New toys.

I have two Apex 435s. I have an M-Audio Firewire 410 Interface. I have stands, cords, a P-popper. Everything is falling into place. Excellent...

Why the Apex 435s after so much nattering about the other mics? Research and price. I get more response and warmer tone for 40 euros less? Ok. That's fine by me. I'd love to copy my brother's home studio, I'd love to have his nice overflowing bank account as well. I have a feeling that this is more than enough for my demo and composing.

So starting the recording tomorrow. Too knackered tonight. Excitement and joy!

Friends.

Got in touch with my old friend from Austin. He's going to become an Episcopal priest! Funnily enough, he's moving to England to finish his studies at Oxford, and this summer he'll be living in Paris so we'll be seeing each other very soon! After so many years...

Have been thinking of friends a lot this year as I am largely alone in France when my fiancé is at work. I skype, chat, call my friends in the States and England, but it's not quite the same as meeting up with them in person for dinner or a pint or a nice walk and some shopping. Not the same at all. And it's hard to make friends with French people. It's a totally different dynamic.

Then I think of friends who are lost or died this year. One friend is in terrible grief because her mother died, and I don't know how to help her or if I should. She's shut in on herself and she's an ocean and half a continent away in Austin. I've called, sent letters and e-mails. Just to let her know she's always in my thoughts and to contact me when she feels ready to deal with the world again. I know exactly how she feels. The relationship she had with her mother was very similar to the one I had with mine. Truly best friends. Maybe that's why I don't want her to be alone. I want her to know that I understand what she's going through. I'll have to be patient, I suppose. But I hope she knows that the bridge between us will never burn.

I also think of a man named Mac also in Austin. I hung out with him a few times, used to house sit for his bassist, but I knew his wife better. She was killed in a car accident last year, and I have not been able to express to him personally how much she will be missed in my life. I signed the guest book. She was honestly one of the sweetest souls I have ever known. I'll never forget a random phone call I received from her one afternoon. She said, "Rachel, I know what you need! You need a Corgi! You're a Corgi person!" I was dead set on this Irish Wolfhound/Great Pyrenées mix rescue dog that I was going to save from the needle. When the papers didn't go through for the rescue, I was really sad. Mysteriously, I received a call from someone who wanted me to come pick up a "pet class" Pembroke Welsh Corgi puppy near Dallas. Kim's call and that one were totally unrelated...or were they? I got the very best Corgi in the world, Chester the Wonder Corgi, and I'll always wonder. Kim seemed to have this sort of happy magical effect on my life, she would say something and then through another channel, it would just happen. We were always going to set a play date for Chester and her Springer Spaniels. It never materialized, we lost touch, I moved away. I cried a lot when I got the news of her passing. The loss of such a wonderful person, even if they haven't cured an epidemic or anything like that, is still a big loss. We need more people like her in the world. So it's up to us to let ourselves be influenced by her humanity. She was an inspiration to me to face the world with love instead of fear. She was kindness incarnate.

Thank you, Internet!

Since it's SXSW in my hometown of Austin, Texas, I was thinking of some of my friends from Austin. Two especially. We've lost touch with each other, and I always think that's such a shame.

Well, I found them again thanks to the power of the internet.

One of them used to play in various bands with me. The other musicians came and went, we were the core. He was the drummer, I was the bassist. He was like the little brother I always wanted and never had. Googled him last night and found out he's in SF playing music. His band's sound is very club-oriented, which was a surprise. I never imagined he even enjoyed that kind of music. Found his myspace page. In the end, he's pretty much the same old guy. Sent him an e-mail.

The other person was my friend Ali's dad, Arthur (Brown, the man who brought us fire and taught us to burn). Ali left Austin, and Arthur and I would bump into each other from time to time. Either at Whole Foods or at a show. He once gave me a session of music therapy at Casa de Luz that was really helpful. I always felt so relaxed around him. Maybe it was his amazing smile. Anyway, I found him, too. Sent an e-mail. It would be nice to hear from one or the other or both!

Songs That Sometimes Make Me Cry.

When I was an angst-ridden teen, before the cancer and all that, I used to listen to songs that I knew would make me cry, and have a good solid bawl. Sort of like the restaurant in The Tin Drum by Günter Grass. All the former Hitler Youth had onions cut at their tables right under their noses so that they could cry. A torture and a therapy at the same time.

I had plenty to cry about. Normal didn't exist in my family (not sure it exists anywhere), and I learned early that extreme emotional pain cannot be endured everyday if you melt everytime it occurs. I guess I was stocking up. In the years between those days and these days, lots of horrible things have happened to me. The lowest points follow:

*I was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 17.
*An abusive man I lived with for 5 years threatened my life and stalked me for 2 years after I left him.
*My mother, my best friend, died while I was living in Paris, a week before I was to come home.

Lots of things pile up, and you have to harden to get through the day, the month, the year. It took me two years to emote "properly" about my mother's death. And you know who helped me the most besides my fiancé? E of Eels and the fabulous "Blinking Lights and Other Revelations." The song that never fails is "Last Time We Spoke." The first time I heard it, I was buying art supplies at the BHV in central Paris. I had just left the building and was standing on the corner about to walk home. But I couldn't move. Bobby, Jr.'s howl stopped me. But the line "nothing hurts/like someone who knows/everything about you/leaving you behind" almost killed me. Even now, that line squeezes my heart. It is so simple, but so complex. Just like grief. There's self-pity, it's acknowledged, and oddly, respected. And, for me, it is exactly what it feels like to have lost my mom. It is the worst pain I have ever experienced. Nothing hurts like it. Something happens, I have a bad day, I don't want to have to explain, but the one person who understood me completely is gone. Very singular and stabbing pain.

I sent my dad "Blinking Lights" for Christmas after another of his (this time successful?) stints in rehab. It speaks to him, too. But I think that those songs speak in a different language to anyone who hears them. They are specifically unspecific. They are perfect songs.

Of course, there's also "It's a Motherfucker" from Daisies of the Galaxy. That whole damn song. Simple, but really not at all.

The other song that sucker-punched me recently was "Imagine a Man" by The Who from Who By Numbers. I was having a Who night, just me and my iPod. I have listened to this song a million times, but that evening, I don't know. The music, the lyrics, the production quality, and something in that liquidy bass line that starts after "or a simple act of deceit" - especially that bass line weaving into eveything else - grabbed my heart and squished it. It's a response, a support, a voice of a loved one. A friend with open arms ready to hold you until you've stopped crying. Empathy translated into music. May have been the furthest thing from John's mind, but that's what it felt like in that moment, at that listening. The magical production quality of that beautiful song lifts it even higher. The image that comes to me is something shining in a blue sky full of fluffy clouds. Is it a UFO? An Angel? You think you know and then it's gone. Like trying to describe a moment of union with the divine. That song makes me cry because it's so damn beautiful.

Recording equipment.

Should be getting some stuff soon for recording on my computer. Nothing too fancy, but I am so excited. I've decided to go M-Audio, couple of (really very sweet and juicy) studio mics and the Firewire 410 with dual XLR inputs so I can record decent acoustic guitar sound and my voice while doing both at the same time. I don't like separating the two. It's never been a problem when I am singing on someone else's recording, but somehow I feel too separated to emote properly. Maybe that's just an excuse to throw down the money for two sweet and juicy studio mics. Not sure. I'll try both recording styles and see where that gets me.

Trying to figure out where to record in this small-ish apartment is a bit of a brainteaser. We have a very large closet that we want to convert into a small office. The acoustics are too tight and tinny. I would need something to soften the space. I've heard of one of my musical heros gluing cork against the walls in a similar situation. Our lease says that's illegal. Our lease says we even have to account for the yucky repeating pattern of upside-down Chinese character wallpaper in our bedroom if we change it. I was thinking of painting the room Robin's Egg blue. That would be an improvement. Then again, I like to think we'll be moving soon, so why bother?

I feel that I have really semi-integrated into living in France now. My psyche bucked at first. I'm getting married to a Frenchman, but one who isn't very, you know, *French*. This is it. This is pour toujours. It will become increasingly difficult to change our minds about where we want to live. The choice was between Paris and L.A. At first, the choice seemed obvious until I got here and endured nearly a year of French bureaucracy, the lack of a right to work, the lack of rights in general (all those truths which Americans hold to be self-evident), French *friendships* which seemed stable, but were in fact too brittle to last, loneliness, etc. The upside is that I finished writing a novel and wrote so many songs, I have more than enough for a CD, I drew a lot, read a lot. And people in L.A. aren't that much nicer, really.

It was just such a change even though I had lived here before. I was living in Venice, CA in a house a block from the beach, working 50 hour weeks at a web design company not even a mile away also a block from the beach. Things were mellow, sunshiney, flowery and I was getting used to that. I was getting used to jeans - tshirt - flip-flops, jumping on my bike every morning to go to work. And the place where I worked. I used to give my boss guitar lessons! He was a surfer. It was very, very relaxed even though the hours were a little tough sometimes. My fiancé and I decided on Paris because I love him too much to put him through the humiliation of visiting the INS in America. I have lived in France before. I know the system, I fought once before and almost won. But I wasn't allowed to have a proper job at first. I worked on creative projects exclusively. This sort of situation was always my dream, but it was difficult to abandon myself because of the fear and stress of my irregular status in France. Difficult also to accept that writing a novel and writing songs was *real* work. I want to do these things as my real work. Yet...it's a leap. This year was a time to learn whether or not I really had the discipline and desire to make a novel and a CD happen. The query's at a lit. agent's office and I'm about to record a demo (or possibly a CD, we'll see...), so there's my answer.

Now, I feel that I am getting the hang of France again. Shedding the overpowering work ethic and not feeling weird about it. Hope that doesn't keep me from finding a job in the coming months. My next big step will be to find places to play. I'll start with open mics and then bother a few promoters. After a really bad relationship with the leader of a very fun band (I was the singer) ended in Austin, TX a few years ago, I haven't really performed much. My early childhood shyness returned. Somehow I managed to lose that before the age of ten. How can I get back to that courage and sense of play?

Jeanne Moreau once said something to this effect about getting over nervousness on stage, "Go out there complete, awake, alive, and give what you've got as though it were a gift you are giving to the audience." I don't think she meant that one should be arrogant about it, though some arrogance may be necessary depending on what a person is doing. I think she meant in the way a sensitive child gives a gift to a parent. There's humility, and there has to be some fear or you aren't caring enough, but there's also generosity. A person has to be strong to be truly generous, to give without ever expecting thanks.

Yet another blog?

This is my third. I think I have a problem. Is there a 12 step program for blogs? I just finished the 12 step program for 12 step programs! Damn!

Not sure what I'll use this one for. Snippets of my as-yet unpublished novel? Lyrics? No clue.

I am also to be found here.