Reeling it in, Folks.
Look I know I’ve been a lot the last couple of weeks. It was a lot for me too. I have had enough of myself as well. I’m exhausting, mostly to me.
It just happens sometimes. Everything is coming in hot and I couldn’t stop any of it from making impact and detonating fires. So be it.
Eventually I reel it in. Compartmentalize. Assess what is really happening and what is disastrously speculative and try to shut down the shit generator. Success. For today.
I think the explosion of anxiety and panic is just the way my mind prepares for change or challenges. Once the fires settle down I can parse what needs to be done, break that shit down into steps to be taken and get a handle on it. With the help of a few good friends who understand the dryness of the forest of my mind.
I imagine most people have some version of that but I yammer about it and I have a lot of different things going on. I have always wanted to be a smoother character, a cowboy of some kind. Maybe I am. I’m half a bull rider and half a rodeo clown. Riding or distracting bulls of my own making.
I also think I feel better because I had a major breakthrough last week. I’ve been playing guitar for a long time, alone. Over the last few years I’ve started to play with other musicians on stage because it was something I wanted to do all my life. Confidently. But the confidence just never came. I would feel okay about the gigs and the playing and the singing but just not great or relaxed. I would be very hard on myself afterwards and during. I know I have a lane that I can be in as a singer and player. I don’t expect to be a professional but I do play with professional musicians. I am very hard on myself primarily because I want to feel like I do it well, for me.
As a player and singer I choke on stage all the time. I lose my place, the words, screw up chords, my throat tightens up. It’s annoying. After the gigs, which are supposed to be fun, I generally feel like I don’t really need to do it again. I’m lying to myself. I can’t really play well enough, I’m not a good enough singer and I fucking choke. It’s annoying.
I let my friend Paige Stark, who I have played and sung with before on a song for the Love LA compilation, talk me into working with some other musicians who she thought would get my vibe, my sound, if you will. It was hard to tell the guys that I played with all the other times that I was going to switch it up but I did.
So, this new bunch of people including Paige, Luke Paquin, Dan Horn and Jerry Borges and I rehearsed. Like really rehearsed. Before I was just jamming out loose versions of covers that I just wanted to do my way, sloppy and easier. We would rehearse a couple of times a few days before the gig. Basically it was good enough for rock and roll. I just never felt like I was really doing the work. I always had the lyrics on paper in front of me. I knew the guys would carry me and I had fun kinda but I wanted to really rehearse and learn the process of making choices about songs and working them and getting the hours in to nail something well-rehearsed.
That’s how you get good.
So, we did that and I think I broke through to some other place. I learned all the words to all the songs we covered. I learned and rehearsed the structures of the songs, honoring originals a bit more than I usually do and it all paid off. I didn’t choke, I didn’t have lyrics in front of me, I didn’t make myself crazy and I had fun and did pretty well all around.
The real doozy of the night for me though was I decided to cover the Taylor Swift song that had a profound impact on me in terms of sitting in grief. I talk about it in my new special that’s out this Friday, Aug. 1, on HBO. Bigger Than the Whole Sky. We did it like Mazzy Star-ish. It broke me. I made it through to the last verse and then I choked up. I didn’t choke. I choked up. It was pretty raw, very emotional but I felt good about it. There is a reel of it up on Largo at the Coronet’s IG page.
So, I think that creative success may have helped lighten the load of all the other anxiety I was feeling. And that is the cross to bear of the creative person. You fucking need it to live.
Today I talk to Ari Aster about his movies. We talk a lot about his new one Eddington which is very provocative and challenging in a great way. Thursday I talk to my Bad Guys co-star Awkwafina about her life and career.
Enjoy!
Boomer, Monkey and LaFonda live!
Love,
Maron
