all dressed up with a ukulele.
in Funny Stuff, Performance, there are pictures here
as breakfast, breakfast meeting, care, catwalk, courage, dear friends, event, fashion, fashion event, first meeting, heck outta, japanese man, kind, kind lady, makeup, musical sense, someone, tomorrow, uke, ukulele, Voice
I am so tired right now and I have to get up for a breakfast meeting in the morning. And then I have two shows…so, right. This post will be short.
A very kind lady did my makeup for the pre-shows fashion event tonight. “I have googled you,” she told me, upon first meeting. “It does not look like you wear much makeup–are you comfortable with me doing your makeup?”
I assured her that I was.
And she got to work.
And then a very sweet Japanese man did my hair.
It was nice to sit back and let other people take care of me, actually. And this is what they did:
They also put me in a dress. Courage B is the designer. And they let me keep it. And I totally would have, too–had someone not stolen it. Which sucks, but what are you gonna do, right? I didn’t have that dress yesterday, so not having that dress tomorrow won’t be that different, anyway.
Here’ s a picture of me playing (in case you couldn’t figure that out). Oh man. I had to walk the catwalk to get to the stool and microphone to sing. People were so kind and cheering. Plus, I didn’t fall or even trip. Added bonus.
The mic situation was trying, though. They only had one and nothing to plug my uke into, so I had to somehow use one microphone for both my voice and my uke. I hunched over like some sort of creature to get my voice and uke as close together as possible for the mic to pic it up, and then I BELTED THE HECK OUTTA THOSE SONGS.
Here’s me and my wonderful, completely lovely friend Jes.
One of the best parts of the night was that two of my dear friends came with me.
And here is me and beautiful Bets.
Oh! Also, I had an awesome rehearsal in Brooklyn today with some AMAZING musicians I am collaborating with for the Sleep No More show on Monday. I feel so lucky to play my ukulele with these guys. Their groove and vibe is just plain dreamy. In a musical sense of the word. Plus they have a HUGE STUFFED LION in their apartment, just chilling. And they call him Aslan. Um, what’s not to love about that situation?
I met a kind Italian man who spoke to me for a while tonight. Considering the music was thumpin’ and his accent was pronounced, I did a lot of smiling and nodded without totally understanding what it was, exactly, I was smiling and nodding about, unfortunately. But, there were two things that stand out from that conversation:
1). I kept thinking that maybe my Italian grandfather (who passed away before I arrived on the scene, but worked in 30 Rock as the senior VP of RCA) sounded a bit like this guy, and the thought warmed my heart.
and
2). At one point I noticed liquid pouring down the side of his pants. I was really afraid that I was witnessing him peeing during our conversation…Until, with some relief, I realized that he was just holding his bottle of beer upside down. Thank goodness that’s what it was.
salsa and conversations.
in Funny Stuff, Thoughts and Feelings
as bathroom, courage, dancer, dancing, Dang, different times, facebook friends, first names, harlem, kind, muscles, perfect sense, salsa, tonight, universal law, way, what the heck, whomever
Tonight was three parts magic and one part groping.
But the magic of beautiful friends and salsa dancing far outweighs the minor groping that occurred.
I think I danced for over four hours straight. Save for the many trips to the bathroom I took in order to stop dancing with whatever partner I was trying to gracefully get away from at the time.
“You know you can just say ‘don’t do that’ to whomever is dancing with you,” said each of my friends with me tonight, in varying words and at different times.
Or I can just go to the bathroom.
A lot.
“Would you like to be facebook friends?” one guy asked me, literally mid-dip. Which is a rather calculated time to ask, I think, considering if he doesn’t like the answer, he could just drop me. In fact, one guy almost did, and then proceeded to say “just kidding!” over and over again. Judging from the way his muscles were quivering, working so hard to just hold me up, though, I am pretty sure it wasn’t really a joke.
Oh, but the facebook friend request mid-dip.
I politely declined.
And then went to the bathroom.
Another guy offered to put a GPS in me. “Cause you’re a dancer in the city,” he told me. “I can protect you.”
Which makes perfect sense.
While you’re installing the GPS in me, why don’t we tell each other our first names? Since I’m gonna be your little helpless pet and all, you should at least know my name.
But I actually met a kind of somewhat normal seeming guy tonight.
Normal-seeming.
Ha.
Aside from being terrible English, what the heck does that even mean?
Well, I guess he didn’t offer to install a GPS in me and he didn’t try to grope me.
I know, what a prince.
But he is here getting his master’s degree in public law. Or universal law. Or something about law. Basically, he seems like he must have at least half a brain.
He lives in Harlem, too, so I told him that I had just been there for the first time this week.
“Great!” he said. “What were you doing in Harlem?”
“Taking a class,” I answered, somewhat evasively.
“What class?” he asked.
“…Um…Pole-dancing…” and then I explained that it’s a fun class and I normally do concert dance and blah blah blah why’d I have to mention that I’d been to Harlem at all?
When he asked for my number, I gave it to him. Like I said, he seemed sort of decent and all that.
“But I am not dating anyone right now–on purpose, I mean. I am not looking to date.”
“I’d still happily take your number,” he said.
Who knows, maybe I’ll regret it, like countless times before.
Or maybe not, I guess.
Scintillating debate, I know.
“Since you’ve already been through just about the worst thing you could imagine,” one friend said to me tonight, “What are you still afraid of?”
She asked this with kindness in her voice. It was the kind of question your teacher might ask you when she knows you know the answer, but it would do everyone a world of good just to hear it out loud anyway.
“I guess getting hurt again.”
“But you also know that there’s really nothing you can do to keep that from happening,” she pointed out.
And yep, I know this.
“And actually? I was hurt terribly, but I am okay.”
“Right,” she said. “So then, live with courage. The worst has already happened and you’re still here, still strong. Live with courage instead of fear.”
Okay, then.
No, seriously, YES.
And then I got home and talked to Betsy.
“I think I am gonna pick someone I don’t care about at all to care about.”
It had taken me all of five whole minutes to forget about living with courage, you see.
“That makes absolutely no sense, Jess.” said Bets.
“No–it does. I will pick someone I don’t care about at all to be in a relationship with–then, when he leaves or doesn’t call or whatever–I WON’T CARE. Perfect sense, see?”
“But you wouldn’t ever do that–you’d never get in a relationship with someone you don’t care about.”
Dang it all, she’s right, folks.
Dang it all.
Anyway, salsa was magical.
So are my friends, by the way.
those happy finlanders.
in I Lift My Eyes Up, Thoughts and Feelings
as alabamians, battle, battle of gettysburg, courage, faith and hope, faith hope, feure, finlanders, happiest people on earth, heckuva, hope, hope and faith, i don t care, kind, life, Line, love, people of finland, perspective, quote
Shane told me something about Finland tonight. He said that they are the happiest people on earth. No really, statistically they are. But. They also have the lowest expectations. I suppose there is a correlation. But, I am not sure how to work that out in my life. I mean, it’s a matter of perspective, [...]
