look_forward raze today i will book a hall with a beautiful grand piano in it for one day or night, sometime in the fall. probably october. the two times i booked this space in the past (in 2010 and 2011), i knew exactly what i wanted going to do. this time i have no idea. maybe i'll invite a few friends and play music with no real direction, enjoying the acoustics. maybe i won't invite anyone at all, and i'll just play for myself. maybe it'll end up being another ambitious free show for an audience of whoever wants to show up, though i doubt i'll get the same kind of insane turnout i did the first time. maybe i'll write a one-actor play and perform it for an audience of peanut shells, arranged just so. it's far enough away that i don't need to even think about it for a while yet if i don't want to. but it's there all the same, looming in the distance, accumulating slow energy that will gradually form itself into one idea, and then another, and another, and another. something to look forward to. 130215 ... raze "what i wanted going to do"?! what is wrong with me? WHAT I WANTED GOING TO DO I AM WANTED GOING WITH YOU YOU ARE WANTING GOING WITH ME I AM WANTING TO EAT A TREE 130215 ... the evil angel on my shoulder just chop off your fingers already. that's the solution. 130215 ... raze i'm leaning pretty heavily toward inviting no one and playing a show to an essentially empty room. i think it would be a fun way of removing all the anxiety that accompanies live performances (at least where i'm concerned), and it would be a nice little "fuck you" to the people who get on my case about how i should play live more often than once every few years and then don't bother showing up when i do. there's still time to change my mind, but i'm not sure i want to. 130503 ... raze i've come to realize my heart just isn't in it. so i'm cancelling the date. there will be no show of any kind. and i'm not sure there will be another at any point. i feel no great desire to share what i do with anyone anymore, outside of maybe a few friends. i've been more generous than i should have been, for longer than i should have been, and what i gave away isn't ever going to be returned to me. fuck_it. no more of that. 130809 ... CheapVodka I was really hoping it would end with you having the courage to go thru with it. It so seemed like the right idea. The thought of the peanut shell audience was interesting, to say the least. However the concept of performing in such a large dignified hall, in front of rows of empty chairs. Doing it in almost a protest to the music you play, to make a statement such as that.. I found it so intriguing. Maybe even appealing? Or dare I even say, compelling? When I get to the part about you giving it up, after being seemingly passionate and moderately sure. It kind of made me feel a little dissatisfied. I wanted to believe in magic. How's that for something to look_forward to? 131107 ... raze i'm sure i'll make it happen eventually...it just didn't feel like the right time, and i thought i should wait until i was really invested in the whole thing. for whatever reason, the magic wasn't there, and i could feel it wasn't going to be there come october. putting aside my bitterness, the piano needed some serious work to get it back in playing shape. for months they told me not to worry about it, they'd get it taken care of before the show, but the date kept getting closer and nothing was being done. so that was a bit of a dark cloud hanging over things. i've had technical problems ruin shows before, and i didn't want an out-of-whack piano to fill me with contempt for one of the only spaces i feel at home playing live music in this city. of course, as soon as i cancelled the date, they got around to fixing the piano. sometimes you gotta laugh. 131107 ... epitome of incomprehensibility It sounds like an interesting thing to do. There's something melancholy, or grandiose, or neither, about playing piano in an empty room with decent acoustics. 131107 ... raze i'll book it again later this year, i think, maybe, depending on how and when some in-progress things finish up. i still like the idea of performing for no one. now i know what i'd be performing, and why. that makes all the difference. 150501 ... raze i don't think i'll be booking it again later this year after all. there isn't much later left now. it'll have to wait until next year. if i can get almost everyone who's been a part of what's been going on to get on board for a show, and i think i can, then i can get into the idea of doing something, some gigantic communal noise-making not like any other show this city's going to see anytime soon. as much as a performance for no one still holds some appeal, it would feel strange to keep a thing like that a secret. so i would open it to the public, though it's impossible to gauge what kind of turnout you're going to get when you're not selling tickets. maybe ten people show up. maybe two hundred. you don't know until you know. then i can retire from this live performance business once and for all, knowing i've said all i could say, and never have to deal with anything that goes along with it again. it'll be an interesting goodbye, if nothing else. 151116 what's it to you? who go blather from