People who are close to me probably have figured out I'm looking for reasons to continue, and a couple of weeks ago I posted some pics on the instagrams of some people who are among the reasons I continue to do music. One of them texted me today:



So sweet. He's such an amazing and musical drummer. And a lot of people in the right places/musical outfits know that. I figure it's only a matter of time before he's touring with someone famous. I wish that was me, but it probably won't be. ;)

I do not, in fact, sound like Janis Joplin. In any way.

Yes, I am a white woman with light colored hair at a big festival. But... um...

No, I don't sound like the lady I sing with, either.*

And she doesn't sound like whatever black woman singer you think you might have heard. Although you probably can't even name one who isn't Beyonce or Rihanna, so that comparison probably won't even happen.

Still. Janis Joplin. Come *on* people.



*Unless we purposely try to make ourselves sound the same. Which we often do but you can't hear that. That's part of what we try to do as blending harmony singers.

Singing with famous people does not make me famous. ;)

This message brought to you by the number "here's my business card" and the letter "I still do gigs in town".

Once upon a time, on a blog I sometimes read, a question was asked about readers' dealbreakers in interpersonal interactions. I wrote a version of this:

My dealbreakers are complicated, and they are also evolving. So they may change in scope or vehemence over time, but they are still dealbreakers.

For business associates and friends: You must respect me, my knowledge, and my time. I have areas of expertise and I have earned my job titles and salaries, so assuming I'm not competent (e.g., because I'm a woman), or disrespecting my skills is not appropriate. Also, I'm super busy and over-scheduled, so being frivolous with my time usually puts me in a state of emergency. It also adds anger/frustation to my life that I don't need.*

For intimate partners: Same as above, but also... you must understand that your experiences are not the same as others', and you must have empathy for them and at least a basic understanding of your own privilege and how that affects your movement through the world. You must be willing to own what you're feeling and what you're doing, and be willing to discuss it without attempts at emotional manipulation or dishonesty. (Why, yes, I *am* single. "Surprise!" -- said nobody ever)

For intimate and otherwise partners: Do not drop Bad Situations on me at night before bed. Even if we talk out whatever the issue is from 8p-10p, and you're at peace with it and going to sleep happy, I am up all night stressed. I'm an insomniac at the best of times, and relationship difficulty is never the best of times.

In general: Don't project what you would do, or what society thinks I would do, onto me. If you want to know what I am doing, or what I am thinking, ASK ME. I have disentangled myself from a lot of bullshit narratives that are ascribed to people presumed to occupy my multiple niches in the world, and while I won't argue with you if you assume incorrect things about me without engaging my input, I will respect you less and limit our interactions.


* The work stuff may come up in a later post.

I have lots and lots of thoughts. I'm reading your stuff here, even if I don't always comment.

Summer is coming! Happiness. Warm is so good. Yay!

Music is amazing. I love that stuff. I love my friends. Sometimes my friends come to see some of my music and I love that, too.

*waves to those of you that I've seen recently in person*

ETA: HAVE I MENTIONED LATELY HOW MUCH I LOVE MOTORCYCLES? After I got home from getting new tires last month, and testing out the balance of them at *cough* outrageous speeds, I pulled into my driveway, saw my nini-van parked there, and I just *laughed*. It's like leading a secret life. *delighted twirl*

When you lose someone close to you, it's hard. Family members... I've lost a lot of them. It's complicated as hell for me, and has for some of them been very much a relief, but it's still big, and still tough.

One way I've always coped with those losses is by throwing myself into music. Both times that I've lost a mom (!!), I've had shows to perform that I went ahead with, even when my fellow musicians suggested cancellation to make me feel better. But that's never been my way. In fact, I did a show in November with my friend Jen, whose younger sister was killed in a car accident a few days before. Jen dedicated the last song to her, and we sobbed on stage while we sang the a capella ending, but we did the fucking gig. That's how we do.

Last night I lost a band member. I'm devastated.

He lost his mother to a long protracted illness right before the holidays. He'd been out awhile and was getting back into gigging again in the last month, after putting everything on hold to be with her. Finally re-emerging into the world, he'd told us just last week that he quit his day job and was going back to music full time. He recently moved in with his girlfriend that he was totally nuts about, and was pulling his life together and making it what he wanted.

Last week after rehearsal we were talking about the the long road to recovery after the loss of family. I hugged him goodbye Saturday night after the show, fully expecting to see him tomorrow. I shot him an email yesterday about song choices for the set list, and stayed up until 3 am working everything out so the Valentine's Day show with him would be awesome.

I don't know how to throw myself into music for this. It feels all ruined. I need to change the set list entirely, taking out all his songs, which I just can't be okay with. I ought to call around and get a replacement for him but there is no replacement. And I don't want anybody else. I want him. There are very few people that I connect with musically where it's just Right and you look in each other's eyes on stage and it's fucking Perfect. He was one of only two singers ever in my life for me like that, and we were looking forward to doing great things this year with original music and us two and a killer band. Now I've got a show to do that requires moving on from that. This is NOT how we do.

I have some very good, very awesome friends. Real, deep, caring friends... people who have my back.

If you don't have anybody like that, maybe it's you.

So, my mother died on Sunday, July 14.

I got an email from my pop on July 2 saying she was critically ill and to please call her friend Janice in Las Vegas for details. I got in touch with pop, Janice, and hospital, and then the whirlwind began. By the time anybody found me, she'd been in the hospital for 8 days, and had been in an induced coma and intubated for 3. She had a right pleural effusion, pneumonia, hyponatremia, malnutrition, and a whole slew of other issues too numerous to name now.

Overnight, the hospital started calling me for permissions for more procedures, including biopsies. On Wednesday afternoon, July 3, the first doctor I talked to said her labs were looking better after they'd tapped the effusion/drained lung fluid and things were looking up. By 9pm the biopsies had come back, and the oncologist called me and said we were dealing with small cell lung cancer and the only hope was aggressive chemo, which would likely not work, would not improve quality of life, and was not recommended. The original doctor called me also and said he did not think she would be able to survive without a ventilator.

She fricken hated that ventilator, and never wanted it in the first place.

I'm going to elide the details here, but I flew to Vegas on Sunday July 7, with the help and support of many friends who pulled together to make the trip possible. I spent a lot of days and hours waiting on other people and making the hospital wait on me and family and friends for decisions and changes to her care that had already been decided, but in the end I chose to take her off the ventilator and move her to hospice. She knew I was here (probably 50 times she woke up and was surprised and pleased - propofol turned her into Dory the Goldfish), but she was only really present for about 15 minutes after we got her into hospice, when she'd been off all the ICU drugs and the vent for hours. She said HI to me all excited when she first woke up, she wanted a chocolate malt so we got her that, we put her glasses on when she wanted them, and she said it was okay for Janice's son to come visit. And then they put her on the hospice cocktail and that was it.

She fought and fought. She had a mission which kept her restless and in a constant state of negation (even back in ICU), and she never relented on it, from Wednesday until her passing on Sunday morning, unless I asked for more drugs. I sat by her bedside through most of it. In the ICU she liked music - in hospice, she didn't. There was not much to do but read email and facebook updates and hold her hand and speak quietly to her. I told her I'd be right back with more drugs to make things feel better. I told her I loved her. I told her that whatever she needed to get done, I would figure it out and take care of it, and she didn't need to hold on for that. Stubborn lady, fighting fighting fighting, but in the end, the lungs just failed.

...

In the week since, I've been cleaning out her house, donating her clothes, setting aside stuff that I want to keep, trying to find out about her finances so I can get her affairs in order. Her house and her paperwork is a mess (she was sick for about a year) but her closet is *immaculate*, just like the daughter of a psychotic person obsessed with neatness would have. ;) She liked peach/orange/coral and blue/aqua/peacock but other than that we have similar taste in... everything. It's a sad thing, going through her stuff, and knowing that the reason we never shared this stuff while she was alive was because she didn't want to bother me and intrude upon my life, and I didn't need a mom relationship and didn't reach out regularly as a result.

The memorial is today. It's going to be hard. Making all these decisions for her has been extraordinarily difficult for me, as her twin in many ways but as a stranger in lots of others, and I feel like I'm not getting things done right. Except for the part where she didn't want intrusive medical care. I know I did the right thing there.

I've been studying alternative housing for several months now, and I finally realize that one thing in common most of these people who live in really small spaces have is that they don't actually DO anything.

They work, and they come home, and they eat super simple meals at home, and maybe some of them garden... and while some of them have bicycles, most of them don't have any gear for things done outside the home that are more complicated than that.

I have motorcycle gear, camping gear, various water-related sports gear, and most of all MUSIC GEAR that would fill up 112 square feet in a heartbeat. Floor to ceiling probably, too. Does simplifying my life mean never doing anything except work and looking around at my Now Greatly Improved And Less Costly living space?

One of the things I dislike about re-certification time, is how neatly my studies categorize all of the deaths of my companions on the journey.