Another week = another weekend over

Weekend was good. Yes. I have been taking care to get enough sleep lately, which is kind of hardcore on my part. I figure I have plenty of whacked out sleep schedules in my future that now is the time to take advantage. That meant passing out at 9ish on a Saturday night. Lame. Does it count if I woke up at maybe 2 AM? But then I went back to bed. But I got up early this morning so it balanced out. I got to help a good buddy record a demo yesterday morning on the Mac. These suckers are so handy. Plug and play, for reals. I also did it in ProTools, which was nice to have the confidence to mess around in that program a little more. Both yesterday and today I decided to take a little bit more care of Writer Jana, because I haven't really worked on any songs for a while. I know it ebbs and flows but it's good to stay in practice. I journaled a little and I hope to start keeping that up again, and I think maybe I finished or almost finished a new song today? It's a combination of about 3 songs I have been trying to finish for months, so maybe they were just standing around awkwardly at the Jana Songwriting Dinner Party, waiting for me to introduce them. I'll try and be a better songlet hostess in the future.

Feet.

Yesterday I had a very enlightening guitar lesson. We talked about our feet. No, I don't plan on becoming the world's best toe guitarist (that sounds kind of cool, though...I bet someone already does it on Youtube. Yep, there it is). Kevin the Guitar Prof is very knowledgeable about the practice of feldenkrais, and the thought of using the natural movement and flow of the whole body to play your instrument well. It makes sense. Many of us spend our days hunched over our guitars or our computers or our steering wheels. We are trained as a society to hunch and fold into ourselves. When you are conscious of this, you can start to adjust your posture and body position to make your movements, whether it is simple like reaching behind you or something like playing a Bbdim7 chord, more fluid and therefore...do them with less effort. It's not a way to cheat, it's a way to maximize the movement our skeletons have. Yay bones! So where do we start? The feet. Some days I have good posture and they are flat on the floor, some days one foot rests on top of the other or one is kind of skewing off to the side. A firm foundation and a connection to the ground gives you confidence and the ability to move with the music, instead of have to balance awkwardly in spite of it. There is energy in the ground and it's best to be in contact with it as much as possible. Not like this. Bad Jana. I am not very aware, and I am slouching right now as I type this. I will correct my spine and in 5 minutes I will be slouching again. Perhaps guitar lessons will finally correct my posture. Just now, in my Mom's brain, the clouds parted and angels started singing. All those music lessons as a kid might actually lead to me having correct posture. Hallelujah. Feet on floor.

j.Po Thots: Maybe I really am in grad school.

I play in Houston this weekend and New Mexico next week, and I am preparing for these gigs with some allergies that I've never dealt with before and the general nit-picky setlist/gear stuff. Normally a cause for freaking out, because the logical voice-in-my-head says: "Dude, you can't help it. You have allergies. Your throat is gonna die." "Duuuude. Winging it is cool. It's spontaneous and exciting!" "Dude. Buy extra batteries in New Mexico if you need them. Walgreens are EVERYWHERE." But no (and yes I call myself "dude" and when we hang out I'll call you "dude," too). You don't walk into a test without having read the book (well, mostly...if you're in grad school you're probably past being an academic slacker). And you don't just accept that fact that you don't "get" a certain part of your field. You study it, you dissect it, and you take it in, and you own it. You see how many facets there are in your field and you address each one until you master it at the level you need to. So this week Dan and I worked on a little teeny tiny bit of "outward" because I will be playing a bunch of gigs next week and that is very outward. A little stagecraft study helps a LOT, and we are going to go indepth with it more next year (these next few months are still all about "inward"). At the Life's A Song workshop I talked with Terri about good and bad things for your throat when you're sick, and she recommended some mucous-clearing natural remedies. Pineapple is good. Most of those sprays and stuff on the market contain alcohol which...guess what? Just dries you out. Bad alcoholic spray. You taste like candy but you are oh so dangerous. Also, I had to ponder long and hard about setlist order, flow, and how my wacked out tunings relate to each other for maximum ease of switching song to song. It's like building a short story every night. It's kinda cool. So folk music grad school involves a little bit of acting and stagecraft study, a little bit of anatomy and medicine, and a little bit of storyboarding. And a LOT of practice and experimentation. Excuse me while I go wrap a tambourine in a towel and step on it.