Domesticated Lady

Picture: I took this one in Bloubergstrand, on Fri 13 May this year.

Sunday 29 May 2011

“Sunday morning, rain is falling” – cool song by Maroon 5, from their album, Songs About Jane. (Lucky Jane!)

Granting myself the sheer pleasure of solitude and silence. If I quieten my environment, I enter a different realm, one where my senses are heightened, and I’m able to tune in to the usually indiscernible sounds of the fridge humming and the wall clock ticking. Sometimes my fridge sounds like there’s a living creature running around inside the motor, or like it’s changing gears!

Another place where I immerse myself in the silence and other-worldliness of the experience, is in the sauna (at gym). I love the smell, the heat, the wood, but I particularly love the solitude. I haven’t been to the gym for a month and a bit, but this week is The Great Return. (Trumpet!!!!!) Watch this space for the RAVE when I’ve had my first swim after about six weeks. Oh, God, I can’t wait!!!! That feeling of slipping into the pool for the first time, that dream-like sensation of swimming underwater and having nothing but the sound of the water swishing as your soundtrack. Indescribably awesome. (Or, as my son says, “ow-where-some”.)

Another grey, overcast day, the cold air forcing me to wear the thick, dark blue cardigan that I made for myself what feels like a hundred years ago, when I had time to knit. When I knew how to. It’s like a blanket with sleeves.  Everyone in the family thinks it’s theirs. Then I have another mistake-turned-magical-creation, a huge red jersey that three people can wear at the same time - were they to be so inclined. It’s funny how, as the years passed, my children went from playing inside the red jersey – Come on, Mom, let’s all wear it together! – to thinking it was an atrocity, best kept hidden from society, full circle to wanting to wear it (individually) to snuggle under in winter. It definitely has an “artistic” feel to it, and makes one actually feel like creating something. In my case, writing a song or typing a blog article, in my son’s case, drawing a picture, typing a story or composing a piece of music, and in my daughter’s case, grabbing the X-Box controller and creating a new SIMMS character!

And so, as I bask in the afterglow of the week gone by and prepare myself for a different kind of magic – a week with my children – I’m struck again by the human spirit and its capacity to handle practically anything. I love my children more than I could ever have thought possible, and yet we live this way, trying to meet the needs of all involved, trying to create as normal as possible an arrangement, a patchwork quilt that, like so many projects I’ve started over the years, will never be completed. Part-time everything, that’s me. I sometimes wonder - I know I’ve written this before in a blog post – about how this living arrangement impacts on other things in our lives.

But that’s another story!

I have had THE most interesting week. (Insert big loopy grin.) On Thursday I did my 14th and last night at Don Pedro’s, which had a magic all its own. My musical knight in shining armour, Wayne Bosch, pitched up and did the first set with me. Yay!!!! I had decided to do only originals on the night, and had written up my set lists to pace myself a certain way. Also, I knew beforehand that he’d be doing the first set, so I choose the songs accordingly: I did most of the up-tempo sambas with him, as well as some ballads and bossas, to vary the pace of the set. I really appreciated his turning up, because he was clearly not well, dealing with flu symptoms. Shame!

I did the second set on my own, which was sort of back-to-front, as it meant that set was more laid-back than the first, but it worked, I suppose. What really made my night was seeing my friends there, and feeling the wonderful support I get from people I’ve known, some for many years and some for just a few weeks. My mom was there, as were Tracy, Carl, Chantel and Andre, Roshiela, Joe, Russell, David and David, as well as June and Elton.

Something that added a different dimension to the night was selling a few copies of a CD of 5 original songs I’d put together, called “Extracts”. The songs were recorded at one of my concerts at Baran’s last year. On Wednesday I selected the songs and designed the cover, bought the blank CDs and cases, and got everything done in time to take some along on Thursday night.

I felt so many things on Thursday night, but the overall feeling was one of having achieved something significant and life-altering, in the 14 weeks at Don Pedro’s. The truth is I’d reconnected with myself as a soloist, a vital step in my life, and the timing could not have been better. The people I’d met at Don Pedro’s, especially the friends I plan to stay in touch with, also made my time there thoroughly enjoyable and memorable. Over the weeks, friends I hadn’t seen in years pitched up to listen to me, and right on the last night, I discovered that someone I’d met there was actually someone I’d first encountered 36 years ago! If you believe, as I do, that there are no coincidences, then that has to be a hugely significant encounter. I always ask the universe to grant me a life full of wonderful surprises – I’d say that definitely qualifies as one.

But today has its very own character: a long, hostile list of household chores just waiting for me, tapping its fingers impatiently as I type merrily away like I haven’t a care in the world. Not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but here goes: I HATE HOUSEWORK. I fantasize about the day I have enough money to employ someone to clean my house once a week. Housework, as essential as it may be, and as character-building as my mother would have me believe, means one thing and one thing only, when I’m alone: less time for two of my loves, music and words.

And so, as a sanity-saving, survival technique, this is how I draw up my list of chores:
1. Clean Summer’s room
2. Play guitar
3. Clean Nick’s room
4. Play guitar
5. Clean my room
6. Play guitar
7. Etc.
8. Play guitar
9. Same ol’ same ol’
10. Play guitar 

I’m serious! I would NEVER survive a day like this without doing it my way. So, yes, it takes me about six hours to get through the whole house, but at least I meet my own Trudy needs along the way. Who said the rules for these things had to be the same for everyone? Oh, and when I’m NOT playing the guitar, and I’m actually doing the work, I play all my favourite CDs! So I get to listen to a diversity of artists, all of whom I love: Jamie Cullum, Djavan, Santana, Stevie Wonder, Cleo Laine, Ivan Lins, Ray Charles, Renee Olstead, Sting, Hilton Schilder, Michel Petrucciani, Herbie Hancock, etc. etc. etc.

Yup, so that’s “How To Clean Your Whole House in One Day”, by Trudy Rushin.

Hey, I should write a manual!

(Ooops – when I next find time, I want to write about Friday night, when I sang at the District 6 Homecoming Centre and heard some amazing artists, including “DAT”, and Saturday night, when I had a scrumptious dinner experience at What’s On, in town.
Like I said, I've had THE coolest week! )

Camera on Standby

Photograph: a picture I took with my phone in Camps Bay, one morning in Feb 2009.

Friday 20 May 2011 08:55

One of those days where I feel I could write for hours. Have to interrupt this, though, because today I take my daughter to her third and last high school interview.

Interesting how this process happens. We applied to three schools: Westerford High, where her brother’s been since 2009, Bergvliet High, which is a mere 2km from our home, and Claremont High, a brand new school which opened this year. The interesting thing about Claremont High, is that Westerford, which was voted the top public school in the country in 2009/10 (I can’t remember which), was approached by the Western Cape Education Department to set up and administer the school. As a family, we’re so impressed by Westerford, that we can only imagine Claremont High being a good place to apply to as a third option.

Each school handles the process slightly differently – Westerford’s principal, the dynamic Rob Le Roux, personally goes to the primary schools and interviews the Grade 7’s who were shortlisted. That already speaks volumes. Bergvliet High splits the interviews amongst senior staff members, so we were interviewed by a teacher yesterday, Mr De Klerk. And, yes, I do mean “we” – both parents had to be present at the interview! While interviewing the parents may be innovative and hugely significant, I thought my daughter would have spoken more freely had we not been there. Hats off to her, though, because despite having a bout of flu (caught from moi), she handled herself well, spoke eloquently and came across as confident but not arrogant.

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I knew, from the moment I looked out of our kitchen window this morning, that today was a day for writing. For some reason or other, we had a nice early start to the day (crazy, considering I crawled into bed at 01:30, after my post-gig adrenalin story) and were treated to the most incredible dawn and sunrise sky I’d witnessed in a long time. (Lesson – get out of the house 15 minutes earlier!) My children and I were oohing and aahing, gasping with delight and surprise for the entire time we were together, driving to their schools. We’re always photographing the sky, the clouds, the mountains. This is because we live in a part of the southern suburbs that has a fabulous 360-degree view of some of Cape Town’s most picturesque mountains and vineyards, providing us with daily masterpieces of nature that take our breath away.

I am SO inspired today, after this morning’s splendid, colourful and wondrous greeting. It was a morning full of magic and promise, and I told my children I had a feeling something wonderful was going to happen to our family today. It was just that kind of morning. In fact, what was indeed wonderful was the three of us experiencing it together, being moved and inspired, each in our own very personal way.

Along the route to my son’s school, I had to stop at traffic lights a few times, and each time I tried to photograph the magic in the sky before it faded away in the glare of the rising sun, but my camera (phone) wouldn’t take the photos. It kept displaying the message “Camera on standby”. I realised I hadn’t taken the previous ones off the phone and saved them on the laptop - in my careful filing system of every digital photo I’ve ever taken (Virgo!) – which meant there was no space to save new ones. I decided that this was one of those moments to just enjoy the experience and to document in a way other than photographically – to drink it in, feel the warmth slipping down into my soul, and to remember, for as long as I can, that I’d had a morning like this one. My son, with all the wisdom of a 16-year-old, put it best when I grumbled about not being able to take pictures right then, giving me the perspective nature itself was trying to instill in me, when he said, “Don’t worry, Mom -there’ll be other mornings like this.”

Later on, after dropping him, I thought about his words and looked at my phone, with “Camera on standby” still displayed on the screen; it occurred to me how accurately this reflected my life. I tend to fling myself into life – GO, GO, GO, GO, DO, DO, DO, DO - and sometimes I wonder why I’m not seeing the results I want, not feeling the progress, not reaching any of my most cherished goals, but the truth is, if I’m not routinely STOPPING to reflect, to review, to recharge, to download my experiences and process them, I won’t have any space for the new ones. My life will be like the camera on my phone – filled with special moments from the past, using up all the storage capacity, and making it impossible for new things to be taken in, recorded for posterity, accessible and available whenever I want to have another look and experience those moments again.

Yes, I am a dreamer, someone who’d rather sit and stare at the ocean or the sky, playing my guitar, than be indoors, watching some mindless television programme. Yes I am a loopy-grinned, freckle-faced, curly-headed dreamer, who’d rather walk in the forest and smell the heady fragrances of nature than buy expensive things that have no spiritual value to me. And yes, I am unashamedly living my life this way, because, in a way that’s starting to dawn on me daily, my “truth” has already been firmly established; that isn’t actually what I’m looking for anymore - what I’m looking for now is that “Of course!”, obvious space for me in this world in which to situate myself, in order to quietly, naturally and unambiguously live my truth, in a way that will bring me happiness and security and benefit others, bringing joy to their lives.

So, yes, I can say I AM living my truth - except now it needs a broader context. I have a huge contribution to make during my lifetime; if I could use music to make that contribution, that loopy grin would become a permanent feature, both on my face and in my soul.

Reviewing my 12 weeks at Don Pedro’s

Friday 13 May 2011 One-ish in the morning

After my gig at Don Pedro’s, once again hyped up, unable to fall asleep. I don’t know how other musicians do it, but I can’t just come home and go straight to sleep.

Ok, had a quick shower, feeling better now.

Tonight was another amazing night at Don Pedro’s. Special people there tonight were my best friend, Tracy, my best friend from high school, Zenariah, my new friends who play the hand drums, and then the surprise of the evening – my sister, Wendy, and her husband, Theo! Also a lovely surprise was seeing my friend, Valmont – very good guitarist and vocalist, amongst other things – and his lovely wife, Tanya.

Sat. 14 May 2011

But the definite highlight of my night was, once again, doing my second set with ERROL DYERS. Every time I’m on stage, I learn something, and tonight I learnt, amongst other things, the same lesson life has tried to teach me so many times before, that there’s nothing as satisfying (musically) as performing your original songs! But there was another lesson life had to teach me again – Errol is amazing! He listens to what I’m playing and singing, and plays around that, complementing, enhancing, never over-playing, never drowning me out or pulling my song in a direction I’m uncomfortable with. He’s considerate and intuitive, sensitive and unselfish. Unlike the previous time we played together, this time he played his own guitar, and I love the sound he produces on nylon strings – warm, melodious, interesting, unpredictable. What makes performing with him different is probably a combination of his playing style and his personality. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the former is merely an extension of the latter.

I’ve been extremely lucky, throughout my life, to have made music with a lot of different people, each of whom has influenced me in some way.

My Thursday nights at Don Pedro’s have been a journey within a journey, and, looking back at the past 12 weeks, I can’t help but think of an affirmation I’ve been using since I left the formal employment sector 8 months ago: “Everything in my life follows the perfect plan of the universe.”

Someone told me recently that when I talk about music, I’m totally engrossed in it. Funny how my first response was to apologise, because I thought he meant I wasn’t being a good conversationalist, that I wasn’t interested in what he had to say, but he corrected that misconception, commending me for having such an obvious passion in my life.

Sometimes I set out to achieve something and life surprises me by adding elements that I’d never counted on, and the whole experience just becomes much larger and richer than I could ever have imagined. That’s what gigging at Don Pedro’s has been like for me. When I was approached to do it as a soloist, I tried very hard to convince the owner that hiring the duo would be much better! He insisted that I do it as a solo act, and encouraged me to do my own material, as well. With great trepidation – well-concealed, according to my friends – I took on the challenge, and what I can say for sure is that after my first night there, after having done two whole sets on my own, I knew what I had to do. I knew what it felt like, after many years of preferring a duo format, to be alone on stage and to be responsible for generating both the vocal and instrumental aspects of the music. The overwhelming feeling was that, as a soloist, I had “no place to hide”.

As the weeks progressed, I realised the other benefits of a gig like that, as I got the opportunity to perform my original songs to appreciative audiences comprising other creative people: writers, poets, musicians and artists. I started going through my original music at home and selecting songs I either hadn’t ever done, or songs I’d rarely done, in public. That was refreshing for me, as an original artist, and of course it’s always good to see how people react to your songs. What I also liked was that I met so many people that I hadn’t met before, many of whom I’d like to stay in contact with.

Some memorable things that happened in the past 12 weeks at Don Pedro’s:
• My best friend went with me on 5 of the nights.
• In week 4, two of my friends (Diana Ferrus and Vangie Watkins) spent the evening there with parties of their friends.
• In week 5, I met duo Mel and Elton, who did a few songs. The restaurant was full that night, with lots of interesting people I knew, and it was a very special night for me.
• In week 7, my high school best friend had her birthday party there. Singer-songwriter Peter LaVey did a few songs as my guest artist. After my second set that night, Mel and El did a set – that surprised me, but proved that, at Don Pedro’s, well…… anything goes!
• Round about week 7 or 8, I sang two brand new songs, one a poem by Diana Ferrus - “Have I Lost You?” - that I’d put music to, and the other a new song of mine, a samba called “What’s What?”
• In week 9, I stepped out boldly and did a whole night of originals! Turning point for me.
• In week 10, Errol Dyers joined me on stage for my second set – we did originals only. That night, a friend I hadn’t seen in about 15 years, Shirley, was there with her husband, Ricardo.
• In week 11, I had the privilege of doing my second set with Hilton Schilder, a musician I’d last performed with about 5 years ago. Nice surprise was seeing another friend I hadn’t seen in about 25 years, who’d come to hear me - Mark.
• In week 12, Errol Dyers once again accompanied me in my second set. My sister and her husband came, as well as hot muso, Valmont Layne.
• On one of my first nights there, I met a group of drummers who come to Don Pedro’s after their drumming workshop; really nice guys, and they’ve been there on most of the nights I’ve played there. In a strange way, their presence, week after week, reassures me. Funny how people you hardly know can have that effect on you.
• On almost every one of the 12 nights, someone asked me if I had a CD, or when I was going to record one. On the 12th night (how Shakespearean) I was able to give someone a CD of original music recorded at a concert in 2009.

With two more Thursday night gigs at Don Pedro’s left, I can only say it’s been a crazy, wonderful time for me, and I look forward to my last two nights there. Who knows what might happen?! 

And so, as I end this blog post on Saturday afternoon, having spent a whole day in bed feeling rotten with flu, I really do see how my life follows some kind of path that I’m not always in control of, but that feels exactly as it’s supposed to. Often, when I’m incapable of making the right decisions for myself, the universe intervenes and takes the decision out of my hands, guiding me to my inexorable destination. And, believe me, the list of examples is getting longer.

But that’s another story!