To Stress or Not to Stress…
SAC songwriting challenge-Week 4
Oh man, during this week’s Pat Pattison songwriting lesson, I got lost by “industrial strength magnets” when a squirrel hopped upon my windowsill… or rather I was drawn vegetatively to the windowsill in hopes of luring a squirrel to hop on by and entertain me. This week’s lesson felt like someone forced me to go camping against my will. And camping is ALWAYS against my will. Ugh. Perhaps I’m over-exhausted from Canadian Music Week shenanigans.
Me saying goodnight to CMW 2013 and dreaming of CMW 2014!
To stress or not to stress… within music, means to analyze the syllables and whether they’re nouns or articles or verbs or squirrels. I tried sooooo hard to pay attention. Okay, to be honest, I can’t precisely qualify how deep my effort to pay attention was, for I kept winding up unconscious. I felt a tangible resistance to attention paying. It felt like the times I’d feigned attention while being scolded for something I planned to do again anyway. The stress was definitely ON.
I didn’t like it. So I shifted my attention to something else important to me: my next live show, for which I plan to perform new songs that are in various stages of incompletion. The most amazing thing happened! I was working with lyrics and– guess what! I found myself employing the tactics of syllable stress in my writing– and– I altered the chorus of one of the songs so that the chorus’s title was more defined! I couldn’t believe it! It worked! Pat Pattison’s songwriting tools had hoed their way into my songwriting process and it wasn’t painful or numbing! Weehaaaaahoooooooey! I believe there’s hope for me yet! I CAN use tools outside of myself! Needless to blog, I am thrilled with the prospect, and recharged with vigor! I feel like I’ve benefited from a long-needed nap! Yowza! Yowza!
And on the songwriting note– ha! Get it?! If you’d like to be among the first to hear these new songs, you should come out to Smiling Buddha Bar next week! There’s even some open mic slots, so you could play a song new or old as well! I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be a smack-on good time! Come if you can!
The Four Winds Collective smiles at Buddha Thursday April 4th 9pm!
Life With More Cowbell interviews Lisa Anita Wegner, an amazingly stunning woman who credits art for saving her life after a brain injury! She shares her story during Wonder Fest Wednesday March 6th 7pm-8:30pm at The Fringe Creation Lab. Details here: http://wonderwomenworld.tumblr.com/WorkshopDetails
“Figure out what it is you love doing and never stop… Everyone can do this, and I encourage everyone to find what it is for them and go after it with gusto. Pierce the mundane to find the marvelous inside you. You are worth it!” Lisa Anita Wegner.
Do yourself a favour and check Lisa out! For serious, yo! love KAT xoxox
When Kat Leonard introduced me to multi-talented, muti-faceted, multi-media working artist Lisa Anita Wegner, what struck me the most was that Lisa credits art with saving her life. You can read her story here. And when I visited her blog site, I was blown away by the imagery in her pixel paintings.
I had a chance to interview Lisa over email – here’s what she had to say:
LWMC: Hi, Lisa. I was looking at your WordPress blog site and the Mighty Brave Productions site to get a sense of the work you do – and was amazed at the multi-faceted aspect of your work overall, and how it all boils down to authentic storytelling, and using story to make interior and exterior connections. You’ve worked as an actor, producer, writer, filmmaker and visual artist. What else? What came first for you and how did the media you work…
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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
KAT LEONARD 