Fearless Failure

Whenever a gig folds, I expand ...

I wrote that twenty-some years ago, in a fit of exhaltation, having been sent home from a nice-paying job because -- as it was put to me -- my bright, loud '90s tie was too wide.  I think there may have been stars all over it.  I remember a guy I worked with bursting out into "Star Man" -- this tremulous, pitch-perfect Bowie noise -- whenever he saw me throughout that day.  We laughed about it ... Me calling him "Ziggy" ... Me laughing not with, but at myself ... and then my gig folded.

I got sent home.

Looking back, it's doubtful my neckwear was the (only) problem.  Perhaps I was bored.  A bit understimulated ... I was working in a hotel environment, where customer service and propriety were the norms.  Probably singing "Ballroom has broken", loudly -- this excellent, tremulous Bowie noise! -- to the tune of "Morning Has Broken", or barking gibberish in German, didn't help back then with the overall perception of me as a qualified, team-oriented AV professional (nor one with a full set of crayons in the box, for that matter!).

... I got sent home.

That paled, though, in comparison to being called up by an employer on New Year's Eve once, after work, and being bluntly informed that that day had been my last ... The subsequent year getting off to a flying stop, as I lay on the floor of New York's Port Authority bus station, waiting for daylight on January 1st, and my wife to return from upstate with our house keys.

There are several -- nay, hundreds -- of other examples, of me and misfortune caressing each other ... Each time, with each failure, and each lesson learned, there's potential, resolve not to get it wrong next time!

There are realizations, and steely damn insights, and fury ... Self-loathings with each new awareness...

But work-wise, I've learned it comes down to this:  If the job doesn't fit you, you really should quit.

If the job don't fit, you gotta quit.

If you're in a rut and it doesn't feel right ... bored to wit's end, and you're understimulated ... Singing songs to pass the time, or acting foolish through discomfort -- You don't feel you belong, so you're creating discomfiture -- it's time to assess.  Call timeout, and if necessary, take yourself out of the game.

Don't wait to be benched.  Or, for your gig to be folded ...

Take a deep breath.  Expand.

Be exhalted ...

V Day

* * *

A Death of Self

... would've loathed what the internet has become

I Rate (Inspiration)

"In a controversy the instant we feel anger, we have already ceased striving for the truth and have begun striving for ourselves." - Buddha

"Disturbing," she says to me, assessing my writing.  "Obviously, you're very angry." 

Am I?  I wouldn't say very angry.  "Very" being the overused word of a pre-teen, or twit waking up to an AOL homepage:  'This star's dress was very awkward' ... 'What happened next was very cute!' ...

Verily, I pray, forsooth, spare me your limp and impotent adverbs!

"The new German one is weird," she says smartly ... failing (not deigning) to elaborate.  "What do you hope to achieve with this?"

"With what?"

"Your writing.  Little stories."

"My 'little stories' comprise the pieces, and piecing together, of a life."

"I see."

"However bent, misspent, or insignificant ... small.  I write with a big mouth!"

"You talk like you write," she says, again smartly.

"Vice versa.  But thank you."

I swallow a toothpick -- the gnawed, wet remains of one -- by mistake.  "Holy shit ..."

"Want some water?"  She hands me a glass of wine. 

I started this blog (to answer the question) with one goal in mind:  to stop, at the very least, counter, the Ripoff Reports and other libelous public defecations on my name ... which have been my scarlet letter, my Jogi Löw moment, my 15 minutes of internet infamy, since 2010.

In the disgusting, un-private glass sphere that our globe, and each of our lives, have become, I refuse to relinquish control of my name ... my life, my potential for livelihood ... because one individual -- in his own mind, running around with cape and red underpants, thinking he was doing something Super and righteous ... and others then, blindly, hysterically piling on, compounding the damages inflicted and delaying, if not preventing, (re)solutions -- campaigned to defame, "name and shame" and destroy me.

No.

That won't happen.  Nothing like it.

Again.

"I'm very angry.  You're right," I say.

Get over it, Jeffrey ... my mom used to say, when I'd petulantly refuse to do something or other if things didn't go, from the get-go, my way; then my first 'real' job in New York, as a light and sound engineer at a theater/cabaret called The Ballroom ...

Eventually, I quit The Ballroom, and I was at this party when The Doors came on:  "Five to One", and the line, "Your ballroom days are over, baby" ...

Having just left a job at a place called The Ballroom, I bellowed and blustered along with that line, in my best and loudest, drunk Jim Morrison.

"No one cares, Jeff," my then-girlfriend told me.

I went home from the party that night alone.

My point being, I know.  I get it:  No one does care.  And I've already made my belabored points, in writing and publicly flailing away.

But I care.

My goal will be achieved.

My voice in a cape, and my pen in red underpants ... Saving my name and reputation.

Fall Colors

 

"In Season", ©Jeff Glovsky

I Can Dance!

I don't make music.

I can write and take pictures (I can bitch slap shade throwers) ... I can mix sounds and voices and instruments live.  I find comfort and meaning and rhythm in words, and can lyricize random poetix with ease.

Oh, I can compose things ...

I can even plink and tinkle a little.

I know what sounds right, I'm not tone deaf and I know what's 'in key' (though I'll never be there!).  I'm not an aggregator of esoteric crap on an i-pod ... There is nothing more curious, or annoying, to me, than knowing that for some reason, you've collected more than 5,000 songs (are there even 5,000 songs??), with a healthy dose of Inuit, bagpipe or "chakra music" in your song library.

Now I can appreciate some sexy throat singing every now and then ... Get down to a little Achy Breaky Mani Padme Hum on a Friday before last call.  But to walk around with that shit in my earbuds for any stretch of time is beyond my capacity ... and yours too, if you're going to be honest!  You don't need to be streaming it - and I certainly don't need you showing me that you're hip enough to 'get' or "like" it.

Anyway ... I'm not a musician.

I'm musical, and music has informed my life ... but a creator of music (or a designer of sound), is something I'm not.  I also can't draw, but that's a whole other post.

So whenever I find time to hang out on SoundCloud, I'm generally wondering why I'm there.  Why would I, not being a musician or creator of "sounds", sign up there?

Why would most people? then, becomes the question.

Whenever I bang around on SoundCloud, I'm praying it won't algorithmically single me out ... like, "Jeff Glovsky plays Barry Manilow on SoundCloud" ... That would be mortifying.

Because that's all I do there -- that's all I CAN do -- is listen to ("play") music, and then repost ("share") it.  I suppose I could put a couple playlists together ... and those would be, like, my "sounds", right?  Isn't that how it works?

Or maybe I'll record myself reading my writing - the ultimate self-absorption ... a maximum masturbation session!

"Amsterdam Avenue, holy midnight", I'll intone enigmatically ... my deep yet keening voice, preening dramatically.

"...on my knees...like Romeo!  Verona, in my pantaloons!  Elizabethan trappings, Al Pacino in delivery...Like, "Attica, oh Attica!  Oh, wherefore art thou...ATTICA!?

"I'm screaming.  No one hears me.

"But now give it out how I'm a writer...Writing!  No more shitty gigs...No odd job mental patient lot, no theater, theayter...NOT!  I'm never gonna work again!"

Yeah, I could read that.  My overwrought and written words pouring out inconceivably:  me reading and recording them!  See, reading a prose piece or poetry live, at an open mic. -- or better, by invitation -- is one thing.  But taking the time to record and promote something ... that's not what I do.

... Yet.  Like working up the nerve to dance ... 'cause that's also something I don't do.  I might bop to the beat like a tactile transducer, or stamp my foot up and down like a farmer ... or maybe even twerk a little.

But I don't dance, and I don't write or play music.

I can only share my own sounds.

Sick and Ridiculous

Playing ...

on SoundCloud

Sick ... Ridiculous: