Blog #2: Getting Ready for Slouching

     Hey everyone, hope y'all have been well. I promised y'all blog posts, so y'all are gonna get blog posts. My brain feels a little slow today, I suppose it does most days. There's always a brain fog I'm wrestling against. Those of you who have been around here long enough to remember my old blog may remember me ranting and raving at the beginning of every entry about how much coffee I had to drink to even start typing let alone start typing about anything at all. I have a really severe caffeine dependency, which I don't have any intention of doing anything about any time soon, because I suspect it's a sort of self-medication for the way I'm wired naturally. Or maybe I'm overcompensating for cognitive blunting from my medication. Or maybe I'm lazy - which I suppose might be part of how I'm wired naturally. What's that they call it these days? Executive dysfunction? I don't consider myself "neurodivergent" because I know nothing of my neurology or anyone else's, but I know I'm a weirdo who's bad at most things that aren't what I'm obsessed with. Save your diagnoses, commenters! I've got enough of 'em.

     Okay, time to move on before I say something too nuanced for the Tally Hall fans.

     I'm preparing for the tour. The show I have cooking for y'all is a bit different. It feels to me like the natural progression of the skills I've built over the years and an inevitable evolution of what I used to do. The sort of vaguely abstract and introspective one-man musicals I used to perform in front of audiences, but with less character work and self-fictionalization and more grounded storytelling. I'm doing what wikipedia will tell you I do with my solo shows (finally, they didn't used to know what I do, which didn't help my new fans with knowing who they had stumbled upon) and in a way that I'm really excited for. I learned a lot from last time around, and from the years I spent driving around the country in an old station wagon performing in dive bars, coffee shops, basements, and various strange holes in various strange walls.

     I used to build my merch setup out of a sequin and chevron adorned piece of wall insulation my girlfriend designed, a folding table that had been wrapped in the same decorative fabric design, and a tool crate. I'd plug it into a wall and a bunch of LEDs hot-glued to all the sides and corners would light up. Then I'd take a metal grid wrapped in Christmas lights and gaff-tape T-shirts that I kept in a cardboard box in the trunk to it, and lean it up against the wall next to me, then stand behind the table still fully in-character and through sheer energy alone upsell shirts and hoodies to people who were mostly just going to buy a sticker to be nice. That would get me to the next certainly-dangerous motel, cover my bagel and cigarettes the next morning, and that would go on for a few weeks. I got by, but only because of Patreon and my girlfriend not asking me to help with rent. Bum!

     Things are very different now. In some ways I'm always going to miss the early years. Maybe someday I'll start a new project under a different name, or book a tour of secret locations I only announce day-of, and do it DIY again. Assuming I still have the knees for it - the old days had a lot more manual labor. But things are so different now in so many ways. My special lady is still sewing things and being crafty behind the scenes, and I'm still using a P-series Yamaha digital piano, but some of these shows are at 500+ capacity theaters and I have a whole crew because otherwise I just wouldn't be able to do it. But with the amount of work and effort and money being put into this tour, I decided that I would step up my game creatively as well. I'm taking a lot of risks, going to a lot of uncharted places, and I'm very curious to see how it goes.

     Almost every show on this tour is at a seated traditional theater or cabaret club, because if people expect a rock show they're going to impossible to perform for. I'm using a headset microphone instead of a traditional handheld one so my hands are always free and I can finally move around onstage the way I need to in order to get my thoughts out. (It'll also help communicate the vibe of "I'm going to talk, please don't interrupt me with your mouth-spam" - although I'm thinking that might already be solved by kicking out the kids. No offense kiddos who aren't supposed to be here but are anyway, not all kids were a problem but almost all problems were kids.) Plus the gal and I plan to do some staging for the show too, which should be a really cool vibe. It'll feel more like what it's always been intended to be; a theatrical performance, and I've got a script I think will knock your socks into next Tuesday. It's just a matter of ironing out kinks, getting it to be closer to an hour and a half instead of over two hours, and rehearsal.

     I've been writing, rehearsing, re-writing, re-rehearsing, drilling the songs, and tooling with everything basically all day basically every day for weeks. I'm even doing dress rehearsals for the show. Some Patreon members were able to get tickets to it so I would have a test audience to do them for. I'll be performing the whole show, learning how it flows in front of an audience, and using that to tighten the screws. When I've said on instagram "boy, do I have a story to tell you" I've really meant it. The setlist is worked into a story that I won't reveal too much about, (and vice versa) but I think folks have probably been pretty curious about the subject of it for a while. If all goes well, I'll be able to do the whole concert film/standup special/doc film I tried to do a couple years ago. I'm excited to see how it goes.

     Now that I'm feeling the way I'm feeling, and have taken the break/sabbatical/walkabout I needed, I feel inspired again. I'm putting the kind of work into this tour I couldn't put into it last time around, and I think this show may be some of my best work yet. I used to think a show couldn't be, because it's not a static product the way an album is. In the face of the entropic modern age - AI-generated art, machine-recommended media, the living satire of parasociality that is modern fandom culture - ephemeral experiences of in-person art seem to be the only things that are safe from being drained of their value. So sure, I'll film it, but if I can only use it for Patreon songs and can't make it into a movie, so be it. Let the audience decide if disrupting the show is more worthwhile. They're the ones in power, whether popular discourse about the nature of notoriety recognizes it or not. All I can do is hope.

     I'm living on a farm far from home, in a house empty save for a mattress, a couple tables, and a couple chairs I brought. Wi-Fi is limited, TV is justly banished, passive content consumption is against my religion, and every day I walk the 17 acres of pine barren hills and dips talking to myself and waiting for The Man to come and kill everything in sight so he can build the Buc-ee's the north is due for. Thinking about how everything ends, about how there is no denying the presence of a higher power even in an unconscious cosmos considering how weak I am, and how the most I can do is learn to simultaneously brace myself and loosen my joints in a way that can blow with some grace in gusts of the unpredictable and the random. A wind chime - I can pick the notes, but I can't call the tune.

     I hope this doesn't come across as resentment or bitterness. It's just an honest expression of my effort to accept whatever comes in the future. And I suppose on a deeper, level, if I ignore the urge to quarantine myself from my own emotions, it's just me saying I'm scared. I am very, very nervous. I am going to work so, so hard to give you a show that I know will mean more to you than shutting up and playing the hits ever could. I have my fingers crossed. Wish me luck.

     I'm going in for a quick surgery tomorrow - getting some benign masses removed from my back so I can move again in time for the shows. Gonna have a big dinner with my girlfriend and my parents and then fast so they can put me lightly under for a bit. Then a couple days to recover, and I'll be good as new. Or better! Between that and the extra weight I've finally started to lose, the quitting smoking a few months ago, and the amount of exercise I've been trying to get, I shouldn't be TOO much of a sweaty, aching wreck when I'm done with my set each night.

     Anyway, that's that for now. I forgot to drink more coffee. I wonder how this will come across. I hope positively. Because I'm feeling positively, despite the fear. The fear means the work is meaningful to me. The work being meaningful to me means it's worth doing. The work being worthwhile is the only reason to do it. To the person making the art, a piece of art can't be more important than the process of making it, or the artist is going to need a hiatus afterward.

     Can't wait to see you out on the road. I am deeply excited. What a thrill!

With love,

ww