Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Goodby Early Adopter, Hello Later Learner

Another birthday in the books and ruminating on the passage of time, as per usual at this time of year. And I'm looking at my old iPhone - without the 3S or 3G whatever that means - and my aging MacAir - the lack of a built in disc drive is really starting to bug me - upgrades are in order, but truthfully I can't be bothered. And my head hurts at the idea that i need to migrate my on-line social life from Facebook to Google+ and I feel guilty for not tweeting and blogging regularly and so I started to play the new Sims on-line game to relax until I had this huge Ah HAH moment...

...as my Sim was cleaning her fake toilet and heating up food in her microwave - something I highly object to in the real world btw and then she headed to her fake computer to write a fake blog post and then the fake guitar where in order to learn life points and simoleaons she had to practice a Flamenco piece.

Imagine if you will, the now, the entire movement of my cosmos screeching to a halt as I look over at my real guitar with my real flamenco music on the stand and I realize the real flower pots on the real balcony need attention more than the fake flowers on the computer screen. What am I doing! I have a life to live and here I am playing at a shadow version of it? Albeit my Sim looks better in skinny jeans and a corset top than I do, but come on! So I powered down the computer and picked up up the real guitar. Tonight I will make my favorite 2.5 hour Baja Beans and clean my real toilet. Then the only thing I'll touch the computer for is to research gluten and egg free recipes so that I can have my real friends over for a real dinner.

So there. It takes me awile to learn things sometime but I got there in the end. If I'm going to have a fake life it is going to have aliens and superpowers and hot guys with six pack abs who sing to me all day and make me sing all night!

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Sing from your heart

I have just watched a bunch of wonderful music videos of amazing BC talent and I am so proud, but...

Okay beautiful young people, lean in and listen well, for I was once one of you and pissed it away with self doubt and pretensions - lose ‘em! The pretensions I mean. Look it up if you don’t know the word. KISS, and not the rock band your parents knew and loved. Keep it simple schmoooes. Trim the beard precisely, forget the feathers unless you can prove First Nations heritage, and a short tight mini skirt as you sit on a bale of hay in the middle of a field is just not the thing chica!

Please be the you are and not the you that you think you should be. I know that is a tall order when in your twenties, I do. Everyone around you is in full court press trying to make you into what they want you to be. But take a deep breath, and ask someone older, in the biz, whom you admire, their opinion before adding tambourines or back-combing your hair or assigning your creative future to your current boyfriend.

Sing from your heart not your ego, and surround yourself with images that mean something to you. Don’t worry about giving us a narrative and god knows you should punt your producer’s narrative, unless he is paying you big bales of cash for the privilege, which I very much doubt. Seriously, I bet if you asked Jan Arden or Sarah McLachlan for 1/2 an hour of advice they’d be thrilled to give it.

Okay, that’s my outburst for the month. Please just know that you are beautiful and genius. After that, it’s just hard work. Don’t forget that either. Push yourselves. It is at the edges of our comfort zone that real magic happens.

Friday, August 5, 2011

6 minutes in my head

Here's a six minute writing exercise from my Writing Maestro Deb Norton who blogs at partwild.wordpress.com

You have six minutes to answer the prompt - If I dig deeper...

Here's where I went.

If I dig deeper I wonder if I’ll strike gold or open up a cess pit? Which will it be? A little of both mayhap or neither. Maybe I’ll just uncover deep dark rich earth that goes on and on underneath my little spade. The kind of earth that must be paired with the word rich. Rich earth ready and willing to receive the seeds of dreams. Ready earth rich with secrets and spells. Earth ready and rich, able to cherish and feed and nurture and infuse the life that turns a dream into a story. If I dig deeper.