Change Calls Constantly
1983- My grandfather wrote this note to me:
Happy I am now that I’ve seen the world change from log house to stately walls. I’ve seen horse and buggy to car and wheel. I’ve seen time go from ‘judge the sun’ to digital. I’ve seen my life pass before my eyes. Grandpa. At the time, my mom (Grandpa’s daughter) mused at how much change Grandpa had seen in his lifetime and that she would never witness the vast changes he had.
2012- I asked Mom to reflect on her musing of the ‘80s. To paraphrase Mom: Wowzers, was I wrong! We have seen even more technological progress than Grandpa did! I’ve seen telephone go from being a party line restricted to the wall. You would physically turn the crank on the phone set to reach the operator. You would ask the operator to speak to Jane, and the correct Jane would be connected in a click. It was a local exchange—everything was local. I’ve seen telephones move from crank to rotary to touchtone to cordless to cellular to some kind of smart thing the kids speak of these days that I have no idea how to operate. In my day, operating a computer meant taking 3”x6” paper cards and punching strategically placed holes in the cards then inserting about 50 of these cards into a building-sized computer that ran the program (which, incidentally would merely provide consolidated data).
2012- I asked Dad to comment on what he’d seen change before his eyes. To paraphrase Dad: Things have moved from real to virtual—lives, money and relationships. We no longer have acres of land on which we can feed ourselves self-sufficiently. We have 400 square feet of condo space within which we play Farmville on Facebook, and some of us have to Google how to grow an egg. Grow an egg? Exactly! People live on projection and credit and alleged worth. It’s virtual money with virtual value, and bankruptcy is a solution just as getting another life is a solution while playing online. But we’ve lost a lot of human interaction and the joy of life.
If you haven’t seen Louis CK (one of my favourite comedians and philosophers) talk about how Everything is Amazing and Nobody’s Happy, I urge you to watch this! http://youtu.be/8r1CZTLk-Gk
2040: What will the changes be that pass before my eyes? Will I have a bumper sticker that says: “My other life is on the internet”? Will I even have a bumper to put it on or will I be transport-mutate-catapulting myself everywhere by then?
The advances in computer ware and virtual relationships I’ve seen in a mere 15 years is staggering. We don’t even use the conventional phone much anymore. Who still has a landline? Our personal cell phones (read: computer) are used for calls probably 10% of the time. We compute. We text. We update our status. We comment and like. Every 6 months we need to update, up-convert and up-power. We gain a thousand potential friends but lose accessible time to actually spend with them. We are wide-eyed and enamoured with the devices we hold in our hand. But will we eventually dismiss the true life forces that surround us? If we misstep, gravity takes the EFF over way faster and more powerfully than a Terabyte of G-Force or a video-gone-viral could ever do. And it doesn’t rely on a power source or clear connection. It is its own self-sufficient force, a constant authority that is un-up-convertible and un-bankruptable. In 2040 will we dismiss the flowers, those adaptable and real, oxygen-producing blooms? Will we no longer bow to soak in the bloom’s fragrance then reach with a fleshy hand to pluck a stem and present it with a genuine smile to a true-life friend? After all, it’s way easier and more efficient to just click on an emoticon and send to an entire friend list. I dunno. I wonder what our relationships and objectives will be in 30 years. I’ll report back around 2040, okay?
Love, KAT 🙂
My website: www.KatLeonard.com
Note To Fans: WIP In Peace
This week I realized how much I apologize to myself for not “finishing”, for not being where I “ought to be”, for continuously being a WIP (Work In Progress). YouTube was the subject of this week’s 9 Weeks… and this week I was on the verge of despair with thoughts that I had so much work to do on my YouTube channel (inputting and tagging and shooting and editing and uploading and analyzing and strategizing and setting and matching and aligning) that my channel would simply never be finished.
Then I realized that NOTHING is ever truly FINISHED. Not really.
One can never truly FINISH the laundry. ‘Cause even as you’re putting away that folded T-shirt, I bet you’re wearing a pair of underwear. That’s dirty underwear now, and that means laundry. So the laundry isn’t finished. It’s only just begun! It’s a work in progress.
One can never truly FINISH their YouTube channel. You will always be adding new videos, changing themes, adjusting colours. Right now I’m on a 9-week music administration mission during which my music and video production has been put on hiatus. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have sounds dancing with images in my head. My notes of inspiration still accumulate in my Sponge Bob Square Pants lunchbox! My creation is a work in progress.
One can never truly FINISH themselves! When will I be done? Will there be a day when someone says to me, “Wow, Kat, you’re, like… really… so… done. You’re finished. How did you accomplish it so completely?” And if this happens, this extraordinary finishing: Then what? What’s actually so GREAT about being finished? When a bag of Doritos is finished, it totally sucks! There’s no longer something to look forward to, no potential, no hope.
I don’t wanna be without hope! I wanna maintain my hopeful, unrefined, unfinished edge! I wanna remain a work in progress! Yeah, man! I shall remain a work in progress! And I won’t lament it! I shall be a WIP in peace! Yes I will. In fact, screw it. I’m not finishing—
LINKS:
My new video: Note To Fans
My YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/katumbrella
My website: www.KatLeonard.com
Echo Of A Click: The Social Media Party
Social Media: It’s like going to a party when you’re sick. You feel like ass and you don’t wanna go, but once you get there you see all your friends and have a good time anyway.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, his tube, my blog… countless others… Like me here, like me there, subscribe to my this, subscribe to my that, click me here, click me there– oh ya, click me there again– it tickles! Follow me! Come on! Follow me! Tag me! But only if I look good. Share! Share! Share! Where is my space? Is that my opinion? Where was I having that conversation? A blog forum or a Facebook group? Where’s the bathroom? I can’t find that girl! Where am I? Who am I? What am I wearing? I swear I know that guy. Wait. Are we enemies? Now, that would be an interesting tag: “Tagged: Enemy. Please click his mean face to read my blog for the story of our enemyship. And sign this petition requesting that he be nice.”
In the Social Media Primer section of 9 Weeks… we are advised to put up as many profiles on as many Social Media sites as we can and make friends. I am not averse to friends. I love friends! But I feel like I’m fragmenting myself like Voldemort and the horcruxes! Although I’m not committing evil and I have no enemies that I’m aware of, I feel a little bit like I’m diluting myself over the interweb. I feel like I’m throwing a self-omelette onto the Social Media cyber wall but the cyber wall isn’t a wall at all but an abyss where omelettes go to pick up other chunks and boomerang back with all they’ve accumulated on their sticky omelette trails. And there’s no telling what will come back out of that deep dark Social Media abyss. At a real-life party there are significant signs– chemistry and body language– hazard alerts. At a Social Media party you’re partying less aware.
What I prefer is to sit down with you, have a beer or a coffee or both, spend some real time as opposed to cyber time. When we share a laugh, I’ll poke you for real. When we share a hurt, you will have the undivided immediate concentration of my horcrux-free self. We will know the character behind the avatar. And we’ll know, by the sincere twinkle in each other’s eyes when we part, that we are friends and we really like each other beyond the echo of a click.
Real life will always be the real party. But like most parties, not everyone’s invited, not everyone can stay long, and we don’t get to spend a lot of quality time with each attendee. Social Media provides a cyber party where you are a click away from steady and new-fangled friends at all times. It allows us to nurture relationships 24 hours a day; when we can’t sleep, when we’re waiting in line, when we’re bursting with expression and no one is around. And we’re able to tag our friends on our online journey, which in real life is like having them along amplifying the fun. I like it. It’s not the same as a real-life party, but I like it.
Social Media parties, however, will never know and appreciate the real us as well as our real-life social circles do. For example, Klout.com (for measuring social media influence) lists my most-influential topic as cats. If you know me in real life, you know that I rarely speak of cats and that when people around me speak of cats at length I get that glazed look on the outside while my insides are strategizing how to exit the conversation and get to the bowl of Doritos.
Social Media and real life share many similar rewards, but I hope we recognize and respect their differences as well. I hope our culture never overvalues the virtual over the real. Fun? Yes. Overwhelming? Yes. Vulnerable to regret? Maybe. Open to friendship? Always. Either way, may you always have a friend, and may you always be a friend.
And, if you like what I’m saying, please share this with your friends real and cyber… and Like my Fan Page and follow me on Twitter! And subscribe to this blog! And subscribe to my monthly newsletter– you’ll even receive a download of my greatest hit, (I Wanna Be Johnny Depp’s) Jockstrap! ;p Oh, and you can subscribe to my You Tube channel too. See what I mean?!
Hope to see you at the party!
Love Kat 😀
Preventing Paralysis
This week was all about preventing paralysis, physically and psychologically.
I have a detrimental relationship with perfection—I strive to catch up with it, yet it doesn’t even care to look back and see if I’m keeping up. How boorish! Now, I know intellectually that perfection doesn’t actually exist so it’s actually only myself I’m running with out there. But I still never seem to be in the lead! And the irrational hope of attaining perfection, paired with the rational awareness that I never will attain it, sometimes leaves me paralyzed with inactivity.
Our task this week in 9 Weeks… is to build our website. Oh, man! So much to fix! I don’t know where to start! So many things far from perfect! (Gasp)
What pictures do I use? I need new promo shots!
Can’t do it!
A bio?! What do I say? I’m not interesting!
Can’t do it! Can’t do it!
I gotta join Reverbation and a daunting plethora of other sites, create a profile, upload music and then place their widget on my website?! It’ll take forever to perfect! I can’t do it! What’s a widget? My fingers and hands and arms are so sore from clicking and typing and scrolling! I can feel my tendons thickening to immobility! I for sure have carpal tunnel syndrome. In fact, I’m quite certain I have plantar fasciitis too from trying to catch up with perfection and running to and fro the fridge continually checking out what could be magically new in there!
Can’t do it! Can’t do it! Can’t do it!
All this computing and internetting and perfecting… I’m struck with paralysis of the physical and psychological kind: Perfection paralysis.
How to prevent paralysis?
As Ariel Hyatt says: Eat the elephant one bite at a time.
Okay, now I’m listening; biting and eating I understand. I get it: One bite at a time; one site at a time; one step at a time. Don’t let doing it perfectly supersede doing it at all. Okay.
And stick your arms in ice water every now and again. Give them a healthy stretch every hour. If it gets really bad, massage the pain with Rub-A535 with Capsaicin. And while chasing perfection, wear supportive shoes instead of novelty slippers—or better yet, just let perfection go, let it run off into the distance and do its own thing while you do your own thing at your own pace. Yeah.
There. Paralysis prevented. Perfect!
🙂 Love KAT
I Promise You’ll Love Me
Would a cow patty by any other name still smell as sweet?
If I were in an elevator for a 15-second ride with an ”omnipotent being who has the ability to make my career lucrative, effortless and now”, I would not ask this question. I would hand them my CD with a charming smile and spew my 15-second elevator pitch that would convince them to listen to my CD optimistically and with the goal of making my music career lucrative, easy and now.
So that means I need a 15-second elevator pitch pronto in case I get in an elevator tomorrow. And, “I’m Kat, listen to this, ok?” probably won’t cut it– and is really much shorter than 15 seconds unless I drag it out or repeat it with a couple different accents. Good thing I’m taking the 9 Weeks to Music Success challenge to help summon a pitch to the page.
I need to describe myself in 15 seconds. Using a reference to another artist could provide context, but it’s got to remain uniquely me. It’s got to be an honest reflection of what I’m about but with the additional edge of being a shimmering lure that will draw a stranger into me, making them want me, need me, love me! (Gasp) I feel like I’ve struggled with this all my life.
As my dad was in the air force, my family moved around every 2 to 3 years. So every 2 to 3 years I had to assert my identity again. I would sit at a new school in a new town among a new set of strangers who knew nothing about me. And a reference to me didn’t help no matter how enthusiastic I tried to be. “I was the girl who saved Billy from those ominous grade 6s and made the grade 4s feel safe while pirouetting and making the whole class laugh. Remember? I was loved! Oh, you don’t remember, you weren’t there, you don’t know me, how could you love me?” (Sigh) With every new environment, I would emit a hefty childhood sigh and start at the beginning… again. How do I make you love me? How do I make you love me fast? ‘Cause I promise you will love me and we’ll be the best of friends and have the time of our lives. But we need to hurry ‘cause I’ll be moving away in 2 to 3 years and we don’t have much time!
Auditions give me similar emotional commotion. I want to bellow at the auditioners, “Come on, just pick me! Spare me the song and dance and let me get to the singing and dancing already! I can do this easy! Let’s get to it! Let’s get to the show!!! Stop auditioning other people! We’re wasting time! Let’s get to rehearsals! We open in 8 weeks!” I feel like I want to scream to the world, “Just trust me! I can do it! I’ll be brilliant! You’ll love me! I’ll make you laugh! I’ll make you cry! I’ll make you pee your pants—“ Okay, this isn’t turning into a good elevator pitch at all!
If only I could prove myself in one dynamic instant. If only I could give you a wink that would place in your mind’s eye a vision of me performing one of my songs. And in that dynamic instant you would sense the core of my spirit, the joy and the gloom, my love for an honest laugh and a sincere cry, and my capacity to leave a constructive footprint before I go. But I can’t. So I need a 15-second elevator pitch for when I encounter that ”omnipotent being who has the ability to make my career lucrative, effortless and now.”
Okay, here I go. Picture it: You and me in an elevator traveling in the direction of your choice. Would you believe this pitch? Would it make you love me?
I’m Kat Leonard. I combine the pizzazz of Liza Minnelli, the passion of k.d. lang, the wackiness of Cyndi Lauper and the sass of Madonna. Madcap and profound, I’m a quirky pop music dynamo whose music oscillates unpredictably between heartfelt and hilarious, leaving you with the drunken joy of a sugar rush.
Eh? You feeling the love? Come on, love me!
Love KAT
Goalmaking Versus Goalkeeping
I always chose to play goalkeeper because it meant I didn’t have to physically move very far. Being a goalkeeper meant I didn’t have to make goals. I didn’t have to navigate the field all the way to the other end— which was undeniably way too far in the distance. I didn’t have to strategize and avoid those pesky opponent players who didn’t share my objectives. As goalkeeper I had one focus to adhere to, and adhere to it I did: nothing got past me. That’s it. I would stand sturdy and flail far in order to block anything. It was easy to—
Oh, hold on a second. I just re-read chapter 1 of Ariel Hyatt’s Music Success in 9 Weeks. That’s not the kind of goalmaking and goalkeeping we’re talking about. Ooops. But it kinda still applies, eh. It’s way easier to stand sturdy and focus on one concise purpose at a time rather than having to navigate a shifting and muddy field of everyday life and its players. But I guess if it were too easy, there’d be no sport in it. ;p
On the field in sports I am not such a great goalmaker because I become so intense and spastic that the sense of urgency to pee takes over and I have to leave the field. That was a tough lesson to learn, leaving the field on time. It was a long and wet walk home. The point is, I get way over-stimulated way too easily—and, incidentally, my mouth yells off during the process. I suck at surprise birthday parties, I’ve caught second-degree wrist strain playing a game of Pac Man, and I’ve lost a game of Glow Hockey on a mobile phone…right into a toilet. But I am an awesome goalmaker in the context of this chapter 1 of Music Success kind of way. I am an awesome goalmaker in that I’m a great brainstormer—those dendrites fire like mental! I have big dreams, big intentions, big pants—ahem—which is something I’d like to focus a goal on rectifying.
I’m a great goalkeeper on the field because there is just one focus at a time. In the chapter 1 of Music Success kind of way, I find it a challenge to be a good goalkeeper because I must maintain focus to put things into action while the world around me spins. It’s almost as if there’s a disconnect between Kat the goalmaker and Kat the goalkeeper. Kat the goalmaker is able to create bold and specific outlines while armed with a cup of coffee at the perfect temperature, safe and optimistic in her favourite armchair by the sunlit window. Kat the goalkeeper is expected to execute said outlines even though she may have slept in with a headache from watching Arrested Development till 4:00am, again, even though she feels deflated that Johnny Depp didn’t come to her show, again, even though it’s so damn cold out to trek to another open mic and her pants don’t fit anyway, again.
Exhibit A: The Disconnect, a pictorial example: Here, Goalmaker Kat researches the time and locations for the next Weight Watchers meeting and commits Goalkeeper Kat to going…. while (precisely simultaneously, mind you) Goalkeeper Kat uses the information as a holding deck for the chocolate chips she eats while not even hungry. (Sigh)
Exhibit A
Of course I am not a complete doofball. I am proud of many of my accomplishments and I am implementing the 5-succeses a day journal to remind myself. But I think I can be proud of more. I came up with numerous specific goals during this week’s goalmaking exercises, but the 3 umbrella goals that I aim to make part of my life as a whole from here and beyond are:
1) to increase the communication and respect between Goalmaker Kat and Goalkeeper Kat: the former to create amazing and attainable goals while remaining cognizant of the latter’s lust for life and lounging; and the latter to make honest effort to combat challenges and accomplish goals set out, and not to dismiss said goals out of revenge for Goalmaker Kat drinking all the coffee.
2) to engage in social media without becoming spastic like I do with Pac-Man.
3) to stop eating like a maniac and to treat my body well, including exercise and rest.
Note to you: Feel free to hold me accountable. If you see me eating Doritos, please tell me I’m pretty and I’ll get the hint! ;p
Love Kat 😀
PS There are a lot of inspirational bloggers along this Blogging Challenge. These ones really wowed me on inspiration for organizing goals! Look at them go! 😀
http://christiegrace.wordpress.com/
http://adriannesoundslike.tumblr.com/
KAT LEONARD (Kat & The MP3) 