Always Rushin

Reflecting on 2011

2011-12-28T10:55:00.003+02:00

Written 26 & 27 Dec. 2011

This is a topic that will probably take a few sessions to complete, but I’ll make a start tonight. I’m using my diaries to help me recall the events of the past year, although there are certain ones that are permanently etched on my brain.

This was a busy year, a year of many firsts for me, a year which, surprisingly, I survived without a permanent job – in fact, one of the most interesting and exciting years of my life. It was a year in which I pushed myself way beyond my former limits, in many aspects of my life, as well as a year of clarity and closure.

2011 has been a year in which I’ve re-learnt the value of friendship, and have come face to face with such love and magnanimity, that I have often been rendered speechless. When it mattered most, my family and true friends were there for me, supportive and caring, never questioning my judgement, nor doubting my integrity.

But the most significant thing for me by far, about 2011, was that I finally learnt what it meant to live my truth. This was the year I regained my freedom.

So, here goes....

1st quarter, January – March

January:
1. Played New Year’s Eve gig at Myoga Restaurant, in the Vineyard Hotel, with guitarist, Rudi Byrnes. The perfect way to see in the new year!
2. Continued interviewing District 6 land claimants – very interesting contract I was involved in since Nov 2010.
3. Recorded a demo of one of my original songs, “I’m So Happy Today”, at Ghalik Jacobs’s Little River Studio, with Wayne Bosch (guitar) and Tony Paco (percussion).
4. Uploaded the song onto the internet (www.soundcloud.com) two days later.
5. Demo played on regional radio a few days later and on national radio about two weeks later.
6. Spoke at a high school choir camp about my life as a singer-songwriter.
7. Started walking regularly with my best friend, Tracy.
8. Carried on swimming regularly at gym – max. at one visit, 30 lengths.

February:
1. Started sessions with life coach, Inez Woods. Wow!
2. Started advertising guitar lessons.
3. Had my Jetta’s engine overhauled.
4. Facilitated two discussion groups for a gender activist organisation.
5. Started a 14-week solo gig at Don Pedro’s, in Woodstock.
6. Did lots of walking, no swimming.

March:
1. Started teaching guitar lessons – by the end of the month, I had four students.
2. More work on the D6 project – compiling and analyzing data.
3. Created publicity pack to market the duo.
4. Did some editing work for a retail company.
5. By the end of the month, I had two weekly restaurant gigs – one solo, one duo (at Myoga, with Wayne).
6. Fitness level increased – max. at one visit, 60 lengths. :-)********************************************************************************

2nd quarter, April – June

April:
1. Extra 4 guitar students – total, 8.
2. From mid-April, a 6-week duo gig with Wayne at Doppio Zero, in Claremont = three weekly gigs!
3. Set up a routine of advertising weekly gigs in newspapers, on radio, Facebook, Gumtree, my blog, as well as my growing e-mail network.
4. Started focusing on my original music at solo gig – good response.
5. Carried on walking with Tracy.
6. Irony of the year: met someone beautiful, natural and soulful, who made me laugh, took my breath away, and made me wonder about so many things….. but the timing was all wrong, so we decided we could only be friends, because we both had partners.
7. Wrote a song (samba): “What’s What?”
8. Put music to a Diana Ferrus poem: “Have I Lost You?”

May:
1. My mom turned 81!
2. Local elections – 18 May declared a public holiday for this year.
3. By end of May, no more weekly gigs.
4. Almost no exercise this month. :-(

June:
1. Redesigned resumé - started marketing myself as a soloist.
2. Designed double-sided business card to reflect my two passions: Music & Words.
3. Applied for short contract, UWC job – Practice Teaching Supervisor - successful.
4. Eric Alan interviewed my mom and me on ‘The Taxi’, a new internet radio station.
5. Wrote a song (ballad): “Today I Opened My Eyes”.
6. Started planning concert of originals.
7. Very little exercise. :-(

********************************************************************************
3rd quarter, July – September

July:
1. Got my first batch of professionally-made, Trudy-only business cards! (Before = duo.)
2. Spoke at a women’s breakfast (organised by Inez Woods) about my journey towards living my truth. Demo CDs for all.
3. Booked the Nassau Hall for my concert, set date for Friday 7 October, intending to record concert as live debut CD.
4. Secured the band for the concert: Wayne Bosch, Hilton Schilder, Errol Dyers, Charles Lazar, Tony Paco. (Or so I thought!)
5. Acquired 12 new guitar students. 2 of previous lot had dropped out. Total 18.
6. A little more exercise than last two months.

August:
1. Started contract job with UWC, supervising practice teaching B. Ed students.
2. Started tutoring a little boy – reading skills.
3. Did ‘Blisters for Bread’ Charity Walk (5km, with Mom and Tracy).
4. Started rehearsing for October concert.
5. Exercise: Not much.

September:
1. Three new guitar students, total 21.
2. Lots of rehearsing for concert.
3. I turned 50!
4. My Yahoo e-mail address hacked into – lost 11 yrs of contacts and e-mails I’d saved!
5. Changed concert to pre-recording, as particular sound engineer not available on 7 October.
6. Two musicians in concert band dropped out – secured new bassist for concert: Alistair Andrews! Hilton offered to do percussion.
7. Secured MC for concert: Derek Ronnie.
8. Had a crystal chakra alignment.
9. Exercise: Nothing!

********************************************************************************
4th quarter: October – December

October:
1. Gregory Franz agreed to take photos at the concert.
2. Interviewed on Bush Radio; dj played two of my original songs: I’m So Happy Today and Lucy.
3. Fri 7 October - my concert of my original songs, with exciting backing band: Wayne, Errol, Hilton and Alistair! Wonderful, appreciative audience of +- 100 gave us a standing ovation!
4. UWC job came to an end – submitted marks for my 12 students.
5. Ailing long-term relationship drew its final breath with the infidelity of my partner, but oh how intoxicating to me the sweet smell of freedom!
6. Started 6-week substitute lecturing post at College of Cape Town, City Campus. Lovely experience. Met really cool people.
7. 2 new guitar students, total = 23.
8. Exercise: Nothing!

November:
1. Lectured at CCT for the entire month. Loved every day there.
2. My daughter turned 13!
3. My cellphone broke – lost years of contact numbers. Another forced new beginning.
4. Most of my guitar students stopped lessons towards the end of the month.
5. Went back to gym after 8 months – swam 20 lengths, restarting the journey.
6. Spoke at another women’s breakfast organized by Inez Woods – the theme was “Eat, Pray, Love”, and I was assigned “Love”!! (The 2nd biggest irony of the year.)

December:
1. Finished up at CCT on 6 Dec.
2. Mom treated me to “Phantom of the Opera”, at Artscape – wow!
3. Children finished up at school, excited to have passed to their next grades.
4. My son turned 17!
5. Christmas lunch at a cousin’s house – huge family gathering – then afternoon tea at another cousin’s …….a very satisfying, stress-free day!
6. Up to the 27th, I had done quite a lot of walking and swimming. Back in the groove of life.

I totalled all the walking Tracy and I had done this year, and it came to 248km – I am SO proud of that! This was one of the many things this year that had started as a thought and blossomed into action - proof that anything is possible. For December alone, I have swum 126 lengths. Now, that may not be much by someone else’s standards, but by mine, that’s pretty good! Tomorrow I’ll be back in the pool, and this time I’m aiming for 40 lengths. I should be back to 60 by the end of January.

So what’s the big deal? Why go on and on? What’s all the record keeping about? This stuff is important to me, because I’m breaking an old habit of playing down my achievements and focusing on my failures. It’s part of how many of us were raised, to regard acknowledging our successes as arrogant. I believe that, if you keep looking at your failures, you’ll keep failing. I live my life joyfully and intensely. There’s a whole lot that’s not where it should be, and a whole lot of serious stuff that needs my attention, but I would be missing the point - missing the lessons life keeps teaching me - if I disregarded the things that have gone well in 2011.

If I say I believe that “nothing succeeds like success”, then I have to look back at my many ventures and appreciate that there were indeed successes along the way. In Mind Power, you’re encouraged to think of past successes, build up an energy/thought vibration of success, and to let successful thoughts flood your mind, so that you predispose yourself to even more of the same.

I prayed for so many changes this year, and I can honestly say some of the most important ones were granted. I enter 2012 with a heart bursting with excitement and hope, a soul celebrating freedom, and a head full of ideas for the year ahead.

As I conclude this post, there are still a few days left of December, in which a lot could happen. I don’t have a New Year’s Eve gig yet, but who knows…..?

********************************************************************************
Some thoughts on 2012
One of my main focal areas for 2012 will be generating an income (doing something I love) that will make me independent again and enable me to sort out the financial complications that arose in 2011. I will also intensify my focus on “a healthy mind in a healthy body”, both for myself and as an example to my children (because children learn from what we do, not what we say!). I’ll be flying solo for as long as it feels right. After that, I trust that, just like with the energy shifts I experienced in 2011, the year ahead will be characterized by more of the same, i.e. the perfect timing of the universe’s intervention in my life. But, more about this in another blog post. ********************************************************************************

Christmas 2011

2011-12-28T10:52:00.001+02:00

Written: Sunday 25 Dec. 2011

Ok, NOW I’m excited! It’s 01h35, the house is quiet, except for the ticking of my travel alarm clock and the occasional vehicle sound outside. I’ve been troubled by my old friend, Insomnia, again.

Tonight my daughter decided we had to decorate the house, and her child-like spiritedness ended up affecting me. I’d thrown the Christmas tree away during the year (or was it before last Christmas?), because we’d had it for so many years, it was shedding its artificial pine needles all over. Anyway, tonight we ended up improvising, turning an unused speaker into a low table, draping it with a sarong and then putting a potted rosebush onto it. My daughter then found the box of decorations and basically put things up all over the lounge. She found the lights and somehow managed to wind them round the other speakers, and when they were switched on, she called us to come and look - I must admit, she’d brought some magic back into the house. And the children shall lead their elders……

Earlier, she and her brother had made the fridge tart for tomorrow’s dessert. Yay! I think I’d better go and sleep. I hope the people I’ve just sat making CDs for (songs from my concert at Baran’s, in March 2010) like their gifts. This is a low-budget gift idea, but, like so many other things, means a lot more to me than anything I could’ve spent hundreds on in a shop.

So, yes, without the cynicism this time: Merry Christmas! I hope that, away from the hustle and bustle of the day, you’ll find a few moments to reflect on the many things in your life that are happening exactly as they should. And for those people who are spending their first Christmas without a loved one – I know how that feels; my heart goes out to you. Draw strength from your cherished memories and trust that the pain will go away…. eventually.

Atonement

2011-12-23T15:16:00.003+02:00

Picture: Part of my back garden.

Written: Thurs. 22 Dec. 2011

Watching the movie, “Atonement”, based on the book by Ian McEwan. It’s one of the three books my son reviewed for a big English assignment this year. He said it was one of the best-written books he’d ever read, and he’s a prolific reader. I should read it sometime. They had to choose three books that shared either a genre, a writer or a theme – he choose the theme of wrongful accusation. He spent months reading, making copious notes, then typing his essay.

Interesting that, with all the junk shown on SABC Television, they’d screen an excellent movie like this one.

*************************************************************************************
Tonight, I took a drive down to the gym, and got into the pool. There were only two other people swimming, so I didn’t need to share a lane. I swam thirty lengths, steadily working my way back to my fitness level of nine months ago, when I could do sixty lengths without feeling wiped out. I have my own way of enjoying the water – I swim underwater for the first part of every length, sometimes managing to reach the halfway mark while at the bottom of the pool, my lungs on the verge of exploding….what a feeling!

I’m not a good swimmer. I always swim the same stroke, breast-stroke – I’ve swum that way since my childhood. Next year I want someone to coach me, so that I may not only swim this stroke more efficiently, but that I may also vary my strokes, adding the crawl and backstroke, neither of which I can currently do for very long. I don’t think I’ll venture anywhere near the dolphin stroke - let’s just say I’m a dreamer steeped in realism.

Meditating while I swim has become one of my favourite pastimes, and I sometimes wish my lifestyle allowed me to do so every day. For now, I try to exercise every alternate day, with swimming sometimes losing out to walking. Another fitness/fun goal I’ve been thinking about is adding cycling (stationary bike) and dancing, varying my forms of exercise to increase my overall fitness and health and to keep myself interested.

************************************************************************************
I dozed off, and now, as the clock strikes 01h00, I don’t know whether I should laugh or cry, as I missed the last five to ten minutes of the movie. I’ve seen it before, on the big screen, but that was a few years ago. Really wanted to catch the end. Beautiful classical music playing during the credits. Stirring.

*************************************************************************************
My annual dilemma is upon me once again – I feel intensely reflective, this time of year, and I crave solitude, silence and the tranquility of nature, but the traditions we observe thrust me into large gatherings of people, frustrating my soul.

So much has happened, this year, and I have so many decisions to make – quite big ones, in fact – that I really don’t feel up to the festivities of the next nine days. This is my second consecutive Christmas where my dire financial situation has made me wish I could just fast forward to beyond the holidays, and get stuck into the pressing matter at hand, namely, securing an income. If I don’t
generate sufficient money, I won’t be able to stay where I am now, and that would be a huge upheaval for my family. I’ve been living here for almost 15 years, the longest I’ve ever lived in one house.
I’ve started working on my plan to earn an income independently, but I’m so distracted by all this Christmas stuff, that I can’t reach a point of completion and conclusion. Today’s unforeseen expense of a new car tyre set me back shockingly, and right now I don’t know how I’ll get to the end of December, let alone the end of January. My guitar students who’ve said they’ll resume lessons in February have no idea of the impact of that decision. I have to run my little music school in a way that works for me – the alternative is too unstructured and too open to surprise and disappointment.

I believe that I hold within me the power to make all of this right, but I need time and space in which to effect the necessary changes. I have absolutely no doubt that I can bring into being every idea in my head – no doubt at all. A friend who’s dealing with serious illness told me she’s afraid of nothing, and I thought about how empowering that must be, and about how we allow fear to hold us back, incapacitate us ….. I don’t want to dwell in that space anymore; I want to live as boldly as my heart assures me I can.

So …… Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, blah blah blah. I’ve got other things on my mind, like survival.

My growing restlessness convinces me that 2011 will be the last year I march to the beat of any drum other than my own. It's about time!

************************************************************************************

Three angels

2011-12-19T14:00:00.004+02:00

Written Sat. 17 December 2011

As 2011 draws inexorably to a close and I ponder on the things that have changed, the things that have stayed the same, and the surprises along the way, I find myself needing to acknowledge some people in my life, people who might not even realize how their personalities, their choices and their life stories inspire and astound me.

I have a person in my life whose greatness lies in, amongst other things, his humility. I met him in August 2008 when I became his guitar student at Jazz Workshop Music School. I’d known about him and had heard what an amazing guitarist he was, but nothing could’ve prepared me for the beautiful personality that came as part of the Wayne Bosch package. Six months after we met, we did our first performance together, and five months later, landed a weekly restaurant gig that lasted 14 months, at Food Lover’s Market in Claremont, Cape Town. We’ve continued to do gigs since then, and he’s someone whose company I enjoy and whom I respect immensely, for the way he lives his life and for the brilliant musician he is. Wayne is easy-going and fun to work with - a consummate professional, who won’t ever disappoint you. During the gig, he’s absolutely in the moment, and doesn’t ever rest on his laurels. Yesterday we played at a wedding on a wine farm in Durbanville (congratulations, Julia and Clint!), and once again he made the repertoire fresh and exciting, by doing songs we’d done many times before in completely different feels. Never a dull moment. Today I pay tribute to Wayne Bosch and the way he brightens the world. He’s a world-class musician who deserves to be playing on the biggest stages, at the biggest jazz festivals around the world. I pray that all the elements, internally and externally, come together to move him decisively towards his destiny.

The second person I want to acknowledge today is someone I’ve known about since my childhood, although I’m not sure if we ever met as children. Our parents (her dad, my mom) sang opera together, many years ago, in the Eoan Group, a cultural organisation. In our adult lives, however, we met through a mutual friend, in about 1992. Early on in our friendship, we went away for a weekend with a group of about 8 women, and discovered we could talk for hours! Haha – that hasn’t changed! Over the years, we saw each other very rarely, when she was living in Ireland and would come down to Cape Town on holiday. In November last year, however, fate moved us back into each other’s lives, when we worked on a District 6 project together, interviewing land claimants. During the time we spent driving around the Cape Peninsula, going from area to area and house to house, we did a whole lot of chatting, and in that time we formed a bond that was destined to become one of the strongest, most interesting friendships I have. Inez Woods offered to do life coaching with me at a time that I couldn’t afford her sessions, so we decided our collaboration would entail an exchange of skills. We spent many hours in many coffee shops and restaurants, having these sessions that seemed to fill both our tanks and have a motivating effect on both of us. We’d brainstorm ideas and talktalktalk until we were exhausted, but each would leave with new ideas and long To Do Lists to tackle before our next meeting. I met Inez two days ago for another coffee-shop-brainstorming-session, and this time we looked back at 2011 - each one finding it harder to acknowledge our own achievements than to see each other’s successes – and started looking at 2012 with some seriousness. Each of us had set our sights on certain goals, and we realize now that 2011 was just the beginning. When I’m with Inez, I am filled with excitement about how much is possible. I don’t know how she does it, but she makes me feel like I can go out there and achieve all my goals and dreams. She has an energizing effect on me, and she never lets me off the hook! She’s an excellent life coach, and most of my successes this year can be attributed to her influence on me. She’s hardcore, I can tell you, but if you seriously want to stop wading in the shallows and want to start swimming strongly towards your target, she’s someone you should consider working with. Her blog is inezwoods.wordpress.com, and she’s also on Facebook. This year she started the WAG Network, with WAG standing for Women Against the Grain – check out her website www.wagnetwork.co.za and watch out for this movement, because its awesome founder, Inez Woods, is going to rock your world.

And finally, I’d like to pay tribute to someone in my house, someone I gave birth to almost 17 years ago, and someone who’s grown into one of the finest people I know – my son, Nick Geffen. In the first half of last year, he started having discomfort in his left knee, which developed into such debilitating pain, that he ended up having surgery. He spent most of last year dealing with the ramifications of this condition (the cartilage below his knee-cap wears away), including missing school, having to give up sport and having to use crutches for an extended period of time. This year, it became apparent that his right knee needed surgery as well, which was what happened. The transformation of this young man, since the second operation, has been profound. About three weeks ago, he finally started walking without crutches and the day that he climbed his first flight of stairs unaided – and without swinging on the banister – he described the achievement to me with tears in his eyes. He’s learnt, in the most extreme way, never to take anything for granted. He’s 16, he’s someone who loves school and enjoys studying, someone with a lust for life like I’ve never seen before, and he’s emerged from the past two years with more wisdom and spirituality than most people achieve in a lifetime. He is someone who inspires me constantly, someone whose zest and passion will move him through life with that huge smile fixed on his beautiful face. Last year had its own challenges for our relationship, when he decided to live with his father and not come to my house every second week as per the schedule, but, with counselling and the healing that comes with the passage of time, we got through that, and we now enjoy an understanding that surpasses anything we might have had. My life is enriched and brightened by this young man, and I am blown away by his capacity to live life and to do so on his own terms, with the compassion and integrity he shows. Wow!

I am blessed by so many people’s presence in my life, and today I felt a strong compulsion to say this about these three angels.

Day 1 of December school holidays / Phantom

2011-12-12T12:31:00.003+02:00

"The times they are a-changing" indeed, as both my children are busy today, leaving me with an unexpected day to myself. Yup, momma's at the internet cafe, doing her online thang. Oh, well. This gorgeous weather reminds me I have some other domestic stuff to attend to, so I'd better keep this short.

Last night I experienced one of the - if not THE - most spectacular stage shows I've ever seen: Phantom of the Opera, at Artscape, in Cape Town's city centre. I was treated by my mom, and I loved it SO much, I want to go and see it again. Everything was fantastic - the costumes, the sets, and particularly the voices of the lead singers. Interesting to me that the female lead had an operatic voice, but the male lead had a rock voice. Both of them were stunning! I don't have the programme with me now, but when I do, I'll do a full article. The orchestra transported me to worlds far away from my seat in the opera house, and I felt my skin tingling, my hair standing on end many times during the show, as the chords and bass lines altered below the melody lines, adding elements of subversion and danger to the atmosphere. What a clever score! SO BEAUTIFUL! One of the highlights was the song, "Music of the night" by the phantom.

BUT, more at a later date.

The silver lining type

2011-12-12T11:48:00.002+02:00

Written Thurs. 8 December 2011

The issue of closure has been on my mind a lot, lately. I’m big on closure – always have been. I need to end one thing conclusively before starting another, especially when it comes to relationships. Closure. Not as scary as we think it is. I think it all depends on how you approach life: are you the silver lining type, or the cloud type? Do you focus on every cloud having a silver lining, or every silver lining having a cloud? To move towards closure, there’s a whole lot of processing that needs to happen. Trying to fast forward the processing can result in loose ends.

Closure is as much a part of life as breathing. Life does indeed go on. In fact, we’re constantly faced with endings and beginnings, birth and death; my philosophy is that, the older you get, and the more life experience you gather, the better you become at dealing with these cycles. And that is one of the most exciting things about this thing called life – the cycles: the new beginnings and the endings and the new beginnings….

I always say that everything has a beginning, a middle and an end, yet most of us live our lives being prepared for only the first two. Even the ultimate goodbye, death, is such a taboo, such a no-go topic for most people, and yet it’s the one thing we can be sure awaits us all. So we delude ourselves that, if we don’t talk about it, it won’t happen. Every relationship has a beginning, a middle and an end: some relationships end with the death of one of the partners, and others with the death - one way or another - of the love that was once shared.

The person I have grown into has an identity unavoidably interwoven with people I’ve been connected to. The challenge is to delicately but decisively unravel, extricate, liberate, and to continue maturing into the Trudy I was always meant to be. I’ve made some promises to myself that I know I will stick to for the rest of my life, because this is the time to break old, stale, counter-productive patterns. This is the time to live my life in an unfettered way, to pursue my goals with faith and vigour, to live my truth boldly, and to step so far out of the box that people’s mouths may drop open in wonder. Haha!

I am consciously opening myself to new energies and embracing opportunities with an almost-childlike curiosity. Tomorrow I make my first-ever television appearance, and I do so as a singer-songwriter. I go into the studio and sing one of my originals, as part of a tv promo for The Taxi, a new online radio station, at a time of day that they’re being broadcast live on Cape Town Television, known as CTV. So yes, I’m grateful for the opportunity afforded me by well-known theatre and media personality, Soli Philander, owner of The Taxi, and looking forward to it like a child anticipating a birthday or Christmas.

And you know those cycles and chakras and alignments and spring tides? Well, I was hanging washing on the line about an hour ago (yes, I do these things at night, when my days are too busy), when I looked up at the sky and saw a huge moon smiling down at me. It must be a day away from full moon – my favourite moon - which means tomorrow is a brilliant day for me to do a tv appearance, because it will be the start of something new, something wonderful.

I suppose it’s clear I’m the silver lining type.

The Perfect Antidote

2011-12-12T11:45:00.000+02:00

Written Wed. 7 December 2011

Last night I went to support Khadija Heeger’s regular poetry event, called “Poetry for Love”, at Sabrina’s, a restaurant diagonally opposite Long Street Swimming Baths. It was the first time I’d been able to go to one of her events, and this was unfortunately the last one for 2011. Sometimes it’s hard to believe the year’s about to end. Shoo, what a year!

The artists for the night were poets and singers, most of whom performed original work – what a treat! I am a great admirer of Khadija’s work: it leaps off the page when you read it, but the true power of her talent is most evident when she performs live. I’m fascinated by the way poets remember their poetry, but I suppose it’s like singers with their lyrics. When I see someone like Khadija performing to such small audiences, I feel frustrated, because, with her skill and finesse, she should be sought-after and celebrated. I love the sheer abandon with which she writes, going all the way with her imagery, taking her audience on a ride so wild, they find themselves panting when she’s done. Why, I keep asking myself, are such richly talented artists constantly struggling to get their work heard? Why!? Why are the “decision-makers” in the Performing Arts not actively engaged in sourcing artists of this calibre?

Also on the programme was UK visitor, Raymond Antrobus, whose poem about his impressions of Cape Town gave us a glimpse of our mountain and climate from a foreigner’s perspective. Delightful turn of phrase, warm, witty, wonderful energy from this engaging young poet. Such a joy to hear poetry like that– intense, raw, impassioned, yet deeply sensitive - written by a man. I was shaken to my core - I love it when someone’s manipulation of words stirs me like that. Check out his blog: http://raymondantrobus.blogspot.com.

Another artist was Daneel Van Der Walt, who sang original songs, accompanied by a guitarist (whose name escapes me - I’ll find out). I enjoyed her style, and would love to hear more of her work. She has a voice that’s versatile, with light and dark tones, as well as a soulfulness that at first took me by surprise. Her lyrics are clever, at times poignant, and her compositions are good. It’s such a treat to be exposed to Capetonian artists I haven’t encountered before.

Noni Nozuko Poni sang three songs, all a capella. The first two were in isiXhosa: Ntjilo Ntjilo, a Miriam Makeba jazz ballad, and a second song, which she wrote for her mother. The third was a soul ballad – I can’t remember who the original artist was. Noni has one of those voices that transport you to some other state of consciousness - you have to listen to her with closed eyes, and surrender to the sound, allowing it to envelope you. She has a huge vocal range, and her phrasing is delightful. Another artist who needs a much wider audience.

Maya Spectre also sang three songs: A Day in the Life of a Fool (also known as “Black Orpheus”, but with different lyrics) and Summertime, both well-known jazz standards. She was accompanied by Elton Goslett, whose electric guitar playing was crystal clear and utterly beautiful. Her third song was an original, which she sang unaccompanied. My honest opinion is that this kind of night lends itself to original work, so artists who have a body of original work should exploit the opportunity to do their own material.

The final poet was Yisir Daly-Ward, whose unassuming style belied the powerhouse of poetry she was about to share with us. Her first poem was short, and, because she read it from her phone, she came across as almost-apologetic when she read it. But her next two poems dispelled that myth. Completely. Wow! Once again, a gifted wordsmith, whose acute – and often humorous - observations of people, of life, of nuances, keep her listeners spellbound. Her voice itself has a rich tonal quality, a strength, a depth, a sense of age-old wisdom, of timelessness - I could listen to it for hours. What a lovely poet!

And so ended a thoroughly enjoyable evening. I had taken my mom along with me, and I think that, although she was slightly uncomfortable with some of the more explicit content (!), as a performer herself, she actually enjoyed the evening.

I’d come to the end of a 6-week lecturing contract yesterday, so I was a bit sad when I got to the restaurant, but all that self-pity came to a well-timed end once the programme started.

Poetry ……. . the perfect antidote.

First-ever tv appearance/Closure/Swimeditate

2011-12-09T12:29:00.003+02:00

So who said that you couldn't experience really cool FIRSTS at my age? Today I sang one of my original songs, "Joe", live on Cape Town Television, known as CTV. It was just after 11am, and it was part of the live recording of "The Taxi", an online radio station, which has been live on CTV for the past week, from 10h00 - 12h00 daily.

I was nervous, of course, and have NO idea how it sounded or how I came across, but what the hell, it was cool, and just another piece of the puzzle, another page in the autobiography, another piece of the mosaic...... and other such metaphors.

Today was not only a day of new experiences, but also a day of closure, as my daughter took her leave of primary school. I attended the Final Assembly, bawled my eyes out, and then enjoyed the pleasant breakfast under the trees we were all treated to. Perfect weather made the entire experience very satisfying.

And so ends seven years of Bergvliet Primary School for my daughter, but 10 years for us as a family, as my son had been there as well. Next year we'll have both children at the same high school, and that should make life easier, especially w.r.t. transport.

Sitting in the cool (temperature) internet cafe. Have to take my mom to the shops. Later tonight, a treat for myself, by myself: a much-longed-for swim at the gym. Friday nights are the best time to go to gym, especially to swim, because you're one of the few people there, and you could easily get the pool to yourself. Ok, it does mean you get to swim with a whole day's germs, etc, but there are some things you just have to deal with, on the road to empowering yourself physically, spiritually and intellectually, which is what I achieve when I swimeditate (my own word for meditating while swimming).

Tomorrow night I do a house party with Wayne Bosch, which I'm really looking forward to. I get to sing and play my guitar for a whole night, I get to interact with really cool people, and I get to make music with one of our country's finest guitarists.

Why would I need to complain, when life sends opportunities like these my way?

Seismic

2011-12-05T17:15:00.003+02:00

Written Sun. 04 December 2011

When I think of all the beautiful things that have been happening in my life, I have to smile. I told my best friend, the other day, that it felt like the universe had us in the palms of its loving hands. I know it sounds corny, but when I think of all the challenges I’ve had to face, especially in the last 14 months, and I see the energy shifts that have occurred (some decidedly seismic!), I can only thank all the benevolent forces out there for bringing me to this point, this wonderful point that feels like the best kind of closure – the kind filled with new beginnings.

Things that had been blocking my energy, causing me tension for a long time, have resolved in surprising and interesting ways. I’ve been blessed with opportunities to heal and to move on, in a few parts of my life. Teaching at a college for the past five weeks has been a new beginning that came at exactly the right time. I’m sending all my prayers out into the universe for more opportunities at the college, a place where I rediscovered a part of myself (the me-in-front-of- a-class part) and met a bunch of fascinating people. The staff weren’t too bad either. J Haha – jokes aside, I have some really cool colleagues, and I hope I get to work with them again.

In two days’ time, I end my short contract, and enter the next phase-within-a-phase of my life, with more uncertainty than I’ve had for the past five weeks, but with a renewed faith in the power of personal energy, that mysterious force which, once ignited, has the potential to effect radical change. What boggles my mind is the sheer force I believe like-minded people can wield, to achieve just about anything.

I’m inspired by the slogan of this year’s 16 Days of Activism against Abuse of Women and Children: “Peace in the home before peace on earth”. It starts on a personal level and it can only grow from there.

I will go through the rest of my life seeking out people as passionate as I am about using our collective power to change the world, person by person, family by family, community by community, city by city, country by country.

Inspired

2011-12-05T17:11:00.000+02:00

Sat. 03 December 2011

23h50, the end of a beautiful, busy day - a day composed of a comfortable mixture of things I had to do and things I chose to do. I liked the fact that I achieved one or two things that had been on my To Do list for a while, like having the garden taken care of! What a relief! Not only had the grass grown really long, but we hadn’t been watering much, so everything had dried out. I look at some of my pot plants that were so beautiful a few months ago, and I know I have to re-prioritize my activities, because a neglected garden makes me unhappy, while a thriving garden inspires me. Part of my frustration about the garden is that I’ve just been too busy to tend to it, so the way it’s been looking recently is basically just a reflection of how busy I’ve been. Fortunately, my son’s become very aware of my workload, and has offered to water the garden tomorrow.

This has actually been a week where I’ve achieved some closure and made significant strides. On Monday I sorted out my gym arrears (long, ridiculous story linked to medical aid) and got back into the pool after 8 months! The feeling of that moment when I slipped into that wonderful, welcoming water will remain with me for a long time. I managed 20 lengths, felt I could’ve gone on, but started feeling a slight pull in one of my calves, so decided that 20 was quite enough. The week seemed to fly by, and the next time I was able to swim was last night, when I did another 20 lengths, this time limited by the closing time of the gym. But still, I’d had the luxury of the whole pool to myself, which always feels like a rare and valuable gift.

Sun 4 Dec. 08h00

Loved waking up naturally, this morning, without an alarm urging me into the new day. This, alone, feels like a holiday. One day I’ll have enough money to go away for a while, on a real holiday, but for now I’ll savour the little breaks life affords me, and feel the pleasure of those moments. The alternative is to dwell on what I don’t have, which is not how I choose to go through life.

Today’s yet another busy day, and I have to start as soon as possible, in order to get through everything and keep my sense of humour.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this past year and how interesting it’s been, so I’ve decided to set time aside to write a reflective article, detailing the amazing path life has taken me down, these past 12 months. Even if all I achieve is the soothing of my Virgo soul, I want to write it down.

What I do hope to achieve, as well, is to show others who have been retrenched, that:

i) LIFE goes on

ii) it’s ultimately up to YOU whether you sink or swim

iii) you have to be open to accepting CHANGE and to doing things differently

iv) you have to HUMBLE yourself and DEPEND on others for a while

v) if you open your mind, you’ll see the many OPPORTUNITIES around you

vi) it helps to spend more time with PEOPLE who lift your spirits and support your journey, and less time with people who constantly drag you down

vii) it seldom happens overnight, but your PATH will become clear, and you WILL find your direction, your purpose, your way of making money that is right for you

viii) you need to TUNE into yourself, know what makes you tick, and try to align that knowledge with an income-generating activity (or activities, in my case) – if you’re interested in living an authentic life, and not just working for the sake of working.

ix) in the words of David Miller, the Principal of Norman Henshilwood High School, “BAD TIMES DON’T LAST” (in a speech at Bergvliet Primary on 30/11/11)

x) you can actually reach a point where, with hindsight, you can APPRECIATE that losing your job was the BEST thing that could’ve happened to you, because it catapulted you into a far more MEANINGFUL and truly SATISFYING time of your life.

In conclusion, I’d like to quote from a speech made by Haajer Kader, an inspired and inspiring Grade 7 pupil at Bergvliet Primary School, also on 30/11/11, on the occasion of their Academic and Sports Awards: “Don’t let your past steal your present.”

Saturday 26 Nov 2011

2011-11-26T18:00:00.002+02:00

This morning I participated in a Women's Wellness Breakfast, organised by the multi-talented Inez Woods, in the southern suburbs of Cape Town. Her previous two were out Blouberg way. About 50 women gathered at Tango's, a restaurant not far from where I live, and spent a few hours together, hanging out, sharing and basically 'filling our tanks' with inspiration, so that we may continue our respective journeys with more insight and joy.

I'm typing this at an internet cafe, so I won't write my review right now. For those who were interested in the books I recommended, here they are:
The Seat of the Soul - Gary Zukav
Mind Power for the twenty-first century - John Kehoe
Women Who Run With The Wolves - Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Women Who Love Too Much - Robin Norwood

Well done to Inez for accomplishing her third event of this nature this year. I remember when it was just an idea, something that she was dreaming of doing. I am immensely inspired by this powerful, inspiring, kick-ass woman.

Colour TV

2011-11-21T12:40:00.001+02:00

Written: Sat. 3 September 2011

A bit hindered by technology, but decided to go ahead anyway. My laptop has a virus problem, so, until it’s sorted, I’m not inserting my memory stick – it corrupted two of our memory sticks, last week, before we realised what the problem was. Like so many other things in life, sorting this out requires spending money, but, like just as many other things in life, there’s always Plan B: finding a friend who’ll do it as a favour.

I’ve realised that I enjoy sitting and typing as much as I do writing (with a pen). Whatever I type now can’t be saved on my memory stick until the virus problem is fixed, so I won’t have the gratification of posting my new article on my blog within a day or two. My recent blog posts have been relatively short, because I’ve been typing them at the internet café. I’ve thought of writing them out and then typing them at the café later, but that somehow defeats the spontaneity (a friend of mine says “spontanuity”) of blogging.

I heard something funny on tv last night – watched “Colour TV” for the first time – which was a performer saying she had an assistant updating her blog regularly. The interviewer asked her, “With your ideas or hers?” (Funny how he assumed the assistant was a woman.) She replied that the assistant posted her ideas (the artist’s). I suppose this is fairly common, as I’m sure there many different applications of the blog concept, but I somehow like the idea of someone, no matter how busy or famous, taking the time to sit down and record, in his/her own words, things on a blog. I don’t doubt that this perspective might change as I encounter more blogs and see the diverse ways in which they’re used. I suppose they’ve come to replace websites, to a large extent.

So, how do I feel about “Colour TV”? As I said, I’ve watched it once only, and that was simply because I was busy doing something in the lounge, the tv was on, I looked up and there it was – a newish South African television programme specifically showcasing “Coloured” people. When I first saw it advertised, a few weeks ago, I did not find it interesting - or important – in any way, and simply forgot about it. The repeated ads kept bringing it to my attention, but again, I didn’t diarise it nor make a mental note to catch it when it came on, unlike my reaction to another new tv programme, “Hello Doctor”, which I thoroughly enjoy and make a point of watching every Sunday at 5pm.

“Colour TV”, from what I gather, attempts to show the funny side of Coloured people, as well as showcase individuals who’ve achieved success in their fields of specialization. My reaction to the humour ranged from a reluctant grimace to a spontaneous guffaw, the latter confined to the ad lib-type comments by the two characters who’re supposed to be the behind-the-scenes studio engineers. They’re quite funny, and their lines sound authentic.

What I do have a problem with, and I might as well be bold enough to just say it, is the perpetuation of the Coloured stereotype – I really don’t need yet another display of the same thing. Yes, many Coloured people talk in a sing-song accent; yes, many Coloured people mix their languages and often can’t speak even one of them fluently; yes, music and performance play a huge role in the lives of many Coloured people (show me a culture where this is not so); yes, the comedic element is rife……… but why is the focus once again on the ridiculous?

What exactly is the goal, here? If this is in response to the hugely successful tv programme, Eastern Mosaic, which focuses on the Indian community in South Africa, I think it’s seriously missed the point. Eastern Mosaic doesn’t caricature its target audience and perpetuate embarrassing stereotypes. It celebrates the history and culture of South Africans of Indian descent, and does so very successfully, in a way that entertains and educates viewers (from diverse backgrounds).

I’ve been wondering about something: the guest who was interviewed towards the end of the programme (by Terrence somebody) – Shimmy – spent so much time doing the raucous Coloured laugh that she looked like she was faking it. Are the guests given the brief as to how to behave, so that you come across as a real Coloured? And what is a real Coloured, anyway?

I won’t deny that the apartheid system, in forcing people to live as separate nationalities within one country, created pockets of culture within the nation, and yes, we did end up developing separate identities. I’m all for celebrating diversity, but I’m afraid this kind of thing doesn’t resonate with me. It’s like those District 6 plays – someone described the genre as “the heart without the head”, and I agree that many of those plays are slanted in a direction that focuses on the soap-opera aspect, rather than whatever else was happening at the same time in history, to people from that same community.

Yes, show South Africans and what they’re all about. Yes, educate the different communities about each other’s peculiarities. Yes, be proudly whoever you want to be. But please don’t portray these differences in ways that over-simplify and ridicule. Do we really want the first thing that comes into someone’s mind when they hear the word “Coloured” to be a picture of someone speaking bad English with a couple of missing teeth and a laugh that hints at some kind of chemical imbalance?! The stand-up comedians have milked that stereotype to death – enough already!

I’ve learnt to trust my instincts. If I spent most of the time cringing while watching “Colour TV”, then I honestly can’t say I found it enjoyable, educational or in any way entertaining.

I won’t be watching it again.

I look forward to a more current and relevant take on the topic.

The day of Aunty Joyce's funeral

2011-11-21T12:37:00.000+02:00

There are two things I miss a lot, each of which adds a dimension to my life that opens up a myriad of possibilities: having internet access at home, and swimming.

Today is Thursday 22 September. The significance of this date is varied – it’s the date on which my parents got married in 1956, but it’s also the day we said our final farewell to an aunt, my late dad’s cousin, Joyce Ronnie (nee Rushin). She passed away on Sunday 18 September, and the funeral was today. She’d been a stalwart of the Methodist Church in Surrey Estate, in the broader Athlone area of Cape Town. She and her late husband, Edwin, had been a formidable couple, practising their Christian faith in the most practical of ways.

But that’s not what I remember about Aunty Joyce and Uncle Edwin – I remember how happy they were in each other’s company. Unlike many men I’ve encountered, Uncle Edwin always treated his wife with respect, and there was no mistaking the love he had for her. Similarly, she beamed when she was with him, and it was clear he was her soul mate, her partner of choice, the love of her life. More than that, they shared an ability to live life to the full and to do so with a good dose of humour. Their sons - Derek, Roger and Donny – are three really nice guys, and they carry in their genes the wonderful attributes of their amazing parents.

I was privileged to have been at Aunty Joyce’s final birthday celebration, in June this year, when she turned 79. She took a break from the home where she lived, in order to be at Derek’s house, where a tea party was held in her honour. I was moved, that day, when a relative, Charles Rushin, paid tribute to her in a speech. He made a point of saying that people always waited till someone died before saying what a wonderful person he/she had been, but he wanted to say TO Joyce (they were cousins) how special she was to him and to everyone present. She sat on the couch, quietly taking it all in, smiling in her sweet, dignified way. We all knew that she was, in fact, gravely ill – her severe weight loss bore testimony to this – and I think everyone felt, that day, that it could well be her last birthday. And so it was.

Interesting how someone’s death ends up bringing family and friends together. I saw so many people I hadn’t seen in years!

Miscellany

2011-11-21T12:33:00.001+02:00

Written: Saturday night, 29 October 2011

I came to terms, long ago, with the fact that I’m one of those people who live life intensely. The past few weeks, with the profound changes I’ve experienced – some a lot easier to assimilate than others - bear testimony to this.

It’s 10:35pm and I’ve just come home from a lovely gig with Wayne - a house party in Kuils River. I don’t just enjoy making music a little, I LOVE it. I thrive on it. I draw strength and inspiration from it. Very little makes me as happy as playing music in a performance context does. If I could perform every day, I’d be the happiest person alive. I also did a gig during the week, with Keith Tabisher’s trio. Very cool. It was high on a hill, with the most magnificent view in every direction. Before the gig started, we were treated to a sunset that was so splendid, we all became silent as we watched in wonder. It was a night of great collaboration. The musicians I work with inspire me immensely. I learn from them all the time, and continue to grow as a musician because of them.

A few days ago, I started teaching a few subjects to adult students, at a college in Cape Town’s city centre, the answer to months of prayers by many people. It’s a temporary post, till 6 Dec. I’ll write more about this, sometime. I teach subjects from the old matric syllabus: English First and Second Language, Afrikaans Tweede Taal and Criminology.

When I was retrenched a year ago, I had no idea it would be so hard to find employment. Our economy’s in a terrible state, with the statistics on unemployment showing little or no improvement. I wonder what the tipping point will be, that moment when our government realizes it HAS to prioritise job creation. I feel very strongly about the huge disparity between the haves and the have-nots, and it saddens me beyond words that the fat cats in parliament seem oblivious to the awful day-to-day struggles of unemployed people.

Sunday night, round midnight:
I have an extremely busy week ahead. I sat my kids down with my diary, this evening; we went through each one’s after-school activities and tried to get our three schedules to somehow fit into a seamless whole – haha! We’ll see. I have a feeling that there’ll be plenty of quickly-prepared meals, as well as late-night laundry sessions, with the unavoidable three-hour sleeps that seem to go with this kind of week. I regretted availing myself for a gig on Tuesday night, as it falls in a crazy period in our lives.

I need to sleep. Listening to Brazilian music on the laptop – aaaaah, what a treat! Soulful, soothing, lulling. I’m deeply grateful to the guy who fixed my laptop, removed the virus and installed an anti-virus programme. :-) Earlier today I found an old cassette of Bahian music, and I listened to the whole thing. Song after song took me back to Salvador Bahia……intoxicating, strangely familiar, a place I’m sure I’m genetically linked to. One day when I have spare money, I’ll take that blood test that reveals your genetic path globally. I’ve always wondered about my origins; I’m expecting to be connected to South America in some way. Or some other culture where the guitar and hand drums feature prominently and the rhythms are the ones I feel in my blood.

Singing now – Rosa Passos, “E Luxo So”. I love this song! Lovely arrangement, just enough congas, light, suggestive, rhythmical, inviting us to dance, sway, samba, samba, samba, smile, sing……! Rosa Passos does the song with so much finesse, gliding her way through the lyrics like a dancer, with her silky smooth voice, effortless, ethereal. Brazilian music! Hits me in the solar plexus, takes my breath away and always puts a smile on my face. How lucky I am, in so many ways.

Goodnight, sweet world.

:-)

Amazing

2011-11-21T12:28:00.002+02:00

"Written: Sun. 13 November 2011

Listening to Stevie Wonder’s “Golden Lady”.

Aaaah, another lazy Sunday morning. Seems like a new routine emerging, to blog in this timeslot. I seem to remember it being a routine I had sometime ago, before the laptop caught the virus. I’m starting to suspect that internet cafes are the problem. I must’ve picked up a virus on my memory stick, then transferred it to my laptop at home. The owner of the intcaf suggested I use my laptop there. I managed it once only, because I usually pop in on my way home, and the laptop’s not always with me.

Woke up, sent a few sms’s re outstanding guitar lesson fees. The craziness of my life at the moment is that I’m working in a job in the city, incurring extra expenses linked to transport, etc, but still 100% dependent on music (guitar fees and gigs) as my source of income, until the day I get paid by my new employer. A glorious day, I hasten to add, anticipated with such excitement, you’d be surprised! Try being unemployed, then self-employed in the music world for many months, and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Having said as much, if I don’t get steady employment for 2012, it’s my plan to develop the self-employment concept into a far more structured and sustainable situation. I am a mother, I have to look after my family and make sure I pay my way through life, which just seems to get more and more expensive, no matter how one attempts to master the art of belt-tightening. Sometimes I get sick and tired of having to live the way we do, doing without important things, because there’s just no money.

“All is fair in love.” A bit of a hectic concept for me, right now. I went to a family wedding yesterday. Driving to Stellenbosch, I thought about love, loyalty, commitment, marriage, and about the two young people embarking on this journey. I knew that, like all the other people my age in the gathering, cynical in spite of ourselves, I’d be sitting there wishing them all the luck in the world, wishing them a beautiful life together, but painfully aware that the odds are so stacked against that. As I sat through the speeches, I realised that the couple and their families were born-again Christians, and I concluded that, with that as a central force in their lives, they probably stood a better chance of weathering the storms. I sincerely wish them life-long happiness, because the idealist in me still believes it’s possible.

“If It’s Magic” – has to be one of the most beautiful Stevie Wonder songs. Like most songs, its beauty lies in its simplicity. As a songwriter (and word nerd), of course I’m affected by the sheer poetry of the lyrics.

If it's magic...
Then why can't it be everlasting
Like the sun that always shines
Like the poets in this rhyme
Like the galaxies in time

If it's pleasing...
Then why can't it be never leaving
Like the day that never fails
Like on seashores there are shells
Like the time that always tells

It holds the key to every heart
Throughout the universeIt fills you up without a bite
And quenches every thirst

So... If it's special
Then with it why aren't we as careful
As making sure we dress in style
Posing pictures with a smile
Keeping danger from a child

It holds the key to every heart
Throughout the universe
It fills you up without a bite
And quenches every thirst

So... If it's magic...
Why can't we make it everlasting
Like the lifetime of the sun
It will leave no heart undone
For there's enough for everyone

Later on in the album, “Ribbon in the sky” has such a beautiful piano solo, you realise that this brilliant pianist is a man known more for his voice and lyrics than for his sheer mastery of this instrument. Interesting how many other artists’ songs feature him on harmonica – and when you hear the sound, it’s immediately recognisable as Stevie’s playing.

Do you know the song “Stay Gold”? I only became aware of it when my sister lent me this album of Stevie Wonder love songs. It’s a song that I can imagine Zane Adams, Vernon Castle, Glenn Robertson or Richard Caesar doing. (All Cape Town male vocalists, in case the names are unfamiliar to you.)

My friend, Keith, gave me a lovely album once, with various female vocalists I wasn’t familiar with. Listening to a song now that was introduced to me on this album, a song I find magical – “Amazing”, by Sara Gazarek. I’ll type the lyrics, but to appreciate the power of the song, you have to listen to this woman’s voice – uncluttered, crystal clear, pure, honest. The sparse arrangement of the piece adds to the overall effect. I always favour the less-is-more approach.

Amazing (sung by Sara Gazarek)

Sunflower beauty surrounds me / Against a sky of grey
The night time falls down upon me / At the closing of this day
Words cannot explain the feeling that my heart speaks of
The choices, the boundaries
When I feel the pain of all of these thoughts of mine,
The questions, the answers

When will I realise all of life is amazing
Take it in, let it go, can’t you see it’s so amazing

I need the feeling of sunlight / To help the forget the cold
Between the spaces of daylight / There lives a frozen soul
Here we go again, this wandering mind won’t settle down
If just for a second
When I think it’s gone, it starts itself right up again
Unending and relentless

When will I realise all of life is amazing
Take it in, let it go, can’t you see it’s so amazing

Melt away, let life flow
Just give in, just let it go
Current strong, so am I
Amazing things don’t ever die

(piano solo)

When will I realise all of life is amazing
Take it in, let it go, can’t you see it’s so amazing

When will I realise all of life is amazing
Take it in, slow it down, can’t you see it’s so amazing

Melt away, let life flow
Just give in, just let it go
Current strong, so am I
Amazing things don’t ever die

Never die

)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
Yesterday I thought about life expectancy, and decided that, since so much of my life has been fraught with one struggle after the other, I’d really like to live to the age of 100, because the next 50 years can only be better, and maybe in that way I’d attain some sense of symmetry, fulfillment. But then, I like the energy I have now, and I suppose that just weakens over time. I mean, can you imagine me doing gigs at age 100? Wonder what we’d call our duo? Some really funny names come to mind, none of them printable – because then you’d really see how off-beat my humour was! :-)
)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

Niche

2011-11-21T12:25:00.002+02:00

Written: Sat. 19 November 2011

What is it you look forward to doing, when life affords you a break from what you HAVE to do every day? THAT’S your truth. For me, there are two strong pulls – playing my guitar, and writing. Sometimes, when I have to choose, because the gap between scheduled activities is so small, the decision is organic: I simply go wherever the pull is the strongest at the time. For really short gaps, I pick up my guitar and play whatever comes to mind. At other times, if I have a long stretch of time, as in hours, or even a whole day (quite unusual), I try to balance the time between the two. Both restore my sense of balance, as well as my feeling that I’m living my life according to my own terms, that wonderful, heady feeling of freedom that dawns on me every now and then.

This has been a year like no other, and the lessons in humility and frugalness I’ve had to learn will most likely be my best allies in the years ahead, as my thoughts turn to what it is I really want to do, to earn a living.

In a sense, it’s merely an academic exercise, this “wondering what it is I want to do” – because I know, just like I’ve known for a long, long time: it’s simple – it’s music! I’ve been teaching guitar lessons since March this year, and I now have 24 students. I’ve sat and done some projections: it’s entirely possible for me to earn an acceptable (not lavish) income from doing just this. I’d have to work hard and smart, and treat it very seriously (as I currently do, anyway), but run it as a tight business enterprise. For me, that’s just the start. This year has shown me the most important thing, and it’s this: I don’t have to do what everyone else is doing, even as a guitar teacher. I need to do what I love doing, and the rest just flows. My niche market is a different one, as I’ve always been convinced there was a significant part of the population wanting to play the guitar socially, to strum chords and play songs they can sing along to, either alone or with others. That’s my market, not people wanting to study music to write exams and do their grades. I can refer my students to teachers who do that, if they get to a point where they want to.

I have quite a few challenges, the most important being to set it up as a small business enterprise. Actually, that’s just one of the important challenges. I’ve learnt some big lessons the hard way, this year, and two of them are:
1) it’s crazy for me to drive to my students’ homes to teach them – it impacts on two of the most important elements, time and money, limiting my productivity and potential income, and
2) I have to establish a simple, effective, no-nonsense fee-collecting system, to cut out the inconvenience and anxiety I’ve had to endure, this year.

So my challenges are clear, as I approach 2012 and consider developing this venture along more serious lines. Knowing myself, I can safely say that setting up the guitar lessons in this way is just the skeleton of what my life will be about – I am a creative person, and teaching guitar lessons, day in and day out, in 30-minute timeslots, could become as unfulfilling as sitting behind a computer in an office; no, my vision extends way beyond this. The one thing I know I need, in order to feel “alive and kicking”, is the excitement of a new project to sink my teeth into. Based on this, I can guarantee you there’ll be lots more I’ll be doing with my time, involving music, but also aimed at another one of my life’s goals: to make a difference in post-apartheid South Africa.

The more the universe exposes me to different people and the realities of life in post-apartheid South Africa, particularly in my city, Cape Town, the more I’m convinced my real role lies in merging these two passions, and forming a collective of some kind, aimed at enhancing people’s lives through music, by taking music to them and affording them opportunities to learn, explore and extend that side of themselves. The real challenge then becomes finding a model which will fulfil my philanthropic needs and earn me a sustainable income, on which to support my family, as a single mother.

And with that, it’s just about time for my alarm to go off, as I prepare to teach a few guitar lessons, do some housework and spend time with my amazing children. You have to be amazing to put up with me! :-) The good news is that, while I do spend a lot of time in my head, planning, dreaming, conjuring up projects, I do move beyond this and bring the dreams to life. But more importantly, for me, success always has meant - and always will - success for the collective, not just the individual.

Utopia. Such a fun place to go to, in my head. :-)

You’ve Got A Friend

2011-11-08T19:54:00.002+02:00

Picture: a cropped version of one of Gregory Franz's photos taken at my recent concert.

Sunday 6 November 2011

One of those days where there’s so much on my mind (this is always true), that I don’t know where to start.

The pleasure of being able to start my day relaxing in bed and typing a blog post, is something I haven’t had for a while. Thanks to the assistance of a very generous friend, I was recently able to sort out quite a few loose ends, including my laptop problems. I might not believe in angels with wings and harps, but I certainly have encountered, in the course of my life thus far, people who possess the qualities ascribed to angels. This friend is one of them.

The profound changes I’ve experienced, over the past fourteen months, and particularly in the last two, have altered the direction of my life irreversibly. The best part is, I’m at peace with it all. When you’re in the middle of a big, life-altering event (being retrenched, for example), it’s easy to feel like you’re the victim of an arbitrary act of unfairness, and it’s even easier to wallow in self-pity. As trite as this may sound, the longer you remain in that state of woe-is-me, the longer you’re likely to take to restore the equilibrium in your life. Some people, for whatever reason, never move beyond the anger-and-blame stage, after an extremely unpleasant or challenging experience, and live the rest of their lives bogged down by the weight of it. I’ve encountered people in their senior years whose every utterance spews out the venom of past injustices, hurts and disappointments. It saddens me that they’ve not been able to deal with, work through and move past their pain; their lack of joy and excitement about anything makes me wonder what daily life must be like for them – I can’t imagine living life like there’s nothing to look forward to. In fact, I’ve promised myself something, especially after my most recent “extremely challenging experience”: if any part of my life feels like a drag, like it’s going nowhere and it’s sapping my joy, rather than fuelling it, and if it feels like there’s nothing to look forward to, it’s time to be true to myself and walk away. I’ve been severely tested, recently, but I’m going through all the emotions that I have to, immersing myself in the different facets of closure, and moving on. Just give me time - I’ll be more than ok.

The beautiful symmetry of life’s energy flow has again become apparent to me, in the past few weeks: the same day I discovered something toxic in my close circle and decisively extricated myself from it, I received a phone call about a possible job opportunity. I went for an interview a few days later, was accepted for the position a few days after that, and am now working in a part-time position, till the end of the school year. I’m lecturing at one of the big FET (Further Education and Training) colleges in our city. Yes! Beaming with excitement and loving every minute of it! I lecture four subjects in the old matric syllabus, to adults: English First Language, English Second Language, Afrikaans Second Language, and Criminology. I love the old building, I’m enjoying the students, and the staff has been welcoming, friendly and helpful. I drive to town every day, leaving home earlier than ever before, and it all works out beautifully. When the children are with me, I leave even earlier! We managed four out of five seamless mornings this week, which was not bad at all! I leave college at 3:30pm, so I miss the evening traffic craziness. I take De Waal Drive (a winding road on the lower slopes of Table Mountain) twice a day, which gives me a sensory feast of ocean and mountain, filling my songwriter tanks, making my spirits soar.

I am alive, so I might as well be very alive!

I have chosen to continue with all my other activities, despite having a day job, which means I still tutor a little boy in the afternoons and teach all my guitar lessons (13 a week, including groups) in the evenings and the whole of Saturday. Besides that, I’ve done a few gigs, as well! Of course, this translates into a hectic schedule, but I’ve chosen to seize opportunities when they arise and to cut the clutter as much as possible. Prioritising and being realistic about how much I can and can’t do, are important under these circumstances. The job ends on 6 December, after which I go back to being a self-employed musician, which was why I didn’t want a break in the guitar lessons. As it is, I’m probably going to be faced with a sudden drop in income in December, if most or all of the students take a break. Here’s sending out a message to the universe – send me lots of fun, well-paid gigs, please!

Speaking of which, yesterday I did a one-hour gig with my friend, Keith Tabisher, at a wheelchair race organised by the Western Cape Rehabilitation Association (I might have the actual name wrong). It was in Mitchells Plain, on the premises of Lenteguer Psychiatric Hospital, where the Rehab building is situated. We sat under a huge Nomad tent and the sound was done for us. We played a selection of well-known instrumentals and songs, and people enjoyed the music. Keith played his acoustic guitar and the two guitars sounded more beautiful than I can describe. Performing music is not just about instruments, techniques and item selection – it’s so much about the energies of the people. We’ve known each other since we were teenagers, and have played in more gigs together than I have with anyone else, and all that history comes together when we play.

Every gig I do is like a chapter in the story of my life, and there’s inevitably something funny that happens. Yesterday we faced the challenge of announcements blaring while we were performing, with the same speakers emitting both. At first, we were thrown by the interruptions, and stopped playing till the announcement was over, then started the song again. This wasn’t very successful, because a few seconds later there’d be another announcement, and we’d have to start again. In the end, we found a compromise, continuing to play the chords and just stopping the vocals until he’d finished the announcement, so you’d have the unbelievable combination of something like: “When you’re down and troubled, and you need some love and care/All the contestants for the 800m wheelchair race please come to the Start/Close your eyes and think of me, and soon I will be there/ Don’t forget you can take a raffle for just R5 to win a fabulous… /You just call out my name, and you know wherever I am, I’ll come running/ We’d like to thank our sponsors, …, for making this event possible /You’ve got a friend!

And finally....

2011-10-19T13:10:00.004+02:00

The person who's largely responsible for my having the confidence to push myself out of my comfort zone, maestro Wayne Bosch. Always a privilege and pleasure to work with him and to keep learning from him.

Pictures: Gregory Franz

A few more pics

2011-10-19T13:03:00.003+02:00

Here are a few more pictures - so hard to decide which ones to publish; they're all so full of life! The top one shows Hilton on the Khoi bow, on my song "I Don't Know". The third one is of our MC for the night, Derek Ronnie.

The whole band

2011-10-19T12:57:00.003+02:00

I had such a blast, doing my songs with Wayne, Hilton and Errol, with the beautiful bass guitar of Alistair Andrews behind us, adding the depth and groove that only a bass guitar can give. Here are some pictures, taken by Gregory Franz, of the whole band.

Left to right: Hilton Schilder, Trudy Rushin, Wayne Bosch, Errol Dyers and Alistair Andrews.

Errol Dyers

2011-10-19T12:51:00.003+02:00

Errol Dyers played his acoustic guitar, and also played the rain stick, a gentle-sounding percussion instrument, on one song. In our mini-set of my originals, we did: Cobwebs in Unusual Places, Salvador, Strong and Gentle and Libido Blues.
Photos: Gregory Franz

Hilton Schilder

2011-10-19T12:40:00.005+02:00

Hilton Schilder played the melodica on one of my songs, Strong and Gentle, and later we did a mini-set with him on piano. The songs we did were: Write Another Ending, Waiting For My Muse, Fall in love in February and Joe!

Photos: Gregory Franz

Some pictures of my recent Nassau concert

2011-10-19T12:29:00.002+02:00

Gregory Franz took some amazing pictures at the Nassau concert on the 7th of October. Here, Wayne Bosch accompanies me on electric guitar. We did a mini-set of four of my songs:
My Favourite Time of Day, Chocolate Guitar, Lucy & Slide Across The Moon.

My biggest original concert over - time to reflect

2011-10-10T12:29:00.004+02:00

On Friday 7 October, I did the biggest concert of my original work thus far. On stage at the Nassau Hall with me were Errol Dyers on acoustic guitar, Wayne Bosch on electric guitar, Alistair Andrews on electric bass guitar and Hilton Schilder on piano, melodica, Khoi bow and percussion.

Sound, lighting, DVD recording and all printing done by Andre Manuel, without whom this concert would've been a very different experience. He put in hours of work behind the scenes, setting up arrangements, sourcing equipment and making sure everything was not only done on time, but also that the quality was superb. I know when I work with Andre (and his wife, Chantel Erfort) that I'm in good hands. Thanks also need to go to Alistair Andrews for linking us up with Paul Bothner's in Claremont, who supplied the microphones, and Eastern Acoustics, for the mic stands.
Any artist knows - you're as good as your sound equipment.

The audience was amazing - I could feel their energy throughout the show. Sometimes it's hard to see people's faces when a bright light's shining into yours, but I tried to look at people, to look at their faces and to see their expressions - quite a blast, doing that on stage; I don't think audience members realise what a huge, important part of the performance they are. Again, take the audience away and the performance is nothing but a dress rehearsal. Big thanks to everyone who took tickets and supported the show. Anyone who knows my story knows that it was much more than just another concert to me.

Originally I'd planned to do the concert as a live CD recording, which was destined to be my debut CD, but plans changed along the way, and NOW I appreciate why that was exactly how it was meant to be. I look forward to recording my CD in a more controlled environment, to produce something of quality that people would want to listen to for years to come.

The musicians wove their magic on the night, putting my compositions out there powerfully, and supporting me in a way that gave me wings to fly. My history of working with Wayne showed on the night - he's tuned in to me perfectly, knows every note of my melodies, plays notes and chords that complement mine beautifully, and always at a volume that's right for my decidedly soft voice. I made sure we did one song in the show as a duo, because that's the most polished sound I have, mainly through repetition, but also because of personal energy.

Finally getting to work with Errol was unbelievable, and I felt like my entire body wanted to smile while we were doing our mini-set, the first four songs of the first set. He's someone I'd love to do a lot more work with - he and Wayne played really interesting 2-guitar accompaniment to some of the songs. I'm not sure if they'd worked together before; acoustic and electric guitarists seldom do. I loved the combination, and wasn't surprised that they could sound that good together - my gut told me they would.

Hilton on piano took songs I'd long heard played on guitar into a new realm. His mastery of his instrument is unquestionable, and his rendition of "Joe", the quirky blues I selected as the final song of the first set, will probably linger in people's minds for a long time. It seems, though, that his playing of the Khoi bow on the ballad "I Don't Know" was what made the biggest impression of all. It has an other-worldliness to it that at first jars the senses and then, once you've become accustomed to it, lulls you, transports you to a different place .... caves, hills, wide open spaces, unspoilt nature, timelessness.

Alistair joined the band late, as we had to replace our original bassist, but he acquitted himself more than capably on the night. I'm used to singing with just guitar backing or with guitar and double bass, so it was quite an adjustment to me to sing with an electric bass sound. In the rehearsals, though, I realised that what I wanted, that depth of sound, I could get from an electric bass as well. He's really fantastic!

I could write volumes about the experience of putting on a concert like that, the risks involved, artistically and financially, and the challenges life threw my way in the weeks leading up to the event, but...... what the hell - no regrets!

I'm deeply grateful to my family for their love and support, especially my children, Nick and Summer, who not only helped on the night (foyer assistants), but had to endure weeks of strangeness as I darted about to rehearsals, etc. I don't think they could handle another night of takeaways! Thanks to my mom for her support always, and my cousin Tracy - the best friend anyone could have! My sister, Wendy, and my cousins (Pat and Jenny) who pitched up to support - wow.... THANK YOU!!! :-)

To all my friends who came to the show, and to those who sold tickets to their friends and helped with publicity on Facebook, etc. - my heartfelt thanks to you too.

Thanks to the cool MC, my second-cousin, jazz-loving Derek Ronnie, who looked so dashing and did a fabulous job.

But for now, I'd like to say I'm proud of what I did, and SO proud of what we as a group of musicians and technicians achieved, with fairly limited resources. Once again, I learnt a lot along the way, and I'm very happy that I trusted my instincts every step of the way. Where, for some reason or other, I overlooked certain things so that the show could go on, believe me, I won't make THOSE mistakes again.

I sincerely believe that Friday night's concert, while ostensibly the end of a process, was actually the beginning of a whole new one.

(When I get the pics from Gregory Franz, who saved the day for me, I'll add some to the blog. MEGA-THANX, Gregory!!!!)

New e-mail address: guitartrudy@gmail.com

2011-09-17T17:53:00.005+02:00

Yesterday was not a good day for me, because I found myself the victim of cyberfraud when someone hacked into my Yahoo account and sent an e-mail to EVERYONE on my list of contacts, saying I was stranded in Spain and needed money to get back home.

If you receive any mail from my old e-mail address: rushintrudy@yahoo.com, please be very careful - ignore or report it, as someone else seems to have taken it over now. They seem to have added an r to the address, making it rushintrRudy@yahoo.com. I'm unable to get into my yahoo account, my password doesn't work, and I can't stay in touch with my people the way I like to.

To remedy this, I've created a new e-mail account: guitartrudy@gmail.com. Please e-mail me on this one from now.

Right now, I'm struggling to convert this blog to my new e-mail address, and dreading the possibility of losing everything on it. I've tried following the steps for adding an author then deleting the first e-mail address (and losing all the photos in the process), but somewhere along the line I must be doing something wrong, because I can't complete the process. Maybe it's time to start a whole new blog anyway. If I could start a whole new e-mail address, after 11 years, then I can definitely start a new blog after 2!

I know this is not sickness (?), it's not death and it's not the end of a relationship, but I'll be honest, the sense of loss and violation I feel can't be rationalised away. Some deeply disturbed individual randomly chose my e-mail account to send a letter of appeal, changed one digit of my cell number, accepted calls on it throughout the day, and opened a bank account in my name, apparently somewhere in Spain!

I went to the police station to report the matter, especially because our new RICA law means cell numbers are traceable, but the idiot there told me to go to TELKOM, the telephone people!

I feel annoyed and frustrated at the loss of continuity this introduces into my life. I have spent a lot of time and energy building up my contacts list and marketing myself with my contact details, all of which I have to start from scratch!

What's the lesson? Right now, I'm actually too pissed off to see it!

Break the rules to keep the rules.

2011-09-02T16:14:00.006+02:00

Picture taken by Lavonne Bosman, at Baran's, in Dec 2009. Wayne in the background.

The other day I started rehearsing for my concert with multi-instrumentalist, Hilton Schilder, a musical wizard. The last time I did any serious work with Hilton was in December 2005, when we did a 3-concert series called "Time With Trudy", at an art gallery in town. Once after that he played with me at the Kirstenbosch winter concert I did in 2006, along with guitarist Keith Tabisher. More recently, he jammed with me at Don Pedro's. One of the things that connect us is original music. Hilton has always encouraged me to perform my own music and has always been excited to be part of performing my compositions.

When we practised this week, I realised a whole lot of things: firstly, that he's a genius; secondly, that he cannot be contained (!) and thirdly, that I need to go into every rehearsal session with an open mind, prepared to learn.

I also realised that I'd become used to hearing my songs played on guitar, and that I needed to shift my thinking, to encompass other possibilities. When Hilton plays the introduction to a song, he takes it where he feels it has to go, whereas my chart would have the chords that a guitarist would typically play. Lesson - it's perfectly ok to do the intro differently, as long as it supports the feel and tone of the song.

I look forward to rehearsing with Errol, next. The songs that he'll be doing will generally be with me on guitar as well. I've done two impromptu sets with him (at Don Pedro's) and have really enjoyed the collaboration. He is coolness personified - a total angel!

The third "soloist" would be Wayne, and I'm equally excited about rehearsing with him. He's the musician most familiar wth my compositions, because we've done the most performing of my work, as a duo. He brings his unique energy, a dynamism which is easily lost on people who encounter him briefly, because he's so unassuming. He's one of the musicians who've had a huge influence on me.

Next week, I'm going into the venue with the sound engineers, to check the equipment. Every time I think about the fact that we're recording it for a CD, I get nervous, but Wayne has taught me that, if you're well-rehearsed, your performance need never be compromised by nervousness.

And so, I've consciously started living in a cocoon of my music - singing all the time: when I drive, in the bath, while I'm doing housework, etc. Every evening now, I sit down at the sound system, plug in my guitar and mic, and sing with amplification, to listen to the nuances and to work on specific things.

Some cliches and quotations that have swum into my mind, recently:
Life is filled with possibilities.

If you keep doing the same thing in the same way, how can you expect different results?

Don't just talk about change - actually change! (Suze Orman)

But this one is the perfect fit for me, right now:
"SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO BREAK THE RULES AROUND YOU, TO KEEP THE RULES WITHIN YOU." (Martha Beck)

Spring is sprung!

2011-09-01T10:58:00.004+02:00

Picture: Taken a few weeks ago - the grapevine at home starting its next phase. Yay - we'll be eating grapes in February! This year I think I'll try my hand at making grape jam.

Interesting keeping track of my blog stats. I think more people read my blog on rainy days in Cape Town. Haha!

Catching my breath between school visits, marvelling at how, even on a grey day like today, I can feel so filled with optimism and expectation, beaming with hope for an end to some of the difficulties I've had to deal with for the past couple of months.

My part-time job with UWC, which ends sometime in October, takes me into schools across the Cape Peninsula, where I observe and evaluate student teachers (studying B Ed.). Once again, as an observer and someone who loves to record everything, I could write volumes on what I've encountered. The most pertinent awareness I've gained, which prods at me like a cold piece of metal, is that I don't see myself fitting happily back into the system. It's a long story, and here again, I could write volumes. Quite awkward, as I'm seriously contemplating applying for a teaching post at a school close to where I live.

Lots to consider.

"Later", as my dad would say, "very much later".

Forgot to pack my lunch today. Oh dear, that means I'll have to buy a chocolate at the cafe next to the internet cafe - eish, life is hard!

Single-minded

2011-08-31T18:07:00.004+02:00

A change in the line-up for my concert: instead of Tony Paco on percussion, I'll be working with JOSEPH AVERGEL. Tony's schedule necessitated this change. I'm sure we'll get a chance to work together sometime. It's important for me to stay flexible and open-minded, focussing on the core goals for the concert. This is a huge project for me, as we're recording it with a view to producing a CD for sale. This is going to be THE debut CD. Quite risky doing it as a live performance, but I know why I'm doing it this way. So please come to the concert - you'll be part of recording history!

Last night I set up my p.a. system and practised, for the first time in quite a few weeks. Aaaaaaah, so satisfying! Earlier, I'd had a rehearsal with Hilton Schilder, which was very uplifting, to say the least. It's SO exciting singing my songs with these fantastic musicians!

Life's been so busy, recently, that I've had very little time to lose myself in my music. Anyone who's ever put on a concert, especially of original work, would know how important it is to bathe yourself in your music, let it soak into your skin and seep into every pore, till it floods your entire being. This is hard when you're bogged down with the mundanities of life, like housework.

I've taken a critical look at my life and made a few simple - yet not so simple! - decisions, which has significantly altered the amount of solo time I have available, solo time that becomes non-negotiable as I draw nearer to the concert date.

I still like Sting's idea of a separate wing in his castle. Maybe, in my case, the secret is to stay single.

Or maybe not!

Clouds and silver linings

2011-08-29T17:58:00.004+02:00

Picture: I love taking pictures from my kitchen window, as no two days are ever the same. This was last week, 25/08/11.

A new week, and one that ushers in my month, September, a month I always anticipate happily. Spending so much time dealing with sickness, recently, I've not had much time to get things going re my concert. However, everyone's on board and I'm starting rehearsals tomorrow. Looking forward to practising with Hilton Schilder on a grand piano - wow! He's such a beautiful musician and a real inspiration.

I started tutoring a young boy last week, and this has brought a whole new dimension to my life; he's an utter delight, complete with twinkly eyes and an impish grin, and I look forward to our sessions. Working with him - planning my sessions and enjoying our lesson time - has brought me back to the realisation that I am a teacher and that I've always loved teaching. What I don't like (about education in South Africa) are the bureaucracy and the stuffy institution-related issues that I know I've outgrown. Having said as much, I could easily end up back in the system, unless something else happens to earn me what I need to take care of my family.

But things ARE indeed looking up: with the additon of two new guitar students who're due to start in September, I now have 21 people learning to play the guitar with me. In June, I had 7, in July it grew to 16 and in August, 19. Looking at that steady growth and knowing how little marketing I've actually been doing, I know I have the potential to double that number before the end of the year.

The most exciting part of it all, though, is how much I ENJOY what I'm doing! I love preparing my lessons and I love teaching them. But most of all, I LOVE seeing my students' faces when they hear themselves playing.

Last night I had supper with a friend who's also had a rough year with employment. So nice to talk to someone who, like me, keeps an open mind and sees life as filled with possibilities, as opposed to some other person in my life who, based on personal fears and old unresolved issues, keeps dragging me down down down with an energy that insists on undermining my optimism, an energy that clings to a morbidity that seeks to instill in me the fact that every silver lining has a cloud.

Harsh Winter

2011-08-23T14:42:00.004+02:00

Picture: I took this one at home, on the 29th of June, a rainy day pretty much like today.

I woke up this morning realizing that I was - once again – sick! This is my third consecutive cold/bout of ‘flu, with just a few days of respite in between. The cycles of my life play a huge role in this, as my children come and go every alternate week, bringing with them the health issues they’re dealing with, and re-infecting me, despite my strict health regime. This is what families do, they pass infectious sicknesses on to each other. In my case there’s a false sense of immunity when I’m on my own, because I have 7 days in which to medicate myself, eat healthily, drink lots of fluids and get a fair amount of rest. And then, as I start to feel a lot better and get to the end of my meds, etc, they return and a whole new set of realities emerges.

Being sick has given me a sense of perspective, as I’ve realized how, when I’m in good health, I let relatively insignificant things hold me back. I’ve had to confront the reality of how much self-sabotaging I still do, and how ingrained it is in me. There are other factors in my life that work at keeping me in that old style of being, but it doesn’t serve me any good to go into those details now, lapsing into blaming mode, because that’s as counter-productive as the patterns I’m struggling to break.

When I look at yesterday alone, and how I was basically busy from 05:45 till 22:00, I want to scream. Motherhood seems to come with a lot of bad habits, unless we consciously work at doing it differently. I know this about myself: when my loved ones need me in any way, it’s hard for me to think of myself. I find it difficult to prioritise my own needs when the people I love need me to take care of them. Since I actually do believe that very little in life demands an all-or-nothing approach, it’s amazing that I’m still caught in this trap of martyrdom, emulating what’s been modeled to me, throughout my life. It’s so hard for me to fully accept that knowing the theory doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to be applying it to my life successfully.

This thing called personal empowerment is a long, arduous journey.

Yesterday I took my daughter to school to write an exam, and fetched her a few hours later. Over the weekend, her flu had become so extreme, that her dad had taken her to hospital to be nebulised. In her case, her condition had been exacerbated by two things – her asthma and a bout of tonsillitis! Her chest was so bad, that the doctor said she was one step away from pneumonia. Now that’s scary!

My son, already dealing with incredible pain and reduced mobility - complications from knee surgery last year – also caught the flu, was coughing like a barking dog, and I ended up taking him to the doctor last night. He’s also had asthma since he was young.

Yesterday, I had my first session tutoring a young boy, which meant I needed time to prepare my lesson. Finding this time was not easy. When your kids are sick, you tend to be the one making the meals, which ends up feeling like your whole day is: prepare a meal, serve it, clear the table, wash up, pack everything away; oh my goodness, it’s meal time again, here we go: prepare a meal, serve it, clear the table, wash up, pack everything away, and oh wait, what’s this, another meal……! Add to that the inevitable laundry, the trip to the shop because you’ve run out of something, the gnawing feeling that you’re not going to achieve any of your personal stuff, that other gnawing feeling that you’re starting to feel sick, yourself, and in the end, if you don’t get the hell to bed at a decent hour, you’re going to be grumpy, snapping at the very people you’re trying to care for.

Today I have to do things differently. I woke up this morning and lay in bed thinking about what day it was and what the demands of the day were. Then I focused on my concert, on 7 October, and realised it was SIX AND A HALF WEEKS AWAY! With all my distractions, I’ve had very little time to consolidate plans, not to mention start rehearsing! On Sunday I’d sent all the musicians text messages and said I’d follow up with a phone call the next day. The next day was yesterday, which, as I’ve just said, was like my very own tsunami.

Today I was up as early as my body allowed me to be, and I’m determined to get through this day with a lot more savvy than yesterday. Today I’m cooking ONE meal, and that’s supper. For the rest, it’s cereal for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch. My daughter asked if we could make pancakes today - she'd found 6 different recipes yesterday - and I’m happy to add that to my To Do list.

Today, Tuesday, is what I call my “Admin. Day” (suggestion from life coach), so it’s a day when I plan things and, where possible, do active marketing of some kind, usually on the internet, but there’s also the “on foot” variety. Last week I designed and printed flyers and posters, advertising my guitar lessons as well as availability for gigs, so today I should brave the elements (brrr!) and distribute some of them to local shops and libraries. Go on Trudy, you can do it!

One thing that I did achieve yesterday, that made me feel a huge sense of accomplishment, was make a pot of stewed guavas, with fruit from a tree in my garden. I’ve been living here for fourteen and a half years, and this is the first time I’ve done that. As a child, I used to eat stewed fruit – always with custard – and had loved it. Every year for the past 14 years I have watched the guavas grow, watched the tree become so heavily-laden that the branches droop down with indulgent fatigue, and every year I’ve thought about picking some, and making this sweet treat for my family. So yesterday, I picked 8 big, yellow (but still hard and unripe) guavas, and sent a text to a friend asking how to stew them. She wrote back that she didn’t know but would ask her mother. By that time I’d unearthed my entire collection of recipe books – much to my daughter’s delight, as she seems to be fascinated by cooking – and found what I needed. So, last night, after supper, we had stewed guavas.

Yes, with custard. Mmmmm!

Take two bossanovas and call me in the morning

2011-08-19T15:10:00.002+02:00

Written on Monday 15 August 2011

Sick with yet another bout of flu, so having a pyjama day.

Watching a DVD that was given to me as a gift by a dear friend, Diego Costa, from Brazil, a few years ago. It’s a recording of a 1978 concert, with Antonio Carlos Jobim, Vinicius de Moraes, Toquinho and vocalist, Miucha (sister of Chico Buarque de Holanda).

At the beginning of the concert, singer-guitarist Toquinho plays a medley of songs by Dorival Caymmi, whose compositions were inspired by his hometown, Salvador, a city that I spent just 34 hours in (in 2009), and which touched me profoundly.

When I watch and listen to this kind of music, played by the Brazilian masters of bossanova, I realize how deeply it’s influenced my own style of music. Brazilian music - especially the bossanova and samba - is tuneful, understated, usually with lyrics that are simple yet beautiful, dealing with topics we can easily relate to. This concert, featuring Brazil’s father of the bossanova, known as “Tom Jobim” by his people, is a pure delight to me; it’s all about the music, the instrumentation and vocals, with a notable absence of flash. Of course, I’m talking about a very specific style, played at a specific time in history, more than 30 years ago. The vocalists are so laid-back, they could be lying on the beach - or in a bath – singing! The intensity, however, is unmistakable. I love the rhythm and sensuality of Brazilian music. I love the nuances of the chords and how they subtly suggest emotions, tensions and resolutions.

I can’t remember when I first actively started listening to this style of music, but I think the first album I listened to must’ve been a Sergio Mendes one, when I was a teenager. Round the same time, I heard the Jobim-Gilberto-Getz one, featuring Astrud Gilberto on vocals.

DVD: Jobim and Vinicius now singing Felicidade, a song they co-write for a movie called Fel Negro. I hadn’t been aware of how much older Vinicius was than Jobim, although this might also have had something to do with lifestyle choices. It looks like Vinicius lived life by his own rules, because he openly smokes and drinks (alcohol) on stage, in this concert! He doesn’t look in a good state of health, either. Reading their biographies at the end of the DVD, I see that this concert took place 9 months before his death, in his late 60’s.

At the end of the concert, they play a medley of songs Vinicius co-wrote with prolific Brazilian musician, Baden Powell: Berimbau, Consolacao and Canto de Ossanha.

*********************************************************************
As a vocalist, I’ve always found it interesting how different genres of music favour and promote different types of voices and vocal styles. For example, the way in which Indian music is sung, versus the way Brazilian music is sung. Then there’s the operatic genre, which itself has subsections with distinctly different vocal approaches – think Italian versus German opera. Even Indian music, about which I’m basically ignorant, is not homogenous, in much the same way their national food has regional variations. I remember listening to a Brazilian student playing guitar and singing to me, at the last language school I worked at, and marveling at how his voice had all the cadences one always hears in Brazilian music – it struck me that that was the style in which that music is always sung. If you think of other genres of music, as well, like Country and Western or R&B, there are distinct styles of singing that seem to be genre-specific. Sometimes I think that inter-genre duets stretch things a bit, like Pavarotti and Bryan Adams – in my opinion, one of them is going to come off second best, depending on who’s listening and by whose standards they’re being judged.

I once auditioned for a rock band, and they asked me to sing anything. I sang “Words”, by the Bee Gees, and they said I sounded too jazzy. They asked me to name some of the songs I usually sang, and then nodded their heads at each other, while I mentioned a few titles, saying, “Jazz”, like it was a disease I should’ve attempted to conceal!

The late Eva Cassidy – a singer whose work I love – is reputed to have avoided recording, to a large extent, because she hated the way record labels wanted to pigeon-hole her, tie her down to one genre. Most of her recorded work we’re able to enjoy today was released posthumously. This beautiful songbird died of cancer in her 30’s. I should find out more about her life.

Like her, I have a problem being asked to describe or define my music. Yes, I have a folk/jazz/blues style, but every now and then, my mentor says my chords to a particular song I’ve written are “gospel” chords, like that’s a separate category. When I’m planning a concert, as I am now, and I’m busy selecting my originals for the show, I write down the titles, the keys, as well as they styles, and then I plan the programme, making sure we don’t play two consecutive songs in the same rhythm or key. But every now and then I find a song that doesn’t fit neatly into any of the bossa/samba/ballad/blues/folk categories, and I start to wonder why the hell I even have to categorise them.

Sting once said, in a recorded interview, that all his songs were like one song that he was spending his life writing. Hectic! I’m fascinated by Sting. Not because he’s married to someone called Trudie, but because he lives in a castle, with his own wing into which he retreats when he’s in songwriting mode, coming out only when he’s ready to. I’m not sure many musicians’ partners would be as accommodating as his. Then again, I’ve always suspected that periodic separation was the key to keeping a relationship alive. In Sting’s case, though, it’s probably that, PLUS the Tantric yoga they do together, which I believe has a lot going for it.

But that’s another story!

Within My Silence

2011-08-14T17:50:00.002+02:00

Picture: My sister, Wendy, my mom and I. Christmas Day, 2010, at a family gathering at my cousin Pat's house.

Written: Friday 12 August 2011

Musician Johnny Clegg is being interviewed on Cape Talk Radio, by Aden Thomas. His brand new album, “Human”, is being released today. Fantastic! Also, he’s about to do a huge concert with musicians from his various bands over the years: Juluka, Savuka and The Johnny Clegg Band. This man is a national treasure – I’m sure every South African above a certain age feels a sense of patriotism, as well as a deep sense of where we’ve come from, when listening to his songs, many of which are firmly stuck in our brains, whether we bought his albums or not. Interesting to hear him talk about some of his songs having been banned in our country, in years gone by. I’m glad my children are growing up in post-apartheid South Africa – I sincerely hope they grow into adults in a South Africa they’d be proud to leave as a legacy for their own children, one day.

I’ve been wanting to write for the past two days, but have been unable to, for reasons I’m about to explain. One thing I know about myself is this: I HAVE TO WRITE! If two consecutive days go by without my having written, I start to feel miserable, unsatisfied, like I’m losing my mojo. Especially when I’ve had interesting experiences, I crave solo time to sit and record my impressions. The other day, I came home, set up the laptop, and set my alarm for thirty minutes later, determined to get my needs met within the limitations of the day. Three lines into my first paragraph, my mom came in and started chatting. I knew I had a busy day ahead, so I carried on typing, intent on getting the catharsis I knew writing would bring me, glancing up at her occasionally. Two lines later, I stopped typing, knowing she’d think it rude, and listened attentively. When my alarm went off, I saved what I’d written, packed up the laptop and told her I had to leave for an appointment. Aware that I had appointments until much later that night, I consoled myself that the next day would have a slot where I could spend time alone, writing.

The next day, I got up early and took my children to school. Came home, fetched some documents I needed, and made my way to a local high school, to meet my first student, as part of my temporary job as a Practice Teaching Supervisor for UWC (University of the Western Cape). Went to the school, did what I was required to do (really impressed and inspired by him and his obvious passion for teaching), then came home, hungry to sit down and write. Pulled into the driveway, saw my back door was open - hoped it was my mom, and not a burglar – and went inside, suspecting that my plans were once again not going to work out. Come to think of it, had it been a burglar, I may very well have been typing shortly after having scared him off, but as it turned out, it was my mom, with all the good intentions that make her the well-loved soul she is, doing my housework because she wants to help me. It’s very hard for me to explain to my mom that I have my own rhythm with housework, and that as a single parent running a home, I love the fact that I can do what I like, when I like, and that there’s something liberating about just having that choice. Like my mom, I’m fiercely independent, and I like to do my own thing. Like my mom, I don’t like people to do for me what I can do for myself.

What is it about us, even as adults, that makes it so hard to clarify certain things with our parents? It extends to so many facets of life. Especially when it comes to our achievements in a field of interest that we share with a parent, why do we automatically dumb down or go into hibernation? My son, all of 16 years of age, has been a serious writer for a few years. I told him long ago, “You’re not going to be a writer one day, you ARE a writer.” I’ve never encountered anyone as passionate about writing as he. He writes fiction, chapters and chapters. He also writes science fiction. He spends hours planning his plots, making notes about his characters and how they’ll develop, talks to us in great detail about his latest ideas, sometimes sits up way past his bedtime, typing, because he urgently wants to write the next chapter while he’s fired up. But here’s the thing – he never lets ME read his stories! He writes songs, but never lets ME read his lyrics. Whenever I ask him, he says they’re not ready yet. But I know that his band practices his compositions, and that his sister sometimes does the vocals! But never at MY house!

It’s like two days ago, when I went to a memorial service for Harold Enus, the dad of a very dear friend, Anton, whom I met in Durban in 1968 and with whom I’ve been friends ever since. (Anton paid tribute to his dad in what was arguably the most eloquent eulogy I have ever heard. A gifted wordsmith, he managed to say a lot in a relatively short time, and I could see it wasn’t easy to talk about his dad, someone he loved so much, in the past tense. My heart swelled with pride that my friend had the strength and composure to do what he did that day.) My mom and I shared a pew leaflet, and when we had to sing the hymns, I realized that this would be no mean feat for me – my mom is a retired opera singer, someone with years of vocal training, someone who’s sung entire operas on stage, and who, at age 81, still lives a frighteningly healthy lifestyle and regularly does her vocal exercises, keeping herself in peak vocal condition. I opened my mouth to sing. I’m sure I was singing, but believe me, I couldn’t hear myself. It’s like when you’re shouting at a sports stadium with everyone else around you shouting at the same time. You know you’re putting your voice out there, but you might as well keep quiet, because everyone else’s sound is declaring yours null and void. My mother is also a trained choir singer, so she follows all those nit-picky little rules – she breathes only where there are commas! So if there’s a run-on line, she plans her phrasing so that she can sing two lines with the same breath! Do you know how much pressure that is for me?!!!

And so, probably for all the same skewed reasons my son doesn’t let me read his stories and my daughter doesn’t sing in my presence, I decided there’s no way in hell I could do it; one hymn after the other, I kept quiet, a combination of knowing one’s limitations and that ubiquitous, yet indefinable, parent-child thing.

Having said as much, I hasten to add: the sound she produces, like an ongoing soundtrack to my life, is flawless and sublime. I took the opportunity my silence afforded me to tune into the purity and serenity she unknowingly emits, profoundly struck by, and appreciative of, her powerful voice, her gift from the universe, her gift to the world, and her gift to her descendants.

Biography of Trudy Rushin, updated June 2011

2011-08-09T16:55:00.005+02:00

Picture: Taken at Baran's in Dec 2009, by Lavonne Bosman.

Trudy’s passion has always been music. As a child she took piano lessons, and at high school, taught herself to play the guitar - within a year, she had started composing songs. At college, she took classical guitar lessons with the late Neefa Van Der Schyff (early 1980’s), and a few years later enrolled at Jazz Workshop, where she worked with Alistair Andrews and later, Alvin Dyers, discovering her deep love for jazz.

She honed her natural singing talent, taking classical lessons from her mother, opera singer, May Abrahamse (Eoan Group Voice Production Department), and jazz lessons from Sandra Harman (Jazz Workshop), over a period of six years. She also explored aspects of vocal jazz with the legendary Merton Barrow, jazz pianist and owner of Jazz Workshop Music School. She joined his 6-piece vocal ensemble, learning intricate arrangements of jazz standards.

Her first stint at professional music was with highly-talented Cape Town musician, Eddie Petersen. Their duo, “Flipside”, performed at restaurants and private functions, using a combination of live and sampled sounds (1989-1990). After that, she worked as a vocalist with a 9-piece band, “Deadline”, a 5-piece band, “Just Us”, and a trio, “Splash”. In 1993, she did a demo recording of four cover versions with Splash.

In 1997, when she had the opportunity to record some of her own material, she turned to Merton Barrow to assist her with the finer points of the arrangements. The band she chose for that demo recording consisted of: Merton Barrow (keyboards), Alvin Dyers (guitar), Charles Lazar (electric and double bass), Denver Ferness (drums) and Jeff Geffen (husband) on percussion. Shortly after recording the 4-song demo, called “At Last”, she performed with the same band at the 1998 Jazzathon, at the V &A Waterfront.

After the Jazzathon, she dropped off the performing scene for a few years, turning her attention to her family life. At the end of 2000, her marriage to drummer Jeff Geffen ended, and she rediscovered her songwriting passion, composing over twenty songs in the first two years after her divorce.

In March 2003, she returned to the performing world by forming a duo with guitarist, Keith Tabisher, a high school friend. In December 2003, they played at the Adderley Street Night Market, and in February 2004, were joined by Donald Gain, a double bassist. They called their trio “Jazz, etc.” and performed cover versions of jazz standards, folk, pop and South African music. Trudy found it exciting adding some of her originals to their repertoire. They did a 5-month stint at Off Moroka, a restaurant in Adderley Street. After extensive restaurant and other work, the trio reverted to the original duo in September 2006, keeping the name.

In November 2005, through her collaboration with fledgling record label, Dala Flat Music, she did a three-concert series, with multi-instrumentalist, Hilton Schilder, at 38 Special, an alternative art gallery in Buitenkant Street, in the city centre. The series was called Time With Trudy, and was her first venture into concerts exclusively showcasing her original work.

In July 2006, after having done two demo recordings (10 songs each, in 2004 and 2005) with Dala Flat Music, she went into the studio with them, with musicians Hilton Schilder (piano and other instruments) and Eldred Schilder (double bass), to record her debut original album. Various setbacks saw the project grind to a halt after the initial tracks for 16 of her songs had been laid. Some of the recording was done at the SABC studios in Sea Point, and the rest at Audio Lounge, the studio of renowned sound engineer, Dave Subkleve. The dream of completing that album is an unquenchable fire inside of her.

In September 2006, she did another concert of original songs, at Silvertree Restaurant, as part of the Kirstenbosch Winter Concert Series. This time, she was accompanied by Keith Tabisher and Hilton Schilder.

Some other venues performed at, over the years:
Arabella Hotel, Foreshore
Spier Village Hotel, Stellenbosch
Silvermist, Constantia Nek
The helipad (helicopter landing area) at Granger Bay
Strandloper Restaurant (on the beach), Langebaan, West Coast
Mugg n Bean Cavendish, Constantia Village and Paddocks
Fogeys, Muizenberg
Habanero’s, Kalk Bay
Café Paradiso, Gardens
Nassau Hall, Newlands
District 6 Museum

A new, exciting phase of her musical journey began in 2008, when she went back to Jazz Workshop to continue guitar lessons, because in August that year she changed teachers, and this was when she first encountered jazz guitarist and music educator, Wayne Bosch, who not only exposed her to more advanced features of playing the guitar, but taught her to analyse her compositions critically, opening up a whole world of musical knowledge to her. She attributes her love for the blues to his influence on her.

In February 2009, she did her first gig with Wayne, in a trio with bassist Shaun Johannes. In July, she and Bosch landed a weekly gig at Food Lover’s Market, a restaurant in central Claremont, which continued for 14 months. In that time, their partnership grew into The Rushin-Bosch Duo, with their focus set on expanding their repertoire and refining their sound.

In September that year she met up with pianist Onyx Phillips and bassist Bernie Lawrence, and performed with them at the Table Bay Hotel, in the V & A Waterfront.

In December, she and Wayne did a concert, “Music Inside Of Me”, featuring her compositions, at Baran’s Theatre Restaurant, on Greenmarket Square. For this concert, Trudy chose to work once again with Charles Lazar on double bass, and took the opportunity to introduce her son, Nick Geffen, 14 years old at the time, on drums. André Manuel, of Dala Flat Music, recorded the concert.

She did a second concert of originals at Baran’s, also entitled “Music Inside Of Me”, this time in March 2010, with Wayne and Charles, which was once again recorded by André. In April that year, she held a fundraising concert for Haiti earthquake survivors in Cape Town’s St George’s Cathedral, featuring a number of poets and musicians. She and Wayne performed two original songs, and their slot was videotaped by Colombian documentary producer, Angela Ramirez.

When Wayne hosted a Guitar Workshop in August 2010, educating and inspiring musicians in the audience on techniques of accompaniment and improvisation, Trudy provided the vocals for his demonstration of different approaches to accompaniment. This workshop was also videotaped.

In September, they played a weekly gig, at Café Adelphi, in Sea Point. That same month, they performed at a Heritage Day concert, as part of NGO Week, as well as at a Heritage Launch at Harold Cressy High School, in Gardens, Cape Town.

December 2010 found her back at Baran’s, doing her third concert of originals there, with three other artists featured in the first half: Diana Ferrus (poet), Megan Francis (vocalist) and Peter LaVey (emerging singer-songwriter). This time, she and Wayne, by now a well-oiled duo, performed one set of her compositions.

The 5-star Myoga Restaurant, in the Vineyard Hotel, Newlands, was where she did gigs on New Year’s Eve, with Wayne in 2009 and with guitarist Rudi Byrnes in 2010. In November 2010 and January 2011, she and Keith Tabisher performed at Neethlingshof Wine Farm in Stellenbosch; they also did a function at Crystal Towers Hotel (Century City) in January.

Pursuing her dream, Trudy recorded one of her songs, a samba called, “I’m So Happy Today”, at Little River Studio, in January 2011, accompanied by Wayne Bosch (guitar) and Tony Paco (percussion). A few days later, she uploaded it onto the internet, putting her original material out in cyberspace for the first time. Within a week, her song was played on regional radio (Cape Town’s Heart Radio), and two weeks later, a national station (Radio 2000) gave the song airplay. She is serious about recording a full album of originals and is busy exploring ways to fund the project.

At the end of January, she spent time in Stellenbosch with a group of Luckhoff High School learners, at their choir camp, speaking to them about the role of music in her life, and playing some of her originals. She met up with the young band, Cappuccino (linked to Stellenzicht High School), at the camp, as well.

In February 2011, she accepted an offer to do a weekly solo gig at Don Pedro Restaurant in Woodstock, where she enjoyed a 14-week season, making her mark as a singer-songwriter at this ‘Bohemian’ venue, frequented by artists from various disciplines.

The Rushin-Bosch Duo was hired for a weekly gig at Myoga Restaurant in March, and another one at Doppio Zero (Claremont) in April.

Trudy thoroughly enjoys performing, in collaboration with other musicians, but also as a soloist, singing her own songs. She writes about things that affect her in everyday life, exploring both dark and light emotions. Her songs often have more than just a hint of humour, and audiences respond well to the range of issues and emotions she sings about. Throughout the different stages of her adult life so far, she has found songwriting cathartic, like journalling to music. It took many years before she felt brave enough to play her originals in public, but once she started, she was shocked at the reception her songs got, especially from women, many of whom related strongly to the lyrics. Her love of Latin rhythms shows in her compositions, many of which have samba and bossa nova feels.

Both a realist and a dreamer, she enjoys immersing herself in activities that feed both of these aspects of her personality. A philosophical observer of life, she is also passionate about empowering young and old South Africans, especially people who were raised to feel invisible under the apartheid system. She’s passionate about women finding their voices and speaking out against all forms of abuse. She’s passionate about truth and freedom, both individual and collective. Acutely aware of how precious life is, she believes fiercely in claiming happiness and power in the present. In her songs, it’s clear that she celebrates life and love, personal power and freedom.

She believes in the healing, restorative power of music, and regularly does sing-alongs with community and church groups, focusing on senior citizens.

Blessed with the ability to function well as both a left and right–brain thinker, Trudy prefers managing her own music career, making time for the behind-the-scenes aspects of the industry, doing the administrative tasks and marketing herself. This is consistent with her belief that, if you want things to happen, you have to go out there and make them happen.

Work:
After 25 years in Education and Edu-tourism, with music as her part-time occupation, she is currently self-employed, working with her two passions, Music and English:

Music: Live performances (voice, guitar) in solo or duo format; guitar lessons to adults and children; sing-alongs with groups of people, particularly seniors.

English: Various forms of work include facilitating discussion groups and workshops, as well as proofreading, editing and report writing.

At home: Homemaker, amateur gardener, mother to Nicholas (16) and Summer (12).

Favourite pastimes: Spending time with the important people in her life, playing guitar and singing, writing songs, jamming with other musicians, swimming, walking briskly with her best friend, watching live performances, reading, journalling, blogging, walking in nature, sending and receiving e-mails, online social networking, surfing the internet, watching movies with strong female characters, taking photos, looking at photos, soaking in a candle-lit bubble-bath, and eating anything containing chocolate!

To listen to demo on the internet, go to:
http://soundcloud.com/trudy-rushin/im-so-happy-today-mp3-3

Teaching guitar lessons

2011-08-05T18:35:00.003+02:00

Picture: Taken at a duo gig at Food Lover's Market, early in 2010.

This week has had very good energy. In so many ways, life feels different, in a positive, exciting way. I’ve managed to tie up some loose ends, and am closer than ever to achieving some of my goals. Of course, having the October concert as a project to occupy my mind and time is really energizing. This week it’s rained once or twice, so I stayed indoors more than usual and achieved things on the home base that I don’t normally, when I’m out and about. Baby steps, but they all contribute towards making the bigger picture of my life feel like it’s taking shape, heading in the right direction.

Something I’ve accepted about myself is that I thrive on being busy. I actually like working, as long as it’s fulfilling, I feel I’m making a difference, and – this seems to be the key ingredient – I have a lot of autonomy. Teaching guitar lessons satisfies all of those criteria. I love managing my own schedule and planning my days in a way that allows me to meet my family’s needs, as well. I like sourcing the students, which I do through my networks, those of my friends, as well as advertising to the public at large. I love preparing my lessons, drawing up the worksheets, finding appropriate songs and I even like the administrative side of things, keeping my files organised (Virgo!) and updating the records of my students’ progress. Because I like to keep things simple, I’ve tweaked my financial record keeping system until it’s made sense to me, and I now give my students monthly statements that look quite professional.

But most of all, I absolutely LOVE teaching people to play the guitar! Having found something that I love doing, which can earn me money, is a huge thing in my life, and something which has filled my heart with hope. In my case, I’m lucky to have not one, but TWO things I love doing, which can generate an income: live performances and teaching guitar lessons. This year I’ve learnt how hard it is to get gigs, especially at restaurants, during winter. Restaurant owners trim their overheads during the colder months, for survival. One of the restaurants I sang at a few months ago has since closed down – business was just too bad. I need to work out a way to ensure I maximize my gig prospects in the warmer months and keep the guitar lessons going throughout the year, because they would be my main source of income during winter.

Having established that I enjoy teaching people to play the guitar so much, and that my students all seem to be enjoying their lessons, I now have to set my sights on the way forward. I have fourteen active students, three of which I teach privately, with the rest in groups. I now need to increase my number of students. Adding 20 more students is my current goal. With a certain combination of private and group lessons, that should earn me enough to get through the month with, shall we say, dignity. It would mean that, finally, I wouldn’t have to borrow from anyone to meet the demands of life.

I prefer to work with absolute beginners, because I like to teach them before they’ve got into bad habits, especially with posture and hand position. I’ve worked out a system that’s logical and easy to follow, and as long as the student practices, he or she WILL learn every week and WILL be playing a song within the first three to four lessons. I do teach some people who can already play, but I always do a free assessment session with them, to establish if we’d be a good match. I have to find out if they want to learn the style of playing that I teach, and if I’m the right person for them – it might be necessary for me to refer them to someone else. I always tell my students, I can teach them everything I know, and after that they need to progress to another teacher, for more advanced lessons. Because I’ve been playing for 33 years, I think there’s quite a bit I can teach people!

Something that I make a point of, in my lessons, is that I hardly ever play my guitar. Most times, my guitar comes out only when we’re tuning, at the beginning of the lesson, then stays in its case for the rest of the lesson. The student handles his or her guitar for the entire lesson, utilizing the full lesson time to work on acquiring the skill. I’ve had lessons, myself, where I’ve just sat and observed while my teacher demonstrated. While this is sometimes necessary, I keep it to an absolute minimum, because I know how disempowering it feels and I believe that you have to learn physical skills by DOING. Sometimes, for different reasons, students don’t find time to practise between lessons. While this is not ideal, it happens, and it used to happen to me, too. If you have a job, you run a home and take care of a family, it’s easy for a week to go by without your having found time to practise your guitar playing. Even more reason for you to play your guitar for the full lesson time.

I emphasise to students that they should never cancel a lesson because they haven’t practised – it’s like going off your diet after a bad day/week. Playing the guitar is a skill that develops over time, and requires commitment. This includes accepting that you’ll have weeks where you won’t have practiced as much as you’d planned to. It’s the same principle that applies to so many other things in life, and sometimes we need a physical example to learn this life lesson: when you experience any form of adversity or failure, the song says: “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again.”

When I was asked, as a little girl, what I wanted to be when I grew up, I apparently had only two answers, ever: a mother, and a teacher. All these years later, I can say that life has indeed given me my heart’s desire – two of my greatest passions are being a mother, and teaching. Now I need to complete the story, by being the best mother I can be, and developing the professional passion into a successful enterprise, one that also addresses another goal of mine – to make a difference in the lives of previously-disadvantaged people, in post-apartheid South Africa.

I have my work cut out for me. It feels like it’s taken me almost a year to re-discover what I’ve known all along I should be dedicating my life to.

But now I know.

Phew!

So far, so good

2011-08-02T19:30:00.001+02:00

I’m normally an extremely patient person, but there are some things in my life right now that stretch my patience so far, I sometimes wonder how much elasticity is left! Breathe in…… breathe out…..

But, on to brighter news!

CONCERT UPDATE:
Today I’m delighted to announce the line-up for my concert on Friday, 7 October:
Wayne Bosch (electric guitar)
Errol Dyers (acoustic guitar)
Hilton Schilder (piano)
Charles Lazar (double bass)
Tony Paco (percussion)

This is such an exciting group of musicians, and I’m over the moon that they’re all on board. I have worked extensively with Wayne, quite a bit with Hilton, a few times with Charles, done two impromptu sets with Errol and worked with Tony on the recording of one of my songs. One thing I can say, though, is that all of them are people I really like, and people whose energy blends well with mine.

There’s a lot to do, both musically and otherwise. One of the next things I have to finalise is the programme for the night. We’re doing two sets of my original songs, and I’m busy with the selection. The next challenge is deciding which combinations of musicians will play on each song. I want to give the audience a memorable experience, so I plan to do as wide a range of styles as possible. There’ll be a bit of all the styles I use – folk, blues, ballads, bossanova and samba, as well as light rock. The thread that will weave the songs together will be their source, their origin – me. My songs tell stories. Each song has its own character - its own feel, its own rhythm, its own colour - and this will be heightened by the different sounds produced by the musicians. At the end of the concert, I hope the people in the audience will feel like they’ve been taken on a magic carpet ride. I know that, being on stage and performing my songs with this particular line-up, will feel that way for me.

Last night I had an exciting meeting with some good friends who’re helping me put the pieces of the puzzle together in a way that will produce a slick event, with all the different aspects covered more than adequately. It’s important for me to consult with more experienced people, to listen to their ideas and to grow my frames of reference.

I’m trying to decide on the name of the concert, and I’m tempted to use one of my song titles, as I’ve done in the past. This step is as important as deciding on the title of a book you’ve written, or the theme for decorating a house. Once I have sorted this out, I can discuss the concept with the designer, and he can start with the artwork for the tickets and the programmes. I wonder if musicians who are hired to play at concerts realize how much behind-the-scenes work gets done, and how much of a risk the producer takes. Those who’ve put on their own events would know.

After deciding on the songs and getting the charts ready, I have to set rehearsal dates. I have to believe that it won’t be that difficult to get 6 of us to the same place at the same time!

Some exciting ideas were shared last night, and I can’t wait to see the different plans fall into place. I fully understand that some things will be easier to achieve than others.

For now, though, I need to focus on getting over this bout of flu, practising my guitar playing until my voice is strong enough to practise singing, and keeping an eye on my checklists and timelines.

So far, so good!

Taking it personally

2011-07-27T11:02:00.002+02:00

Written on Monday 25 July 2011

Watching the disturbing video footage, on SATV news last week, of a Gauteng (a province in South Africa) school principal viciously and repeatedly beating a Grade 8 pupil with a piece of garden hosepipe raised a lot of emotions and memories in me. I became acutely aware of how experiences that we try to sweep under the carpet, file away until we can process them “properly” (if at all), can come back to us with even more ferocity, when triggered by something else.

I was taken back to my eighteen months spent teaching English and some other subjects at a nearby high school. I vividly recalled one particular day when I’d gone to the principal’s office, outraged after my class of Grade 8 pupils had complained about an assault by a teacher on one of their classmates. The teacher had thrown him to the floor, hit him with a walking stick and kicked him, shouting obscenities, in full view of every other child in the class! And then, having meted out this brutality, he’d proceeded to teach his lesson.

The principal listened to me, with a neutral but indulgent expression on his face that gave little indication of what his reaction would be. To his credit, I was further humoured to the point where the teacher was called in and the three of us had another meeting. Once again, I pointed out how inappropriate the teacher’s actions had been, how damaging and humiliating for the child and, of course, that it was illegal! I pointed out that the teacher could face a huge fine, at the very least, but that surely he was putting his future as an educator at risk. The teacher was asked to apologise to ME, but that was not the worst part: the principal’s last words to me were along these lines: “Please don’t make too much of this; today it’s Mr X, tomorrow it could be me.”

At that same school, a certain male teacher would boast, in the staffroom, about how he regularly held boys up against the wall and punched them with his fist. I would express my shock and disgust, and warn the teacher that it would take just ONE pupil to get his parents to take legal steps, for his career to be in jeopardy. He would laugh at me and say smugly, “Daai ouers VRA dan vir my ommie kinders to moer!” (Crude Afrikaans for: Those parents ASK me to hit their children!) So you have so-called ‘middle class’ teachers working at township schools, abusing children physically – and, by implication, psychologically – and capitalizing on the ignorance of many of the parents in those communities, when it comes to children’s rights and the overall provisions of our country’s constitution, with its strong human rights emphasis. I often wonder how – and if – those same teachers discipline their children at home, and how they’d react, were their own children to be on the receiving end of such brutality at school. But here’s the rub: most middle class teachers send their children to better schools, where there IS a culture of learning and there IS a human rights culture. Of course, this is everyone’s right. The continuing disparities in education in our country is a completely separate topic, meriting urgent scrutiny by government and other role players. I really wish teachers were as militant about education-related inequalities as they are (justifiably) about salary-related matters.

It breaks my heart to see fellow teachers, with whom I studied and protested, with whom I sat for weeks on end in mass meetings in the early 1980’s, boycotting lectures in solidarity with others engaged in the anti-apartheid struggle in our country, reduced to what so many of them have become. Every single child in our country deserves an excellent education, by dedicated teachers, teachers committed to lifelong learning, themselves, and teachers actively pursuing lifestyles that their charges would want to emulate.

I remember asking a colleague, when I was newly at that school, what he had done over the weekend. He said he’d sat in his garage. “Oh”, I said, “doing what?” “Drinking!” he said, as though I was stupid for not having known such an obvious thing! I bravely tried to steer the conversation towards sobriety. “What else did you do?” I asked, hoping he’d use the cue to redeem himself. Again he looked at me like I was a moron for not knowing what weekends were all about, and said, “Well, when the beers were finished, I went to buy more beers!” “Oh”, I said again, my optimism flagging, “and did you spend time with any of your friends?” “Ya, of course”, he said (by this time convinced there was definitely something wrong with me), “they came over later in the afternoon and brought a case of beer, so we cooled off in the garage.” I seriously deserve a medal for my belief in humankind, as once again I ventured, albeit a lot more feebly, “So, were you guys watching sport?” “No”, he said, visibly exasperated, “we were watching people walk past my house!”

I was hopelessly outclassed. How would I ever attain such enlightenment?

But the incident that the news footage brought to mind even more painfully was something I witnessed a few months ago. At the time, I intended writing to the local newspaper about it, but I never did. Today I want to write about it.

It was round midday one Saturday, and I was driving along the M3, a scenic route through the southern suburbs, to fetch my son at Jazz Workshop Music School. After passing Chart Farm, I followed the curve of the road and started my climb up the hill behind Wynberg Park. About 100 metres ahead of me, I saw a white vehicle (those family-type 4X4s) parked on the left verge of the road, with a man standing outside, doing what looked like knocking something inside the bonnet. As I got closer, I noticed that his arm movements were big and forceful, and thought I’d never seen anyone hit anything in an engine that hard before. When I got even closer, I realised that he was not knocking something in his engine, but that the side door had been slid open, he was holding a belt in his hand, and he was beating, viciously and mercilessly, shouting (in Afrikaans) like a maniac, a small person cowering inside. It was summertime, and I saw a lot of pink skin, so it must’ve been a child dressed in shorts and a t-shirt.

I was driving alone, and I was terrified. At least one other car’s occupants noticed the incident at about the same time, slowed down, like me, but then, like me, continued driving. Traumatised and confused, and feeling I’d let the victim down, I pulled off on the descending side of the hill, now in Edinburgh Drive, and waited for the vehicle to pass, taking out my notepad and pen to write down the vehicle registration number. A vehicle like the one I’d seen drove by a few minutes later, and I wrote down the number, but couldn’t make out whether it was the same person I’d seen earlier. And then a few more similar vehicles drove past and I decided that I’d lost my moment to do the right thing, and that handing in the wrong person’s number and falsely accusing someone could have serious consequences.

I continued driving to town, switched off the radio and thought about that poor child and what his/her life must be like, and how the rest of the day would be for him/her. I thought about that father and child pitching up at a family gathering, a few minutes later, and the child having to pretend that he/she was happy and carefree, as children are supposed to be. I cried and cried. I thought about all the other children in our city, our country, our continent and the world, who have to endure abuse of any kind at the hands of their ‘caregivers’. I thought about the audacity of the man, pulling his vehicle off the side of a busy public thoroughfare and whacking his child uncontrollably, no doubt acting out a script he’d grown up with. What does he do afterwards - put his belt back on, get behind the wheel and listen to the radio? Does he drive in silence, or is the child then subjected to his verbal abuse, his nagging, his ridicule, and his inevitable justification of his actions? The sickest one is, “I’m only doing this because I love you. Someday you’ll thank me for it.” I don’t think so. All that that child wants is revenge, and the hopelessness bleeds onto successive generations.

Someone told me the other day, when I was expressing an opinion about something, “You really need to stop taking everything so personally.”

I’ve never quite mastered the art of turning a blind eye to injustice.

Smattering

2011-07-27T10:19:00.003+02:00

Written on Saturday 9 July 2011, 09h00

Sitting at my favourite writing spot at home, squeezing in some writing before the day’s formal demands get hold of me.

Earlier, I was outside, breathing in the new day, when I decided to survey the new-morning glow of the back garden, where I’d done a full-body workout yesterday with a Weedeater. One truth, and only one, descended on me as I stood there: I’m a damned good songwriter! :-)

When it comes to gardening, I’m good at watering, planting the odd flop-proof plant (my garden’s full of Impatiens), sweeping up the leaves and taking photos of the mini-success stories unfolding around me. Other than that, and I say this with no disrespect to my friend who lent me his Weedeater (and shears!), I thoroughly enjoy being in and around my garden after someone else has done the back-breaking work. As soon as I have R200 that doesn’t need to feed my family, my car’s petrol tank or our electricity meter, I’ll PAY someone to clean up the whole place, both the front and back gardens.

Listening to a musician who inspires me in a way that I can only feel, but not adequately express in words – Djavan. He’s Brazilian, from Alagoas, and sings in Portuguese, a language I’m convinced I’m genetically connected to. I understand only a smattering (love that word!) of it, but it sets off something in me that’s hard to describe. NO other language does that to me. In March 2009, when I was in Sao Paulo, I got lost in the city on my very first day. I stood outside a shoe shop, where I was convinced my colleague had walked into and lost sight of her budget, and a few people came up to me and asked me questions, IN PORTUGUESE! I assumed they were asking for directions. It was quite funny, because by then I had learnt a few sentences I thought would come in handy, so I used the opportunity to say, as many times as I could, “Eu fala Ingles” (I speak English). They looked at me disbelievingly, not because the words rolled off my tongue, but because I looked like everyone around me! Funny how visiting that country affected me, my sense of who I am and of course, my love for Brazilian music, especially the bossanova and its close cousin, the samba.

Time to go. I think I’ll move into the rest of my day by showering with Djavan singing Estoria de Cantador.

Early stages of concert planning

2011-07-24T10:39:00.004+02:00

With about two and a half months to go to my concert (7 Oct), I have thus far secured my sound engineer, and contacted the three main musicians I want to work with. So far, only one has confirmed that he's both available and interested, and I'm waiting to hear from the other two. Once I've established the line-up, I'll proceed with my concept, because this event will showcase my original material using different sounds, different instruments, different energies combining on stage - quite a different approach to my previous concerts, which featured either a duo or trio for the whole show.

There's a lot that goes into putting on a concert, and I decided to opt for an October date, rather than September (my initial plan), so that I could do it as thoroughly as possible. Once I've confirmed all the important details, (especially the musicians), I'll start advertising. I have a timeline for all my steps, and definitely want the tickets to go on sale as from the beginning of September. My goal is to pre-sell all the tickets. The Nassau seats about 130, which is not an impossible number.

All my expenses have to be carried by me, personally, and earned back in ticket sales, but I would like to explore sponsorship of some kind. I'll need to get that ball rolling soon, as I want the ticket specs to be handed to the printers by the 24th of August, and I want the sponsors' names to be included.

It's funny - long before I even get to the drawing up of the programme, decide which songs to do and with which musician, I have to do so much else! Getting the charts finalised and copied also has to happen before we get to the rehearsal stage.

Right now I have a cold. It was looming for a while, and I thought I could escape it, but here it is - as debilitating as hell. Can't breathe through my nose, starting to look like Rudolph, and feeling lousy. Head hurts, throat hurts, chest hurts like mad, and I suspect my sense of humour will want to elude me for a while.

I'm actually going to a concert at the Nassau Hall tonight, to the monthly jazz concert put on by Cliff Wallis. Tonight it's pop-jazz singer-guitarist Richard Caesar in the first half and a more mainstream jazz band in the second. Should be quite a treat. Of course, I agreed to go before I caught this cold.

Sniff, sniff, sniff.

Concert News

2011-07-20T23:39:00.003+02:00

Picture by Lavonne Bosman: Charles Lazar, Wayne Bosch and I at Baran's in March 2010.

I’ve just secured the Nassau Hall, in Palmyra Road, Newlands, for a concert on Friday 7 October 2011. I’m SO excited, because I have fantastic plans for this one - which musicians I want to work with, and how I want this concert to be different from my others.

ORIGINAL CONCERTS TO DATE:
In November 2005, I did a three-concert series, called “TIME WITH TRUDY”, at a quaint art gallery in Buitenkant Street, Cape Town. On each night, I performed two sets of my own songs, accompanied by the magician himself, HILTON SCHILDER, on keyboards, melodica, guitar and some interesting Khoi instruments, including a bow. That series was organized by Dala Flat Music, a record label I’ve enjoyed a positive association with.

In December 2009, I did my next original concert, called “MUSIC INSIDE OF ME”, at Baran’s Kurdish Restaurant on the historic Greenmarket Square, in the centre of our beautiful city. Accompanying me were WAYNE BOSCH (guitar) and CHARLES LAZAR (double bass). As a novelty, and by way of giving him some exposure to the world of public performance, I featured my son, NICK GEFFEN (aged 14 at the time), on drums, on five of the items.

I followed this up with a second concert with the same name, at the same venue, in March 2010. Once again, I worked with Wayne and Charles. Both concerts were recorded by Andrè Manuel, of Dala Flat Music.

I’ve since put together a mini-CD, called “EXTRACTS”, of five songs recorded at the second concert:
1. My Favourite Time of Day (2007)
2. Lucy (2010)
3. Slide Across The Moon (2001)
4. Unafraid to Fall (2007)
5. Wendy Gave Me A Lavender Plant (2006)
Anyone interested in buying the CD should e-mail me at rushintrudy@yahoo.com.

My next concert, in September 2010, was also held at Baran’s, and this time I had other artists doing the first half. This concert was called “MUSIC AND WORDS”. The guest artists were singer-songwriter, PETER LAVEY, vocalist MEGAN FRANCIS and poet, DIANA FERRUS. I did a duo set of my originals with Wayne, and this time we included a few songs we hadn’t performed before. Unfortunately we didn’t record this concert.

So, now that I have a DATE and a VENUE for my next concert, I have my work cut out for me. There are always pros and cons to selecting dates, but I had to work with the availability of the venue, as well as my own time parameters. This date is in the week of the school holidays, so that could rule out some people. The main thing is, I have eleven weeks in which to put it all together. Yay - a lovely project to sink my teeth into! This fuels me.

All I can say is, watch this space…….!

Home

2011-07-20T23:28:00.002+02:00

Yesterday I went down to the internet café, after about a week, and found an inspirational (“Thought for the day”) e-mail from my best friend. The piece dealt, quite poetically, with the issue of hard times, the writer concluding by saying that, no matter what she’s going through, the one thing she promises herself is that, every single day, she will write.

In the same uncanny way the odd horoscope seems to tap into our circumstances directly, this piece felt like it was meant for me.

La Vem a Baiana, a samba sung by Jussara Silveira, playing on my laptop now – such a cool song! :-)

Back to the point - things have been really tough for me, financially, and I’ve come face to face with some of the difficulties many people in our country have to live with all the time. Some of the decisions I have to make, make me laugh at the irony and ridiculousness of it all, because I have to choose between equally important expenses, in order to make the money stretch. One of the main lessons this time of my life is reinforcing in me is to take an interest in people around me and to lend a hand where I can, because everywhere around us, people are in need. Even the regular “beggars” at my door know that, when I have, I give.

But here’s the point: at the end of every day, I write. With a pen. In a book. Old-school, as they say. I write whatever needs to come out. Sometimes I record the day’s events in point form, because I’m tired or don’t feel like writing a lot, but most of the time I write more reflectively, introspectively, exploring below-the-surface issues. I also write descriptively, and sometimes when I take my old journals out and read my entries, the descriptions take me right back to the events and I laugh at some of the strange things I’ve experienced over the years!

Writing has been my way of getting through all the difficult times of my life. I write because nothing else gives me the release that writing does. If I were to lose the use of my hands, I’d find some other way to put words down on paper or on a keyboard. Writing is such an intense part of my life, it’s far more intimate than a lover.

Much like my songwriting, my journalling is a form of narration, but also catharsis, with the former merely written more artistically.

Yesterday I listened to a recorded interview of John Cleese, British actor and comedian (star of, amongst others, Fawlty Towers, Monty Python and more recently, the movie, Spud) by Cape Talk Radio presenter, John Maythem. The most interesting thing Cleese said, in my opinion, was that the creative process was a spontaneous, emotional thing. He said we’re encouraged to be logical, to follow the rules, and that men, especially, found this a constant pressure in their lives, while women seemed to find it easier to be less logical and more emotional/spontaneous, and therefore were often more in touch with their creativity. This was in response to a question about how he and his fellow scriptwriters had come up with a particular skit. He started by saying that there were no rules or formulae, and that the creation of anything worked a lot more spontaneously, more randomly, starting with a spark of inspiration which could come from anywhere. As a songwriter who’s written about topics as diverse as love, divorce, abortion, friendship, infatuation and libido, I could most definitely relate to what he was saying!

This morning I got an sms from a friend who’d been on my mind a lot recently, and I was so excited, but also frustrated because I didn’t have airtime to reply. I felt myself veering towards brooding about what I didn’t have, so I willed myself in the opposite direction, focusing on what I did have: I decided that, as the one thing I had loads of was TIME, I should do something with my time that would put my feelings out into the universe. I put on about 45 minutes of my favourite music and danced, danced, danced! I danced to celebrate the beauty of friendship, the new day and LIFE, with all the potential it held for each one of us. Afterwards, I had a shower and put on a bright yellow T-shirt, because that’s how I’m feeling.

I’m a typical Capetonian – when the sun shines, I put on a T-shirt, and when it rains, I put on a pot of soup!

Listening to Melanie Scholtz’s album, “Connected”. Velvet voice, clever lyrics, great band (The Love Apples).

I’m often struck by how extremely disparate the different aspects of one’s life can be: yesterday, amidst all my unemployment-related difficulties, I used my last airtime to send an sms in response to a radio competition, and to my surprise (but not entirely, because I’d felt the success and experienced the future phone call when I sent off the sms – this is something that’s hard to explain, but I’ve always had it), I was one of the winners. Yay! I won two tickets to tonight’s premiere of the movie, The Bang Bang Club, courtesy of Cape Talk Radio. It’s in Brackenfell, and right now I have NO idea how to get there, but between now and then, I’ll have sorted out all the niggly details. Don’t you just love winning things?! I saw some footage from the movie on last night’s documentary tv programme, “3rd Degree”, and I now know what it’s about. I also know that it’s not easy viewing, definitely not escapist theatre, and that I’m probably going to be closing my eyes - and sometimes my ears - when it gets too hectic, but in the end, I will have had an experience that will have impacted on me in some way. Let’s face it, if the recent Pirates of the Caribbean could have impacted on me, then there’s no doubt that The Bang Bang Club will! :-)

Listening to Michel Petrucciani’s Live in Tokyo album. His composition, “Home”, is one of the most moving pieces of music I have in my entire (not huge) CD collection. Played superbly by himself on piano, Anthony Jackson on bass and Steve Gadd on drums, this hauntingly beautiful piece starts off with a single line melody on piano, played loosely, then grows into the trio doing a laid-back bossa, and moves into a swing, with lots of vibrant energy, completely different to the mellow beginning. At the end of the piece, they revert to the lead melody in a gentle bossa, with a splendid flourish of an ending, followed by the final notes on the high end of the piano. Stunning!

Time to go! So much has happened since I started writing. The rest of the day awaits!

My talk at the Women's Wellness Breakfast on Sat 2 July 2011

2011-07-19T12:04:00.004+02:00

IMPORTANT LESSONS I'VE LEARNT (AND AM STILL LEARNING!) ALONG MY JOURNEY TOWARDS LIVING MY AUTHENTIC LIFE

Many years ago, a wise woman said to me, “Live your truth, and the universe will support you.” That was about 10 years ago, but it was one of those things that took root inside of me, and subsequently became my philosophy.

Someone once asked me – and today I’d like to ask you - “If money were not an issue and failure not a possibility, what would you spend your life doing?”
In my case, there was no hesitation; my answer was, “Music.”
Knowing what you’d like your life to be about is just the beginning, but it’s a good start.

I’ve decided, because I am so passionate about the guitar, to use the six strings of the guitar to share with you some of the insights I’ve gained, over the past 9 months, during which I have been trying to support myself as a self-managing musician.

1st string: E – It adds an interesting aspect to whatever’s played, has a high pitch that can be quite irritating, is often the one that breaks under pressure. It’s nice to have it as part of the full set, but when you have to do without it, it’s actually possible to play your guitar just fine that way! From my perspective, having played the guitar for 33 years, this is the only string you can do without and play complete songs without being seriously compromised.
E = Everyone else’s expectations of us
I’ve come to understand how strong the messages are that others give us about ourselves – our parents, our siblings, other family members, our teachers, our colleagues, our friends and even our partners. The ones we were given repeatedly as children seem to stick like Super Glue. As adults, we tend to live our lives according to some script we were handed that we’d unconsciously been rehearsing for years.
One of the biggest challenges for me, in trying to live my truth, is seeing how many of my choices and patterns come from trying to live up to other people’s expectations of me. Acknowledging that they’re not always right for me, and accepting that I have a right to choose a different path, is both liberating and scary. It’s also important to be understand that dealing with this issue is not a moment, but an ongoing process.

2nd string: B – This one you can’t do without. In fact, the second string is a very good string for playing the melody line, for playing or taking the “lead”. It forms an essential part of most chords, and provides a clear treble sound that indicates the highest frequency or purest sound of the chord.
B = Believe in yourself (your judgement, your instincts, etc.)
Another aspect of this journey I’ve come face to face with is that it is a very personal thing and, if you want others to believe in you, you HAVE to believe in yourself. Once you’ve identified what is authentically YOURS – YOUR dream, YOUR truth, YOUR path, YOUR authentic self, call it what you like – you have to focus on it and go for it, despite what others say. Well-meaning people will give you all kinds of advice, often trying to dissuade you from your chosen course. It’s easy - especially when the people talking to you are assertive or persuasive, or are people you’ve listened to for years, having them question and override your decisions - to give others the benefit of the doubt and allow them to convince you that you should be doing something else. The people who don’t understand will label you stubborn or selfish, but you’ll soon figure out who you can and can’t share your ideas with. Practically everything that people say to us is a lot more about them than us. Stephen Covey, author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, says, “We see the world not as it is, but as we are”.

3rd string: G - this is the string that I have the most trouble with, the one that seems to slip out of tune the most. Whenever I pick up my guitar after it’s been in its case, this is the one I have to tune. At gigs, after the breaks, we check our tuning, and it’s always the 3rd one, the G-string, that needs to be brought back in line. I turn the tuning peg and listen to it, and once I’m satisfied that it’s where it’s supposed to be, I go ahead and play my guitar. But after a few songs, when I check the tuning, it’s lost its tautness, and I have to tighten it again. If I don’t, then everything I play will sound out of tune, wrong, unpleasant. To produce the sound I want, I have to take a few seconds and get the string to sound absolutely right. It’s something I’ve dealt with for a long time – might just be peculiar to my guitar, but this is the only one I’ve used for the past 14 years.
G = Guts (Courage)
This is an area I struggle with a lot, no matter how many times my plans work out, no matter how much experience I gain along the way. Even though I know I’ve been a musician for so long, of course I can do it, I still have to keep psyching myself up to go out there and do it. Marketing oneself takes a lot of guts, especially when you do cold, face-to-face marketing, where rejection could be immediate and ruthless. I have times when my courage is low and other times when I feel I could conquer the world. Having a close circle of people who support your journey, through thick and thin, helps when the hard work does not automatically translate into success.
When you’re putting yourself out there, if you’re not doing so believing in yourself and being courageous, it will come out that way, and you diminish your credibility, your ability to inspire confidence in people.

4th string: D - This string is the one that visibly perishes the fastest. If you’ve used a guitar for a while and not changed its strings, you’ll see that the 4th string looks worn out and needs replacing. The reason is that this string is also played in most chords and even though it’s one of the three bass strings, it is the thinnest of the three and takes a lot of strain. Often, replacing just this one can make the guitar sound like you’ve replaced the whole set of strings.
D = Dream
For me, as for many people, my main dream has been the same for many years – to be “a successful, full-time musician, living my passion and living my truth”. Over the years, I had a day job as a teacher and then as a manager, and that kept the music side of my life a part-time, semi-professional hobby. I’d drive to work, day after day, going over this affirmation and others, doing visualizations about my dream. But some days I’d forget, I’d be too busy, or there’d be so many other demands on me, that the dream would start to perish. Sometimes we put our dreams away, and, like a wedding dress worn decades ago, we take them out every now and then, look at them and wonder….. And then I was retrenched, and I had nothing standing in the way of my dream. And yet, it wasn’t that easy. I’ve always had a dream, and it’s very important to have a dream. If you’re not sure what yours is, think about my first question. The dream is the start. I can’t imagine not having goals or dreams to work towards.

5th string: A - This string is not quite the biggest or the deepest of the 6, but it’s very, very important – the 5th and 6th strings are like two lotto winners, equally important, sharing the jackpot. These two strings provide the bass notes to your chords, rooting them. Without them on your guitar, you’ll have a serious problem – you’d probably have to cancel your gig or borrow someone else’s guitar, if you don’t have spares.
A = Action
It’s all very well to have a dream and to believe in it, but without the necessary action, that’s all you’ll have – your dream. I read in a newspaper article in January, “A dream is a goal without a plan.” It was a quotation by Antoine de Saint Exupery, the writer of The Little Prince.
I’m very good at making detailed lists, planning a course of action, but my plans often remain on paper – works of fiction. I’ve learnt that when I apply myself, when I take action, I achieve success, when I don’t, I stagnate.
But more than that, I’ve learnt that after that initial step, I need to do the next step and the next step and the next step. FOLLOW UP & THEN FOLLOW UP & THEN FOLLOW UP…
Sometimes the opportunities are there, just waiting for us to follow up with ONE more action step.

6th string: E - The deepest of the 6 strings, the one that gives most chords their root, their frame of reference, their point of departure. The bass line can be played alone, moving a piece of music in a particular direction. Again, you might as well cancel your gig if you don’t have a 6th string. Everything you play will sound like it’s lacking something, like there’s a vacuum of sorts. The sound produced by this string drives the piece of music, giving it its underlying identity.
E = Energy
At the root of everything on this journey, is your energy. This is something that can’t be faked. There are different aspects to energy, but basically I’m talking about things like physical, intellectual, psychological and emotional energy. When your energy’s right, you’re most likely to succeed. Each of us knows when we’re feeling on top of things, when our energy’s “on”, and we all know when we’re not! Identifying the things and people that drain our energy - and then doing something about it - is another challenge for us. Before you embark on your journey, especially the more public aspects (like advertising, promoting, etc.), make sure your personal ENERGY is good and healthy, in order to give others the right message and to predispose yourself to succeed.

Our energy is what makes us unique. We owe it to ourselves to surround ourselves with people, things and activities that fuel us, that give us good energy, and to consciously reduce and (if possible) eliminate the energy drainers.

I’d like to conclude with the question I began with: If money were not an issue and failure not a possibility, what would you spend your life doing?

*********************************************************************
I started my presentation with one of my original songs, “Joe”, a tongue-in-cheek song about a man who caught my attention in a crowd. It’s a blues, and is quite humorous. At the end of my presentation, I gave my latest song, “Today I opened my eyes”, its first public audience. It’s a ballad I wrote in June this year. It starts out sadly and bleakly, then moves steadily towards a very optimistic, hopeful conclusion.

After the event, a few women came to chat to me, and the consistent feedback was that they really liked my lyrics, and would’ve liked to have heard more of my songs. One woman said she liked the fact that my songs told stories.

The organizer, Inez Woods, had afforded me a wonderful opportunity to promote my music, so everyone received a demo CD with my song, “I’m So Happy Today” in their goody bags. To my delight, during my Q&A session after my presentation, quite a few people expressed disappointment that there was only one song on the CD.

I really need to get that official debut CD recorded and released!

*********************************************************************

Gadget-wielding ego-blogger

2011-07-08T13:50:00.005+02:00

GADGET-WIELDING MOI
Tomorrow my hands and forearms are going to be very sore, in fact I can already feel the stiffness setting in. The reason is that I spent the morning gripping and manipulating something for an extended period of time. It’s something I’d considered for a while, but kept putting off, deferring to other tried and tested methods, like getting someone else to do it for me, but today the offer was made yet again and I decided, what the hell, I’d give it a bash.

What exactly am I talking about? Yes, you’ve guessed it – for the first time in my life I used a Weedeater! My whole backyard is now freshly cut, with unmistakable signs that the gadget used was wielded by a novice. It reminds me of when I used to cut my children’s hair, when they were toddlers. I’d stare in disbelief at the visibly skew fringes and wonder how I could justify keeping them indoors for a month, while the hair grew out.

EGO-BLOGGING
I discovered yesterday just how much of one’s (my) ego is involved in this whole blogging business; I checked my blog stats, and I realised that what I’d been interpreting as the number of times my blog had been read was in fact the number of times my profile had been viewed. That figure was 816. And here’s where the ego comes in – I beamed with joy when the number of blog reads came up as 3,363! The number of reads for last week alone was 253. Yes! That’s more like it! (I found it very interesting that the blog post with the highest number of reads was the one on Westerford High School’s 2009 prizegiving event.)

“Interesting” coming face to face with one’s fragile ego. This is not something I can escape or deny, so I’ve learnt to live with it and channel it. Let’s face it, everyone likes to feel noticed, acknowledged. That dynamic is an intrinsic part of being a performer, I’d say. In fact, performing is a very risky way to go about getting your strokes, because your audience is not always going to love what you’re doing. So many lessons I’ve learnt along the way I could only have learnt by experiencing. Every single time I prepare for a performance, I do some version of psyching myself for it, and I’m sure this is something I share with most other performers.

SING-ALONG AT OLD AGE HOME
Two days ago I went down to Douglas Murray Home for the Aged, about 5km from where I live, and did a sing-along with the residents. A friend had asked me to visit someone there on his behalf and sing to her, but that didn’t feel right to me, so I arranged with the Home’s management to sing to everyone, at a time that fitted in with their routine. While I was getting ready, I decided that doing a sing-along would make much more sense, which was what I did. There were some people who chose not to take books, for one reason or the other, but the general response was fantastic! A few of the residents are amputees, so they’re wheelchair-bound, and others just stayed in their comfy chairs (afternoon ‘chill’ time) all the time. This meant that no-one came up to sing through the mic, and I had to lead the singing for the entire session. But did they sing! Wow! I hadn’t done a sing-along in quite a while, and it was exciting to unearth my books, go along to a group of seniors, and just do it. Indescribably satisfying! I love singing and playing my guitar, people in institutions often have lifestyles that are bereft of pleasure and levity, music (I sincerely believe) is the ultimate universal language, so what an obvious thing to do. But the most important ingredient here is that I don’t sing TO them – it’s an inclusive activity, with them calling out their favourite songs from the index, and everyone singing together. I have no words for how that makes me feel.

This is not about leaving a gig feeling I sang well or got paid well – this is something else. My journey as a musician has led me to collaborate with people who GET this side of me. For many years, guitarist Keith Tabisher and I have gone to different churches and done these sing-alongs at fundraisers or Christmas lunches, mainly with seniors. We’ve also done a few sing-alongs at people’s houses, at birthday parties, etc. I put the first book together in 1997, and have since come up with three more, but the hot favourite is “the purple book”. We’ve done some sing-alongs where we’ve used two books, then we’d have people requesting, for example, “Number 30 in the yellow book”.

But this week’s visit and sing-along touched my heart deeply. Seeing people in their twilight years singing old songs (mostly love songs) with expressions on their faces that tell their own stories, brought a lump to my throat a few times. Occasionally, someone would say out loud, “This song was playing when my husband proposed to me” or “My late husband loved this song”, and I was made acutely aware of how raw and unbounded certain things are under certain circumstances. I’ve always been fascinated by group dynamics.

And so, with renewed belief in music as the ultimate stress reliever, happiness bringer and bridge builder, drawing people closer, regardless of age, class, religious affiliation or any other artificial barrier that negates our similarities, I end this post with a commitment to do at least a monthly sing-along, going to various places where old people live together in institutions throughout my city.

Maybe I should seriously consider reprinting the books in large print.

The ultimate full stop?

2011-07-04T13:05:00.002+02:00

Sunday 3 July 2011

Picture: I took this about two weeks ago, on a rainy day. Cape Town winter in all its glory. Brrr!

Why do I blog? Why do I enjoy it so much, and why do I look forward to recording my thoughts in this way? I’m not quite sure, but I think it has to do with a number of things – firstly, I enjoy writing, playing with words. Secondly, I now know that people enjoy reading what I write. Thirdly, and here’s the rub, I suspect, it’s a form of putting down, for posterity, a side of myself that I’d like to leave behind. Is this bordering on the morbid? I don’t think so. Death is as much a part of life as the common cold – in fact, for anyone lucky enough to escape the latter, here’s a newsflash: you’re not going to be that fortunate with the former! Death is the ultimate full stop – or is it? Depends on your view on what happens afterwards.

Someone I know chose to end his life, exactly one week ago, and his memorial service was held yesterday. Since I heard the news, his family have been on my mind: his wife, his daughters - who, in recent months, I’ve come to know and become fond of - and his family of origin, not to mention all the other people whose lives he touched in some way.

I think the details of someone’s death shape the way we deal with that loss – when it’s an old person, there’s a certain inevitability, one has a feeling of closure, and people are heard to say things like, “She lived a full life” or “He had a good innings”, etc. And even though the person is sorely missed by the loved ones left behind, there is a level of acceptance. For those of us who are middle-aged (so strange to realize that I now fit into that category!) and still have one or both parents, it’s an issue I’m sure we all think about every now and then – I’d always wondered which one of my parents I’d have to part with first, and it turned out to be my dad. When he died, I accepted that he’d been sick and that that had caused his death, but over the years I’ve thought a lot about his lifestyle and wondered if he’d have lived longer had he made healthier choices. He died at age 74, and I wish he’d been around today, 5 and a half years later, for so many reasons. I didn’t realize, when he was alive, how much like him I was, and now I’m sorry I didn’t acknowledge and celebrate that more, share more of my life with him.

When there’s death after a long illness, that has its own peculiar set of issues, including relief, I would imagine. It must be very hard to see someone you love suffering, hanging on for months and months, going through all the phases of deterioration before your eyes, knowing that there’s going to be no healing, and that the only outcome is death. That person’s quality of life is reduced to almost nil, while those around, deeply affected, go about their daily lives desperately wanting the limbo to end, one way or the other. I would imagine there’s a fair amount of guilt experienced by people who have to nurse chronically or terminally ill family members for extended periods of time – I’m sure there’s a yearning for normality, for fun and laughter, and that the guilt arises because that yearning presupposes the absence of the dependent person.

Accidental death hits us hard, because the suddenness of it knocks the wind out of us, flings us into a state of shock, causes us to look at our lives differently, even if only till the shock wears off and we slip back into the routine of our normal lives. Death as a result of violent crime must have its very own set of issues, as well. This is something we read about in the newspapers, and people’s traumatic experiences become statistics, until we’re touched by the same horror, ourselves.

But how families deal with the suicide of a loved one has been on my mind this past week. How do you make sense of it? How does a child handle the fact that that was a choice made by one of her parents, one of the people whom you assumed knew all the answers and looked up to as role models? If I sound judgmental, that is definitely not my intention - I don’t know the specifics, so I’m unaware of what pushed this person to commit such an extreme act. All I can say is – if you haven’t walked in someone’s shoes and been fully aware of all the things he was dealing with, you can’t say what he should or should not have done. Nothing gives me the right to say he was wrong to have done it. As I said, all I can think of is how the close people in his life, especially his wife and children, his brothers and the rest of his family of origin, must be feeling now, the questions they must be asking themselves. For a child to lose a parent is profoundly traumatic as it is, but to suffer that kind of loss must be so much more so.

I got the news late on Monday evening, and my children were with me when I read the sms and reacted with shock to its contents. I told them what had happened and we ended up having a long discussion about dealing with life’s stresses and strains, about exercising all options, about never giving up, no matter what, about being prepared to talk about your most embarrassing situation to someone you trust, with a view to getting through and past the problem, no matter how long and inconvenient the road may be. Of course there was a lot I couldn’t discuss with them. They’re aged 12 and 16. As open as I am with my children, I always keep things age-appropriate.

For example – if I believe that euthanasia is acceptable, under certain circumstances (as I do), then why do I struggle with suicide as one of a set of options? I’m not religious, I don’t believe in Heaven and Hell, not to mention Purgatory, so what’s the issue here?

Personally, I can only base whatever I believe in, on this topic, on what I’ve experienced thus far. Yes, I’ve been in extremely unhappy situations, where I’ve wondered how I could carry on living under those circumstances, and yes I have wondered….. But somehow there was always an alternative that entailed giving tomorrow a chance. I extricated myself from an eight-year-long, intense relationship that had robbed me of my spirit, but guaranteed me material comfort, and moved on to live a life without the emotional blackmail and daily suspicion, drama and unhappiness that had characterised that time of my life. Aaah, blissful relief! Eight years – and what seemed like a lifetime – later, I uprooted myself from a marriage that had long ceased to be mutually fulfilling, where all kinds of boundaries had been crossed and respect had got lost along the way. Having come from a divorced family, it had never been my intention to walk that same path, and yet I did. I stayed longer than I should’ve, always giving others the benefit of the doubt, lacking the confidence to walk away, not trusting my instincts, not listening to that little voice inside my head, but when I did, I knew it wasn’t the easiest path I’d chosen. And now, 11 years later, I know for sure that that was the best thing I could’ve done. Yes, once again I incurred extreme material loss, but time has taught me that material things will never be more important than the people issues. You can always earn the money yourself and buy the things you like, and you’ll be much happier away from the toxicity of the dysfunctional relationship.

In any part of my life, when I feel I can’t breathe, when I feel my energy is being depleted, my oxygen levels dropping drastically, I know it’s time to exercise new options. I know myself well enough to know that it will always entail giving tomorrow a chance. Living my life incorporating the exercises and practices of the book, “The Art of Possibility” (Ben Zander and Ros Stone Zander) has intensified my curiosity about what tomorrow might bring.

In fact, I’m still in bed! Let me get up and see what today has in store for me!
Oh, wait, I have to write about yesterday’s event – looks like another day of two blog posts!

Forthcoming Women's Wellness Breakfast & my usual chit-chat

2011-06-26T12:02:00.009+02:00

Picture: Inez Woods (life coach, Reiki practitioner, i.a.) outside Eden on the Bay, in Bloubergstrand, close to Cape Town. Read about her exciting event, a Women’s Wellness Breakfast (2 July), in the blog post below.

Friday 24 June 2011

Listening to Nic Rabinowitz on Redi Tlhabi’s show on Cape Talk Radio (567 FM). He does a slot on her show called “The Week That Wasn’t”, and he goes through things that have happened in the country – and around the world - in the previous week. He has a wonderful talent for imitating accents, and he seems to particularly like those of South African politicians. What adds to the funniness of his radio slot, is how Redi responds, laughing like she’s about to fall off her chair! He IS very funny, though: irreverent, takes on anyone, any topic, any religious group, any public figure – I’m sure he’s had to apologise to a few offended people during his career. I’d love to go to a live show of his, sometime. There’s one happening next month, I believe.

Speaking of radio stations, I had a really cool experience this week – I was interviewed on The Taxi, an online radio station (www.thetaxi.co.za), by Eric Alan. What made it even more special was that I was interviewed along with my mom, May Abrahamse, a retired opera singer. We were in the studio for two hours, and beforehand we wondered what on earth we’d talk about for that length of time. Well, not only did we get through it, but it was a lot of fun! Eric Alan, a well-known jazz presenter, showed exactly what makes him the radio legend that he is. He has a style that is understated, laid-back and disarmingly casual, yet when you watch him at work, experience being interviewed by him, and observe how he brings a whole lot of different things together while doing so, you realize what an amazing person he is, thoroughly professional, but also clearly enjoying what he does. He played quite a bit of music during the two-hour show, and I was chuffed that he allowed me to select a couple of tracks by some of my favourite artists, including Jamie Cullum and Rock Art (Hilton Schilder and Alex Van Heerden). One of the ways he keeps the energy flowing is by chatting to his guests during the playing of the tracks – this is, in my opinion, the secret to making the time pass easily and quickly. He obviously enjoys what he does, and I think that, if there’s anything I can take from that experience on Wednesday, it’s exactly that: as the cliché goes, “when you do what you love, you need never work a day in your life”. I’m starting to fully appreciate that, in every field of life, when you do what you do with passion, you can only succeed.

Which brings me to my own journey: my quest to make a living by being true to myself and doing ONLY what I love. As the months have passed (since my retrenchment in September 2010), the definition of “what I love” has undergone its own journey, changing and developing as I grew to understand the range of possibilities. This, in itself, is a fascinating part of this phase of my life, which feels like one of the most significant transitions I’ve lived through.

On Saturday 2 July, I’m taking part in an event organized by Inez Woods, the life coach I’ve had the privilege of working with since February this year. It’s a Women’s Wellness Breakfast, taking place at the picturesque Eden on the Bay, in Bloubergstrand. Starting time is 09:30 for 10:00, and tickets are R150. This includes a yummy breakfast, a morning of feeding your soul on the inputs of the three speakers, and a goody bag filled with one surprise after the other. The venue alone, right next to the ocean, is pure soul food. “Early Bird” and group bookings were R120. At this stage, I believe the event is sold out, but Inez is busy exploring the possibility of adding a few more seats. I will be reviewing the event in this blog, and all I can do at this stage is recommend that you e-mail Inez right away at woods.inez@gmail.com to be part of this event, or to secure your place at the next one, which is already in the planning stages. Make sure you catch the Early Bird or group discount, next time round. On the 2nd of July, I’ll be doing some performing, but am also one of the guest speakers. I’m enjoying working on my presentation, which will deal with some of the lessons I’ve learnt, from personal experience, about living one’s authentic life.

I’m very excited about this event – I’ve always believed that collective positive energy makes a lot possible, and I’m really looking forward to being part of this gathering of about 60 women who believe that life is indeed filled with possibilities. If you’re willing to attend an event with the theme “Women Against the Grain”, then I can only assume you’re an open-minded person, either defining yourself as part of that group, or, at the very least, curious about what it means. It’s exciting to think that I’ll have the opportunity to make some kind of input into the lives of some of those women. I’m also looking forward to the presentations of the other speakers, one of whom is Inez, herself.

Two powerful women from the USA are currently visiting South Africa – First Lady, Michelle Obama, and talk show mogul, Oprah Winfrey. Obama seems to be blazing a trail in the fight against HIV/AIDS and also pricking the consciences of young South Africans, urging them to value and rise to the challenges of the freedom they enjoy, a freedom fought for by their forefathers. Winfrey’s receiving an Honorary Doctorate in Education from the Free State University, for her role in educating young South Africans.

I’ve been without the use of my laptop for about two weeks, owing to my cable having given up the ghost. Last night, a friend lent me a spare, and I’m delighted to be sitting at my favourite writing spot in the house, once again happily typing away. It made me think about how we often only gain a true appreciation of what we have in our lives when we’re suddenly forced to be without it.

The fortnight away from my laptop coincided with some other unfortunate matters, and my energy has been really low, lately. In an emotional slump, new awareness dawns on me, and all I can do to get through the depression is believe that it will pass and that I will emerge on the other side with fresh insight, new coping skills and a readiness to tackle head-on whatever lies ahead.

Yesterday I made my way to my life coaching session reluctantly, wondering if I shouldn’t just have spent the cold, rainy day in bed, recharging my personal batteries, sleeping off the fuzziness. However, by the end of the day, I knew without a doubt that I had entered a new phase – for the first time in almost 9 months, I received a positive response to a job application, and I’m over the moon about the part-time, temporary appointment. It’s in the Education Faculty of the University of the Western Cape (where I studied BA and English Honours, many years ago), and it runs from mid-July to October. What a cool thing to be able to look forward to! “Pregnant with possibility” is the phrase that comes to mind.

So, yesterday was a day that made me feel like the universe was smiling at me again: I got the job, my daughter received her first high school acceptance letter, I was given the laptop cable, I had coffee with my best friend, I taught a guitar lesson to a cool friend who doesn’t seem to know just how musical she is, and a special friend cooked me a very special supper.

And life goes on.

A good place to start

2011-06-08T17:18:00.003+02:00

Picture: A sunrise that took my breath away, on my way home after dropping my daughter at school, one day last week.

Tuesday 7 June 2011

People often ask me, alluding to my being out of formal employment, “So what do you do all day?” Well, it’s 9am and I’ve already had a cup of coffee, read part of a newspaper and put two loads of laundry on the line. Oh, and I’ve swept up the post-storm leaves in the yard. Next, I’m typing five documents, including two cover letters; I have to burn a few more copies of my promotional (demo) CD, and then I’m getting up to hang more laundry on the line, shower, get dressed, have breakfast and leave for about two hours of e-mailing job applications and marketing myself by personally walking into restaurants (minimum for today is three) with my publicity pack. At 2:30, I’m fetching my daughter at school and taking her to a medical appointment. Afterwards, I’ll practise my music for two to three hours; later this evening I’m connecting with my best friend.

Any other questions?

I live a varied and interesting life – in fact, I always have. The main difference now is that I’m flexing myself as a self-managing musician and entrepreneur, with all the inevitable highs and unavoidable lows that go with that kind of lifestyle choice. Yes, I REALLY miss the security of a predictable salary at the end of each month and the kind of planning and structure that that enables, and yes I do indeed fret about my finances and what I’m not able to afford anymore, and yes, I do aspire to increasing my earning capacity to equal or better what I earned in my last job. Yes, yes, yes. But that’s just one side of the equation; ask anyone who’s taken this step and they’ll tell you, despite the occasional anxiety and the sacrifices, it’s a journey well worth taking. I’ve always been a practical person, and I think I have a good take on when enough is enough. In some ways, I’ve reached that point, which is why I’m sending off job applications again, but what I do know for sure, is that, even if I do end up taking a “normal” job again, my hunger for music will always be there, and I will never stop that side of my life. Ask anyone who’s passionate about anything – whether you do it in a full-time or part-time capacity is nowhere near as important as the fact that you’re doing it at all!

What have I learnt, in the past eight months since my retrenchment? I have learnt to listen to people’s ideas and suggestions, because I may be able to play the guitar and sing, but I could always benefit from other people’s ideas about marketing and promoting myself. I’ve learnt that my shyness and modesty, while encouraged as virtues in my formative years, are obstacles in my current quest, and I constantly have to deal with them, like little ghosts from my childhood that come back to haunt me when I least need them to. I’ve learnt that I actually do have great ideas, myself, and that my real problem is second-guessing those ideas and opting instead for a more assertive person’s idea. I’ve also learnt that, when I do forge ahead with my ideas, not only do I achieve success and satisfaction, but my ideas are so obviously right for me. No-on can do Trudy like Trudy. No-one knows the full range of issues, regrets, fears, thoughts, feelings, actions, concerns, joys, memories, goals, dreams and desires that make me who I am. The person you see stepping up on stage, sitting down and picking up her guitar to play and sing has such a long list of things leading up to that moment alone, that the average person would say, “How the hell do you fit it all in?”

But I do, and I’d do it again and again and again, just to feed my soul with those minutes and hours of performing live music to an audience, something indescribably wonderful and satisfying, something that’s as natural as breathing, yet as complicated as life itself.

A lesson I’ve learnt in bits, over time, and am coming to terms with in all its complexity right now, is that I should be promoting myself – not hiding in a duo, not elevating other musicians while I do all the marketing, publicity, admin, etc. involved in getting music work. I am a brand that needs to be promoted. And if I’m calling myself a “self-managing musician and entrepreneur”, then I have to believe in my brand, be completely comfortable promoting that brand, and lose all the shackles of my earlier socialisation that keep me from maximising my communication, marketing and public relations skills to advantage that brand.

This is going to be a very interesting part of my journey. I have to do it in a way that feels right for me. How do I know that, in my case, self-promotion won’t be synonymous with arrogance? Because I know myself.

I think that’s a good place to start.

Thirsty (Written 06/05/11)

2011-06-02T14:08:00.003+02:00

Picture: Colourful hanging glass bottles(?), taken in the grounds of the tranquil Montebello, in Newlands, Cape Town, in March this year.

00:45

Do you know what I feel the most, after a gig? Thirsty! In fact, having just downed a glass of water with a liberal dash each of orange and berry juice - it can never just be simple and straight up – I am about to drink my customary cup of green tea, as well as a tall glass of ice water!

But that’s not all I feel after a gig. I feel a huge adrenalin rush, which keeps me up way after I should get to sleep! I know that, later this morning, I’m going to want to scream, when that alarm goes off at 05:20!

My Thursday nights at Don Pedro, where I’ve had a solo gig since the end of February, have become very interesting indeed, and what I particularly love is that everything’s deliciously unpredictable. For me to be okay with that, and find it a good thing, shows just how much I’ve changed. Let me put it this way: according to my astrological birth chart, my Sun, Moon and Ascendant are all in Virgo, which makes me three times a Virgo. If you know anything about typical Virgo characteristics, imagine being 300% endowed with those traits! Well, that’s me. That probably explains a couple of things! :-)

Two weeks ago, I decided to depart from my usual repertoire of covers with a few originals thrown in, and do a whole night of my own compositions. It actually went very well, and people enjoyed my songs. I derived a lot of encouragement from the comments and feedback. Last week, I did quite a lot of originals, with just a few covers thrown in. But last week had a magic of its own: I did my second set with ERROL DYERS, a guitarist I’ve admired for years! I thought he’d play while I sang, but he insisted I play my guitar, and what an experience that was! I played and sang my own songs and he played around my playing. It was really a dream come true, and I felt like the luckiest, most blessed person on the planet. I enjoyed it more than anyone present could ever realize, although I think my Cheshire-cat grin and my air punching may have given them an idea! Some of my friends were there, and they took photos – I’d really like to get copies. Long before I met him, I liked Errol. He has a style of playing that constantly takes one by surprise. I watched him play at Theatre in the District, about two years ago, and I had goosebumps for his entire performance. I think that besides his incredible playing, he has a heart-warming smile and he’s so laid-back and ‘chilled’, that I can’t help but be fascinated by him. And there I was, on stage with him, playing my own compositions. Hard to describe, but let’s just say it was one of those memories I’ll cherish for the rest of my life. Definitely worth a blog post!

Tonight was yet another special Thursday night – firstly, my cousin (and best friend) Tracy went with me, and that in itself meant I’d have a fabulous time. During my break, a friend and his wife walked in, and that was a lovely surprise – Mark Kleinschmidt, who’d played Demetrius to my Helena, decades ago. I mean it: decades! Nice to see him, all these years later.

But the undeniable highlight of the evening was connecting with musician HILTON SCHILDER after a long time, and then having the pleasure of doing my second set with him! Hilton and I had done a bit of work together in the past, and in fact we’d recorded 16 of my originals in 2006. That recording project was never completed, and the tracks are still being kept for me. One day,……..

So, Hilton sat next to me on stage and played along with me on his melodica, which is basically a small hand-held piano that you blow into through a mouthpiece to produce a sound. Interesting sound. Particular, peculiar, needs a cultured ear. Once again, I did originals, with a few covers thrown in. Later, he accompanied me on djembe drums. SO COOL doing my material with Hilton, a prolific giant of a composer and someone who’s recorded quite a few CDs.

And now, with my patience running out for this tumble dryer (kids’ school uniforms, needed for tomorrow!), I think I’ll call it a night - have a speed-shower and get to bed, to SLEEEEEEEEEEP! If I can get to bed by 2, I’d have just about 3 and a half hours’ sleep. I should grab it. Tomorrow’s my mother’s 81st birthday, so another late night ahead.

How do I feel? Incredibly tired, sleepy, eyelids droopy, shoulders slouchy, can’t stop yawning. But you know what the overwhelming feeling is? Happiness!

It’s time, Trudy.

Domesticated Lady

2011-05-30T12:40:00.003+02:00

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

2011-05-20T12:27:00.004+02:00

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.

******************************************************************************
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

2011-05-16T14:49:00.003+02:00

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!

More pics taken in Kalk Bay, at The Brass Bell, April 2011

2011-04-23T18:33:00.001+02:00

More Kalk Bay pics, taken April 2011

2011-04-23T18:30:00.001+02:00

A backing band called “Shhhhh!”

2011-04-23T18:23:00.002+02:00

Picture: My best friend, Tracy, and I spent a morning browsing around in Kalk Bay's magical little shops, and ended up having lunch at Cape to Cuba. This was how close we were to the railway tracks! What a rush!

Blog post 2 – Fri 15_04_11

Second blog post in one day – some serious blogging going on! It was all supposed to have been one blog post, but this topic needed to be physically separated from what gushed out as the first article. Blogging is a bit like songwriting, for me – I never know when the mood will hit me, and I don’t always know what’s going to come out, because there’s always so much in my head.

Well, here goes:
My music life has taken a new direction, recently, with the addition of two weekly gigs, bringing my current total to three, the most I’ve had in years, simply because I wasn’t hungry enough for it and I wasn’t looking seriously. That was while I worked in a mainstream job with a safe, predictable monthly income and all the benefits that go with it, and music was my “hobby”. Now music is one of the two main directions I’m investing myself in, as income-generating activities – the other is, broadly, the English language. In the music part of my life, I do live gigs and teach guitar lessons – I now have 8 students. In the English Language part of my life, I’ve been doing some editing work, and have found that not only do I enjoy it, but it’s one of the easiest things for me to do. Imagine having TWO things you love intensely, both of which have the potential to generate an income. “But that’s not all” - as they say in the infomercials – managing myself in both these areas means I get to be in control of my time and my life. In reality, I’ve become my own boss, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. The more I flex myself and reap the rewards, the more I realize what’s possible. Every week, sometimes for a few consecutive days in one week, new opportunities open up, people approach me to do projects, to do short contracts, and to use my expertise in some way – it’s so cool! And do you know why this is happening? Because I believed it was possible. Not only that, I opened myself to the guidance of a life coach (Inez Woods – Google her!), and working with her has revolutionized my entire life. I’d highly recommend her to anyone.

It’s not always easy, and there are times when payments for work done are delayed, and there’s a domino effect on payments I have to make – that kind of thing stresses me as I strive to regain my independence and not have to borrow from anyone. I must say this, however: learning to ask for help when you’re down and out is a very important life lesson; if you know that it’s quite ok to ask for help, you’ll never be someone for whom life has no future, for whom suicide is an option. Pride sucks – get rid of it, keep records of loans made, and be responsible about repayments. What the experience of leaning on someone does is, it raises your sensitivity and compassion towards others when their time of need arises. You will understand fully, when approached by a needy friend, exactly how hard it was to pluck up the courage to ask for that loan, and how desperate the person must be to get to that stage. Watch out, though, for habitual borrowers who have a poor track record of repaying. Some people know how to make you feel guilty when you ask for your own money back! 

But, back to the topic I actually want to tell you about – last night’s gig! Firstly, let me tell you what the three weekly gigs are:

1. Duo gig with Wayne Bosch: Wednesday nights at Myoga Restaurant, in the Vineyard Hotel, Newlands, Cape Town. We play two sets during dinner, from 8 to 10pm. Lovely 5-star venue, characterful old building, the most amazing staff I have ever encountered and the food is so scrumptious, I want to move in!!! We’ve done three nights there so far.

2. On Thursday nights, I do a solo gig at Don Pedro’s, in Woodstock, Cape Town, also two sets, starting at 8:30pm. I’ve been there for 8 weeks, and it’s quite a highlight of my week, for reasons that might take you by surprise. (More about that later!) An old, established hangout for political activists and arty types (!), this venue is regaining its popularity under new ownership. Could have a bright future.

3. On Sunday we started a new gig, at an Italian restaurant in Cavendish Connect, in Claremont, Cape Town, called Doppio Zero. This I do with Wayne, and we play three sets from 7 – 10pm. Lovely ambience, nice buzz, and I really like the way the restaurant spills out onto the public walkway, with tables under the trees. Charming! The manager is Bulgarian, a lovely woman with a warm and funny character, and she made us feel welcome from the word go.

I have 7 minutes before I’m supposed to get up and hang the laundry, shower, get dressed and fetch my son at school to go to the physio.

So, pushing past my self-imposed time limit, here goes again:
Why do I love my gig at Don Pedro’s? Ok, let me tell you about last night, which was easily the funniest experience I’ve had at a gig in ages! As usual, the first set passed fairly uneventfully; I was quite tired and I remember looking at my watch and thinking, the set must be about done, when I saw I was only 15 minutes into it, and there were another 30 minutes left! Doing a solo gig is hard work, especially when the night before you’ve had the thrill and luxury of being accompanied by a wonderful guitarist.

But, I digress!

Somewhere in the evening, round about the end of that set or during the break, a group of people pitched up, having come from a live poetry event. I knew most of them, knew them as writers and poets, and knew that they normally enjoyed my originals, so I made a mental note to do more of my own songs in the second set.

When the second set got under way, one of the women in the audience was so interested in the songs I’d written, and so intent on catching every word, that she kept telling the other patrons to keep quiet, with interventions ranging from ”Shhhhhh!” to the kind of colourful language that you probably won’t read on my blog. Ever. It was so funny! At times I couldn’t even sing, I had to laugh out loud, because the others in the audience weren’t always obliging, choosing instead to engage in playful banter with her, which produced more colourful outbursts, at an even greater volume. At one time, I felt like putting my guitar down, so that I could roll on the stage with laughter!!!! So funny!

But that’s not all!!!! When I sang covers that she knew, she sang out loud with me, and sometimes harmonized – I must say, though, she could really sing!!!! I do a version of a Beatles song, “Do you want to know a secret?”, where I pull the arrangement into a lazy swing with jazz chords, and I love singing it MY way. Last night, however, any attempt at rendering my own version fell by the wayside, as my vociferous friend belted out her own version along with me.

In the end, it was just good fun, and everyone saw the funniness of it all.

Later on, when another friend arrived, someone told him I’d sung my second set with a backing band – oh, the singing lady had also played “drums” on the table, keeping the beat quite powerfully with her flat hands, as one would play a djembe - and that the band’s name was “Shhhhhh!”.

To all my old friends who regularly pitch up at Don Pedro’s to listen to me and enjoy the food and the wonderful Bohemian vibe of the place, as well as to the new friends I’ve made there, and especially to the lady who sang so passionately last night, immersing herself in the music – I believe her name was Maude? - thank you for your warmth and love, and for making my weekly gigs there such a pleasure.

I really do lead an interesting life. Maybe I’ll write a book about it one day.

But for now, it’s all going to come out in little – or not so little! - blog posts. Sometimes even two on one day!

(Big thanks to Zeni and Suli, who gave me CDs last night, to add to my female vocalist listening library – oh my goodness - my head and heart are filled with new music today, utter soul food! Deep sigh of contentment…..)

Standard Deviation

2011-04-23T18:12:00.003+02:00

Picture: My daughter and I had lunch at The Brass Bell (in Kalk Bay), sometime this month, and this was the view right next to where I sat. I feel incredibly alive when I'm this close to the ocean.

Friday morning, 09:45, 15 April 2011

Slouching in my bed, laptop on my knees, four pillows behind my back, determined to laze my way into this day, after what feels like at least two weeks of running around like a headless chicken.

It’s funny how we can go through life believing that A is A, B is B, etc. and that everything we’ve ever “known” is fact, truth, the way it is, the way it’s supposed to be, and the way it always will be. And then we grow up, and things start to look very different. Sometimes we gain new insights through the natural processs of maturing from childhood to adulthood, and sometimes we find ourselves, at different ages and stages of our lives, learning such huge lessons, that we start to realize that much of what we accepted as fact, as unalterable truth, was just perception, or often, misperception.

I am learning, anew, how, when I live consciously, when I strive to live authentically, and not just as a carbon copy of everyone around me – particularly in my family of origin – there are layers and layers of things I need to unlearn, as part of the journey towards discovering and uncovering, setting free the person I truly am. Setting oneself apart and choosing a career, a lifestyle, a path that is different, that doesn’t appear on the list of family-approved options, is not the easiest route to take. In fact, if you’re not ready to be unpopular and risk annoying or offending your close people, I don’t recommend it. Families have their own precious ways of showing their disapproval of behaviour that deviates more than a certain degree from the standard. Interesting how these same people would fiercely allege that they support independent thinking and innovation, initiative.

What I also find interesting is how important it seems to be for people to be able to say, “My daughter/son/sister/brother is a teacher/doctor/lawyer (pick one from the approved list)”, and how much personal investment there is in that kind of statement, as though the speaker is sewing on a Girl Guide badge of achievement for having a family member that’s turned out “right”.

Life is full of ironies. I am not as sorry for disappointing my family of origin as I am happy and excited about the choices I’m exercising and the amazing lessons and gifts I’m able to pass on to my new family, my two beautiful children, now aged 12 and 16. What better legacy could I leave them than the lesson that they have the power and freedom to be whatever they want to be in life, and that I’d be okay with their choices as long as they’re living authentic, fulfilled lives? No greater love can we as parents display than to release our grip from our children, and to release them to the wide world as the free spirits they were born to be. I’m by no means negating the importance of guidance in the early years, of formal education and all the rest that goes into the rearing of children – I’m talking about the expectations we have, as parents, and the uncompromising way we have of dealing with choices our children make that don’t fit neatly into our little box of possibilities.

I pray for wisdom as my children continue to grow and to exercise the choices they were to born to make, and I pray for enlightenment, love and peace, humility, tolerance, and, till the day I die, a sense of humour - asseblief!!!

Songwriting weather

2011-04-01T18:15:00.001+02:00

Wednesday 23 March 2011

Another day that took me by surprise. Fresh from the exhilaration of yesterday, I had enough residue of warm satisfaction to enable me to deal with some unexpected challenges calmly and flexibly. When shit happens – as it WILL, from time to time – this is my perspective: If it’s not death, just give me a few minutes and I’ll come up with Plan B.

I believe that life is filled with alternatives, if we’re just patient enough time to spot them. I’m trying to hone my skills in the alternative-spotting department. Breathe in, breathe out. Slowly getting there.

Firstly, yesterday was a hugely significant day for me because I sorted out a major issue on which I’d procrastinated for long. I’m talking years. I went to SARS (South African Revenue Services) and filled in all my outstanding income tax returns. Phew!! Not as bad as I’d thought it would be; I had been paying tax all these years - just neglected to send in tax returns. There are penalties, though, which I accept as my due (success story of Calvinistic old-SA socialisation). Even though I got there at 08:30 – which I’d thought was early, I still had a three-hour wait. I must say, though, unlike the pitiful state of affairs at the Home Affairs and UIF offices, this place is super-jacked up: at the reception desk, you’re given a number, and you can sit wherever you like, which means you don’t have to play unmusical chairs.  The place is clean, there are television sets to keep you from dying of boredom (I read and played Sudoku), and the system of announcing the numbers works very well. The clerk who assisted me was efficient, helpful and proactive. You could see she was genuinely interested in helping people, which one seldom encounters at government offices. Too many government employees look miserable, brightening up only when they’re due for a tea or lunch break. Sorry, but this cynicism is based on too many lousy experiences. This lady, however, gave me hope – if she’s anything to go by, things appear to be moving in the right direction.

Secondly, yesterday was extremely significant, because I moved beyond my previous best in the pool, and swam a healthy SIXTY lengths! I can hardly believe it, but I did! And it wasn’t even me pushing myself - it just happened seamlessly and naturally, like I choose to believe all the dreams I have will fall into place, in their own time, smoothly and organically. And why shouldn’t they? It doesn’t mean because my great-grandfather got from A to B by horse and carriage that I can’t aspire to a smooth, sleek ride. (By the way, my current car, Gertie, is once again testing my patience, but that’s another story.)

I now know the factors that predispose me to a good, long swim. One of them is that the gym shouldn’t be too busy. More specifically, the pool shouldn’t be full. If it is, I shouldn’t be asked to share my lane. I don’t have much tolerance for that; it just spoils my fun. So I generally try to go at times when the gym’s less busy. Also, I shouldn’t have to rush off to another appointment, because that forces me to watch the clock. I love going for a swim when I have loads of time to spare. That means I fully immerse myself in the experience. What works for me, and this might sound crazy, is to focus on something else. Once I’ve done twenty lengths, I’m warmed up, I can feel my rhythm’s where it should be, and I’m basically able to go on and on. What I do from that point on, is some form of meditation. I choose a topic and contemplate it for ten lengths. It’s hard to describe, but it fuels me. Basically I combine my physical workout with some of the techniques taught in Mind Power. So for ten lengths at a time, I think about my music goals, my fitness goals, my dream home, my ideal partner, etc. It’s fun. You learn, in Mind Power, not to limit yourself to reality, and that’s really a whole lot of fun. If I’d limited myself to “reality”, I’d still be swimming a maximum of 12 lengths, which was what I was doing when I started swimming seriously in October 2010. If I’d limited myself to “reality”, I wouldn’t be doing a solo gig once a week, because my “reality” (read, “limit”) would be that I needed a second musician to make it happen. Says who?

Different is not always worse – it’s just different. We’re always quantifying and stratifying, always creating hierarchical systems, always seeing things in terms of absolutes, mutually exclusive. I reject that as both limiting and unexciting, closing more doors than it could ever possibly open. I can make music in a duo as well as in a solo situation – because I can. Reality is whatever you make it. It’s also a very personal thing. Sometimes I just don’t bother to explain it to people, especially when I can see they’re not open to new ideas.

I find doing affirmations while I swim very empowering and invigorating – I set up a rhythm of movement that coincides with the words of my affirmation, and once I’m into it, that’s when I feel I could go on forever! When I got to 50 lengths yesterday, I was enjoying the Mind Power so much, that I just kept on swimming. Even at 60 lengths I wasn’t exhausted, but I stopped because I didn’t want to overdo it. I can tell you one thing, though – I’ll be doing 70 lengths long before my next birthday, in September. As with most things I’m striving for, all I need are time and space – I can make the magic happen.

Recently someone said to me she was reluctant to start a blog because she didn’t want people reading about her personal stuff. I respect that. For me, there’s personal and then there’s personal. I could write for hours, days, weeks, even months, and you wouldn’t necessarily know about the really personal stuff in my life. I write because I love writing. I love words. I love putting ideas down and expressing what’s inside of me. It’s fun, it’s a game, and I love it.

For example, I could tell you that today’s weather turns me on, that it’s songwriting weather and it’s lovemaking weather, but you wouldn’t know whether I’d be indulging in either of those activities, would you?

Live your truth

2011-03-18T14:44:00.006+02:00

Picture: At the end of September last year, this entire plant was as dry as the little sticks showing on the top right hand side of the picture. I refused to give up on it, because I suspected that, with care and patience, it could be restored to its former state of health and beauty. Looking at it thriving now, I'm so glad I did.

01h40

So here I am again – that same intensity that fuels my songwriting, keeping me awake long after my gig. Thursday was one ‘helluva’ day! I can’t believe so many amazing things happened on one day. Well, maybe they’re just amazing to me, but still, what a day! A special day, filled with firsts.

This morning I had my 6th life coaching session, and a few things emerged that promise to guide me towards greater focus and commitment, as well as to take me on a slightly different path towards one of my main goals. I love the way the life coach sifts through everything I’m saying and identifies patterns of behaviour that hold me back, as well as ones that propel me forward. I am particularly amazed at how long it’s taking me to break certain immediately-identifiable self-sabotaging habits. It’s astounding how tenaciously I’ve clung to some of them! The most important thing is to keep using the strategies that work, and to discard the ones that don’t.

Afterwards, I went to an internet café in our area - a clean, pleasant, low-priced place - and sent off an e-mail I’d been trying to send for a few days.

I spent a good part of the day practising for the gig, and put a lot of effort into selecting my songs and writing up my set lists.

Later in the day, an invitation from a surprising source, and one which I’m eagerly anticipating.

And then the gig – wow! Two good friends of mine, Diana and Vangie, each pitched up with a group of friends, and stayed for the evening! Both of them lead very full, busy lives, so I felt humbled and astounded that they’d chosen to spend a whole evening at a place where I was playing! That immediately made my night, and I enjoyed the experience of singing to people who liked my music; in honour of them and their loyalty, I did a few more originals than I’d planned to, which changed the flavour of my night considerably. Songwriters should sing their own songs, period. I feel more alive and authentic when I’m performing my own stuff. Every cell in my body glows and smiles, and I feel like I’m doing what I was born to do.

During the break, I met a musician – percussionist, Daniel Bloem - who played a few songs with me on someone’s djembe, towards the end of my second set, and it was really exciting. Interesting chatting to him and finding him to be a very cool person, different, anything but shallow and materialistic, a breath of fresh air.

After my second set, one of South Africa’s guitar greats, Steve Newman, took to the stage and played like the wizard he is. Oh my goodness – his dexterity and intensity took my breath away! It was like being enveloped in a cloud of sound, sitting about two metres from him while he played. He used a few different guitars, one of them really tiny, called a soprano guitar, which he said he tunes to C sharp, so it’s a really high-pitched range of sound.

Later the same morning – after a deliciously restorative sleep:
As I reflect on this and so many other things happening in my life, I am more excited than I could possibly put into words about the direction in which my life is heading, with increasing inexorability. There’s obviously still an element of ‘insecurity’ - for want of a better word - because my employment situation is not settled, but at the same time, a whole new realm of existence is emerging, and I’m discovering that there are strongly viable alternatives to the 9-to-5 scenario. In fact, I sincerely hope never to need that kind of employment again. As time goes by, I’m becoming clearer as to what and whom I want to proceed into the rest of my life with. Stale aspects of my life, the ones that have been holding me back - and holding me hostage – are suddenly glaringly dysfunctional (as I suppose they’ve always been), and I’m finally able to look critically at them and be absolutely okay about leaving them behind. It’s so liberating! Shoo!

What works for me is to replace things I’m discarding with healthier alternatives. I find physical exercise helps put a lot into perspective. Whichever way you go about it, the best investment you can make is in your health, because what’s the use of being part of a generation that’s likely to live beyond 90, yet you’re facing your last 30 years being lived with ill-health? It doesn’t make any sense to me. I fully subscribe to the “healthy mind in a healthy body” tenet.

So, exercise has become firmly established as one of my non-negotiables. A second priority for me is regular, serious music practice. Tomorrow I go back to working with my tutor, which I'll do once a month, and that’s something I’ve really missed for the past few months. The discipline of working on my own, though, is something that arose from my having to stop lessons when I was retrenched. That alone has been an amazing journey, where I now find myself exploring material to perform that previously I might have shied away from, or might have tackled in a more conventional way. I can feel myself slowly becoming more courageous, less worried about what people think, and a whole lot truer to myself.

Many years ago, an astrologer I hold in high esteem said to me:
“Live your truth, and the universe will support you.”

I can’t believe I had to walk such a long, convoluted path before I fully understood the emancipatory power of those words.

Double exposure (Written 6 March 2011)

2011-03-12T11:20:00.004+02:00

Picture: A cropped version of a picture taken at a music practice at Katilist Theatre, in Observatory, Cape Town, in 2008. Came out as two photos in one shot, and I love the effect.

As I continue along this incredible part of my journey through life, I can feel myself growing and changing, and the realizations along the way are not always easy. Self-awareness, looking into that mirror and taking a good, hard look at everything about myself, is not always fun and exciting. Along with my recent breakthroughs, daily successes that seem to be propelling me towards my goals at an alarming pace, I’ve encountered some challenges. And this is how I know I’m changing: I know that I am directly responsible for everything in my life, both the wonderful, affirming successes as well as the challenges that have cropped up and have the potential to undermine my successes or derail my resolve and enthusiasm.

Part of the clarity I’m gaining, as I progress through my weekly sessions with life coach, Inez Woods, is that I’m starting to identify patterns in my life. I can now clearly see how decisions I made in the past impact on me and complicate my life now, and the consistent theme is: whenever I handle something in a way that is not empowered, not accountable, not facing an issue squarely and truthfully, not bearing possible/inevitable consequences in mind - or let’s say whenever I do the ostrich thing - I can be sure that that particular matter will not go away quietly – it will come back and complicate my life when I least want it to.

So what’s the lesson? For me, the lesson is that, no matter how uncomfortable or unpleasant, even embarrassing, something may be, I have to deal with it like a responsible adult, address it humbly and honestly, tie up that loose end and move on. When I don’t, I might delude myself for a while (often years, in my case), but it ALWAYS resurfaces and when I eventually get round to sorting it out, it’s a lot messier, and it blocks my personal energy to the point where, if I don’t address it and sort it out, I can’t move on with my other goals.

What am I talking about? Sometimes it’s something like not having called a company to explain that I’ve been retrenched, and watching ‘helplessly’ as my debit orders “bounce” month after month, and sometimes it’s more personal, like an ambiguous relationship that’s been going nowhere for years, but because it’s sort of worked in other ways, I’ve just let the niggling things slide.

A line that Oprah Winfrey says comes to mind, and I know for sure that it’s never too late to tie up a loose end in my life: “When you know better, do better.” There are many reasons why we all do what we do, and I gain strength from knowing that everyone is on some kind of journey, that we’re all generally figuring things out as we go along.

Today I give thanks for the people in my life who’ve known me for many years and who love me. I give thanks for a subset of that group, the ones who accept that I have a set agenda for myself that doesn’t always fulfil their expectations, and who love me anyway. And I give thanks for new people coming into my life, at a very exciting time for me, who in different ways are adding their energy to my life, fuelling me along my journey. I choose to believe that there’s always a reciprocal energy flow, and in this case, I sincerely hope I am enriching their lives as they’re doing mine.

Utterly amazed

2011-03-09T23:10:00.005+02:00

Today was amazing - I had my 5th life coaching session with Inez, spent about 2 hours tackling some clutter in my house (yes, Operation Unclutter is still alive and kicking!) and went for a 70-minute walk with my best friend. I'm so proud of our walking regime! I think we must've spent the past four years talking about walking for exercise, and here we are, in our third consecutive month, walking briskly for just over an hour at a time. In a good week, we manage three walks, and she usually does a long weekend one. My alternative is swimming, something I hadn't done for the whole of February! On Saturday, I went down to the gym and got into the pool! How does one describe that feeling of utter relief and bliss? It reminded me of the first time my jeans fitted me after I'd had my baby - ooh, the sensuality of that well-worn denim against my skin....! Slipping into the water, I felt like I'd come home! Maybe in a former life I was a water creature. Haha - I'm definitely one now!
All I know is, when I'm submerged in water, I believe, with every cell in my body, that absolutely anything is possible.

I love swimming underwater, and I start every length with a few underwater strokes, way down at the bottom of the pool. When I've got enough breath stored up, I can do ten strokes before my lungs feel they want to burst, and then I make my way to the surface, happy to reach the top and to swim the rest of the length like a normal person. We can all pretend, can't we? Haha! And then it's time to swim back and I just can't resist going underwater again. When I'm tired, I can only manage 5 or 6 strokes before I have to surface, but that's ok. Just having been at the bottom makes my heart pound with excitement. I was hoping to do 50 lengths, my current best, but at 38 lengths my calves felt like they were going to cramp, so I slowly swam two more. What can I say? I'm Virgo, and we like round figures, symmetry. So 40 was what I achieved. Had the sauna to myself, then hopped onto the scale - numbers moving in the desired direction. Last year one of my mottos was "Time is my best friend". With regular exercise and a more sensible approach to the rest of my life, time is definitely my best friend. Nice to watch the progress.

One of the things I'm becoming aware of, at this intense, challenging time, is how much clearer certain things are becoming. As I make my way through each day of this unusual time of my life, I'm becoming much better at identifying what's good and what's not good for me. More importantly, I'm learning how to articulate it. Even more significantly, I'm not trying to please anyone with my choices. It's taken me almost half a century to get that right - I'll be 50 in 6 months' time! It ends up being a process of elimination, and what a liberating experience it is.

One of the sobering realities that emerged in my session today was how, even 5 sessions into the process, I still find myself indulging in my old habit of self-sabotage! I suppose it's been years and years of that pattern/habit, and I've mastered the art by now. I even find noble ways of distracting myself, just so that I don't do what I'm supposed to be doing. Gopal Ramasammy-Cook, another brilliant life coach, was the first person who exposed me to the phrase "fear of success" - something I think many of us carry around, in the form of one of those monkeys on our backs.

And so I continue my journey. This week's certainly had its challenges, and some things are still unresolved. But so many other things are going well, and so many possibilities exist.

Today I give thanks for my best friend and my life coach, for my children and my mom, for people who've come into my life and acknowledged my skills and experience, and have given me projects to work on. I give thanks for the lessons I learn every single day. I give thanks for past failures and what they've taught me. I give thanks for past partners, for what we shared and what I learnt.

But most of all, I give thanks for today, for tomorrow, and for all the tomorrows to come. Things are evolving organically, and I am utterly amazed at how life is unfolding!

Changing tracks

2011-03-02T13:38:00.005+02:00

Yesterday I took a train to town, and allowed myself to be fully immersed in, and alert to, the total experience. I closed my eyes, could feel myself being lulled by the rocking movement of the train, and I understood why so many people actually dozed off en route to their destinations. Sometimes it's quite funny watching someone nod off, then jerk awake as the train jolts them upright. I've even seen a few people resting their heads on the shoulders of complete strangers. Very funny watching how the shoulder-owner reacts. Haha! Years of enforced politeness come to the fore, as they bravely bear the getting-heavier-by-the-minute head of their unknown travelling companion, grinning sheepishly when they realise you're watching them.

I've been fascinated by group dynamics for a long time, and I love observing people who find themselves having to share a space, especially with strangers. In South Africa, it's even more fascinating, as years of enforced separation - separate living areas, separate amenities, including parts of the station and carriages on trains - play themselves out in the sometimes-odd ways we have of dealing with people from different ethnic groups. Sometimes funny, mostly sad.

But a feeling I like experiencing in a train, is that sensation when the train changes tracks. You get knocked about a little, you find yourself jumping involuntarily in your seat, you feel slightly insecure, and there's definitely a trace of pending doom - what if the train were to be derailed in the process? - that passes as soon as you've noticed it. The noise that accompanies it is not a smooth sound; it is loud, arhythmical and jarring - the sound of chaos. And then it ends, and the quiet, lulling movement and sound of the train return. You unconsciously breathe a sigh of relief, unaware of the seeds of trepidation that threatened to germinate, only seconds before. You sigh, sometimes audibly, and you continue what you'd been doing before, except now you're travelling along different tracks, a more efficient route to your destination having been selected. The transition is over, nothing more than just a routine, everyday occurrence for trains.

I'm on a journey. I'm changing tracks. I think I need to read this blog post whenever I fear that the cacophony of changing tracks is significant enough to silence the music in any way other than just momentarily.

Redefining

2011-02-28T02:20:00.006+02:00

Picture: Sunset in Mitchells Plain, taken from a friend's car, in January 2011.

Caught up in another insomnia episode. Listening to old Stevie Wonder love songs. Not sure if it's the songs themselves or the fact that I know every note of the music from my childhood (Songs In The Key Of Life), but I find this particular music perfect for me when I'm like this - soothing, reassuring, familiar.

Let's face it, you get insomnia and insomnia. This kind I could do without, because it entails some kind of heartache, and I don't feel energised to create. Earlier, I played guitar, tried out some fresh material for my gig on Thursday.

Okay, let me write about that.

Last week, I started a solo gig at a lovely little place in Woodstock, a suburb close to Cape Town's city centre, called Don Pedro's. It's one of those cosy little unpretentious late-night haunts, popular over the years with - am I allowed to say this? - lefty and arty types. :-) I played two sets, and wow, what an experience! Strange for me, after having performed in duo format for so long. Even stranger to my friends that I was so nervous, because they've heard me doing solo performances over the years.

Looking at it philosphically, I see it as another aspect of the bigger process I'm putting myself through, i.e. redefining myself. It's no coincidence that I got offered the weekly solo slot now - in fact, I strongly believe it's synchronicity at work. I am willing these things into my life, and - for once - opening myself to "unusual" offers and giving myself the benefit of the doubt.

I absolutely love working in a duo with a second (more accomplished) guitarist, because the accompaniment is fuller and better, and I feel a freedom in my singing that I struggle to achieve on my own. To overcome that, I've started practising for at least an hour every day, with this solo gig in mind. I need to nail this, as it's another step along my journey. What made me feel very good was the positive response I got when I shared the news of the gig with my two main guitarists, Keith and Wayne. That made me feel good. Both of them know me well, and they can appreciate what a big step this is for me.

Now listening to Rod Stewart singing jazz ballads with a big band. Strange voice, but it's grown on me. There's something about raspy voices that I like. Steve Tyrell. Elvis Costello. Louis Armstrong! And let's not forget the Big Daddy of the sexy rasp - Kurt Elling. Oooh!

"These Foolish Things" playing now. I had a lot of fun with Keith at our last gig when we played this, a recent addition to my repertoire, because I kept singing (away from the mic.) the little riff Rod Stewart's band plays between phrases - corny, but catchy. :-)

Back to the solo gig. In a solo performance, you can imagine, there's no place to hide. I am responsible for not just the singing (my stronger skill), but also the guitar playing. Very different to playing as the second guitarist. But it went quite well, and, like so many other stressful experiences, it was over before I knew it. Next time, I'll be a lot better prepared, because now I have a feel for the place, the proximity of the audience, and just the broad scope I have when choosing from my wide selection of songs. Working on introductions and endings, because - as I said - there's no place to hide! Haha! In the duos, I often don't play on intros and endings. A nice challenge for me. Well-timed.

Hoping the other gig comes through, as well. Having one solo and one duo gig per week would be fantastic!

Last week, I did something I should probably have done years ago - I contacted music agents! Did it over a few days, first searching on the 'net, jotting down contact names and telephone numbers, calling the ones I liked and then e-mailing them the info they requested.

Interesting, this whole redefining process. My daughter is in her final year at primary school, so we're busy applying to high schools, and there's a lot of paperwork to fill out. I'm busy re-learning that the way we articulate who we are, is very important, so I told her not to write that I was "unemployed", but that I was "self-employed". "As what?", she asked. "As a Musician and a Language Practitioner", I replied. She hesitated, asking if I didn't want to say Music Teacher, and I said that that didn't cover the gigs and concerts. Eventually she wrote it down, but I could see her reluctance. Redefining can be confusing to us, ourselves, so imagine how much more for our loved ones.

And now, thankfully, at 03:11, I am finally yawning and happy to go to sleep.

Allow me to leave you with this question: how do you articulate who you are and what you're about? Do you use negative, self-deprecating terms which keep you stuck in a rut, and which leave no possibility for growth? For the next few days, listen to what you say to others (and yourself) about yourself. Who's really holding you back?

As I end this post, Rod Stewart aptly sings another of my favourite songs, "That's All".

The most important question

2011-02-21T10:28:00.004+02:00

Picture: Sunset sky, from High Level Rd, Sea Point (Oct. 2010)

Life is indeed filled with exciting possibilities. Of course it always has been, but I’ve been either too busy, too unwilling or not ready to fully appreciate it.

On Saturday, I completed my third weekly session of my 12-week life coaching programme. In my second week, I made a commitment to myself, to focus on those things (and people) in my life that give me something to look forward to. You know that wonderful feeling, when you wake up on a day on which something exciting’s going to happen? Well, I want my whole life to be like that. I want to wake up every day feeling I’ve got something to look forward to. I can’t achieve that if I’m allowing myself to be bogged down with energy-draining activities or people, so I’m consciously striving to surround myself with the kind of energy that will enable this spirit to thrive in my life. Why? Because I believe it’s all possible. In fact, I really do believe that we all know, on some level, just how amazing life could be, but we’ve been trained over the years not to expect much, to lower our expectations of life, so that we won’t be disappointed. All you need is one deeply disappointed person in your close circle, someone you spend a lot of time with, whom you’ve listened to for many years, to keep you firmly trapped in the chains of negativity, cynicism and hopelessness. It’s like trying to grow a plant without sunshine and water.

While I was doing the surveys profiling District 6 land claimants, I encountered a friend I hadn’t seen in a while – Inez Woods. She’d been living abroad for many years. In the course of our working together, I discovered that she was a life coach, that she’d had a thriving practice in Ireland, and that she was busy setting up in Cape Town. She offered me three months of life coaching, as a skills exchange, and this is the process I’m on right now. It’s like a weight loss programme with a difference – the weight I’m losing is metaphorical, as I shed layer after layer of negative energy that manifests itself as self-doubt, procrastination, self-sabotage, lethargy, blame, etc. The flipside of loss is always gain – something I often lose sight of. When you lose something, you automatically gain something else. I lost my job, but I gained time to explore possibilities.

This morning was amazing. First of all, I was exhausted last night, after having spent the whole day cleaning my house, so I had an unusually early night. Housework…… ah, what can I say…… a necessary evil. I don’t enjoy doing it, but I enjoy the feeling after it’s been done. I haven’t had a domestic worker for at least 6 years, so this is nothing new. My children return to me every second Sunday, so there’s this mad rush to get the place nice and clean before they get here. I joke that this is more like Trudy’s Guesthouse for them, but you know what - nobody can teach you how to split your life like we do, so I’m doing the best I can. The most important thing, with this shared living arrangement, is that the children feel loved in both homes. Achieve that, and the rest is just detail.

Before I dropped off to sleep last night, I did the Mind Power exercise that puts you in touch with your unconscious mind, and I asked that other realm of myself to show me, once again, the possibilities for my life. My last dream, as I woke up, was so inspiring, the perfect sign for me right now, that, after lying in bed smiling at the contents of the dream, I got up and happily started this new day, this new week, and what felt like a new phase of my life, a new beginning.

I had to get up extra early because I had to walk both of my kids somewhere, as my car is still at the mechanic’s. I got up at 5:30, and by 6:35 was walking my son to his friend’s house, a short walk from ours. There were very few cars and people about, and the air was crisp and fresh. A chilly breeze reminded me that summer was already saying goodbye, making way for autumn. By the time I got back, I’d been away from home for 35 minutes. We took a short-cut on the way, but I walked the full distance back, because it was really pleasant. Ten minutes after getting home, it was time to walk my daughter to school. This took about 20 minutes, and I picked up the pace coming back, so it ended up being another 35-minute walk. By the time I got home, it was only 7:45!

And that’s how my day started. And now, here I am, doing something I love doing, something that always energises me – writing!

Last week was exceptionally constructive. I was without my car, and ended up taking a train somewhere almost every day. On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, I took a train to Wittebome, on Wednesday to town, and on Saturday to Claremont. Lots of walking, lots of fresh air, and I saved a lot of money in the process!

On Tuesday and Thursday, I facilitated focused discussion groups for a gay activist organisation. Very interesting subject matter, and on a personal level, very cool to be afforded the opportunity to do something so different as an income-generating activity – also known as a job! What was even nicer was being approached by one of the participants to possibly do similar work for their organisation.

On Wednesday I wrapped up some matters with my ex-employer, and that felt like progress. My best friend, Tracy, and I managed to walk thrice, which was also great.
I sorted out my gym membership, another milestone! As soon as I have my car back, I’m heading off for a much-longed-for swim. I haven’t swum this month yet!

This process of life coaching is fascinating. I have a terrible habit of coming up with great ideas, then doing nothing about them. I spend a lot of time in thought mode, but not enough in action mode, when it comes to my goals and dreams. What’s happening now is I’m being forced to focus on my goals and to implement the necessary steps that will take me closer to them. I also have a habit of wasting time, spending hours doing unimportant things, and now I check myself and I ask myself, “Is this taking me closer to my urgent goals? Could I be doing something else that would achieve that?” And then I get up and do what I know I should be doing. I get tasks to do every week, and there’s a high level of accountability with the weekly contact sessions. No place to hide!

There are certain aspects I won’t write about, but believe me, this process touches every part of my life. It’s an entire spring-clean of my life, all aspects of it. Anything that emerges as holding me back, keeping me trapped, pulling me down, retarding my progress, is part of the spring-clean. It’s liberating and frightening, at the same time, because the more layers of extraneous issues you strip away, the more of your essential self you’re left with. Getting to the point where there’s no-one to blame but yourself when you don’t reach your goals, is even more scary than undressing in the gym’s changing rooms, surrounded by mirrors and slim, well-toned 20-somethings!

But let’s get to the title of this blog post.

Every now and then, someone says something so profound, something that you take with you for the rest of your life, and often the person isn’t even aware of the far-reaching effects of his or her words. The other day, in a context quite unrelated to my life coaching sessions, someone asked me, “TRUDY, WHO'S IN CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE?” It came at a moment in my life when I was seeking clarity on something specific, and a better question could not have been asked of me. It was like the clouds parted, a magnificent beam of light shone down, guitars played (harps just don’t do it for me!) and I knew, without a doubt, that THAT was the question that would help me find what I was looking for.

Whenever I find myself lapsing into my old ways, that way of putting everyone’s needs above my own, relegating my own goals while I enable others to reach theirs, deferring my own gratification because I’m in martyr mode, I will ask that question.

If I ever wondered what that person’s role had actually been in my life, that question, a crucial part of my toolkit for the rest of my life, put that entire relationship into perspective.

HE asked the most important question of my life.

The truth about dhanya

2011-02-20T13:43:00.002+02:00

It took me a long time to realise the truth about dhanya. I thought that if you planted it, you could cut some leaves whenever the plant grew and it would continue growing. I imagined a permanence that never was there, except in my imagination. I'd wanted it to be permanent, mine, standing openly and proudly in my garden, proof of my ability to nurture and sustain. What I never saw was obvious to everyone but me - dhanya doesn't work like that. It grows, it thrives, it becomes fragrant and beautiful and it reaches a point where that's all it's ever going to be - and you have to enjoy it right then. If you imagine it's going to be as beautiful, as fragrant, as filled with potential in a week's time, you're wrong. You will have missed the moment, because you didn't really see dhanya as it was, as it had always ever said it was. After it reaches its time for picking, if you don't pick it, it shrivels up and dies a little every day, until there's no trace of your ever having had a dhanya plant.

I can't blame the dhanya for how I feel now - it never lied to me. It was what it was, mine for a while, to enjoy, to appreciate. But it never intended to stay. 'Cos dhanya is just that way. It's genetically programmed for just that life cycle.

And now that I know the truth abut dhanya, I suppose I should go to the nursery and buy another tray of plants, and get it right this time. I'm not so sure I'm ready for that whole process again, though. So, until I am, I'll get my dhanya in small quantities, as I need it. Too much of an investment for such a small return.

And life goes on....

My old friend

2011-02-17T01:18:00.002+02:00

Hello, Insomnia, my old friend
Looks like it's you 'n me again!

To blog, or not to blog?

2011-01-31T17:46:00.005+02:00

Picture: Sandi Schultz (on the right) and I, in Belhar, a northen suburb of Cape Town, in 1992!

When I first encountered anything close to blogging, it was in 1998, when I visited my friend, Sandi Schultz, in Los Angeles. She showed me what was then her website: www.cybersass.com. I was fascinated, because my talented, creative friend had found a way to get her writing, her drawings and her opinions - in fact, any information she wanted to share - out to the whole world. I marvelled at the way she'd set it up and how she'd placed different things into sections, like a newsletter. There was a serious side to it, as well, because she'd found a way to get website info to people who'd been sexually assaulted.

More recently, she's started working on a whole website dedicated to this issue. You can look out for www.isaidno.co.za - keep checking to see when it's up and running.

And then in about Sept/Oct 2008, I did some life coaching sessions with Gopal Ramasammy-Cook (www.zestware.com), during which he asked if I'd ever thought of starting a blog, since I liked writing/journalling so much. I felt like I was in a time-warp, but I had to ask: "What's a blog?"

When I came back from my 2-week trip to Brazil in April 2009, I wrote a long letter to all my overseas friends, describing the trip in great detail. After reading it, Sandi wrote to me, saying how much she'd enjoyed it and added, "You really need to start blogging!"

I suppose I'm just one of those people who have to hear something more than once before I act! :-)

And so I Googled "blogging", found a few options, and set one up, all on my own. In fact, setting up a blog is really easy. They take you through all the steps very clearly, and you can't go wrong. There's always the Help button if you get stuck, otherwise it's fairly simple, once you get going.

I loved the absolute freedom of choice when it came to what I'd call my blog. I felt so proud when I'd set it up and there it was...... my very own creation! With my own name and my own password! Like a blank book I could fill with my words any time I wanted to. What an incredible legacy!

I must admit I was very naive when I started, because I thought my blog would be read by people I knew, but it soon became obvious that a lot more than my 10 "followers" actually read what I wrote. I'd meet friends of friends who'd say, "I always read your blog. I really liked what you wrote about...". Gulp!

I suppose in every aspect of our lives, there are times when we question whether the decision or path we took was the right one, and for me it's the same with what I blog about. In what seems like a previous life, I was told that the songs I wrote were "too personal" to sing in public, and yet when I found the courage to perform them at shows, people would come up to me and say how strongly they could relate to what I had written. I came to accept that many of us who write (whether articles, blogs, poems, books or songs) actually articulate what many others feel but can't write. I've had so many women come up to me and say, "The same thing happened to me, but I could never have put it into words like you did." The fact that my songs usually rhyme and often contain humour, makes it even more surprising that certain serious topics find their way into my music.

Recently I took a look at how far across the globe my blog was being read (I LOVE statistics!) and I had a panic attack - are my posts "too personal"? Should I be more cryptic? Should I consciously NOT wear my heart on my sleeve? When I uploaded my first-ever song on the internet, 11 days ago, I went through the same thing. You feel really exposed, really out there, open to criticism.

But I'm an artist. I write, I sing, I play my guitar. I compose music. My lyrics are raw and real, because I write as I experience life. I write as I observe life happening to people around me. Like many artists, I've fallen in and out of love so many times, I sometimes can't tell fact from fantasy. And so I write. I merge the two worlds to the extent where I sometimes dread being asked about my lyrics, because I might feel I have to answer .... and of course I'd answer truthfully.

But I'm a compulsive writer. Before I go to sleep each night, I write. I sometimes fall alseep with my pen in my hand and my journal open next to me, the last word I wrote morphing into hieroglyphics.

And so I suppose, for me, the answer to that question, "To blog or not to blog?", is crystal clear: for as long as I'm able to use my brain and hands this way, I will most definitely be blogging.

Delicious

2011-01-30T17:57:00.002+02:00

* Fresh orange juice

* Fresh fruit salad

* A berry smoothie

* Butter chicken and basmati rice

* Thai green curry

* Seed loaf toast with smoked snoek pate, avocado and sweet chilli sauce

* Vanilla ice-cream with strawberry yoghurt!

It's up to you

2011-01-30T17:28:00.005+02:00

Picture taken by my daughter, Summer Geffen, on the road near Constantia Nek. Sat 29/01/11.

When life sends you blessings, it's up to you to do something to bless someone else.

When someone loves you, it's up to you to either love them back, or be honest about your inability to do so, and move out of the way to give them space to find a more deserving person.

When you've stretched yourself to the max, either physically or emotionally, it's up to you to do something to restore the balance.

When you've given all you could and not achieved your desired objective, it's up to you to re-evaluate your course of action and make a new decision.

It's up to you to give yourself a second chance - or as many chances as you need - to get to that point where you feel you're living life in a way that makes sense to you, even if others don't quite get what makes you tick.

In any situation in your life, it's up to you to either accept your circumstances, or exercise your right to choose a different option - it's entirely up to you.

Funny thing

2011-01-27T09:11:00.007+02:00

Picture: Wayne and I at Baran's Theatre Restaurant, on 6 Dec 2009, at a concert of my originals called "Music Inside of Me".

The funny thing about people's response to the song I put on the internet, a week ago, is that they all call it my "new" song. That makes me smile, because I wrote it 6 years ago, and I've been performing it live for all this time. In fact, for the past two years, working with Wayne, it's sounded pretty much like I sang it on the recording, except that, in the recording, the percussion moved (propelled) the song into the sound it was probably always meant to have.

Makes me wonder about all my other sambas and bossas - ooh, can't wait to record them with percussion too! Some of the titles are "Delighted", "I'm In A Bossanova Mood" and "My Favourite Time of Day". I also really like the lazy blues, and I have a few songs written in that style: "Joe", "Libido Blues", "Lucy" and "Purple". Interestingly enough, all of them have slighty humourous lyrics. That's just the way they came out - something about that groove that lends itself to humour.

Today I'm meeting a jazz radio presenter, and giving him a copy of the "new" song. Once it's been achieved, I'll write more. I'm VERY excited. (No!) :-)

My exciting week

2011-01-25T11:21:00.005+02:00

Pictures:Guitarist Wayne Bosch and percussionist Tony Paco.

For those of you who aren’t connected to me via Facebook, I’d like to share with you what’s been happening in the last 7 days.

On Tuesday 18 January, exactly a week ago, I went into a studio close to where I live, and recorded one of my original songs. It was Little River Studio, owned by Ghalik Jacobs, and the song I chose to record was “I’m So Happy Today”, a samba I wrote in 2005. Originally it was going to be just guitar and voice, with Wayne Bosch, but on the day I was introduced to percussionist Tony Paco, who ended up playing on the track, and what a difference he made!

I got to the studio just after 10am and left at about 6:30pm. In that time we’d recorded 4 vocal takes, a few guitar takes and a few percussion tracks. I had to ease myself into the situation, and get my head around the many possibilities inherent in recording. I’m used to performing my songs live with Wayne, and one gets used to hearing things sounding a certain way – either both of us play our guitars and I sing, or he plays and I sing. But in the studio we recorded one track with him playing chords and a second track with him playing fills and licks, as well as a short solo between verses. So cool! Once I’d made peace with the fact that it’s ok to have a slightly different sound on a CD to a live performance, I relaxed into the process.

The first track Tony recorded was the shaker, and that immediately lifted the feel of the song. Then he did a conga track, which already made my heart dance, followed by a bongo track, which was the indisputable cherry on top. In fact, that song will never sound as good without that bright sparkly bongo sound. It’s festive, it’s happy, and it reminds me of Brazil! And, judging by feedback from people, it makes everyone want to dance!

I’ve always been curious about behind-the-scenes things, so I sat through some of the technical tweaking that Ghalik did after the other musicians had left, and I learnt a whole lot.

That evening, Ghalik e-mailed me the mp3 and I had a listen. Well, fussy Virgo that I am, I heard all kinds of things I wanted changed, and sent one of my anal e-mails to him, listing the changes, in point form! After some correspondence, he advised me to not only listen a few times, but to let as many people as possible listen and give me feedback. I e-mailed it to some close friends and waited for their feedback. I told him I was keen to put the track onto my Facebook wall, and he suggested I check out Soundcloud. On Thursday night, I uploaded my song onto www.soundcloud.com, and a whole new phase of my music journey began. I put the link onto Facebook and people started responding.

And then the momentum started rolling. My brother-in-law, Theo, does a bit of a guest slot on Heart Radio 104.9FM (in Cape Town) some Sunday nights, where he and another jazz lover take a selection of their private CDs to the studio and play their choice during Clarence Ford’s show. Well, right at the end of the show, they played my song!!!! 5 days after it had been recorded! And now, other exciting things are happening, about which I’ll write once plans have become reality.

I’m so glad I chose that particular song. I’d wanted to record a tongue-in-cheek, lazy blues I’d written in 2001, called “Joe”, but a very good friend, Zenariah, convinced me to do “I’m So Happy Today”, and what a good decision that was; the song is full of optimism and joy, excitement, hope and love; it’s a beginning-of-the-year song, but I think it will have resonance throughout the year. When I listen to it, it makes me smile, and I hope it has a similar effect on others.

Suffice it to say that I am VERY excited, and I am full of ideas about what to do next. The big dream is still to record and release a full album of my originals. That flame is burning more brightly today than ever before.

I feel incredibly blessed to have produced this recording with three fine people, each one a master of his craft, and to be surrounded by the love and support of my family and friends.

2011 – I am SO ready for you! What a great start!

My first original song on the internet!

2011-01-20T23:34:00.004+02:00

http://www.soundcloud.com/trudy-rushin/im-so-happy-today-mp3-3

Much more than a wish

2011-01-11T10:38:00.004+02:00

Yesterday I took my car (once again!) to the mechanic, who lives two roads away. Walking back, I detoured to the corner cafe, where I bought the newspaper and some orange juice, my favourite drink.

The main aim was to read the Career Times section, for jobs, so I opened it and started reading while I was walking. I felt that something significant lay inside the paper, especially for me. And there it was, in black and white; not a job, but a quotation, one that hit me in the solar plexus, as it dealt with something I've become increasingly aware of about myself, something I started addressing immediately after reading the quotation.

I've decided that this will be one of my arse-kicks for 2011:

"A goal without a plan is just a wish"
Antoine de Saint-Exupery (author of "The Little Prince")

I know it's only January/Don't you worry, don't you worry!

2011-01-08T13:07:00.006+02:00

As the new year gets off to a sweltering start in Cape Town, with everyone complaining about the recent heatwave, may I take this opportunity to remind them that seasons are cyclical? Last year in January and February, we also had very hot weather! In two months' time we'll all be wearing different outfits, shielding ourselves from the nippy autumn weather, and then we'll hit winter, be miserable and complain about the rain, and then spring will either be too late or too much like summer, and then it will be summer again, more heat, more fires, more complaints. Maybe we need to deal with the transcience of this thing called time, this thing called life?

Just needed to get that off my chest. Thank you!

Into my fourth month at home, going through a decidedly different phase. I'll be honest, I never thought it would take me this long to find a job. Many layers to this experience, not all of which are blog-appropriate, so I'll stick to the ones that are. Some days I'm full of energy, buzzing around doing twenty things at once, and on other days, I surf the internet, answer e-mails, do laundry, potter in the garden, but by the end of the day, I can't account for hours of that day. It's like time just slips away. Slips away. Sometimes my significant other asks me what I've done for the day, and I actually don't know!

But let me contextualise this: my children weren't with me this past week, which meant it was that kind of week, where I could go for days on end not cooking a meal, just eating whatever's around. One night this week I had ice-cream for supper. Yum!
Remember when you were a child, and you dreamed about how cool it would be to be an adult, without anyone telling you to eat healthily, not drink hot and cold things at the same time, etc? But then you grew up and you automatically followed all those rules, somehow having internalised that being an adult meant doing the right thing all of the time? Well, because of my part-time status in most parts of my life (haha!), I have the chance to break all the rules, do silly things like have ice-cream for supper and, every now and then, stay in my pj's all day. It's unbelievably cool! My 80-year-old mom lives in the granny flat on the premises, and I think she sometimes wonders where she went wrong! :-).

I've been feeling really low, recently, immensely frustrated at how long it's taking to find a job. People who've known me most of my life think of me as a teacher, which is definitely a role I played for many years. When I was updating my CV last year, I realised that my working life had totalled twenty-five years! For about six of those years, I worked as a manager as well, with the last three being exclusively management, no teaching whatsoever. And you know what? I actually don't want to teach again. Let me put it this way, that's not what I'm aspiring to. I would take a teaching position to put food on my family's table, and to honour my financial commitments that don't magically stop when you lose your job. Even the companies I went to, explaining that I'd been retrenched, and submitting the relevant documents, still send me letters threatening to send the sheriff to my place of work. Eish!

And then there's the perception of me as stubborn, because what everyone else is telling me is so obvious (see previous paragrah) is not so obvious to me. And yes, I won't rule out the fact that I might have to take a teaching post for a while, to stay afloat, but my heart's not in it.

My last stint in the Education Dept lasted 18 months, and I realised then that, after having been in the private sector for so long - seven years! - it wasn't an easy transition adjusting to the bureacracy, etc of a state institution again. In fact, those eighteen months gave me an opportunity to measure how far I'd moved away from a certain mindset that unfortunately tends to prevail amongst many (not all!)government employees. That mindset that says I can do as little as I like, I can stay absent, I can under-perform on a daily basis, but I will still get my full salary, all my benefits, my short working hours, my bonus, my housing subsidy, oh what the hell, I'll just underperform for the next decade or so, and then I'll retire with my nice, fat, middle-class pension. And no, on a matter of principle, I don't support performance-based bonuses, because that means I actually have to be accountable, prepare my lessons, prove that I have educated and not spoonfed my learners; oh no, on a matter of principle, I definitely don't support performance-based bonuses. In fact, I really like the IQMS system, where my equally-underperforming friend and I can just write glowing reports for each other, sign on the dotted line, and we're all set till the next round of "peer appraisal". Yup.

My goodness, I didn't know all of that was going to come out!

And then there are people who know me in the context of my most recent job, where I managed the daily operations of an English language school that taught adults from all round the world. I was good at what I did, I loved what I did, and I took my role seriously. I loved the industry, the students, most of my colleagues (let's be honest!) and I grew in my role, changing in that space of time to whom I am now; I'm not the same Trudy I was in 1983 when I entered the teaching profession, not the Trudy I was in 1996 when I took a voluntary severance package, nor am I the Trudy I was when I re-entered the employ of the Dept in 2006.

I've had to deal with a lot of change, over the years, and it's funny how the different "communities" we belong to handle the changes we go through. Fundamentally, I believe people sincerely want what's best for me, but there's not much room in their neat little solutions for what I'm really about, at this particular stage of my life.

And so I've come up with what I choose to call "The Rushin Solution". Haha! It's so bizarre, you'd think I was crazy! And so I've set my heart on something, which, even if it takes me two years to bring into being, I believe I have a very good chance of turning into a huge success, not only for myself, but for Cape Town.

I have an original song, a samba, called, "I'm so happy today", which I hope to be putting on the internet really soon. These are the words of the catchy chorus:

I know it's only January
Don't you worry, don't you worry
I am gonna go go go and never stop
And though it's only January
Won't be sorry, won't be sorry
This is gonna be the year that I get to the top!

Happy New Year - 2011, here I come!

2011-01-01T16:14:00.006+02:00

Photo: Woke up this morning to rain and thunder. Wow! Happy New Year to you, too, Mother Nature! Went outside to take photos of my garden. This pot of Impatiens plants is turning into such a beautiful sight!

I have this belief that whatever you're doing at the stroke of midnight, when a new year starts, could have major significance for the year ahead. Which is why I'm SO glad I was singing and playing my guitar at a gig at midnight, at that magical moment when 2010 slipped into 2011.

What were you doing?

I did my second consecutive New Year's Eve gig at Myoga Restaurant, in the Vineyard Hotel in Newlands, one of Cape Town's southern suburbs. Last year I worked with Wayne and this year with Rudi Byrnes, as Wayne had already been hired. What a lovely gig! The staff once again treated us very considerately, and I just enjoy the way they go about whatever they do. On the two occasions I've worked there, I've felt like I was part of a well-run operation; there's an unpretentiousness that surprised me last year, since it is a very classy 5-star restaurant. Well done to Cecil Monk, the manager, for running a tight ship, and to everyone on the staff for coming across as genuinely friendly and happy to be doing what they do. One whole year later and Myoga has that same warm, welcoming atmosphere. 10 gold stars from me!

I've done gigs (including some recent ones!) where I've received no help at all from the staff. They'll stand and watch me carrying my speakers, my amp, etc. from my car to wherever I need to be, point out the trolley and the lift, but do nothing to assist. I suppose they take one look at my car and conclude that they probably won't get much of a tip from me. Not necessarily so! But how would they know? And then there was the embarrassing time that I genuinely had no money on me other than what I'd been paid for the gig, in big notes, and I had no change to tip the guy who had helped me. I apologised profusely and consoled myself that he probably got lots of money from tourists at the hotel on a regular basis anyway. (!)

I really enjoyed last night; even though it was a four-hour gig, the time just flew. I enjoyed playing my guitar for almost every item we did, both instrumental and vocal, and it seemed like we had quite appreciative listeners - although that's not always easy to ascertain in a restaurant setting. I thoroughly enjoyed singing, and could feel the ease of performing things we'd practised as a duo, as well as things I'd practised a lot on my own. I enjoyed playing the basslines of certain standards, as well as tackling tunes I'd never done at a gig before (e.g. "What are you doing new Year's Eve?" and "Aguarela Do Brasil"). Nice to feel myself moving forward with my craft, my passion.

We botched the countdown, and I felt terrible. Something went awry at the last minute, and when I looked at my phone, we were 8 seconds into the new year and the staff had started bursting streamers and popping champagne. So I did the next logical thing - I started singing Auld Lang Syne! (Memo to myself - the next time, get someone else to watch the clock from about 23h55, and ask them to signal me when the countdown is supposed to start!)

I was grateful that my friend had lent me his car, as mine was once again off the road. Also glad that my children were sorted out for the night, and that my mom was home and safe.

I have (as usual) so much on my mind! The start of a new year is like the MOTHER of all new beginnings, and I'm filled with ideas, plans and mental To Do lists. When I have some uninterrupted solo time, I'll write more. Lots of ideas around taking my music further.

But right now, it's back to Mom-mode. Promised my daughter we'd bake a chocolate cake. Yum!

Music & Words: Sat 18 Dec, 7pm, at Baran's

2010-12-12T12:35:00.009+02:00

Pictures:
1. Writer, poet, storyteller, Diana Ferrus
2. Vocalist, Megan Francis
3. Singer-songwriter, Peter LaVey
4. Wayne and I at Baran's in March this year.

Next Saturday I present the next concert showcasing my original songs. Once again, I have the privilege and pleasure of working with my mentor, jazz guitarist-extraordinaire, WAYNE BOSCH. He breathes life into my compositions, and inspires me beyond words. Since July 2009 we have been working together as a duo, and it has been a time of learning, growing and pushing my personal boundaries, musically. We'll be doing the second half of the programme, performing songs I either haven't done in public before or songs I last performed 5 years ago.

In the first half of the programme, three exceptional artists will be strutting their stuff. First on the bill is a young man, PETER LaVEY, who is new to the stage. He's a singer-songwriter in the genre of light rock, who accompanies himself on guitar. Like many world-famous artists, Peter started his musical journey in church. I don't know when last I've heard such a pure, fresh voice. He's got real talent, and I'm very happy to be affording him his first-ever appearance in this type of setting. Cape Town needs to hear this promising musician, whom I believe has a bright future in the music world.

Second on the programme is also a young, up-and-coming musician, vocalist MEGAN FRANCIS. I first heard Megan sing when she did a guest spot at my restaurant gig, in 2009. I was blown away by her voice and stage presence, and have been fascinated by her growth over the past year. She recently came 2nd, against some serious competitors, in the Jazz Voice Competition at Grand West Casino Complex, hosted by Heart Radio. Her voice is amazing, and her musicality outstanding. Besides all of that, she has a sincerity on stage that endears her to her audience, an authenticity that no-one could fake. Megan, too, could have a successful career as a musician, if that was what her heart desired.

Completing the trio of fine artists in the first half is DIANA FERRUS, who describes herself as "'n skrywer, poet en storyteller, wat nou haar eerste bundel in Engels launch. Sy skryf in Engels en Afrikaans." I absolutely love Diana! Not only does she capture everyday moments with such a clever turn of phrase (in both languages), but when she recites her work, she draws you in, as the listener, and takes you on a journey, where one moment you'll be belly-laughing and the next, swallowing a lump in your throat, trying not to cry. Some of the time, you'll just let the tears roll. Diana has done extensive work on the topic of Slavery, with particular interest in the legendary Sarah Baartman. Two days before this concert, she officially launches her latest collection of poems, entitled, "I've come to take you home", her first English-only collection. This takes place at The Slave Lodge, Corner Adderley and Wale Streets, in Cape Town's city centre, at 11:30am on Thursday the 16th of December. Find her on Facebook, if you would like to buy tickets for her book launch.

This is going to be ONE BUSY WEEK, but I am looking forward to the 18th like a child anticipating Christmas! This week is filled with my children, who'll be here for a week, my part-time job (visiting and interviewing District 6 land claimants), duo rehearsal for the concert, singing at Diana's book launch on Thursday morning and at a Kurdish fundraiser that night, as well as at a 50th birthday party on Friday night. Where I'll find the time to attend to the peripheral details, I don't know, but you know what? It always comes together. The concert started out as a means to raise money for my family to survive, in the light of my retrenchment, but it's taken on a life of its own, and I'm enjoying the headiness of it all! Whatever I manage to raise after expenses, c'est la vie!

Tickets to my concert cost R60. You may call me at +27 83 491 3048 if you'd like to attend or just buy a ticket to support.

Good Morning

2010-12-10T07:44:00.004+02:00

As the grapevine gets heavier and the baby grapes change their shape and size with every passing week, as the seedlings I planted blossom and spread themselves out in their rich compost beds, and as the older plants get greener and taller, grinning contentedly in response to all the nurturing and love, I know without a doubt that my journey through this life is more closely linked to the earth and things green than I could ever have imagined. Not a week goes by that I don't learn yet another lesson from my garden.

These are some of the lessons I take with me today, that I've learnt from my garden over time:
* if something in my life is chaotic, neglected, or displeasing in any way, I have the power to change it into whatever I'd prefer it to be.
* if I have a plan, even a general direction, that's a great place to start.
* if I accept and embrace the fact that time is my best friend, and I understand that patience is an intrinsic part of any goal-directed process, then I can change a drab, dry situation into a fragrant, colourful reality.
* people come into our lives and they go, sometimes because they choose to leave and sometimes through death; somehow, the practice of getting my hands dirty in my garden, experiencing the growth and atrophy, the seasonal predictability and the sometimes inexplicable disappointment, having an intimate link with the earth helps me internalise the life-death-life cycles that I believe exist in almost everything to do with the human experience.

And on that quasi-profound note, I get ready for a day of interviews with District 6 land claimants. Today we're visiting 9 families, and I'm looking forward to it. This is a part-time job I managed to get in about mid-November, and it's been keeping me busy. What a fascinating experience and again...... so many lessons being learnt.

I'm going to say something that won't make sense to some people because I haven't found a permanent job yet, but here goes: getting retrenched was the best thing that could've happened to me at that time. And I continue to believe that life is filled with possibilities.

Yearning

2010-11-28T12:52:00.007+02:00

Picture: Imhoff Farm, near Ocean View in the more southern mountains of Cape Town.

I find myself yearning for tranquility, a powerful pull towards nature, space, a slower pace than the city allows me. Trying to find the balance, as usual, between my need for solitude and its flipside, companionship. Most of the time, I'm able to organise my life so that I achieve whatever it is I need to get through the day, the week, the month, the year. Dealing with the uncertainty of my standing in the employment market brings about a level of disquiet, unease, which I understand is inevitable. I am a proud person, like most of us are, and thrive on my independence. Having to rely on others to get me through this period is difficult, and yet I know that once I'm employed again, I'll honour all my commitments. Actually enjoying pushing myself to come up with different income-generating activities, so that I'm not passively waiting for others to make my life happen.

Many years ago, when decisions made in the wake of my divorce left me reeling financially, I approached a close friend for a loan of R2000, promising to repay her as soon as I'd found my feet again. This was someone I saw almost every day, with whom I shared some of my most intimate feelings and issues, someone I'd had many experiences with. Calling her up and asking for the loan was a last resort and took a lot of courage; I asked in a way that didn't assume anything and that gave her the space to decline. I encouraged her to discuss it with her husband, and I waited for her response. When it did come, the words she chose cut me like a knife: "We have a policy that we don't lend money to people."

Without going into detail about their opulent circumstances, I have to say that the use of the word "people" was what hurt me the most. This was a very close friend, who knew all the facts about my life. What also hurt was the fact that there was absolutely no understanding of how few choices I had, and just how hard it was to get up every day and carry on. I discussed it with a mutual friend, who said she could help me with R200 if I needed it. By that time, I had made the decision never to put myself through that again, and I'd started pawning whatever I could, including my wedding rings and my back-up musical equipment. Material things have meaning to me only insofar as they serve some purpose. I had two small children and I had to survive.

After a period of inconsistent income and quite a bit of turbulence, I settled into my new job, happy to be able to consolidate and work towards greater financial freedom. But my own struggles had heightened my awareness of the plight of others, and I soon identified someone who desperately needed help but was too proud to ask. I took a serious look at my budget and decided I could allocate a small amount every month to help ease her load. One of the hardest things for me, related to my retrenchment, was breaking the news to her that our arrangement had to end.

When I am employed again, I will make sure I don't live my life selfishly, with blinkers on. But for now, life has presented me with huge challenges, some of which terrify me, but most of which I've decided to channel into a learning experience. I WILL come out of this and I WILL go on to be happy and productive again. Most importantly, I WILL be a better person for having been forced out of my comfort zone and into a different headspace, where my appreciation of simple things is at an all-time high.

Which is why, with so much going on in my head, so many things to reflect on, I yearn, on a daily basis, for peaceful surroundings. I'm deeply grateful that some of my social activities have taken me to breathtaking spots in our beautiful Mother City, Cape Town. I think I've also come to terms with the fact that my aspirations lean towards tranquil surroundings. So maybe one day people will say, "Have you heard? Trudy's really bought the farm!"

Personal best

2010-11-26T00:29:00.004+02:00

Today I went to gym after a 4-day break (had been really busy) and swam 40 lengths, my all-time personal best. But people don't want to hear that from me right now, do they? People get frustrated that I haven't found a job yet. How the hell do they think I feel?! And how the hell can it be linked to my swimming? Can I honestly JOBHUNT 24 hours a day? It doesn't work like that.

Finding all over again that life is indeed complex, and that some personal victories are best kept to oneself, or blogged about, or tweeted about. I can understand why many people simply retreat into their private little worlds and don't bother to hang out with a group.

And so I will repeat, on my blog: today I swam 40 lengths, my personal best. I am SO proud of myself!

Happy birthday, Summer Dawn

2010-11-23T12:26:00.004+02:00

Today my daughter turns 12, an age she's wanted to be for years!! Just about my height, she's going to be quite tall when she stops growing. A fascinating person, this 12-yr-old. The year before she was born, dealing with the devastating effects of a miscarriage, I consulted an astrologer. Having made no reference to what had happened a few months before, I was blown away when she said, "I see a daughter for you". In that same reading, she said that I would also travel abroad the following year. It was only after I'd come back from my first-ever overseas trip, in mid-1998, and given birth to Summer in November that year, that I recalled the astrologer's words. Thirteen years later, I still have contact with that astrologer, and she's an amazing person. She relocated from Johannesburg to Cape Town and now lives a few suburbs away from me. Her accurate readings have continued over the years, and I have a lot of respect for her. She's counselled me through many different experiences over the years, and I admire the way she chooses her words. Often, only after I've experienced something do I realise that she had alluded to it without spelling it out.

But, back to Summer. I remember getting to the 40th week of my pregnancy and feeling I couldn't last another day. I started panicking at the thought of being pregnant for 41 or 42 weeks, because I was so heavy and the baby wasn't descending, and so I opted for an induction. To fit in with the doctor's timetable, I booked into Constantiaberg Medi-Clinic at 3am on a Monday, and my baby was born at 09h20. Something went horribly wrong with the epidural (a rushed job, to fit in with anaesthetist's surgery schedule!), my body went into some kind of shock reaction, and I had to have a C-section under general anaesthetic! I'll never forget the panic in the delivery room when the baby's heartbeat started becoming faint. Not an experience I'd wish on anybody!

I woke up in the recovery room at 11:00, and drifted in and out of consciousness til 11:30, when a friend who worked at the hospital came to tell me I'd had a daughter! A few minutes later, I was wheeled past my then-husband, who also told me excitedly that we'd had a daughter; I couldn't talk, but I touched my hair, asking wordlessly what any brunette would ask at the birth of her second child, when the first one was a redhead. "Another redhead!" he said, barely concealing his delight. I saw my daughter for the first time just after 11:30, two hours after her birth, and it was like dejavu - she looked exactly like her brother had looked, 4 years earlier! I held her in my arms and fed her, and I felt the most surprising feeling - that I had achieved one of my most important things in my life! I had given birth to a daughter!What a wonderful feeling after having had a son - it felt like the ultimate blessing to have one of each.

That was a curious time of my life. With Summer's arrival, I used to say our home had "three Sagittarians and one vegetarian"!

This little girl has had quite a life, with her parents splitting just before her 2nd birthday, and she's turned into a fiery, fiesty young person, with strong opinions and convictions, and a wonderful gift for languages. She's also got a great eye for photographs and has spent the past year saving up for her very first serious camera, which she's planning to buy for Christmas.

Her dream careers over the years have gone from bus driver to egg slicer, teacher to singer, and most recently, to photo-journalist. She's decided she's going to Rhodes University and then she's going to travel all round the world taking photos and writing. About to enter Grade 7, she's got 6 more years of schooling ahead, during which so much could happen.

I'm incredibly proud of my daughter. She's very witty and has sharp critical faculties. Her sense of humour, evident from a young age, has grown over the years, and she's able to describe and imitate like a regular stand-up comic. Far more confident than I was at that age, she's got a future ahead that I sincerely hope I'm around to witness.

She's one of the most musical people I know, with so much natural talent, it constantly takes me by surprise. She took violin lessons for four years, then decided to change to the piano! She sang in their school choir for four years, too. She sings like a nightingale and has an amazing sense of pitch.

And so, before I go and pick her up at school to spend her birthday afternoon with her, I'd like to send a special thanks to the universe for blessing me with this wonderful little girl. My life has indeed been made a lot more interesting and exciting by her presence.

My wish for her is that she may live her life with all the enthusiasm, curiosity and fun she currently has, as a 12-yr-old, and that she may never compromise on her sense of self-worth, never sell herself short or dumb down to please anyone, but soar like the eagle she is, living life with joy and love.

I accepted long ago that Sagittarians have a very strong sense of adventure - I've trained myself to say all the goodbyes that inevitably go with redheaded Sags! ;-)

Kissing frogs

2010-11-21T23:49:00.003+02:00

And life goes on. At this stage, I need to start my blogs with that phrase! Strange time for me – I’ve been at home for 8 weeks and life is very different to when I worked in my most recent job, at Eurocentres Language School. I can now see how that one change became the catalyst for quite a few others, and I have to say that almost every one of those changes was positive. Yes, I’m still unemployed and yes, I do need to find a job as soon as possible, and yes….. the end of November is going to be a very sobering experience as the usual monthly overheads loom, with my income limited to some gigs and some piece-meal work I’ve picked up. I guess we’re about to see the quintessential stuff hitting the fan. Hectic!

And yet, coexisting with all of the above is an amazing set of circumstances: I can honestly say I’m in a much better space than I’ve been in a long time. I’ve been swimming a lot and the results are far-reaching. I’m enjoying the feeling of working in a disciplined and committed way towards a goal, the physical effects are inspiring, and it seems to be affecting my overall confidence. I feel like I’ve rediscovered myself. Many years ago, exercise played a huge role in my life, but somewhere along the line, I lost it. Life happened, as they say: I got married, became a mother, did the crazy juggling act of being a working mom, struggled for 7yrs to make a troubled marriage work, got divorced, spent the next 10 years in different phases of survival mode, and when I looked, I had gained 19kg! Yes, right now, I’m 19kg heavier than when I got married. How the hell did that happen? The journey is what it is. Time and circumstances resulted in my losing my fitness and figure, and now time and circumstances are the very factors enabling me to address this part of my life. It’s not my goal to lose 19kg – that’s unrealistic; instead, I’d like to lose 10kg. I stopped eating bread one and a half weeks ago, I’m very conscious of what I eat and drink, and I’m determined to maintain these lifestyle changes, to move towards my goal.

Some of the changes I had to make, when I lost my job, were not easy. I miss my guitar lessons intensely, but I practise a lot, because I want to keep improving, keep making better music. More than that, playing guitar keeps me in touch with who I am. I’ve been playing guitar since 1978, and it’s as much a part of me as my freckles! Trying hard to score a weekly gig (or two!), but right now it seems to elude me. I’ll keep on trying. Made publicity packs for the duo, including a not-too-bad demo CD, and I need to get more of them out to establishments.

Having so much time on my hands has also brought me back to one of my old hobbies, gardening, and I’m enjoying seeing the results of my hours of work. So rewarding, so full of promise. This is something I’d also like to keep as part of the way I proceed along my journey from now on.

The way I relate to different people in my life also seems to be changing, and I’m at peace with the fact that this is an inevitable part of a more introspective and reflective time. More and more, I continue to find myself less interested in the glitz and glamour, the mindless money-intensive pursuits, and more at home in my own skin, gaining self-knowledge, stripping away the façade, sorting out fantasy from reality.

And so, as I deal with this curious combination of issues – and much more – the best thing that I can do to get through this phase of my life is just keep on keeping on, in the only way I know and choose to operate, believing that everything is happening as it should, that there’s a beautiful plan for my life, that even when it comes to what we want from life, you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince. :-)

Wide open spaces

2010-11-15T00:08:00.005+02:00

Picture: Wide open spaces open up my thoughts, inspire me. Today I did a gig at Neethlingshof Wine Estate, just outside Stellenbosch.

Tomorrow heralds the start of my 8th week at home, unemployed. While I’ve used the time to do lots and lots of things, it’s starting to freak me out that, despite having applied for quite a few jobs, I haven’t been called for one interview, and nothing in the formal job market has come my way. Very sobering. Requires of me some serious sitting down and thinking out of the box, as the saying goes.

There’s a lot on my mind, as usual. I understand that this period without a full-time job is a temporary phase, and that, at some stage in the (not-too-distant) future, I’ll be employed again and feeling the security that goes with it. But right now, to be honest, I’m taking some strain.

I count my blessings every day, as part of the Mind Power exercises I do, and I really do feel blessed in many ways. In fact, an awareness that dawned on me, recently, was that life (a complex system containing many sub-systems) could be compared to the human body: if my foot hurts, but everything else is ok, I just need to sort out my foot – everything carries on as usual; no need to get rid of the whole body! Well, right now, ONE aspect of my life is not right – employment – but everything else is really fine. I’m healthy (except for a sore foot, seriously!), I have a gym membership that I’ve been making use of, I have my family, I have a home, my car works most of the time, I have my guitar and music in general, I’ve been doing roughly one paid gig per week, I’ve been working in the garden, making a visible difference, I’ve been uncluttering my house, room by room, I’ve spent time with some amazing friends, I’ve had some incredible conversations over the past 7 weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time with my 11-yr-old daughter and my 80-yr-old mom, I’ve done a lot of jobhunting and applied for some fascinating positions that sounded tailor-made for me, I’ve put together publicity packs for the Rushin-Bosch Duo and started distributing them to some of my dream venues (to be continued this week).

You know what? I have nothing to complain about! I’ve been included in a part-time project for which I’ll be paid, interviewing land claimants for District 6 and I’ve actually been offered a lucrative New Year’s Eve gig.

But more than all of that – I have so much love in my life: a family relationship that’s been in turmoil for most of this year is starting to heal, and I’m fortunate to have an incredibly loving home base. Without going into too much detail, let me just say there’s a huge amount of love in my life.

I will get through this phase.

When I wake up tomorrow morning, some ideas that have been brewing in my subconscious will have started effervescing.

So now……, off to bed!

Love me, love my blog

2010-11-05T00:42:00.003+02:00

Picture: A clever, delightful book I got from a friend when I left the school I'd been working at.

Tues. 02/11/10
In my sixth week at home, I can’t believe I haven’t posted a blog since late September! So much has happened, so many insights gained, routines implemented, goals set, procrastinated matters addressed – I can honestly say I’ve been too busy living my life to blog about it. But, as someone who writes compulsively – like I can’t move through life without documenting it, just in case I need to refer to dates and events at some stage and also because I actually enjoy reading back and seeing how (and if) I’ve changed – I must confess I have been journalling a lot. What’s the difference between blogging and journalling? Two main things, in my opinion: firstly, the size of the reading audience and secondly, the level of honesty. Haha! When I blog, I’m aware that there’s a public readership, so the text is checked and tweaked, then checked and tweaked again, before I press Enter and send it out into cyberspace. I’ve received enough feedback to know that, even though I have just 10 followers, a lot more people actually read my blog.

Thurs. 04/11/10
Journalling, on the other hand, is the process of writing like a waterfall – as the thoughts cascade, so do the words onto the page. I sometimes write so fast, I find it hard to read my entries afterwards. Besides the one mode of writing, writing, writing as I think, recording recent events, observations, opinions and impressions, there’s a second mode, the one where I process issues. I look at a situation in fine detail and I suppose ‘deconstruct’ would be a good way to describe what it is I do. That has got me through many difficult periods of my life, lots of dilemmas, lots of lows. I vent, I rant, I abandon the social niceties. But what a useful exercise it inevitably is! A third mode of journalling, for me, is making lists – all kinds of lists! Haha! ALL KINDS! Lists of things to do, goals (short, medium and long-term), and criteria. I make lists of criteria for everything – my ideal job, my ideal partner, my dream home, my dream car (that’s a short list: a big boot and a CD player!), my ideal gig, etc.

The past five weeks have had an identity like no other period of my life. There hasn’t been one moment where I could have said I was bored. There’s always something to do. And yes, I’ll admit, I like being busy. In fact, strange as it may sound, I like working. Losing my job was much more than just changing my daily routine and losing my income; it took me about four weeks to fully and honestly acknowledge that I needed to grieve, that that’s also part of this experience. I miss my colleagues, I miss the students. I miss that community I was part of for 34 months. But life does go on, and in a way I can’t quite explain right now, I embrace what’s happened as part of the universe’s beautiful plan for my life and I anticipate, with great excitement, the new phase that lies ahead.

Every week has felt different and had a different focus. I’ve done so much, and yet it feels like time has flown. I’ve uncluttered parts of my crazy house, also thrown things out of the shed, taken loads of recycling away and given things to my friend for her secondhand shop. I’ve finally had time to potter in the garden, and that’s become something I look forward to, because it’s so soothing, very rewarding and an activity that gives me space to think – I love the lessons about life that my garden teaches me. I’ve enjoyed watching the grapevine grow and also the way the garden has perked up in response to the attention it’s been getting. I took the bold step of cutting down a pot plant I’ve had since 1984, which recently just died, for no apparent reason. So I cut it down, composted the soil and have taken to chatting to it every now and then. Another plant I got recently as a gift, wasn’t looking too happy inside, so I put it outside yesterday. I’ll keep my eye on it.

I’ve been going to gym, mainly swimming and sitting in the sauna. That’s very therapeutic, and I’m lucky to still be able to do that. Another change I’ve had to implement, in the wake of my job loss, has been giving up my guitar lessons. That was hard for me. But my love for the instrument and for singing keeps me practising. I still have a restaurant gig (Café Adelphi, Sea Point), so it’s important that I keep practising.

On the home front, my being unemployed has had some nice spin-offs for my family, with my daughter being able to skip After School Care most days and my mom having me around a lot more, to chat to and go out with. My son’s been living with his dad for most of this year, so he’s not that affected by my changed routines. But that’s another story!

I spend a few hours every day jobhunting, mainly on the internet, but also in newspapers. I sent an e-mail out to my network explaining my situation and received a lot of replies, some asking for my CV, some pointing me to websites or organizations, and some just wishing me well, expressing their confidence that I’d find something suitable soon. I was moved by some of the e-mails people sent me, and I realized that we don’t thrive only on the tangibles that people send our way (contact names and numbers, websites, etc.), but also very much on the intangibles, the words of support, encouragement and love. And hope.

I’ve sent my CV to a few organisations I like (never done that before!) and I’ve applied for about five jobs. I’ve also registered with a few recruitment agencies.

Shoo, will this blog post ever end? I’ve also been doing more cooking than usual, trying to stretch the resources, and even that’s been fun – I’ve tried some things I hadn’t tried before. Oh, and I read a lot and do Sudoku!

Yesterday I fetched the demo CD my music partner and I recorded at his friend’s house a few weeks ago. Funny listening to oneself: after the first time, I decided I liked only one of the 5 songs, and that I’d use just that one as the demo! This morning, I listened again, and decided that four of them were actually not that bad. Oh, I could write a list of what I feel I could’ve done better, but basically it’s a means to an end (getting gigs), so that’s another project I’m involved in. Burnt copies today and wrote on the sleeves. Tomorrow, I’m printing mini-pics of the duo to put onto the sleeves. In for a penny,…!

I sincerely believe that the inner processes we go through are as important as the outer, more public ones. I also believe that the energy we vibrate with (inner world) has a profound effect on what happens in our lives (outer world). In keeping with that belief, I’ve been doing lots of Mind Power. I’m in my third consecutive week of the new Mind Power programme I drew up for myself. I choose four exercises a week and do them every day. They consist of things like affirmation, visualization, acknowledging and contemplating. I make notes of my sessions, and I’ve found myself sharpening my senses and my skills in this area of my life. Hard to describe to a cynic, but suffice it to say: it works for me. It’s a conscious choice, to view the world in a certain way, not as a helpless victim of circumstance, but as a powerful energy source, one that can influence outcomes. I’ve been following this lifestyle for 7 years now, and it’s taught me a lot, about the power of thought as well as the power of words.

With all this inner work, as well as the other emotional issues related to being unemployed, I’ve found myself becoming a bit anti-social, which is hard to explain to some people. I like being with my family, my best friend, my partner and some close friends, but I really don’t feel like being at large gatherings, especially where I don’t know many of the people. I enjoy watching live jazz, but not necessarily where people are over-indulging in alcohol and becoming stupid. Then I’d rather stay home and read, play my guitar, journal, potter in the garden, watch tv, listen to CDs or do Mind Power.

I always have music buzzing round my head, and I love playing with song titles, believing that for every person and every situation there’s a song title that’s a perfect match. What would mine be, right now?
Some possibilities:
I Will Survive
Imagine
Just in Time
Perfect

But the one I like best, which sums up my headspace right now:
This Could Be The Start of Something Big

Waning Wednesdays

2010-09-29T18:12:00.003+02:00

Today I had my guitar lesson, and once again I felt both the discipline and the success of the process I'm going through. Wayne (Bosch) is an excellent teacher, and I'd recommend him highly to anyone wanting guitar lessons, especially if you're prepared to work hard. Today I also informed the admin staff there that I'm finishing lessons at the end of October. Sad, but unavoidable, considering I'm now unemployed.

I'm one of those people who, I'd imagine to the annoyance of others in my close circle, cherish every experience, because my view is that there's no guarantee it will go on for ever, which is how we tend to live our lives.

This came about when I started having to live away from my children, for a few days at a time, after my marriage ended 10 years ago. Every moment I got to spend with them was precious, and I learnt to live IN the moment and to experience things FULLY, intent on making happy memories, intent on living a life with as few regrets as possible.

My point? I have looked forward to and enjoyed every guitar lesson, and I've achieved most of my goals possible for this length of time. I fully believe that Wayne is destined for the international stage, and so I plunged myself into the process, consciously learning as much as I could, because at any time his journey could take him out of Cape Town, out of South Africa. What will I do after October? I'll figure it out. If I get a job in the city centre, I'll try to get my lesson slot back, but if not, I have lots of lessons I could go over and work on until I've mastered what I've learnt in the past two years. Improving at anything we do is not totally dependent on having a teacher all of the time - sometimes what's learnt in lessons takes a while to sink in, to become part of us, and I think the next part of my guitar journey is going to require discipline from me, as I set aside time every day to practise and continue to grow as a musician.

Four Wednesday lessons left. The only constant in life ...

Picture of Wayne and me at Food Lover's Market, taken on 22/05/10 by Bienvenue Mambote, who performed as our guest artist that night.