a singing bowl and gong meditation for an hour and change.  Then she took us back to Snowmass Village to hike the Rim Trail, a hike that was offered during Wanderlust but that I didn't take.  It was cool to be back in the village and the hike was a perfect way to acclimate to the elevation.  It features a pretty steep uphill climb for the first half hour to this ying yang feature:

...followed by an easy jaunt along the ridge with sweeping views on all sides and a few more climbs bringing you to an elevation of about 10,500 feet. After the hike we wound our way down to Aspen to have dinner at Pyramid Bistro and catch a show at Belly Up.

The next day, after a yoga class at another yoga studio, Kula, we got on the road again.  Back over Independence Pass to head down to The Great Sand Dunes and eventually back up to Breckenridge to crash for the night before heading up to the trail head for Grays and Torreys Peaks, the 14ers we had chosen to hike, doing a double summit in one day because we could.  On the way over Independence Pass again, crossing the continental divide yet again, we stopped to view Mt. Elbert, the highest of the 14ers.  Note the fall foliage which had begun changing color in between this ride and the first one.

Then we got on our way past Salida and Buena Vista, down the longest stretch of straight road I've been on since driving to the Outer Banks of NC on Hwy 70.  But what awaited us was nothing short of amazing. The sand dunes can be seen from miles away, butting up against the mountain range, and boast the tallest sand dune in N. America.  When you're upon them, they dominate the landscape, and what a weird landscape:

After playing around for a while, kicking up sand and acting like kids, and just enjoying the surroundings and the quietude (it was seriously dramatic how quiet it was when the wind wasn't blowing...it felt like a sensory deprivation tank or something), we sat and debated our options for the rest of the evening. We were trying to make it as close as possible to the trail head at Grays Peak that night so we could set out and be on the trail as early as possible the next morning. Originally, the plan had been make it all the way to Leadville or even Frisco, and we had been leaning toward Leadville for most of the day as we had lost some time getting out of The Roaring Fork Valley later than expected that morning, so everything had shifted. It was already going to take us almost four hours to get back up to Leadville and it was early evening at that point.  It was so long of a ride we almost considered going all the way back to Carbondale to stay at her place that night.

We scrapped that though because we hadn't even eaten dinner yet. We had our eyes on a steak restaurant in Leadville called Quincy's that only serves steak for $9.95 (seriously, the only decision you have to make is how you want it cooked and how you want your baked potato). Luckily, the restaurant had a location in Salida that was closer so once we got back out on the highway it looked liked we just might make it there before closing and have only an hour and a half left on our journey to Leadville.

We still made it to Leadville after all the hotels had already closed their front desks for the night and had to hit a couple of them before we found one that would book rooms after hours...and of course, we got the last one at the first place that would open up for us.  Good thing too because it was midnight at this point and we had to be up at 6am the next morning!

The following morning, we packed up and got on our way, with a short stop for breakfast in Frisco, making it to the trail head by 8 and setting out around 8:30.  The weather was dreary, cold and windy. Not a good prognosis for a day hike but we were prepared.  Or at least I thought I was.  My sweater, scarf and hat would eventually prove worthless against biting temps in the 30s, steady 40 mph winds and, yes, freaking snow and sleet. The climb was a bit brutal as such and we had driven up to 11,000 feet or so, so we still had about 3,000 feet of rise before we reached the top.  At one point I had to borrow a layer of clothing from my friend. Every 10 minutes or so, I'd have to stop and catch my breath and the higher we got, the longer I had to stop before I felt I could go on.

Due to the weather, we had discussed the possibility of turning back just to prepare ourselves for the disappointment of not being able to climb to the top.  But neither of us were keen on that idea. We came to climb. If anything, we debated turning back after Grays and forfeiting the opportunity to do the double summit.  But then something amazing happened.  I mean, I knew it would happen, to be honest.  I'm ever the optimist, so I knew we'd get some clearing.  There were breaks in the clouds and the winds had them moving off extremely quickly.

As soon as we hit the final stretch, one big gap opened in the clouds and as I stepped up onto the summit, I gasped as I saw clear views for miles and miles.

This was something I didn't get with my Concepcion volcano hike at the end of February. And the rush was enough that the two of us turned to the other peak, Torreys, barely a half mile away down a path that ran along the saddle between the two peaks, and said, "Why not?" We snacked and took selfies and set out, scrambling down the side of Grays and, slowly, back up the much steeper side of Torreys.  (Watch in this video when my friend pans around...the first peak you see is Grays, which we had just come off the top of; the one you see when the camera turns 180 degrees is Torreys).

At this point I was starting to notice how numb and red my hands were. I'd had them clenched inside the pockets of my jacket for too long and needed to move them around and warm them up.  We paused so I could do so and then beat the last stretch of scree reaching the top to find even more spectacular views.

The hike down was slow and easy once we were off the main slope of the mountain and we saw loads more wildlife on the way down, including scurrying pikas and the yellow bellied marmot who crossed our path and then proceeded to stand up on his hind legs and watch us for five full minutes before going back to his business.  My phone was dead or there'd be pictures. I only saw one mountain goat the whole time, far away on a ridge on our way up to the top. He promptly lumbered down the other side before I could snap a pic though.  

At the bottom, back at the car, my head ached, probably from dehydration and not elevation sickness, but I felt great otherwise. After devouring lunch we headed back to Carbondale by way of Glenwood Canyon, looking forward to an evening of lounging and Netflix.  

The final full day of the trip we blew off a lot of the planned activities in favor of trying to have a lower key day and fit in Maroon Bells which we had missed a few days back due to cramming too much in in one day.  We were going to ride bikes down Glenwood Canyon and hike to Hanging Lake but neither of us thought we'd be in any mood for physical activity after hiking two 14ers in one day. So, instead Maroon Bells it was.  In Aspen, you buy a bus ticket and they bus you up the valley into a protected wilderness site where you can take the picture that everyone takes: 

I mean, it is pretty gorgeous. We got some interesting facts on the way up from a knowledgeable guide who knew everything from local history to local geological facts to local wildlife. When we arrived, we opted for a short loop hike through the woods to take it all in and then wandered back to the bus stop.  Unfortunately, we had just missed a bus and had to wait an additional thirty minutes for the next one which set us back quite a bit (although we heard some fantastic Wild West trivia from the same guide on the way down). 

That night we were trying to make it all the way back to Denver to see another concert at Red Rocks (we found out at the STS9 concert that Counting Crows were playing at Red Rocks later in the week so we bought tickets right away).  Making it back there required one more trip over Independence Pass, so we loaded up on coffee in Aspen when we finally got out of Maroon Bells, then headed out. The time was dwindling away and, though Counting Crows had a few opening acts, we did the math and figured there was a slight possibility we'd miss some of their set if we didn't book it. Let's just say that Independence Pass was both thrilling and terrifying this time around.  

One last stop in Breckenridge for legendary crepes my friend raved about, barely set us back in terms of travel time, because where there is usually a colossal line, there wasn't a single soul waiting. Giddy at our fortune we chowed down on crepes in the car as we made our way past Breckenridge back to I-70.  We hit very few traffic snarls from there on and I finally saw the Milky Way out the car window. Arriving at Red Rocks, we found that they were between sets still.  We found our seats chatted for maybe two minutes before Counting Crows walked out on stage, almost as though they were waiting for us to get there.  

So, a perfect end to a near perfect last day.  If not for the crummy hotel I booked outside of Denver, we'd've been totally solid (we booked a non smoking room and it turned out all they had ready when we got there was a smoking room...people can still smoke in hotel rooms??).  But at the point we were so tired we just crashed.  And the following morning I had gluten free buttermilk pancakes in Denver before heading off to the airport and parting with my friend.  

What a trip! Crazy adventures, tall mountains, beautiful vistas, and three separate concerts.  And lots of driving.  Couldn't have asked for a better time and now I have reasons to go back.  As I always do. And I think I might actually have a mountain climbing addiction at this point. 

Wanderlust

It sometimes takes me a while these days to unpack my experience of a trip, the impressions, the things that changed me, and articulate it into a story.  And this blog, while it's been a chronicle of my time in New York City, has also allowed me an outlet for these kinds of stories.  The kinds of stories I've discovered that I love telling.  And perhaps that's why I started to travel again.  I've always had a bit of wanderlust ever since my parents dragged me (I say that lovingly...I was not really dragged) on a trip around the country at the tender yet excitable age of 8.  I've thirsted since to see more of the world.  When asked what I wanted for a graduation present from high school, without hesitation, I said a trip to Paris.

Fast forward to this year.  The fact that there is a festival called Wanderlust seemed like a no brainer. Yet, it was a friend who suggested we go and, therefore, not my idea.  A few months ago in the course of a twenty minute phone conversation, the plan was hatched.  This July, Snowmass Village, Colorado was hosting the festival.  I hadn't been to Colorado since that fateful trip as a wide-eyed eight year old. We rode the Durango to Silverton railroad and I gazed at canyons and roaring rivers out the window of the train, noticing only at the end of the trip how much soot had accumulated on my face.  In Silverton, I gestured toward snowy mountains and begged my parents to hike up so we could see snow in June.  My siblings laughed at my inability to judge distance. Here's me with the brakeman's hat on:

When my friend told me that the Wanderlust festival was in Colorado, I bit almost immediately.  A yoga festival? In Colorado? Of course!

So we began planning, reserved a rental car, and agreed on an AirBnb in Basalt, a town about thirty minutes away, to save money.  And I began getting excited about things like Acro Yoga and Stand-up Paddleboard Yoga (the classes were all full by the time we had bought out tickets unfortunately so I didn't get to try it) and Slackline Yoga, farm to table dinners, hiking and meditation in nature, as well as the fact that there would be music every night.  Outdoor music.  And then they sent out an email after we bought our tickets saying that freakin' Moby was headlining the festival!

Here's an album of photos from the festival.  There's so much to say about the festival so I'll just talk highlights and forego the blow by blow.  Probably one of the most inspiring moments of the festival for me was the meditation hike with Häana, a violinist who came to the festival as one of the performers. Her music was really awesome. She actually almost carpooled with us from Denver International Airport but her flight kept getting delayed. I had researched her when she answered my post on the Wanderlust Facebook page offering rides from Denver to other festival goers.

On the second day of the festival I got a chance to hear her play a full electronic set at one of the indoor meditation classes. That alone was amazing and really freaking cool.  But on this hike, she brought an old vintage violin that had this amazingly beautiful resonance.  We hiked a little ways into the Aspen groves where she led a brief meditation and while we continued to sit in the tall grasses, she improvised for about twenty minutes in a Norwegian influenced style. As the music swelled, the breeze tickled us and a small thunderstorm rolled in.  Just being out there in the open air, feeling the breeze, and hearing the haunting sounds of that violin.  It was so beautiful.  There are a couple good pics from the hike in that album as well as a video I took after hanging back on the hike down (you can hear the thunder in the background!)

Another spectacular moment was trying out Acro yoga for the first time and getting up in a handstand while balancing on another person's knees while they laid on the ground.  All the pics in that album where you see the dome tents set up is where we had all of those classes.  There were some other types of specialized yoga that happened there, but that I didn't get to try, like AiREAL yoga which has you balancing in fabric hammocks, doing moves meant to decompress the spine and strengthen your core.  There was also Slackline yoga which is essentially doing yoga on a tight rope.  The guy who did carpool with us from the airport was huge into this and my friend who came with me tried a few classes (she was also into the Hula classes which were a big thing).  My only attempt at slack-lining was after having a few drinks when it was late at night and dark out.  It did not go well.

Other highlights were of course all of the concerts, including Moby and the Wanderlust Spectacular, a full show of acrobatics and dancing that had my jaw dropping the whole time.  Then there was hanging out in Aspen on my last night with a local I'd met on my first night there and then having her show us around her town of Carbondale on our final day after the festival had ended.  Our AirBnb host even joined us at a local distillery there called Marble Distillery and then we all had dinner at a place called Town.  I tried rabbit tacos and they were excellent!

I gotta tell you, on a side note, the elevation up there did not kill me but it was certainly a bit harder to walk uphill while simultaneously making conversation with the new friends I was making.  And it took far fewer flights of stairs than normal for me to be winded.  But that was all okay because I've heard what altitude sickness can be like and I would much prefer just having a little difficulty breathing to that any day.

Anyway, now that I'm back, and I've made friends out there, I plan on going back in September and hiking one of the 14ers.  Because lately, I've been obsessed with tall mountains and the like.  See my previous trip to Nicaragua in February.  And I'm not worried about the elevation gain because I know I'll probably acclimate in the first few days and the peak my friend has recommended only has like a 4,200 ft. elevation gain.  Concepción was 5,200 ft. tall and I hiked that one from the bottom in 4 1/2 hours.

And before any of this I was planning on going to Peru to hike Huayna Picchu, the peak next to the Machu Picchu ruins.  But that trip may have to wait because my girlfriend and I are talking fairly seriously about hitting up Dominica in the Caribbean, an island I zeroed in on and then was sold on the moment I realized that it boasts one of the tallest mountain peaks in the Caribbean Islands.  Morne Diablotins at 4,700 ft.  So, there will be more stories of surmounting formidable peaks.

And speaking of which, metaphoric peaks are still in the works as well.  But it's a bit slower going on those.  I'll just say for now that I'm still working at doing voice over for CNN whenever they'll throw it my way and I have plans to build up a reel with that material.  Occasionally, my voice coach will throw me an audition or two.  And as for my most recent music outlet, I'm jamming with two new friends now.  Collaborating for the first time in a very long time.

The only other bit of news I got as far as music goes is that I got a statement in the mail from Medianet, showing that The Life has been generating me royalties.  The number is so low, though, I'm not even gonna tell you how much so far.  But hey.  Gotta start somewhere.

Happenings...

January's been a good month so far.  Filled with things.  Happenings.  Memories made. Events attended. Adventures had.  Sure, I've worked my ass off in the interest of saving for this trip of mine next month but the social gatherings and shenanigans in between have made it all worthwhile. Impromptu concerts, bar nights, a date here and there and always yoga. I tried a new gluten free beer at a meetup, made new friends there and at the yoga studio, hitting up regular classes.  I seem to wind up at Rockwood or Barbes on the regular still.

At home, I got talked into taking in not one but two kittens, mischievous balls of fur which are vastly changing my routine around the apartment (always closing my bedroom door and making sure not to leave anything breakable on the table). There's of course been some excitement with the career(s), a new demo, the chance at getting in front of some agents and casting directors and with the screening for "The Life" looming, I get called to do a commercial for the same director.

In the midst of working on the music for this commercial, we get slammed by a blizzard and I have to spend a night in the city at a hotel so I can make it to work two hours earlier than normal this morning, forcing me to take a slight hiatus from working on it.  But tomorrow I dive back in, hopefully having caught up on my sleep tonight.

I got a look at the first cut just now which was shot and edited this weekend.  I composed the initial idea this past weekend (landed on it after just two takes) after having only read the treatment.  A fun way to work, no doubt.  I like doing it this way sometimes.  I get to come up with some idea based on the raw emotions instead of immediately being preoccupied with making it fit some time constraint.  But now, my work is to extend the musical idea and work on creating an arc that aligns with the images I'm seeing in the video.

Really looking forward to this process.  The deadline is approaching.  For now, though, I'm going to head home and get that much needed sleep, without which I cannot function.

Spotting...

I'm gonna do it.  I'm gonna start another blog entry with "It's late and I should be sleeping..." So here goes:

It's late and I should be sleeping.  But honestly, when you've got Nicaraguan rum and Jamaican style ginger beer and a head full of hope and thoughts of the future, it's hard to settle down.  Plus I had some work to do.  It's probably a little too soon, as the final cut has not been polished, but I've been spotting for "The Life." Mostly independently of the director and the production team so far, but George and I have chatted a tiny bit about it.

My process is usually this: (and I've gotten some of this from a lot of industry people who say this is their method, and it works for me)

I start by just watching the film/movie/episode/whatever one time through without any thoughts about music.  Then I add a second viewing where I'm also not writing anything down but I let thoughts about music start to creep in...incidentally this is why I hate it when editors put in temp music...most of the time.  It messes with my conception.  I couldn't get a Latin vibe out of my head for an early feature film I scored about 10 years ago because the director himself had put some canned Latin loops in the opening scene.  Anyway, on the third viewing I actually make notes about what scenes can use music, coming up with names like "So and so takes a walk in the park" which sometimes end up as the actual title of said music cue.  Still no time codes at this point, though.  This is the point at which I like to sit down with the director and ask their thoughts and usually get shot down on a few things.  Then and only then do I actually sit down and start riffing while watching the film...quite possibly the funnest part of all.  This is when it really starts to take shape.  Incidentally, I really like it when a director has strong opinions about where and when and how music should go...okay, not always how.  Sometimes I just want them to let me do my thing.  But you can't have it your way all the time. 

Further refining of ideas comes and then I start to nail down starting and ending time codes so it's not all "music stops when so and so walks out of frame."  Then it comes down to actual production which is where the real magic happens, the fun part.  Who am I kidding?  It's all fun. That's why I do this.  And why I've been dying to get started on this project. 

In my spare moments over the past few weeks, while I've waited, I've started to dream up my next vacation.  And yes, it's to Nicaragua. Again.  But I've been approaching it with the same zeal with which I approached the trip to France I planned in 2007 for my parents and my aunt.  After all, planning is so much fun!  Maybe that's why I also like the planning stages of composing a film score.  I like organization.  But at the same time, I love that feeling of uncertainty right before implementation.  That "how is this going to go?"  That fear of failure and desire for success.  It's positively exhilarating.

The Nicaragua trip won't take place until next January more than likely (because it's contingent upon my accrual and usage of vacation hours) but I have my sights on an island comprised of two volcanoes, one active, one extinct, in Lake Nicaragua called Ometepe that a co worker informed me about.  I found this site which I have fully digested now, and through which I've almost chosen a hotel.   I also plan on starting the whole trip back at the Apoyo Lodge on the Apoyo crater lake because they host three day yoga retreats there all year round.  Then, I go to Ometepe and hike to a crater lake where I can swim, explore the island and take in the petroglyphs and then, when I'm fully exhausted, I get Gonzalo to meet me in San Pedro and drive me back to Casa Ola where I will stay for the remainder of my time...and finally learn to surf. 

It's gonna be one incredible year leading up to all that though.  It has to be. 

Like a composer...

Today I felt like a composer...and now I drink beer and write.  I have to be up tomorrow for the marathon day at both jobs, back to back, that I've been doing, to some degree, every week since end of April last year, but not until 8am...which is standard.  Really, I get up around 8 or 830 every day of the week.  If it's not work it's yoga.

So that leads me back to that whole bit about "time carving."  I decided some time earlier this week, before I even knew that I'd be able to move forward on the music for the trailer, that I should really just start setting aside music and VO days even when I don't have any current projects, and forego, one day out of my week, a yoga class that takes up two and a half to three hours of my time, factoring in the commute.  I did so today and I still had time to practice yoga this morning before getting started and I was able to sleep in until 9am...shit, I even snoozed.  And I meditated before hand, something I only manage to do otherwise if I make it to Yogaworks early enough before class starts that I can do it in the empty studio before anyone shows up.

Add to that, in addition to becoming a founding member of the Brooklyn Yogaworks studio (when it opens in a few months), I got a free six month subscription to their online yoga videos (which only costs $5 a month thereafter in addition to my membership fee).  Now, I should be more inclined to actually practice at home on these music and VO days.  And why the hell not?  I still thirst for that glorious routine that I cultivated on the retreat.  What an amazing thing to practice that much yoga, that consistently!

Back to the music, I feel so much more satisfied if I'm also pushing forward on music and VO stuff instead of just simply staying fit and making it to work on time.  At any rate, while I was at it, I managed to work up an extension of the music for the trailer today (which I tweaked even more later on at work), in order to cover the title card and credits that were added after the whole trailer was edited to mine and Amanda's song.  I can't wait until we post it for you guys to see.  It's looking and sounding great.

Otherwise, I'm back tweaking all the random mixes that I started up last year with the intent of submitting them to the licensing agency I signed with.  What the hell was I doing all damn year not submitting to them?  Oh yeah, chasing down a VO agent and working my ass off at three jobs.  Well anyway, that's why I reassess my goals and my methods every once in a while.  I've already marked off some time on Sunday for rearranging some of my voice demos and planning next steps etc.

But I digress.  The music for the licensing agency.  There are about 12 or 13 mixes floating around, unnamed and ready to be developed.  Plus, I'm thinking up new stuff all the time and I just need to be also sitting at my Macbook messing around and recording that stuff so that I can actually hope to complete something.  The good thing is, I've decided that one of those "mixes" (as yet unnamed), is ready to go...ish.  I need to extend it to a 60 second version.  Which shouldn't take too long at all.

With all that in mind, I need to sleep a little.  Marathon day tomorrow, remember?

Shock to the system...

In 5 days I'll be on a flight to a foreign country with some mosquito spray, sunscreen, summer clothes and a yoga mat.  I've been getting myself psyched by reading weather reports for Nicaragua and wondering how much of a shock to my system a 75 degree difference in temperature will be.  No, it's not even that it's going to be all that hot in Nicarague (mid 80s for highs, mid 60s for lows...all. week. long).  If you're reading this and you're in the U.S. right now, there's a good chance you already know how cold it is in most parts of the country.  This cold snap has been at the forefront of conversation and news reporting for the better part of a week and, while it is annoying that some people still have to be told that weather is not climate and that a single cold weather event does not negate global climate change, I'm more focused on just getting through it for the prize awaiting me at the end.  And since I obviously don't need my summer clothes at the moment, I took the liberty of starting to pack a suitcase with them. I seriously cannot wait.

As of today, I know a few more facts about this trip, as per a recent email from the organizers:  there are 8 people coming on the trip, myself included, minus the two teachers; only one of them is a guy besides myself; and we're all going to be on the same flight from Miami to Managua.  Tomorrow morning, I'm going to the 9:30 yoga class with one of the teachers who's leading the retreat, so maybe I'll meet some of the others then.

When I get back home tomorrow, I have until 2:30 to sort out a handful of other things related to the trip; calling the banks to let them know I'll be using my bank card in another country, calling the airline to make sure things like my gluten free in-flight meal for the return trip are sorted out, and various other errands. I really haven't thought of much else this week besides that...and organizing my iTunes library now that I have an iPhone.  That was a surprise...8 refurbished phones in a row that all went south on me and Verizon finally offers me an early upgrade (almost didn't approve it after the fact too, which pissed me off).  I have a few other gadgets related to said iPhone coming in the mail and I'm hoping they'll show up before I have to leave on Sunday.  One of them is a much needed case, another is a solar powered battery pack.  Perfect for the trip...but not terribly necessary.

I swear, planning a trip is one of my favorite parts of traveling.   Learning about a new place, finding out what's to do and see there.  The anticipation building until the day you leave, the slight nervousness that you'll forget something or oversleep the day of your flight.   All of this has reawakened a sense of adventure in me that I'd almost forgotten I had.  Sure, moving to New York was adventurous...but this is a whole different kind of adventure.

So, yeah, not much else is going on except the excitement of the Nicaragua trip until tonight when I got an email with the newest cut of the full length trailer for "The Life."  It's looking good so far and I'm psyched to hit the ground running when the episode is finally ready for scoring.  Not sure how long that'll be but I know that if this round of edits of the trailer passes with everyone on the production team, then the editor will move on to cutting and re-cutting the episode.

As much as I'm going to enjoy this trip, it will be nice to get back into a routine in a few weeks and really start working.  As previously stated, I've not really bothered to get back to work since the start of the new year.  I've made a few to do lists and done some heavy thinking about my approach but purposefully gave myself a break between my holiday travel and this trip so that I could really focus when I got back.  And so I could really truly relax next week.  I've had to actually reassure myself multiple times that it's okay to take a break.  I'm still trying not to think about how long it's been since I've submitted a voice over audition.

But there'll come a time for all that, when I get back here to the city, refreshed, slightly more tan, having deepened my yoga practice and cleared my head with a week full of meditative quiescence.   For now, I sleep...and dream of tropical weather while the wind howls outside my apartment.

NLP.org...

I feel good.  I've been working for the past 13 days and still have five more to go before I'm off for Thanksgiving weekend.  The whole weekend. Something that hasn't happened in years.  But despite the long stretch with no real rest, things are going exceptionally well.  And not just that, but I actually feel really good.  Sometimes in the middle of it all you can get a little, not overwhelmed, but just so busy that you forget to stop and look at the fact that "hey you live in the most amazing city in the world and you're still alive and kickin' it after five years!"  So, it can be nice to acknowledge it and really let it sink in.  Pausing to admire the view, as it were.

It probably helps that, even though I'm getting up to work at my freelance job tomorrow, I'm sitting here having the last gluten free beer in my fridge and chowing on homemade popcorn (midnight snack guilty pleasure routine, you know how it is).  Overall, I have to say though, that this has been an exceptionally good year.  And while I have been driving myself pretty hard and trying to take as many opportunities as come across my path and trying to make as many more happen as I can, I had a momentary realization on the train tonight.  That, perhaps I should be thinking more about just being prepared for the next opportunity instead of frantically trying to make things happen.

Let's face it, I have a lot of things on my plate right now. I'm working three jobs to pay off my debt and do fun things like go to Nicaragua on a yoga retreat, and also eat healthy and do yoga all the time.  I'm also trying to make the voice over thing a more consistent source of revenue and trying, of course, to advance the ever important music career, taking advantage of a diverse array of projects this year and trying to court several other potential clients to hire me to score their work.  Occasionally I breathe.  Like I'm doing now. As I type. 

So, it's not like I'm neglecting any one part of my career all that much.  Climbing a mountain takes time and while you can make significant strides and look down and see how far you've come to put things in perspective, sometimes you gotta move ahead one ridge at a time and stay focused on where the next foothold is.  (Climbing metaphor...nailed it!)

And I'm really not, when I think about it, neglecting anything.  I got that into my head somehow the other week.  "I'm not pushing far enough ahead in my voice over career."  Yes, I do need to audition more.  But today, I went to another VO practice session with my coach and about five other VO talents.  What fun that was, too!  And I was nailing all the reads for the scripts she gave me.  I actually can't wait to hear the finished mp3 she's going to send me. This stuff was sounding so good and she was liking it so much (my coach) that I think I'm going to use it to buff up my demos a little bit.

And then, who knows.  I'm definitely doing better at the auditioning but I'm really being reminded why I got frustrated before and started to look for agents.  The online auditioning world is unpredictable.  I literally had nothing earlier in the week, just a few weird religious things that I couldn't pull off if I tried.  And just yesterday, when I usually work from 10am to 1130pm, I shit you not, I had no fewer than 7 auditions come through my inbox that were for jobs with budgets up in the $500 range.  What?!

Seriously, guys, it's frustrating.  I may be able to do one or two of them this weekend but I don't have high hopes.  It's like I have to take this freelance work while I can because that's money I know I can make, while the VO stuff is a huge maybe.  Maybe I can pull of an awesome read and send it in time, and maybe they'll like it.  But in all likelihood, I won't hit the mark and they'll be looking for a totally different style of read or voice type than me.

That's the trick and that's why an agent is important.  They can get to know your voice, and already knowing something about the industry can help you find the jobs you're most suited for.

But I digress.  This blog is about savoring the moment.  I may not be at the summit but at least I can pause and look down at how far I've come and center myself, refocus my approach and just look for the next foothold.

On a side note, the reason I titled this blog NLP.org is because I realized while I was typing this that The News Literacy Project has started to post videos with my bumper on them.  Go here to listen.  There's a milestone for you. 

50 Days 'til Nicaragua and a goal...

I bought a plane ticket yesterday to a country I've never been to before.  My passport still hasn't been renewed and I have yet to put down the deposit on this Nicaragua trip because my money has not cleared my paypal account yet.  But somehow, it's starting to feel real.   I'm actually doing this.  About f***** time.

That's the best part about having worked 50-60 hours a week for the better part of this year.  I can do things like put money away, save for a trip, buy an HD TV (one that I barely get to watch) and start thinking about financing a new guitar.  And the yoga retreat is sort of the pinnacle even though I'm committed to waiting until I've fully paid for said trip to start thinking about the new guitar.  Traveling in general is something that I've missed and now I get to do it like I've never done before, in ways I never thought possible.  Completely out of pocket and solo.  An adventure like none other I've experienced.

I sort of wish I hadn't bought the plane ticket already, though, because now I've restricted myself to staying only for the duration of the retreat.  Meanwhile, a co worker of mine, who's been to Nicaragua, gave me some tips to go check out this island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua composed of two volcanoes, one dormant and one active.  Something that would take far longer to accomplish than the allotted time we have on the trip for excursions.   Perhaps for another visit.   But then, who knows.  Maybe I could work it out.  We'll be staying south of San Juan del Sur on a private beach and the ferry to the island, Ometepe, is in San Jorge, a half hour drive from San Juan del Sur by the looks of it.  I guess it's a matter of having enough time to adequately explore the island.

So that's several goals of mine in sight, traveling to Central America, traveling solo again, and finally experiencing a yoga retreat.  I want to talk about a smaller scale goal, though, partially in reference to my last blog entry about carving out time.  I thought about how I was complaining about not having the time to advance my voice over career the way I'd like to and how there's a small space between saying I wish I could do something to just f***** doing it.  So I thought, "why not set a goal?"  It wouldn't have to be a large goal but any amount would be a move toward something quite substantial in the long run.  How about just saying every Monday, I will do voice over auditions, or I will do at least two a day, Monday, Wednesday and Fridays?  Or I will just be consistent and do a certain number every week, no matter when I do them?  I think it's going to go something like that.

That's how it starts anyway.  Maybe I can say at least every other week I will submit voice over auditions between now and the end of the year.  And slowly ramp up the rate at which I submit them until I can't let a week go by without submitting something.  The idea is that I'm being consistent with my practice whether or not I'm getting jobs every week.  And it's not wholly unfeasible to think I could accomplish this.  Heck, I did it with yoga.

Anyway, I got a lot of insight from this video:



While some of the things in this video are a bit intuitive to the point that I found myself saying, "hey, I already kinda do that!" I did find a lot of things that are relevant to my situation and that could be helpful.  I'm thinking mainly of the bits about just getting started on a task.  This part in particular resonated with me:

"Your willpower is simply not enough...in fact, some studies suggest that willpower is an exhaustible source that can be entirely used up...instead of convincing yourself to simply try harder, a more methodical approach is suggested.  The first step?  Get started...it may seem obvious but studies have shown, starting a project may be the biggest barrier to productivity.  Before starting, our brain visualizes the hardest parts to come and instead tries to simulate real work by focusing on small mindless tasks..."

He goes on to talk about the Zeigarnik effect which shows that if we don't finish something we experience discomfort until we do finish it.  In a way, that's the thing that propels us to complete something, having started it and left it unfinished.  I've certainly felt this in the past once I've started a project.  It begins to consume me and I start to want to devote time to it.   But starting is the biggest hurdle.   Also, it tells us that one of the reasons we procrastinate is because we tend to visualize the worst part of something when starting a task and thus get overwhelmed and perhaps abandon it.  Later on in the video he talks about breaking things up into small, manageable tasks to avoid this and that's, again, what I've instinctively done at times before as well.

Ultimately, I'd like to get my voice over practice back up to a level of prominence in my life on par with what I currently devote to yoga.  With yoga, the situation was slightly different.  I basically got a good deal on a membership to a studio and felt like I had to take advantage of it.  Then I started to really like doing it and consciously made it a priority.  Now I can't live without it.  It's certainly reasonable to think I could do the same with making voice over a priority.  It's just a matter of figuring out how to start.  So, I'm taking those steps this week.  And, in a way, I've already started.  In the past few weeks I've auditioned to more than I have in months.  Just the act of getting back into doing it on a regular basis has shown me that I can squeeze them in and that it is definitely doable.  I even discovered that Sound Forge, the software I use at home on the PC is now available for Mac.  Having that on my laptop will definitely up the quality of my auditions when I'm on the go which will afford me so much more time to do them.

Anyhow, for now, I structure and I plan.  Another tidbit from that video that I realized I already do is making lists of things to do instead of trying to multi-task.  :)

So much for recharging...

Back to the daily grind after a wonderful slow paced weekend in the country.  I should do that more often.  But here I am tired again, mainly because I couldn't sleep last night.  As usual, there's lots going on up in my brain.  I talked with George about the end credit music for "The Life" tonight, before I left work, and I'm thinking I'll be finished with the final mix this week and ready to master everything next week.  After that, we start talking about the final edit of the pilot and what kind of underscoring we'll need.  It's shaping up to be about 40 minutes long so, it may be the longest thing I've scored solo since Kisses and Caroms.  Zero Sum Game I scored in part with two other composers chipping in and some of my stuff not getting used in the final cut.

Anyway, I'm as excited as ever about it and all the other projects.  Even the ones on hold right now.  Tomorrow, to add to the excitement, I have a voice over practice session with my coach and a few of her other students in Midtown at 1pm.  So I have time to get back to yoga tomorrow morning and to pitter around town before I go into work at 330pm.  Should be a great day, great to dive back into voice over again...but I have to be up in about 7 hours.  It never ends.

So with that said, I think I am going to start taking more opportunities to recharge...and reward myself.  I've had a long and hard but also fun year.  But also grueling.  And also brutal in some ways.  But also fruitful.

The point is I deserve down time and thinking of how to spend such down time (and some of the money I've saved up) has led me to decide to finally start traveling again.  I don't always believe in such stuff but I have been toying with the notion that our thoughts create our reality.   Central America and the Caribbean have been in some of those thoughts and so has the idea of doing a yoga retreat at some point.  So, a few Sundays ago, while meditating before a yoga class, I decided to direct that thought energy toward such a venture.  "I'd like to make that a reality this year."  I said to myself.  Wouldn't you know it, at the end of that yoga class my teacher mentioned a yoga retreat in Belize that she leads in April, right around my birthday.  I took it as a sign and started doing my research.  After a few days of looking into it, I started to think about how I should probably weigh all my options.   Then, yet another yoga retreat popped up that one of my teachers at a different studio leads.  This one in Nicaragua.   Unfortunately, it's sooner and I don't think I'll have the money in time to put down a deposit but then who knows.  Things could change.  Things always change.

I've been thinking about that, too.  How you can plan so far ahead in the future but your planning can only take into account what you assume will happen given the set of circumstances that you are aware of, i.e. how much money you will be making at your current job(s), or if a new job will come around in time to help you out.  Now, instead of waiting for such a thing to happen, why not just say what you need from the universe out loud.  Again with the thoughts creating reality, if I say, "I can't afford it," then I won't.  But if I instead ask, "how can I afford it," I'm that much closer to figuring it out.  I have to believe it's possible before I can entertain the thought.  Of course, I've never been the kind of person to think you can just draw something from thin air but I do think it's powerful to state your intentions because it gives your conscious mind something to latch onto, a goal to work towards.  You need a certain amount of faith of course, but what I mean when I say faith, is faith in yourself, faith in your abilities.  There is still work to be done.  Oh, no doubt about that.

It always helps me in these situations too, and especially when I doubt myself to look at my track record...I'm here, aren't I?  Good night for now.

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.

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!    

A Sea Change...

At the end of my work week here and I'm trying to accept that it's not all productivity and milestones.  But then I'm also constantly trying to remind myself, when I'm sitting here idle, at a slow moment in the work evening, that I did accomplish a lot earlier today (voice over auditions and work on re-editing one of my demos...oh, and rock star yoga class at noon before work) and that it's no big deal, as awful as it feels, that I'm getting nothing else done today.   It's just too distracting right now at work and so many of the things I have to do, I need to be in the home office/studio to be doing them.

I'm on at least 5 major tasks right now that are preoccupying my time:
Working on the remix project which is due Feburary 8th
Submitting VO auditions on an almost daily basis if I can
Rehearsing for the upcoming CD release parties with Lacy
Networking with filmmakers to try and get another film scoring job
Revamping some of my voice over demos and creating a promo demo so I can ultimately start soliciting agents

...and I think that's it...maybe I can count trying to clean up my apartment on a grand scale.  Right now I'm on the donating clothes leg of that race.

So, you see, very few of these things can be done at work.  I guess I can be researching filmmakers and writing emails right now but everything else needs to be done at home.  I'm in a phase with the remix contest where I really can't be doing anything in headphones.  I need my monitors.  I could be doing research on agents, too, I guess.  

But all this comes with the sinking feeling that, with a potential change in my work schedule here, I may have fewer chances to get any of my work done during the day unless I adjust my routines.  I've always been good at that though.  A while back, I lost the overnight shifts, sorry, got rid of the overnight shifts and while it is nice to be rid of them, I did get a staggering amount of work done there.  During the weekdays here it gets far too busy for me to have my laptop out and, lately, I haven't even been getting breaks because of how short staffed we are.  Having more seniority when we finally get our new hires in here, I stand to completely lose all weekend and late evening shifts, which would be nice...I mean it'd be effing great!  but the notion of doing any kind of work other than administrative stuff, and sending emails would be all but gone.  Maybe I could get away with the occasional mixing and editing of music tracks on my break, or voicing auditions in edit bays, something I haven't done in a while.

Ultimately, depending on what my new shift is, I'm going to have to figure out when during the day I can do things like submit to VO auditions and compose and mix audio.  Shutting the door to my room works but sometimes it's still too distracting when Katrina and I are home at the same time, which could happen, say, if I get a 10am - 6pm shift.  Don't get me wrong it be a rock star shift and I'd eat it up.  Imagine!  Being able to get off work at dinner time and go home and cook dinner and eat it right away instead of this shit where I make three portions of the same meal and carry it all to work, risk spilling it in my bag (happened yesterday with chicken soup), then have to microwave it later so that the vast majority of dinners I eat have been reheated.   Imagine, getting up at the same time every day and going to yoga at the same time and then having weekends off so I can hang out with people who have 9-5 Monday through Friday jobs.  I've been on horrible dates that were my weekend night but the other person's middle of the week or vice versa (worse in my opinion).

But I digress.  This blog is about my own productivity.  I see it as a challenge that, with all the things that could potentially change with my schedule, I may have to do my freelance work at less optimal times of day.  So far, I've actually enjoyed and actively benefited from working nights.  I wake up fresh, go to yoga, then come home and work my face off and then go to work my night job feeling accomplished and in a good mood, get off work, maybe have one drink and sleep and do it all over again.

I suppose I'm getting a tiny bit wistful but, ya know, one door closes another opens, yadda yadda.  I guess I'm going to post this blog and then get to doing my research.  Later on!

 

Blind Barber...

I was walking down 10th Street in Alphabet City in search of a bar called the Blind Barber last night.  Stupidly, I assumed that the actual old school looking barber shop couldn't have been it and passed right by it and the adjacent store front that had no sign in front of it.  I turned the corner on B and glanced up the block aways before turning back and deciding to investigate further.  Lacy had told me in her last text to me that I was in for a surprise.  We were meeting at a party for the PR company she's working with which had an open bar and where we were supposed to meet a ton of music folks.  

I walked more slowly toward where the address should have been and then spotted a store front constructed of old looking wood with an over large iron pair of scissors hanging on the wall.  There was a door with no handle but a slender window in it and, of course, music coming from inside that I had no idea how I had missed before.  Thinking this was maybe some kind of speakeasy, I knocked, like an idiot before turning my head to the left and noticing a gentleman with an eye patch (seriously, not kidding) checking IDs in front of the barber shop.  This was all starting to make sense.  

In the back of an actual two-chair barber shop, where two people were getting actual haircuts, was a sliding door which led to the bar I was looking for.  And the party was in full swing.  

I connected with Lacy shortly after and took advantage of the open bar for a mere ten minutes before we had to start buying drinks.  The crowd was great and everyone was really nice.  Lacy first introduced me to the PR people she's working directly with and then we met a few people who were musicians in bands and just talked the night away.   Dancing was hinted at in the invite but I saw immediately that this was not the kind of party where I'd be trying out my moves from Sunday.  

Did I mention, by the way, that I went to the coolest yoga workshop on Sunday and learned some breakdancing moves?  One of the yoga teachers at Yoga Works Soho that I've been taking class from teaches a breakdancing inspired yoga workshop...or was it a yoga inspired breakdancing class?  She herself got started breakdancing when she was just a teenager and then came to yoga years later and was looking for a way to incorporate the two.  I heard about it from taking her class and got really excited because I've always wanted to learn more about breakdancing and it was a few years ago that I started to notice all the similarities between the two insofar as the kind of strength required for the poses and the moves, etc.  The class was so much fun.  

She got us started with a flow sequence of her design that echoed breakdancing moves, then as the class goes on she got us more comfortable being on our hands and doing inversions.  By the end of it she had us learn a sequence of break dancing moves and stitch them together to do a routine.  The problem is I have been out of yoga classes for a few weeks now, just practicing at home because one of my memberships is suspended and the other doesn't start back up until January.  So I was and am a little sore.  

Anyway, the remixing project is pushing forward now that I have my new software and I'm inches away from calling it done.  Hoping to be sending all this off by the end of the year.  There are 7 songs now I believe ranging from a minute and a half to 4 minutes or so in length.  All of them electronic, some incorporating guitar and bass.  I'm psyched to have them done and out there.  

Right now, I'm waiting to hear back from an opportunity that I won't say much about but that it's big.  Even if I don't get it, I hope to be saying that a lot in the new year.  Wish me luck!

Halloween...

Today, I biked to work.  It was a choice I made last night when I decided I didn't want to take another cab and wait to be reimbursed nor did I want to brave the limited bus service.  It took Katrina 4 hours to get in to work using the bus system.  No, I'd rather snake my way in between the cars on my bike than sit through that kind of ordeal.

Unfortunately, my bike was really in no condition to take such a commute.  But I was determined and, anticipating possibly having to use the bike a few more times before the subway comes back up, I decided to splurge and get a few things I knew I'd need: a bell, a light and, after the ride to yoga made my hands feel like ice cubes: gloves.  Yes, I worked yoga into the mix.  Because yoga was exactly what this stressful ordeal was missing.  A teacher that I most often take classes with posted to my Facebook page that she was definitely teaching in Brooklyn Heights this morning.  So, since I haven't been to class since last Friday, I knew I had to make that part of my day.  And it was the best class ever!  It felt like it anyway.   Just to have a moment of calm in the midst of all of this.

After yoga, I got some advice from my yoga teacher about where to go for a bike tune up and all those accessories I needed.  She's an avid cyclist and bikes everywhere so I knew she'd have the scoop on where to go.  First I hit a shop on Smith and Bergen for the light, bell and gloves and then, since she'd told me I could probably still get a free tune up here, I went to Bicycle Habitat on Lafayette St. in Soho.  The tune ups were not still free but the shop was at least open and, though there was a crowd, I got in pretty quick.  They had no lights but they had a lot of people on staff and bike stands set up, outside the shop even, giving people tune ups.  They were, of course, only taking cash and walking about the darkened store with flashlights to fetch things.  The guy who tuned up my bike, greased my chain and adjusted it for me, had a thick New York lifer accent and sported 3 foot long dreadlocks.  He was animated and seemed like he was having a ton of fun just helping people out who had no other way of getting around but their bikes.  He fixed me up, rather enthusiastically, in just minutes while we chatted about my bike.  Apparently, one of the first kinds of bikes he ever worked on.  $10 and I was out of there on the smoothest ride I'd had on that bike in, well, ever.

I skirted from there over to the West Side with little difficulty.   Only trick was there were no traffic lights so you had to be on alert and wait to cross avenues.  Most cars would stop, especially if they saw a crowd trying to push across.  Then, since I've never taken the Manhattan Bridge to work (beautiful ride, by the way), I sort of had to figure out as I went what the best route was going to be.  The trick?  Follow other bikers.  There were, after all, a ton of them out. Almost as many as the cars.  In fact, Mayor Bloomberg issued a carpool rule for all the bridges into the city to cut down on traffic in the city, especially since there are still no traffic lights below 39th Street.

Work was okay.   The most excitement happened when the news came in that they were evacuating Bellevue Hospital after losing generator power.  The newsroom was all a buzz with everyone running around trying to make sure we could get one of our reporters there ASAP. 

Biking home was probably the coolest thing today.  I stopped and took a ton of pictures along the route, to the extent that it took me an hour and 15 minutes to get home (30 extra minutes than it normally would have on my bike).  As soon as I stepped out into the night, I realized how spooky it was going to be.  Fitting that it's Halloween.  I had my light, which, as the guy who sold it to me said, would not illuminate my path but it would let people know I was coming.  As such, I could barely see the bumps in the road coming and cursed myself once for turning down a cobblestone road in pursuit of some other bikers who I thought might know the way to the Manhattan Bridge.  My bum really hurts right now.

When I crossed back over the West Side Highway after zipping down the Greenway to Tribeca, it became suddenly dark in between the narrow cross streets of that area.  I had the glow of a near full moon and the occasional passing taxi or other cyclist but beyond that I was straining my eyes to see a lot of the time.  Pedestrians would come up out of nowhere, often in Halloween costumes.  Bleeker Street was the darkest but the spookiest was turning onto the bike path on the Manhattan Bridge right where the mouth of the subway tunnel is for the N and Q trains.  I could feel an eerie warmth coming up from the tunnel, and tried to keep from looking down it as I climbed past it on my bike.  In the middle of the bridge, I had to stop and snap a wide photo encompassing both the darkened Manhattan side and the fully lit Brooklyn side, along with the almost full moon and Jupiter floating nearby.

Scary Commute, Halloween Best Shots

I reached a point on the bridge later on where the street lights suddenly came on and looked back a few times to see the sharp contrast, the line between electrified and powerless.  I had to refrain from taking another picture.  I had already wasted so much time and was fatigued.  The rest of the commute home was a breeze compared to all the turns I had to take in Manhattan and the busy streets I had to cross (Houston, Delancy, Bowery, all the avenues, Chrystie St.) and the cobblestones and the darkness and the distractions.  There was one funny moment on 5th Avenue in Park Slope when a woman dressed as a nurse/zombie was lurking in the street near a cab that had pulled over in the bike lane.  She turned to look at me and began to come towards me, fully in character, hungry for brains.  I shrieked and swerved.  Laughter erupted from the sidewalk from the rest of her friends.

Thankful for that final hill, up my street, being short but annoyed at the obstacle of trash cans blocking the gate to the back yard where I lock my bike, I was finally home.  Now, I'm exhausted and have to sleep then literally turn right back around and go into work again tomorrow.  This time, I'm carpooling with a co worker who lives nearby though I have get up much earlier than I normally would need to and will be waiting around for my shift when I get there.  Should be a much easier day, though, as I'll probably take a cab home on the company's dime.  With that, who knows what tomorrow will hold. See ya soon!

Inversions...

Been thinking a lot lately about my inversion practices in yoga class and how they relate to my life as a whole. The headstand, the hand stand, forearm stand, tripod handstand...I always feel like I'm right at the point where I could leave the support of having the wall behind me when I kick up and actually practice them in the middle of the room.  But then I start to settle in to the safety of the wall as a support and a backup and I'll spend months not advancing at all with any one particular pose.  For example, I may have gotten to where I can balance for a few seconds in a handstand but, without the wall there behind me, I can't come up without risking toppling over on my way up. In headstand I've grasped and put into practice the concept of using my core strength to lift myself up versus using momentum from kicking up but lately, though I can get up, I haven't been able to stay up for very long for fear of, once again, toppling over. Either way, with any of the poses, I always hit a wall. And I don't advance until I sit back and examine what I need to do to get to the next level.

As with music and voice over, I feel as though I get to one point and can't get any further until I fully examine the nature of my obstacles.  Regrouping and examining my methods and their results is key at these points.

Having this insight from yoga is great, too, because I can apply what that practice teaches me across the board.  Which is this:  I find that, in yoga class, and lately, especially with headstand, it's most effective for me to not feel bad if I have to come out of the pose for fear of losing my balance.  I just allow myself to make several attempts at it before accepting that I've tried hard enough for today, no matter how far I've gotten.  I also avoid looking around the room at the damn yogi rock stars that are up and balancing the whole time.  It's not about competition.  Even if the voice over and music stuff can be at times, it's still helpful to import this line of thinking into that arena.  After all, I have to acknowledge with both that I can only do so much and that there are only so many hours in a day.  The important thing is that I try and I'm not idle.  If I try something and it doesn't work, I keep going and I try the next thing. And when I've had enough: rest in child's pose. 

That having been said, I am definitely making strides with both but there's never an uninterrupted stream of progress.  I must always contend with obstacles.  Trying not to let this discourage me is the trick. 

And the amazing thing is that, with both areas of my life, I will often pass a milestone in a very noticeable way.  That feeling of weightlessness when you can balance in handstand even for a second equates with that amazing feeling when someone hears my music or my voice and likes what they hear enough to hire me and I realize that the hard work has paid off to some degree.  It's that "hey, wait.  Maybe I can do this."  feeling that's so amazing.  And it really does feel like, despite all of the slips and falls and awkward landings, I can balance, at least a little.

So I should keep it going, right?  I started this blog sitting at Barbès and typing on my phone while listening to Slavic Soul Party.  It's a Tuesday night which means it's my Friday and I wanted to cut loose a little so I headed over there after dinner with my girlfriend in the Village.  Work at NY1 has been hectic and I'm really feeling the weight of all the balls I have up in the air right now (At the moment, I'm looking for legal help with the contract from the licensing agency and have several emails out to talent agents and production companies with my voice over demos attached.) and occasionally, it gets a little frustrating waiting for them to land.  Though, I'm happy right now that I have lots of work, even if not the paid kind, just yet.  I'm finishing a ton of pieces to send off to this licensing agency once I finish looking over the contract and am satisfied.  I'm doing some pro bono work for a friend who was helping produce a short PSA and needs music.  I'm also auditioning for voice over stuff on an almost daily basis.  On top of it all, I got a little bit of a nice pay off from all the hard work I've already done this year when a director I worked with sent me a link to the finished film that I scored.  I'm a little unsure about posting it just yet because it was a password protected link but PM me if you wish to hear/see it.  It's a 13 minute Sci-fi short titled, "The Feed."  You may have heard me talk about it a good bit back in April, May and June if you read this blog at all. 

Now, I'm afraid it's time for me to go to sleep for a change.  Wish me luck with all of the above, headstands and handstands notwithstanding. 

Leisure and its antithesis...

These days I feel as though someone just invented the weekend and I'm among the first to benefit from it.   Yes, I'm talking about the schedule change that happened at work now more than a month ago.  Having two full days off is just amazing.  At first, right about the middle of the first full day off I would always get this slight feeling of "oh crap, I gotta go back to work tomorrow," followed almost immediately by the relief that I don't have to go back to work tomorrow.  Slowly but surely, though, it's turned into just the random acknowledgement throughout the day of the fact that I don't have to go back to work tomorrow.

And that I can do more stuff!!!  So tomorrow a friend and I are going to swing by the pre Bastille Day festivities in the city at Cercle Rouge in Soho on W. Broadway.  And today, I already had lunch in the city and walked around Washington Square Park!

And on top of all that leisure, I'm still getting tons of work done!  I had another voice over gig that I was able to finish and submit a first draft for plus, I'm pushing forward on all the tedium in this next stage of the Samurai film: editing all of my recorded takes.  I found out that I accidentally recorded over one of the takes so I'm having to call back the performer to redo that one little snippet.  It sucks but I have to do it and it's my gaff so I have pay him out of pocket for his time.  Only fair.  But it's a pretty good lesson even if I was anticipating such a mistake happening and still thought I had prepared enough to make sure that I got everything I needed out of him.  I printed up a score for him, wrote time codes and lengths on each cue, down to the shortest one, even wrote notes for myself about what kind of extra sounds to get out of him after we were done with the main cues so that I'd have extra material for the fight scenes.   But alas, I still managed to miss something.

What happened was, a few times I didn't start a new file for each new recording and expected that the program I use, Sound Forge, would just record from the end of the file but instead, somehow, in one of the files, the playback cursor reset to the beginning of the file and it recorded over the first takes of that cue, including every single take of the first part of the cue.  Ack!

So, luckily this only happened with one file but initially, I thought I had lost a lot more.  Somehow when I transferred all the raw files over to my Macbook via dropbox, not everything was showing up.  So I went back to the PC and checked and was able to find the rest, all except for those takes of the first part of cue #4.

You live and you learn.

Anyway, I should mention that the takes sound awesome and I had so much fun recording James, the Shakuhachi player.  The instrument is extremely expressive and James knows it inside and out, extended techniques and all.  So I have some neat sounds from him that I promised I wouldn't sample in addition to the beautiful interpretations of my music.

I'm going to be posting this stuff for sure once the film is done…which I can't really say when that will be at the moment.  Hopefully, I'll have my work done in about a week.  I'm also adding Japanese Taiko drums and potentially other percussion instruments and mixing and mastering everything.  So that should take some time.  This is a pretty tedious part of the process and my right hand is starting to hurt a little (most noticeably in yoga classes in downward facing dog) from using the track pad on my Macbook so much.

That having been said, you guessed it, I have to go to sleep so I can be up bright and early for another of those yoga classes.  And who knows maybe I'll get a little bit more done on the film score and try to do some voice over auditions as well before the Bastille Day fun.

The Transit of Venus...

I've been out of the loop for a bit here but I've had tons going on.   This week is just getting started but I'm doing something fun and exciting just about every night.  Today was the most though.  I wanted to witness the transit of Venus across the sun that I've been raving about all week because it won't happen again until 2117.

And I thank grad school again for my badass organizational and time management skills.  I was able to pull off wrapping up some work on a few cues for the sci fi short at a coffee shop near the Highline park, while I waited for the transit to begin and, having brought my yoga mat was able to make it to a yoga class after the transit.  Granted, I had to put off dinner until about 1030 tonight but hey, you gotta make some sacrifices.  After all, like I said, this won't happen again until 2117, when I'm 136 years old!

The Amateur Astronomer's Association of NY was hosting a viewing party on the Highline Park (and one in Inwood at Riverside Park) so I figured, despite the clouds, I had to give this a shot and try to make it.  I've been meaning to join one of their stargazing events for some time now, ever since I heard of them…which probably came about because of my recent obsession, er, lay interest in astronomy and all things astrophysics borne out of my harrowing overnight schedule at work (which, sidebar, is OVER for good now…I worked my last overnight last night!). 

As I came out from underneath the building that the elevated rail line punctures at 14th Street, I couldn't believe how many people were up there to glimpse the transit.  With the amount of cloud cover there was, I thought there might only be a handful of people.  I almost didn't go and figured I would just watch it streaming online from Mauna Kea in Hawaii.  But as I sat in 'sNice on 8th Avenue, sipping my maté and working on my laptop, the sun peeked out a few times and I got excited.  It was really breaking through by the time I got up there, too.  I wandered around at first getting a scope of how many people were actually there and sizing up all the different telescopes.  Having no game plan, I figured I would just cozy up to one person's setup and try to get a look.  I approached one guy and chatted to him a little and peered into his telescope which was filtered and focused on the sun (it even had a battery powered motor to keep up with the rotation of the Earth).  I glimpsed a few sun spots but at that point the transit was still 15 minutes away.  Hearing rumors of someone passing out eclipse glasses, I began to seek her out and eventually found her but she was out of glasses except for 10 that were her own personal ones that she needed for her class.  I decided to hang out by her setup because she was projecting onto a plate attached to her telescope so it was much easier to watch.  I even tried the glasses a few times but it was too hard to actually see the transit that way. 

The clouds really were teasing us but by the time we were about 5 minutes in to the transit, we got a very clear glimpse of the whole disc of the sun on the plate, and there it was, a tiny black dot (well, bigger and clearer than the sun spots but still tiny). 

As I posted on Facebook earlier today, the dot of Venus is the especially round one toward the top of the disc on this plate.  The darker spots near the bottom are just scratches on the plate, but if you peer closely, you will notice a few sunspots even. 

This was such a fun event and it was inspiring to see how many people were interested in witnessing the transit.  It just gets you excited, too, about the incredible nature of the universe, how it works and how big it really is.  Much more exciting than just watching documentaries about this stuff, I mean, actually seeing it in action.  And add to that the fact that this event was so rare.  Mercury will cross the sun again in 2016 and does so more often but because it is closer to the sun than it is to us, it's not as striking.  But now, I'm probably going to have to go and check that out anyway in a few years.  

After making some new friends and chatting about everything from high powered telescopes, fast Fourier transform, and even the Pluto's not a planet debate, I left around 730pm and headed to Brooklyn Heights where I've been taking yoga at a new studio.  

Most of the teachers there seem to be Jivamukti inspired but the one who teaches tonight has some Anusara training, Anusara being the style I'm most recently acquainted with from studying at Abhaya yoga in DUMBO.  I still haven't decided what I'm going to do when my 3 week new student deal is up.  I may go back to Abhaya and split my time between there and the new place, Yoga People, because I like the new place a lot.  But I've become really fond of all the teachers I've studied with at Abhaya.  I may, however, just continue investigating other studios out of curiosity just to see what else is out there.  

Anyway, I'm about to head off to bed, because I have to work tomorrow at 10am, a rare Wednesday shift to make up for the change in my schedule next week.  No MORE OVERNIGHTS!!!!!!  Tomorrow, after work, I'm going to a networking event, the NY Spotlight on Success, and then Thursday I may go see Marie-Christine Giordano's dance company. The excitement continues!  Good night.