I have an emergency here. I went to make coffee and the water I turned off! There was no warning about this from the building management. What do I do? Stand next to the sink until water starts coming out? Go back and check every 5 minutes which could mean going an extra 5 minutes without coffee? Don’t say “Make breakfast without coffee;” that’s crazy talk. This should be the lead story on every news show. I googled why I have no water, and nothing came up. Is this Biden’s fault? The buck does stop with him. Is this the next escalation by Cult 45? Have they gone from storming the Capitol to the war crime of keeping me from coffee? Don’t tell me to remain calm. I have no coffee. It’s time for panic not serenity.
I went to my second Zoom Folk DJ Peer meeting last night. Without me bringing it up we discussed two of the things I wanted to ask, how do we promote our shows, and how do we get artists to submit digital music with metadata. From our end of the business, it seems so obvious, if all you are giving a DJ is a file, all information has to be on that file. It seems obvious but it’s not, the musicians are intelligent people for the most part, and so many don’t understand. Something we all need to remind ourselves of is to picture interactions from the other person’s point of view. What’s obvious to you might not be obvious to them. I have to remind myself of that every time I see someone do something that seems incredibly stupid. If they were really had that little mental ability they would not be able to function at all.
The one thing that I wanted to bring up but didn’t is how do we get record labels to send us music. I always directly ask the artists, but that doesn’t work for the larger acts, even larger acts that are my friends. I asked one friend for a track and she connected me to someone at Signature Sounds who sent it to me. I am now working up my nerve to write my contact at Signature Sounds for more music. They have such a great lineup for someone with my taste; Eilen Jewell, Crooked Still, Lake Street Dive, Chris Smither, and Birds of Chicago. Check out the complete list of Signature Sounds Artists. Can I go and ask for the back catalog of Legacy Artists? They have so many great ones. Why is Crooked Still among the active artists not the legacies. Are they still under contract and just not making new music?
I have to see if the water is running. If it is I have to make breakfast and then have therapy. If that happens you won’t hear from me for a while. Why am I telling you this? You won’t read it until after I posted. Let’s call it a charming stylistic affectation instead of annoying.
I’m back. The water wasn’t running but I brilliantly came up with a work-around. There was some water in the kettle, so I didn’t need to add that much more. Then it hit me. We have a soda stream so there was seltzer in the fridge, and I topped the kettle off with that. What forced me to come up with this is that I was starving so was going to do the unthinkable, have breakfast without coffee. I started to make Matzoh Brei to Make Your Bubbe Cry™ and after I put the egg and the milk in the bowl I remembered that you have to wet the matzoh before you crumble it into the egg and milk. You can’t unbreak an egg and I didn’t feel like having scrambled eggs or an omelet, necessity is the mother of invention. Let me stop what you are thinking, coffee made with carbonated water is not carbonated coffee. Heating drives the CO2 out of solution. Think of opening a bottle of warm soda. This is an on-brand solution for me.
Then I had therapy. My regular therapist, Connie, is still away; a replacement therapist is like having a substitute teacher. I didn’t even do my homework. It was difficult homework for me, and of course anxiety induced procrastination is the main reason I’m in therapy, but accountability is more effective with Connie. I don’t get as much out of the session and I don’t think it’s a reflection on Heidi, the sub, but simply a matter of not having built up a relationship with her. I don’t know if I she doesn’t speak as much as Connie or if I just have more trouble thinking of where to go next with Heidi. Whatever it is I feel things aren’t coming out of me as naturally.
One thing that came out of the session is realizing how I don’t procrastinate at all when it comes to Gord’s Gold. Instead of rushing to meet a deadline I’m racing ahead. As of yesterday, I not only had next week’s playlist completely planned out, but I finished but I finished the research and wrote my script. I’m back to writing scripts. There’s so much I want to say that the notes would be no shorter than writing it all out. I might start recording today, the only thing I’m waiting on is finding out who Cheryl Prashker’s guest on Folk Pod. Her show follows mine and I decided it would be nice to tell my audience why they should stay awake and not go to sleep after Gord’s Gold and listen to Cheryl’s show too. Last week’s with David Amram was so good.
My project while writing this is listening to instrumentals to see if one jumps out at me to use as the Gord’s Gold theme music. I might have to give it my full attention but as it is exactly the kind of music I like to listen to while I write I decided to try and multitask. It’s hard to find an instrumental that says, “This is Gordon.” Try finding one for yourself. I might have found it. I find it easy to perseverate on Gord’s Gold. The music to write to became music to spark my mind about other music to listen to. I just got an email with another instrumental album. I’m certainly going to play something from it, but that doesn’t mean it’s right to be my theme.
I’m going to choose a song from this album to play then listen to the new one. Next week’s show ends with hard core songwriters. Instrumentals might get their chance the show after that.
Wise Madness 