I'm flooded with gratitude today. Yesterday marked 1 year since I left New York to "visit" New Orleans for a week to move my things out of my estranged wife's house. I stayed 3 months (they were stuck in NYC). It also marks the release of my first EP on Spotify. And the second day of a very welcome and early NYC spring. This quarantine has been one of the most challenging, but also one of the most profound, transformative, and nurturing periods of my life. Tightly Broken, Already Held, we are indeed.
Yesterday I put made a first step in a new project that's becoming very dear and resonant to my heart. The response has been overwhelming, I got a message from someone this morning asking if my calendly was having an issue or if I was actually booked. Y'all booked me out 19 days! I opened another 10.
I wrote this last night
The best time to begin something new, restart an old practice, reconnect with a friend, with yourself, with a passion, a vision, a dream - is today. Right now. And now. Unless you didn’t do it yet. In which case now’s great too! Didn’t get to it today? Wait until tomorrow comes; today will be a great time then too. Do you remember a thousand yesterdays when you didn’t do it? Those aren't today. Today’s fine. Today's no big deal, it's just today. Today may not be easy, but the less precious we make it, the more we may remember to whistle while we work.
Today I'm hosting my first Creative Tech for Artists zoom at 4pm EST, which will become a weekly event, alternating conceptual and creative content.
I also just heard that on April 2nd, NYC will allow Arts and Entertainment venues to begin operating at 33% capacity up to 100 people indoors and 200 people outdoors. This is huge news, and I feel a huge range of things. First, I feel incredibly excited. I also feel incredibly vulnerably, scared, and hesitant. I got my first vaccination on Monday, so I should be functionally immune by then, so my own health isn't a concern. I've gotten used to my incubation shell at home. My creative practice is flourishing. I'm in a groove now. I'm hesitant to leave my little cocoon and enter the bright lights (ok something there's only a single red one, but I like that better).
I will be be able to play live, for real people. This is simultaneously my biggest dream, desire, and fear. I miss the dance floor. I miss the big sound systems. I do not miss the drugs, the late nights, the shallow relationships. I've been sober a year and a half, and I feel comfortable in my ability to maintain my own boundaries and priorities, but it asks me to reconsider what kind of environments I want to be in. The venues I look to play in may not be the ones I'm used to, and that's ok. I know this is the start of a journey, and I don't have to know where it ends. I know there will be some rocky gigs, and some transcendent moments. Buy the ticket, take the ride.