Wednesday December 31 • 11:23

mood: ready
song: the song is not quite finished yet

I suppose I should stand tall upon my soapbox and make some kind of passionate or witty speech, something tearing into the heart of the New Year like a deep breath. My voice quivering with emotion, my words singing of life.

Isn’t that what one is supposed to do on a day like this? — with this year now coming to a close and the New Year taking up where we all left off? Am I supposed to make a speech?

Nah.

I’ll just watch the rising bubbles in a tall glass of Martinelli’s as they swim to the top, breaking the surface tension and escaping into the room with a gasp. And with a smile and silent prayer, thanking God, the makers of duct tape, and the moon for showing itself tonight, I’ll welcome the Year with a hug and with a hip-hip hooray and an a-okay, happy to be living.

I don’t want to turn Doris Day on you, and if what will be will be, then I am okay with that, and I’ll keep in mind the sky is blue, water is wet, and unless some scientific breakthrough occurs, pigs won’t fly, day turns to night, night breaks open like an egg and turns back to day — yes, picking up where I left off.

Conscious, curious, hungry, but at peace.

See, there is a part of me I left behind with each day I have lived, dwelling there in memories. Then there is a part of each day I take with me. And I can call it experience or knowledge or regret or happiness. It fills me up like a little balloon and I wander through the skies in search of heaven, love, answers, and an ice cream sundae.

Okay. So now I’ve decided to do a little winter cleaning.

I have decided to clean up my act. My desktop. My room. My language. I have decided to read more. To be nicer. To help out more. I’ve decided to write more blogs — more often. I’ve decided to finally upgrade my operating system to Mac OS 10.3. I’ve decided to spend more time alone with my guitar, writing, telling it sweet things. I’ve decided it’s okay to fall in love. I’ve decided to pay off my account at the music store and save up for another guitar.

I’ve decided I should try to follow at least one of these… Maybe I should stick to something simple like “remember to floss.” We’ll see.

So a toast!

A toast to all whom we love and everything we hate. To the lovely sense of sleeping in on a lazy day. To waking up. To telecaster guitar solos. To getting smiled at by someone you’ve never known. To living each day.

And I guess a toast to remembering to floss.

Fill ‘er up.

Yours,
megan

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Tuesday December 23 • 11:23

mood: contemplative
song: it’s that telecaster guitar solo again

Charging fast, the New Year has come, telling me to hold on tight because it's here whether I like it or not; we duel.

ME: What the...?
NEW YEAR: Choose your weapon [battle cry]
ME: My what?
NY: Count 10 paces and turn...

But, it's going be a really good year; I can feel it! I'm going to start out with a lovely swirl of optimism in a waffle cone: la vita è bella! I am going to savor every last second. I am going to cry well when I laugh and laugh hard after I cry. I will breathe deep in every new morning's supply of oxygen. I will shiver when I'm cold and complain when I'm hot; feeling everything I can. I am looking forward to every last bad joke and played chord, and note sung. Every last argument, debate, conversation. I will throw myself into love and feel brand new and then die a little every time my heart is broken.

I'm looking forward to seeing the natural order of this year, and what I can create, and the new people I meet, and seeing the people I already know even more.

How's that for optimism?

It's funny how I lose track of the days as the year goes by; it’s as if I’m going down a slope, like Linus in a soggy cardboard box. Tumbling. I'm picking up speed. Faster. Faster. Sometimes I feel there are only about 5 months in a year: Jan, Feb, March, April, and December... With an occasional July thrown in there for good measure.

Do I start daydreaming around June? What is this? Where did my year go?

"Yeah, they start going faster as you get older..."

I get that a lot. I feel very old. Is 20 old? Should I be worried?

I enjoyed 2003 immensely, but can we do it again? I mean, can we call 2004 "2003"? Pretty please? Yeah, well I'm looking forward to writing "2004" on all of my Main Street Music purchases...

Funny, no matter how much it all goes by in a mad rush — come January, I remember how each day is wholly unique and can never be reproduced, which means I should be living each day just that way. Not just plodding through them like I sometimes do.

Live.

Here's where I'd like to thank you. You who lends me your ears, who comes to my shows when you can, who taps your feet to my songs, who sometimes sings along. You who has purchased my CDs and requests songs, who has e-mailed me asking when I'll be in your area again. You who have told me my band rocks so freakin' hard. You, who made my year so successful, so beautiful. You have my love. And I mean that. Thank you.

Anyway, I'd love to stay and chat, but I have a sudden hankering to go look in the mirror for crow’s feet...

Happy Holidays!

Yours,
megan

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Thursday December 11 • 00:14

mood: numb
song: a single line of a guitar solo, over and over again

This rain, though moody and desperate, rings a slight bell of happiness in my limbs — to a time far off, not so long ago when memories were in the making. Ah! Sentimental, we creatures are. Rain and music and candlelight.

And a little mud.

Can I cry on your shoulder tonight? Here is some of it: last night I had been writing, my guitar on my lap, tune in my head; I leaned over my chords and balanced my hands on the computer keys. This is how I like to write sometimes. Paper and pencil is a good ol’ fashioned way, you know, but I said to myself some years ago: GET WITH THE TIMES. So with the times I got. And with the purchase of a lovely iMac, I have been proud of myself ever since.

Kind of.

But, let me tell you, these things are amazing! Not only can one do the simple stuff on them, one can also do the fancy schnazzy stuff too. I mean, why even bother with pencils and papers anymore, puhleaze Megan! With these here computer things you can do a number of cool things: writing, accounting, gaming, recording, communicating, shopping, selling. The list goes on.

Myself, I use mine mostly for those word processing programs, that and of course the recording. All my lovely little documents, all compiled and filed away on this lovely little box, right here on my desk! So accessible to me! So workable! So much time I spent on these things right in the comfort of my own room! Tons of time! Multitudes of hours! Lovely beautiful computer! With all of my so very valuable works!
Do you see where I’m going with this?

I should indeed title this rant, The Art of Backing Up Files… for dummies. Jeepers, I’m such a dummy.

The first episode happened back when I was recording my Pirate CD. And, on this particular night, as the clocks struck 3am, I ran into my parent’s room, gobs of tears streaming down my face. Mom was up in a flash, “Meglee! What’s wrong?!” I had been mixing, or bouncing to disc, or configuring the audio buffers, when all of a sudden the computer died. Just up and died and wouldn’t turn on again but for a cute and puzzled blinking question mark in the middle of my screen.
I knew what this meant. It meant trouble.

Dad was a little ruffled from being awakened up and told me it meant the hard disc was probably damaged. DAMAGED???

“Well!” he said in his reassuring I’ve-just-been-awakened-from-REM voice, “either we will be able to fix it, or we won’t!” Either way, it would have wait until morning.

This meant, either my whole entire album and everything else on the computer was gone, or it wasn’t. And I had made no backups.

Well, in the end we saved it thankfully, and I have learned my lesson…

Unless of course, you look at last night... The rule for future reference is — if you back up, nothing will happen, but if you don’t…

Can you please pass me a pencil?

Yours,
megan

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Wednesday December 3 • 03:52

mood: restless
song: “together” Shades of Grey

Well, my fever is gone. That’s always good, isn’t it? And I tried so hard, really hard, not to get sick — I mean I was drinking a lot of orange juice, tea, eating my greens, getting my vitamins.

Oh wait. Maybe sleeping had something to do with it. Damn.

It’s not my fault I’m a night owl (or is it?) Rest should have more sympathy for me. When did I ditch all reason for the hope that with this unnatural sleeping pattern I, still, could live a normal life? I think it all started with pirates. Pirates? Yes, pirates.

pi·rate n.
1. One who robs at sea or plunders the land from the sea without commission from a sovereign nation.
2. A ship used for this purpose.
3. One who preys on others; a plunderer.
4. One that operates an unlicensed, illegal television or radio station.

Well, maybe not number 4.

Kids cling onto things: Barbies, Superman, King Kong. (Yes, even King Kong.) Kids play cops and robbers. Kids like pirates. I did. Pirates were exciting, free wanderlusts of a harsh and brutal world. And this was strange, because I loathe violence and was still at that age, timid of traveling. And it’s not even like Pirates of the Caribbean had come out yet, so it wasn’t even a Johnny Depp thing.

I liked the idea of doing something thrilling for a living. I liked the idea of seeing the world.

I wasn’t about to start plundering, though.

So I take it this way: music is thrilling, and if I play my cards right I plan to see the world. It’s kind of similar…

But, I digress; this really isn’t my point. My point is, a pirate kept me up at night. Lady is a Pirate, my first CD, did. I quickly learned, that with all the world’s droning and humming, conversing and moving, recording during the day would be difficult — especially when one is doing it in her living room. So, I took to the night, like a shadow, like the moon. And I, a nocturnal critter, have become comfortable with this arrangement. It was only after the months of recording that I realized to regain my old hours again was now unobtainable.

Thus, the night owl bag has stuck with me ever since. It’s been a few years. And just when I thought it might start to wear off, I went and recorded another CD (FLS) most of which was recorded from 7pm to 4am. Sometimes even later, earning that beautiful thrilling feeling of greeting the sun.

Well, that said. I think I should rest if I ever want to get rid of this cold.

I’ll dream of recording CDs, I’ll dream of King Kong, I’ll dream of pirates, and maybe even Johnny Depp.

Arrg,
megan

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Tuesday December 2 • 10:16

mood: stuffed
song: “split screen sadness" John Mayer

What a lovely four-day weekend!

I, overwhelmed with holiday spirit, stuffed myself to the gills with tasty victuals and slumped myself over my keyboard. But, you may ask, how does the whole Thanksgiving thing go over when you’re subject to vegetarianism?

At first not well. I tell you. But one learns, one adapts.

I can’t quite recall the actual time I became a vegetarian, but I know it was largely influenced by one of many fieldtrips my siblings and I took back in the days of elementary school. Being creative, the director took our group of about 20 kids (we were home-schooled, you know — mom is a hippie,) to all sorts of life experience places: a dairy, a mortuary, Hershey’s chocolate factory, police station, some kind of naval base, behind the scenes at a bowling alley… the list goes on — 2 or 3 places a week, always different.

And then, one week, there was the chicken factory.

Chicken factory? Need I say more? Dad then brought home chicken that night for dinner…

Different things affect people in different ways. All of these school trips where taken to teach us about life and how it works. But, back then, in my single digit years, my Dr. Doolittle-ism was flowing strongly within my veins, so in addition to the factory teaching me how chicken-processing worked — which was extremely fascinating — it also made me look at all of my pet chickens at home in a completely different way, all pecking the ground, doing their little chicken things… and I just couldn’t do it anymore. I just couldn’t eat without thinking of them.

Now I don’t have a taste for meat, like some people don’t like candied yams or anchovies, or fruitcake, or cold pizza…

So, here’s hoping you had a lovely holiday. And I definitely hope you ate too much. (I did.)

I’m going to go out and give my pet chickens a hug.

Yours,
megan

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