It's late and I feel alive so I'm writing. It's been a bit but I have more train analogies. I swear waiting on the train platform is better than sitting on the toilet for generating ideas sometimes.
Anyway, the New York City subway system, the MTA, short for Metropolitan Transit Authority, is notorious for delays and night time and weekend service changes because of the simple fact that it runs 24/7. It's easy to forget this fact and get angry at your predicament to the point where you forget to appreciate that at any hour of the night, you could feasibly hop on a train and get somewhere...maybe not always as close to your front door as you'd like but still...somewhere. But last night, trying to get back to Brooklyn after the Mets game was an epic ordeal that took me almost two hours. Back when I lived in NC, a two hour car ride would be unacceptable unless I had planned to be somewhere for 24 hours or more. I'd probably even plan to sleep at my destination as opposed to braving the return trip at an ungodly hour.
In truth, the main frustration on nights like these is that, in my almost 5 years of living here, I like to think that I've gotten better at figuring out what the best way to get home is, factoring in service changes for construction and reduced frequency of train arrivals late at night. But sometimes you just eff things all up by making one snap decision, thinking it'll get you somewhere quicker and it ends up extending the length of your trip long enough that you find yourself standing on the platform for the third time in one night muttering rapid fire F words because your phone is dead and you can't even listen to music or play cell phone games to pass the time and all you wanna do is get home.
So this past Friday night I went to a Mets game in Queens with some coworkers from the freelance gig at TruTV. A fun time all around and I got to see one of my favorite bands play a show after the concert (Third Eye Blind...a band I haven't seen perform in 15 years!). But because I stayed so late and because every single train line that I might take home from Citifield is having some kind of track work related to Hurricane Sandy damage, it took me, as mentioned previously, 2 hours to get home.
I can trace my mistake back to one pivotal moment at Roosevelt Avenue when I took the first train that came, an E train, thinking I would just catch up with the F in Manhattan and take it the rest of the way home, and walk the extra ten blocks from 7th Avenue and 9th Street. I somehow forgot (let's face it, I never go to Queens anymore) that the E is local and the F is express (or maybe I was thinking both would be local at that hour...I don't knwo). So, no sooner do I get on the E train and it goes two stops, do I see an F train passing us in the tunnel on the express track. It probably arrived at Roosevelt Avenue mere minutes after I jumped on the E.
Now, because I did this, I found myself waiting for an absurd amount of time for the next F train to come. The lesson? Maybe it's not always the best advice to jump on the first train that comes along...even if it is late at night. Even waiting at Broadway Lafayette for the F, I had to pass up two D trains that rode by because I knew they wouldn't be stopping at Prospect Avenue due to construction on the R line. They might have gotten me close but not close enough unless I wanted to take a cab the rest of the way. I found out earlier in the week that the D, N and R were not only not stopping at my stop Bay Ridge bound but also Manhattan bound. So there was essentially no way for me to get to the stop closest to my apartment and I would have needed to take the F no matter what. Now, if I had waited two more minutes at Roosevelt Avenue I'd have made it onto that first F train and could have freaking napped on the way home if I wanted to and been home a good 45 minutes earlier than I was!
But, that is not what happened. No, in fact I stayed on that E train all the way to the LES, gave a group of kids some directions because our E train wasn't going to Canal like they had expected, noticed they had beer cans in plastic bags and watched one of them light up a joint on the train (even joked with him about getting a contact buzz), made it to Broadway Lafayette, waited for three trains to pass through that weren't mine before finally landing on the F train and riding home, all the while people watching and listening in on people's conversations since my phone battery had died at the game and I had nothing do but be a fly on the wall.
It was fun, but ultimately, considering my aim was to get home in a timely manner and get a decent amount of sleep for a change, not the way I wanted to spend my Friday night. What if I had waited for the right opportunity? Patiently....Then I got to thinking about that in terms of my career, because, let's face it, that kind of thing always comes up when I have the extra time for introspection that these long train rides afford me. I have a lot of opportunities here. That's literally the main reason I came to this amazing city. Often I'm compelled to take the first ones that come along. It's easy to think that's all you might get and that you'd better seize it while you can. But, as evidenced by my train trip, you could take the first thing that comes along but then immediately realize (or maybe not always immediately realize) that there was something else coming that you are now going to miss out on because you've devoted your energies elsewhere.
I happened to see the F train passing my E train in the tunnel but I thought about how you may not always realize that the choices you make cause you to miss out on opportunities. That's sort of a mind job if you think about it. How do you know what the best opportunities are? I have had occasions where I didn't realize for years that something I had seized upon, thinking it was a great opportunity, whether it was career-wise or relationship-wise, had potentially caused me to miss out on other opportunities. Or maybe not so much miss out on them but delay them while I wasted time on something fruitless.
I'm not terribly depressed by this thought. There are valuable lessons to be learned from every single encounter one has. It does kind of make me reconsider a lot of what I'm doing though...the recent focused search for a voice over agent, some live performing opportunities, film scores I've written for films that never got finished. I've spent a lot of time paring back some of my activities and bringing others to the forefront and slowly over the years I've gotten closer to satisfied with my endeavors. Fruitful or not. I had to give up some things that I really enjoyed because they were simply taking up time I could have been devoting to making ends meet or spending time on my own creative work.
That said, I'm thinking there's going to be some changes soon. I'm revamping my approach to the voice over agent and I'm going to start writing again with a mind to perform my originals.
On that note, I'm in dire need of sleep. Why am I still awake?!
Showing posts with label train luck. Show all posts
Showing posts with label train luck. Show all posts
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Friday, November 2, 2012
Aftermath 5, electricity returns...
The power is finally back on in the Chelsea Market and all around us. Though to the south it is dark. We were getting video in from all over on the East Side as the power came back on over there. People cheering in the streets. I have no idea how many more neighborhoods will have power by the time I get off work. I don't feel like I'll be up to typing after a 39 degree F ride home so I thought I'd fill everybody in before I set out. I still have just under 3 hours before I leave here and I'm not expecting it to be terribly busy. The two biggest stories of the night practically happened simultaneously: the cancellation of the marathon and the power starting to come back on in waves. How can you top those, really?
Anyway, the commute this afternoon was rather unhurried and I even had time before hand to do laundry and grocery shopping. Some of the shelves at the co-op were empty and the lines were as long as some of the busiest days there. It was a typical day at the laundromat though.
I took my bike on the R train and got off at the end of the line in Downtown Brooklyn where I biked over the Manhattan bridge. I'll do the same in reverse in a few hours, despite the temperature and my pesky head cold. I need to get that bike back home. With any luck tomorrow won't be as bad getting in...I don't expect to have full train service but if there's power in Lower Manhattan, hopefully the trains will run over the bridge.
I will be elated if this is the case. Moreso than I was taking the elevator for the first time in 5 days when I went to check on my bike just now. The sidewalks were illuminated on my side of the street, when I went outside, while the opposite side of 15th as well as 14th on south were in darkness. Only the billboard across the street is illuminated making for an eerie scene still. One more spooky adventure through Manhattan tonight. Maybe I'll see revelers in the streets. I'll try to photograph what I see, if I'm not too cold to stop. Good night for now.
Anyway, the commute this afternoon was rather unhurried and I even had time before hand to do laundry and grocery shopping. Some of the shelves at the co-op were empty and the lines were as long as some of the busiest days there. It was a typical day at the laundromat though.
I took my bike on the R train and got off at the end of the line in Downtown Brooklyn where I biked over the Manhattan bridge. I'll do the same in reverse in a few hours, despite the temperature and my pesky head cold. I need to get that bike back home. With any luck tomorrow won't be as bad getting in...I don't expect to have full train service but if there's power in Lower Manhattan, hopefully the trains will run over the bridge.
I will be elated if this is the case. Moreso than I was taking the elevator for the first time in 5 days when I went to check on my bike just now. The sidewalks were illuminated on my side of the street, when I went outside, while the opposite side of 15th as well as 14th on south were in darkness. Only the billboard across the street is illuminated making for an eerie scene still. One more spooky adventure through Manhattan tonight. Maybe I'll see revelers in the streets. I'll try to photograph what I see, if I'm not too cold to stop. Good night for now.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Aftermath 4, night commutes...
Another interesting commute tonight. Here are some pictures:
After snapping these, I hailed a cab at 7th and Greenwich. When I was at work one of the last pieces of video I took in at NY1 was footage of the lines for the shuttle buses that are trying to fill in the holes in subway service between 34th Street in Midtown and Downtown Brooklyn. I didn't want to brave that even though I had been trying for the last few hours of my shift to work out the logistics of such a commute. It seemed more trouble than it was worth. I'd have to bus to the east side (if the M14D showed up) and then take a shuttle bus to Jay St./Metro Tech and grab the R train to Prospect Avenue. No. Cab was my best shot. The company will pay for it after all.
This cabbie seemed harried and worn out. I told him, after getting in the cab (because you never tell them where you're going until you're secure inside the cab because they can't refuse you once you're inside), Park Slope, 19th Street between 5th and 6th. He said, flatly, "I don't wanna go." I sighed and said, "Look, I get it but I gotta get home." Before he could speak, I said for him to take me to the Manhattan Bridge at least and I could walk to Jay St./Metro Tech for the R train. He said he could do that then went on to tell me all about how hard it was getting gas and how hard it would be for him to get back to the city. We shared war stories for the length of the commute and somewhere along the way in downtown he agreed to take me to Jay St. Before I knew it we had passed Jay St. and he offered to take me all the way to Atlantic Avenue where the new Barclay's Center is now. I negotiated a drop off on the corner of Pacific and 4th and hopped out right into the subway station. There were uniformed officers on the mezzanine. The emergency exit door was propped open, the turnstiles roped off. Free subway and bus rides until this ordeal is over.
I wandered into that subway station, eyes wide, realizing just how long it's been since I've been in a subway station. A couple of days doesn't seem like much until you consider that every day of my life for the past 3 1/2 years, I've spent at least a half an hour inside subway stations. I reached out and touched the tiled wall on the stairway to make sure I was really there. When I hit the platform and walked down to the spot where my usual car comes to a halt, I heard it. The characteristic sound of a train creaking around the corner of the tunnel and crawling into the station. I've never been so happy to see the R train. I left work at 9:23 and I hit the street level at Prospect Avenue at 10:10. That's the most normal commute I've had in almost a week.
One day at a time. Good night.
 |
| Aftermath 2, Night Shots |
After snapping these, I hailed a cab at 7th and Greenwich. When I was at work one of the last pieces of video I took in at NY1 was footage of the lines for the shuttle buses that are trying to fill in the holes in subway service between 34th Street in Midtown and Downtown Brooklyn. I didn't want to brave that even though I had been trying for the last few hours of my shift to work out the logistics of such a commute. It seemed more trouble than it was worth. I'd have to bus to the east side (if the M14D showed up) and then take a shuttle bus to Jay St./Metro Tech and grab the R train to Prospect Avenue. No. Cab was my best shot. The company will pay for it after all.
This cabbie seemed harried and worn out. I told him, after getting in the cab (because you never tell them where you're going until you're secure inside the cab because they can't refuse you once you're inside), Park Slope, 19th Street between 5th and 6th. He said, flatly, "I don't wanna go." I sighed and said, "Look, I get it but I gotta get home." Before he could speak, I said for him to take me to the Manhattan Bridge at least and I could walk to Jay St./Metro Tech for the R train. He said he could do that then went on to tell me all about how hard it was getting gas and how hard it would be for him to get back to the city. We shared war stories for the length of the commute and somewhere along the way in downtown he agreed to take me to Jay St. Before I knew it we had passed Jay St. and he offered to take me all the way to Atlantic Avenue where the new Barclay's Center is now. I negotiated a drop off on the corner of Pacific and 4th and hopped out right into the subway station. There were uniformed officers on the mezzanine. The emergency exit door was propped open, the turnstiles roped off. Free subway and bus rides until this ordeal is over.
I wandered into that subway station, eyes wide, realizing just how long it's been since I've been in a subway station. A couple of days doesn't seem like much until you consider that every day of my life for the past 3 1/2 years, I've spent at least a half an hour inside subway stations. I reached out and touched the tiled wall on the stairway to make sure I was really there. When I hit the platform and walked down to the spot where my usual car comes to a halt, I heard it. The characteristic sound of a train creaking around the corner of the tunnel and crawling into the station. I've never been so happy to see the R train. I left work at 9:23 and I hit the street level at Prospect Avenue at 10:10. That's the most normal commute I've had in almost a week.
One day at a time. Good night.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Home at last...
I type that title as though my travel experience yesterday was so awful. While it was as long as it usually is on the way back, it was actually my smoothest day of travel all weekend, in a weekend that started with a bus accident and then preceded to an airport delay that had nothing to do with the storm into which we were flying, all followed by a near miss or a close call, whichever way you want to look at it, in which we barely made it to the airport in Raleigh before it closed! Aside from the 30 second sustained screaming of some demonic child on my flight and a seemingly unnecessary detour out over Long Island (halfway to the freaking Hamptons!) which I assume had to be some kind of holding pattern (we did arrive a little late), it was all pretty smooth. In fact, I had some of the best train luck ever getting home...mind you, I said train and not bus luck. The MTA is apparently working to restore their riders' faith.
Of course, what I saw in my room, though what I pretty much expected to see, was a bit of an adjustment. One of my shelves, which had until recently been screwed into the wall most likely to leak in my room during a rainstorm, fell, sending my tool box and other large objects to the floor. Why I've had the heaviest object in this room aside from my guitar amp on such a weak perch is beyond me, as is how it didn't break anything on my desk during its flight. I cleaned everything up in about a half hour and even unpacked before taking an epic nap which almost went uninterrupted due to my inability to set an alarm properly. Luckily, my internal alarm went off and I sprung out of bed a full forty minutes after I had expected to be up. Thank god for leftovers. I had plenty of time to nosh on something and put together a lunch for work, my nightly routine on Sundays and Mondays for over a year and a half now.
Since I missed my shift Sunday because of my altered travel plans though, I was essentially napping on a day when I don't normally have to. And now that I've had fewer days to get used to the sleep schedule, I'm somehow up slightly before noon and typing this blog. When I get up after having strange dreams about getting knocked off my bike (a dream that will likely deter me from biking to yoga tonight) and can't get back to sleep I tend to just want to give up on the whole affair. So, I'm up and, because this is the way my mind works, I'm already trying to think of ways to use this unexpected time. Eating is in order but then music is probably next. Gotta tweak the mix of the film score one last time. Then see what's happening with the edit for the trailer. I think I'm going to sit down at the piano at some point today too. But we'll see what actually happens. For now, I'm going to start my day.
Of course, what I saw in my room, though what I pretty much expected to see, was a bit of an adjustment. One of my shelves, which had until recently been screwed into the wall most likely to leak in my room during a rainstorm, fell, sending my tool box and other large objects to the floor. Why I've had the heaviest object in this room aside from my guitar amp on such a weak perch is beyond me, as is how it didn't break anything on my desk during its flight. I cleaned everything up in about a half hour and even unpacked before taking an epic nap which almost went uninterrupted due to my inability to set an alarm properly. Luckily, my internal alarm went off and I sprung out of bed a full forty minutes after I had expected to be up. Thank god for leftovers. I had plenty of time to nosh on something and put together a lunch for work, my nightly routine on Sundays and Mondays for over a year and a half now.
Since I missed my shift Sunday because of my altered travel plans though, I was essentially napping on a day when I don't normally have to. And now that I've had fewer days to get used to the sleep schedule, I'm somehow up slightly before noon and typing this blog. When I get up after having strange dreams about getting knocked off my bike (a dream that will likely deter me from biking to yoga tonight) and can't get back to sleep I tend to just want to give up on the whole affair. So, I'm up and, because this is the way my mind works, I'm already trying to think of ways to use this unexpected time. Eating is in order but then music is probably next. Gotta tweak the mix of the film score one last time. Then see what's happening with the edit for the trailer. I think I'm going to sit down at the piano at some point today too. But we'll see what actually happens. For now, I'm going to start my day.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Intensity in ten cities...
...is what the next few weeks are going to be like. Between rehearsing for Tania's concert (and my premiere) and Lacy and I arranging a set list for the 3rd of August for our first full length show AND working on the last touches of the film score, I may go insane. But, the good kind of insane. Luckily, I can sort of organize my thoughts in my spare time here.
Today, after Harry Potter 7 part 2, I worked with Lacy on the set list and deciding which ones we would do electric with laptops and which ones we would do acoustic. We've arranged with Wayne, the organizer of both Bar 82's and Banjo Jim's open mics, a full 40 minute set on the night of August 3rd at Bar 82. It's exciting to take this project to the next level now. Plus it's been a long time since I've played that long of set with a band...I mean, I played with Teletextile back in November but I believe that was only 30 minutes and I only played and sang on about 3 of the songs out of 5 that we did. I'm remembering the days with Brilliance as a Fashion and with Buggstar, though, rehearsing for shows and working out logistics of set lists and things like that and I didn't realize how much I missed it, the excitement of presenting all the work you've done, pieceing it all together into a cohesive whole.
Intense though today was. I had to scarf down dinner after that rehearsal and pack up all of my electronic equipment to head to Queens to rehearse with Tania for the electronics and piano piece, now being called "Moon, Tides, Cycles." I'm going to post program notes to it eventually once I get a recording of the new performance. Here's a link, for those interested, to how I'm setting everything up with the Macbook and my mic, interface and keyboard.
Anyway, we had a few good run-throughs and then I had to truck it on over to the Chelsea Market for work at NY1, the trains running all screwed up in normal weekend fashion. (Tania's apartment and studio are right off the E train in Queens at 23rd St./Ely Ave, yet the first train to come was the F, allegedly running on the E line until West 4th, which would have gotten me straight to work at 14th Street/8th Ave with no connections. Yet, the F was actually running, not as advertised on its regular track after 5th Ave/53rd Street...so I had to take the L at 14th Street one extra stop). Dizzying I know. But luckily the train came as soon as I hit the L train platform at 14th Street/6th Ave.
So things all together felt much smoother than my day on Friday, when, though I began my day with a perfect sans spatula flip of my eggs without breaking the yolks, all hell broke loose. I was planning on buying Harry Potter tickets using a Groupon and then packing all of my stuff together for work, including my equipmnent, so that I could head straight to Queens for rehearsal with Tania right after I left work at 8pm. I would have gotten there way too early and needed to kill time but it would have been better than going all the way back to Brooklyn to get my stuff...which ironically is what I ended up having to do anyway. I was all set to get the movie tickets for just $2 a piece with the Groupon codes but I wasn't sure if Fandango would let me use both Groupon codes a the same time so I figured I'd just buy them separately. After hitting back on my browser though, I forgot to reset the correct date in the date field and ended up buying a ticket for Friday's matinee. So, with an hour before I had to be at work, I now needed to somehow manage go by the theater in downtown Brooklyn and exchange the ticket. The sooner the better they told me. And then I had to still buy the second ticket and hope the show wouldn't sell out before I could get to a computer again. In all this frenzy, I thought I already had everything packed: lunch, laptop, keyboard, cables, microphone, stand, etc. Until I got to work (late because of the effing 2 train being stuck for 10 minutes on the track), I didn't realize that the audio interface was still sitting at home plugged into my PC. This set up of mine will not function without an audio interface. Even if I could plug the mic directly into the computer it's a condensor mic and needs phantom power to operate. So, I cursed for a while and then realized that I'd have to just leave on time and pickup the 15 minutes I'd missed, being late, on another work day, and head home to Brooklyn. First, I decided that I wasn't going to drag the keyboard and laptop all the way home and then back so I left them at work to come pick up later. Since the E train was actually running on its proper track I would only need to take one train from work to her place in Queens. And wouldn't you know it, I got home and back to work in just an hour and 15 and, after leaving work with the rest of my equipment, that put me in Queens squarely on time. All that fuss and everything still worked out.
There's a lesson here I think. Barely anything will go as planned. Not to diminsh the importance of planning, it's probably also a good idea to know how to improvise.
Simultaneously, the film score is coming together quite nicely. Tonight I just saw the first piece of the film, an opening scene. Ideas are pouring out of my head and can barely write them down fast enough. Most of them revolve around taking the Oud performances and sampling them and layering them in the background along with other ethereal sounds like sampled vocals from the Muslim call to prayer we've been using for the full piece. But also, I'm considering some music bed for the opening scene I just saw which centers around a press conference held in 2015 about the new law that is put in effect requiring all Arab Americans to be registered with the government. Soon we will have the animation timeline that follows and at that point we'll start to see the whole thing come together. We may or may not need another studio day. I'll keep you all up to date on it.
For now, I have to work on getting all those ideas in print before they disappear.
Today, after Harry Potter 7 part 2, I worked with Lacy on the set list and deciding which ones we would do electric with laptops and which ones we would do acoustic. We've arranged with Wayne, the organizer of both Bar 82's and Banjo Jim's open mics, a full 40 minute set on the night of August 3rd at Bar 82. It's exciting to take this project to the next level now. Plus it's been a long time since I've played that long of set with a band...I mean, I played with Teletextile back in November but I believe that was only 30 minutes and I only played and sang on about 3 of the songs out of 5 that we did. I'm remembering the days with Brilliance as a Fashion and with Buggstar, though, rehearsing for shows and working out logistics of set lists and things like that and I didn't realize how much I missed it, the excitement of presenting all the work you've done, pieceing it all together into a cohesive whole.
Intense though today was. I had to scarf down dinner after that rehearsal and pack up all of my electronic equipment to head to Queens to rehearse with Tania for the electronics and piano piece, now being called "Moon, Tides, Cycles." I'm going to post program notes to it eventually once I get a recording of the new performance. Here's a link, for those interested, to how I'm setting everything up with the Macbook and my mic, interface and keyboard.
Anyway, we had a few good run-throughs and then I had to truck it on over to the Chelsea Market for work at NY1, the trains running all screwed up in normal weekend fashion. (Tania's apartment and studio are right off the E train in Queens at 23rd St./Ely Ave, yet the first train to come was the F, allegedly running on the E line until West 4th, which would have gotten me straight to work at 14th Street/8th Ave with no connections. Yet, the F was actually running, not as advertised on its regular track after 5th Ave/53rd Street...so I had to take the L at 14th Street one extra stop). Dizzying I know. But luckily the train came as soon as I hit the L train platform at 14th Street/6th Ave.
So things all together felt much smoother than my day on Friday, when, though I began my day with a perfect sans spatula flip of my eggs without breaking the yolks, all hell broke loose. I was planning on buying Harry Potter tickets using a Groupon and then packing all of my stuff together for work, including my equipmnent, so that I could head straight to Queens for rehearsal with Tania right after I left work at 8pm. I would have gotten there way too early and needed to kill time but it would have been better than going all the way back to Brooklyn to get my stuff...which ironically is what I ended up having to do anyway. I was all set to get the movie tickets for just $2 a piece with the Groupon codes but I wasn't sure if Fandango would let me use both Groupon codes a the same time so I figured I'd just buy them separately. After hitting back on my browser though, I forgot to reset the correct date in the date field and ended up buying a ticket for Friday's matinee. So, with an hour before I had to be at work, I now needed to somehow manage go by the theater in downtown Brooklyn and exchange the ticket. The sooner the better they told me. And then I had to still buy the second ticket and hope the show wouldn't sell out before I could get to a computer again. In all this frenzy, I thought I already had everything packed: lunch, laptop, keyboard, cables, microphone, stand, etc. Until I got to work (late because of the effing 2 train being stuck for 10 minutes on the track), I didn't realize that the audio interface was still sitting at home plugged into my PC. This set up of mine will not function without an audio interface. Even if I could plug the mic directly into the computer it's a condensor mic and needs phantom power to operate. So, I cursed for a while and then realized that I'd have to just leave on time and pickup the 15 minutes I'd missed, being late, on another work day, and head home to Brooklyn. First, I decided that I wasn't going to drag the keyboard and laptop all the way home and then back so I left them at work to come pick up later. Since the E train was actually running on its proper track I would only need to take one train from work to her place in Queens. And wouldn't you know it, I got home and back to work in just an hour and 15 and, after leaving work with the rest of my equipment, that put me in Queens squarely on time. All that fuss and everything still worked out.
There's a lesson here I think. Barely anything will go as planned. Not to diminsh the importance of planning, it's probably also a good idea to know how to improvise.
Simultaneously, the film score is coming together quite nicely. Tonight I just saw the first piece of the film, an opening scene. Ideas are pouring out of my head and can barely write them down fast enough. Most of them revolve around taking the Oud performances and sampling them and layering them in the background along with other ethereal sounds like sampled vocals from the Muslim call to prayer we've been using for the full piece. But also, I'm considering some music bed for the opening scene I just saw which centers around a press conference held in 2015 about the new law that is put in effect requiring all Arab Americans to be registered with the government. Soon we will have the animation timeline that follows and at that point we'll start to see the whole thing come together. We may or may not need another studio day. I'll keep you all up to date on it.
For now, I have to work on getting all those ideas in print before they disappear.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
The beginning of another week...
Starting off another week here. The right way. Sort of. I pulled off a two hour nap after spending all of my morning and most of my afternoon at the church. It was our annual meeting today so I sat through that for two hours so I could vote on the budget at the end. After that, for the love of being outside after being cooped up for two hours, I walked with a friend one extra stop into downtown Brooklyn to Lawrence St./Metro Tech and then headed off to the co-op to pick up a few things. The 5th Avenue festival was apparently this afternoon, too, so I wandered through that for a few blocks, post co-op trip, until I couldn't stand being in the crowd anymore. Saw a band for half a minute but mostly just got grill smoke in my eyes and noted that everything there, all the food anyway, cost at least $5, more than I had in my pocket at the time.
By this point, the sun had come out and the humidity was on. So, I headed home and slept, but not before hashing out another quality to-do list for the week ahead. Items ticked off tonight other than napping: voice over! I submitted to another gig tonight (earlier, I had done one from my phone during the meeting because it didn't require a custom audition). I am potentialy meeting with a voice over friend sometime this week so we can pick each other's brains about our various processes. She's used voice123.com a lot more than I have and I come from an audio background so we should be able to help each other out a lot.
Beyond that, I'm diving into the score for Mohammad's picture tonight and the rest of this week. I'll be working mainly on the electronic part since the opening Oud solo will have to wait until our Oud player resurfaces or I can get my hands on an Oud of my own. I'm fully aware that I may be changing certain aspects of this piece to fit whatever I (or someone)end(s) up playing on the Oud. But probably no more than the key the piece is in. I have a slow, swung 4/4 beat running, with a low synth and cello playing an ominous ostinato and have been experimenting with layering samples of subway train sounds underneath (sounds awesome!). I have a sample of a call to prayer from a well known Muslim Imam that will signal the end of the animation and will segue into the electronic beat. So, it's mainly about placement of all those elements right now. The beat, I feel I need to work on choosing the sounds of my kit and the mix of everything. I may experiment with more parts other than the ostinato. Certainly the Oud will be in the mix but I'm also considering some clean delayed guitar. We shall see.
Saturday was another great open mic at Banjo Jim's. Lacy and I really rocked it out, bringing two songs that the crowd there had never heard, Vengeance is mine (which we only played once before at Pete's) and Silverback which was new for us this week. We arranged an acoustic version of the song last Wednesday at rehearsal that has a somewhat different feel than the album version which you can hear here.
Again, I love this crowd and the sense of community and camraderie they bring to the place. They have their regulars but are so supportive of newbies. Highlights were a Welsh girl getting up and singing with an electric uke and then reciting a poem she wrote, and then a brother and sister duo that covered I shall be released by Bob Dylan (the boy was 10 and sang and played piano).
The same 8 year old Asian girl came but we didn't get to hear her sing because I had to leave at 6pm. Lorraine Leckie came again (brought her dog into the bar) but we missed her performance, too. She was great last time.
The videos of our performance are here and here if you're interested.
Anyway, I had one of those stupid commutes tonight. It was just back and forth between good and bad train luck the whole time. First, I catch the R train right away at my station. Then I jump on the N train at Atlantic and before I know it, some urine smelling dude jumps on behind me and sits right next to me on a mostly empty train (I'm thinking, "thanks, dude!")...the next stop after Atlantic was over the bridge in Manhattan, too, so I'm pretty much stuck in this car until Canal St. Then I see the Q train on the next track over when we're in the tunnel and realize that our train has to stop to let that train go first over the bridge. If I had taken the R train one more stop to Dekalb Avenue, I might have been able to jump on that Q, go first and then bypass all the local stops and potentially not have to sit next to someone who smells like urine. Then when I get to Union Square, I just miss the L train and the next one won't come for 12 minutes according to the countdown clock. So, I try to grab the M14D bus but it's leaving once I get up into the street. The next one doesn't show and I figure, I might just have time to get back down into the subway before the next L train arrives. Sure enough, once I get downstairs, there's the L train rolling up. And I make it to work at 10:55. I guess the moral of the story is that sometimes it just doesn't matter what happens in between as long as you get where you're going on time. Even if you have to endure the smell of urine...which was what greeted me coming up the stars in the 8th avenue station.
By this point, the sun had come out and the humidity was on. So, I headed home and slept, but not before hashing out another quality to-do list for the week ahead. Items ticked off tonight other than napping: voice over! I submitted to another gig tonight (earlier, I had done one from my phone during the meeting because it didn't require a custom audition). I am potentialy meeting with a voice over friend sometime this week so we can pick each other's brains about our various processes. She's used voice123.com a lot more than I have and I come from an audio background so we should be able to help each other out a lot.
Beyond that, I'm diving into the score for Mohammad's picture tonight and the rest of this week. I'll be working mainly on the electronic part since the opening Oud solo will have to wait until our Oud player resurfaces or I can get my hands on an Oud of my own. I'm fully aware that I may be changing certain aspects of this piece to fit whatever I (or someone)end(s) up playing on the Oud. But probably no more than the key the piece is in. I have a slow, swung 4/4 beat running, with a low synth and cello playing an ominous ostinato and have been experimenting with layering samples of subway train sounds underneath (sounds awesome!). I have a sample of a call to prayer from a well known Muslim Imam that will signal the end of the animation and will segue into the electronic beat. So, it's mainly about placement of all those elements right now. The beat, I feel I need to work on choosing the sounds of my kit and the mix of everything. I may experiment with more parts other than the ostinato. Certainly the Oud will be in the mix but I'm also considering some clean delayed guitar. We shall see.
Saturday was another great open mic at Banjo Jim's. Lacy and I really rocked it out, bringing two songs that the crowd there had never heard, Vengeance is mine (which we only played once before at Pete's) and Silverback which was new for us this week. We arranged an acoustic version of the song last Wednesday at rehearsal that has a somewhat different feel than the album version which you can hear here.
Again, I love this crowd and the sense of community and camraderie they bring to the place. They have their regulars but are so supportive of newbies. Highlights were a Welsh girl getting up and singing with an electric uke and then reciting a poem she wrote, and then a brother and sister duo that covered I shall be released by Bob Dylan (the boy was 10 and sang and played piano). 
The same 8 year old Asian girl came but we didn't get to hear her sing because I had to leave at 6pm. Lorraine Leckie came again (brought her dog into the bar) but we missed her performance, too. She was great last time.
The videos of our performance are here and here if you're interested.
Anyway, I had one of those stupid commutes tonight. It was just back and forth between good and bad train luck the whole time. First, I catch the R train right away at my station. Then I jump on the N train at Atlantic and before I know it, some urine smelling dude jumps on behind me and sits right next to me on a mostly empty train (I'm thinking, "thanks, dude!")...the next stop after Atlantic was over the bridge in Manhattan, too, so I'm pretty much stuck in this car until Canal St. Then I see the Q train on the next track over when we're in the tunnel and realize that our train has to stop to let that train go first over the bridge. If I had taken the R train one more stop to Dekalb Avenue, I might have been able to jump on that Q, go first and then bypass all the local stops and potentially not have to sit next to someone who smells like urine. Then when I get to Union Square, I just miss the L train and the next one won't come for 12 minutes according to the countdown clock. So, I try to grab the M14D bus but it's leaving once I get up into the street. The next one doesn't show and I figure, I might just have time to get back down into the subway before the next L train arrives. Sure enough, once I get downstairs, there's the L train rolling up. And I make it to work at 10:55. I guess the moral of the story is that sometimes it just doesn't matter what happens in between as long as you get where you're going on time. Even if you have to endure the smell of urine...which was what greeted me coming up the stars in the 8th avenue station.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Snow over your head...
I really have never seen this much snow on the ground in person in my entire life...I'm pretty sure. Winter of '88 was pretty bad and we were almost stuck in upstate NY in the ugliest conversion van in the world but this might top that. Especially vis a vis my inconvenience from the storm as compared with '88. There was the time I went to Niagara Falls in March but these were 4 foot snow drifts and there was almost no inconvenience to me except for the biting cold as the storm had already passed by the time we got to the Buffalo area.
I'm currently watching people shoveling in vain outside my window against some of the largest snow drifts I've ever seen. 3 to 5 feet. Just think about that. Last night on the way to work it had gotten pretty bad, maybe up to about a foot and the L train was delayed half an hour when I got to Union Square, so I thought, "screw that! I can make it to the west side in less than a half an hour. I could have made it in 15 if not for the massive amount of snow I had to trudge through and the automatic slow down effected by gargantuan wind gusts that get worse the closer you get to the Hudson River. All in all, it took me about 20, plus trip to the Duane Reade to pick up a snack for work. I had to go back underground at one point and use the tunnel at 6th Avenue and 14th Street. See, the 6th Avenue lines are connected to the 7th Avenue lines at 14th Street by a tunnel that goes the length of the avenue block. Convenient too because I got to go on to the L train platform while I was down there and check to make sure the countdown clock at Union Square wasn't broken. Sure enough, it still said around 29 minutes until the next 8th Avenue bound train. Of course this little excursion cost me a swipe of my metro card but, hey, that's why I buy an unlimited monthly pass...for times like these.
After getting to work, I proclaimed that I now hated snow...but I still had the commute home, little did I know. And it didn't stop all night long. My co workers were in and out all night and everyone seemed to be working a worse shift than me, some were working 12 hour shifts and crashing at the Maritime Hotel across the street (where NY1 puts us up in times like these) only to come back a few hours later. Me, I just had to stay until 8am, an extra hour.
When I left, I couldn't believe how much added snow there was. Even from the windows of the break room on the 6th floor it didn't look that high. The roads weren't even plowed all that well yet and there seemed to be almost no one out. And the wind. I had missed the worse of it being inside during the height of the storm. But there were still leftover gusts every once in a while. The highest recorded gust was 59 mph and I even overheard on NY1 that there was thunder snow! I guess that means someone reported hearing thunder while it was snowing...still sounds cool as hell though.
Anyway, I braced for a terribly slow train ride home but was met with probably the worst relative platform wait in the history of train riding. I managed to get the F to Jay St. and I transferred using the new connection to the R train(I couldn't have gone down to 4th Avenue/9th Street because all Coney Island bound trains that go above ground had been cancelled). After about half an hour waiting for that damned R train at Metro Tech, I started to curse out loud. In the strangest of coincidences though, I was in earshot of an MTA employee who overheard me saying to another straphanger that I'd been waiting for 30 #$@#$^! minutes. So she whips her radio out of her tool bag and calls the dispatcher to find out where the train was. Two stops away at Whitehall St., the last stop in Manhattan. It's almost 9am at this point, but I calm myself. There was after all, no other way to get home. I had even poked my head above ground to see what the cab situation was. There was no cab situation. There was no anything situation. The roads in downtown Brooklyn were nowhere near plowed and there was a smattering of people trudging through the middle of the street looking more bewildered than me who had been up all night.
When the R finally came, I hopped on and we lumbered out of the station, me thinking, "can this train go any slower?" One stop away from 25th Street at Prospect Avenue, the train conductor announces train traffic and says we'll be moving shortly. Then I hear the hum of the train's engines wind down, which usually mean, shortly isn't shortly at all. I waited a minute, then with an audible curse jumped up and walked out of the train. For a moment, I thought I might get some kind of overheard information, as the same MTA employee from the platform at Lawrence St. was out on the platform too, asking the brakeman what was up. But having little patience, I ejected myself through the turnstiles and began to scale the snow encrusted stairs out of the subway. And this is about what I saw when I came up:
I even snapped a few more of the courtyard so you could see a comparison from last night's photos.
I slept until about 3:30 this afternoon, which doesn't sound like much but I'm rested and I think I want to go outside and snap some more photos the Canon camera before it's totally wrecked. Maybe I'll go to Prospect Park. Although it is windy out there. Very windy.
I'm currently watching people shoveling in vain outside my window against some of the largest snow drifts I've ever seen. 3 to 5 feet. Just think about that. Last night on the way to work it had gotten pretty bad, maybe up to about a foot and the L train was delayed half an hour when I got to Union Square, so I thought, "screw that! I can make it to the west side in less than a half an hour. I could have made it in 15 if not for the massive amount of snow I had to trudge through and the automatic slow down effected by gargantuan wind gusts that get worse the closer you get to the Hudson River. All in all, it took me about 20, plus trip to the Duane Reade to pick up a snack for work. I had to go back underground at one point and use the tunnel at 6th Avenue and 14th Street. See, the 6th Avenue lines are connected to the 7th Avenue lines at 14th Street by a tunnel that goes the length of the avenue block. Convenient too because I got to go on to the L train platform while I was down there and check to make sure the countdown clock at Union Square wasn't broken. Sure enough, it still said around 29 minutes until the next 8th Avenue bound train. Of course this little excursion cost me a swipe of my metro card but, hey, that's why I buy an unlimited monthly pass...for times like these.
After getting to work, I proclaimed that I now hated snow...but I still had the commute home, little did I know. And it didn't stop all night long. My co workers were in and out all night and everyone seemed to be working a worse shift than me, some were working 12 hour shifts and crashing at the Maritime Hotel across the street (where NY1 puts us up in times like these) only to come back a few hours later. Me, I just had to stay until 8am, an extra hour.
When I left, I couldn't believe how much added snow there was. Even from the windows of the break room on the 6th floor it didn't look that high. The roads weren't even plowed all that well yet and there seemed to be almost no one out. And the wind. I had missed the worse of it being inside during the height of the storm. But there were still leftover gusts every once in a while. The highest recorded gust was 59 mph and I even overheard on NY1 that there was thunder snow! I guess that means someone reported hearing thunder while it was snowing...still sounds cool as hell though.
Anyway, I braced for a terribly slow train ride home but was met with probably the worst relative platform wait in the history of train riding. I managed to get the F to Jay St. and I transferred using the new connection to the R train(I couldn't have gone down to 4th Avenue/9th Street because all Coney Island bound trains that go above ground had been cancelled). After about half an hour waiting for that damned R train at Metro Tech, I started to curse out loud. In the strangest of coincidences though, I was in earshot of an MTA employee who overheard me saying to another straphanger that I'd been waiting for 30 #$@#$^! minutes. So she whips her radio out of her tool bag and calls the dispatcher to find out where the train was. Two stops away at Whitehall St., the last stop in Manhattan. It's almost 9am at this point, but I calm myself. There was after all, no other way to get home. I had even poked my head above ground to see what the cab situation was. There was no cab situation. There was no anything situation. The roads in downtown Brooklyn were nowhere near plowed and there was a smattering of people trudging through the middle of the street looking more bewildered than me who had been up all night.
When the R finally came, I hopped on and we lumbered out of the station, me thinking, "can this train go any slower?" One stop away from 25th Street at Prospect Avenue, the train conductor announces train traffic and says we'll be moving shortly. Then I hear the hum of the train's engines wind down, which usually mean, shortly isn't shortly at all. I waited a minute, then with an audible curse jumped up and walked out of the train. For a moment, I thought I might get some kind of overheard information, as the same MTA employee from the platform at Lawrence St. was out on the platform too, asking the brakeman what was up. But having little patience, I ejected myself through the turnstiles and began to scale the snow encrusted stairs out of the subway. And this is about what I saw when I came up:
 |
| Even More December Snow 2010 |
I even snapped a few more of the courtyard so you could see a comparison from last night's photos.
I slept until about 3:30 this afternoon, which doesn't sound like much but I'm rested and I think I want to go outside and snap some more photos the Canon camera before it's totally wrecked. Maybe I'll go to Prospect Park. Although it is windy out there. Very windy.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Brooklyn is home and Merry Christmas...
Christmas night. Unlike last Christmas, which I spent almost entirely alone, I was able to spend my afternoon and evening with some friends from the church, having dinner and sitting by the fire in my friend's brownstone apartment (firewood provided by yours truly, which I picked up from the bodega on the way). My friend Dawn invited me and some others to what she called an "orphan's Christmas" as it was mostly comprised of people who had no place to go for Christmas. We had Tofurkey and mashed potatoes among other traditional turkey dinner trimmings.
It was a rather nice dinner and great company besides. Made me happy to be in New York. Of course, I'm always happy to be here, though. I've felt particularly connected to the borough in many ways in the past few weeks. Take what happened last Sunday, when I was running late to choir rehearsal because of the train (for a change, ha!). After waiting on the platform for ten minutes, I started to notice people wandering toward the turnstiles from the far ends of the platform and, when I took my headphones out, I could hear a muffled sound on the PA. So, I headed back toward the entrance myself and found the station attendant addressing the throngs of people (the first sign it's been a while since a train has passed is an unnatural buildup of people on the platform). Apparently, the R train was stuck at 36th Street for some unknown (or undisclosed) reason and we were being told to either wait or that we could get a train at DeKalb Avenue (for those of you non-Brooklynites, DeKalb Avenue is 5 stops away from where I usually catch the train at 25th Street). I thought, "to hell with this, I'll either walk to 4th Avenue/9th Street and get the F or G or try to catch a livery cab or go back home and sleep." The last option, I hoped not to do because the choir was having one of its last rehearsals before the Christmas Eve service. Thinking there'd be no way I'd be on time if I walked 13 blocks to the F train and then waited, I started to crane my neck out into traffic and scan for any kind of cab I could spot. A passerby, who had obviously been in the train station previously, saw my familiar maneuvering and asked me if I was getting a cab. When I told her I was, she asked if she could share one with me and we began discussing our various paths (She had to go to Manhattan). Before I knew it, another two people had come up and asked us if they could ride along as well. We all talked it over and agreed, and luckily just as we had come to a consensus that we could all benefit from the same cab ride, despite our wildly different destinations, a livery cab drove up and I deftly flagged him down. We all hopped in and got chatting and it turned out that the two girls in the back seat with me were also musicians and one was even also on her way to a church choir rehearsal. Imagine that. I even ran into the other choir singer a few days later on the R train and we exchanged info, agreeing that us musicians should stick together for networking's sake at least. She's a music teacher and an opera singer.
I just loved that spirit of New Yorkers banding together when the system fails us. It just made me love this city even more, that total strangers can trust and help each other in a situation like that. Even more thrilling was the fact that, more so than anywhere else I've lived, musicians and other like-minded artistic and creative people just seem to pop out of the woodwork here. I've made so many connections just by being where I am than I have trying to go out and specifically meet musicians and filmmakers. It's beautiful.
Tonight, as I was heading back from Dawn's apartment, I spotted someone smiling at me on the train platform at Bergen Street and then it dawned on me after boarding the train that it was one of my neighbors. She lives in my wing of the building but two floors up and I've never spoken to her except for a few smiles and occasional hellos on the way in and out. So when we both made the same train connection at 4th Avenue/9th Street we started chatting. She's really nice and it turns out she's a vet tech and we both work overnight shifts so we got to laughing about that. She's lived in the building all her life and knows everyone here. It's always interesting to me when I get to talk to lifelong New Yorkers too and compare living in the suburbs to their lives growing up in a huge metropolis like New York.
I felt bad because I didn't initially talk to her, not tonight on the platform, or even all those times I crossed her path on the stairs. And then I find out how nice she is. I realize that a lot of outsiders in New York move into places with people who have lived there all their lives and see the newcomers as signs of gentrification and sometimes with a little bit of mistrust or suspicion. It's too bad and my shyness ends up playing into that. Yet, I'm at the same time curious about their lives and, without exception almost, every one that I have met here is very kind and outgoing and helpful. The guys at the corner deli (who I found out are all brothers) who always say hey, how's it going? when I go in there before work, Frances upstairs with her granddaughter that she's always apologizing for stomping on the floor, even the quiet Chinese man, who works in the laundromat downstairs, helping me with my bills in the change machine. Brooklyn is feeling like home to me because of all of these things coming together.
And I love it.
Tonight, I'm running on a few hours of broken sleep, which ended abruptly at 5 this morning when I had to go in for an odd shift covering for a coworker who had covered me a few weeks ago when I had two concerts in one week. Tomorrow I do the overnight so I'm pushing myself to stay up and sleep late tomorrow. I'll go to the Vespers service at the Unitarian church tomorrow to sing but I'm definitely sleeping until at least 1 or 2 in the afternoon.
Beyond that, I've not been doing much since I got home. Just wrapping presents and organizing my thoughts on my next couple of projects. As usual my mind is full and I now have to empty it out and try to sleep. More to come. But for now, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
It was a rather nice dinner and great company besides. Made me happy to be in New York. Of course, I'm always happy to be here, though. I've felt particularly connected to the borough in many ways in the past few weeks. Take what happened last Sunday, when I was running late to choir rehearsal because of the train (for a change, ha!). After waiting on the platform for ten minutes, I started to notice people wandering toward the turnstiles from the far ends of the platform and, when I took my headphones out, I could hear a muffled sound on the PA. So, I headed back toward the entrance myself and found the station attendant addressing the throngs of people (the first sign it's been a while since a train has passed is an unnatural buildup of people on the platform). Apparently, the R train was stuck at 36th Street for some unknown (or undisclosed) reason and we were being told to either wait or that we could get a train at DeKalb Avenue (for those of you non-Brooklynites, DeKalb Avenue is 5 stops away from where I usually catch the train at 25th Street). I thought, "to hell with this, I'll either walk to 4th Avenue/9th Street and get the F or G or try to catch a livery cab or go back home and sleep." The last option, I hoped not to do because the choir was having one of its last rehearsals before the Christmas Eve service. Thinking there'd be no way I'd be on time if I walked 13 blocks to the F train and then waited, I started to crane my neck out into traffic and scan for any kind of cab I could spot. A passerby, who had obviously been in the train station previously, saw my familiar maneuvering and asked me if I was getting a cab. When I told her I was, she asked if she could share one with me and we began discussing our various paths (She had to go to Manhattan). Before I knew it, another two people had come up and asked us if they could ride along as well. We all talked it over and agreed, and luckily just as we had come to a consensus that we could all benefit from the same cab ride, despite our wildly different destinations, a livery cab drove up and I deftly flagged him down. We all hopped in and got chatting and it turned out that the two girls in the back seat with me were also musicians and one was even also on her way to a church choir rehearsal. Imagine that. I even ran into the other choir singer a few days later on the R train and we exchanged info, agreeing that us musicians should stick together for networking's sake at least. She's a music teacher and an opera singer.
I just loved that spirit of New Yorkers banding together when the system fails us. It just made me love this city even more, that total strangers can trust and help each other in a situation like that. Even more thrilling was the fact that, more so than anywhere else I've lived, musicians and other like-minded artistic and creative people just seem to pop out of the woodwork here. I've made so many connections just by being where I am than I have trying to go out and specifically meet musicians and filmmakers. It's beautiful.
Tonight, as I was heading back from Dawn's apartment, I spotted someone smiling at me on the train platform at Bergen Street and then it dawned on me after boarding the train that it was one of my neighbors. She lives in my wing of the building but two floors up and I've never spoken to her except for a few smiles and occasional hellos on the way in and out. So when we both made the same train connection at 4th Avenue/9th Street we started chatting. She's really nice and it turns out she's a vet tech and we both work overnight shifts so we got to laughing about that. She's lived in the building all her life and knows everyone here. It's always interesting to me when I get to talk to lifelong New Yorkers too and compare living in the suburbs to their lives growing up in a huge metropolis like New York.
I felt bad because I didn't initially talk to her, not tonight on the platform, or even all those times I crossed her path on the stairs. And then I find out how nice she is. I realize that a lot of outsiders in New York move into places with people who have lived there all their lives and see the newcomers as signs of gentrification and sometimes with a little bit of mistrust or suspicion. It's too bad and my shyness ends up playing into that. Yet, I'm at the same time curious about their lives and, without exception almost, every one that I have met here is very kind and outgoing and helpful. The guys at the corner deli (who I found out are all brothers) who always say hey, how's it going? when I go in there before work, Frances upstairs with her granddaughter that she's always apologizing for stomping on the floor, even the quiet Chinese man, who works in the laundromat downstairs, helping me with my bills in the change machine. Brooklyn is feeling like home to me because of all of these things coming together.
And I love it.
Tonight, I'm running on a few hours of broken sleep, which ended abruptly at 5 this morning when I had to go in for an odd shift covering for a coworker who had covered me a few weeks ago when I had two concerts in one week. Tomorrow I do the overnight so I'm pushing myself to stay up and sleep late tomorrow. I'll go to the Vespers service at the Unitarian church tomorrow to sing but I'm definitely sleeping until at least 1 or 2 in the afternoon.
Beyond that, I've not been doing much since I got home. Just wrapping presents and organizing my thoughts on my next couple of projects. As usual my mind is full and I now have to empty it out and try to sleep. More to come. But for now, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Saturday, August 14, 2010
A vacation....
The first paid vacation in five years, or so I've calculated. I'm currently sitting at my folks' place in Raleigh contemplating such. This week was very relaxing and laid back, with only a slight few bumps along the way. The most interesting thing to note about this week is that little, except for my travel plan, was planned out according to any sort of strict schedule. As a result, I intentionally had a lot of time where I was simply hanging out with no real itinerary. Sometimes, impromtpu plans emerged, sometimes I was content to just relax.
In Boston, as I may have mentioned in the previous blog, it was nice while I was just chillin' with friends to not have plans that necessitated running around trying to get places and see things but when it came to having to kill time in the city it was a bit tricky. But even still, I made plans on the fly to meet up with a friend who was staying in Boston for a few months and that killed all the time I had and I barely had to spend a dime or figure out any logistics.
My days back in NYC between returning from Boston and traveling to Raleigh were similarly spent. I ended up hanging out with a friend most of the time, which included that impromptu trip to the beach. Here in Raleigh it's been a similar scene and maybe even more laid back despite the day of my arrival being a bit hectic.
Delta cancelled my flight first of all and put me on another flight for Friday but I called and said I wanted an earlier flight. They said it was because of weather...um, it was cloudy? Anyhow, I got an earlier flight but so early was the flight that I realized that I had to drop everything and, well, pick up everything and run out the door prepacked suitcase and peanut butter and jelly sandwich in hand in order to catch said flight, still not knowing who was going to picking me up now that I'd be arriving two hours earlier. There was a lot of running to catch public transportation and I had spectacular train (and bus) luck (I was not the only New Yorker running to catch a 12 noon flight, I spoke with an out of breath Wisconsoner who had just barely made the M60 bus right behind me after having gotten off the train at Astoria Blvd). The packed bus made it to the airport at 11:15 so I was all ready to go but saw the line for security and almost freaked out because I still hadn't checked in to my flight. Because I freaking rock, I was able to get to the gate and get a seat assignment with half an hour to spare, good considering I had left my house at 9:50 and it normally takes an hour and a half to make LaGuardia airport taking only public transit.
When I got on the plane I realized that the seating assignment I was so happy to find was a window seat, was also at the front of business class with some massive foot room. My luck, which for the next two hours would be characterized by an almost pendular swing from good to bad, changed when the fattest man who could have boarded through the front door of the plane was seated next to me, almost fully negating the amount of foot room I had previously been grinning about. Luckily though, he was reseated at his own request, relinquishing my elbow space and I sat out a comfortable flight. Upon arrival in Raleigh though, I somehow managed to snap my phone while trying to call my sister (who I had begged to come pick me up). Yep, the Motorola Krave has a plastic flip that besides being gimmicky and useless (you're supposed to be able to tap the touch screen through it, thus not having to open the phone up to text, etc.), is also quite flimsy. But, and here's that pendular swing, I, for some unknown reason, had thrown my phone's headset into my suitcase the previous evening without knowing why. So, it still works thankfully, but I'm still debating getting a new one when I get back even though I had wanted to wait to get a Droid.
But anyway, I left the airport with my sister and the kids and spent the whole afternoon just doing kid stuff and having dinner with them. That night my brother arrived from Boone and we hung out all night and all day Friday. We did go have lunch with a friend but beyond that we sort of just did whatever, hung around, petted the cat, played our instruments (guitar and bass), tried to fix my brother's car stereo, photographed spiders on my parents' side porch, walked to the North Carolina Art Museum and checked out their new space, etc.
Not having to stick to a strict schedule has been both relaxing and strangely stressful though. More of the former though. I'd have liked to have had certain opportunities while being home but I've missed a few for various reasons, mainly because those opportunities were last minute, friends getting in touch last minute, me being too lazy to message people prior to leaving, etc. Since I've been so relaxed, though, about my time, it's been easier to let it go when nothing works out. Probably because not trying to fit in seeing everyone (i.e. driving all over) immediately seems like the more relaxing choice. I think I've just gotten really into the idea of taking it easy while I'm not working.
And that's what I had in mind for this vacation anyway. Granted, I didn't have a whole lot of cash to spend on a big vacation. But, either way, this is what I needed after all of the stress of the past year. Schedule changes, juggling freelance schedules, working composing gigs, not working composing gigs and starting this new voice over venture. Which is probably not nearly as stressful now as it is going to get eventually.
In a few hours, I'm going to be meeting with a graphic designer friend who is working on a new logo for me and design for my web graphics, business cards, marketing materials, etc. Excited about that. But meanwhile, I'm doing laundry...how cool is that? Last night and the night before I watched my parents' new HD TV for a while.
Tomorrow's going to be interesting though. I, once again not planning ahead (or was I), I scheduled my flight for 7am, not thinking about who would drive me to the airport or how tired I'd be. I have to go right back to work too at 11pm and work the overnight shift. So maybe it'll be better not getting much sleep tonight since it'll make me inclined to sleep during the day and so I'll have an easier time staying awake all night.
At any rate, I think I'm just about ready to reinstate routine and get back in the swing of things. On Wednesday, I'm going to reinstall my operating system and start troubleshooting. This time I have a 32 bit operating system and maybe that'll clear up some of the compatibility issues if not all of them. Then I can start composing, recording, and just generally tooling around again. For now, I'm signing off so I can get showered and get ready to meet this designer. Laters...
In Boston, as I may have mentioned in the previous blog, it was nice while I was just chillin' with friends to not have plans that necessitated running around trying to get places and see things but when it came to having to kill time in the city it was a bit tricky. But even still, I made plans on the fly to meet up with a friend who was staying in Boston for a few months and that killed all the time I had and I barely had to spend a dime or figure out any logistics.
My days back in NYC between returning from Boston and traveling to Raleigh were similarly spent. I ended up hanging out with a friend most of the time, which included that impromptu trip to the beach. Here in Raleigh it's been a similar scene and maybe even more laid back despite the day of my arrival being a bit hectic.
Delta cancelled my flight first of all and put me on another flight for Friday but I called and said I wanted an earlier flight. They said it was because of weather...um, it was cloudy? Anyhow, I got an earlier flight but so early was the flight that I realized that I had to drop everything and, well, pick up everything and run out the door prepacked suitcase and peanut butter and jelly sandwich in hand in order to catch said flight, still not knowing who was going to picking me up now that I'd be arriving two hours earlier. There was a lot of running to catch public transportation and I had spectacular train (and bus) luck (I was not the only New Yorker running to catch a 12 noon flight, I spoke with an out of breath Wisconsoner who had just barely made the M60 bus right behind me after having gotten off the train at Astoria Blvd). The packed bus made it to the airport at 11:15 so I was all ready to go but saw the line for security and almost freaked out because I still hadn't checked in to my flight. Because I freaking rock, I was able to get to the gate and get a seat assignment with half an hour to spare, good considering I had left my house at 9:50 and it normally takes an hour and a half to make LaGuardia airport taking only public transit.
When I got on the plane I realized that the seating assignment I was so happy to find was a window seat, was also at the front of business class with some massive foot room. My luck, which for the next two hours would be characterized by an almost pendular swing from good to bad, changed when the fattest man who could have boarded through the front door of the plane was seated next to me, almost fully negating the amount of foot room I had previously been grinning about. Luckily though, he was reseated at his own request, relinquishing my elbow space and I sat out a comfortable flight. Upon arrival in Raleigh though, I somehow managed to snap my phone while trying to call my sister (who I had begged to come pick me up). Yep, the Motorola Krave has a plastic flip that besides being gimmicky and useless (you're supposed to be able to tap the touch screen through it, thus not having to open the phone up to text, etc.), is also quite flimsy. But, and here's that pendular swing, I, for some unknown reason, had thrown my phone's headset into my suitcase the previous evening without knowing why. So, it still works thankfully, but I'm still debating getting a new one when I get back even though I had wanted to wait to get a Droid.
But anyway, I left the airport with my sister and the kids and spent the whole afternoon just doing kid stuff and having dinner with them. That night my brother arrived from Boone and we hung out all night and all day Friday. We did go have lunch with a friend but beyond that we sort of just did whatever, hung around, petted the cat, played our instruments (guitar and bass), tried to fix my brother's car stereo, photographed spiders on my parents' side porch, walked to the North Carolina Art Museum and checked out their new space, etc.
Not having to stick to a strict schedule has been both relaxing and strangely stressful though. More of the former though. I'd have liked to have had certain opportunities while being home but I've missed a few for various reasons, mainly because those opportunities were last minute, friends getting in touch last minute, me being too lazy to message people prior to leaving, etc. Since I've been so relaxed, though, about my time, it's been easier to let it go when nothing works out. Probably because not trying to fit in seeing everyone (i.e. driving all over) immediately seems like the more relaxing choice. I think I've just gotten really into the idea of taking it easy while I'm not working.
And that's what I had in mind for this vacation anyway. Granted, I didn't have a whole lot of cash to spend on a big vacation. But, either way, this is what I needed after all of the stress of the past year. Schedule changes, juggling freelance schedules, working composing gigs, not working composing gigs and starting this new voice over venture. Which is probably not nearly as stressful now as it is going to get eventually.
In a few hours, I'm going to be meeting with a graphic designer friend who is working on a new logo for me and design for my web graphics, business cards, marketing materials, etc. Excited about that. But meanwhile, I'm doing laundry...how cool is that? Last night and the night before I watched my parents' new HD TV for a while.
Tomorrow's going to be interesting though. I, once again not planning ahead (or was I), I scheduled my flight for 7am, not thinking about who would drive me to the airport or how tired I'd be. I have to go right back to work too at 11pm and work the overnight shift. So maybe it'll be better not getting much sleep tonight since it'll make me inclined to sleep during the day and so I'll have an easier time staying awake all night.
At any rate, I think I'm just about ready to reinstate routine and get back in the swing of things. On Wednesday, I'm going to reinstall my operating system and start troubleshooting. This time I have a 32 bit operating system and maybe that'll clear up some of the compatibility issues if not all of them. Then I can start composing, recording, and just generally tooling around again. For now, I'm signing off so I can get showered and get ready to meet this designer. Laters...
Saturday, February 20, 2010
A year's worth of...
One more week left in Sunset Park. When I look at it like that, this finally feels like a year later. One lease, twelve unlimited monthly metro cards, and a year's worth of Time Out New York magazines. 8 months of job uncertainty, and 4 more of adjustment to a full time schedule, 11 months of amazing food in NYC and, after one near earth-shattering diagnosis of Celiac Disease, one month of grieving over the loss of Joe's Pizza, Rocco's Pastries, Magnolia's cupcakes, Ruthie's bagels and Amy's Bread. Three trips back to Raleigh, two to Upstate NY, countless train trips and bus rides, even some long harrowing walks in strange neighborhoods trying to find better ways to get home at late hours when the trains weren't running on time...I even estimated that I've probably spent about a week out of the past year waiting for the train in the West 4th Street/Washington Square subway stop and another week waiting for the train at 9th Avenue in Brooklyn.
What a year. How about a year in pictures?
I feel like I've gotten one hell of a start here, though, I've been thinking about my current path and next steps and that sort of thing lately. It seems like I've gotten a dozen different directions I could go in next and I'm feeling more and more like the answer is not in which direction to go but in how many or how to incorporate them all and still satisfy myself. I've got my electronic music side project baking but also my contemporary music...which more and more I'm wanting to coincide with the electronic project. I know I need to revamp the website and I'm thinking more and more about ways to make a little cash on the side through selling scores or trying to license some of the music I have written and have yet to write.
I've even been thinking about reigniting my interest in starting some kind of voice over work...I've yet to use the word career with this yet because I don't know if I have the energy to simultaneously do that, music and my full time and freelance gigs. But enough people lately have commented on my voice (it's really deep, it's resonant when I want it to be, some even say it's soothing) that I think it's certainly worth considering and I think I would even enjoy doing this kind of work...Plus, the idea occurred to me today that it's something I could incorporate into the business of writing music for people. Why the heck not? Here's the pitch: I can provide voice over and music for your corporate videos and advertisements. Your one-stop shop for creative services.
Sound all right? Anyhow, that's what's on the drawing board at present. But not to distract from the musical stuff. I regret to say that the pressure of finding an apartment and moving have, at least for the moment, have distracted from any kind of progress in that arena. Most importantly, once I get settled I think I'll get to work on the website and also make new business cards. Will probably get new head shots done soon as well. More on that later.
For now, I'm going to bed. There's nothing that'll tire you out like the prospect (not even the act) of packing your things in anticipation of a move, however small.
What a year. How about a year in pictures?
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| Best of NYC |
I feel like I've gotten one hell of a start here, though, I've been thinking about my current path and next steps and that sort of thing lately. It seems like I've gotten a dozen different directions I could go in next and I'm feeling more and more like the answer is not in which direction to go but in how many or how to incorporate them all and still satisfy myself. I've got my electronic music side project baking but also my contemporary music...which more and more I'm wanting to coincide with the electronic project. I know I need to revamp the website and I'm thinking more and more about ways to make a little cash on the side through selling scores or trying to license some of the music I have written and have yet to write.
I've even been thinking about reigniting my interest in starting some kind of voice over work...I've yet to use the word career with this yet because I don't know if I have the energy to simultaneously do that, music and my full time and freelance gigs. But enough people lately have commented on my voice (it's really deep, it's resonant when I want it to be, some even say it's soothing) that I think it's certainly worth considering and I think I would even enjoy doing this kind of work...Plus, the idea occurred to me today that it's something I could incorporate into the business of writing music for people. Why the heck not? Here's the pitch: I can provide voice over and music for your corporate videos and advertisements. Your one-stop shop for creative services.
Sound all right? Anyhow, that's what's on the drawing board at present. But not to distract from the musical stuff. I regret to say that the pressure of finding an apartment and moving have, at least for the moment, have distracted from any kind of progress in that arena. Most importantly, once I get settled I think I'll get to work on the website and also make new business cards. Will probably get new head shots done soon as well. More on that later.
For now, I'm going to bed. There's nothing that'll tire you out like the prospect (not even the act) of packing your things in anticipation of a move, however small.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
On why I moved to New York...again.
I attended a birthday party in a high rise with roof access in Lower Manhattan Saturday night. I'm getting...I guess tired is the wrong word to use. I guess I'm starting to see a trend in conversations with veteran New Yorkers. I've probably mentioned this before, but every time I mention my having just moved here, my only having spent ten months here or my not growing up in a huge city in the context of my general positive sentiments about the city, I always tend to get the same response from these veterans. One of those, every one grins and nods their head knowingly and says something to the effect of, "you'll see what we mean in a few years" kinds of things. Are people that determined that no newbie should go on feeling enamored of this place or is it just that fun to hate this place?
I haven't gotten there yet. I still love this place and I'm rather unashamed of it. And on top of that, after months of loving it but hating my situation in relation to it (i.e. wanting to do more, meet more people, grab at every aspect of the city while feeling hopelessly confined to my apartment and the daily grind), I'm finally feeling a part of this place. I have friends that I've met here that are starting to really feel like my friends, I'm going out more and dating, my job is full time (which has been for a few months but it's really starting to set in with regard to all the benefits and the feeling of inclusion with my fellow full time co workers...e.g. NY 1 holiday party), not to mention the feeling of accomplishment that goes with all of this. I can't help look back to last year and relish in the boost it gives me to remember the helpless feeling of wondering how I was going to make it here without a job or an apartment lined up and simultaneously wanting to try and encapsulate everything that led up to where I am now. But it's so massive.
And no one can take all that away from me. Not in the course of some party conversation about how weathered and jaded they are by this place and how suburbia seems like a cozy option to them. Bollocks to that, I say! And Bollocks to suburbia.
Anyway, just saying it's not for me is all. One of the many reasons I moved here was to get away from the small town atmosphere. Another was the draw of the excitement of this particular city...which is why I'm still a tourist to a degree.
It's cold here now. I just came back from Williamsburg, having a drink with a friend after work. To get home from there, it's a bit of a hike, mainly because of the weird train connections one has to make. It's either back into Manhattan on the L to Union Square and then the N back to Brooklyn...or taking the L one stop to the G at Lorimer/Metroplitan and then getting off the G at Fulton and walking a few blocks to Atlantic Avenue for the D train. I decided I'd take whichever train came first and the winner was the Canarsie-bound L train, which meant the G train and that walk between stops that was so cold this evening. But I had major train luck and made the trip in only 45 minutes. Almost unheard of for a Williamsburg-Sunset Park commute.
Back at home, I'm thinking, in between all this new excitement, about Christmas and how this is my first alone. I mean, family far away, working Christmas, mailing all of my gifts and cards, etc. I've spent Christmases working before but family time (Christmas cookies and ornaments) was always a short drive away and never put off for more than a week if I couldn't make it day of. I needed to do something the other night to make it feel like Christmas so I wouldn't forget or let it pass by unmarked...so I put ornaments on a succulent plant that a friend gave me and downloaded James Galway's Christmas Carols (an album that I loved as a child) off of Amazon.com. It's working for now. Christmas lights might be in order as well.
Meantime, I keep trying to remember that there are supposed to be a lot of beautiful things about this city at Christmas time and that I'd better enjoy them. I'm occasionally stumbling upon the more subtle and tasteful street decorations and seeing people selling Christmas trees, always stopping to bristle the needles between my fingers to get that wonderful pine scent.
It'll be a different Christmas this year though and I was always prepared for that moving to a new city hundreds of miles away from anything familiar. Luckily, I have friends here, I have family here (a family member) but also I have all of these keepsakes; the ornaments that my siblings have copies of hanging from a plant sitting on my kitchen table.
I was up early this morning to get an MRI on my bum knee (long story there but I'm at least taking advantage of my new insurance plan), so I'm tired and delirious but I have to adjust to staying up late because Friday, I'm doing my first overnight shift at NY 1. It can't be all good all the time, I guess. I'm probably going to adjust to doing the shift and find that I like it. News 14 had me on an overnight and I remember slightly dreading that before it started but it turned out to be a gift to my music because I could work all afternoon on my music without necessarily worrying about losing track of the time. So we'll see.
I haven't gotten there yet. I still love this place and I'm rather unashamed of it. And on top of that, after months of loving it but hating my situation in relation to it (i.e. wanting to do more, meet more people, grab at every aspect of the city while feeling hopelessly confined to my apartment and the daily grind), I'm finally feeling a part of this place. I have friends that I've met here that are starting to really feel like my friends, I'm going out more and dating, my job is full time (which has been for a few months but it's really starting to set in with regard to all the benefits and the feeling of inclusion with my fellow full time co workers...e.g. NY 1 holiday party), not to mention the feeling of accomplishment that goes with all of this. I can't help look back to last year and relish in the boost it gives me to remember the helpless feeling of wondering how I was going to make it here without a job or an apartment lined up and simultaneously wanting to try and encapsulate everything that led up to where I am now. But it's so massive.
And no one can take all that away from me. Not in the course of some party conversation about how weathered and jaded they are by this place and how suburbia seems like a cozy option to them. Bollocks to that, I say! And Bollocks to suburbia.
Anyway, just saying it's not for me is all. One of the many reasons I moved here was to get away from the small town atmosphere. Another was the draw of the excitement of this particular city...which is why I'm still a tourist to a degree.
It's cold here now. I just came back from Williamsburg, having a drink with a friend after work. To get home from there, it's a bit of a hike, mainly because of the weird train connections one has to make. It's either back into Manhattan on the L to Union Square and then the N back to Brooklyn...or taking the L one stop to the G at Lorimer/Metroplitan and then getting off the G at Fulton and walking a few blocks to Atlantic Avenue for the D train. I decided I'd take whichever train came first and the winner was the Canarsie-bound L train, which meant the G train and that walk between stops that was so cold this evening. But I had major train luck and made the trip in only 45 minutes. Almost unheard of for a Williamsburg-Sunset Park commute.
Back at home, I'm thinking, in between all this new excitement, about Christmas and how this is my first alone. I mean, family far away, working Christmas, mailing all of my gifts and cards, etc. I've spent Christmases working before but family time (Christmas cookies and ornaments) was always a short drive away and never put off for more than a week if I couldn't make it day of. I needed to do something the other night to make it feel like Christmas so I wouldn't forget or let it pass by unmarked...so I put ornaments on a succulent plant that a friend gave me and downloaded James Galway's Christmas Carols (an album that I loved as a child) off of Amazon.com. It's working for now. Christmas lights might be in order as well.
Meantime, I keep trying to remember that there are supposed to be a lot of beautiful things about this city at Christmas time and that I'd better enjoy them. I'm occasionally stumbling upon the more subtle and tasteful street decorations and seeing people selling Christmas trees, always stopping to bristle the needles between my fingers to get that wonderful pine scent.
It'll be a different Christmas this year though and I was always prepared for that moving to a new city hundreds of miles away from anything familiar. Luckily, I have friends here, I have family here (a family member) but also I have all of these keepsakes; the ornaments that my siblings have copies of hanging from a plant sitting on my kitchen table.
I was up early this morning to get an MRI on my bum knee (long story there but I'm at least taking advantage of my new insurance plan), so I'm tired and delirious but I have to adjust to staying up late because Friday, I'm doing my first overnight shift at NY 1. It can't be all good all the time, I guess. I'm probably going to adjust to doing the shift and find that I like it. News 14 had me on an overnight and I remember slightly dreading that before it started but it turned out to be a gift to my music because I could work all afternoon on my music without necessarily worrying about losing track of the time. So we'll see.
Friday, August 7, 2009
6 months...
6 months in New York City today. Well, yesterday. It all kind of hit me when I bought my metro card for the month on Thursday and realized it was my seventh one since I moved here. But I've been so busy I couldn't blog on the day of. It's funny when you look up after all you've been through and realize for the first time how far you've come. I kind of got into this in my last entry, feeling accomplished and finally satisfied with the pace of things even though I still can't see how this will all fall together. Anyway, the 6 month mark seemed like as good a place as any to pay homage to the fact that I have indeed come this far and might just go a little farther yet.
It's just been 6 days in a row of work (at both jobs combined, so no overtime, unfortunately). The weather has been amazing. Dry, mild, and windy. I wish I could send you this weather in a text message or something. Think of the warmest, sunniest day in September and raise the temperature two degrees. That's here, right now. The kind of weather you wish you could drink out of a tall glass with a few ice cubes.
At NY 1, there are plenty of parks in the vicinity to hang out in on my breaks. The Highline is one, Hudson River Park is another and I can even walk down to the riverfront and eat my lunch if I should so choose. Yesterday though, I had eaten lunch prior to my break so I just walked down to 7th avenue to a pizzeria near the corner of 15th and 7th, grabbed a slice of cheese pizza for $2.50, folded it in half and walked down the block back to the Hudson River Park on 10th Avenue, a favorite spot for business people, sunbathers and that bum that's always sitting at the corner of the park near 15th and 10th.
One thing that happens in six months in any new place is you start to get these little routines going. They're the backbone of your own stability and they sort of ground you and make you start to feel like you belong, like you get what this place is about and you're cool with it. I'm finding out little secrets as well. Things I'm sure other New Yorkers have noticed but don't tell anybody.
I was riding the D train in to work the other day and, somewhere between the Broadway Lafayette stop and West 4th Street, I looked up out the window of the train and where you usually see blackness or tunnel lights flashing by, I could see, on a track somewhere above us, another train running along side us. I knew it had to be the A, C, or E train since we were about to pull into West 4th street where both the blue lines and the orange lines connect, which meant the train I needed to connect to would be at West 4th street at the same time as the train I was riding. To connect from one train to the other I have to go up two flights of stairs and I'm never sure if I need to bother rushing up the stairs because I can never tell if the train will be there or not. That was before. Now, I have my little secret that I can look up between Broadway Lafayette and West 4th and see if the A, C, E train will be there at the same time as the D train...which could save me a good ten minutes depending on how long I have to wait for the next train.
At any rate, these little things like where to get a good cheap slice of pizza on my break and how to make sure I don't miss my train connection are starting to make me feel fully integrated into life on this little island. Who knows how I'll feel in a year. Beyond having steady employment that I can count on, I'm hoping to make my next move to a better neighborhood and apartment in a year so I think I'll focus on learning everything I can about the real estate in my ideal neighborhoods so I don't have to find some squatters hell hole in East Williamsburg or something. I have a good six more months to think about what I want out of my new living situation and to figure out how to go about getting it. And if those first six months went by so quick, it'll be no time at all before I'm looking again. Wish me luck.
It's just been 6 days in a row of work (at both jobs combined, so no overtime, unfortunately). The weather has been amazing. Dry, mild, and windy. I wish I could send you this weather in a text message or something. Think of the warmest, sunniest day in September and raise the temperature two degrees. That's here, right now. The kind of weather you wish you could drink out of a tall glass with a few ice cubes.
At NY 1, there are plenty of parks in the vicinity to hang out in on my breaks. The Highline is one, Hudson River Park is another and I can even walk down to the riverfront and eat my lunch if I should so choose. Yesterday though, I had eaten lunch prior to my break so I just walked down to 7th avenue to a pizzeria near the corner of 15th and 7th, grabbed a slice of cheese pizza for $2.50, folded it in half and walked down the block back to the Hudson River Park on 10th Avenue, a favorite spot for business people, sunbathers and that bum that's always sitting at the corner of the park near 15th and 10th.
One thing that happens in six months in any new place is you start to get these little routines going. They're the backbone of your own stability and they sort of ground you and make you start to feel like you belong, like you get what this place is about and you're cool with it. I'm finding out little secrets as well. Things I'm sure other New Yorkers have noticed but don't tell anybody.
I was riding the D train in to work the other day and, somewhere between the Broadway Lafayette stop and West 4th Street, I looked up out the window of the train and where you usually see blackness or tunnel lights flashing by, I could see, on a track somewhere above us, another train running along side us. I knew it had to be the A, C, or E train since we were about to pull into West 4th street where both the blue lines and the orange lines connect, which meant the train I needed to connect to would be at West 4th street at the same time as the train I was riding. To connect from one train to the other I have to go up two flights of stairs and I'm never sure if I need to bother rushing up the stairs because I can never tell if the train will be there or not. That was before. Now, I have my little secret that I can look up between Broadway Lafayette and West 4th and see if the A, C, E train will be there at the same time as the D train...which could save me a good ten minutes depending on how long I have to wait for the next train.
At any rate, these little things like where to get a good cheap slice of pizza on my break and how to make sure I don't miss my train connection are starting to make me feel fully integrated into life on this little island. Who knows how I'll feel in a year. Beyond having steady employment that I can count on, I'm hoping to make my next move to a better neighborhood and apartment in a year so I think I'll focus on learning everything I can about the real estate in my ideal neighborhoods so I don't have to find some squatters hell hole in East Williamsburg or something. I have a good six more months to think about what I want out of my new living situation and to figure out how to go about getting it. And if those first six months went by so quick, it'll be no time at all before I'm looking again. Wish me luck.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
One day at a time...
Walking back from the train this evening, the smell of soap wafts down from someone's apartment (not the first time I've noticed this) like they have a giant bar of Ivory in their apartment and it's perfuming the entire block...at least it's not everyone's garbage. That's usually Monday and Wednesday. And at least there are no children playing dodgeball in the street at 2am tonight. (They were thankfully at the end of my block and thus, out of hearing range, the other day). And although the apartment door is wide open when I come home at least it's back on its hinges. They've been redoing the lobby the past few days. And although it's humid as it can get in my apartment to the point that sweat beads up on my forehead the second I step inside (I know, I need a fan), at least it's not as hot as my friend's place in the Upper West Side where I was last night.
I had great train luck coming back from Karishma's this evening, and by train luck I don't just mean that the train was in the station upon my arrival at both Franklin Avenue and Atlantic Avenue. It was, but since I had to run down the stairs both times, the luck I am referring to is that I didn't trip and fall either time.
I'm feeling quite on a roll these days despite everything...well, mainly quite recently because, first, I won a poker game for a change last night and this morning I found out that my new job at CNN is going to pay really well. I can only hope that I'm also going to be working there enough to be able to tell that it pays well. I must wait until next Tuesday to know for sure.
But as it stands, I have the next few days off and I'm going to try and enjoy myself. I didn't do much today because my new software came in the mail and I spent about four hours installing everything. And I'm still not done.
When it is installed though, I'm going to have a fresh new palette of sounds and instruments to work with. I'm like a kid in a candy store. And I have two projects going on simultaneously. One should have been finished months ago but, as there's no deadline, no one's exactly rushing me.
Anyway, this CNN job, and the circumstances surrounding it, are about the closest I've gotten to my latest goal...which is to break even and maybe put some money into savings one of these months. I've realized, too, that maybe that's what this whole adventure is about and what life is about, making little goals before big goals can be achieved. Taking things one day at a time. I think I'm okay with that, as that's about all I have the energy for anyway. When you have a mind as active as mine and you think so damn much, it's relieving to be able to tell yourself that you don't have to get there right away. I likened it once to realizing that to get up over a wall, you need a ladder and what is a ladder but a bunch of individual rungs, rungs that you can't skip over and have to take one at a time?
I should get some sleep or I'll make a bad habit of staying up until 2am every night.
Here's a song that's in my head:
Weed Party
I had great train luck coming back from Karishma's this evening, and by train luck I don't just mean that the train was in the station upon my arrival at both Franklin Avenue and Atlantic Avenue. It was, but since I had to run down the stairs both times, the luck I am referring to is that I didn't trip and fall either time.
I'm feeling quite on a roll these days despite everything...well, mainly quite recently because, first, I won a poker game for a change last night and this morning I found out that my new job at CNN is going to pay really well. I can only hope that I'm also going to be working there enough to be able to tell that it pays well. I must wait until next Tuesday to know for sure.
But as it stands, I have the next few days off and I'm going to try and enjoy myself. I didn't do much today because my new software came in the mail and I spent about four hours installing everything. And I'm still not done.
When it is installed though, I'm going to have a fresh new palette of sounds and instruments to work with. I'm like a kid in a candy store. And I have two projects going on simultaneously. One should have been finished months ago but, as there's no deadline, no one's exactly rushing me.
Anyway, this CNN job, and the circumstances surrounding it, are about the closest I've gotten to my latest goal...which is to break even and maybe put some money into savings one of these months. I've realized, too, that maybe that's what this whole adventure is about and what life is about, making little goals before big goals can be achieved. Taking things one day at a time. I think I'm okay with that, as that's about all I have the energy for anyway. When you have a mind as active as mine and you think so damn much, it's relieving to be able to tell yourself that you don't have to get there right away. I likened it once to realizing that to get up over a wall, you need a ladder and what is a ladder but a bunch of individual rungs, rungs that you can't skip over and have to take one at a time?
I should get some sleep or I'll make a bad habit of staying up until 2am every night.
Here's a song that's in my head:
Weed Party
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Weekend.
Had a fun night last night. I met Karishma at her apartment and then after watching most of Bend it Like Beckham (sad, I had never seen it before), we took the subway to Park Slope to meet Apoo. It was a sushi place on Flatbush Ave., called Sushi Tatsu. Great atmosphere, though slightly cramped. I had a 16 ounce Asahi and a mushroom soup.
After that we went to a place called Soda, near Apoo's apartment. A dive bar of sorts, though it only met a few of the criteria that would earn it the moniker; the first being a smelly bathroom with graffiti-ed walls. There was draft beer galore but one could of course, as I did, go for the PBR in a can, criterion number 2 in my book for a dive bar. For all you North Carolinians, I paid $3 for said canned goodness; a full $0.75 to a dollar more than I would have in NC. I guess that's not too bad. I got to drink it in Brooklyn for crying out loud!
The way home saw major train luck, the likes of which I've not seen on a Friday night in Brooklyn since I arrived here. The 2 was at the station at 7th Ave. maybe a minute after I arrived on the platform and when I made the platform for the D train I only had to wait about five minutes but I still had time to snap this photo of cheeky subterranean humor.
During our outing yesterday we got talking about how many people we know are out of work, whether after having been laid off or having chosen to leave a job during a recession, like yours truly. It's interesting to see how many are handling the ensuing unemployment, while not curling up into a ball and giving up. And how many are getting creative with job searching, i.e. trying to find things out of their comfort zones, while others are sticking with the safer method of applying for their usual fare and meanwhile, tucking in and cashing those unemployment checks, not leaving the house at all, eating Ramen noodles and drinking cheap (or no) beer.
Different strokes, I guess. Still would make an interesting topic/sub-topic for a blog. There are tons of 'em out there already that are devoted to just being unemployed.
Here, here and here, for starters.
If I did write about unemployment it would be my own experience with being marginally unemployed (i.e. still being employed at least part time or with several freelance gigs). Also, said blog would be a series of entries in my greater blog, rather than one devoted entirely to unemployment, because, let's face it, I don't really want to be blogging about unemployment my entire life. I plan on being employed by April, to tell you the truth. Just might be interesting to chronicle my first experience with it, with the exception of college, since I was too young to work.
At any rate, I have that composing gig with the filmmaker that I met at Farah's Oscars party and today I went to the shoot. That deserves an entire entry to itself, but here's a photo I took on the way home of a playground a few blocks away from his studio.
Yes, a playground shaped like some familiar buildings.
After that we went to a place called Soda, near Apoo's apartment. A dive bar of sorts, though it only met a few of the criteria that would earn it the moniker; the first being a smelly bathroom with graffiti-ed walls. There was draft beer galore but one could of course, as I did, go for the PBR in a can, criterion number 2 in my book for a dive bar. For all you North Carolinians, I paid $3 for said canned goodness; a full $0.75 to a dollar more than I would have in NC. I guess that's not too bad. I got to drink it in Brooklyn for crying out loud!
The way home saw major train luck, the likes of which I've not seen on a Friday night in Brooklyn since I arrived here. The 2 was at the station at 7th Ave. maybe a minute after I arrived on the platform and when I made the platform for the D train I only had to wait about five minutes but I still had time to snap this photo of cheeky subterranean humor.
During our outing yesterday we got talking about how many people we know are out of work, whether after having been laid off or having chosen to leave a job during a recession, like yours truly. It's interesting to see how many are handling the ensuing unemployment, while not curling up into a ball and giving up. And how many are getting creative with job searching, i.e. trying to find things out of their comfort zones, while others are sticking with the safer method of applying for their usual fare and meanwhile, tucking in and cashing those unemployment checks, not leaving the house at all, eating Ramen noodles and drinking cheap (or no) beer.
Different strokes, I guess. Still would make an interesting topic/sub-topic for a blog. There are tons of 'em out there already that are devoted to just being unemployed.
Here, here and here, for starters.
If I did write about unemployment it would be my own experience with being marginally unemployed (i.e. still being employed at least part time or with several freelance gigs). Also, said blog would be a series of entries in my greater blog, rather than one devoted entirely to unemployment, because, let's face it, I don't really want to be blogging about unemployment my entire life. I plan on being employed by April, to tell you the truth. Just might be interesting to chronicle my first experience with it, with the exception of college, since I was too young to work.
At any rate, I have that composing gig with the filmmaker that I met at Farah's Oscars party and today I went to the shoot. That deserves an entire entry to itself, but here's a photo I took on the way home of a playground a few blocks away from his studio.
Yes, a playground shaped like some familiar buildings.
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