So because of my stress responses and mental illness, I have a habit of just completely truncating things from memory without meaning to.
One of these things was a song I had made with a friend doing backup vocals. I was reviewing older work to see if maybe I regressing in some places, or if there were any techniques I didn’t explore fully, and this song came up.
I’m always scared that I’m biased, because I made the darn thing, but I completely forgot how the song goes, and I forgot about ever making it, so I had an opportunity to listen to it as a brand-new stranger.
If I’m allowed to say so: it’s quite good. (That is so weird to type out…)
Anyway, that was a bit of a confidence boost to discover! I’ve been feeling very uncertain about my music lately.
A red background with a heart shape cut out of it. The photos of former US president Ronald Reagan and Lwaxana Troi of Star Trek: TNG and Star Trek: DS9 infamy occupy the heart.
I’ve been reminded that little nice comments on itch can make someone’s day.
I left one on the TTRPG that made the Gonch Girls a THINGtm a few days back, and they saw it today
I’m really bad at remembering to comment on stuff on itch… but I’m going to do better. Cause I love to gush about games I’ve enjoyed, and that makes peeps happy.
I have a sweet Dolcie that is over 80 in dog years. She can’t sleep through the night. Very high maintenance now but still so thoughtful. Yesterday, she slipped out of her collar while out walking. Our neighborhood has a leash rule. She stood a few feet away just looking at me. “Well, are you going to put the collar back on or what?”
We have a couple of new puzzle toys for her on the way.
I’ve been in a bit of a funk lately, but today I got out my drawing tablet and tried to make a sketch of a moment from a tabletop game, and that felt nice.
Heh, this one’s drawn over a bunch of different stock photo references digitally chopped apart and stitched together to give me guidelines. I want to be able to freehand things like this at some point, but one step at a time.
I ended up quietly re-reading one of my favourite poems by one of my favourite authors this morning, Scheherazade, by Richard Siken. Sometimes I do that, when I’m not really feeling so well. It helps. Poetry usually does, if only a little.
My favourite lines from the poem are:
Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake, and dress them in warm clothes again. / Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it’s noon, that means we’re inconsolable. / Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. / These, our bodies, possessed by light. / Tell me we’ll never get used to it.
Something about the contrast of the cold (dead?) bodies pulled from the lake, all water logged and shivering, being bundled up in warm clothing and the rich sensuality of the warm light possessing them is really appealing to me.
When things get really bad, I tend to think about dates that’re up ahead. In the middle of January, a new epilogue to a major storyline in a game I’ve loved since I was a teenager. Next fall, a new published book of poems from my favourite poet. (It’s a wonder to be alive at the same time as your idols.) I’ve been thinking about calendar days a lot, lately. I’ve been thinking about poetry.
