"Because of who we are, we react in mock surprise."
Haven't posted in a while. I suppose I sort of missed the ideal window for 2011 recaps, but I'll do a brief one here.
It was... an interesting year. I wasn't exactly successful in all the ways I hoped off the bat, but on the other hand I was successful in ways I really didn't expect. There was a lot of work (particularly musical work) that should have gotten done but didn't. Things didn't progress as quickly as I'd hoped on the living independently front or the relationship front (more on those later, though). I haven't been running nearly as much as I was this time last year, what with having a much busier schedule overall.
On the other hand, it was a pretty fuckin' solid year, all told. I wrote music for the Green Fairy Cabaret, which you will recall was a circus show that was commissioned for the Kimmel Center and then later was remounted at the circus school for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. The music was well-received, and I even sold a few copies of the soundtrack album, in both physical and digital form. Since you guys are "preferred customers", as it were, if you want, you can click here to download the soundtrack for free (though if you want to pay $5 for it like awesome people, click here).
I continue to take baby steps towards making some kind of life out of circus. Teaching at the school now makes up the significant majority of my income, even if 7 classes/week isn't quite enough to live off on its own. Little performance opportunities have been coming into my life. I worked on a really neat doubles rope act back in the summer, and towards the end of the year made a solo rope act that, while it slightly overreaches my abilities and stamina perhaps, is pretty fuckin' solid. I even performed it in NYC at a show up there. I'll have video to post soon, I hope. I have tentative commissions lined up to write yet more circus music.
I turned in an application on an apartment in West Philly yesterday. At this location or, if anecessary, another, I'll be living with my friend-of-long-standing kepod. We will make a house of nerdliness. I will make a little production studio for myself, in a space without the frustrations and distractions of my parents' house. It will be good.
New Year's Eve this year was delightful. In one of the strange patterns of my life, I seem to have someone to kiss at midnight exactly once every three years, and this was one of those years. Good kiss. Good way to start a year. Butch was there too, and my soon-to-be-housemate. We drank tasty things, ate tasty pizza that I'd made, and watched Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Most righteous.
This has all been a bit rambly, and it feels incomplete and as though its pacing does not match the proportions of my actual feelings on 2011. But let me make this simple. I think the best way of expressing where my life is right now is to mention a realization I had a few weeks back, which is that I go to bed almost every night looking forward to the next day. Not always all of it (I do still work 15-20 hours a week at Starbucks, until I can find a better source of that few hundred dollars a month of supplemental income), but there is pretty much always something. Teaching, training, rocking out. There is even a girl, and a girl with the power to make me actually want to relax. You all know me, so you know how significant that is. It is difficult to balance everything, and devote all the time to making music and to training rope and to training other skills that each of those things deserves, but having to find a balance of several awesome things is a good problem to have, I feel.
Matt, Jim, and I are all itching to finish this album we started far too long ago. Check out the overture. It's pretty much the last thing I made in 2011, side by side with Matt. He is keys, I am guitars of all types. Jim will be drums, soon. We need a name desperately, so if you have any ideas leave them in the comments. But this overture, it rocks. So let it be an overture not just to its own forthcoming album, but to 2012.
It was... an interesting year. I wasn't exactly successful in all the ways I hoped off the bat, but on the other hand I was successful in ways I really didn't expect. There was a lot of work (particularly musical work) that should have gotten done but didn't. Things didn't progress as quickly as I'd hoped on the living independently front or the relationship front (more on those later, though). I haven't been running nearly as much as I was this time last year, what with having a much busier schedule overall.
On the other hand, it was a pretty fuckin' solid year, all told. I wrote music for the Green Fairy Cabaret, which you will recall was a circus show that was commissioned for the Kimmel Center and then later was remounted at the circus school for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. The music was well-received, and I even sold a few copies of the soundtrack album, in both physical and digital form. Since you guys are "preferred customers", as it were, if you want, you can click here to download the soundtrack for free (though if you want to pay $5 for it like awesome people, click here).
I continue to take baby steps towards making some kind of life out of circus. Teaching at the school now makes up the significant majority of my income, even if 7 classes/week isn't quite enough to live off on its own. Little performance opportunities have been coming into my life. I worked on a really neat doubles rope act back in the summer, and towards the end of the year made a solo rope act that, while it slightly overreaches my abilities and stamina perhaps, is pretty fuckin' solid. I even performed it in NYC at a show up there. I'll have video to post soon, I hope. I have tentative commissions lined up to write yet more circus music.
I turned in an application on an apartment in West Philly yesterday. At this location or, if anecessary, another, I'll be living with my friend-of-long-standing kepod. We will make a house of nerdliness. I will make a little production studio for myself, in a space without the frustrations and distractions of my parents' house. It will be good.
New Year's Eve this year was delightful. In one of the strange patterns of my life, I seem to have someone to kiss at midnight exactly once every three years, and this was one of those years. Good kiss. Good way to start a year. Butch was there too, and my soon-to-be-housemate. We drank tasty things, ate tasty pizza that I'd made, and watched Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Most righteous.
This has all been a bit rambly, and it feels incomplete and as though its pacing does not match the proportions of my actual feelings on 2011. But let me make this simple. I think the best way of expressing where my life is right now is to mention a realization I had a few weeks back, which is that I go to bed almost every night looking forward to the next day. Not always all of it (I do still work 15-20 hours a week at Starbucks, until I can find a better source of that few hundred dollars a month of supplemental income), but there is pretty much always something. Teaching, training, rocking out. There is even a girl, and a girl with the power to make me actually want to relax. You all know me, so you know how significant that is. It is difficult to balance everything, and devote all the time to making music and to training rope and to training other skills that each of those things deserves, but having to find a balance of several awesome things is a good problem to have, I feel.
Matt, Jim, and I are all itching to finish this album we started far too long ago. Check out the overture. It's pretty much the last thing I made in 2011, side by side with Matt. He is keys, I am guitars of all types. Jim will be drums, soon. We need a name desperately, so if you have any ideas leave them in the comments. But this overture, it rocks. So let it be an overture not just to its own forthcoming album, but to 2012.
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