Tag: Zumba

Music Monster

Posted in An Ongoing Journal...1 Comment

Melissa Ferrick at Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, New York

The size and complexity of the musical world blows my mind.

Genres and styles seem to be as numerous and varied as snowflakes. Just when I think I have a handle on things – at least within the parameters of the current, western culture in which I reside, and that I can organize in some satisfactory way the musical world as I know it today – I’ll learn something new about a subgenre, a style or a trend, and I realize it’s not possible. The musical world – even my tiny corner of it – is too big to fully understand.

In addition to my amazement at the boundless forms in which music exists, I am also fascinated by what people seek to get from music. It serves so many functions, and within those functions, so many aspects of music are valued in such different ways. I am endlessly curious about people’s motivations for listening to music. What on earth moves them?

Last night my own feelings about what’s musically important to me became clearer, and as soon as I got home, I began to digest my thoughts…

This evening I went to hear songwriter Melissa Ferrick at Caffe Lena, the iconic local venue here in Saratoga Springs, New York. My former husband produced what I believe to have been her first EP demo – the recording that came before her successful career began (starting on Atlantic Records), now over thirty years ago.

As I listened to her set, I observed the audience with care, as I do at all shows. I always note the reactions, whether folks nod or sway to the time, whether they mouth the lyrics, whether they sit stock still, whether or not they applaud or shout. It was fascinating to me how many folks didn’t move an inch as they listened. I’d say maybe five percent moved visibly. Melissa’s stuff is, as one would expect from a songwriter, mostly about the story, the choice of words. As I listened, I couldn’t help but think that the folks there present – as with folks who gravitate to singer/songwriters in general – didn’t seem to care so much about the groove or the harmony. Maybe even the melodies weren’t of top priority. They seemed to care primarily about the sentiments expressed. I imagined that they were listening for the language and the poetry. Listening for connection through story.

For me, that’s secondary. A clever lyric always impresses, but I don’t really want all that storytelling. (Says the woman who’s penned nearly 700,000 words of her story over the past decade.) And as for the nuance, the poetry? There’s a deficiency in my character, I fully admit it, because I don’t have a need nor the patience to listen for it. (I do enjoy reading poetry, however.) When I’m listening to music I’m wanting primarily to be soothed, to be taken to a place of ease and deep comfort. My objectives cannot be met by an evening of music consisting of essentially the same four chords with very similar voicings. For me, the story alone is never enough to carry the same predictable harmony, over and over. If I want a story, I’ll go hear someone read one. (I usually get a lot more enjoyment from the stories that come in between the songs than come from the songs themselves.)

Please understand that I know Melissa is a super-talented showman and songwriter, and her relationship with the crowd is beautiful. She’s top tier stuff. And her rhythm, her time? Her style of playing is built on it. Her groove is rock solid. Melissa is an all-around stellar human and badass musician. (But in light of how few in the audience were nodding in response to her time, it seems to confirm once again that for them, groove still takes a back seat to story.) Yet somehow – and I cannot quantify exactly how – it didn’t move me the way it did all those people there. Maybe it’s because I have no history with her material. I don’t know. Her set was a great thing to behold, and what she possesses is rare – and I’m glad I went, for sure – but on the whole, I don’t need a lot of solo singer/songwriters in my life. A few shows a year by great talents like Melissa will do me just fine.

There, I’ve said it. It’s been on my mind for decades. I’ve always known it, but I’ve never shouted it from the rooftops before. But now I am ready to declare that I am, musically speaking, a snob. Perhaps I’m even a bit of a simpleton. I want music to wrap around me like a warm blanket or tease me like a lover. I want to feel about a groove the way I do about a fresh, hot slice of thin crust pizza with just the perfect amount of char on the bottom. Oh dear God. That’s the good stuff I’m after.

I like things the way I like them, and at this point in my life I don’t wish to spend too much time trying to like things I pretty much know that I won’t. I’m always up for listening to something new, and I’ve probably spent more time critically listening to a far wider variety of music than most folks I know (thanks to my father, former husband and son and their huge combined musical orbits), but I no longer wish to give over hours of my time to music that I don’t really love.

Instead, I’ll take any form of Bach you have, I’ll take harmonically and sonically rich tracks of any genre, a few clever lyrics – then add in a handful of impeccably tasty sessions at Daryl’s House and I’ll be good. On the drive home I might want some hair bands to push me through those long, dark highway miles, and when I’m driving into New York City I’m gonna need my Cuban grooves on the way down and some deep R&B cuts on the way back. And when I can’t be soothed by tasty and tidy pop tunes, give me some straight-ahead jazz, the stuff that scratches the itch like no other musical form. On a fine fall day I might need to hear the sweeping expanse of a Mahler symphony. And on that first warm day of spring, I’ll definitely need some vintage Allman Brothers playing (with all the windows down) when I’m driving through Greenfield.

Metaphorically speaking, I listen the way I eat; the meat isn’t important to me, the sauce is. All I’m after is the bread and those sexy flavors. Actually, forget the bread. Brother, just hand me a spoon.

I don’t need a sophisticated story – just something I can identify with. Mostly, I just want a rich sound and a great feel. And please. When you’re sharing those lyrics, please… get to the point already. I’m here to witness your story, but do you really need nine verses to tell me about it? Give me a hook or a melody that I’ll go away singing, share a curiously clever lyric. Let me hear the kind of arrangement or performance that will make me laugh out loud because it’s that good.

As I see it, music and food provide the highest order of pure pleasure I’ll ever know at this point in my life. So this shit all better be pretty compelling. Music should sound as good as the best barbecue tastes.

After Melissa’s show I walked around the tourist town to hear the many lives acts whose music spilled out into the street. I paused at each, wondering what it was that appealed to the patrons. It was easy to see what all the cover bands offered; folks waved their beer bottles in the air and sang along with every line. Humans have enjoyed this sort of camaraderie for centuries. The jazz club was different, very few seemed to be listening, the music served more as an energetic bed behind the conversation. I moved on to the large venue in town and could feel the bass pushing my organs around inside my body before I reached the main room. It felt like a physical assault. Yeah, but this was a young person’s scene. Once I too had the energy – and desire – for a full immersion like this. But not now, it seemed almost violent. I didn’t finish out my tour of the town; I’m not a fan of electrified Irish bands; loud, midrangey and often on top of the beat, they usually just make me anxious. Kinda like Zumba classes. (Seriously guys, what’s with the crappy music at the Y? Someone, please, figure it out. Produce some compelling tracks already.)

These days I need the good stuff; I need the medicinal forms of music. Please, do your best to play and sing in tune. Bury the click or lay just a bit behind it. Let your string quartets and symphonies breathe and sway like great undersea plants. Give me a sonic profile that is balanced, lush, and just loud enough. Time is running low; I need to get to the good stuff now. I need to get to those tasty, salty crumbs at the bottom of the bag. Got no time for the filler these days.

Ok, so having just unloaded my uber-honest feelings about music, I feel I must make a confession: I do not find my own music to check many of my own requisite boxes. I’ve written songs that fit my current and limited purview; I write for me and a piano, not for a band. And it’s really more like therapy than songwriting. (Kinda like this collection of writings. So. Who knows how my songwriting might evolve?)

This songwriting thing is completely new to me, and I’m a tad disappointed that my process is confined to keyboards. Guitar players carry an arsenal of critical elements that serve to drive songs. I don’t have the built-in drummer of the strum patterns, I don’t enjoy the complex harmonic profile that strings create, and then there’s the portability issue. I have always been deeply jealous of guitar players, and it’s only getting worse as I realize all the components my one measly instrument is missing. I have begun to dream about having a band, of hearing how my songs might sound if they could only be fully animated. Who can I enlist? Fantasies of moving back to Chicago filter into my thoughts… At least there, I know musicians. I’m odd man out here, and it feels acute these days.

My efforts to find a duo partner have failed, so I’m skeptical that I can find anyone to help me animate my music. I dunno. I feel stopped. I’m such a critic, and yet I myself am worlds away from any sonic success. I began writing songs only to discover there are so many more layers to the process than I’d realized, to say nothing of what’s involved in producing it and bringing it to life. (I wish to add that I do know well about the production process, it’s just that I didn’t expect to get sucked in and wish for anything more advanced than simply writing a song and documenting it on my ancient iPhone 7.) With the skills and tools I have presently, I don’t have the ability to achieve a product that comes close to what I think might be satisfactory. Holding standards that I myself cannot live up to makes me feel a bit foolish, but there it is.

In writing my own music, I have created a monster. Kinda looks like my next project will be learning how to train the beast.

Postscript: Since publishing this post, it has been brought to my attention that a primary element of Melissa’s show is simply her incredible energy. Seems silly that I missed such an obvious thing; it appears that in my analysis of her performance and music, I missed the forest for the trees. Yes, Melissa exudes energy. She also exudes humanity and honesty. There’s much to be said for her and what she gives to this world.

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Badass Not

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Growing Older, Mommy Mind1 Comment

Back in the day, I kinda thought I was a badass. I wasn’t, of course, but I tried hard to convince myself – and many of the people around me – that I was. Inside I was full of self-doubt, but I was still together enough to pretend to the world that I was fine. More than fine. And truthfully, there were moments when did indeed feel strong and confident. Maybe there were some moments when I really was a badass. Good at something in my own way. I think I knew it on some level, yet still, a voice nagged at me… They’ll figure you out one day if you’re not careful…

But for a while, there was something I truly did have going for me. I was in shape. And for a few years there, fitness was my thing. Really my thing. Worked out six days a week, and worked out well, thoughtfully. I’d have women come up to me and ask me for tips, for help with their routines. Back then I hadn’t the life experience to know that a good measure of that fitness was, plain and simple, thanks to youth. And thanks also to a chronic sense that somehow I could just never measure up. And so I made up for it the best ways I could. Being a mini rock star in my small sub-culture, dressing fine, and being on stage – whether I actually was on stage or not. Always fundamentally insecure, always trying to appear that I wasn’t trying. And frankly, the only true barometer I had that showed me I was truly good at something was seeing my hard work paying off in the form of a fit body. So I kept at it.

Until, of course, life took over. My story is not unique, really. Nope. Woman has kid, becomes busy, hell, becomes divorced, poor, run-down by the duties of the post, and, well… Next thing you know a decade’s passed and thirty extra pounds have come to live on your frame. It does sneak up on you. I had no true understanding of how large I’d become until it became necessary, once again, to buy ‘fat clothes’. That, and the observations of my young son that “I really was getting big now”. One can only stall so long. Clearly action was needed. But when I stared down the solution in the face, I wondered how I would approach it. What motivated me then didn’t drive me now. I couldn’t just put on the 80s hair metal cassette and kick some ass… It wasn’t about any of that anymore. How was I going to do this? Sure vanity drives me still, I think all humans share that to some degree, but this time it was more about my quality of life. And the very length of it, too. I’d taken enough of those online tests that determine your ‘actual’ age vs. your ‘age in years’ to know that my prospects weren’t quite as good as I pretended they were. Bad enough I’d smoked all those years. Then there was this inactivity thing on top of it. Ich. Time to move.

At first, I did not want to go to the Y. For one, all I’d ever gone to were women’s gyms. There I was off the hook. Didn’t have to look good for anyone. (Keep in mind, the last time I spent a lot of time working out I was much younger, and my wiring was different than it is now.) And this time, some shadow of that adolescent concern still bothered me. It bothered me for or a day or two. Until I realized that, unlike the me at 25, it honestly wasn’t about my ego anymore. My fitness or lack thereof. And ironically, in some ways, being an overweight, middle-aged woman gave me a new feeling of freedom. Some of it due to the anonymity of my demographic, some of it due to the fact that I don’t care so much anymore how I appear because there are more important things in my life. Course I do care, but also, I don’t. You know, not in the way I once did.

The variety of ages and abilities of the people attending the Y blows my mind. I’ve never before been a part of such a diverse population. Not in my jobs, not in my small, personal world. Not really even on the street. But at the Y – there are ninety year olds and two year olds all doing something. Hell, there are mommies pushing infants in jogging strollers… It’s amazing. Kinda reminds me of the picture books for young children that show all the goings-on of the outside world. Like a Richard Scarry book, or like a Sesame Street short. People of all shapes and colors and ages are there, just doing their thing. Gives me a lot of latitude just to chill and concentrate on doing my own best – and not worrying about looking my best while I’m doing it. I’m still kinda acclimating to the idea of being really sweaty and gross looking in front of, well, everybody, but it is freeing. And while I may not be able to go as low into my squats as the women in my Zumba class (seriously, when did I become this friggin weak??) I know that it’s ok. I don’t have to be a badass anymore. I just have to be. Thank God.

As I’ve passed my first week of routine workouts, I’ve come to notice a couple of things. One, is that my long morning workouts have not served yet to raise my overall energy, instead, I feel like passing out on the drive home. ! This, I hope, will change before long. I remind myself that it’s hardest in the beginning. That I haven’t worked out like this in a decade. (At least one hopes these are sound arguments for hanging in there.) I’ve also come to observe something about the way I move through the world – about the way in which many, likely most folks move in this world: I used to move through this world in spite of my body, now I’m moving through the world because of my body. Simply walking has become a more thoughtful process. And crazy as it might sound, I feel less daunted by it. It feels more familiar. I don’t look for the closest parking space anymore cuz I don’t dread the walk. Ok, so maybe I might not love the walk, but still, it doesn’t feel like quite the burden it did just a week ago. Which is hopeful, because this time, I have a feeling this workout thing might have to become part of my life for the long haul.

And maybe, if I live long enough, and well enough, maybe that’ll give me enough street cred to finally make me a legitimate, card-carrying badass.

 

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