Right now I am high on Diet Coke. I restricted caffeine all day
today and then binged on Diet Coke about an hour ago. I am high as a
kite! I wrote my manager an enormous laundry list of all the
creative projects I've been wanting to pursue and I realized I should
channel some of this into another blog because it's been awhile and
I miss me.
I love having these bursts of creative energy. Honestly, my two and a half year old daughter is going through this phase that is so
exhausting. I feel like at the beginning of the day, as I sit and
try to enjoy a cup of coffee, I am watching her, like I would watch a
hamster on a hamster wheel, tirelessly running around and around. Then, suddenly, the coffee is gone and I am inside the wheel with her, running around and around, thinking "Where can I get off this thing?!"
I watch the clock and pine for nap time -- which comes
and goes with no success because instead of angelically resting her
head next to mine and reading Madeleine, she is jumping up and down
on the bed yelling passages from Dr. Seuss then collapsing on top of
me in a fit of giggles. So that's the phase, a lot of running around
and jumping around and yelling and singing and pushing me out of the
door of her room and telling me to go away, she only wants to play
with Daddy. Daddy gets to have all the fun these days, and I am mean
Mommy who has to remind them both that one can't live on chocolate
Pudding, and that nudity isn't always appropriate in the yard. But I
digress.
So I sit here in my quiet living room. My husband is out playing
music, Evie (the wonder kid) is sound asleep after a long day of not
napping. My thoughts turn to some new songs that are long overdue
and my recent mastery of Garageband. I use the term "mastery" loosely. Let's just say this: I have learned to use Garageband. In general, technology and I are like fire and
water. I'm like the fire with my intense burning desire to have
technology aide me in my endeavors, or in watching a DVD. And
technology is like the big cruel wave of water that puts out that
fire and says, "you have no idea what you're dealing with." Or like
the DVD player that, I swear to you, sends mean messages to me through its display. I push "open" and it says "no". I push "play" and it
says "no". So anyway, I can plug my guitar into the little mbox
recording thingy and then plug that into my computer and, voila!
Music is made. It is a beautiful thing.
So the other night, my husband Brian was out playing music again
and I thought I would work on Garageband. I thought I would surprise
him by showing him that I could learn to do these kinds of things,
that I could move forward, stop living like a hippie and record with
my computer instead of using those gigantic reels of tape that are
now in large immovable boxes in our garage. I raided his stash of
equipment, I read stuff, figured out how to plug it all in, opened up
a new song file on Garageband and began to play. Nothing. There was
no sign that life existed anywhere as far as the computer was
concerned -- unless I put my hand on top of the small box my guitar was
plugged into. I kid you not, this is what technology is like for me. I
put my hand on top of it and the light turned green; I took it off and
it went dead again. I spent an hour on the phone with Brian's friend
Larry, who is a recording genius. He walked me through step by step
until finally we figured out what was happening.
A bit beleaguered, but still willing to try, I popped open a can of the old Diet Coke
and proceeded to record two guitar parts that sounded pretty darn
good. I was so pleased with my work, I thought I would just leave
the computer open on the dining room table with the headphones
plugged in so Brian could come home and marvel at my brilliance.
Brian came home late and just crawled into bed. I awoke in the
morning, excited to play him my tracks and realized I hadn't plugged
in my computer. It was dead, and "saving" the project I had worked
on, well, that would have been one more button to push.
So here I am tonight, writing this blog fueled by Diet Coke instead
of recording some amazing new songs on Garageband. If you are
reading this, it's because I remembered to save my work this time.
Let this be a cautionary tale to you. Diet Coke and technology don't
always mix well with Lux Land. But enjoy this song anyway. It was
recorded on tape and didn't need to be "saved." It was embedded into this
blog post by someone who actually knows what they're doing. It's called
the Astronaut song. I've got to run now; my DVD player finally
opened so I can put in Twin Peaks and figure out who the bleep killed
Laura Palmer.
Listen to "Astronaut Song":