i send my SOS to the world- this is my message in a bottle. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Change is Gonna Come
I can feel it through my toes, and in my heart, so much so that it moves me to shed tears in the middle of the night, huddled in my bed underneath the covers of an unseasonably warm and cold winter. It's neither a negative or positive sort of nightly watershed, it's just the releasing of all these pent up feelings that have been in my heart lately. It's being young and being old, it's being at the cusp of everything but knowing you're full in the thick of it. It's the kind of irrational thing that can only happen when you're twenty-two and letting go of some things and gaining so many others. Maybe now I see the seasons of the past a little more distinctly, each phase and verse of my life and it's place in the song. The track listing makes more sense, I guess. Imagine right now, I suppose I would be on track 5 or 6, the track that holds the beginning of the album, the cohesive one in between the uptempo single that everyone likes, and the slow jam that has perfect chords. Maybe the Sam Cooke song that I love says it all; "A change is gonna come." It seems to echo on all the facets of my life lately. I know I've talked about moving to San Francisco soon, and that is happening in about a month and a week or so, but for once, that has been one of the least things on my mind. Where to start though? One of my dearest oldest friends is moving away today. She's an officer in the Navy, and she's just joined recently, so now they're sending her off to Nuclear Power school. We've been friends for about 11 or 12 years now, and she's one of the girl friends that I truly cherish. Charissa is smart in a way that makes me feel like she knows everything, without her herself knowing she knows everything. She is good at everything she puts her mind to. She is unique in a I-don't-give-a-damn kind of way. She's a really talented artist. She is soooo thoughtful it'll make you squirm. She breaks barriers; she shoots guns, she can ride a motorcycle, weld, sew, paint and listen to my innane rambling and motivate me to go the gym. She's also incredibly modest. She makes the people she's around feel great too. She's amazing, I love her and I will miss her terribly, especially because there is no point where she's ever coming back to San Diego to live here. We spent the day together with another old friend from High School, Cheryl on Friday. A coworker of hers took us out to a late lunch. She was a single mom who had raised two kids by herself and both had gotten full ride scholarships to UCSD and Berkley. She was so inspirational we spent hours just listening to her talk. It was a rare treat to be around someone with so much knowledge. Anyway, the whole afternoon really got me reminscing about our times together. We even listened to old music and sang along to songs that we hadn't heard in forever, and it took me back momentarily to that spot. It was such a good feeling, to connect with a place that I hadn't been to in forever. It reminded me of good things and great memories that I had painted over and forgotten. It also showed me how much evolution and growth has happened since then. We found out another one of our friends from our group is getting married. She's the first man down, the first of us to get married. Ahh.. Yes, now adulthood is happening. I guess I've talked about it a million times- how it seems like right now all this change is happening for real now. Not the kind of change that happened when we first graduated from high school. This is the kind of change they didn't warn you about, the kind that comes at the end of college when the real world starts to beckon and your peers are adults, and you realize that you too...might also be considered an "adult". Which is almost crazy in a way, because I still see myself as an awkward fifteen year old girl. So when your friends have 9-5 jobs and go to Iraq and get married and go to med school and law school...it's hard to convince yourself your fifteen. And when those same friends end up having careers and have already been through wars and have kids and are already doctors and lawyers or dentists or teachers or whatever... yea. Then I'll look back on this time and say, "And you thought you were an adult THEN?"... But for right now... adulthood is calling pretty loud. But there's more too. Other then the abovementioned change, there is change for ME. My dream, the dream that I've been holding onto for four years, since the day that eighteen year old girl first signed her name on the dotted line... is still happening. And that's crazy. I sat in a Starbucks this last Saturday afternoon and got news. I found out that there are two major labels that want to sign production deals with my label. I found out we finally have capital. I found out that Disney bought two of our songs for a new TV show. I found out Usher's manager actually likes US and has a meeting with my producer on the 28th of this month. I found out we're going to reissue the album, add two new songs and redo vocals and mastering (which I am SO excited about going back into the studio.) I found out that I really need to get my ass in gear if we're gonna film a video and squeeze in another photo shoot before I leave. This is huge stuff. Stuff that knocks me off my feet. Stuff that changes my world. Stuff that could potentially make what I thought was going to be one of the biggest years of my life an even bigger year. Who knows? Whether or not all of these things happen, I realized on Saturday that it is the MOMENT that makes it what it is. That little tiny space in time where you can close your eyes and know that this life is yours. It blows my mind sometimes, knowing that no matter what happens, I did it. I did what I could, for that little girl inside me with this dream, and when I'm old, I can already look back on the past that I have had and be satisfied that I did it, and I did it in a way that I am so proud of, with people that I am proud to walk beside. The pivitol moments of the last 4 years have revolved around this music, around this dream. Sitting on the pier in Honolulu Harbor, planning out our dreams at New Years of 2000, full of wide eyed ideals, not knowing how true they would become years later, and yet knowing without a doubt that it couldn't NOT happen. I guess it's always suprising though when the moments you've turned over in your head a million times become reality. The first time we ever sang for our producer. The first time we ever heard ourselves on a CD, as background singers. The first time we ever stayed up all night and wrote our own music. The feeling I got when I signed my name on the dotted line next to my name and the words, "Recording Artist". The first time we heard our voices on those tracks on demo disks driving home the countless miles on the way home from the studio and being so excited that we couldn't even sing along because we were smiling so big. The first time I actually got to write REAL thank yous for OUR CD. The first time I cracked open the plastic wrap on a CD with my face on it. The first time we ever had a live band, and the first time at rehearsal they played OUR song, the feeling of standing there trying not to cry and embarass myself in front of people who were so talented, playing OUR music. The first time we got a fan letter, and the first postive review, knowing someone who didn't even know me had shared a moment with something I had done. So right now, there is a lot going on in my heart, in my life. There's even more that I'm not mentioning, but I've said so much that I can't fit anymore cohesively. I just want these things that stood out to me this past weekend to live inside of my memory for now. It's been a big couple of few days. 4:34 p.m. - Monday, Dec. 13, 2004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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