Muscle Memory

I am always amazed (though it happens so frequently I really shouldn't be) at how I can sit down at my keyboard for the first time in months and three songs come out! I'm sure there are scientific studies about how muscle memory works, but it's quite the feat. I mean, I haven't played these songs or touched the same keys in the same combination since the middle of winter and now something lets my hands fly around and suddenly there are three actual melodies in the air. I love it.

I got so excited about it that I revisited my days of piano lessons and broke out some of my sheet music to take advantage of my momentum, and what do you know? I busted through the whole of Piano - Grade One and moved on to relearning "Part of Your World." Don't give me that look, it's a great song and you all wish you could play and sing it at the same time! And now I'm progressing into Wicked. Lord save us all from Kelly's musical triumphs.

Code Words

I would love to know who chooses the security words you have to type in to post on Craigslist. This week alone I've had "the barnacles," "labor romaine" and "pizza coke." Normally I would say it was a randomized process but of course the last one brings to mind some hunched over secretary plotting his run to the cafeteria on hot lunch day.

It would be funny if the words actually meant something, like a secret code to let you know that your post will be hacked in the next 5 hours or that someone is currently and inconspicuously breathing down your neck.

If I were in charge, I would write things like "If You Seek Amy" and "Hid En Massage." And of course set them for the "adult services" section.

Thorns

Why is it that whenever I get more and more brilliant ideas I find it hard to finally sit down and DO something about any of them? I currently have 6 post-its with things to do and no matter how many I cross off I just can't seem to start the ones that need the most attention.

I think I got it backwards in study skills - they told me to take care of the "big rocks" first and then do the little ones. But I figured that the more little things I finished the more productive I'd feel and then could devote the rest of my time to that big thing looming over my head. Not so.

It's unfortunate because the big things were the ones I was most excited about when I thought of them and now they have slowly evolved to thorns in my side.

Suggestions? Sympathy? Feel free to comment or commiserate.

Keeping up my Poker Face

Awesome show at the Varsity Club last weekend.

The new songs went over well - I think we'll keep them. Poker Face = brilliant.

Attempting to put up some videos from our performance on Facebook this week. For something that sounds so easy, it's actually more complicated than I thought! Maybe it will go viral by June and become a YouTube sensation.

I love that people can go to bar and just let loose and have crazy dance parties to their favorite Top 40s. Reading the crowd is fairly easy when they participate. I want to get up close and personal and hear their requests and interact and let them know that I do this for me AND for them. Yes, I am a bit of an attention hog but mostly I just enjoy being part of a great experience and knowing that I'm contributing to someone's weekend.

Do I have plans to make it big? I don't know. The idea has certainly crossed my mind in past years as I was making my ten-year life plan, but now I'm taking things as they come and it's not so bad, this spontaneity thing. Ideally, I'll be able to keep doing what I love until I'm physically incapable or someone rips out my vocal chords, and whether I'm onstage at the Tweeter Center or rocking a basement house party, it's the same rush.

Cupcakes and Coming Attractions

Really, reeaalllyy excited for a gig at the local Quincy/Braintree hang-out tomorrow night.
We're debuting four new songs and a little surprise (if you are wondering how a band can have surprises beyond new songs, keep your eyes on our FB page and hopefully I will have a video documenting the big event shortly!)

Check out Not Exactly on our Facebook page.

Also, I'm glad that cupcakes can be a great source of entertainment and community bonding. Especially cupcakes branded with the band's name and logo. And especially cupcakes that end up as a topic of questionable conversation later on FB. Hmm. Maybe next time I will bring something safer, like pretzels. Oh no, that doesn't work either.

Solo or Banded Together?

I wonder if it is better to be surrounded by people that are like you or to be the one that stands out.

If I am labeled "creative," then is it beneficial to be around other "creatives" and revel in all of our creativeness and discuss it and break it down and perhaps not use it, or to be the one colored zebra that stands solo and because there is no other outlet is forced to continually produce things that satisfy the craving for creativity.

Wow, that was a mouthful.

But seriously. Creating something with someone else is only useful if you both contribute to the final product and share equally in the experience, no? If I co-write a song but the other person doesn't actually do anything, then it's still only my song, which would have been the same as writing on my own minus the frustration.

I will work on my synergy in the future.

You Need a Gimmick.

But do you really?

What do we value most - greatness and quality or bloated attention-grabbing stuff?

Take, for example, local bands. When a great band comes into existence, they have to work hard to get the coveted spots in the best bars and music hot-spots. They have to be experienced musicians, ready to roll with every punch, letting the high notes shine and the last notes ring, and they have to make it all look effortless. This is not a gimmick, this is talent and dedication.
And yet sometimes it is still not enough.

When you see YouTube stars and fading one-hit-wonders (William Hung, Tila Tequila...) you have to wonder whether we are fascinated by the quick rise of someone who is bound to eventually fall and fall hard, or those that find the mountains, climb them, and STICK at the top.

I'd like to say proudly that we encourage the latter. But the stubborn persistance of reality tv (ok, I love Top Model like anyone else, but The Cougar??) and Ripley's-style breaking news brings doubts. The poor recipient of America's first face transplant doesn't know she's a victim of the car-crash syndrome. I bet 90% of working-class citizens walking out their door yesterday morning did a perfectly executed pivot turn to stare at her before-and-afters.

Which is more gratifying? Five seconds of online fame or five years of respect? And what about the people that don't ask for their five seconds and are forever remembered for them?

The bar has officially been lowered.

Lateral Thinking

I love when things connect.

I had a teacher in high school who used to point this out to us but I never payed attention.

You know how when you buy a new car, suddenly you start to see it everywhere?
That's what I mean. When you think about something often enough or hard enough, suddenly the parallels to other things pop up all over!

It's an interesting phenomenon that I'm sure plenty of people have written about but I'm just now discovering.

Want to make a connection? Drop me a line in the comment box!

Possibilities

I was thinking today...

What happens if you usually jump into something because you want it to happen immediately and reap the benefits right away, but you've suddenly hit upon some mind-shattering truth that maybe the waiting is actually the best part?

Okay, it's not exactly hypothetical, it's truth. And it may or may not be happening to me.

I feel a bit more mature for the sheer fact that I can recognize myself in the past and myself in the present, and the past me definitely jumped into things. All the time. Every time.
Relationships, hookups, party plans, friendships, arguments, vague notions that never quite panned out but by god the initial forward momentum was there!

And sometimes I see that it wasn't what was called for, or I didn't fully commit to it, or the recipient was obviously not quite as ready to jump in the deep end as I was, and so things fell apart.

Now, though, let me entertain the notion that if I wait for it, if I just hang on that little extra bit, wait until the circumstances and the stars line up neatly and everything fits correctly and I can think things through, maybe it will work.

I don't really need to know the end, or how my story is progressing in ten years, I just need to know that it's progressing and that wherever I end up is where I end up, and for now I'm enjoying the possibilities.

Selfishness

I think it would be beneficial to conduct a study that shows the exact breakdown, percent-wise, of those who are born with compassion and deeply care about helping and affecting other people, and those of us (yes, I said us) who do everything with the end goal of ourselves.

No, really, I'm actually curious. It seems that there are is an awful lot of fakeness floating in the atmosphere, and its clogging up the system. For instance, since I spend a great deal of time projecting myself into the social media world, I find that many "professionals" and "experts" inundate the tweeting world solely to gain followers, not because they have a sudden desire to help their neighboring small business triple in size and reputation.

Or when you do things for acquaintances and coworkers and people that just aren't quite on your Top 5 speed-dial list, are you doing favors because you want to or because you want to reap the benefits next week when it will undoubtedly matter to you?

Am I way off?

The Office

The workplace. What a strange world it is.

I am consistently amazed that my coworkers, the mean ones, the ones with strange habits, the ones who never do their job, the ones that try to hide, the ones that scream "Huh-llooooo," the ones that smile when their brain is about to explode, the ones who think Friday cocktail hour = Starbucks, and the ones who are hardly ever there...

...are, in fact, real people.