Get your own
 diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries newest entry

8:21 p.m. - January 08, 2002
therein lies the issue
I'm writing this to the soundtrack of my own music playing in the background. I need help, people. My computer can't seem to figure out how to record from Sonar into the hard drive or onto a CD, so I can send this out to colleges. One deadline is in a week. I've hooked up everything imaginable. And my dad won't let me use his tape recorder hooked into the input; he says I can't touch his things. This is not the time to be worrying about me touching his things....
Everything right now is directly music issues. My English teacher gave us an assignment... to describe ourselves by way of music, dance, or prose. I did music, it being my forte and also thinking no one else would bother to write a song in a night. I did. It took me roughly five hours to get a completed song, on tape, rewound and ready, direct from the computer onto te tape recorder... (done by my father, it being HIS precious equipment (dammit)) so, I get into school today and the very first presentation is Gene, with a CD in hand. He slips it in. Amazing jazz pours out. He reads a poem with it going in the background. I've heard the music before; it's something his band has performed; him on drums, amazing as usual... he's in one of the school's most coveted bands. A few of them, actually. I know he didn't write that, not singlehandedly anyway, and most definitely not, not, last night. I said nothing. But I was called on to go next, and I looked at my tape over on Ms Moynahan's desk, and I thought about my music, which paled ever quickly in comparison to Gene and his stupid profession musicianship, and the more I thought about it the more I couldn't stand having people think he wrote that in a night, and I wrote mine in a night, and his product from writing in a night was so superior, when actually, he didn't write it at all. But they didn't know that, so they would think, and compare, and... I couldn't have it, I simply couldn't, so I said, "I can't go after that."
"Go ahead," the teacher said, grinning, thinking I was kidding.
I wasn't. I was trying not to cry for some insane reason. I looked at her laughing and walked over to her desk, picked up my tape, and put it in my pocket. I faced her. "I'm serious," I said.
Her face hardened. "Oh, Hannah, don't be like that," she cajoled, like... I don't know. She couldn't know.
I didn't say anything, I just sat down at my desk and kept a hand on the tape. "I can't force you," she sighed.
"Good." Shortly. That was the end of that.
She thinks I'm going to play it tomorrow in class... she thinks a night of thinking about it will cool the competitive spirit. It's not about competitive spirit.. although I kind of wish it were, as that would indicate a stronger personality than what it actually is, which is worrying about what people will think and silently compare. If I want to be known as anything it's a musician. I don't want to play crap for anyone, ever, no one. That's why I didn't want Dan to come over and listen until I'd perfected all of it. It beats me over the fucking head if I know how Brodieman can screw up onstage and sing off-key and live with themselves afterwards, wondering what people are thinking. Well, they're probably not wondering...maybe they should. Or maybe I shouldn't.
I'm a harsh critic so I expect everyone else to be as well. and they're most likely not... therein lies the issue.. therein lies the problem. (alanis, how old-school of me.)

 

previous - next

about me - read my profile! read other Diar
yLand diaries! recommend my diary to a friend! Get
 your own fun + free diary at DiaryLand.com!