New e-mail address: guitartrudy@gmail.com

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.

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!

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!