October 23, 2005

4:11 p.m.

Weekend at the Beach -- Oops, No, in the Studio

October 21st

Ten days to Samhain. I'd like to do something special this year, but what remains to be invented. I don't know any actual rituals, or what I'd like to achieve. Shall I make my heart altar a commemoration to those who have passed? Is there any magic I should be working?

I've already put up poor man's decorations -- paper chains, on-sale candles, a sugar pumpkin. A purple-lighted, five foot spider web in the kitchen.

10:30pm

Still recording... I captured a lead vocal today, which I was unable to nail last time I was here. It's sometimes very unexpected, the songs that turn out to be hardest to sing. I made four complete passes and two of just verses and bridge. We used parts from all of them. Then Chris gets to go in and take out all the artifacts (sound clicks) from the piecing together. No one knows what a patchwork they're listening to except us. Chris is a great engineer, and today we've all been very patient with each other through our struggles toward perfection. Even if it is electronically stitched.

My temporary crown is bothering me a lot -- it came off yesterday, and I had it re-cemented today. But the gum around the tooth is just raw and battered, and it aches like hell. As if the crown doesn't fit as well as it did last week, which doesn't make sense. Shoving it repeatedly into its little slot last night probably didn't help. I hope I can sleep tonight.

I also achieved a harmony vocal, which was a relative cinch. Chris then did his, and we feel like we accomplished something.

Now it's time to watch Sex and the City!

Saturday 2:02pm

I had one of those almost metaphysical insights where one realizes a state of mind while focusing on something else altogether. We were putting together a bass part I'd just played, and I was staring off into space, my eyes and ears in soft focus. I'd been negotiating a little with Chris about a couple of notes, and thinking how that can go well or ill depending on whether one is in a snit or feeling relaxed and open at the time. And suddenly I felt the potential to be somehow behind or above all that, to see these workings-out of our personalities as temporal and belonging to the world of form, yet only as a kind of play upon which we've all agreed, with the greater reality underpinning it. And if we all lived in the more informed place, there'd be a lot less tension creating illness, and indeed no strife at all, just the invention of problem-solving without the enmity.

This sounds very trite but it is only my attempt to verbalize a state that I became aware of in those moments -- as though I looked out, briefly, from my true soul.

Meanwhile, the bass part is done and we continue to whittle away at vocals.

9:30pm

Much accomplished. One gets into a Zen state, all listening. Then suddenly one is aware of observing oneself doing that, and then it's over.

We'll usually do three vocal passes for background vocals, maybe four for a lead, and then pick and choose the best phrases. Sometimes we get lucky and get a big chunk, but we're unbelievably picky, and even if all the tracks are good, there will still be subtle differences among them from which we like to choose. In the end, of course, it sounds seamless.

By about 4:00 I was getting sleepy, so I lay on my back on the thin studio carpet. At 4:35 we took a long break -- I took a sort of nap, Chris split wood with the repaired splitter, and I'm not sure what Carol did, maybe slept.

Dinner was bean soup and grainy bread, and then we worked again until just now. I think it'll have to be Best in Show tonight from the home-owned DVD collection, since we have no movies from the library. They're still closed from flooding.

Sunday, 4:22pm, home

My answering machine, apparently, has been on the fritz since sometime last week. I didn't realize it. It's also the base for two of my phones, which weren't working, and now that I think back weren't working on Thursday either but I didn't identify the anomaly as such. If anyone tried to call this weekend they wouldn't have gotten anything. Oh, well. I don't get all that many messages anyway.

I'm nervous about my Reiki client tomorrow, and this week is jam packed, and I found out I have to do an extra errand and return someone's instrument to them; and by the time I left today my blood sugar was low enough that I was very irritable indeed. I picked up some sushi on the way home (comfort food deluxe), and now that I've eaten and fixed the phone, and put down most of the storm windows in this leaky place, and read a little bit, I feel better. Kind of low, but better. I might take a misplaced nap and then have to stay up all night. So sleepy... didn't feel terribly well last night, but that bit's better now anyway. Thought maybe I was coming down with something. Anyway we did get a lot accomplished these last two and a half days, so there is something to be said for that.