Mmm. I slept for a long time on the D train on the way home, and when I came out, there was a very soothing gentle rain raining. It reminded me that there is more in the world than customers, computers, and late lonely nights.
I sang On On by Erykah Badu at the Village Underground tonight. I was definitely more confident and technically skilled than I have been any other time, but I felt like people gave a lot less of a shit. I almost felt like it was like "OK, another good singer. Whoop-de-doo." But I got some respect from various folks afterwards, and I got to talk to Adam the guitarist for a bit about what it's like making a living as a musician. It sounds hard. Scrambling and shit. 5 hour wedding gigs and drop-of-a-hat trips to California. Maybe someday.
I put up a posting on craigslist and got a couple responses, one of which seems promising. I reconnected with Tim, another conflicted singer / songwriter type from college, and we're gonna get together and workshop in 2 weeks or so.
I started on a sort of verse section for If We Were, and I tried to get some lyrics down for it, but I ended up with a little dream poem instead. Maybe I'll share it some other time.
Lastly, today at work, I ran into Gabe, another dude from college who I took some music and interactivity classes with it. He told me he's going to ITP in September and that Konrad, a fantastic jazz pianist with whom I sang on numerous occasions back in college, is now in New York, and will also be attending ITP. Hmm. Abstractly, ITP seems like it might be what I want in my life: mixing technology and art, discussions of paradigms and interfaces and whatnot. Something about it, however, rubs me the wrong way. As cool as Basic stamp microcontrollers and interactive instruments are, do I really need to get a Master's degree in Professional Studies? I worry that I wouldn't learn anything useful, and that, like my current degree in music, it would lead me nowhere. Then again, graduates seem to do cool things with themselves afterwards.
I usually alternate between unfounded optimism and despair. Today, I am at a point of mere confusion and tiredness. I am tired of being hopeful; I am tired of being hopeless.
Poo.