Dyniss

All entries in the general category

Big Back

I’m getting a big back from all the lifting at this driving job. What a physical workout! Bending over and over all day and night. I worked 12 hours yesterday straight.
I’ve been selling some of my Christmas CD’s with mild success this week through people I know and through strangers. This makes me happy. If I had a Powerbook and an iPod, I could just walk around town, play the songs for strangers, and unload CD’s. Hmm… where’s that extra few thousand bucks? 🙂
I started rehearsing for my unplugged show next week. I suck! Not enough practice as a solo artist! At least I’m getting a big back…

Busy in the City

After a week of unpacking boxes here I’m still unpacking boxes. I’m trying also to set up my little studio in the basement, but there are problems — the walls are paper thin — I can hear a house mate pretty easily in the next apartment. All the pipes down here hiss and squeak. It’s not that the pipes are old or anything, just that they’re shuffling the house’s fluids around a lot. There are 5 apartments in this one house! I’m feeling shy about making too much noise in order to not disturb the house mates, which doesn’t make for confident recording. Luckily, my album is near completion and not just getting started. But the basement itself is kinda nice. I’m also seated better between my speakers and the room itself sounds nicer than my last room.
In the last week, I played squash with my old studio buddy Joao Carvalho, met with the owner of Long & McQuade‘s Burlington store about starting up a new audio class for them, talked with and e-mailed lots of old friends as they kindly welcomed me back to Toronto, and looked for regular work as well. It’s quite a jump start from the last few months of my life. I even landed a tiny gig for tonight. Busy week!

Hamilton Music Scene

Aha, over a week since I wrote. Well, in terms of shows, I played as part of the Hamilton Music Scene Festival this weekend. There were lots of people about, since it was also the last weekend of the 2003 World Cup Bike Races here. My show was fun. Had my friend Mike play with me on some songs, and I played with my CD player for a few songs. No sound person showed up. I had to do the sound for me and the two other acts. I also met a drummer I hadn’t seen in years. I appeared on CFMU on Friday night with Ric Taylor to promote the show. Ric had researched me through this site and had a lot of poignant questions which were unexpected… …A sign of a good interview. He invited me to return there around Christmas to promote Hey Michael.
My girlfriend and I got that apartment in Toronto for Nov.1st. We’ve already got 20 boxes of stuff together. I’m job hunting 8 hours a day, including weekends right now. Great cover letters, decent resumes. It’s rather frustrating. Too bad I’ve already used up my “I know people in Toronto” resources to land me work. However, for the record, I’m actually quite sad about leaving Hamilton here! I got to know some people, the community, the sights, etc. I felt I could handle a city of this size with ease. I lived here for one year.

Stuff

Ooo, I already feel like I’m not keeping up with my blog. It looks like I’m going to move back to Toronto after living in nearby Hamilton for a full year. This means I will have to get some new work with decent income to pay the higher rent. How shall I do that? Hmm…a new job in the music industry? Har, har. I learned that it’s virtually impossible to just walk into a good job in the music industry, regardless of experience. You usually have to start at the bottom and work your way up. I might end up working some dumb job. Such a senseless waste of talent! La dee da, we shall see.
Word on the street is I might play the Ontario Green Party election night party on Oct. 2. We’ll see about that, too. It’s amazing how much effort I’m putting into things to make them happen. Offering to play only one song (specifically written for the Green Party) at their election-night party for FREE involved some research, almost a dozen calls, messages, and various e-mails, and even then I don’t know what’s going to happen. Mind you, the Greens are super-busy now, but this is pretty common everywhere.

My First Entry

Welcome to my first blog entry. Seeing that the blog has become somewhat of a trendy thing to do on the internet, and considering I’ve wasted a lot of time meandering through other people’s lives this way, I thought it would be a neat idea to get my own going. This isn’t the first diary I’ve ever kept — I used to keep a diary in a laptop before the laptop was stolen. It was super-detailed and pretty interesting. It was something, however, that I was too shy to share with anyone — lots of private things and thoughts. I suppose that’s why the classic little diaries came with keys (which you could easily pick, though) to keep prying eyes away.
How private shall THIS diary now become? Nowadays, I always say, “I don’t have anything to hide”, which I believe to a great extent. The problem, however, is that what is on your mind can always hurt other people. The reality of raw thought has a blinding and painful quality to it. We have to filter what comes out of our minds and mouths to protect other beings’ feelings. Self-censorship. Sometimes people even tend to take what you say and can possibly hurt you with your own thoughts by criticizing them! Hmm…