day four

[solarbird]

Seven things that cross your mind a lot.

Well, these make me look like a total mental case, don't they?

1. Alienation thoughts of various sorts. I keep myself busy to distract from these, sometimes it helps. But this is a lot of fodder for my talk therapy time.

2. What do I have to do next?

3. KITTIES! so fuzzy! Must harass j000000000!

4. Variations on how I'm such a music fraud. (I'm terribly insecure about music.)

5. Must nom annathepiper's hed!

6. Did I screw up X social interaction? If so, how, and can I fix it?

7. The public idiocy du jour, whatever it is. I miss Japan. Can I leave yet?

Comments

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

i take my meds whenever the alienation-thought-of-the-time-period comes up. i ignore it as a thought and treat it as a symptom. this has made my life infinitely saner. (i never got a damn thing out of talk therapy, alas.)

i still think about iceland a whole lot, but elf my elf thinks we live in the center of the universe and won't leave without threats to life or liberty, and fortunately it hasn't quite come down to that yet.

[solarbird.livejournal.com]

The symptomology approach sounds good. I think I'll try adopting that.

[maellenkleth.livejournal.com]

1) Alienation is the big one. I've shared with you my analysis of the progression from difference>visible difference>futile attempts to avoid persecution>personal disaster (avertable by leaving Dodge City beforehand). I keep thinking that it does get better with time, but it may be that I've become more hard-assed about giving would-be bullies the blankly dangerous glare, and thus stalling the whole dreadful progression. I don't have that long a sample of your level of copaceticity, but it does seem to me that you are doing better with this. Seriously, please consider that possibility.

5) Having a lifemate is a big plus, especially with thus having the opportunity for shared scheming to deal with item 1) above. Whether one hunts singly or in a pack, it's nice to know that there is someone else who is indubitably on one's side.

7) Any time ^_^. I daresay that you could acquire a work permit there if you so wished; Japan is far ahead of America in terms of being able to make accomodations for polymaths. Canada's okay with that, too, as long as one has the wherewithal to shape the debate within one's local community in such a manner as it does not focus upon oneself. That point's really essential in rural places (where the general level of social consciousness is at the chainsaw-and-truck-and-beer level, and does not as a rule involve deep thought, or the thinkers thereof).

I did, some time ago, promise better writing on some of these subjects, particularly 1) above, have not forgotten that promise, and probably need to book some time with a keyboard and some quietude, in order to do just that.

Comment's okay to unscreen if you want; no secret here.

[solarbird.livejournal.com]

I'm just screening so that if anybody's too big a dick I can delete their comment unseen. If I don't talk about not unscreening things, don't assume I won't. (Unless you ask me not to, of course.)

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Well, these make me look like a total mental case, don't they?

That would make two of us, then ;) All but one of these are pretty close to things that run through my head regularly.

[solarbird.livejournal.com]

I like lyonesse's symptomology approach.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Mmm, that does sound useful. I'll have to see if I can get into that habit.

[wrog.livejournal.com]

Re 4: "fraud" would imply that you're somehow fooling people (into believing they like your music and want to buy your CDs and gather around when you perform when they actually don't? wouldn't that in itself be an achievement?).

Also if insecurity keeps you working to make it better, then "Go, insecurity!", I say....

Yeah, I know, rational argument doesn't really work here; I should probably just come by with a 2x4 and thwap you a few dozen times

Re 6: If the people involved care about the interaction, there will be a way of fixing it (they will make a way). Or if They Just Want to be Assholes, then so be it. (cf. certain eastcoastly folks and the amount of time I'm not wasting on xRvL these days...)

[solarbird.livejournal.com]

Re 4: "fraud" would imply that you're somehow fooling people (into believing they like your music and want to buy your CDs and gather around when you perform when they actually don't? wouldn't that in itself be an achievement?).
There are all these books about getting started as a band, getting help from people you know, getting your friends to come to shows to pad the early crowds, things like that. That doesn't work for me; I actually get upset at those chapters, and have to skip past them. The largest number of people I've known beforehand to hit a show has been four. At most shows, it's zero; I have to hope I can work to strangers, or that people who come to the venue anyway just show up. Sometimes that works; sometimes it doesn't. If it's an outdoor venue, I can pull people in off the street; if it's not, I can't.

With people I know personally, it's really been like pulling teeth. I've been actively discouraged from doing music (particularly vocal work) by some people I knew pre-music, which I resent, and I know from web statistics that somewhere around 8-10% of the people who read my LJ have hit play on any song, ever, and most of those don't comment. I've asked for help a lot, and for reactions, but... I've talked to a few of the people I knew before music about my music, and have been told outright; no, they haven't listened to anything I've posted, and no, they don't want to. I've actually had people in this category change the subject abruptly after asking what I was excited about, when they'd see me react to incoming news. It's... very discouraging. It's very much a "fucking hell, how bad must I be?" kind of feeling.

The assumption of multiple market venues by a person hostile to musicians and me in particular this past year has not helped. And I'm still feeling pretty punched in the gut from the Lyon's Den show.

Eventually, of course, everybody has to appeal mostly to strangers, since that's almost all of the audience. The percentage of listener-to-interest is always, always tiny, in that environment, and it takes quite a while to get traction; nothing unusual about that! But I see a lot of other people I know doing music - particularly indie artists like myself - getting lots of support from the people they know, and who are around them; encouragement, help, show attendance, talking up their music to others, the things I read about in books. I'm envious of that, and sometimes resentful. As usual, as of these last several years, I feel very much left out.

I'm trying to focus on the traction I've started to get in the last half of last year - starting a bit with the Jet Car Blues and picking up with My Boyfriend - and a new music crowd I've been hanging about who seem to care that I'm there. I'm having trust and confidence issues, of course, but I'm trying to put those aside - not easy, given how things have been. Hopefully I can hang on to that, and build on it. That's the plan, anyway.

As for nr. 6: I can count on people not attempting to fix a broken interaction. They might forget about it, or they might just go away and not talk to me anymore. I never really know how it's going to go.