The weather seems to have given up its bipolar behaviour and settled on a lovely middle ground, if only for a day or two. I happen to like spring, so i’m happy. Spring is strange for me, because i’m not especially a native to the season. I’m in my glory in the cool days of autumn and the chill of winter, but spring is just the yellow light before the green and heat of summer and it always makes me a little uneasy. It’s a season that moves… wind, rain, growth, warmth. Fall is so different, the way it settles down and leaves you with a polite dusting of snow and a christmas tree.
It’s hard to get a good read on spring (or any other season) while you’re in high school because it’s all skipping school to sit in your bedroom with the windows wide open or idly walking home even though you have much too much homework to do. School adds purpose to spring, because you’re trapped inside and you want to get out. Momentum. Somehow (i know how: through whining and bitching and using all of my connections to my best advantage) i wound up in class fall/winter and working in the spring/summer. So, i’ve got a building for me to escape, but it’s not really the same as school because i like it here and they pay me to do things i really don’t mind doing at all. So, i’ve lost all of my momentum; i am not out the door like a shot at 5pm to jump into a pair of shorts and a tee-shirt and do whatever people do in spring. I wouldn’t even know what they do anyhow.
So, yeah, spring finally feels like it’s here. Maybe i’ll go take a walk…
Obviously i’m too busy or too apathetic or something, cause life is starting to get a little dull on this end. Life gets dull when i have no anchor and i just drift from hour to hour without any sense of where i’ve been or where i’m going. As distracting as it might be, having a crush or a demo or tour tickets to chase after gives me a sense of purpose, of forward motion. And right now i’m just sitting here eating lots of chocolate with zero motivation at all; i don’t want to be here but i don’t want to go home and i don’t want to be playing guitar and i don’t really want to go to my voice lesson because eating several pounds of chocolate in a 24 hours span does not tend to aid one in producing beautiful noise. Listless is the word. So, yeah, i’m just taking it one minute at a time as i crash down out of my sugar rush, hoping the clock will learn to tick a little faster at some point today (other than while i’m asleep).
The scars are slowly fading, you know. I hurt myself the night Selina and i broke up, and i had the angry red scar on my leg this whole time, smoldering underneath my clothing as a physical reminder of what i was feeling. Lately i managed to forget about it a little, and just now i looked down to find it no more tangible than a line drawn with an unsharpened pink crayon. I think it’ll just be unbroken skin again a third into May, which will mark two months since we broke up. And four months since we got together. And i’ve almost found my equilibrium again.
So, i’m not going to Shippensburg this weekend as originally planned. I’m not quite sure why. I have two people who want to drive there and have nothing better to do, but the plan just doesn’t seem to have any weight to it. Maybe it’s because the other two people want to go because i want to go, and i want to go so i can hang out with Teri, but in reality i know Teri will be too tied up in the midst of her last big party of the year to pay much attention to a bunch of us Drexel kids. Or to me. It’s silly to even try to suggest that i had another reason to go … i don’t drink all that much and i’m not the most social person in the world when it comes to meeting people at parties. My excuse for it all was that a bunch of us would go and make it a bonding experience, but obviously the drive behind the whole thing was seeing Teri. But now i’m not. Not sure how i feel about that. But, now it looks like i can just run into town, buy a spindle of cds, and start hammering away at demo duplication. What fun!
I’m starting to hate “Under My Skin“. Sure, it’s a wonderful song, and i love to perform it alone or with Gina backing me, but it’s starting to make me feel like a one-hit-wonder in training. Despite my playing a whole host of songs for my friends here at Drexel for well over a year, the one they always ask for when i’m playing is “Under My Skin” (or, if it’s Renata – “Play ‘legends of the flesh!'”). While they recognize “Never Say Goodbye,” “Deadweight,” “Crashing,” and “Lost,” “Under My Skin” is undoubtably the one that sticks out in their minds. UMS is the only song my mother has ever complemented me on, even after listening to my entire demo twice last night. I’m truly flattered by all of the attention, but i honestly can’t make a prediction on how long any song is going to be sticking around in my performances for; some songs like “Other Plans” seem to want to hang around forever, but other early favourites like “Touch” have fallen off the face of my musical landscape and are hardly every recalled.
I don’t play things just because people like them – i play them because i have something to say. While it feels nice to know that someone might be singing along to something, there are nights that UMS feels redundant in the face of newer material. Furthermore, i come from the Ani DiFranco school of performing that states that i can leave out any songs i don’t want to play, and that i can feel free to change the tempo and lyrics of anything people seem to be too comfortable with. Of course, at this point i shouldn’t give a fig about challenging my audience – i ought to just find one. It’s just that i see all the attention getting funnelled towards the middle of my new cd, where “Under My Skin” lies, and all the other songs that i worked harder and longer on are being ignored. I think i’m going to leave UMS in it’s pre-mix for the album … raw, and unfinished. It isn’t a perfect song, and there’s no reason i should try to make it sound like one.