Filling In The Gaps

I had a lesson on Monday, I wrote something, but left it until I had more material and comments. I was typing it into my phone the moment my feet hit the pavement jumping down the stairs out of the music practice room. She said that she was proud of me. She said that. And I guess in a way I got what I wanted, she didn’t say that I was teachable or listenable but I must have come a long way in the short time she has known me. The life lessons were most certainly noted. As much a doubted it in the beginning, maybe she isn’t as plastic as my resistant mind would have me believe, and I feel there is some sort of connection, at least on my part. Maybe it’s because of her, maybe merely because of her position in my life; it would be hard not to indentify and bond with her in some way. I write about her a lot in my blog. I will thank her on my album booklet, along with my mother, my friends, my idols, my English teachers, and all the other beautiful influential people who I have had the gift of knowing. There was a time when I thought I owed my horrible place in this god-forsaken world to no-one and nothing, and that is what I would point out in my album booklet; taking one last stab at all the people who doubted me and rubbing it in their faces with all the nasty sentiment I could muster. But that’s how it is when you feel depressed about your dreams. When you’re happier you realise how blessed you are to know the people who did indeed help you, and you can brush off and even laugh at the people who tried in vain to made your life harder. Alright! Enough with the syrupy self-help brochure crap! If one thing is for sure, it’s that if I feel something, I really feel it and I make sure everyone knows exactly how it feels. Urgh.

On Monday, in the way of milestones, I actually sung part of a song all by myself, with only piano accompaniment.

I suspected she was lying about her voice not being up to singing it again, but I obliged and didn’t totally regret it. As I said to her, not completely repulsed is an improvement. (There is a boy on my bus who doesn’t know his own name. Someone asked him his name and he said “Ask my sister, she knows.” He sounded almost serious.)

I think, from the sound of a few hints I got, that I am almost on par with most of her other students. What more could someone who started out like I did hope for?

Through personal experience and from what I hear, natural ability doesn’t count for shit. If you’re trying to do this stuff, with the muscle memory and the angelic lilt, and you’re trying to do it WELL, everybody has to go so far that unless you’ve had proper lessons previously, it really doesn’t matter where you start out. I’m having to concede more and more that the problem really is mostly in my head.

I mentioned posting a song up here and she said that she would very much like to hear it, she may have even been excited. I think this must be because of my own terrible scrutiny of myself, and anything that I think is mildly good and worth sharing, must be frigging brilliant. Though I mean not to disappoint.

I just felt so tired hungry and past it on Monday that as unfinished as this was I laid the phone aside mid sentence and drifted off for a short nap.

I have broken the train of thought for this blog so badly, one has to seize the feeling, not mindlessly repeat old words. Linking it all together has been so hard this time round. I curse myself for leaving this and yet do the same thing over and over again. There is not doubt that I am addicted.

Alright. Fresh words. I must also inform you that I have changed my mind about the song. There will still be a song, and I have been diligently researching how to imbed something that will play the track at a click within my blog instead. But I will not be posting Depravity. As yet. First I think you should hear me at my best, how I really can sound. Albeit copying someone (down to what I view was a really good imitation of a Canadian accent) and not singing anything original. I was browsing through my bank of many many recorded and failed attempts at a varying array of songs, when I came across this one from a few weeks ago. It was a rather loud bare rendition of that Lisa Loeb song that I talked about (the one I have yearned to sing for ten years) and I played it while I did some other things on the computer and I found myself enjoying the sound of it. Of my voice, which was easily overpowering hers in some places. I played the track to my mother who gave me many backhanded compliments regarding it. “This track is excellent and I never expected you could do this back when you sounded so shit I could hardly stand to listen… etc.” And I thought about the effort that went into Depravity, from the lyrical and audio production side of things, and I was really proud of it in that respect and then I heard this one, a single simple vocal track of me and a song, all the words in, the mimic in me working hard… and I had to admit that it was still better. I decided that before I went any further with this that I was going to find out what my teacher thought of both of them. I’m dragging this out again and I apologise dearly, though I am sure that you will both understand how big a thing this is for me. I thank you for your patience in advance and I hope it is worth the wait.

Idril, I did finally listen to you and your band’s song. I really liked it, and I also didn’t expect it to be in English. I especially liked the second phase of the intro and the mood of the chorus. It sounded really polished. I heard you singing and I thought you suited it perfectly. On the basis of this song I would say that your voice is nothing to be displeased about. That sounds a little practiced, but I really do mean it. I’m a little nervous about mine now…

Oh oh, and I have been meaning to mention this for ages. There is this new girl at my school, in my homegroup (homeroom, morning gathering to waste time and mark the roll, whatever you want to call it) who looks exactly like a plumper version of this girl I used to know. I mean, I was completely fooled, despite the fact she has a different name and is broader shouldered and heavier, I swore that this girl was the same one I knew from primary school and had deliberately come to haunt me. She has the same skin, the same hair texture and colour, the same eyes and mouth, she moves the same way and speaks with the same soft daddy’s girl voice… I was convinced. The weirdest thing, and you can’t attribute this to me because I didn’t notice all the eerie similarities till later, was the fact that she was always looking at me. Just like the other girl did, just like I sometimes wished she had. When this girl thinks I’m not looking her eyes follow my every action, I do something with my scissors on the table next to her and through my fringe I see those familiar eyes, noting my actions with deliberate interest. I like being watched and I wonder why she does so, I too am guilty of the odd sidelong glance. She has never once talked to me and I can’t remember her name, but she never moves if I sit next to her, as some of the others do, she seems content that we can watch each other better that way. Something tells me that she is not like the girl from the past in the way that I would like her to be, although there is no doubt that she is of a type. She still reminds me terribly of the other each time I look upon her face; she was a very influential sort of friend, not unlike the girl I wrote that poem about… I’ll probably never know who she really is.

I was thinking about Amanda again tonight, being driven around and listening to Truce, thinking about the next time she comes to Australia. It will be impossible for me not to go and not to write another long letter, the previous one did work out quite well for me. But I wonder if there will be any difference in perspective in the letter that she will notice. I have come such a long way from the letter I gave her in December and even further since my first email. But have I really changed in the way that I approach her? In the sort of things I would say when faced with the surreal prospect of meeting her again?

You know there was something I was wondering a few weeks ago. And I could swear that I had written about it more than once on the blog, and I would now be repeating myself, but it seems that I haven’t mentioned it at all. I was in one of my more morose moods about my voice, listening to Backstabber and thinking about the Dolls. You can hear Brian in this song and I like what he adds to it. He doesn’t have the best voice and as far as I know and assume, he hasn’t had any formal training. But I really like his voice and how it words with Amanda’s. The thing is, you hardly ever hear him sing. I don’t know whether he doesn’t like to, chooses not to, or Amanda only wants or lets him on a few songs that call for it. I only ever remember him being really noticeable on Backstabber and The Jeep Song. Somehow I started thinking about how this linked to me. If I looked upon his potential situation with the worst possible light – I was Brian, I am destined to be nothing more than he is, less, because I lack his obvious gift with the drums. Relegated to the most minimal backing vocals, for shame or by force, unnoticed except for clumsy scribblings of who really was in this famous band led by the charismatic Palmer (I was really going over the top here but I am trying to prove a point) And so I looked for Brian in more songs, looking for something that made me aware that he was there, as a person; and finding him only in Dance Me To The End Of Love, and then passionately, almost frustratingly bashing away at the drums in Life On Mars, no doubt a great fan of the song and yet trapped by being unable to sing it with Amanda (I can have a wonderful manipulative imagination). And so I found myself wondering, with a deep soulless sadness – where is Brian? With all the attention I give to Amanda I hardly know about him. Where is he? Where am I? If this the life of a backup singer, of one who can play drums excellently, what am I hoping to get out of this cruel rock-star world? (visualise me speaking this with a distorted pre-tears wail, with the back of my hand dramatically placed over to my eyes).

I just thought I’d finally write that one down. It has nothing to do with anything right now.

Consulting the list… I can’t even remember what I was on about last night. I felt really inspired about blogging and made a scrawled list of great discussion points… now they don’t make sense. Yesterday I felt really motivated and I had all of my homework tasks planned out in my mind, blogging, parties, extra work just to make life in the future easier… then I woke up this morning, it was so cold, and I just felt so tired, and so I spent the rest of the day trying to avoid doing anything. So did everyone else. If your parent is curled up on the couch by the fire at 11 in the morning watching crap on TV you hardly feel like doing anything yourself. I played computer games, I trained speech recognition, which is at the moment struggling with my dictation. It’s really pretty cool actually. I only bothered because my fingers are frozen. How lazy is that? Over here it is… Autumn? Damness, I thought it was winter. I could have been fooled. But it’s not that same crisp clear frosty coldness; it’s an oppressive foggy unexpected chill.

The program is amazingly full of bugs though, I don’t think it knows my accent, which is neither perfect Australian, nor the Middle American it was built on. I don’t think the training is helping. Sometimes it’s really good, sometimes it will get a whole sentence wrong.

My birthday has been and gone without much event. I was awoken at 6:30 am by a text message from a friend thinking it was yesterday and panicking. I was of course asleep, in the darkness, and did not appreciate it. Two people whom I mentioned by birthday to, hastily wished me at happy one, and I remembered to wish the bus driver who has the same birthday the same. It was a clumsy boring day with not so much as a present. There was this gorgeous pair of boots that I had had my eye on which I finally got to try on. They fitted perfectly, not uncomfortable at all by full length boot standards, looked great from the sides. I looked like a right slut in my school skirt and stockings with full length black leather boots standing in the middle of the shoe shop. But you know I loved it. Apart from the fact that I found that the tops of them looked terrible with my skinny legs. Everyone is getting fatter and it’s a damn shame in more ways than one. So apart from a coffee, and four document wallets, I came away with nothing.

Things are good but dreary at the moment. The sheer happiness thing has passed, and I hate to be writing this while it has, but at least I have got something down.

☆Anika☆