Deliverable

Clutter muddles your brain. Makes you move from one thing to the next without actually accomplishing anything. This is no good. Have to clear this clutter today cause I have too much to do!

Just wanted to gather a few thoughts before bed. Didn’t do a whole lot of anything today. I did unexpectedly get to go see Plane Crazy, a musical that the sax player in my club date band was playing in. It was good to get out of the house and see something today. Pretty much came home and tried to shake a sinus headache that stayed with me the whole day. It’s gone now thank goodness.

The apartment is pretty trashed. Lots of dishes in the sink. Clothes strewn about. Bed unmade. Keyboard a raging forest fire. The thing is I’m not like mad depressed about this stuff. I’m going to head to bed now in a few minutes as I have to work in the morning. I’m going to get up after seven hours sleep, work my shift then come home and methodically clear my apartment. Then I’m going to do some work. I feel pretty clear about that.

**Update: 9/26/05 – 5:33 p.m.**
Didn’t end up getting to bed as planned. I tried but couldn’t fall asleep so I’m working on a couple of hours sleep here. Hopefully it will be easier this evening…

I went on a second audition today. It was a kind of spur of the moment thing. I purchased Backstage on my way to teach this morning and saw an ad for an open call this afternoon at 3 pm. (Not alot of advanced notice on their part… the ad first appeared in todays issue.) I figured what the heck, it’s a chance to do my monologue again.

It was an interesting second experience. I felt much less nervous going in but was much more concious of the fact that the audition panel wasn’t laughing at the piece. At one point I was conscious of the fact the director was looking over at the other panel members while I was doing the monologue as if to see if they were feeling me for the part. I wasn’t what they were looking for it seems, because they were asking folks to stick around to read later if they liked you. Oh well. No biggie. I got the impression that the play was more of comic farce type of thing. They mentioned in the ad that they were looking for actors with good comic instincts. I think my monologue is funny in some ways (the last people to see it laughed at it…) and might be good for some things but I’m not sure that it showcases the type of chops they were looking for.

Here’s an interesting side note to the story: I’d originally planned to be there pretty early to avoid the long lines and be first on the sign in list. I laid down and took a nap and didn’t get down there till around 3:30. (Luckily the wait wasn’t too long and was out of there by 5 pm. First learning point: always get enough sleep as you never know what opportunities may arise the next day. I went to bed not expecting an audition but ended up with an audition. Be prepared!).

So anyway I left my apartment and got to the train station. I was on the platform waiting for the trainn when I realized that I didn’t bring my headshots/resume. Doh! Made my way back to my apartment with a bit of a chuckle. It seems that for some reason I wasn’t supposed to get down there when I’d planned.

After the audition was over I headed to the train station but then thought “I’m down here, I should stop by the Drama Bookstore”. Got there and was looking through some G.B. Shaw plays (for another audition I’m going to be submitting my headshot for) when I noticed a line of people waiting for something. Turns out that there was a seminar being held there that evening on Soaps. The Agency Forum was hosting a Q&A / 2 minute monologue audition for assistant casting directors for 3 NY soaps. I was sitting right next to the young lady as she registered people for the seminar. Turns out that she’s a model and The Agency Forum is her company. She gave me their website info and an article on Soaps that was going to the participants that evening. I just sent her a quick e-mail thanking her for the information and asking that she keep me informed of future events. Contact made.

What I learned in all this is that sometimes the best thing about an audition will be the contacts you make before or after you get there. Had I gotten what I thought I wanted (making it to the audition at the time I’d originally planned) I would not have met this industry person. Is this one person going to break open things for me? Who knows… The point is that by consistently putting myself out there I build good Karma.

I had a pretty interesting dream last night. It’s fading rapidly (as dreams do) so I’m probably only going to grab the highlights. I was going to see a concert (I think I was backstage listening, actually…). One of my old undergrad music school classmates (who I had a bit of a rivalry with, at least in my own mind) was there playing bass trombone. (It was oddly enough an amalgam of my old college classmate and my next door neighbor from back when I was a kid… It was kinda switching between the two. This guy was actually was of a tenor trombone player in college but of course he was never an amalgam of my next door neighbor either. Dreams are quite often wacky.)

This wind ensemble (orchestra? group?) was playing some really grand piece by Borodin. (For some reason I remember the composer’s name, but I don’t really know any of Borodin’s music so I don’t know why it was Borodin…). I remember that J*** had a solo and he really played it well. Beautifully, in fact. I was genuinely moved. I went up to him afterwards and told him (and the rest of the section) how much I enjoyed their playing. This was a bit of a leap for me, because I was always highly competitive back in college and it was tough for me to be sincerely complimentary about anyone’s playing.

What’s the point of all this? I give the details of the dream only as preface. They’re secondary to the overriding feeling that this dream left me with and probably don’t make much sense on the surface. The feeling I’m left with is that being good is it’s own reward. It’s not about getting the gigs or getting paid or anything like that. The reason you practice, the reason that you strive to be better is simply about excellence. It’s about going out there and making beautiful music. Or perhaps I should say “excellent music”, because of course it’s not always beautiful. Sometimes it’s funky, sometimes it swings, sometimes it’s beautiful and sometimes it’s all of the above. Maybe it’s just that you go out and are skillful. You go out and do something really really well. You’re a bad-ass at it. And it doesn’t matter if you have the gigs or are getting the gigs or even if there are gigs out there. You practice so that you can be good. Being good is it’s own reward.

Like I said I don’t know why this dream left me with this impression. There were other aspects of it that are (so faded now I can’t recall) that probaby reinforced the feeling. I just remember thinking that it would be cool to be good at the trombone again. To just feel that sensation of being skilled at something again. To know that I can walk into any situation that I’m called on to play in and nail it. I used to be a pretty good trombone player. I had grand visions of being the top freelance trombone player in NYC. Visions of being the first call guy with all the gigs. Except that the gigs aren’t there. I know that had I achieved this it would be illusory at best. The guys that are doing “all the gigs” are settling for an ever shrinking pie made up of lower and lower quality gigs. It got to be downright depressing.

As I think of it now maybe one of the things that brought this dream/feeling on was the lesson I taught yesterday. My student was so excited to be playing these things that we’ve been working on. She was excited by her new skills. It brought me alive seeing that excitement. I saw in her this innocent desire to just be good at the bass. It wasn’t about getting good so that she could get some gig. It was just about being good. I guess I got caught up in that with her.

So, I just wanted to get this down while it was still in my head. It’s the type of thing that I used to write in my journals and I don’t know why I’m putting it out here now. I guess I’m putting it out there into the universe with the hope that I’ll remember it better if I can easily refer back to it. By somehow making this public I’ll be more inclined to act on this new feeling and incorporate it in some way into my ever evolving world view. We’ll see how it goes.

Just wanted to check in here abit. It’s coming up on the end of Monday here. Though I wasn’t that productive today I seem to have avoided the dreaded doldrums that have hit me at the start of weeks past. I did teach a really good bass lesson today and feel like my ideas about how to teach music are starting to come together. It was nice to have some of them validated in the progress of my student.

I think that one of the reasons I feel more settled is that I’ve mapped out preliminary acting path that feels doable. (I may post more on that at a later time.) I now just have to take the necessary actions but it feels somewhat like a weight has been lifted. I’m hoping to spend this week further clarifying my various plans and projects.

More as it comes to me.

It’s official: It’s been 3 weeks since I began my 3 challenges. (Cooking, Fiber, TV).

What have I learned?

• Fiber is a good thing. – The bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats in the morning has been great. I do feel better. I also noticed that there are times in the morning when I felt really sleepy even after a solid nights rest. I’d get up and have a bowl of cereal and the sleepiness would go away. The sleepiness was really just low blood sugar.
• Cooking my meals is a good thing – I only used my official Turbo Cooker recipes a couple of times but still found a way to cook for the 3 weeks. There were a couple of times that I ate out but these felt more like occasions which was nice. The best result of this was not indulging in the crappy Chinese take-out that had been a staple of my diet for so long. Even when I was tempted by time constraints to just go grab take-out I managed to cook quick meals.
• My brain is clearer without TV – Probably has something to do with not being bombarded with electrodes and messages from advertisers all the time.

Conclusion
I’m going to continue my challenges for at least another week in order to deepen the habits. The need for doing this is especially there for TV and cooking. I’ve engaged in bad habits in these areas for a pretty long time. I need to really stay vigilant with these habits until they’re fully ingrained.

It’s an expression that I’ve heard time and time again:

Begin with the end in mind.

I think that I may have found a practical way to implement this from a planning perspective. I don’t want to go into it to deeply here… I want to spend the time actually doing it and seeing what I can come up with. Just wanted to give a shout out of thanks to M. for staying up late working with me on this tonight. (You’re the Beez Kneez! : ) I’ll hopefully have something to post on what I come up with at a later date.

As I was finishing up the previous post I got a call to do a recording session. One of the things I was asked was if I had some .mp3’s I could send of my work or links to bands that I play in. It got me thinking. It might really help my self esteem if I built some kind of online presence. Something that represented the work that I’ve done in NYC up to this point. I don’t know if this is just another way of not working or something that is valid. I’ve been trying for some time to build a better website… one that included a photoblog and links to my short films. It would just be nice to be able to point to something and say “I made this!”. “This is what I did with my week”. I certainly don’t feel like I can do that now.

I’m going to try and quantify the things that I feel like are bothering me right now. Here goes:

• My book is lost at sea. – It’s not one book but a couple of different books and a website. I don’t know how to finish it. I don’t know what to do with it if I did finish it.
• I’m burned out on music. – I don’t know if this is a temporary thing or not but I find myself more and more bitter in this area. I’ve got gigs and gigs worth of songs in I-Tunes and very few of them light a fire under me anymore. Trombone seems like a dead end to me. No gigs that excite me. When I do play these days it’s only to pay the bills. I do enjoy playing the guitar and feel like I’m getting better but to what end?
• I’ve all but given up on doing anything with my Baggage recording
• I start but don’t finish. – See above.
• Acting: I don’t have a freaking clue what I’m doing. – I have no clear idea where I want this to go other than a general “wanting to be successful and good at it”. I know it has been good for me to take the acting classes. I know that I’m a more open and better person because of them. But damnit I need some clarity here. What the hell am I doing?
• I say I want to be a singer songwriter, but I don’t write any songs. – More specifically I have alot of fragments of half finished compositions on my hard drive. I don’t know what the heck to do with it or how to make anything of it. I know that this is a potential source of income for me but I don’t know how to make it work.
• I have a ton of talent in alot of different areas but I can’t seem to focus and make anything work
• I want to be financially successful, but I don’t know how to make that happen. – I’ve read book after book and listened to tape after tape. I know that I need a strategy. I don’t know what the hell that strategy is. I know I need to create income generating assets. The ways that I’d like to do that given my talents (songwriting & acting) seem so far out of reach to me right now.

Some other feelings that come to mind:

It feels like I’ve been here busting my ass for 13 years and I have nothing concrete to show for it. I have a hell of alot of experience, yes. I’m just tired of the up and down. I’m tired of trying and trying and trying and still not having anything to show for it. It’s like really I’m tired of me and my own brain. I have pages and pages and pages of meandering writings like this in journal after journal. It seems like it’s not gotten me anywhere other than where I am right now. Seemingly burned out. It’s also like I can’t seem to stick to any one thing. Sure I’m coming up on week three of my challenges. Where will I be in week five? Ten? What’s the point of starting these habits if I can’t make them stick?

The Point?
I really don’t care what all of this sounds like at this point. Petty? Whining? Blah blah blah? I just needed to get it out and I feel a little better because of it. I have no more answers than I did when I started typing but what the hell.

What’s that? Feeling down, depressed, low, out of sorts? Oh wait of course… it’s Tuesday! It all suddenly makes sense!

I feel like I’ve ground to a stop. Don’t want to make a list or figure anything out or do a damn thing. I really get tired of typing the same thing over and over again because it feels like all I do lately on here is complain. Complain about loss of direction. Complain about how none of this makes any damn sense. I’m getting tired of hearing myself say it and I know others must be getting tired of me going through these stretches.

I’m stuck in a morass and I don’t know how to get out of it. Don’t want to make a start on the book because it feels like I’ve tried and tried and tried and still it goes no where. Music seems to not excite me at all… either listening to it or playing it. Acting? I don’t have a freaking clue where that is going I honestly don’t. I keep telling myself to just sit down and make a list of all the things I need to do or want to do but I can’t seem to even do that because it seems so damn futile. I’ve made list after list after freaking list and still I’m stuck in this shitty apartment lacking vision and lacking funds and not knowing what I’m freaking doing.

So here I go Universe. Another shout into the void. I’m not supposed to be doing the play. Fine. What the hell am I supposed to be doing? I’m really freaking sick of this shit.