I go back and forth on wanting to expand and tour Embodied, and being glad I never, ever have to do it again.
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February 8, 2012, 4:31 am in updates
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One of the more pleasing details of the house concert I’ve agreed to do in Spokane this March; the unlikeliness that I will perform a 4 minute trapeze act and then have to immediately sit down to sing. The was a cool challenge, though. January 29, 2012, 11:06 am in public
The cost is a minimum $6 ($5 + transaction fee) and pay-what-you-can after that if so inclined, sent to courtnee @ gmail.com through Paypal. Once received, I’ll respond via your paypal email within a couple hours with the url to stream and/or download the digital album. You may also send a check via snail mail to 600 1st Ave Suite #325, Seattle WA 98106, with your email address clearly printed on the memo line. Hopefully this will enable more people to experience the music, and help me recover financially from being sick the last few months. Enjoy! January 23, 2012, 9:44 pm in public
Left Brain: I figured it out. Sometimes, if I don’t render the loop region only, i think maybe it tries to create the mp3 as long as the source files. Manually setting them seems to be working, as well as revealing tiny .10 second fades on the bookends of the songs that were making for really weird dropouts. Glad I didn’t export them all before finding that one. SERIOUSLY. Who the fuck designed USB anyway? Sick bastard. My poor little Juno. Working on Embodied is showing me just how many clicks and weird sounds it makes. :/ Right Brain: Found paging through my written music notes: A scrawly incomplete lyric entitled “My Stupid Ideas” .. *chuckle* I really didn’t think very much about the context of a live album during the few occurrences when I spoke to the audience… This machine will Both: IThinkICan IThinkICan IThinkICan Ithinkican i.think.ic … Body: Oh eM Gee a dump the size of turgid, beefy manterial. Make it stop. January 21, 2012, 10:24 am in updates
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My poor little Juno. Working on Embodied is showing me just how many clicks and weird sounds it makes. :/ January 19, 2012, 9:27 pm in public
My body hates me for being on the computer so much, and it’s hard once I’m in the zone to surface again. I piss away hours in what seems like minutes and before I know it it’s past dinner time and I realize I haven’t eaten since breakfast. On the plus side, I have had little interest in venturing outdoors during Snowpacolypse 2012, as being wet and cold with aching digits isn’t my thing. It’s been helpful to have a project to focus on, even if it’s a frustrating one.
In the spirit of fumbling with buggy tech shit, which seems to be the totality of my life right now, one of the highlights of the experience was running across this clip of Infinite Reality from the first night of the show. I feel like I haven’t laughed something off like that in a long time. January 14, 2012, 2:00 pm in public
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Finally moving forward with the Embodied album and cover art, now that I can think straight and stay awake longer than a few hours. Getting excited about having the album available in the summer, and planning a site redesign for http://notapplicable.info/ to go along with it. December 9, 2011, 3:22 pm in public
If you missed Embodied, or just want a reminder of an incredible experience and a damn fine show, please take 5 minutes to enjoy this preview of some behind the scenes footage shot during rehearsal by Bill Nash. I had a cold that week – but it still ended up sounding and feeling pretty great. November 15, 2011, 9:52 pm in public
Taken as I sang my cover of “My Sweet Prince”, by Placebo, during my most recent show, “Embodied”. There is still so much that’s churning through me after this experience. It may take me a while to update about it. But I sense a post is afoot in the near future. November 10, 2011, 10:37 am in public
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One of the moments that i cherish, and yet always sneaks up on me: the moment when my show has become our show. ♥ November 9, 2011, 2:09 pm in public
Best part of last night: After witnessing all the in’s and out’s of the one and only tech/dress rehearsal for a very ambitious, understaffed undertaking, one of my freakishly generous kickstarter backers agreed with pride that I’d spent his money well. Yay! Embodied is tonight and tomorrow at 8pm, FRED Wildlife Refuge, $20 at the door (which opens at 7:30) and BPT.Facebook event is here: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=169170153162567 Tickets here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/199941 Kickstarter project that enabled it all is here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/neevita/1738681387 Some images from the rehearsal and other information are posted on my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/courtnee Laying down to rest for last night with a satisfied, contented smile on my face felt so fitting. Show’s gonna rock some serious emo shit. See you there! October 31, 2011, 2:53 pm in updates
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Alright, you know what? Fuck it. Every important aerial performance I do this — I say, this is going to be the time my process is different. This is going to be the time where I’m “prepared” and my form is perfect and the act is easy and nothing goes wrong and I have oversplits and don’t even break a sweat. In actuality I’ll get through a full run of the act for the first time the day before I open and I’ll be changing my groundwork an hour before doors and then I’ll get the fuck up there and be naked and raw and fucking awesome and that’s just how it’s going to fucking be. So instead of digging into my bruises and jacking up my brokeass body I’m getting the god damn fuck out of here and taking myself to dinner. Fucking fuck the living fuck out of it. I got this fucking shit. October 29, 2011, 6:09 am in public
It still feels like there is so much I don’t know about this show. When I came up with the idea months ago, all I knew was that I felt like it was time I let the music out for real. I felt ready to do that. I felt ready to take in resources and support to enable me to do that. And I took steps to enable me to make that opportunity real — and every kickstarter backer and friend who’s helped me do this since has my deepest gratitude for it. Then I saw a show at FRED and the idea of projection came to me. I met people to run sound and lights who have inspired me both themselves and through their community to embrace more of what I am as a musician. And so on, and so on. The concept of what story I am telling is also something that’s been arriving in little plain packages on my doorstep since I decided I was going to do this show. Most recently I’ve figured out that my motivation and influence to create this show is my relationship with my mother, about growing up antagonized by her, and later in life without her at all, and the journey I’ve traveled repairing myself from that. I’ve noted that I wanted to do this on my birthday, which happens to be the day I turn the age she was when she left. That maybe I only write music that speaks to me when I’m in mourning because it’s all about her. And I’ve realized that these things are why the show has always felt like the closing of a circle. After this, there is no past of ours for me to relive as empathic milestones now that I’m a woman. Now the rehearsals have become grueling. I’m procrastinating in that infuriating way where I am incapable of focusing or triage and making clear progress. I see holes, and I see mountains of work I can’t figure out how to make a dent in, and very little in between. Right now I feel like my vision abandoned me, like what I like so far isn’t good enough, like it’s not inventive enough or smooth enough or cool enough to reconcile how much money people gave me to put on an awesome show. The songs I’m truly comfortable playing definitely won’t fill the amount of time I want, and neither will the video I am happy with. I feel like the experience needs to be bigger and better and more amazing, it needs to encompass and effect on multiple sense levels and all be high quality and well executed. I feel like the symbiotic energy I tap into as a performer with my audience isn’t enough for this. I can’t rely on my stage presence for something this uprooting, but at the same time, I’m going to be out there all alone. I feel like what I know of the show so far is too esoteric and vague, like there isn’t clarity of a forward motion throughout the setlist or enough little things in it that express a relatable story is happening. Fuck, I don’t even know how half the songs fit into a fucking story. …all alone. I feel like I’m not giving back enough and I can’t figure out how to make it better without looking like the poor girl who just tried too hard and didn’t make it. I want it RIGHT and POWERFUL and MOVING and touching without ruining the whole fucking thing trying to cram shit in that doesn’t fit and doesn’t inspire me. Fuck, even if I did want to cram shit in to fill the gaps I CAN’T FUCKING THINK OF ANYTHING. I WANT THIS TO FEEL GOOD. I WANT RECEIVING WHAT I’VE WANTED TO FEEL FUCKING GOOD. WAHH!!! WAAAAHH!! *tiny fists of rage* WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.. .. I’m fucking afraid to look at this. I am fucking afraid to put it out there now that I know what I know. I’m afraid to let people see how much its hurting. Who the fuck wants to watch that anyway. I’m afraid to not know exactly what I’m doing. I’m afraid I’ll choke. I’m afraid to leave myself the breathing room I give my own performers in my shows with Vita. I feel like the only way to give people their monies worth is to give them something that isn’t me. I feel like I’m being as brave as I can be. But I keep looking away from this, I keep not wanting to work on it, I keep pushing myself through soulless rehearsals and I feel like a ridiculous fucking asshole right now. My voice sounds like shit, my brain’s working like shit, and trying to even map out in my head what this fucking thing is going to end up looking like is akin to bathing a god damn cat. I’m just wrestling with it and getting messy and fucking mauled. I don’t know what needs to change in my head. I don’t know which offhand comment someone makes is going to be the one that causes !!!! to click and suddenly gift me with a sense of direction and some fucking relief from this weird self imposed restriction I have going on. I do know it will come and something is going to make sense, I’ll get out of this limbo between putting on what’s real and putting on what I think people would rather see and I’ll be able to take a deep fucking breath while I’m singing again. But god this is uncomfortable. Writing this is uncomfortable. Even the fucking tears I’m crying are the extra salty stinging kind. I want to throw a fucking temper tantrum in my insomniatic bed right now. I’m such a fucking loser. It’s a week and a half before the show and I think Embodied is probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Thank you. <3 October 3, 2011, 5:11 pm in updates
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Ah, yes. I’d been vaguely wondering when and if that whole “HOLY FUCKING SHITNUTFUCKINGFUCK THERE IS STILL SO MUCH FUCKING WORK TO DO AHH FUCK FUCK AHHH I’m SO FUCKING BEHIND AHHHH” thing was going to happen. Check. September 18, 2011, 4:37 pm in public
It’s getting cold. Gusty. Leaves are just starting to wither and float crisply away. Even with only a whisper of what summer used to be in Seattle, I like this season. I like the destruction and death leading the way to renewal. I like the layers, the heavy coats, the warm scarves around my neck. I like the hot baths I take just to warm up. I like the season, the food, my birthday, the sense of nesting and home. I even, dare I say, am beginning to like the holidays, and the opportunity they provide me to create my own rituals and traditions around them. Opportunities to bond with the people around me, and sometimes, the people around them. I’m even sensing a readiness, an ever so slightly coiled spring, for the emotional crush I’ve felt every long, dark season. I can take this again — some new version of what happens every winter, another agonizing layer of skin I’ll shed and make into something that actually makes a difference in this world. My tools are sharper, my mind is finer tuned, and my safety net spans wider every day. Seriously. See the fucking show. September 17, 2011, 6:47 pm in public
I got my first Juno 106 in 1999 off ebay. It arrived with a broken bender, and in the years ahead I somehow lost the ENV slider — not just the cap, but the metal stem as well. I got my second Juno 106 in 2002, when my friend and test manager at Microsoft gave me the one I had borrowed to put on a music show in my living room. It’s also missing a stem and cap from its LFO slider. As a side note, Stu also deserves props for most of the songs I’ve released since my two mp3.com albums, as they were made on the XP-30 he loaned and eventually gifted me as well. Moral: Don’t let me borrow sound equipment from you, because I’ll do such awesome things with it you won’t want to take it back from me. With the show coming up, it was about time to fix these things. I rallied a couple friends to contribute things like epoxy, Juno knowledge and paper clips, and all is now well in the land of my synths. At least.. I think so. I haven’t actually turned either of them on again yet. :P 
Behold, the innards of the illustrious Juno 106 analog synthesizer. Isn’t it beautiful? 
More vintage hardware porn. Mmmm. Sassy. 
It turned out the bender on my original 106 was floppy because it wasn’t actually attached to the assembly anymore. It’s normally screwed into a metal bracket by two plastic tabs that were pretty thin to enable the vertical functionality of the bender to work. Those tabs were broken at some point. This is a photo of Lukes handywork: two tiny pieces of sheet metal epoxied across the break and clamped for drying. 
We also found that large plastic coated paper clips fit perfectly into the plastic divets of a broken slider on a Juno 106. That’s a red one in my mouth there as I’m taking apart the second Juno… 
And epoxying it into the divets of the plastic base. 
Ta Da. The yellow version on Stu’s old Juno. All that’s left to do is put the slider caps back on the rest of them and let that yellow hack shine in all its glory. I can’t even tell you how awesome I think this is. The next fix, which may or may not happen before the show, is to replace the felt that sits along all the sliders. It’s so dry and stiff that it’s completely falling apart. Super fun project. September 15, 2011, 4:12 pm in updates
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After feeling inexplicably sick, like I’d just eaten an entire cake on my own, before aerial training, I now feel inexplicably melancholy. Lots of things being jarred loose and floating around in me lately. I blame the music. September 14, 2011, 11:06 am in events
Embodied is a one-woman show illustrating a musical journey, and a rare public performance including much of my original music and distinctive cover songs. It depicts the sense of the personality fragmentation in youth, and the experience of slowly piecing ones self together to truly be a whole person. There will be live music, stunning visuals, palpable energy and an aerial performance. Anyone who enjoys being moved by the dark, melancholy, and profound will love this show. Artist, performer, director and writer: Courtnee Papastathis (also as Zita the Aerialist) November 9th and 10th. 2011 FRED Wildlife Refuge Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. Example track “Threshold”, from my first album, “Point of Origin”. Flash required to preview music. Tickets are $20 at Brown Paper Tickets and at the door, space permitting. ABOUT THE MUSIC: Until the 2008 limited edition self released album “Songs of Leaving”, my first album in 8 years, I’ve mostly favored covers and lending vocals to other artists. In 2001 I produced vocals for The Dream Traveler (Joey Fehrenbach) for the tracks Structure and Headpusher. Described as “impressive and emotive”, both Structure and Headpusher were released together as a well-received single through Fade records in 2003. Headpusher was featured on Nick Warren’s Global Underground release Reykjavik. In 2002, I sang on Scribe Machine’s album Replicant for the stand-out track Fragile, a top 10 hit on many college radio stations, which was later released as a Maxi-single through Plan B and Tower Records.
Embodied was made possible by the generous donations of my Kickstarter Backers. Endless thank-you’s. September 4, 2011, 10:35 am in updates
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In attempting to find a program that will do what I want to do with video presentation for Embodied (I am absolutely CURSED with simple technological ideas that aren’t possible .. like fucking crossfading video when advancing through a playlist? I can’t do that?? REALLY?) and stumbled upon http://www.easyworship.com. I thought maybe it could be ironic to use a religious program to put on an agnostic show.. but, there’s just no way. Just reading the song lyrics they were pumping into their example on http://easyworship.com/easyworship/getstarted/ made me throw up in my mouth a little. There’s no way I could support the product (and I suspect it won’t do what I want anyway). The search continues.. |
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