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February 23, 2006
Away From Home
I haven't written lately because we are in Disney World. We are having a wonderful time together as a family but I am nearly going crazy because I am experiencing withdrawl--I need to get back to the piano.
I think I am addicted to playing. When I am at home, I sit down to play the piano a few times every day. If too much time passes and I haven't played, I start getting very agitated. That's how I feel right now.
It is very difficult to be surrounded by people all of the time and not have the ablility to get away by myself. I dont' know if everyone needs this, but I really do. For much of my life, I have been labeled as an extrovert, but I realized recently that I have only acted like an extrovert to survive. I really just mostly want to be alone.
My children need me at this point. They are wildly jumping from bed to bed in the hotel room, acting like Jedi knights. But I am next in line for the shower, so I am looking forward to that time to myself. It will last approximately 2 minutes.
Jedi down. Gotta go.
Posted by darby on 07:41 AM | Comments (12)
February 16, 2006
Bound-Lyrics and Explanation
Here are the lyrics to the song Bound, which chronologically is the next song written.
It seems quite clear to me that you think you're diety
And maybe it's true as far as me and you
And I can tell if I'm willing to sell you are buying
Can't you tell that I'm lying when I act like I want to be swallowed up whole
Are you the reaper, have you come for my soul
Take what you want from me cause I'm so tired of fighting
And we both know that you're going to win anyway
Cause my hands are bound behind me
And if I close my eyes do I choose to compromise myself
For your love, ay, there's the rub it's me whose losing my will at your discretion
It's our secret obsession to be playing this game that we've played for so long
And if I never win couldn't something be wrong
I wrote this song while sitting at the piano one night. . .I think it came from my subconscious somewhere because it just came out--one word after the other. (Which is my favorite way to write a song, but that doesn't happen very often.)
As I wrote this song, I realized that it was about so many things. But I will have to think about how to say these things before I say them. . .
Posted by darby on 08:47 PM | Comments (3)
February 12, 2006
snowstorm
When I woke up this morning, the earth was covered in snow. Real, deep, what-every-kid-hopes-for kind of snow. It almost made me cry.
But I have a very hard time crying these days, so I couldn't.
The sight of it made me remember something from a very long time ago. When we were little, my sister Merry and I used to become united, stronger than ever, when we were hoping for a big snowstorm. It didn't matter if we were playing our favorite game, or in the middle of a knock-down, drag-out fight, if it started snowing outside, all was forgotton and we would just direct all of our childish hope out the window.
As soon as the first few flakes fell from the sky, we would start putting on our snowsuits. Think Randy from A Christmas Story, and you pretty much have it. Long underwear, pants, shirts, sweaters, hats, scarves, mittens, five pairs of socks, snowsuits and boots. . . we would work like mad to get this crap on and get outside, almost as if the snow had a greater chance of continuing to fall if we were out there, cheering it on.
We would get out our big blue taboggin and start trying to pull eachother around the yard even if there was only a dusting of snow. . . it didn't matter, it was all about the snow we hoped would be there eventually. And if God, looking down upon these ridiculously hopeful tiny people, granted us our greatest wish and gave us a snowstorm, it was a high we could live off of for days.
Nothing could bring us down--we were transported to another world entirely when we were outside playing in the snow. We forgot all of our troubles. Our wish had come true.
Why did remembering this make me feel so sad this morning? I don't know. But maybe if I call Merry, she will come over in a full body snowsuit and everything will be better.
Posted by darby on 11:53 AM | Comments (5)
February 08, 2006
How This Music Came to Be
Just wanted to explain a little bit about how these four songs came to be recorded and sound the way they do.
It was all Jason's idea in the first place--for me to record. I must say that without him, I would have given up the idea that I could write music at all. My music has been a smoldering flame --the self-loathing critic in me has been trying to extinguish it altogether, but by sheer love and determination Jase has been singlehandedly trying to keep it alive since we became friends in 1992.
He gave a demo of some stuff to Josh Latshaw and Chad Istvan of boysetsfire, and I have to admit that I was pretty nervous to let anyone hear it. Both Josh and Chad are incredible musicians and I was more than ecstatic that they wanted to work on this project. So, on December 26th, 2004 I went to their studio and we began the process of recording these songs.
The songs really only had piano and vocals when I wrote them. But it's pretty amazing what Chad and Josh did to them-- you can hear that they're so much more than piano and vocals. When I got to the studio, they both already had visions for what the songs could sound like, and they really brought them to life.
I think the thing that made me the happiest was that they could accentuate the feeling I had when I wrote each of songs, even if I couldn't articulate what I wanted them to sound like.
For instance, Chad definitely thought the PMS Song should sound like a crazy circus, which is the feeling I had when i wrote it. He totally brought that across. I have no idea how he went from hearing it in his head to bringing it into substance, but he did. It was a fascinating process.
This happened with every song. Josh would listen and say, "What if you tried . . . ." and he'd brilliantly arrange the song a little differently, which brought entirely new life to the song. Or Chad would say, "Right at this point, I'm hearing a . . . ." and he would pour time and care into the smallest detail, which would have a profound and wonderful effect on the whole song.
I've never worked on my music with anyone else, so it was a crazy feeling to have other people so involved, especially because music is really personal to me. But pretty much from the beginning, I trusted them both with my songs. I guess they're both kind of like musical midwives. I don't know how they would feel about that, but when I was there with them, I thought for the first time, "Maybe I really am a musician" . . . instead of just wishing with all of my heart that I was one. And I finally allowed the musician in me to be, and stopped trying to kill her.
You see, I write music basically to try to bring comfort to myself. Without going into much detail, I am a very tormented person. I guess that's not much of a surprise if you listen to the lyrics of some of my songs. Anyway, music is often the only thing that will help me--it transcends words and thoughts. . . and each song is a "place" where I can go.
Because of Josh and Chad, I actually want to go to these four little places.
So this was my experience working in the studio with Chad and Josh and watching the transformation of my songs. . .and I hope someday soon I can finish the project. . .but until then I keep writing music. . .
Posted by darby on 07:55 PM | Comments (3)
Dissociative Musings
I'm sitting on my bedroom floor, staring out the window at the dreary sky, and in the background my children are wrestling on my bed. At this moment, something strange is happening to me which has happened over and over again for as long as I can remember.
I feel like I'm outside of my own body. But I'm not quite certain where I am. I think this is fairly common. But it happens quite frequently to me.
Everything kind of slows down and I feel like everything around me is completely unfamiliar. Kind of like culture shock about being inside of myself and looking out from behind my own eyes. I look down at my hands and wonder what they are.
It's like all of the files inside of my mind have been erased and I have to make new categories all over again. I tell myself, I vaguely remember that this is called a hand. It is part of a body. Which is this unfamiliar lumbering mass that I do not recognize, but it seems I am looking out from inside of it.
It seems that everything I look at is completely new and strange, like I'm seeing it for the first time ever. Like my own face reflected here . . I don't know you. I know I should know you. . . I just stare and stare.
This has happened throughout my life, so I am able to compensate for it and still appear normal (I think.) Sometimes it used to last for days, but it is happening less and less frequently as I journey on through the exciting world of psychotherapy. But it is happening right now, and sometimes writing about it breaks me out of it.
I'm writing a song about this strange cloud that comes over me... I'll keep you posted.
Posted by darby on 02:12 PM | Comments (4)
February 06, 2006
Recurring Dreams
Being inside a recurring dream is a pain in the arse. I always have a sense of, "I can't believe I"m back in this situation..." and it's incredibly frustrating.
Here are a few of the recurring dreams I've had throughout my life:
The Plate-Size Contact Lens Dream
This is the one in which I can't get my contacts into my eyes because the contacts are the size of dinner plates. In real life, my vision is 20/600 in both eyes, so in my dream, everything is blurry and I can't see a thing.
In my dream, I'm always in a hurry to get somewhere--I'm late for something important. I keep trying to hold my huge flimsy contact in the palm of my hand and stuff it into my eye socket. And it just will not go in.
I spend the whole dream trying pry open my eyelids so I can jam these huge contacts up into the space behind my eyeball. I keep getting angrier and angrier as I realize I am getting later and later for whatever appointment I have. . . I can't get ready in any other way until I can see.
The I Have A Whole Year of High School Math To Do Dream
This is probably the most frustrating and nervewracking recurring dream. Suddenly I realize that I have a whole year's worth of high school math homework and tests that I have not done... it's due tomorrow, and I don't understand any of it. It's a dreadful feeling.
In some of these dreams, I protest that I have even finished college, and that I am married and have children...but none of this matters to anyone. One particularly scary version of this dream includes me in a pit with a killer bull, and my 9th grade math teacher sitting in bleachers watching me. I have to figure out mathmatical equations to keep from getting mauled by the bull.
The My Teeth All Fall Out of My Mouth and Shatter On the Floor Like Glass Dream
This is a pretty short dream, but it's a freaky one. I open my mouth and all of a sudden, all of my teeth fall out at once onto the ground in front of me, and they shatter like breaking glass. I'm having this dream less frequently than I used to. I'm not sure why.
There are also quite a few truly terrifying recurring dreams that I've had since I was a child, but I'll write about them another time.
Please feel free to add your own to this list....
Posted by darby on 08:32 PM | Comments (9)
February 04, 2006
Vegetarian Children
My kids were eating bacon the other day, because it is my son's (Ollie, 3) favorite food. All of a sudden, my daughter (Lyric, 6) said, "I feel so bad for the little pig."
Ollie: "What little pig?"
Lyric: "The little pig that you are eating."
Ollie: "This is not a little pig, this is bacon."
Lyric: "Bacon is made out of dead little pigs. You are eating a dead little pig, buddy."
There were a few moments of silence. Lyric said, "I don't want to eat animals anymore. I feel really bad for them."
Me: " A lot of people feel that way. That means you want to be a vegetarian."
Lyric: "Then I'm a vegetarian."
Ollie: "I'm a vegetarian."
(pause)
Ollie: "What's a vegetarian?"
Me: "It means you don't want to eat animals."
Ollie: "I want to be a vegetarian."
So they agreed together that they would be vegetarians. They kept asking me which foods were animals and which foods were not. After about four days, Lyric changed her conviction when her Aunt Linds made a turkey dinner the other night. She says she still feels bad for the little pig, and won't eat bacon.
Ollie remains strong in his conviction. Tonight Jason tried to offer him bacon. He gasped and scolded, "Daddy! I'm a vegetarian!"
I'll keep you posted on how long he remains a vegetarian. Tomorrow I think he's planning to join PETA. .
Posted by darby on 07:43 PM | Comments (12)
February 03, 2006
Lyrics and Explanations - The PMS Song
Well, thanks to Linds I've been inspired to write out some lyrics and explain why I wrote the songs that are up...
I have decided to write about the PMS Song first, because it is the first song that I wrote. I wrote it when I was 17 and in a state of hormonal upheaval, hence the name. Fortunately, that can be a time of intense creativity ...you know, aligning myself with the power of the moon and everything.
I remember sitting at the piano and thinking to myself, "What if I was fooling everyone around me...and I came across as an innocent and kind young girl, but really I was a psycho? And I lured some dude into a relationship..." I think I had just won the Christian Character Award at my high school, Wilmington Christian School. I remember thinking, "these people have no idea what kind of thoughts run through my head..."
I'm just remembering this as I write: I had also just seen the movie Unlawful Entry...which, by the way, disturbed me as well... There was this scene in the movie where the psycho cop chopped up this woman's best friend and stuffed her in the coat closet. And I couldn't get over what a brutal and cruel thing that was.
But when I was a teenager, I mostly dealt with anything painful in a really sarcastic and flippant way, so I just wrote a song from the perspective of one of the scariest kinds of people of all...the kind who look really kind on the outside and are really calculating on the inside.
I wrote the original music to sound like a creepy music box-waltz type thing...again, the sound of innocence and the content of ....well, a psychotic bitch, really.
Or, as my mom described the current version, "A Merry-Go-Round Ride gone awry..."
OK, here are the lyrics:
Don't you think it's kind of funny how we're one in the same
How whenever we're together we're playing some game
Or we're singing some song as we dance in the rain, Lai lai lai...
You're looking at me with those big trusting eyes
You think nothing I do will come as a surprise, do you
Don't leave me out when you say your goodbyes, lai lai lai
So you think that you know me but what if I'm controlling you
What if you're brainwashed and now I'm consoling you
Have you ever considered that I might be messing around with your mind
What if one day you said this is the end
And you left me behind like an old eighties trend
Did you ever think that I might chop up your best friend
And stick him in the closet for you to find
When my skeleton knocks at the door of your mind, lai lai lai
So you think that you know me.....
Oh, you're so beautiful my dear
There's something so childlike about you
I'll keep on quelling all your fears
While I plan for my life without you
Do you ever think I'm too good to be true
Why do I do all the nice things I do
Well, the witch fattened Hansel before he was stew, lai lai lai
I'd just like to say that violence of any kind bothers me so much that if I really think about how cruel people can be to each other, it sends me into that same dark place described in the movie entry from yesterday. But this is one of the ways that I deal with that kind of intense idea.
Posted by darby on 02:31 PM | Comments (9)
February 02, 2006
Traumatic Entertainment
Hi Dudes,
First of all, thanks to whoever told Jack Bauer about this site. . . even though I cannot watch 24 because my nerves are on edge just going through daily life.
For some reason I don't have the ability to differentiate between a show I"m watching and real life. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I've been that way ever since I was little, and it's never changed. When I was four years old, I saw Lassie Come Home, and I was so torn up about Lassie going away that I literally cried on and off for weeks. Nevermind that Lassie eventually did come home. I couldn't see past the trauma.
I don't care if a horribly nerve-wracking or gut-wrenching movie has a good ending. If it wracks my nerves or wrenches my gut, I don't want to watch it. It just gets somewhere deep inside of me, and I start feeling very, very hopeless about how much pain there is in the world.
Has there ever been a movie that just stuck with you, and you just could not shake it?
That's happened with so many movies throughout the course of my life, I couldn't even begin to name them all. And the particular scenes that stuck with me are still as clear as day, and they will never leave me, and they still make me feel sick. But here are a few:
Schindler's List(if that movie didn't stick with you and shake you up, I don't think it's possible to do so),
The Green Mile(and I only saw the middle of it, but there's that scene where that horribly cruel prison guard deliberately didn't wet the electrocution headgear, so that prisoner with the pet mouse died a way more painful death than he needed to.) By the way, is that Mr. Noodle's brother, Mr. Noodle, from Sesame Street? I swear it is, making it all the more traumatic.
What else? Oh yeah, I only saw part of this movie, too. . . but in Cold Mountain, when the soldiers were crushing the mother's hands between two planks of a fence until she screamed so that her sons would come out of hiding, and they ran out to save their mom, and they got shot. . . that's the kind of stuff that makes me so completely traumatized to live in this fucked-up world. And there really is no other way to describe what this place is, or else I would have.
So in conclusion, I would just like to say that I'm not the best person to watch a movie with. If you've seen it before, I'll want you to tell me every thing that is about to happen, so I'm prepared. And if you've never seen it before, I'll still want you to tell me everything that is about to happen, even though you don't have a clue.
And if there is trauma in the movie, like the stuff mentioned above, I will be present in body, but in mind or spirit I will be in a deep, black hole. And if you are my husband, I will irrationally feel upset with you, even though you had nothing to do with anything that is causing me trouble.
Anyway, someone asked me to post the lyrics of the songs that are up, so I'll do that soon. Thanks for reading this.
Posted by darby on 07:45 PM | Comments (14)
February 01, 2006
Four Things
A friend sent this to me and asked me to post it:
Four jobs I’ve had:
Busgirl-For the ChesDel Diner on Rt 13...I learned first hand what it's like to be a woman working in a "hostile work environment"
Singing Elf-Complete with green curI-toed shoes with bells, I was hired to do entertainment for a corporate Xmas party; Santa was wasted. Good times.
MBNA Telemarketer-Yes, I called people during dinner, mispronounced their names and hated myself for it.
Blood Bank of Delaware School Program Coordinator-I was that person who came to your high school and tried to get you to donate blood.
Four movies I can watch over and over:
Pride and Prejudice, BBC Version
The Wedding Singer
Drop Dead Gorgeous
The Big Lebowski
Four places I’ve lived:
Hartford, Conn
Long Island, NY
New Castle, DE
Newark, DE
Four TV shows I love:
The Office
Curb Your Enthusiasm
The Sopranos
Grey's Anatomy
Four places I’ve vacationed:
Polperro, Cornwall, England
Isla Mujeres, Mexico
La Jolla, CA
Naples, FL
Four of my favorite dishes:
Ice Cream from the Woodside or Strasburg Creamery
Pad Thai from Tuk Tuk in LA
Eggplant Salad from Casablanca in Wilm, DE
Steamed artichokes with hollandaise sauce
Four sites I visit daily:
TheLookMachine
Boysetsfire
msnbc
yahoo mail
Four places I would rather be right now:
Under a meteor shower
Watching a thunderstorm
By the ocean
On the Alpengeist in Busch Gardens, VA
Four bloggers I am tagging (so they will all have a good reason to post):
Jason Latshaw
Josh Latshaw
Collin Palkovitz
Jenna Latshaw
Posted by darby on 07:31 PM | Comments (6)