happy place

Everyone has a happy place, right? that one place that comes to mind in context of the phrase, " go to your happy place!" that one place you can return to and every time you do it feels like everything's right with the world. It's home for some people, in their lover's arms, etc. Well, I've switched homes more times than I can count on my fingers and toes, and I don't got no lover on this post-valentines day slump. My happy place is in the recording studio. I've got Jim, engineer who has grown to be one of my greatest friends, a room full of toys (all the instruments you could fathom in one room together), twinkly lights, junk food, wires galore, comfy couches, and more dum-dums than any one person could eat at once. There's no place in the world I love being more than in that old house off Jackson Rd, where in that 100-square foot area inside, I get to escape from everything else in the world and create. Synthesizing something out of nothing; seeing and hearing my ideas bloom and move around in the air and wriggle about and finally come into their skins - there's nothing in the world that makes me feel like that. It's the only place I feel that switch just turn on - where I can feel real, physical electricity flowing through my body, lightning coming out of my mouth and hands. purpose. realization. truth.

Last night and I Ross went down there to lay down some trumpet tracks. I had heard him play before, and knew he was an amazing trumpet player as he's in the Macpodz, but he KILLED it. We had worked out some parts and some solos beforehand but I was still amazed while sitting there next to him, watching him...the sounds! the SOUNDS!! everything he laid down was just so tasteful, deliberate and beautiful. What is a good musician but someone who can really get INSIDE a song and flesh out all those gaps and cracks inside of it to give it wings with his or her own interpretation of it? He was jubilant and energetic for the uptempo ones, contemplative and mournful for the sadder tunes, and captured emotional nuances in between I didn't even know were there. Then I taught Jim and Ross some backup vocal parts for a couple songs and watching them putting all of their energy towards getting it right, genuinely trying to make it sound good, on MY music, was quite a feeling. Like any other experience in which a friend has done something nice for you...picking you up from class, or cooking you something, or just spending time with you, I was touched. They really cared. And it shows in the song. Bless their cotton socks - I'm honored to know them as friends and as people.

thats all for now. thank god it's the weekend! phew!