I Want To Be Weird Again

"What kind of music do you play?" Uh, Haylee Slaughter Music. I don't know. Some of it can be pegged into a genre but some of it cannot. Since I've been recording an album in a real studio with a very talented producer, I've taken into consideration mass appeal to a certain extent and attempted to meet the listener halfway. There are songs I've deemed too personal that have been left off the final track list. The tendency to hold back and water it down now is stronger that I started refereeing seriously, for fear that rugby people will hear a song or read this blog and think "Ummm, yeah, what an unstable emotive weirdo." Referees are definitely not supposed to be unstable, emotive weirdoes.

You know who my song-writing hero is? Daniel Johnston, an unstable, emotive weirdo. So RAW, so REAL. Much of his early stuff was recorded on toy organs or badly-tuned guitars onto a cassette. Check him out, : http://www.hihowareyou.com. I want to make music just as weird. Some instrumental, all experimental, brutally honest lyrically, all music that exposes my heart and soul in a way that makes other people uncomfortable.

In the first two years of my refereeing career, I thought I had to fit a mold, not stick out too much more than I already do as a female. Be humble, not join in conversations, always get to meetings on time with my clothes ironed and my shirt tucked in. In other words, Play the Game. It's not quite me but I think that in a way these expectations have helped me grow up a little. In other ways, I've have to suppress who I really am for fear of weirding people out. I'm much more morbid than I allow myself to let on, and I've learned which anecdotes I need not share. Maybe these are good things. It is unrealistic to expect everyone to understand where I'm coming from, and it's really quite a hassle to try to change this on a day-to-day basis.

I've got high hopes for this record I'm working on right now; Internet radio play and shopping it for song placements on TV, movies, commercials or with major recording artists. I may do a CD launch party and actually perform for the first time in months. Who knows? But when it's done, I want to let myself be weird again. Really weird. Daniel Johnston weird.

Some Things I Learned This Weekend

1. I need to learn how to get in touch with my feelings.

2. I have to stop spitting.

3. Being teased by both my mom and my coach together is disturbing.

4. Many things are not within the scope of my control, but many things in fact are.

Quote of the Day

"You play right up to your limit and then pass your limit and look back at your former limit and wave a hankie at it, embarking. You enter a trance. You feel the seams and edges of everything."

....TALENT IS ITS OWN EXPECTATION.


-from the book Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It's so weird and I can't put it down.

Routines

I was going to say something nice about routines giving me confidence. It just occurred to me what was missing from my athletic development: I'm not superstitious enough. Rafael Nadal, a great tennis champion, was so reliant upon his routines that he declined an invitation to meet the Queen of England at Wimbledon, saying, "It was disappointing for me but the Wimbledon club knows I have my routines before the match." Most of the routines I do have now are about food (e.g. packing the cooler with pre, during, post match snacks, then enough calories for the ride home), but I could get weirder about my watches or the way I tie my bootlaces. Hmmmm...

Traditions

It's not just the name of a local shop that sells ceramic knick-knacks to old ladies who have nothing better to do than shop for ceramic knick-knacks.

Townes Van Zandt

A girl at church (Laura) was the first person to mention him to me after she'd been to one of my shows, asked me had I heard of him. Then, at a record store downtown the guy in the store pointed out a TVZ vinyl double album (Live at the Old Quarter) and spoke of it with such reverence I regretted giving my turntable to my dad. The latest sign was Brother Rufus (my harmonica player!) loaning me an issue of American Songwriter that featured Townes Van Zandt, and the article quoted several musicians. These resonated with me:

Guy Clark:

"And that poetic nature that's so richly inside Townes' work is like standing in front of a Van Gogh or a Renoir. You want to be able to access that part of any artist or writer or poet... They show you what a true artist is capable of doing."

14-year-old Elijah Berlow (Proctor School, NH)"

"He's such a poet, a really, really sad depressed poet. I tell my friends: 'Listen to the words...,' because at first, you know, they don't; they're about the sounds. But you put on 'Flyin' Shoes' and they don't have a chance. I tell 'em, 'Keep listening! Over and over 'til you get it' and they always come back blown away. My friends are inspired. They wanna write songs, but then they realize this is way hard."

Grace Potter:

"...you hear a song like "Waiting Around To Die" and there's such enormous despair, you're consumed by it. Taken whole from a very few, very pure lines... and as a writer, who doesn't want to do that? The way he does it so completely? Wow.

"And it sets a standard. Even his voice is poetry: The beauty is in the broken places! He always chose the perfect place, the perfect word to break... and he never overdid it. As a singer, that's part of it, too: He knew his voice inside out, how to deliver his lines so he could deliver that pain and never let the emotion take over, but be so real because it's true when he wrote it; you know that, but it doesn't make it true every time you sing it. That's the deeper poetry."

Good things come in threes, so I'm sure supposed to get into him now. The good Lord thinks I'm ready to learn from his songs.

And this is just brilliant:

Legs to walk and thoughts to fly

Eyes to laugh and lips to cry

A restless tongue to classify

All born to grown and all grown to die.

From "Rex's Blues" by TVZ

Naked Dream

I walked into a department store completely naked. I think it was the shoe section. This tall sales lady with long blonde hair is gossiping loudly/making fun of me to someone else. She said, "Who leaves the house without pants??" very sarcastically. So I walked right up to her counter and said, "Yeah, I'm naked." Apparently someone had taken my clothes, but to me there was no shame or embarassment, just a matter-of-factness about the situation. Then I started to say something, can't remember exactly, either "someone took my clothes" or "hey I need to buy some clothes." I think it was more about fear of confrontation, or my lack thereof, which is good! Despite my obvious handicap, I took care of business. Take that, tall blonde harpy.

Femininity

It's something I'm putting emphasis on lately. WHY?

When it was still cold, a friend (Gage) called me out about my track pants and huge men's training sneakers (that "even (he) wouldn't wear") and ar-teest Unplugged In New York sweater and challenged me to do at least one feminine thing a day. Don't become "one of those!", he warned. And I knew he was right - I could've taken it personally in a negative way, but knew he had a good point. If it wasn't worth the effort, he wouldn't have suggested it.

AND WHY NOT?

It's strange, as a woman, to be asked to justify my choice of attire, because dressing nicely with mascara and hair down really is a huge departure from my usually indifference. There must be some agenda! No, I just want to look nice. Hopefully I've never been some poster child for women who refuse to be attractive because wearing make-up is selling out.

WHY NOT?

And you dudes out there who say they love women who wear their hair back in sweatpants and wife beaters, God bless you. See you when the weather bans skirts again.