harriehq

Oh, Anne Hathaway is in the new Odyssey everyone's fussed over? PASS.

@ambientspace@cloudisland.nz You're braver than me! (More brave? That grammar is going to bother me but forgive me for being too tired to bother haha.) I definitely should work on my composition skills - but it's one of those "artistic temperament suffering" things where I can barely write WORDS when I'm experiencing heavy emotions and I've tried music only/first composition when I wanted to express something and… I cannot. It is the most banging-head-against-the-wall frustrating thing. I'm really a writer first, a performer second, and a musician third. I LOVE music. But… I don't know. That's how everyone knows me, as the singer / pianist / local musician… and YES… but my love is in the technical skill (performing!) and honestly my biggest nerd passion is, like, musicology and music history and sociology and ethnomusicology. Music is a… ah… delivery method of the words. I mean I don't know how to explain 😅 like… I FEEL it when I hear it. And I can feel it in my body when I sing the music of a genius. Arlen. Mahler. Bernstein. Sondheim. But it's not my native language. I've worked really hard to make music work for me. My SINGING voice is as valuable to me as a custom Gretsch or a Steinway or Stradivarius. (To me, I emphasize, ha) But in MY case, singing is literally "emphatic speech." It's the words. It all comes down to the words. I envy people who "think in music" naturally and organically. But I didn't study opera in college to NOT know my weaknesses now re: what I can grow/learn/work on as an Artist, and what is going to turn me into Van Gogh if I push myself too hard. Still… it would be nice if I had some kind of internal / opposite nom de plume to write detached, observant words for me sometimes. I'm pretty damn good with words. Inversely to the complexity of my emotions, naturally… 🙃

Do you ever have such a specific, poignant emotion or combination of emotions for the day that not only do you need a virgin notebook to consider writing it in (not a problem, I could practically open my own stationery store) but you also really can't stomach writing it in your own voice (a problem, it's the only voice I have)?

No, I'm having buttered sourdough toast with ricotta and red plum jam. It's mine. You go away. #hot-buttered-toast

I "grew up with Dilbert" because my dad is a computer engineer and it was always the specifically IT/computing related strips he got a laugh out of. It was definitely disappointing to grow up and have that geeky connection with my dad ruined by the reality of Scott Adams.