I’m Glad I Bought That Ugly Crystal

Next week I enter the studio for the second time this year to continue work on my debut album.   Oh, that word “debut” makes one sound like such an ingenue! But I feel like I’ve been around the block a few times with music. Not exacly “rode hard and put in wet,” a phrase that’s trickled down through the women in the family, but still…I’ve seen my ups and downs with this music thing. Luckily these last few months have brought me back to a place of wonder towards music, with some distance from the ego’s crowing.

Many know I have struggled to shed the “coffeehouse ingenue singer/song writer” thing, like clothing whose style that I have gradually outgrown but still wear because I haven’t found the clothes that truly suit me. (I remember a roommate once told me I had the right pieces in my wardrobe, I just didn’t know how to put them together right.)

I think sometimes it’s just a matter of not wanting to be like everyone else, of thinking that the music you’re doing is somehow different, so you say “Oh no, I’m not a singer/songwriter.” Many women artists want to be seen as on par with the boys so they do electronic beeps and boops or take on weird monikers. It’s when that self-consciousness disappears that women can truly be artists, not worrying about impressing with their technically proficient but stiff guitar riffs (I have to say that’s the vibe I got from St. Vincent when I saw her perform…talented, but utterly self-conscious, making cold hipster banter in order to gain credence with her followers.) 

Everything is a bit derivative these days, unless you’re Joanna Newsom. And even she uses forms from way back when. So I am happy for now being a singer/songwriter.  Um…who else would wear that hat? I certainly couldn’t.

Anyway. I’ve spent the last four years gearing up for this album. Writing, tossing out songs, thinking songs are amazing, next day thinking songs are shit, recording melodies into my cell phone, losing cell phones, trying out a band, playing with band to less than stellar responses, disbanding rather quietly and guiltily because I like said band members, finding new players, buying crystal from kooky lady who tells me I’ll write better songs, rubbing crystal when I’m stressed out, new better songs start to come (maybe crystal’s doing, maybe not), learning piano again with fingers awkward as popsicle sticks slapping against water.

All the while worrying that this will be one huge effort that will amount in a thin line of haze, not the big bountiful white clouds that gallop across the sky. But I counter that with knowing at least I will have tried, and I can tell my children someday that I tried and did this thing and it was a lot of fun and beautiful for the most part. And they’ll be like, “No way, mom, you were in a band? Did you have groupies?” like that really dumb commercial for a brand that has totally escaped me, where the kids are berating/disbelieving the dad that he was in a band, because he seems so uncool now, and he and the mom blithely try to convince them. If I were that dad, I’d be like “Shut up! All of you! You’ll never know my dreams!” And then storm off to the basement to jam. Teehee!